Northwoods-tracking disease and infestations

[1STRANGEWILDERNESS]

I’ve been up in the northwoods a few years now. I had zero experience hunting deer in environments like this. I’m still pretty green but I’m always learning new things in the woods. I see a lot of common advice such as hunting clearcuts or finding oaks. What about when there aren’t any? Or the small pockets of oaks have vehicles lined up.. Now sure I could drive a long ways and find more desirable habitat (Sometimes I do) but hunting near my home has a lot of advantages, especially having a young family. Not to mention I have had encounters with some really really good deer for anywhere in these parts.

Most of the country I feel like the Emarald ash boarer already went through but it’s been rather recent in these parts. The ash tree would grow in some pretty dang wet terrain but generally not right in the swamp. Usually where there’s just a slight elevation change (edges, fingers, small islands). NOTE: I remember singing bridge talking about how in these vast conifer swamps he’ll find the bedding on the slightest increase in elevations. Not stuff you see on a topo map. I can’t disagree with that. One particular area I have put a lot of time in I’m noticing if I can get on an edge or island and it’s dead ash there is usually a lot of browse that is not available elsewhere. Dogwood, young ash, Various berry bushes. Most rublines I locate lead back to an edge with a lot of dead ash. There are a lot of edges out there from hardwoods to swamp where there’s just no food. No sunlight hitting the ground. Not to say you can’t find a good buck living on cedar somewhere because many people do but if the pressure is low they may not be doing that. I’ll cover over 5 sq miles and know of 3 occasional bow hunters and they hunt one spot. Not much pressure.

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Another pest that’s native is the spruce budworm. I talked with a forester about them for a while this summer as I was kinda baffled by the death. These budworms defoliate primarily balsam fir, white spruce is next on the list. I guess it is a cycle and sometimes the cycle stops as they kill every tree in a large area. Some tell me it’s a 40 yr cycle. I see Balsam fir growing on the edges a lot at just The slightest rise in elevation. Inches maybe a ft or two. Some between the swamp and the hardwoods. There’s a ton of it dead from the budworm In the upper peninsula. It’s a week tree as is. Seems they snap a lot from snow. Once dead they snap off pretty quick like. It looks like the hinge cut bedding areas you see habitat guys doing on their land. I’ve found a few good buck beds in or on the edge of these right on the swamp hardwoods transition.

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The next on the list is beach bark disease that is just taking out some large areas up here ( and all over the northeast). When I head up to hill country something tells me I’ll find some thick areas above the military crest where all the beech has died and let the light in. I don’t have any examples of this yet, so I guess I’ll have to go do some walking!

You can track pests and diseases by map in some cases. A quick google search can produce university studies or the us forest service sometimes maps it too.

[headgear]

You almost have to disregard food in the bigwoods, that isn't to say you can't find those killer isolated acorn or apple hot spots during early season, or even some preferred clearcuts that does will hang tight to during the rut but mostly the food is everywhere and kind of spread out so it is lower on the list. I like to concentrate on the larger bedding areas or zones, the bucks need someplace to escape to get some age on them and those are good places to start. The bucks will hit the clearcuts for food but they don't care when they get there, almost all of their feeding is under the cover of darkness and they could be bedding a long ways off. A mile to a bigwoods deer is nothing to get to food.

[JustinP]

I agree, food sources are tough to nail down, at least they always have been for me around here.
Zero oaks, and very few apples, no smoking gun food sources that I can name off.
Watch the ground cover and new woody growth of any one of about 200 species of plants and you'll see signs of browsing, but I don't think they make a point of coming to that spot to feed like they would an oak tree. I think it's just to go meals, meandering along and nibbling. They might come to huge area to feed, but not a point source.

I don't see as much activity in the ash swamps, but I also don't have many in the areas frequent either.

I have to go do some reading on the budworm thing, I haven't run across that yet, and I'm probably not all that far away from you either.

But you're right those infestations create new transitions, it's a good point to watch for them. Thanks.

[1STRANGEWILDERNESS]

I may have sounded misleading in referring to these as a food source. I don’t find it as a primary food source they are heading to. I find it to be where they are coming from. When I pick out transitions to scout on a map for bedding it just happens once I get boots on the ground sometimes it’s a bunch of dead ash or balsam In between the swamp and the hardwoods. Small pockets or 1-200 yd wide bands of them I guess. Not big acreage of it. It seems there is then good cover and browse for bedding or in some cases maybe it’s more of a staging area as it’s right near the bedding but the main food is far away and possibly being pressured. It’s more favorable than the huge open maple forest or the dense spruce swamp. Sometimes the hard line between the two doesn’t offer much. I do think they like to have some food near their beds. I notice in summer a lot of these areas aren’t seeing much use. There are a lot of other food sources they have but after a few frosts that stuffs gone. I don’t even know what they’re keying in on in summer honestly but I assume it does after the frost. I have observed the deer numbers going up in these tree die off areas right around the time we start getting frost. Generally, the better spots like this I have found tend to be .75-1 mile from areas where there is a primary food source like say Oaks or private food plots, there is even the occasional hay field around here but not many.

I attached some random photos of the swamp I hunt in and around ( not a lot of food available). I don’t have any pics of the hardwoods but you can pretty well picture the large 100+ Yr old maple groves. It could be situational to this area but I don’t see much browse in either those areas. None in the hardwoods and maybe some tag alder Or a fallen cedar in the swamp. I seem to find this buffer or dead zone of trees taking place right between the two on maple islands or ridges or fingers running into the swamp. Sometimes it’s really flourishing and maybe the bedding would be there already anyways but it sure doesn’t hurt matters.

[1STRANGEWILDERNESS]

I agree, food sources are tough to nail down, at least they always have been for me around here.
Zero oaks, and very few apples, no smoking gun food sources that I can name off.
Watch the ground cover and new woody growth of any one of about 200 species of plants and you'll see signs of browsing, but I don't think they make a point of coming to that spot to feed like they would an oak tree. I think it's just to go meals, meandering along and nibbling. They might come to huge area to feed, but not a point source.

I don't see as much activity in the ash swamps, but I also don't have many in the areas frequent either.

I have to go do some reading on the budworm thing, I haven't run across that yet, and I'm probably not all that far away from you either.

But you're right those infestations create new transitions, it's a good point to watch for them. Thanks.

I know what you mean about nailing down a food source. It can be impossible. Some areas here are the same. Sometimes it’s where a landowner is baiting the heaviest. That can pull some deer from a long ways off. Which explains the late night photos of bucks they get. Sure gets tough when there’s feed piles scattered all over around gun opener. That’s been a very challenging time for me as bedding all changes up right around then and I have no idea where all these piles are or aren’t. The pressure is different every gun season. Just depends who shows up around here.

Oh and that budworm deal, the forester told me that those flair ups can sometimes be very localized so perhaps you don’t have that going on near you. I noticed the edge of a spruce swamp from the road the other day where all spruce was dead for about a 300 yd stretch and 50 yds inward. He Also said it generally kilLs the trees on the outer edges as they get hit the worst but once you start penetrating the stand you’ll notice much less impact on the trees.

[JustinP]

I agree, food sources are tough to nail down, at least they always have been for me around here.
Zero oaks, and very few apples, no smoking gun food sources that I can name off.
Watch the ground cover and new woody growth of any one of about 200 species of plants and you'll see signs of browsing, but I don't think they make a point of coming to that spot to feed like they would an oak tree. I think it's just to go meals, meandering along and nibbling. They might come to huge area to feed, but not a point source.

I don't see as much activity in the ash swamps, but I also don't have many in the areas frequent either.

I have to go do some reading on the budworm thing, I haven't run across that yet, and I'm probably not all that far away from you either.

But you're right those infestations create new transitions, it's a good point to watch for them. Thanks.

I know what you mean about nailing down a food source. It can be impossible. Some areas here are the same. Sometimes it’s where a landowner is baiting the heaviest. That can pull some deer from a long ways off. Which explains the late night photos of bucks they get. Sure gets tough when there’s feed piles scattered all over around gun opener. That’s been a very challenging time for me as bedding all changes up right around then and I have no idea where all these piles are or aren’t. The pressure is different every gun season. Just depends who shows up around here.

Oh and that budworm deal, the forester told me that those flair ups can sometimes be very localized so perhaps you don’t have that going on near you. I noticed the edge of a spruce swamp from the road the other day where all spruce was dead for about a 300 yd stretch and 50 yds inward. He Also said it generally kilLs the trees on the outer edges as they get hit the worst but once you start penetrating the stand you’ll notice much less impact on the trees.

I haven't hunted rifle season for probably 14-15 years.
To many people around, and to much bait.
I'm a hermit and hate people, as far as the bait I don't care how anybody else hunts it just ain't for me.
So sometimes the areas I hunt aren't the best areas for deer numbers, but I tend to hunt where there is no baiters that I know of for a long ways and no sign of other hunters.
It's a little easier to fulfill those two requirements during archery season than gun season. But it's always a of a lot more work than I would like it to be.
I don't have piles of record book antlers stacked up in the corner of the garage, but I enjoy myself a lot and feed myself a little.