Sustainable Winter Browse - Zone 4

[Bassattackr]

In my experience, hinge cutting doesn't create bedding, not even on a smaller scale. It just creates a mess that deer don't want to walk through. It's also damaging to the timber value long term.

IMO - You're better off doing TSI (cutting the non desireables cleanly and let them fall), most of the time they still sprout unless it kills the tree (Like ERC for example). Still providing an explosion of browse and bedding. If TSI wouldn't open up the canopy enough, a logger is what is needed.

Discing up fallow sections of open areas / pasture are also great ways to get sunlight to the seedbed and will provide great herbaceous browse.

 

[gunfun13]

Over the last couple weeks I've seen more than a few deer walk right through clover, rye, and triticale food plots without taking a bite in order to go feast on blackberry and Multiflora rose. Property was select cut 3 winters ago and the open canopy has done wonders for creating browse. Some of my blackberries are still holding green leaves...I may try to propagate those. Southeast Michigan

 

[Telemark]

White pine, white cedar (thuja), various willows/sallows

 

[4wanderingeyes]

Over the last couple weeks I've seen more than a few deer walk right through clover, rye, and triticale food plots without taking a bite in order to go feast on blackberry and Multiflora rose. Property was select cut 3 winters ago and the open canopy has done wonders for creating browse. Some of my blackberries are still holding green leaves...I may try to propagate those. Southeast Michigan

The deer are digging through the snow to get to the clover, and winter rye here. I take it the illegal piles of corn must be cleaned up now.

 

[cavey]

I'm looking for opinions on sustainable winter browse that will not require the maintenance of food plots. I have a variety of large acorn producing oaks that are great for early season. However, come mid/late-November and December, the acorns are gone and deer yard-up elsewhere. Late season hunting is a struggle. I want to provide more browse and cover for winter. I'm located in SE Minnesota.

I'm hoping to plant once, water/protect for 2-3 years and remove cages for browsing.

Over the next couple years I will be planting the following:
- Dogwood (red/grey)
- Hazelnut
- Ninebark
- Elderberry
- Apples (Midwest crabs, variety of late dropping apples)
- Plums

Am I on the right track, any additional suggestions for late-season winter browse? Any and all opinions welcome. Thank you in advance.

- Dogwood (red/grey) = awesome for browse - looks cool in the landscape, depending on your resources - buy them from the dnr or better yet do you own cuttings. Find an area of public land or ask permission on private .... find a road ditch where the county/township mows periodically and and take cuttings by the hundreds - nice pencil sized cuttings. Direct plant into wetter areas and or dense plant them into a garden or stooling bed (stooling bed of sand is what I use) and in a year or two you will have all you will ever need.)

- Hazelnut = super slow to establish, no as much nut production as I thought there would be, zero browse
- Ninebark = ok ish, little browse bucks will rub it up
- Elderberry = pretty cool if you can get it big enough to produce - heavily browsed when young
- Apples (Midwest crabs, variety of late dropping apples) = The Bomb! The absolute bomb next to water.
- Plums = hard to establish for me anyways

That all being said, I preach variety is the spice of life - deer are samplers they roam around and browse here and there and will at times walk through clover and alfalfa to eat rag weed ... my goal is to give them something to eat 24/7/365. Corn and soybeans will always be king for late seasons through in some greens like WW or WR into the standing grains. Bonus to WW is that in the spring you will get an early food source for the deer. I keep a bag of cheap red clover around just to seed back any disturbed areas with and toss in WW through out the year. Logging - select cut or pockets of clear cutting is always going to be smarter than hinge cuttings - I believe your land should produce a crop a trees too $$$ but hinge cutting especially to feather out your field edges is effective and if you have a spot you want to brush up for bedding - hinge cutting an area may be an effective way to create bedding - I believe it may be a better way of controlling movement in a smaller area.

There is nothing that is perfect - if it was the deer would eat it to the ground and destroy it. Most of us can not devote a hundred acres to a winter food plot of standing corn and soybeans ... but we can give them variety and hope that that is enough.

Caging or putting the shrubs into a nursery is a absolute must giving them an extra year or two and transplanting bigger shrubs is the only thing that has really worked for me - apart from red osier which you can drop in in pure volume. Otherwise 90 percent of my shrubs are eaten dead within the first year of planting.

 

[rocksnstumps]

Agree hazelnuts seem slow growers, even after weed mats and cages. They get browsed on my place if not protected and tend to send up more suckers when chomped and of course no nut production when that happens. Been trying different hybrids. The ones purchased from a source in my state seem better growers compared to a couple from northeast but still trying for holy grail of good growth and bigger size and quantity of nuts. Mostly disappointing so far. Big effort in upper midwest for these so maybe just keep trying.

The number 1 shrub on my land that keeps expanding even with deer browse when young is prickly ash. Even though native it acts more like an invasive so cannot reccomend it tho.

Plums are slow on my land also. Plum thickets after 15+ yrs of growing.....ah, no. See note above about prickly ash and it overruns and crowds out basically everything unless controlled.

 

[bwoods11]

Red O Dogwood!

 

[Brian662]

I haven't seen anything at my place browse on prickly ash, in fact it's going to get eradicated at the same time as my buckthorn with the forestry mulcher. I plan to plant several shrub varieties to replace the prickly ash that grows on the field edge.

 

[4wanderingeyes]

Does anyone in NW Wisconsin have a bunch of ROD, and could spare some cuttings this spring?

 

[Brian662]

You could just cruise the road ditches and cut some. In MN you need permission from the township (or whoever maintains the roads) to do any cuttings within the road right of way. I called our township commissioner and he was good with it since they just Mow them down anyways. A friend of mine and I spent about an hour or two and filled up two five gallon buckets of cuttings in the back of my UTV.

 

[Brian662]

I will say there are some people who's properties nearby were absolutely loaded with ROD and I do plan to knock on their door to see if I can get some cuttings this spring. Would be quicker and more efficient than cruising ditches.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Sd said exactly what I was going to say. I would go with cutting whatever trees you have. You would have to plant a ton of shrubs to provide enough browse to last any amour of time. I had my woods logged 5 years ago, I bet they cut close to 500 red maples, plus other birch, ash, and aspen. I almost could not find a single stump that they didn't browse. Besides the stump sprout that usually had at least a dozen shoots on them the sunlight caused all kinds of other browse trees and shrubs to grow.

Deer LOVE the kind of habitat like in your pic. When we logged at our camp, we also did away with a batch of red maples, SOME damaged / diseased oaks, and white pines. We caged some of the stumps to keep the deer off the sprouts until they got some size to them. I wish we'd have caged them all. The stump sprouts inside the cages are fantastic.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

For you guys who like ROD cuttings - do they have to be rooted before planting?? I planted some rooted cuttings at camp and even with caging them - not many survived. How do you plant cuttings, and how BIG do the cuttings have to be to survive??

 

[Brian662]

For you guys who like ROD cuttings - do they have to be rooted before planting?? I planted some rooted cuttings at camp and even with caging them - not many survived. How do you plant cuttings, and how BIG do the cuttings have to be to survive??

Check this out. I used pencil thin cuttings with rooting hormone and about 20% survived but we had a drought last year and I didn't use any weed control. Better survival inside cages as the ones outside of cages the deer just pulled out of the ground. Most of my cuttings were 18-24" long and always the brighter red part of the shrub to indicate fresh growth.

Planting Red Osier Dogwood Using Cuttings

I have a lot of Red Osier Dogwood in the cattail marsh on my property. I read/watched some videos on dogwood propagation by sticking cuttings in the ground. I would really like to establish a nice dogwood thicket in a wet, kinda useless area of our property so I thought I'd give this a try. I'll...

habitat-talk.com

 

[SD51555]

For you guys who like ROD cuttings - do they have to be rooted before planting?? I planted some rooted cuttings at camp and even with caging them - not many survived. How do you plant cuttings, and how BIG do the cuttings have to be to survive??

I do it all in one day. Gather them, cut them, plant them. The rooting hormone is dirt cheap. I put all mine in cages, like 50 in a 3’ diameter cage. That 20% number is accurate. If I get ten good stems going in one cage, that’s a success to me. But site match them. Make sure it’s a lower ground spot so they don’t get too dry.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ruskbucks]

For you guys who like ROD cuttings - do they have to be rooted before planting?? I planted some rooted cuttings at camp and even with caging them - not many survived. How do you plant cuttings, and how BIG do the cuttings have to be to survive??

I cut mine about 10 " long. Cut the bottom on a angle just below a bud. They can't be planted upside down. I make sure I have 2 buds in the ground and one above. I have had way more success having just a few inches out of the ground. I think it puts more energy into the roots than building leaves. Just stick them in the ground. Take cuttings in spring before buds pop and stick them in ground asap. Keep in fridge with damp paper towel if you can't plant right away.

 

[ruskbucks]

Deer LOVE the kind of habitat like in your pic. When we logged at our camp, we also did away with a batch of red maples, SOME damaged / diseased oaks, and white pines. We caged some of the stumps to keep the deer off the sprouts until they got some size to them. I wish we'd have caged them all. The stump sprouts inside the cages are fantastic.

I was concerned the first year after the cutting. I thought that they had no chance to survive, but they bounced right back year after year. Most of them now are above the browse line. I would of liked to have put a cage around some just to see the difference, to me they look great for being browse for 5 years. I was happy that they feed the savages that much and they weren't able to kill them.

 

[chucker66]

Does anyone in NW Wisconsin have a bunch of ROD, and could spare some cuttings this spring?

I'm going to scour the ditches around here. If I find any I will share :)

 

[4wanderingeyes]

I am sure there is plenty around me, but I am not exactly sure what I am looking for. I know a red bush, but I don’t just want to cut and plant any red twig in my land.

 

[Telemark]

For you guys who like ROD cuttings - do they have to be rooted before planting?? I planted some rooted cuttings at camp and even with caging them - not many survived. How do you plant cuttings, and how BIG do the cuttings have to be to survive??

In my experience, planting rooted cutting is the last thing you want to do. The roots break off easily and cause failure. Either stick the fresh cuttings down in the dirt where you want them to grow, or root them and then pot them delicately in potting mix and plant them out after a year or so when the roots are established.