Kentucky Oak and Hickory Work Builds Better Elk and Deer Habitat

Kentucky’s elk country is getting the kind of woods work that pays off in acorns, hard mast, winter food, and healthier habitat for a pile of wildlife.

RMEF says its support helped the Kentucky Division of Forestry improve timber stands in Kentucky Ridge State Forest in 2025. The work is aimed at promoting oak and hickory regeneration by removing less desirable species such as maple, black gum, and beech. Crews used a hack-and-squirt method, cutting into the bark and applying herbicide to selected trees instead of just talking about habitat from behind a desk.

Oak and hickory matter. Those nuts feed elk, whitetails, black bears, wild turkeys, grouse, squirrels, songbirds, and plenty of other wildlife when grasses, forbs, and softer foods are scarce. They also matter to Kentucky’s timber future. Good habitat and working forests do not have to be enemies when the work is done with purpose.

Kentucky elk are one of the great wildlife restoration stories in the East. Since elk were reintroduced in 1997, they have continued to thrive in the hills and hollers of the Bluegrass State. RMEF says its work in Kentucky and Tennessee now totals nearly 360 projects across almost 169,000 acres, with a value of about $23 million.

That is not luck. That is years of habitat, money, agency work, volunteers, and sportsmen paying attention after the first animals hit the ground. Reintroduction gets the headlines, but long-term habitat is what keeps a herd from becoming a memory.

There is a lesson here for every deer, turkey, bear, and elk hunter. If you want game on the landscape, you cannot only care about opening day. You have to care about mast crops, forest composition, age class, invasive plants, timber work, prescribed fire where it fits, and the boring management decisions that make the exciting mornings possible.

Legal harvest depends on productive ground. Productive ground takes work. Kentucky’s oak and hickory stands are a good example of conservation with dirt under its nails.