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.

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 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!

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.

Results from woodland burn spring 2018 (May 28, 2018)

March 23, 2018April 1, 2018

Prescribed Firing Technique and Land Management Objectives

Among many, there are 3 major atmospheric factors that influence fire behavior on a proposed prescribed fire.

Relative Humidity
Temperature
Wind

These 3 primary factors interact with each other at different rates influencing the ability of fuel on the ground to burn, depending on it’s type, size, and arrangement.

Couple these things with geographic factors such as slope (how steep the ground is), and aspect (which direction the slope is facing) and you start to build a recipe for how fire will behave on any given day.

This leads to one of the few things a burner can do to influence fire behavior to gain the best results. A good burner combines the knowledge of all influencing factors and applies the appropriate firing technique to best achieve the results desired from the burn.

Firing technique is applying the fire to the ground in such a way that the fire moves with or against the conditions that influence its behavior. Fire behavior with be different burning downhill and against the wind than burning uphill with the wind.

See how I use a backing fire technique coupled with the weather, fuel, and topography to achieve my objective with the burn.

October 20, 2017

“Resto-mod” part 2, Cover Crops to the Rescue

Its been 6 months since we burned the fescue field.

Several weeks later after the fescue and cool season plants came up nice and tall and green and pretty, we sprayed it with glyphosate to kill it all. Ouch, that kinda hurts for the grass folks. Take a deep breath and know that were moving forward, on to something better.

Since then, we’ve had a record rain event in the spring which prevented plan A (planting a summer cover crop for profit), and then dry weather late in the year. Oh well, I guess we move on and learn as a good farmer does.

On the bright side, it gave us a perfect opportunity to control some of the Johnsongrass that lifted it’s head at times through the summer. I didn’t much like not having an abundance of growing plants on the soil through the summer to keep what soil biology we had active, but sometimes you just have to grin and bear it.

So, here we are on August 18th, without delay, drilling our fall cover crops.

Why do we do this? Let me tell you what we’ve learned:

Cover Crops prevent soil erosion by holding soil in place and providing armor
Cover Crops provide excellent wildlife food
Cover Crops that grow robust canopies provide weed control
Cover Crops particularly the radishes and turnips are a bio-fumigant and limit pests

We’ve also observed a few added benefits over the years that are particularly applicable to this project.

Cover Crops, our winter kill mix provides a good decomposing mulch cover in the spring that is easily planted into with a no-till native grass drill.
Cover Crops, seem to provide a cycle-breaking / actively growing environment in the soil that promotes and kick starts healthy biological processes that had been inhibited by fescue endophyte.

Winter Kill cover crop mix planted in August 2017 in preparation for a Native Warm Season Grass establishment.

March 2, 2017March 2, 2017

Objective Driven Burning

The Right Tool for the Job

Prescribed fire should always be done with a specific goal in mind. It should be looked at as another tool in your tool box that can be pulled out and used to accomplish a specific purpose. Can you identify some of the goals mentioned in this video?
Prescribed fire is a tool that when not used under the right conditions can cause a lot more damage and harm to your resources than not. An example would be: burning way to hot and damaging or destroying timber, or fire that escapes your control and damages your neighbors property.
Notice the short flame length and slow progress of this fire. The speed, and intensity of this fire is a result of the proper conditions we chose to burn under. See the discussion about preparation ahead of time here.

February 24, 2017March 2, 2017

Prepare ahead of time for fire

Plan ahead for Prescribed Fire

Having a well planned and well prepared fire line well ahead of the burn can make your burn day anxiety level much more bearable. There are few things worse than rushing to beat the clock to try and get a fire line in and do a prescribed burn while conditions are right. Burn windows (conditions favorable for a burn that meets your objectives) can come and go pretty quick. Plan ahead of time to have a good fire line installed so that the day of the burn, all it takes is a quick brush up and your ready to go.

This fire line was installed with a dozer the later part of the summer before this spring burn, and a quick once over with a good backpack blower is all that is needed to be ready. See the fire in action later in the evening right here.

January 7, 2017January 7, 2017

Cover Plots Revisited: A patch of green during lean times

As I write, I look out my window. Its that time in the winter evening where everything in the cold and still landscape contrasts like a black and white photograph. I can see far off, the silhouette of several deer against the snow, gathered to eat in the cover plot. This late season nutrition is very helpful, helping does maintain good body condition into the heart of the cold winter.

Good body condition is important for does during gestation. Good body condition can be the difference between singles or twins come spring. Good food supply gives those bucks a chance to regain some of their strength and health after the wear and tear of the rut. This year was a poor acorn crop in my neck of the woods, and the bucks dropped antlers early. So, a good alternative food source is extra helpful during the lean times. Good body condition equals a healthy herd and therefore happy hunters in the future.