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Joined: Jan 2002
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Down here it's not the fire department that assists landowners with burning, it's the Ga Forestry Commission. For a small fee they will bring out a crawler and fire plow and plow around the burn area for you, then standby while you burn if you desire them to. You must call them before burning in order to secure a burn permit. They mostly take into consideration the wind and the relative humidity before issuing you a permit number, which is only valid for that day. And, they usually require the burn to be over with by nightfall, although under some conditions nighttime is the perfect time to do a slow burn because the humidity often rises after dark.

I do some controlled burns late in the winter, usually creating my own plowed perimeter with a tractor and heavy disc harrow, then starting the fire with a "firepot", which is an aluminum and brass container that contains a mixture of gasoline and diesel fuel and drips the burning mixture at intervals as you walk along. Sometimes we burn downwind, sometimes we do a back burn and let the fire burn slowly upwind. It's according to the amount of fuel present, and what we are attempting to kill, such as hardwood saplings. Left unburned, an open stand of pines will quickly degenerate into a useless jungle of hardwood saplings and briars, not a useful habitat for much of anything. You don't need to burn the areas every year. Usually once every two or three years is often enough. Then, eventually it may not even need it as often as that.


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Few things are as settling and soothing to my soul as a bob‘s call near dusk, or the call of a whip poor wills. If the last thing I hear outdoors is one of them it will be a nice day.

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Burn Day is always one of my favorite times in the year-long effort to manage for Gentleman Bob. Aside from being one of the cheapest efforts you can implement, it’s also the most effective.
All of my uplands are on 2-year burn cycles (switched from a 3-year cycle about 5-6 years ago). My forester and his team help us, and unlike a large state or federal tract, we are able to be very nimble on the specific timing of which burn day we select, an effort that considers the sap rising in the young hardwoods that we want to kill, humidity, wind, and how much things have started greening up. In general, we burn around the 3rd to the early part of the 4th week in March.

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I can recall putting up some coveys of quail when I was pretty young, but they are nothing but a memory these days in virtually all of Pennsylvania. I never got to shoot any, and never tasted one. Considering the great difficulty of re-establishing ringneck pheasants and the continuing decline of grouse and turkey numbers, I don't hold out much hope of hunting them in this state in my lifetime... unless I stoop to paying to shoot pen raised birds.

https://www.pgc.pa.gov/Wildlife/WildlifeSpecies/Pages/Northern-Bobwhite-Quail.aspx

My area is still largely agricultural and rural, and the farms range from modern, to abandoned, to Amish Dutch, where draft horses are still used to till the soil, and fence rows and other cover is still abundant. Grass fires still happen with regularity when we have dry weather in the spring or fall. I know I have lamented the crash of our ringneck pheasant population, and blamed much of that on the Game Commissions' mis-Management decision to permit shooting hens. But the one other big change that I feel has contributed to the crash of wild game bird populations is the protection of hawks and other raptors, and the introduction of the Eastern Coyote. I've seen most of the blame placed on clean farming, herbicides, and habitat loss. But it is obviously a combination of factors, and the Game Biologists seem very reluctant to even mention the role they themselves played by protecting these predators as if they were on the verge of extinction.

After I Brush Hog my field, I'll often have up to a dozen or more hawks circling overhead to hunt prey in the cut weeds. And it seems like just about every power line has a Red-Tailed Hawk perched on it. I don't think it would hurt the present game bird situation to thin the herd of predators, including feral cats. When I shot two coyote pups in my driveway in the spring, my only regret was that I wasn't able to cycle the bolt on my .22 rifle fast enough to put a bullet in a couple more before they got into the weeds.


A true sign of mental illness is any gun owner who would vote for an Anti-Gunner like Joe Biden.

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Keith: I have seen a dramatic increase in hawks up here this year. Driving down the roads in the forests here is a tour through all the various avian predators (Red Tails, Cooper's, Sharpshinned, etc.) in my bird book. I spoke with one of the folks that manage things here and he agreed that the numbers have jumped dramatically this year. He thought that maybe the drought conditions this summer had contributed to the spike but he clearly wasn't sure.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

A common sight on the trails this year...

Growing up in Pennsylvania, I don't remember seeing many predators. I think the many years of predator control (in the 40s and 50s) that had happened before I hit the ground there played a big part in that.

Last edited by Lloyd3; 10/01/21 08:18 AM.
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Predators of a variety of types can be a threat to quail. Avian predators are a threat to adult birds while nest predators, such a racoons, opossums, armadillos, and bobcats are also very harmful. The path for a bird to hatch and then make it to adulthood is a perilous one.
No doubt some quail managers put a lot of effort into predator control, and I've done some of that, too, but as we know, predators have been around for as long as quail have, so there must be something else that's in play here. In the opinion of most, the change that has been been introduced that is most negatively impactful on quail populations is simply the loss of habitat. You're not going to see quail in cities, in monogamous pine tree plantings, in large irrigated row crop fields, in bahia grass planted for cattle, in timber tracts with a high basal count with little ground cover, or smaller isolated tracts that cannot handle the weather variations needed to sustain a population.
Wisely managed quail properties have 3 key components, and when you eliminate one or more of them, things don't' work. You need nesting cover, you need food, and you need escape cover. While predator control can be beneficial if done on a large and consistent basis, in many cases you simply open up the avenue for expansion of a different species when you remove a competitor. Most people do not have the time or resources to do this on the scale needed. Hence, the answer that I think is a better management target and solution is to simply have the needed cover in place where predators can't so easily have a free lunch.
There's a reason that pen-raised quail only live for a few days at most after being released and that wild birds can continue to flourish on a wisely managed tract. One is wary and one is not, and in addition, one knows where to hide while the other stands out in the open and says, "What is that fast creature flying up overhead?"
Predator control is nice, but habitat management is better.

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For quail, while every little bit helps, it's not only what you do on your land that makes the difference, it's what your neighbor does, and what his neighbor does, and the same sequence repeated, over and over. That is what makes the Red Hills area so productive. Same can be said about the Albany, GA. area. Gil

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The scene Lloyd posted of a pile of down, feathers, and bones is as old as birds and predators. But I don't think it is mere coincidence that when I began seeing that same scene much more frequently, it coincided with the persistent and ongoing crash in ruffed grouse numbers. I am very familiar with the area where Lloyd grew up, and acknowledge that we were both near the extreme Northern boundary of the range of wild quail. I'd guess that had a lot to do with the depth and extent of lake effect snow coming off of Lake Erie. But we did have some quail, and now we don't. Wild ringneck pheasant populations crashed in the 1980's, soon after the Game Commission unwisely permitted the shooting of hens. And the PGC Biologists blamed everything but that big change they iniated in harvesting, which also coincided with decreased trapping and increased predator populations. And ruffed grouse went through their normal 11 year population cycles, but even the down years were much better than what I see now. The grouse even benefited from a big increase in logging caused by timber companies dramatically increasing their harvesting of oak trees during the Gypsy Moth infestation of the early 1990's. I flushed and shot a lot of grouse during that time. But then I began noticing a lot more of those piles of grouse (and turkey) feathers and bones like Lloyd shared, and soon the flushes and shots became less frequent. Nobody was spraying Roundup, Simazine, or Paraquat in those grouse woods, and nobody was building Malls or housing developments either. The 1990's was also the time when I began hearing and seeing coyotes, and they have increased in numbers to a point that they are apparently eating or driving out much of their competition, such as foxes and opossums.

I won't say that the increased number of predators is the sole cause of our present situation where quail and pheasant are all but extinct, and grouse are very scarce. I very much believe that it is a combination of factors that finally reaches a tipping point where mortality began to outstrip survival and natural breeding rates. I also know that the larger farming operations use herbicides instead of cultivators to control weeds, and there just is not nearly as much cover, or insects for food between the rows, as there was when I began hunting. But I also know that in my area at least, the next Amish Dutch field or abandoned farm over still provides the same cover and food sources that were available decades ago. And logging of pines and hardwoods provides a constant source of succession growth. This isn't at all like some of the midwest where agriculture has been dominated by massive monocrop farms with scarcely any fence-rows or natural cover remaining. And Hunting License sales are down at least 25% from their peak, so we sure can't blame hunting pressure or over-harvesting.

I don't really believe that our Game Biologists are too stupid to connect the dots. But I do believe that many of them simply refuse to acknowledge some of the obvious factors in the decline of game bird populations. The money from Hunting Licenses provides the funds for their paychecks, but it seems like the interests of hunters is taking a back seat to those of environmentalists who whine and complain that every raptor deserves to be left alone, and do nothing to strike a healthy balance, or create an attraction to the next generation of hunters. I can only imagine how quickly I would have lost interest if I had followed my Dad through forest or fields for several days without so much as even flushing a grouse or pheasant.

Stan's pics of doing controlled burns reminds me of all the times I mowed fire-breaks and then waited for a calm evening to light things up. I didn't get to do it this spring because of the rains. Several times, not long after I got a good flame front moving, the wind would pick up and... holy shit!!!... I would damn near kill myself getting it under control. I don't know how I never got arrested for uncontrolled burning without a permit. I did have a local cop pull in one evening as I was frantically driving my tractor through the flame front and smoke, using the back-blade to knock down the flames before they could get into the neighbors woods. He asked me if I wanted him to call the Fire Dept., and for some reason, he believed me when I said, "No thanks officer, I'll be fine."


A true sign of mental illness is any gun owner who would vote for an Anti-Gunner like Joe Biden.

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Always good to hear about prescribed burns. I have done at least 50 in mixed grass prairie on my place, and helped with many more. Best and easiest is for two guys to do a surround burn, starting at the most leeward corner and let the backing fire go up the edges till we meet and the plot is surrounded by fire. Then to save time headfire the rest. The need for fancy firebreaks is minimal and we usually just use wheeltracks to compress the grass, always making sure there are no escapes behind us as we move upwind on both sides at the windeard corner. All we carry is a flapper and a fire rake to spread fire forward. Of course we use roads, moist ravines, plowed ground, etc. to make the job even easier. I would never attempt this technique in tallgrass prairie or any place with woody vegetation along the edges. To burn out a cattail infested wetland surrounded by cropland all you need is a Bic lighter. Sure wish more cattlemen would improve their pastures with an occasional burn. And we have thousands of acres of public land where Kentucky bluegrass and introuced weeds have shaded out the native prairie plants vital to so many species. Too bad so many agencies are saddled with unneeded safety regulations they can't get much done. Don't get me started!

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Burn the woods and save the wildlife....bunch of bull hOckey

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