turkeyhunter20
Yearling... With promise
Hello all, first post here. I’ve been reading and learning on here for some time but I’m posting now to get some general ideas about habitat improvements for my property. We have roughly 65 acres in East Tennessee. Our property is long and narrow, around 0.6 miles long and 600yds wide at the widest point. The red line in the aerial represents the property line. The green are food plots that i have been planting for a couple years. The rest of the fields are mowed for hay every year and during the winter are cut and left at ankle height, providing nothing for deer. My main concern is converting our hay fields into something that will benefit deer, if not for bedding cover, then to increase daylight movement on the property.
The yellow lines show the usual directions deer are coming from to access the food plots, mainly at night. The area on the left is an a dense thicker that usually holds a group of 5-10 does. The rest of the deer are coming from the surrounding properties. We had our property select cut 4 years ago and that has thickened things up substantially but i have not seen much of an increase in attraction or bedding. The dark green areas at the bottom left of the property and in the lower center between the food plots are small stands of pine with nothing growing underneath that I’d like to do something with, I’m just not sure what. I’m also interested in creating some more cover/hinge cut bedding/ tree removal where needed. At the top of the property you can see green on a south facing slope that is a dense laurel thicket that occasionally will have a buck or two bedding in but never consistently. The property is very low pressure with only myself hunting it. I’d like to increase the attraction/ cover in order to increase the number of deer using the property
The yellow lines show the usual directions deer are coming from to access the food plots, mainly at night. The area on the left is an a dense thicker that usually holds a group of 5-10 does. The rest of the deer are coming from the surrounding properties. We had our property select cut 4 years ago and that has thickened things up substantially but i have not seen much of an increase in attraction or bedding. The dark green areas at the bottom left of the property and in the lower center between the food plots are small stands of pine with nothing growing underneath that I’d like to do something with, I’m just not sure what. I’m also interested in creating some more cover/hinge cut bedding/ tree removal where needed. At the top of the property you can see green on a south facing slope that is a dense laurel thicket that occasionally will have a buck or two bedding in but never consistently. The property is very low pressure with only myself hunting it. I’d like to increase the attraction/ cover in order to increase the number of deer using the property