The first thing to do after purchasing your property in order to create better wild game habitat will be to take a detailed look at it to figure out your starting point. Is your property mostly wooded? Is it an overgrown field? Or is it a gravel pit or desertified type environment? Depending on what the habitat looks like from the beginning will determine what your first steps will be when coming up with a design for your property.
One of the most important first steps will be to see what type of plants are already growing on your property. If you’re lucky your property could already contain some desirable food and cover species that will help attract game. For example if your property contains a mature forest with large oaks scattered among other non- mast producing species then it would make sense to keep at least a few of the best producing oak trees so wildlife will have acorns to eat. Many other mature tree species that are not mast producing could be cut down, hinge cut, or sold to a timber company for cash. Some species of trees when cut will sprout profusely from the stump and could provide valuable browse and cover early on after harvesting mature trees. In areas of your property where cut trees did not re-sprout you can plant desirable tree and shrub species or scatter forb and grass seeds to create a small meadow. If you can’t find any areas like this, you’ll need to continue to harvest and recut some sprouted trees in order to get areas to plant more desirable species.
Another possible property you could find yourself with is on old field or meadow type habitat with early successional plants like grass, forbs, shrubs and sapling trees. This is usually a good point to start off with because structurally this type will closely resemble an ideal habitat for most game species. It will usually be somewhat brushy but still somewhat open at least in certain areas and will likely have a lot of browse and forage species already growing. In this type of habitat you will mostly be taking out a few non-useful tree and shrubs and replacing them with more useful species. Doing a thorough walk-through throughout the whole property is essential to see what plant species you are working with. Do your research and learn to identify all the species on your property that way you can determine which ones to keep and which to get rid of.
If you have acquired a property that has poor soil or has been desertified with few plants growing there then you will need to work the land more in order to create good growing conditions. One thing that I would recommend for these types of areas, especially in drier habitats would be to create swales on contour. This is a common permaculture technique that is basically just a ditch that will hold water after rain events or spring snowmelt and they will allow the water to seep into the ground instead of running of the property. This will increase the soil moisture and allow a wider variety of plant species go grow. Another positive aspect of creating swales is that they collect organic matter which will increase the nutrients in the soil and will especially help degraded landscapes like gravel pits and bare soil areas. Another technique i recommend when you decide to plant in this type of habitat is to mulch very heavily. This will also help increase soil moisture by slowing evaporation and the much will gradually decompose into a nutrient rich organic soil over time which will help your plantings grow. This type of habitat is definitely the hardest to work with but over time it can be turned into very productive game habitat if the right techniques are used.
Any property can, in theory, be turned into great wildlife habitat It is essential, however, that you do your research and determine the species that are already growing on your property, that way you will know which plants to keep and which to get rid of. Once you do this then you can move on to the next step of actually working the land, planting new trees and shrubs and spreading seeds and eventually you’ll have a property that will be very attractive to wild game species.
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