Even though you're a Vandy fan I'll still help out.
I bought about 50 acres of land in Maury County last year and needed the same advice you're asking for. My property was 100% timber when I bought it. About half of it was open hardwood timber (mostly oaks and hickory) and the other half was rocky/cedars/small trees (but not really a thicket, fairly sparse). It is surrounded on all sides by over 1000 acres similar to mine. The nearest agriculture fields are about 3/4 of a mile away. There is a small pond on my property and there is a big creek about 1/2 mile away.
I got a lot of advice on here as well as from reading/watching stuff online. Here are some of the highlights from different people:
• Your Stihl saw will become your best friend but create the overall plan before cutting trees. Learn to identify the trees on your property and invite your Area Forester with the TN Div. of Forestry to give you a free visit to make recommendations on how to manage your forest. Let him know what you want in the way of wildlife or timber etc. If you have areas with a half-acre of junk forest consider cutting most all the trees to create clear-cuts which will provide valuable cover and more food than a food plot. Cover is king for deer.
• TWRA also has biologists that will help you put a plan together.
• You'll gain tons of native browse and cover created by cutting trees like beech, hickories, elm, sassafras, maple, poplar, ash, locust and a few other undesirables. Cut them in 2-3 acre patches and get back and stay out. The biggest bucks in the area will live there as long as you stay out of it. There will be an abundance of food and cover. The remaining mast bearing trees will be given more room and increase their production. If you run across a real nice timber tree for the future by all means save it if you want a pretty tree there. If it's a straight poplar you can climb next to 4 chinquapins, by all means save that tree. Them beech trees gotta go on my place. The ones I save are the middle aged ones. All the little ones get the axe and so do the huge ones, unhealthy looking ones and the ones near trails that we drive on.
• It is almost miraculous how the under growth / under story and regeneration explodes. It's like it's been pent up for decades and all of the sudden you give it a little sunlight and it breaks out of prison full bore with a fury. I'll say I wasted about 3 out of 9 years focusing on food plots when I should have been in habitat creation mode.
• On a small property, you need to be different than your neighbours. You have to have something that the deer know they can come to you and get. You need to figure out what that is. It's probably the need for great cover and native browse. If you're the thickest and safest place around the deer will figure that out. But maybe you have more white oaks or persimmons than anyone in the area so you need to exploit that. Maybe there isn't any fruit trees close by so you need to plant an orchard. Maybe there are no food plots or agricultural fields around so you could draw them in that way.
After 2 months of getting advice, walking my property over and over, and reading every article I could find, I finally put together my plan. I had a logger come out and select cut the timer for me. He took out the hickory, ash, maple, etc. larger than 14" above the stump and a few of the largest red oaks. None of the white oaks were cut (except a few that were in the way of the new roads and landing area).
I used some of the money I made from the logging to pay a dozer man to come out and create two foods plots (about 3 acres total), an area to plant an orchard, and shape up the new roads. The extra money also more than covered other expenses like gates, a new box blind, lime, fertilizer, taxes, fruit trees, etc.
The logger and dozer guys I hired did a great job. They are both big hunters as well so they could appreciate what my goals are for the property. It's amazing how different the farm looks now...tons of light can now reach the ground so the native browse has started popping up everywhere. I just got my soil test back for my new food plots so I can give them exactly what they need for my fall plantings. This project has been a blast so far. I find myself thinking about it all the time...what should I plant, where should I plant, where should my stands be located??? Let me know if you have any questions.
