A Chainsaw Really Is A Deer’s Best Friend
There’s a saying in deer management circles that a chainsaw is a deer’s best friend. I happen to agree with that, but even more importantly a chainsaw can also be a deer manager/hunter’s best friend as well. Food plots, prescribed burning, and other habitat enhancement techniques all have their place in a management plan, but chainsaw work in my opinion can provide the most bang for your buck when it comes to providing food and cover for deer at low cost to you. I’m going to give you a couple of strategies on how to improve your deer’s habitat, and improve your hunting at the same time, on the property you manage.
The first strategy that you can use to improve your situation is creating pockets of bedding/staging cover. What you want to do is identify on a topo map or aerial photo where deer may prefer to bed down during the middle of the day or stage in late afternoon before coming out in the open to feed. For bedding areas, look for areas where deer can see danger approaching from in front of them, and smell approaching danger from behind them. Finger-ridges, or points, are usually good spots in a predominately hardwood forest area, where the deer can look down into adjoining draws. In more open areas, hillcrest treelines are usually a good bet. To identify staging areas, look around 100 yards downwind of food plots or ag fields as your starting point. In either scenario, after you’ve identified which areas you want to enhance, you want to section off these areas into thirds or quarters by drawing on your map and dividing each section into areas of 1 – 5 acres. The reason you want to section off these areas is for a couple of reasons. First of all, after you go in there and thin the area with a chainsaw, deer will have a tendency to avoid those spots in the first year or so. That’s why you don’t want to go in there and do the whole area at one time, because you don’t want deer avoiding that area altogether. But don’t fret, because after 2 – 10 years, these spots will be magnets to deer activity.
That brings us to the second reason you want to section off these areas. That is, you want to keep rotating these areas to where at any given time you have a sweet spot that has been thinned between 2 and 10 years ago. A five-year rotation is a good plan, so if you divide the section into thirds you’ll be back to the first spot in fifteen years, or if you divide into fourths you’ll be back to the first spot in twenty years.
The second strategy that I really like to employ is creating natural funnels, or travel corridors, through existing mature hardwood stands. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve set up on a trail and had deer skirt just out of range as they cruise by. Wouldn’t it be nice to have them come right by you on a consistent basis? Well, now you can make that happen. Again go to your topo map or aerial photo and identify feeding areas and bedding areas and “connect the dots” between likely spots. Or maybe you’ve previously identified escape routes or other natural travel corridors where deer are frequently seen traveling through the woods or where good trails exist. The next step is to either locate areas that you would like to place a stand or where one already exists within these travel corridors. The key once again is sectioning off these areas into a rotational cutting system to keep deer using these areas over the long haul. And don’t forget that deer will avoid these areas initially. So what you want to do is more or less walk the same paths that the deer travel and thin strips between 20 – 100 yards wide along these paths. Wait two years and then start hunting these strips as the deer will start using these areas heavily at that time. Wait five years and then create new travel corridors that are perpendicular to the first, and so on.
What you’ve done in these instances is to enhance existing habitat to make these areas more attractive to deer, thus bringing them to you and your property instead of you trying to go to them. It sounds like magic, but I assure you it’s not. Creating clearcuts, select-cuts, or Timber Stand Improvement (TSI) does nothing more than open up the forest canopy and allow sunlight to reach the forest floor. This in turn will allow herbaceous forage and seedlings to germinate, providing both food and cover that deer utilize and feel comfortable in. If these options sound right for you, please contact your local forester, private lands specialist, NRCS office, or other agency to help identify exactly how to proceed. In some instances you can even receive cost-sharing through the various government funds available. Talk about a win-win situation for you, your property, and the deer. Good luck.