My favorite hunting area is gone ...

[lt-m-grow]

With all do respect, I think this place looks great.   There are plenty of trees and the understory looks thick enough to hold plenty of deer.   Deer like those new tree tops on the ground too.  And as others have said, it will be even better to come.   Heck keep that DNR guy's phone number, you will be owing him a scotch very soon. :-)

Also, sometimes I think we get too invested in one piece of land.   It is always fun to figure out a piece of property - sure.  But, we start going to the same trees, the same patterns etc. I've been there.  Yet when I move on,  I always like the new places better and the wanderlust of what's over the next hill is what "hunting" is about (for me).

[John3]

Do not be too upset... When the browse comes back you will kill more deer than ever.

Some of my best bowhunting is over a clear cut logged area.  Big time deer browse!!!! It may be slow this first season, but I know the next 4 or 5 seasons will be superb.

John III

[1gutpile]

try having a piece of land 25 years that you managed and grew up and your son grew up on all of a sudden sold and every single tree cut off of it with houses stacked side by side ..used to kill a p&y every year  there ...makes me sick..gut

[Biggie Hoffman]

You'll get to learn it all over again! That prospect should excite you! The habitat will be better for the critters. More browse, and more cover.
This didn't hurt your hunting area at all. The next 3 to 4 years it should be better!

[AMB]

Doesn't look like 'destruction' to me, looks like they thinned a pine plantation.  Trees are a crop and their comes a time to thin and to clearcut. Your hunting area isn't gone, it's being managed for a RENEWABLE resource.  If you showed me a picture of a mall or parking lot, then I would agree with you.  If you are wondering, yes I am in the timber business and yes we have families and need to work 52 weeks of the year like everybody else.  Quit crying and go scouting the deer aren't far away!

[Shawn Leonard]

I too have to agree with Ray, they opened up the understory and new stuff will start to grow right away. In a few years it will be great, still plenty to hunt it looks like and as Bill said now ya can do a few plantings to enhance the area. i know it hurts now, but I think you may end up being a very happy camper! Shawn

[wingnut]

My dad and I had that happen to an area not once but twice over 20 years.  First they came in and took all the big pines and then 15years later they came and took the lodgepole.  You know the hunting never changed.  We still took bucks off of the same trails year after year.

Mike

[John Scifres]

I'm not much of a wise-user kind of guy.  In fact I've been known to hug a tree or two.  But, my little honey-hole of 20 private acres was logged heavily in the summer of 2007.  In the fall of 2007, the deer were still there just as heavy as always and my 10 year old son and I tag-teamed a doe in November.  It looks even better this year as the understory is thick and offers the deer more security than ever.  It used to be an early-morning/late-evening, catch them between feed and bed transition zone.  Now it holds deer all day.  I'm looking forward to the youth hunt later in the month to see what my daughter and son can shoot  

[Mr.Magoo]

Just for a sense of scale, the pines in the first pic are about as big around as your leg (bad cell phone pic).

Anyhow, no it's not the end of the world (though I wish they'd done it earlier or after the season).
As for the "wise conservation" angle.  Cutting all the oaks, poplar, hickory, birch etc... and leaving scrubby pines hardly seems to leave the bio-diversity that once was there (though I'm sure it puts more money in someone's pocket).  It does, however, give us another "pine plantation"; as my logger friend points out above.

[Jerry Jeffer]

I would throw a few bags of full draw seed in those open places since it looks like they didn't plant for erosion control. In a few weeks you will have a food plot to hunt.

[gregg dudley]

What Ray and Biggie said.  The next 3-5 years you will see more deer there than you ever have.  That first picture looks great.  There will be a lot of browse growing up where the sunlight is hitting the ground.  

It does stink that they took oaks, didn't clean up the mess, and did it so close to the hunting season.  It also is not as "pretty" as it was.  BUT, you will see and kill deer there.  Trust me-We live this life on timber leases in the South.

Since it is public land, be careful planting seed unless you want to draw as many people as deer.

[GrnMtnTradNut]

Give it a few years and it will be the best spot around especially when the pressure is on you are going to have the best bedding and browsing area around,it happened to a state land I have hunted in Ohio for 10 years the best spot I got noew and nobody hunts it and they cannot drive the deer out during shot gun it is so good I have let numerous P&Y bucks walk and seen as many as 14 racked bucks in 1 morning it will get better. Good luck

[bawana bowman]

Magoo,
 Have 151 acres I hunt in north central Alabama. It was logged 1 month before season opening. Takes me 12 hours of driving to get there from east central florida.
After hearing of the logging we thought about not going that year but decided why not. When we arrived I couldn't believe the mess the loggers left! (In Florida what isn't good for timber is turned to mulch and sold leaving a nice clean site.) But this turned out to be a blessing, plenty of browse, lots of bedding areas, not to mention appx. 15 years of dry readily available fire wood.
We thought the deer were gone, but they had already moved back in. Opening morning I shot a doe, that afternoon a 4 point, and on day three repeated with another doe in the morning and a doe that evening.
With the regeneration of the property over the past 3 years the herd has gotten larger. And as an  added bonus the rabbit and bird populations have exploded, leading to a large increase in coyotes! All kinds of targets running around there now, So smile your looking at a good thing!  

[Liquid Amber]

In many cases WMAs are not public land but industrial timberland leased to the state for a small fee.  The State then manages it for public use.  The harvesting and managament is done by the landowner not the state.  A little inconvenience can be a small price for a place to hunt.    

Most companies reframe from logging during the hunting seasons on these public hunting areas.  One very good reason is the amount of vandalism on logging equipment and potential conflicts between the hunting public and contractors.

Deer are attracked by change and disturbance in their environment.  One of the best stands is the cab of the loader after the job has shut down for the day.

Deer are browsing animals.  Opening the canopy and allowing light to hit the ground will soon provide an array of "year round" attraction.

[akbowbender]

When we had our land in Upper Michigan logged, I thought that we had really made a mistake because of the mess the logger made. The aspen did need to be taken because it was getting to the age that it was blowing down, but I felt the logger had overdone some of the widening for the main road down one of the ridges on the edge of the property. It was a muddy mess and so wide that when I saw it, I commented that a C130 could land on it!

Now, 10 years later, "C130" is all grassed in, there are blackberry patches all along it, and there are deer and grouse everywhere! The second growth aspen and maple are coming in thick and the deer love it! The trees that were left are now big enough for tree stands and there are plenty of ambush sites. Yup, it looks different, but I'm having just as much fun hunting it as I did before the logging!

[Deadsmple]

I agree with some of the others up top. I don't see anything to get me upset. In fact I believe like others have said, that place will get hotter than ever once the browse comes back. Don't despair good time are coming. Good luck.

Losing a treasured and familiar hunting ground is heartbreaking--I suspect most of us have been through it but it never fails to stun you. We need to protect the wild places (and the not-so-wild oplaces) better than we have. Can't leave it up to the DNR folks entirely.

[Mr.Magoo]

Appreciate the comments.  Hopefully the experienced folks are right and it'll be better than ever.

The land is Army Corps of Engineers land.  The DNR guy made it clear he was responsible for the timber sale and its timing.

I also got the message that not a lot of thought went into the sale.  When I asked him how they planned what to cut, what end environment they wanted to produce etc ... he said "Whatever is the least amount of work."

Anyhow, I'm over the shock and am going out this weekend to do a detailed walk-through and find new "hot spots".

[donw]

one of my favorite areas is now a border patrol substation/helipad....

[JStark]

I sure hope logging it to the bare earth and leaving a lot of duff is better, too, but I'm more skeptical.  Old hardwoods are difficult to come by, and pines don't give as much.  I do think there'll be forage for a couple of years, as long as they didn't so decimate the ground that it just gives bad weeds (do you have star thistles out there?), but after the pines choke out that forage, I'd be more doubtful of deer sticking around so much, especially if there's better pickin's in local private land.

I'm not all against logging, but public land is public, and so it's something we outta have a say in, and I shudder to contemplate the alternative to a judicial system for righting wrongs, though I can see it in Haiti and Sudan and other less fortunate places of the world.