Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 415: DIY On-the-Ground Conservation Work with Adam Keith and Matt Dye

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Ep. 415: DIY On-the-Ground Conservation Work with Adam Keith and Matt Dye · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number four fifteen.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Today in the show, I'm joined by Wildlife Habitat consultants
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Adam Keith and Matt Dye to discuss on the ground
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: project you can employ on your own dirt to help wildlife,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: pliants and the environment as a whole. All right, welcome
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: to the Wired Hunt Podcast, brought to you by First Light. Today,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: we're continuing our Conservation Month series. You know, like I
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: mentioned last week, Earth Days coming up here in a
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: matter of weeks, and that seems like a good of
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: excuse as any to step away from just hunting deer
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: a little bit in take a look at the resources
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: and critters and places that make hunting possible. If we
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: want to keep enjoying these things, it's on us to
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: make sure we keep them thriving, intact, and healthy. So
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: that's what this month is all about. Now. If you
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: heard last week's podcast, you heard me chatting with Randy
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Newberg and we were talking about conservation and policies related
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: to public lands. Now today I want to take a
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: hard pivot, focusing a little bit more on the conservation
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: work that can be done on private land and the
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: stuff we're talking about today. Unlike last week, this is
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: not dependent on politicians or petitions or Congress or any
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: kind of crap like that. This is the kind of
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: stuff that we each can do ourselves without permission, without
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: a penny from anyone else. And I think that's pretty cool. Now,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: across the US, we lose somewhere around two million acres
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: of natural open space to development every year. That's deer habitat,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: that's grasslands, that's homes for turkeys and upland birds, and
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: clean streams and ponds and on and on and on.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: All these places and things that we all value. They're
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: steadily disappearing year after year after year, this relentless push
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: of civilization. It's not stopping anytime soon. So the question
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: is can we do anything about it? Now? My contention,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: my answer is that yeah, especially if you're one of
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: those people who does have a little bit of land
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: that maybe you own, maybe that you lease. I think
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: if you fall into that category with which I personally do,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I think you can do a lot, and you know,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: as I'm sure many of you have done yourselves. If
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: you're in that group, you've certainly thought about what you
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: could do on the ground to help your deer hunting,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: right That's where I started too. But the next question
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: is have you thought about what you might be able
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: to do beyond that? Could we deer hunters look at
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: our properties and our work on them not just as
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: factories for pump out dear, but as opportunities to improve
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: bio diversity and healthy landscapes. Could these places be more
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: than just great deer hunting properties because they also be
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: refuges for all sorts of wildlife and plants and cleaner
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: air and cleaner water. I think the answer is yes.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: It's something that I was looking at and working on
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: with the whole Back forty project over the past couple
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: of years, and it's something that I'm you know, really
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: interested in continuing to focus on in the future. And
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: it's also something that our guests today believe in strongly
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: as well. And that's Matt Dye and Adam Keith. They
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: run Landing Legacy, which is a habitat consulting business. It's
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: a podcast it's a video series and they're just doing
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: great work to educate hunters on how to improve your land,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: how to manage your land, but how to, you know,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: I think, uniquely, how to do that in a way
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: where you're looking at the whole picture. They can take
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: a very holistic approach to land work. They look beyond
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: just deer, and that's what I wanted them to talk
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: about here today, so that we're gonna cover. We're gonna
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: cover the concepts and projects and actual on the groundwork
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: that we can do on our own dirt to make
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: a positive difference for all the other critters they're crawled
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: home and the land and the water and the soil.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: And if we can do that, I think we've done
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: our job. And oh, by the way, the deer hunting
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: is gonna improve too, There's no question about that. So
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: that's our conversation coming up. I enjoyed it. It's gonna
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: be I think, inspiration to get your hands dirty. I'm
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: excited to be out there doing more work and kind
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: of broadening my focus when it comes to what I
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: do on these properties. So good stuff. I'm excited for
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: you to give it a listen. But before that, we
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: do have two quick housekeeping points. First, as you've hopefully
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: heard already, our pals over at First Light launched Specter.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: That is their white tail camel pattern. It's out there
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: in the wild. You can buy products in it now.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Head on over to first light dot com to check
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: that stuff out. And alongside Specter, first Let's also launched
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: the Camel for Conservation Initiative. So what this is is
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: that with every sale of anything printed Inspector's camel, if
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: there's Spector camel on it and you buy it, a
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: certain amount of money goes from that sale right to
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: the National Dear Association to help with the important conservation
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: work the kind of stuff we're talking about today. So
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm proud of First Like for doing this, for
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: putting their money where their mouth is, for standing up
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: and giving back to the resource that makes what we
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: love possible. So kudos. Second, little heads up for you
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: is that my buddy Clay Newcome he was on the
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: podcast a few weeks ago. Well, he's just launched his
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: new podcast with The Mediator. It's called Bear Grease and
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: this is a very unique kind of podcast. It's a
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: documentary style. It looks at history and interesting people and cultures,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: and I think you're really gonna dig it, so check
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: it on out again. It's called Bear Grease. You can
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: find it on the Mediator website or wherever you get
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: your podcasts. And with out of the way, enough of me,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: let's get to the conversation with Matt and Adam. Thank
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: you for being here and tuning in alright with me
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: on the line today. I am really excited to have
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Adam Keith and Matt die gentlemen, thank you for taking
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: the time to be here to Hey, thanks for having this.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: It's always pleasure, appreciate it. Mark. Yeah, this is uh,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: this is a conversation that that I'm particularly excited about
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: because this month of April, um I decided to kind
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: of run a series, a little mini series of podcasts
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: here that I'm just gonna kind of call it. This
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: is a non creative name, but it's Conservation month. It's
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the month of April, it's the month of Earth Day,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: So there's obviously a lot of stuff that's gonna be
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: popping up in the news. Is that comes up people
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: talking about conservation and the environment and all these different
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: things going on around the world. And it seemed like
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: a good excuse to take a step away from how
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: to kill big bucks and instead look at the what
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: big deer hunting and what deer hunting stands on, which
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: is the ground and the wildlife and the plant life,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: and how we conserve the resources, how we keep these
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: places here and healthy for us to enjoy and for
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: the critters and everything else that calls them home. And
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: so this month I'm having a bunch of different conversations
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: with people about that. Some is about public land, uh sums,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: about private land, sums about um, you know, high level
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: policy things. And and then I also want to have
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: a conversation like that which I think we're gonna have
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: here today, which is what can we actually do on
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: the ground. You know, it's one thing to sign a
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: petition to save the environment or whatever to support public lands.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: It's a whole another thing to actually do a real action,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: take a real action that makes some kind of positive difference.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: And you guys probably see the same thing that I do.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: I I bring up this quote all the time, and
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: I know you guys know this one too, But there's
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: the Leopold line where he says that you know, hav
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: an ecologist education is to um be alone in a
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: world of wounds. Something along those lines. I'm paraphrasing, but basically,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: it's once you start paying attention to this stuff, you
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: start seeing all the news, you see seeing all the
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: damage on the landscape. You start noticing all the different
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: things that that could be discouraging. A few numbers that
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: I've seen recently, we're losing something like two million acres
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: of natural land a year in the United States that's
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: being developed or paved over or or whatever. A recent
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: report came out in two USand nineteen showed that our
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: bird populations across North America are crashing two point nine
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: billion fewer birds over the last I think it was
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: thirty years or something like that, grassland bird populations had
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: declined fifty three per cent. Uh. There's a lot of
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: talk about the challenges of the rough grouse. You could
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: go down the line with all these different things across
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: the country that you could point to that would be concerning.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: At the same time, we're sitting here as hunters with
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: a unique opportunity because what I can see, the numbers
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: that I've been able to pull together show that some
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: are around three hundred and fifty six million acres of
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: land across this country are either owned or least for hunting.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: So that's a big chunk of ground that people like
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  Speaker 1: us have some kind of say over and we could
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: either do some great stuff with that or we could
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: do some less great stuff with that. So I look
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: at that as like a hey, there's all these things
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: that people are talking about and that that maybe it
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: has caused for concern, and we actually have places that
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: we can make a difference. And so this is the
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Wired Hunt podcast record for the longest diet tribe. In
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: an introduction before letting the guests talk, but all of
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: this is to say that I'm hoping you guys can
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: help me think about ways that we can actually do
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  Speaker 1: something to help with this place we love, in this
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: place we call home. Is that something that you guys
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: are willing to talk about. Absolutely, And you know, I
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: was happy just to hear you talking about, you know,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: the amount of acres that that are accessible to hunting
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: or most importantly, a person who's hopefully has the interest
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: of trying to improve that land for the wildlife, even
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: if it's just dear, he can do things that benefit
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: other other creatures. That's a lot of land that could
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: be improved, and I think it it's all on our
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: shoulders as as landowners, land managers and people interested in
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: it to spread the message to other people as well
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: as just pick up a chainsaw or drip torch and
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: do it ourselves. And so we're absolutely all in on
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: talking about it. Yeah, And you know what I'm what
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: I'm hoping we can do today is kind of take
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: a little different look at on the groundwork because so often,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: whether it's on this podcast or in magazines or TV
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: shows or anywhere, when people talk about habitat work, it's
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: usually you know, how do I make my deer hunting better?
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: And and that's something that we all enjoy and we
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: all want to talk about, and there's nothing wrong with that,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: um But there are other things going on the landscape,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: as I just meant, and there's there's a lot of
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: ways that maybe we can help other species and other
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: parts of this ecosystem that all are interconnected. UM. So
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: I know this is something that you guys talk about
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: a lot and think about a lot. It's it's the
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: reason why I thought you guys would be the right
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: people to talk to on this topic. When did you
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: guys start looking at your work on the ground, your
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: habitat work and management. When did you and I don't know,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: maybe this is something you differently beginning you have to
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: tell me. But has it always been this holistic viewpoint
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: where you've looked at all species and in all aspects
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: of it? Or did you come into this with a dear, dear,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: dear focus and then eventually realize that there's more to it? Uh?
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: What's your guys personal evolution been around this? That's a
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: that's a great question. I think that for for both
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: of us, we've we've had similar, say, work experiences, and
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: that um, the changes in work experiences has allowed us
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: to expand and o in directions that allowed us to
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: really get back to I would say, naturally, what our
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: roots are as individuals in the way that we grew
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: up on the landscape. UM. You look, you can't deny
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: the connections of the natural world and how things are
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: just so intertwined and there's balances and things like that.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: So so we recognize that, UM by just spending time
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: outside when we were young and then going into the
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: field of very heavy deer management. I think it was
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: always in us that man we wanted to do something
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: that was alwayser than just dear. I certainly went through
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: the stage of being a dear snob where you focus
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: solely on deer and that's really all you care about,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: and then you transition later on at some point. It
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: may have been different for us, But Matt, you can conteh.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: I just you can't help but notice if you're observe
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: and I think that's what you know as a land steward,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: as a hunter, um as a leacy of property, as
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: a public land hunter. Doesn't matter who you are, you
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: spend time outside, if you are observant enough or you
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: crank up how observant you are from where you're at now,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: whatever level you are, you'll see how different species will
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: utilize different types of habitat. And then when you begin
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: to pick up a chainsaw or try different techniques, you
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: can't help notice how then they react to that. And
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: I think that let's say, level of intensity of being
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: observant and carefully watching that really just fueled the passion
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: for learning more and more and more about the connectivity
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: that that we stated earlier, and that man, this is
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: bigger than just dear. Because we see rabbits populations explode,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: We see rodent populations change. We see insect populations changed
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: by just managing specifically for different habitat types. And again
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: it's all connected. Turkey need insects. I mean, you would
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: just keep going the circle and circle and circle. It's like, man,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: this needs to be the approach opposed to all I
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: care about is a single species of deer and what
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: they need. There's more there. I'll piggyback on that. When
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: I was in my early twenties or teenage years going
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: in early twenties, I was definitely a dear focus only guy.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: And then as I grew up, though at a young
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: part of my life I quail hunted, and about the
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: early twenties I noticed that that covey of quail we
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: always saw on a part of the farm we're gone,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: and we we saw him every other year or every
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: three years. It just was not a regular occurrence like
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: it was as a kidd. And having that connection to
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: small game hunting and seeing the decline in a very
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: short window and then hearing whispers of turkey numbers declining
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: to me, I hit the fast forward button and tried
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: to see my life as a fifty year old going,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about turkeys the same way my
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: father talks about quail if we don't do something now,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: and so it quickly, I guess, uh, double speed got
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: into the the older how do I say this and
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: put it nicely? Talking like the older man, the older
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: gentleman with white hair, that's talking about the good old
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: days and when everything was great and focus more on
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: the conservation side than the big buck. And it was like, oh,
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: I'm thirty years old, and that's what we're talking about.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Because that's what I can see happening very quickly, is
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about the good old days really quickly,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: and I don't want that to happen. So let's get
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: after management for a small game. Oh and by the way,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: we started seeing changes that were benefiting the deer too.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: And once you see that, you see that even though
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: I'm not focused on deer, but I'm doing things that
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: are beneficial to all these other species. But the deer
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: are benefiting just as much as they were before. You
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: can quickly say, okay, I'll gladly take on this mind set.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: What do you guys think, Like, I know your fingers
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: on the pulse of this um community within the hunting
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: community right, those of us that that managed to some
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: degree or own land or work on land, steward land. Um.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: There's a whole lot of different media out there, There's
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: a whole lot of different people working on it. There's
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: of course organizations to help with this stuff. How do
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: you guys feel about where it's trending. Do you feel
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: like we're trending, you know, more towards this holistic viewpoint
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: or do you guys kind of feel like shouts in
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: the wind that that isn't necessary being reflected by the
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: rest of the of where things are going. I don't know.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Do you do you feel like we're going in the
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: right direction? Are we still too heavy into single focus?
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: I'm feeling pretty good, to be honest with you. I've
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: noticed you you cruise through social media, and uh, you
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: can see in in habitat chat rooms you can see
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: a lot more talks about Matt now we have a conversation.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: I've seen more people talking about edge feathering. When five
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: years ago when you mentioned it, people were like, is
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: that something that seems like something only the government talks about?
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: And and so more edge feathering talks, more pollinator talks,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: more overall forest health UM talks or forest management techniques.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Invasive species is coming up and so many conversations. I
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: would say I'm very encouraged with the number of people
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: talking about it, caring about it, very proactive, and their
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: management decisions that are progressing towards a greater focus broader
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: land health opposed to a single species, and I think
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: that that's just going to continue to grow UM because
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: it's very collective. You capture a lot of audiences with
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: that type of mindset UM opposed to just, you know,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: worrying about inches of antler on on the deer's head.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Not that that's necessarily wrong, it's just we can we
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: can cast a bigger net with that approach and impact
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: things greater than than just a deer. So does someone
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: who who at this point in their kind of journey
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: is still very focused on Man, I want better deer hunting,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: and that's where I'm at right now, and you know
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: that's what I've been focused on, and that's what I love.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: What would you what would your pitch be to them
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: to look beyond that? Would you would you give him
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: a pitch or would you say just keep on keeping
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: on um? What would you say to someone right now
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: who's thinking, like, I don't know if I want to
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: listen to this or not. Yeah, certainly, I think the
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: one of the big things in that pitch that we
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: would give that person is that, you know I for me,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: it's always about let's make the biggest impact with the
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: least amount of dollars and the quickest amount of time possible.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: And so I think in the hunting world, especially deer,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: we think of like certain products and fads, And I
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: almost have a little bit leary saying that, But there's
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: been a lot of techniques as like pitch to us
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: in a way that this is the ticket to bigger deer.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: But in reality, if you stop doing that, or let's
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: just say food plots for example, if all you did
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: was food plots, and for one year you didn't plant
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: your food plots, and you came back the next year,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: you might see that it's a more annual base of weeds.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: But within a few years you're gonna see that that
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: work that you did on that food plot is gone
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: a race. You cann't even tell that you put it there.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: When a lot of the practices that we promote, certainly
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: to our clientele on our consulting business is lasting, um,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: lasting practices that you're gonna get bigger antlers, you're gonna
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: get healthier dear more dear uh. If that's in a
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: if you're in an area where you have a lower population,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: and overall you're gonna have a healthier ecosystem, and it
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: probably doesn't cost you near as much money and headache
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: as it did when you focus solely on the deer.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: And I guess that would be kind of my my
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: pitch to those guys is just give me five minutes
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: to prove to you that there's gaps in your way
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: of thinking and way of management, and we can quickly
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: fix those and take you so much further along in
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: the health of a white tailed deer. Okay, well I'm convinced. Um,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: let's let's say now we're in a position where I've
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: got I've got the deer hunting side checked off, at
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: least I've got the basics figure it out. I know
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: a handful of things I'm doing on my property to
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: improve my deer hunting. Um, I've got a strategy around
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: why I'm doing and what I'm doing it for and
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: how I'm doing it. But but I also am thinking
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: that I want to I want to start taking a
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: different look at things and and learning about how I
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: can make a bigger difference, how I can think beyond
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: just dear. If you've got someone who's at the beginning
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: of this and wanting to start, you know, just wrapping
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: their head around, like what is important? What would be
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: the couple most important concepts to start thinking about for
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: somebody like that? For me, like the word that jumps
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: to mind or one of the words that jumps to
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: mind to me is is diversity. Um. But I'm curious
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: to you, guys, what would some of these like foundational
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: concepts be if we're just trying to lay a groundwork
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: for Okay, if you're trying to look at improving an
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: overall ecosystem. These are the types of ideas that you
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: want to learn about and think about and that will
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: guide our actual tactical decisions down the line. Are there
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: a few things that come to mind? Yeah, you just
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: opened up a huge can of worms for the direction
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: that this conversation can go. And that's a good thing,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: because there's a lot of avenues to start with. Um.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: For for a guy I think who is got some
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: dear things figured out, and you said to improve my
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: dear hunting Um, I think, and this is where a
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: lot of people can can branch off from and their
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: in their line of thinking is don't think about September
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: through December so much as now, let's change some of
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: our focus from Jane wary through August. Let's let's look
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: at what the rest of the year means for deer specifically.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: And then when you do that, you'll start to focus
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: and realize that I need um shrubs, I need woody
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: brows available, I need young forage in the form of forbes,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: for lactating dose, spawning cover. I need high diversity, Like
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: you said, they're um of that for antler growth and
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: the dietary needs of white tailed deer. That then reflect
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: you know how my hunting season will go in the
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: months to follow. But as soon as we begin thinking
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: about those months outside of hunting season, you quickly begin
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: to look at the overall health of landscape and what
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: forages are available um and essentially what other ecological uh
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: plant species plant communities are available on your given property
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: that you have to manage in So you summed it
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: up diversity. Another common one that we use is return
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: on investment. It's kind of a business term, but we
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: we bring it in a lot for our management and
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: then prioritizing, and so you know, you look at prioritizing
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: and going, how how do I even begin? And it's
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: going where is my biggest turnaround going to happen? If
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: you own a farm that's mostly timber, well, by golla,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: you're a timber manager long before you're a deer manager.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: You need to focus on managing that timber and so
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: prioritizing your farm and making sure that you're managing the
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: biggest scale rather than um looking at some of your
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: very small ratio less than five percent and saying this
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: is where I'm focusing my time when you're not having
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: a very high return on your investment by managing there.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: So tell me a little more about that process. What's
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: if if I were looking at my property, and of
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: course everyone's gonna have a different story here, but let's
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: talk high level. If I'm looking at my property and
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: trying to think, Okay, how do I prioritize? How do
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: I determine what's the best bang for my buck, whether
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: that's my time, my energy, my money. I want to
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: make a positive difference on the land. I'm trying to
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: look beyond just deer. I need to start prioritizing and
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: thinking about where do I start, what's going to be
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: the greatest impact, how do I like, what are the
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: questions I should be asking, what's the process I should
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: be going through? Absolutely, and so one of the big
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: things would be kind of understanding our native um ecological
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: site history and saying, okay, let's just for example, say
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: I'm somewhere in the Midwest and I'm mostly a forested property.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: We would look at that and going, well, priority says
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: and return our investment says that we need to focus
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: on the timber first. That's where we will try to
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: maximize that as far as h for a white tailed
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: deer hunter and say, okay, well, let's how do we
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: diversify for us. Well, we can change the age structure
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: of that forest. We can do a couple of clearings,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: small clearings one to three acres and say I'm gonna
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: had everything and create young forest pockets um temporary forest
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: openings where I just cut everything and I mix in
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: a few hinge cuts and I flush cut a whole
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: bunch of stuff, and I encourage woody brows UM availability
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: in these one to three acres and also phenomenal cover well.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: And then so I step away from that and say, okay, well,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: what else can I do well? Typically in the forest,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: there's uh, Matt can probably I'll give him one second
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: to name all the forests he's been in that need
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: no work in them. It's zero. And so almost every
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: force we go into, it's shocking how mismanaged they are.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: And some of them go from uh management of preserving
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: it to death to active management of not really doing
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: the right practices or over cutting. And so we'll go
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: and say, let's let's just try to do something in
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: general term crop tree release. Let's just focus on the
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: crop trees, the ones that are the tallest, have the
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: biggest canopy, look the healthiest, and let's cut the competition
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: out from around them. This is going to add even
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: more woody brows, it's gonna add even more sunlight hitting
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: the forest floor, so we get some more herbaceous plants.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: And we're gonna do that. Generally speaking, let's start on
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: the south facing slopes or the west facing slopes so
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: we can get the quickest amount of growth because we're
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: gonna get more sunlight there and then overall you just
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: big scale, say how do you diversify that? And you're
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: gonna get that with your terrain features. You're gonna get
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: probably higher stem counts on your east and north facing slopes.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: You're gonna get more of a herbaceous return or herbaceous
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: plant growth and grasses on your south and west facing slopes.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: And then you can diversify your temporary forest openings where
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: you have them on each different type of slope. So
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: if it's middle of the winter, you know they're probably
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: on the south facing slopes and the temporary forest openings
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: versus the north facing during the early season when they
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: still have a it's still hot, but they have a
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: winter coat on. And I gotta that that that really
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: covered very quickly what someone could do in the timber.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: But everyone probably has got um openings to some degree
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: or percentage of open areas on a farm. And one
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: of the first things that people want to do or
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: considers to plan a food plot. Well, if we're thinking
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: about a landscape health and diversifying what it is we
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: offer um and how that may be able to benefit rabbits, songbirds,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: h woodland birds, ground nesting birds strongly should consider doing
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: a practice called old field management. And a lot of
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: these openings um probably have some sort of pasture grass
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: um in them. We see fescue, smooth brown behea grass
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: and a lot of openings and they're just left unmanaged. Um.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: So if you remove that type of grass, let the
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: native seed bank express itself and do so for several
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: years and come back with prescribed fire or dormant season disking,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: You'll get a lot of annual weeds. You'll get shrub components,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: you'll get forbes and brambles, and that all serves the purpose. Uh,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: lots of food, lots of cover for I mean we
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: can even enlist, probably in an hour, the number of
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: species that could benefit to some degree out of that
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: specific type of management opposed to just turning all the
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: openings into a food plot. Um. So, finding that balance
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: of having a food plot but then just allowing natural
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: progressions or or what we term as succession um. Natural
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: succession of plant communities just developed themselves from the seed
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: bank allowed that to occur. And it makes sense if
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: you think about it, because that's what before you know,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: agriculture was even started in the US, or food plots
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: were ever even planted, and that's what these species that
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: we're seeing decline or that we should care about broad
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: in our horizons too, well, that's what they lived off of.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: So that's an extreme decline um as well as those
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: those whether it's a bird population or insect populations. That's
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: what they need, and so let's create something that they need.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: But now, at the same time that is wonderful fawning
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: cover and tons of food value for a white tailed deer,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: or that's brooding cover for a wild turkey or nesting
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: cover for a wild turkey. I think in the there's
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: there's some some literature that suggests like three thousand, thirty
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: five hundred pounds of digestible forage in a well managed
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: old field system, whereas a closed canopy system of one
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: acre is roughly fifty d pounds of digestible food for
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: a deer. So just the value that that can bring
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: two deer as well as many other critters is huge.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: It's huge. Yeah, I was just going to ask you
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: to to tackle why diversity is important in a system
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: like this, but but maybe just answered the question for
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: me when you said that you know, this is how
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: these animals evolved. They they they this is what the
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: natural ecosystem was like before humans came in and started,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: you know, creating these monocultures. Right, Nature of bores a
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: vacuum and nature bores a monoculture. There's there's almost nothing
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: in nature without humans intervention where it's all the same thing.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: It's almost always, always, always a diverse system of plant
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: life in different types of different succession levels. Um, do
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: you think that's it? Is that why diversity seems to
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: be a uh, just a key stone value add for
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: anything when you're trying to manage a landscape or is
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: there anything else there to it? I mean that pretty
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: well sums it up when you think about the two
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: main natural disturb is that occurred. You had fires and
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: you had grazing, and each one of those, depending on
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: what time of the year that disturbance occurs, stimulates certain
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: type of plant communities. And if you have just massive
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: bison herds slamming across the country and and changing the
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: plant communities at the same time there's fire, quickly you
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: can see that over the course of a hundred years
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: of just that, you're gonna have a very diverse ecosystem.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: And to dial it in as far as just insects.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: There's certain plants that attract certain insects. So if you
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: look at from a bird or turkey or a quail standpoint,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: you need multiple types of plants that attract certain types
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: of insects. So therefore you have more insects in that
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: area than just a monoculture where there may only be
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: certain type of insects attracted to that plant or needing
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: that plant during a certain window of time in the year.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: And so if you can think about it from that standpoint,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: it really, uh, it really opens up your eye is saying, Okay,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: regardless of what I do in my landscape, diversity is keen. Yeah,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: and you just think about food availability. To go back,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: go back to something that we're all familiar with, the
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: white tail deer, right, there's three hundreds some plus forges
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: that they eat. So that's just what they eat, not
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: necessarily what they bed in, what they need to for
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: escape cover or fawning cover. And so just in that
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: one single species, that's a vast number of plants. They
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: don't utilize a monoculture. So so why as a manager
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: would I try and have or utilize a monoculture to
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: attract them? And think that I'm making the biggest um difference.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: But we go into you know, birds, we go into
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: small mammals, we go into insects, and the number of
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: species that they utilize this drastically different from from white
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: tailed deer. But it's it's not one gold and silver bullet.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: I guess silver bullet to to things. And we try
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: and work with our clients and get them to the
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: idea that we're not managing a plant, we're managing plant communities.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: It's it's a group of plants, and therefore at the
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: end of that you have diversity just naturally occurring on
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: that landscape. UM. So hopefully people understand that it's a community.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: It's it's it's multiple aspects coming together that creates the
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: diversity that really will make a difference in an impact
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: for a vast number of species. Yeah, that makes a
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: lot of sense. Can you can you give me an
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: example of of one of these plant communities and we
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: could kind of use that example to then explore the
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: different things we could be thinking about the things that
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: we could be doing. UM. I mean, maybe there's literally
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: something you guys have actually been out working on recently
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: that might be a good way to illustrate some of
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: these things. Anything come to mind. I guess if we
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: want to go, yeah, old field where uh you just
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: look at the succession and how that progresses over time.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Let's just take a field that was a person bought
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: an old farm and it's got a cool season grass,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: old pasture where they had cows, and you go in
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: and remove that and and I'm not as afraid to
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: say it, but it's gonna take a one or two
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: treatment herbicide and you're gonna spray out that cool season
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: grass during the time of the year when most of
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: the natives are dormant, and you're gonna remove that monoculture,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: and you're gonna see certain species probably pop up like crazy.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: You'll see common ragweed depending on the site, but that's
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: a very common one, pope berry or poke weed. Um,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: you're gonna see a lot more brambles, pop um that'll
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: be young, golden rot will be a very big one.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: A lot of milkweed typically, And I'm thinking on one
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: site individual, one site specific that comes to mind in
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: this um mayor's tail, um burnweed, possibly just a lot
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: of the annuals that come up, but are all native
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: deer dow forage on some of them, or ham or
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: other ones of like common ragweed is phenomenal deer brows
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: and you'll see that be pretty good cover, but not phenomenal,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: especially not if you're in the north where you're gonna
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: have a lot of snow, and it may all a
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: lot of it, may get knocked over. But you'll see
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: over year two or three some grasses probably start to
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: fill in, and those grasses can withstand the snow a
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: little better in the wind, and so you've got clumps
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: that are staying standing. And then if you don't do
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: anything over time, you'll see some shrubs form, or there
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: might be the dotted eastern red cedar that pops up.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, over five years, you
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: went from a very annual base which was phenomenal forage
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: during the especially the early spring, long before soybeans or
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: corn starts to germinate. It's green, there's forage there, and
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: in the middle of summer it's it's actually gonna be
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: kind of hard to beat the amount of forage that's
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: out there because it's native species that are adapted to heat,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: and so when soybean leaves are turning up and not
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: being as palatable and not as selected by the deer.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: You've got ragley leaves that are like, I'm built for this,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: I'm good, and they still look great, and deer hammering it.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: And just over time you'll see that transition where you'll
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: have still the annual base, but probably starting to go
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: more towards a perennial base and having a lot more
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: of forage from woody brows available. Uh. And so just
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: over time you can have that diversity occur, or you
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: can add the diversity by planting. There's a video that
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: we shot UM that comes to mind on on our
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: social media. UM. We're standing adjacent to a field that
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: had just been removed the year prior of a cool
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: season grass was smooth brome and then that butted up
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: to a tillable field's soybeans. And this is in June
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: time frame, and this is just year one after removing
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: that smooth brome, which is the cool season monoculture. Essentially
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: next to um a monoculture of soybeans where we sprayed out.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: What came back UM was a lot of native grasses,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: the forbes um that Adam mentioned earlier, UM milkweed. And
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: and we're standing this divide basically of of rich diversity
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: that that used to be historically native prairies. And we
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: were seeing those prairie plant communities coming back year one,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: and there were quail whistling, there were grasshoppers hopping. As
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: we're walking out through um this system, there were monarch
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: butterflies floating, and we were accounting them almost by the dozens.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: And then too the I left we were standing in
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: it was ankle high maybe Shinhai soybeans, and there's no
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: life whatsoever. There was no grasshoppers hopping, there was no
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: little spiders run across the ground. There's nothing besides sway beans.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: And so just looking at the two and that had
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: been created in a short matter of time, you see
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: diversity create life opposed to a monoculture that essentially doesn't
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: have like an insurance policy. UM I mean but so so,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: if you're playing a monoculture, it's it's do or die, um,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: make or break situations. But but when we're managing natural
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: plant communities that are diverse, you have other plants that
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: that do better. Let's say you get a drought, they
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: do better in a drought situation, opposed to ones that
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: do better when you get UM your annual rain precipitation amounts,
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: and so you have this almost built in insurance of
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: habitat and forage value every single year if you if
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: you focus on engine for plant communities and diverse landscapes
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: opposed to a monoculture UM. So they're just you know,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: a quick example of how those two systems adjacent to
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: each other. Anybody in the video could just watch it
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: and see, holy cow, this this is this is exactly
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: what we're talking about. There's a clear difference between silence
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: and buzzing in the ambiance sounds that you'll hear on
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: nature apps of like there's all kinds of birds and
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: insects just singing over here, and it's not happening over here.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: So in a situation like that where you describe step
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: one being remove the mono culture, the smooth brome or
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: whatever it might be in your area, and then you
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: describe you know, letting nature take its course from there
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: and and letting those uh whatever was in the seedbed
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: previously come back and take advantage of you know, the
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: new sunlight in space. But what if we want to
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: do more from there, or or how do we know
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: if we should do more or or do less or
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: just let it go or uh, you know, when it
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: comes to old field management, I know there's a lot
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: to it, so we can we can kind of look
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: at some beginner steps, I guess for folks that are
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: looking at this as a way to improve diversity, improve
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: food and cover and all these different types of values
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: for many, many species, it seems like this is definitely
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: one of those best or most um most achievable initial goal.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: So so where do we go from there? Yeah, and
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: I think that's where you can look at. Okay, let's
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: just try to categorize certain plant communities and say what
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: is here, where's the gaps, Let's fill the voids and say, okay, well,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: this is a field, so to speak. So I'm not
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: really targeting tree like oak trees. I could plan them
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: around the edges if I want, but let's just focus.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: I've got acres and acres and acres of o kickery force.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: I don't need that. Let's maximize what's happening here in
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: this old field. And I know I have a lot
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: of annual weeds coming up. They're all native. That's great.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: One of the biggest things we want to do to
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: ensure the longevity of this area is to remove invasive
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: species and constantly be monitoring for invasive species. And the
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: reason we don't like those is they're not native. They
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: don't benefit wildlife nearly as much. If they benefit some insects,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: it's a short list compared to a native plant that
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: benefits a long list of insects. So I just want
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: to remove those and make sure that they're not taking
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: over this area and not having any natural predators. They
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: can quickly get ahead of the native plants. So I'm
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: gonna do that. But I'm also looking to say, okay,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: this area was let's just say it's all been grass. Well,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: I don't like grass, even that's a monoculture. We've sprayed
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: out the smooth bone. Now we have forbes coming back
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: or broad leaves flowering plants. And then I look and
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: can I interject one quick question when it comes to
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: that very first step spraying out some of these big
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: grassy fields that are just nothing but something like that,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: is that literally all you'd have to do? Or do
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: you need to burn it off the the dead stuff
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: you sprayed or mow it down or anything, or just
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: by spraying stuff will still be all come up even
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: through all that residue on top. It might take a
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: little bit longer, but stuff will still come up. Burning
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: would be great, but in a lot of states guys
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: are a little bit scared or a state regulations don't
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: allow it. If it's me personally, I'm burning the baby,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: I'm setting it on fire because it makes me feel
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: good to go. Okay, I sprayed this area out, and
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: now I burned it, and I have a clean slate,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: and there's plenty of soil exposed that's getting ready to
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: explode in life. Plus that burning could probably or that
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: burning helps suppress any grasses that you may have missed
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: because you're it's it's getting ready to hit its peak
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: performance time and you set it back with a fire.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: So fire certainly helps, but it's not necessarily needed. You'll
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: still get diversity. It will just come as a little
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: bit delayed in the growing season as it's trying to
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: struggle and pop through the hatch that you sprayed. But
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: it's not necessary. Okay, continue, Sorry, you're going somewhere that
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: And so I look at that, and I say, okay,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: well I'm missing grasses, native grasses. I'm missing the bunch
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: grasses and so I can say, all right, let's find
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: a few areas. Let's let's broadcast a little bit of
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: a little blue stam or uh switch grass, or even
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: some Indian grass and big blue stem. But I'm not
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: going to get carried away because I don't want to
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: come back in five years and have monoculture of native
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: warm season grass. That's not my goal. And so I'm
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: just doing a little bit scattered around where ultimately my
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: end goal is to have about twenty or less in
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: native grasses. And so I've done that. I look around,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: I say, what shrubs are here? Well, the only shrubs
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: are there. I'll use the Michigan reference for you is
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: autumn olive, and uh, I'm not so much in love
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: with autumn olive. And so this is where we're gonna
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: take lemons and make lemonade. And instead of just cutting
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: it and removing it getting it out of there, I'm
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: gonna take it. I'm gonna cut that thing down, but
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna leave exactly where it fell, and I'm gonna
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: key in on some of the native shrubs that I
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: want to see. So it may be nanny berry or
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: it maybe red O's your dog would or it may
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: be American plum Um N nine bark uh. There's a
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: long list of native shrubs to whatever state you're in,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: and you can take those, buy them from a state
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: nursery or find a local source where you can get
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: them pretty cheaply and take five of those and drop them,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: sink them in with a sharp shovel and plan them
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: in the top of that canopy of that of that
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: autumn alive that you cut. So instead of happening to
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: use plastic tubes and plastic pipe and then go back
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: years later and remove that, just let that natural woody
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: vegetation from that autumn alive be your cage or your
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: barrier and help protect that young shrub at a young stage,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: and then let it grow up out of that as
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: that as that top decomposes. Think of it as like
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: a utilization cage for shrubs that's kind of protected was young, right,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: so they're not getting over brows or nipped um. And
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: then you've treated that stump of the autumn of course,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: and now you've got you've replaced a shrub with now
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: a native option um, and they've got to grow kind
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: of unencumbered or not brows super heavy, and you get
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: a wonderful colony of shrubs, which that's typically how shrubs
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: are growing, colony type forming. You're just replicating nature by
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: if you do edge feathering or anything where you drop
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: a tree, birds perch on that tree and and poop
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: out the berries, and then that starts to grow up
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: out of that thing. We're just speeding up the process
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: by giving a year old sapling or a year old
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: bear roots seedling in that in that top. And just
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: by doing that, now we've encouraged native grasses. We've at forbes,
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: and we've got shrubs which can provide both cover and
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: woody brows. And so the next stage would be how
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: quickly can we get brambles into this, how quickly can
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: we get blackberries? And if it's not real regularly currying
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: in that site, you haven't seen it there before, you
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: can buy some of those and start planting them around
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: in some colonies, and that way you can provide even
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: more woody brows, but cover for small games species like
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: cotton tail rabbits or bob black quail. I would say,
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: specifically with this type of technique that we chose to
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: discuss old field management, let time be on your side,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: because a lot of the stuff that we're talking about.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: The diversity comes with time and sometimes sometimes just our
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: human natures. We want to expedite this process. We want
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: to jump ahead, we want to leap frog and see,
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: um these things change it and we can take some
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: um of those necessary steps and do that, like Adam
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: talked about. But oftentimes, if we're trying to replicate what
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: naturally happened, sometimes the best thing to do is just
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: let nature run its course and and work itself, because
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: we're we're taking away the monoculture that that humans, you know,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: put there right and now why don't we just let
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: the succession take it take over and and in the meantime,
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: although it may take four or five years for things
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: to develop, let's not be misunderstood that years one, two
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: and three aren't providing benefits for a whole host of species.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: If year four and finds what we want to get,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: years one, two and three are still fantastic for certain species.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: And when we take that broad approach of trying to
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: trying to um embrace diversity, then there's a lot of
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: winds years one, two and three that we can we
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: can celebrate right along the way as nature or succession
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: um is taking place. Would you say that this kind
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: of project, this kind of um plant community, you know,
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: fostering something like this, it's got to be one of
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: the very best bang for your buck type of impacts
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: you can make for upland birds, songbirds, turkeys, small mammals, pollinators,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, all of those critters thrive in these young
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: you know, early successional old field type situations like this.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Would you agree, Oh, obviously, yeah, for sure. The one
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: thing I guess, the misconception that I see correlated with
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: old field management and why some people may have a
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: bad taste for it, is converting tillable acres or acres
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: that had heavy herbicide US for years and years and years,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: and they don't get that response is quickly. Old field
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: is best whenever it's a site that hasn't been completely
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: sprayed out or tilled up in in years previous slee
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: So if you're if you're going with if you're going
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: with an old tillable field, you may you may be
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: better off planting a mix. To be honest with you,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: and and honestly, Mark want one thing to ask you
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: with your experience on the back for you that your
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: audience is probably familiar with those fields that were kind
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: of left. Um, those had a previous history of being farmed.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: Is that correct. Yeah, so that that what you just mentioned,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: what Adam just mentioned, is exactly the scenario we had.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: It had been farmed heavily, heavily, heavily, sprayed heavily, you know,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: turned over for decades and then and then we picked
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: it up. So so yeah, we had that situation. And
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: what we had coming back once we left a fellow was,
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: you know, pretty thick stands of mayor's tale a few
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: places where we had golden rod, but we weren't getting
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: the diversity you'd hoped for. Um, and the mayor's had
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: likely built up a resistance I'm assuming to the herbicide use.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: So that's why it had a leg up on everybody. Yeah. Yeah,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: so that was a zy and and you know, the
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: way I tried to approach it, not that I knew
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: everything that I was doing. I was. I was testing
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: things and trying things, but we did have to apply
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: some herbicide and that made a big difference. Actually that
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: you know, knocked a lot a lot of that. I
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: used a pre emergent and with nothing else just getting
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: rid of that Mayor's Tale. It opened up the possibility
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: for so much more diversity to come in that next year.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: And then we did do some spot broadcasting, frauds fraud,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: excuse me, frost seeding of switch grass. We got some
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: of that coming back. We got some natural diversity coming back. UM.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: So in that experience, you know, year one, when we
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: didn't do anything, it was a mayor's tale forest and
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: it was a desert of wildlife in a lot of places.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: Year two, with that herbicide treatment and a little bit
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: of switch grass and a few other things we did,
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: we we saw a very noticeable difference. UM. Obviously a
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: long ways to go still, but it was a very
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: encouraging change just with that. So I could see how
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: you know, some continued TLC along those lines opens up
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: the possibility for nature to do it what it wants
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: to do. UM. But it's a little bit different, like
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: you said, yeah, and because I mean you're really you're
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: behind the a ball when you're waiting on that succession,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: You're like, Okay, we've removed the crops, let's just see
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: what goes back. But ultimately the seeds that were in
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: that soil have been killed off with herbicide or tillage,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: and so you're honestly waiting for native seeds to drift
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: in and make good seed to soil contact. So it's
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: a lot slower of a process trying to convert old
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: tillable lakers into beautiful, diverse old fields as opposed to
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: a pasture that hasn't had that cropping type history. We've
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: seen unreal results in a matter of a year or
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: two years in that type of situation. I think of
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: of many different states and clients who are experiencing just
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: kind of singing praises of old field. But that's where
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: it's important to know what the what the land use
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: was on a specific site before you go into um
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: a specific management technique or or if you don't know it,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: you don't have that information, you may need to adjust
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: some on the fly like you guys did UM and
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: kind of coach along or develop a plan to encourage
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: diversity in other ways. You know. In talking about this,
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: we've talked about herbside use and when you guys are
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: on the show two years ago, we tackled this topic UM,
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: but I want to I want to hit on it
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: again just for those who maybe didn't hear that first one. Um,
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: you know, we're talking about trying to do things that
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: are right for the environment, or trying to make a
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: broader positive difference for the animals, for the plant life, etcetera. UM.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: When you when you hear about trying to do those
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: things and then you hear about applying chemicals that kill stuff, there,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: you know there are some concerns like are we actually
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: helping things? Are we applying these chemicals in a way
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: that actually is more negative? You know, there's there's a
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of acceptance of herbiside use within the
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: wildlife management community, there's there's more concern about it maybe
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: outside of it in a larger environmental context. UM. I
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: know this is something you guys are thoughtful about and
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: have have put some thought towards. Could you kind of
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: give me your two cents on you know, using herbicide
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: in a responsible way to to ensure we don't have
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: any negative environmental impacts. Absolutely. I think one of the
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: first things that I should address in this conversation, because
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: it seems like a reoccurring conversation we've had with people,
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: is the the agricultural world that is trying to weed
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: out and not use herbicides as much. Are guys who
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: are basically managing their farm that is eight acres that
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: are going to get some sort of treatment herbicide from
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: a land manager or a whitetail guys standpoint, we're probably
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: on average based on our conversations and pulling that we've done,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: which is which we seem like as a fair guest.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: But most of our guys are managing their food plots
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: are are almost always less than five percent of the
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: total acreage um, which is where most of our herbicide
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: use comes from. And then the old fields are I
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: wish we had more old fields, but really I'm not
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: been on a property where I can say more than
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: of the property was old field. And the way we're
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: using herbicide in old field management is almost always a
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: one or twice treatment of herbicide and then we're done
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: with it for for a long long time, unless it's
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: spot treatment, which may be a few little areas here
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: and there to remove invasives or non natives that that
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: we just didn't get rid of the first time. So
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: there's a big difference between the herbicide use that white
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: tail guys will use versus agricultural now in regards to
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: do I love herbicide? No? Do I love the tool? Yes,
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: because it helps me remove monocultures and invasive species much
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: quicker than try trying to burn my way to success.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: And a lot of times there's there's non natives that
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: you just can't burn out there there forever, and if
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: if you're trying to manage them with fire like Seisa Lespidisa.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: So I look at it as a tool to remove
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: a non native and it may be a one step
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: backwards to take three giant leaps forward in the stance
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: of old field management or prairie restoration. And so that's
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: where I don't love it. And certainly, if I'm using
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: it and I'm getting it on my skin, I'm doing
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: it wrong. So that's kind of my mat you've got anything,
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: I would certainly say that I think of it like
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: just about any other tool that land manager could use.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: Chainsaw or prescribe fire or grazing um. Those are the
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: big ones that Aldo Leopold talked about. Let's throw herbicide
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: into that category or or to the list of the
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: as a tool. You can over use a chainsaw, you
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: can cut way too much, or you may not cut enough,
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: So understanding how to use that tool is important. Same
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: thing with prescribed fire. You may not be burning enough
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: or you may be burning too much. Um, there's a
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: lot of places with the country that burned way too
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: much and others that don't burn nearly enough. There's people
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: who over grays areas, and then there's some places that
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: don't get grays when they should. And I think a
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: verb sides as Certainly it's a wise use and a
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: very specific application. There's some instances where I think people
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: way over user beside, and then there's other instances where
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: people don't use it and their habitat is actually declining
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: because they haven't addressed it with the proper step, with
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: a proper tool, when they can do it very simply
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: in a very safe, controlled maybe it's just a spot
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: treatment um situation, and then the worry is essentially neutralized
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: in a way and they're progressing habitat further. It needs
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: to be utilize appropriately and in a controlled manner. If
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: there's other options, I'm going to resort to that first,
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: of course, But if I need to use it, I'm
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: going to use it very appropriately. Yeah, the end goal
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: is a diverse, healthy ecosystem and if using a herbicide
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: gets me there quicker than tillage, in which it can
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: be argued that is not great for the soil health
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: at all. So basically, whatever whatever tool we have to
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: use to get to a healthy, diverse ecosystem the quickest,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: that's what we want to use. And a lot of
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: times herbicide, uh, selective herbicide can be that best tool
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: for us appropriately applied. Yeah, so let's keep talking about
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: some of these tools we've we've talked a lot about.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: In the old field management kind of system, the herbicide
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: plays a key role. Another tool would be the chainsaw
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: like you mentioned and doing things within the timber forest management, edge,
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: edge feathering, etcetera. Um, can you can you talk a
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: little bit about how someone could be thinking about using
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: a chainsaw to improve their landscape for for the wider
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: the wider array of critters. What are some of those
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: main things that you would be pointing folks towards at
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: the beginning, and what are the key things to be
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: um to be thinking about before starting a project like that. Yeah,
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: I would say you don't need a forestry degree to
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: be able to go into most forest and look at
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: it critically and see that there is stressed, there is
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: too many stems peraker, there is disease, there are weed
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: trees out there that need to be removed, and you
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: can just look and see that. And so there's a
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: great option of you. You like the chainsaw to reduce
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: the canopy, encourage sunlight to reach the forest floor. And
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know what percentage necessarily of songbirds are woodland
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: type songbirds or have a woodland as part of their
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: life cycle that they need um whether it's reproduction, breeding,
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: um feeding, but it is a strong, strong number of
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: songbirds that need a woodland type setting. UM. So if
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: you go in, you've reduced the canopy by by remove
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: the junk or the weed trees that are dying out.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: One I know by research that you've increased deer forge
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: by five. If you go in and reduced canopy by
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: and add fire, well that's wonderful. Any deer hunters like, wow,
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: it's great. I love the sounds of that. But the
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: songbirds have just erupted in in that same type of
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: situation because that's what they need as well. We've we've
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: seen that on your guys family's farm. Scarlet tanagers yeah,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: absolute and explosion of birds that aren't the typical birds
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: you would see in the Ozark mountains. And and just
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: by doing some chainsaw work and fire, it's all of
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: a sudden we've got different growth speaks. We've got I
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: mean just rainbow effect of birds, from indigo bunt teens
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: to scarlet tanagers to grow speaks to goldfinches. And there
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: we are nearn about birds. But at the same time
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: it's providing just tons and tons and tons of food
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: and cover for whitetail deer. So the chainsaw, I you know,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: when you ask about tools, I wanted to interrupt and
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: say chainsaw and a drip torch. There are no other tools,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: but herbside does come in. So um, those two being
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: just phenomenal and and marrying those two together is just
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: an amazing, an amazing thing for a lot of landscapes.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: And you take a chainsaw, you've got edge feathering, you've
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: got general t s. I you do have hinge cutting.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: And I think sometimes people don't really look at Matt
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: and Eye's hinge cut guys, but we do include hinge
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: cuts and a lot of work we do. We just
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: don't get crazy with it and go more than of
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: our cuts um, and we only do it on smaller
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: mid story type trees. Um. And just I mean other
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: practices old field management. Anytime you've got fields that are
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: at our fields that have a scattered, big tall tree, um,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: you could cut that down and provide more cover for
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: wildlife as well as no longer being a perch for
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: a raptor to to swoop down and kill your to
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: kill your coil, or a great horn to sit in
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: there and uh go down and swipe that white tail fawn.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: So um. You know, if it's going to be a field,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: manage it as a field and try to get rid
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: of some of those tall, scattered trees. In particular, I
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: think of Siberian elms or Russian elms that we see
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: so much scattered out on open areas. And the other
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: thing too, is going back to that word you brought
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: into the conversation Mark with a chainsaw. But the word
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: was diversely. But with the chainsaw, you're you're you're changing
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: the structure and the age of trees. You're not necessarily
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: killing them with a chainsall, You're just resetting them and
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: taking them back down to you know, a stump where
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: they can resprout and be better cover for animals that
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: are living on the ground. You know, think of think
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: of the ability for a tree top to be laid
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: across and now we've got more of a preferential area
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: for a turkey to be able to lay a nest
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: in now because a tree top is on the ground
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: opposed to just leaf litter um. And then the stump
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: erupts the next year with with growth that kind of
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: forms a temporary shrub um. We didn't kill that tree,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: We just reset it and changed its form and put
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: it into a form that now allows for diversity within
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: a wood lot um or or a forest. So I
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: gotta take you back to the hinge cut thing, because,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: as you mentioned, a lot of people look at hinge
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: cutting is like that gateway drug really entryway into timber work.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: A lot of people get excited about it. They do
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: a ton of it. Uh, it seems it seems like
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: a good bang for your type of situation. There's all
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: these upsides to it. Supposedly, give me your take on
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: on why you would be worried about going too too
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: far in that direction, or what's what's the risk in
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: doing too much hinge cutting? Why should we not um
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: go full bar crazy with that. So I see a
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: lot of times with with all of our work, a
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: couple of things come to mind, a couple of negatives
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: with hinge cutting. One of the big ones that humors
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: me when I scan social media's guys in your statement,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: it seems like Michigan is like really popular for hinge kutting,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: which I totally understand why woody brows is limited covers limited.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: You do. You go out in your woodlot and you
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: hinge cut five five trees and the next day there's
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: six deers standing there. It's obvious why it's a beneficial thing.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: But then you've got guys down south like, oh, it's terrible,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: it's it's the stupidest thing I ever heard of. It
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: doesn't work, and it's and it's just the difference in
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: the region and the standpoint that woody brows is unlimited
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: in the South and most of the time it's it's
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: pretty regularly occurring, but it's very limited up north. So
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: you've got two different regions kind of feuding over it.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: And reality, it's just the fact that there's different needs
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: for the white tail during different times of the years.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: For those two regions. So hinge cutting. The other big
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: negative that I see with it is um when it
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: gets to when we use it too much, you kind
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: of create the game of pickup sticks where it's hard
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: for deer to really use the whole area. You're not
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: creating an area that has usable space throughout the entire
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: three acres, and so you're they're using the fringes. So
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: if you cut just flush cut trees, you get more
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: woody brows available within reach. At the same time, the
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: deer can step over those tree tops and and move
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: to the center part of that hinge cut or that
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: area that you've been working. And so that's my take
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: on hinge cutting. I love it, But then I also
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: see too many videos where guys are cutting bigger trees
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: with the chainsaw and trying to hinge cut, and it's
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: like near death every time they cut, and they don't
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: even realize it. That's what's another big scary thing to me.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: I think too, when we when we look at what
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: happens with the end result of of hinge cutting exclusively
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: will do is you're cutting the trees, but you're wanting
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: to keep them alive. And if you do that and
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: the dense pocket in a certain area. All you've done
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: is just reduced the canopy from let's say fifty feet
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: in the air or hundred feet in the air back
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: down to like three and four ft. If the goal
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: is to keep that tree alive, you've just shortened it.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: And so if you're gonna go in and do work
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: intentionally to create diversity, let's cut some of those trees
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: off completely, and so it doesn't grow along the whole
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: spine of the tree, and the canopy stays alive. That
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: parts dead and gone. It may come up from the sprout,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: but that gives room for forbes, grasses and the brambles
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: to begin to grow. And then we just don't have
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: a really short three or four foot tall canopy. That's
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: still close canopy. We've got sunlight to be able to
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: reach and penetrate penetrate through there that ultimately will give
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: you that plant community. Feel opposed to just shortening the
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: treats when you're doing any of that kind of work,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: do you ever have And I realized it's always gonna
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: be site dependent and specific to your own situation. But
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know if there's some kind of guideline or
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: percentage you could offer when it comes to when you're
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: doing this kind of timber work and you're trying to
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: make these openings, is there a size or some kind
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: of ratio that we should be looking at as as
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: a minimum, Like if we do stuff this small, it's
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: just not gonna make an impact, or is it? Hey,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: whatever you can do is is better than nothing? Like
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: how do you approach that? Because I gotta believe some
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: people are thinking, Man, I can't imagine getting out there
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: and cutting five acres a timber or an acre or
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: half acre that this might be intimidating for someone. Give
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: me a little insight there. Absolutely, and and so I
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: would say this as an as my best guestimate for
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: anybody that's listening. UM, if they have timber and they
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: haven't done anything in their timber, just cutting trees will
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: show an increase to to the deer in the wildlife.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: Because most of our forests doesn't really matter what state,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: But there's probably a listener that's got a chunk of
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: woods and it's overstocked and it's unmanaged, and so just
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: cutting some trees will certainly benefit the deer. UM identify
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: the ones that are weak or unhealthy. UM and and
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: just then them back. But as far as trying to
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: create the response that Matt and I are really looking for,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: which has the diversity of forbes and grasses or sedges
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: and rushes depending on the site, um and then getting
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: that those saplings or those stump sprouts that really start
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: growing back, you really kind of need to be a
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: above a half acre to to see that response. If
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: you go any less than a half acre, you're probably
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: going to see an explosion of more brambles or invasives
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: that can grow in that semi shade better than that
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: full sun. So those forbes and grasses sages that we're
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: really looking for need more sunlight. And so if you
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: only give them a limited amount and you do that
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: semi shade or thin the understory, you're gonna see a
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: lot of brambles fill in or coralberry uh and in
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: much of the Midwest, or buckbrush another common name for it.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: And you'll see those fill in and you'll say, yeah,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: that didn't really work. Was because you didn't get the
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: amount of sunlight you really needed to get the plant
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: response that we're looking and that's likely based on the
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: size a half acre and size you've got to consider
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: the way the sun's moving across the sky, and the
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: height of the trees may block more of that half
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: acre open if they're taller opposed to shorter trees. So
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: generally speaking, we want to go that acre ish type
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: and size. And we know at that point, no matter
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: whether it's winter or it's summer, no matter how the
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: sun is moving across the sky, and no matter what
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: the tree sizes around, I'm gonna get sunlight into this
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: unit at some point throughout the day and it's going
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: to be enough to generate that type of response that
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: we want. And so we really really focus and look
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: at um the exposure, so so topography, how the sun
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: is gonna move across an area, whether it's south facing,
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: west facing, north facing before we cut, and that that
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: helps to determine size um of those of those types
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: of cuts. I mean, it's sunlights. It's very very minimum.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: The most important thing if you're trying to get sunlight
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: into your house just ripped. So I guess my my
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: example of this would be take your ceiling and your
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: and your roof off your house, and all you have
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: our walls. If you're in one room, one real small room,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: the sun can grow across the full sky and you
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: barely You probably could stay in the in the shade
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: all day just from the shade of the walls. And
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: that's the surrounding trees for these cuts. So you really
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: need to get big so you can get sunlight into
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: that forest floor. And I would say you to the
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: person who's like, holy cow, guys, one whole acre, there's
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: probably not one whole acre of young forest regeneration if
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: if majority of your timber around us close canopy and
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: and now you just created a limited resource. And now
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: you create something that that you're gonna frequent too, that's
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: got a high concentration of food, and if you treat
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: it securely, you're gonna daylight there a lot. And so yes,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: it may sound intimidating, but at the same time, you
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: just created something that that is very difficult and most
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: portions of the country to find habitat or plant communities
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: that resemble that. So I got a question about this
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: specific scenario and in a person example, um on our
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: on our family hunting property up in northern Michigan. We've
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: got a section of our property that is a monoculture
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: of hemlocks. So that's like a big These are old
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: mature hemlocks, that's an evergreen species. UM. I don't know
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: they're they're six ft tall something like that. There's there's
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: no understory at all. It's it's just a big Why
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: don't been ten fifteen acres of pine needles on the
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: ground and dead branches on the ground and otherwise like
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: a park? Um. And then you know this dense cover
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: up top. And I always looked at that, or more
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: recently looked at that. I thought, geez, this is like
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: a desert for wildlife most of the year, um, most
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: of the time. And there's a little bit of pass
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: through traffic, but nothing's using it throughout most of the year.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: And we had a forester out though couple of years ago,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: and he was looking at the property and stuff, and
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: you know, one of the ideas I had had is
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: something like what you describe. You know, we should we
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: should cut some of this down, we should do something
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: with it. And he recommended we not do that because
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: of the wintering needs of deer up in northern Michigan.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: And you know the thermal cover that evergreens like that
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: would provide. Um I and I get that, but at
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: the same time, I thought, man, there's got to be
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: a little bit we could do with it. But but
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: what's your take on a situation like that where, um,
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: there is a purpose to thermal cover like a big
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: stand like that. But again, I don't know what are
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: your thoughts on that. My this guy's take was that
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: you shouldn't you shouldn't cut any of it, even though
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: it's fifteen acres of of a dead zone for most
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: of the year. Um, what are your thoughts on that
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: situation specifically or more generically for other people that might
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: have something like that. Absolutely, and that's where diversity is
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: keen in in our book, because you look at that area. Sure,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: it's it's good cover. So you know in the categories
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: of cover, food, water, security, it's good cover. Now if
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: you stay out of there, it's probably secure. So it
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: feels okay. So yeah, it's it's tall now, so there's
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: no there's no like ground level cover. The only cover
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: is above you. It's cover for this deep snow, I'm
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: assuming is what he's talking about. So you're you're going
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: into late winter or midwinter through whenever the snow melts.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: That's when it's good. That's when it's good cover. But
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: even during that time frame, deer still have to eat.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: And that's where I'm like it. Good cover does me
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: no good if there's no food close in close proximity
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: to that. And so if you can find a way
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: for me anything fifteen acres twenty acres of the same thing,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: I'm going, how do I diversify that? And so I
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: would look at it, most likely just in my best
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: guess and say, there's probably somewhere in there where uh,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: we open up two areas that are two acres apiece
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: and we try to get young forest for generation because
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: that's king in the north, and try to get some
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: food and uh, and still utilize that that those hemlocks
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: is as quality winter cover in the snow. But even still,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to rank it very high on my
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: list of benefit um for for the very reason that
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: what are the two things during the winter you need?
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: You need to be in the sun preferably and out
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: of the wind. And so if the wind, if it's
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: wide open underneath it and the wind can hel through
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: there you've brought an umbrella as a wind block, it
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: doesn't really do much good. That is the biggest I
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: think misconception misunderstanding of of evergreens. I think they're fantastic
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: for thermal cover if they're in the right density as
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: well as height. So so let's take some of those
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: hemlocks away, we get sunlight to able to penetrate through there,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: and then we're probably going to have more hemlock regeneration
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: because that's what the site is, and they've been dropping
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: um cones there and stuff for many, many years. So
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: we're gonna have some then that are shorter coming back,
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: and that's where that you're gonna have actually now some cover,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: but the sunlight throughout the day is actually gonna be
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: able to penetrate in there into this let's say ten
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: fifteen acre unit, opposed to them being evergreens and not
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: getting sunlight. So we've got energy in there. And then
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: some of the taller trees with the higher branches, once
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: you get sunlight in there, their purpose is to hold
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: the heat in throughout the day. But if all you
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: have our giant tall trees, it's blocking sun you're not
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: getting sunlight into there, so there's nothing well warm throughout
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: them to hold throughout the nighttime. So you have to
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: have not only diversity in height, but you know, let's
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: let's cut some let's get some h diversity of evergreens
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: in there, but we really need to focus on sunlight
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: for it to be let's used as much for thermal
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: cover opposed to the where it stands right now. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: that that certainly makes a lot of sense to me.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: Um along the lines of the sun, you know, talking
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: about sunlight and sun availability and everything like that. It
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: makes me wonder if the topic of the project of
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: edge feathering is is a particularly handy opportunity because when
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: you're operating on edges, sun is a much more available commodity.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: So for people that are trying to start some kind
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: of timber work but maybe aren't quite at the level
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: of doing acre or two acre type openings, is edge
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: Is edge feathering a way to start? And can you
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: just expand on what that is the impact that can
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: have on you know, all these other species and how
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: they use edge Uh, totally. I love edge feathering. I
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: would say for listeners in the North, if all the
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: only cutting they've done is the edge feathering, be prepared
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: to bump deer on the edge of the food plots,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: because if you don't have quality cover and all you
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: do is edge feather. You're gonna see deer most likely
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: betting in and around those tops because that is the
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: best cover in the neighborhood. So in order of prioritizing,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: we're trying to move the cover typically away from the
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: food plots or the roads, to where the deer are
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: betted there during the day and you don't have to
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: worry about bumping them as you're moving around the property. Now,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: to answer your question about edge feathering, it is one
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: of the I mean it's it's a very very good
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: tool for improving habitat while also enhancing your hunting. And
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: I mean that by if you fell trees a certain direction,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: we basically call it closed or open edge feathering. If
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: you close edge feathering, you cut more trees per parallel
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: with the field edge, so it creates on most natural
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: barrier and so deer don't travel through it. But it's
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: also during the winter months when season is over, they're
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: going to get in there and eat those tree tops
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: or eat those stumps sprouts, so you're still providing woody brows,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: but it also helps block them to entering a food
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: plot wherever you lay it out, so you can bring
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: deer closer to your tree stand on whatever side of
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: the food plot you have, while also improving your food
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: plot because you don't have those trees competing with the
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: vegetation right up against the drip line from those trees.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: And so overall it's a it's a phenomenal tool, not
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: just for deer, but many many other species. And I'm
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: glad you made that connection mark with the importance of
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: sunlight to where you're cutting to get that that response
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: that we really want um that are going to bring
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: value to white tailed deer. I mean, we've always heard
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: that deer creatures of the edge. Well a lot of
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: that's because where that's where there's sunlight, and that's what
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: grows the species that they want UM to be foraging
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: on or their utilizing for cover. So if they like,
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: and I'm air quoting the edge so much, why don't
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: we create a better edge. Why don't we Why don't
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: we make a larger transitional area UM to to encourage
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: more of that growth. I mean, it just makes more
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: sense to be able to to do that. So there
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: is a strong correlation between sunlight and UM you know,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: getting the benefits out of the plant communities that we
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: can create for for deer and then gosh, the whole
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: host of other species. I mean, we we did a
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: podcast specifically on edge fathering, and we stopped ourselves at
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: the ten different points to be made as to why
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: you should do this practice. We could have gone on
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: for probably ten more, but it's it's not valuable. And
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: you know you mentioned that you know deer edge species,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: but I think, I mean, I'm having tempt thinking of
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: any species that any kind of animal that doesn't prefer
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: or relate to edges like edge edge habitat is a
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: premier habitat zone for almost everything, whether you're talking fish
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: or deer, or birds or rabbits. I mean, just there's
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: so many benefits to these junctures between habitat types. If
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: you're on the edge of something where you can get
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: one thing quickly in this direction, one thing quickly in
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: the other direction, that just it just seems to almost
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: be a universally beneficial thing for all sorts of critters. Um.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, is there an exception to that or do
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: you think that's true? Oh? I totally think it's true.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: It's it's just there's so much more diversity of occurs
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: on those on those edges. Because of the different plant communities,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: and they have the ability to be cover food. I'm
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: in food now, I'm in cover, and they can bounce
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: back and forth, and in other aspects they can have
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: pretty good cover and pretty good food and still use
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: that edge as a as an opportunity to use the
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: diversity and benefit from it. Yeah, so, so best practices
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: when it comes to edge feathering. Is there anything you'd
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: mentioned for people that want to start giving that a try?
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: And and yeah, that's practice, I guess I was leave
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: it there without rambling. Don't where are your chainsaw gear,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: helmet chaps, safety glasses, gloves, And try to identify the
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: trees if you're kind of new to chain sawing, identify
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: the trees that have a good a decent lean on
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: them that aren't huge, so even if you do mess up,
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: it's not going to kill you. And just try to
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: thin the edge and put some canopy on the ground
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: and try to cut the small trees first, um or
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: the trees that are easiest to drop first, and just
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: take it with take it slowly and just see the
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: change happen. And uh, don't get carried away and think
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: that you've got to get a twenty yards stripped from
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: the field. So go from your food plot edge your
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: cockfield and you say I have to go twenty yards
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: in Noah, fans or butts, I'm doing it. Just feather
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: the edge and and over time, okay, once you get
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: more confident with the chainsaw, start cutting more trees. But
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: ultimately the point of it all is just to put
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: structure on the ground and get more sunlight into further
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: into the forest and provide a limited resource of woody
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: brows and structure for cover. And I would say, don't
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: force a tree in direction it does not want to go.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: Safety first. When that tree is down, get a tractor
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: or a skid steer and push it where it needs
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: to go. That's totally fine and and a acceptable And
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: obviously you're creating more light in an area. So always
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: be mindful. Um if the invasive species are of concern
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: in your area. UM birds love to sit along the
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: edge of fields on limbs, so they may deposit seeds there.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: So it's not a one and done practice. You may
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: need to go back and and spot treats something that
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: comes back. That's a that's a invasive species, So be
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: watchful in the next couple of years. Um, but just
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: do it. I'll take a step a step backwards and say,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: if you are cutting into an old field area that
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: has a cool season base below it, try to spray
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: out that cool season first before you drop the trees,
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: and and you'll be much better off than trying to
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: spray that cool season out from treetops lane on top
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: of it. And you know, we say, there's so many
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: of our practices. The worst thing you can do is
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: do nothing. Um. Many places in the country the habitat
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: is very poor, um stagnant. Yeah, it's just just stagnant.
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: It's been preserved to death or been just idle till
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: a point that it's unhealthy. And so the worst thing
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: you could do is let it continue to be that way.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: We're pretty aggressive land managers and aggressive conservationists, and I
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: want result. It's fast, life's short. Let's get some things going.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: And so let's just cut some trees along the edge.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: See what happens. Don't get ourselves hurt. And uh, if
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: you don't do it exactly perfect the first time, we'll
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: go back in a few months and cut some more trees.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: There's no shortage of trees, right, and historically, here's a
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: good thing historically, and in a lot of areas if
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: you had this just junction of timber and fields, naturally
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: that that would have burned. That field would have burned,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: and so it would have probably ran across or screamed
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: across at a fast pace and slammed into that wood lot.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: So we would have had this, if you will, almost
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: messy shrubby um conjunction of some dead trees and and
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: lots of sunlight getting in and grasses and brambles. I'm
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: not gonna say it was the most aesthetically appealing, let's say,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: junction of of field and timber um, but it was
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: useful and wildlife loved it. And there's a lot of
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: food and cover in there. So it may not look
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: the most appealing when it's said and done, but my god,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: you're gonna see some wildlife use it. Yeah. That's a perfect,
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: perfect segue too, because like you mentioned, Adam, you know,
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of land now that is lacking
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: any kind of disturbance, and you know, Mother Nature's disturbance
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: of choice over the eons has historically been fire, like
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: you mentioned, which is you know less. So now we're changing,
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: But for a long time fire was almost eradicated from
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: the landscape by virtue of people trying to stop and
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: you know, end any fire, you know, shut down any fire. Now,
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: of course people are realizing the value of fire and
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: starting to starting to let fires run or manage them
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: a little bit more, or run prescribed fires and whatnot.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: But you know, even today, man made fire, when done appropriately,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: of course, is still an incredible tool, but it is
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: an intimidating one for a lot of people. Um, it's
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: the final tool of the three you mentioned. We got
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: to talk about it. Can you guys run me through
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: a beginner's guide to fire, but again with a unique
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: angle of not just deer, but but all these other things. Um,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: you hear about prescribed fire a lot um but you
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: know it's not mentioned as much, but I know it
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: does a ton for all these other things, turkeys, birds, insects.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, fire might be number one for a lot
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: of that, absolutely, and I think that that's uh, there's
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: a reason for that. I mean you said it best
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: is historically it was one of the biggest disturbances used. Um,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: I mean that and grazing there there. It is that
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: if you want to shape a landscape grazing and fire.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: Let's do it. And uh, with prescribed fire, it is
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: very scary, UM, and we should have massive amounts of
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: respect for it. UM. Smoky scared us to death for it. UM.
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: But our plants are native plants in most of the
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: places in the country. UM, we're shaped by fire. And
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: if we want to create healthy landscapes, we take a
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: landscape and we manage it with native disturbance, and prescribe
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: fire comes in with that. And UH, I think for
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: a beginner, what do we do? First, contact our state
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: agency or government agency wherever we're at and see if
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: there's any prescribed fireworkshops, see what even the regulations are.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of states where you can't even you
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: can't just go and burn when you want to burn.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: There's certain time windows or frankly, there's not even the
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: ability for some of you guys out there that unfortunately
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: your state doesn't allow it to be used regularly. UM.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: So just find out the information about it and then
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: try to find some courses or classes where they have
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: the education in place. Missouri has a great prescribed fire
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: course where landowners can take and get the experience. Go
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: to the field old actually burn some akers. See how
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: it's going, I know, uh, and see how it reacts
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: in grasses or leaf litter if it's a head fire,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: backing fire, how terrain plays in There's so many things
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: about prescribed fire that we need to understand. Now that's
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: not to get that. Hopefully it doesn't overwhelm you, because
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: fire can beat you. Know. If you're doing backing fire
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: down slopes, it's pretty boring and you'll probably think, boy,
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: I was scared of this, But then you go to
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: the bottom and you light it like let's speed things up,
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: and then quickly you're scared and uh, and so are
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: your neighbors. And so that's something where just educating yourself
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: first and foremost on if it's possible for you, and
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: then just trying to get the education with government agencies
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: on on prescribed fire courses. Uh any infield. Of course
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: they take some volunteers. We used to have volunteers when
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: I worked for the Department of Conservation, where people would
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: come to get the experience and uh. And so all
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: that to be said is that's the first and foremost
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: on prescribed fire. And I would say, let's let's compare
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: that just real quickly to the first time you picked
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: up a chainsaw. Most people with a little bit of
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: experience of running a chainsaw, they're comfortable with it, they're
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: comfortable utilizing it. But the first time they used it,
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: they knew that this tool could potentially harm them and
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: they needed experience with it before they were proficient with it.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: And so think of fire and utilizing fire kind of
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: like that. You should have a healthy fear, but you
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: should really have an understanding of how to utilize the tool,
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: how to fill a tree, how to run that chainsaw safely,
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: take the necessary precautions, and then use the tool as designed.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: And really, if you do those you take those measures,
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: it's a wonderful, fantastic tool. I I I can think
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: in the last two days two clients UM that have
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: applied prescribed fire to their properties for the first time ever,
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: one in Virginia and one in Missouri, and they loved it.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: They're fantastic, but it took them education, UM and knowledge
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: to be able to apply it appropriately. And it changes composition,
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: it changes structure, and it manages plant communities on a
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: large scale. Opposed to a chainsaw, you can only go
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: so fast or cover so much ground. And acres when
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: running a chainsaw, but prescribe fire in an afternoon or
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: a matter of a couple of hours. We're talking acres
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: can easily be done. And you have that big of
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: an um ability to manage and steer a plant community
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: in a certain direction based on the timing, fire frequency,
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: fire return intervals, and humidity, all these different factors. But
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: that's a big opportunity to manage and improve habitat for
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: the wide ray of species we we care about or
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: concerned about, or want to just frankly improve. I've got
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: a text here mark that from a client. I haven't
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: even told matth this because he's been traveling. I've been traveling,
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: but I got a text from a guy and he says, Adam,
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: where do we post a testimonial? Laugh out loud. We
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: burned for the first time eleven days ago, and I
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: busted a small covey of quail last night in that area.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: These are the first quail we've ever seen in these parts,
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: and it's just like they're not there. You think they're
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: not there, and then you do this work and all
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: of a sudden it's like, whoa where have you been
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: all my life? And not to say that everyone's gonna
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: experience and that sort of deal. But like it does
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: provide immediate types of attractions and um that that you
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: can't replicate that with a chainsaw. You just can't. And
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: so each one has its place, but we have to
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: first realize it's place. Once we know that there's value
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: there in this tool, don't just leave that knowledge in
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: your head, apply it, put it on the landscape, and
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: do it responsibly. There's there's hours that could be devoted
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: to fire and talking about all the intricacies of doing
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: a prescribed fire properly and all that. So I I
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: part of me wants to try to dive into it.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: Further part of me thinks of the lost cause in
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: this situation. So so instead I gonna stay high level.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: What I guess I want to know if what I'm missing,
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: if I if I'm talking about I want I want
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: more butterflies. I want more grouse or quail or pheasants.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: I want more turkeys. I want the small mammals like
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: rabbits and squirrels and voles and moles and all that stuff.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: I want my water on my property be clean and healthy.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: I want the soil to be vibrant and rich. I
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: want uh diverse plant in life, and I of course
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: want deer happy and healthy on this property too. I'm
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: gonna be thinking about managing timber. I'm gonna be managing
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: old fields. I'm gonna reintroduce fire to the landscape. I'm
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: gonna use that chainsaw appropriately. I'm going to think about
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: herbicide use when and where appropriate. Am I missing out
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: on any major foundation or any major tool in the
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: chest that would be that would be worth getting out
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: there to to to put up physical um, to leave
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: my thumb print on the land in a positive way.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we put enough emphasis on this
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: one word in this podcast. We've mentioned it, but through
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: all of that you could sum it up. I think
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: with one main word is a native and using native
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: plants both forbes, grasses, sedges, rushes, shrubs, trees, native being
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: also fire natural fire. And then if you really want
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: to get into the weeds and say let's just try
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: to replicate nature as best possible, figure out a way
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: to graze it to even add more disturbance, but we might.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know, Mark, I've listened a lot of your
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: podcast US and I don't think grayzing has been touched
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: on much, so we might be the we might uncap
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: in a can that we don't want to go down.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: But um, yeah, native species and and just trying to
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: replicate nature and nature's natural cycles. And if you just
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: focused solely on that and say, okay, let's just add diversity,
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: let's promote natives, let's just do everything we can to
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: to make this a very diverse ecosystem. And so I
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: want diverse forests with young forests and and old growth forest.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: But I want healthy trees. I want to remove h
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: unproductive trees. I want to promote edge feathering. I want
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: to promote native grasslands or old fields. I want to
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: add shrubs. I want to restore my riparian areas. By
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: the way, it might be introduced beavers, not to go
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: down that rabbit hole, but try to replicate beaver activity
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: and riparian areas to try to improve diversity there as well.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden you're like, whoa, where
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: did this deer come from? Look at this guy, And
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you're deer much healthier. And I
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: think that's just one of the big takeaways is the
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: fact that you can completely forget about deer in your management,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden they blow up because you've
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: been focused on landscape health. Yeah, I would certainly say that.
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of people really go they try
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: to dive too far or too deep into land management
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: without first understanding the value or the importance of sunlight
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: in the whole game, as well as water. And we
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: haven't even talked about water and the way water flows
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: and the diversity that it creates, and flooding is a
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: whole another type of disturbance. And when we're really talking
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: about just overall land and health and whole another whole
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: another podcast will tackle another time. But but when we
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: when we look at those two things, that really helps
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: determine what each acre on any given property should be
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: and how it should be managed. Um. And if there's
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: some out there thinking like gosh, where where do I start? Um,
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: certainly consider it's just starting. And I want to say
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: that like, don't don't don't really think it. Yeah, seriously,
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: it's like, just just start, because once you see a
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: disturbance and see and observe what happens afterwards, it's just
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: fuel to the fire of I can do this, I
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: can create more of this, and maybe I'm going to
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: learn something in the process. But but just begin to
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: create these disturbances with fire, with a chainsaw, with herbicide
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: if necessary, and and watch what happens, and then you'll
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: slowly go down this this trail of just land management
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: of man. I care more about the land and the
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: health of this ecosystem and in all the creatures that
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: are utilizing it. Or before I just thought about deer
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: and how I had access a tree stand um. But
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: things just kind of reprioritize themselves when you know that
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: you were the cause, the root cause of of improved habitat,
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: Like you create that disturbance that was you know, in
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: your power, and so you're just gonna get in. And frankly,
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: I'd be shocked if somebody took this and started doing
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: the disturbances and adding the diversity and they didn't see
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: an improvement of deer size and dear health and dear sightings.
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: Just time and time again, our clients come to us saying,
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: you know, I once only cared about deer, and now
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: I can care about everything, but yet I'm still seeing
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: bigger deer than I've ever seen. It's it's amazing how
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: that works. It's uh, it's really interesting. I'm I'm kind
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: of personally going through this journey myself and um and
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: one of the things that I think has inspired me
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: to think a little differently now is is starting to
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: look more long term and big picture and so thinking
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: about you know, originally it was just like me, like,
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: how can I kill a deer this year? And then
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: gradually I started thinking more and more about, well, how
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: can I make sure that, you know, there's somewhere special
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: for my son to experience something down the line. And
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: then even outside of that, you start, you know, you
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: start thinking, you start hearing about some of the things
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: I mentioned at the top. You start hearing about how
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: you know every day six thousand acres are paved over,
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: put houses on or whatever whatever whatever, and you start
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: you go back. I went back this past weekend. I
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: was at my parents and I went back and walked
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: through the woods where I learned to bow hunt, and
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: there's houses back in the spots I used to hunt,
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: and there's you know, a TV trails and roads through
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: the spots that I used to sneak through and look
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: for turkeys. And my old blind is is crushed by um,
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: you know, this this thing and that thing, and all,
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: you know, all of these special places that we each
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: have UM are slowly being eroded by m team different
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: forces out there and pressures out there, as you know,
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: as as just cities grow, people spread out, blah blah
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: blah blah blah. These things are happening. And I start
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: thinking about how do I make my little difference of
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: keeping a few places still healthy and wild, and keeping
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: some critters out here, and and and just thinking about
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: those types of things, you start to realize that if
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: you do have the privilege of having a little bit
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: of land that you can influence, UM, I think you
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: can start to look at it as a privilege, but
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: then also as almost an obligation, like if if there's
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: some way we can keep a little bit of this
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: stuff from going down the you know, down the road
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: of becoming a parking lot someday, Like, man, I kind
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: of feel like I have to try to think about
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: ways to do that, because I know how special these
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: things and places are and I was lucky enough to
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: get to enjoy them, and I don't know, I mean,
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: obviously I don't want to put than anybody else, but
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: that's the kind of stuff that I'm thinking about these days,
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: and it's making me want to think about water quality
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: and songbirds and and all that, and long behold, it
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: also leads to better deer hunting too, And it's it's
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: a really nice cycle that points to the obvious but
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: sometimes overlooked fact that all of these things are connected,
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: like you guys mentioned and um, and that's that's what's
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: got me excited about trying to trying to think in
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: this kind of way more often. And and I don't know,
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: I'm glad there's people like you guys that are helping
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: people do that. Yeah, we appreciate that. Now, that's we're
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: right there with you where you think about the future
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: and you think about these game animals and non game animals.
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like every time you turn around,
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: you're hearing the story of some some species is in
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: decline and now we have to do this or that
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: to try to help that species along. And it's just
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: I'm sick of bad news, and I'm sick and tired
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: hearing these bad stories. And it's like, let's just try
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: to get more productive and and get more initiative, and
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: instead of talking about coail declining, Let's go do something
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: and help the quail. And it may only be that
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: one covey on your own place, but maybe knock on
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: your neighbor's door and say, hey, this is what I'm doing.
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: I know you think I'm a dear guy, but I'm
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: really focused on rough grouse and I'm really focused on quail,
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: and I'm really trying to ensure the future of that species.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: And you might find the key that unlocks the conversation
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: with the neighbor that says, you know what, sure, I'd
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: love to work with you, or you can do all
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: that stuff over here, I'd love to hear more. And
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: and before you know it, you can hopefully build off
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: of that get more neighbors involved. Um, and then of
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: course you'll get a lot more neighbors involved when all
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, nurse, bigger deer happening. That's funny. Help, Yeah, exactly.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: And Mark, you're really hitting on, um the second aspect
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: of our company, which obviously are titles Land and Legacy.
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: We're trying to do this from from a legacy standpoint.
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: It's it's not just the here and now. You know,
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: from a season to a season, you know, deer hunting wise,
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: But we're trying to make impacts and educate people to
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: the degree that when you pass on that property or
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: it sells and goes to you know, the next person
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: we're staying in the family, they've seen the work that
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: you've done and how you've changed that landscape for the better.
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: And and it's apparent because of of the diversity that's there,
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: not only in plant communities, but in all the wildlife
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: and the abundance that's that's obvious to people, um when
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: they're walking the proper they see it. And and just
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: the educational opportunities that for children, for family to be
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: able to enjoy throughout this entire process. I mean, it
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: really is a transformative um process that that a land
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: can go through if the right techniques are done. Um
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: and and I I guess this is a good thing
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: but bad thing at the same time. But relatively property
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: and habitats pretty poor around the whole country. So you
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: do something positive and in the right way, you're going
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: to see those benefits that we're talking about. And again
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: use that as fuel to the fire too to create
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: this legacy effect of man I own this property for
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: five or ten years, when I held it, I decided
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: to change things and and make it improved. Um, that
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: was my responsibility when I lived there, when I owned it,
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: and I'm gonna continue that with the next property I own,
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: or whatever the case may be. Yeah. So for people
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: that that want to explore some of these things further,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: I will go ahead and just recommend they check out
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: your podcast and your videos and everything you guys have
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: got going on with landing legacy. But for other folks
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: for for for next steps after that, um, whether it
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: be for some inspiration or actual tactical advice, do you
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: have anything you can recommend to folks for additional resources
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: to look at habitat improvement and land stewardship beyond just deer.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of the nonprofits set up for
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: certain species are are just phenomenal. Coil Forever, Pheasants Forever,
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: National Wild Turkey Federation, uh in d A fel Grouse
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: Rough Grouse Society. Uh Yeah, I was gonna sell Eastern
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: Grasslands initiatives. Southeastern Grasslands is great for historical information as
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: well as the you know, just the overall decline and
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: education there. Um. The Audibon Society does a lot of
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: great stuff with the birds. And then there's even state
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: agencies that we love to follow that have are putting
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: out a lot of great research and studies. So you've
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: got Mississippi State Deer Lab which is doing great stuff,
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: even uh Florida Deer Lab now with Mark's lashly down there. UM.
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: And then State of Tennessee does a lot. Dr Craig
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: Harper does really well, does amazing stuff. Penn State oklahom
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: Am the state does really good stuff for UM incorporating
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: native type grazing systems on native grasslands UM No Research,
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: Noble Research Institute, Yeah, you know, and and and those
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: all those people are are are really doing research to
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: understand certain native ecosystems or native uh species and that
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: just packed with great information. Perfect all right, Well, uh,
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it, guys. For people that do want to
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: see what you've got going on, where can they find
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: all your content online? We are at Landing Legacy and
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: sign at Facebook and Instagram as well as YouTube. Perfect
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: nice and simple. Well, I appreciate the time. This has
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: been fun. I'm I'm always learning something new from you guys,
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: and uh coming away inspired to get out there and
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: and do some more work. So so thank you for
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: that and keep on keeping on. I appreciate it. Mark,
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: thanks for having a song. Yeah, thanks for covering this topic.
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: Really appreciate it. Hey, let's let's jump down one of
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: those other rabbit holes someday down the road and talk
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: about grazing or water or whatever other crazy cans of
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: worms you want to open up. Can do? All right, friends,
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: That is it for today and for this week. Thanks
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: for being here. I appreciate you tuning in. Hopefully you've
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: got a few new ideas you can put on the
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: ground in your neck of the woods, and stay tuned.
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: Next week we're continuing with the series. Gonna be speaking
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: and exploring with someone new, chatting about other issues and
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: ideas related to these wild places we care about, the
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: wild animals we care about, and uh, interesting stuff on
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: those lines. So appreciate your time and until next time,
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: stay wired to hunt.