Hardwood Cleanup - VillageSoupstatic.villagesoup.com/AmericanField/images/Dixie...After hardwood...
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e work we do at Dixie would not be possible without our many partners that include our lease hunters, donors, the Continental Field Trial Club, and others. is newsletter is an effort to keep you, our partners, more informed about what happens at Dixie throughout the course of the year. We hope you enjoy this update; we appreciate your help and support, and look forward to seeing you at Dixie soon. It’s been a busy and productive 2020 here on Dixie. We had another successful quail season with strong numbers very similar to the 2018-2019 season. e aesthetics of the woods continue to improve, as we were able to move forward with hardwood cleanup, after missing a year due to the wet winter of 2018-2019. Summer 2020 Dixie Plantaon Update Home of the Connental Field Trial Hardwood Cleanup If you have visited Dixie over the last seven years, you have probably noticed a dramatic decrease in the number of hardwood pockets that occur in the uplands. We have been systematically reducing these pockets of dense hardwoods in an effort to improve visibility, ground cover conditions, and reduce preda- tor habitat to ultimately benefit the quail population. is concept is termed the “New Ground Effect,” and is well-documented across much of the region. As of Fall 2019, half of the hunt courses on Dixie have had hardwoods cleaned from the uplands. ese courses averaged 25% more coveys per half-day hunt, during the 2019-2020 season, than the courses yet to experience hardwood removal. Multiple factors could have contributed to this difference, however, it is worth noting and something we will continue to monitor annually. We were fortunate to have a dry winter this past year which allowed for hardwood cleanup to recom- mence after missing a year due to wet weather. is spring hardwoods were removed right through the middle of the place in what we refer to as the Horse- shoe Course (#7). If you are familiar with this area, you know this was one of the densest areas on Dixie, in terms of Live Oak patches in the uplands. e pictures at right show a before and after photo point of some of the cleanup from this spring. Photo point of hardwood removal on the Dixie Horseshoe Course. The top picture was taken in October 2019, and the boom picture was taken at the same locaon in July 2020.
Transcript of Hardwood Cleanup - VillageSoupstatic.villagesoup.com/AmericanField/images/Dixie...After hardwood...
The work we do at Dixie would not be possible without our many partners that include our lease hunters, donors, the Continental Field Trial Club, and others. This newsletter is an effort to keep you, our partners, more informed about what happens at Dixie throughout the course of the year. We hope you enjoy this update; we appreciate your help and support, and look forward to seeing you at Dixie soon.
It’s been a busy and productive 2020 here on Dixie. We had another successful quail season with strong numbers very similar to the 2018-2019 season.
The aesthetics of the woods continue to improve, as we were able to move forward with hardwood cleanup, after missing a year due to the wet winter of 2018-2019.
Summer 2020Dixie Plantation Update Home of the Continental Field Trial
Hardwood CleanupIf you have visited Dixie over the last seven years, you have probably noticed a dramatic decrease in the number of hardwood pockets that occur in the uplands. We have been systematically reducing these pockets of dense hardwoods in an effort to improve visibility, ground cover conditions, and reduce preda-tor habitat to ultimately benefit the quail population.
This concept is termed the “New Ground Effect,” and is well-documented across much of the region. As of Fall 2019, half of the hunt courses on Dixie have had hardwoods cleaned from the uplands. These courses averaged 25% more coveys per half-day hunt, during the 2019-2020 season, than the courses yet to experience hardwood removal. Multiple factors could have contributed to this difference, however, it is worth noting and something we will continue to monitor annually.
We were fortunate to have a dry winter this past year which allowed for hardwood cleanup to recom-mence after missing a year due to wet weather. This spring hardwoods were removed right through the middle of the place in what we refer to as the Horse-shoe Course (#7).
If you are familiar with this area, you know this was one of the densest areas on Dixie, in terms of Live Oak patches in the uplands. The pictures at right show a before and after photo point of some of the cleanup from this spring.
Photo point of hardwood removal on the Dixie Horseshoe Course. The top picture was taken in October 2019, and the bottom picture was taken at the same location in July 2020.
Dixie News | Summer 2020 – 2
After hardwood removal, looking east from the main road to-wards Windom Lake, July 2020.
Continuing the Field Trial TraditionAs we all know, field trials are a big part of the historical roots of Dixie Plantation. People of all ages share mem-ories of riding horseback or even the dog wagon, during one of the many field trials Dixie hosts each year.
During the 2019-2020 hunting season, Dixie hosted 6 different field trials, while leasing 35 quail hunting days. The trials consisted of The Continental Amateur, Region 16 All-Age Championship, Continental Derby Cham-pionship, Continental All-Age Championship, National Amateur Derby Quail Championship, and the National Amateur All-Age Quail Championship.
It is a significant undertaking hosting field trials in the midst of the quail hunting season, but our staff and Tall Timbers is dedicated to ensuring the tradition of field trials on Dixie continues. The main challenge is ensuring quality field trials and quality hunting.
In an effort to mitigate the pressure that field trials and hunting puts on quail, we systematically schedule and distribute hunts so that a single course is only hunted
At left, Continental All-Age Champion: Touch’s Malcolm Story, handled by Mark McLean, owned by Alex Rickert; at right, Runner Up Champion: Lester’s Storm Surge, owned and handled by Gary Lester.
once every two weeks. This allows for recovery from pressure associated with previous hunts and maximizes both hunt and trial quality.
Bobwhite by the NumbersOverwinter bobwhite survival was approximately 10% less than overwinter 2019. The birds seemed determined to bounce back as breeding season got off to a quick and early start. We found the first incubated quail nest on Dixie April 27, nearly a week earlier than last year.
This summer marks the seventh year we have deployed radios on quail to monitor breeding season demo-graphics. The graph here shows the reproductive effort and survival of the birds with radios on Dixie, halfway
through the breeding season (July 15). We are encour-aged by continued above average production and sum-mer survival.
We believe this generally increasing trend can be attributed to upland hardwood cleanup, planted pine thinning, continued bahia grass reduction, modification of burn strategy, intensified trapping, inclusion of field borders along ag fields, as well as consistent supplemen-tal feeding. We are optimistic for the remainder of the breeding season and look forward to seeing the results this fall.
Dixie News | Summer 2020 – 3
Red-cockaded Woodpecker insert on Dixie Plantation
• 3,000 tractor hours in 2019• 807 tractor hours to block Dixie• 1,800 gallons (~72 acres) of grass sprayed in 2019• 3,300 gallons (~132 acres) of Element sprayed in 2019• 1,942 adult quail banded since 2014• 1,407 radios deployed on adult quail since 2014
• 550 quail chicks banded since 2016• 324 quail chicks fit with radios since 2016• 18 Red-cocked Woodpeckers (RCW) translocated onto Dixie since 2018• 6 currently active RCW clusters• 5 total RCW nests, 4 have been successful since 2019
Notable Numbers
Below: Red-Cockaded Woodpecker chick banded on Dixie by woodpecker biologist Rob Meyer
Dixie News | Summer 2020 – 4
Research UpdateThe research we do on Dixie aims to answer pragmatic questions to help landowners and managers make informed decisions. To date, we have had five graduate students conduct research on Dixie.
Matt Portwood is our current graduate student and is focusing his research on supplemental feeding during the breeding season. The purpose of this project is to better understand the effects of spatial distribution of supplemental feed lines on northern bobwhite breeding season demographics.
We will be monitoring survival and reproductive statistics on three courses, each with a different feed-line length and varying feed rates in an attempt to understand the opti-mal breeding season feed strategy to maximize bobwhite demographics.
We are excited about this project as it has great management implica-tions and we will provide updates as the project matures.
1583 Livingston Road Greenville, FL 32331TEL 850.997.1957
Contact: [email protected]
Dixie Graduate Student Matt Portwood
Dixe Feed Study Treatments
