Sportsmen: Clearing Growth Will Provide Deer Habitat
By Paul Gingras

Members of the Straits Area Sportsmen's Club pose Tuesday, September 25, during a project to clear an area north of M-134 in the Hiawatha National Forest. Pictured (from left) are Jerry Colegrove, Ray Lowetz, Jimmie Miller, Louis Colegrove, Willard Garlock, Bill Kemeny, Jack Luepnitz, and Paul Crystal. The wildlife opening offers habitat for animals such as deer and grouse. The project was completed Saturday, October 13. (Photograph courtesy of Louis Colegrove)

To create a "wilderness field" for deer, grouse, and other game animals, the Straits Area Sportsmen's Club completed a clearing project Saturday, October 13, "smack in the middle of Edison Deer Yard," said club president Louis Colegrove of St. Ignace.

The wildlife opening, north of M-134 in the Hiawatha National Forest, is near Edison and 16 Mile roads.

The two-acre opening will enable native grasses and shrubs to grow in an area where white-tailed deer gather during winter. Nearby conifers provide thermal cover for the animals.

The sportsmen cut maturing trees to maintain the wildlife opening and created brush piles that will serve as cover for rabbits, ruffed grouse, and sharp-tailed grouse.

The weekend project was the second effort to clear the wildlife opening. The first took place Tuesday, September 25.

The club has permission from the Hiawatha to clear two more sites next year, both in the proximity of Forest Road 3309. The effort is allowed under the Hiawatha Forest Plan.

The sportsmen did the work by hand, using axes, machetes, power saws, and a miniature brush hog.

"We really have a vested interest in this," Mr. Colegrove said, who noted the group is maintaining the openings in a project it started more than 15 years ago.

Back then, the Sportsmen's Club and the Forest Service collaborated to create more than 200 such wildlife openings, and Mr. Colegrove was part of that original effort. In the ensuing years, the forest has begun to reclaim the fields.