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

Moriah Boggess: 0:01

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

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 0:21

Okay, welcome back to the next episode of Investments Podcast. And we have a topic to discuss today, a lot of concern with people regarding the use of And lots of people are trying to move away from using herbicides entirely, and there's wrong with that whatsoever. But we want to talk about some of the pros and cons and situations where maybe you can be and accomplish what you want to without of herbicides. And then also review some scenarios where, at in our opinion, you are going to have to 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 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 And uh let's get it rolling with what are your what are your thoughts about herbicide when to use it, when to not use it. What say you?

Moriah Boggess: 1:43

Yeah, let's do it. So I think how I would synthesize my stance on is one, I am cautious of them. I've had run-ins with them, and and I don't take it using herbicides. I wear the PPE, I take the necessary precautions, and I come inside and I shower, you know, as quickly as I 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 dependent on context. And today I really wanted to discuss some of the contexts where herbicides are important. And then I really want to get into the the weeds a bit on some alternatives in places where you to steer away from herbicides in favor of other more management practices, and then also discuss sometimes what you're giving up by not using 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 with anytime discussing the herbicides with it who's like anti-anti-herbicides is you know, 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 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 very context-dependent. And I would throw virtually anything else we talk 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 health component to herbicides than with some of the management approaches that we take. But I think when used appropriately and very herbicides do not have to be used repeatedly long term at rates. And when people, generally speaking, and this is my that I've gotten from a lot of people talking to them, comments on social media, reading popular articles that you know, explaining herbicide alternatives. One of the really big issues that people have with is the repeated high rate use of herbicides. And that is more in like an ag context where you're spraying because you need a you know a really high stand with very few weeds for seed production or you whatever the case may be. And we're operating obviously in a very different 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 food plot forage you're producing, but when we're talking more general habitat management maintenance things, invasive species, you know, forest and improvement with and spray or hack and squirt or whatever, a lot of these applications can be more or less really concentrated upfront when we're establishing whatever cover type we're talking using. And then you can really back off your herbicide use long and use other disturbance techniques like disking to maintain the plant community that you created 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 especially broadcast when there's particles floating in wind and, you know, blah, blah, blah, in food plots or 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 go with this conversation, whenever y'all are the people who are very anti-herbicides and don't want to them at all. Like you said a minute ago, Moriah, that is fine. That's a that's a completely realistic limitation that people will have. However, there will be trade-offs with that. And you will run into situations where it might be really if not impossible, to achieve the intended plant community results without the use of herbicide in some realistic Yeah.

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 research project. So would you mind, because I think we'll want to it a little bit going forward, talk about your and what you're doing over at Mississippi State

Luke Resop: 7:03

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

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 9:11

Well, something I think that's really Luke, with today's discussion is the the fork the road that we were at. So w with your your project, the whole goal comparing contrasting your conventional 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, that time, we were not going to have a uh 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 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 company, so we're not advocates for spraying but there are certainly times when that is to be the single most effective way for you to accomplish your management objectives. And I am certainly not the most learned and smartest regarding alternative methods, but I what what would we do? So I thought I might pose that to y'all. So you're charged with managing a pine forest and the the mid-story is almost entirely of sweet gum, and could be several other 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 this. So yeah, you could incorporate fire and you could top kill a lot of these, but are you going to get the sweet gum under control without And maybe you can, so I'll I'll get your on that. What what are your thoughts?

Luke Resop: 11:39

So to back up to the previous point you made about 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 question. So a lot of people, especially when establishing a food plot, they want to go through the entire process meaning not using herbicides or using very, very which, like I said a minute ago, is a perfectly 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 and you are establishing a first-time food plot that is in an area that has not been managed for crop production, 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 than annual plants, and managing those, eliminating them so you can establish a successful food plot program is difficult, if not, you know, by all intents and purposes, 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, tried to establish regenerative food plots into tall fescue without an herbicide application, and it went as you could imagine. It was a complete failure because that deep perennial 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 have a bunch more tall fescue. Anything you plant into it is going to be immediately by that tall fescue. So it's very difficult to get the regenerative process unless you deal with a tall fescue or Johnson grass or grass or whatever it is in the first place. So on the food plot conversation, I would say absolutely you want to manage a regenerative food plot program and have a problematic species like tall fescue, Johnson you know, add whatever species you'd like to the list. I would absolutely recommend using a strategic, timely 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 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 is intercepting sunlight and preventing an understory full of more desirable species from establishing, certainly 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 talking four-inch dBh or larger, you're going to need a really hot fire to bring those sweet gums down to ground which obviously could induce some unintentional mortality damage to your crop trees and the overstory. So there's a silvicultural aspect to this as of how a management action that might you know help your sweet gum problem might also inadvertently hurt your pine timber. The second issue with that approach, just using a really 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 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 growing from seed wood. When that happens, it is going to get out of the reach of 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 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 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 although it would take some more time up front and you have to use herbicides up front, is to go in and do a treatment on the sweet gum up front and kill that entire so you're not having to constantly fight it with fire and really ever getting full control of the sweet gum. Because if you just go in and burn the sweet gum in year even if you reset all the mid-story sweetgums to ground they're going to be vigorously re-sprouting as soon as fire is passed through that stand. All the while they're going to be out competing other 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 root system. When you burn and you topkill those where you had one 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 the sweet gum problem would just be go in and hack and or girdle and spray or whatever, those larger mid-story so you can treat one tree instead of top killing it and 20 or 30 smaller trees to deal with in the future that it's going to take you years to get good control of.

Moriah Boggess: 18:03

I I think that's a really good segue into discussing 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 fair. They do the same thing to us, right? I I think there's probably people that maybe are definitely people we run into that see us talking about herbicide treatments, especially mid-story 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 we're killing like a bunch of grass or in that case people push back on it. And and a lot of times we're here saying, hey, you 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 why fire alone in that context isn't going to help 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 they've heard our colleagues talk about fire timing. And this is something where I've seen awareness around growing season burns and people 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 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 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 in that problem. And it's very similar to rank native warm season something we've discussed in the past at length. And a lot of these stands that were planted in the warm season grasses 10, 15 years ago at really high seed rates. All we have is big blue stems, switchgrass, Indian and it's super dense, it's too thick for game birds use, has very little cover value for deer, at least in the center of the sand, and overall is just not the kind of diversity that we would like. And I've seen more and more people saying, Oh, well, 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 seen those comments on on the posts of the people who literally did the research that's published the benefits of using growing season fire. But that doesn't address the true limitations that 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 or 80%. Really, the only effective way to do that is a timely 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 where we're actually going to see the flush of Forbes and the maintained openness on the ground that we need game birds is through the use of herbicide. And so in that case with rank native warm season it's it's parallel to the sweet gum example where we taking a stand that was managed poorly before. That poor management might have been mismatch of fire 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 and you might reduce the coverage slightly for a year or half a year, but very quickly those perennial grasses 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 season fire that we're just discussing in pines, we start using that in the future once we get things 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 in the understory of the pines forever. It's really just a one-time thing to fix where we're And then from there we can move forward with the other tools that we talk about all the time.

Luke Resop: 22:57

Yeah, when y'all are talking with uh land managers or Facebook comments on a habitat management Facebook page, 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 with implementing fire, and there's a lot of people have never used fire before.

Luke Resop: 23:26

Yeah, I think I think that when I'm perusing Facebook certainly when I'm talking to landowners, if we've done 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 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 got a tractor and they've probably got the equipment to do the job, but they just can't get to all the acres they don't have the time to get to all the acres, especially for more weekend type land managers that it's not their 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 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 common limitation, I would never want to recommend to a to approach an issue like the sweet gum encroachment into mid-story with a strategy that is not going to be the use of their time long term. Now, obviously, that might come at the expense of using herbicide if they don't want to. But when you think about the long-term value of that pine not just for timber production, but also for wildlife and cover and meeting whatever wildlife objectives we 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 with one strategic herbicide application where if you use fire repeatedly or just go out there and cut stump the trees with a chainsaw, you are going to achieve probably 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 timely herbicide application. So I'm thinking about the use of herbicides for land 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, 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 especially if you're managing a lot of acres. But when you contrast the amount of money that it costs, say $20 per acre for a lot of herbicide applications if doing it yourself, versus waiting five to ten years to maybe the same results that you could in one year with an application. That is the best use of a manager's time so that they can go into maintenance mode. And now I've done my herbicide application, sweet gums under control. Now I can just maintain the desired structure, composition, whatever of this plant community with strategically time Like you touched on a minute ago, Moriah, with the warm grasses. I firmly believe that an herbicide application is the best way to get that plant community into a desirable species and structure. And then you can use things like fire timing, disking, seasonality, return interval, whatever, to maintain the structure and composition. But trying to apply this corrective management approach to address this, what could be viewed as a pretty severe native warm season grass encroachment where you have no or very little, and the value for game birds is very poor. That's not trying to address that with just fire, 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 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 the amount of limitation on the amount of time for 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 plant community whipped into shape versus a year and half, just think how much more quickly we get to start realizing the full benefit of the habitat that we're 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

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 28:20

Exactly where I went, Moriah. And you know, the perspective from an older here compared to y'all, how how many you have? And uh imagine the regret that you would or I would have is I'm not gonna apply the I'm gonna try to use the these other for example, like y'all were discussing, just And I get five years down the road, and that stand or that area still is not producing I want it to produce. So another year, another five years went by. There is no fawning cover, there is no deer there is no turkey nesting, there is no turkey brooding, etc. etc. At some point, I mean, I know you would just would be exasperated and kick myself and go, didn't I just do it right the first time five ago and be reaping the success of that? Now I have enjoyed more turkey seasons. Now my deer condition has been better for a of years. And another thing that that popped in my mind 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 ago, and we were were on this project, and we you know, comparing where an Amazapir was and a pine forest, and we got to this stand, this other compartment, and I was kind of shocked. I'm like, well, Andy, why are we not gonna do exact same treatment there and apply amazapir? And of course he looked at me because it hindsight, it was a silly question, it should been obvious to me. He goes, because there's not enough sweet gum that stand to justify the application. And so with his experience and his wisdom, he look at the amount of sweet gum composition 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 get that money back and more in your pine 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 treatment to always do it. It is an expert looking and evaluating and 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 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 Because there are real effects. I mean, heck, even you know, a masapyr and the of a pine stand, there's obviously the effect on the we're controlling, but there's also a huge effect on 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 brooding cover and overall decent diversity, and by two starting to come in. I've also seen it where you get that initial flush in two, it's more of the same thing, and you're not any fuel to be able to carry a fire, and it can take 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 you are shaking things up. And I mean, like that that's part of the cost for of getting rid of this sweet gum.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 32:37

said earlier, some other cultural If we and you know, this isn't us and we recommend it, but let's just say that the here is you had to take herbicides out of the Okay, here's a scenario, Moriah. You were hired to manage a park, you know, owned by an entity or government or whatever, 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 be Are we talking about a grass? We're talking about a tree, are we talking shrub, whatever? But I I guess I'm just asking you to kind of out loud what are gonna be some alternatives you.

Moriah Boggess: 33:20

Yeah. Think so I I I'm gonna kind of steer this toward 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 But yeah, if I'm in that situation and I'm managing specifically, I think first I'm gonna temper my differently. With invasive species management, your goal never be complete eradication simply because it's it's not realistic with most things, unless you catch it really early. Some things like larger species like Tree of Heaven you know, tree species, woody species, they're a 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 herbaceous things that are lower growing, they're always gonna be hard to get all of them, even with But if I'm stuck using only cultural methods, it's be mowing, disking, burning, my expectation for the 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 number one reason I'm upset about an invasive, let's Japanese stiltgrass, is if it's out competing and 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 that aren't producing much forage otherwise. And usually when I see it competing with things that trying to promote, it's when it's on the margins. It's kind of dappled sunlight, partial shade, where I be able to get some some forb growth in there, but then the Japanese stiltgrass is really taking off and 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 getting more sunlight in there so that other 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 it really, really difficult to get rid of, nearly even with herbicide because there's just so much seed But because it's an annual and grows from seed every it has to establish that root system every spring. And if you have perennials established like any of the other taller perennials, it will help 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 to shy away from, let's say, managing bottom line with single tree selection or a crop tree release I'm going to create an understory and amount of sunlight that is perfect for Japanese stiltgrass to outcompete fours because it's going to be still pretty Japanese stillgrass can do really well in that and other things can't compete near as well. So in that case, I probably will just keep some areas canopy. And then the areas that I do want to manage, I'm going to manage those areas more intensively to try to competition with that invasive. And so I guess to boil down my answer, to address without chemicals requires creating competition for And then in some cases, like in with annuals, stiltgrass being one, you can use mowing if it's very well, right when that that plant is flowering 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 going to get all of it. So again, kind of going back to tempering my

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 37:12

That's precisely what what I was going to You set me up there regarding expectations, is it's just being honest and giving the the 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 the trade-off that they're not going to the most out of that that area or that stand with the plants that we are hoping to cultivate, that's okay. If they were to say, hey, I'm willing to accept ten to twenty percent of that invasive 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 some of the remarks that we see pretty commonly on posts that are, you know, talking about using herbicides or disking that matter, or whatever, when people are placed in the anti-whatever herbicide camp, is that expectations 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 I can just remove a tool from the toolbox and achieve the exact results in the same amount of time that I would had had I used that tool. So the Japanese stiltgrass, or maybe like if you're a park and you've got kudzu, right? Like could you go out there and hand pool all the kudzu 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 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 the same amount of reallocated sunlight to the native you want to be establishing relative to if you had herbicide? Right? So I think the whole temper your expectations point is an point to reinforce because you can absolutely take off the table and you know, landowner prerogative, that's up to the landowner to do. However, when you do take herbicides or any other tool that matter, food plots, prescribed fire, disking, forced it is, you will be changing the game to some extent, will not very likely, depending on the situation, be able achieve the same objectives at the same rate had you 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 in the toolbox and apply them to specific situations to the desired results in the most efficient way possible in least amount of time, right? And by removing a tool from the toolbox, it just lessens ability to do that. It's not that we can't still achieve good results or that 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 the way that we get there is going to be very different, 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 who are anti-herbicide and very dead set in, just accomplish it this way, people who aren't very to the context of all the different options and an option to a certain situation. There's a lot of overlap between those people and who don't pay attention to plant community And when when I am evaluating, and I'm I'm sure it's same with both of you, when I'm evaluating the of a thin hardwood stand, for instance, I am not if all it is is hay scented fern and Japanese Now, it might be close to waist high, dense green but to me that was a failure. I don't have anything against hayscented fern, an understory fern. But I don't want the whole understory to be that. And I definitely don't want the bulk of the to be, you know, Japanese stiltgrass. But again, like I see a lot of overlap between these who say that, oh, you should never use the herbicide, the same people who don't recognize the complexity of community dynamics, don't recognize the difference 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 an old field, whether it's a pine forest, to be a certain way. We want it to have at least most of the time 60 plus coverage of Forbes. You know, we we have goals like that in mind. We want there to be some annual Forbes in there, 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 that's one of the things that sometimes kind of me with people who constantly want to shut down the 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 to kill it all and spray herbicide on it. No, when there when there's the application of there's generally a problem or something that we are to address, and it's very context-dependent. It's not just a button that we hit every time we 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 without there being strong support for it necessary. I mean, we're always trying to, when we're 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 If if it wasn't, you know, critical, we would it as as being critically, you know, 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 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 into the pine stand situation that we were talking about So if there is a, let's say, 70 square foot per acre pine and you've got an established mid-story sweet gum and most of the trees are four plus inches DBH, I think most efficient way to address that problem is going to be an herbicide application. However, to get in that scenario in the first place where 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 fire was probably suppressed or not applied at the 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 approaching the mid-story, but if you use fire very 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, about to have a sweet gum problem where if you give it three years, you're gonna need to get a skitter in here spray, you know, 24 ounces per acre of amazopier, and 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 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, sweet gum. So I think that's a good example of like, hey, we could have essentially the same overstory composition, and if you both situations unchecked, we would end up with the But just by tweaking our approach at the beginning of the we never end up with the problem in the first place. So I'd approach situation A very differently than situation B. And I've I've seen this literally exactly I've got a case 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 fire was suppressed, and on the other side of the road, we kept burning routinely on a two to three year fire return mixing up dormant and growing season fire based on the 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 On the other side, we've got a bad sweet gum problem.

Moriah Boggess: 47:09

Yeah, you know, another way that we can reduce the of herbicide that we need to use is in our food plots by deer management and also just getting out in front of problems. But the best way to create big time cool season weed is by having too many deer on a food plot or not 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 they're going to preferentially eat the crimson and they're not going to eat the buttercup. And so it's essentially like your little 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 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 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 and set seed, the more weed pressure there is in the the more stunted their crop is, the more pressure crop gets from the deer, and it gets worse and worse worse. And so it might require some herbicide work if got a lot of weed seed in there, whether that's or or again buttercup, you might need to do an one or two years to get in front of it and get it and then do some population management at the same get your deer herd in check or add some acreage so that your established crop can close canopy and suppress 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 have to do cool season weed control. And if you do, it should be just spot applications you might have a little wet spot or something and crop dies out and buttercup comes in, and little like that you can keep up with so that you don't have do blanket applications of clethodim or 2-4 dB I mean, there's a lot of places that because they have so many deer, they have they just about have to be those applications annually because there's so much ground all through winter that Carolina geranium's 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, 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 of when most cool, and there are there are exceptions to especially if we start talking about perennial cool season weeds, but most of our cool season weeds are annuals that real problematic in food plots. So think about the timing that problematic cool season germinate versus when your cool season food plot Most food plots, if we're talking in the in the southern are planted from August to October, right? The vast majority of annual cool season weeds are not 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 of miles on the landscape, that planting is out of 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 said, the little gardeners are out there nipping off new growth on the crimson clover and the wheat or and uh still allowing sunlight to the ground that creates good germinating and growing environment for the weeds. But if you did not have that level of grazing pressure, cool season food plot species would canopy and they would those weeds from even germinating in the first place. Or once they did germinate, they'd immediately be out by a plant that was six inches taller and had a vigorous system. But I see it so commonly where we try to plant a one-acre plot, which is, you know, one to two acre food plot, a 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 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 full potential, which from my perspective is not just over it in the deer season, it's by being careful about species we include, so it can be feeding deer into spring 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 got just a weed problem into spring and summer, and you have completely lost your spring and summer forage production of your planting. Whereas A, best case scenario, you just manage your deer appropriately, and B dedicated your food plot acreage to food plots where the planting would be able to outcompete 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 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 if I'm gonna plant a food plot and spend the time and the and the resources and the diesel fuel and everything in that food plot, I mean our data says that a normal food plot costs five to six hundred dollars per acre when factor in soil amendments and herbicide and you diesel fuel and all the things. If I'm gonna spend that much money on a cool season food 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 well. I want it to be ginning and hitting on all cylinders the time. And doing that means that we need to be really careful the very first step of that process, and that's site 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 other, you know, invasive species problems that are an advantage when the native plant community is not doing If you've got a native plant community that's just overgrazed and overbrows by deer, well, why are invasive a problem in the first place? It's because they germinate earlier and they've got longer growing seasons than the native plants. So if the native plants are just getting hammered by deer they're unable to be there in the first place, well, of you're gonna have invasive species problems because the usually not very high preference deer forages and 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 So take care of the deer density issue, lower the population. That in and of itself is gonna cause deer to be better, but by doing so, now your is going to perform better and provide more So now you're providing more food just in plot for a lesser number of deer. So now your food plot is gonna perform better, your deer condition is going to be better, wins in that regard. So it's it just makes really, really good 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. really good discussion. I think we kind of covered the spectrum of the Dr. Bronson Strickland:possibilities. And to me, this is a classic, it depends. We're not in every situation recommending use. We're not in every single situation recommending that you don't. We are recommending that it is very What species need to be controlled? Are are there alternative effective methods control them? And there may be some where we can do it one two or three different ways. There are very likely some situations where if you're going to have success and meet your 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 and to get that that plot, that forest stand, you're managing, where where it needs to 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 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 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 we're not making money in that way. We only really make money by making sound management based off of research and based off of 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 And the correct decision is is very seldom the same in you know multiple circumstances.

Luke Resop: 57:08

So I guess my closing point would be uh none of us are here in our ivory tower disillusioned to the real world. I mean, we don't just manage land for research, we also land for recreation, just like you know, all of the who manage land, they manage land for recreation. And we are very familiar with the situations in which is effective and the situations where herbicide is not best management approach. So I just don't I want people to just be aware that we we it and we get the concerns with spraying herbicides Like we talked about at the beginning of the podcast. We I don't enjoy spraying herbicides, I don't enjoy 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 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 Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Moriah Boggess: 58:28

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