Clover, he said, is a nice thing to plant in places where the switchgrass has not taken hold. This warm-season grass is notoriously hard to establish, often taking two years or more to do so. Finally, the professor has planted a wide variety of other species in his field, such as sunflowers, daisies, coneflowers, Korean lespedeza and partridge pea.

A current project involves planting apple trees, several of them vintage Old South varieties, such as Grimes Golden and Lady, which are designed to drop their fruit from September through November. The apple trees should really draw whitetails and other game and non-game creatures in years of poor hard- and soft-mast production.

Hinlicky also has undertaken a step that many sportsmen, hunt club members and landowners might consider. He has placed a large percentage of his property under a Conservation Easement with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation. The Easement is permanent and will protect his land from ever becoming just another subdivision. The sportsman has received a number of tax benefits from doing so, but mostly, he said, he has received great personal satisfaction in ensuring that the land, even a thousand or more years from now, will always be undeveloped.

LEFFEL’S LOVE OF THE LAND
A few days after I visited Paul Hinlicky last September, I stopped at Jack Leffel’s farm outside of Eagle Rock in Botetourt County. Like Hinlicky, Leffel has a profound love of his land. The 62-year-old farmer bought his roughly 150-acre parcel in 1982, and it is about 65 percent open and 35 percent wooded. A major focus of Leffel has been to no till everything he has ever planted on the property

“With no till, you never break any ground,” he said. “You can drill the corn or whatever seed you want directly into the soil, the result being that you never cause the soil to lose moisture or cause erosion. Your place also never looks like a garden plot.”

Like Hinlicky, Leffel is a switchgrass enthusiast, and in May of 2005, began converting a three-acre plot of fescue into this warm-season grass. Jay Jeffries and the WHIP program proved invaluable in helping him to do so, the farmer emphasized.

“Switchgrass creates great quail and songbird habitat,” said Leffel, himself an upland bird hunter. “Early on during those first few fragile months, rainfall is important to help establish switchgrass. We had a dry year in 2005, so the plot didn’t take off like I wanted.

“In August of 2006, I bush-hogged the plot at a height of 8 inches, so as to cut down on weed competition. I also gave it a light treatment of herbicide designed to kill broadleaf plants. Right now, the plot looks very good and it really took off the second year -- like it’s supposed to do.”

A second suggestion by Jeffries was for Leffel to bush-hog several sections of field (for a total of about 30 acres) every two to three years. This process helps prevent trees such as red cedars from becoming established and also keeps the acreage in the prime early successional stage longer. The blackberry vines, grasses, weeds and forbs that spring up are favorites of deer, quail, rabbits and many songbird species.

Yet, another beneficial undertaking for wildlife involves Leffel annually seeding a combination of rye grass and corn in a seven- to 10-acre parcel.

“Deer eat the rye in fall and early spring and then I cut it for hay or straw,” Leffel explained. “Next, I no till corn into the rye fields. I leave the corn standing, which the deer really like. This past year, though, I had voles eat most of the corn, and the deer the rest before the first of September.”