Recreating a Deer Woods

Dave, glad to see this thread resurrected and your long over due success start to bear fruit. Thanks for the picture of Model, it put a smile on my face, Our season closes tomorrow....and I'm glad the fight with trespassers (and the deer's fight for survival at the hand of trespassers) is coming to an end. I'm anxious to see what mother nature serves us of weather wise. I'm crossing my fingers the deer get another decent winter to allow our growing number of mature bucks to grow another year. I'm looking forward to a spring walk to check browse.
 
Great to see your thread posted here, Chainsaw. I and others can learn a lot from you.
Great buck you killed this year! the bedded buck pics were super. Thanks for taking the time.
 
Always enjoyed your pictures and discussions on the other site, and now look forward to more here. You always approach things with clear goals and level thinking. We all deal with varied properties, and varied big buck possibilities, but the keys are the same. I think about your old title every night when I am emailed picture after picture of deer in the dark. My thought: "I bet chainsaw could get those deer to show up in the day time".
 
Plan the work and work the plan, then reap those results. That's a fine looking deer. Boy, they are heavy up there.
Thanks Buckly,
This was my second heaviest deer ever. Surprisingly the heaviest was way back in the beginning before much management was done. Then one could literally leap into the brush and it was so thick it would bounce you right back out. Here is the pic of that deer from so long ago. In recreating the deer woods I hope to recreate the denseness and diversity of what the growth was way back then. And then applying seriously lo impact hunting which we did not do then that we are doing now I'm hoping my guests can start shooting some of these big boys.

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Holy smokes Dave, that's a bruiser! I'm always amazed by the body weights you see up there. Your property is quickly becoming the local Mecca for mature bucks to hang out. I'm glad you've started your thread back and I look forward to following along.
I'll be in your neck of the woods again next month but unfortunately won't have time to visit this time. Send my best to Mrs Anne!


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Thanks Luke, I look forward to a visit from you again when you are up and have a little extra time. Be careful driving in the whiteouts when you are up;they have been pretty intense lately. Each area has special things about it and this area has large body sizes for both bucks and does. Its just the luck of what the area provides. Mrs. Anne sends her best to you.
 
Chanisaw...Great to see you posting again and congrats on taking a nice buck this season. Pics of deer bedding in snow is so foreign to us southerners. That is a great series of pics and commentary. Thx for taking the time to share. I concur on putting sunlight on the ground. You should see the native flora in our thinned pines as compared to last year pre-thinning. It was a black forest last year. Now a maze of native forbs. We have so much hunting pressure down here with firearms season lasting from mid October thru the 1st Sunday of January. But, we still carry over nice bucks. Food and cover seals the deal. We've yet to take a buck this year. Passed on so many and betting on enough getting thru til next yr. I love this stuff more and more with each passing year! Again, thx for taking the time to share.

Glad you enjoyed the snow pictures Triple C and I'm happy to hear you are experiencing great growth from your logging operation. If it is like ours the second year after logging really packs on the growth. A year without shooting bucks should make for an exciting 2017 season!

Thank you Native Hunter. I think the picture of the 2016 deer is my favorite ever. The light was good and the deer was pre-rut and in great shape.

Steve, we miss you and hope you stop by on this forum now and then. In the meantime be assured that I will follow you on your face book page. For anyone wanting to keep up with Steve on things here is the link to his page
https://www.facebook.com/steve.bartylla

Thank you Cedar Ridge, I'm glad you enjoy the thread. PLEASE feel welcome to comment, agree or disagree, elaborate or whatever on anything posted on this thread. I know you are not shy about speaking out but I just want you and everyone to know I appreciate and learn from everyone's interaction.

Thanks Fish, I'm thrilled that you have found some of my posts helpful; to you. I have likewise found your posts to be helpful as well. I got lucky on the bedded buck and really enjoyed watching him thru the lens for the morning. It was surprisingly a wicked fast four hours. And thank you for the comments on the buck. It was a great buck for this property and was a real thrill to see him.

Thank you Lak, I've always enjoyed our interactions. Your comment about me getting the deer to show themselves during the day is really great. Of course for those that don't know I really can't make deer do that but I'm always trying.

Elk Addict -Tom, I know exactly how you feel. My wife and I are glad also that the deer and us can take a breather now that all of the seasons are over. I thought we had an extra long season here with some sort of gun hunting going form Mid October to mid December but Triple C has a season even one month longer! I can't imagine. Am looking forward to a spring browse walk with you. I wish you a full recovery and hope you feel better each and every day.
 
Everyone looks at the deer and rifle in the picture, correct? But doesn't it seem odd that a property that far north has a respectable green understory in the forest in the fall? Appears to me you have had a very good growing season and deer body weight responded in kind! Good Lord, those deer are beasts!
 
Excellent eye Doug, I am not surprised you caught that though. I'll bet reading property is a lot of fun for you; you sure do see well. The picture with the deer is in the skid road as the cover was too thick for a good picture where he fell. Yes we do get excellent green growth sometimes into December even. The culprit is some great soil and Lake Ontario. The warm waters keep early frosts away from us and provide us with very heavy dew. This year there were maybe only two light frosts before Thanksgiving; some years there are a lot more. It all depends on the wind direction--if it is off the lake there are seldom frosts until the lake water surface finally cools.
Here are two pictures that show the ridge where the buck was following the feeding doe. This ridge was logged in 2014 and then redone in 2015 because the forester had the loggers only cut half as many trees as I requested the first time. While the new growth is excellent it only tells half the story--this was the driest summer anyone alive here can remember hands down! Before it was logged it was a mature open ridge with close to zero ground cover. This ridge is coming along nicely with zero ferns growing as of yet.
Also of note in the first picture are at least three apple trees with their leaves still green. The pictures were taken Nov. 4.
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Little to add to what others have said

Thank you , chainsaw

This thread and this forum are the reason I let Gamekeepers and Quality Whitetails subscription expire

Pretty obvious whyQDMA feared our fraternity

bill

Bill, You are very welcome and thank you so much for your kind words. They mean a lot to me. I am very proud to be a part of this group of deer people that share their hard earned knowledge and experiences with each other just for the sake of sharing and learning. My property would not be on the path it is on today without that shared knowledge.

And for you new guys out there that may not post their ideas; we need you. Everyone of us no matter how experienced is only one person with one persons experiences. Through sharing experiences and insights we can all continue to learn and grow at this accelerated rate and even new guys can teach us all something. So get involved, please!
 
Two thoughts Chain. What was the deer density in the old time pic you show of that horse of a buck in post #25? What year was that? And what are the DPSM average over the last 5 years?
Second, and I think we talked of this before, what do you see growing in the cutover you show above predominately? And I'm quite sure I don't see much BB or MFR?? Is it mainly hardwood or softwood species? If I were to cut as you show, it would be too thick for man or deer to walk thru with MFR within 2 years. The adjacent 100 acres by me was hard thinned 7 years ago. I attract nearly all mature bucks and he seldom produces any. I share my bucks mainly with thick areas that border my other 3 sides of the other 500 ac of my neighbors..
Now don't get me wrong, I like what you are doing, but my observation of that adjacent 100 and some other properties I have hunted that had the same procedure, is that I have been sorely disappointed in their results. I do think I can achieve similar results in my area but in a different manner by way of clusters that provide similar browse yet preserve some of the mature mast producing red and white oak that are heavy producers for deer , bear , turkey, etc.
I think our areas are different in numbers, pressure, and weather which may make some difference in the results and the way each of us choose to manage mature timber. I read of the virgin forests of old and the prolifery of large and small wildlife it supported and I strive to reconstruct that to some extent. But perhaps my goals are different than many on this forum. I don't want to derail your thread, just some questions. I'll get back to my techniques on my thread start of the year and we can compare. Great discussion, am enjoying it.
 
These are very good questions Dogghr and I appreciate your candor and don’t ever consider your insights to be derailing. Luckily for me we are not as far apart in our approaches as the two pictures of where the buck was taken shows.

The deer density in the old pic labeled as taken in 2001 in my files was about in the peak of the brush growth and the peak of the deer population. Off subject but it was shot at about 12:15 pm. It was common to see 25 to 35 deer in a good in the woods ½ day sit pre rut. The DPSM was likely a hundred or more. Over the last five years the DPSM has ranged from a low of maybe twenty to a high of 60 on this property. However most surrounding properties had and have significantly less. The most recent after winter browse survey showed enough preferred browse left so that no one was left hungry.

We do have significant black berry growth and the deer eat the leaves regularly throughout summer and early fall. MFR is not a problem here on most of the property. Each spring I find some and kill it. Some places I expect a fern problem and they will be sprayed each late spring; in many areas there is a buckthorn problem and they will be sprayed where they affect apple trees.

All of the oak trees on this property have been saved—all five or six of them, all of the apples trees have been saved—all 2500 or so (the majority of apple trees are clustered together in three to four acre sections) and many hickory clumps have been saved and are scattered throughout the property in the locations thought to be the most deer popular (remember this is where the deer find hickory nuts to be a preferred food). In addition along drainage's, hemlock and cedar are saved. Some poplar stands have been clear cut while others are saved to be clear cut at later dates as a way to ration winter browse from the resultant prolific poplar root sprouts that occur after a poplar stand clear cut. Here is a picture of poplar sprouting which occurred five weeks after cutting down the poplar stand and a second picture of one of the poplar stands left standing.

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The area where the deer was shot was a mixed stand of pasture grown type hard maple and ash which consisted of less than 2% cherry and beech. Beech trees with disease were cut while healthy beech trees were saved. There weren’t many beech stands throughout the property and the beech here seldom have nuts here but they do have their day some years.

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Probably I may have cut harder than you have in mind but not as much overall as represented in the picture of where the deer was shot. As you can tell I’m going for the maximum amount of beneficial early succession growth while maintaining many of the mast trees that the property has in place. I would say that the difference between what I’m doing and what you are doing as I hear it is that I am cutting heavily for food and cover and leaving small clusters of trees and all apple trees wherever they are while you will be cutting small clusters for food and cover here and there and leaving all of your mast trees (which are significantly more heavily stocked than mine) wherever they are. So it sounds like I am definitely cutting harder than you by a lot yet am not cutting as thorough completely throughout the property as your neighbor did.

I’m not certain of the exact re-growth plants in the pictures of where the deer was shot. Here is a close up of a re-growth picture taken fairly close to there of new growth a few weeks old.

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As you can see there is a variety of things germinating. I’ll cover a lot more of this as I go along with the thread. I thank you for sharing your thoughts and look forward to learning how your cuts make out as well. After three years of logging I still have one more year’s worth left to cut.
 
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Dave,
Your place is looking awesome. Do you think the lake plays a temp difference in my two properties? I thought I would be far enough away to not make a difference. I have noticed several times that my camp is 10-12 degrees colder than when I get to the new land. The new land is 200' higher in elevation so perhaps my camp is in a giant frost pocket. They are only about 7 miles apart. Maybe this is why I only get apples every 5th year. Is the regrowth you are showing after last years logging? I expected much more growth on my place this year after last years logging. You are going to be covered up in bucks going forward. I hope my bucks don't go west or they will never come back!
 
Thanks Chummer, I'm happy with the progress being made. The knowledge and motivation gained from everyone on the Qdma forum combined with the plan Steve made for me was a definite turning point in the hunting here. And definitely --yes the lake would affect your temperatures. Think of it as a super giant hot water bottle which gives off warm air until it freezes; the wind carries that warm air to your property and of course by the time it gets to you it will be cooler than when it goes by my property but it still will protect you from some of the late frosts. You are also affected by lake effect rains there as well as the lake effect snows. The 7 mile difference between the two properties could have one property being in line with lake wind wise also although a lower altitude will definitely be cooler in the spring when the apples come into bloom.

The picture of the poplar regeneration was taken in late August of this summer 2016 of the poplar stand that was clear cut in mid July 2016. It is better to cut poplar later in the year but timing can't always be perfect. As we've talked about summer cut poplar stands can have root sprouts of around 7 to 8,000 per acre whereas late fall or winter can have twice that amount. The other picture of regeneration was of a section cut in 2014 and re-cut in 2015. The original 2014 cut did not open up the canopy enough to my liking so I marked the trees needed to go and had the loggers go in for round two. The regeneration picture was taken early this fall 2016. You will likely see a lot of growth this summer.

Don't worry about all of your bucks staying here, there won't be room for all of the ones already waiting in line!
 
Thanks Chummer, I'm happy with the progress being made. The knowledge and motivation gained from everyone on the Qdma forum combined with the plan Steve made for me was a definite turning point in the hunting here. And definitely --yes the lake would affect your temperatures. Think of it as a super giant hot water bottle which gives off warm air until it freezes; the wind carries that warm air to your property and of course by the time it gets to you it will be cooler than when it goes by my property but it still will protect you from some of the late frosts. You are also affected by lake effect rains there as well as the lake effect snows. The 7 mile difference between the two properties could have one property being in line with lake wind wise also although a lower altitude will definitely be cooler in the spring when the apples come into bloom.

The picture of the poplar regeneration was taken in late August of this summer 2016 of the poplar stand that was clear cut in mid July 2016. It is better to cut poplar later in the year but timing can't always be perfect. As we've talked about summer cut poplar stands can have root sprouts of around 7 to 8,000 per acre whereas late fall or winter can have twice that amount. The other picture of regeneration was of a section cut in 2014 and re-cut in 2015. The original 2014 cut did not open up the canopy enough to my liking so I marked the trees needed to go and had the loggers go in for round two. The regeneration picture was taken early this fall 2016. You will likely see a lot of growth this summer.

Don't worry about all of your bucks staying here, there won't be room for all of the ones already waiting in line!
Maybe they could start a buddy system. I will send one to you and you can send two back!
 
Thanks Chummer, I'm happy with the progress being made. The knowledge and motivation gained from everyone on the Qdma forum combined with the plan Steve made for me was a definite turning point in the hunting here. And definitely --yes the lake would affect your temperatures. Think of it as a super giant hot water bottle which gives off warm air until it freezes; the wind carries that warm air to your property and of course by the time it gets to you it will be cooler than when it goes by my property but it still will protect you from some of the late frosts. You are also affected by lake effect rains there as well as the lake effect snows. The 7 mile difference between the two properties could have one property being in line with lake wind wise also although a lower altitude will definitely be cooler in the spring when the apples come into bloom.

The picture of the poplar regeneration was taken in late August of this summer 2016 of the poplar stand that was clear cut in mid July 2016. It is better to cut poplar later in the year but timing can't always be perfect. As we've talked about summer cut poplar stands can have root sprouts of around 7 to 8,000 per acre whereas late fall or winter can have twice that amount. The other picture of regeneration was of a section cut in 2014 and re-cut in 2015. The original 2014 cut did not open up the canopy enough to my liking so I marked the trees needed to go and had the loggers go in for round two. The regeneration picture was taken early this fall 2016. You will likely see a lot of growth this summer.

Don't worry about all of your bucks staying here, there won't be room for all of the ones already waiting in line!
I think we are actually doing the same thing but on different scales. You have 6 times the acreage I do and I think that is the perspective. I've checked on doing some logging but these guys won't talk to you unless you are doing 100 ac. And I have some very steep sections and I don't want a log road every 30 feet as they like to do with their skidders. I understand their profit margin.

My main difference from you as I am probably 90 % hardwood of red and white oak, chestnut oak, and black oak. I have no poplar trees whatsoever. My trash trees are shagbark hickory and maple and some scrub type trees. So I can trash a good oak, and not worry that I will short my self. I actually try to cut trees that are impinging on my more mature red and white oaks as they are the prime producers at 40+ yo.
I was surprised at your DPSM. I think mine ranges from 40-100 depending on area. If I cut a juicy stump that deer like, they keep it browsed and it never has chance to grow full tree. I've worked hard to improve browse from its farming years and have really got that part up to speed. Soft mast and thermal bedding are still my shortfalls. That's why this area can be so invaded by MFR, the deer eat the good, before the bad can take over. Thanks for showing, really enjoyed this thread in past and present.
Have a Merry Christmas.
 
Around January 15 is the usual date the deer can no longer eat out of the food plots and this year is shaping up to be no different. It started snowing Wednesday and it has snowed on and off since then with today being Saturday. Most of the time the wind was howling so the snow seldom touched the ground then. I think maybe it evaporates as the wind keeps it afloat. But alas yesterday the wind stopped and the snow piled up quickly.

This is a picture of my wife's Toyota Prius yesterday looking at it head on.
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The snow makes everything look so different; here is a picture of two Rednecks that didn't get out last fall. They are built to withstand a heavy snow load evidently and are being well tested here.

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I got us all plowed out late afternoon and then over night a dusting added another six inches. And then finally this morning there is a hint of open sky showing in the distance. It is just a tease though because snow is predicted on and off for at least the next week.
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And of course Old Model is still out there digging turnips. He has the turnip patch all to himself as the day begins Smaller deer are are staying in their beds conserving energy but Model seems to feed non stop. I guess he understands that a few more snow days and the turnips will be unreachable. Eat Model, EAT!
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That's a funny car picture.

I tried my new snow shoes out yesterday and instead of going nut deep, I went knee deep. So I'm installing the back wings.

G
 
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