Mowing and Wildlife

Mowing and Wildlife: Managing Open Space for Wildlife Species

    Here's a link that may help you where you live:  http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=699845&mode=2

Poster's comments:

Most of us humans want to mow (bush hog in most of my cases) in nice straight lines, while I believe most wildlife like curved lines and patches (mostly to hide while they eat), which makes it more difficult for we humans to achieve in the long run, like to keep the woods from taking over the open lands.

Also how ones deals with field edges is another subject, or the theory at least. Sometimes I even disc these areas to unleash local seeds. And even I have had to spend money to erase the efforts and advice of all the PhD's decades ago that advised in what today's PhD's say was wrong. So as a fall back I even spoke with the tractor drivers, who generally did what they thought was right, the PhD's be damned.

Now for regular old yards or playing fields, that's another thing that is more human oriented, including objectives.

My main intent is to aid the wildlife so I can catch them and eat them if times get hard.

Generally speaking, big game, like deer tend to move over a wide area beyond most land owner's control, while smaller game like rabbits tend to live in a much smaller area that land owners can control.

I even consider the QDM (Quality Deer Management) ideas on my land, which is about a square mile.

Whatever eventually happens where you live, only time will tell. Having a main hunter, trapper, or snare person, will probably help that effort to provide food. Later a good cook sure helps, too.

About ten years ago in a logged out area, the rabbits came back with a vengeance. That was followed by the local coyotes also coming back and catching and eating them for their food.  The amount of tracks in the light snow in January provided a really good story of the "play".

In another open land where I live, one consideration is to balance out the wildflowers for the honey bees with the human desire for a clean mowed field. The good news is the short term benefit of the blackberry vegetation also growing up in the non-bush hogged areas. Of course some of the wildlife eats the berries, too, so there is friction there, too.

The good news is that I am benefiting from my earlier work to bring back wild quail. In general, I think I failed in that effort. But in establishing open areas (like paying to make them...around 3 to 5% of all land), I now think I am getting other potential benefits I did not plan on at the time.

What is remarkable to me is that much of this land was in agriculture or grazing a century ago, but is now forested. That was the old time "40 acres and a mule" time frame, or so I think. And I have preserved old time photos that also show all this.