Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods presented by First Light, creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand saddler blind, First Light,
Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon, and this week on the show, I'm joined
Speaker 1: by Kyle Eibarger of the Native Habitat Project to explore
Speaker 1: the potential for managing our dear properties with a holistic
Speaker 1: native ecosystem focus. All right, welcome to the Wired to
Speaker 1: Hunt Podcast, brought to you by First Light. This week,
Speaker 1: on this show, we are wrapping up Habitat Month with
Speaker 1: a bang and what I'd say, a bit of a
Speaker 1: philosophical twist of sorts. Yeah, I'm gonna throw a curveball
Speaker 1: at you here right at the end of our series,
Speaker 1: because you know, that's what I'm here to do. I'm
Speaker 1: here to surprise and delight and educate, and that's what
Speaker 1: we have in store for you today as we've got
Speaker 1: one more Habitat discussion for the month with our guest
Speaker 1: Kyle Liebarger. Now, Kyle is an Alabama resident and hunter,
Speaker 1: so shout out to tell you folks in the South.
Speaker 1: He's a graduate from Alabama A and M with a
Speaker 1: forestry degree. He's a consulting professional Forrester, the founder of
Speaker 1: the Native Habitat Project, and a bit of a social
Speaker 1: media video star. They call these kids TikTokers these days.
Speaker 1: I think who's He's come to widespread notoriety by way
Speaker 1: of these educational videos that he's sharing all across social
Speaker 1: media about native plants and wildlife ecosystem management and restoration
Speaker 1: and conservation. And he's someone who I've actually had a
Speaker 1: number of different folks reach out to him and say, Hey,
Speaker 1: you shou really talk to Kyle. You should talk to Kyle.
Speaker 1: But just recently, somebody I really respect, a Forrester and
Speaker 1: land manager and conservationist himself. This person reached out to
Speaker 1: me and said that he sees Kyle, or he sees
Speaker 1: in Kyle the beginnings of a young Craig Harper. And
Speaker 1: if you don't know, Craig Harper is one of the
Speaker 1: absolute foremost i mean, top of the line, top of
Speaker 1: the top of the top educators and communicators about wildlife
Speaker 1: habitat management. So that's a high compliment indeed. So that's
Speaker 1: why I'm excited to have Kyle here, and it's also
Speaker 1: because I think the topic we're going to discuss here
Speaker 1: is a needed way to cap this month. You might
Speaker 1: have noticed the past three weeks of discussion, there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of chat. There's been a lot of focus
Speaker 1: on hunting. You know. By that, I mean there's been
Speaker 1: this very strong focus on how our habitat, projects, improvements, manipulations,
Speaker 1: how they can make our hunting better, very tactical stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, plant this plot in this kind of way,
Speaker 1: it'll help you get a shot out of deer. Put
Speaker 1: in this betting area in this kind of way and
Speaker 1: this kind of size, you have a better chance than
Speaker 1: an archer shot. Whatever it is, something like that, And
Speaker 1: that's good stuff. It's fun stuff, it's helpful. I enjoy
Speaker 1: it just as much as the nuts guy. But Kyle,
Speaker 1: our guest today, wants us to consider more than just
Speaker 1: hunting when we get to working on our properties. He
Speaker 1: wants us to zoom out a bit and look at
Speaker 1: the whole ecosystem, all the animals, all the plants, everything
Speaker 1: in they're all tied together, and consider if we can
Speaker 1: do more then just manipulate these places to kill more deer,
Speaker 1: maybe we can restore and steward and create something that
Speaker 1: has a far wider positive impact on the land and
Speaker 1: creatures around us. That's our topic of conversation today. It's
Speaker 1: why expanding our view of land management to focus not
Speaker 1: just on deer, but on the goal of restoring the
Speaker 1: entire native ecosystem is worthwhile and how we can each
Speaker 1: do it. We talk native grasslands, pollinators, wildflowers, water quality,
Speaker 1: food plot replaced, creating native food plot screens, timber management,
Speaker 1: creating wildlife openings, and a whole lot more. Really, so, please,
Speaker 1: if you listen to the first three episodes in our series,
Speaker 1: please listen to this one too. I really think it
Speaker 1: works as a perfect bow to wrap around this whole
Speaker 1: month long series. You know, the ideas discussed across these
Speaker 1: four weeks, they don't need to be considered separately or
Speaker 1: as kind of an either or kind of decision. You
Speaker 1: don't need to take you know what Bobby and Toby
Speaker 1: said last week, and then take what Kyle's didn't tell
Speaker 1: you today and choose between the two. It's my belief
Speaker 1: that we can actually incorporate all of this different thinking
Speaker 1: into a new amalgam in our own mold of what
Speaker 1: we're trying to achieve and the things that matter to us.
Speaker 1: We can, in my belief, improve our deer hunting and
Speaker 1: manage for the entirety of the ecosystem. We can steward
Speaker 1: native grasslands and still create great food plots. We can
Speaker 1: have better deer hunting and also help birds and bugs
Speaker 1: and quail and water quality and carbon secrustation and all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff like that. That's possible. So I'm very
Speaker 1: excited about this discussion covering all of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But this brings me this kind of ties into another
Speaker 1: topic I wanted to mention here and exciting. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to stay exciting, but I'm combining within a word announcement
Speaker 1: and exciting announcement that i want to share with you
Speaker 1: about something I've been working on here for a while
Speaker 1: and it's going to be kicking off in about a month.
Speaker 1: Something I'm calling the Working for Wildlife Tour. You see,
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of incredible events across the country put
Speaker 1: on by states and conservation organizations that bring together hunters
Speaker 1: and anglers to volunteer their time and efforts to improve
Speaker 1: wildlife habitat restore ecosystems, clean trash, and so much more
Speaker 1: generally in many different ways giving back to the public
Speaker 1: lands and waters we love so much. So a lot
Speaker 1: of what we've talked about over the past three and
Speaker 1: a half now four weeks has been about how you
Speaker 1: can do this kind of good stuff on private lands.
Speaker 1: Well we can also do that kind of stuff even
Speaker 1: if you don't AI on land. You can do this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff on public lands and waters. And there's
Speaker 1: all sorts of these events all over the place that
Speaker 1: need volunteers, but they're slipping by under the surface without
Speaker 1: a lot of attention and not as much participation as
Speaker 1: they need. And I want to help change that. So
Speaker 1: this year, with the Working for Wildlife Tour, we're going
Speaker 1: to shine a spotlight on a bunch of these different
Speaker 1: volunteer habitat days across the country. And as part of that,
Speaker 1: I'm actually going to go out there and attend and
Speaker 1: participate in these events myself, hopefully bringing along some of
Speaker 1: my friends from Meetator and First Light to work on
Speaker 1: improving our public lands and our waters. And I'm inviting
Speaker 1: you to join me. You know, I talk to you
Speaker 1: guys every week here on the show, as do a
Speaker 1: bunch of other folks at Metator, but we rarely get
Speaker 1: to connect with you, our community members, in person anymore,
Speaker 1: and I want to help change that. So I'm excited
Speaker 1: to meet a bunch of you at these habitat days.
Speaker 1: I want to answer your questions, I want to hear
Speaker 1: your stories, sign some books, give away some free stuff,
Speaker 1: and then get our hands dirty together doing good stuff
Speaker 1: for wildlife. And I do think from what I understand,
Speaker 1: each of these volunteer events will be followed by some
Speaker 1: kind of social shindig afterwards as well, So not only
Speaker 1: are we going to work for wildlife, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: have a good time and meet some like minded folks too,
Speaker 1: So that's, you know, that's a win win as far
Speaker 1: as I'm concerned. Now, the specific details for these events,
Speaker 1: for each one of these events that are gonna be
Speaker 1: part of the tour, that's still getting ironed out. We're
Speaker 1: just about there, but I want to button up a
Speaker 1: couple more things. But I can tell you we've got
Speaker 1: events starting as soon as late March and running all
Speaker 1: the way into October, and I'm gonna be visiting locations
Speaker 1: as far east as Massachusetts and as far west as Idaho.
Speaker 1: We're trying to cover just about each major region of
Speaker 1: the country, so hopefully there's gonna be something that's within
Speaker 1: a reasonable drive for all of you. I'll announce the
Speaker 1: specific details for each of these individual events here on
Speaker 1: the wire Hunt podcast, on social media, on the Mediator website,
Speaker 1: and all those places, so stay tuned for the specifics.
Speaker 1: But this is the basic gist. This is what I
Speaker 1: want you guys to be getting ready for. I'm excited
Speaker 1: it's almost time to hit the road do some work
Speaker 1: for wildlife. And I do really believe this. I really
Speaker 1: do believe that we each have this ability to give
Speaker 1: back to these places and critters that we enjoy so much.
Speaker 1: As hunters and anglers, we can make a difference. And
Speaker 1: I'm just excited to go out there and do some
Speaker 1: of that work right there alongside you. So I want
Speaker 1: to meet you guys. I want to shake your hand.
Speaker 1: I want to pick up some trash next to you.
Speaker 1: I want to stack some brush, cut down some vases,
Speaker 1: plant some trees. Who knows what I am looking forward
Speaker 1: to it. So keep your eyes and ears peeled for
Speaker 1: more on the Working for Wildlife Tour very soon, probably
Speaker 1: as soon as maybe next week I'll have more and
Speaker 1: I'm just excited, very very excited. So with out of
Speaker 1: the way, let's get into this week's conversation. Let's wrap
Speaker 1: up our month long Habitat series with my chat with
Speaker 1: Kyle Liveburger. Here we go, all right now here with
Speaker 1: me straight off of the Wild Turkey Convention extravagance that
Speaker 1: just happened. We've got Kyle Liveburger from the Native Habitat Project.
Speaker 1: How are you, Kyle? Oh? Doing good other than a
Speaker 1: little bit horse from two days of talking nonstops. So
Speaker 1: working working on get my voice back, but hopefully we'll
Speaker 1: make it there this podcast without any problems. Did you
Speaker 1: did you enjoy all that turkey talk? Oh? Yeah, no, man,
Speaker 1: it's uh, that's that's that's my favorite thing to do.
Speaker 1: And that's uh, that's probably why why they make content,
Speaker 1: because my wife gets tired of hearing me talk about it,
Speaker 1: and so it's nice to be around a bunch of
Speaker 1: people who actually want to listen and uh hear about
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff and have conversations. So it's a
Speaker 1: it's a good man. Yeah, yeah, being around like minded
Speaker 1: folks excite about the same things, that is that's a
Speaker 1: recipe for a good time. And I guess that's why
Speaker 1: I'm excited about today too, Kyle, because we're in the
Speaker 1: midst of this. We're actually wrapping up our Habitat month
Speaker 1: on the podcast. We've spent you know, all February talking
Speaker 1: to people about different ways to manage habitat, to improve land,
Speaker 1: to work the ground in one way or another, to
Speaker 1: you know, help wildlife populations and deer hunting or any
Speaker 1: of these other things that a lot of our folks
Speaker 1: like to do. Um. But I'll be honest, a lot
Speaker 1: of our focus this year, in this month has been,
Speaker 1: you know, our guests have been pretty tactical, pretty hunting focused.
Speaker 1: We've talked to a couple folks recently who take a
Speaker 1: you know, a very strategic, tactical approach to doing stuff
Speaker 1: like just to make the deer hunting better and and
Speaker 1: that's something that you know a lot of people are
Speaker 1: interested in. I've certainly learned a lot from it. I
Speaker 1: find a very interest. But there's this other part of
Speaker 1: the habitat topic that we haven't talked about as much
Speaker 1: this time. We've talked about in previous podcasts with other people,
Speaker 1: but this month it just hasn't been kind of the
Speaker 1: It just hasn't been as prominent as some of our
Speaker 1: other discussions. And so when I was thinking about who
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring on to kind of close this
Speaker 1: thing down and to wrap it up and tie a
Speaker 1: bow on it, you came to mind, because your work,
Speaker 1: especially how you've shared some of your philosophies and ideas
Speaker 1: around managing native ecosystems, has really flourished and gained a
Speaker 1: really strong following in social media. You've got a massive
Speaker 1: following across Instagram, a TikTok, and your YouTube channel, all
Speaker 1: these different places where folks have really found your message
Speaker 1: to resonate with them, This message that you seem to
Speaker 1: have around managing for native ecosystems, not just for one critter,
Speaker 1: but really trying to bring back what was here, what
Speaker 1: should be here, and what could be here in a
Speaker 1: way that helps, you know, reach all sorts of different goals.
Speaker 1: So that is a long winded way of saying, Kyle,
Speaker 1: I'm curious to you or for you, why does this matter?
Speaker 1: Why do native ecosystems matter to you? Why has this
Speaker 1: become your life's work? And um, well I got a
Speaker 1: short little story um back in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: I was I was in school for forestry with a
Speaker 1: concentration of wild life. I was working for the state
Speaker 1: Fish and Wildlife, and I had this hunting property that
Speaker 1: I was managed. Is about forty acres and you know,
Speaker 1: mostly timbered, and it had several small open spots. And
Speaker 1: I tried to make those little open spots bigger by
Speaker 1: cutting down a but just cedar trees. And this is
Speaker 1: before I knew anything, before I knew most of my
Speaker 1: native plants. And I went through. I spread the whole
Speaker 1: place with glaifa say, to try to turn it into
Speaker 1: a food plot. I even brought in trailer a trailer
Speaker 1: load of like composts to try to build the soil up,
Speaker 1: and that all washed away the first year. But the
Speaker 1: next summer I was in there, I noticed where I
Speaker 1: cut down those cedar trees. It was just like a
Speaker 1: rainbow of color of just different plants that I had
Speaker 1: never seen before. I mean, I was in forgery school.
Speaker 1: I'd graduated forger school, and I had no idea what
Speaker 1: these plants were. And I'd realized that's what used to
Speaker 1: be on the interior of that field, and I had
Speaker 1: killed it off. And try to make a food plot.
Speaker 1: So I took what was you know, make a long
Speaker 1: story short, after I took the time to figure out
Speaker 1: what these plants were. I invited a botanist friend out
Speaker 1: there with me, and he was just in awe of
Speaker 1: what was there, tons of rare species, state listed species
Speaker 1: county records that have never been documented in my county.
Speaker 1: Before I realized that I had, I had sprayed and
Speaker 1: killed off something that was better for wildlife and what
Speaker 1: I was trying to plant there. And and man, that's
Speaker 1: what I think. That's the moment that that kind of
Speaker 1: flipped a switch, like, hey, maybe this is what I
Speaker 1: should be managing for, and maybe these plants are what
Speaker 1: I should be looking for on other properties. So as
Speaker 1: I as I, you know, as I became a forester
Speaker 1: and was working on a lot of private lands, I
Speaker 1: was looking for a lot of those same species that
Speaker 1: I saw on that on that property. And they weren't
Speaker 1: they weren't almost properties most places were they were mowing
Speaker 1: them and um, you know it was close canopy. But
Speaker 1: when we'd go in there and do a timber harvest
Speaker 1: any we'd start seeing some of those things species. Maybe
Speaker 1: not the diversity this place has and I've come to
Speaker 1: figure out the place that I first started with was
Speaker 1: one of the higher quality sites in my area. So
Speaker 1: but even if I could find half the plants on
Speaker 1: a property, that place was pretty diverse. And I wasn't
Speaker 1: finding that most of the time on ninety percent of properties,
Speaker 1: But every now and then I'd come across and and
Speaker 1: it was those properties that I found them on that
Speaker 1: had the most wildlife diversity. There was turkeys, they still
Speaker 1: had turkeys or quail, and they had great dear populations. Um.
Speaker 1: And and that's when you know, you know, I'm very
Speaker 1: add and I'm I can't sit down and listen, but
Speaker 1: when I'm very visual and when I when I saw
Speaker 1: that for myself, I was like, man, this is the
Speaker 1: way to go. This is what we should be doing.
Speaker 1: Um And as hunters, man, that's uh, we're the We're
Speaker 1: the ones out there putting in the time and the
Speaker 1: money and uh, you know, buying equipment to do this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And you know, maybe this is what
Speaker 1: we should really be focused on. So um, you know,
Speaker 1: a long score short. Now got the Native Habitat project
Speaker 1: and try to try to make other people see the
Speaker 1: lot like I did. Yeah, So imagine you were on
Speaker 1: an elevator and uh, hardcore deer hunter land manager steps
Speaker 1: on the elevator with you, and you're gonna go up
Speaker 1: to the twentieth floor. So you got a couple of minutes,
Speaker 1: but it's not a ton of time before he's going
Speaker 1: to hop off that elevator and go to his room
Speaker 1: wherever he stand. Maybe you guys are at NWTF, you're
Speaker 1: at the convention together, and you know that this guy
Speaker 1: is the typical whitetail hunter and land manager. He puts
Speaker 1: in a bunch of food plots. He maybe does some
Speaker 1: timber cutting or some hinge cutting to create a couple
Speaker 1: of betting areas, but he's got a bunch of monoculture
Speaker 1: food plots, and all of his work is dedicated just
Speaker 1: to growing big deer and shooting more big deer. How
Speaker 1: would you how would you present your philosophy to this guy,
Speaker 1: and how would you pitch him on considering it if
Speaker 1: you had just these few minutes to kind of get
Speaker 1: across to him, like, hey, here's the different way I'm recommending,
Speaker 1: and here's why it might be worth considering. What would
Speaker 1: you tell that guy when you're managing a place with
Speaker 1: about diversity when you've got sometimes hundreds of species of
Speaker 1: grasses and sedges and wildflowers and rubs. If you're providing
Speaker 1: food year round and not just food your brows. You're
Speaker 1: providing insects for turkeys and quail. UM, you're providing cover
Speaker 1: for those deer. UM, you're providing cover during fawning season
Speaker 1: for those does. You're providing a food source during finding season,
Speaker 1: a food source during hunting season. It's it's a year
Speaker 1: round uh. You know that's these ecosystems, these native ecosystems,
Speaker 1: they don't have room for plants that aren't pulling their
Speaker 1: weight um year round, or they don't have they don't
Speaker 1: have UM. I guess they don't have space for um
Speaker 1: just monocultures. And that's why most of our native species
Speaker 1: don't form monocultures. UM. And there I am getting this.
Speaker 1: We're probably on the nineteenth floor now, but UM, you know,
Speaker 1: not just managing for deer, We're managing for an ecosystem.
Speaker 1: And the more biod diversity you have, the more things
Speaker 1: that you're providing year round, and they're not just one
Speaker 1: that one species and just providing food like a lot
Speaker 1: of our food plant stuff are it's providing it's providing brows,
Speaker 1: but it's also providing seeds that is producing when it flowers,
Speaker 1: and it's providing its attracting insects, it is providing cover
Speaker 1: that one plant, you know, one native plant is doing
Speaker 1: multiple things that maybe that one species you're planting a
Speaker 1: as as a monoculture can't do, and so you're less
Speaker 1: likely to not have that one thing that you're lacking.
Speaker 1: And sometimes, you know, people hunters don't realize that, you know,
Speaker 1: what they're doing in the landscape is leaving out something
Speaker 1: you know they might not have. They're like, where's my turkey? Well,
Speaker 1: you might not have that cover, But when you're managing
Speaker 1: an ecosystem, you don't have to worry about that because
Speaker 1: you're going to have pretty much everything and there's not
Speaker 1: going to be any limiting factors most of the time.
Speaker 1: So what if this person on that elevator with you
Speaker 1: is thinking to himself, well, man, when I look out
Speaker 1: there on the property like that, mother nature is already
Speaker 1: doing this. It's already managing the ecosystem. I'm seeing trees here,
Speaker 1: I see grasses here, I see stuff all around. You know,
Speaker 1: why do I really need to do anything, or how
Speaker 1: could I really make an impact in some way that's
Speaker 1: actually better than just planting my food plots. Like I
Speaker 1: put in a food plot, I see this instant change
Speaker 1: to that person. You know, I guess what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say here, not very clearly, is when you say
Speaker 1: manage for a native ecosystem, why do we need to
Speaker 1: quote unquote manage a native ecosystem. Shouldn't it naturally be
Speaker 1: doing that something someone might be saying, yeah, Well, for one,
Speaker 1: we've removed fire from the landscape, and most of the
Speaker 1: time that disturbance is what would have kept these is diverse.
Speaker 1: When you even on some of the best rendants I manage,
Speaker 1: if you remove fire landscape, little blue stems going to
Speaker 1: take over. And then you're going to start seeing a
Speaker 1: decrease in wildflowers. And you're thinking wildflowers, Why do I
Speaker 1: give a crap about wildflowers? They're a wildflower. All of
Speaker 1: this to wildlife is a thing that attracts insects for
Speaker 1: their you know, bull for turkeys and quail to consume,
Speaker 1: and a thing that produces seeds for them to consume.
Speaker 1: M So it's not really a wildflier, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a food, it's the thing something that's providing a food source. Um.
Speaker 1: And so we've removed fire from the landscape, but we've
Speaker 1: also introduced invasives to the landscape. So on most properties
Speaker 1: I go on, there's invasives everywhere, whether it's non dative
Speaker 1: turf grasses or invasive shrubs you know, cerecio, les, dizam
Speaker 1: and these invasives don't act like dative species. They want
Speaker 1: to take over and form monocultures most of the time.
Speaker 1: And so that requires us to go in there initially
Speaker 1: and remove those invasives and created that give that environment
Speaker 1: back to those native species to thrive again. Um. So
Speaker 1: to me, those are the two you know, big reasons
Speaker 1: that we now have to step in and play a
Speaker 1: role on these places. Yeah, what about this? You know
Speaker 1: you talk You mentioned natives versus invasives a lot, and
Speaker 1: there are I guess there's there's two kind of Devil's
Speaker 1: advocates positions on this. One would say, you know, why
Speaker 1: does it really matter at all? Like, you know, if
Speaker 1: if if the deer eating it, why does it matter
Speaker 1: if the if the turkeys are hanging out in it?
Speaker 1: Why does it matterfests native or invasive so that's question
Speaker 1: number one. How would you argue that? In question number
Speaker 1: two is um, you know we are we are? How
Speaker 1: do I describe this? This is the way of the future,
Speaker 1: Like this stuff keeps happening, Invasives are moving in, everything
Speaker 1: is spreading all over the place. There's nothing you can
Speaker 1: do at this point. It's a lost cause this is
Speaker 1: a new normal. Those would be two possible Devil's advocate
Speaker 1: positions to your native habitat philosophy. How would you address
Speaker 1: those two things? Well, first of all, you just because
Speaker 1: a deer eats something doesn't mean that's good habitat because
Speaker 1: they're basically a goat. You know, you could put a
Speaker 1: deer in a in the richest neighborhood in Alabama. You
Speaker 1: could put a deer there and they're going to survive.
Speaker 1: And I know that's something a lot of deer hunters
Speaker 1: don't want to hear, but dad gum, I mean, look
Speaker 1: at other wildlife species and they're I mean, they're highly
Speaker 1: they're specialist, and they have to have insects, so they
Speaker 1: have to have flower and seeds there, or they have
Speaker 1: to have a certain type of cover or they can't
Speaker 1: reproduce deer. I mean they can basically live anywhere. And
Speaker 1: then you know, there's plenty of deer hunters that can
Speaker 1: attest for that, you know, killing giant deer in the
Speaker 1: middle of urban areas. And so for one, that's that's
Speaker 1: not really a measurement of how good an ecosystem is
Speaker 1: um And so we have to look at what kind
Speaker 1: of you know, what species are the canary in the
Speaker 1: coal mine that are are telling us, hey, maybe this
Speaker 1: ecosystem isn't what it should be. And those are the
Speaker 1: specialist species like coel and turkeys, and those are species
Speaker 1: that we're seeing declines in across the country. And not
Speaker 1: just those species, but also non game species songbirds and insects.
Speaker 1: We're seeing decline in those numbers. And that's because those
Speaker 1: things were really, really really depend on our native ecosystems.
Speaker 1: And so so look at those look at those species,
Speaker 1: and do you have those on your property, because in
Speaker 1: North Alabama, I'm lucky to see a covey of quet
Speaker 1: once every year or two um. And it's because those
Speaker 1: are the ones who can't stand those invasives. So if
Speaker 1: you only care about deer and you don't care about
Speaker 1: those species, and yeah, I mean, let your property get
Speaker 1: taken over with invasives because the deer, I mean, they're
Speaker 1: they're gonna be just fine. Um. But it's those other
Speaker 1: things that aren't going to be just fine. And and
Speaker 1: I think those are those species are worthwhile as well. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean they're I want to make sure we still
Speaker 1: have those species around for future generations. On hunters, because
Speaker 1: your kids and your grandkids they're probably gonna be deer hunters,
Speaker 1: but they might be interested in in turkey hunt or
Speaker 1: quill hunting. And so when you're managing deer with this,
Speaker 1: you know, by managing native ecosystems, you're you're giving that
Speaker 1: option to your kids and grandkids to also you know
Speaker 1: hunt woodcock or rabbits or quail and all those other
Speaker 1: species that are very you know, they're specialists and really
Speaker 1: depend on these native ecosystems. Maybe I hope that answer
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, yeah, Now what to what about the
Speaker 1: second part, which was it's a foregone conclusion everything invasive
Speaker 1: is going everywhere. There's no way we can return to
Speaker 1: native everything because we've already changed so much. What do
Speaker 1: you say to that person, No, it's we can. You
Speaker 1: can make a difference on a property. Um, And I
Speaker 1: see examples of that every day. Um, And it's and
Speaker 1: it's really about how you manage it. Yeah, there's situations
Speaker 1: where you might be fighting an invasive and you're not
Speaker 1: having any luck with it, and you're like, man, this
Speaker 1: is a lost cause. Well, it could have been your
Speaker 1: It could have been your your strategy, that could have
Speaker 1: been the problem. You could have had a bad strategy
Speaker 1: or an approach. So for example, if you've got an
Speaker 1: understory full of private and autumn olive and bush honeysuckle,
Speaker 1: or and you go in there and you do a
Speaker 1: timber harvest and you know, bring in a ton of sunlight,
Speaker 1: and then you come in with a multure and just
Speaker 1: start spraying it. And then that same year you come
Speaker 1: in and try to plant new hardwoods. Well that gum,
Speaker 1: I mean, you set yourself up for a very bad
Speaker 1: situation because the first thing you did was bring in sunlight,
Speaker 1: which is going to make those invasives explode. So you
Speaker 1: probably should have gone in there before you did a
Speaker 1: timber harvest and mulch those invasives spent several years spraying
Speaker 1: those stump sprouts to come back, which is it's very
Speaker 1: easy because all those species, for the most part have
Speaker 1: green leaves in the wintertime, and so you can go
Speaker 1: through there with glyphasate and spray it and you're not
Speaker 1: going to kill your native species that are dormant. And
Speaker 1: once you've got that under control, then you can come
Speaker 1: in into your timber harvest and then you can come
Speaker 1: in and plant new harvest trees if that's what you
Speaker 1: want to do. But it's really all about the approach,
Speaker 1: because yeah, there's there's a lot of approaches that I've
Speaker 1: done to get rid of invasis where I was like, man,
Speaker 1: that was just a lost cause. I think I might
Speaker 1: have made things worse. But it's really about the strategy.
Speaker 1: So you have to sit down and figure out how
Speaker 1: to approach it first, and then it might be something
Speaker 1: very simple and might I mean to me, that's a
Speaker 1: very easy approach to getting rid of you know, riven
Speaker 1: automotive or honeysuckle um. For having that option to spray
Speaker 1: them in the wintertime and not kill your native species,
Speaker 1: that makes it a whole lot easier and easier to accomplish.
Speaker 1: But it's easy to see how you know, somebody else
Speaker 1: who didn't go that route could have, you know, made
Speaker 1: it worse. And then you know, then they've kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, they're kicking themselves and down on themselves for
Speaker 1: for uh you know, you know these invasives and they
Speaker 1: just give up on human trying to get rid of them.
Speaker 1: So um, just learn, learn what you get, learn what
Speaker 1: you have on your property, learned the invasive species, and
Speaker 1: then spend a year trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: get rid of them. And I think approach should take
Speaker 1: to get rid of them. And that's where, you know,
Speaker 1: I started a group Native Habitat Managers on on on
Speaker 1: Facebook and we were in the you know there you
Speaker 1: have the Habitat Managers group on Facebook, and there was
Speaker 1: you know, about eight of us guys in there who
Speaker 1: were really managing native ecosystems, and we were like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's start our own, and let's start it. You know,
Speaker 1: we want a group that has hunters in there and
Speaker 1: nine hunters. We want botanists, we want foresters because those botanists,
Speaker 1: those foresters, they know how to manage these places. They
Speaker 1: know the plants, and you know, they usually know how
Speaker 1: to get rid of them. And so we've made the
Speaker 1: community of hunters and nine hunters, which is we were like,
Speaker 1: this is going to go you know this is going
Speaker 1: to be awful, but it's actually gone really well and
Speaker 1: there's a very little conflict in there. And now it's
Speaker 1: become a place where you can go and ask questions like, hey,
Speaker 1: I've got these invasives that I'm just really overwhelmed with
Speaker 1: who's had success, And then you get a you know,
Speaker 1: just last week we had a comment section full of
Speaker 1: people managing Japanese steel grass and having success getting rid
Speaker 1: of Japanese steel grass, and even myself, that's one that
Speaker 1: I almost have giving up on on my property, but
Speaker 1: it's because I was going about it wrong. I was
Speaker 1: trying to get rid of it in a way that
Speaker 1: probably wasn't the smartest way to get rid of it.
Speaker 1: And now you know, I've got the group, and I've
Speaker 1: seen how all these other people are having success, and
Speaker 1: you know, this year, I'm gonna try what those guys
Speaker 1: have been having success with. So learn your property, learn
Speaker 1: what you have that's invasive, and go to a group
Speaker 1: like Native Habitat Managers and say, hey, I've got this invasive,
Speaker 1: how are y'all getting rid of it? Or go to
Speaker 1: the top and just search Japanese steal grass and you're
Speaker 1: gonna get ten posts of people talking about how to
Speaker 1: get rid of Japanese steel grass. So it's really it's
Speaker 1: not a lost calls. It's it's definitely a worthwhile task
Speaker 1: and you'll be thinking yourself for doing it, and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe three or four years from now, but you'll be
Speaker 1: thinking yourself. Yeah, yeah, So I heard you talk once
Speaker 1: about you know, not only does managing for the ecosystem
Speaker 1: in the way you're discussing and managing for versus invasive
Speaker 1: not only does that actually help, you know, in a
Speaker 1: tangible hunting kind of way, or like help you in
Speaker 1: reach whatever your wildlife goals are, but there's also maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit of a I don't know if moral
Speaker 1: obligation is the right word for it, but there's there's
Speaker 1: some kind of obligation we have to give back to
Speaker 1: these places since we're taking from them as hunters, right.
Speaker 1: And then also not only that, but also the public
Speaker 1: perception of what we do and how how we manage
Speaker 1: might be viewed. So, for example, if all we do
Speaker 1: is plant food plots because we want to kill more deer,
Speaker 1: that does not nearly have the same optics as US
Speaker 1: hunters who like to claim that we are the original
Speaker 1: conservationists managing and helping and trying to restore and protect
Speaker 1: and conserve the entire ecosystem, and pollinators just as much
Speaker 1: as bees, or just as much as bucks, and you know,
Speaker 1: songbirds just as much as turkeys. Um can you can
Speaker 1: you speak to that a little bit? Am I am
Speaker 1: I explaining your position right? Or the man perfect? That's
Speaker 1: that's that's exactly how I feel. And you know, we,
Speaker 1: for one, you know, as as hunters, there's things that
Speaker 1: we're we've done in the past, that our granddads or
Speaker 1: our dads have done, and that we're we've already seen
Speaker 1: the light on. And even if you're somebody who who
Speaker 1: isn't into managing native habitats, you see that. You see
Speaker 1: how you know, as as hunters haven't evolved. Um. And
Speaker 1: And it's not to say that the pastoration didn't know
Speaker 1: what they were doing or that they were you know,
Speaker 1: out to do harm, but they made mistakes and those
Speaker 1: are mistakes that we need to learn from and do
Speaker 1: our best to not do those again, because you know,
Speaker 1: let's say, you know, let's just for example, Bradford pair.
Speaker 1: Somebody in North America Brad Bradford pair and started putting
Speaker 1: it on the market. Well, who's getting blamed for planning
Speaker 1: that Bradford pair. It's not that person who brought it
Speaker 1: to market. It's the homeowners um in the in the area.
Speaker 1: And we don't want to be, you know, hunters don't.
Speaker 1: We don't want to be in that position to where
Speaker 1: we're like, all right, yeah, we brought in autumnolive. We
Speaker 1: brought in um, what is it not trifoli and orange
Speaker 1: bicolored lesbediza. You know, these invasive species that that are
Speaker 1: now reckon havoc can cause it harm we brought in. Well,
Speaker 1: let's learn our lesson from those and let's manage native ecosystems,
Speaker 1: because we essentially become bulletproof when that happens. If if
Speaker 1: we're the ones out there managing native ecosystems not just
Speaker 1: for deer, but for you know, all wildlife as a
Speaker 1: whole and trying to improve biodiversity or trying to you know,
Speaker 1: as a as a hunter. In my area, I've been
Speaker 1: going around on roadsides and if I find a rattlesnake
Speaker 1: master and I'm like, man, I haven't seen that around
Speaker 1: here much at all. I grab some seeds of that
Speaker 1: rattlesneak master and I'm now growing plugs of it or
Speaker 1: planted on my hunt property. And and just to you know,
Speaker 1: for selfish reasons, I'm improving the plant communities on my
Speaker 1: hunt property and essentially improving my wildlife populations on my property.
Speaker 1: But to the public, I'm conserving a plant species, And
Speaker 1: to me that's just you know, as a brownie points.
Speaker 1: The more brownie points we can get to the pub
Speaker 1: get from the public, the better chapids and our grandkids
Speaker 1: are going to be able to hunt in the future
Speaker 1: because we're the ones actually out here doing real conservation work,
Speaker 1: and not just the conservation work that we think is
Speaker 1: going to make us kill a big deer. The conservation
Speaker 1: work that's gonna that's managing ECOSISMS as a whole and
Speaker 1: improving dear populations and those you know, non game species
Speaker 1: populations as well. So I don't know, I think it's
Speaker 1: just a way to make hunters a little more bulletproof
Speaker 1: from the public. And that can't hurt that can um,
Speaker 1: That can only be that can only benefit us in
Speaker 1: the long run. So that's why I really push on that.
Speaker 1: I think it's as hunters, um we should really get
Speaker 1: back to focusing on conservation first. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: back in the day, that's why that's what we're focused on.
Speaker 1: When you know, when hunters started out, that's what our
Speaker 1: main goal was was conservation. And I'm not saying that's
Speaker 1: totally shifted, but I don't think that's the main focus anymore,
Speaker 1: and I think we should get back to that. And
Speaker 1: and uh, I don't know. It's just the little things, man,
Speaker 1: that's that's the kind of stuff I enjoy. I probably
Speaker 1: enjoy finding rare wildfliers on the side of the road
Speaker 1: bringing them back to my property more than I do
Speaker 1: hunting now, just because it's a you get a whole
Speaker 1: lot out of it, man's and that makes your you're
Speaker 1: hunting experience a whole lot more enjoyable. But you're sitting
Speaker 1: there on your property and you you know what those
Speaker 1: deer are walking by, and you know what they're consuming,
Speaker 1: and you know you had a hand and make sure
Speaker 1: this negative ecosystem was back and intact and the way
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be. Yeah, So I guess the next thing,
Speaker 1: if I'm well, I am listening to this, but if
Speaker 1: I were listening to this on the other end of
Speaker 1: the microphone or on the speakers, and this resonating with me.
Speaker 1: I think the next thing I'd be thinking as well,
Speaker 1: how do I start, like, how do I how do
Speaker 1: I incorporate these ideas or this philosophy into a property
Speaker 1: management plan? Is it? Is it as simple as well,
Speaker 1: I got to go out and just kill every invasive
Speaker 1: species I can find? Or is it I got to
Speaker 1: get rid of my food plots and put in grasslands,
Speaker 1: or is it you know, how do you incorporate these
Speaker 1: ideas into a plan, into you know, a management philosophy
Speaker 1: For someone who is a deer hunter wants to improve
Speaker 1: their hunt, but also wants to start doing these things
Speaker 1: you're talking about, how do we start thinking about that? Well, so,
Speaker 1: at the bare minimum, if you're listening to this and
Speaker 1: you want to know what you can do and this
Speaker 1: takes no effort at all, don't plant invasive species on
Speaker 1: your property. Um, don't contribute to the problem, because you know,
Speaker 1: as somebody who's walked a ton of private land, everyone
Speaker 1: has invasives. And the problem that invasives are such a
Speaker 1: huge problem, Like we've we we have three thousand or
Speaker 1: like thirty one hundred native species in Alabama we've introduced
Speaker 1: sixty five hundred species in the way. Did I say
Speaker 1: that right? Did I say thirty? I said thirty one hundred.
Speaker 1: In Alabama, we've introduced sixty five hundred species of an
Speaker 1: invasive species to the US. I'm not talking non native wow,
Speaker 1: and I'm not talking soybeans are non native, but they're
Speaker 1: not invasive. Um, there's nothing wrong with soybeans. If you
Speaker 1: want to plant soybeans on your property, go have at it.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna cause problems for future generations about plant soybeans.
Speaker 1: I'm talking sixty five hundred species that are invasive. We've
Speaker 1: introduced twice the amount of invasive plants in the US.
Speaker 1: Then there are native plants and one of the most
Speaker 1: biodiverse states in the country, and that's alarming. So at
Speaker 1: the bare minimum, just make sure what your planting isn't invasive.
Speaker 1: And they're still invasives and some of these snood plot
Speaker 1: seed mixes, but you know the majority of food plot
Speaker 1: mixes are totally fine, and you're not going to do
Speaker 1: anything wrong unless you're doing what I did, and when
Speaker 1: go in and kill off a really biodiverse area. But
Speaker 1: my advice is is find your worst area on your property.
Speaker 1: If you want to put food plot, which I'm I'm
Speaker 1: all four. If you want a food plot on your property,
Speaker 1: find the worst area, Find the plus spot where maybe
Speaker 1: you have a ton of fescue or a ton of lespediza,
Speaker 1: or you have privet taken over. Clear that area, get
Speaker 1: rid of those invasives. Plant your food plot there, um,
Speaker 1: but make sure it's a mix that doesn't have invasive
Speaker 1: species in it. So I think, you know, at the
Speaker 1: bare minimum, as hunters, we should stop planting invasives or
Speaker 1: things that can become invasive or things that are going
Speaker 1: to be permanent on the landscape. And the next um,
Speaker 1: the next landowner is gonna have to deal with we
Speaker 1: don't we don't want to add anything that isn't going
Speaker 1: to allow our native plants native university thrive. Um. You know.
Speaker 1: But yeah it's starting to do. You know. That's that's
Speaker 1: the first at the bare minimum, um. But if you
Speaker 1: really want to make a difference on your property, get
Speaker 1: rid of invasis you know, um, figure out what the
Speaker 1: worst place on your property is, figure out where what
Speaker 1: plants you have that are problems. Get get the I
Speaker 1: naturalist app man. I love the naturalist stapp. There's other
Speaker 1: great apps Picture this or Google Lens and things like that,
Speaker 1: but on our Naturalists you can go around and take
Speaker 1: pictures of plants and it'll tell you what they are.
Speaker 1: You can find out if they're native or invasive, and
Speaker 1: you can look at a map to see where other
Speaker 1: people are seeing that plant in the country, which to
Speaker 1: me is really awesome. There's plants, there's native plants that
Speaker 1: I found in Alabama that nobody else in Alabama has
Speaker 1: documented yet. And that's how I discovered. I discovered new
Speaker 1: species for the state that way on properties. They weren't
Speaker 1: my properties, there were other people's properties. But man, how
Speaker 1: cool would that be to find a new plant species
Speaker 1: on your for the state, on your property. But do that,
Speaker 1: figure out what you have that's native and what you
Speaker 1: have that's non native, and just start trying to get
Speaker 1: rid of the non natives and start trying to encourage
Speaker 1: the native species, and then do like what I did.
Speaker 1: You know, if you find some cool native species on
Speaker 1: a roadside or something, yeah, you know, collect some seeds
Speaker 1: and introduce those of your property, improve upon the native
Speaker 1: plant communities, and try to get rid of the non
Speaker 1: native of the communities. That's a good place to start.
Speaker 1: And that looks a little bit different than woodlands and
Speaker 1: then a dozen fields. You know, you're going to deal
Speaker 1: with different invasive species in different areas. Um And I
Speaker 1: can't tell you what's going to be invasive in your
Speaker 1: area because you know, in Tennessee, thirty minutes from my house,
Speaker 1: everybody's dealing with with a tree of heaven alianthis in
Speaker 1: my area, we don't have tree of heaven. That's not
Speaker 1: a problem yet. Um So, just very short distances invasives
Speaker 1: that people are dealing with, changes and the way to
Speaker 1: manage those changes. And that's why it's a You got
Speaker 1: to learn what's under property and learn what you're dealing
Speaker 1: with the first first of all. And to me, that's
Speaker 1: the best first step you can take to to do
Speaker 1: the kind of things I'm talking about. Yeah, so almost
Speaker 1: you gotta do. You need to do a survey of
Speaker 1: what you're working with to start right, taking invent take
Speaker 1: an inventory. Yeah and uh, you know, with our naturalists,
Speaker 1: you can create a list of what's on your property.
Speaker 1: And that's something I've done on my place. You know,
Speaker 1: five years ago, I spread and killed off on my fescue.
Speaker 1: Every year I walked through my property. Oh, in the afternoons,
Speaker 1: me and my family walk around that field. I use
Speaker 1: I made mode trails around the field that I use
Speaker 1: as I use a fire lines, but also uses walking
Speaker 1: trails fool with my family. And every year I walked through,
Speaker 1: I take pictures of anything, any plants I haven't seen before.
Speaker 1: And I've got a whole inventory of what's native or
Speaker 1: what's what's returned to my property after killing off that
Speaker 1: rescue And man, as I you know you're a landowner,
Speaker 1: how cool would it have been if oh, how cool
Speaker 1: is it going to be for the person who owns
Speaker 1: the property effort you if you've got a list of
Speaker 1: what you're seeing now in twenty twenty three. Man, how
Speaker 1: if I had a list of the plants people were
Speaker 1: seeing on a property back in the nineteen nineties, that'd
Speaker 1: be so cool. I'd like to have a as complete
Speaker 1: of a list that's possible of what was growing there
Speaker 1: so you can you can, then now thirty years later,
Speaker 1: as a landowner, know what's changed, what's still here, and
Speaker 1: what's not here. That's going to make you a better
Speaker 1: land manager for that property. So to those private landowners
Speaker 1: out there, to me, that's one of the best things
Speaker 1: you can do. Take an inventory, have a list of
Speaker 1: what's growing on your place now, and even what invasives
Speaker 1: you're dealing with. Talk about what invasives you have that
Speaker 1: you're trying to get rid of, and and make you
Speaker 1: make put it that in a format that you can
Speaker 1: pass it on to the next landowner, whether that's your
Speaker 1: kids or somebody else. Yeah, yeah, that would be that
Speaker 1: would be pretty cool. So we've done a survey, we've
Speaker 1: got an inventory, we know what's out there on our place,
Speaker 1: and we're thinking, okay, you know now, now what's next?
Speaker 1: And you mentioned how there's kind of there's some significant
Speaker 1: differences between it here if you're working with open areas
Speaker 1: versus if you're working with timbered areas. Um, let's talk openings,
Speaker 1: let's talk grasslands, that kind of stuff. You know, first off,
Speaker 1: why in particularly we've talked kind of generally, but can
Speaker 1: you can you cover a little bit about why native
Speaker 1: grassland ecosystems are so darn powerful and important for all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff out there? That gum, I mean, I'll talk,
Speaker 1: I'll talk. I'll talk in the hunters language. Look at
Speaker 1: the prairie states. I mean, look at the deer killed
Speaker 1: in the prairie States. That's that's the difference. I mean,
Speaker 1: and in the southeast, and fact, most of North America
Speaker 1: was grasslands. It was our dominant ecosystem. And in the
Speaker 1: southeast it was the same. Most of our dominant ecosystem.
Speaker 1: Down here, we're grasslands, but we have a longer growing season,
Speaker 1: we have warmer temperatures, the more moisture. So a lot
Speaker 1: of the southeast turned into forest pretty quickly once fire
Speaker 1: was moved. Um. But the majority of the main, the
Speaker 1: main ecosystem here were grasslings and those those grasslands or powerhouses. Man,
Speaker 1: when he comes to deer like, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: this is stuff I was learning, you know, five years
Speaker 1: ago reading Craig Harper's books. Um, I mean he but
Speaker 1: you got like fifty pounds an acre of deer food
Speaker 1: in a close canopy forest, in an in an open
Speaker 1: field of natives, there's upwards two twenty five hundred pounds
Speaker 1: of food per acre. That's to me, that's that's enough
Speaker 1: right there to make a hundred realize how important these
Speaker 1: grasslands are too, not just deer, but all these other
Speaker 1: wildlife species as well. The amount of deer food in
Speaker 1: the grass and far exceeds man. You'd have to have
Speaker 1: you know how, I can't do the math off the
Speaker 1: time of my head, fifty fifty acres. You'd have to
Speaker 1: have fifty acres of those canady for us to do
Speaker 1: what one acre of of a grassland can do. They're
Speaker 1: just powerhouses. And they provide a ton of cover for fawns.
Speaker 1: If you hate man, if you hate next predators and
Speaker 1: and fawn killers, make sure your property has that cover
Speaker 1: first and a and a good bit of it, not
Speaker 1: just one acre that they can come check and walk
Speaker 1: through the whole thing real quick, and and see what's
Speaker 1: what's laying down in there? Give your give your what
Speaker 1: is it? Ah, gosh, Jerry Jerry Clour down here on
Speaker 1: the radio, give them, but give him a fighting chance.
Speaker 1: Give give your give your turkeys, and give your fawns
Speaker 1: a fighting chance. Man. And then they don't have a
Speaker 1: fighting chance that they don't have that cover. Um. And
Speaker 1: and you know your quail that that have disappeared. North
Speaker 1: Alabama used to have prairie chickens. I know up heels
Speaker 1: Away y'all had prairie chickens. But nobody knows that the
Speaker 1: Southeast had prairie chickens. We had so much prairie. We
Speaker 1: had prairie chickens um and they're even more grassling independent
Speaker 1: than quail. But our quail are disappearing. Our turkeys have
Speaker 1: disappeared in North Alabama. I mean, they're My county's the
Speaker 1: worst in the state for turkeys. And and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: bringing back these grasslands, you see that immediate response even
Speaker 1: my front flower beds. Man Like, in my front yard,
Speaker 1: I converted part of my yard to native prairie and
Speaker 1: it's maybe maybe twenty foot by sixty foot and I
Speaker 1: filled it full of native wildfliers. That first year, you
Speaker 1: could audibly hear the amount of insects in it, like
Speaker 1: just like that. It went from dead silent to the
Speaker 1: noise was almost deafening, the amount of insects and pollinators.
Speaker 1: Using this little little bitty strip and you you take
Speaker 1: that twenty foot by sisty foot area and turn it
Speaker 1: into twenty acres, think about the amount of food that
Speaker 1: is for turkeys and quail, and the amount of brows
Speaker 1: that is or deer, an amount of cover that is.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's that's the thing is people have to
Speaker 1: see this for themselves, and it takes a little experiences
Speaker 1: like I had in my front yard or I had,
Speaker 1: you know, killing off that prairie on that Hunt property.
Speaker 1: It takes a little experiences like that for people to
Speaker 1: see it for themselves and be like, man, there's really
Speaker 1: something to this, Like we're starving these things to death,
Speaker 1: and not just you know, not just deer. I mean, dear,
Speaker 1: we're starving them to death too. When you're starving deer
Speaker 1: to death, I mean that's you're a you're you have
Speaker 1: a real problem there where you have a brows line
Speaker 1: because deer, and you're so far from from correcting that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's you're really you're really deep. Then you're
Speaker 1: really deep into it. It's gonna take a lot to
Speaker 1: fix it. But the grasslands are the first or the
Speaker 1: first answer. Man. If you can take something, if you
Speaker 1: can take an open end and turn it back into
Speaker 1: a grassland and provide that year round food and cover
Speaker 1: and and I mean, that's the best thing you can
Speaker 1: do on a property that has a lot of close
Speaker 1: can to be timber. I know that, yeah, and and
Speaker 1: and not none of that, But can you speak a
Speaker 1: little bit to the benefits that native grass lands have
Speaker 1: to to water quality or carbon sequestration or any of
Speaker 1: these other bigger, bigger things. Yeah, so obviously they're they're
Speaker 1: cleaning water. They're they're those deep root systems. So they
Speaker 1: native grasses have roots I mean anywhere from eight to
Speaker 1: fifteen foot I mean, and some of your wildflowers are
Speaker 1: the same. And these big long tap roots um. And
Speaker 1: that's allowing what's that What that is doing is basically
Speaker 1: doing what what uh what tillage ravages do of those
Speaker 1: you know, they're breaking that hard pan, They're they're going
Speaker 1: way way deep down to the soil, reaching nutrients that
Speaker 1: you know, fescue and like these shorter root grasses can't reach.
Speaker 1: And so they're bringing that nutrients to the top and
Speaker 1: that's building your soils and that's improving your soil quality.
Speaker 1: That's also allowing that water to slow down those tall
Speaker 1: grasses when water hits it, um that water slowing down
Speaker 1: and it's now easier for it to penetrate down into
Speaker 1: your aquifers. And that's cleaning water. When water can get
Speaker 1: down to our aquifers, it filters it before it even
Speaker 1: gets to our streams. UM. But talking about carbon, your
Speaker 1: forests and forests are storing most of their carbon above ground,
Speaker 1: in the in the timber, in the logs, and so
Speaker 1: you're you're storing that carbon. If you cut that tree
Speaker 1: down and use it as a wood product, that carbon
Speaker 1: is then stored in the home for however long that
Speaker 1: home exists. But eight of grasses and Forbes, man, they're
Speaker 1: storing eighty five their carbon underground. And that's why you
Speaker 1: know down you've got the black Belt Prairie of Alabama.
Speaker 1: These prairie soils are just really dark and rich from
Speaker 1: all the carbon stored in them. And when a fire
Speaker 1: goes through a grassland, it's burning the tops of those grasses,
Speaker 1: but it's not really in the carbon that it's already
Speaker 1: stored underground. When you have a fire or a wildfire,
Speaker 1: now that's been you know, that's you're gonna get me
Speaker 1: off on a different topic there. But when when you know,
Speaker 1: a fire goes through a forest, it's burning up all
Speaker 1: those stems and leaves and sticks and down logs, and
Speaker 1: and it's releasing take carbon back in the air. When
Speaker 1: those logs fall down and they rot on the ground,
Speaker 1: that carbon is released back in the ground. So it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily that grasslands are better at sequestering carbon, because
Speaker 1: forests are better at sequestering carbon. Grasslands just store carbon
Speaker 1: in a safer place to where it's likelihood of being
Speaker 1: released again is very low. So when it comes to that,
Speaker 1: grasslands are better carbon sequester or better store or storing carbon.
Speaker 1: But um, is that that makes sense? Last one? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense? So okay, So grasslands are going to
Speaker 1: be incredible producers of food, of cover, They're going to
Speaker 1: clean our water, they're in store carbon, They're gonna do
Speaker 1: all these incredible things. I want some How do I
Speaker 1: do it? I've got some I've got some openings on
Speaker 1: my property, let's say. And actually, here here, I'll give
Speaker 1: you a real life example. I have a property I
Speaker 1: have permission to do some stuff with as long as
Speaker 1: I don't mess with the crops. So I can't do
Speaker 1: a ton. But like, my main openings that I have
Speaker 1: are power lines, and the power lines are just full
Speaker 1: of like I'm not exactly sure what kind of cool
Speaker 1: season grasses, but its fescue or some kind of turf
Speaker 1: grass that's doing nothing. How do you recommend transforming something
Speaker 1: like that into a healthy native grassland that packs a
Speaker 1: big punch for wildlife? Well, what's the history on that
Speaker 1: power line? Has it been farmed? The power line has
Speaker 1: not been farmed. This is just like grassy cutting through
Speaker 1: a piece of timber kind of stuff, all right, So
Speaker 1: that's when you're going to take a different approach it.
Speaker 1: It still has a native seed bank, you think it
Speaker 1: still has some natives in that seed bank that can respond.
Speaker 1: What you want to do is go in. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: you know you got a lot of fescue and cool
Speaker 1: season grasses. You can go in during November, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes March. I prefer doing it in the fall. Going
Speaker 1: in the fall and when most everything else has gone dormant,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna you're gonna want to do it on
Speaker 1: a day that's in the fifties. Um, so you're you
Speaker 1: know glaphy sad is working, or your herbicide whatever you're using,
Speaker 1: and and spray those native grasses. You can even use
Speaker 1: a grass selective herbicide on those and only kill them
Speaker 1: the native or the non native grasses that are green.
Speaker 1: So spray those, kill those off, and maybe run a
Speaker 1: fire through it. And it might take you a couple
Speaker 1: of years. You might have to come back through the
Speaker 1: next year and do some touching up, but kill off
Speaker 1: that at a non native grass and see how that
Speaker 1: seed responds, See how it responds by just not mowing it,
Speaker 1: by bringing fire back. And that's what I did in
Speaker 1: my pasture. And I've had a great response I've had.
Speaker 1: You know, I think I've got fifty six species of
Speaker 1: native wildfliers and grasses down there that have come back
Speaker 1: on their own um. And you can you can watch
Speaker 1: the videos of that on some of my pages. There's
Speaker 1: one where you see just tons of black eyed susan,
Speaker 1: those yellow flowers in the background. That's my past year.
Speaker 1: That was once rescue and now it's a solid blanket
Speaker 1: of yellow just from the seed bank and just from
Speaker 1: not mowing it. Because that first year that these you're
Speaker 1: gonna get a lot of pioneer species, just like you
Speaker 1: would have forest. There's secessional stage, successional stages, and uh
Speaker 1: so you're gonna get those pioneer species. You're gonna have
Speaker 1: a lot of ragweed um, the stuff you find in
Speaker 1: old fields a lot of the time. Yeah, it's gonna
Speaker 1: take it's gonna take longer for your native your perennials
Speaker 1: to establish. So some of those um, some of those
Speaker 1: take three years to get fully grown and established, but
Speaker 1: not not mowing that during the summer for several years
Speaker 1: allows those natives to flower and go to seed, and
Speaker 1: that seed drops on the ground, so you're gonna get
Speaker 1: more the next year. It's gonna multiply, So you know
Speaker 1: that first year. Really you can go in there even
Speaker 1: with some native wild flower plugs and adds some native
Speaker 1: wildflier plugs to it the first year, and those are
Speaker 1: gonna grow and go to seed, and you can you'd
Speaker 1: be surprised just how one wildflower plug being able to
Speaker 1: grow and go to seed, how that will multiply year
Speaker 1: after year if you're not mowing it while it's flowering
Speaker 1: or before it goes to seed. And that's how I
Speaker 1: on something like you're talking about. That's probably how I'd
Speaker 1: approach it. I'd kill the fescue, maybe add a few
Speaker 1: native plugs if you can find them for your area,
Speaker 1: if you want to find if you've got some native
Speaker 1: seeds available in the southeast, we don't our closest one.
Speaker 1: It's Roundstone in Kentucky, but up your way, where's where's
Speaker 1: your place exactly southern Michigan. So there's I don't know
Speaker 1: about Michigan, but I know I think Ohio and Indie
Speaker 1: and Illinois. I mean those there's there's stay native seed
Speaker 1: producers in those areas, so you can probably get some
Speaker 1: from them, and after you kill at rescue, that'd be
Speaker 1: a good time probably go through and just throw out
Speaker 1: some of those by hand. And um, you don't have
Speaker 1: to drill them. If you have a if you can
Speaker 1: get a native seed drill from a from the you know,
Speaker 1: nurcs or something in your area, UM, you could run
Speaker 1: through and drill that. Um, that might be a good
Speaker 1: option to first year. But to me, honestly enjoy just
Speaker 1: seeing what comes back from the seed bank. Um. And
Speaker 1: then um, if it's not the response I was wont
Speaker 1: then I can go through and add some plugs or
Speaker 1: throwing some seeds. But to me, it's fun seeing what
Speaker 1: just comes back on its home. Yeah. So in a
Speaker 1: situation mind specifically, UM, I did a prescribe fire once
Speaker 1: and actually had the power line company come when I
Speaker 1: was doing it and flip out on us for doing
Speaker 1: it near the power lines. So I've been gun shy
Speaker 1: to ever do that again. Can you can you do
Speaker 1: this and have success without the fire? Just doing that? Cool?
Speaker 1: Season spraying or is the fire really key? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that can you can have good results from that. Um.
Speaker 1: And then and then you're gonna, like I said, let
Speaker 1: a flower go to seed, and then in the in
Speaker 1: the winter, you can mow half of it, um, leave
Speaker 1: half of it standing, so it's acting as cover. Um.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, mow it every now and then
Speaker 1: just to keep it from growing up in trees. But
Speaker 1: alternate because that's the main thing. You don't want it
Speaker 1: to grow up in trees. But you're also not going
Speaker 1: to get the response you would from fire. I mean,
Speaker 1: fire is really uh, that's that's the best way. And man,
Speaker 1: you must have got really unlucky for that to happen,
Speaker 1: because I've never I've never I've burned under tons of
Speaker 1: power lines and they've I've never had an issue with it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't know if they threatened threatened me
Speaker 1: with all sorts of stuff and it got me nervous
Speaker 1: to ever do it again. But maybe I just caught
Speaker 1: the wrong guys on the wrong day and they were
Speaker 1: making it seem like it was way more risk it.
Speaker 1: I even had a I even had a fireman buddy
Speaker 1: with me, So it's like we had we were doing
Speaker 1: everything right. We weren't too close to the polls. But man,
Speaker 1: they really gave it to us that we weren't supposed
Speaker 1: to be doing that. And I don't know so. So
Speaker 1: what they say is that if that smoke is sticking us,
Speaker 1: that the electricity can arc through the smoke down to
Speaker 1: the ground. Um. But that's what you if you google it,
Speaker 1: that's what it says. But take this for what it's worth. UM.
Speaker 1: Probably I was in the I took a prescribed pirate
Speaker 1: training class again this year with some buddy's of mind
Speaker 1: who wanted to do it just to just to uh,
Speaker 1: just because I was. The last time I took it,
Speaker 1: I was. It was twenty fifteen and I was had
Speaker 1: no idea what I was even doing then. But I
Speaker 1: just took it again as a refresher. And it was
Speaker 1: with one of the one of the best prescribed burners
Speaker 1: in the I considering the world, probably has done more
Speaker 1: prescribed fires than anybody else in the world. It's not
Speaker 1: his three This guy burns like three hundred days a year. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean he'll do like five hundred burns in a year,
Speaker 1: doing multiple burns a day on different properties. Um. But
Speaker 1: he's he's like he burns under power lines and doesn't
Speaker 1: worry about it. He said, he's never had a problem
Speaker 1: with him. Um, but for the longest, I was scared
Speaker 1: because I saw something about it being able to arc.
Speaker 1: But I still haven't had that issue, and I've started
Speaker 1: burning in power lines again. Nothing's happened. But UM, don't
Speaker 1: don't take my word for that, right If I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not liable. Yeah, I want so let's see you.
Speaker 1: Um So what about You know, a lot of folks
Speaker 1: buy a property and there's some tillable on it, and
Speaker 1: you know, one of the if they don't want to
Speaker 1: plan all that tillable and food, or if they're not
Speaker 1: going to rent it out. Um. A lot of folks
Speaker 1: look at programs like CRP UM or something like that.
Speaker 1: What are your what are your thoughts on those commons?
Speaker 1: CRP mixes or you know, pheasants forever mixes that a
Speaker 1: lot of folks use, um, different stuff like that. If
Speaker 1: you're in a government program that's going to pay for
Speaker 1: some of that work, you know, what are your thoughts
Speaker 1: on those things? Make sure it has a lot of
Speaker 1: biodiversity in it. If it's mostly native grasses, steer clear.
Speaker 1: I've seen places. Hold on one second. I've seen places
Speaker 1: that people have planted some of those mixes in and
Speaker 1: it was almost all non native excuse me, it was
Speaker 1: almost all native warmpses and grasses, so blue stem, big
Speaker 1: blue stem, switch grass, indian grass, gamma grass. And what
Speaker 1: happens is that takes over and you don't have any
Speaker 1: of the forbes. You don't have any of the things
Speaker 1: that are really attracting insects, you don't have any of
Speaker 1: the things that are getting browsed by dear. You don't
Speaker 1: have any of the things that are producing a lot
Speaker 1: of edible seeds dropping on the ground. So it really
Speaker 1: sets you up to make it hard to get any
Speaker 1: more native diversity in there because those native wormses and
Speaker 1: grasses are really aggressive. So make sure it has a
Speaker 1: lot of forbes in that mix when you plan it.
Speaker 1: So that's my advice. And make sure it's an area
Speaker 1: that you can burn. I've seen places where people did
Speaker 1: a mix like that and they're like, well, I can't
Speaker 1: burn it um and or I can't bow it because
Speaker 1: it's wetmost of the year, And then you've got five
Speaker 1: years worth of native wormses and grass thatch built up,
Speaker 1: and man, that's not not that's not very good for wildlife.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be really thick and there's not gonna be
Speaker 1: anything in there for a deer to eat, and it's
Speaker 1: gonna be too thick for things that use this nest
Speaker 1: and cover and stuff. So, um, make sure that's one
Speaker 1: of my advice. Maketure is an area that you can
Speaker 1: burn and make sure there's a lot of forbes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so okay, that that leads me to the next question,
Speaker 1: which you alluded to some of the things right here.
Speaker 1: But but maybe you can expand on if you do
Speaker 1: have one of these areas, if you do have a
Speaker 1: spot where you were able to plant some kind of
Speaker 1: native grass and forb mix, if you've got ground in CRP,
Speaker 1: if you've got you know, powerline that you were able
Speaker 1: to convert like I just talked about, and you've you've
Speaker 1: done it. You got you got this habitat out there.
Speaker 1: But what's the right way to manage it? What are
Speaker 1: your you know, recommendations for how often to create some
Speaker 1: kind disturbance in the right way to do that? Well,
Speaker 1: so that's the way I do it is is I'm
Speaker 1: I'm if you're ever questioning anything managing native ecosystems, can
Speaker 1: ask yourself, what's going to be the most diverse? How
Speaker 1: can I make how can I diversify this so it's
Speaker 1: not all the same. Um So my advice is split
Speaker 1: it up, Split it up in several sections, as many
Speaker 1: sections as you want. Make it a checkerboard. Make it
Speaker 1: look like the American flag if you want. I mean,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter, and burn like or burn or mo
Speaker 1: one section, leave three sections, burn another one in the fall,
Speaker 1: burn another one in the spring. Make sure you're leaving
Speaker 1: half of it standing at all times. And that's gonna
Speaker 1: make sure you always have cover. You always have a
Speaker 1: place for wildlife to escape, and you also always have
Speaker 1: something greening up or something that's gonna You know, burning
Speaker 1: in the fall really benefits your wildflowers and your forbes
Speaker 1: because right now, I don't know about where you're at,
Speaker 1: but in Alabama, things are starting to green up and
Speaker 1: it's all those forbes. You're seeing a lot of forbes
Speaker 1: greening up, and they drop their seeds at the end
Speaker 1: of last summer, and those seeds hit the ground, they
Speaker 1: cold stratified, they started germinating, and now they're growing if
Speaker 1: I did a burn run now in the spring, it's
Speaker 1: going to kill a lot of those forbes that are
Speaker 1: starting to sprout. And then late summer your native forms
Speaker 1: and grasses are going to come in and take over.
Speaker 1: And so spring burns manage for more native on seas
Speaker 1: and grasses. Fall burns really benefit your forbes and your wildflowers.
Speaker 1: So mixing it up on your property doing a little
Speaker 1: bit of both. Do a growing season burn if you
Speaker 1: have to. If you're dealing with woody plants like trees
Speaker 1: and briars or whatever, and you don't want them there,
Speaker 1: and there are species that you don't want there, you know,
Speaker 1: if they're a native like plums or hazel nut or
Speaker 1: something I mean, or sumac I mean, those are going
Speaker 1: to be good for wildlife. If it's something you don't want,
Speaker 1: to a growing season burn to kill them, or do
Speaker 1: a fall burn to trying to kill them. It's really,
Speaker 1: you know, depends on what you're what issues you're having,
Speaker 1: And that's why you know, splitting it up into different
Speaker 1: sections and diversifying it helps because you might see, hey,
Speaker 1: this section is starting to get a lot of trees
Speaker 1: in there, maybe I should come in here and mow
Speaker 1: it or treat it with herbside or whatever, and you're
Speaker 1: not having to do that to your whole entire place,
Speaker 1: So submit it. I've split up those fields and you
Speaker 1: can do it with mode lanes. I like mode lanes
Speaker 1: because I can use those mode lanes as fire lines.
Speaker 1: And if you're a deer hunter, yeah, you can plant
Speaker 1: those mode lanes and clover if you want um and
Speaker 1: use that green clover as a fire line. And there's different,
Speaker 1: all kinds of different things you can do. But that's
Speaker 1: that's my answer to everything, because I had to figure
Speaker 1: out a lot of these questions on my own, and
Speaker 1: so when I try to think through that through my head,
Speaker 1: I'm like, what's going to be the best for my adversity.
Speaker 1: What's going to make my property the most diverse? Because
Speaker 1: when I make my property the most diverse, I'm more
Speaker 1: likely to have what that deer needs dear in a
Speaker 1: specific time of year, so he's not having to go
Speaker 1: off my place looking for something, you know, some kind
Speaker 1: of habitat or something that he's looking for. I've likely
Speaker 1: got it on my place because I've persified it and
Speaker 1: I've got those I feel that's mostly forwards I've got
Speaker 1: to feel that's most native ones and grasses. I got
Speaker 1: a strip that's a lot of thickets. You know, you've
Speaker 1: got a lot of thickets species in there, all thorns
Speaker 1: and hazel nuts and plums and crab apples, and you
Speaker 1: know a lot of your native shrub species. So he's
Speaker 1: you know, a deer's got that kind of habitat. Quail
Speaker 1: and turkey have that kind of habitat. Just make it
Speaker 1: as diverse as possible. And that's you know, that's the
Speaker 1: benefit of natives. I mean, we have a lot of
Speaker 1: native plan university in the US, and and and they
Speaker 1: all provide different things. I mean that one plant can
Speaker 1: do you know so much. I mean, and not to
Speaker 1: hate on. Not to hate on like um, let's say
Speaker 1: Egyptian wheat. Like you've got an Egyptian wheat um strip
Speaker 1: that you were using. Um, not to hate on it.
Speaker 1: But like if you can plant, if you can plant
Speaker 1: switch grass, and you've got ragweed in there, you've got
Speaker 1: you've got some different silk films or maximilian sunflowers and
Speaker 1: um ironweeds and golden ross and taller herbacious species um
Speaker 1: mixed in there. Um one of those herbaseous species, like
Speaker 1: one of those native grasses in that mix that you're
Speaker 1: using there is going to provide more than that Egyptian.
Speaker 1: We can just one of those native species. It's gonna
Speaker 1: you know that, just you just used the one that
Speaker 1: people hate the most, like ragweed, I mean, or golden rod,
Speaker 1: like even the gold I hate golden Just use common
Speaker 1: golden rod. I got it in my passion. It's a
Speaker 1: problem that common golden rod is gonna. It has um,
Speaker 1: It has insects that depend on it. It has goldfinches
Speaker 1: that are gonna eat the seed heads off of it
Speaker 1: and stuff. It's it's it can get browsed on by
Speaker 1: you know, all kinds of different things deer and rabbits um.
Speaker 1: That Egyptian wheat doesn't have. None of our native insects
Speaker 1: use it as a host plant um. None of our
Speaker 1: native insects are adapted to using it as a as
Speaker 1: a stemmed over winter, and none of our native bird
Speaker 1: species are used to having it as a food. So
Speaker 1: worse because they don't really know to go to it
Speaker 1: all the time. It's not providing brows, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: the things that one not a native plant can do
Speaker 1: is very minimal to what one native plant can do.
Speaker 1: And then when you say, when you throw in dozens
Speaker 1: and dozens of native plants into that mix, man, that's
Speaker 1: when it really becomes a powerhouse compared to you know,
Speaker 1: a monoculture of a non native. So diversity, man, diversity
Speaker 1: is really the key. And so if you're asking yourself,
Speaker 1: what should I do to my property, make it more diverse?
Speaker 1: Add more native plant diversity into it, because you can't
Speaker 1: go wrong. So you bring up Egyptian wheat, which is
Speaker 1: a popular screening you know plant. I've used it myself, Um,
Speaker 1: I have to. And um, another one that folks talk
Speaker 1: about more and more often is muscanthus. Um. So I've
Speaker 1: got two questions for you related to this. Number one,
Speaker 1: can you can you convince me why I shouldn't use muscanthus?
Speaker 1: And number two, Um, you talked about how adding diversity
Speaker 1: to you know, these different different things would be better.
Speaker 1: But if you had to specifically give me your best
Speaker 1: recommendation for a native screening mix or option, what would
Speaker 1: that be? So basically, why shouldn't I use muscanthus? And
Speaker 1: then secondly what would I what should I use? Instead? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well that's really the one I wanted to use it
Speaker 1: as an example thereat. But uh, and I would never
Speaker 1: I would never try to convince somebody to not use
Speaker 1: Egyptian wheat because Egyptian wheat, for one, it's not gonna
Speaker 1: it's not a perennial. It's not gonna be there for
Speaker 1: decades and decades and decades and become a problem for
Speaker 1: the next landowner. Even even if it's not invasive, even
Speaker 1: if it just stays in the spot that you planted
Speaker 1: it in and it spreads by rhizomes like muscant this does.
Speaker 1: It's you know, that's that's really the problem. I mean,
Speaker 1: Egyptian wheat is is non native. Yes, I don't hate nonnatives.
Speaker 1: I plant nonnatives in certain situations. Um, but Egyptian wheat
Speaker 1: is not going to become invasive and it's not going
Speaker 1: to be there. It won't even be there two years
Speaker 1: from now. Um. But that's the problem with muscant is
Speaker 1: is people are like, well, it's sterile. You know, we've
Speaker 1: heard that before from a lot of things. Um, but
Speaker 1: let's just say, let's just pretend yes, it is sterile
Speaker 1: and it's not going to spread by seeds. Well, it's
Speaker 1: spreading right now. Because we're planting it, and we're putting
Speaker 1: it on properties all across the country, hunting properties, which
Speaker 1: are you know, look across the landscape. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: the long route with explaining this, but look across the landscape.
Speaker 1: Look at all the different land uses. You've got agriculture,
Speaker 1: you've got housings, neighborhood development, pastures, and I mean, there's
Speaker 1: not many places for native plants to thrive. The one
Speaker 1: place where I believe that native plants can thrive the
Speaker 1: most are on hunting properties and rural hunting properties. Yet
Speaker 1: our rural hunting properties are underattacked by a lot of
Speaker 1: these invasives that are brought in from you know, the
Speaker 1: horticulture trade, to these neighborhoods and stuff, and so you're
Speaker 1: getting a lot of these neighborhood landscaping plants escape on
Speaker 1: your property. I don't know about you, but I have
Speaker 1: more invasives than I want to deal with my own property.
Speaker 1: The last thing we should be doing as hunters is
Speaker 1: planting something that's going to take more ground away from
Speaker 1: our native habitats. And so that's exactly what mescantus does.
Speaker 1: Even if it doesn't spread by seed, it's just like bamboo,
Speaker 1: you plant in one spot and that one rhizomeie plant
Speaker 1: isn't going to come up. It's one stem. It's not
Speaker 1: going to stay one stem. Each year, those stems multiplied,
Speaker 1: it's rhizomes multiplied, and it and it grows, It spreads
Speaker 1: by rhizomes and it and it fills in that space
Speaker 1: to where no natives can grow in there. Like if
Speaker 1: it's a solid monoculture, there's no diversity in there. And
Speaker 1: so it's another we've just essentially created another thicket of
Speaker 1: bush honeysuckle. And how invaluable it is to wildlife. This
Speaker 1: is the same thing we've we've taken more of our
Speaker 1: North American ground and where native North American species should be,
Speaker 1: and we've put a you know, a non native species
Speaker 1: in this place that our wildlife can't utilize. They can't
Speaker 1: use it as a food source, they can't use it
Speaker 1: in the same you know, as the same nesting habitat
Speaker 1: that they would really like to um. And you're gonna say, yeah,
Speaker 1: it provides even more cover. I'd say it provides too
Speaker 1: much cover for for our certain wildlife species. It's too
Speaker 1: much um and it's too thick for them to utilize
Speaker 1: the way they should or the way they want to um.
Speaker 1: But um, I was trying to think, what's the what
Speaker 1: was the The second part was then, Okay, if I
Speaker 1: shouldn't use myscantus, yeah, what's my best alternative? Man? For one? Oh,
Speaker 1: here's what I did on my property is I just
Speaker 1: stopped mowing and I just let it grow up. But
Speaker 1: I've been adding in native plums, native hawthorns, depending on
Speaker 1: what your soils like, what shrubs you can support those
Speaker 1: native shrubs or powerhouses. Man like power houses. I saw
Speaker 1: a possum haul this year that I'm talking. It had
Speaker 1: to be hundreds of thousands of berries on this thing.
Speaker 1: The ground was solid red from a from a from
Speaker 1: a possum hall shrub. That's food. It's called possum all
Speaker 1: because possums and raccoons and and other things eat it.
Speaker 1: And heck, the more you people are like, why would
Speaker 1: you want to feed a raccoon, the more you can
Speaker 1: keep your raccoons them less likely it's going to be
Speaker 1: eating something you don't want to eat, and it's providing
Speaker 1: food for birds songbirds. So native plums food source, native
Speaker 1: hazel nut food source. There are also host plants for
Speaker 1: a ton of native insects, So you're attracting insects to
Speaker 1: your property, food source for quill and turkeys. Mascantus can't
Speaker 1: do any of that stuff. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: these native plums and hazel nuts are allowing for other
Speaker 1: native species to grow amongst them. Native grasses can grow
Speaker 1: in your piece. Um. You know, just the plum trees
Speaker 1: behind my house, they have wild rye grass growing underneath them,
Speaker 1: Virginia wild rye, and those produced they were consumed by
Speaker 1: Native Americans. The seedheads like you would have grain um,
Speaker 1: and they're consumed by wildlife. The greinhead is um and
Speaker 1: tons of wildfliers are coming up underneath them. Um. And
Speaker 1: so you can plan a diverse mix. That's that's really
Speaker 1: what I'd like to promote instead of myscantis is hedgerows,
Speaker 1: native thicket species um, and native grasses and forbes that
Speaker 1: can grow amongst those. So you can do a multi tier.
Speaker 1: If you want to screen on edge your property, plant
Speaker 1: a row of native plums, hawthorns, whatever you can get
Speaker 1: your hands on, native native shrub species, dogwoods um like
Speaker 1: the swamp dogwoods, and then plant a row of native
Speaker 1: grasses and forbes. And you're you're gonna have a really
Speaker 1: great screen. That's also we're going to become an excellent
Speaker 1: nesting habitat for things like quail, and when we can
Speaker 1: benefit when we can have something that's fulfilling our human need,
Speaker 1: which is all Mscantus is doing. It's we're using it
Speaker 1: to fulfill a human need if we can have something
Speaker 1: that fulfills that human need. But it's also playing a
Speaker 1: huge role in our ecosystem, and it is a habitat
Speaker 1: type that is dwindling in our country that is not
Speaker 1: common anymore. We're doing a good thing. And and in
Speaker 1: in twenty years when hunting properties everywhere have M. Scantus
Speaker 1: on them and everybody's like, dagum, I just bought this
Speaker 1: hunting property. I'm gonna deal with this Mscantus first, which,
Speaker 1: for you know, by the way that mscanthus gigantist is
Speaker 1: one of the more difficult ones to get rid of
Speaker 1: with Glasha say. It takes multiple treatments of glass say
Speaker 1: to get rid of it. Those those landhowners aren't going
Speaker 1: to be blaming the folks selling Muscantus. They're gonna say, well, dagum,
Speaker 1: the hunters, the hunters who had this property before us
Speaker 1: planted Muscantus. And and the last thing I want to
Speaker 1: do for my kid or you know, my grandkids is
Speaker 1: is give hunters a bad look, because I want to
Speaker 1: make sure that when they become hunters and when they're
Speaker 1: taking their grandkids hunting, that hunters are looked at as
Speaker 1: conservation leaders in our country and the biggest conservation powerhouse,
Speaker 1: which I believe we are. But I want the public
Speaker 1: to see hunters as that, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: give the public any reason to be upset with hunters.
Speaker 1: And that's just one way. I mean, I think we
Speaker 1: should become bulletproof. And when we're leading conservation and doing
Speaker 1: things the right way, will become bulletproof and nobody can
Speaker 1: say anything to us. I mean, they can't say we're
Speaker 1: doing things wrong when we are the ones out here
Speaker 1: keeping North American ecosystems thriving. I mean, I really believe
Speaker 1: that that's what hunters can be, and I believe that's
Speaker 1: what most of us already are. But that's to me,
Speaker 1: that's that's how I see it, and that's why I'm
Speaker 1: so passionate about it. I'm not passionate about it because
Speaker 1: I hate in basis. I mean, I am, but I
Speaker 1: do hate in basis, but I'm passionate about it because
Speaker 1: I don't want to give hunters a bad name, and
Speaker 1: not for selfish reasons, but for reasons that you know,
Speaker 1: for my kids and my future grandkids. I mean, I
Speaker 1: want them to be hunters, and I want to make
Speaker 1: sure that they're gonna be able to do the things
Speaker 1: that I love. And that's the mean, that's without hunting, man,
Speaker 1: that's I wouldn't the Native Habitat Project wouldn't be a thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the whole reason I'm into what I'm
Speaker 1: into and I'm out here doing what I'm doing is
Speaker 1: because I grew up hunting with my dad and my granddad,
Speaker 1: and I mean that's what I want for my kids
Speaker 1: and my great great great grand kids. So making sure
Speaker 1: hunters have a good, good uh you know, pr with
Speaker 1: the public. I mean, that's that's super super super important
Speaker 1: to me. And that's that's all I'm concerned about. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I uh, I couldn't agree more with all that, and
Speaker 1: uh and on them scant this thing, I'm I'm convinced
Speaker 1: you got me. You got me on that too. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so I mean, where are you saying? Oh that, and
Speaker 1: and that's you know, I'm not People think I just
Speaker 1: hate on invasives, but man like or I hate on
Speaker 1: non natives and it's not it's not that, man. There's
Speaker 1: a there's a huge difference between non native and non
Speaker 1: native invasives. And and you know, you can you can plant.
Speaker 1: There's all sorts of things that are non native, like
Speaker 1: Egyptian wheat that you can plant and it's not going
Speaker 1: to become a problem. And I you know, we've I
Speaker 1: worked on a wildlife management area where we had to
Speaker 1: do with automotive and buy color Lisabetiza and salt tooth
Speaker 1: oaks spreading. I mean, yeah, and that's that's a bad word,
Speaker 1: I know, but I saw for myself salt tooth oaks
Speaker 1: spreading by the thousands and alcomputing native oak trees and
Speaker 1: I saw, you know it was that was hunters doing that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we planted those for wildlife and we were
Speaker 1: going to do a good thing. And I just want
Speaker 1: to make sure we learn from those mistakes and we
Speaker 1: were actually planting things that are going to do a
Speaker 1: good thing. And when we plant native we don't have
Speaker 1: to question whether what we're planting is going to backfire
Speaker 1: on us in the future because those plants are supposed
Speaker 1: to be there. So it's a pretty full proof system.
Speaker 1: If you plant native, you know you're not gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: regrette it one day. And there's plenty of things that
Speaker 1: I've planted, and I'm sure I'm sure there's things you've planted,
Speaker 1: and half the listeners have planted that we regret. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm still dealing with rye gras on one of my
Speaker 1: grasses because I've planted it there and a food plot mix,
Speaker 1: and it's it's really became an aggressive but um, there's
Speaker 1: you you know, you can't mess up. What do you
Speaker 1: plant native? I mean, it's it's pretty full proof. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I like something you've said, I think even today
Speaker 1: in other places you've talked about how natives always carry
Speaker 1: their weight, like they're never just doing, you know, one
Speaker 1: single thing. They're always serving multiple purposes and they're they're
Speaker 1: there for a reason, and they serve multiple purposes for
Speaker 1: all different levels of the ecosystem, which is which is
Speaker 1: a pretty powerful thing man, And then and purposes that
Speaker 1: you and I will never even be able to cover here, right,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll never be able to wrap our heads around,
Speaker 1: uh what a what a grass? And with a with
Speaker 1: even one hundred speed on hundred native species out there,
Speaker 1: will never be able to wrap our heads around what
Speaker 1: all that ecosystem provides. UM. I mean it's doing things
Speaker 1: that will never will never even know. But it's too
Speaker 1: we know what's doing good things. Yeah, let's let's shift
Speaker 1: in to the timber now. So let's say we've we've
Speaker 1: done our inventory in the timber. We're starting to do that.
Speaker 1: We're walking around, We're trying to id different trees, We're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, Okay, what's supposed to be here,
Speaker 1: what's not? UM. I think there's probably a lot of
Speaker 1: people they'll be wondering, well, how do I know if
Speaker 1: this is a good thing to have or not a
Speaker 1: good thing to have? Where should I manage timber? How
Speaker 1: should I manage it? Um? What would be some of
Speaker 1: your starting points for someone who's, you know, wanting to
Speaker 1: take this native approach and this ecosystem approach and apply
Speaker 1: it to their timbered lands. The first thing I do
Speaker 1: is I I'll look at what's in the UNDERSTORYUM. I
Speaker 1: also look at the slope aspect. If it's if it's
Speaker 1: got any kind of hills like we have around here,
Speaker 1: your north slopes, your east slopes, or really your northeast
Speaker 1: north slopes are gonna be are are traditionally gonna be
Speaker 1: close canopy forests. You're gonna have spring ephemerals on those
Speaker 1: sides of the hills. And that's why those that's why
Speaker 1: those spring of femerals are there, because those spring of
Speaker 1: femberals flower this time of the year before right before
Speaker 1: the leaves come back on the trees, because they know
Speaker 1: in a few months when there's leaves on the trees,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be so much shade that nothing's gonna be
Speaker 1: able to grow. So those spring of femberals are adapted
Speaker 1: to close canopy forests. So they're all flowering right now
Speaker 1: where there's still sunlight on the ground. But you don't
Speaker 1: you know, that's on north slopes, northeast slopes, bottom lands,
Speaker 1: places where there wouldn't historically have been fire, so like ravines,
Speaker 1: deep drawls, places where there's a lot of moisture where
Speaker 1: you see two lap popular and maples and beach and
Speaker 1: lots of hemblogs and things like that. So your south slopes,
Speaker 1: your ridge tops, your west slopes sometimes your east and
Speaker 1: southeast Aasan slopes were predominantly savannahs or dryer. They got
Speaker 1: sunlight on them throughout the winter and that kept them
Speaker 1: and they got fire a lot. So those places are
Speaker 1: where you can manage for savannahs very easily because you
Speaker 1: know you're gonna be able to use fire. Um, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be dry enough, that's what's supposed to be there.
Speaker 1: And there's usually still remnant savannah species there. So you
Speaker 1: know all those south slopes and ridge stops and some
Speaker 1: flat rolling dry places where there would have been cressings
Speaker 1: in savannahs, do you find around here? You look for
Speaker 1: remnant trees like post oaks and shinka pins and black jacks,
Speaker 1: short leaf pines, you know, chestnut oaks, a lot of
Speaker 1: those upland hardwoods with very real lofty you know, white
Speaker 1: oaks have those real lofty leaves. Um, if there's a
Speaker 1: lot of those real lofty leaf trees there, then you
Speaker 1: know those are trees that like fire. So you think
Speaker 1: about think about water oak and willow oak, those bottom
Speaker 1: land oak species. They have those very tiny leaves that
Speaker 1: lay flat on the ground, so fire doesn't move through
Speaker 1: them very well. And that's because they're they're adapted to
Speaker 1: grow in places that would have had fire. Your upland
Speaker 1: oaks would have had fire, so they have those real
Speaker 1: lofty leaves. And when those leaves burned through those oaks,
Speaker 1: when those pine needles burned, it got hot. And those
Speaker 1: upland oaks and those pines are adapted to that. They
Speaker 1: can handle it. Those hickories can handle that fire. But
Speaker 1: what can handle that fire is your beach and your maple,
Speaker 1: some of your tulip, poplars, sweet gums, and those cedars,
Speaker 1: trees that aren't supposed to be there, that aren't fire
Speaker 1: tolerant because they can't handle fire. And that's how those
Speaker 1: ecosystems adapted. So when you're going into those places figuring
Speaker 1: out what should be there and what shouldn't, keep those
Speaker 1: and not all of you can remove some of those
Speaker 1: upland hardwind species, but you know, keep some of those
Speaker 1: and remove the species that aren't supposed to be there. Um,
Speaker 1: And you think about sweet gums, like, how I'm guessing
Speaker 1: you'll have sweet gums up your way? No, I don't
Speaker 1: think so. Well, you probably would know, but they sweet gums,
Speaker 1: their leaves just crumble man, and you pick them up
Speaker 1: that just crumble because they grow on bottom land areas,
Speaker 1: they don't knock fire. So get we're into those species
Speaker 1: um and and that's going to open things up. And
Speaker 1: what that's gonna do is you bring a sunlight to
Speaker 1: the ground. And that's the first thing you really want
Speaker 1: to do before you bring fire back to a place,
Speaker 1: because if you bring fire back to a place and
Speaker 1: it's close canopy, you're not going to get that response
Speaker 1: you want. And then it's just gonna be bare soil
Speaker 1: under there. So you want to come through and kill
Speaker 1: some of those trees first. You can either do that
Speaker 1: through you know, the hack and spray girdling um. And
Speaker 1: this is a great time to remove in faces Tom
Speaker 1: Bradford pairs and prive it and sure you heaven and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Kill them. You know, this is a
Speaker 1: great time to take care of a lot of those.
Speaker 1: But go through and kill those trees that are supposed
Speaker 1: to be there. You can drop them psalm and drop
Speaker 1: them down the ground and leave those stumps to re sprout,
Speaker 1: or you can treat some of those stumps. And you
Speaker 1: know how I said before, being diverse with it. If
Speaker 1: you're ever wondering how to go about something. Be diverse
Speaker 1: with it. Don't don't go through there and just hack
Speaker 1: and spray. Don't go through there and just hinge cut
Speaker 1: if you want to, I mean, but go through there
Speaker 1: and do a mix of things, like just cut a
Speaker 1: tree down, let it resprout. Obviously if it's invasive, to
Speaker 1: cut it down and treat the stump, but treat half
Speaker 1: the stumps, leave some of them one treated, and just
Speaker 1: be diverse with it. You want to bring that sunlight
Speaker 1: in because once you get that sunlight in, you can
Speaker 1: run a fire through there and you're going to get
Speaker 1: a really good response from that seed bank. Then you're
Speaker 1: gonna get a lot of understory, need of grasses and wildfliers.
Speaker 1: And I mentioned earlier that close canopy forest that has
Speaker 1: fifty pounds food per acre. When you open up that
Speaker 1: canopy bring fireback, you're bringing in not too thousand pounds,
Speaker 1: but you might be bringing in five hundred pounds of foodbreacre.
Speaker 1: And that's only going to improve your wildlife habitat. And
Speaker 1: those are going to be areas that are perfect for
Speaker 1: hiding fawns and nesting turkeys, and that's what you want.
Speaker 1: You want that those trees that are protecting from aerial predators.
Speaker 1: And you want that grassland complex underneath those trees to
Speaker 1: provide cover and provide food and attracting six and all
Speaker 1: those things, a million things I've mentioned before, but that
Speaker 1: you want that mix of a grassing and a forest.
Speaker 1: And to me, man, that's like the optimal ecosystem. Savannahs
Speaker 1: you got mass producing trees. You got when it's open
Speaker 1: like that, you get those oak trees that sprawl out
Speaker 1: with those big limbs, and those become excellent roosting trees,
Speaker 1: and the turkeys can fly up to them because there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of shrubs and stuff in the way.
Speaker 1: You've got if you're using fire, it's open, they could
Speaker 1: fly up roosting those trees. You've got all the benefits
Speaker 1: of a grass and you got all the benefits of
Speaker 1: a forest. And it's just to me, the ideal ecosystem
Speaker 1: is there. You know, you mentioned that the couple or
Speaker 1: three I think different ways you can kill those trees
Speaker 1: girdling them, cutting them, cutting them, and probably on the
Speaker 1: herb side. And I guess the fourth you mentioned hinge
Speaker 1: cut And I like that. I like the point you
Speaker 1: made about you know, diversify, like everything diversify. That's a
Speaker 1: great kind of guideline to apply across all of your
Speaker 1: different land work. Always have different ways you're doing it.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to those specific you know, timber
Speaker 1: management practices, I guess, are there any that work best
Speaker 1: for certain goals? Like I'm thinking, like, if you're trying
Speaker 1: to diversify your timber, you know, one of the things
Speaker 1: a lot of deer hunters are trying to do is like, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to also make sure I've got some particularly
Speaker 1: good betting areas or different things like that. Are there
Speaker 1: any certain ways of cutting and killing a tree or
Speaker 1: managing this timber asked for certain goals? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: providing cover, betting areas, a lot of those methods that
Speaker 1: people use, like hinge cutting or just piling up trees,
Speaker 1: I like making brush piles. I feel like those will
Speaker 1: get utilized a good bit. But these are all just
Speaker 1: band aids. They're all just really they're not what the
Speaker 1: wildlife really want. You're just trying to mimic what's supposed
Speaker 1: to be there. So if you want those things cover
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, that's where thickets come in play.
Speaker 1: I mean around here in the South. Well, that's what
Speaker 1: Alabama means. Alabama means thick, it clears people who it
Speaker 1: means clear and thickets because we're we have so much.
Speaker 1: You know, somebody's thickets and stuffing here. But if you
Speaker 1: want that, just cut down a bunch of it's gonna
Speaker 1: take longer. That's the thing you can. You can cut
Speaker 1: down those trees and have some barry cover, but make
Speaker 1: sure your end goal is to make like a thicket
Speaker 1: of plums or hazel nuts or or you know, dog woods,
Speaker 1: and there's a meal. You'll probably have a ton of
Speaker 1: shrubs species up there that we don't have, but get
Speaker 1: some shrubs in there, and so that gives you the
Speaker 1: more that's called a woodland. So you have grasslands, and
Speaker 1: then you have where grasses start going to forest. You
Speaker 1: have savannas, which are grasslands with overstory of trees. And
Speaker 1: then you have woodlands, which are forests with a grasslands
Speaker 1: underneath a little bit but a lot of shrubs. You
Speaker 1: got a shrub combonent and so I think that's what
Speaker 1: woodlands are good at. But also just having shrubs on
Speaker 1: edges of openings gives you that you know, people love
Speaker 1: that feathered edge look kilds. And you talk about using trees,
Speaker 1: cutting them down and making that temporary feathered edge with
Speaker 1: those trees, but really your end goal should be to
Speaker 1: have have it go from forest to rubs to grasslands
Speaker 1: and have that shrubby complex there on the edge, because
Speaker 1: that's gonna be great betting cover. So yeah, you use hingecuts,
Speaker 1: use it. I mean that, I mean, put it, make
Speaker 1: you a giant wall of down to logs and I
Speaker 1: mean a bugs while I gonna bet against that. I mean,
Speaker 1: but it's all temporary until you can get what's supposed
Speaker 1: to be there established, and that's kind of should be
Speaker 1: your end goal of I believe. But you know I
Speaker 1: mentioned those methods of using saws and stuff. That's the
Speaker 1: you know those that's my poor boy method, and that's
Speaker 1: what I can do, you know, when I get off
Speaker 1: work or whatever. I mean, you can go and do
Speaker 1: those things. But you can also do it at a
Speaker 1: large scale. I mean no, you can use it multures
Speaker 1: and um, I mean if you really have to, and
Speaker 1: and you can use logging crews. I do that a
Speaker 1: lot with my job as force or I did a
Speaker 1: lot of savanna restorations by having a crew come in
Speaker 1: and log it and man, that is the that's the
Speaker 1: best way. If you have a large that's the best
Speaker 1: way to get a really good response quickly. And you
Speaker 1: know I mentioned earlier you have you know, you have
Speaker 1: those upland hardwood species. Obviously it's gonna be tempting. People
Speaker 1: are gonna want to go in there and do the
Speaker 1: opposite of a high grade where you leave. You know,
Speaker 1: high grading is leaving all the crab trees and only
Speaker 1: cutting the good trees. So like you're big oak, you know,
Speaker 1: oaks and and pickrees, and you know the trees are
Speaker 1: gonna make you money, and leaving the crab trees. You
Speaker 1: don't want to do that. But you also don't want
Speaker 1: to go in there and cut all the crab trees
Speaker 1: and just leave your big um. You know, you don't
Speaker 1: want to leave your property covered in giant white oaks
Speaker 1: because every time the wind blows, you're gonna be You're
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to sleep at night. You're gonna
Speaker 1: be like, there's I've got, you know, hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars worth of white oaks there that are now
Speaker 1: up to the wind. They're gonna blow over. So um,
Speaker 1: what I used to do is I I go in
Speaker 1: and market and I'm move the maples and the beach
Speaker 1: and the and the sweet gums and poplars and and
Speaker 1: remove your bigger um. You know, make sure you're not
Speaker 1: just leaving the interior white oaks. But if you have
Speaker 1: some young white oaks, young oaks and hickries leave like
Speaker 1: the middle aged ones, you know, compared to the just
Speaker 1: giant timber quality ones, you can make some money on that.
Speaker 1: And um, you know, then it's gonna you're gonna be
Speaker 1: able to get a logger and they're easier when you say, hey,
Speaker 1: you can cut some of these bigger white oaks, but
Speaker 1: make sure you make sure you market because you don't
Speaker 1: want them to just go and you don't just want
Speaker 1: to turn a longer and use in your place without marketing.
Speaker 1: But in the end, what you have a savannah, it's
Speaker 1: going to grow up in the grasslands and you're gonna
Speaker 1: bring fire back to it. But your trees are gonna
Speaker 1: be those middle aged oaks and hickores and things like
Speaker 1: you know, short leaf pines or whatever. They're not gonna
Speaker 1: be so tall that they blow over because you know
Speaker 1: they've been growing in in a forest with a bunch
Speaker 1: of trees around them to protect them, so they haven't
Speaker 1: really put in that root structure that's going to hold
Speaker 1: them up. Two wins. But if you leave a lot
Speaker 1: of the middle aged ones and they're not going to
Speaker 1: blow over, and it's going to give them times to
Speaker 1: form those root systems and be get used to being
Speaker 1: out in somewhat open areas. But that's how you can
Speaker 1: go about it without just using a chainsaw and a
Speaker 1: bottle herbside. You can do it at a larger scale
Speaker 1: with a timber harvest. If you if you find a
Speaker 1: good forrester, and if you want to find a good forester,
Speaker 1: that Native Habitat Manager's page, it's good for that finding
Speaker 1: somebody in your area that has used somebody for a
Speaker 1: job like that. Yeah, well, speaking of that Native Habitat
Speaker 1: Manager's page, that sounds like a great resource. I've kept
Speaker 1: you here, John away with your sore throat for a
Speaker 1: good long time, which I appreciate it, but I feel
Speaker 1: like I should let you get back to it. So
Speaker 1: where could folks go to get more resources from you?
Speaker 1: Where can they see your content and connect with you
Speaker 1: and all that good stuff? Kyle? Yeah, Well, yeah, we've
Speaker 1: got I post videos on YouTube and Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, um.
Speaker 1: And then we have a podcast, um that we we
Speaker 1: put on pause for a while because Jake and I,
Speaker 1: uh we both just had newborns within you know, a
Speaker 1: month of each other. So we were like, for our
Speaker 1: wife's sakes, we're gonna put the podcast on Pauls. But
Speaker 1: we're about to start it back up. We have a
Speaker 1: lot of good episodes on there, but um, that's ah,
Speaker 1: that's where you can find us. And um, we're also
Speaker 1: on Patreon. People donate on there and we use that
Speaker 1: towards your store and some you know, rare grass and
Speaker 1: sites and uh, and we're we're about to start We're
Speaker 1: about to start selling some T shirts with a specific
Speaker 1: plant species on there. So I mentioned earlier finding rare
Speaker 1: stuff on grass or on roadsides. Um, there's some species
Speaker 1: in our state, like leafy prairie clover that that only
Speaker 1: has like three populations in the state, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: start selling T shirts with that leafy prairie clover on there. Um,
Speaker 1: And all that money's gonna go towards conserving that hopefully
Speaker 1: hopefully buying some of those properties and make sure they're
Speaker 1: safe for conservation. So that's something else cool we're doing.
Speaker 1: So just you can find all that following us on
Speaker 1: it on Instagram or Facebook. So but that's about it, man,
Speaker 1: And appreciate you having me on. Oh yeah, that's uh,
Speaker 1: that's some really cool stuff. I'm I'm glad that I've
Speaker 1: discovered your your content and your work and I'm glad
Speaker 1: you're out there doing it. So thank you for that, Kyle,
Speaker 1: and thanks for sharing all this with us today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I appreciate it to you. Man. Well, I'm happy to
Speaker 1: come back going whenever of you. Do you ever have
Speaker 1: any more topics like this, I'd be happy to talk
Speaker 1: about it. Maybe maybe next time my voice we'll be back.
Speaker 1: So yes, yeah, I feel like we're just scraping the
Speaker 1: surface on a lot of this stuff. So yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: definitely need to have you on for for a second
Speaker 1: go around, and I'll make sure schedule at not right
Speaker 1: after the big Old Turkey convention. Yeah, well I got it.
Speaker 1: Just so happened. We have a pregnant goat down here
Speaker 1: in my podcast studio. We have is at my barn
Speaker 1: and we just had him. Our goat literally had three babies.
Speaker 1: As I was walking into the to do this podcast,
Speaker 1: so I gotta go check on some baby goats too. Yep,
Speaker 1: priorities we'll get after Kyle. Thanks again, appreciate it man.
Speaker 1: We'll see you later. And that is a rap. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this one. Thanks for being here. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this entire month of habitat related discussions.
Speaker 1: I've certainly learned a lot. I'm excited to get out
Speaker 1: on the ground doing some of this work myself starting
Speaker 1: next week. Mister Tony Peterson, my good friend and partner
Speaker 1: in crime and a lot of the stuff we do
Speaker 1: here at Wired to Hunt is taking over. He's going
Speaker 1: to do an offseason project series. We're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: all sorts of interesting things. He's going to be talking
Speaker 1: through scouting and shed hunting and turkeys and all sorts
Speaker 1: of good stuff that we can be focusing on this
Speaker 1: time of year as we kind of prepare for that
Speaker 1: next phase of the year. So be sure to check
Speaker 1: back in next week for that, check in for more
Speaker 1: details for me on the Working for Wildlife tour coming soon,
Speaker 1: and until the next time, Thanks for being here and
Speaker 1: stay Wired to Hunt.