Habitat consultant Sam Tumburg’s mission is to “help educate landowners about the limitless potential that lies hidden within their property boundaries.” Sam lives in west-central Minnesota and specializes in habitat improvement projects in the Upper Midwest. Click here to check out his consulting company, Purpose-Filled Habitat Management.
As a lifelong Minnesota resident like Tumburg, I’ve learned that much of the DIY habitat improvement advice you find online doesn’t work well in my home state, primarily because of deep snow and extended cold during a typical winter. For example, switchgrass is often promoted as a viable option for increasing the bedding cover on whitetail properties, but in much of the Upper Midwest, it’ll be toppled and then covered by snow, meaning zero cover for deer.
Perhaps the fastest way to build better whitetail bedding is through hinge-cutting. Click here to see a 10-minute tutorial of how it’s done correctly on various species and sizes of trees. (The tool used in this video is called a Habitat Hook.) When a hinge-cut is properly made to the right species of tree, it’ll live for many years, providing both food and cover to whitetails.
In the 10-minute YouTube video below, Tumburg shows you how he plans to build a small bedding area through the use of hinge-cutting as well as flush-cutting (total tree removal). After the work is done (one afternoon of work), he walks back through the new bedding area explaining exactly what he did and why.
He wrote in describing this video: “It's not often you can drop every tree in a bedding cut exactly how you want to, but when you come into an area with trees that are all small enough to move around and drop wherever you want with your hands, that's exactly what you can do.
“This bedding cut wasn't huge, but it was a good example of how I like to lay out a bedding cut when I can get the trees to all fall where I want. It was a 30-plus degree day, so the trees hinged well, and with the temps plunging again today and recent snowfall, I'm sure the deer are appreciating the new browse down at their level.”
I encourage you to watch the how-to video below, but before you jump into a project such as this one headfirst, it’s smart to pump the brakes and check out the host’s “Top 5 Hinge-Cutting Mistakes.” Click here to check it out.
Winter is the perfect time for building, maintaining and improving whitetail bedding areas. Plan carefully before you start but don’t overthink it either. A chainsaw can be a whitetail's best friend.
P.S. Be safe when running a chainsaw and working in the woods. Wear the proper safety gear and take it slow. Click here for a video that does a good job covering the topic for landowners creating bedding cover.
