Prescribed burning

[sportrep]

I hunted South Georgia last weekend. On my drive home I noticed virtually every pine plantation was prescribed burned. The practice isn't followed here anywhere close to down there. Anyone have any idea why?

[fountain]

Down here in ga, it's usually to clean them up for aesthetics, to help promote new growth for wildlife and provide cover/nesting for quail and turkeys.
If it was longleaf pine, they love fire. Fire promotes their growth in the early years of their life. It will also clean them up underneath and make it easier to get in there and spray and set up to rake the straw.

The wildlife will love a burned area. It's always odd to me, that all the understory pine burns I've done, I rarely have ever killed a gobbler in the black area. Most everyone else does, just not me!

[Shellwaster]

Down here in ga, it's usually to clean them up for aesthetics, to help promote new growth for wildlife and provide cover/nesting for quail and turkeys.
If it was longleaf pine, they love fire. Fire promotes their growth in the early years of their life. It will also clean them up underneath and make it easier to get in there and spray and set up to rake the straw.

The wildlife will love a burned area. It's always odd to me, that all the understory pine burns I've done, I rarely have ever killed a gobbler in the black area. Most everyone else does, just not me!

Great explanation. And I'm with regarding not killing a bird in fresh burn area, but have witnessed it.

In my younger days I hunted a WMA in south west GA that, due to weather, was delayed on it's rotational burn and when I got there to the area I planned to hunt it was still smoldering in areas. I was concerned but others in my group didn't mind a bit, they advised me just make sure where I sit wasn't red. Long story short the birds where in there and shortly after fly down one of them took a truck ride back to camp with a buddy of mine. The bird and all of us were filthy with black ash. I'd do it again in a heart beat.

[fountain]

One of them main reasons for a burn, especially a somewhat late winter/early spring burn is to kill the hardwood out of the stand. We will burn longleaf all the way into early summer to promote native grass growth as well. Killing the competing hardwoods out could be the #1 reason for the burns

[sportrep]

Those are all great reasons that I had always heard. The largest landowner here (Gulf States Paper Company) used be on a two year rotation, but they quit for some reason. Now all of their lease land is pine of all sizes with thicket underneath. You can hunt roads and food plots and that's about it. I just wondered if there was new information out there that made them change their practice concerning burning. Bad thing is, whatever Gulf States does everyone else follows. No one seems to be prescribed burning any more. Thanks for the well informed replies.

[Cane Cutter]

Love hunting those burns!

[GLS]

Over the decades there has been a change of practice regarding burning. At one time, folks burned during the dead of winter. Now there seems to be a shift to whenever the hardwoods begin emergence and break dormancy which does a better job of eliminating the nuisance sweet gum and other trash woods. The turkeys flock to burned areas and I've hunted them in areas still smoldering from recent burns.

[Johndoe]

Problem with the burning is the reasons are ecological unsound. The claim is habitat enhancement. While they claim it helps the wildlife, it kills the habitat native animals need. Read about wiregrass. They burn at the wrong times. Gopher tortoises, they say it helps them yet it kills oaks, a part of their natural habitat. They say it's good for longleaf pine and for red cockaded woodpecker yet they clean around those trees to prevent the fire around it. Killing the oaks is bad for deer, turkeys and many other species.

[GLS]

John, one landowner I know has been advised by a game management consultant to get rid of the wiregrass if he wants better numbers of wild quail and to replace it with better grasses. As for raking around woodpecker trees in longleaf forests, that's to prevent the running sap from catching on fire burning up the nests. Cockaded woodpeckers cause a heavy flow of pine sap when they make a nesting cavity. This sap deters rat snakes from climbing the trunk. Somehow it irritates the belly skin of the snakes and when they contact the sap, they fall off the trunk like they were tased. I've seen videos of this phenomenon.

[evanslimbhanger]

i'm not the one who makes the decisions about doing a burn (when, why and how much) on our land. all i can tell you is that we burned 700 acres in february and we are choked down with turkeys this season. must have pulled birds from across the river b/c it has never been this good. strut sign from one end of the property to the other. but yea, we're in south georgia and it is very common here with all the pine plantations.

[crenshawco]

I've never seen a burn do anything but good for turkey numbers. Turkeys love burns

[gut_pile]

Problem with the burning is the reasons are ecological unsound. The claim is habitat enhancement. While they claim it helps the wildlife, it kills the habitat native animals need. Read about wiregrass. They burn at the wrong times. Gopher tortoises, they say it helps them yet it kills oaks, a part of their natural habitat. They say it's good for longleaf pine and for red cockaded woodpecker yet they clean around those trees to prevent the fire around it. Killing the oaks is bad for deer, turkeys and many other species.

This could not be further from the truth. Fire, in many of the areas where longleaf used to grow naturally (the same areas where gopher tortoises and cockaded woodpecker's used to flourish), would burn for years at a time. Fire is natural, and one of the best tools for habitat management and promoting new growth to native plant species.

[Jaybird]

Nothing better than pulling into my favorite honey hole in Kansas, and finding out they burned it 2 days before I got there for the opening. The ground was still smoking, and small trees still burning. Of course every Bird had flew to the Private next door. Man, I was ticked. Control burn right before hunting season. Really?

[Johndoe]

Problem with the burning is the reasons are ecological unsound. The claim is habitat enhancement. While they claim it helps the wildlife, it kills the habitat native animals need. Read about wiregrass. They burn at the wrong times. Gopher tortoises, they say it helps them yet it kills oaks, a part of their natural habitat. They say it's good for longleaf pine and for red cockaded woodpecker yet they clean around those trees to prevent the fire around it. Killing the oaks is bad for deer, turkeys and many other species.

This could not be further from the truth. Fire, in many of the areas where longleaf used to grow naturally (the same areas where gopher tortoises and cockaded woodpecker's used to flourish), would burn for years at a time. Fire is natural, and one of the best tools for habitat management and promoting new growth to native plant species.

Yes fire is natural however, prescribed burn is not natural. If you subscribe to the crap the federal government and the forestry service spews every year then we are just misinformed. If you will read articles, encyclopedia information on natural habitats in ranges of trees and plants and animals without reading the government agenda you will see that they do not burn at the same time as naturally occurring wildfires. They burn much more often than naturally occurring wildfires and it damages naturally occurring plant and animal species.
Gil is right about the reason they clear around the woodpecker trees. But it isn't natural.
Here, they girdle oak trees and say it's not native to the area and it helps indigo snakes and gopher tortoise. However if you read about natural habitats of these animals and natural range of these trees you see the conflict. They mold it into their agenda.
They say they want to get it back to nature before man, like when the Indians did prescribed burns. At what point did Indians cease to be man?
They want to re-establish wiregrass savannah here in apalachicola national forest. However they burn at the wrong time and the natural southern boundary of wiregrass is I10 yet they continue to do it.

[GLS]

There's a special sand ridge that parallels the flood plain of a freshwater river a few miles upstream from the lowcountry. I first hunted it forty years ago when I hunted (unsuccessfully) a gobbler at the peak of dogwoods blossoming around Easter. It was spectacular. My buddies and I named the place Easter Ridge. Others call it "Dogwood Ridge". Mixed among the dogwoods and small oaks were, and still are, a scattering of majestic old-growth longleafs in the wiregrass. When the blossoms were in full bloom, it looked like snow falling in the pines. The land is on property managed by the Corps of Engineers.
I digress. Sixteen years ago I bought this box turtle shell slate caller and strikers tipped with carved antler bases. The carvings are of dogwood blossoms. I bought a half dozen more and gave them to friends. I bought them off Ebay from Turkey Bob. I told him about the significance of the carved blossoms to me and told him the story about Easter Ridge. I never knew his real name. A few years later, a buddy of his sent me an email about Turkey Bob being killed in a motorcycle accident and that he told him the story of Easter Ridge and how much I appreciated his strikers.
Let me pull this digression out of the ditch and get back to Easter Ridge. Well, someone in timber management got the bright idea that the pines would do better without competition of non-cash timber and the oaks and dogwoods were targeted.
The oaks and dogwoods were girded and are now long gone. All that is left are the standing hardwood tree skeletons, memories of the way it was and pines. Oh, the turkeys are still around, but it has never been the same since the dogwoods were marked for extinction.

[fountain]

John is right. Typically the time most want to burn under the big and older longleaf for Wiregrass is prime nesting time. We have found several nests over the years doing this. I have tried to explain to no avail.

For those that mentioned that burning has gone to the wayside, that's a bad thing. Rotational burns help understory growth. S GA is a prime example. Not burning is what creates the huge fires. If it were burned on a planned schedule, they may not be as bad and do the damage they do. It is predicted with current weather that we will likely see a bad fire season here...and I sure hope they are wrong.

[GLS]

Here's a fine video on the history of the longleaf forest.
https://vimeo.com/137612421

[GLS]

And another:
http://video.gpb.org/video/2365587919/

[poorcountrypreacher]

I've been burning about 100 acres a year on my farm here in AL for the past 11 years. It's on a rotation so that the pine forest gets burned every 3 years, and turkeys love it the season after the burn. It then provides excellent nesting habitat in year 3 after the burn. I don't usually burn the hardwood areas, but have burned a couple of them that were just too thick. You must use different techniques when you burn the hardwood.

Most of the land I burn is planted loblolly pine. That is not the native species, but it's what I have so I work with it. I have converted 80 acres to the native longleaf, but next winter will be the first burn on them. I hope to live long enough to see them growing tall, and also to see all the pine stands converted to longleaf.

Here's a pic of what it looked like in February. It's now quite green under the pines. My son in law and I have killed 6 gobblers this season in and around the 100 acres burned in February. I think a prescribed burn is the best practice available for improving turkey habitat. Good hunting to all.

[sasquatch]

I've been burning about 100 acres a year on my farm here in AL for the past 11 years. It's on a rotation so that the pine forest gets burned every 3 years, and turkeys love it the season after the burn. It then provides excellent nesting habitat in year 3 after the burn. I don't usually burn the hardwood areas, but have burned a couple of them that were just too thick. You must use different techniques when you burn the hardwood.

Most of the land I burn is planted loblolly pine. That is not the native species, but it's what I have so I work with it. I have converted 80 acres to the native longleaf, but next winter will be the first burn on them. I hope to live long enough to see them growing tall, and also to see all the pine stands converted to longleaf.

Here's a pic of what it looked like in February. It's now quite green under the pines. My son in law and I have killed 6 gobblers this season in and around the 100 acres burned in February. I think a prescribed burn is the best practice available for improving turkey habitat. Good hunting to all.

The problem with the forest around me isn't the burning, they do plenty of it, the problem is they don't do it in February, they are just getting started with the burns now. When the birds are nesting!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk