Should I fire up the chainsaw?

moellermd

moellermd

Super Moderator
Some of the ground I hunt has volunteer trees growing in the waterways and on the edge of the sloughs. Do you think it would be beneficial to cut them down? The rational being that it gives hawks a place to sit and scout from.
 
Trees on sloughs do a lot of harm. From transpiring water that would be better used attracting waterfowl, to giving raptors an easy way to hunt without any effort, to growing up and creating hollows for furbearers to nest in. They are easiest and cheapest to control when cut and treated young. Be careful what you use for a stump treatment as some have a very long residual and are groundwater contaminants. Another option would be to spray them this spring with Rodeo and then cut the tree down after it has died.
 
I could see that bennifiting on what you are talking about M, It makes sence. Here i can't possibly do it, too many trees. In your case where theres only a couple it sounds like a good concept. Must be why in some of those areas you see them on tellephone poles so much.
 
I'm a big fan of firing up the chainsaw but when you talk about water and sloughs it sounds like those volunteer trees are natural riparian buffer. They come up wherever the conditions are right and help to stabilize soil and provide diversity of cover. I don't worry too much about avian threat unless trees are in excess of 15' high since they need to get a pretty good run at a pheasant to get one.
 
I have noticed the DNR around here has been dozing the groves down when they get a new Public piece of ground. Some say its good, some say what about deer and winter cover. This is not just a couple trees. It is a hundred or more. Big old trees. One case there were nice 50' tall spruce, just a beautifull wind break. they knocked the whole thing down. That I am scratching my head on. They must be thinking the same thing or just doing a few test sites, I dont know.
 
I noticed on some public ground in MN that PF managed that they girdled a bunch of big cottonwoods. It just seems counterintuitive to cut down trees in order to manage nature but when you think about it it tends to make sense.
 
I guess it doesn't bother me when I see the trees getting removed. From my experience I have only seen this practice done on WPA by the USFW since they manage WPA's for waterfowl production thus the name WPA (Waterfowl Production Area). Here in MN the DNR manages WMA's (Wildlife Management Area) for all wildlife but I think they also look the location of the land and manage it based on land type.

On the same lines I have heard people question the practice of burning the prairie grass in the spring and how it kills nests and displaces wildlife. Most folks don't think about the native grasses that where getting choked out by the cool season grasses. They don't burn all the WPA's/WMA's/SNA's in a area so there is plenty of grass/habitat left and after the burn those warm seasons grasses have chance to take off.
 
I think brush, thick young trees, young evergreens thick enough for shelter are good things for pheasants. Scattered larger trees, extensive woodlands are not conducive to pheasants.
 
Mnmt, it depends upon where you're at. Up north, the evergreen plantings that Pheasants Forever has promoted over the years are very important as they encounter heavy snow and high winds almost every winter. Further south, like most of Kansas, these plantings may only be beneficial 1 out of every 10-20 years. Their capacity to spread and escape their planted rows, invading the surrounding countryside is a serious problem. If you've seen pics of eastern and central Oklahoma and Kansas, you might understand the millions of acres that have been degraded by these plantings. Here, patches of kochia, Russian thistle, CRP, and heavy crop residue can usually replace those plantings and avoid the negative results that they cause. The pheasants only occasionally use those plantings, and then usually during the worst of weather. They are expensive to establish if only needed for survival so rarely.
 
PD yup, Lot of difference in the pheasant range North to South.
One thing for sure pheasants are not a woodland creature.
In the North patches of bushy stuff on the prairie is best.
Lots of pheasant will survive in the North at building sites. Best place during a tough Winter. Most have a row or two of evergreen of some sort. Very good during the freezing rain.
 
I'm glad to see an agency make such a united effort on their public lands. I can't see Kansas doing that. It's more of an area by area thing. We've made this hard by our dedicated effort in the past to put tree plantings out. We've developed a mentality in out public that all trees are good for wildlife. Unfortunately, where prairie species are concerned, this is far from the case. To take that a step further, with prairie obligate species like the prairie chicken, it is critical that all vertical structure be removed from the prairie because they are genetically programmed to not nest within 1/2 mile of vertical structure. That means for every tree, telephone pole, or wind turbine, over 640 acres are lost to nesting for those species. So the next time you hear the reporters/politicians on TV telling you how "GREEN" wind energy is, remember that they are putting these windmill fields right in the flint hills and other primary prairie chicken habitats on top of the hills, removing thousands of acres from those species nesting habitats. The spelling should be "GREED" not "GREEN". Sermon over!
 
PD, I guess I never really thought about those windmills like that. They originally put some up beside some public hunting ground in North Central Iowa and the pheasants stayed put. That set of windmills did not seem to bother them very much, if at all. However, a company recently put up 400 windmills near some private that I hunt and I noticed a difference. It was good for me, more birds, but they ran some of their gravel driveways, some about a half mile long, through areas that used to have enough grass to support birds during the winter.
 
Eight miles north of Ellsworth here in Kansas they put a big windmill farm on the high ridges north of interstate 70. It is all grassland on the hills between the Smoky Hill and Saline rivers in mid-grass prairie in the very habitat that Prairie Chickens would have inhabited. That will negate those acres from being nesting habitat for as long as the towers persist. Unfortunately, the towers may persist longer that the Prairie Chicken population. Pheasants are not a prairie obligate species and seem to not have the same adaptive response to vertical structure as chickens do. Lucky for the pheasants and those of us who chase them. This is like putting offshore oil wells in the Great Barrier Reef that is currently reeling from a tanker leaking oil into it right now. The other thing to watch is putting those towers in bird migration corridors. Bird strikes are a significant cause of death where these fields are established. If they are located poorly, many sensitive species could truely pay the price.
 
Unfortunately, I have to agree with you on the GREEN meaning GREED thing. These companies and our own government could care less about some of these wild animals that are being pushed out of this world because of the greed by everyone to go green. As much as I am for saving money and helping the environment, I think they need to be considerate of hunters, which I realize they could care little for, and nature itself. Looking for jobs right now though, these are some of the best paying companies right now and require little experience.
 
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