Do Stump Spouts Make Good Deer Browse?
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- čas přidán 8. 09. 2024
- Dr. Grant Woods is working with a hunter to make better habiat for the whitetailed deer on his property. There were stump sprouts purposely left for deer browse. Grant shows why this was not a good idea.
At GrowingDeer.tv we're all about showing hunters what we are doing each week in the field as we work on our Proving Grounds and others to have better deer hunting! If The hunting strategies and techniques we show can be used if you are hunting public or private land. Our farm has wild, free-ranging deer. If we can grow big antlers on these tough Ozark Mountain bucks, you can too! Good wildlife management tactics, deer management, and food plots with regenerative ag techniques that build better soils! Watch our weekly episodes to see what we're doing, the advice that Dr. Grant Woods (Ph.D Wildlife Biologist) has to share along the way.
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It takes a few years at least for the sprouts to reach above browse height. And obviously some species will be more selected for than others but i completely disagree that stump sprouts don't make good deer food. They are usually some of the best deer food in the woods especially if they are highly selected for species. All you have to do is cut them back every so often if they reach above browse height and it can be a very nutritious and long lasting food source.
Some landowners, including me, don't have time to "cut back" stump sprouts. If you do and that's a type of habitat management you enjoy then I understand! The more mature the stump sprout, the less desirable and nutritious it is for deer.
I think the only place where stump sprouts really shine is in areas with too high of deer densities, and areas with rough enough winters to elicit dormant season browse. It still can’t come close to providing the same tonnage of food as hack and squirt and fire... especially when you look at the long term man hours required for the different methods.
@@GrowingDeerTVBoy you were wrong on this one. Lot of information about stump sprouts are out there showing positive correlation between DBH and nutritional density. A fire will keep those sprouts setback. Its also not a catch all. You wouldn't flush cut 100% of a stand just like you shouldn't hack n squirt 100% of a stand. Balance is important.
Great advice Dr. Woods!
Thanks!
Those stump sprounts are some of the most nutrient dense forage in the woods. Of course they eventually lose their benefit if they mature just like anything else. In our woods the deer hammer them and eventually kill the stump so they never reach that mature stage. I loved MSU deer labs research on this. It wasn't just some random schmuck on youtube talking about this. It was actual research
Stump sprouts can provide fairly high quality forage (for a while). I know the boys at MSU well and enjoy their work. I'm sure you've driving by a hardwood timber harvest and seen millions of stump sprouts head high. It's very difficult to return this to quality habitat. This is much different that cutting a few trees. In addition, I've never known an areas that produces bucks with as large of antlers or as many fawns per doe based on a timber harvest as areas with herbaceous forage - that stump sprouts shade out. I suspect you'll agree. Cutting trees to encourage stump sprouts can be a good tool for a landowner's mission based on their objectives.
@@GrowingDeerTV I'm sure forbs have a long lasting benefit where you are but herbaceous growth has a very limited benefit where I'm from. They lose their palatability late September and don't come back around until late May. They also break down quickly providing zero cover over half the year. On the other hand woody browse is crucial for our deer in the winter when they dont have much else and it provides year round food and cover. I don't mind doing the work to reset it with a chainsaw because I know just how crucial it is for our deer, especially in those critical, nutrient deficient months.
Yes, I'm first. The moose love stump sprouts where I'm from after logging
Yes - Moose are much different that deer.
I recently cut and stump sprayed, girdled and sprayed, or hack and squirt a small area on my farm. I specifically cut and let sprout species like winged elm that are highly selected by deer. I've been blown alway at how much browse I've seen on those sprouts just a few months later. My plan is to manage this area with fire to hopefully "reset" these sprouts every few years. Will that work?
Brian - Fire rarely kills stump sprouts. They have too many carbs stored in the root system.
What do you recommend for the percentage of young succession vs mature forest in an area when trying to manage for all the native wildlife.
Gavin - that varies with the surrounding habitat types, and the landowner's objectives.
Enjoy and appreciate the vast majority of shares from Growingdeer.tv... but this brief one came across as just a bit too simplistic in fully discounting stump growth versus instead identifying it as a limited tool. I will say this -- I've found species selection to be a bit more critical than MSU / Marcus Lashley originally indicated, but have found I get heavy browse on most preferred species. I haven't gone crazy cutting stumps, but instead cut a quite moderate amount of trees along existing trails and heavily visited field edges, giving deer easy, nutrient rich preferred browse during movement. Don't want the feedback to come across as too negative, as again I much appreciate your work and so generously shared content!
Sounds like you have a good plan!
@@GrowingDeerTV, soil-wise not in the best part of the country (Florida) but thanks to good neighbors letting bucks reach maturity combined with moderate amount of improvement work we see some nice bucks each year. My acreage is not high fenced (fence around house is to keep deer OUT), nor are deer given any supplemental feed (at least not by me) outside food plots and a few mineral blocks used primarily for camera captures. Footage shared is of two bachelor groups meeting up / feeling each other out thanks to a wild cherry tree dropping fruit in my back yard.
czcams.com/video/Lrv_kynwOxE/video.html
Deer eat them on our land , we don’t go out of our way to create them
Andy - Thanks for sharing!