How to manage/hunt THICK, logged hill sides

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String Music

String Music

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Sep 24, 2007
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Knoxville
Our place was logged a few years ago and the hill sides are incredibly thick. This makes for great deer bedding and habitat, but is practically impossible to hunt. The hillsides have still have large mature trees, but under these trees is pole-sized timber and briars.
How in the world do you manage this so you can hunt the area?

I try getting as high up on the ridge overlooking the hillsides and logging road benches in an attempt to see deer, but my gosh, I still can't hardly see anything. This is basically how our whole property is.

Great for deer, but a nightmare to try and hunt.

I'm thinking about running a dozer through the area and creating a main logging road system running around the mountains in hopes of the deer using this as their main means of travel.

Any other ideas on how to manage/hunt these step, nasty hillsides?
 
I put roads all throughout my place. Dont even use alot of them, they are just there. I cut off all motorized vehicle traffic on my property from September 1 to end of deer season. Then cut it off again in Turkey season. Basically used the old growed up logging roads for my roads. Also put in little fields all over. For the long term, Im doing TSI to thin out some of the thick pole timber. Leaving the best for wildlife or timber form and thinning everything pretty drastically. You would be amazed how quickly some timber can start to clear up. I can tell a huge difference in the 4 years Ive had my place.
 
Forgot to mention, A good contolled burn will help alot too in some cases. Hard to do in this rough terrain but you can manage if you can do your road system right. But of course roads in our type terrain depend on the terrain, not necessarily where we want them to be :cry:
 
I've got the same habitat. Right now I have been putting in dozer trails, plots in clearing on the tops of the ridge and TSI (basically just cutting down as many 3-4 in diameter tulip poplars as I can manage to help free the oaks). I also put in "deer trails" that focus deer around areas I want to hunt.

Its great for bedding...hard to hunt and hard to pattern mature bucks (does and young ones are pretty easy). But, when the pressure kicks up I get the deer. I saw more deer on mine than a much more mature and heavily hunted parcel close by...they know where they are safest. I make the bowls that I cant get to sancuaries and hunt around the outsides. The 137 right by me just got cut and you can't walk through it. Im thinking about buying it and putting in a 3 acre plot in the bottoms. I'll have some serious carrying capacity and have 250 acres of the best thick cover for miles...
 
I wish they would have left some of the area untouched. There are old logging roads throughout the area. I was thinking about freshening up the roads and windrowing the ditches to force them into pinch points where our stands would be. I will have to get in with a chainsaw and clear out a few shooting lanes.

It's very difficult to pattern mature bucks up in these mountains. I'm hoping to make some type of predictable travel route to catch the bucks crusing around the mountains. Hopefully with the freshened up road system and windrowed areas, it will force them by our stands where we can actually see them!
 
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I'd be tempted to make a couple of small (1-2 acre) clearings on flat spots so you could start some food plots and give you a place to hunt. You could alternate them to reduce over-hunting.

You can obviously help thin out the undergrowth, but some of that is just going to be a waiting game on the trees getting bigger.
 
Learn how to hunt terrain and then do a little chainsaw action.


Find the saddles, benches and pinch points. Saw some trails through the thick and nasty to route the deer by your stands.
 
My farm was logged 4 or so years ago as well. The best thing i found to do is put lockon stands high as u can in a tree. Sit down in it and send a man, with a weedeater with a blade, on it into the thicket and cut shootn lanes. I cut three on the side of my hills all startn at the stand. If I spot movement in the first or second shootn lane it gives me time to set up at the 3rd lane for the shot.
 

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