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

Speaker 2: 0:02

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

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 it'll be more specific to quail, which I don't I've ever actually heard discussed at length from that standpoint. Obviously, there's all kinds of information out there food plots. And someday we'll do one that's more focused on deer. But that that subject has been exhausted in a lot So today we've got Dr. Mark McConnell with us, who does a lot of quail 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 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 instances, Mark, where you would say, actually, I and specifically for quail? And I don't know if that would be like when you have 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 it depends, right? The there there really ought to be a bell that goes off on these podcasts that every time somebody 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 bill him or something, I think every time he but but it it does happen. So I'll put it this way I've never entered a 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 Peterson too much, define what we mean by food So if you mean uh any managed opening that we're for specific plant community, like like a lot of we'll do things just with disking to create a very forb-heavy herbaceous community that we are purely for that plant community, and we're never it get out of there. We're disking it every fall, like in the Red Hills region or in quail plantation country, they're fields, they call them brood fields, they don't them food plots, but they're mostly food plots. I mean, most of them and really well-managed are almost 100% common ragweed, right? So does a does a one-acre field of common ragweed disked every fall to maintain it as common 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 it, but I would never add it, except if, like you 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 a couple of years to really get where we could manpower, resources-wise, get good brood cover the native cover, then absolutely. Then absolutely I would say, look, in the short let's put something in these areas so that 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 would be something I would recommend if it exist. But if they've already got a food plot kind of food plots throughout the property, then how we manage can be a little bit different in terms of of what's needed. And again, balancing it with deer, I do think room you can do that. But like anything, when you're balancing, the perfect thing you would do for the deer, and maybe not the perfect thing you would do for the 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 that you do these food plots and like that's the you go hunt because the birds are in there, So I I've worked with landowners that would plant uh just just brown top millet plots, like 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, And they'll do that. And I've never hunted through those, so I can't 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 for hunting, I would say you're you're very you you don't have enough seeds out there in the rest 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 them for very specific native plant communities disturbance. And whether that's a food plot or not, I guess maybe that's the question. Yeah.

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 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 What would you be prescribing in that situation as a 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 is what the structure needs to be from a deer quail at those two different seasons. So during the brooding months, the summer months, a perfect world with the right soil types and the equipment and seed costs. Honestly, I cannot speak enough about how a ragweed. I I don't like monocultures, but if you're going to do a monoculture, a common ragweed field impressive for quail. It's such an idealistic plant to a cool quail right? It's got one stem coming up and then it's got a 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 cover, which is two things. One, it's a predator thing from avian predators, 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 what's under that cover in that food plot is 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 that you don't have to think about maybe as much deer, but I don't know. When we're when we're planting something quail or it for quail, we're trying to make sure it's a 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 insects, which is what those chicks need. And if it's allowed to go to seed, which it be if it's being managed for quail, it's gonna a seed in the fall, late summer, fall, that they 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 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, remember what the name is now because they've 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 Uh the great thing about partridge pea is if you you just take the plant structure itself, it's got all these little branches once you get a couple off the stem from the ground, and it's got all little nodes that are full of all kinds of stuff, and it attracts a ton of insects, right? It's also really good over winter overhead cover, umbrella cover, and it attracts a lot of insects, got overhead cover, and it's a legume, so it's that pod. So you've also got the other benefit where you're get a seed cast in the in the late summer fall 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 it was because it was developed between Louisiana 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 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 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 plant diversity because it's gonna, it's gonna most other things. And it's so thick, it tends to almost mat to And at some point, when it gets like that, it's 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 all that. We did just finish up, we have not published but analyzing the data, we finished up imprinted chick study where we were we were imprinting putting them in all these different vegetative letting them forage for 30 minutes, calling them killing them, dissecting them, and seeing all what all they ate. In a lark partridge pea monoculture, they did 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, was a uh essentially a pawnator plot that had 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 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 not getting a fire to carry through it, and uh, or at least not well, so it becomes quite But yeah, that's the lark variety. If you're putting partridge pee in your be very careful. Whoever you're working with, just yeah, call and out. You want the the native, you don't want that, in my opinion, you don't want that cultivar in coil

Moriah Boggess: 10:58

I I mean I would call it invasive because it takes the site, it starts to shift plant communities, it your ability to manage that site. It's not going to keep woody species from eventually in. So it's it's invasive up to a degree, but it does everything else. So personally, I that's a very broad category of and it all has everything to do with your 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 know, most of them are good and they know, but 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 probably that cultivar. And so you got to so what we do now is is we just off our partridge pea seeding we know if we put like what the recommendations 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 happen? And then we scratch the dirt with a disc okay, let's let's kind of reset it, and then it came back with a vengeance. It it almost functions as a very hairy-looking 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 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 of the other plant communities when that partropy just disturbed. But then then what are you doing from a quail right? Disturbance is how we maintain stuff. So there I don't have a good solution how to deal it, but the best way is just to avoid it. But going back to the question, for the sake of discussion, do we want to talk about or would a field in a traditional quail plantation meet of a food plot, or does a food plot have to be a you're putting in the ground?

Moriah Boggess: 12:56

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

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 13:24

Yeah.

Dr. Mark McConnell: 13:25

So one of the biggest things, going back to your question, Moriah, one of the biggest things on the landscape from a quail standpoint and for too, and there's tons of research to demonstrate this across the range, is well, really good brood right? We just the complete lack of disturbance in plant communities, but specifically, we when you think about ideal quail brood cover, little of it on the landscape. Shrub cover also, really good shrub cover, very on the landscape, but brood cover in So if you want it, there's plenty of grass usually, and quail can nest on a lot of properties, but they got to take those chicks to make sure they are getting that that high protein, insect-rich diet stay alive and not get exposed to higher that's a hard recipe for a lot of landowners. And a brood field or a really well-managed food 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 and thinning and all the other tools. But yeah, it's a it's a way to get it on the approach I like. Yeah.

Moriah Boggess: 14:35

Question for you. I would say the category of managers and landowners 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 turkey cover and and they've got a good fire rotation regime where they've got brooding cover for turkeys, how I guess how much overlap and then how much separation there from ideal brooding cover for turkeys, or or just say good brooding cover for turkeys, and then cover for quail, brooding cover for quail.

Dr. Mark McConnell: 15:10

Good question. So the the the kind of the biggest salient point all life history with those two species is turkeys have a wider range of things they can exploit and 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 and doing fairly well. Then of course there's plenty of bad cover out With quail, they're smaller in general. Of course, turkeys grow and get bigger, but there's a there's a period where they're but they're just smaller. Turkeys have much stronger legs, they're way 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 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 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 in terms of your they're all trying to eat bugs, but it's really a structural difference, in my They the turkeys can just they can just exploit a range of resources. But that and again, turkey brood cover is very too. You know, I think I think Craig's research at clearly demonstrated that that's a very big limitation on the landscape. But yeah, that's the big thing. In terms of species composition, there's fair amount of overlap if you're gonna do it, but can just quail have a narrower range of what they 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 where you have disking capabilities versus solely 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 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 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 foot fairly easily through through the cover and it on the ground and keep it rolling, and you're hit stuff, but if you can move around it, a chick get through it. If you can't, chick probably can't. I think John Carroll used to do something James Martin told me with a ping pong ball. I found out about that after I was doing the 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 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 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 it's so much more difficult for quail broods to move because of that versus turkeys and all that. Which, I mean, we've all seen turkey brews, at least ones out in fescue fields, not the mean that they're well, and some of them probably get killed while doing that, but they can at least get around enough to to 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 use fescue. It just often depends on how that fescue is The if it when you put a horse, when you put horses in a fescue pasture, they tend to eat it down 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 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 But yes, absolutely when people see quail and fields either mowed or heavily grazed, they go, there's quail and fescue. And I'm like, yeah, there's also deer in the 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 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 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 nesting. But I saw a turkey nesting XYZ, and they turned it around as, well, then that's a really, good indicator you don't have good

Dr. Mark McConnell: 20:14

They're gonna nest somewhere. Yeah. Right. You just gotta make sure you gave you you laid the be successful.

Moriah Boggess: 20:21

Yeah. So related to fescue, that's my bridging the gap most people probably are expecting this conversation to be about, which is your traditional food plot, a food plot is going to have some kind of a grass It should be some sort of cereal grain. Normally, for us, that's wheat. It could be oats, triticale, you know, cereal rice, like that. But structurally, those, especially when they're 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 the last few years, when we've had these hard cold 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 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 the the turt the deer density, right? If most food plots, if they're if they're getting 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 proof that all the clovers are just absolutely to quail. But what I will say is the overall structure of most clover plots provide some quail can exploit them 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 going to be bugs there, and you know, some seed to some degree at some point, if it if it ever makes to that point, if the deer don't get it, they'll it. But most food plots are also on the average 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 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 I've never seen quail in the interior, but I have them use the edge a little bit, and there's 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 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 be more beneficial that probably both 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 it, and a quail will use it. And I can't swear that their fate was negative, it's it's not structurally what we're after, and not providing the the structural resources that 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 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 got just I guess clover in general, but yeah, it like down here in the south, yeah, it's that's the time of year. So if you but if you've got it, when do y'all most clovers? September, October. Yeah.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 24:15

And then what's it look like in say June, Dep depends on the species. But if if it's a species with a later 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 are on the ground. Yeah, but now again, can they eat the green stuff the winter? Absolutely. I mean, if you when you when you look at quail especially in the deep south, where it's there's 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 pop back out, and you get a quail crop and it's 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 or a little bit of utilization. But if you're in an ag centric area, so if in the Mississippi Delta or you're in the a lot of agriculture, and let's use soybean an example. I thought I had either heard or seen data to at least adults would utilize some of those correct?

Dr. Mark McConnell: 25:40

Yeah. So historically, God, as late as probably the early 80s, maybe mid-80s, soybeans were kind of by Quailbot and thought of as a pretty good brood And I have put chicks, imprinted chicks into 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, all agriculture, but a lot has changed since that probably first emerged, right? Our weed suppression, our insect suppression, 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 ag management, which is no competition and minimize almost all bugs. I know the entomologists get mad when I say all the things that quail are going to eat out there's not nearly as many bugs out there, maybe there used to be. Tall Timbers just did a little study. I don't know if they published it or if they just of put it in their newsletter, but Michael I think, led it. And they had chicks in all kinds of different and it it was pretty interesting, you know. But yeah, soybeans are not are not considered in my opinion, an ideal crop. But there was a time where they were. Now, if you're doing soybeans in a food plot, the management regime, it cannot I I'm guessing, 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 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 what's the word, there might be some tangible benefit if it's if it's if the structure and the the of the plant community and the insect community is responding to that lack of in uh of intense uh against them. But yeah, so Mariah, you said something earlier, talking about wheat and everything. Wheat is one of those, again, I talk about old a lot because a lot of the landowners are old. If a farmer's over 65 that I've ever dealt with, 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 A wheat plot, yeah, absolutely. If if it if the deer let it come up, you can have cover. It's not ideal cover, because again, there's no no umbrellaing out, there's no overhead cover, but it they can get through it generally at a certain rate, they can navigate through it. Certainly there's insects in there, so it's considered a bad one, but again, in high deer 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 season. One of the ones that farmers like a lot is Milo, sorghum. And the reason they like it is one, Milo is a 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 south this year than we have in a while, because all the geopolitical challenges, Milo's easy The price fluctuation's not as crazy, it's not 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 come out, so you've got some overhead cover with 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 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 you know, later, but it works. Wide range you can plant brown top in, but again, seeding rate has to be there where if it's a mat, a carpet, you know, they're not going to get it. So you've got some challenges there. But again, it's good for cover-ish for cover, but got a seed head on it. It puts out a little bit more uh horizontal 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 got a bunch of mixes, those mixes, I'm not going to recommend anybody's mix, but the good thing mixes is the plant community there in the mix is which is ideal. Diversity is generally almost always better than lack of. And if they have a fair amount of structural where you can get some of that umbrella overhead and maintain bare ground, there's probably some to those. But again, that that you you've got options for for food plots with quail in the growing season for 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, 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 most likely.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 30:48

Yeah. So Mariah, I'm thinking about one of our most 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 the weeds underneath, but once that deer vetch is established, it appears to me like have an optimal growth form. I have no idea about any how much food it be providing. It would certainly harbor a lot of insects, it should grow up and out and be kind of that 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 late in the year, and only in the plots where it is tall is it is it meaningful. But deer vegetable reseed decently well if it gets up it's not pressured too much. The thing, because we often recommend somewhere around 20 pounds per acre seeding rate, and that's pretty It so I'm I'm guessing, Mark, and maybe you can 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 because obviously warm season weeds are a different 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 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 and a half. So I'm guessing that's I mean, I that's too dense right?

Dr. Mark McConnell: 32:38

So I've only tried vetch the one time, and and it it is is deer vetch a a different cultivar, is it we just joint vetch in general, or are we talking the same plant here? Yeah, same plant. Yeah. I tried it one time at a property, and I I I want say we did it at 20, because I we would have gone off whatever the recommendation was. Again, this particular property, don't think calibrate anything, so I don't know what this the density was out there. But it was it was interesting because during the 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 there was a period of the summer where it looked good. Then it got, like you said, it it I mean it was it matted down and it was almost as if it it's it grew up, it desiccated, and then it just And it after that, it was I didn't like the way 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 like, you know, it's up to here on him, right? Again, as long as they can get on the ground and attracting insects, I'm all for it. Because those chicks, especially early on, they're not flying to get out of any trouble anyway, they're not flying very much at all at those 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 it it it was pretty it pretty much made that 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 definitively say that because I there's not a lot of literature. We we haven't done a lot of studies where we put through common deer deer plots. We're we're doing a similar study now with with with Williams stuff, but and that's going 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 looks it's probably useful.

Moriah Boggess: 34:39

And so the thing I've I've seen, and this is true of lot of plants, but that is really noticeable with deer vetch because it doesn't get killed as easily as do. You know, soybean gets browsed early before it has a true leaves, and it, yeah, it's it's done. But deer vetch, it it re-sprouts it, and it's it's a good re-sprouter. But because of because of that, and depending on browsing intensity, you can have very different, different growth forms of deer vetch. And so, like what you're describing is kind of like I was describing, which is relatively low browse 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 deer grazing a couple an inch or two off the get all kinds of lateral branching. And then I would say it has to be absolutely unusable 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 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 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 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 I'm just curious. I've never dealt with it. And again, it looked great during a lot of the and I really liked it, and then it just kind of got to the point where, you know, it's not usable. But yeah, I think there's from a brooding again, I'm I'm not gonna give everybody say here, 10 plants you should plant for food plots for but really what it comes down to is the structure what your deer density will allow, because you a lot of times it doesn't matter what you put in if you've got way too many deer, quail aren't 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 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 trying to eat them can too. So that that's kind of the you you don't want to the brood is there is is the thing to think

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, five percent of their acreage in food plots. Really, really heavy food plot property 10 to 15 percent. If the type of food plot for deer is influencing your quail population, I would surmise that 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 working with a landowner. If they don't have any, I'm not gonna recommend If they've already got some, we can work like 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 But that's usually in systems like in heavy ag where the only like when 5% of the landscape is 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 not gonna make or break your quail, in my 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 where we have a lot more overlap in, I think, in and and quail options is disturbance, opening of canopy, burning, disturbing the soil, getting those early successional forb dominated plant 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 is because most of what they've keep in mind before the internet and social media and everything, all were getting for the most part was what the magazines were pushing. And a lot of the hunting magazines, of course, trying to sell seeds, so they're pushing food So a lot of landowners, food plot is kind of one of wildlife management. Well, if you don't start with a food plot, what you doing? When I try to explain to them that that is the thing I'm worried about from the quail it's very hard. But like I said earlier, they want to plant and I've given up on trying to convince them to I've just lost that battle. They want to be on a tractor, they want to put in the ground. They'd much prefer to put it in the ground than wait and see what the ground produces on its own disturbance. So if you've already got them and quell your I am going to play ball with that landowner and 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 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 else out of the way. Yeah. Like once they've got a good burn plan, what I landowners is you want to get to what I call mode, right? A lot of landowners have not worked with 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, Once we, and that's establishment, that's up messes, that's getting, once we get a burn we get our timber density down if there is any, get our fire lanes organized. Once we've got all that, we're pretty much in mode after that. We're just burning and keeping up with what You you get everything ready, you go to mode. Once you're in maintenance mode and you want to up your food plots and make them a little more 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 straight once and for all. Make your final point. If you have a landowner with, let's say, a and they've got a few food plots sprinkled across, and they said, I'm giving up deer, Bronson and Mariah, 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 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 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 look, are we assuming there's no ryegrass in 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 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 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 been under, there's no rye gr there's no issue m managing ryegrass, what I typically am going because I hate to make a landowner spend money 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 if the burn allows, and then I'm gonna see what up that next growing season. And if and if that plant community is not diverse my to answer your question, my default is to 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 a really good way to just put really good brood on the ground. It's something landowners, it's so much more 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 average landowner to understand one, they all the plants, nor can you expect them to, to that that's good. But what they are used to seeing is green of one right? Because most food plots, a lot of food plots are 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 they see a beautiful. Ragweed, probably a little partrid pea, a lot horseweed in there. They can see that. It's an easier show sell to say, hey, that's what after. And that's a very easy thing to maintain on most Now, in a lot of ag systems, ragweed has, you know, farmer, you know, Bronson, I'm sure, may have you this, but Mitt called me yelling at me several years ago, jokingly, but yelling at me because 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 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 ag for years, is we had done every disturbance regime I knew how to do, and I could not get ragweed to 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, comes up, right? It took several years. But we went now we can disturb the ground and get right? So I love ragweed from a brood standpoint. That's my favorite. If I had to plant something, it'd probably be kind of mix with Milo and some other kind of forb in there to make sure we if give the deer a nurse or something to knock down before they're hitting Milo. But yeah, those those are the kind that my pr my 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 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, I can see where it's triggering for Mitt when 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 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 getting a dominant common ragweed. And I was like, there's no way. And they're like, Yeah, one year I disc it in 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 that. You disc it and it comes up in the growing season you're done. And getting landowners to maintenance mode is is always my goal as fast as I can, so they can so not stressed out. You know, the first few years of converting a to quail management, it it can be stressful, And if if we're being real aggressive. And and a lot of farmers, if they're older, they want to wait very long. So giving them some giving them an easy win. Hey, fall winter disking, bam, you got a ragweed 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 I'm on. Hell, I took Eric out to a property for his class other day, and almost every, and we got more pea out there than we we need, and a lot of it's but the vast majority of them had been nipped and pretty aggressively. And I'm I'm all for it, like anything to suppress that the deer are suppressing the partridge pea, it'd be okay with me if they did, because I've too much of it. But the deer were just destroying that stuff, and which is great because when we can find that 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 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 I didn't like it, I pretended I didn't hear it, it's 100% true. So where we can, these types of topics and podcasts are important because where we can find where we 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 Here we go. Okay, now we can spoke with them. Yeah. You can edit that out.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 48:52

we have time for one more question here. This is gonna be some really big picture 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 bias in the the formative years long ago, had Guthrie as an instructor and spent a lot of 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 where he was located. So this would have been Texas, Oklahoma, from Mississippi, Alabama. But I thought the the gist of of the topic was that food is never limiting for bob And obviously, quail have to eat, so to have food. My takeaway was when you manage for the and the structure for bob whites, the food 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 cover, etc. etc. And food is gonna come along for the ride. So is Fred wrong? Maybe I'm wrong in misremembering, which is most possible, but what what do you think 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 it. I have enormous respect for Fred Guthrie. One of my critiques is that he was very good very complex situations with assumptions that always hold. There is clear evidence that food can be limiting a landscape for quail. The fact that when you supplementally feed, increase is a direct argument against food not limited, right? Now I have some challenges with that because if got a bird per acre, you go to a bird, bird and a per acre, was food really limiting, or was it to get you to this crazy high density, right? And that's a fair argument. What I think Fred, Fred also, towards a good of the end of his career, was kind of making the that, you know, habitat management wasn't really important in that landscape. It was just rainfall, rainfall, rainfall, and kind of stuff. And I and I know some people that worked with him have had to go back and it's like, ah, you know, that's a little more simplistic than we wanted it. Food can absolutely be limiting on the point was if you just added food in their landscape, and back then it was a lot of stationary feeder There was a lot of studies where you did not see a very tangible benefit. However, there were other studies where you did, Now there has been enough replication of feeding studies, in my opinion, in the in western and parts of Texas and across the East, where it's clear that you can bump a quail population up easily through supplementally uh feeding. The what to Fred's point, though, the structure 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 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 and and food is tight, but that's really not food limitation, right? It just proves that you get food when you manage quail the right way. So I believe food can be limiting on a landscape. And in fact, I can show you many, many properties Mississippi elsewhere where there is a quail population, but that's they're And food is not limiting maybe during the summer 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 just habitat management, because those things are 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 much seed mast in the fall, right? I would argue those populations are limited also structure, but also by food. So yeah, I would disagree with Fred's assessment the way he cashed it, but I get his point. If you're managing for quail correctly, you have enough food. But that really doesn't disprove food limitation. Because by I don't like the definition of food but if you add food and the quail goes population 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 Different environment. Not South Carolina, South Texas, up to And also, if I remember correctly, Fred's also thinking a lot about just sustaining 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 and I'm hoping we get to, because supplemental is still somewhat controversial, costs a lot quail range. I wish it wasn't, but it is, is we haven't enough of implementing it in low density that, let's say, have good habitat on a property, but the landscape, the matrix around them is just god which is a lot of Mississippi, right? There's a there's, you know, and what's the Like how much can we improve a population through feeding, assuming habitat's sufficient, and from there? That's the other challenge. And all the Red Hill studies, to their credit, great studies, but all in quail plantation country, 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 of spatial replication, in my opinion, and you to have some degree of similar densities to be to do that, which again, outside of some of the of the quail world, it's hard to get a sample which is a big challenge with quail research and be for only going to get worse. But yeah, I think I think there's generally in a quail property, there's plenty of food. But by definition, that doesn't mean there add food, it won't be more. How you add food, the type of food you add, and well maintained that residual kind of infrastructure of of quail management and quail habitat is has to do with the magnitude of the response you see 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 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 bit more. Yep. Well, guys, thanks for your time this morning in the Yep. Absolutely. For everyone listening, please, if you listen to you like it. Give us a rating and review. Any questions or comments for future discussions that like us to tackle, you can send those to contact at 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 and Facebook at Wildlife Investments, or visit