Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 895: Small Acreage, Big Impact - Habitat Strategies That Work with Skip Sligh and Jake Hofer

Transcript

Ep. 895: Small Acreage, Big Impact - Habitat Strategies That Work with Skip Sligh and Jake Hofer · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. This week on
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by Jakeofer and a surprise guest
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: to talk about private land conservation and habitat work that
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: can help wildlife. Right now, all right, welcome back to
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Light and their Camo for Conservation initiative. And today we
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: are back to wrap up our Conservation Month series, and
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: we're wrapping it up in a really cool way because
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: I think it's going to be very applicable.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: To a lot of folks.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: So far, over the last four or five weeks, we've
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: talked high level, you know, the status of deer and
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: deer hunting in America. We've talked public land policy and
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: conservation issues. We've talked kind of big picture making nature
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: and conservation nonpartisan again. And today I want to talk
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: kind of on the ground, hands in the dirt conservation
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: and to help me do that and to really lead
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: the way doing that is my pale and podcasting content
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: creating extraordinary in his own right, mister Jake Hoefer. So, Jake,
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: welcome to the show in a different, unique capacity today.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, super unique. I feel it's for someone that listens
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: to a radio show or something and they have the
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: step in guy. These are these are This is a
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: tough position to walk into, but I'm extremely excited and
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: I feel that didn't get my hands dirty and finding
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: someone that can talk about how people can put some
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: things into action right now instead of theorizing about it.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: I'm extremely excited. Yeah, so so so.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Like Jake just said, the plan for today is actually
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: to let Jake take the reins on the show, because
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: if you've listened to the podcast over the years, you've
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: heard me mention this a couple times that I've always
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: thought that Jake is the best podcast host out there
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: outside of myself. If I were in a second, there's anyone, obviously,
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: I don't listen to myself. If there was a podcast
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: I listened to that I actually enjoyed the host the most,
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: it was always Jake. And so Jake and I are
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: working on some possible collaborations coming up here soon. That
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: hopefully we'll be able to announce soon. But in the interim,
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: I thought, why not let Jake take this puppy out
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: for a walk and actually host the Wired Hunt podcast
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: for a week. He is someone who has a lot
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: of experience in the world of private land conservation and
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: habitat work of course, with your own podcast, the Land Podcast,
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: and a lot of the things you've done the past, Jake.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: So today, what the kind of man date or objective
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: I guess I'm putting forth for you, Jake, is to
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: go out and find a really great expert guest who
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: can talk to us about ways that we as land
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: managers or owners or folks that just simply have somewhere
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: we can do something good on the land, How we
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: can do that, how we can make things better for
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: deer and or other wildlife and or the natural world. So,
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: with that kind of task and that objective, Jake, I
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: would like to do two things now before I run
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: away and let you take this take it from here,
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Can you really quickly for folks give people a quick
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: background on again you know how you got to this
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: point and what you're up to right now and why
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: you're who someone I think is a really good person
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: to help lead this conversation the rest of the way.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll be happy to put some words in your
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: mouth here now I'm just kidding. Aside from that. No,
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: So my name is Jake Hoefer and worked with Exodus
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: for a super long time and throughout that process has
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: built the podcast and anyone that there's a lot of
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: people that don't know. But Exodus closed this doors at
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: the end of December, and I was in an interesting
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: position from a career standpoint of what am I going
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: to do next? Really enjoy these conversations, and actually bought
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: back the Exodus YouTube channel and the podcast and just
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: relaunched that on March twenty fifth, and it's this WHTL
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: and the Social Hatters a white Tailed Deer. So a
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: lot of the conversations and type of content people have
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: experienced in the past is going to continue and will
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: continue to evolve as well. And then also run a
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: show called the Land Podcast, and that was birth out
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: of me. You need to learn a lot and recognizing
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: that a lot of other people need to learn about
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: land ownership and everything that goes along with that. And
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: we've helped over one hundred people by their first farm
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: whether they emailed in or texted, or whatever the case
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  Speaker 3: may be. So this conversation is right up my alley,
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: close to my heart, and I love seeing the landscape
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: improve and helping people find the information that will help
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: them do it too.
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  Speaker 4: I love it.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: So here's the game plan from here.
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  Speaker 2: I am going to step away, and I'm gonna let
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: you bring in your expert of choice to have the
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: conversation from this point forward. Jake, I will just say this,
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: take good care of my baby.
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: Be.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Number one focus always is providing the most possible value
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: per minute that we can to our listeners, and I
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: know that you know exactly how to do that. So
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna say, let's let you take it from here, Jake,
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: with one hell of a conversation about private land, conservation,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: land management, and real stuff that we can do right
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: now to make the world and our deer hunting property
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: or lease or Buddies farm or wherever it is, how
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: we can make any of those places better.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: Let's do it, Skip. How's it going great? How are
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: you I'm doing great. I'm stepping in from Mark here.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: This is a little out of my traditional recording approach,
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: but I'm really excited to have you on here where
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: we're wrapping up or he's wrapping up habitat month, and
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: I figured who else to bring on? Then a guy
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: that's been through the gambit started with no knowledge? Is
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: that fair to say? To very advanced I will say.
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, zero knowledge. Yeah, so that's the opposite of bragging.
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: So I'll definitely take that badge of honor having zero
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: knowledge on any of this stuff and making every bone
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: headed mistake known a man. So yeah, yeah, let's start there.
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: What okay, so I give you a five hundred dollars
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  Speaker 3: gift card to go anywhere? What are the must have
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: essential tools for someone to perform some habitat projects on
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: their farm? And maybe it might be a little bit
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: more than five hundred dollars, or maybe you get a
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: little crafty can go to in a state sale or
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: garage sale or Facebook marketplace. But what are the key
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: things that guys really should have in order to start
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: tackling some habitat projects on their farm.
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: I'd say a bag seater, a chainsaw, and a backpack
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: sprayer would probably be Yeah, it'd be my five hundred dollars.
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  Speaker 4: I'd get it done for five hundred bucks, Okay, red
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: bag seater, and then I'd want to pro sauce, so
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: i'd be over the five hundred. So I'd find a
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: deal on a professional grade saw, and then I would
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: buy a backpacks prayer that has a diaphragm pump. And
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: you don't need to get a real expensive sprayer either,
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: just get one with a diaphragm pump. They don't they
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: don't get clogged up, and they can take like powders
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: and different liquids a lot better through it without clogging.
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: What's your favorite saw model? You mentioned professional grades, so
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: what's your go to?
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: Steal to sixty one with a sixteen inch bar and
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: a full chisel chain would be my instinct go to.
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: And you don't need for habitat you don't need anything
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: bigger than a sixteen. Really a fourteen would be fine,
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: but at sixteen's on the smaller end. A lot of
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: guys are running out there with eighteen and twenty inch bars.
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: You don't need it. And then just run a full
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: chisel chain, which if you buy like a steel chain,
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: it'd be the yellow chain as opposed to a green chain,
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: and as long as you have some experience cutting, so
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: the green ones are like anti kickback chain safety. They
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: call them safety chains, if you will. But for me,
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  Speaker 4: for a guy that's cut with any bit of time,
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: or even somebody, as long as you're not doing super
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: aggressive things, you know, running that safety chain just cut
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: so slow. And I never figured that out until later
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: in life, when I'm like, why do I have this
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: chain that always seems dull? That sucks? And I finally
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: figured out. I was buying the safety chain and I
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: threw them all away. There's a plaice form, but I
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: just personally don't like them, all right.
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: And then is there a favorite backpack sprayer model that
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: you just really love?
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so I actually buy this cheap one and I
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: might even have to look it up on my phone,
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: but it's like king or No, it's a cheap one
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: on Amazon, but it's a diaphragm diaphragm pump. And I've
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: got like more expensive ones, like I have a steal.
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: I have this red one that everybody would know that
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: it's super expensive and I haven't used it for so long.
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: And then I have the electric ones too. But I'll
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: look it up and I'll fire it back to you.
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: I'll pop my phone on real quick and see if
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: I can find with that back it's not expensive and
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: it literally doesn't leak on your back. There's another one
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: with backpack spears. They always leak on your back, which
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: drives me nuts, and then they get clogged up or
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: they just break and they go bad. And this one,
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: I've just used it for so long that I have
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: really good luck with it. So I'm going to delay
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: here and tell you what I have.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: No, that's good, And I think that this is a
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: baseline because anyone that's starting habitat projects, I think there's
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: probably some confusion of what do I really need? What's
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: the bare minimum because a lot of this stuff is
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: expensive and people that are just getting started out need
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: the bare bones. And I think those three items are
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: it sounds like you'll become.
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: Here we go the field King dB. It's a dB
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: smith Field King, but you get the uh, you get
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: the diaphragm pump. I don't know if that's specific to
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: this or maybe all of them have that, but it's cheap.
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: And then when you read the description, like it'll say
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: can can be used to with wet table powders and liquids,
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: so that yes to work of okay, work of both
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: a piston and a diaphrag backpack pump. Okay, just get
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: the diaphragm backpack pump is the simple part, and the
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: field king that's what I use. Now. There's plenty of
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: other good ones. I have not no affiliation with them,
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: but I do like them, and they're very cheap and expensive.
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: And I've got like one for fruit trees, one for
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: killing trees, which I have to label very succinctly, so
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: don't get those mixed up, one for regular weeds, and
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: I've got like four of those sitting around for various uses.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: Love it. What when you were starting out with habitat,
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: why did you want to improve the habitat? Was it
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: for deer hunting? Was it for a holistic approach to conservation?
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: What initially had you motivated to dive into this world?
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: Deer hunting, for sure. So I started with a garden,
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: which I had to learn from scratch at maybe ten.
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: I don't know why. I can't think back why I
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: wanted to start a garden. But I wanted to start
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: a garden in our big backyard and just grow things.
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: And I just thought that was cool, and that came
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: out of the blue. I can't explain it to this day.
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: And then from that I got into deer hunting and
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: people think, like food plots are new well in Michigan.
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: So I'm forty six now this would be twelve thirteen,
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: maybe fourteen years old. Yeah, it's probably fourteen when in
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: Zealand Michigan, there was this little seed store called the
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: bread In Seed and guys were starting to do food
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: plots a lot, and like when you get the magazines,
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: I was a kid that was like waiting for the
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: magazines to come in and they were starting to talk
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: about food plots. And then I went there and I'm like,
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: what what should I do? I want to do this
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: food plot stuff right about it in the magazines. And
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: so I know I told you this story before, but
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: I tell it really briefly. I bought a bag of
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: sugar sugar beat seed and then I went to the
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: middle of the forest with my rake, raked up the
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: leaves and planted the sugar beat seeds and then came
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: back and there's never anything that grew. And even back
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: thirty years ago, there was articles like like I didn't
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: know this at fourteen, like little fads or hey this works,
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: or that like they're talking about fertilizing oak trees. Well,
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: I remember buying a bag of fertilizer like that was
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: all my like all the money from a lawn job,
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: and I'm hiking this bag of fertilizer into the hunting
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: land that I just had permission on and fertilizing the
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: oak trees. And that was my game plan. I'm going
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: to make these delicious acorns and the hunting would be better.
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: So when I was young, I definitely fell for every
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: little gimmick or want to replicate what what the more
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: serious group was saying to do. So I try all
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: these things, and I literally tried everything known to man
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: that came out in the last thirty years until I
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: figured out, okay, maybe that's not the best route to go,
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: or actually figured out how to legitimately do it.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, what what do you think right now today? Is
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: one of the biggest habitat misconceptions? Or I don't I
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: don't necessarily want to call it a fad, but what's
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: one of the biggest habitat misconceptions that you hear and
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: talk about with folks And you're like, man, I just
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: I don't quite think the the fruit is worth the
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: squeez or the juice not it is not worth the
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: squeeze on a project like fill in the blank.
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: I think there's problems with every every food plot thing
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: or every habitat improvement because they're so there's just such
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: a variety of information on any given topic, Like like
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: one guy will be planning seedars because they want to
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: have thermal cover and they don't have seedars on their land,
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: and I think that's a great thing to do if
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: you do it correctly, And then there'll be another video
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: right after it or another podcast or somebody talking about
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: how they are eradicating all their seeds, like you don't
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: want seedars, it's bad for this bad habit at. All
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: these things, is there is there a solution probably in
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: the middle there. Yeah, there is, And I definitely think that.
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: You know, well, I went and planted seedars for in
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: this example, I planted seedars. I put a thousand per
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: acre in there, and I planted all seedar monoculture and
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: I spaced them really tight. Yeah, you're gonna have a
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: problem later. Or the guy that's like, I want no
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: seedars on my ground. Seaters are worthless. Seedars are junk,
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: And this is more Midwest. You know, you get up
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: north and you get back into pines, which could fill
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: the same the same discussion topic as cedars do here,
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: so I don't. So they burn every seed or they
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: mulch every seed, which I think is a big, big mistake.
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: Like I have a seater thinning project right now where
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: it's like one hundred acres of seeds that when I
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: bought this farm was a mess, and they're like, you know,
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: the government's like, you can doze all those up them
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: Like I'm not dozing them all lout. I'll fend them,
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: and I fend them. You know, iind ninety percent of them.
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: But now they're space properly and I can I can
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: put other trees in there. So but I'd say, you know,
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: juice not worth the squeeze. If a guy's starting out,
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: I probably wouldn't get heavy into tree planning. I think
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: that's that's kind of a progression down the road. Now.
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: At the same time, I would get to it as
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: quickly as you practically can, because a lot of times
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: that's a project people put off because it is a
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: project that's a down the road project, but they put
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: it off for so long that they just end up
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: not doing it where they could have had, you know whatever,
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: a handful of trees even just you know, do a
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: handful of trees every year. So other other like fads, misconceptions, uh,
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: you know out there. I mean, I would just say
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: there's a lot of information, and I would just make
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: it a general comment. There's a lot of information on
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: YouTube podcasts all over and just if you follow it enough,
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: you dig in enough, you'll find so many contradictory opinions.
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: One guy says, to eradicate these trees. One guy says,
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: ys like the other day, give you another quick example.
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: I'm going back to trees. But I posted I posted
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: a video on vaneer walnuts, and I know, just like clockwork,
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: that guys are gonna say walnuts have no white tail value,
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: get rid of them. And I knew that was coming.
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: But here's the thing. It's like, dude, anybody stand maybe
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: has two three four vneer walnuts perakre. Maybe a lot
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: of them don't have any. Yeah, And what I would
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: say to people who say, you know, walnut doesn't have
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: any deer value, does it? Actually does? It has an
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: ecosystem value where you know you have a higher I'm
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: gonna go into the weeds here, But it's ecosystem. Everything's related. Well,
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: you have more squirrels, well, more squirrels are gonna are
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: propagate more not transfers, and they're gonna they're gonna dig
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: up more acorns and transfer more acorns. With more walnuts,
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: you have more food for the squirrels and they're gonna
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: eat less aco All these weird dynamics like that. But
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: what I'll say to this when somebody says, I don't
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: want vineer walnuts, so I'm gonna cut them down. I'm
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: gonna cut down these thousands and thousands of thousands of
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: dollar trees. A farm that is managed for veneer walnuts
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: is having a lot of work done, it's opening a
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: lot of canopy up. They take such little space. And
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: I would say the farm that's managed exceptionally well, which
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: is which is very rare, but its managed exceptionally rare
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: or exceptionally well for veneer walnuts will have bigger deer
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: because they are going to have so much open area.
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: They're gonna have so much new regrowth and brows and
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: bedding and just thick covering these bottoms and bottoms periodically
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: or typically are very open. So most bottoms icy in
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: the Midwest are like you know, they're very open. You
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: can see hundreds of yards through them. And by going
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: and doing timber stand improvement to improve your veneer walnuts
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: or whatever else is in there, you're just you're going
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: to kill the eight to ten birds with one stone
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: doing timber stand improvement to you know, foster better veneer walnuts.
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: But you're also going to be able to have different
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: oaks in there and different regeneration. It's not necessarily all
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: about what the mast is falling from the trees either, right, Well,
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: they don't eat a walnut, Okay, Well, so do you
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: want all eight oaks because you know there's a lot
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: of ears where oaks don't put out acorns. It's not
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: about what the mast is coming down so much, and
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: that's a component, but it's more about what's growing on
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: the fourth floor. The regeneration. Maybe it's ok regeneration other
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: trees you like. Maybe it's you know, like box elder
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: and other things, or maple or elm or things that
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: the dear will brows when they're younger. So having an
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: open canopy is the bigger point to why a guy
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: would want to manage for veneer walllance to have all
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: that extra tonnage. And we're literally talking like if you
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: can visualize in your mind and Michigan, I remember seeing
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: this all the time, the maple stands and the open
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: forest there. When you're picturing an open forest, it's like
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: really shaded in. You're talking about zero to one hundred
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: two hundred pounds per acre of brows tonnage breaker. When
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: you open that canopy up to a substantial level, like hey,
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: I let a lot a lot of new sunlight in there,
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: a lot of new regrowth depending on what regrows you
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: can bring that to. You know, one thousand, two thousand
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: and three thousand pounds of natural browse breaker well across
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: the whole forest. That's significant. And when you don't have any,
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: those deer are not in good nutritional safe shape. That
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: is not an ideal near environment for nutrition for any deer.
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: And you know, to go back to the walnut example,
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: you know, picking on the walnuts, well they put out
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: a little bit of a toxinto the other trees and
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: so on. Most people are doing nothing. Okay, so ninety
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: nine percent of the forests out there that you look at,
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: nothing is being done. They're usually just canopied over. Guys
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: aren't debating whether to have walnuts, whether to have this,
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: they're just doing nothing. And those situations, if somebody is able,
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: have so many economic and nutritional values to improve your
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: timber at some level. And clearly we can go a
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: million different examples based on the region you're at. Well,
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: I'm in Michigan and I got these trees, or I'm
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: in a conifer region of the north. You know, there's
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: all but there's all sorts of different things you could do.
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: Probably the easiest way to start is to say, get
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: more sunlight to the foreslow.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: What about I'm in bush honeysuckle country, and there's other
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: people that are in the automolive country or insert whatever
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: aggressive invasive what's your strategy or thought process of you know,
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: someone hears that, like, all right, I'm gonna go open
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: up the force floor. I'm gonna open up the canopy
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: and the understory right now is a bunch of junk.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: What's what's your process of prepping?
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: I would I would get rid of the bush honeysuckle.
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: Now the other the other side of that coin, people
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: say you're removing the best cover, and I understand that.
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: So there's several practical approaches to to address that at
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: the same time. Now, I see bush honeysuckle very much
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: like I see cedar thickets or pine thickets that grow
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: so close together that deer can't utilize it. I see
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: that with bush honeysuckle, and it does get to that,
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: and that is a threshold where you're like, listen, it's
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: so choked out. The deer can't use it. There's no browse,
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: there's no food, there's just this nasty thicket that maybe
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: they can get around this area and that and that's
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: an extreme but I see it quite often and I would.
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: Get rid of that.
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: And one way to do it is to say, like, hey,
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: I own a fifty acre piece of woods. I don't
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: want to do it all in one year because I
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: don't want to remove all the cover. Okay, do ten
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: acres per year then, right. And here's the other thing.
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: When you're removing the bush honeysuckle the first time you
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: do it, it's that's the hard part. When there's regrowth
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: and new bush honeysuckle that comes in, that's just light
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: maintenance compared to the initial work. So when you remove
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: the bush honeysuckle, I would do timber stand improvement at
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: the same time. Maybe it's some hinge cutting, maybe it's
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: you know, just having the canopy open period and bush
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: honeysuckle is closing that canopy in a different way too.
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: So you can have a thick, nasty, ideal betting farm
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: with a lot of diversity without bush honeysuckle. And I
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: don't want it in my farm. And listen, I want
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: the thickest, nastiest stuff in certain places. I want remote
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: big buck cover, but I do not want bush honeysuckle
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: because I know what it does to everything else, and
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: I know it's going to impact their nutrition. It will
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: be a nice, thick mess for a certain period of time,
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: but that certain period of time usually expires, and then
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: you're really sacrificing your nutrition at a huge level by
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: having a shaded out, just bush honeysuckle, nasty mess on
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: your farm.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah. The reason I bring that up is sometimes in
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: a lot of conversations they just hear the TSI part
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: of it, and they're like, all right, we're gonna, We're gonna.
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: So really, simply, anytime you disturb your woods, it is
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: the same thing as disturbing your soil. Hey, I went
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: out and you know when I started, I rote to
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: retill my garden. Now I don't rotory till anything. I
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: do everything, don't tell. But you go till up your garden,
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: I don't care if it's with a shovel, with a rake,
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: with the rotor etail. You're spinning all this stuff up
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: and all you're like, what in the world is all
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: this junk coming up? And every example is different. Your
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: forest is the same way when you allow sunlight in.
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: It's very much like if you were to go till
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: up a field. If you till up a field, you
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: will have more weeds, and you're gonna have all these surprises,
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: like what's that, what's that you're stirring up this huge
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: weed seed bank. A forest is no different than that.
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: So if I had a forest that you know, was
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: just full of bush honeysuckle berries, and I open that up,
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: you're gonna have regrowth. Now the key is there is
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: you can if you stay on it. It's not that
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: complex to just continually treat the new little plants. It's
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: actually quite easy. Like, hey, a day year. I took
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: a day year to keep up on the bush honeysuckle.
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: But there'll be other things too.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: With the backpack sprayer.
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there's the main ways to do it. You
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: could do it with fire, you could do it with herbicides,
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: you could do it mechanically and anything habitat. Here's the
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: good part is I had to learn how to do
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: things on a budget of not five hundred dollars. I
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: had a rake, and I didn't even probably own that rake.
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: It was probably my parents. I had no money, so
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: I had to figure out how do I get these
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: sugar beets in the ground. I'll borrow, borrow mom and
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: Dad's rake, no fertilizer, and rake the leaves. And I
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: just wound up with some blisters and that's all cost me.
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: And then I look like an idiot to myself, and
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: I'm like, hey, this didn't work at all. So you
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: can do it with the most basic of tools. So
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: somebody says, you know timber stand improvement, Well I could
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: go do timber stand improvement with a hatchet and a
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: little squirt bottle, right. I could also co take my
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: multure out there, and I've got a like a veil
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: treesaw that rotates and it's got a herbicide button, I
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: could go do it with a Well it's a big difference,
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: big difference. So any problem generally can be accomplished with
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: like ten different tools or ten different ways of doing it. Know,
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: do you have to do everything no till? Do you
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: need a no til drill? Of course not, you don't.
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: There's ways around it, does it? You know? And you
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: got to think of the scale you're doing. Well, you know,
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: I'm working with a half acre. The guy working with
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: the half acres does not need a tractor in or
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: no tail drill. They just don't. But if a guy says,
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: you know, I've got ten food plots and I own
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: a thousand acres, you know whatever, something crazy, Yeah, you
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: might be thinking about that. And the guy with that
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: much more ground probably has the means to buy more
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: expensive equipment. So a million different ways to solve the
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: same problem.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: Which I want to dive into this because I think
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: TSI seasons starting to wrap up here with leaves coming out,
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: and I want you to say what you can and
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: can't do kind of from April to season when it
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: comes to the timber, because I know that's you're a
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: big proponent of fixing timber and what I mean by
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: that is basically a weeding it.
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's not one inch my farm. I don't want
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: to improve you know, fields, waterways, waterways. What a waterways
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: doing for deer? Well, actually you can do some things,
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: but I don't want erosion. Right, So every ounce of
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: my ground there's something that can be done, and there's
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: something that should be done. Now I will prioritize that.
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: And that's why I revert to forest. And you know,
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: food plots, cropland native grass stands, you know, those are
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: probably the big emphasis on improving them. And remind me
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: the question again, just so I have this.
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: The seasonality of sas.
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: Okay, so sorry, So right now the trees, the SAP
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: is starting to flow and basically your trees are coming
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: out of dormancy. Well, when your trees are dormant, you
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: can open wounds, you can cut limbs, you can do
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: all sorts of things. It's not going to hurt the trees.
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: It's a way for them. It's the time when you
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: do these things, when you start putting big wounds in trees,
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: when they're out of door dormancy. You know, now all
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: the all of a sudden, they'll get different funguses or
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: they'll get you know, different pressures where they can really
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: get sick. So it'd be like, you know, call it'd
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: be like if if you were to cut yourself and
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: it was just you know, dirty and unsterilized, you could
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: get infections. Right. Well, that's kind of versus like super
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: clean in a sterile environment and using all the you know,
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: antibiotic stuff like that. That's kind of the comparison with trees.
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: So right now they're coming out of dormancy. So like
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: oak blight, you don't want to get that, so you
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: don't want to you don't want to open up these
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: fresh wounds. Now. The way around that is to say, hey,
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: you know there is oak issues. Just understand oak trees.
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: You don't want to be putting injuries on them, or
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: any desirable trees that you're like, hey, I want to
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: promote this type of tree, just don't injure them, don't
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: cut them. Now. The way around that is to say, hey,
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: there's undesirable trees in my timber and I still want
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: to do a few things real quick, and you could
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: you could do this today, you could do this in
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: a month. Just find the undesirables, you know, It could
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: be hickory, it could be maybe it's cedars or pines
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: that you want to thin, stuff like that. Anything that's
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: a non desirable tree, you can cut that as long
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: as it's not you know, tipping into a desirable tree
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: causing wounds. That's as simply as I can put it.
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: So you know, I would probably wrap this up very quickly.
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: But you know, I'll buy a farm where I'm like, hey,
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: I bought this thing in June. Uh, you know, I
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: miss the window? Do I wait till next winter? I
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: don't I go in there and start cutting some inferior stuff,
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: and I just I'm just very careful about it. But
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: I want structure on the ground so that so I'm
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: breaking it up kind of like you know, saying there's
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: a big, wide open pond with nothing in it versus
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: a pond with rock piles and brush piles and trees. Well,
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: I want structure in my woods, So I'll go knock
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: some of that stuff down, create structure and thermal cover
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: stuff like that and the other thing it's doing. If
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: I buy it, say I did buy it, or may
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: now I have, you know, months of full sunlight coming
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: in there, and I'm gonna get forbes of memes, all
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: sorts of different things that are going to pop up.
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: Some of them good, most of them good, some of
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: them bad. But that's gonna be food, brows, more betting.
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: You know, visual barriers for you and the deer. You know,
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: my timber, you can't see a lot of it twenty
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: yards through it, where when I got it you could
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: probably see three hundred yards through things. It was wide open.
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: So just having timber that is full of structure, full
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: of visual barriers, full of thermal cover, full of brows,
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: full of more betting, those are all the benefits to
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: doing these things. But yes, I'd say just do it very,
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: very carefully, more with like a scalpel, now, very strategically,
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: and baby those trees that are you're desirable, so you
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: don't cause your self issues.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: Do you feel you have been on a bunch of
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: arms over the years. Do you feel that for most
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: guys that are just getting started and they're thinking of
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: wherever they hunt or have mission or the opportunity to improve.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: Do you think that the timber, if there is timber
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: on it, one of the best starting points for most farms.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: Is that safe to say?
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: Is timber stand improvement being the lowest hanging fruit for
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: most farms, oh for sure, for sure. And you say
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: timberstand improvement, Well that's just an acronym, really, that is
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: just it's such a high level term timber stand improvement
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: that it could mean so many different things. It could mean,
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: you know, well, wait, so I could do timber stand
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: improvement on a pine or a cedar stand, but I
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: could also go do it on these beautiful oaks. Yeah,
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: you could do it on both, and they're both very,
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: very different. So it's a very broad term.
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: But there's i.
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: Would say ninety nine percent of cases there's some level
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: of timber stand improvement, So improving your timber, whether that's
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: thinning out you know, a certain stand. And I would
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: say this one's a real common one. Why see the
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: forest what it is is right, it's stocked correctly, No,
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: it's not. Ninety percent of the time is far over stock.
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: There's you know, ten trees in this spot where there
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: should be one, and a lot of times if you
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: want some openings, that means there's ten trees in this
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: spot and I bring it down to zero, you know,
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: and little pockets here and there. So most most timber
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: is overstocked. By definition, just because you look and see
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: what's there doesn't mean that's ideal, and the vast majority
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: of the time it's not. So it could be, you know,
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: it could be opening the canopy up. It could be
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: crop tree release, which is taking your best quality trees
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: and freeing them up. Now you can take that step
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: further and say, oh, I'm going to really free them
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: up and just start knocking back a lot of your junk,
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: which you know, one you're you are freeing your crop tree,
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: but you're also you know, allowing all that new sunlight,
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: new growth and new brows and more betting. So and
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: I'll find if I'm doing crop tree release to improve
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: my crop trees, I'll find areas where I'm like, hey,
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: there's no crop tree here, It's all a solid hickory stand,
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: and I might just nuke it, I mean, just wreck it.
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: And maybe you know, and if you have solid stands
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: like monoculture stands of junk, which do happen, you know, like, hey,
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: I just have one or two species of trees there.
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: You know, I can thin it back, I can pick
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: the best one and free it up. But I still
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: am stuck with this this blend of this handful of trees. Well,
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: then you can get into like interceding different things and
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: just you know, hey, there's no oaks on this on
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: this and I'd like oaks or or I'd like some
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: different softwoods, or I'd like shrubs. Well, you know, doing
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: timber stand and prove me you can do those both
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: at the same time. And then a lot of times
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: there's ways to combine those, like, well, now you get
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: tree tops on the ground, maybe I'll try and plant
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: some of these new trees in the treetops. So they're
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: kind of a natural deer caage. It's not perfect, but
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: it's it's a technique that does have its benefits.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: So you know, in a one acre hickory stand, let's
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: say there's create hackberry and some black locusts. Let's say,
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: and that's the general gist in this one acre plot.
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: You you basically start over, how do you know or
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: how do you encourage positive regrowth? And maybe you would
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: like to see a variety of different oaks in there.
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: I assume have you ever just thrown out, you know,
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: buy a bag of acorns and put them in piles
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: and say, get to work squirrels, or I mean, like, what,
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: what are some some things that people could do?
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: Okay, so like something like a black locust, you're gonna
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: want to treat that and kill it so it doesn't
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: come back. That's key. So you might cut it down
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: and be like, hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna start over.
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: If you didn't kill that, you're not starting out. You're
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: creating a jungle. So yeah, you could, you could intercede things.
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: Like what the approach I would take if I'm going
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: to interceed acorns is to overload the squirrels because they'll
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: dig them back up, but then they'll replant them. Two
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: overload them. And what I do is just find like
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: any park in most states will have a diversity of
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: oak trees, and a lot of times they're on like
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: paved roads. Well I just go like sweep them up
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: and fill like barrels with them. And you know, I
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: filled truckloads with these things and didn't take that much time.
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: And this is when I was younger and I had
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: more energy. And then you could intercede them, you could
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: scatter them, and then it's just a numbers game. Is
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: your success rate going to be real high? Depends depends
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: how you do it depends how far you go with it.
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: If you were to like direct seat each one of
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: them and put them down in there and put them
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: in like sheltered areas, you actually probably have a pretty
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: good success rate. And I would do that. Like here's
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: how I think about it. Like I go anything the
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: government's involved in, Like look along your highway, and a
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: lot of times there's really desirable shrubs in there, like
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: like high bush, cran barrier like whatever.
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's a bunch of dogwood on the Wisconsin Highway.
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: Yes, I mean you could grab all that, grab seeds,
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: spend to pull over, hopefully you don't get trouble with
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: the police, and uh, you know, pull over and go
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: fill bags up with dogwood seeds and so on. I mean,
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: you know, silly ideas like that. I've done all that
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: stuff and it does work, So you could do that now.
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: It's probably slightly more practical if you're talking about a
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: small scale though, like hey, I'm working on five acres,
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: two acres, one acre, then I probably would just say
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: go less and buy like barroot seedlings and just protect them.
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: Just put put a tube with a really good steak.
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: Probably in both sides. I use the tea posts because
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: I just pulled tea posts around my farm. Somebody go, oh,
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: that's more money and more work, and they're free because
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: they pull them. But then your success rate it's way
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: up with the tea post in you know, tube them
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: or cagem for example. Because the biggest failure on trees
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: is just I'm just gonna throw a bunch of stuff
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: at it and hopefully if you survive, and that's just
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: not a good tactic. It's just not so have some
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: strategy behind it, and I would just say plant less
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: of them and get a higher success rate versus doing
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: a lot of work and just hoping a few things
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: stick without really thinking it through. So less is more
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: for sure with tree plannings. But yes, when you're doing
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: timber stand improvement, there is a lot of times where
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: you're dealing with a handful of species of trees and
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: you can do as much as you can to open
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: that canopy and try and encourage other things to grow there,
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: but there is a point where you need to change
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: the composition of that forest through either plant direct planning
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: or you know, nuts berries, And I do a major
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: diversity on what you added to that too.
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: What are some good sources for someone that needs to
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: find what are good species depending on what part of
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: the country they're in and where to source them. Like
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: I know, Illinois has a tree sale, Iowa has a
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: tree sale, Missouri has a tree sale.
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: I always would start there. I'd always start with your
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: state nurseries because it's native trees. They're generally going to
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: be the lowest price. And every every nursery could have
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: complaints like and you know, every nursery still employs people
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: by the hour that make mistakes. So somebody's like, well
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: I got this batch and it was no good. Yeah,
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: it happens. You know, you've got an employee that maybe
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: let it sit in the sun. But that's not a
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: reflection necessarily on the nurseries. Just stuff like that happens,
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: and it's happened to me with private nurseries and the
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: state ones. But you say, well, the state's a little
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: bit bland. They don't have, you know, the cool stuff. Well,
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: a lot of times they do, because you know, they'll
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: have so many diverse choices on like oaks and shrubs,
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: and I'll guarantee you you're messing a pile of those
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: a pile and they're very very good. So find the
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: native things that your state nursery sells the natives and
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: buy the things you don't have, or the things that
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: are you know, desirable to your farm. And maybe you say,
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: you know, my farm's just got bur oak. Okay, go
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: buy pinoak and swamp oak and maybe even some white oak.
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: Well white oak aren't going to have acorns for all
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: these years there. It's actually faster than you think. If
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: you don't have red oak, plant some red oak and
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: understand the sites they grow on. But I would add
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: all those things. But if your farm is and this
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: is one maybe a little bit contrary to what some
• 39:28
  Speaker 4: forsters would recommend. But but if my farm is full
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: of burroaks, I'm probably not going to go out and
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: plant a pile more bur oaks. And somebody say, but
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: but that means they grow real well on your site. Yeah.
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: I still like having diversity too, and I want to
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: I want to add some different things that will grow
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: ideally on those soils. But and you can start adding
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: some staples that like, Okay, the state nursery is not
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: carrying Chinese chestnuts or Chinese chestnuts going to be invasive. No,
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: they're not they're not. Somebody might disagree with me on this,
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: but they're not. You could add those, you could add
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: American person and they do just fine. In most zones
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: you start getting way too north. Maybe not. I would
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: probably add like crab apple, and I would add I
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: like growing things from seed, too, So I have my
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: little nursery in the backyard or nothing.
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: Really, I guess you get the little nursery and then
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: you have the cher too.
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: But both of them are of scene for the location.
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: So my house in a subdivision, I look like a
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: hillbilly because I have this big cage train dustry to
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: keep the squirrels out. Really, and I'll grow like chestnut
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: and hazel nut and per simon and dwarf chinkapin oak
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: and chinkapin oak and these hybrid oaks that I found
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: that's a mix of probably three different types of oaks,
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: all these weird things. And then I'll actually grow pair
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: from seed, and well, I don't quite know what I'm getting.
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: That's fine. That part doesn't bother me. I like dis
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: messing around with it. And so that's in like town
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: kind of. Then you come to my farm and you're like,
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: oh my gosh, you way overdid your tree nurseries and
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: your orchards all over the farm, and yeah, I overdid it.
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: Just do way way less than what I do, which
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: most people won't know what I do, but it's too much.
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: Just do start low, like, hey, I want two hundred trees,
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: start with like twenty, then I want two thousands, start
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: start with one hundred.
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: Just because it's so important to treat those twenty like babies. Yes,
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: and two thousand, no tube, no prep, no nothing, because
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: you probably won't even end up with twenty trees.
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes, And you know we're digging into the tree
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: stuff and you know it's definitely a huge component, no
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: doubt about it. And I would say, you know, managing forest,
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: your forest is going to be your number one. Planting
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: trees and stuff like that is generally down the list
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: of importance, and the bank for the buck is just
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: it's a delayed gratification. And you know, but the four
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: just your forest can have so many instant benefits where
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: you know, if I go plant a paratree, which I will,
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: I'll go plant a paratree, Well that might be five
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: years before it's been now a good amount of fruit. Well,
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: when I go and do timber stand improvement. That's instantaneous
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: benefits like the next day, and then throughout that whole
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: growing season there's just astronomical benefits, nutrition being a huge
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: one of those. It's not like I said, it's not like,
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: well I want more acorns on which I do. I do,
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: but that's not the main reason. You know, the TSI
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: kills eight ten birds with one stone. It's just phenomenal.
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: Now you know the food plots is and what I
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: plan now I farm, so I have to get down
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: that whole can of worms too, and you know my
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: brain goes just as deep on those things as well.
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, which I do want to talk about food plot.
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: One thing I want to ask is, obviously you've done
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: just a ton of projects and your main farm there
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: you've had for over a decade. What beyond the deer
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: have you noticed on your farm? Do you see all
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: different types of birds, wildlife, birds, butterflies, bees across the
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: board from all these different things. Cause if you take
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: a cruise around anywhere in the Midwest, a lot of
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: pasture by overpastured ground. There's a lot of forests that
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: have not been improved over the time, and so like
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: yours is a playground. What have you noticed beyond just
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: more deer and more mature bucks.
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: The whole ecosystem flourishes when you do things correctly. So
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: like I'm in deer country, and I'll tell people that
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: if I wanted to go out and shoot my limit
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: of pheasants in thirty minutes, it'd be no problem. Like what,
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: I don't have pheasants around here. I have billions of pheasants,
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: I have tons of quail. I've got all sorts of diversities.
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: My turkey numbers are through the roof. And then you go, well,
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: you know, is that just from your habitat? No? No,
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: because people in there there's the question. People will hit
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: me with it. But I have really good habitat too,
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: and I don't have that many turkeys, and I don't
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: have many pheasants. How many coons are you getting rid of? Well,
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: we haven't. We haven't trapped coons for a decade. Yeah,
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: you have thousands of raccoons out there now, like I'll
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: trap You know, we counted before, I mean I was,
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: I was trapping like six hundred raccoons in one year.
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: The times we counted six hundred draccoons. So you say, well,
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: that's a lot of time. Well, just take a a
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: dog proof trap and put a couple of them at
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: all your gate entrances. And when you're at the farm,
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: film with cat food or peanut cat food and peanut
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: butter or corn or fish or whatever you like, marshmallows.
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: Just fill them up. Takes two seconds. And here in
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: Iowa we got to legalized where we can trapped coons
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: you round, because they're at epidemic levels. I mean, they're
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: doing massive crop damage. And here's the thing is when
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: you go take six hundred raccoons off the landscape, these
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: things that are just walking around every day just sniffing
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: out nests. It's why when I was doing my chores
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: or doing farm work, I would find and I'm out
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: here every day, I'd find all the nests ripped apart
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: by coons almost always. So it's like, is that really
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: that big of a surprise that turkey numbers are down?
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: When you have fifty gazillion raccoons and possums and skunks around,
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: it's not a surprise to me. And then somebody says,
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: so you're loaded with pheasants and quail and all these
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: other things, and you don't see ness get torn apart hardly. Ever, No,
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: I don't. I'm loaded up with them. And you know,
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: and I don't disagree with some of the theories on
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: like you know, like bird flu impacting turkey populations, or
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: the seed treatments or the sprays. I mean, some of
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: the insecticides very concerning on like turkey populations. But at
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: the same time, in every direction from my farm, they're
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: putting the nastiest stuff on seeds known to man. In
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: my turkey population, I'm like, I need to thin them.
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: There's millions of them. So I do think there's some
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: detriments to some of the you know, insecticides and fungicides
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: and stuff we're applying to our crops, and I would
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: love to see a lot less of it, absolutely, But
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: you know, is that the reason that turkey populations are decimated?
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: I don't necessarily buy it, because I've got an extreme
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: example where I just took out the nest predators and
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: there's gazillions of turkeys with the same dynamics as everybody
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: else who's suffering. And I would say the worst turkey
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: populations I've ever seen, where I've seen them tank is
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: when I go down to Kansas and that's just, you know,
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: my firm belief there is everybody's just gotten, you know.
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: And I hunt there every year and I love Kansas.
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: But I'm just gonna say it, like guys have gotten
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: so lazy with I'm just gonna throw a corn piles.
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: So they don't do habitat improvement. Yeah, there's They hardly
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: do food plots. The amount of foot bluff timber stand
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: improvement in Kansas when you ask people, are you doing
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: timber stand improvement, it's a tiny fraction of what it
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: has done in Iowa. And I'm back and forth all
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: the time. Nobody does it because like, man, I just
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: do a corn pile. And then you look at their photos.
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: Look at this deer. I don't look at the deer.
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: I go, dude, you got fifty raccoons in that photo
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: with the deer. Don't you do anything? Nah? Man, you know,
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: like I don't want to mess with it. I just
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: do corn piles. And they get lazy. Yeah, and the
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: habitat and the ecosystem suffers, so you know, and then
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: they can't figure out whether there's no turkeys. There's my
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: point is I went there twenty years ago.
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: This is fact.
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: I went there twenty and twenty five years ago to Kansas,
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: and you would see hundreds of turkeys. Just like Iowa,
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: you would see very few bait piles. I never I
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: don't think I ever saw a bait pile when I
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: start going there, and I was all over the place.
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: If they were there, they were extremely rare. Now they're
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: littered across the landscape, like distasteful in my mind, They're everywhere,
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: and you go, what happened to all the turkeys? They're gone?
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: I mean there's a few, but it's nothing like it
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: used to be. Well, you've kind of supplemented this raccoon population,
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: plus nobody's trapping them, plus you're throwing out massive corn,
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: plus you don't want to take the time to deal
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: with it. And now you guys have probably double triple quadruples,
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: I mean some staggering figure of raccoons that are raiding
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: the nests every year. It's like, how can a turkey
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: have have a nest out there? I don't even hardly
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: get it how it's even possible. So you know, that's
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: when you start impacting the whole ecosystem by making certain
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: choices that ripple the different animals. And this is coming
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: from a guy who doesn't turkey hot, and I'm not
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: going to go shoot a pheasant off my phone. I'll
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: go up to northern Iowa where it doesn't mess up
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: my deer hunting, and then I'll hunt. But I'm not
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: going to turkey hunt. My guess. Well, so I like
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: there to be turkeys, I like there to be quail.
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: But I like the ecosystem. Those are indicator species. They're
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: indicators of health, and just like the bees and the
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: butterflies and all these things, you know, I like having
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: them around, and I think it's indicative of a better
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: quality environment and a healthier ecosystem and things. Things are
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: far more linked together than anybody would realize. Like, you know,
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: I want I just want big deer. Okay, Well you
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: know coyotes. How many coyotes do you have? That's that's
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: a big component of it. It's a huge component of it.
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: You know, all these things are just interlinked. So you know,
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: if I go to a farm that has in general
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: just lots of brows, lots of good nutritious food, whether
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: it's plots or forest, along with robust habitat, and then
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: people are taking out, you know, the highly populated things
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: that are that are rippling through the ecosystem that maybe
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: aren't natural, like yeah, not trapping raccoons for ten years.
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: Maybe they are at you know, too high of a
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: level that isn't sustainable, and you balance that out. And
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: let's let's just face it, any big game, small game, really,
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: any animal in the Midwest is going to be managed
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: by humans, good or bad. So we just have to
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: figure out do we want to do the good things
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: for them? Do we want to try and balance them
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: ourselves and take the time to do it, and and
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: does it work? Absolutely, it works. It makes a huge
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: difference on the health of this or you know, the
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: balance here. Man's intervention is key here. It just is.
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: So a lot of people don't want to do that,
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: and that's okay if you don't, but just understand it's
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: going to have consequences. And like, hey, I have a
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: you know, huge ranch here and nobody is allowed to
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: shoot a coyote ever and nobody's trapped for decades. You're
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: gonna have detriment because of that. It's going to cause
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: you major problems. So all these things are just interlinked
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: and intertwined.
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: That's a really good point because I think we all
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: get stuck on the fun stuff, unless you like trapping raccoons.
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: I mean, most people look at it as a chore,
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: right mostly it is kinda it can be fun. It's
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: kind of rewarding though, absolutely, But I think for most
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: people are like, yeah, I'm not gonna do that.
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: So here's and I hear that all the time, so
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: and I just tell them, I'm like, dude, just get
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: a couple of coon traps at every gate. Maybe it's
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: five of them, and they're around. Sometimes you'll have all
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: five filled and just put them and you know you're
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: gonna do your chores, and when you're there, set them
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: for the night and then dump them all it takes you.
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: And once they're set in the ground, you know you
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: could leave them there get a little rusty. But we're
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: talking a matter of a few minutes. And that's with
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: anything though, that's with anything, if you want it to
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: be better. There's the people that are like, I'll take
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: the few minutes to do this and their farm is
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: better off for it. Then there's the guys like I
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: don't have time and I can't and I don't want to,
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: and okay, I mean that's human nature on anything. Anything.
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: That's why you know the habitat on most farms is
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: far from ideal. Yeah, keep going with this. It's why
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: most of society is overweight. Do you not know how
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: to stay in shape? Do you not know that if
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: you eat healthy and go to the gym and being great?
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: Well I do, but I did don't want to do it,
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: So I don't want to do it human nature, Yeah,
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: it is one hundred percent. I want to weave back
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: into the food plots you mentioned. For most people, they
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: probably don't.
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: Need a drill if they plant an acre food plot
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: half acre food plot. So how from a habitat and
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: conservation minded approach, how do you plant a half acre
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: food plot? In your mind? And let's get more specific too,
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: whether it's a clover or a fall blend of greens,
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: What's what's your approach?
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: So you know, everything truly does have its pluses and minuses.
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: So somebody might say I don't like herbicides. Well, if
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: you tell the soil, don't think there's not environmental impacts
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: from that, right, and soil loss and huge detriment. Now
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: am I a proponent of herbicides? I guess I would
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: be kind of in the middle where it's like, I
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: don't want to be constantly exposed to herbicides. I don't
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: want them drenching on everything all the time. But used,
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: you know, so I just try and minimize their use.
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: And if a guy has like half an acre, you
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: could and you'd say, well, what what's practical without you know,
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: tillege equipment or a drill or whatever. Clovers fit right
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: into that and that's easy. So a half acre you
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: literally could go out and frost seed that. You could
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: still probably do it now there's still frosts that's coming
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: in a lot of the forecast, which just sucks that
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: seed right up to the soil. It just just hold
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: it there perfect. So that's a great time to do it.
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: So you spread the clover. And even if you're like,
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: but right now, I just got this grass patch, Okay,
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: take your backpack sprayer, then fill it with clethenhum and
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: crop oil and just go over it with the backpack.
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: But that's that took me thirty minutes an hour. Okay, fine,
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: bring an extra few jugs to fill it up and
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: just sit there and spray that grass with clethenum and
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: crop oil when it comes up later, and you could
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: have a clover plot, and you know, you could take
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: that a step further and be like, you know, I'm
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: generally in a area with low pH soils. So you
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: take your same backpack sprayer spreader and you put pelotize
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: line in there, and then you put a bag of
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: P and K in there and you spread that. Oh
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: that took me fifteen minutes minutes on each of those.
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: I mean, this is very minimal stuff, very very easy.
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: Even if you're like, hey, oh yeah, I mean to
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: put to do one hundred pounds of poetize line, for example,
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: which is all right on a half acre clover one,
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: it will make a difference absolutely. And two, I mean
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: that might take twenty five minutes. For example. Usually you're
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: getting frustrated if you're by yourself because you're trying to
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: hold the bag open if you have a bag as
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: opposed to like something for and then it's spilling over,
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: and then you're getting ticked off, like, I get that's
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: still this day, I'll spill seed or whatever, and I
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: get mad.
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: I just got that. I got that, I got the
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: bucket Earthway spread Yeah that year, just because I got
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: so sick of spilling stuff. I'm pretty clumsy.
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: Those are definitely nicer. And I ordered one of those
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: the other day and they sent me so I heard
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: the Earthway and they sent me a different brand, Chapping
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: or something, and I went to spin it and it
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: was so hard. I'm like, man, I'm not in bad
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: shape at all. I'm in very good shape. But I'm like,
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: after sixty seconds, this thing is so hard to turn.
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: So I sent it back. But I'll probably get that
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: that Earthway one if they can get it right. But yeah,
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: you know, a bag spreader can do a lot of stuff.
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: And you know, clover, for example, would be a staple
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: for nutrition, not just shooting, and we can dig into
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: that a little bit deeper. But like, I don't look
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: at food plots or crops or or even the stuff
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: I was talking about with timber stanmprovement is like, well,
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: I'm going to have this opening here or this food
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: plot here so I can just kill a deer. That's
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: not why I do it. It's some of the reason.
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: And I would say most people's reason for planning food
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: plot is like that's where I'm going to shoot a deer.
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: I don't think along those terms, and I'm not saying
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: others should think the way I do, not necessarily, but
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: a big component of what I'm thinking about is optimal
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: nutrition across my whole farm, across my food plots, across
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: my timber. Optimal nutrition year round is what I want.
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: And clover is a great staple to offer that, and
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: clover can do both. Clover can be a component of
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: optimal nutrition. And I would say clover has to be
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: a component every single person's farm period, and a story
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: has to for nutritional reasons. From right now, look at
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: the clover right now. Those deer, especially the bucks that
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: are like run it out, they're just picking at every
• 57:16
  Speaker 4: little green thing that pops up, and it's green, and
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: it's popping up right now where You're like, is there
• 57:20
  Speaker 4: any soybeans right now? No, We're a long ways from that.
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: So clover is replenishing these deer skeletal structures, replenishing their
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: bodies and giving them high rates of protein actually along
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: with other nutrients. So clover will be desired really even
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: in the winter when there's snow, they'll pull at it,
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: eat it all the way to Yeah, I hunt over
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: it in the fall, and I mean it's almost a
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: year round food source.
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: It really is.
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: It's almost a year round food source, so clover has
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: to be a component.
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: So would you say, would you say clover is the
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: most attractive for the most amount of time out of
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: any food source.
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: One hundred person. It's definitely more attractive. It has more
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: benefits than alfalfa. And I have alfalfa fields. I love alfalfa,
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: and alfalfa is more like, I gotta have alfalfa fields
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: because that's cool. It's different, it's next level, and it
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: is it's harder to get established, it's plusier.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: Do you like it?
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: You can bail it, But clover versus alfalfa, I'll take
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: clover every time, and all of my alfalfa fields where
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: I bail them, or I put a grazing type alfalfa
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: with a very leafy type of alfalfa, I'll still have like,
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: hey man, that's a ten acre alfalfa field you have
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: there that you bail, and one acre of it is clovers.
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: And I can sit there and watch the alfalfa field
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: and be like, I know when they're in the alfalfa
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: when they prefer that, and when they're in the clover
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: room when they prefer that. And I would say, just
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: to make a long story short, if you want to
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: do alfalfa, that's fine, and there's a place for it,
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: and it has its benefits, some of the benefits over clovers.
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: But overall, if you weigh the two alclover is going
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: to be better. They're just going to be more desired
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: and used far longer into the season. And that's my
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: experience over and over and over, year after year after
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: year watching these fields with alfalfa and clover in them.
• 59:13
  Speaker 4: So just to wrap a quick bow on it, establishing
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: clover for anybody, even me, dummy me that planted sugar
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: beets with a rake in the forest at fourteen and
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: used my mom's rake just to recap. I could go
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: get clover done. That fourteen year old could get clover done.
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: And literally a bag spreader or any kind of a
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: spreader and probably a backpack sprayer with cleft them and
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: crop oil maybe butterac. If you get different weeds in there,
• 59:45
  Speaker 4: broad leaf weeds, and if you could clip it, you
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: know I would, Yeah, there we go. I got my
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: grandparents old lawnmower. When they upgrade their lawnmower, they gave
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: me their lawn boy, and I would do my food,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: you know, I'd mow my clover with that. Not not ideal,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: but you know, if you could clip it. Well, here's
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: the other one I did too. I'd use a weed
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: whipper forever, took forever, but again another tool that's cheap
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: that everybody has to solve the same problem. So maybe
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: you clip it once, especially the first year. I probably
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: would clip it because you're gonna get weeds in there.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 4: But yeah, you could frost. See that. Now, if a
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: guy wanted to go drill it and wait and add oats,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: or I want to do this or smooth out soil
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 4: a little bit and lightly disc it and cold to packet,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: that's great too. It's great have a little more weeds
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: to deal with. But if you can do that, then
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: you can probably clip it. And you can probably split
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: spray with cleft and crop oil and butter act two
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: four d B not two four D but two four
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: d B. And if you read the alfalfah read the
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: label on alfalfa, you can tank mix those two. And
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: I tank mix those two. I guess it's that's technically
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: for alfalfa, but I did tank makes it. Maybe it
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: somehow cross that line and got into my clovers and
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: it turned out fantastic. Takes care of every weed. I
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: don't I don't need round up ready alf alpha. You
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: can use clothing them, crop oil, and butterac and it
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: really should cover about everything other than maybe sedge, which
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: you can use sed shamber.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: So there you go.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 4: Anybody can do this super simple now, really quickly. To
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: answer your other question, though, what if I want to
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: do greens, Well, greens are going to be this like
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: like brassicas or rhymex. You could do the same thing.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: It's going to be a little bit a little bit
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: trickier because you're not dealing with like frost suck in
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: the seed close to soil. But you could spray it,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: kill it off. You could maybe lightly scratch it and
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: broadcast brassicas into there radish turn ups and you know
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: you got one component there. If you do want to
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: add nitrogen, you either have to time the nitrogen application
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: right for a rain, which most people know, but I'll
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: still mention it, or you just get agurtain and treat
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: your urea so it doesn't evaporate, and then you can
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: just go right over the top in your bag spreader
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 4: again with treated urea and that won't evaporate. So and
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: literally a guy could be like, man, I got to
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: go to the co op to get treated. Youuia, you could.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: You can buy a jug of this, put it in
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: your backpack sprayer and put a tarp out with your
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: urea and spray your urea with this stuff and then
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: it doesn't evaporate and it's worth taking the time to
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: do that versus being like, yeah, I put urea out
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: and didn't rain for the rink and it was ninety
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: degrees and it's all gone. You know, don't do that
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: or you know, well I'll just disc it all in.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: How much time does that take?
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: A lot?
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: What does it do to your soil? It's not great.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: So doing treated aureas has huge benefits and a little
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: bit of time to treat some with a backpack sprayer
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: with agurtain and a little bit of cost. Well a
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: jug costs me a couple of undred bucks. It' last
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: a long time, super super effective. So again, bag spreader,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: backpack sprayer, kill off gly, kill off whatever is there,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: heavy gly maybe ammonium sulfate with it, maybe two four
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: D if you've got some really nasty stuff, and just
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: make sure it is dead and then maybe scratch it
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 4: and intercede it. And you can do a lot of
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: things like that. You can do rye like that, you
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 4: can do clovers like that in the fall, like late summer.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 4: You could do breasts because like that, he's not so much. Oh,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: it's not so much. They're a little fussier, but like
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: rye win or wheat we'll do. Okay, there's a lot
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: of things you can do.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: That. One thing I want to bring up to and
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: you've touched on this with nighte Gen and basically MPK,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: how important in terms of conservation and for the nutrition
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: of all animals eating out of these plots is soil
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: health because I think a lot of people want just
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: the simple aesthetics of a good looking food plot, but
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: the soil health. What is your opinion on it? And
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: I and that's a that topic has a lot more
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: buzz than probably three years ago in my opinion, but
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: I think it's important to bring up and get your perspective.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of there's a lot that's missed with
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: soil health. So people are like, you know, the general
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: ones like being kay, that's soil health, right, No, No,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: that's a component of it. But your organic matter will
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 4: probably be your number one component. Well, that's not what
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 4: he's asking kind of is you know, if your organic
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: matter is five versus two, it's a huge difference on
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: your nutrition, on the success of your plot. What's going
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 4: to grow there, what's going to be able to be utilized,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: all the all the nutrients that are going to be
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: able to be utilized by the plants with your organic
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: matter and surviving a drought, Well, how do I improve
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: that organic matter? Well, plant high biomass crops or plots
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: high biomass. Don't till I add, like compost a grade
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: of food matter. That's how I fertilize or cattle manure.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: People aren't going to do that, they're just not so
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: high biomass. Things like rye corn sorghums, milos with probably
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 4: some legumes blended in there for nitrogen will be a
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: great way to build your soil. Don't tear it up.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 4: And you know your pH will probably be next, because
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 4: you know, if you say, I keep hearing P and
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: K fosterous and potassium, but your pH is wrong one,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 4: you're all the calcium that critters need will not be there,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: and then everything that the plant needs to grow PK
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 4: and then a whole nother list which I'm going to
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: get into and address this, because this is missed all
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: the time. Those plants can't uptake that. So pH would
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: be like next, with organic matter next in importance. So
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: getting your pH right, you know, six five to seven
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: is ideal. In some areas, it's like, well my pH
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 4: is eight, I'm in this you know, uh spot where
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 4: the soils. The other way, well, you'd have to add
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 4: a lot of sulfur to deal with that, right, which is.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: Probably a lot more rare.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 4: It's it's more rare. But in Iowa there's a line.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: If you get into northwest Iowa, you start getting into
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: higher phs. So guys will use more sulfur, and once
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: in a while they use gypsum, which is fairly neutral.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: It's got calcium and sulfur. But you do got to
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: address it in the same for the same reason. So,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 4: and if your pH is like six or five. If
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: it's five, you got big issues. You know, stuff isn't
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: really going to want to grow there and it's not
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 4: going to take up the nutrition that it should without
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 4: the proper pH. So and what you would notice if
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: you ate two plants, like you had a garden with
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 4: the proper pH, and you had a garden with the
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 4: wrong pH, one would taste very bland. You'd be like,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 4: and you'll notice this at the store. If you buy
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 4: like cheap produce that's grown in like Central America and
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 4: junk soils and they're just putting the basics on it,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: it will taste bland. Like an apple. Go eat an
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 4: apple from the store that's from Central America, and then
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 4: go eat an apple that's grown in the Midwest. Your brain
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 4: will instantly know it. One is packed with nutrients, one
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 4: is bland. Well, that's what would happen with a garden.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: If you put two gardens next to each other. One's
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 4: pH is correct, one has the proper calcium levels and
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: all the other nutrients to which are critical, and one
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 4: the pH was wrong. One one would have smaller plants,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 4: less healthy plants, but they would taste bland. The one
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 4: with the proper pH would be flavorful, and it would
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: your brain would would recognize this, and it would crave
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 4: without you even knowing, it would crave the proper pH.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 4: Garden with packed with nutrition. So when your pH is correct,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 4: now your plants can uptake all the other things and
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 4: It's not just P and K. I cannot emphasize this enough.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: It is not just P and K. I mean, granted,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 4: you have nitrogen, which is the other huge component, which
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 4: is a different subject. I'm going to leave nitrogen out though.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: But like our sulfur deficiencies are very rare, are very
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: common across the Midwest. Okay, so almost everybody listening to this,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 4: I will guarantee you if you pull a soil sample,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: and you should pull a soil sample, absolutely you're going
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: to be fifteen to twenty pounds deficient on sulfur. I
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 4: almost guarantee it. I guarantee you you will be low
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 4: on boron. Ninety percent of the people listening to this
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 4: will be low on bora. You will be probably low
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 4: on manganese. You will probably be low on zinc. You
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 4: will probably be low on copper. You will probably be
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 4: high in magnesium. And you probably have people, if I
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 4: say a strong majority, will be high and iron. Thus,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 4: I need to figure out how to supplement boron manganese, copper, zinc.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 4: What the heck? This guy's a chemistry teacher, boring me
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: out of my mind? How do I fix this? Just
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 4: understand that a co op and a lot of the
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 4: different folio sprays you can get. You can. There's ways
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: to fix this and most of the co ops now
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: because there's such a Midwest problem with all these deficiencies,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: offer most of these things. They're for sure your co
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 4: op for sure, if they're any bit decent, is going
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 4: to be able to get or have sulfur on hand.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 4: Solfur is the biggest efficiency problem. We have a crowd
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: some Midwest that people pay attention to. Now you can.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 4: You could get online and say, hey, I'm going to
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: order some boron, I'm going to order some zinc.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 4: But but what you need to do really so so
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 4: I don't confuse people and make this sound like a
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 4: chemistry discussion, is just go get your soil samples.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: Do it.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 4: Just get a probe any way to get a soil
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 4: column that's six inches deep. They get you a good
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 4: representation from the top to down six inches doesn't need
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 4: to be perfect. Send it in and get the full analysis.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 4: So all your macros and all your micros, and with
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: that it will tell you on every sample you know,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 4: one A, one B, one B C. You're gonna label
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 4: them all different around your field. There'll be different results.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 4: It's gonna tell you what your organic matter is, which
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 4: is a big deal. That's the first thing you want
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 4: to look at. It's gonna tell you what your pH is.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: The second thing you're gonna look at. It's gonna tell
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 4: you what all your macros and your micros are. That's
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 4: the third thing you're gonna want to look at. If
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: you're a nerd like me, you're gonna start looking at
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 4: your exchange ratios and your buffer index and all this
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 4: stuff to worry about that. Don't worry about that. That
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 4: will be region based like sandy soils stuff like that.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: But pH, organic matter, macros, and micros. Test for all
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 4: those and address all of those is the work you
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 4: can do.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: It Is it worth doing that on a half acre
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: FOD plot? Because I guarantee someone listening right now is thinking, man,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: it's only a half acre food plot. Is it really
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: worth all that effort? You know, the twelve or twenty
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: dollars soil sample and then going and getting whatever it is,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: two hundred pounds of product from the co op. Is
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: it worth it?
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 4: So put put it in context, then you know half
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 4: acre you're you know, if I added all the high
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 4: level if I'm really deficient on all these things. Yeah,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 4: you have to.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: You have to.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: I mean, you'll grow a mediocre plot at best. But
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 4: if you're really deficient, even on a half acre, you know,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 4: you'll see a huge difference with the results, like the
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 4: amount of tonnage it will produce. The desirability to the deer.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 4: If you are very deficient versus deficient versus like, hey,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 4: I fix this will be vastly different. So you know
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 4: we're talking about you know, in a half acre, I
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 4: mean the most the worst soils. I could think of
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 4: a few hunds. Yeah, you know, I had to add this,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 4: and I had to do this, and I had to
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 4: do this a few hundred bucks to make your plot
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 4: far more desirable. I think it's worth it.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: Well, that's and I think you would say all I
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: have is a half acre, So you would want to
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: make that half acre as great as possible.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I would. It'd be like seeing, I'm going to
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: take the time to carve out a little garden in
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 4: my backyard for my family. Are you gonna pull the weeds?
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: Are you gonna you know, are you gonna take care
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: of that? Are you gonna skimp on everything? You know?
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: Then just don't plan it, right, I mean, if you're
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 4: not gonna do anything. These are basic things. Though it's
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 4: not that complex, it might be the first Here's the
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 4: most complex part of it is doing it for the
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: first time. Well, I don't know how to do a
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 4: soil test, and that was hard to figure out which
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 4: one to ask for. I went to Midwest Labs and
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: I realized it was SC three was the code I
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 4: needed to submit, and it was a little bit hard
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 4: for me to get through the website. Well, just call
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 4: them up and say what soil sample do I need?
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 4: How do I send this in? And you spend twenty
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: dollars and a half acre plot maybe forty because you
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: pull two samples, and then you been two hundred bucks
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: correcting the worst parts of your plot. Well, you don't
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 4: ever really have to go to that extent ever again,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 4: and next time you do, now you know how to
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 4: do it, so it's easy. Just doing it the first
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 4: time is the hardest part period.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: Which would probably be all of these projects we talked about. Yes,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: it's the learning curve of doing it, and I think
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: that Skip, can you give everyone permission right now to
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: not do every project perfect?
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 4: I've done every project, the wrong way, the sideways way,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 4: just I've made every mistake. But I also had to
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 4: go from no knowledge, no tools, to hey, I got
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 4: a riding lawn. More to hey, I got a four
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 4: wheeler with a carrow. And then all of a sudden,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 4: I got a small tractor. Then I have a medium
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 4: sized tractor. Now have a big tractor with auto steer
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 4: and precision planning and you know variable rate spreading on fertilizer.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 4: And you know, so in every step throughout that process
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 4: of trying to accomplish the same goals at different scales,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 4: and made huge mistakes. I planned when it was muddy,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 4: don't play in the mud. Why because it will be
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: a compacted mess. Play in the mud. Your crops will
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 4: be a dud plant the dust, your grain bins will bust.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 4: Whatever the saying is silly things like that. I had
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 4: to learn every single one of these things the hard way,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 4: all of them, because nobody was there to teach me
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 4: these things. And now you do have some things that
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 4: I didn't. I was maybe too stupid to utilize or
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 4: they didn't exist, which is you know, all the the
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 4: information online and you know that's when I got involved
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 4: in like iowaytail. I'm like, oh, here's all the solutions,
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 4: all these things, and you know, spending a year on
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 4: that website, I'm like, oh my gosh, I did a
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 4: lot of dumb stuff. Uh, and that fixed a lot
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: of my issues right there. And now you you know,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 4: there's websites, there's content like this. There's all sorts of
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 4: sources for people who are seeking wisdom or seeking solutions,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 4: or seeking to eliminate mistakes and do things more efficiently.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 4: I mean, there's plenty of information. I would say, it's
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: almost like the opposite now where it's like there's too
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: much information. Yeah, so you're trying to sort through what's
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 4: the garbage, what's the garbage, and what's great? And there
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 4: is a lot of garbage out there. That's the only
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 4: discouraging thing I would say to people. There's some things
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: that are just.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 3: What percentage? What percentage do you think is well, let
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: me ask you this. With the content that you watch
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: or hear about, or whatever the case may be, do
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: you think it comes from a place of ignorance or
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: a different motive of the person that's sharing it. Maybe
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: they have something to sell or they're just trying to
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 3: be an expert when they're not quite an expert yet.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 3: Why do you think that is the case? And what
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: would be a tip to make sure you're getting good info.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 4: All of the above? I think when you're if you're
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 4: really sponsored a certain way and the money's info into
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 4: you a certain way, you're going to push a certain
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 4: mindset and a certain type of products and a certain method.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 4: I think the other way though. The other thing though,
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 4: his guys are like, listen, I did this system at
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 4: one point to make a successful food plot, and I
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 4: continue to have a pretty darn good food plot. So
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: I'm going to say that's the best way for everybody, Like, like,
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 4: hey man, yep, see, watch me use my rotary tiller,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 4: go down eight inches in the soil, then pack it
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 4: to plant a clover seed that's going an eighth of
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 4: an inch deep. It works, it will turn out. Now.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 4: Is there huge downsides to that, huge problems that come
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 4: up with that?
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: Yes?
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 4: Yes there is. Is that the incorrect way to do it? Yes,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 4: I'm going to say it. That is the incorrect way
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: to do it, But you will see people doing it crazy.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 4: The rotary tillers should all be sold for scrap. It
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 4: should all be torn apart and made into no hotel
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 4: drills or or packers or harrows. There's a few pieces
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 4: out there like it does not belong in the Midwest
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 4: and maybe rare circumstances, you know, well, and my buddies
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 4: will be well, dude, I only used it one time
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 4: to smooth out soil, and a will never use it again. Okay,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 4: you know there's little caveats there.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: But.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, uh so I would say there's a lot of
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 4: ignorance and it worked this way. And I have buddies
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 4: they're like, well, I'm gonna keep killing because my plots
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: turn out fine. And they do, but they and I'll say, well,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 4: how many times do you have to spray for weeds
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 4: a bunch? It's like, dude, I don't have to spray
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 4: for weeds with my brass because I never spram and
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 4: then and then the other one like Braskis is a
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 4: great example because it's always grown in a vulnerable time
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 4: of year where success where failure rates are higher. And
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 4: had you grown corn the same way or anything with
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 4: the same things going against it as brass, because you'd
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 4: see a lot more failures. It's just you have more
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 4: forgiveness planning things earlier. But Brasskis is a great example
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 4: because guys are like, well, dude, if I tear up
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 4: the soil and I do this, I still have a
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 4: great brascal pot. But I'll ask them a lot of years,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 4: how many times did you have to spray this year?
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: A bunch and then the common one. I'll bet you
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 4: half the guys I know, if not seventy five percent
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 4: to do that, have Brasica failures. Now that's a lot,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 4: like over half fifty one percent at a minimum, Like, yeah, dude,
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 4: they did. Nothing's grown there. I have never had a
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 4: Brassica failure. Ever.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 3: Why do you think they're failed?
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 4: Because they're tearing up the soil and all their moistures
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 4: going away, and they're getting all this weed pressure which
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: is taking even more moisture out. It's competing with their plants,
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 4: and they're degrading their soils year a year for a year.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 4: So while I'm building my soils and my organic matter
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 4: went from like four to five and a half, they
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 4: probably went from like four to three. And little by
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 4: little they're like, hey, it's still working. But ten years
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 4: from now they're going to be like, I'm having more
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 4: failures and I can't really grow things. And I'm not
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 4: even gonna play Brascus anymore. And I know a lot
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 4: of guys. I'm just sick of the failures. It's always dry,
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 4: we have a drought. It's like you part, you're part
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 4: of the reason for that, on what you did to
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 4: your soils. So uh, just because there's a successful way
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 4: to do something, it's it's it's a lot like how
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 4: corn is done here. I mean, guys, on these you know,
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 4: really erodible ridge tops that are two percent organic matter,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 4: have to go till the living daylights out of the
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 4: soil and they have a good stand of corn. Now
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 4: with the hybrids, they can tolerate some of the more
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 4: poor soil, but they're they're continually degrading their soil. It's
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 4: just getting worse and worse and worse. And they're in
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 4: a way their hope is the hybrids will just get better.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: So they've.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 4: But had they been enhancing their soils the whole time, uh,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 4: they they have less inputs and they'd have a more
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 4: robust crop. And now where you really see the farmers,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 4: this is like real world. I have to grow things
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 4: to live. The farmers that do that, you know, they
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 4: might shine on a year when the weather's great. But
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 4: hey man, I degraded my soil. It's junk, it's two
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 4: percent organic matter. And then they get hit with a
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 4: drought and their yields really whatever hybrid just get just
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 4: get clobbered. Where had they taken great care of that
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 4: soil and built it up, they probably wouldn't have had
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 4: such a devastating result.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think the theme of this is figure
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 3: out a way to add more to your ground, improve
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: it rather than extract. Yes, which would be in my opinion,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 3: like the definition of conservation.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 4: And you know, I would just say, the more you
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 4: do to add to nutrition, you know, which all all
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 4: these things intertwined, just like the ecology we were talking
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 4: about earlier. But the more you do to add to
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 4: your nutrition of your plants, of you know, there's more brows.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 4: This translates into bigger bucks, absolutely bigger bucks. And you
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 4: might say, well, the bucks around you only get to four, fine,
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 4: but that four year old will be bigger. He'll have more.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 4: Like I'm looking at a table full of sheds that
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: are just like all full of like beating and splits
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 4: and kickers. And when I got this farm, you didn't
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 4: see that stuff, you will have bigger deer because of it.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 4: You'll see that. You'll see it in the racks, like
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 4: you'll see all the beating and like, whoa, the three
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 4: year olds used to look like this. Now man, they
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 4: have a lot more of you know, the extra stuff
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 4: you give them, the proper nutrition, which some of that
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 4: can be like artificial stuff too. I mean there's supplementation,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 4: there's mineral there's you know, even even stump sprouts, you know,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 4: and and areas that have soybeans or alf alpha versus
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 4: areas that not that don't are gonna make huge differences.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 4: But you know, getting the nutrition on your farm done
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 4: in a variety of ways, whether that's through the forest,
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 4: the plots, is going to create bigger deer. It will
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 4: make substantial differences in the inches that deer can actually
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 4: put on. And then you know where you tie habitat together.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 4: It's like, okay, now the cover component, what does that
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 4: do well? That allows those deer with proper cover to
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 4: get to those older ages right and not get shot
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 4: at the younger ages because they don't have ideal cover,
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 4: they don't want to be there, they leave all these
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 4: other regions. So proper habitat really does combine ideal nutrition
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 4: with safe habitat to reach the older ages, which is
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 4: what people need in any region. Maybe you're trying to
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 4: grow three year olds because everybody shoots one year olds.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 4: I mean, you know, the habitat component is a big
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 4: part of getting those deer to age. It's a safety component,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 4: it's a desirability of the deer to be on your ground.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 4: So there's all these reasons where those two issues, nutrition
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 4: and safety and seclusion and wanting to be on your
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 4: farm go together. And so bigger deer, older deer with
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 4: proper nutrition and proper habitat. Its sounds easy, it sounds easy,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 4: it's not.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 3: We gave We gave folks a punch lists to start,
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: and that's where that's where you just have to get started.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 3: And I say it next year, next year, next year,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 3: and never get anything done. So this is the thing,
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: just the kickoff. This is the kickoff right here for
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 3: someone right now, they're gonna say I'm gonna do this,
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna go do this, I'm gonna go and figure
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 3: it out. And that's where you.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 4: Can start today. Start today, even if you have no
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 4: money in your pocket and you got to pick up
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 4: some popcins uh and redeem those to get a little
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 4: bit of a little bit of money to get going
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 4: on something. I mean, very very basic to do something
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 4: today for anybody, and just keep going down the rabbit hole,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 4: because if you enjoy it, you're gonna want to keep
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 4: going down the rabbit hole and you'll just get bigger
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 4: and learn more things and and this learning will never end,
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 4: and you're never You'll start buying all this stuff and
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 4: it'll obsess you and it never ends.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 3: It's fun though, It's yeah, it's the wormhole that doesn't end. Well.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 3: This is this is fun because we just finished up
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 3: a live Q and A last week on the Master
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 3: Academy and we answered you answered direct questions of very
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 3: very specific things, which was was pretty fun. So I
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 3: feel like that's the next level of this conversation with
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: really specific examples and questions. And I want to give
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 3: you an opportunity to plug Iowa White Tail. I find
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 3: myself on there sometimes by accident when I Google something
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 3: and I'm like, oh, I'm on Iowa y Tail trying
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 3: to figure out whatever problem I have going on. And
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of really good threads on there too.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 4: It's great. It was part of my progression, you know,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 4: being the guy that knew quite a bit at that point,
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 4: quite a bit, but then discovering Iowa Tale and being like,
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 4: oh my gosh, like I said, there was all these
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 4: mistakes I made. So my good good friend ended up
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 4: being my neighbor in Iowa. This guy named double Tree
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 4: who contributed to like all these different forms back in
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 4: the day, and he passed away maybe like decade decade
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 4: and a half ago, but you know, twenty fifteen ish
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 4: years ago. I did some projects with him. We learned
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 4: a lot of stuff together. I learned so much from him,
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 4: and he contributed to Iawhitetail. So when I could buy
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 4: iowait Tale, it was kind of like, hey, I got
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 4: to preserve this information and keep his legacy going. So
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 4: all that's still there, like the Doubletry section, habitat, anything
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 4: related to habitat. There's so much there. And it's like
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 4: if I post a video or talk about a certain topic,
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 4: like people want to ask me like all these questions
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 4: and I do try and get to them, but it's
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 4: like it's all there. It is all there. Please save
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 4: me a little time, especially during farm season, and just
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 4: go there and it's all like so I just to
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 4: be like transparent, iowait taal is like, you know, no
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 4: profit I don't do. There's no money that comes from
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 4: it. It costs me money, right which to most people doesn't
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 4: make any sense. But it's just a way to get
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 4: back in a way. You know. Maybe there's some things
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 4: I'll do that make some money at some point, and
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 4: maybe I have to spend a little pivot a little bit.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 4: But right now, you know, I'm just farming and uh,
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 4: you know, I work on land and that's that's my living.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 4: But iowait tail, you know, and this won't change. Ioway
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 4: tail will always be there for a resource for people
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 4: to help for the causes on you know, regulations on habitat,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 4: how to how to you know, keep the the Midwest
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 4: a better place environmentally or for deer hunters, or be
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 4: just like that that hardcore information source that sifts through
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 4: the garbage. Like when you see information on there, it's
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 4: not going to be the missing Like like, there's things
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 4: I'll say that is wrong, that is the wrong way
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 4: to do it. I completely disagree, and I'm not saying
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 4: I'm not wrong on some things that I'm far from it,
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 4: but the information on there, especially double trees information, and
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 4: the members there at at a level, a top tiered level,
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 4: and I would be extreme, dreamely confident to take any
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 4: information there and implement any information there.
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 3: Twelve So that's great. Well, what a way to cap
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 3: off habitat month and people are equipped to go get
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: to work. Yeah, thank you, yeah, thanks once again, thanks
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 3: for having me