Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 268: Building A Whitetail Paradise with Terry Drury

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Ep. 268: Building A Whitetail Paradise with Terry Drury · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, your home for
0:06
Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
0:12
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the wire to Hunt Podcast. I'm
0:17
Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan in this episode number two eight
0:20
Speaker 1: In Today in the show, I'm joined by Terry Dury
0:23
Speaker 1: of Drewy Outdoors to discuss the dream scenario of buying
0:27
Speaker 1: and building your own piece of white tail paradise. All right,
0:35
Speaker 1: welcome to the wire Hunt Podcast, brought to you by Onyx,
0:39
Speaker 1: and We've got a good one for you today. So
0:42
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna beat around the bush. I gotta believe
0:44
Speaker 1: that most of you are familiar with Terry Dury, uh
0:47
Speaker 1: for for many reasons, but maybe one of those being
0:51
Speaker 1: the fact that I did a podcast with him and
0:53
Speaker 1: the juries for several years that would Percent Wild Podcast,
0:57
Speaker 1: and he's been on this show in the past two
0:59
Speaker 1: But if you're not familiar with Terry, he is one
1:02
Speaker 1: of the co founders of Drewry Outdoors, which is one
1:04
Speaker 1: of the most successful media companies in the hunting space,
1:07
Speaker 1: and the host of many many different shows and videos
1:09
Speaker 1: over the years, and most important, probably everyone listening, he's
1:13
Speaker 1: a very experienced and successful white tail hunter and property manager.
1:18
Speaker 1: Terry has owned and improved and managed many different white
1:21
Speaker 1: tailed properties over the years, and he's killed a whole
1:24
Speaker 1: lot of big, mature bucks because of that. So today,
1:27
Speaker 1: of the many different things we could talk about with
1:29
Speaker 1: a guy like Terry, we're going to focus just on
1:31
Speaker 1: this aspect of land. You know, a lot of us,
1:34
Speaker 1: including myself, dream of someday owning a deer hunting property,
1:38
Speaker 1: and Terry has lived that dream. But he started out
1:41
Speaker 1: very modestly. You know, he got a very small property start,
1:43
Speaker 1: and he slowly built his way up over the years
1:45
Speaker 1: to now having a great, big, really well managed property.
1:48
Speaker 1: So today we're gonna talk to him about, you know,
1:50
Speaker 1: how any one of us can start that process of
1:54
Speaker 1: finding and maybe owning some hunting ground and then building
1:57
Speaker 1: that into something pretty special. That is our topic for today.
2:01
Speaker 1: On top of all that, Terry also shares us the
2:04
Speaker 1: details of a pretty insane giveaway actually that they're doing
2:07
Speaker 1: over a jury outdoors in which they're literally giving way
2:10
Speaker 1: a farm. Like literally they're giving a hunting property away
2:14
Speaker 1: to one of you guys or gals or to one
2:16
Speaker 1: of the other thousands of fans across the country. So
2:18
Speaker 1: you definitely don't want to miss out in the details
2:20
Speaker 1: of how to get on that one. It's pretty crazy.
2:23
Speaker 1: So with all that out of the way, we don't
2:25
Speaker 1: have a pregame show today, so without further ado, I
2:28
Speaker 1: think we should just get to chatting with Terry Drewy.
2:33
Speaker 1: All right with me now on the line a repeat
2:37
Speaker 1: guest that I'm excited to have here. We've got Terry Drewy.
2:39
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show. Terry, Hey, Mark, how we doing.
2:42
Speaker 1: It's good to be back. Yeah, I'm doing well. I'm
2:44
Speaker 1: glad that we can be chatting again. I miss our
2:46
Speaker 1: frequent conversations when we're doing on Wild so this is
2:49
Speaker 1: this is nice to get to catch up a little bit.
2:51
Speaker 1: I know you kept Matt on the straight and narrow,
2:54
Speaker 1: and now we're now marking our face with that tap.
2:57
Speaker 1: That's no easy task. But no, it's not. It does
3:02
Speaker 1: seem that he's up to some good work because he
3:05
Speaker 1: was telling me the other day about a very interesting
3:09
Speaker 1: new initiative of sorts you guys are working on, which
3:12
Speaker 1: is kind of what um give me the idea of
3:15
Speaker 1: having this podcast, which is today. Mainly what I want
3:18
Speaker 1: to talk about Terry is talking all through different ideas
3:22
Speaker 1: in ways of kind of building a white tail paradise,
3:25
Speaker 1: how to take a property and turn it into just
3:28
Speaker 1: a mecca for deer hunting and for deer. Um. You've
3:31
Speaker 1: had a lot of experience doing that, and it seems
3:34
Speaker 1: like from what I understand, you guys are now going
3:37
Speaker 1: to help someone else live out that dream and actually
3:41
Speaker 1: give somebody a farm. Is that is that true? Terry?
3:45
Speaker 1: It seems kind of unbelievable. Um, is that true? And
3:47
Speaker 1: can you talk to me a little bit about about
3:49
Speaker 1: what you guys are doing and why? Well? I think
3:51
Speaker 1: that is the probably the maybe the feeling that everybody
3:55
Speaker 1: gets is it if it's too good to be true,
3:58
Speaker 1: it's too good to be true. But in this particular scenario,
4:01
Speaker 1: it's Uh, it is the truth and its reality. We're
4:04
Speaker 1: gonna be giving a sixty acre farm away. And uh,
4:08
Speaker 1: this is just a gesture on Mark and I and
4:12
Speaker 1: Matt and Taylor. We wanted to say thank you. We're
4:14
Speaker 1: celebrating our thirtieth year being in in the outdoor industry
4:17
Speaker 1: and being in business, and uh, it's it's more of
4:20
Speaker 1: a thank you to all of our fans and everybody
4:22
Speaker 1: that supported us throughout the years. And uh, we want
4:25
Speaker 1: to take a farm and we want to trick it out.
4:27
Speaker 1: We want to put our footprint on it for thumb print,
4:30
Speaker 1: and we want to turn it over and give it
4:32
Speaker 1: to somebody so that they can enjoy it with their
4:34
Speaker 1: family for years to come. And uh, it's one that
4:37
Speaker 1: Mark and I looked at and did and did some
4:40
Speaker 1: searching quite quite for over a long period of time
4:43
Speaker 1: and finally found the one we wanted and said, let's uh,
4:46
Speaker 1: this is the farm. It has a little bit of everything.
4:49
Speaker 1: And when we go into a parcel or look at
4:50
Speaker 1: a parcel property, we want to make sure that it's
4:53
Speaker 1: got all the elements that we're looking for in water cover,
4:57
Speaker 1: uh you know, spots that we can put food plots in,
5:00
Speaker 1: an hank tree stands, different access, you know, and we
5:03
Speaker 1: always have wind direction in our back of our mind
5:05
Speaker 1: when we look at those spots. So it had a
5:07
Speaker 1: little bit of everything. It had a mixture, and that's
5:09
Speaker 1: really what we were after and that's what this farm entails.
5:12
Speaker 1: So some lucky winner is gonna end up with that
5:14
Speaker 1: and hopefully they'll be able to use it for years
5:16
Speaker 1: to come. So so number one, am I ineligible to
5:20
Speaker 1: to apply to win this farm, and uh, you know,
5:26
Speaker 1: don't know you have to read our terms of service. Yeah,
5:28
Speaker 1: I'll check that out. And and number two, Um, how
5:32
Speaker 1: can other people enter to to win this farm? How
5:34
Speaker 1: does that all work? Well? They can go, uh, you know,
5:38
Speaker 1: into either Google Play or the app store and are
5:41
Speaker 1: the are you know, the download download the deer cast app.
5:46
Speaker 1: It's a free app that they can download on either
5:49
Speaker 1: an iPhone or on an Android. And all you gotta
5:52
Speaker 1: do is go into Google Player the play Store, download
5:55
Speaker 1: the app for free, and then you'll see there's some
5:57
Speaker 1: information in there that gets you to the spot where
6:00
Speaker 1: you can download. Uh this entry form, it's very very simple.
6:04
Speaker 1: You have to log in and give an email address
6:07
Speaker 1: and a password so that we can get a hold
6:08
Speaker 1: of you if you win it. We've got to be
6:10
Speaker 1: able to contact you somehow. So they put their email
6:13
Speaker 1: address and a password in there, and then they are
6:15
Speaker 1: automatically entered to win whenever they enroll or subscribe to
6:20
Speaker 1: dear Cast. So in addition, in addition to that giveaway
6:24
Speaker 1: that we're doing in December of the grand prize, which
6:27
Speaker 1: is the farm, there's a monthly prize that that some
6:31
Speaker 1: lucky winner is gonna win each and every month. At
6:34
Speaker 1: the end of the month, you know we're gonna do
6:36
Speaker 1: the same thing. There'll be an email it's randomly drawn
6:39
Speaker 1: and and uh, we'll contact that person and they will
6:42
Speaker 1: they will find out that they've wanted a great, great
6:44
Speaker 1: prize package that many of our sponsors are participating in
6:48
Speaker 1: and making making it a really really nice giveaway feature
6:52
Speaker 1: each and every month up until the grand prize there
6:55
Speaker 1: in December. Wow. Yeah, I actually did go and mess
6:59
Speaker 1: around with the the entry form just to see what
7:02
Speaker 1: it took myself, and and I did enter. So I
7:05
Speaker 1: don't know if if I end up winning, I probably
7:06
Speaker 1: shouldn't take anything, but I thought I should at least
7:09
Speaker 1: try it out myself and um, and it was really easy,
7:13
Speaker 1: especially if you're already using deer cast um and if
7:16
Speaker 1: you're not using deer cast And this is just me
7:18
Speaker 1: speaking here, This isn't any kind of promotion, this is
7:21
Speaker 1: just I honestly found it useful this past year. I
7:24
Speaker 1: used it a lot. I looked at it both from
7:27
Speaker 1: looking at the weather features and the prediction features. That
7:29
Speaker 1: was was really interesting and handy. And then you guys
7:32
Speaker 1: are just putting a lot of interesting content out there
7:34
Speaker 1: I love being able to follow what you and the
7:36
Speaker 1: whole team were up to the kind of success you
7:38
Speaker 1: were having and having it all there and in an
7:40
Speaker 1: easy kind of app feed to kind of scroll through
7:43
Speaker 1: whenever I was, whenever I had a few extra minutes.
7:45
Speaker 1: It's um, it was. It was very impressive. You guys
7:48
Speaker 1: have done a slam dunk job with it. So if
7:52
Speaker 1: you're not using deer Cast, highly recommend it. And now
7:54
Speaker 1: you're gonna get to enter this kind of remarkable giveaway
7:57
Speaker 1: or not kind of absolutely remarkable give away. So um,
8:01
Speaker 1: I don't know, you guys continue to surprise and impress me. Terry.
8:05
Speaker 1: I'm I've got all sorts of works you to try
8:08
Speaker 1: to keep up with the great work you guys are doing. Well.
8:10
Speaker 1: You know, we're just a couple of rednecks that like
8:12
Speaker 1: the deer Hunt, so not necessarily app developers, so we
8:16
Speaker 1: we Uh, it's been a learning curve, I'll be quite
8:19
Speaker 1: honest with you. But but the performance because we hadn't
8:22
Speaker 1: run a beta test, you know, the previous ball just
8:24
Speaker 1: to kind of get some of the bugs worked out
8:26
Speaker 1: of it, and then went full board with the alpha
8:29
Speaker 1: test there this last ball, and it it worked quite well,
8:33
Speaker 1: we had a couple of little changes that we wanted
8:35
Speaker 1: to make, and we tweaked a few things here in
8:36
Speaker 1: the off season already on the algorithm and just trying
8:40
Speaker 1: to you know, kind of hone it in and get
8:42
Speaker 1: it fine tuned the best we can. And what we
8:45
Speaker 1: found last year last fall that it was you know,
8:48
Speaker 1: about eighty five accurate for instances of undisturbed white tales.
8:54
Speaker 1: And and that's the clincher. You know, what you don't
8:57
Speaker 1: know is if somebody went you know through there on
8:59
Speaker 1: a four wheeler, if kylots ran through, our dogs ran through,
9:02
Speaker 1: you know, and if they're disturbed, obviously a lot of
9:05
Speaker 1: that goes out the window. But if they're undisturbed and
9:08
Speaker 1: they're in their own element, igali, it's pretty dog on accurate.
9:11
Speaker 1: And there's uh twelve influencers that go into this algorithm,
9:15
Speaker 1: and and uh, you know, I won't bore you with
9:18
Speaker 1: with all the details, but it's uh, you know, a
9:20
Speaker 1: departure from from average temperature. It's barometric pressure, it's wind speed,
9:27
Speaker 1: it's cloud cover, it's moon phase. There's just a ton
9:30
Speaker 1: of elements that go into it. We call them influencers,
9:33
Speaker 1: and then those are weighted Accordingly, each one of those
9:37
Speaker 1: is a different weight for each of the thirteen individual phases,
9:41
Speaker 1: because barometric pressure in phase one has a different effect
9:44
Speaker 1: than barometric pressure in phase thir team winduh wind speed
9:49
Speaker 1: has you know, one effect in phase two than it
9:52
Speaker 1: does in phase eight, and sawing down the line, every
9:55
Speaker 1: one of them is a little bit different. And and
9:57
Speaker 1: Mark and I are so analytical. We've been keeping tabs
10:01
Speaker 1: on this for many, many years and then trying to
10:04
Speaker 1: you know, refine it each and every year. And I
10:07
Speaker 1: think we've cracked the code, so to speak, to where
10:10
Speaker 1: we've optimized your time in a in a tree or
10:13
Speaker 1: in a blind and said, you know what, your odds
10:16
Speaker 1: of seeing dear during daylight hours and particularly mature dear
10:20
Speaker 1: h during daylight hours are are really good this time
10:24
Speaker 1: of the day. And that was really what we wanted
10:27
Speaker 1: to do. It's not the cure all end all. What
10:30
Speaker 1: it is is another tooled or another you know, just
10:33
Speaker 1: maybe a pawn in your in your bag of tricks.
10:36
Speaker 1: You know, you've got rattling antlers, and you've got grunt tubes,
10:39
Speaker 1: and you've got all the other different elements UH and
10:41
Speaker 1: access and so on and so forth. As far as
10:44
Speaker 1: deer hunting, but we wanted to have something for a
10:46
Speaker 1: hunter to be able to optimize this time. And we
10:50
Speaker 1: think we've done that, and we've gotten a lot of
10:52
Speaker 1: terrific stories have come back where guys say, you know what,
10:55
Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna go hunting deer cast a great I went,
10:58
Speaker 1: I killed the biggest deer of my life. And that's
11:01
Speaker 1: Those are the Those are the accolades that we want
11:04
Speaker 1: to hear from from different hunters. But if nothing else,
11:07
Speaker 1: we want guys to start thinking about those different elements
11:10
Speaker 1: and say, hey, I'm and And some people don't want
11:12
Speaker 1: to do that. Some might just enjoy going and sitting
11:14
Speaker 1: down by tree and saying hey, I'm enjoying the elements
11:16
Speaker 1: out here, and that's fine too. But for that guy
11:19
Speaker 1: that wants to learn a little more and say why
11:21
Speaker 1: or dear moving during daylight hours on some days and
11:24
Speaker 1: they're not on others, then that's what this is. Far
11:27
Speaker 1: and Mark and I did oh, I want to say
11:29
Speaker 1: a hundred and forty five or a hundred and fifty
11:32
Speaker 1: different interviews for each influencer for each phase, so that
11:37
Speaker 1: you can kind of go into it for that serious
11:39
Speaker 1: guy and and kind of pick our brains and and
11:41
Speaker 1: see exactly how we made those decisions. But it's been
11:44
Speaker 1: it's been uh somewhat successful so far, and we just
11:48
Speaker 1: want people to use it to their advantage. Yeah, I
11:51
Speaker 1: certainly think you achieved those goals you mentioned, And for
11:53
Speaker 1: anyone listening right now, if you want some more details
11:57
Speaker 1: about about the tools within the app and all the
12:00
Speaker 1: kind of underlying theories that helped kind of build up
12:03
Speaker 1: this algorithm and this predictive capability you guys have now
12:06
Speaker 1: in there. We did a podcast back in August, I
12:09
Speaker 1: think with Mark dury Um and it was we went very,
12:13
Speaker 1: very very in depth on all these types of factors.
12:15
Speaker 1: It's it's absolutely fascinating. So if you haven't listened to
12:18
Speaker 1: that one yet, definitely go back and listen for that one. Um.
12:22
Speaker 1: It just is very very interesting. So Terry, that brings
12:27
Speaker 1: me then back to the original part of of the
12:31
Speaker 1: Deer Cast giveaway, that being this farming you guys are
12:34
Speaker 1: going to give away. UM. I kind of curious using
12:38
Speaker 1: that as an example to see if you might be
12:41
Speaker 1: able to help me out a little bit, Terry, because
12:42
Speaker 1: I'm I'm slowly approaching the possibility of maybe trying to
12:46
Speaker 1: buy my first farm, um, small little piece, And I
12:50
Speaker 1: don't know if that's this year thing, or next year
12:52
Speaker 1: thing or further down the line, but I'm at least
12:55
Speaker 1: starting to really start the gears turning in my head.
12:57
Speaker 1: How how to possibly do this some day? Um, I'm
13:00
Speaker 1: kind of curious when you guys were looking for this farm,
13:04
Speaker 1: trying to find the right piece that you're going to
13:05
Speaker 1: be able to work on for a few years and
13:07
Speaker 1: then give away. What were the things? And you did
13:09
Speaker 1: kind of allude to these already, but I'd like to
13:11
Speaker 1: hear even more detail. What were the specific things you
13:14
Speaker 1: were looking at when you were trying to choose the
13:16
Speaker 1: right property. What were those most important criteria? How did
13:20
Speaker 1: you verify those things to to make this decision. Well,
13:23
Speaker 1: we've got a couple of aspects here that you covered,
13:25
Speaker 1: and I want to touch on both of those because
13:27
Speaker 1: they're both very very important. Uh you know, particularly when
13:31
Speaker 1: it comes to purchasing a piece of dirt for yourself.
13:34
Speaker 1: That one gets me excited more excited than probably shooting
13:37
Speaker 1: a big deer. I'm not kidding you, because, uh, you know,
13:41
Speaker 1: everyone is capable and able to do that if they
13:45
Speaker 1: play their cards right. So we'll talk about that in
13:47
Speaker 1: a little bit, but looking at the parcel and picking
13:50
Speaker 1: a parcel that we wanted to give away, and again
13:52
Speaker 1: I'll reiterate that was a thank you too for thirty
13:56
Speaker 1: years of being in this outdoor industry where some of
13:58
Speaker 1: the most blessed people on earth. We're humbled every day
14:01
Speaker 1: and we just cannot thank people that have supported us anymore.
14:05
Speaker 1: And we said, you know what, how can we do that?
14:07
Speaker 1: How can we give back? And this was this was
14:10
Speaker 1: an idea or a concept that we came up with
14:12
Speaker 1: and we said, all right, now, let's put it in motion,
14:14
Speaker 1: let's get the wheel going. So Mark and I you know,
14:17
Speaker 1: looked in research and looked at several parcels of property
14:21
Speaker 1: and we wanted to get one that was big enough
14:23
Speaker 1: where you could, you know, get four or five, six,
14:25
Speaker 1: seven different stand locations on it, and where you could
14:28
Speaker 1: access it easily with different wind directions on northerly, southerly,
14:32
Speaker 1: easterly westerly. We wanted to make sure that a guy
14:35
Speaker 1: was able to get in there and hunt it without
14:37
Speaker 1: running the deer out of there, so it has that,
14:39
Speaker 1: and then we wanted to make sure that it had
14:41
Speaker 1: every single element that we would want on one of
14:44
Speaker 1: our own farms, and we found a piece that fit
14:47
Speaker 1: that mold, and uh, it's got you know, a decent
14:51
Speaker 1: mass crop on it where it's got some white oaks
14:54
Speaker 1: and it's got some red oaks, and it's got a
14:56
Speaker 1: few shingles and some pins, so there was a decent
15:00
Speaker 1: ass crop on it. It's also got some cover, uh,
15:03
Speaker 1: some cedar thickets and some briars and some brush where
15:06
Speaker 1: you think a buck might go in there and lay
15:08
Speaker 1: down our bed or he made drag a dough in
15:10
Speaker 1: there during the rut. And then it's also got a
15:13
Speaker 1: really really beautiful pond location kind of down in a
15:16
Speaker 1: little bitty valley. Uh that was that's pretty decent size.
15:20
Speaker 1: That was loaded with tracks and rubs in and around
15:22
Speaker 1: this pond. And then below the pond, it's got a
15:25
Speaker 1: little bitty bottom field that's absolutely perfect for a food plot.
15:30
Speaker 1: So we wanted to get one up on a ridge
15:32
Speaker 1: top and one down below. The one down below. You
15:35
Speaker 1: have to be a little bit more careful about wind,
15:38
Speaker 1: but it just had everything. It had all of those
15:40
Speaker 1: elements that we were looking for. Uh, it's fenced. We
15:43
Speaker 1: did a little work on the gates. We wanted to
15:45
Speaker 1: make sure that it was gated and and uh kind
15:47
Speaker 1: of secure and posted and all those other things. But
15:50
Speaker 1: we then went through the through the uh efforts that
15:53
Speaker 1: send and now where would we hang a set? And
15:56
Speaker 1: we did that. We looked at it and we said, okay,
15:58
Speaker 1: you can get in here on what wind direction. Let's
16:00
Speaker 1: pick a spot or two, and we did that. We
16:02
Speaker 1: went ahead and hung some sets. So this thing is
16:06
Speaker 1: literally ready to go. Whoever wins it, uh, we'll be
16:10
Speaker 1: able to climb up and hunt. We we planted food
16:12
Speaker 1: plots in there last year, and the first year planting
16:16
Speaker 1: they did okay, but I'll be perfectly honest, they didn't
16:19
Speaker 1: do great. So we're gonna put a little more fertilizer.
16:21
Speaker 1: We're gonna add a little more line, We're gonna sweeten
16:23
Speaker 1: the pot just a little bit and make sure that
16:26
Speaker 1: this thing is uh exactly how we would want it.
16:28
Speaker 1: So we want those food plots to do a little
16:30
Speaker 1: bit better this year. But sometimes those first year plantings,
16:33
Speaker 1: depending on the acidity of the soil, or a little
16:36
Speaker 1: bit tougher to get started. So we're gonna work a
16:38
Speaker 1: little harder at that and uh and try and get
16:41
Speaker 1: those up the snuff this year so that whoever wins
16:43
Speaker 1: it will be able to sit down and say, you
16:45
Speaker 1: know what this is, Uh, this is a nice piece
16:47
Speaker 1: of property. Had reconics cameras on it. We were catching
16:51
Speaker 1: catching a few deer coming through some decent bucks that
16:54
Speaker 1: we said, you know what, here's an up and comer.
16:56
Speaker 1: Here's one we'd shoot, and so on and so forth.
16:58
Speaker 1: Several does where if a guy is looking at it
17:00
Speaker 1: and saying, you know what, all I want to do
17:01
Speaker 1: is put meat in the freezer, we've got that too.
17:04
Speaker 1: It's got all of those different elements. So we think
17:07
Speaker 1: that we have found the right piece. Uh. You know,
17:10
Speaker 1: it's just it's a matter of hunting it smart because
17:12
Speaker 1: it is only sixty acres, so you can't be in
17:15
Speaker 1: there romping and stomping around every day, uh, for fear
17:18
Speaker 1: of running some deer out of there. So we want
17:21
Speaker 1: to try and make it where it's a little mecca,
17:23
Speaker 1: a little home core area for a few deer and
17:26
Speaker 1: something that you can hold a pocket or a family,
17:28
Speaker 1: a dope family in there, and then catch these bucks
17:30
Speaker 1: that might be traveling, uh from every direction. And and
17:35
Speaker 1: when we looked at it, there's some really really big
17:38
Speaker 1: blocks of timber in two different directions, and then there's
17:42
Speaker 1: some agg on other directions. So we looked at and said,
17:46
Speaker 1: you know what, this is one of those spots where
17:47
Speaker 1: it could be a really really good travel corridor through
17:49
Speaker 1: the rut and uh, you know, we just looked at
17:52
Speaker 1: it from every aspect. So I think whoever ends up
17:55
Speaker 1: with it will be uh should be happy, you know,
17:57
Speaker 1: if they spend the time there and they hunt it smart. Now,
18:00
Speaker 1: with that said, purchasing a parcelo property in my eyes
18:04
Speaker 1: lit up whenever you said that. The only thing I
18:07
Speaker 1: can highly recommend is sooner rather than later. And everybody's
18:13
Speaker 1: in a pinch. We're we're always in a financial struggle,
18:16
Speaker 1: no matter what time of year, no matter what year,
18:18
Speaker 1: no matter what week, we're always looking, okay, how are
18:21
Speaker 1: we gonna pay the electric bill, of the car bill,
18:23
Speaker 1: the insurance, our grocery bill, and all those other things.
18:26
Speaker 1: Every person in America looks at that stuff. But with
18:30
Speaker 1: that said, in lieu love buying that new car, or
18:34
Speaker 1: in lieu of buying that boat, or a new set
18:36
Speaker 1: of golf clubs or season tickets or whatever, you know,
18:40
Speaker 1: any of those uh, you know, extracurricular items, why don't
18:44
Speaker 1: you take that payment that you were going to make
18:46
Speaker 1: for a new car, new boats, set of clubs, season tickets,
18:49
Speaker 1: all those other elements and make a farm payment. And
18:52
Speaker 1: and that's how you start. You always start small and
18:57
Speaker 1: do not get too emotionally attached, and then turn around
19:01
Speaker 1: and flip it. Hang onto it for a year or two,
19:04
Speaker 1: you know, get it to where you think it's it's
19:06
Speaker 1: reached its maximum or optimum capacity as far as a
19:10
Speaker 1: little deer mecca, and then turn around and flip it.
19:13
Speaker 1: And then take that, you know, that nominal or marginal
19:16
Speaker 1: amount of profit that you make on it instead of
19:19
Speaker 1: you know, splurging and going on a trip to the Bahamas.
19:23
Speaker 1: Then take that and roll it into another parcel of property.
19:26
Speaker 1: And if you start that at a at any age,
19:29
Speaker 1: and then you continue down that path, all of a sudden,
19:32
Speaker 1: when you get to where you want to be, whether
19:35
Speaker 1: it's three hundred acres, four hundred acres, a thousand acres,
19:38
Speaker 1: whatever it may be, at some point you look up
19:40
Speaker 1: and you go, you know what, this is what I was,
19:43
Speaker 1: This is what I UH set out to do right here.
19:46
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what we did many many years ago.
19:48
Speaker 1: Everybody always says, well, if I had your farm, I
19:51
Speaker 1: could kill big deer too. Well, by golly. For one thing,
19:54
Speaker 1: we're giving a farm away so they can do that.
19:56
Speaker 1: And for another thing, we started by buying small, all
20:00
Speaker 1: little bitty tracks. I started on a fifty three acre
20:03
Speaker 1: piece over in Illinois and uh and rolled it and
20:06
Speaker 1: then just kept kept the ball rowing. And that's that's
20:08
Speaker 1: really how we got our start. We went to a bank,
20:10
Speaker 1: borrowed the money, made payments just like everybody else. And uh,
20:15
Speaker 1: if you kind of sacrifice those big frivolous things, you
20:19
Speaker 1: can end up owning the piece of dirt that you want.
20:23
Speaker 1: And historically, right now, land values or somewhat uh moderate.
20:29
Speaker 1: And I'll say they've been in a little bit of
20:30
Speaker 1: a recession here for the last couple of years. And
20:32
Speaker 1: I watched this stuff fairly close. But now he's a
20:35
Speaker 1: pretty dog on good time to buy. Uh. You know,
20:38
Speaker 1: there's a little you know, some things that that uh,
20:41
Speaker 1: globally we're unsure of. You know, if you got a
20:45
Speaker 1: little bit of tillable acreage on your piece and you
20:48
Speaker 1: can get some cash rent off of that, or you
20:50
Speaker 1: could possibly uh maybe let's say sub leasa one firearms
20:55
Speaker 1: hunt per year. Or let's say it's got some timber
20:57
Speaker 1: on it, and you can figure out, you know that
20:59
Speaker 1: you're gonna maybe get some nets some income off of
21:02
Speaker 1: the timber. You know, there's an or even CRP income.
21:05
Speaker 1: I know the uh the administration just signed a bill
21:09
Speaker 1: and I forgot exactly what the numbers are, but I
21:11
Speaker 1: could foresee the CRP programs opening back up because I
21:15
Speaker 1: think the bill was for an excess of of the
21:17
Speaker 1: CRP contracts. So there's a number of different ways to
21:21
Speaker 1: look at it and to where you can get a
21:24
Speaker 1: positive cash flow, meaning to where the income that you're
21:28
Speaker 1: generating will service the debt. And that's really what you're
21:32
Speaker 1: concerned with, is, okay, the interest on this loan. How
21:35
Speaker 1: can I do that and still be able to make
21:37
Speaker 1: the payments? You know if interest rates would happen to
21:40
Speaker 1: go up, So you really got to analyze it. You've
21:42
Speaker 1: gotta be smart. It doesn't cost anything to look and
21:46
Speaker 1: if a guy is really really smart, if it takes
21:48
Speaker 1: him six months, eight months, a year, eighteen months, however long,
21:51
Speaker 1: if he gets a piece in his crawl and he says,
21:54
Speaker 1: you know what, I can get this thing to where
21:55
Speaker 1: it's cash flow positive. It's got a little bit of
21:58
Speaker 1: income from the tillable, It's got a little bit of
22:00
Speaker 1: timber on it that I could maybe log off and
22:03
Speaker 1: get a little income there. It's got maybe uh, the
22:06
Speaker 1: ability to to lease out one gun hunt or something
22:09
Speaker 1: per year for a buddy and and possibly use that revenue.
22:13
Speaker 1: All of that, you can figure out how it will
22:15
Speaker 1: service the debt on a monthly basis, and then uh,
22:19
Speaker 1: and then you're then you're worried about trying to make
22:21
Speaker 1: the equity payments yourself. But you give up, you make
22:24
Speaker 1: sacrifices and those things that you're your customed to, you know,
22:27
Speaker 1: maybe that cruise that you go on, or that trip
22:30
Speaker 1: to to the breck and Ridge or whatever it may be.
22:32
Speaker 1: You've got to give up a few things. But then
22:34
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, you got the dirt
22:36
Speaker 1: to uh to keep for the rest of your life
22:38
Speaker 1: and your family to enjoy. Yeah. So, if if you're
22:41
Speaker 1: going to go into in that kind of with that
22:43
Speaker 1: kind of goal, the goal of starting small, flipping it
22:46
Speaker 1: and slowly working your way up, is there anything in
22:49
Speaker 1: particular other than the things you already mentioned. Is there
22:51
Speaker 1: anything else that you look for in particular when you're
22:53
Speaker 1: trying to find a flip type property, like something that's
22:56
Speaker 1: you can get for a pretty cheap price, but there's
22:59
Speaker 1: the potential to turn it to something with a profit.
23:01
Speaker 1: Anything that stands out to you that you're looking for
23:03
Speaker 1: for that scenario, check what's around you. You gotta know
23:06
Speaker 1: your neighbors. You've got to be very very uh in
23:08
Speaker 1: tune with what they're doing. And if they're on on
23:12
Speaker 1: track and they're you know, managing a particular area and
23:15
Speaker 1: there's maybe decent tillable fields and there's decent timber in
23:20
Speaker 1: and around, make sure you understand what that market will bear.
23:24
Speaker 1: You know, how much are they getting per acre on
23:26
Speaker 1: the tillable how much is the c RP income if
23:28
Speaker 1: it has the RP income, and you know, at least
23:31
Speaker 1: be analytical about it, be smart about it. It's not
23:34
Speaker 1: something you want to rush into. It's something that you
23:37
Speaker 1: want to take your time. Build your own spreadsheet. You know,
23:41
Speaker 1: if it takes you, you know, two or three weeks
23:43
Speaker 1: to build a spreadsheet and analyze every little detail. Uh,
23:47
Speaker 1: just be analytical. You know, there's there's a thing called
23:50
Speaker 1: due diligence. We've all heard about that. Be very diligent
23:53
Speaker 1: in in your efforts to make sure that you cover
23:56
Speaker 1: all your bases and you don't miss anything. But I
23:58
Speaker 1: would certainly try and find out what's going around going
24:01
Speaker 1: on around you, and then look at historical records as
24:04
Speaker 1: far as the uh, you know, what's that that property
24:06
Speaker 1: done over the years, take the last twenty five thirty
24:10
Speaker 1: years or maybe even go back further than that, and
24:12
Speaker 1: see what kind of history you've had there. And you
24:14
Speaker 1: can check those public records, you know, at the assess
24:17
Speaker 1: or the county courthouse, or you may go to a realator.
24:21
Speaker 1: You can contact a realtor. Some of them are gonna
24:23
Speaker 1: be really really uh in tune with recreational properties. Some
24:28
Speaker 1: of them maybe not. If it's a residential you know,
24:31
Speaker 1: real estate agent, they may not be is aware of
24:33
Speaker 1: what you're looking for. So make sure you you do
24:36
Speaker 1: your due diligence on that end to find out exactly
24:39
Speaker 1: what's available and make sure that you're hooked up with
24:41
Speaker 1: a real estate agent that knows. You know, there's guys
24:44
Speaker 1: out there like White Till properties. Those guys know what
24:46
Speaker 1: they're doing, they know the business. Uh. They've got some
24:49
Speaker 1: tremendous agents that that are all hunters and those are
24:53
Speaker 1: the guys you want to talk to, and just knowing
24:56
Speaker 1: what type of gear have been killed in that area,
24:58
Speaker 1: you know, as it have they've been killed, want someone
25:00
Speaker 1: seventies and two hundies and that sort of thing, or
25:03
Speaker 1: the genetics there than by all means you're gonna look
25:06
Speaker 1: a little harder at those types of areas. Yeah, Now
25:09
Speaker 1: something else, um, I imagine when you're trying to find
25:12
Speaker 1: a small property to get started with. Is um something
25:16
Speaker 1: I heard Maybe it was Mark talk about or maybe
25:19
Speaker 1: I can't remember when it came to this specific farm,
25:21
Speaker 1: the sixty acre farm. You guys have a couple of
25:23
Speaker 1: videos on the Deercast app where you you do a
25:26
Speaker 1: tour of the property and one of you mentioned that, yeah,
25:29
Speaker 1: it's it's only sixty acres, but it feels like twenty.
25:32
Speaker 1: It hunts like a hundred and twenty. It's a small
25:34
Speaker 1: piece that just seems much larger. What about a small
25:38
Speaker 1: property might lend itself to to feeling larger, hunting larger?
25:43
Speaker 1: What kind of things do we look for to try
25:44
Speaker 1: to find that small piece that actually feels bigger. I
25:47
Speaker 1: think because that piece was diverse in its cover and topographically,
25:52
Speaker 1: there was a little bit of elevation change from the
25:55
Speaker 1: ridges down to the bottom. So when you walk in
25:57
Speaker 1: there and you go, oh my god, this thing is huge,
26:00
Speaker 1: and you it just felt bigger. But I think that
26:02
Speaker 1: topographic change from the top down to the bottom elevation
26:07
Speaker 1: change might have been you know, a hundred and twenty
26:09
Speaker 1: ft hundred fifty and it may be in less than that.
26:12
Speaker 1: We didn't shoot it. But then again, there was such
26:15
Speaker 1: diverse uh selection of cover. You know, there receivers and
26:18
Speaker 1: brush and briers and those tickets that you look for,
26:21
Speaker 1: and then when you get into this bottom field, it
26:23
Speaker 1: was just rather open and immediately we're going, okay, there's
26:27
Speaker 1: our food plot right here. It's a no brainer. And
26:29
Speaker 1: then there was a pond just above that, and then
26:31
Speaker 1: you go above that and there's a hardwood ridge and
26:34
Speaker 1: it it gave us every every single thing we would
26:37
Speaker 1: be looking for on a parcel that that we wanted,
26:39
Speaker 1: and then when we walked it, it just seemed like
26:41
Speaker 1: it was bigger than sixty acres. And uh, I think
26:44
Speaker 1: that's why because of diverse, uh selection of of cover
26:48
Speaker 1: and then also the topographic changes in elevation. Yeah, so
26:52
Speaker 1: when you guys got there on the farm, um, or
26:54
Speaker 1: or any other new spot that you have like this,
26:56
Speaker 1: whether it be a new lease or a new property
26:58
Speaker 1: just bought. Can you can you share what your first
27:01
Speaker 1: steps are as far as like, how do you start
27:05
Speaker 1: kind of servying the farm to decide, Okay, this is
27:07
Speaker 1: what we have, this is what we need. These are
27:10
Speaker 1: the first things we want to do. Can you kind
27:11
Speaker 1: of walk me through your mindset and what that that
27:14
Speaker 1: first step might be as you start to kind of
27:17
Speaker 1: take inventor of what the situation is right out the gate. Well,
27:20
Speaker 1: I don't think we're we're any different than every other
27:24
Speaker 1: you know, true blue, red blooded hunter. When we walk
27:27
Speaker 1: in there, if our eyes pop open and we go,
27:30
Speaker 1: oh my god, then we know we've hit the mutherload.
27:33
Speaker 1: It's like, this is this is where a deer should live,
27:37
Speaker 1: This is where deer should travel, This is where deer
27:39
Speaker 1: is gonna want to be. And then okay, how can
27:42
Speaker 1: we make it fit to where we can get in
27:45
Speaker 1: and out of here without running them out? That's the
27:48
Speaker 1: biggest I think one of the biggest detriments that I
27:50
Speaker 1: see are people spending a lot of time on their
27:53
Speaker 1: parcel and sometimes pushing out the deer that they're trying
27:56
Speaker 1: to hunt. So the next thing we look at is, okay,
28:00
Speaker 1: do we have access and on what wind direction? You know,
28:03
Speaker 1: what's the prevailing wind for this particular area. And then
28:06
Speaker 1: how can we get in here without running deer out? Well,
28:09
Speaker 1: this parcel that we the sixty acres had that it
28:11
Speaker 1: had access on on several sides, and we were like, okay,
28:14
Speaker 1: that gets us in here. Now where are we going
28:17
Speaker 1: to put the food we wanted it? It felt like
28:19
Speaker 1: when we walked in there, you know, there was a sign,
28:21
Speaker 1: there was rubs, there was tracks, and and there was
28:23
Speaker 1: everything that that we were looking for, but it wasn't
28:27
Speaker 1: like you know, it wasn't tracked up or hugged up
28:29
Speaker 1: like we wanted. And that might have had something to
28:32
Speaker 1: do with the fact that there wasn't food on it.
28:34
Speaker 1: So that was the next thing. Okay, we're we gonna
28:37
Speaker 1: place these food plots so that we can still get
28:39
Speaker 1: in here without running them out, and so that we
28:41
Speaker 1: can access it from different wind directions. And then where
28:44
Speaker 1: is the uh, where's the most sense make to where
28:47
Speaker 1: we can we call it food plot architecture where we
28:50
Speaker 1: can pick the tree or pick the set and then
28:53
Speaker 1: plant the food plot accordingly, and we did just that.
28:55
Speaker 1: We walk it and we look at it. We look
28:57
Speaker 1: at trails, we look at tracks, we look at rubs.
29:00
Speaker 1: Look it's grapes, and then say, okay, where's he betting?
29:02
Speaker 1: And then where's he going? Is he going across the road?
29:05
Speaker 1: Is he staying internally here? Is he going to deeper timber?
29:08
Speaker 1: Is he going to a food source? You know? Where
29:11
Speaker 1: are they going? Morning? And we're one evening, so we're
29:13
Speaker 1: we're very analytical. But our first impression, our gut feeling
29:18
Speaker 1: when we walk into a piece is really not too
29:20
Speaker 1: indifferent from what most other hunters would have. And that's
29:23
Speaker 1: when our eyes pop open and go, oh god, this
29:26
Speaker 1: is the spot. And that's the feeling that we got
29:28
Speaker 1: when we walked into that sixties. Yeah, that's a good
29:30
Speaker 1: feeling when you're starting out on a new farm. Is
29:35
Speaker 1: food always the thing you prioritize first? Or do you
29:38
Speaker 1: go and look and see, Okay, where are my weak spots?
29:41
Speaker 1: And maybe in some cases I need more cover or
29:43
Speaker 1: sometimes it's food, or I'm kind of curious about how
29:46
Speaker 1: you prioritize it. What projects need to be done first?
29:48
Speaker 1: You know, I think when you look at it and
29:50
Speaker 1: you say, all right, is there is there a lot
29:52
Speaker 1: of sign and the deer are already living there? How
29:56
Speaker 1: much food do I need to plant? More would I plant?
29:59
Speaker 1: Or when you walk into a spot and you say,
30:01
Speaker 1: you know what, there's not as much sign here as
30:03
Speaker 1: I like, there's not as much try as many tracks
30:05
Speaker 1: and many rubs and scrapes, is what I prefer? I
30:08
Speaker 1: need to put more food in to suck them in here,
30:11
Speaker 1: you know, to pull them off on neighbors, and particularly
30:13
Speaker 1: if you're uh in and around are close to deep
30:16
Speaker 1: timbered spots where there's not a lot of acreage for
30:19
Speaker 1: tillable or not a lot of agg in and around
30:21
Speaker 1: you there for food, then by all means you want
30:24
Speaker 1: to load it up with as much food as you
30:26
Speaker 1: can put on it. And sometimes the acidity is so
30:29
Speaker 1: high that that becomes a you know, a cumbersome task
30:32
Speaker 1: of putting the amount of lime on there that you
30:34
Speaker 1: need to put to make sure that you get the
30:36
Speaker 1: pH correct. But you know, as far as we're concerned,
30:39
Speaker 1: on a on a piece where it's highly timbered, you
30:42
Speaker 1: can't hardly put enough food because you're wanting to suck
30:45
Speaker 1: some deer off of adjacent pieces to make sure that
30:48
Speaker 1: they have that food for the winter, not early not
30:50
Speaker 1: just early season, but also middle of the rut and
30:53
Speaker 1: light season. And you want to make sure that those
30:55
Speaker 1: that are traveling, those those bucks that are traveling, you
30:57
Speaker 1: want to make sure that they come in they park
31:00
Speaker 1: on that food source for a little while. If you've
31:02
Speaker 1: got those that are frequenting that on a daily basis,
31:04
Speaker 1: so we really balance it out. If it's got plenty
31:08
Speaker 1: of sign on it and and plenty of tracks and
31:10
Speaker 1: rubs and scrapes and trails, then it doesn't get as
31:14
Speaker 1: heavily planted. But if it's a little more scarce and
31:16
Speaker 1: it's not as heavy as you like, then we're going
31:18
Speaker 1: to load the food up. How do you make those
31:20
Speaker 1: decisions then as far as how to implement food? Um?
31:24
Speaker 1: Do you It's that kind of sounds like with a
31:26
Speaker 1: sixty acre piece, there were some spots that naturally lent
31:29
Speaker 1: themselves to being great locations for food just because they're
31:33
Speaker 1: relatively open and they seem to be in the right position. Um.
31:36
Speaker 1: But maybe another scenario is like, how are you thinking
31:39
Speaker 1: through how much food you need? Specifically? Like if you
31:42
Speaker 1: get a sixty acre piece, is it just how we
31:44
Speaker 1: want one or two acres, or do you actually get
31:46
Speaker 1: as scientific as, Okay, we want ten percent of our
31:49
Speaker 1: sixty acres to be in food, so we need six
31:51
Speaker 1: acres or I'm kind of curious about how you make
31:53
Speaker 1: the decisions decisions around the amount of food and of
31:57
Speaker 1: the actual locations of plots, where they where you start
32:00
Speaker 1: positioning this stuff within a property. Well, and in answer
32:04
Speaker 1: to the question, you know, there are percentages that we
32:06
Speaker 1: like to try and reach our goals that we like
32:08
Speaker 1: to try and hit where you have that open area
32:11
Speaker 1: where you can where you can actually utilize some of
32:14
Speaker 1: those open spaces and plant food on this particular parcel.
32:18
Speaker 1: And I'll use this one just because it was we
32:20
Speaker 1: were so excited about it when we walked in there.
32:23
Speaker 1: It had certain areas that were already open and at
32:26
Speaker 1: one time I assume they might have had cattle on
32:28
Speaker 1: it or something, or they may have hayed these little
32:30
Speaker 1: spots and made hay off of them, but they were
32:33
Speaker 1: just uh, just lent themselves very well to go ahead
32:37
Speaker 1: and put a food plot in because at one time
32:39
Speaker 1: they were kept fairly open. It's grown up in and
32:42
Speaker 1: around all those edges and there seems to be a
32:45
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of bedding in and around it. So there
32:48
Speaker 1: was nothing magic about the formula per se. But we're
32:52
Speaker 1: going to try and plant as much of those open
32:55
Speaker 1: areas as we can there as many of those open
32:57
Speaker 1: areas as we can, so that we get as much
33:00
Speaker 1: food on it as we can possibly cram in there.
33:03
Speaker 1: Uh And and those are some things that a guy
33:05
Speaker 1: can work on. Two. If he says, you know what,
33:07
Speaker 1: they ate everything I planted before October thirtie, then you're going, Okay,
33:12
Speaker 1: I need to plant more food next year. Or if
33:14
Speaker 1: you've got a little you know, some remnants and you
33:16
Speaker 1: still have some food left over, then you're saying, okay,
33:19
Speaker 1: I had the right amount of food, but I want
33:21
Speaker 1: I still want to expand it because I want to
33:23
Speaker 1: suck more deer in here. So there's a different way
33:25
Speaker 1: of looking at it. One of the things that we
33:27
Speaker 1: like to do on our farms is go green to grain,
33:32
Speaker 1: you know, and we talked about green to green transfer
33:34
Speaker 1: all the time, so that whenever soybeans start defoliating and
33:39
Speaker 1: changing and when the carn starts hardening and they're not
33:42
Speaker 1: you know, silking them anymore, you want to have a
33:45
Speaker 1: green food source in those October months for them to
33:48
Speaker 1: go to and we always you know, non typical clover
33:51
Speaker 1: clover plus both are biologic products. We plant a lot
33:55
Speaker 1: of that on our farms to make sure that we
33:57
Speaker 1: can handle that green to green train antsper because they're
34:01
Speaker 1: gonna be looking for that green food source once those
34:04
Speaker 1: soybeans defoliate and once the corn hardens and and they're
34:07
Speaker 1: no longer silking them, so we make sure that's number one. Now,
34:12
Speaker 1: if you can back that green food source up against
34:15
Speaker 1: a grain like carn and being then more part to you.
34:20
Speaker 1: You want to have that green as close and as
34:22
Speaker 1: tight into those bedding cover or those bedding areas as
34:26
Speaker 1: you possibly can. But you also want to stay cognizant
34:29
Speaker 1: of the fact that you still got to get in
34:30
Speaker 1: and out of those without bumping them out. So there's
34:33
Speaker 1: kind of a science to it, and uh, you really
34:36
Speaker 1: want to be careful on wind direction, how you access
34:39
Speaker 1: those and where you place your stands. But on a
34:41
Speaker 1: small parcel, if you don't have the abilities to go
34:45
Speaker 1: in and plant you know, soybeans and or carn, then
34:48
Speaker 1: green is so much easier to maintain and whether you
34:52
Speaker 1: want to do you know, like a trophy oats or
34:55
Speaker 1: winter weed or something. That's always a good one because
34:57
Speaker 1: you can plan it late. You don't have to go
34:59
Speaker 1: through those summer, those hot, hot, dry, arid summer months.
35:03
Speaker 1: You know, you can plant it in there when you're
35:04
Speaker 1: expecting some of those fall range to get it to
35:06
Speaker 1: German A. But we usually have that clover planet early
35:10
Speaker 1: to make sure that we've got both because on a
35:12
Speaker 1: parcel this size, it wouldn't have maybe been easy to
35:16
Speaker 1: get the implements in there to plant corn and beans,
35:18
Speaker 1: and chances are they may have not made anyway because
35:21
Speaker 1: they are it is a small parcel. So on something
35:23
Speaker 1: like this, we would probably stick with a little more green,
35:26
Speaker 1: and we planted in pretty close to their a little
35:29
Speaker 1: tight betting areas, because really aren't creating those destination feed fields.
35:34
Speaker 1: You know, they're not big twenty acre, thirty acre, hundred
35:37
Speaker 1: acre food food sources. Their little bitty pockets there, you know,
35:41
Speaker 1: acre and a half two acres, quarter acre, half acre.
35:44
Speaker 1: But you want to give them a variety, and you
35:45
Speaker 1: want to make sure that you can hunt those on
35:47
Speaker 1: different wind directions. Yes, so that kind of ties into
35:49
Speaker 1: the next thing I'm curious about, which is, you know,
35:53
Speaker 1: knowing or I imagine there's a balancing act. You kind
35:57
Speaker 1: of alluded to this as far as access when I
36:00
Speaker 1: comes to the number of different plots and how many,
36:03
Speaker 1: because I could I could foresee a potential situation where
36:06
Speaker 1: you have so many different little plots that then you
36:09
Speaker 1: have issues with access, issues with wind, issues with knowing
36:13
Speaker 1: how dear using it. If you've got one or two
36:16
Speaker 1: food plots, you might be able to determine a pretty
36:18
Speaker 1: consistent betting area here and betting are there, and they're
36:21
Speaker 1: going to one of these two food sources, and you
36:22
Speaker 1: can start to really understand that pattern. If you have
36:26
Speaker 1: seven little food plots scattered all over the place, I
36:28
Speaker 1: could see that being potentially more confusing. Um, how do
36:32
Speaker 1: you think through that? Or is that something you don't
36:34
Speaker 1: worry about. You just want as much food in there.
36:36
Speaker 1: You're not worried about having too much? No, I think
36:39
Speaker 1: you're correct. I would worry about that on a small,
36:42
Speaker 1: small parcel. You know where it makes sense and where
36:45
Speaker 1: it's a no brainer. Those are pretty obvious. You you
36:47
Speaker 1: would put in two food plots and then uh, just
36:50
Speaker 1: start with the historical data. You know, you'd sit there
36:53
Speaker 1: and you'd observe for the first fall and then maybe
36:56
Speaker 1: even the second fall, and it usually takes us about
36:58
Speaker 1: three years to figure it a stop, to really understand
37:01
Speaker 1: it and know it because sometimes crop rotation around you
37:05
Speaker 1: or mass crop around you may change those patterns. So
37:09
Speaker 1: we would study it pretty long and hard before we
37:12
Speaker 1: added so much food that it became detrimental. Meaning, uh,
37:16
Speaker 1: you know, if you're if you're sitting on one food
37:18
Speaker 1: plot and then you're casting your wind over the top
37:20
Speaker 1: of another one where your deer might come from, you know,
37:23
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, it becomes detrimental. So we
37:25
Speaker 1: would hunt it smart. We'd start on those perimeters and
37:29
Speaker 1: make sure that we don't penetrate too far in, particularly
37:31
Speaker 1: on a small parcel like this one, until the rut
37:34
Speaker 1: then maybe you know first you know, uh maybe first
37:38
Speaker 1: ten days of November. Then you might pile in a
37:40
Speaker 1: little bit harder and go into the maybe into the
37:43
Speaker 1: center of it. But I would start on those perimeters
37:46
Speaker 1: and do a lot of observation because the m R
37:49
Speaker 1: I is is priceless on a new part of parcel
37:52
Speaker 1: like that, and we'd have, you know, put as many
37:54
Speaker 1: cameras out there as we could could do you know,
37:56
Speaker 1: you put three or four cameras in there too. I
37:58
Speaker 1: would put them on the perimeters, put them on the
38:00
Speaker 1: oscars to where you're not doing a lot of damage
38:02
Speaker 1: as you walk in there. Uh, And then maybe you
38:05
Speaker 1: kind of tip in and move one in there a
38:06
Speaker 1: little bit tighter, so during the rut you could slip
38:08
Speaker 1: in there and check it and find out what's going
38:10
Speaker 1: on internally. But I would I would be very very
38:14
Speaker 1: cautious about the amount of food I planted early on,
38:17
Speaker 1: just so that you could get the m r I
38:19
Speaker 1: and start collecting that data and then say, you know what,
38:21
Speaker 1: I can put another food plot down at the end
38:24
Speaker 1: of this ridge and I can access it from another direction,
38:27
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth, to where you're not
38:29
Speaker 1: being detrimental to yourself. Yeah. Yeah, making slow but steady
38:32
Speaker 1: progress as you learned that. That makes a lot of sense. Now,
38:35
Speaker 1: another thing I hear a lot of people kind of
38:38
Speaker 1: debate about on occasion is positioning of your food in
38:42
Speaker 1: relation to the borders of your property. I've heard some
38:45
Speaker 1: folks advocate for putting your food plots. At least if
38:48
Speaker 1: you were going to do like a large feed food plot,
38:51
Speaker 1: like your big plot, maybe that would be central, so
38:54
Speaker 1: place in the center of your property because that will
38:56
Speaker 1: keep dear moving in and staying within daylight hour is
39:00
Speaker 1: on your property. And then if you're gonna have some
39:01
Speaker 1: smaller kill plots those radiate out from there. Then I've
39:05
Speaker 1: heard other people say, no, you wanted the opposite. You
39:07
Speaker 1: want your best bedding right in the middle of your property,
39:10
Speaker 1: farthest away from other hunters and the outsides. And then
39:13
Speaker 1: you want those deer transitioning from the center of your
39:15
Speaker 1: property out to maybe little kill plots that you can
39:17
Speaker 1: hunt in the transition areas. And then those larger feeding
39:21
Speaker 1: areas are those primary food sources. Those would be on
39:24
Speaker 1: the very far edges of the outside of your property
39:26
Speaker 1: that hopefully they're not hitting those till maybe after dark,
39:29
Speaker 1: and then they're not going to your neighbors possibly as
39:31
Speaker 1: often until you know, after shooting ours. Uh, do either
39:34
Speaker 1: one of those two options, I guess appeal to your
39:38
Speaker 1: mindset most or do you what are your thoughts on those?
39:41
Speaker 1: You know, those are two totally different mindsets, and we
39:44
Speaker 1: hear those as well, you know, we hear them regularly. Uh.
39:47
Speaker 1: Grant Woods was one of the first one. Dr Woods
39:49
Speaker 1: was one of the first ones that said, you know, hey,
39:51
Speaker 1: you want to put your your bedding on the outside
39:55
Speaker 1: and put your food source in the middle, and uh
39:57
Speaker 1: and in in in certain areas you may want to
39:59
Speaker 1: put your just the opposite of that. So I think
40:02
Speaker 1: it depends on the size of the piece that you
40:05
Speaker 1: have and trying to be realistic with that piece. You know,
40:09
Speaker 1: you gotta keep it real and the fact, Okay, if
40:11
Speaker 1: you've got twenty acres, are those deer really gonna stay there? Boy,
40:16
Speaker 1: that's that's a tough one. The even forty eight acres,
40:19
Speaker 1: you know, it's hard to hold them, even on those
40:22
Speaker 1: big parcels. We see it all the time where they
40:24
Speaker 1: tip off. You just cannot hold them, you know, in
40:28
Speaker 1: certain certain parcels. So I think you have to be
40:31
Speaker 1: realistic about will the deer stay there to begin with?
40:34
Speaker 1: And and you're gonna do your best to keep them
40:36
Speaker 1: by putting as much betting and cover, and you may
40:39
Speaker 1: do some hinging, and you may plant switch grass, you
40:42
Speaker 1: may do all of those things, and the dog on
40:44
Speaker 1: deer will still leave your property. I have it all
40:47
Speaker 1: the time. I just I struggle with the and I
40:49
Speaker 1: don't know if it's because of the subspecies or what.
40:51
Speaker 1: But I really had a lot of deer tip over
40:54
Speaker 1: the edges, tip over the borders, and I may get
40:57
Speaker 1: a picture of them on my south end and then
40:59
Speaker 1: a mile and a half away on the north end
41:01
Speaker 1: to get other pictures of them. So it's it's that's
41:04
Speaker 1: a fine line and a different approach, both different mindsets.
41:07
Speaker 1: I think both of them work depending on the size
41:10
Speaker 1: of the parcel in you know, kind of the application
41:13
Speaker 1: that you're trying to achieve. Yeah, what about you mentioned
41:17
Speaker 1: food plot architecture and this kind of this kind of
41:20
Speaker 1: all falls in the same category, whether it's where you're
41:22
Speaker 1: position your plots or how you actually shape them plan them.
41:26
Speaker 1: But I know that you guys have have have been
41:28
Speaker 1: working with food plots for a long time now. You've
41:30
Speaker 1: taken it far beyond just the basics of find an opening,
41:34
Speaker 1: toss some seed, hope something grows. You guys are really
41:37
Speaker 1: really fine tuning things. What are some of those next
41:40
Speaker 1: level tweaks that you guys are making when it comes
41:43
Speaker 1: to your food plot strategy. Um, you you alluded to one,
41:47
Speaker 1: which is the fact that and correct me if I
41:49
Speaker 1: got this wrong, but you said that many times you'll
41:51
Speaker 1: pick the right tree first, and then plan a plot
41:54
Speaker 1: around that specific tree. Um, could you expand on that
41:57
Speaker 1: or share any other these next level food plot planning things.
42:01
Speaker 1: You're doing correct. And and that starts with m R. I.
42:05
Speaker 1: And it starts with observation. You know, we may take
42:07
Speaker 1: two years or three years and we may watch a
42:10
Speaker 1: food plot or a food source or just travel carters
42:13
Speaker 1: travel routes and say, okay, those dear feel comfortable being
42:17
Speaker 1: right here to begin with, Now, are there any trees
42:21
Speaker 1: in that particular area that would serve themselves extremely well
42:25
Speaker 1: where we have back covered and yet we can access
42:28
Speaker 1: that tree without running them out, and we get the
42:30
Speaker 1: proper wind direction that we need to keep dear from
42:33
Speaker 1: being down wind. Or they all always coming from one
42:36
Speaker 1: direction in the evening? Are they always coming from another
42:39
Speaker 1: direction in the morning. So that m R I and
42:41
Speaker 1: that historical data kind of tells you where to go
42:45
Speaker 1: and where they feel comfortable, because there's certain areas of
42:47
Speaker 1: a field where they just won't walk. And and we've
42:50
Speaker 1: noticed that throughout the course of time. You may put
42:54
Speaker 1: a tree, hang a set in a tree, and go
42:56
Speaker 1: dog on. I don't know why they won't come up here.
42:59
Speaker 1: I've got the food here, but they just won't walk
43:01
Speaker 1: over there. There are certain areas in a field where
43:03
Speaker 1: they feel extremely comfortable. A lot of them are because
43:06
Speaker 1: of visual observation. You know, we always worry about deer
43:09
Speaker 1: and their noses, but by ali there still want to
43:11
Speaker 1: see what's going on, and there's still a curious animal.
43:14
Speaker 1: So getting to certain areas where it may be a
43:17
Speaker 1: little bit of advantage point for them, you know, and
43:20
Speaker 1: they may come up a big drainage or a crack
43:22
Speaker 1: or a gully or a rut or something to get
43:25
Speaker 1: to it, but eventually they're going to get to the
43:27
Speaker 1: spot where they can see and uh. Sometimes those are
43:30
Speaker 1: the areas that you say, all right, they're all comfortable here.
43:32
Speaker 1: Now where's the nearest tree that I can pick that
43:35
Speaker 1: I can get into and still have the right wind directions.
43:39
Speaker 1: And we do that a lot, where we'll pick the
43:41
Speaker 1: tree and then we'll plant to that tree, and we'll
43:44
Speaker 1: create inside and outside corners with food food plots, whether
43:49
Speaker 1: it be corn and beans, or whether it's clover and
43:52
Speaker 1: carn or whether it's clover and biologic. But we're gonna
43:55
Speaker 1: change it up to where we've either got uh maybe
43:59
Speaker 1: an elevation chain with the with the food plot, or
44:02
Speaker 1: maybe it's just a variety change in what type of
44:04
Speaker 1: food plot we're planning there, But we do that quite
44:06
Speaker 1: often and create those inside and outside corners because they
44:10
Speaker 1: just they just feel more comfortable coming to those particular spots.
44:13
Speaker 1: Can you can you elaborate on what you mean by
44:15
Speaker 1: that the inside and outside corners and and correct me
44:18
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong, But I think you're saying you would
44:20
Speaker 1: position those corners to where your stand would be. Is
44:23
Speaker 1: that right? Because you think that that will be the
44:25
Speaker 1: most likely point of entry or exit for a deer
44:27
Speaker 1: where you'd all get a shop. Absolutely correct. If you
44:31
Speaker 1: got let's say standing carn and a lot of guys
44:33
Speaker 1: can't do this obviously because you don't have the implements,
44:36
Speaker 1: or you may or may not have the acreage or something.
44:38
Speaker 1: But if you're in an area where you do have
44:40
Speaker 1: the ability to get standing carn, uh, you want to
44:43
Speaker 1: make sure that you create that inside corner right there
44:48
Speaker 1: to where it butts up. The end of that carn
44:50
Speaker 1: butts up to either a clover field, a soybean field,
44:53
Speaker 1: a biologic winter bawls and sugar be its maximum uh turnips,
44:58
Speaker 1: all of those, all of those elements guard us what
45:00
Speaker 1: type of food plot you're planting. It's nice to have
45:03
Speaker 1: an inside corner where they're gonna file out and feel
45:07
Speaker 1: comfortable coming out, whether they're coming out of the timber
45:09
Speaker 1: or whether they're coming out of the carn, they always
45:12
Speaker 1: like that edge or that little bit of cover to
45:14
Speaker 1: pop out, and we create those on a very very
45:17
Speaker 1: frequent basis. And we do just the opposite. We create
45:21
Speaker 1: outside corners just like we do inside corners. And it
45:24
Speaker 1: may be where some fences come together, you know, it
45:26
Speaker 1: may be a spot where two fences come together and
45:29
Speaker 1: there's a tree that just happens to be there. We
45:32
Speaker 1: do that quite often as well. Then we plant to
45:34
Speaker 1: that outside corner accordingly, and uh, they may walk around
45:38
Speaker 1: the end of it, they may get to it and
45:39
Speaker 1: jump the fence right before they hit the corner, or
45:43
Speaker 1: or vice versa. You know, but particularly if it's a
45:45
Speaker 1: four strand barbed wire where you see that often, particularly
45:49
Speaker 1: where someone had been maybe cattling it for for many
45:52
Speaker 1: many years and they no longer have cattle in the
45:54
Speaker 1: timber or on that hayground and there's a fence corner there.
45:58
Speaker 1: We do that quite frequently as well. Yeah, and this
46:01
Speaker 1: is a concept that can help folks whether you're planting
46:03
Speaker 1: your own food plots and managing your property or not.
46:06
Speaker 1: I mean, you can look for these types of features
46:07
Speaker 1: just naturally as well, especially if you're hunting farmland. I
46:12
Speaker 1: I remember a specific example that still haunts me. I
46:15
Speaker 1: was heading into hunt a property at permission, and I'm
46:18
Speaker 1: sneaking and I kind of had an idea of where
46:20
Speaker 1: I wanted to go, and it was right on the
46:22
Speaker 1: edge where a standing corn field met a standing bean field,
46:26
Speaker 1: and then there's a chunk of timber, you know, right
46:28
Speaker 1: on the on the edge of that. And I thought
46:29
Speaker 1: to myself, Okay, this is that perfect corner. Like you
46:32
Speaker 1: just described their terry diversity of habitab, You've got a
46:35
Speaker 1: great edge here that then connects with the timber. It
46:38
Speaker 1: was just it looked screamed off the map as a
46:40
Speaker 1: great spot to be. But I walked to that point,
46:42
Speaker 1: I was about to get set up, and then I
46:44
Speaker 1: spotted a big oak tree down the edge of the
46:46
Speaker 1: field another sixty seventy yards away, and for whatever reason,
46:51
Speaker 1: I decided that I wanted to be close to those
46:54
Speaker 1: acorns and not be on that edge. I just thought
46:56
Speaker 1: I was a little more enticed by the acorns down
46:59
Speaker 1: the edge, and I went and set up seventy yards
47:01
Speaker 1: away from the edge of the beans in the standing corn,
47:04
Speaker 1: and at last light had to watch a really really
47:07
Speaker 1: nice shooter a point and go walking right down that edge,
47:10
Speaker 1: right past where I was originally going to set up.
47:12
Speaker 1: And it was a great lesson learn to uh, to
47:16
Speaker 1: stick with your initial instincts sometimes and hunt those train
47:18
Speaker 1: features versus getting tempted by a little bit of candy
47:22
Speaker 1: off off in the distance. And I won't forget that one.
47:24
Speaker 1: And you know, a scenario like that, late season is
47:28
Speaker 1: a really really good time to you know, inspect those
47:31
Speaker 1: areas and see exactly where those really really defined trails
47:34
Speaker 1: are coming in and out. Uh. And a lot of
47:37
Speaker 1: times those bucks bucks won't use those same defined trails
47:41
Speaker 1: and instead of going you know, with the trail, a
47:43
Speaker 1: lot of times they go against the grain and they'll
47:45
Speaker 1: be going perpendicular to those trails, particularly going back to
47:48
Speaker 1: bed in the mornings, where they're you know, they're kind
47:51
Speaker 1: of checking every trail. They're not just hitting one or two,
47:54
Speaker 1: but they'll check them all. And certain times of the years,
47:57
Speaker 1: they certain time of the year they may funnel out
47:59
Speaker 1: or they may file following some does out onto the
48:01
Speaker 1: food plot where they are on that trail. But that
48:04
Speaker 1: first week in November, when they're looking for those first
48:07
Speaker 1: available extra stoves, they go transverse to those trails, they'll
48:11
Speaker 1: go perpendicular to them, and they'll check them all. So
48:13
Speaker 1: being on that edge, uh, even though you're in that
48:16
Speaker 1: big old fat oak tree, you still may get a
48:17
Speaker 1: shot at him if he comes far enough. So that's
48:20
Speaker 1: not the worst thing. You had the right the right
48:22
Speaker 1: uh idea, And it might be different at a different
48:25
Speaker 1: time of the year where they may where they may
48:27
Speaker 1: be under those uh you know, those white oaks. But
48:30
Speaker 1: with that said, we always look at those uh definitive spots,
48:35
Speaker 1: the ones that jump out at you and say, you
48:36
Speaker 1: know what, here's where I'll start. But we picked the tree,
48:40
Speaker 1: and then we plant our our food plot accordingly. We
48:43
Speaker 1: always pick it first. And we've gotta have good back cover.
48:45
Speaker 1: You gotta have access and really really good back cover,
48:48
Speaker 1: particularly if he's sitting over a food plot where you
48:51
Speaker 1: know there's gonna be a lot of eyeballs, so you
48:53
Speaker 1: want to be able to sit there and and uh
48:55
Speaker 1: keep from getting picked off and make sure that you've
48:57
Speaker 1: got great back cover so they don't see you up
48:59
Speaker 1: in a tree. Yeah. So, so one of the challenges
49:02
Speaker 1: that I know a lot of people encounter when trying
49:05
Speaker 1: to set up a property with food and hunting access
49:08
Speaker 1: and everything is trying to think through where your wind
49:12
Speaker 1: is going to blow in a situation like this, because
49:15
Speaker 1: there's because one scenario where the wind is blowing from
49:18
Speaker 1: the bedding out into the open field, and that's great
49:21
Speaker 1: until that food source fills up with deer towards the
49:24
Speaker 1: end of the night, and now all of a sudden,
49:25
Speaker 1: you're wind is blowing to where all this deer are now,
49:28
Speaker 1: and you know, for the last ten minutes you're hoping
49:31
Speaker 1: that mature bucks gonna step out, and instead your wind
49:33
Speaker 1: is just spooked ten does off the food plot, and
49:35
Speaker 1: now they're all running back in. You're not gonna see
49:37
Speaker 1: the buck. The opposite situation is that if you you know,
49:40
Speaker 1: if you have that wind blowing anywhere into the cover,
49:43
Speaker 1: you risk of course spooking something um before they ever
49:46
Speaker 1: get out there. Ideally, you'd like to have a situation
49:49
Speaker 1: that doesn't do either one of those. Are there any
49:51
Speaker 1: specific things you think about or tricks as far as
49:54
Speaker 1: positioning your plot or your stands to negate those two
49:58
Speaker 1: potential wind issues. Well, it gets back to historical data
50:01
Speaker 1: and m R. I. You know an observation, where is
50:05
Speaker 1: where is the least amount of activity coming from? And
50:09
Speaker 1: you're going to give up a down wind side. There
50:11
Speaker 1: are no two ways about it. I don't care who
50:13
Speaker 1: you are, how hard you hunt, or how set free
50:16
Speaker 1: you are, You're still going to give up a down
50:18
Speaker 1: wind side if you're in a tree stand. So that
50:21
Speaker 1: historical data becomes extremely important, m R. I. Knowing where
50:26
Speaker 1: those deer are coming out, where they feel comfortable feeding,
50:29
Speaker 1: and where the least amount of activity comes from. And
50:32
Speaker 1: then you say, okay, I've been watching this thing for
50:34
Speaker 1: two or three years now, and there are zero deer
50:37
Speaker 1: coming from this direction. Then Baygli, there's the area that
50:40
Speaker 1: you're gonna want to look for a tree and say,
50:42
Speaker 1: I can I can get in there, and I can
50:44
Speaker 1: let my wind go out over this direction and do
50:46
Speaker 1: very little damage. And I think it's as much about
50:49
Speaker 1: being smart and observing where they're coming from and where
50:52
Speaker 1: they're going to as it is just picking that tree
50:54
Speaker 1: and and hoping and praying that the wind will won't
50:57
Speaker 1: mess you up because it only takes one and if
51:00
Speaker 1: she if she blows and clears the field and they
51:03
Speaker 1: domino back, that is the worst feeling in the world
51:06
Speaker 1: for them, the domino back because if you if they
51:09
Speaker 1: would have stayed on the field, pretty good chance you'd
51:11
Speaker 1: have seen that buck and he'd have been out there
51:13
Speaker 1: during daylight hours. But once they domino back, then you're
51:16
Speaker 1: another hour, hour and a half, two hours and maybe
51:18
Speaker 1: not at all, and you may not see him at
51:20
Speaker 1: all the rest of the night. So it's extremely important.
51:23
Speaker 1: But it gets back to being observant, you know, when
51:26
Speaker 1: you're sitting there the first two years, and that's the
51:28
Speaker 1: reason we like to hunt the perimeters first and try
51:30
Speaker 1: and start making those observations and saying, Okay, now I
51:34
Speaker 1: can move in. I know which tree I want to
51:36
Speaker 1: sit in because there's very little movement coming in and
51:38
Speaker 1: out of that tree. But yet I still want to
51:40
Speaker 1: be able to get that deer within bow range. And
51:43
Speaker 1: that's where the inside and outside corners become important. Yeah,
51:46
Speaker 1: that's that's when you start getting the kind of the
51:48
Speaker 1: art of it all. Um. You talked about that domino effect.
51:51
Speaker 1: When that one dough blows and sends everything back, and
51:54
Speaker 1: I agree that there's not a worse feeling I think
51:56
Speaker 1: in the world. Then when you hear that blow and
51:58
Speaker 1: you just your heart just drops, And it's funny. The
52:01
Speaker 1: other night, I was sitting in bed reading and all
52:04
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I heard a doe blow. I heard that,
52:07
Speaker 1: and my heart just dropped, my my breathing stopped. I
52:10
Speaker 1: had this this physical reaction because it was like my
52:13
Speaker 1: body automatically reacting to this sound that I hate so much.
52:17
Speaker 1: And then I took a second. I realized, Hey, you're
52:19
Speaker 1: sitting in bed. There's no dough blowing at you right now.
52:22
Speaker 1: And I realized it was my dog snoring. But but
52:26
Speaker 1: I had this very you had me wondering there. I
52:30
Speaker 1: had this very visceral physical reaction that was just like
52:33
Speaker 1: pre programmed into my body whenever I hear that kind
52:36
Speaker 1: of sound. Made me realize, that's been Yeah, it really is,
52:41
Speaker 1: I'll tell you. And and I'm I'm one of those guys.
52:44
Speaker 1: I thoroughly enjoy harvesting. The harvesting does. I've been doing
52:48
Speaker 1: it for many, many years. And if they so much
52:50
Speaker 1: as look cross eyed at me, they usually don't leave
52:54
Speaker 1: the field. That's probably the way to take care of
52:56
Speaker 1: that issue. UM, we had a luxury because the deer
53:00
Speaker 1: density is so high. I just can't seem to get
53:03
Speaker 1: the numbers down. And and that's a great problem to have.
53:05
Speaker 1: I'm not complaining by no means. I I enjoy seeing them,
53:09
Speaker 1: I enjoy harvesting them. We just had some venison sausage made,
53:13
Speaker 1: you know, some summer sausages made, and and uh, I
53:16
Speaker 1: was I was tickled to try it. I got my
53:18
Speaker 1: wife had picked it up. I had dropped it off
53:20
Speaker 1: and they made it. She had picked it up. So
53:22
Speaker 1: I tried a piece last night. It was phenomenal. So
53:25
Speaker 1: we we eat it all season long and continue to
53:28
Speaker 1: keep the freezers full. Yeah, you can't. You can't beat that. UM.
53:33
Speaker 1: One additional question on the food plot architecture piece. We
53:37
Speaker 1: talked about positioning where you want the plots. We talked
53:40
Speaker 1: about where your tree is gonna be handling wind. What
53:43
Speaker 1: about shapes of your actual plantings. Do you do anything
53:47
Speaker 1: to try to funnel deer movement into smaller areas or
53:50
Speaker 1: are you not as concerned about that. That's a great question,
53:53
Speaker 1: because we do do that, and we're pretty diligent about it.
53:56
Speaker 1: You know, if you see where there and again back
53:59
Speaker 1: to the data in the m R. I if you've
54:01
Speaker 1: watched them for two or three years and you know
54:03
Speaker 1: they're gonna pop out over here, and then as the
54:05
Speaker 1: evening progresses they slowly migrate to another another part of
54:10
Speaker 1: the field, then by all means, you can do that
54:13
Speaker 1: little hour glass effect or figure eight, so to speak,
54:16
Speaker 1: and neck it down, uh to where you know you've
54:19
Speaker 1: got a maybe maybe a little bit closer shot where
54:24
Speaker 1: they're not you know, quite out there at eighty and
54:26
Speaker 1: a hundred yards, but maybe they get in with that
54:28
Speaker 1: thirty five or forty yards shot. Then by all means
54:31
Speaker 1: do that. We do that quite often, or make a
54:33
Speaker 1: little bit of a triangular effect, and it may be
54:36
Speaker 1: something that you've created with some hay bales. I use
54:39
Speaker 1: big round bales all the time and make them walk
54:41
Speaker 1: around the end of them. You know, we're I'll have
54:44
Speaker 1: them straight away from me in a tree stand up
54:46
Speaker 1: where I'm looking straight into the end of the bales,
54:48
Speaker 1: and they may go you know into the timber, oh
54:52
Speaker 1: three or four bales deep for five bales, but there
54:54
Speaker 1: within forty yards whenever they walk around the end of it.
54:57
Speaker 1: I do it all the time. So there's other way
55:00
Speaker 1: ways of doing it other than just necking down your
55:02
Speaker 1: food plot. But but marks a master at it. The
55:05
Speaker 1: Mad Scientist does it on on a lot of different
55:08
Speaker 1: things where he does that are glass effect. Yeah, that
55:10
Speaker 1: that seems to be a good way to Again to
55:12
Speaker 1: your point, there's a whole lot of ways to influence movement.
55:16
Speaker 1: And as you start stacking up that, m R. I
55:19
Speaker 1: you're learning, learning, learning, then you can start tweaking, tweaking,
55:22
Speaker 1: tweaking a little more every year. Um, and that for
55:25
Speaker 1: me is probably what's become the most fun. I love
55:27
Speaker 1: making all these little tweaks. You try something out, you
55:30
Speaker 1: put something out there. Then you get to sit first
55:32
Speaker 1: season and watch how they use it and watch how
55:34
Speaker 1: they enjoy the food or the cover you enhanced, Like
55:37
Speaker 1: that's incredible to see. And then the chess match begins again.
55:40
Speaker 1: You get to keep turning the knobs, pulling the levers,
55:43
Speaker 1: and uh, I geek out over that big time. Well,
55:46
Speaker 1: you know, I can't tell you how many times I've
55:48
Speaker 1: sat in a tree and go, why did I do that?
55:50
Speaker 1: You know that was stupid. I don't know why I
55:52
Speaker 1: planted so much food and made this plot so much
55:54
Speaker 1: bigger where now I can't I can't shoot any of them.
55:57
Speaker 1: So there you can make mistakes and to learn about
56:00
Speaker 1: those mistakes, but you've gotta be willing to say, you
56:03
Speaker 1: know what, next year, I'm gonna change this a little bit,
56:06
Speaker 1: or I'm gonna take a disk and I'm gonna disc
56:08
Speaker 1: up what I planted because they're out there at four
56:10
Speaker 1: yards or two d yards and I can't get a
56:12
Speaker 1: shot anyway. So you may, you know, eliminate a little
56:16
Speaker 1: part of it, you know what. It may only be
56:17
Speaker 1: a couple of brush hoogs wide or something, But try
56:21
Speaker 1: and direct a white tail in your position is not
56:24
Speaker 1: as hard as what someone might think. But it takes
56:27
Speaker 1: observation first, and if they're comfortable being there, then it
56:30
Speaker 1: becomes a lot more a lot more easily done. Yeah.
56:34
Speaker 1: So so to that point, if they're comfortable there, I
56:37
Speaker 1: think that is a key aspect of food plots is
56:39
Speaker 1: making sure they feel comfortable. And lots of times folks
56:44
Speaker 1: will plant food plots and then they think that's gonna
56:47
Speaker 1: be the silver bullet that's going to change everything for
56:49
Speaker 1: them when they're hunting. But then they go in there
56:51
Speaker 1: in the mornings and they spook deer out the food plots,
56:53
Speaker 1: and then in the evenings they leave their tree stands
56:55
Speaker 1: that are hung right in the edge of the food plot,
56:56
Speaker 1: and they walk through it and they spook a bunch
56:58
Speaker 1: of deer, And after doing that two or three times
57:00
Speaker 1: now they never see Bucks anymore. And then eventually they
57:02
Speaker 1: never see does anymore, and they're wondering, why is my
57:04
Speaker 1: hunting worse now than it was before I had the
57:06
Speaker 1: food plots? UM. I think that's a scenario that people
57:10
Speaker 1: sometimes experience when they're not thinking about access or ways
57:14
Speaker 1: to maintain security within those food plots for those deer.
57:18
Speaker 1: So that brings me to two questions. Number one, do
57:22
Speaker 1: you ever do anything as far as screening cover to
57:25
Speaker 1: increase security for deer within those food plots so they
57:27
Speaker 1: feel like they can't see things outside or they can't
57:30
Speaker 1: see you moving in um? And then number two, what else,
57:34
Speaker 1: if if there's things other than screening cover, are you
57:36
Speaker 1: doing to help improve your access your own hunting access
57:40
Speaker 1: in and out? Well? And you hit on too, they're
57:43
Speaker 1: in and out. It's as hard to get out of
57:46
Speaker 1: a tree stand as it is to get in a
57:48
Speaker 1: tree stand when they're you know, if you're getting into
57:50
Speaker 1: your tree stand early enough and the deer haven't moved yet.
57:53
Speaker 1: They're obviously not on the food plot, and you know
57:56
Speaker 1: a lot of times they won't see you access that spot.
57:58
Speaker 1: You can climb up, get settled in, but you still
58:00
Speaker 1: got to get out of it at night. So that's
58:03
Speaker 1: the one or in the dark, that's the one that
58:05
Speaker 1: that really is can do the you know the harm
58:08
Speaker 1: in the sidings UH literally go down. And I don't
58:12
Speaker 1: know what that incremental rate is, but if you go
58:15
Speaker 1: to the same set four or five nights in a row,
58:18
Speaker 1: your sightings are gonna go down accordingly. So it's extremely
58:21
Speaker 1: important to be able to bounce around and hunt on
58:24
Speaker 1: the right winds, but it's extremely hard to get out
58:27
Speaker 1: of there. And yes, we do create UH different access
58:31
Speaker 1: UH points, and whether we're cutting through a timber or
58:34
Speaker 1: using UH, I use you know, little drainages and draws,
58:38
Speaker 1: and I make sure that they're clean. Will go in
58:39
Speaker 1: with a chainsaw and make sure that they're clean, and
58:42
Speaker 1: you can slip in or slip out through that drainage
58:44
Speaker 1: without being seen. If you're up on top of a
58:47
Speaker 1: hog back or a ridge, they all see you. If
58:49
Speaker 1: you're down in the crack, you know, and you're and
58:51
Speaker 1: you're kind of hunker down and you've got a little
58:53
Speaker 1: bit of cover going in and out, and and rule
58:55
Speaker 1: will located tree stand sometimes in a spot where I
58:58
Speaker 1: know I can climb up the backs out of a
59:00
Speaker 1: tree without being detected. In addition to that, we may
59:04
Speaker 1: plant in areas. I had a spot last year on
59:06
Speaker 1: a farm that had a pretty big bottom field, and
59:09
Speaker 1: I felt like the bottom was way too open, and
59:13
Speaker 1: it felt like the deer didn't feel comfortable crossing that
59:15
Speaker 1: particular fee. So I loaded it up with carn and
59:18
Speaker 1: with biologic in that carn. Because my muddy bullline was
59:23
Speaker 1: on the other end of the field, I needed a
59:25
Speaker 1: way to access it without being seen. I planted a
59:29
Speaker 1: guest row, And a guest row is just where your
59:32
Speaker 1: planter you move over a little bit and you leave
59:35
Speaker 1: yourself a little with between two rows. And then we
59:39
Speaker 1: went down through there with a machete and we trimmed
59:41
Speaker 1: them just a little bit, and you could literally walk
59:43
Speaker 1: four hundred yards through the carn field without ever being detected.
59:48
Speaker 1: And it was as sweet access as I've ever had
59:50
Speaker 1: to get in and out of a spot. And we
59:53
Speaker 1: did that last year all we did was moved the
59:55
Speaker 1: planter over and I think we were maybe I don't know. Fifth. Uh,
59:59
Speaker 1: let's see twelve. We're sixteen rows in from the edge
1:00:02
Speaker 1: of the field and then planet at guest row, and
1:00:04
Speaker 1: you could walk all the way the blind four yards
1:00:06
Speaker 1: without ever being without ever being out in the open.
1:00:08
Speaker 1: And this was a pretty decent bottom field. So that
1:00:12
Speaker 1: was one way. Planting switch grass is another. Mark does
1:00:15
Speaker 1: that and and has that on a lot of different
1:00:17
Speaker 1: spots on his farms where he's got has it created
1:00:21
Speaker 1: that cover where it's up over your head, and then
1:00:23
Speaker 1: you might take a little more or something and and
1:00:25
Speaker 1: create a little path, or you can get in and
1:00:27
Speaker 1: out there without being detected. Uh. Using you know some
1:00:30
Speaker 1: brushy areas that you can get into a tree stand
1:00:33
Speaker 1: without being detected, using the terrain the topography to help you.
1:00:38
Speaker 1: There's a number of different ways of doing it, but
1:00:40
Speaker 1: being able to get in and out is always crucial.
1:00:44
Speaker 1: And you do as much harm getting out as you
1:00:46
Speaker 1: do walking in. Yeah, so so true. And um I
1:00:50
Speaker 1: will if I had the ability. I don't yet, but
1:00:53
Speaker 1: if I ever have the ability to plant standing corn
1:00:55
Speaker 1: that is a trick, I will definitely be be utilizing
1:00:58
Speaker 1: because that just sounds like the kind of access route
1:01:01
Speaker 1: that gets a deer geek like really excited imagining being
1:01:04
Speaker 1: able to slip in and out so easily without being detected. Uh,
1:01:08
Speaker 1: that's that's a dream scenario. Um. It was. I'll interrupt
1:01:12
Speaker 1: you here. It was the single best access I've ever created,
1:01:15
Speaker 1: bar none, and we've done a lot of them, but
1:01:17
Speaker 1: that one was slick. I kid, you know. It was
1:01:19
Speaker 1: you could walk down this entire bottom field and they
1:01:22
Speaker 1: knew they had no clue you were there, and it
1:01:25
Speaker 1: was easy. It was quiet, it was you didn't make
1:01:28
Speaker 1: any noise because we took the time in the summer
1:01:30
Speaker 1: months to go through with a machete, and even though
1:01:32
Speaker 1: the guest row was was wide, we wanted to make
1:01:35
Speaker 1: sure we didn't rub against anything or hit anything with
1:01:38
Speaker 1: a bow or cameras, are arms or elbows there, knees
1:01:40
Speaker 1: and it was clean. I mean you literally could skirt
1:01:43
Speaker 1: down through there and nothing knew you were there. Yeah.
1:01:45
Speaker 1: That's uh yeah, if that's a dream scenario, then, which
1:01:49
Speaker 1: it is, I need to ask you about a nightmare scenario,
1:01:52
Speaker 1: which is when your plans for a food plot, whether
1:01:57
Speaker 1: it be a corn plot, for access or a greenfield
1:01:59
Speaker 1: that hunt. Maybe I think probably the green fields a
1:02:01
Speaker 1: better example of this. But when you have a situation
1:02:04
Speaker 1: like that where you're hit with the worst weather possible
1:02:08
Speaker 1: during the summer or the fall when you plant it
1:02:10
Speaker 1: and you have drought and your food plot has failed. UM,
1:02:15
Speaker 1: I have seen you use some different creative ways to
1:02:18
Speaker 1: deal with scenarios like that. Could you talk to us
1:02:20
Speaker 1: a little bit about how you handle drought and other
1:02:23
Speaker 1: issues of food plots. Um, You've got a few tricks
1:02:26
Speaker 1: up your sleeve. I think. Well, for whatever reason, the
1:02:29
Speaker 1: the region that I'm in in northern Missouri there where
1:02:32
Speaker 1: my farm is located, I don't know why, but we
1:02:35
Speaker 1: we get hit with a drought seems like every single year.
1:02:39
Speaker 1: You know, and brother marks up there his carns twelve
1:02:41
Speaker 1: foot tall and his beans are up over his you know,
1:02:44
Speaker 1: his his belt, and he's telling me how good his
1:02:47
Speaker 1: food plots look. And I'm struggling, literally struggling to get
1:02:51
Speaker 1: a drop of rain. And it becomes extremely stressful. And
1:02:56
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, it costs a lot to
1:02:58
Speaker 1: you know, the input costs are high in the spring
1:03:00
Speaker 1: and all those other things, and it's just it, I'm
1:03:03
Speaker 1: faced with it each and every year. So I went
1:03:06
Speaker 1: through the trouble. I found a used fire truck that
1:03:09
Speaker 1: was for sale sitting at a uh, you know, outside
1:03:12
Speaker 1: of a firehouse, and I ended up purchasing it for
1:03:14
Speaker 1: a little bit of nothing. And this thing had a
1:03:17
Speaker 1: you know, a three ninety engine in it with a
1:03:19
Speaker 1: big stainless dred gallon water tank on the back, and
1:03:23
Speaker 1: the tank was worth and the motor was worth more
1:03:25
Speaker 1: than the truck. So I was like, man, I gotta
1:03:27
Speaker 1: get this thing, and I've been utilizing it. I pumped Unfortunately,
1:03:31
Speaker 1: I have some farm ponds, so I pump water out
1:03:33
Speaker 1: of the ponds, load the truck, and I try to
1:03:36
Speaker 1: try to keep a few food plots alive each and
1:03:40
Speaker 1: every year and then and then hope that we're gonna
1:03:42
Speaker 1: get a little bit of rain and mother nature be
1:03:44
Speaker 1: kind enough to keep some of the other stuff growing.
1:03:46
Speaker 1: But I found out that I can't water them all
1:03:49
Speaker 1: when it's a hundred and ten degrees, but I'm able
1:03:51
Speaker 1: to put enough water on two or three of them
1:03:54
Speaker 1: to uh to keep them, to keep them going and
1:03:57
Speaker 1: keep them green. In addition to that, because I have
1:04:01
Speaker 1: a few farm ponds, I started looking at areas where
1:04:04
Speaker 1: I could siphon water. And we've done that over the
1:04:07
Speaker 1: top of the levee, where I'll just take literally a
1:04:10
Speaker 1: garden hose and a bucket with a rock in the
1:04:13
Speaker 1: bucket and pook holes in the bucket, so I throw
1:04:15
Speaker 1: it out into the pond and uh, then I got
1:04:18
Speaker 1: a garden hose going over the back of the levee.
1:04:20
Speaker 1: And and typically the backside of a pond is usually
1:04:23
Speaker 1: a low lying area. It's some silt that's usually washed
1:04:26
Speaker 1: down in there. It's usually grass that's fairly tall or
1:04:29
Speaker 1: some thick cover. But it's not very hard to keep
1:04:32
Speaker 1: a food plot growing. And it may be a small one,
1:04:35
Speaker 1: you know, as small as it may be. It may
1:04:36
Speaker 1: only be a quarter of an acre, a third of
1:04:38
Speaker 1: an acre, half acre or whatever. But it's pretty easy
1:04:41
Speaker 1: to keep those growing if you've got a little bit
1:04:44
Speaker 1: of a siphon effect going. And I've done that on
1:04:46
Speaker 1: two or three occasions as well, two or three different
1:04:48
Speaker 1: areas that I had never planted before, and said, you
1:04:50
Speaker 1: know what, the water's right here, and we have an
1:04:53
Speaker 1: elevation change of fifteen foot. All I gotta do is
1:04:56
Speaker 1: start a siphon and let the water run out and
1:04:58
Speaker 1: we've been doing that and in a garden as it
1:05:00
Speaker 1: doesn't take much. You move the hose about every other
1:05:03
Speaker 1: day or whatever, and uh, it's just enough to keep
1:05:05
Speaker 1: it alive until mother nature blesses you with with a
1:05:09
Speaker 1: nice rain. And I think I saw. So what you're
1:05:11
Speaker 1: doing there with that hose is you're running it into
1:05:13
Speaker 1: your food plot and then you have a bunch of
1:05:14
Speaker 1: holes cut into the hose at different distances, so you're
1:05:18
Speaker 1: kind of getting almost like a sprinkler effect across part
1:05:21
Speaker 1: of the plots there, right. Yes, Yeah, I bought some
1:05:23
Speaker 1: half inch PBC and took a drill and drill holes
1:05:26
Speaker 1: in it, and uh, it's you know, you're it's a siphon,
1:05:30
Speaker 1: so you gotta neck it down a little bit to
1:05:32
Speaker 1: make sure it's got enough pressure to even come out
1:05:34
Speaker 1: of those holes. But it did. It worked, and uh
1:05:38
Speaker 1: we would tickled to death to get it to work.
1:05:40
Speaker 1: So you kind of got to be smart about it.
1:05:41
Speaker 1: So we've got a little bit bigger holes and going
1:05:43
Speaker 1: to smaller ones are smaller than going to bigger and
1:05:45
Speaker 1: trying to get that volume out and making sure that
1:05:48
Speaker 1: the uh, you know, the end of it is plugged. Obviously,
1:05:50
Speaker 1: but um, you know, we were just trying to get
1:05:53
Speaker 1: creative and say, how in the world can I keep
1:05:55
Speaker 1: this food plot growing Because it's in the middle of
1:05:58
Speaker 1: my farm. It's one of the best spots on my
1:06:01
Speaker 1: entire farm, and I have zero food here because it
1:06:03
Speaker 1: all burnt up. So we started getting more and more
1:06:06
Speaker 1: creative each and every year, and I said, you know what,
1:06:09
Speaker 1: this is a no brainer. It costs you literally nothing,
1:06:11
Speaker 1: a few garden hoses and some a couple of pieces
1:06:14
Speaker 1: of PVC pipe, and uh it's worked out pretty dog on. Well, yeah,
1:06:19
Speaker 1: that's that's that's pretty ingenious. I like the creative d
1:06:23
Speaker 1: I y work on that one to to solve a
1:06:26
Speaker 1: problem that could be pretty tricky otherwise, especially in a
1:06:29
Speaker 1: region like Sounds Like, where you're at work for whatever reason,
1:06:31
Speaker 1: getting some some funky consistent droughts. That's that's kind of
1:06:35
Speaker 1: a a frustrating situation, I gotta believe well. And and
1:06:39
Speaker 1: another thing we did to enhance that little food plot,
1:06:41
Speaker 1: we went ahead and put scrape trees in there. I
1:06:44
Speaker 1: cut some shingle oaks down and then planted us you know,
1:06:47
Speaker 1: just took a post hole digger and put a scrape
1:06:49
Speaker 1: tree in there. And then all and then put a
1:06:51
Speaker 1: camera on it, and it's amazing how many bucks I
1:06:54
Speaker 1: was getting on this a little bitty highhole food plot
1:06:57
Speaker 1: below this pond. In early season, it can be pretty
1:07:01
Speaker 1: dog on lethal if it's still warm, still hot, still dry,
1:07:04
Speaker 1: and they've got a green food plot, it's the lush
1:07:06
Speaker 1: food plot. And then they got water right there as well.
1:07:09
Speaker 1: So we put a scrape tree in, put a camera
1:07:10
Speaker 1: on it, and we're like, holy cow, there's a lot
1:07:12
Speaker 1: more deer using this than what I realized. Do you
1:07:16
Speaker 1: put scrape trees in all of your food plots? Are
1:07:19
Speaker 1: large open food sources like that? You know? I don't
1:07:22
Speaker 1: in all of them, but I do in several where
1:07:25
Speaker 1: I where I want to shoot one with a bow
1:07:27
Speaker 1: and I want to get him within twenty five yards
1:07:29
Speaker 1: or twenty two yards. I do, and a lot of those,
1:07:31
Speaker 1: you know, because there are there are firearm spots, and
1:07:34
Speaker 1: then there are archery spots. And we're a little more
1:07:37
Speaker 1: creative with our archery spots, uh than we are the firearms.
1:07:40
Speaker 1: But Mark's got him in most of his or many
1:07:43
Speaker 1: of his, and he's got there had really really good
1:07:46
Speaker 1: luck with it over the years, tremendous pictures and video
1:07:49
Speaker 1: footage of these things. Uh, So we've been putting more
1:07:52
Speaker 1: and more out, seems like each and every year. Yeah,
1:07:54
Speaker 1: and it definitely seems to be a u a tactic
1:07:57
Speaker 1: that works. I've been using it here in Michigan too,
1:07:59
Speaker 1: And great pictures and great way to get dear to
1:08:02
Speaker 1: move to a specific location and pause for a moment,
1:08:05
Speaker 1: sometimes for a shot. It's uh, it seems to be
1:08:07
Speaker 1: a no brainer in a lot of cases. Speaking of trees, though,
1:08:11
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that we do talk about
1:08:14
Speaker 1: the other half of white tail habitat. We talked a
1:08:16
Speaker 1: lot about food, but what about cover? Um, how do
1:08:20
Speaker 1: you think about how do you like to implement cover
1:08:22
Speaker 1: improvements in situations where you need that? Do you do
1:08:25
Speaker 1: a lot of that? Actually we do. And I'll tell
1:08:27
Speaker 1: you that I mentioned Dr Grant Woods a little while ago.
1:08:31
Speaker 1: He was one of the first ones that looked at
1:08:33
Speaker 1: a piece of property with us, and and it was
1:08:35
Speaker 1: a piece of market purchase. And Grant was walking through
1:08:37
Speaker 1: it and he said, you know what do you got
1:08:39
Speaker 1: here for for covering food? And and it was full
1:08:42
Speaker 1: of shag bark hickries. And Mark said, well, we got
1:08:45
Speaker 1: all these hickores and he said that that's not cover
1:08:47
Speaker 1: off food. Yet they get zero zero benefits out of
1:08:51
Speaker 1: a shag bark hickory. So you know we look at
1:08:55
Speaker 1: it and say, oh man, we got all this cover.
1:08:57
Speaker 1: He looked at and said, you know what you could
1:08:58
Speaker 1: be doing better to buy enging some of these trees
1:09:01
Speaker 1: and letting that sunlight hit the ground and promoting some
1:09:04
Speaker 1: of that uh you know that understory to grow in
1:09:07
Speaker 1: lou having that big old hickory there, because the only
1:09:09
Speaker 1: thing he's supporting as a as a nest of squirreld.
1:09:12
Speaker 1: So you know, everybody looks at it differently. It's nice
1:09:15
Speaker 1: to have someone with a forestry background that says, okay,
1:09:19
Speaker 1: here's you've got. You know, white oaks, you've got pin oaks,
1:09:22
Speaker 1: you've got breads, you've got shingles, you've got which ones
1:09:25
Speaker 1: are you know a prime food source for a white tail?
1:09:28
Speaker 1: Which ones do you want to promote? Where do you
1:09:30
Speaker 1: want to go in and put a little fertilizer stick
1:09:33
Speaker 1: at the base of that tree, or put two or
1:09:35
Speaker 1: three around the base of that tree. If you've got
1:09:37
Speaker 1: to stand nearby, you know, and your and your planning
1:09:39
Speaker 1: on hunting a white oak grow So there's different ways
1:09:42
Speaker 1: of looking at it and different people that have different
1:09:45
Speaker 1: facilities that can help you with that. But we always
1:09:48
Speaker 1: look at the mass crop. I always want to know
1:09:51
Speaker 1: exactly what's gonna put that fat, you know, onto their
1:09:56
Speaker 1: their body before the rut hits and during the rut,
1:09:59
Speaker 1: are they gonna have enough food source and enough mass
1:10:02
Speaker 1: crop to to carry them through? And carrying capacity is
1:10:05
Speaker 1: so important now in areas where there's let's say, you
1:10:09
Speaker 1: might be butted up against a tillable field. But because
1:10:13
Speaker 1: of the efficiency of of the farming equipment nowadays, years ago,
1:10:17
Speaker 1: there was a lot of it that laid on the ground. Anymore,
1:10:20
Speaker 1: there isn't many kernels that lay there anymore. You don't
1:10:22
Speaker 1: see a lot of corn and beans laying on the
1:10:24
Speaker 1: ground because the the equipment has gotten so much more efficient,
1:10:28
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I think the numbers really kind
1:10:31
Speaker 1: of tested testimonial to that. You see the numbers have
1:10:34
Speaker 1: have declined in in those really really big areas where
1:10:38
Speaker 1: there are a lot of agg fields but it's kind
1:10:40
Speaker 1: of broken woodlots. I think the number and the deer
1:10:43
Speaker 1: densities down because there it doesn't have the carrying capacity
1:10:46
Speaker 1: that it once had. So we're careful about looking for
1:10:49
Speaker 1: a mass crop. We're also careful about looking at the
1:10:51
Speaker 1: agg fields that are in and around it. But you
1:10:54
Speaker 1: know how many how many white oak trees you got?
1:10:57
Speaker 1: You know, reds and blacks are all good, but we
1:11:01
Speaker 1: really want to make sure that it's got a mass
1:11:03
Speaker 1: crop as well. Yeah, Now what about what about actual
1:11:06
Speaker 1: betting areas within that cover? Do you get as strategic
1:11:10
Speaker 1: with betting as you do with food? And by that
1:11:13
Speaker 1: I mean do you ever try to go in and say, hey,
1:11:16
Speaker 1: I really wish that the betting was happening here and
1:11:19
Speaker 1: then create a great betting area there or do you
1:11:21
Speaker 1: usually just look and see where are they betting now?
1:11:23
Speaker 1: And then do we, if we need to improve it
1:11:25
Speaker 1: a little bit, improve it or do we just leave alone?
1:11:27
Speaker 1: Which of those two do you do? Well? I haven't
1:11:29
Speaker 1: done a lot of it on my form because I
1:11:31
Speaker 1: have what I feel as though sufficient amount of betting,
1:11:33
Speaker 1: and we got food plots planted in and pretty tight
1:11:36
Speaker 1: to that betting, and then we've got destination feed fields
1:11:39
Speaker 1: where they'll leave the betting, hit the green and then
1:11:42
Speaker 1: go to grain. So that's really the optimum if you
1:11:45
Speaker 1: can accomplish that on smaller pieces, then I could see
1:11:49
Speaker 1: doing a little more, uh, you know, as far as
1:11:51
Speaker 1: promoting that betting, and you can do that by hinging.
1:11:54
Speaker 1: It's really not that hard, and it maybe trees that
1:11:57
Speaker 1: are that are already dying. You know, in Missouri we
1:11:59
Speaker 1: got hit with a lot of diseases on on some
1:12:02
Speaker 1: of our oak trees that literally took out some of
1:12:04
Speaker 1: the most beautiful timber you'd ever want to see in
1:12:07
Speaker 1: In those particular scenarios, you can go ahead and log
1:12:09
Speaker 1: it out, get the logs off of it, and then
1:12:11
Speaker 1: promote it with with different brush poles. You know, take
1:12:14
Speaker 1: those tops and put them in a certain pattern or
1:12:19
Speaker 1: a certain direction where you kind of maybe funnel some
1:12:22
Speaker 1: dear past the tree stand. It's not that hard to do.
1:12:25
Speaker 1: It takes a little manual labor and a chainsaw. But uh,
1:12:28
Speaker 1: you know, if you go in there and you do
1:12:29
Speaker 1: it early on and you continue enhancing that each and
1:12:33
Speaker 1: every year, you can direct a lot of that traffic.
1:12:35
Speaker 1: You know, if you've got certain trails and they're just
1:12:38
Speaker 1: skirting you by, you know, an extra ten or fifteen
1:12:40
Speaker 1: yards that you don't like, then by all means, take
1:12:43
Speaker 1: some of those trees that are either not helping a
1:12:46
Speaker 1: white tail or they're already dead, and create your own
1:12:49
Speaker 1: funnel inside and it may or may not be betting necessarily,
1:12:52
Speaker 1: but just by creating that structure in that funnel type
1:12:56
Speaker 1: of effect, you can have a pretty compounding effect. Yeah,
1:13:01
Speaker 1: I see there being just as many interesting ways you
1:13:04
Speaker 1: could manipulate and tweak things within a timbered environment as
1:13:08
Speaker 1: you could in like the fields where you're doing food
1:13:11
Speaker 1: plot architecture. That there's probably and I know there are
1:13:13
Speaker 1: examples of people doing kind of timber architecture or cover
1:13:16
Speaker 1: architecture to get those edges to get deer moving down
1:13:19
Speaker 1: to funnel deer through different ways. Um, it's there, really is.
1:13:25
Speaker 1: It's kind of a property really can be a canvas
1:13:27
Speaker 1: and you can paint whatever picture you want on it,
1:13:29
Speaker 1: whether that be with a chainsaw or with a tractor. Um.
1:13:33
Speaker 1: Either way, there's ways to to move things around to
1:13:36
Speaker 1: work towards your benefit as a hunter, and then of
1:13:38
Speaker 1: course improving the habitat for deer and all the wildlife there.
1:13:42
Speaker 1: Usually they go hand in hand right well, and you
1:13:44
Speaker 1: you hit the nail on the head, you know it's
1:13:46
Speaker 1: a blank canvas. When it's a new piece that you're
1:13:48
Speaker 1: starting with and uh, it depends how assertive and how
1:13:51
Speaker 1: aggressive you want to get with it. But one of
1:13:54
Speaker 1: the things that I've noticed throughout time the guys that
1:13:57
Speaker 1: are killing the biggest of deer with consistency, you know, consistently.
1:14:03
Speaker 1: For those guys that are more aggressive, you know, the
1:14:05
Speaker 1: guy that sits on his heel and just sits back
1:14:08
Speaker 1: and watches. Uh. He may or may not. He may
1:14:10
Speaker 1: kill one or two, but he's not gonna do it
1:14:12
Speaker 1: year after year. It's that guy that's a little more
1:14:15
Speaker 1: uh maybe I don't know, a little more type A
1:14:18
Speaker 1: that's a little more aggressive mark being one of him.
1:14:20
Speaker 1: He just he's never satisfied and he's never happy with
1:14:23
Speaker 1: his own performance, so he continues to enhance it day
1:14:27
Speaker 1: after day after day. And if it means putting a
1:14:30
Speaker 1: few hay bales out in front of you in a
1:14:32
Speaker 1: in a feed field or a food plot, then by
1:14:35
Speaker 1: all means do it. Or if it means going into
1:14:38
Speaker 1: the timber with a chainsaw and taking a deadfall and
1:14:40
Speaker 1: moving it and creating that wind row of brushed where
1:14:44
Speaker 1: they gotta walk around the end of it, then do
1:14:46
Speaker 1: that too, Or move your tree stand one or the other.
1:14:48
Speaker 1: But there's ways of doing it, and they're not that hard.
1:14:51
Speaker 1: It just takes a little bit of manual labor. And
1:14:54
Speaker 1: and if you can conn a couple of buddies into
1:14:56
Speaker 1: helping you to see all that much easier where you
1:14:57
Speaker 1: just tell him what to do, that's a move right
1:15:01
Speaker 1: there that that's good to perfect. Um. You know, something
1:15:05
Speaker 1: we haven't really talked about it all is kind of
1:15:07
Speaker 1: the third leg of the tripod that that deer live
1:15:11
Speaker 1: off of, which is food cover and then water. Do
1:15:14
Speaker 1: you do you ever do much water manipulation? Do you
1:15:16
Speaker 1: ever try to dig in ponds or add things like that? Um?
1:15:20
Speaker 1: I know you mentioned using ponds to water food plots,
1:15:22
Speaker 1: but do you ever try to create water sources? You
1:15:24
Speaker 1: know a lot of guys do. I have not, because
1:15:27
Speaker 1: I have seven or eight farm ponds on my particular farm,
1:15:30
Speaker 1: and a couple of them are pretty good size, and
1:15:33
Speaker 1: we we fish them and and um, you know that
1:15:36
Speaker 1: was one of the reasons I bought the piece that
1:15:38
Speaker 1: I did was because it had so many farm ponds
1:15:41
Speaker 1: on it. And when I bought it, I thought, Man,
1:15:43
Speaker 1: I'm gonna fish ease every day. And that doesn't happen.
1:15:46
Speaker 1: You never have time to fish them. But every once
1:15:48
Speaker 1: in a while we'll get a while here and fish
1:15:50
Speaker 1: them and clean them and eat them. But with that
1:15:52
Speaker 1: being said, I think water source is one of the
1:15:56
Speaker 1: most important, particularly during the rut and up in your
1:16:00
Speaker 1: aft of the woods. I know they've been masters at
1:16:02
Speaker 1: making it work farm for a number of years where
1:16:04
Speaker 1: they go in and create those little bitty uh, you know,
1:16:08
Speaker 1: farm ponds if you will, even though they're small. Uh.
1:16:11
Speaker 1: They'll do it in the middle of the timber and
1:16:14
Speaker 1: and I think that area probably has it down better
1:16:17
Speaker 1: than most, you know, other than those arid, really really
1:16:21
Speaker 1: dry regions down in Texas and Oklahoma where they have
1:16:23
Speaker 1: water troughs and and those types of things. I think
1:16:26
Speaker 1: where you're located there, they've been mastering that for quite
1:16:29
Speaker 1: a while. I have not because I think it's a
1:16:32
Speaker 1: fine line, and you've got to be careful when if
1:16:34
Speaker 1: you don't keep them fresh and keep them full, sometimes
1:16:37
Speaker 1: they can get stagnant on your depending on the size
1:16:39
Speaker 1: of that water source. So and there too, hauling water
1:16:43
Speaker 1: is not the easiest thing in the world, but developing it,
1:16:46
Speaker 1: digging a hole, taking a little mini excavator or something
1:16:49
Speaker 1: out out there, and and you know, kind of clearing
1:16:52
Speaker 1: a little area where it's in a little revetment or
1:16:54
Speaker 1: digging down and then building a levy. It's not that
1:16:57
Speaker 1: hard and it doesn't take much to do it. So
1:17:00
Speaker 1: if a guy has a forty acre or sixty acre
1:17:03
Speaker 1: piece without water on it, then by all means, I
1:17:05
Speaker 1: would highly recommend putting a water source on it. Yeah,
1:17:08
Speaker 1: it seems like you said, there's a lot of folks
1:17:10
Speaker 1: here in the Upper Great Lakes who have found a
1:17:13
Speaker 1: lot of success putting those little just like you described,
1:17:15
Speaker 1: these little water holes back in the timber that specifically
1:17:18
Speaker 1: during the ruts, seems to be a great way to
1:17:21
Speaker 1: get passing bucks to stop for a moment coming through
1:17:24
Speaker 1: hit those little water sources while they're cruising. Um. I've
1:17:27
Speaker 1: tried it a little bit. I put a couple in
1:17:30
Speaker 1: and still trying to trying to figure out the best
1:17:32
Speaker 1: way to do it. But it's definitely something worth considering,
1:17:35
Speaker 1: especially if you're lacking water in your area. Those those
1:17:38
Speaker 1: spots are tricky to hunt to. A mature buck is
1:17:41
Speaker 1: really apprehensive about hitting though, so you've got to be
1:17:44
Speaker 1: kind of cognizant of that you may or may not
1:17:47
Speaker 1: kill him when he's at the water. You may have
1:17:50
Speaker 1: to sit off of that and try and catch him
1:17:52
Speaker 1: coming to and from because they're very, very careful about
1:17:55
Speaker 1: how they hit a water source. Yeah, that's an interesting point, um,
1:18:00
Speaker 1: speaking of that kind of thing. I guess, right in
1:18:02
Speaker 1: the situation where you put in a water hole, maybe
1:18:04
Speaker 1: and then you find out, oh jeez, you know, these
1:18:06
Speaker 1: bucks don't want to come out to it, Maybe because
1:18:08
Speaker 1: I put it out too far in the open, or
1:18:09
Speaker 1: maybe because of how I set up on it. Um.
1:18:12
Speaker 1: Mistakes like that that you can only really learn after
1:18:15
Speaker 1: having tried it and then observed and learned from him.
1:18:18
Speaker 1: You have obviously done a lot of things right with
1:18:21
Speaker 1: your with your various farms, especially your main Missouri farm.
1:18:25
Speaker 1: I know you've spent a lot of time on there.
1:18:26
Speaker 1: You've built this into a piece of white tail paradise. Um,
1:18:29
Speaker 1: you've done a lot right. But I gotta believe there's
1:18:31
Speaker 1: a few things maybe you've done wrong that you've looked
1:18:34
Speaker 1: back on and said, ah, I wish I hadn't done that,
1:18:36
Speaker 1: Or maybe there's something you realize and you had to
1:18:38
Speaker 1: fix it. But it's one of those big cross in
1:18:40
Speaker 1: your back that you always remember. Gosh, I sure wasted
1:18:42
Speaker 1: a lot of time or money on this thing. Um,
1:18:45
Speaker 1: is there any mistake like that over all of your
1:18:47
Speaker 1: years on your main farm there Missouri that you could
1:18:49
Speaker 1: point to as being an example of that kind of situation. Yeah,
1:18:53
Speaker 1: Number one, I think it'd be the fact that I
1:18:54
Speaker 1: got old and lazy. You know, it's easy to get
1:18:57
Speaker 1: it's easy to get complacent. Know when we were younger
1:19:01
Speaker 1: and we were really really going at it, Uh, it
1:19:05
Speaker 1: was easy to stay aggressive and stay assertive and try
1:19:07
Speaker 1: and get all of these things implemented that you want
1:19:09
Speaker 1: to implement. And then as you as you get intimate
1:19:12
Speaker 1: with a farm and you start getting uh, you know,
1:19:15
Speaker 1: to the point where it's not easy, but it's easier
1:19:18
Speaker 1: than it was in the beginning. Then all of a
1:19:19
Speaker 1: sudden you start to get lazy. And I think that
1:19:22
Speaker 1: that that can affect a lot of people. So again,
1:19:25
Speaker 1: and I said it earlier, that it's a matter of
1:19:27
Speaker 1: staying aggressive, staying assertive, uh, and just not not being
1:19:33
Speaker 1: satisfied with your own performance. And I think that's why
1:19:35
Speaker 1: Mark and I excel at times, him him more so
1:19:38
Speaker 1: than me, because he's just his mind never stops. They
1:19:41
Speaker 1: call him the mad Scientist for a reason. His mind
1:19:43
Speaker 1: is always working. He's constantly looking at reconics pictures and
1:19:48
Speaker 1: constantly trying to play the chess match, and he's he's
1:19:51
Speaker 1: just never ever happy. And when he gets one in
1:19:53
Speaker 1: his cross, he is like an old coyote. I swear
1:19:56
Speaker 1: he when he gets one and he wants to kill him,
1:19:59
Speaker 1: pretty good chance. He's gonna work on it until he does.
1:20:02
Speaker 1: If they moved during daylight hours. If not, obviously, then
1:20:04
Speaker 1: it doesn't get done. But uh, he's just a master
1:20:07
Speaker 1: at it. And I think that's that's the biggest mistake
1:20:11
Speaker 1: for me. And I'm just saying this personally, but it's
1:20:13
Speaker 1: it's becoming satisfied and and maybe not being as aggressive
1:20:17
Speaker 1: as I once was. And some of that comes with age,
1:20:20
Speaker 1: some of it comes with just being glazier as you
1:20:22
Speaker 1: get old, but being more assertive because there's still no matter.
1:20:26
Speaker 1: Every day when I go out on the farm, there's
1:20:29
Speaker 1: still something I can make better, there's still something I
1:20:31
Speaker 1: can improve, and there's still other ways of harvesting white tails. Um,
1:20:35
Speaker 1: I learned every single day, and uh, we never ever
1:20:39
Speaker 1: stopped learning. We're always analytical. You know. I've been hunting
1:20:42
Speaker 1: through fifty years and March's been hunting forty years, so
1:20:45
Speaker 1: there's ninety years worth of experience between the two of us.
1:20:49
Speaker 1: And uh, that's one of the reasons that we get Deercast.
1:20:51
Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons we developed the app was
1:20:53
Speaker 1: to try and help other people and say, you know what,
1:20:56
Speaker 1: the next time you go out, what what was going
1:20:58
Speaker 1: on here today? What was the prometer, what was the
1:21:01
Speaker 1: departure from average temperature, what was the wind speed? What
1:21:05
Speaker 1: was the moon phase? You know, because dark of the
1:21:06
Speaker 1: moon is dreadful, and uh, we just our sightings go
1:21:10
Speaker 1: way way down and and we in full moon and
1:21:12
Speaker 1: it's just the opposite of that. So there's a lot
1:21:14
Speaker 1: of observations they can make and we're just trying to
1:21:17
Speaker 1: spur them on to maybe click something off in a
1:21:20
Speaker 1: guy's head and say, you know what today, here's where
1:21:22
Speaker 1: I'm gonna hunt, and here's why. And that's what deer
1:21:24
Speaker 1: Cast was all about. It was another tool to put
1:21:27
Speaker 1: in your in your pouch, so to speak, and help
1:21:30
Speaker 1: somebody kill that next big deer. But the biggest mistake
1:21:33
Speaker 1: I've made is probably being complacent, because you can't be
1:21:37
Speaker 1: complacent when you're hunting mature white tails. Yeah, like you said,
1:21:41
Speaker 1: never stop learning, never stop trying to improve. Um. And
1:21:44
Speaker 1: that's that because that's necessary. That's also a part of
1:21:48
Speaker 1: what makes this so much fun is the fact that
1:21:50
Speaker 1: there's always another move to make, there's always another challenge
1:21:53
Speaker 1: to try to tackle. And that's what keeps me going
1:21:56
Speaker 1: at it, wakening up every moore and getting excited about
1:21:58
Speaker 1: this stuff. Is it's it's never ending. Um. And And
1:22:01
Speaker 1: and I gotta I gotta thank you Terry for being,
1:22:04
Speaker 1: you know, such a great resource to so many people.
1:22:06
Speaker 1: Just like you said that the ninety years of experience
1:22:08
Speaker 1: that you and Mark bring to bear have helped a
1:22:10
Speaker 1: lot of folks, whether it be just through what you've
1:22:12
Speaker 1: shared in podcasts and your TV shows and DVDs and
1:22:15
Speaker 1: now with the app, Um, you're you're making a difference,
1:22:19
Speaker 1: and I certainly appreciate it. And for folks that want
1:22:22
Speaker 1: to dive into more of what you guys have got
1:22:24
Speaker 1: going on, whether it be the app or anything else,
1:22:26
Speaker 1: can you kind of point those folks in the direction
1:22:28
Speaker 1: where to find everything. Well, if they if they go
1:22:31
Speaker 1: to either if they're on an Android or and I phone,
1:22:33
Speaker 1: either are you know, and just go into the Google
1:22:35
Speaker 1: Play Store and and download the app. It's free and uh,
1:22:39
Speaker 1: it gives you everything. Drewy, there's a lot of video
1:22:42
Speaker 1: content on their moss Yoak was kind enough to to
1:22:45
Speaker 1: assist this and help us with some of their video content. Uh,
1:22:49
Speaker 1: it's got you know, we're gonna we're expanding on all that.
1:22:51
Speaker 1: We've been working with the developer to improve it. So
1:22:55
Speaker 1: you're gonna see a lot of improvements coming with dear
1:22:57
Speaker 1: cast and Gent two and Gen three were already thinking
1:23:00
Speaker 1: down the road three to five years, but we're just
1:23:03
Speaker 1: wanting to help people and as I thank you, we
1:23:05
Speaker 1: wanted to give back, So that was the whole idea
1:23:08
Speaker 1: of the farm giveaway. Uh. For thirty years of being
1:23:11
Speaker 1: in business, were very blast, very humbled, and uh we're
1:23:14
Speaker 1: just fortunate to be in this this line of work
1:23:17
Speaker 1: that we're in. White Tales can humble you, but pretty readily.
1:23:21
Speaker 1: It goes from the highest of highs to the lowest
1:23:24
Speaker 1: of lows, and you never get tired of those highs. Uh,
1:23:27
Speaker 1: they don't come near often enough. So when you do
1:23:30
Speaker 1: hit one, it's uh, it's it's pretty refreshing and you know,
1:23:34
Speaker 1: I don't know if anything else, it gives you a
1:23:36
Speaker 1: feeling like harvesting a big white tail or one that
1:23:38
Speaker 1: you've been after, one that you've got pictures of. Uh,
1:23:41
Speaker 1: there's just nothing like it. And and it's so infrequent
1:23:45
Speaker 1: that it really does hit home when you do it,
1:23:47
Speaker 1: and and you go, you know what, By golly, I
1:23:49
Speaker 1: won this chess match. This was finally I won the
1:23:53
Speaker 1: chess match. And then you go on to the next match,
1:23:55
Speaker 1: you know. So, Uh, it's it's as good as it gets.
1:23:58
Speaker 1: And we just want everybody to be say, keep that
1:24:00
Speaker 1: in the back of your mind. We want to make
1:24:02
Speaker 1: sure that they're taking some youngsters with them, getting getting
1:24:05
Speaker 1: kids involved and trying to teach them the right way.
1:24:08
Speaker 1: Be respectful of your neighbor and be respectful of the
1:24:12
Speaker 1: quarry that you seek. A lot of times we see
1:24:15
Speaker 1: that maybe that doesn't reach where it should, and we'd
1:24:17
Speaker 1: love to make sure that everybody's respects their neighbor in
1:24:20
Speaker 1: the animals that they're after. I don't think we could
1:24:22
Speaker 1: end with any better words of wisdom than that. Terry,
1:24:24
Speaker 1: so really really interesting stuff today. I really appreciate your
1:24:28
Speaker 1: time and Mark likewise, I always enjoy the visit with you,
1:24:32
Speaker 1: and any time you need something, I don't hesitate to
1:24:34
Speaker 1: holler you better watch how what you asked for, Terry,
1:24:36
Speaker 1: I might be asking for a farm here said, there
1:24:39
Speaker 1: you go, let's take a tour one day. We'll take
1:24:41
Speaker 1: you out there and have you look at it. I
1:24:43
Speaker 1: would love that. I would love that. All right, Terry,
1:24:45
Speaker 1: we'll talk against all right, and that's gonna be a rap.
1:24:48
Speaker 1: So like we're talking about the deercast after the juries
1:24:51
Speaker 1: are putting together. That they've put together is really great resource.
1:24:55
Speaker 1: So highly recommend that not to mention. This giveaway is
1:24:58
Speaker 1: pretty incredible to so check it out, join in and
1:25:03
Speaker 1: on my front, if you could happen to leave a
1:25:05
Speaker 1: rating or review of the wire Dun podcast, it would
1:25:07
Speaker 1: be greatly appreciated. That is a big help. It's how
1:25:10
Speaker 1: we are able to bring new listeners into the fold.
1:25:14
Speaker 1: So thanks in advance for doing that. Speaking of thanks,
1:25:17
Speaker 1: if you want to pick up a wire Dun hat
1:25:19
Speaker 1: or shirt or detail, you can do that by going
1:25:21
Speaker 1: over to the meat eater dot com. Go to their shop.
1:25:25
Speaker 1: That's where all my gears. Now, that's where my new
1:25:28
Speaker 1: content is. Now to the new podcast, my new articles
1:25:31
Speaker 1: that I'm doing, videos, that kind of stuff is over
1:25:34
Speaker 1: on the meat eater dot com. So that out of
1:25:37
Speaker 1: the way, I just want to thank you so much
1:25:39
Speaker 1: for listening to this podcast. I want to wish you
1:25:41
Speaker 1: good luck if you're out there scouting or shed hunting,
1:25:45
Speaker 1: or doing some other project. Maybe you're out there shopping
1:25:47
Speaker 1: for deer hunting property of your own. If you're doing
1:25:49
Speaker 1: any of those things, I'm hoping it's going well for you.
1:25:52
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.