Jim, any fire regime is "Ecosystem Management" it is based on the plants, not the game or non-game. Yes, there are game and non-game species that benefit from the fire just as cattle and the predecessors, bison, benefitted from the fire. Further, historic fires didn't just happen in certain months. They happened year round and each resulted in different plant and animal responses. The problem today is that so much of our "prairie" type ecosystems are either converted to cropland or they are in some disarray from mismanagement. The grazing that these ecosystems developed under also were different historically. Under bison, great herds migrated across the landscape eating and trampling the above ground plant parts until they were more of a lawn height then the herd moved on and those acres may have never seen a grazer again that year. Now, with the annual stocking of the same rate for the same months, the grasslands are typically overgrazed and the more palatable taller species are in decline as they are grazed and re-grazed before they have had time for their roots to recover. The fact that today's recipe grazing standards fail on many levels to function in the same manner as historic burns often makes fire on the landscape even more beneficial. A burn in the mosaic of heights left by "normal" stocking and grazing today will even out the forage and move cattle off of the overgrazed plants and redistribute them across the pasture where they will now graze the formerly ungrazed plants because they don't have to eat the thatch at the same time as the new growth.
If the primary goal is "game" or "wildlife" management, steps might be taken to restrict the size of the burn or protect cover within the burn so that escape cover is still available. The Horseshoe plantation in southern Georgia leaves nesting motts so that the birds can still reproduce in the burned cover in these unburned motts and then move directly into the brood-rearing cover upon hatching. When you're dealing with patches of limited acreage, as long as there is adequate cover in the surrounding space, the fire will only temporarily displace the wildlife that were using it. Once the cover regrows, the wildlife will again use it. Again, using a summer or fall burn is only recommended when conditions within the habitat require it or some other management goal requires it. My patch burn/patch graze methods (google OSU patch burn/patch graze) are structured to create diversity in otherwise limited diversity cover with a significant goal of providing varied habitat ages in a single pasture and providing higher protein forage for stock when it normally wouldn't be available. This is designed to provide that higher protein when it will add growth to stockers when it would normally be waning. Read the Oklahoma State literature and you'll learn quite a bit more than can be transmitted in this space.
