Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the whitetail Woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile
Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by doctor Craig Harper to discuss
Speaker 2: his perspective on how we can manage our hunting properties
Speaker 2: to benefit the greatest number of species in the greatest
Speaker 2: number of ways. All right, welcome back to another episode
Speaker 2: of the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by
Speaker 2: First Light in their cameo for conservation initiative. You're probably familiar,
Speaker 2: but if you're not, a portion of every sale of
Speaker 2: First Light's whitetail gear is donated back to the National
Speaker 2: Old Deer Association to help them with their mission to
Speaker 2: make things better for deer, deer hunters and deer hunting
Speaker 2: well into the future. Big fan of that one and
Speaker 2: today's guest I am also a big fan of. We
Speaker 2: are joined today by the one and only doctor Craig Harper.
Speaker 2: He is a professor of Wildlife Management and the extension
Speaker 2: wildlife specialist in the School of Natural Resources at the
Speaker 2: University of Tennessee. He is also the recient recipient of
Speaker 2: the let me make sure you get this right the
Speaker 2: Deer Management Career Achievement Award from the Southeast Deer Study Group.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty one, he was given the National Deer
Speaker 2: Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. He's the author of multiple books,
Speaker 2: books that a whole lot of habitat managers rave about,
Speaker 2: many many published studies, and he's just simply one of
Speaker 2: the foremost authorities and one of the best communicators when
Speaker 2: it comes to deer management, wildlife, habitat management, and so
Speaker 2: so many things that folks like you and I are
Speaker 2: interested in. Craig is is truly the best of the
Speaker 2: best of the best, and I'm thrilled that he's here
Speaker 2: with me today to discuss a topic that we have
Speaker 2: been exploring kind of meandering along the way throughout this
Speaker 2: month during Habitat Month. One of those main themes that
Speaker 2: I've brought up with a lot of folks that brought
Speaker 2: this up with Doug, brought this up with Thomas, and
Speaker 2: we definitely talk here today with Craig is this idea
Speaker 2: of how can we do more with our properties. How
Speaker 2: can we look beyond the simple, you know, throw a
Speaker 2: bag of food plot see in the ground and grow
Speaker 2: food plot and shoot a bigger buck. That's great. I
Speaker 2: enjoy that too, But there's got to be more we
Speaker 2: can do. There's probably a bigger impact we can have
Speaker 2: beyond that if we just widen our view a little bit.
Speaker 2: And today Craig helps us explore that theme in those
Speaker 2: topics really in a terrific way. He's wise, he has
Speaker 2: a tremendous amount of experience in these in these topics,
Speaker 2: he's able to kind of recenter me in some places.
Speaker 2: He's able to folks me in certain places and not
Speaker 2: just focus me, focus us, I think in some very
Speaker 2: valuable ways. So we're going to talk through everything from
Speaker 2: you know, managing for better cover on your property, to
Speaker 2: discussions around native versus invasive species and how to be
Speaker 2: realistic and what we can do with that kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: why we might want to do that kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: What types of projects will help our white tail deer,
Speaker 2: what kind of projects will help our turkeys, rough grouse,
Speaker 2: bob white quail, insects, birds, the whole gamut. We're going
Speaker 2: to discuss it this is one of the best Habitat
Speaker 2: related podcasts we've had in a while, and I'm just
Speaker 2: very excited that you guys get to listen to it
Speaker 2: or watch it if you're over on YouTube. So with
Speaker 2: that said, I think we should just get to my
Speaker 2: chat today with doctor Craig Harper. All right here with
Speaker 2: me now, is mister Craig Harper. Craig, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for joining me.
Speaker 3: No, I am Martin glad to be here with you.
Speaker 3: While since since we.
Speaker 2: Talked, I know, I know. I actually went back to
Speaker 2: try to find when it was that I last had
Speaker 2: you on the show, and it shocked me how long
Speaker 2: it's been. I don't know how I've managed to make
Speaker 2: the mistake of not trying to rope you into one
Speaker 2: of these sooner, but it wasn't It's been since twenty sixteen, Craig.
Speaker 3: Wow, eight years. I wouldn't have guessed it had been
Speaker 3: that long.
Speaker 2: No, it's it's gone very fast. It's I don't know
Speaker 2: if it's because I've had kids in the interim, but
Speaker 2: everything seems to be just flying by this last five, six,
Speaker 2: seven years.
Speaker 3: So well, I'm sure eight years ago when I was
Speaker 3: with you, I had more hair, and it was darker
Speaker 3: than it is now.
Speaker 2: So I've seen worse, Craig, I've seen worse. You're doing
Speaker 2: all right, and I gotta give you special thanks for
Speaker 2: making time to do this, because we were exchanging emails
Speaker 2: ahead of this, and you had told me that you
Speaker 2: were just ret turning from several weeks in the back country,
Speaker 2: so you must be exhausted and coming off of a
Speaker 2: heck of an adventure.
Speaker 3: Huh, well not really. It was a lot of fun,
Speaker 3: but uh, you know, I kept up. It's the part
Speaker 3: that drags you down is I was in New Mexico
Speaker 3: for a couple of weeks, but then upon returning, I
Speaker 3: had to to go to West Virginia, and then I
Speaker 3: had to go to West Tennessee, and so it's it's
Speaker 3: been four weeks of back to back to back to back,
Speaker 3: you know, solid being gone, and so I think I've
Speaker 3: been home one day now, and it's it's impossible to
Speaker 3: catch up after all that time in the day, but
Speaker 3: I'm plugging away trying to get back at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the one downside of travel is that you
Speaker 2: get that whole of emails that you can never dig
Speaker 2: your way back out of.
Speaker 3: Even if it's even if it's vacation. I mean you
Speaker 3: you sit there and it's almost like excruciating, no, and
Speaker 3: what's building up, you know, this mountain of emails and
Speaker 3: phone calls and everything else. That. Man, it's just if
Speaker 3: you don't keep up with it to the best of
Speaker 3: your ability. Uh, it's it's insufferable. But when I was
Speaker 3: in New Mexico, we were in the back country. We
Speaker 3: were away from everything, in a wilderness area, and after
Speaker 3: about day four, I finally quit worrying about not being
Speaker 3: able to keep up with stuff. You know, you know
Speaker 3: I can't. There is no service, Uh, there is nothing,
Speaker 3: no power, no running water. We did have access to
Speaker 3: one spiccot, but you know, a couple of weeks in
Speaker 3: the back country, no showers and cooking over fire and
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. So you know, after a while
Speaker 3: you get into it. It's like, man, this is really
Speaker 3: nice where I don't have the constant distraction of you know,
Speaker 3: the day to day calls and the emails and everything
Speaker 3: that comes in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't beat that. I remember reading a few
Speaker 2: years ago about something called the three day effect, I think, uh,
Speaker 2: in which a series of actual studies had shown that
Speaker 2: it's on day three, at the end of day three
Speaker 2: when the body starts showing quantifiable physiological changes to that,
Speaker 2: you know, separation from the phone and the internet and
Speaker 2: work like it takes that much time to fully disconnect
Speaker 2: and recalibrate, and then there's all these huge benefits to
Speaker 2: to your psyche and everything once you're fully immersed.
Speaker 3: And totally believe that that was my experience for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I'm jealous. I've not had several weeks in
Speaker 2: the back country, but I could use it. And I'm
Speaker 2: glad you're back though, and willing to do this and
Speaker 2: for you know, to be respectful your time. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to ask you to give me the whole roundabout
Speaker 2: resume and explanation of what you've done the past, because
Speaker 2: most folks have been following you and are aware of that,
Speaker 2: and I've introduced you already, so I want to kind
Speaker 2: of drop you and drop us right into the meat
Speaker 2: and potatoes of this world I've been exploring over the
Speaker 2: past month or so of folks, and I want to
Speaker 2: open with a challenge. I guess that I was faced
Speaker 2: by something I read from you. I was reading in
Speaker 2: one of your books that the idea that you can
Speaker 2: just manage for wildlife is a false one and a
Speaker 2: bad path to take. And I was challenged by that
Speaker 2: because I've been trying to in my own kind of
Speaker 2: path as a wildlife manager and deer manager. I've thought
Speaker 2: to myself it might be better to step away from
Speaker 2: managing just for deer and to instead take a larger
Speaker 2: managing for wildlife or managing for the ecosystem perspective. And
Speaker 2: I've been kind of exploring all that. But then I
Speaker 2: read your piece and said, you can't do that. You
Speaker 2: can't just manage for a while life. You need to
Speaker 2: pick a focal specie because managing for wildlife is too ambiguous,
Speaker 2: And so I guess I wanted to hear a little
Speaker 2: bit more from you on that as a starting point.
Speaker 2: Was I interpreting that correctly? Do you believe that managing
Speaker 2: for wildlife is kind of a false premise and too
Speaker 2: ambiguous of a goal to have.
Speaker 3: Well. Where that came from is where I have given
Speaker 3: presentations helping people come up with their property and wildlife
Speaker 3: management plans. And it doesn't matter if you're a private
Speaker 3: individual or you know a biologist that works with a
Speaker 3: state agency. It's a very very common thing for us
Speaker 3: to say, our objective is wildlife. And what I was
Speaker 3: trying to clarify is that that term wildlife is too
Speaker 3: ambiguous to plan for. That you need to at least
Speaker 3: identify a species or suite of species that you're interested in,
Speaker 3: because you cannot manage for everything. There's too many species
Speaker 3: that have very very different habitat requirements, you know, specific
Speaker 3: items of food, resources, cover resources, water resources, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And so you'll hear somebody say, yeah, our objective for
Speaker 3: the property is wildlife, and that's when I say, well,
Speaker 3: let's try to be a little more precise in what
Speaker 3: we're talking about, because wildlife in this sense is too general. Now,
Speaker 3: when you mentioned managing for deer, what I try to
Speaker 3: bring out to people very commonly, and this has really
Speaker 3: come about through some studies that we've finished and worked
Speaker 3: on through the years, is deer is known as a
Speaker 3: quote generalist species. You know, at least in the Eastern US,
Speaker 3: the two most common wildlife species that people manage their
Speaker 3: proberty for is deer in wild turkeys. And it just
Speaker 3: so happens that both of those are considered generalists, meaning
Speaker 3: that you find them in a wide range of landscapes.
Speaker 3: You could be in very open landscapes and totally close
Speaker 3: canopy forest landscapes and a mixture of everything in between,
Speaker 3: and you're going to find deer in turkeys in all
Speaker 3: of those and so they don't have some specialized requirements
Speaker 3: like say a grassland obligate songbird does, or a forest
Speaker 3: interior songbird, for example, and you don't find them anywhere else.
Speaker 3: And what I've tried to do is use whitetail deer
Speaker 3: in particular, but turkeys also to try and manage for
Speaker 3: other species, because at least in my opinion, in my
Speaker 3: professional opinion, if you're managing whitetail deer to the best
Speaker 3: of your ability, that means that you're going to have
Speaker 3: a wide variety of vegetation types, a wide variety of
Speaker 3: successional stages available to them. Because although deer do not
Speaker 3: have to do not have to have any one vegetation
Speaker 3: type or successional stage in order to have a robust population,
Speaker 3: their populations generally are more robust and with better body
Speaker 3: condition if you have a variety of vegetation types and
Speaker 3: successional stages, because then you're going to have different types
Speaker 3: of food and different types of cover that are available
Speaker 3: and make survival and body condition better through the year.
Speaker 3: And so then when you are doing that, you then
Speaker 3: by default are providing habitat for species that most landowners
Speaker 3: don't know anything about and may not care anything about.
Speaker 3: And that may be shrubbling songbirds, it might be grassland
Speaker 3: songbirds or forest obligates. Obviously non game and other game
Speaker 3: species as well. So I think whitetailed deer and wild
Speaker 3: turkeys are unique and that a lot of people manage
Speaker 3: for them, and not many people manage for some of
Speaker 3: these non game species. But if we enable them teach
Speaker 3: them to manage their properties better for deer in turkeys,
Speaker 3: than by default they're making their properties better for a
Speaker 3: whole lot of other species.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would be fair to say that that managing
Speaker 2: for deer or turkey kind of acts like a gateway drug,
Speaker 2: in that if you're able to get in the door
Speaker 2: because you're incentivized to have better deer hunting or better
Speaker 2: turkey hunting, that might be the thing that opens you
Speaker 2: to the room of possibilities, which might be helping these
Speaker 2: other critters out, helping these songbirds out, improving your grasslands
Speaker 2: for this species or that species or whatever it might be,
Speaker 2: that you would never ever that would never enter the
Speaker 2: realm of possibilities unless it's worth for the fact that
Speaker 2: you were originally incentivized to improve your hunting opportunities.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, I believe that one. Certainly, when you get
Speaker 3: into what you might call a more holistic approach to
Speaker 3: managing property for white tail deer, you know, and you
Speaker 3: can add turkeys in there if you won't, there's no
Speaker 3: question that you gain a greater appreciation for the various
Speaker 3: plants that you will then see and for the different
Speaker 3: species of wildlife that will be occurring on the property.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So one of the things that I've been curious about,
Speaker 2: and that I've been spending a lot of time reading
Speaker 2: into and trying to learn more about, is how you
Speaker 2: know sickle coal or how connected everything is on a landscape.
Speaker 2: And so if we want quality deer hunting or quality
Speaker 2: turkey hunting, it might behoove us to care about those
Speaker 2: other things too, that native vegetation, the songbirds, the insects,
Speaker 2: the pollinators, et cetera, because that all of these things
Speaker 2: end up touching each other in one way or another. Right,
Speaker 2: And while I think it's fair to say that we
Speaker 2: are living very likely in the golden days of deer hunting.
Speaker 2: You know that's not necessarily the case for a lot
Speaker 2: of other species on the landscape. I think I'm preaching
Speaker 2: the choir here when I talk about the decline and
Speaker 2: birds across the North America three billion fewer birds now
Speaker 2: than fifty years ago. I know you've done research a
Speaker 2: lot on bob whit kwail grouse right significant declines in
Speaker 2: both of those species. Forty four percent of insects are
Speaker 2: threatened with extinction in the relatively near term future. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of things that aren't doing so well right now,
Speaker 2: and I've I've thought to myself that there's this unique
Speaker 2: opportunity that we, the deer hunters of America have, and
Speaker 2: that we own land for wildlife and recreation. We're pretty
Speaker 2: well armed with education and tools to manage the landscape,
Speaker 2: and we're incentivized to do so because we want better
Speaker 2: deer hunter better turkey hunting. If we do those things
Speaker 2: with a slightly wider aperture, we very well might be
Speaker 2: able to stem the losses of all these other things too.
Speaker 2: Is that is that a step too far? Am I
Speaker 2: having delusions of grandeur? Or could we save the world.
Speaker 2: For lack of a better phrase.
Speaker 3: I don't know that we'll save the world, but I
Speaker 3: definitely think we can make it a better place. How's
Speaker 3: that not just for us in achieving our immediate objectives
Speaker 3: or goals, but also for all of these other wildlife
Speaker 3: species and many plants. As you mentioned, we just finished
Speaker 3: a series of projects looking at field management techniques and
Speaker 3: how different field management techniques impacted deer, turkeys, grassland song birds,
Speaker 3: shrubbling song birds, several different species, and pollinators as well.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that we found is the
Speaker 3: great increase in plants for pollinators when you manage fields
Speaker 3: more opriately, I would say for deer, as opposed to
Speaker 3: just having fields dominated by grasses, and so by reducing
Speaker 3: the amount of grass coverage and increasing the amount of
Speaker 3: forb coverage, you have by default increased resources for pollinators
Speaker 3: and lots of other insects. And it's interesting to see
Speaker 3: the close tie that so many insects and other invertebrates
Speaker 3: have with the forb community as opposed to the grass community.
Speaker 3: Not to say that grasses won't support some they certainly do,
Speaker 3: but you will see larger populations and more diverse species
Speaker 3: or groups of species assemblages in these areas that have
Speaker 3: a much greater FORB component than a field dominated by grasses.
Speaker 3: And one of the latest projects Wage of Fellers and
Speaker 3: Bonner Powell worked on was comparing how some of the
Speaker 3: field renovation techniques looking at planting native grasses and forbes
Speaker 3: as opposed to using the seed bank only after getting
Speaker 3: rid of the vast coverage of non native grasses, and
Speaker 3: for every metric, the seed bank response was just as good,
Speaker 3: if not better than planting native grasses in forbes. And
Speaker 3: so I'm not saying that you should never plant native
Speaker 3: grasses in forbes, but I will say, for a majority
Speaker 3: of the species that we are interested in, and on
Speaker 3: a majority of sites, you don't have to plant native
Speaker 3: grasses in forbes in order to have a much much
Speaker 3: better plant community and also responding wildlife community. And I
Speaker 3: think that is I think it's very important information because
Speaker 3: we found that we could treat restore impact four times
Speaker 3: more acreage by simply using the seed bank as opposed
Speaker 3: to plant native grasses and forbes when you consider the cost.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I've read a piece that you wrote
Speaker 2: about this study and some of the implications of it,
Speaker 2: and it had me thinking about some things I could
Speaker 2: do myself if you were looking at some of the
Speaker 2: most impactful ways that you could, you know, work on
Speaker 2: your property, manage your property in a way that like
Speaker 2: we're talking about that's not just deer in asylum, but
Speaker 2: looking at the larger ecosystem the health of all these
Speaker 2: different categories of species. Is field management appropriate field management
Speaker 2: for quality early secessional habitat. Is that one of those
Speaker 2: top tier categories of things that we need to put
Speaker 2: at the top of our list to be thinking about.
Speaker 3: I believe so. And when you think of it in
Speaker 3: a by this simplistic way that you can. If you
Speaker 3: have property, you probably have either woods or fields or both.
Speaker 3: I mean, if we just boil everything down, and so
Speaker 3: having a mixture of that is what is most important.
Speaker 3: If you're interested in species richness, having a variety of
Speaker 3: either wildlife and or plant species on the property. And
Speaker 3: so then you get into the nuances of how to
Speaker 3: manage that. And that's where a lot of this field
Speaker 3: management research that we've been doing has shed a lot
Speaker 3: of light on. We don't need fields with solid grass
Speaker 3: coverage for a vast majority of the species that we're
Speaker 3: managing for I mean, unless it's a grassland obligate songbird
Speaker 3: such as an eastern metal arc or grasshoppersparra what have you,
Speaker 3: which still requires some or obviously benefits from some fords,
Speaker 3: whether it be from the structure or for the food
Speaker 3: resources that are available from them, whether it's seed or
Speaker 3: the insects that are associated with the plant. We see
Speaker 3: that these forbes communities provide a lot, and your management
Speaker 3: of the fields to go in that direction instead of
Speaker 3: simply grass coverage will get you a lot more.
Speaker 2: So, what you're saying is that these forty acre plantings
Speaker 2: of nothing but switch grass not such a good idea.
Speaker 3: I would say, in my opinion, No, but the data
Speaker 3: buried out. I mean, will a deer lay in a
Speaker 3: switch grass field, Yes? But will they lay in a
Speaker 3: field containing naturally occurring native forbes just as much? Yes?
Speaker 3: Do they eat switch grass? No? Do they eat these forbes? Yes?
Speaker 3: And these forbes, the vast majority of them, the ones
Speaker 3: that deer select, actually have greater nutritional value than the
Speaker 3: maximum amount required by bucks growing antlers or lactating dose.
Speaker 3: And I'm telling you, when people begin to see the
Speaker 3: value of let's just use this word loosely weeds, and
Speaker 3: for most people, they're referring to forbs when they say weeds.
Speaker 3: It's an inaccurate use of the word, but that's the
Speaker 3: way most people use it. When people, and especially deer managers,
Speaker 3: truly understand and appreciate the value of these wild, naturally
Speaker 3: occurring forbs weeds, the game is changed buying large. You
Speaker 3: don't need summer food plots anymore because they're out there
Speaker 3: growing wild, and we are realizing tremendous increases in both
Speaker 3: antler size and body weights per age class when you
Speaker 3: have a certain amount of the in these plant communities
Speaker 3: that are providing these highly nutritional plants, the various forbes
Speaker 3: that are just coming up from the seed bank that
Speaker 3: they didn't even bother to plant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's hard to argue with that. But I can
Speaker 2: hear some people saying, well, why would you want your
Speaker 2: food and your cover all in the same place where
Speaker 2: the deer would just stand there in daylight and never
Speaker 2: come walking past your tree stand?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: That's the argument I think a lot of people would say,
Speaker 2: is like, I want just pure switch here or pure
Speaker 2: betting here, and then I want pure food on the
Speaker 2: other side, and I want to hunt in between. And
Speaker 2: you know, or they'll say, well, we want switchcrafts because
Speaker 2: it holds up better in the winter and provides better
Speaker 2: cover at certain times of the year. Right, there's very
Speaker 2: specific kind of use cases. Some folks will say from
Speaker 2: a huntability perspective where they'd want something like that, what
Speaker 2: would be what's your response to that?
Speaker 3: I guess, well, one is, you're not a bad person
Speaker 3: if you plant switch grass. I mean, it's all right.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, but but
Speaker 3: I am saying that it's a better thing for the
Speaker 3: deer if you have better plant diversity out there rather
Speaker 3: than just switch grass. And the whole notion that you know,
Speaker 3: my hunting is no good if I have food and
Speaker 3: cover in the same spot. That's that's just simply wrong.
Speaker 3: That's that's it. All you got to do is look
Speaker 3: at any deer movement study, you know, GPS, collars, et cetera.
Speaker 3: I don't care what the quality of the cover is,
Speaker 3: what the quality of the food is. Deer are still
Speaker 3: going to move. That's a fact. And so you're hunting
Speaker 3: pressure has a lot to do with when they move.
Speaker 3: If they're showing up in open areas or wherever before
Speaker 3: daylight or if they're staying put until dark. And so
Speaker 3: don't confuse the quality of cover with with hunting pressure.
Speaker 3: Both can be very influential. But but look, we manage
Speaker 3: these fields in the way that I'm talking about, and
Speaker 3: we hunt over those fields, and you can see deer
Speaker 3: moving in these fields. And we're talking about cover that is, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, at least three feet maybe five feet or
Speaker 3: so in high and you know, there'll be some plants
Speaker 3: that get taller than that, and and it's according to
Speaker 3: the plant composition as to how well it holds up
Speaker 3: over winter as well, many of these plants hold up
Speaker 3: just as good and provide just as good of visual
Speaker 3: breaking with with cover through the winter as switchgrass does.
Speaker 3: So it's it's incorrect to think that you have to
Speaker 3: have switchgrass to have cover in fields. And as we
Speaker 3: all know, in real inclement weather, the deer aren't going
Speaker 3: to be laying out there in a switch grass field
Speaker 3: when it's you know, sleeping and heavy snow and that
Speaker 3: kind of thing. They're going to be in a in
Speaker 3: a forested area. Typically, if there's some a a green cover,
Speaker 3: a vailable et cetera, where the snow is not as
Speaker 3: deep and the wind is not as hard on them.
Speaker 3: So you know, switch grass is not the cure all
Speaker 3: for everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so then this appropriate management of these old fields,
Speaker 2: I selfishly have a couple of specific questions because I've
Speaker 2: got a place that I that I have a certain
Speaker 2: degree of management control over. But I can't do everything
Speaker 2: and anything like I couldn't do a burn on it.
Speaker 2: But I can plant food plots as long as I
Speaker 2: don't mess with the farmer's crops. It's that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And if there's open space, I can do things with
Speaker 2: it as long as it's you know, kind of out
Speaker 2: of sight, out of mind. And there is a large
Speaker 2: power line that runs through this property, and then a
Speaker 2: low lying area that drains a lot of water off
Speaker 2: the fields and now is mostly some kind of cool
Speaker 2: seasoned grass. I think it's either orchard grass or timothy grass,
Speaker 2: and it covers almost all of this probably five acre
Speaker 2: kind of relatively low place. And then there's this you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know, half a mile long power line that
Speaker 2: runs through this property that's mostly that kind of grass.
Speaker 2: I have a couple of food plots in there, but
Speaker 2: for a while now, I've known if I could do
Speaker 2: something with that grass and convert it to something that's
Speaker 2: beneficial for wildlife, that would probably have a greater impact
Speaker 2: than just my couple tiny food plots. But I suppose
Speaker 2: I've just been yeah, Okay, I guess I've just been
Speaker 2: hesitant to I suppose I've thought maybe I don't have
Speaker 2: the right equipment or the ability to do it without
Speaker 2: having fire or a big disc or something like that.
Speaker 2: Can I make a difference just by spraying this stuff?
Speaker 2: Is that going to be enough to get something native
Speaker 2: coming up again or something more beneficial than this carpet
Speaker 2: of grass right now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Mark, what you just describe is exactly what I'm
Speaker 3: talking about. And so if you simply in that situation,
Speaker 3: you've got a non native perennial cool season grass, whether
Speaker 3: it's timothy or orchard grass, bluegrass, tall rescue, you can
Speaker 3: add brome grasses that what have you. All you need
Speaker 3: to do is go in there in the fall, as
Speaker 3: I have said many many times, typically after a couple
Speaker 3: of frosts, and then spray the grass, usually with a
Speaker 3: two percent solution of glycos sate herbicide one time, and
Speaker 3: you've just fixed it. It is that simple spray at
Speaker 3: one time and walk away. By the following spring, you're
Speaker 3: going to have an explosion of all kinds of stuff
Speaker 3: coming out of the seed bank. Some of that stuff
Speaker 3: is going to be good, some of that stuff not
Speaker 3: so good. If some of the stuff is not so good,
Speaker 3: we simply go in typically once per year in May
Speaker 3: through July, and spot spray the stuff that we don't like,
Speaker 3: leave the stuff that we do like, and let nature
Speaker 3: take care of the rest. Wherever you have plants that
Speaker 3: are undesirable and you spot spray, you're going to have
Speaker 3: dead patches, and something is going to germinate in that
Speaker 3: patch within a couple of rains, you know, during the
Speaker 3: growing season. And so if you do that right there
Speaker 3: once per year, over the course of three years or so,
Speaker 3: you will have absolutely transformed that field. And by default,
Speaker 3: then everything there will be what you want because you've
Speaker 3: been you've simply been killing what you don't want instead
Speaker 3: of planting what you do want. When you plant what
Speaker 3: you do want, you still have what you don't want
Speaker 3: because you haven't gotten rid of it yet. There's going
Speaker 3: to be plants coming in from the seed bank that
Speaker 3: you don't like, and so instead of planting what you want,
Speaker 3: simply kill what you don't want and let nature fill
Speaker 3: in the rest.
Speaker 2: So I understand that that false spring is more effective.
Speaker 2: I think I saw one of your studies that showed,
Speaker 2: you know, the amount of non desirable species the year
Speaker 2: or up to three years after is much less when
Speaker 2: you do that fall spring versus spring planting. But we're
Speaker 2: talking in late February. Can I is it so inefficient
Speaker 2: to spray early in the spring that I should wait
Speaker 2: all the way till this fall, and or could I
Speaker 2: start now once that stuff starts greenning up the spring
Speaker 2: and start to see some kind of positive benefit this
Speaker 2: first summer and fall rather than waiting a full you know,
Speaker 2: six seven months from now to start.
Speaker 3: Yes. Absolutely, It's just that you will have additional mop
Speaker 3: up of those cool season grasses over the next two
Speaker 3: or three years as opposed to having your first herbicide
Speaker 3: application completed in the fall. And so on average, what
Speaker 3: we have found is with spring spray in perennial coups,
Speaker 3: season grasses by the second year after spray and you're
Speaker 3: probably going to have at least thirty maybe forty percent
Speaker 3: coverage of that grass because you don't get as good
Speaker 3: of a kill on the root system. But if you
Speaker 3: want to go ahead and get started, absolutely, it just
Speaker 3: means that you have a little more mop up of
Speaker 3: some of those cool season grasses down the road.
Speaker 2: Okay, and I think I read somewhere, but I want
Speaker 2: to make sure I understand this correctly. There's a there's
Speaker 2: a significant thatch layer of all this dead grass that's
Speaker 2: you know, knocked down every single year right before the
Speaker 2: spring growing up when there's gonna be that new growth.
Speaker 2: When I would spray, would it work? Would it be
Speaker 2: worth my time to go in there and mow that
Speaker 2: thatch down a couple of times just to knock that
Speaker 2: down and make it uh so I have better contact
Speaker 2: to that new grass when it does start growing. Is
Speaker 2: that the right way to prep or clean that field
Speaker 2: before spring?
Speaker 3: If you have standing dead material that would block the
Speaker 3: herbicide coming in contact from the green growing grass, then
Speaker 3: it definitely will behoove you to mow that before the
Speaker 3: grass starts growing, get that knocked down, and then when
Speaker 3: the grass comes out and greens up really good in springtime.
Speaker 3: And let's see, would you be doing this in Michigan?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And so you would probably be looking at spraying in May,
Speaker 3: like early May or something, when you know it really
Speaker 3: starts growing really good and before it bolts and begins
Speaker 3: to flour. And so you know, if you go over
Speaker 3: it with and mow it sometime in March April and
Speaker 3: you're kind of setting the table there, you know, cleaning
Speaker 3: things up and enabling fresh growing grass to come out,
Speaker 3: that that would give you your best result. Now what
Speaker 3: I thought you were asking, what is about the dead
Speaker 3: thatch that remains after you spray the grass and you
Speaker 3: and if you can't burn, and if you can't burn
Speaker 3: that off, don't worry about it. It's dead. It's not sinescent,
Speaker 3: meaning you know it's going to come back. It's dead,
Speaker 3: and so it will deteriorate and decompose over time and
Speaker 3: plants are going to come right up through that, no problem.
Speaker 2: Perfect. Okay, Well I've got my marching orders. This is
Speaker 2: the year that I finally need to do it.
Speaker 3: So well, and you know, I certainly sympathize with you.
Speaker 3: I know a lot of people are in either places
Speaker 3: or position whatever where they can't burn, and we talk
Speaker 3: about burning a lot, and of course burning is a
Speaker 3: fantastic management tool. But if you can't burn fields, all
Speaker 3: is not lost. In particular, if you're using these spot
Speaker 3: herbicide applications, that that is a game changer right there.
Speaker 3: We simply drive through the field as if we were
Speaker 3: mowing on an open cab tractor ATV and off of
Speaker 3: either side of the tractor with a spray gun, not
Speaker 3: the spray boom, but a spray gun. Simply spot spray
Speaker 3: those plants that you don't like. And by doing so,
Speaker 3: what you're doing is setting back succession. And so you're
Speaker 3: going right back to square one where you have annual
Speaker 3: plants germinating in those dead barre patches and instead of
Speaker 3: existing perennial plants. And so if you burn a field,
Speaker 3: particularly if you burn it in late winter early spring,
Speaker 3: you consume the material, but you are promoting perennial grasses
Speaker 3: and other perennial plant By doing so, you're you're maintaining
Speaker 3: a community that's primarily going to be perennial plants. If
Speaker 3: at some point you scratch the dirt a little bit,
Speaker 3: you know, light disking. It doesn't have to be you know,
Speaker 3: a heavy bog disc or whatever, but you know, you
Speaker 3: lightly disc that's where you're going to stimulate more annual
Speaker 3: forbs coming out and that will give you increased plant diversity.
Speaker 3: So if you can't burn, you know, don't don't worry.
Speaker 3: Using spot spray applications and and doing some light disking
Speaker 3: every two to three years is really good. And even
Speaker 3: if you're mowing, you know, try to keep your mowing
Speaker 3: in late winter early spring, before the nesting season of
Speaker 3: various species. And uh and if you want the disk
Speaker 3: but you don't have a heavy enough disk, if you
Speaker 3: mow ahead of time and then disk you know sometime
Speaker 3: after you mow, that will call some obviously some soul disturbance,
Speaker 3: and that will maintain a different suite of plants instead
Speaker 3: of if you just mow all the time, then you're
Speaker 3: probably gonna end up with a grass dominated situation. And
Speaker 3: if you just burn, particularly if you just burn in
Speaker 3: late winter and early spring, you're going to be dominated
Speaker 3: by grasses and some other perennial plants. You know, one
Speaker 3: that's very common up your way is golden rod. You know,
Speaker 3: you see fields that are just solid golden rod. Well,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm not a golden rod hater. I like
Speaker 3: golden rod, but I don't a field full of it,
Speaker 3: and so in such a situation, such a situation, you
Speaker 3: need to disk because that's a strong perennial forb and
Speaker 3: it can remain on that site for a long long time,
Speaker 3: and your species diversity is very low. And so even
Speaker 3: if you have a light tandem disc, if you mow
Speaker 3: it ahead of time and then you go over it
Speaker 3: with a disk, you'll reduce the golden raw density because
Speaker 3: that's a perennial plant and you just disturbed its root system,
Speaker 3: and you'll give rise to more annual spaces.
Speaker 2: Something I've heard you mentioned over and over again has
Speaker 2: been diversity, and it it would seem that in many
Speaker 2: cases that is is like a is a principle to
Speaker 2: always keep in mind when we're trying to do what's
Speaker 2: best for the landscape, what's best for the overall ecosystem,
Speaker 2: what's best for biodiversity is often plant diversity or land
Speaker 2: use type diversity, whatever it might be. I guess number one,
Speaker 2: Am I am I interpreting that correctly? And then number two?
Speaker 2: Are there any other overall principles similar to this emphasis
Speaker 2: on diversity that we should be thinking about when trying
Speaker 2: to be better stewards of the landscape, not just being
Speaker 2: dear one, but deer plus anything else other than this
Speaker 2: idea of diversity being important.
Speaker 3: Well, I think, first off, number one, you're you're correct,
Speaker 3: and I think that's an accurate line of thinking. But
Speaker 3: let's think for just a second about what diversity is.
Speaker 3: You know, species richness refers to the number of species
Speaker 3: that you you know, let's say in a field, if
Speaker 3: you're talking about plants, the number of species that occur
Speaker 3: in the field, all right, the diversity takes into account
Speaker 3: the species richness as well as their distribution. And so
Speaker 3: hopefully you wouldn't have one group of plants in this
Speaker 3: corner of the field and another group of plants in
Speaker 3: this corner of the field. See, if that were the case,
Speaker 3: your species richness would be just as great, but your
Speaker 3: diversity wouldn't be Your diversity would be greater if there's
Speaker 3: better mixing across the field of those plants. And so
Speaker 3: the same is true, you know, if you're talking about
Speaker 3: the versity of a landscape. And so with a landscape,
Speaker 3: that's where I'm stressing that people should not just manage
Speaker 3: their woods or manage their property in woods. If you
Speaker 3: have a property that is that is solid woods, you know,
Speaker 3: depending on the size, you should do something to create
Speaker 3: some openings, because if you create openings, then you're going
Speaker 3: to have a totally different plant community, and you're going
Speaker 3: to have different wildlife species, and some wildlife species such
Speaker 3: as deer, will have additional resources that they didn't before,
Speaker 3: and so on the landscape. You can have increased diversity
Speaker 3: by not just having additional vegetation types, but also looking
Speaker 3: at the distribution of those vegetation types, and that can
Speaker 3: be very important with regard to to where wildlife are found,
Speaker 3: their movements and time they spend in different areas, etc.
Speaker 2: That makes a lot of sense. What if we were
Speaker 2: to continue down that line of thinking, and if I
Speaker 2: were if I were in the Craig Harper masterclass for
Speaker 2: how to be a Better land Steward, I think I'm
Speaker 2: picking up on here managing our old fields appropriately. I'm
Speaker 2: picking up on diversity of not just species richest, but
Speaker 2: also distribution. I think we've talked a little bit about
Speaker 2: the importance of, you know, looking at more than just hey,
Speaker 2: what's good for deer in a silo? What would a
Speaker 2: few of the other pillars of your approach be if
Speaker 2: you were to, you know, have that bullet list of
Speaker 2: the main things that you really wanted to drill into
Speaker 2: someone's head. Someone who's been doing the you know, big
Speaker 2: buck on a bag food plot thing for a lot
Speaker 2: of years maybe and is now trying to expand the
Speaker 2: horizons a little bit. What would the next couple of
Speaker 2: things beyond that top three, top four list.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I think is very important
Speaker 3: is not just managing a property, but thinking about your
Speaker 3: scale of management. You know, one ilmost say problem is
Speaker 3: that a lot of people don't manage their property. You know,
Speaker 3: they just have property and it doesn't even cross their
Speaker 3: mind that they can do something to improve their woods,
Speaker 3: improve their fields for different wildlife species, or or they
Speaker 3: might know they could, but they don't because of calls,
Speaker 3: they don't because they don't want to expend the effort,
Speaker 3: et cetera. So not managing is one thing, But then
Speaker 3: when you look at the group of landowners who do
Speaker 3: manage their property, not that many of them think about
Speaker 3: their scale of management. And so what I'm getting at
Speaker 3: there is, let's say, for example, you're going to burn
Speaker 3: a section of woods, or let's say that you're going
Speaker 3: to set back succession in your fields by either burning
Speaker 3: or disking or what have you. Well, how big of
Speaker 3: an area do you burn or how much of the
Speaker 3: field do you disk? Or do you disk all of
Speaker 3: your fields in the same year, or do you leave
Speaker 3: some of them for you know, a rotation such that
Speaker 3: some are disturbed one year and not the others. And
Speaker 3: so thinking about how big of an area should be
Speaker 3: managed at once is very important, and I think that's
Speaker 3: particularly important with fire. Of course we use fire to
Speaker 3: manage woods, but do we have areas broken out where
Speaker 3: you're burning five acres, ten acres, fifty acres, five hundred acres.
Speaker 3: You know, there's lots of thought, you know, into that,
Speaker 3: and it's not that something is necessarily right or wrong.
Speaker 3: But when you think about the movements of a particular
Speaker 3: wildlife species and uh the area that they typically are found,
Speaker 3: you know, a seasonal home range, then you consider, wow,
Speaker 3: you know, if I burn five hundred acres, I've just
Speaker 3: displaced that animal, most of them for a certain amount
Speaker 3: of time. And so would I benefit that species if
Speaker 3: I implemented my management on a smaller scale, And if so,
Speaker 3: what should that scale be? And that's something really that
Speaker 3: that we're still trying to tease out in research. And
Speaker 3: I'm not just talking about myself, but a lot of
Speaker 3: people are working on this concept of scale and what
Speaker 3: should it be, what would be best not only for
Speaker 3: species A, B and C, but for you know, a
Speaker 3: wider assemblage of species. So that that's something that I
Speaker 3: find of great interest. And we were doing a workshop
Speaker 3: just two or three years ago, I remember, and we
Speaker 3: were burning. We were burning a field, and of course
Speaker 3: in a workshop, the area that we burned was was
Speaker 3: fairly small. And I remember one guy asking me, well,
Speaker 3: you know, how big of an area do you need
Speaker 3: to burn to help something? And you know, like and
Speaker 3: what he was getting at is to attract deer and
Speaker 3: you know, provide you know, a fresh you know, re
Speaker 3: sprouting food source to deer. And I asked him, uh
Speaker 3: in the crowd, I said, uh, what is the smallest
Speaker 3: food plot that you all have planted and killed a
Speaker 3: deer in? And so, you know, their answers came in,
Speaker 3: you know, half acre, third acre, or whatever the case
Speaker 3: may be, and I said, so what is wrong with
Speaker 3: getting your backpack blower out and blowing around a half
Speaker 3: acre spot right there and burning it? Do you not
Speaker 3: think that will attract deer? You know, of course it was,
Speaker 3: so you know, and don't stop at that, go to
Speaker 3: another one, and another one and another one. Now that's
Speaker 3: an extreme example. I'm not telling people to burn on
Speaker 3: halfaker scale. But the point is I would much rather
Speaker 3: have several smaller management units than one really large management unit.
Speaker 3: That way, I'm providing more resources both food and cover
Speaker 3: for a particular wildlife species through the year better than
Speaker 3: if I managed it all at once.
Speaker 2: Does that even all kind of trickle back down to
Speaker 2: creating diversity because you're creating time scale diversity in management applications.
Speaker 3: You absolutely are yeah. Interesting and and see don't I
Speaker 3: don't like to get you know, just wrapped up in
Speaker 3: you know, the word diversity or the concept of it.
Speaker 3: You know, you could have of greater species richness. Let's say,
Speaker 3: for example, you have fifty native plants in a field
Speaker 3: and twenty five non native plants. Well, your species richness
Speaker 3: and your diversity are greater with those non native plants.
Speaker 3: I don't want those. So you know, there's a case
Speaker 3: where you know, less species richness and less diversity would
Speaker 3: be would be better. So we have to keep things
Speaker 3: in context that you know, we're we're just trying to
Speaker 3: make things better. And so if if you or I
Speaker 3: or most people go into a restaurant, we would like
Speaker 3: to see and let's think about this, you could only
Speaker 3: eat at that restaurant. Well, we would like to see
Speaker 3: a lot of things on the menu, wouldn't we. We
Speaker 3: would like some choices every once in a while. And
Speaker 3: you know, even our needs change not as much now
Speaker 3: as they did thousands of years ago, but they changed
Speaker 3: through the year. I mean, I certainly find myself eaten
Speaker 3: a little differently in hot summer as I would in
Speaker 3: cold winters. And so that's the whole point, trying to
Speaker 3: provide different wildlife species with as many options as we can,
Speaker 3: because they inherently know what they need, and so if
Speaker 3: we provide lots of things, they can do the picking
Speaker 3: and the choosing and come out in best shape possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you mentioned another thing that if I were
Speaker 2: making a list of what I'm trying to create here,
Speaker 2: which is like maybe my ten commandments for better landscape
Speaker 2: stewardship or whatever it might be. We've talked about a
Speaker 2: few of these different things, but one of them is
Speaker 2: native managing for native versus non native species. That seems
Speaker 2: to be something that universally across the board almost everyone
Speaker 2: says is going to be better for landscape health, better
Speaker 2: for you know, most species. If you care about the
Speaker 2: whole suite of wildlife and your price, pretty managing native
Speaker 2: is usually the way to go. But we're here, I'm
Speaker 2: hearing more and more folks say, well, what's native versus
Speaker 2: non native anything anymore?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Everything around us is from somewhere else. That's the way
Speaker 2: of the world, that's where things are going. So many
Speaker 2: of these species are naturalized now, they've been here for
Speaker 2: one hundred years. I see birds eating the berries on
Speaker 2: my automolive all the time. YadA, YadA, YadA. Two questions
Speaker 2: out of that. Number one, what's your response to someone
Speaker 2: who has that perspective? And then number two, why is
Speaker 2: it that managing for native vegetation is so much more
Speaker 2: beneficial for wildlife in general?
Speaker 3: Well, let me reverse the questions, if I may, sure,
Speaker 3: managing for native species by and large in general is
Speaker 3: going to be native plant species is going to be
Speaker 3: better for native wildlife because that's what the wildlife evolved with.
Speaker 3: The Wildlife didn't evolve with plants from a different from
Speaker 3: a different continent. And so when somebody says, well, what
Speaker 3: is native what is non native? Well, I can answer
Speaker 3: that fairly easily. If a plant is from a given area,
Speaker 3: it is native to there, then it's not native. You know,
Speaker 3: that's pretty easy. And when they say, well, you know,
Speaker 3: is there any need to worry about this? You know
Speaker 3: they're naturalized and that kind of thing. You know. I
Speaker 3: remember the day when I was kind of wrapped up
Speaker 3: in this more than I am now, and it would
Speaker 3: really really bother me if there was anything non native
Speaker 3: on a particular property, and I wanted to go out
Speaker 3: of my way to get rid of it. But I
Speaker 3: guess I've changed my way of thinking a little bit.
Speaker 3: I still am a strong native plant proponent and in
Speaker 3: general want to get rid of non native species. But
Speaker 3: for example, if you have all molive, and I've watched
Speaker 3: turkeys eat break the branches out of automolive trees eat
Speaker 3: eating the berries, is that that big of a deal
Speaker 3: if you're not letting it spread everywhere? I think, if
Speaker 3: it's a non native species and it is helping you
Speaker 3: meet your objective, as long as you're not allowing this
Speaker 3: to spread all over and take over the property, and
Speaker 3: you know it's not an easy situation because somebody can say, well,
Speaker 3: it's it's spreading onto other properties, not just your property,
Speaker 3: And that certainly can be true. However, more likely than not,
Speaker 3: if it's on your property, it's already on the neighbors. Also. Now,
Speaker 3: if you're in a situation where you have a non
Speaker 3: native species, and particularly if you've brought it in and
Speaker 3: that could then spread from your property to others, I
Speaker 3: think you have a responsibility of getting rid of that plant,
Speaker 3: because then you're you're having an adverse effect on other people,
Speaker 3: and and and I don't want to do that, but
Speaker 3: I've backed off a little bit on you know this,
Speaker 3: this strong approach that I used to have. If anything's
Speaker 3: non native, let's get rid of it. You know, there's
Speaker 3: several examples of non native plants that the wildlife species
Speaker 3: that I'm managing for is benefiting from it. Now, I
Speaker 3: still kill multi floor rows. I don't care if rabbits
Speaker 3: are a focal species on the property or not, because
Speaker 3: I can easily manage fields and have a field full
Speaker 3: of rabbits without multi floor rows along the edge. And
Speaker 3: there are others that whatever circumstances there is, you need
Speaker 3: to get rid of it. Things such as Cerisia, lespadiza,
Speaker 3: cogan grass. I mean, there's lots of examples where there's
Speaker 3: there's no reason to have this on your property. But
Speaker 3: you know, you wrote up automolive, and you know I
Speaker 3: don't plant, I don't promote automolive. But you know, if
Speaker 3: you cut the stem of a big automolive bush and
Speaker 3: let it re sprout, those resproutes have some of the
Speaker 3: highest crew protein content we've ever recorded in any plants,
Speaker 3: above forty percent. I mean, it's like off the charge.
Speaker 3: I probably shouldn't have mentioned that. Probably some people we
Speaker 3: need we need to have more of that. But see
Speaker 3: that's not allowing it to produce berries. That's cutting a
Speaker 3: stem and just keeping it, you know, vegetative resprout. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, so much of it comes down to prioritizing limited resources,
Speaker 2: and most times that's limited time or financial resources. Right,
Speaker 2: And if time and money were no object, and we
Speaker 2: could just snap our fingers and change everything we wanted
Speaker 2: on the landscape, well then maybe we would get rid
Speaker 2: of every single non native because you could replace it
Speaker 2: with a more beneficial nonnati or native. But that absolutely okay,
Speaker 2: But in reality, right, that's that's not the case. We
Speaker 2: can't do that. We have to make choices how we're
Speaker 2: going to spend our time, what we're going to focus on.
Speaker 2: And so it does make sense to me that there
Speaker 2: might be more efficient uses of your time, or better
Speaker 2: bang for your buck uses of your time attacking other
Speaker 2: native species that are invasive and spreading, or doing these
Speaker 2: different things we're talking.
Speaker 3: You have to pick your battles. You're exactly right. And
Speaker 3: I'll give you a couple of perspectives. One, if you've
Speaker 3: got a field of non native grass, that is one
Speaker 3: that you should you should address. If you're interested in deer,
Speaker 3: turkeys and most other wildlife species, that's your low hanging
Speaker 3: fruit right there. Simply kill it and you're going to
Speaker 3: improve things tenfold and greater just by doing that. And
Speaker 3: as I mentioned, there's other plants, whether it be cerisio
Speaker 3: espadesa bermuda grass, there's lots of them that I'm going
Speaker 3: out of my way to do what I can to
Speaker 3: control those. And that's an interesting word right there. Does
Speaker 3: control mean keel or does control mean completely eradicate and
Speaker 3: get rid of? Or does control mean maintain it at
Speaker 3: a level that allows you to meet your objective, and
Speaker 3: an example of that might be something like oriental bittersweet.
Speaker 3: It's a vine that grows in the woods. It's extremely
Speaker 3: prevalent in most areas of the eastern US, and I mean,
Speaker 3: it's a problem, it's a problem. But how did the
Speaker 3: oriental bittersweet get there? It got there by birds eating
Speaker 3: and dropping the berries, not on my property, but on
Speaker 3: somebody property. It could been miles and miles away. And
Speaker 3: so I put all this time and effort into spraying
Speaker 3: getting rid of oriental bittersweet in my woods. Well, I
Speaker 3: can't be surprised when I find it in there again
Speaker 3: next year, because the birds came. And so the whole
Speaker 3: thing about controlling non native species now it used to
Speaker 3: be looked at more as an event when we you know,
Speaker 3: I'm will say, twenty five thirty years ago, we didn't
Speaker 3: have near the problems that we do today. And now
Speaker 3: gotten to the point where people say, well, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't think I should cut any trees or disturb
Speaker 3: my woods or whatever, because if I do, I'm just
Speaker 3: gonna get non native species. And to that, at least,
Speaker 3: my perspective is no, no, no, no, no, I'm definitely
Speaker 3: managing my woods I'm definitely using disturbance. I know that
Speaker 3: non native species are going to show up. It's simply
Speaker 3: a way of life now, it's just something that we've
Speaker 3: got to do. Combating non native species has just gotten
Speaker 3: to be a standard procedure anymore. You can't look at
Speaker 3: it as an event. I'm gonna get rid of it
Speaker 3: and won't have to do it again. As long as
Speaker 3: you manage land, you're going to have to continue to
Speaker 3: deal with non nighted spaces.
Speaker 2: So you mentioned a couple specific species examples, and then
Speaker 2: you mentioned that, you know, if you've got a cool
Speaker 2: season grass field that's you know, like a side layer,
Speaker 2: that's a that's a fire five star alarm kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Are there any other more general categories of problems that
Speaker 2: would be like this has to go right to the
Speaker 2: top of your list, Like, like I'm imagining maybe one
Speaker 2: of them might be we've got this monoculture cool season
Speaker 2: grass field that you just described that's an issue. Is
Speaker 2: the same thing true if you have a monoculture of
Speaker 2: old age class hardwoods or something like if you've got
Speaker 2: a really old mature forest where there's nothing growing underneath,
Speaker 2: you know, is that one of those things or Hey,
Speaker 2: that's got to go to the top of the list
Speaker 2: because again we lack diversity in species richness anything like that.
Speaker 2: Am I in the right path of something like that?
Speaker 2: Or are there other things that you would call out
Speaker 2: as being these, hey to the top of the list?
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I agree. I think you're right. At least
Speaker 3: the closed canopy hardwoods, according to what species they are
Speaker 3: the wildlife, even if there's nothing growing under in the understory,
Speaker 3: at least wildlife would get something from the mast that's
Speaker 3: being available where they're For most species, they're getting nothing
Speaker 3: out of the cool season grass field. But yes, there's
Speaker 3: so many things that can be done to your woods
Speaker 3: by simply allowing a little sunlight to come in, and
Speaker 3: there's all kinds of levels of sunlight that that will
Speaker 3: allow better development of the understory. And then you think
Speaker 3: about your disturbance regime as how you can change that
Speaker 3: over time, either through cutting or fire, what have you.
Speaker 3: So there's there's lots of work that we can do
Speaker 3: both in our forest and our field to improve them.
Speaker 3: But again, to get back to that central theme, having
Speaker 3: a little bit of a whole lot of stuff available
Speaker 3: is very important to many of these wildlife spaces that
Speaker 3: we're interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so here's one species that you mentioned as
Speaker 2: being a generalist, but I'm curious if there are any
Speaker 2: specific things we can do to help this generalist, which
Speaker 2: are turkeys. They've been in the news a lot over
Speaker 2: recent years because we are in some states, in some
Speaker 2: regions of the country starting to see these declines. I
Speaker 2: know you worked on a study relatively recently looking at
Speaker 2: that I think down in your neck of the woods
Speaker 2: around Tennessee. When it comes to turkeys, if that's something
Speaker 2: that we're worried about in our area, what are some
Speaker 2: of the most effective management efforts we can tackle that
Speaker 2: are going to help with some of these limiting factors
Speaker 2: that are possibly slowing the growth or rest racial turkey populations.
Speaker 3: Well as related to habitat, trying to provide something on
Speaker 3: your property for all of their life's needs. And so,
Speaker 3: you know, a turkey will nest just about anywhere. But interestingly,
Speaker 3: in the five county area that we conducted the Turkey Project,
Speaker 3: then over its eighth year right now, right at fifty percent,
Speaker 3: almost fifty percent of the nests were located in either
Speaker 3: early succession or a very young regenerating stand which represented
Speaker 3: only seven percent of the landscape. So I mean think
Speaker 3: about that, Yeah, nearly fifty percent of the nest occurred
Speaker 3: on seven percent of the landscape, and having that available
Speaker 3: can be very important because also nest success in early
Speaker 3: succession was greater than any other vegetation type mature woods,
Speaker 3: regenerating woods, pasture, hayfield, what have you. Nest success was
Speaker 3: greatest in early succession and so you know, in like
Speaker 3: an old field. So then thinking about what happens after nesting, Well,
Speaker 3: they have broods, and so having cover that is appropriate
Speaker 3: for broods with regard to the height and the density
Speaker 3: is very important. And so there's where forbes can be
Speaker 3: very important. And particularly if that cover is not taller
Speaker 3: than the hen. You know, if the hen can see
Speaker 3: out over the cover, she typically selects those areas. But
Speaker 3: the cover is tall enough to conceal the poles, that's
Speaker 3: very important and mark you know, forever everybody has always
Speaker 3: thought of fields as being the best brooding cover. Well,
Speaker 3: they fields may be, but that's dependent upon the structure
Speaker 3: of the field. If the growth and thatch at ground
Speaker 3: level is so dense and tight that poulps can't maneuver
Speaker 3: through it, then you're going to see the hens with
Speaker 3: broods either use woods around the edges of fields, and
Speaker 3: that is precisely what we have seen in South Middle Tennessee.
Speaker 3: Of the fields that they had available to them, they
Speaker 3: would strongly select them for nesting, but the structure was
Speaker 3: so dense in general at ground level they didn't brood
Speaker 3: in them hardly at all. And so that's when you
Speaker 3: begin looking at managing your woods a little differently. I
Speaker 3: would argue, and I've said to many audiences, I would
Speaker 3: say that an oak woodland or an oak pine woodland
Speaker 3: where you know your the amount of sunlight coming in
Speaker 3: might be anywhere from around thirty to seventy percent. But
Speaker 3: having those oak woodlands where you're managing with frequent fire,
Speaker 3: those are I would consider them the single best vegetation
Speaker 3: type for wild turkeys. They have fall foods, they have
Speaker 3: spring and summer foods. There's cover for nesting, cover for brooding. Obviously,
Speaker 3: they can roost in there, according to when and how
Speaker 3: often you manage it. There can be loafing cover. There's
Speaker 3: there's something in these oak woodlands for turkeys at all times.
Speaker 3: So don't overlook the value of your woods and reducing
Speaker 3: the tree density to allow a certain amount of sunlight
Speaker 3: to come in, because those can be outstanding brood rear
Speaker 3: in areas, not just your fields. And and and if
Speaker 3: you do have fields, you definitely want to manage some
Speaker 3: of them either with fire or disking to open up
Speaker 3: the structure at ground level. So it's uh, you know,
Speaker 3: it's there's a plant canopy, but it's open underneath where
Speaker 3: the where the polps can walk about very easily. And
Speaker 3: you'll see increased use in the those types of fields
Speaker 3: versus those where there's a lot of thatch build up,
Speaker 3: dead material and it's so dense that the polpes can't
Speaker 3: hardly move.
Speaker 2: And is that same kind of management philosophy or set
Speaker 2: of ideas appropriate or helpful to other bird species like woodcock,
Speaker 2: bob boy, quail grouse, similar type habitat needs. Is that
Speaker 2: going to help across the board.
Speaker 3: With regard to the structure, it can be very different
Speaker 3: by different bird species, But with regard to having something
Speaker 3: on your property available such that they need all the
Speaker 3: way through the year, absolutely that holds true. And so
Speaker 3: the structure that a grouse is going to use is
Speaker 3: going to be very different, of course than a bob
Speaker 3: white or a turkey, and ditto for woodcock. But so
Speaker 3: your management would be different for those species. You know,
Speaker 3: specific management for woodcock versus specific management for turkeys or
Speaker 3: bob white, but the overall general requirements are the same.
Speaker 3: It's just that the specific types of cover and specific
Speaker 3: types of food can be very different.
Speaker 2: So that's where it gets like tricky in my mind,
Speaker 2: is how do I how do I go about making
Speaker 2: a decision on my management prescription when I don't necessarily
Speaker 2: and maybe you have to to do it right, When
Speaker 2: I don't necessarily want to prioritize grouse over turkeys or
Speaker 2: deer over turkeys. I do want quality habitat for the deer,
Speaker 2: but I also have turkeys that I want to make
Speaker 2: sure this is going to be hospitable to. And oh,
Speaker 2: by the way, there are rough grouse out here too,
Speaker 2: or I want to make sure that there could still
Speaker 2: be grouse out here, and oh, by the way, I
Speaker 2: also want to make sure that I'm providing opportunity for
Speaker 2: a B and C down the list, small mammals, rabbits, whatever.
Speaker 2: Is it just a matter of the fact that you
Speaker 2: can't have it all? Or are there them general? How
Speaker 2: do you get what I'm having a hard time for
Speaker 2: me a question around here? How do I make sense
Speaker 2: of this?
Speaker 3: Well, I think what you're getting at is if you
Speaker 3: manage a little bit for everything, you can have a
Speaker 3: little bit of everything, but you might not have a
Speaker 3: whole lot of anything. If if that makes sense, and
Speaker 3: so if you have a wide variety of vegetation types
Speaker 3: and successional stages, then you're going to have the structure
Speaker 3: that that density of vegetation that a grouse would prefer,
Speaker 3: and you would have the density of vegetation that you know,
Speaker 3: turkey brews would prefer, you know, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 3: But your property might not be tuned in the best
Speaker 3: possible for any one of those species. But you're providing
Speaker 3: at a little something for all of them. And so
Speaker 3: the occupancy of your property can be very high by
Speaker 3: different species, but it might not be the best property
Speaker 3: in the county for species A, B or C. Does
Speaker 3: that make sense?
Speaker 2: It does. So my next question then would be is
Speaker 2: that the and so if.
Speaker 3: I may, if I may interrupt you, So in that case,
Speaker 3: I think your objective then would be to provide a
Speaker 3: property that provides as much as possible for the widest
Speaker 3: number of species and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 3: I think that's a great objective. But that's very different
Speaker 3: than if somebody is wanting to hold as many turkeys
Speaker 3: as many gobblers on their property as they can. That's
Speaker 3: that's two different objectives.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep. Okay, So I follow you there, and I
Speaker 2: think that that doesn't make it. That makes it very
Speaker 2: clear if you're trying to establish you know we talked earlier,
Speaker 2: we might not be able to save the world, but
Speaker 2: we might feel to make it a better place. If
Speaker 2: you are a generalist hunter land manager who wants to
Speaker 2: make it a better place, then providing a lot of
Speaker 2: different habitat types for a lot of different habitat species
Speaker 2: seems like a good rule of thumb if you have
Speaker 2: a focus yourself. Though, there's nothing wrong with putting a
Speaker 2: prescription on the ground that is more specific to them.
Speaker 2: That all said, I guess there's ten thousand things that
Speaker 2: we could cover here, but I'm going to skip towards
Speaker 2: kind of the ending to keep you well rested and
Speaker 2: not using up all of your little bit of free
Speaker 2: time you have coming off of all your travel. Let's
Speaker 2: end with top three bang for your buck or efficient
Speaker 2: use of time progest if you had to pick three
Speaker 2: very specific things that someone could do, that someone could
Speaker 2: pick up a tool now and get out there and
Speaker 2: do a thing. And I understand it's all region specific
Speaker 2: and all that, but feel free to pick a place
Speaker 2: of your choosing and pick three projects for somebody who
Speaker 2: has this larger perspective, for someone who's trying to do
Speaker 2: something that will make it a better place. What would
Speaker 2: the first three things you would recommend someone get going
Speaker 2: on this year? We've talked about a lot of different options.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of new ideas I think people probably
Speaker 2: have percolating now after hearing this, But what would be
Speaker 2: your top three list?
Speaker 3: I would say number one would be some forest stand improvement.
Speaker 3: Grab a small chainsaw and get a squirt bottle with
Speaker 3: some herbicide. Go under your woods, kill the trees that
Speaker 3: are not helping you toward your objective, and steer your
Speaker 3: forest into the composition that is the best it could
Speaker 3: be and into the structure that suits your objective. And
Speaker 3: so you might have areas where you implement more thinning
Speaker 3: than in others because you like the you know, stem
Speaker 3: density to be fairly great to help hold deer and
Speaker 3: serve his bedding cover or potentially nesting cover. You might
Speaker 3: have others where you would want to be more open
Speaker 3: and be good brooding cover. You're killing trees that are
Speaker 3: competing with good mast bearing trees and enabling them to
Speaker 3: provide more food to me. That's the easiest recommendation. Grab
Speaker 3: a chainsaw, go enjoy the day, and you know, in
Speaker 3: just several hours work you can make a huge difference
Speaker 3: in your woods. Number two, I would go back to
Speaker 3: the field situation that you described, and if you've got
Speaker 3: fields of native grasses and you're wanting to improve the
Speaker 3: habitat for most species on your property by simply getting
Speaker 3: rid of those grasses, that that's gonna that's that's that's
Speaker 3: the lowest fruit right there. That's that's a very easy one.
Speaker 3: And then number three, I think I would probably encourage
Speaker 3: people to, if they haven't already, to try prescribe fire.
Speaker 3: And what I've told people is don't start big, start
Speaker 3: small and get some people who have implemented fire to
Speaker 3: help you. Go to some workshops. If you have prescribed
Speaker 3: fire certification course in your state, either through the state
Speaker 3: Forestry Agency, prescribe fire councils, et cetera, learn more about fire,
Speaker 3: because if you can use fire, you can get to
Speaker 3: the next level with your your your habitat management. And
Speaker 3: it doesn't have to be a great big burn. You know,
Speaker 3: if you burn you know, an acre of a field,
Speaker 3: you know, disk around one acre and under the appropriate conditions,
Speaker 3: and I know we can't get into all that, but
Speaker 3: under the appropriate conditions you can have a very safe
Speaker 3: burn event. Ditto in your woods. Don't let anybody tell
Speaker 3: you that you can't burn hard woods without killing trees.
Speaker 3: That is a myth that is patently false. Period, take
Speaker 3: a leaf blower, if you've got nothing else, and blow
Speaker 3: a firebreak around a section of woods, and again, in
Speaker 3: the appropriate conditions, use prescribe fire, low intensity, prescribe fire
Speaker 3: in those woods and watch the effect.
Speaker 2: It is tremendous, great, great working orders for us there, Craig.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it seems it seems simple to me.
Speaker 3: It seems overly simple, and a lot of times I'm
Speaker 3: kind of talking about the same thing with different folks.
Speaker 3: But try those things. Work in your woods with a
Speaker 3: little you know, a small chainsaw's not wearing you out,
Speaker 3: Get a squirt bottle of herbicide, Spray the grass out
Speaker 3: of your fields, even if it's planted native grass spray
Speaker 3: that you know, if you've got like a maximum of
Speaker 3: thirty percent grass cover, I've said that so many times,
Speaker 3: you're going to have a field that is much much
Speaker 3: better for the vast majority of wildlife that would be
Speaker 3: using it. And try prescribe fire. You know, that's a
Speaker 3: big thing right there. Try and prescribe fire. There's a
Speaker 3: lot to that. I don't mean to make it sound
Speaker 3: overly simple, but I think those three things right there
Speaker 3: will really help change your management.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there's actually for anyone who's interested, there is
Speaker 2: a learn and burn event occurring here in Michigan, put
Speaker 2: on by the National Deer Association, actually on a property
Speaker 2: that I purchased and managed and then we gave to
Speaker 2: the National Deer Association the back forty. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you're familiar, well you probably worked.
Speaker 3: I saw that, isn't it in June? Is that correct?
Speaker 2: I think it's July thirteenth is the number that's popping
Speaker 2: into my head. But anybody interested in that should go
Speaker 2: to Deer Association dot com and you'll see information about that.
Speaker 2: It looks like a pretty great event in which there's
Speaker 2: going to be a burn taking place on the property
Speaker 2: with folks there. I think Kip's going to be there
Speaker 2: and a few others helping walk through how to safely
Speaker 2: manage to prescribe burn, how to put together the plan,
Speaker 2: how to do the whole thing.
Speaker 3: That'd be tremendous, so that that'll be great.
Speaker 2: That's in southern Michigan.
Speaker 3: We do. We do something like that at most of
Speaker 3: the deer steward two courses. And you know, those typically
Speaker 3: are in the summertime, not all of them, but typically
Speaker 3: in the summertime, and so it can be difficult to
Speaker 3: burn some areas in the summertime. And so what we'll
Speaker 3: do is have the landowner or land manager spray a
Speaker 3: certain area of a field, you know, two to three
Speaker 3: weeks before we get there. Because that way, you know,
Speaker 3: even if it rained the day before, if sun pops out,
Speaker 3: you'll probably be able to burn dead vegetation in the field.
Speaker 3: And at least that allows people to see how to
Speaker 3: start a fire, how to you know, the different firing techniques,
Speaker 3: et cetera. So it's a very good thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So to close this all out, Craig, if there
Speaker 2: were folks who have been intrigued by this whole conversation
Speaker 2: and just and want to learn more, want to go
Speaker 2: down this path further. Are there any resources you recommend
Speaker 2: for people to read, watch, listen to. I'd love for
Speaker 2: you to plug your own things and then also if
Speaker 2: there's anything that you've enjoyed reading or looking into yourself
Speaker 2: that you might recommend to folks.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, people can find just about whatever they
Speaker 3: won't write at their fingertips pretty easily by searching various
Speaker 3: categories and topics.
Speaker 2: Know, I try to.
Speaker 3: Make available the publications that we've written on my web page.
Speaker 3: Someone can go there and find all that. But you know,
Speaker 3: I'm just one person. If you look at the people
Speaker 3: involved in wildlife and academia across the country, you know,
Speaker 3: most people have a web page that's that's full of information.
Speaker 3: I would encourage people to search different wildlife professors that
Speaker 3: are doing research on different species and see what they
Speaker 3: have available. Most of the state wildlife agencies on their
Speaker 3: websites have all kinds of information. And if you're interested
Speaker 3: in fire, absolutely get in contact with your state forestry
Speaker 3: agency and see if there is a prescribed fire council
Speaker 3: in your state. Join that at least go you know,
Speaker 3: to a to a meeting and see what all is
Speaker 3: said and done. Your eyes can be opened in a
Speaker 3: big way. And in these states many of them also
Speaker 3: offer the burned certification courses. Those are fantastic. There's just
Speaker 3: tremendous information to be learned there, and that's a great
Speaker 3: way to get started with some experience and get to
Speaker 3: know some other people who would be willing to help
Speaker 3: you go forward. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I will specifically plug a couple of your books here,
Speaker 2: Guide to Wildlife Food Plots and Early Successional Plants Stellar,
Speaker 2: as well as managing Early Successional Plant Communities for wildlife
Speaker 2: in the Eastern US. If you're watching this, you just
Speaker 2: saw those two covers. There's so much here. I've only
Speaker 2: been able to scratch the surface as I've had various
Speaker 2: projects and pulled out pages and red bits and pieces,
Speaker 2: but there is a lot there. When I started that
Speaker 2: back forty project, I really found the Guide to Wildlife
Speaker 2: Food Plots and Early Successional Plants super helpful because you've
Speaker 2: got this whole back section where you detail each specific species.
Speaker 2: You know what's useful, How is this valuable to wildlife
Speaker 2: or not? When I was trying to understand on that property,
Speaker 2: there was half of that property was old Fellow farm fields,
Speaker 2: and so we had all these different things coming up
Speaker 2: in them, and I was trying to figure out is
Speaker 2: this a good thing, is a bad thing? Should it
Speaker 2: be sprying this? Should we be keeping it around? And
Speaker 2: your book was tremendously useful in that, so highly recommend
Speaker 2: those two.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm very glad that you were able to use that,
Speaker 3: and I appreciate the kind words. The publication on Managing
Speaker 3: Early Successional Communities is available on my web page, you know,
Speaker 3: and you can download a lot of this stuff, purchase
Speaker 3: a hard copy if you want it, And please know
Speaker 3: we're not not making any money off of this. It's
Speaker 3: just going into an account to go back into reprinting
Speaker 3: the food plots and early successional plants. It's gotten a
Speaker 3: lot of attention, a lot of demand, and the copies
Speaker 3: are out right now, but I am hot on a
Speaker 3: revision and I'm hoping to have that out by the
Speaker 3: end of the year, So if you're interested in that one,
Speaker 3: stay tuned. I'm adding as much as I can some
Speaker 3: additional plant species profiles as well as different mixtures for
Speaker 3: food plots and management techniques, you know, regenerative approaches or
Speaker 3: have become very popular, so trying to add more with
Speaker 3: that in mind. So a lot you know, if you
Speaker 3: continue to do research and you continue to look at
Speaker 3: others research, there's there's always new stuff coming out, and
Speaker 3: I try my best to keep things as fresh as possible,
Speaker 3: but a lot of times it's hard to stay on here.
Speaker 2: Well, we might have achieved a first within the genre
Speaker 2: of white tailed Deer and Wildlife Habitat Management podcast because
Speaker 2: we had an entire episode without once talking about food plots.
Speaker 2: So we might have just broke the internet with that.
Speaker 2: But maybe when that new book comes out, that next revision,
Speaker 2: we'll have to have it come back on and talk
Speaker 2: through some of the new regenerative food plots philosophies and
Speaker 2: ideas you write about there, because that's another thing that
Speaker 2: I've found really interesting and explore more too.
Speaker 3: So there's a well, you know, I like food plots.
Speaker 3: It's just very fun to plant something and watch animals respond.
Speaker 3: But you don't have to have food plots, you know,
Speaker 3: the management of your naturally occurring plant communities. You can
Speaker 3: do everything that you need with those and see terrific
Speaker 3: wildlife response.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, next time, and with that Craig, I'll let
Speaker 2: you get back to your day. I can't think enough
Speaker 2: this was This is.
Speaker 3: Great pleasure, pleasure talking to you. Mark.
Speaker 2: All right, thank you for tuning in to today's show.
Speaker 2: Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. As
Speaker 2: I mentioned there at the end, you definitely need to
Speaker 2: go pick up a couple of Craig's books if this
Speaker 2: is the kind of thing you're interested in the best
Speaker 2: way to do that is to go to his website
Speaker 2: over on the University of Tennessee website. It's a long complim,
Speaker 2: ok you, Arel, So rather than giving you that you
Speaker 2: orl I would just say google his name, Craig Harper, Tennessee.
Speaker 2: If you do that, the first link that shows up
Speaker 2: for me at least is that website. Click that. Then
Speaker 2: you'll see all the books, all the publications, links to
Speaker 2: umpteen different articles he's written, all sorts of studies. He's published.
Speaker 2: A tremendous amount of information out there for you if
Speaker 2: you want to learn more, and Craig has lots to offer.
Speaker 2: So that's it for today. Thanks for joining in, Thanks
Speaker 2: for being here with me throughout this habitat month. As
Speaker 2: we've explored this kind of habitat management beyond the norm
Speaker 2: in the deer world. I hope that you've, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe been inspired to try a few new things, maybe
Speaker 2: been encouraged to expand outside of what you're comfortable with
Speaker 2: or what you've done in the past.
Speaker 3: I know I have.
Speaker 2: I'm excited about it. And so with that all said,
Speaker 2: until next time, thank you for being here, and stay
Speaker 2: wired to hunt.