Cutting Trees (untreated) - Shooters good or bad?

cyclonenation10 said:
For all of you habitat guys, I want to pose a question. On our property, we have cut several hundred trees the last year or two along fence lines and things at our farm (all bordering CRP). The fence lines were full of 5" - 20" diameter 10'-20' soft maple trees (mostly). We pretty much hinge cut everything a few feet off the ground, and left the down trees. It has created quite a mess, but the birds definitly use it. We experimented by treating some (tordon) and not treating other stumps. There are tons of shooters coming out of many of the stumps we did not treat, but on the surface, I can't think of anything wrong with this.. In my opinion, it provides some pretty dense cover for the pheasants and doesn't really seem to offer much opportunity for avian predators to use (shooters are probably only 1-2" thick.

Am I thinking about this right? What are the negatives of these shooters? I'm assumign eventually they will get tall enough and big enough to once again provide avian predators with perching spots? Am I missing anything here?
Click to expand...
It turns in to a mess, trust me. I did this 10 years ago, and now it is a jungle, which several are falling now. If your looking for the impenetrable jungle, then its great. But it does keep growing, basically in to trees. Just not the structure to stand for lifetimes... I will be cleaning up my mess with a chipper and treating the thousand stumps now LOL.
 
FCSpringer said:
It turns in to a mess, trust me. I did this 10 years ago, and now it is a jungle, which several are falling now. If your looking for the impenetrable jungle, then its great. But it does keep growing, basically in to trees. Just not the structure to stand for lifetimes... I will be cleaning up my mess with a chipper and treating the thousand stumps now LOL.
Click to expand...

That is good feedback LOL. Hoping I can stay ahead of that and keep plugging away. For as many trees as we have cut, it seems like there's always more to be done - I suppose that's the fun in managing your own property!
 
You can eventually kill the trees by bush hogging twice a year. The trouble with that where I'm from is your habitat will quickly turn into solid fescue. Wich is terrible habitat for almost everything.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top