NATIVE WARM SEASON GRASSES:
I have always know there are benefits to having prairie grasses but the more properties I walk and see the different habitats Illinois has to offer, the more I am impressed with Prairie Grasses and all they have to offer. Don’t get me wrong, whitetails bed in many different habitats and everyone of them are impressive/useful for one reason or the other, but prairie grasses are top of my list for many reasons.
For this article when I mention prairie grasses, I am talking about the Native Warm Season Grasses (NWSG); Big Bluestem, Indiangrass, and Switchgrass. In a future article I am going to introduce you to Tom Schwartz, who we have plant all our grasses. He will share some of his thoughts and experiences. They have proven results of getting prairie grasses to not only establish the first year but grow to a decent height and density. Which, if anyone has tried to plant WSG, you understand how tough it is to get a great stand in the 1st year.
To give you an idea; Big Bluestem can be grow to 7 feet and even 8 feet tall, Indiangrass between 4-7 feet tall and Switchgrass between 3-6 feet tall. When mixed together they create a sturdy, natural cover that can be used for many different options.
Bedding/Cover/Holding Power- Whitetails love bedding in these tall grasses. I don’t know how many times I come within 5-10 yards of deer bedding in these grasses; they hold extremely tight, due to the fact it is hard to see beyond 20 yards inside a properly planted and maintained stand.
During summer months deer spend a lot of time in the corn and beans. When harvest comes and the cover is no longer there, grasses can fill the void.They also have year round holding power.
A lot of times they are planted next to existing timber, thus creating another ‘edge’. Whitetails are edge habitat creatures. It makes for great fawning, also.
Travel/Escape Corridor: By strategically planting these grasses you can create your own travel and escape corridors. Have a great ‘up and over’ location but its too wide open for them to use during the daylight hours? Connect them with a strip of prairie grass. Need a place for them to come from your neighbors to your bedding area when the pressure comes on? Funnel them with a corridor of prairie grasses. Have a south facing hillside that needs something? Put grasses on it…great place for deer to come catch the sun on cold windy days.
Barrier: Block out certain fields from the roadway by planting a couple strips of WSG’s on the field edge. Need a way into your treestand in the morning? Use a border of grasses along your route.
Income: Depending on your county, programs available and type of fields you have, there are ways to plant Prairie Grasses as part of a CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) through the NRCS office. There is a cost share for implementation and also a per acre yearly payment to the landowner. The most common program currently is the CP33 program. It is a Field Border program that allows you to put from 33 feet to 120 feet along the timber edge and one of the allowed plantings are warm season grasses.
Large trees along a field edge rob the soil from producing optimum crop yields, so by implementing this Field Border program, you can now go out past the tree canopy and start your crops, thus getting the most out of your crop inputs while still getting paid on the Whitetail habitat you just enrolled in the CRP program.
NWSG’s are useful and beneficial to all kinds of wildlife, from whitetails to upland game to wild turkeys.
MORE ON WARM SEASON GRASSES TO COME…
