4 Hot Trees You Need On Your Deer Hunting Land

it's middle of April and in spring time and what springtime means when it comes to the whitetail woods is planing food plots habitat improvements grass trees shrubs conifers lots of stuff going on right now and people who just can't wait to get out of the woods and this winter was a you know you can almost say it everyone it's a bad winter but this one was you know we had minus 41 we had a lot of snow lots still staying for a long time snowmobile trails were open up around here for almost two months and that's you know there's about every other year there they're not open at all so everyone's hitching to get out I'm itching to get out I feel fortunate that while we can come out here make videos and we're out in the woods we can scout check out everything that's going on and of course we're creating habitat improvements while we work and we're bringing it to you one of the biggest topics that comes to this time of year is what to plant for whitetails and I'm a no-nonsense kind of guy when I go to clients my goal is to help them improve their property their hunt their herd immediately as fast as possible this is not something that should take several years I had a recent client I went to or someone else had been to several years ago recommended playing in thousands of trees he gets a few hundred and he's asking himself why where are these trees going why am i planning and why am i planting these trees that relates to the plan and it was almost as if you had to plant a bunch of trees in order to have whitetail plant and that was part of it and in folks maybe it is maybe it isn't but I'm gonna talk about four species of trees and I'm working out counting my favorite shrubs we're gonna go over that in a browse video and even conifers but for trees that I think that you can plant or that you can manage for whitetails at a high level and they can give you a the most bang for your buck for the entire season not just for when soft mass is coming in and you had a great September October Apple drop or fruit drop mass production drop not for just acorns where white oak acorns and you have a few white oaks on your property and they they support that browse in the woods and they're there for a limited time they're just part of the plan part of the picture same with red oaks too and and acorns but could be chestnuts too they're just a part of the plan but these trees can actually provide cover and food and browse for the entire season and they're easy they're a great way to great trees to manage easy to plant easy to transplant and I'll show you some right here and and I don't want you to turn the video off right now and go to something else when I say this but boxelder is an awesome wildlife and whitetail tree that far too many people have been instructed to poison to cut to hack to squirt to cut down what a shame now if your goal is to manage trees and get boards per foot and you want hard maple hard cherry and your property may be a little bit of oak throwing in some walnut that's a tree property not a whitetail wildlife property that's not mistake the two they are completely different but when it comes to trees that'll help you support your whitetails and wildlife all year long boxelder is a great tree and I'll show you some examples of this right behind the camera where one's tipped over into the side of the hill and it keeps growing yet they're prolific they're great brow species when it gets into fall and especially during the winter and when you have quality brows and you have quality brows that equals cover then that brows in that food source is working for you for the entire hunting season then we're not talking a month for a specific apple a month for another type of fruit tree a few weeks for red oak a couple weeks for white oak we're talking for the entire hunting season boxelder is one of those and can do that they're easy to cut they're easy to hinge cut because we're always leaning somewhere it's a very if you break the branch if you're wondering if the box elder it's got a very pungent odor I remember that order fondly as late 80s thumb area hunting fence rows and all these little areas that I had to hunt so I had a lot of tree stands in those areas so you're breaking a branch off a tree stand level you get that smell box elder is very prolific it's easy to grab seeds put them into open soil and in pasture areas where you're trying to reconvert back to wildlife you're eliminating grasses all these areas can be swallowed up by switchgrass you're throwing boxelder seeds in and another seed I like to throw in at that same time in another tree variety that's easy to manage for whitetails wildlife soft maple not hard maple but red maple soft maple maple that is prolific for Bottomly and prolific and poor soil when you hinge cut red maple it grows prolifically equals a lot of side cover again deer at three feet so don't cut these and hinge cut these boxelder or maple up at six seven feet high unless you're trying to hide a tree stand or something but or blind but you want to cut this at waist level red maples another one so highly preferred browser species adds a lot of cover it'll side sprout predictably when off a hinge cut off the side and that is a great brawl species great cover species that'll be there when you cut it during summer dormancy let's say July in August maybe even September or during the winter it'll sprout prolifically at a lot of food and a lot of cover basswood is another one very good tree for prolific regeneration Buck's love to rub it it's a soft tree really good brows and very good cover species no finally one of my favorites and I'll tell you a little story about this one is something that I couldn't believe I was shocked went to a client northern Wisconsin 160 acres a maple hard maple a little bit cherry very heart big hard maple stand big trees and needed a lot of cutting on that and they bought this this property purely for wildlife they have a camp in there it's a few three brothers and five acres of that off to the corner by a swamp there was a stand of poplar Aspen and they were instructed deer in the summertime and they did they took a bulldozer they ripped through all those lateral roots Aspen regenerates from the rut system ripped through all that put it on a pile to the side and replanted it in tubes of hardwood and hardwood red maple and oak at seven to eight hundred trees per acre five years later I'm there and all the trees are dead they'd all been eaten because their brows PCs trees and they went above the tree tubes they didn't smashed over and there was hardly a tree standing and all their good stuff for wildlife and white tails that they drastically needed was over in that pile over there dead and that was a huge shame Aspen northern Aspen regeneration and if you're playing in hybrid poplars great tree to plant planning in the clusters don't don't be misled into thinking this can provide a screen it's deer food and so if you put it even on a yard you can see right through it not that much of a windbreak unless it's very thick but boy great brow species then cover species that you can plant out into old field restoration for wildlife in between switchgrass pockets pockets you're spraying grass out pockets you're adding boxelder soft maple seeds to throw in some Aspen in their hybrid poplars but Aspen regeneration is great because it's a renewable resource when you cut Aspen per acre if it gets sunlight on it you're getting 7,000 shoots per acre on average it's great for growls great for small game then that is a really high quality species on your land now something at all four of those trees that have in common box out or red maple basswood in Aspen is that they're not typically except for Pulp and Aspen low value low timber Downton dollar value is they're not timber species trees they're not boards post foot foot tree in fact each one of those you can find recommendations where for stores or Conservation District biologists have recommended getting rid of these trees in favor of Oaks in hardwoods and you have to make that decision on your land are you managing hardwoods are you managing wildlife and whitetails why did you buy that land there's rarely a mix of both I've been on properties where all these species especially Aspen in boxelder hack and squirt projects were what's left in the forest is open forest could be an a quote oak savanna that sounds really cool on paper but offers no cover no real wildlife value and then I have a client 678 years later that's asking me what can we do to return this to what it was because we used to have wildlife we used to have good wildlife cover we used to have daytime movement a deer and we don't have it now because we did this these are great tree species all four of these don't be misled into thinking that you need to cut these down or you need to get rid of them on your land if you have them on your land count yourself lucky it's a blessing it's a blessing for your white tails your wildlife your wildlife goals and I would much rather buy a property that has a mix of those four on it than a mix of hardwoods am I in hardwoods are hard to convert him back to quality while wildlife species your bulldozing your timber removal replanting or if you can buy a mixture of garbage like this you see around me hey garbage is in the eye of the beholder this is great high value treasure that you can find on your land and I hope it makes sense for those four four tree varieties think about adding those to your land this year for a higher wildlife and whitetail values for this hunting season

Channel: Whitetail Habitat Solutions

Views: 113,319

Rating: 4.8521128 out of 5

Keywords: trees for whitetails, deer habitat, trees for deer habitat, best trees, deer, whitetails, habitat, what to plant, plant for deer, whitetail habitat, for hunting, plant on hunting land, for hunting land, deer parcels, deer parcel trees

Id: HZv4VmfRd1M

Length: 9min 44sec (584 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 23 2019