The plant community depends on the amount of sunlight, the soil type, the amount of soil moisture, fire Intensity, fire frequency, and fire timing………

You could probably add “herbivory” to that list…….That’s like the impact a herd of buffalo would have

shut up Harold

That’s right. Disturbance of the seed bed.

Yeah…..it resets succession kinda like fire but with a little different nuances and probably somewhat different plant communities in the end ……It could actually be pretty substantial differences over time if you greatly improve soil conditions in comparison

I would bet someone's done a study out West, where it's not that uncommon to have fires sweep through 10s of thousands of acres, to see how fast game comes back. Not exactly parallel to the hypothetical presented, (different game densities to start with, different species than the SE) but would give you an idea of what would happen. I know the big quail plantations burn on a 3 year cycle, so about 1/3 of the place actually gets burned every year. They carefully checkerboard the place into relatively small squares (50-100 acres).

Back in the nineties I had a lease in TX and we had a natural burn (lightning). This was in August. Burned everything on the place. A month later it rained a lot. Best deer and turkey season we ever had.

Now this is what I'm talking about.......

Looks like SW Georgia.
I was down there last week quail hunting.
That’s some beautiful country.