What's screwed up about it? There aren't as many deer as deer hunters prefer - that's a sign of good management.
What a strange series of irrelevancies - you seem to think that had something to do with my posting, as if I had implied that turkeys and grouse live in white pine forests, or that deer coming in drove them out, or that I want the deer out of my garden so I can have bison in it.
Except there are wolves (and bear) trying to co-exist in those same places.
Then why did you bring up turkeys and grouse and bison? *btw I have turkeys and deer in my yard. I hear grouse drumming but they are not in my yard.
Yes I figured you were making it up and I quote:
The obvious and striking browse lines I've been driving by for years now,
all over central MN, along with the deficit of white pine reproduction and similar consequences of whitetail deer concentration, and you are free to not see them for yourself if you don't want to.
end of quote
Link 1. Summit parks in Ohio. A grouping of 14 parks of various size with no indication as to which park the photo was taken. So surrounding habitat cannot be reviewed.
Link #2
Links to the UP of michigan. (not mn). To discuss your UP pic I would first point out the hayfield bordering that patch of cedars. You dont think the land use is what is affecting the deer browsing habits? Additionally, that is a wintering spot. Quote from UP photo itself:
Browse lines become this prominent over time
when deer do not have access to other quality foods in winter, or they are drawn to an area where heavy baiting and feeding is prevalent.
Looking at that photo I wonder many things. For one, was this formerly a fence woods harboring cattle? Its a hayfield in front so there is defiantly a farm nearby. Its also pretty straight cut, may have been the seedlings after a clear cut in the past (without having a true measurement, I would estimate the age of those cedars to be between 40-60 years old based on the size of my own line of red cedar)
Link #3 Sylvania Wilderness area. Plenty of photos from there Not showing a deer yard browse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvania_Wilderness
Photos auto load:
http://www.friendsofsylvania.org/
Link #4 Photo from 1938. chequamegon national forest (logging continuing on this million + acre forest). What is not evident by the photo is what the preceding winters were like.
Photo from your MN example:
Not much browsing damage evident there. So yes, I believe you are making up browse lines all over central MN.
Every single example you post is Deer Wintering Yards other places (with a possible exception in Ohio).
All wintering spots experience browsing. That is Normal. Winter grounds are compressed range areas (generally) and you will see such things but they are
not a reflection of the general habitat. Deer migrations are well noted among those of us who spend time outdoors. They migrated through our farm to a location approx 1/2 mile away for the winter. And it was very cool to see.
And where did they migrate to? In the stand of white pines planted by the farmer that owned the property. Beautiful trees that are spreading into the surrounding forest (not the farmers property) despite the deer that winter there. But then, there is plenty of deer browse surrounding that 10 acre planting. Which is also a factor for why I dont have a deer issue in my garden. Plenty of variety for them to choose from.
Why do they like conifers? Its warmer there and the snow depth tends to be lower. Its a preferred winter habitat.
http://video.nationalgeographic.com...-revealed-as-never-before?source=relatedvideo
Anyways, thanks for the links to your source(s) of dismay. What these various sources of info on deer browsing fail to define is what is the goal of the pine plantings (MN) and how is failure defined. Forest management tends to be logging orientated. What may be defined as a failure in that goal does not mean the pines were wiped out, rather their survival rate was lower than needed for a profitable logging in the future.
Example:
In the winter of 2011/2012 a wildlife management area I frequent chopped down a stand of pines that were not mature. Tree height was approx 20-30 feet. I inquired as to why. These trees had been planted in the 50s and were stunted due to soil conditions. I was shocked. I thought they had been planted in the 70s. That former pine patch will be maintained as brush prairie now. An example of poor management. Should never have invested in planting pine on that particular plot.
Now you go 600 feet to the east and the conifers are fine (jack, red and white pine) but you can see an increase in height the further east you go. The really cool thing is the line of mature white pine that border the former driveway into the old homestead, with the younger trees mixed into the forest towards the west, with their varied ages and spreading eastward (now that they have stopped burning so close to the white pine). All whites decended from that original line of white pine. And roughly dated (as to when the farm went from private to public land) from the size of their oldest seedlings (approx 60-80 years old). And they go all the way down to 1 foot tall in that spot.
Interesting article. Note the majority of respondents are forestry (logging) related:
http://mn.gov/frc/documents/council/MFRC_Constraints_Red_Pine_Regen_2007-11-07_Report.pdf
I would direct you to the graph on page 15 where is shows good/varied deer habitat reduces the impact of browsing.
Quotes from above link:
Deer impact depends on a number of factors including size of seedlings, quality and abundance of alternative food, ability of deer to find seedlings, density of seedlings, nutrient content of seedlings and soil, hiding cover, and amount of edge (Reimoser 2003).
Naturally regenerated pine seedlings are often browsed less than nursery grown seedlings (Reimoser and
Gossow 1996; Bergstrom and Bergqvist 1997, 1999; Bergquist 1998), ostensible due to lower nitrogen concentration in their tissues (Close et al. 2004).
However, both naturally regenerated and planted seedlings can have increased nitrogen concentration due to site status. Sites higher in soil nitrogen availability may be more prone to browsing (Côté et al. 2004). This suggests that planting native pines in appropriate native plant communities is an important consideration.