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hinge cutting
Topic Started: Jan 4 2015, 07:07 PM (1,318 Views)
Posted Image Muskoka Whitetails
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I'm considering doing some hinge cutting on my farm next year. Has anyone done this and have any suggestions on best tree species to use it on, tree diameters etc? I do have some concerns. If you hinge cut a tree to lay it down to the ground I would think that the deer would browse it so heavily in the winter that they will kill it. Any help on this subject would be much appreciated.
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"A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter has no gallery to applaud or disapprove his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importantance of this fact."                                      Aldo Leopold
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Renegade
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Atikokan, Ontario
Muskoka Whitetails
Jan 4 2015, 07:07 PM
I'm considering doing some hinge cutting on my farm next year. Has anyone done this and have any suggestions on best tree species to use it on, tree diameters etc? I do have some concerns. If you hinge cut a tree to lay it down to the ground I would think that the deer would browse it so heavily in the winter that they will kill it. Any help on this subject would be much appreciated.
I'm curious about this as well. Be nice to have before and after pictures too.
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Donnie7
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I think that the trees have to be kept up off the ground not lying directly on the ground. If they are left up above, they should live for some time providing browse and cover at the same time. There are several videos on this on utube.

Donnie
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Friggs
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Donnie and Muskoka,
Sounds like you need to read Jim Brauker's website and blog. He also is finishing a new book "Extreme Deer Habitat" which will be a electronic version because it will have videos and loads of photos, to big for a book. You can sign up now and and get the first chapter free and see if you like it. I really enjoyed it and will be buying a copy. This first chapter "Plan before you plunge" will shed some light on the basics. http://extremedeerhabitat.com/

I recommend you plan your strategy before you start cutting, do as much research on the subject before you start cutting. Its just not about cutting trees, its also about deer movement and plot and stand location.

Friggs
Edited by Friggs, Jan 5 2015, 08:32 AM.
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Hey Friggs, thanks for the link, lots of good information there. :cheers:
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"A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter has no gallery to applaud or disapprove his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importantance of this fact."                                      Aldo Leopold
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Partikle
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Donnie7
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Friggs
Jan 5 2015, 08:27 AM
Donnie and Muskoka,
Sounds like you need to read Jim Brauker's website and blog. He also is finishing a new book "Extreme Deer Habitat" which will be a electronic version because it will have videos and loads of photos, to big for a book. You can sign up now and and get the first chapter free and see if you like it. I really enjoyed it and will be buying a copy. This first chapter "Plan before you plunge" will shed some light on the basics. http://extremedeerhabitat.com/

I recommend you plan your strategy before you start cutting, do as much research on the subject before you start cutting. Its just not about cutting trees, its also about deer movement and plot and stand location.

Friggs
Hey Friggs, I have ventured to the site before and watched several videos from Jim on you tube. He certainly seems to know his stuff. Another guy I have watched some videos from is Jake Ehlinger from Habitat Solutions. He seems to have a few video clips out there as well.

Your point about having a plan before you start the cutting seems to be very important and I think that is where I am struggling. Going and planting a food plot or cutting some trees for bedding area is pointless if you can't figure out how it will impact the deer.

Donnie
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trophy
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If you only have aspen, pine, and spruce on your property, hinge cutting is basically useless unless you use it for barriers, Although even for that, you mind aswell cut the firewood out and leave the tops.
Aspen, jack pine and spruce will not live and they will not get browsed.
I have a forest that benefits more from selective cutting then hinging.
Edited by trophy, Jan 5 2015, 05:37 PM.
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Friggs
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Donnie7
Jan 5 2015, 04:48 PM
Friggs
Jan 5 2015, 08:27 AM
Donnie and Muskoka,
Sounds like you need to read Jim Brauker's website and blog. He also is finishing a new book "Extreme Deer Habitat" which will be a electronic version because it will have videos and loads of photos, to big for a book. You can sign up now and and get the first chapter free and see if you like it. I really enjoyed it and will be buying a copy. This first chapter "Plan before you plunge" will shed some light on the basics. http://extremedeerhabitat.com/

I recommend you plan your strategy before you start cutting, do as much research on the subject before you start cutting. Its just not about cutting trees, its also about deer movement and plot and stand location.

Friggs
Hey Friggs, I have ventured to the site before and watched several videos from Jim on you tube. He certainly seems to know his stuff. Another guy I have watched some videos from is Jake Ehlinger from Habitat Solutions. He seems to have a few video clips out there as well.

Your point about having a plan before you start the cutting seems to be very important and I think that is where I am struggling. Going and planting a food plot or cutting some trees for bedding area is pointless if you can't figure out how it will impact the deer.

Donnie
Donnie,

First I'm no expert on habitat management and I'm still learning a lot and with the internet it never ends.
You will hear many different ideas and suggestions that will make your head spin. So make a plan that will work for you and your property.

This is how I simply see it and doing it.... First, you want to keep one or several doe groups on your property and manage these groups depending on the size and layout of your property. Simply, these doe groups will pull in the bucks in the fall during the rut. So you have to look after the ladies if you want gentlemen callers during hunting season. :wink:
Doe's will stay within their home range and fawn if they have water, food and shelter and are not stressed. They will bed close to their food sources such as food plots or hinge cuts of selected browse type trees or young growing trees such as suckers from a tree stump. Doe's will feed roughly 5 times during a 24 hour period and more with young browsing fawns. Deer eat many types of forbes and browse depending on the time of year.
Harvest does when the groups gets to large or food is getting low or scarce keep groups about 4-6 deer and only shoot older and mature does or better the matriarch. We shoot 1-2 mature does every 2-3 years mostly during bow season and/or by novice gun hunters. This all depends on the make-up of your property, is it all woods and bush, agricultural, old agriculture that has gone fallow with clearings.
What Trophy said below is dead on, if you have trees of no or little food value to deer such as mature conifers which die during hinging can only be used for creating barriers, funnels and firewood, so look for hardwood, semi-hardwood deciduous trees and cedar.
Walk your property 2-3 weeks after hunting season and before winter yarding. Make sure you have several days of snow on the ground and see how the deer move through your property. See where they access your property and where they bed and feed on your property and water sources and draw this all on a map or aerial photo. Map out types of areas such as swamps, creeks and creek bottoms, high ridges, steep slopes, hardwood forests, mixed bush and so on. Look for browse-lines or lack of in certain areas like cedars and hardwoods, these could be feeding areas.
So, basically you will want to hunt in between bedding and feeding areas and create corridors or funnels to bring deer close to your stand while bow hunting. You want to make sure you have some distance between bedding and feeding areas so not to spook deer.
Lastly, as mentioned above and the most important part.... the wind and spooking deer.... all this habitat work will be a waste if the deer detect you (smell, hear or see you) as your walking into your hunting stand. Make sure you have several hunting spots for different wind directions and make sure it has marked walking trails through good cover so not to be seen or heard. Make sure your up wind.
Most hunt camps have one tree stand or shooting house per hunter during the gun season and they wonder why they don't see or shoot anything and others do. Why...because they are being detected by wind, sound, sight or they're not located in between food and bedding. That's why some have bait near their stands and that's where they shoot most of their deer.

Start off slow with maybe one site first maybe near an existing foodplot or feeding area and create a bedding area near that site and keep the wind and the hunter entry point in mind when designing this bedding area. Keep the bedding and feeding area maybe 100-150 yards apart and see the results of sightings and/or success after a year or two. Create or improve a feeding area by opening the canopy by hinge cutting and letting the sunlight to the forest floor so forbes and browse will grow. Use trail camera's also in these feeding areas on created trails 1-2 ft. wide to and from bedding and feeding area.

I hope this helps....Friggs
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Great post Friggs. For myself I am more concerned about providing food at a height deer can reach in the winter. I have up to a hundred deer yarding on my property and I'm concerned they will over browse it. If I hinge cut they will have more food but I think they will kill the trees the first winter after doing the hinge cutting. Also if the snow is deep with no base like last year the fawns may get hung up in the hinge cut areas if they jump off the trails making easy pickings for the wolves. Do you have any Ideas specifically in regards to wintering/yarding deer?
Quote:
 
"A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter has no gallery to applaud or disapprove his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importantance of this fact."                                      Aldo Leopold
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Friggs
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Muskoka Whitetails
Jan 6 2015, 11:23 PM
Great post Friggs. For myself I am more concerned about providing food at a height deer can reach in the winter. I have up to a hundred deer yarding on my property and I'm concerned they will over browse it. If I hinge cut they will have more food but I think they will kill the trees the first winter after doing the hinge cutting. Also if the snow is deep with no base like last year the fawns may get hung up in the hinge cut areas if they jump off the trails making easy pickings for the wolves. Do you have any Ideas specifically in regards to wintering/yarding deer?
Mukoka,
Wow, that's a lot of deer yarding.
The biologists and experts don't recommend winter feeding and recommend Mother Nature will look after them. But many people do and this will cause many problems to habitat and the herd.
If you had to really feed deer on your property I would hinge cut a few hardwoods, semi-hardwoods and white cedar in or very near the yarding area and inside good cover. Don't cut all the trees in one area and spread out the downed trees and you don't want to destroy the thermal cover (conifers) of the yarding area. A deer's metabolism slows down during the winter so they don't need much food and by you cutting trees in their yarding area might stress them out. Some people feed processed feed or grains and even hay which is not recommended this all costs big bucks (no pun) and not cost effective.

If you provide good food through late summer and fall such as well fertilized food plots of clover, grains, brassica's, corn, soyabeans etc.. The deer will go into winter with a good storage of body fat. All the deer that we shot this fall had about 3/4" of body fat and I have never seen that much body fat in all these years of hunting my property.
Yearlings are usually the first to die off during the winter because their bodies are growing and very little body fat is produced and stored for winter.
I guess it all depends on the length of this nasty weather and certain factors such as cold temperatures and snow depth and maybe Mother Nature will gives us a early spring or milder weather in the near future.

Friggs
Edited by Friggs, Jan 7 2015, 11:43 AM.
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Friggs
Jan 7 2015, 11:42 AM
Muskoka Whitetails
Jan 6 2015, 11:23 PM
Great post Friggs. For myself I am more concerned about providing food at a height deer can reach in the winter. I have up to a hundred deer yarding on my property and I'm concerned they will over browse it. If I hinge cut they will have more food but I think they will kill the trees the first winter after doing the hinge cutting. Also if the snow is deep with no base like last year the fawns may get hung up in the hinge cut areas if they jump off the trails making easy pickings for the wolves. Do you have any Ideas specifically in regards to wintering/yarding deer?
Mukoka,
Wow, that's a lot of deer yarding.
The biologists and experts don't recommend winter feeding and recommend Mother Nature will look after them. But many people do and this will cause many problems to habitat and the herd.
If you had to really feed deer on your property I would hinge cut a few hardwoods, semi-hardwoods and white cedar in or very near the yarding area and inside good cover. Don't cut all the trees in one area and spread out the downed trees and you don't want to destroy the thermal cover (conifers) of the yarding area. A deer's metabolism slows down during the winter so they don't need much food and by you cutting trees in their yarding area might stress them out. Some people feed processed feed or grains and even hay which is not recommended this all costs big bucks (no pun) and not cost effective.

If you provide good food through late summer and fall such as well fertilized food plots of clover, grains, brassica's, corn, soyabeans etc.. The deer will go into winter with a good storage of body fat. All the deer that we shot this fall had about 3/4" of body fat and I have never seen that much body fat in all these years of hunting my property.
Yearlings are usually the first to die off during the winter because their bodies are growing and very little body fat is produced and stored for winter.
I guess it all depends on the length of this nasty weather and certain factors such as cold temperatures and snow depth and maybe Mother Nature will gives us a early spring or milder weather in the near future.

Friggs
The MNR used to have a huge feeding program where my farm is and stopped it about 6 years ago. I basically just continued what they were already doing along with others in the area. I do feed the deer all winter with grain and second cut Alfafa, and yes it is very expensive! I spend almost $2000 in feed alone and what it costs me in gas is insane. The deer do much better with the feeding all winter, coyotes/wolves don't seem to have any opportunity when they have fat to burn. I usually only have one or two kills a year. Last year was bad and an exception. I lost one mature buck that was injured, had an infection the size of a football on the side of his face and could not see out the eye. I also lost 13 fawns and from what I could tell, most were not coyote kills, they simply got off the trails and sunk in the deep snow and could not get back out. The coyotes were not much better off in the deep snow. Basically the deer have thermal cover but choose not to use it. They prefer good viewing areas for security as they are in such good shape the cold is not an issue. That being said I'm worried about over browsing so need to get more tops to ground level. I am not worried about stressing the deer out as they come running to the noise of the saw instead of away. This year I think I will do some different size cuts to experiment before doing any large scale projects. My property was logged about 12 years ago but definitely needs some thinning of the large over story trees again to get some sunlight down to ground level again. I understand the idea and technique of hinge cutting. What I am looking for are tips from people that have done it such as which species and diameters work best for better survivability once cut. Height to cut off the ground for hinge for winter feeding. Species that are able to be cut in the winter and still bend without snapping, best time of year to do the cutting. These are the types of things I am looking for answers to.
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"A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter has no gallery to applaud or disapprove his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importantance of this fact."                                      Aldo Leopold
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Friggs
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Muskoka,
Sounds like you have system in place and its working for you.
I think you should email Jim or Jake and pose your questions to them. They're both from Michigan and have more knowledge then I do or most people.
I know you'll find Jim's email address on his avatar. Jake's I don't know, maybe ask Jim.

http://www.michigan-sportsman.com/forum/showthread.php?t=524987

Friggs
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Friggs
Jan 7 2015, 01:21 PM
Muskoka,
Sounds like you have system in place and its working for you.
I think you should email Jim or Jake and pose your questions to them. They're both from Michigan and have more knowledge then I do or most people.
I know you'll find Jim's email address on his avatar. Jake's I don't know, maybe ask Jim.

http://www.michigan-sportsman.com/forum/showthread.php?t=524987

Friggs
Thanks Friggs, I'll do that.
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"A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter has no gallery to applaud or disapprove his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importantance of this fact."                                      Aldo Leopold
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