Welcome to DeerBuilder.com!
Since the late 90's I have been obsessed with planting food plots and improving both deer hunting and herd health through habitat improvement.
For nearly 20 years that obsession played out in a small, 30 acre parcel in Northern Pennsylvania . Many of you may remember the "Bowsite Food Plot" which took place on that property and watched our various successes (and failures) over the years.
While Bowsite.com grew, so did our desire to own a piece of land that was big enough to sustain a larger habitat program. At the same time we started thinking about formalizing this growing market by launching a new website to compliment Bowsite.com and our diverse family of hunting-related sites - DeerBuilder was born from that vision.
Like Bowsite, the goal of DeerBuilder is to create a community of like-minded deer hunters interested in improving herd health through habitat improvement, food plot projects, predator control, and most importantly education. While we believe strongly in selective harvest of mature animals, that choice is entirely yours.
The single most important aspect of DeerBuilder is reading this article right now. You! Like Bowsite.com, we don't claim to be experts. We are good at creating user-friendly websites that unite like-minded people. We also share your passion every day and spend a ton of our disposable income trying new ideas and starting new projects. While we will be bringing in experts in the field of deer habitat and food plot installations, we have always believed that real people, sharing their experience is far and away
Because of this mission we have designed this site to be easy for you to use. This community wants to see your projects. We want to learn about your property. We want to know what crop you chose, why, and how well it came up. We want to see your trail camera photos and then we want to see you (and hopefully some kids) posing proudly next to a whitetail deer! We also want to see the coyotes and bobcats you knocked down. Through a series of easy-to-use discussion forums, project uploads, seed ratings and more, we hope you decided to share your experiences with us. In return, we are confident you will learn from others as well!
DeerBuilder is broken down in these main sections.
DeerBuilder Forums link- at the heart of this site are our discussion forums. We broke them down into several individual sections that are visible all at once, or can be sorted together if you choose. The sections are Food Plots, Habitat Projects, predator control, tractors, ATVs and Attachments, Trail Cameras, Aging, QDM, and general DeerBuilder Topics. The forums are easy to use and follow the same clean format as Bowsite.com.
Property Showcase link- We are especially proud of our project section and hope this becomes a popular section of the site. In this section we encourage you, our visitors, to upload your projects. You simply start a main project and then add to it over time. For example, you have 100 acres of land. You can start the project by describing your property and uploading a satellite photo of it. Then you can begin by adding to it starting with a spring planting, or a hinge cutting. Perhaps you want to ask people for suggestions on where to place a sanctuary or clear land for a new kill plot. You can upload your project and everyone can track your progress. This spring I plan to amend the soil in our food plot 1 and plant Brassicas. Under our main project, you can follow our progress from planting, to emergence, to cuttings, to final results.
Seed Guide link- when you take a walk through cabelas you will see lots of seed blends from a variety of fine companies. Some of these are outstanding and will work for your given situation, others will not. We'd like to know this. But these are not just about commercial seed blends. We want to learn about generic seeds too. How well did purple top turnips perform for you in North Dakota? How did Soybeans fare in Pennsylvania? Did Sorghum come up strong in Georgia? We encourage you to rate both commercial and generic crop choices while at the same time we provide a handy reference for you to use.
Feature Articles link- while you are the beating heart of DeerBuilder, there are some real rock stars that some of you may or may not have heard about. We will bring them to you. Men and women who devoted their lives to the science of agriculture, deer biology, habitat science, and even the care, maintenance and repair of that big McCormick Tractor you just purchased will be featured here. Some of these names you will recognize, many you won't. But you will learn from all of them.
The DeerBuilder Project link- Located in Northern New York State, just SW of the Adirondacks lies a 310 acre tract of land purchased solely for the DeerBuilder project. Unlike the big celebrity plots of Iowa, Kansas and Illinois, this property represents the common man's deer property with PH issues, heavy snowfall, high predator populations, and an average deer herd both in quantity and quality. While far from perfect, it represents the same issues most of you face. It was also a clean slate with all of the fundamentals in place like mature and immature timber, fields, thickets, water, swamps, and even a magnificent wild fruit orchard that spans over 1000 apple trees. This property will be transformed over time and you will witness every part of that transformation.
To make things as easy as possible, we have also implemented a Single Sign On function. Your registration with DeerBuilder is good on all of our sites include Bowsite.com, Stickbow.com, and Bowhunting.TV. So when you need a break from discussing the differences between Ladino and Durana Clover, you can pop over to Bowsite and find out what elk hunts are heating up!
We appreciate you checking us out and hope that you will choose to share your projects, experiences and knowledge with the rest of us. Together we can all build some great deer habitat together and always remember our slogan: - If you build it, they will come.
Pat Lefemine
owner, DeerBuilder.com
