EP: 461 | Old Field Management

On this episode were joined by the great minds of Bronson Strickland and Bonner Powell of Wildlife Investments.  We talk about an often overlooked area on hunting properties, old fields. We learn what’s the best strategy, techniques and ways to add value to your wildlife by managing these areas with intention. It’s a process that can yield great results and doesn’t cost as much as other projects. This one is really informative. 

Listen, Learn and Enjoy.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm Jeff Foxworthy and welcome to Gamekeeper Podcast. If you want to learn more about farming for wildlife and habitat management, everybody, you are in the right place. Join the Gamekeeper crew direct from Office Yoke Land Enhancement Studio as they discuss the latest wildlife and habitat management practices. News, and of course, honey. There's no telling what you'll learn, but I'm gonna tell you. I bet it's interesting. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_04 0:25

We're live in three, two, one. All right, guys, it's gonna be a good day whenever Bronx's trickle. Oh, you think so? Usually it's usually a good conversation.

SPEAKER_06 0:35

Always is. He I think he brought a list today, didn't you?

SPEAKER_04 0:38

He's here more than I am, I think. He is he's kind of like a bad penny.

SPEAKER_06 0:44

He's been around so much. He's been around us so much that he's helping us stay organized.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

We're we're economical travel for him. That's for sure.

SPEAKER_05 0:54

Oh, that is easy.

SPEAKER_03 0:54

He's here.

SPEAKER_05 0:56

And he, I guess he brought the new Golden Child. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:58

Yes, that's exactly right. Whoa, high praise. We hadn't spoken to him yet. One of my favorite movies, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Brunson brought brought brought him over every break him in.

SPEAKER_04 1:08

That's what we're doing. Yeah. Well, let's go ahead and get him introduced. We've got Mr. Bonner Powell. Happy to be here. Lanny, he's from uh Tupelo. Tupelo.

SPEAKER_06 1:19

And as you like to say, not one pillow, but Tupelo. That's one of the cheesiest Tupelo jokes I know. You know, and I've it's always stuck in my brain. I was like, and Bonner is fresh off having a new baby.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Yeah. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Third little boy. Oh man. Yep. So I got I got two-year-old twins and a uh two-week old, so three under three. Man, you don't want baseball games to start. Do you get there?

SPEAKER_04 1:45

You know, Ty, you've been through that whole twin thing. That has got to be, I don't know how you, I don't know how y'all do it. Did it? That's a lot of a lot of effort.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Fuck it up.

SPEAKER_04 1:54

Twins and a two-week.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

I married way, way over my head. Yeah, you did, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:01

Well, guys, so we're gonna to today, we're gonna talk about a topic that seems I think everybody probably has an opportunity to do something with the the subject of an old field. And I mean, all we talk about early succession and all this kind of stuff, but you guys have kind of Bronson, and I I'm told Bonner is an expert at this, and we'll soon find out, I guess. But there's a lot of work you guys have been doing trying to understand how to utilize some of these older fields and maybe l leave them fallow. Would that be the uh word I could use?

SPEAKER_03 2:32

Yeah, more or less. Um, so it's something that we probably see is the most neglected opportunity. So you think about over the years, I think we've all done a very effective job talking about how to manage your forests, getting sunlight through the canopy, prescribe fire, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, we're all fans of food plots and we all do a good job of that. But we'll we'll go to properties and there'll be an old field or a pasture or a right-of-way that's just turned into grass or turned into trees. And so what we see, and a lot of other people, see the opportunity to convert that into vegetation that's gonna be really good for deer, but also for turkey, also for quail. And so I think Bonner and I, when we whenever we're going to a site visit and and coming back, we talk about how adding that is going to transform that property. And uh it's some really amazing numbers when you put a pencil to paper, and that's what we'll do. We'll we'll kind of draw out a property, and we kind of know what the average vegetation, the good deer food production is. And when you start managing the forest, and then you start managing these old fields, you will see a minimum of a 500% increase in deer food.

SPEAKER_06 3:52

That's a lot. Hit the horns, Richie.

SPEAKER_03 3:55

And then when you start adding in the food plots, then you'll get you know a thousand percent or a 10x increase. And and so it's really when you start fine-tuning the forest management, the old field management, and then getting your food plots, enough acreage, and and productive food plots, you you can really transform a property.

SPEAKER_05 4:15

So I'm thinking this is a lot of stuff that folks used to maybe bush hog every three or four years. Um they have that huge field that they disc and food plot, but they don't quite have the budget for that huge field, so they end up like not fertilizing enough, not liming it as much, that kind of thing, where you might want to turn that field into half old field, yeah, managed old field, right, and and the rest food plot. Or more. Yeah, or it could be just that you know, that that pasture when you're coming into the hunting camp that just gets mowed all the time.

SPEAKER_03 4:55

And and so typically it's gonna be uh it's gonna be an old pasture, is real common, or again a a right-of-way, but it but it's using the bush hog to manage it. And you take the bush hog away, it's gonna turn into a forest. And so people will keep it open, but we call it a managed opening or an old field, because using the techniques that Bonner's an expert at, it it's converting that plant community back to native Forbes, native grasses, habitat for all the things we appreciate. We're providing habitat.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

So the biggest thing is just kind of describing kind of what an old field is, what it looks like, where is that on your property? Because we visit a lot of properties and rarely do we go to a property that doesn't have any old field areas or an opportunity for an old field area. So mainly what we're talking about is, you know, meadows, hay fields, any kind of agricultural land that was once, you know, I've seen old gardens, you know, where they tealed up a half acre garden for a few years and then they abandoned it and it came up in great native Forbes. Uh, but any agricultural lands that have been planted, you know, for years, you know, we're kind of agriculture's changing all the time, but you know, the 10 acres that you had on the back side of the property doesn't get looped in with the the 100-acre field that you've got on the front side of the property anymore. It's just not economical for farmers to farm those anymore. So they're getting abandoned. Uh, all of that would count as kind of these old field plant communities that we're talking about. Uh and I just I kind of think we've overcomplicated a lot of it. Like we've just acted like the barrier to entry was really high. And I think some of that's because of, you know, we've got NRCS programs that require the planting of seed. A lot of those seed mixtures, I mean, Dudley knows, are outrageously expensive. Uh, but but that's not where entry starts. You know, we can turn almost anything into an old field. So like hay fields can be converted to native early successional oil fields uh with simple herbicide applications. Uh you know, any anywhere that we it was a hay field at one time or they ran cattle on it and it's a old old pasture, uh, we're gonna have to take care of those non-native uh pasture grasses. So Bermuda grass, bahia grass, crab grass, fescue. Yeah, fascu. That's the worst one. But the easiest one to get rid of, you know.

SPEAKER_04 7:25

Uh when I listen to him, I'm thinking about some of your properties. There's a lot of this I mean, the I think can think of a lot of old fields.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

I've got two places particular that had a in this we inherited like the most dense mat of old Kentucky fescue you have ever seen. Yep. That's what we're finding out. Choking out everything, and we sprayed and burned, sprayed and burned. Well, actually, one one particular place I wanted to turn, it was such a big area, I was gonna take about 10 acres and try to turn it into just clover. So all summer long, sprayed it, disc it. Brought it back to life, spray it, disc it again, like three different times in the course of you know, from early spring to fall when we could do something with it, and then put it in clover, and it did really well. But then burning too. What I haven't done much yet, then I'm just biting my time. I'm going to for sure this year is the late season burns. Um, but we we've had pretty good luck with getting rid of that. But other grasses do, when you just burn, you know, late late winter all the time, you're gonna get more grasses. Yeah. So we do have grass issues still in some of it.

SPEAKER_05 8:36

What about like old, what about old login decks?

SPEAKER_02 8:39

Yeah. Old login decks are usually always a great candidate for old field conversion, you know, and a lot of the times, that's kind of why I was talking about the hay pasture kind of deal. A lot of the times where we look at converting forests, uh, we we either, you know, there are some places where you're gonna have some Cerricea where it's been spread, either whether uh or bicolor, whichever one, you know, just depending on past management of the property. But most of the time when we open a forest stand and it's a logging deck or something like that, we have a hundred percent native response. And then you just kind of have to pick through and decide which which ones of these do I like, which ones do I not. You know, sometimes you'll get deer tongue grass that's really, really thick, and maybe we don't want a hundred percent deer tongue grass, so we can manage that. But most of the time you're gonna get a hundred percent native species if you're working on lands that haven't been used for anything other than forest in the past.

SPEAKER_05 9:32

Well, you know, in the in the southeast, we're seeing uh, well, it's been a quite a while this has been going on, but you know, your pine trees aren't worth as much as they used to be. Yeah, um, and so can you you might can just create some old fields that were supposed to be in pines, you know, you get them to thin and say, why don't you go ahead and clear cut this five-acre area and maybe can you turn that into an old field?

SPEAKER_02 9:57

Yeah, and we do that pretty commonly. We've done that a lot recently with very, very young pines as well. So we come into a property and start working with a landowner and they've planted, you know, let's say loblolly pine, they planted 15 acres two years ago. Well, that's good, but the feasibility of getting that stand thinned in the future with it only being 15 acres, it's not it's just not gonna happen. Uh so what we've opted to do is, you know, unfortunately the landowner did pay to plant those trees, and we would have loved to have been in there on the front end to stop that, but we can go in and burn or bushhog or march, whatever it takes depending on the size of the trees, and we can convert that to an old field and produce a ton of forage uh for deer, cover for turkeys. You know, we can split the field depending on how large it is and have it one side brooding, other side cover, uh brooding cover and nesting cover right beside each other. It the the options are endless with old fields, uh, and you can kind of put them anywhere. Like I can tuck it in and get it anywhere. And that was that was really what my master's research was on. You know, I worked under Dr. Craig Harper at the University of Tennessee. That was a really informative, really tough three years. Legend. Yeah. When he's your boss, it's kind of uh wake up and get something done today, you know, that kind of deal. Uh but you know, all of my master's work was looking at comparing uh early successional plant communities that were planted versus the ones that were not planted, you know, that we just manage with herbicides. Uh and it's almost always better when you can spray different herbicides. Uh I kind of say we've overcomplicated oil fields a lot, and that's because we plant species, so then we limit ourselves to grass-selective herbicides, or you know, if we use a broadleaf, uh, a broadleaf selective herbicide, well, then it we're killing what we planted. We're we're we're throwing money down the drain. And, you know, oil field management is not complicated. If it was, I could not do it. Okay? I'll just tell y'all that. But, you know, when we don't plant seed, when we don't put dollars in the ground on these oil field uh areas, it opens us up to just all kinds of options. So now I can use grass selective herbicides and not kill anything I planted. I can use broadleaf selective herbicides and not kill anything I planted, or I can use Roundup. I can use glyphosate and kill just about anything uh and simplify everything. You know, if if you've got an old field where you've not planted, uh, you can use glyphosate and amazapir and just about keep that in exactly what you need it to be, whether that's handling Bermuda grass, uh tall fescue trees, uh anything. You know, and then we also talk about when we're talking about oil fields, we want, you know, 40, 30, 40% grass and the rest to be forbes, maybe 50-50. If you got a sand and you've got it at 50-50, I would be happy with that pretty regularly. Uh but we kind of overcomplicated uh trying to maintain that 50-50 split. When we use non-selective herbicides like glyphosate, we don't favor a grass or favor a forb. So it kind of maintains itself. Uh but like I say, if you know eight or ten different species of plants, you know what you want, or in today's age, if you're pretty good at using an iPhone to check what the plant species are, whether you want to put that in chat GPT and use AI or some other app that you've got, you can pretty much manage old fields effectively with just glyphosate.

SPEAKER_05 16:36

Yeah, I um so recently I went to one of you guys' clients' sites and looked around with y'all. Um, and that's what the area was a pine stand that you you cleared, uh maybe 10 or 20 acres. Uh we could hear quail in the background. Uh we were we were walking around and saying, all right, there's some beauty berry, there's some Desmodium, you know, there's some deer tongue, there's some, you know, whatever. Um, but occasionally you would see things that that we didn't want. We saw some a little bit of Ceresia Lespadiza, you see the occasional sweet gum popping back up. So I guess you can go in there and spot treat some of those areas. So you just say you did the the Roundup and the arsenal or whatever to get that first flush of bad stuff out of the way, and and then your good stuff comes back the next year, right?

SPEAKER_07 17:31

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 17:32

And so, but then you can go in and kind of selectively manage it maybe with a backpack sprayer.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

Yep. Yep, and me and Dr. Harper, we talked about a lot of this while I was doing my master's, and basically the whole concept behind old field management should be is kill what you don't want and keep what you do. It's it's that simple. Uh kill what you don't want and keep what you do. Uh, and it's basically, you know, I like to tell people a lot of times, because everybody loves food plots, if you're able to dial in what you can do on food plots, keep it sprayed year-round, plant at the right depth at the right time, get a good stand, just consistently. If you're a good food plotter, you will be a hall of fame old field manager. Because it only takes one to two spot sprays a year to kind of maintain everything. And then getting comfortable with fire and keeping that, keeping that burned, you know, it could be annually if it's more in the bottoms where we, you know, tree growth is rapid, or it could be every three years on the top of a ridge in, say, Alcorn County or Tishamingo County, where you know, we have no topsoil. Uh, so it just varies by that, but getting comfortable with with fire and being a good food plotter, uh, oil field management is much simpler and much less time is invested into that. So name a couple of like your most desirable species. So, yeah, that that's pretty easy. So we're always wanting in oil fields, uh, you're wanting some asters. There's like 30 different species of aster in Mississippi. They're hard to identify without a flower, uh, but asters are always great. They're high in crude protein, phosphorus, and they're highly selected for by deer. We're always gonna want uh some Canada Goldenrod or be happy with Canada Goldenrod or ragweed.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

Uh but common ragweed, not giant.

SPEAKER_02 19:25

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

I got a lot of giant ragweed. I've never seen deer eat on it. Not ever.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

No, it's uh interestingly enough, elk will eat it pretty readily, you know, in the hills of Tennessee, but deer no go. Uh and even with Canada Goldenrod, we want a limited amount of that. So it it does have good protein levels, uh good nutrients, and deer do select it, but it's not one of those just all-star uh species, and it it does tend to take over sometimes uh or get really heavy in the plant community, and a lot of times we'll deal with that by spraying it out. But you know, Canada Golden Rod's a good one, but just watch it and don't let it take up, you know, 50 to 70 percent of the stand. Uh common ragweed, of course. Um partridge pea is a good one, but we also have problems with partridge pea in fields that were planted. If it's native partridge pea, you know, our native partridge pea gets about eight to twelve inches tall. Uh partridge pea that's been planted, you know, that was from It's usually the lark variety. Is four foot tall, you know, and the and we it's fairly aggressive and we'll have problems with it.

SPEAKER_05 20:35

Uh what about one of my favorites at my farm is uh narrow leaf sunflower.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

Narrow leaf sunflower is great if you get it. If you don't, not a big you know, not a big deal. Uh so across the state of Mississippi, man, the the seed bank and what what native species are in the seed bank, it's crazy how it can change, not only within the state, but on a property. Just site history and what grew there, uh, you know, just looking at everything. And a lot of times, you know, narrow leaf sunflower, some of your round leaf thoroughwort, some of your more, I would say, boutique species, you're maybe not always gonna get, but that doesn't mean you failed. You you know, if you got the big five, you're doing great.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

I was just thinking this whole time, the one, the one governing law of all of this is you can't grow it if it ain't there. Correct. You know, you can't just you know, everything on the planet isn't gonna magically appear there. It's just what's in that bank, and that's it.

SPEAKER_05 21:35

And your you know, your soil type and sight will also dictate what comes by.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Absolutely, but then if you don't practice this, you're never gonna know.

SPEAKER_02 21:45

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 21:45

You know, so let me ask this question for Landy because he's not he's he's thinking it, but he's not gonna ask it.

SPEAKER_06 21:50

Yeah, yeah. I got a I got a question.

SPEAKER_04 21:53

So that that when you that said you you mentioned using glyphosate in a cocktail with something else, aka. Are you not gonna burn down some of the partridge pea and some of this Canadian thistle and Canadian thistle?

SPEAKER_02 22:09

100%. We're gonna when we're working on old field management, we're gonna kill some species that are native. But just like anything, it's kind of collateral damage. You know, if we've got Cericea Lespediza or, you know, some other species that are problems, Bermuda grass, which is fairly persistent, but we want to keep it, you know, at a tolerable level. We are gonna have to kill some native species. But the great thing is, if you if you manage for that, they're gonna come right back. You know, we're gonna kill a few on the fringe, and we're technically gonna get more, maybe not native species, but the same species back in the gap where we killed the Sarinsky or the Bermuda grass or whatever your problem species is.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

So uh I guess the they and I they're asters my understanding, the little tiny daisy-looking stuff.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

Daisy flea bane, Philadelphia flea bane. Yep. Yeah. They're in the Aster family.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

They're they're almost invasive, there's so many. Are they good brows?

SPEAKER_02 23:08

Uh they're decent. I would say moderate. They have fairly good protein, uh, but you'll see moderate use in some areas and low use in some areas.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Well, they're probably when they put on all those flowers, they're probably no good.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

Yeah, once they put on flowers, they're not really sweet.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

What about the the purple? I've seen just a few spots where some of those beautiful, like New England Aster purple things.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

Those asters are fantastic. They're, you know, usually they're in that 18 to 22 percent crude protein range, uh, and they're not really, really desired.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

I'm on wildflower nut job, and they are beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 23:40

And um the the cool thing about asters is, and I I've I've never really identified some of the species uh like I should have, but a lot of times you'll see asters in the bottom ones. You know, if you if you have a patch that opens up in the bottom ones and it gets dry, uh you'll have uh it's a wetland aster. Again, I don't know the species, but it gets hammered by deer and it stays green all the way till a hard frost.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

I've seen one that's kind of almost blue looking.

SPEAKER_02 24:08

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

And they I mean they just and they hammered in late summer.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Yep, all the way till frost. It's pretty cool. This is some interesting stuff.

SPEAKER_04 24:17

Go ahead, Lance. Yeah, I got two questions, by the way.

SPEAKER_06 24:20

What gave you the right?

SPEAKER_04 24:21

We'll take a break here.

SPEAKER_06 24:24

Uh you mentioned it, the big five. You know, if you it can you can you go, can you restate what those big five are again, please?

SPEAKER_02 24:31

So common ragweed, Canada Goldenrod, Blackberry. We you know we always want a little bit of a a woody vine in there for some cover. And blackberry is a decent deer forage, you know, 14% crude protein. We're always gonna want our asters, whatever species that may be. And then we usually always gonna have. A little bit of uh Desmodium.

SPEAKER_05 24:57

I was gonna say Desmodums.

SPEAKER_02 24:58

Or Desmodiums are the number five. So there's a lot of beggars ticks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:05

The triangular velvet thing that sticks to your legs.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

There's quite a few varieties in it.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

Yeah, there's 15 or 20 species of those, and again, very hard to identify without a flower. Some of them can be identified by leaf shape. Uh, but you know.

SPEAKER_05 25:19

Another one I like is the Bydens.

SPEAKER_02 25:22

Yeah, absolutely. That's a good one. You'll get that in wetter areas.

SPEAKER_06 25:26

So I'm when I'm thinking about these old fields, the first thing I think of is sweet gums. Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, like I'm thinking of old field. If it's been there for an old field for nine months around here, it's got sweet gums in it. So am I treating that with pure chemical, or do I need to come in there and clip and just kind of, you know, walk us through that process?

SPEAKER_02 25:45

Yeah, so we're gonna whether it's green ash or sweet gum, you know, a lot of people have a problem with green ash as well. Uh and I would say, you know, in the soils where green ash does grow, it's probably a bigger problem than sweet gum.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Yeah, just dance.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

But we're gonna go at that from all angles. So the first line of attack is gonna be some kind of chemical application. Like typically, if we're in a field and I get sweet gums or green ash or whatever over my head, we need to either be spraying that or or bush hogging to get it down. And then, you know, we're gonna implement a pretty steady fire rotation. You know, we're gonna it'll be highly variable based on kind of what you see in the field at the time, but annual is not, you know, outrageous. I've used annual burn rotations several years in a row to kind of manage areas until we wear those trees out and actually get them killed, and then you can kind of back off a fire a little bit. But typically a two-year rotation is what we're gonna see after a chemical application. Okay. Now, almost always when you're converting an area that's been trees, you'll have stump sprouts, which is great. Yeah, which is great, much better than the but they're much more aggressive than seedlings because they have all that underground biomass. They're just so much more hardy. And when we when we convert an area from, you know, fairly large sweet gums or or mid-story hardwood trees, almost always gonna have to use an herbicide application to go ahead and get rid of those. Or they're gonna eat our lunch as far as growing up and shading out.

SPEAKER_05 27:22

I'm dealing with that right now.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

I think they're dealing with that everywhere all the time.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

Yeah, but there's there's there's there's a issue to help me understand how we do, because like especially green ash around here, but both of them, if you start with an old feel, it means you got a lot of sunlight. And they're usually such a dense, they're so dense, there's no fuel to burn them. Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

That's why we go in first with the herbicide application most of the time.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

So how do you spraying high?

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Oh, oh yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

How do you get them dead enough if there's no grass or anything growing? Just those did will they burn?

SPEAKER_02 27:55

No, no, so hardly ever will they burn, and you kind of just got to beat it into submission until you start to get some grass. So kind of I was talking about earlier, you know, uh, you know, me and Dr. Harper go back and forth about this, but you know, 30% grass is kind of what we need for uh any kind of grassland that's not a grassland obligate. Uh we need that 30% grass threshold is kind of where we want to be at to have more forbs and produce more forage. But as we get further away from 50% grass, it gets harder and harder to burn. So when in situations that you're talking about, in oil fields, grass is our fine fuel. Just like in a pine sand, it's pine. So as you get further away from 50%, it gets harder and harder to burn. And I I like to keep stuff around 40 or 50, and that way we can put the match to it pretty regular. But if you're if you really have to go in and start with the problem you're talking about, where you don't have any grass, we can change our herbicide a little bit. So uh amazapere is a very good herbicide for killing trees, but it also was invented to help pine trees grow, and the main competition for the first two years of pine trees is grass. So it is it is a great grass herbicide. That's why we use it to kill Bermuda grass. But garland, on the other hand, will kill trees, but it will not kill grasses. So in those situations, maybe we use a garland or a triclopear application that way, preserve the few grasses that we do have, and we can do that for a couple years until we get a grass base built up that we can start putting fire in there.

SPEAKER_05 29:30

And then you'll have the native broadleaves popping up. I I did a lot of triclopeer, aka garlawn last year to get rid of Cerecia. All of my road systems were just covered in it. Yeah, all my openings. Um, but guess what came back? A whole bunch of common ragweed just the next year, which is a broadleaf. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Yeah, the the the the issue with the prairies, again, I talk about a lot, but that's what we have here, is it's so lows grasses. Yep. That you you know, trying to keep it at just 30% without doing something drastic is pretty tough in a lot of cases. So, you know, because that's a that's our my big problem, uh, this holding back to the preferable lagoons and forgs both. It's just too much grass. If you let anything, it just takes off like wildfire. And especially like uh in recent years, some of the um like um actually I got the great privilege and benefit from walking in the woods with our buddy Marcus the other day. Oh good places. So wow, I wish I had been just running a tape recorder the whole time. But like Japanese stiff grass. You know, and um of course the fescues are awful, and we've got Johnson grass everywhere. I mean, there's just it it just seems like you can't keep them at bay. And I mean, I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. I feel like switching to late season, you know, late summer and early fall burns are gonna make a big difference there.

SPEAKER_02 30:57

Yeah, and that that is one thing to think about going forward. Like you you kind of have to burn in the in the dormant season in that kind of February to March, uh maybe early April time frame in old fields in the in the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

Right.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

Like in Genesis, we burn in February to March. Uh but after that, it is extremely important to vary timing from a standpoint of composition. You know, if we if we go in and we disc, we open ourselves up to invasives, especially if we disc at the wrong time of year. Just i.e. we want to be uh disking in kind of that September, October, November time frame, not in February, March. Uh just you know, useful tip there. He's the first guy to speak Latin to us. Bronson, he's throwing down. I know.

SPEAKER_04 31:44

He knows the stuff.

SPEAKER_05 31:45

And he's throwing Bible stuff in there too.

SPEAKER_02 31:48

But with that, with both disking and with herbicide, we open ourselves up to some problems. But with late growing season fire, mid-growing season fire, uh, we can kind of change composition without really opening ourselves up to all those non-native invasives that we just spent all the time and money getting rid of. You know.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

So there's amazing similarities in managing wetlands too, because one of the keys is I've always said don't even touch it till after the 4th of July. And then all the work's done. Really, August is the magic month around here. Right. More than any month. You know, and the later you wait pulling your water, the better you're gonna, the better species you're gonna have. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:26

Wetlands management is very similar. It's just we've got a different disturbance. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

Yeah, that's right. One's gotta be super dry. One thing I say too all the time, you can't manage moist soil pants without the moist part.

SPEAKER_02 32:38

Yep, that's right. Yeah. That's right.

SPEAKER_04 32:41

It's it's pretty interesting stuff, and I can see how that would be a big part of uh of a landowner's portfolio if he can pull it off right.

SPEAKER_03 32:49

Yeah. That's kind of the the way I think about it too, and I think about it from the perspective of resilience. And so you're gonna get, of course, you're gonna get a lot of cover out of that system for deer in in the fall and winter, but you're gonna be getting most of the food, you know, during the growing season, during the summertime. So if if you have a lot of acreage in Oldfield, and unfortunately this stuff happens, uh well, either you don't plant warm season food plots, and we recommend that you do, but sometimes they fail for whatever various reasons. If you found a lot of acreage in Oldfield, you are really gonna buffer your deer. They're gonna be a lot more drought tolerant plants, they're gonna be more browse tolerant, and you have added much needed diversity. So cowpea, soybean, deer vetch, all that's wonderful. We recommend it. We want it there, deer are gonna eat it, but we also want to contribute to the other 80 to 100 plants that deer are gonna eat when they're available. Space you're not utilizing in the first place, too.

SPEAKER_04 33:55

I mean, it really is. So we kind of see this happen on its own when like here in the deep south, where we have a lot of timber land that the that you'll see the pines get cut on the side of the road, and then that that next summer it's just kind of sparse, and then the second summer it's boy, it's just explodes, and then that third or fourth the the newly planted pine trees kind of take back over. But so you had it, you had something really good and cool for about three years there. Right. And then it revert there depending on if they replanted or not.

SPEAKER_03 34:27

But yeah, I was on a property uh last week, I think it was, and they were one year removed from a clear cut. And I remember telling Bonner about this that it was absolutely amazing. If you kind of know what what you're looking for, the uh the species diversity of all the good plants that were there. And so in in that case, um we're gonna be working with them, and rather than them planting it back in trees, it's just gonna be managing those good plants. And as uh Craig Harper said years ago, it it is just going through, and Bonner mentioned a second ago, it's just going through and killing the plants you don't want. So it's a reversal of thinking, I've got to plant everything I want. Everything you want is already there. Right now, let's just go kill the stuff that we don't, and Mother Nature takes care of itself. And then it's just managing succession with the tools, with prescribed fire, chemical when necessary, disc when necessary.

SPEAKER_04 35:29

Anyone ever kind of figured out what that might be worth per acre on a oh wow.

SPEAKER_06 35:34

Look at you. Just curious. Maybe you should figure that out tonight.

SPEAKER_04 35:37

We're talking about tonnage wise or dollar wise. Dollar wise. I mean, all these native seeds are expensive for the most part. Yeah, they're crazy. They're crazy.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

It isn't as easy as running a combine thumb, though. No, yeah. I know it's there's not a value in that. You gotta get you one of those wheat eaters with those harvest heads on it.

SPEAKER_04 35:56

No, uh, you know, I've seen them on Facebook doing that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

So, you know, I thought about it. It's like the reverse, you I mean, when we start with like the tray the trees and the forest, which is the first thing we think about in habitat management. Well, learning more about your everyday stuff. The key to all of it is, of course, you have to have the moisture for everything to grow, but the key is what you're trying to get is sunlight, because without sunlight, none of this works. Right. That's numero uno. So you're trying to create sunlight kind of strategically with the timber harvest. Yep. But with the the old field thing, it's already you've already got the magic of the sunlight, and you're kind of reverse engineering to selectively, you know, put a spotlight on the things you want.

SPEAKER_02 36:38

Yeah, it's the same, it's the exact same book, just a different chapter. We we got the got the sunlight, and now let's put that sunlight into the species that we want. And just, you know, you know, just because I did this with my master's research and I don't ever get to say anything about it, uh, I took a you know terrible amount of time, I would hate to, you know, log the hours, uh collecting forages in the field and then going back to the lab and taking the parts of that forage that deer would eat and putting it in a bag and sending it off to the lab and getting kind of an estimation of what we've got deer forage per acre in these old fields. And we've got anything from the poorest dirt I've ever seen produces about five to six hundred pounds per acre of deer forage, and some of the best dirt, coincidentally, in my project was in the middle of Cades Cove. So, yeah, that was pretty cool. I got to drive my my blue University of Tennessee Durango out into the middle of the pasture at Cades Cove where we had our study sites, and I got several cussings and a bunch of fingers, and you know, people were really upset that I was out there. But coincidentally or not, you know, uh about 1,600 pounds per acre of deer forage there. It's just outrageous soils in those in those valleys where people used to farm, which makes sense. That's why they would have settled Cadescove. But anywhere from 600 to 1600 pounds, and for what it costs you to maintain and create those areas, that is a big bang for your buck, especially if you've got a little bit better soil, although you're gonna have to burn it a little bit more often, you're gonna have to take care of it. 1600 pounds per acre of deer forage for not a whole lot of money is a great deal. Great deal. And it's fun, breaking your plow.

SPEAKER_04 42:08

So, Bonner, is this like something that you were super interested in, or is this was something that was in the path and it was the next thing for you to do to get your master's?

SPEAKER_02 42:17

Yeah, so uh I was very interested in plants in general, like different plant species. And my biggest thing was the whole time that I was at Mississippi State was just habitat management in general. I wanted to get in on anything that that was habitat management. I don't really care much about trees. I'm not not a forester or anything like that, but I want to know kind of the wanted to know the inside workings of what makes all this go around. Uh, and then I kind of got a little starstruck uh when Dr. Harper called. I went up and worked as a technician for him and his lab for a summer, and he called and he's like, uh uh I worked on that summer a turtle tracking. We tracked box turtles, okay, looking at box turtles and how they were associated with fire. And then we uh we also did a a precursor project to mine looking at old field management. And Dr. Harper called me, he said, Bonner, uh I got a position for you, and you can continue either project uh you pick. And I said, Dr. Harper, as riveting as those box turtles are, I think I'm gonna go with the old field management. So uh, you know, and you know, working with Dr. Harper, I got to learn everything kind of wildlife management or habitat management related. And it was kind of a weird time period because uh, or at least I got a special education uh because it was right in the middle of COVID. So everything shut down. The offices at the University of Tennessee shut down, and Dr. Harper's not a real shutdown kind of guy, nope, as y'all know. And he's like, he calls me one morning at 7 a.m. Bonner, come to my house. We will we will work like this from now on. So I got to go to Dr. Harper's house, and we you know, we did all kind of stuff, ran around the country and had a really great time. Did you get to hunt with him? Uh I got to hunt with him a a fair a fair bit. Yeah, I bet he's a good turkey. Yeah, we were successful. There you go.

SPEAKER_04 44:17

Yeah, I'd like to turkey hunt. Yeah, something you'd like to turkey hunting. You know, I've always heard that the box turtles are attracted to the May apples. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

Is that that's true? Yeah, sure. So you'll see I have no clue. I don't know anything about box turtles, but I did track them for a summer. Yeah, you know, toxic in your paint on them. Had uh a number and a s a skewed tag, and it was pretty cool.

SPEAKER_05 44:44

You had one trying to lay eggs in front of the cabin the other day, right?

SPEAKER_01 44:48

He was aerating. He was aerating under the water rope. Good for him.

SPEAKER_05 44:53

Her. Or him.

SPEAKER_04 44:55

I don't know. I don't know enough about him. Probably her. It's good when you meet somebody that's pretty passionate about something, and and this guy is passionate about this old field matchman.

SPEAKER_03 45:04

Oh, he's fired up about it. He's really, really good at it, knows all the ins and outs, all the management prescriptions. So yeah, he's he's perfect.

SPEAKER_01 45:13

Much as we love our food plots. I mean, that's literally that's the backbone of your place.

SPEAKER_05 45:17

Yeah, total property manager. Yeah, and you've got room for both. Right.

SPEAKER_01 45:21

I mean, what could, you know, what could you send him? I mean, that's why I'm a big fan of clover for the food plots, because if you you can set it in place right, you got something, you know, year after year after year, instead of like, you know, a couple of months and out every time. And with the things you're talking about, and you continue to manage it with things, you you're talking about, you know, establishing stuff that could be around for you know a generation.

SPEAKER_04 45:43

And I think historically, maybe it Lanyard, are we are you you're not going to sleep on the show?

SPEAKER_06 45:49

No, no, I'm looking at it. Lanyard, he didn't even sleep at night. What are you talking about? You don't let me ask any questions or talk anymore. So I just gotta bud in circuit.

SPEAKER_01 45:56

You gotta be rude, and this is broke to get you.

SPEAKER_05 45:58

You gotta be quick draw McGraw here.

SPEAKER_04 46:00

But I think historically we may have viewed this as bedding area or bedding cover, but there's so much more to it.

SPEAKER_05 46:06

Or we just referred to it as cut over. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 46:10

Yeah. Yep.

SPEAKER_05 46:11

And so it was it's like we knew this stuff was good all along, but now we're learning how to manage it better and and create a lot more diversity, you know.

SPEAKER_03 46:23

So we recognize the clear cut was good. I mean, anybody in the deer you stalled that first hand, but what we're doing is the maintaining that. Correct.

SPEAKER_02 46:32

I'd say what we're learning to do is be intentional. You know, we're intentional about maintaining and keeping or creating those areas on properties that don't have them.

SPEAKER_05 46:40

It's funny, all those years in the past, uh, you'd have this cut over and it would be awesome for like, you know, one to five years. Yep. And then you're like, oh well, it's just gonna suck for the next 10 years after that. You know, but now we can just keep it in that in that management.

SPEAKER_03 46:57

So Bobby, I I do think it is good bedding cover, but it's not gonna be in during the the warm season. You know, they're not they're not gonna be out there uh in the middle of the day bedded down. But on those cold days, November, December, January, great place for them to bed when it's really, really cold and get sunlight on them. So we we we see that all the time.

SPEAKER_01 47:18

Remember Bob Dixon used to hang his climbing stands where he could see the first place sun hit the ground in the winter. And he killed a bunch of big old deer that way. They would go to that too when they're when it's hard frost, 20-something degrees or more at night, they'll show up at that first sunlight spot early in the morning. But only if it's in a thick, you know, close to which, you know, clear cuts are.

SPEAKER_02 47:43

Oh yeah. And they're they're really, really fun complexes to hunt. Like, especially like kind of with our plans that we do for people and and working with landowners. A lot of the times if we've got an eight-acre-ish, more than that complex where we can split it, we'll burn one side and burn the other the next year, or we may put a two-acre food plot in the middle of a four-acre, that way we got two acres around the edge. It is an incredible rut spot to get up high with a rifle and be able to see they feel completely comfortable. You know, as long as they get that cover up around their shoulder, they're like, dude, I'm good to go. Like I'm chasing and I don't care. And you'll just see unbelievable activity in those areas.

SPEAKER_05 48:25

So you can be strategic with it.

SPEAKER_02 48:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 48:27

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 48:29

Didn't I see you, by the way, published, I think I read in the something one of the papers you had published a study on uh most likely to see a white tail mature buck during the rut of all these different types of like habitat. And the least likely was big mature wide open hardwoods, which we all adore and crave, you know, dream having some and all. That was the least likely spot to see a mature whitetail during hunting season and during the rut. What does that tell you?

SPEAKER_05 49:01

Makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_01 49:03

Well, other than passing through to grab an acronym which you might follow a doe on, there's nothing, you know, there's nothing left to eat there because of this a complete dense canopy and there's no sunlight in the ground.

SPEAKER_07 49:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:13

So, you know, why are why are the trees, why are the hot oak trees always on the edges and perimeters? Because they're getting more sun and they're next to the cover too, you know. Yeah. That's the spots to look for where the thicket is.

SPEAKER_04 49:25

So the way you guys are doing this with wildlife investments and y'all are making recommendations, you if you went to a guy's property and he had some really big oak trees in that area that you suggested to cut, you could leave those there. Certainly.

SPEAKER_02 49:39

That's correct. We can manage that as an oak savanna, you know, which is basically just an old field with some oak trees in it. You know. So that's the way I like to think about it anyway. You just gotta be a little bit more careful about whatever sides you use where, you know, if we start using them as a pair and some of those pine savannas, we don't want to kill some of our big white oaks or whatever trees we've left.

SPEAKER_01 50:00

No.

SPEAKER_02 50:01

But that's certainly an option to leave those.

SPEAKER_01 50:03

Well, you can, you know, you can also kind of reverse select cut it by marking what you want to leave, mark the lead trees, and then letting someone have the rest of it, you know.

SPEAKER_06 50:14

I feel like we've kind of scraping on some of this at Carnathan. Oh, for sure. Yeah, you know, because we're burning uh every other year, north in one year, and then every we've only been burning in the growing season. Uh, and we've been making herbicide applications.

SPEAKER_05 50:28

Definitely, yeah. I mean, it's so fescue dominant. It out there because it's an old cattle place. Yeah, it's a prairie right in the middle of the way. So we've been killing a lot of fescue and then coming back and burning, and then you see all the cool stuff come up.

SPEAKER_06 50:41

And we've definitely seen a response, you know, really have.

SPEAKER_03 50:44

So we've started thinking about it too. We think it's so important. And you know how we we start talking about everybody did cool season food plots, and then you know, adding in warm season, then we try to convince people best case scenario is not to have your cool season and warm season on the same spot. So you know, you could let the cool season grow and fade out in the warm season, but now we're even adding a third component to where if they have a big enough area, we want an old field spot adjacent to warm season, adjacent to cool season. Uh-huh. And you literally every day out of the year, you have got a hub on your property where there's there's going to be deer activity.

SPEAKER_02 51:29

And and you know, Bronson's a big deer guy, and I'm a big habitat guy, uh, but we both like turkeys as well. You know, not a dedicated turkey. Wait a minute.

SPEAKER_04 51:38

Bonner, you've had me all long to this point. You said Bronson is a big deal.

SPEAKER_02 51:43

He likes them, he likes them, I like them every now and then. I'm not good at it, but I like them. Just not at the detriment of deer.

SPEAKER_01 51:51

No, no, no, no. Liking them is not enough. That doesn't cut it in this room.

SPEAKER_02 51:56

But but you know, when you start looking at uh the argument for kind of early succession as a whole or old field management as a whole, really when you get to the turkey argument is when stuff gets really, really compelling. Like if you're not already convinced by what I've said so far, you'll be convinced by this if you're if you have any kind of you know interest in turkeys at all. But you know, I don't know the numbers exactly, but uh Will Goolsby does, Dr. Harper does. Uh but for every percent that you go up in early successional coverage, I think they do it by county. You know, we see a pretty tight lockstep correlation with turkey populations in that in that county. So nesting success. Brooding success mainly. You know, we've got nesting a lot of places across, you know, they're weak nest selectors, and we've got we've got nest success a lot of places, but that brood success is so low, and with every percentage of acreage of early successional coverage that you go up, the turkeys are going up as well.

SPEAKER_05 53:03

And I I would venture to say that you know that may be more due to uh hiding them from avian predators, you know, which is the predators we can't really control.

SPEAKER_07 53:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:15

So I want to say um, help me with these numbers, but Craig's Tennessee study, I want to say that early successional habitat made up less than 10 percent of their study area. Less than 10 percent. But had like 60 percent of the successful nests. Correct. Yeah on the so the disproportionate selection of of hens to those areas.

SPEAKER_02 53:38

And then Dr. Goolsby, I can't remember the numbers on that one either, but he has a similar, yeah a similar situation in Alabama. Uh but you know, when you want to put the full argument together, it's it's there for those old fields and our body.

SPEAKER_03 53:52

I want to say his had something to do with for every 1% or 5% or 10%. It the the response there was the number of gobblers. Yeah. Turkey population and gobblers increase correspondingly with early successional habitat. We're lacking gobblers.

SPEAKER_01 54:10

That makes total sense.

SPEAKER_03 54:11

Yeah, it does. And if you're interested in quail, of course you gotta have this.

SPEAKER_04 54:16

We're hearing more people say they're hearing quail and seeing quail. It's very encouraging.

SPEAKER_06 54:21

I'm telling you, I've seen more people managing their habitat now. People are burning more. Burning, yeah. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 54:27

It's crazy because we can pop quail out of the ground like that. Like they just appear if you've got the right kind of cover. Now, huntable numbers, that's a completely different argument. But you know, if we can get a couple good clear cuts in an area that they can kind of move around in.

SPEAKER_01 54:44

I just don't know why they're even any there to strike, kind of like the plant. I mean, it seems like they're gone completely. So, how do they ever start back again if there's nothing?

SPEAKER_02 54:52

They pop out of the ground, I'm telling you.

SPEAKER_05 54:54

I I mean it's kind of like those little green sunfish in a pond. You're like, how did they get there? Nobody stopped them. Yeah, where'd they come from?

SPEAKER_01 55:02

There's still one around somewhere. Yeah, yeah. God bless them, is all I got to say. Yeah, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_05 55:07

Maybe a crane brings them in, just like they do the green sunfish.

SPEAKER_02 55:11

Well, that's a that's a long road to hoe there in the the northern Bob way.

SPEAKER_05 55:16

But you know, it it seems like 10 years, 10, 20 years ago, the biologists would be like, you have to just be incredibly intensive and you might get a few, but it seems like now we're getting more than a few.

SPEAKER_03 55:30

So well, the the property you went with us uh a visit like a month ago, Dudley. I don't know if you remember kind of the story there, but uh we we kind of intensively manage about 300 to 350 acres, and Mark McConnell, our quail biologist, uh he did a tagging study, and uh on there, you know, we're just here in the bobwhites and flushed them. We know they're there. Well, he goes and marks them to determine population size and distinct cuvies, and it was six or seven distinct cuvies on three hundred acres. It's amazing the response.

SPEAKER_05 56:03

Yeah. I think it would be fun to take a dog out there and shoot two or three with your buddy. Right, right, right. And and that would be sustainable. Absolutely. Toxic, you need to go.

SPEAKER_04 56:19

I'm good. Okay. Let me ask this. Uh, so Bronson, just to change gears just a little bit. Right now we're in the middle of the summer. We've been getting some fairly timely rains, it it it seems like. As a guy that's wanting to grow big a deer as I can. What do I need to be it is a wet summer and it going into the is that more beneficial than uh uh you know I I I know in Texas rains everything, but how what do I need to be cheering for around here?

SPEAKER_03 56:49

Um it's a little counterintuitive, and and I'm gonna qualify this right now. We are about to do a a big reanalysis of these data, but working with MDW FMP, the Deer Lab, uh Natasha on our end is gonna be helping us with that. When Steve Demaris and I undertook that years ago, we went into that working with MDW FMP because they came to us and said, man, we had a really bad, relatively bad drought. How badly is that going to impact body weights, antler size, et cetera? Because we wanted our biologists to read the data correctly and not assume that a body weight loss wasn't just because of deer density and you had too many deer. You know, we wanted to be able to attribute well, that was because of the drought, not because you had too many does. So that was the reason we went into that. But when we started teasing all that apart, what we found was that heat, meaning heat days, the number of days, consecutive days, etc., where you were 90 plus degrees, we saw a much stronger signal of that than we did the drought. Now, the thing about that is those things are correlated. Right. You know, typically when you have all these hot days, you're not having rain, but there's some exceptions there as well where you can have some moisture and be hot. So I think they're they're both related. So to answer your question, what I'm hoping for, I hope we keep getting rain. I hope especially in August and September. And I would really not like to have these heat index days of over 110 degrees. Me too. Wishful thinking, but that's what I'm hoping for.

SPEAKER_07 58:34

So here we are.

SPEAKER_01 58:35

We've been lucky about that so far. We haven't it's not been too brutal.

SPEAKER_04 58:38

Yeah. So we're early July, and some but bucks are recognizable, and some are like, I had never seen him before. Is that kind of the norm? Is that so by the end of July, should everything be you you should be able to recognize them from last year?

SPEAKER_03 58:55

Well, I think we're uh I actually uh calculated that a few weeks ago, and at that time, about two weeks ago, we were about 40 percent for our area here of antler growth. So we're probably 50, 55 or so percent. So yeah, you're seeing the browse and the beam shape and the G2 location and things like that, but you still probably have a good 40 percent of antler growth to go. So I would say if that was a uh distinctive antler configuration last year, you'll probably be able to pick that up.

SPEAKER_01 59:27

Um they change a lot of them on you sometimes too. You may think it's another one came in somewhere. Yeah. Well, I gotta say this, I've been astonished this year, getting my cameras up sooner than ever. That like what are we first week of June basically? Some are look like they're almost made completely. And some are just like don't barely have a bump coming up for a point yet. It's so much variation in how far along they are. Yeah. And I know just like we talked about, sometimes we'll find a shed at the end of January and we'll see deer with their horns in you know, first of April. There's so much variation there. Yeah. So you can't, I mean, I can't look at mine and see exactly how far they are along because it's end I'm hoping a lot of them are have most of it till to grow because they don't look very good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:18

You know, 50% would be we'd be somewhere in that range right now. Yeah, I'd say a little over 50% right now.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:24

That's looking rough where I am. We got halfway there. So we got the rest of July, August, and then like Toxie's saying, there's individual variation of when they're going to be shedding out, but a lot of them in September.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:35

I might have a 60, 70 inch deer.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:41

Let's hope. Let's hope.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:43

Well, you always did measure in hamburger. That's right, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:46

It's so fun to see them in velvet. And it's it's so interesting how if you see one, there'll be two or three or four bachelor's groups. Yeah, they're all hanging together. Just when they're all cool. That's when they're friends.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:55

Yeah, we're buddies for now. Same way with turkey, best buddies, and they try to kill each other. Yeah, for about a couple months.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:01

Yep. Then they get back together again.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:07

So as guys studying all this, uh, I mean, when does it when does the when do y'all really get excited about looking at like we need to do a survey, we need to figure out who what bucks or where, you know, identifying bucks.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:21

What what month is that for you guys? Um, from my perspective, when we're working with a client or a property and we're doing a a camera survey or or buck inventory, et cetera, you know, I I would love for it to be as late in the year as possible before gun season. And so I I want them out of velvet. Uh, I want their bachelor group home range shifts to have taken place. So this actually buck is on the property you're hunting and not, you know, five miles away. And really, the reason I say as close to gun season as possible, I want to start seeing the body development. I want them to be as close to the rut as we can. But you know, we got to have all this inventory stuff done before gun season because people need to make harvest decisions at that at that time. So for me, uh mid-October, end of October is a really good time.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:19

That makes sense because, like you said, a lot of these deer you see in the summer just disappear when they're gonna be. Yeah, they're gonna lose their velvet.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:26

Yeah, and that six-year-old buck looks like he's three because he didn't have a neck.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:29

That 11-point I was watching all summer got replaced by a six-point or a seven.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:35

Yeah, Lanny, do you want to ask him about minerals? You and this.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:39

I thought we were gonna talk about clover.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:40

Well, the other morning you said something about asking about minerals. No. Not really.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:46

Well, I mean, you kind of caught me off guard there. Let me think about that. Mark that's a good thing. Mark that ask him about minerals. Ask him about minerals. I mean, we know that there is no definitive evidence that that minerals, you know, affect, I guess, antler growth. I isn't that what the the study pretty much says.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:06

Well, the the individual minerals do. The elements of phosphorus and potassium and calcium do. That we know for sure. And they're all found in plants. That's right. Right. Gotcha. I think part of it is probably, and he I don't please tell me, but it seems like like your supplements, what is readily absorbable. Right. You know, and so I'm sure that most that's why the best transfer nutrient transfer agents in plants are the best at growing those horns. And I don't know, maybe some minerals are less digestible or absorbable than through plants might be part of the issue.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:49

So are y'all recommending mineral sites on any of y'all's properties?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:53

The the really the only time we would be recommending that would be for to get photos. Uh-huh. We're not making leave.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:02

And do you think that's more related to the mineral need or just salt? Salt. Just salt. Mostly salt. The attractions coming from the side. So we're just as good to just throw out salt. Salt block.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:10

You know, um a multivitamin isn't gonna make you, you know, have huge muscles and and become 300 pounds. It's what you eat.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:18

And your genetics.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:20

And you have a deficient. You're insured that it's bioavailable for the deer. I mean, that is a herbivore. They evolved to eat plants and extract those minerals, the calcium, the phosphorus, etc. So you're just delivering it the way Mother Nature intended. Makes sense.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:37

There you go. Minerals, Bobby.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:39

Yeah. That good good question, Lanny.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:41

I will say that when I've combined some of the minerals with the salt, it seemed to attract more mature bucks than it than just putting salt out there. That for as far as what he said, getting pictures. So I think they maybe they crave that more.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:58

It's a it's a great way, Bonner, to like these little salt rocks. Oh, it's a great way to inventory them late in the late summer.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:06

Well, they crave it so much that the best thing I've always said is like you don't, you know, if someone's like baiting a spot to get deer pictures, you don't have to keep intruding again and again and again. Maybe you just do it one time to attract them to the spot, but they'll keep coming back to that rock this time of year. I'd much rather do you know, with the you don't have to go get a chip or anything now. You saw cell phones, so it's you don't disturb that area. That that's a big deal to me.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:29

I'd much rather do that than put some kind of goop or corn on the ground that's gonna make all your birds sick and whatnot. But you know, some states, a lot of states are becoming, you know, more they're they're not allowing salt due to like disease transmission fears and things like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:48

Yeah, I think we're all there's a lot of learning going on. And I I you know, look, I've I I'd default to y'all's opinion for sure, and uh the minerals have probably been studied as much as anything. And if there was some kind of definitive do this and you'll see uh results, it probably would have been a lot of things.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:06

Well, everybody did you see them we're using them for just for camera surveys more than anything that I've seen.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:11

I I have no doubt in a controlled study in a in a deer pen fence where we could manipulate their pelleted ration and reduce the amount of phosphorus in the pelleted ration and then have a treatment where we added phosphorus with salt via a mineral lick, yes, you were probably going to see a response there because we took all the phosphorus out of their diet, the only food that they can eat. But when you do this in the wild where they can choose to eat plants, I mean, even the food plot plants we recommend are very high in phosphorus and calcium and all that good stuff. So to me, it is a redundancy to even try to do it.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:53

Yeah, so like you know, growing something at the nursery in a pot, um, you can have deficiencies very easily. But if you grow something in the in the ground, those deficiencies are incredibly rare. And so that's that's kind of a good comparison. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:10

Well, is there anything else about the old field management that we need to be thinking about, Bonner if you Yeah, the the biggest thing I would say about old field management is just that there's opportunities there for everybody. If you've got a piece of property and you've got a little bit of open ground, it doesn't matter if you try and do a quarter acre with a backpack sprayer and some herbicide, or if you want to do a hundred acres, uh, you can do it. It's easy to do, it's simple, it's not complex. And a lot of people are hesitant to jump off that ledge and be like, well, I you know, I don't have the time, I'm gonna lose it. Try it. Right. Go go see if you can do it, because I'm telling you, if you're a good food plotter, uh, or if you or if you really pay attention to what you're doing when you're working your food plots and everything, you'll be an amazing old field uh manager.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:58

So the first podcast I ever sat in on, and Bronson was here, and the first word out of his mouth was diversity, other than hello. Diversity, diversity, diversity. Oh, yeah, and also uh depends. It depends. But so I'm just saying everything we come back to goes back to that kind of one law of managing your place. Yeah. Is diversity. I mean, not only is this a very mean, you don't even, you know, let's face it, you don't want to turn your whole place into old field. We're just talking about it's it's a very critical missing link in a lot of places. That's the major point. Yeah, it's low-hanging fruit that's neglected.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:36

There's a lot of things you can do to mess up your property. Trying to manage old fields is not one of those things.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:42

No, because you're gonna do it in patches and places and even if you diversify your place.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:47

Even if you miss the goal, you've still made it better. Like if you only get halfway there, it's still better than it was than it was. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:55

Yeah, I've I've got a little spot right inside my gate, and I've I've probably talked about it on the podcast ten times, but that was my little stepping stone to to this old field management, you know. Park the vehicle, get out, walk around and look at it. It's it's it's soothing, it's it's therapeutic. And then, oh, there's a sweet gum. I'm gonna I'm gonna hit that one, and then you walk through. I mean, it's like only a quarter of an acre. Yeah, but uh I've got a bluebird box on it now. I've already hatched three uh three three clutches of fledged already. Um, you know, there's just bird butterflies all over the place. You walk through it, you're kicking bugs up everywhere. That's where I jumped my first uh mating pair of quail out there. I mean that that just gave me chill bumps, and it's like a stepping stone. I want to do it all over my place now. All the roadsides, all the other log loading decks. I want to cut down some pines and do it there. So it it's it's really, really fun.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:55

It's the real deal. To all the non-nerdy people, I will sound extremely nerdy. But learning the plants and and figuring out how it kind of all fits together, it really isn't nerdy at all. It's uh it's a lot of fun. Uh you know, humans are conditioned to recognize patterns, whether that's in food plots, whether it's in oil fields, you know, whether it's on computers where we recognize patterns, uh, whatever it is, we recognize patterns, and you will pick up, if you try, you'll pick up those plant species way quicker than you think you will. You know, toddlers, you know, Dr. Lashley, I always laughed at him. Uh, he used to, his kids knew more plant species than most people do by the time they were three or four years old. You know, maybe not species, but they could get you to genus, and it was it it's incredible. Uh so people recognize patterns and you can pick up on that incredibly quickly.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:50

So just walk your place and get one of these apps. You can actually take a picture in Google to tell you a good bit of stuff, but get one of these really good apps. There's a couple of really good ones. And look and see what's getting browsed, and then take a picture of it. And learn from that. And you can even save it so you start to build a little note bank in your phone. And that I mean, you could just keep on learning, keep on learning. You may learn something out there that teach us about it because you found it from actual, you know, on you know, time on the property, feet on the ground evidence, you know.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:21

And you know, this this fall when late summer when people go in and start bush hogging, and then you know, the road gets a little wider and you bush hog the whole thing, you know, that that could be a good spot to start, you know. Um, and so they're not it, those spots aren't easy to find. You don't have to make them, you know. Some a lot of times they're already there. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:41

Use a disc instead of a mower. Yeah. And there's your start. Yeah. If you got pine trees, a southern pine beetle probably created a couple for you. Oh, absolutely. It did for me. Oof. Yep.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:52

Yeah, and and y'all made a statement earlier, Bonner. I think you did, and maybe it was something that that uh Dr. Harper taught you, but it was, and I'd love for you to restate it, it was about managing what you got and not going in there and trying to replant everything.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:06

Yeah, absolutely. Look, our our whole philosophy on this old field stuff is kill what you don't want and keep what you do. Because you're gonna get some good and some bad. You know, you get the good, the bad, and the ugly when you start doing old field management. Uh, but the good thing is we're gonna go in there and spray, we're gonna keep the good, we're gonna kill the ugly and the bad, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:25

To your point, too, you can't just do that and think you've done that. It because you're gonna always get more bad and more bad and less good because the deer are gonna hammer the good. Correct. And so that's what you want. So you're gonna need to help it in some manner over time.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:42

And you know, I've I've got a spot I've been managing for a couple years over there, and you know, you get all excited, it's getting better, and now I've got this Japanese clover stuff. It's it's a Lespadiza that's really short, Korean Les Podiza, and it is like a a carpet underneath all of my good stuff. So I'm probably gonna have to go back to ground zero there. But guess what? I've got a couple more areas that don't have it, and so they're gonna be there while I go back to ground zero to fix that that area.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:15

It's not gonna hurt you turkey-wise to have a couple of really clean spots though, either. You know, in the in a room.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:21

We're we're gonna have to have you back. Yeah, I'll be glad to come back. I like a guy that gets passionate and excited. Bronson, y'all got a good one. I know, exactly. You've been hiding him from us. No, he's just been busy.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:33

I've got I've got y'all trick, that's for sure. I've got y'all trick.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:37

Well, we've been trying to have you over here, but this uh this having a baby, that sure got in the way.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:42

Having a baby will throw you off every time.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:45

What do you spend your time doing mostly?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:46

Are you out walking on properties and giving advice? Yep, so I'm I'm down in the ditches and uh, you know, in the fields, and I wouldn't have it any other way, but uh I do a a good bit of traveling around the properties and looking over properties, what they've got, and then helping those landowners come up with a plan on how we're gonna move forward. Uh, you know, we do everything forestry management, oil field, food plots, bottomland management, you know, the whole thing, and every one of them it's fun for me. You know, it's like I get to put a different puzzle together all the time uh and just come up with stuff and uh it's kind of my you know, I I can't play music. Uh you know, my wife will tell you I can't keep time for nothing. Uh I can't draw, uh I'm not a good singer, you know, all the arts I'm very, very poor at, but uh setting up properties is kind of my artistic outlet. Yeah. Uh and it's you know, it's a lot of fun for me, and I just I love what I do getting to see the properties.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:45

That's good. You sound like you hooked up with a good bunch of guys there. Are you guys seeing more ticks than you normally do?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:54

So this year I've not seen more ticks, but chiggers have been relentless.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:59

Yeah, they're bad.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:01

They're getting me pretty good. Yeah, but I we do take fairly good precautions to stay out of the ticks.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:08

You know. Yeah. Don't talk to me about ticks. Yeah, well.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:14

It's gotten a lot worse, actually. So I I did the acupuncture. You know, they say that fixes about 96% of people. Oh, you're the four. Uh Toxie's in the same boat. He got he got worse again recently.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:26

I did. Um they all say that I got bit again, which it probably, you know, tells me, like you, probably getting bit at your house because it's the same idea again.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:36

I got a lone star tick. The the crazy thing is, is it didn't really even have time to dig in. But it was like clockwork. I I was reacting to stuff that I previously wasn't reacting to. Like right now, it feels like I've got poison ivy all over my neck, my head, the back of my ears. Right here. And that was from tasting a piece of elk the size of a pea. Wow, you know, trying to reintroduce. Well, the first the first time. First time. And you know, a couple months ago I wasn't able to eat cheese and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:11

That was too like crazy. I've never had that, but I've had some digestive issues.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:16

Oh, yeah, that too.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:17

But you gotta go to go through the treatment, you have to abstain completely. So that's the hard part. Yeah, no, I bet. I think I gosh. I could give it all up with cheese. Same, and and everybody's give anything for a slice of cheese.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:28

And I thought I thought it was gonna be like steak and stuff, but and you go to a restaurant, and there's usually only one item that you can eat, and you still have to ask them to take the cheese off of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:39

So I didn't know. I'm thinking chicken, okay, at least I you know, I'd do Chick-fil-A.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:45

There's dairy in the batter. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:47

I didn't know it. Had a reaction.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:49

Uh, extra crispy from KFC does not have dairy in the batter. Okay. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:55

Yeah, hit the horn. Sweet chicken out tip. Yeah, we don't have a KFC here. I've been going to Walmart getting rotisserie chickens. So I uh I'll say this along the lines of I got introduced to a new term by the brilliant Dr. Marcus. And in in timber harvest, especially pine, and talk to your forester about using variable retention strategy. Which means basically you go through there and get rid of every bit of junk except the super premier to be saw timber trees, which means some areas may be almost a clear cut, some may be actually pretty dense. You know, you might want to give them a limit you want on it per acre. But that that one word telling them how to do that, they should know what to do. They like that because they're gonna probably haul more volume out of there too, will create the diversity for you that you probably need. Because I never heard him use that term before.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:53

Variable retention is uh is the PhD way to say more here, less there, more here, less things.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:58

But let the let the trees dictate it, because you're just when you and uh again, from a monetary standpoint, when you're harvesting that second thing, especially uh in and doing something like this, the stuff you're getting rid of and maybe cutting too many, it's never gonna be worth much anyway. It's more gonna be about the volume then anyway, than the price per tree. So, and then you're gonna have a better chance at better, you know, grade timber saw logs at the end. So that's that's a term I'm gonna use. Uh I've got a couple of pretty good sized spots still waiting to be done to, and that's exactly what I'm gonna do with them. And it'll look cool, it'll look more natural. Yeah, yeah, because you'll you'll automatically build in some spots, it's like, oh my gosh, so much sunlight. Look at that. You'll have a you know, savannah effect plus in some areas, and some places he said you want to leave some with a little bit dense canopy too, you know, where it's clean for turkeys. Sure. You know, some of the beach. But I had never heard that term, but it's described exactly what I envisioned and gave me a way to express it.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:56

Well, so like on you know, somewhat hilly ground, your little valleys and drainages are gonna are gonna probably gonna be where the the big good trees are gonna be left. And then so it almost looks like a topographic map from the 40s or 50s, you know, where all your timbers on the good sites and your little upland areas, you can manage them with those old field techniques.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:16

Yeah, variable retention is you know the best way to introduce diversity within a stand. You know, you can have five, six, and have someone pay you to do it. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_07 1:19:27

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:29

Good stuff, good stuff.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:31

Yep. All right, guys. What else? Is there anything else that a stone we've left unturned here, Bronson? We got an event coming up. That's right. Oh, yeah. I wondered if you were gonna bring it up.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:41

Yeah, yeah, good for you.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:42

That sounds like it's gonna be a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:44

Well, I hope it's a lot of fun, but more so I hope it's informative and and teaching a lot of people. So we're gonna have we're calling it calling it the the Deer Academy. Oh, okay. And um, that will be at the end of August, I think it's it's the 28th. And so it'll be me and Bonner and Mariah. We will be the speakers. And we're trying to twist some of y'all's arms to come down for the social the night before.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:11

We're making a plan on it.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:12

So we're gonna have uh, and that'll be seating will be a little more limited for that, but we're gonna have uh a social the night before with a little food, and we can all get together and talk and people it's all over at Vegas over there, or where is it gonna move? No, it it's gonna be in Raymond, Mississippi. Uh-huh. My old stomping grounds. Yeah. So we got a good conference center down there that we have have a lot of room and so forth. And um, and so it'll be I'll be talking about deer biology, deer population management, antler stuff, selective harvests, Barner and Mariah, they're gonna be talking about timber management, habitat management, old fields, food plots, all that. So really it's gonna be a jam-packed day. I think our calendar, I think we start at 7:30 and go to 6 p.m. Nice with a few breaks. So it's gonna be a lot of information. What's the date again? Um August 28th, but it it is on our website. It'll be a Saturday. The main educational event will be Saturday, but some people can sign up and come Friday evening.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:15

Oh, you can probably learn a lot chit-chatting with everybody at that.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:19

That's right.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:20

And dove season doesn't open until later. Yeah. So you're not missing dove season. Very strategic. I like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:26

So go to our website at wildlifeinvestments.com. We've got info there. We've also done posts on our socials on Instagram and and Facebook. But um, for for us to get the number of meals ordered and the supplies and everything, uh, ticket sales will stop August 13th. So please register before August 13th if you want to attend.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:49

Dudley and I, maybe a few more, thinking about we're we're planning on it.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:52

So we're great. We're we're working on a Dunkin' booth for Bronx.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:58

Bobby and Bronson. Man, y'all might get me there.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:02

Hey, be sure to and check these guys' podcast out at Wildlife Investments. They got a bunch of good topics. Uh, so be sure and check them out there too.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:10

Bronson, we always enjoy having you. Well, thank you. I always enjoy it. A little bit of a plug there, Lanny. Thank you. We recorded the first of a three-part series on culling, the effects of culling. Oh, nice. And I know I've talked about that a lot, but we finished up about 15 years of study, me working with my colleagues at Texas AM Kingsville. And so uh study on the King Ranch and the Comanche Ranch, and so we finally got all that information published through peer review, so that's out there. So I'm gonna be doing a three-part podcast series on that. Oh, great. So we recorded the first one with Mick, Mick Hellixon, y'all know. Uh, gonna be doing the uh next one with Donnie Draeger from the Comanche Ranch part two, and then wrapping it up with my buddy Randy DeYoung, who's kind of the genetics expert on the team, and just talk about what worked, what didn't work, you know, about culling. So hopefully fully explaining all of that to people. That's awesome. Good stuff. Yeah, it is. And that'll be on the Wildlife Investments podcast. Be sure and find them and subscribe.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:16

Yeah. This has been good. I've uh really enjoyed meeting you, Bonner.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:20

Uh enjoyed being here and enjoyed meeting all of y'all.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:22

Oh, good deal. Yeah, Richie, you pulled this one off without a flaw once again. I'm telling you, do what I can, guys. The television shows. I watched one last night. Did anybody here watch the television show last night on the outdoor channel? It was incredible. Richie, it may have been the best show I've ever seen. Oh, yeah. I do appreciate that, Bobby, but uh, I think sometimes you do overstate sometimes. But no, no, no. They're going along good. Going along good. Point is, is it's the new ones are air now, guys, on the outdoor channel.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:52

And if you don't have fancy cable, you can watch it on the friendly app. That's right.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:56

Yeah, Bronson, you need to get that. I do. All right, guys. I think that's about it. Sign up for the Rambo bike. Toxic's got to get out of here. He's got something he's got to go to. But we enjoyed having y'all here. Thank you so much. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:06

No trivia? No trivia. No reviews. No reviews. Well, get us out of here, Dudley.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:12

This was this was hardcore. We're just talking pro stuff. I love it.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:16

Say goodbye, Dudley. Goodbye, Dudley. Get us out of here, Richie.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:20

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Game Keeper Podcast. And be sure to tune in again. Subscribe to Gamekeeper Farming for Wildlife magazine, and don't miss the Maxio Properties Fistful of Dirt podcast with my good buddy, Ronnie Guster.