Value of clearcuts (for elk hunting)

[timberland]

In heavy timber without burns, how much value is there in clearcuts? As cover or as a food source? Does a clearcut's value change with age?

 

[Northpark]

I guess it depends on what you value. Clear cuts can be a valuable wildlife habitat management tool in some cases. They can also be detrimental to some species.

Let’s take for example where I live in CO. For decades the land was managed as a timber base resulting in homogeneous stands of lodgepole pine for millions of acres. We excluded all fire and other natural disturbance that would have left the landscape a mix of early seral and late seral habitats providing multiple species with habitat. The result was one species of tree with very little wildlife benefit and ultimately a mountain pine beetle outbreak the killed approximately 70% of lodgepole pine in NW Colorado. If clearcuts had been employed as silviculturally appropriate (lodgepole pine is a stand replacement species that relies on disturbance and the stand level for propagation) we would have had a better mix of habitat. Today as we clearcut the dead lodgepole (that according to the university of Wyoming studies elk have grestly reduced using due to the fact that they can’t move through it well) we see a rebound in herbaceous cover and aspen growth resulting in quality forage habitat for ungulates as well as small mammals leading to raptors and small predators hunting there as well as a variety of pollinator species.

There’s one example but there are many more. In the other hand if done incorrectly clearcuts can damage watersheds and lead to a downgrade in some wildlife habitat.

 

[TheTone]

Where I live clearcuts are extremely common on the landscape. They can provide some great browse and grazing for critters when they are young however I do see many things that aren’t great for wildlife.
1. They lead to vulnerability for wildlife. This is mostly a rifle season thing and has gotten worse around me with more and more people getting long range rifle
2. They commonly come with road/atv access. Again where I am most cuts are behind gates that allow atv access and riding around all day on atv’s is pretty common hunting practice. If you want peace , quiet or the ability to have some type of plan don’t count on it
3. The resulting slash in a cut can make them an absolute nightmare to navigate
4. Around me they are more and more commonly being sprayed with herbicide that kills off native plants really diminishing wildlife value
5. Trees are often replanted in way to high a volume in my opinion. It’s pretty common to see them go back in a few years after a replant and thin a ton of the replanted trees leaving them lay. A thinned patch around here is terrible to walk around in

Where I am you can basically tell who owns the land just based on the way they take care of their cuts. University land and one of the private timber companies have great looking cuts, state and the other private company leave a wasteland. FS seems to be somewhere in between depending on who the contractor was

 

[timberland]

all great input. learned a lot. I mean, when you are elk hunting, do you spend extra time around clearcuts, and why?

 

[Fred@Exterra]

In N Idaho, I think they could really help elk populations by logging federal lands. They all but quit ~20 years ago and now it’s just miles of overgrown timber with very little browse. I would love to see thousands of 10-100 acre clear cuts.... and then re-contour the roads.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[cnelk]

I’ve killed quite a few elk in/around clearcuts.

Here’s some cow elk feeding in an older clearcut.

 

[Wapiti1]

Clearcuts are well worth your time. Even very old ones. They are a break in the old growth and provide grass and browse for the deer and elk. On old ones, the edges are typically travel routes for game and often there are sections that never regrew trees interspersed in the new growth.

Jeremy

 

[wildwilderness]

Elk are Grazers and historically covered the entire Great Plains. In densely forested areas clear cut have the only graze. (Deer are browsers and prefer different feed, though there is plenty of overlap)

 

[chasin.elk]

I have had many elk encounters in young clearcuts during the morning and evening hours. Clearcuts seem to attract the hunters though so I’ve evolved into hunting more remote thick timber so I don’t have to deal with other hunters messing up my game plans

 

[cnelk]

Yeah. Thumbs up on clearcuts

 

[Oregon]

I’d hate throw out a guess, but roughly 60% of all Roosevelt bulls are killed in clearcuts during rifle season. So, very important!
I’m actually depressed when I turn the corner looking into a cut and don’t see elk!

 

[come2elmo]

I’m actually depressed when I turn the corner looking into a cut and don’t see elk!

Story of my life....

 

[Swede]

Clearcuts can provide valuable forage for deer and elk. In the Cascade Mountains of Oregon the deer and elk populations are way down from where they were in the 1980s and 1090s because the Forest Service has quit harvesting timber, and the older clearcuts have grown up too much to provide much food. Hunter success has gone for 10% or more down to 3%-4% on elk here in Oregon. The deer and elk are gone.
Where I hunt in central and eastern Oregon a forester would need to be a lot more strategic in laying out clearcuts if they were going to increase deer and elk populations, and then they would be up against winter range capabilities and conflicts with range issues. There are enough natural openings to maintain quite a few elk without clearcutting.

 

[.204smokechaser]

Clearcuts have a huge value in heavy timber. I think it depends on habitat type as well, but really haven't looked into it that hard, but these are my takeaways below.

Think of it as you are cutting your shrubs down so grass will grow in a particular spot in your yard. Stand rotations are anywhere from 40-60 years and ground cover composition will change depending on the amount of sunlight. If you live in logging country, you can see this first hand driving and looking at stands in their various rotation stages. Once the canopy starts filling in, grass will die out and ground cover will go into a more shade tolerant species. Elk like grass and it increases grass forage for about 10-20 years so clearcuts are important for that aspect. Now, selective logging as well as commercial thins have their places and clear cuts have their respective places in silviculture which is a whole different topic from this thread. I will say that private timber companies who nuke sections of land off and only leave a few "wildlife" trees and stream shade retention trees within a 5-10 year time frame are hurting elk populations by not leaving more cover, but they are in it for the money and not necessarily the wildlife. When I am rifle hunting, I spend more time glassing hard get to/hidden 5-15 year old clearcuts unless wolves are around. Archery get in the 20+ year old timber where it is cool and find the wallows. Evening and mornings walk slow on the grassy roads and you'll find elk, at least that's the case on Potlatch ground.

OP, could you provide a picture of the timber in question?

 

[timberland]

I have just been making my hunt plans on Google Earth, and part of my hunt area has several various aged clear cuts. Is far as I can tell, there is very little grass under the undisturbed canopy, it looks brown or rocky

 

[mtnbiker208]

I have killed a lot of elk in clear cuts, but i think they are good for about 20 years, and then the trees grow to where you can't see.
find clear cuts that are not easy to get to. ie behind gated roads.