A few habitat pics I thought you might enjoy

[omicron1792]

Three more things are happening near me that could change my hunting. Time will tell how much and whether for better or worse:

1. Bordering me on the southeast they cut timber this spring in a 20 acre woods. This will be a grown up jungle soon. I'm not sure if the guy who hunts it will know how to hunt it. It doesn't take much human pressure on 20 acres to keep the good ones from bedding there.

2. Bordering me on the south - the farmer is letting his crop field edges go fallow. It will be heavy cover, but it will be narrow strips not over 40 yards wide. The guy who hunts there is constantly driving an ATV all over the place, so I doubt the good ones will try to bed in it.

3. About 1/2 mile to the southwest on another farm that doesn't join me - they sold out and the new owners are putting in 8 chicken houses. I'm hoping it ends the hunting there, because some of my best future prospects we passed have been killed on that farm.

1. Those clear cut pockets can be great. I have them all over my farm. You are right they can be difficult to hunt.

2. Hopefully those strips will hide the atvs

3. Chicken coups often increase the predators. Keep your thermal cooking those yotes.

Last night.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

The guy who hunts there is constantly driving an ATV all over the place, so I doubt the good ones will try to bed in it.

Don't know if this helps with that particular property you indicated - but around here, when the ATV's start to motor around properties in September, the nicest bucks we've seen on cams all summer get really scarce. They go deeper into thick cover, or go nocturnal. Might be different in AG country where deer are more used to tractors & other farm equipment moving around all year long. IME - the more mature bucks don't like much disturbance. You may be right about good bucks not bedding in an ATV-disturbed area. They might just love your thicker cover though!

 

[TreeDaddy]

We all have a different perspective based upon experiences in our own area. I worked hard to get fields of nwsg - they ended up being a big nothing. No animal I know of uses them on a regular basis - here. I am having success converting some nwsg to pollinator and the deer usage is much increased. Within that open ground of nwsg, I have about ten acres I planted in beans for a few years - the deer swarmed them in the summer - I like the protein for both the bucks and does. They ate the beans in fall. It was a win - until they started eating the beans shortly after they came up and I could no longer grow them.

But, I think the reason nwsg was so ineffective is cover is everywhere in this country. That is the least needed component of habitat here. Food is king - it gets them out of cover. There is one row crop farm in the county. If it was on my ground - planting the field in food would be a no brainer - especially if I didnt have to do it and it cut down maintaining 30 acres of field. At my place - fields are high maintenance - the fields see the surrounding woods and that is what they try to be - the fields want to be woods - and it is a job keeping the fields from becoming woods.

Open fields/plots left alone are Sweetgum/elm magnets in east texas

Gotta keep em mulched, mowed ,or burned

bill

 

[SwampCat]

Open fields/plots left alone are Sweetgum/elm magnets in east texas

Gotta keep em mulched, mowed ,or burned

bill

I have calcareous soil in SW AR - high PH. Persimmon, honey locust, and cedar is what likes my ground