3 Improvements to Make Your Property Feel More Like Hunting Camp

Sure, it might be hard to do if you only have a couple acres, but small(ish) properties of around five acres or more can still feel like a hunting camp even if you don’t have thousands of acres outside your backdoor. Luckily, these three improvements can make your property feel more like a hunting camp.

Build a Skinning Rack

You can always skin a deer on the ground or your tailgate, but a simple skinning rack can give you more room to work and even keep you out of the conditions. You can make your skinning rack as basic or as extravagant as you wish. Some require little more than three 4x4s and an inexpensive winch. Others might include a sink, covered roof, concrete slab, butchering table, etc., but that all depends on your budget and access to utilities.

Regardless, having a skinning rack makes it easy to quickly clean your deer when it’s on the same property. If you have a good drive from your hunting property to home, getting your deer cleaned and on ice before you get home saves a lot of time and work.

Aside from the convenience that skinning racks offer, they provide a natural gathering place after someone’s killed a deer. You can hang your deer, chum it up with your hunting buddies or family members, and revel in the fact that you harvested a deer on your own property.

Hang Some “Permanent” Stands

You should always reevaluate your stand locations to make sure you aren’t trying to relive successful hunts. However, there are some locations that naturally funnel deer every year all throughout the season. If you have such a spot on your hunting property, you should put a permanent stand in that location.

That permanent stand might be a lock-on or a comfortable two-man ladder stand. It should be something you can access quickly and quietly. This is the type of stand location that usually gets named after a family member who killed a big buck there, defining terrain feature, or even the most famous buck that fell in that spot.

Of course, you’ll want to make sure you aren’t just blowing out this stand by disregarding the wind or overhunting it. The goal isn’t to beat it to death. Instead, it’s good to look at it as a reliable spot when you don’t have a specific game plan, or maybe you have a friend joining you and you don’t want to gar-hole them.

These permanent spots aren’t meant to limit you, and they shouldn’t be viewed as the only places you can hunt; they’re meant to give you and others options. In essence, they’re sort of like pin-out spots in a hunting camp. Naming them will certainly make it feel that way.

Install a Small Cabin or Shed

The most obvious way to make your hunting property feel more like a hunting camp is to, well, set up camp. I know folks who simply park their camper at their property, but adding an affordable cabin or shed feels more established than a camper or RV, even on small properties.

You can build your own cabin if you’re handy enough, but if you don’t have the skills or time, you could go with something like a Stor-Mor portable shed, specifically their cabin-style sheds. If you’re wanting to make your property feel like a true hunting camp. You can go with one of their bare-bones models or customize your own to fit your needs.

They’re not huge, which makes them ideal for smaller properties. Their compact footprint gives you plenty of options when it comes to placement, and while it can certainly be a permanent fixture, you can always have it moved if you wish.

The Stor-Mor cabins offer plenty of space to get out of the rain, warm up, and have a hot meal between or after hunts. Those simple things can feel like a luxury after a long day of hunting.

Start Your Own Tradition

You might not have grown up around hunting camps, or maybe you experienced a few bad ones. Starting your own, even a small one, can give you, your family, and friends a deer camp experience that leads to good times, cool experiences, and a lifetime of hunting.