Hackberry Trees

[Drop_Tine5214]

I was wondering if Hackberry trees provide any kind of benefit to deer or turkeys. I have a small lowland creek that runs through my property and it is loaded with hackberry, elm, and cottonwood trees. There is very little ground cover so the deer rarely use it, and I hope to change that by doing some hinge cutting this winter.

 

[jw_wildfire]

Hackberry is not particularly a great deer or turkey tree. It does produce a berry, so the song birds do benefit from it. I cut a small one down in my shooting lane this fall and must have had 10 different deer stop and browse on that tree, so it must be somewhat of a preferred browse species, when they can get at it. It probably would be a good candidate to hinge cut a few, although I don't typically recommend killing them when doing a standard TSI.

 

[LoessHillsArcher]

Hackberry is thick on our farm in the Loess Hills. They are the main understory tree amongst the big oaks that take up the majority of the upper canopy. We hinge cut the majority of the hackberry to thicken up the understory and allow for the young oaks to have a chance at living. One thing about hackberry trees, they tend to grow straight and make good treestand trees!

We also see deer browsing on them a lot once the browse is brought down to their level.