You know I’m not against farming in any way and understand we have to feed society…..To me though, farming and wildlife management are just two entirely different world’s with completely different variables, goals, and constraints………We are looking at it through two totally different lenses. The things that are so much of a concern for the farmer have no bearing on what is or isn’t a constraint for the wildlife manager……In fact, many of the goals of a farmer are in direct contradiction to the goals of a wildlife manager.

For example…..if you want things like turkey and quail to thrive then you need to produce thriving food sources for them……Critters like crickets and tiny snails don’t just exist alone in populations by themselves…..They live within a dynamic food web ……You dont JUST grow crickets to feed the turkey and quail, you have to grow the whole system…..and that is done through growing the richness of the soil and promoting plant diversity……not eradicating it……If you want to produce critters like crickets and tiny snails then you have to create the habitat for them to exist in. That concept applies to below ground as well as above and to the habitat for more critters than just the deer and turkey. I think for the most part we focus solely on what is happening above ground and forget about what is happening below even though the latter is likely the more important. There aint a whole lot for a turkey to go scratching after in a biological desert.

In the end you really should be focused on growing the “whole” ecosystem shebang if you want to grow the critters within it. Be able to see the whole circle and how to grow it ALL instead of becoming so fixated on one or two things that you get tunnel vision. It’s very obvious to see just how much we have lost sight of the bigger cycles when we have these discussions about native plants……Very, very few people seem to recognize that any of them have a purpose except for maybe three or four that they cherry pick and deem as “good” simply because deer eat them……. That's tunnel vision.