How do Forestry Practices Benefit Deer Habitat?

Forestry Practices and wildlife habitat improvement go hand in hand.  Anytime I do a timber harvest, I am designing my harvesting and cleanup efforts with game habitat in mind.  However, loggers can mess up your deer habitat in a timber sale if not done correctly.

Timber harvesting in the big woods is where you will find most of the deer in the winter.  On large tracts of land where there are no farm fields, timber harvesting is critical to keep food within reach of deer, especially in winter.  Forbs that develop after harvesting by letting in some sunlight.

Many forestry practices are extremely beneficial to wildlife.  Applications like prescribed burning, TSI (timber stand improvement,) planting and herbicide applications to get rid of plants that are not helping your habitat.

Lets Talk about these one at a time.

Prescribed Burning

By carefully and under the supervision of an expert Burn Boss, we burn the duff layer and any fire-adapted shrubs from the understory, we can vastly improve the forage available for our favorite game species.  By burning off the old leaves that may have built up the a thick layer covering the soil, we can expose that soil that is now freshly fertilized, to seeds blown on the wind or excreted by birds and heavy seeds like the nut trees.  Any newly sprouted plants are more palatable and nutritious to deer and other wildlife.  When burning is combined with harvesting, more light can be let in to the forest floor to increase forb growth.

A couple of things to keep in mind when burning.  Spring and fall during dry weather with calm winds are the best time to try burning.  Whether you choose spring or fall depends on what you want to accomplish.  A Spring burn will create a good seed bed for plants to get established and fire-adapted species will prosper since they readily sprout from the energy stored in the roots for winter.  Oak trees, mountain laurel, sassafras, warm season grasses and blueberries are all examples of these plants.  If we want to favor them a spring burn will do good.

If we want to do a better job of top-killing the existing trees, we would burn in the fall before the target plants are able to store energy in the roots.  For instance, if we want to kill a stand of birch saplings that regenerated and took over the understory, we may want to consider a fall burn to kill them.

What are the Benefits of Prescribed Fire?

Some benefits of a prescribed burn are:

• Kills thin-barked, non fire-adapted species
• Reduces root competition underground
• Exposes mineral soil to seed
• Increases water infiltration
• Refreshes old decadent plants and stimulates new growth of tender plants and fruit
• Makes more forage available to turkeys (no place for bugs to hide)
• Reduces tick populations

The best way to encourage a stand of oak is to burn it multiple times until oak seedlings are dominating the understory.  The best way to refresh warm season grasses is to burn it during the dormant season.  Its a great tool to have in your toolbox when you are a habitat manager.

The biggest hurdle to conducting Rx burns is the fact that you need a fireboss who is qualified to conduct them.  Insurance and liability are big problems that can be solved by hiring a professional company to do your burn or to deal with the State Government in your state to do the burn for you.  Here is PA, a way to get habitat work and Rx burns done is to enroll in the Game Commission Public Access Program.  This requires you to open your property to some hunting.  It doesn’t have to be full access and it is permission only.

Timber Stand Improvement

Timber stand improvement or TSI is a job you can do yourself with a chainsaw.  You may want to hire a consulting forester and describe what you want to achieve with your TSI work.  He can mark a few acres for you and provide some advice that would help you choose the right trees to cut.

The benefits of TSI are to let some light into the forest floor to encourage low growth.  It also gets some immediate browse and ground cover onto the ground, making it an instant results type of practice.  You can do this in the winter (recommended) when the deer need access to the tender growth and nutritious buds that developed last summer.

Herbicide Application

Much of the time, especially in areas of high deer populations, native trees and shrubs are unable to regenerate.  Where heavy deer browse, non-native invasive plants and poor timber harvesting practices have been present (pretty much everywhere) there are often understories filled with nothing but plants deer can’t or don’t want to eat and no fruit or browse.

The only thing we can do in this case is to apply forestry herbicides to kill off the invasive or unwanted plants.  For this we can use glyphosate products labeled for forestry use.  This can be broadcast sprayed with mist blowers and skidder-mounted sprayers.  Broadcast spray is used when there is almost nothing desirable in the understory.

When there are undesirable species of shrubs or saplings taking up growing space and shading out the forest floor, we can use direct applications of herbicide to the target species.  For this can use the cut-stump method, the basal spray method or hack and squirt.

Cut-stump is  when we cut down the target tree and spray the stump with either glyphosate, triclopyr or amazapyr.

These same chemicals can be used in a hack and squirt application.  Here we make a cut in the bark of the target tree with a sharp hatchet and place some chemical in the cut.  The tree takes up the herbicide and kills it.

The basal spray method is when we mix the chemical, usually triclopyr, with penetrating oil and cover the lower 15 inches of the target sapling.  This is a good choice for trees from 1.5 to 6 inches in diameter.  Too small and the chemical ends up on the ground, too big and you use too much and takes too long – better off with hack and squirt.

Timber Harvesting

Harvesting mature timber for income is very beneficial.  Especially when combined with all of the other techniques mentioned above don first.  One should never harvest timber for income (commercial harvesting) without doing something to ensure regeneration of a quality new stand of healthy trees.

Some of the benefits of commercial timber harvesting are:

• sunlight to the forest floor
• tops and slash provide browse and ground cover
• log landings and skid trails provide greater access for hunting and work.  They can be planted with forage for huge increases in forage availability
• income from timber sales can be rotated back into the other work that needs done.  All of the above practices can be done plus it can pay for food plot installation or improvements to the hunting camp.  Keep in mind any money spent on regeneration is tax deductible so it may be worth a trip to the accountant to figure out how best to apply the income.

Do Logging Operations Hurt Deer Hunting?

No, they don’t.  While some deer may shy away from the activity, for some reason deer are very tolerant of logging activity.  I have seen deer in winter stand around waiting for a logger to drop a tree to they can eat the tops.  Deer will often stand and watch heavy equipment go by just like they would standing next to a busy highway.

So, during logging operations and for a couple of years after, near the logging work is where you have the best hunting.  I have had hunt clubs and state foresters shut down my harvesting and TSI jobs for deer season.  This is short-sighted and unnecessary.  Deer aren’t bothered by forestry practices nearly as much as hunting activity.  Prey animals know when they are being hunted and when predators are just going about their business.

So, if you are a large landowner or in a large hunt club, ongoing forestry activity should be continuous.