Want to do some burns. Just gotta get everything lined up - including the gumption to just do it. Worry some about it getting out of control and some about it damaging some white oaks that might be good lumber some day.
My advice would be to bush hog and then rake under the white oaks that you want to protect.
My fires through short cut dormant grass or light leaf litter just are not very hot at all. Those types of fires should move right past your oak trees and barely even scorch the exterior of the bark.
OTOH, my dead branch piles (that fall around my trunks after big ice or wind storms), my cedar trees planted by the birds, and my un-cut tall prairie grass (that may consist of several years of thatch) all burn VERY hot. I would not have any of that type of material within the circle of the tree canopy of any trees that I wanted to protect. Unless the lowest course of branches are pretty high in the air. A greened up tree in the spring can survive some branch scorching that you won't even be able to notice by the end of summer.
P.S. Another good rule for MY heart health during prescribed burns ... take the planned fire breaks and then double their width!
P.P.S. If you have never burned and don't have any experts on your burn crew, then you need to be extra careful and extra timid. I had an expert to consult that burns hundreds of acres each year about 12 miles from my farm. Even with that advice, I performed tiny "test burns" when I was starting out - just to get a feel for how the fire moved through various materials, and how much effort and water it took to extinguish the fire in those materials. I made some tiny square fire breaks and then lit 20'x20' patches to observe the course of the burn, and to practice putting out those burns before they hit a fire break.
Good luck on your burns. It is scary (and potentially dangerous) to perform burns, but my prairie species are all fire-adapted. You should see the difference in the spring between my burned and un-burned acres.
