Edge Feathering and bedding areas

[dbltree]

I walked in to set up a cam for a friend of mine and couldn't help notice the open park like atmosphere

compared to a hinge cut area we had worked on last winter...I didn't want to get closer but you can see the sunlight shining in and simply the fact that one cannot see "forever" as you can in the areas not hinged.

Many of the new cams nowdays will operate for a year on lithium batteries and hold thousands of pictures on 8G or larger cards. Makes it nice to slip in and set one to monitor and area but not have to be tramping around in there frequently.

I always prefer to set up cams in the same funnels were I will hunt because it allows me to stay away from bedding areas yet monitor deer traveling through the funnels. Since cams can be left for very long periods of time now they can become an accurate means of doing a survey without disturbing deer.

Checking trail cams can become addictive so one must use caution to keep them from interior areas that might hold mature bucks yet still be able to know with certainty what is living and using both your property and bedding areas.

Just like with hunting, use natural screening cover to travel to and from cam setups so that the liklehood of spooking deer will be minimized. Edge feathering along timbers edge can help provide such a natural screen and funnel deer right past a trail cam at the same time. Remember it is impossible to do accurate cam surveys if deer have dozens of runways traveling in and out of your bedding areas and hunting those runways will prove just as frustrating.

Hinging trees to create funnels makes both hunting and trail monitoring via cams much more successful, accurate and rewarding...

 

[letemgrow]

HInge cuts are also great area to add trailing wild beans too so they can trail up and around the hinged trees to add further benefits. I noticed that on my property after some trees were cut down for a new fence and I sprayed the fescue for a shrub planting. No more spraying that area next year as I will promote the TWB

The twb was just starting to grow up this oak stump when I took the pic and had spread over a 4 foot area in a month!!! I expect to the stump engulfed when I go back the next few days.

You may also wanna check and see if the twb is already there, I was suprised to see it in more than a couple spots on the farm so it may be readily available on your property as well.

 

[dbltree]

Now that the hay is off I took a few pics of an edgefeathered field edge (hinging trees along the field edge). This edge was hinged nearly three years ago although I have done a little work on it each winter since.

The edge is clearly impenetrable and a 1/2 dozen runways were effectively closed off when I had finished working on it.

Deer follow the edge right to one remaining runway, feeding on the browse along the field edge but deer on the other side cannot see into the field.

The ensuing jungle that erupts along the edge creates a solid screen that makes deer feel secure in bedding areas on the other side and allows me to slip in and out unseen.

I always leave a tree with overhanging branch at the entrance to the runway and they have kept this scrape active for years now. Note the trail cam that accurately monitors movement and gives a better idea what mature animals might be using my property.

a few dollars worth of trace mineral salt tells me about the deer I have and then I monitor the funnels and bottlenecks I have created with hinging to see where they are actually traveling

Mature bucks are nocturnal and elusive creatures but hinging to "bottle" them up sure narrows the odds...

 

[dbltree]

Hunting season is barely weeks away for many of us so habitat work will largely come to a screeching halt while we enjoy the fruits of our labors.

One thing that should never stop however is OBSERVATION

We hinge trees to help create thick areas that become safe secure bedding areas that will hold whitetails year around and for the most part we are not going to be invading those areas. Depending on how your land lays however you can use hinging to create travel corridors through narrow natural bottlenecks leading between bedding and/or feeding areas.

I have been lucky enough to harvest a buck or two that showed himself in the waning moments of daylight at a field edge but by and large mature animals are more likely to be killed inside the timber where they feel safe moving in daylight hours. In Iowa where draws and narrow ridges or fingers are common it's fairly easy to set up and not have to be anywhere near their actual bedding area.

Bill Winke and Don Higgins have both written great articles on the importance of creating safe sanctuaries that are by and large left alone especially on small properties and then using great care to hunt the edges or connecting points rather then be tramping in and out of the timber. I follow those same principles and hunt only narrow corridors or creek beds so I do not infringe on a bucks safe area.

Even at that however, a corridor may be 60-80 yards wide allowing an animal to easily pass by out of the range of the average bowhunter leaving one frustrated and dissappointed. I have learned to "cure" that by hinging trees with a plan that funnels deer to a natural narrow area that I can cover with my bow. Those same narrow areas are also easy to slip in and out of and rarely used by bedding deer and that brings me back to my thoughts about observation.

Regardless is you have begun working on creating funnels or not....hunting season is when you learn by observing. If you started work on creating a funnel there may be flaws in it and if your merely curious about starting a project this winter...fall is the time to observe buck movements and problems that you encounter.

I have a trail cam on a corridor that has been up all summer so I slipped in to check it, change the batteries and swap cards.

Standing in one spot I took a pic of the thick hinged area on one side....

and the open area that deer use for travel

and the well worn trail that is evidence of how heaily deer are using the runway

Now keep in mind that this is NOT a bedding area but a narrow area leading between two bedding areas. The thick hinged area provides screening cover and an impossible tangle that deer prefer not to walk thru and that is especially true during the rut when bucks only want to get from point A to B! They are not interested in stumbling around in the brush but instead follow a safe well screened path inside of enough heavy cover that they can feel safe during daylight hours.

I don't have dozens of stands but instead a few well placed stands (for different winds) in narrow areas. I often have only to walk a few feet into these travel corridors and that insures I don't leave a "mark", yet I am still able to hunt deer where they feel safe...in the timber and not on a field edge.

As your hunting this fall...think about how you can utilize hinging, screening and other habitat improvments to funnel deer by you without entering their sanctuary. This winter you can begin to make positive changes that will up your odds of harvesting a mature buck the following fall....:way:

 

[dbltree]

September 1st 2010

A year ago at this time you could see clear across this draw...now you can barely see more then a few yards in from the field edge! This hinged tree has sent up probably hundreds of shoots from the stump and entire length of the trunk providing both cover and browse!

It's a little difficult to see through the shadows but there are a whole series of trees hinged here creating a plethora of screening cover and reachable browse.

Those trees were hinged in very early April of 2010....there is very little a landowner can do to improve their property as quickly and inexpensively as one can by simply getting out the chainsaw... :way:

 

[dbltree]

I slipped in past an area that I had hinged heavily to create a bottleneck by a stand simply to clip some growth out of the way so I wouldn't be stumbling through it in the dark.

I stopped for a moment to snap a couple quick pictures including this one of two young oaks...a white on the left and a red on the back right.

While oak regeneration is not my primary reason for hinging by any means, it can be accomplished with a little management by removing competing canopy where hinged tops impede growth of new seedlings.

The hinged area itself now is a dense screen of nearly impenetrable cover that funnels deer past my stand as they travel from bedding to feed.

Hinged bottlenecks not only make hunting more successful but they also allow us to effectively use tail cam surveys by forcing deer in an out of a few runways instead of dozens. Habitat varies across the country of course but here in Iowa doe groups tend to use hinged sanctuaries heavily while mature bucks are more likely to prefer the solitude of large stands of tall native grasses.

Trail cams at a field edge where a hinged funnel moves deer in an out in larger numbers soon answers the question of what is using your hinged sanctuaries

Often some hinged areas have not a single buck traveling through them during the summer months but as the rut approaches....they know where the girls bedroom is and things change in a hurry...

Remember to keep observing deer as you hunt, look for problem areas that you can correct with a chainsaw this winter, then monitor your deer without invading sanctuaries on your property by using IR trail cams that can last for months without being checked.

Food plots are fun and important but your chainsaw you will find..is the most effective tool in your habitat program.... :way:

 

[dbltree]

Hinging cull trees is a great habitat improvement because it provides some of the most key and crucial elements that whitetails need...dense, thick, safe cover. In addition it provides browse even from the second a hinged tree hits the ground and with some common sense thought and planning it provides us with another important element...funneling.

Don, Tony, Bill and Jeff are just a few folks we often hear ideas from, some great...others we may disagree with but I think to a man they would agree that providing a safe secure sanctuary and then building into your program, travel corridors that allow us to efficiently harvest deer would be a "good thing".

There is plenty of bad or even worse, false information out there and quiet frankly much of it comes from well known "Deer Dr's" that hunters tend to trust. One tries to convince us that we have grave concerns about brassica toxicity while another tells people that if they double the planting and fertilizer rates in their corn...they will double their yield?!

If those were true then our deer would all be dead and farmers everywhere would simply double their inputs to double their yields! It is important then to be discerning and wise, making common sense choices in our habitat improvement and hunting choices.

Hinging then is a great tool and those in forested areas may need to rely largely on this tool but many of us who live in agricultural areas on farms with mixed timber and fields can utilize a multitude of options to provide those same key elements...safety and security year around.

Our properties should be insulated from roads and people as much as possible and tree and shrub plantings combined with NWSG's are two very effective ways to accomplish this. This is a picture of one of my own farms where I established a windbreak planting through the CRP program 15 years ago and established NWSG's in the same program at the same time.

Take note of the wide open fields on the opposite side...common sense tells us which place whitetails would feel safer on. Even if your property is vastly different or all timbered the same insulating effect can be accomplished using edge feathering and conifer planting around the perimeter.

One might argue with almost any consultant about a variety of things but screening and insulating your property and there by creating a safe sanctuary would be unlikely to bring about disagreement.

Travel corridors are a second subject that I also doubt would be cause for argument and the need for them is imperative because it allows us to harvest deer traveling to and from bedding and feeding without disturbing them in either. I've shared how we can create funnels and bottlenecks using hinging but there are also a variety of ways to accomplish the same thing.

A combination of Egyptian Wheat, shrubs and a high sugar ryegrass/clover planting provide an irresistible combination of safe, protective screening cover along with a tasty food source to further entice them. Bucks love this travel route as they circle property perimeters checking for hot doe crossings, they use the shrub limbs for licking branches/scrape sites and follow this right to a runway in a natural narrow corridor leading past a stand.

Creating travel corridors via chainsaw or plantings is a very simple common sense improvement that is IMO inarguable and a necessary element of your program.

Across the road from my home farm there are bonafide 180-200" deer that never set foot on my place. No one made them a bed, they have not yet seen a single hinge cut nor visited a tied down licking branch. They live there simply because there are hundreds of acres of solid timber combined with large hidden crop fields...the whole thing in itself a safe secure place to live.

There are things then that each landowner must discern for themselves the usefulness of some practices and it is not for me to say yeah or neigh as to the effectiveness. I can only say that while not 200" deer, mature animals do live on my farms and they make their own scrapes and beds.

There always exceptions to everything but suffice it to say that most mature bucks will not use scrapes in daylight hours. They rarely move in daylight except for two key times...the rut and late winter when hunger forces them out of hiding. They tend to bed in the thick, tall NWSG's making "bed building" or scrape making largely ineffective here.

If you have property enhanced to give them a safe secure place to live and well thought out travel corridors then bucks will live there and they will be far easier to kill using travel corridors. They will race down those corridors during the rut and feel safe staging in those areas in December when they need to feed and you can get in and out easily with some planning.

There is little need to visually see what animals are doing while hunting nor molest them in any way with the use of inexpensive IR cams. Used over a period of years at bottle necked points, they provide a wealth of information about what is living there, when they travel and which corridors we need to hunt when.

Handy, adjustable mounts allow us to mount cams up high where they have little effect on even the wariest mature whitetail and new models can last a year with lithium batteries and store thousands of pictures on 16G cards.

Common sense combined with factual knowledge gives each of us then, the information we need to manage our property and hunt it effectively. It also allows us to glean useful information from others and decide what elements may or may not be right for us in our situations.

When season is over we'll fire up the chainsaws and begin once again to utilize hinging as a habitat improvement but there is so much more, so many options in addition to hinging that you'll want to consider. Sitting in a tree stand is a great place to do some thinking and planning about some very common sense habitat and hunting improvements you can make in the coming year....

 

[letemgrow]

Sitting in a tree stand is a great place to do some thinking and planning about some very common sense habitat and hunting improvements you can make in the coming year....

That is what always gets me in trouble and I get the big eye with all my,"Thinking and planning" while on the stand. :thrwrck:

It really is a great time to see how things look and how the deer are using an area. I know it has taught me where to pinch deer, find invasives and trees to release while not going in more than is needed.

 

[huntdoc]

My landowner let me know that over next year or so the 2 main blocks of timber that I hunt will be logged. Several trees have rings painted on them. Guess at this point I just wait and see what kind of changes they create? They select cut and although I am not thrilled over the number of oaks that will be leaving, the islands of thick treetops make for good bedding. I hope to hinge entry/exit from these spots to help my opportunities. Nothing stays the same I guess!

 

[dbltree]

I had to walk along the field side of a hinge cut area to take some soil samples the other day and took a few pics as I did

This area was hinged in March 2010 and you can see all the new browse and screening cover that has sprouted vertically off the horizontal hinged trees.

The leaves have largely fallen here in late October yet line of sight distance is pretty limited.

We still have some work to do in here but compared to the open park like atmosphere previously the difference is great!

Even though hinging has made a huge difference one can quickly see that if there were conifers such as red cedar or Norway spruce around the perimeter deer would feel even more secure....food for thought in your long term habitat plans....

 

[dbltree]

Someone asked about what the hinge cuts looked like so I took a few pics from my tree stand in hopes it would give a better idea as to the "mess" one can make.

You can see in this area I left few trees standing

and the ground area is a literal tangle of hinged trees and new growth

These views are from my stand and you can see the -V- shaped cut or open area across from me...open from afar but a tangled mess of hinged trees at ground level.

The corridor I'm in is between a crop field and my home

Looking down from stand there are some large trees that help form a fence like funnel that guide deer down the natural runway already there.

You can see here where two runways are funneled together because of my "hinging with a purpose" to block off runways

I can zoom in with the camera and look in my garage window

The runway is beaten to bare dirt visible behind the tree slightly to the right

Along the natural runway I have left the trees standing so it provides canopy for me above the runway and deer are underneath me before they could possible see me

It's almost not fair...they don't have a chance...

and walk by only 15 yards away

Now photographs of bucks on runways don't mean a thing but...there no pics of bucks traveling anywhere in this corridor but on THIS runway.

How many times have you been frustrated by bucks that are 40, 60 or more yards away running a doe or just cutting cross lots?

It just doesn't happen when one has created a hinged living fence to funnel deer by your stand

I've already taken a buck so these bucks were only "killed" on camera...

This buck is standing exactly where I killed my buck earlier simply because it's the only possible place to come out for 100 yards or more due to my timber edge feathering (hinging alone the timber edge)

In this case an old farm lane runs through a narrow opening between woodlots creating a natural crossing both ways and a ground blind tucked into the brush has allowed me to take several nice bucks with my bow from that spot.

In years prior to edge feathering bucks came out helter skelter all along the lane and small field making it a crap shoot to ever kill one but now...it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Hinging trees is not only an effective means of creating safe sanctuaries but also an extremely deadly means of harvesting deer consistently.... :way:

 

[dbltree]

November 22nd, 2010

Fortunately gun seasons here in Iowa are still several weeks away and normal rut activity is still going on and it's a great time to really monitor how the hinged bottlenecks and funnels have been working. These are just a collage of pictures from my stands and trail cam showing some of the buck movement in daylight hours through these funnels

Funnel #1 in a 100 yard wide stretch of timber where hinging has reduced a dozen runways to one...

I've taken pics of them from my stand...

and the trail cam monitors the runway when I'm not there

Funnel #2 is a "cross hairs" comprised of edge feathered timber and an old farm lane and I have killed two bucks from a ground blind at this bottleneck.

Same runway, different cam position ...(wrong date)

Funnel #3 where I used a shrub and Egyptian Wheat funnel to "lead" deer to small narrow patch of timber and my stand

From my stand...

Funnel # 4 is a natural funnel created by a field edge and a steep ravine utilizing some minimal hinging to narrow the bottleneck.

It is of course impossible to force every deer down any runway but you can significantly increase the odds that bucks will have to travel within 25 yards of your stand by creating funneled bottlenecks. Combine hinging trees with shrub and conifer plantings, annual screens and food sources to bring consistently bring deer by your stand.

I put the telephoto lens on and took more pictures from my stands to give more of a birds eye view of some of the hinge cutting.

It's thick...

but full of little pockets where deer bed

Tons of new sprouts and suckers that provide more screening cover

and new easily reached browse

When trees are hinged "with a plan" they can easily create the funnels and bottlenecks that bring deer past your stand like those in the beginning of this post.

Hinging offers huge benefits in the way of habitat improvements and increased encounters with mature whitetails.... :way:

 

[Crimson Arrows]

Looks like amazing cover Paul! I hope to "touch up" some of my sanctuary this winter that was TSI'd in 2006 to create habitat as the pictures you have posted depict. Should only enhance the sanctuary as many areas of it now are still too open IMO.

Still, the TSI did wonders for my farm in a very short time.

 

[dbltree]

Cover

Hinging trees provides browse and creates bottlenecks but the most important aspect is COVER! Despite all that has been said on this subject I still see hundreds of landowners with wide open timber and fields that wouldn't hide a rabbit let alone a whitetail! Right now...everyone has either been hunting or are still and your timber or wooded areas and the lay of your property and amount of cover is fresh in your mind and a great time to discuss the topic in general.

how does one tell which information is useful to them and which is not

Good question because regardless of where information comes from we need to know it is not only truthful and helpful but really in our best interests if we hope to improve our properties for whitetails.

Why believe me...after all, I'm just an ordinary man with an extraordinary penchant for wildlife habitat. How can anyone, anywhere trust or believe that the information I share will actually help them if their goals are to consistently harvest mature whitetail bucks? I share hundreds of pictures of not only the habitat I create or help others with but the whitetails that utilize the habitat on a daily basis year around in hopes readers will see it's not just "talk"...I share.

Yet another way is when multiple people have consistent success utilizing the same habitat improvements that makes things not a coincidence but rather a set of proven principles that can work literally across the country. I have many good friends in the real estate business all of whom have great habitat programs and are very successful hunters but since my friend Rich Baugh ( A recreational land sales specialist for Whitetail Properties) recently wrote an excellent article for QDMA's "Quality Whitetails" magazine called "Cover is the Key" that parallels to a -T- my own thoughts on cover I wanted to highlight Rich and this years harvest.

168" 5 1/2 year old whopper buck taken with archery equipment on Rich's SE Iowa farm

This isn't the first huge buck Rich has taken nor will it be the last simply because he has put together all the elements of great habitat and put COVER at the top of the list, rather then thinking a food plot was the answer. Some people are successful because of intense pressure on properties around them that forces deer onto their place but if you are looking for the very best advice....look to those who consistently whitetail bucks on their property from 2 1/2 to a mature harvest, because f the habitat they have created.

Rich has done that very thing by creating awesome cover through hinging, TSI, NWSG plantings, smart hunting strategies and the use of many trail cams to monitor his whitetails.

This picture is evidence that Rich was able to hold this deer on his farm from 2 1/2 to 5 1/2

and then successfully harvest this beautiful buck this fall

Some of you may have watched Rich take another beautiful 5 1/2 year old buck from his farm last fall, on Realtree TV so it's not an accident or a fluke. I asked Rich for permission to use his photographs and I urge you to read his article in Quality Whitetails, for great common sense information that you will find very helpful. You won't find anywhere that Rich made individual beds or tied trees down but instead hinged on south facing slopes, logged mature trees and hunts travel corridors....just as I do.

So...before I give my friend a big head....we'll move on to the subject of cover and the reasons it works for Rich and I and hundreds of other landowners...

Hinging cull trees and/or killing competition around crop trees (Oaks) via TSI in most cases is one of the most rapid means of improving cover but not a single inch of your property should be wasted. Recently I acted as cameraman for a friend of mine as he hunted his new farm near mine and we watched as more deer then we could count popped out of the thick red cedar/shingle oak bedding area into a corn stubble field. He has only owned the farm a few weeks and is still learning it and planning new habitat improvements.

We looked over an aerial map of the bedding area and he noted a 4-5 acre field of cool season grass (once pasture) that deer skirted and rarely used (observations from his tree stands) so I encouraged him to consider converting the field to NWSG to not only add to his overall cover but create a place where a mature buck, intent on solitude would be inclined to bed. Nothing to do with hinging per se but everything to do with adding as much cover to his property as possible and that means turning otherwise wasted area into better habitat.

As we watched deer pour out of that bedding area we also noted at least 5 bucks that probably ranged from 3 1/2 to 5 1/2....all from one 40 acre patch of cover.

I'm not aware of a single consultant or adviser who would not be in complete agreement that cover is extremely important but there are of course differing ideas or opinions on hot to create the best cover and actually hold whitetails from 2 until maturity. That's the part that many landowners are confused by...they see the buck harvested but no evidence (such as Rich shared) that they had made improvements that keep whitetails there for years....not just when pushed there due to high pressure on surrounding properties.

In heavily hunted/pressured areas like PA and MI even a small property becomes a sanctuary to deer during November but such is not the case in Iowa where nearly all farms (at least in SE Iowa) become sanctuaries. Large tracts of land are purchased solely for hunting and managed as such so 1-2 people are likely to quietly hunt bow hunt 400 acres in Iowa versus 5 people on any given 40 acres in eastern states. That means people like myself with small farms must work even harder to hold whitetails because they don't come here because throngs of hunters drive them here.

My farms are separated so they involve different deer and different terrain but the principles are the same...thick timber created by TSI and hinging, NWSG, shrub and conifer planting, centrally located food sources that feed deer year around and...bottlenecks that allow me to kill bucks away from feeding areas.

I enjoy sharing trail cam pics as living proof that the habitat improvements that Rich, myself and literally hundreds of others employ...work perfectly!

What kind of cover should you have?

Thick! The kind you can't see through...the kind deer feel safe in, that they can see under but you can not see them!

I'm standing at a fence line taking these pictures of naturally regenerated cover (over grown pasture)

and what we don't want...wide open timber!

One thing rich notes in his article is that when deer reach 4 1/2 they stop appearing in the open timber areas of his farm...so this we want to avoid (note some minimal TSI has been done)

and create this instead

I encouraged the landowner to have the forester doing the TSI to do some hinge cutting but because they don't understand it...they just cut it all down!

The side with the tremendous cover is made even better because it is screened by red cedars

There is no need to make deer a bed in a safe sanctuary like this...heck you couldn't keep them out if your tried!

When you hunt narrow corridors leading from thick bedding areas to either more bedding or feeding areas you can easily kill mature bucks without hoping they'll expose themselves in open ares before dark. Knowing that there is no real need to "boggle" your mind with minute details abut hunting itself. Create the funnels, hunt the wind and kill some good deer as they travel them...

If you wonder if you can believe the habitat advice given...look for proof the the habitat enhancements actually hold young bucks like these...

until they reach 4 1/2, 5 1/2 and older...

Too many people have "food plot on the brain" and they completely forget the need that COVER is the only way they will ever be able to consistently hold whitetail bucks on their property to maturity. Trust in whom you will and believe what you wish but those pics are from two different farms, each with less then 40 acres of timber a piece...not unlike a whole lot of other farms across the nation........

 

[Scott]

I bought my farm this year through Rich and he is a standup guy and continues to be a great resource for projects on my place. I cant wait to start cutting trees. You can have all the food in the world but cover is a big key to raising and holding big bucks.:way:

 

[letemgrow]

My sancturary is a thick mess of shingle oak, cedars and a few locusts as well. Its time tho to thin it out and I am going to create lines north and south to funnel the deer more to my favor out of that area. Also, thinning will help the oaks produce more as there are a few swamp white oaks mixed in there as well. The red blocks are the sancturaries that I only enter to do habitat work on, the green circles are the stand sites and the green lines are the paths to walk in and out of the stands on.

The thick blue lines are my plans of dropping cedars, locusts elm etc to funnel the deer past my stand sites. TSI will also be preformed again on the good trees growing in those areas. The upside down "V" is used for a gun stand across the creek to the west of the V to funnel them down along the creek instead of just walking wherever they want to in that whole section llike they have been doing. :way:

 

[dbltree]

Like your plans Phil! Take some before and after pictures to share later...

Here's a couple pics of some timber that's sorely in need of some habitat improvement and it's the perfect size to allow hinge cutting!

Maple is a pretty invasive tree and while there is plenty of it in this stand, it can also provide some high quality browse when hinged. Right now however it's a barren wasteland for deer....they have neither cover nor browse.

The landowner does have some oaks that could be released by hinging the invasives around them which then becomes a "win win" for both improved timber and greatly enhanced whitetail habitat.

Once hinged the whole area will explode with new browse

and deer will feel safe and more likely to bed near feeding areas

If timber is too open deer are likely to move far into the interior and that means it's often after dark before they walk by your stand. I've seen deer walk nearly 2 miles to get to cover they felt safe in and that makes them very vulnerable to neighboring landowners as they travel back to food sources.

Provide plenty of thick cover on your property and that's where they'll stay...

 

[streat]

what to do with hedge trees?

In places with lots of hedge trees like western Illinois, where do the hedge trees (osage orange) fit into the TSI and bedding area management?

We often cut hedge trees for posts, and the tops can be left behind and the trees regrow vigorously.....but they are hedge trees!

Hedge trees are incredibly tough and thorny, can't imagine even whitetail like to try and move around or through the left behind tops.

Question is: Do you even hinge a hedge or promote leftover hedge tops for cover or is the hedge trees in bedding areas best left alone or killed off?

Thanks for the help! I guess the thorny locust trees fall into the same category, what about them?

 

[FarmlandQDM]

I hinge cut both honey locust and hedge(osage orange). Osage orange leaves, fresh honey locust sprouts, and honey locust pods are all sought after food sources for whitetails.

 

[letemgrow]

I hinge cut both honey locust and hedge(osage orange). Osage orange leaves, fresh honey locust sprouts, and honey locust pods are all sought after food sources for whitetails.

I only wish they would seek out honey locust sprouts and pods on my place....I would have a gold mine. The pods last all winter long and I quit cutting down honey locusts since they never browsed them. Deer do tear up black locust seedlings on the farm tho and everyone looks like a shrub.