doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com OT - a tribute to wild bobs

Quail only thrive in southern Georgia because they release them by the truck loads.

Yes over time the oceans have come and gone as evidenced by the limestone and shale at the surface or buried under so much of Earth. And the woody plants are in a constant battle with the grasses and other shorter plants. It might take many burns to greatly reduce your loblolly and hardwoods. My old friend Leo Kirsch, who was a friend of the Komareks and had set or observed a lot of prairie fires, estimated it would take 20 burns to get buckbrush (Symphoricarpos) back to its original location in the hydrological profile and it is only a shrub. I wonder what the native herbivores were in the prairie Blackbelt? They devour many woody plants, especially those that sprout after fires. Up here, the Aspen Parkland expanded 500 miles into the prairies after the buffalo and elk were killed off and the number of prairie fires was reduced.

There are lots of interesting and fascinating accounts of the effects of fire and grazing on prairies in what is now Kansas in Wm. Least Heat-Moon's 1991 book PrairyErth: a deep map. ISBN 0-395-48602-5

Hal, I think that buffalo were very plentiful in the Blackbelt until sometime in the 18th century. The Creeks and the Chickasaw tribes controlled the land through that time and the accounts I've read mentioned them using the robes and other products they got from them. Of course, there were whitetails and elk too. It is still great land for whitetails and people buy some of the tracts for no purpose except hunting them.

Both tribes developed close trading relationships with the English traders during that time, and they wiped the deer out of much of the Blackbelt by the time of the American revolution. The elk and buffalo were both completely gone by then.

I have read more than one account that said that the tribes of the 18th century did their burning in late winter and early spring, the same time that it's usually done now. I don't suppose anyone really knows about the ones that were before them, as they seem to have been a completely different people group

I have a forester friend who does a lot of summer burns under the big pines to eliminate the hardwood competition. It seems to be very effective at eliminating the sweetgums that try to dominate the understory in our pine forests. Quail really benefit from these type of burns.

Very similar to states along the Ohio River, where the Amerindians followed the bison trails through forested areas and up the highest elevations where there were grasslands, likely due to recurring fires. Immigrants followed these trails also, and today these trails contain some of the major highways in the region.