Rumors about the HCC program had been sparking
concerns. Some hunters worried that they’d be prohibited from shooting bucks for years, while others
feared that the program was a plot to inflate lease
prices. To ease concerns and dispel misinformation,
we held an introductory meeting in October 2004.
“Communication was key,” says Dacus, who helped
explain to hunters the biological basis of QDM.
He also outlined harvest recommendations for the
2004-05 hunting season, and explained how hunters
would collect data about herd size and health. “We
weren’t trying to impose a program on them,” says
Dacus. “We just explained that when you’re trying to
improve herd health, it’s a lot easier to do with more
acreage.” After some initial mumbling, all the clubs
came on board. Then the real work began.
Making It Work
To improve habitat conditions for deer and other
species, Weyerhaeuser implemented the following
strategies beginning in 2004:
Fire lanes. Fire lanes can serve as surrogates for
open habitat conditions within primarily forested
landscapes that have limited openings. We therefore created fire lanes around stands scheduled for
prescribed burns, and planted them with perennial
“wildlife-friendly” seed mixes, creating a supplemental food source that benefitted deer and other species
and provided additional hunting opportunities.
Row spacing. Traditionally, pine rows are planted
10 to 14 feet apart, where forbs, legumes, vines, and
other browse thrive until the pine canopy closes,
which prevents sunlight from reaching the ground.
When the HCC project began in 2004, Weyerhaeuser established new pine plantations with rows
spaced 20 feet apart. This has created desirable
habitat for deer and early successional species that
will last for a longer period of time due to delayed
canopy closure. In some cases, as part of standard
silviculture, when trees reach five to seven years of
age, the stand is treated with the herbicide imazapyr
(approximately 12 ounces per acre) to control hardwoods, which encourages herbaceous growth.
Herbicide and fire. Research has shown that using a herbicide such as imazapyr with prescribed fire
can substantially increase the nutritional carrying
capacity for deer over that in unmanaged pine stands
(Mixon et al. 2009) while benefitting numerous nongame species. For herbicide-fire work on HCC land,
we selected thinned pine stands with dense mid-
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Credit: Darren a. Miller
Weyerhaeuser forester
Steve emerson lights
a fire line during a
prescribed burn to
control mid-story
hardwoods. Studies
show that pine
plantations treated
with herbicide and
prescribed burns
(below) provide
abundant herbaceous
plants, including
legumes and grasses,
which benefit deer and
other species.
Credit: Darren a. Miller
story hardwoods—such as sweetgum (Liquidambar
styraciflua) and red maple (Acer rubrum)—which
shade out the herbaceous layer and limit biodiversity
potential of the stand. In many cases, the hardwoods
were too large to control with prescribed fire alone.
So, each fall, we selected stands to receive a single,
low treatment ( 8 to 12 ounces per acre) of imazapyr
herbicide, applied with a skidder. The following
winter, these stands were burned to remove pine
