Sorry y'all, you have to do a little work on your part to read this paper, here's the link, click on it and then scroll down to page 81.
The Effects of Prescribed Burning on Deerfood and Cover, Paul A. Schrauder and Howard Miller
I bet you were today many years old when you first heard about using fire as a tool to promote fungi for deer, especially as a response to a failed mast crop or ag crop year. I've talked with a ton of Pyro's peddling drip torch propoganda and they're rarely in the know about this. Yet here it is in black in white in 1969 being presented by the folks at the University of Georgia to be discussed at a conference of the top minds in habitat management.
Read that last sentence again... "The ability of common species of mushrooms to withstand shade and respond to fire will become increasingly important to wildlife managers in the forst environment of the future."
Here's a 2021 Paper on the exact same subject matter from the exact same institution.
The Effects of Perscribed Burning on White-Tailed Deer in the Southeast United States. Miranda L. Hopper, Gino D'Angelo, Michel T. Kohl
Somewhere between 1969 and 2021 the importance of and basic knowledge of Mycophagy (deer eating fungi) and fungal response to fire must've been missplaced because this and every other paper in the industry we are operating off of isnt ackknowledging it. Once again I am absolutely not singling out or criticizing any one person, I respect and admire Dr. D'Angelo and the UGA deer lab quite a bit. I was elated to share my experiences with UV and Deer with them last autumn and look forward to anything they release with regards to their work, especially on deer vision.
TBH, if you read the last few blogs, you already know, Hippies, Nixon, the DEA and missinformation/propoganda of Mycophobia lead to this whole dang conundrum as magic mushrooms became criminalized in 1970, a few short months after this apers release. All the hard work, peer review and years spent advancing this notion to the forefront of the habitat world fell victim to bad timing and pop culture misnomers.
It is very frustrating to continually see Fungi left out of the conversation, after all it's only 10-15-25-50-80+%?? of the diet at times and none of those figures are apparently worth investigating like plants, which are a habitat topic that's the epitomy of beating a dead horse. Aside from my "we can and should do better rants regarding Fungi.. I wish it to be known that am an enormous fan of fire on the landscape as a tool. Like Aldo Leopold said, its the cheapest way to do habitat work and lord knows I love "free ninety free" as the pricetag! But when we're championing it, we might oughtta list its benefits to Fungi which outnumber plants and how that relates to wildlife, because it matters a lot.
MM