Bassattackr
5 year old buck +
That's not terrible actually. Most NWSG require a minimum ph of around 5.5 to do well..
Cover/Security
- Thread starter BrushyPines
- Start date
That's not terrible actually. Most NWSG require a minimum ph of around 5.5 to do well..
Tree Spud
5 year old buck +
So whatever undesirable plants that are there will really grow well?
BrushyPines
5 year old buck +
Only thing to me undesirable at the moment are the trees mentioned above. My overall goal is to make the open spots from the thinning thicker to hopefully have more daylight deer movement to my food plots that are planted on the pine plantation side of the property.
Tree Spud
5 year old buck +
Well good, you have come to the alter of pain. Many think a simple action will result if in wonderful results they desire.
Not sure of your experience with exposed seed banks exposed to sunlight, canopy removal, or invasives once released taking control but happy to ride along.
Keep us posted ...
Bill
Administrator
True Dat.
All my multiflora rose showed up when I hinge cut. I learned to live with it.
Don’t like sweet gum. But it does add stem count on an outrageous level because it comes up everywhere
Crimson n' Camo
5 year old buck +
Sunlight is your friend......The best properties here in Alabama are where pines are heavily thinned and the understory vegetation is maxed out
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
I'm on a pine farm. First, expect deer sightings to go way down immediately after a thinning of significant acreage. Timber management is a major habitat change. First it is intense human intervention. Deer often avoid the area for a while. Second, it changes how deer relate to your land in both the short and long term. Even after deer begin using the area again, they will use it differently. Sightings continue to be down until you learn how they now relate to it. Some of it is simply that you need to figure them out again.
If your objective is really to create cover, the best tool I've found is a controlled burn. We waited a year or two after the thinning for the fuel load to reduce before conducting a burn. This will increase the growth rate on your pines as it removes competition. It also addresses the second issue which is pine needles. Sunlight doesn't just need to make it through the canopy, it needs to make it to the ground. Once the fire exposes soil, all kinds of stuff from your native seed bank will grow. Much will be herbaceous creating both quality food and cover. Once again, this is a disturbance. It is amazing though how quickly deer will begin to use an area after fire versus logging activity. I often see turkey in there while it is still smoking!
While this creates cover, it creates "Quality food in cover" as well. This is great from a deer management perspective if your objective was QDM, but it creates problems from a hunting perspective. There is a constant algorithm that goes on in the brain of a deer. It is a balance between food, security, and for a few short bursts, sex. When you create "Quality food in cover", deer become much more sensitive to hunting pressure and often become nocturnal with very little hunting pressure.
Deer have become significantly harder to hunt on our place since we done QDM oriented timber management. Before we did any timber management, deer bedded where they could (both on and off our property) in the cover they could find. The then traveled through our "pine desert" to reach our food plots. They needed the food and feeding at night only was not enough. They were willing to risk exposure to get to the quality food. As the quality native foods began to grow in the thinned pines along with cover, they no longer needed to expose themselves as much to get quality foods. They now have many more secure bedding options where they only need to stand up, stretch their legs, and walk a few yards to get quality native foods. They can then just lay back down. They still use our food plots a lot, but only after dark. They have become much more sensitive to hunting pressure.
If you decide to go the controlled burn route, study up. There are different kinds of fire and different timing. Each has a different impact. Growing season burns tend to favor forbs and dormant season burns have different plants they favor.
Personally, I would not try to plant anything in the pines to thicken them up.
Best of luck,
Jack
If your objective is really to create cover, the best tool I've found is a controlled burn. We waited a year or two after the thinning for the fuel load to reduce before conducting a burn. This will increase the growth rate on your pines as it removes competition. It also addresses the second issue which is pine needles. Sunlight doesn't just need to make it through the canopy, it needs to make it to the ground. Once the fire exposes soil, all kinds of stuff from your native seed bank will grow. Much will be herbaceous creating both quality food and cover. Once again, this is a disturbance. It is amazing though how quickly deer will begin to use an area after fire versus logging activity. I often see turkey in there while it is still smoking!
While this creates cover, it creates "Quality food in cover" as well. This is great from a deer management perspective if your objective was QDM, but it creates problems from a hunting perspective. There is a constant algorithm that goes on in the brain of a deer. It is a balance between food, security, and for a few short bursts, sex. When you create "Quality food in cover", deer become much more sensitive to hunting pressure and often become nocturnal with very little hunting pressure.
Deer have become significantly harder to hunt on our place since we done QDM oriented timber management. Before we did any timber management, deer bedded where they could (both on and off our property) in the cover they could find. The then traveled through our "pine desert" to reach our food plots. They needed the food and feeding at night only was not enough. They were willing to risk exposure to get to the quality food. As the quality native foods began to grow in the thinned pines along with cover, they no longer needed to expose themselves as much to get quality foods. They now have many more secure bedding options where they only need to stand up, stretch their legs, and walk a few yards to get quality native foods. They can then just lay back down. They still use our food plots a lot, but only after dark. They have become much more sensitive to hunting pressure.
If you decide to go the controlled burn route, study up. There are different kinds of fire and different timing. Each has a different impact. Growing season burns tend to favor forbs and dormant season burns have different plants they favor.
Personally, I would not try to plant anything in the pines to thicken them up.
Best of luck,
Jack
BrushyPines
5 year old buck +
I have never done a controlled burn, so I will definitely be looking for someone that has experience with controlled burns to assist me. My plan is to burn different sections of the property throughout the years to create a "checkerboard effect". I'd like to have both growing season burns and dormant season burns to have a variety of vegetation. I've talked to a few people about controlled burns and they also said to wait 2 years after the thinning to let everything rot. Makes sense now to let the fuel reduce as well so the fire doesn't get out of hand.
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
Yes, we worked with USDA/NRCS and got into the EQIP program in our area. They paid for our firebreak establishment as well as our controlled burn. The way our program worked, is that we worked with them on a plan, applied, and got approved for specific practices. You can then do the practice yourself or hire someone to do it, but it has to meet their specs. For firebreaks, they pay by the linear foot. So, if you do it yourself, you pocket the money. If you hire a contractor, they may charge you more or less than you get paid. You front the money, get the work done, they inspect, and they pay you. We had 3 practices approved, Firebreaks, Controlled burn, and herbicide application in a clearcut. We hired contractors to do all three as it was our first time.
We netted a little money on Firebreaks and broke even on the controlled burns. We lost a bit on the herbicide application. In the end, it cost us very little to have all this done in total.
You definitely want to hire a controlled burner. This reduces your liability and keeps things safe. Our first burn was large. We did both clear-cuts as well as thinned pines. It was over 120 acres. The controlled burner brought a dozer to do some touch-up and in case something got out of control. He let me participate on the burn crew to get some experience. He suggesting I take the class to become a controlled burner myself. It is about a week long in Sep when I'm planting so I have not done that yet.
Several years later (this spring) we decided to burn a clear-cut again. One of our members has a friend that is a controlled burner and biologist who has done more burns than anyone else in the state. We provided the manual labor. I filled 55 gal herbicide tank with water. We also used a blowers, rakes, and 2 tractors with FELs. We had no dozer on site. It was a great learning experience. We did not have a fire disc a the time (we bought one right after). We just mowed one of the internal breaks that had broom sedge growing on it and blew off the cuttings. The controlled burner, his partner, and myself were the only ones with any experience. We had 3 other fire virgins on the crew. The weather was perfect. It was great to watch the Burner's decision making. At one point the fire jumped the internal break. He very quickly assessed the situation and we retreated to the exterior break. We had planned to burn about 1/2 of the 10 acre clear-cut, but ended up burning the entire thing. If we had disked the internal break, we never would have had the jump, but we learned a lot because of the jump. Never was the fire outside the bounds of the Burner's backup plan.
Unless I take the class (or one of my partners does) and we get a lot more experience, we will probably always hire a certified burner.
Thanks,
Jack
