Keystone Krops

[Mennoniteman]

Painful indeed, Randy is the side kick of Jake and Jim, all fallen LaPratt apostles that became deer experts. I watched one of his videos where he went down a row along a cattail marsh and dropped big trees into the marsh. He said now big bucks are going to come out and walk this path and get killed by his client in a stand down the way. He had no concept of how bucks relate to the cattail, shrub and tree interface. If I were the landowner I would have sued him for malpractice.

In the aforementioned video he talked about cutting down a beautiful young white oak and a black oak, then he showed clips of him doing so on other jobs. Again, malpractice, Lloyds of London must be carrying his policy. I put a stand in a black oak this year, I did notice that it was dropping acorns. Turns out it was the go to feed tree.

I did my own hinge cut experiments in Iowa, I made similar overhead structures out of hickory right where does where bedding. Does continued to bed in the area around my structures never did I see beds under the structures. In cold weather they bed where broomsedge met cedar on southern exposures. I did a larger hinge cut experiment in Kentucky when I hinge cut 2 acres of red maple. In the following 3 years deer just did not relate much to that patch. Once I ran fire through it and cut down 90% of the hinge cuts it became good/used deer habitat.

These youtube habitat experts seem to all want people to believe that bucks bed on top. Occasionally I would find buck beds on top along the giant fallen bur oaks in Iowa. Even on those smaller ridges most bucks bed on southern exposure side slopes or down off the top out on the nose of the ridge. Here in Kentucky bucks bed 100 feet down in the tops of the watersheds.

New land owners would be money way ahead to buy a good tree ID manual and a Stihl, not an expert. On one video someone asked deer expert Jeff Sturgis, okay the land owner did everything that they paid him to tell and plan out for them and they still don't kill big bucks. Jeff's response was they don't kill big bucks because they are not me. Buyer beware.

G

It's amazing how closely my deer research results align to yours!
I went through almost identical experiments, the hinge cutting was thanks to a seminar by deer expert Jim Ward (who really does know his stuff but was wrong on the canopies) and hinge cut red maples, throwing them in perfect wagon wheel patterns five feet off the ground with a push pole, and the results were so beautiful it even made me want to live under the canopy, but not deer beds showed up underneath those beautiful roofs.
I cut a half acre of the identical red maples flush with the ground, leaving a few acorn dropping trees standing, and the deer absolutely went crazy browsing the resulting stump sprouts. Hinge cutting is definitely still another tool in the toolbox, but with somewhat limited uses.
As to bucks bedding on top of knobs, my research shows the same as yours again, that all deer prefer the military crest southern exposure locations above all else in winter, and military crest southern exposures during summer.