bornagain62511
5 year old buck +
We have about 8 acres we planted with white cedar and lots of red osier and silky dogwood, and some apple trees. Deer browse white cedar like crazy during the winter around here. Because we were determined to get a large area of awesome winter habitat with white cedar, we built a 8 strand, electrified 12.5 gauge hi tensile wire fence around this area 12 years ago and left it up to keep the deer out until the white cedar were big enough to survive deer browsing. This is the first winter since we took the fence down, so the deer will likely browse all the foliage up to 6 feet hi by the end of winter. There are some areas withing this 8 acre planting where there aren't many white cedar but mostly just weeds and dogwood. Would you suggest I plant more white cedar or apple trees in those areas, or would it be better to just let those areas be more open and allow the dogwoods to reach their full size intead of getting shaded out by planting more white cedar or apple trees? Of course, I would have to individually fence each white cedar or apple tree now that the electric fence is down, but I would not be opposed to doing that for a couple hundred white cedar or apple trees if I decide to plant more in this area. I have hundreds of other apple trees elsewhere too. We also have many thousands of white spruce nearby and around the farm as you can see in some of these photos. The one photo is taken from a distance and you can see the area I'm talking about with some areas less heavily planted with the white cedars, that's where it's mostly dogwood and/or apple trees. This is south facing too, so it will make for excellent winter habitat.
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