Habitat plans that produced

[Steve Bartylla]

got it! thanks Steve! Do you ever find that you end up with deer bedding up along side the sidewalks?

Occasionally, but it's not the norm if it's connecting a food source to bedding area or bedding area to bedding area...It happens more when you don't create the bedding areas or have good naturally ones on your ground and are just trying to create travel ways. I'm not saying it NEVER happens in those situations. It's just much rarer...Those pesky deer don't always follow the rules we make for them. It's rather rude behavior on their part, if you ask me.

 

[phil@thesidehill]

Occasionally, but it's not the norm if it's connecting a food source to bedding area or bedding area to bedding area...It happens more when you don't create the bedding areas or have good naturally ones on your ground and are just trying to create travel ways. I'm not saying it NEVER happens in those situations. It's just much rarer...Those pesky deer don't always follow the rules we make for them. It's rather rude behavior on their part, if you ask me.

Yeah I kinda figured that there could be places along the travel corridor that fit the criteria for bedding and then bang! You have a spot where you might get deer bedding on occasion.
The corridor I'm thinking of will run from the corner of a property that almost borders a large swampy area that currently holds bedding areas on higher ground with hemlocks and lots of brushy/grassy hummocks. This corridor will run up to a proposed food plot area. Then another (more or less the same corridor) sidewalk will continue on from the food plot area to the a proposed man made bedding area on a south facing slope. Currently there isn't much in the way of bedding cover on the property so I'm concerned that the edges of the sidewalks might be attractive as bedding.

 

[sandbur]

In my experience, you need to add a couple words to your sentence, MN. "does bed MORE for convenience THAN BUCKS." That doesn't mean you can get them to bed anywhere you want them to. It's just that you have more wiggle room in accomplishing that. You flat aren't going to get them to bed on a steep side hill, when they can bed on a flat top or bottom. You aren't going to get them to bed in a hinge cut on a north facing slope during the cold, when they either have thermal cover or a south facing slope. Good luck stopping them from bedding on the edge of a nearby swamp and so on.

Bucks are almost always going to bed in areas that offer them certain traits or a combo of traits. Start kneeling down in all the beds you believe are made by bucks, look around and ask why, if I'm a buck, do I want to bed here. Do that enough and it actually starts becoming easy to guess where bucks are bedded on your hunting grounds. The catch is that you aren't going to have very good luck at all getting them to shift away from spots that offer those traits to a spot you make a bedding cave for them that doesn't have those features. Does don't have those hard and fast strong tendencies, but you can still only push them so far, if that makes any sense.

P.S. Cut at chest to shoulder level when making doe bedding areas. They seem to REALLY like being able to more around inside freely. My goal is to drop the biggest trees first and then lay the smaller ones on top, creating a false ceiling. That said, when the big ones snap or the woods just doesn't work for the false ceilings, I create little 10ish yard diameter openings inside, either by cutting out those trees or getting them to hinge in directions that create that naturally, and even create an entrance and exit trail, when it is hard to maneuver inside.

I feel like my deer trails are in reasonable places for my stands. Three to four foot wide and mowed once a summer.

But how would you try and create a doe bedding pocket in locations like this?

 

[sandbur]

My thoughts are a circle of waist high cuts, leaving the cedar stand in the middle. Cut the lower branches and remove form the inside trees. Leave an inlet and outlet. Suggestions????

 

[MN Slick]

In my experience, you need to add a couple words to your sentence, MN. "does bed MORE for convenience THAN BUCKS." That doesn't mean you can get them to bed anywhere you want them to. It's just that you have more wiggle room in accomplishing that. You flat aren't going to get them to bed on a steep side hill, when they can bed on a flat top or bottom. You aren't going to get them to bed in a hinge cut on a north facing slope during the cold, when they either have thermal cover or a south facing slope. Good luck stopping them from bedding on the edge of a nearby swamp and so on.

Bucks are almost always going to bed in areas that offer them certain traits or a combo of traits. Start kneeling down in all the beds you believe are made by bucks, look around and ask why, if I'm a buck, do I want to bed here. Do that enough and it actually starts becoming easy to guess where bucks are bedded on your hunting grounds. The catch is that you aren't going to have very good luck at all getting them to shift away from spots that offer those traits to a spot you make a bedding cave for them that doesn't have those features. Does don't have those hard and fast strong tendencies, but you can still only push them so far, if that makes any sense.

P.S. Cut at chest to shoulder level when making doe bedding areas. They seem to REALLY like being able to more around inside freely. My goal is to drop the biggest trees first and then lay the smaller ones on top, creating a false ceiling. That said, when the big ones snap or the woods just doesn't work for the false ceilings, I create little 10ish yard diameter openings inside, either by cutting out those trees or getting them to hinge in directions that create that naturally, and even create an entrance and exit trail, when it is hard to maneuver inside.

True. Qualifiers are always needed when talking about deer and deer behavior.