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StrategicHabita... - Habitat Plans and Hunting Setups
Randy VanderVeen - 616-560-7488 - randy@strategichabitat.com
Back in March of 2020 a landowner in MD contacted me to check out a couple hunting properties in order to develop a habitat plan and create some hinge cut bedding and visual screens since his woods was wide open with a closed canopy overhead.
The following hunting season he saw more bucks and rutting activity there than he ever had before, so he had me come back the next 2 years to create more of the same on both properties.
Since then he’s been sharing photos and texting me on how bucks have moved in and are living in the high-ground hinge cuts. He now has 4 and 5 yr olds showing up on his cameras.
Last year he told me he bought a property in western KY and asked if I could come with my good friend Jake Ehlinger so we could get twice as much hinge cut bedding and screening done.
So in January of this year he gave Jake and me a quick tour of the property so we could identify the best areas to create great hinge cut bedding and travel routes.
The areas we noticed on a topo map prior to our visit, turned out to be great spots where deer would naturally want to bed.
High ground extending off food plots into the timber before gradually getting narrow and slowly dropping off into the creek bottoms.
Deer will bed just over the edge from the ridgetop giving them a visual advantage over the ground below, and monitoring rising thermals in the morning. In the afternoon they can bed on the downwind side of the ridgetop so they can see everything below and in front of them, and smell what’s behind them.
For landowners with hilly properties, these can be some of the best locations to look for and build your habitat and hunting opportunities around.
So after identifying several of these areas, Jake and I hinge cut a few of these ridge tops to give deer a safe place to bed with cover on both sides of the ridge, with an open travel corridor leading deer up the gradual incline all the way to a large 4 acre food plot.
To give you an idea what this ridge looks like after we finished cutting trees, here’s a short video walk thru starting about right here and heading down the ridge. You can see by the topo lines that the ridge drops down faster on the south side than the north side.