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A post for the Moderators… ALSO!!! Who is making bedding cuts on their land?

dramsey25

dramsey25

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Aug 31, 2020
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Do we need a land manager sub forum? It seems as tho lots of guys do food plots and other land management type things… only asking because I felt like I couldn’t find the right place to start this thread.

Anyway can anyone educate me on how you have created bedding areas on your own property please! Videos, pictures, maps. All suggestions are welcome! Thanks!
 
dramsey25 said:
Do we need a land manager sub forum? It seems as tho lots of guys do food plots and other land management type things… only asking because I felt like I couldn’t find the right place to start this thread.

Anyway can anyone educate me on how you have created bedding areas on your own property please! Videos, pictures, maps. All suggestions are welcome! Thanks!
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Habitat talk may be a better place to discuss these types of things than this site. Just my 2 cents. But I have made bedding areas successfully. Its a subject lots of people have discussed for many hours but in my experience it boils down to this: find places they naturally want to bed from your hunting experiences and enhance them rather than trying to force bedding in entirely novel locations. Small clusters of bedding may be more utilized by bucks vs larger blocks for does. Cut it down, let it grow back, burn it every 5-8 years.
 
BackSpasm said:
Habitat talk may be a better place to discuss these types of things than this site. Just my 2 cents. But I have made bedding areas successfully. Its a subject lots of people have discussed for many hours but in my experience it boils down to this: find places they naturally want to bed from your hunting experiences and enhance them rather than trying to force bedding in entirely novel locations. Small clusters of bedding may be more utilized by bucks vs larger blocks for does. Cut it down, let it grow back, burn it every 5-8 years.
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Are you personally a fan of hinge cutting? Or could you give more details on your “cut it down” process?
 
dramsey25 said:
Are you personally a fan of hinge cutting? Or could you give more details on your “cut it down” process?
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I would rather not risk my life and limb doing hinge cutting. With patience a clear cut will do just as well in my opinion and last a little bit longer before needing dressing up. Hinge cutting just gives you immediate results which are desirable for many people. Cut it down means I go through and strategically try to either fell or girdle and squirt with herbicide and area that I laid on prior on a map and then flagged. I think flagging is a helpful step especially if you are using herbicides. Hinge cut is the fastest and some say creates the best structure but it is dangerous, ugly, and the stump sprouts very quicly reconvert it to forest. Clear-cut is labor intensive and takes an intermediate amount of time, my preferred if someone else is doing the cut lol. Girdle and squirt with the Craig Harper cocktail (google it) is my preferred method if its just me
 
BackSpasm said:
I would rather not risk my life and limb doing hinge cutting. With patience a clear cut will do just as well in my opinion and last a little bit longer before needing dressing up. Hinge cutting just gives you immediate results which are desirable for many people. Cut it down means I go through and strategically try to either fell or girdle and squirt with herbicide and area that I laid on prior on a map and then flagged. I think flagging is a helpful step especially if you are using herbicides. Hinge cut is the fastest and some say creates the best structure but it is dangerous, ugly, and the stump sprouts very quicly reconvert it to forest. Clear-cut is labor intensive and takes an intermediate amount of time, my preferred if someone else is doing the cut lol. Girdle and squirt with the Craig Harper cocktail (google it) is my preferred method if its just me
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This is by far the most succinct summary of my general management strategies on the places I work on, but doesn't include the 10% of the work details of creating scenarios for killing stuff with a stick and string like hidey hole food plots etc

 
I would suggest finding a reputable forester in your area, explain your objectives for the land, (wildlife habitat improvement) and he will guide you.
There are much better long term solutions than to hinge cutting, (which I hate) standard logging practices will get you the same results.
Select cutting (not hinge cutting) allows you to have natural regeneration that will last longer and provide better bedding and or food that you want.
I help manage 3 different properties that have active TSI (timber stand improvements) programs that hold deer very well.
@Buckspasm said it very well hinge cutting is dangerous, ugly and a waste of possibly good timber or firewood.
 
It helps to plan your stands and then your bedding cuts. If you make a bedding cut, but then can't hunt it due to blowing deer out, it's not working for you. Think of it like connecting dots. You want to define where they're feeding, where they're bedding, and how they're moving between them. If you make the bedding area too large, you may not be able to hunt it effectively. Save oaks that produce well, and cut the trees around them. You may have to remove some oaks, but make sure you're not taking out your best producers. Kill out invasives around it before you start taking out other species. If you clear an area only to make a thicket of invasives that deer won't utilize, you may regret it. Learn your tree species before you start cutting. If you have things start coming back that deer can't utilize for cover or food, why have it? Kill it.
 
We broke the property down into multiple sections based on topo features and access. We then outlined the areas to cut, then marked them. Hired a logging crew that are deer hunters and have a good understanding of our objectives and what good habitat should look like based on our goals. Instructions were release good young oaks, save a good sprinkling of big, good producing oaks and open the canopy a minimum of 50%. Also had them leave the tops for immediate cover. 3 years after, we start running fire through it. So far so good. Scrape and rub lines are along the edges where they are supposed to be and the lines are laid to funnel that travel to pinch points that naturally relate to the terrain and work with our access.
 
I attended the Tony Lapratt boot camp several years ago. If I remember correctly his property was around 50 acres. Hinge cutting, micro plots, and scrape encouragement was the basic scheme of the place. The property was amazing in the amount of habitat manipulation. The place "hunted big" meaning it seemed more like 200 acres because of walls of cover screens. It was quite impressive.
His hinge cut beds were well used, to the point that I wondered if someone artificially placed all the deer hair, poop, rubs, etc. I guess I can be a bit cynical sometimes.
So I came home and made a bunch of hinge cuts and I made them in areas likely to be used.
Very few ever showed any sign of deer actually laying down in them.
Hinge cutting does have it's place. I believe it is very effective to steer deer a little closer to your stand. You find a good stand tree with a great trail passing it, but it's 5 or 10 yards too far for an ethical shot. Properly placed hinge cuts can bump them your way.
There's lots of uses for hinge cuts.
And as @BackSpasm said, Habitat Talk forum is great for all things habitat.
But I'd agree with the OP on adding a sub forum here.
And while we are talking about forum layout...
Why is the deer contest not located on the bottom of the page? Crazy to have to scroll down past contest discussions that are almost 10 years old.
 
I never got too crazy with deer management. I have planted a few food plots over the years. But as far as bedding areas, I let the deer find their own spots. If there is an abundant and available food source, the deer will adapt and take care of the rest.
 
Where is the habitat talk section?
I’m overlooking it somehow.


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Halfstep said:
I never got too crazy with deer management. I have planted a few food plots over the years. But as far as bedding areas, I let the deer find their own spots. If there is an abundant and available food source, the deer will adapt and take care of the rest.
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Not knowing anything at all about your property it is impossible to say if your approach is the best for your property or not but as a general statement that approach will not achieve the best hunting you could have. Property size plays a big role as does the make up of the surrounding property. Deer need food, water, and security cover. Deer hunters need deer and good access/egress. Sound habitat management ties it all together. Why not give the deer more of what they need, built in a way that strategically benefits the hunter?
 
I’m more in this thread to learn than anything else, but on the subject of hinge cutting I can’t stand what it does to a property. Truthfully I don’t understand it well enough to make sense of it in the overall scheme of deer management practices, but from a human perspective, it sure junks up a good property in short order.
Our neighbor owns like 20 acres of woods that backs up to our 20 acres of woods, which is a thoroughfare within a larger forest, trafficking deer between ag fields. This neighbor is a hunter, has some good natural habitat with a creek bed, oaks, etc. Well, he thought he’d increase some bedding cover over the last few years and hinge cut/hack-squirted a bunch of stuff near our shared border. The hinge cuts are like 6’+ up the trunks of some trees (yikes!) and the trees he squirt fall on our side of the property line in a storm or windy day. He has deadfall all over the border of our properties and it’s now encroached on our woods, right near one of my favorite presets. Can’t get the golf cart back there anymore, the fence that used to show the border is trashed, can’t get a mower back there anymore, can’t even get a good chainsaw back there because these are some of the biggest trees in the forest that he just let drop wherever without a plan for them (unless his plan was to make 20% of our property completely inaccessible in just a couple of short years). What’s worse? The deer moved their beds closer to my preset. Sounds awesome until you can’t access that tree without something snorting at you within 50 yards. It’s still a good tree but I’m on pins and needles during the first hour any time I hunt. Some deer moved to another neighbor, and it’s incrementally shifted their travel pattern each of the four years I’ve hunted that portion due to the lack of trail maintenance I am able to accomplish now.
Needless to say, I won’t be “binge” cutting on our property any time soon. Select cuts only and have a plan for the trunks when they fall.
 
Small 4ac lot which is about 2ac of woods...I been torn on clearing the underbrush (mainly vines and sticker bushes) on the one half, but most times when I'm short cutting to my stand, I jump one or more bedded.
I Let my grass (50'x100' ish) in my clearing grow (about mid-thigh) thinking they would bed... lots of flat spots, so guess they used it.

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-----------------------------------------^ there.
 
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Halfstep said:
I never got too crazy with deer management. I have planted a few food plots over the years. But as far as bedding areas, I let the deer find their own spots. If there is an abundant and available food source, the deer will adapt and take care of the rest.
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I don't know what state you're in but here in central illinois if there's no management the oak forest will cease to exist in the future. We've got honeysuckle shading out any seedlings that the deer don't eat. Or you've got open floor heavy canopy areas and the deer easily find any oaks that sprout and again eat them up. In these scenarios some intervention is necessary to perpetuate a hardwood forest. Otherwise you'll leave behind a woodland bound to be overrun with locust, elm, Hackberry and other less desirable trees in the future.

I'm hoping that now I'm retiring to have time to reintroduce fire to my small woodland. I'll have to kill honeysuckle and autumn olive first. That will improve the browse substantially.
 
dramsey25 said:
Do we need a land manager sub forum? It seems as tho lots of guys do food plots and other land management type things… only asking because I felt like I couldn’t find the right place to start this thread.

Anyway can anyone educate me on how you have created bedding areas on your own property please! Videos, pictures, maps. All suggestions are welcome! Thanks!
Click to expand...
If you haven't already, watch 500 Whitetailhabitatsolutions videos. Grasp the concepts he teaches, and start putting a plan on paper. When your plan seems solid, then go to work. That's the long answer.
 
NATHAN said:
Habitat talk is not on here. It is a separate forum.
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Yes, the name of that forum is Habitat Talk.
It's a spin off from the defunct QDMA forum which was excellent, until they went belly up. A wealth of info and knowledge went away on that day because the QDMA forum did not archive any of the threads. However, a bunch of us went on to start and/or contribute to 2 new forums...Habitat Talk and Deer Hunter forums.
Tons of info over there. Not quite the participants that SH has but it's a different niche with lots of helpful participants.
 
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