Two of the biggest limitations in managing deer habitat are a lack of knowledge and time. Not everyone has formal land management training or experience, and we all do our best to balance life’s other priorities like work and family. However, one small and easy way you can reduce both constraints is by using a virtual mapping application as a baseline to design deer habitat improvements.
Most deer hunters regularly use a digital navigation app in some form, and I’d be willing to bet almost all that do leverage this sort of technology exclusively for scouting and hunting purposes. But this resource can be invaluable at helping manage land as well. In this article I’ll cover five map layers I use for habitat management and how each can help you, too. Hopefully this list provides efficiencies as you work and fuels some ideas for your next deer habitat project.
NDA has a long-standing partnership with onX Hunt, so I’ll discuss the layers and tools available in that application. We even helped onX develop some of them. If you don’t already use onX and are interested in trying it, they offer a free 7-day trial, or you can use code “NDA” and save 20% when you sign up.
The Familar Features
If you do use a mapping app to aid in land management, you probably use the more obvious features like marking a location of interest with a Waypoint or the Area Shape tool to outline a particular management boundary, such as a food plot, prescribed fire unit, or a deer bedding block project. You also hopefully measure the acreage of those areas to calculate any supplies you’ll need like fertilizer, seed and herbicides. You may even go as far as using the Notes feature within each polygon to track this data over time, or the Build Route tool so you can design these activities with the best available access to each. These are all excellent uses of the app, but this article goes beyond these well-known features.
Soil Capability Map Layer
A lot of hunters naturally think about food plots in their first foray into habitat management. That’s because much of the beginning of our history in managing land for deer revolved around this technique. It’s relatively easy to implement and if you mess up, wait a few months and you get a re-do.
One of the first decisions to be made when thinking about a food plot program is where the plantings are located. For many, the choices may seem limited based on the open land available. However, the type and quality of the soil should be the first consideration, whether the area currently receives enough sunlight or not. The fact is, some areas weren’t meant to grow lush, green food plots even if they’re void of trees or brush. In those cases, you’d be better off spending your time and money working on other aspects of your hunting land. Likewise, sometimes a prime area to plant exists, but it’s hidden deep in the timber. More advanced habitat managers look for these places to develop early successional vegetation in addition to food plots because the best soils produce better food and cover.
NDA staff worked with onX to develop a Soil Capability layer that helps the user find the most productive areas on their land. Pulling in data directly from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Web Soil Survey, this layer provides a heat map that identifies 8 different soil capability classes; 1-4 are the most suitable for cultivating crops. It uses soil type in the designation but considers important factors beyond just soil texture and composition. It also considers the land’s overall suitability for planting field crops like terrain, whether crops can survive without irrigation, and whether the area is prone to flooding or erosion.
This layer was inspired by an activity in our Deer Steward 2 class after an onX employee attended and wanted to incorporate it into their app. Now you don’t have to go to a separate resource, it’s available right there! The Soil Capability layer can be found in the Trees, Crops & Soil category.
The Wetlands Layer
Managing upland and wet areas for wildlife can be vastly different ventures, depending on the species you are managing and the techniques you plan to use. You don’t want to create (and attempt to maintain) a portion of your property in a specific vegetative condition if you end up fighting some environmental factor that prevents you from reaching your goals.
For example, trying to maintain a field or food plot in low-lying areas that are more ecologically suitable for bottomland forest can be difficult. Similarly, if you can’t or don’t want to use herbicide and hope to setback succession by disking or fire, you may have limitations in wet areas. Moreover, the timing of disturbance in these spots will impact what grows back. Regulations and best management practices for working in wetlands may differ compared to uplands as well, so it’s good to be informed.
Therefore, I have found it useful to be able to turn on the Wetland layer and instantly see where the moist soils are on a property. This layer shows up in a blue color for both Woody and Herbaceous Wetlands and each can be toggled on/off independently. This layer is also in the Trees, Crops & Soil category and will be instrumental to your success whether you manage for deer, ducks, pollinators, woodcock or swamp rabbits!
An interesting sidenote, research shows bucks that use wetlands have a higher survival rate than those that don’t, supporting grandpa’s old “swamp buck” theory. We also know that permanently flooded areas often strongly influence deer travel routes. I use both pieces of information about wetlands when laying out a property and prescribe habitat management tasks accordingly to help steer deer where I want ‘em.
Color-Coded Slope Angles
Speaking of influencing deer travel, numerous land managers like to focus their efforts on developing bedding thickets on south- or southwest-facing slopes to better predict where deer bed within a particular property. The thought behind this strategy is that a slope with a southern aspect provides more direct sunlight due to the angle of the sun at that time of year and refuge from a predominant north or northwest wind. Both theoretically keep deer warm during colder months, which typically coincide with hunting season. Some folks even purposely choose these areas for sanctuaries, and create conditions that provide the right structure for deer bedding in select locations.
That is why one of my favorite things to look at early in the process of breaking down a property is the distribution and prevalence of southern slopes. Within onX, you get to this in two ways. The first is the standard Slope layer, which is available with toggle switches for Slope Angle and Slope Aspect (or direction a surface faces based on cardinal direction). These layers are found in the Land & Access category, and each shows up in a unique color-coded gradient. The other way is via their Terrain-X function, which is a new tool for Elite members that allows the user to analyze patterns in elevation change, including slope.
Tree Species Data Layers
Deer eat almost anything, so they can survive almost anywhere, but they need large quantities of high-quality food and cover to truly flourish. I’ll go out on a limb and say one of the biggest things lacking in most habitat managed for deer is adequate cover. However, what is on many of those same properties? Trees. And they’re typically older trees that provide little cover value for deer in their current state.
Managing forests for wildlife can be one of the quickest ways to realize your deer management goals and put valuable cover and food within a deer’s reach. This method is called Forest Stand Improvement and is based on the strategy developed by Dr. Craig Harper of the University of Tennessee to “keep what you want, and kill what you don’t.”
That’s why NDA also worked with onX’s team several years ago to help bring their Tree Species and Habitat layers to life. Similar to the soil layer, this pulls in data from the USDA Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program, which is a national network of over 350,000 permanent forest plots. The information is publicly available but generally hard to find and use. These plots are checked every 5 to 10 years, and data gathered at each help monitor broad patterns of forest cover and health in the United States.
The onX Tree and Habitat layers use FIA data to identify 28 different forest types in 6 different groupings, so you can quickly scan the map for stands of trees to target in your habitat management and hunting efforts.
A word of caution, however: It’s good to ground-truth these forest type designations before any final land management plans are put into action, because the layer is not accurate down to the individual tree. This practice would be akin to taking a soil test to verify the soil layer classification before buying lime or fertilizer.
Within the FIA database, forest type is broken down by small, 30×30-yard pixels and that’s how it is displayed within onX. Each pixel represents the dominant tree species in the canopy; it doesn’t mean other species aren’t present. At each FIA plot, field crews collect detailed information on forest type and other site attributes, such as terrain, tree species, size, age and overall condition. Plots occur roughly once every 6,000 acres. Then a highly sensitive system of computer models uses the plot info around a property. It looks at thousands of high-resolution satellite images from the same area, info about plant phenology, ecology, elevation, slope, aspect, and a whole host of other variables to predict the trees growing in the space between.
I find if I focus on broad patterns within the layer, it provides enough information that I can identify a certain part of a property and burn some boot leather to see it in real life. Then I’ll determine if the current condition is desirable for my deer management program. If it’s not, I simply decide what habitat management technique would best be applied there to change it.
Weather Forecasts
Habitat managers routinely tap into their inner weatherperson to make magic happen in the name of deer. Whether you’re banking on enough rain to avoid a food plot failure, or you track the relative humidity, wind speed and “atmospheric dispersion index” to decide if the conditions are safe enough for prescribed fire, planning around and for weather is par for the course!
While some key pieces of weather information aren’t provided in an app like onX, it fortunately provides some of the critical information you need, and you can easily view it in relationship to the exact polygon on your land you drew at the start of this article. For example, the app delivers Weather Updates every 15 minutes from the closest weather station to your actual GPS location on the map – not the nearest zip code or city. There you can see hourly wind direction, speed and barometric pressure indices, among other things. The app also includes a radar layer for Active Precipitation which allows you to view upcoming storms and rain intensity heading your way. A layer in the Current Conditions section displays current U.S. Drought Monitor conditions from NOAA and is updated every week.
Honorable Mentions
Two layers I also use for habitat management when available are onX’s Leaf-Off and Recent Imagery, found within the Basemap setting. However, both are only accessible to Elite members. Leaf-Off provides you with aerial imagery in the fall or winter, so the delineation between hardwood and coniferous trees is obvious. The function also lets you see underneath the dense forest canopy to help identify game trails, old logging roads, and other terrain details. Both are beneficial when chopping up a property into management units. My only complaint here is that it’s not available for every state.
Recent Imagery has lower resolution than normal satellite images but offers valuable near-real-time views of the current and past conditions in two-week intervals. I’ve found myself scrolling backwards on that layer more than once, looking for changes to the landscape like timber sale progress or flooding events.
Closing
As you can see, virtual mapping apps are not just for finding a nearby public hunting parcel or gaining permission on private land by using land ownership data. They’re much more than a topographic map and aerial image overlay. Sure, these platforms have the tools to find success in scouting and hunting, but they also will empower you to save time and add valuable information that you normally wouldn’t have access to when creating your very own deer management plan. You just need to dive in and put these powerful mapping solutions to work!