Page 10 - Georgia Forestry - Fall 2017

FOREST MANAGEMENT
10Tips
for Planting Deer-Hunting
Orchards
Planting fruit- and mast-bearing trees is a great way to enhance your land for wildlife and hunting. Combined with efforts to increase understory plant diversity — like
food plots, timber thinning and prescribed fire — planting wild- life trees will help ensure food and attraction for wildlife across several months of the year.
Though it takes a little more patience to see the payoff with trees than with other practices, you can ensure the fastest growth and quickest fruit and acorn production by following these recom- mendations, which are based on my family’s experiences growing wildlife trees for decades in Georgia.
12Plant native tree species Avoid non-native invasives like autumn olive. Some of these species
do have wildlife benefits, but there are always native alternatives that are as good or better.
Pay attention
to your region
Buy tree seedlings from a nursery that is in or near your climate zone and physiographic region. Trees that are adapted to your climate and soils are more likely to survive and thrive than varieties from distant regions.
3 Diversity is key
There is no single tree species that
is the magic tree for deer. Diversity will always win. Also, evaluate your exist- ing hunting area and determine which tree species are already common and focus on planting tree species that are under-represented or absent.
4 Order and plant trees
in winter or early spring
Seedlings are dormant at this time. You will get much higher survival on transplanted seedlings when you move them while dormant.
by Lindsay Thomas, Jr.
8 | GEORGIA FORESTRY