From the Gamekeeper Podcast Studio – Episode 461 Old Field Management – Joined by the great minds of Bronson Strickland and Bonner Powell of Wildlife Investments. We talk about an often overlooked area on hunting properties, old fields. Subscribe on YouTube or Apple
Most Gamekeepers spend their habitat budget on two things, thinning the timber and planting food plots. Both matter, but according to wildlife biologists Bronson and Bonner Powell of Wildlife Investments, there is a third opportunity sitting on nearly every property that gets almost no attention at all. It is called old field management, and the numbers behind it are hard to ignore.
The Habitat Type Everyone Drives Past
Old fields are not exotic or hard to find. They are the pastures, hay fields, log decks, abandoned gardens, and rights of way that already exist on most properties. Bronson explained that when a landowner has an old field or right of way that has simply turned into grass or scattered trees, that space represents one of the most overlooked opportunities on the entire property.
Bonner added that this land often started as agricultural ground. Farming has changed so much over the decades that smaller, less accessible parcels, like a ten acre strip on the back side of a property, simply are not economical for modern farmers to work anymore. That ground gets abandoned, and instead of becoming productive wildlife habitat, it either stays a mowed pasture or slowly reverts to trees.
Why the Barrier to Entry Feels Higher Than It Actually Is
A lot of Gamekeepers assume old field management requires expensive native seed mixes, similar to what is required under certain NRCS programs. Bonner pushed back hard on that assumption. Planting is not where old field management has to start. Hay fields dominated by non-native pasture grasses like Bermuda grass, Bahia grass, crabgrass, and fescue can be converted into productive native habitat using nothing more than a straightforward herbicide program. Fescue in particular has a bad reputation, but Bonner noted it is actually one of the easier grasses to eliminate once a Gamekeeper commits to the process.
The Numbers That Make This Worth Doing
Bronson laid out the math in a way that is hard to argue with. When a property owner manages the forest properly, opening the canopy and getting sunlight to the ground, that alone improves deer food production. But when old field management gets added into the mix on top of that forest work, the combined effect produces a minimum 500 percent increase in deer food across the property.
That number climbs even higher once food plots enter the equation. Once productive food plots are layered onto a property that already has well managed timber and well managed old fields, Bronson said landowners can expect something closer to a 1,000 percent increase, or a full 10 times improvement, in overall deer food compared to where they started.
Old Fields Add Resilience When Food Plots Fail
Beyond the raw tonnage numbers, Bronson pointed to another benefit that rarely gets discussed. Old fields provide most of their food value during the growing season, right when warm season food plots are supposed to be doing the same job. If a Gamekeeper has a lot of acreage in old field and a warm season food plot happens to fail for any reason, drought, poor timing, deer pressure, that old field acreage acts as a buffer. Native plants growing in an old field tend to be more drought tolerant and more browse tolerant than planted crops, and they add a level of dietary diversity that a single food plot species simply cannot match. Cowpeas, soybeans, and deer vetch are all valuable and worth planting, but Bronson noted that deer regularly browse somewhere between 80 and 100 different plant species when they are available, and old fields are one of the few habitat types capable of supplying that kind of variety in one place.
What The Research Actually Measured
Bonner’s graduate research went beyond simply comparing planted and unplanted communities. He spent significant time in the field collecting forage samples, then processing them in a lab to estimate exactly how much usable deer forage a well managed old field can actually produce per acre. The results varied dramatically depending on soil quality. On the poorest soils he studied, old fields produced somewhere in the range of 500 to 600 pounds of deer forage per acre. On the richest soils in his study area, located in the Cades Cove valley of the Great Smoky Mountains, that number jumped to roughly 1,600 pounds of deer forage per acre. Given how little it costs to establish and maintain an old field compared to the return in forage tonnage, Bonner considers even the lower end of that range a strong return on investment, and the upper end an exceptional one.
Log Decks and Right of Ways Are Often the Easiest Wins
Some old field opportunities are more obvious than others. Bonner pointed out that old log decks, the cleared areas where timber gets stacked during a harvest, are almost always excellent candidates for conversion. Because that ground typically has not been used for anything other than forest in the past, it tends to respond with close to 100 percent native vegetation once it gets opened up to sunlight. The main job for a Gamekeeper at that point is simply deciding which native species to encourage and which ones need to be thinned back if they start dominating the site.
Rights of way function the same way. Utility corridors and old roadbeds that get bush hogged regularly are prime candidates. Take the bush hog away for a season and start managing that strip with the same tools used on any other old field, and it quickly transforms from a mowed strip of nothing into a productive band of native forage running across the property.
Young Pine Plantations Can Be Reconsidered Too
One of the more surprising applications Bonner described involves young pine stands. Southern pine values have declined enough that landowners are increasingly reconsidering small pine plantings, especially blocks under twenty acres that will never be economical to thin properly down the road. In these situations, Bonner and his team will sometimes recommend converting that young pine stand back into an old field using fire, bush hogging, or mulching, depending on the size of the trees involved.
This approach gives a landowner far more flexibility than a solid stand of pine ever could. A converted area can be split, with one half managed for turkey brooding cover and the other for nesting cover, placed right next to each other. According to Bonner, the options for how to configure a converted old field are essentially limitless, and the space can be tucked into almost any corner of a property.
Why Unplanted Old Fields Often Outperform Planted Ones
This entire management approach traces back to research Bonner conducted for his master’s degree under Dr. Craig Harper at the University of Tennessee. His work specifically compared early successional plant communities that had been intentionally planted against ones that were simply managed through herbicide applications on whatever native seed bank was already present in the soil.
The unplanted approach came out ahead almost every time. Bonner explained the underlying logic clearly. Once a Gamekeeper plants a specific species, they immediately limit their herbicide options going forward, since a grass selective product would kill planted grasses and a broadleaf selective product would kill planted forbs. That restriction essentially throws money away, since it forces a much more cautious and complicated management approach for years afterward.
Skipping the planting step entirely opens up nearly every herbicide option instead. Grass selective products, broadleaf selective products, or straight glyphosate can all be used without the risk of wiping out something that was deliberately planted and paid for. This flexibility is a major part of why Bonner insists that old field management, despite sounding complicated, is actually simpler than most people assume once seed cost gets removed from the equation.
What a Realistic Starting Point Looks Like
For most old fields, the target composition sits somewhere around 30 to 40 percent grass with the remainder made up of native forbs, though a 50 50 split is also perfectly acceptable depending on the site. When non-selective herbicides like glyphosate get used on unplanted ground, that balance tends to maintain itself naturally, since the herbicide does not favor grasses over forbs or the other way around.
Bonner’s advice for anyone intimidated by plant identification is to lean on modern tools. Learning eight or ten key species goes a long way, and for anything else, a smartphone camera paired with a plant identification app or an AI tool can fill in the gaps quickly. Between that kind of technology and a basic glyphosate program, most Gamekeepers can manage an old field effectively without ever needing a botany degree.
Conclusion
Old field management does not compete with food plots or timber management. It complements both, filling gaps in seasonal food availability and cover that neither forest management nor food plots can fully address on their own.
For a Gamekeeper looking for the single highest return on effort available on a typical property, converting even a modest patch of neglected pasture, log deck, or right of way into a managed old field may be the most overlooked opportunity sitting in plain sight, and the data behind it, a 500 percent minimum increase in deer food, makes a compelling case for finally putting it to work.
