Burning For Better Habitat

For the last few years on my family farm that I hunt I have been battling brome grass.  Brome grass suppresses growth of many plants and small trees and is not very attractive to whitetails. My plan going into this year was to get rid of my brome.  My plan was to go in late Spring and burn the whole south side of the river to help suppress it.  The later you can burn the better, but in my case, with needing help of a few extra people and farm equipment, I needed to get this burn done before my family got busy in the field.  With the weather looking like it was going to cooperate and rain in the forecast for the next day, we made plans to burn.  We started in a narrow spot in the timber where it would be easy to put the fire out as it separated.  With the fire burning into the wind creating a sufficient fire break we went to the west side of the property along the road and started the head fire there.

It was long and we had a good fire going. After 3 or so hours the south side of the river was burnt off and smoldering. Now that we have had a couple of rains and some warm temperatures, the brome grass has started to green back up meaning it is time for me to get in there and do some spraying.  My plan is to get the brome killed, and hopefully, have new regrowth of weeds and some native grasses.  I will be doing follow up blogs showing the transformation of the property.  Hopefully I can create new browse and make my hunting property more attractive to whitetails.