Tree placement

I’ve seen it before but I can’t find it now.

I have two food plot fields I’m going to put fruit trees along the edges. What side of the field should I plant them for the most sunlight? Or could I plant on all sides?

One runs North to South 1.5 acres and the other runs East to West 5 acres.

The N to S I was thinking the West side and the E to W I was thinking the North side. Would that be correct or could I plant on all sides?

North and west edges would be the best for sunlight reasons.

Your initial hunch was correct!

I would plant them on the side where I wanted them, ie. where they are the most accessible to take care of them, where they are in proximity to my hunting stands, where they fit best to farm around. If they are shaded by the woods I'd take my chainsaw and drop a few trees to give them more sunlight.

So my next question is how many small “orchards” should be on a property. I’ve always heard “well fed deer are hard to kill”. Since they have so many options and patterning becomes hard.

But we have a few old hayfields on the property that I’m letting go fallow and I figured adding some fruit trees in those would be a really nice feature in some thicker brushy cover.

Also keep in mind they will fight for resources other than just sunlight as well. Also avoid lower areas "frost pockets" and try to keep them as open as possible as good air circulation is your friend as well. Also try to avoid any spots that tend to hold moisture. So the general statement of the edges that where mentioned are great if everything else is equal....but that often times isn't the case. Put them in the best overall location you can for the best results.

I was typing while you posted your second post... Your statement is only partially true. What tends to happen is folks put food in every place they can without much thought to how they will hunt it OR how the deer will be more spread out because of it. Planning. Planning is the answer. Plan first...then plant....not the other way around. I live/hunt in heavy ag country..70% of land use in my county is a row crop of some sort. So I tend to have my best results hunting the more limited resource.....cover. Sure i can take the kids to a plot and shoot a deer. But it's very difficult to narrow down which deer will be where. Great for hunting does....not so great if your looking for a particular buck. The only way food becomes this limited resource is if you provide something that the deer just love and it is literally in short supply. You still need to plan first....plan your access. Once the deer know they are being hunted things change quickly. You also may have to monitor and follow the hot food source as well and again have a plan in place for access to be able to follow that hot food source.

Food isn't always better for hunting. It tends to spread deer out on a property and can put them where you don;t want them or make defining their patterns more difficult. Plan with hunting access in mind first.....then plant. Just my 2 cents worth.

Excellent information! I appreciate it. Years ago we planted a bunch of dwarf apple trees and we didn’t have much luck with them. I made all the rookie mistakes. After have much better lunch with spruce and different shrubs I’m ready to venture back into fruit trees again. But just the easier ones first.

jlane35 said:

Excellent information! I appreciate it. Years ago we planted a bunch of dwarf apple trees and we didn’t have much luck with them. I made all the rookie mistakes. After have much better lunch with spruce and different shrubs I’m ready to venture back into fruit trees again. But just the easier ones first.

Click to expand...

I have read that if you really want to start with the easiest....start with pears if you have the room. If not pears then I would suggest looking into crab apple varieties first. Apples are great but you need to do your homework on which rootstocks and which varieties will work best in your area. DO NOT BUY BIG BOX STORE TREES. I have made that mistake....many time you have no idea what the root stock is and the 3 and 5 gallon sizes tend to have root issues, from what I have seen. Most places carry "people" varieties as well and not more wildlife friendly (disease resistant and drop during hunting season). We have wonderful apple/fruit tree resources here....turn to those folks there with far more experience than I have. They know their stuff and are only interested in your success.

I like to plan all aspects of a food plot before I even clear it, including a hunting blind location that can be accessed without spooking deer. And I usually plan to have several kieffer pears and several grafted female persimmons within shooting distance of the blind. But not right against the blind or when the trees are big they will block sightlines. I never plant a fruit tree at a spot that I can't shoot to from my regular hunting spots. This system eliminates the problem of feeding the deer too much in too many random places, and throw in too much people pressure, so that they become nocturnal and can't be hunted anymore.

Mennoniteman said:

I like to plan all aspects of a food plot before I even clear it, including a hunting blind location that can be accessed without spooking deer. And I usually plan to have several kieffer pears and several grafted female persimmons within shooting distance of the blind. But not right against the blind or when the trees are big they will block sightlines. I never plant a fruit tree at a spot that I can't shoot to from my regular hunting spots. This system eliminates the problem of feeding the deer too much in too many random places, and throw in too much people pressure, so that they become nocturnal and can't be hunted anymore.

Click to expand...

Thank you, this is what I’m working with and as you can see the 3 main food plots, the brown disced fields, we do. The two smaller ones are roughly an acre and the large one is 5 acres.

The two smaller ones are where my Uncle hunts all the time bc it’s right next to the cabin. The larger field we stay away from until the second week of rifle season, if we aren’t already tagged out. Or for kids to sit over during the junior doe season.

The 3rd orchard I want to do is in the large field surrounded by 4 smaller ones.

My 2 biggest failures in my habitat career.....are failure to plan before acting & cutting corners!!! Plan out every detail FIRST with hunting access at the top of the list and then implement only what you can truly afford (money and time and ALL needed resources) as you progress. Too many times I have acted first only to realize I made an area impossible to hunt OR I got 1/2 assed results because I put in a 1/2 assed effort because I over-extended myself in some manner.

j-bird said:

My 2 biggest failures in my habitat career.....are failure to plan before acting & cutting corners!!! Plan out every detail FIRST with hunting access at the top of the list and then implement only what you can truly afford (money and time and ALL needed resources) as you progress. Too many times I have acted first only to realize I made an area impossible to hunt OR I got 1/2 assed results because I put in a 1/2 assed effort because I over-extended myself in some manner.

Click to expand...

That’s exactly where we went wrong in the past. I plan on only buying 5-10 fruit trees for next year, and see how maintenance on them go. I already have 100 shrubs coming in 2 weeks.

J-bird, three excellent posts in a row, you’re on a roll !

Unfortunately, both you and MM pointed out most all of the mistakes I made on the property I sold. Some of it worked out, some of it didn’t, but if I had taken MM’s path, much more of it would have worked out much better !

Drycreek said:

J-bird, three excellent posts in a row, you’re on a roll !

Unfortunately, both you and MM pointed out most all of the mistakes I made on the property I sold. Some of it worked out, some of it didn’t, but if I had taken MM’s path, much more of it would have worked out much better !

Click to expand...

Guess what, I learned by making all of the mistakes jbird talks about too. But they weren't actually 100% mistakes, because I was enjoying what I was doing, learning while I was doing, working with the limited funds I had available, and the cheap and incorrect habitat management work I was doing actually worked good enough to justify the misdirected cost and efforts expended. To summarize, IMO doing habitat work wrong is still better than doing none.

jlane35 said:

That’s exactly where we went wrong in the past. I plan on only buying 5-10 fruit trees for next year, and see how maintenance on them go. I already have 100 shrubs coming in 2 weeks.

Click to expand...

To get back to the tree planting topic, I looked at your picture and your layout looks excellent from above, you have great locations for your fields, which is the most important thing, the one thing that's hard to change. Here's some ideas on how I usually lay things out for a normal food plot hunting setup. I grew up on a farm, and am still a farmer at heart. That means I don't like anything in the middle of the field, because it obstructs doing straight rows and passes through the field with equipment. And in my experience islands of brush or trees in the middle of a field are not utilized much by deer for cover anyway, they prefer cover connected to the edge. Food they'll eat wherever it's at. So I like a hunting stand location on a field edge, preferably close to the middle on one of the long sides, considering the prevailing winds and the side that's closest to my truck or cabin. Then I will plant some fruit trees along that same field edge from 30 to 80 yards away from the stand, just out of bow range, or, directly across the field from the stand if the field isn't too wide. I make a wide spot along the edge of the field for the fruit trees so that I don't have to bump out my tractor rows to get around the trees. So when I mow the edge of the field I'm mowing a straight row and passing within several feet of the fruit trees with the woods being another 20 to 30 feet back. I might plant the fruit trees fairly close to the woods them cut the woods further back as the trees grow bigger. So if I get lucky and actually have some fruit and deer show up, they should get within archery range of my stand at some point. I have a stand beside a keiffer pear tree that's almost guaranteed to be good for the biggest buck in the area 15 minutes before dark on the archery opener in mid-September.

Drycreek said:

J-bird, three excellent posts in a row, you’re on a roll !

Click to expand...

That just means I messed up...A LOT!!!!! I have learned a lot of ways on how NOT to do something!