When it comes to plants for wildlife there are a some natives that are super common and also excellent for everything from pollinators to deer. Some of these are not the most loved by people. I did a short video about 3 of them - ones I have no problem with if they pop up in my managed areas - in fact I encourage them in places.

Interesting video! I'm enjoying this series.

Good video Anthony. Hope to see you at our fall meet.

You just covered every quail plantation in the South, lol.
And people will harrow this up to plant a “food plot” out of a bag that will eventually die and not come back. Managers here will harrow up a field and plant ragweed and it will flourish year after year with minimal effort.

I’ve seen ragweed fields tall enough to hide an F150. Want to find a big buck? Find a trail coming out of the ragweed and put a camera on it.

Great video.

Oh yeah, beggars lice is popping right now. Just pulled some off my pants this morning.

Guess I need to find your other videos and see if you’ve covered Partridge pea. I see “deer heads” looking at me from it every morning when checking traps.

Glad everyone is enjoying them! All of my ragweed has been mowed by the deer this year - it is barely knee high. Same with the tick trefoils - all browsed, but they still flower and set seed.

Learch - what is the date for the fall meet and the location?

Nice video. Early in the season, most of the doves I shoot have more ragweed seeds in their crops than anything else.

Keith

If you have a filed of ragweed and poke it would be hard to keep the doves off of it.

Dang, and he's one of our own.
Great video !

Only if you mowed it, lol. Ours are so thick and huge a rabbit would get lost in them. Following a blood trail in those at night you’d better have a GPS or look around at a tree you’ll be able to see the top of. I wasn’t joking when I said you could hide a F150 in them.

Quick story about tall ragweed. back in the day I was working on an Indiana bar project near Indianapolis. It was part of a mitigation project for an airport expansion. Part of that job entailed evaluating all of the land that had been taken for the expansion so an equal amount of habitat could be mitigated. One of the tracts had houses that had been demolished and removed (but we did not know this) and was essentially a huge field full of common and giant ragweed that was as tall if not taller than the Ford Explorer we had. So we are cruising through this field with zero visibility when all of a sudden everything in front of us opens up. Problem was there was no ground! We had driven into where an old house and basement had been. Driver slams on the breaks and we drop into that hole (Maybe 10 feet deep) and stand that explorer square on its nose. After we crawled out and climbed up out of the hole we all had a Clark Griswald moment - "Stood it right on its nose, that takes real skill" kinda stuff. Moral of the story - don't drive through tall weeds with zero visibility at 30+mph. Although it was pretty darn cool...

Haha! That I can believe!!

I don't remember deer damage being an issue on either ragweed or the poke. So just checked and not a leaf is out of order on any of it. Either defective plants or defective deer. They don't seem to have a problem chomping down on the fruit trees or green beans......just a few feet away.

A lot depends on what is available. Deer tend to do a lot of browsing close to where they bed. If they are walking to get to the beans and fruit trees they most likely aren't concentrating on the native browse when they get there. Around where I live it is hard to find ragweed, giant ragweed or mares tail that hasn't been topped by deer. Tick trefoil is often eaten to a stub.

One acre of trees and brush below the house. About half a dozen does and yearlings bed there or pass through it daily. Yet walk through that a month from now and you will come out covered with beggar's lice.

Was up in the middle of the night a few days back and noticed that pod of does and yearlings laying down in my front yard....short grass.....100 feet from front door and right beside the apple trees. Have 4 foot cages around the trees to keep damage to a minimum. If birds are eating poke berries and dropping the seeds, that would explain why I keep getting poke growing up inside the cages. But whatever the case, leaves hanging out, right next to the apple tree leaves. Deer nip the tree leaves and leave the poke alone.

So I"m thinking defective deer.

Don't have Poke up here in the north, Ragweed is like Antony mentioned its an early secession plant, so ts rather rare in a quality ecosystem. Tick trefoils, I have 3 of them, 1 that grows exclusively in the shade, pointed leaf tick trefoil, its very common in the open woodlands.

Great stuff Anthony.

As far as what deer eat, it varies form place to place and it changes over time. I've never seen deer go after ragweed, but its not common so that maybe why.

Deer browse preference is regional for sure. It can even vary farm to farm. That really early successional growth is prime stuff for quail and turkeys. After a couple of years it gets too tall and thick for turkeys to use regularly and quail love disturbed sites.

Tick trefoil is tough and still flowers heavily even when browsed so it always seems to produce a heavy seed load - which the birds love.

I have noticed that preference, even amongst the apple trees. They will hammer the early season Lodi green cooking apple, yet not touch another apple tree even 20 feet away Same up at the farm. The old Lodi I grafted mine from. No leaves left at ground level on it, yet don't touch other apple trees or the concord grapes. Have a sapling pear tree that rarely has a leaf on it. They nip em off as fast as they sprout. Bucks doing the same thing, rubbing on tree saplings or fruit trees planted in lawns. Neighbor lost a tree about 30 feet from his back door.

Despite having hundreds of acres of feed and cover all around, the deer seem to go out of their way to cause trouble around houses. Will wipe out hostas and day lillies.......yet leave the nearby ditch lillies untouched. There are 80 acres of soybeans across the road, but guess the pole beans and snap beans are just that much better. Same with thornless blackberries vs. the wild brambles. They just like em better.

BTW, chickens also have an uncanny knack for going out of their way to get into stuff and cause trouble. Been close to going postal on them a few times.

Plants around houses are usually a little more pampered than the stuff growing in the scrub. Deer are nutrient concentrators, meaning they browse the most nutrient dense parts of a plant - buds, fresh leaves, tender twig tips. They can tell the best parts to eat. Here in KY we almost always have something green 12 months a year. If we have a heavy snow or an ice storm you will see the deer nipping off red cedar tips. That is when you know they are not finding anything else.

Here ya go Anthony…just so y’all didn’t think I was stretching the truth on some Ragweed fields.

Wanna Be - that is one healthy field of ragweed. Was a fire run through there? It seems to do that after fire, or after discing.