What habitat management activities are right for your land?
By Matt Tarr, Whitetail Stewards, Inc.
So, you're interested in improving deer habitat on your property. By now you've probably read countless magazine articles, and talked with your buddies for ideas about what you can do to manage deer habitat on your land. Maybe you've considered making some nutritional or hunting food plots. Maybe you've thought about cutting some trees to encourage young growth for deer, or about planting some pines for cover, or some apple trees for a food source? How about creating a deer sanctuary?
Let's face it, you've read and heard a lot of different ideas for improving deer habitat; but how do you really know which ones will work, and which ones are right for your property? Although managing deer habitat isn't rocket science, you can't go about it blindly. Knee-jerk management decisions can degrade your deer habitat, ruin hunting opportunities and limit future uses of the land. In this article, I will explain how you can avoid poor management choices and how to determine which management activities are appropriate for your habitat. Additionally, I'll explain how to contact forestry and wildlife professionals, who can help you through every step of managing your property. As a professional forester, wildlife biologist, and avid deer hunter, I have helped many dedicated folks like you become successful managers of their deer habitat and other natural resources.
Identify your reasons for owning or leasing land
The first step to becoming a successful habitat manager is to realize there is no single "right" way to work with your property. In fact, there can be countless ways of managing the exact same parcel of land. What is "right", depends on your reasons for owning or leasing your property and what specific management objectives you have for the land.
While deer hunting is probably a major reason many of us have purchased property, most of us can't afford to buy land outright for this use alone. Instead, we invest money in property where we can build a house or a hunting camp and head out the back door to participate in the outdoor activities we enjoy. Besides deer hunting, these activities may include hunting other game species, target shooting, riding ATV's, camping, or horseback riding. Additionally, we might grow some crops, or manage a woodlot where we can cut our own firewood and occasionally harvest timber.
These are all legitimate reasons for owning or leasing a property, but they must be balanced with our goal of improving deer habitat and hunting opportunities. Just as locating an ATV trail through a bedding area will reduce the quality of your deer habitat, creating a food plot in the middle of a young woodlot may eliminate future opportunities to manage that forest as a viable, timber producing resource.
Rank your desired uses of your property
To avoid making the types of mistakes I mentioned above on your property, identify all your desired uses for your land before conducting any further management activities. To do this, gather your family members or hunting partners who have an interest in the property. It is helpful to have each person write down what uses are important to them now, and which ones will be important in the future. Have each person rank their desired uses in order of importance and compare what everyone has written. To help in this process, ask yourselves the following questions:
How long do we plan to own or lease the land? Will it be less than five years? Five to 25 years? More than 25 years?
Do we plan to build any houses on the property? If yes, how many and where on the property?
Do we want to manage the property just for deer or do we also want to improve habitat for other wildlife such as turkeys and grouse, or for non-game species such as songbirds, hawks and owls?
Will only our family or hunting partners hunt on the land or will we allow other people to hunt? How many days during the hunting season will someone be hunting on the land?
In addition to hunting, do we want to participate in any other recreational activities on the property such as four-wheeling, horseback riding or cross country skiing? Will we allow others to participate in these activities?
Are we interested in managing a forest with healthy trees and valuable timber? If so, will we harvest timber periodically to create deer habitat and/or to offset the cost of the property?
Ask yourselves these additional questions, because they will determine your ability to accomplish specific habitat management activities:
Do we own equipment that will be necessary for creating and maintaining food plots, for cutting trees, and for hauling wood from our woodlot? If not, are we planning to borrow or buy these things, or will we hire someone to conduct projects that require this equipment?
How much money can we afford to designate toward managing deer habitat each year? Do we want to fund our land management activities primarily by revenue generated from periodic timber harvests? Will we apply for state or federal cost-sharing to help fund our habitat management?
Your specific answers to these questions are critical . Here's some reasons why. If you are going to build a house, where you put that house on your property could make or break your deer hunting opportunities. If you and your buddies plan to do all of your hunting on your property, you will have to plan carefully the location of your hunting areas and access trails to those areas if you hope to avoid significant disturbance to deer. If in addition to hunting deer, you also want to hunt bear and turkeys, your management should address the habitat needs of these animals as well.
The above questions also help you determine what types of management practices are reasonable for you to tackle. For example, if you don't own and can't secure equipment for maintaining food plots, you probably shouldn't invest your money into creating them. Also, if you plan to keep the property indefinitely, you can invest the time and money into long-term projects such as developing a young stand of mixed hardwoods into a stand of mature trees. Such a project could provide deer with an important hard mast feeding area, and provide you with a valuable timber resource. However, if you plan to sell the property within ten years, you'll likely manage that young hardwood stand in a manner that will provide deer with more immediate benefits. This may include creating small patch-clearcuts to encourage hardwood sprouts, or creating a small hunting food plot within the dense growth of young trees. By identifying your reasons for owning your land, and your resources for conducting management, you can begin to sort through all of your options and develop a clear set of objectives for what specifically you want to accomplish on your property.
Determining the "Right" management activities for your property
Set objectives that can be accomplished
Now that you have your management objectives in hand, it's time to determine if those objectives are feasible for your property. Here in my home state of New Hampshire I would love to raise acres of soybeans for deer; however, I'd go broke trying to convert my granite hillside into tillable land! To be successful at managing habitat you need to set reasonable objectives you can actually accomplish.
Work with a professional
To determine which of your management options are feasible, you should work closely with a professional wildlife biologist or forester , and assess the resources available on your property. If your only interest is improving deer habitat and hunting opportunities, base your assessment on those objectives. However, if you are interested in other recreational activities or managing timber resources, you'll need to make a more comprehensive assessment.
Assess your property
The purpose of an assessment is to identify what specific habitats, forest resources and recreational opportunities already exist on the property, along with what opportunities you have to enhance existing resources or create new ones for future use. For example, let's say that after conducting your assessment, you and your wildlife biologist determine that there are many abandoned fields on your property which are becoming over-grown with young trees. If your objective was to increase the availability of high-quality food sources for deer, you may decide to reclaim those old fields and plant a variety of high-quality forages. If your objective was to improve woodcock and grouse habitat, you may decide to maintain those abandoned fields in their current condition, since they will provide these birds with nesting and brooding habitat.
If your assessment showed your property lacked dense cover for deer, you may decide to allow a portion of those abandoned fields to grow into a thick patch of young trees that deer could use as security cover. Again, the purpose of your assessment is to determine what resources you have on your property, what gaps you have in desired resources, and what you can do to improve or eliminate those gaps.
How does your property compare to surrounding properties?
Although your assessment will start within the boundaries of your property, it shouldn't stop there. To get the best sense of what management activities will provide the most benefit to your deer, you also need to know how your property fits into the surrounding landscape. Specifically, know-don't guess-about what types of habitat components are available to deer on neighboring properties. This can be accomplished by using aerial photographs and soils maps, and by walking the properties with your neighbors. Also, find out what types of disturbances deer are subjected to when they leave your land. This information is invaluable to managing deer habitat because you will know if there are critical habitat needs missing within the landscape; you may be able to provide those habitats and attract deer to your property. This information also provides you with the opportunity to create habitat features that compliment those on neighboring land. For example, if your neighbor maintains acres of nutritional and hunting food plots, it may not make any sense for you to create another food plot on your property. Instead, maybe you should manage your oak stands to improve acorn production and provide deer with a food source unique to your area. You might also create a deer sanctuary which will draw deer to the security of your property. By complementing neighboring habitats you can improve the overall quality of deer habitat in your area and increase hunting opportunities on your land.
Seek professional assistance
I'm always amazed at how reluctant many people are to seek professional advice when it comes to managing their land. It's almost as if they think that because managing land has to do with deer and trees and forages-things that interest them-that they should automatically know how to manage these assets.
If you haven't assessed and managed habitat before, there's no reason why you should know anything about habitat management, so don't be afraid to ask for help. Your knowledge about hunting, deer behavior and deer habitat requirements are invaluable for determining your objectives, but get professional assistance when it comes time to assess your property and actually implement habitat management projects. Even if you have been managing your property for years you'll benefit from having a professional wildlife biologist or forester visit your property, not because you are doing something wrong, but because you will find it useful to hear someone else's ideas about how your property could be managed. A professional can also suggest management approaches you may never have considered-or even heard about.
You have a lot of options when it comes to seeking professional advice for managing your land. Your first call should be to either your state Cooperative Extension agency, your state Forestry Department, or your state Fish and Wildlife Department. Most of these agencies have contact information available on the internet. When you call, ask to speak with an agent who can help private landowners manage their natural resources. In most cases, you can have a state agent visit your property, help you identify your management objectives, and guide you through a property assessment, free of charge. These professionals can also inform you about financial assistance programs to help you pay for your management activities. There are many federal and state cost-share programs available to help fund habitat management projects on private land. Your state agent will help you identify which programs you qualify for, and they may even be able to enroll you. Ask the state agent to refer a private consultant who can assist you in writing and carrying out a management plan, if that is not a service they themselves provide.
A final thought
To be successful as hunters and habitat managers we must take a deliberate, comprehensive approach to the way we manage the land we hunt. This means we don't jump into a management practice just because it worked for our buddy, or because we read about it in a magazine. Instead, we evaluate our own reasons for owning or leasing land and we develop our own management objectives based on those reasons. For habitat management to be successful, we must consider all our desired uses of the land, and manage in a way that allows us to achieve those uses most important to us. By following these steps, we will gain the best idea about what management activities are "right" for our land.
