Crabapples, pears and apples

I would look and see what you have and go from there. If you don't have many oaks plant some of both red and white oak species.

If you have plenty of oaks trees maybe add chestnuts for diversity.

If you want low maintenance fruit trees persimmons and pears may be a good option.

My goals have been to try and add diversity as well as put food on the ground not o ly during hunting season but during times of stress such as mid summer and late winter.
 
Thanks for all the replies and wisdom. I'm trying to put together a game plan for the years going forward. Obviously none of us have the time or resources to do everything all at once.

My next question would be, if you were to start your management efforts over from scratch, what would take priority? Oak plantings because they take the longest? Providing the maximum amount of security cover assuming it's lacking? Improving native browse? Are fruit and nut trees a lower priority? Assume there are equal "holes" in a property's "assets".


It really depends on what you have to work with and your goals. In my case, when we started, we had young pine stands which provided reasonable cover and more mature pines that had a thick canopy but were not yet ready for a commercial thinning. When we assessed the first thousand acres with our property at the center, and then a 3 mile radius from the center of our property, it was clear that quality food and age were the limiting factors. Our deer numbers were quite high. We were on the borderline for having enough acreage to achieve our objectives. Those objectives included improving the health of the local deer herd as measured by body weight and antler size, and introducing new folks into our sport, managing primarily for deer and turkey but for wildlife in general including quail and small game and non-game species. We also plan to manage for a compromise between timber value and wildlife.

Our first priority was to protect young bucks. It took us 5 years of constant vigilance, reporting, and prosecution to get trespass under control. Our second priority was establishing an emergency food plot program. As I mentioned, we are borderline in terms of acreage to make these goals achievable. We only own a little less of 400 acres. Fortunately, we have some cooperating neighbors and have influence over just over 800 acres. That is still small and we are still not sure if those objectives are achievable.

In recent years, we have finally been able to do some larger scale improvements. Commercial thinning of pines, clear cuts for bedding areas, establishing firebreaks and conducting controlled burns are among them. These are disruptive activities that have a negative short-term impact on hunting but have great long-term benefit for wildlife management. We are just now beginning to transition from a high intensity/maintenance food plot program to a more sustainable long-term permaculture approach.

Factors in our approach included what we had to work with to begin, how much acreage we owned and had influence over, our management objectives, and our resource limitations. They could be quite different for others and the things that are most important to start with could be much different.

Thanks,

Jack
 
My order of events went like this....got.some.fruit and chestnuts in the ground asap just bc they take so long to pay off...then started soil amendments where I wanted food plots .....next i put in the food.plots ....next I'm continuing my plotting and worlimg on cover and natives......if I had it to do over again I would.prob work on the cover first as I have none worth a damn and I believe cover is the single greatest asset to.have to.attract wildlife and keep rhem there ....even better than food ...just my 2 cents

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My next question would be, if you were to start your management efforts over from scratch, what would take priority? Oak plantings because they take the longest? Providing the maximum amount of security cover assuming it's lacking? Improving native browse? Are fruit and nut trees a lower priority? Assume there are equal "holes" in a property's "assets".

For me on a do-over I wouldn't have put out some of the varieties of apples I did and the biggest thing is I wish I would have started sooner.

My places had lots of thick hardwood cover to start with so adding more soft&hard mast is what I have been doing along with creating more "edge" cover and planting various shrubs for all wildlife like hazelnuts/cranberries/button brush/dogwood/pin oaks along with native grasses and conifers. And a big thing that hasn't been mentioned yet in this thread is making sure you have a continuous water source.
 
To answer your " do-over " question - It all depends on what you have to start with. For us, we had acres and acres of mature hardwood that was pretty wide open. So timbering ( which also brought in $$ ), was a priority to get sunlight on the ground to help native seedlings and brush to start growing. At the same time we planted lots of Norway spruce, white spruce and balsam fir to give us more thick security / thermal / bedding cover. The spruce also provided a road screen along the mountain road that borders our land, so that cut the " road shooters " down.

Those were our priorities - ( first ) more thick cover by natural regeneration, as well as added plantings of evergreens. We already had fields that were food plots, so then we started planting apples, crab apples, pears, serviceberry, dogwoods, high bush cranberry, Washington hawthorn, etc. for diversity. That was our plan, but each guy has his own set of circumstances to deal with.
 
My do-over would be more chainsaw and less planting. I got very excited with planting all kinds of stuff to start with. Some of that will still pan out. However, chainsaw would have brought cover can we still need more of while providing lots of browse i thought I would get from the plantings. For the same amount of work, we'd be farther ahead. I am pleased with my plans and execution for apples, pear, persimmon, paw paw, and chestnuts. Spruce thermal cover plantings will be good someday.
 
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My do-over would be more chainsaw and less planting. I got very excited with planting all kinds of stuff to start with. Some of that will still pan out. However, chainsaw would have brought cover can we still need more of while providing lots of browse i thought I would get from the plantings. For the same amount of work, we'd be farther ahead. I am pleased with my plans and execution for apples, pear, and chestnuts. Spruce thermal cover plantings will be good someday.
Obviously, it's very much location dependent. Where I am, there is certainly no lack of cover. Conversely, there is nothing but cover in most areas. My focus would be eliminating invasives/ worthless trees/plants, i.e. Acres of sweetgum infested pine plantations, seek&destroy of privet in most areas and, instead, cultivating a more native, beneficial, controlled overall layout with strategically placed cover/ food/ transitional areas. Also, the very first thing I would do is develop a road network that provides as low an impact as possible, with a couple of different routes to fields/ locations and, again if possible, multiple access points.
 
My do-over is not planting the DR apple trees right away and planted a lot on non DR Apples. Wish I had 15 yr old Enterprise, Galarina, Liberty, Kerr, Chestnut Crab, Dolgo Crab, Whitney Crab, and Zestar instead of Granny Smith and other varieties that don't grow as well in our area. I also wish I had done more B118 rootstock, but that is minor as our M111 rootstock are doing well.

My ranking would be: Cover (with native browse species) then fruit trees, then food plots, and nut trees last. I'm too far North for persimmon and chestnuts. Oaks take so long to bear that I'll never see the benefits anyways so we plant those, but with no expectations of improving our hunting.

Of course trying not to do these all at once is hard!!!
 
A simple way of saying it is "Plug the lowest hole in the bucket first."

Then get things done that will take years to show beneift, if you will be able to use the property over those years.

For the north country, I say forget pears and many of the larger apples. Plant hardy crabs. I would also add to be very conscious of you USDA zones. Don't waste times with persimmons, chestnuts, or even some of the hybrid oaks from southern climates. It's fun to experiment, but remember it is experiment if the plants are out of your zone or out of your climate (wet versus dry).
 
Thanks for the responses. The "do-over" portion of this thread has been incredibly enlightening.
 
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