Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 350: Can Whitetail Habitat Managers Do Better? with Lindsay Thomas Jr.

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Ep. 350: Can Whitetail Habitat Managers Do Better? with Lindsay Thomas Jr. · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the wire to Hunt podcast, your home for
0:06
Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
0:12
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm
0:17
Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan, and this episode number three and
0:20
Speaker 1: fifty and today in the show, I'm joined by Lindsay
0:23
Speaker 1: Thomas Jr. Of the Quality Deer Management Association for a
0:26
Speaker 1: terrific and varied conversation about white tail habitat, improvement, in
0:31
Speaker 1: conservation and how we can all do better. Hello, my friends,
0:38
Speaker 1: and welcome to the Wired Hunt podcast, brought to you
0:41
Speaker 1: by on X. Today we've got Lindsay Thomas Jr. Here
0:45
Speaker 1: on the show, and Lindsay is the communications director over
0:49
Speaker 1: at the q D MAY. He is a terrific outdoor
0:51
Speaker 1: writer and an avid deer hunter and habitat worker from Georgia,
0:55
Speaker 1: and today I'm chatting with him on a variety of
0:57
Speaker 1: habitat and conservation related topics, things such as whether or
1:01
Speaker 1: not we should really care about controlling non native or
1:04
Speaker 1: invasive species, or why and how hunters can get better
1:09
Speaker 1: plant identification, or ideas for planting lower impact, environmentally friendly
1:14
Speaker 1: food plots. There's just lots and lots of interesting things here.
1:17
Speaker 1: To cover, and I think I think there should be said.
1:21
Speaker 1: I think there's there's a lot of content out there
1:22
Speaker 1: today teaching us how to create quick, fix, fast and
1:26
Speaker 1: easy habitat improvements that maybe help are hunting a bit
1:29
Speaker 1: here and there. But if there's any overarching message that
1:32
Speaker 1: I can take from the conversation I have with Lindsay,
1:35
Speaker 1: it was that we can we can do better. Whether
1:39
Speaker 1: it's food plots or timber management, or dealing with weeds
1:42
Speaker 1: and shrubs and non native plants, we all probably have
1:46
Speaker 1: room to do just a little bit better for the
1:49
Speaker 1: deer and other wildlife and for the larger environment that
1:52
Speaker 1: we all enjoy as hunters. And that's that's an admirable
1:56
Speaker 1: and worthwhile goal to strive towards. So with that going mind,
2:01
Speaker 1: that is what we're in chat about. Let's get right
2:04
Speaker 1: into it with the one and only Lindsay Thomas Jr.
2:09
Speaker 1: Alright with me on the line now, is Lindsay Thomas Jr. Lindsay,
2:14
Speaker 1: it's Grace talked to again, you too. Mark. It's it's
2:17
Speaker 1: good to be to be back on wire to hunt,
2:19
Speaker 1: and I hope you're doing well. Yeah, you know, we're
2:22
Speaker 1: just talking before we start recording that you know, I'm
2:24
Speaker 1: doing about as well as you can ask for right now,
2:27
Speaker 1: given us it's spring, We're in the middle of the
2:31
Speaker 1: coronavirus pandemic and all the various impacts of that. So
2:36
Speaker 1: so yeah, I mean, I think I can't complain too
2:40
Speaker 1: much because I'm healthy, my family is healthy, and we're
2:43
Speaker 1: still able to pay the bills. So that's about as
2:46
Speaker 1: good as you could ask for. Think, Um, how about you.
2:49
Speaker 1: You guys are doing all right? It sounds like, yeah,
2:52
Speaker 1: we're doing okay. You know, family wise doing fine. Qutu
2:55
Speaker 1: May is doing okay. Of course, facing struggles that unique
3:00
Speaker 1: conservation nonprofit conservation organization is looking at right now. But
3:04
Speaker 1: other than that, you know, the whole team and my family,
3:07
Speaker 1: everybody's okay getting by. You know, we're seeing, like you said,
3:12
Speaker 1: everybody in America is struggling right now to some degree. Um,
3:16
Speaker 1: we're seeing a lot of people step up to the
3:18
Speaker 1: plate and helping others and that's good to see. Um,
3:21
Speaker 1: you know, we want to help our our health care providers.
3:24
Speaker 1: Seeing seeing what those people are doing on a day
3:26
Speaker 1: to day basis is pretty incredible. So, you know, kind
3:30
Speaker 1: of seeing what folks are doing for each other through
3:32
Speaker 1: this has been good. But yeah, everybody just like you,
3:37
Speaker 1: like me, and everybody else to some extent is struggling
3:40
Speaker 1: with this, some some more than others. And but yeah,
3:44
Speaker 1: everybody here's okay, Yeah it is. It is. Um. The
3:48
Speaker 1: one silver lining, like you just mentioned, is is seeing
3:51
Speaker 1: people step up to play, seeing people rally together. Um.
3:54
Speaker 1: It's it's unfortunate that sometimes it takes uh tragedies of
4:00
Speaker 1: kind to bring folks together. But I hope if if
4:04
Speaker 1: one small tiny thing we can take out of this
4:06
Speaker 1: is maybe it brings the country back together in certain ways,
4:09
Speaker 1: and and I think we're seeing examples of that, so
4:12
Speaker 1: so that's good. Um, it's something you mentioned I do
4:15
Speaker 1: want to hear a little bit more about because something
4:17
Speaker 1: that's been on my mind, which is, you know, how
4:20
Speaker 1: the q m A is holding up and how conservation
4:23
Speaker 1: organizations in general are weathering this storm, because I mean,
4:28
Speaker 1: so many businesses are really really um having a tough
4:32
Speaker 1: time at it given the variety of different regulations and
4:35
Speaker 1: shutdowns and lockdowns in place. I've always assumed that conservation
4:40
Speaker 1: organizations are feeling that in a big way too. Um, Right,
4:46
Speaker 1: is that the case? How are things going? How is
4:48
Speaker 1: this impacting you guys? Yeah, I mean it's um, it's
4:52
Speaker 1: an impact and all I think I can speak for
4:54
Speaker 1: all nonprofit conservation organizations when I say it's tough times
4:58
Speaker 1: right now, it's lean times right now. Nonprofits you know,
5:02
Speaker 1: as you know, we we play it close to the
5:04
Speaker 1: margins all the time, even during good times, because UM,
5:09
Speaker 1: you know, our job is to put the money we
5:12
Speaker 1: make back into our mission, back into conservation and constantly
5:16
Speaker 1: be able to show our members and supporters that there
5:20
Speaker 1: are contributions to us, UM aren't going in a bank
5:24
Speaker 1: account somewhere that they are taking you know, making action,
5:27
Speaker 1: accomplishing things for white tails in our case, UM, but
5:32
Speaker 1: particularly UM. You know, like many conservation organizations, events are
5:37
Speaker 1: a big part of our mission work and our fundraising. UM.
5:41
Speaker 1: And that's true for almost all conservation groups. You know,
5:45
Speaker 1: we all of us have played over time with you know,
5:47
Speaker 1: online fundraising and digital gatherings of various types, but it
5:52
Speaker 1: was still UH, events and banquets and fundraising, the things
5:58
Speaker 1: where people gathered. We're still a big part of the
6:02
Speaker 1: pie there on the income side for all of us.
6:05
Speaker 1: And so you know, when when this all hit, UM,
6:09
Speaker 1: we managed to pull off our White Tail Weekend, which
6:12
Speaker 1: you know you ended up you were supposed to come
6:14
Speaker 1: to White Tail Weekend on March fourteenth, and the travel
6:18
Speaker 1: restrictions at the last minute you had to pull out
6:20
Speaker 1: of that, and a lot of people did. We went
6:22
Speaker 1: ahead with it because the day, you know, the day
6:25
Speaker 1: we were rolling and the thing was started in people
6:27
Speaker 1: in town. For example, here in Anthon's, Georgia, the University
6:31
Speaker 1: of Georgia was still open um. You know, the governor
6:34
Speaker 1: had not yet done a sheltering place regulation or any
6:38
Speaker 1: of that. And literally the day after we finished the event,
6:41
Speaker 1: that's when all that stuff changed, and the university clothed
6:44
Speaker 1: and the governor you know, did a press conference and
6:47
Speaker 1: things started closing up. So you know, if we scheduled
6:52
Speaker 1: that thing a week later, we have had to cancel it,
6:54
Speaker 1: I feel sure. But on that Monday, we came in
6:56
Speaker 1: the office and postponed about two months worth of our
7:00
Speaker 1: If you made branch events around the country, it's going
7:03
Speaker 1: to end up being longer than that, you know, before
7:05
Speaker 1: it's over. And you've seen the same thing among all
7:08
Speaker 1: the other non concert nonprofit conservation groups. They're they're shuttering
7:12
Speaker 1: these in person events. You know, I saw that that
7:15
Speaker 1: country hunters and anglers had to close their June Randee
7:18
Speaker 1: boos completely. UM. I was talking with Shawn Curran was
7:22
Speaker 1: Rough Grosse Society late last week and about this thing.
7:26
Speaker 1: And you know, for the Rough Grouse Society, for example,
7:29
Speaker 1: this has hit them at at during one of their
7:31
Speaker 1: peaks of banquet activity. Uh, Turkey Federation, you know, spring
7:35
Speaker 1: is a big time for them. So it it's not
7:38
Speaker 1: the peak of our banquet season right now, but we
7:41
Speaker 1: still have banquets on going on. We still have spring
7:43
Speaker 1: banquets and they are a big part of our income picture.
7:47
Speaker 1: UM for a deer organization. You know, spring is a
7:49
Speaker 1: slow time of year anyway. Folks are turkey hunting, they're
7:53
Speaker 1: thinking about fishing. UM. You know, we still talk a
7:55
Speaker 1: lot about habitat at that time. But you're about as
7:58
Speaker 1: far in any directions, any direction as you can get
8:00
Speaker 1: from a deer season looking back or looking forward. So
8:03
Speaker 1: it's um always a slow time of year for us.
8:05
Speaker 1: But still without those banquets, it was in a pretty
8:08
Speaker 1: big financial hit and we are taking steps. We we
8:14
Speaker 1: did furlough temporarily uh some employees. UM. We are hoping
8:19
Speaker 1: to bring them back home soon. But that was part
8:21
Speaker 1: of the sort of stop stop gap measure of of
8:24
Speaker 1: making up that difference. And we are, uh, we've we've
8:28
Speaker 1: launched a number of raffles, We're working on a number
8:31
Speaker 1: of online auction um coming soon and essentially jumping out
8:36
Speaker 1: there and just promoting every possible other thing we can
8:39
Speaker 1: do to keep to make up the difference in that
8:41
Speaker 1: income um that works you know, remotely and online. Uh.
8:47
Speaker 1: And that's what you're seeing all of the conservation organizations do.
8:51
Speaker 1: And it's you know, it can be. I'll be honest
8:54
Speaker 1: with you, it's it's um. Conservation is still important and
8:59
Speaker 1: always will be. But when you see when you look
9:01
Speaker 1: out there around the country and you see healthcare providers
9:04
Speaker 1: who need masks, and you know, folks who are hungry,
9:11
Speaker 1: and school kids who aren't getting their free school meals
9:13
Speaker 1: who you know, in some cases means they don't get
9:15
Speaker 1: a meal, it does make you stop and go, you know, uh,
9:24
Speaker 1: asking for money for white tails. I struggle with that.
9:28
Speaker 1: But um, you know, all I know to do is
9:32
Speaker 1: to tell folks, look, meet your community needs first, you know,
9:36
Speaker 1: give to share venison with neighbors, and give to what
9:39
Speaker 1: you can give to to your local community. Philanthropy, and
9:43
Speaker 1: if you can still support qtumy when that's over, if
9:46
Speaker 1: you can still support the other species groups and land
9:49
Speaker 1: conservation groups, help them to because we also, you know,
9:55
Speaker 1: need to stay viable through this process and emerge on
9:58
Speaker 1: the other side of it healthy and ready to pick
10:01
Speaker 1: up where we left off with, you know, full time
10:04
Speaker 1: conservation work. You know that said, what we've also pointed
10:08
Speaker 1: out is there's a ton of little ways you can
10:10
Speaker 1: help people like us groups like us. You know, even
10:13
Speaker 1: if if you're ordering stuff from Amazon, you know, have
10:17
Speaker 1: you have you used Amazon Smile, which lets you designate
10:21
Speaker 1: a nonprofit or charity of your choice, and every time
10:24
Speaker 1: you buy something and order something through Amazon, you get
10:28
Speaker 1: the same price, but Amazon kicks a little bit of
10:30
Speaker 1: your purchase back to that group. So you could set
10:32
Speaker 1: Q to you maaze your Amazon Smile preference and every
10:35
Speaker 1: time you order something we get you know, a little
10:38
Speaker 1: bit of change. You can do that with any group.
10:40
Speaker 1: So there's there's lots of little small ways out there
10:44
Speaker 1: that you can support us and support other groups that
10:46
Speaker 1: we've been talking about. It didn't have to be a
10:48
Speaker 1: big cash donation um or becoming a member, you know,
10:52
Speaker 1: things like that so all of us, all of the
10:54
Speaker 1: nonprofit world, are looking for ways to to do that,
10:57
Speaker 1: to continue helping our communities and but at the same
11:01
Speaker 1: time survived through this, continue doing important work for the
11:05
Speaker 1: species we're working on. UM. You know, during this chronic
11:09
Speaker 1: waste and disease is not going to go away. Hunter
11:12
Speaker 1: numbers are not going to you know, become less of
11:14
Speaker 1: an issue than they were before. An habitat conservation and
11:18
Speaker 1: all the other issues we're working on. UM, those problems
11:21
Speaker 1: aren't going to go away. We want to keep working
11:23
Speaker 1: on them. So so staying healthy, staying viable through this
11:26
Speaker 1: is you know. The other thing too, I would say, Mark,
11:29
Speaker 1: is that in talking with other folks and other conservation
11:32
Speaker 1: groups and friends in the in the industry, what we've
11:35
Speaker 1: also all pointed out and realized is that the challenges
11:40
Speaker 1: of this period are going to make us come up
11:42
Speaker 1: with creative new ways to do business that we may
11:47
Speaker 1: stick with after this is over. UM, it may completely change,
11:51
Speaker 1: and I think it probably will. This may completely change
11:53
Speaker 1: the way nonprofit conservation groups do business. It's going to
11:56
Speaker 1: change the way a lot of America does business after this,
11:59
Speaker 1: even after the disease is no longer a threat. So
12:03
Speaker 1: there will be some good that comes out of this,
12:05
Speaker 1: you know, us being forced to learn some new digital
12:09
Speaker 1: ways to reach people in fundraise and UM get our
12:14
Speaker 1: message out and do our work. UM. That's that's going
12:17
Speaker 1: to be beneficial in the end. Yeah, speaking of of
12:20
Speaker 1: things going increasingly digital, I know that you guys have
12:24
Speaker 1: have put a lot of time and effort into the
12:26
Speaker 1: digital Dear Steward one of course, and that's something that
12:31
Speaker 1: people might have a little more time at home and
12:34
Speaker 1: available free time to engage with something like that. And
12:38
Speaker 1: that's also a way to support what you guys are
12:40
Speaker 1: doing too. Is that something you can explain a little
12:42
Speaker 1: bit about. Yeah, you know, UM, and you've been involved
12:46
Speaker 1: with our Dear Steward course, which is our kind of
12:48
Speaker 1: advanced dear training UM and Level one is uh. We
12:53
Speaker 1: used to do it in person, but a few years
12:55
Speaker 1: ago we went totally online with Level one. We videoed
12:59
Speaker 1: UM one of the events and UM all of the
13:04
Speaker 1: speakers giving their PowerPoint presentations, and we and Clemson University
13:08
Speaker 1: helped us get it online so that anyone can go
13:12
Speaker 1: any hour of the day or week, can sign up,
13:14
Speaker 1: pay and get your keys and blog on and start
13:17
Speaker 1: watching the videos. At home. It's like sixteen hours of
13:20
Speaker 1: instruction from various speakers. So this was already in place, UM,
13:25
Speaker 1: we wanted to be able to reach more people with
13:27
Speaker 1: it who couldn't travel to do an in person Level
13:29
Speaker 1: one class. We kept Level two in person. That is
13:32
Speaker 1: still the you know, the hands on event where you
13:36
Speaker 1: go and you spend a weekend with these instructors and
13:38
Speaker 1: you're outdoors and you're you know, planning food plots in
13:41
Speaker 1: burning woods and aging jawbones and you know all of
13:45
Speaker 1: the hands on type stuff um that you that you
13:49
Speaker 1: really can't dig into in an online class. But Level
13:51
Speaker 1: one is online sixteen hours of instruction. We did go
13:55
Speaker 1: in and reduce the price some to kind of help
13:57
Speaker 1: folks out during this bunchtime because we're all looking at
14:02
Speaker 1: you know, financial crunches some extent. And but you know,
14:06
Speaker 1: if you're stuck at home, you're sheltering at home, and
14:09
Speaker 1: and you've painted the entire interior of your house, and
14:15
Speaker 1: you've rebuilt the deck and you know, done um everything else,
14:20
Speaker 1: mode the lawn uh twenty times and you really just
14:25
Speaker 1: want something else to do. Read all the books in
14:27
Speaker 1: your bookcase uh and finished all of Netflix. Then you know,
14:31
Speaker 1: this is a great way to um learn about deer hunting,
14:36
Speaker 1: uh and become a dear ninja at home with these
14:40
Speaker 1: instructors watching these video instructions. You know, it's not reading,
14:43
Speaker 1: it's not it's uh, you know, pretty fun video. It's
14:47
Speaker 1: pretty informative and fun instruction. Uh. So yeah, we're putting
14:52
Speaker 1: that out there. It's we were very fortunate that was
14:54
Speaker 1: already set up in online and we didn't have to
14:56
Speaker 1: create that too, uh to deal with this situation. We
15:00
Speaker 1: could jump right on it and say, hey, you know,
15:02
Speaker 1: drop the price a little bit to help folks out
15:03
Speaker 1: and great way to uh to learn about deer while
15:08
Speaker 1: you're stuck at home. Well, like you mentioned, I got
15:10
Speaker 1: to be a part of one of those in person
15:12
Speaker 1: classes I don't know about a decade ago now, which
15:16
Speaker 1: is kind of crazy, and that was that was such
15:19
Speaker 1: an important education event for me just in my growth
15:24
Speaker 1: as a deer hunter and as a communicator. And it's
15:26
Speaker 1: one of those first was early early in my in
15:28
Speaker 1: my career, I guess, and so so helpful. I mean,
15:32
Speaker 1: it's not just deer hunting. I mean we're talking dear biology,
15:36
Speaker 1: dear you know, habitat needs um. I mean it's just
15:40
Speaker 1: just fascinating, fascinating stuff. I I thought it was very
15:44
Speaker 1: very well worth the time. I think I think if somebody,
15:48
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, if they if it got the deck
15:49
Speaker 1: done and the honey deal list is checked off, I
15:52
Speaker 1: would highly recommend checking out this course because if if
15:55
Speaker 1: you love deer and deer hunting and you want to
15:57
Speaker 1: better understand the creature, their needs, how we can help,
16:01
Speaker 1: how we can hunt them, all that kind of stuff,
16:03
Speaker 1: There's gonna be a few resources I can think of
16:06
Speaker 1: that are probably, um probably better than this. So how
16:10
Speaker 1: do they How do folks find this if they want
16:12
Speaker 1: to sign up for the course and participate, how do
16:14
Speaker 1: they get in there? The real easy shortcut we set
16:18
Speaker 1: up is qtum a dot com slash d S one
16:22
Speaker 1: as in dear Stewart ds one after qtmy dot com.
16:26
Speaker 1: You can also just go to the qt May homepage
16:28
Speaker 1: and look under the conserve menu and you'll find dear
16:31
Speaker 1: Steward with all of the stuff. The in person classes.
16:34
Speaker 1: UM we did have a May level two course in
16:38
Speaker 1: Alabama that we have postponed. UM. I believe we've still
16:42
Speaker 1: got a habitat module in Pennsylvania in August. UM. So
16:48
Speaker 1: that's still going on at this point may not be postponed,
16:51
Speaker 1: so all of them. You can find out all about
16:52
Speaker 1: the dear stewart stuff at the in the conserve menu,
16:56
Speaker 1: or like I said, go straight to the online level
16:58
Speaker 1: one class at q d M a dot com slash
17:02
Speaker 1: ds one and you sign up online, um, and you know,
17:06
Speaker 1: dive in immediately with the videos. It's all as you know,
17:10
Speaker 1: and you've taken the course. Our instructors are professors, wild apologists.
17:15
Speaker 1: This is all science based stuff, um, but all deer hunters. UM.
17:19
Speaker 1: I've even we've had folks with state agencies reach out
17:24
Speaker 1: to us in the last few weeks and ask about
17:27
Speaker 1: getting their staff signed up to take this while they're
17:30
Speaker 1: stuck at home. So um, you know some of your
17:33
Speaker 1: professional deer managers and your state agency are deer stewards.
17:37
Speaker 1: So this is yeah, it's top level, reliable, science based information,
17:42
Speaker 1: just like everything else we put out. Yeah, it's it's
17:44
Speaker 1: it's good. It's not a knucklehead like me try and
17:46
Speaker 1: tell you what to do. It's it's the real deal.
17:48
Speaker 1: So highie highly recommended. UM. With with that in mind,
17:53
Speaker 1: kind of this this uh holistic educational opportunity, you guys
18:00
Speaker 1: other with DS one that that's also why I want
18:03
Speaker 1: to talk to you, Lindsay right now, because there's not
18:08
Speaker 1: you know, we we can't go traveling all over the
18:10
Speaker 1: country right now for a lot of people. Um, we
18:13
Speaker 1: can't for a lot of people go to work as normal.
18:17
Speaker 1: But something that hopefully many of us can still do
18:20
Speaker 1: is go to our hunting properties um or public land
18:23
Speaker 1: hopefully and and do some work to try to improve
18:26
Speaker 1: these places where we're able when budget allows all that
18:29
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And I know that a lot of
18:32
Speaker 1: the things I've seen you share over the years related
18:35
Speaker 1: to this always always resonated with me, whether it be
18:38
Speaker 1: because you found creative ways to do things with less money,
18:41
Speaker 1: or because you're finding ways to improve habitat for deer
18:44
Speaker 1: while also benefiting other benefiting other species, or doing things
18:48
Speaker 1: in a low impact manner. Um. So I just kind
18:51
Speaker 1: of want to pick your brain and all things deer
18:54
Speaker 1: and wildlife habitat management right now. UM. I don't know,
18:59
Speaker 1: it's it's it's just it's something that I think can
19:02
Speaker 1: take our energy and attention off of the negative stuff
19:06
Speaker 1: and help us reavert it towards something positive. Uh. And
19:10
Speaker 1: you seem like the perfect person help us do that,
19:13
Speaker 1: So thank you. You know, is it fair to say
19:17
Speaker 1: that this is the kind of topic you enjoy talking
19:19
Speaker 1: about I do. I mean, I'm a deer hunter and
19:23
Speaker 1: I love diving into deer in their biology. But habitat
19:27
Speaker 1: is you know, the slip side of the coin for me, um,
19:31
Speaker 1: I love. You know a lot of people know me. No,
19:33
Speaker 1: I love planting trees and growing trees and plant food plots,
19:37
Speaker 1: but messing with native plants to and cover and forage
19:41
Speaker 1: and just learning about plants, and to me, you know,
19:45
Speaker 1: that's that's just goes hand in hand with deer management
19:50
Speaker 1: because to manage a deer population for optimal help, you
19:55
Speaker 1: know the habitat there, understanding that and how they live
19:59
Speaker 1: in it and how they benefit from it, and how
20:01
Speaker 1: the deer themselves impact the habitat, and your management of
20:04
Speaker 1: the herd results in quality habitat or poor habitat. Um. Yeah,
20:09
Speaker 1: it just kind of all goes together. So yeah, I'm
20:11
Speaker 1: passionate about both sides of it. Hunting the animal, but
20:15
Speaker 1: you know the other months of the year when I
20:17
Speaker 1: can be hunting them, um, messing around with plants and land.
20:22
Speaker 1: It's it's such a great way to engage with it
20:24
Speaker 1: and just become more part of that whole cycle going
20:28
Speaker 1: on out there. How long have you been doing this
20:32
Speaker 1: as far as actually actively improving or managing or or
20:37
Speaker 1: working on habitat and some capacity. UM. I can remember
20:42
Speaker 1: being younger than ten years old going along with dad
20:47
Speaker 1: doing prescribed fire burning woods. I mean, you know, as
20:50
Speaker 1: a kid, burning anything, it's fun, you know, So getting
20:53
Speaker 1: to go along and light the light things on fire
20:55
Speaker 1: and see that process was exciting and fun, but also
21:00
Speaker 1: occasional learn learning and understanding why we did that and
21:03
Speaker 1: what the benefits were. And even at around that same age,
21:06
Speaker 1: my dad would order tree seedlings every year and uh
21:11
Speaker 1: and take us with him. We'd go out and I
21:13
Speaker 1: was you know, yeah, we ran the post hole diggers
21:15
Speaker 1: dig in the hole of my brother and I did
21:17
Speaker 1: for the tree seedlings, and we planted things that, you know,
21:21
Speaker 1: crab apples and for simmons and oak trees and things
21:24
Speaker 1: that we could hunt around one day and actually are
21:26
Speaker 1: now has grown in hunting around some of those trees
21:29
Speaker 1: that we planted when we were kids. So that just
21:32
Speaker 1: you know, just like learning to hunt from my dad,
21:34
Speaker 1: so did the love of of habitat. UM My dad
21:38
Speaker 1: was a farmer and and I know he planted what
21:41
Speaker 1: was the first food plot I ever knew of, or
21:43
Speaker 1: saw um in uh in South Georgia. Not obviously one
21:49
Speaker 1: of the first plannings anybody ever did for deer, but
21:51
Speaker 1: he was early on setting aside a little patch over
21:54
Speaker 1: here and planning rye um and you know, setting that
21:59
Speaker 1: aside for the you're for hunting season. So yeah, that
22:01
Speaker 1: just was ingrained in me um from a very young
22:05
Speaker 1: age by my dad. And you've been then doing something
22:09
Speaker 1: along these lines professionally for for at least as long
22:13
Speaker 1: as I've known you so well over a decade now
22:15
Speaker 1: as well. I asked this because I think that I'm
22:20
Speaker 1: guessing that you have an interesting perspective on this given
22:23
Speaker 1: what you do. I'm wondering what you've seen as far
22:27
Speaker 1: as how this, how this community or this activity has
22:33
Speaker 1: changed over the years. You know, how how do you
22:37
Speaker 1: see how habitat management is practiced or how it's promoted? Um,
22:43
Speaker 1: how has that advanced or changed the most in your
22:46
Speaker 1: time paying attention to this stuff? What's different now? There
22:51
Speaker 1: are definitely some big sweeping trends you see across you know,
22:56
Speaker 1: my lifetime from like I said, witnessing some of the
23:00
Speaker 1: first hunters becoming interested in planting things for deer, whether
23:05
Speaker 1: it's trees or food plots, and seeing the food plot
23:08
Speaker 1: industry come along on a national level during the early
23:14
Speaker 1: you know, the late eighties and nineties for sure, and
23:17
Speaker 1: um into the two thousand's and become you know, a
23:20
Speaker 1: big industry um. But then also seeing that um that
23:27
Speaker 1: really I'm not sure whether the quality deer management philosophy
23:32
Speaker 1: lead to people being interested in food plots or the
23:35
Speaker 1: reverse or a little both, because you know you can
23:38
Speaker 1: if you start once you start getting interested in the
23:40
Speaker 1: health of the deer you're hunting, you start thinking how
23:42
Speaker 1: could I improve what they eat? And then you get
23:45
Speaker 1: into planning food plots and then what that ultimately leads
23:50
Speaker 1: to and I think has in a big, in a
23:51
Speaker 1: big sweeping trend. After you're done with the food plot,
23:55
Speaker 1: you start looking beyond the border of that literally and
23:58
Speaker 1: figuratively into the woods and going, well, what else can
24:01
Speaker 1: I do? What you know, what should those woods look like?
24:05
Speaker 1: What else should be out there for the deer? And
24:07
Speaker 1: you start stepping into the woods and and looking at
24:10
Speaker 1: what you can do there, um and to improve forage
24:14
Speaker 1: and cover. And that's I'd say that's really the broad
24:18
Speaker 1: a transition that I've seen is going through a period
24:25
Speaker 1: of interest in quality to deer management, passing young bucks
24:29
Speaker 1: eventually you know, learning to take the right number of
24:31
Speaker 1: those when you need to take some planning food plots
24:34
Speaker 1: hand in hand with that, both of the hunting approach
24:37
Speaker 1: and as you know, from a nutritional standpoint, But then
24:40
Speaker 1: that process leading to greater and greater curiosity about other techniques.
24:47
Speaker 1: Things you don't have to plant, how to encourage things
24:49
Speaker 1: that are just out there already naturally, how to get
24:52
Speaker 1: rid of things that aren't supposed to be there so
24:53
Speaker 1: you can have more of the beneficial species, you know,
24:57
Speaker 1: learning about fire, learning about timber management, and identifying plants
25:02
Speaker 1: and and all of this has That's that seems to
25:05
Speaker 1: be where we are now. Folks are still planning food plots,
25:08
Speaker 1: and we always will, I know I always will, UM,
25:12
Speaker 1: But I see more and more folks stepping beyond the
25:16
Speaker 1: edge of the food plot into the forest, looking like
25:18
Speaker 1: you said, using that word holistic, looking at the whole
25:21
Speaker 1: picture of deer habitat and what they need, um in
25:25
Speaker 1: terms of cover and forage in the works beyond just
25:30
Speaker 1: what you can plant, UM. And that's that seems to
25:34
Speaker 1: be where we are today, is a greater interest in
25:38
Speaker 1: um holistic management of deer habitat. And at the same time,
25:41
Speaker 1: you know, when the if you come in and bringing
25:43
Speaker 1: it back to food plots, UM, you mentioned kind of
25:46
Speaker 1: the low impact food plots that that has become in
25:50
Speaker 1: the last few years. A greater question we get is
25:52
Speaker 1: people asking more and more. Okay, look, I know about
25:55
Speaker 1: food plots, I know about planning and we need control
25:58
Speaker 1: and all that, but I want to do it without
26:00
Speaker 1: spraying weeds. I want to do it without fertilizer. I
26:03
Speaker 1: want to do it, you know, without causing erosion. I
26:05
Speaker 1: want to Can I do that? Can I do a
26:07
Speaker 1: green low impact food plots? So we're seeing those questions, UM,
26:13
Speaker 1: which you know raises the point that how you don't
26:16
Speaker 1: even have to do food plots if you really don't
26:18
Speaker 1: want to. We can talk about the all the things
26:21
Speaker 1: you can do from an habitat standpoint to to fill
26:24
Speaker 1: those needs of deer. And if you don't want to
26:27
Speaker 1: plant things, you don't have to. So UM, Yeah, that
26:32
Speaker 1: that seems to be where we are now. Greater interests,
26:34
Speaker 1: we're seeing increasing numbers of people using prescribed fire, um,
26:39
Speaker 1: using wise timber management, um, all of that seems to
26:44
Speaker 1: be where we're going now. In your role at QT MAY,
26:48
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to say that you engage and
26:53
Speaker 1: kind of get to get a lot of feedback from
26:56
Speaker 1: lots and lots of hunters and habitat managers out there,
26:59
Speaker 1: and you've got pretty good finger on the pulse. I
27:01
Speaker 1: think of what people are doing and what people are
27:04
Speaker 1: not doing. If I gave you a magic wand and
27:08
Speaker 1: I gave you the ability or maybe say I'm a
27:10
Speaker 1: genie in a bottle and you could rub the bottle
27:12
Speaker 1: and I came out and I was gonna give you
27:13
Speaker 1: one wish. Let's let's bring it this way. I'm gonna
27:15
Speaker 1: give you one wish that you could ask for in
27:20
Speaker 1: regards to getting hunters to do one thing that not
27:23
Speaker 1: enough people do or they don't pay enough attention to
27:25
Speaker 1: this thing. We're gonna say one thing beyond food plots
27:28
Speaker 1: that you wish you could get people to jump on
27:31
Speaker 1: board with and get into it. What would that wish
27:34
Speaker 1: be or what would you do with that with that
27:36
Speaker 1: special power I'm granting you right now? Wow? Wow, oh man,
27:42
Speaker 1: that's uh. You know several things come to mind there. Okay,
27:45
Speaker 1: so one thing beyond food plots, you say, and then
27:49
Speaker 1: what I got to tell you that the one rule
27:51
Speaker 1: of genes in the bottles. You can't wish for more wishes,
27:53
Speaker 1: So don't try to gain the system and just get
27:56
Speaker 1: you just get. One thing is I'm picturing wheel Smith.
28:00
Speaker 1: Just watched The Laddin with my daughters just last week.
28:05
Speaker 1: Wasn't too long ago. I watched that one too, my son.
28:10
Speaker 1: Oh man, so many Oh, I can't wish for more wishing,
28:16
Speaker 1: you know, I think it would be um so many.
28:24
Speaker 1: But one I think the first, literally the first thing
28:26
Speaker 1: that jumped into my head. I'll just go with that
28:27
Speaker 1: one is to get hunters to let other hunters hunt
28:34
Speaker 1: like they want to um. In other words, look, we
28:41
Speaker 1: all have our priorities in hunting, whether that is look
28:46
Speaker 1: I just want to put some venison in the freezer,
28:48
Speaker 1: or we want to do like I do where you know,
28:51
Speaker 1: you want to have a balanced age structure. You want
28:53
Speaker 1: to see more of the rut behaviors. You want to
28:55
Speaker 1: see more adult bucks out there. You want to have
28:57
Speaker 1: the right number of deer on the habitat. Take those
29:00
Speaker 1: when you need to improve the habitat and all of that.
29:03
Speaker 1: But you know, I think I just wish all deer
29:06
Speaker 1: hunters kind of understood that that there's many many forms
29:09
Speaker 1: of other deer hunters, um and as long as we're
29:13
Speaker 1: all doing it legally and according to the rules, than
29:15
Speaker 1: we should support each other and what whatever choice that is,
29:18
Speaker 1: and certainly not judge each other, and certainly not belittle
29:22
Speaker 1: anyone because they approach deer hunting differently than I do
29:27
Speaker 1: or someone else did. Um. I don't know. That's that
29:31
Speaker 1: doesn't really get us. It doesn't really advance knowledge or um,
29:37
Speaker 1: you know, improve anything for for deer and habitat. But
29:40
Speaker 1: I think it does improve the culture of deer hunting.
29:44
Speaker 1: That's that's something I just see a lot of And
29:47
Speaker 1: I know that social media and the Internet have made
29:50
Speaker 1: a lot of that possible because people will say and
29:52
Speaker 1: do anything on the Internet. We know that, um. But
29:56
Speaker 1: I think that's what I'd like to see. It's just
29:58
Speaker 1: more understanding of deer hunters for the different ways people
30:02
Speaker 1: approach deer hunting, and acceptance of and support for folks
30:07
Speaker 1: who deer hunt no matter how they do it. Yeah,
30:09
Speaker 1: that's that's a a very good point, A well uh
30:13
Speaker 1: A well thought through and in great use of your wish.
30:17
Speaker 1: I will say though, that you you did successfully gain
30:20
Speaker 1: the system, because now I'm going to give you another
30:21
Speaker 1: one because you didn't answer the way I wanted to
30:23
Speaker 1: Lindsay's good of an answer as it was, so you
30:29
Speaker 1: you win the game, you beat the genie. Uh. So
30:33
Speaker 1: answer me with a second wish, something specific to habitat improvement,
30:37
Speaker 1: that you wish folks would start doing more, because I'm
30:42
Speaker 1: going to go into the assumption like you kind of
30:43
Speaker 1: laid this out that most people food plots is the
30:46
Speaker 1: first thing I think of, And even though we're getting
30:49
Speaker 1: more and more to the point that people are looking
30:51
Speaker 1: at the broader horizons, still I still think that food
30:55
Speaker 1: plots suck a lot of the oxygen out of the
30:56
Speaker 1: room to the sexy option. Um. But there's all these
31:01
Speaker 1: other things that you alluded to that people can be
31:03
Speaker 1: doing that can make a great impact, possibly with less
31:07
Speaker 1: time or money invested, possibly with less potential negative impacts
31:12
Speaker 1: of chemicals or different things like that. Um, if you
31:15
Speaker 1: could use your second wish to get hunters to adopt
31:19
Speaker 1: one of these other things or change their habitat management,
31:25
Speaker 1: philosophy in one way or another. What would that be?
31:28
Speaker 1: That's that's where're gonna push you. Okay, then let me
31:34
Speaker 1: just say that I'd wish that, Um, all deer hunters
31:40
Speaker 1: could walk into the woods they hunt right now and
31:44
Speaker 1: no by sight ten important native plants that need to
31:52
Speaker 1: be there for deer, they're important to deer, and ten
31:55
Speaker 1: non native plants that need to go. Okay, because let's
32:00
Speaker 1: start there. If you can do that, even if it's
32:06
Speaker 1: only five, if you can you know, small handful. Um,
32:11
Speaker 1: if if the average deer hunter knew that could identify
32:14
Speaker 1: important plants they see around them and important plants that
32:17
Speaker 1: are uh, non native plants that are damaging or taking
32:23
Speaker 1: space away from those valuable native plants, then you can
32:28
Speaker 1: start doing all the things we can do to encourage
32:33
Speaker 1: those that are there that that true that dear need.
32:37
Speaker 1: And part of that encouragement comes from removing the ones
32:40
Speaker 1: that are you know, usurping that space. So plan I
32:45
Speaker 1: D skills. You know it starts from there. You know
32:49
Speaker 1: you I don't care what you set out to go
32:51
Speaker 1: do today. UM can cut, burn some woods, hacking scored
32:59
Speaker 1: um you know, burn an old field, manage an old field, whatever,
33:05
Speaker 1: it is. If you can't identify the trees you want
33:09
Speaker 1: to cut or might cut the trees, you're gonna leave
33:12
Speaker 1: the trees, you're gonna inge cut the plants you're trying
33:16
Speaker 1: to encourage. You know, if you can't identify them, those
33:20
Speaker 1: efforts might be misplaced, um might be even causing damage.
33:27
Speaker 1: So it all starts from from knowing a few species
33:31
Speaker 1: out there. So yeah, if I'm wishing, I'm gonna say ten.
33:35
Speaker 1: But what I would tell your listeners is start with one.
33:42
Speaker 1: This is not a you know, you don't have to
33:44
Speaker 1: pick up a field guide and learn every single plant
33:46
Speaker 1: in there before you step outdoors. It's not that big
33:50
Speaker 1: of a task, you know. It's Yeah, if you look
33:54
Speaker 1: around the woods at all the plants immediately that you
33:57
Speaker 1: may not know, it can be pretty over filming. But
34:01
Speaker 1: just start with some of the most common ones. If
34:04
Speaker 1: you learn one of the single most common beneficial tree
34:08
Speaker 1: out there and one of the single most common invasive
34:12
Speaker 1: or non native that's out there, you know you can start.
34:17
Speaker 1: You can start making a difference. Yeah, is there, there's
34:20
Speaker 1: my ways. Let's begin with plan I do. That's a
34:22
Speaker 1: good wish. I'm gonna I'm gonna give you give a
34:24
Speaker 1: high five for that one. That's that's uh, that's perfect
34:27
Speaker 1: for where I wanted to go, and thank you for
34:30
Speaker 1: teeing me up, but I failed on the first one. No,
34:35
Speaker 1: you just give us a really good bonus, a good
34:37
Speaker 1: bonus one which is which is helpful too, which is important. Um.
34:41
Speaker 1: But if people want to do what you're talking about,
34:44
Speaker 1: and they don't have a mentor or a family member
34:48
Speaker 1: who can show them some of these things, UM, what
34:51
Speaker 1: would be a resource or two that you recommend? Is
34:53
Speaker 1: there anything out there a book or an app or
34:55
Speaker 1: a website or I don't know anything that you've used
34:58
Speaker 1: to help begin this plan and I d education. Um,
35:03
Speaker 1: i'd say for anybody starting all of the above that
35:05
Speaker 1: you just said books, apps, there are apps, um. High
35:09
Speaker 1: Naturalist is one that comes to mind, and there are others.
35:12
Speaker 1: If you just search, you'll find a bunch and they
35:13
Speaker 1: are they are becoming rapidly advanced. I can't remember the
35:17
Speaker 1: name of one I saw advertise just the other day,
35:19
Speaker 1: but it was you know, you can take a photo
35:21
Speaker 1: of the leaf and then scans it and give you
35:23
Speaker 1: some options or and then there are others that you
35:25
Speaker 1: can upload photos to a community based crowdsource resource that
35:30
Speaker 1: that can help you identify, you know through apps, and
35:34
Speaker 1: some of the apps are just basic guides field gods.
35:37
Speaker 1: So there's that, there's books. Um you know, when I
35:42
Speaker 1: haven't used a lot of the apps honestly because um,
35:45
Speaker 1: I learned most of what I know a long time ago,
35:50
Speaker 1: and I mean I'm still learning new ones as I go.
35:52
Speaker 1: But UM, you know, if if the if the job
35:55
Speaker 1: was learned the top ten, um, you know, I'm already there.
35:59
Speaker 1: And it was a long time before anybody had a
36:00
Speaker 1: smartphone or an app. So but for someone new, there
36:03
Speaker 1: are apps. You know, you can get your your field guides.
36:06
Speaker 1: There are national field guides for for different regions East, Southeast, Northeast, Midwest.
36:12
Speaker 1: There are state specific field guides. UM. I check with
36:17
Speaker 1: your state agency, both your state wildlife agency and your
36:20
Speaker 1: forestry agency see what online resources they have. There are
36:24
Speaker 1: a lot of those, um and ultimately what you can do.
36:30
Speaker 1: Many of those agencies have people who will schedule a
36:34
Speaker 1: time right now. Maybe not you know, because we're social distancing,
36:39
Speaker 1: but under normal, normal circumstances would schedule time to come
36:43
Speaker 1: out and talk with you have a forester come out
36:46
Speaker 1: and you know, if you own the land, walk through,
36:48
Speaker 1: have them show you some of the valuable trees from
36:53
Speaker 1: a timber standpoint, valuable trees from a wildlife standpoint. Like
36:57
Speaker 1: I said, you just get them to show you the
36:58
Speaker 1: most common ones, um, both beneficial and those that probably
37:03
Speaker 1: should go. So you can get folks to walk with you.
37:07
Speaker 1: You mentioned friends, family, you know, ask around, just somebody
37:11
Speaker 1: who is knowledgeable. Maybe you know somebody who's a forester
37:15
Speaker 1: um and just you know, trade him some venison or
37:20
Speaker 1: a turkey hunt or some fishing or something like that,
37:22
Speaker 1: and have them come out and spend a few hours
37:24
Speaker 1: walking around with you, teaching you just a few. Like
37:27
Speaker 1: I said, don't try to bite it all off at once.
37:29
Speaker 1: Don't go out and look at all the woods and
37:30
Speaker 1: expect to go home that day knowing them all. You're
37:32
Speaker 1: not and you're not going to remember the ones. You
37:35
Speaker 1: identify someone you don't see commonly enough or only during
37:39
Speaker 1: certain seasons, and by next year when it comes back,
37:41
Speaker 1: you're you forgot what it was. That's okay. Um, the
37:46
Speaker 1: most common ones start there, because it's kind of like
37:50
Speaker 1: um sweet gums. A sweet gum is a native tree
37:56
Speaker 1: to the southeast. Um. There's nothing wrong with it just
38:00
Speaker 1: doesn't have any wilife benefit that I know, uh, and
38:04
Speaker 1: it is extremely prolific. It's one of the first shrubs
38:07
Speaker 1: saplings to pop up in disturbed areas and then quickly
38:10
Speaker 1: grows and crowds out and shades out everything else. So
38:13
Speaker 1: it's got invasive tendencies. Even though it's not a non native,
38:16
Speaker 1: it is a native tree well in the southeast. If
38:21
Speaker 1: you can learn to identify a sweet gum with leaves
38:24
Speaker 1: and also by bar in the winter when the leaves
38:25
Speaker 1: are gone, which is not that difficult, you can keep
38:28
Speaker 1: yourself busy from now to eternity killing sweet gum trees.
38:32
Speaker 1: You know, I could send you out there and say, look,
38:34
Speaker 1: go kill all the sweet gums, come back and let
38:35
Speaker 1: me know when you need to learn another tree. And
38:37
Speaker 1: it did a long time before you came back. Um,
38:41
Speaker 1: So you could be having enormous benefits to dear habitat
38:44
Speaker 1: by cutting down and killing sweet gum trees and opening
38:46
Speaker 1: up that space to something else and never know how
38:49
Speaker 1: to identify another tree. So that's why emphasize Look, just
38:53
Speaker 1: start with a few. Start with the most common ones,
38:55
Speaker 1: either that you want to encourage or that you want
38:57
Speaker 1: to get rid of UM, but yeah, a lot of
39:01
Speaker 1: resources apps field God's friends but especially state agencies talked
39:05
Speaker 1: to those clothes and get some help there. Yeah, I
39:09
Speaker 1: can at least vouch for UM. The app I last
39:13
Speaker 1: year started using I Naturalist like you mentioned, and that
39:16
Speaker 1: is very helpful. I mean most everything I look at there,
39:21
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. So I take a
39:22
Speaker 1: picture of it and yet scans the leaf and it
39:25
Speaker 1: gives you a handful of potential options and then you
39:28
Speaker 1: can click the potential options and then look at more
39:30
Speaker 1: pictures and then you can match it up and so
39:31
Speaker 1: works works pretty darn well. Um. I've also got a
39:35
Speaker 1: guide from Dr Craig Harper that is a great resource
39:39
Speaker 1: for a lot of like old field species early successional
39:42
Speaker 1: type plants. That has been helpful to me too. So
39:45
Speaker 1: that's I can't remember what that one is called, but um,
39:48
Speaker 1: but that was a helpful through. The newest edition is
39:51
Speaker 1: called Wildlife Food Plots and Early Successional Plants UM, and
39:56
Speaker 1: we do sell it at QTMA dot com. So plug
39:58
Speaker 1: baill um Wildlife Food Plots and Early Successional Plants great, great,
40:03
Speaker 1: great habitat book, and yeah, Dr Craig hard persibent and
40:06
Speaker 1: enormous uh influence on me throughout his career. There's another one,
40:13
Speaker 1: I mean, we've got I've got one called Forest Plants
40:16
Speaker 1: of the Southeast and their Wildlife Uses. Dr Carl Miller
40:19
Speaker 1: at U g A. Was one of the co authors
40:21
Speaker 1: on that. That's a very good one if you're in
40:23
Speaker 1: the Southeast. There are other books for other regions, you know.
40:27
Speaker 1: There's there's one called Weeds of the Northeast that is
40:31
Speaker 1: pretty good just for helping you identified because you know,
40:34
Speaker 1: we don't don't anybody that hears that word don't don't
40:37
Speaker 1: be frightened away by the word weed. Many of the
40:39
Speaker 1: things we call weeds or things do you eat. So um, Yeah,
40:44
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of good books out there. So
40:48
Speaker 1: here's the big thing though, when it comes to this
40:53
Speaker 1: topic of you you've alluded to, which is we need
40:56
Speaker 1: to be able to identify species so that we know
40:58
Speaker 1: how to take the proper management action. We know what
41:00
Speaker 1: to remove, what to keep. Um there's I have all
41:05
Speaker 1: sorts of questions and moments of confusion when considering this topic.
41:12
Speaker 1: Because you can look at a tree or a quote
41:15
Speaker 1: unquote weed, or a forb or a pile of brush
41:19
Speaker 1: or something and you can look at and say, Okay,
41:21
Speaker 1: is this beneficial to wildlife or not beneficial to wildlife?
41:25
Speaker 1: Is this native or is this non native? Is this
41:28
Speaker 1: invasive or non invasive? And all these different sides of
41:33
Speaker 1: the coin would lead you to think that you should
41:36
Speaker 1: keep or remove, encourage or discourage. Um and they don't
41:39
Speaker 1: always match up though, so like there might be a
41:41
Speaker 1: species that's non native but very beneficial to wildlife, or
41:46
Speaker 1: at least it seems to me like, hey, this is
41:47
Speaker 1: the best cover I've got around, and deer are packed
41:50
Speaker 1: in there. Why would I want to cut out all
41:52
Speaker 1: of my automotive when I've got all these deer using
41:54
Speaker 1: it is the best betting in the area. Um so.
41:57
Speaker 1: And I know I'm not the only one who Deevan's
41:59
Speaker 1: questions because I see these conversations and debates pop up
42:01
Speaker 1: on YouTube and on Facebook and social media. Um So,
42:05
Speaker 1: I I still don't know how to make sense out
42:07
Speaker 1: of it. It seems like the moral thing to do
42:10
Speaker 1: is removed non native things or that like it's it
42:13
Speaker 1: seems to be that there's this push to do that
42:15
Speaker 1: more and more. Um and So I want to try
42:18
Speaker 1: to understand that, but I'm still figuring it out. Can
42:21
Speaker 1: you help me with that? Yeah? I think so, Um,
42:25
Speaker 1: because yeah, you're try not to go into the moral ground.
42:28
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not telling people to get rid of
42:29
Speaker 1: invasive species because it's the right thing to do. Um.
42:34
Speaker 1: But doesn't that doesn't doesn't it seem like that's an
42:38
Speaker 1: argument that we hear today. I mean not necessarily in
42:40
Speaker 1: the dear world, but I mean this whole native versus
42:42
Speaker 1: non native thing is everywhere where. There's debates about mountain
42:47
Speaker 1: goats in Grand Teton National Park being removed right now
42:50
Speaker 1: because they were introduced there and they're not native to
42:53
Speaker 1: that specific ecosystems, so we're taking them out. Um. You're
42:57
Speaker 1: seeing this with trout, You're seeing this with you know,
43:00
Speaker 1: it's it's everywhere. It's not just dear habitat. But yeah,
43:03
Speaker 1: I start to interrupt you if you take this far
43:06
Speaker 1: enough back with the whole native versus non native and
43:10
Speaker 1: it's the right thing to do, moral approach, You and
43:12
Speaker 1: I are an invasive species. Are we gonna remove ourselves
43:16
Speaker 1: from North America? Um? You know, this landscape has changed dramatically,
43:23
Speaker 1: and it always has and and was changing before there
43:27
Speaker 1: were people. You know, continents drifted together, and animals and
43:30
Speaker 1: plants that weren't together before suddenly were through natural processes.
43:34
Speaker 1: So this is nothing new. Certainly, we have sped up
43:38
Speaker 1: the process in the last one two hundred, three hundred
43:42
Speaker 1: years in North America by you know, vastly increasing the
43:45
Speaker 1: flow of plants and animals and u and viruses and
43:50
Speaker 1: bacteria and every kind of you know, insects into this
43:52
Speaker 1: country that didn't along here. So we've kind of overwhelmed
43:55
Speaker 1: the system. So you can't really go down that that
43:58
Speaker 1: path of get of everything that don't belonging here, because
44:01
Speaker 1: it's the right thing to do, You'll, you just can't
44:03
Speaker 1: achieve that that's that's not achievable. Um. So when it
44:08
Speaker 1: comes to this whole, you know, and I've heard the
44:11
Speaker 1: apologists for things like automolive. I know what you're talking about. Hey,
44:17
Speaker 1: it has benefits dearer betting in this or dear or
44:19
Speaker 1: eating it. We can talk about Chinese private which we
44:22
Speaker 1: have a lot of here at qt May Headquarters and
44:24
Speaker 1: in the South Eastern General and probably I think the
44:26
Speaker 1: all of the East, um. And it's similar to automolive.
44:31
Speaker 1: And then it forms the deep deep tickets that head
44:33
Speaker 1: out and shade everything else out and there's nothing else
44:36
Speaker 1: there but but privot and and it eventually gets out
44:38
Speaker 1: of reach of the deer and they do bed up
44:40
Speaker 1: under there, just like with automolive. Um. I think when
44:45
Speaker 1: I go back to a phrase that I heard Craig
44:48
Speaker 1: Harper say. He was we were having a habitat work
44:52
Speaker 1: day here at the headquarters. He was leading it. I
44:54
Speaker 1: was actually filming him, and while he was talking to
44:57
Speaker 1: the group, we stopped and we're looking at some briggs
45:00
Speaker 1: of Chinese private that were coming up in deer had
45:02
Speaker 1: browed it. You could see that they've been hitting it.
45:04
Speaker 1: They will brow Chinese private in winter especially, and Craig
45:08
Speaker 1: pointed that out. Yes, dear, we'll use this, they'll eat it.
45:12
Speaker 1: It can be valuable winter food if that's what they've got.
45:16
Speaker 1: But Craig said, you can do better, and that's what
45:20
Speaker 1: has stuck with me since then, that phrase you can
45:24
Speaker 1: do better. You can do better than autumolive, you can
45:28
Speaker 1: do better than private. Now that doesn't apply to every
45:31
Speaker 1: single non native plant. Let's let's clarify that. I think
45:35
Speaker 1: that also speaks to what you're asking me here. If
45:37
Speaker 1: you list all of the non native plants out there
45:42
Speaker 1: where you hunt. I don't care what part of the
45:43
Speaker 1: country you're in. Here in the southeast, we've got them.
45:45
Speaker 1: You've got them, North, Midwest, Northeast, We've all got them.
45:50
Speaker 1: There's some overlapping species, but for the most part, most
45:54
Speaker 1: of us in different regions have a different suite of
45:56
Speaker 1: non native plants out there. And there's a whole long
45:58
Speaker 1: list of them, a bunch of them, but it's a
46:02
Speaker 1: pretty small percentage of all those nonnative plants that are
46:04
Speaker 1: truly invasive, meaning they are aggressive and difficult to control. Uh,
46:13
Speaker 1: and that they take over, that they form mono cultures
46:18
Speaker 1: that lockout any other plant, native or non native. And
46:23
Speaker 1: those are the ones where you can do better. They
46:27
Speaker 1: have benefits like deer browsing on embedding in prive it,
46:30
Speaker 1: like deer bedding in automotive Um, you know, we can.
46:35
Speaker 1: We can run down the list here, um of other
46:39
Speaker 1: things we can talk about kad zoo. Uh. There are
46:43
Speaker 1: some there are some invasive nonnatives that have no benefits
46:47
Speaker 1: and that's a no brainer. Um, they have no benefits
46:51
Speaker 1: for deer and they should go. But there are some
46:55
Speaker 1: that you can the apologists will say this has good benefits.
46:58
Speaker 1: There's this is good bad and cover or the deer
47:01
Speaker 1: browsing this. But with those you can do better. You
47:04
Speaker 1: can do better than Chinese private. And that's one of
47:07
Speaker 1: the things we've been doing on my family's land is
47:09
Speaker 1: getting rid of Chinese private. And and we can talk
47:12
Speaker 1: about how we did that. And I can talk about
47:13
Speaker 1: walking through there just a few weeks ago, where we
47:15
Speaker 1: over the last two years got rid of a bad
47:17
Speaker 1: bad thicket hell um private, hell um, and what's coming
47:24
Speaker 1: up there now and seeing the deer eat it, the
47:27
Speaker 1: native plants that are coming up there now, and seeing
47:29
Speaker 1: that I'm doing better automolive, the deer may bed in there.
47:33
Speaker 1: I'm just here to tell you you can do better
47:35
Speaker 1: than that. So yeah, so you should get sorry and
47:39
Speaker 1: illustrate that for me, what does better than those two
47:42
Speaker 1: things look like and and and help help paint that
47:45
Speaker 1: picture for what the alternative is. Well, for example, the
47:50
Speaker 1: private that I'm that I'm dealing with, when I you know,
47:55
Speaker 1: to paint a picture of it, it had done what
47:57
Speaker 1: you often see with automolive in some of the worst areas,
48:00
Speaker 1: and we got auto molive here too, but it hasn't
48:02
Speaker 1: really I'm not aware any of the places that I
48:06
Speaker 1: hunt where it has become you know, blanketed patches of
48:11
Speaker 1: our large areas like I've seen private do, like I've
48:14
Speaker 1: seen Kudzoo doo and some others. Um, but private, we've
48:18
Speaker 1: we've had that situation probably we had five acres or
48:20
Speaker 1: so of it and my family's land. Through an NRCS
48:23
Speaker 1: program that that we're enrolled in, we were able to
48:25
Speaker 1: get assistance from them. We had a multure come through
48:28
Speaker 1: on the skid steer a contractor. They molsted it all down.
48:32
Speaker 1: It looked beautiful, it was a nice park. But of
48:34
Speaker 1: course the private is going to come back. All you've
48:36
Speaker 1: done is pisted it off at that point and it's
48:39
Speaker 1: going to come back from the route and the stump.
48:41
Speaker 1: So what you had to do was follow up with
48:43
Speaker 1: a nervous side treatment after that and when the private
48:45
Speaker 1: started coming back from the stump, and and to finish
48:47
Speaker 1: it off. And we will still be mopping some up,
48:50
Speaker 1: will be spots praying on the periphery of that area
48:52
Speaker 1: for a while. But walking through there recently, uh, just
48:57
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago when I was down home
48:59
Speaker 1: for a turn. You know, um, there are species popping
49:04
Speaker 1: up in there now. Like American beauty berry, dog fennel,
49:09
Speaker 1: wild grapes, other things that are good cover. I'm seeing
49:12
Speaker 1: poke weed, I'm seeing partridge p which are good forage,
49:16
Speaker 1: high quality forage, far better than private, far better than
49:21
Speaker 1: private as forage. UM. I'm seeing wild flowers in that
49:26
Speaker 1: area that UM. Some of them I have learned recently
49:29
Speaker 1: because we didn't have them until we started releasing them.
49:32
Speaker 1: They were there. I didn't have to plan anything until
49:35
Speaker 1: we started releasing them by getting rid of the private
49:37
Speaker 1: So the diversity of things you see coming up in there,
49:41
Speaker 1: UM is just amazing, and it is cover. It is
49:44
Speaker 1: over time. It will be brooms edge, which is a
49:47
Speaker 1: native warm seasoned grass that we have in the southeast. Uh.
49:50
Speaker 1: It will be dog fennel and other things deer don't eat,
49:52
Speaker 1: like like the broom sedge that that make good cover. UM,
49:56
Speaker 1: it will be soft mast it will be these wildflowers
50:01
Speaker 1: that are good for pollinators. Dear don't necessarily eat all
50:03
Speaker 1: of them. Some of them they eat, some money they don't,
50:06
Speaker 1: but it's good for the pollinator community, for songbirds, migratory songbirds, butterflies,
50:10
Speaker 1: the whole suite of things. But then the food in
50:14
Speaker 1: there for deer is just way better than private is.
50:17
Speaker 1: It's just better. So the whole situation you've created there
50:22
Speaker 1: where that private once stood, is better for almost everything.
50:25
Speaker 1: Whereas before you could say, well, when you walked in
50:28
Speaker 1: under that, and some of it was so thick you
50:30
Speaker 1: couldn't literally walk through it. I don't even think a
50:32
Speaker 1: deer could bed down in there, it was so thick
50:35
Speaker 1: and there was nothing in there but that private. So
50:38
Speaker 1: the situation is just completely night and day in terms
50:41
Speaker 1: of diversity of plant life and the benefits for a
50:44
Speaker 1: host of of wildlife species. We can talk about turkeys
50:47
Speaker 1: too and how they're using that area for nesting and
50:49
Speaker 1: bugging and everything else, but there's just it's just night
50:52
Speaker 1: and day difference. So if you've got a situation like
50:55
Speaker 1: that with a very aggressive plant like autumotive um and
50:59
Speaker 1: deer are betting there, just remember that when you get
51:02
Speaker 1: rid of it, you're going to have stuff they'll still
51:04
Speaker 1: bed in and other things will benefit from as well.
51:10
Speaker 1: There'll be food they'll eat, there'll be wildflowers that will
51:13
Speaker 1: be things for a whole host of different species. Now
51:18
Speaker 1: it's all situational. If you've got land in Michigan and
51:22
Speaker 1: you've got a giant ten acre patch of solid autumnolive
51:27
Speaker 1: and that's the only cover from miles. Yeah, you don't
51:31
Speaker 1: want to go out there and eliminate that all overnight,
51:34
Speaker 1: because yeah, you've just gotten rid of all your cover.
51:37
Speaker 1: In a situation like that, I wouldn't tell you to
51:38
Speaker 1: do that. Um. Just like everything else, you want to
51:41
Speaker 1: break things up in patches so that at any given
51:44
Speaker 1: time you're offering a diversity of different stages of cover.
51:47
Speaker 1: But eventually I would say you should start getting rid
51:50
Speaker 1: of that a patch at a time and converting it
51:53
Speaker 1: piece by piece to something different that you can put
51:56
Speaker 1: on a rotational basis, because you'll be doing better. You
52:00
Speaker 1: can do better than that blocked out um automolive ticket. Yeah,
52:07
Speaker 1: and that was exactly what I was going to ask
52:09
Speaker 1: you about next, which was trying to understand how to
52:14
Speaker 1: prioritize where and when, because I think it was maybe
52:19
Speaker 1: dugg Dern or somebody I was talking about this with
52:21
Speaker 1: who said, you know, trying to go your full scale
52:26
Speaker 1: war on automolive or something like that, or buck thorn
52:29
Speaker 1: or whatever species you're dealing with, it could just take
52:32
Speaker 1: up all your time. You'll never never be able to
52:33
Speaker 1: completely beat it in most in many cases at least. Um.
52:37
Speaker 1: So he recommended trying to do what you can, have
52:40
Speaker 1: a management approach, have a plan, fare out where your
52:43
Speaker 1: highest priority places are, and do what you can there. Um.
52:48
Speaker 1: And and that that's got me thinking about, Okay, how
52:50
Speaker 1: do you how do you pick your spots? How do
52:52
Speaker 1: you rank order? Okay, this is the most important you know,
52:56
Speaker 1: invasive species management? I can do. I guess I'm curious
53:00
Speaker 1: or what I'm trying to get at is is how
53:02
Speaker 1: do we go about deciding how to actually try to
53:06
Speaker 1: manage this. We can't wave a wine and have it
53:08
Speaker 1: all go away. Um, how do you pick your poisons
53:12
Speaker 1: or pick your spots? Um? In that kind of way? Yeah,
53:16
Speaker 1: I asked this question not too long ago. I was
53:18
Speaker 1: talking with Mark Turner, who is at Auburn University right now. Um,
53:24
Speaker 1: he was at the Southeast Dear Study Group. He just
53:26
Speaker 1: got done with some research into the forest stand Improvement
53:30
Speaker 1: method f S. I now, that's a term that Craig
53:32
Speaker 1: Harper coined two offset the concept from timber stand improvement,
53:39
Speaker 1: which he thinks the word timber tends to evoke commercial
53:43
Speaker 1: timber harvest and management. And I agree with him there.
53:47
Speaker 1: So he came up with f SI Forest and Improvement
53:50
Speaker 1: to talk about what you and I do when we
53:51
Speaker 1: walk outside with a chainsaw and try to improve covering
53:55
Speaker 1: forage for deer. So Mark did some Mark Turner did
53:59
Speaker 1: some some research into forest stand improvement with some different
54:03
Speaker 1: treatment areas, and he and I we're talking about his
54:05
Speaker 1: results and all that. This is something we've been doing
54:07
Speaker 1: at QTY headquarters under Craig's guidance. Um, I've learned a
54:11
Speaker 1: lot from him in that process and and been practicing
54:15
Speaker 1: a lot of what I've been learning from him here
54:16
Speaker 1: at qt May. But I asked Mark, I said, you know, same,
54:22
Speaker 1: same similar question. Okay, so we've got a hundred fifty
54:26
Speaker 1: acres that qt May my family has landed south east Georgia.
54:29
Speaker 1: What whatever it is you're dealing with where if you're
54:31
Speaker 1: hunting a hundred acres or ten acres, you can't walk
54:35
Speaker 1: out there today with your chainsaw and go I'm gonna
54:37
Speaker 1: do all of this today, or I'm gonna start in
54:40
Speaker 1: on this corner and work my way all the way across.
54:42
Speaker 1: That's just not manageable. Whatever did you're trying to do,
54:45
Speaker 1: whether you're sending the forest, to produce for aging cover
54:48
Speaker 1: of killing invasive species, all the above, what you know, whatever,
54:51
Speaker 1: all at once, you can't tackle it, and all at
54:54
Speaker 1: one time you'll go nuts, you will lose track of
54:57
Speaker 1: the work you've done, You'll it's just you can't take
55:02
Speaker 1: it that way. So I asked Mark, you know, what's
55:04
Speaker 1: the what's the best way to decide where you start
55:07
Speaker 1: with forest and improvement if you're gonna do it. And
55:09
Speaker 1: he had a pretty simple answer that made a lot
55:11
Speaker 1: of sense to me. He said, how about start with
55:14
Speaker 1: a place that you can easily put fire breaks around,
55:18
Speaker 1: because then you can come back and burn it. And
55:20
Speaker 1: I thought, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Um.
55:23
Speaker 1: In the Southeast we use prescribe fire a lot. There's
55:26
Speaker 1: no reason you can't use it in the North, as
55:28
Speaker 1: you and I have talked about before, and more and
55:30
Speaker 1: more people now are using prescribe fire. So whether we're
55:33
Speaker 1: talking about burning woods or hardwoods, or whether we're talking
55:36
Speaker 1: about burning an old field, you know, prescribe fire is
55:38
Speaker 1: an important follow up method for maintaining the early successional
55:43
Speaker 1: covering for it you've created through your daylight work, through
55:47
Speaker 1: your invasive removal work. Fire helps you easily come back
55:51
Speaker 1: and reset the clock on those taches. So, following Mark's advice,
55:56
Speaker 1: if it made me think, you know, you really need
55:58
Speaker 1: to divide things up in the patches. Ultimately with fire
56:04
Speaker 1: things work best on a rotation. We can get into
56:07
Speaker 1: that in terms of the interval of the time interval,
56:09
Speaker 1: because it varies depending on the part of the country
56:11
Speaker 1: you're in, the length of your growing season, and what
56:13
Speaker 1: your ultimate goals are for wildlife. But you once you
56:18
Speaker 1: have treated a patch, whether you're removing invasives, whether you're
56:23
Speaker 1: daylighting the forest, whatever it might be, and you follow
56:26
Speaker 1: up with fire, you're gonna want to come back through
56:28
Speaker 1: there and follow up with fire again at some interval
56:30
Speaker 1: to reset the clock on that cover again and set
56:33
Speaker 1: it back to zero. When I say color, I mean
56:36
Speaker 1: the understory cover. So starting by designated A a patch
56:42
Speaker 1: that you can easily put fire breaks around, or that
56:44
Speaker 1: already has fire breaks around, whether that's a creek and
56:46
Speaker 1: a woods road, a field edge, a fire break that
56:50
Speaker 1: already exists, or someone or a place where you could
56:53
Speaker 1: easily put one in. Start there and go, oh okay,
56:56
Speaker 1: I could easily put fire breaks where they already exist
56:59
Speaker 1: around patch A. So I'm gonna start in Patch A,
57:03
Speaker 1: which is one acre or five acres, whatever it is,
57:06
Speaker 1: some small manageable size for you, depending on whether you've
57:09
Speaker 1: got you know, family and folks friends that can help you,
57:13
Speaker 1: or it's just you and your chainsaw, and start in
57:17
Speaker 1: and do that patch first, whatever it might be. Putting sunlight,
57:20
Speaker 1: more sunlight on the ground, killing automotive, killing the privot
57:25
Speaker 1: that's in there, killing all the major invasive trees and
57:28
Speaker 1: shrubs that you can find in there, and putting some
57:30
Speaker 1: on the ground, and then following up with some fire
57:33
Speaker 1: then you can start next year on patch B and
57:38
Speaker 1: Patch C and Patch D and so forth. Now, so
57:42
Speaker 1: fire breaks would be one way to look at the
57:44
Speaker 1: easiest way to pick your first target area. The second one,
57:47
Speaker 1: I think obviously would be your hunting strategy, if not
57:49
Speaker 1: your first one, because when you improve these things, when
57:54
Speaker 1: you kill invasives, when you put sunlight on the ground,
57:57
Speaker 1: like I've seen and I was talking about a minute ago,
57:59
Speaker 1: you're gonna start seeing forages and cover and things that
58:02
Speaker 1: deer eat that attracts them sometimes immediately. Um So this
58:06
Speaker 1: can affect your hunting strategy, your your hunting access. So
58:11
Speaker 1: think about if you're gonna be enhancing cover and in
58:14
Speaker 1: patch A, where do you want that cover ultimately to
58:17
Speaker 1: be in the picture of your your hunting infrastructure and
58:21
Speaker 1: where your stands are and how you reach those stands
58:24
Speaker 1: and where the dear bed and where they feed and
58:26
Speaker 1: how you want that all to flow. That's obviously I'm
58:29
Speaker 1: a very complicated UH formula to workout with your aerial
58:34
Speaker 1: map UM, and we probably don't want to dive into
58:37
Speaker 1: all that right now, But but that's where you start
58:39
Speaker 1: tick a patch and think about what makes the most
58:42
Speaker 1: sense from ease of access for you and equipment you
58:45
Speaker 1: need to get in there for fire breaks, for your
58:47
Speaker 1: follow up fire and for your hunting infrastructure, and just
58:51
Speaker 1: starting on bite size pieces UM. Then you know, as
58:57
Speaker 1: you get further down the road three, four or five years,
59:00
Speaker 1: you're gonna be following back up at Patch A. It's
59:02
Speaker 1: time to burn Patch A again. So you're you're following
59:05
Speaker 1: through with fire and this keeps the maintenance and upkeep
59:08
Speaker 1: of the work you've done at a manageable level. Every year,
59:12
Speaker 1: you're gonna be doing a little burning, a little additional
59:16
Speaker 1: chainsaw work, NERB side work, and invasive removal work. But
59:21
Speaker 1: you're not doing it all at one time, and eventually
59:23
Speaker 1: you're going to get to a place where you know
59:26
Speaker 1: your cycle, you're cycling back and coming back to the places,
59:29
Speaker 1: and it all gets easier from there. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah,
59:33
Speaker 1: that does make sense, and it's it's right in line
59:35
Speaker 1: with something we're trying to do on the on our
59:37
Speaker 1: back party property over here in Michigan. Um, we have
59:41
Speaker 1: this area on the property that has a lot of
59:43
Speaker 1: a lot of automolive and buck thorn, and in the
59:47
Speaker 1: patches that that's not there though, we're getting We've got
59:51
Speaker 1: this really cool remnant prairie ecosystem with a lot of
59:54
Speaker 1: native prairie species that aren't found many of the places
59:57
Speaker 1: anymore in Michigan. They've all been paved over, hild up, etcetera.
1:00:01
Speaker 1: So we'd love to try to get some more of
1:00:02
Speaker 1: that in there. Um. So we're gonna try to manage
1:00:05
Speaker 1: some of those invasives through the processes you just outlined.
1:00:09
Speaker 1: But rather than trying to remove everything, which just seems
1:00:13
Speaker 1: daunting and impossible and hard to do with everything else,
1:00:16
Speaker 1: I'm taking sort of that Patrick approach where I'm going
1:00:19
Speaker 1: to try to, you know, just bite off a piece
1:00:22
Speaker 1: that I can manage, so taking up patches and then burning,
1:00:25
Speaker 1: and then you know, the next year we come in
1:00:27
Speaker 1: and take out a few more and maybe do a
1:00:29
Speaker 1: burn again in the new area. Um. But that leads
1:00:32
Speaker 1: me to a very tactical question, selfish tactical question. UM.
1:00:36
Speaker 1: I was going to go in and start cutting down
1:00:40
Speaker 1: um automolive and buckthorn at the base and then applying
1:00:45
Speaker 1: an herbicide to the cut stump. So doing the cut
1:00:48
Speaker 1: stump treatment is what I've been looking into, and it
1:00:51
Speaker 1: seems to be the best option I have with the
1:00:53
Speaker 1: equipment I have. Um, But while I was researching this,
1:00:58
Speaker 1: I read that they tell you least what I saw.
1:01:00
Speaker 1: I said not to do this in the spring when
1:01:03
Speaker 1: plants are producing SAP. And that totally killed my buzz
1:01:07
Speaker 1: and really bummed me out because I wanted to do
1:01:09
Speaker 1: that right now. Because I have the time, I can't
1:01:11
Speaker 1: do anything else but go to this property relatively close
1:01:14
Speaker 1: and do a little work. Um. Is that true? Or
1:01:17
Speaker 1: will I be okay? Can I get away with applying
1:01:20
Speaker 1: the herbiside on the cut stump now and it'll still
1:01:22
Speaker 1: work and we're gonna come in and burn still a
1:01:24
Speaker 1: month from now or whatever? So that'll happen too. Can
1:01:27
Speaker 1: I Can I do that work now or do I
1:01:29
Speaker 1: really need to wait until summer or fall? I think
1:01:33
Speaker 1: you can. I asked Craig Harper about this because that
1:01:35
Speaker 1: was something I'd heard for a long time too. You
1:01:38
Speaker 1: can't do this in spring. Caused the sap flowing and
1:01:40
Speaker 1: it will push the herb side out of the cut um.
1:01:43
Speaker 1: But you know, Craig has just like Mark Turner's new research,
1:01:46
Speaker 1: Craig is Craig and his students at University of Tennessee.
1:01:48
Speaker 1: You've been researching this stuff for years. And you know
1:01:51
Speaker 1: what Craig said was, look if you if you girdle
1:01:54
Speaker 1: the tree or you cut this stump you're talking about,
1:01:57
Speaker 1: and you literally see sap flow out visibly um like
1:02:02
Speaker 1: you do with some species that at certain points of
1:02:05
Speaker 1: spring are very heavy sap producers. And literally with a cut,
1:02:09
Speaker 1: you know, juice starts draining out. That's the the primary situation,
1:02:16
Speaker 1: he thinks, where the herbicide effectiveness is reduced. Otherwise with
1:02:22
Speaker 1: growing plants. When you do it, uh, you cut the
1:02:26
Speaker 1: stump or you girdle it um and there's not sap
1:02:29
Speaker 1: literally flowing out visibly, you should be fine. So I
1:02:34
Speaker 1: would say in those cases, go ahead, if you've got
1:02:37
Speaker 1: time to do it, go ahead and do a test.
1:02:40
Speaker 1: You know, the worst that will happen you cut these
1:02:42
Speaker 1: automotives down. You've got a stump. You paint the stump well,
1:02:47
Speaker 1: and you know the technique is you spray the the
1:02:49
Speaker 1: outer cambium layer. You don't have to paint the entire stump,
1:02:52
Speaker 1: but you spray the circular ring on the outside with
1:02:55
Speaker 1: the herbicide and see how it works. You know, if
1:03:00
Speaker 1: in a month you're seeing shoot stump shout shoots coming out,
1:03:05
Speaker 1: you know it didn't work and you can hit that
1:03:06
Speaker 1: at least now it's easier to combine hit that with
1:03:08
Speaker 1: a backpacks prayer. But in most cases that's gonna be effective. Um.
1:03:14
Speaker 1: You know, it's mostly when things are immediately leaping out
1:03:17
Speaker 1: and yeah, there's a ton of SAP flow and because
1:03:19
Speaker 1: leads are growing. But once you've kind of hit that
1:03:21
Speaker 1: point where the major spring rush of leaf growth and
1:03:24
Speaker 1: SAP flow is over, you can you can get busy. Um,
1:03:28
Speaker 1: that's what Craig has told me. Unless you're seeing sap
1:03:32
Speaker 1: literally flow out visibly, if you make the cut, you're
1:03:35
Speaker 1: gonna be fine. Well, thank you for giving me that
1:03:40
Speaker 1: that bit of confidence. Now I can now I cannot
1:03:42
Speaker 1: make some kind of progress again, which feels good. That's good.
1:03:49
Speaker 1: What what are some of the You mentioned something a
1:03:53
Speaker 1: little while ago about about weeds quote unquote weeds, and
1:03:58
Speaker 1: how a lot of that isn't really we we we
1:04:01
Speaker 1: put this label of weed on something. But in fact,
1:04:03
Speaker 1: many of these species are great for wildlife. A lot
1:04:06
Speaker 1: of critters like them. They're very beneficial. Um, if you
1:04:09
Speaker 1: had to pick just a handful couple, two, three, four
1:04:12
Speaker 1: of the weeds that hunters should start being able to
1:04:17
Speaker 1: identify and and take advantage of in some kind of way,
1:04:21
Speaker 1: what would those be that we should start keen in
1:04:24
Speaker 1: a little bit and giving them a break? Uh? In
1:04:27
Speaker 1: the south, Um, ragweed is a really good one. Um.
1:04:32
Speaker 1: People you know everybody wants to talk about their allergies
1:04:35
Speaker 1: when you mentioned that one, but that I'm sorry. It's
1:04:38
Speaker 1: a it's a great deer forage, and it is one
1:04:40
Speaker 1: that pops up in food plots and agricultural situations, and
1:04:45
Speaker 1: farmers don't like it. But if it's in your food plot,
1:04:48
Speaker 1: let it go, dear, We'll eat that. Um. It's a
1:04:50
Speaker 1: very beneficial plant. Dear, we'll eat it. The seeds are
1:04:54
Speaker 1: good for upland game birds and a lot of other birds.
1:04:58
Speaker 1: It's a good plant to have out there. UM beggars
1:05:01
Speaker 1: lice Desmodium it's another good one. In the southeast. There's
1:05:05
Speaker 1: prickly lettuce and wild lettuce, which are basically they look
1:05:08
Speaker 1: very similar to each other, but one of them has
1:05:10
Speaker 1: thorns and one of them done high high quality dear forage.
1:05:14
Speaker 1: UM poke weed is another big one. Things that you
1:05:18
Speaker 1: see pop up in disturbed areas, you know, after fire
1:05:21
Speaker 1: or at the edge of a food plot where you've
1:05:22
Speaker 1: done some soiled disturbance, poke weed will pop up. UM
1:05:28
Speaker 1: partridge p is another good one in the southeast. Some
1:05:30
Speaker 1: of these you may be seeing in where you are
1:05:33
Speaker 1: in other parts of the country. I'm up into the
1:05:35
Speaker 1: middle part of the country in the northeast too. But
1:05:37
Speaker 1: um everybody has species like this where they wherever you are.
1:05:42
Speaker 1: I'm just throwing some of the ones out there that
1:05:44
Speaker 1: that are most familiar to me. UM. There's others that
1:05:49
Speaker 1: come along a little later in the successional stages. They're
1:05:54
Speaker 1: not you know, the immediate weeds that come up, but
1:05:56
Speaker 1: some of those that come along in year two or
1:05:58
Speaker 1: beyond Greenbrier and and some others. I just the other
1:06:02
Speaker 1: day shared on Twitter a patch of Devil's walking stick
1:06:05
Speaker 1: that I saw coming up where we had done some
1:06:07
Speaker 1: forest and improvement right here in front of the qu
1:06:09
Speaker 1: May office and and followed up with fire. And that
1:06:12
Speaker 1: wasn't there before, And like two weeks I tried, I
1:06:15
Speaker 1: took pictures of it, and I walked back by and
1:06:16
Speaker 1: the deer had hit it and browsed it. So um,
1:06:21
Speaker 1: but yeah, ragweed, beggars, lice, the lettuces, poke weed, some
1:06:26
Speaker 1: of those or some of those that jump to mind
1:06:28
Speaker 1: as some of the quote weeds we even see in
1:06:31
Speaker 1: our food plots that people think they need to get
1:06:33
Speaker 1: rid of it are pretty high quality deer forage, you know.
1:06:37
Speaker 1: And and there's a there's a lot of others. And
1:06:40
Speaker 1: then there are some that have no benefit whatever pistols, garlic, mustard, uh,
1:06:45
Speaker 1: coffee weed or sickle pod is a bad one in
1:06:47
Speaker 1: the southeast, you know. Um, those you need to go um,
1:06:52
Speaker 1: whether you're gonna spray them or whether you hand pull them,
1:06:55
Speaker 1: um whatever. So yeah, I learned again going back to
1:06:58
Speaker 1: that importance will plan, I d learning ragweed would be
1:07:01
Speaker 1: a good one because then when you spot it, you're like, ah,
1:07:03
Speaker 1: that's a good one. Let it go. Um And if
1:07:06
Speaker 1: you see coffeeheat or this, will jump out of the
1:07:08
Speaker 1: vehicle and pull it. When you see one, yeah, and
1:07:12
Speaker 1: kill it. You mentioned um, you know, being able to
1:07:17
Speaker 1: identify some of these things in a food plot, and
1:07:21
Speaker 1: it makes me think of this idea of like clean
1:07:23
Speaker 1: food plots or clean farm fields that a lot of
1:07:26
Speaker 1: people right there. They're pretty, They're what we kind of
1:07:29
Speaker 1: envision when we imagine what our food plots should look like.
1:07:32
Speaker 1: This beautiful carpet of green mono culture, just this lush
1:07:37
Speaker 1: forest floor of carpet or of clover. But ah, as
1:07:42
Speaker 1: as we've talked a little bit, and as I've seen
1:07:44
Speaker 1: some of the things you've put out and some of
1:07:46
Speaker 1: the things I've been looking into over the last year. UM,
1:07:50
Speaker 1: to achieve that sometimes requires a certain amount of impact,
1:07:55
Speaker 1: and there might be some negative, some potential negative impacts
1:07:59
Speaker 1: of trying to achieve that beautiful, perfect, pristine U field
1:08:05
Speaker 1: that we see in the magazine spreads. And you Ti,
1:08:09
Speaker 1: you tackled this um in a video I've seen you
1:08:13
Speaker 1: tackled this in an article I read discussing these low
1:08:16
Speaker 1: impact food plot ideas, which you alluded to earlier in
1:08:20
Speaker 1: our conversation. Um, can you can? We may pivot to
1:08:24
Speaker 1: talk about that a little bit, because if we do,
1:08:26
Speaker 1: if we do, you know, decide we want to do
1:08:28
Speaker 1: some food plotting. Um. I you know, I learned how
1:08:32
Speaker 1: to food plot from a lot of the resources you
1:08:34
Speaker 1: guys are putting out there ten years ago, a lot
1:08:36
Speaker 1: of the other magazines and books and stuff out there,
1:08:39
Speaker 1: and there's kind of a standard approach to doing it. Um,
1:08:43
Speaker 1: that was just kind of all it seemed to be
1:08:46
Speaker 1: out there. But there seem to be small ternatives. Now,
1:08:49
Speaker 1: would you be able to set the stage for us
1:08:53
Speaker 1: first by just describing a little more of what you
1:08:56
Speaker 1: mean by a low impact food plot or green food plot? Um?
1:09:02
Speaker 1: And maybe the best way to do that is to
1:09:03
Speaker 1: describe what the opposite of that is. But I don't know.
1:09:08
Speaker 1: Can you can you first set the stage by what
1:09:09
Speaker 1: you mean by this or what kind of ways we
1:09:11
Speaker 1: can reduce impact with other food plots? What am I
1:09:14
Speaker 1: getting at here from your perspective? Yeah, it kind of
1:09:17
Speaker 1: goes back to, like I said, the whole reason I
1:09:19
Speaker 1: wrote that original article and followed up with the video
1:09:22
Speaker 1: and really started playing with some of this myself. Two things.
1:09:24
Speaker 1: One was you know, the email and phone ringing here
1:09:28
Speaker 1: at the headquarters of people going, um, can I do
1:09:31
Speaker 1: food plots without herbsides? Um? Can I do food plots
1:09:35
Speaker 1: without lime and fertilizer, chemical fertilizers. UM? Can I do
1:09:40
Speaker 1: it without disking and soil erosion and all this other stuff?
1:09:43
Speaker 1: You know, just people saying this feels really intensive to me,
1:09:47
Speaker 1: and I'm wondering if I can do food plots without
1:09:48
Speaker 1: all that or with less of that. So that that
1:09:51
Speaker 1: was part of the thing. But then also the bigger
1:09:55
Speaker 1: trends in commercial agriculture lately over the last few years
1:10:00
Speaker 1: has been more and more towards no till practices UM
1:10:04
Speaker 1: sharing the science of that and pointing out how UM
1:10:08
Speaker 1: farmers can save on fuel, save time, save on herbicide
1:10:12
Speaker 1: and other things, UM save on fertilizer by using more
1:10:17
Speaker 1: you know, quote organic. I'm not talking about you know,
1:10:20
Speaker 1: trademark organic. I'm talking about you know, natural processes for
1:10:26
Speaker 1: building soil fertility and using less tillage, which you know
1:10:31
Speaker 1: what the experts are saying that These were the folks
1:10:33
Speaker 1: I was listening to on that side of the of
1:10:36
Speaker 1: the conversation so I started practicing these things myself, finding
1:10:40
Speaker 1: that they worked, and that was kind of where some
1:10:43
Speaker 1: of our content has come out of. But but really
1:10:45
Speaker 1: what it means is UM doing food plots with less
1:10:50
Speaker 1: soil erosion, with less chemical inputs, whether that is chemical fertilizers,
1:10:58
Speaker 1: mineral fertilizers in t K that you bring in a bag,
1:11:03
Speaker 1: and with less serbicides, less chemicals in general that you're
1:11:07
Speaker 1: putting out there, less fuel expenditure and burning less fuel
1:11:12
Speaker 1: in your vehicle with repeated tilling and repeated trips out
1:11:19
Speaker 1: there with the tractor. So that it's kind of all
1:11:22
Speaker 1: of that. I think there are people that are interested
1:11:24
Speaker 1: in different parts of that, and people are interested in
1:11:26
Speaker 1: all of it. They want to do low impact food
1:11:29
Speaker 1: plots UM, So that's what we looked at. How do
1:11:34
Speaker 1: you know, how can you do all of these things?
1:11:36
Speaker 1: That's really what he comes down to is food plots
1:11:38
Speaker 1: for deer that have benefits for deer and wildlife, that
1:11:41
Speaker 1: don't put dirt in the trout stream down the hill, UM,
1:11:45
Speaker 1: that don't drift herbicides into natural plants that deer would
1:11:51
Speaker 1: use if they weren't killed. Those kinds of things, and
1:11:55
Speaker 1: then you've got you know, there's a there's other sort
1:11:57
Speaker 1: of looming dark issue is out there, like the neo
1:12:01
Speaker 1: nicotinoid herbicides that are applied now to most soybean and
1:12:06
Speaker 1: corn seed in North America. It's on the seed, so
1:12:08
Speaker 1: it goes into the plant endemically when when the plant grows,
1:12:12
Speaker 1: and there's concerns there about pollinators and the honey bee
1:12:16
Speaker 1: collapse problem and whether that's related to those types of herbicides.
1:12:20
Speaker 1: And then other people have GMO concerns. I don't want
1:12:23
Speaker 1: to plant anything that's genetically modified. So yeah, there's a
1:12:27
Speaker 1: whole suite of things that go into that how you know,
1:12:29
Speaker 1: low impact food plot. Yeah, so let's let's tackle this
1:12:33
Speaker 1: first on the herb side front um. I started again,
1:12:37
Speaker 1: a lot of this started coming up for me last
1:12:38
Speaker 1: year as I took on the back forty project and
1:12:40
Speaker 1: I started trying to kind of re examine all the
1:12:44
Speaker 1: traditional ways I've done things and and try to see
1:12:46
Speaker 1: other better ways I can do this. And this brought
1:12:49
Speaker 1: to mind then as you as you mentioned, you know,
1:12:52
Speaker 1: what is the impact I'm having with herbicide? Is it
1:12:54
Speaker 1: okay that I'm doing this? So these chemicals safe? Is this?
1:12:58
Speaker 1: You know? Am I negatively impacting other things that I
1:13:01
Speaker 1: don't realize when I'm going out here trying to trying
1:13:03
Speaker 1: to clean up a food plot or trying to prep
1:13:05
Speaker 1: a food plot or something like that. UM. So I
1:13:07
Speaker 1: started reading a whole bunch of different stuff. I At
1:13:10
Speaker 1: the same time, the e p A was putting out
1:13:13
Speaker 1: a report about glyphos fate, so round up UM. And
1:13:17
Speaker 1: when that came out, I saw you write up a
1:13:19
Speaker 1: really great take on it, which then I read and used,
1:13:22
Speaker 1: and some am I writing to reference. UM. Can you
1:13:25
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about your perspective on using herbicides
1:13:29
Speaker 1: and how you think through any potential negative impacts of them. Also,
1:13:36
Speaker 1: is there a negative impact from from what you understand?
1:13:38
Speaker 1: Can you speak to that too, Um? Yeah, in in
1:13:42
Speaker 1: a general sense. First of all, herbicides have a place
1:13:46
Speaker 1: in food plot management and in agriculture. There are simply
1:13:50
Speaker 1: and certainly in invasive plant control. UM. If you did
1:13:54
Speaker 1: not have herbicides to get rid of that autumnotive on
1:13:59
Speaker 1: the back forty, you'd be in trouble because you could
1:14:02
Speaker 1: cut it down, but it's gonna just come back from
1:14:03
Speaker 1: the stomp. UM. So there's a place for herbicides in
1:14:08
Speaker 1: all of these applications. There are there are things you
1:14:12
Speaker 1: may need to do to improve dear habitat that are
1:14:14
Speaker 1: gonna be very difficult to accomplish without herbicides. But you
1:14:19
Speaker 1: have to look at what's really necessary and what didn't.
1:14:22
Speaker 1: Go back to the ragweed. If you uh plant a
1:14:26
Speaker 1: food plot and you know, and of the field comes
1:14:31
Speaker 1: up with ragweed in the middle of your pretty clover
1:14:33
Speaker 1: or whatever it is soybeans, don't worry about it. Do
1:14:38
Speaker 1: you eat that. You don't have to jump out there
1:14:40
Speaker 1: and go, oh, I need a broad leaf selective herbicide
1:14:43
Speaker 1: and to come out here and try to control this
1:14:44
Speaker 1: ragway or whatever. You don't need to control it. So
1:14:47
Speaker 1: to start off, plant I D can help you eliminate
1:14:50
Speaker 1: times you don't you know when you need think you
1:14:52
Speaker 1: need herbside. Uh. These plants that are beneficial, it doesn't matter.
1:14:57
Speaker 1: Let them go, encourage them even. Don't be worrying about
1:15:01
Speaker 1: spraying if that's the plant you're dealing with. But then
1:15:04
Speaker 1: if Johnson grass or thistle um, coffee weed, garlic mustard,
1:15:11
Speaker 1: some of these others that really are bad weeds that
1:15:15
Speaker 1: are out there in the soil in many places, particularly
1:15:18
Speaker 1: those that have an agricultural history, and that's coming up
1:15:21
Speaker 1: in your food plot. You're gonna be hard pressed, um
1:15:25
Speaker 1: over time, to be producing significant amount of of deer
1:15:30
Speaker 1: forage in that spot without doing something to control the weeds,
1:15:33
Speaker 1: because the weeds will take over and um you surpu
1:15:37
Speaker 1: the soil productivity and the moisture and the space and
1:15:41
Speaker 1: the sunlight. So you'll have to do something now. Sometimes
1:15:44
Speaker 1: with those, you can hand pull some of those in
1:15:47
Speaker 1: a small plot. If you've got the time and there's
1:15:49
Speaker 1: not enough, you know there's a small number of weeds,
1:15:51
Speaker 1: get out there and pull them up by the route
1:15:53
Speaker 1: before they go to seed, and you can have an
1:15:55
Speaker 1: effect there. Other times you might be able to minimally
1:15:59
Speaker 1: do spot spraying with a backpack s prayer. You're not
1:16:02
Speaker 1: spraying the whole field. You're walking around like with a
1:16:05
Speaker 1: thistle uh thistle for example, if you take a sling
1:16:09
Speaker 1: blade and cut down that stalk before it goes to flower,
1:16:13
Speaker 1: you have prevented the dispersal of a whole lot of
1:16:15
Speaker 1: thistle seeds and a whole lot of headache down the road.
1:16:18
Speaker 1: But you didn't kill the plant, and it's going to
1:16:20
Speaker 1: produce another flower stalk after you go back home. However,
1:16:25
Speaker 1: if you hit that with a court of glaph to
1:16:27
Speaker 1: say from your backpack s prayer, you've killed the plant
1:16:30
Speaker 1: and it's gone. So these are the choices you can
1:16:33
Speaker 1: make to eliminate or minimize some of your herbside use.
1:16:38
Speaker 1: The bigger picture here is to remember this that you
1:16:41
Speaker 1: know you asked about herbicide safety. Just remember that the
1:16:47
Speaker 1: label on the herbicide is federal law and it is there.
1:16:51
Speaker 1: It is federal law because it is based on the
1:16:54
Speaker 1: best scientific research available done by the e p A
1:16:57
Speaker 1: and other agencies that have to look into these um
1:17:00
Speaker 1: to approve these products for use by the public, there
1:17:05
Speaker 1: has to be that label and it is enforceable by
1:17:07
Speaker 1: by federal law and it is backed up by science.
1:17:10
Speaker 1: And if you follow the label, you will be using
1:17:14
Speaker 1: the product safely to the best of our knowledge. So
1:17:17
Speaker 1: let's take delfe of sate for example. There's a whole
1:17:20
Speaker 1: lot of controversy around that term, as you know, which
1:17:23
Speaker 1: is you know what you and I both talked about
1:17:25
Speaker 1: and road about last year when that e p A
1:17:27
Speaker 1: report came out. There's a certain group of people out
1:17:30
Speaker 1: there that just think glipe of sate is evil. And
1:17:33
Speaker 1: then that's the end of the story, and you're not
1:17:36
Speaker 1: gonna commence him other ones. But if you read the
1:17:38
Speaker 1: glipe of state label, you know it tells you how
1:17:42
Speaker 1: to be safe with it. It's one of the least
1:17:44
Speaker 1: toxic ERB sides out there that we can work with UM,
1:17:47
Speaker 1: which is one of the reasons it is so common.
1:17:50
Speaker 1: Everybody's got some in their garage. You can buy it
1:17:52
Speaker 1: at the local gas station just about And that's one
1:17:56
Speaker 1: of the reasons I think too, that it's so controversial.
1:17:58
Speaker 1: People see it everywhere, so it's in front of you
1:18:00
Speaker 1: all the time, and I think it's that's sort of
1:18:02
Speaker 1: why it's become the the scapegoat here. But UM. But
1:18:07
Speaker 1: if you read the label, it tells you how to
1:18:09
Speaker 1: use it safely, not only for your own safety, how
1:18:12
Speaker 1: to keep it out of your body, how to keep
1:18:14
Speaker 1: it out of your eyes and not breathe it and
1:18:15
Speaker 1: not get it on your skin. All these things are
1:18:17
Speaker 1: on the label. It tells you what to do, but
1:18:20
Speaker 1: also how not to impact the environment when to use it.
1:18:23
Speaker 1: Some people think that you know, you spray as much
1:18:26
Speaker 1: pop life to say as you want on a food plot,
1:18:28
Speaker 1: as many repeated times as you want. No there's a limit,
1:18:31
Speaker 1: and if you read the label, it will tell you
1:18:32
Speaker 1: don't spray it more frequently than you know once or
1:18:36
Speaker 1: twice in a certain period of time. That's how we
1:18:40
Speaker 1: have ended up with things like the life of State
1:18:42
Speaker 1: resistant weeds that can't be killed by it anymore, from
1:18:45
Speaker 1: people spraying too much life and say too often, or
1:18:49
Speaker 1: using the ineffective solution rates. Again, go back to your label.
1:18:54
Speaker 1: It tells you how to mix that stuff to be effective,
1:18:57
Speaker 1: and it's there for a reason, and it's people using
1:19:00
Speaker 1: it off label. It's how we've ended up with glife
1:19:02
Speaker 1: of State resistant weed. That's how we've ended up with
1:19:05
Speaker 1: the controversy. Um. That's one thing I wonder about what
1:19:08
Speaker 1: life sate just you know me personally, is it's so
1:19:11
Speaker 1: common and it's so available, um and so uh you know,
1:19:17
Speaker 1: useful even around your house and then your in your
1:19:20
Speaker 1: lawn and your garden. Is you know, people just pick
1:19:23
Speaker 1: them up using all the time with no gloves and
1:19:25
Speaker 1: no eye protection and not worried about when direction and
1:19:28
Speaker 1: not paying a whole lot of attention to their solution rate.
1:19:31
Speaker 1: So the point is, if you follow the label, um,
1:19:36
Speaker 1: all of these herb sides out there and if you're
1:19:37
Speaker 1: using them for the right application, a labeled application, under
1:19:40
Speaker 1: labeled practices. Uh, you should be safe. You should be safe,
1:19:44
Speaker 1: and the environment should be safe. But that's that does
1:19:47
Speaker 1: not mean it's not a good idea to try to
1:19:48
Speaker 1: minimize their use. I still feel that way. I believe
1:19:52
Speaker 1: what I just said about the label in my own safety,
1:19:55
Speaker 1: but I still prefer to keep them in the jug
1:19:57
Speaker 1: and not buying to start with. I don't have to,
1:19:59
Speaker 1: that's just me, Um. I use them what I need
1:20:03
Speaker 1: to because I understand sometimes you've got to that I can't.
1:20:06
Speaker 1: I can't kill private for example, without an herbicide. I
1:20:10
Speaker 1: won't be able to overcome that battle. Um. But when
1:20:14
Speaker 1: I you know, but I don't want to just be
1:20:16
Speaker 1: using herbicides all the time because they're there. I still
1:20:19
Speaker 1: want to minimize it. Yeah, that seems to be where
1:20:21
Speaker 1: I've settled to is trying to minimize as much as
1:20:26
Speaker 1: possible when I do have to use them though in
1:20:29
Speaker 1: those certain applications, just doing it as by the book
1:20:32
Speaker 1: as carefully as you possibly can. Um. That seems to
1:20:36
Speaker 1: make sense. Another another impact of planting food plots. In
1:20:45
Speaker 1: another suggestion you had for ways to lower your impact
1:20:48
Speaker 1: was to think about erosion. Um, can you speak to
1:20:54
Speaker 1: why erosion is a bad thing within an ecosystem and
1:20:59
Speaker 1: or a field in surrounding areas? And then secondly, when
1:21:02
Speaker 1: we're working on food plots, how can we help prevent that? Yeah,
1:21:06
Speaker 1: so you know, erosion is your food plot, dirt, your
1:21:09
Speaker 1: top foil going away somewhere else, whether it turns to
1:21:12
Speaker 1: dust and blows away in the wind because there's no
1:21:15
Speaker 1: crop there at the time, or because it drifts you know,
1:21:18
Speaker 1: rolls off down the hill with rain water because you're
1:21:21
Speaker 1: trying to grow something on the slope that's too sleep
1:21:23
Speaker 1: steep um, or because um, you don't have some kind
1:21:29
Speaker 1: of a buffer around that field. You know, you you've
1:21:32
Speaker 1: planted a food plot on a slope right next to
1:21:34
Speaker 1: a stream. Well, what's gonna happen when it rains? That
1:21:37
Speaker 1: stream is going to turn the mud and impact those
1:21:39
Speaker 1: species in there, whether they're trout or whatever, um, waterfowl.
1:21:45
Speaker 1: I mean we can, we can going down the line.
1:21:48
Speaker 1: And this is this is why you know there's a
1:21:52
Speaker 1: dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico from all of
1:21:55
Speaker 1: the nutrients and fertilizers coming down the Mississippi River out
1:21:59
Speaker 1: of the heartland. So this is something to be avoided,
1:22:04
Speaker 1: UM in many ways, but the basic one is, you know,
1:22:08
Speaker 1: it's counterproductive to you trying to have productive soils, nutrient
1:22:12
Speaker 1: rich soils that will grow a crop that will be
1:22:15
Speaker 1: beneficial to deer because ultimately, the nutrition or benefits that
1:22:19
Speaker 1: deer to get out of a plant they eat that's
1:22:21
Speaker 1: grown there come from the dirt, and preventing erosion and
1:22:26
Speaker 1: growing healthy soils naturally increases the nutritional benefits of those
1:22:33
Speaker 1: plants and reduces the amount of fertilizer you have to
1:22:36
Speaker 1: bring in. So that's that's what I've learned about this process.
1:22:41
Speaker 1: And it comes back to a basic idea you'll you'll
1:22:45
Speaker 1: come across if you listen to the folks in the
1:22:47
Speaker 1: commercial agricultural community, and that is or really any organic
1:22:52
Speaker 1: soil community. That is that healthy soil is built from
1:22:55
Speaker 1: the top down. UM. It starts with its multch dead vegetation,
1:23:03
Speaker 1: the previous crop on top, and that gradually breaking down
1:23:06
Speaker 1: into smaller and smaller pieces and filtering with rainwater down
1:23:10
Speaker 1: into levels of the soil. And that's how healthy soil
1:23:14
Speaker 1: is built. That's how you get the microbe, the earthworms,
1:23:18
Speaker 1: the life forms and in there that helped break all
1:23:20
Speaker 1: that down and produce the nutrients that the plants use,
1:23:24
Speaker 1: and all of that prevents erosion. It prevents dirt from
1:23:28
Speaker 1: drying up and blowing away in a winter wind, it
1:23:31
Speaker 1: prevents it from washing away of the rainwater UM. And
1:23:34
Speaker 1: so that really comes down to the basics behind why
1:23:37
Speaker 1: many of the experts are encouraging farmers not to tell
1:23:40
Speaker 1: anymore to use no tail practices, and so I've tried
1:23:43
Speaker 1: to bring those into food plotting as well, and it
1:23:45
Speaker 1: and it works pretty good. So you're trying to build
1:23:47
Speaker 1: soil from the top down, disking totally turns that process
1:23:53
Speaker 1: upside down. It buries the heavy organic matter deeply where
1:23:58
Speaker 1: it can't break down and can get enough air and
1:24:00
Speaker 1: oxygen to break down naturally. It brings loose soil to
1:24:04
Speaker 1: the top where it can blow away and wash away.
1:24:06
Speaker 1: It brings weed seeds back to the top where they
1:24:08
Speaker 1: can germinate. So disking really sometimes you need to do it.
1:24:12
Speaker 1: But disking too much, as we're all used to doing,
1:24:15
Speaker 1: is really counterproductive to healthy soils, to preventing erosion, UM,
1:24:20
Speaker 1: to low impact food plots. And so that's that's the
1:24:24
Speaker 1: way we've been trying to go, and you can do it.
1:24:27
Speaker 1: You know, when I say no till, a lot of
1:24:28
Speaker 1: people picture a big, giant, expensive no till grain drill.
1:24:32
Speaker 1: And if you've got one of those, which can borrow
1:24:34
Speaker 1: one of those or a lot of you know, soil
1:24:36
Speaker 1: conservation agencies have grain drills available for loan and rent um,
1:24:41
Speaker 1: so there's access to those, but you don't have to
1:24:44
Speaker 1: have one. Um. I've done no till food plots without
1:24:48
Speaker 1: a grain drill, with nothing but a hand trank seeds
1:24:50
Speaker 1: broader and a little culti packer before behind the four wheeler.
1:24:54
Speaker 1: So uh, no till is possible. It's really the ideal
1:24:58
Speaker 1: way to go if you can. If you and avoid
1:25:00
Speaker 1: telling uh and start going towards that process of building
1:25:04
Speaker 1: your food plot soils from the top down, increasing the nutrients,
1:25:08
Speaker 1: preventing erosion, keeping that healthy soil there in that plot
1:25:12
Speaker 1: instead of in the stream, instead of blowing away in
1:25:14
Speaker 1: the wind. Um it all has trickled down benefits for
1:25:18
Speaker 1: your fertilizer bill, your fuel bill, and of course the
1:25:23
Speaker 1: wildlife and habitat around you. Can you can you outline
1:25:27
Speaker 1: exactly how you've done those no till food plots without
1:25:30
Speaker 1: the drill, because I'm sure there's a lot of people
1:25:32
Speaker 1: out there that are in that scenario and are wondering
1:25:34
Speaker 1: about this. UM, could you just give a little more
1:25:36
Speaker 1: detail of exactly what process, what tools? UM. I know
1:25:40
Speaker 1: you mentioned a couple, but exactly how you do that? Okay.
1:25:44
Speaker 1: So it's a few quick steps on outline. First of all,
1:25:47
Speaker 1: you've got a crop there that whether it is weeds
1:25:51
Speaker 1: in an empty field or fallow field, or the remnants
1:25:54
Speaker 1: of a crop you grew last year. UM. You come in,
1:25:59
Speaker 1: you mow the at if needed, and the mowing is
1:26:03
Speaker 1: to break up all the bigger chunks and get them
1:26:05
Speaker 1: down on the service in the most layer, but also
1:26:07
Speaker 1: to facilitate the herbside treatment. UM. And that is usually
1:26:13
Speaker 1: a requirement of this process. And I'll people immediately go,
1:26:16
Speaker 1: what I gotta do herbside, But just hang on. So
1:26:20
Speaker 1: you come in, you mow, that facilitates the herbside treatment
1:26:25
Speaker 1: and gets it, you know, the growing weeds and this
1:26:27
Speaker 1: thing down to you know, six inches or lower, so
1:26:31
Speaker 1: that when you spray with life state to kill everything,
1:26:33
Speaker 1: you get a good effective kill. So you kill everything,
1:26:36
Speaker 1: and then all this happens about the time you're ready
1:26:39
Speaker 1: to plant whatever season that might be. I've done it
1:26:41
Speaker 1: with warm season plots and this time of year, I've
1:26:43
Speaker 1: done it with cool season plots in the fall. And
1:26:45
Speaker 1: then you wait for a good rain and you get
1:26:49
Speaker 1: out your broad trest spreater. You have your seed ready,
1:26:51
Speaker 1: you know how much you're gonna put and when there's
1:26:53
Speaker 1: a good rain coming in the forecast, and I mean
1:26:56
Speaker 1: a strong chance. I don't mean a you know chance
1:26:59
Speaker 1: of thirty minutes of like missed this afternoon. I mean
1:27:03
Speaker 1: sure enough, you know good rain coming, you jump out
1:27:07
Speaker 1: there ahead of that and you broadcast onto the mulch
1:27:10
Speaker 1: layer you've created, and then with a good rain you
1:27:14
Speaker 1: may be off to the races. I've done it without
1:27:17
Speaker 1: any additional steps. But the other step I often do
1:27:20
Speaker 1: is take a particularly with large seeds like soybeans, um
1:27:26
Speaker 1: take a small culti packer behind the fo wheeler and
1:27:29
Speaker 1: pull it around over the top of that just too lightly,
1:27:32
Speaker 1: kind of mash the seed down into the most layer
1:27:35
Speaker 1: and stir that mulch a little bit, just to kind
1:27:37
Speaker 1: of get the seed to settle in. That's it. That's
1:27:39
Speaker 1: all you need to do. The rain comes along, it
1:27:43
Speaker 1: further settles that most layer and the seed together, so
1:27:46
Speaker 1: you get decent seed to soil contact and the seeds
1:27:49
Speaker 1: germinate and they take off and that's it. You're off
1:27:53
Speaker 1: to the races. So you know, there's a lot of
1:27:56
Speaker 1: questions the folks have about that process. You know, what
1:27:59
Speaker 1: about this? A little about that? Can I use a
1:28:01
Speaker 1: drag and I'm you know, et cetera. But that's the basics.
1:28:05
Speaker 1: Create you want that crop residue there, you mow it
1:28:09
Speaker 1: to chop it down and get a nice most layer
1:28:12
Speaker 1: and an effective surface forth spraying the turbicide and contacting
1:28:15
Speaker 1: all the weeds that are existing there, and then you
1:28:18
Speaker 1: broadcast you seat over it with a rain coming and
1:28:21
Speaker 1: that's it. You're going um Now. Over time, like I
1:28:26
Speaker 1: was talking about with the disking, disking brings weed seeds
1:28:29
Speaker 1: to the surface and stimulates those weeds to grow. So
1:28:32
Speaker 1: a lot of times disking keeps you in a perpetual
1:28:35
Speaker 1: weed problem in a in a plot. Over time, if
1:28:38
Speaker 1: you can keep this cycle going, I'm not disking, And
1:28:41
Speaker 1: just like you know, planting into the crop residue from before,
1:28:45
Speaker 1: you're reducing your weed problems, particularly if you're using fast
1:28:49
Speaker 1: growing annuals um. You know, your cowpees soybeans, lab lab
1:28:54
Speaker 1: things like that in the summer that you know your
1:28:56
Speaker 1: cereal grains, you're fast growing cereal grains and braskas in
1:28:59
Speaker 1: the fall that pop up quick and put some shade
1:29:02
Speaker 1: out there and quickly compete with any weeds that might
1:29:06
Speaker 1: be coming along. That additionally helps suppress what weeds might germinate.
1:29:11
Speaker 1: You throw in some hand pulling and you know, some
1:29:13
Speaker 1: additional spots praying. Over time, you're you're going to reduce
1:29:17
Speaker 1: your weed problem to the point that, um, you may
1:29:20
Speaker 1: not need to do that life of state treatment prior
1:29:23
Speaker 1: to planning. But that's it. Yeah, it's not. It's it's
1:29:28
Speaker 1: not out of the realm possibility. I think for a
1:29:31
Speaker 1: lot of people to be able to do something like that,
1:29:33
Speaker 1: it's I think we sometimes come into this, I know
1:29:36
Speaker 1: I did early on thinking that you need this picture
1:29:40
Speaker 1: perfect farm process that you see on TV to get
1:29:43
Speaker 1: a food plot, and you really don't in a lot
1:29:46
Speaker 1: of ways. And you don't need that perfect food plot either.
1:29:48
Speaker 1: If it's a little messy here and there, that's not
1:29:50
Speaker 1: the worst thing either, too, right, that's right. No, Um,
1:29:54
Speaker 1: you know food plots may not look perfect. That Yeah,
1:29:57
Speaker 1: we have to not worry about this, Like farmers like
1:29:59
Speaker 1: you want to have this award winning clean crop. Um
1:30:03
Speaker 1: that deer don't care. Um, they're gonna eat the crop. Uh,
1:30:08
Speaker 1: they're gonna eat some of the weeds that come up.
1:30:10
Speaker 1: Some of the problematic ones you need to get rid
1:30:12
Speaker 1: of if you can. But but other than that, deer
1:30:13
Speaker 1: really don't care about an ugly food plot. There's got
1:30:16
Speaker 1: a few weeds come up in it. Many of those weeks,
1:30:18
Speaker 1: like we talked about, are just fine with the deer.
1:30:23
Speaker 1: But you know, let's let's think about this in a
1:30:25
Speaker 1: minimal scenario, or somebody doesn't even own a four wheeler. UM,
1:30:33
Speaker 1: with a small enough patch, you could get out there
1:30:35
Speaker 1: with a sling blade and chop down the heavy cover,
1:30:40
Speaker 1: take your backpacks, prayer and spray if you need to
1:30:42
Speaker 1: to kill that. Here comes the rain. You got a
1:30:45
Speaker 1: hand crank broadcast better spreader, you know, left less than
1:30:48
Speaker 1: fifty bucks at the hardware store for that if you
1:30:51
Speaker 1: don't have one, or a push spreader. If you've got
1:30:54
Speaker 1: a garden lawn and garden push spread at your house,
1:30:57
Speaker 1: bring that out there and broadcast just ahead of the rain.
1:31:02
Speaker 1: For small seeds like brassicas, you really don't need to
1:31:06
Speaker 1: cultipack because the rain is going to settle those tiny
1:31:11
Speaker 1: seeds in there very well. Um, it's the bigger seeds, soybeans,
1:31:15
Speaker 1: and you know some of the bigger wheat and oats
1:31:18
Speaker 1: that you might want to cultipack if you can. Um.
1:31:22
Speaker 1: But again even just um, you know, driving your vehicle
1:31:27
Speaker 1: around over it if you had to your your truck
1:31:29
Speaker 1: or car would work for that, but probably again not
1:31:32
Speaker 1: necessary a few time it with a good rain. So
1:31:35
Speaker 1: there we go. We just put in a food plot
1:31:36
Speaker 1: with nothing but a sling blade and a hand crank
1:31:38
Speaker 1: spreader and maybe a backpack sprayer or you know, a
1:31:41
Speaker 1: little hand pump garden sprayer. And if youve got a
1:31:44
Speaker 1: couple of friends, you know you can do more than
1:31:46
Speaker 1: a tenth of an acre. You can maybe do a
1:31:48
Speaker 1: half acre or more. Even if you need to bring
1:31:50
Speaker 1: your push mover from home out there too mow you
1:31:55
Speaker 1: know a larger amount of cover. So you can do
1:31:58
Speaker 1: this with home and garden that you probably already on.
1:32:01
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I I absolutely have have tried all those
1:32:04
Speaker 1: things you mentioned. I've I've used my home mom mower,
1:32:07
Speaker 1: I've used a push uh like fertilizer spreader, I've i
1:32:12
Speaker 1: got my lawn mower stuck once and had to have
1:32:14
Speaker 1: my wife come out and help me. When that when
1:32:16
Speaker 1: that was fun. Um, But yeah, you don't. You don't
1:32:18
Speaker 1: need big fancy things. You don't need a big fancy
1:32:21
Speaker 1: food plot to make a positive difference either. I mean,
1:32:23
Speaker 1: my first food plot ever, this was a ten eleven
1:32:27
Speaker 1: years ago. Maybe it was the size of a two
1:32:31
Speaker 1: stall garage probably, and it helped. It was a cool project.
1:32:37
Speaker 1: It made a difference. I you know, got to engage
1:32:41
Speaker 1: with the land in a different way and attracted deer
1:32:43
Speaker 1: in a new way. And and yeah, I mean you don't.
1:32:46
Speaker 1: You don't need to be a big time farmer with
1:32:50
Speaker 1: tons of equipment and money to be able to do
1:32:51
Speaker 1: some of these things. And I think being able to
1:32:53
Speaker 1: do them the ways you described, which are you know,
1:32:56
Speaker 1: even less of an impact or minimizing any possible negative
1:33:00
Speaker 1: impacts from an environmental standpoint, make it even better. Um.
1:33:05
Speaker 1: So yeah, I love it. You have two things real
1:33:08
Speaker 1: quick to throw in here now. But you mentioned fertilizer
1:33:10
Speaker 1: and I didn't that. I think it goes without saying
1:33:13
Speaker 1: in all food plotting, I didn't throw that in there
1:33:15
Speaker 1: in the steps of this, But that that's just goes
1:33:18
Speaker 1: without saying you should pull a soil sample, get that tested,
1:33:22
Speaker 1: and find out nutrient levels for the crop you intend
1:33:25
Speaker 1: to grow, and let that guide you in line and fertilizer.
1:33:27
Speaker 1: Line to adjust the pH level of the acidity, and
1:33:30
Speaker 1: fertilizer to bring up any soil nutrients that are missing,
1:33:33
Speaker 1: and early in this process they're going to be missing.
1:33:37
Speaker 1: Eventually your use of that organic matter, keeping that on
1:33:41
Speaker 1: the surface, letting that breakdown, building those natural soils without disking,
1:33:45
Speaker 1: that's going to increase nutrient levels to the point that
1:33:47
Speaker 1: your need for fertilizery is going to fall off and
1:33:50
Speaker 1: you won't need as much, but you're gonna need some.
1:33:52
Speaker 1: So always pull your soil test and check on that.
1:33:55
Speaker 1: If you don't line when you need to um, the
1:33:58
Speaker 1: plants can't take up the nutrients are there, so you
1:34:00
Speaker 1: also need to adjust the pH. So that's that kind
1:34:02
Speaker 1: of UM goes without without saying there um. And then
1:34:08
Speaker 1: you know the other thing too, is just remember that
1:34:11
Speaker 1: many times we we we get excited about food plots
1:34:14
Speaker 1: and we're planning food plots because it's part of a
1:34:16
Speaker 1: hunting strategy. We're gonna plant something that's going to be
1:34:20
Speaker 1: highly attractive at a certain time of year, whether that
1:34:22
Speaker 1: is summer lagoons like cow peas and soybeans that we
1:34:26
Speaker 1: can bow hunt late, you know, in early fall while
1:34:29
Speaker 1: the deer is still coming to them, and that's highly
1:34:32
Speaker 1: attractive in a small little catch scenario. Or we're talking
1:34:35
Speaker 1: about you know, winter cereal drains in Braskas and those
1:34:39
Speaker 1: annuals like that that are highly attractive during the fall,
1:34:42
Speaker 1: you know, unless acorns or at peat production and can
1:34:46
Speaker 1: be particularly attractive later in the winter. So those are
1:34:49
Speaker 1: hunting opportunities were doing. But but the thing to remember
1:34:53
Speaker 1: is ultimately, if you're just interested in dear nutrition, um,
1:34:58
Speaker 1: you don't even have to worry about dragging the long
1:35:00
Speaker 1: are out there in the backpacks prayer and buying seed
1:35:02
Speaker 1: and buying fertilizer. Look to the woods beyond the food
1:35:06
Speaker 1: plot and look out there and see what you see.
1:35:07
Speaker 1: And if it's all shade and you can walk through
1:35:10
Speaker 1: their nice and there's no briers and nothing scratches you,
1:35:13
Speaker 1: and it's wide open and you can see a hundred
1:35:15
Speaker 1: yards to make a nice rifle shot, that's not good.
1:35:19
Speaker 1: You could be removing some of those trees out there.
1:35:22
Speaker 1: If you knew what they were and could remove some
1:35:23
Speaker 1: of the less useful ones, less valuable ones, maybe the
1:35:26
Speaker 1: invasive ones putting sunlight on the ground and having a
1:35:30
Speaker 1: much more cost effective impact on nutritional levels for your deer.
1:35:34
Speaker 1: So I just got to throw that in there. Don't
1:35:36
Speaker 1: forget that one of the options in low impact food
1:35:39
Speaker 1: plots is don't plant food plots. And that was how
1:35:42
Speaker 1: I ended that article. I wrote was, look, let's on
1:35:45
Speaker 1: a spectrum of intensive commercial agriculture food plots to the
1:35:51
Speaker 1: opposite of that in terms of impact. The other end
1:35:54
Speaker 1: of the spectrum is don't plant food plots if you
1:35:57
Speaker 1: really just don't want to buy a fertilizer in the
1:35:59
Speaker 1: bag and don't want to buy her besides, and you
1:36:02
Speaker 1: don't have to plan anything. The seeds are out there,
1:36:05
Speaker 1: the things that deer will eat and hide in and
1:36:09
Speaker 1: make use of are out there. All you gotta do
1:36:11
Speaker 1: is put somebody on the ground and encourage them. So,
1:36:16
Speaker 1: you know, I feel like that needs to be mentioned
1:36:17
Speaker 1: that if someone who's just really interested in super low
1:36:20
Speaker 1: impact food plots and just doesn't want to do any
1:36:23
Speaker 1: of these paints as we talked about period, fine, you
1:36:26
Speaker 1: don't have to do that. There is plenty of options,
1:36:29
Speaker 1: in fact, far more cost effective options for just simply
1:36:33
Speaker 1: producing dear nutrition on a large scale. Well you, Um,
1:36:37
Speaker 1: you make my job easy, Lindsay, because there's there's really
1:36:41
Speaker 1: something attracted to the human psyche. Two circles coming to
1:36:46
Speaker 1: a close. When things come full circle and you can
1:36:48
Speaker 1: end where you begin. It's pleasing to the ear, it's
1:36:51
Speaker 1: pleasing to the mind. And we're so perfectly doing this
1:36:54
Speaker 1: with what you just tied me up with because we
1:36:57
Speaker 1: let our conversation talking about the the impacts of the
1:37:01
Speaker 1: current health crisis and how that's hurting people's budgets. So
1:37:04
Speaker 1: folks are trying to find cost effective ways to still
1:37:07
Speaker 1: make a difference. You made a wish to the genie
1:37:10
Speaker 1: of Mark Kenyon that you could help people identify plant species,
1:37:13
Speaker 1: and now you've just illuminated how one of the best,
1:37:16
Speaker 1: most cost effective habitat improvement projects requires knowledge a plant identification.
1:37:23
Speaker 1: And that just leaves me with the perfect way to
1:37:25
Speaker 1: end it with what you just shared this, Lindsay, that
1:37:27
Speaker 1: was really nicely done, and um became full circle in
1:37:32
Speaker 1: a great way, And I think this is really interesting stuff.
1:37:36
Speaker 1: I've been reinvigored to do a better job identifying things,
1:37:41
Speaker 1: understanding my natives, my non natives, invasive versus non Um.
1:37:45
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to do even more this year
1:37:47
Speaker 1: to learn about all that and then applying that into
1:37:50
Speaker 1: these low impact solutions. So man, a lot of good
1:37:55
Speaker 1: stuff covered here. Thank you, Lindsay. Well, I've enjoyed it this.
1:37:58
Speaker 1: I love talking about this off. You know, we could
1:38:00
Speaker 1: go on and on and on, but you know, just
1:38:03
Speaker 1: I think remember what Craig Harper said to me about
1:38:06
Speaker 1: when it comes to some of these you know, invasives
1:38:08
Speaker 1: that are really problematic and aggressive, but that deer used
1:38:11
Speaker 1: to some extent, you can do better. Um. So you
1:38:16
Speaker 1: know I think about that, and I think about deer management. Um.
1:38:20
Speaker 1: You know, all of us to some extent and want
1:38:21
Speaker 1: to be deer managers and have better deer hunting. If Mark,
1:38:25
Speaker 1: if you quit worrying about whether you need to take
1:38:28
Speaker 1: a doll or two, and you quit protecting young bucks
1:38:31
Speaker 1: and it was just shoot the first dear that comes by,
1:38:34
Speaker 1: and you're just you know, gonna hunt for the freezer,
1:38:37
Speaker 1: would you continue to have deer hunting. Sure, deer hunting
1:38:41
Speaker 1: will still be there, just like deer are still gonna
1:38:44
Speaker 1: be on your place if you don't kill that automotive
1:38:46
Speaker 1: and you don't kill that private or whatever that aggressive
1:38:49
Speaker 1: invasive is you're dealing with. But could you do better?
1:38:53
Speaker 1: Could your hunting be better if you protected a few
1:38:55
Speaker 1: yearling bucks and maybe took a doll or two when
1:38:57
Speaker 1: you needed to to encourage more nutrition for the deer
1:39:00
Speaker 1: to remain? Yeah, you're hunting could be better. You can
1:39:03
Speaker 1: do better. And it's the same thing with habitat management.
1:39:06
Speaker 1: With those invasives, you can do better than that, and
1:39:09
Speaker 1: your deer can too. So um, that's yeah, really a
1:39:14
Speaker 1: pretty simple mantra to live by, I think when it
1:39:16
Speaker 1: comes to this, but but a good one. Definitely a
1:39:18
Speaker 1: good one. If if folks have been intrigued by what
1:39:23
Speaker 1: you've been sharing with us today, if they want to
1:39:24
Speaker 1: learn more about some of these ideas, and or if
1:39:27
Speaker 1: they want to go back to our original beginning of
1:39:29
Speaker 1: our conversation, if they'd like to get involved with qut
1:39:32
Speaker 1: may donate or get involved the d S one or
1:39:35
Speaker 1: become a member. Where can they find all this stuff?
1:39:38
Speaker 1: Qum a dot com just that simplest place to start, yep,
1:39:43
Speaker 1: best place to start where, of course, on all the
1:39:45
Speaker 1: social media channels that the qum a Facebook dot com,
1:39:48
Speaker 1: the q m a Instagram and Twitter as well at
1:39:51
Speaker 1: the same address. But start with the website QTMA dot com.
1:39:55
Speaker 1: Got a ton of free information there. Have a store
1:39:58
Speaker 1: with books like Craig Harper book Wildlife, Food Plots and
1:40:01
Speaker 1: early Successional Plants are Quality Food Plots book. Um, all
1:40:05
Speaker 1: of these resources that are there free. But of course
1:40:09
Speaker 1: we'd appreciate the support. We'd appreciate folks becoming members, uh
1:40:13
Speaker 1: donating doing whatever they can to help us another nonprofit
1:40:16
Speaker 1: groups right now through the current crisis. Yea, and hey,
1:40:19
Speaker 1: speaking of books for selling your website, I saw that
1:40:21
Speaker 1: my book That Wild Country is available on there too,
1:40:25
Speaker 1: So how could I have forgotten that one? Yeah, yes,
1:40:28
Speaker 1: we now have the Wild That Wild Country by Mark
1:40:30
Speaker 1: Kenyon my website. So if reading list by the way, hey,
1:40:35
Speaker 1: well I hope you get a chance to check it out. Um.
1:40:37
Speaker 1: And yeah, if anyone listening hasn't picked a copy up yet,
1:40:40
Speaker 1: pick it up from qt may and help them out
1:40:43
Speaker 1: a little bit too. So yeah, I appreciate, I really
1:40:46
Speaker 1: appreciate the time. This has been fun. It's always informative,
1:40:50
Speaker 1: and um, I'm just gonna I'm gonna keep on bugging
1:40:52
Speaker 1: to come on again because I never run out of
1:40:54
Speaker 1: things to talk about with you, Lindsay, I'm enjoyed it. Mark.
1:40:57
Speaker 1: I appreciate everything that you do. I appreciate what you
1:41:00
Speaker 1: do for Q do you may well. You've been a big,
1:41:02
Speaker 1: big help and fan and support of ours up for
1:41:06
Speaker 1: years and and no han to thank you enough for that,
1:41:08
Speaker 1: but I really really enjoy talking with you and U yeah,
1:41:12
Speaker 1: look forward to doing and again sounds good, Lindsay, thanks again,
1:41:15
Speaker 1: and stay well, be safe, you do the same, take
1:41:18
Speaker 1: care all right, that's gonna do it for us today.
1:41:21
Speaker 1: Thank you all for tuning in. I hope you are
1:41:24
Speaker 1: doing well, safe and healthy and enjoying some some outdoor time,
1:41:29
Speaker 1: whether that's turkey hunting, mushroom hunting, scouting, white t hellivet improvement,
1:41:35
Speaker 1: white tail habitat improvement, that's a mouthful. Whatever is you're doing,
1:41:39
Speaker 1: I hope you are breathing in some of that fresh
1:41:41
Speaker 1: air and enjoying sunshine with friends and family in a
1:41:45
Speaker 1: socially distance safe way. Uh So, all that said, thank
1:41:49
Speaker 1: you and stay wired to HU