Recreating a Deer Woods

You are partially correct LLC. January, Feb and March get very tough at times. The exhilaration of open ground and warming sun that comes in April though and lasts thru our wonderful summers with their cooling lake breezes and then thru fall with the great fish runs and active deer rutting helps to carry us thru Jan., Feb, and March. And a trip south in January does help to take the sting out of winter as well.

Still though some days are less sucky than others;

Great post! Great pics! Your screen name should include Johnny Appleseed.

Thanks Triple C. There is more to this story!! Here in the next two posts are pictures taken in February of one wild tree, a special tree that I have mentioned on and off for years, the one I can see from the sun room every day, the one with the deer traveling back and forth to it on and off day and night, the one that deer groups actual fight over and some even bed under it as if to claim it as theirs and theirs alone, the only tree on the property that we have named. It is called the Turning Point Tree. It alone here stands out among the thousands of trees I have visited in this area as the finest deer apple tree of all for this property. There are two posts worth of pictures as each picture tells a apart of the story.

I'm sure you all have noticed how the main branches as heavy as they are are mostly bent downward. That has been caused not by snow weight but by years of heavy apple loads.

February 5 and the Turning Point Tree is still loaded.






Around Feb 10 the cameras on Turning Point were changed to take videos and that is when pictures of deer groups fighting over the tree showed up. In the very last picture shown here there are deer hanging around in the background and it is likely they are not being allowed to feed under Turning Point until the deer there give up their turn. Turning Point is still loaded with lots of apples as of this morning February 21 and it is expected to make it to about March 15 before it finally runs out of apples. Now this tree which is a chance creation which has been dropping apples since November and will continue into March is near a perfect deer habitat tree for this property. Its' deer friendly traits surpasses almost every single named apple tree grown today for this deer property. A few hundred Turning Point Trees could hold deer here thru hunting season and end up feeding hundreds of deer thru winter here, making this property a true Deer Garden. And that simple and obvious revelation is why the tree is named Turning Point.

Put me down for some please.

You are already in Chummer. I saved some for each of us in your grafting class coming up in March. The rest have been mailed off to Ryan for his nursery grafting.

Is the apple tree a crab-apple? I know a couple like that on some public land - they are an amazing draw for all animals.
I start to get pretty edgy by late Feb - I'm ready for some open ground!!

Farmhunter, Winter will be over soon, we are almost there. The simple definition of a crab apple is an apple with a diameter of less than two inches. Most known crab apple varieties have been hybridized to meet the needs of landscapers, something small and pretty on the lawn that isn't messy with apples falling during good weather. Holding small (less than 3/4 inch) pretty red apples thru the winter was hybridized in also for ornamental purposes.The picture on your post shows lots of smallish crab apples that don't appear to have a lot of weight to them as the branches are not looking weighted down. And yes they would draw all manner of animals including deer but many crabs are so small that while they may contribute greatly to a birds' diet or get a possum or two thru the winter they may not impact much how a deer makes the winter. If you know of any with the larger apples say over an inch diameter they would surely be worth adding to your property. Here the apples don't draw the huge flocks of turkeys like corn and beans do. That is a good thing for the deer here.


A picture of a Turning Point apple with a quarter is shown on page 3 of this thread and it shows the diameter of the apples to be close to two quarters which translates to almost two inches. Some would be larger and some would be smaller. So technically it could be called either a crab or a full sized apple but it is simply a full sized wild apple tree with smallish full size apples that thru a chance mix of genes holds onto its apples longer than any of the trees around it.

It was tempting to just graft or have grafted a few hundred apple trees using scions from my Turning Point tree as that tree has everything I’m looking for. However in the interest of limiting exposure from unknown diseases it seemed necessary to go with several varieties of apple trees. And then upon further research it seemed additionally necessary to go with even more than a single specie of fruit. Thus pears were added. Besides the insurance against one disease wiping out the entire planting the resultant longer bloom time from having two fruit tree species and many varieties within each would reduce the risk of zero or extremely poor pollination due to bad weather.

It was about last Dec. 10 before a budget and ordering plan was figured out. Little did I know most nurseries were selling out of much of their stock by then. This was a real downer. Each day as the ordering plan was adjusted to match what various nurseries had in stock they would run out of something else. Finally I got some orders in for some of the trees that met my criteria for here and that the nurseries still had in stock. It made for some expensive shipping costs purchasing from different nurseries though. Buying from different buyers did not actually raise shipping costs. They were higher because with small orders and the box not full is not so economical because UPS evidently charges by box size and not weight up to a point. Thus shipping four trees when ten could have fit in the same box makes the shipping per tree more costly.

These are the varieties of apples that are expected to be be shipped to us this spring;
Dolgo Crab, Liberty, Sundance, 30-06, Drop Tine, Gray Ghost, Enterprise, Freedom, Winter Wildlife Crab, Ormiston Roy Crab, Purdy, King David, purple prince and Arkansas Black. Arkansas Black might be a test case for our winters but the rest looked Okay. And David and Purple Prince were ordered for just the aesthetics their blooms bring.
Apple trees were ordered on a variety of rootstocks as available. 14 apple varieties, 58 apple trees total.

These are the pear varieties expected to be shipped to us this spring;
Malus, Advent, Rifle Deer Pear, Danville Keiffer, Korean Giant, Golden Spice, Gourmet Pear, Stacyville Pear, Rogue Red, Patten, Magness, Harrow Crisp, Harrow Sweet, Potomac, Seckel, Summer Crisp. There are no other than one variety of early hunting season wild pears on the property so pears covering early to late were purchased and on various rootstocks as available. 16 pear varieties, 55 pear trees total. Note; Don't take my list of pears ordered or apples for that matter to be an iron clad list of what is cold hardy to this area. Many of the trees listed are listed as having seen minus twenty-two degrees so we don't know for sure those will take our extreme lows which can run from minus 25 degrees to minus 35 on occasion. Others on the list originate from the extreme cold of Minnesota so those should be solid growers here. None the less all the apple and pear trees ordered appeared to me to be the best candidates to try here.

Rootstocks for grafting from the few late holding apple trees here were ordered in B118, G890, and P18. Rootstocks for grafting from our wild pear trees here were ordered in OHX87 and OHX 97. Some leftover rootstock of both apples and pears will be planted in a garden bed to be grafted to at later dates. Additional rootstock diversity for both apples and pears will come from seedlings grown here from seeds produced here on various wild trees.

Apples on the short to order list for next year that were sold out before I got my full orders ready this past winter are; Big Dog, Callaway Crab, Buckman Crab, Golden Hornet, Grams Gift, Kerr Crab, Road Kill, Sonocal, and Canisteo. And on the pears additional Advent and Rifle Deer Pears will be on the short order list. And I suspect some of the nurseries will tempt me with some "new" varieties next fall as well.

And again why all of this effort with over 2,000 released wild apple trees already on the property? Answer--Most of the released wild apple trees here have fully dropped their apples around Nov. 15*. Planting of these mostly late holding apple and pear trees is to provide additional food to the deer from Nov. 15 thru the winter part of March so more young deer can grow into older,larger and healthier deer like the deer pictured below caught on trail cam throughout last season. And it is hoped that the resultant additional winter food will help some of our older deer live longer and healthier lives as well. And further planting and growing apple and pear trees will be fun.


*Actual dropping dates vary each year and sometimes apples are held on many trees here another week or so to almost Thanksgiving but not normally.

Chainsaw said:

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Nice pic

Dave, I think what you are doing is great and it’s easy to see how much thought you have put into the apples and pears. You are enhancing what is already a great whitetail haven, and I predict that it will definitely pay off big for you.

shedder said:

Nice pic

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Thank you Shedder. It is a great natural photo shoot spot. The pic was taken on Nov. 21. The buck is standing over a ground scape on the edge of one of the more significant area Apple thickets. Many bucks visited the scrape but this one was the more dominant. He must not have read about bucks not visiting scrapes once breeding kicked in because the camera showed him to be a regular visitor. There was another dominant buck who regularly hung out about two hundred yards away and was not photographed even once at this scrape.

Native Hunter said:

Dave, I think what you are doing is great and it’s easy to see how much thought you have put into the apples and pears. You are enhancing what is already a great whitetail haven, and I predict that it will definitely pay off big for you.

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Thank you Steve. It is very exciting to be working on a grand plan again and the winter is literally flying by very quickly. We will have a high of forty degrees today and sunny. It will be a great day for cutting scions. And to you and all of the others on the forums who have already added a late dropping fruit program to their properties, a big THANK YOU for sharing your knowledge and expertise on this subject. Thanks to you guys, those of us that are finally seeing what has been knocking on our doors for years can fast track the learning curve and likely get great results.

Looks like a great project and looking forward to how it comes together. Thanks for sharing. Enjoy the beautiful day.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/149096152237789/permalink/798032737344124/

Jeffrey Herrmann Chad Hauenstein it has nothing to do with commercial or not. It has to do with fruit, time, energy and money. You spent far more time and energy, which is money, to save those trunks than it would have cost to simply clear and replant. Now you have years of spending an enormous amount of time and energy doing corrective pruning simply to get low fruit production. Instead, had you replanted, in the next few years you could have invested less time and energy to establish a brand new orchard. In a few years a new orchard would be outproducing what you have, would have required much less time/energy/money and would be worth far more to the deer and the value of the property than the current trees ever could be.

I saw this on FB and had wonder about this sort of thing. It surprised me on multiple levels. Do you agree?

shedder said:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/149096152237789/permalink/798032737344124/

Jeffrey Herrmann Chad Hauenstein it has nothing to do with commercial or not. It has to do with fruit, time, energy and money. You spent far more time and energy, which is money, to save those trunks than it would have cost to simply clear and replant. Now you have years of spending an enormous amount of time and energy doing corrective pruning simply to get low fruit production. Instead, had you replanted, in the next few years you could have invested less time and energy to establish a brand new orchard. In a few years a new orchard would be outproducing what you have, would have required much less time/energy/money and would be worth far more to the deer and the value of the property than the current trees ever could be.

I saw this on FB and had wonder about this sort of thing. It surprised me on multiple levels. Do you agree?

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I don't see anything wrong with that. If they start taking care of those neglected trees they should get a good return for their labor. They are investing mostly time for a guaranteed quick return, with some longterm limitations, whereas starting a new orchard takes cash, is a longterm prospect with no guarantee of success. To me, the ideal solution would be a compromise to get the best of both worlds, doing exactly what they have done, but start adding new trees one row at a time each year. Given the right care a nonproductive older fruit tree can be brought back into production by proper care and fertilizer. However, these trees do look rather over pruned, which could weaken them and leave them open for insects and disease if not sprayed properly.

Shedder, I trimmed three old trees like that once close to thirty years ago. They are still alive but have never had a good crop of apples, just a few each year. When I did prune those old trees like that it was spring versus winter and maybe that made the difference. What we have done for old trees since is just cut all competing trees around them and that seems to be enough to get them Producing. If the apple trees are blocking out each other’s sun then the weaker one gets cut down. Very hard to do but one with sun and space out produces two or even many without sun and space. Maybe because the ones Referred to on your post were cut in the winter the results could be different. It will be interesting to see how it works out.
As Mennoniteman said though it is worth the labor to try. Still I would have preferred to just cut out every other apple tree rather than prune them. Am looking forward to hearing how he makes out though.

Chainsaw said:

Shedder, I trimmed three old trees like that once close to thirty years ago. They are still alive but have never had a good crop of apples, just a few each year. When I did prune those old trees like that it was spring versus winter and maybe that made the difference. What we have done for old trees since is just cut all competing trees around them and that seems to be enough to get them Producing. If the apple trees are blocking out each other’s sun then the weaker one gets cut down. Very hard to do but one with sun and space out produces two or even many without sun and space. Maybe because the ones Referred to on your post were cut in the winter the results could be different. It will be interesting to see how it works out.
As Mennoniteman said though it is worth the labor to try. Still I would have preferred to just cut out every other apple tree rather than prune them. Am looking forward to hearing how he makes out though.

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I like your idea of giving them room to grow and get more sun, and then just a standard pruning each year. Prunings that cut half the tree away can have varied results. I've seen some really ancient trees that still gave a good crop of apples each year.

farmhunter said:

Is the apple tree a crab-apple? I know a couple like that on some public land - they are an amazing draw for all animals.

I start to get pretty edgy by late Feb - I'm ready for some open ground!!

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Thanks - I'll look up Turning Point. I have a few apple trees that hold late - they are a hard apple, a "keeper" my grandmother called them. Not a spy - but something similar.

Not to reroute your apple talk Chainsaw, but since you are not doing anything , jk, can you take some pics of your sidewalks you made in your thickets you did few years back and how have they done and would you change anything? I do similar between my random clusters, but they are more vague. BTW, apple talk is always good on your place. Hope your snow melts soon, we are still on a seesaw of spring and winter each wk. Just enough temptation for spring fever yet having to watch snow come and go. Thanks for your thread, always a good read.