Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the whitetail woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile
Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the.
Speaker 2: Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, I'm
Speaker 2: joined by Thomas Milsna, a whitetail coach and habitat consultant
Speaker 2: from the Untamed Ambition, and we're going to be discussing
Speaker 2: his unique approach to sustainable habitat management for deer and
Speaker 2: other wildlife. All Right, welcome back to the Wired to
Speaker 2: Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their
Speaker 2: Camera for Conservation initiative. That means a portion of every
Speaker 2: sale of First Light's whitetail camel pattern, which is specter,
Speaker 2: a portion of everyone those sales is donated to the
Speaker 2: National Deer Association, something I'm real proud of. And today's
Speaker 2: conversation is about conservation. With our guest Thomas Milsna, we
Speaker 2: are getting back into habitat month the month of February.
Speaker 2: We've talked to Doug Durham, We've talked to Kyle Perry,
Speaker 2: and today Thomas Milsna, who is a habitat consultant and
Speaker 2: whitetail coach with the Untamed Ambition. You can learn more
Speaker 2: about everything's got going on at the Untamed Ambition dot com.
Speaker 2: He's got courses, he does consulting, he does videos, and
Speaker 2: all sorts of different kinds of content of podcast.
Speaker 1: And Thomas is someone who's got.
Speaker 2: A perspective on whitetail habitat management that I really appreciate.
Speaker 2: He has a very holistic perspective, as you're going to
Speaker 2: hear about here shortly. He looks at, you know, improving
Speaker 2: deer habitat not in a silo. It's not about what
Speaker 2: can I do to make my deer hunting better, It's
Speaker 2: what can I do to make this whole landscape better?
Speaker 2: And by doing that, Thomas makes a really compelling case
Speaker 2: that by doing that, it's going to make your dear healthier,
Speaker 2: it's going to make your deer hunting better, and it's
Speaker 2: going to make every other link on that food chain
Speaker 2: more healthy, sustainable, and long lasting. And that's something I
Speaker 2: think is pretty darn cool. I really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 2: We get into a bunch of interesting topics. It's one
Speaker 2: that I really think you're going to enjoy I think
Speaker 2: you're all going to learn a lot from it. And
Speaker 2: I don't think that I should beat around the bush
Speaker 2: here too much longer. I think we should get to
Speaker 2: this one because Thomas and I talked for a very
Speaker 2: long time. It's a long podcast, but this one is
Speaker 2: full of a whole lot of meat on the bone.
Speaker 2: I really really like this one. So without further ado,
Speaker 2: let's get to my conversation with Thomas Milsnup. He is
Speaker 2: a trained wildlife biologist. He has an education in that
Speaker 2: and he has real life applicable experience on the ground
Speaker 2: doing this stuff. So you're gonna enjoy this one. Here
Speaker 2: we go, all right, hear me on the show. I'm
Speaker 2: joined by Thomas milsna Thomas. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Mark, good to see you, good to meet you, good
Speaker 3: to chat a little bit.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Yeah, I'm excited to have this conversation. You're
Speaker 2: someone who I've had referred to me several times, and
Speaker 2: you were in the back of my mind, and then
Speaker 2: recently we kicked off this habitat month and I was
Speaker 2: trying to think of some folks that would fit into
Speaker 2: a little bit of a sub lane within the white
Speaker 2: tail habitat management world that I'm particularly intrigued in. And
Speaker 2: as I was doing that research and asking around and
Speaker 2: thinking about things, your name popped up again and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, yes, this is a guy I need
Speaker 2: to talk to. And I went to Instagram to reach
Speaker 2: out to you, and then I saw that you had
Speaker 2: already reached out to me like a year or two
Speaker 2: ago about this very thing, and I completely missed it,
Speaker 2: never responded. I felt horrible about that, So I appreciate
Speaker 2: you being understanding of me leaving you unread and being
Speaker 2: here to day to chat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it probably would have been worse if
Speaker 3: I saw that you read it and then didn't respond.
Speaker 3: I could be forgiving. So it's not a big deal.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad. I'm glad we're chatting now. And you know,
Speaker 2: as I mentioned, we're on this series this month of
Speaker 2: February talking about habitat and I like to try to,
Speaker 2: you know, whenever we do this kind of thing, I
Speaker 2: like to explore all aspects of a particular topic, in
Speaker 2: this case, habitat management. So I've talked to some folks
Speaker 2: who you know, are very tactical with you know, how
Speaker 2: do you put your food plots in this location and
Speaker 2: your stand locations in this spot? And I've talked to
Speaker 2: other people who are more thinking, you know, hey, how
Speaker 2: do we manage our oaks in relation to our this
Speaker 2: kind of timber, in relation to this kind of habitat?
Speaker 2: And you came to mind as a great fit for
Speaker 2: this conversation because, in particular, something I noticed on your website.
Speaker 2: A few things I noticed on your website, the Untamed
Speaker 2: Ambition dot com. I'll paraphrase a few things here, but
Speaker 2: for one, I saw you say that hunters can save
Speaker 2: the world by saving nature. I saw you say something
Speaker 2: on the lines of the fact that hunters have the
Speaker 2: potential to make a massive impact, a massive positive impact
Speaker 2: on the world by protecting wildlife habitat and promoting healthy
Speaker 2: native ecosystems. And I will quote you here. In turn,
Speaker 2: that land will provide an abundance of opportunities for us
Speaker 2: and our families to thrive, not just with deer and
Speaker 2: hunting opportunities, but with other nutritious wild bounties, diverse income opportunities,
Speaker 2: and the all too often overlooked importance of clean air
Speaker 2: and clean water for generations to come. So those are
Speaker 2: some pretty bold statements to have on the website right
Speaker 2: out the gate, Explain what do you mean by all this?
Speaker 2: Is that something that you lead when someone shows up
Speaker 2: to the untamed ambition.
Speaker 3: Well, let me back up a little bit and give
Speaker 3: you kind of my two minute elevator pitch on how
Speaker 3: I got to that point. Right. So, my background, I
Speaker 3: grew up on a farm, a relatively large dairy farm.
Speaker 3: Actually you've probably been very close to it, because I'm
Speaker 3: only about ten or twelve miles away from Doug Duran's
Speaker 3: farm in Burning County, Wisconsin. But so my background has
Speaker 3: always been in land management. And then I actually went
Speaker 3: to college for wildlife biology and natural resource management. In
Speaker 3: a strange turn of events, I ended up changing my
Speaker 3: career path. My father was injured in a farming accident.
Speaker 3: I ended up transferring some credits. Long story short, I
Speaker 3: end up working for a trail camera company for ten years,
Speaker 3: and so instead of becoming a biologist, I worked with
Speaker 3: biologists on the technology side. Fast forward, In due time,
Speaker 3: I went back to pursuing my passion in biology and
Speaker 3: natural resources. And my passion has always really been with
Speaker 3: white tail hunting, love the allure of big bucks obviously
Speaker 3: most of your listeners probably feel the same. But once
Speaker 3: I got into the consulting field, you know, thinking I'm
Speaker 3: gonna come out, I'm going to show people my approach
Speaker 3: to land management, you know, again from the things that
Speaker 3: I've learned over the years and my education, and then
Speaker 3: also my approach to targeting big mature books. Once I
Speaker 3: got into that space, I was constantly presented with this
Speaker 3: question of how is the best way to do this?
Speaker 3: What's the best way to do this? And it just
Speaker 3: led me down a lot of rabbit holes. And I
Speaker 3: like to read research papers. I like to dig into
Speaker 3: a lot of different ways of you know, different perspectives,
Speaker 3: different ways of doing stuff, and ultimately the answers to
Speaker 3: these questions on land management always came back to this
Speaker 3: more holistic approach. And then you add in the fact
Speaker 3: of having kids, right, So that's really where this generational
Speaker 3: sustainable thing comes in. Where I kind of shifted away
Speaker 3: from what can I do right now to kill a deer,
Speaker 3: you know, and therefore, what can I help my clients
Speaker 3: do right now to kill a deer? To how do
Speaker 3: we set up a sustainable system to ensure that we
Speaker 3: can not only kill big deer in the near future,
Speaker 3: but ensure that we can kill big deer for generations
Speaker 3: to come, and obviously protect all the resources that produce that,
Speaker 3: you know, or that provide the ecosystem or environment that
Speaker 3: grows big, healthy deer. That's kind of how I got
Speaker 3: to that point. And the holistic approach, you know, the
Speaker 3: idea of holistic management is just the concept of managing
Speaker 3: as a whole. So instead of going in and doing
Speaker 3: things specifically for deer, which you know, i'll say outright
Speaker 3: in my opinion, I think that this whole concept of
Speaker 3: white tail land management is an overall net negative to
Speaker 3: the environment. And it wasn't that long ago that I
Speaker 3: thought it was a really good idea. You know. Again,
Speaker 3: this allure of oh what can I do to manipulate
Speaker 3: habitat and focus specifically on deer, all of that's very,
Speaker 3: very appealing, but at the end of the day, it's
Speaker 3: very detrimental to the ecosystems that these animals live in.
Speaker 3: So that's what kind of led me down that path.
Speaker 3: And then you know, my background in general, growing up
Speaker 3: on a farm, seeing these you know, local communities that
Speaker 3: were thriving back in the day, you know, and there's
Speaker 3: a lot of rural activity, and then seeing them kind
Speaker 3: of dwindle and the habitat loss that came with the
Speaker 3: growing expansion of these farms and obviously urban development. It
Speaker 3: really made me take a step back and go, oh, man, like,
Speaker 3: you know, so how much has changed in the last
Speaker 3: twenty years of my life, and if we continue this trajectory,
Speaker 3: what's going to be left twenty years from now or
Speaker 3: forty years from now for my kids? Right? And not
Speaker 3: just the habitat alone and the hunting opportunities, but also
Speaker 3: you know, again when you look at the water system
Speaker 3: and the air quality and all the things that go with,
Speaker 3: you know, hand in hand with our land use practices,
Speaker 3: what where are we going to be in a generation
Speaker 3: from now and how do we get ahead of that?
Speaker 3: So that's that's really how I got to this point
Speaker 3: or started to take this approach of analyzing land differently,
Speaker 3: you know, looking at from a different scope or different
Speaker 3: perspective and trying to solve these problems. And then you
Speaker 3: start to realize, you know, this whole white tail thing
Speaker 3: is really a pretty minor thing on the grand scheme
Speaker 3: of things, But at the same time, it's a really,
Speaker 3: really good excuse to improve the quality of your habitat.
Speaker 3: And also, you know, tech that habitat going forward, and
Speaker 3: it's a byproduct of it. Again, you know, killing big
Speaker 3: maturre tier is a byproduct of a healthier ecosystem that
Speaker 3: they live in.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh so, so two things I want to drill
Speaker 2: into I do want to better understand. Well, let me
Speaker 2: start with something that caught me there. You said that
Speaker 2: in your throughout this journey, you kind of came to
Speaker 2: the realization that managing for white tail habitat specifically is
Speaker 2: a net negative. How do you how do you figure
Speaker 2: in what way is managing for white tail habitat a
Speaker 2: net negative for the ecosystem? And then once I understand that,
Speaker 2: then we can start exploring what the alternative is that's
Speaker 2: good for everything. But first, in what ways is the
Speaker 2: status quo white tail specific way problematic in your view?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And I you know, I don't want to generalize
Speaker 3: too much because there are you know, white tail land
Speaker 3: managers out there that have a similar approach that I follow.
Speaker 3: You know, they're looking at the bigger picture, but they're
Speaker 3: dialing things in. So when I say white tail land management,
Speaker 3: I'm talking more specifically about this, you know, for a
Speaker 3: lack of better analogy, this landscaping technique that people are
Speaker 3: employing to put white tail deer in their lap for hunting, right,
Speaker 3: and you start looking at some of these situations where
Speaker 3: you have very a big lack of biodiversity at the
Speaker 3: end of the day. You know, so, first and foremost,
Speaker 3: managing specifically for white tail deer is a bad idea
Speaker 3: because white tail deer are a generalist species right there,
Speaker 3: and they're pretty far up on the you know, the
Speaker 3: so called food web. So when you start managing for
Speaker 3: a generalist species that ranks as high as they do,
Speaker 3: everything below them starts to suffer and eventually disappears. And
Speaker 3: and that's a big, big problem. I mean, by themselves,
Speaker 3: white tailed deer are creatures of diversity. So when you
Speaker 3: manage for diversity and obviously native habitat of which they
Speaker 3: are a product, then everything thrives. But when you manage
Speaker 3: specifically for the deer themselves, and you start looking at
Speaker 3: things like, you know, how can we feed them very
Speaker 3: specific monocrops like soybeans or corn or you know, whatever
Speaker 3: you put in your food plots. And that's not the
Speaker 3: worst thing. At the end of the day, right, But
Speaker 3: when you start to make that your entire approach to
Speaker 3: managing deer, then there's a lot of other things that
Speaker 3: suffer in that equation. You know. One of the things
Speaker 3: that I bring up frequently when I talk to my
Speaker 3: clients who oftentimes come to me, you know, again with
Speaker 3: this idea that I'm going to help them produce really
Speaker 3: big deer and make it easier for them to hunt.
Speaker 3: And they've got all these ideas because they've been influenced
Speaker 3: by other people in the space. They start looking at
Speaker 3: different you know, call them consultants approaches. And I'm not
Speaker 3: here to throw anyone under the bus, right, trying to
Speaker 3: bring some awareness to the situation. But one of the
Speaker 3: main techniques that a lot of these guys will use,
Speaker 3: and it's very effective. I mean, I will say that
Speaker 3: as far as hunting goes, is to separate food from cover,
Speaker 3: so you ultimately have an area of dense cover, be
Speaker 3: it switch grass. You know, maybe they'll tell you that
Speaker 3: bringing in diversity by adding pockets of giant muscanthos or something,
Speaker 3: or some guys will even promote leaving invasive shrubs because
Speaker 3: it provides really good cover value. And then on the
Speaker 3: other side of the property, they have all their food,
Speaker 3: again generally broken up into various monocultures. So you're separating
Speaker 3: your food from your cover, which I like to refer
Speaker 3: to as the half a tat approach, not habitat, because
Speaker 3: habitat is the combination of food plus cover. Right, So
Speaker 3: that presents a really good situation for hunting deer because
Speaker 3: you're forcing them to move to you know, go from
Speaker 3: cover to food. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: it's it's bad for both ecosystems. Right, Your forest ecosystem suffers.
Speaker 3: Your ecosystem, you know that is in that food plot
Speaker 3: suffers ultimately too. And also you're not really providing the
Speaker 3: deer with the quality nutrition that they need to really thrive.
Speaker 3: And there's a lot of potential issues with that that
Speaker 3: we're seeing through a lot of research studies as well.
Speaker 3: So those overall concepts of you know, again that kind
Speaker 3: of that landscape architecture that comes with deer hunting. I'm
Speaker 3: not one hundred percent opposed to that, but it kind
Speaker 3: of goes back to the same thing. You know, I
Speaker 3: work with some small property owners that don't hunt at all,
Speaker 3: just trying to increase diversity on their property. Maybe they
Speaker 3: want more butterflies and birds or whatever it might be.
Speaker 3: It's the same concept, right, what we're going in. We're
Speaker 3: trying to replace some of these alien, cool seasoned grasses
Speaker 3: or lawns with more native plants that are going to
Speaker 3: benefit the native pollinators and local insect population, which in
Speaker 3: turn benefits the birds, which you know that it kind
Speaker 3: of scales up throughout that system, and then you know,
Speaker 3: we're placing invasive ornamental plants with native shrubs, again benefiting
Speaker 3: all the players in that system and actually creating a
Speaker 3: sustainable system in their backyard. It's the same thing we
Speaker 3: do on a property, just at a bigger scale, so
Speaker 3: we can have the same type of architecture and create
Speaker 3: the same type of movement, predictable movement, right that makes
Speaker 3: it easier to hunt. But we can do it with natives.
Speaker 3: The only real difference that I've seen is just this time,
Speaker 3: the time that goes into the development of it, where
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of it is just the sales
Speaker 3: pitch of convenience that comes with this magic being or
Speaker 3: this process, because it's so fast and so convenient see
Speaker 3: results right away, versus hey do these things and in
Speaker 3: a couple of years you're going to see these results
Speaker 3: and kind of work up to it. But it creates
Speaker 3: a more sustainable system. So as a whole. Well, again,
Speaker 3: managing just for deer, I think is problematic because you
Speaker 3: start to reach a point where you're not really managing
Speaker 3: for wildlife. You're kind of more so just farming certain
Speaker 3: species of wildlife, which you know, if we start looking
Speaker 3: at the conventional agricultural systems, it's pretty easy to punch
Speaker 3: a lot of holes in the sustainability of that as well.
Speaker 3: And that's where I say hunters are on the front line.
Speaker 3: You know, we're on the front line of conservation, so
Speaker 3: we have kind of an unspoken responsibility to do things
Speaker 3: the right way. Yeah, and you made a good point
Speaker 3: earlier when you said that, you know, deer are generalists.
Speaker 3: They can actually, in fact live in many different habitat
Speaker 3: types with varying degrees of habitat quality and still get by.
Speaker 3: So what if you are managing specifically for white tails,
Speaker 3: you are it's like you're throwing a basketball at a
Speaker 3: basketball hoop the size of a bathtub, But you have
Speaker 3: many other species on the landscape that are equally important
Speaker 3: to the whole that are specialists. There are many insects,
Speaker 3: there are many different critters out there who are you know,
Speaker 3: dependent on specific things, dependent on certain relationships between different animals,
Speaker 3: different pollinators, different habitat types, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: So if we don't manage for the specialists, they just disappear.
Speaker 3: And so, like you're talking about deer pretty far up
Speaker 3: the web, but these other critters down towards the bottom
Speaker 3: are more specialized, are important, and invasive species really do
Speaker 3: impact them.
Speaker 2: So that makes a lot of sense to me. If
Speaker 2: we manage for those specialists, if we focus on those natives,
Speaker 2: all of that kind of stuff, then creates a stronger
Speaker 2: foundation for a healthier deer herd and everything else. You know,
Speaker 2: that makes sense to me. But but I'd love you
Speaker 2: to expand a little bit on the possible positive impact
Speaker 2: hunters have. I mean, I mean, you're not saying that
Speaker 2: hunters can just have better hunting. I've seen that on folks,
Speaker 2: you know, their sales pitch. I've heard people say, you can,
Speaker 2: you know, shoot bigger bucks. I've seen that on you know,
Speaker 2: folks Instagram pages. You're saying hunters can save the world. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you're not saying I just kill a booner buck. You're
Speaker 2: saying hunters can save the world by doing this kind
Speaker 2: of thing. Help me understand that, Help me understand the power,
Speaker 2: the influence, the impact that you believe we can have
Speaker 2: if we look at things this way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think one of the biggest factors there is
Speaker 3: leading by example. Right, So you start to look at
Speaker 3: the land in this country and the land use practices. Again,
Speaker 3: we have the large or the vast majority of the
Speaker 3: land is being utilized to grill crops.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: We're never going to really get away from that because
Speaker 3: we obviously have to feed a population. But when you
Speaker 3: start looking at the rest of the land and you
Speaker 3: have forty to fifty million acres of lawn and you know,
Speaker 3: sixty million plus acres of paved surfaces. When it comes
Speaker 3: down to the people that actually own land and want
Speaker 3: to manage it for wildlife, I think we have a
Speaker 3: very heavy responsibility to do it in a way that
Speaker 3: increases or promotes biodiversity. And that's where that leading by
Speaker 3: example comes into play, and that what I always refer
Speaker 3: to as that impact with that subsequent rippling effect. One
Speaker 3: of the things I tell my clients all the time
Speaker 3: is community communication creates common goals. So where a lot
Speaker 3: of whitetail consultants out there, will you know, they use
Speaker 3: as kind of a sales pitch of oh, how to
Speaker 3: kill your neighbor's buck, or how to you know, hold
Speaker 3: you're on your property and not let your neighbors kill them. Well,
Speaker 3: unless you have a really really big property, we know
Speaker 3: that that's kind of a line of bs because deer
Speaker 3: cover a lot of ground, so it's really hard to
Speaker 3: hold the mature buck on your property. All the time,
Speaker 3: what I preached to my clients is work with your
Speaker 3: neighbors when they start asking questions. And we see this
Speaker 3: all the time. I just last week did another community
Speaker 3: cooperative meeting where we had a client property, we had
Speaker 3: some projects in progress. The neighbors started asking questions, and
Speaker 3: I just tell my clients all the time, and I
Speaker 3: kind of preface the whole consulting process to them and say,
Speaker 3: at some point people are going to ask questions, and
Speaker 3: I would strongly encourage you to share whatever you're comfortable
Speaker 3: with sharing, because you're going to have an impact, and
Speaker 3: the bigger the impact you have, the better your hunting
Speaker 3: is going to get. At the end of the day, again,
Speaker 3: I try to use that hunting as an excuse to
Speaker 3: make everything better. But with that community communication, we start
Speaker 3: talking to these guys, Now you have one property, you know,
Speaker 3: call it the point of impact. You have one property
Speaker 3: in the center that we're going through and we're improving
Speaker 3: all the native habitat. We're taking degraded crop land, improving that,
Speaker 3: we're taking over used pasture land, improving that all with
Speaker 3: native habitat. And then the neighbors start asking questions. We
Speaker 3: tell them what we're doing and why, and all of
Speaker 3: a sudden they start to look at their property from
Speaker 3: a different perspective. Now too, how does that fit into
Speaker 3: the big equation? How can we make it better for hunting?
Speaker 3: And then the other thing that I do on that
Speaker 3: same note is we try to get landowners to cooperate together.
Speaker 3: At the end of the day, you know, with cattle
Speaker 3: are a big, big part of the equation, and in
Speaker 3: any situation where they're involved, they're a very valuable land
Speaker 3: management tool, specifically for nutrient cycling. So if we have
Speaker 3: a neighbor that has beef cattle rather than mowing our
Speaker 3: native pasture land or what was pasture land is now
Speaker 3: just native prairie, habitat rather than just going in there
Speaker 3: and mowing that all the time, we'll work out in
Speaker 3: agreement with the neighbor to come in and graze his cattle.
Speaker 3: And that's a double win, right, because it costs us
Speaker 3: less on our inputs as far as how we're managing
Speaker 3: that land, and the neighbor's happy because it takes pressure
Speaker 3: off of his land, and that in turn makes his
Speaker 3: land better because his caring capacity can go up now.
Speaker 3: And it kind of ripples from there, and when you
Speaker 3: start to see that, you know, outside of that immediate community,
Speaker 3: then other people start asking questions or you know, when
Speaker 3: they ask you your technique or how you're managing your land,
Speaker 3: then they are more intrigued. And again, I think we
Speaker 3: have a big responsibility not just on improving biodiversity and
Speaker 3: managing our land appropriately, but also just again leading by
Speaker 3: example so that you know, the non hunter can look
Speaker 3: at what we're doing and have a better understanding, because
Speaker 3: how many times are you asked that question right like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're just farming deer, and I get it. You know,
Speaker 3: people that don't understand it, and even people that do
Speaker 3: understand it look at it like, well, you're just farming deer.
Speaker 3: You're just doing that so you can kill deer. I
Speaker 3: just had this conversation this morning. I have this like
Speaker 3: strange guilty pleasure of starting conversations online with the vegans
Speaker 3: like wow when I'm when I'm bored, because I follow
Speaker 3: it and I try to do it like tactually right,
Speaker 3: mostly because I'm trying to understand their perspective outside of
Speaker 3: just you know, the virtue signaling that comes with that
Speaker 3: type of lifestyle. And most of the time they're not
Speaker 3: productive conversations, and they are what they are. But sometimes
Speaker 3: you get into really productive conversations and I always bring
Speaker 3: it up. You know, I am a true animal lover, right,
Speaker 3: I think most hunters are. And then people always ask, well,
Speaker 3: if you love them so much, how can you kill them?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Then you start to explain, like, this is what we're doing.
Speaker 3: You know, we're trying to improve these habitats, increasing the sustainability,
Speaker 3: the caring capacity, the biodiversity. And then we use hunting
Speaker 3: as a management tool. And the byproduct of that management
Speaker 3: tool is we can feed our families or the surrounding
Speaker 3: communities with this extremely nutrient dense meat or food that
Speaker 3: has very little negative environmental impact in fact, it has
Speaker 3: a very positive environmental impact, and that kind of brings
Speaker 3: me all the way back around to why I think
Speaker 3: hunters can save the world is because they are really
Speaker 3: the only population of people that own land that are
Speaker 3: willing to stick the time and money into that land
Speaker 3: to improve the wildlife habitat without expecting a dramatic financial
Speaker 3: return from it. Right. We're you know, like farmers are
Speaker 3: kind of in the same boat, but they always have
Speaker 3: to have profit at the end of the day. Where hunters,
Speaker 3: you know, they bought that land for that reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we are internally incentivized already to improve the habitat
Speaker 2: for the reasons you're discussing, right, And it's you know,
Speaker 2: this is this is a line of thinking that I've
Speaker 2: been spending a lot of time exploring as well, and
Speaker 2: you know, it comes to the scale of our impact,
Speaker 2: it's not it's not inconsequential at all. You know, the
Speaker 2: best number I can come up with, based off of
Speaker 2: a land you study that came out a handful of
Speaker 2: years ago, is that there is about three hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty six million acres of land across the country that's
Speaker 2: owned primarily for hunting. Three hundred and fifty six million acres.
Speaker 2: That's larger than our National Park Service lands across the country.
Speaker 2: That we could change. That we can change that, we
Speaker 2: could do the things you're talking about on and address
Speaker 2: you know, some serious things, because I think something that
Speaker 2: we haven't talked about. It's something I you know, mentioned
Speaker 2: probably earlier in this month. But you know, deer are
Speaker 2: doing pretty darn good across the nation, right We're basically
Speaker 2: in the golden days of deer. But a lot of
Speaker 2: these other things, those specialists I talked about, those birds
Speaker 2: and those bugs, and many plant species and all sorts
Speaker 2: of stuff are struggling in many ways across the country.
Speaker 2: And if we lose that stuff, which we are, you know,
Speaker 2: trending in that direction, then all of a sudden, our
Speaker 2: beloved white tails are in trouble. So I think there's
Speaker 2: this selfish incentive, like we want better deer, and then
Speaker 2: there's this more altruistic incentive, which is, hey, we can
Speaker 2: make a big picture impact, Like you're saying, that's going
Speaker 2: to help everything. It's going to help our air quality,
Speaker 2: our water quality, the health of everything around us. So
Speaker 2: so your argument is falling in what's the word I'm
Speaker 2: trying to say, you're hitting me right there where I'm interested.
Speaker 2: But I guess the thing that I want to explore
Speaker 2: next is this, if all of this sounds pretty good
Speaker 2: to somebody, if someone likes the idea of it, what
Speaker 2: are the three or four big picture things that we
Speaker 2: need to be thinking about doing differently on our land
Speaker 2: if we want to manage sustainably, if we want to
Speaker 2: manage holistically. I'm sure there's twenty seven different tactics you
Speaker 2: could recommend, but what are the three or four philosophies
Speaker 2: or principles that we need to write down right now?
Speaker 2: Is like, these are the most important ideas or things
Speaker 2: I need to learn about or practices I need to
Speaker 2: start digging in on.
Speaker 3: I think the number one thing is the mindset, right
Speaker 3: I find myself over and over again, you know, And
Speaker 3: this is a personal thing when I you know, I
Speaker 3: find myself challenged with a decision to make, and I
Speaker 3: carry a lot of weight on my own because when
Speaker 3: I'm here managing all these client properties or directing them,
Speaker 3: knowing that the decisions that I make and consequently they
Speaker 3: make will affect generations right where. I think that's one
Speaker 3: big issue also with kind of this mentality of the
Speaker 3: white tail land management, so like, oh, how can I
Speaker 3: buy land and kill deer? Like we're not thinking about
Speaker 3: the value of that land outside of deer, which again
Speaker 3: is another negative. But I always come back to this quote,
Speaker 3: and I don't know if someone else said it or
Speaker 3: if it kind of, you know, was a conglomerate of
Speaker 3: other people talking books I've read and whatever. But I
Speaker 3: always tell my clients every convenience comes at a cost
Speaker 3: if you focus on that're not necessarily focused, but always
Speaker 3: remind yourself every convenience comes at a cost, and that
Speaker 3: you know by that, I mean it might be a
Speaker 3: week down the road, it might be a generation down
Speaker 3: the road, whatever it might be. We have to, as
Speaker 3: hunters and as land managers, first and foremost understand that
Speaker 3: those conveniences are going to cost someone at some point
Speaker 3: in time. So cutting corners, punching the easy button, you know,
Speaker 3: taking those shortcuts in things that in our mind. And
Speaker 3: I've been there, I've been guilty this many times, Like
Speaker 3: what can I do right now? It's going to help
Speaker 3: me kill it here, especially if you're in the middle
Speaker 3: of the season doing something crazy. Right there's one thing
Speaker 3: to adjust your habits and make bold, aggressive moves. That's
Speaker 3: only going to affect you, right, But it's another thing
Speaker 3: to just constantly cut corners, try to, you know, look
Speaker 3: for again these easy, convenient ways of improving that you know,
Speaker 3: habitat situation on your property, and then it ultimately it
Speaker 3: comes back around and cost someone or something at some point.
Speaker 3: And you already kind of hit on that the specialist
Speaker 3: species that are suffering from these management practices. At the
Speaker 3: end of the day, beyond that, it's not that complicated,
Speaker 3: I think, you know, again, it goes back to that
Speaker 3: holistic approach, which you know, the concept of holistic land management.
Speaker 3: We're looking at that land and how it functions as
Speaker 3: a system in and of itself, right, So that's that's
Speaker 3: really the hunting layout, and that's how I explained to
Speaker 3: my client. So we can look at that and you know,
Speaker 3: this is a big part of what I do. Where
Speaker 3: we come into a property and we're not just necessarily
Speaker 3: consulting on where to put a tree stand, where to
Speaker 3: put a food plot, where to improve a betting area,
Speaker 3: but we're trying to create a system. How can we
Speaker 3: create a system on that property where you know, our
Speaker 3: main goal at the end of the day is to
Speaker 3: at least get our management practices to pay for themselves
Speaker 3: or balance out in some way, shape or form so
Speaker 3: that it's sustainable. Because if it's if it costs us
Speaker 3: a lot all the time. At some point in time,
Speaker 3: whether it's you know, the current landowner realizing how much
Speaker 3: money he's sticking in this property, or maybe he passes
Speaker 3: on and then his children inherit the property and they realize, wow,
Speaker 3: I can't really manage it this way. It costs too much.
Speaker 3: Then they're more likely to just get rid of the
Speaker 3: property or you know, develop it, whatever whatever comes up.
Speaker 3: Right Again, that dollar, you know, it controls a lot,
Speaker 3: so it has to be sustainable in that sense. So
Speaker 3: we're looking at the property how it functions as a
Speaker 3: system in and of itself, and then we're looking at
Speaker 3: how that property fits into the bigger system, back to
Speaker 3: that community aspect, And I think that's a big thing
Speaker 3: people should look at on their property is you know,
Speaker 3: we all have this idea where we have to have
Speaker 3: a betting area and we have to have a food source,
Speaker 3: and we have to have this, and we have to
Speaker 3: have that. And sometimes that all works out really well,
Speaker 3: but sometimes with smaller properties, which you know, more and
Speaker 3: more with the price of land itself going up, and
Speaker 3: obviously the you know, the financial situations in this country,
Speaker 3: it's going to be harder and harder for the average
Speaker 3: person to purchase a big tract of land. So when
Speaker 3: you start talking about smaller pieces of land, we need
Speaker 3: to look at how that land fits into the overall community.
Speaker 3: And that might be you know, how it produces food
Speaker 3: for other wildlife in the area. It might be where
Speaker 3: it fits into the watershed. You know, everyone loves the
Speaker 3: idea of having their own personal fishing pond, but if
Speaker 3: we go and we dam up the river the stream,
Speaker 3: that's going to have consequences downstream, right And also you
Speaker 3: know the things that we spray on the ground or
Speaker 3: how we treat that dirt. If that dirt ends up
Speaker 3: in the water, again, we're causing problems that bigger watershed.
Speaker 3: So looking at how it fits into the big picture,
Speaker 3: that bigger systems big And then you know, we look
Speaker 3: at the property and how it's made up of smaller systems,
Speaker 3: and that's really where that habitat comes into play. What
Speaker 3: are the different ecosystems on that property and how do
Speaker 3: we how do we use those ecosystems on the property
Speaker 3: to our advantage without completely altering or manipulating them, right,
Speaker 3: So there's always some compromise that has to be had.
Speaker 3: We can't just go in and say, well, you know,
Speaker 3: ideally it'd be better if the betting area was over
Speaker 3: here and the food is over here, so let's go
Speaker 3: and clear cut this whole area and or bulldoze it
Speaker 3: and put in food and then plant switch grass over here.
Speaker 3: When we you know, we basically flip flop these these
Speaker 3: ecosystems on the property. So a lot of it is
Speaker 3: working with what you already have and trying to build
Speaker 3: off the strong points on that property versus trying to
Speaker 3: you know, be the hand of God and alter things
Speaker 3: in a dramatic fashion purely for personal gain. You know.
Speaker 3: When it comes to the hunting and being successful in hunting,
Speaker 3: habits play a bigger role than anything. You know, Having
Speaker 3: the deer there is the reason why we focus on
Speaker 3: habitat again, and that's why we need to focus on
Speaker 3: the sustainable side of that. But once the deer are
Speaker 3: there and we have the quality of deer there, then
Speaker 3: it just comes down to the habits in your approach. Obviously,
Speaker 3: there's some strategy involved there, but again, we can do
Speaker 3: those things without sacrificing the bigger picture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So if I'm imagining the typical whitetail habitat management
Speaker 2: plan of action, I can imagine some combination of Hey,
Speaker 2: you should plant some food plots, and they're usually going
Speaker 2: to be some kind of buck on a bag type
Speaker 2: food plot thing, right, and you're gonna get some of that.
Speaker 2: You're going to get some Hey, you should do some
Speaker 2: hinge cutting, or you should do some timber stand improvement,
Speaker 2: or you should plant some switch grass, or you should
Speaker 2: plant some screening cover. You should plant some apple trees
Speaker 2: or something like that. You should design these kinds of
Speaker 2: things in such a way that it encourages deer movement
Speaker 2: in a way that will benefit your hunting. You should
Speaker 2: put your habitat improvements in places where you're not going
Speaker 2: to spook deer when you come in and out. You know,
Speaker 2: you should add some water, some combination of that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff with various expansions on any one of those particulars.
Speaker 2: Is about what you're going to hear when it comes
Speaker 2: to what somebody should do with a habitat management plan
Speaker 2: for white tailed deer, how is your suggested philosophy different
Speaker 2: than that or within those sets of examples, like what
Speaker 2: would you do differently or is it not different at all?
Speaker 2: It's just choosing the right types of things to plant
Speaker 2: or not plant, or manage or not manage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really not that far from that at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, because all the things that you
Speaker 3: touched on there are valuable aspects of a hunting property. Right,
Speaker 3: if you're buying that property specifically for hunting, then yes,
Speaker 3: we do want to manage it in a way that
Speaker 3: it creates more huntable situations. And again, most of that
Speaker 3: is going to start with opportunity, and opportunity comes from
Speaker 3: the habitat that produces the standard or quality of animal
Speaker 3: that you're trying to pursue. So my approach, you know,
Speaker 3: as a whole, you're always going to be better off
Speaker 3: with a systems type approach versus relying on any one
Speaker 3: single aspect of anything. Right. It's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 3: you're going to be healthier if you choose a healthy
Speaker 3: lifestyle versus just exercising once a day, but eating a
Speaker 3: poor diet or you know, everything together has that cumulative effect.
Speaker 3: So the way I approach everything is you know, we'll
Speaker 3: start will break down the property, visualize everything that's going on,
Speaker 3: and I do a lot of mapping stuff, so we'll
Speaker 3: map everything out, what your current situation is, and then
Speaker 3: we're obviously looking at goals. The next thing we're doing
Speaker 3: is we're scouting that property to assess the actual habitat types.
Speaker 3: And you know, from the hunting side of things, we're
Speaker 3: really just trying to locate pinch points or figure out
Speaker 3: where we want to create pinch points that are accessible.
Speaker 3: Because once you have that opportunity, once you've improved the
Speaker 3: habitat to put deer in your on your property, then
Speaker 3: the next key to the white tail side of things
Speaker 3: is to ensure that you're not pushing them off your
Speaker 3: property by unnecessary pressure. So we're scouting to find the
Speaker 3: best hunting locations that have the least impact on the property. Again,
Speaker 3: you kind of touched on that, and then the next
Speaker 3: thing is that actual habitat design. So with that, you know, again,
Speaker 3: same thing you just brought up, where do we want
Speaker 3: to add screening cover so that we have better access.
Speaker 3: Do we even need to do that in some situations
Speaker 3: where do we want to improve more dense betting cover,
Speaker 3: where we hold our deer during the day that daytime
Speaker 3: security cover, and where do we want to create higher
Speaker 3: food value areas to draw those deer into. So my
Speaker 3: approach is very very similar to most guys, except again
Speaker 3: I try to always go back to that convenience factor,
Speaker 3: Like we don't want to just settle for convenience. We
Speaker 3: want to think about the big picture. And it's really
Speaker 3: it's not that difficult. The end of the day, we're
Speaker 3: just addressing things based on the ecosystems. And you know,
Speaker 3: I don't try to be one hundred percent of peerst
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, right I understand that
Speaker 3: at this point in the game that we're never going
Speaker 3: to reach that level again. So I try to follow
Speaker 3: more of like a ninety ten rule on our client properties,
Speaker 3: where ten percent is dedicated to our wants and needs
Speaker 3: and the other ninety percent needs to be focused on
Speaker 3: the wildlife. Though again we might manipulate that habitat in
Speaker 3: ways that encourages certain activities, but it's ninety percent native
Speaker 3: in various forms and fashions, and then that ten percent
Speaker 3: is what is going to fall under, you know, the
Speaker 3: food plots and the more focused on our specific needs
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, and it creates a
Speaker 3: little bit better way to approach things right, It takes
Speaker 3: a little bit less pressure off. But ultimately at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, I tell my clients the same thing,
Speaker 3: don't over it. If we focus on native habitat and
Speaker 3: diversity within that, you can't really go wrong. Once we
Speaker 3: have our overall hunting strategy laid out in our design,
Speaker 3: then you just go back to the native habitat and
Speaker 3: part of that too. You know, I actually work, you know,
Speaker 3: so my background is in biology, but I'm really really
Speaker 3: good at assessing the habitat and the native vegetation in
Speaker 3: my area, southwestern Wisconsin. But when I start to go
Speaker 3: up into northern Wisconsin, yeah, I know most of what's
Speaker 3: going on there, but I'm not as good up there.
Speaker 3: And if I go south, you know, I've got clients
Speaker 3: as far north as Duluth, Minnesota, and as far south
Speaker 3: as central Missouri. When I get in those areas or
Speaker 3: anywhere out of my element, and even sometimes in southwestern Wisconsin,
Speaker 3: I've got a whole team of biologists that I can
Speaker 3: network off of that work for the state. They're a
Speaker 3: free resource. So if I go to them, and I
Speaker 3: already know what I want as far as the structure
Speaker 3: and habitat types. They can help me figure out the
Speaker 3: native habitat and those native ecosystems in a way that
Speaker 3: I don't understand as well outside of what I'm familiar with.
Speaker 3: So I think that's important too.
Speaker 2: So it sounds like one of the absolute, maybe the
Speaker 2: most important principle within the system. Though after having a
Speaker 2: plan and thinking through how these things are all an
Speaker 2: interconnected system, it seems like a major principle is native
Speaker 2: favoring native habitat vegetation, you know, ninety percent of the
Speaker 2: time at least. So we've kind of dibbled and dabbled
Speaker 2: kind of around why native is better, But can you
Speaker 2: give me your explicit take on why native, why I
Speaker 2: focus on natives is better than kind of succumbing to
Speaker 2: the temptation of the non native or invasive, which is,
Speaker 2: as you mentioned, usually sometimes at least sometimes more convene.
Speaker 2: It might be quicker, or it might already be there
Speaker 2: in serving a purpose to some degree. But why is
Speaker 2: native the better option and worth the inconvenience it might
Speaker 2: take to add it back to the landscape or restore it.
Speaker 3: The biggest factor from my perspective, is the nutrient cycling
Speaker 3: within any ecosystem. So you know, you have all these
Speaker 3: different species from bugs and insects, plants, birds, all the
Speaker 3: way up to deer predators. Obviously, if you're not managing
Speaker 3: the nutrients, then your system is not productive at the
Speaker 3: end of the day. And that's one of the biggest
Speaker 3: net negatives of invasives in an ecosystem is they don't
Speaker 3: fit into that nutrient cycle, right, nothing consumes them and
Speaker 3: breaks them down. You know, whenever an animal consumes a plant,
Speaker 3: it utilizes certain minerals and nutrients from that plant to
Speaker 3: do whatever it needs to do. And then the byproduct
Speaker 3: of what it doesn't use is a change in form
Speaker 3: of the nutrients that it didn't utilize that go back
Speaker 3: into that ecosystem, and you know, maybe that byproduct might
Speaker 3: help to promote growth of a different plant or whatever
Speaker 3: it might be. So when you have a non native
Speaker 3: in an ecosystem, it doesn't fit into that cycle.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: For example, well, one of the things that I say
Speaker 3: all the time to my clients is good quality deer
Speaker 3: habitat is for the birds if you actually focused on
Speaker 3: the birds. Yeah, if you focus on the birds. You're
Speaker 3: going to provide everything in more than those deer need,
Speaker 3: from cover to brows and everything in between, right, And
Speaker 3: that's a huge element of it. So, you know, we
Speaker 3: start talking about let's just take native grasses for example,
Speaker 3: and I'm a huge I'm very, very against giant muscanthus grass,
Speaker 3: you know, and I've heard you talk about it before.
Speaker 3: I think you had a really good conversation with the
Speaker 3: Native Habitat Project on here about giant muscanthus. And you know,
Speaker 3: by definition, an invasive is an alien plant that spreads
Speaker 3: throughout its environment, right and has limited competition, or it
Speaker 3: limits competition. Some invasives have an aleopathic aspect to them,
Speaker 3: or most of the time what we see with most
Speaker 3: invasives is they green up sooner in the growing season,
Speaker 3: and they stay green longer in the growing season. And
Speaker 3: when you take a plant that averages, you know, thirty
Speaker 3: to forty more days of photosynthesis than all the native competition,
Speaker 3: it doesn't take long for it to choke everything out
Speaker 3: with that advantage. Giant muscanthis, there are those out there,
Speaker 3: you know, and I have I'm sure everyone knows who
Speaker 3: we're talking about. I have a lot of respect for
Speaker 3: these guys. But they will argue that it's not invasive. Well,
Speaker 3: if you go back to that definition of what they
Speaker 3: or something that's sterile, Yeah, but by definition on what's invasive, yes,
Speaker 3: maybe this plant's not spreading by seed right now, but
Speaker 3: if it's being distributed throughout the country and planted, that
Speaker 3: kind of is following the same suit. And when someone's
Speaker 3: going in and eliminating the native habitat or whatever vegetation's
Speaker 3: growing to promote the growth of this specific plant, it's
Speaker 3: kind of accomplishing the same goal, but forced upon nature
Speaker 3: by the human hand. So when you start to look
Speaker 3: at that, giant Mescantho is perfect example, right if you
Speaker 3: look at let's compare it to a native grass like
Speaker 3: big blue stem. Okay, there's a lot of bird species
Speaker 3: that feed on the seeds of big blue stem. Giant
Speaker 3: Mescanthos doesn't produce a seed that feeds any native birds.
Speaker 3: If you dig a little bit deeper into that food web,
Speaker 3: there's like seventy to one hundred different species of insects
Speaker 3: that feed on big blue stem at some point in
Speaker 3: its life cycle, and subsequently there's hundreds of species of
Speaker 3: birds that feed on those insects. Actually rely on the
Speaker 3: those insects to feed their chicks so that they have
Speaker 3: enough protein to grow big enough, fast enough, strong enough
Speaker 3: so that they can migrate before winter.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So if you strip that out of the system, and
Speaker 3: you plug in a non native plant like giant mescanthus
Speaker 3: that feeds few to none of those native insects, then
Speaker 3: you basically clip out the food source for the native
Speaker 3: birds that would feed on those native insects and or
Speaker 3: the seeds from that plant, and you completely disrupt that
Speaker 3: whole ecosystem. So, you know, back to where I think
Speaker 3: hunters have a pretty big responsibility. And I see this
Speaker 3: all the time this time of year. I'm sure you
Speaker 3: see it on social media. You know, maybe I do
Speaker 3: more because I'm on the land management stuff, but you
Speaker 3: all see these ads for land clearing companies, and I
Speaker 3: always got a kick out of them because they always
Speaker 3: push the same thing, enhance or improve your usable space
Speaker 3: on your property. And that term or that phrase usable
Speaker 3: space drives me nuts because what is usable space? Again?
Speaker 3: A lot of us look at like, oh, it's a
Speaker 3: lawn where you know, maybe two days out of the
Speaker 3: entire summer we actually take our kids outside and throw
Speaker 3: football around versus you know, what could that actually be
Speaker 3: to again improve that local ecosystem. And we're talking about
Speaker 3: a hunting property. Every single square inch of that property
Speaker 3: should be utilized in a beneficial way to the wildlife
Speaker 3: that we're promoting. And you plug an invasive in there
Speaker 3: by design, it really only has an advantage for you
Speaker 3: and you alone, and it has no part in that ecosystem.
Speaker 3: So again, the nutrient cycling in that system is completely
Speaker 3: gone at that point with these invasives. So that's the
Speaker 3: biggest reason.
Speaker 2: So back to the specifics of miss scanthos real quick,
Speaker 2: what's an alternative? So if I wanted to use miscanthos,
Speaker 2: if that was my original plan, I was going to
Speaker 2: use that for screening cover, to provide a screen around
Speaker 2: a food plot, or to screen the road, or to
Speaker 2: block a trail so I can walk in without dear
Speaker 2: seeing me. What would you recommend as a alternative that
Speaker 2: is more likely to be native and still achieve that
Speaker 2: same function.
Speaker 3: Switch grass is a good one as far as grass is,
Speaker 3: you know, it's not going to get as tall, but
Speaker 3: relatively quickly you can provide pretty good cover as far
Speaker 3: as screening cover goes. Obviously, there's a variety of conifers
Speaker 3: that will provide the same cover value. Again, it takes
Speaker 3: a little bit of patience for those to grow and develop,
Speaker 3: So you know, there's that balance there, which is the
Speaker 3: main reason why most people lean towards the miscanthus if
Speaker 3: they're in that situation, because you know, within a few
Speaker 3: years they get a lot more cover. But again it's
Speaker 3: that convenience factor that comes at a cost to that
Speaker 3: local ecosystem. Those will be the main ones when I'm
Speaker 3: looking at screening in general. You know, there's really two
Speaker 3: things I'm looking at. Are we trying to screen deer
Speaker 3: from seeing into a certain food plot or screen deer
Speaker 3: from seeing other deer in that situation, there's a wide
Speaker 3: variety of things that you can put in place from
Speaker 3: you know, a variety of native shrubs, combination of native grasses,
Speaker 3: all of them are going to create really good structure
Speaker 3: and cover for bedding or screening. On the other side
Speaker 3: of that, if you're trying to screen off an area
Speaker 3: and not not actually add attraction to it because you
Speaker 3: don't want to draw deer into your access route or something,
Speaker 3: then switch grass is a great way to go. But
Speaker 3: I want to say that and remind people that switchgrass,
Speaker 3: you know, planted with a no tail drill at a
Speaker 3: high seed rate doesn't really produce the same native quality
Speaker 3: of stand that switchgrass would produce in the wild. You know,
Speaker 3: switch grass and a lot of these other grasses we're
Speaker 3: talking about, like big blue stem and little blue stem
Speaker 3: and such. You know, they're a perennial bunch grass, and
Speaker 3: when they grow in a more native or natural setting,
Speaker 3: they provide pretty good cover, you know from a deer's level,
Speaker 3: eye level, or you know, even on up. But on
Speaker 3: the ground level they have this umbrella effect because they
Speaker 3: grow in a bunch and that provides this whole highway
Speaker 3: and network of places for ground nesting birds and chicks
Speaker 3: and stuff to navigate through and also search for insects
Speaker 3: and be protected from hawks and other aerial threats. But
Speaker 3: if you go out and you drill in your switch
Speaker 3: grass at a high seed rate, it actually creates a
Speaker 3: situation where those ground nesting birds can't move through it
Speaker 3: as freely and it can be problematic. So you know,
Speaker 3: in certain situations like a ten foot wide swath for screening,
Speaker 3: it's probably not that big of a deal. But if
Speaker 3: you're talking about creating a whole massive betting area. Going
Speaker 3: pure switchgrass can again be a problem for the grand
Speaker 3: scheme of things. Now, on that same note, there's guys
Speaker 3: out there that will promote killing forbes in your switchgrass plantings,
Speaker 3: because you again this whole idea of separating food value
Speaker 3: from cover value to force movement, which I think is
Speaker 3: a huge, huge negative as well. In what we see
Speaker 3: through that again the nutrient cycling is you've got native
Speaker 3: grasses that have this incredible potential to harbor nutrients from real,
Speaker 3: real deep in the soil. I mean, you've probably seen
Speaker 3: the graphics or the pictures of a native grass with
Speaker 3: like a twelve foot root system. Yeah, and what happens
Speaker 3: is those plants they're pulling, they're mining for minerals real
Speaker 3: deep in the soil. They pull them up into their biomass,
Speaker 3: and at the end of the year, you know, it's
Speaker 3: a perennial plant, so at the end of the year,
Speaker 3: it dies off, or the top of it dies off,
Speaker 3: creates kind of a thatch layer, and all those nutrients
Speaker 3: break down on the surface layer, and then your forbes
Speaker 3: with a much shallower root system can sequester or pull
Speaker 3: in those nutrients. And then when your deer come through,
Speaker 3: or you're ground nesting birds whatever they might be, they
Speaker 3: feed on those plants, or maybe insects feed on those forbes,
Speaker 3: and the birds feed on the insects. You know that
Speaker 3: again the cycle. Then those deer get the benefit from
Speaker 3: that native grass without actually feeding on that native grass.
Speaker 3: So if we're constantly killing all those forbes in those
Speaker 3: plantings of native grasses, then we're just pulling up those nutrients,
Speaker 3: but they're not really cycling through that system again, and
Speaker 3: it kind of cuts off that nutrient cycle. So that
Speaker 3: I guess I kind of went on that tangent there,
Speaker 3: But again, there's there's plenty of alternatives. It's kind of
Speaker 3: looking at your specific need. And another thing on the
Speaker 3: screening aspect is, you know, there's two different ways to
Speaker 3: screen deer from seeing your access. One is screening you
Speaker 3: or your access route, and the other is just thickening
Speaker 3: up betting areas so that they can't see.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Bill Winkie talks a lot about that, having thicker betting areas,
Speaker 3: and he'll say that he would rather have the cover
Speaker 3: two feet in front of the deer than on the access.
Speaker 3: I kind of use a hybrid approach most of the
Speaker 3: time where we just do both right as much as possible.
Speaker 3: Then if if your screening gets blown down from a wet,
Speaker 3: windy storm one day, you still have you know, the
Speaker 3: secondary cover in the betting area, and with that cover
Speaker 3: in the betting area, more often than not, you're gonna
Speaker 3: have brows, which is going to provide food value at
Speaker 3: the same time. So it's kind of a win win there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so switchcrass you mentioned as a possible screen alternative
Speaker 2: that takes several of the years to get to a
Speaker 2: decent height where it actually you know, blocks of deer's
Speaker 2: vision conifers, unless you you know, plant relatively mature trees
Speaker 2: and you've got a whole lot of money to do it.
Speaker 2: That can take time for something like that to grow
Speaker 2: tall enough and thick enough to block off a food plot.
Speaker 2: Let's hypothetically say, let's not talk hypotheticals, let's talk very specifically.
Speaker 2: I used to plant a screen of Egyptian wheat and
Speaker 2: or sorghum to screen in one of the food plots
Speaker 2: I've got on a property I can hunt. I haven't
Speaker 2: done that in the past few years, just out of time,
Speaker 2: but I've noticed less deer movement in those plots during
Speaker 2: daylight as a result of it, especially mature bucks. I
Speaker 2: used to have mature bucks in those plots feeling pretty
Speaker 2: comfortable in daylight, and it's not happened as much since
Speaker 2: I stopped planting the screen. The problem being that this
Speaker 2: area is visible towards some houses and some roads without
Speaker 2: that screen. So going into this year, I know I
Speaker 2: have a little bit more time to get a screen
Speaker 2: in of some kind if I wanted to. But now
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, Man, I probably shouldn't do this Egyptian wheat
Speaker 2: thing that I've done the past if I'm trying to
Speaker 2: manage more in this kind of way, given the fact
Speaker 2: that I'm looking like, how can I get something? Or
Speaker 2: is there what am I trying to say here, Tomas?
Speaker 2: Is there anything I can do in a single year
Speaker 2: that will get me some level of screening. Knowing that
Speaker 2: conifers will take time, switch grass will take time. I've
Speaker 2: heard from some folks that maybe there are some types
Speaker 2: of shrubs like a maybe a hybrid willow or something
Speaker 2: that might be native and that might grow fast enough
Speaker 2: to get something. Is there anything you'd recommend to get
Speaker 2: me started for that first year that will give me
Speaker 2: some level of screening a bit, or do I just
Speaker 2: need to suck it up and be patient and know
Speaker 2: that's going to take a few years.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it goes back to the kind of
Speaker 3: that mindset too, of not necessarily short term thinking or
Speaker 3: being overly patient, but some combination of the two. So
Speaker 3: what I do with all my clients is we build
Speaker 3: out a five year timeline, and you know, rather than saying,
Speaker 3: here's a plan, go do these things, we break it
Speaker 3: down into a five year timeline, and when it comes
Speaker 3: to the screening a lot of times what we will
Speaker 3: do is we will utilize sorgum, an annual grass like that,
Speaker 3: and we'll plant the switch grass and or conifers, and
Speaker 3: then we'll just say, you know, you're doing the sorgum
Speaker 3: and basically you're losing ten or twenty feet of your
Speaker 3: food plot for the next three to five years until
Speaker 3: the switch fills in or the conifers reach the appropriate height.
Speaker 3: And you know, with conifers, usually the first few years
Speaker 3: they're not doing a lot, but usually by year five
Speaker 3: or six they're up there in that five foot six
Speaker 3: foot range, and then you gain that twenty feet of
Speaker 3: your food plot back. You know, the sorgum stuff. It's
Speaker 3: not the worst thing in the world. But again to
Speaker 3: the sustainable side of things. Sorgum's you know, it's a grass,
Speaker 3: so it consumes a lot of nitrogen when it grows.
Speaker 3: And obviously when you're dealing with the grass that can
Speaker 3: grow fifteen feet tall in one growing season, it's pulling
Speaker 3: a lot out of the soil and then it just
Speaker 3: ends up. You know, there's a big load of carbon
Speaker 3: on top of the soil, which pulls more nitrogen out
Speaker 3: of the soil as that carbon degrades. So it can
Speaker 3: be a pretty expensive or costly crop to plant year
Speaker 3: after year after year, you know, unless you're in there
Speaker 3: fertilizing it with a heavy dose and nitrogen every year,
Speaker 3: which you know, most guys are using a synthetic fertilizer,
Speaker 3: which again has its negative side effects. But back to
Speaker 3: that approach, what I generally would do is we'll say,
Speaker 3: you know, we're gonna do the sorgum here, switch grass here,
Speaker 3: conifers here, whatever it might be, and then once the
Speaker 3: native or the perennial starts to the cover that we want,
Speaker 3: then we can get rid of that sorgum. Now, the
Speaker 3: only caveat there is, and this is true for all
Speaker 3: of our land management. At the end of the day,
Speaker 3: really what you need to focus on is how you're
Speaker 3: managing the sunlight and how it hits the ground, right,
Speaker 3: It's the harnessing the sun's energy. Ultimately, that's what the
Speaker 3: world revolves around, is that energy for the sun. So
Speaker 3: if you're, for example, if you're trying to screen off
Speaker 3: the north side of a food plot and then you
Speaker 3: go and you plant sorghum along that north side, you know,
Speaker 3: and the sun's hitting that sorghum from the south first,
Speaker 3: then you're not going to get as much growth on
Speaker 3: your switchgrass if you're completely choking it out. So you
Speaker 3: have to be mindful of that. And sometimes it might
Speaker 3: just mean you know, pushing that screen in a little
Speaker 3: bit further giving some space for that switch grass, or
Speaker 3: going with a conifer, you know, like a white pine
Speaker 3: or a spruce is going to be more shade tolerant
Speaker 3: and still grow with less sun versus a switch grass,
Speaker 3: which is going to grow the best with more sun.
Speaker 3: So you know, a lot of situations you can get
Speaker 3: away with it. You just again you just kind of
Speaker 3: have to be mindful of where that Sorgum's casting the shadow.
Speaker 3: If that's going to delay stuff.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's okay. Step one or point one one
Speaker 2: here is, don't add invasives to the landscape. If you're
Speaker 2: planting screening cover, or if you're planting trees or a
Speaker 2: field of cover, whatever it is, let's let's choose a
Speaker 2: native species rather than an invasive non native. But what
Speaker 2: about when we already have invasives on the landscape. We've
Speaker 2: got automotive all over the place, or we've got buckthorn
Speaker 2: all over the place, or we've got some kind of
Speaker 2: grass that's come in. There's all sorts of those that
Speaker 2: can choke out a landscape. If I were to walk
Speaker 2: out on one of the properties that I've got access
Speaker 2: to and that I can do some management work on,
Speaker 2: I think I could spend the whole day pointing out
Speaker 2: different non natives here and there and everywhere, and it'd
Speaker 2: get really overwhelming. How do you recommend someone go about
Speaker 2: prioritizing what to get rid of If the thing we're
Speaker 2: talking about next is how do we get rid of
Speaker 2: invasives that are there that are non native, that aren't
Speaker 2: achieving the goals that you've been talking about. How do
Speaker 2: I know, like what to tackle. Is there some particular
Speaker 2: couple species that you really think, man, you got to
Speaker 2: tackle those first, or is there some way to rank
Speaker 2: order what's on your property, or how do you go
Speaker 2: about figuring out where to start, how much to try
Speaker 2: to do, what's the most impactful. What's your take on that,
Speaker 2: because it all seems very intimidating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it can be extremely overwhelming. And you know,
Speaker 3: the more you learn about invasives, the more you notice them.
Speaker 3: You know, at least I feel this all the time.
Speaker 3: You're driving down the road and you just look around
Speaker 3: and you see them everywhere, and it's depressing really at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, right you start to see
Speaker 3: all these things that you know, maybe just a few
Speaker 3: years ago looked like a flourishing ecosystem with a lot
Speaker 3: of green in life. Then you realize, well, it's actually
Speaker 3: all invasive. It's not as good as you know, we
Speaker 3: thought it was my approach, you know, ultimately, you know,
Speaker 3: again it kind of comes back to mindset. So first
Speaker 3: and foremost, you have to understand that at this point
Speaker 3: in the game, there's no such thing as one and
Speaker 3: done when it comes to invasive species management. This is
Speaker 3: an ongoing battle, right, it's an ongoing war, I should say, right,
Speaker 3: every year is going to be a separate battle. So
Speaker 3: the way that I try to do it with my
Speaker 3: clients again, we're breaking things down into a timeline. And
Speaker 3: then generally what we do is we will look at
Speaker 3: the property and will break it down into separate management units.
Speaker 3: Generally we'll use logging roads, access trails or topography to
Speaker 3: break it down into units. And oftentimes we do that
Speaker 3: because those those land features help when we run fire
Speaker 3: through there. You know, it's an easy way to break
Speaker 3: it down from the bottom of the hill to this
Speaker 3: logging road or bottom hill, top hill, whatever it might be.
Speaker 3: So obviously that goes it kind of leads to what
Speaker 3: I was getting at with managing them and fire being
Speaker 3: a valuable tool. And I understand obviously people don't necessarily
Speaker 3: take the fire easily. You know, it's hard for the
Speaker 3: average person to accept that, and that's okay. So what
Speaker 3: we'll do is will break it down in the management units,
Speaker 3: and then I always like to start on the edge.
Speaker 3: The edge habitat is some of the most productive habitat
Speaker 3: on a property. Edge habitat is also where most of
Speaker 3: your invasives are going to show up first. And at
Speaker 3: the same time, it's one of the easiest places to manage.
Speaker 3: So if we break down a property into zones and
Speaker 3: say you're one, our project list is focus on improving
Speaker 3: edge habitat on zone one and attack invasives and zone one.
Speaker 3: And what we'll do is we'll go in and we'll
Speaker 3: clean up that edge. We'll cut out all the invasives
Speaker 3: and treat them. You know, it's a relatively easy task,
Speaker 3: all things considered. You're just following a line, right, that's
Speaker 3: the beauty of that edge. You're not meandering through the
Speaker 3: woods and finding invasives at the turn of every corner.
Speaker 3: So we attack that edge, we get that cleaned up.
Speaker 3: You know, maybe we are expanding on that edge, if
Speaker 3: we're trying to re claim some egg fields or something
Speaker 3: and trying to add more habitat, or maybe it's an actual,
Speaker 3: you know, an active farm where we can't gain any
Speaker 3: more habitat. So we're trying to improve that edge and
Speaker 3: push it back into the woods and feather it. Right,
Speaker 3: So we'll go in, we'll clean that up, and then
Speaker 3: if there aren't really many natives on the property, that's
Speaker 3: when we'll come in and we'll plant native shrubs. You know,
Speaker 3: we want to look at our local ecotypes as much
Speaker 3: as possible because they're going to do better in that environment.
Speaker 3: So we'll go in and we'll plant our native shrubs
Speaker 3: along that edge that what that's going to do is
Speaker 3: it's going to ensure that we have a seed source
Speaker 3: of natives in the area. And then we'll start pushing
Speaker 3: back into that property, into that zone. And you know,
Speaker 3: again year one, we're really trying to attack those invasives
Speaker 3: before we open up that canopy and promote any growth,
Speaker 3: any regeneration, because if we do that without attacking the invasives,
Speaker 3: then more often than not, they're going to take over.
Speaker 3: But as we remove those invasives and create a situation
Speaker 3: for regeneration, now we have, you know, and fast forward
Speaker 3: a couple of years when our shrubs that we planted
Speaker 3: on that edge are maturing and producing a seed source.
Speaker 3: Now we have the potential of birds feeding on the
Speaker 3: good stuff and carrying that back in that wood lot
Speaker 3: and spreading it throughout the woods to help fill in
Speaker 3: that space that we're creating by removing those invasives. So
Speaker 3: I think one of the biggest things that's overlooked is
Speaker 3: going in and attacking invasives or removing them and then
Speaker 3: just sitting back and waiting for something to happen. That's
Speaker 3: not the worst thing at the end of the day.
Speaker 3: But if we want to cover all of our bases
Speaker 3: ensuring that we have a seed source of more native varieties, again,
Speaker 3: we can kind of double up by improving that edge habitat.
Speaker 3: So one, you know, we're ensuring that we're creating quality
Speaker 3: habitat on that edge, which is where deer are going
Speaker 3: to spend a lot of time anyways, and it's also
Speaker 3: going to draw them up to the front of the property.
Speaker 3: You know. With that, we start looking at betting structure
Speaker 3: and cover. The analogy I always use is the it's
Speaker 3: a multi layered cake. The base layer of that cake
Speaker 3: is our food source, the layer of cover is the icing,
Speaker 3: The next layer of that cake is the dough betting,
Speaker 3: and then to stack another layer on for buck betting,
Speaker 3: we have to have another layer of icing or cover.
Speaker 3: So if we have really good edge habitat, we hold
Speaker 3: our does closer to the food source, which gives our
Speaker 3: bucks more space and the property. So that's just kind
Speaker 3: of the strategy the hunting strategy side of things, but
Speaker 3: again setting it up where we're providing a quality seed
Speaker 3: source going back into that property. And then another thing,
Speaker 3: when you're looking at improving betting areas, we're doing clear
Speaker 3: cuts of any sort. I really like to leave a
Speaker 3: handful of trees stand in those clear cuts. You know,
Speaker 3: if you have a couple good productive oaks, obviously you've
Speaker 3: got a good seed source there a valuable food source
Speaker 3: as well, so we'll leave those. If there are no productive,
Speaker 3: mass producing trees in that vicinity of that clear cut,
Speaker 3: then we'll leave a couple of trees stand and girdle
Speaker 3: them and let them die. But that encourages those birds
Speaker 3: to take those seeds into those clear cuts and spread
Speaker 3: them in the areas that we want, and then again
Speaker 3: we get more natives in that seed bank. But we
Speaker 3: have to always ensure that we're managing for those invasives
Speaker 3: because again there's no one and done. But that's where
Speaker 3: fire is effective. You know, once our natives are more
Speaker 3: established within a couple of years, they can handle fire
Speaker 3: pretty well. Most species of native shrubs can be burned
Speaker 3: off or mowed off, top killed in their dormant they've
Speaker 3: got enough energy reserves in their roots, so they can
Speaker 3: push up new growth that year, and that growth is
Speaker 3: more palatable to deer and wildlife anyway, So it's advantageous
Speaker 3: to cycle through that way.
Speaker 2: You mentioned the possibility when you're doing that edgework of
Speaker 2: adding native shrubs eventually. I know this is casion dependent,
Speaker 2: but are there any particular favorites of yours in your region,
Speaker 2: you know, Upper Midwest, that are particularly productive and useful
Speaker 2: for wildlife that you might recommend.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love the dogwoods. Dogwoods are great, Viburnums are great.
Speaker 3: You know, there's quite a wide variety within both of
Speaker 3: those families. Elderberries, you know, the red and black elderberry.
Speaker 3: You know, the red elderberry are more shade tolerant and
Speaker 3: they're more productive in the shade. And that's why the
Speaker 3: dogwoods are nice too, because they're relatively shade tolerant. But
Speaker 3: you know you've got red osier dogwood, silky dogwood, gray dogwood,
Speaker 3: there's some bigger flowering dogwood stuff like that, So those
Speaker 3: are advantageous. You know, it kind of comes down to
Speaker 3: that sun exposure again at the end of the day.
Speaker 3: You know, like plum American plums a really good shrub,
Speaker 3: but it needs a lot of sun to do well.
Speaker 3: If you have it tucked in a hedgerow or something
Speaker 3: where it's only getting a couple hours of sun a day,
Speaker 3: it'll grow, but it's not as productive. So the vibernums,
Speaker 3: you know, there's a lot of plants within that family
Speaker 3: that are very productive for the birds. Nine bark is
Speaker 3: a good one. You know, that's going to be a
Speaker 3: more shade tolerant shrub. And a lot of times I
Speaker 3: like to look around on those properties too, and if
Speaker 3: you start seeing any native shrubs, which unfortunately, i'd say
Speaker 3: probably fifty percent of the properties I'm on have no
Speaker 3: noticeable native shrubs at this point because they've been completely
Speaker 3: choked out. But what we'll find is a lot of
Speaker 3: times just going in and clearing out the invasives and
Speaker 3: managing those, all of a sudden, you see some of
Speaker 3: these natives pop back. So there's generally some seeds in
Speaker 3: that seed bank waiting for the opportunity to grow, But
Speaker 3: again you have to give them an opportunity at the
Speaker 3: end of the day and create space for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So so you mentioned a couple different ways of
Speaker 2: creating or enhancing cover stuff like feathering edges, stuff like clearcutting.
Speaker 2: We've talked about screening, but I've heard you talk about
Speaker 2: the way that mature bucks utilize or react to good
Speaker 2: native covers, kind of like a Plinko board. Could you
Speaker 2: explain that analogy and the importance of having that good
Speaker 2: cover when it comes to hunting. And then if there
Speaker 2: are any other kind of favorite ways that you like
Speaker 2: to approach adding or enhancing cover that we haven't talked about,
Speaker 2: could you mention those.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, the plinko board analogy is a good one,
Speaker 3: and I still keep telling myself I'm going to build
Speaker 3: one of those to give a visual demonstration. But for
Speaker 3: those of you listening, if you can visualize the plinko
Speaker 3: board right, You've got a flat board with a bunch
Speaker 3: of pegs on it. You drop a disk or a
Speaker 3: ball from the top, and it bounces around, and you know,
Speaker 3: it just finds a space to drop down on the
Speaker 3: next level until it works its way all the way
Speaker 3: to the bottom. If you have a property that doesn't
Speaker 3: have a lot of cover or a lot of food,
Speaker 3: then those deer generally move through it very quickly, so
Speaker 3: that all you drop from the top it only bounces
Speaker 3: off a couple of pegs that it's relatively quick from
Speaker 3: the top to the bottom. When you start to add
Speaker 3: cover in there, especially when you add cover with food value,
Speaker 3: then you really slow down that deer movement and hold
Speaker 3: deer because they have the sense of security along with
Speaker 3: the food value, and that food is ultimately what's going
Speaker 3: to hold them in an area and also define or
Speaker 3: drive the movement during you know, the crepuscular periods of
Speaker 3: the day of morning and night. And adding the two
Speaker 3: or the combination of the two is huge for mature
Speaker 3: bucks because mature bucks don't really move by random, right.
Speaker 3: They're always very tactful with their movements. And if you
Speaker 3: watch them when they move through the woods undisturbed, they're
Speaker 3: always nibbling on something as they go. And I think
Speaker 3: that's a big reason why a lot of times you're
Speaker 3: not getting pictures of mature bucks consistently on the same
Speaker 3: trail as other deer. You know, those doughs are much
Speaker 3: more linear with their movement. They get out of the
Speaker 3: betting area, they take that same trail out to the
Speaker 3: food source gorge themselves. Maybe they go back in the
Speaker 3: woods bed down, Maybe they bed down in the middle
Speaker 3: of the food plot. Bucks don't do that nearly as frequently.
Speaker 3: They are very tactful and they can't take the same
Speaker 3: trails all the other deer because it's already browsed off.
Speaker 3: So again, adding that cover and food with it is
Speaker 3: going to ensure that those deer move through the property
Speaker 3: a little bit slower. They're unpressured and they just kind
Speaker 3: of meander through and they feed a little bit here,
Speaker 3: they feed a little bit there. If they sense any threats,
Speaker 3: you know, they see, they smell, they hear something, then
Speaker 3: they just freeze up. They're still in cover. They've got
Speaker 3: no problem there. So that's a big, big part of
Speaker 3: holding mature bucks on your property is just having adequate
Speaker 3: food and cover. Again, that's the element of habitat. You know,
Speaker 3: if you have topography or you know, fluctuations in topography,
Speaker 3: that is the greatest form of cover there is. So
Speaker 3: you're going to hold deer with that. But if you
Speaker 3: add the food value in there, it increases the amount
Speaker 3: of time that they spend there and the more consistent
Speaker 3: amount of time that they're there. And as far as
Speaker 3: you know, improving cover, good timbersand improvement, you know, you
Speaker 3: can't can't really beat it at the end of the day.
Speaker 3: As far as regeneration goes expanding edges, one of my
Speaker 3: favorite things to do if we are expanding an edge
Speaker 3: is while the grasses are dormant. You know, right now
Speaker 3: is actually a good time because we don't have any
Speaker 3: snow on the ground, it's not really frozen. Run a
Speaker 3: real heavy disc through there a couple of times to
Speaker 3: stir up that native seed bank, and then we'll still
Speaker 3: sometimes go you know, again, it depends on the rest
Speaker 3: of the habitat. We still might go in and plug
Speaker 3: a handful of shrubs in there, but otherwise we're just
Speaker 3: letting it fill in with native regeneration, which is going
Speaker 3: to go through succession. You know, it's going to end
Speaker 3: up start out with a bunch of forbes and annuals
Speaker 3: and then you know, might evolve to more brambles and
Speaker 3: eventually fill in with trees and shrubs, and then we
Speaker 3: just have to decide how we want to manage it.
Speaker 3: But deeper in the woods, again, it just comes down
Speaker 3: to that solar management, right punching holes in that canopy
Speaker 3: that are big enough where it's not just one year
Speaker 3: there's light on the ground, it's you know, enough space
Speaker 3: where when the trees surrounding that canopy or that hole
Speaker 3: in the canopy start to release and fill in, it
Speaker 3: doesn't just fill that hole right away, and then you know,
Speaker 3: we go back in there five ten years later and
Speaker 3: we don't really see the progress that we want. So
Speaker 3: with that, you know, again solar management. If you have
Speaker 3: a hill, if you're on the south facing slope or
Speaker 3: you know, east west, whatever it might be, you have
Speaker 3: a huge advantage because the way that that land is pitched.
Speaker 3: You know, a lot of times you can cut trees
Speaker 3: on the crown or that hill are going down the
Speaker 3: hill and you get a lot more sun deeper into
Speaker 3: that forest on the top. Versus flat land, you have
Speaker 3: to cut a much bigger opening. And in most situations,
Speaker 3: you know, and most foresters I deal with, they'll tell
Speaker 3: you on flat land minimum of an acre if you're
Speaker 3: going to open up the canopy or do kind of
Speaker 3: a clear cut type situation. But again, it all kind
Speaker 3: of comes back to also what's growing in that area,
Speaker 3: because like, for example, if you're trying to regenerate a
Speaker 3: popular stand or aspen, then you really need to make
Speaker 3: sure you're getting as much sun in there as possible,
Speaker 3: because it's not going to regenerate without full sun, and
Speaker 3: then other things fill in and choke it out, and
Speaker 3: then you kind of defeat the purpose of your your
Speaker 3: management technique there.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's a lot too. That's a lot to
Speaker 2: think about on the cover side. And I guess that
Speaker 2: the obvious follow up then is are there ways to
Speaker 2: achieve the other half of the habitat equation in a
Speaker 2: similar way you talked about the ninety ten approach. You
Speaker 2: take maybe to ninety percent native, ten percent a little
Speaker 2: bit of flexibility I'm imagining, I think you mentioned this.
Speaker 2: A lot of that ten percent then goes to the
Speaker 2: food side of the equation. Food plots in particular, it
Speaker 2: sounds like food plots in that man seen food plots
Speaker 2: are still a part of your game, despite the fact
Speaker 2: that many times they require, you know, introducing a species
Speaker 2: that's not necessarily native to the landscape. So what's your
Speaker 2: take on using food plots. How do we do it
Speaker 2: in a way that is more healthy for the overall ecosystem,
Speaker 2: not just white tail focused. What are your principles of
Speaker 2: sustainable food plot usage in this kind of context.
Speaker 3: The first thing is food plots should supplement your habitat, right,
Speaker 3: they shouldn't be the sole source of food on the
Speaker 3: property because if that is your approach, it's unrealistic because
Speaker 3: deer going to consume those food plots pretty quickly, you know.
Speaker 3: So again, you don't want to be in a situation
Speaker 3: where let's just use a forty acre property for example,
Speaker 3: if you have a forty acre property and half of
Speaker 3: it has a potent be a food plot and the
Speaker 3: other half has potential to be cover but that cover
Speaker 3: it doesn't providing food value, You're probably going to require
Speaker 3: all twenty acres of that in food to support that herd.
Speaker 3: And at the end of the day, that's kind of
Speaker 3: the weak link in the situation versus having good quality
Speaker 3: habitat that provides brows. You know, and white tailed deer
Speaker 3: are going to get eighty to eighty five percent of
Speaker 3: their nutrition from the brows. You know, they prefer the brows,
Speaker 3: they need the brows. And you know a big part
Speaker 3: of that too with that browse I should touch on
Speaker 3: is when you start looking at those native perennial plants, shrubs, grasses, forbes, whatever. Again,
Speaker 3: in that nutrient cycle, they have a much deeper root system,
Speaker 3: so if we address the needs of those deer, and
Speaker 3: you know, let's go back to the ultimate goal here
Speaker 3: of killing the biggest buck we possibly can. Right again,
Speaker 3: this is kind of the guys or the excuse of
Speaker 3: good quality management for our habitat. If we want to
Speaker 3: produce the biggest deer, we need to get a lot
Speaker 3: of vitamins and minerals into those deer. Native habitat with
Speaker 3: a deeper root system is going to mine down and
Speaker 3: pull up a lot more minerals once we start getting
Speaker 3: in those food plots. Those food plots should just supplement
Speaker 3: that habitat in a way that it creates an attractive,
Speaker 3: nutrient dense and luscious food source to create that consistent
Speaker 3: movement through the most huntable areas on the property, you know.
Speaker 3: So there are situations, in fact, even on the property
Speaker 3: that I hunt on my own most of the time,
Speaker 3: a lot of my food plots aren't very huntable just
Speaker 3: given the location. But I'm also competing with four hundred
Speaker 3: plus acres of alfalfa, So the attractiveness of those food
Speaker 3: plots doesn't really increase until late in the season on
Speaker 3: the attractiveness of the alfalfa declines. Right, It's all a
Speaker 3: relative scale, but on most my client properties, you know,
Speaker 3: again assessing that overall situation, we're looking to add food
Speaker 3: specifically in the most huntable areas, or maybe not in
Speaker 3: the exact area we want to hunt, but drawing movement
Speaker 3: through a huntable area to that food plot. Right, You're
Speaker 3: always going to have the best or increase your opportunities
Speaker 3: by reducing pressure when you hunt the transitional area between
Speaker 3: food and bedding, because then you can get in and
Speaker 3: out without bumping deer. At the end of the day.
Speaker 3: When it comes to the food plots themselves, kind of
Speaker 3: the same concepts, except to your point, we're not really
Speaker 3: planting natives in those situations, but they are what I
Speaker 3: would refer to as more intensively managed situations. So we're
Speaker 3: not really planting stuff that's you know, at risk of
Speaker 3: escaping the confinements of our food plot, like you know,
Speaker 3: an invasive shrub or something that's going to go to
Speaker 3: seed and spread by the birds. But we are intensively
Speaker 3: managing that primarily for the nutrient content of the plant,
Speaker 3: you know. And that's where I fold back on the
Speaker 3: egg industry. You know, the practices within the egg industry
Speaker 3: for that because they've obviously perfected that when they have
Speaker 3: to produce a profit at the end of the day.
Speaker 3: So I come from a dairy farming background, and I've
Speaker 3: actually in the last couple of years now worked more
Speaker 3: and more with companies that are involved in that space
Speaker 3: because they have the same goals at the end of
Speaker 3: the day. Right, when you look at the similarities on
Speaker 3: a physiological standpoint from a dairy cow to a white
Speaker 3: tailed deer, their nutritional demands are very very similar. And
Speaker 3: so we can look at how do we manage the
Speaker 3: soils on dairy farm to produce the highest quality forage
Speaker 3: for dairy cattle and utilize those practices for deer. Now,
Speaker 3: on the other side of that scale, we don't necessarily
Speaker 3: want to manage our food plots the same way that
Speaker 3: a cash cropper manages his fields, because he's managing for
Speaker 3: a yield and a yield alone, Right, And we look
Speaker 3: at the statistics. I think most people know at this
Speaker 3: point that if you take a cab of corn or
Speaker 3: a lot of the produce in this country the way
Speaker 3: it's farm and compare it to the produce in a
Speaker 3: European country, or even what the produce was twenty years ago.
Speaker 3: The nutrient content is anywhere from twenty to forty percent
Speaker 3: less than what it was. So if we want to
Speaker 3: again get as much nutrition in those deer to grow
Speaker 3: the biggest, healthiest deer, and at the same time, our
Speaker 3: ultimate goal with that food plot is the attractive power
Speaker 3: or utilizing that as an attractive tool to pull deer
Speaker 3: through certain areas. Nutrition equals attraction. Deer are not attracted
Speaker 3: to soybeans or brassicas or alfalfa. They are attracted to
Speaker 3: the palatability or the nutrient density of that plant. Deer,
Speaker 3: I've said it before, right, they're very diverse creatures. They
Speaker 3: feed on diversity. Are you familiar with doctor Fred Provenza
Speaker 3: if you ever read any of his stuff I have not,
Speaker 3: he'd be a good one to dig into. I think
Speaker 3: his book is called Nourishment, but he talks about some
Speaker 3: studies that they did or he was involved with monitoring
Speaker 3: domestic populations of sheep as well as wild populations as sheep,
Speaker 3: and how they found this cultural as to these herds
Speaker 3: where the more mature animals within that group would teach
Speaker 3: the younger animals that they could feed on certain plants
Speaker 3: that we thought were completely toxic to all animals, but
Speaker 3: by feeding on a little bit of a certain plant,
Speaker 3: it would change the biology of their stomach enough where
Speaker 3: they could feed on more of another plant, both of
Speaker 3: which being toxic, but it changes the biology of their
Speaker 3: stomach to where now they can digest it. And you know,
Speaker 3: whether it's a medicinal reason or nutritional reason, you know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot, a lot that goes into that research,
Speaker 3: and I could go on for days about that stuff.
Speaker 3: But the diversity aspect is very important. You know, when
Speaker 3: we start looking at a food plot, whenever you plant
Speaker 3: a diverse planting, you're far better off than planting a
Speaker 3: monoculture on every aspect of it. Right first and foremost,
Speaker 3: the soil health is the most important aspect of it.
Speaker 3: So having diversity with that with those plantings brings diversity
Speaker 3: to the nutrients in that soil. You know, some plants
Speaker 3: are going to harbor nutrients and break down other plants
Speaker 3: are going to utilize those nutrients. So instead of having
Speaker 3: one type of plant that pulls everything out of the
Speaker 3: soil that it needs and not really putting anything back,
Speaker 3: you have that balance with the diversity. And at the
Speaker 3: same time, from a hunting aspect, it's like well, are
Speaker 3: deer going to crave brascas today or are they going
Speaker 3: to crave clover? Well, if I have that all mixed together,
Speaker 3: not only does the clover as a legume feed nitrogen
Speaker 3: to the brassica plant, but now if the deer is
Speaker 3: showing up for clover or they're showing up for brascas,
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter. We're all going to the same party
Speaker 3: at the end of the day. So it simplifies things there.
Speaker 3: But it all comes down to the nutrients and the
Speaker 3: nutrient management in those food plots. So the more sustainable
Speaker 3: approach that I take is first and foremost trying to
Speaker 3: wean off of chemicals and synthetic inputs. It's probably one
Speaker 3: of the most important aspects of it. And I'm not
Speaker 3: entirely anti chemical. I think they're a very valuable management tool.
Speaker 3: But there's a difference between implementation or established and an
Speaker 3: annual routine, and we always strive to have an annual
Speaker 3: routine that's as chemical free as possible. And you know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of reasons for that. One of the
Speaker 3: biggest things, you know, obviously one of the most commonly
Speaker 3: used chemicals the food plotters utilize is glyphosate. Well, we
Speaker 3: all look at that as a very effective, broad spectrum herbicide.
Speaker 3: But glyphosate was originally patented as a mineral kelator to
Speaker 3: descale boiler systems and clear out pipes. So what it does,
Speaker 3: you know, the keelation process. If you just think of
Speaker 3: like a magnet right now, how magnet can pick up
Speaker 3: tiny little particles of metal. That's what chelation is. So
Speaker 3: that glyphosate, every time you spray it on the soil,
Speaker 3: it chlates minerals in the soil, and now those minerals
Speaker 3: are no longer bioavailable to the plants, and therefore they're
Speaker 3: no longer bioavailable to the animals consuming those plants. So again,
Speaker 3: if we go back to growing the biggest, healthiest deer,
Speaker 3: we want to get as much nutrition in them as possible.
Speaker 3: At the same time, glaf state's an antibiotic, so it
Speaker 3: disrupts the microbiome of the deer if they go and
Speaker 3: feed on anything that you spray and even in the soil.
Speaker 2: So if we want to reduce our synthetic inputs, so
Speaker 2: that means reducing our use of herbicide and reducing our
Speaker 2: use of you know, chemical fertilizers, which is for most everyone,
Speaker 2: that's just fertilizer in general. What what's like the alternative,
Speaker 2: what's the more or what's the sustainable moderation of that.
Speaker 2: I know you mentioned like making it not an annual practice.
Speaker 2: I've tried to do this. I've tried to reduce my
Speaker 2: use and I've achieved that to a degree as I've
Speaker 2: instituted a number of more regenerative principles to my food plots.
Speaker 2: But I still I'm still kind of like needing to
Speaker 2: knock down the weed girls at least once with herb side.
Speaker 2: And even though I'm doing several cycles of like two
Speaker 2: cycles of plantings throughout the year and I'm never trying
Speaker 2: to wipe clear the whole menu off and I'm trying
Speaker 2: to maintain you know, cover on the soil, and I'm
Speaker 2: trying to follow the principles of soil health as much
Speaker 2: as possible, I still seem to need some degree of
Speaker 2: additional fertilizer to get that boost, especially when you know
Speaker 2: it's dry, we're not getting out of water, and the
Speaker 2: crops struggling, and I'm like, man, I've got a failure
Speaker 2: of a food plot coming in here, and so I
Speaker 2: then feel like I got to put something on there,
Speaker 2: so I've yet to really knock it out of the park.
Speaker 2: Is what I'm getting at. Is that just a reality
Speaker 2: of this that it's going to be a challenge and
Speaker 2: sometimes it'll be better, sometimes it'll be worse. Or is
Speaker 2: there some better way to do it than what I'm describing.
Speaker 3: I don't think there's a silver bullet solution, right, So
Speaker 3: I just want to preface this with that because you know,
Speaker 3: I'm going to explain how we approach it, but it's
Speaker 3: it's a relatively simple approach. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: every situation, situation is unique, right, So for me to
Speaker 3: just say do these things and you can wean off
Speaker 3: of all your synthetics, it's probably very achievable in your situation,
Speaker 3: but maybe you have to alter the approach. So you know,
Speaker 3: I mentioned before that whenever you have a systems approach,
Speaker 3: you're always far better off than relying on one specific
Speaker 3: aspect of whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish.
Speaker 3: And at the same time, let's bring back the whole
Speaker 3: idea of every convenience comes at a cost, right, So
Speaker 3: why do we use chemicals as much as we do
Speaker 3: They're convenient, right, It's the easy button most people. And
Speaker 3: I would argue, you know, and I'm not again trying
Speaker 3: to throw anyone under the bus, because I've been there
Speaker 3: many times, but I would argue that the chemical application
Speaker 3: used in food plots is far worse than the can
Speaker 3: ventional egg model because most food plotters aren't overly precise
Speaker 3: with their application rates. You know, their timing is not
Speaker 3: the best. It's again, it usually comes down to, oh wow,
Speaker 3: I've got one weekend to get this food plot in.
Speaker 3: I'm already behind the schedule. I'm going to go out.
Speaker 3: I'm going to mow it, spray it, till it, whatever
Speaker 3: I can do in two three days time. So first
Speaker 3: thing would be coming up with a better system in general,
Speaker 3: you know, an annual routine is going to be an
Speaker 3: important thing. And understanding the timing element of when you're planting,
Speaker 3: when you're disturbing soil, whatever it might be. The next
Speaker 3: thing comes back to the soil itself and having healthy soil,
Speaker 3: having a balanced ecosystem in the soil itself is going
Speaker 3: to produce a situation where weeds aren't as much of
Speaker 3: a problem. Right. The biggest thing people overlook with weeds
Speaker 3: in a food plot is weeds are generally I shouldn't
Speaker 3: even say generally, they're always there because of the soil itself, right,
Speaker 3: They're there to heal something in the soil. Now, you
Speaker 3: might have some noxious weeds in there that are just
Speaker 3: really good at filling in space, but they're healing something.
Speaker 3: You know, maybe you disturb the soil and that's nature's
Speaker 3: way of creating cover to protect the soil. Maybe there's
Speaker 3: a mineral deficiency or a nutrient deficiency in that soil,
Speaker 3: and those weeds are showing up to sequester, harbor those
Speaker 3: nutrients to fix and put that soil back in balance.
Speaker 3: So that's that's the first thing you have to understand
Speaker 3: to get away from the chemicals, because every time you
Speaker 3: disrupt that ecosystem with chemicals, you take another step backwards.
Speaker 3: And you know, that's where cover crops, like you're talking
Speaker 3: about cycling through cover crops, planting more diverse species at
Speaker 3: any given time versus a single monoculture all the time.
Speaker 3: That's going to help balance out that ecosystem. But one
Speaker 3: of the things that I've been doing the last couple
Speaker 3: of years, and a company that I've worked with now
Speaker 3: pretty closely for the last year. Midwestern bioag is the
Speaker 3: name of the company and the reason I was drawn
Speaker 3: to them again the dairy background and understanding the soil
Speaker 3: acogy and how important that soil health is. They produce
Speaker 3: fertilizers that are a minerve based, homogenized and remineralized fertilizer.
Speaker 3: So their whole approach is a system's approach to agriculture.
Speaker 3: And what I love about them is they've got a
Speaker 3: ton of data and all the numbers to prove the
Speaker 3: system's approach. And actually, at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: their approach is more cost effective than the conventional approach
Speaker 3: because they can go in you know, we can dial
Speaker 3: in these fertilizers to balance out your soil. Once you
Speaker 3: reach that call it state of homeostasis. In that soil
Speaker 3: where things are more balanced and equalized, weeds aren't really
Speaker 3: that much of an issue. And then when you go
Speaker 3: in there and you plant a crop, it has the
Speaker 3: advantage because you placed it at the right depth at
Speaker 3: the right time, given the right amount of moisture and everything,
Speaker 3: and it's going to more often than not outcompete the weeds.
Speaker 3: At the same time, if there are some weeds you know,
Speaker 3: it's just kind of one of those things where we
Speaker 3: have to understand that a lot of time those weeds,
Speaker 3: you know, we call them weeds throw up air quotes,
Speaker 3: but more often than out, they're a native plant that
Speaker 3: you're going to feed on anyways, and a lot of
Speaker 3: times they're as high or higher in nutrient content than
Speaker 3: a lot of the crops that we plant. But the
Speaker 3: nutrient compounds or the makeup of these fertilizers are a huge,
Speaker 3: huge advantage, and that's why I've really started to love
Speaker 3: them more than anything. You know, I talked about nutrients
Speaker 3: cycling in general. Well, if we back up, you know,
Speaker 3: not that long ago, a few hundred years ago, Up
Speaker 3: until a few hundred years ago, our habitat was managed
Speaker 3: by large animals, right. You had everything from wooly mammoths
Speaker 3: which were actually you know, obviously gone a lot longer
Speaker 3: ago than a couple hundred years but all we up
Speaker 3: to like bison that were just eliminated a few hundred
Speaker 3: years ago. Those large animals had the role of creating disturbance,
Speaker 3: which created space for regeneration, but also they move nutrients
Speaker 3: around those ecoss and across the landscape. We don't have
Speaker 3: that anymore. So you know, a lot of times what
Speaker 3: we see and I think a big reason for a
Speaker 3: lot of the invasive issues is we just don't have
Speaker 3: as nutrient rich soil as we used to have in general.
Speaker 3: You know, even in a forest ecosystem that's well managed,
Speaker 3: you're still just cycling through the nutrients in that system
Speaker 3: and you never have the added bonus or you know,
Speaker 3: thrush of nutrients that's brought in from an outside source.
Speaker 3: And now with these fertilizers, which is again why I
Speaker 3: love them, is we can go and we can basically
Speaker 3: spread manure that's been it goes through a digestion process,
Speaker 3: so it's broken down to its most usable form, all
Speaker 3: the impurities are removed. We have that it's pelletized and homogenized,
Speaker 3: so it's even we put that in our food plots.
Speaker 3: Now we're putting real nutrition into those plants or into
Speaker 3: the soil, which ends up in the in the plants,
Speaker 3: which ends up in the deer. And now those deer
Speaker 3: are distributing those nutrients throughout the habitat on our property,
Speaker 3: versus a synthetic fertilizer that really promotes growth but doesn't
Speaker 3: promote nutrients, right, it's kind of those empty calories. It
Speaker 3: like I can go grab fast food and fill that
Speaker 3: void of hunger, or I can eat something that's actually
Speaker 3: got nutrition and it's going to benefit my body. But
Speaker 3: the difference is, again you have deer spreading those nutrients
Speaker 3: throughout the rest of the habitat, and then all your
Speaker 3: habitat gets better from there on out too. So again
Speaker 3: it all comes back to the soil in the nutrients
Speaker 3: cycling in that ecosystem and the surrounding ecosystems, and those
Speaker 3: deer are now the landscape managers or the vegetation managers
Speaker 3: of that habitat, and we're just there kind of overseeing
Speaker 3: what can grow and what can't grow, but they're ultimately
Speaker 3: moving the nutrients through that system. What was the name
Speaker 3: again of that fertilizer company, Midwestern bio Egg And is
Speaker 3: that something that's regional or is that something that's more
Speaker 3: widely available Yet it's widely available. Actually, I'm working with
Speaker 3: them right now and we're trying to solve logistical problems
Speaker 3: to get smaller quantities to food plotters for this exact reason.
Speaker 3: They're they're actually located in southwestern Wisconsin and so and
Speaker 3: they distribute throughout the entire country. In fact, some of
Speaker 3: their bigger research trials were done in the Dakotas, so
Speaker 3: you know, you're taking a completely different climate with relatively
Speaker 3: poor soils, and they can get those soils balanced out
Speaker 3: with these fertilizers to where they're this year. I think
Speaker 3: they set multiple county yield records and in doing so,
Speaker 3: they've dramatically reduced the chemical inputs on these fields. So
Speaker 3: that's a you know, that's a big, big positive to me.
Speaker 3: But you know, this kind of comes back to to
Speaker 3: the deer side of things again. If our ultimate goal
Speaker 3: as a deer or habitat manager is to produce the biggest,
Speaker 3: healthiest deer possible, then getting real newttrition into those deer
Speaker 3: is obviously a critical element of that. And when we
Speaker 3: start looking at the soils in any given area, the
Speaker 3: nutrient or the lack of nutrients, I should say that's
Speaker 3: happening more and more with row crops because of all
Speaker 3: the added synthetics. This is a way to ensure your
Speaker 3: herd is getting high quality nutrition and minerals back in
Speaker 3: their diet without congregating them around a supplemental food source
Speaker 3: or a mineral lick and obviously there's advantages and disadvantage
Speaker 3: to those things. But I often will use the analogy
Speaker 3: where you know, you can take a multi vitamin every day,
Speaker 3: but we know that you're far better off getting the
Speaker 3: nutrients that you need through the foods that you eat
Speaker 3: versus just popping a pill or drinking a supplemental drink
Speaker 3: every day. So that's kind of the same approach we take.
Speaker 3: Let's get the nutrition in those deer through these perennial
Speaker 3: native food sources and through truly nutrient rich food plots,
Speaker 3: which again it's going to create a really really strong
Speaker 3: source of attraction because of the nutrient content there, and
Speaker 3: that goes hand in hand with our ultimate goal of
Speaker 3: creating that huntability on the property.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then to the to the ultimate ultimate that
Speaker 2: we discussed earlier, which is the whole ecosystem health by
Speaker 2: managing for more nutrient, more nutrient dench more nutrient dense vegetation,
Speaker 2: which comes from the healthier soil, which is a byproduct
Speaker 2: of not using as much chemical as, not tilling as much,
Speaker 2: not using synthetic fertilizers. All those kinds of things don't
Speaker 2: end up, you know, running off into your waterways, they
Speaker 2: don't end up being you know, chemicals drifting onto the
Speaker 2: native vegetation adjacent to those food plots and killing the milkweed,
Speaker 2: killing the forbes and flowers, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So it seems like by doing all these things that
Speaker 2: lead to bigger, healthier deer in this case, it is
Speaker 2: also helping the rest of the ecosystem. So this is
Speaker 2: one of those things where it really seems to be
Speaker 2: the best of both worlds in that managing your food
Speaker 2: plots in this kind of way is very whitetail specific,
Speaker 2: beneficial and also very whole ecosystem focused in such a
Speaker 2: way that it's like a positive feedback loop, if you will.
Speaker 2: It's hard to argue with from that perspective.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I can take that up even another notch
Speaker 3: because one of the things that I'm doing now with
Speaker 3: my clients, you know, a lot of these recreational properties
Speaker 3: have some component of tillable land on them that they
Speaker 3: lease out or maybe you know it is a farmer
Speaker 3: that has recreational property. We're actually reevaluating a lot of
Speaker 3: these land use contracts and trying to work more closely
Speaker 3: with the farmers to utilize these fertilizers too, because again,
Speaker 3: if we're eliminating the chemicals going into that local environment,
Speaker 3: it's reducing a lot of those problems. But at the
Speaker 3: same time, if we're going to grow crops in the
Speaker 3: surrounding area and we want the biggest, healthiest deer possible,
Speaker 3: and those deer are feeding on those surrounding crops through
Speaker 3: much of the growing season, then you know, we want
Speaker 3: more nutrients in those crops at the end of the day.
Speaker 3: So that's another big advantage there. One other thing to note,
Speaker 3: you know, from the conservation standpoint with hunters and this
Speaker 3: particular fertilizer company. Another reason why I was drawn to them.
Speaker 3: This fertilizer is produced in a carbon negative manner, so
Speaker 3: it's you know, it comes off of a dairy farm
Speaker 3: that has a surplus of manure, and it goes through
Speaker 3: a digestion process. It's broken down by microbes and during
Speaker 3: that process methane gas is given off. They capture all
Speaker 3: that methane. It powers generators that power the entire manufacturing
Speaker 3: facility for the fertilizer, and then a byproduct of that,
Speaker 3: when they separate the water, they reuse the water to
Speaker 3: irrigate the fields. So there's a huge advantage on that
Speaker 3: side of things versus all of your synthetics that are
Speaker 3: mostly petroleum based, right where there's the carbon effect there.
Speaker 3: So you know whether whether you're concerned with the carbon cycle,
Speaker 3: you know, and this the climate issues that are shoving
Speaker 3: our face all the time, or not. This goes back
Speaker 3: to that leading by example where if you get approached
Speaker 3: or you get in some sort of confrontational conversation with
Speaker 3: a non hunter trying to tell you that the things
Speaker 3: you're doing are just to kill deer, you can fold
Speaker 3: back on this and explain like, well, actually you're not wrong,
Speaker 3: but look at the big advantage to all the things
Speaker 3: that I'm doing versus you know, And this is the
Speaker 3: conversation I have a lot of times with some of
Speaker 3: these vegans.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It's like I look at myself and I think all
Speaker 3: hunters are this way in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 3: But we are the frontline conservationists, right. We're actually out
Speaker 3: there actively trying to solve problems, be it small on
Speaker 3: our properties or larger like I'm you know, approaching many
Speaker 3: properties in many communities. We're not just stand out in
Speaker 3: front of a courthouse with a picket sign shouting things
Speaker 3: about climate change. We're actually, you know, actively working to
Speaker 3: improve food security and sustainability of these ecosystems.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like you said, sequestering carbon along the way
Speaker 2: as we plant these grasslands and manage native vegetation and
Speaker 2: all that kind of good stuff. So we're hitting it
Speaker 2: on all cylinders. One question around a specific here back
Speaker 2: to the you know, the ways that we are managing
Speaker 2: for soil health, which is at the foundation of a
Speaker 2: lot of these things. If we're trying to establish a
Speaker 2: food plot or if we're trying to remove an invasive
Speaker 2: species of some kind, usually the two options are either
Speaker 2: chemical disturbance or mechanical disturbance. So we've already talked about
Speaker 2: the downsides of chemical disturbance but sometimes needing to use it.
Speaker 2: We haven't talked as much about the downsides of mechanical disturbance.
Speaker 2: But you know, as you know, and as we've talked
Speaker 2: about in this podcast in the past, you know, repeated disking, tailling,
Speaker 2: aggressive disturbance of the soil in that kind of way
Speaker 2: does break down the life of the soil significantly reduce
Speaker 2: in the ability for it to produce nutritious vegetation. Down
Speaker 2: the line, So one of the things I wonder about
Speaker 2: is we got to pick a poison. Though sometimes we
Speaker 2: could either disc entil something to get rid of a weed,
Speaker 2: or to open up a food plot, or to get
Speaker 2: rid of a grass that's taken over a prairie, or
Speaker 2: we can burn it down with glyph or something like that.
Speaker 2: With a nervous side, if you had to pick your
Speaker 2: poison metaphorically one of those two, which is which is
Speaker 2: less negative or vice versa, which is the less which
Speaker 2: is the more positive option?
Speaker 3: I I have to pick that poison many times a month,
Speaker 3: you know, every time I write a plan with implementation,
Speaker 3: we're picking that poison. I look at it from a
Speaker 3: situational standpoint. Right If a lot of what I do
Speaker 3: is in hill country, we don't really want to go
Speaker 3: in there and aggressively turn up the ground because there's
Speaker 3: obviously a huge risk for erosion there. So we are
Speaker 3: utilizing the chemicals, but again, we do it in a
Speaker 3: way where we're usually out of that routine or out
Speaker 3: of that cycle within a couple of years. And that's
Speaker 3: another way I kind of pitch it to my clients
Speaker 3: is we try to look at the chemical application as
Speaker 3: a credit based system. If I tell you you've got
Speaker 3: three credits to burn, use them appropriately. Don't just go
Speaker 3: out all willy nilly and spray, you know, not the
Speaker 3: best timing, like, use them appropriately so you get the
Speaker 3: most effective kill. Usually within three applications we can reduce
Speaker 3: or eliminate most of that weed competition, and then we
Speaker 3: get that soil balanced out. But again there's no silver
Speaker 3: bullet solution, right, so once we get the soil, you know,
Speaker 3: getting that soil balanced out, I think is absolutely critical
Speaker 3: because once that soil is balanced out, everything else is
Speaker 3: a lot more manageable. But you know, if it's been
Speaker 3: foul ground for a long time, or it's in CRP
Speaker 3: and CRP you know, I like CRP in general, but
Speaker 3: it's a reserve program or a resting program. It's not
Speaker 3: a rehabilitation or regenerative program by any means. So a
Speaker 3: lot of times CRP ground is pretty bad ground. You know,
Speaker 3: it's been overfarmed, they planted in native grasses, and a
Speaker 3: lot of times you'll see the CRP never gets very tall.
Speaker 3: At all those situations when you're going there and trying
Speaker 3: to add a food plot, there's a lot of nutrients
Speaker 3: that are missing from those soils to get it to
Speaker 3: where we can grow that crop. Ultimately, once we get
Speaker 3: it to produce a healthy crop, again, that crop is
Speaker 3: better at out competing the weeds and keeping that soil
Speaker 3: balance and check or that soil health in check, which
Speaker 3: gets away from it. Now, one thing that I've learned,
Speaker 3: and you know, if we would have had this conversation
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago, I would have pushed hard
Speaker 3: for a no till regiment, right. I think that's a
Speaker 3: pretty strong talking point. It's pretty common talking point with
Speaker 3: food plots, and in most situations I would still tend
Speaker 3: to lean towards that, even though on the conventional egg side,
Speaker 3: no till is not a it's not a long term
Speaker 3: answer or not a fool proof answer because there's a
Speaker 3: lot of other issues at play again, nutrient cycling, ground compaction,
Speaker 3: water infiltration, stuff like that. So those guys in a
Speaker 3: lot of situations are going to have to till. And
Speaker 3: you know, so when you're driving around the countryside thinking
Speaker 3: from a food plot perspective, no till is the best,
Speaker 3: and you see someone tilling or turning dirt, every situation
Speaker 3: is different. You know, in northern areas of the United States,
Speaker 3: if these guys don't turn the dirt in the fall,
Speaker 3: it doesn't dry out or warm up fast enough in
Speaker 3: the spring to even get a crop planted with the
Speaker 3: short growing season they have. So that's part of it.
Speaker 3: But what I've learned in working with companies like Midwestern
Speaker 3: bioagg and gleaning information from these guys who have farmed
Speaker 3: organically or using what they refer to as a biological
Speaker 3: systems approach, what I've learned over the years is that
Speaker 3: light tillage has tremendous advantages. And the reason why that
Speaker 3: always kind of stuck with me or was appealing to
Speaker 3: me is back to the sustainability standpoint, right, It's it's
Speaker 3: unrealistic to expect all the guys out there food plotting.
Speaker 3: You know, what's the average food plot size less than
Speaker 3: an acre quarter acre. You know, maybe a guy is
Speaker 3: fortunate and he's got three or four eighth acre quarter
Speaker 3: acre plots on his property. I'm not gonna expect those
Speaker 3: guys to go out and buy a no till drill.
Speaker 3: And at the same time, a lot of guys, most
Speaker 3: guys like to diy things, so they're not going to
Speaker 3: want to go hire a land manager to come in
Speaker 3: and pay them a bunch of money to do a
Speaker 3: no tail drill. So in those situations and even in
Speaker 3: situations where they have options light tillage very light, and
Speaker 3: I'm talking like the top inch inch and a half max.
Speaker 3: Incorporating the organic matter or thatch layer into that top
Speaker 3: inch is at advantageous. It's going to improve water infiltration,
Speaker 3: it's going to help break down the organic matter and
Speaker 3: feed the biology and the soil faster, and it's going
Speaker 3: to eliminate that weed competition without the use of an herbicide.
Speaker 3: The you know, we soil health guys talk a lot
Speaker 3: about the micro rhizal fungal layer, right that layer lives
Speaker 3: sub two inches, So if you go and you bust
Speaker 3: up that top one inch of soil, you're not really
Speaker 3: affecting that fungal layer. Now, having a thatch layer there
Speaker 3: is still advantageous. And again understanding your situation, you don't
Speaker 3: want to go until on the hillside, especially if there's
Speaker 3: rain in the forecast. But having healthy, balanced soil, you know,
Speaker 3: trying to maintain as much groundcover as possible at all times,
Speaker 3: and incorporating that residue into that top inch is going
Speaker 3: to promote a lot of growth, so you get that
Speaker 3: weed competition out of the way, promoting or accelerating the
Speaker 3: growth of the crop that you're actually planting. So you know,
Speaker 3: again there's two avenues to look at that. But I
Speaker 3: just like to say that or bring that up, because
Speaker 3: most guys out there exit the conversation on soil health
Speaker 3: as soon as you start saying no tilling is the
Speaker 3: best way to go. And I'm here to tell you
Speaker 3: that although I think no tilling is very advantageous in
Speaker 3: a food plotting situation, you know, again, all the elements
Speaker 3: at play, the timing aspect of it, can be a
Speaker 3: lot more lenient with no till. But if you are
Speaker 3: in a situation where all you have is a light
Speaker 3: disc or a tiller, that's good too. Just don't go
Speaker 3: so deep. I mean, I think the biggest issue is
Speaker 3: we like the idea of turning the dirt until it
Speaker 3: becomes this like fine powdery medium, but in doing so,
Speaker 3: we completely destroy all the soil biology and we also
Speaker 3: destroy the soil structure itself, and we cause a lot
Speaker 3: of problems that way. So one of the things that
Speaker 3: I do, and you know, on most of our client properties,
Speaker 3: we are doing no till or very light disking my
Speaker 3: property here by my house. I've never sprayed my food plots.
Speaker 3: They're right next to where my kids play, not far
Speaker 3: from my garden. I've got a beehive back there. I
Speaker 3: just don't want to have anything to do with it.
Speaker 3: But what I do is every year I go out.
Speaker 3: I've got a kind of a perennial basin there of
Speaker 3: alfalfa and clover, and then I'll go out, you know,
Speaker 3: late summer fall food plot time, and I take a
Speaker 3: rototiller and I set that puppy out about an inch
Speaker 3: and I just go through it one time, and basically
Speaker 3: I clip the root crown off of the clover and
Speaker 3: alfalfa and it sets it back. And then I plant
Speaker 3: my fall blend. And you know that fall blends nice
Speaker 3: because you've got grasses in there, like rye and oats
Speaker 3: and stuff that germinate relatively quickly and they fill in,
Speaker 3: and then the brassicas and the peas and stuff fill
Speaker 3: in after that. But you get a really nice fall plot,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of nice rogen sitting in the
Speaker 3: soil available to those plants because you had that living
Speaker 3: root there the whole time. And then this next spring
Speaker 3: or the next spring, the rye fills back in and
Speaker 3: they'll slowly mature and die off and that clover that
Speaker 3: there fills back in. Clover and alfalfa are relatively hard
Speaker 3: to kill. You know, most guys probably know if they've
Speaker 3: tried to kill it, sometimes the wrong timing or just
Speaker 3: one shot of glifa say it won't even kill it.
Speaker 3: So you can get pretty crazy with your tillage if
Speaker 3: you don't go too deep and you're not going to
Speaker 3: kill that. And again, the idea is to really just
Speaker 3: set it back long enough to let that initial crop
Speaker 3: fill in, and then you know, it becomes a kind
Speaker 3: of a perennial cover crop at the end of the
Speaker 3: day and it works out. It creates a good groundcover.
Speaker 3: And again, we're doing everything we want to do as
Speaker 3: far as following those six principles of soil health, but
Speaker 3: we're doing it in a way that works for our
Speaker 3: own system. And that's another reason why I love those fertilizers,
Speaker 3: Because you talk about those six principles. The sixth principle
Speaker 3: is animal integration. Well, how do we integrate animals into
Speaker 3: our food plot system for really good soil health. We
Speaker 3: actually do that in some situations I talked about the
Speaker 3: beef cattle earlier. In some situations, we will actually go
Speaker 3: in and we'll drill in or broadcast food plot seed
Speaker 3: into our cover crop, our warm season cover, and then
Speaker 3: we'll dump cattle in that food plot for twenty four
Speaker 3: to thirty six hour period, let them smash everything down,
Speaker 3: spread the nutrients around, integrate the seed, and then we
Speaker 3: pull them out and we get pretty awesome food plots
Speaker 3: that way. But again, it's not feasible for most guys.
Speaker 3: So these pelletized minerve based fertilizers are the next step
Speaker 3: there in a more manageable way to have that same
Speaker 3: level of animal integration as far as the nutrient cycling goes,
Speaker 3: without having to worry about, you know, the inconveniences of
Speaker 3: moving cattle across the landscape.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, Thomas, I we joked before we started recording
Speaker 2: that if we weren't careful, we could go for six hours.
Speaker 2: And now I'm realizing that was less of a joke
Speaker 2: and more of a quite real possibility. If I'm not
Speaker 2: able to stop myself, well, I'm going to say we
Speaker 2: should wrap this up. But we have covered a lot
Speaker 2: of really good stuff and it seems like there's a
Speaker 2: lot more to talk about, So we might need to
Speaker 2: get you back on for return visit sometime down the
Speaker 2: line if you're up for it. But before I let
Speaker 2: you go, where can folks go to learn more about
Speaker 2: what you're talking about here today? Your courses, your other resources.
Speaker 2: How can folks learn more from you? Because obviously there
Speaker 2: is a lot we can learn.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The untamed Ambition dot com is my website. We're
Speaker 3: actually in the process of kind of overhauling that to
Speaker 3: incorporate those online courses a lot more. But you can
Speaker 3: find me there. You can reach me through that, Email
Speaker 3: me Thomas at the untamed ambition dot com or Instagram
Speaker 3: is where I'm probably the most active when I am
Speaker 3: active on social media, the Untamed Ambition. So yeah, if
Speaker 3: anyone has any questions on anything we talked about today,
Speaker 3: I mean, this is what I do every day, is
Speaker 3: answer questions, So feel free to reach out and I'll
Speaker 3: do the best I can.
Speaker 2: Awesome, Well, thank you, Thomas. I thoroughly enjoyed this. You
Speaker 2: were the right get to talk to. I'm glad this
Speaker 2: worked out and let's do.
Speaker 3: It again, all right, Thanks for having me Mark.
Speaker 2: All right, and that is a wrap. Thank you for listening,
Speaker 2: thanks for joining me for this one. I hope that
Speaker 2: you believe that you know I provided what I promised,
Speaker 2: which was a podcast that I thought would give you
Speaker 2: a lot to think about, a lot to learn from,
Speaker 2: and a lot to carry forward into your own habitat
Speaker 2: management efforts this coming spring. So thanks for being here,
Speaker 2: and until next time, stay wired to Hun