Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods presented by First Light, creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by Jake Hoofer to discuss best
Speaker 2: practices for planning out your year of upcoming wildlife habitat improvements.
Speaker 2: All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast,
Speaker 2: brought to you by First Light and their Camo for
Speaker 2: Conservation initiative. And today we are continuing to kick off
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five by looking forward into the new year
Speaker 2: and planning out what this new year might hold. Last week,
Speaker 2: Tony and I were kind of talking about our own
Speaker 2: personal plans. This week on the show, I want to
Speaker 2: look forward toward things on a wildlife habitat improvement kind
Speaker 2: of scale land management. How we can improve things for
Speaker 2: our deer hunting, for the biodiversity, for wildlife or recreation,
Speaker 2: whatever your goals are, That's what we are exploring today.
Speaker 2: How do we put a plan in place, how do
Speaker 2: we prioritize our projects? How do we choose the right
Speaker 2: things to work on. How do we do that in
Speaker 2: an effective way? And my guest today is someone who's
Speaker 2: really going to be able to help us do that.
Speaker 2: This is Jake Hoofer. He is the host of the
Speaker 2: Land Podcast, owner of the Whitetail Master Academy, previously was
Speaker 2: a host of the Exodus Trialcam radio podcast and ran
Speaker 2: their YouTube stuff over there and right, all sorts of
Speaker 2: great content in the hunting and management space. And today
Speaker 2: he is going to share his experience both as a
Speaker 2: landowner and habitat manager himself, as well as being somebody
Speaker 2: who has interviewed and toured farms of, and sold farms for,
Speaker 2: and learned from all sorts of great deer and land
Speaker 2: managers themselves. He's been able to kind of pick the
Speaker 2: brains of some of the best of the best when
Speaker 2: it comes to this stuff land improvement, land management, improving
Speaker 2: things for whitetail habitat and wildlife habitat. Jake's been able
Speaker 2: to cover it all. He's chatted with the best of
Speaker 2: the best out there. And so what I wanted to
Speaker 2: pick his brain about was all, you know, two things.
Speaker 2: Number one, his experience, what's worked for him, and then secondly,
Speaker 2: you know what he has learned from those best of
Speaker 2: the best, and how those might be applied or how
Speaker 2: we can apply those lessons to our own experiences. So
Speaker 2: that's the game plan today, and that is what I
Speaker 2: think we should just jump right into rather than beating
Speaker 2: around the bush. So here is my chat with Jake Hoford.
Speaker 2: All right with me on the line now, is Jake Hoeford.
Speaker 3: Jake, how are you doing well? Happy New Year?
Speaker 2: Happy new year to you too, man. I'm glad we're
Speaker 2: kicking off the new year here together talking about something
Speaker 2: we both enjoy, which is getting out there on the
Speaker 2: landscape doing some good work, getting the hands dirty.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 2: How much have you been able to give thought to
Speaker 2: the next year yet? Are you kind of still recuperating
Speaker 2: from New Year's Eve festivities and the last hunting season
Speaker 2: all that, or are you already like chomping at the
Speaker 2: bit thinking about twenty five.
Speaker 3: I don't think it ever stops, tell you the truth.
Speaker 3: And I was in bed by ten o'clock on the
Speaker 3: Year's eve, but it never really stops. And I think
Speaker 3: that you know now that a lot of seasons are
Speaker 3: wrapping up. It's when the rubber meets the road and
Speaker 3: you start executing on some of those plans. And you know,
Speaker 3: I had a really fun and exciting season and I
Speaker 3: buked out here in Illinois. I think it was the
Speaker 3: third weekend of December. And that's a weird feeling. I
Speaker 3: haven't done that since twenty seventeen. I was like, man,
Speaker 3: I'm done done, Like I can't even you know, I
Speaker 3: can scout and I can drive around in this pretend
Speaker 3: I'm hunting and last year, but that was a weird
Speaker 3: feeling in itself, and so it's actual kind of bottled
Speaker 3: up more excitement to get out there and start doing work.
Speaker 3: And it's always a challenge too, because everything Ytai hunting
Speaker 3: is hurry and wait in a lot of ways. And
Speaker 3: so as much as I want to go back there
Speaker 3: and start working, you know, behind my house, I have
Speaker 3: a bunch of standing food and say, man, I don't
Speaker 3: really want to booger the deer up. It'd be nice
Speaker 3: to find some sheds and just trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what can I do or you know, just go ahead
Speaker 3: and work on this place and leave the other place alone.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's always a challenge, but yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: super excited to enjoy some of these cold months and
Speaker 3: the chainsaw will be outside and get a little bit
Speaker 3: of vitamin D as we all get pale and pasty
Speaker 3: during winter.
Speaker 2: Man, Thank goodness, there's an excuse like that, getting out
Speaker 2: there on the on the landscape at this time of year,
Speaker 2: because if you're just stuck in the office the whole time,
Speaker 2: it can be it can be brutal. So I got
Speaker 2: a question for it, just for context. How much ground
Speaker 2: do you have that you actually can do work on yourself?
Speaker 3: I would say a little over one hundred acres, probably
Speaker 3: one hundred and one hundred and fifteen with free reign,
Speaker 3: and that's across three different farms, so not a huge scale,
Speaker 3: but more than I ever could have dreamed of growing up.
Speaker 3: So I mean, it's it's uh. I've had the pleasure
Speaker 3: of being on some incredible farms that are just like,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh. And then you know there's other people
Speaker 3: with the land podcast for guys, they want to buy
Speaker 3: ten acres twenty acre. So I realized how blessed I
Speaker 3: am to be able to have that amount of ground
Speaker 3: to work on, but just enough to where you can
Speaker 3: scratch a lot of different inches. And what's interesting where
Speaker 3: I live versus the other farm. There are almost two
Speaker 3: completely different types of farms where I live. It's kind
Speaker 3: of an oak savannah on to the west of MEAs
Speaker 3: where it used to be all prairie, and this is
Speaker 3: like one of the last little slivers of timber. So
Speaker 3: this is a much different type of ecosystem, much better
Speaker 3: soils than the other farm, where it's more bluff country
Speaker 3: and it's pretty rugged, and you know, they're not very
Speaker 3: far apart, but you go to one farm and work
Speaker 3: one day and go to the other one, it feels
Speaker 3: like you're working on two completely different types of projects
Speaker 3: and landscapes, which is actually really exciting. And it wasn't
Speaker 3: really a strategic thing initially, but after I had both,
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, man, yeah, that's kind of cool
Speaker 3: that they're completely different and you get to try different
Speaker 3: practices on both of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really cool, and that that seems like a
Speaker 2: sweet spot. You're one hundred, one hundred and fifty acres.
Speaker 2: That seems like a realistic size for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: And still, you know, it's it's for some people you
Speaker 2: said that would feel like a ton of ground. On
Speaker 2: the other side, it's not so much more than a
Speaker 2: forty or a fifty that what you're experience in there,
Speaker 2: you know, it's certainly still relatable to someone who's got
Speaker 2: forty or fifty or twenty or seventy. You know, that
Speaker 2: seems to be the window that a lot of folks
Speaker 2: can can someday aspire towards.
Speaker 3: So yeah, absolutely, Yeah, and on ones a forty ones
Speaker 3: of sixty and another one is a really small one,
Speaker 3: you know, between five and ten acres, And so yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's a it's they're very relatable. These farms are
Speaker 3: as reels like the issues everyone faces across the board.
Speaker 3: I'm not immune to those, and that's all part.
Speaker 2: Of the fun. Yeah, So you talked about this kind
Speaker 2: of conundrum that you've got right now, which is you
Speaker 2: want to get working on things, but at the same time,
Speaker 2: you don't want to put too much pressure on your
Speaker 2: properties when they're standing food out there that you left specifically,
Speaker 2: so the deer would and wildlife would use your landscape
Speaker 2: now maybe drop antlers, maybe overwinter, whatever it is. So,
Speaker 2: how do you think about, you know, when you come
Speaker 2: into the when you come into the new year, what
Speaker 2: does your process look like when it comes to putting
Speaker 2: that plant together. You know, do you have a calendar
Speaker 2: almost were you come into a given year and you say, okay,
Speaker 2: these months I'm doing this, these months I'm doing this
Speaker 2: or is it kind of you know, every year is
Speaker 2: a little bit different. What's that look like for you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all a little bit different based off of I
Speaker 3: utilize the equip contracts to the NRCS quite a bit,
Speaker 3: and so that has different parameters and timelines of when
Speaker 3: you need to do things. And obviously the preparation in
Speaker 3: order to do the work and so some of that
Speaker 3: you know, helps you plant things out by the structure
Speaker 3: of that. And actually I bought the Lane of Legacy
Speaker 3: calendar that Ian Kirby designed that are work and every
Speaker 3: now and I look at that like, oh, yeah, that's
Speaker 3: a good idea. I should. I should? You know, that's
Speaker 3: in the calendar of what to do and what to
Speaker 3: do and not that usually you need ideas to go.
Speaker 3: There's always more to do than what you have time for.
Speaker 3: But sometimes that's a fun little thing. But I mean
Speaker 3: this time of year, I really like to tackle the
Speaker 3: invasive species. So you know, hack and squirt honeysuckle, cut
Speaker 3: the stumps and treat it with garl on four and
Speaker 3: kill out the honeysuckle, and that I've done like different
Speaker 3: pockets at my house and try to hit a pocket
Speaker 3: each year. And because the common theme that a lot
Speaker 3: of people say is, yeah, you take all that out,
Speaker 3: all the cover is gone on your farm. If that's
Speaker 3: the if that's the best cover on your farm, you
Speaker 3: take all of it out at once. It's all gone.
Speaker 3: So I've actually done different pockets where one year I'll
Speaker 3: I'll take it all out. The next spring I'll plant
Speaker 3: native trees and shrubs and help get that established and
Speaker 3: then go to a different part of the farm and
Speaker 3: start working on that. So this is a really good
Speaker 3: time of year for that. And the other thing too
Speaker 3: is it's a great time to get out and walk
Speaker 3: your farm very methodically and maybe not looking for shait anglers,
Speaker 3: because man, every shedhoun I have turns into a scouting mission.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I don't really want to find anylers that bad.
Speaker 3: I like, what's what went on over here? And you
Speaker 3: look for sign and keep really detailed notice. I know
Speaker 3: if I don't write it down, I'll probably forget it.
Speaker 3: And so I'm a I get a hard time for
Speaker 3: some of my friends, like you're just you go too fast,
Speaker 3: Like when you walk a farm, You're just go. I'm like,
Speaker 3: I look up mixing, you're over another hill over, and
Speaker 3: I just get too fast. And so I have to
Speaker 3: constantly tell myself, slow down. Why do I think this
Speaker 3: bet is here? What win? Was he maybe using this on?
Speaker 3: How could I improve my access from this bed? Can
Speaker 3: he see me walk in? Or can the dear walk me?
Speaker 3: Watch me walk in? And really slow down and take
Speaker 3: a minute to process all that information, because it's really
Speaker 3: easy to be like, oh, yeah, there's a bed, there's
Speaker 3: a rub, there's a scrape, and you just look at
Speaker 3: it at face value. I've known this for a very
Speaker 3: long time. But take a minute to really slow down.
Speaker 3: So that's probably the number one thing to do this
Speaker 3: time of year, regardless if you're planning projects or walking
Speaker 3: public ground or permission ground. So that's probably the biggest thing.
Speaker 3: And the invasives, there's a lot of I've interviewed at
Speaker 3: different people and I've asked this question specifically to a
Speaker 3: variety of different folks of it's almost a debate in
Speaker 3: the land management world of do you leave it or
Speaker 3: do you replace it? Yeah, and I think I fall
Speaker 3: on the side of I would just go ahead and
Speaker 3: replace it with something that is native and good, but
Speaker 3: a lot of guys don't have patience to watch that develop.
Speaker 3: I've planted trees and they bed in a little bit.
Speaker 3: But I've walked farms that were that tree planning is
Speaker 3: five to twelve years old, and those are the farms
Speaker 3: for your hair on the back of your next stand
Speaker 3: up with really great sign And the only way you
Speaker 3: get that is if you take five to twelve years
Speaker 3: to light the trees and do all that. And I
Speaker 3: think that the debate of native warm season grasses or
Speaker 3: planting trees, I have this conversation with guys all the time.
Speaker 3: I'm a tree guy. I like planting the trees is
Speaker 3: a lot more work, it takes longer, but I think
Speaker 3: it changes the landscape in a better way. For the
Speaker 3: warm season grasses, if you're impatient, happens faster. So I mean,
Speaker 3: those are some of the biggest things, and I think
Speaker 3: TSI is obviously a great time of beer to do
Speaker 3: TSI as well, out reducing crappy trees, bad trees and
Speaker 3: ferrier trees, and letting crop trees come into more sunlight
Speaker 3: and grow faster. And and that, I mean, all these
Speaker 3: things have so many different warmholes where you talk to
Speaker 3: I've talked to different TSI guys and even one of
Speaker 3: them specifically was Adam Keith with land a Legacy. I said,
Speaker 3: out of all the farms you go walk for, you know,
Speaker 3: you guys are doing a client visit and the guy says, hey,
Speaker 3: I did TSI on this farm, how often do you
Speaker 3: look at the TSI and say, yeah, you did a
Speaker 3: good job. And he said maybe one out of ten. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it's like, okay, well, where's the gap that communication
Speaker 3: here where there's all these different things. But I don't
Speaker 3: want I don't want people to get paralyzed with not
Speaker 3: starting a project because I think that we all cannot
Speaker 3: start every project with all the answers and know everything,
Speaker 3: like you just have to get going. And that's that's
Speaker 3: been what I've done. And I think another side of
Speaker 3: things of just different projects of planting trees in the
Speaker 3: spring one year that we bought this originally three years
Speaker 3: ago in the fall. Now I'm so excited to just
Speaker 3: playing trees and the spread. I gotta do it. And
Speaker 3: I planted a bunch of trees and brow infest you
Speaker 3: and they're not any bigger than what they are. I
Speaker 3: planned it three years ago, so I realized, Okay, you
Speaker 3: have to do the prep work, get rid of the
Speaker 3: grass that's gonna choke out all the trees and shrubs
Speaker 3: that you plant it. And then I did that the
Speaker 3: following year, and those trees are like already two or
Speaker 3: three times bigger than the ones I planted much further
Speaker 3: in the in the background. So I think all these
Speaker 3: different things, we want to rush and get them done
Speaker 3: and kind of just do it to get it done
Speaker 3: and put it off the checklist. But maybe going into
Speaker 3: some of these projects this upcoming here, maybe make it
Speaker 3: your point to educate yourself on how to do it
Speaker 3: as best or as close to right as you can
Speaker 3: the first time, rather than watch a video on YouTube
Speaker 3: and you know, hey, I'm gonna do TSI and you
Speaker 3: don't really know how to do tree identification or you're
Speaker 3: not really sure what you're trying to accomplish. A lot
Speaker 3: of those are pretty big decisions that you don't get
Speaker 3: to undo. And so I mean, that's that's a lot there.
Speaker 3: But those are just some of the things that are
Speaker 3: of mind that mistakes I've made, things I've learned from
Speaker 3: other people and things that I've implemented. And the other thing, too,
Speaker 3: is the off season goes fast.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the things you're talking about, though, though,
Speaker 2: is there's this temptation to want to do everything right
Speaker 2: now right. We want it all and we want it now.
Speaker 2: But I think that, to your point, can often times
Speaker 2: lead to us rushing things, not doing the real prep
Speaker 2: work that we needed to do, not doing things the
Speaker 2: right way, and then in the long run, you know,
Speaker 2: the payoff is half what it could have been if
Speaker 2: we just would have slowed down and made some better decisions.
Speaker 2: So I'm imagining that one of the antidotes to that
Speaker 2: is simply better prioritizing and planning what projects to do
Speaker 2: at a given time, instead of maybe trying to do
Speaker 2: twelve big things this year, maybe doing four things really
Speaker 2: well versus twelve things half assed. So number one, am
Speaker 2: I right about that? And number two, if so, how
Speaker 2: do you go about prioritizing and choosing, you know, what
Speaker 2: is the best use of my time this year or
Speaker 2: what should be in my list for twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: Because like you said, there's a thousand things that could
Speaker 2: be on that list on any given year, how do
Speaker 2: we pick the right things and at doing them at
Speaker 2: the right times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the biggest thing, and this is going
Speaker 3: to be no surprise to anyone, but the improving your
Speaker 3: access is such a big, big part of that. And
Speaker 3: so ideally you would have sprayed this last fall to
Speaker 3: prepare to plant switch grass or whatever other screening you
Speaker 3: planned on doing, and I think that for this upcoming
Speaker 3: spring you can continue to spray it and prepare it
Speaker 3: for either a prot seed or maybe I mean there's
Speaker 3: the debate if you can spray it multiple times in
Speaker 3: the springting and do a late tune planning of switch grass.
Speaker 3: That's a possibility for sure, depending on what you're working with.
Speaker 3: And so I think planning your access is probably the
Speaker 3: big improvement that you can make. And making pockets throughout
Speaker 3: your farm just to make the deer feel more comfortable
Speaker 3: and direct traffic, I think that's the biggest thing, because
Speaker 3: you're going to get more use out of your farm
Speaker 3: and not scare as many deer coming in and out.
Speaker 3: And you also kind of funnel the deer where you
Speaker 3: want to go, or at least encourage them to do
Speaker 3: what you want a lot easier with just some of
Speaker 3: those edges, and so this year, this is a good example.
Speaker 3: Last year I did a lot of prep work to
Speaker 3: plant switchgrass, and I proceeded to switch grass last February,
Speaker 3: and so this is a one year stand. Next to
Speaker 3: that one year stand, I planned a one year annual
Speaker 3: screen to still accomplish the access, and then once the
Speaker 3: switch grass gets established, I'm going to take out that
Speaker 3: annual screen and extend my food cloth. And I think
Speaker 3: that's a really quick and easy way to accomplish both
Speaker 3: buckets all in the same year. And I think some
Speaker 3: of the other things too. When it comes to TSI
Speaker 3: is guys just get really excited, and I think it's
Speaker 3: a very powerful method to improve a parcel. However, a
Speaker 3: lot of guys, I think, forget the once again the
Speaker 3: prep work of getting rid of the undesirable species before
Speaker 3: you flush open the canopy, and then you have a
Speaker 3: bigger mess to fight, and it's really tempting to think, like, ah,
Speaker 3: you know, it can't be that bad. It can be.
Speaker 3: It can be if you don't do it. So, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think those are the those are some of the
Speaker 3: biggest things, is just nailing down the access, figuring out
Speaker 3: how to maybe improve something as simple as a as
Speaker 3: a mock scrape or some of these little, little tiny
Speaker 3: projects that can make a big, a big impact for
Speaker 3: your upcoming season. And I think just the biggest thing
Speaker 3: that it always boils down to is access and trying
Speaker 3: to put the deer where you can hunt them effectively.
Speaker 3: And I think that is something that is a common
Speaker 3: thread with name whatever, white tail expert. If you could
Speaker 3: just really boil down what the what their thesis is,
Speaker 3: it's improve the access, scare less deer, and have higher
Speaker 3: opportunity stand locations. Easy to say, hard to do, Uh,
Speaker 3: if you don't really have a really good plan.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So with that being the case, and an access
Speaker 2: being one of the first things you recommend somebody look
Speaker 2: at you share one example of how you've been working
Speaker 2: on improving access. What's on your to do list for
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five? What projects have you prioritized as being
Speaker 2: the things that you're going to get done this year?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so access is one of the On another farm,
Speaker 3: it's Uh, there's an area I remember walking it last
Speaker 3: year and grabbing candors and this exactly happened where I
Speaker 3: found a bunch of beds looking exactly where I park. Okay,
Speaker 3: something has to happen.
Speaker 2: It's a problem.
Speaker 3: And unfortunately I identified that last year, I didn't I
Speaker 3: didn't get it done, and so that's something that's just
Speaker 3: number one on my project list this upcoming year. Another
Speaker 3: good example is last couple of years, I've planned about
Speaker 3: four thousand trees where I live, and over three thousand
Speaker 3: of those have been by hand. And the reason I've
Speaker 3: done that is, I see, I just don't like straight rows,
Speaker 3: and I remember watching the video and reading a scientific
Speaker 3: study that animals don't like straight road tree plannings. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to do that, and so I've basically
Speaker 3: been creating a forest by hand, and which has been
Speaker 3: really cool. But the thing of this is where that
Speaker 3: I plan on planning another two thousand trees, it's old
Speaker 3: cattle pasture broman fescue, and I made that mistake previously
Speaker 3: where the trees just don't grow as rapidly as they should.
Speaker 3: And so this past year I have sprayed all of
Speaker 3: that down to prepare for the upcoming not this spring,
Speaker 3: but the following spring. And this year I'm going to
Speaker 3: plant basically a peasants forever and hotxy native seed they
Speaker 3: sell different blends where it's say, basically, there's a mix
Speaker 3: of timothy grass and clover and alfalfa to get a
Speaker 3: good base for your trees and then go ahead and
Speaker 3: plant your trees the following year. So I mean, I've
Speaker 3: made the mistakes, and so now I'm dialing back what
Speaker 3: I want to get done in the multi year fashion,
Speaker 3: because if we look at it this way, a lot
Speaker 3: of our deer seasons or even planned on a one
Speaker 3: season approach, everything's make or break one season, like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is the biggest year I have to hunt. I
Speaker 3: got to kill him and say, well, man, could you
Speaker 3: imagine it? Maybe you waited or bet on the deer
Speaker 3: the following year, maybe your following season would be twofold
Speaker 3: as good because of you know, whatever happens. And I
Speaker 3: think that comes down to the same thing with land
Speaker 3: management and planning, to where we always look at what's
Speaker 3: this year, we all can I get done? But if
Speaker 3: you stretched it out in a long term vision, you're
Speaker 3: gonna be way more productive. Because I've made like all
Speaker 3: these different mistakes of just trying to get as much
Speaker 3: done as fast as possible, and it's like, gosh, I
Speaker 3: wish I could do that again, and sometimes I do
Speaker 3: have to do it again because it's not been work.
Speaker 2: So you did the rushing the trees mistake, and now
Speaker 2: they've been stunted. What are some of the other mistakes
Speaker 2: you've made over recent years that were, you know, real
Speaker 2: doozies that now you look back on and say, man,
Speaker 2: I should have done that differently. What are a few
Speaker 2: more of those worst mistakes that you've learned from not.
Speaker 3: Listening into my own gush. I remember the first arm
Speaker 3: I bought, there was a blind already on it, and
Speaker 3: the best way to explain it was it's kind of
Speaker 3: a longer north the south food plot and it was
Speaker 3: on the east side of the plot, which makes sense
Speaker 3: for a win perspective, but you would have to walk
Speaker 3: through the plot in order to get to the blind,
Speaker 3: and you're putting a bunch of ground sent it. And
Speaker 3: I remember the first time I even walked, I was like,
Speaker 3: the blind really needs to be over here. It'd be
Speaker 3: really nice to put like two track road in. And
Speaker 3: so I didn't do that the first year, and then
Speaker 3: the next year, so okay, I'm just gonna do it.
Speaker 3: I know this is something that needs to happen, and
Speaker 3: so I moved the blind put in the two track road,
Speaker 3: and actually the first sit I had on that line,
Speaker 3: I ended up killing a buck doing exactly what I
Speaker 3: had initially envisioned in my head. That I don't necessarily
Speaker 3: think it would have worked if I would have left it
Speaker 3: where it was at. So I think a lot of
Speaker 3: the mistakes are just not doing what you know you
Speaker 3: need to do.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And maybe that's easier for some people than others. But
Speaker 3: if there was a you hunted all season, like man,
Speaker 3: they all come out of this corner of the field,
Speaker 3: and I just I don't know why that is, and
Speaker 3: I wish I could get over there, but this or this, this,
Speaker 3: this or this doesn't allow me to do it. If
Speaker 3: there is a way to make it happen. And you
Speaker 3: notice that's what's always occurring during the season, make the
Speaker 3: move and plan for it. And it's November every single
Speaker 3: year at the same time, like we all make it.
Speaker 3: It's going to happen. This upcoming November is going to happen.
Speaker 3: And when you realize this November, you wish it was
Speaker 3: set up that way, use this time to actually do that.
Speaker 3: Or another example would be at my house, we used
Speaker 3: to be an old cattle pasture, and there's a lot
Speaker 3: of interior fencing, which is actually pretty cool that that's
Speaker 3: already in place. And I remember thinking, they all come
Speaker 3: out of this north corner of it, and it would
Speaker 3: be really nice if on this corner of this creek,
Speaker 3: if they could cross right there. And so I just
Speaker 3: cut out a chunk of the fence, and sure enough,
Speaker 3: all the deer like it. It's more of a split thing.
Speaker 3: I didn't plug up the other one, but it made
Speaker 3: a big impact. And so it's just a lot of
Speaker 3: it is just I would encourage people to think back
Speaker 3: on their past season and think really hard and say,
Speaker 3: what what did I notice? What could I do to
Speaker 3: improve things in order and this? Do it whatever that is,
Speaker 3: do the self research, figure it out, call buddy, figure out.
Speaker 3: You know you've done this project. This is another thing
Speaker 3: I do all the time. I call other guys that
Speaker 3: have done the projects I'm trying to do, and you
Speaker 3: give them a call. Hey, I know you planned some
Speaker 3: some warm season grasses two years ago. What would you
Speaker 3: do differently? Oh? Oh I did this, and oh man,
Speaker 3: I definitely wouldn't do that again. Like okay, well, I'm
Speaker 3: definitely going to take your advice here and do the
Speaker 3: different thing here. And I think all of it comes
Speaker 3: down to preppoor, which is the boring thing like when
Speaker 3: you paint, when you paint a house or paint your room,
Speaker 3: and you got to put up all the tap. You
Speaker 3: have to lay out a foundation or the claw, like, man,
Speaker 3: this is gonna take forever, and then you give the
Speaker 3: paint sprayer and it's like ye, and it's all done.
Speaker 3: And I feel like the white tail work is a
Speaker 3: lot of the putting up painters tape, and then the
Speaker 3: fun is actually the painting, and it's important to have
Speaker 3: the foundation ready to go.
Speaker 2: Man, that's so true. So you did the you you
Speaker 2: mentioned the one set of trees you planted that were
Speaker 2: stunted because the growth. You mentioned another set another two
Speaker 2: thousand or something that you're planting here in like a future.
Speaker 2: I meant to ask you what other than not planting
Speaker 2: them in straight rows and now planting them in this
Speaker 2: prepped meadow of sorts with that mix you mentioned, what
Speaker 2: else are you doing different or what specifically are you
Speaker 2: doing with this new forest you're planting to make sure
Speaker 2: that it does, you know, pan out the way you
Speaker 2: wanted to so what species are you planting, when are
Speaker 2: you doing it, how are you doing it? Anything else
Speaker 2: around the details there, because I think there's a lot
Speaker 2: of guys that you have these big open spaces and
Speaker 2: they're trying to figure out what do you do with that?
Speaker 2: And like you said, there's like the quick fix things,
Speaker 2: but trees take time and a lot of folks, you know,
Speaker 2: steer away from that because they want that give me
Speaker 2: something right now kind of impact. So with the trees,
Speaker 2: what's what's the right way to do it? Or how
Speaker 2: are you trying to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I mean this is a this is a
Speaker 3: pretty interesting case study that I did this past year
Speaker 3: in comparison to the previous year. So I used a
Speaker 3: dibble bar. And so a dibble bar is like a
Speaker 3: little spade. You push it down at your boot and
Speaker 3: open up a little pocket and then stick the tree
Speaker 3: in there and then close it up. And what happens
Speaker 3: You have to trim up the roots a bunch. And
Speaker 3: so a j root is when it curls back up
Speaker 3: and the tree is going to die. So you have
Speaker 3: to trim the roots in order to fit into these
Speaker 3: tiny little holes. And so I went down to the
Speaker 3: hardware store and rented a steel auger. It's probably like
Speaker 3: thirty forty pounds. It's gas operated at auger. I rented
Speaker 3: that for the weekend and it makes an eight inch hole.
Speaker 3: You can put it a lot deeper. And I quickly
Speaker 3: realized I needed to buy one of those, because I
Speaker 3: know what I was going to get everything down in
Speaker 3: a weekend. And so this past year I used an
Speaker 3: auger for ninety percent of my trees, and so I
Speaker 3: did not have to trim up the roots hardly at all.
Speaker 3: And there's some Chicksaw plums American plums that I planted
Speaker 3: this year, hazel not that I planted this year that's
Speaker 3: already taller than me. I'm six foot tall and they're
Speaker 3: already taller than me. And they started out as a
Speaker 3: little four foot bare roots, all.
Speaker 2: Right, So there are three or four foot Another are
Speaker 2: already six foot six and a half foot seven foot
Speaker 2: And comparing that to even some of the trees I
Speaker 2: use a dibble bar where you had to trim up
Speaker 2: the roots.
Speaker 3: They have to regrow those roots. And I'm not a
Speaker 3: forester by any means, but or arborous, but it's kind
Speaker 3: of common sense. They have to put a bunch of
Speaker 3: energy to re establish the roots and then grow. But
Speaker 3: when you have a big old root ball and you
Speaker 3: put it into a nice soft soil all the way
Speaker 3: around it, they grew phenomenally better. And that was a
Speaker 3: very clear indication that it tasts longer. It's more pain
Speaker 3: in the butt, but it's definitely worth it. And even
Speaker 3: I did use a treat planner for about seven hundred
Speaker 3: trees of the four thousand I've planted, and same thing.
Speaker 3: You have to trim up the roots and you know,
Speaker 3: side by side. I planted these trees the same weekend
Speaker 3: and those ones did not hardly grow at all in
Speaker 3: comparison to the other ones that I took the time
Speaker 3: to use an augur and created a forest. And as
Speaker 3: far as different species, I love swamp folks, swamp white
Speaker 3: oak I planted. I planted a bunch of different rides planets.
Speaker 3: Swamp white oak, which is a white oak variety, they
Speaker 3: hold their leaves really late, they have really sweet acorns.
Speaker 3: I planted pen oak and as a red oak variety,
Speaker 3: they hold their leaves really late. They grow pretty fast,
Speaker 3: and so it's actually pretty crazy to think I have
Speaker 3: all these different species and I'm hand selecting where each
Speaker 3: one of them go. And I planted per simons, different
Speaker 3: types of plums, hazelnut, red dogwood, great dog wood, planted
Speaker 3: some weird stuff like an anie berry, which I just
Speaker 3: wanted to see what those looked like when they got
Speaker 3: big and if the deer messed with them. And it's
Speaker 3: like all this kind of all these different little things
Speaker 3: that you're just trying and to be able to hand
Speaker 3: select where day I want a shrub line along the
Speaker 3: creek of the red dog wood where they should thride.
Speaker 3: And then I want a band of swamp white op oak,
Speaker 3: and then I want to put haze lut in a
Speaker 3: little bit more upland area and just hand select all
Speaker 3: these different little pockets and then I'll you see whatever
Speaker 3: is most desirable. But I think that one of the
Speaker 3: plants I like the most is actually the plums, because
Speaker 3: they grow really fast and they start to put out
Speaker 3: fruit in three to four or five years, and I
Speaker 3: think that's somewhat of the instant gratification side of things.
Speaker 3: But they also don't live super long either, so I
Speaker 3: think their lifespans fifteen to twenty years. And then also
Speaker 3: planning just a bunch of white oaks and I've just
Speaker 3: had the luxury of walking a lot of different farms
Speaker 3: and I just get to see the different stages of
Speaker 3: maybe an old abandoned CRP field where it's maybe twenty
Speaker 3: years old and you have a bunch of white oaks
Speaker 3: and all you know, shingle oaks, pin oaks, and it's
Speaker 3: just it always looks really good and they usually have
Speaker 3: really good deer. And that doesn't happen by accident. Someone
Speaker 3: took the time to do that, and whoever ends up
Speaker 3: hunting that farm twenty years later, it gets to reap
Speaker 3: the benefits of that, and it's uh, it's a long
Speaker 3: term plan. It's a very long term plan, and it's
Speaker 3: extremely gratifying to do that. And I think depending on
Speaker 3: where you're at, this is probably one of the biggest
Speaker 3: tips for someone. The state forestries sell tree species at
Speaker 3: a very affordable price. So Illinois has a sale and
Speaker 3: you have to be ready to go right when it
Speaker 3: goes live because a lot of the good species sell
Speaker 3: right away. Missouri has another really good sale. Iowa has
Speaker 3: a really good sale where you can get these tree
Speaker 3: species that are really desirable and they'll ship them to
Speaker 3: your door and they're very affordable then going to a
Speaker 3: nursery or buying them somewhere online, and I think that's
Speaker 3: where I pretty much, but based off what I buy
Speaker 3: is what's available that year, because they're growing these bare
Speaker 3: root trees and then they're selling it to a conservationist,
Speaker 3: and I think that's a really great resource to if
Speaker 3: you want to buy a bundle of one hundred, it's
Speaker 3: sixty dollars for a lot of species, for thirty five
Speaker 3: dollars for a shrub species, and those are a big thing.
Speaker 3: The other thing too, that I know a lot of
Speaker 3: guys have not all my trees, and so aesthetically it's
Speaker 3: kind of a little ugly, to be honest, but I
Speaker 3: know long term I'll be able to take them off.
Speaker 3: But I planted some where I did not tube them
Speaker 3: and they got eight to the ground. Or I planted
Speaker 3: some shrubs that were two foot tall tubes and that
Speaker 3: are still too foot tall, and I don't think they'll
Speaker 3: ever get dark and two foot it because are two
Speaker 3: feet because the deer just browsed them right away. So
Speaker 3: I think the biggest thing is protecting those trees. My
Speaker 3: plan is some fruit trees. I've not produced any fruit yet,
Speaker 3: but one mistake I did was I did not put
Speaker 3: a like you put a window screen around the base
Speaker 3: of the tree, because in the winter, rabbits can go
Speaker 3: in and girdle your tree, your fruit tree. And I've
Speaker 3: made that mistake. And so it's just a lot of
Speaker 3: different things. But that's and that's the crazy thing about
Speaker 3: hytail land management. We just have only talked about trees
Speaker 3: and schritz. I mean, there's a bunch of stuff we
Speaker 3: haven't covered that is so important to have a successful project.
Speaker 3: But tuning them, prepping the site, I think using an
Speaker 3: order is worthwhile and just sit back and watch them
Speaker 3: grow and it's very gratifying.
Speaker 2: So one of the questions that I have wrestled with
Speaker 2: in the past when I have been able to do
Speaker 2: stuff on a property, and then I get whenever I
Speaker 2: talk to people who are curious about doing this themselves,
Speaker 2: and I guess I'm kind of gonna reask the question
Speaker 2: I already asked you once, I'm gonna ask a slightly
Speaker 2: different way. But when someone's trying to decide where my
Speaker 2: biggest weak spot is on my property, right, I've got
Speaker 2: maybe I've got a new farm, or I have a
Speaker 2: farm that I just haven't been able to do a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff on but this is the year I'm
Speaker 2: finally going to really work on the place. I'm going
Speaker 2: to do something. I'm gonna make it better this year.
Speaker 2: But to your point, like, gosh, there's all this stuff
Speaker 2: we just talked about with trees, and then of course,
Speaker 2: you know, food plots get a lot of press and
Speaker 2: they're really exciting and sexy, and then you talked about grasses,
Speaker 2: and we've talked about access routes and all that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. I guess I'm wondering, from like a process standpoint,
Speaker 2: or like a high level standpoint, how do you recommend
Speaker 2: someone you know, determining where to start. I mean you
Speaker 2: said earlier access, Is it, excuse me diying over here?
Speaker 2: Is access always number one? Or is there something else
Speaker 2: or a different process someone can go through to decide, Okay,
Speaker 2: where's my weak spot or where's my area of most need?
Speaker 2: How do you think through that?
Speaker 3: I think every farm has the best spot. I think
Speaker 3: you start there, and the best spot maybe is a
Speaker 3: tree stand or a blind that you can hunt. You know,
Speaker 3: you hear people talk about I can hunt that blind
Speaker 3: every day at the season and not get busted. And okay,
Speaker 3: well that's pretty interesting, But what about the other best
Speaker 3: spot that the axis is not that great? Where I
Speaker 3: feel my year this year the axis was not that great,
Speaker 3: and I hunted at one time and it worked and
Speaker 3: so and how that works is I stayed the heck
Speaker 3: out of there until the conditions were perfectly right and
Speaker 3: needed an east wind. I really wanted to fall between
Speaker 3: the fifth or Wealth of November. It was in between
Speaker 3: two betting areas. And to make that, I guess to
Speaker 3: boil that down is start with the best spot and
Speaker 3: then identify how often can I hunt it and when
Speaker 3: should I hunt it? And is there things that I
Speaker 3: can do to improve it? And I think that you
Speaker 3: know someone that's just starting with something brand new. A
Speaker 3: lot of times, the best spot is probably a location
Speaker 3: that has pretty solid access, maybe a seven out of ten,
Speaker 3: maybe a six out of ten, And then how can
Speaker 3: you go in there and improve that. Maybe that is
Speaker 3: a micro food plot. Maybe that is fell in a
Speaker 3: couple of trees to try to get them to go
Speaker 3: where they were, you know, dictate that traffic just a
Speaker 3: little bit better. Maybe not anything crazy drastic, but just
Speaker 3: a little way to up your odds. I think I
Speaker 3: just and maybe do you experience this when you look
Speaker 3: at a farm, do you just automatically gravitate towards maybe
Speaker 3: one or two spots of like, oh, yeah, these are
Speaker 3: two really good spots based off of the sign, based
Speaker 3: off the like I feel like as h it automatically
Speaker 3: kind of comes to us to say.
Speaker 2: It's hard not to. Yeah, it's hard not to do that.
Speaker 2: But also I think sometimes the opposite is possible, which
Speaker 2: is you gravitate towards where the easiest place to make
Speaker 2: an improvement would be. Right. I think like you might
Speaker 2: look at a property like, well, there's my opening, Like,
Speaker 2: there's already an open spot. That's where I'll do the
Speaker 2: food plot, because food plots are fast and they're exciting,
Speaker 2: and there's an open spot. And so this is like
Speaker 2: a mistake I've made the past, where I got access
Speaker 2: to a property I can improve and there was already
Speaker 2: an opening in a spot, and I say, all right,
Speaker 2: that's it.
Speaker 3: That's gonna be the first.
Speaker 2: Thing I do. And I'm playing a big old food
Speaker 2: plot here in this open spot, and I go and
Speaker 2: do it, and then lo and behold, it's it's right
Speaker 2: along the route I need to access and every time
Speaker 2: I try going for a morning hunting, spooking deer off
Speaker 2: this food plot. And you know, two years later, I
Speaker 2: had to just let the whole thing go because I
Speaker 2: realized it was making things worse for me than it
Speaker 2: was in the you know, actually helping me. So I've
Speaker 2: made that mistake. So so I have struggled with answering
Speaker 2: this question myself.
Speaker 3: I guess yeah, I think it comes down to to
Speaker 3: the actual I'm trying to just go through my own
Speaker 3: thought process here, because I think that sometimes not doing
Speaker 3: a bunch of stuff is just as powerful as doing
Speaker 3: a bunch of stuff. And I think you're exactly right
Speaker 3: that open area would be great. It'd be so easy
Speaker 3: to put in a food plot. But to your point,
Speaker 3: it may be more productive to leave it the way
Speaker 3: it is or improve it, because I think all white tail,
Speaker 3: if you have a piece that you can mess around with,
Speaker 3: you just your tinkerer. By default. You want to tinker,
Speaker 3: You want to tweak everything, you want to improve everything.
Speaker 3: And I have this internal debate quite often. It's like,
Speaker 3: I wonder how good that farm would be it just
Speaker 3: stayed exactly the way it is, and I just stayed
Speaker 3: the heck out of it, and I had to think
Speaker 3: that I had a permission, a new permission piece where
Speaker 3: I tested that theory and it works, and then I
Speaker 3: think like and then the whole time I was like, man,
Speaker 3: he's so nice to have a food plot, you know
Speaker 3: right over there. They wouldn't have to dive as deep.
Speaker 3: And I think that a lot of times, it's it
Speaker 3: just comes down to making effect, making the spot as
Speaker 3: effective as gospel without doing stuff just because it looks
Speaker 3: really good, Because we all get caught up in the
Speaker 3: aesthetic of a farm. It's so pretty. Do you see
Speaker 3: that food plot? You see how green that food plot is,
Speaker 3: or it's just all these different things that we think
Speaker 3: as humans and not necessarily is how the deer would
Speaker 3: perceive that when you put a really nice green food
Speaker 3: source right next to a giant alfalfa field, and was
Speaker 3: that really worthwhile? But I think the biggest thing is
Speaker 3: figuring out where the best spot is and then reverse
Speaker 3: engineering maybe how to make it a little bit better,
Speaker 3: and kind of going all into one spot because I
Speaker 3: think a lot of the theme from so many of
Speaker 3: the guys that I've talked to, one thing that is
Speaker 3: pretty common is they're aggressive in the sense of hunting
Speaker 3: when the time is right and making it happen with
Speaker 3: whatever mouse trap they developed, or maybe working with what
Speaker 3: they have. But they're not aggressive in the sense of
Speaker 3: it's November fifth, I have to get to this exact
Speaker 3: center of my farm on this one bridge point where
Speaker 3: I think it's gonna happened. It's They're very disciplined and
Speaker 3: very patient, and I think that's the hardest thing as
Speaker 3: hunters across the board, because they they listen to Cody
Speaker 3: de Quista, like, oh, he's got to get in there,
Speaker 3: he's got to do that, Or you listen to Dan
Speaker 3: Infoll if you're passive on it, dear you're teaching them
Speaker 3: and like those are that's in the back of your mind.
Speaker 3: But then you also understand that there's a tried and
Speaker 3: true method of just sticking to a discipline plan and
Speaker 3: trusting that plan. And I think that where you get
Speaker 3: in trouble is where you start telling the line between
Speaker 3: both of them, like yeah, I think I'm going to
Speaker 3: die back in there, and like, oh, I'm going to
Speaker 3: stick back to my plan. It's like, well, you might
Speaker 3: have shot yourself on the foot there, And that's something
Speaker 3: I battle all the time. Is how you got to
Speaker 3: get in there. You got to do it. And then
Speaker 3: at the same point like, Okay, I tried that, Now
Speaker 3: I'm going to go back to the the more disciplined version.
Speaker 3: And then it it's like you almost have to be
Speaker 3: all in on one or the other.
Speaker 2: It almost seems like yeah, and it's also so circumstantial, right,
Speaker 2: Like some people, if you have just one little farm
Speaker 2: a certain way of hunting, it might be very different
Speaker 2: than if you hunt three farms worth three thousand acres,
Speaker 2: right Like Code can bounce around to a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of different places right that are all great or Dan
Speaker 2: can bump around thousands of acres there's a different public
Speaker 2: land that he's hunting and scouted. But if I tried
Speaker 2: that same attempt on my twenty acres that I is
Speaker 2: the only spot I hunt, you know it's not going
Speaker 2: to work out so well. So you need to understand, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: certain tactics work best in certain types of situations, and
Speaker 2: understanding if you are fitting a square peg into a
Speaker 2: round hole or not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think this is probably the biggest piece of
Speaker 3: advice that's not land management, but it kind of works
Speaker 3: out in the same fashion. Go get permission on a
Speaker 3: few more spots, or go find a couple of public
Speaker 3: places that you can burn some hunts on. And sometimes
Speaker 3: not hunting your farm is just as productive as hunting it.
Speaker 3: And I think that a lot of guys fall into
Speaker 3: this trap to I have to hunt it, I have
Speaker 3: to week off. I really want to go and that's
Speaker 3: fine because you have you have someone that says you
Speaker 3: gotta be out there to kill him. And I question
Speaker 3: if those are the guys that are killing the deer
Speaker 3: or the quality of deer that they really want to
Speaker 3: I mean, if if we're being completely honest, and I
Speaker 3: think that where guys struggle is they just they have
Speaker 3: to hunt because they have to. And I think this
Speaker 3: leading farm as fresh as possible. And then you did
Speaker 3: the pop my whole, my whole ethosis upcoming season or
Speaker 3: this last season, just fall my gut. It's like really simple.
Speaker 3: We if you listen to white tailed podcasts, you're ate
Speaker 3: up by this. You know what to do. Just follow
Speaker 3: your gut and don't overthink it. And that's I called
Speaker 3: myself where I was the hunts where I would just
Speaker 3: go in on a on a gut feeling and just
Speaker 3: kind of just go a little bit more instinctual, way
Speaker 3: more productive. And then I would catch myself in the
Speaker 3: stand thinking, Okay, tomorrow is going to be a southwest wind.
Speaker 3: What are some good south wind spots, and just like
Speaker 3: really getting overthinking it, and then I'd go do that,
Speaker 3: and it's like, man, this I went here just because
Speaker 3: I thought it would be good in my own brain
Speaker 3: and reality. I just talk myself into thinking it would
Speaker 3: be good. And I think that comes down to the
Speaker 3: land management. It comes down to everything. It's like, follow
Speaker 3: your instincts, follow your intuition, and do what you need
Speaker 3: to do. And maybe that's not doing anything, or maybe
Speaker 3: that's doing a lot if something needs to get done
Speaker 3: that could rascally improve.
Speaker 2: A carson, you know. You know, with with the hunting tactic,
Speaker 2: like you're talking about, like should I hunt here? Should
Speaker 2: I hunt there? You can get feedback on your decision
Speaker 2: pretty quickly, right, you can go out there and hunt today,
Speaker 2: and then you can determine like do the right thing
Speaker 2: or do the wrong thing. So it's a very furs
Speaker 2: fast turnaround as far as understanding your decision making process
Speaker 2: and if it paid off or not. When it comes
Speaker 2: to land management, though, you know, you can do something today,
Speaker 2: and can you see a difference next year or is
Speaker 2: it two years or is it ten years? You know how?
Speaker 2: How like what kind of timeline do you recommend someone
Speaker 2: looking at these things on and how quickly could someone
Speaker 2: expect to see positive changes seat progress?
Speaker 3: That's a fascinating question, because you're right that feedback loop
Speaker 3: is a lot longer it. Man, that's an excellent question.
Speaker 3: I think some things you could see an improvement on
Speaker 3: rather quickly, and I think a lot of it is
Speaker 3: just a response of nature and habitat. Like, for instance,
Speaker 3: I killed a bunch of that rescue and brone grass,
Speaker 3: and then I had and I did a control burn
Speaker 3: and I had a bunch of new oak seat seedlings
Speaker 3: popping up out of the ground the following sprint. Now,
Speaker 3: how does that relate to hunting? It creates better brow
Speaker 3: like all these different things. But I think the feed
Speaker 3: feedback loop, that is an excellent question. I don't know
Speaker 3: when the time is to pull the plug or say that, yeah,
Speaker 3: this isn't working, because a lot of it does take time.
Speaker 3: You can't you can't make three year old switchgrass in
Speaker 3: one year, no matter what you do. And I think
Speaker 3: a lot of it is just trust seeing the process
Speaker 3: and then having enough self awareness to say, Okay, this
Speaker 3: didn't work, how can I improve it. I don't know
Speaker 3: when you'd pull the plug. I think the biggest thing
Speaker 3: would be if you think a stand location is really
Speaker 3: good because of the postseason scouting, and you go in there,
Speaker 3: and then the following fall you hunt it two or
Speaker 3: three times and you get busted and or this isn't
Speaker 3: A really good example is the wind does something drastically
Speaker 3: different than what you thought to where it swirls on.
Speaker 3: I thought it would be good for a north and west,
Speaker 3: north and south wind, but on a south wind it
Speaker 3: seems to swirl back over to where I didn't think
Speaker 3: it would go, And I think that that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 3: change anything. It's maybe just not hunting on a south wind,
Speaker 3: but that comes back to a quicker feedback loop. I
Speaker 3: don't I honestly don't have a firm answer on when
Speaker 3: to pull the plug on a project. I think, like,
Speaker 3: for example, the tree side of things, going into the
Speaker 3: first year, there was not much betting our activity around it,
Speaker 3: but following year there was more, and then this year
Speaker 3: there was even more. There was actually one sit that
Speaker 3: was pretty fun. I was sitting there doze around me
Speaker 3: and I was here this plastic like crashing, like what happened?
Speaker 3: I'm like, and I'm pinned down. There's doze all around me,
Speaker 3: like what is that? I ended up being able to
Speaker 3: pull my binoculars and there's this like junker old mature
Speaker 3: but just smashing all my tree tubes and all set
Speaker 3: and snapping them all off. And so I mean that
Speaker 3: then there's a corner of my planning where there's fifteen
Speaker 3: trees that got snapped off, like the steak that planted
Speaker 3: the trees, And that was pretty fun to actually witness
Speaker 3: and hear it. And I had a camera down there
Speaker 3: and I watched the cameras all bristled up, and so
Speaker 3: I mean that took three years to that for that
Speaker 3: to occur. And so I think the biggest thing comes
Speaker 3: down to patients. I think the other side of that
Speaker 3: is having a plan that you have a lot of conviction,
Speaker 3: and if you're a wishy washy on the plan, you're
Speaker 3: probably not going to see it through and you're gonna
Speaker 3: I did this wrong, I don't know. I like, people
Speaker 3: are constantly changing things before it would get good. And
Speaker 3: I think that's something that is probably a hard thing
Speaker 3: to battle on. This comes down to having a good
Speaker 3: plan and having conviction in that and easier to than done.
Speaker 2: Once again, what makes a good plan?
Speaker 3: Then I feel that it would boil down to what
Speaker 3: your goals would be, because I think for some people
Speaker 3: the plan would be this farm doesn't really hold any deer.
Speaker 3: I would just really like to go out and when
Speaker 3: I hunt, just see deer. Or I would like to
Speaker 3: be able to hunt this blind and have a seven
Speaker 3: out of ten chance to shoot a dough. And I
Speaker 3: think that plan's a lot easier in a much quicker
Speaker 3: feedback loop. I think the other side of I think
Speaker 3: it's so situational to where and I battled this initially
Speaker 3: where my idea of how I wanted to change the
Speaker 3: landscape was whitetail specific. What is simply the best for
Speaker 3: white tails. I don't care what the implications are. I
Speaker 3: just wanted to be the absolute best for white tails.
Speaker 3: And as I started doing more research and getting deeper
Speaker 3: into and it's like, well, maybe I could dial that
Speaker 3: back and be kind of cool to plant this and
Speaker 3: the pollinator and it'd be pretty cool to do the plant,
Speaker 3: you know, I planted quite a bit of native grasses,
Speaker 3: and I had a pheasant once and I hadn't seen
Speaker 3: a pheasant for everything. Okay, that's pretty cool. And so
Speaker 3: it's almost it's so situational to where there are guys
Speaker 3: that are it's white tail specific only and that's all
Speaker 3: I care about. And then there's other folks that have
Speaker 3: different varying levels of expectations. But the biggest thing is
Speaker 3: understanding what possibly the ceiling or maybe glass ceiling would
Speaker 3: be on a farm and being ultra realistic with that,
Speaker 3: which is hard to do. And I think that's something
Speaker 3: that just comes to comes with time. I mean initially
Speaker 3: when I moved on forty acres, like, oh man, I
Speaker 3: can't I'd love to shoot doing a crock of white
Speaker 3: tail behind my house. I don't think that's probably realistic
Speaker 3: in a ten year timeline. Maybe a twenty year timeline,
Speaker 3: maybe it is. But there's other farms where that expectation
Speaker 3: could be a once and a five year occurrence. And
Speaker 3: how you would develop a farm with probably cater to
Speaker 3: what the quality of the deer and the So that's
Speaker 3: why I kind of dial back some of the white
Speaker 3: tail side of things of Okay, it's probably you know,
Speaker 3: it's gonna be a really fun place to hunt. I'm
Speaker 3: really gonna enjoy it, but I probably don't have to
Speaker 3: be so extreme and do everything to the tenth degree.
Speaker 3: And maybe that's a mistake, but I but once again,
Speaker 3: that's the beauty of all this is you get it
Speaker 3: catered to what you want. And I think the biggest
Speaker 3: thing is being realistic to what you want and what
Speaker 3: is realistic and meshing those two things together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you alluded to this earlier, the fact that
Speaker 2: you know, in your own podcasts you've talked to all
Speaker 2: sorts of people about these topics. You've talked to you know,
Speaker 2: the best land consultants, land managers, whitetail habitat tacticians. I
Speaker 2: mean you've you've talked to them all and I've talked
Speaker 2: to a bunch of them. Two and one thing I
Speaker 2: have noticed about many of these folks is they tend
Speaker 2: to be very and then this isn't this isn't a rule.
Speaker 2: There are exceptions to this, but many of them, I
Speaker 2: don't want to figure out how to put this properly.
Speaker 2: They're a little bit black and white. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of them there like this is the way to do it.
Speaker 2: If you don't do it this way, you're a knucklehead.
Speaker 2: There's a handful we are very opinionated in that kind
Speaker 2: of way, and they're all great, like, they're all doing
Speaker 2: their thing very well. So I'm not saying that their
Speaker 2: way of doing things doesn't work, but there seem to
Speaker 2: be a bunch of different ways that work from what
Speaker 2: I've noticed from afar. So I'm curious, from your perspective,
Speaker 2: having kind of specialized in this area more than I have,
Speaker 2: what are some of the things that have stood out
Speaker 2: to you as consistencies across the board, across all of
Speaker 2: these people. Are there any things that stand is like
Speaker 2: the absolute pillars of success for land management that whether
Speaker 2: it's Joe, John, Bill or Bob ever, one believes this
Speaker 2: kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you're right, there's a lot of I always,
Speaker 3: oftentimes when I look at something like how would so
Speaker 3: and so look at this? And then I would go
Speaker 3: to the what would say so and so think about
Speaker 3: this and this kind of go down the list, and
Speaker 3: I think that there's a couple of things that all
Speaker 3: ring true. They all treat their properties like a glasshouse,
Speaker 3: and I think that that's why I mean that's just
Speaker 3: like a lot of this, I think a lot of
Speaker 3: our A lot of the shortcomings could be from the
Speaker 3: person looking in the mirror and how you hunt and
Speaker 3: utilize the farm. And so I think the biggest thing
Speaker 3: that to do is they treat things like a glasshouse
Speaker 3: and something that I want to do with the Master
Speaker 3: Academies actually have like three or four different consultants come
Speaker 3: out and all do a plan and then compare them
Speaker 3: all and I think there would be a lot more
Speaker 3: common things than not maybe even more than what they
Speaker 3: would realize, and I think those those would be leading.
Speaker 3: It's okay to leave a lot of your farm alone,
Speaker 3: it's okay to not improve every single square ench of
Speaker 3: your farm to every every open area has to be
Speaker 3: food or every open area has to be converted to betting.
Speaker 3: Ok to maybe leave a two acre field into something
Speaker 3: that's fallow that allows you to access your property. I
Speaker 3: think all those plans would match up showcasing that. The
Speaker 3: other thing too is they're all very disciplined to your
Speaker 3: point with what they do, but it's they're disciplined to
Speaker 3: if you think about it, they all have success, right,
Speaker 3: so that means it's working. But they're all very methodical,
Speaker 3: methodical and discipline to what that plan is. And I
Speaker 3: think that where you get in trouble is you just
Speaker 3: take a little bit from here, a little bit from here,
Speaker 3: and you don't realize that they may be contradict what
Speaker 3: needs to happen, but you want to scratch both issues.
Speaker 3: Is probably one shortcoming. But I think the biggest thing
Speaker 3: is they leave on their farm alone, a lot of
Speaker 3: their farm alone, and they don't have to improve every
Speaker 3: square inch and you don't need twenty good spots. You
Speaker 3: need one or two good spots. And I think that's
Speaker 3: probably the biggest thing and something that I always like
Speaker 3: to ask people if I'm on their farm, like what's
Speaker 3: your favorite spot on the font and the reason I
Speaker 3: always like to ask that and the like, well, like
Speaker 3: my favorite spot for killing a deer? And I'm like, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 3: So if you have where can you go? You have
Speaker 3: the perfect ideal conditions, where do you like to go?
Speaker 3: And then you'll show me on the map and let's
Speaker 3: go look at it. And typically it comes down to
Speaker 3: really good access with the good food source that's nearby,
Speaker 3: and so if you can reverse engineer that, you need
Speaker 3: one really good spot with those items versus I mean,
Speaker 3: where I live, I have two spots I hunt maybe three,
Speaker 3: and one of the spots I have one hundred in
Speaker 3: two years because it hasn't been a deer I wanted
Speaker 3: to shoot. But the point being is like this, have
Speaker 3: some absolute, dialed in spots and make those great. And
Speaker 3: I think that we all want to We all want
Speaker 3: to see what's over the next hill. We all want
Speaker 3: to see I wonder what's happening over there, And thankfully
Speaker 3: with cameras a lot of those questions can be answered.
Speaker 3: And whether people want to admit it or not, real
Speaker 3: time uh to what's going on. But the biggest thing
Speaker 3: is discipline. They leave on to the farm alone and
Speaker 3: they treat it like a class house, and and they
Speaker 3: have a plan and they stick to it. But they
Speaker 3: all come down to good cover, good food, and lead
Speaker 3: your to your alone. I mean, that's the that's the
Speaker 3: three things that they all agree on. Whether however, you
Speaker 3: get to that, those three things they all agree with,
Speaker 3: those are the three really important.
Speaker 2: That makes sense, And I would say that stands out
Speaker 2: to me too. I'm curious about the flip side, which
Speaker 2: would be what are some of the things that stand
Speaker 2: out to you as most unique. So some can you
Speaker 2: are there any off the wall ideas that you've heard
Speaker 2: from someone over the years that you've talked to, You've
Speaker 2: walked a lot of people's farms, You've talked to all
Speaker 2: these guys on your podcast. Do any off the wall
Speaker 2: ideas stand out to you still? Is like, Man, this
Speaker 2: one crazy thing that Jeff said, or this one wild
Speaker 2: idea from Bobby or or anything like that that stands
Speaker 2: out to you is particularly unique and that you think
Speaker 2: really has some validity to it, or that you've been
Speaker 2: able to implement and see work for you.
Speaker 3: There's a couple of things that more than one thing.
Speaker 3: One of them was I was a Bobby Kendall earlier
Speaker 3: this past summer. He had three stands in one spot,
Speaker 3: three stands for all different wins. So there was the
Speaker 3: spot within the spot, and it was actually exactly what
Speaker 3: I described really good betting transitioning to really good food.
Speaker 3: And he had three different stands for three different wins.
Speaker 3: I don't know too many other people that would go
Speaker 3: to that lengths to have it set up for that
Speaker 3: exact scenario. So I mean, that's pretty it's pretty genius,
Speaker 3: and it had me question, like, I want a lot
Speaker 3: of the spots if you could, you know, instead of
Speaker 3: being on that side of the trail or that side
Speaker 3: of the cover, what could you do to make it
Speaker 3: work more often if it is the best spot right.
Speaker 3: Another one that's really interesting, ironically, I was just on
Speaker 3: this farm this morning. Actually, Bill Whinky came out to
Speaker 3: a client of Minds property and there's a cabbin and
Speaker 3: then it comes out to where it's a really big
Speaker 3: cliff and then it goes into a at an area
Speaker 3: and he's like, you need to put a forty foot
Speaker 3: extension ladder right here so you can access down there.
Speaker 3: And I was like, really, he was dead series and
Speaker 3: that was Bill's idea, and I said, that is definitely
Speaker 3: to the level of extreme. I don't think I would
Speaker 3: have thought of I'd actually just I just sold the
Speaker 3: farm and I was walking with the cellar. And it's
Speaker 3: kind of the inverse of this. He had a rope
Speaker 3: off the side of a big steep hill. Because we
Speaker 3: walked back there and I was like, man, how the
Speaker 3: heck did you get back here? He's like, I was
Speaker 3: waiting for you to ask that he has a rope
Speaker 3: and he pulls himself up this giant hill to come
Speaker 3: up off a cliff face, basically to get to where
Speaker 3: he needs to go. And that, ironically unprovoked came up
Speaker 3: as this is my favorite spot on the farm. And
Speaker 3: so it's like we all we all know within our
Speaker 3: own brains and what's the best spot. And then those
Speaker 3: are a couple of creative ways to make it much
Speaker 3: more realistic, which I mean kind of a streamed. Those
Speaker 3: are a couple of extreme examples, but it I wouldn't
Speaker 3: have thought of either of those. I may have thought
Speaker 3: of the pull up rope, but I don't think I
Speaker 3: would actually do it. I'd probably be like, what about
Speaker 3: this word you over here?
Speaker 2: Right? I got a buddy who's always said he's wanted
Speaker 2: to develop a white tail zipline system for access. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if anyone ever figures that one out, that might be
Speaker 2: useful to get into certain spots.
Speaker 3: I bet you there's some white tail tunnels across the
Speaker 3: country that we do not know about to where you
Speaker 3: go underneat this little tunnel to get to the backside
Speaker 3: of a bod. I bet you somewhere across the country
Speaker 3: that is a thing.
Speaker 2: Someone's figured it out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if someone's creative enough to do that.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, man, all right. So if someone is chomping
Speaker 2: at the bit to do this kind of work and
Speaker 2: they're excited for the new year, they really want to
Speaker 2: make some positive changes on their farm this year. Do
Speaker 2: you have any resources you would recommend folks check out.
Speaker 2: Are there any books or videos or particular podcasts or
Speaker 2: episodes that you've done, or anything at all that you
Speaker 2: would send folks to to kind of get this planning
Speaker 2: process rolling.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think the biggest thing for a lot of
Speaker 3: folks that are newer to this would be utilize the
Speaker 3: free source free resources that are out there, and that
Speaker 3: would be your local on RCS office. And so they
Speaker 3: have pheasants, forever biologists, and I've utilized these a lot personally,
Speaker 3: and I had a concern going into that to where
Speaker 3: they'd be like, yeah, you know, you're kind of videer hunter.
Speaker 3: That's kind of weird, like we only really care about nature.
Speaker 3: But they've all been extremely accommodating to you know, they
Speaker 3: suggest something like, well, you know, that's that's great, but
Speaker 3: how could we tweak that plan to make it more
Speaker 3: whitetail centric. They usually have a suggestion beyond that, So
Speaker 3: I think utilizing the NRCS office, the free biologists, utilize
Speaker 3: the equiped contracts that are available to do a lot
Speaker 3: of this work. The first year I planned, uh, like
Speaker 3: a thousand shrubs and trees. I pay for all all
Speaker 3: of it out of pocket because I was not aware
Speaker 3: that I could get costs here on that. And I
Speaker 3: think that's one of the biggest things. The one thing
Speaker 3: I would say is be patient with them, like they're
Speaker 3: they're busy folk and they have you know, they're all
Speaker 3: spread really thin. So I think utilizing those would be
Speaker 3: one of the biggest things. And navigating equip contracts is
Speaker 3: something that is pretty challenging to do for the first time.
Speaker 3: And so a shameless plug would be the White Tail
Speaker 3: Master Academy or break down equip contracts. What do you
Speaker 3: need to ask a lot of just like you need
Speaker 3: to know what questions you need to ask order to
Speaker 3: get the outcome that you would like, because a lot
Speaker 3: of it is unique and changing for the NRCS offices.
Speaker 3: And so that's something that I would encourage folks to
Speaker 3: look at. And there's a bunch of different land plans
Speaker 3: from Don Higgins, like over twenty land plans, and so
Speaker 3: you kind of get the the ability to look at
Speaker 3: different farms, maybe find one that is similar to what
Speaker 3: you're working with, and maybe you'll get an idea or
Speaker 3: two and make a big difference. And I think those
Speaker 3: are some of the bigger items that I really enjoy
Speaker 3: when it comes to just the pure native species and
Speaker 3: establishing those grasses and things of that nature. I really
Speaker 3: like the Prairie Farm podcast which they talk about they
Speaker 3: really nerd out on the different varieties of grasses and
Speaker 3: things of that nature, and so you kind of get
Speaker 3: an idea of the different processes and the ecological benefits
Speaker 3: and a lot of this. You always start as a
Speaker 3: white tail hunter, and I have no doubt by the
Speaker 3: end of it, you will be a true conservationist by
Speaker 3: the end of it, and you will get excited about
Speaker 3: little oak trees growing that I never thought I would
Speaker 3: get excited about. You'd get really excited about a clump
Speaker 3: of Indian grass that responded after a prescribed burn. And
Speaker 3: so the basis of it is to hunt and kill
Speaker 3: big deer more more consistently. But you will find along
Speaker 3: the journey a lot of different things that you will
Speaker 3: really enjoy, and you get a top to different biologists
Speaker 3: that have different backgrounds and get maybe they walk your
Speaker 3: farm and they like, oh, this is a very rare species.
Speaker 3: This is really cool. I haven't seen one of these
Speaker 3: three years. Well that's pretty cool, right, And so to
Speaker 3: start the process, and I think that utilize your NRCS office,
Speaker 3: utilize foresters once again, be persistent. They're spread then where
Speaker 3: I'm at the part of the state where I'm at,
Speaker 3: there's very few of them, so it's kind of hard
Speaker 3: to pin one down. But utilize those free resources and
Speaker 3: check out the whiteail Master Academy, check out the Prairie
Speaker 3: Farm podcast. And there's so many different things that I
Speaker 3: consistently tune into. I mean, there's some really good YouTube
Speaker 3: channels out there. It'd be a disservice to to nate
Speaker 3: many because there's a lot of them that are really good.
Speaker 3: And also, surprisingly Facebook groups can be really good too.
Speaker 3: There's a I'm in a group that is just switchgrass
Speaker 3: Switchgrass Facebook. That's amazing.
Speaker 2: So neat I doubt Mark Zuckerberger imagined that when he
Speaker 2: built Facebook, like, someday there'll be people congregating here to
Speaker 2: debate switchcrasts varieties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's it's crazy because people will take a
Speaker 3: picture of their stand and say, hey, what do I
Speaker 3: need to do and improve? And there's guys that have
Speaker 3: been playing switchcrasts for twenty five years and they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: you need to mow this or spray this, or wait
Speaker 3: till next year. And so like a lot of these
Speaker 3: resources are out there. You just got to figure out
Speaker 3: what gets you excited and get up the old Google
Speaker 3: machine and start going and learning and applying and making
Speaker 3: this be comfortable to make mistakes and be have enough.
Speaker 3: I don't want to say all this A lot of
Speaker 3: this comes down to a lot there's a lot of
Speaker 3: ego and all this based off of me, Like I'm
Speaker 3: just speaking generally, like me identifying like I need to
Speaker 3: learn more about this, like I don't know as much
Speaker 3: as I really should, and just load the ego and
Speaker 3: just going to learn it as much as possible and
Speaker 3: utilize all these different resources and have fun, like at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, have fun doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you mentioned the white tail Master Academy. You've
Speaker 2: got the land podcast. Can you just give folks a
Speaker 2: quick rundown of where they can access these things?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so white tail master Academy dot com. We have
Speaker 3: new videos every single week. Land planned from Don Higgins
Speaker 3: once a month, and we actually have virtual a lot
Speaker 3: of events. For example, we have doctor Bronsis Strickland on
Speaker 3: this evening you can ask doctor Bronce Strickland any question
Speaker 3: you've ever wanted to, which is a pretty cool format
Speaker 3: to be able to do that. The Land podcast you
Speaker 3: can find that for every find podcasting. Then also a
Speaker 3: lot of the audio version, the video versions on this
Speaker 3: my YouTube channels just my name Jake Hoefers. So those
Speaker 3: are the places you can find all the different exciting
Speaker 3: things that get me excited and hopefully people find value
Speaker 3: in them.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, but I appreciate Jake, great catching up, great talking Land,
Speaker 2: and I'm excited to get to work on my plan
Speaker 2: for this year too, even more so now awesome, Thank
Speaker 2: you so much for having me all right, and that's
Speaker 2: going to do it for us today. Thank you for
Speaker 2: joining me here on the podcast, Thanks for being a
Speaker 2: part of this community, and until next time, stay wired
Speaker 2: to Hunt.