dead woods in the winter

[wklman]

Does anyone else's property get little to no use during the winter? My property is a runway of sorts. With no real thermal cover or big food plots to keep deer around they seem to shift off to other places during the winter months and only come back in the spring and stay thru the fall. I've had a cellular trail cam up on one of my best trails for the past 3 weeks and the only pic of a deer has been one with just an ear on it. I'm not complaining but just wondering if others are in the same boat as me.

 

[SD51555]

Yep. Ours gets quiet too, that's why we're spending almost all of our tree dollars on spruce and dogwood. We've made the initial push on hard and soft mast, but it's almost primarily cover now. I'd like to see some grouse and rabbit eventually. They eat too, and look nice next to the mashed potatoes.

 

[tooln]

I won't see any deer in my 40 till spring. I'm hoping my improvements will change that.

 

[Greta&Gus]

I have read deer will travel up to 20 miles to their wintering grounds. With the lack of snow we have I am sure they are all finding a nice patch of corn someone is putting out.

 

[sandbur]

To get deer to stay in the winter you need conifers and feed.

With usual Mn. snow depths, feed is browse, standing corn, and late dropping apples. Turnips and alfalfa/clover as well as rye does not cut it in most winters due to snow depth. I know you are planting apples.

What does your woods look like?

 

[leexrayshady]

Wade ours usually stays pretty busy, with the river and the few pines we have. We have tons of cover And usually the neighbors have the food

 

[bat man]

One piece they stay all winter, one piece they come and go and then vacate early March even if there is food on the ground.

 

[sticknstring]

Main property I hunt the deer leave in December and come back in April. With the early winter blast last November, they mowed down my corn & beans and left by Thanksgiving. They yard up a few miles away. Only positive is you can get your work done in the the winter without disturbance.

 

[wklman]

To get deer to stay in the winter you need conifers and feed.

With usual Mn. snow depths, feed is browse, standing corn, and late dropping apples. Turnips and alfalfa/clover as well as rye does not cut it in most winters due to snow depth. I know you are planting apples.

What does your woods look like?

I've got mostly hardwoods art. Oak, maple, popal,ironwood, birch and a few black spruce. It's got some bedding but a lot of it is more open the I'd like. The apples are fenced in for the time being until they get a bit bigger. I've got 1 3/4 acres of corn, 15 acres of alfalfa/Timothy grass hay ground, an acre of clover and maybe an acre of brassicas for food. There is 17 acres of newly planted(within the last 5 years)pines, crabapple, spruce,Ninebark,wild plum and a few more I can't remember. Then I have maybe 15 acres of lowland river bottom.

 

[wklman]

Wade ours usually stays pretty busy, with the river and the few pines we have. We have tons of cover And usually the neighbors have the food

Yeah, I think it's my lack of good thermal cover that has them move out in the winter lee. That and the fact that all the crops around me got taken off this year instead of having the 40 acres of corn that got left last year by the neighbors.

 

[Terrific_tom]

In my opinion sometimes it is a blessing if the deer winter some where else, they don't eat all your browse on your land and come spring, summer and fall your land will have attractive available browse versus no browse as high as the deer can reach where the deer wintered.

 

[bat man]

In my opinion sometimes it is a blessing if the deer winter some where else, they don't eat all your browse on your land and come spring, summer and fall your land will have attractive available browse versus no browse as high as the deer can reach where the deer wintered.

May depend on where they winter. If they have good food plus thermal they enter spring in good shape. If they only have thermal and live on fat reserves, they enter spring not so bouncy.

 

[BJE80]

The last two winters with the deep snow they have been gone. This winter they are still around quite a bit. They mostly leave to hang around the big Ag which I am quite not close to. Hard to compete with that.

 

[wklman]

I'm doing this on my smartphone so this is the best picture I could get to download.the blue area is my orchard on a south facing rise, the fence is made up of tamarack posts I got off Craigslist and a 8' black plastic fence stapled to the posts. the orange/peach area is the 15 acres of alfalfa/Timothy grass. I planted 2 rows of white spruce/red pine around the perimeter of it. The white area is kind of an experimental area where I've put in a number of different trees/brush to see if they'd grow. Its got a mix of blue spruce, wild plum, dnr/Siberian crabapples,walnut, hybrid popal,Ninebark,Hazlenut and a few others mixed in. The deer like this field and seem to find the new seedlings and keep them trimmed back pretty good.the black area is my corn plot I planted last year and will be soy beans this year. The yellow area is a 12 acre field I broke up into a half wheel design where I planted 4 sections into Norway spruce and 3 sections into food plots(brassicas and clover). The 2 purple dots are where my permanent stands are set up. The woods are a little under 20 acres and run up against a river bottom to the east.

 

[wklman]

I forgot to say that theres ag to the north, west and south sides of me and the river is my east boundary. I get 2 hunters on my south line and a single hunter on the piece to the north. The river keeps everyone off the east line for at least 200 yards and is my best place to hunt. Nobody hunts to the west of me since it's usually harvested fields and there are houses close by.

 

[wklman]

Did the Norways come through all the rains in okay condition Wade?

The norways are looking good and healthy stu albeit they're covered up in canary grass. Every one I seen this fall were green and growing. This spring I'll have to mow down each row,clear around them, and have my neighbors spray some 24 d while I'm gone.

 

[sandbur]

I'm sure Stu can tell you about hinging ironwood.

 

[wklman]

Yeah, he's been to my place a couple times and gave me some great ideas to help me think over. I've hinged about 2 acres of ironwood so far and have about that much to go.