What to do????

[walleye270]

i am looking to make this quite a bit thicker. there is standing water throughout the majority of this small river bottom. everytime it floods, it holds water. i cant keep deer on my property. i figured if i can make this a thick bedding ground, then they would stay. i have food plots for them up on the high ground and they of course have water. the only other thing would be cover. any help would be great. i'll try to post pics.
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http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii69/walleye270/DSCF0458.jpg

[Peck]

You need to fire up the chainsaw and start cutting down trees. You need to open up the canopy and let the sun in. Whatever grows back will offer much more cover than you have now. You may get cattails or other natural vegetation that can handle the flooding. You don't lack cover from the flooding, it's from lack of sunlight.

[bishs]

Peck, has it right. Lack of sunlight reaching the ground is your problem. If you cut trees, sell them and have them hauled out. Don't drop a lot of mature trees and create a situation that deer avoid the area, because they can't travel throught it. I would girdle trees. "Kill them standing" this will allow the sunlight in, and cover will start growing.

[smsmith]

Another option would be to do some hinge cutting. That would both allow light in to the ground and create new brushy areas for deer to browse and bed.

[chevyjam2001]

You will also need some high ground for the deer to bed on. They won't lay down in water.

[walleye270]

hey guys, thanks for the help. i went down in the bottom and started cutting trees today. a lot of sun can get through. if stuff doesn't start growing, what can i plant down there to thicken it up?

we do own up on top of the ridge where there is an up and coming pine tree field. the pines are really young yet. i also plant a food plot up top every year too.

what i want to do with the bottom area is make it like a "sanctuary" where the deer can come from all around and feel safe and stay on my property. i have walked the bottom for miles and its not thick anywhere. i figure that if i thicken my property up with cattails or some kind of brush or pines, i might be able to see deer every day instead of whenever they pass through.

any help on what i can plant down there would be appreciated. like i said before, if it rains, there can be standing water down there for a week or two. thanks.

[koz bow]

Walleye - you have a great asset on your land by having that river bottom. I have a very similar bottomland on my ground. I have built the higher ground around the river bottom as bedding ground and bedding cover, including my sanctuaries. I have located my best stand locations along that river bottom, where there are bends and where the bucks will cross, during the rut and go from one bedding area to the next.

I use that bottom as a route in and out of my stand, where the bedding cover remains up high and to the sides.

The key is that before daylight, I can walk along that bottom quietly, (unless there is a heavy frost) and access my stand locations. The deer are then out in the open fields feeding. They then use that bottom land as a travel route to and from the bedding zones. The keys is to have many bedding zones so that the bucks have lots of places to check (using his nose) for does. Once the deer are bedded for the day and you decide to leave your stand you can do so undetected. So, I would seriously think about building your bedding area around this bottom and use the bottom as a killing zone.

If it is big mature bucks you are after, the same thing goes, but the only difference is, that chances are good that he is already bedded before you even make your way to your stand. I know that this is the case on my land. Again, you use the bottom land to get into your stand and then position yourself down wind, as best as possible of your best (hottest at that time) doe bedding area and wait for him to get out of his bed, head down along the bottom and work his way downwind to check for hot does. For me this generally occurs between 10 AM and Noon for me on my land in early November.

If you want to create bedding cover instead of what I describe above, your best bet is to drop your largest trees, hinge cut the smaller ones and make sure you leave travel lanes so that the deer do not need to jump over the logs. You really should not need to plant anything, unless you are in a hurry to get this puzzle completed.

Or as bishs suggests, have a logger take out those trees and leave the tops, but do so after the muzzle loader season next winter.

[koz bow]

chevyjam2001You will also need some high ground for the deer to bed on. They won't lay down in water.

Forgot to include this in my post - Chevyjam is correct on this, another good reason to rethink that sanctuary strategy inside the low land. It may not get used anyway.

[shell waster]

I can't really tell but I saw mostly maple and some beech in your photo. Don't cut the beech! It's wet too and I don't go to bed in a wet bed? Just cut what you need and don't worry about bedding, they are probably beeding on the high and dry evergreen side. Also I am not a very big fan of hinge cutting. Too many guys have died from barber chairs via the hinge cut.