I just read this book Grow ‘Em Right written by Neil and Craig Dougherty.  Neil and Craig are experts in deer management and members of an established outdoor consulting company in Canisteo, NY.  I thought I would share some of the most important ideas from the book, some ideas that render themselves more useful to the average American hunter rather than the one with access to expensive equipment like a bulldozer.  The nice thing about being a college student is that I can do a lot of theses tasks during my spring break in March.  It’s the perfect time to do this work in the woods without disturbing deer.

A Chainsaw is a Deer’s Best Friend

A chainsaw is a deer’s best friend.  Take this comment to heart, chainsaws create food and cover for deer.  Clear cutting sections of your property will allow undergrowth to prosper, this will result in better browse for deer as well as thick safety cover.  It is important to remember that no matter how much of your property is in food plots, deer will still browse on shrubs and small trees.

 

You can create living brush piles by dropping small trees or shrubs without cutting them clear through.  Felling small trees with a cut that doesn’t sever it from the stump can do this.  The tree will lie on the ground for a few years providing cover and allowing regeneration of smaller trees.  Note that small trees in the three to six inch range respond better to this than large ones. 

 

The most effective way to lay out a browse cut and create structure and food is to make a series of quarter to half acre cuts in a wooded area felling most trees.  Another approach is to cut long power lines through the woods, which will become browse and travel corridors.  Remember that good wildlife habitat looks nasty; removing 70% of the tree stems in an area is generally necessary for good browse to thrive.  So be aggressive but cut strategically.

 

One suggestion that seemed to catch my attention was called “Snipping and Sticking.”  This procedure works best on cane-like shrubs such as dogwood, and shrub willows.  You can snip pencil think cuttings from dormant shrubs like the ones mentioned above, about 150 12” long, and shove the lowest end of the cutting 2/3 of the way into the ground.  Roots develop in the spring and before you know it your stick is a small shrub.

 

 

Logging Roads and Clearings

Many logging roads and woodland clearings have good soil moisture.  Therefore, they can be planted with high quality perennial seeds.  Chicory and clover blends make excellent forage for a perennial.  If the logging road you choose to use runs east to west make sure (here in the North Country) that you clear our trees on the south side of the road to provide more sunlight to the forage.  If this is case, it makes sense than that north south running logging roads would be the best. 

 

Note, a typical logging road that is 12 feet wide equals a half-acre ever 600 yards.  When planted correctly this road could produce 5 tons of forage each year.  Of course remember that one deer consumes 1.5 tons of food per year by itself.

 

In dry, thin soils, you can apply erosion mixes that consist of less expensive seeds to establish a good base for a few years.  This mix may consist of generic brands of clover, rye grass, and birdsfoot trefoil for marginal conditions.  You don’t want to go wasting hundreds of dollars on high quality forage seed that will likely do poor.  Another option towards marginal soil conditions is frost seeding.  Rather than repeatedly disturb the dry erosion prone soils you can throw the hard seed on the snow or frozen ground in early spring.  When the snow melts, the moisture will help establish those seeds in the ground and you will eventually see a nice food plot.  Remember to control weeds with select herbicides and mowing and also note that only 30% of the seed, when frost seeded, will germinate. 

 

 

Creating Sanctuaries

Sanctuaries are areas where human trespassing never occurs.  They are pre-selected areas where us landowners never ever go, which give the deer the protection and comfort they need.  They lose their effectiveness if violated even once a year.

 

Natural sanctuaries are often overlooked by the average hunter.  They could be anything from highway medians to vertical hills.  The idea is to be able to identify these on your property or create your own.  In other words, when the gunshots start ringing in the deer, you want every deer within three square miles to run to your sanctuary.

 

If a wounded deer enters a designated sanctuary track it only at night.  Go in with a lantern and no more than two hunters.   Your entrance should be low key with no shouting or loud talking.  By tracking only at night you give deer a change to leave the sanctuary to feed.  You have a less chance of thus spooking deer and turning them nocturnal.  Note, no deer is entirely nocturnal. 

 

You should try to create and maintain a food plot or two near a designated sanctuary or between two sanctuaries to entice a trophy buck to leave his haven and check for does.  You can hang stands around the edge of the sanctuary but never inside it.  Deer learn that the sanctuaries are designated safe areas and will often travel the edges in search of does. 

 

So what is a good amount of the property that should be sanctuaries?  About half of your property.  Of course if the property is small you may want to increase that to about 75%.  These sanctuaries might differ from each other a little bit.  You may have a few sanctuaries that you never enter and then others called “working sanctuaries” where you enter once a year to clear trees and maintain its cover. 

 

 

Woods Working – TSI

This was a very interesting chapter to me.  I had never heard of anything like this in my life and I read a lot about deer management.  TSI, otherwise known as Timber Stand Improvement, is basically a haircut for your woods.  Double and triple trunk trees are reduced to single trunk while undesirable trees are cut down.  A good example of this, Oak trees produce more forage when they are thinned. 

 

Trees that you may want to consider keeping are oak, maple, ash, spruce and pine trees, as well as all fruit bearing trees.  Also, don’t forget the fertilizer!  You can gain great benefits from by fertilizing trees.  Tablets are made for this exact idea and stuck into the ground at the drip line of the tree.  A little note, use about a half pound of fertilizer for every four inches of trunk.  Also, save those apples trees.

 

 

Dougherty, Chris and Neil. Grow ‘Em Right A Guide to Creating Habitat and Food Plots. Newark: NCW Press, 2006.

Tags: Deer Management Food Plot Planting Plots Chainsaw Wood