An Idiot's guide to Ancient Woodland management

[the village idiot]

DEER.

 

It's not putting too fine a point on it to say that if you are considering bringing an area of woodland back into management and you do not have a plan for Deer management you are probably doomed to very disappointing outcomes.

 

As Silverhooker pointed out, Deer numbers have rocketed in recent years to the point where if you don't control the numbers, or fence them out, you are very likely to get little or no viable regeneration from the seed bank in the soil or from freshly cut coppice stems.

 

This never used to be a problem. When Deer numbers were sustainable a woodsman could fell an area of coppice and be safe in the knowledge that they could return the following summer to see prolific regeneration of trees and wildflowers. With Deer numbers as they are now, apart from in a very few locations where Deer are not present, you will not be experiencing this life affirming vista unless you have taken Deer management measures.

 

Deer numbers have reached a level where road collisions have become widespread. The health of Deer populations is also being adversely affected due to increases in the spread of disease and malnourishment due to lack of winter food. Both a result of over-population.

 

We humans have wiped out all the natural predators of Deer from the UK countryside so it is now our responsibility to keep their numbers at a sustainable level for the sake of our crops, our woodlands and for the Deer themselves. 

 

There are six species of Deer resident in the UK, four of which are especially relevant to woodland management, Red Deer, Fallow Deer, Roe Deer and Muntjac. Of these four only two are truly native to the UK (Red and Roe).

 

If you have just Roe and/or Muntjac it is just about possible to manage the populations on a woodland scale through culling. If you have a Fallow population in the area the issue is a lot more serious and you really have to be part of a 'landscape scale' management program as these Deer are a lot more free roaming. A herd of Fallow could wipe out your coppice compartment in a couple of evening suppers.

 

If you don't like the idea of having Deer shot you do have the option of fencing them out of any freshly cut areas (or the whole woodland if you have the resources). This method works well to protect the areas in question but has the unwanted consequence of increasing browsing in unfenced areas of your Wood, or neighbouring blocks of woodland.

 

I think it is fair to say that in most areas of the UK, Deer control needs to be your top priority when considering woodland management operations. Without a Deer plan it is often better not to start as you are likely to be doing more harm than good.

 

A plan for controlling Deer impact can include killing Deer or fencing/stool protection or both (you could also buy a Lynx but this would land you in a lot of trouble!). I'll outline what's involved in each of these scenarios in the next post.

[the village idiot]

DEER MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES.

 

Before making any major decisions on how you are going to counter Deer damage impacts you need to have some idea of the scale of the problem in your particular patch.

 

You can have a Deer impact survey, where an experienced person can walk through the Wood recording the frequency of slots (Deer hoofprints) and assess the general level of browsing damage. This will provide you with some fairly general information about the species that are present and whether the browsing level is severe, tolerable or non-existent.

 

A more definitive measure can be made with the use of Deer exclosure plots. These involve felling an area of trees (such as a coppice compartment) and erecting a Deer proof fence around a segment of a few square mtrs. You can then monitor the difference in regeneration inside and outside the exclosure. If after a couple of years the vigour of the regrowth is comparable either side you can be somewhat sure that you currently have a sustainable number of Deer. If however you observe a scene similar to the picture below, you know you have a big problem.

 

 

We have used Deer exclosures in our Wood and find them an invaluable monitoring tool. Heras fencing panels make excellent Deer exclosures. They are very easy to put up and take down, and can be re-used multiple times.

You can just about see one of our exclosures behind Chainsaw miller Alec.

 

 

Once you have an idea of how heavy the browsing pressure is in your wood you can plan appropriate action. If browsing pressure is low you might get away with taking no action, or you might choose to employ some simple regeneration protection techniques such as piling brash material on top of cut stumps, or spreading your brash liberally across the entirety of a felled area. Deer are quite lazy and don't like picking their way through branches to get to new shoots. I have tried both these methods, and in our particular circumstances the 'brash piling' worked reasonably well, but the 'brash spreading' didn't. It has worked for other people with lower browsing pressures, but spreading the brash has the complication of making compartments relatively inaccessible to Deer stalkers. If you don't go down the Deer stalking route though this is obviously not a problem. 

 

I have experimented with various individual stool protection techniques over the years including building semi fortresses. These worked well against the Deer but inhibited the regrowth too much by blocking out the light.

 

 

 

If you have a great deal of brash and free labour at your disposal you can build up a 'dead hedge' around your freshly felled area. This can work reasonably well to keep some Deer out, but it is rare that you will generate enough tops to build a tall enough hedge, especially in neglected coppice. Deer are excellent jumpers. We do make a dead hedge around our compartments. It is a bit of a token gesture in terms of keeping Deer out, and is more about keeping the brash out of the way and providing a habitat.

 

If Deer browsing pressure is high you could consider fencing off any newly felled areas for a few years to give the regeneration a chance to grow above browsing height. There are several different fencing options, which one you choose would depend on budget, time and your own aesthetic preferences. Some people use plastic mesh fence, others use a more substantial metal wire fence. Both of these options are quite labour intensive and it is difficult to remove the fencing once they have done their job. The plastic mesh also often succumbs to Badger attack.

 

 

 

 

Electrified strand fencing is another option which some people have success with. It is relatively cheap and easy to install but requires constant upkeep to keep it from short circuiting. Theft is also an issue here as these set-ups are often powered by a solar panel and battery (easy pickings for the light of fingered).

 

Becoming more and more popular as a woodland fencing option are Heras fence panels. These are the metal mesh panels you often see erected around building sites. They offer the advantages of being very user friendly and very re-useable. On the down side they don't make your woodland look particularly beautiful. You would want to jettison the rubber feet as they create a gap any mildly peckish Muntjac could easily squeeze under.

 

 

If you have a relatively small woodland and high Deer pressure you could consider fencing the whole perimeter. This can be very effective if you keep on top of maintenance,  but is disastrous if (as has happened many a time) you manage to fence a Deer population in. You will also just be exporting your Deer issue to your neighbours, and stopping the transit of other large mammals into and out of your Wood.

 

In my view the best 'holistic' Deer management option is to control the overall numbers. This involves yourself or other trained people shooting a certain percentage of the Deer within your Wood and the surrounding land. There is a lot of public queasiness around shooting Deer. This is misplaced in my opinion. The process is very humane, especially when compared to how we obtain our other sources of meat. Venison is also a very healthy option as the Deer have been browsing in the wild up until their death, they have not been overly stressed and have not been pumped full of antibiotics and growth enhancers. One wonders whether if Deer were rather ugly creatures there would be anywhere near the level of public distaste at their numbers being controlled.

 

The browsing pressure in our Wood is probably best described now as moderate. Arbtalk's Stumpy Grinder and others put in some seriously extensive stalking work in the early years. We don't currently have Fallow which is a huge bonus. We now have a team of Deer stalkers who take around 30-40 animals a year. Sometimes they stalk on foot, and sometimes sit in high seats and wait for the Deer to come to them. They are not paid, they operate in return for the venison.

 

Even with this level of Deer culling we still get significant problems. In the first growing season after coppicing the freshly cut stools all get browsed down to next to nothing. What saves us is the bramble. The browsing pressure is not so high that the Deer take out all the bramble growth too. Once this gets established it protects the regenerating stools from the Deer and we can get acceptable, all be it delayed regrowth. If we didn't control Deer numbers they would take out the bramble too and we would get no regeneration.

 

We have also had some moderate success by 'overfeeding' the Deer. We have opened up so much area in the Wood over the last few years that the Deer struggle to have a devastating impact in any one particular place. The browsing pressure is the same but it is diluted over a large area. This technique is only really possible in a large block of Woodland. If however you a planning a couple of separate areas of felling in the same season it might well be worth considering combining them into a single block. Deer are cautious about wandering out into wide open space, a one hectare coppiced block will be a less attractive proposition than a freshly felled acre.

 

If you invite Deer stalkers into your Wood it is a good idea to make sure they have had adequate training and have the appropriate firearms certification. The rifles they use are serious bits of kit and you need to be sure that they are going to operate safely and humanely. You can research the DS1 and DS2 training schemes.

 

It's not just Deer that obliterate new shoots. Rabbits, Hares and even mice and squirrels can be problematic. You can tell if your damage is caused by Deer by looking closely at the browsing. Deer have no top teeth in the front of their jaws and have to tear off the shoot that they are eating. This leaves a somewhat ragged edge to the 'chew point'. Rabbits and Hares nip the new shoots off very cleanly.

 

Deer control is such an important issue in Woodland management but it is not really given the amount of attention it deserves. They are very elusive creatures so people are often surprised to hear that they are such a huge problem. I hope that in the future public consciousness can be raised and we can start to tackle the issue more systematically on a national scale. All these new hugely ambitious tree planting initiatives will fall flat on their faces if we don't take appropriate action on Deer control.

 

That being said, don't let the threat of Deer stop you from performing management operations. As explained above there are ways to mitigate the damage at a woodland level and the work is too important to give up before you've even started.

 

 

 

[Woodsman1967]

Great post ! It's an ongoing battle of wits to keep the deer under control , I've tried most ways over the years .

Brash piling didn't work particularly well , brash spreading turned out to be a real pain if your not using machines , ended up knee deep in brash trying to fell and drag wood to piles (never again !) . Plastic fencing was very quickly chewed through by rabbit and badger and electric solar powered fence was not much good and was then stolen within a few months .

We dead hedge our plots , its time consuming and hard graft but leaves the ground free of  trip hazards and also allows you to survey the plot the following year for any unusual wild flower etc that may appear before the brambles and nettles take over . Also dead hedges create great habitat and look good to !

 

 

 

 

If a bit of care is taken to get the bottom of the hedge tightly packed its a pretty effective barrier and will generally keep out Fallow for a couple of years before it starts to collapse . The sneaky Muntjac are more problematic but aside from a bit of browsing this summer we have mostly kept them out .

 

Back in the day the Wildlife Trust would surround our dead hedge with 6ft chestnut fence ( which also supported that industry in Kent/Sussex) and then more recently with Heras fencing . This combined fence meant nothing got through and there was zero browsing .

One thing to note is that a lot of new Heras fence has bigger gaps in the wire which proves useless to keep Muntjac out as I have witnessed first hand , worth noting if your buying hundreds of metres of it as the Wildlife trust did without checking !?.

 

Culling is pretty essential to keep numbers down and as you say also provides great quality free range healthy meat . I'm vegetarian and not a supporter of shooting animals for sport but accept and understand that wild animal numbers do ,in many cases , need to be controlled . I wish more animal rights supporting Vege/vegans could work this out . Walt Disney has much to answer for !

 

 

 

[the village idiot]

7 minutes ago, Woodsman1967 said:

brash spreading turned out to be a real pain if your not using machines , ended up knee deep in brash trying to fell and drag wood to piles (never again !)

Yes, I've been there, and never going back again!

 

Lovely dead hedges you've got there. Thanks for posting the pictures. Do you have extra hands on site to help construct them?

[Woodsman1967]

There's just 2 of us and sometimes just me . It's a labour of love , as is the whole job in truth . Definately not in it for the money .

[the village idiot]

TAKING STOCK.

 

We are now pretty up to date with our tour of operational events in the Wood. I'll try and remember to keep you updated as other exciting events occur.

 

We'll move over now to Ancient Woodland ecology, focussing on the ecosystem as a whole and also on some of the important and interesting species that make their home in this increasingly rare habitat.

 

In the meantime here are a few arty farty shots of the Wood to flick through. It is a real pleasure sometimes to remember to down tools and just mindfully take in the beauty of these places.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Christmas everybody.

 

TVI.

 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2019 by the village idiot

[Bolt]

Really great thread, Interesting content and fantastic pictures.  I hope your are enjoying putting it together as much as we are from reading it.

 

Have a great Christmas yourself.

[the village idiot]

9 hours ago, Bolt said:

Really great thread, Interesting content and fantastic pictures.  I hope your are enjoying putting it together as much as we are from reading it.

 

Have a great Christmas yourself.

Thanks Bolt.

 

Yes, have really enjoyed putting it together, and the kind feedback has been very nice to receive.

 

Looking forward to meeting up with some of you in the new year for a woody stroll.?

[woody paul]

Have you thought about putting what you have done into a book or something. 

[the village idiot]

45 minutes ago, woody paul said:

Have you thought about putting what you have done into a book or something. 

Simple answer is no. Do people still read books?

 

The best way to communicate your ideas with people these days seems to be on the internet, and this format suits me whilst work is still ongoing.

 

Perhaps when my body tells me it's had enough something like a book could be a possibility. It is probably too niche a subject to attract a lot of interest though and I really wouldn't know where to start.

 

There is a lovely little book called 'A Year in the Woods'. It is written from the perspective of a Deer stalker so there is a fair bit of killing, but it contains some wonderful descriptions and really manages to capture the range of feelings and experiences you have being in, and working in, the Woods. An excellent Christmas break read.

 

 

Edit: I bought this book for Steve's Dad at Christmas a couple of years ago. He is now our most active Deer stalker in the Wood and loves the place just as much as we do!

Edited December 22, 2019 by the village idiot