Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 272: Forestry for Deer Hunters

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Ep. 272: Forestry for Deer Hunters · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, your home for
0:06
Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
0:12
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm
0:17
Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan. Is episode number two Hunted and
0:20
Speaker 1: seventy two and today in the show we're joined by
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Speaker 1: Matt Ross and Tim Russell of the Quality Deer Management
0:26
Speaker 1: Association to discuss trees, forests and forestry for deer hunters.
0:34
Speaker 1: All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought
0:36
Speaker 1: to you by Onyx. And today in the show, we're
0:40
Speaker 1: talking about trees and forests and how they impact deer
0:43
Speaker 1: and deer hunting, and how we as hunters can influence
0:46
Speaker 1: those forests to improve deer hunting, and a whole bunch
0:49
Speaker 1: of things like that. So, in other words, we're talking
0:51
Speaker 1: about forestry and timber management for deer hunters. And joining
0:56
Speaker 1: us to discuss this topic is Matt Ross, the assistant
0:59
Speaker 1: director of con serration for the Equality Deer Management Association
1:02
Speaker 1: and Tim Russell, a Forrester in the Young Forest specialist
1:06
Speaker 1: for the Cutiaman. And this is a topic that of
1:09
Speaker 1: course is probably the very most relevant to hunters who
1:12
Speaker 1: get a say in habitat management of the places that
1:15
Speaker 1: they hunt. So if you fall into that bucket, get
1:18
Speaker 1: ready for it. I think it's probably our most thorough
1:20
Speaker 1: deep dive we've ever done into the timber related things
1:24
Speaker 1: when it comes to management of habitat. But I also
1:27
Speaker 1: want to make it clear that I did want to
1:29
Speaker 1: find ways to make this conversation relevant to all hunters,
1:32
Speaker 1: even if you know you're hunting private land by permission
1:35
Speaker 1: or hunting public land. Um so. We talk about things
1:38
Speaker 1: along the lines of, you know, what kinds of forest
1:41
Speaker 1: habitat or age of forest or features of forest can
1:44
Speaker 1: we key in on when we're hunting public land um or.
1:47
Speaker 1: We also talked about, for example, ways that we can
1:51
Speaker 1: influence forestry management and habitat management on public lands. Um so.
1:56
Speaker 1: I think there's something in here for everyone. I'm excited
1:58
Speaker 1: about that. It's a it's a real, like I said,
2:01
Speaker 1: I say, I use this word a lot, deep dive,
2:04
Speaker 1: but it really is a deep dive into this stuff
2:06
Speaker 1: that I think is interesting and not talked about a
2:09
Speaker 1: whole lot. So I'm hoping you guys will enjoy it
2:12
Speaker 1: as much as I did. I talked to Matt and
2:14
Speaker 1: Tim already, but I'm back here now in the future
2:18
Speaker 1: with my co host Dan Johnson, because before we get
2:21
Speaker 1: to the Big Dance, we did want to have a
2:22
Speaker 1: pregame show and uh catch up a little bit on
2:25
Speaker 1: current events in our own white Tail worlds and whatnot.
2:28
Speaker 1: So Dan, what is uh what is new with you,
2:32
Speaker 1: my nine fingered friend. I'll tell you what relating to
2:34
Speaker 1: the topic. I just found out that I think this
2:39
Speaker 1: year or next year, the um the timber that we
2:45
Speaker 1: had that I hunt in is under some forestry preserve
2:49
Speaker 1: type thing where they can go and log a specific
2:53
Speaker 1: type times year, but you can't do any other alterations
2:56
Speaker 1: to certain portions of it. So so I think in
3:01
Speaker 1: the upcoming, like I want to say, a year, I
3:05
Speaker 1: might actually be able to go in and talk to
3:08
Speaker 1: the landowner about maybe doing some hinge cutting and creating
3:13
Speaker 1: some uh some possible habitat work on some like low
3:17
Speaker 1: value trees, identifying low value trees and maybe create some
3:22
Speaker 1: hinge cutting opportunities on the farm that I hunt. And
3:25
Speaker 1: uh so when I when I brought that up to
3:28
Speaker 1: her originally she said, no, I can't allow that because
3:32
Speaker 1: it's in this forestry program. But you know whatever, Now
3:37
Speaker 1: I asked her again about it, and she's like, well,
3:38
Speaker 1: that should that should be up sometime soon. So I
3:43
Speaker 1: think I might be able to do some some habitat
3:45
Speaker 1: work on this farm in uh in the upcoming years.
3:49
Speaker 1: That would be pretty cool. Have you have you has
3:51
Speaker 1: this been something that you've been kind of brain story about.
3:53
Speaker 1: Are there areas where you already have in mind that
3:55
Speaker 1: you really want to try to improve betting? Absolutely, especially
3:59
Speaker 1: on like the wide open pieces of timber that are
4:02
Speaker 1: that are there. I would love to just take a
4:04
Speaker 1: chainsaw in there and uh make a couple of pockets. Yeah,
4:08
Speaker 1: it's it's amazing what you can do with the chainsaw.
4:10
Speaker 1: I've I've only been able to do a little bit
4:12
Speaker 1: of it myself, but when you you hear about some
4:15
Speaker 1: of these other projects that some folks are doing that
4:17
Speaker 1: have you know, full control of their properties, it's it's
4:20
Speaker 1: quite a tool if you you know, got to use
4:21
Speaker 1: it safely, of course, but if you safely, it can
4:25
Speaker 1: the simple the simple change of just getting sunlight to
4:30
Speaker 1: hit the floor can really change the habitat um. Which
4:33
Speaker 1: kind of we bring this up when I when I
4:35
Speaker 1: was talking to Matt about this Originally, we brought up
4:38
Speaker 1: the situation that you had. I don't know, was it
4:41
Speaker 1: three years ago now that your main property got logged
4:44
Speaker 1: and that year you were all stressed about it was
4:46
Speaker 1: kind of messing up your hunting, you thought, And I
4:49
Speaker 1: remember thinking, well, you know, let's wait a year or
4:52
Speaker 1: two though you might be pretty happy about it. Then
4:54
Speaker 1: do you feel like, are you starting to see some
4:56
Speaker 1: positive results from that at all yet? Well, I'll tell
4:59
Speaker 1: you that the places that did get logged, right, there
5:04
Speaker 1: was more sunshine that is allowed to hit the forest floor.
5:08
Speaker 1: The tree tops are still there, and around the tree, uh,
5:12
Speaker 1: tree tops grew all these smaller trees grew all these
5:16
Speaker 1: um you know, because they didn't clean it out like
5:19
Speaker 1: a guy would if he was actually managing for deer. Right,
5:23
Speaker 1: they chopped down the tree, They left the tops, and
5:25
Speaker 1: they pulled the trunk out. That's really all they did. Right.
5:29
Speaker 1: But the places where they did that and knocked down
5:32
Speaker 1: in the sunlight can get in. It is s thick
5:35
Speaker 1: and it is nasty, and it's not in any specific spot. Right.
5:40
Speaker 1: So like if me and you were gonna go into
5:42
Speaker 1: a timber, we would want to do it in specific areas, right,
5:45
Speaker 1: So all they did was go into where the valued
5:48
Speaker 1: trees were at and cut down the valued trees, right,
5:51
Speaker 1: So maybe it's not in the best possible place for
5:54
Speaker 1: a quote unquote betting area. However, it is sticker and
5:57
Speaker 1: it does allow more cover, uh and lower brows for
6:01
Speaker 1: the deer. Did you have you seen increased deer activity
6:04
Speaker 1: around those spots at all last year or previous years? Yeah,
6:07
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna say yes with an asterisk, because i
6:11
Speaker 1: feel like the deer we're still moving through that area.
6:16
Speaker 1: Maybe they just slowed down a little bit because there
6:18
Speaker 1: was some brows there that wasn't there before. Okay, okay,
6:23
Speaker 1: Well to your point, then it would be nice if
6:26
Speaker 1: you could supplement that then with a little bit more
6:28
Speaker 1: targeted spots. And so you're thinking maybe of increasing the
6:33
Speaker 1: cover available in spots that deer already want to bed.
6:37
Speaker 1: It's like a ridge top or something like that. Is
6:38
Speaker 1: that kind of yeah, something something a little bit off
6:41
Speaker 1: the top of the ridge, right and create So there's
6:45
Speaker 1: one specific spot on the farm where there's a pinch
6:47
Speaker 1: point and then there's a diagonal trail up the ridge.
6:50
Speaker 1: You know that doesn't crush the ridge, but it kind
6:52
Speaker 1: of goes up at an angle to the point and
6:54
Speaker 1: then back down the other side. So imagine like a
6:59
Speaker 1: upside down you and uh kind of a line going
7:03
Speaker 1: right through the center of it, and that's that trail.
7:05
Speaker 1: I would love to do some kind of hinge cutting
7:08
Speaker 1: on either side of that trail and maybe make that
7:15
Speaker 1: kind of like a betting area, but at the same
7:17
Speaker 1: time a an edge if you know what I mean
7:20
Speaker 1: to where the deer because we all know dear love
7:22
Speaker 1: working edges, and if I could create a little bit
7:25
Speaker 1: more edge where the wide open meats the thickness, then
7:29
Speaker 1: I feel I can even make that pinge point stronger. Yeah,
7:33
Speaker 1: that seems to make a lot of sense. That's that's
7:35
Speaker 1: a huge, a huge upside of when you can do
7:39
Speaker 1: some small cuts like that, like you said, add that
7:42
Speaker 1: transition that edge, and you can start directing traffic through
7:45
Speaker 1: an area in a way that you otherwise wouldn't have.
7:47
Speaker 1: And I kind of, you know, with some small hinge
7:49
Speaker 1: cutting of my own on one of the properties at
7:51
Speaker 1: Hunt in Michigan. I mean, not a large area, probably
7:55
Speaker 1: I don't know, an acre maybe maybe an acre kind
8:00
Speaker 1: of long, skinny area where I did some some kind
8:03
Speaker 1: of selective hinge cutting through their handful of years ago. Now,
8:07
Speaker 1: UM made what's possibly one of the best betting areas
8:10
Speaker 1: now on one of these properties that I hunt in Michigan.
8:12
Speaker 1: It went from being a spot that I never hunted
8:15
Speaker 1: to now being at least in the top two areas
8:18
Speaker 1: for me to hunt during the rut. It's like the
8:20
Speaker 1: main place I'm saving to hunt during the right now
8:22
Speaker 1: because so many bucks are cruising through there, because that
8:25
Speaker 1: little betting area is holding a couple of Doll family
8:27
Speaker 1: groups now and at least one Doll family group, possibly
8:30
Speaker 1: two on one on either side, and you're always getting
8:33
Speaker 1: bucks cruising through there. And it just took you know,
8:35
Speaker 1: an afternoon with a chainsaw cutting a handful of trees
8:38
Speaker 1: and I even bumped up a nice buck out of
8:40
Speaker 1: there this summer um. So yeah, it's it's an easy
8:44
Speaker 1: way to do some cool stuff. So that's exciting that
8:47
Speaker 1: you might be able to test the water to the right.
8:49
Speaker 1: And the other the other thing is there's a ridge
8:53
Speaker 1: top right and it leads from one that's like more
8:58
Speaker 1: open spot into it was like an old camp. There's
9:01
Speaker 1: an old camp church camp on this property. And I'm
9:05
Speaker 1: what I mean old, I mean like dilapidated, just the
9:08
Speaker 1: foundations there, and it's called kind of grown up and
9:10
Speaker 1: do your frequent this spot as a transition I kind
9:13
Speaker 1: of a transition area between betting and a big egg field.
9:18
Speaker 1: And there's this really big giant tree in there with
9:24
Speaker 1: a huge canopy, right, So what I would love to
9:27
Speaker 1: do and it underneath this canopy like nothing grows, right,
9:31
Speaker 1: There's there's some smaller stuff in there. But what I
9:34
Speaker 1: would love to do is basically clear out an area
9:39
Speaker 1: and plant some kind of kill plot, right, something that's
9:43
Speaker 1: like an acre. That's it, Just something maybe even smaller
9:48
Speaker 1: than that, real small and have the ability to get
9:52
Speaker 1: something to slow down coming through this or maybe go
9:55
Speaker 1: out of their way off the original trail, come ups
9:58
Speaker 1: and check it on their way to main egg And
10:00
Speaker 1: I feel that this spot would be money if I
10:04
Speaker 1: could just trim one big branch off of this this big,
10:08
Speaker 1: bigger tree and knocked down a couple other trees on
10:11
Speaker 1: the edge, letting some more addition, some additional sunlight in.
10:14
Speaker 1: If I could do that, man, another money spot, man,
10:18
Speaker 1: that would be that would be nice. Speaking of those
10:21
Speaker 1: little food plots, I was just working on a little
10:23
Speaker 1: food plot project to my own this past week. Um.
10:27
Speaker 1: Two things of note with that one that we never
10:29
Speaker 1: talked about. But um, the first than did is I've
10:33
Speaker 1: got this main food plot system on my main Michigan
10:37
Speaker 1: property that we've talked about a lot over the years,
10:39
Speaker 1: you know, the spot where I talked about holy Field
10:41
Speaker 1: a lot, trying to kind of fine tune this spot
10:43
Speaker 1: for him. Um, and then ultimately that's where I killed
10:46
Speaker 1: Frank this past year. Uh. Two things. Number one, I
10:51
Speaker 1: frost seated this last week. Familiar with frost eating if
10:55
Speaker 1: you heard that, yea? So so for those who aren't familiar,
10:59
Speaker 1: this is basically a way too to kind of supplement
11:04
Speaker 1: a food plot, or to plant a new food plot
11:06
Speaker 1: without needing to disc or till up an area. So basically,
11:09
Speaker 1: in my situation, I'm just trying to um to kinda
11:15
Speaker 1: what's the word I'm looking here, strengthen a food plot
11:17
Speaker 1: that's been here for a long time. This is a
11:18
Speaker 1: perennial clover food plot that I've had planted in this
11:21
Speaker 1: spot for I don't know, six seven years now. Um,
11:24
Speaker 1: But it's it's it's getting a little bit patchy. There's
11:27
Speaker 1: a bunch of weeds coming in area, so I want
11:28
Speaker 1: to try to fill it out, and I'm doing that
11:31
Speaker 1: by overseating it right now, So this past week we're
11:35
Speaker 1: still frozen ground, but it was going to be thawing
11:37
Speaker 1: out here and get some brain and that was gonna
11:39
Speaker 1: freeze again with some cold nights. It was gonna thought again.
11:42
Speaker 1: And when that happens, if you have seed that you
11:44
Speaker 1: put on top of the ground at this time, as
11:47
Speaker 1: that freeze and thought freeze and thoughts cycle goes back
11:50
Speaker 1: and forth, it kind of heaves and then lowers the
11:54
Speaker 1: soil and soil heaves and then it sinks back down
11:56
Speaker 1: again and that kind of sucks the soil down in
11:59
Speaker 1: incorporate rates it into the soil itself, allowing you get
12:02
Speaker 1: the seed to soil contact you need for those seeds
12:05
Speaker 1: to German name. Um. So it was the simplest going
12:08
Speaker 1: out there and broadcasting the seed over top of the
12:10
Speaker 1: plot and that was it. That's all I had to
12:11
Speaker 1: do to kind of replant this food plot and make it,
12:14
Speaker 1: you know, really nice and lush and thick again. So
12:17
Speaker 1: that was a really easy thing I did. I think
12:19
Speaker 1: it was, I don't know, Wednesday or Thursday this past week.
12:22
Speaker 1: Took me fifteen minutes um. And now that plot is
12:26
Speaker 1: going to be in great shape. This year, I think,
12:29
Speaker 1: But while I was out there, I had kind of
12:31
Speaker 1: an aha moment, dan Um. I was finishing up that plot,
12:36
Speaker 1: and then I looked over to the larger sections. So
12:40
Speaker 1: I don't know if you if you remember, but basically
12:42
Speaker 1: this this plot has his kind of two sections. There's
12:45
Speaker 1: a little clover plot. If you imagine this is like
12:47
Speaker 1: a imagine a pie and you take a quarter of
12:51
Speaker 1: the pie outs you got a quarter piece of the
12:53
Speaker 1: pie missing. That is this food plot, and the at
12:59
Speaker 1: the center of the pie, So the narrowest end of
13:02
Speaker 1: that triangle on my pie piece, that's where the clover
13:05
Speaker 1: plot is. So they got a small, like quarter acre
13:07
Speaker 1: clover there, and then there's a strip of big thick
13:11
Speaker 1: grass that kind of just circles it. And then the
13:14
Speaker 1: rest of the pie piece, so the main portion of
13:17
Speaker 1: the pipe piece extending out to the crust. That is
13:20
Speaker 1: the larger piece of the food plot, which is my
13:23
Speaker 1: brassicas and my oats, which I've used here for four
13:26
Speaker 1: or five years and I rotate them in strips um.
13:29
Speaker 1: So that's what I had planet there. I don't know
13:32
Speaker 1: if you again these little details. I don't know if
13:34
Speaker 1: you remember this either, but last year I made one
13:37
Speaker 1: significant shift to that plot. What I did in the
13:41
Speaker 1: past was that oat and brassica section of the plot
13:44
Speaker 1: that was planted almost right up to the edge of
13:47
Speaker 1: the property line, right up close to it. I was
13:49
Speaker 1: trying to maximize as much food as I get in there.
13:52
Speaker 1: But as you probably recall from the past two years
13:55
Speaker 1: of hunting holy Field, I had numerous encounters where he
13:58
Speaker 1: would kind of get to the edge of it, but
14:00
Speaker 1: would stay on the neighbors and wouldn't cross over into
14:03
Speaker 1: the food plot where I could shoot. Remember, I had
14:04
Speaker 1: a bunch of situations like that. Yeah, I didn't want
14:08
Speaker 1: to step out into the open. So in two thousand eighteen,
14:11
Speaker 1: I thought, well, what if I were to just push
14:13
Speaker 1: the food plot further into my property and then what
14:16
Speaker 1: used to be food plot just let that regrow up
14:19
Speaker 1: into tall grass and brush and brambles and have that
14:22
Speaker 1: cover but on my side. So maybe holy Field or
14:25
Speaker 1: whatever future buck is in here, maybe he would still
14:28
Speaker 1: come into the cover, but it would now be on
14:30
Speaker 1: my property, So he would come in twenty yards onto
14:32
Speaker 1: my side of the property that I could shoot him,
14:34
Speaker 1: but he's not into the wide open where he didn't
14:36
Speaker 1: want to go yet. You know what I mean. So
14:39
Speaker 1: I made that change last year, and then I didn't
14:42
Speaker 1: really think anything about it. The rest of the year.
14:44
Speaker 1: Holy Field disappeared, you know, how the whole thing went.
14:46
Speaker 1: But as I was sitting out there the other day,
14:49
Speaker 1: I'm looking at this and kind of looking around and fiddling,
14:52
Speaker 1: and I got to thinking, WHOA, if I hadn't made
14:56
Speaker 1: that change, if I hadn't pushed that food plot out
14:59
Speaker 1: and let all that cover girl up, I don't know
15:01
Speaker 1: if I would have got the shot at Frank, because
15:02
Speaker 1: Frank came out into that area but stayed inside the
15:07
Speaker 1: tall grass that was not there in two thousand seventeen.
15:10
Speaker 1: But in two thousand eighteen he was able to be
15:12
Speaker 1: on my side of the line, but in the tall
15:14
Speaker 1: grass he felt comfortable stepping out there, walked yards onto
15:18
Speaker 1: my side of the line, and I got the shot. Um.
15:22
Speaker 1: So that was kind of like a lightbulb moment, like Wow,
15:24
Speaker 1: there's an example of one tiny tweak. I made, one
15:28
Speaker 1: small change, um that I made for holy Field. But
15:32
Speaker 1: in this case, you know, that small tweak ended up
15:34
Speaker 1: leading to getting a shot at this other buck. Um. Right,
15:37
Speaker 1: I don't think that's something I brought up in the past,
15:39
Speaker 1: and it kind of hit me again. Yeah, I remember
15:42
Speaker 1: you talking about it, but I also remember past guests
15:44
Speaker 1: on the show talking about softening edges. Right, So when
15:48
Speaker 1: they take a hard edge, like a straight egg field
15:52
Speaker 1: onto a timber right the deer, if there's ever like
15:56
Speaker 1: a buffer strip or something like that, it's almost like
15:58
Speaker 1: they seemed comfortable coming out in the wide open before
16:01
Speaker 1: they hit the main egg. So what they'll do is
16:03
Speaker 1: they'll cut trees down and they'll lay them right in
16:06
Speaker 1: that hard edge. And then what that does is the
16:07
Speaker 1: grass grows up, softens it up, so there's a little
16:10
Speaker 1: bit more of a staging area between this wide open
16:14
Speaker 1: bare ground. And uh yeah, you hear him talk about
16:18
Speaker 1: it all the time, so it's no doubt it worked, right, Yeah,
16:21
Speaker 1: it was. It was cool to see that fleshed out
16:23
Speaker 1: and actually come into reality. Um. And another one of
16:26
Speaker 1: those reasons why when you have the ability to do
16:29
Speaker 1: some habitat stuff, it is cool to be able to,
16:31
Speaker 1: you know, move a chess piece one spot and then
16:34
Speaker 1: wait and see how it changes things. And in this case,
16:37
Speaker 1: it was a chess piece that's moves to the right
16:39
Speaker 1: spot and made a what was a small change made
16:42
Speaker 1: a big difference, I think now and I'm now that
16:44
Speaker 1: i'm thinking back on it more so, Yeah, do you
16:47
Speaker 1: have any other Do you have any other big spring
16:49
Speaker 1: projects coming up for your hunts other than possibly trying
16:51
Speaker 1: to get that plot and possibly doing some some timber. Yeah, so,
16:55
Speaker 1: so the plot is probably not gonna happen, but potentially
17:00
Speaker 1: the timber. Uh, some of the tree trimming might happen.
17:04
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, I don't think it can happen until the
17:08
Speaker 1: because I'd love to do it, get out there and
17:10
Speaker 1: do it right now, but I just don't think it's
17:11
Speaker 1: going to be able to happen until April. If it
17:14
Speaker 1: does happen, and I still have to clear it with
17:16
Speaker 1: her and um, you know, the landowner, and she's she
17:20
Speaker 1: probably has to run it by her family, you know. Uh.
17:24
Speaker 1: So I don't think I'm gonna like I'm optimistic, because
17:29
Speaker 1: she's pretty cool with me doing whatever I want out there. However,
17:32
Speaker 1: when it comes to like lay manipulation, um, you know,
17:36
Speaker 1: they just want to make sure they're there, their investment
17:40
Speaker 1: of their property is producing long term and they you know,
17:43
Speaker 1: they don't want me to cut down any trees that make,
17:45
Speaker 1: you know, get them some value later on down the line. Yeah. Yeah,
17:50
Speaker 1: um so if you're not doing that kind of stuff yet,
17:53
Speaker 1: you are shed hunting though, right. We haven't talked since
17:55
Speaker 1: shed Rally. Look like you guys had a good day
17:57
Speaker 1: there on the Sunday of shed Rally, is that right? Yeah,
18:00
Speaker 1: A couple of people had some good days. Uh. I
18:02
Speaker 1: found one I found. I ended up finding one antler
18:06
Speaker 1: on shed Ralley and it was something fairly small. So
18:08
Speaker 1: I let Ben Harshine's boy Jack. I dropped it on
18:11
Speaker 1: a trail and then I told Ben and his wife
18:14
Speaker 1: would go, hey, I dropped a shed up there. Take
18:17
Speaker 1: take their son Jack, right, I said, take him up there,
18:19
Speaker 1: walk up this trail, and he ended up finding it again.
18:22
Speaker 1: So I walked away. I walked away with zero antlers,
18:25
Speaker 1: found one, but overall, you know, had some fun with
18:29
Speaker 1: that crew that was there, and some other guys walked
18:32
Speaker 1: away with quite a few sheds and uh one big
18:35
Speaker 1: four point side just a hammer of an antler and
18:38
Speaker 1: uh like real long main beam, real long, you know,
18:41
Speaker 1: no junk on it. But other than that, you know,
18:45
Speaker 1: this entire shed season has been crazy. I mean up
18:49
Speaker 1: where I live, there's still snow in the timber, right,
18:52
Speaker 1: and uh, if if it's open, I'm sure people have
18:55
Speaker 1: walked it, and that with the fertilizer on the properties
19:01
Speaker 1: and high water on the river bottoms, all my spots
19:04
Speaker 1: just didn't produce this year. And so I I just
19:08
Speaker 1: I shed hunted lesson. I'm okay with that because I'm busy. Yeah,
19:12
Speaker 1: I saw you, Um you posted this was a couple
19:15
Speaker 1: of weeks ago. I don't think I mentioned it on
19:17
Speaker 1: the podcast, but a couple of weeks ago you uh
19:20
Speaker 1: did a little Instagram video talking about how you went
19:23
Speaker 1: out and you didn't find any sheds at all, and
19:25
Speaker 1: you said that that was the first time in like
19:28
Speaker 1: two or three or four years, the first time in
19:30
Speaker 1: years that you've gone out shed hunting and not found
19:33
Speaker 1: an antler. Yeah, it was nuts, man. I I can
19:37
Speaker 1: every time that I go out right now, I remember
19:40
Speaker 1: I've refined these spots two points where Okay, if I
19:44
Speaker 1: if I've shed hunting a place five or six years
19:46
Speaker 1: in a row and it doesn't produce, more than likely
19:50
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go walk that piece anymore because of
19:52
Speaker 1: the limited time that i have. Right So, I'm going
19:54
Speaker 1: to my high production spots. I'm going to the buffer strips,
19:58
Speaker 1: the water ways, you know, the the betting areas and
20:01
Speaker 1: like some egg fields and stuff, and if they don't produce,
20:05
Speaker 1: I'm not going into the timber looking for him, especially
20:07
Speaker 1: this year with just the large amount of snow and
20:11
Speaker 1: the water that we've had. So it's the first time
20:15
Speaker 1: in a while where I went to some of these
20:17
Speaker 1: spots and there was no sheds there and I was like, WHOA.
20:23
Speaker 1: So I I was driving back home and I was
20:25
Speaker 1: thinking about I was like, man, that's gotta be two
20:27
Speaker 1: years of shed hunting that I It's like I got
20:31
Speaker 1: skunked that day, right, And I mean me get skunked.
20:35
Speaker 1: I'm not saying like going out with you know when
20:38
Speaker 1: the last time that we went up with that whole
20:40
Speaker 1: crew in northeast Iowa. Um that I I personally didn't
20:46
Speaker 1: find a shed, but the crew did. I count I
20:48
Speaker 1: count that as a win. But me personally, running on
20:51
Speaker 1: a solo mission, I didn't. I didn't find a shed.
20:54
Speaker 1: So it was it was nuts. Yeah. And when I
20:57
Speaker 1: heard you say that on your Instagram story, I just
21:00
Speaker 1: thought to myself, there's millions of people out there who
21:03
Speaker 1: don't have one ounce of sympathy for you. Damn right.
21:06
Speaker 1: I know. I'm thinking of my head man. He has
21:10
Speaker 1: gone two years without going out once without finding one,
21:13
Speaker 1: and I thought to myself, nine times shed hunting, I
21:18
Speaker 1: don't find anything so right. But when I say that
21:22
Speaker 1: is because I mean back in the day, I would
21:24
Speaker 1: go four days, five days without finding a shed, right,
21:28
Speaker 1: and then run into a pocket of them, and you know,
21:31
Speaker 1: find a whole bunch of sheds. Uh. And now I
21:34
Speaker 1: just don't go shed hunting in the I guess the
21:37
Speaker 1: lower the lower statistic areas. I guess is, if that's
21:42
Speaker 1: what you want to say, right, the chances of me
21:44
Speaker 1: finding a shed where I go shed hunting are higher.
21:47
Speaker 1: Smarts work historically the deer of ben So it looked
21:50
Speaker 1: like you sorry. The cool thing is, though, what was
21:55
Speaker 1: it Saturday morning? Right? Like we hadn't had sunshine here
21:58
Speaker 1: in Iowa for a while. Saturday morning was gorgeous and
22:02
Speaker 1: I wanted to get my kids out of the house,
22:04
Speaker 1: my my son and daughter, and we ended up going
22:07
Speaker 1: on a And I'm using my quotations right, my one
22:11
Speaker 1: good hand in my one bad hand, So it looks
22:13
Speaker 1: like a quote in a comma or apostrophe. And uh,
22:20
Speaker 1: so I took I grabbed two sheds out of my
22:24
Speaker 1: like my smaller shed pile, and uh, I ended up
22:28
Speaker 1: I ended up taking my uh my oldest boy and
22:32
Speaker 1: my daughter out and uh we went out in this cornfield,
22:35
Speaker 1: walked around and I dropped two sheds out and they
22:38
Speaker 1: they found him and they were pretty jackman, it was
22:40
Speaker 1: pretty fun doing that. The pictures, that was awesome. Well
22:43
Speaker 1: how did how did Mac react when he picked that up? Uh?
22:46
Speaker 1: So have you ever seen like the only thing that
22:51
Speaker 1: I can remember, like is like a superhero. I'll just
22:55
Speaker 1: use the Incredible Hulk right where he stops and this
22:59
Speaker 1: like this, his face twitches and he gets like that. Like.
23:05
Speaker 1: So we're in this little grassy area and I was like, okay, buddy,
23:08
Speaker 1: it's in here somewhere. I just know it, right, And
23:10
Speaker 1: obviously I dropped it out of my coat, so I
23:12
Speaker 1: know it's there. And both times I dropped the sheds
23:16
Speaker 1: out of the coat, they landed times down, so so
23:20
Speaker 1: it's not like they stood out right. It looked like
23:23
Speaker 1: a a stock of corn. So he's walking around, he's
23:27
Speaker 1: walking around, and finally I go, buddy, you gotta look
23:30
Speaker 1: at the ground. Because every time a bird would sound
23:32
Speaker 1: off or like the geese would fly overhead. He's looking
23:34
Speaker 1: in the air right. Finally I put him on the line.
23:37
Speaker 1: I said, walk straight, there's gotta be one here somewhere.
23:40
Speaker 1: I just have a good feeling, buddy. He runs walks
23:43
Speaker 1: up to it, and he's just like Dad, Dad, I
23:48
Speaker 1: found one. Oh, he was jackman. He was Jack, and
23:54
Speaker 1: he was Jack for about five minutes, ten minutes, you know.
23:57
Speaker 1: And I got a couple of pictures out of the deal,
24:00
Speaker 1: and he ended up he ended up happy. But you
24:03
Speaker 1: know how kids are, right, they lose interest real fast.
24:05
Speaker 1: So instead instead of him scooping every five minutes, I
24:09
Speaker 1: only brought one out when I probably should have brought
24:11
Speaker 1: more than one out. But I did the same thing
24:13
Speaker 1: with my daughter, and she she kicked it with her
24:16
Speaker 1: boot like two times before. Every time she walked up
24:20
Speaker 1: to it, she'd kick it. And then obviously she knows
24:23
Speaker 1: more than me, right, So she's like, Dad, we've covered
24:26
Speaker 1: this area. There's no sheds here. I'm just like, sweetie,
24:31
Speaker 1: and I'm talking about that, like a fifty ft grass
24:34
Speaker 1: strip that's two ft wide along the side of this cornfield.
24:37
Speaker 1: And so she's walking up and down and she finds it.
24:39
Speaker 1: She's like Dad, I got one, she got all she
24:42
Speaker 1: got all excited, and you know, it was something. It
24:46
Speaker 1: was something forty five minutes is all it was, from
24:49
Speaker 1: the time we got there, got out of the truck,
24:51
Speaker 1: got back in the truck forty five minutes. But what
24:54
Speaker 1: I feel that did right there, They're obviously not ready
24:57
Speaker 1: for a four hour shed hunt, right, So I feel
25:01
Speaker 1: what that did was that just small, very small piece
25:05
Speaker 1: of it at a time, getting interested and then maybe
25:08
Speaker 1: the next time we go out for a little bit longer,
25:10
Speaker 1: and maybe the next time I don't put any sheds down,
25:13
Speaker 1: and we teach them about patients, right, yeah, And you know,
25:17
Speaker 1: and just getting them outside is so important and I'm
25:20
Speaker 1: learning that now, right. And the mud was there, and
25:23
Speaker 1: they got dirty, and I had to do some extra things, right,
25:26
Speaker 1: I had to make sure that they had their gloves
25:29
Speaker 1: and their stocking caps and their boots on. And the
25:31
Speaker 1: back of my truck got dirty because they you know,
25:33
Speaker 1: they were kicking the back of the seats after they're
25:35
Speaker 1: stopping in mud. But I really didn't care because I
25:39
Speaker 1: had a blast. I had just as much fun with them.
25:41
Speaker 1: And even though those sheds were stayed staged, right, I
25:45
Speaker 1: had I had an absolute blast just being out there
25:48
Speaker 1: and watching their actions. Yeah, you can't, you can't beat that.
25:51
Speaker 1: I uh, I know what you mean. I'm just starting,
25:55
Speaker 1: you know, to get Everett out there doing those things.
25:57
Speaker 1: And he can walk now, so now that's not so
26:00
Speaker 1: miserably cold and the snows melted. I've been taking him
26:03
Speaker 1: out into the woods now and just letting him kind
26:04
Speaker 1: of walk around out there and explore. I guess the
26:08
Speaker 1: walk around is a stretchy. It's more like he will
26:11
Speaker 1: just stand there. He's a little nervous to walk in
26:14
Speaker 1: the forest for he's just not like comfortable with the
26:17
Speaker 1: uneven ground, I think, and everything. So it takes him
26:20
Speaker 1: a long time to get going. And then sometimes if
26:21
Speaker 1: I hold his hand, then he'll start walking. And once
26:24
Speaker 1: he builds a little confidence, then he'll then he'll go
26:26
Speaker 1: slowly on his own. But you know, he's picking up
26:29
Speaker 1: every leaf. He's pointing at a tree and he says,
26:31
Speaker 1: what's that, what's that? Um? He's grabbing every bush. He
26:36
Speaker 1: brought him up to big rubs and let him like
26:38
Speaker 1: pull out the bark or the you know, the ripped
26:42
Speaker 1: up tree bark shredded off of the rubs. He's grabbing that. Um,
26:45
Speaker 1: So that that's fun. And uh, I think by next
26:49
Speaker 1: year and maybe even I'll take him out here in
26:51
Speaker 1: the next couple of days or something and just put
26:53
Speaker 1: an antler out there and let him grab it, because
26:55
Speaker 1: I know he doesn't really know what's going on, but
26:58
Speaker 1: he does. He does have like a fascinating one of
27:00
Speaker 1: the antlers because you know, in my my kind of
27:03
Speaker 1: man cave room with all the bucks on the wall
27:05
Speaker 1: and stuff, he comes in there and he points every
27:06
Speaker 1: one of them and he says buck, and then he
27:09
Speaker 1: goes over the table where I've got just a bunch
27:11
Speaker 1: of antlers and a big pile, and he's always trying
27:13
Speaker 1: to grab him. Um. So I'm sure if he saw well,
27:16
Speaker 1: I think if he saw one in the woods right
27:18
Speaker 1: and from him, he'd pick it up and get excited. Maybe.
27:20
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think on the test that theory here
27:22
Speaker 1: soon because that would be cool to see. Yeah, and
27:25
Speaker 1: they wanted to. Like my my daughter, if it was
27:28
Speaker 1: just her, I probably would have gotten away with getting
27:30
Speaker 1: into the timber a little bit more. But my son,
27:34
Speaker 1: you know, he's still fairly short, and we didn't have
27:37
Speaker 1: the kind of coats and you know, you know, like
27:39
Speaker 1: how the first ten of a field ed jar they're
27:42
Speaker 1: just briars and thorns, and uh so we I was like,
27:47
Speaker 1: all right, let's go in the timber. And I turned
27:49
Speaker 1: around and they're stuck in the thorns, right, And so
27:53
Speaker 1: I had to say, Okay, well we can't go in
27:54
Speaker 1: there because of the thorns, and uh you know next time, right, yeah,
28:00
Speaker 1: something you can getting early in there. I didn't think
28:01
Speaker 1: about that with God. It's like anywhere you want to
28:04
Speaker 1: get to look for sheds, almost always you have to
28:06
Speaker 1: go through some serious prickers. In our neck of the woods,
28:08
Speaker 1: at least Iowa and Michigan's brutal. But but I guess,
28:14
Speaker 1: I guess this is probably in a bad place for
28:16
Speaker 1: us to wrap it up, get to talking with our
28:18
Speaker 1: main guests about trees and forestry and and all that
28:22
Speaker 1: kind of interesting stuff. And um, maybe about next episode
28:26
Speaker 1: we'll finally have some sheds, because I've had a horrible
28:28
Speaker 1: shed hunting. Your total to how many do you have
28:31
Speaker 1: so far? This I only found two so far this year. Okay,
28:34
Speaker 1: well I'm actually I'm actually ahead of you. Then I found, um,
28:39
Speaker 1: I found five total. Nothing nothing remotely large or nice,
28:45
Speaker 1: but um, but five sheds. Two of which were super old,
28:49
Speaker 1: two were really small, and one was a little four
28:51
Speaker 1: point side. Um, but I am still trying to trying
28:56
Speaker 1: to get that Montana shed hunting trip in on one
28:58
Speaker 1: of these next work trips, I go on, So might
29:01
Speaker 1: that might bring the total up. But but yeah, let's uh,
29:04
Speaker 1: let's plan catching up soon on some other topics and
29:07
Speaker 1: uh finding a few antlers before then. Huh sounds good man.
29:10
Speaker 1: All right, let's take a quick break. All right, I've
29:15
Speaker 1: got now with me Matt Ross and Tim Russell, and
29:19
Speaker 1: let's start with you. Matt, you're a repeat guest on
29:22
Speaker 1: the podcast. Always love getting to chat with you usually. Um,
29:26
Speaker 1: I'm talking to you from the perspective of of your
29:29
Speaker 1: main role, which I think is is oh gosh, associate
29:33
Speaker 1: director of conservation. Is that right? Pretty close assistant? Okay,
29:38
Speaker 1: so talking all things quality dear management. Um, but I've
29:43
Speaker 1: never taken a deep dive with you on this topic
29:45
Speaker 1: of forestry, but I know you've got a background it
29:48
Speaker 1: can you can you hit us off here with a
29:50
Speaker 1: quick background as far as what you're what your history
29:53
Speaker 1: is with with Forrester in this specific topic. Yeah, my pleasure,
29:57
Speaker 1: Mark and and always like being on a show. So
29:59
Speaker 1: for thanks UH, you know in the lead here for
30:02
Speaker 1: having me back, and also were including somebody else from
30:04
Speaker 1: g d M a UM and I was love talking
30:07
Speaker 1: about deer and deer on it. So I started out
30:11
Speaker 1: very interested in wildlife because of deer hunting. And I
30:14
Speaker 1: know we've covered this in the past, but I went
30:17
Speaker 1: to school for wildlife UH and really focused on deer UM.
30:22
Speaker 1: When I was in graduate school in New Hampshire UM,
30:27
Speaker 1: I started doing a little bit more with the forestry
30:30
Speaker 1: side of things I did. I had a degree in wildlife,
30:34
Speaker 1: but I taught forestry class several forestry class related to
30:38
Speaker 1: my my thesis because of what I was researching and UM.
30:44
Speaker 1: At one point when I graduated, I was looking for
30:48
Speaker 1: a job and my initial job right out of graduate
30:50
Speaker 1: school was working for a consulting company UM in New
30:54
Speaker 1: Hampshire covered New Hampshire, Maine UM, and most of what
30:58
Speaker 1: that company did was forestry worked. I was hired as
31:00
Speaker 1: the wildlife biologists on staff to to write prescriptions into
31:04
Speaker 1: the management plans related to to wildlife UH type of
31:09
Speaker 1: goals and I was there for for quite a bit
31:14
Speaker 1: of time and long enough that UM I had a
31:18
Speaker 1: lot of experience working with landowners and loggers and and
31:22
Speaker 1: UH towns for doing the management on side of things,
31:26
Speaker 1: and UH eventually started to go more on the forestry
31:30
Speaker 1: side in terms of what the company was having me do.
31:33
Speaker 1: And by the time I was done working there, I
31:36
Speaker 1: had become licensed as a forester, I was marking timber um,
31:41
Speaker 1: I was working with Cruise on actual sivilcultural prescriptions along
31:46
Speaker 1: with the wildlife side of things, and UH that was
31:49
Speaker 1: really kind of a trial by fire for me from
31:52
Speaker 1: the wildlife side of things where I really was interested
31:56
Speaker 1: in dear and dear management and wildlife. And I realized
31:59
Speaker 1: on all of the properties that I had worked on
32:03
Speaker 1: while I was there at the consulting of me that
32:05
Speaker 1: UH forestry, mostly because that part of the world is
32:09
Speaker 1: dominated by forest Maine in New Hampshire as the most
32:12
Speaker 1: forested seats in the country by land mass, UM really
32:16
Speaker 1: was driving wildlife populations what foresters did. So I really
32:21
Speaker 1: loved it, and UH did a lot in the forestry community,
32:25
Speaker 1: and then eventually left that job and found myself at
32:29
Speaker 1: qd m A. So I am licensed as a forester
32:32
Speaker 1: and have done a lot of forestry prescriptions. Even though
32:35
Speaker 1: I was driven by deer to to begin with. Okay,
32:39
Speaker 1: and so, so Tim, what about you? What's what's your story? So? Uh,
32:44
Speaker 1: I grew up spending a lot of time in the
32:46
Speaker 1: out of doors, and I didn't have the opportunity to
32:49
Speaker 1: hunt when I was younger, which is something that has
32:52
Speaker 1: changed now that I'm adult. Now that I'm an adult,
32:54
Speaker 1: and something I'm very happy about. I loved being outdoors.
32:58
Speaker 1: I knew I wanted to work outdoors, and so I
33:00
Speaker 1: went to school and in Syracuse to h Too sun
33:03
Speaker 1: ees F to study forestry, where I got my degree
33:06
Speaker 1: in forest resources Management. After school, I spent a few
33:11
Speaker 1: years working for a couple of different forestry consulting firms,
33:14
Speaker 1: doing timber inventories, assisting with forest management plans, UH, that
33:19
Speaker 1: sort of thing. And UH, one day I saw a
33:22
Speaker 1: job posting come up that was for q D M
33:25
Speaker 1: A and they were looking to hire somebody to work
33:27
Speaker 1: on the Young Forest Initiative. UH. In UH, the Northeastern
33:31
Speaker 1: United States and much of the United States, we don't
33:33
Speaker 1: have a lot of young forest cover as we used to,
33:36
Speaker 1: and so there's sort of an effort to get landowners
33:40
Speaker 1: involved in creating and maintaining and enhancing young forest on
33:44
Speaker 1: their properties to benefit wildlife, which seemed like something that
33:47
Speaker 1: I really wanted to do and that I'd be able
33:49
Speaker 1: to help with. So, uh today I'm I'm happily with
33:52
Speaker 1: q d m A. So what does that entail? How
33:55
Speaker 1: are you actually going about encouraging and partnering with folks
33:58
Speaker 1: to to encourage that young forest type AVATAH sure well,
34:01
Speaker 1: part of its outreach to to get people aware. Um
34:05
Speaker 1: and we have partnerships with other conservation organizations including National
34:10
Speaker 1: Wild Turkey Federation and Rough Groud Society and National Audubon Society.
34:14
Speaker 1: UM And there are several different different groups working under
34:18
Speaker 1: the umbrella of the the Young Forest Initiative and including
34:21
Speaker 1: our state's Department of Environmental Conservation. But there is funding
34:25
Speaker 1: through the Natural Resources Conservation Service through their Environmental Quality
34:30
Speaker 1: Incentives Program EQUIP that a lot a lot of folks
34:34
Speaker 1: are probably familiar with where they've they've got some funding
34:37
Speaker 1: put aside just to just to help fund those sorts
34:39
Speaker 1: of projects that can uh you know, range from uh
34:45
Speaker 1: heavy density cuttings to to get young forest growing into
34:49
Speaker 1: in phase of plan control to make sure that plans
34:52
Speaker 1: we don't want don't come to to overtake some of
34:54
Speaker 1: these sites. Uh. So it's there are a lot of
34:57
Speaker 1: different partners in this effort, and uh, certainly there are
35:01
Speaker 1: a lot of benefits to the landowners who are interested
35:03
Speaker 1: in in joining in. I definitely want to dive in
35:06
Speaker 1: further into that a little bit later. And and you
35:09
Speaker 1: mentioned some of the government programs, assistance programs. That's something
35:12
Speaker 1: I'm definitely curious about too, but probably before we go
35:15
Speaker 1: down that rabbit hole. UM, I want to just kind
35:18
Speaker 1: of lay a foundation here for folks. UM and maybe Matt,
35:21
Speaker 1: maybe you want to tackle this first. Uh, why does
35:24
Speaker 1: this matter? Why does why does forestry matter for deer hunters?
35:27
Speaker 1: And maybe maybe even take it one step back further.
35:30
Speaker 1: What is forestry? And then why does this matter for
35:34
Speaker 1: for deer hunters? Sure, yeah, I'm happy to jump into
35:38
Speaker 1: that's a big topic. But um, forest give me your
35:44
Speaker 1: elevator pitch. Yeah, okay. Well, forest management is is a
35:50
Speaker 1: way or that we as natural resource managers, landowners and
35:54
Speaker 1: just the public managing private and public lands can steer
36:00
Speaker 1: direction of and the health of a forest. Um. So
36:04
Speaker 1: it's based on making decisions on how many trees to
36:09
Speaker 1: either keep or leave a keep or removed. Um, sunlight
36:14
Speaker 1: to let in. It's a very predictable thing. Uh, forest,
36:18
Speaker 1: forest management, you can actually predict what will show up. Now, Mark,
36:22
Speaker 1: do you have you and your wife have a garden
36:24
Speaker 1: garden at all? Yeah, we didn't pull it off this
36:27
Speaker 1: last year, but usually we have a garden. Yeah, I'm
36:30
Speaker 1: sure I know why. So Uh yeah, guarden gardeners are everywhere, right,
36:34
Speaker 1: And it takes time. Uh, that's what a forest takes it.
36:37
Speaker 1: It needs time. And to get a good crop in
36:41
Speaker 1: your garden or even a farmer would need, you need
36:44
Speaker 1: to make sure that things are well spaced. Right. So,
36:47
Speaker 1: if you were to go out to the store the
36:49
Speaker 1: spring and wanted to put um, you know, tomatoes, pepper
36:52
Speaker 1: and all that stuff in your garden, you bought all
36:54
Speaker 1: those and instead of putting it in in the same square
36:57
Speaker 1: footage that you normally do, you just lumped every thing
37:00
Speaker 1: together and it was really close together. The end result
37:03
Speaker 1: would not be the same as if you gave everything
37:05
Speaker 1: in the space and the nutrients that it needs. A
37:08
Speaker 1: forest is basically a guarden. It's a big crop and
37:12
Speaker 1: as long as you can give good space to the
37:15
Speaker 1: tree so that they can grow and grow straight, especially
37:18
Speaker 1: if you're if you're interested in timber management, getting nice
37:21
Speaker 1: straight trees to grow and the species that show up. UM.
37:25
Speaker 1: That's also very predictable through succession. UM you can, although
37:29
Speaker 1: it's a very long timeline and it's hard to uh
37:32
Speaker 1: to see that if you're not trained in it. And
37:35
Speaker 1: one of the things I was just talking about a
37:37
Speaker 1: few minutes ago was my prior experience, and tim has
37:39
Speaker 1: it as well, is being able to go on properties
37:42
Speaker 1: that have been managed for ten fifty hundred years. That's
37:46
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting thing to have as a manager because
37:50
Speaker 1: it get lets you kind of look back in time
37:53
Speaker 1: and say, Okay, I know what the managers of this
37:56
Speaker 1: property did that time period ago, and say, right, well,
38:00
Speaker 1: now this is what's growing here. So forestry is that
38:05
Speaker 1: taking those things of time and and the spacing of
38:09
Speaker 1: the different trees and altering it so that you can
38:13
Speaker 1: kind of shift it to what you want to grow there. Now.
38:17
Speaker 1: For deer hunters, why is that interesting? Uh? And important? Um?
38:22
Speaker 1: For most deer hunters. Obviously you get into parts of
38:26
Speaker 1: the Great Plains and and even parts of the West
38:30
Speaker 1: where there isn't much of a forest component. But for
38:33
Speaker 1: most deer populations, particularly white tail populations, they live where
38:37
Speaker 1: forests grow. They might not be a dominant part of
38:40
Speaker 1: the landscape, but for most parts of where white tails are,
38:45
Speaker 1: forests are growing. And honestly, they spend a lot of time,
38:48
Speaker 1: as we all know as deer hunters in where trees are.
38:52
Speaker 1: They could be you can call them what you want.
38:54
Speaker 1: In areas where there's a lot of agg, you know,
38:57
Speaker 1: ravines or coolies or creek where trees are growing and
39:01
Speaker 1: shrubs are growing, dear bed in there, they you certainly
39:04
Speaker 1: eat a lot of stuff in there. We can talk
39:05
Speaker 1: a little bit about, you know, what they access. But hunters, no,
39:09
Speaker 1: that's where you're going, right, That's where betting covered typically
39:12
Speaker 1: can be found where forests are in must of the east,
39:15
Speaker 1: where forest is the dominant um part of the landscape,
39:20
Speaker 1: certainly dear rely on that for everything where agg is
39:23
Speaker 1: not a major thing. So by managing forests, we really
39:28
Speaker 1: manage dear health, dear populations um. And that's kind of
39:32
Speaker 1: what I alluded to earlier is as this kid coming
39:35
Speaker 1: out of grad school, I really had driven myself and
39:38
Speaker 1: what I wanted to go for school is wildlife specific
39:42
Speaker 1: and deer specific. I realized once I was walking around
39:45
Speaker 1: these woodlots that foresters were really the ones that were shaping,
39:51
Speaker 1: at least in New England, you know what dear populations
39:55
Speaker 1: were looking like. Yes, obviously land managers and deer managers
39:59
Speaker 1: and the state regulates harvest and that's a big part
40:02
Speaker 1: of it. It's a huge part of it. But on
40:05
Speaker 1: the habitat side, UH, you're really missing out if you're
40:08
Speaker 1: not managing forest for deer um, particularly because they it
40:13
Speaker 1: makes up such a large component of where they live.
40:15
Speaker 1: Even in areas where it's dominated by agg they spend
40:19
Speaker 1: a lot of time where there's cover and trees are
40:22
Speaker 1: typically Yet if you can manage that to promote good
40:26
Speaker 1: dear populations where they're getting a lot of food where
40:29
Speaker 1: they find cover, you can really influence uh a lot
40:33
Speaker 1: of things with dear dear through forestry. So that's why
40:36
Speaker 1: it's important. Now, what about for someone who doesn't actually
40:41
Speaker 1: have the ability to implement changes on a property of
40:43
Speaker 1: their own. What if there's someone listening who is just
40:45
Speaker 1: a deer hunter who hunts maybe some public land, maybe
40:48
Speaker 1: they hunt some private bad permission? Are their concepts related
40:51
Speaker 1: to this topic that are helpful to understand for any
40:54
Speaker 1: hunter that might be be applied anywhere. Yeah, I'll touch
40:58
Speaker 1: on that and I yes absolutely UM and Tim feels
41:02
Speaker 1: flee free to chime in after, you know, but I
41:06
Speaker 1: think most again we're a white tail organization. Uh, most
41:10
Speaker 1: white tail hunting is happening on private land U. Uh.
41:14
Speaker 1: You know, so if you don't own land, most whitetail
41:18
Speaker 1: hunters have access to land that's privately owned. Yes, there's
41:21
Speaker 1: a lot of public land whitetail hunting going on out
41:23
Speaker 1: there and we should talk about that. But for the
41:25
Speaker 1: people that don't own land, I would venture a gas
41:29
Speaker 1: just based on all the statistics out there that most
41:32
Speaker 1: of them have permission on land that's privately owned. UM.
41:35
Speaker 1: So that is important um for them for those even
41:39
Speaker 1: if you don't own those pieces of ground, because you
41:43
Speaker 1: could do it a couple of ways if that person
41:45
Speaker 1: that owns the land is willing to let you, you know,
41:48
Speaker 1: learn or do some habitat management. UM, you can certainly
41:52
Speaker 1: implement some of the stuff we're talking about. You can
41:54
Speaker 1: actually be uh knowledgeable about where to find dear on
41:59
Speaker 1: places that either publicly owned or privately owned, just based
42:04
Speaker 1: on forestry because obviously influences greatly how dear move UM
42:08
Speaker 1: and where they're going to be based on recent operations.
42:12
Speaker 1: If there's a lot of forestry happening where trees are
42:14
Speaker 1: being removed, it'll influence where deer betting and eating UM.
42:18
Speaker 1: So you need to be able to read and predict
42:19
Speaker 1: that just as a deer hunter UM and as well
42:23
Speaker 1: as you know on other other examples, if you're hunting
42:28
Speaker 1: public land, UM being able to do the same thing
42:31
Speaker 1: and tim feel free to to to jump in sure
42:35
Speaker 1: absolutely UH. You know whether forests are being managed for
42:38
Speaker 1: timber production or for wildlife or not at all, is
42:42
Speaker 1: going to have an influence one way or the other
42:45
Speaker 1: on those wildlife of course, including white tails and UH.
42:48
Speaker 1: For people who are near and haunts own public land,
42:51
Speaker 1: I would say, look at what resources are available as
42:54
Speaker 1: far as information. If you can get your hands on
42:56
Speaker 1: the management plan for the state or the federal force
43:00
Speaker 1: that you live near and be able to say, hey,
43:02
Speaker 1: look this is where a clear cut took place in
43:05
Speaker 1: the recent past, that there will be good brows in there,
43:08
Speaker 1: or you know, maybe even more recently, maybe in the
43:10
Speaker 1: past month or so, that you see a schedule that
43:12
Speaker 1: there's going to be a thinning, and now you know
43:15
Speaker 1: that when you're going out in the woods to hunt,
43:16
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a bunch of tree tops on the
43:18
Speaker 1: ground in that stand which can be highly attractive to deer.
43:21
Speaker 1: That that's very valuable information. Apart from that, even those
43:26
Speaker 1: of us who think of ourselves as not owning land
43:28
Speaker 1: are are part owners of hundreds of millions of acres
43:32
Speaker 1: of land as as US citizens. And so it's definitely
43:36
Speaker 1: our duty to uh to pay attention to what's happening
43:38
Speaker 1: on those lands and and make our desires known that. Uh,
43:42
Speaker 1: you know, if if that's the way that we would
43:44
Speaker 1: like to see the property manage and those that's what
43:46
Speaker 1: we would like to see as far as the benefits
43:48
Speaker 1: that we reap off of those public lands, then uh,
43:52
Speaker 1: it's incumbent upon us to communicate that to the to
43:55
Speaker 1: the government officials who are in charge of making these
43:58
Speaker 1: decisions and how those lands are going to be managed. Yeah,
44:01
Speaker 1: that's a great point that there are ways correct me
44:03
Speaker 1: from wrong tim but there are ways that we as
44:05
Speaker 1: the public can influence some of the management that happens
44:08
Speaker 1: in these places, right. I know, for example, there have
44:11
Speaker 1: there have been some debates in certain parts of the
44:13
Speaker 1: United States around you know, managed force versus unmanaged, and
44:17
Speaker 1: some groups want to keep it untouched um, while other
44:20
Speaker 1: groups are saying, hey, there's a value to some management here. Um.
44:23
Speaker 1: That's probably in an instance where we might be able
44:27
Speaker 1: to you know, be participants within those community meetings or
44:31
Speaker 1: comment gathering sessions, um, and speak to like the benefits
44:36
Speaker 1: of that kind of practice. Right, is that correct? Absolutely?
44:39
Speaker 1: And myself being in New York State where I've spent
44:43
Speaker 1: all of my life and most of my career, we
44:45
Speaker 1: actually have very little federal land, but we have a
44:48
Speaker 1: lot of state land that's managed by our Department of
44:51
Speaker 1: Environmental Conservation, And as they prepare management plans, they do
44:55
Speaker 1: hold public meetings where I've had the opportunity to show
44:58
Speaker 1: up and you know, read management planing before the meeting
45:01
Speaker 1: and come to the meeting and ask questions and give
45:04
Speaker 1: suggestions and you know, sort of discussed with the group
45:07
Speaker 1: what it is we'd like to see off of that
45:08
Speaker 1: property before they make those final decisions. That's great, Okay,
45:13
Speaker 1: So so that that will makes a lot of sense.
45:16
Speaker 1: It's good to know that there are some ways that
45:17
Speaker 1: we can influence forestry policy, you know, even in situations
45:22
Speaker 1: where we don't on land, because like you said to him,
45:24
Speaker 1: we are all public land owners. I think that's a
45:26
Speaker 1: great point. Um. Now, throughout the first you know, fifteen
45:30
Speaker 1: minutes or so we've been talking about here, both of
45:32
Speaker 1: you guys have mentioned a handful of different types of
45:36
Speaker 1: habitat and a handful of different types of ways of
45:38
Speaker 1: managing habitat. Um, maybe maybe it'd be helpful to understand
45:44
Speaker 1: a little bit about what dear need from habitat and
45:47
Speaker 1: in relation to forest. Um. Matt, could you speak to
45:51
Speaker 1: this maybe to kick us off a little bit on
45:53
Speaker 1: you know why different levels of forest habit or different
45:57
Speaker 1: ages of forest habitat or different management this is why
46:00
Speaker 1: that's beneficial to deer from from from the standpoint of
46:03
Speaker 1: what they need biologically. Sure, yeah, happy to so. Uh Well,
46:09
Speaker 1: deer really can survive in a lot of different places.
46:11
Speaker 1: We all know that, right. I mean they you can
46:13
Speaker 1: find them in suburban areas where they're uh trees that
46:17
Speaker 1: have never been cut, to the places that have been
46:19
Speaker 1: heavily cut. So in terms of their need, they're very adaptable.
46:23
Speaker 1: They can live in a lot of different places. Um.
46:26
Speaker 1: You know what what is ideal, um is places where
46:31
Speaker 1: within deer at home range the space they use in
46:35
Speaker 1: a year, they can find all all the things that
46:38
Speaker 1: they need. Right, So what what they typically will do
46:42
Speaker 1: on a daily basis of changes seasonally is they are
46:45
Speaker 1: going there their prey animals and their ruminants, so we
46:49
Speaker 1: all know that. And because of that, what they do
46:52
Speaker 1: is they spend most of daylight. In most cases, this
46:55
Speaker 1: is not everywhere UM have been shown through some research,
46:58
Speaker 1: but in most cases year will bed during the day
47:01
Speaker 1: UM during daylight hours, and they're known as fanty term preposcular,
47:06
Speaker 1: which means they're up and moving around dawn and dusk UM.
47:12
Speaker 1: So that's why we see deer UH. And most hunters
47:15
Speaker 1: will try to get out a few hours before dark
47:17
Speaker 1: UM because that's when they're going to see them, or
47:20
Speaker 1: they get out there for their morning hunt before the
47:22
Speaker 1: sun comes up, and you see deer movement those first
47:25
Speaker 1: few hours of daylight UM. So they bed during the day,
47:28
Speaker 1: they will walk to a food source or or we'll
47:31
Speaker 1: try to find a place to eat UM and that's
47:34
Speaker 1: when they're most active. And then during the middle of
47:37
Speaker 1: the night, yes they are active and more so than
47:39
Speaker 1: they are during the middle of the the day, but they
47:41
Speaker 1: are going to bed down again. So knowing that and
47:44
Speaker 1: then over the year it's generally the same pattern, although
47:48
Speaker 1: during the breathing season there there's no more chaos than
47:51
Speaker 1: what they do, and their home ranges definitely expand they're
47:55
Speaker 1: much larger because they're seeking breeding opportunities. You want within
48:00
Speaker 1: a home range of where deer live to have covering food. Um.
48:05
Speaker 1: If you had basically a dichotomy of a hundreds you know,
48:09
Speaker 1: hundred acre block of land and food was in one
48:12
Speaker 1: place and a fifty it across, you know, the lying
48:16
Speaker 1: right down the middle and there was cover on the
48:17
Speaker 1: other side, you would be supporting less dear. Then if
48:22
Speaker 1: you had that same hundred acres and you had it
48:24
Speaker 1: really diverse where covering food was interspersed with a good
48:29
Speaker 1: mix of all of these different things. Um, So you
48:31
Speaker 1: can almost picture it almost like a jigsaw puzzle looking down. Um.
48:35
Speaker 1: You know, if you're on an aerial like an on
48:38
Speaker 1: X or Google Earth or Hunt or something like, then
48:40
Speaker 1: you're looking down. In those environments where there's a nice
48:43
Speaker 1: mix of food and cover, you will support more gear
48:48
Speaker 1: and have more opportunities to manage dear than you would
48:51
Speaker 1: in a place that's less diverse. So from a forestry perspective, um,
48:58
Speaker 1: it's almost better to start with a blank slate with
49:01
Speaker 1: a property that has uh, you know, almost a forest,
49:06
Speaker 1: or even better, something that's got very little forest and
49:09
Speaker 1: a lot of open space where you could start creating
49:13
Speaker 1: a place that's diversed. And the reason I say that
49:16
Speaker 1: is because dear tend to need cover from their very
49:20
Speaker 1: short animals. I mean they're you know, four ft five
49:23
Speaker 1: ft tall, um, you know, so from that six foot
49:26
Speaker 1: mark down you need a lot of thick cover and
49:30
Speaker 1: food so they can reach it. And a lot of
49:32
Speaker 1: that is found early in the successional phase. So succession
49:36
Speaker 1: is that predictable way that we can manage plants. And
49:40
Speaker 1: Tim mentioned it earlier. I talked about a little earlier
49:42
Speaker 1: in terms of forestry, is predicting what's going to grow there,
49:47
Speaker 1: and succession is that marching forward of how those different
49:51
Speaker 1: plant communities show up. And if you can start with
49:55
Speaker 1: a blank slate hundred acres of field, you know, for example,
49:59
Speaker 1: and start think that come back into a plant community
50:03
Speaker 1: that's no longer young grasses and it started getting shrubs
50:07
Speaker 1: and small trees. And Tim was talking about earlier with
50:09
Speaker 1: young forests you can support more deer than if it's
50:13
Speaker 1: wide open grass, or if it's a forest that's so
50:16
Speaker 1: old that it's canopied out and you have shade on
50:18
Speaker 1: the on the ground. So what you want to do
50:22
Speaker 1: from a timber perspective in terms of managing for financial
50:25
Speaker 1: gains and on the side of trying to make that
50:29
Speaker 1: forest workforce for you financially, can be tweaked a little
50:34
Speaker 1: bit on the deer manager's brain by trying to make
50:37
Speaker 1: it more diverse and offer more UH young cover through
50:43
Speaker 1: forest management practices. UM. So that's kind of the big picture,
50:47
Speaker 1: and we do that through a couple of broad rush
50:50
Speaker 1: techniques that foresters use of either trying to manage a
50:54
Speaker 1: UH landscape in a lot of young trees um or
51:00
Speaker 1: kind of a mix of young and old and those
51:02
Speaker 1: We can get into some of that terminology if you'd like,
51:04
Speaker 1: But that's the thought process. So if I was to
51:08
Speaker 1: be hired or you know, prior to working for t DUM,
51:10
Speaker 1: if somebody had called the consultant company I used to
51:12
Speaker 1: work for and said, hey, I'm really interested in deer hunting, um,
51:16
Speaker 1: how can I manage this for deer? The way you
51:19
Speaker 1: would manage that could would be different than if that
51:23
Speaker 1: person had said, hey, I'm really interested in and growing
51:26
Speaker 1: big trees, so I can, um, you know, get a
51:29
Speaker 1: rebbin off this from my kids or my grandkids. You
51:31
Speaker 1: can do both, but you definitely have to change what
51:35
Speaker 1: you're doing, um, and the prescriptions and how it's done,
51:39
Speaker 1: how the property is is treated would be different from
51:42
Speaker 1: the deer manager's point of view. Okay, So so talk
51:46
Speaker 1: us through then that scenario. Let's say I'm a landowner.
51:50
Speaker 1: I have a chunk of property that has some timber
51:54
Speaker 1: on it. Maybe I've got some diversity and what I've got, Um,
51:59
Speaker 1: can you walk me through Let's say let's say you
52:01
Speaker 1: were still working as a force and then Tim, I'd
52:03
Speaker 1: love you to hop in here too, in your role
52:06
Speaker 1: that you're in right now. UM. You know, let's say
52:09
Speaker 1: the two of you, we're gonna show up my hunting
52:11
Speaker 1: property and I said, hey, I want to understand what
52:15
Speaker 1: I need to do here to improve the habitat um
52:19
Speaker 1: influence some kind of force management. Can you kind of
52:21
Speaker 1: talk me through what your initial questions would be, what
52:26
Speaker 1: that initial process would look like, UM, what would what
52:29
Speaker 1: would I be in for during that first kind of
52:31
Speaker 1: meeting and and kind of subsequently, well, Kim, does that
52:34
Speaker 1: on almost on a daily basis, but it meets with
52:37
Speaker 1: landowners all the time, UM to the program we have
52:40
Speaker 1: here that you mentioned earlier. So Tim, why don't you
52:42
Speaker 1: take take a stab at it? I don't want to
52:45
Speaker 1: steal your thunder because you that is part of your
52:47
Speaker 1: job description. Sure like, Uh, I mean with any any
52:51
Speaker 1: form of FORCET management, you know you have that discussion
52:54
Speaker 1: with the landowner. UM that the initial discussion. A really
52:57
Speaker 1: good thing to find out is about the history of
52:59
Speaker 1: the property, how long they've had it, if it's been
53:02
Speaker 1: logged in the recent past, that they know the land
53:04
Speaker 1: has been treated to a certain way that might allow
53:06
Speaker 1: us to make inferences about what we'll find when we
53:09
Speaker 1: get out there. Probably the most important discussion to have
53:13
Speaker 1: is is about the objective uh and what things you know.
53:16
Speaker 1: It might be one objectives. Sometimes you meet with a
53:19
Speaker 1: person who really just wants that to be hunting property,
53:22
Speaker 1: or they have a multitude of objectives that might rank differently,
53:26
Speaker 1: and so you start with that objective. You do uh,
53:30
Speaker 1: you do an assessment of the property to basically uh
53:33
Speaker 1: get some information about what's what the forest looks like now,
53:36
Speaker 1: what the conditions are like currently, and then you work
53:39
Speaker 1: within your your knowledge and skill set to try and
53:42
Speaker 1: come up with a series of treatments which will sort
53:45
Speaker 1: of uh, as Matt alluded, to drive or steer that
53:48
Speaker 1: forest ecosystem in a direction that better meets those objectives,
53:53
Speaker 1: which can consist of a lot of different things, oftentimes
53:56
Speaker 1: cutting trees and oftentimes using herbicides to role plants which
54:00
Speaker 1: are not desirable. Uh. And of course hand in hand
54:03
Speaker 1: with that is heard management to make sure that you
54:06
Speaker 1: don't have deer that are are causing damage to your
54:10
Speaker 1: your potential crop for what you're trying to grow. So
54:14
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's basically the essence of it. Um. Okay,
54:19
Speaker 1: would you and and you you also want to know
54:22
Speaker 1: like what limitations are there? I mean certainly have to
54:24
Speaker 1: walk the property with the person. It's interesting those conversations
54:27
Speaker 1: are come sometimes the landowner or the person that's calling
54:32
Speaker 1: you know or even emailing us. We get these questions
54:34
Speaker 1: all the time. Uh. We just put a blog up
54:37
Speaker 1: about you know, that kind of interaction on our website,
54:41
Speaker 1: not that long ago, um. Where the landowner has has interest,
54:46
Speaker 1: but sometimes it's hard for them to even define it themselves.
54:50
Speaker 1: So it's those conversations that back and forth of Okay,
54:53
Speaker 1: you know, what do you use the property for? UM,
54:56
Speaker 1: you know, what would you like to not happen? What
54:58
Speaker 1: would scare you where? Whoever that manager is this meeting
55:02
Speaker 1: them almost has to massage the discussion to the point where,
55:07
Speaker 1: you know, just trying to get out of them what
55:09
Speaker 1: they're looking for, and then UM offer them a draft
55:12
Speaker 1: plan and a list of objectives to see if that
55:14
Speaker 1: actually is what they're looking for. I'll say one thing
55:17
Speaker 1: too as well, is it's really an interesting opportunity too.
55:22
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, these things are happening UM and they
55:25
Speaker 1: influence dear movement. But one of the things I thought
55:29
Speaker 1: was super powerful and one of those kind of like
55:31
Speaker 1: aha moments for me, was how we have the ability
55:35
Speaker 1: to change that. UM. You know, looking at a forest,
55:39
Speaker 1: many deer hunters will go out, you know, it doesn't
55:42
Speaker 1: matter private of public lands, and they start scouting for
55:45
Speaker 1: deer sign Right, You're going to look where you can
55:47
Speaker 1: find rob lines and beds. UM find sheds on the
55:50
Speaker 1: ground this time of year. In the next couple of weeks,
55:53
Speaker 1: UM plant food plots. You know, obviously to try to
55:56
Speaker 1: steer that a little bit, but you can think big
55:58
Speaker 1: picture and start really thinking, Okay, if you have access
56:02
Speaker 1: and the ability to do this on private land, it
56:05
Speaker 1: start uh influencing that in a big way by saying, Okay,
56:10
Speaker 1: if I know, Dear like these certain conditions, and I
56:13
Speaker 1: know the wind direction is a certain you know, predominant
56:15
Speaker 1: wind directions coming across this property a certain way, and
56:18
Speaker 1: I know my access is only uh these you know,
56:21
Speaker 1: from the from the main road. If it's a place
56:23
Speaker 1: where you don't have a house or cabin, I have
56:26
Speaker 1: to walk in from this direction. You can start planning
56:28
Speaker 1: that out in advance and saying I want to steer
56:31
Speaker 1: where dear go um. And you know it's not a
56:35
Speaker 1: bulletproof thing like anything, but you can really heavily influence
56:38
Speaker 1: dear movement across the landscape by making some of these
56:41
Speaker 1: decisions at the thirty ft scale. Now, so for the
56:44
Speaker 1: people that are listening that don't own property and don't
56:48
Speaker 1: have those decisions, that's where you fall into what Kim
56:50
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier is on lands you don't control, but you
56:56
Speaker 1: have access to, either through permission or if it's public land,
56:59
Speaker 1: you can start making those decisions and figure out where
57:03
Speaker 1: to scout and where the hunt from the air. Even
57:05
Speaker 1: though you don't have the control over it. You can
57:07
Speaker 1: look at things like that, UM, even on properties that
57:10
Speaker 1: you don't have access to. If there's land near you
57:12
Speaker 1: that's privately owned that you don't have permission to get on,
57:15
Speaker 1: all you need to do is get on an areal,
57:17
Speaker 1: go back a couple of years. There's all different ways
57:20
Speaker 1: that you can kind of rewind time on those areals
57:23
Speaker 1: and see what it looks like five years or man
57:26
Speaker 1: even fifty years ago. You can go into some of
57:28
Speaker 1: the soil and water conservation districts and get old areals
57:31
Speaker 1: and see what was done to that property that that
57:35
Speaker 1: is right next door that you've never stepped foot on,
57:37
Speaker 1: and kind of make a decision of Okay, I think
57:40
Speaker 1: I know why de are doing that. It really lends
57:42
Speaker 1: itself to the to the deer hunter that's trying to
57:45
Speaker 1: strategize making those decisions through forestry and how that's been treated. Yeah,
57:50
Speaker 1: it's interesting. At a very similar example, pop up my
57:53
Speaker 1: own life on our on our Northern Michigan deer camp
57:57
Speaker 1: up there about two years ago, maybe three years ago,
58:01
Speaker 1: two or three years ago. UM showed up there one year,
58:04
Speaker 1: I think, late summer and saw that the neighbor had
58:07
Speaker 1: just done a really aggressive cut, not quite a clear cut,
58:10
Speaker 1: but a but a very aggressive selective cut, I guess
58:13
Speaker 1: you'd call it. Um, And it just dramatically changed like
58:17
Speaker 1: a twenty acre section right next to our property. And
58:19
Speaker 1: right away I was like, Okay, well this is gonna
58:21
Speaker 1: change a lot of things, because what used to be
58:24
Speaker 1: just a big, thick, mature timber stand now is all
58:27
Speaker 1: of a sudden it's probably gonna be really good betting
58:30
Speaker 1: it's probably gonna be a whole lot of good food
58:32
Speaker 1: here for a while to um. So the past few
58:34
Speaker 1: years we've started placing cameras along the edge of our
58:36
Speaker 1: property and start paying attention to it more. Um, because
58:40
Speaker 1: you could just tell, like, when you see that kind
58:41
Speaker 1: of habitat, change is going to probably be positive for
58:45
Speaker 1: deer activity. Um. Even as you said, math, if it's
58:47
Speaker 1: not on your own property, you can still take advantage
58:50
Speaker 1: of it to a degree. And um. Interestingly, our shared
58:53
Speaker 1: friend further almost killed a nice buck coming into that section.
58:58
Speaker 1: He was right near kind of on our side, close
59:01
Speaker 1: to that clear cut area, and that the buck was
59:03
Speaker 1: heading that way probably check out for doze, and he
59:05
Speaker 1: almost got a shot. So it's that's cool. He didn't
59:09
Speaker 1: tell me. That's enough to find out why why I
59:11
Speaker 1: didn't hear all about it. Yeah, just just didn't quite
59:14
Speaker 1: have enough time to get on him before he turned
59:16
Speaker 1: heart started heading directly away from him. But yeah, yeah,
59:21
Speaker 1: I'll say One of other things too, is like you know,
59:24
Speaker 1: on the hunting side of it is we all have
59:26
Speaker 1: that thing in the back of our brain, you know,
59:28
Speaker 1: where you're walking into an area and all of a
59:30
Speaker 1: sudden it feels like theory, right, you know, you're like, oh,
59:34
Speaker 1: I feel like I could jump a deer right now.
59:36
Speaker 1: Um that you control that too. You can make those
59:40
Speaker 1: decisions from the air and say I would like that
59:44
Speaker 1: feeling to be over here on this part of the property.
59:46
Speaker 1: And that's land management and it doesn't necessarily always have
59:50
Speaker 1: to be forestry. Um. You can make those decisions by
59:52
Speaker 1: just letting the field go and let it go back.
59:55
Speaker 1: But that is what we're talking about here. Um. One
59:58
Speaker 1: thing you mentioned earlier is, uh, you said a selective cut,
1:00:02
Speaker 1: and I talked a little bit about those broad brush
1:00:04
Speaker 1: treatments generally for terminology. If you talk into a forester
1:00:10
Speaker 1: or if you know the property you have access to,
1:00:13
Speaker 1: forster has been on it and they're starting to work
1:00:15
Speaker 1: with that UM through some of the terminology and tim
1:00:19
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. UM kind of one way to regenerate a force.
1:00:25
Speaker 1: There's two big I guess camps of forestry. Way we
1:00:29
Speaker 1: ways we manage is even age management and uneven Asian management.
1:00:33
Speaker 1: And even Asian management is where you want to create
1:00:36
Speaker 1: one whole new age class of trees coming up, and
1:00:39
Speaker 1: that would be like a clear cut as you were
1:00:41
Speaker 1: just talking about on that property up in Michigan. There's
1:00:43
Speaker 1: other ways to do even age management. UM. What you
1:00:47
Speaker 1: may have been looking at was a sea tree cut
1:00:50
Speaker 1: or shelter would cut. They're basically big massive changes where
1:00:54
Speaker 1: you remove almost the entire overstory, if not the whole
1:00:57
Speaker 1: thing sea tree and shelter would cut, or where you're
1:01:00
Speaker 1: leaving a little bit left for a residual stand. But
1:01:04
Speaker 1: the eventual plan is to get a new crop of
1:01:06
Speaker 1: trees coming up, and you do that in a block
1:01:09
Speaker 1: fashion where you're saying, Okay, this block is what I
1:01:12
Speaker 1: want to regenerate. And if we create a environment where
1:01:16
Speaker 1: there's a lot of sun and no overstory, very few
1:01:18
Speaker 1: overstory trees, you'll get a lot of some loving trees
1:01:21
Speaker 1: to come in there. Things like aspen, light seated species
1:01:25
Speaker 1: like white pine. Well, I'm listening stuff in the northeast,
1:01:27
Speaker 1: but it doesn't matter where you are. The things that
1:01:30
Speaker 1: will pioneer site is what shows up. Alternatively, if you
1:01:35
Speaker 1: want to do uh, the type of management that's uneven
1:01:39
Speaker 1: Asian management where you're removing some most people call it
1:01:42
Speaker 1: select cut or selective cut, where you're removing some of
1:01:45
Speaker 1: the trees believing a portion of them. You can regenerate
1:01:49
Speaker 1: some new trees in there. But the trees that generally
1:01:52
Speaker 1: will go back in that environment like shade or a
1:01:54
Speaker 1: little bit of sun, not a lot of sun. And
1:01:56
Speaker 1: that's through that predictability that I mentioned earlier. If you
1:02:00
Speaker 1: want to influence what trees grow back, you do that
1:02:03
Speaker 1: through those two major camps. In the forester's mind, they say, Okay,
1:02:07
Speaker 1: I need this to happen. The landowner or the landowner
1:02:10
Speaker 1: or deer hunter that's talking and he wants deer to
1:02:12
Speaker 1: bed over there. Here are things that we need to do. Now.
1:02:15
Speaker 1: The timeline on both of those of what deer will
1:02:18
Speaker 1: use are different. The reason I'm mentioning that is you're
1:02:20
Speaker 1: talking about that Michigan neighbor UH, the northern Michigan neighbor
1:02:25
Speaker 1: that's probably gonna be in the in the long term,
1:02:29
Speaker 1: kind of short lived. Although they did that cut that
1:02:33
Speaker 1: you know what you felt like was an aggressive or
1:02:35
Speaker 1: you know you described as an aggressive thing. They removed
1:02:37
Speaker 1: a lot of trees. Dear, deer use in there. You
1:02:40
Speaker 1: can expect to be very high for a handful of years, right,
1:02:44
Speaker 1: but at some point that stuff will get above the
1:02:47
Speaker 1: deer's reach. Shade will stroll back up, but use around
1:02:50
Speaker 1: the seven or eight eight year mark, and then deer
1:02:52
Speaker 1: youth starts to decline because they don't have access to
1:02:56
Speaker 1: those trees that are within reach or have lots of
1:02:59
Speaker 1: berries and fruits. The buds are no longer reach. And
1:03:02
Speaker 1: that's where you can start making those predictions. Um again,
1:03:07
Speaker 1: big term, big picture, long term from the sky of
1:03:10
Speaker 1: how dear will dear useful change. So I will bet
1:03:13
Speaker 1: you whatever year that was done on your neighbor's property,
1:03:17
Speaker 1: you got about seven or eight years of really high
1:03:19
Speaker 1: activity and then all of a sudden you're gonna start
1:03:21
Speaker 1: seeing at the client. UM use that to your advantage.
1:03:24
Speaker 1: You could plan around it. You know, those are things
1:03:26
Speaker 1: that are deer hunter even if you don't own the
1:03:28
Speaker 1: land next to you. You want to know that stuff. Yeah, So,
1:03:31
Speaker 1: so how do you determine what the right option is
1:03:36
Speaker 1: between an even age class management or UM or uneven
1:03:42
Speaker 1: I'm blinking on the terminology you just said two seconds ago. Um,
1:03:45
Speaker 1: But how do you determine what the right route is
1:03:47
Speaker 1: to go between those two different camps of managing a
1:03:50
Speaker 1: piece of timber? Um? I manage? It probably depends partly
1:03:53
Speaker 1: on your goals. But can you elaborate a little bit
1:03:55
Speaker 1: mat Tim, I'll say it had definitely the buds on
1:03:58
Speaker 1: the goals. A lot of it is baseball. So on
1:04:00
Speaker 1: what Tim mentioned before is walking the property and getting
1:04:03
Speaker 1: a you know, a current status what's out there? You
1:04:06
Speaker 1: know what what trees are there now? Um, because that
1:04:10
Speaker 1: will play a large role in it. UM commercially, if
1:04:13
Speaker 1: there's trees that you can't take out of there that
1:04:15
Speaker 1: will pay for it, then you're you're looking like it's
1:04:18
Speaker 1: a cost operation and most people don't have the ability
1:04:22
Speaker 1: to pay to have something like that done. You want
1:04:24
Speaker 1: the forest operation to pay for itself, um, if you
1:04:27
Speaker 1: possibly can. So you know the current conditions part of it. Also,
1:04:31
Speaker 1: the ground really really you know what what the soils
1:04:34
Speaker 1: are like? Moisture level. UM, all of that stuff will
1:04:38
Speaker 1: play a part too, because sometimes logistically, if it's really wet,
1:04:43
Speaker 1: you can't go in there any time year, or you
1:04:44
Speaker 1: gotta wait till it's frozen if you're in the north. Um.
1:04:48
Speaker 1: And all of the things that are kind of fall
1:04:51
Speaker 1: under the logistics tab you know of like what what
1:04:54
Speaker 1: you can do and what you can get away with.
1:04:56
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of nuances and that's why the
1:04:58
Speaker 1: answers typically it depends. It really depends on walking the property,
1:05:03
Speaker 1: getting a sense of what it feels like. And you know,
1:05:05
Speaker 1: I'll say nod for any anybody listening. You know, this
1:05:09
Speaker 1: is why forresters are important. There's a lot of these
1:05:12
Speaker 1: folks out there that use forresters. UM. They aren't just
1:05:16
Speaker 1: a middle middleman or woman that's there to you know,
1:05:20
Speaker 1: help alone with the process, but also get their quote
1:05:23
Speaker 1: unquote cut um. A lot of times you need somebody
1:05:26
Speaker 1: that's trained in those decision making. There's a lot of
1:05:28
Speaker 1: great laggers out there. I still have a lot of
1:05:31
Speaker 1: great friends and their loggers. UM. Folks that go directly
1:05:34
Speaker 1: with loggers can get a similar result, but you want
1:05:37
Speaker 1: somebody that's trained in silver culture. The science and art
1:05:40
Speaker 1: of managing forests to make some of those decisions. And
1:05:44
Speaker 1: that's part of the thought process too, is working with
1:05:46
Speaker 1: somebody that's trained. They have they went to school for it,
1:05:49
Speaker 1: um and it's certainly important, uh, Tim, you know, feel
1:05:53
Speaker 1: free to chime in, know about like going onto a property,
1:05:57
Speaker 1: how do you decide, um, whether you're gonna do full
1:05:59
Speaker 1: on even Asian management, uneven Asian management or what mark
1:06:03
Speaker 1: you originally had asked us to be on the call
1:06:05
Speaker 1: of uh is timber stand improvement. And that's a whole
1:06:09
Speaker 1: camp in itself. And of this intermediate stage where the
1:06:12
Speaker 1: trees are not quite commercial. Uh, they're not ready to
1:06:16
Speaker 1: be cut, but you can still do some things. I'll
1:06:18
Speaker 1: let Tim kind of take the ball from there. Yeah,
1:06:21
Speaker 1: if you can define some of that to be helpful
1:06:23
Speaker 1: to Tim absolutely well. You know, when we have an
1:06:27
Speaker 1: uneven state and uneven aged stand that's being managed typically
1:06:31
Speaker 1: using that selection method that Matt had mentioned, we're trying
1:06:35
Speaker 1: to leave, you know, at the stand level in that
1:06:37
Speaker 1: individual stand a similar area with trees of different ages
1:06:41
Speaker 1: in each age class trees and different ages that are
1:06:43
Speaker 1: all mixed up in the same stand. Because of our
1:06:46
Speaker 1: history at least in New York and a lot of
1:06:49
Speaker 1: the Northeast, so much of our forest has reverted from
1:06:52
Speaker 1: a band and agricultural land. That the vast majority of
1:06:55
Speaker 1: the forests that we're managing our even age um, and
1:06:59
Speaker 1: so it sort of becomes easier to continue to to
1:07:03
Speaker 1: follow that system. Uh, it takes a tremendously long time,
1:07:06
Speaker 1: whether you're starting from the ground or starting from an
1:07:10
Speaker 1: older even aged forest, to convert to an uneven aged
1:07:13
Speaker 1: forest where you have trees of lots of lots of
1:07:16
Speaker 1: different age classes. There are a few ways to do it,
1:07:18
Speaker 1: where you might come in with a mosaic of very
1:07:21
Speaker 1: small gaps that you're creating over time, or starting with
1:07:24
Speaker 1: a gap that you're expanding over time. But that's a
1:07:27
Speaker 1: very long process to go from, you know, an even
1:07:30
Speaker 1: age stand to an uneven aged stand. Whereas in any
1:07:33
Speaker 1: of these cases, if we go in and we do
1:07:35
Speaker 1: a very heavy cut like a shelter would or a
1:07:38
Speaker 1: seed tree or a clear cut, you know, it isn't
1:07:42
Speaker 1: as difficult to regenerate the stand and now have an
1:07:45
Speaker 1: even age stand that can basically that conversion can take
1:07:48
Speaker 1: place in a single treatment um. As far as you know,
1:07:53
Speaker 1: managing those as as they go forward, I mean, they're
1:07:56
Speaker 1: they're a little bit different, UM and this can this
1:07:59
Speaker 1: can influence which one is preferable, because with the even
1:08:02
Speaker 1: age stand, you're you're regenerating that stand, getting a new
1:08:06
Speaker 1: age class and new cohort cohort of trees coming up
1:08:09
Speaker 1: UM as they approach rotation age. Typically you have intermediate
1:08:13
Speaker 1: treatments like timber stand improvement to reduce the crowding and
1:08:17
Speaker 1: and leave behind the best individuals UM and then ultimately
1:08:21
Speaker 1: you're regenerating the stand, whereas in that uneven aged stand,
1:08:24
Speaker 1: each entry you're sort of doing both of fenning and
1:08:27
Speaker 1: a regeneration treatment because you're trying to keep trees of
1:08:30
Speaker 1: all different ages throughout that entire stand. So you've got
1:08:33
Speaker 1: seedlings and saplings and pole timber and small saltember and
1:08:37
Speaker 1: large saal timber size trees UM. And this can pose
1:08:40
Speaker 1: a different obstacle UM, particularly when you get into areas
1:08:43
Speaker 1: like much of New York has, where where deer can
1:08:46
Speaker 1: be overpopulated to the point that they're they're browsing down
1:08:49
Speaker 1: UM all of the region you want. In an even
1:08:52
Speaker 1: age scenario, you basically have a window of time where
1:08:55
Speaker 1: you need to get trees regenerated and then up over
1:08:58
Speaker 1: the heads of the deer where they can each those
1:09:00
Speaker 1: trees and not have to worry about it for another
1:09:02
Speaker 1: eighty years, whereas in an uneven aged setting you need
1:09:06
Speaker 1: to have regeneration constantly and having you know, even a
1:09:11
Speaker 1: period of time in time for a few years where
1:09:13
Speaker 1: the deer brows is so heavy that you can't get
1:09:16
Speaker 1: that regeneration established. That can pose a problem that is
1:09:20
Speaker 1: going to continue to be a problem because there's a
1:09:22
Speaker 1: gap in that age structure that will continue on through time. UH.
1:09:26
Speaker 1: The other thing we think about a lot as far
1:09:28
Speaker 1: as trying to you know, when we have them manage
1:09:30
Speaker 1: uneven aged stands UH in New York and many other
1:09:33
Speaker 1: places that have each bark disease. As Matt mentioned that
1:09:37
Speaker 1: that uneven aged management UM often favors shade tolerant species
1:09:44
Speaker 1: because they're growing under several other tiers of vegetation of
1:09:48
Speaker 1: different heights. It could be more difficult for those UM
1:09:51
Speaker 1: those shade intolerant or sun loving species to come in
1:09:55
Speaker 1: and UH in New York and many other places, we
1:09:59
Speaker 1: have this issue with with each that can come to
1:10:02
Speaker 1: dominate in those cases because each is so tolerant of shade,
1:10:06
Speaker 1: So it definitely poses some different obstacles managing under one
1:10:11
Speaker 1: versus the other. Is there any is there any kind
1:10:14
Speaker 1: of blanket statement you could apply to either even or
1:10:19
Speaker 1: uneven management as far as a benefit or or or
1:10:24
Speaker 1: negative to either one as far as managing from a
1:10:27
Speaker 1: deer hunting perspective, because I'm imagining if I were to
1:10:30
Speaker 1: just like guess off the top of my head, I see, okay,
1:10:32
Speaker 1: a clear cut that to kind of practice and even
1:10:35
Speaker 1: management practice right there. That seems like a downside to
1:10:38
Speaker 1: that would be that it would be at least immediately
1:10:42
Speaker 1: after that clear cuts made, you've lost a lot of
1:10:44
Speaker 1: cover in the short term, and you might have changed
1:10:47
Speaker 1: dear behavior in the short term, possibly negatively, depending on
1:10:50
Speaker 1: when that cuts made, how close it might be the
1:10:52
Speaker 1: hunting seasons. So that's something like, well, that's a catastrophic change.
1:10:56
Speaker 1: That's one downside, but then the upside might be that
1:10:58
Speaker 1: a year or two or three years from now, then
1:11:00
Speaker 1: you've got this this great, big, large area of of
1:11:04
Speaker 1: beneficial habitat um. That's my novice guests on one possible
1:11:09
Speaker 1: upside downside of something a clear cut. Could you speak
1:11:12
Speaker 1: to or point out any other possible benefits or downsized
1:11:16
Speaker 1: to either one of those. Um that someone might want
1:11:18
Speaker 1: to think about one considering one or the other. Yeah,
1:11:21
Speaker 1: I'll jump in. I think they both have their place,
1:11:24
Speaker 1: and if the land lends itself, the space lends itself.
1:11:29
Speaker 1: I like both techniques for deer hunting. UM. You know,
1:11:32
Speaker 1: in an ideal situation, you know, percuts don't have to
1:11:35
Speaker 1: be although they're nice to have, you know, larger five
1:11:39
Speaker 1: ten acres or even ten to twenty acres or larger recommended.
1:11:44
Speaker 1: You know, these blocks of two to five acres can
1:11:47
Speaker 1: be created to get especially if you get the light
1:11:50
Speaker 1: slope where the sun's coming down. It's the you know,
1:11:53
Speaker 1: a south facing slope to get a lot of sun
1:11:55
Speaker 1: in those places. UM. I like to see both. Then
1:12:00
Speaker 1: end on even as management for deer hunting, and it
1:12:02
Speaker 1: goes back to that sculpting of deer movement where you
1:12:06
Speaker 1: can you can influence how deer will bed you get
1:12:10
Speaker 1: the forest to respond the way you want as well,
1:12:12
Speaker 1: but you can influence how deer will better move. If
1:12:15
Speaker 1: you can picture again a block of landmark where you have, UM,
1:12:20
Speaker 1: let's say, just as an extreme right, the wind is
1:12:23
Speaker 1: out of the west. I'm gonna give you an extreme example.
1:12:26
Speaker 1: And on the west side of that hundred acres you
1:12:28
Speaker 1: put a linear five acre clear cut that takes up
1:12:32
Speaker 1: the whole west boundary. Right. Um, you can expect within
1:12:35
Speaker 1: a couple of years dear to be betting on that
1:12:38
Speaker 1: west cover. And then what if right in the center
1:12:40
Speaker 1: of that block, UM you did UM going from a
1:12:45
Speaker 1: you know, east west pattern, you get a whole bunch
1:12:48
Speaker 1: of uneven aged management UM coming from that that clear
1:12:53
Speaker 1: cut towards a food source which is all the way
1:12:56
Speaker 1: over on the east side of the property, but on
1:12:58
Speaker 1: the north and on the south off the end of
1:13:00
Speaker 1: your block, you didn't do much. There's just open canopy
1:13:03
Speaker 1: in there, or you know, a close canopy, not much
1:13:06
Speaker 1: on the ground growing. You would predict that deer would
1:13:09
Speaker 1: probably come out of that clear cut they'd be betting
1:13:12
Speaker 1: in there would follow that uneven aged management kind of
1:13:16
Speaker 1: swath where there's some cover growing in the in the
1:13:19
Speaker 1: understory to your food source. UM. That's an extreme example.
1:13:24
Speaker 1: But what I'm saying there is that's an example of
1:13:27
Speaker 1: having both and kind of um for lack of a
1:13:30
Speaker 1: better term, I mean, others have used it out their
1:13:32
Speaker 1: deer scaping the property where you can influence where deer betting. Sure,
1:13:37
Speaker 1: in about eight years or nine years, that clear cuts
1:13:39
Speaker 1: no longer going to be useful for deer um. Not
1:13:43
Speaker 1: necessarily useful, but it's not going to have the betting
1:13:46
Speaker 1: cover holding capacity that it did in the first couple
1:13:49
Speaker 1: of years. Um, you wanted some kind of time limits
1:13:52
Speaker 1: on that. I can tell you. You You know, doing those
1:13:54
Speaker 1: heavy even age management techniques, you're going to see a
1:13:59
Speaker 1: hundredfold being greets and brows coming in immediately in the
1:14:02
Speaker 1: first one to five years, you'll see an excess of
1:14:05
Speaker 1: over a thousand pounds of food. Breaker You're gonna get
1:14:08
Speaker 1: a flush of soft mass because a lot of those
1:14:10
Speaker 1: things like raspberries, um and other soft mass bearing shrubs
1:14:16
Speaker 1: and small trees will show up. That's where they grow. UM.
1:14:20
Speaker 1: But again you're gonna it's short lived, it's gonna kind
1:14:23
Speaker 1: of disappear. Whereas in the environment where you're doing the
1:14:26
Speaker 1: uneven aged management, you can expect, especially if we're going
1:14:29
Speaker 1: in and penetrating that area and just doing a little
1:14:31
Speaker 1: bit every seven to ten years, you're always gonna have
1:14:34
Speaker 1: cover coming up and always having covering coming up. So
1:14:38
Speaker 1: from a deer hunter's perspective, they're both good if you
1:14:42
Speaker 1: have the space for it. Um. You know, in that
1:14:44
Speaker 1: extreme example, I just told you after about ten years
1:14:48
Speaker 1: that western boundaries not going to be holding gear the
1:14:50
Speaker 1: way it was, um, you know, until you can go
1:14:54
Speaker 1: in there and do something else with it. So now
1:14:56
Speaker 1: you've got to plan accordingly. And that's really what a
1:14:59
Speaker 1: forced and UH wildlife management plan combined can do for you.
1:15:05
Speaker 1: If you integrate those two goals, your deer hunting or
1:15:08
Speaker 1: your wildlife specific goals with a timber management or forestry,
1:15:13
Speaker 1: you can start in flowing some of those things that
1:15:15
Speaker 1: having decisions where you might not do UH as large
1:15:19
Speaker 1: as a clear cut or even age management. In year one,
1:15:23
Speaker 1: you might do just that northwest boundary and then in
1:15:27
Speaker 1: ten years go down and do the north you know,
1:15:30
Speaker 1: southwest boundary and then move it into a different quadrant
1:15:35
Speaker 1: where you're moving that around where deer going. That's an
1:15:37
Speaker 1: ideal thing where you're always going through a rotation. I
1:15:41
Speaker 1: use that word of doing something there every couple of
1:15:44
Speaker 1: years to keep deer cover and food low and deer
1:15:48
Speaker 1: use on your property high. Um. It requires space to
1:15:52
Speaker 1: do that. For private landowners that have small landholdings. One
1:15:57
Speaker 1: of the best ways you can do that. And I
1:15:59
Speaker 1: didn't even plan I'm talking about this, but it just
1:16:01
Speaker 1: makes sense. It's through a cooperative, and I know they're
1:16:03
Speaker 1: huge in Michigan and they're big in New York too.
1:16:06
Speaker 1: Is I've seen foresters firsthand example where you might not
1:16:11
Speaker 1: own that much land if you are a private landowner, um,
1:16:15
Speaker 1: but you can plan a forest operation with multiple landowners
1:16:19
Speaker 1: involved through a cooperative where that forrester and the logging
1:16:24
Speaker 1: crew will love it because it's economy of scale where
1:16:27
Speaker 1: they might come in and they might have to create
1:16:29
Speaker 1: a couple of different landings to access the wood, but
1:16:32
Speaker 1: at least it's working cohesively as one big plan where
1:16:36
Speaker 1: you might have you know, five or ten landowners together.
1:16:40
Speaker 1: That actually makes it worth the operation and then you
1:16:44
Speaker 1: can start influencing the same stuff we're talking about through forestry.
1:16:47
Speaker 1: So cooperatives, although they have a lot of benefits in
1:16:50
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways, a lot of folks don't
1:16:52
Speaker 1: think through with the forestry side of it. But I've
1:16:55
Speaker 1: seen that firsthand example. I chure tim as well, where
1:16:58
Speaker 1: one foresters high by basically every landowner and they bring
1:17:02
Speaker 1: a crew and they just treat as much acres as
1:17:04
Speaker 1: they possibly can. In the fact, my own cooperative. Uh,
1:17:09
Speaker 1: there's a guy moving on this weekend. Uh, a logger's
1:17:13
Speaker 1: moving and he's gonna be treating several different properties on
1:17:16
Speaker 1: the place, slide hunt on. That's a really interesting way
1:17:19
Speaker 1: of of of continue to take that group approach and
1:17:23
Speaker 1: and expand that beyond just harvest decisions, but also to
1:17:27
Speaker 1: management of habitat. That's a pretty cool way to do it.
1:17:31
Speaker 1: You were talking about kind of rotating different quadrants and
1:17:35
Speaker 1: creating different even necessarily mentioned this war, but you kind
1:17:38
Speaker 1: of alluded to you're creating different edges. Like you talked
1:17:40
Speaker 1: about how you've had that one example scenario where you
1:17:43
Speaker 1: had the clear cut betting here on the west side,
1:17:45
Speaker 1: and then you had this edge created by uneven management
1:17:49
Speaker 1: through the middle then directed traffic towards that food source
1:17:52
Speaker 1: to the east. And as you were talking about that,
1:17:54
Speaker 1: I was thinking about, Yeah, a lot of what we're
1:17:55
Speaker 1: doing here when we're managing timber is taking what might
1:17:58
Speaker 1: be a wide been monoculture, even age standard timber that
1:18:02
Speaker 1: has no diversity to habitat, no edge within it, and
1:18:06
Speaker 1: now you're creating this edge, which as is a lot
1:18:09
Speaker 1: of deer hunters. No, edge is something that attracts deer
1:18:12
Speaker 1: that deer really relate to as far as movement, as
1:18:15
Speaker 1: far as the types of habitat they desire to be
1:18:18
Speaker 1: around for food and escape, cover and whatnot. Um and Tim,
1:18:22
Speaker 1: I read an article you wrote a while back about
1:18:25
Speaker 1: this about the importance of edge and how it might
1:18:29
Speaker 1: be something to think about. Is you could achieve I
1:18:32
Speaker 1: think your your line wasn't there that you could achieve
1:18:36
Speaker 1: creating edge on a habitat one bite at a time. UM,
1:18:39
Speaker 1: if you know what I'm talking about? Could you could
1:18:41
Speaker 1: you elaborate on on what your concept was there that
1:18:44
Speaker 1: you that you spoke about in that piece? Sure? Uh,
1:18:47
Speaker 1: And in that that piece, I was looking at something
1:18:50
Speaker 1: very much like what Matt was talking about just earlier,
1:18:53
Speaker 1: as far as continuing to to cut on the property
1:18:57
Speaker 1: so that you know there's always something that's been freshly
1:19:00
Speaker 1: cut and always something that's been growing in. I think
1:19:02
Speaker 1: one of the examples I gave in that article, Uh,
1:19:05
Speaker 1: it would be to expand a gap, particularly if somebody
1:19:08
Speaker 1: has a limited amount of space or time and resources
1:19:11
Speaker 1: that they can create a patch cut and then continue
1:19:14
Speaker 1: to work off of that. Um. You know, uh, sometimes
1:19:19
Speaker 1: you know it would seem almost that uh, that habitat
1:19:23
Speaker 1: management as as far as deer go and timber management
1:19:26
Speaker 1: can seem at odds because when we think about the
1:19:29
Speaker 1: things that dear need, you know, we're often talking about
1:19:33
Speaker 1: the things that come with that, those earliest stages of succession,
1:19:37
Speaker 1: whether it's actual early succession with forbes coming in at
1:19:40
Speaker 1: the ground level, or whether we're talking about young forest
1:19:43
Speaker 1: whereas we think timber and we're thinking of an older
1:19:46
Speaker 1: forest that's yielding larger saw logs. That seemed to be
1:19:49
Speaker 1: opposite objectives. Uh. And one of the best ways to
1:19:53
Speaker 1: to manage for that, when possible, is to create something
1:19:57
Speaker 1: of a rotation of a mosaic what forests sometimes term regulation,
1:20:03
Speaker 1: where over time, as you continue to cut similar areas,
1:20:07
Speaker 1: you eventually have this mosaic with plenty of edge um,
1:20:10
Speaker 1: but where you also have a consistent amount of habitat
1:20:15
Speaker 1: of different age classes. It's always changing, it's always moving,
1:20:17
Speaker 1: but you've got a stable, stable capacity there because you've
1:20:21
Speaker 1: always got this similar amount of of recently regenerated forest
1:20:25
Speaker 1: that maybe has some early successional plants coming in and
1:20:28
Speaker 1: stands that are just a few years old that offer
1:20:30
Speaker 1: that cover and then mature stands which you can which
1:20:34
Speaker 1: you can you know, tend in between. And that's also
1:20:36
Speaker 1: very good from a timber standpoint, because now you're over
1:20:39
Speaker 1: time getting consistent flows of timber from that UM. And
1:20:44
Speaker 1: there are are the things that you could do in
1:20:45
Speaker 1: those those intermediate treatments that you might tweak things a
1:20:48
Speaker 1: little bit differently than you would do for timber management
1:20:51
Speaker 1: to make the conditions better for deer and for deer hunting. UM.
1:20:56
Speaker 1: Speaking of that, another thing you mentioned, I think it
1:20:58
Speaker 1: was in that piece or maybe another, when it came
1:21:01
Speaker 1: to these different cuts that you're making and how it
1:21:03
Speaker 1: might be able to benefit both wildlife and your timber
1:21:06
Speaker 1: management plan. One of the things to improve UM the
1:21:10
Speaker 1: capacity for wil life use that you mentioned was the
1:21:13
Speaker 1: shape of the cuts and what the benefit might be
1:21:16
Speaker 1: of having an irregularly shaped cut versus just a circle
1:21:20
Speaker 1: or square. And this is something I never thought about.
1:21:22
Speaker 1: I thought about a lot when it comes to food plots,
1:21:24
Speaker 1: the benefit of strategically planning the shape of your food plot,
1:21:27
Speaker 1: but when it came to, you know, improving timber habitat
1:21:30
Speaker 1: or bedding cover, I'd always kind of I just kind
1:21:32
Speaker 1: of make a block and you cut it all, or
1:21:34
Speaker 1: you do whatever kind of practices that you want to implement. Um.
1:21:37
Speaker 1: But can you speak to why you might want to
1:21:39
Speaker 1: be a little bit more thoughtful with the shapes? Sure? Well,
1:21:43
Speaker 1: for one, uh, you know, different shapes of the same
1:21:47
Speaker 1: area are going to have different perimeters, that is to say,
1:21:50
Speaker 1: different amounts of edge. Um. And beyond that, I think
1:21:53
Speaker 1: another thing I mentioned in that article is getting near
1:21:55
Speaker 1: the edges of those patch cuts are clear cuts you're
1:21:58
Speaker 1: planning and actually feathering, so that rather than having a
1:22:02
Speaker 1: heavily cleared area met a wall of timber, you've you've
1:22:05
Speaker 1: gradually thin in that surrounding area um, which uh you
1:22:09
Speaker 1: know can give you basically the interspersion of those older
1:22:12
Speaker 1: and younger trees and uh as far as a deer
1:22:15
Speaker 1: and hunting goes. It can also give you a good
1:22:16
Speaker 1: place to to hang a stand. Uh you know, have
1:22:19
Speaker 1: have trees that you can hang a stand on and
1:22:22
Speaker 1: be among some of that stuff that that's coming up. Um.
1:22:25
Speaker 1: Some of the more important points of choosing the shape
1:22:28
Speaker 1: of a cut um have to do with how much
1:22:30
Speaker 1: sunlight is reaching the ground when you're planning a clear
1:22:33
Speaker 1: cut or a patch cut. There are a number of
1:22:35
Speaker 1: different things that are influencing how many hours of direct
1:22:38
Speaker 1: sunlight you're getting. You know, you want to think about
1:22:40
Speaker 1: the aspect. Are you on a north face or a
1:22:42
Speaker 1: south face? Um. And not that there's anything you can
1:22:45
Speaker 1: do to influence that or to influence this, but um,
1:22:48
Speaker 1: your latitude is going to affect how much sunlight you're
1:22:51
Speaker 1: going to get in a cut of a given shape
1:22:53
Speaker 1: and slow position and all that. Um. And of course
1:22:56
Speaker 1: you know a shape, the shape of the cuts gonna
1:22:58
Speaker 1: influence that because you know, if you have a cut
1:23:02
Speaker 1: of a given area, you know the shape is going
1:23:05
Speaker 1: to influence how wide and opening you're creating. So if
1:23:09
Speaker 1: you're doing a linear cut, you might not get as
1:23:11
Speaker 1: much sunlight as you would in a cut of the
1:23:14
Speaker 1: same area that is closer to a circle or a
1:23:17
Speaker 1: square in shape. Uh and uh. You know, typically as
1:23:21
Speaker 1: a rule of thumb, UM, if you're trying to create
1:23:24
Speaker 1: a gap that's large enough to regenerate shade tolerance trees,
1:23:30
Speaker 1: you want to create a gap that's at least one
1:23:32
Speaker 1: times the width of the surrounding tree heights. If you
1:23:37
Speaker 1: want to regenerate shade intermediate trees. Uh. You know you
1:23:40
Speaker 1: look to create a gap that's one and a half
1:23:42
Speaker 1: times that total tree height of the surrounding trees. And
1:23:46
Speaker 1: if you want to create a gap that has enough
1:23:48
Speaker 1: direct sunlight for enough hours reaching the ground that you're
1:23:50
Speaker 1: gonna get shade intolerant trees, which are really sun loving species,
1:23:55
Speaker 1: you want that gap to be, you know, at least
1:23:57
Speaker 1: twice as high as a twice as wide as as
1:24:00
Speaker 1: the surrounding trees are high. And that's just the rule
1:24:02
Speaker 1: of thumb, of course, because as I mentioned, there are
1:24:04
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of factors, um such a
1:24:07
Speaker 1: slow position and latitude that are going to affect how
1:24:10
Speaker 1: many hours of direct sunlight your your cut is going
1:24:13
Speaker 1: to receive. You know something I didn't that we didn't
1:24:17
Speaker 1: really touch on, maybe quite enough, but that I'm thinking
1:24:20
Speaker 1: of as we go through all this, Through all this,
1:24:23
Speaker 1: I'm thinking to myself, there's a lot here, right, There's
1:24:26
Speaker 1: there's a lot of nuance, there's a lot of detail,
1:24:29
Speaker 1: um And and if I ever thought to myself of
1:24:32
Speaker 1: going out into my woods, if I had a block
1:24:35
Speaker 1: and trying to figure all this stuff out on my own,
1:24:37
Speaker 1: I would be very intimidated by it. And so this
1:24:40
Speaker 1: leads me to the question of and you you kind
1:24:44
Speaker 1: of alluded to this a little bit. Mag touched on
1:24:46
Speaker 1: us a bit, But it seems like bringing a forster
1:24:50
Speaker 1: is a is a good option if you feel that way. Um,
1:24:53
Speaker 1: but how do you go about finding a forster? How
1:24:55
Speaker 1: do you go about getting someone like the right kind
1:24:58
Speaker 1: of forster? You did an article about this, Matt, Um,
1:25:01
Speaker 1: can you can you just give us a little bit
1:25:03
Speaker 1: more detail if we're listening to this and we're like, oh,
1:25:05
Speaker 1: holy smokes, I'm overwhelmed. How do I actually find the
1:25:09
Speaker 1: right person to help me with us and not just
1:25:11
Speaker 1: you know, pick the first force I see in the
1:25:13
Speaker 1: Google results. Sure, yeah, that's funny. It's an article that
1:25:17
Speaker 1: we just put on our website a couple of weeks
1:25:20
Speaker 1: ago that I had written. It was inspired because I
1:25:22
Speaker 1: had a member reach out to me through social media
1:25:26
Speaker 1: and said, uh, hey, yeah, I get a question for you,
1:25:29
Speaker 1: And it just sparked the thought because it was my
1:25:32
Speaker 1: dou dat to write something, and it was like, this
1:25:34
Speaker 1: is something I get asked all the time. Um. And honestly,
1:25:39
Speaker 1: I was just talking to another colleague this morning about
1:25:41
Speaker 1: the exact same question. Um. One of our co op
1:25:44
Speaker 1: guys in Missouri had a similar thing happened to him. UM.
1:25:48
Speaker 1: My advice is generally pretty simple, as you want to
1:25:50
Speaker 1: find a forceter that gets deer hunting and hopefully they're
1:25:53
Speaker 1: a deer hunter. UM. Even better if you can find
1:25:57
Speaker 1: somebody that's ACUITIA MAY member or have worked with Q
1:26:01
Speaker 1: and MAY members if they're not one. And one way
1:26:04
Speaker 1: you can do that is we are obviously a UM
1:26:07
Speaker 1: conservation organization. We have members and we have local branches
1:26:10
Speaker 1: all across the country. There's a map on our website.
1:26:13
Speaker 1: You can click on your home state or province and
1:26:16
Speaker 1: see if there's a branch near you. Contact them. They
1:26:18
Speaker 1: have a contact information. Uh, maybe even get involved with
1:26:22
Speaker 1: that branch and uh, you know there's likely somebody there
1:26:26
Speaker 1: that's probably used a forrester. Personal recommendation is always a
1:26:30
Speaker 1: great way to find somebody, and particularly if you're talking
1:26:33
Speaker 1: to a fellow deer hunter that's into deer management, UM,
1:26:37
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna get a good referral. So that that's
1:26:39
Speaker 1: one way to do it I talked about in that article.
1:26:42
Speaker 1: Another is ke you may actually has a program to
1:26:44
Speaker 1: certify lands. It's called our Land Certification program, where we
1:26:48
Speaker 1: have inspectors listed. Many of them have forestry uh backgrounds,
1:26:53
Speaker 1: a lot of more foresters. UM, you can mind that
1:26:56
Speaker 1: list for folks that are listed on our website. UM.
1:27:01
Speaker 1: Not all of them are force or some of them
1:27:03
Speaker 1: have strictly wildlife background whether that's another opportunity. And you
1:27:07
Speaker 1: can also enroll and in that program and get your
1:27:10
Speaker 1: property certified. That's what they're there for. UM. You know,
1:27:13
Speaker 1: so there are there are different ways, but generally you
1:27:15
Speaker 1: want to if you find somebody that's as passionate about
1:27:18
Speaker 1: deer hunting as you are. UM, they're and they're trained
1:27:21
Speaker 1: in silver culture or forced management, they're likely going to
1:27:25
Speaker 1: get what we're talking about. And um, you know, along
1:27:28
Speaker 1: the lines of sculpting or you're talking about directional planning.
1:27:32
Speaker 1: In terms of your habitat, it's okay to not treat
1:27:35
Speaker 1: every you know, square foot of your property. In fact,
1:27:38
Speaker 1: if you want to, and I know, Mark you wrote
1:27:39
Speaker 1: something like this for years ago for our magazine about
1:27:42
Speaker 1: having those dear deserts right, you can not treat some
1:27:45
Speaker 1: of your property, um, with the hope that it influences
1:27:49
Speaker 1: deer to not be there. I mean, that's that's certainly important,
1:27:54
Speaker 1: UM to think about any time that you can manage
1:27:57
Speaker 1: the property, get good food cover on the ground. UM.
1:28:02
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say go to on the extreme and manage
1:28:06
Speaker 1: only small parts. I would actually go to the other
1:28:08
Speaker 1: direction of that continuum and try to manage most of
1:28:10
Speaker 1: your property most maximum food and cover on the food
1:28:14
Speaker 1: would be maximum benefits. So if you want to see
1:28:17
Speaker 1: deer hit their their highest potential for antler size and
1:28:20
Speaker 1: body weights per age class, you need lots of food
1:28:23
Speaker 1: and cover on the ground. So to do that, you
1:28:25
Speaker 1: need a lot of airs treated. So I wouldn't push
1:28:28
Speaker 1: the dear desert extreme to where you leave very little
1:28:31
Speaker 1: your property managed. UM. I would manage most of it,
1:28:35
Speaker 1: but maybe leave little blocks here there it might help
1:28:38
Speaker 1: in terms of dear movement. UM. So the person that's
1:28:41
Speaker 1: feeling a little bit overwhelmed by the discussion, the first
1:28:46
Speaker 1: thing would be to reach out to somebody, um uh,
1:28:49
Speaker 1: to talk to a forest or somebody that's trained in it.
1:28:52
Speaker 1: But you know, in all honesty, Mark, even with some
1:28:54
Speaker 1: of that UM and I'm a big proponent on working
1:28:57
Speaker 1: with license or certified foresters, trying to find somebody that's
1:29:00
Speaker 1: a professional. UM, there's still a lot you can do,
1:29:04
Speaker 1: whether if you're able to on land that you either
1:29:08
Speaker 1: own or have access to, and they'll let you treat
1:29:10
Speaker 1: some things. Um, you can do a lot of work.
1:29:13
Speaker 1: You know this, you know with the chainsaw, score bottle
1:29:16
Speaker 1: and influence. What's there the general idea of trying to
1:29:21
Speaker 1: influence growth at the ground levels. You've got to get
1:29:24
Speaker 1: some light to come in. I mean, that's the simplest rule.
1:29:27
Speaker 1: And by removing some of the canopy, if you can
1:29:30
Speaker 1: reduce that at least to that like sixty mark where
1:29:36
Speaker 1: of the sky is open, of the sky's open, that's
1:29:40
Speaker 1: when you start influencing growth. It's that predictability that Tim
1:29:45
Speaker 1: and I have been talking about what's going to grow back?
1:29:48
Speaker 1: There is where you really need the professional advice to
1:29:51
Speaker 1: come in. UM. And then also you don't want to
1:29:53
Speaker 1: miss opportunities. UM. You don't want to kill or cut
1:29:56
Speaker 1: down a tree that might be valuable because then you
1:29:59
Speaker 1: just you and yourself in the front in terms of
1:30:01
Speaker 1: if the tree had value in it and you cut
1:30:03
Speaker 1: it down, UM, you know you're you're taking that away
1:30:07
Speaker 1: from yourself. You basically you are throwing money out the window,
1:30:10
Speaker 1: which we don't like to see. You should make that
1:30:12
Speaker 1: money your property grew it or your grandfathers or grandparents
1:30:15
Speaker 1: or parents property grew it. That's standing money there. You
1:30:18
Speaker 1: might as well utilize it. So that's another thing. And
1:30:21
Speaker 1: then obviously in the respect of having an operator in
1:30:24
Speaker 1: there where a forester comes in, most forestry operations don't
1:30:29
Speaker 1: have hired contractors. They work with subcontractors and uh those
1:30:34
Speaker 1: people could folks that are logging, they come in, they
1:30:36
Speaker 1: have insurance, they're trained. You can treat way more acreage.
1:30:40
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of good that comes into
1:30:43
Speaker 1: paying somebody to come in and mark the timber, sell
1:30:46
Speaker 1: the timber for you. You make more money. I mean,
1:30:49
Speaker 1: I can go on and on about all that. UM
1:30:52
Speaker 1: just based on if you think of it this way,
1:30:55
Speaker 1: if you were to try to do it yourself and
1:30:58
Speaker 1: you wanted an outlet to sell out, would and you
1:31:01
Speaker 1: were just going around and trying to sell it, you know,
1:31:03
Speaker 1: in whatever means way you could. Uh, when you work
1:31:06
Speaker 1: with a forrester that has a lot of UM, a
1:31:12
Speaker 1: client base that's broad and is working with lots of landowners,
1:31:16
Speaker 1: the pure supply that they provide UM, you know, mills
1:31:21
Speaker 1: and things like that is much much much greater than
1:31:23
Speaker 1: you would be able to do by yourself and they
1:31:25
Speaker 1: can demand higher prices for it, you know, because they're
1:31:28
Speaker 1: supplying them with so much more wood, So you actually
1:31:31
Speaker 1: can make more money by by doing that. It's one
1:31:33
Speaker 1: of my soapbox things that I like to talk about.
1:31:36
Speaker 1: So I'd say, if you feel overwhelmed, you're not going
1:31:39
Speaker 1: to be paying to use somebody to get professional lice.
1:31:42
Speaker 1: There's a lot of free resources out there through your
1:31:45
Speaker 1: state wildlife, state agencies, through your state forestry agency. UM.
1:31:49
Speaker 1: In some parts of the world. UM. You know, you
1:31:54
Speaker 1: can even to get advice through your cooperative extension service.
1:31:58
Speaker 1: Where I mentioneding that I went to school in New Hampshire.
1:32:01
Speaker 1: There are county based forresters that that is certainly a case.
1:32:04
Speaker 1: In some state wildlife agencies, they have private lands forresters,
1:32:08
Speaker 1: private lands conservationists and biologists. There are free resources out
1:32:12
Speaker 1: there for you. Tim is one he's he's in New York.
1:32:16
Speaker 1: Other other conservation organizations like ourselves have have those resources.
1:32:21
Speaker 1: But if you ended up going with a consultant to
1:32:24
Speaker 1: come in and basically work for you, uh, they are
1:32:28
Speaker 1: going to work for you, and that means make you
1:32:30
Speaker 1: the most money if it's possible. So it certainly is
1:32:33
Speaker 1: a good way to do it. Um. And you know
1:32:36
Speaker 1: what they can your mark project that you can do
1:32:38
Speaker 1: for yourself. Um, and say, hey, listen, I marked every
1:32:42
Speaker 1: tree you need to get rid of either girl and
1:32:45
Speaker 1: spray or cut it down. And then you go out
1:32:48
Speaker 1: there and do the silla equity. Um. You know there
1:32:51
Speaker 1: there's there's certainly nuances of how you can do these things.
1:32:54
Speaker 1: You don't have to just hand everything over to somebody else. Yeah,
1:32:58
Speaker 1: and and and that was one the questions I had
1:33:01
Speaker 1: was about the the d I Y option. If you
1:33:03
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of try to do a lot of
1:33:04
Speaker 1: this yourself, it sounds like there's still benefits to bringing
1:33:07
Speaker 1: in a consultant of some kind. Um. So I want
1:33:10
Speaker 1: to first better understand the free options if I want
1:33:13
Speaker 1: to try to get some free help. Does it sound
1:33:16
Speaker 1: like the first step is just contacting your state game
1:33:19
Speaker 1: agency and say, hey, do we have some kind of
1:33:21
Speaker 1: program within Michigan to help with this kind of thing?
1:33:24
Speaker 1: And then there'll be someone who can direct me around.
1:33:27
Speaker 1: Is that kind of how to start the looking for
1:33:29
Speaker 1: free help process? How would always go with whatever the
1:33:33
Speaker 1: government agency is that's in charge of forestry and or
1:33:36
Speaker 1: Wilby it's because if they know, if you contacted your
1:33:39
Speaker 1: wildlife department, you know, they're all under the same roof
1:33:42
Speaker 1: in most places. But um, and saying I'm interested in
1:33:45
Speaker 1: having some forestry advice, UM, they're probably gonna send you
1:33:48
Speaker 1: over to the forestry side of things, UM advice first.
1:33:52
Speaker 1: You know. A lot of times though, getting back to
1:33:55
Speaker 1: that comment about you know, I'm really interested in deer hunting,
1:33:58
Speaker 1: I think that's where that's born from. I'm not saying
1:34:01
Speaker 1: not to call free management advice. Certainly is there. Our
1:34:04
Speaker 1: taxpayer money pays for it. But a lot of time
1:34:06
Speaker 1: those folks are not maybe on the same um sheet
1:34:11
Speaker 1: of music, I guess because they might not be deer
1:34:13
Speaker 1: unders they went to forestry school, or it would be
1:34:16
Speaker 1: a little bit of a long shot to try to
1:34:17
Speaker 1: find somebody that's really really interested in deer hunting. Um
1:34:21
Speaker 1: where it's gonna you're it's gonna take some due diligence
1:34:23
Speaker 1: on the person that they're asking. You gotta ask a
1:34:25
Speaker 1: lot of questions, um, you know, and find the person
1:34:28
Speaker 1: that fits well with you. But there are certainly lots
1:34:30
Speaker 1: of free options. And not only is that, I mean,
1:34:33
Speaker 1: I know in your case in Michigan, there's there's some
1:34:35
Speaker 1: really good options just based on some friends I know
1:34:38
Speaker 1: through our organization UM that get deer onting that our
1:34:41
Speaker 1: q d m A members. I mean, it's it certainly exists.
1:34:44
Speaker 1: Just might do take a little bit more flipping through
1:34:46
Speaker 1: the playbook to find somebody. Yeah, now, what if we
1:34:49
Speaker 1: want to bring in uh a force your consultant that
1:34:53
Speaker 1: that would be a paid situation. Obviously payments would be
1:34:58
Speaker 1: different depending on who and where and but can you
1:35:01
Speaker 1: give me any kind of ballpark or how costs is
1:35:03
Speaker 1: applied or anything? Just if I'm thinking about this, what
1:35:05
Speaker 1: am I thinking about to bring in something like this?
1:35:07
Speaker 1: Is this like a two bucks for a day or
1:35:09
Speaker 1: is this like x percentage of the project we plan
1:35:12
Speaker 1: on doing? How does that work? There's all different ways
1:35:15
Speaker 1: that it can happen, uh And I hate to say
1:35:18
Speaker 1: it depends, but it depends on what you're asking for.
1:35:20
Speaker 1: So if you're looking for a management plan, like to
1:35:23
Speaker 1: have them come in and write a plan for you
1:35:25
Speaker 1: with no operations in the woods, but basically give you
1:35:28
Speaker 1: a document. UM that typically is the cost, but there
1:35:31
Speaker 1: are definitely cost share options and we can get part
1:35:34
Speaker 1: of that paid off. They're definitely free options again, management
1:35:37
Speaker 1: plans written through different federal and state programs. Um, if
1:35:43
Speaker 1: they're coming in to cut timber, and there's commercial timber,
1:35:46
Speaker 1: typically an initial visits not going to cost you anything.
1:35:49
Speaker 1: That they're they're getting to know you. You're going to
1:35:51
Speaker 1: get to know that that that is certainly uh, the
1:35:54
Speaker 1: most common thing is, hey, they want to find out
1:35:57
Speaker 1: what you need, what you're looking for, and then you
1:36:01
Speaker 1: know vice versa that you're trying to figure out if
1:36:02
Speaker 1: there's the right fit for you. Um. Sometimes it's a
1:36:05
Speaker 1: combination of not only writing a plan, but doing an
1:36:08
Speaker 1: inventory to figure what's out there, eventually doing a commercial harvest.
1:36:12
Speaker 1: Sometimes that can all be wrapped up under one contract
1:36:15
Speaker 1: where uh, they are going to eventually cut some wood
1:36:19
Speaker 1: there and it can be paid for from the from
1:36:21
Speaker 1: the sale. UM. You know, to have a management plan.
1:36:24
Speaker 1: There's also tax incentives to get tax breaks on your property,
1:36:28
Speaker 1: and there's certainly a lot of ways to get plans
1:36:30
Speaker 1: there too, and tim feel free to jump in. But
1:36:32
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm trying to make it not as confusing,
1:36:35
Speaker 1: but it's hard to answer that question based on Unfortunately
1:36:38
Speaker 1: it is confusing, especially you know here in New York
1:36:41
Speaker 1: there are so many different programs that involve different agencies
1:36:45
Speaker 1: tax breaks, you know, getting funny, so you know, New
1:36:47
Speaker 1: York State offers a program where in New York land
1:36:50
Speaker 1: owners who get a four stry plan written and agree
1:36:53
Speaker 1: to follow it, they get a tax break. Then there's
1:36:56
Speaker 1: the NRCS and they've got equipped and you can get
1:36:59
Speaker 1: funding to have a plan written by a consultant who
1:37:02
Speaker 1: you hire, and then they'll offer you funding for that
1:37:04
Speaker 1: and then also funding for other things like getting t
1:37:06
Speaker 1: S I marked, getting t S I caught, that sort
1:37:09
Speaker 1: of thing, and you know, that's a different program, and
1:37:11
Speaker 1: they typically expect that consultant to be a technical service provider.
1:37:15
Speaker 1: I know that in the New York City, in the
1:37:17
Speaker 1: New York City Watershed, the Watershed Agricultural Council, they offer
1:37:22
Speaker 1: funding for plans where they'll they'll pay to have a
1:37:25
Speaker 1: consultant come out and UH write a forest management plan.
1:37:28
Speaker 1: So it actually can be tough to navigate. UM I
1:37:31
Speaker 1: know d EC they'll come out and they're they're state
1:37:33
Speaker 1: foresters will will sometimes come out for the day and
1:37:35
Speaker 1: write a for stewardship plan. So there's a number of
1:37:37
Speaker 1: different routes you can go. UH as far as how
1:37:41
Speaker 1: forresters charge when it comes to a management plan. Some
1:37:44
Speaker 1: of them do it on a per acre basis UM.
1:37:46
Speaker 1: Most of them have in an hourly rate that they'll
1:37:49
Speaker 1: sometimes base calculations off of UM. A lot of them
1:37:54
Speaker 1: do charge a percentage when it comes to administering a
1:37:57
Speaker 1: timber sale, But as far as some of the management
1:38:00
Speaker 1: ending goes, a lot of them are just sort of
1:38:02
Speaker 1: trying to cover their time and sustain themselves and not
1:38:04
Speaker 1: earn too much money really off of the management plans.
1:38:07
Speaker 1: But you know, cover you know, cover their calls, make
1:38:10
Speaker 1: a little bit of money off of the management planning
1:38:12
Speaker 1: in hopes that they'll have a relationship with that landowner
1:38:15
Speaker 1: so that they can be the person to make some
1:38:18
Speaker 1: money when it comes to administering the timber sale for them. Uh.
1:38:21
Speaker 1: That's that's really where a lot of a lot of
1:38:24
Speaker 1: consultants do better because landowners know that they're they're you
1:38:27
Speaker 1: know overall, even even paying a consultant going to do
1:38:30
Speaker 1: better by having that timber sale administered with somebody in
1:38:34
Speaker 1: their corner, particularly when it is a sizeable timber sale.
1:38:38
Speaker 1: So yeah, unfortunately, can't be uh simple answer, but there
1:38:43
Speaker 1: there are a lot of opportunities out there to explore.
1:38:46
Speaker 1: So would it be safe to say that if I'm
1:38:49
Speaker 1: a landowner and I want to if I'm just looking
1:38:52
Speaker 1: at this from a from a hunting perspective, and I'm thinking, Hey,
1:38:55
Speaker 1: I know I've got all this timber. It's not doing
1:38:56
Speaker 1: me a whole lot of good because mature it's it's
1:38:59
Speaker 1: a mono culture. It's big, wide open block of the
1:39:01
Speaker 1: same thing. I know. I want to do something to
1:39:03
Speaker 1: improve for wildlife habitat. Would it be safe to say that,
1:39:08
Speaker 1: whether it be through timber sale of marketable timber on
1:39:11
Speaker 1: that chunk, and or through tax breaks, and or through
1:39:16
Speaker 1: government programs that help fund certain desired types of habitat practices,
1:39:21
Speaker 1: that I can get a management action taken on my
1:39:26
Speaker 1: hunting property that will improve my hunting and improve wildlife habitat.
1:39:30
Speaker 1: I can do that, and there are ways to help
1:39:33
Speaker 1: cover that and or completely cover the costs, or at
1:39:35
Speaker 1: least help with the costs of making that change if
1:39:38
Speaker 1: I were to take advantage of these previously listed um
1:39:43
Speaker 1: uh benefits. That's that's right, right. We shouldn't just go
1:39:47
Speaker 1: in there and think we gotta cut everything down ourselves.
1:39:48
Speaker 1: It's gonna cost ten dollars to do it. We can
1:39:51
Speaker 1: actually look at this as a way of hey, we
1:39:52
Speaker 1: might be able to get free habitat improvement or cost assistance.
1:39:56
Speaker 1: We just kind of habitat improvement. But we have to
1:39:57
Speaker 1: take advantage of these different programs. I yeah, that is accurate.
1:40:01
Speaker 1: And I would say, um, having a plan from the
1:40:05
Speaker 1: forefront helps in a lot of different ways. And there's
1:40:07
Speaker 1: ways to either they either low costs are free based
1:40:10
Speaker 1: on what's out there. Um, you know. So I would say,
1:40:14
Speaker 1: if you don't have a manage a plan for your property,
1:40:16
Speaker 1: if you're interested in doing this, you want kind of
1:40:19
Speaker 1: a plan of action, right, Like Like if I were
1:40:21
Speaker 1: to leave my house right now without and I was
1:40:24
Speaker 1: trying to drive to where you are, Mark, and I
1:40:26
Speaker 1: had no idea where in Michigan you were, but I
1:40:28
Speaker 1: knew you were in Michigan and I just left, it
1:40:30
Speaker 1: would take me a lot longer than if I actually
1:40:33
Speaker 1: you send me your address and I put it into
1:40:35
Speaker 1: my GPS and I got straight there. Right. So a
1:40:37
Speaker 1: plan will get you someplace faster. So having a plan
1:40:40
Speaker 1: is important. Will spent one source the plan plan writers
1:40:45
Speaker 1: are free, there's ways to get them. Number two, I
1:40:47
Speaker 1: would want that plan to be integrated with both if
1:40:51
Speaker 1: there's enough value in the timber. With my wildlife centric goals,
1:40:57
Speaker 1: particularly dear qum A, we really stay a deer management
1:41:01
Speaker 1: plan template. It's free, it's a PDF you can sell out.
1:41:04
Speaker 1: It gives really good guidance. It's actually part of our
1:41:07
Speaker 1: dear Steward program, but it's a free document. You don't
1:41:09
Speaker 1: have to take dear Steward to get it. Get's posted
1:41:11
Speaker 1: on our website. Um I would say sit down with
1:41:15
Speaker 1: somebody if you're using a Forrester that does not get
1:41:17
Speaker 1: deer hunting, have them kind of go through well, either
1:41:21
Speaker 1: have them take dear Steward, which would be awesome for
1:41:23
Speaker 1: both you, the Forrester and for us UM at least
1:41:27
Speaker 1: have them sit down with that management plan template and
1:41:30
Speaker 1: talk through some of those concepts of hey, this is
1:41:33
Speaker 1: a concept of what I want to think of. So
1:41:36
Speaker 1: that your deer hunting goals and the land management timber
1:41:41
Speaker 1: specific goals are talking to each other. You know, obviously
1:41:45
Speaker 1: we talked about how all of this influence happened. So
1:41:48
Speaker 1: you don't want them going to be counter productive or
1:41:50
Speaker 1: you know, working against each other. You want them to
1:41:52
Speaker 1: be going in the same direction. So number one to
1:41:54
Speaker 1: have to get a plan written. Number two, make sure
1:41:57
Speaker 1: your deer hunting goals uh are married to your other
1:42:01
Speaker 1: land management goals. And then number three, the property is
1:42:05
Speaker 1: capable of having something done to it in terms of
1:42:09
Speaker 1: tree removal and manipulation of that for us, don't be
1:42:13
Speaker 1: scared of it. There's a lot of people. That's one
1:42:14
Speaker 1: thing we didn't talk about yet. Are you know clear
1:42:18
Speaker 1: cut has been a bad word. Uh. The mass that's
1:42:21
Speaker 1: left of cutting trees down. You know, people get very
1:42:24
Speaker 1: they don't like change, but it definitely influences deer and
1:42:30
Speaker 1: and in a good way. And I've gone over the
1:42:34
Speaker 1: years of being um probably less conservative to being I
1:42:38
Speaker 1: mean more conservative, being less conservative in terms of, okay,
1:42:42
Speaker 1: we want to influence dear nutrition at the highest scale.
1:42:45
Speaker 1: You gotta cut some timber, you gotta get you gotta
1:42:47
Speaker 1: get something down there. You gotta get deer eating stuff
1:42:50
Speaker 1: that grows in the ground. Because I mean, let's be honest, Mark,
1:42:53
Speaker 1: you know, most people that are doing things like putting
1:42:56
Speaker 1: feed out plots or you know, supplemental stuff, you're only
1:43:00
Speaker 1: treating a percent to a couple percent of your property, right,
1:43:04
Speaker 1: I mean, and even in agg dominated landscapes. That agriculture
1:43:08
Speaker 1: is there during the summer, but it's not once this
1:43:10
Speaker 1: stuff is harvested. So you're talking about the limiting resource
1:43:14
Speaker 1: for deer, particularly during the breeding season and when they're
1:43:17
Speaker 1: at their lowest point nutritionally in the winter, when there's
1:43:21
Speaker 1: nothing green and growing is relegated to forests. So why
1:43:25
Speaker 1: not give them the best benefit by cutting that stuff
1:43:29
Speaker 1: in a way that gives them food and cover where
1:43:31
Speaker 1: they want to be. Um, you know, all those folks
1:43:34
Speaker 1: out there that are interested in growing deer or managing
1:43:38
Speaker 1: deer for health and having them weeks of potential per
1:43:42
Speaker 1: age class you do that through forest You you can
1:43:44
Speaker 1: get some marginal gains by doing all the other things mentioned.
1:43:48
Speaker 1: They certainly help, but that doesn't care. Do what carries
1:43:51
Speaker 1: you with Where do you look? Deer live and a
1:43:53
Speaker 1: lot of that is in forests. And and it's is
1:43:56
Speaker 1: it fair to say that that forest management it really
1:44:00
Speaker 1: benefits so many other species to not just white tails. Right,
1:44:03
Speaker 1: if you're if you're trying to think about the holistic
1:44:05
Speaker 1: I felt, the whole ecology of your property and all
1:44:08
Speaker 1: the animals that are out there. Forestry management is a
1:44:11
Speaker 1: really important way to do that right, absolutely, it's the foundation.
1:44:17
Speaker 1: Tom Tim tell them about, you know, Young Forest initiative,
1:44:20
Speaker 1: how many species are influenced by that? Well sure, uh,
1:44:25
Speaker 1: of course you know. Q D m A is on
1:44:28
Speaker 1: board with the Young Forest Initiative because of the benefits
1:44:31
Speaker 1: that it offers to to deer. But white tails are
1:44:33
Speaker 1: not the number one species that are targeted by the
1:44:36
Speaker 1: overall initiative. There are other species like New England cotton tale,
1:44:41
Speaker 1: which it's it's range has seriously decreased because of a
1:44:45
Speaker 1: lot of forests growing older and not having that young
1:44:47
Speaker 1: forest on the on the landscape of the same as
1:44:51
Speaker 1: true with the American woodcock is another focal species for
1:44:54
Speaker 1: the Young Forest initiative. Golden winged warbler is another focal species,
1:44:59
Speaker 1: and they need young forest cover near the ground, uh
1:45:02
Speaker 1: you know, forbes and shrubs and sapling springing up where
1:45:05
Speaker 1: they've got some scattered over story trees as perch trees
1:45:09
Speaker 1: to do their singing display. Of course, rough grouse. There
1:45:12
Speaker 1: used to be a lot more rough grouse in New
1:45:14
Speaker 1: York than there are today. Um so yeah, I mean
1:45:16
Speaker 1: there's a very long list of of of songbirds and
1:45:20
Speaker 1: game birds and uh, you know, of course rabbits that
1:45:23
Speaker 1: uh that UM can can benefit greatly from having some
1:45:27
Speaker 1: of those earlier stages of forest development. You know something
1:45:31
Speaker 1: I was talking to someone recently about doing some forest management,
1:45:36
Speaker 1: and they were talking about how in the head of
1:45:37
Speaker 1: forest or come in they would they like to have
1:45:39
Speaker 1: all the tree tops cleared out and taken with them.
1:45:42
Speaker 1: And I was thinking to myself, why why would you
1:45:45
Speaker 1: want that? Like, wouldn't you want the tree tops left
1:45:47
Speaker 1: in some instances because because of just like those types
1:45:51
Speaker 1: of things like having cover valve for rabbits and other species,
1:45:54
Speaker 1: and you know, some some betting that deer might like
1:45:56
Speaker 1: to Is there anything to be said about that too? People,
1:45:59
Speaker 1: you really like to get rid of the tree tops?
1:46:01
Speaker 1: Do you leave them? Is that something that you would
1:46:04
Speaker 1: ever think about when making plans like this? When when
1:46:06
Speaker 1: the tree tops come out as part of the logging operation,
1:46:09
Speaker 1: it's often a whole tree shipping operation where that's just
1:46:12
Speaker 1: more efficient and it's all usable. So so there, that's
1:46:15
Speaker 1: what they're doing. Uh. In many of the cuts that
1:46:18
Speaker 1: we see here, and of course a lot of our
1:46:20
Speaker 1: forests are northern hardwoods, those tops are left behind initially
1:46:24
Speaker 1: as some of the larger saw logs and larger firewood
1:46:27
Speaker 1: is pulled out, those are left behind. Um. And sometimes
1:46:29
Speaker 1: that's put in the timber sail contract that the landowner
1:46:32
Speaker 1: retains those for the simple reason that it creates less
1:46:35
Speaker 1: erosion and less scarring of residual trees compared to dragging
1:46:38
Speaker 1: those those crowns out. Um. But what you're describing where
1:46:42
Speaker 1: people want to see the tops gone or commonly also
1:46:45
Speaker 1: included in contracts, the tops are lopped down. Sometimes the
1:46:49
Speaker 1: contract will say that the logger needs to go with
1:46:51
Speaker 1: the chainsaw and lopped the tops down so that they're
1:46:53
Speaker 1: below you know, six ft below four feet. Sometimes contracts
1:46:58
Speaker 1: will call for them to be down to eighteen inch.
1:47:00
Speaker 1: Is that's really a matter of aesthetics, so that the
1:47:03
Speaker 1: landowner when they walk through their their forest, when you're done,
1:47:06
Speaker 1: i mean logging forestry, when done right, it doesn't look
1:47:10
Speaker 1: pretty immediately after it happens. And so that's one way
1:47:13
Speaker 1: that people live have uh, you know, basically made it
1:47:16
Speaker 1: look like a prettier timber sale afterwards. But uh, you know,
1:47:19
Speaker 1: absolutely leaving some of those tops both in place and
1:47:22
Speaker 1: leaving them up you know, maybe not where they're they're
1:47:25
Speaker 1: way up in the sky, but that they're you know,
1:47:27
Speaker 1: six eight, even ten feet high, that's gonna offer side cover,
1:47:31
Speaker 1: that's gonna offer cover to small mammals like you alluded to,
1:47:34
Speaker 1: and uh, in many cases can be significant in protecting
1:47:37
Speaker 1: some of the regeneration coming in in cases that we
1:47:40
Speaker 1: want dear to be able to benefit from some of that,
1:47:43
Speaker 1: but also want to be able to protect some of
1:47:45
Speaker 1: it so that it becomes part of that next stage
1:47:47
Speaker 1: class We're you gonna add anything then? Now what he said? Uh, so,
1:47:55
Speaker 1: speaking of um, just the the that X a little
1:48:00
Speaker 1: bit of it and how it is in some of
1:48:03
Speaker 1: these cases if you're doing a more of an even
1:48:05
Speaker 1: stand management practice where you're coming in and doing something
1:48:07
Speaker 1: pretty dramatic. Um, is there anything that we should know
1:48:12
Speaker 1: about the timing of something like this? So that might
1:48:15
Speaker 1: be different maybe than your general forster might come and say, Hey,
1:48:18
Speaker 1: we're just gonna do this as soon as we can
1:48:19
Speaker 1: get to it. But if I'm a deer hunter and
1:48:21
Speaker 1: I'm trying to manage this for the best possible hunting
1:48:24
Speaker 1: habitat that coming season, would it be best to do
1:48:27
Speaker 1: this kind of thing like in the winter right now,
1:48:30
Speaker 1: or when's the best time to maximize the reproduction of
1:48:33
Speaker 1: new growth and all these other things. But that would
1:48:37
Speaker 1: depend on on a lot for for reasons other than
1:48:40
Speaker 1: just hunting. I mean, for one, as far as hunting goes.
1:48:43
Speaker 1: You know, it occurs to me how many times I've
1:48:45
Speaker 1: gone on a recently completed or even active logging job
1:48:48
Speaker 1: and seeing how many deer have come just to just
1:48:52
Speaker 1: to chew some of the buds off of the tree
1:48:54
Speaker 1: tops that are laying there. So there can be that impact. Uh,
1:48:57
Speaker 1: certain species that we're working with have a tendency to
1:49:01
Speaker 1: sprout from the stumps or the roots system, and oftentimes
1:49:04
Speaker 1: we get a better sprouting or compassing response when we
1:49:08
Speaker 1: cut during the winter, and that might be desirable. Um.
1:49:11
Speaker 1: And then on the opposite side, if we're dealing with
1:49:13
Speaker 1: some species where we expect them to sprout and we
1:49:16
Speaker 1: don't want them to sprout, and that can be a problem,
1:49:18
Speaker 1: it might be more beneficial to cut them during the summertime,
1:49:21
Speaker 1: and more beneficial still to cut them during the summertime
1:49:24
Speaker 1: so that we can apply herbicide to them. Apart from that,
1:49:27
Speaker 1: you know, you think at the time of year, depending
1:49:30
Speaker 1: on some sites that might be weather, you might require
1:49:32
Speaker 1: that the trails are frozen or dry during the heat
1:49:36
Speaker 1: of summer. UM. And then there are other things, like
1:49:38
Speaker 1: you think about the time of year that uh, you know,
1:49:41
Speaker 1: trees have seeds on them, you know, are you cutting
1:49:43
Speaker 1: them just before they're gonna put seeds out for the season,
1:49:46
Speaker 1: or are they hanging onto viable seeds that haven't fallen yet.
1:49:49
Speaker 1: And now when you drop the tree, the seeds fall
1:49:51
Speaker 1: right where that crown is, so that's where your seedlings
1:49:53
Speaker 1: are coming up and being protected. So yeah, Unfortunately, again
1:49:58
Speaker 1: it kind of comes to a depends answer because it
1:50:01
Speaker 1: has to do with which tree species you're trying to
1:50:04
Speaker 1: regenerate or not regenerate, what the site conditions are. UM.
1:50:08
Speaker 1: In New York, some people are faced with time of
1:50:11
Speaker 1: year cutting restrictions because of an effort to protect endangered
1:50:15
Speaker 1: bats that roost in those trees during the summertime and
1:50:18
Speaker 1: then go into caves during the wintertime. So there are
1:50:21
Speaker 1: certainly a whole lot of factors that that can play
1:50:24
Speaker 1: into the timing of a regeneration cut. Yeah, And one
1:50:28
Speaker 1: thing to add to that, I mean, I would say
1:50:31
Speaker 1: from the deer hunter's perspective, although that's that's all true,
1:50:35
Speaker 1: I would I would less care about the timing and
1:50:39
Speaker 1: make sure that it's the right time. Um for all
1:50:41
Speaker 1: the environmental reasons. You know, a lot of it is
1:50:44
Speaker 1: whether dependent and you know, accessibility. Sometimes it's scheduling based
1:50:48
Speaker 1: on one that crew can get there if the forest
1:50:51
Speaker 1: here you're working with is you know, using specific crews
1:50:55
Speaker 1: to douce uh. You know, there's all kinds of different
1:50:57
Speaker 1: blocking operations out there, from small opera raiders to to
1:51:01
Speaker 1: you know, machinery that's very big that takes up a
1:51:03
Speaker 1: lot of space and it's fully mechanized. So whatever scale
1:51:07
Speaker 1: the property is and whatever operator would be the most
1:51:11
Speaker 1: efficient for you to you know, get it done with quickly. Um.
1:51:15
Speaker 1: They all lend itself to two different things, but a
1:51:19
Speaker 1: lot of it is gonna end up probably especially on
1:51:21
Speaker 1: one of those larger operations. Mark the market, you know,
1:51:25
Speaker 1: in terms of when that wood is valuable. Sometimes it's
1:51:28
Speaker 1: very specific to a time of year based on the
1:51:31
Speaker 1: bed where I've seen like cruise move in and it's
1:51:34
Speaker 1: not necessarily a short notice, but just say, hey, prices
1:51:37
Speaker 1: are really good on oak now, for example, we want
1:51:39
Speaker 1: to cut that now because it might not be in
1:51:41
Speaker 1: six months. So, um, if the ground can hold it,
1:51:44
Speaker 1: and and and handle it. Environmentally wise, there's a lot
1:51:47
Speaker 1: of good best management practices out there or state agent,
1:51:50
Speaker 1: state forestry agency, and environment protection agencies will make sure
1:51:54
Speaker 1: that they're not happening at that time of the year
1:51:57
Speaker 1: that there's you know, erosion is at the at the
1:52:00
Speaker 1: east to minimize as much as possible, um, and you're
1:52:03
Speaker 1: not really you know, ruts are not happening. A lot
1:52:06
Speaker 1: of that those d MPs are followed. UM. You know,
1:52:09
Speaker 1: financial driven decisions are usually what comes into play. And
1:52:13
Speaker 1: I would say for the deer hunter, let those things
1:52:16
Speaker 1: make those decisions, because as we all know, seasons come
1:52:19
Speaker 1: and go and deer react to it. Although it might
1:52:22
Speaker 1: not be ideal for three months or six month perry
1:52:25
Speaker 1: for your deer hunting, Um, it will make it better
1:52:28
Speaker 1: in the big picture. And if that's when that cruise available,
1:52:31
Speaker 1: I would I would let it, let it happen, even
1:52:33
Speaker 1: though it might be it would be a little bit
1:52:34
Speaker 1: of a punch, and of good it's something's happening right
1:52:36
Speaker 1: when you're about to hunt. The hunting will get better.
1:52:39
Speaker 1: And I do listen to your podcast, Mark, and I
1:52:41
Speaker 1: know that Dan uh your co host, had talked about
1:52:44
Speaker 1: that not that long ago, but I've also heard him
1:52:47
Speaker 1: recently say that things are are pretty good right now.
1:52:50
Speaker 1: And if the DAN from a couple of years ago
1:52:52
Speaker 1: could talk to the Dan today, I would imagine he'd
1:52:55
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, right, things are things are pretty hot
1:52:57
Speaker 1: because that's where the gear are. Yeah. I think that's
1:52:59
Speaker 1: a perfect example. He was really stressed out about it
1:53:01
Speaker 1: that one year, but now it's been a few years
1:53:03
Speaker 1: and things are looking really good. So that's that is
1:53:06
Speaker 1: a perfect illustration of that concept. His stressed level sounds
1:53:10
Speaker 1: like it came down quite a bit. It might be
1:53:12
Speaker 1: rising for other reasons, but but at least for that
1:53:16
Speaker 1: one thing, it's down. So one back back a little
1:53:20
Speaker 1: bit too um some of the d I Y options.
1:53:23
Speaker 1: I feel like when we start to get into, at
1:53:26
Speaker 1: least when deer hunters start talking about managing timber and cover,
1:53:31
Speaker 1: one of the first things people usually jumped to is
1:53:34
Speaker 1: hinge cutting, because it seems like the easiest thing that
1:53:37
Speaker 1: you as an individual can do without knowing a whole lot,
1:53:40
Speaker 1: without like feeling comfortable falling great big trees, without hiring someone.
1:53:44
Speaker 1: That just seems to be like the most accessible way
1:53:46
Speaker 1: to manage some degree of timber because you go out
1:53:49
Speaker 1: through the chainsaw and cut downs or hinge cut some
1:53:52
Speaker 1: small trees and you can you can manage to a degree.
1:53:55
Speaker 1: So a lot of people seem to do it. It's
1:53:57
Speaker 1: very popular. People are always talking about all these different
1:54:00
Speaker 1: tegic ways to hinge cut. And you hear some people
1:54:03
Speaker 1: talk about the properties. You go look at some properties
1:54:05
Speaker 1: and these things are hinge cut all over the place,
1:54:07
Speaker 1: like tons and tons and tons of hinge cutting. From
1:54:10
Speaker 1: your guys perspective, from a forestry perspective, um, do you
1:54:15
Speaker 1: see any downside to the popularity of hinge cutting or
1:54:18
Speaker 1: do you see anything that's being done or or promoted
1:54:22
Speaker 1: or recommended to folks as far as hinge cutting that
1:54:24
Speaker 1: actually from a Forrester's perspective perspective that hey, we're actually
1:54:29
Speaker 1: missing the boat on some of this stuff. Any like
1:54:31
Speaker 1: mistakes that pop out to you, guys, that's a great question.
1:54:34
Speaker 1: I figured we get into hinge cutting a little bit
1:54:36
Speaker 1: and I'll I'll try to cover as many bases as possible. Um.
1:54:41
Speaker 1: So Kim has mentioned the kind of intermediate you know,
1:54:45
Speaker 1: when the forest is not quite mature enough to get
1:54:48
Speaker 1: something out of it in terms of value for the wood,
1:54:51
Speaker 1: When trees are are smaller size, you know, midsize UM.
1:54:56
Speaker 1: There's a lot of things you can do to influence that,
1:54:58
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of different TI. That's the timber
1:55:01
Speaker 1: stand improvement t s I. What people say t s
1:55:04
Speaker 1: I is basically removing trees that are I don't use
1:55:07
Speaker 1: the word runs, but the trees that are not either
1:55:10
Speaker 1: the species is not what you want there, or they're
1:55:12
Speaker 1: competing with trees that you do want there. But it's
1:55:15
Speaker 1: the removal or killing of trees that you don't want
1:55:17
Speaker 1: and leaving of the ones that you do want. That
1:55:20
Speaker 1: can be done a number of different ways. You can
1:55:22
Speaker 1: do that through cutting the tree down completely and removing
1:55:25
Speaker 1: it UM if you can get fireword out of it,
1:55:27
Speaker 1: if there's a product there, cutting it down and leaving
1:55:30
Speaker 1: it on the fourth floor. You can girdle it, you
1:55:33
Speaker 1: can hack and square. Yes, you can hinge cut it.
1:55:35
Speaker 1: With the goal there is to influence competition, so leaving
1:55:41
Speaker 1: your favorite species and and UH taking away the ones
1:55:44
Speaker 1: that are undesirable and influencing structure UM and sunlight so
1:55:49
Speaker 1: basically getting more in the sunlight in there. So hinge
1:55:52
Speaker 1: cutting is one of those techniques UM that can be used. UM.
1:55:56
Speaker 1: I think a lot of under the untrained I. UM,
1:56:00
Speaker 1: what a lot of folks are doing is they're just
1:56:02
Speaker 1: removing trees that they don't want there or just want
1:56:05
Speaker 1: to cover aspect without thinking about the food side of it.
1:56:08
Speaker 1: And Tim mentioned earlier, UM, you know, if you kill
1:56:12
Speaker 1: a tree, if you spray it with some chemical and
1:56:15
Speaker 1: the tree is dead from the root down, you're not
1:56:17
Speaker 1: going to get the sprouting effect. And if it's a
1:56:19
Speaker 1: tree that deer want to eat the sprouts of UM,
1:56:22
Speaker 1: it might be counterintuitive. So you can hinge a tree
1:56:26
Speaker 1: that is an undesirable food and if that tree sprouts,
1:56:29
Speaker 1: all you're doing is providing, yes, and cover, but a
1:56:32
Speaker 1: lot of food at the ground level of something dear
1:56:34
Speaker 1: don't really want to eat. So there's that side of it. UM.
1:56:37
Speaker 1: A couple of years ago, one of our colleague colleagues
1:56:41
Speaker 1: wrote and really good articles on our website about UM
1:56:45
Speaker 1: kind of clues that you might be hinge cutting too much.
1:56:48
Speaker 1: And UH he had talked about species and that that's
1:56:51
Speaker 1: kind of one of those examples of not knowing the
1:56:53
Speaker 1: species of the trees you're cutting and what's going to
1:56:55
Speaker 1: happen there. And there's a handful of other ones, UH
1:56:59
Speaker 1: listed I would wreck men. You go look for that.
1:57:01
Speaker 1: If you're interested in hinge cutting, find that article on
1:57:04
Speaker 1: their safety is certainly another one. Um Safely cutting a
1:57:09
Speaker 1: tree down, UM, it comes with risk. The larger the
1:57:13
Speaker 1: diameter of the tree. UM, you're certainly uh better off
1:57:18
Speaker 1: at felling that tree down through a technique that will
1:57:22
Speaker 1: drop the tree directional felling where the tree goes in
1:57:24
Speaker 1: a very predictable way. We kind of have a general
1:57:27
Speaker 1: rule of thumb that q D M A. I mean,
1:57:29
Speaker 1: it's not like a policy or anything, but we recommend
1:57:31
Speaker 1: to folks that if you can influence the direction of
1:57:35
Speaker 1: that tree with the power of your hand or one
1:57:38
Speaker 1: of those tools to basically push it um. You know,
1:57:41
Speaker 1: so about the size of your thigh or smaller um,
1:57:44
Speaker 1: you could hinge it. But if it's getting larger than that,
1:57:46
Speaker 1: where no matter how hard you push with you in
1:57:49
Speaker 1: your hand on that tree, once it's been hinged or caught,
1:57:53
Speaker 1: that tree is going wherever it wants to, you know,
1:57:55
Speaker 1: the risk goes up exponentially. So safety is certainly another
1:57:58
Speaker 1: thing I think of on the cutting kind of wagon
1:58:02
Speaker 1: that a lot of people are jumping on. And then
1:58:04
Speaker 1: from a forestry perspective, one thing I'll finish with and
1:58:08
Speaker 1: then jip tim feel free to jump in is um.
1:58:10
Speaker 1: You know. One of the things that it does is yes,
1:58:12
Speaker 1: it creates a lot of that side cover, similar to
1:58:15
Speaker 1: leaving tops in the woods. Right, you get all of
1:58:17
Speaker 1: this structure out there, um where you're going to bed underneath,
1:58:21
Speaker 1: and people try to influence exactly where dear bed by
1:58:24
Speaker 1: doing hinge cuts and uh. It certainly has a value
1:58:27
Speaker 1: to it. But from a forestry perspective, you're creating if
1:58:32
Speaker 1: you do a lot of that an example of where
1:58:36
Speaker 1: um example, but you're creating a situation where it's going
1:58:38
Speaker 1: to be really hard to come back in in seven
1:58:40
Speaker 1: to ten years and remove some other trees. So if
1:58:43
Speaker 1: it's part of a forestry operation, uh, where you hope
1:58:48
Speaker 1: to continually come in and do un even age management
1:58:50
Speaker 1: for example, UM, you're pretty much creating a very difficult
1:58:55
Speaker 1: situation where a logger can't get around there anymore. Um,
1:58:59
Speaker 1: they can't move the machinery without clearing some of it,
1:59:02
Speaker 1: you know, out of the way, and it's just going
1:59:03
Speaker 1: to take a lot of time and it's gonna cost
1:59:05
Speaker 1: more for you to do it. And if you do
1:59:06
Speaker 1: things like prescribed fire or other land management techniques. It's
1:59:11
Speaker 1: becoming more and more difficult now. I know a lot
1:59:13
Speaker 1: of folks that do a lot of hinge cutting have
1:59:15
Speaker 1: smaller properties and they say, listen, I can never get
1:59:18
Speaker 1: a forester in here or a logging crew because I
1:59:20
Speaker 1: only own ten or twenty acres. And there's truth to that. UM.
1:59:24
Speaker 1: But if you're part of a co op and you're
1:59:26
Speaker 1: working with your landowners we talked about earlier, you can
1:59:29
Speaker 1: thwart some of that and actually get the economy of
1:59:32
Speaker 1: scale to a point where you can have somebody come in. UM.
1:59:35
Speaker 1: I prefer to treat remove trees completely, UM, either removing
1:59:40
Speaker 1: them using that product or doing some safe techniques where
1:59:45
Speaker 1: directional selling, hinging of not hinging, uh birling and spraying
1:59:51
Speaker 1: in the interior of forests. So any place that is
1:59:54
Speaker 1: in where I want to manage a forest through civil
1:59:57
Speaker 1: culture with you know, the operation and that we talked earlier,
2:00:01
Speaker 1: even or on even age management, I am not hinge cutting.
2:00:04
Speaker 1: I think it has its best place. And that article
2:00:07
Speaker 1: talks about this to a degree on our website on
2:00:10
Speaker 1: the edges of habitat and Kim talked about edge feathering. UM.
2:00:16
Speaker 1: You know, so where you're basically working on the edges
2:00:19
Speaker 1: of what is open in that wall of forest where
2:00:22
Speaker 1: you're trying to get as soft as edge as opposed
2:00:25
Speaker 1: to a hard edge. Hinge cutting has certainly a place there.
2:00:28
Speaker 1: A lot of times the timber on the edge of
2:00:31
Speaker 1: a field is not going to be your highest quality
2:00:33
Speaker 1: because those trees will be more limit um there. They
2:00:36
Speaker 1: will have more limbs on the bowl of the tree
2:00:40
Speaker 1: in the mid stem, in the mid story because they
2:00:42
Speaker 1: are trying to reach out into the field, so they
2:00:45
Speaker 1: have a limb there, and because of that, their timber
2:00:47
Speaker 1: value is not that great. And what a great way
2:00:50
Speaker 1: to influence dear betting than you know, fifty to a
2:00:54
Speaker 1: hundred yards or maybe not quite a hundred yards, but
2:00:56
Speaker 1: just off the field ed you want dear betting there.
2:00:58
Speaker 1: So that's why hinge cutting is Unfore why not place
2:01:02
Speaker 1: it on your field edges where there's some open space
2:01:04
Speaker 1: and you're trying to do some of the edge feathering.
2:01:07
Speaker 1: If I was a move to the interior of the
2:01:08
Speaker 1: forest for all of those other reasons, I would want
2:01:11
Speaker 1: to do straight up silver culture manage at a scale
2:01:15
Speaker 1: with where I can actually influence nutrition at a maximum
2:01:18
Speaker 1: way get dear bedding under you know, even age management,
2:01:23
Speaker 1: dear dear travel patterns through uneven aged management, and just
2:01:26
Speaker 1: be able to go in there and continually treat it
2:01:29
Speaker 1: with a crew, you know, have them come in and
2:01:31
Speaker 1: do large scale stuff. That's where it makes the most
2:01:34
Speaker 1: sense to me. I'd like to kind of jump off
2:01:38
Speaker 1: what Matt said. They're about doing it near the edge
2:01:41
Speaker 1: and and say, I've seen a few places where hinge
2:01:44
Speaker 1: cuts have essentially died rather rapidly. You know, when you
2:01:49
Speaker 1: go out into the interior of the forest and you're
2:01:51
Speaker 1: doing these hinge cuts, particularly where maybe no real thingning
2:01:55
Speaker 1: is taking place in the trees that you're hinge cutting.
2:01:58
Speaker 1: Are you know, maybe in the lower can a bee
2:02:00
Speaker 1: because they're the smaller trees that you want to hinge cut,
2:02:02
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, you get that initial sprouting response
2:02:05
Speaker 1: which is kind of a distress response, but there's now
2:02:08
Speaker 1: not enough sunlight for that tree now that it's on
2:02:10
Speaker 1: the floor to actually continue to grow and grow new sprouts. Um,
2:02:14
Speaker 1: So you definitely want to consider that and maybe you know,
2:02:18
Speaker 1: have a reasonable expectation when you're in the dark forest
2:02:21
Speaker 1: compared to in an area or on the edge of
2:02:23
Speaker 1: an area that's being clear cut or the edge of
2:02:25
Speaker 1: an existing field where the tree can sprout and now
2:02:28
Speaker 1: those sprouts grow leads and get sunlight and continue to
2:02:30
Speaker 1: grow despite being horizontal. Uh. And I would also point out,
2:02:34
Speaker 1: you know, with the hinge cutting um, there are a
2:02:37
Speaker 1: number of different ways that hinge cutting itself has been
2:02:40
Speaker 1: used to you know, create betting areas, just to provide
2:02:43
Speaker 1: some some brows when when deer needed, or to actually
2:02:46
Speaker 1: create a a bottle bottleneck to influence deer movement across
2:02:50
Speaker 1: the landscape. So, just like some of these other practices,
2:02:54
Speaker 1: certainly consider before you go around and start cutting trees,
2:02:57
Speaker 1: hinge cutting them or cutting them down, what is your
2:03:00
Speaker 1: ultimate goal in doing this work. And in the case
2:03:03
Speaker 1: of hinge cutting, you know, do consider if I'm gonna
2:03:06
Speaker 1: hinge cut, is this going to be any different or
2:03:08
Speaker 1: how would this be different compared to if I just
2:03:11
Speaker 1: severed the tree, you know, from the stump and allow
2:03:14
Speaker 1: those sprouts to come in. It's like any other tool
2:03:18
Speaker 1: on a toolbox. It has it has certainly a very
2:03:21
Speaker 1: high value and purpose just needs to be applied in
2:03:24
Speaker 1: the right place. You know, you're you're you gotta grab
2:03:26
Speaker 1: a hammer to hammer nail, not not a crescent wrench,
2:03:29
Speaker 1: you know, so you gotta just figure out where it
2:03:31
Speaker 1: has the best place. Now, there's a lot of folks
2:03:33
Speaker 1: out there with small properties that don't work with their neighbors,
2:03:37
Speaker 1: and they've hinge cut, you know, their entire ten acres
2:03:40
Speaker 1: in some way, shape or form. And I can guarantee
2:03:42
Speaker 1: a mark that they are going to be met at
2:03:44
Speaker 1: betting in there. I mean, I certainly would say that
2:03:47
Speaker 1: is going to have that influence that they're hoping for. Um.
2:03:50
Speaker 1: But I mean, I wouldn't put it under the word sad,
2:03:53
Speaker 1: but it certainly it's caught on and a lot of
2:03:55
Speaker 1: people have been doing it, and I just say, think
2:03:58
Speaker 1: about where the best play to use it so that
2:04:01
Speaker 1: you get the maximum benefit and uh and you're also
2:04:04
Speaker 1: not risking your life, you know. And sometimes some places, um,
2:04:08
Speaker 1: it can be very risky to hinge some of those
2:04:11
Speaker 1: bigger trees, and folks are hinging them, and it makes
2:04:13
Speaker 1: me grim us a little bit that their safeties um
2:04:17
Speaker 1: at risk, you know, And I don't I don't like
2:04:19
Speaker 1: seeing that. I'd rather than be safely at home and
2:04:22
Speaker 1: have somebody in there with a feller buncher that's going
2:04:24
Speaker 1: in and caught those trees down. You're gonna get to
2:04:27
Speaker 1: some light in there, and the trees are gonna respond
2:04:28
Speaker 1: and they're gonna betting that that happens too. Yeah. Well,
2:04:34
Speaker 1: you just kind of blew my mind there, Matt, because
2:04:36
Speaker 1: all these years I've been using crescent wrenches trying to
2:04:39
Speaker 1: get my nails and then never worked too well. And
2:04:41
Speaker 1: so now no, no I'm not so handy. In all seriousness,
2:04:47
Speaker 1: You're welcome seriousness, UM. This is this has been really interesting,
2:04:52
Speaker 1: really helpful for people. I think, I think for anyone
2:04:56
Speaker 1: out there who hunts deer, cares about deer and wildlife,
2:04:59
Speaker 1: and while habitat, there's there's some pretty interesting things in
2:05:02
Speaker 1: this conversation. I think understanding habitat, understanding habitat UM improvement
2:05:08
Speaker 1: and management and force try being one of those ways
2:05:10
Speaker 1: of doing that. It just helps with a holistic understanding
2:05:13
Speaker 1: of this creature and how we interact with it. So
2:05:16
Speaker 1: so thank you guys for sharing such in depth, UM
2:05:19
Speaker 1: insight and know all of this. But I gotta believe
2:05:21
Speaker 1: there's a whole lot of stuff we have not covered.
2:05:23
Speaker 1: Still there there's a lot more to it, um. If
2:05:26
Speaker 1: people want to learn more about this or if they
2:05:29
Speaker 1: want to learn more about the Young Forced Initiative or
2:05:31
Speaker 1: anything that we've kind of discussed. Becauld, you guys point
2:05:33
Speaker 1: out a few places that folks can go to dive
2:05:35
Speaker 1: into this these topics further. Matt, maybe you want to
2:05:38
Speaker 1: kick it off. Sure, well, if you if you're not
2:05:41
Speaker 1: a member of k m A and you've never been
2:05:43
Speaker 1: on our website either way, just our websites q m
2:05:46
Speaker 1: A dot com. So I would say there's a lot
2:05:48
Speaker 1: of stuff there. There's a little search window that you
2:05:51
Speaker 1: can type in habitat Management. There's a whole um menu
2:05:55
Speaker 1: option of habitat Management. You can look to all of
2:05:57
Speaker 1: our articles there. Um certainly if you want, remember, we'd
2:06:00
Speaker 1: love to have you. You belong with us if you're
2:06:02
Speaker 1: if you're a deer hunters, would join. It's good to
2:06:05
Speaker 1: be part of a conservation organization that fights for you
2:06:08
Speaker 1: know what, one of your passions. If you're a deer hunter,
2:06:11
Speaker 1: we'd love to have you as part of our family.
2:06:13
Speaker 1: And uh, it's not that expensive, and you get a
2:06:15
Speaker 1: great magazine, some great authors out there that are written
2:06:18
Speaker 1: like Mark Um. And then one final thing I'll say,
2:06:22
Speaker 1: um is that we have a series of different classes
2:06:26
Speaker 1: and training. Some of them are online, some of them
2:06:28
Speaker 1: you can attend in person. We dive pretty deeply into
2:06:31
Speaker 1: the habitat management realm in all of those and certainly
2:06:35
Speaker 1: we I mean we've been talking a while now, um
2:06:38
Speaker 1: today this is all forestry. There's all other kinds of
2:06:41
Speaker 1: habitat management you can do as well, you know, including
2:06:44
Speaker 1: food plots. A lot of people go to managing you know,
2:06:46
Speaker 1: putting in food plots, um. But one of the big
2:06:48
Speaker 1: things is just managing early successions. So not even forestry
2:06:52
Speaker 1: or young for us, but basically that first flush of
2:06:55
Speaker 1: forbes and and young growth if you disturb an area
2:06:59
Speaker 1: and walk away idea really really need that and that's
2:07:02
Speaker 1: been kind of uh an eye opening things for a
2:07:05
Speaker 1: lot of folks. So we cover all of that in
2:07:07
Speaker 1: those classes that's under the conserve menu class we do
2:07:11
Speaker 1: called Dear Steward. We actually have a couple of in
2:07:14
Speaker 1: person classes this year. One in South Carolina in June,
2:07:19
Speaker 1: um one in Ohio in uh September. So you know,
2:07:23
Speaker 1: check that stuff out unlisted on that Let's say, if
2:07:25
Speaker 1: you're interested in attending some of the stuff, you can
2:07:27
Speaker 1: reach out to me perfect anything you would add, Tim
2:07:31
Speaker 1: sure for anybody interested in learning more about the Young
2:07:34
Speaker 1: Forest Initiative check out young forest dot org, which is
2:07:39
Speaker 1: run by Wildlife Management Institute. And as far as getting
2:07:42
Speaker 1: general forestry information, I would say reach out to your
2:07:45
Speaker 1: state agency or cooperative extension locally, because forestry is something
2:07:50
Speaker 1: of a regional practice where you know, if you transplanted
2:07:54
Speaker 1: me a thousand miles away, I probably would not be
2:07:56
Speaker 1: able to offer sound advice the way your local foresters could.
2:08:00
Speaker 1: All right, good, good advice, And thank you for mentioned
2:08:03
Speaker 1: those additional places we can check out, and um, you
2:08:07
Speaker 1: both have left me with a lot to think about.
2:08:09
Speaker 1: We're trying to implement some of this stuff on our
2:08:11
Speaker 1: Northern Michigan deer camp. We've actually been I've been looking
2:08:14
Speaker 1: into trying to find a forrester myself and hopefully can
2:08:17
Speaker 1: step some meetings here in the next couple of weeks
2:08:19
Speaker 1: and look at some things that we can do related
2:08:21
Speaker 1: to all these topics, um to to improve the wildlife
2:08:24
Speaker 1: habitat for our little neck of the woods. And this
2:08:27
Speaker 1: certainly helped me kind of steer the direction I need
2:08:29
Speaker 1: to go. So thank you Matt, thank you Tim, and
2:08:33
Speaker 1: uh this has been great. Thanks for having a smart
2:08:36
Speaker 1: for having it's always it's always a pleasure to have
2:08:38
Speaker 1: to have you on the show, Matt and Tim. Hopefully
2:08:40
Speaker 1: you can come again, all right, and that's gonna do
2:08:44
Speaker 1: it for us today. So thank you for tuning in.
2:08:46
Speaker 1: Hopefully you found this one interesting. I certainly learned a
2:08:50
Speaker 1: lot from this because it's a topic that you know,
2:08:52
Speaker 1: it's relatively new for me, so I definitely came out
2:08:54
Speaker 1: of this conversation with some important lessons to learn. Now,
2:08:58
Speaker 1: I want to leave you with a couple remind enders. One,
2:09:00
Speaker 1: if you haven't yet left a rating or review on
2:09:03
Speaker 1: iTunes for this podcast. You know, I've been you know,
2:09:06
Speaker 1: preaching this for years now, but I'm still gonna keep
2:09:09
Speaker 1: mentioning because it really does help and I really do
2:09:11
Speaker 1: appreciate it. So thank you in advance if you're able
2:09:13
Speaker 1: to go in there and share some feedback. Also, I'm
2:09:16
Speaker 1: putting a lot of my content now in two places.
2:09:19
Speaker 1: The Mediator dot com is where all my new articles are.
2:09:22
Speaker 1: That's where the articles that include the new podcasts are
2:09:25
Speaker 1: as well, so make sure you're following what's going on
2:09:27
Speaker 1: over at the meat Eater dot com. And then secondly,
2:09:30
Speaker 1: the wire Hunt Instagram account has more than it ever
2:09:33
Speaker 1: has before. I'm doing almost daily stories documenting all sorts
2:09:36
Speaker 1: of things going on in my white tail life UM,
2:09:39
Speaker 1: as well as different recommended books, UM, different breakdowns of properties.
2:09:43
Speaker 1: You can find that all at Wired to Hunt on
2:09:47
Speaker 1: Instagram and other than that, I just want to uh
2:09:50
Speaker 1: wish you all luck in the woods, if you're shed hunting,
2:09:53
Speaker 1: if you're out there scouting or hanging stands or working
2:09:55
Speaker 1: on some habitat, I hope you're having fun with that too,
2:09:58
Speaker 1: And as always, thank you for listening, and until next time,
2:10:02
Speaker 1: stay wired, don't h