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Cool video - thanks for posting!

Many hunters overlook the importance of woody browse especially once snow is on the ground, not realizing that deer require and consume several pounds of it per day

It's real critical up here with limited agriculture and big woods for miles



Maybe down below, but not in areas where thermal cover is important - especially white cedar.

This is a very important point yooper.

How much cutting you should do is very situational. So I hope guys do not just go into their white cedar swamps and cut them all down. It could result in disaster.

I would say without question though, that unless a maple is a stand tree, that the only good ones are lying on their sides. They take over in hardwood woodlots because they are shade resistant. Taking them out allows other less shade resistant trees to take off like oaks and basswoods.

Thickening up the understory by removing canopy allows the less shade resistant species to get a new start by allowing enough to shoot up to win the race against over-browsing.

I have woodlots with lots of basswoods in them, and there is hardly a basswood tree to be found that did not sprout sometime in the 1960s or before. Ever since then the deer population has been too high for basswoods to regenerate except along roads or in areas deer cannot reach.

That is one reason for dropping trees and leaving the tops. Oaks and basswoods, two of the most preferred browse species in southern Michigan (IMO) can regenerate in the tangle of tops.

The goal of this demonstration in the video was to show a felled tree as a pure food situation. The deer are not there because of the cover, it is in a wide open area. They are not there because it is a travel corridor, there was virtually no usage of that area written in the ground and snow.

They are probably there initially because they heard the chainsaws and came over to investigate. After that the activity of the deer, the odors of the browsed stems, and the knowledge that it is there will keep them coming back until the tree is stripped.

I still have the camera up and expect to see usage of the frame of view of the camera to drop to near zero.

 

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So instead spending hours/days making food plots all you need to do is drop a tree, set up a tree stand and wait an hour or two.

If you can't do anything else, you could do very well with just a chainsaw alone. However, cover and variety are the two things deer crave most, so food plots, even though they are a lot of work, are a tremendous value.

Last December 29th, I counted 27 antlerless deer and 8 bucks in or around an Austrian winter pea plot during a 3 hour sit. The farm was short one very big fat doe by the end of that evening, and another shot by casscityalum the next night.

 

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I've always wanted to see someone take a 40 or 80 acre "up north" parcel and improve it for deer using nothing more than a chainsaw, backpack sprayer and handheld seed spreader. It might open a lot of habitat manager's eyes to see just how much you can accomplish with just those three basic tools.

Great video. If that many deer were nibbling at just one tree top, imagine how much they would use a dozen or more, in a more secure area?

Many of the northwoods canopied properties could be turned into a deer wonderland in one season with a chainsaw.

Jake has been helping folks in some of the north woods properties do exactly that.

When I drive around up there I fantasize about what I could do with all those woodlots that are filled with food but it is all up above the deer's heads.

 

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A couple weeks ago at the TLC winter health check, Dr. Kroll collected a fecal sample from one of the first doe that came in. As he suspected she had been feeding on woody browse, specifically, aspen buds created by TLC's TSI program on their property. The man knows his $h*t.
Even with a bumper crop of acorns and fairly light snow covered foodplots, the deer preferred the woody browse.
Cool video Jim, thanks for the effort!

One of the other key points about the TLC program is they do cuttings every year, but they do several of them spread around geographically. This distributes the food, so that deer do not gather together in large groups in yarding areas. The goal is TB control.

It is heartbreaking to drive through the club country on the way TLC and see all the clubs where you can see 200 yards back in a canopied woods. I can imagine all those frustrated hunters there not seeing deer and remembering the good old days of feeding. Little do they realize they have huge amounts of food on their properties suspended above the heads of the deer, preventing the growth of anything nutritious on the ground.

The other problem I often see up there is where they do clearcuts, they remove the tops. Those tops will protect new growth from being overbrowsed in winters. When you remove them, the deer can limit or prevent regeneration.

 

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Jim did that big maple in the video end up staying attached or did it end up breaking off when it hit the ground? If so, do you expect it to keep on growing. I'm amazed that big of a tree can be hinged. I guess you just hinge it in the direction it wants to go and hope for the best on those larger trees?

Well, if you mean hope that the hinge will hold, yes.

But if you mean hope that the tree will react like we want it to, we don't do hope.

It might be worthwhile to talk about safety at this point. I don't want to encourage anybody to cut a tree like this unless you have, well, thousands of smaller trees behind you and know exactly what to expect.

I have viewed hundreds of videos of tree-mistakes. I remember one where the guy does the sign of the cross just before he breaks both bones in his lower leg. If there is hope or prayer involved I would not even start a chain saw. In every case in these videos where you can clearly see what is going on the mistake just screams out at you. Usually it involves an angle cut to the stump, cutting a free-standing branch without an undercut, not reading the lean, not using wedges, and not leaving enough hinge wood whether you are doing a hinge cut or conventional cut, with the last one being the most critical.

In this case we could predict with high certainty what the tree was going to do. We purposely cut quickly through it with a very sharp chain and a powerful saw so that we cut past the barber chair point. A small or dull saw will create a high risk of a barber chair with a leaner like that. We take very little risk and will not touch a tree that size that gives us any clues of unpredictability. In the case of a maple like that, it is wise to cut below a knot or limb as that prevents barber chairs, and to not cut near a crotch because maples will split unpredictably near a crotch. Moreover, this tree had no sign of rot. The biggest risk on a tree this size is up above. There can be loose branches, vines extending into other trees, or trees downstream that are going to get bent over, and turned into catapults to throw stuff back at you.

We get many trees this size to survive. The key is to cut far enough and fast enough so the tree does not split up too high. This one had a nice hinge and Jake and I both think it will survive at least a year or two.

Maples are one of the easiest to get to survive as small trees and one of the hardest as larger trees. Again, the key is to cut fast enough if there is any lean.

For more info on safely hinge cutting go here: [URL="http://www.michigan-sportsman.com/forum/showthread.php?t=364252"]LINK[/URL]

 

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Thanks for the reply Jim, I very much appreciate the information. Building on this discussion, if you know a tree cannot be safely hinged but brought to the ground by creating a notch and then safely felling it will you go that route? I guess another way of asking this question is, is a tree brought to the ground for the purpose of browse and opening up the canopy just as valuable if it does not stay attached and you have no choice but the fell it?

Great point BOC.

I like to keep trees alive but will not risk life and limb to do so.

For me, the main goal is to shed light on the forest floor.

I cut many trees conventionally. Very large trees are cut conventionally.

Here is an example of a Maple tree. One tree creates about a 75 foot long barrier that will las for years, protect new shoots coming up from the ground among its branches, and open a giant hole in the sky.

Before:

Butt after:

Top after:

There are certain large species I will never hinge cut. Last summer Dan Timmons came out and we hinge cut a bunch of trees at my place. But we ran into a bunch of tulip trees that had about 50 feet of straight grain. I conventionally cut a number of them. They could split up and land 50 feet from the stump if you tried to hinge them.

Here I am cutting a big one with a smaller one in the background. We let massive amounts of light in doing this and relieved a massive root system from having to feed these trees. I expect it to be too thick to walk through this area by the end of next summer.

Removing a tulip tree creates quite a hole in the sky.

I conventionally cut very large poplars, as well as willows and especially dangerous are large locust. They will just fly apart on you. Dead tree I usually leave standing. rotton trees I will usually girdle if I do not feel safe felling them.

One big tree I will hinge is beach. They hold together very well and seldom try to split very far. If I can hang up a beech like this I am very happy. It creates a great visual barrier and yet deer can walk under it in areas where you are not trying to block them. Beech trees are real canopy hogs.

Here's Larry Dasch, the best chainsaw man I have ever doen habitat work with, tackling a big beech on my property. I had a picture of him with his daughter Larkyn sitting on the stump but seem to have lost it.

 

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You are weird!:evil::lol::lol:

This is something you did not already know?:evil:

 

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No, I knew it. I also suffer from the affliction.

You aren't mad because I stole your crybaby idea are you?

I see yours has disappeared:lol:.

 

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That is a cool video Jim. I can't wait to see you and Jake in action.
My question is, If the tree does remain alive horizontally will its grow continue at the same rate as if it were vertical? May be a dumb question but I'm just curious.

I also drive down the road and look at all the habitat work that can be done. I look over the fence in the neighbors woods and think the same thing. The great thing about him is he is on board with it. I lined up the logger to have his woods thinned and it is in his woods that I spend most of my time hinge cutting. It a beautiful thing when the woods is not yours and you can do what needs to be done. It helps him and us.

Good question Jim. The horizontal part of the tree will not continue to grow. What will happen is that if there is a good connection with the root system, it will send up shoots that are vertical. Depending on the species, you can get tremendous amounts of growth in a very short time. Here is an example of a black. Within one year they put up 10-15 foot tall shoots, which can then be re-hinged. This is one of the most effective plants for screening that I know of. This is one after just two seasons of growth.

 

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Great posts guys. I guess one thing I have kind of thought about and haven't seen discussed much is the plan when hinge cutting (for bedding areas in particular).

Say you have a half acre area where there is a stand of hingeable trees. What is your plan or thought process when you begin?

Obviously some areas are going to be blocked off, others you can create trails through, when creating a hinged bedding area do you have a main trail through it with locations to bed adjacent to the trail? A multitude of trails? Do you hinge in a manner where you decide exactly where a deer is going to bed or do you make some trails, make it thick and let them decide.

Not sure my thoughts are coming across clearly but maybe this will start some discussion, thanks.

(Sorry, realize this is off topic.)

Cut first ask question later:lol:.

The hinge cutting we were doing when we made this video were in a transition zone between bedding and food. The exception is the one tree in the video that we put down into some reed canary grass about 100 yards away from the action. We wanted a single, isolated food source for the camera.

It is a 100 yard wide strip of woods bounded on the south by several acres of reed canary grass and on the north by open, park effect woods, which forces deer to travel in the cover between those two open areas. It is used as a travel corridor between bedding to the east and food to the west. We created a tornado zone about 100 yards down the middle of it that will cause deer to skirt both sides in season, at which time this is purely a transitional area between bedding and food.

We just randomly cut down the tornado area and let trees fall and crisscross in such a way it will prevent deer from passing through. Instead they skirt the edges. On the edges we cut higher so that if we can keep the trees intact the deer can easily travel under them. We do not worry about where existing trails are because we have a chainsaw in our hand. If we need to drop a tree we do it, and then if it is in the way we cut through it. It will take 10 times as long to fuss around and try to engineer tree falling to keep an existing trail open.

Our goal with this work was to set a stand to be used only in the evening and only with a west wind. The pic shows the set-up. The idea is for the wind to blow into the tornado zone, which the deer will be skirting because it is an obstruction to travel. They will crawl in there to feed in winter but do not need to do that in hunting season when they have lots of other food sources.

When it comes to bedding areas we do not worry about making individual beds. We designate an area, let's say it is a 3-5 acre area, we simply cut most of the trees in the area but try to keep them up off the ground to preserve as much real estate as possible. After getting everything down, we then worry about designating particular areas for family groups or individuals, and cut paths that intersect everything. Again, worrying about "preserving" existing trails will slow things down to a crawl. We will tell them exactly where we want them to move with the chainsaw and preserve those paths with the DR mower.

Entry and exit to bedding areas is allowed only past our stand sites.

 

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Do you guys find that you may occasionally bump deer that decided to bed up against this tornado zone when they are traveling back and forth. I understand the middle of it might be too thick, but how do you keep them from bedding on the outside of it? By creating a no-go zone within the tornado zone it just seems like you might be adding some additional bedding cover?

Great picture...really drives home the point! Thanks.

If a deer chooses to lay down along the edge of that transition zone during hunting season, he is either very sick or had a tree limb drop on his head when he was young:lol:.

This is a travel corridor only, because it has open woods or open fields to each side.

Within 150 yards there ARE perfect 5-star hotel locations for them to bed. Why lay down in a Motel Six when there is a Four Seasons just down the way for the same price?

I won't say it can't happen, but if it does, we will adjust things.

 

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Do oak trees have any significant browse up top this time of year? If so thinking I should cut the oaks I want for firewood now and let them lay till spring.

Yeah Steve oaks offer up great browse.

I tend to try to keep really good acorn producers upright. But oaks for acorns are overrated in many situations. I believe I can feed more deer year around with a living oak at ground level than it would provide with acorns.

I have not done an actual assessment of calories/protein/carbs but having those oak twigs/buds near the ground has tremendous value, even if it just offers variety.