High level land tour and planning. Help/ advice welcome!

[bgusty]

Alright, here is your chance to chime in on some habitat improvement ideas. I figure this year is starting to wind down, and I want to hit next year running.

So for the basics. Property is about 75 acres in total, southern MN (generally mixed ag area around me, most of our property is riverbottom - see zoomed out pic). Of that, probably 30 acres is in pasture or hayfield (the E and S fields) for horses and can't really be touched. In probably 10 years or so we won't have horses anymore and I can start improving those spots as well, but for now they are just left as is. The remaining 45 ish is river bottom woods and one 13 acre field (NW from the house). The field used to be in CRP and that's since expired. The lower area (including the field) floods probably every other year and has standing water for the early part of spring.

I've put together a crude map of my ideas. Property is outlined in yellow, and goes to the river to the W, and the green circles are where I would like to make bedding areas (the green area in the field is all small caliper maples and scrub trees right now that they are using as bedding quite a bit already. The two circles in the woods I was thinking I would hinge cut to create buck bedding areas.) The gold dashed lines are where I would like to put a food plot around the perimeter of the field. The black dashed line is where I would plant a screen so that I could use the brown line to access stands. The central part of the field I want to put into like switchgrass with pockets of woody browse (I've been watching plenty of Whitetail Habitat Solutions). Currently the plan is to do a controlled burn of the field in the spring to knock back some of the trees growing in and the weed cover.

The dots are where I currently have stands, will be moving some for next season for sure.

Overall my goal is to put in a few really good bedding spots, and some low maintenance late season food plots that create a travel corridor/ pattern. I think if I can really make it a good spot for late season food and bedding, I'll massively enhance my odds at getting a decent buck. There are good deer in the area, I just can't keep them around or pattern them.

I'd like to add some diversity and just general visual appeal where I have the red or tan dotted lines. Those are areas where I was thinking I could plant fruit trees or oak trees (the property doesn't have any oak trees on it right now. The woods are all maple, boxelder, poplar). Even though I can't touch the hayfield or pasture, I can enhance the perimeter. Would some crabapple or apple trees do OK where it floods occasionally or do they not tolerate flooding well?

Limitations/ Equipment: I've got a tractor, bush hog, disc, hand seeder, chainsaw, and a small drum sprayer. Property is my parents, and they aren't hunters, so I don't have full say or an unlimited budget. Also they have followed too much of the monsanto crap and a neighbor is organic, so generally spraying roundup is not an option. Might be able to convince spraying like one time after the burn to reset the field.

What do y'all think of my layout/ plans? Open to suggestions on other improvements, layouts, food plot recommendations, etc.

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[S.T.Fanatic]

I wouldn't waste you time on "buck bedding" You can create "bedding cover" all you want, you cant control whats between the legs of the deer that beds in it. Where is the N-S line on the western edge of the property?

 

[trampledbyturtles]

Awesome looking property

Apples do not like flooding.
High and dry
A work around would be to create mounds to plant into. Easy work with a skidsteer, not so much fun with a shovel but can be done. And if that's the route u take, I'd be looking into pears cause they can take more water than an apple.
They just do not hold as late in zone 4a /4b as some crabapples would.

Anyway u can cross the neighbors ground to use the water to access potiental stands sites on those oxbows?

 

[bgusty]

I wouldn't waste you time on "buck bedding" You can create "bedding cover" all you want, you cant control whats between the legs of the deer that beds in it. Where is the N-S line on the western edge of the property?

The river is basically the property line. I think technically the neighbor’s lane ends 10 yards on our side of the river at the two points where the land juts out to the W.


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[bgusty]

I wouldn't waste you time on "buck bedding" You can create "bedding cover" all you want, you cant control whats between the legs of the deer that beds in it. Where is the N-S line on the western edge of the property?

The river is basically the property line. I think technically the neighbor’s lane ends 10 yards on our side of the river at the two points where the land juts out to the W.


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[bgusty]

Awesome looking property

Apples do not like flooding.
High and dry
A work around would be to create mounds to plant into. Easy work with a skidsteer, not so much fun with a shovel but can be done. And if that's the route u take, I'd be looking into pears cause they can take more water than an apple.
They just do not hold as late in zone 4a /4b as some crabapples would.

Anyway u can cross the neighbors ground to use the water to access potiental stands sites on those oxbows?

I guess I should have made it clear that our property ends to the W at the river (or just shy of it in two spots).


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[S.T.Fanatic]

Like mentioned, I'd make the middle oxbow your thick bedding cover.

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

I like the idea of having the oxbows be thick bedding cover. I wouldn't add bedding cover near the edge of the field since that looks like a perfect spot to funnel the bucks during the rut and you need to get in and out without bumping deer. It looks like there should be a lot of N/S buck movement during the rut, so wait for a west wind and hunt that bottleneck between the river and field. That thin patch of woods could be hinge cut to funnel the deer through a 10 yard gap. Put a stand just to the east of that gap and kill your rut buck.

I think you could add a bunch of food plots and trees to give the deer more food options year round, but I think that rut stand would give you a shot at the same bucks with a lot less effort!

That's a cool looking property.

 

[bgusty]

I like the idea of having the oxbows be thick bedding cover. I wouldn't add bedding cover near the edge of the field since that looks like a perfect spot to funnel the bucks during the rut and you need to get in and out without bumping deer. It looks like there should be a lot of N/S buck movement during the rut, so wait for a west wind and hunt that bottleneck between the river and field. That thin patch of woods could be hinge cut to funnel the deer through a 10 yard gap. Put a stand just to the east of that gap and kill your rut buck.

I think you could add a bunch of food plots and trees to give the deer more food options year round, but I think that rut stand would give you a shot at the same bucks with a lot less effort!

That's a cool looking property.

The area by the field is already being used as bedding/ transition. It was cleared as part of the CRP field, and hasn’t been touched since. So there are a lot of 3-5” caliper trees in there right now. Do I just leave as is? Cut and clear it? In my head I kind of see leaving that as bedding cover and making the two oxbow into bedding spots with hinge cuts. That way it creates a rut travel pattern of the bucks going between the 3.


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[Ben.MN/WI]

Your plan could certainly work since you are more familiar with how the deer use your land and I'm just looking at an aerial photo. To me it looked like the best funnel on the property is the small strip of woods between the river and your field. You could funnel that down even further with hinge cutting to get them to go through a 10 yard opening there. Then put a stand on both ends of the opening and you can hunt it with any easterly or westerly wind. Having bedding on the field would give the deer more options and they wouldnt necessarily need to go through the opening near your hypothetical stands. in a perfect world it would be nice to have the field be a dead zone for deer that would push them in the kill zone between your stands.