Landlord's habitat improvements (I hope)

[wiscwhip]

Get plugs. Itasca Greenhouse in MN and North Central Reforestation(NCR) in MN are both good places to start looking for northern sourced trees. Have I mentioned that it is important to get things like seedling trees from as close to your USDA Zone as possible, if possible, pretty sure I have, but just a reminder for everyone.

 

[landlord]

Get plugs. Itasca Greenhouse in MN and North Central Reforestation(NCR) in MN are both good places to start looking for northern sourced trees. Have I mentioned that it is important to get things like seedling trees from as close to your USDA Zone as possible, if possible, pretty sure I have, but just a reminder for everyone.

Thanks. I looked them up and will be ordering in spring.

 

[wiscwhip]

Thanks. I looked them up and will be ordering in spring.

Good luck and pictures or it never happened...............;)

 

[landlord]

I travel 4hrs to get to the cabin, and I love the place and solitude, but I have a camera out behind my house. I checked it this week after getting back home, and what do I see...

I will re-aim the camera today.
I only have 1 acre, and the ordinance says I need 5 to hunt, Damn. He will be a very nice 12.

 

[PassThrew]

I had the same thing happen last year, I came home from my rut vacation and there was a beautiful 8 point bedding with a doe in my back yard!

 

[landlord]

Well I got the fall plots in this weekend, winter rye, buck forage oats, rape, and a 3# bag of BOB seed that is a brassica mix. now I wait till the start of bowseason before I will get back up there. I did get a good thatch layer out of the jap millet that should help with germination of the fall seed.
Both pics are the same field from opposite ends.

 

[landlord]

I started taking up a load of my yard compost from home each trip. I built a mound out in the marsh grass for fruit trees next spring. I will take a load each trip for the rest of the year. That should give me raised beds for about 10 trees.

 

[landlord]

The 5" of rain last week washed out my driveway above the culvert. It must have washed all the sand down the ditch, since all that is left downstream is stone. The town dumped sand over the culvert before I got here, so I was able to get in my driveway.

It also washed out the road where a culvert allows the swamp to drain.

I got a couple nice bucks on camera from the past month.

 

[landlord]

Another nice buck.

I have another pic of him in the dark after he rubbed off the velvet. He would be preferred over the other one due to mass.

 

[kl9]

That first one looks like a young buck with a lot of potential! Granted that is just going off that limited picture.

If I was you I'd move that camera down just a bit.

 

[landlord]

This is another pic of the 10 pt above. I just educated him on Sunday morning. 15 yds and I hit him high in front shoulder, quartering towards me following a doe. Found the arrow after 75 yds, no blood, and bent the muzzy broadhead right in the center, not at the shaft, DAMN. I hope he gives me another chance as the rut heats up and he thinks with his little head.

 

[PassThrew]

following a doe already?!

 

[landlord]

following a doe already?!

Yea, I thought she was a fawn when I first saw her. I am up about 27 ft. When she looked back I thought she was watching for mamma, then he came out of the tags. I saw a small 4 or 5 pt chasing a doe and 2 fawns last weekend.

 

[PassThrew]

Looks like the improvements are paying off!

 

[landlord]

Looks like the improvements are paying off!

We will see once the pressure is on. I saw nice bucks every year, (this one is nicer than most) but once the hunting pressure builds they did not seem to stay on my place. That is what I am hoping to improve. I am hunting my stands less, and spending more time on county land. I am noticing much better cover from the hinge cutting now that the leaves are dropping, there is a lot of vertical growth off of the horizontal stems at eye level, this should give them some security. At least everything seems to be moving in the right direction.

 

[bueller]

landlord, I moved your thread to the native habitat section where the other land tours reside. Keep the updates coming!

 

[j-bird]

Where have I seen that scrape set-up before???? Oh, that's right Andy's place!

As for the tree in post 33 - that appears to be an elm of some sort and not hackberry. From what I can tell - both hinge fairly well - if it is hackberry the sap wood will be nearly white while the heart wood will range in color from purple to grey to black. Elm is pretty worthless - birds like hackberry because it will produce some small fruits. Neither are of much value to deer.

Looks like you got some nice bucks to hunt this year as well. Place looks good, hope you get a crack at one of those bucks.

 

[landlord]

Where have I seen that scrape set-up before???? Oh, that's right Andy's place!

As for the tree in post 33 - that appears to be an elm of some sort and not hackberry. From what I can tell - both hinge fairly well - if it is hackberry the sap wood will be nearly white while the heart wood will range in color from purple to grey to black. Elm is pretty worthless - birds like hackberry because it will produce some small fruits. Neither are of much value to deer.

Looks like you got some nice bucks to hunt this year as well. Place looks good, hope you get a crack at one of those bucks.

I hope I get ANOTHER crack at the 10pt. I blew it the 1st time.

As best I can figure, the tree is a green ash, they are where the habitat changes from tag alder to hardwoods. They did stay alive well and put on a bunch of vertical growth this summer.
The scrape setup is from there, I have it hanging too loose, so I need to fix it, the deer are not using it. I am hoping to go to the land walk again next year. Hope we can get together then.

 

[j-bird]

I hope I get ANOTHER crack at the 10pt. I blew it the 1st time.

As best I can figure, the tree is a green ash, they are where the habitat changes from tag alder to hardwoods. They did stay alive well and put on a bunch of vertical growth this summer.
The scrape setup is from there, I have it hanging too loose, so I need to fix it, the deer are not using it. I am hoping to go to the land walk again next year. Hope we can get together then.

I try to go to the land tours Andy has as well. He has had 3 and I have been to 2 of them thus far (#1 & #3). I'll have to suggest to Andy that we use name tags so we can figure out who is who!!! Funny how few people know other people...or think that is the case, and yet some-thing as simple as a "handle name" would spur a conversation in a heart-beat!

As for the scrape - I have found scrapes are all about location, timing and the resident buck population. So either the older bucks are not moving in that area, it's a little early for those bucks to be scraping OR the older bucks are not using your property yet. My property I have very few scrapes simply because I don't house older bucks, I only get the wanderers looking for a girl friend. It sucks, but that's the facts. I now target my hunting efforts and habitat work based on that information and it has led to more success and less frustration. I still look for and monitor scrapes, but for the most part I don't have the large community scrapes - I simply don't have the deer numbers.

 

[landlord]

I got up to the cabin mid-Feb to meet with the NRCS, and the brush cutter. Every norway spruce I planted last year (300) was bitten off at the snow line. I knew they liked white pine but was surprised by this. I hope they don't attack the black spruce I have ordered for this year. I am not going to cage 300 trees. Sorry, no pics.