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According to the Greek myth, Hercules was successful in slaying the nine-headed Lernaean Hydra where others failed because he used fire to quickly cauterize the stump of each serpentine head he chopped off before it could regrow into multiple new heads. This may prove to be a fitting analogy for land managers who have difficulty controlling woody encroachment in rangelands where persistent resprouting shrubs decrease biodiversity and degrade ecosystem services. Increasingly, attempts to utilize multiple management strategies are being employed to potentially maximize the efficacy of woody control treatments and decrease economic costs associated with methods requiring expensive machinery or synthetic herbicides. However, few systematic, quantitative assessments of the effectiveness of these various treatment combinations currently exist. Using data from several experimental studies in woody encroached rangelands we assessed the factorial effectiveness of mechanical cutting, chemical herbicide applications, or ungulate grazing on resprouting woody plants coupled with and without prescribed fire treatments. The first study assessed the interactive effects of fire and cattle grazing on a problematic shrub found in degraded South African grasslands. A companion study in Texas coastal grasslands examined the effects of fire and cattle grazing on woody encroachment and the composition of native and introduced herbaceous species. In the same coastal grassland, another study experimentally tested the effectiveness of coupling intense prescribed fire with herbicide applications to control mature resprouting woody shrubs. Lastly, we assessed the effectiveness of prescribed fire combined with mechanical-chemical treatments of resprouting woody species in South Texas. Our results suggest that attempts to control undesirable resprouting plant species using dual-treatment combinations of traditional management interventions is not a restoration panacea, but other novel methods of intervention (prescribed extreme fire during periods of drought) may prove ecologically useful and economically pragmatic in addressing problematic resprouting woody plants and restoring degraded rangeland ecosystems.