Don’t Blink

We started this project in 2019, and here we are in 2023 still working on it little by little in the grand scheme of things. We’re observing, waiting, doing, and observing again. Each step of the way we see something new, like a patch of wildflowers out of nowhere, the seeds or roots waiting patiently for the day scrubby trees would give way and unveil the sun. The day fire would remove the duff layer, warming the soil, recycling and adding a certain suite of nutrients, waking the seed to its environment from days gone by.

The natural world God created has so much wonder, and so much to learn from, and what seems like, at times, so little time to do it in. But God sees fit to create and re-create on a time table not ours. Some things, so beautiful and intricate seem to take unmoving time to develop, such as the successional trend of a forest, or mineral formations in a cave. Other things of great splendor come and go in the blink of an eye such as the beauty and uniqueness of each snowflake, God sees fit to create millions in one event, just to melt and vanish in a few days, all to do it over and over again.

Who knows the mind of God in all this. All we can do is study, be patient, and don’t rush past the things He wants to teach us in the twists and patterns of the natural world. There is great wealth here, but not always the kind you will see in a quarterly report.
Forestry requires a lot of patience, but don’t blink.

January 27, 2021January 27, 2021

Observations of snow, snow-clothes, wildlife, and how God made the world.

If you grew up in a region that had snow, you might remember a few things as I do. Snow is cold, and the air that helps form it is COLD! Brisk wind blowing across my face made my cheeks cold and often numb. I remember feeling vulnerable at times, imagining life without the clothes provided for me, and thankful that they were. If you had as much snow as I remember, I often made tunnels and such in the snow. One thing I remember very well about tunneling in the snow, was just how warm it was in there, and how wonderfully quiet and serine the earth was around me. I loved it! I understood the result as a child, but didn’t understand the science behind it, but I experienced clearly that snow was a good insulator as long as the snow wasn’t touching my skin. The snow only aided in keeping me warm if I had good clothes on.

The earth is similar in this way, in that the earth surface can keep warmer, and become more inhabitable if it has “good clothes” ( Matt 6:28-29 ) on between it and the snow, and the COLD air above it. The better the clothes, the more hospitable the ground is for important soil biology and the wildlife that make their living at ground level (rabbits, quail, etc.)
The snow is nothing to fear when you have good clothes ( Prov 31:20-21 ).

Observe the difference in this picture (1/27/21) and note that where you can see plenty of brown above the snow in the Native Warm Season Grass field, there is a network of void space in and under the canopy of grass bunches. In the food plot which is primarily clover this year (not designed for cover) the snow is in close proximity to the soil surface and not a place for small game and wildlife to find refuge and warmth.

Consider putting some clothes on your open land, some good clothes. Your land and the wildlife that use it will benefit.

This video from 2019 shows when the food plot had a good stand of cold hardy brassicas in it and still provided food in winter, but as it transitioned and clover became the primary food source, so went the deep winter food. BUT, the video showcases the voids under the snow, the winter clothing if you will.

January 15, 2021January 15, 2021

More Habitat Diversity = More Wildlife

These past few weeks we have been starting to implement a forest management plan that I developed for a landowner last year. His goals were to improve the timber and improve deer and turkey habitat. WE CAN HELP!

He started off with a several hundred acre block of trees that were in varying degree of health and quality depending on topography and past land use. We took detailed inventory of the whole property and then broke up the land on paper planning to:

Increase Forest Health and productivity where good growth could be supported by identifying timber stands and performing a combination of TSI and Crop Tree Release on the stands to improve timber growth and wildlife habitat.
Increase Wildlife Habitat in areas where forest productivity is poor by managing them as Open Woodlands by thinning them to let light to the woodland floor, and then implementing Prescribed Fire to stimulate and increase green vegetation and tender woody sprouts.
Increase Habitat Edge by creating habitat transitions between certain management stands using Edge Feathering to increase habitat diversity.
Increase Wildlife Food Production and Water Availability with food plots and strategically placed water sources

Today, I want to focus on what TSI and Edge Feathering looks like on the ground.

In ecology, Edge Effects are changes in community structures that occur at the boundary of two or more habitats.

In this segment of the overall plan map for the property you will see how the habitat was laid out with forest stands, edge feathering in red, food plots in green, water holes in blue, and open woodland/prescribed fire stands in orange. **Photo Direction** is for orienting the edge feathering photos.

In this photo you see how we make the transition from a continuous block of trees into 3 distinct but very complimentary habitat types. To the left is the boundary between forest stand 17 and 18 marked by the reference tree pointed by the red arrow. Stand 16 to the right of the installed fireline trail (orange line) will become an Open Woodland habitat.

In this photo you see the edge feathering completed, and creates a distinct habitat type and creates a transition between the Forest Habitat to the far left (see pic below) and the future Open Woodland habitat to the right.

This picture is what TSI looks like in stand 18, where we cut poorly formed, poorly growing, or undesirable species to make room for good quality trees to grow to their maximum potential. This makes for a productive healthy forest and good wildlife habitat.

January 31, 2019January 31, 2019

QDMA article about foresters, hits the nail on the head!

There are foresters primarily concerned with the noble goal of helping grow the highest quality trees and the most board feet for the landowner and the wood products marketplace.
While that may be important to many landowners, in my experience, its either a close or distant second to managing their land for deer and wildlife habitat.

Many landowners want to actually maximize opportunity and enjoy their land while they have it, while doing the right thing.

Us foresters that understand these dreams and actually participate ourselves, understand our responsibility is to actually listen and understand what landowners want and help them achieve those dreams in a responsible way.

You want a forester that understands diverse habitats, how they can work for you, and carries many tools in the tool box to help you shape the land accordingly.

A forester that only carries a silvicultural-hammer looks only for a nail to hit or worse, leaving the landowner under-served and unsatisfied.

The Deer Hunter’s Guide to Finding a Forester

Matt Ross hits the nail on the head!

November 29, 2018January 31, 2019

Timber Stand Improvement (TSI) Pays in more ways that one! (new study shows)

Good forest management involving proper timber harvest and TSI not only benefits you, but also benefits the wildlife that use your forest. Let me briefly highlight for you a few of those benefits, and share a new study from the MSU Deer Lab that supports our observations:

Increases health and productivity. Forests that are thinned so that the best trees are maximizing the available growing space are healthier and grow to their full potential. Watch this short video from a previous post and see it in action as I explain the process!
Increases advance regeneration. TSI removes or sets back undesirable trees in the forest to make room for oak seedlings to sprout and gather enough sunlight to stay alive. This banking of an adequate amount of advance regeneration is important for when a tree blows down or needs to be harvested, the growing space will be occupied by a desirable oak tree. (See a previous post for further explanation)
Increases browse for deer and cover for wildlife. Most trees that are cut during a TSI operation will re-sprout with a flush of new tender shoots that are desirable browse for deer. The downed trees provide immediate cover for wildlife, and the new found sunlight on the forest floor initiates growth of desirable herbaceous plants. (see a good example here!)
September White Oak acorns are an important wildlife food.
Increases mast (acorn) production. Proper thinning of forests increases health and growth of crop trees. If a healthy oak tree has a opportunity to expand its crown it will grow more terminal buds . Consequently, the flowers that grow the acorns start from these buds, and the leaves and the twigs that support them come from these buds. The more buds the more acorns, and the more buds the more leaves, and the more leaves the more growth (see #1).

A new study from the Mississippi State University Deer Lab puts some actual numbers to our observations showing that crown release thinning of white oak trees increased acorn production between 47% and 65%. That is a significant increase! An increase like that will certainly be noticed by deer and turkey in your neck of the woods after proper thinning is done.

September 25, 2018

Fall is here!

Sometime, usually in early September, the first noticeable “cold” front of the year bringing a slight chill to the air and the beginning of the end of summer. Its hard to describe how it approaches and even harder to predict the exact moment it sneaks up on me, but it always does.

I don’t think its merely a temperature change, but also the combination of associated smells and feelings that pave the way. None the less, thoughts and anticipations of hunting season and all the trimmings sneak their way in. Trimmings? Yes, thoughts of even cooler frosty mornings, quieter evenings in a tree stand, longer views through the woods, chili & cornbread suppers, pumpkin pie and another log on the fire start to sound wonderful at the end of a busy hot summer.

Hopefully you’ve spent a few of the last hot summer days preparing, doing habitat work and planting your fall food plots.

Now is the time to take an easy walk, surveying your work, dreaming of that big buck, and your magic moment.

Join me as I survey habitat, my labor of love on the first day of Autumn.

July 24, 2018

We work hard to read the land for You

Your goals and objectives for your land are important.

Understanding the past helps us determine the strategy to shape the future.

A proper course of action is partly dependent on land use history (good or bad) and it’s influence on natural systems and processes.

When we complete a management plan for your property, we don’t just take a programmatic cookie cutter approach to planning, we pay close attention to your desires and your dreams for your land. We do our best to read the land to suggest the best stewardship options to guide you towards achieving your goals and objectives.

Listen as I discuss landowner objectives, investigate clues from the past, observe present condition, and our approach to the planning process as the first step to achieving goals.

July 18, 2018July 18, 2018

Old trees arn’t always big! (maximizing growing space)

I’ve heard the way to manage timber is to “cut the big old trees and leave the small young trees to grow into big old trees and then do it all over again in about 10 to 20 years or so”.

That method of tending the forest sounds intuitive enough and quite good and reasonable, but unfortunately in our oak and pine forest systems, its just not that simple, and quite frankly, slowly degrades forest production and quality.

In a generally even aged forest (for which most of the central hardwood forest is comprised) its important to understand first, how these 4 concepts below interact:

How trees grow
Shade tolerance
How trees interact with each other
Tree age

How trees grow – Trees are like factories, where production is dependent on how many workers (leaves) can gather sunlight, convert carbon, and store it in the warehouse (trunk or stem) as wood.

Shade tolerance – Not all trees respond to light and shade the same way throughout their lifespan.

How trees interact with each other – If a tree doesn’t have enough light it will either not grow at all and die, or it will grow slowly and with poor form.

Tree age – Certain species of trees will only live to a certain age range, and must interact with other trees to gain a competitive advantage to become a large productive tree.

If two or more trees start as seedlings with plenty of light, generally a few of those trees gain advantages by either genetic superiority or a localized patch of good soil to get started. Once those few trees gain the advantage, the advantage carries with them through most of their growth and life.

More sunlight means more workers (leaves) to invest in, and therefore bigger roots, more branches to support more leaves, more height, more sunlight to catch, and the process gains traction from there into a big dominant tree.

The trees that don’t gain the competitive advantage early, fall further and further behind and go into survival mode, which means they only invest in enough leaves and growth for the limited light it receives under the shadow of the bigger trees.

For these suppressed trees, this means less branches, smaller root systems, and ultimately a smaller stem. These trees do this and ride it out until they don’t get enough sunlight at all and die, or until they reach the end of their lifespan (maturity) and then die. Often times, these suppressed trees are mistaken for younger trees, and its assumed that if given room to grow, they will grow into a big old tree.

Lets look at a live example:

Note: This vertical panoramic picture exaggerates how bent over the tree looks. Its actually a fairly straight tree.

If a black oak tree can only live 90 – 100 or so years on a fair growing site, then both of these trees only have 10 to 20 years left to occupy the growing space.

There are many factors to discuss here, and many of them to long winded for a blog post, as if this post wasn’t already long winded enough. But a few take home points from all this information would be:

Don’t assume a small tree is a young tree, and it will grow big if you cut the big tree next to it. Often times, it wont!
Evaluate which trees to cut in a stand based on their ability to provide the most return and value for you and wildlife in that limited growing space for the long haul.
In an oak forest, don’t let suppressed trees get to old or die before they are cut. Oak trees can sprout from a cut stump using the existing root system and will contribute as a future tree in the forest. If a tree dies, the root system dies with it. Use that process to your advantage.
Use a trained forester with experience to help you manage your timber. It pays now and into the future!

June 21, 2018June 21, 2018

Deer Foraging Habits

Are they Habits?

When it comes to deer, and their foraging preferences, I believe there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. I suspect, like many things, we know less than we think we know. Hopefully, with some humility and a close look at creation at work, we will learn more.

For wildlife management, food plots are good and meet a specific need, but one thing I’ve learned is it doesn’t replace habitat management with a focus on diversity. Deer, like many browsers, grazers, and other foraging animals, respond to many different plants at many different stages of maturity and at different times of the year depending on dietary needs. I think they have a built in sense for this. I believe that when certain minerals in their body are lacking, they adjust, targeting certain plants at different times to meet that need. They also get that when certain plants are at different stages, they just plain taste better.

The picture below is of a compassplant on our farm that has just been shredded apart by a deer. Why? I don’t know, but I have a hunch there was a specific dietary need that was met by this plant at that specific time. I think the takeaway message is this:

When managing for deer, wildlife in general, or even livestock –

Diversity is good!

Compassplant browsed by deer in mid June.

May 31, 2018

Woodland Prescribed Fire to Improve Wildlife Habitat

Prescribed Fire can be used in the Ozarks and all across the south and central hardwoods region to naturaly influence plant mix and arangement in a way that meets your goals for your property, whether it be to increase or improve wildlife habitat, increase or improve forest regeneration, or improve grasslands for livestock.

Here we’ve conducted a prescribed burn for a landowner that is motivated and excited about managing his property for wildlife. Working with landowners that are passionate about management and witnessing them experience the results and sharing in that excitement is one of the best parts of what we do.

Post burn picture the landowner sent me this past week. He went from leaf litter to an increase in green herbaceous vegetation benefitting deer, turkey, and other wildlife.