Top 10 Hinge Cut Deer Bedding Area Fails

Many hinge cut deer bedding area projects are doomed for failure before ever even firing up the chainsaw. Great intentions and poor online hinge cutting information combine to give false hope, and a hinge cut buck bedding location is only the tip of the iceberg. After scouting hundreds of lands with failed hinge cut bedding areas created by landowners and resource professionals, there has been an extremely common trend of failure. The following top ten tips are your cheat sheet for not only creating hinge cut buck and doe bedding areas correctly, but for determining if you should even use the tool of hinge cutting in the first place.

[Buterflycatcher]

Thank you so much for your free information. And I thank you even more for getting straight to the point with every video and not wasting ten minutes with some ridiculous introduction and advertisements for sponsors. I am more inclined to buy products you support/use because you don’t ram it down viewers throats. Great stuff! You inspire me with every video to improve my land!

[Jonnydeerhunter]

I feel better about the unintentional hinge cutting I did today lol. Thanks Jeff

[craigsmith]

Great video and good timing. I'm going to the farm next weekend and now I won't waist my time trying to hinge ironwoods as i did in years past. I'll also make sure i don't have any dead end trails and cut some larger trees to create bigger opening for light. I never believed the nonsense in other videos about creating buck bedrooms and canopies. Your videos are clearly backed by real woods experience.

[edwineugeneeckerjr]

I cut a path to my tree stand years ago through a vast pine grove and the deer immediately changed their travel pattern the first year and followed that path to an from their bedding and feeding sites, this gave me a wealth of opportunities to harvest deer and actually pick and chose the deer I wanted.

[chadrap]

Jeff your feedback is SO helpful. One question though: you have said on a few videos that only 25% of properties need hinge cuts. But how do we know if our land does or does not need them? Also, you mentioned the timber may not be the right size. Could you comment further on that?

[BrianBartholomewChiro]

Great video. Now I know how to upgrade my bedding areas. Thank you.

[mikesutherland]

Really good advice on hard mass in the beddinging area definitely great information great video

[angelasutherland]

Hi Jeff, I am using a lot of your videos to work my small 10 acres. I have a 2 acre piece in which 1 acre I just clear cut to gain Aspen regeneration, this area was pretty wide open other than mature Maple, Aspen and some Ash & Oak. Adjacent to this I have Aspen, and Ash with Redwood dossier and Tag with some Witch Hazel what I want to do is cut out the Aspen for another regen and hinge the Ash for browse/bedding but what I am not sure of is if the "Brushes" would stunt the regen. The "brushes" currently aren't really thick, I can see through it across to the farmers field and most of the Ash in this area is no more than6-8" in diameter, the area gets about 10 hrs of Sun in the Summer. Really wished I could show you what I have done as a whole and go through the full scope of the plan but that's a lot of typing :) thanks and I appreciate every video! FYI im in N.E. Wi

[MySliceOfHeavenoutdoors]

Great Info again Jeff, I appreciate everything you teach me.

[randlerichardson]

Great video brother. Not had a chance to look up your books yet but I ain’t forgot it. Very informative video as always. Have a blessed day brother Amen.

[williamschablowsky]

Do you have cue cards or stop the camera between points ? If not, your ability to remember and go through each list without a mistake is impressive if these are one or two take videos

[rfb]

We have done some hinge cutting a few years ago to offer better bedding areas and concealment from neighbors on box alders and maples. They seemed to have work relatively well.
Hope we get some meltdown of snow here in SW WI soon to be able to walk in the woods. Bob

[MrCurtm]

I have a lot of persimmon trees on my property and the deer love them when they fall to the ground. A high percentage of the persimmons will hang on the tree where the deer can’t reach. They eventually fall after they are rotten and deer season is over. Will persimmon trees survive hinge cutting and would that be an option so the deer can reach the fruit?

[blazeice]

Excellent video. I wish I had seen this before we did our first rounds of hinge cuts. You confirmed what we learned from our mistakes. Question though: You mentioned cutting down large canopy trees. What do you do with them after? Do you try to haul them out or just leave them lay for cover?

[Patrick-wukt]

Thanks Jeff. My property was mostly hemlock which I had removed because they were dying from the wooly adelgid. There are now piles of hemlock branches. They seem to be hindering growth just because of how much there is. I cut some trails through for the deer to move easier and where I want them to go but I'm not sure if I like the way it's going. Do think it would be better to burn them off or let them there? The remaining trees are mostly chestnut oak and beech.

[backcreekcabin]

Love your videos. Very informative and useful.

[rocksteady]

Hey Jeff thanks again for another great video! We all really appreciate the time you guys spend to put these together! I have two questions and you might have already covered them in other videos. Do you think the temperature plays any role in a trees ability to be hinged? Like if it is 10 degrees would a tree have a greater chance of breaking than if it was 35 degrees? Also I know the bigger the tree, the harder it would be to hinge and this probably varies from species to species, but do you have a diameter that you would say 'this one is 12" and thats too big' and fell the tree instead of trying to hinge it? I know there's no one size fits all answer on any of this stuff just curious to your thought on these.

[jackc.]

Hey Jeff, Can you hinge balsam? Or would it be better just to top them for cover/windshielding?

[hornotostador]

Thanks very much for the information. What about hinge cutting Sweet Gum trees? Yay or Nay? What would be the reasons to or not to?
Thanks again for sharing your time and efforts.

[joshfisherback]

Jeff any videos about honeysuckle for bedding in the future. I have 60 acres of woods that is old pasture. The deer bed everywhere. And come from everywhere. It’s hard to hunt when you can have deer come from 360 degrees around you. I’m interested in having you come out this summer. I sent a message two weeks ago with no response. Great videos!