Category: Virginia forestry

I went down to the farms over last weekend.   I did a lot of bushwhacking to check the boundaries and water courses and although I had long sleeves and bug repellent on, I picked up at least three ticks.   I got them before they managed to bore in but something got me and made a bit of a rash.   I hate ticks.   I usually don’t get any, but they are very active now and I went more into the bushes than usual.

Below – spring is here. Leaves are coming out.

I am trying to stabilize one of my roads and I needed some branches etc.    So I went and cut out some of the trees damaged by the machines squirting out biosolids.  Some were bent so much they would not come back and others had so much bark stripped that they would be deformed.  I laid them in the ruts to slow the water flow.    It works well.  Where I did this before on the slopes I have some vegetation coming in, but it is a lot of work, especially given the primitive tools I use.   I am glad to have the truck now.  That allows me to move a lot more and a lot farther.    I am letting the road grow over for now.  

Below – I want to keep my streams clean, so I cannot have dirt running off the roads or anyplace else. 

The wildlife plots are doing well.   They used a couple of them as staging places for the biosolids and those are growing like made.   It is probably the most fertile half acres in the state.   We planted ladino clover and some orchard grass and chicory.  The clover is good because it fixes nitrogen.  I like how it looks too. 

Below is Blimbie.  Now that I have have the other forest, I sometimes go up 95 via Emporia, which is where this is.  I’ve always like Blimpie, but my favorite place used to be Togo’s.  I have not seen a Togo’s for a long time.  I don’t know if they are still in business. 

The truck is no good unless it has the orange mud decoration. 

I went down to the farms today.  I had nothing special to do, but diligence and vigilance demands attention.    The new growth on the loblolly will start in a few weeks and the old needles are a drab in anticipation of the energy that will go into the new.   None of the hardwood trees is budding out.  Although Brunswick is more than 150 miles south of Washington, spring comes just a little bit later.    I don’t know why.   Maybe it is because Washington is a heat island, as most urban areas are with all their heat absorbing surfaces and heat producing human activities.  One problem in measuring changes in overall temperature is that as the measuring stations are surrounded by urban areas, the readings are biased by the buildings nearby.

Above is one of the streams near the road.  The banks are just starting to green up.   In back is a wetland about two acres.  The stream shifts.  I have seen the main bed in three different places.  It ranges over around 100 yards and I am never sure where I will find the main stream.  Below is Genito Creek that runs through part of our land.  Look carefully.  The creek is very wide at this point and the bottom is reddish clay, so it doesn’t stand out clearly in the photo at this time of year. The creek changes course and sand bars build and disappear.   The forest near the creek is mature, but the shifts tend to knock down the big trees.

Above shows the stream management zone between two areas of pine.  The SMZ protect the streams and provide corridors for wildlife. Some of the trees in the SMZ are very big.  According to the records, the zones were established in 1958.   don’t know how old the trees were when the zones were established.  When the leaves are on the trees, you cannot see how they interact with the pines.  Below – I have been exploring the new property in Freeman, VA. The forest is a little older and the ground is flatter, so it is easier to get around.  I was surprised to find these big rocks in the SMZ.  You find these kinds of outcroppings in mountains.  This area is mostly flat. For my friends and relatives in cold climates, let me point out that the green leaves you see are holly.  It stays green all year long around here and thrives in the understory, so the woods are never completely bare.

A lot of water is flowing and the roads are muddy.   I am glad to get my truck muddy again.   It is not a real truck unless it has the red clay spray marks up the wheel wells.

Although this is the least attractive part of the year – the wear of winter just before the burst of spring – it is also the easiest time to move around.   Last year’s brambles are as weak as they will get and I can push through them.   The ticks are active if it gets at all warm, but chiggers are not out yet; snakes are not active, no mosquitoes or flies.    This year it is easier than before.   The thinning and fertilizing operations of last fall made some paths.   Beyond that, the trees are just getting bigger and starting to shade out some of the brush. 

I walked around the SW boundary, down to the creek.  My neighbor cut timber year before last.  The boundary trees stand like a row of sentinels.  He had a lot of hardwood brush.   I don’t think he is going to replant.   The guy who sold me my property called to tell me that this place is on the market.   Not many people replant before they sell.   Replant might be the wrong word, in any case.  It was natural re-growth before.   If he just leaves it alone, it will come in with tulip trees, some oaks.  This is what he had before and it will come up from the roots.   The pines cannot compete with this.    The problem is that a lot of the re-growth will be inferior.   They tended to selectively cut in the old days, which meant that they took the best and left the worst.   This pattern will persist into the next generation if they come back from the roots.  

Above is part of Genito Creek.  You can see the sand bars. They form and disappear.  You can also see how the water undercuts the trees on the banks and eventually causes them to fall in.  I also found some signs of beavers.  They probably cannot do much harm here, and may be beneficial if they make a little pond at this point.  Judging from the composition of the forests along the flats, I don’t think this would be the first time beavers have damed up this creek.

I wrote this article about investing in forest lands for the next issue of “Virginia Forests.”   It is based on a posting I made a couple months ago, so it should look familiar.   Below are five-year-old pines.

We own lots of things during our lifetimes but we form special bonds with land; it is our connection to the earth and our legacy for future.   There is no surprise that people have deep feelings for land that has been in their families for generations, but it is astonishing how fast the same sorts of connections form with adopted land.

I have loved forests and wanted to have my own part as long as I can remember, but owning a forest is not something you can easily do.  Many forest owners inherit their land.  Others have long connections with the forestry community.  I was completely new.  I would have to think about it long and hard.  I thought about it for more than twenty years.  I couldn’t afford to buy a forest as a luxury.   My forest had to be an investment that would at least break even, so I started to study the economics of forestry.   I was surprised and encouraged to learn that forestry is an excellent, if illiquid, investment.    According to “Forbes” magazine, timber investments from 1990 – 2007 timber produced a compounded annual return of 12.88%.  You can’t beat that if, and only if, you have the time and ability to wait for nature to take its course.   There are several ways to invest in forestry. 

Below are twelve-year-old pines.  They are growing very well, but are a little thick.  We will probably thin early – in two or three years.

Many people who invest in forestry do so through Timber Investment Management Organizations (TIMOs).   That option didn’t appeal to me.   That makes forestry just another investment.   My logic was the reverse.   I wanted to own a forest and I needed to justify it as an investment, not the other way around.   I wanted my forest that I could stand on and manage.    After investigating the economics, I decided that I felt secure enough in my judgment on this matter to base my retirement savings on growing trees rather on a capricious stock market. 

Of course finding the right forest is harder than buying stocks or bonds.   I needed to find a place close enough that I could visit but far enough from my home in Northern Virginia that I could afford the land.   My research took me to Southside Virginia on the Piedmont south of Richmond.  I quickly learned that successful forestry on my tract of land requires successful forestry on the land in the neighborhood.  Timber is heavy and hard to transport.   Unless you have enough nearby forested acres, skilled forestry contractors and mills to process the timber and sustain a forestry industry, you cannot grow trees profitably.   The forests of Southside Virginia meet these requirements.  

The real estate broker didn’t think I was serious when I called and he probably didn’t change his mind when I showed up at his office in Lawrenceville.  He tried to steer me to small tracts of land suitable for a getaway cabin.   I told him that I wanted a place for forestry – real forestry.   “You would never be able to build your cabin,” he warned. This is just land good for growing trees.  He smiled when I told him that is exactly what I wanted. 

We looked at several tracts of well developed timberland and then told me about a recent clear cut, which was less expensive.   The trees were two years old, but there was good site preparation and I could see the tops of the little pines poking above the weeds, slash & brush. I loved the potential. I also liked the streams and the mature hardwoods left near them.  

Above is the land as we bought it in 2005.  Below is three years later in 2008.  Trees grow.  The ones in the lower picture are thinned to make them more resistant to pests and improve wildlife habitat.  Notice the different density compared with the twelve-year-old trees in the picture with the truck.  Those are planted a little too thick, IMO, which is why we will thin early.  There is disagreement re how thick pines should be planted.  The latest practice is to plant thinner for the wildlife and pest benefits I mentioned, as well as the idea that a thinner forest will produce more chip-and-saw and saw timber … eventually.

The smartest thing a new landowner can do it to get to know the neighbors and make some local friends.  They are the ones who protect your land … or not.   Fortunately, the land I bought already had a hunt club associated with it and they were happy just to keep on doing what they had been doing.   The hunt club maintains the gates and the “no trespassing” signs.   In this rural area, everybody knows everybody else, so it is helpful if they know me too.   Local friends are also very helpful in suggesting contractors. 

Below you can see some of the diversity of the tree farm. In the front is a food plot (a little beaten down because they used it as a staging area for the thinning and biosolid applications.  It will better next year.)  The pine plantation is in the middle and you can see the mature hardwoods (oak, beech, tulip poplar & sweet gum) in the background.  This provides a balanced habitat for wildlife.  I think it just looks nicer too.

There are lots of things a forest owner needs to know and do.  Fortunately, there are lots of people and organizations eager to help.  One of the first things a new owner should do is become a certified tree farmer.  Sustainable forestry is becoming increasingly important and the American Tree Farm System helps landowners understand and use the best practices on their own tree farms.   The ATFS requires a forestry plan, which informs choices and is a key to making better decisions.   It pays off.  Another of the first stops is the local forester.  The Virginia Department of Forestry can hook the new owner into networks of helpers and information and help fund programs benefit forests all over the state.   The Virginia Forest Landowner Update is the place you can find out about events and programs for forest owners.   Many of the events are free or inexpensive.  I attended many field days and I learned about things like soils, pests, invasive species, better trees, taxation questions and a lot more from events available through the update.   Finally, getting a good forestry consultant is a must.  I hope someday to know how to do many of the forestry activities on my own (or make my kids do them), but I will never have the expert knowledge of a trained forester who works full-time on these issues. 

I joined the Virginia Forestry Association and got the communication director job for the Virginia tree farm project of the ATFS.   It is a great privilege and learning opportunity.  My job mostly consists of writing articles for the Virginia Forests magazine four times a year and I get to write the story of the tree farmer of the year.  The more successful tree farms you see, the more you understanding your own.  I have never met or even heard about a tree farmer who didn’t love his forest, and everybody you meet is eager to talk about what they did on their own land and help others do good things too.

I have been happy with my forestry investment and the forestry community it opened for me.  You cannot rush the trees, so I sometimes wish I had got into the business sooner and been further along. But I then I remember that I couldn’t.  Besides the obvious lack of money (or more correctly mortgage credit), I didn’t have enough understanding of the forestry business.   Liking trees is not enough.  You need to know a lot more than I do, but I get along with a little help from my friends.    

Forestry on Televison

Forestry seems to be enjoying some popularity.  There are two competing logger shows on cable TV.   The first was Ax Men on History Channel and now we have Extreme Loggers on Discovery and American Loggers.  Of course, these programs show the most exciting, challenging and dangeous part of forestry.   For me the growing and environmental aspects are most interesting, but those processes unfold slowly and prosaically.  It doesn’t make good TV.   They also show the forestry in big, natural forests.  Tree farms are more civilized and easy to work.  Nevertheless, logging can be  indeed a tough job.   Here are some pictures of logging machines.

Very good is the Ax Men 3D Logging Tour.  

I am a Virginia tree farmer.   In addition to traditional forest products, I know that my land is helping to protect water quality, cleaning the air, giving wildlife a place to live and just making the world more beautiful.   If you are interested in learning more about tree farming, please feel free to contact me for a personal point of view, or contact the tree farm system at the links below.  

We all depend on each other in our interconnected environment and nobody can do it alone, so I joined the American Tree Farm System.  This hooks me in to people who can help me do a better job and connects me to others who need me to help them.   It makes me feel good that the things I do on my land and the plans are make are “forest certified” by an organization with long experience in making forests sustainable.   I recommend that anybody who owns even small woodlots consider becoming a certified tree farmer.

A lot has been changing in the woods.  We have learned how to grow more wood on the same land.  We know better how to protect and restore soils.  It has become more crucial to guard water resources and we have a whole new commitment to removing excess greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.   Besides markets for timber, we now have markets for ecological services.  We have a lot of great partners in Virginia. 

The health of my forest and our environment depends on the choices made by other Virginian and other Americans.   That is why we all need to be concerned about each other.   No individual or group can come up with a comprehensive plan for a sustainable environment.   But together we can, as we all make decisions based on our own unique knowledge, intelligence, imaginations and priorities.   Information is important in making choices and every tree farmer is on the cutting edge about his/her own farm.  I try to share my experience through my blog on forestry.    And I told the story of how I came to buy my own forests at this link. 

My truck got recalled because of something to do with the wheels.   Since I was off because of President’s Day, I could take it to the dealer.    They looked at it for a couple hours and then told me that they needed to order the parts.   They will call when the parts come in.  Until then, there is evidently no imminent danger.   Besides this excitement, it was an uneventful day.

Below is a ponderosa pine plantation in Oregon.  The ponderosa pines that grow on the western slopes of the Cascades are different than those that grow in Rockies.   Please read the original entry re at this link.

I found a good report on the Internet re ponderosa pine forest restorations by the Wilderness Society.    You can read it at this link.   Ponderosa pine forests are among the most pleasant ecosystems in the world.  They are widely spaced if fire is not excluded.   But fire has been excluded too long, as you will see in the report.   The ponderosa pine forests are usually found half way up the mountains, at higher elevations farther south and lower up north.    Individual trees can survive significant drought once established.  A lone pine you see on the prairie is probably a ponderosa pine.

Below are thinned loblolly on my land taken last fall.  Pines ecosystems look similar wherever you find them, but there are clearly differences.  Read the original post at this link.

All pines have a generalized pine smell but there are lots of variations. Ponderosa pines have a distinctive smell, like vanilla.   What most of us call pine smell – the one that the fresheners or pine cleaners try to imitate – smells to me like white pine.   I have been trying to figure out how to describe the smell of loblolly.  I really can’t, but I am pretty sure that I could identify loblolly by smell alone.   

One of the better lessons of the report linked above is not only about trees.   They recommend adaptive management, where each action is an experiment that informs future activities.   This iterative, continuous learning approach is good no matter where you use it.   They also stress that we must acknowledge that we cannot predict future conditions, which is another reason for the experimental management.

Different sorts of fires are prescribed for different purposes.    The variations usually depend on the wind direction and topography.    A backing fire goes against the wind and spreads slowly by conduction.   It is the safest fire and consumes most of the fuel, but it is slow.   A head fire goes in the direction of the wind and/or uphill.   Flames are carried by the wind, so things burn faster, but it tends to be a less complete burn.  The fire jumps over some fuel.  That jumping also makes this fire more likely to get out of hand.   Other variations are flanking fires, as the name implies along the sides and strip fires.  The strip fire is a series of head and back fires.   They run into each other.  The strip fire is faster than other fires because you light several places at a time.  Similar to a strip fire is a spot fire, where you light a series of spots that come together.   The spot fires work well in theory, but they very often turn into strip fires anyway, just because it is hard to keep the spots apart.  The challenge with all multiple fires is when they come together.    They rise up and can scorch the trees or even provoke a crown fire.

The time of the year when you set your fires depends on your management goals.   A dormant/winter season fire will consume the surface vegetation but won’t usually kill it.   In fact it will create a lot more sprouts and shoots, especially with understory hardwoods and blueberries.    This kind of fire produces a lot of good browse for deer, but it will not yield the herbaceous growth for other species.    A growing season burn will often kill much of the woody vegetation and over time it will produce the savannah-like open forests with a herbaceous forest floor.    It produces more flowering, legumes and releases nutrients to the soil.  If a forest has not been burned for a long time, a winter backing fire is probably smarter.   It cleans up the debris at a cooler temperature that is less likely to damage your trees.   After that you can do the growing season fire as appropriate.    May/June is a good time.

In a loblolly rotation, it makes sense to wait a year after thinning and then do a winter season fire to clean up the slash.  After that, go with a spring time burn every 2-3 years.

Loblolly pines usually survive scorching.  The biggest danger to them is in October, after they have finished growing for the year, but before they have gone dormant.   A scorching will probably kill them at this time, so you should never burn in October.   The State of Virginia bans outdoor burning until after 4pm from February to April.   This is the time when conditions are dry and the leaves are off the trees.  There is significant danger of fire escaping. 

A major concern in fire management is its effect on the soils.   An intense fire burns hot.  A severe fire burns down more of the soil.   Sometimes you want to expose mineral soil since some plant communities require that to regenerate; most of the time you don’t.    Usually it is best when you see black.  The vegetation has been carbonized but much is still intact.  White is ash.  Too much white means you burned a little too severe.   It is bad when orange is exposed.    If the soil gets burned bad enough, it can become impervious to water.   The fast run off caused by the impervious soils can create mud slides.  

Burning off too much soil litter can lead to erosion in general.   Summer rains in Virginia can be torrential.   The water hits hard and washes the soil downhill.   All land erodes.  An intact forest in Virginia loses from .05-.1 ton of soil per year on average.  By contrast, field crops can lose 3-15 tons a year.   After a burn, a forest floor loses more than the intact forest, but less than plowed field, depending on how severe the burning was.   But repeated small burns create a stabile herbaceous layer that helps build a healthy soil that mitigates erosion in the longer run.  Good forest stewardship means thinking in the long term.  Be aware of how what you are doing now will be in years or decades. 

Of course, erosion is an eternal process that never stops.   The Appalachians were once as high as the Rockies and in the future the Rockies will be as low as the Appalachians.  Erosion & time will flatten Mt Everest. Everything washes down and everything has to go somewhere.  If a ton of soil flows from one acre to the one down hill and that one loses a ton of soil to the one below that, it is really not much of a problem.   Each acre “loses” a ton of soil, but not really.  It becomes a problem when too much soil is lost and when it flows into watercourses.   The water from my farms flows eventually into Albermarle Sound via the Meherrin and Chowan rivers.  An important duty is to protect the waterways from too much silt.  That is why we don’t cut near the streams (stream management zones) and generally tred lightly near them.  Beyond that, you just don’t want to lose your dirt, on which all prosperity depends.

Alternatives to fire, such as mechanical, mowing, grazing or chemical do not have the same ecological effects.  For example, none of these things can properly kill diseases and pests on the ground, nor do they consume all the combustible materials.  

There is a general rule that big fires decrease biological diversity, since only a few species can stand being totally annihilated.   Big fires will also tend to impact areas where fire is less useful.  A beech forest, for example, will be destroyed by a big fire, but the moist conditions of such a stand will usually resist or limit small fires.  Small regular fires lead to greater diversity, since they prevent to domination of a few species while not destroying too much and opening the landscape to some sunlight. In any case, you really cannot avoid fires; you can only postpone them.  When combustible materials build up in wild lands, you eventually get a much bigger and more disastrous fire.   These are the kind of thing we saw in Yellowstone back in the 1980s.   Years of fire exclusion made the place a tinderbox.

An unplanned fire is significantly more dangerous than a prescribed fire, but fire is dangerous no matter what.  A prescribed fire can get out of hand and even if it goes 100% according to plan, it will create side effects, principally smoke, that will annoy the neighbors.    They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.   In the case of prescribed fire, an ounce of prevention is sometimes worth a ton of blame, as people weight the tangible effects they see from the prescribed fire with the much greater, but unspecified effects from a true wild fire.

A form for a burn plan is included at this link.

Fire has several simple characteristics.  We all know about them, but it is useful to think about what that means.  Fire usually rises.  You should always avoid getting above a fire.  Fire will move up hill more readily than it goes downhill.  It will also climb if there is a burnable ladder of brush or branches.   Flames will also rise when two fires come together.  This may scorch tree branches or even set them on fire.  Fire more easily spreads to loose and dry material, but it burns longer in denser materials.  You can see that with a campfire.  I have seen people trying to light big logs with matches.   It doesn’t work.  You need to go from the small to the large.   Of course, if you light a pile of pine needles with nothing else, you will just have a short flash and then ash.

The behavior of a fire on the ground depends on lots of factors, none of which can be predicted with absolute certainty.  The most capricious is the wind.  Wind directions can change and local conditions can change the direction locally.   The fire itself changes wind conditions.   A fire draws in air.   If the fire is going up a canyon, it might create an effect much like a chimney. 

Other factors include humidity, temperature, air stability and time of day.   Higher humidity dampens fire.  The key factor is not humidity itself as much as relative humidity.   Warm air hold more water than cool air.   The same amount of water will be a lot less dense in warm air.  Roughly speaking, for every 20 degrees in temperature, the relative humidity decreases by half.   That is one reason time of day makes such as difference.   You might have dew in the morning (relative humidity is 100% and the air cannot hold the water it has, so dew forms), but as the temperature rises, relative humidity falls.  That is why fires burn faster and stronger at 3pm than they do at 3am.  Temperature makes a difference independent of humidity, since the cooler the temperature, the more heat a fire needs to generate to maintain and spread.

Fire weather forecasts are available at this link.

You can sometimes see stable air at a distance because may be clearly demarcated layers of air.   Stability makes a bigger difference for smoke.  In stable air, smoke rises and then flattens out.  It doesn’t blow away.  Smoke rises higher and disperses easier in unstable air, but unstable air has its own challenges in that it usually has stronger and more variable winds, making fire control more of a challenge.  The tradeoff is between smoke problem and fire control problems.

Fire escape used to be the big concern for burn bosses;  now it is smoke.  As more people w/o country experience move into the countryside, the complains and problems of smoke increase.  

Smoke doesn’t always rise.   In stable air or in humid condition, it tends to drain.  Like water, it drains into valleys and gullies, where it might sit a long time.   Unfortunately, valleys are often places where we have roads and homes.  Smoke can be a health and a traffic hazard.  The worst is “super fog”.  Super fog is a combination of smoke and fog that makes visibility almost zero.  The fog helps hold the smoke near the ground and the smoke helps keep the fog from evaporating off.   It is bad all around.

We used to have lots of super fog in Krakow.   We would often unwisely drive in it, following the taillights of the car in front.   Such behavior sometimes led to spectacular accidents involving many vehicles.  One vehicle stops and the others blindly drive into it, sometimes for miles.

Anyway, those are some of the concerns about prescribed burns.   Tomorrow I will talk a little more re how and why we burn.

In Wisconsin, beech trees are native only within the fog distance of Lake Michigan, so you find them in Grant Park along the lake but not a couple miles inland.   They are common in the Middle Atlantic States and in Central Europe.  It is hard to tell the European beech from the American.  The European comes in more horticultural varieties, so if you see one at the nursery it is probably a European beech.

Beech trees are shade tolerant.  They show up only near the end of natural succession and you find them in old well-established sites with rich and well developed soils.    When you see lots of beech trees, you know that the place has not been disturbed very much for a long time.   I am very fond of the beech trees along the stream beds.    This is my hardwood legacy forest.  You can see from the picture below that the young trees are beech.  They are the ones with the brown leaves. This is a good time to see them.  They stand out, since they characteristically keep their dead leaves until pushed off by the new ones in spring.   

Nobody will cut this forest as long as I am alive.  Right now we have some big beech trees, along with oaks, red maples, tulip poplars & ash.  In a generation the beech will be more dominant.  The big tulip trees will start die out.  The little pines you see in the picture above are volunteers.  They need to grow in the sun and none of them will reach maturity. The oaks will not regenerate in the shady forest but they live for centuries and will be around for a long time yet.   Beech and oak are both mast producers and provide good wildlife food.   The understory already has a lot of holly.  More will fill in.  

I am not leaving this forest completely alone.  When this land was part of somebody’s farm, they high graded (i.e. took out the biggest trees and left the little ones).    This degraded the quality of the stock and there are some old but small trees that are just sucking up resources.   Other trees were damaged by ice storms past.   I am cutting out the runts and the damaged trees to make more room for the robust young ones.    A well managed forest just looks untouched.

Above is spring of this year.

We couldn’t hunt because we didn’t have licenses.  Technically, we could have hunted on our own land, but we weren’t really ready anyway.  I am a terrible shot. We just went along instead with the other hunters.   Technically, we couldn’t even go along with anybody toting a gun except that the guy we went with was a “disabled hunter.”  Ostensibly, we were there to help him.  If he shot a deer we would carry it out of the woods to the truck.   No deer jumped by, so our hunter didn’t get one, but we had a good talk.

Below is Alex at the new farm. 

There are several types of deer hunting in Virginia with different weapons and different practices.   Bow hunting is mostly a solitary pursuit.   The hunter usually waits in a tree stand until the deer comes by.  You get one shot and there is not much range, so bow hunting requires a lot of patience and preparation.  The hunt is the culmination of a year-long study of the deer ecology and habits.   Similar preparation is necessary for black powder.  In both these cases, the older technologies require more effort and understanding.  Those who hunt with these tools usually just like being in the woods more than hunting.

Below are my 13-year-old loblolly pines along with Alex to show the point of comparison.

The guy we went with knew the woods and the animals very well.  He had been stalking these woods as fields for more than a half century and his family has been doing it for centuries.  As a boy, he told us, his family had to hunt to put food on the table.  Years ago, deer were not as common as they are today, so they had to know the land better back then.  He showed us how the bucks paw up the along a path.  They lay scent there to attract does and scare off other bucks. Solitary hunters can call the bucks.  Very often the deer are nearby, but out of sight.  If you imitate the buck snort, the dominant local buck comes running to drive off his rival.  This is a fatal mistake.  But we didn’t try to lure any bucks; we were not doing that kind of hunting.

We did a third kind of hunting common in the south.  They send hunting dogs into the woods.  The dogs chase the deer out to where hunters are waiting at strategic points along the roads and paths.   We heard the hounds howling, but neither dogs nor deer came our way.  We heard the shots from other hunters.  One got a nine point buck in the first minutes of the hunt.   Our guide explained to us how the dogs communicated with each other.  One kind of howl mean “I’m lost,” he said.  The other dogs respond and the lost dog rejoins the group.  The dogs follow the deer by scent, not sight until they are right close, so on a windy day the dogs are actually following some yards to the side of the deer. 

Some hunters just like to train the dogs and some of the dog handlers don’t even participate in the actual hunt.  They just take care of the dogs.  I see them running the dogs during the summer.  I don’t know for sure, but the dogs seem to be having a great time too.  I suppose running freely and jumping is what dogs do in their dreams. Two summers ago when I was working on the farm I heard some plantive shouts.  I thought someone had been hurt and went to investigate.  I met a guy in the brambles looking for his lost dog.   The dogs almost always can find their way home.  Besides, the dogs usually have tracking devices on their collars, but the dog lovers worry nevertheless.  The dog wasn’t so dumb.  He had already found his way back to the truck and was waiting there.

Below – hunting dogs waiting for transport.

The hunting is mostly a social event.   About thirty guys take part.    My main reason to go down to the forest was to talk with the Reedy Creek Hunt Club re buying about five acres of my land.  They want it for a clubhouse.   I am willing to sell it to them.   I worry a little re that my new forest because it is along the electrical lines easement, which makes it easily accessible.  The hunters’ presence near my trees will help protect them from dumping or vandalism.    

Since Alex and I were down there anyway, we stopped off at our other forest too, where ran into members of the McAden Hunt Club at the gate.  They are the hunt club that uses and takes care of our land on SR 623.  They were in a good mood because one of the kids got a nice looking deer.   Successful hunts are more likely these days, since there has been such a population explosion among the deer.  It was deer day all over Brunswick County.  We heard the dogs and saw the guys with the bright orange hats at the gas stations and convenience stores.  The Second Amendment is a big deal in Southern Virginia.

Many of the hunt club members are farmers and for them hunting is almost a necessity.  They told us re the damage the large deer numbers can do.   They can eat up whole fields of beans.   They also eat peanuts.  I never would have guessed.  They cannot really eat enough of the peanuts to make a difference, but when they make the harvest difficult when they paw up the plants.

Changing the subject a little, I have a small problem with one of my streams.  It is draining under the road, but no longer going through the culvert pipe.  I cannot see exactly where it sinks in, but it come out underneath the rocks on the other side.    I suppose a sink hole will develop.  There must have been a truly bodacious storm in the last couple of weeks.   There were sticks and debris five feet above the usual water level and east bank was severely undercut.   I wouldn’t usually care much, but my only surviving bald cypress is on top of the bank, so Alex and I shored it up with some rip-rap and sticks.    I don’t know what to do about that potential sink hole.   Maybe it will be self limiting as the dirt falls into it.  I built up some rocks on the far side to avoid erosion, although it has not been a problem so far and the water is coming out clear and clean.  One of the hunters told me that many years ago his had put down a bed of broken concrete to stabilize the road so they could drive across.  My guess is that the water if flowing through that.