Speaker 1: You're listening to the Sportsman's Nation podcast network, brought to
Speaker 1: you by Savage Arms. Now, Savage has come out with
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Speaker 1: name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host of the Bear
Speaker 1: Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into the
Speaker 1: world of hunting the icon of the North American Wilderness Fair.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation. We will also bring
Speaker 1: you into some of the wildest country on the planet
Speaker 1: chasing fair. This week we had Matt d and Adam
Speaker 1: Keith of Land and Legacy consultation. Come to the Bear
Speaker 1: Hunting Magazine Global headquarters. These guys have been friends of
Speaker 1: mine for a while. They have a really good and
Speaker 1: very informative land management podcast, but they do a lot
Speaker 1: of land consultation. They in the last three years have
Speaker 1: done consultations in twenty seven states. So we have a
Speaker 1: conversation about land management, about white tail hunting, and a
Speaker 1: whole lot of stuff. Interesting conversation. The first of this
Speaker 1: podcast is us touring some land right here in the
Speaker 1: Ozarks of Arkansas, and we're kind of just getting their
Speaker 1: commentary on tree species and ways that I could improve
Speaker 1: this property. So you're gonna enjoy that. Muzzleloader seasons in
Speaker 1: the United States and in Canada are typically fairly liberal
Speaker 1: in terms of season dates, length of seasons, and that's
Speaker 1: why I love to hunt with a muzzloader, taking some
Speaker 1: good deer with a muzzloader. And I'm gonna be hunting
Speaker 1: more this fall with a muzzloader than I'll probably ever have.
Speaker 1: And c v A, the company c v A, makes
Speaker 1: an incredible line of muzzloaders. The company was established in
Speaker 1: They're known for their Bugara barrels, which is a world
Speaker 1: famous high quality barrel they have multiple lines of muzzloaders.
Speaker 1: They're owned for some very high end, very accurate muzzloaders,
Speaker 1: but they're also known for their price point in some places.
Speaker 1: C v A is a is a great place for
Speaker 1: you to step into the muzzloader world or to upgrade
Speaker 1: your old muzzloader to something way better. So check out
Speaker 1: c v A dot com. Be ready for this fall.
Speaker 1: I know that I will. You know, one of the
Speaker 1: big ex bearers ever killed with the Musloders building. Mm hmmm.
Speaker 1: The Western Bear Foundation nonprofit hunting conservation organization based out
Speaker 1: of Cody, Wyoming. They're fighting the good fight out west,
Speaker 1: standing up for the rights of bears. Yep, that's right.
Speaker 1: These conservationists hunters like us members of the Western Bearing Foundation,
Speaker 1: we actually love bears. We like them, we want them
Speaker 1: on the landscape. We also like their fat, their hide,
Speaker 1: their meat, their claws, and I think we can both
Speaker 1: have what we want. And that's what the Western Bear
Speaker 1: Foundation is doing. They're standing up for the rights of
Speaker 1: sportsmen and for hunting, but also for solid bear conservation.
Speaker 1: Check them out. So we're just gonna walk through this property,
Speaker 1: small property here in the Ozarks, and I just want
Speaker 1: to hear your commentary on the different species, maybe what
Speaker 1: you think happened here, and maybe what you would if
Speaker 1: you just had like a ten minute consultation with a client,
Speaker 1: like you would say, yeah, hey, this is what you
Speaker 1: should do if we were managing this for for white
Speaker 1: tail deer. And uh, we've been doing a little logging
Speaker 1: on the property. You guys will be glad to know.
Speaker 1: I know you guys hate like can't full canopy cover? Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm working on a barn over here. So
Speaker 1: we cut down some oaks that we milled up, and
Speaker 1: I'm amazed that you can take out one oak tree.
Speaker 1: Well how much lumber, but also how much canopy space?
Speaker 1: I mean like I've got like what feels like room
Speaker 1: for like a quarter ack or food thought after like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know one time cutting down a tree. So let's
Speaker 1: just walk up here. Hey, yeah, all right. Do you
Speaker 1: guys have these white buck eyes or Ohio buck eyes
Speaker 1: of man? I bet this property has a thousand Ohio
Speaker 1: buck eyes on it. I mean, I'm serious, they are.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a weird sight for us to see
Speaker 1: them in typically yeah bottom land, um, but it's are
Speaker 1: there wet? Is this not hillside? No, usually typically dry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there there I've been some of them out. I've got
Speaker 1: some that I really like. But so there's a lot
Speaker 1: of limes stone in this area, surprisingly really good soil.
Speaker 1: Like we have these big limestone like shelves. Like there's
Speaker 1: parts of this property where you can see, yeah, big outcropference.
Speaker 1: But if you're not, like if your shovel is not
Speaker 1: hitting you know, a five thousand pound rock, you're in
Speaker 1: pretty black dirt. Yeah, all right, tell tell you what.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting forest composition here with you know, you've
Speaker 1: got some taller Eastern red cedars thirty plus foot tall,
Speaker 1: but then you have hedge or o say George Berry,
Speaker 1: and then you have the um oak regeneration where there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of sunlight. There is a major issue
Speaker 1: that we see that will address more and more as
Speaker 1: we move up through here. Can I guess what bush
Speaker 1: honeysucker that's the place is full of it? And and
Speaker 1: how far are you from Flattville? So us off the
Speaker 1: understanding Kansas City, St. Louis, these big metropolis areas in Illinois, Ohio. God,
Speaker 1: you can just see it like spreading like a virus.
Speaker 1: So people don't say the coronavirus. Did anybody we are
Speaker 1: staying pretty close to each other, did uh? Did they
Speaker 1: bring that in for what? Ornamental? So a lot of
Speaker 1: our No, no, but it's got tons of berries and
Speaker 1: birds eat the berries and then they carry those berries
Speaker 1: away poop mount woof, and you can just see it
Speaker 1: just it goes from residential areas out to the rural areas.
Speaker 1: So and what you see like with these tree species,
Speaker 1: a lot of them are some of the first ones
Speaker 1: from a tree species standpoint to come back after something
Speaker 1: was open walnut, honey, locusts hedge, eastern red ceatar, and
Speaker 1: per simmon in this point in the country. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what you typically see come back from that first generation
Speaker 1: forest would have been have been definitely definitely this was
Speaker 1: open probably. I would like to honestly go back in
Speaker 1: Google Earth and see or see what the sight would
Speaker 1: register as. But this was way back when very open.
Speaker 1: Now close all secondary growth, so you know, go back
Speaker 1: presettlement most likely glades, savannahs, open landscape because we're right
Speaker 1: at that transition. You would have had that, you know,
Speaker 1: but your south, your south slopes would still have raging
Speaker 1: fires going up on them and so they would be
Speaker 1: more open south and so then once fire was removed,
Speaker 1: then it started to you saw the tree species probably
Speaker 1: transition over from the north and east slopes or areas
Speaker 1: where fire wasn't as severe, so you would have um
Speaker 1: the o' kickry transition more on the south and the
Speaker 1: west facing slopes. But then when started getting logged out.
Speaker 1: Here we are now where at some point it was
Speaker 1: probably logged out, and then you have these tree species
Speaker 1: that are here. Now do you think it would be
Speaker 1: safe to say that this was probably logged like in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties or something, because there are some big oaks,
Speaker 1: like like we're looking at a start left here, there's
Speaker 1: a big hole in the campy where I cut down
Speaker 1: one of my better oaks on this property for that barn. Sure,
Speaker 1: And I mean we we counted the rings back on
Speaker 1: that oak um, you know, like from just right on
Speaker 1: the ground, and it was eight plus. Yeah, we kind
Speaker 1: of it was. It was I think a northern red oak.
Speaker 1: It was definitely red oak, but it could have been
Speaker 1: a spotted oak. Some people from spotted oaks. All right,
Speaker 1: probably a northern red oak. Let's keep walking up there, um,
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't say that a lot of these other
Speaker 1: that's amazing. How fastened some of the cedars growing, how
Speaker 1: big and quick get Yeah, you nailed it, man, chink
Speaker 1: a lot of chicka pin oak here, Like down two
Speaker 1: hours south of here, you can't find a chinckapin oak.
Speaker 1: I mean it's not as rocky down there, probably is it.
Speaker 1: Maybe you know, like on the other side of the
Speaker 1: Arkansas River down the wash toss like, you can't find
Speaker 1: a chicken pan oak. This place wants to have chicken
Speaker 1: pin oaks more than standard white oaks because of all
Speaker 1: the you know we see at the site of chicken
Speaker 1: pin oaks on bluffs creeks so rocky. Yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: that's another sign that hey, this is or once was
Speaker 1: very open, glady like. So right over here is where
Speaker 1: I cut down a boat dark. There was a boat
Speaker 1: dark right there that was probably twenty two at the
Speaker 1: base and was straight as an arrow, which is unusual,
Speaker 1: and it was I guess was because canopy was already
Speaker 1: around it, and so it just had the same thing
Speaker 1: that you see with a lot of the seaters. Even
Speaker 1: some of the heirs Simmons in here, they're typically straight,
Speaker 1: but I mean they're big simmons on the cherry over there.
Speaker 1: That's very straight. You can get the leaning to that
Speaker 1: seat right there. Man, I'm surprised you didn't it. Man,
Speaker 1: I would have cut that I was going to. But
Speaker 1: it's this is like my trail, so you know, we
Speaker 1: kind of gotta keep that one. But like, see here's
Speaker 1: a big, big red oak, big nice red oak right there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is like when we look here, it's it's a
Speaker 1: it's it's diverse, which is great. You have some chink
Speaker 1: a pins. But then like you look up here and
Speaker 1: you've got per simmons which are tall and straight, and
Speaker 1: that tells you that it was open. It was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's another bit of black locust right there. There's a
Speaker 1: honey locust just down below us. Again, those are some
Speaker 1: of the first ones that will come back. Every farmer
Speaker 1: deals with black locus, honeylocus coming in pastures well, because
Speaker 1: that's the first thing that comes back in an opening
Speaker 1: to make it in transition. Here, here's a good case
Speaker 1: study right here. So when we bought this place, the
Speaker 1: first thing I did was I cleared order acre food plot.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's what you're that's exactly what you're supposed
Speaker 1: to do. So this was woods where we're going right now.
Speaker 1: This was all woods and I'm gonna tell you a
Speaker 1: tragic Okay, I'm gonna tell you a story of triumph
Speaker 1: of the white tail hunter. But then I'm also going
Speaker 1: to tell you the same story in the same story,
Speaker 1: a story of tragedy. Built this food plot, dug out
Speaker 1: the stumps. You know, you could probably shoot forty yards
Speaker 1: across this and uh, let's go, let's way through all this.
Speaker 1: You're probably good. You're probably good. Got it all probably
Speaker 1: is easy to say, but we still have a two
Speaker 1: hour drive. Good thing we didn't use Kolby's tick repellent chapstick. Okay.
Speaker 1: So this was in two thousand five. I cleared a
Speaker 1: lane so from my house I could see this plot.
Speaker 1: It's since grown up. I saw a giant deer from
Speaker 1: my house in two thousand seven, and this the deer
Speaker 1: I ended up killing that, that big, big deer that's
Speaker 1: in there. This field was a beautiful clover field. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is pretty a clover food plot as you've ever seen.
Speaker 1: The deer were hitting it well, So that's the victory, okay.
Speaker 1: And what I was shocked with at the time was
Speaker 1: that this was not the kind of place I wanted
Speaker 1: a deer hunt. I mean, to me, deer hunting was
Speaker 1: like going to some wild place, and here in my
Speaker 1: backyard I had the suburban, pretty suburban backyard had these deer.
Speaker 1: But the reason I had these deer is because the
Speaker 1: forty acres north of me was uninhabited. I killed two
Speaker 1: real nice deer out of this food plot. And then
Speaker 1: a guy bought that place who was a big deer
Speaker 1: hunter and totally changed the deer hunting. What's well, he
Speaker 1: just lived there. He just bought the land and was
Speaker 1: a deer hunter, and more power to him. He just
Speaker 1: started bringing in family and they killed deer, and he
Speaker 1: actually killed a giant deer on that place. So do
Speaker 1: you see the status my food plot? How dilapidated it is?
Speaker 1: Lost interest in hunting here? After all, the potential for
Speaker 1: big deer was pretty much gone. So anyway, this has
Speaker 1: been grown up for seven years. So if on this
Speaker 1: small property this opening, what would be most beneficial for
Speaker 1: me to attract wildlife? Here? To do with this piece
Speaker 1: of property? At one time I would say this was
Speaker 1: close to a quarter acre. So I guess a big
Speaker 1: question would be what are the this is the same
Speaker 1: questions we always ask our clients want to kill a deer,
Speaker 1: all right, so we want to kill a deer, just
Speaker 1: any dere or a mature four and a half for
Speaker 1: older buck, I'd like a three and one quarter. So
Speaker 1: then we got to look at the neighborhood and say,
Speaker 1: what's the limited resource here? Um? Is there food plots?
Speaker 1: Most just like you told the story, Yeah, their food
Speaker 1: plots in the area. People are feeding deer. Okay, so
Speaker 1: that's right. Our saw out that different from Texas, right,
Speaker 1: just more trees, but we still have good you could
Speaker 1: and so uh, you know, feeding is a big thing.
Speaker 1: So you're not gonna be able unless you want to
Speaker 1: spend a fortune to outbate your neighbor most likely. So okay,
Speaker 1: what is something else? And this is where a lot
Speaker 1: of people aren't doing this? But what happens to a
Speaker 1: deer that gets pressure during the fall? He starts trying
Speaker 1: to hold up get thicker cover. He's just trying to survive,
Speaker 1: and that comes in the form of thickets, the best
Speaker 1: cover that's also secure. So it's not getting he's not
Speaker 1: even if you have the thickest area in the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: if you walk through it every day, they're not going
Speaker 1: to utilize it like they would. So if you could
Speaker 1: turn in these thick pockets or use um just young
Speaker 1: forest restoration, cut some timber let, some thickets, some stump
Speaker 1: sprouts grow up, that's where hinge cutting is come in
Speaker 1: really popular. If you do a mix, you can provide
Speaker 1: a secure area for the d here, especially a maturity
Speaker 1: or who's keying in on a pressure a lot more
Speaker 1: than a dough and a with a with a button
Speaker 1: buck behind her that's coming into your yard every day.
Speaker 1: So I would much prefer if if this is an
Speaker 1: area we're in a state that you can bait, I
Speaker 1: would much prefer to have quality cover then a quality
Speaker 1: food plug. Well, there's food out there, as we're saying
Speaker 1: through bait that's super easy to get to. It's always out.
Speaker 1: What if I want to be cool and have a
Speaker 1: food plot I can put on Instagram? What'd you doing that?
Speaker 1: I think? I think clearly I don't property. You really
Speaker 1: need to take in the neighborhood and what those other
Speaker 1: resources are or aren't identify that limited resource here and
Speaker 1: what we find in most places it is not only
Speaker 1: just good cover, but suit the secure cover and then
Speaker 1: hunt that because The thing is, it doesn't take reset
Speaker 1: it get the cool season out. Well, I mean okay,
Speaker 1: but but you're not saying come back in here and
Speaker 1: plant more clover. You could if you want to, and
Speaker 1: then pick a spot just hundred yards that way or
Speaker 1: whichever way the property lays, and get over there and
Speaker 1: then cut into young forest pocket. It may be a
Speaker 1: half acre where you just go in kind of do
Speaker 1: what you did here, but lead the tops where they lay,
Speaker 1: just cut them and and that creates. Now you have
Speaker 1: pretty good food. You could have your feed er if
Speaker 1: you want, so you've got a destination feeding area. But
Speaker 1: then you have a couple of areas if you do them.
Speaker 1: Una always spied something. What is that? What does it
Speaker 1: look like? Uh? We kind of looks like weak. So
Speaker 1: it's a cool season grass. Its native but in a
Speaker 1: practical sense a bottle brush right, bottle brush grass, that
Speaker 1: is what it is. That's that's a pretty common that's
Speaker 1: a cool see you'll find um. And of course so
Speaker 1: I think elm cut elms. Yeah, they're not doing any good,
Speaker 1: are they? Well? When they're you know, above the reach
Speaker 1: of a deer. But elm is one of the species
Speaker 1: American elm. When you cut it, and it regenerates highly
Speaker 1: palatable foods, and deer will go to that woody browse
Speaker 1: over other species such a you know, another one is
Speaker 1: flowering dogwood. Um, maples. There's a couple of maples and
Speaker 1: stuff therough here. Cut those things that's additional foods or
Speaker 1: greenbriers growing everywhere, encouraged that type of native forest to grow.
Speaker 1: So we've worked now we created Land of Legacy in
Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen, and we've worked in twenty seven states
Speaker 1: across the country. Um, mainly about white tail deer. And
Speaker 1: there's only a few tree species that we would say
Speaker 1: we find deer highly selecting to eat the leaves. And
Speaker 1: one of those probably the most popular, boat arc really crazy.
Speaker 1: It doesn't look like a leaf that a deer with eat.
Speaker 1: It looks waxy, leathery, thick, but they just devour it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll be doing it. And so you may not notice
Speaker 1: it because you have an abundance of it around here.
Speaker 1: And and this is a pretty thick you know, you
Speaker 1: have a lot of undergrowth. Yeah, unfortunately it's getting the
Speaker 1: bush in bush honeysuckle. But um, yeah, you know another
Speaker 1: tree that I've I've seen in this part of the
Speaker 1: world deer selecting for their leaves is um is mulberry.
Speaker 1: That's the other one that at one time was watching
Speaker 1: the dough feeding on acorns. It was it was in
Speaker 1: the fall, the leaves returning, and I was sitting right
Speaker 1: under this big, big mulberry and one of those you know,
Speaker 1: the leaves are like five six inches across sometimes and
Speaker 1: this big leaf like you know, we kind of swoon
Speaker 1: down to the ground and landed and that no walked
Speaker 1: like thirty yards to pick that leaf. This and but
Speaker 1: that's just observation though. In a tree stand and just
Speaker 1: being out with nature, you see those things, and that
Speaker 1: is obviously a preference. Right key into those preferences and
Speaker 1: offer those types or or make that food available here
Speaker 1: on the property where it's not being elsewhere that forty
Speaker 1: acres at the guy bought, he's not gonna go in
Speaker 1: there and do that kind of stuff. Diverse by your property,
Speaker 1: make it different by knowing what they like, what they're
Speaker 1: attracted to, and make it where it's accessible to him.
Speaker 1: Anybody who's hunted national forest is probably ran into clear
Speaker 1: cuts before and gone. Well, it seems like those deer
Speaker 1: really like that clear cut. But those could be fifty
Speaker 1: acre clear cuts. We're talking half acre to an acre
Speaker 1: to where it really congregates deer travel patterns, and so
Speaker 1: it's like, well, there's still beneficial. Now, the same number
Speaker 1: of deer wouldn't use that. That us a two acre
Speaker 1: clear cut, but the deer in this area will certainly
Speaker 1: key in on that and start using that. Summer tanagers
Speaker 1: still saying, all right, we're at the Bare Honey Magazine
Speaker 1: global headquarters. We just went on a little tour nature walk,
Speaker 1: nature walk. Yeah, so I've got Matt Die Adam Keith,
Speaker 1: Colby moorehead with global headquarters. Um Man, thank you guys
Speaker 1: for driving down here. I appreciate it absolutely. So you
Speaker 1: guys are fellow Ozarker's that's right. So we're like, uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so so you're like pretty much in your home turf here,
Speaker 1: so you're about two hours away from from where we
Speaker 1: are here. I'm born and raised Ozarkian, Matt semi adopted.
Speaker 1: I guess that's just now home. You know, we've been
Speaker 1: talking about a couple of times on the podcast. We've
Speaker 1: been talking about tribalism and how that's bad. So I'm
Speaker 1: trying to reframe my mind to not say like us
Speaker 1: and them like ozark ER's like versus the world. You know,
Speaker 1: that's kind of my world view. Is that what's coming
Speaker 1: down to You're on the border, moved here from Dallas.
Speaker 1: He's doing really good. He's uh, he's kind of picking up.
Speaker 1: You know. So you said us and them and Matt
Speaker 1: and I are we those well yeah, undetermined those guys
Speaker 1: from from the state line. Yeah, you know what. What
Speaker 1: what is funny though, is that between here and there,
Speaker 1: between like you know, our northwest Arkansas and Missouri, people
Speaker 1: are really confused whether where the South starts. Absolutely because
Speaker 1: to me, southern Missouri exhibits the characteristics of an upland
Speaker 1: southern culture. Yeah okay, uh so upland southern. You know,
Speaker 1: like when you when you hear the words southern and
Speaker 1: here we go again travelism. Nope, we're just talking about
Speaker 1: what we see. We're just a messenger here, observation. Now,
Speaker 1: like you know, like southern culture you would typically associate
Speaker 1: with agriculture, swampland like like, and so that's not what
Speaker 1: this is at all. No. Um, but I heard a
Speaker 1: phrase actually pretty recently about Upland Southern culture, which would
Speaker 1: be the Ozarks and the Highland Appalachian region. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, because I came from the east and so
Speaker 1: I had a lot of experience Appalachia. And it's like
Speaker 1: this compare and contrast. I have both experiences, like I
Speaker 1: put almost them together. That's got my heritage, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm scotch Irish. And so when when we were
Speaker 1: I guess my ancestors were brought over um it was
Speaker 1: and they and then they started taking homesteading or taking
Speaker 1: up um home places. It was. It was the Appalachia's
Speaker 1: West Virginia and Virginia. And then whenever that started to
Speaker 1: I guess when they started to move um and I
Speaker 1: guess with a little bit of history, Uh, when they
Speaker 1: ran out of money, then they moved on to those arcs.
Speaker 1: Because it was so much like West Virginia Virginia. I
Speaker 1: would think that, you know, in my mindset, if if
Speaker 1: it didn't work back there, I wouldn't move to some
Speaker 1: place that looks very similar and again again. But they
Speaker 1: did so here. That's why the Ozarks are one of
Speaker 1: the poorest places in the country because they tried it
Speaker 1: again here and it didn't work again. You just stop
Speaker 1: in Kentucky or Tennessee. I read just the other day
Speaker 1: that um, at one time in the Ozarks of Arkansas,
Speaker 1: seventy percent of the settlers were from Mid Tennessee Middle Tennessee.
Speaker 1: So we have we had a ton of overlap with
Speaker 1: culture between Middle Tennessee and in Eastern Tennessee as well.
Speaker 1: But like that was like the travel route, and you
Speaker 1: can see how patterns started to develop in communities because
Speaker 1: you know, there would be these communities that formed and
Speaker 1: then they're like, hey, Jim and Sue moved to Arkansas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hear there's this, and that there and this, Like constantly,
Speaker 1: these people were moving based upon a promise of a
Speaker 1: better It's a cattleman's paradise. Uh no. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: good to have you guys here. Man. So, you guys
Speaker 1: have a business called landing Legacy, and landing legacy is
Speaker 1: a lot of different things. Tell me what land of
Speaker 1: legacy is. How much time do we have? So give
Speaker 1: a short version and then we'll get into the long version.
Speaker 1: The short version of so were natural Resource Management land
Speaker 1: consulting from So we work with landowners across the country
Speaker 1: to restore landscapes, to offer quality, healthy landscapes for the
Speaker 1: wildlife that lived there. Um. Sometimes we get into cattle
Speaker 1: multi use properties where we're trying to integrate crop rotations,
Speaker 1: cattle rotations with with more productive wildlife populations. Yeah, now
Speaker 1: are are you guys? I know you're very well versed
Speaker 1: in biology. What's your educational background in So I have
Speaker 1: a degree in biology with the concentration wildlife management and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm an agriculture animal science, So I come from
Speaker 1: the agg world. But have you know I was fortunate
Speaker 1: enough to have a family farm that was cattle operation,
Speaker 1: but was really passionate about hunting. So my brother and I, um,
Speaker 1: we just kind of self taught school of hard knocks
Speaker 1: of cutting trees that really attracted wildlife, burning that really
Speaker 1: helps the wildlife. Things like that. It sounds like you
Speaker 1: have a really complicated process here. Cut trees attracted wildlife,
Speaker 1: burn attracted wildlife, like caveman stuff pretty much. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like what was nature? You know, cave may in style,
Speaker 1: Like I I call it caveman Um thought process. I
Speaker 1: was making a joke and now you're like, I'm dead serious,
Speaker 1: Like because you know, first caveman when he saw fire
Speaker 1: for the first time, he said fire good. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you build the bedding gear will come. Essentially you
Speaker 1: can boil land management down to disturbances. Fire and cutting
Speaker 1: trees are is a type of disturbance. Cattle grazing as
Speaker 1: a type of disturbance. So as many articles and stuff
Speaker 1: as you can read about land management and this and that,
Speaker 1: you can quickly complicate things. But essentially, man, you've got
Speaker 1: a lot of disturbances on properties, you're probably gonna have
Speaker 1: quite a bit of wildlife. Yeah, but isn't that the
Speaker 1: history of North American continent? Like we often have this
Speaker 1: image that pre European settlement the continent was just like
Speaker 1: full of wildlife. And what I've been read in in
Speaker 1: uh a book by Brooks Blevins we had Brooks Blevins
Speaker 1: on the podcast a while back, is that there was
Speaker 1: a there was a period of time potentially thousands of
Speaker 1: years when much of the Ozarks were uninhabited year round
Speaker 1: by Native Americans. Yeah, so there was there was year
Speaker 1: round colonization by Native Americans. Well, let me back up
Speaker 1: twelve thousand years ago as the first human evidence in
Speaker 1: the Ozarks for you know, that's that's when the people
Speaker 1: first got here. Yea, they stayed here year round for
Speaker 1: like a couple of thousand years they were here and
Speaker 1: then for whatever reason, permanent settlement retreated, and then there
Speaker 1: were several thousand years and that was part of the
Speaker 1: reason the Ozarks were so uh uh, such a good
Speaker 1: place to settle in the seventeen hundreds, and like when
Speaker 1: French trappers and stuff, the French were the ones that
Speaker 1: settled all these places, named all these places. It's really
Speaker 1: a shame tribalism. I love, I love the French um
Speaker 1: the and when they got here, there were no year
Speaker 1: round native tribes here, and the O s age were
Speaker 1: the main ones that were using this and they would
Speaker 1: seasonally hunt this and uh So, anyway, I can't remember
Speaker 1: exactly why I started telling that story, something about disturbances maybeces.
Speaker 1: So we had we had this idea that that there
Speaker 1: was all this wildlife here. But when the Native Americans
Speaker 1: weren't here those several thousand years, where there weren't as
Speaker 1: much human disturbances, primarily by fire, wildlife populations were lower.
Speaker 1: And I think populations too. When you read the journals
Speaker 1: of some of the early exploration, they'll talk a lot
Speaker 1: about wildlife and in the vast quantities that were there
Speaker 1: but you also have to understand two when you look
Speaker 1: back and and kind of study that is that populations
Speaker 1: fluctuated pretty significantly, like if you had really severe winners
Speaker 1: a couple of years in a row, populations were lower
Speaker 1: or major drought, and or you had a influx of
Speaker 1: prey population and then at some point following that as
Speaker 1: an influx of predator population, so the prey species lowered,
Speaker 1: and once it lowered to a certain amount, pray species
Speaker 1: are predator species moved on or or starved. And so
Speaker 1: you know, depending on when you were here. And we
Speaker 1: talk a lot so much about native landscapes, that's a
Speaker 1: big part of our business. But that's where you know,
Speaker 1: the question is, well what do we call a native
Speaker 1: what time frame? And we go for what's achievable. Well,
Speaker 1: you know that seventeen hundred just pre European settlement, because
Speaker 1: we can't go back and bring animals that have gone extinct,
Speaker 1: like we can go that's not in Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: So we really try to manage for that native presettling.
Speaker 1: And we know that it was through the settlers that
Speaker 1: it was an abundant landscape with lots of wildlife, with
Speaker 1: lots of diversity, fantastic mixtures of different plant communities from
Speaker 1: hard mass producing trees all the way down to you know,
Speaker 1: grasses both cool and warm season stuff. Like, they's everything
Speaker 1: here growing in the landscape. So if that was some
Speaker 1: of the best times, well, let's restore it, let's get
Speaker 1: it back. Or or you read those journals. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody's probably at some point stumbled upon or read a
Speaker 1: portion of Lewis and Clark journals. But they talk a
Speaker 1: lot about the species that they find or used for
Speaker 1: medicinal purposes, and it's like, oh, yeah, we got that.
Speaker 1: We don't have a lot of it anymore, but it's
Speaker 1: still here. Um. And so that's always been really really
Speaker 1: cool for me to look back in history and study
Speaker 1: those cabas Davaca. Have you ever Have you ever read
Speaker 1: that book? I have not? Um, it's right, really you
Speaker 1: should you you you should read the book. It's it's
Speaker 1: the first journal of the first European that traveled across
Speaker 1: the southern United States. Uh fifteen something is that the
Speaker 1: day Vaca? Uh that that was his name. He was,
Speaker 1: he was a Spanish guy, and uh, incredible book. Um.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna backtrack on myself because I think I
Speaker 1: got it mixed up. When the when the Native Americans
Speaker 1: were gone, there was wildlife populations increased. When they were
Speaker 1: here year round, they decreased, but the fire suppression and
Speaker 1: the stuff that they did was was obviously really beneficial
Speaker 1: to him. And so the whole point of a lot
Speaker 1: of people that talk about that Cabaza day Vaca book
Speaker 1: by Sickly, he went all the way through He started
Speaker 1: in Florida and went all the way to South Texas
Speaker 1: basically all so he was burning up incredible, especially with
Speaker 1: the amount of swamps that we had. Yes, and and
Speaker 1: basically he they saw very little big megafauna like they
Speaker 1: talked about deer. They talked about seeing Native tribes that
Speaker 1: had some puma mountain lion decor so, you know they
Speaker 1: were mountain lions, but they never killed one. They never
Speaker 1: talked about bear. Yeah, it was it was pretty it
Speaker 1: was pretty incredible. But but the whole point of it
Speaker 1: was is that there there these fluctuations and we would
Speaker 1: you know, you would think it would just be this
Speaker 1: like zoo, you know, in fifteen I can't remember exactly
Speaker 1: when the book was written, but incredible book. Wow, it
Speaker 1: was incredible and thinking, you know, one thing he said
Speaker 1: there kind of stirs a comment for me is when
Speaker 1: the when the Native Americans who were here, there wasn't
Speaker 1: as many animals because they were obviously killing them and
Speaker 1: eating them and and putting pressure so driving populations away. Um.
Speaker 1: But then you think a lot about well, what was
Speaker 1: probably occurring if there was no hunting, well, populations grew,
Speaker 1: they probably started eating a lot more. We see this
Speaker 1: all the time in our work in present day of
Speaker 1: deer populations exploding, people not managing them. Um. Therefore young
Speaker 1: forest uh and woody brows and plant communities are are
Speaker 1: over eaten um to where then you have winter kills. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you get a really bad winter, there's no food.
Speaker 1: So then nature then's the herd in a very brutal
Speaker 1: way compared to the way we should be doing it.
Speaker 1: And that's not documented because people weren't there, so you're
Speaker 1: just you're left to assume, like, well that's the way
Speaker 1: populations work. Um. Yeah, it's crazy, and there wasn't that
Speaker 1: uh suburban area impacting all of this at the same time,
Speaker 1: like you know, isolization of of um populations where they
Speaker 1: can't move and micrate like buffalo. Gosh, imagine the range
Speaker 1: on those things back then. Yeah, well yeah, there were
Speaker 1: there were buffalo all the way down into Arkansas, all
Speaker 1: through the Ozarks and Missouri. And that's relevant to you
Speaker 1: guys because what you guys, what I hear you guys
Speaker 1: talking about a lot is restoration of native landscapes. So
Speaker 1: I think probably two two people that are paying quite
Speaker 1: a bit of attention, like they recognize that, like invasive
Speaker 1: species are a big problem inside of our landscapes. Um.
Speaker 1: I would you say, I feel like sometimes when we
Speaker 1: talk invasive species, that we could we could take the
Speaker 1: people in this country that are really aware of it
Speaker 1: and fill up this room. Um. It seems like there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of people that are aware of what's
Speaker 1: going on around. Well, talk to me about that, because
Speaker 1: I hear you guys talk about that a ton and
Speaker 1: and and with my background too, I mean, I recognize
Speaker 1: invasive species and sometimes we have this love hate relationship,
Speaker 1: like Japanese honeysuckle. Like I grew up killing deer on
Speaker 1: Japanese honeysuckle in January and February down public lands South
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. I never was that great at it, but
Speaker 1: my dad was better. So like honey stuckle to us
Speaker 1: is like sweet in it, but but we also know
Speaker 1: the overall long term benefits of that are yeah, low
Speaker 1: compared to what you could have. So talk to me
Speaker 1: about invasive species. Yeah, you know that's something that you
Speaker 1: say that, Um, it's it's in our position, um, and
Speaker 1: in our what we promote is uh, you know, it
Speaker 1: can Obviously we've had a we've got to work with
Speaker 1: a lot of landowners. But if we go down south
Speaker 1: and we're like invasive species, we gotta get rid of
Speaker 1: Japanese honeysuckle, and a deer hunter down there who's been
Speaker 1: making his life finding patches of he's like, get out
Speaker 1: of here. You guys don't know how to grow deer
Speaker 1: that they're eating the honeysuckle. Well, then we go up
Speaker 1: north and it's like, uh, you know, we gotta get
Speaker 1: rid of the autumn olive, and they're like, that's where
Speaker 1: all the deer are. You guys are foolish, Like, But
Speaker 1: when it comes to longevity and the actual health of
Speaker 1: animal populations that's actually sustainable and can continue, we have
Speaker 1: to monitor our invasive species. And so why why are
Speaker 1: there's so many invasive species that people are still connected
Speaker 1: to for instance, Uh, eastern red cedar around here. Like
Speaker 1: I know you guys like that's a curse word. Well
Speaker 1: I should say that. Yeah, uh, invasive species, that's not invasive.
Speaker 1: That's a native species, native species with an aggressive tendency.
Speaker 1: So if you disturb the landscape, it's gonna pop up,
Speaker 1: or don't burn or improper grazing management things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's the non native side, and then there are
Speaker 1: just invasive species that I have that tendency to just grow, grow,
Speaker 1: grow without that disturbance. So because they don't have a
Speaker 1: natural predator. And so like you take like a beaver
Speaker 1: eating like a cedar tree eating beaver, like like focuses, insects,
Speaker 1: things like that that are controlling that species. Those don't
Speaker 1: usually make the whatever transition from whether the species came
Speaker 1: from Asia, Europe, whatever. Those natural predators are left. But
Speaker 1: this plant is here and now it can grow seemingly uncontrolled,
Speaker 1: very aggressive because that predator is not here present in
Speaker 1: this landscape. Take common milkweed, which any deer hunters probably
Speaker 1: at some point use common milkweed to be a wind indicator.
Speaker 1: It's a native species here, but if you notice some
Speaker 1: years you can monitor common milkweed and be like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's a couple of bugs that are all over that,
Speaker 1: and it started to make seed pods. And those seed
Speaker 1: pods kind of just shriveled up and it didn't make seed.
Speaker 1: It didn't appear like those little black and orange sometimes
Speaker 1: solid black, but little aphids, um, little insect that are
Speaker 1: all over them. In some years you're like, man, that
Speaker 1: if it took all the milkweed, that something happened. Um.
Speaker 1: But then other years you're like, man, I got a
Speaker 1: ton of milkweed. But then it's like as you see
Speaker 1: that population increased and you see the insects come in um,
Speaker 1: and it just looks a little sick. But you take
Speaker 1: common milkweed and then go to Asia where it is
Speaker 1: an invasive species on there in their part of the world,
Speaker 1: and the leaves are all perfect. It makes seed because
Speaker 1: there is no natural predator, nothing to really kind of
Speaker 1: keep it at bay. And that's just one example. There's
Speaker 1: been so many times on my farm where I've been
Speaker 1: fighting invasive species, and through whether it's cutting or herbicide use,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, it's just like, oh my goodness, is
Speaker 1: this a never ending battle? Because it sure feels like
Speaker 1: that and you kind of have that thought process, is
Speaker 1: there somebody where I'm sitting here fighting a species from Asia?
Speaker 1: Is there's somebody in Asia fighting a species and they
Speaker 1: are like common ragweed, calmon milkweed, those are the common
Speaker 1: invasive species. And so at least we do have that
Speaker 1: to cheer about. It's a fair trade. But like going
Speaker 1: back to that common of like down south, yeah, people
Speaker 1: are promoting and hunting over and and like Japanese honey
Speaker 1: cycle up north, a lot of people are loving the autumolive.
Speaker 1: But it's like what happens like that, that's such a
Speaker 1: small time frame to put yourself in of you going
Speaker 1: to the woods observing maybe a deer walking out of
Speaker 1: an automn alive thicket, but that same acre. What happens
Speaker 1: if you remove that automolive and you replace it with
Speaker 1: a native shrub, Now that offers both cover the same
Speaker 1: quality cover and then forage on top of that. Now
Speaker 1: you just improved acre for the species here for the
Speaker 1: time frame. So I understand what you're saying. So like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like Japanese honey suckle would be benefit. I mean, there
Speaker 1: aren't browsing Japanese honey suckle that much when there's better
Speaker 1: stuff available, they are browsing it at the peak stress periods,
Speaker 1: the only thing that's green right that time. And so
Speaker 1: we would come in without knowledge and go, well, Japanese, honey, suckle.
Speaker 1: The only reason these deer survived, man mindset. Remember I said, okay, man, fire, good,
Speaker 1: more fire. It's like, oh, Japanese honey suckle good Japanese,
Speaker 1: my dear. But if you took that what I what
Speaker 1: I'm hearing you say, Matt, is if you took that
Speaker 1: five acres and improved it with a native vegetation, that
Speaker 1: would become valuable year round for the deer. They may
Speaker 1: not all thirty deer on your you know, property, may
Speaker 1: not be in that one half acre, and that's what
Speaker 1: that's the that's that's then the perception that this is valuable. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you might spread them out a little bit. We have
Speaker 1: to look at and we've fight this quite a bit,
Speaker 1: but we have to look at population and landscape level,
Speaker 1: not just we did it here on your property, not
Speaker 1: just your seven acres or not just your forty acres.
Speaker 1: We gotta look at like the whole neighborhood and say,
Speaker 1: what's what does this population this, dear, population need, not
Speaker 1: that individual target buck, Like, what what does he need?
Speaker 1: Does he need this food plot? I don't know. We
Speaker 1: gotta look at the whole landscape and say we got
Speaker 1: to improve it. So if it means taking away Japanese
Speaker 1: honda cuckle from this big patch and improving it, well
Speaker 1: that's what we need to do. How many native species
Speaker 1: invasive species would be? Like if you just like on
Speaker 1: my property, would you say the species are invasive? Mm hmm,
Speaker 1: I really on your property, on any property. I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to get it out because it varies so greatly,
Speaker 1: so it depends on the For here, I really only
Speaker 1: my mind probably only wraps around but chiney cuckle. There's
Speaker 1: multi floor rose. Yeah, I guess that's best rescue, which
Speaker 1: I don't know if I would technically call it an
Speaker 1: invasive um. Some people, You know, if you say invasive
Speaker 1: around a bunch of cattle guys and say fescue, you
Speaker 1: probably get you're not walking your face re structured. Um.
Speaker 1: But now, but I mean, I guess the answer to
Speaker 1: your question, Yeah, it's a non native species and for
Speaker 1: these purposes of what I mean, it didn't come from here,
Speaker 1: you know, correct? Yeah, the blow for the cattlemanvescue is
Speaker 1: terrible if we're looking at it from a wildlife stand
Speaker 1: and it's really not great if we look at it
Speaker 1: from a cattle standpoint. It's terrible because we drove through
Speaker 1: miles and miles of brown, yellowish colored fields. It's a
Speaker 1: cool season grass trying to survive the summer heat. It
Speaker 1: doesn't stand a chance. It's been hot and dry, um
Speaker 1: and so as on average. I'll play your game with
Speaker 1: the question I get us when it comes to overall
Speaker 1: working all these properties across the country, UM and trying
Speaker 1: to monitor uh, the amount of let's just say, non
Speaker 1: native versus invasive invasive. It would probably be mind blowing
Speaker 1: for a lot of people to realize how much of
Speaker 1: their property is colonized by a non native species, whether
Speaker 1: it be uh smooth brome reads, canary, tall fescue. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just listening some of our the grasses um or
Speaker 1: bermuda grass down south or bahaa grass um. And then
Speaker 1: you go into the shrubs autumala bush, honeysuckle, uh, Chinese
Speaker 1: privet um. Then you can go into trees, yeah, vines,
Speaker 1: English ivy, oriental, bittersweet. I mean, the list goes on
Speaker 1: and on and on from thesteria Vinco Vinca minor. Do
Speaker 1: y'all see that that sounds familiar? What's the common name?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, may not minor, maybe Vinca major
Speaker 1: that I've got some And I think it was a
Speaker 1: landscape cover cross that I see in the woods. You're
Speaker 1: a landscaping guy, so yeah, there you know how awful
Speaker 1: it is in the in the landscaping company. Barberry. That's
Speaker 1: a bastall one of those that y'all posted that was
Speaker 1: out in the woods. Yeah, Crimson, Crimson, red Barberry or
Speaker 1: something like dwarf Barberry is a big one. Like we
Speaker 1: drove by trying to remember where I saw it. It
Speaker 1: was a new church right up to where we're at,
Speaker 1: um that they had just built the church during all
Speaker 1: this COVID nineteen stuff. And then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you see out in front and there's like twenty Barberry
Speaker 1: trees are shrubs planted, and I'm like, what, how, why
Speaker 1: do we have to repeat history? It's a popular landscape plant.
Speaker 1: You ever seen one outside of the landscape bed though?
Speaker 1: And here's the thing. This is where because if you look,
Speaker 1: it was first introduced and using landscaping in the East Coast,
Speaker 1: so you have to have a like a seed source,
Speaker 1: and so out there that's where you have it. A
Speaker 1: lot here is just starting to be used in landscaping
Speaker 1: on a on a pretty regular basis. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I hate to look in our magic eight ball and say,
Speaker 1: what's the future looked like, but I would imagine based
Speaker 1: on the planting rate that we're starting to see it
Speaker 1: on the landscape in residential and commercial properties will probably
Speaker 1: start seeing it. For instance, For as an example, the
Speaker 1: one of the one of the worst um infestations I've
Speaker 1: seen of Japanese barbary specifically was right on the New
Speaker 1: York Pennsylvania border. We're talking the middle of nowhere. I
Speaker 1: mean small, small, small town, not a big intersection, traffic area,
Speaker 1: not and we're middle of four acres. It's everywhere through
Speaker 1: the timber. How did it get here? It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: because it's there. But yeah, absolutely, and we're again middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere, north central Pennsylvanias you've worked other properties in
Speaker 1: central Pennsylvania that just crazy infested. It's almost like you know,
Speaker 1: when you go to the beach with a family and
Speaker 1: you head home they're saying, still everywhere, and then months
Speaker 1: later you're still at your house, states and states away
Speaker 1: and you still find that sand. It's like the seed source,
Speaker 1: like you know, it has to trickle out and rush
Speaker 1: talking equipment for uh skidders, dozers. It travels on that stuff. Boots,
Speaker 1: you know, there's like a lot of these stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: we'll stick to animals high and for said they said
Speaker 1: they worked at twenty seven states since we washed the
Speaker 1: bower washer. Boy always make the w It's like we
Speaker 1: always make that joke. You go out west to hunt elk.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, let's make sure we wash our boots off.
Speaker 1: I don't want to bring you that stuff back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably not a joke. But it's the amount of
Speaker 1: traffic that moves around this place in the country. That's
Speaker 1: how it gets moved. And you don't I mean, so
Speaker 1: the seeds, well, most of this stuff is so small.
Speaker 1: It's just think of the seed bank. I don't know
Speaker 1: a lot about the seed bank, but it's it is
Speaker 1: absolutely fascinating that you could take a chunk of soil
Speaker 1: from out in my yard that has been you know,
Speaker 1: in it was my front yard would have been a
Speaker 1: blueberry and kind of like truck farm from the forties
Speaker 1: through the sixties and maybe even seventies, and so you
Speaker 1: know it's in agriculture for around here anyway. You know,
Speaker 1: you could take a block of that soil and go
Speaker 1: planet and and probably find an incredible amount of native
Speaker 1: stuff inside of it that's been dormant in that in
Speaker 1: that ground for so long. You know what strikes me
Speaker 1: about all that's even talking about invasive species and stuff
Speaker 1: is the resiliency and the energy and the life inside
Speaker 1: of nature. I mean, it's like incredible. I mean that
Speaker 1: though could like all like they were as we are,
Speaker 1: or you go across so many areas that are like, oh,
Speaker 1: Man's that's such let's say generally poor quality habitat, like
Speaker 1: that's just bad man. But with some of the right
Speaker 1: practices and disturbances, the things that come back. It's such
Speaker 1: a short time frame. It is powerful stuff, and it's
Speaker 1: incredible to see, like there's so much life if we
Speaker 1: just let it breathe, if we just remove the bad
Speaker 1: add sunlight, get a little bit of rain. Most times
Speaker 1: it's incredible. With no fertilizer, you don't have to plant
Speaker 1: the seed. It's just like the way God designed it
Speaker 1: to just bro just to list, just just work. Like
Speaker 1: we did a on a property that we manage um
Speaker 1: right next to my family farm. It was you know,
Speaker 1: it's a west mainly west southwest facing slope and crumby
Speaker 1: timber wasn't great, you know, real rocky, very barely any
Speaker 1: plants growing in the other story not stick not not
Speaker 1: great quality. And and so we manage a lot. A
Speaker 1: lot of our landowners managed for dear that's the focus,
Speaker 1: or quail or turkeys. But if they've hired us, they've
Speaker 1: already probably gone to the holistic mindset where they're like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do anything that's detrimental to pollinators
Speaker 1: or um to my forest, to my to the water quality,
Speaker 1: make this land as healthy as it can be, generally
Speaker 1: knowing that that's going to bring in more dear or
Speaker 1: bigger deer. And so we're like, okay, this is not
Speaker 1: good for pollinators, not good for the birds. Really it's
Speaker 1: pretty much just setting idle and somebody's paying taxes on it. Um.
Speaker 1: And so what we did was we went in and
Speaker 1: we we did a logging operation. They cut some timber
Speaker 1: as much as they could find um and really the
Speaker 1: goal was to completely give it a facelift and just
Speaker 1: change it because where it's at was bad. Let's make
Speaker 1: it good. And so to real quick the direction. If
Speaker 1: you hadn't done anything, it wasn't really getting better by itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just just the cake trees we're gonna they
Speaker 1: were all too densely growing, so they were not healthy.
Speaker 1: So that made them more susceptible to disease or storm
Speaker 1: or or whatever the case may be, to where we
Speaker 1: were going to have to just wait on nature to
Speaker 1: either kill it with the disease, blow it over with
Speaker 1: a storm, some kind of disturbance, or a fire. And
Speaker 1: uh so we decided to speed that process up and
Speaker 1: do what God called us to do. Be a gamekeeper,
Speaker 1: be a land manager, be a caretaker. And so what
Speaker 1: we did was we cut trees. We opened up that canopy,
Speaker 1: and then we went back in with chainsaws cut. Because
Speaker 1: what's most timber operations, they come in it's almost like
Speaker 1: picture because most people picture a garden. You go in,
Speaker 1: you harvest your crops, your corn, your soybeans or I
Speaker 1: guess you're not growing soybeans in your garden vegetables, and
Speaker 1: then you just leave even idol and the weeds grow up. Well,
Speaker 1: then they make seed and then that's what's growing back
Speaker 1: until you start this generation of weeds. And so what
Speaker 1: we did was we cut it. Now, we we cut
Speaker 1: a lot of crop. Now we have to cut the
Speaker 1: weeds to and release the next generation of crop um.
Speaker 1: And so when we thinned it and then we started
Speaker 1: burning it, we had big blue stem growing up that
Speaker 1: had a twelve inch crown at the you know, at
Speaker 1: the base of the ground where it had been sitting
Speaker 1: there just trying to survive. One or two sprigs we
Speaker 1: may have seen on that site when it was roughly
Speaker 1: close canopy timber. Now we're talking it's full crowns six
Speaker 1: on this property. It would have been in the native range.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I hear. I hear. Big blue stem
Speaker 1: used like almost like the crown jewel of Southeastern like
Speaker 1: Southeastern land management. So so I think that there's a big,
Speaker 1: big miss like well, like most people were gonna generalize here,
Speaker 1: love to manage for deer, and so they're like, all
Speaker 1: I want is you know this CRP grass, I want
Speaker 1: switch grass, indian grass, big blue stem, want tall grass
Speaker 1: does over Here's the thing. Deer don't eat grass. So
Speaker 1: all you have then is cover. So don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: it's a native type of cover. But they're not eating it.
Speaker 1: So what are they gonna eat? I don't want to
Speaker 1: hold property. Are don't want to property dominated and just
Speaker 1: a grass, don't I mean? I know they down there
Speaker 1: in the gut and they eat some like they may
Speaker 1: eat um. You know, wheat is a is a grass.
Speaker 1: I think it's about five percent of their diet is
Speaker 1: comprised of grass, but it's not very very they're they're
Speaker 1: they're a woodland animals. What grows in woodlands typically broadlis
Speaker 1: because it's a mixture of such and so the leaf
Speaker 1: itself is is wider to capture more sunlight. Where grasses
Speaker 1: you find them in pretty much open areas where they're
Speaker 1: long and slender. When they get three sixty son, well
Speaker 1: they're gonna forage on something that is there woodland species.
Speaker 1: So if you know a lot of our I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of people, you know, the eastern decisionous forest
Speaker 1: takes up probably the majority or well, let me let
Speaker 1: me say close canopy forest would probably be the majority
Speaker 1: of the North American continent. Now yeah, yeah, okay, So
Speaker 1: so what would you in general like if if a
Speaker 1: guy had a property, just average property, cut some timber,
Speaker 1: let some sunlight get down to the forest floor. What
Speaker 1: else would you tell him? I would say, manage with
Speaker 1: the natural disturbance. Um Man, you asked a question right
Speaker 1: there that would excite me not to say I want
Speaker 1: this position. I said, big Blue sto him, like five
Speaker 1: minutes ago. He's got to come out of his chair
Speaker 1: species And you guys gave me a plenty plenty of
Speaker 1: room to wave my arms and your podcast in right now.
Speaker 1: So when when we look at our landscape now or
Speaker 1: our country and it is closed canopy forest, if if
Speaker 1: for the most part you see that, um, there's some
Speaker 1: major red flags of that, but there's some major possibilities
Speaker 1: I see of of the opportunity to restore a healthy
Speaker 1: forest by doing some cutting. First thing I would probably
Speaker 1: do is consult with a local forest or UM and
Speaker 1: tell them the overall goal is a healthy forest for
Speaker 1: not just the trees itself, but the wildlife. I think
Speaker 1: that gets blurred a little bit of going I want
Speaker 1: a healthy forest, Well, it looks a little bit more
Speaker 1: close canopy than the wildlife may want. UM. So I
Speaker 1: would like to see some active management UM to where
Speaker 1: we are cutting a little bit of timber. We are
Speaker 1: using that money to hopefully manage it. Give some employee,
Speaker 1: hire some employees to use prescribe fire if that's what
Speaker 1: that site needs. Um, if it's if it's not supposed
Speaker 1: to be a force. Sometimes we get into glades where
Speaker 1: it's like this is growing up in trees that we
Speaker 1: don't even need. Now, most likely those trees aren't ones
Speaker 1: that are gonna make any kind of timber income, but
Speaker 1: we need to cut those burn it. Let's bring in
Speaker 1: some grazing animals. Let's let's get some disturbance here. Um.
Speaker 1: What you typically don't see any more happening Mississippi in
Speaker 1: east is the middle ground. You typically have pastures or
Speaker 1: crop lands, so open fields either canning crops or cool
Speaker 1: season non ave pastures, or you have a closed canopy timber.
Speaker 1: There's nothing on a spectrum in between that. On your
Speaker 1: On You Guys podcast, one time I heard it described
Speaker 1: really well, it wasn't It was one of your guests
Speaker 1: and he described, I'm sorry, guys, I could have just
Speaker 1: slided and would have been like, yeah, I said that,
Speaker 1: now you probably have said it. But his analogy was like,
Speaker 1: like rating vegetation on a scale of one to ten,
Speaker 1: and a one would be like a fresh cut bermuda
Speaker 1: lawn on a golf course, and a tin would be
Speaker 1: a negative. Yeah, a tin would be a closed canopy
Speaker 1: like full scale forest. And he said, we have a
Speaker 1: lot of ones and tens and not a lot of fives,
Speaker 1: like so that the gradient would be you know, like,
Speaker 1: is there how much of your property is grassland with
Speaker 1: mid level shrubs, you know, like successionary successful habitat, Yeah,
Speaker 1: is in such a decline. It's like, imagine, I can't
Speaker 1: even imagine a landscape where let's just say you asked
Speaker 1: about a percentage let's just say ten of the country's
Speaker 1: invasive species. I don't I don't know if that's or not,
Speaker 1: But just imagine if that same tim per cent was
Speaker 1: early successional habitat, and how much better it would be,
Speaker 1: not just for dear quail, but also pollinators, which is
Speaker 1: a big buzz word right now, and not if you
Speaker 1: just look down the landscape right now and you look
Speaker 1: at let's just say Missouri and east because out west,
Speaker 1: you know, Oklahoma even has some pretty good native landscape still, um,
Speaker 1: probably because we haven't moved enough of us, haven't moved
Speaker 1: out there to completely destroy it. Yet. But you go
Speaker 1: Missouri and east and we have a majority of the
Speaker 1: open landscape is either uh, we've got of course, residential areas,
Speaker 1: town cities. Then you go into crops or pastures, which
Speaker 1: for the most part most cattle operations are non native
Speaker 1: dominated grasses. So those two are both non natives um
Speaker 1: and aren't great for wildlife. Then you go into the
Speaker 1: forest and you have close can be unmanaged forests um.
Speaker 1: And then you go down the south and you go
Speaker 1: into pine plantations where it's kind of monoculture. And and
Speaker 1: then now we go, well, how come there are wildlife anymore?
Speaker 1: It's that's a depressing way to look at it, because
Speaker 1: nothing that they adapted with over years and years and
Speaker 1: years is that way anymore. I would I would say
Speaker 1: that's probably pretty confidently that in many places, or let's
Speaker 1: say regions of the country or your state, a lot
Speaker 1: of wildlife populations are surviving, they're not thriving. I think
Speaker 1: that we see some properties that are doing a lot
Speaker 1: of good things, or a neighborhood or a coop is
Speaker 1: where the wildlife can thrive, and that's where we see
Speaker 1: some of the best either populations or individuals, whether it's great,
Speaker 1: you know, a giant deer um. But in many of
Speaker 1: the places we're simply just seeing wildlife survives. They're just
Speaker 1: and that's a little bit surprising, I guess because in
Speaker 1: some ways, because like around here we don't have a
Speaker 1: really thick populate, well there here we're running into a
Speaker 1: lot of problems already, Like maybe a thick deer population
Speaker 1: isn't what we want. But generally that's what people would think,
Speaker 1: like most deer haunters would be like a indicator of
Speaker 1: how good the habitat is and how good deer doing
Speaker 1: is how many deer we have. But actually that's wrong.
Speaker 1: I would say this go back to that same analogy
Speaker 1: of the habitat of the one to the ten ratio.
Speaker 1: If you have a one or a very low population
Speaker 1: when comes to deer, you don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: individuals to determine how good or healthy environment is, so
Speaker 1: you just have a lesson of population. If you have
Speaker 1: too many that you have a stressful environment where none
Speaker 1: of them can reach potential. But if you're in the
Speaker 1: middle at that five range, you have a healthy balance
Speaker 1: of I've got enough deer individuals on the landscape where
Speaker 1: I can grow get some to an age, but then
Speaker 1: there's not too many of them at their carrying capacity
Speaker 1: where they can all then still reach their full potential.
Speaker 1: So it's a happy medium between all for the deer
Speaker 1: hunters out there, you know you think about are part
Speaker 1: of the world is not known for growing giant deer,
Speaker 1: but it's not known for really it's not. It's not
Speaker 1: southern Iowa or West Illinois that everybody's talked about. We
Speaker 1: have a lot more trees and most of our force
Speaker 1: is not managed, so we just don't have as much
Speaker 1: food availability. Um, the land use is different, and so
Speaker 1: we just don't have that many deer that show up.
Speaker 1: But you get you take a site or a coop,
Speaker 1: a decent track of ground, you really start managing and
Speaker 1: really increasing the quality of the habitat. You start seeing
Speaker 1: big deer show up. But then what you also start
Speaker 1: seeing as dose with twins, dose with triplets, and you
Speaker 1: see that population start blowing up. And then over of
Speaker 1: course the time you'll see those giant deer that you've
Speaker 1: had faye away and start going back down to what
Speaker 1: you had before. But you just have a lot more deer,
Speaker 1: social stress, food, availability has changed, And so if you
Speaker 1: really are shooting for giant deer, the biggest deer you
Speaker 1: can have on your or in your neighborhood, you've got
Speaker 1: to get the habitat at max level where it's just
Speaker 1: food year round, and you have to keep that dear
Speaker 1: population below holding capacity. That way, those deer have the
Speaker 1: amount of nu transcription we've seen have been on a
Speaker 1: bunch of different places, some that are like, let's just
Speaker 1: say zero or one when it comes to the quality habitant.
Speaker 1: We've been on some sites that are seven and eight.
Speaker 1: It's like, man, this stuff is good, man, this neighborhood's rocking.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, most places have way too
Speaker 1: many deer, and you're like, you're you could they could
Speaker 1: be doing a lot better. Absolutely, And I guess that
Speaker 1: that's just that's the point that I'm getting, as like,
Speaker 1: we evaluate deer so often just about how how many
Speaker 1: there are, I mean, and so you don't think about,
Speaker 1: like I I don't think about this area having like
Speaker 1: really poor habitat. I mean I do. I guess I'm
Speaker 1: a little bit I mean, I've been educated a little
Speaker 1: bit about, you know, how to improve habitat and stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean most people wouldn't, like the landowners that I
Speaker 1: hunt on, like they're just like, man, we got lots
Speaker 1: of deer. Oh yeah, you know, you don't know what
Speaker 1: you don't know, Like just people for instance, just you know,
Speaker 1: we've worked around home. We actually do more work probably
Speaker 1: away from home than we do at home, because nobody's
Speaker 1: really setting out thinking they can grow a two deer
Speaker 1: in the ozarks um. And but we deal with our
Speaker 1: local neighbors and it's just like, so what do you
Speaker 1: do you work with landoarders who we'll shoot. What we're
Speaker 1: doing here is great, We've got plenty of deer. It's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: we don't. It could be so much better. And I
Speaker 1: think that so many people in any given region likely
Speaker 1: underestimated their region itself. It's like I've been here, I've
Speaker 1: observed this for ten years. It's like this is status quo. Well,
Speaker 1: if something status quo, then you don't have again disturbances
Speaker 1: in that environment to change, manipulate, improve, Therefore the wildlife
Speaker 1: will benefit from it. So status quo is like bad
Speaker 1: from where we come from, Like every region there, there's
Speaker 1: there's not a place I can like that We've been
Speaker 1: to them, like yikes, man, Just whether that's the native
Speaker 1: vegetation that's that's there or um that can be there
Speaker 1: is subpar most places we go to. It's all there.
Speaker 1: It just needs that massive facelift and then it will
Speaker 1: it will be that potential where and you can you
Speaker 1: can grow and kill doing a crocketeer. What's the what's
Speaker 1: the what's the temperature? I mean, obviously your your your
Speaker 1: business is doing well. So there's people that are willing
Speaker 1: to talk about these things things and implement these strategies.
Speaker 1: What would you say the temperature of the you know,
Speaker 1: at least this part of the country is for the
Speaker 1: type of wildlife management that you guys are talking about.
Speaker 1: It pretty high just north North America. Yeah, you guys
Speaker 1: aren't being limited to anyway. I think it's growing. I
Speaker 1: I definitely think that we U our mindset is growing. Um.
Speaker 1: People are being more aware of what's happening to our land. UM.
Speaker 1: I think people are starting to understand that you can't
Speaker 1: take a forest and say they're forest. Go be a forest,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna be a forest in a hundred years
Speaker 1: that's still healthy. We can't do that. The preservation mindset,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, is not something that we can do
Speaker 1: in a lot of places because of invasive species. Um
Speaker 1: and so I think there's people who are really keying
Speaker 1: on on native landscaping. There's companies out there that are
Speaker 1: really starting to promote they're planting. I see I see
Speaker 1: more echinasa planted in landscapes now than I ever have.
Speaker 1: And people are starting to become aware of purple tone
Speaker 1: there you go. Yeah, and uh, which is endemic to
Speaker 1: the ozarks. There you go. Started here, we saw a
Speaker 1: lot of it growing in on the roadways coming down here. Um,
Speaker 1: I saw a lot of other bad stuff coming down through.
Speaker 1: Don't even say what it was, don't don't even propagate it.
Speaker 1: Just people will go out. Whatever you'd say that's bad,
Speaker 1: people will go out and get it. And planet take
Speaker 1: a guess that was there that's cigarettes and friendly kids. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um and so yeah, it's definitely growing. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of people that are like, I want clean I want
Speaker 1: a healthy landscape, I want clean water, I want clean air.
Speaker 1: I want to make I want to feel like I'm
Speaker 1: being a part of a of a solid movement that's worthwhile.
Speaker 1: I think that's death that we're definitely seen, that we're
Speaker 1: seeing you know, people like the reginative agriculture model and
Speaker 1: just understanding cattle and grazing in the in the cattle
Speaker 1: are a tool essentially if if you cattles or mules, Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you'all implement mules into more of your stuff? Maybe?
Speaker 1: Maybe YEA is a lot different than that track the
Speaker 1: logs out that we cut. Like horses, horses grays differently
Speaker 1: than cattle. Um, they do. Mules grays different than horses. Okay,
Speaker 1: how so well they're they're they're known for being less selective,
Speaker 1: so they could be good at weed controls if they
Speaker 1: there's the thing. If you can train a mule to
Speaker 1: select sire celestidsa you're hired and dude, you don't even
Speaker 1: need to mazin. We got a full time job for you.
Speaker 1: Just turn loose this mule, magic mule. Yeah. Because like horses,
Speaker 1: they eat grass and keep returning. Ultimately they'll pull it
Speaker 1: up by the roots that they cattle. You know, if
Speaker 1: they're trained and used appropriately, they're not as active. They'll
Speaker 1: eat almost anything. Even we've seen cows on good operations
Speaker 1: eat honey locusts in a young form. You wouldn't think
Speaker 1: they would, but they hammer it um and so, And
Speaker 1: it's all the way that you use that tool. If
Speaker 1: you're rotating, managing them, keeping them on there, you're around,
Speaker 1: it's not doing any good. That's the thing. When we say,
Speaker 1: like the government U S. Force Service, I used them
Speaker 1: as an example. They used to have grazing rights on
Speaker 1: a lot of the Ozark reagion. The glades would get grazed. Um.
Speaker 1: But at some point along the way the sixties, seventies, eighties,
Speaker 1: management was the grazing. Management wasn't doing what was healthy
Speaker 1: to the land over grazing was occurring. It wasn't managed.
Speaker 1: It was just being grazed, and so they pulled out.
Speaker 1: They pulled out the grazing. So now the landscapes not
Speaker 1: getting grazed. And it's like most people picture when we
Speaker 1: say grazy and they think over grace. Well, wile if
Speaker 1: don't like that, well, of course not we would agree
Speaker 1: with that. But if you use them correctly, they're more
Speaker 1: beneficial wildlife than not having the grazing occasionally leaving residual grass.
Speaker 1: I mean the cycles and and all the things that
Speaker 1: we can go into. I mean, it's it's crazy to think.
Speaker 1: Once you once you realize that and learn that like
Speaker 1: man cattle kind of really important to that and what
Speaker 1: I see, you know, I kind of try to we
Speaker 1: manage with a business mindset, like any business that just
Speaker 1: constantly loses money goes broke, right, And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of landscapes that our businesses that are just going to
Speaker 1: continue to go broke. And when I say cutting trees,
Speaker 1: a lot of people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 1: I know to change to to fight climate change or
Speaker 1: two to make a healthy landscape, I need to be
Speaker 1: planting trees and making health trees. Well, there's a whole
Speaker 1: lot of there's oftentimes more things that go on than
Speaker 1: than just that one phrase. It's well and it's we
Speaker 1: know this world is way more complex. You can't You're
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to change something by planting some trees.
Speaker 1: Just trees go back to diversity. Grasses are super super
Speaker 1: important to water infiltration, carbon city questration. It's completely different,
Speaker 1: but you need all of them at the right mixture
Speaker 1: to make something. So cutting trees you can make money.
Speaker 1: Cattle grazing you can make money, and all that money
Speaker 1: is all if done correctly, is also improving the habitat,
Speaker 1: improving the landscape. Now we're really starting to cook with
Speaker 1: peanut all. You know, it's like we're really we're really
Speaker 1: making something great here. Um because we're opening up that canopy.
Speaker 1: We're we now have funds to either put back in
Speaker 1: the landscape or put somebody in place to manage this.
Speaker 1: And man, you want to talk about making a big
Speaker 1: impact not just for deer, but birds and everything. You
Speaker 1: know what I talked earlier about that that where we
Speaker 1: where we did the hillside that we cut trees and
Speaker 1: we did timber stand improvement. We cut the weed trees
Speaker 1: and then we burned it. Fellas that like the deer
Speaker 1: utilize it now it's great nesting for turkeys. But what
Speaker 1: you can really key on, key in on, is the
Speaker 1: amount of birds that are in that. Like you can
Speaker 1: just go there and hear birds singing, flying, you know,
Speaker 1: just it's amazing. It sounds alive. And that's what we're
Speaker 1: looking for in a landscape. A landscape that is either
Speaker 1: restored or healthy should not be stagnant. You should hear
Speaker 1: the buzzing, you should hear birds chirping, like, there should
Speaker 1: be activity from a wide range of whether again insect
Speaker 1: life all the way up to birds mammals utilizing that area.
Speaker 1: If it's not, it's probably a low grade site because
Speaker 1: they're not gonna Yeah, they're not gonna be there if
Speaker 1: it doesn't offer anything, right. Yeah, man, that's incredible stuff.
Speaker 1: I want to have you guys back on sometime we
Speaker 1: can just talk about uh turkeys. Actually, back in the spring,
Speaker 1: I was wanting to I was trying to figure out
Speaker 1: a way to talk about turkeys and nesting habitat because
Speaker 1: she's this part of the world is hurting now. I
Speaker 1: think Mike Chamberlain, he was on some of the bigger podcasts.
Speaker 1: First you think I sent some of the bigger Uh no,
Speaker 1: I did hear him on your podcast? First? Um, and
Speaker 1: uh no. But but he's done a good job fifth grade. First,
Speaker 1: Well he's I think he's done a good job. And
Speaker 1: I mean he's saying all this same stuff you guys
Speaker 1: are doing, but but just talking about brood habitats. But
Speaker 1: we don't really it's people aren't thinking that much about
Speaker 1: turkeys right now. But I really would like to have
Speaker 1: you guys back on. So we're very passionate about turkeys,
Speaker 1: turkey hunting and then making more of them. One thing
Speaker 1: that's not like poultry farmers, peanut oil, fry and turkey.
Speaker 1: My brother, my brother working in in kind of western
Speaker 1: south of here. Uh in western Arkansas. Landscapes pretty similar,
Speaker 1: different mountain range air quote that um. But one thing
Speaker 1: that he's got to observe over his last four or
Speaker 1: five years working down there is the impact of you know,
Speaker 1: everybody knows Arkansas turkey population is not doing great, but
Speaker 1: where they find and like they can go and employee
Speaker 1: are other employees that he works with are are actively
Speaker 1: hunting in Arkansas. Of course he's a Missouri guy, so
Speaker 1: he leaves Arkansas to come out Missouri. You know where
Speaker 1: they're finding populations increasing in a lot more turkeys to
Speaker 1: hunt these places that are very actively managed there. There
Speaker 1: are lots of fire, there's lots of timber sales or
Speaker 1: they're cutting timber. So there's lots of the early successional
Speaker 1: plants growing up in the disturbed sites. They're not growing
Speaker 1: them in close candic forests that are getting filled with
Speaker 1: bushy suckles. Not by happens chance. Yeah, strong strong, strong
Speaker 1: correlations to disturbances and improving or maintaining stabilizing UM turkey populations.
Speaker 1: So hey, I want to I want to talk to
Speaker 1: you guys some about your hunting. Um, just like your
Speaker 1: personal hunting. So y'all are like getting big plans this
Speaker 1: fall traveling or hunting locally, mainly locally. My wife and
Speaker 1: I will have our second child in August mid August,
Speaker 1: so um my, my traveling is going to be pretty limited.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, Manes was so crazy for
Speaker 1: us with consulting that once dear season starts to dwindle,
Speaker 1: you know, we start consulting in December, usually in January, February, March,
Speaker 1: April is just crazy. And this year it's travel enough
Speaker 1: in that first quarter generally that's like I'm done. So
Speaker 1: like going into the fall, we feel guilty leaving home,
Speaker 1: and frankly I don't want to because I just want
Speaker 1: to stop and sit down and and kind of go
Speaker 1: hunt my own spots. And fortunately where I grew up hunting,
Speaker 1: my family farm, we still have it today and so
Speaker 1: I get to hunt the same turf that I hunted
Speaker 1: when I was twelve years old. And we have a
Speaker 1: pretty good buck on there. So what's a pretty good
Speaker 1: buck for up there? Uh? Well, this is above average
Speaker 1: for the area. A pretty good buck would be hundred
Speaker 1: and we have a couple of those that will probably
Speaker 1: be in the range. Yeah. Yeah, we got one that
Speaker 1: we're waiting on to show up. The last year was
Speaker 1: probably low flow forty high thirties. That was three and
Speaker 1: a half year old that Matt saw late season. That
Speaker 1: should blow up. But we found sheds to a buck
Speaker 1: that um somewhere around one nine. I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 1: Are you being serious? Yeah? Yeah, wow, Yeah, that's been
Speaker 1: missed him last year. Uh took a shot at him
Speaker 1: with a boat last light shot under him. But um,
Speaker 1: he's still around hopefully, and so that that's just uh,
Speaker 1: if you will again, the region of southern Missouri, it's
Speaker 1: not often characterized as a big buck place, right where
Speaker 1: you can have many hunting shows going to the ozarks
Speaker 1: it right, So, but in pockets where that habits hat
Speaker 1: is in place. Again, another strong correlation to with you
Speaker 1: when you have that age structure built in and you've
Speaker 1: got some really good deer and then you'll find, you know,
Speaker 1: pockets across you know, I think I think of something
Speaker 1: like south central Missouri where they're doing more logging operations
Speaker 1: and there's the return of some of the great species
Speaker 1: that we want. In an understory, they've got them and
Speaker 1: they've gotten spread across the landscape. Usually there's a couple
Speaker 1: of big deer to come out of there like the world,
Speaker 1: and then as the forest grows back and the canopy closed,
Speaker 1: it back up the big deer kind of you don't
Speaker 1: see him getting killed there as much. I think in
Speaker 1: timber country you can almost like when you have hard woods, um,
Speaker 1: not timber country in this pine plantation, but if you
Speaker 1: have mixed hardwoods, uh, you can almost find a correlation
Speaker 1: between big deer that follow logging operations because those five
Speaker 1: years after logging operation there's food and cover everywhere. Do
Speaker 1: you think they're following the trucks or do you think
Speaker 1: they're actually hitching on I think there's more and getting
Speaker 1: spilled out yuh um. What do you guys think about
Speaker 1: bears in southern Missouri. I think it's awesome. It's cool,
Speaker 1: Yeah that we've we've started finding them more and more,
Speaker 1: um there showing up on cameras. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And we're not too many years away from a bear season,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I don't know what that's gonna be like
Speaker 1: for us. You know, they're talking like it'll be in October.
Speaker 1: Rifles in October Rifle and it's kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: I want to be bo hunting deer at that point.
Speaker 1: But you know, we had we had on Laura Conley,
Speaker 1: the the Yeah, so one of out there What's up
Speaker 1: your podcast? Of course one of the bigger ones. Um no,
Speaker 1: she I think it's pretty much if if you guys
Speaker 1: could bait deer in Soet of Missouri, or in Missouri
Speaker 1: at all, the bear would be a big problem totally. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because like what if you could bait there, there would
Speaker 1: be bears at every corn pile, tearing up every corn feeder,
Speaker 1: and people will be throwing a fit. So it's interesting
Speaker 1: for me to look at it because it's a different
Speaker 1: setting and we've had bears for so long here people
Speaker 1: are just kind of used to it. But these bears
Speaker 1: are moving back in and they've been there for thirty
Speaker 1: years or longer. Even I think she said there was
Speaker 1: evidence of bears being in there, I mean pretty shortly
Speaker 1: after the reintroduction from Arkansas in the fifties and sixties.
Speaker 1: I mean there's been there, there's been bears there, but
Speaker 1: just in the last ten years they've really crazy. You know.
Speaker 1: I worked for the Missouri Department of Conservation in college
Speaker 1: and shortly after right out of college, and when we
Speaker 1: first started trapping bears um and first started radio calling bears,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, what's what's funny about it that
Speaker 1: that you know, fortunately for Matt and I were not
Speaker 1: government employees, so we're a little bit more aggressive with
Speaker 1: our management techniques. We don't have to jump through legislation
Speaker 1: to try to get a timber sale or whatever. We
Speaker 1: can kind of just go recommend it and people do it.
Speaker 1: And uh so we can say things that maybe they
Speaker 1: wouldn't say. But it was funny when I was working there,
Speaker 1: um is we would track these radio collared bears. And
Speaker 1: when we first started doing it was late, it was
Speaker 1: late in the summer. Um and even during deer season
Speaker 1: when there was no legal you couldn't legally bait, you
Speaker 1: would notice trends of bears going to sites on a
Speaker 1: regular basis where it's just like, I know, there's some
Speaker 1: sort of attractant there because bear is there almost every
Speaker 1: single feeding deer or something. Yeah, people feeding deer and
Speaker 1: bears were going in and so they couldn't complain that
Speaker 1: their feeders were getting tore up because they right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what did I did I see? Uh where was I
Speaker 1: at the other day? I was somewhere the other day. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it was here. You know. We we we now
Speaker 1: have CWD regulations that can't bait deer thirty days before season. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's what that's. So that's that's Missouri anyway. So like
Speaker 1: even without CBD, that's Missouri. You could bait during the
Speaker 1: off season, but thirty days before the season you had
Speaker 1: to stop. You guys are, well, no, no, we're the opposite.
Speaker 1: We can't. We can't feed any time except thirty days
Speaker 1: before hunting is exact opposite. Does CWD stop being transmitted
Speaker 1: thirty days before the deer hunt? Is more important? It
Speaker 1: was totally a political political right but uh no, But
Speaker 1: like Walmart in different places around, like you're selling corn.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say right now because that hadn't
Speaker 1: been to Walmart in a long time, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: people are selling corn. And it's like all the game
Speaker 1: Ward and would have to do is like the Walmart
Speaker 1: watch who buys, you know, gender pounds of corn and
Speaker 1: then following up to the woods. But what's the point
Speaker 1: of writing a ticket for a judge or somebody just
Speaker 1: throw it out yeah, maybe, since it depends on the region.
Speaker 1: You know, in Missouri, um corn is sold in Walmart
Speaker 1: and supporting goods stores almost. I'm assuming you're around all
Speaker 1: other times of the year except hunting season. Yes, in Missouri, yes,
Speaker 1: us you're in a zone ten days before honey season.
Speaker 1: I just think it's fifteen maybe somewhere in there. But
Speaker 1: but in ironically, and it's just like what a world
Speaker 1: we live in. But when hunting season opens up, it's
Speaker 1: like they go get the palette jack and they move
Speaker 1: it up closer, and you're just like, are you serious?
Speaker 1: Right now? We can't even in even CWT zones where
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to bait at all, is like they
Speaker 1: still sell corn, so it's sort of not money, it's
Speaker 1: bird seed at them. Yeah, yeah, we see the same. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we gotta uh an uphill battle in the world of
Speaker 1: changing perspectives, that's what really it comes down to. And
Speaker 1: everything that we deal with is changing perspective and usually
Speaker 1: the most beneficial thing is long term. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's the way it is. Cut corners with the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff I don't think you can cut corners
Speaker 1: and conservation really, yeah, it's a natural, it's a natural
Speaker 1: corners and conservation world that we're working with, and that
Speaker 1: you have to look at the foundation, which in what
Speaker 1: it operates on, and it doesn't really cut corners. The
Speaker 1: system is the system. I think we need to learn
Speaker 1: first what the system is, embrace it, and then may
Speaker 1: edge in that system. We're not now as we're seeing
Speaker 1: all this stuff occurrently. We talked about the podcast Learn
Speaker 1: the System Management was you know when you learn that
Speaker 1: since the system that he's talking about, it's not that
Speaker 1: we set on a throne and rain over all of
Speaker 1: it would just fit right in the middle of all
Speaker 1: of it, and we just have to figure out how
Speaker 1: to And it's nothing that like manage with it we
Speaker 1: created or land lace it did. It's just like this
Speaker 1: is the way that God designed it. I'm just embracing that,
Speaker 1: I'm learning it, and then I'm applying you know, truth
Speaker 1: and the way that nature works to nature. Well, it's
Speaker 1: like another statement we make sometimes talking about invasive species
Speaker 1: and improving deer and whatnot. It's like, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to manage a native species talking about dear with non
Speaker 1: native plants. Yeah, I want to find the native plants
Speaker 1: that they like manage for those, I'm probably going to
Speaker 1: improve that native animal species at the same time. And
Speaker 1: that's a longer game plan than going out and buying
Speaker 1: corn and pouring it out it totally. Or you will
Speaker 1: create you will create a deer mecca for a couple
Speaker 1: of days by putting out two hundred pounds of corners there.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's that's what's that's what's so it's so
Speaker 1: bizarre and at the same time, you're you're you're confined
Speaker 1: by the culture in some ways. But like, um, you know,
Speaker 1: like baiting deer in Arkansas such a political thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: like the culture has become if revolves you know, on
Speaker 1: private land, can't bait on public land. So there's still
Speaker 1: guys that are on public land that are deer hunting
Speaker 1: based upon sign and trails and stuff. But then like
Speaker 1: if you're on if you're on private land, you're deer
Speaker 1: hunting in Arkansas. I mean, like, you know, it's almost like,
Speaker 1: don't hate the player, hate the game. I mean you
Speaker 1: gotta bait deer. Yeah, I mean, and I said, quote
Speaker 1: quote unquote gotta and I'm torn on because I mean
Speaker 1: hunting small properties, I mean I have no and say that,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's it's actually a lot harder kill
Speaker 1: a big deer over supplemental feed. Then you think, I
Speaker 1: mean there are guys that are masters at it, and
Speaker 1: you know what, they're there, Jedi masters because it's hard
Speaker 1: um and so you know, like to kill big deer
Speaker 1: over here. Here's an idea. Let me let me just
Speaker 1: off the top of my head, say what we do.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of guys that hunt up the ground,
Speaker 1: and then you search for like these perfect betting areas
Speaker 1: like where he's like, oh he's betted here private land. Guys,
Speaker 1: we can go, well, okay, what is what makes that
Speaker 1: so special? Okay, I'm gonna take that and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go do it on twenty spots on my farm to
Speaker 1: where I've got ideal betting everywhere. What about you know,
Speaker 1: when it comes to debating, everybody says most guys that
Speaker 1: hunt over bait say, well, it's really hard to shoot
Speaker 1: a maturity or over a bait side. We have to
Speaker 1: really hunt him going to the bait side because they
Speaker 1: show up right after dark. Well let's not. So let's
Speaker 1: take and create ideal betting, secure betting somewhere using trained
Speaker 1: features and what we know about natural disturbance to create
Speaker 1: what he would call a bedroom, and then let's find
Speaker 1: a place in between the two to hunt him as
Speaker 1: he's getting up. It's like, that sounds sounds pretty pretty
Speaker 1: fun to me. Now I don't have to sit and
Speaker 1: stare squirrels eating all the corn and you and you
Speaker 1: would and you would kill better deer too. Any time
Speaker 1: I dog on bait and deer, I've got to clarify myself.
Speaker 1: I've got to say. I've had people say, Clay, you're
Speaker 1: a massive proponent of baiting bear. Baiting deer and bait
Speaker 1: and bear is totally different things. We bait bear to
Speaker 1: be selectively to selectively harvest bear, we're not. We're not
Speaker 1: trying to supplement a bear's diet to improve his health. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll see what I'm saying. We're when we're baiting a bear,
Speaker 1: we are we're trying to draw berrying because there's such
Speaker 1: a dispersed there. There don't have high densities, you know,
Speaker 1: like a deer. A deer would have these really high densities,
Speaker 1: of bear would have very low densities. And so it's
Speaker 1: like totally different because I just what is for you?
Speaker 1: You know who you are out there and podcast World's
Speaker 1: gonna email me and say, I thought you're a proponent
Speaker 1: of baiting. I absolutely am for for for bear and
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying I'm against it for deer totally.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a catch twenty two in places where
Speaker 1: you have been able to do it for so long,
Speaker 1: they probably just needed they need to just cut it out.
Speaker 1: To me, I think it, and they do. I would
Speaker 1: be totally cool if they cut out baiting for deer.
Speaker 1: I mean, and they really should. It's this is what
Speaker 1: we talked about, what we started seeing. Let's take a
Speaker 1: person who has a bait side out and you're monitoring
Speaker 1: it with trell cameras, and I want your listeners because
Speaker 1: I know there's probably a lot of them in this
Speaker 1: region that that that uh, that bait because that's the
Speaker 1: way of life. Like um, alright, So do you get
Speaker 1: more picture of raccoons in in a in the course
Speaker 1: of your baiting, you get more pictures of raccoons or deer.
Speaker 1: And based on my experience when I used to put
Speaker 1: out corn, it was almost always more raccoons. And if
Speaker 1: your deer hunter, especially at Turkey Hunter, you're you've now
Speaker 1: got this like embedded in your in your brain that
Speaker 1: raccoons are bad, that you must trap kill them, don't
Speaker 1: stop killing them till you don't see him anymore kind
Speaker 1: of mindset. And it's like, okay, well is my corn
Speaker 1: more beneficial to the deer, more beneficial to my hunting,
Speaker 1: or more beneficial to the predator that I hate. You're
Speaker 1: not only supplementing food for deer, you're supplementing for this
Speaker 1: species their benefiting as well, which man, And that's why
Speaker 1: I like when we step back to trying to replicate nature,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna use
Speaker 1: fire and grazing and this kind of disturbance because that
Speaker 1: right there is a little bit hard to hard to chew.
Speaker 1: I think to me, the overarching principle that stands out
Speaker 1: in my mind is that it's much harder to do
Speaker 1: what you guys are describing, but the long term benefits
Speaker 1: are much higher. It's much easier too, you know, either
Speaker 1: not manage and just hunt the deer that you have,
Speaker 1: which you know, some people it's just not a priority
Speaker 1: to manage deer, so you know whatever, there's just some
Speaker 1: people that just have some land there. Like we go
Speaker 1: out there for three days a year and no big deal.
Speaker 1: But it's it's anyway. Just in life, that's always the case.
Speaker 1: What's hard and long term is usually way better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but takes a lot more energy and effort, you know.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, and you know those people who are
Speaker 1: sitting there wondering how do I fit into all that?
Speaker 1: There's a lot of winds along the way too. If
Speaker 1: you're if you're not just some incremental like like you
Speaker 1: could do small things. Yeah, like you you you you say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take that long route. I'm gonna manage in
Speaker 1: this way, this mindset um. And let's say you're doing
Speaker 1: it for deer. Sometimes that that goal it may take
Speaker 1: years to get there and then you stabilize it and
Speaker 1: maintain it whatever. But although your goal is for whitetail
Speaker 1: deer and you want to kill one sixty whatever, there's
Speaker 1: other things that you can enjoy along the way. Rabbit
Speaker 1: populations are going to increase, other small game. The birds
Speaker 1: that we hear in the woodland that you just talked about,
Speaker 1: that's cool, Like you did that like that that that
Speaker 1: is an ecological significance of what you did. It's not
Speaker 1: a hundred sixty in deer. But maybe you heard one
Speaker 1: summer tangent. Now there's what how many? You can go there?
Speaker 1: And here half a dozen on the same side. There's
Speaker 1: there's these little winds along the way in this long
Speaker 1: game that you need to be focused on a certain
Speaker 1: mentality when you think about it, like we're as a
Speaker 1: human being, we're pretty prideful, Like we want to think
Speaker 1: that at the end of our life there'll be a
Speaker 1: ton of people at our funeral, and and two hundred
Speaker 1: years after our death that people are still gonna remember
Speaker 1: us and talk about us. Like that's just our human nature.
Speaker 1: But if you look at the most common type of
Speaker 1: hunting habitat enhancement, and I say that kind of loosely
Speaker 1: because it's not really habitat enhancement. But if we go
Speaker 1: out and we put out a feeder, we put up
Speaker 1: a food plot, we hang a tree stand, or we
Speaker 1: make some trails, and you did that for five years,
Speaker 1: and then you didn't do it for five years and
Speaker 1: you came back, what would there be that you You'd
Speaker 1: have a rusted up feeder and arrested up tree stand
Speaker 1: and a trail that's overgrown. Probably wouldn't even be able
Speaker 1: to tell that your work was ever there. But if
Speaker 1: you do, you know overall habitat enhancement. You plant a
Speaker 1: diverse prairie, or you restore a woodland or savannah, or
Speaker 1: you put in a young forest clear cut. That's something
Speaker 1: you go back twenty years later and they're probably gonna
Speaker 1: see it, and it's like it's like lasting impact, lasting impact.
Speaker 1: It's a legacy of of managing that land in an
Speaker 1: appropriate manner to where your kids and your grandkids hopefully
Speaker 1: can see that and carry that torch rather than oh,
Speaker 1: there's there's dad's rusted up feeder and tree stand that
Speaker 1: now I have a haul out of here, and and
Speaker 1: that like there's even in in that same scenario, there's
Speaker 1: so many either life lessons about whether it is life
Speaker 1: and death or or the progression of new growth and
Speaker 1: spring greenups, all these different lessons that you can share
Speaker 1: with other people. You can't really do that when you
Speaker 1: go in, walk into a feeder and put a fifty
Speaker 1: pound back of corn. You could see that dear respond
Speaker 1: to it. But you still have that same advantage by
Speaker 1: going the conservation mindset and and improving the actual habitat
Speaker 1: and the landscape itself. I think I think we often
Speaker 1: underestimate our potential to have that impact because they're simple
Speaker 1: ways to do it. But we can impact the landscape,
Speaker 1: we can impact regions, we the pact states. It just
Speaker 1: is a long term. Yeah, that's cool. That's very cool. Um,
Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta tell the story and then and
Speaker 1: then we'll end, because this is it's it's pretty connected.
Speaker 1: Going back to supplemental feeding and everything you just guys said,
Speaker 1: I think sums up kind of who you guys are
Speaker 1: and kind of like your your like deeper philosophies for
Speaker 1: why you're doing what you're doing, which I like it. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: So back to the like the the lesser topic of
Speaker 1: baiting bears and the southern washing dolls are expanding pretty
Speaker 1: rapidly into the Gulf coastal plaine of Arkansas. So like
Speaker 1: the like the larger regions of Arkansas would be the
Speaker 1: ozarks like Western Arkansas Ozarks, Washtalls, and the Gulf coastal plane,
Speaker 1: which would basically be and be like getting in down
Speaker 1: to like the swamp country, like pretty much like alligator
Speaker 1: country and stuff. Black bears are rapidly moving south and
Speaker 1: uh that's a part of Arkansas that's fairly sparsely populated,
Speaker 1: like no major population centers. Uh, some well mainly would
Speaker 1: be forestry, like big pine plantations and stuff. Myron means
Speaker 1: the bear biologists for State of Arkansas believes that the
Speaker 1: backbone of the expansion of bears into that area, which
Speaker 1: is pine primarily pine like dominant pine dominated landscape which
Speaker 1: pine tree does nothing for a bear, is uh, supplemental cornpiles. Wow,
Speaker 1: he thinks. He thinks that basically, you know, so bears
Speaker 1: biology like or his his caloric calendar revolves around fall
Speaker 1: hard mast like gathering these massive calories in the fall
Speaker 1: before denning, and there's they're they're white oaks down there
Speaker 1: and stuff. So you know they're feeding on that sun.
Speaker 1: But pine not to the prevalence for an everything or
Speaker 1: majority as a pine plantation. Oh yeah, it's like massive
Speaker 1: pine plantations and a lot of monoculture. So and he
Speaker 1: thinks basically corn people feeding deer has become the back
Speaker 1: like part of their Yeah, yearly architecture. I would say
Speaker 1: they're thriving. So, I mean, there's no point to that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm processed. I'm sitting there, Okay, what's that
Speaker 1: because I'll share a similar story. Um, I don't really
Speaker 1: get you know, the idea of Missouri repopulating or growing
Speaker 1: the bear population to a point where we can hunt
Speaker 1: them and and you know, make the state can make
Speaker 1: money on license sales. That's pretty stinking cool. We're restoring
Speaker 1: a native species to a native region and now we
Speaker 1: get to enjoy That's absolutely, it's awesome. And there are
Speaker 1: deer hunters. They're going to complain, but you know what
Speaker 1: it's it's they were here before we were, um, and
Speaker 1: so like, yeah, it's super cool. But the idea that
Speaker 1: that population is growing because of a supplement doesn't have
Speaker 1: the longevity or the sustainability. That doesn't It was like
Speaker 1: a weird like stomach like I felt. It was like
Speaker 1: it's almost like And the reason I say that because
Speaker 1: I have a similar feeling with U with our our
Speaker 1: elk restoration that we're doing in Missouri, because a lot
Speaker 1: of the food plots, the areas that we're trying to
Speaker 1: provide this food, they're planting orchard grass, which is a
Speaker 1: non native cool season grass. And it's like, so we're
Speaker 1: taking this big push to restore natives species for nonnative Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that doesn't make sense to me, let's let's try
Speaker 1: to fix the landscape and restore the woodland, savannah's the
Speaker 1: glades and give them the native species that they have
Speaker 1: adapted to because us. This is funny thing, like those
Speaker 1: sites with it which were restocked in obviously, like they
Speaker 1: chose those sites because the potential of the landscape to
Speaker 1: offer to be restored. Yet we're supplementing it all with
Speaker 1: this non native green sources. It's like, that's actually the
Speaker 1: same story. Let's go take a native prairie and say
Speaker 1: we're restoring the native landscapes with throw cows out on it.
Speaker 1: Like it's large ruminants on the native grass and like,
Speaker 1: what's we just switched it from plants to animals. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's it's cool that they're expanding, and it's
Speaker 1: cool that there's a potential that more people are going
Speaker 1: to get to see Myron. Myron is the first one
Speaker 1: to say that's that's not research back, that's just his
Speaker 1: that's just his observation, that's just what he thinks is happening.
Speaker 1: And I think it's totally probable. I think what I've
Speaker 1: thought is that, well, heck, if if they outlawed baiting
Speaker 1: or something, you know, would that mean that they would
Speaker 1: leave those areas? And it's my Matt Stein saying, I
Speaker 1: think I think they'll. I think the bears will find
Speaker 1: a way to survive down there. But I think I
Speaker 1: think they're using that because it's a great food source.
Speaker 1: It's probably prop them up a little bit. But I
Speaker 1: think if it was gone, I think, man, there such
Speaker 1: a successful omnibus. There's a question. Yeah, do you think
Speaker 1: one growing seasons are are different too, so like that
Speaker 1: length and severity of winter, I think it's gonna help.
Speaker 1: So it's like it's almost like that crutch to get
Speaker 1: them into the area. But then if let's just say
Speaker 1: it did happen baiting was removed, do you think that
Speaker 1: you would certainly see that bear population if there was
Speaker 1: those um more populated areas, those bears then be supplementing
Speaker 1: on trash. More of the cultural conflict people. You know,
Speaker 1: they have to take one supplement from humans and then
Speaker 1: go to another one to to from a caloric standpoint,
Speaker 1: if if nature is not providing it, they have a
Speaker 1: wide range of stuff that they eat, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just it's crazy, but we all know that bears
Speaker 1: love easy meals. Wildlife in general love easy meals. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's entirely possible that if you took it away then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you'd have nuisance problems and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: here's a question for you. So I mentioned earlier Missouri
Speaker 1: will open up a season, hopefully in the near future
Speaker 1: for bears. Um, they'll be from my understanding, and I
Speaker 1: didn't listen to that podcast, so my apologies. Do you
Speaker 1: feel from what I've heard, Um, there is not going
Speaker 1: to be any baiting and there's so there's no baiting
Speaker 1: private or public, and it's gonna be a short, short
Speaker 1: window with a rifle from what I understand, how successful
Speaker 1: what I picked is probably by design. What I picture
Speaker 1: is a bunch of US Missourians who have drawn tags
Speaker 1: headed to the woods, no dogs either, I don't think,
Speaker 1: headed to the woods, walking around in densities where are
Speaker 1: in areas where there is a higher density of bears
Speaker 1: pushing them out. So what I picture is it's going
Speaker 1: to be very tough to fill tags. And I picture
Speaker 1: the bear hot spots or the bear population dispersing into
Speaker 1: larger regions to where then those bears can repopulate to
Speaker 1: where ten years from now we'll have bears everywhere. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's by design, but I just when I heard the
Speaker 1: potential regulations, I was like, oh, that would be a
Speaker 1: to the right the right track and say that that's
Speaker 1: gonna be a super hard animal to hunt. We have
Speaker 1: a phrase that we use on the podcast, a type
Speaker 1: of hunting that we describe as the sheep hunt of
Speaker 1: the South. We actually have shirts that say sheep hunt
Speaker 1: of the South. And the whole idea is that hunting
Speaker 1: bears in the eastern deciduous forest is hard, like a
Speaker 1: western sheep hunt. Like you're you're it's a low probability hunt,
Speaker 1: very low probability. Um. The only thing that Missouri has
Speaker 1: going for it is these are unhunted bears. So that's
Speaker 1: what's incalculable. And you know, it's hard for me to
Speaker 1: calculate based upon why because our bears are hunted and uh,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's I think it's as tough a
Speaker 1: hunt as there is in North America. And I'm talking
Speaker 1: about all the types of hunting to go take a bow,
Speaker 1: and now I'm also talking about take a bow and
Speaker 1: going to the national forest and kill a bear on purpose.
Speaker 1: Now almost next to impossible. Well, I mean, that's what
Speaker 1: that's that's what we've spent a lot of our time
Speaker 1: the last couple of years doing and talking about and
Speaker 1: and people are getting better at it as as they're
Speaker 1: being educated on how to do it. And it's much
Speaker 1: more stable and predictable than I ever thought. That bear
Speaker 1: right there was the first bear that I ever killed,
Speaker 1: uh in national forest on purpose. Um. And that picture
Speaker 1: behind it right where I killed it. Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: that looks a lot like the ozarks, minus your rocks
Speaker 1: look a little bit more smooth than our, little bit
Speaker 1: more so regional, you know, like different places the rocks
Speaker 1: very But now that that bear was right there, Um,
Speaker 1: so I'm with you at them. It's gonna be a
Speaker 1: low odds hunt. I think some people will kill some.
Speaker 1: But they had to go with that strategy though, I mean,
Speaker 1: they didn't want to start off that they're starting at
Speaker 1: the making it as absolute hard as possible, which that's
Speaker 1: a total that's a that's a great strategy for bears
Speaker 1: because bears are you know, low reproductive rates. The females
Speaker 1: don't start reproducing to their three or four years old
Speaker 1: and then they only produced cups every two years or
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah, yeah, and that's a that's not
Speaker 1: a super that's pretty average. So it's not like this
Speaker 1: population is just like growing exponentially. I think you'll see
Speaker 1: a time when it does. They're parts of Arkansas that
Speaker 1: are growing by eighteen percent per year myer means, which
Speaker 1: is incredible. And like because these big you know, large
Speaker 1: carnivore pipe they just just don't they don't naturally need
Speaker 1: to produce. Like you know, a dophon can give birth
Speaker 1: her first year of life. She can come into heat
Speaker 1: when she's six months old, be bread and have twins
Speaker 1: the next spring. I mean it's possible. Yeah, So bears
Speaker 1: are not like that, so they manage them conservatively. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I think I think they're doing a good job. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be super tough yea. But could you imagine if
Speaker 1: they if they allowed you to bait out the gate
Speaker 1: then but then change the regulation and took it away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would that would cost even worse. It would big
Speaker 1: political problems. Yeah. I think I predict that maybe one
Speaker 1: day they would have a bait on private land hunt,
Speaker 1: just because that's what Arkansas and Oklahoma have done pretty successfully,
Speaker 1: really successfully. And but our populations are so big, like
Speaker 1: the reason. And here's what a lot of people don't understand.
Speaker 1: We preached on the podcast all the time. Where you
Speaker 1: can bait bear in North America is because there is
Speaker 1: no other effective way to manage them. I mean, like
Speaker 1: where you can spot and stock bears usually and they
Speaker 1: can harvest the number of bears they need to harvest
Speaker 1: by spot and stock. Then that's what they let them do. Man,
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, our population is growing so much. I mean,
Speaker 1: we currently have a population six thousand bears in Arkansas
Speaker 1: and we've been knocking the fire out of them for
Speaker 1: twenty years. I mean, if we had not taken out
Speaker 1: three to four hundred bears a year for the last
Speaker 1: twenty years, I mean, bears will be overrunning this place.
Speaker 1: We'd all have one beating down our absolutely would. And
Speaker 1: so so it's such a win win for sportsman when
Speaker 1: you can manage a population keep it under control relative
Speaker 1: to the amount of habitat that we have. Didn't have
Speaker 1: any idea how much UH money comes in with tags,
Speaker 1: And for Arkansas, it's hard to track bear hunters because
Speaker 1: everybody that buys a tag has a bear tag. So
Speaker 1: I mean, like you buy Arkansas Sportsn's license, you get
Speaker 1: sixty or two turkeys a bear. You know, all the
Speaker 1: all the small games, handing out tacks like it's candy
Speaker 1: in here. It is there. It's a good state for
Speaker 1: actually it's a terrible state. Slow down. Oh hey, thanks
Speaker 1: so much, guys. I really appreciate it than what you
Speaker 1: guys are doing. The people can find you, guys that
Speaker 1: Landing Legacy, Landing Legacy and now y'all would have like
Speaker 1: personal Instagram pages to you or no? So uh I
Speaker 1: think Adam Keith something like that. I only posted photos
Speaker 1: like one Legacy Legacy. Okay, do you want to see
Speaker 1: Adam's daughter? Yeah? So yeah, Landing Legacy and Man almost
Speaker 1: started off the podcast by talking about your podcast. You guys,
Speaker 1: you haven't made six hundred episodes of your podcast? Have
Speaker 1: you too? Why are you number in your episodes? It's
Speaker 1: like six d I think that's Johnson. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. You've made like two ding well been
Speaker 1: doing for three and a half years or so, and
Speaker 1: every week to two weeks. I appreciate the persistency. So
Speaker 1: I'll end up have said this before because I'll say
Speaker 1: this in the intro that I do. But like your
Speaker 1: podcast is full of it's like it's like information driven.
Speaker 1: Um so, like our podcast is like more like conversational
Speaker 1: like long you know, we're not as much like we
Speaker 1: do some tip driven tactical stuff for sure, but but
Speaker 1: you guys is more of a format of we're given
Speaker 1: infort we have topics and we're given information, which is great,
Speaker 1: and they're usually shorter, uh you know, under an hour
Speaker 1: most of them anywhere. From Yeah, so man, tons of information.
Speaker 1: That's part of the reason I didn't necessarily want to
Speaker 1: go into like a specific topic on this party, because
Speaker 1: you guys have covered so much. People can go back
Speaker 1: and and look at all your stuff and and learn
Speaker 1: a ton you really can't. You guys are doing a
Speaker 1: great job I think of just disseminating really solid information.
Speaker 1: You really are and uh so, yeah, keep doing it.
Speaker 1: Good luck with that big buck this year. Do you
Speaker 1: all both hunt in the same place? You let him hunt? We? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I just I just leased a hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: acres and um, I don't know. It was the second
Speaker 1: night of putting cameras out. There's a good one there.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, alright, alright, my brother and I are
Speaker 1: working on buying that farm, right now so out from
Speaker 1: but he's sitting Yeah. Yeah, but but no, no, you're
Speaker 1: trying to buy the least that he no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no, no, the least try there. Him and his
Speaker 1: brother are purchasing the lane that's next to their family farm. Okay,
Speaker 1: and so okay, yeah, no no, yeah, was interesting story
Speaker 1: about a family farm. Not to go off on another
Speaker 1: rabbit trail, but you know it's it's been on. My
Speaker 1: grandpa and great grandpa and a nineteen sold it to
Speaker 1: Stark Brothers of Fruit Tree Company. You ever heard of
Speaker 1: fruit the fruit trees, but sold it for a thousand
Speaker 1: fruit trees. Grandpa bought it back two so it's been
Speaker 1: in the family farm ever since. My brother and not
Speaker 1: trying to expand it and buy the neighboring property. That's cool.
Speaker 1: Thousand fruit trees. Trying to buy it for a lot
Speaker 1: of fruit trees. That's part of the world. Its a
Speaker 1: fuel North America with apples. Yeah, like in the huge
Speaker 1: orchards first twenty years of the twentie century, early d Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you have many short leaved pines around here where
Speaker 1: you're not like right here, you get twenty five miles away,
Speaker 1: they get cut out, or they just aren't here, man I.
Speaker 1: You drive from here to Fort Smith in the winter
Speaker 1: and see a lot of it's not all public land,
Speaker 1: but it's pretty just native ozarks. You won't see a
Speaker 1: pine tree. Did he say native ozarks? This he has
Speaker 1: not listened to the podcast. Well, all right, thanks guys,
Speaker 1: keep the wild less wild because that's where the bears
Speaker 1: live and we got to get the Japanese have a
Speaker 1: suckle out.