Log ‘Em Or Lose ‘Em

Why You Should Harvest Your Timber

By Brad Herndon

Fred Davidson watched the woods, hoping a great buck might show up. It was not to be that day. In fact, he was seeing fewer and fewer deer on his property each year, a perplexing situation he couldn’t figure out. Then as he was sitting on stand one fall day scanning the timber, the realization as to what had happened was revealed to him. Sure the swamp white oak trees were still there, and many other types of trees deer loved to browse on. The problem was, they were all at or near maturity, and the forest now had an open under story. 

This was a direct contrast to the way his woods were only 10 years previously, just three years after he had several of his mature trees harvested. The openings this created let in quantities of light to the forest floor, which resulted in the quick growth of new saplings and other nutritious deer browse. In addition, the treetops had provided clumps of brush that served as excellent bedding areas in his woods. Food plots, bedding cover, nutritious native browse; the deer had it all back then.

But no more. Sure the deer still came to his food plots, although much of the time they spent there was during the darkness of night. Many of their daylight hours, unfortunately, were spent on an adjoining neighbor’s brushy property, where nutritious natural browse was readily available near their bedding area. Davidson knew action had to be taken, so he formulated a better deer management plan for his property.

Logging Your Woods

Perhaps some of you who manage for whitetails have seen the same thing happen on your property, or on the property of friends who manage for deer. It’s actually fairly common, happening most often to those hunters who are new to quality deer management. Following is a plan that will keep deer on your property, keep them healthy, and will also let those antlers grow to their maximum potential.

First of all, I should mention Davidson is a friend of mine and a sharp guy. Despite this, the slowness of the change in the woods fooled him and he didn’t recognize what was going on until it was too late. He lost about two or three years of good hunting because of this. Don’t let it happen to you.

First of all, you should recheck your entire deer management plan every year. Let’s assume you are up on food plot management and properly plant nutritious products such as Imperial Whitetail Clover and Alfa-Rack. You’re on the right track, but what is the condition of your timber? Do you have plenty of brush on your land to provide bedding cover for your whitetails? Is the timber on your land the type of browse deer favor? Do you know your trees and can you identify the ones that should be taken out to leave growing space for trees and bushes deer favor more? What trees should you plant that will provide needed browse for your whitetails?

Some of you will be up on your trees and be able to answer some of these questions. Others don’t know tree species as well. Therefore, these questions are puzzling. I’ll answer the questions later, but first I want to cover another important question: What is the timber on your property worth? Few people, if any, will be up to date on what their timber is really worth if they sell it. This is why I recommend hiring a forestry consultant to help you formulate a plan for your deer woods. In the long run, they will make the landowner money.

For instance, I’ve seen loggers come by and look a woods over and offer the landowner $80,000 for the timber. The owner often jumps at this opportunity, not realizing there is $120,000 worth of timber in his woods. By using a licensed consulting forester, this will not happen. They will walk through the woods with you, mark the trees that need to be sold, and also suggest which non-productive trees should be removed. Forestry consultants specializing in wildlife management will be sure you leave the trees whitetails favor for food. They will also recommend what trees should be planted in particular types of soil, trees that will be beneficial for deer. They can also help with controlled burns, if desired.

After the timber is marked, the consulting forester will have several reputable logging companies bid on the timber. He makes sure these loggers are licensed and insured and that you get paid for the timber in advance. This professional forester may charge by the hour, job, or take a percentage of the timber sold, depending on the size of the sale. Once the bid is awarded, the forester will oversee the harvest of the timber, making sure that cutting is carried out in the best time of year to reduce damage to the forest. In addition, many foresters will give valuable advice about tax advantages in selling your timber.

Harvest Timber With A Plan

When walking your woods with a forester, be sure to share ideas of deer management with him. For example, you may have an excellent stand of white oaks that you know will be a big buck magnet in early fall. You should cut this section lightly. If you have undesirable timber such as elm, sycamore, boxelder, cottonwood, sweetgum, and hophornbeam in another part of your woods, you might want to cut this section extensively, turning it into a jungle within three to five years.

When doing all this, consider the fact timber can be logged to control deer movements. For example, locate a heavy cutover, which serves as an excellent bedding area, adjacent to a stand of succulent white oak trees. Deer will pass from one position to another during daylight hours and stand sites can by located along those travel routes.

Another timber harvest strategy to employ involves small timbered tracts. For instance, extensively harvest the timber out of the center of a small woodlot. This creates a prime bedding location and encourages your deer to stay away from the outer boundary lines where they might be harvested by other hunters. All of this makes a difference in bucks making it to maturity, and many trophy whitetails are harvested each year from well-managed small tracts because of tactics such as this.

Some landowners even work with the logging company to include features such as logging roads placed in particular locations. For instance, in the Midwest a logging road running just inside of the east edge of a woods can be very productive hunting. This is true because the logging road provides a great place for bucks to place their scrapes and rubs, meaning they use it heavily during late October and early November. And since the wind in the Midwest most often comes out of a westerly direction, this layout provides a nice east entry for the hunter to get to his stand.

And don’t forget that a logging yard location can be used as another location for a food plot, as can the logging roads themselves. There are many types of improvements you can make to your property as a result of a timber harvest.

Trees To Leave, Trees To Cut

Nut trees that should be kept will vary some from region to region. Generally, leave your oaks. Deer love acorns. They are tasty and in a year when the oaks really produce, this food source can last for several months. White oak acorns are the sweetest and should be preserved since they are one of a whitetail’s favorite foods. This includes the classic eastern white oak and swamp white oak in particular. Other oaks to save, among many, are the chinkapin, black (they don’t rot as quickly on the ground as white oak acorns do), red, chestnut and pin oak. There are more than fifty varieties of oaks scattered throughout the United States.

Deer will eat other nuts such as pignuts, hazelnuts, pecans, chestnuts and beechnuts, but these play a small role in their overall diet. So save the productive oaks. Of course if there are any wild fruit trees in your area such as apple or pear, by all means leave them. Other trees you want to leave are persimmon, honeylocust (thorn), and blackhaw. The list of trees you want to leave will vary from region to region, and what I have listed here is only a partial list. But again, a forester who is experienced in wildlife management can help identify productive trees.

A partial list of large trees to remove from your woods are: sycamore, boxelder, sweet gum, hackberry, black gum, ash, shagbark hickory (unless you’re a squirrel hunter), beech (leave a few for den trees), red cedar, cottonwood, elm, hophornbeam, maple, osage-orange, poplar and sassafras. Some of these trees do produce mast deer will eat, but the amount they provide is insignificant. This is not to say some of these trees don’t provide excellent browse for deer; some do. But they are far more beneficial to deer if they are small, not mature.

Providing Browse For Your Deer

Although pristine forests are beautiful, the food they produce in their under story is dismal. An old-growth forest may grow no more than 20 to 40 pounds of deer food per acre. Meanwhile, that thicket you’re going to create by logging may, at its peak, grow an astonishing 500 to 2500 pounds of forage per acre! How much it grows depends on the amount of light reaching the forest floor and the moisture available to the plants. Regardless of the figure, this is a significant increase in nutrition available to your deer. This native browse, in effect, can be a real lifesaver to whitetails when a severe drought hits, such as the one much of the nation had last year that almost destroyed many deer food plots.

This new browse, incidentally, is available within easy reach of the deer, since deer-browsing height is approximately four feet. It takes seven or eight years for new browse to grow higher than the deer can reach, so an ongoing timber harvesting plan is crucial.

One friend of mine walks his timber each summer with saw in hand. With many of the trees that have grown above the deer’s browse height, he cuts through enough so they fall over, but don’t die. This creates a jungle of saplings, each of which leafs out near the ground. This is a good strategy since it provides nutritious food for whitetails near the forest floor where they can easily reach it. This manager, by the way, knows his trees and shrubs and makes sure he leaves the ones deer favor.

Species of trees, scrubs and vines deer prefer varies from region to region, so I can’t list all of the them. A forester or your state deer biologist can help you with this, and much information can also be found on various web sites on the Internet. Basswood, wild apple, ash, aspen, hard maple, staghorn sumac, serviceberry, viburnum, white cedar, hemlock and dogwood are just a few of the woody species they prefer to browse on.

Trees You Can Plant

By providing your deer with lush food plot products, and by conducting an ongoing, well-planned timber harvest program, you will keep everything whitetails need right on your property. Even with these near-ideal conditions, you can make your quality deer management even better by planting trees.

If the property will be passed on to a family member, consider planting trees like oaks. For quick results, though, fast growing trees are a better choice. In this respect, there are several options.

The sawtooth oak is an example. Imported from Asia in the early 1900s as an ornamental tree, deer managers recently took note of the fact they produced acorns in an amazingly short time. In fact, prolific acorn crops are produced by the sawtooth oak by the seventh to tenth year of life, and a mature tree will yield several hundred pounds of acorns per year!

As these results reveal, planting sawtooth oak on your property will be a real bonanza for the deer, providing high-energy food during the fall and winter months when whitetails need it most. The range of the sawtooth oak has not yet been completely determined. We do know that it does extremely well from northern Florida west to Texas and Oklahoma, north through Missouri to New York and into southern New England. It is somewhat winter hardy, although on exposed sites in the northern Finger Lakes Region of New York winter kill may occur. All in all, it appears it will produce quick, astonishing results for an acorn tree in much of the range where hunters manage for whitetails.

Although they will grow in moist soils, the sawtooth oak does best in well-drained and moderately well-drained soils. In areas where flood waters cover the small seedlings for long periods of time during the summer, say one to four days, they most likely will die. Usually sawtooth oaks are planted as 1 or 2-year-old transplants. They are sold by nurseries either bare-rooted or as seedlings in containers. 

Persimmon is another fast growing tree, one that produces a sweet tasting fruit deer simply love. Common persimmon trees do well in well-drained or moderately-drained soils, but will tolerate some moisture. They need adequate sunlight and weed control to grow quickly. Only the female tree produces fruit, so when planting a number of persimmon trees be sure to plant groupings of six or eight trees – half male, half female is the way nurseries supply them – to assure pollination of the species.

Here in southern Indiana many QDM managers also plant quick producing apple and pear trees. They are a true deer magnet in early fall and give the whitetail even more variety in his diet.

Timber harvest, selectivity of the trees you leave in your woods and the planting of more trees is a perfect deer management plan when coupled with quality food plots. Don’t forget, though, that all of your hard work will be for naught if you let your deer numbers get out of control. Log your deer woods, keep whitetail numbers within the carrying capacity of the land, and your deer will never leave you.

Sidebar

Logging is a dangerous business and there are many precautions you should follow when using a chain saw. First of all, both eye and ear protection should be used when operating a chain saw. Your ears can be damaged more easily than you can ever believe. Take it from me, an older deer hunter who doesn’t hear very well.

Secondly, always wear a hard hat. This will help prevent head injuries, although it won’t eliminate all of them. Many head injuries occur after a tree is cut and falls. Typically, an inexperienced person is proud of himself because he did a good job of felling the tree. What he doesn’t realize is that a limb has broken off the falling tree and is caught in another tree above him. Oftentimes, the limb swings awhile, then falls to the ground, possibly on the logger. This happened to a dear friend of mine who was an experienced logger. He is a bull of a man, and was wearing a hard hat, yet still sustained extensive paralysis below the waist from bruising of the spinal cord.

If you are cutting up a large tree on the ground, always start from the top of the tree where limbs are small and work your way in. Keep your body as far away from the top of the tree as you can when you are sawing. Trees on the ground contain a bag of tricks. If careless, you may cut off a limb that is supporting the weight of the tree, causing it to flip over when this limb is cut. If you’re near the trunk or other big limbs of the tree, they can crush you when the tree flips over.  Please, be extra careful.

A Whitfield tree planter will allow you to plant twice the number of trees in half the time. Although they cost several thousand dollars, in many regions of the country they have been purchased with grants received by Quail Unlimited chapters and other conservation organizations. Most of these groups make these tree planters available free of charge to any landowner for  planting trees and shrubs for wildlife enhancement purposes.