Herbicides - Do We Need Them for Habitat Management?

Herbicides are becoming an increasingly contentious subject in the habitat and food plot management world. There are many valid concerns surrounding their use, but do these concerns outweigh their value? Bronson and Moriah are joined by Luke Resop of the MSU Deer Lab to tackle this topic and discuss how they approach the herbicide issue when managing habitat for game species.

Transcript

Intro & Guest Welcome

Moriah Boggess 0:01

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.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 0:21

Okay, welcome back to the next episode of the Wildlife Investments Podcast. And we have a topic to discuss today, a lot of concern with people regarding the use of herbicides. And lots of people are trying to move away from using herbicides entirely, and there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever. But we want to talk about some of the pros and cons and situations where maybe you can be effective and accomplish what you want to without the use of herbicides. And then also review some scenarios where, at least in our opinion, you are going to have to include herbicides if you want to get where you want. So really, this may be more a discussion about pros, cons, and what are you giving up with the the use or non-use. So that's generally what we're going to talk about today. And we have Moriah Bogas joining us today, and also Luke Reesop of the MSU Deer Lab. So gentlemen, number one, how are you doing? And uh let's get it rolling with what are your what are your thoughts about herbicide application, when to use it, when to not use it. What say you?

Honest Takes on Herbicide Use

Moriah Boggess 1:43

Yeah, let's do it. So I think how I would synthesize my stance on herbicides is one, I am cautious of them. I've had run-ins with them, and and I don't take it lightly using herbicides. I wear the PPE, I take the necessary precautions, and then I come inside and I shower, you know, as quickly as I can when I get done using herbicides. Even using PPE, I I know I get exposure. And I, for one, am not crazy about that. That being said, I think the use of herbicides is solely dependent on context. And today I really wanted to discuss some of the specific contexts where herbicides are important. And then I really want to get into the the weeds a little bit on some alternatives in places where you might be able to steer away from herbicides in favor of other more cultural management practices, and then also discuss around those sometimes what you're giving up by not using herbicides. I I I will just le throw this out there to lead in, and I'm gonna hand it over to Luke. But for me, one of the main points that I I have a problem with anytime discussing the herbicides with it with someone who's like anti-anti-herbicides is you know, people point out how unnatural it is, these synthetic compounds, and I don't disagree. My counter to that is we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a landscape that is infiltrated with non-native species, and because of that, we have to hedge the bets and sometimes kind of lay level the playing field, and herbicides are a really good way to do that. So, Luke, I'll I'll let you speak a little bit broadly about your stance, and then maybe we can get into some specifics.

Luke Resop 3:33

Yeah, my stance is very similar to what you just shared. I think that herbicides, as is any other tool in the tool belt, very context-dependent. And I would throw virtually anything else we talk about in with herbicides. It could be tillage, it could be prescribed fire, it could be using food plots versus not using food plots. Obviously, herbicides, there is a greater human and environmental health component to herbicides than with some of the other management approaches that we take. But I think when used appropriately and very strategically, herbicides do not have to be used repeatedly long term at high rates. And when people, generally speaking, and this is my the feedback that I've gotten from a lot of people talking to them, reading comments on social media, reading popular articles that are, you know, explaining herbicide alternatives. One of the really big issues that people have with herbicides is the repeated high rate use of herbicides. And that is more in like an ag context where you're repeatedly spraying because you need a you know a really high quality stand with very few weeds for seed production or you know, whatever the case may be. And we're operating obviously in a very different context than that. And it's not to say that you can't use herbicides in a food plot in the same way to produce a really pure stand of whatever food plot forage you're producing, but when we're talking about more general habitat management maintenance things, controlling invasive species, you know, forest and improvement with girdle and spray or hack and squirt or whatever, a lot of these herbicide applications can be more or less really concentrated upfront when we're establishing whatever cover type we're talking about using. And then you can really back off your herbicide use long term and use other disturbance techniques like prescribed fire or disking to maintain the plant community that you created with an upfront herbicide use. So I guess to summarize all that, I'm I'm with you that I do not love the idea of going out there and spraying herbicides, especially broadcast when there's particles floating in the wind and, you know, blah, blah, blah, in food plots or in old fields, but I absolutely view it as a very beneficial tool in the toolbox that we can use to achieve desired results. And I think one of the places that I would like to eventually go with this conversation, whenever y'all are ready, is for the people who are very anti-herbicides and don't want to use them at all. Like you said a minute ago, Moriah, that is fine. That's a that's a completely realistic limitation that some people will have. However, there will be trade-offs with that. And you will run into situations where it might be really difficult, if not impossible, to achieve the intended plant community results without the use of herbicide in some realistic sense. Yeah.

Luke's Research: Conventional vs. Regenerative Food Plot Management

Moriah Boggess 6:39

Luke, before we go on, while I'm thinking of it, first off, thanks for joining us today. It's the first time we've had you as a guest on. And I I can think of other topics in the future I would love to have you join us to discuss mainly around your research project. So would you mind, because I think we'll want to reference it a little bit going forward, talk about your dissertation and what you're doing over at Mississippi State right now?

Luke Resop 7:03

Sure. So I've been at the MSU Deer Lab for six going on seven years now. And my research project that I'm currently working on is comparing essentially conventional versus regenerative management techniques, which is obviously very relevant to the conversation we're having today because part of the regenerative management framework is reducing or eliminating herbicide use when we're managing food plots or crops. My project is very focused on food plots and old field management. So looking at how, in a food plot context, a conventional food plot that's managed with tillage and synthetic fertilizers and herbicide use to promote maximum biomass production, how that compares with a regenerative food plot that's planted directly adjacent to the conventional, where the regenerative is using essentially focusing on soil biology, so reducing or eliminating herbicide use, using all no-till, not using any synthetic fertilizers or soil amendments, and using diverse species blends to prime a soil biology to produce a high-quality food plot. So we're comparing kind of those two different management systems, how they impact the soil, how they impact plant quality and biomass production, how they impact deer and turkey use, how they impact the economics of your food plotting operation in terms of what you have to spend in terms of money, time, diesel fuel, etc., to achieve desired results. And then we're also looking at a lot of really neat turkey brooding ecology in terms of this, with how turkey pults can access bugs and seeds and all these different treatments and how our management actions essentially translate to brooding cover during a life stage of pults when it's traditionally very limited. So, yeah, that's what that's what I've been doing for the last few years, and we're wrapping up my project. Right now we're in the last year of field work, so we will have lots of results coming out in the near future, and I would be very glad to come back on and discuss them with y'all once things are more finalized.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 9:11

Well, something I think that's really relevant, Luke, with today's discussion is the the fork in the road that we were at. So w with your your project, the whole goal was comparing contrasting your conventional systems versus a regenerative approach. Multispecies blends, etc. etcetera. But we had a a scenario where we had this species that we had to control. In other words, we weren't, in our opinion, at that time, we were not going to have a uh viable evaluation of some regenerative plots if we did not deal with ryegrass. And so to to me, that was a a scenario to where we didn't want to incorporate herbicides. The whole point was to exclude it. But in this particular case, we were not going to have a a a viable regenerative food plot if we did not deal with with that species. So philosophically, I I think that represents all of our point of view is one of y'all called it, you know, it it is a tool, it is a viable tool to use when you need it. And so we're not working for a particular chemical company, so we're not advocates for spraying unnecessarily, but there are certainly times when that is going to be the single most effective way for you to accomplish your management objectives. And I am certainly not the most learned and and smartest regarding alternative methods, but I was just jotting down some species of

Sweet Gum in Pine Stands: Why Fire Alone Won't Solve It

Dr. Bronson Strickland 10:55

what what would we do? So I thought I might pose that to y'all. So you're charged with managing a pine forest stand, and the the mid-story is almost entirely composed of sweet gum, and could be several other species as well, but what do you do in that scenario? Well, some may say, well, just fire. And you know, Luke, you did a lot of work with this. So yeah, you could incorporate fire and you could top kill a lot of these, but are you going to literally get the sweet gum under control without herbicide? And maybe you can, so I'll I'll get your opinion on that. What what are your thoughts?

Luke Resop 11:39

So to back up to the previous point you made about establishing food plots without herbicides, absolutely. And I want to get to the sweet gum question in a minute, but I think it's worth dealing for a second with the food plot question. So a lot of people, especially when establishing a regenerative food plot, they want to go through the entire process regeneratively, meaning not using herbicides or using very, very little herbicides, which, like I said a minute ago, is a perfectly reasonable limitation to impose on your management program because it's based on your objectives and your concerns. However, if you are in anywhere in the southeastern United States, anywhere, you know, really anywhere in the United States, and you are establishing a first-time food plot that is in an area that has not been managed for crop production, you are very likely going to have some suite of weeds, many of which are going to be perennial weeds. Perennial weeds generally have a deeper, beefier root system than annual plants, and managing those, eliminating them so you can establish a successful food plot program is extremely difficult, if not, you know, by all intents and purposes, impossible without a timely herbicide application. So some examples of that. And I have tried to establish regenerative food plots. I had a very strong suspicion how it was going to go, but I've tried to establish regenerative food plots into established tall fescue without an herbicide application, and it went about as you could imagine. It was a complete failure because that deep perennial root system of tall fescue cannot be killed by crimping or bush hogging or discing. You're just gonna you know disturb the soil and you're gonna have a bunch more tall fescue. Anything you plant into it is going to be immediately outcompeted by that tall fescue. So it's very difficult to get the regenerative process started unless you deal with a tall fescue or Johnson grass or Vasey grass or whatever it is in the first place. So on the food plot conversation, I would say absolutely if you want to manage a regenerative food plot program and you have a problematic species like tall fescue, Johnson grass, you know, add whatever species you'd like to the list. I would absolutely recommend using a strategic, timely herbicide application up front to get that species under control and then starting your regenerative food plot program. If you don't, you know, you're gonna be wasting a lot of money on seed that is readily outcompeted by the plants that are already established. So now I guess to the to the sweet gum question. So in a pine stand, in a pine system where you have a lot of mid-story sweet gum issues that is the where the sweet gum is intercepting sunlight and preventing an understory full of more desirable species from establishing, certainly one potential remedy to that problem is to run a really hot fire through that stand and topkill those sweet gums. Now, several issues come along with that if you're not going to use an herbicide application. Number one is depending on the size of your sweetgums, if we're talking four-inch dBh or larger, you're going to need a really, really hot fire to bring those sweet gums down to ground level, which obviously could induce some unintentional mortality or damage to your crop trees and the overstory. So there's a silvicultural aspect to this as well, in terms of how a management action that might you know help your mid-story sweet gum problem might also inadvertently hurt your overstory pine timber. The second issue with that approach, just using a really hot fire, is that to bring that sweet gum down to ground level from a mid-story tree, you're going to use up all of the fuel that you have in the understory to conduct that burn. But remember, that sweet gum is going to be re-sprouting from an established root system. So it is going to grow much faster than a sweet gum that was growing from seed wood. When that happens, it is going to get out of the reach of fire, so to speak, really quickly. Very likely fast enough where you do not have fuel that has reaccumulated in the understory to carry another fire to reset that sweet gum back to ground level. So it's you just kind of set yourself up to be dealing with this cycle that is really hard to maintain because sweet gums grow so fast. You used up your fuel. How do you deal with it? So a I think much more efficient way to deal with that problem, although it would take some more time up front and you would have to use herbicides up front, is to go in and do a chemical treatment on the sweet gum up front and kill that entire plant so you're not having to constantly fight it with fire and not really ever getting full control of the sweet gum. Because if you just go in and burn the sweet gum in year one, even if you reset all the mid-story sweetgums to ground level, they're going to be vigorously re-sprouting as soon as that fire is passed through that stand. All the while they're going to be out competing other high-quality plants that are in the vicinity. Sweetgums are very clonal, right? So you got one big mama tree, and then you've got a bunch of little small trees that have sprouted up from that mama tree's root system. When you burn and you topkill those where you had one stem, now very likely you end up with seven or ten or twenty stems that kind of branch out like an umbrella. That umbrella is capturing sunlight, right? And it's out competing the high-quality stuff that we want to be germinating in the understory. So I say all of that to say that a more efficient way to deal the sweet gum problem would just be go in and hack and squirt or girdle and spray or whatever, those larger mid-story trees, so you can treat one tree instead of top killing it and having 20 or 30 smaller trees to deal with in the future that you're it's going to take you years to get good control of.

The Case for a One-Time Herbicide Reset

Moriah Boggess 18:03

I I think that's a really good segue into discussing more about the context behind herbicide use in the same way that I I I think a little bit we kind of led into this talking about those kind of people that hate herbicides. So I'm kind of labeling and bending people, which isn't fair. They do the same thing to us, right? I I think there's probably people that maybe are listening, definitely people we run into that see us talking about herbicide treatments, especially mid-story treatments in in pine plantation. People don't like that, especially aerial applications sometimes make people kind of queasy. Anytime that we're doing these blanket applications where we're killing like a bunch of grass or in that case trees, people push back on it. And and a lot of times we're here saying, hey, you know, we're using this for a particular purpose, and I think I think all they hear is that we're pro-herbicide. Right there, Luke, you laid out a really good example of why fire alone in that context isn't going to help your sweet gum problem. It's going to maintain it. And I think it's a good time to talk about some of the other tools that we we discuss all the time. Like we talk about disking, we talk about fire timing. And I'm sure people have heard us talk about fire timing, they've heard our colleagues talk about fire timing. And this is something where I've seen increasingly more awareness around growing season burns and people wanting to implement that and seeing the pros of using growing season fire versus dormant season fire. But even in the case of fire timing, of course, it's not a silver bullet. In the same way the herbicide is not a silver bullet. But in in your example there, just using growing season fire isn't going to kill all of those suicums that are already established in the understory. Because to your point, they've already got a root system, they're very well established. Growing season fire is a lot better way to steer a plant community so you don't end up in that issue or in that, in that problem. And it's very similar to rank native warm season grasses, something we've discussed in the past at length. And a lot of these stands that were planted in the native warm season grasses 10, 15 years ago at really high seed rates. All we have is big blue stems, switchgrass, Indian grass, and it's super dense, it's too thick for game birds to use, has very little cover value for deer, at least in the center of the sand, and overall is just not providing the kind of diversity that we would like. And I've seen more and more people saying, Oh, well, don't worry about spraying it. You're poisoning the earth. You know, that's bad. Don't use chemicals, just use growing season fire. Which is kind of ironic because, you know, I like I've seen those comments on on the posts of the people who actually literally did the research that's published the benefit benefits of using growing season fire. But that doesn't address the true limitations that there are in something like fire seasonality. Just burning in the late growing season isn't going to suddenly set back your native warm season grasses by 70 or 80%. Really, the only effective way to do that is a timely herbicide application. Now, a lot of times we will combine that with fire, or we will combine that with disking. We will combine it with another management action. But the thing that really pushes that control to the point where we're actually going to see the flush of Forbes and the maintained openness on the ground that we need for game birds is through the use of herbicide. And so in that case with rank native warm season grasses, it's it's parallel to the sweet gum example where we are taking a stand that was managed poorly before. That poor management might have been mismatch of fire timing. It might have been fire exclusion completely. Either way, we got too much of something that we didn't want in there. Maybe it's mist or sweet gum or rank native warm season grass. But really, the only way to get out of there, to get out of that stage, and especially to get out of it quickly. Is with herbicide. And there's, I mean, like with grasses, you know, you can do late summer discing, you can do late summer burning, and you might reduce the coverage slightly for a year or half a year, but very quickly those perennial grasses come right back to where they were. And without severely knocking them back with herbicide, we're going to stay at that stage for a long time. And then here's the important part, like with the growing season fire that we're just discussing in pines, we can start using that in the future once we get things corrected with the herbicide. So the herbicide is a one-time thing to remedy, to fix a problem that developed. And we're not going to maintain this herbicide application in the understory of the pines forever. It's really just a one-time thing to fix where we're at. And then from there we can move forward with the other tools that we talk about all the time.

The Real Limiting Resource: Time, Efficiency & What You're Giving Up

Luke Resop 22:57

Yeah, when y'all are talking with uh land managers or reading Facebook comments on a habitat management Facebook page, what is usually the most limited resource for a land manager? What do you mean by resource? Just anything that they have at their disposal to manage a plant community.

Moriah Boggess 23:17

A lot of times it's fire because there's a lot of complexity with implementing fire, and there's a lot of people who have never used fire before.

Luke Resop 23:26

Yeah, I think I think that when I'm perusing Facebook pages, certainly when I'm talking to landowners, if we've done surveys, we've hit on this some. I think a lot of times the most limited resource to people, and maybe when I phrased it a minute ago, I I should have said I should have phrased it away from like a tool. To me, it's more time. People are usually most limited on time to what they can get to. Like they they can spend the money on drip torch fuel and they've got a tractor and they've probably got the equipment they need to do the job, but they just can't get to all the acres because they don't have the time to get to all the acres, especially for more weekend type land managers that it's not their full-time job. They just don't have the time to manage their food plots to the nines and all their timber stands and all their old fields and keep up with their road maintenance and clear branches from shooting lanes and just don't have the time. So when I think about that as what I perceive to be the most common limitation, I would never want to recommend to a landowner to approach an issue like the sweet gum encroachment into a mid-story with a strategy that is not going to be the best use of their time long term. Now, obviously, that might come at the expense of using some herbicide if they don't want to. But when you think about the long-term value of that pine stand, not just for timber production, but also for wildlife food and cover and meeting whatever wildlife objectives we have, their time is going to be best used treating that sweet gum problem like that. You can turn a stand around in the matter of six to eight months with one strategic herbicide application where if you just use fire repeatedly or just go out there and cut stump the trees with a chainsaw, you are going to achieve probably 20% of the results. And it might take you a decade or more, or maybe never, to get to the same point you would have if you had just used one timely herbicide application. So I'm thinking about the use of herbicides for land managers, it's really all about how do I achieve the best results in the least amount of time. And obviously there's a financial aspect to this too, because herbicide applications are usually, you know, anywhere from $15 to $100 per acre. So it's not like it's an insignificant burden on your pocketbook, especially if you're managing a lot of acres. But when you contrast the amount of money that it costs, let's say $20 per acre for a lot of herbicide applications if you're doing it yourself, versus waiting five to ten years to achieve maybe the same results that you could in one year with an herbicide application. That is the best use of a manager's time so that they can then go into maintenance mode. And now I've done my herbicide application, sweet gums are under control. Now I can just maintain the desired structure, composition, whatever of this plant community with strategically time fire. Like you touched on a minute ago, Moriah, with the warm season grasses. I firmly believe that an herbicide application is the best way to get that plant community into a desirable species composition and structure. And then you can use things like fire timing, disking, fire seasonality, return interval, whatever, to maintain the desired structure and composition. But trying to apply this corrective management approach to address this, what could be viewed as a pretty severe problem, native warm season grass encroachment where you have no Forbes or very little, and the value for game birds is very poor. That's not trying to address that with just fire, it's it's completely inefficient, right? You're in a year, you're gonna be at the same point as where you were, or maybe a little bit better. Whereas I could just use an herbicide application, and now all of a sudden it's like I've got a brand new field. I've got a brand new plant community. It's not at all the same thing. So it's just way more efficient to use the herbicide application as step one, deal with the problem, and then use the other tools that maybe people view as a little bit more holistic to maintain the plant community going forward.

Moriah Boggess 27:46

The other part of the time equation, you're talking about the amount of limitation on the amount of time for implementation, which I agree with you. That is that's a huge limitation for a lot of people. The other one is that if it takes us 20 years to get a plant community whipped into shape versus a year and a half, just think how much more quickly we get to start realizing the full benefit of the habitat that we're managing for instead of, you know, decades down the road. I mean, we all only have so many years, so efficiency is definitely something that we're always trying to get so that we can get get where we're going as quick as possible.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 28:20

Exactly where I went, Moriah. And you know, the perspective from an older guy here compared to y'all, how how many seasons do you have? And uh imagine the regret that you would have or or I would have is I'm not gonna apply the herbicide. I'm gonna try to use the these other techniques, for example, like y'all were discussing, just fire. And I get five years down the road, and that that stand or that area still is not producing what I want it to produce. So another year, another five years went by. There is no fawning cover, there is no deer forage, there is no turkey nesting, there is no turkey brooding, etc. etc. At some point, I mean, I know you would just I would be exasperated and kick myself and go, why didn't I just do it right the first time five years ago and be reaping the success of that? Now I have enjoyed more turkey seasons. Now my deer condition has been better for a number of years. And another thing that that popped in my mind was we are not saying that here is this recipe that you have to do it. You have to do it this way. It's always a site assessment of does it need to happen? And I I remember working with Andy Ezell years ago, and we were were on this project, and we were, you know, comparing where an Amazapir treatment was and a pine forest, and we got to this other stand, this other compartment, and I was kind of shocked. I'm like, well, Andy, why are we not gonna do the exact same treatment there and apply amazapir? And of course he looked at me because it was in hindsight, it was a silly question, it should have been obvious to me. He goes, because there's not enough sweet gum in that stand to justify the application. And so with his experience and his wisdom, he could look at the amount of sweet gum composition there. He knew what the cost of the treatment was gonna be, and it was not going to pay for itself with accelerated pine growth. Whereas in this other stand, the sweet gum was competing with the pine tree. So the rate of growth was being diminished, and when you pay to remove that sweet gum, you're gonna get that money back and more in your pine forest, in your timber quality. Whereas in this stand it wasn't. So I'm just it's it's the same thing. We're not saying that it's just this carbon copy treatment to always do it. It is an expert looking and evaluating and saying there is too much of species A, B, or C, and it is going to eliminate or diminish your results, and you're gonna be set years behind. Yeah.

Moriah Boggess 31:16

And I I think that's where we get a lot of pushback on herbicides is people looking at it from the opposite side saying it's never good, it's always a problem. And I'm glad you pointed that out, Bronson. It isn't always the answer. It it it should be weighed and it shouldn't just be taken lightly. And I think I think, you know, at the beginning we all kind of made that point that I don't I don't think any of us take herbicide use lightly and just use it willy-nilly. Because there are real effects. I mean, heck, even you know, a masapyr and the understory of a pine stand, there's obviously the effect on the hardwoods we're controlling, but there's also a huge effect on the composition of that understory. And I've seen it the year after look tremendous with and the forba flush of annual Forbes coming in and really good brooding cover and overall decent diversity, and by year two starting to come in. I've also seen it where you get that initial flush in year two, it's more of the same thing, and you're not building any fuel to be able to carry a fire, and it can take some time to work out of that. So it's I mean, even the the herbicide button is is kind of a question mark too. Like you're not always going to get the same result because you are shaking things up. And I mean, like that that's part of the cost for sure of getting rid of this sweet gum.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 32:34

So, what are some I think Moriah, you

No-Herbicide Scenarios: Managing Invasives with Cultural Methods Only

Dr. Bronson Strickland 32:37

said earlier, some other cultural methods. If we and you know, this isn't us and we wouldn't recommend it, but let's just say that the exercise here is you had to take herbicides out of the equation. Okay, here's a scenario, Moriah. You were hired to manage a park, you know, something owned by an entity or government or whatever, and they go, absolutely no herbicide use. What's what's your toolbox now? And it depends. You know, the question back to me is probably gonna be Are we talking about a grass? We're talking about a tree, are we talking about shrub, whatever? But I I guess I'm just asking you to kind of think out loud what are gonna be some alternatives for you.

Moriah Boggess 33:20

Yeah. Think so I I I'm gonna kind of steer this toward invasive species because I want to talk about those some. We've already talked about disking and burning and some of those other methods for just managing native plant communities. But yeah, if I'm in that situation and I'm managing invasive specifically, I think first I'm gonna temper my expectations differently. With invasive species management, your goal probably should never be complete eradication simply because it's it's not realistic with most things, unless you catch it really, really early. Some things like larger species like Tree of Heaven or you know, tree species, woody species, they're a little bit easier to identify individuals and kill. You might be able to get closer to eradication. But you know, things like Caricia or Japanese stilt grass, herbaceous things that are lower growing, they're they're always gonna be hard to get all of them, even with herbicide. But if I'm stuck using only cultural methods, it's gonna be mowing, disking, burning, my expectation for the amount of control I'm gonna get is going to be lower. And I guess for me, the way I'm gonna look at that is the number one reason I'm upset about an invasive, let's take Japanese stiltgrass, is if it's out competing and suppressing native vegetative growth that I want to promote. And honestly, in the case of like Japanese stiltgrass, a lot of times it's growing in densely shaded understories that aren't producing much forage otherwise. And usually when I see it competing with things that I'm trying to promote, it's when it's on the margins. It's kind of dappled sunlight, partial shade, where I might be able to get some some forb growth in there, but then the Japanese stiltgrass is really taking off and suppressing it. And so in that case, if I'm not using herbicides, one of the ways I I've seen to manage Japanese stiltgrass and by no means controls it, but it helps suppress it, is just getting more sunlight in there so that other vegetation can grow and outcompete it. Japanese stiltgrass is a pretty weak plant because it's an annual and it grows from seed every year, which makes it really, really difficult to get rid of, nearly impossible, even with herbicide because there's just so much seed production. But because it's an annual and grows from seed every year, it has to establish that root system every spring. And if you have perennials established like Goldenrod and any of the other taller perennials, it will help suppress that that Japanese stiltgrass. So in that case, if I can't manage with with if I can't use chemical to control Japanese stiltgrass, I'm going to shy away from, let's say, managing bottom line hardwoods with single tree selection or a crop tree release because I'm going to create an understory and amount of sunlight that is perfect for Japanese stiltgrass to outcompete other fours because it's going to be still pretty light-limited. Japanese stillgrass can do really well in that situation, and other things can't compete near as well. So in that case, I probably will just keep some areas closed canopy. And then the areas that I do want to manage, I'm going to manage those areas more intensively to try to create competition with that invasive. And so I guess to boil down my answer, to address invasives without chemicals requires creating competition for them. And then in some cases, like in with annuals, Japanese stiltgrass being one, you can use mowing if it's timed very well, right when that that plant is flowering and about to set seed. You can mow to set it back and in some cases kill that plant because all of its energy's been spent putting up seed. But that takes extremely careful timing, and you're not going to get all of it. So again, kind of going back to tempering my expectation.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 37:12

That's precisely what what I was going to say. You set me up there regarding expectations, is it's just being honest and giving the the landowner the heads up that this species is here and it is going to be problematic. No judgment from us if if they are willing to accept the trade-off that they're not going to be getting the most out of that that area or that stand with the plants that we are hoping to cultivate, then that's okay. If they were to say, hey, I'm willing to accept ten to twenty percent of that invasive species not to apply a herbicide, that's okay. I just think it's gonna be our role to say it's going to be a problem to this extent. Here's what we would recommend to to c take care of it, but they can make a decision on how they want to manage that situation. Yeah.

Luke Resop 38:08

Yeah, I think the most common fallacy that I see with you know some of the remarks that we see pretty commonly on posts that are, you know, talking about using herbicides or disking for that matter, or whatever, when people are placed very firmly in the anti-whatever herbicide camp, is that expectations have not been tempered. There is this prevailing idea for whatever reason, maybe it's a lack of experience, it's a lack of whatever, that if I can I can just remove a tool from the toolbox and achieve the same exact results in the same amount of time that I would have had had I used that tool. So the Japanese stiltgrass, or maybe like if you're managing a park and you've got kudzu, right? Like could you go out there and hand pool all the kudzu with a tractor and a chain and get the same results? Maybe, but how long is that going to take you and how many hours of park staff effort is it going to take you to achieve those results? And are you ever going to get as good a control because all that kudzu is going to be re-sprouting from the root system too? Are you ever going to get the same level of control and confer the same amount of reallocated sunlight to the native plants you want to be establishing relative to if you had just using herbicide? Right? So I think the whole temper your expectations point is an excellent point to reinforce because you can absolutely take herbicides off the table and you know, landowner prerogative, that's 100% up to the landowner to do. However, when you do take herbicides or any other tool for that matter, food plots, prescribed fire, disking, forced whatever it is, you will be changing the game to some extent, and you will not very likely, depending on the situation, be able to achieve the same objectives at the same rate had you kept all the tools in the toolbox. So that's all that's that's what we all do for a living. That's what we like to think about. It's how to take and synthesize and integrate all of the tools in the toolbox and apply them to specific situations to achieve the desired results in the most efficient way possible in the least amount of time, right? And by removing a tool from the toolbox, it just lessens our ability to do that. It's not that we can't still achieve good results or that we still can't get to the same endpoint. In some cases, it's just the landowner has to realize, or the park manager, or whatever situation we're talking about, that the way that we get there is going to be very different, and the end product is likely going to be very different.

Moriah Boggess 40:50

I've I've also noticed a lot of overlap between people who are anti-herbicide and very dead set in, oh, you can just accomplish it this way, people who aren't very open to the context of all the different options and fitting an option to a certain situation. There's a lot of overlap between those people and people who don't pay attention to plant community composition. And when when I am evaluating, and I'm I'm sure it's the same with both of you, when I'm evaluating the understory of a thin hardwood stand, for instance, I am not satisfied if all it is is hay scented fern and Japanese stiltgrass. Now, it might be close to waist high, dense green vegetation, but to me that was a failure. I don't have anything against hayscented fern, it's just an understory fern. But I don't want the whole understory to be that. And I definitely don't want the bulk of the understory to be, you know, Japanese stiltgrass. But again, like I see a lot of overlap between these people who say that, oh, you should never use the herbicide, and the same people who don't recognize the complexity of plant community dynamics, don't recognize the difference between the values of various Forbes or various grasses. Because for us, just having green on the ground is not enough. We're trying to shape a plant community, whether that is an old field, whether it's a pine forest, hardwoods, whatever, to be a certain way. We want it to have at least most of the time 60 plus percent coverage of Forbes. You know, we we have goals like that in mind. We want there to be some annual Forbes in there, especially after disturbance. We don't want it to all be just Canada Goldenrod. And so, I don't know, I'm on my soapbox a little bit because that's one of the things that sometimes kind of frustrates me with people who constantly want to shut down the advice or recommendations that we're given with those goals in mind, because we're being very specific to try to get to something. We're not just looking at it and be like, oh, we just want to kill it all and spray herbicide on it. No, when there when there's the application of herbicide, there's generally a problem or something that we are trying to address, and it's very context-dependent. It's not just a button that we hit every time we encounter a thin pine stand, for instance.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 43:08

You know, I I think of it this way too, is that it wouldn't be anything we would recommend casually without there being strong support for it being necessary. I mean, we're always trying to, when we're working with people, to also save them money. And so we're not going to recommend, you know, the the cost of the chemical, the time for the application, maybe having to pay for an applicator. If if it wasn't, you know, critical, we would see it as as being critically, you know, necessary to help the the landowner reach their goals. So all this stuff comes into play. We don't we don't take this lightly. Just because we recommend herbicide use does not mean we always recommend herbicide use. It's always necessary and the judicious application of it, you know. Only when necessary, only the amount needed to solve the problem.

Luke Resop 44:05

Yeah, I think a I think a very good example of b what both of y'all just said can we can find in the sweet gum encroachment into the pine stand situation that we were talking about earlier. So if there is a, let's say, 70 square foot per acre pine stand and you've got an established mid-story sweet gum problem, and most of the trees are four plus inches DBH, I think your most efficient way to address that problem is going to be with an herbicide application. However, to get in that scenario in the first place where you've got a dense sweet gum mid-story of four to six inch trees, what does that very likely mean to happen? It means that from the time that stand was thinned or whatever, fire was probably suppressed or not applied at the right time and frequency. So I think the flip side of that is if you have a 70 square foot per acre pine stand that has just been thinned, and you very well might have sweet gum popping up in the understory, approaching the mid-story, but if you use fire very strategically from the get-go, you're never going to end up at the place where you need an herbicide application, right? We might we might look at that stand and be like, hey, you're about to have a sweet gum problem where if you give it another three years, you're gonna need to get a skitter in here and spray, you know, 24 ounces per acre of amazopier, and it's gonna cost you 100 bucks per acre to do. Or you can deal with the problem now and use a strategically timed fire in June, July, August, whatever, knock that sweet gum back and reallocate resources to the better plants. Because those plants are still there in the understory with the sweet gum. There's more direct competition. We just need to find a way to reallocate the resources and confer an advantage to the species that we want more of and less of an advantage to the species that we want less of, i.e., sweet gum. So I think that's a good example of like, hey, we could have essentially the same overstory composition, and if you left both situations unchecked, we would end up with the same problem. But just by tweaking our approach at the beginning of the situation, we never end up with the problem in the first place. So I'd approach situation A very differently than I'd approach situation B. And I've I've seen this literally exactly I've got a case study in my mind of where this has happened, and it's on one side of the road versus the other side of the road. And the both sides of the road were managed the exact same way up until about 10 years ago, when on one side of the road fire was suppressed, and on the other side of the road, we kept burning routinely on a two to three year fire return interval, mixing up dormant and growing season fire based on the composition of the plant community at the time. And on the one, we still have excellent composition of forage and cover in the understory and very minimal sweet gum problem. On the other side, we've got a bad sweet gum problem.

Deer Density, Food Plot Weeds & the Catch-22 Most Landowners Are Stuck In

Moriah Boggess 47:09

Yeah, you know, another way that we can reduce the amount of herbicide that we need to use is in our food plots by deer management and also just getting out in front of weed problems. But the best way to create big time cool season weed issues is by having too many deer on a food plot or not enough acreage for the amount of deer you have. Because what that does is, you know, essentially let's say you have crimson clover and and buttercup in a food plot, and you have too many deer grazing that food plot, they're going to preferentially eat the crimson clover and they're not going to eat the buttercup. And so it's essentially like your little gardeners out there weeding out your crimson clover just so you have this tremendous crop of of buttercup. And then if you don't control that buttercup, that problem gets worse and worse and worse. And I would say that is the status of 80% or more of food plots in the South is that maybe they do some cool season weed control, maybe they don't. Those weeds kind of accumulate more and more every year, and it's a catch-22 because the the more those weeds accumulate and set seed, the more weed pressure there is in the fall, the more stunted their crop is, the more pressure that crop gets from the deer, and it gets worse and worse and worse. And so it might require some herbicide work if you've already got a lot of weed seed in there, whether that's ryegrass or or again buttercup, you might need to do an application one or two years to get in front of it and get it suppressed, and then do some population management at the same time, get your deer herd in check or add some acreage so that your established crop can close canopy and suppress weeds that are going to germinate underneath it. And I mean, that's the best way to suppress future weed problems. And then once you get everything tuned in, you shouldn't have to do cool season weed control. And if you do, it should be just spot applications because you might have a little wet spot or something and your crop dies out and buttercup comes in, and little things like that you can keep up with so that you don't have to do blanket applications of clethodim or 2-4 dB every year. I mean, there's a lot of places that because they have so many deer, they have they just about have to be doing those applications annually because there's so much bare ground all through winter that Carolina geranium's coming in there. I mean, you you name it the cool season weed, it's it's getting seeded in just because there's growing space.

Luke Resop 49:32

Yeah, I think it's worth harping on this point for a minute because I 100% agree that the most hands down, bar none, most effective means of weed control is cultural. And that is by balancing the number of mouths with your food plot acreage. Cool season. Think about the phen think about the timing and the phonology of when most cool, and there are there are exceptions to this, especially if we start talking about perennial cool season weeds, but most of our cool season weeds are annuals that are real problematic in food plots. So think about the timing that problematic cool season weeds germinate versus when your cool season food plot germinates. Most food plots, if we're talking in the in the southern US, are planted from August to October, right? The vast majority of annual cool season weeds are not germinating until December, January, or February when we start getting some of those warm mid to late winter days. So if you have your food plot acreage balanced with the number of miles on the landscape, that planting is out of the gate, has the advantage over the weeds because it was planted and has germinated three months earlier. The situations where we see issues are where Moriah, like you said, the little gardeners are out there nipping off all the new growth on the crimson clover and the wheat or whatever, and uh still allowing sunlight to the ground that creates a good germinating and growing environment for the weeds. But if you did not have that level of grazing pressure, those cool season food plot species would canopy and they would prevent those weeds from even germinating in the first place. Or once they did germinate, they'd immediately be out competed by a plant that was six inches taller and had a vigorous root system. But I see it so commonly where we try to plant a one-acre food plot, which is, you know, one to two acre food plot, a lot of people do it. It's extremely common, and for a lot of people, that's the only, you know, that's the only acreage they have to devote to food plots. But when you have that size food plot in the south where deer densities are generally quite high, you can expect some cool season weed problems. And if you want that cool season food plot to perform to its full potential, which from my perspective is not just hunting over it in the deer season, it's by being careful about which species we include, so it can be feeding deer into spring and even summer in a lot of cases, then you're gonna need to be on top of that weed problem. And if you're in the one to two acre food plot and you've got a weed problem and you don't use herbicides, well then you've got just a weed problem into spring and summer, and you have completely lost your spring and summer forage production out of your planting. Whereas A, best case scenario, you just manage your deer density appropriately, and B dedicated your food plot acreage to larger food plots where the planting would be able to outcompete weeds, then that food plot has just become a lot more efficient for you because you likely won't need an herbicide application, or if you do, you'll need less frequent herbicide applications, and that planting will now persist for a great deal longer into the spring and summer. So, like our point a minute ago about maximizing efficiency, if I'm gonna plant a food plot and spend the time and the money and the resources and the diesel fuel and everything in planting that food plot, I mean our data says that a normal conventional food plot costs five to six hundred dollars per acre when you factor in soil amendments and herbicide and you know seed and diesel fuel and all the things. If I'm gonna spend that much money on a cool season food plot, I want that thing to be rocking and rolling for as long as I can. And I don't want to have to, you know, nurse it along with band-aids and Kool-Aid all the time because it's not feeling well. I want it to be ginning and hitting on all cylinders the entire time. And doing that means that we need to be really careful with the very first step of that process, and that's site selection, and that's how many deer are on the property. I think those are two of the most important things in all of this equation. And you you I mean, you could even apply that to a lot of the other, you know, invasive species problems that are conferred an advantage when the native plant community is not doing well. If you've got a native plant community that's just continually overgrazed and overbrows by deer, well, why are invasive species a problem in the first place? It's because they germinate earlier and they've got generally longer growing seasons than the native plants. So if the native plants are just getting hammered by deer and they're unable to be there in the first place, well, of course you're gonna have invasive species problems because they're the usually not very high preference deer forages and there are no natives there to compete with them.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 54:18

Well, think about the the positive feedback loop you described there, both of you all did. So take care of the deer density issue, lower the population. That in and of itself is gonna cause deer condition to be better, but by doing so, now your food plot is going to perform better and provide more food. So now you're providing more food just in the food plot for a lesser number of deer. So now your food plot is gonna perform better, your deer condition is going to be better, everybody wins in that regard. So it's it just makes really, really good management sense. So most most properties are on the negative side of that feedback loop. No doubt about it. Even with their you know, understores of their forest stands. Yeah. No doubt about it. Well, guys, this was uh a

Closing Thoughts: Right Tools in the Right Context

Dr. Bronson Strickland 55:15

really good discussion. I think we kind of covered the spectrum of the possibilities. And to me, this is a classic, it depends. We're not in every situation recommending herbicide use. We're not in every single situation recommending that you don't. We are recommending that it is very site-specific. What species need to be controlled? Are are there alternative effective methods to control them? And there may be some where we can do it one or two or three different ways. There are very likely some situations where if you're going to have success and meet your objectives, it may require some chemistry. It may require some herbicide use. And and we just simply think that's going to be the more effective way to fast forward success and to get that that plot, that forest stand, whatever you're managing, where where it needs to be. So thank thank you both for your time. I appreciate the input. Any any closing thoughts, Moriah or Luke?

Moriah Boggess 56:22

Yeah. We are not in any way associated with any chemical company. If we were, we would all make a lot more money. You should see the cars we drive. We're always the ones buying the chemicals to get the work done. But yeah, like we're first off, we're not associated, we don't sell any kind of food plotsi, we don't pitch chemicals, we're not making money in that way. We only really make money by making sound management advisements based off of research and based off of experience. And that's why we harp so much on context, because the context you know is so imperative. You have to understand that to make the correct decision. And the correct decision is is very seldom the same on in you know multiple circumstances.

Luke Resop 57:08

So I guess my closing point would be uh none of us are sitting here in our ivory tower disillusioned to the real world. I mean, we don't just manage land for research, we also manage land for recreation, just like you know, all of the listeners who manage land, they manage land for recreation. And we are very familiar with the situations in which herbicide is effective and the situations where herbicide is not the best management approach. So I just don't I want people to just be aware that we we get it and we get the concerns with spraying herbicides too. Like we talked about at the beginning of the podcast. We I don't enjoy spraying herbicides, I don't enjoy the exposure, but I also am very aware of how effective herbicides are at achieving a specific objective in a very timely manner. So we're all about using the right tool for the job. We're not about just blindly throwing the toolbox at the wall and seeing what gets the job done. We are very strategic in what we use, when we use it, and how we use it to achieve a specific objective.

Dr. Bronson Strickland 58:19

Well said. Well, thank you guys. I appreciate your time and uh really good discussion. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Outro

Moriah Boggess 58:28

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.