Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 301: We Bought a Farm! with Steve Rinella and Jake Ehlinger

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Ep. 301: We Bought a Farm! with Steve Rinella and Jake Ehlinger · 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
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyon, and this episode number three and one,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and today in the show, Steve Vanilla and Janice Potelus
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: they're joining me to share the very exciting news about
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: how and why we bought a farm and then habitat
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: consultant Jake E Linger hops on for an audio tour
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: of our new chunk of Dirt and now welcome to
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: the wire Dhunt Podcast. As I just mentioned today in
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: the show, we have got all sorts of exciting news,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: lots and lots of exciting news. So here in a minute,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: we're gonna hop over to a conversation I had with
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Steve Ranella and Janice Ptelis from Meat Eater to discuss
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: one the heck which did why we bought a farm,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: what we're planning to do with it, and why I
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: think all this is going to be particularly interesting for
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: pretty much all of you, including some very very cool
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: giveaways coming up, so stay tuned for that. And then
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: after that we're gonna get into a conversation that I
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: had with White Tail Habitat consultant Jake Elinger earlier this
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: summer to give you all an audio tour of sorts
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: of the new property. We walked up with Jake. We're
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: gonna get his perspective, his first impressions, and all sorts
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: of ideas he has for how we can start shaping
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: this thing into something new. But first, let me just
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: say this, I am super excited about this new project.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Over the last decade or so that I've been putting
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: out content for Wired to Hunt, I've always kind of
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: looked at myself as a guinea pig. You know. My
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: job here has been to seek out the best experts
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: and resources in the deer hunting world, learn as much
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: as I possibly could from them, put their ideas to
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: the test in the real world, and then report back
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: to you on what's working, what's not, what I learned
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: along the way. Now, I've been able to do this
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: across a pretty wide swath of of types of deer hunting.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: You know. I've been able to do a lot of
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: d I Y type hunting on by permission properties, on
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: small lease properties, done a bunch of public land hunting
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: across different parts of the country and to a small scale.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: I've been to the dabble here and there with some
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: habit at work on a couple of small spots, but
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: I've never really been able to dive deep into private
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: land conservation and whole scale land improvement projects until now.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: So with this new project, the aim is to guinea
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: pig a whole slow of new idea is related to
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: how to turn a tiny property into a killer hunting
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: spot and ways that we can manage and improve the
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: entire ecosystem from everything from bees to birds to bucks
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: and everything in between. So that is the game plan
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: for this year. I'm going to continue to hunt my
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: spots by permission, keep putting. The Big Woods Family Deer
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Camp got three out of state public land hunts. But
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: now I'm going to add to all that this deep
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: dive into small scale land management. So really hopefully going
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: to be like to have a little bit of something
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: for everyone, really flesh out a whole wide spectrum of
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: different ways to deer hunt, test it all out, and
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: maybe pass something along you guys. It's helpful and interesting
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: along the way. So that's what's coming up. Enough beating
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: around the bush, though, Let's just get right to Steve
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Ronella and Janice patel Us and myself to give you
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: the full scoop on our new project. Alright, we're back
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: in another one of those Front of the Truck podcasts.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: I got Steve Ronella and Janice tell Us sitting up
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: here with me and in Front of the Truck podcast
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: something that happens a lot. It kind of is yeah,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: because I'm always traveling around and inevitably end up recording.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Here's the best podcast studio I have. Do you think
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: our podcast studio is stinking? But we're doing this thing.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: We've been half in the rain for the last four hours. Yes,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: we'll be, we'll be smelling it up, but we are
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: here for a good reason. We have something exciting to share.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Do you want to do you want to break the news?
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Like like you've got a really great line at the
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: beginning of our video. The enthusiasm is spot on. Yeah, exactly.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: This farm that is it? We did by a farm,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: and I want to tell everyone what we bought, why
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: we bought it, what we're doing. So it's the back forty,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: but the back forties what we're calling it, what it
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: actually is is acres. Yeah, under selling it by like
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: a significant By calling the back forty, you're under selling
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: it by under promise over delivery. Right out the gate,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: we're surprising with how many more acres we have instead
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: of exaggerating the acreage downald selling the acreage a modest,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: a mo honest, half abandoned farm. Yes, in southeast Michigan.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: And it was one of these things where, gosh, back
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: in January or February of this year, we were talking through,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: you know, through this whole idea how we wanted to
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: try to do it, and it was funny. My whole life,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: I've always thought if I ever was able to go
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: out there, if I had the means and the ability
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: to go out there and get a farm, it'd be easy, right.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: It was just always about having the means to finally
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: do it. And I thought, oh, you'd find this wonderful,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: amazing place and then it would be rainbows and butterflies
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: and your dreams would come true. So we finally came
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: up with this idea and in a way we could
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: try to try to do this, and that was not
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: the case. There have been few rainbows or butterflies. Have
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: been a lot more challenging than I expected, but we
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: did find it. We found the sixty four acres. I mean,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: you felt that was challenging to find even just trying
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: to find it was challenging trying to find you if
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: I told you this. But I think we've spent several
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: months looking for it, trying to find something to fit
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: the bill. We found several that we thought would but
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: we got sold out from underneath us. Oh. And I
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: actually the day I found out the property we wanted
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: it got sold, I was just frustrated that it was
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: really nice. I mean it was sweet, but I feel
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: I feel like we found something with similar pieces at
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: least um. But that day I found out in the morning,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: I looked again online and I've spent so many days
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: looking on line different portals and different real estate sites,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: and nothing else looked interesting within our general realm of possibility.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: And I thought, you know what, I just need to
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: go take a drive and like burn off the steam
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: and just look around. And there was one property I'd
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: seen online that was not all that enticing, but I thought,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: I'll go just look at it. Maybe it's different person.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: And on my way to that property, I passed a
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: sign here at this place had never had never popped
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: up online before. Was it just like a sign nailed
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: to an olk tree? Yeah, well no, just sign stuck
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: in the ground, that kind of thing. Oh what's that?
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Pull it up on the map. That looks interesting, and
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: lo and behold here we are. So a little bit
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: of a stroke of good luck. Let us the back
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: forward and here we are. Now we bought a farm.
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  Speaker 1: And what we are trying to do at a high level,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: and you jump in here, Steve, but at a high level,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: we are hoping to showcase what can be done on
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: a small property like this, whether it's in Michigan or
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Missouri or South Carolina or Nebraska, when you're trying to
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: have great hunting in particular deer hunting, but also looking
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: at a bigger picture point of view as well. Yeah,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: it's wildlife in general and deer. And I think that
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: when you get a place, I mean, it's easy to imagine,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: uh you know, if you have hundreds or thousands of
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: acres in the Midwest, Like, it's easy to imagine that
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: how things take care of themselves. But it's interesting to
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: look at something I'm just like the micro scale of
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: just like what would be regarded as a very achievable
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: chunk of property for a lot of people. Definitely not everybody.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: It will still be like a huge jealousy factor, like
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  Speaker 1: we I'll never have something like that. But it's like,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: in terms of buying a piece of ground, it's big
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: enough to do a little hunting on, big enough to
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: see some impact from your labor. I mean, you know,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: this is like toying with the threshold of what that
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: would look like. Yeah, it definitely. It's It's interesting because
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: I think there's a couple of different storylines that we're
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: we're kind of exploring here from I mean, we're documenting
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: this whole thing in a whole lot of different ways.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: First and foremost, we have, of course, we'll be telling
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: the story of what's happening in this property through the
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Wired Dun podcast. We've got a whole series of how
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: to videos coming out from it, um a bunch of
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: different articles related to the types of things we're trying
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: to do out here. But then we've launched this new
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: video series, the Back forty, in which we are telling
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: that story as well, and not just you know, showcasing
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: what we're trying to do, but we're bringing in a
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: number of different experts to help us try to understand
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: what it is we have here and how can we
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: best manage it for everything from bees to birds to bucks.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: I think they don't forget the squirrels, and squirrels don't
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: know we're going to really I don't think you can
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: really manage for him the squirrels. Is there anyone does
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Kevin ever like, would he know anyone to talk to
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: who would give us an idea as far as what
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  Speaker 1: we could do if we wanted to. I think if
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: you planted corn and left to sit, that'd be good
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: for squirrels. And if you and if you raise hell
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: on these pine squirrels, I feel like that might be
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: good for squirrels. But I don't know. I don't know
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: who who knows you might see an increase in squirrels.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: But one of the more interesting things to me about
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: doing a project like this is there's this there's this
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: sort of idea in in in people's minds in a
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: general sense, was this idea in people's minds that the
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: best thing for nature is always just to like leave
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: it alone. Right, You're this all the time, and it's
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: it's easy to magine they're just leaving it alone is
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: the best thing for nature. Um And in a lot
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: of places, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for instance, that's
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: all that it needs. Right, There are a lot of
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: places that really do and undisturbed ecosystems. Leaving them alone
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: is largely the best thing you can do for him.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: To let natural processes play out is like great, But
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: in the place like this, that ship sailed, man, that
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: ship sailed a couple hundred years ago. Right, this is
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: all manipulated landscape. It's been manipulated and then manipulated again,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: and then manipulated again and changed and whole new plant
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: species brought in. Everything has been everything's been messed with.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: And we should point out this is the middle of
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: like major agricultural land right now. You're like in the
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: you're not quite the you're not in the suburban urban interface,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: but there are large urban areas within a couple of
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: hours drive from here. But yeah, you're just in. It's
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: just an egg area and things have been you know,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: farmed half to death in a lot of places. Uh,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: there's not that much. Uh there's no big woods left.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: It's just wood plots and wood lots. And it's such
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: a way that when you walk away from it. Um
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: if someone walks away from it, it oftentimes just goes
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: to pretty useless non native wheats, you know. I mean
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: if you walk around and just and kind of like
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: look at the landscape, it's a lot of introduced species.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: It's a lot of disturbed ecosystems and and disturbed plant communities.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: And so when you realize that, you're like, in a
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: case like this, the best thing for the landscape, the
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: best thing for the animals is to come in and
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: do a new, more thoughtful round of land manipulation. Right,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Like letting it sit isn't the best thing for it.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: And in terms of just like increasing increasing bio diverse,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: making better deer hunting, making better turkey hunting, is like
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: you can do great productive stuff. And I think there's
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: these two trains of thought. Are these two parallel paths
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: that were following here with the back forward it one
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: is right for most hunters buying a little farmers like
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: the dream, right, Everyone kind of dreams of getting their
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: own little piece of dirt and being able to mold
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: that into whatever it is they've always dreamed of. So
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: there's that whole storyline which we're going to be showcasing.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: For sure, we're gonna get deep into the the white
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: you know, the white tailed geek kind of stuff. People
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: really want to know. How are you going to design
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: food plots? How are you gonna have great entry and
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: exit routes? How are you going to run trail cameras?
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: How are you going to hunt a small property like
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: this with lots of hunters all around it and still
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: maybe find a good buck or two. We'll definitely talk
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: about that. That's not, though terribly unique within the white
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: tail media world. What sometimes it's a little more unique
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: is looking beyond just deer. And I think that's the
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: interesting thing is can we do story number one? Can
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: we turn a little farm into a deer hunting mecca?
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: But can we also do that while thinking about bees
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: and butterflies and squirrels and turkeys and native plant life?
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Can we achieve both those things? And why does it
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: even matter to do that? Like, those are some of
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: the ideas that I want to explore that personally are
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: like really interesting to me because I geek out about deer,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: but I like the idea of pushing myself to learn
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: about the bigger picture. Yeah, I think it's valuable because
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: every day, more and more of the country um is disturbed.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: It's like the lands are broken up into smaller pieces generally, right,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: we're like generally going and we I mean, this is
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: nothing new. We've been going since we became a country,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: of going toward increasingly fragmented places. And so I think
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: that not that not that like we're pioneering something here,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: but I think that anything that can add to this,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: anything that can kind of add to build out an
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: semple it of how to do small scale um land
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: management projects to benefit wildlife and showing people that it
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: can be done, what it requires to do it, the
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: lessons of how how you can mess it up, how
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: you can get it right, to just generally improve hunting
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: and improve wildlife habitat on small chunks of ground, because
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: that's in in the eastern US and and big portions
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: of the big portions of the West. Like that's how
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: sort of the war for wildlife is gonna be one.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: It's gonna be one by people making decisions for wildlife.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: It's like making wildlife based decisions or at least factoring
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: wildlife into your decision making as you exist and work
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: and live on the property. So something interesting we found
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: while trying to try to research what we're trying to
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: do here. When you think about at least a lot
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: of times, when I think about how we can do
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: significant positive things for the natural world still here in
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: the United States, sometimes the first thing you jump to
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: is our big wild public landscapes, and for good reason,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: we have six hundred plus million acres of that land. Um,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: but private land, these little small chunks like you're talking about,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: should not be ignored because a number I saw recently
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: show that more than three hundred and fifty million acres
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: across the country are owned or least by hunters. Really,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: so just imagine, like that's a lot of land that
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: you can make a positive difference with six sixty million
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: of federally managed public land and private half that much.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Again of land it's sort of owned for purposes of hunting,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: owned least for least for purposes of hunting. So we
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: as a hundred community, Yeah, like that's a normal, like
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: an enormous uh area for potential impact. Yeah. So I
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: think the pine this guy aspiration is is what if
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: we could in some small way help inspire some small
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: portion of that to to try to do a little
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: more like we're gonna try to do a little more
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: here and maybe we're able to share some ideas to
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: help others. And there's a whole lot of million acres
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: out there possibility, so that you know, of course, i'd
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: love to see some big deer, and I hope we
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: do that. But at the but the world's bigger than
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: just big deer. Worlds bigger than the big deer, and
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: so I think that that does get me excited. So
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: even while we've had certainly plenty of challenges already when
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: it comes to trying to turn this thing into a
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: hunt in paradise, um, I still am excited about what
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: we can do on that other side of things. I
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: don't think that I don't think that one needs to
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: be and you're not. But I don't think one needs
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: to be apologetic about wanting to uh achieve good hunting
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: or grow big deer out of property, because you have
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: to have there has to be like the incentivizing sort
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: of like the incentivising gateway to want to care anyway.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, so, argument, if we're gonna keep talking about
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: like big Western public ends, a thing that comes up
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: is that people argue that those landscapes need advocates, and
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: you find great advocacy among hunters, meaning there are a
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: lot of people who, like, you know whatever, on some
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: big national forest, there's a lot of people who like
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: to hunt elk there. Uh sort of the goal is
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: you create all these people like to hunt it, and
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: then those are people who are going to be inclined
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: to advocate on its behalf and to watch out for it.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: So I don't think that one. You know, you don't
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: need to be apologetic about Let's say you bought a
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: bunch of land just to hunt deer. It's like, if
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: you're gonna do that, and you didn't buy it just
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: to subdivide it and put a golf course on it
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: or build it into a bunch of condos, It's like, great,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: if that's what it took, the promise of hunting deer
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: is what it took to get you to get the place.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Fantastic because that allows it to stay like as a
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: wildlife producing area. I own and I own one quarter
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: of two acres and half of point six acres. I
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: own that land for like very uh selfish purposes. You know,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: most people are not like in a position to um
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: buy big chunks of property they're not in a position,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: but they don't really have the desire to buy big
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: chunks of property, set them aside for wildlife, and then
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: not derive some personal benefit and some interaction with it.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: So if growing big box, that's great. If growing big
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: box makes you want to go out and like buy
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: some little chunk of ground and sort of like protected
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: for wildlife, um, fantastic. If you can do even more
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: on that without hurting that, but in addition to that,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: do more that that increases bio diversity, and it kind
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: of like helps nature out in places where she might
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: be a little bit struggling, you know, helping out in
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: certain species. It might be not doing too great and
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: and allowing certain like plant communities to thrive. That might
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: be sort of like gradually vanishing from the landscape. One
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: of the things we talked about was like milkweed and
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: monard butterflies. Right, you can have big box, you can
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: grow dear. You can also do like cool things that
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: create the experience of being out there just more vibrant
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: and full of life. If the gateway is is dear,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: I don't great. Personally, I wouldn't buy a property if
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: it if it didn't have the if it if it
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: didn't have hunting potential and just wouldn't do it. Let
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: except for where my house sits, but then that's gonna
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: have a place to live. Anything beyond that, I'd be like,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: is a good hunting if not? Or could it? Could
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: it be? Is it? Or could it become? You know?
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: And I definitely think what we have here is a
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: a a yes, And I think it is decent hunting
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: and I think it can be great. So we've got
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: One of the criteria I was looking at was something
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: that had a lot of potential, something was kind of raw,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: but that we would have the opportunity to mold. And
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: I definitely think we have that here. But we are
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: kind of leaving out a huge punch line of this
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: whole project to this point, because right we bought a farm,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: we're gonna try to manage it for great hunting, but
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: also look at the bigger picture too. But then what
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: are we gonna do on it? Number one other than
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: hunted ourselves. We're going to do a giveaway, Steve, I
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: hope you know about this. We're gonna give away a
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: hunt with you and me and maybe be honest too.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Out here on the farm so we're gonna bring some
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: fan out here to join us. Check this place out,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: hopefully it's gonna be pretty great by then, and have
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: a fun hunt during the heart of the Michigan hunting
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: season season. What's that? Oh, yes, that's correct, giveaway a
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: hunt for season. We eat a bunch of wild game
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: at night, hunt during the day, and then eventually sounds
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: like a good time. Are you into that? That? And
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: we thought about what we don't know what we're gonna
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: doing as far as accommodations, but we'll figure out some
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: cool place for us. I'll stay and and have a
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: good time. Hopefully see some deer. Oh, dude, that we'll
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: see here. Yeah, there's bunch run around. Maybe not one
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: of your dreams. Yeah, but this we're still talking about
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: way down the road. By the next By next year,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: the deer of my dreams will be here. We'll be
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: living here somewhere. And then what are we doing? What
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: you tell the We're gonna give the whole damn thing away.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: We're gonna give it away. I gotta stay two the farm.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: We're gonna give the farm away. Remember not saying I
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: was trying to think of yes, And now I'm blanking
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: onto farm. We're not betting the farm. I was confusing
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: betting the farm with by buying the farm. Given the
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: damn farm away. We're giving the farm away. We're going
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: to share over the course of the next year how
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: exactly we're gonna be doing that. But I think the
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: point being is that we're going to build something, hopefully
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: that's awesome, and we're gonna pass it on and hopefully
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: it will be a really exciting thing to share, and
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: we're gonna squeeze some honts out of it first. Absolutely,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: we'll have some first time hunters get a chance a hunt.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: We'll have some hunters who have some challenges, that's true,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: some hunting challenges get a good hunt. We're gonna have
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: someone someone who uh wins our hunt giveaway come out
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: camp out here with us and hunt it, which would
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: be fun. And we're they'll kind of but they'll be
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: in the driver's seat on that one. I mean, they'll
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: get the sweet spot. They're gonna get to go right
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: to the honey hole and uh and then in the end,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Mark has to do all this work, and Mark will
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: have to he'll have to walk away, as we'd like
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: to say, give the give away the keys to the gate,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: even though the gates gone right. Um, so what do
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: you guys think you your honest just got to see
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: the farm for the first time today, Steve, you've now
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: seen it twice. Um, we tried to squirrel hunt it today. Yeah,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: well no, we didn't do any good on squirrels. But
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: then we pulled the Yeah, it was just I mean,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: it's looking pretty good. No, they're here, but Mark. The
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: thing is Mark's trying to not He doesn't want to
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: like overly disturb it all out. We gave it a
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: good little push. Now we're gonna go to our spot.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: We pulled a trail camp that Mark had up and
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: realized that while we were out squirrel hunting there was
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: a fox squirrel out of the field, a couple of them.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: But no, we didn't we didn't pull it together rained
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: the blue wind. It's not really you know, if you
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: were going to buy us, this is more of a
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: deer property, definitely not a squirrel farm. It's not a
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: squirrel deer and turkey. And there's not your great, big,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: wide open timber, a bunch of oaks. We've got a
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: series of old egg fields that used to be farmed,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: they've been out of production for two years, has been
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: two years, and then fast and then a big acre
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: swamp in the middle that connects into a larger system
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: across their naming properties. And then a thick brushy cedar
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: native grass swamp, not swamp, prairie, ridgeline. It's got some
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: really cool habitat on it. So there's a nice diversity
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: of different habitat types. Uh, there's turkeys, there's deer, there's squirrels,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: not as many as we wish there were rabbits. There
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: are lots of different birds species. Yeah, so we've been
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: trying to serve like what do we have here now?
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: How high quality is the habitat? Now it's raw at
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: this point, but bird species six birds, something like ten
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: mammals um and we're gonna, you know, get to work.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: I thought it was pretty interesting what I learned today
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: that you told me about the like the two major
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: criteria you had when you were shopping from the farm.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Which were those two that I told you that you
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: would have a neighboring farm that doesn't allow any hunting,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: or you would have a swamp. Yeah, that that would
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: and those two things you felt like are very strong
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: factors possibly producing a Yeah, so what I was saying
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: was to try to find a place to hunt where
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: you'd have a chance of seeing like a big mature
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: buck in Michigan. Those are the two things I look for,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Like a big swamp system, something nasty that could become
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: a sanctuary for deer where hunters won't go into it,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: or yeah, a place that just doesn't allow it. But
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: I apply that not to buying a farm, or not
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: just to buying a farm, but also even when I'm
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: trying to get permission, like I will seek out big
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: swamps spots. So in this case that we had a
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: part of that swamp on the property, that was like
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: a big flashing green light that got me excited. But
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: then I was also looking for something that had like
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: all those building blocks. This is kind of like a
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: blank canvas. What I like about all the old fields
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: is that you have the opportunity to try a lot
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: of different things. If it was nothing but sixty acres
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: of pure, big hard timber, it's a lot harder to
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: manipulate Aventure forest versus this kind of habitat. There's tons
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: of room to do stuff. Yeah, So so that's what
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: we're working with. We're gonna show step by step by
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: step everything we're doing. The new video A series is
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: launching when this comes. I'll be launching next week, and
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: you'll get to see from the beginning everything from trying
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: to fare out what do we have here to bring
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: these different habitat and wildlife experts, to then actually starting
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: to try to do the work. And I've alluded to
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: some of the challenges in previous conversations on the podcast,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: but always kind of loosely. I haven't shared the full
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: ah set of frustrations. But as you guys have probably
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: got to know over the years that you've known me,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: I'm not the handiest. I don't have farming background. I
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: don't have you pick. Does it not handy? Dude? No,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: you're not handy. Not handy. I'm trying trying to get better,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: but I'm not naturally handy. My dad was a computer guy,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: so I got that thing grown up, but I did
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: not get like the hands on work stuff. So I'm
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: just always struggling through trying to figure it out. Yeah,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: so this has been like all sorts of struggling through
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: type of things, figuring out how to get this piece
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: of equipment to work or how to get this thing
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: going or so we've had those things, but we're pushing
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: through it. We're making some progress. Our first set of
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: habitat projects are in the books. Very small steps so far,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: but we have something. And the first hunting season and
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: we just did the whole squirrel thing. Deer starts in
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: two weeks. Yeah, and then next summer you can just like,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, starting this winner, starting this winter, it's gonna
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: be a lot. And it should point out too that
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: this is an area. This is an area in Michigan
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: that produces some big bucks. It is I mean like
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: right around here. Yes, that is very true. And and
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: that was one of the other things I did look
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: for was trying to find when you're looking for a
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: small property, especially and if a deer is one of
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: the things that are most important to you, a very
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: very helpful thing is to be in the right neighborhood
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: kind of like generically talking about the zone where there's
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: other people that might be on the same page as
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: you as far as management efforts. So that was another
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: thing I looked at, was trying to get to know,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: like who are the people around here? Are other people
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: interested in managing for wildlife and deer, and I was
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: able to talk to friends of friends and do a
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: little snooping around and chatting around and found out that
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: there are some neighboring landowners who are in the same
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: kind of same kind of page. Well, for perspective, how big,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: how big was the buck? And how big was the
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: property that you got the buck on last year? So
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: I killed a five year old hud buck last year
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: on what sized property? Eighty nine acres, but more than
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: half of that's just wide open field. So really it's
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: like forty and you knew and that buck was there,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: and you knew he was like living in there. Well,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: he was living somewhere else, and I saw him like
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: once a year until last year. Then all of a
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: sudden he showed up for a month and camped out,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: camped out. But that's like, that's that's like a comparable
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: kind of thing here. Yeah, so like you could make
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: us it wasn't like it wasn't accidental that he settled
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: into that zone. Well, what I was telling the honest
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: earlier day is like that has been a neat little
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: micro cosum or a small example of what might be
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: possible here because on on that little farm. I'm able
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: to do just a tiny little bit of habit at
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: work and a couple of spots that don't mess with
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: the farmers property with his I don't know. I just
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: have access to it. Um. But what I do, what
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: I do have control over is you know, when it
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: gets hunted and so by. You know, we talked about
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: this gun season sanctuary idea. I do a number of
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: things like that to try to make this property really
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: hospitable to deer at certain times of the year. And
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: I think over the years that has led to the
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: general population of deer in the larger area getting you know,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: a more and more Well, that's what I'm looking for,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: you a higher age class across the board. There's more
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: older deer, there's larger deer. There's I think, you know,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: in in small micro ways. I've been able to make
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: a positive impact there simply by making a handful of decisions.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: But then when you have something like this where it's
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: all fair game, that kind of success with so little
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: control gets me so much more excited for what could
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: be possible here. When anything's possible. Um. But what that
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: challenges I mean acres, I mean, it's it's it's it
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: seems like a lot to me because I've never had
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: anything to work with like this. But on the grand
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: scale of things, it's it's pretty small. The deer aren't
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: really living just here right there, all over the neighbors too.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: We just need to try to create something that all
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: you know, deer, turkeys, etcetera. Will find the sweetest spot
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: in town. Yeah. Well, I think just a kind of
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: a final thought on it, man is, haven't been involved
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: now and sort of the business of hunting television for
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: a long time. Uh. One of the top conversations I
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: have with people, um who like to hunt and then
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: they sort of look at representations of hunting from magazines
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: and represent presentations of hunting from TV shows is that
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: they're often like seeing a world. They're seeing a world
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: that's not their world, meaning that they're they're watching people
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: hunt these like like giant least properties or hunting you
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: know up in the Arctic and alask whatever, right, and
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: it just doesn't look like it doesn't look like what
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: they're doing, when what they're doing is they're out pursuing
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: their passions on again, like modest small patches of ground
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: right down like the property down the road, the property
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: across the road, their uncle's little place, right, Like, that's
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: where if you want to talk about just like nuts
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: and bolts American hunting, that's where it's taking place. It's
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: it's people hunting white tailed deer. A little ship in
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: chunks of ground is what it is. And so let's
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: talk about that for a while, right, I mean, like,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: I really you can show all this stuff that's like aspirational.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: It's great, and I engage in a too. Man, we
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: do all kinds of aspirational stuff. We're like at a point, yeah,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: let's let's like examine that thing that might at this
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: from from that might to some people from the service level,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: be like, it's not that exciting, it's not that interesting.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: It's just a small patch of ground. The bucks aren't
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: you know so far as no like Boone and Crockett Box,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: It's like, okay, sure, but that's what we're living, man,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: and that's what most people are living in. So let's
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: let's kind of like show and discuss and kind of
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: explore a very real world for most people and see
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: what you find out. You should add and celebrate because
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: that's uh pretty uh special thing to have. That's very true.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: So what we're going to start today is fleshing out
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: a picture of what it is we're doing here. And
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: after we end this little introduction chat with the three
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: of us, were bringing on Jake e Linger, who's a
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: habitat consultant who was one of the people that came
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: out here toward the property with us earlier this year,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: and he's going to help us kind of kind of
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: give you an audio tour of the property and share
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: with you his thoughts on everything he saw and ideas
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: for some some steps we could take to move into
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: this new direction. So that's the rest of today's episode.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: That's what we're gonna talk about. If you're interested in
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: what we were what we're trying to dive into here,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: if you go to the Meat Eater dot com slash
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: back forty, you'll be able to eventually see maps of
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: the proper pretty some of all the content that we're
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: creating around it, and all sorts of the video series
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: everything we're talking about. You can also do that right
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: now as today at the media dot com slash win
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: a hunt that will take you right to that sign
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: up as well. So I'm guessing a good way to
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: stay abreast of everything that's going on here at the back.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Forty would be to sign up for the weekly White Tail. Yeah,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: the same place you sign up with that link I
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: just mentioned. You'll be on the newsletter. So think. And
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: when you win this hunt and you shoot your buck,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: I will make hot buttered buck nuts for you. Who
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: could say no to that? I will cook when you
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: get your bar. Mark's licking his lips right now. That
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: doesn't even have a dough tag. Right when you get
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: your deer, I'll cook every damn thing you want to
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: eat and some things you don't want to eat. All that,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: and with that we'll let you go. Thu, Stephen Jann
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: for coming out here checking it out, and uh, we're
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: gonna have some more adventures out here soon. Thanks Mark,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Mark. Alright, so we are doing um one
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: of these on location podcasts, but we're not in a cabin,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: we're not in a house. We're actually sitting on my
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: back deck here with Josh ford or Hilliard and Jake
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: E Linger. We got a nice view with the bean
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: fields and stuff behind us. Um, there's been a lot
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: of does and fawns feeding back there. So five bucks
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: to anyone who sees feeding out there. While we recorded podcast. Alright,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: I'm watching for Deer the whole time. Um, But what
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: we did today was a lot of fun as far
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: as what I'm concerned about, and that's what I want
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: to talk about in this episode the podcast. What I'm
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: hoping we can do here is do like an audio
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: version of what Josh and I just got to experience
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: with Jake, which thank you Jake for doing. For spending
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: the time you spent with us today walking our new
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: property with us. If if any of your clients get
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: the kind of which I'm sure they do, plus some
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: if they get the kind of like interesting insights and
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: advice and recommendations and and enthusiasm like we did there
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: in for a treat. I was telling Josh on or
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: drive back. Probably my favorite thing about spending time with
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: you in the woods, whether it be this property or
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: when we toward yours, it's like just your genuine excitement
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: about it. It just gets me even that much more
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: because I can telege as you are about it, the
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: the the the opportunities you see in places, and that
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: is cool. Um, So that's a special thing. Well, thank you.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: You know. I often struggle with do people see the
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: vision that I do, and I know a lot of
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: guys that hire me don't. That's why I'm there. But
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: for me, you saw, I can walk into a place
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: and I can see in my mind what it can be.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: And that's why I get all jacked up because I
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: just know a little bit of TLC a couple three
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: years of time. Man, can this be a great place
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: to hunt? Yeah? And that's that's you know, that's what
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: we're looking for here today? Was right? We we we
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: bought this new property in southern Michigan. It's sixty four
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: acres of raw potential from what I saw when I
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: eventually first scout it out and picked in and we
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: were able to purchase it. And I've had all these
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: different ideas and all these different visions in my head
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: and things I want to do or things I think
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: we could do, or things that maybe we could do,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: but I'm not sure how to quite pull it off. Um.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: But to this point, it's been mostly just me and
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: a couple other people I know that have been able
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: to really take a look at it. I was really
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: hoping for an outside new perspective on them, Like, was
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: I right? And the ideas I saw, the opportunities I saw.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: Are there some other potential red flags that I didn't catch? Um,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: how would somebody else approach this? That's those are the
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: questions I've been having. And I want to bring someone
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: like you in who has that kind of skill set
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: and and just a long background of experience to pull
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: from to take a look at the property and say,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: these things look good, these things not so much. Here's
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: some different ways to think about improving your food source.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: Here some different ways and think about improving your betting.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: This is how I think deer might be using it now,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: this is how you could change that. Here's some things
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: to think about from a hunting standpoint. I mean, that's
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: that was like my dream situations if you were able
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: to come in and share those kinds of ideas, And
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: that ended up being exactly what we did. We walked
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: all over the place, stopped in a lot of different
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: locations and kind of broke it down. Um. Some idea
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: for this conversation now is let's rewalk our steps, Let's
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: park our truck at the front of the property and
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: walk through it again and talk about what's of interest
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: and just we'll dive into more detail now than we
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: did earlier. Today when we were just walking about with
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: the video cameras and chit chat. So, so we pulled
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: into the parking lot. It's not really parking lot. We
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: pulled into the drive. I've got a lousy screen that
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: I tried to plant at the front of the farm
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: to try to block it from the road. It's it's
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: it's actually one of the best on the property. So
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: cam in Okay and with some nitrogen, I think will
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: be able to get the boost and will work. But
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: we started out in that front field. We call it
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: field number one. It's basically the property kind of looks
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: like the state of Oklahoma a little bit. If you
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: imagine like a pan kind of looks like a make
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: a pot almost, and the panhandle is where the property starts.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: That's the road front is the narrow portion of the
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: panhandle there. That's field number one. It's a big brushy
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: field overgrown with all sorts of stuff and then thick,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: nice fence rows all around it. So we started walking
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: down the north property boarder. I've got a little two
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: track kind of cut in there. Just I guess give
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: me your first perspectives on what you saw when we
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: started walking through that portion of the farm. Well, what
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: I liked was you've got the really neat what i'll
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: call the traditional old fence rows. They're quite wide, probably
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: five to ten yards wide, big trees, cherries, some oak trees,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: some hickores, things like that in there. And then you've
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: got you know, kind of this patch where of fields
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: that at one time we're cultivated but are not this year.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: So you know there's all kinds of good natural betting
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: already in their golden rod, pig weed, uh, ragweed growing
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: in there. There was a lot of natural food sources
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: and good cover right now the way it is. But
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: because of that, your access is a little bit tight
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: because you're in that when you say we enter into
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: the panhandle, so it's narrow. You've only got one or
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: two choices where can I walk? So you pick the
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: north fence rows makes as much sense as anywhere, and
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: as great as it is with some cover and opportunity
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: to food for food, that's the last place you want
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: to put food. If you're in and out of there,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: you park there. I like the idea of your screen.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: I think if you get some two things, hit it
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: with some nitrogen, and then maybe go back in with
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: a broad leaf killer and knock off the competition, and
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: you'll still see it be five six ft tall for
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: the years over, and that'll be good for you pull
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: in there and be hidden. I do think that it's
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: as when I originally got on here early in the spring,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, this is up front in the road.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: There's not gonna be much activity. But now with how
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: well all that gold run everything has grown up. I
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: mean it's once you get just back a little ways,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: I mean it feels quite secluded. Yeah. I think at
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: a minimum we'll be able to do a lot of
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: dough hunting up there, don't you. You pointed out a
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: couple of things when we were there, like the high
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: spots versus the low spots. Um, can you touch on
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: a little bit of that? How you thought, dear? Might
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: you know? So we we walked maybe I don't know,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty yards heading east along the north border,
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: and we came to i'd probably guess primarily the high
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: point in that field, and it was a nice little,
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: nice little flat shelf. And so typically because of wind
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: and uh, just the way air moves in high ground,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: deer like to cross where they can have the best
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: ability to have their noses work for him. And then
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: directly east of there, maybe fifty sixty yards, it was
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: a pretty good, nice little low spot, which again depending
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: on the conditions the wind direction, things like that, dear
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: are gonna across and utilize that as well too. So
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: there's two neat little spots right there where you're gonna
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: have encounters with deer. And then when you came to
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: the corner of the very first food uh fence road
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: that went north and south, you've got a gap to
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: bring equipment through, and what a place to kill dose.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: We hadn't been there five minutes right there basically, and
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: we what was it three four There was a couple
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: of three and they were just in that tall golden
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: ride and all that pig way, and they weren't five
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: or ten yards away from us. Was really cool. We're
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: just standing there talking. All of sudden they jumped up
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: and ran away. So I think long term, depending how
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: long you own it, you might consider into the core
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: of that first field. The food source was some screening
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: all the way around it for like early season in
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: late season doe harvest, but it would require your screen
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: do really really well, so nobody from the road can
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: see what you got going on in there. So okay,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: so how far across do you think that like the
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: panhandle from north to south, so the narrow old length
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: of that panhandle, how far do you think that's a
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: hundred yards wide? Maybe? So how far do you think
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: from our access trail would we need to put that
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: food source? If we're going to get into food source,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: they're screened in little plot, which I did think I
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: have thought about them that can you get that in there?
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: Would be nice to have a little something up here?
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: How far away do you think we have to get that?
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: We get to quietly getting enough if you have a
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: good screen and and it would require two screens, one
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: along that trail and then one also on the inside
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: edge of the food plot, so you could definitely get
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: into them. So you could have kind of a long, narrow,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: hourglass shaped plot in the center of that field. And
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: with the screens plus the natural goal and round, all
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: that stuff has to be real, real thick, that'd be uh,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: you know, from a priority, there's lots of other things
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: you can work on, but a couple of years from now,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: if you've got everything else working for you, that'd be
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: a place to focus on and another thing you mentioned
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: though that could keep it low key, but maybe just
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: sweden it just enough to help our early season dough
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: hunts was the idea of doing some strategic mowing through there. Yeah,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: can you expand on that, so you could go into
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: the lower area and across that high spot that deer
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: like to cross, and just literally mow a four foot
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: wide winding trail through that high golden rod and and
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: pigweed and maybe make a couple of openings. You know,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: think of a clover leaf with two or three and
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: and so you'll have that the exit trail go up
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: and then end up next to another fence. For all
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: that's easy for you to access. And so you and
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: those deer are going to use those edges. They're gonna
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: use those internal openings. Even though there's not food per se.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: You'll mow that. Something's gonna come up, probably some clover
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: and a lot of volunteer stuff is going to come up.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: So you'll have green in there this fall, probably something
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: for it a six inches tall, and de you're gonna
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: congregate in those openings. They're gonna use those edges. I mean,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: if you get creative and just do some winding trail
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: systems with some openings in there and then have them
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: ending where you want to stand location. I think that's
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: a really easy way to just take advantage of that
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: field one end field to really which are the two
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: parts of the panhandle? Kind of that I you know,
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: like you mentioned, access is the big question mark with
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of things on this farm, but especially there
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: at the front because it's the Panhandle. It's a very
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: narrow area I have to come in and out of
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: every time I hunt. I originally, okay, these first two
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: fields that formed the Panhandle, I'm just gonna not gonna
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: plant anything because I was afraid of spook and deer
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: in a night. But I think this is a really
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: clever way of still doing something that can help you
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: just a little bit, just improve your chances hunting up
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: there a little bit. And I think there's no question
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: that there are deer already up in there. Yeah, Like
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: were we spooked them? When I've walked out from a
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: Scotlan trip the other day in the evening, blew a
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: bunch more deer out of there than I realized. Um,
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: And it would be easy, quick project to do for something.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: This is the first week of August. So if you know, man,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: if you just get in there in the next two weeks,
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: get that done, I mean you're you're good to go.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: And just keep in mind, don't do any straight lines.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: Make sure those trails can deer can't see into an
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: opening into where you're walking or where you're walking into
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: an opening, there has to be a big enough you know,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: s curve in it or something to block their visions
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: so when you are walking through, they're not able to
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: see you. It's a good point. Now is that more?
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: Is that mostly just for that reason so they can't
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: see you, or is there also something to be said
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: about that encouraging their movement down the trail. It's twofold one,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: so they can't see you. But secondly, when you do
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: get bucks cruising, you know they use their eyes a lot,
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: and if they can look out and say, oh not
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: need dose that little opening. But if he can't see
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: into that opening, then then it will force him based
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: on when to walk down around that curve look in there,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: and he just might go all the way across and
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: walk right through another mode trail you have going to
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: a oak tree that you've got set up and you're
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: happy to be hunting there that day and it can
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: just you know, um okay, So Field one, that's the
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: story there. It's it's mostly gonna be our access and
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: exit route. It's going to be a spot we can
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: get some good dough hunts in early and who knows,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: I mean a buck could come cruising through there. But
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: it's a safe location to get to, very easy to access,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: very nice place to harvest. Goes you're not even in
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: the property per se, piece of cake. We found a
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: really nice tree five yards off the road that we
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: think Josh will hunt from. We did see location. I'll
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: be sleeping in while you guys are. Then I'm super
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: early to hike all the way the back. I'll show
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: up just before daylight there. And that you can find
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: the silver lining and anything that's that's a good um.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: So then moving to Field Too, very similar to Feeld one,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: and that it's this overgrown old farm field. I guess
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: we shouldn't know, like Field one must have very high
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: quality soil or something going for it, because it did
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: have like the best growth. I mean it was already
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: above our heads in that field. So imagining in entire
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: farm field covered in six to eight foot tall, we
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: growth of falls or stuff, golden rod. There a lot
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: of diversity, and you moved into field too, so we
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: just got, like, like you said, a five or ten
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: yard thick fence row of just trees, cherry trees, brush.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: You get to feel too again mostly the same thing,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: except for it starts to drop off down towards the
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: bottom and then on the neighboring property you've got a
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: small chunk of timber that connects into this field. Um,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: and that the bottom of this hill is where our
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: big swamp begins. Was there anything and field to worth noting?
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: Outside of what we talked about the field one? You
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: know what I did like about Field two was the
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: topography change and the fact that just as you transitioned
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: from field one to field two, there was at north
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: south fence row and that little tractor gap, and that's
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: where those funds were laying up high on the hill,
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: probably for sent scenting conditions and other things, but again
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: just a perfect location for dough harvest. Easy in, easy out,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: don't have to drive back very far and pick it up.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: And I do think I think for sure there's gonna
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: be movement coming in and across there from that timber
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: on the side of the ridge across our old field.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: And then if we do the food plot that we'll
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: talk about in field three, that could pull dear across
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: right through there and use that the you know, two
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: thirds the way up the ridge kind of typical ridge
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: type moving across there you might see. And the fact
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: that say, the eastern end of field two was the
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: lowest level and that's where you're swamp and thick cover
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: sanctuary type environment was. I think there's gonna be a
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: lot of cruising opportunities the eastern end and and the
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: northern edge because of that thick cover that the neighbors got. Yeah,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: that's a good corner. Um. What would there be anything?
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: So those two fields as of now we're talking about
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: mostly leaving relatively in touch. Maybe put a little food
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: plot in their tuck then there, maybe do some strategic
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: wing um. But you saw the types of vegetation in
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: there right now in those two fields diverse, um, a
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: little bit of everything. Would you recommend or is it
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: something not worth prioritizing trying to do anything to manage
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: that vegetation there, or is it pretty darn good as
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: it is and you should let it be you know,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: for a couple of years it's going to be fine.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: Eventually other succession comes in and it will change. But
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe two years down the road, if you
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: have people or have experience doing backburning control burns, you
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: can actually burn the bris and maybe do a very
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: light disking through there. Man, it'll be up eight nine
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: ft tall again the following year, given rain and the
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: conditions this year. Okay, that's that's kind of some of
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: the things I was thinking about, trying to just revitalize,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: and then we'll talk to some of the other fields
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: that aren't as good. You know, We've talked about some
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: other ideas, but I really do want to make sure
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: we one thing about those fields in the early spring
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: when they're you know, extentia is a foot eighteen inches tall.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: That is a lot of deer food. I think people
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: totally miss how much good natural food is right there
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: fields coming back up. Man, that's good at early successional growth. Certainly,
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: the times I've been on turkey hunting the spring and stuff,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: they were hitting it there in their feet. There's a
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: lot of good food for him. So that's nice to see.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: So we headed down that hill. We got to the
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: bottom where the edge of the swamp is. When we
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: continued on towards field three and you get to this
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: kind of big cross intersection where you get the power
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: line which is the edge of the swamp, intersects with
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: this two track that goes down into the swamp across
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: the high spot in the swamp that also intersect with
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: the offense row coming down and then there's a gap.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: So imagine like take a t, make a t with
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: your hands, and then make a little gap right where
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: those two lines come together. Imagine there's a little gap
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: in the trees there that deer could come easily through
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: back and worth along each line. That's the kind of
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: situation we have where fields two and three come together.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: And I stopped and I said, hey, this was an
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: area of interest for me. Do you see it too? Um,
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: can you describe what you saw and if you if
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: you agree with that at all? Yeah, And number one,
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: it's kind of steep right there where it's heading to
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: the east going down the hill, and yeah, there's a
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: power line that you know it's been opened and the
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: utility people keep it clear. And you've got a fence
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: row that comes to an end and leaves a nice
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: gap right there, and I think especially during the cruising
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: phase of you know, pre rut, what a location to
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: get into. And it might even be a good evening
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: stand in early season, say the tenth to fifteenth of October,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: given good conditions. Again, there's just a great edge there,
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: and because of the opportunities the deer to kind of
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: show up from anywhere, come out of the swamp from
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: the east, come from the west, and that's the only
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: gap they can go through. It would be very easy
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: for you to get in and out of that. That's
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: what I like about it. Access is great, and that
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: that whole tree, the whole fence row that comes up
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: behind it is really thick, and it's actually a big
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: ditch in there, and just a bunch of junk and
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: tangled mess in They're like, I don't see many deer
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: wanting across that. They're gonna want to come through that game.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: I think they're gonna use that game, especially if you
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: take the time to mow it or something like that
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: to give them a little path to walk through down there. Now,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: is there the barrier like those kind of brush barriers
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: and those in the uh has that been built up
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: along that? Like we saw up towards the front. No,
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: I don't think there's that like up towards the front
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: of the property. More towards the beginning of the panhandle.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: The previous owner or several owners back could like stacked
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: a bunch of trees and stuff like that. That doesn't
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: continue there. But it's just like there's it used to
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: be a ditch. It looks like they filled it with
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: a bunch of trash and junk. So there's a bunch
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: of junk junk in there, and then it's just tangled briers.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's I've never even tried to walk through.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: It's like so nasty just for me to walk through.
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: Uh So, I gotta believe most deer would rather not
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: at least probably. Um So, it's a nice big I
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: can't remember what country it was. It was a big tree,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: was an oak, a big cherry, because a cherry right there,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: big tree they all looked at. That's where you put
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: the stand, yep. I think we could The question can
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: we get a if we do a saddle sit up there?
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we can get a saddle tether
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: around because it's so big, So what to look at that?
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: Maybe you'll have to do the ladder stand or something
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: to get around a big enough tree like that. But yeah,
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: easy spy, you could sneak right into the back of
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: the hype climbing there. See in the field three, maybe'll
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: see the little I don't know, the food plus pretty
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: tucked down in there, but you can see you can
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: a little long ways hopefully get some cruising along that edge. Also,
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: deer might be coming up and down that uh line
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: of travel along the fence rather extends down the two
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: track through the swamp to um, so those are I
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: think you also will see up into fields four and
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: five swamp to the other side. We could also kind of, um,
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: you know, buddy up as an observation stand for you
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: because you know we're it's sitting and you can see
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: right across your swamp in the fields three and four.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: So it could be a very beneficial stand for the
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: right time of the year. Yeah, I mean, I could
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: totally see the first couple of days the season maybe
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: even like I kind of wanna be in the action
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: because you never know. At the same time, I want
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: to just be able to see a lot of stuff.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: Being a low impact that's kind of just enough in
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: there that I feel like there's a chance that something
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: could pop out the same time, I can see a
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: lot of country and not really be messing stuff. And
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: when you go to Leaven evening when it's dark, there's
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: no food around here, so you can just slip right
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: out and slip any deer. Well, that's the beauty of
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: that spot. So the one downside about filming or recording
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: podcasts outside of my deck in farmland is that when
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: the guy who farms the farm right next to you
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: decide to spray everything right when you record a podcast,
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: it just happens. So we're gonna get some round up
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: spread on us or something here, Yeah, in the next
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: few minutes, but we'll be okay. So we saw that
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: intersection point thought that would be a good place to
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: hang a stand, And then it took you to field
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: number three, which was this next field that is a
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: little bit larger than one and two. It's another one
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: of those overgrown farm fields. This one is not quite
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: as thick as the others. There's some spots where was higher,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: some spots or it wasn't quite as good. And you've
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: got um some mayor's tail and different things like that.
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: Um but this is a location that I thought it
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: would be a good place to possibly put a food plot,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: because it's far enough from that north access route that
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: I didn't think you'd be spoken deer when you come
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: in and out. And I wanted to have some kind
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: of attractive food source on the west side of the swamp,
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: so i'd have somewhere to hunt with wind directions, you know,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: on that side. Um, I didn't want to have to
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: always go to the far side of the far right,
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: so I thought, I gotta have some kind of food
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: source on this side to work with. So my original
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: idea was to plan a pretty substantial food plot in
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: that field, and I planned a screen of Egyptian wheat
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: and sorghum and sunflowers and various things along the what
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: would that be the western border, um, along this neighbor's property,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: and he's got there's like a barn and a garage
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: and a bunch of junk and stuff there, and then
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: even in one corner you can even see the house.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: So I thought, I need a thick screen there to
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: block this whole neighbor's yard and stuff visually from this field.
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: If we're gonna do it and make this work from
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: a food plot standpoint, the screen did not come in
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: well at all, So basically it's unscreened. Now with that
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: situation place, if you imagine neighbor's house can see all
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: these things overgrown field and then a swamp of the
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: bot on the hill. And I came to you, Jake,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: and said, okay, now what do I do? Can I
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: plan a food plot here? Should we not do a
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: food plot here because of how how visible it is
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: by that neighbor? Um, what do you think about that area? Well,
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: you know, lucky for you, you had a really nice
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: little depression about two thirds of the way to the
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: south and close to the east side of the third
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: uh field tree, and it was low enough to where
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: if you put food in there, the neighbor is never
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: gonna be able to see it. The deer when there,
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: you know, it must be twenty feet of train change
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: and it's probably gonna get a half acres worth by
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: the looks of it. So I encourage you to go
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: in there and moment spread and plant some food in there.
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: And that's going to really help that that stand that
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: we just previously talked about in that gap, because you're
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: going to get a lot of north south deer movement
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: right along that that fence row using that same train. Yeah,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: they're gonna follow it along that thick edge, and there's
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: the food and it could be a really good spot.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: And I think you'll be able to get in and
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: out of there real easy into that stand because that
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: food is down over the hill. I mean, I don't
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: think the deer will ever know you're there, right, And
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: the beauty of it, you could hunt the stand. We
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: talked about the t intersection. You could have a stand
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: there and hope that you'll get deer traveling on the
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: edge towards it. Um. We also talked about the idea
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: of brushing in the ground blind just above the food
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: pot so that you could access it from the back
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: slip in and then just once you're in, you'd be
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: able to see down the crest and from the west
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: and that would be a great ground line. You know,
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: probably wouldn't want to hunt much. Yeah, a couple three hunts,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: a couple of times at the right time, and then
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: maybe you could even hunt. We never even went to it,
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: but the far south border there on that edge, you
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: could probably throw a stand and catch deer moving out
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: in that direction. You'd have to. And then you could
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: walk right up by the neighbor's house walk neighbor is
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: a junk pile and go down to that stand exactly
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: and not bother any deer. You know, Yeah, I think
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: that's gonna be. Ah. I think that's gonna be a
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: little better location than I'm even giving a credit for,
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: because I do think that deer, there are going to
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: be some number of deer. They're gonna want to move
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: out that direction, head towards those crop fields across the road.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: Natural movement would pull them out that way. On certain
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: wind directions. It might be it might be a nice
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: little sweet spot. It could very well be. And then
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: that from there is just this big swamp. And I
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: described it to you was kind of the shape of
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: a gourd, like one of those cords, like a long
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: handle on it, kind of. And um, so at the
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: far northern side of the swamp is the handle of
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: the gourd, and as you go farther south, it widens
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: out into this big, bulbous shape. So that's this big swamp.
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: And we we crossed the narrowest portions, we crossed the
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: handle of the gourd. We've got a little two track
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: that runs across the dry spot, and we got into
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: the beginnings of that wet land, and then we walked
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: a little bit a couple of that. We entered it
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: into several different parts to look in what we're kind
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: of looking at as a sanctuary. We're kind of I'm
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: kind of almost entirely leaving the swamp as a sanctuary
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: because it's acres maybe of really incredible cover and tough
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: to get in and out of, very tough for a
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: human to get in and out of there without something
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: no when you just stepped in. And I think that's
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: one of the biggest reasons why I liked this property
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: from the beginning, because I had that. I don't know
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: what you think, Jake, but so often when I'm looking
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: for a property here in Michigan, just like when I'm
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: looking to get permission or something, I always try to
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: find a property that's close to like wetlands swamp something
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: like that, or or another thing could be like a
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: farm that's awful the mist hunting, or something that's going
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: to protect a buck. To maturity. I feel like a
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: big swamp is one of those things that can give
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: to maturity because I can hunker down there during gun
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: season and survived the orange dr army. So when I
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: saw that, I was like, right there, that tells them
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: it's probably a mature buck around here because he has that. Um.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: So tell me what you thought about what that looked like,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: how you would be using it or manipulating or leaving
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: a touch or world. Just where we entered first, you know,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: it was kind of thick and there were some cherry
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: trees and you've gotten invasive buck thorn we didn't talk about,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: but you've got some buck the worn. But once we
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: you know, that was ten or fifteen yards and it
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: went into read canary grass with some uh, there were
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: some dogwood edges, but they were a very natural deer
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: trail right along the cover where it was dry enough
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: to not be wet and they're keeping them from getting
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: their feet sage. Okay. A lot of trails going in
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: and out of there. And so I saw that as
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: a great location. There was a couple of cherry trees
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: that you could put a stand in and that would
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: be more of a rut period stand to watch deer
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: and probably with a south and a southwest or west wind,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: that would then be more on the east side of
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: that swamp, trying to use their nose to set check
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: what's laying or using or crossing that swamp, trying to
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: cut trails of doors. And then those deer would come
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: right via in that stand and you would actually be hunting,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: you know, just into the the edge of the swamp,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: but you'd be up in a nice high tree, you know,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: that's part of a big old fence row right there.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: And it's it's kind of a natural pinch that's formed
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: because of how everything grew right there. It's almost like
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: if you imagine a triangle, a right triangle, so you've
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: got that right angle, and then you imagine you're holding
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: your gourd and then you take a right triangle and
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: just jamming into the side a little bit, and so
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: you've got that angle cut into the gourd of your swamp.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: That's sort of what's happened here. And that inside corner
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: there of the right triangle that you pushed into the
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: gourd creates that pinch that you have now, and deer
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: want to move on the edge of the swamp, the
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: corner forces them around it, which just I think becomes
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: that special little focus of activity, right I think you know, again,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: when it comes to a you know, at seeking cruising
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: phase at ten days of the year before they're actively
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: chasing and running and and all that, that would probably
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: be a high activity area of buck screwsing through there. Now,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: how do you think deer are using the Gordon general? Um,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: you saw we didn't go way deep into it, but
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: you saw a couple of little points within if you
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: imagine it looks mostly like that. You know, some of
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: it's wet, there's some there's some islands where you've got
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: some maple trees and some cottonwood trees and some willows
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: growing on. And then on the narrow end of the
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: gourd towards the north, that's where it again became higher ground.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: So I think the deer are using that north higher ground,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: and then they're they're using whatever is dry, depending on
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: the season, along the edges of where it's dry. And
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: then probably when it comes to gun season, just because
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: of pressure, you've probably got some little islands and things
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: out there, some little clusters the size of this table,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: maybe twice the size of this table, and you're gonna
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: have deer useing nose just to get away from people.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: So do you think that most of the dope do
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: most of the dough betting is happening, like up in
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: the hills and the fence rows, and something right up close,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: maybe right on the edge of your swamp, but right
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: up close at first ten yards of cover where it's
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: still high ground. And then bucks. Do you think bucks
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: even now might be betting on some of those islands
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: in the swamp or they stand up? I think there's some,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: you know, depending how many mature bucks you have right now,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: But of course this time of the year, they're all
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: pals in there and at each other's thin Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: So what about sanctuaries in general? What's your perspective on
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: like this idea I have of leaving that thirty five
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: acres relatively untouched. Um, is that something you generally like?
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: Is that something you recommend? I mean, I love having
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: a sanctuary having that area you do not hunt, okay,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: But on the other hand, manage it. Clear out trails
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: in the off season to know where these deer are
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: moving and then set your stands according to be on
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: the entries and the exits. But you've got to have
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: a sanctuary. You've got to have place that the deer
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: on that property that you're trying to advance to the
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: next age class can go get away from you and
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: get away from the other hunters and still, you know,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: we all have a pretty good life without a whole
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: lot of stress and everything else. So the the argument
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: from some people would say that's stupid to leave a
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: best party of property in touch because that's where they
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: want to move in daily. Um, what's your answer to
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: that person? You know, there's there's one or two days
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: a year I set stands. You've been in my place.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: I do go into my quote sanctuary, but it's just
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: once or twice and again, we're hunting a high pressure state.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: You're a little bit different here and depends what your
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: goals are. And I think your goals are to try
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: and move dear that you used to be happy to
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: take now and to advance him to the next age class.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: So if you've got a really good one, kind of
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: a homeboy, it spend a lot of time there and
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: you'd really like to see him next year, then give
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: him that spot. Don't don't go in there and and
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: push him so hard that he leaves. Then he might
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: go over in the neighbor's property. Even getting a little
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: trouble um, But I mean, I love sanctuaries for what
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: they what they are, and it is a safe place,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: a safe zone for those funds and bucks of different ages.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: And I like that they offer you, as a landowner,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: opportunities to hunt mature DearS. They come and go, but
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: I'm a big believer in leaving them alone most of
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: the time. But it's worth taken to risk, especially when
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: you've got a buck that's on your list, he's in,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: you're getting pictures of him coming and going. Then when
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: everything's right, go in and hunting. Yeah, you know the
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: Hall Mary Shop. Yeah, from a from a management perspective,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: you know, talking about sanctuary stuff. In the off season
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: doing some work. I know you mentioned trails cot some
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: trails in there. What would be like your number one
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: recommendation in that area to do this offseason too. I
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: would I would go in there in the off season
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: and follow those trails, see where they go, and they're
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: gonna some of them are gonna lead into some really
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: thick cover and it's gonna be so thick it's you're
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: gonna see it's very hard for deer to move through there.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: So go in there and open those trails up to
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: you know, three ft wide, you know, two two and
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: a half feet wide or so, get them tall enough
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: so that you're tall tined. Ten inch bucks that you
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: grow around here can move through there when they are
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: in velvet because they don't like to mess up their
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: antlers as they're moving around. And clear that debris out
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: of the way. And then cut kind of some side
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: spurs that go to some high ground for dose to use,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: so they actually you can just you can double the
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: amount of deer use in that sanctuary by opening up
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: new trail systems. Maybe you maybe the trail has got
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: a bit of an arch curve to it, and you
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: you cut a snaking trail that goes from one part
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: to another and just adds a little another feature of movement.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: And so I do a lot of that in the
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: off season. Cut openings and locations for dear to move freely,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: but still give them all the cover, make them feel like, man,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: we're in here and it's great. And then strategically ending
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: those that's points where we want to have a stand
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: set up, direct those out tours and you know, yeah,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: any of those trails that that you're cutting should be
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: connected and eventually come by a location you've got a stand,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: and those are the stands are easy for you to
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: get into. Your literally going in five yards, you're in
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: that stand. You haven't really entered the sanctuary. So talk
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: about how you think, uh, these bucks will be operating
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: during the fall or with that swamp a little bit around. Um,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: how you imagine them using the wind to check what's
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: happening in the swamping. Because we talked about setting you
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: know that little right triangle into the gourd, We're like, hey,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: we should stand there because they'll be cruising it. But
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: why are they cruising it? What are they trying to
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: do there? Um? Because I'm always I'm always interested to
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: know what direct what wind direction are they going to
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: come this direction? And what wind direction when they go
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: that direction? Can you just allow? So Number one, we're
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: talking about a mature deer, and here in Michigan, I
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: consider that three and a half and older. Some might
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: say four and a half and older, but for sure
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: three and a half and older and then a three
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: and a half Michigan deer's pretty well pressured, knows a
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: lot about hunters, starts avoiding people, and also deals with
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of competition. There's not near as many three
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: and a half here, there are an other states, so
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: that puts him in line to be a breeder, okay,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: active in the rut. So what that buck's trying to
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: do is literally just be very efficient, cover enough ground
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: quick enough so he can go from one location to
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: and to the next. So he's gonna use his nose
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: most of the time. He's gonna be down wind or
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: he suspects does are betting, or he's gonna he's going
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: to use a parallel trail along an edge of that
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: swamp where there are dough trails that are perpendicular that
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: are going crossing maybe the the reed carry grass and
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: going up into those maples. So there might be three
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: or four places where does like to frequent. So his
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: goal is through that hundred and fifty yard walk that
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: he's taken that morning, he's gonna cut four or five
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: of those trails and hopefully come across uh a dough
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: that smells like she'd be worth you know, going and
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: checking out. And in that process he's also going to
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: keep tabs on his competition. Some of these Now you
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: start getting into your four and five year old bucks,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: you know, they're in the top of the hierarchy, and
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: they maintain, you know, their ability to stay at the
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: top of that hierarchy. So they're pretty pretty concerned about
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: who their competition is. And through that process, they're making
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: some scrapes here and there, they're doing some rubs and
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: that's hiss, you know, say, and it's always on the
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: down wind side, so under you know, that last pinch
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: point that's ideal for west south and southwest. If the
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: wind happens to be out of the north, then that
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: buck is going to be completely over any other side
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: of that swamp, over on the west side of that swamp,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: on the south side of that swamp, doing his cruising
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: because he wants to smell the want a cross, and
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: you know they're they're nomadic animals that don't follow us.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: Gripped a lot, but in general, you know, I'm just
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: because hey, anybody who's hunted and watched, you're gonna see
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: deer that do things completely different than what I'm mentioning.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: But in the grand scheme of things, their goals they
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: get down wind and use their nose as possible. When
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: you're in really good cover where there's never a person
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: like your sanctuary. They never run across human odor. Then
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: they start letting their guard down because it's thick, it's
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: security cover, and then they'll do things called tail winding
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: and maybe not really worried about the wind for this
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: to fifty yard jaunt that they take through the read
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: canary grass where it's it's kind of an opening, so
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: the wind in one moments from the north and the
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: next moment it's from the west. They don't, you know,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: they just it's the right time of the year for
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: them to take a risk because they feel like they can.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: But you won't see them do that in open field,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: that type of thing. So when you say tail winning,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: you're you're saying walking somewhere with the wind actually coming
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: from behind them. Yeah. Um. So we checked out that
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: little right triangle in the gore, checked out the sanctuary.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: We talked about the sanctuary. You know, one other things
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: on the sanct where standing point that should be of note,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: And this is something I've talked about in the past,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: but I'll bring it up just one more time because
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: you asked about it while we were walking through. It
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: was if I planned to use my gun season sanctuary
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: idea in there, which which I do um and and
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: it sounds like you've maybe done something somewhat similar or
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: heard of, at least the idea of leaving almost the
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: entirety of the property almost untouched during the gun season.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: And now, I know some people want to hunt during
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: the gun season. That's fine, and I sometimes go out
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: a couple of days. But I've kind of found the
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: most valuable thing I can do during the gun season
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: is make my property the safest place around, because all
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, you get tons of hunters everywhere else
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: coming out. Every deer rushes to the one place there's
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: no one bugging them. If that ends up being your property,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you've done two things. You have
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: a better chance of the bucks that you are interested
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: in killing surviving long enough that you can be the
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: one that gets hun the most. I'd much rather hunt
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: my buck when I'm the only person around for six
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: acres versus when I'm one guy of fifty other guys
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: that are in that six acre block, depending on where
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: you're at, So one gives me a better chance to
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: have that mature buck to still hunt in a more
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: controlled environment in December, late season of my bow or
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: musler or whatever. And then number two, I think you
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: have a disproportionate impact on the larger population as far
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: as what bucks can make it to the next age class.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: If all of a sudden, you can have the place
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: that all these bucks come to for safety, all this
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: year and a half old and two and a half
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: year olds and three and a half year olds, and
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: you're not going to bother them in there all of
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: a sudden, those bucks aren't getting killed. That might otherwise
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: if you were hunting and walking in and out bumping
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: all this deer off your farm. Now they're going everywhere,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: and everyone else who was out there who wants to
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: shoot them all all the deer get killed. So just
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: by leaving my place on touched for a couple of weeks,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: I think I can have an extra large impact on
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: the quality or an age structure of deer in the
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: general area by gave him in that safe spot. So
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: I do that in a lot of my property. Is
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: not saying I'm not ever out there. UM. I'll still
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: make my presence known every once in a while, and
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: you know you gotta be careful, but low impact, um,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: And I think it really helps. You're doing it just
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: the way I tried idea to do the same thing.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: You know, my place becomes a real sanctuary from gun
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: season on. It's uh, if if you're willing to sacrifice
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: a little time now, it's of course it's a good
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: time to kill deer. So I understand people want to
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: get in there deer run around all over the place
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: and fun tradition and get that. But if you have
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: somewhere where you're willing to lay off, it's it's a
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: very it's it's a little trick to really improve things.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: I think, well, I think Jake, you're saying this that
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: you had a buck maybe moving was if it was
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: it maybe last year season and just stuck around. Yeah,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: there was a total stranger and he's stuck around. I've
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: always wondered that if you come in you've got a
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: really great situation, like, oh this is over here. Yea. Yeah.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: And I never ever got pictures of him. He was
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: a whole new guy, and he was, you know, fairly nocturnal.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: It seemed in daylight a couple of times. And then
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: all you know during uh March when they said he
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: was just getting pictures of him all the time, watching
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: him grow this summer and now he's becoming a little
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: more nomadic like they get at this time of the year.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: But he's still there and that's what's pretty cool. So
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: he didn't leave you. Yeah, I am. It's very excited
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: about it. That's good. That's it's nice to have those
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: kinds of get excited about. So, so we we left
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: the right triangle of the gourd. Man, I just got
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: you're on fire with your shapes as descriptions between a gordon,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: a triangle and Oklahoma. Yeah, very good visual listeners to
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: see where we're walking. So I'm gonna describe what Josh
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: looks like if you imagine lots of ovals and does
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: we we leave the gord we had up We head
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: up in the field number four five. We feel five.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: So imagine your pan, your Oklahoma pan, and imagine the
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: way this should be oriented from like a northeast west
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: would be if you imagine the northern border of the
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: property is the top of the panhandle, top of your pan,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: your pot right there. Okay, So field five is like
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: right in the middle of your pot, kind of smack
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: dab in the middle of that pot. So we entered
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: that field. It's low where the swamp is and that
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: steadily rises up a series of hills heading up towards
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: the far eastern property border. And this is where I
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: showed you our first food plot work. We've done so far,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: what I assump we have tried to do here in
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: the pot, you've got these two large fields. So imagine
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: two long rectangles the top of your pot, and then
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: the second tier down is another field, same size, separated
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: just by a thick fence row. My idea was to
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: create a food plot system there that essentially looks like
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: an hour glass in one of those open fields. Is
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: the top triangle of the hour glass, and then the
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: pinch point of the hour glass is that fence row.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: Because I thought put a tree stand right there that middle,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: and then the bottom triangle extends down to the south
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: and two field number five. So that was my idea
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: of the food I thought these locations. I thought to
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: put the food plots there because you could they were
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: central enough in those fields, and I thought I could
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: access around the outside edges of the property. Depending on
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: when directions stuff I would be able to get this.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: I could still have a food plot in those fields,
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: but be far enough away on those edges that if
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: everything was screened properly, I could get in and out
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: and move to a number of different places in the
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: property in early morning or late evening, hopefully if you
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: were in that field without them knowing him. At the
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: same time, I wanted a location that would be far
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: enough away from the neighboring property lines that neighbors wouldn't
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: be taking advantage of that food or spooking deer off
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: of that food. And the last thing is I wanted
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: something that would transition deer in a some predictable way
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: across the property. And my idea with that setup was
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: that I wanted the edges to be able to move.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: But I knew there'd be deer bedding in the swamp
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: and along those just in that ridge system that we're
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: about to get to. So I also knew there was
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: a crop field to the far north, and there's a
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: crop field to the far south. So I imagine there's
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: two lines of movement. There's the north to south movement
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: coming heading up to feed in one way or heading
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: down to be the other way, and then there'd be
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: this east to west movement from deer in the swamp
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: heading into the food. So I oriented this food plot
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: kind of north south to kind of transition across that,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: but I could intersect him coming either way. This is
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: my high level idea when I was kind of planning
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: it out. So what I did this spring was I
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: went and I tried to do a no till food
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: plat screen planting in June. It failed miserably, so we
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: got about failure on the screen. Me and Josh just
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: went in there the other day and replanted it. Most
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: of that we replanted in a quick growing hybrid sorghum.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know what we're gonna get. I'm hoping for
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: four or five six ft. Anything will be better than nothing,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: So we're hoping these things will still be screened. I
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: just don't know to what degree. Um. The two triangles
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: of the hour glass are both situated and kind of
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: little balls or shelves in the hill, so it's kind
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: of a low spot in each one of those fields.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: I thought that would be the best place to place
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: it within there because it'd be a shielded a little
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: bit visually because of the topography. Be those a little
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: bit of low spots might have a little bit better moisture. UM.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: And then lastly, I assumed deer would feel more comfortable
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: probably staying in the slightly lower topography a little bit themselves.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: So with then like there's my whole mindset. That's what
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: I've done so far. That's what I was thinking. I
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: kind of outlined that too, and we walked up there today.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: Walk me through how much of an idiot I am?
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: Or if that sounds good? Well, actually, you know, it's
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: a good idea, and it's a it's a good location
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: the pinch point because of that fence row dividing your
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: pinch point. Super good idea. Um might have a little
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: excess issues depending on the season and how many deer
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: are you using that food? Okay, but generally more those
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: deer should be in the the large bells of your
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: hour glass versus being at that pinch point. But it's
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: very good and with screening, those could be great. And
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: I think you said they were gonna each you add
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: up to about an acre apiece, right, So that's all.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of food for those areas and it
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: and it brings your deer into the core of your
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: property too, that's what I like about. It keeps you
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: away from all your borders. Okay, So so seeing what
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: I had there, if we took all that away. If
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: I didn't, if I hadn't done anything yet, if you
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: just saw those two fields now, or or maybe even
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: all six fields are yours to play with, where would
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: you put your food plots or what would you do differently?
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: I would definitely, you know, food is king, and even
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: though you've got food on the neighbor's property, you know,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: when you have food and you have a great sanctuary
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: like you do where deer are going to spend time
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: and call at home, you've got to have a very
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: good food source. And you've got some natural food sources
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: and some eggcorns, some mass crops, and that's good. But
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: it's a short term thing. So I would have looked
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: at very generally the same thing I'd have looked at.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: Field four and five probably is my ideal locations for
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: large what I called destination food plans, because it was
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: far enough away at the number one, I wouldn't be
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: going walking by them, and I wouldn't be there all
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: that often myself. Then I got to deliberately go in
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: and hunt, and so I you know, I might have
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: done a little bit different shape. I might have done
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: two separate plots and just use that fence row is dividing,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: but it probably wouldn't have taken very long to hunt
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: in there and figure out where that natural north south
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: movement is. And you're probably more familiar with it because
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: you have turkey hunted in there. And I think it's
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: gonna work out real good. I mean, so you were
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: not a dummy. You did a real good job. Well,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: it might still be dummy for other reasons. It's exactly
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: um yeah, And I think, um, is there anything else? Well,
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: you did recommend one other spot, but would there have
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: been if let's say, if if we because another idea
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: I had was should I shrink those instead of two
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: big triangles to become an hourglass acre each? Should I
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: have scattered really small ones throughout, like have a little
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: corner with a little one little corner with a little
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: I didn't ended up not doing that, But I don't know,
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: are there any totally different like shapes or sizes, because
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: we really aren't locked into this, and we could do something,
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: you know, we're regardless of I mean, I'm an irregular
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: shaped guy. I'm not a square in rectangle when it
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: comes to food plots. If I can avoid it when
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: I'm creating them, just because how dear naturally use the
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: edges and things like that. But when you when you're
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: tired for the listeners to see. But when you're on
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: that property and you look at some of the slopes
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: southern exposure, which means they're gonna get beat with a
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: lot of sun, and then other slopes, you go, well,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: where can you plan a food plot where would retain moisture?
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: And you pick the two best places in both those fields.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: And you also use the topography to hide those deer
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: to kind of be in a bowl. It's not a
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: deep bowl, but it's enough to hide them. And when
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: you think about access coming up that hill or going
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: down that hill, you'll be able to hide from those deer.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: I think I think we fought out quite honestly as
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: far as where to put food, because that's that can
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: be your achilles heel. You can be real successful growing food,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: but if it's in the wrong spot, you can't ever
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: get in and get And that's been like my big
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: stressor trying to like figure out the right way to
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: place it in there to get it and out and
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: and so much of that was originally dependent on the screens,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: and now we just don't know what how that's going
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: to pan out. But I do think through most of
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: the spots, as I imagine, like walking around those edges
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: and trying to get there's pretty well covered between how
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: tall the vegetation already is and the natural topography like
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: the way you'll admit of the hills. But there's a
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: couple of spots where I see like danger zones, like
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: for example, when you come across the two track across
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: the swamp and you get to that intersection where fields
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: four and five story, and if there's not a good
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: screening cover blocking that those food plots, especially the food
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: plot in four, if they can see right down to
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: us that I'm screwed. You got danger zone. Is there
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: anything like we kind of talked about up front with
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: maybe mowing some trails, is there anything that we should
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: think about doing back there that might dictate some movement
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: because too and from those food plots, we may be
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: able to maybe keep them back further instead of up
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: front where they may be able to see down. I
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: don't know, maybe some micro plots or something that we
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: could do. You had had a couple of corners on
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: some of your food plots as well. Here's a nice
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: little bowl in this corner. Yeah, it's kind of close
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: to your neighbors, but if you could screen it, it
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: would be a great place. But a perennial. It's always
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: nice to have some perennials, not always focus on on
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: annuals um But again, you know, you your new landowner,
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: You're gonna learn a lot of information this year, you know,
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: and you're gonna find out how it is during the season,
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: just really what's going on. But you know, I'm a
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: trail guy. I mean, I'm mo trails to guide dear,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: whether it's in woods is that I've done hinge cutting
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: and t s I work on, or whether it's early
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: successional growth and even in my soybeans last year when
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: the soybeans get really tall, I mean I mowe these
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: trails and the deer followed them, you know, just like
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: they were highways, and it worked out real good. So
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: you know, deer are pretty lazy and they take to
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: those trails really easy. So you know, the trouble is
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: getting in and getting out and not not running into
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: those deer into those trails. We we try our best
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: not to have those encounters with deal deer where we're walking,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: you know, I can't eliminate all of them, but I
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: don't try to plant food where I'm going to walk
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: for access if I've got to get to a stand somewhere,
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: I'm trying not to go down trails that are planted
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: in food and that sort of thing. And and you
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: brought up a good point in that I never really
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: described fields four and five like we're talking about putting
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: food plant in there. But you gotta remember even the
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: four and five aren't quite as thick as Field one.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: We're still talking I don't know, belly high tall all
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: weed growth like almost to the entire field. So it's
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: not even like you're planting something. And when I when
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: I say a field, I think a lot of people
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: think like a clover field. It's not open. It's it's
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: like you're you're carving in a little opening into what's
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: eventually going to be hopefully shoulder tall walls of vegetation.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: You're gonna have so much edge once you create those
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: food plots, and those deer are gonna feel very safe
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: in there. So so even though you didn't have your
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: screen workout here, there's a lot of good things are
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: gonna happen because you're carving into something chest high, and
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: I think the big, the big. I feel really good
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: about how it's gonna look through October. But once the
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: leaves I'll come down that stuff dies. That'll be my
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: big question mark is at what point or how well
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: does it still in the first heavy wet snow is
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: really going to be going to show what's going on.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: And that's gonna be I think, well, we'll see, Okay,
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: here's where our dangers new danger zones are, or this
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: is how dear behavior is going to change. Um. Another
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: thing we talked about when we were back there, excuse me,
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: was mock scrape locations, either real scrapes or mock scrapes.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: There's a lot, least at lots of great natural edge
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: already where there's gonna be natural looking branches. Deer are
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: going to be naturally moving through they're making scrapes. But
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: then one of the questions I had for you was,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: you know, given how open it is a lot of
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: relatively open it is in places, um, should I be
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: putting in more scrape trees or more mock scrapes different
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: things to to move dear kind of the direction I
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: want them to or stop them in the places that
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: I want them to. There's lots of opportunities for that
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: if we wanted to, um, what are your thoughts on
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: all that? Well, you know when it comes to mock
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: scrapes and whether it's limbs that you pull down and
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: the grape vines, I guess there's ropes you can buy online.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: There's all these different methods and and they all work,
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: you know, relatively well. But it really is about location.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: I seldom put a put a mock scrape somewhere to
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: change dear movement. All I'm really trying to do is
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: concentrate and slow down, dear. So it's got number one.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: It's got to be the location. If you've got a
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: location where there is frequent deer activity, and that could
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: be you know, all those and fauns and box of
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: different age classes, then having a mock scrape in there
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: is going to buy you more time, going to have
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: more activity. And it becomes that place at that mature
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: buck all of a sudden goes and either scent checks down,
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: gets downwind of it, or visually goes up to it
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: and works it because of all the other deer that
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: leave their calling cards there. And I've watched that change
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: with you know, big time with areas where I didn't
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: have the scrapes and there was just one natural one,
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: and I've put three or four mox scrapes in there.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: Now I got mature bucks in there during daylight because
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: they're busy keeping track of Big Louis. You've got a
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: somewhat unique, uh way of doing mock scrapes with sometimes
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: hanging a rope or cord and some vines and stuff.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: Can you describe how you do that set up? So
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: let's say you're in a some either the trees are
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: too small or the timbers big and mature, and there's
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: nothing in the right size for you to pull a
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: limb down or attach something too. But you might have
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: two oak trees or walnut and oak tree that are
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: say eighteen inch diameter sixty foot trees, and they're twenty
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: yards apart. You can run two strands of wire, two
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: strands of rope fairly tight one another, and those have
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: to be up in the air, probably liking at six
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: to seven foot. And then what I use is you know,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: plastic electrical tized to either put oak limbs, basswood limbs,
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: or grape vines now usually put at least two and
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: dangle them and tie them on on both pieces of
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: wire so that they have they're fairly ridge in. The
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: deer can have some resistance and leave their scent on them.
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: And if they're in the right location, usually where one
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: or two trails or three trails converge or cross, you're
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: gonna get a lot of activity. Um, the ground should
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: be fairly level, it should be open enough, open enough understory,
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: not be so darn thick that they can't get in
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: there and move. I mean, it's got to be open.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: If you've watched any area where deer scrape, they aren't
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: gonna do it in a real tight quarters. They've got
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: to have openings and some areas where they can move.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: But I've had real good luck doing that with him.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: And then also, you know, just pulling a limb down
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: at the right place on the edge of a food
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: plot or a travel corridor, attaching a grape vine to
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: a limb with some wire, just having an arch down
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: and be in the right location from literally chest a
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: shoulder high in an area and it works real good. Yeah,
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: I feel like there's because of how much edge on
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: this farm there is, I feel like there's a great
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: opportunity for some smart mox scrapes you do. And again
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: you got to think about where can I place those
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: so that when I'm accessing certain stands I'm not visually,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: I can't be seen. So you gotta always think visual,
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: you know, can if I can see it, the deer
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: can see me. And that's a thing, especially when, especially
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: later in the season, have be thinking about that often. UM.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: Food plot diversity. What I was actually planning. I told
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: you my idea this year was to try to have
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: a diverse blend of things, um, both from like a
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: soil trying to build up that soil, trying to do
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: some things that're gonna help from a soil standpoint, but
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: then also provide a diverse, diverse buffet that will last,
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: you know, all through the season and then continue on
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: into the spring and smother weeds and then I can
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: replant some stuff in there, trying to develop us us
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: not cycle, but a rotation that will work well. So,
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: as I described to you, I've got a blend of
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: Brassica's variety of turn ups, greens, radishes, then some annual clovers,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: some winter wheats, some oats, some cereal rye that kind
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: of Smorgasport approach is that I'm trying this year. I've
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: not I've never gone that diverse before. I've usually done
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: like strips of Braska's strips of boats. It's worked great.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: But I'm trying this new deal. Uh thoughts on that,
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: you know, I've I've done both. I've done the strips
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: individual strips over the years. I've combined the more just
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: to basically have different diversity because one product is more
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: attractive at this time of the year, and two weeks
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: later now the oats are right and around the oats.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: So what I'm trying to do is keep er in
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: the same exact field, feeding in the same locations. They're
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: just feeding on different species. And I'm a I'm a
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: blended mixed guy. I like it. I think what you
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: just told me is really good. Those annual clovers are
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: very nice. I've had really good luck with your crimson
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: clover and that that type. And you know, not only uh,
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: not only is it awesome in the fall, but in
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: your spring. I know you're a turkey hunter, that crimson
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: clover comes back up and the spring the deer, not
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: only deer, but your turkeys will be in there. They'll
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: be strutting turkeys will be picking on it. You know,
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: it's the first place for bugs to show up because
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: it it blooms pretty early in the season. But yeah,
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: I think that's a really good idea. But you can
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: only do that for so many years, and then you
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: want to move into something else. So always rotate, and
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: ultimately you want some you want some perennials, some perennial
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: clovers and chickery. And I'm you know, I use that
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: that very high level checker clover because I have found it.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: The box just go nuts over it. They just feed themselves.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: So I've got you've seen no small little plots and
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: you you know, it's just amazing to see how many
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: bucks feed and no small chickery plots all fall along. Interesting.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: I never I've actually never planned chickery, never experienced it.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: So I've got one right now. It's a little over
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: an acre and there are you know, not only are
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: the doors and falls, but there's a lot of bucks
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: in it. Interesting. They're hitting it pretty hard. So this
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: takes us sounds like our food plot plan is is Okay,
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: We're gonna test it out and see how things work
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: with access and exit. That'll be our like touch and
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: go situation. I think that's like a big crux of
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: the whole season, is how we're gonna be able to
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: get in and out of there. If we can get
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: away with it, we can pull it off. I think
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: we'll be aholdsome deer. I think we'll have some success.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: If we're blowing deer out every time. Then so we're
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: changing things up five yards off the road, Josh will
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: be safe on the road. And then if there's any
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: advice I can tell you, I've seen when it comes
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: to paying attention to details. Planning your food plots is
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: where you need to pay attention to details. You've done
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: your soil test. You know you know where things set,
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: so plant the right the right blends. Take the time
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: to eliminate competition as just as you can, UM, because
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: without doing that it'll be a failure. And you said
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: in most of those fields, especially fields four and five
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: heavy and Mare's tail, which is tough to deal with,
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: invasive weed that in many places developing glycos fate resistance,
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: the round up resistance. UM, your thoughts for dealing with
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: that were, well, you know, uh too, for d is
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: a broadly selective and we'll kill Mary's tale very well
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: regardless of the age. And the trouble with glyci fate
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: a round up is, they say, and I've experienced it.
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: When your mayor's tail starts getting eight ten inches tall,
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: it's very hard to kill and and sometimes you can
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: hit it. It It will turn yellow, but it just won't die.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: The trouble with using two four D to kill it.
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: At this time of the years, you will get some residual,
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: which means it it re sides in the soil. You
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: can put seed in the ground. It will german and
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: it will come up and grow a little bit and die.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: If it happens to be a broad leaf. Now it
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: wouldn't bother any of your grains, but it would bother
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: your chicken eas and your brassicas and or and your
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: annual clover too, So you might have a waiting game.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: So I guess the sooner you can get in there
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: and all those openings, or just going there first and
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: spray that marrisdale and try and kill it, but realize
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have about two weeks as long as you
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: follow the label. What the label tells you know more
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: is not follow that label, So that puts you you
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: know you might be looking at the third week of
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: August or later before you plant. That's not too late
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: for your grains. And and sure you're not gonna get
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: huge brassicas, but you can go with kale and rapes
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: and things like that and still have a whole bunch
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: of forage. Or the other alternative would be to mow
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: it all right now and spray with glyph. Just mow
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: it and spray with gly and then get your seed
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: in the ground and just take what you go. See.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: My issue is that it's just a funky situation. I
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: don't have my mower yet, so I can't mow right
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: now to do that. I could spray with two four
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: D right now, but I wanna I don't want to
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: film until I've got like you know, the guys that
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: are helping us, we're trying to film it. So I'm
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: trying to line up the timing of like I don't know,
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: I might have to do the we might need to
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: do the mowing and the glyph because I could do
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: that all one day and we're not gonna have the
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: mower for like a week. But at that point I
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: can mow, I could spray, and then we could plant
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: the next day. If we wanted maybe just knock call
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: out in one day or two, that's probably gonna be
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: what I meant to do. Yeah, you can go right
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: behind gly and plant and you're gonna be using a
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: drill to Yeah, you're in good shape. Knock on wood.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: If somehow that falls through, then I do. I'm calling you,
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: Jake and trying to see what kind of magic you
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: can pull out of the area. Man um. But we're
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: in field four. No for phill five or at the
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: bottom of the hour glass. There's another gap in the
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: thick brush east ence rose and now okay, we're let's
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: look at our pot again. We're holding our Oklahoma pot.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: We've been in the middle of the pot. Now we're
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: about to enter the bottom of the pot. The bottom
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: of the bottom of the pot. Let's envision if you're
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: looking at your pot, you look at the bottom. Now
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: put a line through it vertically to split that bottom
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: portion of the pot. The left side of the bottom
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: of pot is this big brushy ridge system, which we'll
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: talk about. The right side of that pot is another field.
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: It's field six. Let's talk about the field six first,
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: and then we'll move to the ridge system. Last, so
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: Field six is um blocked from the food plus system
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: by another one of those brushy tree rose friends rows.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: And then there's a small gap, and that small gap
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: in the fencer I planted in a screen that actually
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: did come in pretty easy, pretty good. So I think
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: by the time hunting hunting season comes through, that gap
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: will be mostly blocked by that screen. So visually, dear
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: in field six at the bottom of the pot, they're
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: not going to be able to see much that's going
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: on the main food plus systems. So kind of nicely
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: keeps that back section secluded Field six. I originally had
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: this idea Jake, and I told you this earlier today,
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: but we'll spell it out again. This is the very
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: farthest point on the property from my access, so it's
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: the hardest spot to get to without blowing stuff up.
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: It also is right next to a neighboring property owner
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: that I know hunts that has a tree stands right
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: in the edge, has trail cameras right in the edge.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: Um so, and it also is adjacent to that rich
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: system I just talked to you that had lots of
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: great betting and habitat just looked really great. So I
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: thought to myself, maybe I should just leave field six untouched,
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: make it part of the sanctuary because it's hard to
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: get to anyways. If that all, if that grew up
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: into great, you know, head high vegetation this summer, and
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: I also thought I'll plant some some kind of strips
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: of winding screen cover. They're just to break it up
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: more and add some more of structure and stuff that man,
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: that could be awesome additional betting sanctuary or whatever visually
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: will block the neighbor that hunts on the edge from
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: the rest of the property. That was my idea coming
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: into the summer. Did all that got back from our
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: western trip in August, went out there and looked at it.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: The screens failed. The vegetation itself throughout most of the
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: field did not grow very tall at all. I mean
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: some places only knee high. Um, So it didn't really
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: achieve much at all of what I originally thought it would.
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: That's the circumstance we have known. That's what you saw. Um.
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: Given what you're seeing now, can you walk us through
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: your recommendations for what to do with this maybe three
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: acre field ish of maybe knee high to thigh high
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: marriage tale and stuff. So clearly, um it looked like
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: it was gravelly sandy soil, and that pretty much probably
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: explains why everything is low to the ground. You know,
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: no organic manner, well drained, not holding any moisture, less nutrients,
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: so you're just not getting the spectacular growth like you're
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: getting the other fields. So because of that, you know,
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: you don't even want think about trying to grow anything
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: in there because of the soil building that's ahead of you.
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: If you were here for twenty years, that'd be one thing.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: But uh, you could though go in there, uh and
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: do some herbicide treatment and prepare it for warm season
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: grasses and probably get some really in create sanctuary, and
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: then move towards the north side of that, next to
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: that fence roll that divides field six and deal field five,
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: and put a small little food plot in that low
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: area that parallels that fence role. And not that you'd
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: ever you might put one stand down in there, but
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: it would just be a great attraction and it would
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: hold more dear farther away from your neighbor. Not your
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: neighbor is gonna kill some deer. He's gonna see some deer.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's just all part of the deal. He's
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: got a big egg field right over there, but it
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: would create it would answer the problem for you for
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: taking that field and doing something strategic with it, turning
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: it into bedding. You know, most of the time around
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: your year three year switch grass, big blue stems going
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: to do pretty good. And I know your blue stems
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: gonna grow well because you've got some growing different places.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: They're already talk about the idea of mixing in some
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: other stuff with your warm season grasses to get some
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: better height and cover in the first couple of years
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: before your grasses reached U technique I tried several years ago.
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: I've shared it with a number of different clients and
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: friends of mine, And that is when you're planning your
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: warm season grasses, you plan them at the regular rate
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: you're gonna plant them, and then you come in and
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: you replant over the top of them with Sudan sorghum grass,
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: which is very inexpensive. It's fairly thin. It doesn't stand
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: up to snow and wind and rain and ice like
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: these big hybrid sorghums in Egyptian wheat. But it creates
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: a great cover and it allows your warm season grasses
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: to not have any other competition other than that Sudan grass.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: So your second year of switch grass, big blue stem
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: indian grass that you have that you're growing will come
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: up really good and not not fight the broad leaf
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: like the Mayor's tail and the golden rod and pigweed,
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: and it's going in all the other fields. And the
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: great thing is the first year you've got eight feet
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: of cover. Yeah, I like that, and you get a
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: real good feel for how you can approach and things
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: you can do. And carving out that little food plot
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: down along that fence row. And you know, if I
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: if I was to plant that down in front where
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: your access is, you can probably hide yourself from that
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: small little food plot. So it's worked out real good.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: Sure you've got some debris the second year, the dead
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: sorghum goes through the frost, it's gonna lay on the ground.
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: But that but the switch grass and blue stem or
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: whatever it is you plant, it's going to come up
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: through there and just really do well. And I've seen
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: year to four foot switch grass grown. Now can you
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: walk through just how to plant warm season grass like,
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: because that's a little bit of process right, it's there,
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: and the most important thing to remember about warm season grasses.
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: They do not like competition, so it's all about preparation,
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: and it's kill and kill and kill, and you what
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: your goal is to try and remove the existing seed
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: bank whatever is banked in that soil. There are seeds
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: that are not German eating, but will anytime that soil
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: is disturbed, something German eats. No, I don't care if
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: it's a drill, because the drill still is going in
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: there with cutters and opening a gap, put a seed down,
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: covering it back up, but you're still disturbing it. So
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: the one thing I learned with warm season grasses is preparation.
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: And a lot of guys follow the midsummer spray all
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: the way through falls, where in the fall you've got
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: this bare open field with absolutely no pains me. And
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: it pains me to go through that process. But then
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: you can go in there in the spring with zero competition,
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: put in your seed and some guy's frost seed and
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: things like that as well. So you think the best
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: thing to do would be actually going there and start
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: spraying now, and so it'll be dead this fall if
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: you If you want a really good looking stand of
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: warm season grass, is the best thing you can do
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: is start killing now, and you do too sprays this year,
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: you do one now, probably come back to one in
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: mid September, more towards October. They say, that's the most
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: beneficial kill you can have out of the entire season,
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: is doing that kill. So what if I don't care
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: about looks, I'm all about personality. What happens, And you're
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: just like me, what I was like, I can't give
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: that up if I cover, What if I just spray
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: in the spring? Yeah, and you're gonna you'll have multiple
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: springs in the spring, and often one it's done. As
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: you spray, let it come up, turn green, spray again.
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: Then a light disc, say two inch disc. Just disturb
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: the soil. And your goal was to disturb it, open
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: up that seed bank, make it German eight, let it
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: get up for spray it again, same thing, kill, give
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: it another and and that will get you to late
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: June early July planting time. And when I did mine,
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: that was four kills, and I planned on the last
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: day of June. And now if you saw my my
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: fields are just and they're eight feet tall and the
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: air beautiful. I did burn this ring and had always
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: enhances it the following year. So okay, So in the spring,
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: I do this multiple kill, let come back spray, Let
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: it come back lightly disc now it comes back kill it.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: It gets me to late June or the July. We
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: drill in all of our warm season grasses. In July,
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: I overseed with some sedan sorghum grass or sorghum? Was
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: it sort of sudan? So I think it's I always
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: gonna make. It's been a long time since I bought it,
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: so I oversee it with that that first year you're
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: telling me I could have eight foot talls sedan grass
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: plus three ft tall switch grass. Yeah, that's what I had.
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: I like that old pictures of mine when I first
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: did mine, I wish I had done my entire fifteen
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: acres that way. Only did just a couple of acres
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: that way. I bet you that'd be that'd be really nice.
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: And even even portions of Field three, the one that's
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: close to that house there that's not it's very similar
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: fields sick lock that area completely off. That could be
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: pretty cool and warm season grasses like that. Um okay,
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: And again that's a completely diverse type of habitat. Does
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: love it for fawning in the spring. It's great running
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: cover and it's very random. You know. The only way
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: it becomes defined is if you go in your motrails
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: and then they're gonna follow trail through that warm season grass.
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: But like, what I think would be cool is if
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: we were to have that, we'd have several fields with
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: warm season grass. We have several fields with a very
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: diverse blend of big weed, poke weed, golden rod, some
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: maryor's tail. There might be some things we can do
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: to manage that, maybe do some selective springs, or I
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: don't know, maybe eventually we'll want to do a prescribe
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: burn through some of those and get it to regrow um.
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: And then so you have that kind of habitat, you
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: have the warm season grass habitat, you have some wetland habitat.
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: You'll have all I mean, there's a whole slew of
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: different things in that sanctuary swamp. You saw all sorts
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: of different types of vegetation in there, and then you know,
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: three acres of food. Then we've got these brushy fence
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: rows full of lots of red oaks. It's got acorns, um.
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: We found some other soft mass in the next look cation,
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: we're gonna walk to um. So it's a pretty nice, diverse,
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: blended habitat across this front. And one of the best
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: things is every every next field we go to is
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: all that additional edge. Man, there's a lot of edge
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: on that farm. And all animals were like, especially deer,
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: especially deer a key in on edge. They really do.
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: So we're at the bottom right corner of our pot,
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: which was the field number six. We're gonna go to
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: the bottom left section of the pot, which is the
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: ridge system, which is the taj mahal of the farm.
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: I think in certain ways this was like when when
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: we arrived at the property, I asked, you, like, when
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: you see the spot you like the very most, Let's
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: spend spend some extra time there and walk through exactly
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: how you set it up, how you hunted, what your
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: thoughts are. And I said to Josh, I bet you
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: I know the spot and this is the things. Like
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: everyone of my friends that I walked through and check
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: it out, we're all like, ah, this looks like something
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: you see, you know, the TV show. So I'll outline
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: like the high level of what it is, and then
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: I want to you know, hear some more of your
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: thoughts on what you like about it. But basically, if
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: you imagine these fields we have been been describing to
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: you that are in the pot part of the property.
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: So this is the far eastern side of the property,
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: fields four or five and six. Most of those fields
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: are up high, and then again it drops down into
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: the middle of the property, which is where our big
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: swamp is. Going from field six the bottom right of
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: our products, it goes down to the swamp and there's
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: this ridge system that connects it. And that ridge system
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: is kind of blend of tall grasses, cedars, um, there's
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: a bunch of buck thorn that you talked about, there's
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: some autumn olive or something um scattered other small treeze
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, just a whole lot of different cover types.
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: And there were these little openings at the openings um.
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: When I walked in the first time and you said,
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: it's funny, you said the exact same thing, said, this
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: looks like something you see like on a dreary video
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: with all these scattered tree, cedars and grasses, and just
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: like looks bucky. And when I got in there in March,
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: I remember going in anything looking underneath these cedars, and
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: there's just scrapes around all of them. All this, all
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: these old seater treos are just rubbed up from every
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: year getting um. And then we went in there today,
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: walked me through what you saw when walked in there,
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: what you thought about this whole little ridge system. So
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: as we entered and there was like an old tractor
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: gap or something. You went in there, and the first
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: thing I noticed was the warm season glasses, you know
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: they were. There was big blue stem and it was
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: all seven eight ft tall, and it just looked beautiful
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: in there. And as soon as I got into the opening,
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: the first thing I noticed, I said, holy smokes, you
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: got a pear tree right here. And there was a
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: pair pretty loaded with pears, not a big pair, but
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: i'm eight ten inch diameter, probably something twenty five years old.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: Well man of mass tree right there and and dear
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: love pairs. And then fifteen yards uh west of it
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: was a really nice red oak loaded with acorns and
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: warm season grasses six seven ft tall all the way
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: around it, but it was slowly dropping down towards your swamp.
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: And then we came to a large cedar tree had
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: last year's big rubs on it, and there was three
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: well used beds all the way around underneath those overhanging limbs,
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: and I would imagine based on time of day and
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: wind direction, you got one lone deer bedding in there,
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: and it just it was a big deer. It was
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: all flattened out. It's being used a lot, probably I
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: would guess, yeah, probably a buck laying in there, and
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: you had some you had some mixed cherry trees in
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: there was some autumnotives down at the base, and a
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: little buck more in here and there that kind of
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: broke it up and really compartmentalized it. But there was
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: two definite lines of movement in there, and and it
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: just looked like depending on the time of the year
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: in the wind, there's two places I would hang stands
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: one in particular. And if you can't have an encounter here,
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: something's wrong because the signs there, there's historic sign from
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: year after year before with all these old rubs. You know,
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: that's that's the action spot. So what's the situation when
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: you would hunt that walk me through, I would hunt that.
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: I would definitely wait for that late October early November
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: pre rut time period seeking phase, and that would be
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: myself post cold front high pressure, so you're gonna have
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: a northwest wind, north wind home. I'm gonna go in
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: the morning, I'm gonna plan on hunting all day. I'm
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: gonna go in there. I'm gonna stay all day or
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: until i'm killing. And we're thinking, you're thinking, these deer
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: doing what they're doing, a lot of cruising, there's there's
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: there's socialization because there's rubs and scrapes, so you probably
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: sometimes have different blocks of different age classes kind of
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: you know, look at me, you know, man, I'm I'm
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: I'm you know, I'm I'm big boy on campus. You know,
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: my auntler's a bigger in near a sort of thing.
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: A lot of scraping, less scent communication because of the scraping,
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: and then just that incredible cover and the way that
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: was compartmentalized everything from the warm season grasses, the buckthorn,
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: the autumn alive. There's not one spot there that deer
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: can see a whole lot farther in about twenty to
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: thirty yards in any direction. But it had nooks and
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: crannies and a lot of edge, and I think with
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: the with the slope, uh, it makes for great betting
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: for the afternoon. I think it's probably very good. From
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: a scent wind anything out of the west and southwest
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: deer can enter regardless of the end and sent check
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: that and you would want do you think the smartest
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: way to hunt that would be the primarily hunt with
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: your wind blowing back behind you over the dead field.
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: So you're gonna try to get yourself down in the
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: southeast corner of that area, get yourself one of those
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: bigger trees, use cover to hide yourself, yep. So that
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: bucks will be entering and moving their goals to get
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: down to that southeast end and use their nose to
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: send check everything from does to competition. And they're gonna
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: rub and scrape while you're there too. That's the cool part,
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: you know. You may it may antagonize you to watch
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: a deer for an hour before you can get a shot,
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: you know, which is really tough. Okay, let me let
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: me I want to back up for a second. Well,
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: it ties into this. How would planning warm season grasses
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: in that backfield affect how you would hunt that spot.
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: I don't that particular spot because of the cedars, because
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: of that slope is unique for what it is. I
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: think those warm season grasses behind us in field six
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: would not change how that gets used. It's just another
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: place for especially does does really like those warm season
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: grasses for putting, you know, putting their fawns in there
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: in the spring. And how I'm not gonna say there
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: isn't some reading activity that will take place in there,
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: but that you know, you're focus, you know, and this
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: is primarily all bow hunting for you, right so you
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: know our shots are short, So whatever is going on
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: sixty yards behind you, who cares? Yeah, I just want
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: the shirt. Like if we wanted to blow the wind
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: back over that dead field right now as a few start,
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: and it's just gonna cut you know, the way that
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: tree that we that we looked at not a whole
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: lot of years scent with a northwest wind is gonna
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: end up in that field. You're just gonna go across
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: that one corner heading towards the neighbors and maybe you
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: take that corner, don't put any warm season grass right there,
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: kind of leave it open. I think it's a good
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: it's a good set up that early November, right conditions
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: set there and big boys got a cruise through, definitely,
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: and it was you know. I mean, I saw some
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: rubs on different cedar trees. It just look it's trying
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: to heal. I'd say for the last ten years those
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: trees have been rubbed. So that's a really good sign.
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: That tells me the big boys cruise through there. Off,
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: that was the deal. That was the deal maker for me.
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: When I walked into that section, it was like the
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: last part of the property I got to and I
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: stepped into the edge there and just my jaw kind
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: of dropped. I was like, oh, yes, yeah, you saw that.
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: You said it all works now at all. Yeah, everything
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: I've been seeing was getting me more and more excited
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: than I got into that and like, yeah, this is
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: this is cool. So that's the basic gist of the property,
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: and that's the basic gist of kind of your thoughts
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: that are seeing what we saw. Um. So when we
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: when we got done with it all we did we
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: did a little more of a circle around. You saw
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: more field four, but essentially just looking at where the
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: food plus system was, walked on that edge, seeing what's
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: on the neighbors and whatnot. Um, after having seen it
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: all now thought through or heard through our ideas, thought
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: through your own ideas, Um, can you give me a
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: couple of like your big two dues or like if
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: we were if if you would walk the property and
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: we're like a paying client and you're gonna say, hey,
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: this is a couple of things you can do to
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: make this better. Would a couple of those things be
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: you know, the one thing you don't have on that
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: property is win or thermal cover. Yeah, and that's a
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: big deal. I mean, look at last winter we had gosh,
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: how many days at twenty below zero? So white tails
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: are looking for a place to get out of the
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: wind and stay one. So, uh, if you were paying
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: client and you're gonna hang on to this for the
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: next forty years, instead of warm season grasses and field six,
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: I'd say put some white spruce and Norway spruce in
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: there and turn that into a conifer sanctuary, and boy,
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: would you have a place to find ships. Would be awesome.
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: It is, and it's a it's an investment in time,
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: it really is. And you're you know, trees are dying.
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: It just part of the life. You're always replacing them.
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: But ten fifteen years down the road and everything now
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: is ten twelve ft tall, you're gonna now you're gonna
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: the area that we said is, oh man, look look
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: at this spot. Now you're going to create another one
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: in there. You're gonna have a little opening because you're
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: gonna plant those trees instead of in rows. I always
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: recommend doing it in a more random pattern, which is
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: more like nature. So you'll have some little openings that
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: will show up in there, and you'll have another spot
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: that you can throw a stand in and have that. Well, Okay,
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: it didn't work real good over here. This morning, I'll
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: go over here. I'll hunt this one to killing there.
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: And although I still don't, I don't think you're gonna
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: mess that one spot up too bad, do right right?
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: I see you killing something pretty good, I hope. So
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: I add some thermo cover, so that's really important to
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: have some thermal cover. And then as the years go by,
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: because I really don't have a good handle on your
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: deer density, you had some brows lines that were obvious,
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: so there may be more deer there than I think.
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: But as you grow food, one thing that happens is
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: you concentrate deer. So maybe you're two and three, you
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: have more miles to feed, so you might have to
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: look at another location that you're going to just stay
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: away from and you're just gonna grow food. You're not
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: gonna hunt it. It's just all about producing food. And
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: then the takeaway in any of your dry ground where
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: you've got autumnile, buck thorn, a combination of buck brush,
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: all the stuff around the edges of your you're sanctuary swamp.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: Get in and clear those trails and open up locations
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: so dear can move and cut some trees here and
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: there to get some early successional girls, so you can
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: get young cherries, young young maples, young oaks coming up.
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: Because it's important to have a lot of food for
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: deer to eat in that swamp, and late in the
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: season instead of early in the spring like it always
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: is when everything turns brown. Other than a few eggcorns,
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: they don't have a whole lot to eat down. I think, um,
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: I think coming out of like our day to day,
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: I feel more confident. I feel more excited about certain
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: locations I was already excited about, but getting you know,
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: another set of eyes on it has me that much
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: more ready and rare to get. After that, I feel
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: like much more confident about my ideas around what to
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: do with some of those mayor's tail fields. Now that
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: we've talked throughout warm season grass ideas, UM, I'm glad
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: that my food plot idea seems not horrible and on point,
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: I think that's gonna be a little bit of learning
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: experience where you see how it works out this year
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: and will adjust on the screens. Um. But man, this
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: has just been really helpful, I opening in a lot
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: of ways and fun for sure. This is a great
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: So if I could give you one more tip, just
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: thinking about that food plot where that pinch point crosses
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: the fence row which we're talking about of those two
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: food plots, where the narrowest party crosses from field four
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: and five, So that's a fairly wide fence row five
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: yards wide. There some trees or some brush. You're definitely
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: going to clear that out so dear can move through there.
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: That would be an ideal location for a licking branch.
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: I like that. Every deer is going to come through
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: their pinching in anyways, and they're gonna stop and use it,
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: And it's a lot easier to kill a deer stand
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: instead the ball when it's moving. I definitely, I definitely
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: agree with that. Um, Yeah, that's gonna be a cool
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: little set up. I think one of the big things
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: I'm interested in seeing is is what kind of chure
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: buck activity will get during daylight in those fields? Will
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: they feel comfortable moving out there? Or will they will
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: still be too open for a four year old buck
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: to come out there? Will our will our mature buck
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: encounters be happening in the swamp on the edge of
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: the swamp and the honey hoole spot, or will we
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: get october I said that our glass pinch point, and
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: a nice buck does come out and follows a doe
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: to there. And and here's something I'll let to kind
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: of chew on. Um. Right now, we don't know what
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: those deer are, like, what kind of encounters they've had elsewhere, um,
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: how how they are about your odor? But if you
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: were if you said, four years from today, and there
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: was a button buck that's running around her right now,
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: young buck, and all he knows is that food plot.
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: When he's four, he'll be in that food plot because
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: that's home to him. That's all he knows. You might
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: have a buck this year walks in there, maybe just
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: cruises through three times a year in the fall, cruising
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: for for getting dates and he sees those openings, he's like,
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 1: oh my gosh. But usually if there's girls hanging around,
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: they don't think it's such a bad idea. If we
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: if we play smart hopefully keep it feeling safe for them.
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: I think it's I think there's a chance, and you know,
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: work on your scent control. You know how important that is. Yeah,
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to play real well intry and access
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: is going to have to be real, real smart. But
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: my my thoughts in the beginning are still the same,
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: which is, if we do things right, it can be great.
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we hunt it smart. It has all the
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: pieces it needs to be really good. It really does.
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: It's got all the potential will be just as good
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: as my place or better because of something, because you've
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: got a great spot. Well, Jake, thank you. I had
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Thank you so much. It has
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of fun, Thanks Jake. If folks are looking
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: for this kind of help for themselves, they'd like to
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: learn more about what you've got going on. Where should
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: they where they going to learn or to get in
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 1: touch with you? Uh? Website, Facebook and YouTube, habitat solutions
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: three sixty L perfect that's easy. Yeah, we'll go check
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: it out, folks. Jake has got lots of helpful things
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: out there. He's just I mean, as you can tell
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: from listening, amazing guy, very knowledgeable, very helpful. Hit him
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: up and he will help put you in position for
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 1: a great hunting season. A right, thanks Jack, and that
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: is a rap. Hopefully guys enjoyed this one. I cannot
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: wait for you to see all the new stuff that's
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: gonna come out of this project. As we mentioned in
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: the introduction with Steve and Janice, if you head over
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: to the Meat eater dot com slash Win a Hunt,
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: you can sign up to win a hunt with me
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: and Steve on the back for the property. And very
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: soon we're going to have a new video series in
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: the media to YouTube channel. We're gonna have new articles
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: and a whole lot of our podcast content will have
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: updates on the project, stories from the project. UM. You know,
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: this time of year, we're not gonna spend too much
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: time in actual land management UM conversations on the podcast
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: because lab of Us are actually out there hunting. But
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: definitely in the off season there's gonna be a lot
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: of interesting things will be diving into as well, So
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: make sure you are checking all all those things out.
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: The Wired Doing Instagram account's going to have a lot
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: of updates and Instagram Stories in real time updates as well,
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: so follow along, thank you, and until we chat next time,
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: stay Wired to Hunt.