Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 529: Working the Land for Southern Whitetails with Mark Haslam

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Ep. 529: Working the Land for Southern Whitetails with Mark Haslam · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the
0:05
Speaker 1: modern white tail hunter and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
0:11
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt Podcast. I'm your host,
0:14
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyan, and this week on the show, I'm joined
0:17
Speaker 1: by Mark Haslin, the two thousand nineteen n D a
0:20
Speaker 1: Dear Manager of the Year, to discuss his lessons learned
0:24
Speaker 1: and best practices for improving whitetail habitat in the Southeast.
0:38
Speaker 1: All Right, welcome back to the Wire to Hunt podcast,
0:42
Speaker 1: brought to you by First Light Tan the show, we
0:44
Speaker 1: are continuing to talk habitat. We're gonna be discussing in particular,
0:51
Speaker 1: southern white tail habitat, and I think a lot we're
0:53
Speaker 1: going to discuss will be replicable and relevant to you
0:55
Speaker 1: if you're in the Midwest or the Northeast, but I'm
0:58
Speaker 1: giving a little extra love to those of you down
1:01
Speaker 1: in the South. My guest today, Mark Haslum, hails from
1:05
Speaker 1: the southeast. He's got a family farm down in South Carolina,
1:09
Speaker 1: and today we're gonna be talking about the story of
1:12
Speaker 1: this place. We're gonna be talking about what he's learned
1:14
Speaker 1: in the many years since he began managing. You know,
1:17
Speaker 1: last week we talked to some guys who have just
1:20
Speaker 1: recently gotten into the land management game. They've been into
1:24
Speaker 1: it just a few years. Today with Mark, he's been
1:27
Speaker 1: doing this for fifteen plus years, diving really deep into
1:31
Speaker 1: this and learning really the ups, downs, ins and outs
1:35
Speaker 1: of what it takes to improve a piece of ground
1:38
Speaker 1: managed a digger herd, and and enjoy it. So we're
1:41
Speaker 1: gonna discuss everything from timber management, hinge cutting, clear cutting,
1:47
Speaker 1: planting pines, doing u dormant season burns, the pros and
1:52
Speaker 1: cons of food plots, getting natural food plots, going uh
1:56
Speaker 1: Sunheim Conservation, Eastman's uh shoe. Who knows what else. A
2:01
Speaker 1: whole bunch of else is hit on in this one.
2:04
Speaker 1: Marks a great guy. He's actually gonna be contributing a
2:07
Speaker 1: little bit more to Wired to Hunt for us in
2:09
Speaker 1: the future, so look for articles from him coming down
2:12
Speaker 1: the line over on the Wired Hunt website as well.
2:15
Speaker 1: And uh, He's got a lot to offer. So that
2:18
Speaker 1: is my pitch for today's episode. I hope you're gonna
2:20
Speaker 1: stick around, hope you enjoy this one. If you've been
2:23
Speaker 1: out there working the ground already, I think this will
2:25
Speaker 1: be just what you need to inspire the next weekend
2:28
Speaker 1: or the next weeknight of work. So thanks for being here.
2:32
Speaker 1: Let's get to my chat with Mark. Has them all
2:36
Speaker 1: right here with me now on the show I've Got
2:38
Speaker 1: Mark HASLM. Mark. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Mark.
2:44
Speaker 1: I'm I'm glad to be here. Tell you what You've
2:46
Speaker 1: got a good name. Right off the bat, I gotta
2:48
Speaker 1: tell you that this is it's always good to have
2:51
Speaker 1: a fella Mark on this show. That hasn't happened too often,
2:54
Speaker 1: so I like that. But uh, in all seriousness, Uh,
2:59
Speaker 1: it's it's great to have on here. I've I've been
3:01
Speaker 1: you know, kind of following some of your work from
3:04
Speaker 1: AFAR over the years. Mark, I've I've seen how you've
3:07
Speaker 1: been doing a really great job of showcasing and sharing
3:12
Speaker 1: your family farm with other people and mentor new hunters.
3:16
Speaker 1: I saw when he won the Dear Manager of the
3:19
Speaker 1: Year award and thought to myself, Man, he seems like
3:21
Speaker 1: someone who's very deserving of that. And I started reading
3:24
Speaker 1: more of your work and kind of just seeing what
3:26
Speaker 1: you're doing on social media. Um, just recently, I know
3:30
Speaker 1: we've we've gotten you starting to do a little bit
3:32
Speaker 1: of writing for us at Wired to Hunt. Sou and short.
3:35
Speaker 1: This is a this is a conversation. I'm really glad
3:36
Speaker 1: we're having and uh, I know you've got a lot
3:39
Speaker 1: to offer, so so thanks for making time to be here.
3:43
Speaker 1: What was what was that experience like, Mark, before we
3:47
Speaker 1: get into the real meat and potatoes of what I
3:49
Speaker 1: want to talk about, What was that experience like when
3:53
Speaker 1: you found out that you won the Dear Manager of
3:55
Speaker 1: the Year award from the National Deer Association. Was that
3:59
Speaker 1: was that something that you thought, oh, yeah, this is
4:02
Speaker 1: coming my way someday or were you surprised by that? Um?
4:07
Speaker 1: Absolutely shocked. M. I both my father and I did
4:11
Speaker 1: not see that coming. UM. We we put on a
4:17
Speaker 1: at the time a q d m A mentored hunt
4:20
Speaker 1: UM that previous fall, and we invited Joe Hamilton's the
4:24
Speaker 1: founder of q d m A now the National Deer
4:26
Speaker 1: Association UM, and Joe Hamilton's just absolute national treasure UM.
4:33
Speaker 1: And he saw what we were doing. He he resides
4:37
Speaker 1: about an hour and a half from our farm, and
4:39
Speaker 1: he saw what we were doing and UM in the
4:42
Speaker 1: longevy that we were doing things the farm and UM,
4:48
Speaker 1: I had no clue. Dad and I were planning to
4:50
Speaker 1: attend Whitetail Weekend later that I guess we marked and um,
4:57
Speaker 1: when Joe started to read our uh background while before
5:03
Speaker 1: giving the the award, that was very surreal. Absolutely was
5:07
Speaker 1: because for me, I'm a life I was a lifelong
5:10
Speaker 1: qtumn remember going back to the mid like nineties, back
5:15
Speaker 1: when we were in a hunting club, and so that
5:17
Speaker 1: was very much surreal and just shock for me. Yeah,
5:23
Speaker 1: I can't imagine. And I guess that's a great place
5:27
Speaker 1: for us to start, because I think that this this
5:30
Speaker 1: award you were given, I think is representative of the
5:35
Speaker 1: work and the transformation that you guys put into place
5:40
Speaker 1: over the last fifteen years or so on this this
5:43
Speaker 1: farm that Joe visited with you down in South Carolina.
5:47
Speaker 1: From what I understand, your family, you guys acquired this
5:50
Speaker 1: place back in two thousand six, right, Can you can
5:53
Speaker 1: you fill me in on you know, what's what's the
5:57
Speaker 1: family farm look like? What was this place like when
6:01
Speaker 1: you stepped foot on it so many years ago? Originally
6:08
Speaker 1: it was a raw piece of land. And when I
6:10
Speaker 1: see a raw piece of land, um it uh. It
6:15
Speaker 1: was being maintained by a forster. It was um it
6:19
Speaker 1: was in a family that originally owned a much larger
6:23
Speaker 1: piece have been passed down through many generations. I think
6:26
Speaker 1: it was about twelve or fourteen different owners that had
6:30
Speaker 1: a sign off um on the sale that actually had
6:33
Speaker 1: to track some people down. But it was one of
6:35
Speaker 1: those classic, you know examples of you know, a piece
6:38
Speaker 1: of property that was in a family for a long
6:40
Speaker 1: period of time and none of the current owners had
6:43
Speaker 1: any um uh you know, ties to the land. They
6:48
Speaker 1: had a forster that was maintaining the force your work
6:51
Speaker 1: and then sending checks you know when they cut timber,
6:54
Speaker 1: and they leased the hunting rights out to a hunting club. Um.
6:57
Speaker 1: So it was a very raw piece of land. And
7:00
Speaker 1: but that's what drew it, drew us to it. And
7:03
Speaker 1: it was a good location, being somewhat centered between uh
7:08
Speaker 1: two very long you know, two of the closer uh city.
7:12
Speaker 1: So when you start to distance yourself from larger cities,
7:15
Speaker 1: you're starting to see the price per acre, in the
7:18
Speaker 1: price of dirt dip down before it rises back up
7:22
Speaker 1: going to the next city. So what about the terrain
7:25
Speaker 1: and habitat? I mean, I know nothing about South Carolina,
7:29
Speaker 1: So can you paint a picture for me what this
7:31
Speaker 1: ground looks like? What kind of plant life. Is this
7:35
Speaker 1: swampy wet stuff as this high ground is as hilly
7:38
Speaker 1: as this big timber. What's what was the break down there?
7:42
Speaker 1: This would be considered the midlands of South Carolina, the
7:48
Speaker 1: lower western part of the state. It's right on the
7:52
Speaker 1: just north of the low country area, which is mostly
7:55
Speaker 1: coastal plains. The coastal plains would run all the way
7:59
Speaker 1: from South Carolina all the way to Alabama, Mississippi. UM.
8:03
Speaker 1: And it's exactly what it sounds like. Very flat. I
8:06
Speaker 1: mean I I live in Savannah and we are at
8:09
Speaker 1: sea level right now, so it's very flat. But we're
8:12
Speaker 1: right on the north side of that. And just when
8:16
Speaker 1: the state starts to get a little bit of terrain
8:19
Speaker 1: features slight rolling hills, elevation drops, I would call them hills.
8:24
Speaker 1: Living at sea level, UM. Some of our elevation drops
8:27
Speaker 1: would be ten or fifty um. There are We do
8:31
Speaker 1: have a couple Carolina bays, which is a geological term
8:36
Speaker 1: and the idea of the theory which I think has
8:39
Speaker 1: been some substantial evidence, but there were some meteors way
8:42
Speaker 1: back when that hit hit the ground and created some
8:47
Speaker 1: oval shaped depressions, and so those are called Carolina bays.
8:51
Speaker 1: We do have a several spring fed creeks, uh, some
8:55
Speaker 1: swamps and bottom land um, but it's primarily upon arm
9:00
Speaker 1: and that's what you see a lot in this in
9:02
Speaker 1: this region of the southeast, and the highest best use
9:06
Speaker 1: would be growing pine trees with a good amount of
9:10
Speaker 1: acreage for cultivated fields farmland. Okay, so what about the
9:16
Speaker 1: wildlife population, the deer population when you guys showed up
9:19
Speaker 1: there in two thousand and six, what what did that like?
9:22
Speaker 1: Was this place flourishing already or were you starting with
9:26
Speaker 1: a little bit of a fixer upper. It was certainly
9:30
Speaker 1: a fixer upper. It was a it was a great
9:32
Speaker 1: piece of property. It had been in a hunting club
9:36
Speaker 1: I think for several decades um. And with that, we
9:39
Speaker 1: did not know exactly what they were, what their goals were,
9:43
Speaker 1: and what they were harvesting. Based on some of the
9:47
Speaker 1: information that we received and actually talking to them, and
9:49
Speaker 1: they they still have a club in existence, I think
9:52
Speaker 1: they were. They weren't practicing, you know, all the fundamentals
9:57
Speaker 1: of the QDM model Quality Deer manage a model. It
10:01
Speaker 1: was perfectly fine. I mean, that's legal to do. But
10:04
Speaker 1: I don't know if they were letting young box walk,
10:06
Speaker 1: so we didn't know what we had. A sparts Box
10:09
Speaker 1: definitely has some deer on the property, um very little
10:12
Speaker 1: turkeys and at the time no quail, no Bob white quail.
10:16
Speaker 1: But you know, we just did not know what we
10:19
Speaker 1: had as far as the deer population. And then I
10:24
Speaker 1: guess what were you hoping for? Like when you guys
10:27
Speaker 1: step foot, like, what were you hoping? What? When? What
10:30
Speaker 1: am I trying to say, I'm trying to stay here.
10:31
Speaker 1: What were your hopes and dreams and goals for this place?
10:35
Speaker 1: Because it sounds like you were pretty serious and the
10:36
Speaker 1: deer hunting already having been a kidium a member for
10:39
Speaker 1: a long time. So when you step foot on that
10:42
Speaker 1: farm in two ousan six, was it okay, we're gonna
10:44
Speaker 1: go gung ho doing everything we've learned about from reading
10:47
Speaker 1: the magazine and studying these things over the years, or
10:50
Speaker 1: or what was the plan when you guys began this journey.
10:55
Speaker 1: The plan was to take it very very slow. Well,
10:58
Speaker 1: actually I should say that the plan was to take
11:01
Speaker 1: it slow, but we ended up over time just taking
11:04
Speaker 1: it very very slow. Originally just step stepping foot the property.
11:08
Speaker 1: My my short term plan was to put some tree
11:12
Speaker 1: stands on some of the act fields, UM that they
11:16
Speaker 1: had peanuts or corn and just hunt is wait until
11:20
Speaker 1: I saw, you know, a one sixty inch come out.
11:22
Speaker 1: I just had, you know, we just didn't know what
11:24
Speaker 1: we had. We knew that the deer population would be
11:28
Speaker 1: a lot different than what we were used to hunting
11:30
Speaker 1: UM on the coastal plaine of the coastal South Carolina
11:34
Speaker 1: coastal Georgia. But we didn't know what what we had.
11:37
Speaker 1: The plan was just to take it slow, observe um
11:41
Speaker 1: and just right off the back, keep doing what we
11:44
Speaker 1: were doing uh in our hunting club UM for many
11:48
Speaker 1: many years, and that is keeping good hunter observations now
11:51
Speaker 1: still away due to this day, keeping a hunting observation
11:55
Speaker 1: log everything you see UM on the sand and then
11:59
Speaker 1: a course to harvest log data. UM. But we I
12:04
Speaker 1: did shoot my first buck on the property I think
12:06
Speaker 1: to the third or fourth season, and that was just
12:09
Speaker 1: a process of letting. I let a lot of bucks walked.
12:15
Speaker 1: In hindsight, I probably would have known what I know
12:18
Speaker 1: now would have shot, but we just we weren't really
12:21
Speaker 1: sure what we had and when we were and when
12:23
Speaker 1: I say that we were basing that off some friends
12:26
Speaker 1: of ours that had similar type properties but had been
12:29
Speaker 1: managing it and pritic seeing the QTa model for a
12:32
Speaker 1: lot longer, So we just didn't know if that was
12:35
Speaker 1: something that where we could kind of slip right into
12:39
Speaker 1: and tweak a couple of things or it. And it
12:41
Speaker 1: ended up being uh uh, you know, a five or
12:45
Speaker 1: six year plan to kind of get it to where
12:47
Speaker 1: we were consistently seeing UM mature box on the stand
12:53
Speaker 1: and on straw camera and then being able to maintain
12:57
Speaker 1: and observe and understand our dear herd. You know, I
13:00
Speaker 1: want to go back to something you said about UM
13:02
Speaker 1: one of the things you carried over from your hunting
13:06
Speaker 1: club days, which was really good hunting or hunter observations
13:11
Speaker 1: and harvest observations and records. Can you walk me through
13:14
Speaker 1: you know what that actually means? How were you doing that?
13:17
Speaker 1: What kind of things are you taking note of? You know,
13:19
Speaker 1: was this in an actual journal that you carry with
13:22
Speaker 1: you everywhere? Like? How do you actually do this? Well? Absolutely,
13:26
Speaker 1: I'd love to UM. You know this is this is
13:30
Speaker 1: just a classic q d M fundamental practice, and that
13:36
Speaker 1: is you know, your your your hunter observation on the
13:39
Speaker 1: stand and your harvest data log. So you know, this
13:43
Speaker 1: goes back to our hunting club and I the earliest
13:46
Speaker 1: I can remember being there is in kindergarten, just wearing
13:49
Speaker 1: one of those insulated old school camo jumpsuits, probably michelin Man,
13:53
Speaker 1: and I couldn't even like move my arms the good
13:55
Speaker 1: old days, that's right. Um So, but what we you
13:59
Speaker 1: know nowadays there there are apps uh for hunt clubs
14:03
Speaker 1: where you can sign in and sign out on your
14:05
Speaker 1: on your phone. But we had a clubhouse and there
14:09
Speaker 1: was a little bulletin board um right there in the
14:13
Speaker 1: clubhouse where you sign it and you you know, you
14:16
Speaker 1: you put a magnet on the aerial map of where
14:18
Speaker 1: are you gonna hunt, put your name in, and then
14:21
Speaker 1: you sign out and we sign out. You put what
14:23
Speaker 1: you saw or if you shot something uh at the
14:26
Speaker 1: skinning shed, you would take the live weight. Um. We
14:30
Speaker 1: weren't necessarily doing all these things at the hunt club,
14:32
Speaker 1: but we had tweaked it to where um at our
14:36
Speaker 1: farm we were you know at the end the hunt
14:39
Speaker 1: writing everything we saw as far as white tails breaking
14:42
Speaker 1: it down within fawns. Um. You know, if it's if
14:45
Speaker 1: it's a skilled hunter or hunter that we feel like
14:47
Speaker 1: knows what they're looking at, we will put button bucks
14:49
Speaker 1: or do fon if not just simply fawns doze, and
14:53
Speaker 1: then antler bucks and depending on you know, if someone's confident,
14:57
Speaker 1: you know what particular buck they saw six point point
15:00
Speaker 1: eight point, maybe it's a two year old eight point,
15:02
Speaker 1: maybe it's a four year old eight point and then um,
15:06
Speaker 1: the harvest log and this is harvest law. I mean,
15:10
Speaker 1: both are an imperative, but the harvest log is very
15:15
Speaker 1: very key. And everyone doesn't have a skinning shed on
15:18
Speaker 1: their property. Everyone doesn't have a scale on the property.
15:21
Speaker 1: So some people take their dear to a processor. And
15:24
Speaker 1: back in the day before we had a skinning shed,
15:27
Speaker 1: you know, I would wait at the processor until he
15:30
Speaker 1: or she weighed my dear so I could get the
15:33
Speaker 1: weight and the jawbone because I did not want to
15:36
Speaker 1: leave and potentially them not weigh it. Um. But when
15:39
Speaker 1: you have that data, here are some of the highlight
15:42
Speaker 1: bullet points that you can get from it. From the
15:45
Speaker 1: hunter observation you'll see at the at the end of
15:48
Speaker 1: the season. And this is what we do right now.
15:51
Speaker 1: You know, after the season, rolling into the following fall
15:54
Speaker 1: is you'll you'll get a breakdown as far as how
15:56
Speaker 1: many does you saw an average per hunt? How many
16:00
Speaker 1: bucks you saw on average per hunt? Um your buck
16:04
Speaker 1: to dough ratio. I mean that's you know, we use
16:08
Speaker 1: a uh an online service. It's very inexpensive and you
16:12
Speaker 1: upload all this information. What's it called uh The website
16:17
Speaker 1: that we use is called deer manage dot com and
16:22
Speaker 1: it'll you just up put all all the data and
16:24
Speaker 1: it breaks down it gives you the estimate of bucks
16:27
Speaker 1: to the ratio, which is that alone is one of
16:30
Speaker 1: the top points to focus on and in one sidebar
16:34
Speaker 1: that and why it's important was because after about ten
16:37
Speaker 1: or ten or so years, when we had went really
16:39
Speaker 1: had the farm fine tuned UM, we were starting to
16:44
Speaker 1: get a lot of bucks on camera. We had we
16:46
Speaker 1: were growing bucks and we were sing bucks in person.
16:49
Speaker 1: And we went through that phase where we were hunting
16:53
Speaker 1: more bucks than we were regulating the dose and our
16:57
Speaker 1: dough numbers are do dough harvest dipped down, and what
17:00
Speaker 1: we saw was our bucket do ratios shot up way
17:03
Speaker 1: out of whack. And so for the past number of
17:05
Speaker 1: years we've been just hammering the does trying to catch up.
17:08
Speaker 1: That's why that's imported. You'll also get the fun recruitment.
17:13
Speaker 1: You know, what's your fun recruitment like. And that's why
17:15
Speaker 1: taking those uh you know, jotting down or you know fonts,
17:19
Speaker 1: that's that's important. You know, people are concerned about kynotes
17:23
Speaker 1: and you know trapping or do you have adequate uh
17:26
Speaker 1: phone betting um. And then also for instance, if you're
17:30
Speaker 1: seeing one antlerd buck for every ten doze, that could
17:35
Speaker 1: be a problem. If you're seeing one antlerd buck for
17:38
Speaker 1: every fifteen plus or fifteen or twenty does, that's a
17:43
Speaker 1: major problem. You've got way too many does. And sure
17:46
Speaker 1: you might still kill some large bucks, but you're bucket
17:49
Speaker 1: devior ratio is way out of whack. And there's you know,
17:52
Speaker 1: if you're listening to podcasts, you probably understand what that
17:55
Speaker 1: can cause as far as the ruts and then fawns dropping,
18:00
Speaker 1: and then with the with the with the harvest log,
18:04
Speaker 1: you're extracting extracting the jawbone, which is you know, besides
18:09
Speaker 1: sending off the jawbone to get tested the teeth. I mean,
18:12
Speaker 1: that's one of the top ways of actually aging a deer,
18:16
Speaker 1: taking a live weight. And then for instance, like if
18:19
Speaker 1: it's a dough wasn't lactating. Wasn't lactating in September, Well,
18:23
Speaker 1: that's common, that's good. Was it lactating in November? That's
18:27
Speaker 1: a lot longer. If you're if it's if a dough
18:30
Speaker 1: is lighttating in November December, that can tell you some
18:33
Speaker 1: things about your ruts and about the button dough ratio um.
18:37
Speaker 1: And that's just a excellent way to keep track of
18:41
Speaker 1: your of your deer population. Are they are the weights
18:45
Speaker 1: trending up or trending down. It's just there's a there's
18:48
Speaker 1: a lot of different things you can and then you
18:51
Speaker 1: can look at this all kinds of data. Francis Moon.
18:53
Speaker 1: So this website will factor the moon in and it'll
18:56
Speaker 1: show you how many deer on average you're seeing with
18:59
Speaker 1: every moon phase, um, temperature, wind, everything like that has
19:05
Speaker 1: that has that level of analysis kind of highlighted any
19:09
Speaker 1: kind of correlation with the moon or anything. I mean,
19:13
Speaker 1: this is just like a pet project favored of mine,
19:16
Speaker 1: always talking about these things and looking into that. And
19:18
Speaker 1: you know, one of the big pieces of pushback along
19:22
Speaker 1: the lines for most of that is that there's not
19:24
Speaker 1: a lot of peer viewed research that can point to
19:27
Speaker 1: a connection between any of those factors like the moon, temperature,
19:31
Speaker 1: bare metric pressure, and deer movement. But so many hunters
19:35
Speaker 1: feel like there is have you seen anything line up
19:38
Speaker 1: with that with your own data? I can send you
19:42
Speaker 1: the data and I can, and I'll be willing to
19:44
Speaker 1: post on social media. But there's absolutely no correlation whatsoever
19:48
Speaker 1: between hunter observation and the moon vase deer movement. There's
19:56
Speaker 1: just not It's there is no chance aange whatsoever with
20:01
Speaker 1: the moon face. You know, I personally, I was smiling
20:05
Speaker 1: when when you brought this up. I personally just get
20:08
Speaker 1: a chuckle out of the moon. I feel like a
20:10
Speaker 1: lot of people just they they tend to hunt when
20:13
Speaker 1: they feel like they have you know, some people, some
20:17
Speaker 1: people can pick and choose when they hunt based on
20:19
Speaker 1: whatever condition they like. And some people, maybe like you
20:22
Speaker 1: and me, they have a couple of kids and a
20:24
Speaker 1: job and a and a wife and a household, and
20:26
Speaker 1: we we we hunt, we excuse me, we hunt when
20:29
Speaker 1: we can um and that's typically, uh, you know, without
20:35
Speaker 1: even looking at data, the best times to hunt, in
20:38
Speaker 1: the best places to hunt and when to hunt are
20:41
Speaker 1: going to be early or places where there's been very
20:44
Speaker 1: little pressure. And yeah, so in my opinion, it makes
20:50
Speaker 1: a little sense. Um, I want to rewind the tape
20:54
Speaker 1: a little bit to to where a lot of this began,
20:58
Speaker 1: because it seems like, you know, taking the the level
21:02
Speaker 1: of detail that you're looking at things that the records
21:04
Speaker 1: you're keeping, that that must have really helped inform so
21:09
Speaker 1: many of the decisions you guys made along the way
21:11
Speaker 1: since you had real data to look at. But I'm
21:14
Speaker 1: sure that especially in those early years, you had some
21:18
Speaker 1: false starts. Um. You know, on my back forty project,
21:22
Speaker 1: for example, a few years ago, I had plenty of
21:24
Speaker 1: false starts when I was getting into this whole world
21:27
Speaker 1: of kind of taking that next step in land management.
21:30
Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious what those look like for you guys.
21:32
Speaker 1: Can you if you thought about those first gosh five years,
21:36
Speaker 1: maybe does anything stand out as as some of the
21:40
Speaker 1: biggest mistakes you made in those early years or something
21:43
Speaker 1: that you just really got wrong? Um, does anything come
21:46
Speaker 1: to mind? Well? How much time do we have? Um? Yes,
21:54
Speaker 1: to answer your question, Yes, there's definitely a lot. Some
21:57
Speaker 1: items that come to min would be UM, planting trees,
22:05
Speaker 1: we would we bought some fruit trees early on, and
22:09
Speaker 1: that that weren't really eaten suitable for that area h
22:13
Speaker 1: South Carolina. We plant some oak trees, uh, a lot
22:17
Speaker 1: of sawtooth oaks, which a lot of people you know.
22:20
Speaker 1: Now there was a little bit of pushback as far
22:21
Speaker 1: as planting those. UM. I still like him. But we
22:24
Speaker 1: we we we plant some of these trees far too
22:27
Speaker 1: close together, did not space them out, um far enough
22:32
Speaker 1: um food plots, you know. UM, we weren't doing soul
22:38
Speaker 1: samples originally and before we really opened up some of
22:42
Speaker 1: the property, we were squeezing food plots in wherever we
22:46
Speaker 1: could because the previous hunters were not planning food plots.
22:50
Speaker 1: There was a farmer there's a couple hundred acres of
22:53
Speaker 1: farm land, so he had that uh to hunt over
22:56
Speaker 1: or to hunt around. But we were squeezing food plots
22:59
Speaker 1: a lot, and like on firebreaks or roads that we
23:02
Speaker 1: didn't use as much, or little fallow areas and and
23:07
Speaker 1: a lot of those areas did not get sunlight, very
23:10
Speaker 1: little sunlight. Um. And that was yeah, that was primarily
23:16
Speaker 1: a that was a bust because you buy seed and
23:19
Speaker 1: you and you plan it. We weren't. We weren't spraying
23:23
Speaker 1: um for we control. We weren't doing the soul samples
23:28
Speaker 1: and then you're not you're not really monitoring really what
23:32
Speaker 1: what what comes up? Is it weeds popping up? Or
23:35
Speaker 1: is the plan that you that you plan with a
23:38
Speaker 1: seed um and then a stand location. Um. You know,
23:44
Speaker 1: some of the stand locations we had early on were
23:46
Speaker 1: around roads, um, and that was just a factor of
23:51
Speaker 1: not really having the time yet to open the property up.
23:54
Speaker 1: But sometimes hunters, and this is what we were guilty of,
23:57
Speaker 1: we put deer stands where we thought the best places
24:01
Speaker 1: would be based on just our preferences. But we weren't
24:06
Speaker 1: necessarily basing any one where the deer are. How do
24:09
Speaker 1: the deer use our property? Where are they coming from,
24:11
Speaker 1: where are they batting? Where are they going? Um? You know,
24:15
Speaker 1: not basing the stand location stands set up based on
24:18
Speaker 1: the deer movement. We're basing on one. You know what
24:20
Speaker 1: we're best for us. I think that's something that a
24:25
Speaker 1: lot of folks, myself included, are guilty of. So so
24:41
Speaker 1: plenty of mistakes along the way. What what was if
24:47
Speaker 1: you could if there's anything that kind of fits this,
24:51
Speaker 1: what was the impetus for positive change? Like if it
24:56
Speaker 1: was there anything you can point back to where things
25:00
Speaker 1: all of a sudden started to click. Did you change
25:03
Speaker 1: something with your food plots and all of a sudden, oh,
25:05
Speaker 1: now things are coming together. Or did you open up
25:08
Speaker 1: these new roads or new access points to allow you
25:10
Speaker 1: to hunt deeper into the property and then all of
25:12
Speaker 1: a sudden that was what changed things. Was there any
25:14
Speaker 1: big epiphany or light switch moment, you know, where you
25:18
Speaker 1: kind of hit a fork in the road and all
25:20
Speaker 1: of a sudden the results started changing. Was there any
25:23
Speaker 1: kind of lying in the sand where all of a
25:26
Speaker 1: sudden everything was different after that, I would say to
25:31
Speaker 1: answer that question, was probably the first UM logging contract
25:37
Speaker 1: we had the farm, and the first UM the first
25:42
Speaker 1: time I have some a timber crew on the farm
25:44
Speaker 1: to cut pine trees too. The first cut was just
25:47
Speaker 1: a thin. It was actually a combination to thin some
25:50
Speaker 1: trees and what that did was open up so the
25:54
Speaker 1: canopy gets more sunlight in UM. And then they also
26:00
Speaker 1: created some loading decks. So when you cut pine trees,
26:04
Speaker 1: there's a site usually that they clear cut, like a
26:06
Speaker 1: you know, a smaller site where they clear cut first,
26:11
Speaker 1: and then that's where they're loading the timber. That's where
26:13
Speaker 1: they're the machines are dragging the timber. And then then
26:17
Speaker 1: then then they're loading it on the semi trucks. So
26:20
Speaker 1: when that's done, what we did on those old loading
26:23
Speaker 1: decks was to clean it up. We stumped it and
26:26
Speaker 1: then cleaned up all all the leftover debris, burned every
26:30
Speaker 1: you know, burned the leftover debris, and then converted those
26:32
Speaker 1: into food plots. Um. That was a huge change for
26:37
Speaker 1: us because that gave us an actual smaller spield that
26:40
Speaker 1: maybe like a quarter acre or half acre to play
26:44
Speaker 1: a food plot. Um. And then with a thinning and
26:48
Speaker 1: that allowed uh exposed sunlight, open the canopy up to
26:52
Speaker 1: get more sunlight UH on the ground, disturb the ground
26:56
Speaker 1: and get some natural growth um. And then combined with that,
27:00
Speaker 1: they also widened the road for us. They cut some
27:02
Speaker 1: trees along the roads, why the roads better. We did
27:06
Speaker 1: some did some roadwork. When you why the roads, especially
27:10
Speaker 1: in the South, it helps dry the roads out. It
27:14
Speaker 1: helps to you know, dry them out, the sun hits
27:16
Speaker 1: it as not as muddy. UM. That was probably just
27:20
Speaker 1: the start of being involved with the forest to work.
27:24
Speaker 1: And then that next cut, which wasn't that far after,
27:27
Speaker 1: we ended up clear cutting uh two sections that were
27:31
Speaker 1: very close to each other that had some ice damage,
27:34
Speaker 1: and it was one of those where we could either
27:36
Speaker 1: just let that timber stand be um and it's not
27:40
Speaker 1: gonna produce as well as it should because there's some
27:42
Speaker 1: ice damage, or clear cut it. At the time we
27:45
Speaker 1: knew the best option for our income to maximize income
27:48
Speaker 1: on the pond stand, but we were I was, I
27:53
Speaker 1: was not looking forward to a clear cut at all.
27:56
Speaker 1: And after they clear cut their sections right right in
27:59
Speaker 1: the middle of the property, they weren't all that big,
28:01
Speaker 1: probably two sections that may be equal to about fifty
28:05
Speaker 1: or sixty acres um. It just looked like a waste land.
28:09
Speaker 1: I mean, it looked like a bomb went off. Um.
28:11
Speaker 1: But over the next couple of years being able to
28:14
Speaker 1: hunt around that clear cut afterwards planned with entrees hunting
28:19
Speaker 1: around it, and then when it thickened up to become
28:23
Speaker 1: just an incredible white tail betting thicket, which was what
28:26
Speaker 1: pond thickets do. When when you really plan, that's when
28:29
Speaker 1: things really started to click with me as far as
28:32
Speaker 1: how we can manipulate the landscape to not only do
28:37
Speaker 1: the force you wore, but then also to better of
28:39
Speaker 1: the wildlife habitat and to better the hunt ability of
28:43
Speaker 1: the farm. M HM. So I read somewhere that you
28:46
Speaker 1: believe that timber management is now the single greatest tool
28:50
Speaker 1: you have in your goals towards growing mature bucks and
28:54
Speaker 1: maintaining a healthy deer. Heard, can you can you expand
28:57
Speaker 1: a little bit on what you just just on what
28:58
Speaker 1: you just told me. They're about why you find this
29:01
Speaker 1: to be such a powerful tool. Yes, So you know
29:08
Speaker 1: the South is very heavy with with with tree farms,
29:13
Speaker 1: pond farms, and it's exactly what it's said. I mean,
29:15
Speaker 1: it's exactly what I what I said. I mean, it's
29:19
Speaker 1: you you have an inventory of trees that your crop
29:23
Speaker 1: and that's what you're growing for you know, thirty plus
29:26
Speaker 1: years depending on the species. And you know a lot
29:30
Speaker 1: of people some people might not do much t aside
29:32
Speaker 1: timmerstand improvement. They might not do much work at all
29:36
Speaker 1: um on their farm. But some of the some of
29:40
Speaker 1: the things that you can do to blend there's a
29:45
Speaker 1: way that you can blend the forestry work to grow
29:49
Speaker 1: trees for income for a profit and then maintain a
29:54
Speaker 1: healthy wildlife habitat um. I've already mentioned t s I
30:00
Speaker 1: timberse and improvement, thinning. I've already mentioned I've already mentioned thinning.
30:06
Speaker 1: When pine trees are the age of about fifteen or
30:09
Speaker 1: sixteen years UM, they are very much tight. The ground
30:14
Speaker 1: cover is gonna be bear. It's gonna be a layer
30:16
Speaker 1: of pine straw. There's really not much going on to it.
30:18
Speaker 1: But you can thin it about fifteen or sixty years.
30:21
Speaker 1: Once you thin that pine stand, you you open up
30:23
Speaker 1: the canopy, lower the basil area, which means more sunlight
30:27
Speaker 1: is getting in. Um. That sunlight hits the dirt and
30:31
Speaker 1: you will disturb the native seed bank. Um. And what
30:34
Speaker 1: we've done the pind stands is actually thin it a
30:37
Speaker 1: second or a third time. So the more you thinning,
30:40
Speaker 1: the more open it gets. And when you incorporate prescribed fire,
30:46
Speaker 1: which I know can be it was definitely a Dalton
30:49
Speaker 1: cast for us to uh to do to do the
30:52
Speaker 1: first couple of times. But prescribe fire. What that what
30:55
Speaker 1: you're able to do for anyone that's not familiar with it.
30:59
Speaker 1: It's with pine tree is very quickly you you end
31:02
Speaker 1: up with a thick carpet of pine straw and there's
31:06
Speaker 1: very little vegetation breaking through that carpet of pine straw.
31:10
Speaker 1: Do do do a prescribed fire? Burn it off and
31:15
Speaker 1: if it's done pretty clean, you'll you'll have pure exposed
31:18
Speaker 1: dirt with exposed cannopy. Sunlight gets in there and you'll
31:21
Speaker 1: disturb that that native seed bank and you'll end up
31:25
Speaker 1: with just incredible amount depending on when you burn uh
31:29
Speaker 1: in the dormant season, you'll end up with a lot
31:31
Speaker 1: of um, a lot of grasses uh Ford's brows um.
31:36
Speaker 1: In our area it's American beauty berry, BlackBerry, h partridge
31:41
Speaker 1: p uh for turkeys, golden rod, um poke weed. All
31:47
Speaker 1: of that fords in in in in plants you're seeing
31:51
Speaker 1: being covered. Now, that's that's that's really making a big
31:54
Speaker 1: push for that holistic land management. UM clear cuts. I
31:59
Speaker 1: thought and then a minute ago about about clear cutting sites,
32:03
Speaker 1: and I know that can be daunting, but if you
32:07
Speaker 1: if you try to, if your goal, your goal in
32:11
Speaker 1: my opinion, should be to avoid the monoculture on your
32:15
Speaker 1: pine farm. And so what we've done after we have
32:19
Speaker 1: those two smallish clear cut sites was what I like
32:23
Speaker 1: to call is to checkerboard the property to where your
32:26
Speaker 1: clear cut maybe five and maybe fifty acre blocks anywhere
32:31
Speaker 1: from five fifty acres and you you try to just
32:35
Speaker 1: check our boards your property have have a diversity, so
32:37
Speaker 1: you have a pine thicket and after a clear cut,
32:41
Speaker 1: depending on the soil, those pine trees. You know, in
32:46
Speaker 1: the South we have a very very long growing season.
32:48
Speaker 1: Our green up started in the February. It's been going
32:52
Speaker 1: crazy throughout March, and it goes all the ways to
32:55
Speaker 1: the first frost, which is about the first week in November.
32:58
Speaker 1: So our pine trees go very very quick leap in
33:00
Speaker 1: those clear cut replant sites will um thick en up
33:04
Speaker 1: for for for outstanding deer bedding and deer thinke. It's
33:07
Speaker 1: some falling cover and nesting cover for turkeys within about
33:11
Speaker 1: one to three years, depending on the soil, and then
33:15
Speaker 1: it'll last anywhere from six to ten years, again depending
33:18
Speaker 1: on the soil. You know, the darker, low, lower lying soil,
33:22
Speaker 1: they'll probably thinker it's gonna get And when deer bed
33:25
Speaker 1: in there is absolutely killer hunting. And that's some of
33:29
Speaker 1: the some of my favorite hunting to do, especially early
33:32
Speaker 1: season in August and early September, when it's uh it's
33:37
Speaker 1: a hundred degrees outside during the day, but the coolest
33:41
Speaker 1: part of the day every day is at night, and
33:44
Speaker 1: so if you know where the deer are feeding at night,
33:47
Speaker 1: in act field and maybe maybe a food plot system. UM.
33:51
Speaker 1: A lot of times what I like to do is
33:53
Speaker 1: to climb right on the edge of that young pine
33:56
Speaker 1: thicket and I'm a chirp pine stand that's been fend,
34:00
Speaker 1: it's been burned, so you know, you can get up
34:04
Speaker 1: as high as you want. And with that vegetation that's
34:07
Speaker 1: been disturbed in that native seed bank that's that you've burned.
34:11
Speaker 1: Um Or if you had a thin and it grows up,
34:14
Speaker 1: that vegetation can grow by the fall anywhere from two
34:18
Speaker 1: to five ft tall, and deer will feel very comfortable
34:22
Speaker 1: slipping through their browsing and making their way back to
34:25
Speaker 1: their bedding site. UM. And so that you know, pine
34:28
Speaker 1: farms might have a stigma as far as being like
34:30
Speaker 1: a you know, a wildlife waste land, but if if
34:35
Speaker 1: you blend these management practices, it can absolutely be a
34:38
Speaker 1: wildlife haven in my opinion. So so with these clear
34:44
Speaker 1: cuts that you're doing, the checkerboard clear cut. Am I
34:48
Speaker 1: right that you are contracting these clear cuts out to
34:51
Speaker 1: uh two loggers to do this commercially? Is that right?
34:55
Speaker 1: That's correct? Yes? And then so you contract that out
34:59
Speaker 1: they come, then they cleared out etcetera, etcetera. They make
35:02
Speaker 1: they do everything you subscribed. Do you do the replanting
35:06
Speaker 1: or do you have someone does somebody else come in
35:09
Speaker 1: and replant them? And are you replanting just as wildlife
35:12
Speaker 1: openings at that point or are you replanting in rows
35:14
Speaker 1: for future harvest. So we would contract the actual timber
35:19
Speaker 1: sale UH for the clear cut, and then we had
35:24
Speaker 1: been doing most of the chemical spray. So after it's cut, um,
35:28
Speaker 1: you know, let's say we're let's say we cut some
35:30
Speaker 1: time the spring or summer, we would go in UH
35:33
Speaker 1: late summer, early fall and spray it and and and
35:36
Speaker 1: just spray the ground just to kill off all the
35:39
Speaker 1: all the volunteer UH sprouts hardwood, sweet gums and then
35:44
Speaker 1: other volunteer pot other volunteer pountree just kill those off
35:48
Speaker 1: and then we would replant contract the work uh to
35:52
Speaker 1: be replanted pine trees the next dorm at growing season,
35:56
Speaker 1: So January February of next year. Um, we I do
36:01
Speaker 1: have plans for our next timber sale. I'm going to
36:05
Speaker 1: clear cut a section and I'm gonna let it grow
36:08
Speaker 1: up wild. Um, just volunteer, just just just let it
36:11
Speaker 1: grow up wild. That was a suggestion that Joe Hamilton's
36:15
Speaker 1: had to us a couple of years ago when he
36:18
Speaker 1: first came to the farm, was you know, he was
36:20
Speaker 1: like he was looking at some of the areas where
36:23
Speaker 1: it was probably taken deer a little bit longer to
36:25
Speaker 1: get to as far as you know, defeat um, and
36:29
Speaker 1: they wouldn't get those areas until after dark. So he
36:33
Speaker 1: just suggested clear cut it and then just let it
36:36
Speaker 1: grow wild and so and so by doing that, you're
36:40
Speaker 1: not growing pine trees. You know, you're not maximizing the
36:45
Speaker 1: timber production. But we're gonna let it grow wild. And
36:49
Speaker 1: then he said to not let us see its third birthday.
36:53
Speaker 1: So after three years, burn it or mow it down
36:56
Speaker 1: and just start over again. So keep sitting back, can
37:00
Speaker 1: keep it in that early successional stage. Exactly, yeah, exactly.
37:06
Speaker 1: So yeah, so you've got the checkerboard of clear cuts
37:09
Speaker 1: that you're doing. You've got some thinning throughout the pine stands. Uh.
37:14
Speaker 1: Is there any other timber related projects that you guys
37:18
Speaker 1: have tried over the years. Have you dabbled in hinge
37:20
Speaker 1: cutting or or anything girdling, anything else like that, and
37:24
Speaker 1: how has any of that worked for you? We do
37:27
Speaker 1: a lot of girdling and a lot of hacket squirts,
37:29
Speaker 1: probably more hacket squarts. UM. Sweet gum trees or prevalent
37:34
Speaker 1: down here. UM, and they you will fight sweet gums.
37:39
Speaker 1: I mean, we've been fighting sweet gums for a very
37:42
Speaker 1: long time. They sprout very quickly, they grow very quickly,
37:46
Speaker 1: and they offer really nothing for for wildlife. UM. I
37:50
Speaker 1: have done some hinge cutting, not not much. UM. I
37:55
Speaker 1: did a number of sections last summer and I really
37:59
Speaker 1: didn't see I did not notice. I haven't noticed much
38:04
Speaker 1: sign deer activity around them. UM. But at the same
38:08
Speaker 1: time as that, we have a lot of, in my opinion,
38:11
Speaker 1: better betting sites. So you know, I don't know if
38:17
Speaker 1: I don't think they were choosing to use them, And
38:21
Speaker 1: maybe I wasn't. Maybe I didn't have the best locations.
38:24
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. UM. Other timber projects we do, something
38:29
Speaker 1: we've been doing for a number of years now is
38:31
Speaker 1: early successional disking light disking with a harrow UM. And
38:36
Speaker 1: that's something you can do down here any time from
38:39
Speaker 1: December till about March. And all you need is attract
38:42
Speaker 1: or a harrow or maybe you can even if you
38:43
Speaker 1: can hook up a harrow too. A four wheeler or
38:47
Speaker 1: a TV, but you lightly disk the ground surface, just barely,
38:51
Speaker 1: just enough, just enough to disturb the soil. And it's
38:56
Speaker 1: very similar to a prescribed fire. You're disturbing that native
39:00
Speaker 1: seed bank. And as long as those areas get sunlight,
39:05
Speaker 1: you'll see those same native plants grow up that I
39:09
Speaker 1: mentioned before. We've done a lot of those in the
39:11
Speaker 1: timber where there's maybe a firebreak, Um, they get some sunlight,
39:17
Speaker 1: maybe some roads, uh, fallow fields. I mean, I would
39:21
Speaker 1: implore everyone listening just to do that. I mean you
39:24
Speaker 1: can still do it now and go out and lightly
39:26
Speaker 1: di some areas that maybe you wouldn't touch with anything else,
39:30
Speaker 1: and just observe what happens to it, observe what grows up,
39:34
Speaker 1: what pops and then may and then pay attention to
39:37
Speaker 1: what's being eaten, what's being snapped off. Um. That's an
39:42
Speaker 1: excellent way of creating a border around at fields or
39:48
Speaker 1: in the food plots. If you don't have the means
39:50
Speaker 1: to plant, you're you're just adding diversity and uh and
39:55
Speaker 1: switching things up, adding those edges. And I gotta believe
39:57
Speaker 1: that's almost always a win win. Absolutely, Yes, I wanna
40:02
Speaker 1: I want to go back to one more thing on
40:04
Speaker 1: the timber side of things. Um, because I'm going to
40:07
Speaker 1: make an assumption here for other people based on an
40:10
Speaker 1: experience I've had, which is that getting some of this
40:15
Speaker 1: larger scale timber work done it seems like, um, yeah,
40:20
Speaker 1: it's it seems like there's a number of hoops to
40:22
Speaker 1: go through to actually make it happen that many of
40:26
Speaker 1: us maybe don't know how to go through. Um. For example,
40:29
Speaker 1: We've got a little family farm property up in northern Michigan,
40:33
Speaker 1: forty acres, a lot of timber on it, and and
40:36
Speaker 1: I know that we could benefit from getting some of
40:39
Speaker 1: these trees out of there and opening getting some openings, etcetera.
40:43
Speaker 1: We had a forester come out and take a look
40:45
Speaker 1: at things, and and he said, you know, this can go,
40:48
Speaker 1: this can go, this can go. It would be great
40:51
Speaker 1: if you could get this out. But his concern was
40:53
Speaker 1: that it was too small a scale to likely get
40:57
Speaker 1: somebody out there willing to take the time to work
41:00
Speaker 1: on a project of that size. And so in the
41:02
Speaker 1: years since, I've kind of kind of taken a couple
41:06
Speaker 1: of different stabs of trying to get people to come out.
41:08
Speaker 1: But maybe I don't know what I'm doing, or maybe
41:09
Speaker 1: I was talking to around people, but I bring all
41:12
Speaker 1: that up to ask you, what has that process been
41:16
Speaker 1: like for you in contracting out work? You know, what
41:19
Speaker 1: does that all entail? If somebody's listening and they want
41:21
Speaker 1: they want to see what opportunities they have to manage
41:24
Speaker 1: their timber, who do you talk to? How do you
41:26
Speaker 1: get that process started? What have you learned in the
41:29
Speaker 1: years since about how to do that better? How to
41:32
Speaker 1: work with a forrester or a logging or a logger
41:36
Speaker 1: or anyone like that. You know, what does that look like?
41:37
Speaker 1: What are some of the best practices. I would certainly
41:42
Speaker 1: suggest anyone listening to connect with a forester. And you know,
41:48
Speaker 1: unless you unless someone has a background and forced you work,
41:52
Speaker 1: and it's not necessarily I mean, it's kind of like
41:56
Speaker 1: doing your taxes, you know. I mean, you could probably
41:58
Speaker 1: figure out how to do your tag XS and file
42:00
Speaker 1: if you wanted to. UM, there's ways you can figure
42:04
Speaker 1: it out and do it. But some people would rather
42:06
Speaker 1: just hire a c p A and have it done
42:08
Speaker 1: the right way. Wise, because the c p A might
42:12
Speaker 1: be able to save you some money, maybe some tax
42:14
Speaker 1: res emptions. So you know, going with a professional, you
42:19
Speaker 1: may there very well could be some benefits to it. Um,
42:23
Speaker 1: So I would definitely say connect with a forster. And
42:24
Speaker 1: on top of that, they're gonna have connections to the
42:27
Speaker 1: timber buyers. They're gonna have connections to the local mills
42:30
Speaker 1: where um you know where the timbers going. You know that,
42:35
Speaker 1: So there are some benefits there. But you also definitely
42:39
Speaker 1: want to want to connect with the with a forcer.
42:42
Speaker 1: You know, if you're listening to podcasts, you obviously or
42:45
Speaker 1: into hunting, So you want to find a forcer that
42:48
Speaker 1: that can they can blend and has a wildlife background
42:51
Speaker 1: of some sorts and it gets what your goals are,
42:56
Speaker 1: so you don't necessarily need to you know, get a
42:58
Speaker 1: force to do whatever he or she wants to do.
43:01
Speaker 1: Connect with them, set your goals, tell them what you
43:03
Speaker 1: want to do, and prioritize things. If it's maximizing true production,
43:07
Speaker 1: then then you know that's what it needs to be.
43:11
Speaker 1: If you're trying to blend true true production in wildlife habitat,
43:15
Speaker 1: there's things you can do, um right now, it can
43:19
Speaker 1: be challenging to get a timber contract uh sign and
43:24
Speaker 1: then get the crew on site there. There there are
43:26
Speaker 1: so much I was reading something of a day I
43:30
Speaker 1: mean there are decades of of of of trees on
43:35
Speaker 1: the stump, a decade's worth a supply of trees on
43:39
Speaker 1: the stump that are ready to be cut. There's actually
43:42
Speaker 1: an article in the Wall Street Journal about this, I
43:44
Speaker 1: think maybe last year in about uh the amount of people,
43:49
Speaker 1: most in the Southeast that we're planning pine trees back
43:52
Speaker 1: in the eighties, in the early nineties as a nest egg,
43:55
Speaker 1: as a retirement, and a lot of those are coming
43:59
Speaker 1: up for fist. And we had a lot of mills
44:03
Speaker 1: and a lot of timber mills and in our area
44:06
Speaker 1: of the state and Georgia that closed down during the recession,
44:10
Speaker 1: during the Great Recession, um, you know, two thousand nine
44:15
Speaker 1: twelve area range. So when those mills closed, we're less
44:20
Speaker 1: We're left with fewer places for our timber to go,
44:24
Speaker 1: and so there's there's basically a lot of supply inventory
44:28
Speaker 1: on the stump right now. So I say this, um
44:33
Speaker 1: because if you have a smaller property or even like
44:35
Speaker 1: even like our property, we're not looking to clear cut
44:38
Speaker 1: large sections. We're looking to clear cut smaller sections, which
44:41
Speaker 1: that might not be If you want to clear cut
44:44
Speaker 1: fifty acres, that might not be attractive for a timber buyer.
44:47
Speaker 1: But if you can lump in maybe a thin maybe
44:49
Speaker 1: maybe you do a third thinning on a pine stand
44:52
Speaker 1: and then you tie in um a clear cut site
44:56
Speaker 1: that might be attractive form or I recently I had
45:00
Speaker 1: a conversation about the power of co ops, the power
45:05
Speaker 1: of wildlife co ops UM. And you know, we all
45:09
Speaker 1: know the value of that talking with your neighbor as
45:11
Speaker 1: far as deer management, UM, what they're seeing and what
45:15
Speaker 1: you're shooting. But another benefit of that is is is timberwork.
45:20
Speaker 1: You're not gonna lump every everything together on one contract,
45:24
Speaker 1: but you can absolutely pull your properties together and you know,
45:28
Speaker 1: approach you know, have your forester or approach a timber
45:31
Speaker 1: buyer with it and saying, you know, we've got properties A, B,
45:33
Speaker 1: and C that we like to lump all altogether. And
45:37
Speaker 1: that's much much more trapptive for the timber crew to
45:40
Speaker 1: be able to move into one general area and to
45:43
Speaker 1: post up and to cut because it costs them so
45:47
Speaker 1: much money, uh to move the machines around and the
45:50
Speaker 1: equipment from property to property. Yeah, that's a great idea. Uh.
45:56
Speaker 1: So let's say we've we've tried thinning we've done clear hunting,
46:00
Speaker 1: We've done a number of these different timber things. As
46:02
Speaker 1: you've done it sounds like one of the next steps
46:05
Speaker 1: you had was adding prescribed fire to the mix, burning
46:09
Speaker 1: out that understory, underneath those thinned you know pine stands. Um.
46:13
Speaker 1: What have you learned over the years about that? What's
46:17
Speaker 1: worked best when it comes to fire? What are you
46:19
Speaker 1: really achieving with that too? With fire? I think what
46:25
Speaker 1: what works best, what's work for us is to carve
46:29
Speaker 1: the property up in the sections. We carve it up
46:33
Speaker 1: each track at about three sections, and we burn one
46:37
Speaker 1: section every year, and so each section is being burned
46:40
Speaker 1: once every three years. Um. There's no plan, one management
46:45
Speaker 1: plan that's gonna fit every property. You need to just
46:48
Speaker 1: like everything else, after you burn up, observe what what happens,
46:54
Speaker 1: observe what grows, what comes up, and what the deer
46:57
Speaker 1: or actually eating. Um. We found the burning a section
47:03
Speaker 1: once every three years is is adequate to produce uh
47:08
Speaker 1: just killer forge. And then also it will still leave
47:11
Speaker 1: places thick think briar patches for betting, um. And so
47:16
Speaker 1: even my burning and somebody think you know brambles and
47:19
Speaker 1: briars and those are excellent betting sites. And then and
47:22
Speaker 1: then when you can buy that with the pine think
47:25
Speaker 1: it's we've got plenty of betting um. You know me personally,
47:30
Speaker 1: if I had to make a decision, if for some
47:33
Speaker 1: reason I had to make a decision on whether or
47:35
Speaker 1: not I could plant the best food plot seed every
47:39
Speaker 1: year or to burn every year, and I can only
47:45
Speaker 1: choose one option, I would I would burn every year
47:48
Speaker 1: as opposed to planning food blots. I still like food blots.
47:52
Speaker 1: But as far as the bank for the buck, there's
47:54
Speaker 1: no question what you get um and the and the
47:59
Speaker 1: diversity that you get from bresh sky fire. So a
48:03
Speaker 1: lot of the bucks killed, I mean, the majority of
48:07
Speaker 1: them is gonna be in the pine stands. The heaven
48:09
Speaker 1: burnt been burnt. And I'm climbing right on the edge
48:13
Speaker 1: of that pot ticket and so they're either going there,
48:16
Speaker 1: they're going back to bed, or they're coming out of
48:18
Speaker 1: bed um and they hit that next block of a
48:23
Speaker 1: thin pine stand that has like I said, two to
48:26
Speaker 1: two to five feet tall vegetation and brows, and they're
48:28
Speaker 1: gonna mel through there and they're gonna mil their way
48:32
Speaker 1: back at first light to go bed, or they're gonna
48:35
Speaker 1: step out and kind of mil through there and take
48:37
Speaker 1: their time and feed and brows and make make sign
48:40
Speaker 1: and whatnot until they get to that destination food plot.
48:44
Speaker 1: That's an acre to why that they really don't want
48:47
Speaker 1: to step out until dark because they know what's there.
48:51
Speaker 1: Am I right? That you need to get the timing
48:54
Speaker 1: right on when you would do a burn like that
48:56
Speaker 1: to achieve that kind of natural food plot transition zone
48:59
Speaker 1: in a stand of pines like that, Like when when
49:02
Speaker 1: are you doing that burn? How are you doing that
49:04
Speaker 1: burn to achieve that two to five ft of of
49:08
Speaker 1: kind of attractive growth while still in the pines. Um,
49:13
Speaker 1: you're looking at anywhere in the dormant season, starting in
49:16
Speaker 1: January January to to about March. As when prob most
49:19
Speaker 1: people do it. We usually run into a situation where
49:24
Speaker 1: a lot of our land is very wet. Uh And
49:27
Speaker 1: in January, sometimes February it's just cold as wet. It's
49:30
Speaker 1: a little too wet to burn. Um. But you know,
49:34
Speaker 1: I had a conversation with Dr Marcus Lashley with the
49:38
Speaker 1: University of Florida. He's he's like to go to prescribed
49:43
Speaker 1: fire biologists. Um. You know, I had a long conversation
49:47
Speaker 1: with him and you know, burning this time of year
49:50
Speaker 1: January through March, you're gonna get out a lot of grasses.
49:54
Speaker 1: And but that foliage, those that forward is gonna dear
50:02
Speaker 1: like that young, tender, succulent uh sprouts, like when they
50:08
Speaker 1: eat briars or when they eat the you know, Devil's
50:10
Speaker 1: walking stick, which I don't know if you'll have that
50:13
Speaker 1: up uh in Michigan or not, but it's it's very thick.
50:18
Speaker 1: I mean, they're not eating it when it's mature. They're
50:20
Speaker 1: eating the youngs, the young sprouts, you know, the briars
50:24
Speaker 1: and everything else poison ivy. And so if you burn,
50:28
Speaker 1: let's say in February, a lot of that is gonna
50:31
Speaker 1: be a little too. They're not gonna hit it in
50:33
Speaker 1: the summer. So what Dr Lashley was saying was it
50:36
Speaker 1: you should really burn if you want that excellent uh
50:41
Speaker 1: forged throughout the summer, which for us is the stress period.
50:45
Speaker 1: You know. I was you might be around snow right now.
50:48
Speaker 1: I was talking to someone in New York snow and today.
50:52
Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's just crazy. I mean I was talking
50:53
Speaker 1: to a guy in New York state on Friday. He's
50:56
Speaker 1: dealing with snow. I mean, we we had snows dick
51:01
Speaker 1: January of eighteen and then we had snowstick. I think
51:08
Speaker 1: so um, so like our stressful period is not the
51:14
Speaker 1: winner now it certainly is. But our stressful period for
51:18
Speaker 1: for for white tails is the summer. Yeah, it's nine
51:21
Speaker 1: needs a hundred degrees of course, a little bit cool
51:24
Speaker 1: in the shade, but there's extreme heat. We could be
51:27
Speaker 1: there could be a drought. Um, there's a high level
51:31
Speaker 1: of insects, bugs, and then you get with the heat, um,
51:36
Speaker 1: you get the stress and in the in the demands
51:39
Speaker 1: of the antler production, which there's much stress on the
51:42
Speaker 1: body for the bucks to grow those antlers every single year.
51:45
Speaker 1: And then you have the lactation, you know, the final
51:49
Speaker 1: stages of the dough, the mother do's gestation period and
51:54
Speaker 1: then she's got to produce that quality milk. So um,
51:58
Speaker 1: he was gone, I'm bra and blame. But doctor Lasha
52:01
Speaker 1: was saying, to to meet those summer demands, you really
52:04
Speaker 1: ought to burn late spring and you know late spring
52:09
Speaker 1: and then you have those that fresh, tender, succulent uh
52:13
Speaker 1: sprouts from all these plants growing back throughout the summer
52:17
Speaker 1: and late summer early fall. To to meet these demands,
52:20
Speaker 1: if you were to burn excuse me, late summer, early fall,
52:25
Speaker 1: you would get a lot more hardwoods, um, a lot
52:28
Speaker 1: more forbes to grow, if I had that right. We
52:31
Speaker 1: have never done a late summer, early or early fall burn.
52:36
Speaker 1: I would like to just to be able to have
52:38
Speaker 1: an experiment to see what happens. But for us, as
52:40
Speaker 1: you usually it's just timing. It's extremely hot and that's
52:44
Speaker 1: another animal in itself to burn that time of year. Um.
52:48
Speaker 1: And we're also usually gearing up for deer season at
52:51
Speaker 1: that point. But to change your questions, you do produce
52:55
Speaker 1: different results on burning in the dormant season or the
52:58
Speaker 1: growing season. You bring up an interesting, an interesting point,
53:02
Speaker 1: which is you know how your main stress period that
53:05
Speaker 1: you're trying to prepare for is the summer compared to
53:08
Speaker 1: maybe up here where it's late winter. Right. Um, I'm curious.
53:13
Speaker 1: You must hear from a lot of people, whether you're
53:16
Speaker 1: listening to podcasts or reading articles or books or anything
53:19
Speaker 1: like that about land management, habitat imperment that's coming from
53:24
Speaker 1: a Northerners perspective or the Midwest. Um, I gotta believe
53:28
Speaker 1: a lot of things like what you just mentioned simply
53:30
Speaker 1: are different than what you're dealing with down there in
53:32
Speaker 1: the southeast. Is there anything else that really stands out
53:35
Speaker 1: to you? Is is something that you're dealing with or
53:38
Speaker 1: that you have to do differently, that's that's dramatically counter
53:42
Speaker 1: to the conventional wisdom coming out of the Midwest or
53:46
Speaker 1: some of these other places. From a habitat management perspective, UM, yeah,
53:53
Speaker 1: a little bit. I can probably rattle off a couple
53:56
Speaker 1: of dozen ways how we're different than like Iowa, for instance. UM,
54:02
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, once some some top level
54:07
Speaker 1: points would be one I've already mentioned it, but our
54:10
Speaker 1: growing season as much much longer, um. And a lot
54:15
Speaker 1: of times in the Southeast, if you look at it,
54:17
Speaker 1: if you look at it at a an aerial map,
54:21
Speaker 1: it's just gonna be one massive green block. Um. You're
54:26
Speaker 1: not necessarily gonna see distinctive land features. You're not going
54:29
Speaker 1: to say, oh, well, that's a funnel, that's a pitch point,
54:33
Speaker 1: that's probably where they're betting, that's where they're feeding. It's
54:36
Speaker 1: very very You really need boots on the ground to
54:40
Speaker 1: be able to look to see because you'll see if
54:42
Speaker 1: you'll see green pine trees, but you don't know, he
54:45
Speaker 1: might not know really what it looks like. Are they
54:48
Speaker 1: betting in there? Is it just is it just too open.
54:51
Speaker 1: So it can be a little challenging to figure out
54:56
Speaker 1: how the deer are using your property in the South,
54:59
Speaker 1: because they can bed everywhere. Betting is something that is
55:03
Speaker 1: significantly different when when when people talk about you know,
55:06
Speaker 1: finding but buck beds and hunting but buck beds, that's
55:09
Speaker 1: not really, in my opinion, something in the Southeast unless
55:13
Speaker 1: you've got a very unique property. Um, when I talk
55:17
Speaker 1: about deer bedding, I'm really referring to deer bedding into
55:21
Speaker 1: where it's you know those bucks, you know, and there
55:26
Speaker 1: are some areas where bucks tend to bed, but it's
55:30
Speaker 1: usually like a general area, um, like a you know,
55:33
Speaker 1: a young thicket maybe five or fifty acres where they're
55:37
Speaker 1: betting somewhere in there. Or it could be in a swamp.
55:40
Speaker 1: We have, you know, some swamp systems where they bed.
55:44
Speaker 1: But it can be because it's just so thick in
55:49
Speaker 1: most places. Um, when you burn her and I mentioned before,
55:52
Speaker 1: you'll you'll generate a lot of a lot of thickets
55:56
Speaker 1: the deer eat, but they also bed in them. So
55:58
Speaker 1: when you're laying out out your property and looking at
56:02
Speaker 1: the design as far as access, Where do you want
56:05
Speaker 1: your stand? Where do you want to hunt? You know,
56:07
Speaker 1: of course we have the permanent stands, but I traditionally
56:11
Speaker 1: hunt mobally um And that was another turning point for
56:16
Speaker 1: me when I started to do that more. But when
56:19
Speaker 1: I'm hunting myself or if I'm putting out a guest
56:22
Speaker 1: or trying to figure out where they're gonna hunt, I
56:25
Speaker 1: look at more so of like where is their scent going?
56:28
Speaker 1: How are they walking in? Like where are they parking,
56:31
Speaker 1: how are they getting their spot, how they walking in,
56:33
Speaker 1: and where their scent is blowing. Because with the Southeast
56:37
Speaker 1: being so dense and being a very high deer density,
56:42
Speaker 1: and and that's something else, another difference than like the Midwest,
56:46
Speaker 1: we typically have a higher deer density. So there's deer
56:50
Speaker 1: everywhere and they're betting everywhere. So when you go to hunt,
56:53
Speaker 1: you're gonna educate deer, You're gonna spook deer. Um, You're
56:57
Speaker 1: gonna educate dear that you didn't even know was there.
57:00
Speaker 1: But that's another major factor as far as it thinking
57:02
Speaker 1: about your access. And it's not so much you know,
57:06
Speaker 1: hunting pressure like pulling the trigger, but just simply going
57:09
Speaker 1: into the woods and walk at I look at more.
57:12
Speaker 1: I think more about like leaving it dark, when you're
57:16
Speaker 1: walking into eye before sunrise a dark or you're leaving
57:19
Speaker 1: a dark they're just You're all around you. You might
57:23
Speaker 1: not see them or hear them, but they're but they're
57:24
Speaker 1: watching you and paying attention to you. UM. So it's
57:28
Speaker 1: it's just a lot to um, it's a lot to
57:32
Speaker 1: you know, try to put together. Do you does does
57:37
Speaker 1: that factor into any of your land projects at all?
57:41
Speaker 1: Just that challenge of you know, dear in much of
57:44
Speaker 1: the southeast, being able to live anywhere, being able to
57:47
Speaker 1: bet anywhere? Do you ever try to strategically plan where
57:53
Speaker 1: you want some of these cuts or where you don't
57:55
Speaker 1: want some of these cuts to allow for any kind
57:57
Speaker 1: of safe place for you to access or et ceter
58:00
Speaker 1: anything like that. Or is it just a loss? Cause
58:04
Speaker 1: I know it's not. I that's a that's an excellent
58:07
Speaker 1: point you made, And I and I can give you
58:08
Speaker 1: a real example that we're doing right now. UM. We
58:12
Speaker 1: got a track that um the last owner was a
58:18
Speaker 1: timber company and before they sold it, they cut the
58:22
Speaker 1: majority of the pine trees, most of them at least,
58:26
Speaker 1: and they cut it years before they sold it in.
58:28
Speaker 1: It was just left to grow up wild those clear
58:31
Speaker 1: cut sections, so they were it was pretty thick sections
58:35
Speaker 1: growing up, I mean, just to make a volunteer pine
58:37
Speaker 1: trees and hard woods and everything else. Um. But we
58:41
Speaker 1: were left in the kind of a transition time where
58:44
Speaker 1: it was if you let an air grow up in
58:47
Speaker 1: the southeast wild, you're gonna get a lot of hard woods.
58:50
Speaker 1: It is, it's gonna be mixed. But you either have
58:53
Speaker 1: to just let it, let it roll for a lot
58:57
Speaker 1: longer periods for the for that for that for that
59:00
Speaker 1: growth to become timber, to become merchant noble commercial timber
59:04
Speaker 1: that someone would want to buy for pulp wood or
59:07
Speaker 1: salt timber um or poll saw, and that's gonna take
59:10
Speaker 1: a lot longer. Or do you just bite the bullet
59:13
Speaker 1: and clear and clear cut it. But we were at
59:17
Speaker 1: a stage where it wasn't worth anything. I mean, we
59:21
Speaker 1: were trying to get a fuel chipper in there too,
59:24
Speaker 1: you know, mulch the material for field chips, which there
59:28
Speaker 1: is a market for that, but there's just not many
59:31
Speaker 1: fuel chip crews out there, and we end up just
59:34
Speaker 1: having to get a crew just to simply mulch it
59:37
Speaker 1: down very rough, um, basically push it over, molst down
59:42
Speaker 1: the stumps. I mean, these are trees that weren't even
59:45
Speaker 1: considered pulp would um. And then we've already gone in
59:49
Speaker 1: those areas to to to to replant. We've already planted
59:53
Speaker 1: pine trees and I we were sitting on that project
59:57
Speaker 1: for many years, so we just didn't know how to
59:59
Speaker 1: attack it. Um. But what I'm looking forward to doing
1:00:03
Speaker 1: is that's very close, pretty much, very flush to a
1:00:08
Speaker 1: creek swamp um that I like to hunt. And if
1:00:13
Speaker 1: anyone follows some of my content like on Instagram, I
1:00:17
Speaker 1: post a lot of UM, I've got some I've got
1:00:20
Speaker 1: some trail cameras down the swamp and I keep it
1:00:23
Speaker 1: on video mode, which yeah, I will thank you. And
1:00:28
Speaker 1: so that's UM. There's a number of bucks that bed
1:00:31
Speaker 1: down line swamp every single year. I mean, I'll get
1:00:34
Speaker 1: a number of mature bucks down there. But it's been
1:00:37
Speaker 1: a very to say the least. I mean, you can
1:00:39
Speaker 1: also look at my Instagram feed and tell us a
1:00:41
Speaker 1: challenge to kill them. It's a challenge to harvest on
1:00:44
Speaker 1: because they're in the swamp that has a it's fairly
1:00:49
Speaker 1: you know narrow. It it's just not you know, it's
1:00:51
Speaker 1: it's not incredibly wide, but there's a fifteen to twenty
1:00:54
Speaker 1: ft drop off on both sides that that you know,
1:00:58
Speaker 1: dropped down to it. So the third moles are crazy,
1:01:03
Speaker 1: uh to hunt in the swamp. And then you have
1:01:05
Speaker 1: the fact that it is a flowing creek, so you
1:01:09
Speaker 1: do have the wind currents through their long story short,
1:01:13
Speaker 1: it's extremely hard. It's been hard for me. Maybe not
1:01:16
Speaker 1: hard for you to come. You can probably roll one
1:01:18
Speaker 1: and kill them all. But but in what I'm describing
1:01:23
Speaker 1: that area is like if you were to see a
1:01:25
Speaker 1: deer to harvest, it's gonna either be on a road
1:01:29
Speaker 1: or a firebreak that we've created, or a food plot.
1:01:34
Speaker 1: Because most of the timber wasn't old enough to really
1:01:37
Speaker 1: open up and thin and to be able to climb
1:01:40
Speaker 1: over it and be able to burn over Some of
1:01:42
Speaker 1: it was and it wasn't. So by clear cutting that section,
1:01:46
Speaker 1: we we have now opened it up and it's gonna
1:01:49
Speaker 1: be I think, very very good for the next couple
1:01:52
Speaker 1: of years to hunt those hunt those edges, dear love
1:01:55
Speaker 1: edges ums. We're gonna get a lot more sunlight, a
1:01:58
Speaker 1: lot of native you know, veget asian growing, and then
1:02:02
Speaker 1: in a couple of years it's going to be good
1:02:04
Speaker 1: to hunt over a clear cut, especially the first couple
1:02:07
Speaker 1: of years when it's not quite uh warm season bedding.
1:02:12
Speaker 1: It's not quite tall enough and shade enough for deer
1:02:15
Speaker 1: to bed in when it's hot, but it'll be good
1:02:18
Speaker 1: cold season betting for them to go out in bed
1:02:21
Speaker 1: during the cold weather and be in the sun. Mhm, man,
1:02:26
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of different factors that player aren't
1:02:29
Speaker 1: there keep you keep you busy for a very long time.
1:02:47
Speaker 1: Something I really like about this We've talked for an
1:02:49
Speaker 1: hour and we have almost not touched on food plots
1:02:54
Speaker 1: one time, which is just kind of rare and the
1:02:56
Speaker 1: land management conversations, so many people want to want to
1:02:59
Speaker 1: jump to food plots like that's that's just like the
1:03:02
Speaker 1: sexy kind of topic in the land world. That's that's
1:03:05
Speaker 1: seemingly the one that delivers the most results right out
1:03:08
Speaker 1: the gate. Some people assume it's the easiest, but many
1:03:13
Speaker 1: times it's not. Um. Nonetheless, food plots are a part
1:03:17
Speaker 1: of what you guys do though too, righte Um, what
1:03:20
Speaker 1: what does your food plot kind of practice look like
1:03:24
Speaker 1: on this property? Now? I know you mentioned in the
1:03:27
Speaker 1: beginning you had some struggles with not having enough open space.
1:03:31
Speaker 1: You mentioned how they're open up those logging pads. You're
1:03:34
Speaker 1: expanding those little kind of hidy hole food plots. But
1:03:37
Speaker 1: now you know, almost twenty years later, how do food
1:03:39
Speaker 1: plots fit into this overarching strategy you guys have now
1:03:42
Speaker 1: to to work in the land. What we've done, um,
1:03:47
Speaker 1: for a number of years now, we have maintained some
1:03:51
Speaker 1: most smaller food plots might be a quarter or like
1:03:53
Speaker 1: a half acre, and those are more of kill sites, um,
1:03:57
Speaker 1: you know where where it's not it's like kill sites.
1:03:59
Speaker 1: It might sound barbaric, but it the idea behind that term,
1:04:03
Speaker 1: in my opinion is or from my understanding I should say,
1:04:07
Speaker 1: is that it's not enough acres to you're not really
1:04:12
Speaker 1: you're not feeding the deer as far as nutrition. Um,
1:04:15
Speaker 1: I mean, they're not really getting much out of the
1:04:18
Speaker 1: nutrition side. You're just attracting them in to be able
1:04:21
Speaker 1: to you know, harvest them. We still maintain those, but
1:04:24
Speaker 1: what we've increased the size of our main food plots.
1:04:28
Speaker 1: There was there's a nice uh, it was a formal
1:04:33
Speaker 1: it was always had had always been used by the
1:04:35
Speaker 1: farmer um kind of center of our property. UM, there
1:04:38
Speaker 1: was a series of of of agg fields that they've
1:04:43
Speaker 1: been the farmer has been slowly uh turning those over
1:04:46
Speaker 1: to us. It's it's um. It's a lot it's very
1:04:50
Speaker 1: dark soil, which is great, but it stays wet when
1:04:54
Speaker 1: he's going in and in the plant. This time mean
1:04:57
Speaker 1: they're gonna start planning pretty soon, so a lot of
1:04:59
Speaker 1: time those fields are are a little too wet when
1:05:02
Speaker 1: they get a plant. UM and then some of the
1:05:04
Speaker 1: other acts, some other food plots. We've expanded the size.
1:05:08
Speaker 1: So by expanding the size, we have met the demand
1:05:13
Speaker 1: of our dear density. Because if you plan, if you're
1:05:17
Speaker 1: in a relatively high deer density, which might be over
1:05:21
Speaker 1: if it's over I think like the somewhat the normal
1:05:24
Speaker 1: averages maybe per squad per square mile. If you're over
1:05:30
Speaker 1: fifty five going towards a square mile, any plant food plots,
1:05:36
Speaker 1: you you need some size to it because if not,
1:05:38
Speaker 1: the deer are just gonna wipe it out very very
1:05:40
Speaker 1: very quickly, depending on what you plant. UM. So a
1:05:43
Speaker 1: lot of our feet food plots we have expanded the size,
1:05:47
Speaker 1: and UM we're gonna try a mix this year. A
1:05:51
Speaker 1: warm season mix to see if we have some better results.
1:05:54
Speaker 1: We've had some problems for a while of keeping the
1:05:58
Speaker 1: deer out of soybean so that they can become browsed tolerant.
1:06:03
Speaker 1: You know some of the forge beings that you can
1:06:05
Speaker 1: buy now nowadays that grow very viny and grow very tall.
1:06:10
Speaker 1: They need to get about knee higher or maybe about
1:06:13
Speaker 1: thigh high to become somewhat browsed tolerant, which means the
1:06:16
Speaker 1: deer can sniff them off and they'll grow back. But
1:06:19
Speaker 1: if they go in there and hammer them when they're sprouting,
1:06:23
Speaker 1: you know, under a foot, they're gonna they won't kill
1:06:26
Speaker 1: the plant probably, but it's gonna it's gonna be stunted,
1:06:29
Speaker 1: and it's gonna grow wider, but it's not gonna really
1:06:31
Speaker 1: grow tall, and it's not gonna fill out. So we
1:06:35
Speaker 1: use some various management practices to really keep the deer
1:06:38
Speaker 1: at bay for a couple of weeks before those you know,
1:06:41
Speaker 1: whether it's sun hemp or soybeans to grow and to
1:06:45
Speaker 1: become browsed tolerant. But over the of course, maybe about
1:06:48
Speaker 1: five years, the deer have really you know, just like
1:06:51
Speaker 1: everything else. Uh, you can educate deer and they realize
1:06:55
Speaker 1: as tactics of roping off the food plot or using
1:06:59
Speaker 1: my lower nite uh fertilizer um or using even human scent.
1:07:05
Speaker 1: I mean, we would take dryer sheets and put them
1:07:07
Speaker 1: around the around the rope of the fire, around the
1:07:10
Speaker 1: rope on the food plots, just try to keep in
1:07:13
Speaker 1: bay and then to take it down once the food
1:07:15
Speaker 1: plot was established. Um So in what I see every
1:07:21
Speaker 1: year is that if if if our farmers, if our
1:07:24
Speaker 1: farmer on our property or the surrounding farmers, if they
1:07:27
Speaker 1: plant cotton, for instance, the deer are gonna hammer our
1:07:31
Speaker 1: warm season food plots much more than if they plant peanuts,
1:07:36
Speaker 1: soybeans or corn, because those will be established first before
1:07:42
Speaker 1: our food plots probably and they'll feed on those, and
1:07:45
Speaker 1: that will help deter some of the pressure on our
1:07:49
Speaker 1: food plots. Um But food plots or in my opinion,
1:07:54
Speaker 1: and absolutely it's a key if you can do it
1:07:57
Speaker 1: for diversity, it's all but diversity. I mean, I know
1:07:59
Speaker 1: I talked about a minute or a while ago about
1:08:01
Speaker 1: if I have if I had to had to make
1:08:03
Speaker 1: a choice between scuy fire or planning food plots, that
1:08:06
Speaker 1: a new scup fire. However, food plots give you that
1:08:10
Speaker 1: diversity and food plots allow me to be able to
1:08:13
Speaker 1: have success in those burn sites because they're going to
1:08:17
Speaker 1: those food plots. And that's why, Like I'll sit on
1:08:21
Speaker 1: food plots early season, you know, when they're fresh and
1:08:25
Speaker 1: deer r and used to hunters yet, or I'll sit
1:08:27
Speaker 1: on a very very late season. But the way I
1:08:30
Speaker 1: hunt food plots during the during the mead the season
1:08:33
Speaker 1: is really nowhere near m um. I'll use a destination
1:08:38
Speaker 1: food plot or maybe that food plot system hub that
1:08:41
Speaker 1: we have in a property, which if anyone is looking
1:08:43
Speaker 1: at if they can design their property or there may
1:08:46
Speaker 1: be looking at doing a clear cut site, maybe maybe
1:08:50
Speaker 1: clear cutting on the somewhat centered when your property and
1:08:53
Speaker 1: then converting that site to to you know, food plots.
1:08:56
Speaker 1: Stump it converted the food plots. You have a hub
1:08:59
Speaker 1: on your proper, it's centered and sure you can hunt
1:09:02
Speaker 1: on it, you know in the evenings. But I exploit
1:09:06
Speaker 1: those food plots as destinations by you know, you gotta think, well,
1:09:10
Speaker 1: how many deer are using those food plots or agg
1:09:13
Speaker 1: fields at night. It's probably the majority deer in that
1:09:17
Speaker 1: air or within that food plot area throughout the night,
1:09:22
Speaker 1: you know, Dear White tails are very social animals, whether
1:09:24
Speaker 1: they're feeding or just making sign whatever they're doing the
1:09:27
Speaker 1: very social. So a lot of my morning hunts will
1:09:31
Speaker 1: be planned of, you know, being outside of a pine
1:09:34
Speaker 1: thick or a thick and knowing that they bet in
1:09:36
Speaker 1: there and that they're going to that destination food plot.
1:09:40
Speaker 1: I could be a couple of thousand yards or maybe
1:09:42
Speaker 1: a quarter mile away, but I'll cut them off going
1:09:45
Speaker 1: to or from that food plot. So that's how you
1:09:51
Speaker 1: know I used the food plots a lot. Hunters really
1:09:53
Speaker 1: just I don't want to sit on them, but I
1:09:56
Speaker 1: you know, catch them, hunt them going to and from.
1:10:00
Speaker 1: You mentioned um sun help, and that's something I have
1:10:04
Speaker 1: zero experience with, but I but I've seen it kind
1:10:07
Speaker 1: of popping up more and more over recent years, especially
1:10:09
Speaker 1: down south. Can you can you film me in on
1:10:12
Speaker 1: how you're using sun hemp um what your experience has
1:10:16
Speaker 1: been with that so far? Yes, So sunhamp is a
1:10:20
Speaker 1: fairly new on the food plot deer management scene. I
1:10:23
Speaker 1: think I first came on the scene as far as
1:10:25
Speaker 1: um cattle like like cows. It's originally from India. It's
1:10:29
Speaker 1: a lagoon um and you have to it's really it
1:10:34
Speaker 1: thrives in the south because you have to you you
1:10:37
Speaker 1: really need to be I think in a much lower
1:10:42
Speaker 1: it's a it's it's a subtropical lagoon. Um. And it's
1:10:48
Speaker 1: I think it's I think that either either Dr Craig
1:10:52
Speaker 1: Harper or maybe the India did a study on it's.
1:10:56
Speaker 1: It's it's about thirty crew protein which is getting up there.
1:10:59
Speaker 1: What soy beans. Um. It can grow anywhere from four
1:11:05
Speaker 1: to eight feet tall and grow very thick. I mean
1:11:08
Speaker 1: grow about an inch a day. It grows very quickly. Uh.
1:11:13
Speaker 1: It's excellent for cover crop if you want. That's how
1:11:16
Speaker 1: a lot of farmers were originally using it as a
1:11:18
Speaker 1: cover crop. Um. It's it. It's it doesn't drain on
1:11:24
Speaker 1: your soil like like corn. For for instance, we don't
1:11:27
Speaker 1: plant much corn. Corn is very demanding on your soil. Uh.
1:11:31
Speaker 1: It's strips of nutrients. UM. Sun him. It's actually a
1:11:36
Speaker 1: soul builder's loaded with nitrogen. You just you know, mow
1:11:40
Speaker 1: it down after it's dead in the season, let it
1:11:43
Speaker 1: decompose back until the back to the soil. Uh. Dear
1:11:47
Speaker 1: love the young leaves on the plants. Um, it's tender
1:11:52
Speaker 1: and they'll eat the and they'll eat the the main
1:11:56
Speaker 1: stem too. At a certain point, after it gets a
1:11:58
Speaker 1: little tall, maybe five six ft tall, the stems do
1:12:02
Speaker 1: become a little fibrous and they won't eat it. Um.
1:12:06
Speaker 1: But they'll eat the new leaves in the in the
1:12:08
Speaker 1: But the best parts about it is it is that
1:12:10
Speaker 1: you can cut it, you can bushog it, you can
1:12:13
Speaker 1: hit it with a bushog and it'll grow back. It'll
1:12:18
Speaker 1: sprout back, um as long as you know, as long
1:12:21
Speaker 1: as you're still in my growing seasons. So for us,
1:12:23
Speaker 1: for us, it's all the way to the first of November. Um.
1:12:27
Speaker 1: So I like to plant a whole field of it
1:12:29
Speaker 1: and then just most shooting lanes or use it for um,
1:12:35
Speaker 1: you know, a border or not your fruit plot, especially
1:12:38
Speaker 1: if you have somewhere of a of a low a
1:12:41
Speaker 1: low growing plant in your food plant, plant that around
1:12:43
Speaker 1: your border. It's very thick, very dense as lady with protein.
1:12:47
Speaker 1: M Yeah, I love having those those screening elements to
1:12:51
Speaker 1: just provide that extra safety around a feeding area like that.
1:12:55
Speaker 1: That's just so so useful, uh. Mark. I want to
1:13:01
Speaker 1: want to pivot a little bit, um. I heard about
1:13:05
Speaker 1: timber fire food. I want to talk a little bit
1:13:10
Speaker 1: about the future of this of this place, UM, because
1:13:14
Speaker 1: I think a lot of times when it comes to
1:13:16
Speaker 1: land management and owning land or working land, I think,
1:13:23
Speaker 1: I think the idea of legacy starts to creep in.
1:13:26
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of us, UM. And when
1:13:31
Speaker 1: you look at the future of this place, you've put
1:13:34
Speaker 1: so much time into so much energy, so many of
1:13:37
Speaker 1: your hopes and dreams. What do you what do you
1:13:40
Speaker 1: envision for the future. What do you hope for the future? UM?
1:13:44
Speaker 1: What do you think that looks like? What I hope
1:13:49
Speaker 1: of the future is a weekend UM. And this is
1:13:52
Speaker 1: something that we're working on now, is developing a forest
1:13:58
Speaker 1: forestry management plan to be able to maintain the farm
1:14:03
Speaker 1: for the next generation. UM. And you know, that's something
1:14:08
Speaker 1: that my father is talking about many times to me.
1:14:11
Speaker 1: He's a retired c p A and he sold a
1:14:14
Speaker 1: lot in his career. He had a lot of clients
1:14:17
Speaker 1: that owned land. UM owned farms or september tracks like this,
1:14:22
Speaker 1: or hunting ground. And he always told me that a
1:14:26
Speaker 1: lot of times, UH, land or real estate just does
1:14:30
Speaker 1: does not survive the grandkids. You know, it'll it'll transfer
1:14:37
Speaker 1: down to the kids and they'll get along. But when
1:14:41
Speaker 1: it gets down to the grandkids. A lot of times
1:14:43
Speaker 1: at that point you'll have some differences of opinions or
1:14:47
Speaker 1: uses or everyone's not going to use in the property,
1:14:50
Speaker 1: and it's hard for the farm to stay, you know,
1:14:55
Speaker 1: without people wanting to sell it. So the plan, this
1:14:58
Speaker 1: is something that we we we've been working on and
1:15:00
Speaker 1: I've been trying to take over more with forest. Your
1:15:01
Speaker 1: work is to have a true uh force management plan.
1:15:08
Speaker 1: And this this this cann ties right back into you know,
1:15:12
Speaker 1: diversifying your land and constantly be cutting in in you know,
1:15:15
Speaker 1: so so you have avoid that monoculture. But you know,
1:15:19
Speaker 1: if someone has marsonable timber on their property, they should
1:15:23
Speaker 1: really again connect with a forest or someone in the
1:15:26
Speaker 1: know to be able to come up with a standing
1:15:29
Speaker 1: inventory value of your marshonable timber, whether it's pine trees
1:15:34
Speaker 1: or hardwoods. Well, you know, if there's a plan to
1:15:38
Speaker 1: sell it one day, you should have a rough estimate
1:15:42
Speaker 1: about the current value of your inventory um of your
1:15:46
Speaker 1: timber crop and then project out, um what you what
1:15:51
Speaker 1: you should be getting for it when you got to sell,
1:15:53
Speaker 1: you know, five years down the yroad, ten years, and
1:15:55
Speaker 1: then sort of map out you know, five years from now,
1:15:58
Speaker 1: what are we gonna clear, god, were we can of
1:16:00
Speaker 1: thing how much it would be selling at that point,
1:16:02
Speaker 1: and then you start to kind of develop a plan
1:16:04
Speaker 1: to where you've you're you're projecting out the future income
1:16:10
Speaker 1: to be able to cover the cost of opera, owning
1:16:14
Speaker 1: and operating the farm. Um. And that's something we are
1:16:17
Speaker 1: working on now to try to maintain that, keep the
1:16:21
Speaker 1: farm in the family, and then also do everything we
1:16:25
Speaker 1: can to be better land stewards, to be better conservationist
1:16:30
Speaker 1: because I mean, every everything what we're talking about today,
1:16:32
Speaker 1: Mark is about you know, being a good land steward
1:16:36
Speaker 1: and being a good conservation So I mean, you know,
1:16:38
Speaker 1: a lot of what we do is to kill big
1:16:39
Speaker 1: jacky in bucks, but there's more to it than that.
1:16:42
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm when the projects I'm doing now is
1:16:46
Speaker 1: kind of you know, ongoing long you know, long game
1:16:48
Speaker 1: projects will be the continue to work on Bob White Quail.
1:16:52
Speaker 1: We do have many several covees wild covers in the
1:16:54
Speaker 1: property and then also the Eastern wild turkey. Um. I
1:16:58
Speaker 1: mean as far as legacy, I would love to be
1:17:00
Speaker 1: able to build the property up with a healthy turkey
1:17:04
Speaker 1: population because right now, I mean it's it's you know,
1:17:08
Speaker 1: it's not headline news right now, but the Eastern Wild Turkey,
1:17:12
Speaker 1: the population has been dwindling for a well of a decade.
1:17:15
Speaker 1: And it's not something that's gonna get better over night.
1:17:17
Speaker 1: That's gonna the change is going to come from landowners,
1:17:22
Speaker 1: at least in the southeast. And that's you know, it's
1:17:24
Speaker 1: not that not the works not being done on public land.
1:17:27
Speaker 1: But when I say that is just because most of
1:17:29
Speaker 1: the Southeast is private land, um, and so um, you know,
1:17:35
Speaker 1: if that's that's something with the legacy, I would love
1:17:39
Speaker 1: how would love to change? Yeah? Now, speaking of speaking
1:17:43
Speaker 1: of private land legacy opportunities, another thing that I understand
1:17:48
Speaker 1: you guys have done is placed a significant portion of
1:17:51
Speaker 1: the property into a conservation easeman. Is that is that right?
1:17:54
Speaker 1: Did you guys do that? And can you can you
1:17:55
Speaker 1: describe to me you know for others maybe that aren't
1:17:58
Speaker 1: familiar with what that means and why you guys decided
1:18:01
Speaker 1: to do that. Yeah, So a conservation easement um is
1:18:06
Speaker 1: something that um, if it was interested, I would definitely
1:18:09
Speaker 1: suggest you talk with your uh accountant, your CPA or
1:18:14
Speaker 1: maybe attorney about it. But it basically you're putting a
1:18:17
Speaker 1: section or property your whole property or section of it
1:18:21
Speaker 1: into a conservation easement to where no one you the
1:18:24
Speaker 1: current owner or any you know, owners down the road
1:18:27
Speaker 1: can can develop it. They can't carve off a home
1:18:32
Speaker 1: site by the highway and sell it, or they can't
1:18:34
Speaker 1: put multiple houses. There are some different things that you
1:18:37
Speaker 1: can put on the property, you know, like a skinning
1:18:40
Speaker 1: shed or a tractor shed, stuff like that, but it's
1:18:42
Speaker 1: protecting it from being developed. Um. And there there are
1:18:48
Speaker 1: tax benefits from it. You do get a very a
1:18:51
Speaker 1: very very nice tax bright from it. So a lot
1:18:55
Speaker 1: of people are doing that. We're actually looking at something
1:18:59
Speaker 1: that had relatively recently has been on my radar as
1:19:03
Speaker 1: far as carbon credits. Um. You know, wetland credits have
1:19:07
Speaker 1: been you know, wetland metigrace, wetland mitigation credits have been
1:19:12
Speaker 1: something for a long time now. But carbon credits are
1:19:15
Speaker 1: at least somewhat need to me and we we'll be
1:19:19
Speaker 1: diving in that pretty soon. Um. And that's tied into
1:19:23
Speaker 1: not cutting trees. I'm not I can't really speak on that.
1:19:27
Speaker 1: That's something that we are going to look into. The
1:19:30
Speaker 1: So the idea with that credit me if I'm wrong,
1:19:32
Speaker 1: but that would be basically getting financial incentives to keep
1:19:36
Speaker 1: trees on the ground. Uh, And people essentially incentivize you
1:19:42
Speaker 1: pay you to do that as as a way to
1:19:44
Speaker 1: offset carbon that they're using in some other way, and
1:19:47
Speaker 1: you're keeping carbon in there by not cutting the trees
1:19:49
Speaker 1: in certain places. That's that's the idea of carbon credits, right, Yeah,
1:19:54
Speaker 1: that's my that's my understanding, and I you know it
1:19:57
Speaker 1: makes sense. But at the same time, as you know,
1:19:59
Speaker 1: we're there's certain stands where we're not gonna cut I mean,
1:20:02
Speaker 1: we know when we're not gonna cut and we're not
1:20:04
Speaker 1: gonna cut them before ten years. Let's say, are five years.
1:20:07
Speaker 1: So but that's just something we got to dive into.
1:20:10
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's something to it's yeah, it's interesting. Now
1:20:16
Speaker 1: back to the conservation Easeman, why did you guys, I
1:20:19
Speaker 1: mean I can make ansumptions, but why did you guys
1:20:22
Speaker 1: decide that was something you wanted to do, Because I
1:20:25
Speaker 1: know that's no small decision saying that, you know, okay,
1:20:28
Speaker 1: we are not going to develop this, We're not gonna
1:20:30
Speaker 1: you know, parcel it off. This is this is going
1:20:32
Speaker 1: to be protected in perpetuity as a somewhat intact piece
1:20:37
Speaker 1: of undeveloped um habitat from here on out? What was
1:20:41
Speaker 1: what was that decision making process like for you? In
1:20:44
Speaker 1: the family, it was mostly my father at the time,
1:20:49
Speaker 1: but he you know, he wanted to protect the farm. Uh,
1:20:52
Speaker 1: you know, he um, my father has spent a lot
1:20:55
Speaker 1: of time, especially after he retired, and he put a
1:20:59
Speaker 1: lot of heart and soul on the property. And so
1:21:01
Speaker 1: I think for him it was probably too secure it
1:21:05
Speaker 1: for the next generation and you know, to uh try
1:21:09
Speaker 1: to you know, secure our legacy on on the land
1:21:13
Speaker 1: so that we're not you know, it doesn't you know,
1:21:16
Speaker 1: end up becoming um, you know, something else being developed.
1:21:20
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just protecting everything that we're putting into
1:21:23
Speaker 1: it's for next property owner. I mean, it's that's something
1:21:26
Speaker 1: that can be a little different to think about. You know,
1:21:29
Speaker 1: when if you if you you know, I mean, I
1:21:32
Speaker 1: know what it's like when you lease land and you're
1:21:34
Speaker 1: putting management or you're doing some work into a lease
1:21:37
Speaker 1: land if you're a hunting claud because you don't know,
1:21:40
Speaker 1: you know, if you're if if you're least at land,
1:21:42
Speaker 1: it's probably whether it's written or verbal, probably a twelve
1:21:45
Speaker 1: month deal, so you don't know what you're doing. I mean,
1:21:48
Speaker 1: you're passing up on bucks, letting, bucks, walk, shooting, does
1:21:51
Speaker 1: maybe doing some habitat like working on a low level.
1:21:54
Speaker 1: But you don't know if things are gonna change for
1:21:56
Speaker 1: the next calendar year. Um. But for you know, for
1:22:00
Speaker 1: but but for private land, it's just something to I
1:22:03
Speaker 1: think protect and just secure that everything we're doing will
1:22:09
Speaker 1: remain in the land for the next owner. Yeah. So
1:22:14
Speaker 1: you've got a couple of young kids yourself. What's what's
1:22:17
Speaker 1: all this? How how has that changed things for you
1:22:20
Speaker 1: if at all when you look at the work you're doing,
1:22:23
Speaker 1: when you look at the future of this place. Uh,
1:22:27
Speaker 1: how his how his kids factored into how you approach
1:22:30
Speaker 1: land management and any of this kind of stuff now,
1:22:35
Speaker 1: um a lot tremendously. Um, I mean I can. It's
1:22:39
Speaker 1: it's funny, you know, thinking back about you know, years ago,
1:22:43
Speaker 1: listening to your podcast when y'all were expecting and before
1:22:47
Speaker 1: you had kids and afric kids, it's you know, very similar.
1:22:50
Speaker 1: I mean, you know I had mentioned before but about
1:22:53
Speaker 1: some hunters picking and shoes and when they hunt. I mean,
1:22:56
Speaker 1: you know, even when I was married before kids, unless
1:23:01
Speaker 1: we had some kind of social engagement, I could hunt
1:23:03
Speaker 1: when I wanted to. So now it's it's you know,
1:23:06
Speaker 1: picking and choosing the best times to to you know,
1:23:11
Speaker 1: between work and family. Um, to go up there a
1:23:15
Speaker 1: year round to hunt or do habits at work. Um.
1:23:19
Speaker 1: The hunting aspect, you know. I have brought my kids
1:23:22
Speaker 1: a couple of times to hunt, um, but not with
1:23:26
Speaker 1: you know, a firearm. I haven't shot a firearm around
1:23:29
Speaker 1: them there two and five, so not quite old enough
1:23:31
Speaker 1: I think to be around them yet pretty soon. Um.
1:23:35
Speaker 1: We've sat out the stand a couple of times, just
1:23:37
Speaker 1: without a gun or or a bow. Um. But this
1:23:40
Speaker 1: time of year is a good time to bring the kids.
1:23:42
Speaker 1: I I've been bringing both of them for a couple
1:23:45
Speaker 1: of years now to shed hunt, look for andlers. Um.
1:23:49
Speaker 1: And that's a that's that's the prime time when I
1:23:51
Speaker 1: do most of my scouting is looking for sheds before
1:23:55
Speaker 1: that green up because you can really see you can
1:23:57
Speaker 1: see much so much so much more of the land.
1:24:00
Speaker 1: How do you're using it? But yeah, some of the
1:24:02
Speaker 1: habitat work, I'm able to bring the kids up and
1:24:04
Speaker 1: and and um and and and and do some of
1:24:08
Speaker 1: the stuff with so it's um. Um, It's caused me
1:24:14
Speaker 1: to do a lot of work from home as far
1:24:17
Speaker 1: as planning, you know, planning out and maybe um um,
1:24:24
Speaker 1: you know, delegating some of the world to other people
1:24:27
Speaker 1: they can do it, whether it's my my father that's
1:24:29
Speaker 1: now retired or one of my brothers to be able
1:24:32
Speaker 1: to to be able to do it. But you know,
1:24:34
Speaker 1: to answer your question very quickly, would probably be it
1:24:38
Speaker 1: caused me to be more focused on time management because
1:24:43
Speaker 1: you know that's work in the back forty that you
1:24:45
Speaker 1: spend half the time when you go to your farm
1:24:48
Speaker 1: fixing stuff, looking for stuff. You go there and you know,
1:24:53
Speaker 1: between the farmhouse and the tractor shed, you know, things
1:24:55
Speaker 1: getting moved around, things don't get put back where they were.
1:24:58
Speaker 1: You're looking for things. Things break, Um, I mean we
1:25:01
Speaker 1: we we went up in February to do a control
1:25:04
Speaker 1: burn and we had the weather conditions where we had
1:25:07
Speaker 1: to burn permit. Everything aligned, and then our tractor broke
1:25:10
Speaker 1: down and we spent the better part of the day
1:25:13
Speaker 1: fixing it was some kind of wire that shorted underneath.
1:25:17
Speaker 1: But we couldn't burn, and that was a that was
1:25:21
Speaker 1: that was a heartbreaker because we because it was a
1:25:23
Speaker 1: bus for the day and that time a year, that
1:25:25
Speaker 1: really couldn't with with the tratter down, we couldn't do
1:25:28
Speaker 1: much else. But if we were to burn without a
1:25:31
Speaker 1: tractor with a harrow in the back, if that fire
1:25:34
Speaker 1: got loose or across the cut firebreak, there could be
1:25:39
Speaker 1: some problems. So it's just um, and and that goes
1:25:42
Speaker 1: back to what I said earlier, is just to take
1:25:44
Speaker 1: things slow. Um, we didn't know, really, we didn't know
1:25:48
Speaker 1: what we were doing at the beginning, so we had
1:25:50
Speaker 1: to take things slow. I mean, I think I told
1:25:52
Speaker 1: you we did take things slow, but we had to
1:25:54
Speaker 1: because we didn't know what we were doing. You know,
1:25:56
Speaker 1: it was a big learning curve. And so um, there's
1:26:00
Speaker 1: nothing wrong. Would take it thing slow, you know, um breathe,
1:26:04
Speaker 1: Let let the property develop on us own, and then
1:26:08
Speaker 1: over that time period, you'll you'll learn how dear you
1:26:12
Speaker 1: use the landscape, how they use it, what kind of
1:26:16
Speaker 1: dear density have, and then you'll be able to manipulate
1:26:20
Speaker 1: the land based on what the wildlife needs. If you
1:26:26
Speaker 1: if you had a little piece of paper, like like
1:26:30
Speaker 1: the little piece of paper that you find inside of
1:26:32
Speaker 1: a fortune cookie, and if you could write something on
1:26:36
Speaker 1: that little piece of paper, stuff it into a fortune
1:26:38
Speaker 1: cookie and give it to yourself back in two thousand
1:26:41
Speaker 1: and six when you and the family were gonna begin
1:26:43
Speaker 1: this land management project. What message do you wish you
1:26:48
Speaker 1: could have wroteen on that little piece of paper to
1:26:49
Speaker 1: read back? Then, m hm, that's a that's a good question.
1:27:00
Speaker 1: Are I would? It could be a longer piece of
1:27:04
Speaker 1: paper if you want, Um, I would probably One thing
1:27:11
Speaker 1: would just be don't sweat small stuff. This will be
1:27:14
Speaker 1: a lot of failures, whether it's you're trying to work
1:27:17
Speaker 1: the land or hunting failures. And you know, wildlife is
1:27:22
Speaker 1: a renewable resource. And I'm not saying that lightly for
1:27:27
Speaker 1: white tails and turkey and quail everything else, but it's
1:27:31
Speaker 1: a renewable resource, and just take your time with it, um,
1:27:37
Speaker 1: and just don't sweat the small stuff because there's gonna
1:27:40
Speaker 1: be a lot of failures. But that's that's how you learn. Um,
1:27:43
Speaker 1: that's how you get to become a better hunter. And
1:27:46
Speaker 1: then too, um I would. I thought about this this
1:27:52
Speaker 1: second point many times. Is I look back on some
1:27:55
Speaker 1: land features, like like pine thickets that we had some new,
1:27:59
Speaker 1: you know, new thick. It's that we're planting poun trees
1:28:01
Speaker 1: that were good, tight, you know thick, nasty betting sites
1:28:04
Speaker 1: that I did not exploit. I did not hunt. I
1:28:07
Speaker 1: was focused on other other spots and just not let
1:28:12
Speaker 1: those I mean hunt the areas, hunt those areas and
1:28:16
Speaker 1: don't you know, don't, don't don't just let those grow up.
1:28:21
Speaker 1: And because you know some of those pine thinks you
1:28:24
Speaker 1: you have a window to hunt them. Um. And at
1:28:26
Speaker 1: a certain point they do, you're stop betting at them. Um.
1:28:30
Speaker 1: But um, I would if I could do things over again,
1:28:33
Speaker 1: I would probably say to get off and hunt mobile
1:28:35
Speaker 1: a lot. I should have done that a lot of
1:28:37
Speaker 1: a lot quicker, a lot quicker. That was a turning
1:28:42
Speaker 1: point for me as a hunter. I think probably I
1:28:44
Speaker 1: can look back on pinpoint that when that changed. Yeah,
1:28:51
Speaker 1: I've certainly had similar experiences too. Well, Mark uh, I
1:28:55
Speaker 1: really enjoyed this. It's it's it's always it's always a
1:28:58
Speaker 1: kick for me just to get to hear about these
1:29:02
Speaker 1: different places in different ways. People are doing this and
1:29:05
Speaker 1: having fun and learning about the land and figuring out
1:29:08
Speaker 1: how to hunt and improve their spots. And your story
1:29:11
Speaker 1: down there in South Carolina is a perfect example that.
1:29:14
Speaker 1: So where where can people go if they want to
1:29:18
Speaker 1: learn more about what you're doing? I know you've got
1:29:19
Speaker 1: a website and some different things. Is there anything that
1:29:22
Speaker 1: you point folks to if they want to follow along
1:29:24
Speaker 1: more with what you're up to. Yes, Um, they can
1:29:27
Speaker 1: follow me. They can find me on Instagram. It's at
1:29:30
Speaker 1: Mark Haslam um my Instagram has really it's it's been.
1:29:37
Speaker 1: It's pretty much just been. I've been showcasing what I've
1:29:40
Speaker 1: been doing the farm and hunting stuff habits at work
1:29:42
Speaker 1: for a number of years now, and uh, because I
1:29:47
Speaker 1: was and then you know, I about a year ago,
1:29:52
Speaker 1: the beginning of last year twenty one, I've I've been
1:29:55
Speaker 1: sitting on the idea for a while, but I finally
1:29:57
Speaker 1: launched a website, Southeast whitetail dot com. Um, just a
1:30:03
Speaker 1: just to show showcase what I'm doing at the farm
1:30:06
Speaker 1: and and and I think, right I wanted to highlight
1:30:09
Speaker 1: some of the stuff in the Southeast because I think
1:30:11
Speaker 1: just so much the hunting content out there is driven
1:30:14
Speaker 1: a lot towards the Midwest, and some of that stuff,
1:30:16
Speaker 1: you know, we could definitely use down here, but a
1:30:18
Speaker 1: lot of it we can, and a lot of it
1:30:20
Speaker 1: is just it. It's you know, it's We've got a
1:30:25
Speaker 1: different different terrain and different deer herds and so I
1:30:28
Speaker 1: wanted to really showcase, you know what what I'm doing
1:30:31
Speaker 1: in UM so that's where people can find me. Awesome. Well,
1:30:35
Speaker 1: I would definitely recommend people check that out. And Mark,
1:30:39
Speaker 1: thank you for your time. It's fun. Well, thanks for
1:30:43
Speaker 1: having me on Mark. I appreciate it. Let's talking with me.
1:30:45
Speaker 1: Let's do it again soon. Sounds great. Thank you Okay,
1:30:50
Speaker 1: and that is it. Thanks AELF for tuning in. I
1:30:52
Speaker 1: appreciate it. It's been a fun chat. I'm I've been
1:30:57
Speaker 1: just taking a little bit of time peering back behind
1:30:59
Speaker 1: the house watching turkeys strutting around. So it's spring. It's
1:31:03
Speaker 1: a great time a year to be out there working
1:31:05
Speaker 1: the land, working food plots, hanging stands, or like I mentioned,
1:31:10
Speaker 1: turkey hunting. So I hope you're out there and having
1:31:12
Speaker 1: a good time. Thanks for tuning in, and until next time,
1:31:15
Speaker 1: stay wired.