Making Your Food Plots Work For Quail

Most recreational properties in the southeast are covered with food plots. Do these food plots add habitat value for quail, or do they just get in the way? Bronson, Moriah, and Dr. Mark McConnell discuss food plots and their value to quail at length, giving you insight into how you can improve food plot value for bobwhite.

Transcript

Intro & Guest Welcome

Speaker 2 0:02

Welcome to Wildlife Investments, where we discuss wildlife research, habitat, hunting, and land management with our panel of leading resource managers. Wildlife Investments, resource management by scientists.

When (and Whether) to Add Food Plots for Quail

Moriah Boggess 0:21

Well, welcome back to the Wildlife Investments Podcast. Today we're going to be discussing food plots, which of course is a topic everyone loves to hear about, but today it'll be more specific to quail, which I don't know that I've ever actually heard discussed at length from that standpoint. Obviously, there's all kinds of information out there about food plots. And someday we'll do one that's more focused on deer. But that that subject has been exhausted in a lot of ways. So today we've got Dr. Mark McConnell with us, who does a lot of quail consulting work through wildlife investments. So, Mark, thanks for joining us and me and Bronson here to discuss this topic with us. And so I think we'll both learn quite a bit about where we might be able to make some adjustments on the deer side that could benefit properties interested in quail. But we'll give you the floor so that you can uh you can talk at more length about the ideal way to do things for quail. Yeah, happy to happy to be here. Looking forward to it. If if we were managing solely for quail, are there any instances, Mark, where you would say, actually, I would prefer you create a food plot and specifically for quail? And I don't know if that would be like when you have some limitations in brooding cover. Can you kind of walk through that if there are any times where you would specifically look to add food plots?

Dr. Mark McConnell 1:41

Yes, but and and Bronson's gonna smirk when I say this, it depends, right? The there there really ought to be a bell that goes off on these podcasts that every time somebody says that phrase.

Moriah Boggess 1:51

You gotta pay a dollar every time.

Dr. Mark McConnell 1:52

We we tried when we did um the Game Bird University podcast, we tried to tell Heath Hage that we were gonna bill him or something, I think every time he said it, but but it it does happen. So I'll put it this way I've never entered a property that didn't have food plots where I initiated food plots from good cover that was already there, right? I would never, I would never say you need a food plot where one doesn't exist. However, we might have to to to not not to invoke Jordan Peterson too much, define what we mean by food plot. So if you mean uh any managed opening that we're managing for specific plant community, like like a lot of times we'll do things just with disking to create a very forb-heavy herbaceous community that we are managing purely for that plant community, and we're never letting it get out of there. We're disking it every fall, like in the Red Hills region or in quail plantation country, they're brood fields, they call them brood fields, they don't call them food plots, but they're mostly food plots. I mean, most of them and really well-managed plantations are almost 100% common ragweed, right? So does a does a one-acre field of common ragweed that's disked every fall to maintain it as common ragweed, if that's a food plot, then absolutely that there's there's a time and place to integrate that. But if it means something we're actually seeding in the ground ourselves, then there's time and place for it, but I would never add it, except if, like you said, um Rye, if brooding cover was very limited. Yeah. And we felt like it was going to take, depending on the conditions of the property, it was gonna take us a couple of years to really get where we could infrastructure, manpower, resources-wise, get good brood cover through the native cover, then absolutely. Then absolutely I would say, look, in the short term, let's put something in these areas so that these chicks have a place to go where they can get insects, get easy paths to walk through, overhead cover. Absolutely. Yeah, that that's a good scenario like you where that would be something I would recommend if it didn't already exist. But if they've already got a food plot kind of food plots throughout the property, then how we manage those can be a little bit different in terms of of what's needed. And again, balancing it with deer, I do think there's room you can do that. But like anything, when you're balancing, it's not the perfect thing you would do for the deer, and it's maybe not the perfect thing you would do for the quail, but there's been both species can benefit and and and and use it. The challenge with food plots is a lot of hunters, uh landowners have been taught, if they're older especially, that you do these food plots and like that's the places you go hunt because the birds are in there, right? So I I've worked with landowners that would plant uh just just brown top millet plots, like dozens, dozens, if not more, of them on a property, and they called them like feed lots or feed patches, right? You'll hear that term a lot. If the landowner's over 70, feed patches, right? And they'll do that. And I've never hunted through those, so I can't really speak to whether that works or not. But if if a bird is going in to get that seed source and they're concentrated enough to where you use it for hunting, I would say you're you're very you you don't have enough seeds out there in the rest of the property, right? So there's a time to do it. I think there's a lot of utility to do it when it's already there and tweaking it for quail. But we can also just take those open areas and manage them for very specific native plant communities through disturbance. And whether that's a food plot or not, I guess is is maybe that's the question. Yeah.

Best Plants for Quail Brood Cover

Moriah Boggess 5:29

So if if you were in that situation where let's just take an example. You could be in the the Mississippi Delta or in maybe a Midwestern state where there's a lot of ag. It's been farned for a long time, and maybe you're uncertain what that that first response is going to be, or maybe you're a year or two in and you're just not getting the structure you want. I would think you'd be getting horseweed, and that would be pretty good for for brooding cover. But let's just say that the brooding cover is problematic. What would you be prescribing in that situation as a planting for brooding cover?

Dr. Mark McConnell 6:02

Sure. Yeah, great question. So for summer food plots, right? We're talking about like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so that's that's probably the biggest difference is what the structure needs to be from a deer and a quail at those two different seasons. So during the brooding months, the summer months, in a perfect world with the right soil types and the right equipment and seed costs. Honestly, I cannot speak enough about how beneficial a ragweed. I I don't like monocultures, but if you're going to do a monoculture, a common ragweed field is pretty impressive for quail. It's such an idealistic plant to a cool quail chick, right? It's got one stem coming up and then it's got a really good umbrella cover on top. So there's, if it's managed well, there's plenty of room to walk underneath, and there's a good umbrella cover, which is two things. One, it's a predator thing from avian predators, but two, it's a thermoregulation thing. A bobwhite chick can overheat quite rapidly in most of the United States pretty quickly, right? So the temperature differential between ambient and what's under that cover in that food plot is huge, right? And those chicks are really going to need that to be able to forage there. So one of the things you think about with quail plants that you don't have to think about maybe as much with deer, but I don't know. When we're when we're planting something quail or promoting it for quail, we're trying to make sure it's a food source and good cover, right? There's plenty of plants that produce tons of seeds that don't make good cover and vice versa, right? So ragweed, for example, it's gonna attract insects. Just the nature of that ragweed field is gonna attract insects, which is what those chicks need. And if it's allowed to go to seed, which it should be if it's being managed for quail, it's gonna produce a seed in the fall, late summer, fall, that they can use throughout once they're in coveys, right? So that's an idealistic plant. Partridge pea is another good one. Showy native partridge pea, not not the lark variety. We've all seen how that bad that can go. I got a picture with it over my head. Yeah, let's let's touch on that real quick. Jump into the that cultivar and all. So showy partridge pea, the native partridge, I can't remember what the name is now because they've probably changed it since I learned it. But it's a about it gets in good soils, it may get about waist high, you know, rarely much more than that. Uh the great thing about partridge pea is if you if you just take the plant structure itself, it's got all these little branches once you get a couple inches off the stem from the ground, and it's got all these little nodes that are full of all kinds of herbaceous stuff, and it attracts a ton of insects, right? It's also really good over winter overhead cover, it's umbrella cover, and it attracts a lot of insects, it's got overhead cover, and it's a legume, so it's got that pod. So you've also got the other benefit where you're gonna get a seed cast in the in the late summer fall that's gonna hopefully last a good bit through the winter. So it's an idealistic plant for that. Showy native partridge pee. There's a variety, a cultivar lark, and I heard somewhere it was because it was developed between Louisiana and Arkansas. I don't know if that's true or where that lark word came from, but it's a I don't know why they did it. I'm sure there was a reason, but it's very aggressive, it's much taller. It will dominate stands in good soil. In poor soils, I have not seen it take over, but I can show you innumerable pictures of me standing in head-high lark partridge pea stands. Showy partridge pea is never going to get like that, right? Now, granted, these are very productive sites. What happens there is it becomes so dominant you lose plant diversity because it's gonna, it's gonna outcompete most other things. And it's so thick, it tends to almost mat to some degree. And at some point, when it gets like that, it's very hard to get a fire to carry through it. So you lose the ability to manage it, manipulate it. Or at least you lose the ability to do it in maybe the traditional sense that you would like to, right? Partridge pea can tolerate a lot of fire. It's not gonna hurt it, but if you can't carry fire through it, you don't get that soil disturbance, you don't get that bare ground, you don't, you don't get all that. We did just finish up, we have not published this yet, but analyzing the data, we finished up imprinted brood chick study where we were we were imprinting them and putting them in all these different vegetative manipulations, letting them forage for 30 minutes, calling them back, killing them, dissecting them, and seeing all what all they ate. In a lark partridge pea monoculture, they did incredibly well. But weirdly, it was all almost all rolly polis. They were slap full of rolly polies. And it it was comparable to our next best stand, which was a uh essentially a pawnator plot that had some native grass and a lot of different Forb species. And it was very comparable to that one. It may have been a little bit better one year, maybe not the next. I'd have to go back and look. But it either way, it was it was useful. But again, that's one side of that story. Our ability to manage that field has been completely compromised. So, what do you do with a six-foot-high monoculture of lark partridge pea? Well, you can mow it, you could spray it, but you're not getting a fire to carry through it, and uh, or at least not well, so it becomes quite challenging. But yeah, that's the lark variety. If you're putting partridge pee in your plantings, be very careful. Whoever you're working with, just yeah, call and find out. You want the the native, you don't want that, in my opinion, you don't want that cultivar in coil management.

Moriah Boggess 10:58

I I mean I would call it invasive because it takes over the site, it starts to shift plant communities, it hinders your ability to manage that site. It's not going to keep woody species from eventually coming in. So it's it's invasive up to a degree, but it does smother everything else. So personally, I that's a very broad category of invasive, and it all has everything to do with your objectives. But yeah, that's one I will put up there.

Dr. Mark McConnell 11:25

I do not recommend it. Yeah. We try not to recommend it. Sometimes the seed sources, you know, the the the you know, most of them are good and they know, but sometimes, you know, if you just grab a bag somewhere and it's got partridge pea in it, and again, I've only done this in, you know, the the southern region, it's it's probably that cultivar. And so you got to so what we do now is is we just back off our partridge pea seeding recommendations because we know if we put like what the recommendations used to be, we're gonna have a monocle. And I I've got plenty of places where that was done that I'm working now, and it's like, how did this even happen? And then we scratch the dirt with a disc thinking, okay, let's let's kind of reset it, and then it just came back with a vengeance. It it almost functions as a very hairy-looking fire lane because the fire will only go so far into it, and then it stops. So we like we've got fields where we scratch the dirt for whatever reason, and that was in the seed bank, and it just it's the hot, it's just that's all it is. Now, the other thing that I've noticed, if we just let that field go and we don't disturb it for a few years, we do start to see a slight uh comeback of some of the other plant communities when that partropy isn't just disturbed. But then then what are you doing from a quail standpoint, right? Disturbance is how we maintain stuff. So there I don't have a good solution how to deal with it, but the best way is just to avoid it. But going back to the question, for the sake of this discussion, do we want to talk about or would a brood field in a traditional quail plantation meet the definition of a food plot, or does a food plot have to be a seed you're putting in the ground?

Moriah Boggess 12:56

I'll say my take personally, and I'm curious to get bronzers, but I I think that it absolutely is a food plot. It just that again, it's kind of a it's a broad category. There's a there's some blurry lines there, but I mean, we manage fields specifically for deer that we're not planting anymore. We're just maintaining them. I mean, how do you how would you regard a eight-year-old perennial stand of white clover that you've been maintaining? It's a food plot. So I would call it a food plot.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 13:24

Yeah.

Turkey vs. Quail Brood Cover – Key Differences

Dr. Mark McConnell 13:25

So one of the biggest things, going back to your original question, Moriah, one of the biggest things limiting on the landscape from a quail standpoint and for turkeys too, and there's tons of research to demonstrate this across the range, is well, really good brood cover, right? We just the complete lack of disturbance in early successional plant communities, but specifically, there's not what we when you think about ideal quail brood cover, very little of it on the landscape. Shrub cover also, really good shrub cover, very limited on the landscape, but brood cover in particular. So if you want it, there's plenty of grass usually, and quail can nest on a lot of properties, but where they got to take those chicks to make sure they are getting that that high protein, insect-rich diet and stay alive and not get exposed to higher temperatures, that's a hard recipe for a lot of landowners. And a brood field or a really well-managed food plot would be uh one way to kind of quickly get that on the landscape. No, I'm not saying do that in a in in instead of burning and thinning and all the other tools. But yeah, it's a it's a way to get it on the landscape and that that approach I like. Yeah.

Moriah Boggess 14:35

Question for you. I would say the category of managers and landowners that are managing their property specifically for turkey is larger, that pool's larger than than necessarily quail properties. But if someone is in that boat and they've got really good turkey cover and and they've got a good fire rotation disturbance regime where they've got brooding cover for turkeys, how I guess how much overlap and then how much separation is there from ideal brooding cover for turkeys, or or let's just say good brooding cover for turkeys, and then ideal cover for quail, brooding cover for quail.

Dr. Mark McConnell 15:10

Good question. So the the the kind of the biggest salient point across all life history with those two species is turkeys have a wider range of things they can exploit and make it work. So, like, you know, you've probably seen, I know I have and Bronson has too, you've probably seen turkey broods brooding, you know, in oak forest, you know, you know, with just not a whole lot of understory cover and doing fairly well. Then of course there's plenty of bad cover out there. With quail, they're smaller in general. Of course, turkeys grow and get bigger, but when they're there's a there's a period where they're pretty small, but they're just smaller. Turkeys have much stronger legs, they're way better at scratching and that kind of thing. So they can just exploit a wider range of conditions, right? With quail, the tolerance or the uh lack of tolerance for litter or thatch is just tremendously minimize a bigger deal than it is for turkeys. Turkey polts can tolerate a little bit more of that. They can scratch through it, they can move through it to get those bugs and seeds. Quail chicks, they're the size of a bumblebee when they hatch. They cannot exploit some of that thicker thatch and cover the way uh uh turkey polts can. So it's gotta be super clean bare ground, or ideally super clean bare ground. And then um the, you know, the other things are just the the species compositions probably aren't that different in terms of your they're all trying to eat bugs, but it's really a structural difference, in my opinion. They the turkeys can just they can just exploit a wider range of resources. But that and again, turkey brood cover is very limited too. You know, I think I think Craig's research at Tennessee clearly demonstrated that that's a very limitation, big limitation on the landscape. But yeah, that's the big thing. In terms of species composition, there's probably a fair amount of overlap if you're gonna do it, but turkeys can just quail have a narrower range of what they can get. Turkeys can exploit a lot more.

Moriah Boggess 17:02

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, and that that totally makes sense. It seems like from that point of view, you're going to get it right more often if you're managing an old field where you have disking capabilities versus solely reliant on fire and and heart in woods. Not that that is bad and obviously very important to your overall management and you could provide great brooding cover, you're of fire. But a disc field is just so clean underneath. I mean, that's the most impressive thing, is bare mineral soil every time if it's been burned and then disced.

Dr. Mark McConnell 17:31

The analogy I give people for if a chick can get through it is you drop a golf ball. And if you can with your foot, not not not kick it 20 feet, but if you can move that golf ball with your foot fairly easily through through the cover and keep it on the ground and keep it rolling, and you're gonna hit stuff, but if you can move around it, a chick can get through it. If you can't, chick probably can't. I think John Carroll used to do something similar. James Martin told me with a ping pong ball. I found out about that after I was doing the golf ball thing, and he told me, I was like, oh crap, now it looks like I ripped him off. But a golf ball is easier to manipulate with your foot. So that that's the analogy I give people. That's a real good comparison.

Moriah Boggess 18:10

I like that. Yeah, a ping pong ball too was a lot lighter, so it seems like there's less forgiveness there.

Dr. Mark McConnell 18:16

It's gonna but it's gonna roll up, you know, if you push it, it it's gonna it's easy to move a ping ball vertically. You don't want to do that. You want to keep the ball on the ground, yeah.

Moriah Boggess 18:24

So related to brooding cover, you were talking about how it's so much more difficult for quail broods to move through because of that versus turkeys and all that. Which, I mean, we've all seen turkey brews, at least older ones out in fescue fields, not the mean that they're doing well, and some of them probably get killed while doing that, but they can at least get around enough to to move through one. Probably not the case for quail, right? Because they're so small.

Dr. Mark McConnell 18:49

Chicks, not so much. Adults, uh I hate to admit it, but adults can absolutely use fescue. It just often depends on how that fescue is managed. The if it when you put a horse, when you put horses in a fescue pasture, they tend to eat it down just because you know their their structure is a little bit different. They tend to eat it down closer to the ground and it actually creates a little more access, which either two things can happen. Either the quail can get through there or other species can germinate a little bit, like you'll see broom's edge and sometimes other forbes in there. But no, we don't recommend fescue in any stretch, but because it's just a nightmare for a lot of things. But yes, absolutely when people see quail and fescue fields either mowed or heavily grazed, they go, wait, there's quail and fescue. And I'm like, yeah, there's also deer in the Walmart parking lot. It doesn't mean it's a good idea. You know, it just means they're there. It probably means there's a lack of what I tell people, that's a lack of the resource they need. They're making a suboptimal decision. Just because you saw them there. Well, that's a whole nother thing. You know, trying to convince people that just seeing an animal there doesn't mean it's good. Otherwise, house sparrow Walmart, the rafters of a Walmart building are tremendous house sparrow habitat. We should build more.

Moriah Boggess 19:58

Yeah, build more Walmart house sparrows.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 20:01

So Marcus and Will say that all the time with turkey nesting. But I saw a turkey nesting XYZ, and they turned it around as, well, then that's a really, really good indicator you don't have good nesting cover.

Do Deer Food Plots Have Any Value for Quail?

Dr. Mark McConnell 20:14

They're gonna nest somewhere. Yeah. Right. You just gotta make sure you gave you you laid the t you set the table for them to be successful.

Moriah Boggess 20:21

Yeah. So related to fescue, that's my bridging the gap to what most people probably are expecting this conversation to be about, which is your traditional food plot, a deer-focused food plot is going to have some kind of a grass component. It should be some sort of cereal grain. Normally, for us, that's wheat. It could be oats, triticale, you know, cereal rice, something like that. But structurally, those, especially when they're getting grazed heavily by deer, are pretty low-growing. They're sprawling, they have thatch. In the case of especially oats, I mean, even in the South, the last few years, when we've had these hard cold snaps, we get a lot of dead thatch built up by the time spring comes around. Do those areas have any value as they're normally managed for deer? Do they have any value for quail? Or is it just a cutoff?

Dr. Mark McConnell 21:12

Yeah. And again, I think it goes back to probably the quail, the the turt the deer density, right? If most food plots, if they're if they're getting just just eaten, just being hammered by deer, no. Now, we have all probably seen, just like we've seen turkeys in quail and fesky, we've probably all seen quail in a clover food plot at some point. Clover, there's all kinds of clover, is one of those things where you will absolutely see birds in it. And they will use it. And I'm not going to sit here and say that I have definitive proof that all the clovers are just absolutely detrimental to quail. But what I will say is the overall structure of most clover plots provide some quail can exploit them and there's bugs in them, but from a ch but adults can get through it a Lot easier than a chick can, right? So if you've got a pretty decent clover plot and there's going to be bugs there, and you know, some seed to some degree at some point, if it if it ever makes it to that point, if the deer don't get it, they'll use it. But most food plots are also on the average property, are pretty small, they're pretty narrow. And there's no doubt that quail is being exposed in that clover plot. So while they may be able to get a few bugs in while they're in there, it's a narrow spot. They've exposed themselves. And if there's a hard tree line next to it, you're you're essentially asking to get eaten. So now, big wider plots that have a lot of clover, I've never seen quail in the interior, but I have seen them use the edge a little bit, and there's probably some utility to that. But again, that doesn't mean that's the ideal plant community. It just means they can exploit it. Clover just tends to, at most seeding rates for deer management, they just it's just thick, you know, it's it's hard to get through. Could you back that off a little bit and maybe make it more accessible to quail? Theoretically, but that might be counterproductive to your deer objectives. And again, there's other things to plant that would be more beneficial that probably both species could benefit from. The advantage of a clover plot is, like you said, if you're doing it right several years uh once you get it established and you're managing it right, where your maintenance is pretty damn low and you're not reseeding constantly. There's a lot of advantages to that. But I wouldn't recommend that as a as a quail plot, but I I cannot deny that I've seen it, we've all seen it, and a quail will use it. And I can't swear that their fate was negative, but it's it's not structurally what we're after, and it's not providing the the structural resources that we're aiming for. Yeah.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 23:44

So, Mark, I I presume you keep talking or you're putting a lot of weight on clover. And am I correct in assuming you are primarily referring to cool season food plots and not warm season food plots?

Dr. Mark McConnell 23:59

For the most part, but yeah, I mean you've i if you've got just I guess clover in general, but yeah, it seems like down here in the south, yeah, it's that's definitely the time of year. So if you but if you've got it, when do y'all planting most clovers? September, October. Yeah.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 24:15

And then what's it look like in say June, July? Dep depends on the species. But if if it's a species with a later maturation date or a perennial, it's gonna be pretty dang thick.

Dr. Mark McConnell 24:29

Yeah. That so like that time of year, yeah, when the chicks are on the ground. Yeah, but now again, can they eat the green stuff during the winter? Absolutely. I mean, if you when you when you look at quail crops, especially in the deep south, where it's there's something green eleven, if not twelve months out of the year, down here, because like what are we right now? We're at 70 degrees almost. Hell, we'll even have grasshoppers show up in crops in in Mississippi in February. We get a warm spell and all of a sudden grasshoppers pop back out, and you get a quail crop and it's got in the dead of winter and it's got grasshoppers. I mean, that's yeah. So all that to say, they'll eat the green stuff too when it's available. Yeah.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 25:09

So I thought I had seen this before, and this is this is recognizing this is not ideal. It could just carry over maybe some populations or a little bit of utilization. But if you're in an ag centric area, so if you're in the Mississippi Delta or you're in the Midwest, a lot of agriculture, and let's use soybean as an example. I thought I had either heard or seen data to where at least adults would utilize some of those areas, correct?

Dr. Mark McConnell 25:40

Yeah. So historically, God, as late as probably the early 80s, maybe mid-80s, soybeans were kind of recommended by Quailbot and thought of as a pretty good brood crop. And I have put chicks, imprinted chicks into soybean fields and I've let them go and call them back, and it's it's it's not it's not ideal. So a lot has changed in in soybean agriculture, well, all agriculture, but a lot has changed since that recommendation probably first emerged, right? Our weed suppression, our insect suppression, we're managing soybean fields a lot differently than we did in the 60s, right? It the whole system looks different. So I would not recommend soybeans now, not under conventional ag management, which is no competition and minimize almost all bugs. I know the entomologists get mad when I say bugs, but all the things that quail are going to eat out there, there's not nearly as many bugs out there, maybe as there used to be. Tall Timbers just did a little study. I don't know if they published it or if they just kind of put it in their newsletter, but Michael Hazelbaker, I think, led it. And they had chicks in all kinds of different things, and it it was pretty interesting, you know. But yeah, soybeans are not are not considered any longer, in my opinion, an ideal crop. But there was a time where they were. Now, if you're doing soybeans in a food plot, assume the management regime, it cannot I I'm guessing, because I don't know. For deer, it's it's less intensive than it would be for for for conventional ag. Is that is that accurate?

Dr. Bronson Strickland 27:08

I would say generally the inputs might be less intensive. Okay. But you would still want a a a dense stand when you plant it anyway.

Dr. Mark McConnell 27:17

Aaron Powell I'm thinking like pesticide, that kind of thing.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 27:20

Generally, yeah. Less intense.

Dr. Mark McConnell 27:22

Yeah. So then there might be some anecdote, or not say anecdotal, what's the word, there might be some tangible benefit if it's if it's if the structure and the the diversity of the plant community and the insect community is is responding to that lack of in uh of intense uh fighting against them. But yeah, so Mariah, you said something earlier, you're talking about wheat and everything. Wheat is one of those, again, I talk about old farmers a lot because a lot of the landowners are old. If a farmer's over 65 that I've ever dealt with, they consider wheat to be the ideal food plot for quail, right? And they will plant wheat ad nauseum. They they just love putting wheat out there, right? And that's because historically they were told it is. A wheat plot, yeah, absolutely. If if it if the deer let it come up, you can have some cover. It's not ideal cover, because again, there's no there's no umbrellaing out, there's no overhead cover, but it they can get through it generally at a certain seeding rate, they can navigate through it. Certainly there's insects in there, so it's not necessarily considered a bad one, but again, in high deer densities, is it ever going to get that high? I don't know. I mean, I don't see many wheat food plots that get too high down here. Of course, we've got crazy deer densities down here. But yeah, so wheat's one that you can do in the growing season. One of the ones that farmers like a lot is Milo, grain sorghum. And the reason they like it is one, Milo is a really easy, generally an easy crop to grow. You're seeing a lot of farmers now. I bet we're going to see more Milo acreage in the deep south this year than we have in a while, because with all the geopolitical challenges, Milo's easy to grow. The price fluctuation's not as crazy, it's not as expensive to grow. And, you know, it's kind of a safer crop, right? Well, in a in a quail standpoint, the structure of Milo is kind of cool. It gets up, it umbrellas out, you know, the the leaves come out, so you've got some overhead cover with bare ground oats they can run. And if you can keep the deer pressure down and keep the thrips out, you've got a seed head that eventually is going to provide some decent food. And Milo is a pretty legit seed source for quail. In fact, most supplemental feeding programs spread mylo. They've they spread grainsorgum for quail. So it's a good one to do. Browntop's another one, well, growing season one that, you know, later, but it works. Wide range you can plant brown top in, but again, the seeding rate has to be there where if it's a mat, a carpet, you know, they're not going to get through it. So you've got some challenges there. But again, it's good for cover-ish for cover, but it's got a seed head on it. It puts out a little bit more uh horizontal vegetation than, say, wheat does. So you've got lots of options. Now, if you look at some of the mixes that have like proso millet or any of the millets in it, and they've got a bunch of mixes, those mixes, I'm not going to recommend anybody's mix, but the good thing about those mixes is the plant community there in the mix is diverse, which is ideal. Diversity is generally almost always better than a lack of. And if they have a fair amount of structural complexity where you can get some of that umbrella overhead cover and maintain bare ground, there's probably some utility to those. But again, that that you you've got options for for food plots with quail in the growing season for broods. It really comes down to not planting them as dense as you might for you might want to simply to maintain that bare ground. If you can't pass the golf ball test in July, it's going to get minimal use. Or it's going to keep the use at the edge, right? Which is going to subject them to a lot more predation, most likely.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 30:48

Yeah. So Mariah, I'm thinking about one of our most common warm season prescriptions is deer vetch, or deer vetch being a large component of that. I I would think, uh uh assuming you took care of the weeds underneath, but once that deer vetch is established, it appears to me like it would have an optimal growth form. I have no idea about any how much food it would be providing. It would certainly harbor a lot of insects, but it should grow up and out and be kind of that umbrella growth form if the deer are letting it get knee high, for example.

Moriah Boggess 31:27

Yeah, the the seed production I've seen is normally really late in the year, and only in the plots where it is real tall is it is it meaningful. But deer vegetable reseed decently well if it gets up and it's not pressured too much. The thing, because we often recommend somewhere around 20 pounds per acre seeding rate, and that's pretty thick. It so I'm I'm guessing, Mark, and maybe you can speak to this a little bit, you know, in one of those plots, we get a really good, we get really good weed suppression once we get up past those weeds. We generally use pursuit to as a pre-emergent one we plant, because obviously warm season weeds are a different beast, and you can't just blow past them with deer veg easily. But then once we're up and it's smothering everything, maybe a little hemp cusbania, you know, coffee weed is in there, but that's about the only meaningful weed. And the structure's really good, but this is I'm thinking back to a plot from this past summer, summer 2025. It was chest high, but even at the ground, even though it was chest high, the spacing of most stems was an inch, inch and a half. So I'm guessing that's I mean, I that's too dense for quail, right?

Dr. Mark McConnell 32:38

So I've only tried vetch the one time, and and it and it is is deer vetch a a different cultivar, is it or we just joint vetch in general, or are we talking about the same plant here? Yeah, same plant. Yeah. I tried it one time at a property, and I I I want to say we did it at 20, because I we would have gone off whatever the recommendation was. Again, this particular property, don't think they really calibrate anything, so I don't know what this what the density was out there. But it was it was interesting because during the summer, I never I never had any, I didn't have any ch chicks marked on that study on that property at the time. But yeah, structurally, for from a brooding standpoint, there was a period of the summer where it looked pretty good. Then it got, like you said, it it I mean it was it it matted down and it was almost as if it it's it it grew up, it desiccated, and then it just dropped. And it after that, it was I didn't like the way it looked. But again, for the summer months, I think it served a pretty good purpose. I know I saw I think I saw a video of Jacob where it's like, you know, it's up to here on him, right? Again, as long as they can get on the ground and it's attracting insects, I'm all for it. Because those chicks, especially early on, they're not flying to get out of any trouble anyway, because they're not flying very much at all at those early stages. So they just need to be able to run. And as long as they can run and get through it, you know, they have a better chance of getting away. But yeah, my only challenge with it was after that, it it it was pretty it pretty much made that plot, I would argue, unusable for the fall. Which again, that's fine. Just plant something else, right? That you're switching to something else. But yeah, I think in the summertime, again, I can't definitively say that because I there's not a lot of literature. We we haven't done a lot of studies where we put chicks through common deer deer plots. We're we're doing a similar study now with turkeys with with Williams stuff, but and that's going to be pretty interesting to look at. But yeah, from a structural standpoint in the summer, I I think it looks at the right seeding rate, it probably looks it's probably useful.

Moriah Boggess 34:39

And so the thing I've I've seen, and this is true of a lot of plants, but that is really noticeable with deer vetch because it doesn't get killed as easily as soybeans do. You know, soybean gets browsed early before it has a couple true leaves, and it, yeah, it's it's done. But deer vetch, it it re-sprouts it, and it's it's a really good re-sprouter. But because of because of that, and depending on your deer browsing intensity, you can have very different, seemingly different growth forms of deer vetch. And so, like what you're describing is kind of like what I was describing, which is relatively low browse pressure and it gets up nice and tall. It's it's a pretty stringy plant, it grows up, and then it does, you get some lateral branching up higher. But when it does have heavy grazing pressure, and you're deer grazing a couple an inch or two off the ground, you get all kinds of lateral branching. And then I would say it has to be absolutely unusable because it is it's like living thatch the way it grows. It's kind of like dewberry in the way it's. Yeah, that's a really good idea.

Dr. Mark McConnell 35:41

The landowner will be trying. I said I wanted to try it. We had a we had a little strip, I I'd say it was probably a half acre food plot issue. It wasn't really a food plot, but we were trying to it had come, it had been a lot of Brazilian in Vervain, and we're like, all right, we gotta get rid of that. So I hate that plant. It's on my high, it's it's it's as high as green ash and cedars on my list now. I've I've spent years trying to kill that damn thing. I hate that plant. Useless. Maybe a butterfly likes it. Who cares?

Moriah Boggess 36:08

You're like to eat it. Well, pine goats. God, God, I hate that. And it's just so aggressive. There's actually some some hummingbird moths. I I've seen a lot of hummingbird moths and other insects using it.

Dr. Mark McConnell 36:22

So yeah, I'm sure they do, but who cares? I hate it. And so we were trying to get rid of it, and then he wanted to try something. I said, Well, look, I'd let's let's plant some vetch. I'm just curious. I've never dealt with it. And again, it looked great during a lot of the summer, and I really liked it, and then it just kind of it got to the point where, you know, it's not usable. But yeah, I think there's from a brooding standpoint, again, I'm I'm not gonna give everybody say here, here's 10 plants you should plant for food plots for quail, but really what it comes down to is the structure and what your deer density will allow, because you know, a lot of times it doesn't matter what you put in there, if you've got way too many deer, quail aren't gonna be able to use it because it never it never gets to a point where they can. And you don't want quail trying to use something that gets them very exposed. Like if if you can see if you're if you can see the quail walking through the food plot, everything that's trying to eat them can too. So that that's kind of the you you don't want to know the brood is there is is the thing to think about.

Does Food Plot Type Even Matter at the Landscape Scale?

Dr. Bronson Strickland 37:17

Yeah. So here's my question. Listening to you ramble on and on is so yeah, so that was a smart ale comment there. Genuine question here. Does this even matter? And what I mean by that is the the scale on the landscape. So let's go with just some averages. Let's say your typical property has three, four, five percent of their acreage in food plots. Really, really heavy food plot property might have 10 to 15 percent. If the type of food plot for deer is influencing your quail population, I would surmise that your quail population is in big trouble.

Dr. Mark McConnell 38:08

Yes, 100%. That's why I was telling y'all, I don't know if we were recording at that time or not, but food plots for quail are pretty low on my priority list when I'm working with a landowner. If they don't have any, I'm not gonna recommend any. If they've already got some, we can work like we're talking now to figure out a way to balance it. But no, that it's such a small footprint. It doesn't mean no, there's plenty of literature to suggest that you know, small amounts of acreage of the right plant community can influence quail populations. But that's usually in systems like in heavy ag systems where the only like when 5% of the landscape is quail habitat, you can have a huge impact on the land on the population. That's been replicated across the country. But to your point, on an average property, yeah, it's it's not gonna make or break your quail, in my opinion. And yes, if you if the if the food pot is all you're doing for quail, you're never gonna reach whatever your objective is, even if i I don't care. It's just not gonna get there. Managing the land as much acreage as you can, and that's where we have a lot more overlap in, I think, in deer and and quail options is disturbance, opening of the canopy, burning, disturbing the soil, getting those early successional forb dominated plant communities productive and prevalent. That's what's gonna keep quail on your property. That's what's gonna grow quail on your property. One of the hardest things to explain to landowners is because most of what they've keep in mind before the internet and social media and everything, all they were getting for the most part was what the magazines were pushing. And a lot of the hunting magazines, of course, they're trying to sell seeds, so they're pushing food plots. So a lot of landowners, food plot is kind of like step one of wildlife management. Well, if you don't start with a food plot, what are you doing? When I try to explain to them that that is the last thing I'm worried about from the quail standpoint, it's very hard. But like I said earlier, they want to plant something, and I've given up on trying to convince them to not. I've just lost that battle. They want to be on a tractor, they want to put something in the ground. They'd much prefer to put it in the ground than to wait and see what the ground produces on its own through disturbance. So if you've already got them and quell your priority, I am going to play ball with that landowner and say, hey, let's let's put something as good as we can, but let's not let that distract us or take up too much of our time to where we're not getting our burning done or we're not getting our thinning done or we're not getting, you know, our other priorities. But yeah, it's it's low on my totem pole. I rarely even talk about it until we've got everything else out of the way. Yeah. Like once they've got a good burn plan, what I tell landowners is you want to get to what I call maintenance mode, right? A lot of landowners have not worked with them. We're in creation mode. We're trying or we're in fix mode, right? We're trying to get that place in quail cover, right? Once we, and that's establishment, that's cleaning up messes, that's getting, once we get a burn regime, we get our timber density down if there is any, we get our fire lanes organized. Once we've got all that, we're pretty much in maintenance mode after that. We're just burning and keeping up with what we've established. You you get everything ready, you go to maintenance mode. Once you're in maintenance mode and you want to tune up your food plots and make them a little more quail friendly, have at it, but not at the expense of the other 95% of the property that could be quail, could be in quail cover. Absolutely. That's a really good point. Yeah.

Moriah Boggess 41:25

So I got one last thing for you so you can set the record straight once and for all. Make your final point. If you have a landowner with, let's say, a thousand acres and they've got a few food plots sprinkled across, and they said, I'm giving up deer, Bronson and Mariah, I don't care about deer. I let my cousin come. I dream about this. I'm gonna let my cousin come shoot whatever he wants. I don't care about deer. I've had these food plots and mark, I'm doing everything else habitat-wise good for quail across my property. I want you to take that acreage and make it as meaningful as possible for quail. So the question is with those food plots, are you gonna continue some type of food plot program or are you going to convert that? And then how, if so, would you convert those?

Dr. Mark McConnell 42:06

If it's already been managed as a food plot, and let's look, are we assuming there's no ryegrass in these food plots?

Dr. Bronson Strickland 42:14

You probably that is not a good assumption.

Dr. Mark McConnell 42:16

You probably have a little ryegrass in there. Yeah. I was on a property the other day and there was ryegrass everywhere. And I was like, Did you plant it? Because I it's just it's just everywhere. And I was like, Oh my goodness. Like every time you turn, it was like another ryegrass patch going.

Moriah Boggess 42:30

I I've I've often thought about you could just fly the whole property in a grid with a with clefthodum in like March. And just I would you would kill a couple good cool season grasses, but it'd be worth it.

Dr. Mark McConnell 42:41

Let's be honest. So if the if the infrastructure, like the plots are already there and they want them, and assuming they've been under, there's no rye gr there's no issue with m managing ryegrass, what I typically am going to do, because I hate to make a landowner spend money before they have to, I'm gonna let it come up fallow that first year and see what it what's in the seed bank. And then I'm either gonna disc winter disc or burn if the burn allows, and then I'm gonna see what comes up that next growing season. And if and if that plant community is not diverse enough, my to answer your question, my default is to manage it as an old field and or a ragweed plot plot. I that I really like a ragweed plot. And I think landowners, it's not just because it's a really good way to just put really good brood cover on the ground. It's something landowners, it's so much more tangible. Like when you show them a weedy field and to weedy to us, right? Or to them, like we know that all those plants are good. But when you show them that, it's very hard for the average landowner to understand one, they don't know all the plants, nor can you expect them to, to understand that that's good. But what they are used to seeing is green of one thing, right? Because most food plots, a lot of food plots are mostly that, right, for the most part, not all of them. So if they can see, if they can come in and disc in the fall and winter, and then that next growing season, they see a beautiful. Ragweed, probably a little partrid pea, a lot of solidago, horseweed in there. They can see that. It's an easier show sell to say, hey, that's what you're after. And that's a very easy thing to maintain on most properties. Now, in a lot of ag systems, ragweed has, you know, farmer, you know, Bronson, I'm sure, may have told you this, but Mitt called me yelling at me several years ago, jokingly, but yelling at me because I was planting ragweed all over a property in the prairie. And he's like, Do you know how long we fought from an agronomic standpoint to get ragweed out of here? And now you're planting it everywhere. Well, I the re and I said, Man, I'm sorry, but the reason I planted it everywhere, this property had been ag for years, is we had done every disturbance regime I knew how to do, and I could not get ragweed to resp, I couldn't get it to germinate. So I'm like, all right, they must have just depleted this thing. So I started planting it. And I planted it all over that place. Now, when we scratch the dirt on that place, ragweed comes up, right? It took several years. But we went now we can disturb the ground and get ragweed, right? So I love ragweed from a brood standpoint. That's my favorite. If I had to plant something, it'd probably be some kind of mix with Milo and some other kind of forb in there to make sure we if give the deer a nurse crop or something to knock down before they're hitting the Milo. But yeah, those those are the kind that my pr my preference is an old field that we manage really aggressively and/or a ragweed field. So annual disturbance.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 45:28

Mark, could Mitt's outrage been based on maybe a misunderstanding, meaning that he's in the prairie in his farm, and when you say ragweed in a Mitt Wardlaw context, he's thinking giant. Well ragweed. I definitely don't promote giant ragweed. We collectively are thinking common. Mitt hasn't gotten rid of the giant ragweed, though. I can see where it's triggering for Mitt when you go to his farm.

Dr. Mark McConnell 45:54

Well, it's a lot of it's a lot of farmers have told me that though. They're like, because I'll say ragweed. Like we do workshops and they'll go, ragweed? Ragweed? You want ragweed? And it's like, yeah, really badly. I want ragweed. And so it is, it is from if they're farmers, they, you know, they've been they've been trying to deal with that. But yeah, it's that that's my one of my favorite uh plants for that time of year. And it's just just gorgeous to look at. And when you get the when you get the recipe right, when you get the disturbance timing right, and again, we say fall winter disking. I know guys in Georgia that were disking in March and getting a dominant common ragweed. And I was like, there's no way. And they're like, Yeah, one year I disc it in April and still got it. I was like, okay, wow, that that blew my mind. You don't see that everywhere. And I would not recommend that. But it's easy to get if you got it in the seed bank, and once you get it and it's it becomes dominant a couple years and it's casting all that seed, you've you've got a ragweed plot. And then it's just it's your maintenance mode after that. You disc it and it comes up in the growing season and you're done. And getting landowners to maintenance mode is is is always my goal as fast as I can, so they can so they're not stressed out. You know, the first few years of converting a property to quail management, it it can be stressful, right? And if if we're being real aggressive. And and a lot of farmers, if they're older, they don't want to wait very long. So giving them some giving them an easy win. Hey, fall winter disking, bam, you got a ragweed plot, boom. Like that's an easy win, right? And that's the other benefit.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 47:26

I'll take a ragweed plot for a warm-season deer forage.

Dr. Mark McConnell 47:30

Absolutely. So that's probably our best. Yeah, and like partridge pea, I know God, all the properties I'm on. Hell, I took Eric out to a property for his class the other day, and almost every, and we got more partridge pea out there than we we need, and a lot of it's lark, but the vast majority of them had been nipped and nipped pretty aggressively. And I'm I'm all for it, like anything to suppress not that the deer are suppressing the partridge pea, but it'd be okay with me if they did, because I've got too much of it. But the deer were just destroying that stuff, and and which is great because when we can find that overlap, you know, Mitt convinced me, don't ever admit this to him, but Mitt convinced me years ago, if I wanted to sell quail habitat, I needed to start talking about deer and and Mississippi. And to his credit, he's 100% right, right? Nobody, very few people care enough about quail in the deep south, but they all love deer. So we've started, you know, as soon as he told me that, I didn't like it, I pretended I didn't hear it, but it's 100% true. So where we can, these types of topics and podcasts are important because where we can find where we can integrate both, it it's it benefits me more than it benefits y'all. But it's it's I will admit, there's more enthusiasm for pine goats than than there are for quails. So I'll play that game now. Sorry, dear. I'm not supposed to call them pine goats around y'all. Here we go. Okay, now we can spoke with them. Yeah. You can edit that out.

Is Food Ever Truly Limiting for Bobwhites?

Dr. Bronson Strickland 48:51

Mariah, we have time for one more question here. This is gonna be some really big picture stuff, but uh it it would help me, so I think it would help a lot of listeners. And so I'm gonna go back, Mark, to my Fred Guthrie bias in the the formative years long ago, had Fred Guthrie as an instructor and spent a lot of time with him. I thought I remember either a lecture or maybe it was a paper that he published. And I thought the gist of it, and we have to acknowledge where he was located. So this would have been Texas, Oklahoma, very different from Mississippi, Alabama. But I thought the the gist of of the topic he presented was that food is never limiting for bob whites. And obviously, quail have to eat, so they have to have food. My takeaway was when you manage for the composition and the structure for bob whites, the food is always gonna be there. Or you don't have to intentionally go into it and I need to provide food, you need to go into it and I need the the structure and the thermoregulatory cover, etc. etc. And food is gonna come along for the ride. So is Fred wrong? Maybe I'm wrong in misremembering, which is likely most possible, but what what do you think about that? Is Fred gonna watch this? Absolutely not.

Dr. Mark McConnell 50:31

All right, so you put me on the spot, so I'll answer it. I have enormous respect for Fred Guthrie. One of my critiques is that he was very good at oversimplifying very complex situations with assumptions that didn't always hold. There is clear evidence that food can be limiting on a landscape for quail. The fact that when you supplementally feed, populations increase is a direct argument against food not being limited, right? Now I have some challenges with that because if you've got a bird per acre, you go to a bird, bird and a half per acre, was food really limiting, or was it limiting to get you to this crazy high density, right? And that's a fair argument. What I think Fred, Fred also, towards a good portion of the end of his career, was kind of making the argument that, you know, habitat management wasn't really that important in that landscape. It was just rainfall, rainfall, rainfall, and that kind of stuff. And I and I know some people that worked with him that have had to go back and it's like, ah, you know, that that's a little more simplistic than we wanted it. Food can absolutely be limiting on the because Fred's point was if you just added food in their landscape, and back then it was a lot of stationary feeder stuff. There was a lot of studies where you did not see a very tangible benefit. However, there were other studies where you did, right? Now there has been enough replication of supplemental feeding studies, in my opinion, in the in western and parts of Texas and across the East, where it's pretty clear that you can bump a quail population up pretty easily through supplementally uh feeding. The what to Fred's point, though, the structure and everything, yes, it will come with it, but that's a different answer than if it's foods limiting or not, right? I think what Fred really meant was you shouldn't have to add food to get a reasonable quail population if you're doing all the things right, right? But the the correlation between structure and disturbance and and food is tight, but that's really not disproving food limitation, right? It just proves that you get food when you manage for quail the right way. So I believe food can be limiting on a landscape. And in fact, I can show you many, many properties in Mississippi elsewhere where there is a residually low quail population, but that's they're there. And food is not limiting maybe during the summer months or the brooding months, but during the fall, there's very little out there producing producing seed. And if you start to shift that pop, and it's hard to separate if the, if the, if you do management, if the population increased because food increased or because just habitat management, because those things are highly correlated. But yeah, one of the things I look for when I do a fall assessment on a property is how many plants out there that are producing seed that a quail can eat. And I see I get a lot of properties where there's not much seed mast in the fall, right? I would argue those populations are limited also by structure, but also by food. So yeah, I would disagree with Fred's assessment cashed the way he cashed it, but I get his point. If you're managing for quail correctly, you should have enough food. But that really doesn't disprove food limitation. Because by I don't like the definition of food limitation, but if you add food and the quail goes population goes up, it's direct contradiction. And I I think there's a nuanced argument there.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 53:49

I do too. Yeah. But I think you brought up a good point. Fred may have first of all, again, different environments. Different environment. Not South Carolina, South Texas, up to Oklahoma. And also, if I remember correctly, Fred's probably also thinking a lot about just sustaining a viable population versus the example you gave of bird birds per acre.

Dr. Mark McConnell 54:11

But what we haven't done well enough, in my opinion, and I'm hoping we get to, because supplemental feeding is still somewhat controversial, costs a lot of the quail range. I wish it wasn't, but it is, is we haven't really done enough of implementing it in low density populations that, let's say, have good habitat on a property, but the landscape, the matrix around them is just god awful, which is a lot of Mississippi, right? There's a there's, you know, and what's the limitation? Like how much can we improve a population through supplemental feeding, assuming habitat's sufficient, and then go from there? That's the other challenge. And all the Red Hill studies, to their credit, great studies, but all in quail plantation country, habitat's not limiting there. It's a 600,000 acre landscape of almost 85% of that being really well-managed quail plantations. So habitat's not a limitation. What we don't know yet is the role of supplemental feeding when habitat is still limiting, right? And we need to figure that out. But that's a tough study to do because you need a lot of spatial replication, in my opinion, and you need to have some degree of similar densities to be able to do that, which again, outside of some of the meccas of the quail world, it's hard to get a sample size, which is a big challenge with quail research and will be for only going to get worse. But yeah, I think I think there's generally in a well-managed quail property, there's plenty of food. But by definition, that doesn't mean there can't you add food, it won't be more. How you add food, the type of food you add, and how well maintained that residual kind of infrastructure of of quail management and quail habitat is has a lot to do with the magnitude of the response you see from adding food to the landscape. But yeah. But that's a fun topic to get into.

Moriah Boggess 55:51

Yeah. Uh we're gonna we're gonna dedicate a future podcast solely to the supplemental feeding questions around quail. Yeah. And we'll need to do a different one on deer. Maybe a few. Yeah. We might not be able to break bridge those together a little bit more. Yep. Well, guys, thanks for your time this morning in the discussion. Yep. Absolutely. For everyone listening, please, if you listen to the podcast, you like it. Give us a rating and review. Any questions or comments for future discussions that you like us to tackle, you can send those to contact at wildlifeinvestments.com. Thanks for listening to the Wildlife Investments Podcast. For more information on these topics or to see some of the projects our team is working on, follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Wildlife Investments, or visit wildlifeinvestments.com.