Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Wired To Hunt Podcast #111: Micro-Managing Small Properties for Big Deer with Jake Ehlinger

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Wired To Hunt Podcast #111: Micro-Managing Small Properties for Big Deer with Jake Ehlinger · 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 this episode number one
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: hundred and eleven tennis show, we're joined by white Tail
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Properties land specialist and white tail habitech insultant Jake Linger
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: to talk about micromanaging small properties for big deer. All right,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: by sick Gear. Today we've got a terriffic guests, someone
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: who's actually nearly my neighbor as he hails from south
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: central Michigan, and he's someone who's got a vast amount
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: of white tail knowledge to share, and that's Jake and Linger.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: He is a white tail habitat consultant and currently is
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: a land specialist for white tailed properties, and he's definitely
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: an expert on all things related to hunting white tails
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: and heavily pressured areas and managing small properties to make
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: that possible. And so that's exactly what we're gonna talk
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: to Jake about today. You know exactly how to manage
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: a small property in a situation kind of like what
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: I have in Michigan or a lot of other people.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I'm sure they're listening. You know, how do we do that?
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: How do we hold and hunt big mature bucks in
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: situations like that? So that's the game plan for the
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: next hour, hour and a half, however long this runs, Dan,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: what do you think about that plan? I like it,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: You're like it? I like it. I always like talking
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: about deer hunting and management and property and all that
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: good stuff. I agree, it's a I don't know, I've
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: found some level of fascination with like every different type
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: of scenario for deer hunting. Like I love the idea
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: of like how do you micro manage a tiny property
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: with habitat improvements and stuff? But I also am like
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: really intrigued with like how do you hunt big public
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: land parcels out in the far West or something like that.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: And I'm interested in how do I, you know, try
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: to figure out big properties of private land versus small
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: properties of privately All all the different types of scenarios
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: and ways you can kill and hunt white tails. There's
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: something kind of cool about all of them. So how
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: do we do though? Oh, oh, not too much? Um,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: I accidentally eat dog food Monday? How do you accidentally
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: eat dog food? Well, you know, some of these gourmet
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: dog foods have like the cover on them, it kind
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: of looks like beef stew type of deal. And so
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: for some reason, my wife decided to get this gourmet
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: dog food. And I came home and I was in
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: a hurry because I had to record a record a podcast.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, you know, I pulled this
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: can out and look at it, and it on the
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: front cover is like rice and beef and carrots, and
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, that kind of looks good. So
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: I I didn't, you know, real fast put it in.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: There's no way this is real. There's no way this
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: is real. This is real, Mark, this is real this
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Have you ever been that? Well, it was on Monday.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: So I scoop it out. You know, I'm in a
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: hurry because I'm a little behind, so I scoop it out.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I gotta stuff in my face because
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I haven't eaten anything all day. Throw it into the microwave,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: turn it on, and I pull it out and I'm
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: like mm hmm, well, you know, maybe it's just the
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Cheapo brand. So I put a spoon in it, put
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: a little bite in my mouth, and I'm like, that
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: doesn't taste like beef stew. So I look back at
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: the can and it said perk purina on it, and
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: uh so that was the last time I ate dog food.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: You realize that there are so many people listening right
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: now that they have serious questions about your ability to read,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: for reason, function as an adult. Well, this even blows
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: my mind. Well, I'll tell you what. First off, I'm
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: not proud of it right. Second off, you add you
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: add two kids into the equation of your life, and
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: your mind disappears like you're you are so scatter brained
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: all over the place that you know sometimes you accidentally
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: dog food. Did I tell you what? This is a
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: clear indication of your state of well being right now,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: I'd say, like, I think all of us need to
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: be a little concerned about your well being. If you're
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: at the point where where you're accidentally eating gourmet dog food,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: and I guess this to give you, you've got a
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: free pass Dan now for the rest of the next
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: couple of months at least. If things are so rough
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: right now that you're eating dog food by accident, if
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: you if you forget to check a trail camera or
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: if you hang a bad tree stand, don't worry about it.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: You It's understandable. That's that stuff's important, all right, Like
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: eating Accidentally eating dog food really is like, oh, oh no,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: I accidentally ate dog food. Now if I put the
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: stand in the wrong spot or forget to turn the
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: trail camera on, that's a big deal. That's more that
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: has bigger repercussions and accidentally dog food, I suppose. So
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: what did you tell your wife about this? Oh? No,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: I didn't so really, I mean, it's a little embarrassing.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: The only thing I asked her to do is, hey,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: can you do the little Yeah, hey, can you do
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: me a favor and not put the dog food, the
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: gourmet dog food next to the serving side canned food
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: items that we have in there. She's like, I go,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: it could be it could be a little you know, mistaken,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: And she's like why, And then I didn't say anything.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: So how would you describe the taste real quickly? Here?
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Like kind of like dog food? I don't know how
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: that I can't relate to That means I've never eaten
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: dog food, I don't. I mean it had kind of
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: a beefy taste to it, you know, but you know
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't go I wasn't going in for a second
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: a second scoop If that makes sense, Yeah, yeah, it does.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna do your favorite here. I'm gonna move
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: on from this topic. Hey, I want to talk real
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: quick about scouting in Montana. Have you seen anything else
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: while you've been out scouting? I do have some quick
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: updates on that. Great, great topic to bring up, actually,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: because just yesterday I called the Fishing Game Agency here
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: trying some information about some of these public land areas
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: that well they're private land that's open to public hunting
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: through their walk in hunting program here in Montana. And basically,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: you know, I've been I've had some maps I'm looking
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: at the show these properties, and so I was targeting
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: handful of these properties that I've been trying to start
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: to scout from the road and stuff, and I was
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: gonna try to, you know, get on them and walk
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: around to try to figure them out a little bit
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: before I come back and hunt. So I called them
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: to ask a couple of questions about, you know, how
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: do I go about doing that? Can I just show
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: up or do anything to sign in or something, and
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: this person, um just was really short with me and
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: just did not seem to be in a good mood.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: And um, you know, they just basically said that you
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: can't do anything that the new the new property listing
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: blah blah doesn't come up till mid August, and every
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: time I had a question about anything additional, they just
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: said that, well you gotta wait till augu Um. So
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: I got completely shut down and I just kind of
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: like with stammering on the phone for like thirty seconds.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: I didn't know how to handle this response got But
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: long story short, I was bummed out about that because now,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: well what properties. I have no idea where I can
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: hunt because they can't confirm whether or not these properties
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: are open to the public or not. So I can't
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: go scout. I can't do anything like that. Um. So
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: last night I'm like, well, what the heck am I
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: gonna do? I start thinking, you know, should I just
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: start knock on doors, try to get private permission somewhere? Um,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: these are all things I'll starting to think about last night.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: But I thought, you're not gonna go for a drive
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: in this general region again and just try it again,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: get a better idea of where the you know, where
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: the deer are, where some of these better bucks might be.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: And two good things happened. Number One, Um, I saw
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: five shooters. I saw some really nice bucks, probably in
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: the hundred and thirty forty class, I'd say, Um, so
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: some definitely mature deer in the general area that I'm looking,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: which is encouraging. And then the second thing that was
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: a bit serendipitous would be that as I was riding
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: back from this deer drive at what one, I saw
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: black bear, which is cool. He came around across the road.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: And then number two, as I'm driving back from my drive,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: there's a truck and trailer off side of the road
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: and they waved me down and pull over and they've
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: got a flat tire. So I end up helping these folks,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: um get back to their house, try to get to
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: jack and all that kind of stuff. And after you know,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: chit chatting and stuff and helping them along, they mentioned
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: that they own a bunch of land in the area.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: And then I'd be lucky, lucky son of a gun. Yeah,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: and they said I'd be welcome to hunt it. So, um,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: you know that isn't for sure for sure, you know,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: I've got to you know, foul up on and everything.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: But based on this, uh, this uh encounter last night,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: some really nice people, Um, I might have a place
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: to hunt. So very lucky. I've never had that happen before. Um.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: You always hear these stories about getting lucky like that
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: and running across someone who happens to have a place
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: even hunt, And finally happened to me, So I'm not complaining.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I had a friend who was had a situation like that.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: He headed over to ellenor Way to do a quick scout,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: um like a I don't know, a quick scouting because
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: he wanted to go hunt in Illinois and he was
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: looking around. So all this property in this area that
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: he was looking around had been leased and uh leased
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: by outfitters and like I guess some notable outfitters that
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: have like do really good at management. We're talking you know,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: several booone and Crockett Deer every year. And uh so
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: he's driving down the road and he sees this lawnmower
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: on its side in a ditch. Well luckily the guy
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: riding it was not hurt, but he ended up helping
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: this guy tip a lawnmower back on and help him
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: drive it out of this ditch. And this guy owned
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: like twenty five acres. And then that's how this guy
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: and he's like, hey, man, I see you got all
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: these bow hunting stickers on your truck. You bow hunt.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: And the guys like, yeah, I'm look, I'm actually down
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: here looking for you know places the hunt. He goes,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: you're more than welcome to hunt my place. And it
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: was just an overgrown and overgrown pasture or that hadn't
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: had cows in it for like thirty years. So he
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: puts choke camera up and just like I think three
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Boone and Crockett deer were making their way through that
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: through that area in between these two bigger chunks of timber.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: So he he got real lucky. Yeah, that's awesome. It Uh,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: you shouldn't do good things to try to get a
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: nice reward, but every once in a while it's it's
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: kind of neat that karma comes around. I suppose, right,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: that's right, that's right, So you gotta start doing nice
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: things for people. Damn. I do nice things for people
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: every single day. I know I'm kidding. I opened doors
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: for people. I tell random strangers. Hey, like things like, hey,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: you got some nice teeth in your mouth. You you
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: have literally said that to somebody. No, I've never said that,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: but you know that's one thing people don't comment comment
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: a lot on is teeth. That's true. Maybe you could
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: make somebody's man, you got some good teeth. I'm thinking
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: that this. We're really quickly about to get side for health.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna sponsor here pretty soon if if we
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: don't get the guests on the line. Yeah. So we
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: we've covered dog food, we covered Montana scouting, We've covered compliments.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: So I think that's a great place to end this intro.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: And we're gonna take We're gonna take a quick break
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: for a word from our partners at Sick of Gear.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: And I'm actually in their basement again recording as I
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: told you a second ago. And uh, we'll take a
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: word to hear from Sicka and then we'll give Jake Cale.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: So we do want to give it a big thank
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: you to Sick a Gear for the support of this podcast.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: You know, they've contributed in a lot of ways that
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: helped us keep this show on the air, most notably
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: at the moment by letting me record here and today
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: I want to mention briefly one of their new pieces
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: for two thousand and sixteen, and that's the Fanatic Light bibbs.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: These are similar in form and function to the original
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Fanatic bibs, which I love. But the big difference here
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: is that while the originals were super insulated for those
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: long cold, you know, November late season days, these Fanatic
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Lights they offer a much thinner, gritted flace installation, which
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: is going to make these perfect for those early two
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: mid season sits. And what's super nice about is if
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: you layer some kind of installation underneath, you could probably
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: rock these right into the later parts of the year.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: So it's a very versatile lower body piece and something
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: that I know I'm going to be wearing a lot
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: this year. In addition all that, the Fanatic Lights have
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: got great handwarming pockets and full two way zips that
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: go up and down the pant legs, allowing you to
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: vent when you're walking, to keep you from sweating when
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: you're going in and out of stands, or just make
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: it easy to get them on and off maybe before hunt,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: after hunt, whatever might be. So I'm excited to try
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: these this year, and if you would like to learn more,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: you can visit sa gear dot com. And now let's
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: get back to the show with us. Now on the
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: line is Jake e Linger. I screwed up last time. Sorry, Jake,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Hey, thank you Mark. Great to
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: be on a show with you, And couldness be with
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Dan as well? Absolutely? Well, we're we're excited chat. And
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: you know, this is one episode where we occasionally have
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: these episodes we hadn't one a couple of weeks ago
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: where me or Dan or both of us are selfishly
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: particularly interested with our guests because we think they can
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: really help us, and I think you can really help
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: me because we have very similar scenarios. You know, we're
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: right down there in south central Michigan hunting similar properties
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: and similar types of areas at least. So I'm looking
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: forward to picking your brain about how you've had so
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: much success here in Michigan. And I think a lot
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: of other people will be able to have some things
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: they can learn from you too. But I suppose before
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: we get too far into that, Jake, you know, I
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: don't know if you knew this, but I actually first
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: heard about you from my friend Corey Daniel. You know
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Corey Um. And Corey had told me about this guy
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: who he used to bring his antlers to to get
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: your amounted. And he told me about this guy, Jake,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: that lives down in such and such area, and he
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: brought some antlers over and he remembered once that it
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: was either I think your house or your barn or something.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: You brought him out there back and you looked out
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: over the back of this building down into this lush
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: food plot and he told me, oh man, this is
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: just the coolest place, this beautiful food plot and all
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: these deer coming out. He's like that guy really knew
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: what he was doing. And so ever since then, I
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: was like, I need to meet Jake. And so since
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: then we've been able to meet, we've been able to chat,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: and it's been really great getting to know you and
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: learn from you. But for those who don't have that
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: background with you, Jake, could you tell us a little
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: bit about you know, what you do, what's your background,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: and what you're doing today related to deer and whitetail
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: habitat Sure Sure Mark Um. I started a business habitat
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Foolish in three sixty about fourteen fifteen years ago um
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: and my goal at that time was to try and
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: help the small landowner who had lived all trials and
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: tribulations that I have is in wanting to hunt bigger
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: and better deer hunting in southern Michigan, high pressure with
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: non cooperative neighbors the kind of sum it up and U.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: So I spent a lot of years young in my
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: life learning everything I could about white tailed deer. And
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: I was lucky to have permission, probably when I was
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: in my early to late teens, to hunt on a
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: really nice property in Hillsdale County. And I'm just one
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: of those guys that notices everything. And the thing that
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: stuck in my head was the diversity the different types
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: of cover, the different types of cover that deer used
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: at different types of the year, food sources, things like that.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: So you know, when I was in my early thirties,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: my wife and I were lucky enough to buy a
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: sixty seven and three quarter acre farm here in Lenuay County,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: and and from the day we closed on it, I
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: came out here and I started making changes immediately, from
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: planning trees to uh trying to increase the cover, trying
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: to figure out where the deer we're betting if there
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: was an ey betting in those types of things. So
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: over the years, my background has always been prior to
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: this business, I was a mechanical engineer in the high
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: speed automation business and the Detroit automotive world. From a
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: real detail oriented guy, a lot of drafting and engineering
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: type of thought processes. So when I built this business,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: I thought, well, why can't I do this just like
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: I did all my proposal work when I was an engineer.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: So I put the plans together, basically started out with
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: written plans, very detailed written plans, and then my design
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: layouts that I do of the property itself. I take
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: these satellite photo and I reproduced that in hand drawing,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: and I draw the kind of detail that a lot
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: of people in this business won't do, and I break
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: it right down into you know, every screen meaning uh,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: you know every betting area, of the separation of does
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: and bucks and that sort of thing, stand locations, entry
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: and exit strategies, really get into a lot of detail. Uh.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: It's you know, it's just been a blast, uh to
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: be a part of and grow this business. The Achilles
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: heel is the amount of time and detail it takes
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: out of me to provide that kind of service, so
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: I can only help so many people a year. And
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: through the through this business, I became associated with the
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: people that own white Tail Properties about four years ago. Uh.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: They saw some of my YouTube videos, were really intrigued
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: with what I was doing and asked me to come
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: help them with some of their Illinois and Missouri properties.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: And through that relationship really got to know the guys
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: and they asked if they could film some of the
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: techniques I do and put it on their hunting show,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: which I had no problem doing. And they said, geez,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: you know, you know land so well, You're so good
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: with people, You're so passionate about what you're doing. We're
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: thinking about opening up Michigan, as you know, another one
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: of their states to put land specialists into to to
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: us sell hunting lands and farms. So they offered me
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: the opportunity to to uh work directly with them, representing
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: the company as a land specialist. And white Tail Properties
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: has come into Michigan about a year ago, just about
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: this time last year, and so I went ahead and
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: got my my real estate training, took the test, past
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: the test, and I'm a land specialist for white tail
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: properties real estate as well, and that's such a good
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: you know, both businesses benefit one another, you know, the
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the properties that I do designs on and help the hunters.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: You know, there's a gee, do you know of any
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: property for sale or cheese? You know, you did such
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: a good job on my property. I've killed some great books,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: but I'd like to take this forty acres and turn
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: it into a hunt or do you know of any
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: properties in the area to sell? So it's working out
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: really good as a companion business. So that's pretty much
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: how I got to where I'm at today. That sounds
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: like a pretty fun gig. I gotta believe there's a
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: lot of a lot of fun times out there on
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: those properties, whether you're selling them or managing and improving
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: them or just talking to people about them. You know,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: it really is, mark Um. I've been blessed to be
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: able to see so many different properties, so many different
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: habitats that deer use, and you know, be that the
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: urban environment, the deep woods the Midwest that you know,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: deep ravines are just uh we'll call Billiard table flat
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: land that you would see in certain parts of central
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Michigan and central Ohio and Illinois. Uh, you know, and
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: so dear our deer. They all react in similar situations,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: but depending on topography, you're going to do a habitat
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: plan a little bit different, you know. Uh. So, Yeah,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: I I take everything I learned from each property, and
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: at this point, I think I've been to just under
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: six d properties in the last fourteen years, and so
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: as a heck of a lot of data I can
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: throw into my brain to help out the next guy
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: that calls me and wants me to do a plan form. Yeah. So,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: so what I kind of want to do, what I'm
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: hoping we can do, is I'm hoping we kind of
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: mine all of that data that you've accumulated to help
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: each of us as individuals better look at our own
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: properties or our own situation and apply some of these
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: things you've learned, hopefully. And I thought it might be
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: interesting if you're willing to share, um, taking a look
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: at your own property, or at least the property um
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: that I've I've read about in the past that I
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: know you've done some work. I'm not sure if that's
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: still the same one, um, but but that's sixty seven
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: and a half acres or whatever. Is that still the
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: farm that you hunt the most or manage the most
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: of your own. Yet oh it is it's a it's
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: the only farm I hunt in Michigan. Uh. You know
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: one of the things. You know, you can travel throughout
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: the Midwest, go to a lot of different states hunt
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: some great deer, hunting some great areas. UH. To me,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: the biggest challenge I like is trying to make based
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: on uh, I have certain uh I call it realistic expectations.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm certainly not going to produce and grow
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: multiple boon and crocketts on this small farm, Okay, but
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: I really enjoy doing the work and getting the best
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: deer that I possibly can have grow on this property.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: And just to give you a little background, it's uh,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: you know, it's your typical half mile deep. Uh. It
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: was a seventy acre farm and a small little uh
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: three and a half acres was taken out of the
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: corner that the original farm house and barn was split
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: off of the property before it was sold. It's what
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: you call gently rolling over here. I'm gonna say. The
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: topography changes about to thirty five feet nothing really steep.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: There's one small steep bank that goes to a swamp,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: but but not the kind of ridges that you would
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: see in you know, say Illinois and Missouri and that
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: type of thing. And it does have a really very
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: interesting wetland. It winds through kind of the the central
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: core of the property, and so it divides the north
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: and the south sections with the high lands. It actually
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: separates the two and there's peninsulas and small islands, and
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: so I've come to really appreciate having the water and
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: that transition area where you go from flooded timber to hardwoods.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: And when I first bought the property, that's where the
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: deer movement was because there's a big change in stem
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: density from where you have open you know, where the
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: sunlight's getting in creating early successional growth where there's a
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: swamp system to where it transitions over to say a
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: mixture of oaks and maples, which is typical forest habitat
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: that we have here in southern Michigan. But it was
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: a closed canopy for forest. Uh it. It had about
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: twenty two acres tillable on it, and at that time
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: I wasn't sure what I was gonna do, so I
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: kept just cutting away at it, and uh I found
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: out that there was only two small locations that there
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: were any deer doing any betting on this property. Uh.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: You know, I see a lot of closed canopy woods
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: here in Michigan. So if you've got no understory and
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: no cover, you're not gonna have a lot of betting.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: But you know, on the other hand, there were some
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: good stands oaks, So depending on the year, uh mass crops,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: you could have great acorn drop and you'd have quite
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: a few deer using the property. But you know, when
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: you go back to uh, it was when I bought
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: this property and I knew nothing about scent control and
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: over hunting stands, and I made all those mistakes, you know,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, you name it, I did it. But on
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: the other hand, you know, that's the best way to learn.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: So it didn't take very long. Mark when I where
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: I I started, uh cutting trees. Okay, I actually had
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: some some select cut timber up cut done on this property.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: I think I had three cuts on this property, staged
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: at seven year intervals, and once in a while i'd
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: i'd have some good cutting situations that took place where
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: I did get a lot of early successional growth. Right away.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: I had deer betting in them, and you know, and
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: I know all during this time I bought them, uh
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: a Deer and Deer Hunting magazine. I was just trying
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: to suck up every piece of information you could about
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Dear Habitat. I read every book that John Ozoga had written,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: and you know, he talked a lot about clear cutting
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: and selective cut and creating cover. And so I just
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: went off on my own trying to create cover on
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: this property. And probably in the I want to say
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: mid eighties to early nineties, people were discussing food plots.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: So I started getting into, you know, rather than leasing
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: my farm out for corn and soybeans and that type
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: of saying, uh, telling the farmer, hey, you know, I'm
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: gonna take this seven acres and I'm no longer going
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: to plant it, you know, and he'd have he'd looked
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: at me with that what are you doing look, because
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: he doesn't want it taken away, and he thinks a
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: lot of you know, what are you gonna do with him?
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna make dear habitat, you know. And so my
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: wife and I got two sons, and at the time
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: though both my boys were probably you know, uh, mid
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: to late teenage years and you know, and so I'd
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: tell them, hey, you know, I bought a bunch of trees,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: We're gonna plant some trees, and oh, you know, they
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: would they would disappear on weekends. You don't even know
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: where they were, you know, because the guy would be
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of work. But but the truth is it
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: was a lot of fun. And we planted all kinds
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: of conifers and hardwoods as well, and masked you know, uh,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: different type of mass trees that we're not common from
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: around here, and really got into you know, growing food
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: and creating cover and uh turning it. At the time,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: I didn't you didn't realize what I was doing. But
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: I'd been one property in Central Hillsdale County that I
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: had permission to hunt that there were pods of trees
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: rather than trees being in a block. They didn't they
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: didn't seem to make any sense, but you felt like
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: you were in amaze when you walked around. So I
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: basically emulated that and planted trees and all, you know,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: a few straight lines here and there, but a lot
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: of crazy groupings and fingers and points and alcoves and
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: ended up taking seven acres and over about ten years
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: at seven acres developed into just an incredible core area
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: of buckandole movement and you know, great food plots and
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: you know it just you know, so each year I
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: would learn I'd learned from my successes and you evaluate
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: my failures just like anybody. Uh, but got real good
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: at planning food plots, and then really got into uh
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: you know, into the technique of hinge cutting, started hearing
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: about it, started reading about it, had friends of mine
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: that had tried it or been somewhere where they had
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: seen it done, and got into hinge cutting, and that
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: completely blue things up on this property as far as
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: you know, instant success for bedding and predictability, a dear movement.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: And then from that I learned, you know, what the
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: size of a hinge cut you should have. And probably
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: I want to say mid eighties, early nineties, we had
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: a really dead ice storm here one year and you've
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: seen it, you know, you know, right there where you hunt.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we'll have an ice storm in February and it
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: will never get warm enough and the ice hangs on
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: the trees for weeks. So what I had was I
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: had a peninsula that went out into this swamp and
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: there was about a dozen the fifteen red cedar trees
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: it might have been you know, six to eight inches
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: in diameter, but twenty ft tall. Although all that ice
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: took those trees and just been them in a big arch.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: And anyways, after the ice thought those trees never returned
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: in an upright position. So you had this beautiful arching
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: that was that you could literally walk underneath. And it
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: didn't take long for me to figure out that's where
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: all the bucks were betted. And then I started trying
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: to copy all that either polling trees down with ropes
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: and uh you know, hinge cutting and stacking trees on
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: top of each other to basically duplicate that effect. And uh,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: you know, just over the years, I have created this
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: property with a lot of good food of some great
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: betting locations. And I learned early on in this when
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: I started doing the timber management, that there were certain
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: locations those seemed to prefer to bed and and locations
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: that bucks seemed to prefer to bed. And they were
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: not the same two locations. And now you read about it,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: and you know, in in a lot of different tuff places.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: But you know, if you go back twenty years ago,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: nobody talked about that. So that was one of the
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: first things I noticed on my own was that seemed
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: like bucks and does like to have segregated bedding, and
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: the dope families were into larger bedding groups, and the
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: bucks like to be isolated, and they were solitary creatures.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: And so I really started focusing on that and developing
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: more and more isolated small betting areas for bucks, and
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: larger betting areas created for dope family groups, and then
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: attaching them with travel corridors. And and this property is
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: just a really great property. I mean, it's it's something
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: to watch during the hunting season, and you know, as
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: the years went by, you know, I mean, they're it
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: just you know, things that you'd learned, you know, like
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: you know, any of us who's hunted, we saw plenty
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: of ground scrapes. And I'm a real watcher, and so
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: I'd always sit in these trees of binoculars from a
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: long distance away and just watch, you know everything, Why
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: is a buck doing what he's doing? And even though
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: I never really understood it a hundred percent, I started copying.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: And so before you even read about mock scrapes, I
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: was doing that myself, pulling limbs down trying to create
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: places for bucks to scrape. And through the years I
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: found out that you can create an awful lot of
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: competition within your bucks on small properties by putting those
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: in key locations, close to bedding areas, on the edge
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: of food plots. And so I think for anyone that's
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: listening to this, if they've got a small property and
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: they you know, they want the best hunting they can
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: have up there's a phrase I coined about fifteen years ago,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: and I call it the magic triangle, and that is,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: you want to have the three most important things, at
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: least in my opinion for deer on a small pressured property,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: is security, cover, food, and water all closely associated each other.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: So so jake them. A question then, is, in your
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: particular instance, how did you go about actually implementing those
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: things you talked about, the cuttings and things like that.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: But I'm kind of curious about, well maybe maybe more
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: I'm curious about what it actually looks like today. Can
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: you walk us through specifically? Now, you know, do you
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: have two food plots or is it ten food plots?
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Do you have you know, one major area of hinge cutting,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: or is there six or how can you describe a
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: little more detail of what that now looks like, how
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: you actually implemented this magic triangle on your property? Yes, yes,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: I can. Um. I started with I think a lot
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: of people went off in this direction. Early in the
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: food I planted a large food plot, not knowing any better. Okay,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to say something of an anchor and
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: a half or so, which which I would now classify
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: as a destination food plot. And uh um, But I
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: have kept that food plot because the location's right. There's
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of cover around, a lot of trees around it,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: and I've changed the shape of it, and I've planted
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: some trees in it and and that sort of thing
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: to break it up and compartmentalize it. But this property
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: exists with I have a total by the time I
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: get my fall plantings in, there's probably about nine and
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: a half to ten acres of food on sixty seven
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: acres planted solely for deer. And out of that there's
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: about three and a half to four acres or what
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: I would deem destination food plots in an acre or
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: larger in size. And my largest up food plot is
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: probably about two and a half acres and then I
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: have an you know, I have a number of small
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: food plots, micro food plots, and I'm gonna say are
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: in the one of an acre to a third of
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: an acre in size, And basically the small food plots
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: are closest to the bedding areas to where the gray
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: cover is. And what I tried to do a stage
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: the deer from the in these bedding willcasions. If you
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: saw this property of magic, imagine looking down at a
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: property and in the center of the property is a
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: swamp and it's flow. It's more flooded timber than your
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: typical swamp. There's oaks and maples and small islands out
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: in there, so it's wood duck heaven, and so it's
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: got a bunch of fingers and points and things like
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: that in it. So anywhere you have a large peninsula,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: I started creating these betting areas out into those peninsulas,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: and then on the edge of where I would stop
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: the hinge cutting or stop the cutting process, then probably
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: within twenty yards of that area, thirty yards of that area,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: I have a small little micro food plot, but a
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: very well defined travel corridor where I would bring the
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: deer out of the bedding areas to the first small,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: little micro food plot, and then you know, they travel
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: another six seventy five yards to another food plot, to
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: another food plot, they may pass another bedding area, and
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: ultimately they reach the destination food plot. And that's really
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: how this property is set up. And I've pretty much
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: broken into like three segments. So imagine three three small properties,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: all with that design, contained within this sixty seven acres
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: if that helps you understand it. What did you picture? Yeah,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: what did you design first? The Did you put the
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: destination plot first and then design the rest of the
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: property around that, or did you find a betting area
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: and and and start from that end. Actually, you know,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: I was working on the woods is before I was
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: planning food plot, so I actually developed the betting areas first,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: and then it was a natural betting area to start with.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, I would you know, I would jump deer
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: in there, and not knowing any better at the time,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: trying to hunt a spot in November, not understanding you know,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: I was going in the wrong time of the year
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: with a sec control, So I knew deer preferred this
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: particular peninsula. And to this day it is the greatest
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: betting peninsula on this property. So then from there, so
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: you had a betting area, and then did you create, um,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: knowing that they're going to a destination food plot? Did
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: you are you able to basically influence deer movement between
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: this betting area and the the destination plot with these
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: micro plots in these other little thick areas in your
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: on your property. Yes, Dan, and that's exactly what happened.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: And you know, throughout this process, I was planning trees.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: I had different tree ages. You know, I had trees
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: there were three ft tall trees that were fifteen ft tall,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: all these different diverse tree uh you know, species. And
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: then I would have areas open areas where I was
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: planning warm seas and grasses and one but I found
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: it I could take literally, you can take a five
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: acre section of a property and create these micro habitats
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: and deer socialization areas, areas that deer like to spend
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: a lot of time rubbing, scraping, showing off to each other.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Uh food, you know, there's betting clothes. There's half a
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: dozen small food plots. And then I was real specific
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: about mowing these these three foot wide travel corridor. I
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: really you know, I bought Now you call it a
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: d R field and brushmower, but at the time this
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: one was made by a company called uh Swisher and
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: it was a thirty inch wide walk behind brush hawk
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: and I probably bought that thirty years ago. And I
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: started connecting every food plot at every bedding area with
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: a thirty inch wide mode path through the woods, through
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: the hinge cuts, through the warm season grasses, through the
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: spruce trees that I planted. And I did it. I
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: never did in anything any path with any straight lines
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: to it. It was constantly winding. And what I in
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: the beginning it was a lot of times a mistake.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: I'd cut a big tree at a tree tops. Oh shoot,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: I gotta go around this. Well. I found that if
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: deer can't see a long distance, then they have to
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: walk down these these curving, winding trail systems to look
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: into the next food plot, or to come down on
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: the edge of a betting area. And you know, during
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: that seeking phase that we all love to hunt. Um,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: I use this term compartmentalization, you know, Uh. I like
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: to take what was ten acres of a wide open
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: field and make it so deer can't see any more
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: than thirty yards anywhere in there, no matter where they're at,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: they could never see any more than twenty to thirty yards.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: And I've said in a tree stand and watched the
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: same three and a half year old buck for four
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: hours wander all over seven acres and never leave that
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: area during the run. We're twenty years ago. He cut
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: across a wide open wheat field and went on to
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: the neighbors and was gone and just about forty seconds,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: you know. So it was a real eye opener for me,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: and um, I hope that that opens your or answers
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: your question for you. Yeah, so super interesting. I've actually
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: seen similar results on you know, one of my Michigan
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: properties where I did something kind of similar. There was
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: just a great, big, wide open field of grass and
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: I went and added food plot screens around screen it
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: up into three different sections and then add some food
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: in between there. So, like you said, when you compartmentalize it,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: you give a deer, you give deer incentive to to
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: travel more because they want to see what's in the
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: next one, or they wanted when they're moving, or in
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: a buck's case, you know, cruising checking for does that
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: time of year. Also, I think that that also provides
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: a greater level of security during daylight. It also reduces stress.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: I think I've read a lot about how, you know,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: for example, dope family groups will feel more stressed if
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: they're a whole bunch in one area versus split up
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: into their own separate, you know, more covered secure regions.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: So there seems to be a lot of benefits to that.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: But I'm kind of curious. You know, we we've heard
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: about all these changes you've made to your property, from
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: adding the betting areas, to the micro food plots, to
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: the destination food plots, and creating this core region where
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: there's so much activity um in addition to like an
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: example you just brought up there where you saw this
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: one buck use a small area for hours. Are there
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: any other tangible results? Now? What's what's been the the
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: end outcome now of all these changes when you when
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: you go out there during November or whatever, you know,
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: what are you seeing now? I'm kind of I kind
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: of asked this because I imagine the r V people
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: listening at home who live in Michigan or Pennsylvania and
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: New York and they have sixty acres or forty acres
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: and they're wondering, Okay, if I did this, what what
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: could I actually produce? Well here's uh, I will I
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: will give you. I'll tell you exactly what I've been
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: able to see and what I did produce. But I
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: want to put a disclaimer on there, and that is, uh,
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: all of these things ings on a small property mean
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: little to nothing in your ability to see dear on
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: a predictable basis unless you, as a hunter, really understand
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: scent control and also understand when and how to understand
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: and when not to inderstand and so so that's part
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: of what I teach each each one of my clients,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: you know, is not only do I go through all
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: these habitat changes, but boy, I'll tell you if you want,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: if you really want this to work, because you're gonna
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: put all this time and energy into it, scent control
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: is highly important. And then you know, don't enter a
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: betting area the first week in November, first week of October. Okay,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: you know, you know how everybody can't wait for October one,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: you know, counting down the days. So what do they do.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: They get on their camouflage and they had their stands
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: hung sensed August and they go right into a betting area. Well,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: you know, at that time of the year, it's really
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: really hard to get into a betting area in the
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: morning and beat the deer there because the really is
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: not happening yet. So I try to work with people
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: and pass what I know and let them know that
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: the more they know about dear biology, the better hunter
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: and land manager they're going to be. You know, there
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: are certain times of the year that you can enter
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: betting areas in the morning, and then there are certain
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: times of the year you can't. And and same with feeding,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: you know, I can. I can tell you if I
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: had it to do over again, I would make some changes.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: But I've got so much invested in time and energy
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: and and and creating these large food plots. One of
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: the things I learned, Uh, because I had such good
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: betting and such good habitat, I increased the deer population
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: on the property significantly. So then I couldn't hunt in
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: the mornings in octob were because no matter where I went,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: I was bumping deer. You know. Yeah, but it didn't
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: take me long ago. That's all right. I can deal
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: with that, you know. And uh, but I mean there
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: are good problems, but what But ultimately, you know, to
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: answer your question, what have I seen? Um, you know,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: it's along with with developing this property, I went through
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: my own personal development of learning to pass year. And
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: you know, if you only hunt southern Michigan and you
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: know how many hunters as part of Michigan gets uh
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: trying to trying to pass a hundred and twenty five inchineer.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: At least for me, you know, I definitely had to
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: go through some steps to get there. Okay, but you know, um,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: I've been able to do that, and I will tell
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: you that there he probably has not been a year
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: in the last ten or fifteen years that I've not
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: had a say, one thirty five to one fifty ish
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: type buck around me multiple times. And there are days
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: that I have four or five of them. And that's
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: the beauty of the change that I've made on this
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: small property. So uh, um, you know, I would say
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: that anybody can do this if they put their heart
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: into it and understand how important betting is and safe
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: zones you know the term sanctuary, and you know where
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: to walk when not to walk. Uh. You know, it's
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: it's all, you know, it's all tied into one another.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: But anyone can have it. I've seen very small properties
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: right here in southern Michigan, say ten to eighteen acres
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: treated exactly the way I mentioned how I've handled my
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: own and watched these landowners have very similar results. Yeah,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: and I think, you know, I want to make sure
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: that you know, for those listening that maybe aren't familiar
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: with the setting like where we're at, you know, those
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: kinds of results. Like even even if you just said
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: every year you see at least one buck that's over
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: one thirty, that's pretty incredible for most people in Michigan.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Just to see a buff like that, that's like a
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: once in a lifetime buck for some people around us.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: Um and except for people that are working like you
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: are to manage these properties, or if you happen to
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: to live in an area near an area like that,
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: or have a great sanctuary or swamp or whatever it
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: might be. But there's of course there's some guys like
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: like Tan in Iowa where that's like an average Tuesday.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: But um, yeah, but in these situations, like to say
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: that you're saying multiple deer like that, I mean, that
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: is that's really impressive to me because I know, you know,
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: even for me, heck, I'm not seeing I'm not very
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: often seeing deer like that ever in that area. So
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: it really seems like there's there's proof in the pudding
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: to what you're doing. Um, and it's fascinating, you know,
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: It's yeah, you know, to this day, you know, I'm
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: constantly learning. I'm always trying something new. There's not a
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: year goes by that I don't come up with some
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: crazy idea. And and you know, my wife says, I'm
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: just absolute dear crazy the man. And uh, and I
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: usually give it about two or three years before I
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: will then um offer it to my lions. And uh.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: I have just recently, I'm gonna say, in the last
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: two to three years, focused a lot with going into
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: betting areas and and irregardless of how that betting area
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: is created, where whether it's a hinge cut, a combination
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: of select cut timber harvest and hinge cut, or say
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: a clear cut, or just say an early successional growth.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: Maybe it was a field and it hasn't been planted
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: in fifteen years, you know, when it starts with grass
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: and weeds and now you've got you know, all kinds
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: of different things including automolive growing in there. One of
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: the things I've keyed in on are these small little
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: alcove openings within the bedding structure itself. And uh and
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: I go into those openings and I kill them with roundup.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: I kill, I cut everything, and I kill everything. I
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: spray it, and then I come back and I seed
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: it heavy with about sixty chicory in about durrain of
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: clover to actually have the kind of food that bucks
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: crave in November in a betting area because if you
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: understand what a deer goes through during the day, you
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: know they bed, but they also they still feed, you know,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: every hour and a half two hours they're up and
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: they've got to feed a little bit. So I've used
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: this philosophy to do this and my small property to
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: hold these bucks in my betting areas and keep them
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: close or they're not moving around and exposing themselves and
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: getting in trouble. And what I can tell you is
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: my Dame cameras and my last two years experience has
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: proved that it's working. Interesting, So then are you you're
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: holding those bucks there with these terrific betting areas have
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: both great covering, great food, but how are you taking
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: advantage of that from a hunting standpoint. Are you eventually
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: going into those betting areas during the rut or are
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: you always hanging out of the sanctuary and hunting the edges.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: I'm you know, it's a combination of two things. Um.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: But I will tell you that I cut a very
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: really you'd have to see it to believe it. And
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: I just uh again, I'd love to have you come
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: out here and see these sometimes. But I cut these
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: very distinct travel corridors from the from the core section
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: of the betting area through that opening and right out
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: past my hunting stand. And these travel corridors are from
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: thirty inches to four ft wide. I've got trees cut
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: parallel on each side, not never thick enough to be
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: a wall, you know, you want it porous enough for
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: a deer and go right or left any time. It
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: has to have some overhead cover there. And I actually
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: plant that food all the way through, right up right
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: up that travel corridor, right up past the stand. Okay,
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: So they come out of their great bedding area, they
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: eat in that little clearing, and I basically give them
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: a freeway ramp right on to to the exit zone.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: That they want to head to, and it just gets
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: some you know, the those come in there and of
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: course eating brows, and you know, I'll cut a lot
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: of the small saplings right at ground level, and the
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: saplings of course will send up suckers, which is highly
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: nutritious because you've got a great root system there. So
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: that's great native brows. And so it's a combination of
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: a few things I do, but it really creates predictable
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: dear movement. Sounds like it. There's it's funny. You know,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: we have a lot of different guests on the show
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: who have all sorts of different experiences and the hunt
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: different areas and I can't remember I'm already forgetting maybe
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: maybe I mentioned this at the beginning of this show
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: with you, Dan, but I've come to just really get
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: a kick out of the very different ways of going
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: about this. And you know, there's some people like the
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: kind of a situation like yours, Jake, where you're able
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: to manage and manipulate and adjust a property, you know,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: through your own work and time, and that's really fascinating
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: and interesting. And then there's other people who maybe hunt
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: public lands somewhere where they can't manipulate the habitat at all,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: but they're hard work and they're strategy is put into Okay,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: how do I figure out what the deer are doing
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: right now, regardless of the habitat and try to take
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: advantage of that or take advantage of the hunters. And
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: there's there's something really cool about all those different ways,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: and I appreciate all the different ways and I find
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: them so interesting. And and as you were, as you
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: were walking through how you're you know, setting up this
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: this line of travel you're creating for deer, I just
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: got to thinking, Um, how I think there's something great
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: about all of them. And I love this idea of
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: how you're manipulating it. But I know some people will
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: hear this and say, ah, well, where's the hunting in that,
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: because he's just leading the deer right to him or
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: something like that. And I, personally, I think it's all
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: really interesting and fascinating. The different ways we go about
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: hunting is pretty cool. And I don't know I'm going
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: off on a tangent here, but I just started thinking
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: about this idea. I don't know if you have you
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: ever encountered that, Jacob. People not liking these types of
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: ways you're going about it, or or anything like that.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: You know, occasionally I do, and and I will tell
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: you that anyone who was spent plus year this hunting
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: high pressure deer in southern Michigan will soon find out
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: that the reason I'm doing this. These deer are the
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: most challenging deer to kill. I think there isn't a
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: whole Midwest. I've met so many people from out of
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: state that came to Michigan and tried to and off
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: camera will say, I don't know how you kill those deers.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: I'm still trying. Yeah, Dan, Dan would get a kick
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: out of it, you know, uh, because hey, let's face it.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: You know, I've spent some time recently in Iowa and
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: northern Missouri, and you know, we're talking areas where there
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: maybe three or four miles and only one or two
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: bow hunters in an entire three or four miles. So
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: those deer are completely different deer. And then you take
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: the kind of deer that you hunt mark in Michigan,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: that I hunt here in Michigan. Um, they're dealing with
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: fifteen plus bow hunters per square mile some areas, maybe
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: maybe much more than that. So these deer are on edge,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: and it doesn't take much pressure to have them leave,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: you know, their safe zone and go somewhere else, or
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: just decide you're only going to move, you know at night.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: You know a lot of people say, oh, they go nocturnal.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of that has to do with us.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: You know, we're our worst nightmare, you know, when it
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: comes to that. But so I've just tried to adapt
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: what works for me. But you're right, I have met
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: a few people that say, well, geez, you know, it
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: seems too easy. Well, isn't that the goal? I mean,
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: I'm real, I'm very ethically oriented as far as how
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: I take a deer, And for me, my biggest challenge
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: is how close can I get a mature Michigan deer
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: to me and still be able to take it with
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: a ball. And I've killed from three and a half
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: an older deer at less than ten yards, and a
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: lot of them at that ten to fifteen yards, And
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: as you know, Mark, that's not an easy attack. Uh,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: to accomplish property in the world, that's still really challenging.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: And I've probably killed three or four bucks you know
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: that would flirt with that to low one twenties. To
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: low one thirties on the ground with a bow at
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: ten yards. Wow. And it's just it's just a blast.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: I just so enjoy the chance. Now, Oh yeah, there's
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: something like I get a kick out of traveling to
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: bow hunt other areas. You know, it's totally different. You know,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: when I go to Iowa or wherever, it's very different
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: and very fun in a certain kind of way. But
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: then it's also really fun to try to do it
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: here in Michigan where there are these inherent challenges that
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: are very different. Um And there's a different kind of
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: fun to all of it. So it definitely forces you
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: to learn and adjust try different things. Um And. And
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: I guess to that point, when we're talking about some
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: of the different create things that you've created on your property, first,
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: one of the things I want to talk about was
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: your cover, how you're creating cover, because I've learned a
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: lot about creating cover from some of the things I've
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: seen you do on your videos and and talked about
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: hinge cutting in particular, something that seems to be something
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: you've really utilized well. And we've dabbled with it over
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: some episodes over the past couple of years, but never
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: really dive too deep into it. So it's curious, Jake,
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: could you walk us through exactly how to hinge cut
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: the right way, because I think I've been doing occasionally
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: the wrong way and I want to make sure that
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: I fixed that for the future. Yes, you know. And
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: and rather than get into the mechanics of hinge cutting,
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: because I think everybody, you know, there's so many videos
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: and pictures available. Uh you know, hey, you're you're cutting up.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: You know. Basically, you're cutting to through the tree, depending
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: on the species, to get it to fall in the
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: direction you want it to fall and stay connected and
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: stay alive. And even if the tree dies, if it
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: stays connected, then you can hinge additional trees across it.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: And that becomes say what we call foundation tree to
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: create overhead living cover. And we're also letting sunlight into
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: the ground, which creates early successional growth in the terms
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: of deer cover and and brows. Okay, you know, I
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: think people don't realize how important brows for deer truly is.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: So I'm a big proponent of early successional growth. But
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: to kind of help the listeners understand why, and and
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: this is clearly my opinion Okay, it's my years of
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: watching and cutting and cutting on other people's properties. Well,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: any time I look at a property, I always tell
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: people this is the easiest way to understand it. Imagine
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: you have just built a seventy acre pond. You want
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: to plant walleyes, large mouth baths, northern play in. So
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: now you're gonna put structure in there to fish form it, right,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: And so I literally go about creating structure on these
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: fifty to seventy acre properties. And one of the neatest
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: things that happens when you create a hinge cutting area
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: is you have a spot where you quit hinge cutting,
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: and then you have the existing woods, whether it's a
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: closed canopy woods or medium age woods, and that's an edge.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: And a lot of hunters may not be able to
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: see that edge until you show it to them. Then
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: they go, oh yeah, I can definitely see that. And
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: there's gonna be a change in stem density, a change
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: in in a tree age, and of course a change
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: in the canopy. And that is where probably seventy of
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: the deer movement takes place. So I use the edges,
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, I actually create my own pinch points with
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: hinge cuts. You know, people say, well, I don't want
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: to have any natural funnels, and I don't. We'll cripe
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: you can make one, you know, give me a half
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: an hour with a chainsaw and I'll make you a
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: good one, you know. And uh, it's just, you know,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: it's really cool to manipulate deer movement and have them
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: go where you want them to go. Because anybody has
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: a small property has clearly got a lot of locations
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: they can't easily get into and get out of without
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: bumping deer. So if you can come up with the
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: great location that's easy to get in with screening and
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: easy to get out of, then you can create you know,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: a up a larger hinge cutting area for betting, and
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: then create pinch points and uh what you call neck
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: down funnel areas with low cut trees that they don't
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: bet under. Uh. But I hope that sort of answered
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: the question. Uh. You know, ideally for dear betting, you're
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: the canopy of the hinge cut has to be you know,
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: pretty much chest to head high, because you want dear
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: to be able to walk underneath, move around and lay
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: down and within that hinge cutting where you're gonna have
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: trees going in different directions. You've got to go back
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: in there and cut trails for deer to move from
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: one location of the hinge cut to another. You've done
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: enough of up mark to know that when you start
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: hinge cutting, like it or not, the top of that
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: tree is gonna end up on the ground, right yep.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: And then you're gonna cut two or three other ones,
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: and two or three of those trees are going to
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: cross that tree that you hinged, and so you're definitely
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: going within it hind cut. You're gonna have areas deer
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: cannot move the tree tops are there, but you're also
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: going to have areas where the trees cross each other,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: lay parallel to each other, um are being held up
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: by the structure that you've created so that deer can
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: move around safely underneath. And I think this goes back
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: to what I observed many years ago when I told
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: you the story about the feeder trees. It got been
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: over by the ice. These deer really liked that overhead
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: canopy and that's what really that's when the light bulb
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: went off for me. So we just watched and that
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: deer did this, you know, from a natural situation. So
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: why not just start doing it myself. Makes sense now, Jake,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: There there seems to be two different camps that I've
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: kind of encountered when it comes to, you know, creating
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: or manipulating betting areas. There's some folks that like to
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: just create an area, a general region, and there's some
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: people that like to have a region but then try
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: to create actual individual beds that they think maybe a
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: buck would use based on some criteria. Which do you
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: do you believe in either one of those is better
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: or the other? You know, I've had success with both. Um.
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: I will tell you for myself when I create the
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: what I call the Doll family betting group, and that
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: that's going to be a large area because let's face it,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: dope families are multiple deer in the fall. Okay, you
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: know you're gonna look at anywhere from seven to eleven
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: adult doze and young fonds all betting together because there
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: were really a related family groups. So that's going to
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: take an area, say a quarter two half the three
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: quarter of an acre of a hinge cut to create
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: what I call these bedrooms for dear to bed in.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: But I may not go in there and clear out
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: the individual areas. I'll go in and clear some areas
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: and give them locations, but nothing like I will for
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: isolated buck betting. And I may go to a hundred
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: yards in that doe betting area and find a isolated
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: point or peninsula and build a isolated betting location for
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: one buck so that he can satellite that betting area.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: Because you know the stress that does put on bucks
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: until the time is right, they really don't want a
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: whole lot to do with each other. So I've I've
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: had good luck with both, but I think on a
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: small property, um, I have had probably better luck with
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: the isolated you know, identifying these eight or nine locations
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: I'm making just for buck betting, and then I've got
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: these three or four locations I'm designating just for Doe
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: family betting. And you know, more than likely here in
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: southern Michigan, if you've got forty or more acres, you're
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: gonna have one to maybe three different Doe family groups
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: are not related. And that gets into that stress factor
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: you mentioned a while ago. And that's the beauty of
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: compartmentalization and having smaller food plots is now you can
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: have unrelated dope family groups that compete and everybody see
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: them when they if anybody's watched them in food plots,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: for on say, bait piles, they stand on their iron
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: legs and swat each other. So you can now you
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: can not only you can take the same idea from
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: how they treat each other in a feeding situation and
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: do that in a betting location. You can produce enough
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: isolated betting locations large enough for multiple deer for these
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: these family groups to each have their own spot. Now
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: that doesn't mean they won't rotate from one to the other.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: And you know, because when I mean, there's so many
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: factors involved, I mean, like I said, I I run
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: cameras and I test stuff all the time, and I
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: note everything from barametric pressure to wind direction. So you know,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: you might have a Dolle family group of seven. Uh
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: you know, a total of seven Antler list deer betting
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: in one area today and tomorrow the wind direction is
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: completely opposite, and the temperatures are different. And now they're
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: betting forty yards away facing a different direction entering and exiting.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: I'm a different direction. Uh. So I love to build
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: a hotel Hilton for a hundred guests, and uh, you know,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: a hundred rooms, but I'll let those thirty guests pick
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: the rooms. Okay, it's good analogy. Yeah, no, cremit if
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: I'm wrong, Jake. But for most of the things I've
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: seen and heard from others when you're trying to when
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: you're thinking about dough betting areas versus buckbetting areas, most
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: of the time, when you relate it to a food source,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have the doughs betted or creating your doughebetting
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: group closer to the food source and then typically a
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: buck would be back behind that doe betting group even
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: further back into the cover. Would you say that's accurate?
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: Is that how you typically go about trying to create
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: these You know that that's a pretty accurate standard. Uh, analogy?
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: It is it is marked um other than UM. Time
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: of the year can have a big impact on that. UM.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: If we have really cold weather and deep snow, these
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: doughs are gonna move so close to the food then
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: they're going to literally be right on the edge of it.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: And so part of my holistic plan for every property
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: is winter thermal cover, which is going to be in
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: the form of Norway spruce and white pine or a
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: mixture of both up close to the food, so that
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: you don't really expect those does to be betting in
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: there in mid October, but you would in mid December.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: But what you're getting at is, yes, I like the
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: bucks farther back, and I like the does and a
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: designated you know. So so you stage where these deer
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: are betting, You've got a layer of buck betting areas
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: and a layer of dough betting areas, and then of
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: course you've got the food. Okay, interesting, So I'm curious
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: Dan over there, what are your thoughts on this? This
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: is a little bit different than your situation back home, right, Um,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: I mean I got a lot of questions. But in
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: regards to the different locations of the dough verse buck
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: betting areas, Um, you know, you mentioned a smaller type
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: of betting area for a buck. But is there anything
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: different that you're doing, you know? Or are you still
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: hinge cutting, are you still you know, clearing some areas
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: out or are there two different things that you're doing,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: one for dough and one for buck. Um? In general terms,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: the process is quite identical. But I will tell you
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: that the isolated buck bed is generally gonna be three
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: or four trees hinge cut in a tight isolated area,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to create, uh, I'm going to create
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: an area for one deer to bed. I'm going to
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: cut a number of logs what I call backstops, that
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: are going to be eighteen to two inches in diameter
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: and four ft long, so that I can set some
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: of those logs ay on the north side of where
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: you would bed and then some on the south and
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: the southwest side, so that depending on the prevailing wind,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: he can put his back up against that, you know,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: and look look down wind and then smell what he
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: can't see from behind his back. And then what I
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: will do is I will hinge cut a number of
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: trees around this bedding area low to create what I
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: call fringe cover, so that when he's bedded in there
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: all by himself, uh, he feels like he's not out
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: in the open. Okay, you know it's a small enough
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: you know, you're really talking about doing a ten by
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: ten area, you know, if you're trying to give you know,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: provide a dimension, you know, tend to ten to fifteen
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: feet long tent or you know, three or four trees
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: hinge cut creating a really nice oval of that's fort
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: to five ft long. And and I actually flat I
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: use a shovel, and I flattened him out. I cut
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: every tree, every twig, and I also put about four
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: inches of pine needles in him. And I just like
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: it was my lab laying down. And I've had the
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: best of luck with him. I mean I've I've gotten
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: know and a lot of bucks using them, you know,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: going there, and the investigate and the hairs everywhere, and
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: I've I've found some real nice antlers in these beds
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: in the wintertime. And so so you know, the buck
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: bed is small and by itself, and and and Dan
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: had to help you a little bit. You know, one
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: thing we didn't talk about is topography. If you're in
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: areas of rain change, say forty to fifty ft train
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: change and ravines and things like that, then you you
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: deal with a little bit differently because there's what's called
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: the military crest where you've got a point and then
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: it drops off pretty steep on the end of that point,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: and that buck typically likes to be right out there
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: just before it drops off. And then the larger, more
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: flat region fifty yards backwards on that point where it's
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: more flat, that's where the dose bet So does that
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: kind of explain things for you? Dan? Yeah? Yeah? What
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: what else you got, Danny? Get last questions? I I
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: want to make sure that we're getting this different perspective
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: because I've done a lot of this habitat work and
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of a similar situation to Jake. But I
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: always want to make sure, you know, for people in
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: your situation that might be looking at this from a different,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: different viewpoint. So you know, you're talking about your your
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: property is you know, over sixty five acres? I Mark,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know what your property is. How big is
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: your farm in Michigan that you hunt on? The main
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: farming hunts is cover So dropping it down all the
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: way to like a ten acre piece or uh, you know,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: or a twenty acre piece. Obviously, people who own those
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: type of you know that number, those number of acres
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: have less room to work with. But are you can
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: you relate those property or those principles to a smaller
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: piece just on a smaller scale or is there are
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: there things more things that you have to consider, like
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: neighboring properties, when you know, putting a plan together for
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: your actual piece absolutely, you know, up the neighbors and
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: depending on the neighbor, uh, and what's going on on
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: the neighbor's property. Key to make it, you know, work
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: really well or make it almost impossible. You know, if
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: you happen to have a UH and I say, you know, um,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: a neighbor that's uh. You say, he's got forty five
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: of his buddies there every weekend and they're shooting their pistols.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: Probably not a good place to put betting, you know,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: and believe it. Then I've I've run into these situations
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: in this business. And uh. But ideally, you know, say
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: say maybe you've got a neighbor and he's interested in hunting,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: and he's got four or five tree stands right along
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: your property border, you know, And I think that's a
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: normal Michigan scenario. People run into that. So you have
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: to look at well, you know, how can I how
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: can I developed the property and be strategic and be
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: somewhat competitive? How can I get these bucks older? Maybe
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: that neighbor shoots the first He doesn't care about deer
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: age structures, so he shoots the first year and a
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: half hold that comes across the fence, or a long
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: sense or whatever. So there's things you have to do
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: as far as where you established the betting areas. Uh,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: screening is a great you know, it is a great
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: tool that I use, you know. So, so in the
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: process of hinge cutting, there's a number of different heights
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: that you hinge cut depending on the purpose you want
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: to use them. You know, betting is a high hinge cut.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: Screening is a low hinge cut. You're literally building. You
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: imagine building a fence with trees that are laying sideways,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: and of course deer won't bed underneath trees if there's
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: no not sufficient room for them to bed. So you
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: can create great screening, get sunlight in there and get
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: early successional growth, and maybe create a wall and then
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: forty yards from that wall deeper into your property than
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: you build a betting area, so that then a lot
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: of the deer movement is far their away from the
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: neighbor's property. But every property depending on topography. Uh, you know,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: the all important water. I can't say that enough how
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: important water on the property is. And the natural water
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: is great, but if you don't have it. I've seen
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: some creative guys that I've worked with that have done
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: everything from the small plastic tubs to thinking a well
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: and you know, investing some money in creating a natural
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: pond and that type of thing. But but water is
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: definitely important for deer. They've got to have it, and
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: it creates edges and monocultures that you're just not going
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: to get without it. But any small property can be
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: tuned in, you know, to literally know where the deer
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: are betting and know where they're feeding. And then it's
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: up today landowner to be disciplined enough to not hunt
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: when it's the wrong time of the year and enter
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: an exit at the right time. And of course you've
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: sent control all right now, Before we move on to
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: the next question, we do need to take a very
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: quick break for word from our sponsors of this episode,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: the White Tail Institute of North America, and today we've
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: got a few quick tips from White Tail Institute employee
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: John Cooner in regards to perennial food plot. So, first, John,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: what's the difference between perennials and annuals. Okay, Perennials are
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: basically plants that are products. They're designed to last for
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: more than one calendar year from a single planning uh.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: The annuals are plants that are designed will last for
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: for part part of one calendar year from stay for instance,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: from spring through summer, or from you know, during hunting
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: season or through winter fall to spring, that sort of thing.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: So then how do you choose the right perennial option
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: for your own plot? Right? There are so many options
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: out there to choose from, it can really bottle the mind.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: Of course, you know, you can talk to your friends.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: They'll tell you what works well for them in your area. Uh.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: You go to a farm supply store, they will be
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: able to tell you different kind of seeds. Uh, they
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: are appropriate for a certain planning time, like cool season
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: or warm season. Our products run a run a very
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: broad gamut. Uh, it's very easy to select the right
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: product with ours. We've got a little product selector on
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: our website, and we design our products uh other almost
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: entirely blends because it's rare to find, if ever, you
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: find one plant variety that does everything you wanted to
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: in terms of attraction, nutrition, longevity, fast growth. So we
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: use compatible forages of different types and then test them
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: individually and together to see which one's which one's give
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: us the best over broad performance. You know, we get
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: calls sometimes people say, you know, what's your best product? Uh?
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: And my answer is always what's the sight like? Is
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: it a good soil or is it a light so one?
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: Is it something you can get into with equipment or not?
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: Is it slope? Is it not slope? Do you want
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: a perennial, do you want an annual? You have to
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: run through those factors uh to get to get a
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: really good answer. And that's what that product selector does does.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: It's a little program I wrote, and I remember when
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: I did it. I was thinking, you know, I could
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: look at the food plot and I know in half
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: a second when I'm gonna put in there. I thought, well,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: how do I know that? I realized what I'm doing
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: is taking all of our products and putting them into
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: a mental bucket, excuse me, and then running through a
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: series of short questions about three or four in a
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: certain order and calling things out as I go. And
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: when I get to the end, I have water, maybe
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: steven several forges their ideal for that will produce optimum
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: performance in that specific situation that's soil type and slow
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: equipment access, time of the year and all that. If
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: you'd like to learn more about white Tail Institute perennial
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: food plot options or to check out that product selecting tool,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: you can visit white Tail Institute dot com. And now
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: let's get back to this show. So we've talked about
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: we've talked about, you know, two corners of this triangle
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: you brought from beginning the betting the water just a
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: little bit here. What about some of the food tactics
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: that you use on these small properties, whether it be
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: your own or your clients. Do you have any advice
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: for small property owners when it comes to trying to
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: establish a food source or improve food sources or anything
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: like that. Um, you know, Uh, it's kind of a
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: big subject about trying come go through it pretty quick.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: I guess, if if I had my choice, I always
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: tell the property owner to focus on cover because if
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: you focus on your cover, you're gonna produce way more
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: food than the landowner realizes at the time. You know,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: Woody Browse uh pretty much. Uh, you know, is responsible
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: for about of a deer's daily diet. So if you're
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: good with creating early successional growth, you're producing a food plot.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: You just don't know it, okay, Um, Depending on the
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: soil conditions, you know, you can have the greatest food
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: plots in the world when you have uh, you know,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: good loamy soil with with great nutrients in it. And
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: then I also see by that it's yellow blow sand,
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: you know, and and uh, you know, they can't get
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: they can't get a weed to grow in it, you know.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: And when it does rain, it's you know, the moisture
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: is gone and just a day or two. So it's
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of work to grow good food. So you know,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: so the soil has so much to do with your
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: success when it comes to growing a food plot. So um,
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: I like to have a destination food plot with you
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: know again and attractive food source and that could be
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: you know, anything from turn ups. Nebraska's a mixture of
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: boat and I also want multiple small micro food plots
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: that go from that destination food plot back towards the
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: bedding area. And it's some wearing between those micro plots
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: and the destination food plot where you're hunting. Setups are
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: going to be to take advantage of that deer movement
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: from betting where they stage and go from one small
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: plot to the next and eventually they hit the destination
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: food plot just before dark by minutes before dark. That's
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: the idea. That doesn't always work that way, but generally
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: that's how it works. Yeah, what are your thoughts on
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: positioning of these food plots on a small property? You know,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: my my intuition, and what I've seen a lot of
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: times is people talk about, you know, trying to have
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: these food plots away from the edges, more towards the
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: center portion of your property. But then are you're more
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: at risk of your neighbors blown out betting areas if
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: you're betting areas are on the outsides. You know, if
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: you could pick the perfect scenario, or if you could
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: create this perfect scenario, how would you like to position
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: these things? Well, I'll tell you what. You know, you
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: go back twenty thirty years ago, the few people that
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: were talking about managing properties then always talked about putting
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: the sanctuary in the center of the property and the
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: food along the out side. So imagine that you've got
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: deer in the center of your property now heading in
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: a direction to leave your property right at dark. And
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: I would just as soon, especially with small properties, put
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: all the bedding along the outside edges of the property
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: and put the micro food plots around, say the interior
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: one half of the property, and then the center of
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: the property is where the destination food plot is. So
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: then the deer are staged bedding along the outside perimeters
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: of your property, moving towards the center of your property
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: right at dark. And that way they're not moving across
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: your your fence, going over to your neighbors. And if
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: you know, if you're trying to say maybe get that
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: two and a half year old for a three and
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: a half class, or to get that three and a
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: half year old to four and a half, because that's
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: your goals, you'll have better luck doing that. And that's
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: a lot of my property is set up that way.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: I actually had of a a property border where I've
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: had a few years of problems people hunting on the
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: line hunting. I caught them hunting in my stands, and
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: it's it's it's the farthest edge for me to reach
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: the property, so it's hard for me to get there.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: I don't hunt all that often, but it's a good location.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: And ultimately what I did was I took that entire
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: property border and hinge cut it and turned it into
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: bedding and thick cover. It's the best thing I ever
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: did interesting. So, speaking of those types of issues, you
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: talked about the challenge of getting a buck from two
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: to three or one to three or four and then
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: dealing with, you know, neighbors that might have different goals
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: or whatever it is when it comes to small properties.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: Have you do you have any advice for those people
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: that are trying to get those older age class bucks
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: other than some of the habitats. Have you found there's
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: any relationship things or other ways to go about, you know,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: better being able to implement the age of quality of
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: your management. Well, I mean, there's no doubt that one
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: of the best things you can do is talk to
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: your neighbors and and try to establish just a friendly
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: rapport with Hey, this is what I'm doing, and I'm
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: I'd really like to hunt older age class dear and
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: see where they stand. Okay, And as you know, Mark,
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: and you probably know a lot about these two dan
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: uh Deer Management co ops are really popular here in
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: Michigan for that reason, and we have one established in
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: this area. But I can tell you, as great as
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: this property is that I own right here, I do
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: not have one property owner that borders me that practices
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: or participates in this deer management co Op. So the
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: most impressive thing about my property is at sixty seven
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: acres and I'm consistently growing deer four and a half
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: and five and a half years old and sixty seven acres.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: And this is my takeaway from it. Um, I've been
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: doing this long enough that these young button bucks that
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: are born here or that say they're a year and
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: a half old and they dispersed to this property. However
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: they end up here, they find out in a really
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: short amount of time that it's really dangerous outside of
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: my property borders and really a great place to live inside.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: And some of my target bucks I get the biggest
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: kick out of because I strategically put uh my game
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: cameras to watch these bucks movement patterns before I go
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: in and hunt stands at that you know, magic ten
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: days out of the year, and I will notice these
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: bucks will spend all day on the property, leave the
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: property after dark, and come back onto the property before daylight.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: And so what you're doing is is you can't save
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: them all. Some are gonna cross and they're gonna get
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: shot by the neighbors. That's that's the reality of hunting
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: in southern Michigan. But you know what, a few of
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: them are gonna make it. And those are the ones
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: I call them homeboys, And those are the ones you
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: can you can personally watch at game camera data on
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: and take the risk and say, you know what, I've never,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: I've never. You know, you can't kill a one fifty
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: if you kill a one forties, right. Yeah. So actually,
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: last the last muzzleoading season, I did that with a
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: buck here that I actually targeted and had been watching
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: him from the house and went out with my muzzleloader,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: and you know, my wife had been watching him with
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: an ox man. You want to go kill him? He's
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: he's a really nice eight point. I'm definitely in the
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: mid one thirties. He might have been low one. And anyways,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: he came out just like he was supposed to, walk
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: right in front of me, and I didn't kill him
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: because I looked at him. And you know what, muzzle
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: oder season is going to be over in a couple
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: of days, and imagine why he'd be next year if
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: he makes it. And sure he made it, that's tough
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: to do in Michigan right there. You know, I guess
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: the one thing I'd add to this mark is and
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: you've probably heard this, but it is true. We all
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: need to have realistic expectations. If you've got a forty
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: or nine are property and you've got a bunch of
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: neighbors that, for whatever reason just do not want to cooperate,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: and the best years getting on game camera and visual
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: observation is a hundred and fifteen inch two and a
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: half year old, then that probably should be your goals
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: for deer harvest. And if you're lucky enough though to
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: be able to get the occasional three and a half
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: and that's what I try to do. I try to
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: hunt the top five percent of the deer herd, you know,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: whatever I've got that showed up on camera, and I
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: get a good a good inventory of them, then I go, okay,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: these these two, these three deer, these are on my hitlist.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: Nothing else is on the hit list. I'm letting everything
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: else go. And if the neighbors kill them, and hey
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: it does. I I see deer that I get pictures of,
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: and I've got you know, I've got a family that
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: lives right next to me, and they do not participate
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: in passing young bucks. So I see some really nice
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: young bucks that I get pictures of and then they
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: call me and tell me they got a six point hanging.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: Then I go over and go, oh, yeah, I know that, dear.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: You know, but it's there, you know, in the grand
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: scheme of things. It's just one or two, dear. And
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: I think that's probably another good piece of advice. I
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: think people overthink it and get too worried about it. Um,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: you know what you're if you do things right and
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: you you focus on what you can control, not what
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: you can't control, and I think you know, you're going
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: to be just a lot more successful and just really
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: have a lot more time and enjoy what you're doing
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, it's great advice for for all of us,
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: whether we're in situations like this, you know, with so
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: many of their hunters right around us, or or anywhere,
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: you know, having having the right expectations and having fun
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: with it. That's that's an important takeaway from every conversation
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: about dear Hunter. Now, I thank you. I've got another
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: question for you, uh, kind of related to my situation
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: in Michigan at least, the way I go about hunting
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: in Michigan is that I am very very particular about
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: when I hunt and how often I hunt UM. Even
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: on a ninety acre property, you know, like I mentioned,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: half of it essentially isn't huntable because it's just why
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: I don't crop field UM. So I basically have forty
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: five acres to work with, and I have very, very
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: rarely hunted just when there's the right conditions because I'm
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: really concerned about pressuring those deer, and if I if
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: I make one mistake with the one buck on the
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: property that I'm interested in killing, I'm probably gonna blow it.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: So for me, I spend maybe you know, my season
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: in Michigan kind of looks like I'll hunt the first
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: night or two if the conditions are right, and then
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: I might not hunt it again until the rut. Towards
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: the beginning of the rut face um, because at least
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: in my section, that's when I end up possibly having
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: a chance of seeing some daylight movement from some of
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: these deer. Maybe it's different, you know in the property
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: that you're able to do as much work as you've done.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: But I'm just curious when it comes to hunting these
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: smaller properties in heavily pressured areas. What are your thoughts
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: on the timing of when you hunt them or anything
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: related to that, you know, Mark, I I tell people
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: I want to be the invisible hunter. My goal is
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: to extremely low pressure. Exactly what you said. And then, uh,
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if you know much about
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: my scent control or regiment. But some people think I'm
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: absolutely crazy, but I do everything I can to eliminate
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: human odor. And of course you can't. But um, I
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: only hunt at the right time of the year. And again,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: conditions have to be right. And uh, I'm lucky enough
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: to live here, and we built the house so that
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: we can have great viewing, and so I do a
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: lot of scouting from my kitchen windows. You know, I
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: watched the food plots and I've got you know, uh,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: twelve acres of warm season grasses, and I can see
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: uh the food plot, my destination food plots right here
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: from the house. And I can go upstairs with my
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: spotting scope, and you know, I can see uh two
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: d and fifty yards away and watch Bucks from does
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: and and uh. But yes, I'm I think the best
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: takeaway that a small property owner can take from from
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: my advice is the worst thing you can do is overhunted,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: because exactly what you said in explaining your situation will happen,
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: You'll tip off that mature buck and you know they
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: will get so frustrated because they keep getting nighttime pictures
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: of him but they've never seen you know, and you've
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: probably been down that road, right and uh, you know
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: when it really is that the result of their uh,
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: their pressure on him. And as you know, these Michigan deer,
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: they're they're they're really uh, you know, they are amazing
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: survivors considering what they go through here. And so yeah,
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: I only go in under the right conditions. And you know,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: probably like yourself, because I know last year you had
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: early seasons success in that dealt with cold front, and
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: you know, and so I'm, uh, normally I'm a lot
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: like you. I will hunt the first couple of days,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: and typically that is for me to take out one
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: or two large doughs. If I've got enough deer based
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: on my surveys to tell me I need to take
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: a couple of big, mature doughs out. That's pretty much
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: my goal I'm hunting, you know, really not exactly a
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: buck killing stand. I'm trying to kill a couple of
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: big doughs. But you know, you never know, if you know,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: you might get a hundred and thirty inches year from
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: walking out that that same exact trail at that time
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: of the year. And usually then I back off. I
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: just you know, I like to hunt grouse in Woodcock
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: in northern Michigan, and I'll do I'll do a little
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: of that. I'm always busy working on you know, uh,
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: hunters layouts and designs and habitat plans for this business.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: So I keep busy doing that, and I just run
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: my trail cameras, and usually two or three days before Halloween,
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: depending on the temperature and the conditions, I get a
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: little more interested about trying to hunt these mature bucks.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: And last year, the best, the best morning hunt I
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: had with Halloween morning and and you know, uh fantastic
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: morning target buck came came from the betting area just
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: like he was supposed to, following a dough. I mean
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: it was just it was textbook, you know, less than
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: ten yards. I mean, you know, everything was perfect right
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: until the moment I took the shot. You know, that's
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: another story that happens. Well it does. You know, That's
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: the great thing of bow hunting is you know, uh,
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: if it's going to go wrong. It'll go wrong. Then
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: nothing is guaranteed. Now, if I remember right Halloween in Michigan,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: because I at that point I think I had, I
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: was in Iowa, but a big cold front was hitting
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: right around the thirty thirty first in Michigan. So it
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: is probably what happened for you. Yes, yep, And that's
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: I really am a guy that keys in on cold
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: front and I love the northwest wind. Uh. Probably sevent
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: of my hunting stands set ups are strictly for northwest
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: wind conditions. Um, every good buck I ever killed with
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: a bow evening or morning was killed pretty much in
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: a northwest wind cold front. And not that I have.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: And I've killed some of the typical west and southwest
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: wind you know, the what you call the fair weather deer,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: but most of them are always moving under that cold
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: front condition. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of the same thing,
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: that's for sure. Oh and you know, I have a
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: couple of funnels that i've well, number one there there's
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: somewhat natural that I've enhanced them, and I've got the
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: betting areas there and one is really difficult for me
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: to get to. But I have one that when the
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: conditions are right, and it's the first week in November.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: I can't sleep that night. I can't wait to get
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: in there. And I mean it never ever lets me down.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: I mean I've never gone in there and not had
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: you know, exactly what I expected to have happened. It
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: doesn't always mean you kill the deer, okay, but boy,
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: it sure his neat to have one or two of
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: those those go to and it clearly is a result
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: of the habitat the food and the fact that I
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: don't go in there. You know, if you were in
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: there six or seven times during October during what people
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: call the October Law, those bucks would be, you know,
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: all about you. They'd have heard you, smell you. Uh.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: And so now that the time is right, you go
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: in there and you don't see it because he's onto you.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: So well, I think they pattern us much better than
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: we're able to pattern them. Oh yeah, that's for sure.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: I think me and Dan have experienced that many times.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately every season, yeah, every year. Yeah, yeah. So you
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: know it's funny something you mentioned there is one of
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: my absolute favorite things about a hunting season, and it's
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: that day before or the night before when you just
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: have those perfect conditions, and you have a spot that
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: you've been waiting for, and everything feels like it's lining up,
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: like that level of anticipation that I get the night before,
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: or like on the drive to my property or whatever,
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: and you just have that feeling in your gut like
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: something good is going to happen. I lived for that.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: That is the best, you know. I mean, I guess
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: that's what keeps us out in the woods every day
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: and gets you getting up at four thirty in the morning,
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: isn't it? Yes? Exactly? Because it can be tough sometimes
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: I can't can You know? It's a lot of It's
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of work, okay, you know, especially someone like you.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: You're hunting multiple states. I know you hunt Ohio and
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: last year you hunted Iowa, So you're really putting in
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: your time. And you know, back in the old days
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: when I was still a pretty successful deer hunter, I
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: killed a lot of deer with a bow and a
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: lot of small bucks before I understood the age class
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: and all that kind of thing. So I would hunt.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: I had two different I had this property and then
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: I had permission to hunt another property in Hillsdale County,
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: and I was one of those guys, I hunted every
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: available day I had, okay, and that becomes a lot
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: of work. Uh So, yeah, I can only imagine, you know,
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: for the people that are in the business that you know,
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: they're just in the filming and they you know, they
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: hunt forty five sixty days in a season. That's a
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: long cold season. Yeah, Kenvy, that's for sure. And kind
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: to that point, you know, as we're talking about, you know,
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: this idea of of not hunting your small property a
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: whole lot, being really careful about that. You know, we
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: talked about I've talked about this sometimes in the past,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: and then you get people who hear that and they say, well,
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: I want to hunt. You know, I love to dear
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: him because I want to be out there. So this
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: sounds like a stupid idea if I can never hunt
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: my property, and I totally I totally get that and
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: and the way I kind of combat that, at least
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: in my situation. And you know, it depends on your goals, right,
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: If you just want to be out hunting a lot,
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: that's perfectly fine, and you know that's great, But if
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: you are trying to kill a big or mature deer
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: on a small property in a place like Michigan or wherever.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: You know, you have to go about a little differently.
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: So for me, what that means is that you know,
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: I've got If I know there's a buck that I'm after,
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: a mature buck, let's say on this main Michigan property
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: or one of the other ones. You know, I go
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: into like mature buck hunting mode for that property. So
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: that means this, you know, very careful timing, very few hunts,
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: just when it's right. But that doesn't mean I'm not
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: hunting on the other weekends or the other days that
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: I can hunt. You know, I'll still go hunt somewhere
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: I just have, you know, maybe it'll be a public place,
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: or maybe it'll be one of the other properties that
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: permission on where I can just go out there and
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: hunt and have a good time. But I'm not necessarily
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: so concerned about you know, me actually seeing a mature
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: buck or spooking mature buck. Yeah, it's great, I'm out there,
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: so I might have a chance, but it's in an
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: area where I'm not as concerned about possibly blowing it
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: on the deer I'm really after. So you know, if
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: you can go out there and get a couple of
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: additional properties by asking for permission or finding piece of
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: public land that you can still go hunt and have
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: fun on um, but then be particularly careful in the
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: smaller areas. Maybe that you are trying to be careful
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: with that maturity here. That's one way to still get
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: to hunt but also have a chance of those kind
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: of deer. Right yep. And I would say one of
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: the things I have done on this property, and actually
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: three or four of my clients in the last four
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: or five years with similar sized properties have done it.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: I've established stands that I'm going to call them low
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: productive stands, but good visual stands. So you're just dying
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: to get out there and see what the deer are doing,
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: but you don't want to even think about entering your
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: good zones. I've got places that I can hunt that
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: are literally seventy hundred yards from my house. Uh, you know,
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: probably not going to run into Mr Big, but you
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: never know. But hey, you can go out there and
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: hunt any evening, you know, and still see what the
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: deer are doing and use your you know, got your
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: binoculars and glass and see where they're coming in and
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: out of the bedding areas. And what time you're moving
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: in because they let's safe that that's what you know,
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: we do all this work all year long just for
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: that short window of time. And so if if you're
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: not lucky enough to have that state land or from
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: private land that somebody else lets you, uh, you know,
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: gives you permission to hunt on, you can establish some
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: other you know what you call what I call them
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: low productive, more observation type stand but you're still out
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: there hunting, and then that's that's good. Yeah, that's a
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: great point. It's a great idea. Then, any any of
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: the questions from you before we wrap things up here.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: I have one question, and I don't believe we quite
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: touched on it. You know, a lot of creating it's
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: going back to creating betting areas, but based off of
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: how the property lays will determine where these um deer
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: are betting on certain winds. So, for example, on a
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: piece of property that I hunt UM, the south side
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: of the property is all high ground and then it
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: all drops off on UM as it works its way
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: north down to a creek, and all these little fingers
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: and um spurs come off of this huge valley and
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: it's like they're pointing north, so the deer like to
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: bed there on a south wind. Now the deer on
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: a north wind aren't really betting there because based off
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: of the terrain, it's it's not beneficial for them to too.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: You know, they don't have the wind advantage if they're
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: betting down at the end of those points. So are
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: you are you making betting areas on your property for
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: every wind direction? Um? You know, like you're The topography
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: situation you talked about makes it extremely difficult. Probably the
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: only place you could build betting is on the south side,
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: the highest the highest point of the property. You know, say,
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: if you wanted betting for north wind and I don't
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: know if you if you enter that property from the
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: south side, uh, but you know, it limits your ability
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: for access. So if it's not so, if it doesn't
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: have a lot of topography change, then you can really
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: get creative and build multiple betting locations for different wind directions.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: But topography in either give you a lot of options
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: or take those options away, depending how it lays. So
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: every property is different. And that makes sense, you know,
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: because right topography is such an influencer of betting that
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: if I understand that correctly, JA, because I'm hearing you
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: say this. In an area with that type of topography,
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: that's going to preempt almost anything else when it comes
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: to where a deer will bed, because that's such a
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: highly desirable factor one of deer's deciding word bed versus.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: Let's say you've got a flat piece of ground, then
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: the highly desirable features for betting can be anything you
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: want them to be if you're creating that cover. And
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: so there isn't that there isn't that additional natural influencer
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: that would impact it one way or the other. Yeah,
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: you can literally just you know, uh, start with a
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: blank slate and say, you know, we're gonna put you know,
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: X number of buck bets here and so many dol
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: beds here. Then we're gonna go to the southwest corner
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: and we're gonna put buck the bets here and do
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: beds here, and we're gonna put destination food. And because
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: it's flat ground, they're just in a bed on say
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: the north side of the bedding area one day and
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: on the south side of the betting area another day,
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: just based on wind, but still bed in the same
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: basic betting structure. For a half acre hinge cut. Yeah,
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: that's some pretty interesting stuff to me. I love when
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: you start looking at all the tiny variables, like, you know,
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: how will win direction impact where they're betting? And if
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: I can take that and faret where I think they're betting,
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: then where do I think they're going to want to feed?
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: And based on that where I think there, how will
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: they travel from A to B? And I get that
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: kick out of trying to micro analyze it. Probably it's
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: a fault. I probably take it too far and it
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: screws me up more than it helps. It's maybe one
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: piece of information I can put into this. And I
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: think this this is more about pressured deer than non
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: pressured deer. But many of my betting areas and food
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: plot locations, as far as what I would call deer
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: pattern movements where you would expect dear to move, are
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: based on deer betting in a being in a particular
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: to a betting area. And as they start moving towards
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: the food, they're gonna want the wind somewhat in their face.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: That doesn't mean they go directly into the wind, okay,
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: but it often means they're gonna quarter into the wind
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: they want, you know, they're in a betting area, and
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: so they want to be able to detect danger, whether
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: that's a coyote man, you know, a neighbor's dog. For
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: a lot of my setups that I do on my
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: own property and I design on client properties are focused
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: on you know, that northwest wind cold front, and here's
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: you know, here's the betting location, here's the food plot.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: So this is where your stand is going to be set.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: And then what you call a fair weather, your west
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: southwest wind, and so we're gonna have a betting area
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: over here, in a food plot over here, And so
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: you would completely change the location of hunting maybe two
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: days in a row if the wind changes from the
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: northwest cold and then it goes back to you know,
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: your fair weather conditions. Yeah. Interesting, interesting to go into
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: each of those different behavioral tendencies based on factory. So
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: many facets of this we could go on forever. We
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: could turn this into a d podcast. There's always the
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: risk of that, that's for sure. So I guess what
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to do. Jake is trying to wrangle
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: you around for coffee sometimes, so I can continue to
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: pick your brain about this stuff without the risk of
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: a hundred hour podcasts. There you go. I would encourage
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: you to when you do get back to Michigan and
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: before it's hunting season, reach out to me and I'll
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: give you a tour that would be awesome. And speaking
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: speaking of that, you know what you're doing with your
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: own property and elsewhere. For those that do want to
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: learn more from you um or get a hold of
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: you about you know what you're doing from from work standpoint,
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: whether it be real estate or habitat consultations, how can
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: they find how can they find you online? How can
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: they get ahold of you? My habitat business is Habitat
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: Solutions three six dot com and I've got some free
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: videos there and a lot of information on that website,
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: and that would be everything from habitat management to improving
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: and developing a property. And from a real estate listing
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: or selling standpoint, you'd want to reach me at, you
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: can go to the white Tail Properties dot com website
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: and go to Michigan agent finder and you'll be able
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: to find me right there and my email and my
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: contact information is right there available for just one click away. Awesome. Well,
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: we'll make sure to include those links too in the
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: blog post for this podcast if anyone's interested. So, Jake,
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us. I I definitely
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: got to kick out of this and I think a
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: lot of our listeners did too well. Thank you, Mark
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: is an honor to speak with you guys. Absolutely well,
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: let's stay in touch, Jake, and good luck this season
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: and you too, thanks so much. All right, ye see
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: you byye And with that we are going to wrap
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: up this episode number one and eleven. Before we go, though,
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: we do need to thank our partners to help make
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: this podcast possible, and we need to thank you all
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: for you know, taking listen to these occasional advertisements and
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: supporting these companies that have been so helpful for us
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: to make this podcast reality so big. Thanks to Sick Gear, Trophy, Ridge,
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: Bear Archery, Redneck Blinds, Hunt, Arra, Maps, Osonics, Carbon Express,
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: Maven Optics, and the White Tailed Institute of North America.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: And finally, most importantly, thank you all for spending some
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: time with us here today for listening to this episode.
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: Hopefully you found Jake's advice interesting and helpful, and of
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: course we hope until next time you'll stay wired to
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: Hunt