Too Many Trees
Posted By
Rick Knochel
at
12/15/2009 12:00:00 AM
Too Many Trees
By: Dean Gericke
A lot of thoughts go through a persons head when they’re on stand. Where are the deer? Wonder if the other staffers are doing any good? What are my wife and kids doing? Can’t wait to eat! Geez I’m tired…. Thoughts run the gambit. One of the things that dominate my head while on stand is what can I do to improve my ground. Bill has written some excellent blogs as well as provided videos on a couple of his early shows about the subject. Any ground that he can improve, he does. Food plots, water sources, bedding cover are all part of a land development strategy.
Food plots have been covered in great detail both here and to a greater extent on the net, in magazine articles and books. I will not go into that subject. What hasn’t been as widely publicized is work you can do to improve your timber. Most of the time, this element of your ground goes without attention, and it could be the single biggest oversight you might be making in developing your ground for whitetails.
Timber Stand Improvement (TSI) is the practice of making the forest healthier, primarily through the removal of unwanted trees. Most people don’t realize that over the years, with nothing being done to their timber, it becomes over run with trees. What happens is that too many trees start to grow, and the canopy of the timber chokes out sunlight trying to reach the ground. Thus, the timber has little understory (brush, shrubs, vines, browse) that deer like to eat and bed in. If you can see 30 yds. through your woods at ground level, you have too many trees. Too many trees also results in reduced mast crop production because of competition for available nutrients by the mast producing trees. Areas of my timber before TSI had twice as many trees on it, than it should have.
What to do (more tree stand thinking). The first thing I did was locate a block of timber away from my property lines to perform TSI. If you are developing it for bedding and browse, you certainly want to try to locate it away from neighboring hunting pressure. Second is to do the work or have someone do it for you. Since I had 40 acres in mind, I chose to have the work done by a professional. Not to mention I didn’t know which trees to cut. I contacted the NRCS office to find a qualified forester in my area that could write me a plan and perform the work. A plan? What plan?
This might be the biggest unknown as far as this practice goes. There is usually cost sharing available (check with NRCS office) to have this work performed. I was able to get 75% cost share when I had my work done, but you must have a plan drafted up by a qualified forester. He will outline what area will be managed, and what he plans to take out after walking the timber. A typical charge to get this work performed is around $100/acre. Since I had 40 acres in mind, I was looking at a $4000 bill. Cost share brought that down to $1000 out of pocket. Might seem like a lot of money, but the mast, browse and bedding improvements by establishing this practice is more than worth it. I am actually looking to do more in the future.
The forester will come in and either fall the trees or girdle them. Girdling is taking a saw and going in about 3-4 in. into the tree (around the outside), which will kill it, but remains standing. This dead tree is now a snag and good for birds like wood peckers. The forester will work with you on other non mast producing trees you might want left standing. I wanted my cedars left standing since they usually get rubbed on and are good for cover.
Warning!!! This practice is not pretty at first. You must come to grips that your timber will look torn up at first, but give it a couple years. When that understory starts to take off, it looks great, and the scares from the cut trees will fade quickly. The trails and beds you find in a TSI area are unbelievable.
The Knochels are planning to bring more on this subject on future videos by talking to a private land conservationist. So stay tuned and they will bring you more on the subject in the near future.
