Originally Posted by dirkdaddy
Originally Posted by gobbler
Originally Posted by Mbrock
Some of the highest turkey populations I’ve seen were on properties with rotational grazing in prairie and forested areas. I’ve tried to promote more forbs and less grass on a few test areas with growing season fires. Dormant burning promotes grass in a big way.


Glad youve chimed in. I don't think burning is gonna get it. We burn through June/july and still, areas with good broomstraw have good broomstraw after. I would love to find a way, besides cows, to promote less grass and more forbs.

Gotta get mechanical. A disk does three things: disturbs the soil, with enough passes it will kill and bury broomstraw/sage, and brings dormant seed up from below for it to sprout. Fire is great for large scale and cost efficiency, but the most bang for the buck is going to come from a big tractor and heavy ass disk.

I was thinking about the best way to describe what "early successional" habitat is to people the other day, and it occurred to me just to tell people to imagine their garden if they disked it up real nice and didn't plant anything. A years growth of weeds is early successional habitat.


A lot of the quail places use strip disking in the woods to discourage broomstraw and encourage forbs. It needs a couple passes at least though and it labor and equipment intensive. It certainly does work. Same with a roller drum chopper. Used all the time but does not do a great job of reducing the coverage of broomstraw.

I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine