Take a minute when you get a chance PCP and watch this short 19 minute video......Maybe it will help the light bulb come on with the soil health stuff. I think if someone really wanted to maximize their turkey potential then this is how you would do it.

When the lady biologist is talking about coming onto his site and finding plant species not commonly found anymore in other surrounding areas…..the reason why is likely due to state of his soil …..Some plants only grow in really fertile “climax” type soil conditions where there’s a lot of SOM…….

I don't know about PCP, but you and Kbush have got me studying soil like I never thought I would. KBush sent a link to a series of podcasts yesterday and I've just finished 4 of the 9. Interesting stuff, but it is taking me a while to digest.

It can seem overwhelming at first but at a certain point you’ll likely have an “ah ha” moment when a light bulb comes on and then it’ll all click…..

A high fence owner could really simplify the situation by just introducing a wild grazing herd of some sort……I imagine there’s a few options that could be feasible to use ……You wouldn’t have to worry about tending to something like a cow……You would just have to be able to recognize the sweet spot for where you kept their population level…..Enough to make the impact on the understory we’re wanting to see while not having so many that they over graze it. I think it would really revolve around the drought years although you could always start harvesting more if drought set in.

For someone dealing with cows I think the key would be to choose the right breed……One that could handle what is being asked of it while still being marketable. Quail plantations are already set up ideally for introducing this kind of management. You’d probably want to modify your burn plan too…..Instead of burning large amounts at one time in Feb/March…..I think you would want to try and burn a stand once a month year round or as close to doing something like that as you could make happen……I think you’re gonna want to keep those grazers rotated to the new flushes of growth coming in 2-3 weeks post fire as much as possible…….Seems like to me that grazers would nearly move themselves in a situation like that.

https://livestockconservancy.org/heritage-breeds/heritage-breeds-list/pineywoods-cattle/

Trying to talk someone into using these on a quail place

What I’d be curious to see is what would happen if you just low fenced the perimeter of the quail plantation and let the cow herd move around as they please instead of this real hands on rotational stuff a lot of the videos are doing…….I think the wildlife would like it better. Humans want to apply uniformity to everything…..In most of these videos they’re roping off “X” amount of acres and applying the tool “cow” so that it impacts that stand uniformly then they’re moving them to the next stand……I think wildlife would rather have a patchy mosaic of irregularity though. Quail for example like having those little islands of brushy refuge to fly and escape to……the little areas that maybe didn’t get set back as much by fire…..The same with grazing…..For wildlife I don’t think you want them to graze it all uniformly……I think you probably want the structure of a stand to be more complex and diverse than "uniformity".

Thanks! I don't have enough signal to watch it now, but I will. Still very skeptical it's a primary limiting factor on turkey numbers.

A possible problem I think you may run into just letting them do their own thing is that they may get semi-wild and hard to handle…..A solution to that though may be what I saw one farmer doing…..He had some kind of feed pellet that he would drop out of his side by side to get the herd to follow him…It may be worth doing something like that just to keep them more docile and used to human interactions. You could also use it to encourage them to follow you around to new burn areas or watering holes if they didn’t find them on their own.

In a lot of these situations that we have out here on the landscape right now, we’re starting out from the wrong structural arrangement of the understory and “flow” of the cycles to begin with……You’re looking for limiting factors of the wrong paradigm……

At the end of the day we’re talking about modifying and making some structural changes to improve “The Habitat”……..I think we can all appreciate the importance of habitat…..Maybe folks just arent envisioning the final picture of those changes yet and what all it impacts… ……I think if Gobbler can get one of these big quail plantations to implement this kind of management and paint that picture for someone to be able to just ride through and look at…..then it would really make it easier for someone to “get it”.

PCP……..There’s going to be a lot of little things that this modifies that most folks wont think about until after they see it having been put into practice…..Take for example, these videos recommending for you to disk during the dormant season to stimulate the growth of good brooding cover…..they show folks doing it in food plots……Imagine now though if we were able to do that across 100’s of acres instead of just a few food plots??.....That’s what the hooves of a big herd of grazers would do while moving around all winter long……Imagine the scale of the impact that could have on good brooding cover

This kinda leads into something that I think is going to be different for the quail plantation than what you see in most of the videos about this stuff…..Even though these folks in the videos are managing for a different paradigm with the “herbivory” included in the mix…..they are all still really managing for the cow first in all of them. They’re managing a stand with idea of applying uniformity to the grazing with the mindset of creating a maximized long term grazing cycle…..The wildlife is a happy side product for these folks…..

That’s going to be a little bit different than the guy who want to include herbivory to maximize wildlife production. Maximizing wildlife isnt going to worry about perfect uniform grazing and pumping out the most amount of cows we can produce……The healthy cows we have running around working as habitat managers are the happy side product in this scenario. I don’t really see anything out there much showing people approaching it from this perspective….I’m sure there are somee out there but just not putting out video content. I think Rusty Baker in LA is doing something close this in a good sized high fence

So if I’m seeing grass and forbs doing in recent burns it that good sign or bad sign?

That’s good but there’s deeper things to look at as well……It depends on the ratio, density, and diversity of those understory plants……..You want the right amount of broadleaf stuff compared to the right amount grass clumps……You want the broadleafs/legumes to be really diverse and all of it together creating the correct amount of density and “space” between plants…..There’s also a decomposition and mineralization process going on that’s driving your total productivity from the soil and soil life……You really need something like a grazing herd to stimulate that whole process with poop as well as just physically altering the understory structure……making it more complex and stirring up the seed bank…..I think they help create some of that proper plant spacing without it getting too thick while still pushing out a lot of good fertile plant growth……

I don’t think the roaming herd animals are coming back so now what?

Are you saying no more fire?

Also I see would that rarely two much of anything. I’ve called that sour soil for years after hearing a friend say that. Cedar glades come to mind where not much grows and what does is pretty slow going.

I get hat you’re saying I do. Lots of that comes from organic farming I dove off into. I used techniques in the early 2000s of cover cropping mentioned in a Rodale Institute book.

We probably have as many or more herding grazers on the landscape now as ever…..Just a matter of how they’re being used. Like I said, I think you could change the game over the course of time if some of these quail plantations started becoming demonstration properties…..All it would take is for them to show how much more productive they can be using a different style of management and it would create a snowball effect where other landowners started wanting to implement it as well…..Once you have all the recreational property owners wanting to manage their land with “herbivory” then maybe it spills over into what your typical cattle farmer is currently doing…..Maybe instead of feeding hay all winter you start having guys move their herd into recreational properties and so on….I could see it potentially modifying the typical way we raise cattle, especially in areas like the blackbelt where quail type land sits right next door to cattle farms.

As far as fire goes, this method still uses fire…….I think fire was is naturally supposed to be a little different than what we do now…..I think its supposed to be low intensity growing season burns for the most part without so much grass fuel…..Folks typically are looking to completely burn off the duff layer and I don’t think that’s what you really want to have happen. Fire is just supposed to burn off a bit of the excess that doesn’t get consumed by your grazers and browsers and help control woody vegetation. I think many of the natural burns occurred during periods of rainfall that dampened the duff layer and probably resulted in what many would think of as not being a good burn. That preserved your soil system from scorching though……Your herding grazers are what came around and stimulated the seed bank and duff layer like you’re wanting to have happen to get the plant response.

Thanks for the video; I enjoyed watching it, but didn't really need a "light bulb" moment to appreciate how good cows can be for turkeys. It was pretty common when I was growing up, though the forests weren't longleaf. I also went on some great dove shoots where hogs were turned on standing corn, but that's another story.

I would say don't let perfection become the enemy of good. There is no way in the world I could ever run cows on our land when I live 100 miles away. And I doubt seriously that any of the timber companies that are my neighbors would ever want cows either. And I don't think the bison are coming back. That doesn't mean we can't do things to produce poults..

This spot was burned a few weeks ago, but it already has a lot of green and the understory will provide decent cover for poults:



This 9 year old LL stand was burned 3 years ago and has plenty of good nesting cover. I saw a lone hen go into it this morning and suspect she is already laying somewhere in it:



The other side was burned last year and is getting open enough for some turkey usage:



Always need some early succession habitat like this:




And nothing feeds turkeys like chufas:




The jake my grandson killed yesterday was full of chufas, crimson clover, and arrowleaf clover; all things he was able to find in multiple fields on the place. We saw 3 different groups of jakes this weekend, and there's already been 3 turkeys killed off the place and the neighbors have also killed 3. It seems like what we are doing is working. I'm sure there's plenty of improvements that could be made, but I decided when I was a young man that one of my goals in life would be to never own a stinking cow to have to chase. So far I have been successful on that.

When I was at Auburn, I worked with a guy who fancied himself on organic farmer. He called the farming I did the "Toxic Method" and promised me that it couldn't sustain itself much longer. He was talking about tillage, chemical fertilizer, and herbicides. That was 50 years ago and so far he has been wrong.

If you can figure out a way to bring back free ranging bison, I will be all for it.

Very nice done there preacher