This guide covers several wildlife habitat and food-planting management techniques. The techniques provide information to increase natural food production, supplement the diets of game species, improve recreation, and to manage populations to meet user objectives. This guide is based on proven wildlife management techniques and ongoing wildlife research and is written to provide information that will help meet recreational and management objectives.
Soil and Vegetation Disturbances
Soil quality determines wildlife habitat and population potential. Soil disturbances, such as timber harvest, disking, mowing, and prescribed burning, can improve wildlife habitat, and, if you do it correctly, can reduce the need for food plantings. However, for the best vegetative habitat diversity and to help in wildlife harvest and viewing, you might want a mixture of both natural vegetation and food plots.
Disking can prepare seedbeds for planting and change the natural composition of plants by removing thicker, undesirable grasses and creating space for more desirable legumes and seed producers. Disking also increases insect production. The best method of
Pictured Above - Quail
courtesy of Dept. Natural Resources of S.C.
disking is “strip disking.” This technique works best with fields (pastures or agricultural) and rights-of-way but may also be used in stands of open timber. The key is to disk strips that are 30 to 50 feet wide to leave similarly undisked strips in between them. Do this alternately across the length of the field or area. You should disk strips every 3 years or so for .
Strip disking is excellent for providing nesting and broodrearing habitat, insect production, and important seed (food) production for quail and turkeys. As an example, blackberries, an important food to deer, turkeys, and quail, grow on an average 3-year rotation and can be promoted on a 3-year disking schedule. Aquatic plants (such as maidencane and smartweed), which are important duck foods at certain times, can be encouraged by spring and summer disking in drawndown ponds or marshy areas. Legumes (such as partridge pea, beggarweed, vetches), forbs (such as croton, ragweed), and large seeded grasses can be encouraged with winter-to-spring disking of fields and plots. Always disk on the contour to prevent or to minimize soil erosion.
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