Tiger Ridge Experiment Showcases Small Tract Management By By Hugh Hugh McAloon McAloon
“E
verything happens for a reason.” “The right place at the right time.” “It’s better to be lucky than good.” Take your pick, because all these old adages apply to the best buck of my life. (At least it was the best buck for three weeks.) My job as the group publisher for Deer & Deer Hunting magazine and producer of D&DH TV allows me great opportunities to travel the United States chasing whitetail deer. However, I’d argue that when it comes to bow-hunting, central Wisconsin near my office is awfully difficult to beat. The launch of D&DH’s Tiger Ridge Experiment had me excited as work began on the property in 2006. But wow, was I disappointed to be taking a stand at one of the best Tiger Ridge food plots the evening of Oct. 10, 2006. 58
WHITETAIL NEWS / Vol. 17, No. 1
Let’s flash back to the start. The beginning of Tiger Ridge Experiment was in 2004, when D&DH staffers came up with the idea to take a piece of “worthless” deer habitat and try to build it into a whitetail mecca in five years. The plan was to take no more than a 200-acre parcel and show the world how — with proper management, food and nutrition — you could create a whitetail nirvana. We didn’t want anything larger then 200 acres because we wanted to illustrate why you don’t need thousands of acres to manage deer. Rather, the plan was to show hunters how to work with neighbors (cooperative and uncooperative), and illustrate how proper placement of food sources and sanctuaries will hold deer on small tracts. The final requirement was to find a piece of land with very poor habitat. We wanted to start with the worst of the worst to show that Tiger Ridge-like success was possible anywhere. We found ideal land just 20 miles from the D&DH office. And we were lucky to find the perfect source of information in Whitetail Institute. The land we chose had been in a managed forest program for more than 100 years and hadn’t been logged for at least 40 years. It had 150 acres of rolling mature hardwoods with a 50-acre swamp through the middle. During good years, scattered white oak
trees produced a few acorns, but there was very little food to hold deer. The last thing that made this parcel perfect for our plan was it had been open to public hunting for the past 100-plus years. Public land in central Wisconsin is hunted very hard, assuring us there were few deer inhabiting the property. The first year, we mapped, planned, studied and logged. We marked where we wanted food plots, where we wanted sanctuaries and what areas needed to be logged. We did everything but hunt the property the first year. The real work began in Spring 2006. Loggers took care of the cutting, but we cleared five food plots ranging from one to three acres. We also selected several smaller locations on old logging decks and roads. Honestly, we bit off way more then we could chew the first year. We attacked it hard and solicited the help of the local highschool baseball team, which was trying to raise money for a spring trip to Florida, to pick rocks and clear debris. The cleared areas were then limed and fertilized, and it was time to plant. I’ll be the first to admit that we rushed into the project, and the soil preparation was not ideal. However, we were running out of time. The Whitetail Institute staff again www.whitetailinstitute.com