Woodland Stewardship Plan

[Greta&Gus]

As my grandparents age the need for a stewardship plan for our property is upon us. Both my Dad and Uncle want to make sure the property can be sustained in the future when my grandparents pass. As part of our stewardship plan, we are looking to conduct selective logging to pay for the property taxes and upkeep. We also obviously want to improve the habitat for deer and turkey.

The plan itself is 30 pages long but I attached the last two overview pages. I will try and add more if possible because the breakdown of each forest type is very interesting.

We have a number of old oaks and we are concerned regarding oak wilt. After reviewing the plan one thing I would like us to focus on is removing the ash, maple, aspen, ironwood and basswood. They stated that the ironwood specifically, and others, are hindering future growth of young oak trees. Based on our hunting history and where we currently have hinged bedding areas, I would like to focus on improving the red oak hardwoods with young oak growth and creating bedding.

Take a look and provide some feedback please.

 

[Greta&Gus]

I hope this worked.

 

[bueller]

Thanks for posting. I love reading stuff like this. It's like taking a speed course taught by a forester.

 

[biglakeba$$]

Remove aspen? Why?

 

[buckvelvet]

I was just in a QDMA meeting around my parts (i know i said the name, come on don't shoot the messenger) with James Baulker he said that Basswood is the most preferred browse for a whitetail, I don't know if that is true but even if its in the top 5 why would you wanna get rid of them all?

 

[Greta&Gus]

My first post was slightly mis-leading in regards to what I believe the next steps should be. The red oak hardwood area (central and west central portions of the property) have quite a bit of old growth oak/basswood/maple and so on. Primarily old oak, but all tree species are old(er) and the understory is relatively open. We would like to maintain some of the older oaks as mast producers and for aesthetics, but start removing some that are on the downside. With that, I would like to remove almost all of the old basswood and aspen in the center and west portions of the property. We typically tap about 150 maples that are all very large and taking up canopy, but they will not be going at this point in time.

Hopefully, we can open up the canopy in areas to promote new growth of all species but specifically the young oaks. At this point clear cutting is not an option. The two aspen stands that are 7 and 35 years old are two of the main bedding areas currently. The map certainly shows that the vast majority of the property is what I would consider to be older. Really only two areas with trees under 40 years old.