Discovering - Deer Habitat Grant, Tree Planting, Acorn Planter

welcome to discovering there's a lot of reasons to consider planting trees scenic appeal and of course wildlife habitat enhancement we'll take a look at the ongoing results of a deer habitat improvement grant and what it means for wildlife we've been successful with these grants for at least three or four years now then the U P inventor who proves there's more than one way to plant the nut if you want to plant oak trees I've developed a tool that I think would really assist any landowner or people that have food plots sit back and relax it's Monday night and time for discovering the secrets trees that flow beneath the cliffs colored stone forest again with birch and pine surrounded by the greatest lakes in this world has ever black bears awesome presents as a roams the hills and fields call of the Timberwolf don't rub the eagle soaring high above the trouble lies deep and still these are what I treasure the only way I measured feelings that I have for this fine land there is so much to discover when your longtime lover Michigan [Music] or forest teeming with clients and animal life they support thousands of jobs and hence the quality of our air and water we count on them for energy to contribute billions of dollars to Michigan's economy each year they provide countless outdoor recreation opportunities we hunt there we fish there hike bike camp right here in the U P the forest is part of our lives every day of the Upper Peninsula is ten and a half million acres eight point eight million or eighty four percent of it is covered by forests it's not hard to conclude that we need to take care of it both for us humans and for the wildlife that occupies it Forest Management can take many forms here's a look at a project taking place in AUP deer wintering complex area this project is sponsored by bees Enoch gobblers the Marquette County Conservation District the DNR upy tails and upy tales of Marquette County and is being funded in part by a deer habitat improvement grant provided by the Michigan DNR Wildlife Division well we've been interested in helping wildlife ever since we've owned the property I've done different kinds of food plots over the years and I've done small timber harvests in a plantation we had and we also cut our own firewood out of the maple grove I was contacted by Matt Watt keys in the winter about a grant with deer habitat improvement program and he wanted to plant some conifers on our property because we're part of the deer wintering complex and so we met with him and he walked the property with us and decided it would be best to do planting and amongst our maple woods to give kind of an understory for the deer the Marquette County Conservation District was successfully awarded a deer habitat improvement partnership initiative grant these grants come through the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and we've been successful with these grants for at least three or four years now and we keep similar ideas in mind but we kind of changed things up a little bit the goal here is to under plant these recently thinned hardwood stands with conifers and also with some Oaks so we're trying to introduce a little bit of a conifer component for cover for the wildlife and also the Oaks like I mentioned for a food source in the future these stands are lacking that component right now that's why we're putting it in here obviously the crew that's here today is part of Timberland forestry and they are based in Rumley Michigan out of the evergreen nursery office there in Raleigh there are great local contractors that grow a lot of our seedlings for our plant sales as well they grow containerized seedlings and a full potted large-size trees two main things that we're doing in you pay throughout is growing forestry native seedlings all the pines all the spruces hardwoods birches yellow white birches red and white oak burr Oaks in a large variety of native shrubs for wildlife habitat that's the nursery end the service end involves putting those same seedlings back into the ground in either productions environments as a plantation or in deer habitat wildlife habitat [Music] you [Music] so this project actually started out on the neighboring parcel I visited that parcel last year it's a large family Hunt Club and they wanted to discuss a little bit of Aspen cutting in their resource but more of a patch cutting to introduce different age classes into their Aspen stand that could be the ideal habitat as if you have three or four different age classes of Aspen on your property but their project was a little bit of a smaller volume project so I knew is gonna be a challenge to get a logger interested but then I met with these landowners this spring came out and toured their woods and saw their large Aspen component as well which basically stretched right across the property boundary to the neighbors we had some areas we needed to harvest because of the qualified forest program and so he put us in touch with Kerry logging who was gonna harvest some of our neighbor's property I asked a few loggers as per my program and referred to work out Kerry logging jumped on this project and they are the ones that undertook this cutting they wanted to start on this side though because it was a little bit of higher ground and we've had a fairly dry summer so it's not very sloppy in here right now as they finish this project and it gets a little bit colder they're gonna move into the neighbors and complete that project as well that logging is going on right now and gonna harvest about Oh 18 to 20 acres and it's a mixture of big spruce and balsam and Popples and it's again to kind of get different age classes established to help the wildlife but the ultimate goal here is to not only harvest these forest products but to also help create a lot of great wildlife habitat over the next few years we're gonna see a lot of young fresh aspen sprouting in this stand to give a lot of browse material for the wildlife and a lot of cover as well the loggers here are doing a fantastic job also and it matches up with the landowners goals of leaving these small islands of some trees some small conifers and some maples and bass wood as well so this is going to help with wildlife corridors and movement through this area too I believe we are also very fairly close so the Escanaba River and inside one of the mapped winter deer yards as well part of the reason this is a map deer yard is because of the river corridor but also because of the cedar components that we have so there's a nice cedar stand just off to the edge of this aspen stand here so there is some thermal cover in the wintertime and we're creating that food source which is a little bit lacking in this area we really want a nice balance of winter cover and food sources for the wildlife and that's what we're accomplishing here as well as a large-scale planting project that we're undertaking today as well in other parts of this property [Music] we are putting in 1,000 trees here today we have 300 white pine 300 red pine 300 white spruce and 100 red oak white pine is especially beneficial for wildlife habitat because it has those large spreading branches when it is mature and it does intercept a lot of snowfalls similar to hemlock and Cedars when we hear about winter deer yards the red pine component when is young and the white spruce component when they're young again provide a little bit of cover and wildlife corridors for the tree for the animals to move around the crew here is looking for mostly gaps in the canopy to fill in these trees so they get some sunlight but we are also kind of spacing the trees out in about a 10 foot by 10 foot spacing where applicable and we're kind of staying underneath this hardwood forest like I mentioned there is some nice wildlife fields off to our East active logging down to our south as well as cedar stands and other conifer components the landowners boundary is just off to our west at their gate and off to the north this way we definitely transition into more of a conifer component that way so we're sticking right under this hardwood stand on either side of this landowners driveway here this was an area of the screws plantation of that was about sixty years old and it was on our schedule to have it harvested and then the spruce budworm got in it and so we were lucky enough to catch up with Dave Lafleur who was working in a state land next to us and he's swung over here in February of 2016 and harvested this along with the state land and he tried to cut a few Popples on the outside of the stand of spruces and that's what you see mostly here is you know aspen coming in here a lot of raspberries and it's only getting been three years yet since he cut it so we're pleased with the regeneration of this 280 he left some seed trees in the background too so we will get some hopefully some Bruce's growing in and you know a few maples are in there he left a few snags for the woodpeckers he left the white pines and should be a nice mix once it finally gets established [Music] these three landowners were working with today have been clients of this consulting Forestry firm for several years they are the ones who set up these timber sales to have these stands thinned and they've been working on many other habitat improvements on these lands including crabapple tree plantings a lot of other oak plantings wildlife food plots there are some nice grapevines growing here as well and it's just an ideal parcel to get this done we couldn't do it without the partners that we asked for in-kind donations from and also time and effort now some of those partners include U P whitetails and u P whitetails of Marquette County also the wild turkey Federation's bay de NOC gobblers of course the conservation districts the Michigan DNR and we're also working with clients of a local consulting forestry firm out of Escanaba and they're called Upper Michigan Land Management and Wildlife Services u P whitetails association would like to thank Matt Dean we're working with the private landowners on projects such as what they're doing here today reforestation planting and actual forest plans the private landowner needs to get involved realize what is available out there for them that hardly any cost at all and will benefit the wildlife and themselves as far as the value of their property so again I would like to thank Matt with the conservation districts and Dean with the forestry projects for their time and effort we've been working with them for years we will continue to work with them and help the private landowners and work together to better our resource for today and tomorrow anybody looking for any species that we've been mentioned or species that has been mentioned that we do grow or we can always kind of track grow anybody can come we do retail we do wholesale at the greenhouses and Rumley we have oak plate oak trees we planted over the years crabapples just anything we think would help deer and turkey and grouse all the wildlife I'm enters to them hares that kind of thing so trying to do what's right for the land and for whoever owns it after us reforestation can range from planting partially grown trees all the way down to a seed I met with you P inventor Lowe Larson who proves there's more than one way to plant the nut if you want to plant oak trees I've developed a tool that I think would really assist any landowner or people that have food plots in 1990s I had a forester come up and evaluate my land and he asked me my objectives for my land and my land well we use our land forests primarily recreation hunting fishing hiking and just family get together and in his report he noted that I had there was an absence of all trees which if I'm going to hunt I have to have food sources for the animals so I asked him then how am I going to get oak trees growing when there's no trees around here and he said well from the Acorn would be the best and I said well how do I plant him he said well you'd have to dig a little hole but an inch and a half and put an acorn in in the hole and cover it up and hope the squirrels don't get him and you can work from there I said I got a crawl around in the woods planting acorns I said there has to be a better way so that came to the point where I developed this prototype this was my first prototype after I planted many acorns I put the Acorn planner away hadn't worked with it for years and Along Came invent and amou we're talking about patenting and ideas that people had and I brought it over there and they thought it was a wonderful idea and so we went on to working to develop what we call now the squirrel it took a lot of work prototyping and so on and and patenting process and but they've worked me through the process and it worked out very well I'm in the process of manufacturing now it's a very simple process it cores the ground digs out the hole by pressing this down as you push this down it stops at the proper depth and it pulls the core up into the tube now I line it up we drop the Acorn into the guidance tube and the acorn now just fell into the hole and I push the plunger down to release the core back into the ground step it down to firm it up and I move on to the next one when I'm true planting you would not know that I went through and put in hundreds of acorns I do not disturb the ground if you're trying to plant seedlings you're tearing up the ground this way it's just a natural process and hopefully the squirrel doesn't find it in the ground my name might plant her to squirrel because I'm in competition with the squirrel you I gather my acorns in the quality of course when the tree drops the nuts float test them to make sure that the nuts will grow those that float we throw away the nut has to sink those are your better acorns and I package them in sandwich bags of about 50 if they do happen to go bad you don't lose a lot of acorns at one time put them in the refrigerator in the garage at a temperature of 34 to 38 degrees they should be in stratification or dormancy after they've fallen for about at least three months I can plant them in the spring I also can plant them in this late fall 1st of November is excellent just before the ground freezes they will sprout in the spring this is an excellent way to plant oak trees because it sends a taproot down deep into the ground here's two examples of white oak that sprouted during stratification during the dormancy period as they came out of the nut they split open they send out a taproot now this tap root gets quite long and then the other part of the tree comes out of the ground so this tap root is critical and this is what makes planting seedlings are difficult because getting the tap root down into the ground far enough and by planting and not that does it naturally so that's two examples of nuts that have emerged that's what's happening underground preparing to plant the nuts if you're only going to plant a few I cut the bag open and I can use it for a carrying on my belt I could put it on my belt or you can get a some kind of pouch to carrier emerging tree nuts you can walk through an area I can if there's not a lot of debris on the ground I can walk through and put down 308 corn nuts in an hour I can walk chew and there's nothing that shows that I've been there except the acorns are in the ground and ready to sprout so we're not tearing up the environment with this method of planting so there's a couple of different keep growing times fall and spring people that plan on cutting their property after the cut normally it's very difficult to get around with branches and so on on the ground if you can get the acorns in the ground November first part of November they'll be in stratification or dormancy until spring after the cut has been made during the winter the acorns are already in the ground and they're ready to go as soon as spring breaks we can also plant them this spring early April soon as the snow leaves the ground and you can start pushing the Acorn planner into the ground you can start planting your nuts before they as they start to emerge from the nut if there's a Burnout area excellent you want to get into an open area where the Sun will be beneficial you don't want to get in a to heavier cover oak trees like a lot of plants they have to have the sunlight so you want to be able to plant them in the open burned out areas cut over areas they're all excellent or you can prep an area yourself take out some trees so the light gets to the ground you can make your own little opening you don't have to necessarily do a big cut you can just open it up so the Sun gets to the ground and you can plant some acorns that way it takes about 20 years to start producing acorns there's a variety of wildlife that benefit from acorns production it's an excellent food source for bear deer turkeys love them I've seen Blue Jays fly by with them grouse will eat them duxelle eat them it's not a quick fix but it's a fix to help animals in the future if we plan now it will provide great food source for many wildlife that depend on acorns by developing a squirrel and planting a corns to develop into nice oak trees in the future and a food source I'm doing it primarily for the future my grandson Isaac Harry he I hope will benefit when I'm gone and the trees are producing the acorns a bit of you pea news Richard P Smith has released another book great Michigan deer tales book seven continues the series started back in 1994 the book includes detailed information about how where when and by whom state's biggest Bucks were taken you find more information at Richard P Smith calm well that's it for this week thanks for watching and I hope to see you next week right here on Upper Michigan's very own Discovery [Music]

Channel: 906 Outdoors

Views: 3,119

Rating: 4.8000002 out of 5

Keywords: discovering, up, u.p., upper, peninsula, michigan, mi, 906, outdoors, trees, tree, planting, marquette, conservation, refortestation, district, evergreen, nursery, deer, habitat, grant, improvement, initiative

Id: Bg3AKaxBdeU

Length: 22min 32sec (1352 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 01 2018