Originally Posted by
sproulman
douge, i was sitting today trying to get a gobbler to call, like you, no answer.in this spot i own 100 acres.in this area i took out about 12 trees. lets say about a 100 yd circle.
this was done 4 years ago. in this area there is still lots of trees.
there is all kinds of growth in this area but go out the circle and FERNS are only thing growing .
now ,remember i dont kill ANY doe on my land, none.i had 15 on those 100 acres but i believe its around 10 now.i saw 4 today .
if deer are eating everything to death than why is that area growing.i wish i knew how to put the pics on here to show you.
or you could come down and i can show you.
get sun into area and do a little burning and things will grow.
yes deer have to eat but my 10 deer are NOT destroying my property.
If you have 10 deer on your property and they only stay on your property,you have 64 dpsm right now.I wish you could post the pictures because I highly doubt that you have anything growing that the deer want to eat.At 64 dpsm the deer will completly wipe out the regeneration in a 100 yard circle in a very small period of time.It may be growing now and it may resist the deer but I'll gauarantee that it another year or two,anything that's still there will not be a prefered browse species.
I can show you a 70 acre exclosure in moshannon state forest that was fenced after a shelterwood cut was done.The oak regeneration was fantastic three years ago.Last year I took a guy from another board there to show him a shelterwood cut.Every single oak seedling was completely browsed down because three deer got in that exclosure.THat's right,three deer browsed every oak seedling in the exclosure.Deer are picky eaters and they hit the most prefered species first.There's still a ton of maple regeneration in there but now the maple took over because the deer ate the oak.That's exactly how deer impact the habitat.I took R.S.B. to that area and he took a bunch of pictures.Maybe I can get him to post some.I can show you example after example of cuts that failed during the 90's.Today they are fencing less and less because the deer herd is down.In fact,I can show you a 75 acre cleaercut that was cut on SGL 44 in 1990.The cut failed and turned into a meadow.Six years later,the PGC put up a couple dozen small exclosures and now you can't walk through them.It wasn't insects,acid rain or poil soil that caused that.It was the deer and that same story can be retold time after time in the northern tier.