Native forbs/invasives

So this is the entrance to my hunting area (40acres). Couple O' questions here... what are the bushes/trees with the white looking leaves and flowers ? I'm pretty sure they're invasive and not benefiting deer. I mowed all of this and let it grow back. Different stuff popped up like flowers some purple some yellow, thistle, horse weeds. I may plant it, I may not, but I'll definitely mow it two or three times per year. The one picture showes what it was like after I got a trail cut though it. Could somebody tell me what kind of weed that is growing on the sides of the trail? I don't want invasive stuff, I want native stuff that benefit the deer most. Lastly, how would you use this area? I'm working on getting a plan together for after season, the second pic is clover from the top of the hill now to the bottom part down by the hay field now

 

The shrubs look like Russian Olive. If so it's definitely invasive.
The grass like stuff looks like wood oats. Does it have any seed heads on it yet? Wood oat seed is a flat fan shaped cluster. If so it's native.

 

Nah, I think it's deer tongue grass. I just don't know if it's good or bad.

 

Oh yeah, I think you're right. I don't know either about that one.

 

I'm def gonna get those Russian olives out of there though in January.

 

I agree with the deer tongue grass, as far as the other plants , need better/close up pics. If it were me I'd leave cover and since you have 40 acres , utilize the open ground.

 

After owning 40 acres for about 10 years now, I will say this. While it seems like the right idea to manicure and mow the property, it's really about the worst thing you can do to promote wildlife. There's certainly a time and a place for it, but I've decided to let my small 40 acres get as thick and nasty as possible over the last 5 years or so. It has really changed how wildlife are using the property and in a good way.

I think we call those tree's Autumn Olive around here and they should go for sure. They will out compete your native cover. I would personally go the hack and squirt method this winter and kill every one of them while leaving them standing to keep the little bit of cover they might provide.

 

I think you'll find that hack and squirt is too impractical for attacking Russian Olives. I'd use a sprayer and burn them out in mass and as quickly as possible. They're rawnchy invasives, birds spread them like wildfire.

For deer, I agree that manicuring property with a mower is not a great tactic. The catch is, there is a fine line between allowing a property to go wild and letting it get too far gone. Most wildlife prefer transitional habitat, like from crop ground to overgrowth but that phase doesn't last forever. At some point it goes from transitional to brushy and loses much of it's appeal. My advice for deer habitat would be to simulate the transitional phase with a purpose so that it's sustainable. Once a person lets natural growth go unhindered, it's extremely expensive to rehabilitate and it's not worth as much on the market as more useful land. Native grasses with well thought out mast bearing trees and berries can simulate the transitional phase while maintaining some value and usefulness.

I can tell you from experience that old overgrown CRP and pasture is an expensive and very labor intensive undertaking to bring back into a useful holding. I'm refurbishing a few hundred acres now that were good deer habitat but was on the verge of being just overgrown brush on the bottom of the land value scale. Not great for deer, cattle, crops or anything else unless someone finds a value for hedge trees, locusts trees and sercea lespedeeza. Those are the species that take over here on unmaintained land.

 

Thanks, I'm mainly wanting to let it grow but I want to get all the invasives out first. Asian bush honeysuckle pretty much covers the entire forest floor. It only serves as cover until the leaves fall off , then it is useless and overpowering.

 

I'll do both! As quickly as possible, starting after hunting season lol. Also I have stands of sassafras that are so thick that they end up choking each other out. For some of those patches I was going to hack and squirt, spray the honeysuckle and let whatever grow back up while spot spraying the stuff I don't want that regrows.

 

Both methods need actively growing plants to work. Aside from now, you'll have to wait for spring green up for the bushes and trees. I'm not sure about the honeysuckle, if it's treatable during winter or not.

 

I understand, I'm just trying to get a plan together for next year.

 

Oh yeah, I'm with you. That's how my property was when I purchased it. They had ran cattle on it, but there was a 3 acre field that had been left over grown for a long time. I've since turned that field into my main food plot, and your right it took countless hours of labor to get it to the condition it's in today. I do use the brush hog on occasion, but I will generally leave any of the timber and transition areas alone as best I can. My timber is exactly as you describe, mostly hedge and locust. That's a battle I can't win at this point. Luckily, the deer still find it useful.

 

Lol, yeah it's an undertaking of nearly biblical proportions to reclaim hedge and locusts. Hedge isn't so bad but those locusts were created by satan as a middle finger salute to all creation. I forgot to mention cedar trees too.

 

I would take some cedars, at least they provide some thermal cover. The locust's just plain suck!! I have a couple tree stands in Locust trees. I have to trim off the thorns every year before I sit on the stands. Hedge tree's can be challenge to hang a stand too, but they also seem to generally provide me some nice cover. The other hand of satan is the multiflora rose bushes!!! They seem to spread like wildfire too.

 

Haha, I guess everything has a bit of a bright side. The locusts provide pods that deer eat and deer eat hedge leaves somewhat. The roses...pollinators????IDK, lol. I just prefer to have non thorny stuff on the properties like grasses, forbes, legumes and mast producing plants. That's a nice property to own no matter what a person is into.

 

Thanks for the input guys. Next April I'll break out the back pack sprayer. The spots I mow, I only mow once a year in the late spring and then let it grow back with flowers and weeds about 3 feet high besides a trail to get to the woods and my clover patch

 

Yeah that would be nice for sure, but my overgrazed thorny hell of a bit of land still produces some quality bucks. Another bright side is that since the timber isn't ideal, I don't get a ton of pressure around me. Gotta find the bright side of things

 

I wish I had some pictures of what our bottom ground looked like before we cleared it all off. The horseweeds were some of the tallest I'd ever seen. It was too the point that I had our oldest ride the tractor with me while I was brush hogging so we could keep an eye on the creek. It is so much better now that we have it "under control". We have planted a few areas of switchgrass planted btw the crop field and the timber. We are planning on adding these as time goes on. We've had lots of general clean-up to do so it is a slow process getting it to where we want.

 

The bright side to it here is that the old rough and mistreated farms is all a person can find available here now and it's still bringing a crap ton per acre for what it is. Everything good sells before it even hits the market. I did see a 600+ piece for sale the other day within 30 miles that is already developed with 260 acres of farm land and another 60+ in CRP...it was priced at a cheap $2.2mln. 0.o