Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Wired To Hunt Podcast #219: Steve Bartylla’s Habitat Management Philosophies

Transcript

Wired To Hunt Podcast #219: Steve Bartylla’s Habitat Management Philosophies · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyon. This is episode number two hundred
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: and nineteen, and today on the show, I'm joined by
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: outdoor writer and whitetail habitat consultant Steve Bartilla. He's a
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: tremendous resource, and today we're taking a deep dive into
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: his white tail habitat management principles and philosophies. All right,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, brought to you
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: by Onyx Maps. And I guess this bears mentioning just
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: a little bit extra today because we do have a
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: new title sponsor, Onyx Maps, who's come on board in
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: a big way to support Wired Hunt and the rest
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: of our team over at meat Eater. And I'm pretty
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: excited about this because onyx Maps is actually a tool
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: that I've been personally using for a long time now,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: well before they ever became any kind of partner. So
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: very briefly, if you're not familiar, onyx Maps has this
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: hunting GPS app that provides some really impressive digital mapping features.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Some of the most useful things that I found out there,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: and in particular as a white tailed guy who's always
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: out there searching for new properties to hunt or new
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: public land sections to explore, I really love the onyx
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Maps shows all of the property lines and property owner information.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: This has been hugely helpful for me as I go
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: out and try to find new spots to hunt or
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: when I'm planning out of state trips both public and private.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: So over the coming months, I'll definitely be sharing some
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: more insight into my experiences using this product, but for now,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to introduce you to what this company
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: is all about and why I'll be seeing them on
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: the show. If you want more information, you can visit
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: onyx maps dot com or search for Onyx Maps on
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: whatever app store you use for your phone, and that's
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: on X that's o n X maps. Now. As for
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: today's show, like I mentioned at the top, we're joined
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: by Steve Bartilla and Steve as an outdoor writer who's
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: been published in magazines such as North American White Tail
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: and Deer and Deer Hunting Magazine. He's also the host
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: or co host of several Deer Hunting TV and web shows.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: He's the author of a handful of books such as
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Big Buck Secrets and White Tailed Deer Management and the
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Habitat Improvement. And it's that last topic that we're going
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: to cover today with him, habitat management. And you might
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: have noticed this spring we we've talked a pretty decent
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: bit about habitat. We've actually had three different habitat management
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: experts on the show here just over the last couple
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: of weeks or months, um And what I think is
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: cool now after having chatted with all three of these
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: guys and other than Steve, the other two were Jeff
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Sturgis on episode and Jake Ellinger on episode two fourteen,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: you know, after chatting with these guys, it became very
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: quickly apparent to me and anyone who's listened to this
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: that there are a million different ways to approach improving
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: habitat for deer and wildlife. But just as it is
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: with other aspects of deer hunting, there are a whole
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: lot of different ways to skin this cat. But what
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: all three of these folks had in common was that
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: they have this really strong passion for and excitement for
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: the animals and the land and for ways that we
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: can both give back to the resource and also improve
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: our hunting experience. And that's what I love about this
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: whole habitat thing. You know. I'm fortunately I have a
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: couple of properties where I am able to do some
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: tinkering with the land, and that that has given me
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: this really neat opportunity to more deeply get to know
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: these properties and the local deer and then move around
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: the pieces of the pals of myself and and see
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: what happens. And I found that very very interesting, very fascinating,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: you know, being an addict to the whole strategy element
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: of deer hunting, being able to now adjust habitat it
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: just adds this whole new exciting layer to the hunting equation.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: But above and beyond all that, you know, being able
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: to do habitat work, I think at least it offers
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: this this meaningful opportunity to engage with the land and
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: animals in a different way. And I know I've mentioned
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: this on some previous podcasts, so forgive me for being
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: a broken record, but we once you dive into this
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: habitat work, it's it's like this veil is taken off.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Your eyes are open to this whole new world, and
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: once you get into the stuff, you develop a whole
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: new appreciation for an understanding of soil and sun and
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: rain and plant life and all sorts of things like that.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: And I think, in my opinion, that just really enriches
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: your experience as a hunter. And that's at least why
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: this has been so compelling for me. Now for all
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: of you out there who don't have a property where
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: you can manage habitat, you know, I can relate to
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: that too, as as most of the rest of my
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: properties that I hunt, I'm in a similar boat. I'm
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: not able to manage any habitat. I'm not able to
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: change things. But there's this whole other, really interesting, different
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: type of strategy and challenge and excitement that's available with
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: those sense of hunts, you know, where it's all about
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: understanding natural movements and how terrain and hunting pressure and
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: all those things impact dear and how you hunt them.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: And I think even though you might not be able
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: to take habitat improvement advice from a podcast like this
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: and apply it directly to a property you own, you
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: know just exactly how they're talking about. You might not
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: be able to go take food plot information and use
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: it to plant food plot. You can still use many
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: of the things we talk about in your own hunting
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: by just better understanding what types of features or habitats
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: deer prefore prefer, or different ways to approach your hunting
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: strategy using some of these habitat or terrain focused ideas.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: You know, even without changing habitat. I think there's ways
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: to put this stuff into play. Especially in today's episode.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: I think you're gonna find some concepts and philosophies that
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: can apply to really any deer hunting situation. Steve has
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: been one of my very favorite guests on the podcast.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: He's been on twice before, back on episode twenty two
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: and episode one hundred and sixteen, and if haven't listened
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: to those, I'd highly recommend you check them out there.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Like I said, two of my favorites, jam packed with information,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: much more focused on hunting, timing your hunts, patterning deer,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: lots of stuff like that. Um, it's good stuff, but
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: today he brings it back. He's brought his a game.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: He didn't have disappoint So that said, I guess, without
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: further any ado, let's quickly think our partners at White
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Tailed Properties and then let's get to that interview with Steve.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: So this week I wanted to call out a helpful
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: resource put together by the land and deer and management
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: experts over at White Tailed Properties, and that is their
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: land Beat video series on YouTube. Now. I've been mentioning
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: this for a few weeks now, and today I wanted
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: to call out another specific video that I recommend you
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: check out. And this new video features the one and
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: only Dr Craig Harper and he is one of the
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: very most interesting and well versed habitat experts in the country.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: And speaking of past podcast guests, he was on episode
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: number one hundred and three and it is amazing, so
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: be sure to check that one out too. But in
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: this video, he discusses the value of improving brushy fence
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: rows and other small random areas on your property for wildlife.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: By removing non native grasses and encouraging the growth of
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: other native forge, the wildlife can actually benefit from. It's short,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: but sweet, and if you head over to the White
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Tail Properties YouTube channel or just go on YouTube and
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: search for the title which is maintaining brushy fence rows,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: you should be able to find it. It's well worth
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: a watch. And if you want more from white Tail Properties,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: you can visit their website at white Tail properties dot com.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: And now let's get to my conversation with Steve Bartilla.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: I really think you're gonna enjoy it. I hope you do.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: So here we go. All right, I'm back here today
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: with what is now his third appearance on the podcast,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Steve Bartilla. Thanks for joining us against Steve. Oh hey,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: my absolutely my pleasure. Mark. It's it's been every time
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: you've been on the show before, they've been some of
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: my absolute favorites. I think you do a really nice
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: job of of of helping people understand things in a
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: in a language that makes sense and that people can
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: actually apply to their to their real life. So so
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: I've always appreciate that about you. But on those past
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: two episodes, we really focused on the hunting side of things,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: you know. I think that first episode was really all
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: about patterning bucks, and then the second episode we talked
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: more about you know, how to stack your odds from
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: a hunting standpoint, you know when to hunt, where to hunt, uh,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: you know, using trail cameras, thoughts on the ruts, stuff
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: along those lines. But we haven't really covered ever in
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: much detail, though, is what we can do from from
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: a management perspective, whether it be habitat or actual herd management.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Things you can do, you know, in the off season
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: to improve your hunting. Things you can do during the season,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: um to impact future hunting seasons. And that's kind of
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: what I want to talk about today. Um, Since the
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: last time we talked, I did read one of your
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: books that covers this topic called White Tailed Deer Management
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: and Habitat Improvement, and you've covered a lot of really
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: interesting stuff. I loved the visual approach you took to
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: things with lots of diagrams. UM. So I'm kind of
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: hoping that we can somehow articulate as much of what
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: you covered in that book or at least introduced in
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: those concepts. But we're not to do it with our voices.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: We can't do it visually. So UM, I guess excuse me.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Number one? Does that sound like a good plan to you? Steve? Okay?
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: So the number two what I'm curious about. First, you
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: talk about this a lot in your book and in
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: some of the different video series you have, you talk
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: about the importance of Before you get into any of
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: these habitat projects, then the importance of understanding and mapping
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: your property, really having a good plan in place and
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: maybe even a physical map in place. Can you talk
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: about why that's important and how you how you do that?
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: I sure will, But keeping with my tradition of our
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: podcast s, I'm going to take us off on a tangent,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: and that is you mentioned something in the in the
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: build up here about you making it so that the
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: stuff is, you know, the audience can understand, you know,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: putting it in simple terms, all that type of stuff.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: We are we are blessed and cursed right now, and
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: that there's so dang much information out there, and that
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: is awesome. Problem is just trying to figure out what
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: information is good what information is bad right off the bat,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: if we're talking hunting, or if we're talking habitat improvement,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: if somebody's trying to make this stuff sound way too
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: complex to understand, either they don't understand it or they're
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: trying to sell yourselfthing. We're we're talking, we're talking to
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: white tails, We're talking I hate to swear here, but
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: we're talking simple animals. You know that this stuff is
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: not overly complex. If as I said, every time somebody
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: tries to make it so the first two thoughts to
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: pop into my head is either you don't know what
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: you're talking about, or you're trying to make money off me.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Because nothing, none of this stuff is overly complex, and
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: what once once? You wants to see the picture now
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: and painting the picture isn't that hard it Actually, in
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: this case, it all starts out with goals every one
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: of us has. We're all the same in a lot
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: of ways, and that we're driven by white tails. We
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: want to make it our property if we own Speaking
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: of this specific topic, um, we want to go ahead
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: and make our property as good as we can if
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: we own it or lease it and have control over it.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: If we don't. A lot of us someday we want to,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: but we all have different goals. The key to achieving
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: goals in this or frankly, in my humble opinion, life
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: in general, figure out what it is you want. First
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: identify what your goals are. And that sounds silly because
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: especially in something like this, well, obviously all our goals
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: are to raise the biggest, the most and the biggest
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: bucks we possibly can. Know. That's not true. I've actually
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: sold this business now a couple of years back, but
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I did that. I did habitat evaluations, slash plans for
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: clients based stuff of aerial photos. Now did a whole
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: bunch of those. I'll tell you what the goals are all.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, George has got George's fifty eight years old,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: He's starting to have grandkids, and man, he wants a
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: place for his grandkids to play. And yeah, if they
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: can go ahead and kill some big bucks, awesome, But
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: really he wants a place for them to go ahead
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: and be able to goof around though, have fun. We
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: just to make darn sure I don't miss this. Now.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: One of the biggest myths and all this stuff is
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: you have to have deep pockets and you have to
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: have sprawling, sprawling acres of ground to make any kind
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: of difference in habitat improvement bologning. You hear about the
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: stuff that costs money, because I mean, I have to
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: be preaching the player here with you. Market We're we
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: hear about the things that cost money because this is
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: a business, you know, the hunt like it or not.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: The outdoor industry is an industry. You know, the magazines
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: and TV shows, all these places need money. Flowing in
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: and um or they cannot they cannot present their message. Well,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: you know what, there's not a lot of companies that
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: produced the simple handsaw that are sponsors of the stuff.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: You can do an awful lot with his handsaw. You go,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: you get a change, so you can do a heck
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: of a lot more. Now, there's all sorts of stuff
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: that we can do that doesn't have to cost us
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: hardly anything. I'm one of the biggest things I'm doing
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: this time of year, well all times a year, is
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: bending down licking branches. But it all begins with identifying
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: your goals. Okay, if I know what my goal is
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: now in virtually anything in life, now I can backtrack
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: and how lay out a plan and how to achieve
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: that goal. Is it going to go that nice and
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: smooth and simple and easy. Heck no, No. I go
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: ahead and try to try to live by live by
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: the credo of being rigidly flexible. I got a plan,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: I've got a plan. But man, when my plans there's
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: going south, you know, And I'm going to figure out
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: a different way of I'm going to figure out a
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: different approach. I'm gonna change stuff up now. Um, So
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: first figure out what it is you want, and they
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: have to be realistic wants. If you own a if
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: you own a twenty in norther in Wisconsin, Odd's Hire,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: you're not gonna be You're not gonna be setting up
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: to kill booners. Well, jeez, maybe once in your life
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: you'll have the opportunity to kill a booner. And when
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: do you do awesome? If you're if you're down in Florida,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: you're not setting your ground up to manage for hundred
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: and sixty inch bocks. It once the lifetime, maybe, but
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: you have to have realistic expectations. Part of the way
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: you figure out what's your realistic expectations is is what
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: what's going on around you. If if the biggest bucks
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: in your colony, that's what is consistently being drugged from
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: your colony is the biggest box, that's about the best
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: you're gonna hope for, and that's awesome, that is that
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: is awesome. But if your area is producing consistently, the
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: top end is one one thirty, and there's a lot
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: of areas out there to stick on my tangent deal.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: The worst gauge of how good a hunter is is
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: what they put down for inches, because you know what,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of areas where heck, you don't have
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty buck, and it's real hard to
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: kill a hundred and thirty inch buck when it isn't there. Um,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: But go ahead, look around the area. What what is
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: this area consistently producing for a top end? That's my goal?
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Am I going to be able to kill, to draw
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: and kill the top end? Dear every single year onto
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: my ground? No, but that's gonna be my goal because
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: that I can achieve at least a percentage of the time.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Um that learn your habitat. You have to know what
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: you have on that ground before you ever start making improvements.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: One of the biggest mistakes I think so many of
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: us make, I know I made when I first started,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: is Okay, I got me a bag of seeds? Where
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: can I slap it? Now? If you take that approach,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: how does that be in the best place to put
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: in a food plot? Really aren't that good? How are
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: you going to get to that location? How are you
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: going to hunt that location? How are you going to
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: get out without deer knowing you're there? Because one of
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: the biggest things that I me personally I'm trying to
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: do whether it used to be when I was setting
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: up these plans for clients or now I do uh um,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: long term consulting for a handful of people each year.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: You want to manufacture high odds, low impact overstand locations
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: because we can hunt the snot out of our grounds
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: as long as deer don't know we're there. But that
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: doesn't happen. That does not happen naturally hardly at all.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: So what you do is you look at your ground.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: How can I access? What areas can I get to
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: and get out of without messing anything up? And now
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: how can I go ahead and lay out a deer
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: flow A gentle When I'm talking dear flow, I do
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: not mean that every dear and this property is going
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: to do what I'm going what I'm trying to convince
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: them to do every single time, that's not going to occur.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: What we're going to do those We're going to encourage
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: them to flow through our property in a way that
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: takes them hie high high odds low impact stands and
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: waste their time on our ground. But the way you
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: do that is you start first by identifying what am
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: I really trying to trying to achieve because if I'm
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: that guy who wants his grandkids playing out on my ground,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that I can't hunt it. And I
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: have great hunting too. That means that I need a
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: division of church and state. This area over here, the
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: area that isn't that great for deer. Oh heck, they
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: can ride a t v s around here, they can
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: shoot squirrels, they can go rabbit hunt, and they can
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: be stupid kids playing out in the woods just like
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: I was. And I'll tell you what that is some
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: dangn precious time for a kid. But this area over here,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: we leave that area alone. And now, because we happen
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: to have this this the neighbor has a twenty acre
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: field and we have woods that butts up against it. Okay,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: And there happens to be a nasty, nasty erosion ditch
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: running from the edge of his field down into the
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: creek that goes through our property, and on that side
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: he'll along our property line. Well, geez, if that ditch
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: is tough enough that the deer can't cross, that's the
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: funnel right there, and you're gonna be pushing most of
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: the deer down to the bottom or wrapping the tip
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: because crossing that erosion ut is too tough for them,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: assuming it's a nasty, nasty erosion cut. Okay, well, I
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: want them to be walking along at that edge quite
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: a bit because I can pop just five six ten
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: yards into the woods, and I'm hunting those deer that
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: are wrapping that tip, and so if I can get
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: them to flow that way, jeez, I just went ahead
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: and manufactured of pretty darn high odds low impact stand.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: I'm five yards in the woods and I might as
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: well be hunting the center of my woods, but I've
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: got the wind blown over to the out into the
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: neighbor's field. I can hunt that stand over and over
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: and over and over and over again, as long as
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: I stick to the wind and and slip just barely
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: inside inside that the um woodline down my property line
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: to pop into that stand. All that type of stuff
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: begins by identifying what your goals are, studying your ground on,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: figuring out what you've got that you can take advantage of,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: and then you can take it another step. And that
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: is what don't the neighbors have? What do the neighbors have?
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: What don't they take inventory of? That because if and
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: not every not every property set up well for this.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: But if if your goal is to get dear to
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: spend the disproportionate amount of time on your ground, I
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: need to pause there for a second. What does disproportionate
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: amount of time on your ground mean? It means that
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: they're spending more time. If you want a forty, they're
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: spending more time on that one forty of their home
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: range than they are on every any other forties on
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: their home range. Does that mean they're gonna leave? Of
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: course they're gonna leave, But the more unless you put
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: up a high fence. But the more time they spend
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: on that property during daylight, the higher the odds of
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: you being able to get the shot and or actually,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: we get this animal another year because you don't want
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: the neighbors. As long as that's a legal dear, they
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: have every rate in the world to shoot that animal
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: if it once it jumps defense, whether you decide to
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: pass it or not, that is their right. And if
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: they shoot it, they deserve nothing but our praise because
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: the stuff is supposed to be fun. We don't have that.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: I don't have the right to impose my will on
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: every other hunter out there. But giving them to spend
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: that disproportionate amount of time on our property helps me
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: control things. But it sure isn't a high fence, all right. Um,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: So how do you get dear to spend a disproportionate
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: amount of time on your property? You give them better food,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: better water, better cover, better feeling of security, and better
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: comfort than they can get anywhere else in the area,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: and they're going to spend more time there. That is
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: an extremely it sounds extremely difficult and streamly labor intensive,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: and it candy to to a certain extent. But I'm
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: telling you right now, if you're not enjoying this stuff,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: you might want to find a better, different hobby, because
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: the stuff is supposed to be fun. And don't look
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: at it, don't look at it as a race. Just
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: sit there and pick away at it, because you know what,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: five years, especially these days, five years seems like forever away.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: But and I'm not going to get a lick. I'm
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: not going to get a lick of production out of
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: those fruit trees. And then I planted some some mass tree,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: some oak trees, and then I want to head it
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: through in a couple of dungst and chestnuts as well.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to get a look of use out
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: of that for probably five years. But if I don't
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: do it today, where am I in five years? I'm
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: the neighbor that's sitting there complaining that the other neighbors
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: got all the deer. So, so, Steve, you've got all
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: these different things you just mentioned, right if we're trying
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: to if our goal is to have deer spend a
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: disproportion amount of the time on our property, and you know,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: let's let's take my goals. For example, I'm hoping that
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: I can get but sure bucks to spend a disproportionate
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: amount of their time on my small properties. So in
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: that case, when I'm now looking at this scenario just painted,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: which is okay? To do that? We need food, cover, security, um,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: and then you can do you mind me hijacking list
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: for a second. Let's talk if you're comfortable with it,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about your ground because by talking about your
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: ground now we can go ahead and apply this to
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: a bunch of other properties out there. So tell me
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: how big is your property? Okay, So so let's let's
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: talk about this property that I'm working on right now.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: My family has a forty acre property in northwestern Michigan. Okay, okay,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: what's the what's the hunting pressure like our own? So
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: the hunting pressure around it too, to two sides of
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: it is moderate and towards the back of it is
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: is almost none because on the front side of the
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: property it butts up to some private land where there's
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: a handful of hunters. On the back side of the
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: property butts up to a very very large piece of
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: public land that's far from a road, so hard to
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: get to. Its deep swamp, big cover, kind of big woods,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: typed terrain, awesome, awesome, awesome, um. And the reason that
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: it's not funded very hard. It's just way too much
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: of a pain to get that fire back and through
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: all that junk exactly. And there's just low hunters up
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: in this part of the country relative to this part
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: of the state relative to other areas, because deer populations
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: are relatively lower too, so people aren't heading up there
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: as much as they used to. Okay, um, And this
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: is not I know, there's one area of Michigan that's
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: called Club Country because there's a great big chan This
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: is not that area, not that area. No, I think
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: that part is more in the up or in central
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: northern part of this is the northwestern part of the
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Lower Peninsula. Okay, all right, Um, so you've got forty
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: acres the idea of being able to hold and I
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: know in many cases here I'm gonna be preaching the
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: choir mark. I'm just going into this level of detail
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: because everything's brain surgery until you hear a once. Yeah,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: and there's certainly people who don't know this stuff, so
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: so yeah, let's cover it all. Um. So right off
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: the bat, now, a mature bucks home range is well,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: it is going to go ahead, and we're talking pure
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: averages here. Um, it's going. Home ranges is the area
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: that a mature buck lives in throughout his and from
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: the time he disperses, as my definition, from the time
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: he disperses as a year and a half old mom
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: kicks him out. So to keep the gene pool strong,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: he averages, according to radio telemetry studies, relocating one to
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: tend my else away. Okay, Now, when he sets up
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: shop at that after that yearling buck dispersal, his average
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: home range is about sixty It's going to increase and
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: decrease um inside based on frankly, what the habitat has
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: to offer to a very very large extent um. As
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: I said, every deer, every buck has one home range,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: so that home range has to give them absolutely everything
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: they need. They're gonna die now because they don't know
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: what's outside of that home range. That said, they have
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: many core areas or potentially many core areas within that
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: home range. And core area is just the area that
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: at that at that given time they're spending the majority
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: of their time. Now, what I specifically zero in on
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: is when it comes to management is daylight core areas.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: We can't hunt at night. So right off the bat,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: I'm full becased on far more what are these bucks
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: through doing during daylight? Potentially you can get one to
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: two mature bucks to set up home range core areas
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: on your ground on the forties. Here's the catch, though,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: you got to offer the best to everything both swamps.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm betting you can't touch that for betting now
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: without as I said, take for year ground. Take all
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: this with a grain of salt, because I haven't looked
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: at odds are pretty darn good that you're not gonna
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: be able to You're not going to be able to
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: match or exceed the quality of betting that that swamp has.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: And at the same time, at the same time, if
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: I'm you, I don't care. I'm looking at that. I'm happy,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: no problem, great, because what I'm really gonna do is
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: I'm going to focus in your situation on creating a
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: buck trap. And that is they have all this ground
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: out here that they can live on, and it is swampy,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: it is nasty ground that you know. What is is
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: any other hunters ever going to drag bucks out of there? Yeah,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have some happen. But you know as well
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: as I do that hoptally what that's that's too much work.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're we're a couple of the idiots that
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: actually do go back into situations like that, and it
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: has been great until you kill something and then all
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: of a sudden you really start questioning what you're doing.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Way the heck back here, you know, um and not
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: jobs like us. We do it again and again and again.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: But a lot of people are not a lot of people.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: That's not fun for them. For as I said, I
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: hope you don't mind me continuing. We calling you and
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: I not jobs for us, it is I'm right there
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: with you for most people. That not for most hunters
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: going ahead and dragging a pair of waiters with you
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: having to change and I'm actually thinking of public land
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: buck I killed doing just this, having to go ahead
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: and switch in and out of those waiters three times
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: to get to that spot an honest mile and a
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: half back in they are going to do that. So
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: you have outside of the exception of the nut jobs
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: like us, you don't have people in our back door,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: and you in that situation take that use it. So
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't what I would be focusing. So this is
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: more of a more of a big woods swampy area, correct, Yeah, yeah,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: So You've got to give you a little bit more detail.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: So this is, yeah, where you have all that called for,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: all that potential betting area, okay, um, in an area
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: where you don't have a ton of candy crops. I
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: can all but promise you your best road is to
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: focus on having some doze bet up around your food,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: laying this food out so that when Mr Big comes
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: from that swamp to check your girls or get some food,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: that odds are really high they're going through this one
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: or two or three pinch points on that forty and
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: on a forty In a situation like this where you
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: can go ahead and re remodel their world, you can
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: set it up so that pretty much every deer that comes,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: every buck that cruises either for into your ground for
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: food or for girls, you can't go ahead and do
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: some pretty significant rearranging and make it so they are
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: going through here, here or here. Now, go ahead and
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: put to three stands sites for each of those look
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: casions for various wind directions. Lay them out so that
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: they said, I'm guessing you don't have that natural funnel.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: No worries if you don't. The overwhelming majority of people
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: don't have funnels like that on their forties. But I'll what,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: bulldozers are not very expensive to rent. They really aren't.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: You can get I mean you can in one day
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: for a thousand bucks, you can get a ridiculous amount
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: of stuff done on that forty acres that is going
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: to pay for itself over and over and over and over.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: And I don't want to say this to try to now,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: but I'm going to. You know what, people are out
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: there spending a thousand bucks a year on bows for
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: crying out woud there are guys out there, and God
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: love them guys and girls out there that are buying
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: a new bowl every stinking year. All a person has
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: to do is skip want us one year, and you
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: know what, they can get an awful lot of darn
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: stuff done in that on their ground for for a
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: thousand bucks. So so let me let me hit pause
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: real quick and and take us back, because I want
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: to understand your thought process here, um, and I think
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: I understand it, but just so everyone else does when
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: you when we talk, when I describe my property and
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: then you said, oh yeah, so then we want to
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: focus on food. So what I would would love for
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: you to expand on a little bit is how you
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: make that decision, Like how do you determine the order
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: of operations? If you if you think back to our
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: old math problems back in the day when we have
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: to do had to do kind of long form math
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: way this order of operations when you're figuring out algebra
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: and stuff, you determine, Okay, I have to do food first,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: and then I can worry about access, and then I
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: can worry about water or whatever this order might be.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: How do you prioritize the different pieces of the habitat puzzle.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: You need to focus on um like you started to
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: do here on my property. Can you describe just how
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: other people can be thinking through that? It really start
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: for me at one starts with betting. If you if
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: you study dear long enough, especially if you study how
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: deer react on specific properties long enough, what you see
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: is it's a repeating cycle. Now, dear do not have
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: the power to analyze things like humans do. Deer have
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: deer very instinctual. They have great senses of they have
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: great senses, in many cases better than ours, But they
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: don't have the power of analytical thought. They are they
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: are a product of their environment, what Mom taught them,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: and their instincts. Because of that, every dear is different,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: but they all tend to share certain traits. And one
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: of the things you noticed, and I am n sure
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: we talked about this and one of the other ones podcasts,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: is that ms Mr Big, especially especially in heavily hunted areas,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: how does Mr Big get old? He gets old because
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: he figured out how to survive. Okay, if he figured
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: out how to survive, that means that the next year
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: in line now is probably gonna probably gonna stick pretty
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: darn tight to those that survives is gonna stick pretty
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: darn tight to what the previous year did or their dad. Um.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: You you really see that play out in betting areas
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: when you and I know I've said this, um, when
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: you find that buck bed, that that lone bed in
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: the middle of winter, when you're out there scouting in
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: the snow, you know, maybe it's got a peace spot
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: in the middle of it. But I'm sorry. The idea
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: that every time a buck stands, every time a buck
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: is betting the year and eight, as soon as they
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: stand up, I don't buy that. Um. They may take
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: a step forward, they may take instead back. Who knows,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: so that peacepot doesn't really I'm sorry even got into that, um.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: But there's a big rub there. There's no other different
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: sized beds around. You know what. Odds are fairly decent.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: That's a buck bed, not a guarantee, but pretty decent.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Now you go over to over the next ridge and
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: here's a whole bunch of different size beds in the snow.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Odds are pretty darn good that those are. That's a
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: family group betting area. Those fons young bucks, Okay, squat
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: down in each of them, look around, ask yourself, why,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: out of every place is this animal betting here? Okay
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: for those for the family groups, good luck, Um, they
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: aren't anywhere near at ticky. For the box. Should do
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: that ten twelve times, and you start seeing patterns emerge.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: And then you do it year after year after year,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: and you find that the same buck or the most
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: mature bucks are betting in the same general locations, the
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: same grounds every year. It's because that betting area has
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: something that is superior. By doing the squats in these beds,
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: what you notice is either it's thick and nasty to
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: the point where absolutely nothing sneaking up on you. You
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: can use wind direction to cover one area, your ears
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: are covering the rest, and you can just heck two
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: jumps in any direction you're vanished. Okay, that's a common scenario.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Another common scenario, and that's what no doubt you're dealing with.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: I need on with that swamp awesome, awesome protective cover
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: bedding where nothing sneak I mean, do you think you
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: can slash through that swamp without something hearing you come?
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Probably not? Yeah. Um. The other really really common example
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: is based on topography, that will that knob at the
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: end of the ridge. Hell, heck that bulge. You're going
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: off the side. Now someplace where I can lay right
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: year and I can see everything down below me. I
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: can have the wind. I'm not saying they always do this,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: but I can't have the wind going over the ridge,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: protecting my backside, my eyes going ahead and scanning for
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: the front. Good luck beating a spot like that. It's
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: it's really really tough. Okay um, to go ahead and
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: try to get those deer. Those bucks, specifically the doose
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: are easy. But get those bucks. They're betting in that
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: swamp to bet on yourthority. That that's pushing, that's pushing
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: the rock uphill, because that swamp most likely has the
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: advantages when it comes to betting. And at the same time,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: these deer are trained that this is where I want
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: to be because they've seen they've seen there, the older
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: bucks do that. Now it gets to be it's it's
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: hard to break training. And now I've been betting here
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: for a while. I feel safe. This works for me.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: I'm surviving. Does that kind of answer. That's why I
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: start with betting the very the very first well, the
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: very first thing. I start with the goals. Okay um,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: figure out goals. And then the next question in my
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: mind is how if it is trying to get deer
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: to spend as much time on your property as possible. Now, jeez,
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: if I can't, then the next question is is will
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: they bet there? Okay? If I believe that that's going
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: to be tough, then okay, Well, what's the next thing
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: we can do? Well? The next thing, jeez, especially in
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: big woods foods, king baby, know you offer when look
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: at look at what's in the least supply in the area.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Based on what you described to me, we're talking about
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: a heck of a lot of timber and swamp. Well,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: that means that there probably isn't a heck of a
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: lot of egg in that area. There might be some,
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: no doubt, but not a tremendous amount. There's a heck
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: of a lot of cover mm hmm. That means that
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: I could focus on bedding and and hope then I
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: could draw some deer over here. But they've got to
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: stir plus a bedding everywhere. Or if they're short on food,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: and I can offer them brassicas, and I can offer
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: them cereal rye, and I can offer them some fruit trees,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: and I can throw some clover out there all of
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: a sudden. It's not gonna be real hard for me
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: to offer a whole bunch of food that they can't
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: get other places. And I offer a whole bunch of
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: food they can't get other places. I can all but
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: promise you that at least at times during the season
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: I'm going to have a ridiculous number of deer on
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: my ground for that area. Um, So it's really it's
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: really start with goals and then figure out. Okay, as
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: I said, are these realistic? Mark? I hate to tell
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: you it's probably not realistic for you to get a
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: buck to spend a disproportionate amount of daylight time on
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: that forty He's going to be spending that disupport disproportionate
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: amount of daylight time back in that swamp. But that
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean you can't you can't give him a really
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: good reason to make it the very first place he
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: goes when he gets up, because you've got really good food.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: And now we start getting into the rot and geez,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna be hanging around Mark's place an awful lot
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: because he's got food, water, and girls. What more do
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: I want? So the trick for Mark is to set
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: his ground up so he does have food, water, and girls,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: and take it a step further and set it up
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: so that as Mr Big flows through that property to
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: check it for dose to go for food, that there's
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: a really really good chances he's going to go through here. Yeah,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: So so tell me this, Steve. And I think I
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: either read about this in your book or saw you
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: talk about this in the videos somewhere, but you had
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: mentioned that before planning food. So if we're if we're
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: focusing now, okay, yes, on my property, food is going
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: to be that that lever I can pull and get
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: an extra big boost of impact if food is what
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: I want to do. Now, I read somewhere that you
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: said before planting any food, at least if you plan
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: on using this to hunt in anyway, you should first
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: think about tree stand locations or things like access or
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: different things there. Can you can you tell me a
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: is that? Is that right? Do you think about access
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: in the locations before you actually think about where to
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: put a food plot or how to plant food plot?
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: And then if so, can you tell me why tell
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: me how that helps? Yes? With one can yet, and
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: that is there's certain places that I peck, I'm gonna
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: be leaving for their pretty much as soon as I
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: hang up. There's one property that I'm doing management right
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: now that has has a big bottom, plants and food
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with hunting. That has to
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: do one. I mean, you can't get to the bottom.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: You're gonna have swirling winds. It's one surrounded by deer
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: cover pack deer bedding three hundred and sixty degrees around there.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Could I go ahead and make it so they didn't
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: bed there? I could, but I pretty much take clear cutting.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: There was no. Um, you're not going to be able
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: to get into that bottom to hunt. But they have
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: this person here controls about a hundred and twenty acres
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: and they're surrounded by meat hunters, and God love those
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: meat hunters. And I'm being could not be being more
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: sincere when I say that, Um, the day act to
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: get off on a very brief tangent. But you know what,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: when we sit there and we are complaining about each other,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: and we are slamming each other for their choice of
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: weapon for all this stuff, all we're doing is the
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: anti's job form. Whether we want to or not. You know,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: our hunting numbers are dwindling, they're not increasing. Every single
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: person we drive from this sport is we're cutting off
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: our own nose to spire or face. But God loved
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: the meat hunters around him, and they have every right
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: in the world to do what they want on legally
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: on their side of the fence, just like I have
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: every right to legally do what I want on my
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: side of the fence. So that that bottom is planted
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: in food merely merely the suck dear to the center
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: of that property. So in that case, if there are
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: there are situations where what I'm about to describe does
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: not apply when you're using food strictly for holding purposes
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: to get them to waste more time on your ground. Otherwise,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: I've learned the hard way. Before you ever start breaking dirt,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: before you ever bring in a bulldozer to clear out
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: in woods plots, and I'm telling you, look into those dozers.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: They are so much cheaper than people realize and so
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: much more effective. But before you go ahead and have
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: somebody come out, you find the stand, the tree you're
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: gonna put that stand up in. You figure out, as
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: I said when we first started talking, Now one of
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: The first things you do on your ground is you
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: figure out what areas you can get to, what areas
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: you can hunt and get the heck out of without educating. Dear,
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: one of the biggest things we do is hunters. One
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: of the biggest, in my opinion, mistakes we make is
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: we when we're trying to manage property as we hunt
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: way too darn much of it. Look at that, Look
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: at that area, a public ground that butts up against you.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: Once deer season starts, where most of the deer I'm
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: without ever having step foot out there, I'm guessing they ain't.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: They're not right around those parking areas, because those those
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: parking areas right around there, they get hunted. So what
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: do the deer do. They shift two areas of their
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: home range where they feel safe. Once they start feeling pressure,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: they don't leave that home range. But as I said,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: it's sixty acres and it's not laid out in a square.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: It's more like a python that's that's swallowed a medicine ball,
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: a couple of volleyballs and softball, and another medicine ball
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: twisted all sorts of But add that whole entire python
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: up and it equals about six hundred and forty acres,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: but it twists and turns off all over bulge here,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: narrow there to achieve their needs. Okay, Um, and somehow
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: I lost where the heck I was even going with
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: all that? Well, can you can you give us a
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: little more? Yeah? Yeah, So so back to when we
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: have those these perspective food plot plans and we're thinking
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: through okay, picking those stand locations first, picking the access points,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: and you were describing a lot of that, and I
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: kind of encourage you to go off on another tangent
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: when it comes to access because, like you mentioned, so
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: important and I've i've I've seen where you've talked about
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: thinking about edge access versus central access, and that you prefer,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: you know, planning your access routes from the outside end
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: versus the opposite way. Can you can you talk about
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: that a little bit and then how that might fit
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: into what I'm talking about here in that forty piece too? Yeah? Um.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: And I actually was able to connect a few of
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: the dots and then left out there for myself. Um.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: But what I was getting at is you have six Okay,
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: that's six. They know that six forty, Like the back
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: of their hand because that's where they live. Three under
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty four days a year. They're they're
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: living there, I think, actually, jeezus, can't you remember how
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: many days are in the year right now? But they're
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: living there, they know that, so they know those areas
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: that don't have pressure. You want that area to be
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: your ground, and you do that by hunting less of it. Then,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: rather than hunting more, the more your property hunt, the
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: less you're leaving for deer to feel safe. Okay, um,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: And now set me back on course, and I'm sorry, Okay,
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: So that all makes sense about that dear home range
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: and hoping that now that you know part of my
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: forty might intersect with his home range of sixty acres
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: or so. Um, Now, how can access, good access fit
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: into that to make it feel like your property isn't
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: being overhunted, to make those deer feel safe on it?
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: And you know, how does access filter your factor into
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: the equation and when you're thinking about where to put
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: food as well? And this it all goes back to
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: trying to keep give dear the illusion of safety on
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: your property so that those those as I've tried, and
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: I hope that this is coming through sincere, because it
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: couldn't be more sinceres. I've tried to hammer that neighbor
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: has every right in the world to shoot whatever legal
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: dear he wants or she wants. And you know what,
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: we really should be nothing but happy for them. That said, now,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: as they're pummeling their ground, as they're going out there
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: the day before season opens and going to scout their
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: eighty acres and they're whipping around out there, you know what,
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: I want them pushing dear to my ground. And how
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: do you accomplish that? You accomplish that by making them
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: feel safe on that ground by hunting from those low
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: impacted locations. If that gear does not see smell here,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: you you're not there as far as they're concerned. Um So,
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: what works so very nicely for trying to accomplish that
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: is take your ground your forty MM. I've got two choices.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: I can go ahead on your specific forty work. This
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: is hypothetical. Obviously, I can go right through the center
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: of this ground to access my stands, or I can
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: go along the edge of my ground to access my stands.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: If I go through the center, what what wind direction
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: isn't blowing into a huge part of my property. There
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: is none if I go But if I so, what
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: ends up happening so often for hunters is they go ahead,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: they show up their hunting ground. They hunted the first day,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: Oh man, this is great. They hunted the second day,
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: this is pretty good. Hunted the third day, well this
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: ain't bad. Hunted the four where all the deer? Now
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: it does and take that many times to explode a
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: forty eight or chunk of dirt to turn it pretty
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: much worthless for for deer activity right then too well,
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: now to put a serious ding to the amount of
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: deer hunt deer activity that occurs in that ground. Now
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: compare that too, you know, taking that forty and having
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: edge access as a matter of fact, when you're going
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: down the west side of that property. Now, well here,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: let's make it even simpler on forties like years, if
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: I can design it exactly the way I want the
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: wind directions. TELLEL is answering what part of the property
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: I'm hunting that given day, Because if I have edge
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: access on a forty, I'm going to make it so
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: that whenever I'm accessing that property, that wind is either
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: blowing down the property line or it's blowing into the
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: neighbors because I want the deer to believe that this
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: ground that I control is safe. And by blowing that
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: scent down the line or into the neighbor's ground, it's
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: not blown into mine. And then you can go ahead
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: and even take it a step further and do what
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: I call edge feathering. And as you hinge cut, a
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: hinge cut a band of trees. Hinge cutting is And
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: please anybody listening to this, don't go out and do
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: this if you're not exceptionally comfortable with chainsaws. Frankly, you
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: can do it all with a hand saw. Follow all
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: chain saw safety rules, all that good stuff. We're just
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: talking deer hunting. It's not worth going home without a
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: leg or an arm, or worse yet, making your kids orphans. Now,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: remember there's a lot of this stuff is dangerous. Don't
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: push it, um, but you can't. Hinge cutting is cutting.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: What I do is cut about half to six the
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: way through a tree. Bend the darn thing over. Now
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: it retains that the top retains that connection the root system,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: So so percent of those trees are going to continue
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: to grow. Only now all that canopies down there at
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: down there right on the ground level for deer, both
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: for cover and for food. Go ahead and stick to
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: trees no bigger than your bicep. And if you don't
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: get much to worry about if the if the timber works,
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: for what you can do is you can go ahead
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: and edge feather hinge cut about a five yard wide
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: band on your property side of that access trail. Now,
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: so what ends up happening is, I've got this access
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: trail going down my property line. The wind is either
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: blowing down my property line or into the neighbors at
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: the same time, on my property line, on my property
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: side of this trail, I've got a five yard wide
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: band a hinge cut. Ok that's creating a screen. So
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: the deer within my burt can't see me as I'm
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: going down that line. At the same time, neighbors are
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: setting up on the fence line can't see it anywhere
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: near as good, which they have every right to set
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: up on the fence line. They don't have a right
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: to shoot into my ground. Ok Um. But now, simply
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: by using the wind, I can make it so that
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: the wind is, except for swirls, never bump blowing into
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: my ground. And at the same time those neighbors over there,
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: they're running around their property and man, they're ruining the
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: hunting for this area. No, they aren't not a not
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: a the dear think my forty safe. They're not ruining
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: my ground at all. Instead, I've just took those people
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: that have been working against my goals. Now they're working
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: towards my goals by kicking up deer. Because every time
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: they kick up deer on their ground, they're training them that, hey,
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: you're not safe over here. But every time they're coming
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: on my ground, they're not smelling me, they're not seeing me,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: they're not hearing me. I'm not there, You're safe here.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: And that it access has a huge, huge impact when
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: it comes to that, because if you're going down the
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: center of your property and you're hunting it on every
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: single wind direction, you know what, it's only a matter
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: of time before every single year in that ground knows that,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: you know what, I'm not safe over here either. Maybe
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: I should go over to Gertrude's place because she doesn't
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: let anybody hunt on that ground at all. That kind
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: of connected that somewhere in there for you. Yeah, yeah,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: it does. So let's let's let's continue down with this
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: line of thought. Now, so we've we figured out, okay,
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: this this property, this area has got tons of bedding cover,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: so food is going to be where I can have
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: that impact. We've talked about making sure that we have
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: smart access into the spots we might want to hunt.
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: So now we've decided we want to plant some food.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: We're on a planet in a place it's easy to access.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: What else should we be thinking about when choosing what
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: to plant or you know the shape of that plot,
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: anything when it comes to what we need to thinking
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: about just before actually digging in and putting something in there. Now,
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: so we know this is we know we can get
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: to this area, we know we can get out of it,
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: We know that we have a potential safe wind direction.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: Now it's blowing over into this wetting the area of
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: the swamp that has standing water. Where they can go
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: ahead and walk this peninsula over just a couple of
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: hundred yards to the other side. Now, keep with your
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: feet whatever some type of what I call dead zone.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: What you can do and actually I do more than
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: I care to, uh is actually manufactures safe zones as well.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: Be creative when it comes to this type of stuff.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: You can go in there and you can knock down
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: a bunch of trees, which is waste if they're if
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: they have any timber valley to them. But you can
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: make a mess to the point where deer don't want
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: to go through here. You call us a tornado zone,
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: right yep, exactly. Uh. But one way, shape or form.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: You have to be able to get to this location
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: without getting busted. You have to be able to hunt
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: this location. Meaning I need a safe one direction from hunting,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: and I need to be able to get out of here.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: That doesn't happen easy. So that's why you start with
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: what areas can I access? All right now? This area here, Oh,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: and I go ahead and remove a few trees here.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: I can put a food plot in over here? All right,
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: where would my stand be? I can go ahead and
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: put a stand up in this tree right here, have
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: a blow into that that wet area with it with
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: any type of southeast or south wind this area over here.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: Oh geez, I could use this too, because this goes
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: up against this goes up against a nasty creek, you know,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: real high creek crossing the creek bank. You know something
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: some type of a barrier, or I'm going to create
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: a tornado zone. So now I've got a got a
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: place store I can hunt with another wind direction that
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: works with my edge access as well. All Right, so
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: I go ahead and I select those specifically select the
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: trees first. Now, how can I lay this plot out
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: to make it safe or you know, um, for example,
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: where I have the stand, I might want that to
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: be a bend a bend in the food plot because
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: that may potentially increase the amount of the safe wind
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: cone I can hunt the stand with. It might be
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: able to stretch that cone out a little bit more.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: The there. It's a really tough thing to answer with
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: specifics because there so much of this habitat stuff is
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: one part art, one part science. There is not that
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: this is the size and shape that this food plot
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: should be. No, the food plot should be sized and
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: shaped to try to achieve my goals. This is just
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: for example. You know what you're doing this fifty yards
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: in from a big egg field. You're what you're trying
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: to do is you're going to bring a dozer in here.
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: You're gonna open up a quarter acre spot plant some food.
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: You're not counting on that food being the primary food source. Actually, really,
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: what you're doing is you're gonna go ahead and slap
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of licking branches out in that. Make
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: sure that there's a whole bunch of licking branches around
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: that food plot. Heck, am I even cutting plants a
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: scrape tree in the middle of it. You're trying to
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: create this into a staging cub, a social hub of sorts. Okay,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: so they're that situation. Excuse me. In that situation, the
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: food plot size and the amount of food that's being
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: produced as long as it's green and that can withstand
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: browsing and the deer like, and I'm cool. You know,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: I'm probably either going with cereal rye or um Antler
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: King's trophy clover in there or whatever. Clover um. That's
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: just what I'm using. So ah, but I wasn't trying
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: to do a sales pitch there. Actually, Uh, now take
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: that in a different way to put that near situation.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Your situation, you don't have a big you don't have
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: the neighbor's great big egg fuel to take advantage of
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: for a destination food source. So that means if you
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: want dear to be coming into your ground for food.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: You need production, you need acreage. So therefore I'm gonna
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: if i'm if I'm setting up your ground, I'm gonna
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: focus a lot more on Okay, I mean, jeez, there's
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: probably I'm gonna guess here, there's probably fifteen deer per
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: square mile up in this area. I'm suck and a
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of them in you know what I have,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: I'm probably gonna be feeding. I'm probably gonna be feeding
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: on low side twenty deer here. I mean, I need
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: some acres to put into food. If I wanted to
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: pull this off overseason. Um, so that situation is going
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: to be very different than the one I just described there.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: There isn't that remain originally flexible. It's really what it
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: comes down to on so much of this one of
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: the one of the biggest challenges for trying here. I'll
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: share a little bit of personal stuff with you right now.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: In my career. The reason that I am focusing more
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: on this, more on this type of stuff than I
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: ever did in my work before, it's because it is
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: so incredibly diverse and challenging. You know, the cookie cutter
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: approach just does not work. It just doesn't work when
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: it comes to this type of stuff, because every single
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: person's ground is different. So ultimately, ultimately, everybody who's doing this,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: excuse me one second, Ultimately everyone who's doing this is
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: actually playing mad scientists on their ground. The catches. There
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: isn't one formula to do it what And that's why
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: the book you read that, that's why I tried to
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: lay it out in the way I did. Is that
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: here a whole bunch of tools you guys can use,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: because ultimately, and here are some here are some general
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: philosophies on well, here are some very specific philosophies on
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: exactly how I set up this property of this property.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I think I got a dozen of
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: them in there. But there's a reason that there's a
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: dozen different properties are more in that book, and that's
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: because there just isn't one way to skin this cat.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: You can have two people with identical goals, now, each
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: of them with authorities set created by nothing more than
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: a fence line, and odds are that the best route
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: for both of them isn't the exact same thing, because
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: both of their habitats different, their access is different. Little
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: things like that make it so that you just you
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: just can't lay out a cookie cutter approach. And that
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: is why spending that time up front and really studying
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: your ground, really honestly answering what is it that I
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: want to accomplish here? Now before you go it, then
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: educate yourself on the tools that are available, because there's
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: all sorts of tools, and quite frankly now in on
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: shows and in magazines and even in most books now
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: a lot of them aren't even covered because well, frankly,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: a lot of people write the bout this stuff. Don't
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: do it um. And you know, again going back to
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: the money in the industry, now you don't. You don't
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: make money for writers, TV shows or outlets by talking
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: about chainsaws. You make money by talking about food pots.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: No um. But go ahead to educate yourself on what's
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: available out there and then play man scientists for yourself.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: But really lay this stuff out and think to yourself,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: I need to create I want to create a deer
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: flow that works towards my goals and minimizes my weaknesses
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: in your situation. You know the weaknesses. You don't want
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: the deer jumping the fence to the neighbors. You said,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: if I recall correctly you said there were a couple
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: of neighbors that that do hunt pretty aggressively up in
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: there on one side of property. So I'm guessing you
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: don't want them jump in that side of the fence.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: So you know what, You're really don't want to put
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: bedding right up against the fence over there, do you.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: It was the first thing that happens when they wake up,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: They've got to choose which way to go. And yeah,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: nine times out of ten they're choosing to go into
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: your property to get that food. But that tenth time
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: when they jumped the fence on November three, and Ted
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: happens to be sitting stopping that tree over there, he's
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: going to shoot that buck when he walks by. More
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: power to him, buddy. So you really get I think
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: you're starting to understand why I talked more hunting the
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: first two times, because it all fits it all together. Yeah,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: and and because frankly for a while, more straightforward. So
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: so so this I think I think you can give
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: me a straightforward answer on this question, which is back
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: to the food piece. As we talked, can you you're
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: you're talking about how we can think about how diverse
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: of options there are when it comes to developing the
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: shape your plot and the location of your plot based
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: on all the different things that are very specific to
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: different situations. But something here that I've heard you talk
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: a lot about is once you do decide on the
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: right shape and the right location, now you're actually planting
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: food of some kind. And when you're choosing what to plant.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: I've seen lots of times you recommend that what you
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: call it a smartest board type of effect where you
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: have a lot of diversity. Yeah, so so can you
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: can you tell us why that's important and what you
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: mean by that, because now we're actually planting something. This
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: is something that people always have questions. Almost the most
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: common food plot questions what should I plant? What should
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: I plant? And of course there's a lot more to
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: it than just buying a piece or a bag of
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: sea that's got a big buck on it. Um, can
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: you just walk us through your your thought process there
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: and then this whole smortgage board deal, it all comes
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: back to the whole Okay, food sources are changing dynamically
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: over the course of seas. You got those those late
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: plant to the soybeans. Man, there's those ones that that
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: first week of season, they're still perfectly green. Oh geez,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: go han them because at that point those those deer
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: are going to be all over those green soybeans. But
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: now they start to yellow. Oh geez, this isn't so good. Oh,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: and geez, the acorns are dropping now too. Hey, I'm
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: gonna go shift into the woods to feed on some acorns.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: Um well, and oh, there's happens to be an alfalfa
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: field over here, so I'm gonna eat some else alfie too.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: Oh geez. Now we've got a couple of frosts. Now
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: that alfelf isn't quite as good. In the acorns, most
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: of the good ones are cleaned up, and now we
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: just have the wormy ones. But oh that corn, that
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: corn is getting nice and dry, now high in carbs.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: And you know, geez, either the ruts going or it's
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: about to come, or it's done. And I need fat
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: because I just lost percent body weight during the rout.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: Now you have different biological needs and the changing ecosystem
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: all occurring at the same time, making it so there
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: is not that one thing that you can plant that
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: I'm aware of, and boom, this is what they're gonna
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: want every day. All the way through season. So how
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: do you counteract that you offer from a bunch of stuff.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: So go back to we were talking edge feathering along
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: that along that access trail to serve as a screen. Okay,
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: well you know what else it does. It produces an
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: awful lot of food. So now that we've got this
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: food plot in, let's go ahead and edge feather a
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: five yard band around that food plot of those safe
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: trees that we can go ahead and drop down to
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: ground level or creek. We're doing a couple who were
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: killing a couple of birds with that stone right there.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: We're making it so that Mr Big when he walks
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: by fifty yards in the woods and he looks out
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: in that food plot. Oh wait, he can't look out
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: in that food plot. He actually has to stick his
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: head into check. Since we're hunting that food plot. We
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: really want him to do that. Um. Besides, even if
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: we're not hunting it, it's wasting as time having to
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: go in and check that food plat light. As long
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: as I'm there, I might as well work a scrape
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: or two, um, you know, as well as I do that.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: Hunting oftentimes comes down to that thirty minutes the first
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: and last outside of the rut, the first and last
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: thirty minutes of the day of legal shooting light. If
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: I can go ahead and waste fifteen minutes to him
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: doing that stuff here, awesome because then he's not doing
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: it over in the neighbors during legal shooting light. Um.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: And at the same time, all those tops now are
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: down ground level. I don't care if we are talking
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: the richest farm land in Iowa or northeastern or northwestern
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Do you eat a lot of brows,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: no matter what other food options they have. So we
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: now have another food source here. We have the brows
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: from those tops that are down, the leafy and the
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: leafy growth in the bugs over winter as well as food.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: We opened up a five yard band along the edge
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: of this food plot, so it's getting sunlight. So now
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: we have cool seasoned grasses and weaves and all sorts
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: of regrowth. We just created a salad bar form surrounding
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: our plot. And at the same time we made it
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: slap plot gets more sunlight by taking out some trees
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: that would shade the outer edge, but the outer edge
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: is still going to get more shade and still going
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: to have more competition from trees and stuff. What works
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: well there culver. So I'll go ahead and slap in
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: a ten yard bank white, a ten yard wide band
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: of culver around the food plot. Because that ten yard
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: white outside band isn't gonna produce brass, because real well
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: isn't gonna produce corn really well isn't gonna go ahead
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: and produce soybeans. Sure is going to produce clover well though.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: So now in the inside of the plot, if it's
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: a if we're talking to several light plot, I've got
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: all sorts of options. I can go with corn, I
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: can go with soybeans, that can go with brass, because
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: I can go with the combination of the three if
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: I want to. But I'm gonna nine times out of
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: ten I'm either planting the honey hoole, which is a
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: brassica mix, or I'm planning soybeans or corn in the
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: center of that plot. Okay, So now we have three
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: food sources already. We've got the edge feathering and all
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: the salad bar that's creating. We've got the trophy. We've
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: got the clover going out around the food plot in
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: an area where we can't get other most other plantings
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: to really thrive. And in the center of that food plot,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: we've got either brassica's corn or soybeans. Awesome. Now, once
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: we start getting into fall, if it's brass if it's corn,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: or if it's corner soybeans I planted, I'll go out
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: there and i'll top seat. When those with the leaves
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: start yellowing a little bit, I will do nothing more
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: than throw a hundred pounds per acre of three part
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: cereal rye one part ben oats. And by ben oats,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: I mean just fetos, just cheap oats, cheap as oats
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: you can get your hands on, um, about a hundred
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: pounds and acre. I'm going to throw that right on
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: top of the dirt. Just go through with a hand seat.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: If it's corn, it's about every fifth row, I'll go
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: ahead and walk down and just with a hand seater,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: hand seating cereal ryan oats out into this stuff. Because
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: now I've got yet another food source option. And at
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: the same time, and what becomes subrassica as brassicas you
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: can go ahead and do spring plantings to get by
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: you you may want to seriously consider it. Um doing
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: spring plantings a brassicas. If you use the right type
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: of brassicas, you can, man, you can have some serious
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: food by fall. Now it's not quite as nutritious, it's
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: not quite as desirable. But when m I can go
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: ahead and I can eat swamp sticks, or I can
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: eat brassicas that are a little bit overmature brascas. Your
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: sound good in that situation. You're down in Iowa, and
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: I can eat overly mature brasticas, or I can eat
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: LFL FU clover um, soybeans or corn. Well, that's not
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: quite as good of an option, okay, um, But so
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: there's a little side bonus side tip. How's that? Uh?
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: Most times I'm planting brassicas in August, when those brassicas
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: get up about over four to six eight inches, I'm
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and top seed that same three parts
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: cereal rye one part bent about a hundred pounds pre acre,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: you know, right on top of the dirt into that
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: braska as well. The whole reason behind that is, now
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: you're I don't care for talking braska. We're talking corn,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: we're talking soybeans. They can only would you know, you
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: eat them? They're gone, Okay, They're not like a clover
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: that keeps growing back over and over and over. Um,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: So those more candy crops, they've got a limited lifespan.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: But and especially if you're only planning an eight or
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: two of it up by you there, that ain't that
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: ain't probably even gonna make it through the rut. The
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: grains the brask Is probably would. But the grains probably
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: won't even make it through the rut. But that's okay
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: because when the grains are gone, I still have oats,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: and well, the oats are probably froze out by them,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: but I still have cereal right out here, and that
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: cereal right doesn't freeze out. So now you add and
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: then I'm gonna go ahead, and I'm going if I'm
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: especially if i'm sucking a northern state up by you,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: even with all that water around there, I'm gonna go
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: ahead and put in a couple of water holes on
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: that food pot. But I'm gonna put definitely a water
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: hole by one of the stands in a safe wind direction.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: So now I have food and water. And then what
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: the heck, I'm gonna go ahead and slap in half
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: dozen fruit trees and maybe even a couple of dungs
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: in their oaks as well. Add it all up, and
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: why am I going to go anywhere else to eat first?
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: Is now, look at just planting that opening in soybeans.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: Soybeans great food choice, But this heck up until those
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: leaves the yellow. Once those leaves the yellow even up
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: heaven up by you where there isn't tremendous food options
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: in the area, those leaves yellow, they're gonna be shifting
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: too something else for a while. Now they go ahead
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: and they dry out in harden. Now they're gonna shift back. Um,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: I don't want them shifting around. I want to offer
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: him everything they could possibly want in one location, because
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: that is going to make them so much more predictable.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: It's not even funny now when it comes to planting
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: another thing. And I mean, there's there's so much information
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: out there online as far as the basics of how
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: to plant something like clover or brassicas or whatever. There's
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: plenty of step by step instructions of how to do this. Um,
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: we don't need to cover that. But but one specific
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: example I've heard you talk about, I think is is
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: kind of unique and worth mentioning. And it's your poor
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: man's no till way of planning a food plot. So
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: if you don't have all the big equipment, UM, the
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: way you recommend putting in some type of food plot
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: without that big equipment, I thought was worth touching on. UM.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: If I'm in that situation, can you talk us through
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: that poor man's no till you you have in your
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: area and I'm just actually feeds into this UM. In
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: your area, you have the disadvantage of a shorter growing season,
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: but you have the advantage of higher I mean higher
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: monthly rainfall averages, lower monthly temp average temps than Indiana
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: per se. Okay, UM. How one of the bigger things
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: I learned is man, these northern states food plats very easy.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: They are, UM, and this method is going to work
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: better in your northern states because the daylight temperatures during
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: the during the hot season, they're getting as hot, and
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: we tend to have more monthly annual precipitation. UM. If
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: you're going to if you're going to be talking Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, UM,
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: there you need you really need to focus this technique
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: on lower areas that get adequate moisture. You try doing
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: what I'm about to describe up on a ridge top,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: a dry ridge top. It isn't gonna work real well.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: But really, all it is is using using the weeds
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: to go ahead and blank at the seed between the
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: dirt and the weed. If the seed itself doesn't care
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: if it's if it's covered with dirt or if it's
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: blanketed by a combo of dirt and dead weed. So
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: what I'm doing is I'm going in. I am top
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: seating this area with nine times out of ten. Uh,
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: just a hand seater because there's a reason that I'm
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: not working the dirt in this area. Um. But you
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: know it's a great trick for people that don't have
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: equip big equipment. Um, a ferminator. Ferminator is the best
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: a TV implement I've ever used in my life. But
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: you don't have to have one to put in a
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: food pot. You can't go out there and do nothing.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: You can put in a food pot with nothing more
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: than a backpack sprayer and a hand well, hecky wouldn't
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: even need a hand seater. You could throw them out
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: by hand if you really wanted to, but I'd suggest
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: getting a hand seater. So you go to this area,
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: you do nothing more than spray it with roundup regeneric equivalent.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: As a side note, please do not buy this from
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: a chain store. Instead, go to local coop and they
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: won't have a bottle. That's that's small enough for your use.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: But it's okay. It's it keeps and you're gonna be
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: able to buy enough round up to last year for
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: twenty years for less money than you're gonna be able
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: to buy it down at the big box store. They
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: rip you off on chemicals. A big box store so bad,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: it's beyond ridiculous. Um, But just go in there spray it.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: You can top seed right after. Because roundup is actually
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: a cont hacked her beside, meaning that it has to
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: come in contact with actively growing plant tissue be absorbed
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: into that plant for it to work. You can Heck,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: you could soak. I'm not suggesting anyone does this, but
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: you could soak seeds and round up before you plant them,
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: and they're still going to germinate because it's not going
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: to go It can only affect living plant tissue. Okay. Um,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: So I'll go ahead, right after I spray, I'll go
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: ahead and throw the brassicas or clover. You need to
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: use small sea varieties for the six stuff to work. Well, Um,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: I'll throw Brassica's clover right on top of the dirt,
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: and nine times out of ten I'm walking away. Right then,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: If if this is an area where I'm worried isn't
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: gonna get enough moisture, what I'll do is I'll come
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: back in about a week or two. I won't seed
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: right then, I'll just go ahead and spray. I'll come
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: back in a week or two before all the weeds
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: are fallen down, but yet they're dead. Now, toss the
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: seeds and just fashion some type of a drag now
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: to drag the weeds down to create the blanket there.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: But that a person. The biggest really, the biggest key
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: in all this is just the realization that we're not
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: we're not cash cropping here. We're not trying to create
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: uh cover photo for Farm Digest Weekly. All we're trying
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: to do is create enough food for deer. Weeds are
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: oftentimes most weeds are deer food, at least during various
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: stages growth stages of their life. Now, what we really
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: have to worry about isn't so much weeds but grasses, grasses.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: They there are enemies there. What ends up, choking stuff
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: out and getting ugly and all that good stuff, but
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: a few weeds in food plots. Who cares? As I said,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: that's dear food now. Um, and you take that approach,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: you can get food in all sorts of I won't
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: my and I'd love to take credit for this idea.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: My brother actually is the one who first thought of
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: it and started doing it. Um. His his ground has
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: a bunch of has a bunch of swamps. Okay. On
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: what he does is in those swamps they fill up.
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: They're just little pockets. They fill up in spring and
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: over summer they slowly recede till your time you get
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: to fall. All he does around those swamp edges is
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: tossed right on top of the dirt, tossed the cereal
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: ryots mixed I was talking about, and just be be creative.
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: They're all you need to do is getting enough food
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: off there for deer. It doesn't have to look if
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: you're trying to make your food plots look like what
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: like your neighbor's farm fields, there's nothing wrong with that,
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: But you sure you don't have to? Is there is
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: there anything else that you do when it comes to
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: food plots that that helps take things above and beyond.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: But then maybe it's a little unique beyond just the
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: basics of getting something to grow. Is there anything that
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: you're doing this kind of next level that we haven't
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: touched on On the food plot side, the big thing
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: is looking branches. Uh, go ahead and well, let's say
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: big things. When you're laying this stuff out o that
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: edge feathering. Awesome, you just created a nice little thick
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: band around this around the food plot. Well, there's especially
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: a year or two after that when it really starts
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: growing up. There's no reason that you can't cut a
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: trail through that stuff where you want the deer to
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: enter and eggs. It's not going to mean every single
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: year is entering an egg thing there now. But if
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: it's the buck you want to kill, that's all that
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: really matters. Um putting that going ahead, in putting a
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: scrape tree twenty yards out in front of your stand
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: with licking branches pointing back towards you. You can either
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: plant a tree and protect it until it gets to
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: that stage where licking branches are about nose level the deer,
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: or even go ahead and cut a tree, cut it off,
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: dig a hole two and a half three ft in
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: the ground and plant it now if you're gonna go
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: ahead and go that route, and when now, when it's planted,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: you've got the branches right about it, nose level to
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: deer pointing back towards the stand again, you know, because
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: that's going to help both draw them and position them
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: for the shop. You don't want to, if you're going
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: to go that route, use hardwoods because soft woods break
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: too easy. Or something I started messing with this past
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: year is just taking a treated fence post, slapping a
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: slap in a chunk of two by ten on top
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: of it, drilling some holes in, attaching some U bolts,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: and putting putting those outen plots. Now, all I have
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: to do each year is replace the branches that the
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: U boats are holding with new cut branches. You know.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: But what I'm really getting at here is again creativity.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: Make it so that that food plot has a ridiculous
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: amount of licking branches sitting right at nose level. You know,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: I'll go ahead and on one of them. More often
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: than not, I'll go ahead and slap out a magnum
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: scrape dripper with some gold and scrape trying to chum
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: the area just to start with. You don't absolutely have
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: to do that, though, if you don't want to go
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: out and get a magnum scrape dripper and spend money
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: on scent, don't but get those licking branches down at
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: nose levels. So now I'm creating as much of a
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: social hub and this food plot as I am a
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: food source, and I'm laying it out where. Okay, when
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: that buck is working that scrape tree safe wind, taking
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: his attention away from me within shooting distance, I got
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: all day to come to full draw. When that buck
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: is over there drinking in that water source of one
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: head and backstop the water source, so he has to
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: be facing broadside or away from me to get a drink.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: That happens to be in a safe wind location, just
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: like the scrape tree was within shooting distance of the stand.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: Put that entrance, that trail through the edge, feathering in
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: a safe wind direction twenty yards from the stand. So
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: if he comes out on that trail, you're killing him.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: Think about all these little things you can do. Not
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: any one of them changes the world. You had enough
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: of them together, though one it can be a pretty
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: darn big game changer. About the only other random food
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: food plot tip that I can think of that not
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: everybody in the world already knows is fulliar fertilizers. If
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: you're in a jam, so you go ahead, you put
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: in two acres of soybeans up at your place, and
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: oh man, those deer are just hammering the snot out
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: of them. You know right now, they're just they're wasted
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: on them. Um. And at the same time, you know,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: it's starting to get to the point where where the
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: weed competition is starting to get bad. Which is good
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: because those weeds you can use them to protect your
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: soybeans as they're growing up. But let's getting to the
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: point where they're starting to choke it out. They're wiping
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: out the areas where they can get to and the
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: stuff that can't is choked with weeds. Well, I gotta say,
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: I put off spring as long as I could to
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: use those weeds to protect those soybeans. But man, I
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: got a spray. Now we'll go ahead and add a
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: at a full fulliar fertilizer to that spray. So now
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: what you're doing one is here actually increasing your kill
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: rate by getting those weeds and grasses to absorb even
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: more chemical because they're actively trying to absorb the fertilizer
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: that was sprayed on them along with that chemical. And
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: at the same time, you're giving your planting a growth spurt.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: You're giving it a nice boost of a nice boost
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: of growth to kind of help you get ahead of
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: the curve a little bit more. That that's that's a
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: nice little trick that. I mean. It's not something that
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: I use every year on every food plot, by any
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: stretch of the imagination, but every year, I mean I've
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: got a whole bunch of food plots and a whole
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: bunch of different properties. Every year, I'm using it a
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: couple of times. It's just a nice little trick there.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: What about this scenario. What if I went ahead and
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: I planet soybeans or something in the spring, or maybe
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: I planted brassicas in August, like we're talking about earlier,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: but the rain that was supposed to come doesn't it.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: I get hit with a drought, or maybe the beans
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: just get hammered by the deer so much they're never
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: able to really get over that hump and they're eaten
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: down to the ground. And I get to sometime in
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: September and I'm looking at a blank slate, like the
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: plots have failed and what are you doing that? Scenarrow.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: Cereal rye is a great diaper um. It doesn't unlike
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: unlike oats, for example, where you plant them, it hits
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: a certain temperature and they freeze out. Cereal rye doesn't
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: freeze out the same with actually the winter wheat. If
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: it gets too cold, the winter week can freeze out
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: um cereal right, does it just merely goes to dorman
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: and winter wheat. By the way, it's far better than
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: just regular oats um for being able to handle that.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: But so what you can do is you can get
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: in there now in September and planted and grain in
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: either to wheat a serial rye. I personally, I keep
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: going back to. I keep going back to three parts
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: cereal right. One part been o It's it's the best
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: combo for what I'm trying to accomplish that I can
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: find you. All The oats pop real quick and easy,
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: um cereal right. It takes a little bit more work
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: to germinate them, but the oats pop real quick and
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: easy in the second pretty much the second to come
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: out of the ground. That's when they're most desirable, so
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: they take some initial feeding pressure. As the cereal rice
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: starts to get going. As a serial right gets going,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: it ends up. That's about the time when the when
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: the oats are starting to die off a little bit
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: and you get a nice little two punch combat of
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: the deal. That can as long as long as that
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: ground isn't frozen, that's cereal right, can germanate versus a
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: versus you try to If you try to plant soybeans
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: that time of year, you couldn't even get them to uh,
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: couldn't even get them to Germany because soil temperatures have
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: to be uh have to be up to a certain
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: point before they can or a serial ride. Now, as
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: long as it's not froze, that stuff can Germany and
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: you can just you can just broadcast that topsy that
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: when there's some rain coming and that will be all
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: you need to do. Probably you can, Yes, it is.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to kid you though. You're going to
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: get a better stand if you actually work the dirt.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: But as I said, so much of this is is Okay,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: this is what I really want? Now, what can I have?
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get as close to what I really
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: want as I can. But you know what, as I said,
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: I'm going to keep. Hopefully I've hammered this enough to
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: get it through. We're not cash cropping here. All we're
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: trying to do is grow some stuff that dear ell ete.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: So it doesn't have to look perfect, It doesn't have
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: to be a uniform stand, it doesn't have to be
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: any of that stuff. All it has to do is
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: offer them food that they want, nothing more and nothing less.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: Something is better than nothing, yes exactly, um, speaking of
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: which he don't be more than once over the years,
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: you know you're hunting back in the timber um, and
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: you happen to be hunting a little bit of an
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: open well, you can go ahead, and you can go
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: ahead and throw cereal Ryan Oates right down on the
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: ground of the forest, flour, do a little raking, and
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: if the leaves are off, it's probably gonna come up,
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: and it's There's be creative, is really what I'm trying
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: to hammer in all this stuff. Don't just because nobody
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: has said you can do something, that doesn't mean he can't.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: And just because everybody says you can love God, don't
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: listen to him if it's not working for you. Stop
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: and that that includes me. No matter how many people,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: including myself, are telling people to do something, if it's
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: not working for you, for the love of God, stop
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: and no matter how many people are telling you that
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: this is a huge mistake, don't do that that will
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: never work. If it's working for you, keep doing it.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: Because each and every one of us have different experiences,
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: different ways of doing things, different environments were working in,
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: and everything doesn't work the same for everybody. It doesn't
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: all somebody like me is doing. Really, Ultimately, all I'm
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: doing is sharing one of my successes and failures. But
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: the people that, in large parts, the people that are listening,
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: enabled me to have Now that, I'm not pretending that
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: everything I do is the smartest way of doing it
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: or the best, and I'm sure not pretending that everything
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: I do is going to work equally well for everyone
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: else out there. Each of us has to figure out
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: what works for us and run with it and ignore
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: all the noise that goes along with it, and be creative.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: Don't don't be free. I learned. I can tell you
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: I learned so much more from when I fall on
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: my face than I ever do from when I succeed no,
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: failure isn't a failure unless you don't learn anything from it. Yeah,
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: I think that's that's one of the most important things
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: that always keep top of mind when it comes to
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: deer hunting, because there's gonna be lots of quote unquote failures.
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: But to your point, take something from it, grow from it,
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: and you're being a better You're being a better position afterwards.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: Speaking of um to to kind of a change course
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: is a bit speaking of popular things that people recommend
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: a lot. One of those really really common catch phrases
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: out there is sanctuary. You know, people, authors, experts recommend
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: having a sanctuary on your property. Can you give us
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: your take on saying stuaries and if which I think
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: you do, think there's some value to them. What's the
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: requirements of our sanctuary? How do you make one or
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: make one better? Um, we'd love to hear about your
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: thoughts on that, and really, really if you peel the
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: onion I've been talking about sanctuary for a large part
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: of this entire conversation. UM, to me, sanctuary, all that
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: means is this is an area that I tend not
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: to go. UM. It doesn't mean that I'm never going
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: to go there. As a matter of fact, it is
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: a the definition using air quotes here that nobody can
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: see um of sanctuary. That that I've come to gather
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: most are talking about is all right, this area here,
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: you just plane, do not go into it for anything
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: other than to retrieve a deer. I'm sorry, I think
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: that's ridiculous. How do you if okay, you're sanctuary, what
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: you're really In my mind, it always it always comes
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: back to what am I trying to accomplish. I'm trying
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: to get dear to spend a disproportionate amount of time
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: on my ground. How do I do that? I do
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: that by giving them the best food, the best water,
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: the best um comfort, the best breeding opportunities, and the
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: best feeling of safety they can get in the entire area. Okay,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: so if I want them to feel safe, I stay out,
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: But geez, I can have that area achieve more than
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: just that. Hey, that that that's good. I'm glad I
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: was able to put pluck that low hanging fruit of
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: making them feel safe by not going in there. That's easy.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: But let's give them some comfort, Let's give them some betting,
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: Let's give them that. How do you do that? You
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: get in there and you do some work. I I
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: don't think that anybody is doing themselves any favors by
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: never stepping foot into this hundred acre area of their
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: h property. Please go in there and scout, improve it.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: Just don't spend a ridiculous amount of time in there, now,
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: try to What I do is every spring I go
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: in there, I shed hunt and scout. And while I'm sheding,
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: hunting and scouting these sanctuaries, I'm also looking, Okay, how
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: are they used? How are they specifically utilizing this? Can
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: I set up on the outside of it to take
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: advantage of that? Um? Their main entrance and exit rope?
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: Is there anything I need to do to improve this
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: from a comfort and safety standpoint? Maybe? Maybe if I
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: go ahead and plant a bunch of uh ten acres
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: in Norway spruce in here. Now, we'll go ahead and
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: space some fifteen feet apart between trees and between rose,
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: and will stagger the rose so they get even more sunlight.
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: Man ten years, that's awesome. Now I got some thermal
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: cover back in here too. Um And oh jeez, there
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: happens to be absolute killer stand side in here. Wow.
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: I can't get I can't get here safe. I can't.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: But oh jeezus, is good. You know what, I'm setting
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: up the stand. I'm gonna go ahead, and I'm gonna
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: set it up. And what I'm gonna do is I'm
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: gonna hope, like a son of a gun that I
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: never have to hunt it. But you know what, if
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: it gets into Bow mid November and that buck that
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: I'm getting trail camera picture of after trail camera picture
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: of all in the middle of the night, in the dark,
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: if I believe that he's actually bedding back in that sanctuary, okay,
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: it happens to be a great dear weather movement day
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: happens to be a great day for dear movement. As
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: far as the phase of season goals, you're talking during
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: the rot here. You know what, I'm gonna go in
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: extra early. I'm gonna sit in that sanctuary all darn
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: day or until I killed that thing. The catches is
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: that at max. I'm gonna do that to three times
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: a year. Okay. So what I'm trying to do is
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: I'm trying going to first establish what I'm actually talking about.
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: By sanctuary, it doesn't mean that I never go in here.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that I never hunted. It means that
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: I try my best not to, and I'm only going
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: in there when it serves a purpose, you know, to
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: do the scouting and work in spring and then come
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: fall because I just can't get it done from the outside,
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: and I really want to take this buck, so I'm
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: going to take one or two swings at. I treat
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: the majority of just about every property as my definition
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: of sanctuary. Um I would say that of the deer
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: cover on the properties I have set up over the years,
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever suggested anybody hunt more than
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: their deer cover. Now what I'm trying, And that's the beautiful,
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: beautiful part about habitat improvement is we can manufacture the
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: high odds low impact gear stands simply by getting in
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: there with a chainsaw and or dozer. Now you do that,
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: and now why do I Why do I want to
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: hunt deeper in there? I got the fame advantage by
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: going ten twenty fifty yards into the woods. There's no
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: there's no incentive to go in there deeper still because
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: the best spots I got I made around the around
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: lower impact areas. Okay, But yet if I still can't
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: get it done. I'm getting pictures of him. He's coming
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: from the sanctuary each night or a couple of times
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: a week, our two hours after dark. That's telling me
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: that he actually is betting in that sanctuary. He's living there.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: But man, he's not coming out, and he's not coming out.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: He's not coming out, he's not. Eventually, i'm gonna say
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: forget it. I'm going in there after him if I
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: can't get it done from the outside. The way I
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: define sanctuary simply put the areas that I cannot get
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: too safely on that ground, the deer cover areas. If
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: I can't get there, if I can't consistently get in
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: and out of that area without disturbing deer, I'm going
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: to make it a sanctuary because by because by hunting
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: that area, it's actually working against my goal of getting
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: deer to spend a disproportionate amount of time on this ground. Now,
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: if you're talking a situation more along lines of years
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: where you're going ahead and creating a you're not you're
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: better suited for creating a buck trap than you are
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: forgetting bucks to live on this ground. In that's its scenario,
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: I'm still going to have sanctuaries. I may have sanctuaries
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: and the dolls stay there because the dolls are my
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: baked um. But in that case I can actually hunt
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: very much, a very higher percent of my dirt without
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: negatively impacting me because I don't have Mr Bigley living there.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: All I've got to do is make sure that I
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: keep those one or two family groups of dose happy.
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: So in that case, I will actually design my sanctuary
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: more far more around them than anything else. But as
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: you can see from all this, again there's no clear
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: cut answer. It's it's remaining rigidly flexible and just using
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: that one part art, one part science what am I
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: trying to achieve, and then using the power that we
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: have that dear don't analytical fount this is my goal.
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: I'm now going to rely on my own, my own
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: knowledge and creativity to figure out how I can best
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: achieve this. Because if you pick up a book, or
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: you watch a television show or a web video or
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: whatever that is telling you giving you specifics on this
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: is what you need to do to manage your ground.
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: Don't pay a lack of attention to this person either
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: doesn't know what they're talking about. And they're trying to
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: sell you something, because every single situation is different, and
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: if you try to lock yourself into that cookie cutter approach,
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: it might. You may improve things on your property, but
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: I promise you you're not going to come anywhere close
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: to improving them as much as you potentially could. We haven't.
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: We haven't talked very much about betting area improvement, probably
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: because our original example. You know, I already had lots
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: of a lot of great cover on on our small
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: property here. But if you have a sanctuary area, if
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: you have some percentage of your property that's hard to hunt.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: You know that there's dear betted in there um, but
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: you want to either banned the amount of quality betting
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: or you just want to improve whatever is in there
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: um other than the things we've talked about already, Is
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: there anything important on the betting area side of things
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: that you want to touch on or that you uniquely
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: recommend um? And really, more than anything, I think the
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: most important thing I can possibly say is, right now,
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: there's this Oh heck, it's been around for fifteen years,
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: but lately it's become with key person or too real
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: popular to talk about dough factories Oh my goodness, if
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: you put out any food over summer, what you're gonna
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: do is you're going to create a dough factory, and
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: those doughs are going to drive all the bucks away.
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: And you just plane cannot go ahead and improve your
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: ground for anything but deer season without creating this dreaded
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: dope factory that drives all these dear let's pure ignorant ds.
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: I'm telling you property I've I've managed somewhere over I've
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: honestly can't give you an honest answer, but somewhere over
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: thirty different properties from multi year spans um almost almost
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: without exception. There was one, but there was an that
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: ball deal, and uh but almost without with the exception
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: of one property, I can think of, every single one
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: of those properties ended up holding more dear than the
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: surrounding ground. They all had more doughs living on them
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty five days a year per acre
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: than the surrounding properties. And you know what else, they'll
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: add more mature bucks living on them per square acre
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: the entire year long. It's not that there's nothing to
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: this bologny about how and they offered ridiculous amount ofs
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: of nutrition there is nothing legitimate about this idea. It
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: if you offer offer nutrition outside of hunting season that
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: you cannot hold mature box. What it all comes down
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: to is property layout. If you improve every inch of
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: your ground, you are not doing yourself any favors. You
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: want dead zones in your property if you don't. Right
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: off the bat, if you don't have dead zones in
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: your property, how are you going to access it? Because
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: every that means that you've improved every inch. That means
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: there's deer every inch of your ground at times. Now,
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: I don't want that. I want areas that the deer
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: don't want to go, because That's how I'm getting in
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: and out. Okay, um, next, by improving every inch of
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: your ground, what you're doing is you're spreading the dose
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: out and goes back to goes back to the bedding.
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: And That's where I'm getting into all this stuff. Um.
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: Bucks are way more selective when it comes well. Bucks
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: place a much much, much much higher premium on personal
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: safety than family groups do. Therefore, where where when are
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: they most vulnerable? They're most vulnerable when they're betting. So
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: Mr Big has the extremely high tendency of putting so
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: much more importance on betting safety than the family groups
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: do family groups in general. You know what, just just
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: give me a place that I can lay down that
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: I feel somewhat safe, that's close to food, because I'm lazy.
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: So would I typically do is I try to stack
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: the dough bedding around the food, and I tried to
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: put that food away from known buck betting areas. I
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: want to leave those buckbedding areas alone because what is
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: true is from what I've seen, it does seem like
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: Mr Big doesn't really care for a bunch of women
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: and kids running through his bedroom all the time. He
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: wants a mancave. He wants an area that he can
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: pretty much just be left the heck alone and feel safe.
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: At the same time, I suspect, I can't swear this,
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: but I suspect that the reason that he doesn't want
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: the does and fawns around is because they're making disturbances.
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: And now I gotta keep word. What's that twig snapping there?
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: Oh Jesus, just a kid again. God damn, I'm trying
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: to sleep. Um, So go ahead and stack the doughs
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: around the food. You can do that by plant heck,
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: you can do it. By planting trees that UM Norway
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: spruce example, I just gave earlier for something else UM
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: to give that security cover and thermal cover. You can
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: do it with by hinge cutting quarter acre or half
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: acre area acre area UM that's relatively flat where the
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: deer would feel otherwise comfortable bedding UM. In other words,
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: you're not walking by it, you know, within within fifty
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: yards every other day, kicking them out uh stack. You
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: can do it with warm season native grasses as well.
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: There's company out of Michigan's who I get it from Mscanthus.
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: It's a oriental it's a perennial sterile oriental grass. You
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: go ahead and you plant switch grass or big blue
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: or indian up by you, and guess what's going to
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: happen the first or second first or second storm that
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: goes through snow storm that's sofs gonna be lay flat.
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: But you go ahead and use that mascanthus and that
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: although that's pushing, that's actually pushing the growth. Its oone
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: pushing it. But you might be able to get away
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: with it yet. UM. You plant Muscantus there, that stuff
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: is gonna stand up far better. Works great for screening
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: as well, um, but but between native grasses or a muscantus,
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: or planting trees or creating hinge cut bedding areas, I'm
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and try to stack the doughs around
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: the food. That's where they want to be anyway. You know,
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: they want to be as close to their food source
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: as they can be while still feeling safe. There's all
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: sorts of talk about creating buck beds. You can go
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: on YouTube right now and see some exceptionally good videos
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: on creating buck beds, and that's good and great and
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: sexy as hell. But I can tell you I virtually
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: that I virtually never make them for management stamp. I'll
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: make twenty thirty a year, but really, honestly, that's for
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: my own sake, trying to learn what am I missing here?
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: Can I get this work? Because my experience has been
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: I have unbelievable look making a many little igloo with
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: an entrance and an exit at locations that bucks want
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: to bed. But man, I make them other places where
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: they don't want to bet and I maybe get five
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: percent success, and I'm probably exaggerating at that. I think.
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: I think the idea of creating buck beds is the
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: most over aspect of all of management. As I said,
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: they work awesome when I make them in spots bucks
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: already want to bed. But guess what, they already want
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: to bed there, and they're already bed there. So what
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: did I just accomplish? I'm maybe they bet they're a
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: little bit more afterwards. But I'll tell you what, I've
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: yet to have yet to get to a property where
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: that becomes a top priority because there's so many other
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: things that are so much more important. Now where this
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: will work, and when I do go ahead and suggest
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: this from a management standpoint, is one of those areas
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: where the bucks would otherwise like to bed, there's something
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: wrong with them. For example, during summer, dear love betting
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: on overgrown fence lines. You know, bucks to bachelor groups
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: frankly because they're out of the woods and they don't
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: have to deal with as many bugs, and well the
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: foods right there, all that good stuff. If that you
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: go ahead and create some pockets that deer can crawl
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: into in that overgrown fence line, Now all of a sudden,
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: they'll they'll use it, whereas if it was so thick
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: they couldn't snuggle in there, as as they weren't before
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: you take that point that bucks have been bedding on
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: for years and years and years, you have a tornado,
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: go through, dump a whole bunch of big oaks on
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: that point to the point to the extent that they
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: can't bed there anymore. Now going in there and cleaning
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: that up so they can still bed in there. Oh heck, yes,
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: that's extremely beneficial. But the dirty, the dirty little secret,
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: at least for me, is I don't make buck I
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: hardly make buck beds for management at all. I focus
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: on dolls. And the reason I'm focusing on dolls is
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: to keep them away from those existing buck bedding areas.
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: I do that, and that works pretty darn well. That
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: makes sense. Now, speaking of our mature bucks, and one
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: of the goals that many people might have is how
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: to get more mature bucks to use your property. Um,
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: I've I've I've read about something you call a checkerboard
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: approach to how you take all these habitat things we've
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: been talking about, and then you use a checkerboard approach
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: to try to make it a little bit more feasible
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: for multiple mature bucks to set up shop. Can you
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: describe that? Sure? Can? Um? And what it is is again,
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: it all goes back to, really, if you think about it,
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: everything we're talking about goes back to one of the
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: first things I said, and that's about goals. If your
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: goal is too for example, you just want someplace for
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: your grandkids to be able to come out and have
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: fun and do some hunt, you know you're probably better
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: off setting up that forty. So you have one may,
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: you have one grandson who wants to do the set
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: up one main food source, because now you're concentrating as
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: many deer on that one main food sources you can.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: Odds are pretty darn good that every single time that
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: old fellow goes out, he's gonna see deer and he's
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: gonna come back shaken, and he's gonna come back all
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: starts to happy. As you divide up these food sources
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: and bedding areas and such, you're spreading der outmore. You're
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: deluding the concentration effect, making it making it harder to hunt.
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: So you want to you want to figure out where
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: your goal falls on the sliding scale. If you're looking
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: at trying to hold the maximum number of mature bucks
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: on that ground, having one food source, one primary food source,
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: one primary betting source, one primary water source is not
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: your best choice because during most of the fall, at
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: this point, you got the ruck going on. Now the
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: bachelor groups have broken up and you're looking at competition
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: instead of a group of happy, go lucky idiots like
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: they were all summer long. When that domin and I
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: probably should back up just one second here and talk
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: about dominance just for flit second. And that is because
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: everybody thinks of the biggest buck in the woods, is
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: your dominant buck. Not necessarily, it's a matter of fact,
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: very often not especially when you're looking at rack. It
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: takes a lot of energy to produce on top of
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: the head. Generally speaking, those bucks that don't have a
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: ridiculous amount of bone on top of their head, they're
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: putting that energy everything else being equal, they're putting that
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: energy into their bodies instead. Body and attitude is what
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: dominance is. Where dominance comes from, not rack size. Rack
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: size has nothing to do with it at all. It
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: has to do with so much to do with attitude.
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: And then next, can you back it up and your
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: your rack? You're probably I rack is nothing more than
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: nothing more than essentially a blunt instrument that you're pushing
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: against um, so very often you're more your most dominant
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: bucks are not your biggest rack box. Very very often. UM,
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: Now you have that one food source on that property,
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: and here you got the dominant buck and this gorgeous
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: buck that subordinate that you just happens to have an
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: extra twenty inches on his head. When they end up
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: getting in a fight at that food source and the
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: dominant one chases them off, I really want to have
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: a secondary food source on my ground where that bucking
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: shift too. Yes, having the two food sword, taking your
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: forty and dividing it up, looking at it as two
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: twenties instead of one forty, and going ahead and offering
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: the bedding, the water, the food over here and one
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: of them and the bedding and water and food over
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: here on another one. That does go ahead and make
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: it more challenging for hunting because now you have two
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: options instead of one. But it gives you the potential
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: of holding having more mature bucks set up their dairylight
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: core areas on your ground than when you have just one.
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: Because on any single property anywhere out there in the
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: deer country, there is one buck at a time on
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: that ground that's dominant, and if there's two of them
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: that think they are, those two are going to more
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: than not fight it out until one of them leaves
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: or dies. Now So, rather than offering everything in one location,
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: splitting up a property and offering everything in multiple locations
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: helps reduce social stress. And if we are going to
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: talk about deer management, which is real hard to do
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: on a private land scale. Um, when when I talk
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: deer management, I'm not talking anywhere near the management that
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: most people are assuming, because you know what, you got
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: forty acres of ground. There's only so darn much you
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: can do. But if you're talking management, a huge part
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: of that is social stress, as a matter of fact,
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: is probably the most ignored topic in in deer management
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 1: and most horribly misunderstood. Social stress is think back to
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: when we were back in high school, grade school, middle school.
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: Sometime virtually every one of us got ticked on at
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: one point in their life. How bad did you want
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: to walk down those halls? Now you I can't speak
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: for anybody else, but I had a when I was
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: a kid. Um, yeah, I shouldn't go into because it
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: makes me sound really the My brother got in a
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: my younger brother got in a fight with the kid
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: who was in special education, who was two years older
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: than me and three years older than him. I made
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: the mistake of trying to defend my brother. And I'll
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: tell you what, You've got an entire class of kids,
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: they're older than you, that want to beat up I
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: was not real comfortable going to school during that. It's
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: the same type of stuff, for dear, look at all
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: the studies out there on health impacts of stress and
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: how they in humans, and how it leads to so
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: many such an elevated risk of heart attack and stroke
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: and all this stuff. I I firmly believe the exact
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: same thing goes on in the dear world. Firmly believe it.
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: That stress. You can see it play out so often
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: when you kill that dominant buck on the ground, that
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: subordinate buck that was making very good jumps from year
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: to year. That next year, look out, buddy, because nine
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: times and he puts inches on his head that he's
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: never put on before now, all due to stress. You
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: go ahead, you divide these grounds up. You reduce the
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: stress of the family groups, you reduce the stress of
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: the box, and generally speaking, you have happier, healthier dear
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: as a resolved and by dividing it up, you help
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: minimize that stress while making it so you can potentially
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: hold more dear. That makes all the sense in the world.
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: And Steve, you never you never failed to or you
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: never what's the way how do you phrase this? You
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: never disappoint is what I'm trying to say. I knew
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 1: that we would, but I knew we would get a
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: ton of interesting ideas and value from you. And the
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: only thing I regret is that we didn't get to
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: cover than many other things I was hoping to talk about.
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: But but that's because we covered some any other great things.
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: And I don't want to keep you any longer. We've
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: been talking up. That's your best quality, Steve, is that
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: you've got lots to share, UM, So I don't want
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: to keep you any longer. I've kept it here for
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: for quite a while already, but I appreciate it so much, Steve.
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: And if people want to to learn more about what
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: you have to say, and they want to either check
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: out your books or your web shows or anything else
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: out there, can you point us in what direction they
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 1: can go to find all the other things that you're
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: working on. UM, well, I've got two different web shows
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: that I'm doing for Deer and Deer Hunting their web
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: shows exclusively. One is Grown Big and the others Hunt
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: them Big. Um. They're oh five to eight minute shows
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: that just covered one, just drilled down on one tip.
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: They are aired every Wednesday on Deer and Deer Huntings
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: Facebook page. I also air them as well on and
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: then Uh. Speaking of shows, uh, co host Deer and
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: Deer Hunting TV. I'm pretty sure they're on Pursuit again
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: this year. Um and uh otherwise I have I'm going
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: to go ahead in this year. At some point I'm
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: going to create my own website, which no doubt will
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: be Steve Bartellow Outdoors and have all this stuff on there.
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: But for now, um another Facebook page Steve bart Hello Outdoors.
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: I post post five tip of day during the work
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: week free, well yeah free. Actually, all my companies that
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: I pro staff for, thank god for them. Um, they
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: they're sponsoring them, but it's I love the company as
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: I work with. None of them pressure me to say
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: anything about any of their stuff. The Facebook junk really
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: is me just sharing stuff and them being happy to
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: be associated with it. Uh. So for now, i guess
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: that's that's that's about it. Um Books. I no longer
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: sell any of any of the books myself. Ah, you
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: can always jump on Shop Deer Hunting. Deer and Deer
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: Hunting's website sells two of them, including the management book,
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: and then uh um you can get virtually anything off
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: I Amazon by just doing a search on my name
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: there if you're interested. But that said that Facebook page,
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to share all this stuff for nothing. It's
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: your audience, and I imagine at the state you're at
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: your career, you'll be able to understand this and appreciate this.
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: I really like my life, I really really do, and
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: it is at least due to your audience. Now, they're
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 1: the ones who allowed me to do this stuff, and
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: I'm to the point where I'm dug in as deep
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: as a kick and a coon hound and they ain't
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: getting me out anymore. And that's because of them. So
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: what I'm trying to do as much as I can
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: is use this phase in my career to say thanks
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: and just dump the dump whatever I think I may
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: have learned from these audiences empowering me to do this
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 1: stuff for free, and now I know it sounds kind
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: of silly and cheesy, but honestly, it's the absolute least
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: they can do. This idiot from northern Wisconsin who who
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: his homeroom teacher had twenty bet with my freshman wrestling
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: coach that wouldn't even graduate high school. I'm living my
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: dream because of everybody who's listening to this stuff, and
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: that's never lost on me and talk that's that is
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: pretty awesome. I can definitely relate. There's a lot to
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: be thankful for, no doubt about that. And I think
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: it's great that you, you know, continue to give back
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: to to that community, and I know a lot of
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: people have benefited from it, and I can I can
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: attest to that. The Facebook tips of the day and
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: stuff that you're sharing that is really good stuff, really
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: in depth. You're putting some some really good original content
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 1: out there on your Facebook page. So everyone listening, check
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: out the books, check out the web shows, and like
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: Steve said, definitely follow him on his Facebook page where
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: it seems like there's going to be more and more
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: good stuff. So Steve, thank you so much taking the
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: time to do this for a third time. It's as usual,
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: was great, my pleasure. My friend and that is the
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: end of this podcast, so we'll make this short and sweet.
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or whatever podcast
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: app you use if you're not already doing that. And
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: Google actually just released a brand new podcast app that's
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: supposed to be pretty good, so if you use an
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 1: Android phone, that would be a great way to listen
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: to this podcast in the future, so check that out. Otherwise,
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: hit us up on Instagram and Facebook and YouTube. Thank
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: you so much for your time, thanks for being a supporter,
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.