When
managing your deer hunting property, you have a limited number of acres with
which to work. It makes no sense to waste even one of them. Do your best to
make every square foot produce something that benefits your long-range goals. If
you find an acre that doesn't produce optimal food or cover, you should do
something about it.
SETTING THE STAGE
Regardless
of how much land you have, there is no such thing as too much. You can’t afford
to waste any of it. You paid for it all, so you might as well use it all. That
means that every acre should produce maximum benefit. To a deer hunter, that
means that every acre of the property should do one of two things well: It
should produce as much food as possible for deer or produce the best possible
cover. In some cases, it will do both. I have gone through my farm and looked
at every acre with an eye toward maximizing each. These are the things I have
learned and the steps I have taken to set things right. In no way should this
be the final word on land management. Everything takes time, and we learn as we
go forward. However, I hope this will at least get you thinking critically
about your property.
IN THE TIMBER
When
I bought this property, I noticed the open timber. I even had people tell me
how “pretty” it looked. Of course, I didn’t really want “pretty,” and what I
did to the place after buying it was anything but pretty — except to deer. Most
deer managers understand that by opening up the timber canopy, they permit more
light to reach the forest floor, encouraging plant growth. The result is better
browse and cover for deer. Sunlight can make a dramatic difference, as I
learned. My first step in dealing with the open timber was to engage in a
timber-stand improvement project that spanned five years and encompassed every
timbered acre on the farm. I hired the work done, because cutting thousands of
trees over the course of several years didn’t fit into my work schedule. I made
a few mistakes. The first step should have been a commercial harvest of mature
timber. That makes the most sense: get the valuable stuff out before you turn
the rest of the timber into matchsticks.
A
few species are still in reasonably high demand (and there are always some good
local markets), but in general, today’s timber markets are depressed because of
the lull in new home building. However, like everything, they will eventually
cycle back. When that happens, if you have mature timber, it would be wise to
hire a consulting forester and work out a timber harvest plan. I started my
timber-stand work two years before I sold any commercial timber, so it was a
bit more difficult for the cutters to get through all the downed junk in a few
areas. They complained a little, but in the end, I still got fair market price
for the logs, so it worked out. The forester can help you fine-tune a plan to
meet your goals. I wanted the thickest possible cover without cutting any of
the young medium-sized oak trees on the farm. I was green and didn’t understand
the logging process. As a result, I let the timber buyer (I didn’t hire a
forester) talk me into taking just the best mature oak and walnut. There was
nothing wrong with that part, but I should have pressed to have him take the marketable
pallet trees, too. There were plenty of remaining oak trees, so removing the
larger junk trees — ash, elm, cottonwood, hickory and hackberry in my area —
would have increased my income while reducing my timber-stand improvement time.
When full sunlight reaches the forest floor, it causes a flush of new growth.
In
just two years, the forest looks completely different. Some benefits occur as a
result. One is improved security cover and a dramatic increase in browse. The
second benefit is also important — thick cover makes it easier to sneak around
in your hunting area without blowing deer out of there. If they can see you
coming and going from 300 yards away, your property is going to burn out
quickly. A friend who specializes in creating thickets on otherwise open
pasture farms claims that he can hold a mature buck per 40 acres of thicket
cover. That seems incredible to me, but I have not done the experiment, so I
have no basis to doubt him. However, I have noticed that I am holding more
mature bucks on my farm now, presumably because of the thicker cover. The final
benefit is less obvious and relates more to your grandchildren than to you. If
you are serious about regenerating oaks on your property, there is only one way
you can do it — through an aggressive timber stand improvement program. Oak
will not regenerate well in the shade because seedlings need maximum sunlight
to grow and flourish. I now have five years worth of timber-stand improvement on
the farm, some of it very aggressive. We did some areas five years ago, during
January 2003. We did more each winter thereafter through January 2007. I can
now see what a timber-stand improvement project looks like after one, two,
three and four growing seasons. It is interesting to see how things have changed
in just five years. Three things jump out at me. First, I learned that I was
not aggressive enough when I started in 2003. I didn’t trust the outcome well enough
to go for broke, so I cut fewer trees than I should have. I will have to go
back and hit those areas again soon. During each successive year, I became more
aggressive as I gained confidence from watching the regrowth spring up in prior
project areas. Again, it is best to hire a forester to help you make these
decisions. I would hate to have you hammer the timber in an area of your
property based solely on my experiences, because growing conditions and soil
types may be different where you are managing.
The
second thing I learned is the importance of studying the forest before cutting
to determine what will take over after you start removing the canopy. This is
as simple as looking at the young growth in the affected area and directly
nearby. What are you going to release? I was generally releasing desirable
brush and crop trees. However, I had a few areas where I released honeysuckle
bushes. A little bit of honeysuckle is fine, but I don’t want my timber taken
over by this very aggressive invader. I will watch it carefully and if it starts
to spread, I will have to take measures to beat it back. In some areas, there
was very little young vegetation, so it was difficult to predict what would
respond to the sunlight when the junk trees came down. In these areas, I often
ended up with grass. Believe it or not, I have some small, dispersed grassy
openings now growing in the middle of my timber in areas that had a bare forest
floor at the time of the timber-stand improvement cut. When dealing with such
areas, where you can’t predict what will grow, you have two choices. You can
skip those areas and live with the open timber (not a solution I am willing to
tolerate; remember the title of this article), or you can open it up knowing
you might have to come back later with a back-pack sprayer filled with Roundup
and seedlings or nuts to plant or you can plant a small food plot with Secret
Spot. Fortunately, most of my property produced desirable regrowth, but I have
some planting work ahead of me the next few years.
OPEN GROUND
When deciding what to do with open ground, food takes a priority over cover. Determine how many food plot acres you need before deciding what to do with the rest of your open ground. As a general rule, try to have roughly one acre of well-maintained food plots for every five deer you expect to be on your property during fall and winter. You might end up feeding some of your neighbor’s deer, so factor those numbers in too. If the number of food plot acres you come up with is unreasonably high, maybe it is time to start shooting more does. Even if you have to plant some of your plots in marginal soils to meet your food plot goals, the production you get from these acres is better than nothing. Proper soil treatment (affecting fertility and Ph) will help to rev up poor soil when planted to certain crops, such as clover and chicory. It is difficult to make poor soils pro- duce corn and beans, however. Assuming you still have some marginal open ground left after meeting your food plot goals, you must decide what to do with them. Obviously, these acres aren’t needed for food, so they might as well be cover. Don’t wait for nature to convert old pastureland into timber cover.
That
might take 40 years. Instead, help the process. Finding something to plant that
produces the best possible cover in the least possible time is the goal. There
are three options. First, you can plant switchgrass or a mix of native
warm-season grasses to produce bedding cover. I have planted switchgrass and
found that it can be fickle to establish. In the best conditions, it will take
at least two years to establish a stand. Some of my stands never came in and
had to be replanted several years later. There are many thoughts on how to
establish switchgrass. Seed depth is critical. It is best to consult with your
county's soil conservation officer or contact a local agronomist to learn the
methods that have worked best there. Follow all guidelines to the letter,
including the application of lime and fertilizer. Switchgrass is a crop like
any other, and you need to manage it as such. The second option for marginal
acres is to plant seedling trees. You can often buy these in bulk from the
state nursery operated by your state's game and fish department. After planting
many thousands of trees, I have been generally disappointed with the result.
The true survival rate after all that work is less than 25 percent. Some years,
not one tree survived from that year’s planting. Seedlings are especially
vulnerable to drought and mishandling. If their roots dry out, or they are
exposed to air pockets in the soil when planted, they will quickly die. If you
are serious about planting seedlings, it is a very labor-intensive job. You
have to handle the seedling very carefully, keeping the roots wet until planted.
Make sure they have complete root-to-soil contact (no air pockets) and that the
root is pointed downward and not forming a J shape.
Then
you must water the seedlings regularly for the first three months. Watering
several thousand seedlings is far too much work for me. Again, there might be
better ways, such as dormant fall plantings, but I have all but given up on seedlings.
If you want to try them, contact the local state forester for advice on supply and
the best methods to assure maximum survival, or plant them on a limited basis.
For example, I planted 40 apple trees last year, and that proved to be much more
successful because I was able to give each tree the care it required. There is
a big difference between hand-planting 40 trees vs. 4,000, however. This past
fall, I took a different approach to producing tree cover on my marginal
ground. I engaged in a direct nut-seeding project on 22 acres. It is still too early
to know how well that will turn out (I am writing this in January), but I can
at least offer a few suggestions about methodology and then report back after the
spring growing season reveals the results. Instead of planting young trees, I
planted seeds — five bushels of acorns (red and white oak) and one bushel of
walnuts per acre. That amounts to roughly 20,000-plus seeds per acre. If even
25 percent of them germinate and grow, I will be more than satisfied. First, we
prepared the soil by spraying the grass with Roundup and then waited three
weeks before tilling it to create a fine, mellow seedbed. We broadcast the seeds
and immediately disked them in to a depth of roughly two to three inches. I was
lucky that it rained the day after I finished and didn’t stop for more than a week,
so I had the best possible conditions for keeping those white-oak acorns alive.
They germinate in the fall and had already partially germinated when I planted them.
For
the first two years, I need to spray the planting area with a weed killer, such
as Oust, to reduce competition. By the third year, I can just let the planting
area go, and the trees will compete well enough with the weeds to hold their
own. We planted in mid-October, and by May 2008, the trees are supposed to be
six inches to a foot tall. They are supposed to then add about 10 to 12 inches
each year thereafter. By all accounts, this is a better method of establishing
a tree planting. I look forward to reporting on the results later in the year.
By the way, I got a list of consulting foresters from a sawmill and called several
of them to find one who would collect the acorns and store them in a cold place
until I needed them. Acorns are expensive, so if you can collect your own with
a simple acorn-collection basket (a roller that you can buy online), you will
save a lot of money and will likely get the freshest possible seed. It is not
as critical with acorns from the red-oak family because they germinate in
spring, but you need to get white oaks in the ground as soon after collecting
them as possible.
FOOD PLOT ACRES
Regular
Whitetail News authors pepper this magazine with all kinds of great advice
about how to make the most of your food plot acres. I won’t rehash that here,
but I encourage you to take their advice seriously. You can produce a lot of
forage on a limited number of acres if you do it right. Buy good seed, test the
soil, prepare it properly and then maintain the plot as recommended. This
simple blueprint will help you make every precious food plot acre count.
CONCLUSION
Grab an aerial photo of your property, and walk the ground from end to end. Note any areas that are producing less then optimal food or cover. Coming up with a plan to address those areas is the fun part. You likely bought the property for deer hunting, and you have a lot invested in time and money. Good stewardship requires that you take all the steps needed to bring the land to its maximum potential as a deer factory.
