Plant the food source in the center of your property and hunt the travel corridors going to the food.

 

Thats pretty much exactly how my property is set up now. I use to have random small food plots scattered throughout my property. Deer movement was sporadic and unpredictable. Tookout a couple smaller plots this year. Then connected two other plots towards the center of my property to make it one big one. Will see how it works out this year. Plot is kind of an hour glass shape with a pinch point in the middle. Have a couple stand sites planned out on the food plot but most of them are on the travel corridors coming from bedding to food. Still a work in progress though.

 

My property layout is pretty much fragmented as well....mostly by chance rather than design. Property is 160 acres - 1/4 mile wide by 1 mile deep (N-S). I acquired it over a period of 20 years - 80 acres (the 2 middle 40's) 29 years ago....another 40 (to the South) 10 years later and the last 40 (to the North) 10 years after that. Every acre of it was forested when I purchased it so in order to create food plots and clear cuts I had to have timber sales. The timber harvests more or less dictated how my plots, and clear cuts came about, although some of those were harvested by specific design either for food plots or to create hardwood regeneration. The property has a lot of elevation changes with hills and valleys as well and some of the design was done in order to put food plots where they could best be built.

The 2 larger plots are 3.5 acres each and the smaller plots range from 1/4 acre to 3/4 acre in size. They have fruit trees in them as well as the majority of all the other food plots. I've never planted a pear tree so these are all apple and crabapple varieties. Many of them are not producing well yet but I keep plugging away at it. I can honestly say that none of them were planted with the goal of hunting over them. I mostly planted them where they could get fairly good sunlight and I could get to them for maintenance fairly easily, and they could provide some soft mast for the wildlife. I've planted probably a couple hundred oak trees for the same reason. We call the property "Lone Oak" for a reason - there was only 1 naturally occurring oak tree on the entire 160 acres when we purchased it.

These flags identify permanent box blinds (11 altogether now) but many of them are rarely hunted. Tree stands and ladder stands are mostly on the outside edges and we leave the center of the property pretty much undisturbed during hunting season.

Here is a look at some of the fruit trees:

The "Big Field" to the north by Dad's Blind once had 20 apple trees in it. These are all that remain after bears have trashed them many times over....in fact, the small one on the far left is now gone as well after a bear broke it down a few years ago. I have lost at least 20 trees here to bears since 1995. This is a destination food plot which is rarely hunted.

An older pic but this is in the SW corner of the other destination food plot to the South - the Camp 94 "boomerang". I have added several crabapples to this section since this pic was taken and I planted a couple more here a couple days ago. These apple trees are 5 years old and producing fairly well now and I will likely be removing the cages this year. Hoping the bears stay away from them.

3 apple trees and 4 crabapples to the right and a few more to the left in this photo - This is "Art's Corner"

These are above our pond and up a steep ridge but they get good southern exposure here. These crabapples are getting bigger now and should start producing soon.

"Pepper's Post" - apple trees on the right. Crabapples and oaks on the left. Oaks down the center with Norway Spruce to the left and Switchgrass to the right.

This crabapple produces small fruit. I will be grafting onto this tree soon - maybe this year yet to get new scaffolds that produce larger fruit.

I've got about a dozen crabapples planted around this opening which will also get grafts from trees that produce larger fruit. This is up north near "Wide 8".

Here are a few of those. Believe it or not - these 4 foot tall cages protected these trees just fine. I used some 3 foot tall cages the same year and not one of those trees ever made it above the cage. My preference for cages is 5 feet, but at one time or another over the years I also purchased 4 footers and 6 footers so I continue to use them.

This is an older food plot (SE of the Burnt Hilll stand) which I am converting into a tree plot. I've got 2 apple trees left that the bears didn't get on the far left side with probably a dozen newer crabapples on the edge as well. I planted 2 more crabapples here on Friday and I will be pretty much planting this entire open section to crabapples in the future. I've got a few dozen healed in now that I hope to transplant soon. To the right of this 3/4 plot is switchgrass, oaks and Norway Spruce.

So....to answer your question on where do I plant fruit trees? In a big woods setting like you and I have we are pretty much relegated to planting where we have openings. In my case that has been primarily by food plots but I do have some planted in smaller woods openings as well.

Best of luck with your soft mass plantings. Hopefully you won't have bear issues. If you do, you may want to lean more towards crabapples than regular apples. I wish I had concentrated more on crabapples years ago.

 

Wow good post Wildthing! Have heard plenty about your property but it is nice to see an overhead view of it. There is a lot that can be done on 160 acres and it looks like you did a lot! Would love to expand my 40 acres but im thinking more along the line of buying more acreage elsewhere. That way I can hunt two seperate deer herds and areas.

We have owned our property since the 1960s I believe. No one has ever seen a bear out there until this year. I got one on camera twice. Once in September and October. All in the NW corner of my property away from my newly planted fruit trees and food plot. Hoping that bears wont be an issue once the trees get established.

I plan on planting mostly crabapples. Are bears not as attracted to them?

 

Wow good post Wildthing! Have heard plenty about your property but it is nice to see an overhead view of it. There is a lot that can be done on 160 acres and it looks like you did a lot! Would love to expand my 40 acres but im thinking more along the line of buying more acreage elsewhere. That way I can hunt two seperate deer herds and areas.

We have owned our property since the 1960s I believe. No one has ever seen a bear out there until this year. I got one on camera twice. Once in September and October. All in the NW corner of my property away from my newly planted fruit trees and food plot. Hoping that bears wont be an issue once the trees get established.

I plan on planting mostly crabapples. Are bears not as attracted to them?

Thanks Twalter. It is still a "work in progress" as they say but I just keep pecking away at things and ideas that come up....keeps me out of trouble.

I planted regular apple trees long before I planted many crabapples. IDK - maybe I have been lucky but I have never had bears take any interest in the crabapples. Time will tell. I just know that it seems like regular apple trees require much more maintenance than crabapples and I wish I had planted more of them years ago.

BTW - I like your idea of buying more property away from your current place. More places to hunt isn't all bad...even if it does require more work for you

 

Forgot to mention the "People Orchard" to the SE of the barn. We clearcut about 5 acres in this area and I decided to convert some of it to orchard back in 2007. I have 25 apple trees inside the fence here now and 3 cherry trees just outside the fence. This is waaaaayyyyy more apples than I can ever utilize and I wish I had limited it to maybe 10 trees total. The original plan was to remove the fence once the trees got beyond deer damage size but due to the bear issues, and to losing some 7-8 year old trees to vole damage one year (necessitating planting new trees again), we are reluctant to take the fence down right now.

This is an older photo and the trees have grown much bigger now. It is nice to have some apple trees right near the cabin and barn as we seem to take better care of them when they are close by....plus, we have never experienced any deer or bear damage here. This orchard is also an excellent source for collecting scion wood for grafting. You might consider planting and fencing in a few nicer varieties for human consumption right near your camp. We have Honey Crisp, Honey Gold, Red Wealthy and Cortlands in this orchard - some of my favorites.

 

Here is a thread from the Habitat-Talk forum which has lots of info and photos of many different crabapple varieties:

Sandbur (Poster) is from Central MN so likely the same hardiness zone as much of Michigan.

Crabapple timeline

 

Here is a thread from the Habitat-Talk forum which has lots of info and photos of many different crabapple varieties:

Crabapple timeline

I need to start using habitat talk more. Tons of good info over there. I dont think I have ever posted in any other forum here besides the whitetail deer habitat section. As you can tell I am a little hooked on this stuff! Lol Im the only person doing this stuff in my family so im constantly trying to learn new things.

 

Im hoping that these whitetail crabs do good on my property. I know this is a whole nother subject but can I take scions from these whitetail crab trees and graft to another root stock? Trees probably need to grow for a few years right?

 

Absolutely you can graft from your Whitetail Crabs onto other varieties. I plan to do exactly that...in fact, I saved the cuttings from what I trimmed off of my Whitetail Crabs the other day and plan to graft them onto some of my Siberians. I haven't done that before but I think it is worth a try. In the coming years as they grow larger there will be plenty of scion wood to collect from them. I also plan to graft from my recently found "Wild" crabapple...and maybe the Chestnut...and the Whitney....

There is a lot you can do by grafting. You saw the crab whips I grew from seed I am sure. I have no idea if they will clone the Mother tree or not but if they don't I am confident I can still get great fruit from them by grafting from either the mother tree or from one of the other varieties I have that will give me desirable traits. Only time will tell.

This is one of the wild crabs that I started from seed. They have grown to this size in a little over 2 years. By next year for sure I will be able to graft onto them and I will still have zero dollars invested in them other than the tube and the cage, which I will use again many times over on other seedlings. Fun stuff!

 

Hopefully in the next year or two I can get into grafting some trees. I have a couple crabs at my house that I want to try and take some scion from. Both trees have been producing annually since I moved here 4 years ago. One drops between mid sep-mid october and the other from Nov-late winter/early spring. May have to see if its worth it to buy some rootstock and try to graft them next year.

 

Every one of my food plots is lined with fruit trees along the boarder. That's 85% of my 200ish trees. Then I have an orchard for the family that's right off my main access trail that I can go harvest fruit without really intruding onto the property and they're all varieties that ripen in July-September. That's 10% of my trees. The last 5% are just in spots where there was a small opening I could utilize and thought a small cluster of trees could provide a good stand site.

I'm pretty much tapped out of room for fruit trees now unless I start planting into my switchgrass fields or cutting down forest, of which I have no intention of doing.

 

How you have yours planted sounds exactly like what I plan on doing. Do you feel like the fruit trees help attract and hold deer on your property? How old are most of your trees? If I recall correctly from reading prior posts that most of your trees were plant in the past 5 years or so.

 

What are the advantages/disadvantage to planting a tree from seed versus a graft? What is the process from apple to seedling?

 

A grafted tree you know what you are getting. Variety of apple and tree size, dwarf to standard determined from the root stock. A tree from seed is a cross with what it is pollunated with.