Category: Whitetail Habitat Management

Last spring, Daniel toured and designed a habitat and hunting improvement plan in Tennessee. There was an old pasture along the property line that would be easy to convert to a food plot.

Daniel recommended planting Green Cover Seed’s “View Blocker” as a visual screen along the edge of the property to conceal the plot from neighbors during fall. As you can see from the above picture, even during the current summer drought, the screen is growing great and will be well above a pickup truck come fall! Visual screens can be great tools for landowners/hunters along property lines.

Another option we often  suggest is to create bedding areas next to roads.  The thick, gnarly vegetation not only serves as visual screen, but also as a barrier for folks to walk through.  Deer bed by a road and then move into the center of the property to feed. This option is only good if the native vegetation will grow tall enough AND remain standing throughout the winter. Often grasses will lay down during the late season and hardwood trees loose their leaves so it no longer has the ability to screen the food plot from the neighbors or those driving by.

Planting pines may be an option. If there’s a market in the area pines should be considered an investment as they can be harvested and sold in 15 + years!

Enjoy creation!

The GrowingDeer team

While working in South Carolina, Grant found this area where forestry mulching was used. As you can see in this video, the mulch did not kill the hardwoods. Mulching makes it look good for a year or two but stumps will sprout creating unproductive whitetail habitat.  See more information in this short video on where you could use mulching and where/why not to mulch for longterm productive whitetail habitat improvements.

Last January, we toured Chad’s 80 acres and developed a habitat and hunting improvement plan. Chad’s place used to be used as a cattle and hog farm and the neighboring properties are still primarily cattle pasture and small wood lots. He began implementing the timber stand improvement projects, used prescribed fire and added food plots.

The property is already more attractive than most of the neighboring properties and he’s seeing more deer. The habitat plan we designed for him has almost endless opportunities for stand and blind placement. And that’s because there’s a huge amount of edge – food/cover/edge, food/cover/edge, food/cover/edge. So, no matter the wind direction, there’s going to be an ideal place for Chad and his family to hunt. In fact, Chad recently harvested a great buck.

Congratulations Chad on your habitat improvement project and a nice set of antlers!

Native habitat makes us smile! Years ago this area was covered with eastern red cedar and offering no benefit to wildlife. After removing the cedars and using prescribed fire, the native habitat released its potential! Now there is a diversity of grasses and wildflowers, which are not only beautiful to look at but many species offer critters great cover and quality browse this time of the year.  If you’re interested in a more in-depth look at the wildflowers and native browse that have been restored on our hunting property, watch this video. 

Much of the poorest quality habitat here at The Proving Grounds was covered with eastern red cedar. Those cedars were allowed to take over areas that used to be open due to overgrazing and suppression of all fire.

However, there was a great native seed source.  We simply cut and felled the cedars, allowed them to dry for two to three years, then burned them where they fell.  A fabulous composition of native warm season grasses and forbs recolonized the area.

After the fire, the areas responded quickly, and in some areas — counting the rings on the cedars — that native vegetation seed had laid dormant in the soil for 75 or more years.

The state botanist helped us to identify over  176 species of native warm season grasses and forbs.  The only maintenance I’ve done on those sites since the original fire has been additional prescribed fires on a three to five year rotation.

If you take degraded habitat – unless it’s been intensely plowed and that seed bank really messed with – if you use prescribed fire or whatever the appropriate technique is for that habitat, usually the natives will recolonize that area. And you have to go around and spot treat some of the invasive species, like sericea lespedeza  to allow these natives even to expand.Cedar glades that became established on tillable land usually don’t have a good native plant seed base as it was disturbed during the previous tillage.

The value of these areas now to many species of wildlife, and the views created, and the value to hunters, is much, much greater than the value it had when they were covered with eastern red cedars.

Missouri is blessed with a great Department of Conservation. All states have a similar department. I hope you’ll reach out to them and check out the resources they have to offer to assist you in establishing native habitat on your hunting property.

Enjoy Creation,

Grant

What is quality cover? We recently toured a property in western Kansas to created a habitat and hunting improvement plan. During the visit we noticed several CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) areas around the ag fields.

From a wildlife perspective, these long, narrow areas of CRP do not offer quality cover. We often refer to such areas as “predator food plots”. All a coyote or raccoon needs to do is run on the down wind side of this area and they can locate every fawn and turkey nest.

To provide critters with quality/security cover, areas should be at least several acres large (+10) and not long and narrow.

Native browse is extremely nutritious! We noticed an area where deer were hammering the giant ragweed. We collected a ragweed sample and had Waters Ag (same lab we use for soil samples) analyze the nutrient quality. Check out the results. This is one reason we work to improve native habitat! (page down to see the nutritional analysis)

Daniel recently toured and designed a habitat improvement and hunting plan for a 180-acre property in southern Missouri. The timber on this property had been harvested during the mid-90’s. The result of this harvest was a closed canopy forest containing low quality trees.

The timber stand offered no quality food or cover for wildlife. There were several stands of cedars that also created a close canopy. Daniel recommended using a chainsaw to fell all the cedars and use hack and squirt to terminate the hardwoods to open up the canopy. The landowner will leave a quality hardwood tree every 50 yards or so but terminate the rest. This will create a great savanna habitat of scattered trees and vegetation growing below. With sunlight reaching the ground and management through prescribed fire, native grasses and forbs will flourish, providing great cover and browse.

There were also several large hay fields. These fields could easily be converted to food plots and provide deer quality food and create incredible hunting opportunities. Daniel recommended that the landowner begin implementing principles from the Buffalo System to improve the soil and provide deer forage throughout the entire year.

After touring the property (see Daniel’s Tracks from OnX), Daniel drew up a plan that increased quality food, provided quality cover, and great hunting locations. In an area that is mostly cattle pasture and low-quality timber, these improvements will make this property one of the most desirable to deer as they seek quality food and cover. We look forward to updates from the landowner and hearing about his hunting seasons!

Prescribed fire can be a great management tool! Here, you can see three bedding areas with the date they were last burned.

Burning during the dormant season (late winter) tends to promote native forbs. Burning during the growing season (summer) favors native grasses.

By rotating the use of prescribed fire during different times of the year (growing season/dormant season) it creates a mosaic of habitat types.

The fires from August 2019 and February 2020 are currently growing rapidly! They are providing quality native browse. In a few months these areas will provide quality nesting and fawning habitat. The area burned during 2017 is providing great cover for critters now- should they seek this type of cover.

This diversity habitat of food plots, native food and cover located in close proximity is extremely productive for wildlife year round!

Enjoy Creation!

Clay O’Dell

I received the question below from fellow hunter:

“I was recently helping with a prescribed fire in central Iowa when we ran into an area of saplings encroaching an old grass land. I see you have recommended both cutting at ground level and spraying, as well as hack and squirt, then burn. The area is 15 acres of old CRP but over half is overrun with 10-15’ tall growth. We hope to convert most back to native grass and a few acres for food plots. Is there a reason for one method more than the other? Is there ever a time to mechanically cut all the brush at ground level and maintain with annual burns?”

I gave him the following advice:

It sounds like you are doing some nice habitat improvement work.  If the area where saplings have encroached is to remain in native grass/cover then there is no need to expend the resources to cut the trees assuming they aren’t cedars.  The easiest way to control eastern red cedar is to cut them below the bottom limb.

Hardwood species almost always sprout after being cut.  They can be cut and then an herbicide applied to the stump within five minutes of felling the tree.  This requires lots of time and resources.  I prefer to use the hack and squirt method.  This is a much safer, faster, and less expensive method of controlling hardwoods and allows the sun’s energy to reach the soil.

There’s some excellent information at this link about which herbicide to use and time of year for different species.  Please note that the best results when using the hack and squirt technique almost always occurs when it’s used during the late summer. I don’t recommend using this technique when sap is rising.

A regular rotation of prescribed fire, especially during the growing season, will keep hardwood seedlings from becoming established.

Enjoy creation,

Grant

New Video

The GrowingDeer Team has been busy improving habitat! Fire conditions were favorable to burn several bedding areas, improving the quality of fawning and nesting habitat at The Proving Grounds. Between fires, we’ve had the opportunity to travel to Arkansas and Tennessee to help landowners improve the habitat and hunting on their properties! See what techniques we are using to improve wildlife habitat!

Click Here To Watch Now

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