Habitat University

0:00Class is now in session. Today, we're going to take you through Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever's new online training course called Habitat University. It's a course built to teach you as much as possible about habitat. Aaron Keel is my guest. He's the director of habitat programs for PF and QF, and he's one of the brains behind this new program. If you own your own land and want to build great habitat, this will be great information for you. If you're a public land hunter like me that wants to understand more about habitat and how we impact it, this will also be great information for you. The more we all know about wildlife habitat,

0:35the better we will be as hunters and stewards of the land, and we're never too old to learn. This episode is brought to you by OnX Hunt, Waltons, Hoxie Native Seeds, the Minnesota Horse and Hunt Club, HuntFishSD.com, Rufflin Kennels, Black Gold Dog Food, and by Game Virtual Shooting Simulator. All right, here we go. Welcome to another episode of The Flush Podcast. I'm your host,

1:14Travis Frank. Big Al, as always, is our producer. And I should let you know that if you are a podcast listener that likes to watch, Alex is over there with cameras rolling, and this episode is also on YouTube, right? Yeah. How long have you been doing this? This or on YouTube? Both, Al. This, well, you know, I'd have to count on my fingers. No, but the YouTube part of it, so people can go back and watch episodes if they want to just see our faces talking. We've been doing it consistently for the past, I don't know, two months, maybe. Yeah. But we have a few, like our dog training episode,

1:48I would recommend everybody go watch those three parts. The last three-parter that we did? Yes, that was last year. Well, around this time, actually. Well, we're about to get into some more dog training topics, but right now we're going to focus on Habitat. Aaron Keel is today's guest sitting next to me. Aaron, I just had our hands-on Habitat Day a couple days ago, and I want you to know that our producer, Alex, who is a member of Pheasants Forever in the Carver County

2:19chapter, was not there. I was trying to find a good excuse for Travis Haspie, and all I could think of was that my girlfriend was over. Well, fortunately, you can go to the website and see all the hands-on Habitat events all over the country and pick one. So there's more. He could have done a day right here in his backyard, but now he's going to have to travel to Indiana to get his hands dirty. If S. Franzen pays for it, I'll go. You know who else wasn't there? See, he's been part of it longer than I have. I know. You know who I've never seen at Hands-on Habitat Day?

2:52S. Franzen. You know who we've never asked that we should ask? Hannah the Hunter. Oh, she would probably do it. I bet you. I did actually kind of want to come. You know who else was there? Your kids? Yeah. Yeah. I figured they would. They were helping. That is a great family activity. It is. It is. It actually, we had a great turnout again. The weather was not ideal, but we still, I went through multiple tanks of gas in my chainsaw. Did it rain on Saturday? It did, Alex. It did. I mean, I know you weren't there, but yes. I thought, yeah, yeah, you're right. It did rain Saturday. And we still habitatted. That's a thing, right? Habitatted.

3:25We still habitatted in the rain, in the wind, in the cold, and felt great about it. Yeah. It was a wonderful experience. My chainsaw never runs out of gas at the same time as a bar oil, though. I'm always bar oil more than gas for some reason. Yeah. Every time I go to fill up one, I do both. It's just the way it works. I didn't hurt myself this year. So they had to do a big announcement beforehand that nobody, what to do if you hurt yourself, you know, because I didn't really hurt myself last year, but I did nick myself with the

3:58chainsaw blade. You get in the moment and you're throwing brush and the bar was still moving a little bit and it just, just the fastest nick. And I was bleeding before I knew it. No volunteers were harmed during the filming of this hands-on habitat. They're going to have to put a counter days since injury or days since accident. Yeah, I know. And everybody looked at me every time they said something and I was like, easy guys, easy, easy. You're using the chainsaw and they're all staying back. Yeah. There was actually somebody else that had blood out there that had to use the first

4:30aid kit. Not me this time. Nope. In order for a lesson to stick, Alex, it has to hurt. Been there, been there. Some words of wisdom for today. So maybe next year, I guess we'll see out there. Maybe you can find a different hands-on habitat activity. You know what's a good lesson to learn that I learned when I was a kid? You're still a kid. Don't walk, talk, and chew at the same time. Bit my, bit my tongue one too many times doing that. Everybody's got a bar.

5:02Any valuable words of wisdom that you would like to share, Aaron? Maybe not beating that, but I don't know if you can beat that. That's pretty deep. That is wise. Wow, Al, where'd you get that? A lot of years of hard work and dedication. Okay. All right. Aaron, how long have you been with Pheasants Forever? Going on 26 years. 26 years. What keeps you there? Great organization with a solid mission and honestly, just tremendous volunteers. So passionate

5:33about what we do. What's your title? Director of Habitat Programs. So were you the mastermind of this entire Habitat University? That would be great to say, but it was really about a community coming together. I got to hold and nurture the idea for a few years here, but it was everyone from our state coordinators, our volunteers, our teams that deal with landowners, really talking about the struggles we have as an organization in delivering the highest value technical assistance to landowners. So this is

6:06kind of the birthplace of all of those ideas. Well, as I'm out there on the landscape, chainsaw running, and I'm looking at all the different plants and trees and everything around me, and I'm wondering which ones should I be taken down. I know there's a plan. It's not my design. I don't know exactly which ones I should be cutting and which ones I should be leaving. And when I asked people around me, the same response came from all of them. They didn't know

6:40either. So I think a lot of times there's just a lot of questions we don't necessarily know for sure because there are so many plants out there. There are so many different trees. Which ones should stay? Which ones should go? Which ones are native? Which ones are invasive? There's so much out there, which is why this university is, I think, an important or useful tool for us to really wrap our heads around what's happening out there on the landscape. And when I say I don't know the plan,

7:10obviously there are managers that are looking at it and say, we want to restore this oak savannah. We want to make sure that we take out any buckthorn or whatever it might be in this particular area. Or this tree is actually seeding this whole prairie with all these little shoots that you're seeing. It's all from that one. You got to kill that one. Take that one down. You know, so there's a lot going on in the manager's minds as to what we need to do. I'm just a grunt. I'm just a worker bee.

7:41But I do... What are you laughing at, Al? Just a worker bee. I am. I'm a mule. Put me to work. That's all I want to do. Yeah. I like to think of it as the planners and the doers instead of the grunts and the chiefs. But absolutely, it's a critical tool in that process of learning what to do and getting it done right. And we have Habitat University for professionals too that help with that planning side. But Habitat University, we really need to have like a tech or a Habitat University do or something so it can better differentiate between the two.

8:14Well, it says HU. Correct. There's HU. And then if you go on there, you have HU for pro. Is that right? Yeah. We're calling it HU pro. It's really for the planners, the professionals out there. So a lot of the same content, but really from a different perspective and certainly some different content as well. So just launched. I'm looking at it right now. I'm online here on pheasantsforever.org. And then you'll see one of the headers. It says Habitat University. And you can't miss it. When you open it up, it says Habitat University or HU is your free, I want people to realize

8:50this, free, F-R-E-E, skills-based habitat and conservation training resource for students, biologists, landowners, chapters, contractors, land managers, and Habitat DIYers like Travis. Didn't say that, but I added that part. HU offers flexible online learning certificates, hands-on opportunities, and bundle badges to help you succeed in your Habitat projects. It's most, this was just launched a few days ago, really.

9:21Yeah. March 26th. March 26th. Hey, that's my birthday. Oh, I thought we were finally going to get past us. We actually collaborated with him on that. See, I knew he was coming here because we talked about it on my birthday. He has one day and I said, not my birthday. It's a special day. Aaron, he's been talking about his birthday for two months already. I think you only get a month on either side. Yeah, see, I'm choosing the April month, you know, because I'm in the end of March, you know. Unbelievable. Yeah, birthdays are probably in there too. Okay, so you just launched it not even a month ago, three weeks, two weeks ago, something like that.

9:55And you've got how many people signed up already? We've got 400 and some students right now, and they've enrolled in 1,400 and some courses. Wow. So once you open this thing up, I mean, there's a lot of information, a lot of different courses.

10:13How do we want to even dig into this? Where do we begin, Aaron? Well, maybe just talking about the framework first. So you're looking at the courses, modules, whatever you want to call them, but really bite-sized. So we're trying to target 15 to 60 minutes in length so it's something that someone can do on a dinner break or just, you know, not get bored. In a society, when it's like seven seconds, swipe up, down, you want to make it bite-sized. And I think the other part that you mentioned, and I appreciate that, it is free.

10:47And it's free because we had some really innovative leadership from some of our partner agencies. So Fish and Wildlife Service helped us do this. Working Lands for Wildlife is part of the Natural Resources Conservation Service. And also in USDA, the Farm Service Agency worked with us to help build the team that's collaborating on these courses. So let's just give you an example here. Here's one of the free courses, CRP Essentials. It's an introduction to the Conservation Reserve Program.

11:20I'm going to click on it, and within there, there are eight sections and 46 lessons, each one roughly 10 to 15 minutes.

11:34Yeah, that's probably about right. I haven't actually taken that course specifically. It's one of our most popular right now. There's an ongoing general CRP sign-up. We even talked about calling it general CRP, the course, but didn't want to confuse that. So it goes over both the continuous CRP and the general CRP. And then we actually have a companion course, too, that really goes into state-specific information, like what are the Minnesota keys to actually scoring really high on your EBI and getting your project funded.

12:05Yeah, I mean, once you open that particular topic up, you get CRP Essentials, which is an introduction to the Conservation Reserve Program. Then you get program introduction and benefits, eligibility and payments, continuous CRP, general CRP, management, submitting an offer, date reminders, and state CRP. So it's pretty complex. I mean, this feels like if you've ever really wanted to wrap your head around the Conservation Reserve Program, it feels like a really good place to start.

12:39It's an essential place to start, right? CRP Essentials. So we like the course name. And it is, I mean, it seems complex. It's really basic information, but there's a lot of information on that program specifically. And over time, we'll be adding very specific courses on EQIP or CSP and just kind of expanding that network of knowledge for private landowners, farmers, ranchers across the country. Is there open enrollment still happening right now? It is. It's a rolling enrollment. So you can enroll any time.

13:10We will be dropping courses in kind of a brick and mortar style semester kind of lookalike. So I think we'll have courses dropping in the terms of 10 to 15 at a time, three times a year, likely. And then also having things like Hands-On Habitat Month is coming up right next month in May. And so we might have a couple of courses drop specifically for volunteers that are doing a Hands-On Habitat event. Or in Pollinator Week in June, we might be doing something specific to a pollinator or a P-HOP project, Pollinator Habitat Outreach Project.

13:44So you think this course, all of them, I should say, is this going to be a fluid thing where it's going to continuously be updated? And why would it be updated? Is there new information coming? So when we talked about this initially, it was there's this gap between project implementation and actually doing a successful habitat project. I used to think of this as doing a successful habitat project is part science. I'm a wildlife biologist by training and also part art.

14:18And I've kind of transitioned my thinking a little bit. It's mostly science and then a lot of environmental factors that play into that science. So understanding the right way to do it and how to deal with those unintended or unavoidable situations that Mother Nature brings us. Like invasive species. Correct. There's a whole chapter on that. I actually, that's the first one I dug into as I started scrolling through it because I was literally just working on eliminating, trying to eliminate.

14:49And it goes in depth into, you know, eradication in some instances is almost impossible based on how much those invasive species have taken over on the landscape. And then what our role can be on it because I, without owning any acres of wildlife habitat, as much as I dream about it and want it, don't have it right now. But then once I got in there, there's all kinds of stuff that you don't think about.

15:27Like you might go to Bachman's and buy something for your garden. I don't know. Why do you laugh at that? Because the Bachman's, I just didn't expect Bachman's to be what we were talking about. No, but it's a good point. So it's a garden center. I know what it is. I know. There are 11 plants on the do not buy list if you open this up. Do you know what they are, Aaron? I know some of them. Give Al a couple of them. Can I write them down so I can tell my mom? Because my mom is a Bachman's regular. Yeah. Well, this is any garden center, but go ahead.

15:58The one I hear most about is butterfly bush, which is, you know, it's got this concept of like, oh, this is great for pollinators and butterflies. It says butterfly in the name. Yes. And a lot of times when you buy it that way, it has neonicthinoids, which is an insecticide that will actually go throughout the plant and kill pollinators. So it's just ironic some of those species out there. 40 years sure is a long time to be in business, and that's exactly how long Waltons has been helping America's butchers, hunters, anglers, and families prepare their meat.

16:30That is quite a milestone. And to that, I say, Waltons, congratulations on 40 years in business to your entire family. I sincerely hope that you know how hard they work to provide all of us with the right tools to process and prepare all of our hard-earned meat. And Walton's motto is everything but the meat for a reason. They have everything we need to process every cut of meat you can think of. And after a long hunting season, I'm hoping you have a freezer full of it. If you're looking to make sausage, jerky, snack sticks, roast, you name it, Waltons can help you with the tools and the knowledge to do it right the first time.

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18:43First, grab your phone and then open up the OnX Hunt app. In the bottom right corner, click on the 2D button and then select 3D. Then place two fingers on the screen of your phone and slide them up together at the same time. After that, zoom into a property that you've hunted before or one that you've never been to and take a look at the terrain in 3D. I bet you'll see a few nooks and crannies that will hold birds out of the elements. I bet you'll see the land in a dimension that you never thought possible. These are the details that matter when you're putting miles on the truck and on your boots during a hunt.

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19:49So anyway, you open this up and you start to realize there's a lot of information in there that most people don't realize. Al, did you know that there are 11 commonly purchased plants in the garden center at your local hardware store that you should not be planting in your garden? Because once you do, you can't get rid of them and they're going to spread to your neighbors and then from your neighbors are going to go into the trees and then from the trees are pretty soon they're killing butterflies. I didn't know that, but I'm going to have to ask my mom because her and the person across the street from their house are in a garden war to see whose garden is better because my mom has it in the front and the back.

20:24The person across the street only has it in the front. Does she like having butterflies, I assume? Of course she loves having butterflies in bees. Who wouldn't? So I'm going to have to ask her if she knew that just to make sure she doesn't get the butterfly bush. Exactly. And then send her to this link to say, here's more information about it because you might be surprised at what you're doing out there. Yeah. And I think like right now, think of Habitat University as 1.0 or your 100 level courses in a brick and mortar university. And we're trying to get to like, what's the next 200 level? What about 300 level? Once you have this baseline of information, getting really detailed on the how to specifics.

20:59If I take every class in here, do you think that I could start up my own business as a habitat specialist and know enough to be successful? You'd know a lot. Right now we've got 62 courses. I would hesitate to say that you're going to know everything. Even when we're at that 500 course number, there's a lot of great folks out here. And one of the ways we looked at Habitat University early on is we had a lot of young biologists coming out of college, right?

21:30Early career professionals, great training in a classroom. And we still saw a knowledge gap and we wanted to shorten that gap. And again, initially, this is just how I framed it. Initially, it was like, oh, we want them work ready. So they're ready to go out there and work with those landowners and deliver excellent habitat projects. But now I think of it more as kind of a work effective. So like just bridging that going from they're ready to work, but there's just a lot of information that they don't teach in courses in college that we're trying to bridge that gap.

22:04How many years of school did you have to go to to be certified as a what's your certification? Well, certified wildlife biologist. Yeah. So I went to seven myself. It was the undergraduate, which I did at South Dakota State University, go Jacks. And then I did my master's in animal ecology at Iowa State. So I failed to the psych clones as well. You got around. I did. I did. I worked with pheasants in South Dakota, not surprisingly, you know, as an undergrad. And then when I went down to Iowa State, I actually flipped a little bit and went more of a predator fur bearer.

22:40But I was looking at how they use landscape features to kind of while they're forging to impact bird populations like pheasants. So what's your take then on predator and bird relationship? I know a lot of our listeners are peeking their ears when they heard those two different, you know, majors or you're studying those two different creatures. Yeah. Predators have been in the landscape forever. And birds, our favorite birds, have adapted with them. So really, it should be about reducing the habitat that's favorable for predators and increasing the habitat that's beneficial to our favorite bird species.

23:19That's going to get you far better off than trying to control predators. Hunting, trapping by design is designed not to impact populations of wildlife. So trapping all the predators, shooting all the predators, we can't get there. It's just not possible. I spent, and I've talked about this over the years, and I apologize if I'm bringing this up and somebody doesn't want to hear it again, but I spent some time with the damage control agent in Wyoming 12 years ago, something like that. I didn't know that. Yeah. He was fascinating. This guy was unbelievable.

23:50And his job was to protect the sheep out on the big, wide, I mean, wide open area. You've got mountain lions, coyotes, bears. You got a variety of different predators that can kill them. But he was really focused on coyotes at that time of the year because that particular time of the summer that we were out there with him, the moms are teaching the pups how to hunt. And so they might go and kill 25 head in a night, not to eat, just to teach the pack how to hunt.

24:22And so he had to protect them. We went up on a kill, and he could tell you what predator killed it based on the bite marks and things like that. But then when we hunted with him, he'd shoot, he shot an adult female, and he cut open her belly, and he looked inside her belly, and he could tell you how many pups she had. And then he knew how many pups he had to go and eliminate before he had taken care of that particular pack right there.

24:55This guy was absolutely dialed in, crazy knowledge, but he lives on the land. And he totally understands it, right? And he said, basically, if there's more food available, they're going to have more. So we'll never get rid of all of these predators. And if there's less food available and conditions aren't right, they're going to have... Wait. They said the pup's size that they're going to have is based on what's available to them.

25:27So it fluctuates in their world based on the prey relationship on the landscape. So even if you would take out, let's say, eight coyotes, but there's one left, apparently this guy says that one coyote remaining is going to keep the population alive because she's going to have the biggest dang pack of pups come summer next year. It's going to replenish the landscape. Yeah, there is some compensatory fertility for sure. Raccoons, there was a study out of Iowa a while back that looked at hand bounties reduce a population of raccoons

26:04to a level where you see benefits to a bird population. And instead, what they found is they have just a lot more juvenile raccoons because they are compensating for that in their fertility rates. And then you have a lot more juvenile raccoons on the landscape. They forage more, they disperse more, so they could potentially be encountering more birds. And you could also have the ultimate reverse effect. Seriously. So I don't think you and I will convince anybody to change the way they think about predators. If somebody thinks a coyote's eating every bird out there, they're going to shoot every coyote.

26:37And there's nothing you can tell them otherwise. But it is interesting when you think about the whole ecosystem, the whole balance out there. Everything affects each other. Every seed that grows has a purpose out there in the landscape. Some people are mad at mean seeds, right? Heard that. Yeah. But then somebody that looks at the whole ecosystem would say, that is an important native plant that was here before. And there are certain insects that need that to survive.

27:09And those birds, by the way, need those insects to survive. So it's all part of the ecosystem, right? It is. And I think early on in kind of the wildlife biology career, like when we became planners and tried to restore native prairie, like we planted rates really high of some of those mean seed species that people talk about. And so I constantly went into fields of Canada wild rye, for example, and you would see a lot of it. It doesn't persist long term after the first fire, it backs off. But I think planners get better in reducing those rates and balancing those rates so they're not the issue they have.

27:44We're learning a lot more now. Yes. Is that included in the university? It's going to be. Yeah? Yep. Let's go to another area here. Power of partnerships. This is session three with the working lands for wildlife. Then there's state-specific information. I think the state-specific information one is really a good one to have there. Why is that? Because, I mean, well, I guess I don't know how to follow up on that because I don't know that much. But, I mean, the rules differ in every state.

28:17It is different. In the landscape. For sure. Yeah. One of the benefits, I think, in the visionary parts of Habitat University is we have a network of 400 private lands biologists across the country. And I do mean across the country, everywhere from Washington State to Florida to Texas to Minnesota. And they all have different landscapes they're working in. And so they're bringing those experts. These are our instructors, and we've been asked by our partners to lead trainings for their staff. So I know they have it. And the vision in my head is, like, there are laptops out there with our staff.

28:51There are minds out there in our tenured staff. And we're trying to bring those together in one place for everyone to benefit from. Yeah. I mean, I'm just looking. Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, Montana, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin. I mean, you definitely do have a lot of differences on the landscape. I mean, I see that some states have more lessons than others. I mean, Colorado has nine, whereas Arkansas only has three. Why is that? Well, you're talking about the CRP lessons specifically, right?

29:24So we created, yeah, we created that general or essential CRP course that everyone can look at. And then we worked with some of our state staff to say, what are the things you need in Colorado for a landowner to really understand CRP specifically in that state? So that's really a teamwork between the training coordinators and our state coordinators to develop that content. Okay. So we have Habitat HQ, which is turning passion into impact. Welcome to Habitat HQ.

29:55This course was developed. Should we open it? Develop it with the estimated time to complete? 15 minutes? Yeah, that's pretty short. That's Maryland giving kind of that top view. Like, here's what Habitat University is. Here's how it can help you.

30:12Fire as fertilizer. Mastering fire as a management tool. I'm going to dig into this one. How many times have you been a part of Burns, Aaron? A number. Is there a better adrenaline rush out there? I was, so it's, it's crazy because I was also on a volunteer fire department for a number of years and there's something like we're all part pyromaniac out there. I was going to say every, every volunteer fireman that I know when that buzzer goes off in their pocket, they cannot get to their vehicle fast enough to get there.

30:52They are so jacked for the fire call. Yeah, and fire is arguably and maybe definitively the best habitat management tool we have for grasslands and early successional habitat by far. Well, and I, I think a lot of people and myself included, I'll just say myself because I'm not going to speak for anyone else, but understanding the exact right time to burn. You know, is it a time when you don't want to destroy the wintering habitat? Is there a time when you don't want to destroy nesting habitat?

31:25When do you burn? How do you do it? Why do you do it? I mean, those are questions that I have. Yeah, and, and the why to do it should be your first question, right? So if you're trying to control woody species versus, for example, cool invasive species, your timing is absolutely going to be different to be successful with those burns. The other thing is you have shorter windows to do burning because you have weather factors, right? So you might have 30 days available in the springish season and about the same in the fall to get a lot of work done.

31:55So as a landowner, your project might fit in that window. It might not. We're promoting a lot of prescribed burn associations. So landowner groups that can work together to get all of their projects done in, in a season. When is the right season to burn? Spring? Again, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Like spring is... Everybody's trying to accomplish the same thing. They want the best habitat on their landscape for wildlife. So a common challenge in a lot of grasslands is the brome invasive kind of cool season, not native species that invade your native grasses.

32:31And ideally this time of year is pretty good. You don't want to do it too early because you're going to burn off all the residue and then all those cool season grasses are going to pop really well. You just gave everything to those cool season, which you were trying to control. If you wait till they're a little bigger and starting to grow, your burn's going to be a little smokier, but you're going to get a better kill on those target species if that's what you're trying to accomplish. So then why would somebody burn in the fall? So there is a difference with the species you're trying to help too.

33:04So a lot of like native wildflowers do really well following fall burns. That's one reason. Another reason could be to really set back that woody encroachment. That can be a really effective time to kill that because everything's trying to bring in nutrients into their root systems and you're, you know, short cycling that. Gotcha. Can I, let's say Alex and I wanted to go out to his parents' place and do a prescribed fire. Is it legal for us to do so? Yeah, there are some steps you have to take depending on where you are in the country.

33:36Get a permit. Correct. Might be hard since we live in a neighborhood, but I just was just throwing it out there so that we know that they're able to do this out. Just follow along. Come on. Yeah. And the other thing too is like if, if they're not comfortable burning, they should be looking for someone who has some experience there. So we've got a network of farm bill biologists that can help with that. Well, I think people want to think that they know what they're doing until that fire is going. And you realize that it goes really fast. The first time I was ever part of a controlled burn, I was just like, wow.

34:09I mean, this was a long time. It was like 15 years ago, maybe more, but I, I mean, that thing goes. And so if you're not knowledgeable about it, if you're not ready to do it, you, you should not be doing it. Yeah. That wind shifts or the humidity drops, uh, and you can see fire behavior changes almost immediately when that kind of stuff happens. And it could be very detrimental. If it does, you've got to go through like the, the safety precautions, make sure your burn breaks are great. Have evacuation plans. There's a process.

34:40Sure. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about, um, the chapter or, I mean, maybe not chapter course. Would that be a better way to describe it? Mechanical management for habitat. What is that? So that is all, all things. So there's small scale and large scale. And, um, we'll have, I can imagine we'll have courses specifically on using a chainsaw correctly, how you do that. Or, uh, one of my favorite tools is, um, like a brush saw. Steel has a great brush saw that I use for cutting down bush honeysuckle coming from Illinois.

35:14That was a big one in our woods. Uh, but buckthorn would be another one on those small little, you know, inch or maybe even two inch size. Stems. Well, and it's interesting too, because let's say we talk about buckthorn. That's huge here in Minnesota. I mean, it is such an invasive. It seems like it's everywhere. If you go out to North Dakota, they're like, what's buckthorn? I've never even heard of it. Like what? How do you not know what a buckthorn is? It's everywhere. Like, no, I've never heard of it. The regional differences are real. Cheatgrass. Cheatgrass is, is, I, I brought it up in a podcast a couple of weeks ago.

35:48We had the fish and wildlife director from Wyoming on the show, and we started talking about cheatgrass. And I had some listeners reach out and say, I think it'd be great to do a full episode on cheatgrass. And one guy in particular even reached out to some different biologists across the West to find out if any of them would be willing to come on the show with me. Thank you. Yeah, exactly. Did Al's work for us? Just kidding. That's Travis's work. I know. Did you find that individual?

36:18Because we've got a couple internally that are working on it every day out West. I think it's a discussion that's worth having. Do you? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. What, what do you think is in America? What is our most destructive invasive species right now that you're dealing with?

36:38You could argue a lot. Like in the South, they might say pigs, right? Really? I mean, they destroy habitat. So there's this idea that they are a habitat destructor out there. So are they as detrimental as brome or like bush honeysuckle or buckthorn? I think it just depends on where you are locally on what that evil villain species is. What are they doing? Are they digging? They do. Yes. And that's what does it. Yeah. But now you could also argue that that disturbance in some cases might be revitalizing for that habitat, depending on where that stage is.

37:14As a biologist that knows a lot, do you think pigs are a real issue in the South? I think it could be project by project. Definitely. Okay. Wide scale. There are probably other more important species. Such as? Really putting you on the spot here. You really are. And I didn't give you any notice as to where this was going to go. It could be kudzu, stilt grass. I mean, there is just a wealth, like you said, on hands-on habitat. You can be walking around and looking at a species out there and not know whether it's good or bad.

37:44But if you drive in the South, I just got out of Arkansas and went to Hot Springs with my son. And you can see different invasive species visibly on the landscape. So it's absolutely where you are. How about here in the Midwest? Minnesota, Iowa, North, South Dakota? Brome is a bad one in terms of invading your native grasses. Any of those cool season pasture introduced grasses can be harmful. But I think buckthorn is a good one in the woods to talk about.

38:15Garlic mustard is another one, depending on what habitat you're really working in. And really burning is the way to control the brome? It can be if timed right. Right. So one thing that we do out on our habitat day is if we're going to cut down buckthorn, somebody has to come with a dauber. And inside that dauber is what kind of chemical to kill it? You're putting me on the spot now. Like we've got a good team that would know. I mean, you could do like a Tordon Garlon, I'm sure would work on a woody species like that.

38:49But there are other species. Even glyphosate Roundup can work at a higher level for some of those trees at like a 20% mix rate. So it depends. And people have different success. One thing I will say is the bad part about doing that treatment in the spring is, again, all the energy is going up from the roots instead of getting sucked down. So a better kill often happens in the fall. But that's when we're hunting. We don't have time for that. Yep, for sure. So we're doing hands-on habitat day at the wrong time?

39:21There's never a wrong time for hands-on habitat. But there can be more effective periods for different treatments. Yeah. Okay. Next course would be safe and effective weed control for wildlife. It's interesting. When a farmer looks at that plant and he calls it a weed, a biologist or a conservationist looks at that plant, they call it a forb, right? Yeah, a weed is just a plant that's out of place, really, right? So whether that place is supposed to be somewhere in Eurasia and we brought it over because it was great for cattle in those cool seasons, we don't want it in our native grass prairies.

39:58So this course in particular, welcome to the course Safe and Effective Weed Control for Wildlife. This course is the fourth of a series of six habitat management learning courses. The basics of using chemical treatments as a habitat management tool will be discussed within this curriculum. And it's approximately a 30-minute course, five sections, 25 lessons, safe and effective weed control for wildlife, chemical treatments, know your target species, principles of chemical application, and then a summary on top of it.

40:30I'm going to read this one. I'm going to do this course, too, because I am curious as to what we should be using. Are there any that we should not be using that we're seeing on the landscape?

40:41For sure. I mean, everything has its right, you know, treatment, and you got to do it at the right time, right place. So Roundup gets a lot of slack sometimes, but it can be a very effective habitat management tool when used properly. And if you know when plants are actively growing, right, it's a very specific, like, it has to be actively growing for it to impact the plant. So there are times of the year that some species are and some species aren't. So in Illinois, where I lived for 17 years, bush honeysucker was an issue on my place, and they hold their leaves longer than all the other species and also green up before most of my other species.

41:20So I could broadcast herbicide over those foliar on their leaves and have less impact to the other desirable species. Now, some people might say, well, that's leaves, that's green, that's good, right? That's something that the deer might want. We don't want to kill it. We want to keep all of it, everything. But why are you going to cut certain ones out and not all of them? Or, you know, like, how do you determine which one is actually bad? So reed canary is my favorite example that came to mind when you said that, because a lot of hunters, bird hunters, will hunt reed canary in the fall, and they're like, oh, I got some birds out of it.

41:57It must be good for pheasants, right? Really, though, there's not a food value to it, a very marginal cover value, especially in the winter. If you've driven by those same locations, it lays flat. There's not a residual cover at all. So it's not if it has, it's more valuable than a parking lot, likely, right? But not more valuable than a native grassland. Why are the birds in it in the fall? It might be all they've got on the landscape left, right? If all the corn was harvested and all those other things aren't existing, if there's no CRP in the landscape, it's there.

42:30Yeah. Let's go to another course, Building Better Bird Cover with Livestock. This one's interesting. Gosh, I wish I had land that had livestock that could graze on it. Building Better Bird Cover with Livestock, History of Grazing and Using It as a Management Tool, How to Use Grazing, Infrastructure, and Wildlife Modifications. So that's a little bit more in-depth course. This one's a 40-minute course. You want to take this one? Give us the nuts and bolts of this one, please.

43:02Good for the bird, good for the herd is something we've talked a lot about, especially in quail range, for example. If you can control grazing, so high-intensity, short-duration grazing, you can really control some of the species. Again, it's all about timing. It's about duration. But cattle will use habitat differently and target different species. So it maintains some of that diversity you would see in a native grassland. And this is specifically on those native grasslands, right? Site Prep Secrets is another course.

43:34Setting the Table for Success. In here, we have... This is about a 20-minute course. Oh, it was developed by you. You're on this one here. And there's a couple other... Yeah, I would say there's probably a lot of others in that one. Okay, this one was developed by you, Laura Newberg, and Jonathan Erkis. Erkis, okay. What are we going to learn about in here? I mean, holy cow. Let me actually...

44:05Let me read you everything inside. There's lots this course. There's a lot. Lots in there. Yeah. Site Prep Secrets, Setting the Table for Success. This is probably a... I think they're all going to have value. But this particular time of the year when there's a lot of planting happening, this one here might be a course you're going to want to check out right away. This is proper site preparation, the influence of seed, basic types of seed delivery, site preparation techniques, mowing, tillage, solarization, herbicide, cover crops,

44:39prescribed fire, prescribed fire again, good site preparations with two key characteristics, removing vegetation and debris, reducing competition, seed bed targets, assessing site preparation, existing soil conditions, site preparation takes time, and additional resources. Whew. There's a lot there. There is. That's a very good example of like this is introductory. Like we're going to introduce you to a lot of these techniques. You're not going to learn everything you need to know about that.

45:09And then you would have our 200 level courses, right? Coming soon would be solarization. And then there might be a 300 level. Like you would have a very specific course topic that dives into each one of those different topics. So did you learn all of this stuff at SDSU? No, it's taken me 25 years. No. Right? It is a lifetime learning. And it's like I said, it is a network of 400 of our staff and then partner staff. We've got folks from BASF that have provided content.

45:41And we continue to get more and more people providing contact as instructors. If you really want to know how to manage the land, if you really want to understand it, the whole ecosystem, this is a tool. So this is a toolbox for you to dive into for free. What a time to be alive, huh? It was probably a time when you had to pay, I mean, how much did your degree cost? A lot less than it does for my kids nowadays. Yeah. Right? I mean, just that the cost to go to a building and spend years studying,

46:15not saying that it's going to be, you're going to be able to, well, I don't know, actually. I mean, can you go online here and spend these hours and research this and really self-teach everything you need to know to manage your land or your buddies? I wouldn't say, I mean, you're not going to get the ecological principles you would from a degree program, right? For sure, you're not going to get that. And regardless, you're not, even on your own property,

46:45your experience is going to be limited to that one project or two projects. That's why Habitat University is nice, because you can see a lot of these different perspectives from all over the country. Site prep and specifically, that is the number one reason projects fail if site prep is done improperly. When the hunt is on, your dog's performance matters. Every step, every sprint, every retrieve, it takes stamina, strength, and focus.

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47:48My answer is Aberdeen. Aberdeen is a hub for out-of-town bird hunters. They have dog and hunter-friendly hotels and lodges where you can bring your own dogs and clean your own birds right there on site. They have thousands of acres of public land within a short drive of town, and there are wild pheasants on all of them. I know this because I've hunted several of these properties myself. I've seen those big flushes where the birds get up in waves, and it's awesome. In addition to the state and federal properties, they also have the Aberdeen Pheasant Coalition properties in the area that are open to public hunting.

48:19When you look at a map of publicly accessible places to hunt for wild birds in South Dakota, and you zoom into the Aberdeen area, you'll see what I mean. To learn more about Aberdeen's pheasant hunting opportunities and get a free hunting guide, head to huntfishsd.com. I live for bird hunting, and I'm guessing that because you're listening to this podcast, that you do too. Well, we all know that you don't have good bird hunting without good habitat. It's just that simple. Few people know more about wildlife habitat and how to create it than the hardworking team at Hoxie Native Seeds.

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49:21To learn more about their native seeds, when and how to plant them, as well as maintain your premium wildlife habitat, head to HoxieNativeSeeds.com. That's H-O-K-S-E-Y NativeSeeds.com. Hey, Flush fans, the Minnesota Horse and Hunt Club has expanded into South Dakota. Oak Tree by Horse and Hunt is the ultimate South Dakota pheasant hunting lodge. 15,000 square feet with private bedrooms, 6,000 premier acres, full hospitality and bar, and open to the public.

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50:03Give us an example of a mistake that's most commonly made. One is they bury seed too deep in their planting, but with site prep specifically, they're like, oh, it looks fairly dead. I'm just going to go ahead and broadcast seed over it, not incorporate it in the soil. And you haven't really destroyed the turf grass that was there before, whether it's brome or another species. It's just, if you're not giving the proper seedbed, that seed's not going to have the right contact.

50:34Or weeds will just take over, right? If you haven't controlled your weed issues. They do. They do come. I really think, though, I didn't get very far in before I found something that I thought was useful. And I already mentioned it. If you go to the garden store, you're potentially buying invasive species and introducing them to the landscape in your area. I got five minutes into a course and I learned something that most, I never thought about that, really. Most people probably don't think about it. You know, and there's got to be just

51:05one nugget after another of information that people like myself doesn't know because I didn't go to school for it. But I might find interesting. Knowledge is a big deal because even though I don't have the property to go and drop a plow in and change, I can volunteer and go and work on public lands like I just did two days ago. And I can talk to people like we're doing right now. And we can educate each other

51:37because Al's mom has 875,000 acres and she's trying to manage it, right? Not kidding. She wishes. Yeah, exactly. We all do. We all do, right? So this information is good to know. I think it's really good to know. It's hard to go walk around and talk to a hunter that doesn't think that they know what's best for the land. Armchair biologist? Yeah. I mean, yeah, we've all been there, whatever it is. Right.

52:07And so if you don't, if you don't really invest in learning a little bit, maybe you're just naive doing yourself a disservice. You're doing yourself, yeah, there you go. Yeah. And a lot of, I would say one of the challenges we face too is there's just a lot of information out there that is based on a single experience. And people go there and they find that one topic without maybe understanding the bigger issue behind it. And like, oh, fire is good. Yes, it is. I want to do fire

52:37because I want to control woody species. Someone told me to burn in the spring when really maybe what you want to do is burn later in the growing season. And so it is, there's a lot of information out there. There's a lot of misinformation out there. You know, we're hoping that this can be a community tool where everyone's getting a lot of information that's good based on other experiences across the country. Well, I would have to imagine you found it hard to compile this information and then to whittle it down to what you wanted to put on there. Right. I mean, there's a lot here,

53:08but you said before we turned the microphones on there. So that's the hardest part is what do we put on the course? What do we leave off? Because I know a lot of biologists and one thing they struggle with, you know, if they turn in a thesis paper, it's 84 pages. And I'm like, no, dumb it down. Dumb it down for me in one paragraph of four sentences because that's what the average person can digest. Yeah, we started with a list

53:38of about 150 ideas for topics at an entry level. And we're at 62 of those right now online. We're going to continue to really focus in on those kind of basic level courses, get everyone that same bar. And then I think we can use how many people are enrolled in this topic and say, okay, well, that looks like we should focus on the next level learning there and just kind of grow from that. maybe you'll do this eventually or maybe you've already started. You had 400 people sign up

54:09for this course already in the first, what, two and a half weeks or something like that. Obviously, you can see where they sign up, which classes they're taking. Are there any that stand out? Like, holy cow, we're seeing a lot of people going into this one. Right now, that's the CRP Essentials, which makes a ton of sense. Landowners wanting to learn about their enrollment process, which is ongoing right now with USDA. Other ones that were really high, I kind of made some notes here.

54:40I mean, just the Conservation and Sky to Habitat Management, which is, again, it's an overview, like, here's what you should know as a landowner out there. Obviously, there's a lot of interest in something general like that and then we'll let them kind of dig in and tunnel into other courses. And really, the idea here is to, like, ultimately set up bundles or pathways of courses for specific things. We might have a, call it a mini degree, call it an endorsement that's something for, you are a Habitat contractor one, right? Or a DIY backyard habitat

55:12or a food plot guru, whatever those are. But that's the intention is really to create these pathways of learning. Food plots. You just piqued my interest here. Okay. Probably, what, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, food plots became a phrase or an idea in the world of hunting prior to us really ever doing that. I think deer hunting specifically changed food plots. And obviously, Pheasants Forever

55:42has a food plot mix, right? We do. And I think what I'm learning more about food plots is the best ones are really just a really diverse mix of grasses and habitat. It's better, it's more productive for deer and obviously birds as well on the landscape versus like, let's say I'm just going to do a radish or some kind for deer

56:12or grow big horns, right? It's not as productive as what we originally thought once people started planting those. Yeah. Again, this comes to the question, right? Are you trying to produce pheasants, right? Grasslands, chicks, you need that diverse grasslands or are you trying to focus wildlife activity where your deer stand or turkey line might be? Like, there are different uses for those. So, I think food plots have a big value where they're used and deployed correctly but you're right. Like, if it's like, oh, which one do I do

56:43to, I want to shoot more pheasants, you're going to kind of focus on that nesting cover unless your neighbor has just a ton of nesting cover you want them over at your place. Well, and I think even deer hunters are learning that they're having more success by planting some kind of habitat grass mix than if they were to plant just, you know, what's like antler king or something, I don't know, I'm just throwing it out there on the ground for just one strip of whatever would come up at a certain time of the year. Yeah, and deer hunting specifically, you're talking

57:14about trying to modify