Habitat

Another couple of days in the north country, another bunch of trees in the ground.  Sunk about forty more juneberry and silver maple into the earth at my Fortress of Solitude, bringing the total trees planted to around 200 this spring.  Far fewer than the usual 500 trees my dad and I plant most springs, but this year's trees were free so we won't quibble about the lower tally.

After planting yesterday I spent a couple of hours this morning tending to some oak trees we planted over ten years ago.  Those oaks have been persistent if nothing else - they've suffered through a couple of drought years and many years of being eaten off by deer.  But they keep surviving, and finally some are starting to grow high enough to be out of the reach of a whitetail's teeth.  Today I moved cages from taller trees to shorter trees (we don't have many caged....we planted a couple thousand.....only have about 15 caged......who's got time to cage two thousand trees?!?) and pruned low branches off dozens of trees to promote vertical growth.  I'm finally starting to get slightly optimistic that our deer will someday feast on acorns.  Probably right around the time I die.

I have many "favorite" outdoor activities, but habitat development might now be at the top of the list. My dad and I have spent years building fences and planting trees to transform what was once pastureland into wildlife habitat, the intended wildlife being white-tailed deer.  It is often said the best time to plant a tree is ten years ago, and our property is living proof of the truth of that saying.  Take a look.....

A view of Armstrong River as you leave my folks' yard and head towards the fields to the north.  The hillside to the left used to be our sliding hill 25 years ago.  Now it's a beautiful mix of Norway pine, jack pine, white spruce, and various wild bushes.  Deer love moving, eating, and bedding in this stream-side cover.

What you see on the right side of the fence looked exactly like the pasture on the left until the fence was built fifteen years ago.  The planted trees are being joined by volunteer trees that have naturally grown outward from The Sanctuary woods.

Exact same spot, but looking north instead of south.

Barron, scrubby pastureland on one side of the fence...

...lush, natural habitat on the other side.  It's almost impossible to not see deer grazing along here anytime from mid-summer until mid-winter.

The land in those photos is a fraction of the habitat we have developed as a part of the Federal Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).  But we haven't stopped there - straight north off the end of The Sanctuary we've started creating a travel corridor for deer by planting rows of spruces along an old fence line that cuts through a hay field.  Deer move in and out of The Sanctuary from the north woods but usually at night.  We hope better cover will encourage more movement during shooting...ahem, I mean daylight hours.

This weekend I started creating a cover screen along the south edge of the field to the right of what you see above.  The deer love grazing this field, but again are leery of doing so in the daylight.  I planted a row of about twenty Juneberry bushes spaced with a half-dozen silver maple, with the intent of adding a couple of rows of spruce or pine next year.  Both of the pictures below are the same view; the top pic was taken this morning, the bottom two weeks ago.  Incredible difference in the grasses and trees, huh?

           

My other tree project this spring was to transplant ninety white spruce along the west edge of a food plot that sits above what we call the Sand Flat.  About a mile from my folks' house the ditches of the county road are thick with young spruce trees that are doomed to be mowed off.  I dug 'em up and hauled 'em to our field, where they will be allowed to live for years in exchange for providing cover and seclusion to grazing deer and the hunters that want to shoot them.

Trust me, I'm driving between two rows of young spruce trees that look like....

...this.  And someday I'll be able to ride through that same path and have it look like....

...this, my favorite section of trail.  After weaving through these spruces you enter a pine grove before coming out to the field where I planted the rows of trees you couldn't see.

The pictures up there don't begin to do justice to the beauty of the habitat that's been created on our land.  Habitat built with hundreds of hours of work and sweat and bug bites and sunburn, but worth every bit of the pain.  And the wait - habitat development is a process, a slow one, so patience has been as much an ingredient as the sweat and work.  But now, seeing what's come of the journey thus far provides the vision and energy to continue the work each spring and summer.  Like always, I'm already eager to get back up there....the focus on my next trip will be food plots.  The habitat we've developed has plenty of natural browse for the deer, but a few good food plots lets our deer know just how much we care about them.  Until we shoot them.

Thanks for reading.  Go plant some trees.