Hinge Cut Advice

[DavidBrown1212]

I don't know if anyone is actually paying attention, but there are too many deer as it is. Studies across the nation are showing ballooned populations (except in portions of the southwest). It even mAde the fronot cover of Time magazine. Deer don't need any "habitat improvements," raptors, woodpeckers, flying squirrels, and premier species trees need habitat improvements.

You want biger deer? Get evryone to stop shooting the biggest most prouctive deer for a generation or two. You have to be ppretty stupid to not realize that continuously shooting your baddest bucks halfway through their reproductive years is a bad idea. They are not starving.

 

[HuskStihl]

I'm just jealous. I haven't hunted deer in a few decades. You used to have to get up real early, drive a long way, then walk quietly all day looking for the stupid deer to shoot. Most of the time you wouldn't even get a decent shot. My BIL has a nice, comfy stand with a feeder and a game camera. He watches the activity and knows when the buck he wants tends to feed (apparently the deer keep a pretty tight schedule). He just shows up a few hours before and heads home with a new trophy for his game room. I'm not saying that's a bad way to hunt, as it certainly saves a lot of time and frustration, but I would just start calling it "killing" rather than "hunting".

 

[Jim Timber]

Most folks doing this use an open face notch 70 to 80 percent of the tree diameter then push or pull the tree to close the notch. Usually done with an ax. No barber chair.

I've never heard of anyone doing this with an axe or an open face notch. Most guys are using 30-50cc saws, but there's a lot of us converting to Silky's because of the lack of weight and speed at which a good handsaw cuts these <4" trees.

You'll never get a 12" tree to "hinge" - just not gonna happen. They barber chair, or simply break off. If you're cutting a big open face notch, you've already removed what should be the holding wood in a habitat "hinge" cut.

So to explain the process to the folks who seem to be experts at something you blatantly profess knowing nothing about...

You "hinge" the tree by cutting about 2/3-3/4 through the back side of the hinge, and LEAVE the cambium layer on the opposite side of where you just cut to allow the top of the tree to continue to live (typically 1-2 years from when you cut it). You then pull the top of the tree down, bending it at the "hinge" you just made.

The smaller trees respond better than bigger ones. Not many people will suggest attempting a hinge on pole size or larger trees as they just don't work very well. Danger isn't even part of the concern, it's a matter of effectiveness. There's no reason to risk dropping a big tree on you when it won't produce the end result you want anyway. So the larger trees are always traditionally felled, and then the smaller ones are laid down on or around them to fill in the open space.

This is a video sitting in a 1/4 mile long wall of vegetation created with the hinge cutting process:
(click on the pic to play)


I was out squirrel hunting and wasn't even in camo (other than my muck boots) when I stopped to check emails leaning next to a tree and 3 deer showed up.


The forester who did my management plan was disgusted with the project. He saw lots of money he wasn't going to make laying on the ground. The habitat improvement is worth astronomically more than what he would've paid me for those trees. I have no regrets, and he's never getting any more work out of me.

 

[Cayuga]

I have researched this hinge-cutting method for increasing deer habitat.

I personally am interested in creating more dense cover in my 80 acres of woods. Currently, my woods is thin enough to see from one side to the other. The deer natural choose to bed on my neighbors property where the osage orange, grape vines and multiflora rose are so thick that a man cannot walk 20ft without encountering a major obstacle. Since the deer are not bedding on my property, I can only ambush at my property edges.

Ideally a deer will reside at the convergence of dense cover, ample food supply, and a water source. Out of the three, dense cover is the most important. For a property such as my own, the lack of dense cover really affects the deer.

One thing I do not see mentioned here is the selective cutting that should be used.

Ideally, a forestry expert should be involved in selecting trees that are negatively impacting your forest or crowding your high value trees. Then, by hinging trash trees, you have created dense cover, provided an extra food source for deer, and improved the health and profitability of your forest.

Trying to make the trees form a funnel to your stand is an entirely different subject.

Good cutting and Happy hunting!

Dave

 

[newforest]

I ran across a new video from the Hinge Cutters and wonder what y'all might think. I think one of them will eventually be killed, or more likely, some poor land-owner they have influenced. I only watched the beginning of the video, it was more than enough. Yes, they suggest doing this only on small trees…but then they make this video. I have conversed with them a little but won't bother in the future.

Personally, I don't hunt. I frequently work 6 & 7 day weeks in the woods. When I get time off, I go to the bar.

And there is a lot of potential work working for the Deer Nuts, though I try to avoid the type now. I do think it should be called "killing" and not hunting because what these guys really want to to do is stage manage every step of an assassination, as I heard an old time woods stomper describe it. They haven't learned something contained in a story a friend told me ten years ago. Round about Thanksgiving I asked him how his deer season went. He said "it was the greatest deer season ever and the worst deer season ever." Huh? At the second minute of legal daylight to shoot on the Opener, he took a 250 pound 8 point buck with a single shot. Great, right? "My deer season lasted all of one minute."

There are too many deer in the world, but these guys get their rocks off trying to make that even more true. I say the same thing as I read up above - just plunk down your $5K at the Game Ranch and get your trophy rack and fill that inadequate feeling you have. Personally I'd rather blow my money chasing trophy racks on the 2-legged dears, every time.

Anyway, here is the video:

 

[newforest]

And I did watch some of the video, some good safety stuff in it. It always amazes me how many people don't even know what chaps even are. The beginning of it though… Hinge cutting 4" is fine. But then people get into it and they want to make a funnel with a big tree, but when they want the funnel to go the other way than the way that tree wants to fall...

 

[Jim Timber]

The first tree shown is too big to hinge in my opinion. It's not going to live more than the first growing season, and should've just been felled. Anything over about 8" gets a proper face cut and dropped when I'm involved. When you cut them in the winter up here, they just break off anyway if they're bigger than that.

Too many deer is a matter of opinion and location. I enjoy my habitat work far more than killing deer. I wouldn't shoot them if they weren't so darn tasty. My wife's response to the first backstraps I ever cooked for her: "this is the best meat ever!" Healthy, free range, GMO free, and renewable. The deer I eat enjoyed a happy life in the wild prior to being taken to feed my family - that's an honorable food chain IMO.

 

[northmanlogging]

this all sounds like a great way to increase fire danger to me... bunch of half dead timber on the ground... but hey its not my land

 

[MMG]

It's called "edge feathering" by the USDA. This is done along the edge of well developed pastures or a good food plot I suppose. Drop all trash trees ON THE GROUND except a few small ones the will live being hinged. Around here those are small (4/6") eastern red cedars mostly. Maybe some small maples. Leave all good mast producing trees. This is done mostly for small game. I suppose the extra cover will be good for deer as well.

 

[groundup]

I use to hunt deer and do stupid stuff like this to help bring them around. Then I started killing them for farmers and now do whatever I can to keep them off the properties and kill them indiscriminately as they cost money in destruction

Guys do stupid things to kill deer, like driving nails in a tree to build a ****ing treestand. Then the tree dies and they go build the stand in another tree. Then 20 years later I cut into the damn thing with a brand new chain.

 

[Wannabe123]

Sounds like a pain in the ass. Just set out a timed feeder below your blind. They'll come walkin right up to it and you shoot em from 20 feet away, probably you'll be too drunk to shoot straight, hit em in the gut and let em run away to die slowly, but eventually you'll kill one clean. If that seems too difficult, there are plenty of canned hunt ranches here in Texas where you can just walk up to something you'd like to kill, put several bullets/arrows into it, your guide will finish it off for you and you'll get some meat you prolly won't eat, and a stuffed head of it looking wild and majestic. Pussies

Dude, I like the way you think.

 

[TheJollyLogger]

It's the Texas way.. If ya make sure it goes off at the same time every day you can get em trained pretty well.

 

[Brandon Miller]

I've found that small cherries in the winter when the sap is down seems to work well for hinge cutting. Also if you hinge them 5 or 6 foot off the ground it helps create a better "canopy" for the deer to take cover under. Clear the small limbs from the underside of the tree once you have hinged it to create a space for the deer to bed. Some guys have even gone as far to bring in sand or plant clover under their hinge cut trees to make them more desirable for deer to bed there. Then usually in a few years years more saplings will sprout up and you will be able to do the process all over again in the same area if you choose to do so.

For a guy like yourself without rigging or a truck, one method is to build a pole about 15'-20' long with a tee on the end. That way you can make your cut and push the tree in the direction you want it to go. Helps if you have a second set of hands for this.

Don't listen to the haters. They're gonna hate! They don't know anything about QDM (Quality Deer Management) to begin with.