Planting Conifers for deer bedding
Whitetail Deer
I have about an old 7 acre pasture that I would like to plant in conifers and make deer bedding for the winter. What should I plant? Norway Spruce? Pine? Plant in rows or more natural sporadic planting? How do you control the weeds?
First, be sure they want to bed in conifers. On the right, across the end of the pond, is the start of two acres of conifers. Have yet to see the first deer even go in them, let alone bed there.
Here in the Great Plains deer love to bed in Rocky Mountain Juniper and Eastern Red Cedar. They are brushy and provide fantastic winter thermal cover.
Spruce are less likely to get nibbled when young than pine, and remain thick at ground level longer as they age...pine will self-prune eventually like the ones in the pic above...leaving it too open and lack of wind protection. Norway spruce is what a lot of guys choose. Having said that, my favorite conifer is Pinus Strobus (white pine), beautiful tree!
We have planted over 5000 trees in the last several years, most of them conifers of some variety. Bedding, screens, and general desire for the trees was the main reason. Here deer love bedding in the thick evergreen plantings.
Anyways, if I had to do it again I would plant a combination of Norway spruce and pitch x loblolly pines. The norways are great trees but grow MUCH slower than a lot of people advertise, unless you take a lot of care to maintain weeds, etc. And for the record, deer will eat norways too!
The pitch x loblolly grow real quick but don't have a thick limb network like norways do. We have several dozen of these planted and most are over 6 ft tall at 2 years old....and we planted them as seedlings (about 12-18" tall).
No matter the tree, you will battle deer eating and rubbing the snot out of them....its a game of numbers, plant them on about a 10 ft spacing with offset rows. Use plugs if you can, and if not buy a dibble bar for bare roots.
Dont plant a mono culture. Its heartbreaking to have a disease pop up and destroy all of one variety, and if you only planted that one, well... If you plant in row you can mow easier.
Deer won’t eat spruce but will require you cutting the bottom 2.5 feet of branches so they have room to bed. I also like to cut off the bottom 6 feet to use for scrape trees, works great.
sporadic plantings, not rows. I've had good success with eastern red cedar, jack pines, and dog woods. willows too. Avoiding mono culture is a good plan.
Craig
Ask a Forester/land manager from your area for recommendations. The best choice for your property may be different than the property down the road much less different regions or states. Soil type, zone, and a dozen other factors at play. Stick with natives.
