The Brush Mountain Sportsmen's Association
was organized to conserve, restore, and manage game, fish and other wildlife and their habitat, to procure better hunting and fishing for sportsmen, and to promote and maintain friendly relations with landowners and sportsmen.
Deer exclosures are areas that have been fenced to protect vegetation from deer browsing.  For several decades state wildlife and environmental resource agencies in all whitetail states have been erecting exclosures for demonstration and educational purposes.  There is no better way to gauge the impact of deer upon their habitat than to protect a small area from browsing and monitor the difference between the adjacent protected and unprotected areas.  Fenced exclosures are now a common component of timber harvests that are conducted by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
Here at the BMSA, the Habitat Committee wanted to demonstrate the potential results of a timber harvest conducted with no concurrent effort to either reduce deer population density or protect the harvested acreage from browsing.
To that end, we established several small exclosures.
























This is our largest exclosure immediately after it was set up in September of 2006.  Enough trees were cleared to give the fenced area and its surroundings a broad southern exposure.  Ferns and Japanese barberry were treated with herbicides both inside and outside the fence line immediately prior to erecting the fence.  Every effort was made to ensure that the only difference between the exclosure and its surroundings would be the presence or absence of deer.























BMSA members used scrap fencing and fence posts.  Some trees were left standing where their trunks could be used as fencing supports. 























BMSA Habitat Committee members inspected the results of fencing after one growing season.  The results were  indisputable.  Regeneration inside the exclosure is phenomenal, dominated by aspen which is top-notch forage for deer, ruffed grouse, and many forms of wildlife.  Oak, black locust, red maple, tulip poplar, and black cherry seedlings were also present.  The same seedlings sprouted outside the fence, but were destroyed by browsing before they could reach several inches in height.























After one year.























After two years.























Exclosures are also an extremely useful tool for evaluating the use of food plots by deer.  In the fall of 2007, it was clear that deer were hitting our fields hard.  In this photo, an entire field of mixed forage species have been chewed to nearly ground level.