Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Wired To Hunt Podcast #106: Jeremy Flinn, Managing Your Deer Property and Public Land Hunting

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Wired To Hunt Podcast #106: Jeremy Flinn, Managing Your Deer Property and Public Land Hunting · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
0:06
Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
0:11
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm
0:16
Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan. In this episode number one hundred
0:19
Speaker 1: and six Tay in the show, we're joined by wildlife
0:21
Speaker 1: biologist Jeremy Flynn to discuss all sorts of advice for
0:25
Speaker 1: managing your hunting property, public land hunting, and much more.
0:45
Speaker 1: All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought
0:49
Speaker 1: to you by Sick of Gear, and we're back from
0:51
Speaker 1: a week long break, and today we're joined by Jeremy Flynn,
0:55
Speaker 1: a wildlife biologist, outdoor writer, and all around white tail nut.
1:00
Speaker 1: And we're going to be discussing everything from ideas for
1:02
Speaker 1: better managing a deer hunting property to public land hunting advice,
1:06
Speaker 1: so kind of this whole gamut of different ways to hunt.
1:08
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna be super interesting. But before we
1:11
Speaker 1: get Jeremy on Dan, it's been a couple of weeks,
1:14
Speaker 1: so I figured we should catch up. Is there anything
1:17
Speaker 1: new new in your deer hunting world. I finally got
1:21
Speaker 1: out and checked one trail camera that I had sitting
1:26
Speaker 1: over a month and uh, I have at least one
1:33
Speaker 1: shooter from last year who's back, and I can't tell
1:37
Speaker 1: who he is. If it's a bucket called Dork who
1:40
Speaker 1: was just like this gigantic bodied uh three year old
1:45
Speaker 1: or excuse me, he's probably a six or seven year
1:47
Speaker 1: old this year, and then or Mark Kenyon. So they
1:51
Speaker 1: both kind of have split brows, so it's hard to
1:54
Speaker 1: tell this point. I'm not you know, I don't study
1:56
Speaker 1: their facial features and their coats. And I set my
2:01
Speaker 1: my trail camera up a little too high last time,
2:03
Speaker 1: so I'm not getting their heads when it's down in
2:05
Speaker 1: the mineral station. So it's kind of hard to get
2:08
Speaker 1: an accurate so I to adjust that. How what date?
2:12
Speaker 1: What date did you get those pictures on? Oh geez um,
2:16
Speaker 1: we don't let me pull up. I gotta I'm on
2:18
Speaker 1: my computer right now, and that date is the date
2:25
Speaker 1: of the big Boy was five, so May one. So
2:30
Speaker 1: how much antler growth did he have at that point? Well,
2:34
Speaker 1: let's see here. Um, he's got a notice will split
2:39
Speaker 1: on his main beams. He's got probably ten to somewhere
2:47
Speaker 1: in between the the eight twelve range for route or
2:52
Speaker 1: for main beams. He's got uh the G two and
2:59
Speaker 1: the that's about it. It's just a bump so split
3:05
Speaker 1: split on the brow ten you mean yeah the brow
3:08
Speaker 1: tyn Yeah, just one and it looks like, I don't know,
3:13
Speaker 1: you see some of those brow times where it grows
3:17
Speaker 1: up the main beam just a little bit, and then
3:19
Speaker 1: you have other brow times that look like they're coming
3:21
Speaker 1: straight off of the base. Right. So this this buck
3:25
Speaker 1: has one of each on this picture. So I think
3:28
Speaker 1: it's If I had to guess, I'd say it's this
3:30
Speaker 1: buck I called Dork. He's just a real tight racked,
3:35
Speaker 1: really massed out, thick, uh like three pound buck. This
3:41
Speaker 1: this is reminding me of last year. This is the
3:45
Speaker 1: beginning of my struggling summer while I listened to you
3:48
Speaker 1: talk about trail camera pictures and telet bucks and I
3:51
Speaker 1: just have to imagine what might be on my properties.
3:54
Speaker 1: I'm jealous, right right, So yeah, And I got like
4:00
Speaker 1: can see one, two, three, four, five six. I got
4:09
Speaker 1: six trail cameras out on Saturday. I have another one
4:12
Speaker 1: on another farm, and I got two or three more
4:15
Speaker 1: to put out on another farm yet. So um, I'm
4:18
Speaker 1: behind the eight ball as far as getting mineral out
4:22
Speaker 1: and get them coming to the mineral is concerned. Yeah, hey,
4:25
Speaker 1: it sounds like you have a lot of options eventually,
4:27
Speaker 1: I know. But that's the good thing, right, So yeah,
4:31
Speaker 1: that's exciting. I just love I love these summer months.
4:34
Speaker 1: It's just like the this is like that season of anticipation,
4:38
Speaker 1: Like checking the pictures gets you a little more excited
4:40
Speaker 1: every single week, and the antlers grow a little bit
4:43
Speaker 1: more and you start to slowly figure out, you know
4:45
Speaker 1: what deer in the area, who's back? And oh my gosh,
4:49
Speaker 1: I I I'm stoked. I got a couple of cameras
4:52
Speaker 1: out back in Michigan, couple in Ohio, and now I
4:57
Speaker 1: just have to wait a few months till I get
4:59
Speaker 1: home and check them. But I can't wait to see
5:03
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. So, based on the crop rotation,
5:06
Speaker 1: it wasn't last year, but the year before I had
5:08
Speaker 1: my best trick ear of trail cameras ever. So that
5:12
Speaker 1: would have been what two thousand and fourteen crop rotation,
5:16
Speaker 1: And so we're back in that crop rotation this year.
5:18
Speaker 1: And uh, you know there's tons of little young bucks.
5:22
Speaker 1: You know this this bachelor bachelor group of like five
5:25
Speaker 1: bucks is in coming to this mineral site all the time,
5:29
Speaker 1: nothing nothing giant, maybe three year olds and younger. But
5:33
Speaker 1: that same year it happened the same way. So the
5:37
Speaker 1: first of August is when I started blowing up as
5:40
Speaker 1: far as all these giants, like I think I remember
5:44
Speaker 1: talking to you about had like six shooters over over
5:48
Speaker 1: five even over five years old, five years old or older.
5:51
Speaker 1: So hopefully they stick around. Logging is done this year,
5:56
Speaker 1: knock on wood. So I'm but that's that's not really
6:01
Speaker 1: important right now. The what's important is my extreme jealousy
6:06
Speaker 1: for where you are and what you're doing right now. Yeah,
6:09
Speaker 1: I guess. I guess I'm saying I'm jealous about your pictures,
6:12
Speaker 1: but I can't complain too much. I suppose. Yeah. I
6:16
Speaker 1: just made the drive last week. The reason why we
6:18
Speaker 1: didn't have the podcast last week was because I drove
6:21
Speaker 1: my wife and I and are dogs headed out for
6:23
Speaker 1: our summer out west again. We're doing it again this year.
6:25
Speaker 1: So who we drove through Minute Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana,
6:32
Speaker 1: and then down into Idaho. So we're staying here in
6:35
Speaker 1: Idaho for the next month. And uh, so far the
6:40
Speaker 1: last eight days we've been here eight days, I think,
6:42
Speaker 1: and I have either hiked or fly fished every single
6:45
Speaker 1: day so far. So I'm trying to keep that straight
6:48
Speaker 1: going as long as I ken. I don't know if
6:49
Speaker 1: it will happen tonight, but I'll try to maybe get
6:51
Speaker 1: out for a little hike because it's been fun. It's
6:54
Speaker 1: been a lot of fun, beautiful, beautiful country. So I
6:57
Speaker 1: just every time you open your mouth, I want to
7:02
Speaker 1: just punch me in the face. It's not it's not
7:04
Speaker 1: even like it's like that on the movie. Uh what
7:09
Speaker 1: step Brothers, Like I want to punch you right in
7:12
Speaker 1: your mouth. I'm sorry. I don't know what it is
7:15
Speaker 1: about you telling spreading your good news makes me so jealous,
7:20
Speaker 1: Like I want to be in the mountains or even
7:23
Speaker 1: just outside, but instead I uh see Maiden China signs
7:27
Speaker 1: all day. Yeah. I know we're talking earlier about the
7:33
Speaker 1: the dull drums of cubical life. I know that um
7:36
Speaker 1: slowly can kill your soul. That definitely did it to me.
7:39
Speaker 1: So I, like I said earlier, if I could, I'd
7:43
Speaker 1: just give you a great bittell right out there, and
7:44
Speaker 1: I really would. I'd accept it too. Oh man, Well,
7:51
Speaker 1: one of these summers you've got to pack up the
7:53
Speaker 1: kids and the family and come and visit us out here,
7:56
Speaker 1: do some hiking, kayaking, fishing, gosh, so that fish. Yeah,
8:01
Speaker 1: it's I can't say I'm a good teacher because I
8:04
Speaker 1: am just still learning, but just in the couple, you know,
8:07
Speaker 1: last summer learning and now this summer again. While I'm
8:09
Speaker 1: not good at it, I sure found it addicting. It's
8:12
Speaker 1: it's like the bow hunting version of fishing. I feel
8:16
Speaker 1: like for me, it's like as bow hunting is to
8:18
Speaker 1: regular deer hunting, fly fishing is to regular fishing. It's
8:21
Speaker 1: kind of what I've been finding. It's just I don't know,
8:23
Speaker 1: another level of intricacy and strategy and like, I don't know.
8:29
Speaker 1: It's difficult, but really really like engaging and captivating. Like
8:33
Speaker 1: I just find myself all of a sudden, I've been
8:35
Speaker 1: out there five hours. I'm like, WHOA, where the time going?
8:37
Speaker 1: I just feel like I just got here. Right. So
8:41
Speaker 1: I haven't caught a whole lot yet this summer, just
8:43
Speaker 1: a couple, but I'm trying. I'm trying. Have you gotten
8:48
Speaker 1: your plaid shirt and pipe yet? No pipe? I'm rocking
8:52
Speaker 1: the plaid shirt on occasion, but I haven't had I
8:56
Speaker 1: have not found a pipe to my liking yet damn,
8:58
Speaker 1: but one of these days that will I know it's
9:00
Speaker 1: I know it's hard, but just do me a favor
9:04
Speaker 1: and with words, paint me a picture of some of
9:07
Speaker 1: the views that and this is gonna satisfy me for
9:10
Speaker 1: maybe thirty or forty minutes. But just like a couple
9:14
Speaker 1: of real quick sentences, maybe one sentence of how beautiful
9:17
Speaker 1: it is out there, and that will make me more jealous. Yeah,
9:20
Speaker 1: So I'll describe to you the setting. The other day,
9:24
Speaker 1: I was fishing the Snake River, which is this beautiful
9:26
Speaker 1: river that runs along the base of the Grand Tetons.
9:30
Speaker 1: So you just have this wide, maybe hundred yard wide river.
9:34
Speaker 1: This is flowing nice kind of bubbling brook type sounds.
9:37
Speaker 1: You hear the water going over the rocks. You've got
9:39
Speaker 1: a moose standing on the opposite shore looking around, and
9:42
Speaker 1: then as you gaze up, you've got the sun setting
9:44
Speaker 1: behind these three peaks, the cathedral peaks of the of
9:47
Speaker 1: the Teton Range. They're just jagged. It's the most like
9:50
Speaker 1: dramatic skyline of mountains I've ever seen. And it's just
9:54
Speaker 1: like a like a saw tooth blades up and down,
9:56
Speaker 1: up and down across the sky with those beams of sun,
10:00
Speaker 1: they're just starting to hide behind it, coming over so much.
10:03
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever seen that. When you've
10:04
Speaker 1: you can see the actually you can actually see the
10:07
Speaker 1: rays of light coming over something, whether it be trees
10:10
Speaker 1: or in this case, mountains. Those rays of light are
10:13
Speaker 1: actually coming down, reaching down, right down to the river
10:15
Speaker 1: in front of me, and that that right there is
10:18
Speaker 1: a pretty good day. That didn't make me feel I'm sorry.
10:31
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Get yourself a plane ticket. I know, I know.
10:38
Speaker 1: I'm trying to talk my wife and kids into moving
10:41
Speaker 1: into one of those teeny houses. Where have you ever
10:44
Speaker 1: seen that documentary Tiny House? Yeah, there's a whole TV
10:47
Speaker 1: show on it now, I love it. Yeah, I've been
10:50
Speaker 1: trying to do the same thing, trying to convince my
10:52
Speaker 1: wife who could do it, because I mean, I always say,
10:54
Speaker 1: if you downsize your payments, you can upsize your life.
10:57
Speaker 1: That's like my my new philosophy is like trying to
10:59
Speaker 1: cut other awesome things that we don't really need so
11:01
Speaker 1: we can go do the stuff we want to do.
11:04
Speaker 1: So that's one of those things that guess, if you
11:05
Speaker 1: could cut your house payment down, you can travel more,
11:08
Speaker 1: do different things work less. I don't know. Um, it's
11:12
Speaker 1: kind of a fun idea to think about at least.
11:16
Speaker 1: So we have got to get our guests on the
11:20
Speaker 1: line now. But I believe you've got to run because
11:22
Speaker 1: you're on your baby duty today right right. I'm on
11:25
Speaker 1: a different schedule as far as today because we're recording
11:28
Speaker 1: a different time, but I got in for the intro
11:32
Speaker 1: just to catch up with you, and uh, I guess
11:34
Speaker 1: I'll be back next week at our regularly regularly scheduled
11:38
Speaker 1: programming time. Yes, well, I appreciate you happening on for
11:41
Speaker 1: a little bit, Dan, and we're going to take a
11:42
Speaker 1: quick break for word from our partners at Sick Gear,
11:46
Speaker 1: and then we will get our guests on the line.
11:50
Speaker 1: So as we do every week, we've got a sick
11:52
Speaker 1: story for you, and today it's from Mike Mansell, who
11:55
Speaker 1: last year focused in a enormous amount of effort trying
11:58
Speaker 1: to get a shot at of buck you've been after
12:00
Speaker 1: for several years prior. In two thousand fIF he manipulated
12:04
Speaker 1: his property and food plots and tree stands all with
12:07
Speaker 1: the goal of getting a shot at this dandy four
12:10
Speaker 1: and a half year old nine pointer, and then Finally,
12:13
Speaker 1: one day in December, it all came together and the
12:16
Speaker 1: buck appeared in shooting range. The only problem Mike had
12:21
Speaker 1: already filled his tag on another deer, so he couldn't shoot.
12:26
Speaker 1: I mean, it was it was upsetting at first, but
12:28
Speaker 1: it was probably one of the most rewarding feelings has
12:31
Speaker 1: all the work that we put in. Who harder was
12:34
Speaker 1: that particular dear, and just seeing that it would have
12:37
Speaker 1: worked even if I had a take at the time, Um,
12:40
Speaker 1: it was that vertty special it was. It was pretty
12:44
Speaker 1: cool to see it's where it actually would have panned out.
12:47
Speaker 1: So how do you feel what it's coming year? How
12:49
Speaker 1: excuttered are you to get another shot at him? I'm
12:52
Speaker 1: pretty stoked, um, as we've got a really good chance
12:55
Speaker 1: at him. So be honestly, how many times have you
12:58
Speaker 1: thought about that deer already this year? Oh? It's I've
13:04
Speaker 1: I've looked at the pictures, the Tiana photos, the video
13:09
Speaker 1: of the encounter, several plants. He's already on my behind.
13:13
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna sleep much this far
13:18
Speaker 1: for good reason. Hopefully we'll have a part two to
13:21
Speaker 1: the sick Of story as Mike takes another crack at
13:24
Speaker 1: his buck in two thousand and sixteen. But back to
13:26
Speaker 1: that two fifteen encounter. On that hunt, Mike was wearing
13:29
Speaker 1: a Sick of Gear shack Itt Fanatic hoodie and the
13:32
Speaker 1: Equinox pants. If you'd like to learn more about what
13:35
Speaker 1: sick of Gear options might be right for you, visit
13:38
Speaker 1: sick of Gear dot com. And now let's get back
13:41
Speaker 1: to the show and give our guests Jeremy Flynn a call.
13:45
Speaker 1: All right with us Now on the line is Jeremy Flynn.
13:48
Speaker 1: Welcome to show. Jeremy first aid Mark. Yeah. I I've
13:52
Speaker 1: been reading a lot of things from me over the
13:55
Speaker 1: past few years and have thought to myself over and
13:58
Speaker 1: over again, I've got to talk to Jeremy some day.
14:00
Speaker 1: I got to have him on the show. So I'm
14:02
Speaker 1: really glad this is finally happening. Thanks for making this
14:04
Speaker 1: happen to him. I appreciate it, man. I Like I said,
14:07
Speaker 1: I've been a big fan of the podcast, listen to
14:09
Speaker 1: a lot of them over the years, and and kind
14:12
Speaker 1: as they were discussing any day is a good day
14:13
Speaker 1: to talk to your Yeah, I haven't found a day
14:16
Speaker 1: yet that's not a good one to talk about this topics.
14:19
Speaker 1: So so I guess. With that said, though, before we
14:21
Speaker 1: get too far, for those that aren't further with who
14:24
Speaker 1: you are, can you give us a little bit of
14:25
Speaker 1: background as to, you know, how you got to where
14:28
Speaker 1: you are now and what you're doing today in relation
14:30
Speaker 1: to two deer? Sure? Absolutely so. You know, I grew
14:35
Speaker 1: up in in western Pennsylvania, which cohincidentally is where i'm
14:40
Speaker 1: that right now. It's kind of been a full circle
14:42
Speaker 1: ride for me. UM did my undergrad at penn State
14:46
Speaker 1: University and wildlife UM work you know, numerous jobs and
14:50
Speaker 1: internships do in whitefield deer research, and kind of always
14:54
Speaker 1: knew I needed to go to the next level UM,
14:57
Speaker 1: and so in two thousand and seven I started doing
15:01
Speaker 1: my master's degree at Mississippi State University. Spent three years
15:06
Speaker 1: in Mississippi UM doing research on trail cameras and and
15:10
Speaker 1: aging and scoring deer from photographs. Was kind of my
15:13
Speaker 1: big background there. And you know, some people that may
15:16
Speaker 1: be listening to the podcast and in two thousand and ten,
15:19
Speaker 1: eleven and twelve might remember buck score UM, which was
15:22
Speaker 1: a computer software that was out for a while and
15:25
Speaker 1: and that was one of the derivatives of my research.
15:28
Speaker 1: When I was at Mississippi State UM, and so kind
15:33
Speaker 1: of leaving Mississippi State, they spent several years managing that
15:36
Speaker 1: program and that company UM only to end up at
15:40
Speaker 1: Cabela's about three years ago and ran the Midwest and
15:45
Speaker 1: Northeast sections for their Wildlife and Land Management division and
15:50
Speaker 1: uh kind of going through on that, you know, Cabela's
15:53
Speaker 1: was a great opportunity for me to to expand my
15:56
Speaker 1: horizons as a dear biologist and uh, but really on
16:00
Speaker 1: my passion to be working kind of on my own
16:04
Speaker 1: as a as not only a wildlife consultant, but got
16:07
Speaker 1: into growing businesses UM when I was in my software
16:11
Speaker 1: days and now kind of my main focus is running
16:15
Speaker 1: my company and being the marketing officer for Stone Road
16:18
Speaker 1: Media UM. And we do a lot of marketing for
16:22
Speaker 1: hunting organizations, both television shows as well as manufacturing companies.
16:27
Speaker 1: And then we also operate the Bucket Advisors, which is
16:30
Speaker 1: basically our wildlife management arm which we produced a lot
16:33
Speaker 1: of video content for these companies but also providing good
16:37
Speaker 1: informational and educational pieces for just kind of the average
16:41
Speaker 1: deer hunter. UM. You know, maybe the guys who own
16:44
Speaker 1: big properties, but but a lot of times it's it's
16:47
Speaker 1: guys who have small properties or even hunting public land.
16:52
Speaker 1: So you've got you've got such a cool set of experiences.
16:56
Speaker 1: There's so many different things that sound like super super
16:59
Speaker 1: interest in to to be involved in. But I want
17:01
Speaker 1: to go all the way back to school. What was
17:03
Speaker 1: it like going to school for deer related stuff? I mean,
17:08
Speaker 1: that sounds like a dream come true for most people,
17:11
Speaker 1: you know, and it was. Man, I mean I remember
17:14
Speaker 1: growing up and it's kind of funny. I felt like
17:17
Speaker 1: I was in that position where that's the only thing
17:19
Speaker 1: that I really wanted to do. And you know, for
17:23
Speaker 1: for a lot of people thinking about it, you know,
17:26
Speaker 1: you kind of wonder, you know, what do you do
17:28
Speaker 1: with that kind of an education? And and really there's
17:31
Speaker 1: probably a lot of people who may be listening to
17:32
Speaker 1: this and even in school, that are asking themselves that
17:35
Speaker 1: same question. I mean, what what do you do with
17:37
Speaker 1: that career? And and the hard facts are is that
17:41
Speaker 1: there aren't a ton of opportunities once you get out
17:44
Speaker 1: of school. UM, So you've got to make sure that
17:46
Speaker 1: while you're in it to maximize it more than just
17:49
Speaker 1: the educational level. And what I mean by that is
17:52
Speaker 1: experiences everything, Um, and so it was such a cool
17:57
Speaker 1: opportunity to get involved and being wild life. But then
18:00
Speaker 1: it was almost scary to know that there's so much
18:03
Speaker 1: competition for so few jobs. And and call me stubborn,
18:07
Speaker 1: and a lot of people did when I was in school,
18:10
Speaker 1: But you know, I just wanted to work with deer.
18:12
Speaker 1: You know, I love turkey hunting, I love grouse hunting,
18:14
Speaker 1: I love I love trout fishing, and at the end
18:17
Speaker 1: of the day, I just wanted to work with deer.
18:18
Speaker 1: And and you think about on a landscape level, even
18:22
Speaker 1: across the country, there's not a ton of jobs that
18:25
Speaker 1: work with deer um, you know, if you've got a
18:28
Speaker 1: handful of state biologists and maybe work with deer um
18:32
Speaker 1: on a federal level, very few, if any, because it's
18:35
Speaker 1: such a state managed species. And then on the private sector,
18:39
Speaker 1: you know, feel and far between, especially outside of Texas
18:42
Speaker 1: and most of the major ranches. So it was a
18:45
Speaker 1: cool experience, but it also was scary to know to
18:49
Speaker 1: think about where is it gonna lead to UM once
18:52
Speaker 1: school was over, And yeah, I had some really good guidance.
18:56
Speaker 1: I think that pointed to if you really want to
18:59
Speaker 1: make an impact UM and try to go somewhere, you know,
19:02
Speaker 1: Masters was what I needed to do and and really
19:05
Speaker 1: to leave my home state of Pennsylvania. It was the
19:07
Speaker 1: first time I really had to go outside of that
19:09
Speaker 1: state and be gone for an extended period of time.
19:13
Speaker 1: That was probably the hardest part of it. Yeah, I
19:15
Speaker 1: can imagine. So once you did go to matt to
19:18
Speaker 1: get your masters at Mississippi State, I think you said
19:21
Speaker 1: you were researching and working on this project related to
19:24
Speaker 1: aging and scoring bucks. Right, Well, what what were the
19:26
Speaker 1: major takeaways you came that you came out of that
19:29
Speaker 1: experience with What did you learn about aging and scoring bucks?
19:32
Speaker 1: Was there any major take home message? Yeah? You know.
19:37
Speaker 1: The cool thing about it, I mean everything dealt around photography,
19:40
Speaker 1: and I mean, even though we did some handheld, you know, photographs,
19:45
Speaker 1: of what we studied were trail camera pictures. And to
19:48
Speaker 1: this day, I'm still a trail camera junkey dis like you,
19:51
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, it's it's one of those things
19:52
Speaker 1: that it's like Christmas, you know, every day that you
19:55
Speaker 1: want to take trail cameras, you never know if you're
19:57
Speaker 1: gonna have on. And we were just looking at some
19:58
Speaker 1: pictures here on a new property. I have a Pennilvania
20:01
Speaker 1: with red box all of this place, and you know,
20:04
Speaker 1: even though it's not dear, it's just really cool to
20:06
Speaker 1: see that kind of stuff. So, UM, I think that
20:09
Speaker 1: it's in the grand scheme of things to to know
20:12
Speaker 1: that you're looking at a picture and you're trying to
20:15
Speaker 1: identify age or antler size. UM. The major takeaways that
20:21
Speaker 1: we found, UM, we studied mostly southeastern deer, but then
20:25
Speaker 1: we really started expanding it, you know, across the Northeast
20:28
Speaker 1: and Midwest, was that although deer, you know, like in
20:32
Speaker 1: Saskatchewan maybe bigger than deer in some parts of the
20:36
Speaker 1: coast of Mississippi or even Florida, we found that they
20:40
Speaker 1: were mostly proportionately larger on an aging standpoint. So even
20:44
Speaker 1: though you look at that fully rutted out buck um
20:47
Speaker 1: from Alberta or or even Wisconsin and you're like, man,
20:52
Speaker 1: deer doesn't even have a neck on him, it proportionally
20:56
Speaker 1: is still the same size as a Florida deer would be. UM.
21:01
Speaker 1: So if you took measurements of the neck and compared
21:03
Speaker 1: it to the chest, there took chest measurements and compared
21:06
Speaker 1: it to the stomach. Earth as long as you were
21:09
Speaker 1: looking within the same age classes, they were proportionately larger
21:13
Speaker 1: um And I thought that was a big take of
21:14
Speaker 1: message because you know, a lot of people have trouble
21:17
Speaker 1: aging deer from different regions of the country because you know,
21:20
Speaker 1: the nutrition especially. You think while the deer in the
21:23
Speaker 1: Midwest are just you know, eating crops all year long
21:26
Speaker 1: and they're putting on weight. But really your eyeballs should
21:30
Speaker 1: be trained to look at different proportions than anything else. Interesting.
21:35
Speaker 1: So what would you say then, I imagine giving all
21:38
Speaker 1: this work you did, you probably came away with some
21:41
Speaker 1: some some helpful maybe guidelines or steps to trying to
21:46
Speaker 1: age deer on the hoof, whether it be in person
21:48
Speaker 1: or in trail cameras. Would there be anything you could
21:50
Speaker 1: share with us now in regards to how you go
21:52
Speaker 1: about trying to make those you know, estimates, Now, sure, absolutely,
21:57
Speaker 1: I mean we we looked at so many different variations
22:00
Speaker 1: of different features on the deer compared to each other,
22:03
Speaker 1: you know, still uh to the to the day. Probably
22:07
Speaker 1: the chest girth is obviously a big indicator, especially as
22:10
Speaker 1: related to the stomach garth um. So you know, when
22:15
Speaker 1: people think about that classic three year old like thoroughbred racehorse,
22:18
Speaker 1: look obviously that's because you're looking for that deep chest
22:22
Speaker 1: but not necessarily filled out in the stomach earth um,
22:25
Speaker 1: as it would get closer to a four year older
22:27
Speaker 1: than even a five year old whom we are starting
22:29
Speaker 1: to look at the sack of the stomach UM, so
22:32
Speaker 1: that that definitely was a big indicator UM the next earth.
22:36
Speaker 1: So both at the base end up towards the jawline. Actually,
22:39
Speaker 1: so you think about a young one or two year
22:41
Speaker 1: old bucket, you know, almost looked this spin as a
22:44
Speaker 1: dough up around the jawline where the neck would meet
22:47
Speaker 1: that area and you get into that three, four and
22:50
Speaker 1: five year old age class. Even in the pre run.
22:52
Speaker 1: There's just a definitive difference UM in that size. So
22:58
Speaker 1: I think that susy feature wise. Those those are two
23:02
Speaker 1: of the bigger areas or comparisons that we looked at,
23:05
Speaker 1: And you know a lot of people were still and
23:08
Speaker 1: ending and as a biologist, I say, you know, don't
23:10
Speaker 1: look at the Endler's obviously for age UM. But what
23:13
Speaker 1: we did find is one of the most definitive age classifications,
23:18
Speaker 1: especially when you bring in like the chest or the
23:20
Speaker 1: neck into play. As looking at the deer overall was
23:24
Speaker 1: the basil circumference. You know, as that basil circumference increased
23:28
Speaker 1: regardless of what was above it, whether it was a
23:30
Speaker 1: six point or twelve point um you know, whether it
23:33
Speaker 1: was a hundred ten inch buck or a hundred and
23:35
Speaker 1: seventy at basil circumference played a huge role in us
23:38
Speaker 1: being able to um separate age classes. Um. So you know,
23:43
Speaker 1: we were looking at it as on a very micro level.
23:46
Speaker 1: I mean, we were actually using measurement tools to measure
23:50
Speaker 1: that basil circumference and a picture. Um. But you know,
23:53
Speaker 1: visually you can tell as well. You know, you can
23:56
Speaker 1: tell the difference between a two year old that's really
23:59
Speaker 1: thin in a four year that's starting to put some mass,
24:01
Speaker 1: well m circumference. Yeah, So so the basil's circumference, correct
24:05
Speaker 1: me if I'm wrong, But we're talking just about the
24:06
Speaker 1: mass the circumference of the antler right at the base,
24:09
Speaker 1: right right at the base. Yep. So you know, obviously
24:13
Speaker 1: you can probably extrapolate that and say, well, you know,
24:16
Speaker 1: sicker mass at the base is going to lead to
24:18
Speaker 1: a better mass measurement overall for Boon and Crockett score,
24:22
Speaker 1: And then Boo and Crockett score probably plays a factor
24:25
Speaker 1: in age and it does. But you know, really just
24:27
Speaker 1: that Basil's circumference when we would look at that measurement individually,
24:31
Speaker 1: um and and again bringing in the factors of the neck,
24:34
Speaker 1: in the chest, earth, in the stomach, earth, all of
24:37
Speaker 1: those together really was what separated age classes out the
24:41
Speaker 1: best for us on a measurement standpoint. Yeah, makes sense.
24:44
Speaker 1: It's one of those things trying to age dear on
24:47
Speaker 1: the hoof or on pictures. You know, it's not a
24:49
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not a you know, down past science,
24:54
Speaker 1: but sure's a lot of fun trying to trying to
24:56
Speaker 1: figure it out and using these types of It's so
25:00
Speaker 1: tough too, I mean, you know, really, like I tell everyone,
25:03
Speaker 1: when you get to the even like this time of
25:05
Speaker 1: the year, I mean, deer still look ragged. They're not
25:07
Speaker 1: nearly as as thick as they're going to be in
25:09
Speaker 1: another two months. I mean, that pre rut time period
25:13
Speaker 1: is about the most consistent you're gonna get, you know,
25:15
Speaker 1: because once you get into the peak ride, I mean,
25:17
Speaker 1: different deer are going to develop muscular better or worse
25:22
Speaker 1: than other deer in the same age class. Um, So
25:24
Speaker 1: you tend to get the most consistent in that pre
25:27
Speaker 1: ride and then you had to get to the post. Rude.
25:29
Speaker 1: I mean that's a whole different ballgamean planning on food stores,
25:33
Speaker 1: how worn down from the rut. You know, lots of
25:36
Speaker 1: factors playing into that, but it is it's it is
25:41
Speaker 1: more of just training yourself. And like I tell everybody,
25:43
Speaker 1: I mean it's harder for the guys who hunt multiple
25:46
Speaker 1: places across the country, but the ones that are really
25:49
Speaker 1: sticking to a local area or even a single property,
25:52
Speaker 1: I mean, train yourself on those deer and and really
25:55
Speaker 1: just try to stay consistent. It's like doing a camera survey.
25:58
Speaker 1: You may not know the definitive number of beer every
26:01
Speaker 1: year on that property, as long as you're monitoring the trend.
26:04
Speaker 1: So if you stay consistent saying these are all three
26:07
Speaker 1: year old, then these are all four year olds in
26:10
Speaker 1: your eye, and that's what you're You know, you're going
26:12
Speaker 1: to be fairly close within a year or so. UM.
26:15
Speaker 1: So that in itself is gonna help you develop a
26:19
Speaker 1: better herd overall. Um. If you try to always say, well,
26:23
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna shoot you know, three year old this year,
26:25
Speaker 1: I'm only gonna shoot four year old, You're very rarely
26:28
Speaker 1: going to be a accurate. There's gonna be three year
26:31
Speaker 1: olds that look like four year olds? Is gonna be
26:32
Speaker 1: four year olds that look like three year olds? Just
26:35
Speaker 1: the name of the game? Yeah, yeah, definitely. So so
26:38
Speaker 1: speaking of that type of situation, you know, hunting a
26:41
Speaker 1: specific property, managing it for for a certain age class. Um,
26:45
Speaker 1: if I think, I think I saw that you just
26:47
Speaker 1: recently bought a piece of property. Is that right? You
26:50
Speaker 1: just started going front? I did, I did. I've got
26:54
Speaker 1: so you know, after being in in the well, I
26:57
Speaker 1: lived in the Midwest for the last five years, Um,
27:00
Speaker 1: I moved back to my home state, about an hour
27:03
Speaker 1: south of where I grew up. And we've got just
27:06
Speaker 1: a small piece, just under thirty acres right at the
27:08
Speaker 1: base of the mountains. So for sure not the Midwest
27:11
Speaker 1: fertile soils that we were dealing with in Missouri, but
27:15
Speaker 1: you know, definitely a cool piece to to start from
27:18
Speaker 1: scratch essentially and and really build up into you know,
27:21
Speaker 1: more of a hunting property and a wildlife seeing property.
27:24
Speaker 1: From my wife and my kids, I mean, my wife
27:27
Speaker 1: loves the hind. I can't wait to get my kids
27:29
Speaker 1: out in the woods and start hunting. You know, it's
27:31
Speaker 1: a it's a cool opportunity to start something from scratch.
27:34
Speaker 1: But also there's anyone who has property notes that regardless
27:37
Speaker 1: of size, it's always work. Yeah. Yeah, but like you said,
27:41
Speaker 1: a lot of fun to be able to do that
27:43
Speaker 1: work on your own little piece of a little piece
27:45
Speaker 1: of paradise, right. It's it's a dream comes true, man.
27:48
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't I can't imagine how long it's
27:51
Speaker 1: been that I've thought about having my own piece of dirt.
27:54
Speaker 1: But you know, I could call my own I put
27:56
Speaker 1: my own tub plot in, I could shoot my own
27:58
Speaker 1: deer over, you know. And I know, obviously everything public
28:02
Speaker 1: resource at the end of the day when we talk
28:03
Speaker 1: about wildlife, but you know, you definitely look at things
28:06
Speaker 1: a little different when it's your own property. Um, you know,
28:09
Speaker 1: even I mean at least tons of property in the past.
28:12
Speaker 1: It's it's a completely different feeling to know that you're
28:15
Speaker 1: responsible for that pizza dirt. You definitely become protective of it.
28:19
Speaker 1: I can tell you that I probably have more trail
28:21
Speaker 1: cameras up for trust passers than I do have for wildlife.
28:24
Speaker 1: So um, but it but it is a neat thing
28:28
Speaker 1: to have and into experience, especially with the kids growing up. Yeah.
28:32
Speaker 1: So so when you've got a piece of property like this,
28:34
Speaker 1: you know, when you're just starting out and you you
28:36
Speaker 1: you go into this, it sounds like you went into
28:38
Speaker 1: this with a goal of creating a deer hunting property,
28:41
Speaker 1: a better deer hunting property than it is today. How
28:43
Speaker 1: do you start that process? Like, what are the things
28:45
Speaker 1: you're thinking about or taking you know, taking inventory of
28:48
Speaker 1: or where does that process begin? So even know, the
28:52
Speaker 1: first thing that I do is that I go to
28:55
Speaker 1: maps right away, you know, before I even step foot
28:58
Speaker 1: on a piece of ground. UM. And a couple of
29:01
Speaker 1: things I'm looking for one, you know, area views them.
29:04
Speaker 1: I'm looking to see the lay of the land UM,
29:07
Speaker 1: in particular what's surrounding the property. So you know, like
29:10
Speaker 1: I said, I've got just under thirty acres, which most
29:13
Speaker 1: people are thinking, well that's you know, that's barely anything
29:16
Speaker 1: to hunt. You know. The way that it lays out
29:19
Speaker 1: is thirty acres of all timber, you know, basically decides
29:22
Speaker 1: where my house is at um, which is probably a
29:25
Speaker 1: little over an acre acre and a half of open ground.
29:27
Speaker 1: Everything else is solid woods. UM. It's a very rugged terrain. UM,
29:33
Speaker 1: lots of deep cuts in the hillsides um steep through
29:37
Speaker 1: the middle. So I mean if you if you look
29:40
Speaker 1: at it over top and you think, wow, that's that's
29:42
Speaker 1: thirty acres if you legged it, you know it may
29:45
Speaker 1: hunt sixty or ninety acres UM just because of how
29:49
Speaker 1: much topography is actually there. So that's one thing that
29:53
Speaker 1: I always like to look at is that overall. But
29:55
Speaker 1: even more so than that, UM is what's surrounding my property. UM.
30:01
Speaker 1: You know, if it's a thirty acre island in the
30:03
Speaker 1: middle of of uh you know, residential community or something,
30:07
Speaker 1: then it's it's one thing, you know, the opportunity to
30:10
Speaker 1: have that kind of stuff nearby and and just you know,
30:15
Speaker 1: see what the deer movement would be relative to the
30:18
Speaker 1: properties around you makes a big difference. For for instance,
30:22
Speaker 1: my property I border about two acres of privately owned
30:25
Speaker 1: timberland from a paper company. Uh. And then there's a
30:29
Speaker 1: public state game lands that even borders that. So you know,
30:32
Speaker 1: if you wanted to say how contiguous is your property,
30:35
Speaker 1: it's probably approaching a half a million acres UM. So
30:39
Speaker 1: you never know what's gonna end up in uh, in
30:42
Speaker 1: the property, even though it's only thirty UM because of
30:45
Speaker 1: what's surrounding you. So I would say number one, as
30:49
Speaker 1: I go to the map, that's gonna give you the
30:50
Speaker 1: best view of the not only what your property has
30:53
Speaker 1: and it's and its benefits, its advantages and disadvantages, but
30:57
Speaker 1: what's the potential around it, because that's obviously going to
31:01
Speaker 1: affect it, especially smaller landowners. Yeah, so when you look
31:05
Speaker 1: at your property right now, when you think about that question,
31:08
Speaker 1: you look at the high level of view and you say,
31:10
Speaker 1: what does my property have? What does it not have?
31:12
Speaker 1: One of the advantages and disadvantages? What did you actually
31:15
Speaker 1: what was the answer to that question when you answered
31:17
Speaker 1: after looking at this so so obviously the big one
31:20
Speaker 1: was that I had a ton of privately held land
31:24
Speaker 1: that bumped right up next to my property, um and
31:28
Speaker 1: then even the public land next to that, knowing that
31:30
Speaker 1: there probably would be some pressure on top of the
31:32
Speaker 1: mountain and I'm at the base, so naturally we see
31:36
Speaker 1: a lot of wildlife kind of migrate down off the
31:39
Speaker 1: hills as the season progresses, not only from hunting pressure,
31:42
Speaker 1: but weather as well. Um So that was one big
31:45
Speaker 1: thing that I saw, the one that I really thought
31:48
Speaker 1: was a big advantage to mine and to some people
31:51
Speaker 1: wouldn't be because the property was logged out um in
31:54
Speaker 1: the early two thousands, taking everything basically eight inches in
31:58
Speaker 1: diameter and under um and so and today it's it's
32:03
Speaker 1: thick um. I mean it's it's navigable. You can get
32:07
Speaker 1: through it. There's still some big timber, We've got some
32:09
Speaker 1: big oaks on the property and an American beach that
32:12
Speaker 1: will produce some good hard mass. But the amount of
32:15
Speaker 1: greenbrier and cover compared to the mature timberland that basically
32:20
Speaker 1: surrounds it, I saw, is a huge advantage. Um. Not
32:23
Speaker 1: only is embedding, but I've told everybody from the start,
32:26
Speaker 1: if I can see deer and this time of the
32:28
Speaker 1: year where there's food everywhere, when we get to the
32:31
Speaker 1: fall and it's all relying on hard mass, and then
32:33
Speaker 1: even into the winter when we're talking about all natural brows,
32:37
Speaker 1: this property is going to just be loaded with deer um.
32:40
Speaker 1: And we've seen that. We've seen a lot of deer
32:42
Speaker 1: on the property, bachelor groups moving through already in this
32:45
Speaker 1: late spring when home ranges are pretty small. But I
32:48
Speaker 1: think as we get into the fall and the hard
32:50
Speaker 1: mass and then they rely more on the natural brows
32:53
Speaker 1: with these big clothes, canopy forced basically surrounding it. These
32:58
Speaker 1: deer going to be just suck been into this property
33:00
Speaker 1: because there's so much natural browse form, which is always
33:04
Speaker 1: a huge benefit to me. I mean that's no matter
33:06
Speaker 1: where you're at, I don't care if you're in the
33:07
Speaker 1: Midwest or you're in the Northeast. Number one suit source
33:11
Speaker 1: for the deer is going to be the natural browse. Yeah. So,
33:14
Speaker 1: were there any major uh gaps that you saw or
33:19
Speaker 1: major issues that you saw when you're starting to looking
33:21
Speaker 1: at Is there anything that you're like, Okay, this I
33:23
Speaker 1: need to fix. Well, I mean the number one in
33:27
Speaker 1: my lovely home state of Pennsylvania is is always trespassing.
33:31
Speaker 1: I mean, we've got such a high number of hunters
33:33
Speaker 1: in the state identity. Um, there's quite a few houses
33:36
Speaker 1: that border my property and and I'm sure, based on
33:40
Speaker 1: the previous landowners not being hunters, that there will be
33:43
Speaker 1: quite a few people dabbling in on my property this year.
33:46
Speaker 1: And I expect that, you know, the first couple of years,
33:49
Speaker 1: it's just gonna be a lot of monitoring and laying
33:51
Speaker 1: down the law. Um, you know, knowing that somebody is
33:54
Speaker 1: actually there to enforce trust passing on the property. Um,
33:58
Speaker 1: you know, that's something that every landowner deal with. So
34:01
Speaker 1: the one thing that I thought was going to be
34:02
Speaker 1: the hardest and still is this day, and I'll be honest,
34:06
Speaker 1: I haven't even quite figured it out myself, is access um.
34:09
Speaker 1: When you've got twenty twenty nine acres of of solid
34:13
Speaker 1: timber and basically there's two main access points where one
34:17
Speaker 1: where my houses and one that has a little piece
34:20
Speaker 1: of road frontage completely on the opposite end, it's it's
34:24
Speaker 1: hard to navigate through there. There are some more logging roads,
34:27
Speaker 1: but because it's so thick, at any given point you
34:30
Speaker 1: could you could essentially come through a betting area. So
34:33
Speaker 1: I think the big challenge, you know, even through the
34:35
Speaker 1: first few seasons, is going to be figuring out where
34:38
Speaker 1: the definitive betting areas or do I need to create
34:40
Speaker 1: more definitive betting areas, not necessarily because there's a lack
34:44
Speaker 1: of betting on the property. The more so that I
34:47
Speaker 1: can kind of patterned deer to be able to navigate
34:50
Speaker 1: to my three stand in and out more efficiently, Right,
34:54
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense. If you can't, if
34:55
Speaker 1: you can't naturally figure out where those opportunity areas are
34:59
Speaker 1: to get in there unnoticed. You can encourage deer to
35:02
Speaker 1: go certain places where you can avoid. That's that's a
35:05
Speaker 1: good and that's that's one of the hardest things that
35:09
Speaker 1: I think any property I think really deals with and
35:13
Speaker 1: maybe even has the lack of knowledge on is you know,
35:16
Speaker 1: what's the effect of going in and out? I mean,
35:18
Speaker 1: just by nature, we're going to take the path of
35:21
Speaker 1: least resistance. You know that's a logging road or or
35:24
Speaker 1: bag feel, but it doesn't matter, um and we don't
35:27
Speaker 1: necessarily think thoroughly of where those deer are going to
35:30
Speaker 1: be during the entrance and exit time. So the stands
35:33
Speaker 1: and you know, I think with the heavily timbered ground,
35:36
Speaker 1: especially when it's very even though there's a little bit
35:39
Speaker 1: difference in the habitat type, deer literally could be betting everywhere.
35:43
Speaker 1: And I mean I've jumped them in ten different places
35:45
Speaker 1: on that property that it's like, how am I going
35:48
Speaker 1: to congregate these deer in an area that lets me
35:51
Speaker 1: navigate through a little bit? More so, how have you
35:55
Speaker 1: tried to go about figuring this property out? You you
35:58
Speaker 1: haven't hunted it, right, this is your first spring owning it? Correct? Yeah,
36:01
Speaker 1: we literally just move in about two months ago, so
36:04
Speaker 1: it's like fresh off the fresh out the gate for sure.
36:07
Speaker 1: So so what have you been doing so far to
36:09
Speaker 1: try to start figuring out and what are your plans
36:11
Speaker 1: for the next couple of months leading up to the
36:13
Speaker 1: hunting season, Just to you know, this is your first season,
36:16
Speaker 1: how do you establish that base knowledge? You know, the again,
36:21
Speaker 1: the master are really critical on that. Um. You know.
36:25
Speaker 1: The second thing and I try to do it as
36:27
Speaker 1: carefully as possible is just straight navigation and legging out
36:31
Speaker 1: the property. Um. It's been really hard to try to
36:35
Speaker 1: figure out how to get in there and get out
36:37
Speaker 1: of there without moving deer. And I know a lot
36:39
Speaker 1: of people are extremely sensitive of putting pressure on the
36:43
Speaker 1: herd um, But at this time of the year, I'm
36:46
Speaker 1: always one of those people that I don't I don't
36:48
Speaker 1: want to put a lot of pressure on them, But
36:50
Speaker 1: I also don't think that it hurts to walk through
36:52
Speaker 1: a property if you bump a deer here or there.
36:55
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, you know, four months
36:57
Speaker 1: from now, it's probably not going to make a big difference. Um.
37:00
Speaker 1: You know, as we get close to the season July August,
37:03
Speaker 1: then I'm a little bit more concerned. You know, I
37:04
Speaker 1: don't want to be pushing deer around when I'm a
37:06
Speaker 1: couple of months out from the season. I want them
37:08
Speaker 1: to settle in. I want them to feel comfortable. Um.
37:11
Speaker 1: But I do try to get out there and move
37:13
Speaker 1: through the property as much as possible, especially with this
37:16
Speaker 1: rain that we have. I mean there's there's funnels and
37:19
Speaker 1: gaps and saddles all through there, um you know, and
37:22
Speaker 1: even locating some of the remnant big oak trees through
37:24
Speaker 1: there to figure out where some of these hard mass
37:26
Speaker 1: rod spots are gonna be. I think that's one of
37:29
Speaker 1: the biggest things, um, you know. Also just being a
37:32
Speaker 1: big trail camera nut. You know, We've got five cameras
37:36
Speaker 1: I think out right now on on thirty acres, and
37:38
Speaker 1: I'm sure it will probably double by the time hunting
37:40
Speaker 1: season gets here. Um Again, it's figuring out not only
37:44
Speaker 1: patterns on the deer that it currently existing, but but
37:47
Speaker 1: just seeing with out there. I mean, I'll be honest,
37:50
Speaker 1: in in that part of the country, you're expected to
37:52
Speaker 1: see maybe some you know, does moving through at this
37:55
Speaker 1: time of the year, a couple of smallpox or something.
37:57
Speaker 1: We had a bachelor group we could go show up
38:01
Speaker 1: and one of them is started just a young two
38:03
Speaker 1: year old. There's one buck I think that could probably
38:05
Speaker 1: be a decent three and another one that's probably a
38:08
Speaker 1: good three year old too. He was already way out
38:10
Speaker 1: past few years with a slip brow on one side,
38:13
Speaker 1: you know. And that was the last part of May. So,
38:17
Speaker 1: you know, for being what I would consider pretty solid
38:20
Speaker 1: mountain deer, I mean, there's no agg there's nothing around.
38:23
Speaker 1: Um Now my thinking started to say, well, maybe they
38:27
Speaker 1: are able to get some age on them, because they've
38:30
Speaker 1: got so much room to roam. So can I increase
38:33
Speaker 1: the habitat and the nutrition to now factor that piece
38:36
Speaker 1: in and if I can, I mean Scott is a limit.
38:39
Speaker 1: I mean I could produce a hundred and fifty or
38:40
Speaker 1: sixty h d or potentially on that property, which will
38:43
Speaker 1: blow a lot of people's minds around here, but they
38:45
Speaker 1: won't know it until after the harvest. Right. That's that's
38:48
Speaker 1: pretty exciting, just to be able to have that potential
38:50
Speaker 1: out there though, I got believe Yeah, so yeah, absolutely,
38:54
Speaker 1: you mentioned you know, possibly improving a nutrition. Typically when
38:58
Speaker 1: you either you and you in this case starting your
39:01
Speaker 1: own property, or when you're advising someone else who's on
39:03
Speaker 1: a new place? Do you do? You usually go into
39:06
Speaker 1: that first year and make habitat improvements just right out
39:09
Speaker 1: the gate, just based on what you see, or do
39:10
Speaker 1: you like to wait a hunting season, observe, learn, and
39:13
Speaker 1: then the next year, with that knowledge, start making changes.
39:17
Speaker 1: I try to always look at the low hanging fruit mark.
39:20
Speaker 1: I mean, really, where's where? Do I think the most
39:23
Speaker 1: limiting factor is. Um habitat is one that I'm more
39:27
Speaker 1: cautious on, just because any changes or significant changes in
39:31
Speaker 1: the natural habitat could take multiple years to recover if
39:35
Speaker 1: it's not the right move. Um. You know, food plots
39:38
Speaker 1: is a different thing. If I say, hey, you know,
39:39
Speaker 1: here's a lot life opening. It's not growing anything but
39:42
Speaker 1: some annual you know, food during the summer ear late spring.
39:47
Speaker 1: Let's convert this into a fault food plot as well,
39:49
Speaker 1: or a late season soup plot. You know That's something
39:51
Speaker 1: and I'm a little bit you know, more apt to
39:53
Speaker 1: pull to trigger on right away. The habitats a different beats.
39:57
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I look at a lot of
39:59
Speaker 1: different things. I mean, typically you can walk into a
40:01
Speaker 1: piece of property and see a brows line or clothes
40:04
Speaker 1: canopy with no natural food on the ground, and and no,
40:07
Speaker 1: pretty quick what you need to do. But then again,
40:10
Speaker 1: you start going in and cutting down sixty seventy year
40:13
Speaker 1: old oak trees to open up the canopy, and you
40:16
Speaker 1: don't know how that's gonna affect the deer. You don't
40:19
Speaker 1: know how that's going to affect the movement, um. And
40:22
Speaker 1: and it's a significant, you know, mark on the natural habitat.
40:25
Speaker 1: It's not gonna be fast to replace those trees if
40:27
Speaker 1: for some reason it was the wrong move. So I
40:31
Speaker 1: think that you definitely have to have a good grasp
40:34
Speaker 1: on what's going on. UM. I do think that's probably
40:39
Speaker 1: the people that I've worked with and including my own property.
40:42
Speaker 1: The first thing to do would be to increase the
40:45
Speaker 1: natural food as well as maybe something supplemental like food plots, um.
40:51
Speaker 1: You know. And and it's it's usually adding more food
40:54
Speaker 1: is never a hard thing. It's just what are you
40:57
Speaker 1: going to do to add the food? Are you gonna
40:59
Speaker 1: do it? Prescribed fren You can open up the canopy
41:01
Speaker 1: or you're gonna plan a food plot. Um. A lot
41:04
Speaker 1: of that depends on the property and a lot of
41:06
Speaker 1: that depends on the property owner in terms of what
41:08
Speaker 1: they're limited resources are you know, if they don't have
41:10
Speaker 1: any equipment, We're not going in there and planting a
41:13
Speaker 1: four acre clover plot. Um So, it definitely depends on
41:18
Speaker 1: what they have and what the properties availability is to
41:22
Speaker 1: to increase that natural food or that supplemental food. Um
41:27
Speaker 1: But you know, I think online I'll probably be fairly conservative.
41:30
Speaker 1: I'm pretty confident in the native food, so I'll definitely
41:34
Speaker 1: let that go through the year and see where it
41:36
Speaker 1: ends up. Um In the wintertime, my gut is I'm
41:39
Speaker 1: actually probably gonna be pulling in a lot of deer
41:41
Speaker 1: and have the potential to really put a put a
41:44
Speaker 1: negative effect on my natural habitat over time. UM So,
41:49
Speaker 1: I think there's there's an old mog landing that I'm
41:51
Speaker 1: gonna look at doing a perennial food plot again, and
41:53
Speaker 1: I'll have the best soil at all. In fact, most
41:56
Speaker 1: of its old shell and and rock. Um So, gonna
42:00
Speaker 1: try to put in something that I can get established
42:03
Speaker 1: and only have to maintain over multiple years. It's it's
42:06
Speaker 1: definitely not the type of soil that you want to
42:08
Speaker 1: come in and after disc or kill every year, because
42:10
Speaker 1: it's gonna get nasty after a couple of years, you're
42:13
Speaker 1: basically going to lose all your top soil. So in
42:16
Speaker 1: that type of situation, what do you think of the
42:18
Speaker 1: perennial clover probably or something else. Yep, definitely, that's that's
42:22
Speaker 1: what I think. I'll go in with the perennial clover. Um.
42:25
Speaker 1: I typically in the first year and want to have
42:27
Speaker 1: an annual clover in the mix just because it's gonna
42:30
Speaker 1: grow a little bit faster and established itself ahead of
42:33
Speaker 1: the perennial um. And that's more more for erosion control
42:36
Speaker 1: of anything um, but definitely keeping ahead of the brows
42:40
Speaker 1: line for the deer um. So I'll probably have that,
42:44
Speaker 1: and then you know, I may let that reseat out
42:46
Speaker 1: of first year or something, but then just maintain it
42:49
Speaker 1: for the next three or four years as a perennial clover.
42:52
Speaker 1: Every once in a while, depending on what it looks like,
42:54
Speaker 1: I could go in there and you know, broadcast some
42:56
Speaker 1: kind of graphica or sugar beet or something like that
42:59
Speaker 1: in it if I think just the late season needs
43:02
Speaker 1: some additional forge. But I still think you can't go
43:05
Speaker 1: wrong with the perennial clover as long as you maintain
43:08
Speaker 1: it correctly. Yeah, So on the food plot topic. Given
43:12
Speaker 1: the fact you've worked with a number of people all
43:14
Speaker 1: across the country, it sounds like, Wow, if there's any
43:18
Speaker 1: main issue or mistake that you see a lot of
43:21
Speaker 1: people make when it comes to food plots, what would
43:23
Speaker 1: that be so first and foremost, And it's always it's
43:28
Speaker 1: a topic that we deal with every day. We're involved
43:30
Speaker 1: with a couple of different food plot companies and and
43:33
Speaker 1: one of those is a company called Deer Grow that
43:35
Speaker 1: we started about three years ago. But taking soil samples
43:39
Speaker 1: um no matter where you are, I don't I don't
43:41
Speaker 1: care if you're in the river bottoms of Iowa. Having
43:45
Speaker 1: that knowledge of what the soil current status is and
43:49
Speaker 1: and really more so what the plants are gonna need.
43:52
Speaker 1: I mean, we think about the soil and amending the
43:54
Speaker 1: soil to appeal to the plant, but a lot of
43:58
Speaker 1: times it depends on what plant you're putting in. It's
44:01
Speaker 1: a big difference between putting corn in there, which is
44:04
Speaker 1: gonna suck the soil drive nitreg in, and putting flood
44:07
Speaker 1: beans in, which is gonna fix nitrogen um. So. I
44:11
Speaker 1: think that's probably one of the biggest misses out there,
44:15
Speaker 1: is taking a soil sample, even on a food plot,
44:18
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's Nebraska oats, clover. Um, that's that's
44:22
Speaker 1: a big factor. Along with that though, and likely what
44:27
Speaker 1: I would say the biggest mistake made is not putting
44:32
Speaker 1: a food plot enclosure or explosure cage on it to
44:35
Speaker 1: see what the food plots potential was without deer browsing. Um.
44:40
Speaker 1: You know, I'm sure you've seen and how many times
44:42
Speaker 1: you walk up to the food plot and somebody says, well,
44:45
Speaker 1: you know, seed failed or weather it was bad, And
44:48
Speaker 1: you know, nine times out of ten it was because
44:50
Speaker 1: the deer just mode it to the ground. And if
44:52
Speaker 1: you had a cage on it, you'd be able to
44:53
Speaker 1: look inside there and see, you know, six sade inch
44:56
Speaker 1: beautiful clover and on the outside bear dirt because they
45:00
Speaker 1: get down to the ground. Um. I think that's a
45:03
Speaker 1: huge indicator, and it's something that far too often is
45:06
Speaker 1: overlooked by food plotters today. That's a great point. Now,
45:12
Speaker 1: I think I remember seeing when you were doing some
45:14
Speaker 1: of the work with Cabela's, you were doing some food
45:17
Speaker 1: plot work over on Bill Winky's properties. That right absolutely
45:21
Speaker 1: did a lot of food plots on Bill's property. So
45:23
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of curious from like a fan of
45:26
Speaker 1: Bill Winky's deer hunting success out there, what what kind
45:29
Speaker 1: of food plot system did you guys have in place there?
45:32
Speaker 1: What was he doing and why why were you guys
45:34
Speaker 1: doing that? You know, Bill had a really good food plot.
45:38
Speaker 1: First of all, he did one of my favorites, which
45:41
Speaker 1: is he planted a lot of summer crops and he
45:43
Speaker 1: left them up all year long. And I know, for
45:46
Speaker 1: for most of the people out there, anybody that harvest
45:48
Speaker 1: the yield and thinks about Ireland and leaving you know,
45:52
Speaker 1: soy being their corn up for deer probably is is
45:54
Speaker 1: just shaking their head. But you know, it was an
45:57
Speaker 1: amazing thing. I mean, that's probably one of the biggest
46:00
Speaker 1: things that I do. I love planning, especially soybeans. I
46:03
Speaker 1: love planning soybeans in the summer, having that protein available
46:06
Speaker 1: all summer for you know, growing bucks but also fawns
46:09
Speaker 1: and does black hating um. And then you kind of
46:12
Speaker 1: taper off, you know, as you get into that first
46:14
Speaker 1: part of the season when eight corns start falling, and
46:17
Speaker 1: then about you know, at least in most of my
46:19
Speaker 1: areas that have dealt with and around mid November to
46:22
Speaker 1: late November through the end of the year and even
46:26
Speaker 1: in the early spring. Having that ability to have you know,
46:30
Speaker 1: pods above the snow line um through where food is
46:34
Speaker 1: so scarce, it's an amazing source of nutrition UM. And
46:40
Speaker 1: that was one thing that Bill did very well, leaving
46:42
Speaker 1: leaving those crops standing and in small sections too. It
46:45
Speaker 1: wasn't that he left sixty acre fields available for him,
46:48
Speaker 1: you know, he he had smaller section in some areas
46:50
Speaker 1: he did harvest um. And then he had a very
46:54
Speaker 1: good balance of fall annuals um. Typically we would we
46:58
Speaker 1: would plan a lot of uh graptica's um, you know,
47:02
Speaker 1: a lot of turnips in the ground UH and then
47:05
Speaker 1: having perennials. He had have perennial clover and in certain areas,
47:09
Speaker 1: so his balance was good. At what Bill was really
47:12
Speaker 1: smart with was some of the areas were that were
47:15
Speaker 1: the most hard to access um during hunting even but
47:20
Speaker 1: really just in general, he would always put in a
47:23
Speaker 1: in a good perennial and he knew that he could
47:27
Speaker 1: leave that down there and even if he didn't get
47:29
Speaker 1: down there to manage it very well, there would always
47:31
Speaker 1: be a good food source year round in those spots.
47:34
Speaker 1: And and we saw that in an area he called
47:36
Speaker 1: the tube um where he killed the four bucks a
47:41
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. That block would just hang down
47:45
Speaker 1: there in that clover uh all the time, and it
47:48
Speaker 1: was a space that basically you did not want to
47:50
Speaker 1: have to go into. So to think that he could
47:53
Speaker 1: stay out of there, you know, through the summer, knowing
47:56
Speaker 1: that was his range, you know, maybe look for sheds
47:59
Speaker 1: everyone you know in the winner for a little bit,
48:01
Speaker 1: but just stay out of that area and know that
48:03
Speaker 1: there will be an intrusion down there to hold him
48:05
Speaker 1: in that area. I thought that was a really smart
48:08
Speaker 1: plan by him. But I love Bill's aggressiveness on the
48:12
Speaker 1: on the summer plots for literally the entire hunting season.
48:17
Speaker 1: I mean, how many times you seem hunting overstanding beans
48:19
Speaker 1: are corn? Probably more than overfall annuals. Yeah, Yeah, that's
48:25
Speaker 1: it's awesome. We'll have that to a situation where he's
48:28
Speaker 1: able to do that and have the equipment and have
48:30
Speaker 1: the land everything. And one of the things I always
48:32
Speaker 1: you know, I gotta believe one of the challenges of
48:35
Speaker 1: it's a good problem to have, I guess, but one
48:37
Speaker 1: of the channels when you have as much land is
48:38
Speaker 1: he might have in the ability to put in as
48:40
Speaker 1: much food. The trick is how do you hunt large
48:44
Speaker 1: food sources or all these different food sources. You know,
48:46
Speaker 1: it's kind of easy when you're on a fourty acre
48:48
Speaker 1: piece and you've got one half acre food plot. Well,
48:50
Speaker 1: you know that if you hunt that little food plot,
48:53
Speaker 1: there's gonna be some you know, you're gonna be within
48:54
Speaker 1: shooting range or something like that. But when you're in
48:56
Speaker 1: a situation like Bills, it seems like there's a lot
48:59
Speaker 1: more thought has to go into how you design those
49:01
Speaker 1: food plots or how you know when to hunt which one.
49:04
Speaker 1: Did you see anything while you're working with him that
49:07
Speaker 1: that was kind of eye opening about how he designed
49:09
Speaker 1: these food plots or anything like that. You know, I
49:13
Speaker 1: think one of Build's toughest challenges and something that people
49:16
Speaker 1: probably didn't even realize. I mean, he had a ton
49:18
Speaker 1: of food plots on the property, um and very strategically placed.
49:22
Speaker 1: But one of the things he did throughout the early
49:25
Speaker 1: years of the farm is he did timberstand improvement through
49:29
Speaker 1: the entire farm, and actually some of the places he
49:31
Speaker 1: was on the second round, he had more natural vegetation
49:35
Speaker 1: and food than almost any other property I've ever seen,
49:39
Speaker 1: and it made it. I think it actually made it
49:42
Speaker 1: more difficult to hunt because the deer had so much
49:46
Speaker 1: natural food that didn't really fill the pressure to have
49:49
Speaker 1: to come out and do any of these food sources,
49:51
Speaker 1: whether it was an annual food plot or summer food plot,
49:54
Speaker 1: um you know. And I think that was one of
49:57
Speaker 1: the reasons that he could keep deer or so many
50:02
Speaker 1: mature bucks on his property at a given time was
50:05
Speaker 1: because of the betting area. I mean, yeah, it was
50:07
Speaker 1: a huge piece of property, but a deer didn't have
50:10
Speaker 1: to move, he had water, he had shelter and native food,
50:13
Speaker 1: he had you know, supplemental food in the food plots. Um.
50:18
Speaker 1: You know. It was such a such a different type
50:21
Speaker 1: of property than you're used to seeing in that area. Um.
50:24
Speaker 1: So I thought that was that was one thing that
50:26
Speaker 1: he really had to overcome and to do that. You know,
50:29
Speaker 1: we we saw him getting more and more aggressive into
50:31
Speaker 1: these microplots or these poor man plots. I think it
50:34
Speaker 1: was a neat thing to show these people that who
50:36
Speaker 1: didn't have equipment, how you can make a quality food plot.
50:39
Speaker 1: But it was also because we were getting in some
50:41
Speaker 1: of these areas closer to betting areas that you you
50:44
Speaker 1: probably weren't going to get that much equipment into UM
50:47
Speaker 1: and you didn't need to make a full acre plot.
50:50
Speaker 1: He only needed a core aker or less, just because
50:52
Speaker 1: you were trying to slow them down moving from a
50:55
Speaker 1: betting area or these natural food areas into a destination
50:59
Speaker 1: food plot, which could be one of these larger crop buields. Yeah, yeah,
51:03
Speaker 1: that that uh. I love the fact that he showed that,
51:06
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, because it does show people that they can,
51:09
Speaker 1: you know, still get a food plot and it still
51:11
Speaker 1: can be effective. You don't need huge food plots to
51:13
Speaker 1: enjoy benefits of a food plot. It might be a
51:16
Speaker 1: different benefit. You know, a core rack or food plot
51:18
Speaker 1: isn't going to make the nutritional difference that a you
51:20
Speaker 1: know that twenty acres of food plots would make, but
51:23
Speaker 1: you still can you still can see benefits UM. But
51:28
Speaker 1: I want to take a step back to something else
51:29
Speaker 1: you said there. You mentioned the fact that in these
51:32
Speaker 1: sections these deer didn't need to move very far because
51:34
Speaker 1: they had great food, great cover and water. And water
51:38
Speaker 1: is something that doesn't get discussed a whole lot, I
51:41
Speaker 1: think because in many situations it is kind of a given.
51:44
Speaker 1: But do you ever find yourself on properties where that
51:46
Speaker 1: is a limiting factor and you do need to supplement
51:49
Speaker 1: it somehow. Or is that something that you know people
51:52
Speaker 1: will worry about too much. Maybe putting in water holes
51:55
Speaker 1: and stuff is overboard. What do you think about that.
51:58
Speaker 1: You know, we we've done some testy recently. We actually
52:01
Speaker 1: just did a video um that we're gonna put out
52:03
Speaker 1: here not too long from the Buck Advisors on on
52:06
Speaker 1: building a water hole. And we've got some cameras around it.
52:08
Speaker 1: You know. We we dealt with kind of a mix
52:11
Speaker 1: of both. Um. You know, a lot of these areas
52:14
Speaker 1: in the Midwest and Northeast and even the South. You know,
52:17
Speaker 1: you get these seasonal water areas. You know, it could
52:21
Speaker 1: be a really nice creek, but by the time you
52:23
Speaker 1: get into July August, the thing, if you're not getting rain,
52:26
Speaker 1: it's going bone dry now, you know. Fortunately, so far
52:29
Speaker 1: this summer it's it's so wet, almost too wet early
52:33
Speaker 1: into the summer through a lot of the Midwest into
52:35
Speaker 1: the Northeast. But I do think that it becomes something
52:39
Speaker 1: of a of a limiting factor, um as you get
52:42
Speaker 1: into the later part of the summer and early fall.
52:45
Speaker 1: Now to go to the extent of putting in a
52:47
Speaker 1: water hole or anything like that. It's hard to say.
52:50
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, a deer could cover you know,
52:53
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty acres pretty easily as we get
52:56
Speaker 1: into that later part of the summer if it needs to. Um.
52:59
Speaker 1: That said, you know, it's one of those things that
53:02
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like a human you know, you
53:04
Speaker 1: can go without food for quite a while. Water is
53:06
Speaker 1: a different story. Here gets most of its water um
53:10
Speaker 1: when it's consuming it's natural plants. So you know, as
53:13
Speaker 1: long as the water quality is in the plants, um,
53:17
Speaker 1: then it's not as big of a factor. Um. But
53:21
Speaker 1: if we get into a drought condition like we've had
53:23
Speaker 1: a couple of years, uh in the last five, then
53:26
Speaker 1: that that starts to be a bigger red flag for me.
53:29
Speaker 1: And and having supplemental water, I mean, I've been granted
53:32
Speaker 1: do it um on his properties with good success. Um.
53:35
Speaker 1: I've got other people kind of you know, work with
53:39
Speaker 1: these seasonal water sources to create some standing ponds. Um.
53:45
Speaker 1: I'm up in the air on it. And and really
53:47
Speaker 1: the big thing for me, Mark is the fact that
53:49
Speaker 1: when you create these watering holes and stuff, you stand
53:52
Speaker 1: to create mud flats, which can promote the midges that
53:56
Speaker 1: transmit uh hemorrhadic disease, and obviously everybody's been familiar with
54:00
Speaker 1: that in the last few years. Um So, I've been
54:04
Speaker 1: on a big stance of minimizing mud flats. So you know,
54:08
Speaker 1: with that, if you can control the mud flats and
54:11
Speaker 1: and put in a decent water holes, and I'm all
54:13
Speaker 1: for it. If do you think you're going to create
54:15
Speaker 1: more exposed mud flats. If it's a drought year, um
54:19
Speaker 1: and you're having mud flats exposed, the odds of you
54:22
Speaker 1: having him rhagic on your property are probably pretty good.
54:26
Speaker 1: Um So, I just surely don't want to create any
54:27
Speaker 1: more breeding grounds than already naturally exists. Yeah, that's really
54:31
Speaker 1: interesting point. I had not thought of that, But I
54:34
Speaker 1: know more and more, especially like you mentioned back in
54:36
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve and with the horrible h D
54:40
Speaker 1: outbreaks we had across most of the country, more and
54:42
Speaker 1: more people are starting to think about, you know, how
54:45
Speaker 1: can I start to in some way managed to minimize
54:48
Speaker 1: the impact of h D if it is hit again.
54:51
Speaker 1: Um And that seems to be pretty It seems like
54:52
Speaker 1: a pretty smart thing to think about. If that's something
54:55
Speaker 1: you're concerned about. Is there anything else that you can
54:58
Speaker 1: think of or that you've she thought about when it
55:01
Speaker 1: comes to trying to minimize the potential for h D
55:03
Speaker 1: other than just minimizing those mud flats. You know, as
55:07
Speaker 1: much as I love having mineral blocks out, you know,
55:11
Speaker 1: to me, it's more of an attractive thing than a
55:13
Speaker 1: nutritional standpoint. Obviously, there's there's some benefits to the to
55:18
Speaker 1: the micro nutrients and some of these blocks, I mean
55:20
Speaker 1: at this time of the year, and just salt is
55:22
Speaker 1: something that's a great thing to be able to supplement
55:25
Speaker 1: UM when deer consuming a lot higher water content. But
55:30
Speaker 1: you know, anytime you congregate these animals into a smaller area,
55:34
Speaker 1: whether it's a feeder or mineral block or a watering hole,
55:38
Speaker 1: the fact is you you kind of increase the opportunity
55:41
Speaker 1: for transmitting UM diseases. You know, in in the case
55:46
Speaker 1: of pemorragic, closer density of the deer is gonna increase
55:50
Speaker 1: the opportunity for blood mills to be taken by these
55:52
Speaker 1: female midges. So I think that you know, in times
55:57
Speaker 1: of knowing, and honestly, I wrote an article I don't know,
56:01
Speaker 1: it's got to be four or five months ago UM,
56:04
Speaker 1: and I think It appeared in one of the more
56:06
Speaker 1: recent Deer and Deer Hunting one's on would this be
56:10
Speaker 1: a hemorrhadic outbreak? Here? And And to this day, I
56:15
Speaker 1: still think that we're teating ourselves up for a really
56:17
Speaker 1: bad year. It's been a very wet spring. It's continued
56:21
Speaker 1: into the first part of the June. If it heats
56:24
Speaker 1: up and the water shuts off, I don't I don't
56:28
Speaker 1: think it's going to be good for a lot of
56:29
Speaker 1: people across the Midwest in the Northeast. And so you're saying,
56:33
Speaker 1: and let me see if I understand this, You're you're
56:35
Speaker 1: saying that would be the case because you've got so
56:38
Speaker 1: much water now that you've created essentially what will be
56:41
Speaker 1: larger mud flats once the drought hits in July or
56:43
Speaker 1: August and all that dries up, leaving this exposed mud
56:47
Speaker 1: a lack of water, and you've got more deer moving
56:51
Speaker 1: to the areas where those fewer water sources are, and
56:53
Speaker 1: then all these exposed mud flats which allow a lot
56:55
Speaker 1: of midges. Is that is that right right on the head? Yeah?
56:59
Speaker 1: And I'm mean it's that is exactly the conditions that
57:02
Speaker 1: we dealt with in twelve that led to I mean
57:06
Speaker 1: a massive outbreak. We had a very wet spring, we
57:09
Speaker 1: formed all these basically seasonal water pools. As we hit
57:13
Speaker 1: the drier summer months, they all evaporated up, leaving these
57:16
Speaker 1: big mud plus find the ponds and pools that were
57:19
Speaker 1: less congregated deer around it because we were essentially in
57:22
Speaker 1: drought conditions and the result was, you know, massive deer
57:27
Speaker 1: die off across many states um to this day, I mean,
57:30
Speaker 1: harvest are still suffering from those bottlenecks. So you know,
57:35
Speaker 1: it's I here, you know, I open all. I hope
57:38
Speaker 1: that it stays wet and moist all year and the
57:40
Speaker 1: next thing we know, it's September and we don't have
57:42
Speaker 1: to worry about it because we started hitting frosts. Um.
57:45
Speaker 1: But it seems like we're teaming up for something that
57:48
Speaker 1: could not be at a worse time for some of
57:51
Speaker 1: these states that are already suffering from and thirteen outbreaks. Yeah, jee,
57:56
Speaker 1: I hope that's not the case, because yeah, we're just
57:59
Speaker 1: starting to see some of those states now get to
58:01
Speaker 1: be you know, four years out and hopefully starting to
58:04
Speaker 1: get some of those mature bucks back. And if we
58:05
Speaker 1: get hit again, that would be that would be very disappointing,
58:09
Speaker 1: I know for a lot of people. Um, a hammer
58:12
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah. So kind of speaking of of deer
58:16
Speaker 1: the dear herd, I'm kind of curious about how, you know,
58:19
Speaker 1: kind of going back to your situation, either on your
58:21
Speaker 1: new farm more. I guess for anyone, um, when you
58:24
Speaker 1: first start on a property, how do you go about
58:26
Speaker 1: trying to evaluate that herd or take inventory that her
58:30
Speaker 1: to figure out you know, Okay, what kind of bucks
58:32
Speaker 1: do I here? What types of what's the structure, what's
58:35
Speaker 1: the age structure, etcetera, etcetera. You know, what are the
58:37
Speaker 1: things you're looking for? And then how do you go
58:39
Speaker 1: about looking for that stuff? I would say that's probably
58:43
Speaker 1: the number one thing I do is always go to
58:45
Speaker 1: my cameras. I mean, you know, it's great to scout
58:48
Speaker 1: and be out in the woods and you know, or fields,
58:50
Speaker 1: and I love being out there, but you know, efficiently
58:53
Speaker 1: wise and vampire wise, it's just not something that's gonna
58:57
Speaker 1: gonna pan out. Um, cameras are using tool to be
59:00
Speaker 1: out there seven for us, and you know, so setting
59:04
Speaker 1: cameras up and doing a camera survey and whether it's
59:06
Speaker 1: an official camera survey, and you do the analysis and
59:09
Speaker 1: you try to extrapolate data and stuff. That's that's a
59:12
Speaker 1: whole different ball game. I mean really just getting out
59:15
Speaker 1: even doing what I'm doing. I've got five cameras on
59:17
Speaker 1: thirty eight years, which if you look at most of
59:19
Speaker 1: the tro camera survey research that says one for one,
59:22
Speaker 1: one for two hundred, I should be capturing every deer
59:25
Speaker 1: within you know, a seventy or radius. Um. It's just
59:31
Speaker 1: a it's trying to get a snapshot of what the
59:34
Speaker 1: herd looks like. And kind of to me, especially this
59:38
Speaker 1: time of the year, if you're you're getting decent bucks
59:40
Speaker 1: on the camera. And it's not to say I mean
59:43
Speaker 1: we're basically rate at that end of spring summer home range,
59:47
Speaker 1: um Peece. You know things are gonna change here as
59:51
Speaker 1: we get into the fall. You know, home range are
59:53
Speaker 1: gonna change, Deer gonna disperse, um. But if you've got
59:57
Speaker 1: some deer on your property at this time, and if
59:58
Speaker 1: you've got some bucks that are starting to look pretty good,
1:00:01
Speaker 1: there's a really good chance that you'll at least see
1:00:04
Speaker 1: those deer early into hunting season. Um. And that's the
1:00:08
Speaker 1: one thing that's excited to me about this place is
1:00:09
Speaker 1: I've seen, you know, several different bucks and a couple
1:00:12
Speaker 1: bucks that actually could stand to be something this year,
1:00:15
Speaker 1: especially in a state like Pennsylvania. And you know, I
1:00:19
Speaker 1: think that the potential to see those deer early in
1:00:22
Speaker 1: the hunting season exists. So cameras is probably my easiest play. Plus,
1:00:26
Speaker 1: I mean just sitting there and being able to study
1:00:28
Speaker 1: a photograph um or a video. You know, having a
1:00:32
Speaker 1: camera video mode is is something that's a huge advantage
1:00:36
Speaker 1: to us nowadays as hunters. And that still I do
1:00:39
Speaker 1: like to go through and do my buck to doo ratio. Um.
1:00:43
Speaker 1: You know, I like to take on a bigger properties
1:00:45
Speaker 1: on leases and stuff. I'll look at the actual density
1:00:48
Speaker 1: and think about how many deer, how many does I
1:00:51
Speaker 1: need to take out at least on my thirty acre piece.
1:00:54
Speaker 1: I'm not too worried about it this year. I am
1:00:57
Speaker 1: concerned that there's gonna be a big section of deer
1:00:59
Speaker 1: coming in in the winter time because of the natural
1:01:02
Speaker 1: browse that this property has versus around it. So then
1:01:05
Speaker 1: that begs the question of, you know, do I need
1:01:08
Speaker 1: to harvest more deer on thirty acres because I'm sucking
1:01:11
Speaker 1: so many in uh And if I do how do
1:01:14
Speaker 1: I do that without you know, putting too much pressure
1:01:16
Speaker 1: on the property to you know, basically ruin it for
1:01:19
Speaker 1: multiple seasons that come. So it depends on the situation.
1:01:23
Speaker 1: But I don't think anybody can go wrong with using cameras.
1:01:26
Speaker 1: Whether you use bait or attractant, that's kind of a
1:01:28
Speaker 1: personal decision, um. But using those as you're scouting tools.
1:01:33
Speaker 1: I mean, daily life is pretty busy, and those things
1:01:36
Speaker 1: do a pretty good job of being able to keep
1:01:39
Speaker 1: you up to date almost going on out there. So
1:01:41
Speaker 1: do you do you think that the average guy girl
1:01:44
Speaker 1: should be trying to perform more of an analysis from
1:01:49
Speaker 1: the trail cameras? So maybe your average person right now
1:01:52
Speaker 1: probably just looks at those pictures just see, hey, is
1:01:53
Speaker 1: there a big buck? And is that big buck around
1:01:56
Speaker 1: my tree stand? Should we all be actually looking at
1:01:58
Speaker 1: density and age, structure and bucket of ratio and stuff
1:02:02
Speaker 1: like that. I think it depends on your goals. I mean,
1:02:05
Speaker 1: if you want to be able to you know, see
1:02:08
Speaker 1: or have the ability to hunt bigger deer or even
1:02:12
Speaker 1: in some places, you know we just talked about more
1:02:14
Speaker 1: deer than Yeah, you need to be critical. I mean,
1:02:17
Speaker 1: one of the things I remember doing in thirteen is
1:02:21
Speaker 1: you know, most hunters, even in areas that were stricken
1:02:24
Speaker 1: by e h D. There was, at least the Missouri areas,
1:02:28
Speaker 1: there were some low acorn crops, so a lot of
1:02:33
Speaker 1: the deer were very visible in food plots and people
1:02:36
Speaker 1: hunted the herd as if nothing happened that late summer
1:02:40
Speaker 1: early fall, and they camereed the deer. And so now
1:02:43
Speaker 1: you had a harvest that was pretty aggressive on top
1:02:46
Speaker 1: of an e h D which was probably the worst
1:02:49
Speaker 1: that the state had ever recorded. And so it makes
1:02:52
Speaker 1: sense that the next season it was like where the
1:02:54
Speaker 1: deer at UM. And one thing I always try to
1:02:57
Speaker 1: tell people, and doesn't matter if they own a housing
1:03:00
Speaker 1: acres or ten acres, is just because you know it's
1:03:03
Speaker 1: legal to shoot four or five, six, seven does, doesn't
1:03:05
Speaker 1: mean that it's appropriate for your property. You know, every
1:03:08
Speaker 1: property is different in its own right. UM. So yeah,
1:03:12
Speaker 1: the state may say, hey, you can shoot five does
1:03:14
Speaker 1: on your property if you want, But if you know
1:03:16
Speaker 1: you're not seeing dose on the property, they don't exist
1:03:19
Speaker 1: on the property, then why would you go out there
1:03:21
Speaker 1: in carves five just because the state said it was
1:03:23
Speaker 1: legal to Um, it's a case by case basis that
1:03:27
Speaker 1: really is a big, big play on that. So I
1:03:30
Speaker 1: don't know if necessarily everyone needs to. I mean the
1:03:33
Speaker 1: family that loves to hunt, they you know, want to
1:03:36
Speaker 1: have to meet for the freezer. The kids, it's an experience.
1:03:39
Speaker 1: I don't think they need to be out there analyzing it.
1:03:41
Speaker 1: I think it's a great educational tool. Um. You know,
1:03:44
Speaker 1: I'm all for having older age structure bucks. Um. But
1:03:48
Speaker 1: at the same time, you know, when when it's time
1:03:51
Speaker 1: for my child to hunt, if he wants to shoot
1:03:53
Speaker 1: the first one horn spike that comes through, let him
1:03:55
Speaker 1: do it. So you know, it's it's it's different for
1:04:00
Speaker 1: different people, but if anyone is thinking about managing the herd,
1:04:05
Speaker 1: and absolutely you should at least take it in more
1:04:08
Speaker 1: consideration than a passerby of I'm only scrolling through the
1:04:11
Speaker 1: next five thousand pictures looking for big anglers. Um, there's
1:04:16
Speaker 1: a lot more to it that you can see and
1:04:18
Speaker 1: learning the pictures that not only will make you a
1:04:20
Speaker 1: better deer manager, but I think will make you a
1:04:22
Speaker 1: better hunter at the end of the day. Yeah. So,
1:04:25
Speaker 1: so you talked about figuring out how many doughs to kill,
1:04:27
Speaker 1: and this is a question I think a lot of
1:04:29
Speaker 1: people have. Is there any relatively easy, consistent way for
1:04:35
Speaker 1: someone to determine the right number of does to kill
1:04:38
Speaker 1: on their property or do they need to do a
1:04:40
Speaker 1: really in depth trail camera inventory, figure all that kind
1:04:43
Speaker 1: of stuff out. I mean, you know, to be accurate. Yeah,
1:04:49
Speaker 1: they probably need to do a survey. My biggest kind
1:04:52
Speaker 1: of factor I look at is if I think about
1:04:56
Speaker 1: in the times that deer of the least amount of
1:05:00
Speaker 1: food available. So as we're getting that, you know, early
1:05:03
Speaker 1: midwinter period and especially into the early spring about you know,
1:05:08
Speaker 1: you're at about the bottom of the barrel in terms
1:05:10
Speaker 1: of food. And I walk around on the property and
1:05:13
Speaker 1: I start seeing heavy brows lines, no native foods um,
1:05:18
Speaker 1: you know, but lots of sign I don't even have
1:05:21
Speaker 1: to know what your dear density is or your buckadore
1:05:24
Speaker 1: ratio is to tell you you need to kill more deer,
1:05:26
Speaker 1: you need to kill more doughes um. And it could
1:05:29
Speaker 1: be seasonal. You know, you could look at me like
1:05:32
Speaker 1: I'm crazy because in the early part of hunting season
1:05:35
Speaker 1: you didn't see a deer on the property. But you what,
1:05:38
Speaker 1: what I always try to emphasize with people is you
1:05:40
Speaker 1: have to manage your herd numbers to match the lowest
1:05:44
Speaker 1: amount of food in space during the year, which is
1:05:47
Speaker 1: typically the early spring. So it doesn't matter if you
1:05:51
Speaker 1: know you have hardly any deer early in the season,
1:05:53
Speaker 1: as you get in the mid season. If at the
1:05:56
Speaker 1: last part of the season into early winter or early spring,
1:06:00
Speaker 1: you have a massive amount of deer, you need to
1:06:03
Speaker 1: be managing your herd the rest of the year for
1:06:05
Speaker 1: that number to keep that number down as as close
1:06:08
Speaker 1: as possible, because that's when you're going to cause the
1:06:09
Speaker 1: most damage to your property, and that's when your deer
1:06:12
Speaker 1: going to stuff for the most. I mean, your bucks
1:06:14
Speaker 1: are going to come out of the winter in early
1:06:16
Speaker 1: spring and horrible condition. They're gonna have to put four
1:06:19
Speaker 1: months of resources to repairing the body before they can
1:06:22
Speaker 1: even think about sudden extra nutrition to the handlers. Right,
1:06:27
Speaker 1: do you think that there are any negative impacts of
1:06:31
Speaker 1: having too many doughs on a property, not just from
1:06:33
Speaker 1: a nutrition standpoint, but on like a like a space standpoint.
1:06:37
Speaker 1: If you're trying to target older bucks or bigger bucks.
1:06:40
Speaker 1: Have you ever found a property that is just so
1:06:43
Speaker 1: overwhelmed with so many doughs that you end up having
1:06:46
Speaker 1: fewer bucks. Wanting to hang out just because there's not space.
1:06:49
Speaker 1: Is that a thing? You know? I don't know if
1:06:52
Speaker 1: that's I think it could be. Um, you know a
1:06:55
Speaker 1: property I grew up about an hour from where I
1:06:57
Speaker 1: live right now. Um, in the summertime, if i'd take
1:07:00
Speaker 1: you out there, and you know, July, late July, early August,
1:07:03
Speaker 1: you said, at a telephone pool and watched fifty and
1:07:06
Speaker 1: you would see more bucks, more mature bucks, and probably
1:07:10
Speaker 1: bucks that you would never think you're sitting in the
1:07:11
Speaker 1: state of Pennsylvania. Um as as the you it would
1:07:16
Speaker 1: pan out that you would think it would be the
1:07:18
Speaker 1: greatest rut hunting spot ever. And when the rut came,
1:07:22
Speaker 1: it was the worst hunting ever. And it was because
1:07:24
Speaker 1: there were so many doughs on the property that I
1:07:26
Speaker 1: think that the bucks did not have to work to
1:07:29
Speaker 1: find a dough. Um. Now, you know, we saw we
1:07:34
Speaker 1: saw them spread out really fast as as the season
1:07:38
Speaker 1: came in. You know, sloy beans turned then they were harvested.
1:07:42
Speaker 1: Um and bucks seemed to kind of you know, vanished
1:07:45
Speaker 1: out besides the stray that would come through, maybe on
1:07:47
Speaker 1: a hot dough. But like I said, they didn't have
1:07:49
Speaker 1: to move, they didn't have to work to find does.
1:07:51
Speaker 1: And I think that was probably the most limiting factor.
1:07:54
Speaker 1: I mean, I grew up hunting a property that was
1:07:57
Speaker 1: almost non rut existent. So I remember the first time
1:08:01
Speaker 1: I was in a standing, Missouri during the rut, and
1:08:06
Speaker 1: you know, it was like things are starting to heat up,
1:08:08
Speaker 1: and then I'd see a buck chase in the dough
1:08:10
Speaker 1: and I'm like, man, this is the rut. Because to me,
1:08:12
Speaker 1: that was the first time I really experienced what people
1:08:15
Speaker 1: would talk about when they saw the rut. And then
1:08:17
Speaker 1: it was like the next morning I had like nine
1:08:19
Speaker 1: bucks come through chasing does. I was like, Okay, this
1:08:22
Speaker 1: is what the rut is, um. And so it was
1:08:25
Speaker 1: amazing for people to understand, Like when I said, you know,
1:08:28
Speaker 1: I don't even want to think about about that property
1:08:30
Speaker 1: during the rut, and they're like, why there's fifteen bucks
1:08:33
Speaker 1: in the field at night, Well there was fifty two
1:08:36
Speaker 1: doughs as well. So, um, you know, I think that's
1:08:40
Speaker 1: probably the biggest thing. But I do think that there's
1:08:42
Speaker 1: a space factor. I mean, you think about those old
1:08:44
Speaker 1: mature bucks. Outside of the rut, there there's solitude animals. Um,
1:08:49
Speaker 1: you know, you don't see them very often with another
1:08:52
Speaker 1: buck or dough unless it's you know, getting into that
1:08:55
Speaker 1: early coming out of a baxtor group or as we're
1:08:57
Speaker 1: transitioning into the rut phase. So I do think that
1:09:01
Speaker 1: there's a space factor in it, um, you know. But
1:09:04
Speaker 1: I also look at some of the research that starts
1:09:07
Speaker 1: to show that some of these older bucks in the five, six,
1:09:10
Speaker 1: seven year old eighth class don't even move that much anymore,
1:09:14
Speaker 1: you know, they're not doing the thousand the two thousand
1:09:17
Speaker 1: acre home ranges that a two, three or four year
1:09:20
Speaker 1: old buck maybe hitting. UM. So I think that there's
1:09:24
Speaker 1: there's multiple cases to say, Yeah, it definitely affects it.
1:09:28
Speaker 1: To me, I would have rather have a tighter buck
1:09:31
Speaker 1: the dough ratio than you know, having all these adequate
1:09:35
Speaker 1: does available for the rut because I don't think that
1:09:38
Speaker 1: rattling works is good. I don't think that sense work
1:09:41
Speaker 1: is good. I don't think that grunt calls work is good.
1:09:44
Speaker 1: I think that hunting during the rut is harder. And
1:09:47
Speaker 1: that's that's first hand experience from a property on it
1:09:50
Speaker 1: for fifteen years that should have been theoretically a rut
1:09:54
Speaker 1: hot spot to kill a big buck every year. Yeah,
1:09:58
Speaker 1: definitely increased competition for does always seems to lead to
1:10:01
Speaker 1: better activity from a hunting standpoint. Absolutely. I mean the
1:10:06
Speaker 1: best days in the woods I've had is when one
1:10:08
Speaker 1: or two doughes have gone into Estris and there's five
1:10:11
Speaker 1: to seven bucks fighting for them. I mean that, that
1:10:15
Speaker 1: to me is when people when they say they've seen
1:10:17
Speaker 1: rutting activity, that's what their experience when and and anybody
1:10:22
Speaker 1: that hunts the rut knows that when most of the
1:10:25
Speaker 1: does are in Estris, we get that peak Estra cycle.
1:10:28
Speaker 1: It's about as law as it gets in the woods
1:10:32
Speaker 1: because the bucks are basically doed up. It's no different
1:10:36
Speaker 1: than you know, a gobbler getting hand up in the spring. Um,
1:10:39
Speaker 1: so you get that kind of lall. You know, it's
1:10:42
Speaker 1: when those first few are coming in, or even towards
1:10:45
Speaker 1: the tail into the rut, when there's the last few
1:10:47
Speaker 1: coming in, that's about when you started hearing people saying, yeah,
1:10:51
Speaker 1: I've been seeing bucks. Jason, Yeah, yeah, speaking of the rut.
1:10:55
Speaker 1: I actually wanted to bring this up later, but I'll
1:10:57
Speaker 1: touch on now since we kind of segue nice nicely
1:10:59
Speaker 1: to it. Um. I've read some stuff from you in
1:11:02
Speaker 1: regards to the rut, and UM, I believe me if
1:11:06
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, but I believe when it comes to the
1:11:09
Speaker 1: rut in most of the country, especially the northern part
1:11:11
Speaker 1: of the country, you're in agreement with most people when
1:11:14
Speaker 1: it comes to the fact that's relatively consistent due to
1:11:16
Speaker 1: photo period, etcetera, etcetera. Um, I guess number one is that?
1:11:20
Speaker 1: Is that true with your belief? Yeah? Yeah, if you're
1:11:23
Speaker 1: if you're leaning towards the lunar phase, then yes, I'm
1:11:26
Speaker 1: a much more strong proponent of photo period guiding. Yes, okay,
1:11:31
Speaker 1: So then what my real question then was, Okay, if
1:11:33
Speaker 1: that's the case in the north, I know it's different
1:11:35
Speaker 1: in the South, and I think I've seen you write
1:11:37
Speaker 1: something about that in the past. Could you walk us
1:11:39
Speaker 1: through what why the southern rut is different and what
1:11:43
Speaker 1: people in the South are thinking about when it comes
1:11:45
Speaker 1: to trying to figure out when's the rut how to
1:11:47
Speaker 1: hunt it. Absolutely, I mean it's it's a completely different
1:11:51
Speaker 1: ball game. I mean it always always make a laugh
1:11:54
Speaker 1: about it. I guess when I hear people talk about, well, like,
1:11:58
Speaker 1: you know, what five days do you want to take
1:11:59
Speaker 1: off store in the rut? Because when I grew up
1:12:01
Speaker 1: in the Northeast and living in the Midwest, there were
1:12:04
Speaker 1: there are four or five six days that you know,
1:12:07
Speaker 1: if you took throws off, you were going to experience them.
1:12:09
Speaker 1: Pretty crazy rud action. When I lived in Mississippi and
1:12:13
Speaker 1: the guys started saying, well, you know, rut will be good,
1:12:15
Speaker 1: but you'll you'll kind of get the drift ruts. And
1:12:18
Speaker 1: I was like, what, you know, what are you talking about?
1:12:20
Speaker 1: And it was the fact that you know, one day
1:12:23
Speaker 1: it could be hot and heavy, then it might be
1:12:25
Speaker 1: a week before you see any other action, and then
1:12:28
Speaker 1: you might see a little bit this day and nothing
1:12:30
Speaker 1: the next, and then the third day it's just on fire. Um.
1:12:34
Speaker 1: And so you basically see this widespread swath of rutting
1:12:39
Speaker 1: activity across a lot of the Deep South, and in
1:12:42
Speaker 1: particular Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, even some parts of Georgia. You
1:12:47
Speaker 1: see this kind of stretched out rut And so a
1:12:50
Speaker 1: couple of things that I've I at least with my
1:12:53
Speaker 1: research and working with a lot of the professors, I
1:12:56
Speaker 1: did you know that we came up with some theories.
1:12:58
Speaker 1: You know. Number one is probably what I think is
1:13:02
Speaker 1: the most proficient, is the fact that the buck the
1:13:06
Speaker 1: dough ratio is throwing off some of the rutting activities.
1:13:11
Speaker 1: So in some of these areas where the buck to
1:13:13
Speaker 1: do ratio is so skewed that there's actually bucks missing
1:13:18
Speaker 1: dose and estris. When they basically stay in estris for
1:13:22
Speaker 1: seventy two to ninety six hours, they're getting missed because
1:13:25
Speaker 1: a buck is actually occupied with another dough that's an
1:13:27
Speaker 1: estres tending to her because then it has to wait
1:13:30
Speaker 1: twenty eight days before that cycle starts again. So you
1:13:34
Speaker 1: start to see where these periods if you stagger them out,
1:13:37
Speaker 1: that you know every so many days there may be
1:13:40
Speaker 1: a new group of dose coming in because these bucks
1:13:42
Speaker 1: are basically occupied. And also a lot of the reasons
1:13:45
Speaker 1: that in February March you see Southern bucks that look
1:13:49
Speaker 1: like they've just been run through the ringer um because
1:13:52
Speaker 1: they're they're instead of a two week rut craze periods,
1:13:55
Speaker 1: they're going to two months rut craze period um su
1:13:59
Speaker 1: one of the big factors. The other thing that we
1:14:01
Speaker 1: see is you don't have a definitive of growing harsh
1:14:05
Speaker 1: seasons in terms of weather and vegetation. So as we
1:14:09
Speaker 1: think about the North and the Midwest, you know there's
1:14:12
Speaker 1: very definitive times of the year. I mean, obviously a
1:14:15
Speaker 1: dough doesn't want to have to have a fall on
1:14:18
Speaker 1: early where there still could be the potential of less
1:14:21
Speaker 1: vegetation and you know, an early April potentially UM as
1:14:26
Speaker 1: well as the fact that the later we go into
1:14:28
Speaker 1: the season, the less nutritious, the vegetation is less cover
1:14:32
Speaker 1: very definitive in that piece. As we think about the South,
1:14:36
Speaker 1: you know, we start getting spring green up in early March,
1:14:39
Speaker 1: and as the season progresses, we don't have those definitive
1:14:43
Speaker 1: frosts and things coming in the September even early October period.
1:14:47
Speaker 1: I mean, heck, in some of those places in October
1:14:49
Speaker 1: still ninety degrees, So even though the food quality may
1:14:53
Speaker 1: not be as good, they're not as concerned with having
1:14:57
Speaker 1: the vegetation being killed off by frost and freezes. Um.
1:15:01
Speaker 1: You know, So we would see fons that would be born,
1:15:03
Speaker 1: you know, in typical late May early June time period,
1:15:07
Speaker 1: but I'd also see fons being born in September and
1:15:10
Speaker 1: October UM, and so it's hard to place on which
1:15:15
Speaker 1: one it would be. You know, is it because they
1:15:17
Speaker 1: have a more broad area that they can cover in
1:15:20
Speaker 1: terms of the growth in the seasonality, or is it
1:15:23
Speaker 1: just because the buckado ratio is so out of whack
1:15:27
Speaker 1: that there are does being bred in February March April
1:15:31
Speaker 1: instead of being all bred in that November December time period. Um.
1:15:37
Speaker 1: So you know, those are the ones that we looked at. Um.
1:15:40
Speaker 1: The big question always remains out there, and in genetics
1:15:44
Speaker 1: is kind of the dirty word and deer management. You know,
1:15:47
Speaker 1: nobody wants to say that genetics are different and and
1:15:50
Speaker 1: in this case it's not as much different as it
1:15:53
Speaker 1: is um different from the origins of where these deer
1:15:58
Speaker 1: were coming from. Uh. So you know what we tend
1:16:02
Speaker 1: to see. Coincidentally, we see different body sizes in a
1:16:06
Speaker 1: lot of these areas, especially in Mississippi, but we would
1:16:09
Speaker 1: see groups of deer within a forty or fifty mile
1:16:13
Speaker 1: area having significantly different peak breeding dates. And I'm not
1:16:19
Speaker 1: talking about like a couple of days. I'm talking like
1:16:21
Speaker 1: a month plus different um. And so beg the question
1:16:25
Speaker 1: of how can a deer group that's fifty miles apart
1:16:29
Speaker 1: have a peak breeding that's a month or a month
1:16:32
Speaker 1: and a half. And so you start to think about
1:16:34
Speaker 1: the restocking efforts of the nineteen hundreds deer coming from Mississippi.
1:16:39
Speaker 1: So I'm coming from Mexico. There's a large group of
1:16:41
Speaker 1: deer that were brought from Wisconsin that has assumably died
1:16:45
Speaker 1: from probably a hemorrhagic or something that they couldn't be
1:16:49
Speaker 1: adapted to. You know, is there some lingering effect or
1:16:54
Speaker 1: imprint on these deer and um. You know, we saw
1:16:58
Speaker 1: that from research of Mississippi would bring deer from different
1:17:02
Speaker 1: parts of the state and put them all in a
1:17:04
Speaker 1: captive research unit, and we would see deer that were
1:17:07
Speaker 1: from the lower coastal Plain in Mississippi that typically had
1:17:11
Speaker 1: their fawns late in the year, like July, August into September.
1:17:15
Speaker 1: When we moved them two hours or three hours north,
1:17:18
Speaker 1: they still had them in July, August, September. UM, even
1:17:22
Speaker 1: though they were bred in that new area. Those deer
1:17:25
Speaker 1: from that area would typically, you know, have fawns in
1:17:28
Speaker 1: June and July. They would still have fawns in June
1:17:31
Speaker 1: and July. So it was kind of weird to see that,
1:17:34
Speaker 1: you know, somehow there was an imprint on these deer
1:17:38
Speaker 1: to have this timing of fawning. UM. And so, you know,
1:17:43
Speaker 1: there's a lot of potential factors that could come in there,
1:17:45
Speaker 1: but it definitely seemed like there was something more uh
1:17:51
Speaker 1: environmentally affecting them. Um, but it also could be a
1:17:56
Speaker 1: genetic thing too. Hm. Fascinating stuff, although it sounds like
1:18:01
Speaker 1: maybe terribly frustrating for hunters in that area trying to
1:18:04
Speaker 1: figure it out for themselves. Absolutely, I mean, you know,
1:18:07
Speaker 1: I still go to the fact of uh kind of
1:18:10
Speaker 1: whether you're in the Northeast or you're in the Deep South.
1:18:14
Speaker 1: You know, if you if you've hunted long enough, you
1:18:16
Speaker 1: can pretty much lay a thumb down on that. You know,
1:18:19
Speaker 1: running activity is going to occur around the same time
1:18:22
Speaker 1: every year, you know. I know Bill is huge on
1:18:25
Speaker 1: saying how I think November seven's his favorite day, Like, hey,
1:18:29
Speaker 1: if you hunt November seven, it's gonna be nail on
1:18:31
Speaker 1: the head. And and you know, I've had a similar
1:18:33
Speaker 1: experiences number fifth to the seventh in Missouri and Kansas.
1:18:37
Speaker 1: I've had great experience. UM. But I think you know
1:18:42
Speaker 1: what determined that is not necessarily uh, you know, the
1:18:46
Speaker 1: photo period or the moon phase or genetics. It's just
1:18:51
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, every year, on a fairly
1:18:53
Speaker 1: consistent basis, those deer are going to be breeding at
1:18:56
Speaker 1: that same time. That's that's their optimal time to breed,
1:18:59
Speaker 1: knowing that a proximately two hundred days later, they're optimal
1:19:02
Speaker 1: time to have the fawn. UM. And in the touth
1:19:05
Speaker 1: it is it's a lot less predictable. But some guys
1:19:07
Speaker 1: like that too, because then it's like, hey, instead of
1:19:10
Speaker 1: two weeks and I missed the ride, I've got two
1:19:12
Speaker 1: months that potentially catch this thing. In the last day
1:19:14
Speaker 1: of the season, I could still be catching running activity.
1:19:17
Speaker 1: I don't know if I necessarily think that's great for
1:19:19
Speaker 1: the bucks that are, you know, spending all that energy
1:19:22
Speaker 1: over two months, or even the fawns that are potentially
1:19:24
Speaker 1: being born in August September instead of June and July.
1:19:28
Speaker 1: That's a huge disadvantage in their first year. Um, but hey,
1:19:33
Speaker 1: it is what it is, totally totally well, not off top,
1:19:36
Speaker 1: I guess, but kind of digressing from where I wanted
1:19:39
Speaker 1: to go. But do you just mentioned the fact that, Okay,
1:19:41
Speaker 1: so in some of these areas down south, you've got
1:19:43
Speaker 1: fawns being born over the course of several months, you know,
1:19:47
Speaker 1: spread out. Is that a disadvantage for deer for fawn
1:19:51
Speaker 1: recruitment in the southern part of the United States compared
1:19:53
Speaker 1: to the north because of that because I think what
1:19:57
Speaker 1: I think the reason why that might be. My hypothesis
1:19:59
Speaker 1: was that in the North, when you have faunds all
1:20:01
Speaker 1: dropping a relatively consistent short time span, you have this
1:20:05
Speaker 1: overload of funds, so they cannot be predated as much.
1:20:09
Speaker 1: So the coyotes have so many funds that can't kill
1:20:11
Speaker 1: them all. While you know, in the South, if you're
1:20:14
Speaker 1: spread out, you know, there's there's more price spread out
1:20:17
Speaker 1: over a longer period of time, and it allows predators
1:20:19
Speaker 1: to have a larger impact. Is that is that right? Exactly? Yep,
1:20:22
Speaker 1: exactly it, Yeah, And I think that's always been a case.
1:20:25
Speaker 1: And in the South is like you said, there's only
1:20:29
Speaker 1: so many that the predators can consume in the North
1:20:31
Speaker 1: in a tight, tight time period um. And we always
1:20:34
Speaker 1: emphasize that with people that have fawn recruitment issues, like, hey, listen,
1:20:38
Speaker 1: you know you may not be able to change the
1:20:39
Speaker 1: genetics or the environmental effects easier or are having, but
1:20:43
Speaker 1: you can tighten up your buckido ratio to try to
1:20:46
Speaker 1: ensure that breeding occurs in a tighter time cycle. Therefore
1:20:49
Speaker 1: the fawning occurs in the tighter time cycle. Um. And yeah,
1:20:53
Speaker 1: I think as these things are stretched out, you know,
1:20:55
Speaker 1: especially as you get into the mid to later parts
1:20:57
Speaker 1: of July. In the August, you've got a couple of
1:20:59
Speaker 1: fawn dropped every day, that coyote or that bob cat
1:21:02
Speaker 1: is eating every couple of days. So, um, I definitely
1:21:06
Speaker 1: think that's a huge impact and probably a big advantage,
1:21:11
Speaker 1: you know, besides cover effects um that the North has
1:21:14
Speaker 1: over and the Middlewest has over the South. Interesting. Yeah,
1:21:18
Speaker 1: as you said that, it just kind of spread out
1:21:20
Speaker 1: to me that while that that makes a lot of
1:21:22
Speaker 1: sense as to some of the phone recruitment issues that
1:21:24
Speaker 1: you see, UM, yeah, down there typically you know, and
1:21:30
Speaker 1: and a lot of that depends on timing and then
1:21:33
Speaker 1: when you're looking at it. But I would say pretty
1:21:35
Speaker 1: consistently in a lot of those areas that aren't managing
1:21:38
Speaker 1: for predation, you know, you're south attent in your phone
1:21:41
Speaker 1: recruitment rates, and most of the time in the Midwest
1:21:44
Speaker 1: and then the Northeast you're probably north of UM. So
1:21:49
Speaker 1: it's it's a significant difference for sure, um. And and
1:21:52
Speaker 1: even if you manage for the best habitat yes, that
1:21:55
Speaker 1: increases cover, it still plays a big, big piece of
1:21:59
Speaker 1: the game in terms of the fawn recruitment and how
1:22:02
Speaker 1: heavy the predation is. But yeah, the longer the run is,
1:22:06
Speaker 1: the longer the fawning season, the more increase in predation
1:22:10
Speaker 1: that you're likely to see on the property. Yeah, very interesting.
1:22:15
Speaker 1: I kind of want to pivot now to actual hunting tactics.
1:22:18
Speaker 1: We've talked a lot about, you know, improving a property,
1:22:21
Speaker 1: understanding a property, how to manipulate a property, maybe how
1:22:24
Speaker 1: to understand what type of herd you have on the property.
1:22:27
Speaker 1: But I want to talk about actually, you know, actually
1:22:30
Speaker 1: killing and harvesting these deer on that property, because of
1:22:33
Speaker 1: course that's our our end goal in many cases, um,
1:22:36
Speaker 1: culmination exactly. So I want to talk about two different
1:22:39
Speaker 1: situations though, um that I think you've got experience in both,
1:22:42
Speaker 1: which is why I want to touch on both. One
1:22:43
Speaker 1: would be hunting, you know, a piece of private land,
1:22:46
Speaker 1: maybe a small piece of private land like what you
1:22:47
Speaker 1: now have. And then number two, I want to talk
1:22:49
Speaker 1: about public land hunting and maybe compare and contrast the two. Um. So,
1:22:54
Speaker 1: I guess first, when it comes to hunting your own
1:22:56
Speaker 1: private pieces, for anyone who's owns their own piece, they've
1:22:59
Speaker 1: been doing some habit at work. Maybe they're trying to
1:23:01
Speaker 1: manage it for better deer. What are some of the
1:23:03
Speaker 1: things that you've found based on your own experiences or
1:23:06
Speaker 1: other people you've worked with that you know, either we
1:23:09
Speaker 1: are some of the biggest mistakes you're seeing these people make,
1:23:12
Speaker 1: or what are some some of the things you've seen
1:23:14
Speaker 1: other guys or yourself do to help maximize your hunting
1:23:17
Speaker 1: success in that type of scenario. I think probably the
1:23:22
Speaker 1: biggest mistakes that I see is over hunting, um, you know,
1:23:26
Speaker 1: and that that could be on a property level, um,
1:23:29
Speaker 1: but likely on a stand level. And you know, anybody
1:23:32
Speaker 1: that that hunts long enough, or even you know, hunts
1:23:35
Speaker 1: of specific beer long enough, and you tend to have
1:23:38
Speaker 1: that hot spot, that hot stand, that hot area, And
1:23:42
Speaker 1: you know, I think we all get wrapped up in
1:23:44
Speaker 1: the pursuit and often don't think about even if we
1:23:47
Speaker 1: are using sent elimination clothing and devices and and trying
1:23:51
Speaker 1: to get in and out as as quickly as we
1:23:53
Speaker 1: can and quietly as quietly as we can, the fact
1:23:57
Speaker 1: is that you've got some pressure in that area. Yeah.
1:24:00
Speaker 1: And you know, for me, it's always been those first
1:24:02
Speaker 1: couple of sits in a new spot where I feel
1:24:04
Speaker 1: like I have the most success. So, you know, hunting
1:24:07
Speaker 1: and over hunting a stand or property is probably the
1:24:11
Speaker 1: number one killer of big bucks to me, not necessarily
1:24:15
Speaker 1: by the gun or by the boat, but's just the
1:24:16
Speaker 1: fact you're gonna boot them off your property and you're
1:24:19
Speaker 1: never gonna see those deer again. Um. So I think
1:24:22
Speaker 1: that's probably something that that a lot of hunters need
1:24:25
Speaker 1: to really focus on, is is strategically, how are you
1:24:28
Speaker 1: going to hunt this? Um? You know, it's one of
1:24:31
Speaker 1: those things that we only have so much time. I mean,
1:24:35
Speaker 1: life is busy, um, but you you've got to be patient. Um.
1:24:39
Speaker 1: I mean that's the key. Anytime you rush something, especially
1:24:42
Speaker 1: hunting on the four bucks, odds are not going to
1:24:45
Speaker 1: be in your favorite to actually you know, finish the job.
1:24:49
Speaker 1: So I think that's something that that a lot of
1:24:52
Speaker 1: people need to work on, you know, on a success standpoint.
1:24:56
Speaker 1: What's really kind of impressed me, um that they're you know,
1:25:01
Speaker 1: a seasonal based hunter, um, you know, and and just
1:25:04
Speaker 1: out on the weekends or when they can or if
1:25:05
Speaker 1: they're more serious, is the fact that I see more
1:25:09
Speaker 1: and more people taking pride in the deer that they
1:25:11
Speaker 1: don't harvest um than the ones that they do. You
1:25:15
Speaker 1: know that I feel like, you know, for me, one
1:25:18
Speaker 1: of my greatest passions growing up was was going to
1:25:21
Speaker 1: beer game, you know, in that tradition. And it didn't matter.
1:25:24
Speaker 1: I mean, everybody, of course wanted to shoot a box,
1:25:27
Speaker 1: but at the the end of the day, it was
1:25:28
Speaker 1: just being there and and experiencing the tradition and the
1:25:31
Speaker 1: memories you make. And I see more and more people
1:25:34
Speaker 1: doing that in a little bit different manner. You know.
1:25:36
Speaker 1: It used to be that you go up and it
1:25:38
Speaker 1: was more of the bonding with the tradition of hunting
1:25:41
Speaker 1: and the family. Now I see it more and more
1:25:44
Speaker 1: in the in the pride of of property and and
1:25:47
Speaker 1: growing and maintaining deer and habitat and and even the
1:25:51
Speaker 1: non targets. You know. One of the coolest things we've
1:25:54
Speaker 1: been seeing on our property is a whole dinner red
1:25:58
Speaker 1: fox um and it's just awesome to be able to
1:26:01
Speaker 1: see these these animals going across the property knowing that,
1:26:05
Speaker 1: you know, we have a responsibility to maintain that place.
1:26:09
Speaker 1: And of course it's the same thing when when we
1:26:10
Speaker 1: see a great buck, I mean to know that that
1:26:13
Speaker 1: deer is utilizing our property and to figure out, you know,
1:26:16
Speaker 1: how are we going to maintain them. You know, I
1:26:18
Speaker 1: feel like half the time I'm thinking about more protecting
1:26:21
Speaker 1: him and growing him, and then it's like, wait a minute,
1:26:24
Speaker 1: I'm I'm trying to kill the here. So it's a
1:26:28
Speaker 1: fine line, but I think it's a really neat connection
1:26:32
Speaker 1: that more and more people landowners or lease's are doing
1:26:36
Speaker 1: um with the property and with the deer. Yeah, I
1:26:39
Speaker 1: can definitely relate to that. That's one of the most
1:26:41
Speaker 1: fulfilling aspects of having a property that you can consistently
1:26:45
Speaker 1: hunt or manage or if you own it even um,
1:26:47
Speaker 1: you know, being able to you know, be a steward
1:26:50
Speaker 1: in some way and get to you know, see those
1:26:53
Speaker 1: deer and those animals and the wildlife flourish there and
1:26:56
Speaker 1: then ultimately you know, have some opportunities to hunt and
1:26:58
Speaker 1: kill some animals too. But it's it's pretty cool looking
1:27:01
Speaker 1: at it holistically, um and seeing everything that happens there
1:27:05
Speaker 1: and being able to be a positive influence on it
1:27:08
Speaker 1: is Uh, that's pretty gratifying. Yeah, absolutely, I think that's
1:27:12
Speaker 1: definitely the coolest part about it. And and again, you know,
1:27:15
Speaker 1: it's it's something that even if you don't succeed in
1:27:18
Speaker 1: the harvest, the fact that that dear is a good
1:27:20
Speaker 1: chance he's going to live to see another day, or
1:27:22
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you get shot by a neighbor or
1:27:24
Speaker 1: someone else, and you know, you still have to kind
1:27:26
Speaker 1: of keep your head up and think about all the
1:27:29
Speaker 1: successes you had to get that deer to where it was.
1:27:31
Speaker 1: So I think that's the that's probably the biggest aspect
1:27:35
Speaker 1: on owning or releasing property that people are taking pride
1:27:38
Speaker 1: in and to me is a great success. Yeah. Now
1:27:41
Speaker 1: I want to kind of, um, I want to look
1:27:43
Speaker 1: at your situation there in Pennsylvania on your new property.
1:27:47
Speaker 1: How do you plan on hunting that farm or how
1:27:50
Speaker 1: are you thinking about going throughout the season. I'm kind
1:27:53
Speaker 1: of curious to see how your what your thought processes
1:27:55
Speaker 1: are you planning on. Do you already know where you
1:27:57
Speaker 1: want to hunt the early season and the rut and everything.
1:27:59
Speaker 1: Have you figure that out yet or are you going
1:28:01
Speaker 1: to observe and adjust or what's what's the game plan?
1:28:05
Speaker 1: You know, it's a constant chest match, especially I think
1:28:07
Speaker 1: this first year, I see us doing a lot of
1:28:11
Speaker 1: scout flash hunt at the same time, you know, getting
1:28:14
Speaker 1: into a position thinking that this is going to be
1:28:16
Speaker 1: the right spot. Um and then more than likely having
1:28:19
Speaker 1: to adjust based on observations over a couple of hunts. Um.
1:28:23
Speaker 1: You know, I definitely have my my places in mind
1:28:26
Speaker 1: that you kind of walk up to the first time
1:28:29
Speaker 1: and you just you know that there's a good chance
1:28:31
Speaker 1: this is gonna be something when when the rut comes
1:28:34
Speaker 1: or or even the early season. Um. I think the
1:28:37
Speaker 1: hardest part about our property that we're going to be
1:28:40
Speaker 1: dealing with is how are these deer going to react
1:28:44
Speaker 1: when you know, two hundred thousand plus acres of hardwoods
1:28:48
Speaker 1: start raining down? You know, acorns and beech nuts. Um,
1:28:52
Speaker 1: you know, I've got them on my place, but it's
1:28:55
Speaker 1: no different than what's stuff above. In fact that there's
1:28:58
Speaker 1: probably more uh off my property than there is on
1:29:01
Speaker 1: the property. So I don't know if we're going to
1:29:04
Speaker 1: experience a little bit of a law at that point, um,
1:29:07
Speaker 1: or maybe you know, my place is stick enough that
1:29:09
Speaker 1: it's actually gonna be the betting area and they're gonna
1:29:12
Speaker 1: be going from that area up to these big mountaintops
1:29:15
Speaker 1: where a lot of the big oak flats are. You know,
1:29:19
Speaker 1: if that's the case, now I gotta figure out how
1:29:21
Speaker 1: am I gonna hunt twenty plus acres a betting area
1:29:23
Speaker 1: without knocking the steer around. So I think, definitely the
1:29:27
Speaker 1: first year it's gonna be a learning experience, you know,
1:29:30
Speaker 1: one that will be exciting, but we'll probably be very
1:29:33
Speaker 1: cautious if anything. Um, there's a couple of food plots,
1:29:36
Speaker 1: at least one that I want to put in off
1:29:37
Speaker 1: the log landing, you know, just to establish something that
1:29:41
Speaker 1: it'll be an easy one to get to um without
1:29:43
Speaker 1: disturbing too many of the deer. And I'm hoping it.
1:29:46
Speaker 1: You know, my strategy for food plots, especially on a
1:29:49
Speaker 1: small farm, is always to draw them in the property.
1:29:52
Speaker 1: So I don't like putting food plots on the property lines.
1:29:56
Speaker 1: I like my deer leaving from the center of my
1:29:57
Speaker 1: property heading out. I want to them from my auto
1:30:01
Speaker 1: outside of the property in especially in a hunting scenarios.
1:30:05
Speaker 1: So that's something that I think this one will work
1:30:08
Speaker 1: out well with. But I mean it'll be a complete
1:30:11
Speaker 1: learning experience. I do think that there's a couple of
1:30:13
Speaker 1: areas that will be you know, kind of that standard
1:30:16
Speaker 1: tree spot tree stand spot that will likely lead to
1:30:20
Speaker 1: some sightings. The fact that I just I don't know
1:30:22
Speaker 1: went um. You know, we may not see hardly any
1:30:26
Speaker 1: deer until you know, the end of the November December
1:30:29
Speaker 1: when we start getting into these year feeding on natural
1:30:33
Speaker 1: browse um or we could have them like right now,
1:30:36
Speaker 1: we've got bachelor groups moving through. I just don't know
1:30:39
Speaker 1: how far and where they're coming from. Um, But I
1:30:42
Speaker 1: think that's probably the fun part about it is is
1:30:44
Speaker 1: going to be learning these behaviors and and strategies. There
1:30:47
Speaker 1: will be for sure, there will be more failures in
1:30:50
Speaker 1: the first year than there'll be successes. But that's just
1:30:53
Speaker 1: kind of how it goes. That's that's the truth. Like
1:30:55
Speaker 1: you said, that's the fun part figuring it out. So
1:30:59
Speaker 1: so shift now to the other type of hunting that
1:31:02
Speaker 1: I think I've seen you do in the past, I believe,
1:31:04
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong, But I think you have
1:31:07
Speaker 1: had a number of really good encounters recently hunting public
1:31:10
Speaker 1: land and you've killed several good bucks. Um, that's right, correct, Yep, yep, absolutely,
1:31:15
Speaker 1: I mean I love hunting public land. It's um. It
1:31:19
Speaker 1: was kind of a forced passion, I guess to start
1:31:21
Speaker 1: when when I was in college and moving around and
1:31:24
Speaker 1: and not having private land to hunt, so you kind
1:31:27
Speaker 1: of left with what you got. And I'm not gonna
1:31:30
Speaker 1: stop hunting. So for a public land was the the opportunity,
1:31:34
Speaker 1: and um boy, it's a different challenge, it's a different beast.
1:31:38
Speaker 1: I know that it can be frustrating. I mean there's
1:31:41
Speaker 1: there's been times, uh in Mississippi hunting public land that
1:31:45
Speaker 1: I would go, I don't even know, ten twenty hunts
1:31:48
Speaker 1: without even seeing a deer. Um. So you talk about discouraging, Yeah,
1:31:54
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely the low of lows. But I think
1:31:58
Speaker 1: when you finally start to get on the year, um,
1:32:00
Speaker 1: that the successes are great. I mean, you know, I've
1:32:03
Speaker 1: harvested my fair care deer on public land and and
1:32:06
Speaker 1: have had some encounters. I mean I've I've killed deer
1:32:09
Speaker 1: that we're that we're poping young and over on on
1:32:11
Speaker 1: public land in Missouri. Um, I've encountered deer that we're
1:32:17
Speaker 1: you know, probably given boone and crocketter run. Uh. And
1:32:21
Speaker 1: it's amazing to think that some of those deer on there.
1:32:23
Speaker 1: I mean, I still think, probably to this day, my
1:32:28
Speaker 1: best harvest on a public land was a dough in
1:32:31
Speaker 1: Missouri I killed with my muzzle order, um, four years ago,
1:32:36
Speaker 1: um that we sent off to met Since to have
1:32:39
Speaker 1: the Cementum Annualize tested and it was it came back
1:32:42
Speaker 1: as an A plus rating for a fifteen year old
1:32:44
Speaker 1: deer um. And you think about, how did a fifteen
1:32:48
Speaker 1: year old doe survive that long on public land? Um,
1:32:53
Speaker 1: and and what did she see and what did she
1:32:55
Speaker 1: go through? And and I think that was one of
1:32:58
Speaker 1: the challenges. Um it No, it's it's a whole different
1:33:01
Speaker 1: breed of hunting. I mean talking about running gun, I
1:33:05
Speaker 1: mean both seasons obviously a lot different than gun season. Um.
1:33:09
Speaker 1: You know, there's some places that are great. I mean
1:33:11
Speaker 1: Missouri when I started was one of those states that
1:33:13
Speaker 1: was was unbelievable. And then we had e h D
1:33:17
Speaker 1: outbreaks and it it through a curve and pretty much
1:33:20
Speaker 1: to the rest of my hunting strategy for the entire
1:33:22
Speaker 1: time I lived there. Um. You know, but even if
1:33:25
Speaker 1: to stay like Pennsylvania, where you know, we've got eight
1:33:28
Speaker 1: hundred thousand deer hunters. You know, I've seen a lot
1:33:31
Speaker 1: of bucks that are three plus years old. Um, it's
1:33:35
Speaker 1: just you're not gonna just go out walking under yards
1:33:38
Speaker 1: from the vehicle and sit on a food plot. You're
1:33:40
Speaker 1: gonna you're gonna work for him. It's gonna take some time,
1:33:43
Speaker 1: but they're there for sure. It just takes a lot
1:33:46
Speaker 1: of homework and a lot of effort, and uh, you know,
1:33:48
Speaker 1: some people just don't want to do that, but for
1:33:50
Speaker 1: those that do, the opportunities exist. So let's say for
1:33:54
Speaker 1: a hypothetical year, Let's say you're going into this coming
1:33:57
Speaker 1: hunting season and you don't have this piece of price
1:34:00
Speaker 1: at lands you know own, you don't have any leases,
1:34:02
Speaker 1: you have nothing. You're gonna hunt public land. What does
1:34:04
Speaker 1: your process look like from finding a piece of public
1:34:08
Speaker 1: land to scouting it to actually hunting it. Walk me
1:34:10
Speaker 1: through a hypothetical year in that situation. Well, you know,
1:34:16
Speaker 1: it's kind of it depends where I'm at. So I'll
1:34:18
Speaker 1: use Missouri where I was for example, that the first
1:34:20
Speaker 1: thing usually again I go to a mass but the
1:34:23
Speaker 1: first thing I did is actually search out properties. And
1:34:26
Speaker 1: what were the hunting methods allowed? You know, being a
1:34:29
Speaker 1: guy who hunts everything from bow to muzzleoader to gun,
1:34:32
Speaker 1: I mean, I love I'm a I'm a bow hunter
1:34:33
Speaker 1: by heart. Um. You know, I know that anywhere that
1:34:37
Speaker 1: offers the opportunity to hunt archery only or archery and
1:34:40
Speaker 1: muzzleloader likely has the chance of having older age class
1:34:44
Speaker 1: bucks and those that allow rifle hunting, just simple mass
1:34:48
Speaker 1: of pressure UM from from local hunters during the hunting season.
1:34:53
Speaker 1: So I first went out and identified the areas that
1:34:56
Speaker 1: we're bow hunting only or ones that offered UM and
1:35:01
Speaker 1: muzzle literally and typically those were the areas that I
1:35:04
Speaker 1: saw the best year and and had my best chances
1:35:07
Speaker 1: that the year. UM. So you know, again it's a
1:35:10
Speaker 1: game of I think the number one factor in public
1:35:12
Speaker 1: land playing pressure. You know, you can avoid the hunting
1:35:15
Speaker 1: pressure UM or use it strategically to your advantage, the
1:35:19
Speaker 1: odds of successor or at least encountering a good deer
1:35:22
Speaker 1: are are much greater UM. You know. I think as
1:35:26
Speaker 1: we get into the actual hunt itself, you know, half
1:35:30
Speaker 1: of it just luck you know, coming on it. But
1:35:34
Speaker 1: I think using using the skills of scouting UM are
1:35:40
Speaker 1: never more tested UM. Finding scrapes and and food sources
1:35:45
Speaker 1: and moving always being mobile and adjusting UM during the season.
1:35:50
Speaker 1: I mean, I had spots that I knew when I
1:35:51
Speaker 1: put a stand in it there was no way I
1:35:53
Speaker 1: was gonna hunt it year round, that that stand was
1:35:55
Speaker 1: probably gonna end up in five different trees by the
1:35:58
Speaker 1: end of the season. Um. And I think that's probably
1:36:01
Speaker 1: one of the most important things, and one of the
1:36:03
Speaker 1: things that most people don't do is you know, they'll
1:36:05
Speaker 1: they'll get into place that they've seen bucks in the past,
1:36:08
Speaker 1: and there's a good gence will run into them again.
1:36:10
Speaker 1: But you know, early season and movements are a heck
1:36:13
Speaker 1: of a lot different than rut movements, that heck a
1:36:15
Speaker 1: lot different than gun season, and then especially after gun
1:36:18
Speaker 1: season and what you know, what's left over. Um And
1:36:22
Speaker 1: I still think to this day, I've had more success
1:36:26
Speaker 1: hunting the late season, or at least more encounters hunting
1:36:31
Speaker 1: the late season on public land than I have any
1:36:34
Speaker 1: other time of the year. Um. Just for the fact
1:36:38
Speaker 1: that I think deer are more predictable in their patterns. Um.
1:36:43
Speaker 1: And there's a lot less hunters limp skun season end.
1:36:48
Speaker 1: So are you finding then? I mean it seems like
1:36:50
Speaker 1: once you get into that late season, these deer obviously
1:36:53
Speaker 1: have been pressured significantly over the course of the past
1:36:55
Speaker 1: couple of months. Are you finding these deer in just
1:36:58
Speaker 1: the hardest to reach, hards to find parts of a
1:37:01
Speaker 1: public land parcel in It depends on the timing. I mean,
1:37:05
Speaker 1: if it's directly after you know, a gun season. Yeah,
1:37:08
Speaker 1: I mean they're buried in there pretty good, and you know,
1:37:10
Speaker 1: but at that time of the year, you know, deer's
1:37:13
Speaker 1: gotta move, a deer has gotta eat, so you know
1:37:15
Speaker 1: they're they're gonna be mobile. It's just finding them an
1:37:18
Speaker 1: access thing. Um. As you get later into the year
1:37:22
Speaker 1: and the pressure is eased up for you know, a
1:37:24
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, um, you start to see them moving
1:37:27
Speaker 1: back into their areas. Actually, what I think is is
1:37:31
Speaker 1: early season, I mean like summer patterns to where they're
1:37:34
Speaker 1: getting back closer to food. They're not moving nearly as much,
1:37:38
Speaker 1: you know, and it's very patternable, and that it was
1:37:41
Speaker 1: they're going to be moving probably in the early morning
1:37:43
Speaker 1: and especially in the afternoon, and that's about it. Um.
1:37:47
Speaker 1: So I think that that you kind of use it
1:37:50
Speaker 1: to your advantage and that if you knew where they
1:37:53
Speaker 1: were moving in their late summer early fall patterns at
1:37:56
Speaker 1: times the seasons rested to close, they're probably pretty darnful
1:38:00
Speaker 1: was back onto those patterns. Yeah, one of those. Uh,
1:38:04
Speaker 1: do any one of the bucks you've killed, you know,
1:38:06
Speaker 1: recently in Missouri on public land, would any one of
1:38:09
Speaker 1: them be an interesting example to walk us through how
1:38:11
Speaker 1: that actually happened. Uh, yeah, I mean you can, I guess,
1:38:19
Speaker 1: try to wear that again for me. So, yes, I'm
1:38:23
Speaker 1: just curious to hear about one of the specific bucks
1:38:25
Speaker 1: that you killed on public land, whether it be Missouri
1:38:27
Speaker 1: or one of the other places. I'd just be interested
1:38:29
Speaker 1: to hear about that specific situation, you know, how how
1:38:32
Speaker 1: you ended up sitting there, while you sat there, how
1:38:34
Speaker 1: it happened. Yeah, absolutely. So I had a place, UM
1:38:40
Speaker 1: it was actually a city owned property, UM that was open.
1:38:43
Speaker 1: It was a bill hunting program. They were trying to
1:38:44
Speaker 1: reduce the number of deer within the city limits. UM.
1:38:48
Speaker 1: And so the archery only I had scouted it. It
1:38:53
Speaker 1: was only but it had state park that was a
1:38:59
Speaker 1: border on it. So you know, there were certain areas
1:39:03
Speaker 1: that I figured deer were likely going to be in.
1:39:06
Speaker 1: And and my instinct again thinking, you know, not only
1:39:09
Speaker 1: is it bill hunting, but there's a state park that
1:39:11
Speaker 1: was not hunted at all, the potential for age structure
1:39:14
Speaker 1: was there. Um. And so I had done one of
1:39:18
Speaker 1: my and I still used to this day and my
1:39:20
Speaker 1: biggest strategies is I tried to identify the betting area
1:39:23
Speaker 1: at least close to the betting area right away, and
1:39:25
Speaker 1: then I start, you know, working my way back in
1:39:28
Speaker 1: a funnel situation, and then as the season starts, I
1:39:32
Speaker 1: get increasingly aggressive, getting closer and closer and closer to
1:39:36
Speaker 1: that betting area pretty much to when it's rout, I'm
1:39:39
Speaker 1: I'm in their wheel half, I'm in the budroom um
1:39:41
Speaker 1: at that point. And so for this this particular deer,
1:39:46
Speaker 1: there were there were two other bucks that I was
1:39:48
Speaker 1: actually after ahead of this year. There was a mature
1:39:53
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's probably over mature and hud deer um.
1:39:58
Speaker 1: There was a what I called a giant tent and
1:40:01
Speaker 1: at that point for public land, it was the biggest
1:40:03
Speaker 1: deer I've ever seen. It was a hundred and fifty
1:40:06
Speaker 1: a swell point and then the bluck guy ended up
1:40:09
Speaker 1: killing which was just a solid hundred seven and eight point,
1:40:12
Speaker 1: but it's probably a four year old deer. Um. He
1:40:16
Speaker 1: had been getting more and more visible um on trail camera,
1:40:22
Speaker 1: and so it was one of those deer that at
1:40:24
Speaker 1: two am he was there pretty consistently, and then it
1:40:26
Speaker 1: was like four am, then it was five thirty, and
1:40:29
Speaker 1: as we were getting to the rut, I knew in
1:40:31
Speaker 1: that area was getting more and more consistent. So I
1:40:34
Speaker 1: set up in an area that was basically UM right
1:40:38
Speaker 1: off of his betting area where I thought his betting
1:40:40
Speaker 1: area was, and just so happens it was one of
1:40:43
Speaker 1: those times where I had a hot deal come in
1:40:45
Speaker 1: UM and you know, it's probably getting towards the peak
1:40:49
Speaker 1: of the rut, and uh, you know, Doe came in.
1:40:53
Speaker 1: Bucks were chasing her. And it was a unique situation
1:40:58
Speaker 1: in that every time time I rattled, I would draw
1:41:02
Speaker 1: in bucks, but if I grunted, I had no response
1:41:05
Speaker 1: whatsoever UM. And it almost made it difficult because I
1:41:09
Speaker 1: was getting I was in a cedar thicket, so I
1:41:12
Speaker 1: was getting bucks so close that, you know, rattling. Obviously
1:41:16
Speaker 1: I had more movement and that's what I had to
1:41:20
Speaker 1: do to get them into bow range. The grunts just
1:41:22
Speaker 1: were ineffective, nor leases were ineffective. UM. And so this
1:41:27
Speaker 1: this year I had ended up. I was a huge
1:41:30
Speaker 1: rattling sequence out after seeing about five or six different
1:41:33
Speaker 1: bucks all basically after in this area for this one day,
1:41:37
Speaker 1: and just so happened to turn around behind me and
1:41:40
Speaker 1: and from the betting area that I thought he was in, UM,
1:41:43
Speaker 1: he came cruise him through it about ten am um
1:41:46
Speaker 1: and and made a good shot on him. But you know,
1:41:48
Speaker 1: I've seen that deer on camera since September, um, and
1:41:54
Speaker 1: this was in the middle of November. But it was
1:41:56
Speaker 1: one of those places that I hadn't seen. I hadn't
1:42:00
Speaker 1: seen but probably seven deer in huts on the property, um,
1:42:06
Speaker 1: and I mean most of them, doze of fawns. I
1:42:08
Speaker 1: had seen one shooter box before then that I never
1:42:11
Speaker 1: got shot at. What other than that I didn't even
1:42:14
Speaker 1: seen about in person on camera at night absolutely, um.
1:42:18
Speaker 1: So it was it was very reassuring that the fact
1:42:23
Speaker 1: is just knowing there in the area and again that
1:42:25
Speaker 1: rut period, um, knowing that at any time it could
1:42:27
Speaker 1: happen and they could pop out right there, and that's
1:42:30
Speaker 1: pretty much what he did. Yeah, trail cameras are definitely
1:42:33
Speaker 1: a great tool for just keeping the optimism alive, that's
1:42:36
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah. Oh man, Well that's an awesome story.
1:42:40
Speaker 1: That sounds like a heck of a hunt and killing
1:42:42
Speaker 1: a four year old nearly eight pointer in public land
1:42:46
Speaker 1: that is that is awesome. So it was it was
1:42:49
Speaker 1: the biggest here I'd killed with with anything to date
1:42:52
Speaker 1: and at that time, and it was one of those
1:42:55
Speaker 1: ones that kind of you know, set me on fire again,
1:42:58
Speaker 1: I guess, especially thinking about all the time and putting
1:43:01
Speaker 1: the stand on public land. Oh yeah, that's that's as
1:43:04
Speaker 1: good as it gets, I would think. So yep, jere
1:43:08
Speaker 1: we are. We've been talking your ear off here for
1:43:10
Speaker 1: a pretty good time here, so we're gonna have to
1:43:11
Speaker 1: wrap it up. But I guess before we do that. Um, yeah,
1:43:14
Speaker 1: this has been really interesting stuff. I know our listeners
1:43:16
Speaker 1: are going to want to hear more from you, So
1:43:18
Speaker 1: where can they go if they want to get more
1:43:21
Speaker 1: information from you? Learn more about what you're doing? And
1:43:23
Speaker 1: you think that, so we we are still producing videos
1:43:28
Speaker 1: pretty frequently at thevisors dot Com. Um, we always try
1:43:32
Speaker 1: to do something really cool, educational, informational. That's it's basically
1:43:35
Speaker 1: in real time, you know what what people are going
1:43:38
Speaker 1: to be dealing with on their properties, whether that's a
1:43:40
Speaker 1: management thing or hunting strategies are actually hunts from the field, um,
1:43:45
Speaker 1: and we get those out pretty regularly. I'd say we
1:43:47
Speaker 1: have between you know, one and three a week, depending
1:43:50
Speaker 1: on the time of the season. Um, So we do
1:43:53
Speaker 1: a lot on that. You know, I still write a
1:43:55
Speaker 1: lot of articles for Deer and Deer hunting. And then
1:43:57
Speaker 1: also I've got um basically a week or bi weekly
1:44:01
Speaker 1: depending on the seasonal timing on outdoor channel dot com
1:44:05
Speaker 1: as well under at the column called Everything Dear and
1:44:09
Speaker 1: basically cover everything dear again trying seasonality. You know, my
1:44:13
Speaker 1: big thing is I want people to be reading and
1:44:16
Speaker 1: watching what they could be doing on their own property
1:44:19
Speaker 1: at best time. Um. It's probably the best way to
1:44:21
Speaker 1: relate to what's going on out there in the deer
1:44:24
Speaker 1: woods at any given time. So this is basically the
1:44:27
Speaker 1: best ways and in at least on a deer standpoint,
1:44:30
Speaker 1: to get to get into me. But you know, with
1:44:33
Speaker 1: Stone or media, we're at at the a P shows
1:44:36
Speaker 1: and at the shot shows and we're doing expose. Um,
1:44:39
Speaker 1: you know, we're there with our Deer grow product as well.
1:44:41
Speaker 1: So you know, I always welcome guys to grab me
1:44:45
Speaker 1: and talk at at any of the events KATIU may events,
1:44:48
Speaker 1: whatever they might have to to talk dear. It's very
1:44:52
Speaker 1: rare that I'll ever turned down talking deer, that's for sure.
1:44:56
Speaker 1: Well I'm glad that's the case because it was we
1:44:58
Speaker 1: were able to get you here to talk dear, and
1:44:59
Speaker 1: this was uh interesting, fascinating conversation. I uh, I enjoyed
1:45:03
Speaker 1: it and I'm even it probably was not didn't think
1:45:06
Speaker 1: it was possible, But I'm even more stoked to get
1:45:08
Speaker 1: deer hunting now than I was about two hours ago.
1:45:11
Speaker 1: So so thank you, Jeremy. I appreciated mark anytime, and
1:45:15
Speaker 1: it was great to be on and hopefully we can
1:45:18
Speaker 1: do it again sometime. That sounds great. Good luck this season?
1:45:22
Speaker 1: All right? Thanks? Like all right? Well, before we wrap
1:45:24
Speaker 1: it up, a few quick reminders. First, be sure to
1:45:27
Speaker 1: check out the new One Wild podcast. Our latest episode
1:45:31
Speaker 1: featured former pro baseball player Jim Tony and we discussed
1:45:35
Speaker 1: hunting from ground blinds and much more so I think
1:45:38
Speaker 1: you guys will really enjoy that one. We also need
1:45:40
Speaker 1: to thank our partners who helped make this podcast possible,
1:45:44
Speaker 1: so big thank you to sit Gear, Trophy, Ridge Bear Archery,
1:45:47
Speaker 1: Redneck Blinds, Hunter a, Maps, Osonics, Carbon Express, Maven Optics
1:45:53
Speaker 1: in the White Tail Institute of North America. And finally,
1:45:56
Speaker 1: thank you all for joining us. I hope you enjoyed
1:45:59
Speaker 1: this conversation with je Army as much as I did.
1:46:01
Speaker 1: And until next time, to stay Wired to Hunt. H