Out Of The Ashes

Small-scale prescribed burns can create red-hot turkey hunting.

- Will Brantley

IT WAS STORMING just before daylight, so I slept in. I pulled into my farm right after sunrise and heard a gobble as soon as I opened the truck door. He was still on the neighbor’s, but I knew he was headed for the charred hillside on my place, which was now alive with new green growth. I grabbed my gear and took off.

Six weeks earlier, with the help of some buddies and a can of diesel fuel, I’d set my farm on fire. Conservation groups like the National Wild Turkey Federation are pushing to bring prescribed fire back to the habitat-management scene, both on a large scale and for individual landowners. Fire is certainly cost-effective compared with mowing and herbicides. I just didn’t realize how fast it would improve the turkey hunting. Within three weeks, we had hens bugging and gobblers strutting in the 15 acres of old field that we’d burned.

NEW LIFE

On a landscape level, periodic prescribed burns reduce the fuel load (leaf litter and dead logs on the forest floor) that builds over the years and can cause wildfires to rage out of control. On a smaller scale, prescribed burns improve wildlife habitat and make for better hunting on individual properties, small ones included.