Tips & Tactics: Summer Wildlife Management

Getting into a lot of detail about wildlife management. I get a lot of clients who want, you know, this time of the year, they're beginning to. They've already been through the deer season and the turkey hunting season and hadn't quite started thinking about food plots. Although a lot of clients now plant summer food plots for deer and turkey. But nobody's really thinking about all that just yet. You know, it's a good time to start thinking about the wildlife management side of it. As I said earlier, we talked about prescribed burning and what we were doing there. And we do so much prescribed burning now that's oriented toward wildlife management, what's beneficial to them, rather than. And that works hand in hand with the trees. And I get a lot of questions about what can we be doing during the summertime for the wildlife. But one of the most important things that people can do. I see a lot of people out this time of the year on the tractor mowing and bush hogging and clearing up. And one of the things that I think, and I think wildlife experts would agree, is to really need to be careful this time of the year out in the woods working, because we're in the nesting season. Not only are we in the nesting season where the fawns in the southeast are dropping, this is the time of the year to start dropping fawns. So if you're out there bush hogging, you know, and cleaning up your place, so to speak, and make it look pretty, you need to be very conscious about the nesting season. This. This past week, I've been in the. In the woods a lot doing some timber inventory work, and I've seen a lot of little quail. And in fact, I was on a place and the guy was out there doing just random mowing through the woods, and he said, well, this is a great time. I've got time to be mowing. And I'm like, maybe you need to think about this. There are little quail out here, you know, and so you can really do a lot of dam to the wildlife population by doing those treatments, such as mowing or disking or anything in. During the nesting season, which depends on the species. Turkeys, it's in the March through April on into May maybe. And then with the quail, it's later, it's June, July. So you have to time those operations maybe in between those nesting periods. And to be. Not to be destroying habitat, number one. Number two, not to be destroying the quail. You can run over some quail pretty easy and nest and that sort of thing. And really do a lot of damage to your wildlife population this time of the year. Also, you know, I advise people to stay out of the woods right now while the deer are dropping the farms. It's really not a good time. Come August on into August, once the deer get up where they can move around and get out of the way of the equipment, then you can go back to doing that kind of work. End of August, September is a great time to do that bush hogging that you've been planning on doing and keeping your property maintained. So I think that's important for people to know, landowners to know, especially as it relates to farm equipment, tractors and mowing, that, you know, there are times of the year that you really need to be cautious about doing all these activities and land improvements and just know your species, your wildlife species, the nesting periods and when they're rearing their young. You need to know those times of the year so that you're not being detrimental to the wildlife that you have.