Creating bedding

dawghall

Member
I live in heavy ag country and believe I should focus more on holding deer than feeding them (which we have concentrated on primarily before with trees, food plots etc). The food will still stay but I am curious as to the best way to create our small parcels of woods surrounding our age fields into deer holding habitat. Is hinging cutting the best/only option......what else has worked for you? Thanks for any suggestions

Also, if you know of any podcasts or YouTube videos that have helped you in this aspect please link if you don't mind
 
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What exactly is the lay of the land there? Is it mostly ag with 1 acre wood lots? Any pasture and grass? Any large chunks of timber?

In my experience a deer will bed in just about any cover if it feels safe to them (even really small chunks of cover). If it's disturbed often they will find a new place.

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It's mostly large ag fields with small 1-3 acre lots of woods in between fields. There is not much grass. Mostly pine, maple, hickory, sweetgum, Chinaberry mixes of trees. We have been trying to eradicate the sweetgum/Chinaberry and have planted oaks, pears etc on the wood edges.
 
That's quit a bit different than what I'm used to. My advice won't help much other than find ways to give them privacy and security. I'm sure others here will know the situation better.

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I turned a 12 acre fescue field into a forest of oaks, pines and other desirable trees and shrubs. You need to plant in rows so that you can mow for a few years and do some chainsaw work within the rows to knock back undesirable volunteer species that compete with the desirable species. Below is what my fescue field looks like after about 15 years.

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I live in heavy ag country and believe I should focus more on holding deer than feeding them (which we have concentrated on primarily before with trees, food plots etc). The food will still stay but I am curious as to the best way to create our small parcels of woods surrounding our age fields into deer holding habitat. Is hinging cutting the best/only option......what else has worked for you? Thanks for any suggestions

Also, if you know of any podcasts or YouTube videos that have helped you in this aspect please link if you don't mind
(This is northern advice and experiences...)

I used to hunt flat farm country in southwest MN and it was 95%+ black dirt by deer season. Cover was abandoned homesites, ditches, and the occasional woodlot that wasn't cleared for some reason. Best education I ever got on bedding improvement was a straight line wind storm that uprooted our biggest basswoods on a third of a 20 acre woods I hunted. It was a mess. I tried to clean it up with a chainsaw, a 4020, and some log chains. Didn't get far. But the sunlight provided new growth, and those trees grew for a while after they fell. The deer moved right in and bedded there for a number of years after.

Up where I'm at now, It's solid woods, but mostly closed canopy (away from my property) and an open forest floor. I try to select cut a couple acres each year. Those spots, almost everything gets cut down anyway, but where I find stuff I wanna keep, those get a pass, the rest gets knocked down. Primary focus is putting sunlight on soil. Cover follows. Browse is a bonus.

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I REALLY like this! What's your formula and methods?

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Thanks.

I did two gly kills spaced out a few weeks apart and followed with drilling in the seed. This was in the CREP program. After that I just mowed high for a couple of years to keep sunlight coming to the NWSGs that were slowly developing. I also would drive my truck through the fields with spray tanks in the bed and do spot spraying at places. Two years ago I was getting blackberry pretty bad and did an area spraying, which got me back to where I needed to be.

Now I just do strip mowing as required by the CREP program and also still do a little spot spraying if I see something like a patch of briers developing. I do my mowing in early May just before fawn drop time as required by the CREP program as well. That's a good time, because any cool season stuff is knocked back and the warm season grassed are just beginning to grow and appreciate the extra sunlight that you give to them.
 
Thanks.

I did two gly kills spaced out a few weeks apart and followed with drilling in the seed. This was in the CREP program. After that I just mowed high for a couple of years to keep sunlight coming to the NWSGs that were slowly developing. I also would drive my truck through the fields with spray tanks in the bed and do spot spraying at places. Two years ago I was getting blackberry pretty bad and did an area spraying, which got me back to where I needed to be.

Now I just do strip mowing as required by the CREP program and also still do a little spot spraying if I see something like a patch of briers developing. I do my mowing in early May just before fawn drop time as required by the CREP program as well. That's a good time, because any cool season stuff is knocked back and the warm season grassed are just beginning to grow and appreciate the extra sunlight that you give to them.
Thanks for the reply/info!

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(This is northern advice and experiences...)

I used to hunt flat farm country in southwest MN and it was 95%+ black dirt by deer season. Cover was abandoned homesites, ditches, and the occasional woodlot that wasn't cleared for some reason. Best education I ever got on bedding improvement was a straight line wind storm that uprooted our biggest basswoods on a third of a 20 acre woods I hunted. It was a mess. I tried to clean it up with a chainsaw, a 4020, and some log chains. Didn't get far. But the sunlight provided new growth, and those trees grew for a while after they fell. The deer moved right in and bedded there for a number of years after.

Up where I'm at now, It's solid woods, but mostly closed canopy (away from my property) and an open forest floor. I try to select cut a couple acres each year. Those spots, almost everything gets cut down anyway, but where I find stuff I wanna keep, those get a pass, the rest gets knocked down. Primary focus is putting sunlight on soil. Cover follows. Browse is a bonus.

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This is probably what I'll end up doing alot of. Taking down trees of little value to get sunlight on the ground.
 
That very last picture was a 6' tall brush pile when I was done cutting it.

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Two years later, the brush settled and the vegetation swallowed it whole. You wouldn't even know there's a brush pile in there.

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Liberated a lot of 1-4' spruce and fir, and they responded right away.

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Are timber stands large enough to be logged? Getting some sunlight in will help get new young growth and leftover debris from logging will create good cover for deer.

Otherwise any of the Ag can you convert to tree stands. We had an old ag field we converted to pine standing. It's long term goal but we are seeing dividends 15 years later.

I've never been one for promoting hinge cutting i feel like it is short term success plan.


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It would be difficult to get loggers into these small heads of woods. I'll look into it though. As for the agland, it provides us income as it's rented out for row crops. We have considered switching some over to a CRP program to provide better cover and still provide some income.
 
It would be difficult to get loggers into these small heads of woods. I'll look into it though. As for the agland, it provides us income as it's rented out for row crops. We have considered switching some over to a CRP program to provide better cover and still provide some income.
I'm not positive, but I believe the deadline to apply is the end of this month.
 
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