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Switch grass is too thick.

J

jlwdvm

Active Member
I'm in the 6th year of ownership of my farm, which consists of 20+ acres of CRP on the south side, and 80 acres of timber on the north. In the 1st year, the 20 acres of CRP was in pretty poor shape, so my first project was killing it off and drilled Switch back in. Fast forward to today...I believe there is a high percentage of the Switch that is too thick and the deer avoid it, I avoid it too! there seem to be few trails going through it, and we have never found a shed in it after a burn. Looking for some ideas on tweeking it a little so the deer might use it more.
 
jlwdvm said:
I'm in the 6th year of ownership of my farm, which consists of 20+ acres of CRP on the south side, and 80 acres of timber on the north. In the 1st year, the 20 acres of CRP was in pretty poor shape, so my first project was killing it off and drilled Switch back in. Fast forward to today...I believe there is a high percentage of the Switch that is too thick and the deer avoid it, I avoid it too! there seem to be few trails going through it, and we have never found a shed in it after a burn. Looking for some ideas on tweeking it a little so the deer might use it more.
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Spit balling here (I haven't dealt with this problem personally)...Could you burn it now? Then spot spray portions of it once it starts growing back to make the stand less "pure" and more diverse? In other words...create "islands" of sorts.
 
I've never done it in switch grass but I've dragged out old Christmas trees into crp and cattails with good success.
 
Burn it as soon as you can. Then go back and disc it. Will set it back some.

Bonus, you'll get a flush of native forbs as well..
 
I have the same issue with some and have a thread started on deerhunterforum.com I too have drug tree tops out in CRP to give structure.As mentioned discing can be an option,in fact in kansas you can disc 1/3 each year instead of burning. I think deer would prefr to bed in weeds instead of really thick switch.Bigger areas of switch I do see getting used during the rut to hide does but then it seems to slow down.
 
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