The late winter and early spring months are arguably the best time to do and prepare for habitat improvements on your properties. This is never more true if you are going to enter a mature block of timber with the hopes of converting it into great bedding and security cover. But many parts of the whitetail world have little to no timber as is the case throughout the Midwest and certainly in Iowa. Vast timber areas, combination timber and farm land, and spars cover habitats should all have different strategies to maximize their holding power and hunt-ability. One size doesn’t fit all.
You can look at it this way; a deer needs bedding and security cover and a way to get away from predators, usually human. They also need a good source of daytime browse in the form of woody plants or broadleaf weeds. From there, they need (or prefer) an afternoon preferred food source free of harassment and predators, usually human. The final thing a deer needs is some sort of water source. Sounds pretty easy right? Shelter, Food, and Water. What makes the habitat planning for us hunters a little more sophisticated than just that is providing them in the right proportions. Or, emphasizing what deer don’t have in your particular environment or on your farm.
As you look toward making habitat improvements on your farm, keep in mind what the prevailing acres around you provide the local deer herd. This is very important when deciding what your farm needs to attract and hold deer throughout the hunting season.
Big Cover Acres
I’ll start this high-level overview with farms or hunting parcels located within vast acres of cover. This could be tens of thousands of acres of timber, marsh, warm season grasses, or just about any habitat that allows deer to bed virtually anywhere. This is common in the north like upper Minnesota, Wisconsin, the UP of Michigan and other areas with vast tracts of national and state forests. But it can also be a factor in other areas of the Midwest where huge chunks of public and/or private land are in mostly timber, swamp, or native grasses. In some cases, huge amounts of pasture ground intermixed with cover in the form of brushy draws, timber, and native grasses can mimic big timber. This super high ratio of cover to food distinguishes it from other deer habitats. I’m not talking about a few hundred acres in localized habitat; but rather thousands and thousands of continuous acres with bedding habitat almost everywhere and little to no preferred food sources.
In these cases, the least effective way to attract and hold deer to your farm is to provide more bedding cover. It is the opposite end of the spectrum that you should focus on…the food. And, because food is scarce, you don’t need to plant high cost grain plants like corn or beans. In fact, a solid green food plot strategy (even if money is no object) would attract and hold the lion share of deer to your farm. If water is already abundant, adding more water sources would do you little good unless you are trying to manipulate deer movement toward a water source that you are providing. In big cover areas, the key to attracting and holding more deer to your property is to provide the one element of the three that deer are lacking the most—food!
Combination Farms
Combination farms are probably the most common hunting parcels we experience as deer hunters. They can also be the hardest to improve and make stand out from all your neighboring farms because in combination areas, most hunting parcels already have some cover, some food, and most of the time water. You can’t attract and hold deer by simply providing them with what they don’t already have. Why? Because down every dirt road you’ll find row crops of beans and corn, lush alfalfa, thick draws, native grasses, marshes, timber, thickets, and food plots. I’ve hardly seen any combination farm in my life too that hasn’t had some sort of water source available nearby. In short, in combination areas, deer have most of what they need just about everywhere.
There are two things you can do in combination areas to make your farm stand out from all the rest. The first, is to provide the deer herd with the best daytime bedding cover there is. This means young hardwood regrowth areas from logging, hinge cuttings, or timber improvements. I find the best bedding in these timber environments is when this is done in pockets. If you have 40 acres of continuous timber (for example), clear cutting the whole thing would provide you with new young regrowth. But that regrowth won’t offer you much diversity and will be mature again beyond a deer’s reach in only a few years. Instead, create pockets of the same cover. This is why timber improvements and hinge cuttings work so well. Because every pocket of cover you create within this same 40 acres provides diversity and edge. Then, every two or three years you can just simply make a few more pockets of cover and you’ll never run out of space. This method also allows you to decide where within these 40 acres you want the deer to bed, making it much easier to hunt.
Another great way to provide bedding cover is to intermix stands of tall native grasses like switch grass with pockets of conifers and woody browse. This is, in fact, the best and most attractive bedding scenario I have ever witnessed and duplicated. The tall native grasses provide the deer with side and thermal cover. The pockets of conifers (like pines, cedars, and spruce) break up the native grasses so that multiple family groups and bucks will use the same areas. The conifers also provide great cover when it gets cold and windy. In many parts of Iowa, pockets of conifers mixed into native grasses would be the best cover a deer could find. Because deer need to feed a little during the day, having some areas within this cover in woody browse or briars would be the third key ingredient to make perfect bedding.
The second way to make a combination farm stand out is to provide evening food sources that are unpressured. This literally means providing a food plot of greens and grain that don’t get hunted or bumped—EVER! This allows the local deer herd to have great security in knowing that their main meal of the day will be without stress. Too often hunters plant great food plots only to attract a bunch of deer to them; then either turn them nocturnal or completely push them away because they are hunting those same food plots. Instead, provide these evening food sources as a way to manipulate deer movement in predictable bed to feed patterns…hunt the pattern but NOT the food. This very well could set your farm apart from all the others in the area.
Most combination farms have some form of water available. If you add a water source, do it to further help in manipulating deer movement to a huntable pattern.
Limited Cover Habitats
Whether it’s big agricultural settings, pasture, or more urban type settings, limited cover habitats are missing one key ingredient in being able to attract and hold deer. It’s the cover. As with big cover areas, adding the missing element can turn your limited cover farm into a deer magnet. Again, native grass plantings intermixed with confers and woody browse makes for great bedding and security cover. If you’re in an area that has abundant food until after the fall harvest, you will need to also add some food supply that remains when the combines go through. Limited cover habitats also need to be hunted on the fringes, so plan this when creating your cover.
In many places where limited cover exists, hunters can experience a scenario where there are thousands of acres of row crops with only small strips of timber, wind breaks, fence lines, ditches, and small pockets of timber. Adding even 10 feet of tall switch grass along a ditch or fence line, or encircling a pocket of timber will make that particular structure twice as attractive to the local deer herd. In limited cover areas, you can really pack a lot of deer into a small space if you hunt the fringes and the cover is thick. Each year, as I’m working with hunter/landowners to improve their properties, the number one thing they miss or overlook is identifying what deer need in their area. When planning out your habitat improvements, always start with trying to provide the local deer herd with what they are missing. If you can give them cover where non exists, or food where it is scarce, or exceptional bedding and unpressured food where there’s an abundance of both, that would be a great place to start. It requires an assessment of the local habitat and what surrounds your property both close by and within a mile or two. Some things cost more and take more time, some are just more fun while others are harder to do. But you will get your biggest bang for your time and money by focusing on what is missing.