Recreating a Deer Woods

[Chummer]

On a side note the deer blowing at the fisher tells me they are also on the predator list for fawns. I already expected that but I was shocked they would blow and take off this time of year. That was quite the scene and an example of you never know what you are going to see in the woods.

 

[Chainsaw]

Chummer, Anne and I had a lot of fun with you on our short hunting get together despite the worst weather of the season for hunting. Naturally after you left the weather turned perfect and on my first day out setting out the new cameras a very large eight literally almost ran me over following a doe while I was setting cameras( he was only a few feet from my kneeling position). Later that day a big nine offered me a twenty-five yard standing shot twice and then soon afterwards the really big ten blew at me before giving me a view of a very slow motion yet high bound while I was putting the camera on the tree; the deer must have known that I was "one and done" buck wise and were just testing me. I'd like to do a hunt together again next season if the stars align and hopefully we will get better weather; the rut timing was right for this hunt but the weather was just atrocious. I went out yesterday setting the last three cameras of the new purchase and passed thru the area we were watching on our Sunday morning sit; there was a rub on a tree there that just shredded the tree and to top it off it was an IRONWOOD TREE which is probably the hardest tree on the property. Here is a pic from the one card pull located a short distance from where we sat Sunday; the wind was wrong for this spot and it was right for where we went so I don't regret our stand choice. One more year would finish him off anyhow.



Tomorrow morning is cold-cold but after that it warms up so I shall rally up the troops(Anne) and see if we can get her within twenty yards or so of one of those big boys that keeps taunting me while I'm out setting camera traps. By the way, love how you dropped that doe quickly so we didn't have to lug it through those very thick woods to retrieve it.

The trespasser whose tracks were discovered just after you left has been ticketed;I hate calling in the law on these things but experience has taught me that it must be done or next time they go further and further if left unchecked. Our wardens in this area are very conscientious and professional. It is not personal for them at all; the warden said something that stuck with me as to how it should be. He said it simply; So and So made a bad decision and will pay the consequences. Of course trespassing consequences are not high but still it is some deterrent to otherwise law abiding people.

 

[Chummer]

Glad they gave him a ticket. That buck might have been the one we saw chasing if he was in that area. Rack and body looks about right. I am driving up in the morning and going to do a spot and stalk for a bit before I close up camp for the year. I think Anne is going to get one of those big boys. Deer is still at butcher but I will be dropping you off a batch of jerky that I am sure will change your opinion on jerky. Hopefully we get a mild winter and I can make it up for some chainsaw work. I would love to see how you approach hinging, releasing, and the sort. Did the officer say what he shot?

Just read your post again. Was this a second trespasser? Was that the shot I heard? I told my dad the story about the doe today. I was never so happy to see a deer tip over. I had 3 seconds of very high anxiety as it tried to make it to the woods. I will work on that high shoulder shot for next year. 25 years of aiming at the heart is going to take a couple of deer to get over.

 

[Elkaddict]

Dave,
You’re lucky you have responsive wardens. My local ones are either too busy or don’t prioritize trespassing violations. After the first emails/calls went ignored for weeks, I started calling the Troopers. They’ll send someone up on the spot. The bummer is the troopers are not as familiar with some of the DEC regs like wearing a backtag or producing a hunting license at the request oh the landowner.

I’m excited about your pics. I believe this is a direct consequence of your logging operations. All that new browse is only going to get better!

Chumme,r Anne and I had a lot of fun with you on our short hunting get together despite the worst weather of the season for hunting. Naturally after you left the weather turned perfect and on my first day out setting out the new cameras a very large eight literally almost ran me over following a doe while I was setting cameras( he was only a few feet from my kneeling position). Later that day a big nine offered me a twenty-five yard standing shot twice and then soon afterwards the really big ten blew at me before giving me a view of a very slow motion yet high bound while I was putting the camera on the tree; the deer must have known that I was "one and done" buck wise and were just testing me. I'd like to do a hunt together again next season if the stars align and hopefully we will get better weather; the rut timing was right for this hunt but the weather was just atrocious. I went out yesterday setting the last three cameras of the new purchase and passed thru the area we were watching on our Sunday morning sit; there was a rub on a tree there that just shredded the tree and to top it off it was an IRONWOOD TREE which is probably the hardest tree on the property. Here is a pic from the one card pull located a short distance from where we sat Sunday; the wind was wrong for this spot and it was right for where we went so I don't regret our stand choice. One more year would finish him off anyhow.
View attachment 14026


Tomorrow morning is cold-cold but after that it warms up so I shall rally up the troops(Anne) and see if we can get her within twenty yards or so of one of those big boys that keeps taunting me while I'm out setting camera traps. By the way, love how you dropped that doe quickly so we didn't have to lug it through those very thick woods to retrieve it.

The trespasser whose tracks were discovered just after you left has been ticketed;I hate calling in the law on these things but experience has taught me that it must be done or next time they go further and further if left unchecked. Our wardens in this area are very conscientious and professional. It is not personal for them at all; the warden said something that stuck with me as to how it should be. He said it simply; So and So made a bad decision and will pay the consequences. Of course trespassing consequences are not high but still it is some deterrent to otherwise law abiding people.

 

[Chainsaw]

Chummer, No there was just that first trespasser; I'll fill you in on the details when I see you next. I did see some snowed in foot prints on our tractor road bordering a back edge section and I'm spending a lot of time now on that border hoping they return now that we have excellent tracking snow again and of course there are a few extra cameras there now as well.

Elk yes the logging was one of the direct causes of what I believe is a major turnaround of the property. It wasn't just having it logged but rather how it was logged. There were lots of other factors as well including implementing parts of the plan that Steve had made for the property including property layout, sanctuary designation, use of cameras much more than we were doing, hunting on high odds days, hunting low impact locations first, law enforcement(wardens) helped by curtailing illegal activities that were taking place in the general area both prompted my calling and independent of my calling, having a farmer/renter that plants crops that both feed deer in fall, winter and spring and provide fawning cover,as well as improving the soil, me no longer shooting a couple of 2 1/2 year olds most years, a very proactive approach to land posting, surveillance and making our presence very visible and continued releasing of apple trees and dropping trees to increase winter deer food. Anyone of these things would have helped but it was the combination of efforts that brought it all together seemingly at once though it really took years.

With all of that said the logging likely had the largest impact with hunting practices being a close second tied with farmer planted food which freed me up to do other improvements.

 

[Chummer]

As good as your property has become I don’t think you have seen anything yet. The edges I hunted appear to be an impenetrable wall. I am seriously considering clear cutting the back half of my property. I am a believer now that there really is no reason not to do it. Let all the deer live there and wait for them to poke their head out. Briars, briars, briars, and more briars.

 

[Chainsaw]

Take it easy we must stay somewhat diversified. We definitely don't want park like woods but 100 % briers wouldn't do it either.

 

[Chummer]

Take it easy we must stay somewhat diversified. We definitely don't want park like woods but 100 % briers wouldn't do it either.

I tend to be impulsive. If some briars bring in 7 deer, 20 acres would bring in lots of deer!

 

[Chainsaw]

Jeremy, if you would like to make a plan to become the most efficient deer producing property on the Hill, I would be glad to assist you on it. This post is addressed to you because of your question but really it is the beginning of a pre-planned winter long recap of how decisions were reached in Recreating a deer woods here. STARTING FROM THE BEGINNING TO RECREATE A DEER WOODS RATHER THAN STARTING AT THE END WILL PRODUCE THE BEST RESULTS.

Twenty acres worth of clear cut land on 100 acres may not be too much at all and once studied maybe even 50 acres or even more might be advantageous but decisions as to where to clear cut and in what sizes, when and over what period of time would work the best is more near the conclusion of recreating a deer woods plan than the beginning. To answer "where" we need to know what is where throughout the property today(plant inventory) so we can predict what will grow back and what will not, a plant inventory of all places on the property is needed to also determine what positive elements are already in place and should be retained. Clear cutting is not a magic bullet to greater deer hunting but simply one of the very many tools in our bag. As a major tool in our bag though clear cutting will be addressed throughout our discussions this winter in recreating a deer woods planning.

First let's start at the beginning and that is setting up our minds with more understanding of what is important in recreating a deer woods.Soil is as good a place to start as any; what do we really know and understand about it? There are two science based books written thru S.A.R.E. (Sustainable Agricultural Research and Education) that helped me understand soil at least significantly better than I did before. The books explain how soil nurtures plants life, how to care for the soil, how to preserve the soils' integrity and functionality and much much more. Reading these science based books is a high value addition to the base of the deer management knowledge that we have thru personal life experiences. This added understanding is paramount to making better decisions as we recreate a deer woods thru reshaping the landscape of our individual properties.

Here is the link to the S.A.R.E. website where books can be purchased in hard copy or downloaded;
https://www.sare.org/Learning-Center/Books

A second place to start at the beginning in recreating a deer woods is to learn as much as possible about clear cutting for deer and ruffed grouse and managing forests for deer and ruffed grouse. Searches on Google for such information will result in a tremendous amount of science based articles from the Ruffed Grouse Society as well as Cornell university, Michigan State and other northern based universities who have performed studies on managing habitat for ruffed grouse and whitetail deer (I say check northern papers the most because we are in the north, other areas would find the best info where studies were done in areas similar to their locales). It is highly recommended to do the searches and read as many papers as possible about the subject of clear cutting and habitat manipulation; note, I'm not suggesting to read books written by professional deer hunter writers at this time, just science based papers. Here is just one of many, many articles that approach the subject nicely;
https://deeradvisor.dnr.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/resources/Habitat Improvement for White tailed Deer _ A Landowner’s Guide.pdf

In many of the papers they advise us to hire a forester and talk with a wildlife biologist, It would be even better to learn as much of the science of habitat manipulation ourselves as we can before relying on recommendations from foresters or even wildlife biologists. Although most wild life biologists in this area are more in sync with our goals, the few professional foresters I have met were not. If we want to know how to maximize timber values over a long period then the foresters met here so far might be a big help but keep in mind the subject here is recreating a deer woods into the best deer producing woods possible for the deer not for creating wood for furniture. Yes a better understanding of forestry than most of us have is required in making a recreating a deer woods plan but that is a subject for another post on another day. Note; This is not to slam foresters or even say all of us can do this job without them, it is simply for the few foresters I have interacted with here it was evident that their training and recommendations are directed towards maximizing current and future timber values; The foresters' focus was not at all on recreating a deer woods for deer and it could be different in other locales. To understand which recommendations really apply to our goals or at least to my goals I/we need to be able to discern the difference rather than just fully trust that what is recommended to us will fit into our recreating a deer woods plan.

 

[Chummer]

I would love to have you over for another walk. I think it is long enough after the initial logging to get a good idea of what will grow back and how fast. Unfortunately, it will probably have to wait till May. I guessed I missed the memo where we got 2’ of snow. I went up yesterday to close down camp and take one last hunt. Snow was already knee deep and very hard walking. The deer have already moved close to the road and river. Lots of coyote tracks through bedding areas. This is the worst start possible for the deer to survive winter. I almost had a shot as I was leaving. I was all packed up and driving home when near the end of the road, on the state land, I spot a nice 2 yo 6 pointer standing 40 yards off the road in some hemlocks. I thought I drove far enough up the road and there was a big hump between me and the deer so I tried sneaking to the top of the hump. He must of heard me because he was gone when I got to the hump. Lucky for him I wasn’t one of the regular road hunters because he easily could have been shot out the window. With that it looks like my season is over. Time to start planning for next year.

 

[Chainsaw]

It is that time of year that we need to crop a few more does. The freezer was full so we needed to make room before we could add any more venison to it. Our canning plan was to wait until winter had us pinned in to do the venison canning all at once but we needed to make space so that we did. We canned up thirty-three pint jars of venison which freed up our freezer so we could go doe hunting.

With a third of the meat, we canned it in the regular fashion of just salt and pepper for seasoning and pan juice and chicken broth for the liquid part. For about another third we put an onion in the bottom and Sweet Baby Ray or ketchup on the top, something we had seen in a Habitat Talk thread and again added both pan juice and chicken broth in each.

Synergy kicked in for the last third of the venison to be canned so we decided to try something new to us. We took two favorite stove top/oven recipes and assimilated the ingredients used in those recipes into the canning process. The great thing about canning for us is the ease of no meal planning--just take a jar off the shelf, dump it into a pan and heat it up and it's meal time at least meat -wise. It is our hope that the two different recipes we canned will taste as or near as delicious as the stove top/ oven versions of cooking them. The two recipes we used were "Jaegermeister-Lemon Steaks" from The Complete Hunter Venison Cookbook and the other recipe is "Big Game Round Steak" from The Complete Hunter Dressing & Cooking Wild Game. The canned jars are well marked so we can tell which recipes are in which jar; the "new" canning recipes might be a great hit or it might be a total bust--we'll see.

 

[Deadeye]

My Mom used to Can Venison and it is still IMO the very best tasting meat there is.

 

[Chainsaw]

My Mom used to Can Venison and it is still IMO the very best tasting meat there is.

Mom's always knew how to cook things great in our era;I hope the mom's of today will be remembered that way as well. Our canning venison is very tasty not the absolute finite best for us but it is up there. It is odd to me how canning venison is not at the top of everyone's list these days; not because it is the only best way to prepare venison but it is a great way to preserve a few meals a year or maybe even fifty meals a year. It is just how it is; old ways are replaced by new ways but always the old ways become rediscovered eventually and then they become the new ways again.

 

[Chainsaw]

I would love to have you over for another walk. I think it is long enough after the initial logging to get a good idea of what will grow back and how fast. Unfortunately, it will probably have to wait till May. I guessed I missed the memo where we got 2’ of snow. I went up yesterday to close down camp and take one last hunt. Snow was already knee deep and very hard walking. The deer have already moved close to the road and river. Lots of coyote tracks through bedding areas. This is the worst start possible for the deer to survive winter. I almost had a shot as I was leaving. I was all packed up and driving home when near the end of the road, on the state land, I spot a nice 2 yo 6 pointer standing 40 yards off the road in some hemlocks. I thought I drove far enough up the road and there was a big hump between me and the deer so I tried sneaking to the top of the hump. He must of heard me because he was gone when I got to the hump. Lucky for him I wasn’t one of the regular road hunters because he easily could have been shot out the window. With that it looks like my season is over. Time to start planning for next year.

Another walk on the hill property would be great and late April/May or whenever the snow leaves is the absolute perfect time to examine regrowth and plan for future habitat changes. Am glad you had a mini-adventure with the six point and it is one of the things Anne and I admire in you; it is all about the hunt and fair chase and not just about shooting deer.

We have had a good thaw here and hopefully the hill has had it as well.The hill is one of the toughest places in Northern NY for deer to thrive; maybe though with your passion and drive to make it work it will. Minimally I expect your property will be among the best property on the hill very soon.

 

[Elkaddict]

Dave, for those of us who haven’t done it, can I trouble for detailing how you can your venison?

 

[Chainsaw]

Dave, for those of us who haven’t done it, can I trouble for detailing how you can your venison?

No trouble at all Tom, canning is an exact science in preserving meat and pressure cooker manufacturers cookers products come with instructions that make it all simple. Our pressure cooker is made by All American Pressure cooker/canner. Meat is canned in Ball Jars in pint or quart jars. Meat and liquid is put in jars and the jars are heated to a point that the lids seal themselves air tight.

Specifically meat is precooked in the oven to hot in the middle;Ours are cut into one inch cubes, salt and peppered and cooked on a tray for ten minutes in the oven at 400 degrees. The meat is then stuffed in jars and the pan juices poured in. Any remaining air space in the jar is then filled with heated chicken broth. Flavoring/spices/seasonings are also put into the jar at this time. Note; we use the tougher cuts for this process as all cuts come out equally tenderized.

Three inches of water is then heated in our pressure cooker. Jars are placed in the pressure cooker(it holds 19 pint jars) and the top is then screwed down. Other than the relief valve, it is air tight. The gas stove heats the water and when steam has come out of the relief valve for seven minutes a pressure gauge weight (provided with the pressure cooker) is set on the valve using the ten marking. The weight rattles as pressure over ten is released. Directions explain how often it should rattle to keep it around ten. Lowering or raising the gas controls that along with the pressure gauge weight. Note-there also is a pressure gauge but the weight rattling at the just right intervals is the best measurement. 75 minutes for a pint at 10 pressure and 90 minutes at 10 pressure for a quart and it is done. Leave it set to release pressure after turning off the heat and then remove from the pressure cooker and let cool; the tops will then seal;it makes a noise as the lids seal themselves. You will easily see/hear it happening. And that is it;the venison is canned and can be put on not-refrigerated shelves for a year but they are always so far eaten up by then here. It seems so simple that it shouldn't work but it absolutely does.

I would equate the texture of the canned venison to a good pot roast or a well stewed stew meat.

 

[snowracerh]

Canned 16 pints this weekend. Slice of yellow onion in the bottom, pack in raw cubed venison. 1/2 tsp canning salt, 1/2 tsp pepper (fresh ground) and beef bouillon cube all on top. 11 psi for 90 minutes. It was perfect. No extra liquid needed. New favorite and quick way to prepare meal. Especially with a newborn and 3 yr old at home. Daughter really enjoys watching me butcher - very interested in it!! SORRY TO HIJACK THIS THREAD!

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[HB_Hunter]

Congrats on two great deer! I need to spend several hours catching up on this thread .

 

[Deadeye]

Mom used a Pressure Cooker until ours blew up one time and we never did find the gauge part that blew off!
Then she returned to "old style" where a simple Roasting Pan with Lid was used and the Jars set inside. Same Principle of Cubed Venison, salt & pepper and a Beef Bouillon Cube placed on top. She would fill the jars with water to the "neck" and leave some space for expansion.

She had a pair of Grips that were made for grabbing the tops of the Jars and would set them out after 90 minutes of cooking. I don't recall she ever pre-cooked the cubes. The meat cooks in it's own juice.

After she set out the done jars she would re-heat the water to boiling and set new jars in. The Taken Out Jars were set on Newspaper laid out on the counter. When the Lids POPPED the Canning process was done.

Just dump a jar into a skillet and warm then add a little flower to thicken the juice and serve over Mashed Potatoes.

 

[Chummer]

I cooked your jagermister(sp) recipe for the family and it was a solid 3out of four stars. Wife and youngest loved it, the problem child thought it was okay. That is about as good a compliment as she gives. There were no left overs so I know it was a hit.