Where to start with property management?

Mattyq2402

5 year old buck +
I posed this in my recent fruit tree post but figured I should ask as a general question. Ive hinge cut on travel corridors on my hill country peice, added water at locations where it gets hit, made mock scrapes which have gotten hammered, planted plots with greens and fruit which look real good for 3 to 5 years old. I live out west away from my Ohio ground. I was in earlier this month and saw my hinge cut areas had grown up quite a bit adding regen. I still have plenty of open ground tho that resembles the state forest look. Im likely going to get 4 to 5 days this summer to do some work and want to give it another go. As far as resources go out there, who or what do you all follow when trying to do property improvements? Ive listened to Erich Long, sturgis, brauker, ellingher, bartylla. Are there any resources out there I am missing, any information thats a must read? I know every property is different and my improvements need to be based on what my property has or needs. Im just trying to extend my knowledge base and see if there are any publications out there that im missing. Is qdma membership a must?

What is your reccomendation for the high canopy with mainly maple trees?

Also I have a ton of fallen and standing Ash on the property, many of them have fallen and blocked my sneak trails and parallel movements ive created, would you all just wait 5 years till they all tumble down or keep working to open up those blocked trails? Do you think having hundreds of ash fallen blocking the paralell movements on my property the deer naturally ised for many years could be causing a decline in movement, this year was a very strange year for daylight activity, its the first year I can remember where i didnt have at least two resident shooter bucks on my place. Our cameras caught far less activity and hunt pressure was very limited.
 
Start by establishing reasonable achievable objectives. Are you trying to do QDM and improve your local herd? Do you have control of sufficient land to do this? Are you working with smaller ground and just trying to improve the hunting on that ground. Do you have other objectives? What is your blend. I'll tell you where we are at as an example:

I went in with others and purchased a pine farm that is bit under 400 acres. We wanted to do QDM, but 400 acres is too small for that. However, there are some large adjoining properties that will cooperate wittingly or unwittingly with our QDM. With a total of 800 acres, we are still on the small side for QDM to be an achievable objective. Knowing that, we still chose to include QDM as an objective. Because of the cost of the property, we decided we wanted to manage the timber for profit. We decided to try to balance between wildlife objectives and timber income. We put slightly more weight on the wildlife management side. A third objective is to introduce new folks to hunting, especially youth.

There is tension between all of these objectives. Some of our timber decisions that benefit wildlife generate less income than if we were profit only focused. One of the QDM legs is to let young bucks walk to improve the age structure. That is in direct conflict with introducing new kids to the sport. We let kids and novice hunters shoot any deer they would like while restricting experienced hunters to targeting bucks 3 1/2 years or older.

As far as resources, we started with the free pros. We are in VA do we started with our forestry department and our wildlife department. The state forester gave us great general advice and as some of our timber approached sellable size, we hired a private forester. We interviewed several and chose one who was sympathetic with our timber value/wildlife balance. The game department was a great resource for biologist. I had several come out and evaluate the property. We discussed our objectives and they made recommendations. They also directed us to specific programs they have for deer management. In our case it was called DMAP. We also contacted USDA and they sent out wildlife biologists. They directed us to specific cost sharing programs. Our private forester wrote a forest stewardship plan for us. He coordinated with the biologists to write the plan. We then entered into several cost sharing programs with USDA.

All the big name deer guys have nothing on the local biologists here. They understand our specific situation with boots on the ground. They understand the general area as they service other private landowners, and they understand deer trends across the county and state specifically.

As for QDMA membership, I dumped mine when they decommissioned the forum to control the message and keep their members from badmouthing the products their sponsors were selling. Don't get me wrong. They did a lot of good work, especially in the early days. However, eventually, what was best for the organization diverged from what was good for deer management. They still do lots of good work as long as it does not conflict with their funding lines.

Just one man's opinion,

Jack
 
First of all...QDMA membership is NOT a must. You will find lots more FREE resources and advice here and on other sites....from people with dirt on their hands and in some cases potentially more specific to your area. Folks not being paid to push a product....

As for mature maples....the best thing in my opinion is a chainsaw! If you have enough you may be able to draw the attention of a logger and make a few dollars (soft maple isn't very valuable, but hard/sugar maple should bring $100 a log or so). Maple create dense shade and once they exceed the reach of the deer they are useless to the deer. I would drop the trees, pull the logs for timber or firewood and leave the tops for cover and the like as they will break down over time. Sunlight on the ground is the key to deer level cover and browse.

IF - you get a logger on site....they can be paid to drop/remove those ash as well....

As for seasonal movement issues.....its hard to say. A standing crop field or a nearby land use change can make a big difference. The same can hold true for your mast crop or the like as well. Lots of variables to consider. I would leave some standing dead trees for other wildlife, but you can address those you have specific issues with if needed.

I personally would be trying to find a logger in your area that may have some interest and even if you break even...timber value for work being done....the habitat will respond and you come out ahead in the long run.
 
Cut all the ash this winter. Cut some maples too. The stump sprouts will give good browse, and the thick regen will make deer feel safer.
 
I'd start with a soil map of the property
 
I'd start with a soil map of the property

An include the surrounding properties as they will have a big impact on what you do unless you have a very large property.
 
Step one is to make a plan. One of the early parts of the plan is as Jack has suggested is to define your objectives, what it is that you want your property to do for you. An even earlier part of your plan though is to document everything you know about your property and the neighboring properties. Hand drawn or computer maps with overlays showing key habitat features such as apple trees, oak trees, all nut and food trees, good for the deer brush, bad for the deer brush, wasted space brush, current food plots, drainages, ridges, current sanctuary areas if any, etc. Add to that everything you know about the deer on your property, like rub lines, your History of kill locations, old wooden stands from the past, ground scrapes, major travel paths, sightings of does, sightings of mature bucks either in person or on camera(highlight daytime sightings versus nighttime sightings), deer beds, antler sheds found, your travel patterns and parking areas as well everything you know about neighboring properties like their access, stand locations near you, days hunted, #’s of deer shot etc. In a few months when you finish gathering and mapping out all of this data, all sorts of ideas and strategies will pop out at you.

Still at that point you will be ready to get all of the observations you can from government/educational programs. Then visit as many properties of forum members that you can while hosting as many forum visitors on your property that you can. You will find that you will learn from every walk you take with forum members whether it is on your property or theirs and you also will likely find that they will learn things from you on each walk. It is a math thing where the knowledge and experience of one forum member plus the knowledge of a second forum member adds up to way more than double. 1+1 in this case equals 4 or 5.

Once these things are done YOU and YOU alone will be the best person to complete the rest of your habitat and hunt plan for your property.
 
Actually, if you are doing it right, the objectives get defined before you purchase the property. Then you evaluate property characteristics before you buy. That gives you the most flexibility to adapt your goals as needed. Most of us are not that prescient. We find a property that looks good and we buy it. Often we find our goals are much greater than what we have to work with. So, assessing what you have and what surrounds you and adjusting your goals to something achievable is where most of us start as Chainsaw says. Planning is more important than doing. I was so naïve when we bought our place, I never even knew what soil types we had. I then did a lot of damage getting the horse before the cart with a 2-bottom plow.

We all learn as we go. I don't want to scare you off from getting dirt under your finger nails. That is important too from a learning perspective for most of us. It is kind of like the Hippocratic oath...first do no harm. When it comes to managing our properties, many of us try to do brain surgery while we are in the first year of med school. :emoji_smile:

Thanks,

Jack
 
There’s already a lot of good guidance above but remember to pace yourself...it’s a marathon not a sprint. Develop a forestry mgt plan, employ NRCS expertise, prioritize projects, and give Ma Nature time to respond (she’s often far far slower than our expectations).

I‘ve got a little over 830ac that’s 1/3rd each: tillable ag, hardwood, planted pine and each has a very different set of mgt objectives. Soil and water quality, managing invasives, growing quality wood products. Managing for deer, turkey, small game, addressing pests like beavers...it’s complicated. Take the time to itemize everything...it’s worth the effort in the long run.
 
First of all...QDMA membership is NOT a must. You will find lots more FREE resources and advice here and on other sites....from people with dirt on their hands and in some cases potentially more specific to your area. Folks not being paid to push a product....

As for mature maples....the best thing in my opinion is a chainsaw! If you have enough you may be able to draw the attention of a logger and make a few dollars (soft maple isn't very valuable, but hard/sugar maple should bring $100 a log or so). Maple create dense shade and once they exceed the reach of the deer they are useless to the deer. I would drop the trees, pull the logs for timber or firewood and leave the tops for cover and the like as they will break down over time. Sunlight on the ground is the key to deer level cover and browse.

IF - you get a logger on site....they can be paid to drop/remove those ash as well....

As for seasonal movement issues.....its hard to say. A standing crop field or a nearby land use change can make a big difference. The same can hold true for your mast crop or the like as well. Lots of variables to consider. I would leave some standing dead trees for other wildlife, but you can address those you have specific issues with if needed.

I personally would be trying to find a logger in your area that may have some interest and even if you break even...timber value for work being done....the habitat will respond and you come out ahead in the long run.

You might be surprised what big soft maple bring.
 
^^^red maple prices can actually be decent. Silver maple not so much.
 
Here...soft maple is simply pallet wood...too soft for much else as I understand it. The money is in hard/sugar maple here (they like the sap wood for furniture/cabinets).....but again that is why getting a logger involved is time well spent. Either way...once out of the reach of deer...they lack much wildlife value in my opinion. I had the loggers here take every maple they wanted...and I'm glad I did.
 
Red maple is really only "soft" in comparison to hard maple/sugar maple but is the best of the "soft" varieties. About the same general hardness as black cherry actually. Silver maple is on the lower side of the soft maples however.
Basically trees not a sugar maple or black maple are all lumped under the soft maple term however.
 
I would caution you on logging being an absentee landowner. Since you don't live near the property you will not be able to manage the invasive species that are bound to flourish once the sunlight hits the ground. If you do log the property set aside a good portion of the profits to hire a crew to come in a year or two later to chemically control the invasives. I like fire for doing that but it isn't a good fit for a lot of properties and takes a good amount of man power.

I would actually do nothing for a year or two and see how your woods responds to the increase of sunlight from the lac of canopy where the Ash trees were growing. You would also be advised to pick out several good stand trees and mark them well so if you log they don't get cut down. Granted travel patterns can change with logging but the areas where the deer travel based on terrain features should remain the same.
 
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