 Hi, I'm Norm Haley, Natural Resources Management Agent with Alabama Extension and we're back on site for our fourth and final installment of the Old Field Management Series for Wildlife and we're here for the best part, essentially coming back in and seeing how the site responded to the treatments that we'd applied in November of 2020 when we did our glyphosate application to kill out the fescue, the perennial cool season grass that was dominating this old field pasture and then also in April 2020 or I'm sorry 2021 when we come in and conducted a prescribed burn to get rid of that fat layer and really allow that seed bank to respond and hopefully receive the response that we have behind us in native vegetation that's beneficial to both white-tailed deer and wild turkey. That's primarily what this demonstration is managing towards and the important part of coming in and assessing the site is you want to make sure that the plants that have responded are indeed going to serve to provide that forage, that browse, the bedding cover, the nesting cover, the brooding cover for those species that the deer and turkey in this case. So what that takes is coming back in on site having a walk throughout the majority of the field and beginning to identify the species that are indeed beneficial and also maybe some of those that might be a management issue in terms of eradicating to allow something else to come back in its place. There's really no better way to do that than to have several keys with you at that time or be willing to gather up samples and have them to come back to the extension office or back to the house to where you're able to key those plants out or identify them and match them up to the pictures that they that they match. So some texts that I like are forest plants of the southeast in their wildlife uses that's by Miller and Miller. I've got another one here that's titled Weeds of the South that's by Bryson and D. Felice and then there's also a text out there for wildlife food plots and early successional plants by Dr. Harper at University of Tennessee. This is a great text not just for the early successional plant identification that we have here but also for food plots. So this is kind of a double a purpose this one's serving but we go through and we gather up plants and the ones we know offhand that's great the ones we don't important that we key those early off. You know we're here just five months past that prescribed burn so we have a really good chance to come back in and knock some of this vegetation out before before the cool season sets in. Ideally if you can come back throughout the season check on it periodically make sure that the plants we have responding are beneficial that's great the sooner we can control them the better ideally before they go to seed. Of course if they go to seed that's going to be some more follow-up that you'll have to do from season in and season out and when we talk about control we're not talking about coming in and mowing spots and mechanically taking care of this vegetation that way you can see I'm standing in a what's soon to be a fire break here of cool season plantings that being red clover white clover and also some oats or wheat that will give us a good green fire break to go on but when you mow this vegetation like this it's going to favor a lot of your non-natives it's going to favor your carpet grasses and that's not going to benefit wildlife of course unless you come back and plant it like I just described. So we're actually talking about coming back in and just spot spraying we're not doing large broadcast applications on this field we're coming back in with glyphosate and good surfactant in most cases and spraying out and then allowing something else to come back and I usually recommend glyphosate applications for two reasons one is a broad spectrum herbicide it takes care of a lot of our plants it's not magic we still need to make sure we identify what we're trying to control but it also allows for the forb to respond primarily in these old fields for deer and turkey we're not looking for more than about 30% grass coverage so if we would come in with a forb selective herbicide it's going to kill all the forbs in the area and then allow for the grasses to respond if we spray a broad spectrum herbicide like glyphosate neither advantage is given towards grass or forbs it kills indiscriminately to where we're able to have something potentially better seed into that spot until we get something that we want in return so just in this spot right on the edge of the field we can identify a lot of beneficial species we've got goldenrod tritons for purple top grass blue miss flower our native warm season bunch grasses we've got blue stem in the field and also broom sedge we have in the back there some bone set thorough wart and these tall back taller flowering forbs back here are known as burn weed and just right off the bat those are all beneficial plants for both deer and turkey in terms of brows in terms of cover in terms of seed production shade bedding nesting this is what you want to see respond and we've been very fortunate on this site to have such a good response in just that first season of management so here you're really able to see the structure and cover that old field or early successional management can provide a deer or turkey in this case you know when we talk about turkey management you're looking at the limiting factors on a lot of properties in alabama being nesting and then also brooding cover this is nesting and brooding cover oftentimes you do like to see a shrub component in there we do have some other shrubs throughout the field we have american beauty berry we have winged elm we have clumps of some sweet gum that have come back that are still a bit shrubby those are providing that in some cases but a turkey a turkey hen is perfectly comfortable nesting to the back of some of this burn weed next to some of these thicker clumps of golden rod things along those lines but you're looking for essentially that 18 to 36 inch cover for that nesting in that in that well for that wild turkey polts will do great in here there's an open enough structure they can bug around it's hard to sit here and listen and not hear a pollinator or an insect buzzing and making noise and i'm sure you can pick that up in the camera as well so there's a lot of protein being produced in here for those brooding turkeys and uh and just lots of opportunity and edge and and mobility they have is that as they navigate this uh this structure and this cover this vegetation and what's so important about that size that 36 inch is that it allows some cover and some escape from predators particularly avian predators as a hawk or a barred owl flies over a turkey polk and very quickly escape into some of this thicker vegetation does very well for their survival let's talk about white-tailed deer now white-tailed deer do very well in multiple successional uh habitat types and this or vegetation types and this is certainly one of those this first year return on a vegetation after that burn does provide a lot of good browse there are lots of plants in here ragweed um a lot of the golden rod mares tail that's in here that is nipped on and been being fed on by white-tailed deer we've got partridge pea throughout that's also providing um some uh seed production for wild turkeys as does a lot of the grass species that we have in here um burn weed does that as well some of the bone sets and uh miss flowers things along those lines lots of flowering plants lots of seed production as well but back to the deer again uh it does provide great uh bedding cover for adults they can get in here and take a rest maybe not in the middle of the day when the heat is like this particularly without a really strong shrub component like we have but it's a great place for a deer to stash that fawn great fawning cover in here uh this is a this is a area they're going to spend a lot of time in particularly um throughout the throughout the growing season lots of good fresh vegetation in here as we reset this every one to three years it will provide that same fawning uh and and and and browse that those white-tailed deer so often need if we let it go a little bit longer we've got the option to uh provide a bit more bedding long-term holding cover that three to six year rotation will provide that and even further on down if you do a six to six to nine year it can get can get difficult to burn reset at that point but it does allow that really thick heavy holding cover that also lots of properties lack after that though you may have some trouble coming back in removing that woody vegetation but there's ways to get around that as well but this is essentially the cover and the structure that you want when you talk about uh the nesting and brooding cover for turkeys and a lot of that uh forage and nutrition uh for your white-tailed deer and as well as your fawning cover so here you can see as we walk through the field just how much structure there is cover for the wildlife we've mentioned deer and turkey and then also just how it defers you know we can walk through very thick stands of goldenrod like we have here and then come into more open areas where you've got some bone set and you've got some broom sedge the burn weed poking up so you can see the the field varies quite a bit as you walk through it so it gives a lot of edge if you will a lot of different vegetation types covers that not just deer and turkey but lots of other wildlife will benefit from lots of cottontail rabbits will make use of this all types of non-game uh songbirds um small mammals all different types of populations will make use out of these uh old field management sites this early successional vegetation and you can see that with that varying cover also comes shade thermal covers a big part of this management um as a as the sun moves throughout the day that deer fawn doesn't have to go very far to stay cool uh stay concealed concealed uh protected from predation um you can see we've got some paths and you may not be able to see but we've got some paths that are developing through here where we've got some deer traffic and in just a short amount of time but you can see how it's patchy and that's fine we're not trying to do a crop here we want a lot of different variability a lot of a lot of variability in the plants structure cover patchiness is fine patchy burns are okay you don't have to manage this in the same mentality that you would for a crop field here's another species that we've got a fight in here coffee coffee weed coffee pod or sickle pod rather some folks will know it as that's when we have to control so as you walk through here you can see where if you walk with just a backpack sprayer you can grid the field back and forth uh you can jump on the side by side the atv and go through and look and spot spray but this field has responded so nicely there's very little non-beneficial plants in here and if uh you know you're somewhat lucky this will be the case all it was really ever put on this hillside was fescue we killed that off uh early last winter and now we're left with just a tremendous old field for a deer in turkey great habitat enhancement sometimes you'll have some problems sometimes you'll face some species that are really problematic sometimes you'll control one species for example maybe the fescue like we did here but then what responds is warm season perennial grasses like bermuda grass behia grass if you're further south in the state things like that so then you'll have to spray again until just like we mentioned you get something that you'd like to have and then sometimes you might have another issue respond on my own personal side I had a lot of buckhorn buckthorn uh I'm sorry buckhorn plantain and crabgrass come back so I'm on my third spray and I wasn't this fortunate to have fortunate to have such a nice response right off the bat but with a little bit of plant ID a little bit of herbicide knowledge and some prescribed fire um you can really manage some fantastic vegetation types in early successional areas you can see to the bottom here on the gram farm and nature center where this demonstration is located we have a working cattle farm so this is really a good um habitat vegetation type that uh you know is lacking on our on our 500 acre farm so our demonstration is a good example of providing some of that vegetation and some of that benefit to wildlife and then up behind us you can see I'm in a I'm in the valley behind us there is Maxwell Mountain and that is just acres and acres of closed canopy timber and hardwoods great for acorn mass production but not much else so this will provide a very nice area for the wildlife that are on that mountain deer and turkey to come down turkeys can nest in it maintain some production that way deer can fawn in it they can feed in it forage lots of nutrition um just very good uh very good compliment to the overall landscape um and very often we like to see about you know 20 30 percent of our properties maintained in openings like this not necessarily food plots we can do a lot less maybe you know one to five percent actually be planting in a food plot but this is what you would consider a wildlife opening beneficial to many species feel free to come and tour this side it's open to the public at the gram farm and nature center here in Jackson county alabama um you can like us on facebook that the gram farm and nature center also the forestry wildlife and natural resources extension team has a facebook and you have agents in each and every county office um that you can call and that can help to serve you towards uh not just your forestry wildlife and natural resources needs but many others so that concludes the four-part video series on early successional vegetation and old field management i'd like to thank allegory for their generous donation of the chemical that was donated towards converting this old field fescue pasture into the native vegetation that we have behind us also the gram farm and nature center here in jackson county where this site has been installed they offered up the nine acres and allowed the demonstration to take place and you're welcome to visit that at any time and also the alabama forestry foundation and the alburn university school of forestry and wildlife sciences that provided a grant that allowed a vast majority of the equipment to be purchased for these uh this video series as well if you have questions and would like to contact an agent feel free to visit www.aces.edu we have a directory there as well as many other publications or call your local county extension office thank you