Wildlife Openings

[Telemark]

Thank you. Does it matter the size of the tree? What is the best time of year to cut to get the stump sprouts?

The bigger the better. I think the type is more important than the size though. They seem to like maple and ash best at my place, especially mountain maple.

Winter is best, but I have cut them into early summer with success.

 

[NT179]

Up here, winter cutting is the best choice for several reasons. Better suckering the next year. Usually far less rutting of the ground especially if you can tramp the frost in. Winter cuts provide a major source of browse for the deer when they need it when its cut and for several years after. Some trees, ex. Poplars root sucker while others, ex. Ash sucker off the trunk. Rotationally cutting of 20-25 % of your land every ten years can boost most of your game species.

 

[Telemark]

Rotationally cutting of 20-25 % of your land every ten years can boost most of your game species.

I've seen where trees get blown over, die, or are otherwise killed (beavers, etc) and light hits the ground it increases wildlife activity maybe 100x. Deer eat the stump sprouts, bears and grouse eat the raspberries. Ducks, otters, eagles, hawks, turtles, frogs, etc. all show up.

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

The neighbors are in the process of having their property logged. We are going to start making plans to have ours done in about 10-15 years when their new growth is starting to get out of the reach of the deer. Hopefully the oak market is better by then. We don't have the wallnut to make it worth it right now. The neighbor got 9K off of 7 wallnut trees alone.

 

[Early Bird]

Thanks for the replies. I will wait until winter which will allow me to map out the areas that I will cut. Great project for winter when I will have much more time.

Ray

 

[Rit]

I like it Jack. I am doing nothing of real scale but I have 3 such openings. This is the largest of the 3 and totals about a half an acre. It was formerly a food plot and has last years WR growing. The soil here is not great for tree planting so I won’t add any fruit trees but the West end has a half dozen established callery pear trees that could be converted to fruit bearing trees.

The picture is a few weeks old. I have since transplanted some cedars into it. About 25% of this plot I took out of food plot last year and I have briars, rough leafed dogwood, oak, and maple seedlings that have popped up. I have tried to enhance those seedlings but the deer find them quite easily. My hopes are to transplant more seedlings, and add a few more browse species to get ahead of the wildlife.

The other two areas are much smaller one was already semi open I just cleared a few trees to the South. The last opening was created when a large pine fell and there was a lot of collateral damage. I’ll plant the two smaller ones for now but the picture above won’t see anymore seed.

 

[roymunson]

What year did you gain access/ start this process?

I'm entering my 3rd year on my piece, but am curious as to how long you've been "building" yours?

It takes a lot of time to build it up and see the results, compared to other conquests like say, a house, a business, etc...

I'd be interested to see how long you've been at this property and how long it took for you to see some of the momentum swinging your way

 

[yoderjac]

What year did you gain access/ start this process?

I'm entering my 3rd year on my piece, but am curious as to how long you've been "building" yours?

It takes a lot of time to build it up and see the results, compared to other conquests like say, a house, a business, etc...

I'd be interested to see how long you've been at this property and how long it took for you to see some of the momentum swinging your way

Well, I've been learning for many years. I've been volunteering at a nearby marine base since the early 1990s. I got to know the agronomist and learned a lot from him. His background was in soil science. That is where I started learning about and operating equipment as I helped with food plots on base. I was a founding member of a suburban archery group trying to manage deer populations in the suburbs. As part of that we got a thousand acre project ahead of a developer and I tried my had at some food plots there before development began. I also has a lease for a few years where I was able to do a few food plots.

I got together with a few folks and we bought our pine farm back in late 2005. We have been managing deer and turkey since then on that property. I've evolved a lot over that time. I'm learning that bending nature less over a larger area lends itself to deer management. Deer range over a large area. Some of that is a function of the quality of the habitat, but much is related to the social structure and how deer relate to each other as well as how they relate to mankind and other predators.

We are closing in on 15 years now with the pine farm.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Michael Bey]

Rit ask about my evolution in habitat management in another thread so I thought I'd start a new one to address it.
Wildlife Openings:
Continuing this concept of sustainability, I've begun to look at things differently. Opening in the canopy provide lots of high quality food whether planted or not. Our small kill plots are 1/2 acre or less; Most less. I start these with a clover base and plant fruit trees in it. I then, let nature take its coarse. Weeds are not a problem as many can be great deer food. Every few years, I'll bushhog them flat. I'll do this just often enough to to keep them from getting woody growth. I may even strip disk though to disturb the soil after mowing from time to time. The idea is to simply keep them open and allow the combination of the fruit trees and sunlight to produce food.

Jack,

As I think about sustainability, I'm very intrigued by this idea of wildlife openings (the fruit tree and clover variety) since it sounds like it has a higher juice-to-squeeze ratio than traditional food plots. Just making up numbers here, but would you say these wildlife openings provide 80% of the food as a traditional food plot (e.g., clover or brassicas) but with only 20% of the effort? Or is the difference between these two approaches (in terms of effort and output) not that dramatic?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[yoderjac]

Mike,

I've come to the point where I find the amount of food produced to be unimportant. I've been trying to do QDM. The objective of the small wildlife openings is to provide kill plots for doe management and to increase the deer carrying capacity from a social perspective. Family doe groups tend to "claim" a small opening as anchor point for the group. More of these openings, distributed across the property, means more anchor points for family groups. Food is not always the limiting factor. Keep in mind that I'm on a pine farm. We do have good riparian buffers with oaks and a pipeline bisecting the property that is 60' 80 yards wide. So, in my case openings add diversity in what otherwise is a pine and oak monocultures.

There is also another type of opening that I described earlier that takes about 5 acres and cycles pines for pulp. These area do a fast cycle from early succession to pulp sized pines that are then clear cut to repeat the cycle.

All of these are part of a larger plan that includes bedding areas, controlled burns and rotating timber harvest. Some of our land will eventually be in savannah type habitat with a low stem count of large pines.

We use the large pipeline, divided into sections with bicolor lespedeza (warning, this is a non-native and can be invasive in some areas under some conditions), as our quality food plots. Here again, the amount of food produced is not important to me. What IS important is that here is sufficient Quality food in these plots to support deer during stress periods when the quality native food are scarce. Quality food, left in the field after the stress period is over, is not contributing to my deer.

So in our management plan, we want to feed our deer with quality native foods by habitat manipulation. It is native foods that deer eat most. Some guys think they are having success because deer are in their food plots all the time. It doesn't matter if deer are eating quality food plot food or quality native food, as long as they have quality food available they will do well. We see our food plots as supplementing our native quality foods during specific stress periods.

So, as far as the wildlife openings that start with clover and soft mast trees, I see them more native foods in the long run. Apples may not be technically native but they are certainly naturalized. The point being that as long as sun gets to the ground, nature will produce quality foods for a significant part of the year at a very low cost in time and money. Persimmons are native here, but the twist I put on them was to convert native male trees to female through bark grafting. I've purchased named tree scions as well as trading scions with others with an objective of having persimmons drop over an extended time period.

Thanks,

Jack