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From Cornfield to Big Buck Habitat In 3 Years With Little Expense
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- čas přidán 6. 09. 2023
- StrategicHabitat.com - Habitat Plans and Hunting Setups
Randy VanderVeen - 616-560-7488 - randy@StrategicHabitat.com
How to convert a cornfield into big buck habitat.
Back in March of 2021 I visited a landowner in WI who wanted some ideas on laying out a habitat plan to promote more natural food and cover.
He was in a heavy ag area with lots of corn and soybeans, and wanted to turn part of his farm into great cover and diverse habitat that would hold mature bucks during daylight hours to give them a safe place to grow to maturity since he had a few brown and down hunters nearby.
When I made a return visit just last month, he showed me several of the improvements he made according to the habitat plan he received from me, plus several other features he added beyond that.
The amount of natural deer food and cover that grew on its own in a former corn field in just 3 growing seasons was incredible, even though,… this growing season of 2023 got off to a slow start due to no rain in May and June.
There were dozens of varieties of volunteer weeds and forbs that you normally see in an overgrown CRP field with dozens of plant varieties that are great deer food.
A lot of the cover was chest to shoulder high, and we walked up on a couple fawns that were feeding in the tall cover. They let us walk by at about 12 yards and then went back to eating.
He showed me several poplar trees that started growing on their own. He moved them in a row and cut the top 3’-4’ off a few of these, and after sticking the tops in the ground, they have now taken off as well.
Just like willows…if you cut the previous year’s new growth off the top of poplars in March, they’ll become a fat bush instead of a tall skinny tree.
When we got to the NW corner of his property, he showed me the Browning camera he had setup in video mode to watch deer in that section. He mounted it in June and got several cool video clips of bucks and does milling around in the winter wheat eating a variety of natural browse.
It was a great place for does to hide their fawns from predators.
As the buck’s antlers continued to grow through the summer, so did the little poplar trees along the edge of the woods. Everyday the bucks would get up and walk from the tall cover over to the new poplar shoots and start eating the leaves. It was like a little food plot of tree leaves the deer couldn’t resist.
This is exactly what will happen in a closed canopy woods after you have some timber removed and let the sunlight hit the ground.
In other areas of this big field he planted white cedars which are like candy to deer. He protected them by laying big tree branches all the way around them so deer would have to work at getting to them. He did the same thing where he planted spruce and pine trees in clusters for bedding cover and wind breaks.
He only had one small cluster of mature pines on the property and deer were bedding in there like crazy. I was surprised when he said he went in there once in a great while to swap SD cards out of his Browning camera…. which we did when I was there. They were definitely using it and I felt like I was intruding big time.
Since he had a real dry May and June, his pockets of Shawnee switchgrass were not as tall as last year in most areas, but it was still tall enough for deer to run in and hide whenever they wanted to.
As we walked through some of the areas with taller regrowth, we ran into several good size deer beds. These deer had it made with a wide variety of food and cover. Predators like coyotes and bobcats don’t operate very well in this type of tight cover.
So a couple of the big take aways for landowners who struggle to hold mature deer on their property during the hunting season is that
Sunshine is your friend if you want great deer habitat with lots of woody browse and cover. That doesn’t mean you have to clear cut your woods. You may just need to remove some of the bigger trees that don’t benefit deer and only cast shade.
The other take away is that the strategy this landowner went with is not going to be the answer for everybody.
Some landowners may not want to give up acres of crop revenue for deer habitat.
Other landowners may not have soil good enough to regenerate the kind of natural food and cover this landowner has.
Many properties already have fallow fields that have never grown into the kind of habitat this WI property has. Some just have way too much cool season grass like you have in your lawn, or, the soil is just too sandy to produce any kind of decent habitat that will hold deer.
In my next video, I’ll show you a property in southern MI with very sandy soil where I planted 5 acres of switchgrass as a base for bedding and cover, and explain what we’re going to add to that 5 acres to make it much more attractive for holding mature bucks on the property.
Great video Randy, that property is a great example of how quickly a plan comes together with some small projects.
I'll be having you out, when I find my property, ok?
Great video. Love seeing the plan and the follow up results
Great property. Thanks Randy
Great video Randy
Thanks John
Awesome!
Great information!
Great video!
Thanks Jon
Heavy ag area is the key word. Add a little cover and those setups come alive quick.
Exactly.
@@kurtcaramanidis5705
If it’s ag heavy add cover. If it’s cover heavy add food. Problem solved!!!
looking forward to the next video! I have property in Upper MI and would really like to transform 4 acres of my field into something like this!
If you have any questions on what went well and what I would do differently, let me know.
@@kurtcaramanidis5705 awesome thank you!
Great video! Thanks for the laugh about creating a doe factory.. haha
Couldn't resist
Super cool video. You john Brad going to do some more joint videos?
Yes sir
Great video. My favorite part was creating a doe factory. Hilarious!
Me too 🙂
Funny thing is I paid to learn about that for 6 hours in a restaurant 😅.
Ouch! @@travissmith-wz5nc
@SeeMoreBucks jared been making fun of me for 3 yrs now! 😅 payback for stupid behavior lol!!!
@@travissmith-wz5nc I hope you had a heck of a meal in that restaurant for 6 hours and $3000! Who knew "boots on the ground" meant under a restaurant table!?!?
What variety of red osier dogwood are you recommending for dry soils like that? Native rod in Michigan won’t grow in that dry of soil, at least on my farm.
His soil was not dry or sandy
Looks awesome in August. What's it look like in January? Does it still provide cover? Do deer still bed in it in the winter?
Not yet... but that's what the landowner is working on... year around cover, bedding and food.
I had 15 bucks in January.
May be the only 4 year old bucks I’ve ever seen in Michigan
Are they using it during fall??
Yes.
That fallow field will be wasted space.....
Wasted space?
It's a wildlife bonanza.@@whitehondarider22
Please elaborate.
Field rats. I could shoot ten deer from the seat of my tractor while picking corn. There will be 30 of them on a fifteen acre field. Frankly farmers should band together and start charging the state grazing fees.