Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1010: The Power of Prairie for Whitetails and Beyond with Kent Boucher and Nicolas Lirio

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Ep. 1010: The Power of Prairie for Whitetails and Beyond with Kent Boucher and Nicolas Lirio · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the whitetail woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, I'm
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: joined by Kent Boucher and Nicholas Lerio of Hoxy Native
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Seeds and the Prairie Farm Podcast to discuss exactly why
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: native prairie grasses and forbes and wildflowers are so beneficial
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: to whitetail deer and wildlife of all types, and exactly
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: how we can get more of that kind of habitat
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: on the ground. Really, all right, welcome back to the
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Today in the show, we are talking prairie.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: We are discussing why native prairie ecosystems are so power
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: or wildlife of all types, how they can specifically help
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: you as a white tailed deer hunter, and a whole
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: lot more. My guests today, as I mentioned at the top,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: are the driving forces behind Hoxeyed Native Seeds, and they're
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: the co hosts of the Prairie Farm Podcast, Kent Boucher
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: and Nicholas Lerio, these guys are hands on experts when
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: it comes to native prairie habitat, and given their experience
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: running Hoxy Native Seeds it's a company that develops and
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: sells native seed blends. They have this very you know,
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: personal experience with prairie habitat, with you know, putting.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: This stuff on the ground.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: But then they also have this very interesting kind of
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: zoomed out perspective as hosts of the Prairie Farm Podcast,
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: because what they do on that show is they speak
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: to all sorts of experts around the country and the
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: world about, you know, prairie ecosystems, about how all this
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: impacts wildlife of all types, sometimes upland birds, sometimes it's turkeys,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: sometimes it's deer. They're speaking to people about broader farm
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: related issues, conservation related issues, and so by way of
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: all of these interviews and then also that hands on
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: experience working with native seas and native prairie ecosystems, they
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: have this kind of like down in the dirt experience,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: but then up in the clouds understanding of how it
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: all applies to things that are relevant to us. So
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: for that reason I'm thrilled to have these guys in
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: the show. They're also just very likable, so they're fun
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: to chat with, the fun to listen to. We explore
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: these two simple topics when you drill it right down.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Number one, why should deer hunters care about prairie habitat?
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: And number two, if we believe that prairie habitat is important,
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: then how do we get about getting some of this
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: on the ground in our neck of the woods.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: That's it.
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  Speaker 2: To sum it all up as simply as I possibly can,
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: that is the conversation today. And so with that, let's
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: just kick it to my conversation with Kent and Nick.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: Enjoy all right with me?
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Now on the line is Nicholas Lerio and Kent Boucher.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Thank you guys for being here today. Yeah, I'm glad
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: this is happening. You guys had me on the show
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: on your show about a year ago, and I.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: Really enjoyed that conversation that we had.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: Your podcast and the stuff you guys have been doing
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: has been recommended to me by a number of people
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: over the years. And so once I kind of connected
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: the dots between Kent, who you know, I had chatted.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: With you years before that.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: I guess on you know about first gen hunter kind
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: of things, I think, right, And it's all kind of
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: circle back to where we are now. You both have
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: been doing really really cool work, and I've just been
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: slow to recognize the relevance and the overlap with what
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: so many of us deer hunters are thinking about, especially
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: these days.
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: So that is my typical.
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  Speaker 2: Long winded Mark Kenyan way of saying, I'm very interested
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: in what you have to say to this first question,
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: which is kind of getting right to the heart of
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: this whole conversation. What I want to know is why
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: in the world should a deer hunter care about prairie?
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: Why is that something?
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: Why would wildflowers and native grasses and forbes in any
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: way whatsoever be of interest or relevance to someone like
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: me or our listeners who likes to get out there
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: and shoot deer. Kent, you're a deer hunter yourself. Do
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: you want to tackle that one first?
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'd love to, and just really appreciate you having
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: us on the show. And I got to say, one
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: of the people that I know recommended our show to
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  Speaker 4: you because he told me so just sent me this
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: jealousy inducing picture of a giant shed he picked up
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: this morning with his son, said, I hope you're.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: Not working today that same picture. Yeah, that was a dandy.
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  Speaker 3: But man, one day I was talking to Ken and
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: he was he was he was a little grumpy. He
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: was in the field. He was in he was planting
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: someone else's field is very bumpy. And then I'm not kidding,
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  Speaker 3: I mean he was kind of having a rough day.
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: An hour later, he calls it, I just bound my
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: first shed of the season. His day made just one
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: little shed he bound to the field. Yeah, it will
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: make it. That really helps.
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: But yeah, ironically, you know this, this story can kind
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: of answer your question mark. I was, I was planting
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: a prairie, as Nick tells that story. And actually I
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: didn't call him an hour later. He was still on
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: the phone with me during my grumpy rant, and I
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: had to stop the tractor to scoop that shut up.
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  Speaker 3: But when you think of Iowa, where where we have.
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: Cornfields and bean fields, which is roughly thirty million acres
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  Speaker 4: of our thirty six and some change million acres of
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: surface area in our state, that would have largely been prairie,
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: not all of it, of course, there would have been
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: some wetlands in there that we've drained, there'd be forests
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: in different spots that we have, and even some of
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: the areas that we would classify as prairie would have
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: been more of an oak savannah area. But I mean,
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: for simple displacement, it's largely just been that we got
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: rid of prairie and we put in corn and beans.
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: And to be honest with the story, and I probably
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: actually learned this little fact off your podcast years ago, Mark,
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: but we know that today we have more deer in
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: North America than when Chris Columbus made his way over here,
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: and so deer have benefited from just a population standpoint.
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: They have benefited from land development, for sure. However, they
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: existed here long before we developed that land, and they
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: were thriving in our vast prairie ecosystems that we had
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: here in Iowa, and not just in Iowa, all throughout
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  Speaker 4: the Midwest and and and in different regions of what
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: we normally consider to be prairie areas. I know you've
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: done some white tail hunting man all over this country,
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: and I've had the privilege to do a little bit
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: in places like Nebraska where western Nebraska where it's you know,
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: short maybe some mixed grass prairie, but places that you
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: just do not think when you're there, you kind of
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: get that feeling like man of mine, like is this
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: like some kind of a snipe hunt here?
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: You know, like there's deer in here, you know, And
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: sure enough.
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  Speaker 4: They're thriving on on, you know, even a much more
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: arid and much shorter grass and even competing with you know,
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: huge cattle herds that are out there too. They're still
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: able to to to make a go of it. And
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: so prairie and deer we don't really think of it
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: this way, but but historic it's hand in glove. They're
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: they're an animal of the prairie. Now certainly they they're
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: a creature of the edge. So those those wetlands that
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: I talked about, those oak savannahs, the forest and actually, ironically,
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: I think it historically I was believed to have been
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: about five percent forested, and that we're still around that today.
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  Speaker 4: And so I wonder, Okay, where do we have forest
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  Speaker 4: today that we didn't back then? And I think probably
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  Speaker 4: a lot of the places where we do still have
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: forest there, they're still forest there today.
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  Speaker 3: But but.
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  Speaker 4: You do need that edge for you know, deer to
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: really thrive. But prairies were definitely a part of how
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: they they survived. And then taking it back to shed hunting.
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  Speaker 4: Whenever I'm shed hunting, I get real excited when I
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: see a little bit of timber with a big, old,
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  Speaker 4: south facing sloped prairie and that's where I'm going to be.
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  Speaker 3: That's where I'm going to be heading first.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, Nick, what do you you know? I know, you
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: guys have a lot of different customers. You guys, you know,
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  Speaker 2: market to a why swath of different types of buyers.
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  Speaker 2: But when somebody comes to you who has this wildlife
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: perspective and they they you know, care about deer and
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: critters like that, how do you explain to them why this,
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: you know, why native grasses and forbes and flowers, why
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: that might be something they should incorporate into their management.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: Well, I want to be really clear, as you know,
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  Speaker 3: a non deer hunter I will never change their mind,
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  Speaker 3: But I sometimes I use two little words that help
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: change their mind. I say the words uh skips law
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: I said uh and uh you know a ritual red
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: skip slide. Usually if he says something, you know it
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: turns out to be pretty good for the white tail.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: But in all seriousness, if they already understand, they get it,
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: and I just guide them through different forbes that white
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  Speaker 3: tail are known to uh kind of concentrate select on,
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: but uh if not. I use the metaphor that a
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: Jenga tower pretty often, and I just tell them, you know, us,
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: white tail deer, bison used to be there. We're kind
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: of all at the top of this Janngu tower and
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  Speaker 3: you can pull out just when you're playing Jenga. You
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: can pull out a piece or two at a time.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: It's okay, that's fine, But you pull out enough pieces,
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  Speaker 3: you get rid of enough diversity, the whole thing comes
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: tumbling down. Maybe there's a few bricks at the bottom
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: that lasts, but those aren't white tail deer, and it's
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: not us. It's like it's like crab grass, cockroaches and
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: cottontail bunnies. You know, those are the only things that
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: are going to be around. And so when you start
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: walking through there, and I say, hey, by the way,
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: if you have, if you're doing forty acres of this
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: prairie for your white tail, I hope you enjoy bird
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: hunting as well. Because you're gonna get a lot of
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: those out there, or we actually there's a gentleman that
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: put and now he put hundreds of acres in and
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: he was able to do that in Iowa saw an
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: elk and so you know there and just more than
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: one more than want occurrence of this. So to speak
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: their language, I can't do it all the way and
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: to be able to connect with them on the things
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: that they're able to talk about. But I do know
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: that you know, our ecosystem is a Jenga tower, and
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: white teled deer are in that just as much as
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: any others. And you know, habitat those are kind of
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: the big words, right habitat. So is habitat made out
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: of miscanthus? Is it made out of just straight switch grass?
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: I would argue not, there's some utility when you're hunting there.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: I know they make screens and things like that. Not
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: totally against those making a screen with switch grass. But
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: if you're wanting habitat, if you wanting to find places
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: that people are betting or white tail are betting, then
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: you're gonna want that diversity. And if you want them
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: traveling through all year round. Now we're talking about having
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: their diversity of different forbes that bloom different during different
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: periods and different height grass coming up at different times.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: And now we've got a whole conversation where it's very
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: livable for most of the year for the tail. Yeah,
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: I love that Jenga analogy. That's a great one.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Can you speak to a little bit, can you paint
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: that picture a little bit more about how all the
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: other Jenga pieces benefit from the from these types of ecosystems,
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: because you guys just point out like there's a lot
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: of ways this directly helps deer. But of course, then
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: you know, if you start to understand that the entire
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Jenga tower matters, then that also means that the upland
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: birds matter, and that means the turkey's matter, and that
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: means that the butterflies and the songbirds and the ants
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: and the cottontails and all that probably matters too. And
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: from everything I've learned over the years, it seems like
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: all of those species and many many others benefit from
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: this habitat. But can you can you help us understand
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: that in more detail, because you guys, you guys are
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: masters of this world.
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: In a way that I'm just not oh thanks. Well, uh,
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: I would first start by even taking a step back
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: and saying, uh, diversity is just what it takes to
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: be healthy. For instance, at our office, Ken and I
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: are not organized at all, but we desperately need someone
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: in the office that's organized. We've got to have people
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: thinking different things. And Ken and I are arguing about
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: stuff all the time about how we want to do
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: business or what new species wi we want to grow
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: and that, and that creates a much stronger work ecosystem.
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: It's just a principle of life. So now let's take
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: that and put it in with prairie. There are species,
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: they're called hem and parasites that literally can only grow
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: on other species, and they zap these other species of
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: their nutrients. And that's the only way bastard towflax, a
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: real a real name of a plant can only grow Yeah, yeah, sorry, sorry,
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: but it likes to grow on sedges and there's a
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: few other things it needs that that ecosystem, that diversity
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: in there. And if you don't have diversity of let's
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: say your forbes, especially your lagoon forbes, well, big blue
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: stem will get in there, it'll totally dominate, and then
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: it'll zap itself dry and dead, and it will actually
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: allow other woody encroachment, invasive wood encroachment, more than it
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: would have otherwise because it doesn't have the nitrogen and
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: from the lagoons to be able to boost the grass
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: right there, So there are I would dare say thousands
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: or millions of relationships of plants to plants that are
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: required for the ecosystem. That's just at the flora base.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: Now let's move to the fauna. I mean, big bluestem
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: was carried here a little bit by wind, but they
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: think probably mostly by hide. It came from the east
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: coast all the way to the Midwest. It was carried
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: by hide. There are some species that won't, that really
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: struggle to break dormancy if they're not eaten by birds. Right,
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: And so you start adding all of these things together again,
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: thousands or millions of relationships between flora and fauna. And
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: now you start taking away enough of those Jenga pieces
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: and the other Jenga pieces can't exist. And you know,
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: in the Midwest we're privileges some of the greatest soil
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: in the world. There's only two other places on Earth
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: that compare ones in Ukraine you know, coincidentally enough, and
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: one is in South America where they're also growing a
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: lot of corn, and that was because of two major components.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: It was the glaciers and the prairie and the diversity
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: that came with the prairie and the worms that came
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: because of the diversity of the prairie. And you dug
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: up this really rich black soil that we as a
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: Midwest have sustenance off of, not I mean just food,
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: even economically, and so there's all these things that go together,
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: and if you take away too many of them, you
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: start losing all of them. Would you add anything to that, Kemp?
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: I think Nick did did a really nice job. They're
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: summing it up.
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: But yeah, diversity, you know, you think of whether you're
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: talking about the Djenga Tower model or even just what
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: we know about all ecosystems there or even I think
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: probably the best. So I used to be a biology teacher,
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: and I'd like it where you could take different sections
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: of biology and use a you know, use a term
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: or an illustration that transfers across to other, you know,
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: studies within life sciences. So to me, it's I like
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: to compare an ecosystem with like genetics. Right, when you
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: look at the science of genetics, you want the most
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: individuals in a population that have a different set of
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: genetic traits, because then you have what we call a
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: deeper gene pool, right, you have you have more traits
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: available among those individuals, so that if there's some kind
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: of disturbance to the environment that these organisms are living in,
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: they can absorb that disturbance and roll with the punches
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: through time. They can they can stick around. And it's
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: really a similar illustration with an ecology. The more components
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: you have, the more you.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: Can absorb those blows.
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: And to continue with Nick's Jenga model, which he is
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: just he's playing it down right now.
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: He is just doing victory laps in his brain.
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: He's been talking to me about this, this Jenga tower
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: metaphor for years.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: Time I get us to speak in place, it's like
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: the easiest way to communicate you. That's what his name
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: will be on Suday.
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, since you're so much since you're aging
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: so much faster than me, Nicholas, I will actually your headstone.
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: I'll make it look like a Jenga tower. But the
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: point is though that some of those Jenga pieces are
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: gone and we can't get them back. And from a
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: prairie reconstruction standpoint, we see that just in putting together
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: a mix now something I'll give Nicholas a lot of
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: credit for. He designs our mixes, our seed mixes. He
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: works his tail off to find as many species as
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: he can put into a mix without the mix becoming
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: unaffordable to your average consumer.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: And some people they come to you and say, no
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: matter the cost, give me the best you got. But
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: a lot of the prairie acres we see going back
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: onto the map. Let's be honest, it's a it's an
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: old farmer who decided he was going to enroll some
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: acres into CRP, and he, you know, he's got some
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: level of care in it turning out to be a
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: good finished prairie. But a lot of times money is
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: the biggest factor, right, And so Nick tries to create
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: value not just for the people who are are willing
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: to show up with you know, a fat wallet, but
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: for people who want to just do the bare minimum.
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: Because he's trying to get as many of those Jenga
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: pieces back into the into the tower as possible, but
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: even still compared to what these uh, you know, these
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: prairies were in their original state. A lot of times
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: it pales in comparison to to what all was there.
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: So it is important to recognize what can be there,
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: what was there, and what we we can't replace. But
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: we need to try and compensate in other ways because
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: of all those different benefits that Nicholas talked about.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: You know, I heard you say Nicholas wants that you
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: almost get more excited when you hear about like a
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: small landowner planting your guys seed because they can focus
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: on like nurturing it and actually identifying like, oh, yeah,
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: this speci is doing well and making sure that this
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: speci is there. While you know, someone who's planted hundreds
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: of acres, you know, could never really keep tabs on
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: all these different you know, such and such hogwarts or whatever.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: There's probably not a hogwarts should there should be.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: But uh but but but I think you know what
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: came what came out of that when I was listening
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: to you, is this, like how much you actually cared
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: about getting this prairie like back on the landscape, getting
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: these native species back out there, you know, above and
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: beyond just the business for you, it was more like
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: like a calling, like you want to see these species
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: flourishing out there above and beyond just the practical side
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: of it. Why do you care so much about that.
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: About diversity or about people caring about their uh CRP
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: or their their their finished career.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, about seeing that's come to life on the landscape.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: Why why are you actually genuinely personally excited when you
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: see like, oh, this person is nurturing this species and
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: it's actually working, and this prairie is actually out there.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: It just seems like it's more than just oh, yeah,
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: I want to see my customer succeeds they buy more
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: from me.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well that that is a good question, And I'd
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: say there's probably three major parts to it that kind
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: of have compounded and sit in my have been sitting
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: in my brain for the past several years. But I
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: went to Bible school, studied Bible and counseling, went to
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: Bethel School in Reading California. Reading California. Man, that's the
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: place to be that the mountains that surround it on
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: three sides. Man, I was very different. So I'm moved
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: back to Iowa. But what they taught us at that
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: school was contentment. That was a big deal. They had
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: a lot of slogans around contentment and being thankful for
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: what you have. And and when when you see prairie
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: not a lot of money, there's not a lot of
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: gain to be had out of prairie other than beauty
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: that comes out of deep satisfaction in your soul. And
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: I really care about humans in the state of human souls,
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: and and and are they at peace? Are they not
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: at peace? That matters to me a lot, me and
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: my friends, and and so that would be peace number one.
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: Peace number two is that it is a tragedy to
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: me how much we consider ourselves the lords of the
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: land and not serving the land. Our mutual friend, Doug Duran,
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: he says this, I know what the hunter gets, I
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: know what the the landowner, I know what the white
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: tail get, But what does the land get? You know,
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: who's who's actually helping the land. And that really struck me.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: And just like, can I care about something that could
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: never give me anything material gain back? Can I do that?
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: And then the third piece is just like our longevity
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: here in the Midwest, there's you know, political forces at
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: play and all these things. But but can we set
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: aside some akers to allow wildlife to live so our
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: own health and the land's health can be uh can flourish.
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: And I understand that that's a very complicated, difficult question
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: that deals with a lot of different people, a lot
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: of different interest groups. But just on a macro level,
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: I would love to see us be able to be
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: able to decide as a society we care about this
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: and and what our futures. And I mean, in Iowa specifically,
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: our kids are leaving. I mean they're going to Michigan,
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: they're going to Colorado, they're going maybe going to Kansas City,
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: but that they're usually going further than that. And I
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: don't want to see Iowa die away just because we decided,
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: you know, it wasn't worth having any any acres around.
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: We ripped it all up. I'd love to see some
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: of it put back down. So you put those three
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: things together, and when I see someone excited about it, Prairie,
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: I just like they just feel like a whole person,
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: you know, they just seem real, They're they're able to
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: connect with things more than their phone. And I really
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: really appreciate that. And my wife and I we have
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: these phoneless walks right, we'll go out. We got a
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: big lake near us, and we'll just go walk around.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: Just make sure you don't have your phone. And a
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: lot of times I really wrestle on my inside, like, oh,
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: I want to listen to something, I need to check
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: my email. I'm worried to you know. And then about
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: thirty forty five minutes in, you're like you start to
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: feel this this piece come over you. And I think
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: we don't have that as much as I would like
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: us to, including myself. And so when it comes to prairie,
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: Prarie represents a lot more than just the ecology to me,
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: and I'm things, I'm willing to fight for fills, I'm
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: willing to die on.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot there and I can. I obviously
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: don't have as deep of a connection as you guys
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: have to it, but certainly in my more fleeting experiences
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: in grind grass lands, on the Great Plains, in prairie ecosystems,
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: it's undeniable the abundance of life there, the tranquility available there,
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: the restorative properties.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: Of those landscapes. You know.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people, you know, recognize the
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: ocean maybe as being one of those kinds of landscapes
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: that can restore you. But I think grasslands in many cases,
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: like they're a sea of grass. I think they can
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: almost have the same kind of effect when you stand
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: out there and it's you know, the waves of wind
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: rippling a grassland or a prairie patch. And in many cases,
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: you know, in some of these bigger landscapes where you
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: can really see that's a pretty special place. And one
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: of the things that I've noticed when I've been on
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: you know, truly flourishing native prairie ecosystems, is that you
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: can it's undeniable that there's something else going on. There's
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: something different. Like when you're in a cool season grass field,
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: which is a lot of what I have around where
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: I live, it's just kind of like a dank, low jungle.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: And then when you're in an area where there's native
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: species and diversity, it's it's it literally sounds different, it
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: literally smells different, and obviously looks different. You can feel
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: it all around you. And a big part of that
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: is all of these things flittering and fluttering around you
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: and buzzing and nipping and biting and crawling and creeping.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of bugs. There's a lot of birds
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: flying all around.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: Uh, there's a lot of pollination happening in my my.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: My good friend and co host Tony Peterson, God bless him,
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: is always giving me a hard time talking about pollinators.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: He thinks I'm a big nerd for pollinators. And I'm
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: hoping one of you would be willing to volunteer to
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: help make the case to Tony the pollinators that that
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: benefit so much from native grasslands and wildflower patches and
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: the prairie eco system. Can you tell Tony why it's
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: okay to be a fan of pollinators and why they're
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: pretty good for deer hunters and deer hunting in the
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: wider world, and somebody please make that case for me.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: I'll let you guys fight amongst your sites.
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: I gotta say, Mark, I have an answer for you
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: on this one because I loved one of your comebacks.
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: This was a couple of years ago when I still
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: can't believe you had the courage to do this, but
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: you had Dan Johnson and Tony on there at the
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: same time. You've done it since, but it was super
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: entertaining episode. But I remember one of Tony's questions was
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: he was making fun of like your love for reading
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: versus your love for pollinators, I think, And he said,
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: all right, Mark, you have to choose. Are we going
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: to burn down all the all the prairies?
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: Are we going to burn down all your favorite bookstores
• 26:48
  Speaker 5: and and the If Tony knew anything, if you knew
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: a dang thing about Perry, wouldn't ask you that question
• 26:57
  Speaker 5: because I'm so obvious.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: Right, burn the prairies because they need it. Burn the prairies,
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: go ahead.
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: I actually got to uh uh, you know, like a
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: Thanksgiving ending type of argument with the relative ones, and
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: they started screaming for him, it keeps things interesting, right,
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: and they started they started screaming at me and and yelled,
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: what do you think, Well, how would you feel if
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: they burned all the prairies down?
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: And I just kind of got that that that irritating
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: smile on my face.
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: Go ahead, baby, but anyways, make my day, That's right,
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: Go ahead, make my day. Uh So, the reason anyone
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: should care about pollinators is, I mean, why should you
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: care about, you know, feel mice, Why should you care about,
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: you know, the orangutans in the part of the world
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: I don't even know where I think they're they're South
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: American in the apart there, No, yeah, yeah, are the
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: Southeast Asia? Southeast Asia? Okay, I don't know. I'm not
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: up on my uh my prime scary as monkeys?
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know, why should we care about any
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: of those things?
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: And and there's something about life that's just different than
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: not life?
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: An ecosystem is made up of biotic and abiotic factors
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: and how they exchange matter and energy between them, right,
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: But there's something about life that that is just different,
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: you know. And so you have that level right there.
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: But that's not going to convince a guy like Tony.
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: A guy like Tony is going to be more pragmatic
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: I would.
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: I would assume.
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: I've never met Tony, but I've heard him a few
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: times on on on his different shows. From a human standpoint, someoney,
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: don't know who it was, that maybe is like the
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: Center for a Livable Future or something like that. Somebody
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: calculated that one in three bytes of food depend on
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: pollination on a on a on a in a human diet,
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: one in three bytes of food, So that would be
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: a pretty pragmatic standpoint. From a hunting standpoint, a lot
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: of the different species of plants that white tails need.
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: They in order to produce seed, they need pollination to
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: take place in between the different the different plants, and
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: and there are a lot of plants that will self pollinate.
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: But the problem with that, going back to what we
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: were talking about genetics earlier, is and then you're just
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: having clones over and over again, and you're you're allowing
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: more fragility to enter into that ecosystem so that when
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: that disturbance comes, which it always does, right sometimes it's
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: a you know, a big flooding season, or sometimes it's
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: a freaking meteorite that hits the planet and wipes out,
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: you know, half the life. But whatever that disturbance is
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: going to be, we we survive it by having more
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: genetic diversity. And so when you think of then to
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: extrapolate that to a super endangered ecosystem, which would be
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: the tall grass prairie, the tall grass prairie is just
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: as endangered as any other ecosystem on the planet, I believe,
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: or at least is endangered as the rainfor the tropical rainforest.
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: And and as we talked about the beginning of this conversation,
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: white tails and prairie, they they go together and now
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: they are surviving on on, you know, increasingly smaller amounts
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: of that prairie, and they have so far been able
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: to roll with the punches.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: But things have changed they Iowa.
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: You know, EHD is such a buzzword, and I'm gonna
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: get I'm gonna get you some nasty comments here. Someone's
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: gonna call me a crack. I've ever been called that
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: once today, so I'm used to it. But uh, the
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: what we've been seeing with eh this is just me
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: hypothesizing here. I'm just spitballing. But what we've been seeing
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: is just a i don't know, an increasing prevalence maybe,
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: And uh, there's not really a reason for me to
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: hope that it's gonna, like ever get much better here
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: in Iowa. I know it hasn't from what I've heard,
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: It wasn't always here in Iowa. It's something within the
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: last fifty to one hundred years. I believe that that's
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: really started to show up here. But we have been
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: having years and years of drought. Now this last year, thankfully,
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: we got a break from that, but before that was
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: four straight years of drought and what do you know,
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: two terrible years of EHD in the middle of that,
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: we've seen our growing zones shift north. You know, there's
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: there's less rain, more dry days, and and you know,
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: just these greater impacts that I really think are starting
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: to impact deer hunting.
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: And now I'm hopeful.
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: You know, there was a terrible year of VHD in
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: twenty twelve in southwest Iowa, and the deer bounced back
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: for a while, but now here again. You know, it
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: was basically eleven years later, twenty twenty three we had
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: a terrible year of VHD again, and then twenty twenty
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: four another bad year of VHD. And and if we're
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: getting that every ten years, I mean, and we figure
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: that a trophy white tail is a deer that is
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: five and a half years or older, you're only getting
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: two cycles of deer before the population is totally slammed
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: again by EHD.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: And that's if that's.
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: What the new normal is going to be. I don't
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: I don't think that our best days of deer hunting
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: are ahead of us. And something that what that I
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: would be interested in is something that's going to be
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: make the landscape more how would you say it more
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: useful for holding water? Right, something that's going to make
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: better use of the water that's here. Well, we know
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: field tile isn't yeah, right, we know field tile doesn't
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: help with that that you know, we're we're losing a
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: lot of our ground water as fast as it can
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: collect below the surface. And something that does, though is
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: living tissue, living plant tissue, and and not just above ground,
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: because we do get that with corn. Corn is a grass.
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: It's an annual grass, and it holds moisture you know,
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: above ground until it sinesses and then and then you know,
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: dyes and crisps up and loses its water. But living
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: roots are going to store a lot of that water
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: below below the surface, you know, year round. And and
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: so you know, just from a standpoint of how do
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: we make deer hunting better, I think that you know,
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: again I'm hypothesizing on some of that, but a lot
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: of that is well known truth that prairies hold more water,
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: and pollinating species make prairies function and make them last.
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: And then you know, you have the whole nutrition side
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: of it, whether that be for humans or for wildlife,
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: including the animals that we love to chase deer, turkeys, pheasants,
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: whatever else.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you make a really good point, which is that
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: this isn't something that I had thought ahead of this,
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: but it's it's it's actually one of the strongest cases
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: I think for deer hunters to think about adding more
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: of this kind of grassland prairie habitat. It's the fact
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: that you know, for so many folks, traditional deer land
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: management has meant food plots, food plots, food plots, food plots,
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: a lot of annual food plots, yeah, a lot of monoculture,
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: single species food plots, right, a lot of you know,
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: big buck on a bag kind of stuff. And in
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: a new normal in which extreme drought, frequent drought is
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: just kind of becoming what we have now, it seems
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: like every year or very frequently those kinds of management practices,
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: annual food plots, monoculture food plots, those become really risky
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: if your whole deer.
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: Hunting plan depends on that.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people last year saw that
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: a lot of folks thought they were going to put
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: in a late season food plot, They're going to plant
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: something in August early September, and there was no rain none.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: I've never had a worst food plot year in twenty
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: years than last year, and the year before that I
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: thought was the worst in the year or two or
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: before that, you know, I thought that was the worst.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: And so becoming more and more and more, you're hearing
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: stories like this where unless you're incredibly rich and you
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: can go out there and irrigate your food plots, somehow,
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: it's it's not something you can depend on as much
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: as you used to a perennial grassland ecosystem. Though to
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: your point, that's something you can hang your head on
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: and that's more resilient, maybe more I mean it sounds
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: obviously more drought resistant, tolerant.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: It's the kind of thing that.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Can provide wildlife habitat that does not require you going
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: in there and replanting every year and you know, possibly
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: sucking up more of the moisture with traditional tillage or
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: things like that. So, yeah, that's a really interesting point
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: that makes a lot of sense. Nicholas, Is there anything
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: you would add on the pollinator things specifically before I
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: kind of take a pivot.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: Just two fragile arguments that Judd McCollum. If you know
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: that that guy's awesome and lives out in Illinois, and
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: he said that he was reading a paper like an
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: officially posted paper that argued that it was like sixty
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: percent of the water intake of deer in the dead
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: of summer if they have the choice is from forbes,
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: from native forbes. Now you know Native forbes are thriving
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: in June, July into August, you know, and they're not
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: most of them aren't drying out yet. They're they're really
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: they're they are holding a lot of moisture. And so
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: I could see that argument being true. I've never read
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: the paper myself. Is true.
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: It is true that it's known that deer get the
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: majority of their moisture from from their diet, and not
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: not just from I mean they do go and drink
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: from a creek or drink from a pond or whatever,
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: but but they do get during the growing season for plants, well,
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: then get the majority of their water that way.
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: And the argument jud was making to me was that
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: if that is what they are choosing, that probably is
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: their instinct realizing what has more nutrition in it. So
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: if you're a trophy hunter, then more nutrition means bigger bucks,
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: healthier herd. And so I would add that in there,
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: that the nutritional value adds in the middle that you
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: just can't get without you don't have them without pollinators specifically, actually,
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: like Ohio spider war and some of the ones that
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: hold a lot more water these are or fox club
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: pen smont these are actually ones that only get pollinated
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: by native pollinators. So yeah, interesting. So one last kind of.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know, it's not necessarily philosophical, but another one
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: of these, I guess, just like why questions Within the
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: habitat world, there are some folks who are they might
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: call them pragmatists, and they'll say, well, if a plant
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: does a job, I'm okay with it, whether it's native
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: or non native. And there's other folks we might call
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: them purists, who would say, well, known natives because natives
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: are supposed to be here. Non natives aren't supposed to
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: be here. And then they have their reasons. Could one
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: of you give me a take on why you guys
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: believe that natives are more beneficial to having the landscape
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: worth managing for, worth planting, worth you know, trying to
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: get rid of those invasives and promote the growth of natives.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: There's some folks that this is, yeah, just something they're
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: not willing to dive into. So I'm curious if one
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: of you guys would be willing to give me a
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: perspective on that before we kind of get into the
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: how to.
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, Kent will have more after this, but I
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: two things that I tend to share with people is
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: that we were We've been promised about twenty times over
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: the past eight decades that this brought in ornamental species
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: will not be invasive, and we were wrong every single
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: one of those, even when like no, don't worry the
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: seed's sterile or there's no seed on this one. You
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: do not have to worry about this. And so I
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: would love to say, like, you know, mis kitt is
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: really popular, and I would love to say that they're right,
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: because I see how much of it goes in. I
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: would love to think, well, that's never going anywhere. But
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: the same thing was said about the pompous grass, and
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: you don't you know, when I'm in the back, would
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: somewhere plant for someone crp field. You have no idea
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: how many times that just lines the ditches all the
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: way for like miles. So I'd love to I'd love
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: to say that's true. It just hasn't been the case yet,
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: and it is not something I'm willing to put my
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: faith in Up to this point, plants are unbelievably resilient.
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: They have lasted this long through evolution because they are
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: so resilient, they're gonna figure it out. They figure it out.
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: And then the other argument I would add is the
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: the Djenga tower sometimes and this is actually why a
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: pheasant is the hawks and native seeds logo. Pheasants are
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: not native, but they reprien. We've changed the landscape. We've
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: brought in something that's not native and it made a
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: good home. So it kind of recognizes for us we're
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: never going back one hundred percent to what was, but
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: it needs to make sense, and it needs to be balanced,
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: and it needs to be a healthy ecosystem, and pheasants.
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: When we have healthy ecosystems that could like support bison
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: which used to be here. Turns out that's actually pretty
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: good for pheasants as well. So that's why we use
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: pheasants at one of the two major reasons we use
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: pheasants for our logo. But when going back to this
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: Jenga tower, sometimes bringing in something like an invasive version
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: of Reed's canary or brome, it's like putting a big
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: weight on the top of that Jenga tower. And what
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: I mean by that is the tower can't support it
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: and has no checks and balances for this species. So
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: this species, it starts as a little block, and then
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: it gets heavier and heavier and heavier, and all of
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: a sudden, it's a forty five pound dumbbell sitting on
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: the Jenga tower. Jenga tower is hardly holding it together.
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: And in a lot of places for acres and acres
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: and acres and acres, it is. It doesn't It doesn't
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: fit at all. And now I mean I would challenge
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: anybody to go to a brome field versus a native
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: a native prairie planting, even a bad native praier planting,
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: and tell me the difference and diversity of flora and
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: fauna and to be astounding.
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: So those are my first two. But I know Kent's
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: got stronger, strong field. Just play yeah, just playing off
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: what Nicholas said there. I can't imagine there being a
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: single listener right now who if you said, you can
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: snap your fingers and all of that reed canary monoculture,
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: all of that smooth brome monoculture, all of the you know,
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: bush honeysuckle autumn, all of buckthorn monoculture that we have
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: in Whitetail, USA. If you could snap your fingers and
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: restore it to it's its native diverse status. Who would
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: say no? You know, we would? I mean, just imagine
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: the difference what that would mean for for how many
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: deer could be. The caring capacity for deer in Whitetail
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: USA would would jump, you know, significantly. And and so
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: I think right there illustrates, you know, a good answer
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: to to or a good example to play out what
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: Nicholas is talking about there and and you know the
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: actually heard you ask Kyle Lei Barker, another mutual friend
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: of ours about this.
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: Oh, must have been two or.
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: Three years ago, and he had he had a really
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: good answer because some of those things they really don't
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: spread too bad, you know, Misscanthus, you know it as
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: long as you are willing to be actively managing it.
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: I don't think you do have to fear a ton
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: of it, you know, escaping very far right. It's it
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: spreads right on a rhizome. But if you're you know,
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: if you're cutting it back or you know, maybe going
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: in there with an excavator. Every now and then and
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: ripping it up a little bit. You might you can
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: keep it at bay, but the second you're out of
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: the picture and someone who cares about it less than
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: you and is less attentive to to the chores that
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: keep aware you wanted it as you're screen to your
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: stand or whatever, it's going to stay on the land.
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: And Kyle made the point of, you know, if fifty
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: years from now we see all these these properties that
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: used to be owned by avid deer hunters and they're
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: all loaded with giant muscanthos or Egyptian wheat or whatever
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: else frag mighties. And somebody goes, Grandpa, what what's with
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: all the giant muscanthos over there? And he says, oh,
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: deer hunters used to be really into that. Man, what
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: a you know, what a bad mark on our resume
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: as people who claim to care about the land to
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: you know, be strapping a future generation with with another
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: ecological problem.
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean so much.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: It comes down to, you know, so much that it
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: comes down to the work that goes into managing it. Right,
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: Like you mentioned earlier, how if you could snap your
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: fingers and all the invasive non native automotive and honeysuckle
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: and cedar trees or whatever might be. If we'd snap
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: our fingers and all that was gone, who wouldn't take that? Yeah, everywhere?
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: Take it.
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: The problem is to actually do the work to get
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: rid of that stuff. It's a lot of work, it's
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: a lot of time, it's a lot of energy. And
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: some people are like the cost benefit analysis for them,
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: they're not seeing it. Yeah, but to your point, I
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: would say that the cost or the benefits far outway
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: the costs. But there's people who are constantly saying, well
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: is it worth it? Is it not worth it?
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: And I can't remember where I where I picked this up.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: But one of the things that also drove this home
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: for me, you know, you know, the jeng analogy again
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: works really really well.
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: But then there's also this, there's.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: There's all these different specialist connections, like an ecosystem is
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: like all of these different threads, all interwoven and all
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: connected from this piece to that piece and all the other.
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: And when species co.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: Evolve, they very often develop unique relationships from plant to
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: bug or bug to bird, or bird to plant, and
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: very oftentimes those are unique, special important connections that you know,
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: like puzzle pieces fit perfectly together. Now, if you bring
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: it in a non native species, maybe it fills the
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: blank spot in the dirt and it can grow.
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: They're just fine. But this puzzle piece now does not
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: match up with that.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: Native bird that lived there, or that native bug that
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: lived there, it's not going to that connection won't work anymore.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: And so if you disconnect all the threads of this tapestry,
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: you know, again kind of like pulling out pieces of
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: the Jenga. If you were to snip all these different
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: threads across the tapestry, which are these specialized connections between
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: native of co evolving species, all of a sudden that
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: tapestry falls apart, and you have relationships that aren't working anymore.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: You have processes that aren't working anymore. And so again
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: it's you know, all these things are connected, All these
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: things do matter, but it does take time, it does
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: take energy, it does take work.
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: And that's what I want to talk about next, is
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: the work.
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: If people want to put some of this on the ground,
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: if people want to have some native prairie strips, or
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: if people want to take what was an old field
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: and convert it to a native grassland, or if somebody
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: was planting some annual food plots, and they've gotten sick
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: of the fact that drought makes it a waste of
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: time every other year every three years, and instead they
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: want to put in a perennial kind of cover slash
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: food mix or something like that. They've gotten to the
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: point where they want to try something different, or they
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: at least want to add some diversity to their other
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: food plot stuff. If that's the bolt they're in here today.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: What I would love for you guys to do is
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: walk me through the process of how to do that
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: for a small landowner, but not the actual process of
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: like do this, do this, do this, because anyone can
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: go online and get the base of constructions for how
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: to plant a native prairie strip or something like that.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: What I would like you to do is is walk
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: through the common mistakes or what people miss with the
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: conventional wisdom. Typically for someone who's trying to plan an
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: acre prairie, trying to put in two acre strips or
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: something like that for the first time, what does the
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: conventional wisdom or the typical one two three steps, what
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: are they missing that? Where do most people make a
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: mistake or hit a rodblock or bump their head up
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: against the wall and fail, or think they've failed and
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: don't want to do this anymore, or say this prairie sucks.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: I'm never gonna I'm never gonna try this again. I'm
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: converting it back to Brassica's or whatever it is. Could
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: could you know, Kent, Maybe I'll let you start here
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: if you want, with a few of the things that
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: you you know, have have heard about over the years
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: or have seen yourself, that are a few of those
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: common stumbling blocks. So maybe you can briefly kind of
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: address with some of those steps that somebody has to take.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: But I'm most interested in, you know what most people
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: don't think about.
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: What is What is that?
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a really important question. You could basically break
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: it up into this prep plant, maintain all those all
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: those that have to go into it, right, But the
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: prep part is just so important. The other the other two,
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: of course, they have their own little nuances which we'll
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: talk about, but but the the prep phase is one
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: that and honestly, our founder, Carrol, who's been growing prairie
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: for forty years before he passed away this last July,
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: he he would talk about this all the time. You
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: need to get a double kill before you uh plant,
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: and a lot of you know, historically people thought, oh,
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: I got this spot in my yard, I'll just spray
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: it down and then I'll plant, and then they'd have
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: all this you know, non native seed bank come roaring
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: back now that the Kentucky bluegrass is out of the
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: way and isn't shading the ground and using the resources
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: and so getting getting a proper kill in uh double
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: kill is the easy way to say that. But I'd
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: also encourage people to think of it from a standpoint
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: of cool season versus warm season kills. And so this
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: is where guys who love food plotting are going to
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: like me. Uh it's it's the best case scenario in
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: my opinion, for planting a prairie. Planting a reconstructed prairie,
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: it's different if you're maintaining a you know, ground that
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: might have a remnant seed bank. And I'll just say
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: this right away. If you have a farm that's mostly
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: old pasture, it's very hilly, you know, almost impossible to
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: have been farmed. There's a chance that it never was
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: was significantly tilled. You know, most most ground, most prairies
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: could handle one you know, maybe one hard plow up
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: that that may have happened in their history. But usually
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: what would have happened on that on those kinds of acres,
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: somebody tried farming it and now, oh, good grief, you know,
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: the the erosion, the you know, the horse could about
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: killed the horse trying to drag a plow up that
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: hill or trying to harvest it was a nightmare or whatever.
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: It flooded.
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: If it's if it's had a history of being old pasture,
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: there's probably a lot of remnant prairie plants already there
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: that you aren't seeing there getting you know, shaded out,
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: or just a seed bank that's still there. And so
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: that's a little bit different situation. But if you're in
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: a place like Iowa, or southern Michigan, or southern Wisconsin,
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: southern Minnesota, you know, Illinois, much of the much of
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: the heart of whitetail country, right if you're in one
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: of those areas, then it probably has been cropped for
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: years and that and those areas they're the easiest to
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: do a prairie into because they've been planted with round
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: up ready corn and soybeans for years and they've been
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: the you know the weeds.
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: Have been taken care of.
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: So if you can plant into soybean ground, that's your
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: usually your best right nice smooth soil, and you've had
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: both those cool season and warm season sprayings that have
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: been taking place. Well, if you don't have that and
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: you you need to simulate it, then it might not
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: be a bad idea to grow some round up ready
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: corn and soybeans on the area that you're envisioning being
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: your prairie a few years later, because then you're going
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: to still get something out of those out of those
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: acres that's going to be useful to you as a hunter,
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: and you're also going to be setting back the all
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: the non native weeds and other pressures that you need
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: to be out of the way for you to plant.
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: And so that's what I would recommend from a hunting standpoint,
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: just for the prep side of it. Then from a
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: planting standpoint, the other main problem that a lot of
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: people had historically, and thankfully the NRCS has come in
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: and they've you know, they give their planting recommendations to people,
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: and they they uh give a planting seed depth recommendation
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: I believe on the NRCS website it says a quarter
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: of an inch or or more shallow than that. So
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: a maximum depth of a quarter of an inch. The
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: vast majority of prairie species they certainly cannot handle more
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: than that. They won't. They just simply won't. Germany, they'll
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: stay dormant in the soil column. And so you need
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: to you need to have a seeding method that seeds
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: right at the surface or just scratches the surface and
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: just gets more so incorporated with the surface. And so,
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: you know, a lot of people, you know, they get
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: the cart before the horse, right, and they get excited.
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: They don't they don't know about the prairie stuff yet.
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: But man, they saw a drill on a good deal
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: at a trade show, and and they uh want that drill.
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: And they know how to spend money.
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: They don't know how to plan a prairie yet, and
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: they go and they buy the drill and then let it,
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: you know, resolve itself later, and then they start planning
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: too deep and then their prairie just never comes up.
• 54:19
  Speaker 6: Well.
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: So start by getting the you know, start by getting
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: your knowledge on what you're going to be planting.
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: It's going to be prairie. It's got to be really
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: we use.
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: The rule of an eighth of an inch or at
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: max depth and and so plant real shallow like that.
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: And you know there's a seating rate if you're if
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: you're buying from a reputable seed dealer, they're gonna give
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: you seed tags that provide a an appropriate seating rate.
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: In Iowa, the Sea Peace standard is forty seeds per
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: square foot. Illinois is twenty seeds per square foot. So general,
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: the general rule is, I mean, there there is a maximum,
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: but you don't want to go too heavy. But you know,
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: if you can be you know, forty to what did
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: justin Myizin say, Nicholas, did he give you a number
• 55:19
  Speaker 4: like if he had his perfect world? This guy's like,
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: like the prairie you.
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: Know, researcher, he's the covercy of Northern Iowa Tallgrass Prarie Center.
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: But he said, was it eighty? If you could get eighty?
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: He gave the classic scientific answer. He's like, well, it depends, yeah,
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: but you know it depends on the species. But if
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: if I'm recommending something for someone's yard, a big field
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: is different because you've got it's just easier, but it's
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: someone's yard, we do sixty. Yeah, I mean an acre
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: or less. Yeah, right, Yeah, there's.
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: A lot of things those seeds have to survive to
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: make it to germination. And then I would add on
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: to that with planting. If you can do a dormant
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: season planting a lot of the flowers, a lot of
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: the forbes. The things that we're most excited to see,
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: whether we're a deer hunter or a little old lady
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: birdwatcher are the flowers. And a lot of those flowers
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: they need a period of cold stratification so to break
• 56:18
  Speaker 4: their dormancy in the next or in some cases next
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: to growing seasons. But most flowers need at least ten
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: days of cold stratification, many of which need thirty or
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: even sixty days of cold stratification. So if you can
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: plant at our latitude here in south central Iowa, you
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: know that November timeframe is about perfect. That's when justin Maizen,
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: the guy we were just talking about, that's his ideal month.
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: Get it on the ground then and let it over
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: winter and then comes. Of course, the maintenance and maintenance
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: is largely done through mowing. But you can't you know,
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: if this goes for people who just apply chemicals to
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: do all their maintenance, right, whether they're their spot spraying
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: or they're you know, doing a big broadcast you know
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: with a you know, giant spray or something. A big
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: part of of herbicide usage is scouting beforehand, right, you
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: need to go out there and see what weed problems
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: do I have? And and I think when people do that,
• 57:28
  Speaker 4: then then comes the real hard part. You might have
• 57:31
  Speaker 4: to get out of shovel, You might have to get
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: out of garden hoe. You might have to get out
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: a rake. You might have to get out a little
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: pump jug of of round up or something and go
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: and hit hit that targeted problem. You know, the classic
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: is UH Canada thistle right, and you know you might
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: have to get a little pump jug of some dric
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: ore and go out there and or some milestone or
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: something and and and hammer that. But you got to
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: stay on top of it with the maintenance. Otherwise, you know,
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: some of those other problems that choke out a prayer
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: or you can can begin to U invade. Wow.
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: Would you add anything to that, Nicholas, I would just
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: add that we should habituate our minds to burning prairies.
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: And you know there's also I forget you know, there's
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: the twenty acre like or people have twenty acres of
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: timber right next to it. It doesn't mean your prairie
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: doesn't need to be burned. And there used to be
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: a recommendation of disking, like do like a four or
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: five year diit. Do not do that. It is not
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: good for your prairie. I don't know who. Every time
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: I ask at the state level, they're like, yeah, we
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: don't really know who recommend I think someone knows, they're
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: just not willing to out everyone.
• 58:45
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: But and then the other thing I would say is
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: if you're doing a yard specifically and you've got turf grass,
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: turn that two springs into three springs. You really need
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: three springs. And the reason is you need two cool
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: season springs and you need a warm season spring because
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: all this crab grass and other stuff that's being choked
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: out by your Kentucky bluegrass, it will come in. And
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: that stuff is particularly harmful for prairie or pollinator patches
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: and stuff like that, because it it thatches and it
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: grows out and it does a really good job shading
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: and choking. Right, if you have a little bit of
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: foxtail or some that's whatever that's not going to outlast
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: the prairie with good maintenance. But that crab grass or
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: the other things that crawl along the ground that create
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: that cover, that will cause an issue. And there are
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: some non chemical ways too to prep the ground. You know,
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: you can.
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: I have a nice prairie in my yard. I mean,
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: it still needs some maintenance. But I cleared about a
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: five thousand square foot area with just giant silage tarps.
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: I just you know, staked them down through a bunch
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: of palettes on them and t posts and things like
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: that to weigh them down through the you know, winds
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: of Europe whipping across Iowa. And after enough weeks of that,
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: you know, it turned it into dirt and I got
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: you know, of course, multiple killings like Nick.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: Was talked about.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: But but I know a lot of people are sensitive
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 4: to they don't want to use pesticides. I don't blame them.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: I hate that's that's that is the one part of
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: my job I like the least is when I have
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: to get out the pesticides. But it's you know, there
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: are other options out there.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: Were you going to add anything else, Nicholas, I feel
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: like you were. You were kind of on another thing there, No.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: No, those those were the two was was mentally prepare
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: yourself for fire and then uh, the three sprands on
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: the yard. Yeah, those those are ones that cause headaches
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: for people that I get a lot of phone calls about.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: Okay, So one thing that deer hunters do know and
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: are excited about talking about, uh, that will be relevant
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: to this conversation is actually picking seeds. That's one thing
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: I always love to talk about. It is like, give
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: me the right food plot seed, what bag should I buy?
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: What mixed should I buy? Et cetera. And you guys
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: have this very interesting set of products that you guys sell.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: You have a white tail mix habitat mix, and then
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: you have a perennial food plot mix.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: But it's using like native.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: Forb species, flower species, some grass species, and some of those.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: It's a very interesting alternative to planting traditional food plots
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: like we would usually think about. And I would love
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: to understand, Nicholas, how you guys go about picking out
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: what the right mix is for something like that, Like
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: what does your u you know, what does your white
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: tail habitat mix achieve? What's what's the goal you're trying
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: to achieve there. How do you do that in this
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: kind of unique way? And I'd love to know about
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: you know, as much as you're willing to talk about
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: your specific product, because I think that's great. But I
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: do know that it's only you know, native and appropriate
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: for certain states, right Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: South Dakota.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: I think right, But I want to make sure that
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: we can.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: I want to make sure that for people that live
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: somewhere else, how do they go about using a similar
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: framework to create the right for themselves. So I'm curious
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: about the answers to those questions for the white tail
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: habitat mix, but then also the perennial food plot mix.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: So kind of a two part question.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: There, I fix getting all excited right now, he is, man,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: I'm yeah, Man.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: You don't know how many hundreds or thousands of hours
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: I spend on the phone on these kinds of conversations.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: But so I came up with the idea of the
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: perennial food plot because I believe it was a gentleman
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: named Steve I was talking to was basically talking about
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: how much like the deer seemed to just come in
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: and nibble all these different species and his pollinator mix.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: And I was like, you know what, I bet I
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: didn't know anything about deer. Didn't know. I just know
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: that sometimes they hate your car. And that's what I
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: knew about deer. I knew that Iowa was a good
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: place to hunt, you know, I didn't know anything. I
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: was like twenty two years old, and I was like, well,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: you know, I bet if we threw I threw a
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: mix in together like this and and so that's why
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: I originally posted a mix for the Premia food plot
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: on the website. And then honestly through the podcast have
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: learned and I just selfishly ask people. You know, I've
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: talked to skips Li about it. Hey, what do you
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: see browsing? Jud McCollum, who I mentioned earlier, he's got
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: large acres of prarier? Hey, what do you see them
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: the great or browsing on? What are they? What are
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: they picking out there? Doctor Mark Turner? Uh, you know,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: people that just know what they're talking about and have
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: spent a lot of time on the landscape. And then
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: there's just general biology and speculation of you know, I
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: know that this plant the seeds are very large. Uh,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: in general, you can kind of break forbes into two
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: groups of quality versus quantity. Usually the things later in
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: the in the fall when they bloom, those are quantity species.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: And the reason you can tell is because they have
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: millions of seeds and a pound, but they're a lot smaller,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: and their success rate, even if their germination tests high,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: their success rate is lower. Versus legomes are almost always
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: a much higher quality. But what does that mean. That
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: means there's fewer seeds in there. That means the seeds
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: have to be higher quality. That means they probably have
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: more protein, They've got more nutrients in there, and so
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: you start breaking that down. And then plus what other
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: people are saying, they're seeing the deer Grayson and that
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: was kind of my original. And then just I've probably
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: asked a hundred times, what do you see your deer
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: bed in? You know? And then that's what I did
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: for the habitat. I just threw those species in there,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: and then I added some other species that I know
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: intermingle with those specific flora, and I put those out
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: and we've seen great success. And the truth is marked,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: like our mixes have like eighty or ninety percent overlap,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: like most of the species, I would saying it's just
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: general prairie, and then there are some more expensive things
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: that deer like round headed bush clover. It's a little expensive,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: but deer like it, so we'll throw it in there.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: It's another one of those legomes. But there's a lot
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: of there's a lot of overlap on a lot of
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: our mixes. So we have a friend named Caleb Key
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: plants in town. He planted a little a faker prairie
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: and two years in a row he saw a buck
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: out there.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: Ye urban prairie mark he's had uh uh, you know,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 4: at least a three and a half year old buck
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 4: tending a dough in his his little thousand square foot
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: prairie in his yard.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: And that was just like a show we mix. That
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: was one that was supposed to have really pretty flowers,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: you know. But it's like there's so much overlap that
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: in general, if you plant what is native and you
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: get a lot of diversity, the white tail will show up. Now,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: you're right. The mixes we have on our website are
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: basically Iowa and states touching Iowa. Uh, But we get
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: a lot of calls from elsewhere. I was just chatting
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: with the guy from Georgia here a couple of weeks ago,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: and usually I have a general feel for what species
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: are good out there, and I will take your call
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: and I will handle all of it. But I'm gonna
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: tell everyone listening right now, I'm going to call a
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: seed provider in your area, and I'm gonna middle man
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: it through them. So well, if you've got a really
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: strong regional seed provider, call them and just ask for
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: a pollinator mix, or ask for a tall grass mix.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: If you're in that area and you have the privilege
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: of having tall grass prairie to be habitat. Now, I
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: know you get further west, the tall grass isn't really
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: a thing as much out there, and so you're looking
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: for different habitat right, But if you are eastern Nebraska,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: South Dakota, or further east, you're looking at being able
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: to have a mix to tall grass prairie. And the
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: more forbes you have out there, they're more there is
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: for them to eat. Now, keep this in mind. You
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: put a bunch of big blue and switch grass and
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: Indian grass in there, which people do for the habitat side.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: There are forbes that can handle that competition. But it's
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: not the majority of them, right. Some of those include
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: the prairie clovers, wild Bergamont, black eyed Susan could grow
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: out of a rock. Several of the asters can handle
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: that kind of competition. But if someone says, hey, it's
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: mostly big blue stem indian and switchgrass, and then I've
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: got a list of these sixty other Forbes, save your money.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: You know what you want to do is if you
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: want a lot of those Forbes have a little bit
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: of Indian grass, big blue stem switch grass, and then
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: mostly little blue stem blue grama, depending where you're at,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: prairie drop seed, rough drop seed, some of these shorter
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: grass that allow the Forbes to come in and flourish
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: and compete, and then you'll have your white tail out
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: there what jud calls a full plate. He says, they've
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: got something almost all year round that they can go
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: and you're basically habitually training them to be in that
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: field or to travel there and browse through there every
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: single day. So those are what is going through in mind.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: But I want to be clear, there's no there's not
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: a lot of papers of like these are the exact
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: Forbes that you know whitetail eat during this time, there's
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: a little bit of literature, and then it's mostly just
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: who's been on the ground for years and years and
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: who's been watching the deer.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: So am I right that the white tail habitat mix
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: that you guys have is heavy on the tall grass,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: the big blue stem what you mentioned there, lower zac orbs,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: and then your food plot mix still has you know,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: it's the alternative, which is the heavier four because we're
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: really trying to king on the food there, but then
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: also still some of the prairie, some of the grass,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: some of the flowers as well.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: Correct, Yes, that is exactly right. And one more thing
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: I would add. If you put big blue stem in
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: a mix and you're not willing to do random burns
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: or have something grays on it, and if you have
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: enough of it in eight years, it'll all be big
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: blue stem. But even if you only have a little
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: bit in thirty years, it'll all be big blue stem.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: Big blue stem had one competitor, well maybe two if
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: you count elk, but really one competitor throughout the evolution
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 3: of the Midwest, and that was bison. It doesn't exist anymore.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: Cows love it, But do you really want your cows
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: crazing in that area, you know, And so that's why
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: in our perennial foodbot there's just no big blue stem.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: There's I think there's no big blue stem or switch grass.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: Indian grass is okay some of that, but yeah, that's
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: heard to stay first, should no longer exist? Nick Is said,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: they're all well? Are they like? They're all right?
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 4: Is there a group of people that say Canada doesn't
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 4: exist too or something?
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: I don't know. There's people who say the earth is flat, brother,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: I know that you've been going to those meetings.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: People will say just about anything these days, gentlemen. I
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: love this idea though. I love the idea of this,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: uh And it's a growing thing like this, this messy
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: field approach to wildlife habitat where we used to love
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: our And this is not just for wildlife. This is
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: farming right, like used to be clean field farming right.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: And now I think people are getting certain groups are
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: getting okay with a messy field. And I think the
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: same thing's happening within the hunting management side of things.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: And there's definitely been more and more interest in diverse blends,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: more and more folks talking about managing their soil carefully,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: no till, et cetera, et cetera. But now I love
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: this idea of now taking the next big step, which
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: is like let's add in a little bit of grass,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: let's add in some flours, some native forms, let's get
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: really let's get really crunchy with it, and and be
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: like supernatural. It doesn't have to be everywhere like this.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: You'll have to replace all of your traditional food plots
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: with something like this. But I love the idea of
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: this supplementing, this adding diversity because you could still really
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: benefit your white tails in this way while also helping
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: so many other things.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: And then it's you know, in the.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: End, probably lower maintenance than constantly going in there every
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: spring and summer and redoing your food blots over and
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: over and over again. With all these inputs and all
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: this chemical makes a lot of sense. So I love,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: I love that approach. It's very heard, it's very intriguing
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: to me.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: Well managed prairies, you know, an afternoon or two per
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: year lasting well over thirty years. So in terms of
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: like ROI on your your food plot, that that is
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: definitely a possibility. That's incredible.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: You Nicholas particularly have mentioned this a couple different times
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: you've mentioned like backyard stuff that's becoming more and more
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: of a thing myself. You're a family, We've tried to
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: add a couple of different little pollinator patches in our yard.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: We've we've tried to lose.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: A lit little bit of our regular lawn every year.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: We kind of give back a little bit more every
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: single year, slowly adding to the native stuff and trying
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: to manage that and improve that.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: You guys have some mixes for this.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: You've probably talked to a lot of people trying to
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: do something like this. Can you address some of the
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: common either little tricks that really help with that or
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: mistakes that folks often run up against when it comes
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: to trying to establish a little bit of a backyard prairie,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: a native prairie little patch in their garden, or they're
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: converting their backyard or whatever. You mentioned a few things, alrighty,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: but I'd love to kind of look at this a
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: little bit more focused and see if.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: There's anything that you want to touch on. Yeah. Yeah, Well,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: we get a lot of questions. So we sell down
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: to five hundred square feet worth, you know, in like
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: little packets, and people ask for smaller. The problem with
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: smaller is it gets tough to make sure all the
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: different species you have in the mix actually get into
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: that tiny bag of one hundred square feet, and so
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: we are we kind of bottom out of that. It's
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: like forty dollars or something for a fifty something different
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: species to put in there. But there's a couple of things. One,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: if you have a really small area ten you know,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: maybe ten feet by ten feet, plugs is not a
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: bad option. It's more expensive, but you know, it kind
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: of balances between having a yard your hoa won't complain
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: about and and having that prairie those those natives on there.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: But if you're wanting to spread seed, make sure and
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: just like if you need to wait an extra year,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: it's okay, make sure you eliminate the vegetation that's there.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 3: You know. I had a guy tell me he did
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: five springs on it, and I was like, great, you
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: know you're not gonna find you crab grass in there.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: And then the other thing is we don't We'll sell
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 3: mixes like this, but it's not as common planting your
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: forbes one year and then coming back and planting your
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 3: grasses the next year. The reason is your grasses just
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: are more aggressive. They get a better head start. Even
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: if you take out big blue steminion and switch grass,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: the tall grasses, even if you take those out, even
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: the little blue stem the rough drops, you can kind
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: of come up a little bit faster than your forbes.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: And so giving your forbes an extra year head start.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: Some of those forbes need two years of dormancy to
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: even get through. It gives a little bit of an advantage.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: Or even starting your forbes in the fall and then
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: planting your grasses the next spring, that's a pretty good strategy.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: But I would say I'm adding a lot of details.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: For the most part, as long as you eliminate your vegetation,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: it's not that hard to get something to show up
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: and look pretty. The big thing that one year I
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: kept track of it was one hundred and twenty two
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: phone calls of just hey, nothing showed up yet, right
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: the patient's piece to it. So they say, year one
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: it sleaps, year two it creeps, and year three leaps.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: But I would even argue that I tell people year one,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: you're gonna think I sold you sand. Year two, I think, wait,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: I paid for that, all right. The year three it's
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: gonna look great. But there are species in there, some
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 3: blazing stars, the cardinal flowers. Some of these they don't
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: like showing up first, two, three, four years. Some of
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: them will show up year six, seven. A gentein things
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: like this that have a high number of coefficients, and
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 3: so they come later. So patience is a really strong game.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: But it also brings a lot of delight when on
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: year six you see something in a two hundred square
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 3: foot plot that you'd never seen before. It's a really
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: cool feeling.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: Well, they say, what with trees, Like, the best time
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: of playing a tree was yesterday?
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but the next best times today.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: Well I think it's probably the same with a prairie, right,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, oh yeah, I appreciate some patience, but every
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: day you wait as a day wasted.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, man, Kent, would you add anything on the
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: on the backyard front.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 4: No, just the importance of that maintenance, and maybe also
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 4: a little bit on planning. You know, I'm mumble, I'm
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 4: from Iowa, but planning with meeting without the tea in it.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 4: So if you're going to be able to burn this thing,
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 4: you need to make sure that it's not too close
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 4: to the house. Not you know, preferably not right under
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 4: the power lines or or whatever. You know, make sure
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 4: it's a because otherwise what will happen is you just
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 4: won't manage it how it needs to be managed. And
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 4: and you'll tell yourself when you're planting it, now, I'll
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 4: figure it out, I'll get it, you know, I'll get
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 4: it burned. And then that you're standing there with the
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 4: box matches in your hands, you like, there ain't no
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 4: way I'm lighting the stame on fire, you know, And
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 4: so may you know a little bit of a little
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 4: bit of good planning on what's going to be realistically
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 4: manageable to you is critically important. Otherwise what ends up
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 4: happening to those prairies is eventually they go without the
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: proper maintenance and they just get mowed and then seeded
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 4: back down into some kind of turf grass. So you
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 4: want it, you want it to be something that's going
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 4: to stick around for the long haul. So a little
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 4: bit of a little bit of planning goes a long way.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: Measure twice that once that's right, well, we've only just
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: barely scratched the surface of a lot of these topics.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is this is really some very basic
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: introductory into a lot of this. But you guys, I
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: have to commend you. You guys have put together a
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: really great resource with your podcast. You do a great
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: job with your social clips getting those out there. I
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: think that's that's really well done. I've learned really interesting
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: little nuggets over the last handful of years following that,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: and then in the podcast, just a tremendous marketing mechanism
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: for your business, I'll say, and then also great resource
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: for anybody who wants to learn more. And it's not
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: just about, uh, you know, the specifics of planting a
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: prairie or planting native grasses or anything like that. You
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: guys are not telling you guys anything new, but to
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: the folks listening, I've really appreciated you know, you guys
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: explore a lot of conservation related issues, a lot of
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: things related to the farming account of me and small
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: business owners, and and just lots of really fascinating stuff.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: I'm glad that my buddy recommended checking you guys out,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: because every time I drop in and listen to something,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: I find myself thinking, like, these guys.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 3: Are doing this well.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of podcasts out there and I don't
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: say that about a lot of them.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: You guys really.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: Well, you're welcome, and I want to give you guys
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: an opportunity here real quick before we wrap it up,
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: to just let folks know where can they find your
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: guys's work, both the content and then also how can
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: they connect with with Hoxy and the seeds and maybe
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: get some of your products in their hands. Will either
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: one of you guys like to share that?
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, uh, well, we have two different social media
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: so we have Hoxy, h ok s e Y, Hoxy
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: Native Seeds. I think it's on basically everything, and what
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: we do there is we talk about what we have
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: going on the farm and we uh have little clips
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: about that. Usually it's ken to face, although Mark you
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 3: want to hear something kind of sad. We had two
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: guest videos from two different people. They are two of
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: by far, the most watched videos we've ever had on
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: the social account. That Maks Yeah that that art me
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 3: ken or Riley is just like somebuddy. And then the
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: other one is the Prairie Farm podcast. That one's also
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: ever I think you can watch the most. A few
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: months ago we started posting them on YouTube as well,
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: but otherwise the major platforms, the Prairie Farm podcast, and
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: I want to give one more shout out. And my
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: dad in the eighties one against farming and was made
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 3: fun of by his neighbors to start a prairie farm.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 3: And he passed away this past summer from cancer cancer
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: that is not proven because but highly correlated with water
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: quality issues, the exact thing he was fighting against. And
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: I'm very grateful for him, and so every time I
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: show my face publicly, I just want to commend him
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: as and I'm grateful to say he was a good
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 3: dad and a good person behind the scenes as well,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: and so yeah, I really want to commend him. And
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 3: this is all everything we're doing is possible because of this.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: And before anybody ever listened to our podcast, he I
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 3: bet he spent fifty thousand dollars on the podcast, believing
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: in Kent and I just going around interviewing these people
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: for you know, a year and a half before probably
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 3: a single listener came on. So we're very grateful to him.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: That's that's incredible, and of course very sorry for the loss,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: but also so so impressed with with your dad's story
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: and what you guys have built and what he built
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: and the mission that you guys seen beyond it. It's inspiring,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: it's encouraging in a world where if you care about
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: the natural world, if you care about native wildlife, habitat,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: clean air, clean water, if you pay attention to it,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: you can recognize the fact there's a lot of wounds
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: out there. You know, Leopold said, we live in a
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: world of wounds once you kind of have eyes to
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: see it.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: But work like the.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: Kind that you guys are doing gives me hope that
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: we can we can address those wounds and we can
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: make things better. So keep up the good work. I
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: appreciate you guys, and thanks for being here on the podcast.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: Absolutely thanks for having us.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: All right, and that's going to do it for us today.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: Thank you for joining me here on the podcast. I
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: hope you learned a few things about native prairie habitat
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: and ecosystems, native grasses, flowers, forbes. Now, all of that
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: can help you as a deer hunter. It can help
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: your white tail deer. It can help your turkeys, your pheasants,
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: your grouse, your quail, your butterflies, your birds, your bunnies,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: all across the board.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: This is a good thing. I hope in.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: Your neck of the woods you can help put a
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: little more of it on the ground. I certainly will
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: be trying to do the same. So until next time,
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: thank you for being here, and stay wired to hugg