Burn Areas

[rygo72]

With all the fires we have ad in the past few years I was wondering how these burn areas effect the W/t deer. Does the new growth have a positive effect on populations. Does it take a while for populations to return to prefire levels??????

[BASS]

With all the fires we have ad in the past few years I was wondering how these burn areas effect the W/t deer. Does the new growth have a positive effect on populations. Does it take a while for populations to return to prefire levels??????

 

 

This is just me talking so take it for what it's worth. After a burn, the ash actually helps to get everything going again, along with some rain. The soil will become "recharged" and sprouts will start to grow back along with some grass. These will slowly bring deer back to the area. But it may take a few years for the shrubs and trees to come back. Wildfires look horrible right after they happen, but in the long haul they are a good deal. The only problem is to get this going, you need rain, and we are having a hard time getting that. It's hard to look at the anual rain fall because it lies. Even though the anual totals sound good, it gives a very false reading, because all that rain may only come in a couple months out of the year. It would be much better to get a little bit every other month instead of all of it at once. It's good when we get rain late in the year because the does will fatten up and be able to support a new fawn. But we also need rain around this time too because of the fawns we are already on the ground. They need the rain to help grow grass for them to eat so they can survive the winter. With this drought we are having, along with the fires it's getting tough for our deer.

[azryan]

i completely agree with BASS, I think wildfires are a good thing for our habitat in the long run, it might take awhile for it to grow, but it is good for the land. From my experience, When the Rodeo-Chediski burnt one of my areas i liked to hunt. I was pissed off, and didnt want to hunt there anymore. last year I got drawn for Elk in this area, and my reaction when i got up there to scout was "holy Sh!t", there was so much new growth. It was unbelievable...it was sooo thick and green. I couldnt beleive it. There was a lot of animals in this area that were thriving off of the new growth. But in order for the habitat to make this change like BASS said you need rain...

[missedagain]

I had a 22 tag last year and when I was out hunt'n and saw how many of favorite spots had been scorched down to bare earth I was so mad and frustrated that all I could see through my glasses was red. I even found some really nice sheds that had the tips burned off that I didn't even pick up I was so mad. On the last day of my hunt I took a decent buck with an incredible spread and instantly regretted leaving those sheds cause there is a good chance one of them came from my buck. Some day soon I'm hiking back in there to pick them up. As already mentioned rain heals everything and by the time I get another 22 dec. tag those deer should be healthy off of all the new growth.

[BASS]

Yeah that was a nice deer you got last year. What did you do with it? Last time I saw it, it was boiling dry in the backyard.

[az4life]

A lot of hunters tend to stay out of the burn areas, but game animals seem to like the new vegetation. As long as the flames are not licking their tails, they are usually in those zones.

 

I think it is like eating regular carrots or baby carrots... new growth is like the baby ones and most folks agree those have better flavor.

[Redbeard]

For most areas a fire is not too bad and often good. As long as the fire doesn't burn too hot. The chaparral and ponderosa pine country where most of us whitetail hunt is fire adapted and needs to burn every 10-20 years. The pondo forests need frequent ground fires to help thin the small trees and keep the brush down so fires can't get into the tree crowns. Fire suppression for the last 100 years has made some of these places too thick so that when a fire does happen it will burn too hot and/or get into the crowns. We still need them to burn sometime though. The erosion that follows these hot fires can be the worst thing.

 

I like to see fires almost anywhere because the hunting usually does improve in a couple of years.

 

The sonoran desert habitats are not fire adapted so once they burn they often revert to grasslands dominated by low quality exotic annual grasses. These grasses the promote even more frequent fires so the desert plants keep getting pushed back and the grasslands grow. Some models predict that most of the sonoran desert will eventually be converted to these much less diverse and much less productive grasslands in the next 50 years.

[ajohunter]

You are exactly right about the desert after a fire. It is never the same again. when we had the Goldwater Fire burn 60,000 acres it still does not have one bi of new growth in the burned area. I will take some ics of it on my way home and post themso you can see the difference.

[Red Rabbit]

I just came back from a quick, one day trip to see the Warm Fire burn area on the North Kaibab. A lot was like a controlled burn, with the lower needles or the smaller trees browned. Grass and lupine were growing back.

Saw a few does and a forky in the lightly burned areas. Some other areas, like the denser fir stands near the highway, were pretty well scorched.

 

RR

[JVS]

After a fire, most of the secondary successors are good browse for deer. The best of any is the aspen in a high pine fire area. The aspen sprout out first thing after a fire, which is a good browse for deer and elk.

[muley]

Everybody I think agrees that it usually works out in the end as a positive.

Fire is no doubt the best thing that nature can see, as long as the fire is not so hot that it even kills

the minerals in the dirt, so that nothing can reproduce. Redbeard is exactly right when he says its because

we didn't do more burns in the past that we get bigger and hotter fires do to the over growth that you see in

some areas. Alot of times not a month after a burn, with (rain), you will see new sprouts coming do to the ash acting as new minerals like a garden with muner, not sure if that is spelled right. Anyways, it's a bonus, hands down. I love to get a good prescribed burn in my hunting areas, specially right before a hunt, the turkeys love the ash to get rid of the bugs on them, along with the elk and deer. Just my two cents.