Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 907: Janis Putelis’ Land Management Journey From Zero to Hero

Transcript

Ep. 907: Janis Putelis’ Land Management Journey From Zero to Hero · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods presented by First Light, creating proven
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by the one and only Yannis
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Pitelus to discuss his land management journey, going from ground
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: zero all the way to the implementation of significant wildlife
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: habitat improvement projects such as creating wildlife openings, oak savannahs,
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: timber stand improvements, and much more. All Right, welcome back
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: First Light, And this week on the show, I'm joined
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: by my good buddy, the one and only the Latvian Eagle,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: mister Jannis tell Us, and we're talking about a topic
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: that is near and dear to my heart and something
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: that in recent years has really come on for Yanni,
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: and that's habitat improvement. Wildlife habitat projects work on the ground,
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: improving the landscape for deer and turkeys and other critters.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: And this is something that you know, Jannis for a
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: long time was not interested in this at all. He
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: has lived out west for many years, but in recent
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: years he has had a kind of restirring of the
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: soul around white tails, which has led to him spending
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: more time in Wisconsin at his family hunting property and
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: in the last handful of years actually diving really deep
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: into the habitat side of things. So today's story is
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: this really interesting look at someone going from kind of
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: you know, not having any experience and really interest at
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: the beginning in improving a landscape for wildlife, to then
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: diving in headfirst and learning everything he possible he could,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: talking to all sorts of people, consuming every different resource
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: he possibly could, and then starting to try these things
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: on his own. And now you know, four or five
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: years later, he has made some real changes on his property.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: He's made a big difference. Some real things are happening now.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: So this is a story and a conversation that I
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: think if you are new to the habitat improvement world,
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: or if you're just getting started, or if you're intrigued
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: about maybe someday trying to do some work on your
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: back forty or your family farm, or a new property
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: that you are wanting to buy, if any of that
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: is in your future if you have been curious, maybe
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: you know, intimidated by this kind of stuff. Our chat
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: today is going to be a big eye opener because,
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: you know, making a difference on the ground is something
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: that anyone can do, whether you have been doing this
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: for decades or if you're brand new, like Giannis was
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: just a handful of years ago. So our story today
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: will be documenting that entire path, that entire process, the
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: journey from kind of quote unquote off the couch to
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: doing some real stuff now. So that's our chat today
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: with Yanni. I think you're going to enjoy it. In
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: my world, lots of exciting stuff happening. I need to
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: do a podcast here soon about a recent bit of
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: turkey hunting success that we had that's very exciting here
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: with my family, but I will hold that off for
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: another time, and I think we should just get right
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: into it. The only other piece of housekeeping I guess
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: I will let you know is that this week, if
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: you are listening to this, the week this is coming out,
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: which is oh, let me just tell you here in
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: a second, this podcast will be dropping May fifteenth, twenty
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: twenty five. So if you are listening that day or
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: the next it's Dog Week at meat Eater, which means
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: that you are going to be getting all sorts of
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: really fun and informative dog related content across the media network,
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: whether it be the Houndation's podcast that Tony does over
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: in Cal's feed, or the YouTube channel to meet YouTube
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: channel across the website. I know there's a dog photo
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: contest and all sorts of stuff. So going over to
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: the meat eater dot com to engage with our dog
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: and hunting dog content, lots of stuff there. I'll remind
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: you again as I said last week, please subscribe to
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: this podcast, leave a review on iTunes or Spotify or
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: wherever you do that, and then check out the rest
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: of the meat Eater podcast network. I think a lot
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: of people don't realize that there's actually a bunch of
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: other shows that we produce in addition to this. In
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: addition to the flagship Meet it or podcast, We've also
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: got you know, Cal's Weeken Review, which is going to
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: give you conservation and hunting and fishing related news. Uh,
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: there's the God's Country podcast, which is a really fun
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: look at the intersection of country music and the outdoors. There's,
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: of course Tony's Foundations podcast and Foundations here on this
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: speed there is the Cutting the Distance podcast again more
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: tactics and Western focused hunting. Uh. And then we can't
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: forget Bear and that country life over there with play
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Newcome and Brenton Reeves and the heck, I might be
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: forgetting something, but lots and lots to check out if
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: you are into hunting, fishing, conservation and you know, spending
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: your time and energy in the outdoors. So without further ado,
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: let's get to another member of the Mediator crew, my
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: good friend, the one and only Jannis, who tell us
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: and the story of how he went from zero to
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: hero when it comes to whitetail habitat management. All right
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: with me now on the line. It's my good pal,
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: mister Jannis tell us, Yanni, I enjoy our chats off air,
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: so I'm excited to have one on air here for
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: the first time in a little bit, so welcome back.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: Thank you. Yeah, I do as well. I always appreciate
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: that you are willing to take the time, although as
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: busy as you are, it's uh, it's almost like trying
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: to get a hold of Stephen Ranella. I have to
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: like talk to Steve's assistant to just get like a
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: five minute convo about what we're doing this weekend with
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: the kids. And I feel like it's becoming that way
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: with you too.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Oh. I don't want that to be the case.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: But I know, well priorities, you know, but I do
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: want to before we get started. I do. I feel
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: like I owe you an apology because really episode two
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: fifteen of the Wire to Hunt podcast. You had to
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: go way back, but I just found it somewhere now
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: now I'm not look, Oh, there it is yep us.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: You interviewed Steve and myself to talk about white tails
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: when we were in Michigan hunting white tails, I believe
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: right on.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Turkeys.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: Wasn't that when we were hunting our friends farm?
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: I think we're well, I thought we were Matt's hunting turkeys,
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: but maybe it was Dear. I can't remember it was Mats.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Could have been it could it could have been anyways.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: I won't speak for Steve, but i'll, you know, speak
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: for myself, but we I definitely had uh sort of
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: a standoff ish I'm too cool for white tails attitude,
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: and I'd like to say I could blame that on
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: just being like young and dumb.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: But I mean, it wasn't that long ago, like you
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: were just five years ago.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Huh, you were just middle aged and dumb.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, totally middle aged and dumb. And you know, it
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: was just a time in my life where I just
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: wasn't that into the white tails, but it was. It was.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: It was literally the the leading cusp, the leading edge
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: of where I've gotten to now. And uh, as everybody knows,
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: I've done it my whole life, but never really had
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: I guess just taken the next step to just you know,
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: really call it a passion or just really get into it.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: And at that time I actually had was given the
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: opportunity to hunt white tails more and to do it
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: more often back where we have some property in Wisconsin,
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: and I really kind of got the bug. And so listen,
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying any other hunting is any less interesting
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: to me. You know, bugle and bulls and goblin turkeys,
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: they rank very high and what I love to do,
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: but whitetail deer and white tail deer habitat management and
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: that includes you know, habitat management for all the other
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: species that live with white tail deer. But all that stuff, now,
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: is it occupies a large chunk of time in my
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: mind on a daily basis. So anyways, apologies for you know,
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: slandering your love for white tail deer hunting general white
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: tail deer hunting, and uh, yeah, that's all I can
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: say about it.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: That was amazing. G Honest, I think I need to
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: have you talk to my wife about how to do that.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: That was terrific love of may a couple like that.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: It's been so fun though, to watch you know, from Afar,
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: to see your your new excitement around it. And you know,
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: we talked about this a few years ago when you
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: were on the show and we I had just gone
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: down and visited your place with you. But seeing that
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: fresh excitement around it is it's it's kind of a
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: what's the word I'm looking for, Not addictive, but uh,
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: contagious contagious. Yeah, and uh and you know I'm the
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: opposite in to you, and that I've been so deep
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: in the white tail world that I've I've gotten cover
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: up in it, completely consumed with it, and then being
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: with you again it helps kind of make it fresh
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: again for me. And uh, and that's been fun too,
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: So I love getting a geek out with you. When
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: you're sending text messages and and trying to figure stuff out.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: So I'm curious though, you know, I know you mentioned
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: that stuff started to get rekindled when you start going
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: back to the Wisconsin property with your family. Was there
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: any more specific inciting incident or moment or or something
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: happened you're like, oh, wow, Like now I'm now I've
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: really got it. Was there anything that really turned the
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: corner for you that brought you back into this world
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: more specifically?
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't say it's one specific incident, but what I've
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: realized about myself is that I like just to have
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: fresh stuff right to be working on, and stuff that
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: I don't know about. And you know, it's one of
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: those jack of all trades, master of none, you know,
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: like I'm a pretty good turkey hunter, pretty good elk hunter.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: Am I as good as you know the greats out there? Definitely?
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: I know means but I think that white tailed deer hunting,
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: even though I've been doing it for so long, that,
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: you know, jumping into it again with sort of you know,
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: a fresh set of eyes and a fresh amount of
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: time to put towards it, that's really what did it.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: And then realizing that, oh, I don't don't really know
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: that much about it. There's a lot to learn here,
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: there's a lot to explore, even just on the same
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: acres I've been hunting my whole life. So I think
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: it was more that that just sort of like, oh,
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: here's this whole thing that you know, I've got at
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: least five to ten years of really you know, jumping
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: in headfirst into it before I'm going to sort of
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: feel like, oh, I get it. You know, I'm confident.
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: I always put it this way, where like, there comes
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: a time where it was even this way. It was
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: squirrel hunting, right where like the first ten times I
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: went squirrel hunting, I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing,
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: Like where should I be? What trees do they like
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: to be in? Is it better to be out early
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: or midday? I mean, they still humble me. But it
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: got to a point where I knew I was good
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: enough at scroll hunting where I could guide my kids
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: scroll hunting and have a good day. I got good
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: enough at turkey hunting where I could take people turkey
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: hunting and probably kill a turkey with them. You know,
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: I guided elk hunts. I could take people out elk
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: hunting and kill turkey. So there will come a day
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: where I'll feel confident enough whitesell deer hunting that I'll
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: be able to say, oh, yeah, come with me. I'll
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: put you in a spot where you'll probably see a deer.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, there's something about those big, those early phases
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: of any new love, right, There's just something so intoxicating
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: about the curiosity never being fully quenched, Like there's always
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: something new to learn, there's always another rabbit hole to
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: go down. There's always more and more and more that
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: I mean. I mean, you know, I'm always reading. I'm
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: just like that person is to constantly learn new things.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: So yeah, when it comes to activities that way, same
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: same thing. Now, four years ago I went back and
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: confirmed this too. Four years ago, I visited your place
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: there in Wisconsin. We walked it, We looked at all
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: sorts of things, talk through ideas, hunting strategies, whatnot, talk
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: through some possible habitat, things that you might want to do.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: We began a very little, tiny project and we did
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: a podcast recapping kind of the long history of your place,
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: everything that's gone on there, what your hopes and dreams,
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: are for it everything, so on and so forth. For
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: folks that didn't hear that one, can you give us
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: like the cliff notes version, just a really quick recap
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: of what's the property situation, Like what are we talking
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: about here, what are we working with? And then what
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: are the goals with this place now? So how do
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: we get here and what kind of set the stage?
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: For sure? I probably should have listened to that podcast too,
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: that would have been beneficial to spur this on.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: But assume most people probably didn't hear.
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: So yeah, well go back, go back and listen. I will. Hey,
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: give me just a second, my dog needs inside.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no problem.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So I've been hunting the same spot since I
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: was a young boy, I don't know, eleven or twelve
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: in south central Wisconsin. We're basically at the northern edge
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: of the driftless area my dad had had owned with
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: a partner of his uh a forty acre chunk. They
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: actually sold it and bought one that was a little
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: bit closer to the lodging that we stayed at. And
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: reason beings because there's other labbyans that own there's like
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: a total of roughly four hundred contiguous acres that kind
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: of everybody hunts together as sort of a co op,
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: I guess, you know, and we all work together on it.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: And so about I don't know, Well, I guess it
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: might have been had I bought the property when we
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: did that. Had I bought in yet when we did that,
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: I don't think I had.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: I don't think so.
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So I don't know. Maybe three years ago my
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: dad's partner wanted out of the property and so it
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: was an opportunity for me to buy in. And timing
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: was great because we had just sold a house, had
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: some extra cash, and so we rolled it right into that.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: And then basically immediately my dad hands me this contract
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: that says MFL Managed Forest Law in Wisconsin. I'm like,
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: what's this. He's like, well, it's his program we're enrolled in.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: You know, it keeps our taxes really low. But it
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: basically the states telling us how to manage our timber,
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: you know, like they want you practicing silver culture. And
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, I don't know anything about this, but yeah,
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: I'll check it out. And so I was basically like
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: thrown pushed headfirst into having to do like some sort
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: of habitat management. I mean, it was just logging at
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: that time the way I was looking at it, But
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: that's sort of what really got me thinking a lot
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: about it. And so as I was talking to the
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: forester about what needed to be done, because they basically
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: had already written a sort of a prescription for you know,
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: what the next fifty years looked like on that property.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: And after talking to the forester a bunch, I realized
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: that in his own words, he's like, look, Because I
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: would always ask him, well, can we do this or
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: can we do that? And in his own words, he's like, look,
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: as long as you're doing something, I'm going to be happy.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: Because I think that for the most part is I
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: don't know what the percentage is, but I think he
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: has a long list of delinquent MFL landowners that have
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: been in the program for twenty years, twenty five, thirty
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: years and haven't done anything. And so you know, there
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: comes a time where he has to start writing letters
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: that say, hey, if you don't, you know, start managing
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: your forest actively, you're gonna to start paying these back taxes. Right.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: He doesn't want to do that. That's not fun for him,
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: but anyways, so yeah, basically he's like, we can mold
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: whatever it is to fit into the plan. Really, I'm
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: sure there's some extremes that it wouldn't work. But like
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: I said, the MFL program is it's a state program
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: for Wisconsin, and basically, you know, we pay little to
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: no taxes in exchange for them sort of you know,
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: making sure that we are actively growing and harvesting timber.
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: But I realized well before we get into the weeds
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: about it. I guess that's sort of like the rough
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: history that brings us up to you know, when the
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: habitat work really started, and I would say early on.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: The main goals obviously was to improve the habitat for
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: all wildlife species including deer, including turkeys. Meet the goals
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: of the MFL plan, and hopefully what's nice about this
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: chunk is that the little ridge that we have on
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: it is very climbable, walkable even for people in older age.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: The rest of the properties pretty flat. The other four
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: hundred acres are very hilly, so as my dad and
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: his peers age. Unless we get some side by sides
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: there can am If you're listening, you know, it's just
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: going to be harder for them to use utilize all
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: of that property, right, So this is nice because out
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: of the forty acres, there's I don't know, maybe ten
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: that's like a hill and the rest of its flat,
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: so very accessible. And so one of the main goals
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: I think was once this was all done, is to
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: have you know, very accessible hunting for guys that are
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: in their seventies and beyond.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, from a hunting perspective, expand a little bit
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: on like how many people do you envision hunting this?
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: Is this going to be like a just a bow
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: hunting spot or is this bow hunting and gun hunting?
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: Is this deer? Is this deer in turkeys and everything?
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: A little bit more in the use of it.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: Sure, I would imagine that for bow hunting it will
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: be all the above. I mean, we'll utilize it as
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: much as we can. For bow hunting, it'll probably mostly
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: be my dad and I And if it seems like
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: that's too much pressure, and again we're lucky because we
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: have access to the other four hundred acres and so
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: we can you know, rotate through and you know, maybe
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: only hunt that forty you know, on the right wind
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: every two or three days or whatever in rifle season. Again,
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: if it's if it can hold two hunters or three
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: hunters and be worthwhile to hunt that way. Once it's
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: the habitat is matured into what I'm hoping, then great,
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: we'll do that. You know. Again, these guys they hunt,
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: you know, two to three days for the opener of
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: the rifle season, and that's really about it. But so yeah,
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: I would say as much as possible, but the I'd
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: say the the hardcore hunting will happen in BO season
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: when my dad and I are there usually together sometime
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: early in Nova member and I'll give him first DIBs,
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: you know, and let him kind of work it and
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: try to give him as much as advice and direction
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: direction as I can to hunt properly so that if
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: we are holding a good buck that we you know,
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: we don't run him out of there.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So one of the most common questions that I
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: get from folks or or like little anecdotes I hear
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: from people kind of similar shoes to you, is just
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: around how do I make a plan? How do I
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: figure out what to actually do? Because there's so many possibilities.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: You hear podcasts, you read articles, there's there's a thousand
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: different things you can do or that people say you
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: should do, and then you're trying to look at your
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: actual piece of ground and figure out, how do I
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: make a priority, how do I make a plan? How
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: do I do this stuff? You know, coming into this
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: kind of cold turkey the way you were, how did
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: you go about putting together a plan and figuring out
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: what's steps to take in what order? What was that
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: process like for you?
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: Certainly just talking to a lot of people. And that's
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: you know, started with our the MFL forester that works
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: for the state of Wisconsin, you know, people like you.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: I started calling. I got numbers of other neighbors in
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: the area there from my forester of people that were,
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: you know, going above and beyond the normal MFL plan
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: requirements and actually doing habitat improvement in his eyes, all
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: the way up to you know, prescribe burning and so
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: talking to neighbors, Uh going there and then you know,
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: going to neighbors places, looking at what they have done,
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: looking at results. I mean, I'm still doing that now.
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: I was. Actually I set up a I'm lucky to
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: have so many neighbors that are into this sort of
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: thing and are doing it, but we had I went
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: to a prescribe burn when I was there just a
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: couple of weeks ago and helped to help the neighbor out,
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: got to see his place and got to see a
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: prescribe burn in the woods go down. And then we
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: went on another tour on a really big property that
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: you know, you can almost pick any sort of oak
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: regeneration time frame and oak regeneration style and sort of
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: the I don't know the tactics or the processes that
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: were implemented to see and go, oh, here's oak regeneration
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: five years out with no fire. Fire, here's oak regeneration
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: with five years out with fire. Here's oak regeneration where
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: they did a bunch of forestry mulchain but no fire.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: And then we went and saw some oak regeneration that
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: was you know, ten years old right after just a
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: straight clear cut with nothing having been done. So I
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: think just going and seeing, you know, neighboring properties. You know,
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: there's a big group in Wisconsin called the Mississippi Valley
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: Land Conservancy, I believe, and so you know, they conserved
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: areas for public use and but they you know, actively
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: heavily manage it. And so talking to those guys, because
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: we've been talking about putting our place into a conservation.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: He'sman too. But talking to them, they're like, oh, yeah,
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: there's a place not far from you that where we
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: burn often and there's oak savannah there, and so you
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: know I've gone there and looked at that and see
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: what that looks like. You know, again, I have a
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: lot of resources that probably a little bit more than
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: a lot of people. But talking to people like Jared
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: van Hyes, who has also been there and you know,
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: wrote me up a very quick sort of plan of
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: you know how he would envision it. So yeah, we're
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: definitely forced into it through the MFL plan that we
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: I had to do something and that and that doing
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: something was a lot of logging, and sort of in
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: a way, you know, that was the plan. I could,
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: I could tweak it, I could be flexible with it,
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: but like, we had to log and a big thing
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: that I learned too, I think that people should know
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: it gets hard, Like just loggers in general. I think
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: from what I hear, there's more like bad ones than
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: good ones. And and I'm not trying to put any
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: loggers under the bus. I got really lucky. I've had
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: a great logger. He's been great to work with. But uh,
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: it's gonna It's like any home improvement project is gonn
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: to take way longer than you think it is, and
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: they might not be interested in your forty acres. I mean,
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: if you're covered up in you know, walnut trees and nothing,
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: but you know one hundred foot tall white oaks, Sure,
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: no matter how big the companies, they're gonna come look
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: at it. But I think a lot of these Midwestern
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: close canopy properties like ours was, they're probably sixty to
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: eighty years old. They were maybe high graded at some point,
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: and so you get loggers that walk through there and
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: they're like, man, it's really not worth it for me
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: to bring up my equipment to do this right. You're
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: gonna have to find someone smaller that needs to do
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: a smaller job. And it took a while. I mean
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: I talked to ten different logging companies and probably had
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: half of them at least come and walk the property.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: And half of those said no, half said maybe. And
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: then it took you know, again, getting lucky talking to
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: Doug Durham and he recommended a lot and he said, look,
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: this guy's a little bit more in tune with habitat
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: projects as opposed to just doing logging, and to me,
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: I see a big future in that where hopefully there's
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: some loggers that can mesh those two as opposed to
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: just coming in and doing the logging work, but that
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: people like us are going to say, hey, yeah, we
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: want it logged, but there's these other things that we
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: want accomplished while the equipment's in here and whatever. And
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: so yeah, the plan it is still dynamic. It probably
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: always will be dynamic. I don't know if it's ever.
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: It's definitely as we all know with habitat work, it's
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: never going to be done. It's like it's not and
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: like Craig Harper says, it's not an event, it's a lifestyle.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: And so look at you, Yanni, you're quoting Craig Harper.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: Like you're in officially tattooed.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: Pretty soon you're officially in the crew. Man.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's I posted a picture the other day
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: of me walking around chainsaw on one hand and then
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: a squirt bottle of Craig Harper's cocktail in the other,
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: and uh, it's like that's my happy place.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Man, if you have told me this a
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: decade ago and never would have thought.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: This crew in the woods, cutting trees, spraying, you know,
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: the trees that I'm not interested in having around. Yeah,
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: your question about making a plan.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: It does, it does. So I want to I want
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: to dive into the parts of your plant you've moved
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: forward on so far. But before we get into the
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: details of each, can you just like list out for me,
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: like if you can imagine the top of an Excel doc,
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: like the columns, can you list for me, like the
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: major projects that you have, you know, put as like
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: I'm going to do this or I've started doing this,
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: Like what are those main things that you ended up
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: putting as bullet points on your plan? And then I
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: want to dive into some of those.
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and one of the first ones that I did,
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: which can take up a column, is just general TSI
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: work timber stand improvement. Yeah, I won't get into the
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: details of it yet, but that was one. And then
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: the whole logging operation in of itself is another one
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: to get ready. And again I'm trying to balance what
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: this MFL plan needed. And then you know, my sort
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: of habitat goals, which in a nutshells basically make it
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: really good for deer and turkeys, right, make them want
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: to be there, and it doesn't seem like it's that
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: too hard to balance them and really mesh them. But
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: the logging project is by far like the biggest, biggest thing.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: But in preparing for that so that I get good
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: oak regeneration, because that's the goal with this NFL plan
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: was to you know, limit competition and so hacking and
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: scorting or just you know killing off any you know, undesirables,
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: which mostly for us is just the red maple is
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: going to be the biggest competition. Ah, so getting rid
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: of those, we put in a water source. Uh that
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: that was top of the list. You know, you and
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: I did that food plot. It kind of sort of worked.
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: That has morphed into what are now these wildlife openings.
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: But I would say, you know, I could break down
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: the logging project into different zones because you know, the
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: forty acres doesn't look the same, you know, in each quadrant.
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: So within the logging, you know, there was one zone
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: that was really going to have most of the trees
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: taken out because they were all oaks and we were
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: going to get them out. The southern half was white
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: pine dominated with a lot of maple in there. Too,
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: a lot of birch in there, some aspen in there,
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: but none of it was very merchantable. I mean there
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: was maybe a dozen fifteen of these you know, giant
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: sixty to eighty year old white pines that had some
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: you know value for boards, but otherwise it was basically
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: nothing but pulp wood and slash. Figuring out what to
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: do with that was a big column. So yeah, I
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: would say that's a oh and I guess and again
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: kind of part of the logging operation. But access and
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: roads slash, fire brakes was another big one.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Okay, so with that logging operation, since that's the big,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: big job here. Yeah, you mentioned that you had to
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: you know, you had a forrester already have a plan
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: like a prescription, and then you had to go out
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: and call logging companies. You had some of them be
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: willing to come and take a look, and then a
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: smaller percentage of that actress that they would be willing
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: to do it. You finally narrated down to the one
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: guy who would be a good fit. What did you
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: guys actually do to then make the decisions about what
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: you just described, Like in this part, we're going to
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: do this, and in this part we're going to do this,
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: because that's a big scary set of decisions to make.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: I gotta believe, and I'm sure those people thinking like, hey,
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: if I bring in this guy who's going to come in, like,
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: how do I make sure that what he or she
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: or they do is you know, gonna meet my goals
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: for the wildlife stuff while also meeting their financial goals
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: or my financial goals or whatever it is. How did
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: you guys like work through all that and put together
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: that part of the plan.
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Again, I was lucky because this fella came highly
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: recommended from Doug dr and Doug had worked with him,
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: and so I feel like I didn't really need to
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: have that another layer of protection because I think what
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: a lot of people do, and it's recommended, you know,
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: especially if you have a lot of value in your timber,
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: is that you would hire a forester to basically work
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: on your behalf. And so instead of you and the
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: logger just walking through the woods and marking trees not
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: to cut or to cut or whatever, the forester actually
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: goes in there they do it and then they're sort
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: of they take a cut, but they're responsible for basically
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: getting you the most amount of money out of your timber, right,
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: and they do it in a ton of different ways.
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: But like some of them will actually get the work
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: done and just pay out the logger to get the
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: work done, and then they'll have all of the wood
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: stacked and they'll literally have an auction and then they
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: can get the highest bidder for it. Right, Like, there's
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: all different kinds of versions of that. Because we didn't
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: really have that much value. I was just happy to
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: have a logger first of all, right, and basically all
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: of our you know, any financial gain that we get
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: got from the timber was we knew it was going
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: to be completely reinvested back into the property in the
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: in the form of these wildlife openings and roads and
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: access and fire breaks. We knew that basically just doing
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: that would eat up, you know, our profits. So it
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: just it wasn't huge. So the way the logger and
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: I went in to make those decisions was like, I'll
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: get I'll go back to one more thing. Because our
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: property was so small and there wasn't such high quality timber.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: The original MFL plan said, hey, you do a shelter
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: would cut, which means like you take out depends on
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: the percentages, but you're going to take out a large
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: chunk of the trees, but you're going to leave a
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: layer of oaks. They're going to act as the seed
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: source to make more oaks. Once those are established, the
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: new young ones, then you come in for another cut
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: and remove these overstory trees. Well, being that there weren't
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: that many of them. The property is small to have
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: to get a loger to come back ten years later
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: to remove thirty big oaks. It just wasn't like it's
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: not going to happen, right, And so I pushed for
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: more of a clear cut tactic, and again the forest
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: are signed off on it, and so we went in
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: the logger and I and basically just said, okay, we're
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: gonna leave some oaks so that we can promote oak regeneration,
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: but it's gonna be a lot less. And like again,
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: there's been other a lot of logging in the area
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: that's happened. So we were able to go right next
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: door and I'd say, well, what kind of cut was this?
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: What is mine going to look like, you know, compared
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: to this one? And the logger would say, well, just
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: way more open because you're gonna have less trees standing
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: right because you're gonna go for the clear cutming process.
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: So I was okay with that, and so yeah, we
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: basically just walked through and we saved a couple pockets
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: of semi mature oaks, white oaks, and red oaks. We
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: saved trees that I thought were in good spots to
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: be uh tree stand trees where you know, either historically
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: we'd have of deer movement or thinking about what the
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: future would look like where the deer would move, you know,
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: it had said all right, let's not cut these, and
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: then even behind those trees or near those trees, I
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: would sort of make a little five yard by five
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: yard zone where we didn't cut anything at all, just
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: so you could have you know, breakup. Because when you
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: clear cut and there's a couple oaks left standing, those
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: oaks are not going to be great to get up
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: into for honey, I mean, unless you go like John
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: Eberhart plus ten and you're like, you know, as high
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: as a high as a hunter. Everyone wants to get
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: You're just it's hard to hide right in in that
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: kind of a scenario. And so that was really about it,
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: because the main goal was to really just like get
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: rid of a lot of trees, and so there wasn't
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: too much left if I had to look act at
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: that now, because the logging is finished as of just
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: I don't know, three weeks ago or so. The logger
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: actually ended up leaving a few more oaks than I
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: had even marked, because the whole thing is is you like,
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: you put your stamp of approval on it, and the
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: whole time you're thinking, oh my gosh, am I gonna
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: cut too much? Am I gonna cut too much? He
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: ended up leaving a few more, And that'll kind of
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: we'll talk about how this morphed into another project. But
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: I would have been happy if he would have taken
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: them or left them. Either way, It's like what's left
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: looks good to me because I can see what the
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: future is going to look like there. But yeah, it's
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: a weird place to be in because again, there was
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: the MFL plan. It's a fifty year plan. They require
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: you to do these things, and you don't want to
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: get that like liquent notice right from your forester. So
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: that sort of, you know, that pushed a lot of
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: my decisions to be like, Okay, I'm going to get
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: this done. So that like, the forester is not going
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: to tell me to do anything until I resign up
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: forty years from now, and then maybe he won't even
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: talking to me. He'll be talking to my kids about
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: you know what, what has to happen with the timber.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: Right, So with this logging, I know, as you've described,
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: you were mandated to do something, But what is like
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: the end state that you're hoping this will become? Like
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: what are you managing towards?
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: Now?
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: So what you just took it out of one state?
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: You reset the deck primarily with a clear cut like that.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Now what are you going to manage it for? Are
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: you going to let it all regrow? Are you going
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: to keep it at a certain successional stage? What's what's
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: the end goal here?
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: So and originally basically with the MFL plan, it's like
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: you they just want you to be making trees, right,
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: and your higher value trees are gonna be you know,
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: your oaks and your walnuts. We mostly have oaks. So
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: you're trying to do oak regeneration because it's gonna it's
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: gonna be good for the you know, business of silver
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: culture in Wisconsin. It's gonna be good financially for you.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: Within the NFL plan, you're allowed to have it twenty No, yeah,
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: twenty percent can be what they call non productive. So
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: if our forty acres is enrolled, I can have eight
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: acres that aren't producing trees, So that gives you the
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: room to do some food plots or you know, maybe
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: cut all the trees down and turn it into a
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: prairie in that eight acres. Right, Originally, I had had
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: that sort of gonna be my rich top, and I
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: was just gonna do heavy TSI on it and keep
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: it fairly open and not really be allowing too much
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: you know, woody growth to come back. But again, talking
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: to Doug, he introduced me to a fella from the
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: US and Fish Wildlife Service Partners program. And get this straight. Yeah,
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: he's a private lands biologist for the US Fish and
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: Wildlife Service, and he works within a program called the
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: Partners for Fish and Wildlife. And basically what they do
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: is they help private landowners do good conservation. Seventy of
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: the land in this country is private, and so they
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: feel that like if they put this energy and uh,
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: you know, money into private lands conservation, it's gonna help everybody.
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: And I told you, I mean there's no doubt that
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: in our neighborhood there. I'm talking about a big giant neighborhood,
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: you know, like fifty square miles or something. There's no
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: doubt that all of the private land habitat conservation work
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: what's going on there is benef fitting all the public
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: land stuff that's interspersed within there too, like one hundred
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: So anyways, he introduced me, I've made a phone call.
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: These guys came out, did a walk, and then they
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: came back and said, hey, you have something that we
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: like where you happen to cut heavy where you did
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: this clear cut in the northwest corner and you only
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: have you know, five acres or sorry, five oaks per
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: acre standing like that would be a great place to
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: do an oak savannah. Basically, in oak savannah is just
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: that like imagine a forest, but like if a tree falls,
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: it's probably not going to hit another tree, So very
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: open and the understory is, you know, three to five
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: foot grasses and forbes. I've heard some of these habitat
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: guys say that some of the best deer hunting they've
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: ever experience has been in oak savannahs Uh, just a
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: lot of a lot of a lot of benefits, a
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: lot of food, a lot of cover in there.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: What's that for critters of all types too, not just deer?
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred and So these guys wanted to do
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: this project, and the way that it work, it's a
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: it's a true partnership where they're like, this is the project.
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: It's going to cost twenty five thousand bucks. We're going
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: to cover half of it, and this is what our
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: half is going to cover, and you need to cover
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: the other half. You need to take care of these things.
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: The cool part about it is that a lot of
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: it can be what they call in kind. So they
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: might budget, say five thousand dollars to burn these giant
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: slash piles that we have now on the property. Well,
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: if you go and burn it yourself and the work
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: gets done, then you don't have to, you know, kick
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: out that money for a contractor to do it. And
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: so I'll be I'm on the hook for some stuff
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: like herbicide buying and then applying and we're going to
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: need to buy a little bit of equipment to put
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: it out there. But the nice thing was was that
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: oak savannah. If you only have these few oaks, like,
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: it's not a like, you're not producing oak trees anymore, right,
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: So I had to go to my forester and go like, oh, hey,
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: can this seven acres be an oak savannah because we're
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: not going to be producing oaks anymore because we're going
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: to be killing any young oaks that come up in
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: the future. And he goes, oh, yeah, we'll just move
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: your non productive from that ridge top since you're still
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: technically growing you know, oaks up there. Although you've done
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: some TSI you've you've taken out some and dropped them,
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: but you've left a lot of them and they're gonna
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: get bigger. You're growing trees. So we'll just move your
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: non productive to that oak savannah. And so this really
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: was like it was a huge win for me because
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: early on, like the first thing I wanted to do
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: when I got in there was like, I'm gonna do
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: eight acres of corn beans four and four. Just got
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: to figure out how to pull that off because I've
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: got neighbors that have that, and like they kill bucks
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: off their corn and beans every year. Right, difference beings
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: they live there, they have farm equipment, they can put
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: it in. I live a thousand miles away. It's a
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: little bit harder to manage. So I was thinking, well,
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: maybe I can trade or the farmer that he'll you know,
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: take half of it and you know leave the other half,
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: things like that. In the end, I decided it's it
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: wasn't going to work financially, so we were just going
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: to kind of go with a very natural state of
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: these couple one wildlife openings. Well, when the US Fish
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: and Wildlife Service project kind of came in and said, hey,
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: let's do five acres of your oak savannah, I said, well,
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: let's maybe add my two to one acre wildlife openings
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: to that project. We'll make it seven and we'll do
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: all of it as an oak savannah. And so they
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: are going to provide the native urb and grass seed
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: mix that we're gonna plant next winter. And so basically
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: instead of having my eight acres of corn and soybeans,
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: I've sort of through this whole process ended up at
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: seven acres of an oak savannah and I'm gonna have
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: unbelievable you know, forbes and grasses. And I'm a believer
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: now that that's gonna be way more valuable than if
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: I did have my seven or eight acres of soybeans
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: and corn, mostly because I think it's going to be
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: a little bit more year round source of food cover
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: versus the corn of soybeans having a much more limited
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: timeframe when they're really valuable. So yeah, that's that's been
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: super exciting. That is what. Now seven acres of this
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: forty is gonna be oaks Savannah and it's gonna be
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: absolutely awesome. Whoam may old bird of prey? Just I
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: think maybe knocked like a chickadee or something out of
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: a fir tree outside my window. Looks pretty exciting what
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: I could see there. Sorry for the interruption.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: It's always an adventure outside the window in Bozeman.
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: Oh, it totally is. Okay, So there're seven acres right
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: oaks Savannah. I don't know. I've never I've never owned
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: an oak savannah. I've never really hunted an oak savannah.
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: So I can't tell you how we're gonna hunt an
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: oak savannah. I know it's gonna be a huge attractant.
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: I know it's gonna there's gonna be deer feeding in there,
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: there's gonna be deer bedding in there. So how we
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: hunt it? I don't know yet.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: What do you have to do to make it though
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: you mentioned that they're gonna plant forbes and grasses, and
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: you mentioned that you've got to apply herbicide, But is
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: that it is it just gonna be there to come
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: in they're in a plant, and then you're gonna do
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: an erbicide treatment or two or or what does ongoing
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: management look like?
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: So we so basically there was this you know, the
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: perimeter edge is fuzzy right where it starts and ends,
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: but there's basically this northwest quadrant that uh was you know,
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: dang near clear cut but a few oaks left, but
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: there was slash everywhere. So one of the first things
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: that happened as a contractor came in and made these
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: big slash piles. They're going to be burned this upcoming winner,
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: so that when we seed all of it can be seeded. Right,
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: We are going to do two herbicide treatments and basically
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: chemically burn it this summer a full full.
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: Like like like round up, you know, non selective herbicide
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: kill everything.
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: You know, the biologist is going to come and once
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: we have i don't know, eight inches a foot of
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: growth and he can see what sort of is what's
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: the competition is going to be what's coming up in
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: this clear cut that's responding to all the sunlight. Now
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: they're going to come in and see what's there, and
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: then they're going to give the recommendation of what kind
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: of herb side to buy and use, So I should
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: know that in the next month. So yeah, we'll basically
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: do two big sprays. The second spray might be only
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: spot spot spraying. We'll see, but you basically want a
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: new kid so that you know. The seeds that we
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: put in have limited competition. So we'll burn the piles
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: over the winner and then frost seed late winter and
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: then it's basically a waiting game the way they described
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: it was with these seeds for you know, to fill
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: in the understory. It's a three year process. And the
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, the
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: third year it leaps. So the first year you really
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: don't see much. It's frustrating with you, like it's hard
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: to wait another three five days, and then the second
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: year it's kind of creeping along. You see some response,
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: and then he's like the third year you'll have stuff
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: that's over your head and it'll be flourishing. So that
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: is basically, well, that's to make it to that point
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: and then it'll it'll go into a a fire cycle
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: where we will I don't know if it'll be every
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: year or every other year, but we will burn that.
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: You know, there's like a quadrant that's probably about five acres,
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: and then I've got two kind of separate openings that
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: are that are an acre a piece, and we'll burn those,
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: like I said, every year every two years. We just
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: had to kind of see what's the best for it,
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: you know, and timing, you know, if it's best to
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: do a you know, a dormance season burn or a
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: growing season burn. I mean that's all to be determined,
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: but that you know, that's basically the management plan for
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: the Oak Savanna.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: What's your experience been so far in these early stages
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: working with that Fish and Wildlife Partners program?
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: Incredible? So we I also you know, called everybody always
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: talks about in our CS, right, I called them and said, hey,
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: don't you guys come out, and they're I think very
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: willing also to you know, help give money, help you
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: accomplish this, you know, conservation work on your property. But
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: like they didn't really find anything that was appealing on
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: my property. Now, they also went and walked some of
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: the you know, my adjoining landowners property and they did
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: find like a giant, you know, almost an acre of
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: buckthorn that they'd be very happy to help kill off. Right,
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: So they're working with that landowner and you know, through
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: some partnership figuring out how to how to whack that.
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: So that would be a tip to anybody. It's like, hey,
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: if the NRCS didn't necessarily find, you know, something to
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: help you with, like keep asking and calling uh other
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: other folks other you know, uh, I guess government conservation groups,
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: because there's probably somebody out there that will see, you know,
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: something beneficial that can be done on your property that'll
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: benefit them, benefit the public, benefit wildlife, and benefit you.
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: But yeah, these guys were like I think the first
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: time I talked to them was early January, and then
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: by late January they had walked it, they had sent
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: me a proposal, and then basically the balls in my
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: court to decide, well, you know, do I want to
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: because if you look at you know, financially split in
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: twenty five K down the middle just to do habitat work,
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: that's not in my budget. But knowing that I could
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: have some friends that would maybe help me burn these piles.
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: I could have you know, my dad and his buddies
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: come up and do the herbicide treatments, you know, all
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: of a sudden, that brought down the costs a lot.
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: So once we decided to sign on and go forward
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: with the project, I think they had a contractor out
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: there within a couple of weeks to start doing the piling.
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: That guy got that knocked out in I don't know,
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: six seven days, and so basically the next step now
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: is is like seeing what's going to grow and then
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: doing the herbicide application. So overall, I'd say, yeah, nothing
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: but good things. These guys have been, you know, on it,
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: moving quickly and getting stuff done. So it's been, uh,
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: it's been great.
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: Do you know. I know you got connected through Doug,
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: But do you know if this is if this is
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: a program that any person could possibly get involved? Like
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: could any random guy like me? I call the US
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: Fish and Wildlife local offices and be like, Hey, is
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: there an opportunity for my property? Can can anyone get
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: involved in this? What's that look like? Do you do?
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: No? Literally, I just before we started talking today, I
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: just googled like partners Fish and Wildlife. We use Fish
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: and Wildlife Service, and that pay comes up and you
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: don't have to scroll, but you know to two scrolls
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: with the fingers, and there's a there's a header that
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: says how to get started, and you probably just need
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: to find the biologist in your area and make a
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: phone call. And then oh literally says a phone call
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: or email is all it takes to get started. Contact
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: your state coordinator to schedule an official an initial site visit,
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: and learn how Partners for Fish and Wildlife can help you.
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: There you go, and it's great.
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: It's a great page because it like show there's like
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: laws and regulations around this legislation and economic impact and
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: it's all there so you can see, like, you know,
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: the benefits of why the government might want to help
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: private landowners make better habitat.
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so so that's your big one. I mean that
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: this project the Oak Savannah is the clear cut the
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: logging there that really is that's going to change everything
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: on that part.
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: It's it's already changed it. I mean, a clearcut is
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: as it's a change, all right, you know.
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you get to see it for the first time,
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: just a couple of weeks ago, right.
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And it's interesting, how, you know, my own
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: sort of view on it and mindset has changed, because
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: I think even ten years ago, I would have been
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: like clearcut, you know, who wants anything to do with
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: a clear cut? And now I'm like, proud to have
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: Steve call me clear cut Yanni. But it's interesting, you know,
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: we have often we have invited the neighbors over, you know,
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: for a beer or whatever and chit chat. And I've
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: had a couple of neighbors be like, what are you doing,
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: you know, like very skeptical about like, I'm not gonna
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: do that to my woods. Look over there, it's beautiful
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: sixty to eighty year old trees, and I love the
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: fall colors and all that. I'm like, hey, if that's
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: what you want, there's nothing wrong with it. If you
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: wanted to produce higher timber value, you might want to
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: go in there and you know, cut some of the
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: ones down so you can let the good ones flourish.
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: But it's not the best habitat right, Like when you
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: can walk through there. I don't know who said this one,
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: but this is a great way to look at it.
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: But like, if you can walk through your woods and
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: like shorts and flip flops and comfortably just cruise around,
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: it's not good for wildlife, right, Like you want the
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: kind of habitat where you're like, oh, I better put
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: on some car hearts in my work boots and definitely
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: long sleeve shirt if I'm going to go just marching
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: through there, Like that's where the deer and everything else
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: wants to be. Right. So it's been interesting because you know,
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: it makes you question it yourself, like am I doing
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: the right thing right? And obviously I've never done it,
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: so I'm sort of justking on what I'm believing that
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: in three to five years, you know, we're really going
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: to see the responses to all of it. But yeah,
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: major change, but I will say that. So we have,
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: like again the seven acres of this oak savannah and
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: these two wildlife openings are connected. But I was telling
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: you earlier the whole southern half was just this and
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: you saw it. To me, it looked like a wildlife desert.
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: It was just these It had been pretty close to
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: Clearcut in the early nineties and then it was just
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: this nothing. But you know, three to six inch white pines, aspens, maples,
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: some oaks mixed in and just like all competing against
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: each other, had never been thinned, and the understory was
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: nothing like if you got down at you know, deer level,
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: you could pretty much see across the whole property, right
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: and sure there was a few trails going through there.
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: You'd find a couple of scrapes, but the deer were
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: not hanging out there by.
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: Any It was past past their territory for sure.
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, pastor, that's a good way to put it. So
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: that one probably that section, that twenty acres probably took
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: the most thinking than any other section of like what's
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: going to be the plan? How are we going to
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: accomplish this because most of its non merchantable timber. Right,
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: So again you're like, oh, I have a lagger here,
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: but probably he would rather not touch that twenty acres
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: at all, just working the northern twenty acres, work with
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: giant oaks and giant aspens, maybe a few big maples.
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: Take those nice big trees out and be done with it.
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: Like when they're looking at pulp number one, the pulp
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: market kind of stinks right now, So like just finding
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: a place to get rid of the pulp wasn't easy.
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: And then, like the lagger told, and we did a
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: walk through when I was there, he spent eighty hours
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: in a harvester, which is that's the machine that has
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: the big arm that can grab the tree, cut the tree,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: and then measure it and cut whatever lengths you've set
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: it to cut out. He spent eighty hours cutting and
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: stacking non merchantable timber. Okay, so two full weeks. And
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: I forget what he says he charges per hour sitting
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: in that machine, but it's in the hundreds of dollars, right,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: so do the math. I think that you know, he's
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: massaging it because he wants me to be happy. But
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: I keep telling him like, look, man, I don't want
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: you to go broke doing this project, so we need to,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: you know, find the happy medium. And there was all
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: kinds of ideas, you know, throwing around. It was like, well,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: don't do anything, and you're just gonna have to do
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: it by hand, which is like, oh my gosh, you
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: know Acres with me and Asaw like that's you know,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: who knows how many years work that would take, you know,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: Matt Ross and the nda was like just do strips
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: do like a big turkey futt. You could like sit
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: in one spot and look down strips and kind of
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: hunt hunt the whole thing that way, and then you'll
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: limit it. Because everybody thought like, if you actually clear
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: cut it and you can take out your pulp woards,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: you're still gonna have so much slash on the ground
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: that regeneration is going to be tough. Critters moving through
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: it is going to be tough. Well in the end,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: I talked my logger into basically like I'm like, okay,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: take out all the pines, all the you know, maples,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: all the basically anything that wasn't an oak, and we'll
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: just try to get rid of it through the pulp market.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: Anything left, we'll try to pile as best we can,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: and then we'll try to burn these piles. And uh,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: he executed against as best as he that he could.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: It definitely costs him a little bit. And again, I
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: don't want the guy to go in the red on.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: It, but.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: There's so many oaks left. The positive of it is
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: that there's so many four to eight inch oaks left
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: that it almost doesn't look like a clear cut. It
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: just looks like an oak stand it's only fifteen to
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: twenty years old, even though it's actually thirty. But because
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: these oaks were suppressed by all this competition, you know,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: they didn't get big. So I'm going to say, in
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: the year or two, what's left is gonna really just
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: pop and we're gonna have it's gonna be thicker than
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: an oak savannah, maybe an oak woodland, because there's definitely
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: some spots where there were no oaks, and so you
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: got an acre or two that's just gonna be open
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: and stuff coming up. The cool thing about it is
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: because we're chemically burning this oak savannah and it's not
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: gonna really come to fruition for three years. The southern
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: and half where we've got these you know whatever they are,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: thirty forty foot skinny oak standing. We've got these two
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: wildlife openings in there that will be planted with this grass.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: But everything in between that is like slash piles, some
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: debris on the ground, Like whatever is gonna grow now
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: with all the sunlight, it's gonna go bananas in there.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: We're not gonna really touch that. I think even just
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: this fall, like it's gonna produce amazing bedding, cover and food,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: right like that's gonna be the if you're gonna hunt
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: our forty, Like, you're probably gonna want to concentrate in
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: that southern twenty because it's gonna have the cover, it's
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: gonna have the thickness, it's gonna have food that the
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: deer gonna want to be hanging out and they're not
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: gonna hang out where you know, it's been it's been
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: nuked by chemicals for you know, twice and there's really
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: nothing growing, right, so I'm pretty excited about it. That's
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: the one where you don't really we don't really know
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: what it's gonna look like. And again, there's plenty of
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: oaks standing where I'm like, oh, that's pretty cool. Like
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: it's not a full clear cut, there's a lot of
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: trees standing. They're gonna flourish now because they have no competition.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: Hopefully they'll start throwing some acorns and we'll get some
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: oak regeneration coming up in there, and it's gonna be thick,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: which is great, right, Like I'm gonna have this oak
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: savannah that's gonna be a little bit more prairie grassy,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: and then I'm gonna have hopefully this just crazy thick
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: slash pile oak regeneration stuff. That's it's it's gonna be
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: nasty where like you're not gonna want to walk through it.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: But again, we reinvested all of our profits back into
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: the access and that's kind of what what you know
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: brings it all together is that right now, the bulldozers
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: in there, and we're gonna have a it's a square.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: We're gonna have a perimeter road that goes on on
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: three sides because our main access road is on the
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: forest side or the main whatever, the main road is
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: on the fourth side. But he's putting in a full perimeter.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: And then we're gonna have a east west road that
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: kind of meanders through it. We're gonna have a north
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: south road that meanders through it just about through the middle.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: And then I've got a couple other strategic spots where
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: he's gonna do not quite full roads, but more trails
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: because again I need access, I need fire breaks. And
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: then I'm gonna see all these roads with you know,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: some basic clover mix of some sort, right, so they'll
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: also act as deer travel ways, you know, food plots,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: I guess. But that will make it so that again
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: my dad can very easily take the southern perimeter road
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: park not have to walk far, get into a stand
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: and be almost right into the middle of what's gonna be, well,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: not the middle, but like the middle east west. But
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: what's gonna be this giant, you know, five six acre
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: bedding thicket. I'm hoping and be able to hunt the
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: edge of it.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's gonna be. It's gonna be pretty sweet. Now,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: this is all in the southern part. The northern part
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: is where you are primarily leaving that for your di
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: y T S.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: I work right, well, the northwest corners where that oak
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: savannah is the.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: Ridge though, is the north like it's northeast then right?
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I is so what exactly are you doing
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: with that? What are you what are you hoping to
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: achieve there? And what have you actually been doing there?
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: Yep? What's cool about that is that that is one
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: of the things I probably started doing right after you
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: and I walk the property.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: Yep, and.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: You know, bought a brand new two sixty one and
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: all the goodies that go with it and have been
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: you know, keeping that chain nice and sharp, but mostly
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: just started with by just dropping trees. And again it
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: was that kind of northern part was a pretty good
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: mix of oaks. We've got some white pine, we've got
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: some jack pine, we've got some red pine. There are
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: some maples in there too, not so much on the
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: ridge because I don't think that soil is great for
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: those maples. But really just getting rid of I probably went,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: I did, I went again, felt like a lot. And
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: now when you go back there, you go, oh, I
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: could probably still do more, but I don't know if
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: I quite reached fifty percent, like right on the ridgetop,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: but it was a spot where you, because of canopy
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: and the way the ridgetop rolls a little bit, you
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: couldn't really see from one end to the other. But
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: now you can. It's open enough now, and I mean
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: obviously the understory's coming up, but it's open enough that
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: you can see through there. And that's it interesting thing
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: too that it takes a while to understand, and like
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: the difference between being a sea like a whole ridge
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: top as a human standing there with my eyes at
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: six feet roughly, or getting up into a tree ten
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: or twenty feet like as long as it's thick from
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: four feet down low, the deer gonna love it. Right,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: And sometimes you can look at and go, oh, but
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: it's so wide open and I can see all of it.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: But all you gotta do is like crouch down to
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: three or four feet and you're like, oh, no, I
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: can't actually see all of it. And this is what
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: they're talking about with that understory coming in and being thick,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: and the deer being happy and feeling secure in here.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: And what's been great is that you know, that's already
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: now three four years behind us, and like the the
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: positive reaction from both deer and turkeys, which is what
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: I mostly pay attention to, is incredible. I had before
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: I did the work, I had a camera in this saddle.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: I'd get a picture of a deer once a week,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: you know, because it was just like a saddle in
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: some close canopy woods. It wasn't really a saddle that
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: connected two major whatever food sources or betting areas or nothing.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: It was just like kind of a random saddle. But
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: now that it's open and it's got you know, but
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: it's got plenty of cover on it. Like there's deer
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: pictures on it almost every day. There's turkey pictures on
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: it every two or three days, and like just this morning,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: I was looking at my Moultary app and there's a
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: dope bedded like right in front of the you know camera.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: To me, there's like, I don't feel like there's nothing
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: more exciting, whether I'm actually hunting or whether it's a
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: it's where I've put a camera. But if I see
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: a deer bed down, I'm like, okay, I'm doing things right,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: Like that deer is so comfortable and so stoked it's
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: going to just go ahead and sleep and rest here
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: for a little while and obviously feeding around too. So
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: the actual work, I would say, it's basically just been
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: cutting trees. And then once I cut the trees, if
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: I feel like there needs to be a little bit
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: of a path because the richetop is eventually going to
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: also be a fire break, so that needs to remain
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: fairly open so that it can be you know, traveled
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: to do that. But yeah, otherwise, like I went in
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: there and some stuff that had already grown up and
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: had gotten you know, over six feet, I just cut
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: it down again, right, Like keep the stuff down close
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: to the ground where the deer can get to it.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: Are these fall.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: Cuts be honest or are you hinge cutting or anything
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: So I had it on my to do list this
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: for my spring trip, and I didn't get to do
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: any hinge cutting because I feel like it could use
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: some of that, just a little bit more of that
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 3: structure cover. But so up until now, I've just been
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: just literally the goal is just like cut the trees
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: down and get sunlight, you know, to the to this area.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: And that's been like I said, the response has been great,
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: and now I feel like I could manipulate it and
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: make it even a little bit better by actually doing
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: some hinging. I've never done any hinging, so I can't,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: you know, because hinging is still so controversial, right, I mean,
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 3: and I guess not that the hinging is controversial, but
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: is it better than if you just knock the tree down? Right,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: that's sort of the debate. So anyways, I'm definitely gonna
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: try it in like some small little pockets and we'll
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: see how the deer respond to it. But yeah, it's
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: mostly just been like just getting rid of more trees
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: because I think that the answer is sunlight to the
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: forest floor and then you get that food and cover
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: that the deer actually want.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I was just gonna say, you could think
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: about another way, which is rather than getting rid of trees,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: it's you are adding suddenly you are a sunlight creator.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: That's the more. You can do that on a lot
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: of properties. Now, you know, it's different some places that's
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: not the limited resource. You know, some places you need
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: the opposite. But so much of the Upper Midwest, like
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: you're talking about, especially the farther north, you go close
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: canopy semi mature, overstocked woodlands like that, you know, they
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: just need sunlight in diversity, you know.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: So h.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: So, okay, I want to close with this, Yannie. Given
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: everything you do you just said, given the journey you've
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: been on for the last ten years and especially the
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: last four, you know, you went from being on the couch,
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: you know, metaphorically to being you know, in the race,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: from from no experience doing this stuff to a land
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: manager that has now been a part of some really
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: significant changes. What would be the three most important lessons
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: you would pass on to someone who's in your shoes
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: five years ago? So somebody right now who was like
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: you five years ago, fresh and not having any done
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: anything like this, but now all of a sudden being like, yeah,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: I want to try to do this to the family farm,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: or to this new place I bought, whatever it is.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: What are the three most important pieces of advice or
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: lessons that you would pass along right now?
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: M get started yesterday, Yeah, because it just it takes time.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: You know, all of it is more work than you
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: think it's gonna be. You know, I always show up
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: for our spring work trip with like a list so long,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: and I end up getting through, you know, a quarter
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: or a third of it, and a lot of it
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: is little dinky things like oh yeah, go move some
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: cameras around, or you know, go spray some roads with
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: you know, four gallons of herbicide or whatever. But uh,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, if you're gonna see anything, get done,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: Like get started. You know, don't be scared to cut trees.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: You know, make sure you got yourself a nice chainsaw,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: learn how to use it properly, read that book how
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: to Fell a Tree, and and get started doing that.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: I don't think that one person with because again it's
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: scary just to start cutting trees down, you know, but
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: you need to identify what trees you know you're cutting.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: But like for me, it's like I could just walk
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: through the woods and cut hundreds of red maples a day,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: and I'm not gonna doing any kind of negative you
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: know thing. It's all gonna be positive and I'm not
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 3: gonna mess anything up, right, So like, identify what it
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: is that you feel like you can't screw up, because
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: you know, first time Doug Durham watched the place with
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: me after I've done TSI, He's like, man cutting a
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 3: lot of oaks down, you know. I'm like, well, like,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 3: if that's all there is and you want to get
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: sunlight to the forest floor, you're gonna have to cut
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 3: some oaks, right, So what do you do? You pick
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 3: like the crooked oaks or the ones that don't look
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: like they're producing. If you have time, you could like
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 3: wait till a good acorn here and go, oh, this
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: one's got great acorns. These three don't. Then you cut
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: the ones that aren't producing. I didn't have that time.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: But anyways, even like when you're looking at a stand
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: of oaks, you can pick the ones that you're like, oh,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 3: this one's gonna be robust and be able to handle,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: you know, winds. Sitting here by itself when it doesn't
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: have its buddies around it anymore might be a great
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 3: tree stand because it's straight where it's got a nice
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: branch coming off of it that'll help hide you. So yeah,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: number one, would we get started. Number two, I think,
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 3: like call around and just talk to a lot of people,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 3: because that's that's been so helpful man, you know my
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, I know I'd probably heard Craig Harper's name before,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: but one of my neighbors as soon as I after
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: I talked to him on the phone the first time,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: he sent me a couple of pictures. He's like, these
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: are my favorite books, and one was like a guide
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: to Wisconsin's Wildflowers and Forbes, and then the other one
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: was Craig Harper's book, and he's like, if you get
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 3: these two, you're you're gonna be getting you know. I
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: just feel like the amount of advice that's out there
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: for free just by calling your neighbors, and you know,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: it's always a great thing to do is to know
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: your neighbors. But just ask around, get get People that
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: are into this are very happy be to I think
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 3: help others most of the time. So when you talk
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 3: to them, they're probably going to offer, like, hey, I
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 3: would love to come out to your place. And walk
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: it with you Mark. And then I mean before we
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 3: started logging, I bet you I had at least six
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: different people that I did that with and uh yeah,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: each one of them looks at it a little bit different.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: And then but you also hear recurring themes and once
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 3: like the fourth person says like, yeah, definitely do this,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: like that's the thing. You're like, all right, got it,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: you know, like I'll start there. So yeah, call around,
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: talk to a lot of people, call your the nrcs,
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: call these private lands biologists. There's just there's a lot
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: of help out there for you. You just gotta put
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: in the effort and make some connections. And number three, man,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: I don't know, there's so many little bitty things that
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: are I can give as sort of hot tips. I think,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: like think about it. Yeah, I guess holistically where you know,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 3: the logging has been a has been a sort of
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: a big part, and then there's but there's also the
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: habitat and then but there's also this thing, you know,
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: hunting that we all really want to do with our properties.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: So you know, think about all those things put together.
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: Because for a while I even thought like with our
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: roads that are going to be put in that's gonna
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: cost us a lot of money as opposed to like
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: putting that money into the bank account. I was like, ah,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: maybe we can skimp on that. But now realizing what
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 3: those roads are going to get us and what that
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: access is going to give us, and comparing it to
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: what the access was like where you really couldn't get
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 3: into these spots properly and be able to hunt it
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: from the outside in, Like I'm glad. I thought about
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: that a lot. A lot of people mentioned that, and
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: you know, it's again a recurring theme. People walk it
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 3: and they're like, oh, well, if you can make sure
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 3: you put in a perimeter road and it's gonna be
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 3: a big time. So yeah, I guess I would just,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: you know, make sure that you're even if you're just
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: looking at like logging, or even if you're just looking
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 3: at putting in this, try to always step back and
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: look at it holistically and see how the whole thing
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: is gonna work, and you know, not just your property,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 3: but holistically with like the next mile out. I think
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: it's so easy to always be staring at on X
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: and only looking at forty acres and thinking like, well,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 3: on my forty the deer going to bed here, and
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: they're gonna come here to drink, and then they're come
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: here to eat. And the bucks are always going to
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: do this when they're checking my little betting area. But
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 3: it helps so much to go, Okay, well, let's bump
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: it out of half a mile and then think about
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: how like, really the big not it's not even the
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: big picture, it's the picture because the deer aren't going
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 3: to live on your forty acres. The buck's not going
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 3: to only be cruising doughs on your forty acres. He's
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: going to be cruising a much bigger area around it.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: And then think about how more of that flows. You know,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: how did the deer flow from you know, a mile
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 3: that way through your place and a mile the other way,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: or however it works. That's been helpful, and that's definitely
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: I think it's influenced decisions that we've made, because yeah,
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: because it's like you're always saying, like, what don't the
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: neighbors have right yep? And if you don't, if you're
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 3: not thinking about it that way, because that's the thing.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: With the corner of soybeans, we've got, like I don't
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: know how big those fields are, but there's you know,
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: two three fields that are probably you know, a couple
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: hundred acres of corn and soybeans every year, Like, are
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 3: my corner soybeans really going to be that attractive when
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: right across the street there's that different no one has
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: around there is an oak savannah.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah, I love it. I think there's a good
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: good advice and really inspiring. I think just seeing like
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: encouraging and inspiring to see what you've been able to
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: do in just a few years and your journey is
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: really cool. It's really cool to watch them afar so
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: some nice work way to just get after it and
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: jump in head first and figure out stuff along the way.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of people that get paralysis
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: by analysis, myself included sometimes, uh, and then afraid to
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: take those big swings and try stuff like that. Oh
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: pretty cool that you have have just gone for it.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean I don't.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 3: It just doesn't seem like any cause I the mentality
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: is even my kids, like they joke, even though I
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: talk to them a lot of time, They're like, you're
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: doing deforestation and I'm like, no, we're not. You know,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 3: that's what happens down in the Amazon when they're clearing
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: you know, hundreds of thousands of acres and burning it
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 3: so they can run cattle. Right, Yeah, that's that. And
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: this is different, like we're actually what we're creating does
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 3: way more for you know, flipping carbon dioxide back to
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 3: oxygen than just the standing trees that were there alone, right,
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 3: And so yeah, I guess like, don't be scared to
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 3: to cut trees down. It's uh yeah, the sale so
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 3: it's so been a official, it's so beneficial, and like
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 3: it's going to be so good for your for your
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 3: deer hunting, you know, if that's really what your what
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 3: your goal is.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and if and if that kind of thing scares
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: you or you're you know, still don't quite see how
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: that can beneficial. We had a really good chat about
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: this a couple of weeks ago with Ethan Tapper, and
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: he spoke kind of about this, you know, how there's
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: there's a time and a place for leaving stuff untouched
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: and growing is you know, mature force, and there's a
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: time and a place for restarting the cycle and adding
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: diversity and managing in this kind of way. And uh,
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: and what you're talking about, Giannis is a great example
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: of of the latter. So lots lots to learn there,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: But to your point, give it a shot. Try some
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: of this stuff, learn, ask questions, call around, and start yesterday.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: So be honest. If folks want to see the stuff
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: you're doing these days, you haven't yet done anything big
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 2: around the habitat that I've seen. But folks want to
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: see your content. You're hunting films, your latest cooking exploits,
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: anything like that. Where could folks see all that? Connect
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: with all that?
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's all mixed up there on the old meat
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 3: Eater YouTube channel really for the most part, about most
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: of it. You know my hunts, you know, there's there's
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: different iterations of the of titles these days. So you
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 3: can just search my name and there's been some haunts
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 3: that have happened on that property. Actually haven't hunted on
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 3: camera on our forty yet Again, I often give my
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 3: dad kind of first DIBs there and I hunt the
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 3: neighboring stuff. But yeah, I just search my name on
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 3: on YouTube and you'll see content. We do have a
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 3: new cooking show on meat Eater called meat Eater Roasts,
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 3: and seems like folks have been liking it. It's a
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: very lighthearted cooking competition show where we have two of
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 3: our crew members cooking and then we have two crew members.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 3: Sometimes we invite folks from outside of our crew to
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 3: judge them, and then I sort of just try to,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: you know, steer the conversation in between and have fun.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 3: And kind of gist of it is is they don't
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 3: know what they're cooking with until I reveal it, so
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 3: they sort of have a mystery chunk of meat and
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 3: then they have, you know, some amount of time to
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 3: cook a meal out of it. And so far, I mean,
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: I tell you, I've been really impressed and really inspired
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 3: actually by a lot of the meals that have been
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 3: made in you know, ninety minutes, to the point where
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 3: I've probably made like I know, I made krins stir fry,
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 3: one time, I made Spencer's potstickers, made sets smash burgers,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 3: and it's great to just see like even though I
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 3: make smash burgers, it's like, oh, Seth did this and
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 3: did this and it was a little bit different. So
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 3: you know, it's been educational and like I said, people
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 3: are liking it. So check that out. It's called meat
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: Eater Roasts. That too, is on the mediater YouTube channel.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 3: You can hear me on the Mediat podcast Mediater Trivia sometimes.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 3: But as far as the habitat stuff goes, really, I've
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 3: just posted videos on my Instagram doing stuff. It's uh.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 3: As much as I'm enthralled with it and so passionate
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 3: about it, it's hard to make habitat work sexy, you
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: know what I mean. It's just like there's a niche
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: group of people that are like really into it, and
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 3: we'll watch, like I'll watch a video on YouTube with
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 3: some people burning in oak Savannah, right, a lot of
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 3: for everyone, though, Yeah, it doesn't do it for everybody,
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 3: but yeah, you can kind of follow along with what
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 3: we're doing over there. So yeah, now basically because all
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 3: the work, the major work has been done. Yeah I
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: say that, and then I think, well, not really, but
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 3: the logging has been done, and so now it's a
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 3: little bit of a waiting period to just kind of
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 3: see how everything is going to respond, which obviously I'm
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: super excited about. It's very hard being a thousand miles away.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: I constantly deal with fomo, the fact that I can
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 3: just swing over there and just see how the oaks
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 3: are butting out or whatever you know.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: Have you have you started strategically placing your cell cameras
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: yet to just give you views of habitat changes. Do
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: you have like a savannah cam and a clear cut
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: cam or anything like that.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, oh for sure, for sure. Yeah. I mean, obviously
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 3: they're in spots where they're going to catch some animal
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 3: movement too, but yeah, no, no doubt. And it's amazing too,
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 3: even without Like there's a couple of spots where they
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 3: did some stump grinding and some and some mulching, and
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 3: so it's very flat and clear, and like the turkey
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 3: gobblers have been strut in there like crazy, you know,
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: and they didn't used to strut there when it was
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 3: a close kind before us. And so yeah, for sure,
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 3: for sure, it's great to see. But the problem is,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 3: again you're getting such a just a sliver of what's
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 3: actually going on there. Like I can't zoom in on
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: my cameras to be like, oh, that is golden rod
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: growing or that's little blue stem growing. I'm just like
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 3: it's grass, I think. But yeah, it's funny doing all
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 3: this stuff and being so into it. Again, I kind
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 3: of give first DIBs to my dad, the other old
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 3: guys like if my kids are gonna want to hunt it, sure,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 3: And for me, I've actually been starting to explore some
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: of the public land that we have within an hour's drive.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 3: And I've always hunted the hill country because that's what
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 3: our place is, right. It's got hills that are roughly
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty feet of elevation, you know, relief,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 3: and a lot of this public land around there is
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: swampy and flat, and so it's like a whole new
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 3: adventure for me. Like I haven't quite run into a
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 3: spot where you need waiters. I've gotten close, But I
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: tell you what, it's been almost easier for me. I
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 3: feel like to learn and pick out where I want
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 3: to hunt, because it seems like the deer trails are
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 3: just like more pronounced like you in the Hill Country.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 3: Just seems like those jokers are just anywhere they want
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 3: to go. We're in this swamp country. I'm like, Oh,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 3: they're not going to go there because that's a lake,
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 3: and they're not going to go there because it's wide open.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 3: So oh, here's a great funnel and here's three trails
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 3: going through it. Oh, great place to get into a tree,
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 3: you know, and clear out a couple of shooting lanes.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: So that's pretty cool that you've got a spot though,
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: where you have that diversity of options both yeah, you know,
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: to keep it fresh, to learn new places, and just
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: to kind of figure out what works. But but I gotta say, yannesty,
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: you should make a point to let old Papa Giannis
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: uh slide on over and give you a seat on
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: the forty so you can see the fruits of your
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: labor a little bit this fall. You gotta try to
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: hunt it at least a time or two and see
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 2: see what's happening there. We will, yeah, for another reason,
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 2: because we want to We want to see, We want
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: to see the.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, it'd be good to
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 3: get a first first person report. What am I trying
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 3: to say?
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: I yeah, yeah, yeah, first person. I think I know
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: what you're trying to say, but I don't know the
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 2: words either. Ye in person in person? Thank you well,
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: my friend. I appreciate sharing this with it. I'm excited
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: for you. Super fun to watch.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 3: We can get to half the stuff that I had
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 3: written down in my notes. But want's say that for
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 3: another time.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: We never do. There's always there's always way more to
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: cover than we can get through in a dec the
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: time on these things. So thanks for joining us, Yanni.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 2: Let's touch base again when we've got another year or
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: two of progress and you can tell us all the
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: things you did wrong and what you do different next time.
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 3: It was a pleasure Mark as always, Thank you.
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: Thanks buddy. All right, thanks for tuning in, folks. I
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: enjoyed this one with my buddy Yanni. I hope you
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: did too. Hopefully it inspired some of you to give
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: this stuff a try, to dive into the world of
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: wildlife habitat improvement, to do some good out there on
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: the ground that has done so much good for you.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: So without any further ado, I'm going to wrap it up.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: Thanks again for being here, and until next time, stay
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: wired to Hunt.