Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 950: Back 40 - What Can You Do to Make the Next 25 Years of Deer Hunting Better?

Transcript

Ep. 950: Back 40 - What Can You Do to Make the Next 25 Years of Deer Hunting Better? · Wired To Hunt Podcast

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Speaker 1: There's so much that one person can do. People discredit
0:03
Speaker 1: themselves and they minimize the value they have so much.
0:07
Speaker 1: One person can really change the course of things if
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Speaker 1: they're ambitious enough, if that's their calling.
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Speaker 2: If you will, welcome to Back forty.
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Speaker 3: I'm J Koefer, and this week we are diving into
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Speaker 3: a larger question about what can one single person do
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Speaker 3: to make the next twenty five years of hunting better
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Speaker 3: than the last. If you're listening to this, obviously you
0:27
Speaker 3: want the world of white tal hunting to improve. And
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Speaker 3: so I asked all of the folks we've been talking
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Speaker 3: to for the last eight weeks this specific question, and
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Speaker 3: I'm hoping it sparks some inspiration and you'll pick up
0:39
Speaker 3: a couple of things that will allow you to maybe
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Speaker 3: be a positive influence on the grander picture of white
0:45
Speaker 3: tail hunting, something that we're all passionate about. If you're
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Speaker 3: listening to this podcast, as you know, Back forty is
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Speaker 3: brought to you by land dot com, the leading online
0:52
Speaker 3: real estate marketplace to find your perfect rural, recreational, agricultural,
0:56
Speaker 3: or hunting properties here in the US. Let's go ahead
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Speaker 3: and kick things off with Skip Sly on his perspective.
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Speaker 3: Skip has been one guy that has been very instrumental
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Speaker 3: of protecting Iowa, making it while remain one of the
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Speaker 3: best dates from just the simple back of keeping strong
1:12
Speaker 3: legislation for residents. And I think that if Skip can
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Speaker 3: do it, and I know he would say this too,
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Speaker 3: you can do it. And here's what he has to say.
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Speaker 3: What can one hunter do to make the next twenty
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Speaker 3: five years of hunting better than the last? So not
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Speaker 3: collectively just one guy?
1:32
Speaker 1: Oh uh, there's so much that one person can do,
1:39
Speaker 1: and there's so people discredit themselves and they minimize the
1:45
Speaker 1: value they have so much that one person can really
1:49
Speaker 1: change the course of things if they're ambitious enough, if
1:53
Speaker 1: that's their calling, if you will, you know, I think
1:57
Speaker 1: there's a few dynamics. Even at a basic level. Somebody's like, well, dude,
2:00
Speaker 1: I'm not like crazy ambitious or I'm just the regular dude.
2:04
Speaker 1: But that's all that. We're all just regular dudes. It's
2:06
Speaker 1: just like, where do you want to fit into this? Well,
2:09
Speaker 1: you know, let's just say that the milder ambitious type
2:13
Speaker 1: that are guys that are like I just kind of
2:16
Speaker 1: coast through life, which is fine. I'm not making a
2:18
Speaker 1: job at all, but I just kind of you know,
2:20
Speaker 1: I don't want to go to extremes. Well, a minor
2:24
Speaker 1: impact would be like not cliche again, but like take
2:28
Speaker 1: kids out, get some kids involved. We need more kids hunting,
2:32
Speaker 1: We need more kids taking the sport up.
2:35
Speaker 2: And it sounds.
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Speaker 1: Cliche to say that, but it's actually true. Well, I
2:37
Speaker 1: don't want I wish there was less hunters. You don't
2:40
Speaker 1: wish there was more less kids that had opportunity at
2:42
Speaker 1: this Maybe you wish that there were less middle aged
2:46
Speaker 1: knucklehead hunters that were just there to take that ruin
2:50
Speaker 1: the resource that we're just idiots or disrespectful or that
2:54
Speaker 1: kind of sour you on the sport because they are
2:57
Speaker 1: idiots and there's you know, bad apples in every group.
3:00
Speaker 1: But you don't want genuine kids with a passion for
3:03
Speaker 1: the outdoors not to hunt. So at a basic level,
3:06
Speaker 1: you can change that. You can impact, Like one person
3:09
Speaker 1: could take you know, twenty kids out through the next
3:13
Speaker 1: decade and make an impact on twenty kids' lives, which
3:16
Speaker 1: they'll impact other people later. So there's one dynamic that
3:20
Speaker 1: can change hunting. You know, getting involved in the regulations
3:24
Speaker 1: could be as simple as who's doing anything for regulations
3:29
Speaker 1: in my state, and you find out who that is,
3:32
Speaker 1: how can I help? And I email into my legislator
3:35
Speaker 1: because that makes a huge difference. I can actually speak
3:39
Speaker 1: in public that I I'll go to a subcommittee meeting
3:43
Speaker 1: at the capital of my state. I will show up.
3:46
Speaker 1: And then you might be the case where you're like,
3:49
Speaker 1: who's the group that does this for my state? Oh,
3:52
Speaker 1: there isn't one. Well, you could be that person that
3:55
Speaker 1: forms that. And the way you're going to form that
3:58
Speaker 1: is be like, yeah, I do have six friends with
4:02
Speaker 1: a common goal, and maybe one of them is that
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Speaker 1: super ambitious type and he'll kind of run with it
4:08
Speaker 1: and he knows how to start a business, or he
4:11
Speaker 1: knows how to you know, manage things and growth things,
4:14
Speaker 1: or run an organization or get how to get a
4:18
Speaker 1: group of people together that can get along with a
4:20
Speaker 1: common goal and just support them or be involved.
4:23
Speaker 2: So so you could be the guy.
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Speaker 1: That's just emailing your legislators and I'll take the time
4:28
Speaker 1: to email all of them on these issues that come up,
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Speaker 1: keep up with the bills I've always been.
4:33
Speaker 2: I'll chime into Iowa like I'll pay attention.
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Speaker 3: I'll send the emails out and I'm always shocked by
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Speaker 3: the amount of replies I actually get and like you
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Speaker 3: whoa you actually an assistant or whoever, someone actually read
4:45
Speaker 3: my email because it wasn't just received.
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Speaker 2: Thank you. Yes, that's always shocked me. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: So so think about if anybody wanted to educate themselves
4:53
Speaker 1: a little bit, think about what Iowa was doing to
4:57
Speaker 1: defend against the special ene that want to exploit our resource,
5:01
Speaker 1: they want to ruin it, that want to just kill
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Speaker 1: all the deer. We have groups and a growing army
5:10
Speaker 1: of hunters who are like, no, this is wrong. You
5:12
Speaker 1: aren't going to destroy or say you're not going to
5:15
Speaker 1: exploit it for your little special interest or exploit it
5:18
Speaker 1: or short term benefit so you can make a little money.
5:22
Speaker 1: Not happening in our state. You want to do that
5:24
Speaker 1: stuff in Illinois. That's that's how it's done there. It's
5:27
Speaker 1: not happening in Iowa. So we're run by common sense
5:31
Speaker 1: in Iowa. And if somebody says, well, I want to
5:33
Speaker 1: take this to the most extreme ambitious level, run your
5:37
Speaker 1: state like Iowa. Get it, get an organization in place,
5:40
Speaker 1: you know, and it can't be one guy that but
5:43
Speaker 1: you might be that one guy that forms the organization,
5:46
Speaker 1: but that organization will start out with like, hey, you know,
5:50
Speaker 1: I got twelve guys on board. One of them's good
5:53
Speaker 1: talking to people, one of them's good with accounting, one
5:55
Speaker 1: of them is a lawyer, one of them runs a business.
5:57
Speaker 1: They all have these different skills and like and I
6:00
Speaker 1: would be like that. Like I I try and take
6:03
Speaker 1: on everything myself with whether it's the farm, and I
6:06
Speaker 1: realize I can't.
6:06
Speaker 2: There's certain things I'm not good at.
6:08
Speaker 1: Know what you're not good at, And I have things
6:10
Speaker 1: that I'm not good at, well, I know, like within
6:13
Speaker 1: an organization, Like I know, I have kind of an
6:18
Speaker 1: intense personality and I I you know, I might have
6:23
Speaker 1: to even dial that back at times when I get
6:25
Speaker 1: really fired up. But I want somebody a part of
6:28
Speaker 1: the organization who's kind of like chill and like the
6:31
Speaker 1: guy that can be like the calm rational and not
6:35
Speaker 1: that I'm irrational, but you know, just different personalities. I
6:37
Speaker 1: think diversity of personality is huge. And just realize with
6:41
Speaker 1: any organization that people start, if it falls on one
6:46
Speaker 1: guy's shoulders, it will not succeed because something could happen
6:49
Speaker 1: to that one guy. You know, it could be anything
6:52
Speaker 1: from that guy dies to he gets burnt out to, hey, dude,
6:56
Speaker 1: I just had you know, my wife just had triplets,
6:58
Speaker 1: and now i'm you know, I'm trying baseball or something,
7:01
Speaker 1: and I'm just so busy. Life happens and people get busy.
7:04
Speaker 1: So it has to be like at least twelve guys
7:08
Speaker 1: that form this organization, and you know there and maybe
7:12
Speaker 1: three of them like go mia for six months, and
7:15
Speaker 1: you bring them back in and you constantly grow it.
7:17
Speaker 1: So you're like, now there's not twelve, Now there's fifty,
7:21
Speaker 1: and at least somebody's contributing at some level, and just
7:24
Speaker 1: create an organization that can just mimic or rival all
7:31
Speaker 1: the organizations that most people don't even understand exist in
7:34
Speaker 1: your state to do everything against your resource, everything against
7:38
Speaker 1: your regulations. I mean there is in your state. I
7:41
Speaker 1: don't care who's lessening wherever they are. There is organizations,
7:44
Speaker 1: lobbying groups, special interests, companies, manufacturers that have systems in
7:50
Speaker 1: place to exploit your resource, to ruin it, to screw
7:54
Speaker 1: up the regulations, or just to make just dumb choices
7:57
Speaker 1: on regulations. And they need a counterway. And in most
8:00
Speaker 1: of these states they've never had a counterweight. So if
8:04
Speaker 1: you want to make the most difference, fix your own state,
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Speaker 1: form an organization.
8:08
Speaker 2: That's very simple.
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Speaker 1: We're talking like, how much funding would we need if
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Speaker 1: we were really rocking in my state filling the blank.
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Speaker 4: Illinois, Illinois?
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Speaker 1: You would need more money because that system so corrupt
8:22
Speaker 1: in Illinois. Really, you'd probably need like you need to
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Speaker 1: hire a lobbyists. You need to have dozens of guys
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Speaker 1: form a group and grow that group with membership, and
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Speaker 1: you'd need to have a budget of like maybe one
8:37
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars a year. One hundred thousand dollars a year. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: most you guys in Illinois, I know a gazillion people
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Speaker 1: in Illinois are like, yeah, that new Playeri's fourth heater
8:47
Speaker 1: was fifty grand. My hunting lease was seventy five dollars
8:52
Speaker 1: an acre. Yeah, I spent eight grand on this hunting
8:55
Speaker 1: ground right here.
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Speaker 2: That is okay, there's.
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Speaker 1: That amount of money, especially in Illinois. It's not a
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Speaker 1: huge sum. One hundred thousand bucks, a lot of members
9:06
Speaker 1: and a lobbyist where all the money goes to fighting
9:09
Speaker 1: the cause and stays in Illinois, and everybody donates their time,
9:13
Speaker 1: but you work collectively could start to make a difference
9:17
Speaker 1: in Illinois. You could actually fix that state with that
9:19
Speaker 1: simple recipe. Put in a pot, Put twelve hardcore guys
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Speaker 1: with knowledge, passion, and skills, throw one hundred thousand dollars
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Speaker 1: with them. Hire the right lobbyists. Five years from now,
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Speaker 1: two years from now. I mean, you can start making progress.
9:36
Speaker 1: But that system has been flushed down the toilet for
9:38
Speaker 1: so long you're trying to reverse that. Right, it's not
9:42
Speaker 1: going to happen overnight, and nothing's a guarantee, and human nature, like,
9:46
Speaker 1: you can't get frustrated, you can't get give up. If
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Speaker 1: you have a dozen guys, you're not going to agree
9:51
Speaker 1: on everything. You have to be mature enough to be like,
9:54
Speaker 1: we don't agree on these things, that's fine. There's three
9:56
Speaker 1: issues out of twenty we don't agree on, and some
9:59
Speaker 1: one guy in the group might be like, well, if
10:01
Speaker 1: you have that view, I'm out. You know, I'm gonna
10:03
Speaker 1: take my ball and go home. You can't have guys
10:05
Speaker 1: like that. You can't or you have to be mature
10:07
Speaker 1: enough not to do that. And if you do that,
10:09
Speaker 1: that's how these states will get fixed. And this is
10:13
Speaker 1: happening in several states, and several of these states will
10:17
Speaker 1: get fixed over time, like a small minority of them.
10:22
Speaker 1: But you know, we're so many of these states are
10:28
Speaker 1: going to have to hit rock bottom and you know,
10:33
Speaker 1: just collapse in themselves.
10:36
Speaker 2: Before they improve.
10:38
Speaker 1: But there's some other ones that like, hey, the hunters
10:41
Speaker 1: could grat could get it before it did hit rock
10:44
Speaker 1: bottom and start to just counteract all the bad garbage
10:47
Speaker 1: that's gone through their state for just decades and they
10:49
Speaker 1: can turn it around. I mean, my my loose goal
10:53
Speaker 1: if you will, if you're like, hey, you know ambitiously,
10:56
Speaker 1: because I always think of things to the extremes, like nursery,
11:00
Speaker 1: I do everything, everything's big, into the extreme, everything I do,
11:05
Speaker 1: or I just don't take it on. But like, if
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Speaker 1: somebody's like, what do you want to do with hunting?
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Speaker 1: I want to make hunting better across the country. I
11:11
Speaker 1: want it to be a better experience for kids, for
11:15
Speaker 1: the next generation that come after me.
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Speaker 2: That's my goal.
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Speaker 1: I want to impact the hunting world, you know, until
11:22
Speaker 1: my dying day. I want to get more kids involved.
11:24
Speaker 1: I want to leave the hunting experience better than what
11:27
Speaker 1: I found it better. And I have a real concern
11:31
Speaker 1: that you know, in the last twenty years, we've gone
11:35
Speaker 1: in the wrong direction in a lot of ways, in
11:37
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, and I want to reverse that.
11:39
Speaker 1: I want to see that reverse and you go. Anybody,
11:42
Speaker 1: anybody might say, what's in it for you? What's your
11:45
Speaker 1: motivation there? I want to give back. I want I
11:49
Speaker 1: want kids to have great experiences. I think of the
11:52
Speaker 1: kid that was me living in this in the city,
11:57
Speaker 1: in a town with you know, I had a lot
11:59
Speaker 1: of maniac friends that would probably that probably got into
12:02
Speaker 1: bad stuff later, and all of a sudden, I'm like,
12:05
Speaker 1: I found this little thing outside of town driving on
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Speaker 1: my bike of the outdoors and farms and nature and
12:13
Speaker 1: then hunting, and I got into that and it was
12:16
Speaker 1: amazing experience.
12:18
Speaker 2: And then my brothers the same thing.
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Speaker 1: They got into it too, and we were all city
12:21
Speaker 1: boys and nobody hunted, nobody in our family hunted, and
12:24
Speaker 1: we found that and it's like, oh, it was amazing
12:27
Speaker 1: and still like I mean, I can think about it,
12:29
Speaker 1: it's like it's like yesterday. But the nostalgia of that,
12:32
Speaker 1: like getting into the outdoors, and I still like it
12:34
Speaker 1: to this day, like that, I still love being out
12:36
Speaker 1: there like that. And how I want that.
12:38
Speaker 2: For the kids.
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Speaker 1: They deserve that, the kids, especially they deserve a quality experience,
12:44
Speaker 1: and they deserve for us hunters with some maturity who
12:48
Speaker 1: understand these dynamics to fight for them, to leave this
12:50
Speaker 1: a better space for them. When we know we're doing
12:53
Speaker 1: these things that are some of the time, that are selfish,
12:56
Speaker 1: that are ruining in the sports. Our duty to stop
12:58
Speaker 1: all this crap that's going through and fix it for
13:01
Speaker 1: these kids. It's our freaking duty. And I want to
13:04
Speaker 1: see that and society will be better for it. These
13:06
Speaker 1: kids will be better for it. And if somebody says,
13:10
Speaker 1: like I said before, I'm going to repeat myself. But
13:12
Speaker 1: if somebody says, well, I want there to be less hunters, Okay, fine,
13:14
Speaker 1: the irresponsible, disrespectful hunters that are just there to take fine,
13:18
Speaker 1: I could even maybe agree with that. I want less
13:21
Speaker 1: of those, But I want more of these kids to
13:23
Speaker 1: get out of maybe bad situations, have a good influence
13:26
Speaker 1: in their life and have the experiences that I have.
13:29
Speaker 1: And I don't want them to get into it now
13:31
Speaker 1: where they're like it sucks so bad. I don't even
13:34
Speaker 1: want to do this, Like, yeah, I tried that hunting thing.
13:36
Speaker 2: It sucks.
13:37
Speaker 5: It was lame.
13:39
Speaker 1: They just threw me on a corn pile and you know,
13:42
Speaker 1: wait until the cell cam went off and I shot
13:44
Speaker 1: it with my cross. But I'm not going to stick
13:45
Speaker 1: with it. I want them to have a good quality experience.
13:48
Speaker 1: But like, this was fun, this was challenging, it was hard,
13:52
Speaker 1: but it was rewarding, and it was a good quality
13:54
Speaker 1: system and I actually had access to good quality land.
13:57
Speaker 1: All these dynamics want to leave this better for as.
14:01
Speaker 2: Next up we have Bill Winki.
14:02
Speaker 3: Bill has seen the sport of whitetail hunting change, or
14:05
Speaker 3: I guess the world of whitetails change over the last
14:07
Speaker 3: twenty five years. Here's what he has to say, as
14:09
Speaker 3: just one guy that can improve it for the next
14:11
Speaker 3: twenty five years, what can every hunter do to make
14:14
Speaker 3: the next twenty five years of deer hunting better than
14:17
Speaker 3: the last twenty five.
14:19
Speaker 6: You've got to lock up.
14:23
Speaker 7: The opportunities, you know, and that's you won't necessarily make
14:27
Speaker 7: it better, but let's put it this way. You'll you'll
14:31
Speaker 7: guarantee that you're still in the game. You need to
14:36
Speaker 7: align yourself in some way with a landowner, whether that
14:42
Speaker 7: means you are that landowner or you know. Usually what
14:48
Speaker 7: I've found is that if you work besides somebody you
14:53
Speaker 7: know consistently, they usually don't stab me in the back,
14:57
Speaker 7: you know. So if you can find a relation ship
15:00
Speaker 7: where you're helping somebody out and you're doing a lot
15:03
Speaker 7: of work and they're giving you hunting access, you know
15:06
Speaker 7: as a result of that, that's a pretty strong position.
15:09
Speaker 7: If all you're doing is writing them a check. Not
15:11
Speaker 7: that that doesn't, you know, make some difference. It's not
15:15
Speaker 7: nearly the same. It's easy to on a business transaction
15:19
Speaker 7: and say, well, you know, sorry, but this guy you
15:22
Speaker 7: know who's going to write me a bigger check. So
15:25
Speaker 7: you have to be a lot more actively involved and
15:31
Speaker 7: say with maintaining the opportunities that you have, ideally you
15:36
Speaker 7: would buy. I'm not a huge fan of leasing. It
15:39
Speaker 7: just feels too temporary to me. You do a lot
15:42
Speaker 7: of important work to build up the value of that property,
15:46
Speaker 7: and then there's you know, unless you've got something written
15:50
Speaker 7: into a contract, they could just lease it to somebody
15:53
Speaker 7: for more that they could turn around and sell it
15:54
Speaker 7: because now you've done all this work and you've proven
15:57
Speaker 7: this track record or this piece of land.
16:01
Speaker 6: Doesn't mean everybody's going to do that.
16:02
Speaker 7: But that's the only downside I saw the biggest downside
16:05
Speaker 7: I saw with leasing. I think I'd rather own something
16:11
Speaker 7: and have permission through however method you can get it.
16:15
Speaker 7: You know, like I said, working working for it, it
16:19
Speaker 7: just seems.
16:20
Speaker 6: To pay off really well.
16:21
Speaker 7: And now you or you just got to get really
16:28
Speaker 7: good at winning those states that have a lot of
16:30
Speaker 7: public land. I mean, that's the other option too, is
16:34
Speaker 7: you know the Western States. There's some really good hunting
16:37
Speaker 7: in these Western states, and you know, you could become
16:42
Speaker 7: an expert at that, and that would be that would
16:46
Speaker 7: probably prove to be as usequal as anything else you
16:49
Speaker 7: can do. But you can't assume. You can't assume status quo.
16:53
Speaker 7: I guess that's the bottom line. Yeah, be looking forward
16:56
Speaker 7: and saying this isn't if I don't own it, if
16:59
Speaker 7: I don't control it, this is temporary. So I need
17:04
Speaker 7: to do something in order to ensure the next twenty
17:09
Speaker 7: five years.
17:11
Speaker 6: And you know that's why I started buying land. You know,
17:15
Speaker 6: I didn't.
17:16
Speaker 7: I love land, you know, but I didn't buy it
17:18
Speaker 7: because I thought it would be a great investment.
17:19
Speaker 6: I didn't. I didn't think it would. It turned out
17:22
Speaker 6: that it was, but you know, I didn't.
17:25
Speaker 7: Think that it would be. I just wanted to know
17:27
Speaker 7: I had a place to hunt. Yeah, and then it
17:30
Speaker 7: just kind of led to a whole lifestyle after that
17:34
Speaker 7: that you got to do something. You can't just sit
17:36
Speaker 7: back and assume that it's going to work out, because
17:38
Speaker 7: it won't, not even twenty five years.
17:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, what with the farm you've been working on recently
17:44
Speaker 3: and doing a lot of a lot of heavy lifting,
17:46
Speaker 3: a lot of heavy projects. What is the motivation for
17:50
Speaker 3: that looking decades away rather than you know, next season,
17:55
Speaker 3: because you're doing a lot of projects that take a
17:57
Speaker 3: long time to have, you know, major responses or positive returns.
18:01
Speaker 6: Yeah.
18:02
Speaker 7: For me, the fun on this farm is, uh, there
18:05
Speaker 7: weren't that many deer to start with, you know. So
18:08
Speaker 7: it's the first time I've ever owned land where there
18:09
Speaker 7: weren't very many deer on it. So I thought I
18:13
Speaker 7: can take this thing from scratch and do it right
18:16
Speaker 7: where it's just not a constant war. I'm trying to
18:19
Speaker 7: get my numbers down every year, you know. I saw,
18:22
Speaker 7: you know, I need to keep the foot my foot
18:24
Speaker 7: on the brake. But that's not the number one management goal,
18:29
Speaker 7: whereas almost everything else I've owned, it seems like the
18:31
Speaker 7: number one management goal is killing up those over here.
18:34
Speaker 6: But you know, now I can do the habitat first,
18:38
Speaker 6: you know where gosh, the deer that.
18:42
Speaker 7: Are on my farm now, I mean, they don't hardly
18:44
Speaker 7: come out of the woods because the habitat is so
18:48
Speaker 7: good and there's.
18:48
Speaker 6: So much food in the timber that they're just completely different.
18:54
Speaker 6: They act completely different from deer that I've bunted in
18:57
Speaker 6: the past that are more stressed.
18:58
Speaker 7: Because there's a lot of deer, you're competing more and
19:01
Speaker 7: you've got to be the first one to get to
19:02
Speaker 7: the clover or whatever. These dear don't have any of
19:05
Speaker 7: that urgency. As a result, they're a little bit tougher
19:08
Speaker 7: to hunt. But they're just maybe not temper to hunt.
19:10
Speaker 7: They're just different. It's it's a different style of hunting
19:13
Speaker 7: them what I'm used to because I'm used to deer
19:15
Speaker 7: that are more on your stress or you can get
19:17
Speaker 7: them out of the open and keep your impact really
19:20
Speaker 7: low because you're just coming and going in open areas.
19:22
Speaker 7: These dear don't do that. I don't come out. But
19:25
Speaker 7: the whole thing is like, Okay, if we do this perfectly.
19:28
Speaker 7: I remember reading doctor Brentwood's book a long time ago.
19:32
Speaker 7: I've got it in the bookshelf here I s happened,
19:34
Speaker 7: I think goes white Tail Management one oh one or
19:37
Speaker 7: something like that, and he said that if you want
19:40
Speaker 7: to grow the very biggest possible bucks, you've got to
19:44
Speaker 7: have a lower density and you've got to have the
19:47
Speaker 7: highest possible plane of forage, lowest stress possible. So I thought, Okay,
19:55
Speaker 7: here's my chance. You know, on this farm, I have
19:57
Speaker 7: the opportunity to see what can be done because most
20:01
Speaker 7: of the people who are killing really big deer that
20:03
Speaker 7: you know, have farms of one deer on and you know,
20:08
Speaker 7: I could we could go through the list and yeah,
20:10
Speaker 7: they're killing big deer, but it'd be fun to know
20:13
Speaker 7: what those deer would look like if there wasn't that competition.
20:17
Speaker 6: You know, what is possible. And I'm a few years
20:21
Speaker 6: away from knowing.
20:21
Speaker 7: That, because we're just starting to get those age classes
20:24
Speaker 7: filled now. But I think that's that's probably my number
20:28
Speaker 7: one reason for it. I want to see, you know,
20:33
Speaker 7: before I die, what's possible. It'll be nice if the
20:37
Speaker 7: neighborhood was you know, if I controlled more, because you're
20:40
Speaker 7: still going to get some attrition, you know, from the
20:42
Speaker 7: deer leaveing and getting killed someplace else. But at least
20:46
Speaker 7: I can find out on a propert size that I.
20:48
Speaker 6: Have what can be done. Because this is the perfect
20:53
Speaker 6: setup right now. I mean, it's never going to get better,
20:56
Speaker 6: you know.
20:56
Speaker 7: As far as like the density, you know what I control,
21:01
Speaker 7: the type of train that I've got, the amount of
21:03
Speaker 7: food that I've got, you know, what is possible? I
21:07
Speaker 7: guess is the question. And you know, I might be
21:09
Speaker 7: humbled by it, and I become to a conclusion that
21:12
Speaker 7: you know that sothern I have a farm with too
21:13
Speaker 7: many deer on was better, you know, But it'd be
21:16
Speaker 7: fun to find out this is going to be This
21:19
Speaker 7: will be the perfect fo when I'm that that's I guess.
21:22
Speaker 7: That's what I'm saying, is as perfect as one man
21:24
Speaker 7: can make it.
21:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well that'll be fun. When do you feel
21:27
Speaker 3: that you get to do a check in to know
21:29
Speaker 3: if you did the right.
21:29
Speaker 7: Thing five years in So this is year four, okay,
21:34
Speaker 7: you know, I think it takes five years. So next year,
21:38
Speaker 7: after next season, that's when you know, I have a
21:42
Speaker 7: really good feel for how effective this was. It continues
21:47
Speaker 7: to get better. You know, we didn't show all the
21:48
Speaker 7: ship and outmuchs that we found, you know, there's you
21:52
Speaker 7: just don't necessarily want to draw a lot of attention,
21:55
Speaker 7: you know, But it's every year it's seemed better, you know.
21:59
Speaker 7: It's just a question of how much better can it get.
22:02
Speaker 7: And we'll start to see that in two more seasons
22:05
Speaker 7: after the this is twenty twenty five, after the twenty
22:08
Speaker 7: twenty six season, check in with me again, and then
22:12
Speaker 7: I'll be able to tell you whether this worked or
22:14
Speaker 7: didn't work.
22:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think if it does work, I think you'll
22:23
Speaker 3: challenge a lot of philosophies of and also and also
22:27
Speaker 3: provide a lot more patience for people who want instant
22:30
Speaker 3: return of or like instant gratification of we did this.
22:33
Speaker 3: One season later, it's forty percent better, And maybe there's
22:36
Speaker 3: projects like that. But also, you know, if it was
22:38
Speaker 3: a two out of ten from when he started, and
22:40
Speaker 3: five years later it's an eight and a half or nine,
22:44
Speaker 3: it'll be really interesting see what the perception of that is.
22:47
Speaker 6: Well, and that's kind of what I may look forward.
22:49
Speaker 7: It's kind of funny too, because in the process of
22:51
Speaker 7: doing that, everybody kind of rates you off, you know,
22:53
Speaker 7: because you're just not killing lots of big dear anymore,
22:57
Speaker 7: and people are thinking I'll kind of lost his time.
23:00
Speaker 7: Sure he doesn't know what he's doing or whatever, and
23:01
Speaker 7: there's some of that, but I'm getting older, might touch
23:06
Speaker 7: fin there's more to it than that. This is uh,
23:09
Speaker 7: there's a method to the madness, you know, And someday
23:13
Speaker 7: we'll know. I'll either be you know, smiling, you know,
23:17
Speaker 7: off into the sunset, or everybody be laughing at me
23:20
Speaker 7: as I go off into the sunset. But one way
23:23
Speaker 7: it'll be kind of a cool experitedness to see what's possible.
23:27
Speaker 3: Next up we have Thomas Milsner. Thomas is very in
23:30
Speaker 3: tune of trying to do what's best by the land,
23:33
Speaker 3: and his perspective is a little bit more focused on that. So,
23:36
Speaker 3: without further ado, here's what Thomas Millsna.
23:38
Speaker 2: Has to say.
23:39
Speaker 3: As one guy, one guy listening to this, you as
23:43
Speaker 3: one guy, me as one guy, what can every hunter
23:46
Speaker 3: do to make the next twenty five years of deer
23:48
Speaker 3: hunting better than the last twenty five?
23:52
Speaker 8: Both there's so much, but to focus your attention on
23:59
Speaker 8: the concert aspect. I think it's the absolute most important,
24:04
Speaker 8: and by that don't buy into the gimmick side of
24:09
Speaker 8: the industry. Right the hunting and white tail industry is
24:13
Speaker 8: a fantastic thing, but it's also consuming itself in regards
24:18
Speaker 8: to focusing too much on this one resource without understanding
24:25
Speaker 8: the consequences that these other resources are facing. So we
24:29
Speaker 8: focus on the conservation side of things, focus on that
24:32
Speaker 8: holistic approach, Right, what can I do to improve this
24:35
Speaker 8: habitat to make things better for all of these things,
24:38
Speaker 8: You're gonna have significantly better deer hunting and ensure that
24:41
Speaker 8: it sticks around. But right now we focus too much
24:44
Speaker 8: on the deer, then all these other things start to
24:47
Speaker 8: fade away, and pretty soon all we're going to have
24:49
Speaker 8: is deer and we're ultimately gonna have to farm them
24:52
Speaker 8: because we have to provide them with every element that
24:55
Speaker 8: they need to survive just to keep them going. And
24:57
Speaker 8: that's not how I want to deer hunt, right, I
25:00
Speaker 8: want that nature experience. So I think everyone's going to
25:03
Speaker 8: be a little bit different. I'm sure with the questions
25:05
Speaker 8: that you get, but are the responses that you get.
25:08
Speaker 8: But for me, the best thing that we can do
25:10
Speaker 8: to ensure deer hunting is around for the foreseeable future
25:14
Speaker 8: wherever really is what we want. Right, But right now,
25:16
Speaker 8: we need to focus on the immediate problems we face, yeah, exactly,
25:21
Speaker 8: and make it better than the last twenty five, which
25:24
Speaker 8: I think we absolutely can do. Is we need to
25:26
Speaker 8: focus on the habitat and these ecosystems that actually produce
25:31
Speaker 8: a deer, and also focus on quality over quantity. Right again,
25:36
Speaker 8: we're not farmers, we're not livestock producers. If I'm a
25:39
Speaker 8: live stock producer, I'm trying really hard to grow the
25:42
Speaker 8: biggest animal that I can in the shortest amount of time.
25:45
Speaker 8: I still want that animal to be healthy, and I
25:47
Speaker 8: still want my practices that I follow to be good
25:49
Speaker 8: for the land to ensure that I can run that
25:51
Speaker 8: animal on the land year in and year out for
25:53
Speaker 8: as long as possible. It's kind of the same thing,
25:56
Speaker 8: except we're not trying to make money off of it.
25:58
Speaker 8: We're trying to build experiences, right, We're trying to recreate
26:02
Speaker 8: with the situation. So we really need to focus on
26:04
Speaker 8: the resource itself and what it provides to us and
26:09
Speaker 8: keep that resource happy, keep those ecosystems happy and healthy
26:13
Speaker 8: so that it can keep providing that resource to us,
26:15
Speaker 8: which is the recreation, the food, those experiences, all those
26:19
Speaker 8: memories that come with it.
26:21
Speaker 3: Do you think the importance of private land ties into
26:27
Speaker 3: the success of the next twenty five years of hunting
26:29
Speaker 3: because you mentioned handling the habitat and where most activity
26:33
Speaker 3: for habitat work, good, bad, and different is on private
26:37
Speaker 3: land one percent.
26:39
Speaker 8: I've said this before, actually, I think I said it
26:42
Speaker 8: on the Wired to Hunt podcasts one time that I truly,
26:46
Speaker 8: truly believe that land owning hunters, all hunters, but especially
26:51
Speaker 8: the land owning hunters, have the ability to make a massive, massive,
26:56
Speaker 8: positive impact in the environmental side of things. Literally think
27:00
Speaker 8: that they could have the impact that'll save the planet.
27:03
Speaker 2: I mean when you take all the private.
27:05
Speaker 8: Land and the fact that we have control over that
27:08
Speaker 8: might not always have the time or the money, but
27:10
Speaker 8: at least you can stop things from happening, stop habitat loss,
27:15
Speaker 8: stop development in those areas as much as possible, right
27:19
Speaker 8: slow play, so, you know, slow this down so we
27:21
Speaker 8: can turn the ship around. Right now, we're just constantly
27:24
Speaker 8: trading out native habitat for invasive habitat, altered low production habitat,
27:30
Speaker 8: whether it's you know, a wood lot that gets logged
27:33
Speaker 8: and regenerates. All invasives because of a lack of management
27:36
Speaker 8: and lack of fire, a lack of animals whatever it
27:38
Speaker 8: might be. Or it's a prairie that gets turned into
27:42
Speaker 8: a farm field and now it's just monocropped in a cycle,
27:45
Speaker 8: which you know, maybe it's providing food during part of
27:47
Speaker 8: the year but not a whole lot the rest of
27:49
Speaker 8: the year. Or maybe it's an area you know, mixed
27:53
Speaker 8: habitat doesn't matter, that's now cleared and there's a housing
27:56
Speaker 8: development or one house with a lawn. You know, that's
27:58
Speaker 8: a it's a big thing. It goes full circle. You know,
28:01
Speaker 8: if you're a hunter and you're truly a conservationist and
28:05
Speaker 8: you've got a five acre lawn at your house, you're
28:09
Speaker 8: maybe part of the problem more than part of the solution.
28:12
Speaker 4: You know.
28:12
Speaker 8: It's different if you know, you're the attraction of the
28:15
Speaker 8: neighborhood and all the kids are coming down and playing ball, Like,
28:17
Speaker 8: I don't want to take that away from you by
28:18
Speaker 8: any means. But if you literally just have a lawn
28:19
Speaker 8: because you like looking at a mode bond, you can
28:22
Speaker 8: put that back into habitat which is going to provide
28:26
Speaker 8: refugea or refuge for all sorts of beneficial animals, you know,
28:30
Speaker 8: depending on the scale, depending on the location. Maybe it's
28:32
Speaker 8: just insects. Maybe it's insects and birds. Maybe it's more dear,
28:36
Speaker 8: you know, whatever it might be. But looking at it
28:38
Speaker 8: that way, where can I improve? Wherever I can improve,
28:42
Speaker 8: I should improve as much as possible. And doing so,
28:46
Speaker 8: you know that that gives us the option. Private landowners
28:48
Speaker 8: absolutely have the ability to make a massive positive impact
28:51
Speaker 8: if we take a step back and look at things
28:53
Speaker 8: for what they are. On the other side of things,
28:56
Speaker 8: public land is extremely important too, you know, so we
28:59
Speaker 8: definitely need to ban together and fight the fights and
29:03
Speaker 8: legislation and the people that are trying to take our
29:07
Speaker 8: resources and turn them into a monetary gain for them
29:10
Speaker 8: somewhere down the line. Sell us out right, we need
29:13
Speaker 8: to stick together on that side of things. But you know,
29:16
Speaker 8: I talk about goals all the time with all my clients, right,
29:19
Speaker 8: and we talked about goals and becoming a great hunter
29:21
Speaker 8: versus a good hunter.
29:23
Speaker 4: And if you really really.
29:24
Speaker 8: Are passionate about hunting and conservation, no matter what situation
29:29
Speaker 8: you're in, a goal of yours should be to own
29:32
Speaker 8: a piece of land that you can manage and improve
29:35
Speaker 8: and create that refugee for wildlife in these native ecosystems.
29:38
Speaker 8: And if hunting is your motivator for that, that's great,
29:42
Speaker 8: But we can't lose focus on that resource as a
29:46
Speaker 8: whole just because we want to kill a deer. You know,
29:49
Speaker 8: we buy this property and put in all these soybeans
29:52
Speaker 8: and whatnot and kind of neglect the other half of
29:55
Speaker 8: it or whatever it might be. We're not really doing
29:58
Speaker 8: the resource a service, just kind of providing a buffet
30:02
Speaker 8: for farm animal, you know, scenario type like that. So
30:06
Speaker 8: we're losing sight on that. But the big picture, we
30:08
Speaker 8: got a band together. We got to protect the land
30:10
Speaker 8: that we have and whether it's private or public, and
30:13
Speaker 8: then we got to work towards improving it and manage
30:15
Speaker 8: it for the foreseeable future.
30:17
Speaker 3: Rolling in right into our next guest, we have Jeff Sturgis.
30:20
Speaker 3: Let's just go right into it right now. Okay, you're
30:23
Speaker 3: just one guy. You're just a guy listening to this.
30:27
Speaker 3: What can every hunter do to make the next twenty
30:29
Speaker 3: five years of deer hunting better than the last twenty
30:33
Speaker 3: five years?
30:34
Speaker 9: No, you could say, never get into uh rots, there's
30:40
Speaker 9: a in never get into rots are so broad you know,
30:45
Speaker 9: you're I'll give you a couple a couple of pointers
30:48
Speaker 9: that to me that are so important, and this has
30:51
Speaker 9: been proven to me over and over again. Let's say
30:54
Speaker 9: in Minnesota, and I'm just gonna go off the top
30:56
Speaker 9: of my head, we can shoot two to three bucks
31:00
Speaker 9: a year in Minnesota depending on the tags in southeast
31:04
Speaker 9: Minnesota and a cut in a CWD area. And I
31:08
Speaker 9: want to say, in the last five seasons, I think
31:11
Speaker 9: I've shot seven bucks six bucks.
31:14
Speaker 5: I have not shot one of.
31:14
Speaker 9: Them from the same stand. Had a history for twelve
31:21
Speaker 9: years in Wisconsin out of property, and in that twelve
31:25
Speaker 9: years shot seventeen bucks out of fourteen different stands. I
31:31
Speaker 9: haven't added up the stats for the one in between
31:34
Speaker 9: that I had for another eleven twelve years, whatever it was,
31:37
Speaker 9: but similar statistics. Your favorite stand should be the next
31:43
Speaker 9: stand you shoot a buck out of, not the last
31:45
Speaker 9: stand hold no favorites. Has been many favorite stands that
31:48
Speaker 9: I have not hunted the next year that I shot
31:50
Speaker 9: a monster out of than the year before, because the
31:54
Speaker 9: signs were not there that immature buck was in that area.
31:58
Speaker 9: To hunt that it's one big thing. Always move, always change,
32:03
Speaker 9: always be a part of the same structure overall of
32:06
Speaker 9: your hunt planet. It might be that you're still hunting
32:08
Speaker 9: the same area on public land, the same noll's, the
32:10
Speaker 9: same benches, the same points. But you can't just go
32:14
Speaker 9: in and say I'm gonna hunt the same oak tree
32:15
Speaker 9: every single year and expect success. It's not going to
32:18
Speaker 9: work those mature bucks that will work every three or
32:22
Speaker 9: four five years. But I want it to work every
32:24
Speaker 9: single year times one and a half. You know, I
32:27
Speaker 9: want to experience more than one hundred percent success every
32:29
Speaker 9: year if I have two tags. So that's one thing.
32:33
Speaker 9: The other thing is you can kill them from the couch.
32:37
Speaker 9: More time in the woods does not equal more hunting.
32:40
Speaker 9: In fact, I would say I average a mature buck
32:43
Speaker 9: every six sis somewhere in there, five to seven somewhere
32:46
Speaker 9: around there. And so by being patient, and I'm not
32:50
Speaker 9: saying being patient, November sixth is my favorite day to hunt.
32:55
Speaker 9: So I'm gonna hunt November six in the middle of
32:57
Speaker 9: my property every year. That's not being patient. That's just
32:59
Speaker 9: waiting till a certain day. That's being stuck in a rut.
33:02
Speaker 9: Why are you going into that stand in November six
33:04
Speaker 9: What conditions led you to that? Why what pattern is
33:08
Speaker 9: that as a buck showing that's there? That's not what
33:10
Speaker 9: I'm saying I'm saying that it's September seventeenth, that your opener,
33:15
Speaker 9: it's eighty five degrees. You have a buck pattern, you
33:18
Speaker 9: know by summer scouting cameras, visual binoculars, sitting on a
33:24
Speaker 9: fence row, watching that this buck is coming out to
33:27
Speaker 9: a specific food source. Every single afternoon it's eighty five degrees,
33:32
Speaker 9: thirty mile an hour winds. That is not the day
33:34
Speaker 9: to go sit on that stand. Likely he might not
33:36
Speaker 9: move because of the winds. He might not move because
33:38
Speaker 9: of the heat. However, two days later, the high is
33:41
Speaker 9: going to be sixty seven. There's a major storm coming
33:44
Speaker 9: through that night the next day. I'm going to wait
33:46
Speaker 9: those two days and I'm going to go in and hunt.
33:48
Speaker 9: That's what I mean by being patient. Is doesn't mean
33:51
Speaker 9: that you're waiting til November fifth. It means that when
33:53
Speaker 9: the conditions are right, you're not sitting on the couch.
33:58
Speaker 9: You're going in, but you're sitting on the couch the
34:01
Speaker 9: rest of the time. You're making wise decisions, and you
34:03
Speaker 9: could be making wise decisions all hunting season long. That
34:06
Speaker 9: might mean that you choose a Friday on a three
34:07
Speaker 9: day weekend instead of a Monday to hunt. If your
34:09
Speaker 9: boss will let you do that. That might mean that
34:12
Speaker 9: you choose a Sunday evening to sit in your favorite
34:15
Speaker 9: stand instead of a Friday night, because you don't want
34:18
Speaker 9: to bugger that stand up in poor conditions on a
34:20
Speaker 9: Friday night, So you know, exercising those patients. I love
34:25
Speaker 9: to hunt by the weather and choosing that time and
34:29
Speaker 9: really point in methodically having a reason why am I
34:32
Speaker 9: sitting here?
34:33
Speaker 5: I want several reasons.
34:34
Speaker 9: Why not just because this is my favorite tree. I
34:37
Speaker 9: want because this is the time of year. When bucks
34:40
Speaker 9: move from point A to point B, they're probably on
34:42
Speaker 9: this food source nearby. He's probably in that betting area
34:46
Speaker 9: over there, because my neighbors have been three four hundred
34:48
Speaker 9: yards away spooking out their property and when they.
34:50
Speaker 6: Do that, buck moves into this spot.
34:52
Speaker 9: He's moving through this funnel location because it's too steep
34:56
Speaker 9: on either side. There's a water source over there. I
34:58
Speaker 9: defined that line and move meant either by pressure, by
35:02
Speaker 9: habitat provement, or I've recognized it on publicly and for
35:05
Speaker 9: several different indicators. And then oh, by the way, the
35:08
Speaker 9: conditions of the weather, the wind, extremities of temperature.
35:12
Speaker 5: Are on my side. And then I go in for
35:14
Speaker 5: that set.
35:15
Speaker 9: That would be if you can adhere to some of
35:17
Speaker 9: those things going forward, make them a better twenty five
35:20
Speaker 9: oh much better.
35:22
Speaker 3: Next we have Steve Hanson, and I think his answer
35:24
Speaker 3: was probably the only one that brought up this take,
35:27
Speaker 3: And so here we go, how can one guy make
35:29
Speaker 3: the next twenty five years of white tail hunting better?
35:32
Speaker 2: With Steve Hanson, you.
35:34
Speaker 10: Know, I would say, you know, number one, try to
35:37
Speaker 10: bring somebody new into the sport. You know, that's that's
35:41
Speaker 10: going to help everybody. If you have a nephew, a cousin,
35:44
Speaker 10: you know, even somebody else, you know, maybe mentor someone
35:48
Speaker 10: on a on a youth hunt, that would be the
35:50
Speaker 10: you know, that would that would make the overall hunting
35:53
Speaker 10: community better. If you're asking what could somebody specifically do
35:57
Speaker 10: to make their next twenty five years better, I'm gonna
36:02
Speaker 10: say the same thing I've answered on some of our
36:04
Speaker 10: other discussions. It's, you know, up your game, you know,
36:07
Speaker 10: don't settle for young deer, truly, learn to judge deer, pass,
36:12
Speaker 10: dear up, and spend a lot of time improving the habitat.
36:16
Speaker 2: Improving the habitat.
36:17
Speaker 10: Will yield rewards right away and for the next twenty
36:21
Speaker 10: five years. And you know, not everybody can go in
36:24
Speaker 10: and TSI eighty ac ors or something like that. But
36:28
Speaker 10: if you identify a need on a farm, even if
36:30
Speaker 10: it's a place you have permission, Hey, ask the landowner.
36:33
Speaker 10: You know that old fence that the deer keep getting
36:35
Speaker 10: tangled up in and dying and stuff. We find them
36:37
Speaker 10: every year. Yeah, can I tear that fence out? I'll
36:39
Speaker 10: spend a couple of saturdays doing something like that, you know,
36:41
Speaker 10: something like that to give back to the herd. We'll
36:44
Speaker 10: pay dividends to you in the future.
36:47
Speaker 3: Rolling into the next guest, we have Bobby Kendall, and
36:50
Speaker 3: let's just get right into it.
36:51
Speaker 2: Here's what Bobby has to say.
36:53
Speaker 3: What's one thing an individual can do to make the
36:56
Speaker 3: next twenty five years a deer hunting better twenty five.
37:00
Speaker 11: Ye, so you know the elephant in the room. I
37:04
Speaker 11: hunt a lot of private ground and that is a
37:07
Speaker 11: game changer. You know, when you own the ground and
37:10
Speaker 11: you can make the decisions, you have to be able
37:12
Speaker 11: to do that. So maybe my story can be a
37:17
Speaker 11: motivation to somebody watching.
37:19
Speaker 5: So I'm thirty nine. I've used to play music for
37:22
Speaker 5: a living.
37:23
Speaker 11: I dropped out of pharmacy school to come to the
37:25
Speaker 11: Midwest and guide hunters. When I was nineteen to try
37:28
Speaker 11: and figure out what I want to do with my life.
37:30
Speaker 11: I was reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad books, and I
37:33
Speaker 11: figured out how to buy an apartment building, and I
37:35
Speaker 11: use out a apartment house, and I.
37:37
Speaker 5: Used that equity to buy another one.
37:39
Speaker 11: And then I got in a position where I didn't
37:41
Speaker 11: have to get a real job because I was just
37:42
Speaker 11: like surviving barely. But on that so I was able
37:46
Speaker 11: to make some moves, and eventually, when I was twenty two,
37:49
Speaker 11: I bought a twenty acre piece and it was a stretch,
37:54
Speaker 11: you know, I just did it, and I was like, well,
37:57
Speaker 11: maybe if I do like it with the house stuff
37:58
Speaker 11: and I like set it up, I could sell it.
38:01
Speaker 5: And so fast forward. That was when I was twenty two.
38:02
Speaker 11: I'm thirty nine now and I've bought and sold several
38:05
Speaker 11: hundred farms, and I've got to hunt some of the
38:08
Speaker 11: sweetest farms there is anywhere. And so I guess my
38:13
Speaker 11: point is with that, like I was playing music in
38:17
Speaker 11: bars and guiding for a couple hundred dollars a week,
38:21
Speaker 11: and I made some decisions and I changed my course
38:25
Speaker 11: and so like, there's three type of people that are
38:27
Speaker 11: gonna listen to this, and and one is gonna be like,
38:30
Speaker 11: it must be nice.
38:31
Speaker 5: You know, I can't do this. One is gonna be like,
38:34
Speaker 5: he's right, I did it. You know.
38:35
Speaker 11: I've watched so many people accidentally create wealth buying hunting farms,
38:42
Speaker 11: and other people are going, I can't believe what they're
38:44
Speaker 11: paying to shoot a deer, And I'm like, can you
38:48
Speaker 11: believe what they're paying for bitcoin? What is bitcoin? Well,
38:52
Speaker 11: that's what hunting ground has become. It's become an asset class.
38:55
Speaker 11: It doesn't matter. It's not about the value of shooting deer.
38:58
Speaker 11: It's an asset class. And there's only so much of it,
39:00
Speaker 11: and the demand is getting greater and it's going up
39:03
Speaker 11: in value. So I've watched so many people accidentally create wealth,
39:07
Speaker 11: like change their lives by buying hunting ground. So I
39:11
Speaker 11: would say, get motivated, figure it out. Whether it's this
39:17
Speaker 11: year or next year or the next year. Maybe it's
39:19
Speaker 11: five acres in suburban area that somebody had overlooked, and and.
39:24
Speaker 5: You got to get in the game.
39:25
Speaker 11: So, like I had a mentor I met when I
39:27
Speaker 11: was playing music at one of these places, a hunting
39:30
Speaker 11: lodge or whatever. And he's a big developer in Huntsville, Alabama,
39:33
Speaker 11: and he was my mentor, and he kept saying, you
39:36
Speaker 11: got to get in the game, you got to get
39:37
Speaker 11: in the game. I'm like, well, how do I get Well,
39:39
Speaker 11: I finally just got in the game. So that would
39:41
Speaker 11: be my advice is just go for it. Understand, there's
39:46
Speaker 11: bad debt like a credit card, and there's good debt
39:48
Speaker 11: like a bank. Figure out where you're comfortable. It's probably
39:52
Speaker 11: gonna work out. Its land. We've had all this crazy
39:54
Speaker 11: stuff going in the world on in the world over
39:56
Speaker 11: however many years, and this land doesn't hiccup, you know,
40:00
Speaker 11: especially here in Illinois. It's just so good and it
40:04
Speaker 11: can be life changed, not just about deer, honey.
40:07
Speaker 5: So get in the game.
40:09
Speaker 11: Figure out a plan, one year, five year plan to
40:13
Speaker 11: get your first piece of ground.
40:15
Speaker 5: Control that thing.
40:16
Speaker 11: I would rather control twenty five acres and make the
40:19
Speaker 11: calls than a thousand acres with a group of guys,
40:22
Speaker 11: even if they're friends, and not have full control over
40:26
Speaker 11: making the decisions, because it's little decisions that break you.
40:30
Speaker 5: So that's what I'd say. I mean, you know, get
40:33
Speaker 5: in the game by ground.
40:36
Speaker 2: Next we have Don Higgins.
40:38
Speaker 3: I think Don is the oldest of the guest here,
40:40
Speaker 3: so he has the most insight, the most wisdom on
40:43
Speaker 3: his perspective, and maybe everyone doesn't agree with it, but
40:46
Speaker 3: this is his take on how the next twenty five
40:48
Speaker 3: years of white tail hunting can be better.
40:50
Speaker 2: As just one guy doing their own thing.
40:52
Speaker 12: Here we go, well, on a personal level, they need
40:55
Speaker 12: to buy land. There's no doubt about it that good
40:59
Speaker 12: hunty in the future, and we're probably already there is
41:02
Speaker 12: going to be tied to land ownership.
41:05
Speaker 4: You're either going to own it or you're not going
41:08
Speaker 4: to hunt.
41:08
Speaker 12: And I think even leases are extremely difficult to find
41:11
Speaker 12: today and very expensive. It's easier to find a place
41:14
Speaker 12: to buy than it is to lease a good a
41:16
Speaker 12: good property. Now they the drawback is that good property
41:21
Speaker 12: has become more and more expensive over time, and it becomes.
41:23
Speaker 4: Harder and harder.
41:26
Speaker 12: For the average person to purchase a property just for hunting.
41:30
Speaker 12: I totally get that, but on a personal level, you
41:35
Speaker 12: need to be doing everything you can to acquire property
41:37
Speaker 12: today because in the future it's going to become more
41:40
Speaker 12: and more critical if you want to be a hunter
41:42
Speaker 12: from a whole I don't hate to call it industry,
41:46
Speaker 12: but let's just say hunting community wide answer to this question.
41:51
Speaker 4: We need to be more involved with our game agencies.
41:54
Speaker 12: And I don't know that that's even possible, But these
41:57
Speaker 12: game agencies have become so political that I think in
42:01
Speaker 12: a lot of cases, the hunter's opinions, the hunter's desires
42:06
Speaker 12: are not even considered.
42:07
Speaker 4: That there's other.
42:10
Speaker 12: Groups whose input is a whole lot stronger than the
42:15
Speaker 12: deer hunter, and one of those is a farmer. In Illinois,
42:18
Speaker 12: the Farm Bureau is the most powerful lobby in the state.
42:21
Speaker 12: I think that the hunters and the farmers need to
42:24
Speaker 12: get together and find solutions to some of these deer
42:28
Speaker 12: management issues. You know, the farmers they want every deer
42:31
Speaker 12: dead during the growing season, but then in the fall
42:34
Speaker 12: they want to lease out their hunting land to whoever,
42:37
Speaker 12: including non residents, without any sort of government oversight. But
42:42
Speaker 12: yet then in the summer they want that government to
42:45
Speaker 12: provide them these deuisance tags they can go out there
42:47
Speaker 12: and indiscriminately shoot deer on nuisance permits. I think the
42:52
Speaker 12: solution there, and I'm not pointing the finger at farmers.
42:54
Speaker 12: I'm not pointing the finger at deer hunters. What I'm
42:56
Speaker 12: saying is the farmers and the deer hunters need to
42:58
Speaker 12: come together. They need to work together to find solutions
43:03
Speaker 12: that's good for both parties, and I think it's possible.
43:06
Speaker 12: I think to this point, farmers and hunters on the
43:10
Speaker 12: political side of the spectrum anyway, i've kind of been
43:12
Speaker 12: at odds.
43:13
Speaker 4: They've wanted different things.
43:16
Speaker 12: I've been on different sides of various issues, and I
43:19
Speaker 12: think that if they came together and each side was
43:22
Speaker 12: able to hear the other side out and come to
43:25
Speaker 12: a better understanding of the other side's position, I think
43:28
Speaker 12: that the deer hunters and farmers could sit together at
43:32
Speaker 12: a table and come up with some common.
43:34
Speaker 4: Sense solutions that benefits everyone.
43:37
Speaker 12: I don't know if that's possible in today's political climate,
43:40
Speaker 12: especially in a state like Illinois with our dirty, corrupt politics,
43:47
Speaker 12: But if it's ever going to happen in Illinois, it's
43:49
Speaker 12: got to happen hand in hand with the Farm Bureau.
43:52
Speaker 12: The Farm Bureau gets on board with some solutions, then
43:56
Speaker 12: I think it could be pushed through the legislature. But
43:59
Speaker 12: without the farm Bureau support, I don't think good deer
44:02
Speaker 12: management practices are ever going to have.
44:09
Speaker 2: Do you think good deer management practices are.
44:12
Speaker 3: A large enough group for people that care, because you
44:16
Speaker 3: see people debate about man if Illinois went to one
44:21
Speaker 3: buck state, Illinois doesn't have to go to a one
44:23
Speaker 3: buck state. You just shoot one buck, I'm still going
44:24
Speaker 3: to shoot two. That's an argument that I have actually
44:27
Speaker 3: seen Forbatam, unfortunately on Facebook. But the thought process, or
44:31
Speaker 3: my question is the people that really want best for
44:35
Speaker 3: the resource, best for the opportunity. It's the industry and
44:39
Speaker 3: the white tail commercialization is based off of big deer,
44:42
Speaker 3: it's not off of immature deer. But there's also a
44:46
Speaker 3: larger group of hunters, not as serious, that don't care
44:50
Speaker 3: about that. And so how do you within You have
44:53
Speaker 3: the farmers and hunters, but then you break down the
44:55
Speaker 3: hunting side and it's fragmented, pretty drastic.
45:00
Speaker 4: And that's the whole problem.
45:02
Speaker 12: I mean, there's been groups in the past in Illinois
45:04
Speaker 12: tried to represent the hunters, tried to bring them all
45:07
Speaker 12: together and represent them all, and it's been impossible. I've
45:11
Speaker 12: been a part of a couple of those groups and
45:15
Speaker 12: been some very serious deer hunters, very well intentioned deer
45:19
Speaker 12: hunters on board as well. But as soon as you
45:22
Speaker 12: throw an idea out to the public, I don't care
45:24
Speaker 12: how good the idea is. You could throw out the
45:27
Speaker 12: idea that you found the cure for cancer, and somebody's
45:30
Speaker 12: gonna hate it. The drug company's going to hate it
45:32
Speaker 12: because now you just took away their opportunity to make
45:34
Speaker 12: a profit from treating cancer. And it's the same way
45:38
Speaker 12: with deer hunting. It doesn't matter what idea you throw
45:42
Speaker 12: out to the deer hunting community, there's going to be
45:45
Speaker 12: a sizable percentage against that, whatever that idea is, and
45:52
Speaker 12: that keeps us divided. And the only reason that our
45:54
Speaker 12: deer herd has fallen apart in this state and in
45:57
Speaker 12: other states is because the deer hunters have been so divided.
46:00
Speaker 12: If you go to Ohio and look at the topic
46:03
Speaker 12: of baiting deer, you know they're allowed to put bait
46:05
Speaker 12: piles out throughout season. There's that faction of deer hunters
46:09
Speaker 12: that are totally for it, and there's a total another
46:12
Speaker 12: group that's totally against it. And as long as those
46:15
Speaker 12: two groups are divided, they're never going to come to
46:19
Speaker 12: a consensus. And I think the issue that I've seen
46:23
Speaker 12: in Illinois is the people that are the loudest when
46:28
Speaker 12: an idea is presented. Are the people that do the least.
46:31
Speaker 12: They do nothing but get on social media and complain
46:35
Speaker 12: about another group, another hunting group. And all the DNR
46:39
Speaker 12: has to do to the legislators is say, look, these guys,
46:43
Speaker 12: here's our side of the issue, and we got all
46:47
Speaker 12: these guys supporting our side exactly. And so they've always
46:52
Speaker 12: no matter which side they take, they've always got a
46:54
Speaker 12: sizeable group on their side. And hunters have always been divided,
47:00
Speaker 12: always going to be divided. There's no way to unite them,
47:02
Speaker 12: absolutely no way. The only way to address this situation
47:06
Speaker 12: is for the serious hunters who care about the resource.
47:10
Speaker 12: And too many deer hunters don't care about the resource.
47:12
Speaker 12: All they care about is their own personal situation. You know,
47:15
Speaker 12: I don't have a place to hunt, blah blah blah.
47:18
Speaker 12: I want to shoot deer with the bazookah. So let's
47:21
Speaker 12: make that legal, no matter what it does to the resource.
47:24
Speaker 4: That's what's ruined this resource.
47:26
Speaker 12: And we need to bring the hunters and the farmers together,
47:30
Speaker 12: get the Farm Bureau behind us, and then we could
47:33
Speaker 12: institute some positive change.
47:35
Speaker 3: So what would you say to the person that says
47:37
Speaker 3: I love deer hunting, but I'll never spend money to
47:40
Speaker 3: buy a piece of ground to hunt deer. I'm going
47:43
Speaker 3: to hunt public, I'm going to hunt permission. The day
47:45
Speaker 3: I have to pay the hunt is the day I
47:46
Speaker 3: stop hunting.
47:47
Speaker 12: I've heard that before, Yeah, I have too, And I
47:51
Speaker 12: got news for those folks. The day's coming where they're
47:53
Speaker 12: not going to be hunting, like it or not. Hunting
47:56
Speaker 12: is becoming a rich man's sport in this country, and
47:59
Speaker 12: I don't don't like it personally because I was once
48:02
Speaker 12: that kid that didn't have two nickels to rub together.
48:06
Speaker 12: I'm the kid that and not just a kid. This
48:09
Speaker 12: was into my adult years. I couldn't afford the cheapest lease.
48:14
Speaker 12: I couldn't afford one hundred dollars a year for a lease.
48:18
Speaker 12: You know, I grew up My wife and I when
48:21
Speaker 12: we were first married, even we had our electricity shut off.
48:24
Speaker 4: Numerous times.
48:25
Speaker 12: I've documented that or told that story on podcasts and seminars,
48:29
Speaker 12: and so I understand the plight of the guy in
48:33
Speaker 12: that situation. I don't want hunting to become a rich
48:38
Speaker 12: man's sport because if it was a rich man's sport
48:40
Speaker 12: when I was young, I would never have been able
48:42
Speaker 12: to partake in it, So I don't ever.
48:44
Speaker 4: Want that to happen. But that's the road we're headed on.
48:48
Speaker 12: It's already there to some degree, but it's only going
48:51
Speaker 12: to get worse. It's going to get to the point
48:52
Speaker 12: where you own land or you don't hunt. I think
48:55
Speaker 12: even the leasing thing, more and more ground that would
48:59
Speaker 12: be east is being bought up by deer hunters to manage.
49:05
Speaker 12: And I've said it before, you know, a big reason
49:08
Speaker 12: for that is because of the management on the state
49:10
Speaker 12: wide level. The state has done such a poor job
49:13
Speaker 12: managing for quality. They manage for numbers. They don't manage
49:16
Speaker 12: for quality they want to. And I was actually sit
49:19
Speaker 12: in on a meeting where a DNR rep was there,
49:22
Speaker 12: and he specifically said, the way we manage is we
49:27
Speaker 12: see are herd at a certain number early in the fall,
49:30
Speaker 12: after the doze have had their fawns and raised them
49:32
Speaker 12: in the summer. We want to bring that number down
49:35
Speaker 12: to this number, and we don't care how it's done.
49:38
Speaker 12: We don't care if they're shot with guns or bows
49:40
Speaker 12: or hit by cars, or we don't care. We want
49:42
Speaker 12: this number to become this number, and we don't care
49:46
Speaker 12: which deer gets shot. We don't care if they shoot
49:49
Speaker 12: all dose or all bucks, or we don't care if
49:52
Speaker 12: they shoot fallns. We just want this number to become
49:55
Speaker 12: this number. And that's a terrible way to manage a resource,
50:00
Speaker 12: a big game herd. Yeah, and no matter if we're
50:03
Speaker 12: talking deer, big horned sheep, that's a terrible way to
50:06
Speaker 12: manage a big game herd. And that's exactly what's being done.
50:11
Speaker 12: And you know, it wouldn't take that many regulation changes
50:15
Speaker 12: to make Illinois the best, the best state in the
50:19
Speaker 12: whole country for deer.
50:21
Speaker 4: Once again, we were there. We were there.
50:23
Speaker 12: We blew Iowa away at one point, and we could
50:28
Speaker 12: get back there and it doesn't take much. And the
50:31
Speaker 12: thing that the state doesn't realize, the legislature doesn't realize,
50:35
Speaker 12: is that the value in our deer herd is not
50:38
Speaker 12: by the numbers of deer we have. People aren't coming
50:40
Speaker 12: here to hunt Illinois because we have lots of deer coming.
50:45
Speaker 12: They're coming here because of the size of the bucks
50:47
Speaker 12: that we used to have.
50:48
Speaker 4: Illinois is living on its past reputation.
50:51
Speaker 12: Hunters are coming to Illinois because of what Illinois was
50:54
Speaker 12: twenty thirty years ago and we're living on our past reputation.
50:58
Speaker 12: Those of us serious about it and who live here
51:01
Speaker 12: know that it gets worse every year. This year is
51:04
Speaker 12: worse than it was last year. Last year was worse
51:07
Speaker 12: than the year before. We're on a downhill slide and
51:10
Speaker 12: it's not turning around. I hate to say it, it's
51:15
Speaker 12: not turning around.
51:16
Speaker 2: What can one person do? What can one guy do?
51:19
Speaker 12: Oh, one guy can't do much, But I guess it
51:23
Speaker 12: starts with one person. One person needs to organize, and
51:25
Speaker 12: one person needs to get the Farm Bureau. And since
51:30
Speaker 12: they represent the farmers, they need to get the Farm
51:32
Speaker 12: Bureau at a table with a couple of deer hunters
51:35
Speaker 12: that totally understand deer management, not some guy that's looking
51:39
Speaker 12: to shoot more deer. Not some guy that's looking to
51:42
Speaker 12: legalize another weapon because he likes some you know, crazy
51:47
Speaker 12: strange weapon that shouldn't even be legal if you look
51:50
Speaker 12: at it. Only what have they done in the past
51:51
Speaker 12: twenty years. They've legalized crossbows. First it was just for disabled,
51:57
Speaker 12: and then they made it what it was only a
51:59
Speaker 12: half for a certain time, and then I think it
52:04
Speaker 12: was what you had to be sixty years or older
52:07
Speaker 12: and you could use a cross and it was just
52:10
Speaker 12: a way to get their foot in the door. They
52:12
Speaker 12: knew all along what they was going to do, but
52:14
Speaker 12: they didn't want to do it all at once. They
52:16
Speaker 12: wanted to do it a little bit of time so
52:18
Speaker 12: that we got to we didn't scream too loud. Yeah,
52:22
Speaker 12: And so then they made the crossbow legal during the
52:25
Speaker 12: entire archery season, and that was the last straw. And
52:29
Speaker 12: I've said it before, I'm not against crossbows. I think
52:32
Speaker 12: they ought to have their own season. I don't think
52:34
Speaker 12: they should be used during the full archery season. That's
52:37
Speaker 12: where the management of the resource comes in. And you
52:39
Speaker 12: can look at the firearms side. You know, they've started
52:42
Speaker 12: allowing rifles to be used during the Illinois firearm season,
52:46
Speaker 12: which was not used before. They've expanded seasons, They've created
52:50
Speaker 12: all these extra seasons, so the last weekend of the
52:54
Speaker 12: of the season, you know, if you've got any leftover tag,
52:57
Speaker 12: you can go out and shoot dose. I think we
53:00
Speaker 12: just about any weapon you can use, guns or bows
53:02
Speaker 12: or whatever, and it's all about killing more with more
53:07
Speaker 12: different weapons. And there's never been anything to address the
53:13
Speaker 12: biological side to keep those sex ratios, the buckdough ratios
53:16
Speaker 12: in line, there's never been anything to improve the aide
53:20
Speaker 12: structure of the herd. All the regulation changes have been
53:23
Speaker 12: about killing more, kill, kill, kill, and indiscriminately. It doesn't
53:27
Speaker 12: matter which year you kill, kill, kill kill. That's been
53:30
Speaker 12: the management philosophy of the Illinois DNR for the past
53:34
Speaker 12: thirty years. And again I keep repeating myself, but we've
53:40
Speaker 12: got to get the Farm Bureau and the deer hunters
53:42
Speaker 12: sitting at the same table to come up with solutions
53:45
Speaker 12: that benefit both sides of that table. And when we
53:48
Speaker 12: do that, we can all start moving forward.
53:51
Speaker 3: You mentioned you've never killed more than two bucks in
53:52
Speaker 3: a year, probably best for the resource. So do you
53:56
Speaker 3: think every hunter could not think selfishly about themselves but
54:01
Speaker 3: think what can they do best for the resource?
54:04
Speaker 4: Well?
54:05
Speaker 12: I think that asking every deer hunter to do what's
54:08
Speaker 12: right for the resource is a big ass that's never
54:11
Speaker 12: going to happen. And I don't think I'm not being
54:15
Speaker 12: pessimistic here, I'm being realistic. Based on my observations from
54:18
Speaker 12: the last forty eight years. I think deer hunters as
54:21
Speaker 12: a whole are a very selfish lot. All they care
54:25
Speaker 12: about themselves. Do I have a place to hunt? They
54:28
Speaker 12: don't care about their kids and their grandkids that aren't
54:30
Speaker 12: even born yet. Do I have a place to hunt
54:32
Speaker 12: this season? They don't care about the management of the
54:35
Speaker 12: deer herd.
54:37
Speaker 4: You can't even get guys to let young bucks go.
54:39
Speaker 12: They will shoot a young buck year after year, cut
54:42
Speaker 12: the antlers off and throw them out in the garage,
54:44
Speaker 12: and in the dog ends up running off with them
54:46
Speaker 12: and chewing them up. Why couldn't they let that deer
54:49
Speaker 12: go and shoot a dough to get the buck dough
54:51
Speaker 12: ratio more in line. The average deer hunter does not
54:54
Speaker 12: care about the proper management of the resource. And I
54:58
Speaker 12: hate to say it, but it's the true.
55:00
Speaker 2: And last, but not least. We have Mark Kenyon.
55:03
Speaker 3: Mark has been very instrumental of trying to be a
55:06
Speaker 3: voice in the world of conservation. And here's what he
55:09
Speaker 3: has to say.
55:10
Speaker 2: Here we go.
55:11
Speaker 3: You me one guy listening to this podcast. What can
55:16
Speaker 3: one person do to make the next twenty five years
55:19
Speaker 3: of deer hunting better than the last twenty five years.
55:24
Speaker 13: That's a big question.
55:28
Speaker 14: There are so many different specifics to this, but I
55:34
Speaker 14: think the generality, like the big picture answer that I
55:39
Speaker 14: would give is to zoom out beyond the self. But
55:46
Speaker 14: take ownership as an individual. So by that, I mean,
55:49
Speaker 14: I think if we want to make the next twenty
55:51
Speaker 14: five years of deer hunting better than the last, it's
55:53
Speaker 14: going to require I'll speak for myself rather than telling
55:56
Speaker 14: anyone else what they should do.
55:59
Speaker 13: I think that for me to do that, I.
56:02
Speaker 14: Need to stop thinking about just what would make my
56:06
Speaker 14: deer hunting better and instead think about what I could
56:08
Speaker 14: do to make everyone's deer hunting better and the situation
56:12
Speaker 14: better as a whole. By that, I mean one of
56:16
Speaker 14: the actions that I can take as an individual that
56:18
Speaker 14: will make sure that we have the opportunity to hunt,
56:21
Speaker 14: the right to hunt, and the resources to do so. So,
56:25
Speaker 14: how do we make sure that there are thriving wildlife
56:28
Speaker 14: populations and there are healthy habitats in open space and
56:32
Speaker 14: access to them. And I think it's about having that
56:35
Speaker 14: view beyond you. It's about having a long term view.
56:38
Speaker 14: It's about thinking about not just again what's going to
56:41
Speaker 14: impact me, but how does this impact to my kids
56:43
Speaker 14: and their friends and the rest of that next generation.
56:47
Speaker 14: And so there's a couple different ways to do this,
56:49
Speaker 14: and the key thing is like taking ownership, I think,
56:52
Speaker 14: I think hoping and wishing somebody else will do.
56:54
Speaker 13: It is a recipe for nothing happening.
56:58
Speaker 14: Complaining on social media, talking about how politicians suck all
57:03
Speaker 14: the time, like all of that stuff by itself not
57:05
Speaker 14: gonna achieve anything. Complaining about the DNA R not gonna
57:08
Speaker 14: achieve anything. So my approach is twofold one. I'm gonna
57:13
Speaker 14: do real dirt on the hands, action to make tangible,
57:18
Speaker 14: real impact on the ground, on the landscape in any
57:21
Speaker 14: way I can so. On the properties that I have
57:24
Speaker 14: influence over and manage, I'm gonna do whatever I can
57:27
Speaker 14: to improve the landscape for all wildlife. I think it's
57:29
Speaker 14: really important for me personally to remember that you can't
57:34
Speaker 14: look at the natural world.
57:35
Speaker 13: As like a species by species thing. What impacts do
57:39
Speaker 13: you like?
57:39
Speaker 14: Maybe deer we're most excited about, But deer are tied
57:44
Speaker 14: to vegetation, which are tied to bugs, which are tied
57:47
Speaker 14: to birds, which are tied to small mammals, which are
57:50
Speaker 14: tied to dirt, which are tied.
57:52
Speaker 13: To all of these different things.
57:52
Speaker 14: You know, there's this famous quote from I think John
57:54
Speaker 14: Murra says something like pull out any one thread in
57:57
Speaker 14: the world and you'll find it connected to everything else. Truly,
58:00
Speaker 14: everything out there is intertwined, and so I personally am trying.
58:05
Speaker 13: To zoom out when I look at.
58:07
Speaker 14: The landscapes that I influence over and try to make
58:09
Speaker 14: improvements and to make land management decisions that are good
58:13
Speaker 14: not just for well I kill at one point fifty,
58:15
Speaker 14: but are like, Hey, what's the best thing for all
58:18
Speaker 14: of the wildlife hut here? What's the best thing for
58:19
Speaker 14: the health of this native ecosystem? So how can I
58:22
Speaker 14: make decisions when I'm trying to improve the timber or
58:25
Speaker 14: improve the food, or improve early secessional habitat, so that
58:29
Speaker 14: I do something that improves my deer hunting opportunities, but
58:32
Speaker 14: it's also good for up the birds, and it's also
58:34
Speaker 14: good for songbirds and the insects and butterflies and everything
58:38
Speaker 14: else out here, because if you do that, you have
58:41
Speaker 14: all of these trickle down effects that are much more
58:43
Speaker 14: long lasting. If you're helping everything, it's going to come
58:45
Speaker 14: back and help your deer hunting, it's going to come
58:47
Speaker 14: back and help your deer, turkeys, et cetera. So I'm
58:51
Speaker 14: going to do anything I can on the lands that
58:53
Speaker 14: I managed to make tangible, real impact.
58:56
Speaker 13: Right now, I'm going to go and.
58:57
Speaker 14: Also do the same things where possible on the publicans
59:00
Speaker 14: because public land access is incredibly important, not just for
59:03
Speaker 14: me personally, but also for the future of hunting because
59:06
Speaker 14: access is getting harder and harder. New hunters increasingly need
59:10
Speaker 14: public land to get started. If we don't have quality
59:13
Speaker 14: public land and healthy habitat out there, those new hunters
59:17
Speaker 14: aren't going to stick with it. They're not going to
59:18
Speaker 14: get involved in this thing. They're not going to care
59:20
Speaker 14: about this thing, They're not going to advocate for this thing.
59:23
Speaker 14: So I'm volunteering on public lands to try to improve access, opportunity,
59:27
Speaker 14: habitat out there as well. It's all connected again, right,
59:31
Speaker 14: there's spillover from private land to public land, from public
59:34
Speaker 14: land to private land. It's important to remember that wildlife
59:37
Speaker 14: is a public resource right, so whether it's whoever's property
59:41
Speaker 14: is on, it is a public resource managed in the
59:45
Speaker 14: trust of the public for us. It's managed by the
59:47
Speaker 14: state for us the people. So I'm doing what I.
59:51
Speaker 13: Can in the tangible reu way.
59:53
Speaker 14: On top of that, I am also trying to be
59:56
Speaker 14: educated and active when it comes to advocating things at
1:00:00
Speaker 14: the high level because there's like stuff.
1:00:01
Speaker 13: We can do as individuals on the ground.
1:00:03
Speaker 14: But then there's also decisions made by the federal government
1:00:06
Speaker 14: or the state government or the state while you know
1:00:08
Speaker 14: fishing game agencies or the different land management agencies.
1:00:12
Speaker 13: There's all these.
1:00:13
Speaker 14: Different groups that manage our resources, whether it be our
1:00:17
Speaker 14: public wildlife resource or be public lands or even you
1:00:21
Speaker 14: know these agencies that help incentivize and manage private land
1:00:25
Speaker 14: conservation right, farm bill stuff, all that. So, all of
1:00:28
Speaker 14: those things have a huge impact on our hunting opportunities,
1:00:33
Speaker 14: on habitat quality, on the future of wildlife, deer, all
1:00:37
Speaker 14: these different things. And it's easy to think that that
1:00:40
Speaker 14: is all outside of our control and just all dealt
1:00:43
Speaker 14: with by some boogeyman in Washington, d C. And maybe
1:00:46
Speaker 14: that's the case sometimes, But if you are not participating
1:00:50
Speaker 14: in that process, you're just as much kind of at
1:00:53
Speaker 14: fault as anyone out.
1:00:54
Speaker 13: There who is making the decisions.
1:00:55
Speaker 14: If you are standing outside of me and completely and
1:00:58
Speaker 14: ignoring it or pretending it's not happening, or not in
1:01:02
Speaker 14: some ways speaking up about it, how can you complain
1:01:05
Speaker 14: about so? I think just as important as like working
1:01:08
Speaker 14: the ground, yourself is working whatever they out but working
1:01:12
Speaker 14: you're working.
1:01:12
Speaker 13: The grounds in the clouds.
1:01:13
Speaker 14: I don't know the ground in the clouds, like advocacy,
1:01:18
Speaker 14: calling your elected officials, going to Natural Resource Commission meetings
1:01:22
Speaker 14: of your state, speaking to your state game agency, making
1:01:25
Speaker 14: sure that they understand what's happening in your neck of
1:01:28
Speaker 14: the woods, or understanding the needs and desires or challenges
1:01:32
Speaker 14: of the boat wunting community or the waterfowl community, or
1:01:34
Speaker 14: what's going on in the turkeys, or you know, engagement, advocacy,
1:01:39
Speaker 14: having a voice. All that stuff really really matters in
1:01:42
Speaker 14: the hunting and fishing community. When we all kind of
1:01:46
Speaker 14: recognize issues and we stand up and speak out together,
1:01:50
Speaker 14: we really can change things. But most of the time
1:01:53
Speaker 14: our community is so focused on just doing our own
1:01:55
Speaker 14: thing that we generally don't get involve in that. And
1:01:58
Speaker 14: that's a mistake for the future because in the future
1:02:01
Speaker 14: there's there's so many other pressures. There's so many other
1:02:04
Speaker 14: things going on right now that impact hunting and fishing
1:02:07
Speaker 14: in the outdoors and deer, but are being decided on
1:02:11
Speaker 14: by people who have no connection to it. They really
1:02:14
Speaker 14: don't care about it because they're worried about totally different things.
1:02:16
Speaker 14: They have other priorities, perspectives. It's like a foreign concept
1:02:19
Speaker 14: to them. We are the folks who understand it, who
1:02:22
Speaker 14: live it, who really deeply care about it. But we're
1:02:24
Speaker 14: a small slice of the population, you know, four percent
1:02:27
Speaker 14: or something like that. So if we don't make a
1:02:30
Speaker 14: concerted effort to be really active and really engaged, you know,
1:02:34
Speaker 14: this stuff will just be completely off the radar of
1:02:37
Speaker 14: the people who are ninety six percent of the nation
1:02:40
Speaker 14: and very easily could vote against us or just do
1:02:42
Speaker 14: something out of total disregard that has huge ramifications for
1:02:46
Speaker 14: the next twenty five years.
1:02:47
Speaker 13: So we got to do the work on the ground.
1:02:50
Speaker 14: We've got to do the work in the halls and
1:02:52
Speaker 14: the capitals and at the you know, the Zoom meeting,
1:02:57
Speaker 14: commission meeting, whatever it is. Like, we need to be
1:02:59
Speaker 14: active across If we do that, if we go maybe
1:03:03
Speaker 14: the biggest thing here is this. I think for a
1:03:06
Speaker 14: long time, hunters and anglers have thought, you know, by
1:03:10
Speaker 14: the license. I did my part. Now I want to
1:03:12
Speaker 14: go do my thing, have fun. That used to be
1:03:14
Speaker 14: enough to check the boxes like I'm a hunter, I'm
1:03:16
Speaker 14: a conservationist.
1:03:17
Speaker 13: I bought my license. I've made that contribution.
1:03:19
Speaker 14: I don't think that's gonna be enough if we want
1:03:21
Speaker 14: to keep this stuff around for the next twenty five years.
1:03:24
Speaker 14: I think also when you say, Okay, I'm a hunter
1:03:27
Speaker 14: and I want to go kill deer, whether or not
1:03:29
Speaker 14: we want this to be the case, is kind of
1:03:31
Speaker 14: the reality moving forward. You also are going to have
1:03:34
Speaker 14: to become an advocate, whether that be with your hands
1:03:37
Speaker 14: or with your voice. We have to work for these
1:03:40
Speaker 14: things if we want the next twenty five years to
1:03:42
Speaker 14: be better, because there's so many other things that are
1:03:45
Speaker 14: coming at us that are trying to take that away,
1:03:47
Speaker 14: whether it be a tax on the rights to hunt,
1:03:50
Speaker 14: or just all these pressures on land and habitat disappearing,
1:03:54
Speaker 14: or the many of the things that are impacting wildlife
1:03:56
Speaker 14: disease go on all so we cimainly have to be
1:04:01
Speaker 14: engaged if we want to keep this wrong.
1:04:03
Speaker 3: I think that's a sobering response there and should be
1:04:07
Speaker 3: something for everyone to have a planet attack as one person,
1:04:09
Speaker 3: because I think that collectively there's a lot of impact
1:04:13
Speaker 3: that can be done. And I think that there's obviously
1:04:15
Speaker 3: some division and some different styles of hunting and what
1:04:18
Speaker 3: people think, but I think overall we all want the
1:04:20
Speaker 3: resource to be better.
1:04:21
Speaker 2: I think everyone wants that, and so that's the roadmap.
1:04:25
Speaker 3: That we get pointed in the right direction, and that
1:04:28
Speaker 3: concludes the back forty mini series. And so I appreciate
1:04:32
Speaker 3: the opportunity. I've really enjoyed diving into all these questions
1:04:36
Speaker 3: with so many people I have so much respect for,
1:04:38
Speaker 3: and getting to learn firsthand and catching up with all
1:04:40
Speaker 3: those different folks. So I appreciate the opportunity, and I
1:04:42
Speaker 3: hope everyone really enjoyed it. And there's so many more
1:04:46
Speaker 3: now what's white till the lemmas? And so many other
1:04:49
Speaker 3: questions that happened every single day throughout the whole year.
1:04:53
Speaker 2: So I just want to say thank you.
1:04:54
Speaker 13: Hey, you're welcome. I appreciate you spearheading this.
1:04:56
Speaker 14: I'm so excited to go back and listen to everybody
1:04:59
Speaker 14: else's answers, and I think this is going to be
1:05:02
Speaker 14: a format that folks are really going to learn from.
1:05:04
Speaker 13: And there's a lot more Jake.
1:05:06
Speaker 2: We'll see and we'll see what happens.
1:05:07
Speaker 14: Yeah, speaking of hopefully folks you are not sick of
1:05:11
Speaker 14: hearing Jake, because there's more of Jake to come this year.
1:05:13
Speaker 13: I'm wired to hunt.
1:05:15
Speaker 14: Hopefully you're aware of our rough Fresh radio mini series,
1:05:19
Speaker 14: in which we get in season reports from deer hunters
1:05:22
Speaker 14: all across the country on what's happening out there every
1:05:25
Speaker 14: single week, and this year, Jake, you are hosting rough Fresh.
1:05:28
Speaker 14: I'm excited about that. Thanks for taking up the mantle. Yeah,
1:05:31
Speaker 14: are you ready for that?
1:05:33
Speaker 2: I'm ready or not? Here I come.
1:05:35
Speaker 3: I think it's a great format and it's fun to
1:05:37
Speaker 3: hear what's happening all across the country, and I think
1:05:39
Speaker 3: there's a lot of value for people to get a
1:05:41
Speaker 3: really concise idea of Okay, this guy from Michigan. I'm
1:05:45
Speaker 3: from Michigan. This is what his plan is for the
1:05:47
Speaker 3: next couple of days. This is what he's anticipating. This
1:05:49
Speaker 3: is what he saw two days ago, and I'm hunting tomorrow.
1:05:52
Speaker 3: I think there's a lot of value and it's going
1:05:54
Speaker 3: to be fun. I live in my own little echo
1:05:56
Speaker 3: chamber with my own friends, and you know this, doing
1:05:58
Speaker 3: my own rough Fresh and where I'm at, and it'll
1:06:01
Speaker 3: be fun to expand that and learn more from a
1:06:03
Speaker 3: lot of different people. So I'm really looking forward to it.
1:06:06
Speaker 3: And the fall is gonna fly by, and I'm really excited.
1:06:08
Speaker 13: Yeah.
1:06:08
Speaker 14: So that's gonna be every Wednesday basically from here on
1:06:11
Speaker 14: out through the end of the season Rough Fresh Radio
1:06:14
Speaker 14: with Jake Hofer.
1:06:15
Speaker 2: There you guys have it.
1:06:16
Speaker 3: I hope you enjoyed the Back forty series. I really
1:06:19
Speaker 3: appreciated all the guests that took the time to answer
1:06:22
Speaker 3: each and every question.
1:06:23
Speaker 2: Here.
1:06:23
Speaker 3: We had the bonus episode on the white Tail podcast
1:06:25
Speaker 3: that is Live that was back when we launched this series,
1:06:28
Speaker 3: and it's been a lot of fun. I hope you
1:06:29
Speaker 3: guys have got some key pieces of insight as we
1:06:32
Speaker 3: roll into the season. Each week was developed to have
1:06:35
Speaker 3: an approach that likely everyone is facing to some capacity.
1:06:38
Speaker 2: Maybe it's the field, food plots.
1:06:39
Speaker 3: We still haven't had much rain, Maybe you've got access
1:06:42
Speaker 3: to a new area. All these different things and different
1:06:44
Speaker 3: challenges we face as we build up to the season.
1:06:47
Speaker 3: I hope everyone got one or two things that they
1:06:49
Speaker 3: can keep in the back of their mind to have
1:06:50
Speaker 3: a better White Tail season this upcoming year. And next
1:06:53
Speaker 3: week we're gonna be kicking off Retfresh and so I
1:06:55
Speaker 3: just want to say thank you to everyone that tuned
1:06:57
Speaker 3: in on the Back forty series and we'll see it