Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1018: What Habitat Work REALLY Makes a Difference for Whitetails?

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Ep. 1018: What Habitat Work REALLY Makes a Difference for Whitetails? · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. Your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods presented by first Light, creating proven
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Light Go farther, stay Longer, and now your host Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This is Jake Hoefer.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: On this week's show, we have Thomas Milsna, who owns
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: the Untamed Ambition, to talk about habitat projects you should
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: be thinking about right now. Welcome back to another episode
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: of Wire to Hunt. I'm your host Jake Hofer, and
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: today we're diving into a topic that I think a
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: lot of deer hunters care about but sometimes struggle to prioritize,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: and that's habitat projects that actually move the needle. There's
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: no shortage of things you can do on a property,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: food plots, betting, cud hinge cutting, water holes, access improvements,
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: tree planning. The list goes on, but the reality is
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: not every project delivers the same impact. Some projects great
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: real measurable improvements and how deer use the property, and
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: others sometimes just feels like busy work. Today we're going
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: to talk about what actually matters. Joining me is Thomas
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  Speaker 2: Milsen from the Untamed Ambition. Thomas has a biology background
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: and has been spending years working with landowners across the country,
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: helping them design habitat systems that not only improve hunting,
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: but improve the overall health of the landscape itself. And
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  Speaker 2: that's where this conversation gets very interesting because when we
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: talk about habitat improvement, we often focus on bigger deer
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: or better opportunities, but the reality is that healthier landscapes
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: can also mean healthier deer herds. And a time where
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: hunters are increasingly concerned about diseases like EHD, the role
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: that habitat quality plays in deer health is something worth
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: paying attention to. So today we're going to break down
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  Speaker 2: what projects actually move the needle, and how to do
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: it and why you should consider some of these projects
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: for this upcoming season. Welcome to Wired Hunt, presented by Moultrie.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Let's go in and get into this week's episode. Here
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: we go, all right, Thomas, Welcome to Wired to Hunt.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: How's it going great? Great? How are you?
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: I'm doing great? We have a lot of exciting things
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: to talk about here today. It's bring people are either
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: relishing from a great season or even if they are,
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: they're probably identifying some different habitat projects that are going
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: to help incrementally increase their success for next year and
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: maybe even five or ten years later.
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  Speaker 4: So I mean a lot of different things.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of different habitat Conversations that focus on
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  Speaker 2: projects like that will hit the high ones like hinge cutting,
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: food plots, creating betting areas. But in your experience, what
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: are a few habitat changes that actually move the needle
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: to improve your property? I understand this is completely situational,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: but on a high level of the you know, you
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: can sol for a living and you work on you know,
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: your own place and all these different things, what is
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: typically one of the biggest holes in the bucket that
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: people need to get out the flat seal and slap
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: it on a bucket and fix it.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, that's a kind of a loaded question. You know,
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: every situation is so different, you know, and the complexities
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: of every individual landscape or every area are so different
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: that it's hard to have, you know, that cookie cutter
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: or generalized answer to that response. What I would say,
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: you know, in every situation, our goal is always to
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: analyze that objectively highlight the strong points, highlight the weak
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: points of every property, and then we prioritize that, you know,
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: what is that low hole in the bucket. When we
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: are trying to build a property, we really focus on
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: three main factors holdability, huntability, and management efficiency. You know,
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: our our design element in and of itself is generally
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: what creates the huntability side of things. The wholdability is
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: somewhat related to the design, but largely related to the habitat.
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: And then the management efficiency is how effective you can
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: improve and maintain that habitat along the way. So you know,
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: we're talking about springtime, things are greening up. I was
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: just in southern Iowa, which is drastically different from here
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: in the Midwest. I mean, we're forecast to get eight
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: inches of snow tomorrow. But I get down there and
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: I almost have like a little bit of a panic
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  Speaker 3: attack where I'm like, oh, spring us here, you know,
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: like to bring us here, and we're not ready. And
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: all these clients are waiting to, you know, get ready
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: to hit the ground running with spring. But every single
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: individual client property has different low hanging fruit so to speak,
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  Speaker 3: or that one project that's going to give you the
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: most ROI well, you go back to holdability, specifically with habitat.
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  Speaker 3: The common denominator that I've seen on every property i've
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: bet on this year is a failable ability of food.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: And you know, availability of food comes in a lot
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  Speaker 3: of different layers and levels. More often than not, we're
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: always thinking like, what's the thing that we can plant.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: You know, what's the magic bean or this food plot
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  Speaker 3: that we can plant, which in some situations that might
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: be the low hanging fruit. It's usually the easiest thing
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: to address, which is largely why a lot of us
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: gravitate towards that. That's pretty simple. There's a clear area there,
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: or we'll push open this area, will plant this seed.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: It's going to solve our problems. But I think it's
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: really important to emphasize and for the listeners to consider
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: or remind them, because we're all aware of this at
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: some level, right, But understand that when you look at
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: the deer food pyramid, the cultivated food sources and that's
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: how I categorize them, you know, food plots and even
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: egg fields. Those cultivated food sources make up less than
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: twenty percent of a deer's diet. Actually probably closer to
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: fifteen or ten percent. Most of the year, so that's
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: not the thing that's really going to move the needle
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: for you. It's all the other food groups in there,
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  Speaker 3: soft mass production, hard mass production, forbes and legumes, woody stems, bramble,
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: stuff like that, woody vines, I was gonna say, bramble,
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: and then your your woody brows in general. And then
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: at the foundation of that food pyramid is your moss's
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: fungus and lichen, which are part of good habitat management,
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: good forest stand management in general, and they kind of
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: go hand in hand with the woody regeneration, which would
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: bring me to, you know, probably the top of the
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: list in most situations, the project that's going to move
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: the needle to most If a guy has an afternoon
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: or a day to get out and do something, it's
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: going to be a timber stand improvement project of some
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: sort that's gonna you know, get ash. You back up
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: your priority or your objective with any timber stand improvement
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: project is going to be to get sunlight to the
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: ground to promote regeneration. But it's not always straightforward as that,
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: which is why you know, it's important to have a
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: good plan or really understand what that project entails as
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: far as like what you do and the results that
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: you should expect, which is going to be based on
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: a lot of different parameters, right aspect of that piece
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: of ground, that particular area. So let's back up. If
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: I want to do a timber stand improvement project, and
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: maybe I want to focus on an area that could
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: be improved for betting. So I'm moving the needle ahead
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: by improving cover, I'm improving availability of food in a
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: secure location, which is going to increase the whole ability
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: of the property, especially when you're talking about mature bucks
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: that are more susceptible the pressure. Right, So if I
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: want to move the needle on that, and I want
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: to assess that specific location, I'm going in there, and
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: I'm looking at first and foremost the aspect of that location.
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  Speaker 3: Which direction does it faces it totally flat ground or
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  Speaker 3: is it a hill? How much sun is it going
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  Speaker 3: to get when I punch a hole in the canopy here?
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  Speaker 3: You know, in hill country where I am, you get
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  Speaker 3: a self facing slope. You don't have to cut nearly
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  Speaker 3: as heavy to get the same amount of sunlight in there.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: But at the same time, there's different levels to your
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: TSI that will promote the best response, and ultimately, when
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: we boil it down to management efficiency, we want to
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  Speaker 3: be thinking about this project, but then how do we
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  Speaker 3: maintain that or get ourselves in a routine that incrementally
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: improves the property, whether it's this one specific area that
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: we've improved or the whole property, you know, painting with
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  Speaker 3: a more broad brush. But we don't want to fall
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: into this trap of go cut a bunch of trees
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  Speaker 3: like you mentioned hinge cutting. You don't want to go
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: like hingecut a bedding area and then think that you're
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: done right. So, like when I lay things out for
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: the client as far as like priority projects, things that
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: are going to move the needle, it's like, what can
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  Speaker 3: we do now, and how do we do that in
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  Speaker 3: a way that is a one time time or money
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  Speaker 3: investment to push you forward? But ultimately, how do we
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  Speaker 3: manage that from that point on so that we don't
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: go backwards? And that's what we see a lot on
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  Speaker 3: a lot of properties is you know, it's a project,
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  Speaker 3: we cut, we do this thing, you know, maybe it's
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: broad scale logging project, whatever it might be, but we
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: go in we create this disturbance. Ultimately, mechanical, maybe some
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: chemical for cutting and treating and removing invasives, But how
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: do we keep that in a state that is either
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: constantly improving or at the very least maintaining so that
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: it still offers that food value for de right.
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  Speaker 2: What are some of those things for someone that's like, yeah, Thomas,
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  Speaker 2: of course TSI. Everyone says TSI's one of the most
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  Speaker 2: impactful projects. I did it four years ago, and you know,
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  Speaker 2: it seems like every year. You know, first first two
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  Speaker 2: years it was really good and they were using it
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  Speaker 2: and there was a lot of brows and man, I
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: found two sheds in their one shed season, and now
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  Speaker 2: it just seems like activity and use is going down.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: So like, what are the things to address of whether
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: undesirable species are coming back up or you know, like
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: what are some of the things that you can diagnose
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: to where you've already done it and you're a year
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: four into it, Like, I need to revisit this because
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: you're saying the management of it is almost as important
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: as the initiation.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: I would argue it's more important for sure, you know.
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: And that's where I have two demographics, two multiple demographics,
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: but two real main demographics of clientele, and both of
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: them have the same problems, right, you have in your
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: realtor so you understand this, right, the cost of land
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: is not going down.
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: Now.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: The guys that can afford hunting land either are so
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: busy with their career that they don't have time to
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: put into it, or they're yeah, I mean ultimately it's
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: the same thing, right, Either they're a prominent businessman that
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: doesn't have a lot of time, or there's someone blue
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: collar guy that works his tail off and either doesn't
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: have a lot of time or doesn't have an extra
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: a lot of extra cash to jam into the property
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: to hire someone to do these projects. Either way, I
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: look at the same way. It's like when we break
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: these plans down into different projects based on a timeline.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: You know, year one, do this, year two do this,
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: similar to like an EQUIP contract, right where they'll be
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: like year one, focus on this zone, You're two, focus
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: on that zone, but then go back and follow up
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: on zone one, right, and you get you in kind
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: this routine. But that's where EQUIP kind of falls apart
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: because then just like well, after three years and you're
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: paid and you've remove the invasives, what do you do
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: so ultimately, prior to stepping into any of those projects,
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: we need to be thinking what are we going to
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: do as far as a controlled disturbance to maintain some
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: level of early succession in this area. And you know
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: my approach, I try to get really really detailed on properties.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: So we'll look at specific betting locations, specific feeding locations,
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: and various different types of food sources in general, and
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: we're creating travel corridors and so on and so forth.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: But between those locations, we're trying to paint with a
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: much broader brush so that we can manage at a
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: more efficient level, because it's unrealistic to think that a
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: client's going to go in and recut every betting area
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: on their property. Now, again, every situation is different. So
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: if I'm a guy that has fifteen, twenty, maybe even
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: forty acres, you could do that, and you can do that, yeah, exactly,
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: and that's fine, But I could argue that you could
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: be a lot more efficient with your time having a
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: management plan right, and more productive as far as the
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: regeneration and the response that you see from the seed
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: bank and the current vegetation. So ultimately, what it comes
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: down to is before you create any form of disturbance.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: You should be thinking two, three, five, ten years down
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: the road, what is my follow up response to that
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: to reset that area into early succession, which is going
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: to promote a lot more food value. Right But ultimately
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: or in addition to that, would be to govern the
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: response of the vegetation or what you're going to allow
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: to grow. So TSI, to really boil it down and
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: simplify it really for me how I explain it to clients, TSI.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: The mindset you need to have with TSI is termination
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: or regeneration of what's growing there. And then am I
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: bringing in some added diversity to that location or am
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: I just waiting for the natural native setting to respond appropriately,
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: which you know, again, this might get in the weeds
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: a little bit more. But what we know more and
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: more now, what we're learning more and more now is
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: a lot of these invasive battles. It depends on the
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: type of species, but a lot of these invasive battles
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: are a result of soil at its core, the soil
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: makeup this. You know, house soil has evolved over time
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: from lack of management or previous management practices. For example,
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: a property I just came from old cattle pasture. Right,
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: So what happens when you have cattle on a pasture
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: for a long period of time is they're relatively selective
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: of what they graze, less selective of what they graze,
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: but more selective of what they browse. What happens to
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: most cattle pastures ends up being a sea of Eastern
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: red cedars, multi floor rows, honeysuckle locusts, yes, honey locus,
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: all those things that pop up that the the cold
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: that want to eat. So when you start to decrease
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: the species diversity or composition of vegetation on the property,
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: the soil structure starts to change. In addition to that,
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: you have cattle that are you know, conducive to ground compaction.
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: You know, especially if they're in a pasture under all
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: types of conditions and they're not rotated, there's kind of
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: let to do whatever they want to do. Right, So
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: there's all these things at place. So if you go
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: into a project and say, you know, another thing that
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: could move the needle quite a bit for someone, depending
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: on their situation, if they have decent timber, or maybe
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: the adjacent property just got logged. So there's some decent
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: brows that's going to be taking place there. But maybe
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: their property has more open area. They don't have a
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: timber project that they can even do, so maybe that property,
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: you know, moving the needle there would be increasing the
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: native ford production and open areas. But just going in
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: and killing off cool season grasses, you know, your seed
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: bank response is likely not going to be desirable because
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: a lot of things are suppressed or you know, have
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: been killed off over time. And even just going in
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: and throwing down seed, which is not cheap perennial native
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: seed is not cheap fantastic investment. Don't want to discourage
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: anyone there, but just throwing that down and expecting it
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: to do it's thing isn't always as straightforward either. Sometimes
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: it is, sometimes it isn't. But it's a roll of
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: a dice at a cost of three hundred to four
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: hundred dollars per acre for a diverse perennial fort mix. Right.
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: So when we look at that from that standpoint and
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: kind of start with the foundation, you know, again we're
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: looking at the soil type, we're looking at the soil
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: moisture content, the current species compositions. How much so it's
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: going to get when we open up the canopy. And
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: really at the end of the day, it just all
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: boils down to having that plan, like how do I
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: get ahead of this, you know, like whether it's timber
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: stand or it's prairie. As simple a thing as like,
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: before I go and plant this, what is going to
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: be my next round of controlled disturbance? And if it's
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: something like fire, which I would argue at the most
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: exactly so you know that's going to be the most efficient,
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: then it could be as simple as like, well, I
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: don't want to start managing that area unless I know
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: I have good access to it, So maybe I need
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: to put a road system in first, you know, And
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: that might not require a bulldozerund site. It might just
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: mean a weekend with a chainsaw and cutting a path
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: where you can follow up a year later with a
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: backpack leaf blower or drive a UTV through a certain area,
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: you know, to get access to the top of the
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: hill or the back corner of the property. Stuff like that.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: Access is going to be We talk about this all time.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: Right from a hunting perspective, access is so incredibly important.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: From a management perspective, I would argue it's even more
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: important because if you're not accessing certain areas your property,
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: then you can't manage them, and not not efficiently. Right
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: if you're doing everything manually on the ground, piking back
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: and forth, doing all these things like young strapping dudes
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: like us can handle it, right, But then you hit
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: that certain point in your life or you can't or
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: you don't have enough time, and if it takes an
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: extra day or extra half a day to prep that,
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: then that project won't fall into a weekend project list
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: per se. Right, I kind of went down a tangent there,
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: but I think you kind of understand where I'm going.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: There's no like straightforward, easy response or approach. But I
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: think the biggest thing is is thinking, like I want
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: to do this thing, but what's the next step to
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: maintain this thing. It's like I can I can go
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: buy a nice chunk of lamb, but if I can't
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: afford the taxes on it, how is that sustainable? Or
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: if I buy my truck and never get the oil
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: changed on it, like that's not sustainable either, Right, So
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: then your time investment, your monetary investment, starts to decline.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: And then you look back and you're like, well, did
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: that really move the needle. Now on the other side
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: of that, you know, that's that's talking like long term mindset,
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: long term planning. Right. But if we back all the
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: way up and go all the way back to the
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: original question, like, what's that one thing I can do
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: now that's going to move the needle for me this fall?
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: Depending on your situation, you know, maybe you have a
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: property that has relatively poor habitat, but it's still holding
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: deer because deer are a generalist species. They need food
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: and cover. Food plus equals habitat in a lot of situations.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: Right now, what we see is that this concept of
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: half atat right where you have cover here and food there,
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: and that holds deer on the property, it's not a sustainable,
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: long term, resilient ecosystem by any means. But if we're
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: talking right here, right now, what do I do to
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: move the needle? Or maybe maybe you're a person that
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: doesn't have control over the property to begin with, maybe
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: your permission base and you have you can do limited improvements,
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: but you're not in a position to be putting together
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: a twenty year management plan right and you have deer there.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: I think that the primary thing to consider is if
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: you have deer currently or you know, probably not currently
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: if it's poor habitat, because it's probably not there in
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: February or March right now. But ultimately, if you if
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: you have mature buck activity or the quality of deer
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: that you're willing to put your tag on activity on
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: your property, right because everyone's goals are different. But if
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: those deer are there but you're not connecting with them,
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: then it might be you know, as simple, you know,
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: to move the needle is like dropping some trees or
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: hinging some trees to create a barrier. And that's where
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: like when it comes to management and hinge cutting specifically,
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: I love hinging trees to manage or to manipulate movement,
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: not necessarily to create food value. I don't want those
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: trees to stay alive. I just want to stay off
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: the ground so they don't rot, to create a natural
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: barrier that maintains for the next ten plus years. Right,
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: and in time that'll kind of fall apart two. But
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: you can a lot of times condition deer to move
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: through certain areas. So like an example I can think of,
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: actually if you dial back two years ago, I probably
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: four years ago, I did a big timber stand improvement
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: cut on an area of our farm, and it moved
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: the needle for sure. You know, we had a logger in,
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: We took out some dead ash, we thin some hickories,
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: we released some oaks, turned into a nice betting area.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: I hundred the fringe of that betting area a couple
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: of years after that, and we were already seeing pretty
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: dramatic improvements, dramatic increase in forage value in that location,
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: increase in cover holding deer, pretty straightforward. But what happened
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: is on stand I had my target book at fifty
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: five yards, couldn't get a shot right. Okay. So if
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: you're in that situation, and maybe you didn't do a
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: prior improvement, but that's a situation. You've got an area
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: that hunts well to a certain extent, but you have
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: a lot of close calls, or you just can't cross
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: paths with deer. They blow right through an area that's
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: where you can go in. And what I did, ultimately
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: was I created a mock scrape set up in one spot,
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: and I felled some trees, some ironwood, some lower quality
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: trees in a different area to force the deer movement
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: around a certain you know, a barrier essentially right to
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: force them around. So now all the movement flowing through
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: there is within shot distance. Now when the deer there,
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: as long as I'm there at the right time, I'm
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: set up for success. And that's a relatively quick project.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: So again, every situation is a little different, and when
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: we analyze these properties, we want to look at it
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: that way as like, what can we do to move
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: the needle right now that there's an overhaul coming to
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: this property, But an overhaul doesn't happen in one season, right,
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: so how do we break that down? And then what
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: are the low hanging fruits? Is it adding a food plot?
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: You know, I was on a property yesterday and there
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: was multiple food plots throughout the property, you know, and
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: on their map they had two previous consultants on the property,
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: so they had good plans, and looking at the map
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: everything made sense, Oh, you've got all these food plots there, Like,
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: how what do we need to change on the property.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: And then walking the property, it's very apparent there are
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: the food plots themselves were not great, Like the condition
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: of the plots was not It wasn't anything that's going
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: to be super super attractive to the deer specifically. I mean,
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: we could talk about that in a minute or later on, right,
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: but ultimately the food plots weren't that great and the
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: surrounding habitat was terrible. So if you think that you're
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: going to pull deer into your property with just a
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: food plot, but you're not holding deer to begin with,
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: then that's not going to move the needle for you.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: But if you're holding to your and you put a
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: food plot in the right location and it's an attractive
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: food source there, that can really move the needle, right.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: But it's not a long term thing either, because every
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: year you're looking at going back in and redoing that
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: at some capacity or maintaining at some capacity.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: What's you know, for the end of March, first two
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: weeks of April, what is what is the window of
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: TSI or what are time sensitive projects that are like, man,
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: if you're going to do this and it's kind of
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: somewhat of a blanket statement for you know, the corn
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: belt or you like or even you can throw in Michigan,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: southern Minnesota, southern half of Wisconsin, what are either the
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: what's the window of TSI? And second question of that
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: is what are time sensitive projects for the end of
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: March to the first two weeks of April.
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: Like, if you're going to do this, you need to
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: get it done.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: Well. This actually is not a great time to be
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: doing some certain TSI projects. So I'd emphasize that if
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: you have a property that doesn't have a lot of
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: invasive pressure, then you can do just about anything. You know,
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: cutting trees. When you go back to what I was
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: saying earlier, you know this this idea or decision you
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: want to make as far as I want to regenerate
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: this specific species or terminate this specific species. Right right
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: now is a great time for regeneration. When you cut
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: a hardwood deciduous species, when it's dormant, it's got the
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: bulk of its energy load in the root system. So
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: when you cut it then it will regenerate with a
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: lot more vigor when it comes out of dormancy. Inversely,
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: right now, these trees are kind of starting to wake
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: up a little. You know, also SAPs starting to flow.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: Guys are tapping maple syrup. Like I said, I was
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: just down in Iowa, things are already turning green. So
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: on the other side of that, if I'm trying to
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: terminate any given species. Now is not a good time
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: to do that because if I try and cut and
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: treat with a chemical and that vascular system is moving
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: the energy or the sap from the roots up, it's
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: going to push most of that herbicide out and you're
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: going to do it lot of work, and your efficacy
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: is going to be dramatically lower. So it's kind of
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: a I don't want to say, a wasted effort, but
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: in many ways it can be because you might think
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: you're doing this thing that's you know, one and done,
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: and it's certainly not. So this specific time of the
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: year I would avoid, you know, and you'll know if
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: you're cutting trees and they're sap pouring out of them
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: when you cut, then it's definitely not time to be
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: cutting and treating anything. But if you're just trying to
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: cut to create instant cover structure on the ground with
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: that top, maybe feed the deer some buds right now,
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: late in the winter and then set yourself up for
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: hardwood regeneration or you know, herbaceous growth that's going to
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: come for getting the sunlight to the ground now is
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: definitely a good time to do that. That's what I
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: would be focusing on more than anything. You know. Right now,
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: we're we're what I'm personally doing across client properties or
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: what my clients what I have them doing, is we've
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: done a lot of the betting area cuts and stuff already,
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: so we're kind of working our way back now and
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: we're we're finalizing and setting ourselves up for the food
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: plot side of things, where we're feathering edges, improving the
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: edge structure. Maybe we're prepping for tree plantings where we're
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: trying to peelback some of the non desirables and plug
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: in some you know, more specific attraction based species in there.
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: And then we'll segue into pulling soil samples, prepping for
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: food plots and so on and so forth.
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: A lot to it, man, there's a lot, a lot
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: of it never happens.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: And that's the thing. It's like, it's hard to be like,
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: just go do this one thing, It's going to solve
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: all your problems, right, It's just that's just not the reality.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: In most situations, most properties have that one thing that
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: can exponentially move the needle forward. But there's, like I said,
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: with the complexities that are out there, it's not easy
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: to say, like this is that one cookie cutter plan
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: or idea that you should overlay on your property and
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: expect to see the same results that that guy saw
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: or that guy saw.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I completely agree with that. And
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: I've been on a bunch of different farms, and it's
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: sometimes you can almost categorize farms to where depending on
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: I mean most of most of where I'm at, obviously Illinois.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: So it's like I can kind of categorize different farms
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: here in Illinois. So let's run through a scenario for
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: someone that they did not have a great season. You know,
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: they had night pictures of bucks, they didn't find really
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: any many sheds. Sign was pretty lackluster. But you know
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: during peak rut you had just enough hope and excitement
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: to keep you out there. But it's like looking inversely, like, man,
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: you know, something has to change if I want to
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: increase my odds of success. So in that scenario, I'm
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: picturing average blow average habitat. You know the field, you know,
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: like there's ag ground nearby, but you know there's really
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: not enough room to have a true destination food source.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: I mean with something like that, is it an uphill
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: battle that can that's worth hiking up the hill scenario
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: and hopefully that's enough context where you can picture a
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: farm like that. I think realistically more farms than not
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: fall into that category if it's not strictly managed.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent. You know, I would go back
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: to Now, this is just operating under the assumption that
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: someone has full control over their property, right, not necessarily
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: like you said, maybe they don't have the space or
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: or it does come down to the time and the budget, right.
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: You know. I talk about that food pyramid, and then
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: directly related to that, I've got my time investment pyramid,
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: like where should you be sticking your time on your
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: property that's going to have the longest and the highest
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: ROI return on that investment. You know, when I have
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: my discussion with clients, a lot of them money is
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: not the issue per se. It's the time, right, And
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: even if they're willing to hire things out, it's like,
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: you can only get so much done in a year,
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: So we want to look at all the different parameters there.
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: But if you have control over the property, every situation
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: is different. To be honest with you, I don't I
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: almost rarely rarely promote destination style food plots on properties.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: If there's egg in the area, the ROI on it
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: just isn't there. It's it's just not so if you had,
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: if you had, let's run this.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, so someone has I'm gonna I'm gonna put I
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: did a podcast with doctor Bronzis Strickland and like the
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: break even on a big food pot. What he discovered,
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: I want to say it was either three or six acres.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: I think it was six acres. So Thomas, I have
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: six acres that I can do whatever the heck I
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: want to do. You're not telling me to plant six
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: acres of a corn and bean rotation and leave it
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: for food. That's that's where you're getting at, because that's
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: kind of.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: Yes it well, and again it's all relative. If there's
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: egg in the area, Okay.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Let me add a caveat there is agg in the area,
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: and you flip a coin. Whether they put anhydris on
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: it in November or if they work the field as
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: soon as they pick it, like sometimes they do it,
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: sometimes they don't.
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: So like you can't bank all that nearby at well.
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: And here's where I've what I've boiled it down to. Okay,
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: and there's and my journey is obviously different from a
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: lot of guys out there talking about this, Right, I'm
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: looking at things. I'm trying to look at things objectively
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: in every situation and not just say this worked here,
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: let's do this here and then ultimately, you know, I'm
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: looking at this from the long, long game perspective. Where
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: has deer habitat come in the last ten years, right?
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: I think I think it's been a great thing in
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: the industry in general as far as like bringing a
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: lot more awareness to improving habitat for deer. But I
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: also think that we've gone off the path a long
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: ways when we start to consider corn and beans as
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: deer habitat period.
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: Dear food, dear food.
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: It's deer food. Yes, it's deer food, but even the
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: ROI on that and the cost of that. You know what,
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: from a holistic standpoint, right, I'm a holistic land manager,
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: And I say that in the sense that I emphasize
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: and and everything I do is based on managing systems
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: and not individual species or individual plants. Where do deer
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: fit into the system that they're a part of, right,
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: Deer they manage the vegetation on the landscape. They cycle
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: nutrients through the landscape, so they are definitely part of
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: the system. Where do hunters fit into that part of
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: the system. We manage the deer and we manage the landscape, right,
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: so we have to figure out this balance as far
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: as like what problems are being caused upstream, what can
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: we do to mitigate those, and how do we stop
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: causing problems downstream?
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: Right, So let's let's talk about where maybe we have
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: gotten off off track. And I'm giving you the opportunity
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: to say, like, hey, maybe we should think twice about
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: this management practice or that management practice, or like everything
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: you're saying is long term, right, And I think inherently
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: to a fault, deer hunters are one year minded next year, Yes,
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: next year, you got any good bucks hunt later this year?
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: And like that's you know, that is to a fault
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: deer hunters well, and.
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: I I yes, And I don't want to pretend like
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: I'm like that much different from everybody else out there.
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: I used to say that I I used to remember
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: my past based on the rock albums that were released
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: by the artists I followed like back through you know,
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: back you know, people listening to probably even know what
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: CDs are anymore, right, but that I used to think
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: about that and now it's it's on the target book
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: that I pursued, right, I can think all of about
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: I remember, like my wife was like, what year did
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: we start eating? I was like two thousand and eight.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: I can tell you exactly when I started dating. How
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: do you remember that? Because I remember the deer that
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: I didn't kill, the day that I didn't go hunt
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: to go meet you at college and go out to dinner.
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: I was like, I remember that deer played this day, right,
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: So I'm in the same boat, and you know, to
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: back up on it again. I think that our biggest issue,
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: the biggest issue is that we have we're trying to follow,
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: you know, and I don't want to like beat the
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: food plot horse to death, right, but with food plots
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: and now it's kind of starting to extend into habitat
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: management as a whole. We're trying to follow this mindset
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: or this conventional management mindset and mirror conventional agriculture. Right,
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: And if you take a step back from that, there's
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: nothing really great about how that's how that's helped our country,
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: how it's helped our environment. All these things. Right, the
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: only benefit from conventional agriculture is it's efficient in the
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: sense that you put so much in, you get so
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: much back out. But it's failing us as a society
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: as a whole. Right, we're not producing the healthiest foods.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: We've got the highest disease rates we've ever had as
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: a country. Our healthcare costs are through the roof. And
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: if we turn around, we take that same model and
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: now we're employing it to farm for deer, create deer food.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: Where do we sit right now? We've got the sickest
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: deer herds we've ever had in this country. In some
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: areas there's way less deer. In other areas there's way
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: too many deer. But we're setting ourselves up for this
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: long term failure because our ecosystem resilient and see is
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: at an all time low because of the biodiversity. So
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: to back up to the question the conversation with Bronson,
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: the food plot size and stuff like that. Where I've
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: shifted over the last five or six years is these
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: bigger destination food plots. If we're planting a ton of food,
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: a cultivated food source to feed deer right out of
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: the gate, our mindset is failing us. We shouldn't be
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: cultivating an insane amount of food to feed deer per se. Now,
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: having a supplemental food source post rut early winter into
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: the winter, I think is advantageous. Ultimately, I always refer
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: to them as seasonally attractive food sources. So what can
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: I plant there that's going to hold ensure that deer
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: aren't leaving the property, especially during the hunting season, and
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: ultimately pull them into the most huntable or accessible areas
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: on the property so that I can keep pressure off
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: of the more sensitive areas. Right. I talk about this
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: all the time with clients. You know, ultimately we're scouting,
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: we're looking for or looking to create the most accessible
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: pinch points possible. There's two types of pinch points that
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: we look for or look to create, and ultimately my
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: goal is to always to create some hybrid version of
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: the two. We have a physical resistance type pinch point,
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: like I alluded to earlier. Maybe you're dropping some trees,
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: maybe it's a river crossing, you know, a hole in
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: the fence, Topography, ravines, all these things that restrict deer
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: movement on the landscape and choke deer down. If you
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: go out and try and engineer a spot like that.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: It can go against you if you try and choke
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: deer down too tight. So the other side of that
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: is an attraction based pinch point we're drawing deer in.
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: It can be a food plot, it can be a
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: water hole, some sort of limited resource. Well, when we
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: hybridize a pinch point, it can go from either angle right.
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: So we hybridize that we want to choke deer movement
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: down to a certain extent and then draw them in
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: the rest of the way. You know, it's like kind
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: of trying to get your parents to change their mind
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: on something. You have to kind of plant the seed
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: and influence it and ultimately has to be their decision.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: If you try to get a mature buck to choke
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: down into a small gap, he'll do it, but not
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: very consistently. I've watched it many times. So these deer
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: getting they spots and get nervous, they back out, maybe
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: they go wide. You know, then you're out of the game.
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: So if you can choke them down to a certain
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: extent draw them in the rest of the way, that's
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: a beautiful thing. With food plots, we do this in
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: many different ways. Right, we can draw them into a
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: big area, but maybe we feather the edges and create barriers,
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: force them to enter in one end or certain areas,
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: and that makes that three or four acre food plot
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: hunt like a quarter acre a half acre, and then
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: we know where to set up. But ultimately the issue
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: that we see that I see more and more is
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: this mindset of planting more food for deer that's annual
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: food versus perennial food. So there's a concept we talk
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: about frequently that is permanence, right, Like, what's something you
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: can put down that's going to be more permanent on
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: the landscape. Now, nothing's truly permanent, right because everything's evolving
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: and changing, But what's something that's going to last more
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: perennial type system? So what I've done a lot the
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: last couple of years and all the designs I drop, well,
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: we've shrunk down these six acre food plots and stacked
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: our food plot create a system to stack our food
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: in one area that ultimately has a lower footprint, a
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: smaller footprint. So instead of planting four acres of food,
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: because let's be realistic, most of those big destination food
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: plots have to be four acres because the browse pressure
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: is so high on them that if you want to
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: get one or two acres of standing beans to last
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: through the hunting season, you have to start out with
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: four acres. Okay, So what is the cost of that
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: management efficiency? What is the cost of that? I can
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: tell you the exact cost of that three hundred and
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: fifty to four hundred and fifty dollars per acre probably
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: on average for beans. When you start talking about seed cost,
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: fertilizer costs, chemical costs, right, ye, Corns even worse. Four
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: hundred to seven dollars hundred dollars per acre.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: Probably right, I mean, yeah, depending, you could probably make
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: an argument that's seven, seven, eight or nine hundred dollars
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: depending on the chemicals and treatments and fertilizer.
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: And corns are pretty hunker crop.
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: And to anyone listening that's planted corn the last two
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: years and like that didn't cost me that much? Just wait,
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: just wait, because getting corn pulls a lot of stuff
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: out of the soil and doesn't put a whole lot
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: back in the soil, right, And that's a whole other
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: thing too. So let's actually talk about the cost of
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: a food plot, like that on average, you know, depending
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: on your planting practices, but on average, corn and beans
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: are responsible for about two to ten tons per acre
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: of top soil loss on an annual basis. Just by
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: trying to force a monoculture that doesn't protect the soil
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: between the ropes. You lose a lot to wind erosion.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: You lose a lot to water erosion. Where does that
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: end up? Right? That ends up silting in these ponds
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: that are catching runoff. On top of that, the chemicals
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: that go into that, where do those end up? Right?
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: Those end up in those ponds? They end up in
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: the groundwater. Now take this another whole other level. What
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: has what happens to those ponds? Right? Anyone who's listening
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: that's dealing with or or terrified of the next year
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: ahead with EHD potential EHD outbreaks maybe took a huge
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: hit last year. You know, hopefully the deer that survived
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: are immune to it now and not didn't just avoid
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: getting bitten period, right, because you don't want two three
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: years of that in a row, right. One year sometimes
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: is actually probably a blessing in disguise to help kind
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: of reset things as much as it, you know, it
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: hurts but but ultimately where is that coming from? Right,
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: What's this? What's the problem the root cause of that?
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: When you look at the landscape, and I can argue
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: again objectively analyzing these landscapes, being on many properties that
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: had EHD issues and seeing the weak links and all
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: these properties, it comes down to biodiversity. So as simple
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: a thing, and to go all the way back to
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: the food plots and where my mindset is and the
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: strategies I employ, and this is the same thing that
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: we use to combat EHD, to combat CWD, to combat
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: whatever the next nasty disease is. You know in the South,
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: I've got Southern clients that were break seen for impact
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: with the New World screw worm if you if you've
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: read anything on that, right, this is a potential issue
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: coming down the pipe too. Fly lays an egg and
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: an open wound and basically that that worm eats that
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: deer alive. So there's there's things like that out there.
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: It's you know, moving through the cattle industry. Why not.
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: But anyways, the way that we combat that is by
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: increasing native plant diversity on the landscape. TSI projects a
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: lot of times can be overwhelming for people and harder
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: to manage. And again I think that that's where most
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: people should be looking to move the needle. But if
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: you do, and this is kind of our approach, if
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: you take that six acre destination food plot and shrink
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: it down to a super efficient two acre system, and
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: then you take the remaining four acres and plant that
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: to the HOXY native seed native perennial food plot mix, right,
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: just throwing that out there, you know, a native food
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: plot or native mix.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: So like for someone that's like, what what is that?
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: Why would I, you know, take up just food pot
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: acres for something that doesn't look really awesome like from
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: the drone or you know, it's like the deer are
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: just going to be selectively browsing in there where it's
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: like most times probably don't even know what they're really
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: eating because there's so many different things popping up. So
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: what's in that that is truly attractive enough for someone
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: to give up acreage?
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: Well, and that's the beauty of it, right, So we
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: go back to habitat food plus cover eqals habitat. The
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: beauty of native habitat hardwood regeneration native forbes is there's
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: a huge amount of food value in there. The timing
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: of the year isn't the same as a food plot.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: That's why I say food plus are seasonally attractive food sources.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: The food we'll use the native forbes for example, Right,
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: So pollinator planting, flowering forbes, like if you just whittle
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: it down, like if it's a wild flower and it flowers,
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: it's a wild a weed that flowers that is most
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: likely a forb or legume. Those from a deer perspective,
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: directly to the deer offer a ton of food value,
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: specifically during the growing season. So to start out, you
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: have a perennial plant with a significantly deeper root system
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: that has evolved over the last four million, four hundred
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: million years plus, right to supply those animals with the
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: right amount of nutrients that they need. Deep root system,
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: mining minerals, the fiber ratio in there with the protein,
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: all these things are perfect for those deer. And that
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: might be one bite of that plant today and not
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: for a week. Right, But when you have a lot
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: of diversity thirty forty fifty different species growing in any
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: one given area, those deer in there every day throughout
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: the growing season. And the reason I bring up that
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: native food plot mix from hoxy is because there was
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: a lot of thought put into that to engineer that
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: to get the most desirable, most palatable deer species in there,
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: and that starts to lose its attractiveness and food value
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: going into like mid October time frame, which sets you
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: up perfectly to pull deer into your food plots because
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: they become more attractive, but at the same time, it
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: still maintains the level of cover. So what we do
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: on most of our properties now is we're shrinking down
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: our food plots and we're filling that void on the
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: outside with perennial food sources like that. So we're conditioning
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: deer to flow in those areas, providing a lot of
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: you know, it's basically like creating a big feathered edge
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: or buffered edge in these areas and as it transitions in,
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: you know, and adding shrubs in there. If we want
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: to create better lines of movement, we plant rows of shrubs.
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: Stuff like that. How tall does that make skit?
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: Most of the time, you know, and again it's going
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: to be dependent on the conditions, right, you know, the
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: soil type and whatnot. But most of the time, what
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: we mean, there's oh much taller than that. Really, I
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: would say, you know, there's there's species in there, but
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: there's a it's a wide variety. So you're you're gonna
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: have shorter statute species like some of your like prairie
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: clovers and stuff like that that are only going to
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: get a foot or too tall, but and you're going
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: to work your way up to like golden rods and
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: asters and stuff like that that are going to be
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: three to four feet tall. And then you're going to
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: get up. You know, there's some grasses in there, some
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: extra structure and some cover.
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: And grass in it.
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: I think, yep, yep, you know, but ultimately you're going
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: to get I mean there's things in there that are
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: five six feet tall, depending on how established they are
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: on the soil type. And why I love it is
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: because from a deer perspective, like the best deer cover
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: out there, especially in a transition zone, is eye level
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: high on a deer. They can stand in it, they
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: can feed, they feel safe and comfortable, and then you
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: take a hunter and you put them at an elevated
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: position even you know, like if I have a box
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: line set up near a food plot like that, I
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: like to keep them relatively low five six eight feet
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: off the ground, not too high. But now you're looking
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: down into that so you can see everything. But the
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: deer feels super secure and safe in there, right, But
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: from a deer perspective, directly feeding on it huge advantage.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: But that's not the point I'm trying to make here
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: with with this whole system and the true cost of it. Right,
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: So we go back to the disease mit again and
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: managing a system as a whole. When we increase the
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: vegetation or the diversity of plant species on the property,
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: we increase the diversity of insects species on a property. Okay,
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: when we do that, it's the same thing for deer.
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: If we only plant food plots that are attractive in
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: the fall, then we shouldn't expect to have deer on
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: the property all year long. Right, So if we increase
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: our food look at that whole total food pyramid, have
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: a lot of food sources. We condition deer to stand
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: on the property year round, or at least the bulk
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: of the year. Maybe they're coming and going, but they're
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: always anchored to that spot. The same thing goes when
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: we look at insect diversity. If we have a lot
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: of insects on the property. Now we're anchoring and holding
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: insectivores on the property. So our predatory insect population like
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: dragonflies and predatory wasps increases exponentially, Our bird population increases exponentially,
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: our bat population increases exponentially. Why is that important Because
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: when Midsummer rolls around and the biting midge that spreads
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: EHD works its way up from the south and creeps
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: further and further north, bites a few deer, lays some
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: eggs in the mud, waits for that next hatch. When
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: that hatch takes place, if we have these predatory animals,
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: these insectivores on the landscape, they clean up a hatch
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: really quickly, and maybe you lose one or two deer,
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: but these flies aren't running rampant.
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: It's mortality in another experience, yes.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: And then they go lay these eggs in the mud again,
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: and the next cycle is even worse. Right, So instead
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: there's like one round and mostly it's gone. And we
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: were talking about this earlier, like on properties that have
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: really good biodiversity, we don't have EHD issues, plain and simple.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: And it's a snowballing effect because you know the sediment
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: top soil that ends up in these ponds. That's part
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: of the problem. The chemicals that end up in these ponds,
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: The chemicals we put on the landscape, they all affect
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: other things. There's a lot of collateral damage with them.
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: Now I'm not entirely anti chemical, right, It's just like
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: what moves the needle. If we're just putting a lot
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: of time and money and thinking that a two or
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: four or six acre bean or cornfield, it's going to
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: change the game for us, we're setting ourselves up for failure.
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: And I can take that to a whole other level
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: on that too, because if we're creating these plots like that,
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: specifically a standing grain that is super attractive in the wintertime, right,
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: what we're doing is we're pulling deer and increasing the
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: concentration of deer on the landscape during the time of
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: year where conditions are at their worst, the resources are
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: at their lowest point in the season. So it's easy
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: from a deer manager standpoint to be like this is awesome, right,
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: you know, and there's consultants out there to talk like this,
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: you want a big food plot because you want to
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: pull deer in from all around. Late in the season. Well,
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: if you're in an area that has CWD, do you
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: want a high concentration of deer on your property during
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: the winter. And I'm sure there's people out there right
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: now rolling their eyes not real things. Yes, And now
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who has dead
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: deer on their farm every year from CWD. Okay, So
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: I think it's also important to understand, like, if there's
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: people out there that are trying to pooh pooh the
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: threat of CWD, if they're not directly dealing with it
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: in their scenario or on a client property, then they
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: shouldn't be talking about it, plain and simple. That's my
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: perspective right now. I'm not in the mindset of the
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: sky is falling, right, you know, I don't do anything
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: any differently, to be honest with you, for CWD, we
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: still need really good habitat management. Why because it keeps
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: deer spread out and keeps them healthy. You know, it's
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: the diversity of the diet, the diversity of the nutrition
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: that they receive throughout the whole year, and the consistency
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: of it that's going to keep them healthy. With that
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: habitat comes the balance in that system. So we're mitigating
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: things not just the EHD spreading, biting midges, but things
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: that increase pressure on deer, mosquitoes, biting flies, ticks, all
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: these things cause problems for deer that can all be
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: mitigated by increasing the biodiversity and having more predators on
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: the landscape that consume these pests. And you know, these
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: these these uh parasites. That's as kind of drew blank,
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: these parasitic animals, right, but ultimately with c TOWD in general,
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: like keeping those deer spread out is a big part
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: of it. But that's not even the whole issue that
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: I've been seeing more and more and more across properties.
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: So again, sorry we've been going on a tangent here,
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: but you back all the way up and like, if
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: your goal is to improve your property for the long term,
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: and this is all is my goal of clients, is
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: what can we do that's going to be incrementally improving
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: the property without this like two steps forward one step back,
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: or or more so one step forward two steps back
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: is what we're seeing more often than not, these big
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: standing grain attractive late season foods versus what they do
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: is they pull in a lot of deer so that
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: in and of itself is a problem. But something like corn,
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: when you look at it from a nutritional standpoint, it's
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: not very good deer food. It's a very fast burning carbohydrate.
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: You know, deer ferment everything in their system, right, so
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: it burns fast. But it's no different than people. So
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: if we go eat a ton of carbs or a
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: ton of sugary stuff, do you ever feel full? Or
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: you just want to eat more and you want to
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: eat more? Right, Like you go out to eat dinner
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: and you eat, you know, you go to a specifically
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: in America because of our grains and how they're grown. Right,
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: you go out, like eat a bunch of pizza. You
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: wake up the next morning you feel like garbage, but
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: you're just hungry again. You just want to eat more
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: and more and more. You're never satiated. You have to
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: have protein in your diet to feel satiation. And deer
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: the same way. So if they go out and they
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: eat a bunch of corn, you're pulling all these deer in.
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: Now you've got all these deer from miles around that
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: have pulled in, And what are they doing when they
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: go to bed down during the daytime? They're just mowing
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: down on your native habitat and setting you back. I
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: mean this property that I was just on. When you
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: want to highlight or emphasize the weak link on the property,
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: you know, of the food sources that we grade properties on,
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: we look at cultivated food sources. We look at soft
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: mass production, hard mass production native forbes and brows, or
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: native forbes and legumes, bramble and woody vines and woody brows,
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: and then at the base of that is mosses, lichens
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: and fungus. Okay, well, we greade all that and we
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: explained to the client we're looking for those low points,
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: bottom hole in the bucket. This property I was on yesterday.
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: I brought the client over and it was explaining the
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: brows issue. But it can be deceiving because if you
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: don't understand the species you're dealing with, it looks like
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: there should be brows and it should be covered because
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: there was plenty of brush and a lot of areas
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: in the property. But it was almost one hundred percent
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: Japanese barbery, multi floor rows and northern prickly ash, which
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: is not an invasive but shows up with lack of fire,
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: lack of management on this property the deer were eating.
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: Like if I had to guess feet feet worth of
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: the canes off of the multi floor rose, I mean
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: the response where multifloor rose was browsed down to about
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: a foot off the ground and the stem was like
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: a dime size, And the same with the bush hunt
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: or the northern prickly ash. I was just like, if
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: deer eating this, that's a problem. Like that's a big problem, right,
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: So it kind of explains that you know to move needles.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: So ultimately that's a good spot check for people that
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: maybe the next time they're going out to the farm,
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: look at for the browse line and look for what
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: they're browsing. And if you see a row of cedars
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: on the edge of the field and you're like, okay,
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: well we have this is something needs to get addressed.
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent. But it's a snowballing effect. And
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: that's why I like, I don't you know my job
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: at least the way I actually had to clients, Right,
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: it's like we're going to take this thing. You know,
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: we kind of started this out or we alluded to
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: it many times, Like there's a lot, there's a lot
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: here to talk about. Right, So let's take this thing
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: that's super complex and intimidating for people who intimidate that yes,
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: is all new to them right now. Well, and instead
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: of trying to dumb it down to be like you know,
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: and this is something that we were talking about earlier,
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: and I've heard it many times from different consultants, different foresters, like, well,
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: it's not worth the battle fighting these invasives. You're never
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: going to get ahead of them. And that's just blatantly false.
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: It's blatantly false. If you have a good management plan
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: starting with the physical set up, the physical structure and
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: components of a property, and access included, vegetation included, right
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: starting there and working your way up, it's very very doable.
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: It's very very doable. And if we ignore it in
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: its entire and just say, let's simplify this, just focus
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: on a food plot. That thick cover that's being produced
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: from those invasives is advantageous to us because it holds deer.
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: It really does. Right, anach form of cover next to
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: any type of food will hold deer. I mean, you
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: can drive through I've got a client up in Duluth, Minnesota.
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: You drive through the Duluth Minnesota on any given day
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: and there's bucks bedded down behind wood panel fences in
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: people's backyards and they're feeding on bird feeders and introduced
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: alien shrubs in their yard. Is that good deer habitat right?
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: Not really, it holds deer. Point being is we don't
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: want to oversimplify things to the point where it's just
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: like cookie cutter, buy this, do that. We want to
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: take this complex thing and boil it down. And I
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: do think at the end of the day, it's pretty simplistic,
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: just like focus on native diversity and then the species types.
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: You know, basically the amount of structure and cover that
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: you're going to produce in any given area of your
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: landscape is going to be based on the species and
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: the disturbance or the return interval of the disturbance. Right.
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: So the more frequently you disturb it with good management,
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: you know, I say that because you can disturb and
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: everything can turn into grass.
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: But the more frequently you disturb, generally speaking, the more
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: food value that location is going to potentially have. So,
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: like food plots fit right in that same equation. If
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: I'm doing an annual food plot, I mean there once
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: a year, maybe twice a year doing a couple of
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: things for that provides pretty good food value, but it's
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: very narrow in that timeline versus like a timber stand
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: improvement where maybe we go in and reset with fire.
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: Maybe you can't run fire through there, so you do
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: have to do some chainsaw, bring a maulter in, brushog
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: it off during certain times of the year. That you know,
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: something you do every three to five eight years. You know,
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: it just depends on the growing conditions, but that resets things,
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: gets back to early succession, and that's how we kind
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: of govern the amount of structure versus food. But ultimately
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: we want native habitat because it provides food and cover together,
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: which is truly what habitat is. At the end of
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: the day.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: One question that we'll go to a quick rapid fire
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: here more of a more of a request than a question.
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: Give these folks right now a sense of words of
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: encouragement of like, because when the people hear this, like,
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: so you're telling me I have to do more than
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: just do my fall food pot to really be a
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: true advocate for the for the landscape. And to your point,
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: like the farms have really good habitat. They typically seem
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: to be more resilient to EHD than the ones that
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: have been degraded. So give a word of encouragement. This
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: effort is worthwhile because for a lot of people, they're
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: gonna have to go down a wormhole and start learning
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: a lot of different skill sets, which I like, I
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: get excited about that.
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: What do you say to them, Well, you know, there's
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: an evolution of a hunter, right, we probably talked about
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: it before, I know, I know for sure Mark has
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: talked about it on this podcast. Right, there's hunters go
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: through this evolution where you know, they're just trying to
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: get closer to deer and they're trying to kill deer
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: and then trying to kill a specific deer. But ultimately,
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: as land managers we go through this evolution. I see
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: this with my own clients. You get to a point
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: where the enjoyment, the bulk of the enjoyment comes from
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: working the land at some level or some capacity, right,
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: And that could be a small thing, and that's where
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: I you know, food plots don't generally move the needle,
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: but I understand it. It's kind of a gateway drug
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: into land management, right, Yeah, because it's like you do
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: this thing and if things go right and you have
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: a good plan or a decent understanding, And that's where
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: I would argue, like having a better understanding allows you
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: to be more flexible and adjust your plan versus just
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: like this cookie cutter chain of events that we follow
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: and pray for rain and hope it works right. But ultimately,
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: if you're in this and you're enjoying it, you start
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: to get to this mindset where you're trying to build
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: something that's truly long term. And I ask my clients
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: straight up every time, like is this a long term
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: legacy type property or is this you know, maybe it
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: is a least property, or is this just like a
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: here and now I want to make the most of
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: it in the next five seasons. Maybe it's just a
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: land investment. I'm gonna flip it. I don't want to
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: put a lot of time and money into it, and
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: I totally understand that too. But I think the biggest
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: thing for people to think about or to focus on,
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: is this concept of permanence or perennial systems, Like what
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: can I invest my time and money in right now
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: that's going to move the needle for me? Maybe it
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: doesn't move it a ton this year, but maybe after
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: a couple of years of implementation and initial management, you know.
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: So like the native native food plot blend, for example,
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: So let's let's prep for that. Let's plant it. The
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: first year, we keep it mode knees to ankles, knee high,
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: mot it down to ankle height. That reduces annual weed
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: pressure stuff like that. The next year we don't do anything.
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: By year three, it's like alive and rocking, right. So
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: once we get that set up, then it's just you know,
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: every few years we touch it either with fire or
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: mow it, and we have a system there that's feeding
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: and improving the resiliency and the quality of our whole system,
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: but doesn't talk. It doesn't take any more time or
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: money after that. So that's finally at a point where
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: like we've done this thing here. Now we can move
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: away from it. Yes, we have to revisit it, right,
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: we always have to maintain, but it's moved the needle
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: incrementally forward in a way that's not just like, well
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: we got to do it all over again next year
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: and all over again next year. So I really back
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: to the food plot thing. I really emphasize with guys
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: like building perennial systems to where you know, maybe something happens,
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: business family, not enough time, not enough money. You could
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: walk away from that for a year, and it's not
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: going to change the dynamic of how your property hunts. Period.
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: You know, a lot of my clients right now are
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: in our generation. A lot of them are popping out
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: babies left and right. They're starting businesses, changing businesses. You know,
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: they're doing all these things. And it's like the conversation
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: I had with the client yesterday's like this, this is awesome,
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: Like everything that you're telling me makes so much sense
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: at this point, and they're a little bit disheartened from
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: the fact that they wasted ten years from these other
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: consulting plans that were just like a list of projects.
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: Do these projects, you'll see the needle move. But ultimately
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: he said it straight up. He's like, what we need
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: to figure out is who's going to do the work
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: and how are we going to pay for it? Right,
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: And that's a whole other level of it too, and
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: we can go down that rabbit hole. I mean, a
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: big thing I do with these properties is we're looking
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: for ways to create more cash flow on it outside
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: of you know again like a project based income like
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: a you know, logging project, or even the limited cash
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: flow that comes from renting out crop land, right, you know,
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: and and and you're a great a great advocate and
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: educator on like the EQUIP and CRP programs. And that's
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: the other beautiful thing of you know, and not to
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: not to give them too much credit, but you know
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: that that that perennial native food plot blend from HOXY
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: falls into a pollinator planting for CRP. So if you're
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: a guy that has row crop land that you want
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: to improve habitat, you can get paid perak or to
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: plant a perennial food plot for your deer. And it's
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: a beautiful thing when you can pull it.
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: General general continuous is open right now, so this.
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: Yes, get in there. But ultimately it comes down to
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: like thinking about you know, there's the short term things,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: there's long term things. You know, put this water hole in,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: do this thing, like how do you maintain it moving forward?
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: But the mindset shift that comes with thinking long term
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: as far as like where can I invest my time
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: and my money Now that's going to set me up
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: or more so maybe even set my children up for success, right,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: I think that's a big thing that we're we're overlooking
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: more and more and more now is you know, we're
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: just focused on how do we kill a deer this season?
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: But if we, if any of us, take a step
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: back and objectively analyze the current state of affairs, things
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: are not getting better. They're not getting better, right, they
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: are in the sense that, like the I do think
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: that there is a mindset, mindset shift happening in the industry,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: pushing more on habitat beyond just food plods stuff like that.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: But where it stands right now, the current the conventional
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: practices are being pushed and preached and promoted by some
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: of the biggest voices in the industry have not been
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: setting us up for success. And if you take a
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: step back and look at those objectively and go, is
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: that guy's mindset based on permanence or product sales? And
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: that's where we fall into this trap, and myself included,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: I sell food plots seed to my clients for a living,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: and not not necessarily for a living. You know, it's
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: a supplemental income, sure, but I'll be the first one
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: to tell you, like we should cut your food plots
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: in half and pay for this one time expense that
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: you can set yourself up for that's going to increase
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: the resiliency of your property across the board. You know,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of it there, and there's a lot
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: of opportunity out there. But the mindset to go all
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: the way back to the mindset of like invasives are here,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: they're not going anywhere, we just have to deal with
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: them is complete bs. You know. Another example of that
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: is read canary grass is another good one. For a
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: long time, the conventional thinking there, even within like nrcs
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: and some of these government agents, you can't get ahead
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: of read canary grass. It just is what it is. Right. So,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: anyone that has a wetland area that has reed canary
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: you know that provides a decent amount of cover during
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: part of the year and then mostly it's just lays
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: out flat and zero flud value. Right. So we're actually
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: working with HOXY on creating some wetland mixes. But I
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: bring this up is I want to just tell people like,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: first and foremost, there is a very effective approach to
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: mitigating read canary grass. And secondly, when you look at
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: ecosystems and their potential productivity. We rank things on a
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: parameter referred to as net primary productivity, how much dry
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: matter or forage production is produced with any specific habitat type.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: And when you look at different habitat types and what
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: is the most efficient or the most productive. Water is
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: the number one nutrient there. So the wetter the habitat type,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: the higher the net primary productivity. So when you have
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: a wetland area on your proper to just especially and
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking of this because I have a call count
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: up here in an hour with a client that fifty
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: percent of their property is a wetland area all recinary
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: grass and.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: The trees, like is there like maples, cottonwoods, bastwood trees or.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: Is it around some of the edges.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: Other than that, it's like a mat of reacan area
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: right now.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: And almost completely flat. The other the property rolls into
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: this like really cool like ungulated topography with some little
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: peaks and ridges and stuff like that. So it sets
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: up really well. It's like you got food. You could
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: have a lot of food in the swamp and a
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: lot of betting up here, and even add betting structure
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: and stuff in that swampy area. You know, it's not
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: like a true, true wetland. It's more like seasonally wet. Right,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: it's wet enough that it's choked out a lot of stuff.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: But recnary is thrived, is what it is. But you know,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: something like that from a productivity standpoint, has the potential
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: to not only increase you know, dramatic amount of biodiversity
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: on the property, which creates resiliency, but ultimately feed your
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: deer an insane amount. So you don't need to have
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: five acres of alfalfa on your property to feed the
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: same tonnage to those deer. And at the same time,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: it keeps them all spread out throughout the whole year,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: not concentrated around those only food sources on the property.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: Real quick, for someone has freak canary, what is the book?
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: As fast as possible, I want to be respectful of
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: your time. What's the quickest way to get rid of
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: it again?
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: Or you've got to be thinking management. So first and foremost,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: you gotta if you can burn. If you can't burn,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: you got to figure out a way to create a
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: burn break around the perimeter of what you're trying to burn.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: And what I would tell people, and this, you know,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: is another big thing that I preach is like the
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: more you can cooperate with your neighbors as better off
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: it is because sometimes there's a ton of time and
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: money to create a burn and break across the middle
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: of a swamp if the property line is there. But
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: if you talk to your neighbor and say, hey, can
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: we just access on this and maybe we do a
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: collab and we do this together. Right, So that's one
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: side of it. But ultimately timeline there you want to
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: be thinking, is you want to burn you know, in
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: the springtime or late summer, but you want to burn
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: off the thatch later, thatch later and then a fall.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: Treatment of herbicide is critical, like either cleth or even
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: just gly you know so, and I tend to lean
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: on glyphysate a lot more. You know, glip State's been
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: in the news a lot negatively, but it is the
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: lesser of all the evils. I will tell you that
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: right now. All of those herbicides have downstream effects or
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: soil residual effects. Glyphysate is the least of our problems.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: It just becomes more problematic with repetitive use. Right, So,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: like food plot wise, we try and peel off the
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: chemicals as much as possible once we get food plots established,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: different topic of conversation, but in the fall specifically, it's
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: important because when those plants are starting to go dormant
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: and read. Canary grass has a very risemous root system.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: It's you know, essentially creates like a turf barrier, very
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: similar to turf grass, but like insane. And another mistake
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: I see guys make is like, well, I went, I
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: worked up that area when it was dry. Don't do that.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: Every time you bust those roots in half, you just
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: multiply that. You know, you cut that worm in half
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: and it regenerates into two worms. Right, So you don't
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: want to approach it from that standpoint. You want to
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: fall treatment of herbicide. And that's why I like GLI.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: It's cheaper, it's equally or more effective in general, but
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: it's the timing of it. And you want to hit
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: any cool season of grass in general, if you can
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: hit it after a cold stretch in the fall when
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: it's still warm, you know, warms back up and it's
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: still actively growing with a fully herbicide like that. The
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: big thing is in the fall, it's going to grab
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: that herb side. It is going to draw it down
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: on the root system and usually in one year, a
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: lot of times two years, you can wipe out most
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: or all that reed canary by doing that. If you
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: try and burn it and spray it right away in
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: the spring, it's hit or miss because it's pushing a
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: lot of energy up and it's actually growing, it's a
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: lot harder to kill. So that's the protocol that we follow.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: And you know now with drone sprayers and stuff like that,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: it's a lot easier to get that done. You know
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: your conditions. And also with glyie you know you can
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: get Wetland approved glide which has you know, different type
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: of surfactant and built into it. But ultimately you can
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: use the herbicide at the most effective time and not
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: be limited by the ground conditions per se, or even
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: like the pressure it puts on your property. Instead of
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: the zigging and zagon out there with an ATV or
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: you know, bigger equipment or god forbid, you have to
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: do it with a backpack sprayer and that volume right,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: it would be terrible. A drone guy can do it
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: super efficiently in and out and out with it. But
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: it the key thing there is you got to reduce
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: the thatch layer so you get better contact with the herbicide,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: and then a fall treatment of the herbicide is a
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: really good way. And if you get into the part,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: I usually would give it at least a full year
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: to make sure. Once you get to that last fall treatment,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: then you can go right in there a lot of
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: times in broadcast in that perennial blend, and it's got
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: the whole winter to cold stratify and it'll get a
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: big boost the next year. So that's that's our operating
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: procedure in there. And you know, again there's a lot
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: of layers to it, depending on site conditions and you know,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: individual landowner goals and such. But that's very effective.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, real quick, rapid fire. Most underrated habitat tool in
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: your arsenal.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: Most underrated habitat tool in your arsenal. I mean, obviously
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: it's easy to say a chainsaw or a drip torch, right,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: but I think I think we talk about those a
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: lot now and people are starting to catch on to it. Yeah,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, again, it kind of starts with
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: that foundation. Sometimes the most underrated habitat tool is just
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 3: a plan, plain and simple. That's fair. That's fair, you
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: know what I mean? Because again, like we don't want
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: to be thinking like project, project, project, and setting yourself
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: up for success. You know, the burning thing always comes up.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: And I have this conversation with every single client. Are
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: you willing to burn? Do you want to learn about burning?
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: Some guys have done it, They're all for it. Some
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: guys are apprehensive. Some guys are completely against it for
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: various reasons. Usually they've had a a traumatic experience. I
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: had a client that had a house burned down.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 4: Oh my god.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: It's just like, I don't even want to think about
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: running fire through here. And I always try and ease
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: their mind. I'm like, I'm not saying this to brag.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: I just want to give you something to relate to.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: I did all of my personal burns last year with
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: my four year old daughter and my eight year old son.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: They were the only staff I had, right, And I
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: say that very very very cheap, not super effective. They're
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: mostly spotters, right, you know. I park my daughter on
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: one corner, safest spot she can be in. You watch
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: that fire line. If that fire gets across it, you
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: yell for dad. Son can go on the other side.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: He's a little bigger can make better decisions. Give him
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: a shovel, electrically floor. If it hits the fire line,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: put it out. If you can't get it out, get
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: out of there, yell for dad. Pretty straightforward. But ultimately
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: what it all comes down to is having a really
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: good plan laid out. You know, we've got a good plan.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: I know the timeline there, I've got the you know.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: I could also say, like, you know, an on underrated
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: habitatool will be a bulldozer, right if we cut in
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: burn brakes or a mulcher cutting in a burn break,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: or a skitzteer chainsaw, you know, all that falls into
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: their backpack, leaf floor, creating access points in burn breaks,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: something that's easy to maintain, where you know the conditions
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: look right today, I throw on the leaf bloor, go out,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 3: zip a perimeter around that I'm ready to burn and
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: not like this ongoing thing where it's like, oh, this
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: is all this prep that comes you know with that,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 3: but ultimately having the plan laid out and it's no
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: different than how we hunt. Right, It's like if I'm
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: a guy that only has like, you know that one
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: week out of the year that I can hunt my
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: property and I have to really be dialed in. I'm
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: looking for a very specific set of conditions to go
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: into some of those really really productive spots, and if
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: I hunt them at the wrong time, it can cause
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: problems for the whole property. Right. The same thing goes
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: with a burn plan or any plan. It's like, if
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: I have everything laid out in front of me, where
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: I understand the timing that's going to promote the best response,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: then I'm just sitting back and wait for the conditions
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: to be right and I can jump and go do
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: it right now, you know, maybe I've got an hour
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 3: at the end of the day. Up, zip up there,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: relatively easy, right, you need more an hour to burn
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: most of the time, not the burn itself, but the
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: mop up afterwards. Right, But even that, it's like, oh,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 3: we've got the right conditions today and rain's coming tomorrow.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: I'm burning, and I'm gonna watch it a little bit
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: and I'm gonna sleep a lot better knowing that rain's hitting,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: you know, at the wee hours of the morning to
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: suppress everything else. But yeah, you know again, drip torch
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: is great chainsaw. You know it is probably going to
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: move the needle for more people more than anything else.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: But that's short term if you don't have a long
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: term plan. So I would argue and we could whittle
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: it down to having a plan, a good plan. And
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying that from the viewpoint of like you
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: need to hire me, but you should write things out
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: on a piece of paper, take your map, lay it out,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: look at every individual tary of your property and go, Okay,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: what do I want this to be and what's it
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: going to take to get there? And then what's it
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: going to take to keep it there? Or how do
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: I reset it? Cause you know, again painting with a
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: broad brush. There's gonna be properties where you know, maybe
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: all they're doing is managing via timber harvest. Okay, well,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: then don't harvest the entire hundred acres in one or
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: two years, stagger it, break it up a whole bunch
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: in a mosaic so they're in there every five years
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: and you have a rotation in there, right and again
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: you got to stay ahead of the invasives. That's a
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: big problem that we see on these properties where they
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: just go on and cut heavy and there's no management plan,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: because then you don't get any good regeneration and then
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: then you're talking a lot more cost perakre to get
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 3: ahead of it down the road when you decide that
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: or come to the realization that it's a problem.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: Essentially, yeah, most overrated habitat practice. And then and then
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: that's it.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: Most overrated habitat practice. You know, I don't want to
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: jump on this bandwagon, but I would definitely say hinge
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: cutting is right up there.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 4: Why is that?
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: Well? You know, and again I don't I don't want
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 3: to be I don't want to generalize too much. I
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: definitely employ hinge cutting and utilize hinge cutting, and promote
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: hine cutting to a certain extent. But when you're hinge cutting,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: I think it's important that you want to look at
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: hinge cutting and again, what is this going to turn
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: in two years down the road? A successful hinge is
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: very problematic down the road in the sense that it's
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: hard to manage. It's one hundred percent manual reset of
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: that hinge. So if you're a guy with a small
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: property or even a big property, and you have like
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: a handful of very specific hinge cut areas, betting areas, screens,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: whatever however you create those, then you just have to
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: have that on your reoccurring schedule of every x number
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 3: of years, I'm going in there and I'm recutting that, right,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: versus going in flush cutting or cutting like pollard cutting
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: and cutting out different heights and stuff like that to
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: encourage regeneration at certain levels that can be managed a
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: lot more easily either resetting with fire or just going
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: in and cutting like one felt swoop, whatever it might be.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: Where hinge cutting I think is the most effective and
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: how I utilize it the most is that back to
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: what we're talking about creating barriers or obstacles in some sense,
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: when I hingecut to create a barrier, I don't want
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: the tree to stay alive, so I'll cut it as
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: far the way through as I can to keep it
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: hanging on. And sometimes I'll leave a hinge cut it
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: and i'll girdle it below the hinge, or usually girdle
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: it first and then hinge it so it's easier to
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: get access to. But ultimately I just want to keep
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: that tree off the ground because I want a barrier
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: there that doesn't rod away in three to five years,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: and also keeping it off the ground creates a little
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: bit better barrier also, Right, But if I keep it
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: off the ground, out of the moisture, less bacterial, less
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 3: bugs there, it lasts a lot longer. I'm creating structure
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: that lasts a long time. So if I go in
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: a bedding area, i might hinge one or two trees
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: in there, but I'm not doing it to keep them alive.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: I just want instant back cover. And I'm understanding that
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: in time it's going to fade. You know, it's not
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: going to be a permanent solution. But I would definitely
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: argue hinge cuttings. You know, it falls right in those
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: parameters of a project that creates more work for you
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: down the road. And I've been on so many properties
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: where there's these nasty hinge cut messes that you know, basically,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: it becomes a tree with way too many stems to
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: try and manage again, and then around it is filled
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: in with invasives. It's hard to access those spots and
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: becomes a tangly mess, and then the mature bucks just
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 3: don't like them as much. You know, the doles will
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: talk in there, the bucks will bet on the backside
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: of it, but they don't generally get into it. And
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 3: I say this, you know again, people are listening to
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 3: this and be like, wow, that's bulls. Yes, you know,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: I've seen that on my property at work. Every area
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 3: is different, right, it's all relative to the area. But
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: as far as things that I think are way overblown
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: or way overdone are like massive hingecut projects for sure.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: Well, Thomas, if someone's fired up and wants to learn more,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: maybe once to get a plan. Where is the best
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: place to get a hold of you and anything else
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: you want.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: To plug here?
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 3: Well, hopefully I didn't just confuse everyone or turn there.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 4: There's some confusion, but hopefully sparks curiosity.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, well you can reach out to me. Instagram
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 3: is probably social media where I'm the most act give
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: the Untamed Ambition. My website is probably the best place,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: you know, if you if you're serious and you want
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: to plan or you want to have a detailed conversation,
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: the best thing is just go to my website and
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 3: schedule a free call. That's just the Untamed Ambition dot com.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 4: Awesome, Well, thank you so much, Thank you