Post by Sandbur on Apr 11, 2019 12:32:49 GMT -6
J-Bird,
Do you have types of hazelnuts? They grow up into bushes with several stems. Provide deer and animal food. One thing you may want to try is planting evergreens in a line between your food areas so deer have edge down the road for travel corridors. Sandburg does this and did it years ago.
I have travel corridors on my place. Just sort of my chance. This works great once the deer I am looking for are on their feet. However the lack of the depth of cover makes holding mature bucks virtually impossible.
The shrubs are to increase cover while helping the overall wildlife food supply on a long term low involvement basis on my part. In many cases I am planting areas that where part of plots because my plots are under utilized.... And my current shrub diversity is in the tank.
Conifers could be considered but I think I would have to plant them in a larger block than I have available to really seem them be effective.
My place is different because I have 50 acres of "cover" in little blocks and narrow strips spread out over 150 acres total....with 100 acres of row crop field that I can't play with from a habitat perspective. I'm just trying to work with what I have and back off of the traditional "food plot" and increase cover if I can.
If your land is like I suspect, I would get some spruce planted along the edge of these small patches of cover so deer can feel hidden and isolated in there.
Then stay out until the rut and hunt travel corridors. If you want to hunt early season with the kids, just pick some areas to hunt and leave at least one pocket of cover completely alone.
My two cents, and I don’t always know what I am talking about.