Edge Feathering for habitat management, What, Why, and How to Get Started Before and After
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- Опубліковано 13 лип 2024
- When the biologist and forester told us we should do some edge feathering, we took their advice and created some awesome new habitat for wildlife.
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I'm always getting into something outdoors and would love to have you follow along.
Join me as I get outdoors with the #JohnDeere1025R and #JohnDeere4052R to do #habitatmanagement and plant #foodplots for #whitetaildeer and #wildturkeys. I have a newer #polebarn that has lots of projects going on inside of it and when I get to relax I will #hike, #hunt, #fish and do all kinds of other things.
i bought an old christmas tree farm 10-12 years ago and have been letting it regenerate and use this method. i drop and pile the aspen and a bunch of blighted blue spruce and other garbage trees and shrubs like autumn olive and encourage the dogwood, oak, poplar, sasafrass, holly, crabapple and other natives. its amazing the diversity that has emerged in just this short time. 15 years ago this was neatly mowed rows of trees. now it is a forest with 20+ foot mast producing trees with box turtles, snakes, toads and other fauna that was never here before. the squirrels and birds get most of the credit though. the deer and turkey and squirrels love it too.
That’s an awesome story. We are definitely making progress on our place even if it is slow. Hopefully in another 10 years we look at our place and it looks nothing like it did when we bought it.
Thanks for watching and commenting. Jason
What enters my mind about this practice is eventually all that jagged edging that extended into the cleared field grows up quickly and now you have another cut edge further in the field because your brush hog keeps cutting up against the jagged edge. If you keep this going then eventually you have no field. I have 11 food plots on my 245 acres, many are less than one acre so I am very protective of my fields. What I have been doing is dropping trees back into the woods creating a mess of limbs inside the woods. I just noted last night that all my food plots are eaten to the ground. I am trying to figure out how I can grow more food not less. Anyway love your suggestions especially about benefiting birds and other wildlife like turtles, rabbits, squirrels, snakes, etc.
You aren’t wrong about potentially losing field. I do brush hog around these tree tops to keep things in check. The other challenge I have found is that with the edge feathering attracting song birds, the birds land and deposit seeds into the tree tops. Unfortunately many of those seeds are invasive autumn olive and now I have AO growing out of a tree top and it’s hard to control.
Dropping trees back in the woods is a great idea and on my list of things to do.
This year while hunting I was looking at my edge and thinking about how the deer hit freshly dropped trees to eat the buds. Next year I may cut a tree and drag it out into one of my fields to draw deer out during gun week.
Thanks for watching and commenting! Jason
I noticed he logged a cul-de--sac into the forest and that would be the area that gets grown into, not the field itself. And new ones can be cut into the forest periodically.
That’s an interesting approach.
Excellent concept. Ins and outs, not straight edge between forest and field, by dropping low rated trees. Smart.
The deer really responded well to it. It’s been a few years since I dropped any trees. I need to go back and add a few new cuts.
Great information. Thanks!
Glad it was helpful. Always appreciate you watching and commenting. Jason.