brush management | Buck Manager

Habitat Management Can Be About Timing

Good habitat management is the cornerstone of a successful deer management program. But providing good habitat is more than just planting a couple food plots, setting up some protein feeders, and hoping it rains. In fact, none of that stuff is habitat management. Those things can help with available food resources, but they do little to address big issues for the plant communities found on your property.

Sure, food plots and free-choice feeders do provide supplemental food, but habitat management is a whole other issue. Habitat management is not as straight-forward as placing out food for deer to eat, so many people shy away from it. Habitat management is actively creating or restoring processes that impact habitat and food production at several levels – and they can have long-term benefits for deer rather than just over a single season or year.

As time consuming as habitat management can be, not all techniques are difficult to implement. Although I touch on different techniques from time to time, today I just want to talk about timing. Timing, as in life, really is everything! Continue reading “Habitat Management Can Be About Timing”

Habitat Management and Mechanical Brush Control

Although browse plants are the staple of the white-tailed deer, too much brush can hamper your overall deer management program, particularly when it’s invasive cedar (ashe juniper) or nuisance regrowth such as mesquite. These woody plants are not targeted by deer and often times create problems with overly-dense canopy cover, preventing more beneficial forbs and browse from establishing. And too much brush decreases water infiltration.

However, with brush control comes brush control options: biological, chemical, and mechanical. The use of mechanical equipment to control woody plants will typically result in the initial growth of forbs and annual grasses and the resprouting of many woody species. As a result, woody species targeted for control may have to be stump-sprayed to prevent regrowth. Find out more about the life history of the plant you intend to control prior to investing valuable time and money.

The abundance and diversity of forbs and annuals found post-control results from soil disturbance. Soil disturbance exposes the natural seed bank found in the soil, increasing the quantity, quality, and distribution of plants beneficial to wildlife. For white-tailed deer and most game birds this is a very good thing! However, if hydraulic shears are used for brush removal the amount of ground disurbance will be minimized, but so will erosion issues. This is a good idea on sloped areas with erodible soils.

However, without periodic follow-up treatments of prescribed fire, additional mechanical manipulations, costly herbicides, and/or without proper livestock grazing management, these “cleared” sites will eventually become dense stands of regrowth brush and trees on again, especially if the plant you are trying to control is a root sprouter/resprouter.

Resprouting is good for when we are talking about high-quality deer browse foods, but for plants such as noxious mesquite or redberry cedar, it is not. In these situations, resprouting plants need to be revisited with a proper herbicide application.

Lastly, mowing areas of herbaceous plants with low-density woody plants is another form of mechanical treatment that could have merit depending upon the objectives. However, mowing should be postponed until after the peak of the nesting and fawning period (end of July) of ground-nesting birds and deer.

Chaining for Brush and Deer Management

There are many effective ways to control or maintain brush. Where woody plant growth is short and overly abundant, such as arid areas like south Texas, chaining is an feasible and cost-effective way to get the job done. White-tailed deer need brush, but where too much cover exists, the removal of some brush can be a great deer management strategy.

The concept behind chaining is simple. Pull a big chain, knock down woody plants, and create more edge and places for forbs to grow. Chaining is typically done with two dozers that pull a ship anchor chain. It’s recommended that the chain be pulled in a half-circle or “J” pattern between them (from an aerial view). The chain should not be stretched tight between the dozers!

In order to pull out the target species of brush, each link should weigh more than 50-pounds. And since you will likely have to hire someone to pull this management activity off — unless you have two bulldozers and some 50-pound per link chain lying around — they will know exactly what to do if you tell them what you want to accomplish. Continue reading “Chaining for Brush and Deer Management”

Brush Management Recommendations for White-tailed Deer

White-tailed deer the need cover and big, mature bucks relish it, but having too much cover is not necessarily a good thing. Open areas are needed to grow beneficial forbs for deer — and deer prefer habitat with a lot of edge — so providing a variety open areas within wooded habitats are deer magnets. This article gives a few tips on things to keep in mind for your brush and deer management program.

In general, brush cleared from better soil types results in higher forage production and typically cost less. As such, before you go to clearing excess brush off or opening up forested lands on your property, do a little preliminary investigating to determine the soil types found on your property. Soil reports are published by the USDA for most counties in the United States and will save you both time and money.

The next step in your brush management plan should be to avoid steep slopes. Steep slopes are not only prone to erosion, but steeper slopes usually have thinner soils and do not respond readily to brush control practices. Use your resources for brush management on level, deeper soils that are more easily cleared, managed, and provide consistent deer forage. Continue reading “Brush Management Recommendations for White-tailed Deer”