Selective thickening

Selective thickening

Selective Thickening is nothing more than hinge cutting the smaller trees to provide the appearance, security and advantages of a “thicker” woods. Simply by hinging all the small trees, one does get a slight boost in browse production. Though not as effective as creating the doe bedding, you’ll also often get increased bedding activity within. However, the primary benefits can be found in making bucks feel more secure in their travels and forcing them to waste more time searching for does.

Selective thickening

That’s why I most often do this on hill and ridge sides, though it can work in many other settings, as well. In both these locations pictured below, before the selective thickening, all a buck had to do was glance down into the valley below and he knew if there were any does moving through or bedded below. In less time than it took to write that last sentence, he could determine the area held nothing of interest and move on to the next. For those trying to hold bucks on their property for as long as practically possible, keeping them from their neighbor’s bullets and arrows, that’s not good. Every daylight minute we can encourage a buck to waste time on our property is one less minute he is in danger of being shot somewhere else. After this selective thickening, both are approximately a couple acres in total areas, he now must waste time to check it, either by circling downwind or physically searching the hinge cut area.

Selective thickening

At the same time, it provides chased does an area to better lose their pursuit. In open areas, does have the tendency to blow straight through. When headed for the neighbors, that’s less than ideal. However, in areas such as this, they’ll often run around in circles and even try to hide, all in an attempt to lose their pursuit. Again, this helps up the amount of time a buck wastes on our ground.

This, like so many things illustrated in this thread, is not a guarantee that Mr. Big won’t leave our property. It’s merely stacking odds in our favor. the more little things we do to stack more and more odds in our favor, the greater the chance one or a combo of them will be the difference maker we need to either give that buck another year or make it so we are the one killing him.