Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1027: What 100+ Farms Taught Us About Big Bucks

Transcript

Ep. 1027: What 100+ Farms Taught Us About Big Bucks · 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.
0:18
Speaker 2: What is going on?
0:19
Speaker 3: Welcome to Wired to Hunt. I'm Jake Hofer. In this
0:21
Speaker 3: week we have Jack Houston with Midwest Deer Surveys. Jack
0:25
Speaker 3: has flown over five hundred farms and we talk about
0:28
Speaker 3: some of the observations he's been able to make from
0:30
Speaker 3: habitat deer density where mature bucks are living, the impact
0:35
Speaker 3: of insects in how it may correlate with healthier dear
0:38
Speaker 3: So we cover a lot of different topics here on
0:41
Speaker 3: Wired to Hunt, presented by Multrie. Hope you guys enjoyed
0:44
Speaker 3: this episode. Here we go, Jack, Welcome to Wire to Hunt.
0:57
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me. Jake looking forward.
0:59
Speaker 2: To absolutely so.
1:02
Speaker 3: Just to rip the bandit off here you I think
1:05
Speaker 3: you have flown and observed more farms than probably anyone
1:07
Speaker 3: else in the United States, and have surveyed more farms
1:11
Speaker 3: than anyone else. How many farms are you up to now?
1:14
Speaker 4: Roughly uptown right around five hundred, yeah, three years sixteen
1:20
Speaker 4: states roughly from you know, western Pennsylvania all the way
1:26
Speaker 4: to western Kansas, from Minnesota down to Florida, so and
1:31
Speaker 4: everywhere in between.
1:33
Speaker 3: So okay, a lot of different farms, and you know,
1:38
Speaker 3: just in passing, a lot of people bring up, like,
1:40
Speaker 3: you know, everyone wants to form an opinion on thermal
1:43
Speaker 3: drones because I think there it's a pretty fascinating piece
1:46
Speaker 3: of technology. You know, there's I think from the deer survey,
1:52
Speaker 3: like I feel like people fully.
1:54
Speaker 2: Kind of buy into what you're doing there.
1:55
Speaker 3: But then like there's the question of abuse and the
1:58
Speaker 3: question of the technology and the space that often comes up.
2:01
Speaker 3: But one parallel I will draw for everyone is you're
2:07
Speaker 3: basically conducting scientific research on a micro scale for every
2:11
Speaker 3: single farm, and then you can take all that data
2:14
Speaker 3: and form all these different trends that you see across
2:16
Speaker 3: the whole country and over five hundred farms or you know,
2:19
Speaker 3: almost five hundred farms. And whenever there's a new GPS
2:22
Speaker 3: study that comes out by MSU, I'm the first one
2:26
Speaker 3: reading it. Probably not the first one, but it's something
2:28
Speaker 3: that like you want to read, like, oh, what is
2:30
Speaker 3: the dear behavior?
2:30
Speaker 2: What are they doing?
2:31
Speaker 3: And just trying to learn to apply it to your
2:33
Speaker 3: own form of hunting and all these different things, and
2:36
Speaker 3: you're doing that on steroids. And so that's kind of
2:38
Speaker 3: where I'm positioning this conversation, is like, I'm looking at
2:40
Speaker 3: this from a research perspective, a live version of a
2:44
Speaker 3: GPS study. Someone can argue with me, say it's not
2:46
Speaker 3: the same, but that's where my head's at. What do
2:48
Speaker 3: you think about that? That parallel?
2:51
Speaker 4: It's deer data, right, who doesn't love that? I think,
2:56
Speaker 4: you know, I'll take take it real serious and cracking
3:00
Speaker 4: everything well, location numbers, breakdown all that stuff. I've had
3:05
Speaker 4: a lot of people reach out they're interested in, you know,
3:09
Speaker 4: getting access to that data, which I think is really
3:12
Speaker 4: cool and one day I'll kind of release that as
3:15
Speaker 4: a large set. But there's just there's so much to learn,
3:19
Speaker 4: right because research researches, you know, in captive herds and
3:26
Speaker 4: all that's one thing. But actually seeing it across the country,
3:30
Speaker 4: what changes where what's actually going on is really cool
3:34
Speaker 4: and it really wasn't possible, you know. The thermal drone
3:38
Speaker 4: just allows us to take a step that we couldn't
3:41
Speaker 4: do before.
3:43
Speaker 2: Yeah.
3:43
Speaker 3: I think another thing too, it's it's the most relatable
3:47
Speaker 3: dear information, dear data, because you're fine a variety of
3:50
Speaker 3: different farms, right, different sizes, different regions, different habitat types.
3:55
Speaker 3: Where often the GPS data I enjoy reading and learning
3:58
Speaker 3: about it, but it's usually on a specific scientific site.
4:02
Speaker 3: Maybe it's six thousand acres that is partially allowed there's hunting,
4:05
Speaker 3: or maybe there's no hunting. It's like, well, how can
4:07
Speaker 3: I compare if I have forty acres or I hunt
4:09
Speaker 3: a track of public that's two hundred acres to that
4:12
Speaker 3: GPS data where you're able to see like the different
4:15
Speaker 3: density and behaviors and how they bad. That's applicable to
4:20
Speaker 3: more people than a specific scientific site. So I'm not
4:24
Speaker 3: I'm not dogging what they do because I find it
4:26
Speaker 3: really interesting. But this is the most relatable data I
4:29
Speaker 3: think across the board that you're that you're going out
4:31
Speaker 3: there and seeing.
4:33
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just it's what's actually going on in the
4:36
Speaker 4: real world. You know. I feel like I've got a
4:39
Speaker 4: pretty large shamful size now, so it's cool to actually,
4:43
Speaker 4: you know, once you get enough, you can really start
4:45
Speaker 4: to see a few trends that you know, maybe I
4:49
Speaker 4: had never thought about before or things you just didn't
4:53
Speaker 4: think were possible or you know all that stuff, and
4:56
Speaker 4: we're gonna we're going to dive into that today. But
4:59
Speaker 4: there's a few.
5:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, what what surprised you most early on when you
5:03
Speaker 3: were just starting, let's say at Milestone Farm one hundred,
5:07
Speaker 3: so you have a lot of farms under your belt,
5:09
Speaker 3: and what you've been able to, you know, see those
5:11
Speaker 3: first hundred farms. What was really shocking or surprising that,
5:16
Speaker 3: you know, conventional wisdom would have told you differently, but
5:19
Speaker 3: you were able to deserve like, oh man, I didn't
5:21
Speaker 3: I didn't realize this was the thing.
5:25
Speaker 4: It's unbelievable how many deer are out there in certain
5:28
Speaker 4: parts of the country. I've worked for some state agencies
5:33
Speaker 4: in the last year and flew with them. I said,
5:36
Speaker 4: how many do you think we're going to find today?
5:37
Speaker 4: And they say their number, and I said, how many
5:40
Speaker 4: deer do you think is the most possible will find?
5:43
Speaker 4: And then they tell me and we'll find twenty five
5:46
Speaker 4: percent more than that. So they're just mind blown. There
5:50
Speaker 4: are a lot of deer out there in certain parts
5:52
Speaker 4: of the country, not so much into others. I would say,
5:57
Speaker 4: you know, talk about social stress. A lot but just
5:59
Speaker 4: how important that is, how that plays into growing bigger deer,
6:06
Speaker 4: you know, optimizing your herd all that. But and I
6:10
Speaker 4: think we're going to dive into it. Density rings. That's
6:12
Speaker 4: probably the biggest jake that applies. I don't think it
6:16
Speaker 4: matters if you're hunting forty acres of public or you've
6:21
Speaker 4: got a five thousand acre farm in Iowa. Density rings
6:25
Speaker 4: play out everywhere I do a survey, and I think
6:29
Speaker 4: I think hunters can use understanding them, can really help
6:33
Speaker 4: anybody anywhere.
6:35
Speaker 3: So for someone that's never heard of this, what is
6:38
Speaker 3: a density ring? Like, what do you mean by that?
6:42
Speaker 4: So across the we just take a twenty thousand foot
6:46
Speaker 4: view of you know, a county or a township or whatever.
6:50
Speaker 4: There's there's changing density densities among that landscape. So there
6:57
Speaker 4: might be a dense pocket in this forty acre patch
7:00
Speaker 4: timber here, or this ridge. And usually you know it's
7:04
Speaker 4: not not just ten acre little spots. It's we're talking
7:06
Speaker 4: a little bigger than that. But there's less deer here,
7:09
Speaker 4: there's more deer here, simply put so that that we
7:15
Speaker 4: can't really see that, but the drone that does allow
7:18
Speaker 4: us to see that, and I see that on surveys
7:20
Speaker 4: all the time, and how does that affect deer. There's
7:27
Speaker 4: a social aspect with the white tail that we can't
7:31
Speaker 4: we can't really see from a stand that they know
7:34
Speaker 4: there's a lot of deer over there, they know this
7:36
Speaker 4: buck's over there, and so that influences how they act
7:41
Speaker 4: and where they want to be. And and I found,
7:46
Speaker 4: you know, density rings are kind of the base level
7:49
Speaker 4: of it is the dose are more in the higher
7:52
Speaker 4: density areas, and then the bucks are kind of outside that.
7:57
Speaker 4: And then even further some of the biggest bucks in
7:59
Speaker 4: the air area are usually one to two to three
8:03
Speaker 4: miles away from the highest density area. So it's kind
8:07
Speaker 4: of a there's a localized density ring of the dose
8:12
Speaker 4: might want to be here closest to this food cloth
8:15
Speaker 4: that's in the center of the farm and the best
8:18
Speaker 4: and then a quarter to a half mile away you're
8:20
Speaker 4: start finding a lot higher density of bucks. But then
8:24
Speaker 4: there's also you know, look at it from further up,
8:29
Speaker 4: two to three miles away, is where the biggest buck
8:31
Speaker 4: in the whole township or you know, area that county
8:35
Speaker 4: might be because they're just they just want to be
8:41
Speaker 4: away from all the ruckets. I guess we're still trying
8:45
Speaker 4: to figure it out. I talk with a lot of
8:46
Speaker 4: people about it. But that's been really cool to see.
8:50
Speaker 4: And if you if you understand, here's where a lot
8:52
Speaker 4: of deer are. Here's some good cover one to two
8:56
Speaker 4: miles away. Maybe I can get a spot there. I've
8:59
Speaker 4: seen over and over again. Those are those are the
9:01
Speaker 4: best spots to get the biggest and best with your bucks.
9:08
Speaker 3: It seems it seems almost counterintuitive to like the you know,
9:11
Speaker 3: I'm mis picturing in my head, you know, one farm
9:13
Speaker 3: that's highly managed, a bunch of food, really good cover,
9:18
Speaker 3: and then in my mind and I could be wrong,
9:20
Speaker 3: and you could tell me I'm picturing like a ditch
9:23
Speaker 3: with maybe twenty acres of cover, you know, two miles
9:27
Speaker 3: away as could be a better spot, is what you're
9:30
Speaker 3: telling me? Or is that at least for where that
9:32
Speaker 3: deer lives.
9:33
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I mean there's some I love my clients. I
9:37
Speaker 4: would never do this, But there's some of my clients
9:39
Speaker 4: where I would. I wouldn't want to be on their fence,
9:41
Speaker 4: even though that might be kind of the logical. Oh,
9:43
Speaker 4: this is a really good farm, I want to be
9:45
Speaker 4: right here. I'd want to be two miles away, somewhere
9:49
Speaker 4: most people would never think, but that actually ends up
9:52
Speaker 4: being where that one eighties killed or where that two
9:57
Speaker 4: hundreds killed, and then that really good habitat on that
10:00
Speaker 4: great farm. It got a lot of the year, but
10:04
Speaker 4: they just don't don't maybe have the quality they're wanting.
10:08
Speaker 2: That's interesting.
10:09
Speaker 3: What so if you had to say where you're finding
10:13
Speaker 3: the highest concentration of mature bucks and this is more
10:16
Speaker 3: like habitat related in association to the density rings, I mean,
10:20
Speaker 3: is it pretty consistently like two or three miles away
10:23
Speaker 3: from wherever? Like imagine for someone that doesn't have a
10:26
Speaker 3: thermal drone or doesn't you know, they're just trying to
10:28
Speaker 3: figure this out. Like if you drive by and you're like, man,
10:31
Speaker 3: there was twenty doers out in that field, that's crazy.
10:34
Speaker 3: And the next logical thought would be, okay, based off
10:37
Speaker 3: what Jack's learned and seeing, what's another block of cover
10:41
Speaker 3: two miles away, and that might be the place where
10:43
Speaker 3: you can find a higher density and mature bucks, not
10:45
Speaker 3: necessarily near the field where you see a bunch of deer.
10:49
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you can just play around on a
10:51
Speaker 4: exis great. So what I do and you can you know,
10:57
Speaker 4: it doesn't always hold true that every single block a
11:02
Speaker 4: cover two miles away as there's going to be a
11:04
Speaker 4: giant deer, but it does hold true that those bigger
11:09
Speaker 4: deer are in one of those block September two miles
11:11
Speaker 4: away or draw or whatever. Yeah, you can. You can
11:17
Speaker 4: play around on on X and once once you see
11:20
Speaker 4: one or two, then you can really start to pick
11:22
Speaker 4: up on. Okay, I think he'll be here, and a
11:27
Speaker 4: lot of factors, but.
11:29
Speaker 3: How does how does that conversation often go with someone
11:32
Speaker 3: you know, like I don't own a thousand acres, but
11:35
Speaker 3: we can pretend I do for a second. I hire
11:37
Speaker 3: you and you're flying and then you know, let's say
11:40
Speaker 3: I own a satellite farm two miles away and they're like,
11:43
Speaker 3: oh man, I've worked really hard over the last fifteen
11:45
Speaker 3: years and this farm has a bunch of deer, but
11:48
Speaker 3: the little ditch farm I bought on a second second thought,
11:51
Speaker 3: is better? Has that happened? Or like what is the
11:55
Speaker 3: conversation for them? Because like anyone that has like a
11:58
Speaker 3: core farm, they spent a lot of time, a lot
12:00
Speaker 3: of money, a lot of effort, a lot of energy,
12:02
Speaker 3: and like, man, is all this for nothing?
12:05
Speaker 4: It's unbelievable. And I do work for a lot of
12:07
Speaker 4: people that kind of have their main farm, that's their baby,
12:10
Speaker 4: that's where they do all the habita at work. But
12:13
Speaker 4: if you look at where they actually kill their deer,
12:16
Speaker 4: their biggest deer, maybe half or less than half are
12:20
Speaker 4: actually there. And you would think that every single one
12:23
Speaker 4: would be there. But if they have access, they have
12:27
Speaker 4: a lease over here. A lot of times that's where
12:30
Speaker 4: those are actually getting their their bucks. If you look
12:33
Speaker 4: at it fifteen twenty years mark, mark it down, crack it.
12:41
Speaker 4: But you know, I tell them, if you're not going
12:45
Speaker 4: to take your herd management serious and get your numbers
12:48
Speaker 4: down here, you're just honestly, all this work has benefitting
12:51
Speaker 4: the neighbor more than you your neighborhood.
12:56
Speaker 3: And so let's run through that example. Let's say let's
13:00
Speaker 3: say someone listening to this has an eighty A one
13:02
Speaker 3: to twenty whatever it is, or just a honeyhole permission
13:06
Speaker 3: spot where there's a bunch of deer. What is typically
13:09
Speaker 3: your suggestion, Let's say number one, what is the density
13:13
Speaker 3: of Like okay, yeah, you have too many deer for
13:15
Speaker 3: this block, Like quantify that and then maybe walk through
13:20
Speaker 3: an example of a prescription of like you need to
13:21
Speaker 3: shoot x percent of dos for how long? And like
13:26
Speaker 3: what do you anticipate how long until you see a
13:29
Speaker 3: return from doing that? Because I mean, honestly, shooting a
13:31
Speaker 3: bunch of dos is a lot of work.
13:34
Speaker 4: It's an unbelievable amount of word.
13:36
Speaker 2: So let's walk through that.
13:38
Speaker 4: So typically on let's call it not saying one hundred
13:42
Speaker 4: and fifty acre farm a small farm, but one hundred
13:44
Speaker 4: and fifty acres and less. You just battle the problem.
13:48
Speaker 4: Less you don't have as many acres. You can't get
13:51
Speaker 4: the just in terms of the math of the totality
13:56
Speaker 4: of numbers, I can't get as bad there. So you
14:01
Speaker 4: want to have great habitat and then you know, ideal,
14:05
Speaker 4: if we could do a survey, right, we can get
14:08
Speaker 4: an idea of the herd. I kind of understand most neighborhoods.
14:12
Speaker 4: We can understand a little bit about the neighborhood, what
14:14
Speaker 4: the dynamics are there. And then really you want to
14:19
Speaker 4: create a different density dynamic on your farm that's more
14:23
Speaker 4: favorable towards bucks. So what do I mean by that? Well,
14:27
Speaker 4: simply put, if you get rid of does and bucks,
14:31
Speaker 4: you don't want to be there. You make it a
14:34
Speaker 4: lot better scenario for a buck that you do want
14:39
Speaker 4: to be there to move in so and that's social stress.
14:43
Speaker 4: We're eliminating social stress, which makes that far more attractive
14:47
Speaker 4: to the kind of buck that we want to kill.
14:51
Speaker 4: You if you just kill those, stack the cold bucks
14:54
Speaker 4: out of it. Over time, what you're going to see
14:57
Speaker 4: is your buck to dough ratio is just going to
14:59
Speaker 4: get better seeing that over and over again. Talk about
15:04
Speaker 4: Bill Wink's old Iowa farm a lot, but you know
15:07
Speaker 4: he killed fifty dolls a year for years on end,
15:10
Speaker 4: and he says at the end of it he had
15:13
Speaker 4: a three three buck to one dough ratio. And that's
15:17
Speaker 4: because as you as you take some of the doughs away,
15:20
Speaker 4: maybe they move in at a one to one rate.
15:22
Speaker 4: But after you do that so long, then you're left
15:25
Speaker 4: with a bunch of bucks, which does make it more
15:30
Speaker 4: attractive for a bigger buck to be there. But jump
15:34
Speaker 4: back to your question, Drake, not to go on a
15:36
Speaker 4: tangent there. You know, if I had an eighty or
15:40
Speaker 4: one twenty, I want to make the habitat great and
15:42
Speaker 4: keep the numbers low, and that's going to make it
15:45
Speaker 4: a great scenario for the kind of bucks we want
15:49
Speaker 4: to be there to make their home there.
15:52
Speaker 2: How do you how do you make it?
15:54
Speaker 3: The conundrum I think a lot of people are thinking of, like,
15:57
Speaker 3: man if I have, you know, a year round food
15:59
Speaker 3: and like it become and maybe the surrounding area does
16:03
Speaker 3: not have is high quality of habitat or high quality
16:06
Speaker 3: year round food. How do I keep that balance and
16:10
Speaker 3: kind of manage the six forty we'll say the square
16:13
Speaker 3: mile on my eighty to where it's like more likely
16:16
Speaker 3: the dose are going to want to be on this
16:19
Speaker 3: farm because it's, you know, the best little eighty in
16:22
Speaker 3: this block. Is there a way to do it from
16:25
Speaker 3: what you've seen or like, have you seen anyone do
16:27
Speaker 3: a really good job of it?
16:28
Speaker 4: It's it's very hard to be the central density farm.
16:33
Speaker 4: I don't like you talked about just being by far
16:35
Speaker 4: and away the best habitat in the area. If you're
16:39
Speaker 4: gonna battle high to year numbers just because you're always
16:41
Speaker 4: going to have that problem. That's kind of why I
16:44
Speaker 4: like being in a little better overall habitat area because
16:49
Speaker 4: then I'm not going to have such a draw that
16:52
Speaker 4: I'm gonna have to fight every single year. I would
16:57
Speaker 4: say even if you are a big draw that you
16:59
Speaker 4: still want to keep your numbers down. Deer will move in,
17:03
Speaker 4: there will still be plenty, but those bucks are always
17:07
Speaker 4: going to push out. It doesn't matter even if your
17:10
Speaker 4: overall numbers are low, They're always going to push out
17:13
Speaker 4: to the edge. And recently did a survey on Bill
17:19
Speaker 4: Winkie's farm for the third year in a row, and
17:22
Speaker 4: he has very low numbers, but almost all of the
17:25
Speaker 4: bucks we found were on the edge of our survey area.
17:30
Speaker 4: Even though he's got low numbers and great habitat, all
17:34
Speaker 4: of the bucks still are on the edge because there's
17:38
Speaker 4: this social dynamic between deer where the dose are going
17:43
Speaker 4: to be in the best spot, the bucks are gonna
17:44
Speaker 4: be on the edge, even if there's not that many overall.
17:58
Speaker 3: That's fascinating when you think about it, it's you know,
18:00
Speaker 3: it's I'm just I'm almost speechless, like what is the
18:04
Speaker 3: right way to do it?
18:05
Speaker 4: Then? Uh?
18:06
Speaker 3: If you want the deer to live on you, It's
18:07
Speaker 3: like it's doing nothing better than than doing everything. Because
18:12
Speaker 3: there's this there's has been this movement of like you know,
18:15
Speaker 3: you can tune into any podcast ever and like you
18:18
Speaker 3: got to have diversity, you got to have the best habitat,
18:20
Speaker 3: you got to have this, you got to have that.
18:22
Speaker 3: And then it's like, yeah, that's obviously great, and we'll
18:25
Speaker 3: make potentially more opportunity to kill the buck that you're
18:28
Speaker 3: wanting when he shows up. One hundred percent agree with that.
18:31
Speaker 3: But it's like, even if you do all the management
18:34
Speaker 3: and you don't have a big enough piece, like they're
18:35
Speaker 3: still going to end up probably on the outskirtser edge.
18:39
Speaker 2: And I could be looking at this wrong. So like
18:41
Speaker 2: you've you've seen this, I haven't.
18:44
Speaker 4: No, it's that's uh, it's very true, Jake. I was
18:48
Speaker 4: in Iowa last week with the landowner who's killed a
18:54
Speaker 4: lot of two hundred inch bucks and he's got a
18:57
Speaker 4: lot of acroog and he said, Jack, I'm almost just
19:01
Speaker 4: one hundred percent done with the food plots because it
19:04
Speaker 4: was better before I ever started doing them. And he's
19:07
Speaker 4: talking about thirty acre off alfa fields and you know,
19:11
Speaker 4: all of this stuff because he understands just it's a
19:15
Speaker 4: huge straw and that pushes the deer deer out outward. Yeah,
19:22
Speaker 4: I mean he had a he had a great deer
19:25
Speaker 4: that got got pushed three quarters of a mile away
19:27
Speaker 4: and and got harvested by a neighbor, which is great,
19:30
Speaker 4: but you know, we were talking about how that probably
19:32
Speaker 4: happened because he's he's just too populated.
19:38
Speaker 3: Did he say what he would replace those food plot
19:40
Speaker 3: acres with? Like is it is it more habitat or
19:44
Speaker 3: it just like throw the keys to the wind and
19:47
Speaker 3: let nature reclaim the ground.
19:49
Speaker 4: We were talking about filling it in with warm seasoned grasses,
19:52
Speaker 4: but or just just plain syllable mm hmm.
19:57
Speaker 2: Interesting. Yeah.
20:00
Speaker 3: I mean I've seen where people like through selling land,
20:04
Speaker 3: like people go in, they fix up this farm and uh,
20:09
Speaker 3: you know, like it was maybe pretty raw before they
20:10
Speaker 3: they had bought it, and then it's like all of
20:12
Speaker 3: a sudden, the neighbors are like, oh my gosh, we
20:13
Speaker 3: hadn't killed a big deer in a long time. And
20:15
Speaker 3: it's like I've seen that happen time and time again,
20:17
Speaker 3: where you know, raw piece gets improved and then the neighbors,
20:21
Speaker 3: you know, raap the benefits of it. And that's not
20:24
Speaker 3: dogging the situation whatsoever, but like that's just a trend
20:27
Speaker 3: I've seen to some degree, and that follows with what
20:30
Speaker 3: you've you've been seeing with how the deer actually behave
20:32
Speaker 3: and uh, it's it's just interesting.
20:35
Speaker 2: It's like it's it's uh, it's a lot to process. Jack.
20:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I would say, all I've learned, if I'm
20:42
Speaker 4: buying a farm, what I'm going to look for is
20:45
Speaker 4: I would never want to be in the area that's
20:49
Speaker 4: going to constantly draw a deer in. So that's that's. Uh.
20:53
Speaker 4: You look at satellite, that's the one or two thousand
20:55
Speaker 4: acres that you're like, that's the place to be. And
20:59
Speaker 4: I still believe in habitat management. What I would want
21:02
Speaker 4: to do is go one to two miles away from
21:05
Speaker 4: that in marginal habitat that maybe can only support a
21:09
Speaker 4: few deer. Now, make it really awesome, make it way
21:16
Speaker 4: more desirable the deer, and kind of start at that
21:19
Speaker 4: low level and keep it at a medium level and
21:23
Speaker 4: you're just never going to have to battle it like
21:25
Speaker 4: you would on the other places.
21:27
Speaker 3: MM here's a question for you. You know, for someone
21:31
Speaker 3: you mentioned you flew for a st aid agency and
21:33
Speaker 3: had twenty five percent more than what they thought they
21:35
Speaker 3: would have. So assuming that trend may kind of go
21:39
Speaker 3: across the board for everyone and they don't have a
21:41
Speaker 3: thermal drone and sorry, Jack, they're not going to hire
21:44
Speaker 3: you because they don't have a big enough farm. But like,
21:46
Speaker 3: what are some what are some things that would tell
21:49
Speaker 3: you that there is too much deer or too much
21:53
Speaker 3: Like you're in the you're the ecubator farm here right now,
21:56
Speaker 3: and but you don't know that. Like, what are some
21:58
Speaker 3: key indicators that would maybe tell you that that, Okay,
22:00
Speaker 3: maybe we need to readdressed strategy, Maybe we need to
22:05
Speaker 3: maybe we need to start managing some does it's been
22:07
Speaker 3: five years since we shadow do off this farm like
22:09
Speaker 3: something like that? Like, what are some either deer behavior
22:13
Speaker 3: or on the landscape indications that there's too many deer
22:17
Speaker 3: or just too much social stress?
22:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, we can start with, Uh, I've got a couple
22:24
Speaker 4: of obvious ones and then a couple that probably people
22:27
Speaker 4: have never thought of, but I've picked up on. You know,
22:30
Speaker 4: you could start with food. Is there a big brows
22:33
Speaker 4: line in the woods, Well, that's that's probably an indication
22:37
Speaker 4: that there's just too many deer, too many deer there
22:41
Speaker 4: food plots, you know, a utilation Yeah, utilization cages those
22:49
Speaker 4: are great. You know you get to see, you know,
22:52
Speaker 4: how much is that food pot really getting browsed down?
22:56
Speaker 4: I mean if it's nipped like that. That's either need
22:59
Speaker 4: to plant more food or you've you've probably got too
23:03
Speaker 4: many mouths. Just deer body condition going into this time
23:08
Speaker 4: of year March April, that's a great indicator a prolonged rut.
23:17
Speaker 4: I've seen many deer running in January and February doing
23:21
Speaker 4: these surveys, which is something that I didn't really know
23:25
Speaker 4: happened before, but it very much so does those dough
23:29
Speaker 4: fonts come in to heat. And one thing I picked
23:34
Speaker 4: up on if your bucks are holding super late consistently
23:37
Speaker 4: year over year, that means you have a very out
23:41
Speaker 4: of whack buck the dough ratio.
23:43
Speaker 2: So say that again.
23:44
Speaker 3: So I just got a picture of a buck still
23:47
Speaker 3: holding both antlers yesterday, So tell me what that means.
23:50
Speaker 4: Okay, well, one off, you know, I'm not talking about
23:52
Speaker 4: one or two bucks. But if you consistently have bucks
23:56
Speaker 4: the second week some second week of March across all
24:00
Speaker 4: age classes holding, that's that's not a good sign. It
24:06
Speaker 4: means you have an idawhac herd. And actually there's a
24:11
Speaker 4: balance to this because stress fears shed early, stress bucks
24:17
Speaker 4: shed early. But actually if you're if I would say
24:23
Speaker 4: if all your bucks shed the third week of January.
24:26
Speaker 4: That would be a really healthy herd. You actually want
24:29
Speaker 4: them to shed earlier in a way that means you
24:34
Speaker 4: have a more balanced herd. And I've talked with some
24:36
Speaker 4: landowners who have gone extremely aggressive on harvesting does, and
24:41
Speaker 4: one of them comes to mine in particular, he had
24:44
Speaker 4: found almost every buck shed by the second week in January.
24:51
Speaker 4: And you know, we do a survey. He's got three
24:53
Speaker 4: bucks to one dough on a thousand acre sample size,
24:58
Speaker 4: and he says, jackets one hundred percent. This never happened
25:02
Speaker 4: before we started implementing the aggressive dough harvest, and it's
25:06
Speaker 4: because there's no more dose to breathe and so they
25:08
Speaker 4: drop earlier. He had also to me he had he
25:12
Speaker 4: had spoken with with doctor Woods about that, Doctor Grant Woods.
25:16
Speaker 4: So mhm, something I heard, But.
25:19
Speaker 2: No, that's pretty interesting.
25:21
Speaker 3: So for for if bucks you're still holding the second
25:24
Speaker 3: week of March, you think you correct me if I'm wrong,
25:28
Speaker 3: But I'm the reason why they might be holding into
25:32
Speaker 3: the second week of March is because there's so many
25:33
Speaker 3: do fonts going into extras and so their testosterone stays
25:37
Speaker 3: higher longer, and it like prolongs that period or like
25:41
Speaker 3: changes the natural resum.
25:46
Speaker 4: One more quick example, I flew uh flew kind of
25:50
Speaker 4: a big residential real estate development place that was having big,
25:55
Speaker 4: big problems with here and here and landscaping. Some of
26:00
Speaker 4: the members have got gotten Alpha cat house, so they
26:03
Speaker 4: had they had they had way too many deer. So
26:07
Speaker 4: they called me in to do a survey. This was
26:09
Speaker 4: the first week of mark. We found eleven hundred deer total,
26:14
Speaker 4: and only eighty of them were bucks. Now what's crazy
26:19
Speaker 4: is you would think that's that's an extremely unhealthy herd,
26:23
Speaker 4: but probably seventy five percent of those bucks that looked
26:27
Speaker 4: as rundown as you could ever be, still had their antlers.
26:33
Speaker 2: That's really interesting. There was eleven deer, eleven and eighty bucks.
26:39
Speaker 4: Said yeah, and one mature buck. Yeah.
26:44
Speaker 3: How big? How roughly? How large was that sample size?
26:48
Speaker 4: Seven thousand acres?
26:50
Speaker 2: Okay, that's crazy, dude, Yeah.
26:54
Speaker 4: About five thousand the habitat, So that population, you know,
27:00
Speaker 4: if I were to look at that habitat, I would
27:02
Speaker 4: say it's probably support about forty to fifty per square mile.
27:06
Speaker 4: It was really poor habitat, but it was holding one
27:09
Speaker 4: hundred and twenty five per square mile, and those numbers
27:13
Speaker 4: were just going up. Like crazy because they were kind
27:15
Speaker 4: of protected in the neighborhood.
27:19
Speaker 2: Wow. Why so okay?
27:22
Speaker 3: And that did you want to fly like two or
27:24
Speaker 3: three miles away to see how many big bucks you
27:26
Speaker 3: could find?
27:26
Speaker 2: Did that cross your mind?
27:29
Speaker 4: It's it would be interesting. Yeah, I don't know if
27:34
Speaker 4: that would be the case there or what. That's kind
27:36
Speaker 4: of an extreme example, but yeah, there probably are some
27:40
Speaker 4: are some great bucks on the edge there. I mean,
27:42
Speaker 4: you would have to imagine there's a huge crash in
27:44
Speaker 4: during the rut, there so many dos coming in the heat,
27:48
Speaker 4: what what happens?
27:49
Speaker 3: But yeah, wow, so seventy five percent of them are
27:52
Speaker 3: still holding their antlers? First, was that in the Midwest?
27:55
Speaker 3: Or was I like, just for a reference.
27:57
Speaker 4: For it was in Missouri? Okay? Sure?
28:01
Speaker 3: So yeah, they definitely more than seventy five percent should
28:04
Speaker 3: have been shed by that by that point.
28:06
Speaker 2: That's really interesting. I've never heard of that.
28:11
Speaker 3: What are they gonna do with the deer with that
28:13
Speaker 3: many deer? Like, are they gonna have some sort of
28:15
Speaker 3: program to allow hunting? Or I mean, okay, so in
28:19
Speaker 3: that extreme extreme scenario, how long does it take to
28:22
Speaker 3: course correct something like that or is it candy course corrected.
28:26
Speaker 4: From that's a unique scenario just because it's I mean,
28:31
Speaker 4: there's people living there. It's not it's not just through
28:35
Speaker 4: out in the country. It kind of depends on how
28:39
Speaker 4: aggressive you get with the harvest. I mean, I think
28:43
Speaker 4: you could course correct in two or three years if
28:46
Speaker 4: you hit it really hard. But you know, just taking
28:49
Speaker 4: ten percent every year wouldn't wouldn't do anything. M assuming
28:54
Speaker 4: you do the numbers on that, that's a lot of
28:56
Speaker 4: that's a lot of deer.
28:58
Speaker 2: I mean, that's crazy amount of deer.
29:00
Speaker 3: I mean you if you did shoot ten percent, that's
29:02
Speaker 3: one hundred some deer every year.
29:04
Speaker 2: And what what have you been seeing?
29:06
Speaker 3: Like relating back to Winkie's farm since he've phon it
29:10
Speaker 3: for a few years and has his because he's been
29:15
Speaker 3: actively shooting does or at least I think it was
29:17
Speaker 3: two or three years ago, he was like, every every
29:19
Speaker 3: chance I get it to shoot a do, I'm gonna
29:21
Speaker 3: shoot one. What have you been able to deserve from
29:25
Speaker 3: that because you've been on the farm, I haven't you've
29:28
Speaker 3: seen it?
29:29
Speaker 2: Like?
29:29
Speaker 3: What from your conversations with Bill and what is the
29:33
Speaker 3: trajectory of the current plan that he has, Because I
29:36
Speaker 3: feel like a lot of people could potentially relate to,
29:40
Speaker 3: you know, wanting to reduce dough numbers, and what is
29:42
Speaker 3: the positive of it, and then what's the potential negative
29:45
Speaker 3: of it if fun recruitment isn't great or like all
29:47
Speaker 3: these different factors that go under this.
29:52
Speaker 4: I've never seen anybody overdue dough harvest, really, not once.
29:58
Speaker 4: I've never you know, even after giant EHD kill offs,
30:06
Speaker 4: I've never seen anybody over do it. Now. I think
30:08
Speaker 4: doing the survey for Bill was great because, you know,
30:11
Speaker 4: he's gung ho about getting on the dose and we
30:15
Speaker 4: kind of learned after three years of history that he
30:18
Speaker 4: probably needs to build his numbers up a little bit
30:21
Speaker 4: or at least keep them where they're at. He doesn't,
30:23
Speaker 4: he's not battling that problem like many landowners are. His
30:28
Speaker 4: plan is, you know, it's kind of come to the
30:32
Speaker 4: conclusion that he doesn't have the best genetics in that area,
30:36
Speaker 4: which is a huge, huge factor and growing bigger bucks.
30:42
Speaker 4: He's going to try to kind of hit it hard
30:44
Speaker 4: on on culling some bucks if he can taking those
30:48
Speaker 4: genetically you know, insuperior deer out. But really it's just
30:53
Speaker 4: continuing with the habitat. It's it's such a unique scenario
30:59
Speaker 4: there that it was such a blank slate that I mean,
31:02
Speaker 4: he told me this year that he was there in January,
31:05
Speaker 4: the year he bought it. In January, he didn't even
31:06
Speaker 4: see a deer track. So he's going from zero to
31:11
Speaker 4: what he is now and just continuing on that progression.
31:17
Speaker 4: There's not a whole lot he can do on the
31:19
Speaker 4: herd management side, just because he's not not too high
31:23
Speaker 4: on deer numbers, which is which is kind of rare
31:26
Speaker 4: for my customers.
31:29
Speaker 3: So which would you rather have you have to reduce?
31:32
Speaker 3: Like what's the better scenario for someone listening right now?
31:35
Speaker 3: Like solid genetics create you know, twenty thirty percent more
31:41
Speaker 3: deer on the landscape or forty percent more deer on
31:43
Speaker 3: the landscape than than what there should be, or the
31:48
Speaker 3: opposite of lower density with with not the best genetics,
31:51
Speaker 3: Like what is an easier thing to potentially improve.
31:55
Speaker 4: General etics or herd size?
31:58
Speaker 3: So yeah, good genetic way too many deer, way too
32:02
Speaker 3: many deer, or poor genetics not a ton of deer.
32:07
Speaker 3: And so like, can you, in your opinion from flying
32:09
Speaker 3: over multiple years, do you think that someone could improve
32:12
Speaker 3: the genetics I don't want to say like improve the genetics,
32:15
Speaker 3: but you know, selectively harvest to where if you have
32:19
Speaker 3: five bucks, one of them has some potential, four of
32:21
Speaker 3: them are junkie. It's a very complex question, but hopefully
32:25
Speaker 3: you get where I'm getting at.
32:26
Speaker 4: Oh, I would way rather have too many deer in
32:28
Speaker 4: great genetics. We don't talk about it a lot in
32:32
Speaker 4: the deer world, but I've learned. I mean, I think
32:36
Speaker 4: having good genetics is I mean, that's the biggest thing
32:39
Speaker 4: to grow on big deer. It really is. You have
32:43
Speaker 4: to have it. Some places don't, some places do. I
32:48
Speaker 4: do think you can make a difference on genetics. We've
32:51
Speaker 4: seen you know you, and I know Don and Don's
32:55
Speaker 4: Don's talked a lot about over the last couple of
32:58
Speaker 4: years how he's changed the genetics on farm. But that
33:01
Speaker 4: took twenty years and it's some time, very very hard
33:07
Speaker 4: for anybody to realistically implement. I think it can be done,
33:12
Speaker 4: but it's it's such a long time horizon. So I
33:14
Speaker 4: would way rather have high view numbers and bring those
33:17
Speaker 4: down because that's actually doable in the short term.
33:24
Speaker 3: Have you noticed any trends where you know, correlation of
33:28
Speaker 3: good genetics and different regions, different habitat types, River systems
33:33
Speaker 3: like anything that you're like, okay, typically the better genetics
33:37
Speaker 3: are in these three categories or is it completely random?
33:41
Speaker 4: For the most part, there's some randomness to it. I
33:47
Speaker 4: was there's a couple parts of Iowa that are head
33:50
Speaker 4: scratchers for me in terms of like, this is the
33:54
Speaker 4: most beautiful farm I've ever been on in a great
33:56
Speaker 4: area you think is a great area, and they just
34:00
Speaker 4: don't have the genetics that are twenty miles away. I
34:04
Speaker 4: would say it really sticks out in like Kansas, because
34:08
Speaker 4: in Kansas, especially as you get more western, you know,
34:12
Speaker 4: you have drainages, that's where the cover is, that's where
34:15
Speaker 4: the deer are, and then you go ten miles away,
34:18
Speaker 4: there's kind of nothing in between. The deer really aren't
34:21
Speaker 4: traveling maybe in between, and then there's another drainage. Well,
34:27
Speaker 4: the genetics are different ten miles up here on this
34:31
Speaker 4: river versus ten miles down here on that river, and
34:34
Speaker 4: you want to be on that river and not the
34:36
Speaker 4: one above it. So they definitely do follow in the
34:40
Speaker 4: kind of extreme scenarios like that where they're separated, isolated,
34:46
Speaker 4: they follow those rivers. I mean, there's some rivers in
34:49
Speaker 4: Kansas that are you know, won't name drop spots, but
34:54
Speaker 4: it's like you need to be on that place, but
34:57
Speaker 4: you go ten miles away on the next river that
34:59
Speaker 4: looks same and it's just not as good. And that's
35:03
Speaker 4: one hundred percent genetics.
35:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's the type of information that wasn't available,
35:08
Speaker 3: Like you know, someone local that maybe grew up their
35:11
Speaker 3: whole life, will you know, I would have figured that out,
35:14
Speaker 3: I think. But to have like the hard data and
35:16
Speaker 3: observation is pretty crazy that you're able to do that.
35:20
Speaker 3: Talking about Kansas and you know, you had mentioned that
35:24
Speaker 3: the gentleman with a bunch of food pots to potentially
35:27
Speaker 3: put in a warm season grasses. We had talked about
35:29
Speaker 3: warm season and grasses on the White Tail podcasts and
35:31
Speaker 3: it ruffled some feathers. Have you changed your position or
35:34
Speaker 3: thoughts on warm season grasses in terms of deer habitat
35:37
Speaker 3: because it's a it's a quick way to get cover
35:40
Speaker 3: on the landscape, and I think that's really attractive for
35:42
Speaker 3: a lot of people.
35:45
Speaker 4: They've really grown on me. I still I will say,
35:49
Speaker 4: you know a lot of my surveys are kind of
35:51
Speaker 4: November first through and now into April, and I very
35:55
Speaker 4: very rarely find a significant amount of deer bedded and
36:02
Speaker 4: warm season grasses, switch grass, you know, all of that stuff.
36:08
Speaker 4: Do they use it early season? They do, It's definitely
36:11
Speaker 4: more utilized in the summer months and early fall. I
36:15
Speaker 4: think it's much less preferable than say, well cut timber
36:20
Speaker 4: that's really thick. That being said, I think warm season
36:25
Speaker 4: grasses and switch grass, they they add depth to a
36:30
Speaker 4: farm that's super helpful. They add thickness to a farm
36:35
Speaker 4: that's super helpful. I think they limit some deer interaction,
36:39
Speaker 4: which is social stress, which is great. You know, a
36:44
Speaker 4: huge Some of the best farms I've seen, like on
36:46
Speaker 4: their road front edge, they have really thick grasses so
36:49
Speaker 4: nobody can see in there, and I've I think that's
36:53
Speaker 4: extremely valuable. Some places much more short than others, but
37:00
Speaker 4: I think they're great for fun recruitment. I've noticed a
37:05
Speaker 4: huge increase in turkey numbers and areas that have a
37:10
Speaker 4: lot of CRP or switch grass just because I think
37:13
Speaker 4: they're nesting is a lot better. So I think there's
37:16
Speaker 4: a lot of benefit for wildlife and having it. The
37:19
Speaker 4: problem is people look at it as the best deer
37:23
Speaker 4: betting on their farm when it is absolutely not that
37:28
Speaker 4: MM hmm.
37:29
Speaker 3: What so follow up is what is the typically the
37:33
Speaker 3: best for the for the November SURVEYSS specifically like in November,
37:37
Speaker 3: wearbucks betted as a rule of thumb, as a general idea.
37:43
Speaker 4: In November, if they're with a dough, they're gonna be
37:47
Speaker 4: kind of isolated. It might be in switch grass because
37:51
Speaker 4: that's really isolated out there, but don't necessarily see that
37:57
Speaker 4: super common. They're in ditches, they're in draws, or in
38:00
Speaker 4: big timber way back they're just they're just by themselves
38:07
Speaker 4: or or they've got to go back there. But it's, uh,
38:13
Speaker 4: it can be kind of random.
38:14
Speaker 3: Jake, you're gonna say that I was gonna I was
38:18
Speaker 3: afraid you're gonna say it was gonna be random, because
38:20
Speaker 3: that's how November often feels random.
38:23
Speaker 2: So that that tracks for sure. What have you noticed?
38:28
Speaker 4: What so thicker cover? Yeah, bicker bicker cover with some
38:33
Speaker 4: form of isolation, that's where big bucks are going to
38:35
Speaker 4: be bedded?
38:36
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
38:38
Speaker 3: What is Everyone has a different definition of thick on
38:43
Speaker 3: some of these When everyone's like, oh, you need to
38:45
Speaker 3: thicken up the timber, or you need to you know,
38:48
Speaker 3: do t s I, you need to you know, open
38:49
Speaker 3: up the canopy. Like that's a I almost feel like
38:52
Speaker 3: it's a record album that gets on repeat. It's like
38:55
Speaker 3: that is a common theme of if you want to
38:58
Speaker 3: hold more dear, hold more bucks, you need to have
39:00
Speaker 3: a thicker farm.
39:01
Speaker 2: Is that something that you have seen.
39:06
Speaker 4: Making your farm thicker? Let's start with the timber does
39:10
Speaker 4: two things. It makes the deer. It kind of it
39:15
Speaker 4: limits the social interaction, so in a way it kind
39:18
Speaker 4: of boosts your ability to hold deer. But it makes
39:23
Speaker 4: if you're if your farm's much thicker, even if you
39:26
Speaker 4: have the same amount of deer, that mature buff doesn't
39:30
Speaker 4: necessarily think there's the same amount of deer because he's
39:33
Speaker 4: seen them less. Just so much sticker you can hold
39:37
Speaker 4: more mature bucks. But it also adds a huge food component.
39:43
Speaker 4: You know, browse is the majority of a deer's diet
39:45
Speaker 4: in the Midwest, woody browse in the winter time, So
39:49
Speaker 4: if you don't have that on your farm, you're not
39:51
Speaker 4: not going to hold deer in that time of year.
39:55
Speaker 4: I would almost say I used to think that brows
39:59
Speaker 4: was a much bigger part of doing timber stan improvement,
40:03
Speaker 4: but I really do believe now that it's just the
40:05
Speaker 4: thickening of it security. Yeah, it's such an attraction for bucks.
40:12
Speaker 4: And then you jump into the grass side. I mean
40:15
Speaker 4: we've all seen big tall fields of warm season grasses
40:20
Speaker 4: that's such thick, so it just creates depth thickness.
40:26
Speaker 3: Have you flown a farm where they're like, all right,
40:30
Speaker 3: security cover, I'm gonna make it thick. Have you seen
40:33
Speaker 3: an instance where it's just simply tooth thick and you
40:35
Speaker 3: fly the drone and it's like, this is a deer
40:38
Speaker 3: desert because it's it's tooth thick. They can't work through it.
40:41
Speaker 3: Or is there such thing as tooth thick? From what
40:42
Speaker 3: you've seen from the air, Like I understand you're not
40:44
Speaker 3: in there, like walking every squore inch of these farms
40:46
Speaker 3: at all, But just from from the air, what have
40:49
Speaker 3: you observed?
40:51
Speaker 4: I would say the only you know, invasive species are
40:54
Speaker 4: the only way that that's going to become a possibility.
40:58
Speaker 4: So you're bush on his uckle, your autumn olive, your
41:02
Speaker 4: multi four rows, if you're going to open up a
41:05
Speaker 4: bunch of sunlight to let those species flourish, there's a
41:10
Speaker 4: there's a possibility that it may become too thick. Sure
41:14
Speaker 4: you see that in someone Illinois.
41:16
Speaker 2: Just a bushy circle here, those those.
41:19
Speaker 4: You know, viny and thorny plants can become and you
41:24
Speaker 4: just can't walk through them, and neither can a deer.
41:26
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
41:28
Speaker 3: So, no such thing as too thick as long as
41:30
Speaker 3: it's good habitat of thickness, like all thick all thick
41:34
Speaker 3: timbers not created equals what I'm picking up.
41:39
Speaker 4: Correct. Yeah. I think if if you have all great
41:41
Speaker 4: species and I'm not a forest free expert, but if
41:44
Speaker 4: you clear cut of forests with no invasive species, then
41:48
Speaker 4: you just let it grow up. I don't think it
41:51
Speaker 4: becomes too thick for deer.
42:03
Speaker 3: Is there an example of a farm, and I don't
42:06
Speaker 3: if this guy listens, I feel bad, But is there
42:08
Speaker 3: an example of a farm where like, dude, this this
42:10
Speaker 3: farm is a total like I'm picturing it like a
42:15
Speaker 3: like a house, right, like, oh, you know it's got
42:16
Speaker 3: good bones, you can do this, you can fix that.
42:18
Speaker 2: And then there's some houses like it's not worth saving.
42:21
Speaker 3: Have you fawn a farm where it's like this thing
42:24
Speaker 3: is really really really bad because of these key elements?
42:30
Speaker 4: Absolutely? I mean you start with neighborhood, right, If you're
42:36
Speaker 4: in the wrong neighborhood and you have one hundred every
42:40
Speaker 4: forty yards on your fence, you can never I don't
42:42
Speaker 4: think you can overcome that. So in scenarios where that's
42:47
Speaker 4: that's possible, you know, maybe moving it's kind of your
42:52
Speaker 4: your option there. In terms of habitat, I mean, there's
42:55
Speaker 4: certain scenarios that play out once you see enough farms
42:59
Speaker 4: where just you can't make a difference heard management habitat management,
43:06
Speaker 4: you can't overcome that problem. Trying to think of some
43:10
Speaker 4: specific examples, nothing too extreme comes to mind.
43:18
Speaker 3: Okay, have you did you fly any farms in southeast
43:24
Speaker 3: Ohio this this off season where EHD was a major killoff?
43:29
Speaker 2: What'd you see?
43:30
Speaker 4: I did? Yeah, I saw in southern Indiana. I think
43:34
Speaker 4: I did quite a bit of work there and they've
43:37
Speaker 4: I think they've had some incertain pockets, at least from
43:40
Speaker 4: talking to the locals, pretty bad EHD. And the numbers
43:44
Speaker 4: were they were lower than I would have thought going in,
43:49
Speaker 4: But they weren't extremely low, or I wouldn't even call
43:54
Speaker 4: them low. They were more more of what you might
43:57
Speaker 4: want to see. Now, I'm not talking about the high
44:00
Speaker 4: spots for I'm sure it's very bad, but I've flown
44:05
Speaker 4: after quite a bit of bad EHD killoffs, and there's
44:09
Speaker 4: still quite a few deer there. There's the thing is
44:11
Speaker 4: it's just a lot less than we're used to. And
44:14
Speaker 4: many times that's some other nature's way of kind of
44:18
Speaker 4: course correcting. But I would say a typical non major
44:23
Speaker 4: EHD killoff might fill thirty percent of the herd.
44:30
Speaker 3: Have you on surveys have you flown a farm that
44:34
Speaker 3: was smoked by EHD. I'm just making these years up
44:37
Speaker 3: in twenty four and then you flew it in twenty
44:39
Speaker 3: five and twenty six.
44:39
Speaker 2: Have you seen.
44:41
Speaker 3: What what's the trajectory of growth of If you haven't
44:46
Speaker 3: flown that, that's fine, But I'm just trying to see if,
44:48
Speaker 3: Like for those folks that.
44:49
Speaker 2: Are in Ohio, we're like, yeah, we gotta hit really hard.
44:50
Speaker 3: What can I potentially anticipate a year from now, two
44:54
Speaker 3: years from now, three years from now, If you've been
44:55
Speaker 3: able to document anything like that, well, I think they
45:00
Speaker 3: should be.
45:03
Speaker 4: I mean they I think good things are to come
45:05
Speaker 4: for them. Uh. Once you lower those numbers, you reduce
45:09
Speaker 4: that social stress. A lot of times there's bigger deer
45:11
Speaker 4: to follow. There's one one farm in Iowa where I've
45:15
Speaker 4: consistently flown it and they in the first year I
45:20
Speaker 4: flew it, they didn't think we were going to find,
45:23
Speaker 4: you know, fifty deer on the whole place, and we
45:26
Speaker 4: ended up finding one hundred and fifty, which was about
45:29
Speaker 4: one hundred per square mile, which is you know, actually
45:31
Speaker 4: a pretty high density. And they were shocked by that.
45:35
Speaker 4: And we flew it this year and I mean it
45:39
Speaker 4: probably gone up fifty percent in two years percent a year.
45:48
Speaker 4: What's interesting, Jake, is so you know, we had this
45:51
Speaker 4: influx of fonts every year, and you know, some populations
45:57
Speaker 4: once they've reached kind of the holding capacity of the land.
46:01
Speaker 4: You know, there's sponts that keep coming in and they're shunning,
46:03
Speaker 4: you know, deep hunters feeling deer, but the populations kind
46:07
Speaker 4: of stay the same. You know, it's x perstquare mile
46:10
Speaker 4: or x breaker. But on those growing deer populations like
46:15
Speaker 4: that one, they actually do I mean, you can you
46:18
Speaker 4: can add up to twenty twenty five percent more dear
46:21
Speaker 4: year over year in those in those places that they're
46:25
Speaker 4: not at the holding capacity.
46:28
Speaker 2: Mm hm.
46:30
Speaker 3: We've talked very briefly in the past, but ticks and
46:33
Speaker 3: deer health, what what what What's been your observations with that.
46:38
Speaker 4: Oh, I think kind of kind of Jack's bold prediction
46:44
Speaker 4: for something in the next twenty years is that we're
46:47
Speaker 4: gonna have some big discoveries on ticks and deer and
46:53
Speaker 4: and maybe ticks and humans too. But uh, you know,
46:57
Speaker 4: alpha gal is a term. I'm just hearing more and
47:02
Speaker 4: more that that place. I flew forward in Missouri and
47:09
Speaker 4: they had quite a few residents that had come down
47:11
Speaker 4: with it, and it was it was a huge deal.
47:13
Speaker 4: That's why I was there. It was the spreading of
47:16
Speaker 4: alpha gal. And I think with deer, you know, it's
47:22
Speaker 4: unbelievable how I don't know how I track it, But
47:27
Speaker 4: there is some correlation between lots of ticks on deer
47:31
Speaker 4: and not as big a bucks. And there's some areas
47:36
Speaker 4: I'll fly that five miles away, I could go, there's
47:40
Speaker 4: a lot of ticks on the deer. You know, I
47:42
Speaker 4: go this way five miles and there's no ticks on
47:45
Speaker 4: the deer. Well, why is that? Is there is there
47:47
Speaker 4: some genetic trait that's keeping them off? Should the landscape
47:52
Speaker 4: has something to do with it? But there's not some
47:54
Speaker 4: giant difference in ticks five miles away. There shouldn't be
47:58
Speaker 4: m m and If so, what's causing that. I've had
48:03
Speaker 4: a lot of conversations about ticks and dear, and I
48:06
Speaker 4: think they make a bigger impact than we think, even
48:09
Speaker 4: in a localized environment. If you go look at all
48:12
Speaker 4: your bucks on a given farm and say, August, you know,
48:21
Speaker 4: maybe this is just my head playing games on me.
48:23
Speaker 4: I feel like the better bucks just have less ticks
48:26
Speaker 4: than every other one in the bachelor group sometimes.
48:29
Speaker 3: M So, the question is, okay, if ticks do, if
48:34
Speaker 3: they're a bottleneck to a white tail expressing I mean
48:38
Speaker 3: all white tails expressing the healthiest version of themselves, It's like, okay,
48:42
Speaker 3: what eats ticks? Turkeys? How do you reduce take pressure?
48:47
Speaker 3: I would imagine obviously having good habitat for birds for
48:50
Speaker 3: them to get eight by ticks prescribed buyer. I feel
48:53
Speaker 3: like would probably be another thing that you could put
48:56
Speaker 3: in your control. And then hopefully there's a biologist or
48:58
Speaker 3: someone listening to this smarter than both of us, like,
49:00
Speaker 3: all right, you want less ticks, this is the game plan.
49:02
Speaker 3: Maybe that'll be something that gets implemented more in the landscape.
49:06
Speaker 3: And everyone hates ticks, man, if you could tell me,
49:09
Speaker 3: all right, there's less ticks now, do this.
49:11
Speaker 2: I think everyone would do that.
49:13
Speaker 4: I think uh, I think fire. Maybe warm season grasses
49:18
Speaker 4: could potentially help. Fire is going to be your biggest
49:23
Speaker 4: one though. Oh and really just finding the area that
49:28
Speaker 4: doesn't have as many I know that sounds dumb, but
49:32
Speaker 4: that's that's kind of the biggest.
49:33
Speaker 2: Thing, all right.
49:37
Speaker 3: Let me h, you need to rank these three things
49:40
Speaker 3: you have to rank. I had I had a note
49:43
Speaker 3: here specifically, I want you to rank one, two, three,
49:47
Speaker 3: One being most important, three being the least important, age, age, structure,
49:51
Speaker 3: nutrition or genetics for someone that wants to have the
49:54
Speaker 3: best ear possible. But what is the most important? What's
49:57
Speaker 3: the least important of those three?
50:00
Speaker 4: Genetics is number one by far, And people might kind
50:05
Speaker 4: of argue with me on that, but there's some bucks
50:08
Speaker 4: that they could make it to seven or eight years
50:09
Speaker 4: old and they're never going to be more than a
50:11
Speaker 4: one hundred and thirty inch a pointer. And the mile
50:15
Speaker 4: of Hanson buck was supposedly three years old when I
50:17
Speaker 4: got shot. So genetics by far number one. Second would
50:23
Speaker 4: be age for sure. You know, a one year old
50:27
Speaker 4: buck in the wild is two year old buck in
50:29
Speaker 4: the wild will take the most extreme kind of into
50:34
Speaker 4: that it's it's never going to have a giant rat.
50:38
Speaker 4: And then third would be nutrition. I used to think
50:42
Speaker 4: nutrition was much more important than I realized it is.
50:47
Speaker 3: What's made you come to that realization, is it fine
50:50
Speaker 3: deserts in Kansas that look like mars in.
50:56
Speaker 4: Yeah, deserts in Cans that's a good that's good way
51:00
Speaker 4: to put a jake, and those grow the biggest deer
51:04
Speaker 4: many times, biggest deer in the whole country sometimes. But
51:09
Speaker 4: even even you know, you go to the southeast, you
51:13
Speaker 4: have a pine forest, there's nothing to eat, and you know,
51:18
Speaker 4: you do a clear cut you increase of food drastically,
51:22
Speaker 4: put in acres and acres of food pot. So you
51:25
Speaker 4: went from zero food basically to as much food as
51:29
Speaker 4: you can realistically put and you're only going to see
51:34
Speaker 4: and I say only, but you're only going to see
51:36
Speaker 4: it fifteen inches jump on your bucks on average. I
51:41
Speaker 4: mean you went from one end of the spectrum to
51:44
Speaker 4: totally on the other. And it made it made a
51:46
Speaker 4: great difference, but you know, maybe not as big as
51:52
Speaker 4: we'd hope. I think in the Midwest there is it's
51:56
Speaker 4: important to have good food pots and great brows, but
52:00
Speaker 4: there is a lot of great food just on the
52:02
Speaker 4: landscape that deer can make it by with.
52:09
Speaker 3: What where do you think thermal drones? Where do you
52:14
Speaker 3: see thermal drones place in the world of white tails?
52:18
Speaker 4: Personally, I think they're a great tool to understand her dynamics,
52:27
Speaker 4: study deer. Collect all the data I'm collecting. You know,
52:35
Speaker 4: there's so much we don't know about populations and her
52:38
Speaker 4: dynamics in the wild, and that's such a huge part
52:40
Speaker 4: of management. So understanding that's really important, and I don't
52:45
Speaker 4: think there's a better tool for the job than a
52:47
Speaker 4: thermal drone. I think, you know, on the recovery side,
52:53
Speaker 4: that's probably where it's most used. I would bet there's
52:57
Speaker 4: probably been fifty thousand US dear over the last three
53:01
Speaker 4: years that may not have been found without thermal drones.
53:06
Speaker 4: That's a huge number, and it's affected a lot of
53:09
Speaker 4: people and their enjoyment of hunting because they're able to
53:14
Speaker 4: recover that buck and not not not waste that resource.
53:18
Speaker 4: I do think there's a lot of potential for misuse
53:22
Speaker 4: just because the power of the tool, and that's that's
53:27
Speaker 4: up to us to manage it. Right. I don't have
53:31
Speaker 4: the answers on what the right legislation would be in
53:36
Speaker 4: terms of this or that, but hopefully we can come
53:40
Speaker 4: come to that soon and and you know, ultimately it's
53:44
Speaker 4: up to people actually following the rules, and there's always
53:48
Speaker 4: gonna be bad apples, right, But it'll be interesting to
53:53
Speaker 4: see how that plays out. But I think they're I
53:55
Speaker 4: think they're here to say stay, and I think they're
53:58
Speaker 4: a great tool for hunters and land managers across the
54:02
Speaker 4: board when they're used correctly.
54:04
Speaker 2: Wonderful.
54:04
Speaker 3: Where if someone wants to reach out to you and
54:08
Speaker 3: they want to see what's on their farm and get
54:11
Speaker 3: a dear study, because I know when you fly you
54:13
Speaker 3: give them full report and you know, some tangible information
54:17
Speaker 3: for them to carry along and build a management plan.
54:20
Speaker 2: Where do Where do people reach out to you?
54:23
Speaker 4: Midwest year Surveys dot com is our website. You can
54:28
Speaker 4: find all my info there and then on social media,
54:31
Speaker 4: YouTube all that stuff. Midwest your Surveys you can find
54:36
Speaker 4: my info there.
54:38
Speaker 2: Awesome, Well, thank you so much, Jack, Thanks Jake, appreciate
54:41
Speaker 2: it all right, you guys have it.
54:44
Speaker 3: Hopefully you're able to get some insight that may impact
54:49
Speaker 3: how you scout per deer, how you manage your properties.
54:53
Speaker 2: You know, the whole gambit.
54:54
Speaker 3: I really appreciate Jack taking the time and sharing his
54:58
Speaker 3: observations because, like I said in the very beginning end
55:00
Speaker 3: of this episode, he has observed more farms than probably
55:04
Speaker 3: anyone else in terms of dear density, different trends, and
55:08
Speaker 3: it is a scientific paper on steroids with what he
55:11
Speaker 3: has been able to observe.
55:13
Speaker 2: So hope you guys enjoyed it. We will see you
55:15
Speaker 2: next time. See you