You guys know alabama natural history better than I do, but how likely was "natural" fire really a dominating cause on the landscape?

itThe research Ive seen has always emphasized human atrributed fires as being the overwhelming source.

One of my pet peaves is the reference to the "natural system" as somehow being from the pin point of settlers establishing homesteads. That leaves out that natives had been largely removed from the landscape for 200+ years. The large Mississipian Culture and peoples probably had a pretty big impact on fire regimes.

Skinny probably knows the population #s and impacts on natural communities.

This is my understanding from what I’ve learned…….There were large expanses of the Southeast from South Carolina all the way to east Texas that were dominated by longleaf pine ecosystems which are fire dependent systems. There was without a doubt a fire component to the natural system. No argument there…..My opinion though is that we have taken that fact and used it to create a bastardized form of it that doesn’t use fire in the same manner as the natural system did. The timing is off and the intensity of burns are off as well. I think the vast majority of it was likely large scale low intensity burns with less fuel and many more acres burning at night under high humidity during different months than what we burn now.

I believe that if you want things to run optimally then you look at how the natural system functioned without our hands heavily tweaking variables and you try to replicate those conditions. The more ways in which you deviate then the more likely you are to cause unintended consequences and potentially decrease productivity.

My point was that native americans might have been altering landscapes to a much greater degree than most assume. Was that natural?

One we would all like to know the answer to! Undoubtedly indigenous fires had as much, or more, impact on how and when the woods burned. I don't know of a lot of definitive data on native set fire seasonality (not much besides speculation on lightning set fires either).

Here is one:
A history of recurrent, low-severity fire without fire exclusion in southeastern pine savannas, USA
Monica T.Rothera, Jean M.Huffmanb, Christopher H.Guiterman, Kevin M.Robertson, Neil Jones

"Both fire frequency and seasonality were relatively consistent throughout time and among sites. Biennial and annual fire intervals were the most common. Most fire scars occurred in the dormant and early-earlywood portions of the rings, indicating that these fires were human-set fires during the months of January to mid-April, before the main lightning-fire season."

An article in "Global Application of Prescribed Fire" titled "Fire in Pines in the Southeastern US" published this year by Miller and Corby states "Lightning strikes early in the growing season are significantly more likely to start fires, and those fires are statistically more likely to burn more acres."

Ok…..I get what you’re saying now. They were humans capable of altering natural patterns just the same as us but I would suspect that the Indians were much more in tune with Mother Nature back then than we are today and they would have understood when natural fires occurred and how to replicate them for maximum game output…..I also suspect though that there were times when they used fire as a weapon in war against other tribes and these burns could have been at any given time. I really doubt they just went around setting the landscape on fire with no rhyme or reason though…..Again, I think they likely looked to nature for their cues on how to go about it.

Thanks, Ive seen some presentations and publications concerning the plains along the blackbelt and indiginous control, but havent looked at that stuff for about a decade.

The sky is not always falling.

You know Semo that’s a pretty intriguing question the more I think about it……Would the Indians really had any reason to do controlled burns for the sake of wildlife management???.....I mean they would have still had the natural fires that lit up and likely burned large areas on its own. That would lead you to possible think that maybe the Indians actually used fire to create firebreaks that guarded against these natural fires suddenly sweeping in on them……maybe….possibly……

I have to believe that if they had medicine men who intimately knew every plant in the forest and how to use them for medicinal purposes, etc……then they also understood the other intricacies about the true cycles of nature. They may have exploited them at times but they likley understood them.

I guess the two articles I cited indicating spring fires by the natives isn't relative? Maybe a made up map with squiggly lines would be intriguing. You don't stand up well to actual data.

You seem to really like my map don’t you……Here’s what I cant get past about your opinion on it Gobbler. You could say that you need hunter hours this and that and yes that would be good to add to the mix.....but even without any other information what the map IS showing pretty accurately is simply the total numbers of gobblers coming out of each county whether 25 hunters killed them or 100…… ……My question is this……If you say these counties in red and grey arent having a turkey issue, then who is???.....Because many of these other counties in yellow and especially green have nearly twice as many gobblers being killed and reported to game check...in some cases more than double of the red ones. Say what you want to about it but someone called those birds in as being killed in Coosa Co….. and Jackson Co…..and Cherokee Co……and Henry Co…..and Dale…..and Franklin Co….and Calhoun Co……etc etc……So where is the turkey issue occurring then if its not in the red/grey counties that arent reporting as many gobblers killed??..... If you say the reason those red and grey counties arent reporting as many is because hunter density is just low and they have a bunch of left over gobblers that arent being killed, then why is the bag limit being reduced? Who is this for? Is it for the green counties that are killing the most birds?? Help me understand who these changes are for.

Also, I’ve been reading the study you posted in the other thread……If the idea that moving the opening of the season back were the solution, then wouldn’t we see the southern third of the state thriving the most right now in comparison to everyone else since their breeding starts the earliest of anyone???…….yet many of those counties are reporting the fewest amount of birds being killed per acre……How does that make sense?.....I'm sure you'll just say "The map doesnt mean anything!!!!".......Ok.....Righhhhht.

I've never had much luck burning at night in high humidity. About like burning a wet mop.

I burned 10 acres weekend after deer season doing a night burn. It burned great actually got hotter then I wanted it to. Not the best pic but a screenshot of a video I took
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Yes, your map still doesn't mean anything BUT you can simply look at GA who has traditionally had a later start date and lower limits but is still, apparently, seeing a decline and also indicate fewer turkeys than Alabama. This is why delaying start dates, shortening the season and lowering the limits will have no effect.

Gobbler, what happens when this "start later, shorten season, lower limits" doesn't work after x-number of years in all these states throughout the country?

Draw hunts? One week season and one bird?

Because the noose never gets looser.

I've yet to see where a later start, less days and a smaller gobbler harvest will result in more turkeys. Yes, it takes 2 to Tango so to speak, but getting that clutch hatched and to survive the next 6 months is the real issue.

Exactly!

As Clem says, the won't go back up in limits or days! Most every biologist will tell you the declining poult recruitment numbers are what is driving the "possible" decline in turkeys, even those biologists that are proponents of reducing limits and shortening seasons. I have yet to hear one of them explain to me how shortening the season and lowering the limit will recruit more poults into the fall population. As I have said before, we don't have a problem with too many hunters killing 5, we have too many killing 1

Predation is the problem. That includes man hunters and everything else that will eat eggs or baby chics. If a hen nest had 75% survival due to zero predators effecting the nest you would have a bunch of poults. From that point all they have to survive is coyotes hawks and all the like. Hunters harvest numbers have way less of an effect as the other predators that hunt them 24/7. If they weren’t good at hunting they wouldn’t eat. That’s ultimately what the issue is. The big proponent to the habitat is to give the poults and eggs adequate grass structure for safety. I think between the coons, possums, coyotes and everything else that have gone unchecked for years since the pelt days is to blame for all of it. But the state can’t do anything about any of that. All they can do is limit what we do in hopes of more nests and more birds that are able to slip through the cracks.

So, the amount of gobblers killed in the Spring is a problem?

I agree on both accounts…….That’s why I think if we try to picture what a natural fire might have looked like back in the day then you might have had a portion of the fires that got lit in the afternoon and then just went out after dark……However, and like Gobbler pointed out, you would have likely had others that could have burned for days or maybe even a few weeks……And if we think about how a week long fire would behave I think we would all agree that the intensity would vary within every 24 hr period according to the rise and fall in daily/nightly humidity levels…….where you had something like 18-20 hrs worth of burn under night time and early morning/ late evening humidity levels and only about 4-6 under the higher midday levels……So a burn would have fluctuated as it went across the landscape from day to day from creep…..creep…..creep…..creep……pick up a little steam……burn hotter for a little while and then…..creep again…..creep…..creep…….again, with much lower fuel loads so likeey not as much of the big intense grass fire type burns even with head fires….