Clearing trails

[9x56MS]

The last few years here in the southern tier of NY have been hard on our Ashe trees. The emarald Ashe borers have decimated 90% of the Ashe trees on my property. We were up clearing the trails and cut up over 2 cord of wood just from the trees that fell across the trails. We even had a couple of dead maple trees, larger older trees.

 

[Drycreek]

The drought of 2011 probably took half of my big white oaks as well as some less desirables. I think it really hurt my deer movement too. Of course some of the trees that were smaller then are producing now but I haven’t recovered from that loss yet. When you only have 80 acres there are not gonna be many deer living on you, so you need something to differentiate your place from your neighbors’. The combination of losing my large white oaks and the neighbor’s 400+ acres recovering from a clear cut has hurt my deer movement. The fact that I had a so-so food plot last fall didn’t help either !