When you’re doing Forest Stand Improvement for deer, no tree is sacred just because it produces mast. You can have too many oaks, or too many hickories or too many beech. If you keep them all and hoard them just because they produce mast, you’re not going to achieve the right balance of sunlight, forage, cover and mast that makes great deer habitat.
A forest with only 2% to 3% sunlight reaching the ground is producing only about 100 pounds of quality deer forage per acre. A forest with 50% sunlight produces around 1,200 pounds per acre. To achieve 30% to 50% sunlight reaching the ground, select low-value, overabundant and invasive trees to remove. This includes mast producers. Select a few individual mast producing trees to keep, remove the rest, and you’ll increase mast production while producing forage and cover for deer in the space you’ve created between them.
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