Speaker 1: What is going on?
Speaker 2: Welcome back to a fresh episode of Back forty. This
Speaker 2: is Jake Hoefert and we have a fresh panel of
Speaker 2: four guests to talk about all the different things when
Speaker 2: it comes to managing whitetails. There's no shortage of advice
Speaker 2: on what you should be doing, but sometimes the fastest
Speaker 2: way to improve your property is knowing what mistakes to
Speaker 2: avoid in the first place. In this episode of Back forty,
Speaker 2: we ask the question what are the biggest white tailand
Speaker 2: mistakes people make? And the answers cover a variety of
Speaker 2: different things. So as you're building out a plan for
Speaker 2: this upcoming season, you can whittle down your project list
Speaker 2: that's likely very long and narrow it down based off
Speaker 2: of crossing some things off that might not be worth
Speaker 2: the time effort for energy. We have West Elks from
Speaker 2: Illinois with real world wildlife products and chasing giants. We
Speaker 2: have Steve Hanson from Iowa, Jake Ellinger from Michigan, and
Speaker 2: Sam bill Horn from Wisconsin. So we are covering the
Speaker 2: heart of the Midwest where there's a lot of deer hunters.
Speaker 2: So I hope you guys really enjoyed this episode. We're
Speaker 2: going to kick things off with West Elks, who has
Speaker 2: consulted on a lot of farms over the years the
Speaker 2: scene different projects that have made a big impact on
Speaker 2: his own personal farms and clients, and he's also seen
Speaker 2: things that maybe are worth avoiding depending on where you're
Speaker 2: at in your land journey. So we'll kick things off
Speaker 2: with the west Elks. Here we go, all right. Next
Speaker 2: up we have Wes Delks. Wes, you have traveled all
Speaker 2: across the country. You have been on more farms than
Speaker 2: I can imagine, and I think oftentimes people are thinking
Speaker 2: all these different things that they can do. Right, there's
Speaker 2: these so many different projects. You can go on YouTube,
Speaker 2: you can read magazines, you can listen to podcasts, and
Speaker 2: there's all these things you can do. But I want
Speaker 2: to remove all the things you can do and focus
Speaker 2: on what you need to avoid at all cost, whether
Speaker 2: it's projects, behavioral, whatever the case may be. From you know,
Speaker 2: folks that you've visited with, or your own personal experiences.
Speaker 2: What are the things you just simply want to avoid
Speaker 2: at all costs that aren't worth you know, the juice
Speaker 2: isn't worth the squeeze.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good question, Jake, Thanks for the opportunity to be
Speaker 3: here and it's funny you asked this is I made
Speaker 3: a post at the end of my consulting season after
Speaker 3: looking at these farms across the Midwest, and I kind
Speaker 3: of identified basically three things that mistakes to avoid, and
Speaker 3: I posted about this a few weeks ago. And first
Speaker 3: and foremost is buying a farm based on habitat rather
Speaker 3: than on layout.
Speaker 4: And I see so many people.
Speaker 3: That they're attracted to that property because of good looking habitat,
Speaker 3: good dear sign, but that doesn't necessarily equate to the
Speaker 3: potent to raise.
Speaker 4: The bar to the level that you and I want.
Speaker 3: So mistake number one, I would say buying a farm
Speaker 3: based on habitat rather than layout. You've got to have
Speaker 3: a farm that lays out well, which to me means
Speaker 3: being able to access a property from multiple different directions
Speaker 3: and then having a some degree of isolation from neighboring
Speaker 3: hunting pressure. So that would be the number one thing
Speaker 3: that I would say avoid.
Speaker 1: It all calls.
Speaker 2: So even if even if there's property with you know,
Speaker 2: a two out of ten access, but you know ten
Speaker 2: out of ten deer, can you break this rule or
Speaker 2: is it hard and fast for you?
Speaker 4: I would say that.
Speaker 3: It's more important what surrounds a property than what lays
Speaker 3: inside a property's boundaries. And if I've got a two
Speaker 3: out of ten access, but it connects to a property
Speaker 3: that's owned by a science company or a nuclear power plant,
Speaker 3: and there's five hundred acre no hunting area and we've
Speaker 3: got one sided access, we might take that one sided
Speaker 3: access and hunt it with one wind direction and go
Speaker 3: in there under very specific conditions because we know we're
Speaker 3: connected to something really good.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I would say.
Speaker 3: I would break that rule if it's a property where
Speaker 3: maybe I've got some other options. Maybe I've got a
Speaker 3: home farm that I'm putting a lot of effort into managing,
Speaker 3: and i can hunt it with a lot of different
Speaker 3: wind directions. But then I've got this other farm down
Speaker 3: the road that it's a two out of ten for access,
Speaker 3: but it's connected to a sanctuary, and I'm just gonna
Speaker 3: hunt it with the northwest wind, Then yeah, maybe I
Speaker 3: would be interested in that.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, it's for people that are hearing, are
Speaker 2: listening to this, I feel like that would simplify the process,
Speaker 2: right If that is from what you've seen on many
Speaker 2: many farms of you know, the best ones do have
Speaker 2: multiple sided access, And obviously you're in the business of
Speaker 2: developing plans, which includes increasing the habitat and developing that.
Speaker 2: It's like, figure out what you can change and then
Speaker 2: what you can't change, and what you can't change is
Speaker 2: a lot easier obviously than what you cannot Yep.
Speaker 3: Access you're I mean, sometimes you can do things to
Speaker 3: improve your access, but those access.
Speaker 4: Points are normally pretty concrete. So so in.
Speaker 3: That social media point I post I said three things.
Speaker 3: I said layout was number one mistake. Number two was
Speaker 3: you have to commit to a sanctuary. You gotta have
Speaker 3: a sanctuary. You got to identify where that sanctuary is,
Speaker 3: commit to it. And then number three, number on three
Speaker 3: mistake was not having nearly enough food. Is after looking
Speaker 3: at all the farms that I've looked at, is the
Speaker 3: I literally one time I have told somebody, Wow, I
Speaker 3: think we almost have too much food here.
Speaker 4: But that just that just never happens.
Speaker 3: Is h layout, commit to the sanctuary and got to
Speaker 3: have ample food.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, so let's let's talk about the sanctuary itself.
Speaker 2: So what how do you make a sanctuary? You know,
Speaker 2: very good obviously sanctuary you stay out of it, you
Speaker 2: don't go in there. You you give that to the deer.
Speaker 2: You're not going to go in there and mess with it.
Speaker 2: But in terms of maximizing those acres, because it feels
Speaker 2: like I'm guilty of this, Like you work really hard,
Speaker 2: you buy a farm, and you want to enjoy the
Speaker 2: full purchase, but you have to you know, for a
Speaker 2: lot of people, maybe they bought it for having, you know,
Speaker 2: the best hiding possible for that specific piece. And so
Speaker 2: you had the sanctuary. Okay, we're gonna stay out of it. Well,
Speaker 2: let's say it's a giant oak ridge hickory flat that's
Speaker 2: that's wide open. Or let's say this sanctuary is an
Speaker 2: old pasture with cool seasoned grasses with almost snow habitat value, Like,
Speaker 2: what is the next level to make it an attractive
Speaker 2: sanctuary versus just devoid of human human pressure and also
Speaker 2: probably wildlife wildlife desert potentially.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I'm a firm believer that cover is king,
Speaker 3: not food. This is coming for a guy that works
Speaker 3: for real world wildlife products. Is get to it to
Speaker 3: do a lot with real world and I fell a
Speaker 3: lot of food plot seed, but cover is truly king.
Speaker 3: And when you start off with the property and identify
Speaker 3: where that sanctuary is. You've got to get deer betted
Speaker 3: on you, not on the neighbors, not on one property away,
Speaker 3: you got to get them bettered on your property. And
Speaker 3: in order to do that, we want to have thick, nasty,
Speaker 3: gnarly cover free of human intrusion.
Speaker 4: And I am a firm believer that by a time
Speaker 4: a buck.
Speaker 3: Gets to his fourth, fifth, sixth birthday, he's got somewhere
Speaker 3: to go where he feels safe. And as the hunting
Speaker 3: season begins and hunting pressure continues throughout the hunting season,
Speaker 3: by the time he's reached maturity, he knows where that
Speaker 3: sanctuary is.
Speaker 4: And so we've got to identify that.
Speaker 3: And when you buy a property that sanctuary, the cover
Speaker 3: might not be very much different from the rest of
Speaker 3: the neighbors. And in the situation that you described, you
Speaker 3: have an oak and open oak hardwood. Yeah, when you
Speaker 3: first purchased that property, we're going to have to go
Speaker 3: into that sanctuary and cost some intrusion with these projects
Speaker 3: at the beginning to make that cover different. And that
Speaker 3: might be a timber harvest, it might be warm season
Speaker 3: grass planning, might be a tree planting.
Speaker 4: So there is going to be.
Speaker 3: Some intrusion oftentimes with the property at the very beginning,
Speaker 3: to make sure that your sanctuary is different and then
Speaker 3: it's completely staying out. So get in, get those projects done,
Speaker 3: and then stay out.
Speaker 1: Let's run.
Speaker 2: This is a very generic question, but hopefully it'll help
Speaker 2: someone out there. So let's say someone has a forty
Speaker 2: acre track, sixty acre track, you know something, SEB one
Speaker 2: hundred acres. Obviously, the bigger the sanctuary, the better, But
Speaker 2: is there a rule of THEMB that you try to
Speaker 2: try to, you know, educate folks on to like man
Speaker 2: as big as you can potentially makes the most sense,
Speaker 2: but you really needed to be at least ten percent
Speaker 2: of the property or twenty percent or five percent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, A great question is and that's something that I
Speaker 3: see a lot of times with sanctuaries is people say
Speaker 3: that they have a sanctuary, but they might have a
Speaker 3: two hundred acre farm and there's this fifteen acre patch
Speaker 3: of multi floor roads that they don't go into, and
Speaker 3: that is their sanctuary. I want to devote as much
Speaker 3: acreage as possible for sanctuary, and the smaller a property is,
Speaker 3: the more important that becomes. If you've got a forty
Speaker 3: acre property, we need to vote every acre that we
Speaker 3: can to sanctuary. If you've got five hundred acre property,
Speaker 3: you can access around the perimeters of it and hunt
Speaker 3: the edges of it. But if there's an interior of
Speaker 3: that that is I mean you might with a five
Speaker 3: hundred acre property, if you're accessing around the primer, you
Speaker 3: still may have a three four hundred acre sized sanctuary
Speaker 3: and intrude off the property from the property lines into
Speaker 3: the interior of your property a little bit, but you
Speaker 3: still have a massive sanctuary.
Speaker 4: Whereas with a case with a.
Speaker 3: Smaller property, Yeah, it does not take much to ruin
Speaker 3: a forty acre property. So with the smaller ones, you
Speaker 3: got to commit every acre you can perimeter access.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then so the last one you mentioned, you know,
Speaker 2: out of a lot of visits, there was maybe one
Speaker 2: or two where they had enough food. So when I
Speaker 2: think of food, I think of obviously destination food sources.
Speaker 2: I think of natural brows. I think of you know
Speaker 2: different you know, there's deer eat a lot of different things. Right,
Speaker 2: when you say not enough food, is it simply low
Speaker 2: quality brows or is it also just simply not enough
Speaker 2: destination food to to have?
Speaker 1: Do you not leave?
Speaker 3: I mean when I said that I really meant quantity
Speaker 3: as far as acreage, but quality as well as far
Speaker 3: as diversity. For comparison, on my property, we got a
Speaker 3: two hundred acre farm here.
Speaker 4: And a lot of that is a wide.
Speaker 3: Open agg fields and cattle pasture that is not deer habitat.
Speaker 3: And I've got about thirteen acres of food, and that
Speaker 3: is enough food to get me.
Speaker 4: Through until spring greenup each year.
Speaker 3: And that thirteen acres is diverse, meaning it's got twenty
Speaker 3: one different I counted the other day and in my plots,
Speaker 3: I've got twenty one different species and the first twelve
Speaker 3: I get to twelve really quickly with deadly.
Speaker 4: With the fall plots, they got twelve right there.
Speaker 3: Then corn, soybeans, clover, chickory, alfalfa, sorghum. So I mean,
Speaker 3: it's twenty one sounds like a lot, but it really
Speaker 3: it's not that hard to have fifteen plus different species
Speaker 3: in your plots. But you've got to have enough to
Speaker 3: get to spring greenup. And a lot of times I'm
Speaker 3: looking at farms throughout the winter months and I want
Speaker 3: to evaluate how much food did I have at the
Speaker 3: end of winter, because if I get to the end of.
Speaker 4: March and I'm out of food.
Speaker 3: I want to either reduce the mouths that are on
Speaker 3: my property, take out some doze, or increase the acres
Speaker 3: of food that I provide. And that's easier said than
Speaker 3: done on some properties more than others. But I want
Speaker 3: to have plenty of food plot acreage to get my
Speaker 3: dear herd all the way through the winter months till
Speaker 3: spring green up.
Speaker 1: Awesome, Well there's the answer.
Speaker 2: Those are the three things you gave us some extra
Speaker 2: ones to avoid it all costs, and I feel like
Speaker 2: if you just focus on those three, you'll find I
Speaker 2: would imagine quite a bit more success and just you know,
Speaker 2: you'd be working much closer to the goals that you
Speaker 2: likely have. I mean, those are three really good things
Speaker 2: to focus on that'll help a lot. Yep, Wes, thank
Speaker 2: you so much. Where can people follow along with what
Speaker 2: you have going on or how people can get a
Speaker 2: get in contact with you?
Speaker 3: I would just listen to the Chason Chasing Giants podcast
Speaker 3: with Don Higgins and Terry Peer, or you can get
Speaker 3: me on social media on Instagram or Facebook just at
Speaker 3: my name, Wesley Delks.
Speaker 2: All right, next up, we have Steve Hanson from Iowa
Speaker 2: and Steve has been a real estate professional for a
Speaker 2: very long time. He's worked on a lot of his
Speaker 2: own farms, He's helped friends clients along the way, and
Speaker 2: we get his opinion on something that you can disavoid
Speaker 2: at all costs for the time being.
Speaker 1: So let's kick it off here. It was Steve Hanson.
Speaker 2: All right, Steve, welcome to back forty. In the world
Speaker 2: of white tail projects, there is so many different things
Speaker 2: that you can do. The list could be hundreds or
Speaker 2: thousands of items long. But I think for this point,
Speaker 2: what are the things to either delay or avoid at
Speaker 2: all costs, just it's not worth the effort, or a
Speaker 2: project that maybe gets misused and you need to have
Speaker 2: the parameters in order to utilize it. So I know
Speaker 2: a lot of different things there, but I want to
Speaker 2: hear what jumps out to your mind.
Speaker 5: You know the one that I see them the most,
Speaker 5: that people, you know, everybody seems to want to do
Speaker 5: and I've seen probably ninety five percent failures and almost
Speaker 5: none make it to what I would call total completion.
Speaker 5: And people aren't gonna like this. But it's fruit tree planning.
Speaker 5: You know that that one there just for the amount
Speaker 5: of risk, money, time, to final reward. I've just seen
Speaker 5: that fail so many times. That's one if you do
Speaker 5: have it, or you're going to use it in your playbook,
Speaker 5: I would absolutely put it towards the back of your planning,
Speaker 5: meaning once you've it's a micro project, you've got to
Speaker 5: fish fix all the macro projects first, otherwise you're you know,
Speaker 5: But it seems to be one people want to do
Speaker 5: early and that I've I've probably done it half a
Speaker 5: dozen times myself. Some were big projects where we spent
Speaker 5: three thousand bucks on trees and amendments and you know,
Speaker 5: a couple good spring days doing it and in the
Speaker 5: end to have zero survival. I'm talking five years ten
Speaker 5: down the line. So and I've seen that over and
Speaker 5: over again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you will make some people up.
Speaker 2: Some people just love fruit trees and they love the
Speaker 2: idea of them, but I feel like you really have
Speaker 2: to have the ability to baby them. I've planted probably
Speaker 2: twenty fruit trees here at my house, and I've had
Speaker 2: of those twenty, I got some that are doing great,
Speaker 2: and I have some that are doing really poorly. And
Speaker 2: that's with me living here too, right, And I think
Speaker 2: that's the challenge.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I would say that is part of the challenge.
Speaker 5: We deal with a lot here with out of the
Speaker 5: area landowners. They may be non residents, they may be
Speaker 5: from Des Moines there an hour and a half two
Speaker 5: hours away. I would say that would be the one
Speaker 5: thing if if you are full time, have the ability
Speaker 5: to be at your farm full time, or it's your
Speaker 5: place of residence where you can literally spoon feed them,
Speaker 5: water them, spray them. The amount of spray you need
Speaker 5: to actually do it right is mind boggling. I mean
Speaker 5: the different dormant oil sprayings and you know, stuff for bugs.
Speaker 5: And then the other reason we probably struggle here more
Speaker 5: than most people would is and there are blight resistance varieties,
Speaker 5: but we have a lot of cedar trees, eastern red cedars,
Speaker 5: and the cedar apple rust.
Speaker 6: Is one that really we really battle here.
Speaker 5: So and the other thing that people seem to forget
Speaker 5: about apple trees, they're not native. You know, you're truly
Speaker 5: planning a non native species, which everybody loves to jump
Speaker 5: on me scant as, oh it's not native, blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: It's like, what about your apple tree? What about alfalfa?
Speaker 5: You know, it's that part of it's funny too. But yeah,
Speaker 5: that's probably one that I see the most, that I
Speaker 5: see fail the most often, and is fairly expensive.
Speaker 2: It's expensive and it takes time, and to buy the
Speaker 2: tea post, to buy the fence, you know, you have
Speaker 2: the cost of the tree, and then you add everything
Speaker 2: in there additionally, like it does add up. Is there
Speaker 2: an instance where there was a random apple tree in
Speaker 2: a cattle pasture somewhere in Iowa or something like that
Speaker 2: that was just like this divine location for deer hunting too,
Speaker 2: because I feel like that might that would potentially sway
Speaker 2: your opinion if there was an example like that.
Speaker 5: I have seen a few examples of that. In every
Speaker 5: case they were around abandoned homesteads. But I mean very
Speaker 5: very very few more pairs than apples you know, that
Speaker 5: have persisted naturally or you know, from being planted as
Speaker 5: a homestead tree twenty thirty forty years ago. You know,
Speaker 5: I personally haven't seen one where I thought, wow, this
Speaker 5: is really putting out the apples like we would hope to. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and we've had a few, you know, I've had a
Speaker 5: few landowners that literally it's almost like their side hobby
Speaker 5: as much as they're into hunting. As much as they're
Speaker 5: into hunting, they're into you know, maintaining their orchard or
Speaker 5: stuff like that. And I get that. I'm speaking to
Speaker 5: the context of simply, hey, i've got this hunting farm,
Speaker 5: I've got X amount of dollars I can spend. Where
Speaker 5: is the best use of my resources? And that's that's
Speaker 5: why I would put that on the list of you know,
Speaker 5: very low on the list or not on the list
Speaker 5: for sure. So and we've had everything kill them, I
Speaker 5: mean everything you name it.
Speaker 2: So well, yeah, you have rabbits can girdle them, and
Speaker 2: you can just have I mean there's you can have
Speaker 2: a raccoon climb up on and snap off a giant branch.
Speaker 1: I mean right, We've had that happen.
Speaker 5: We've had fires, people burning adjacent switchgrass get away and
Speaker 5: kill them. We've had that. We've had some overspray di
Speaker 5: camba from crops being sprayed, not even adjacent, just in
Speaker 5: the area. It's they're a very sensitive plant, you know.
Speaker 5: It's I think of them as a permanent tomato plant,
Speaker 5: like any Everything wants to kill them.
Speaker 6: It's it's crazy.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, okay, you mentioned very low on the list
Speaker 2: or not on the list. Will there be a point
Speaker 2: where you think you'll put out a twenty you know,
Speaker 2: a twenty to forty apple and pear grove on a
Speaker 2: permanent farm of yours, just just to out of sheer
Speaker 2: boredom and experimental of I'm gonna baby these things and
Speaker 2: I'm gonna see if it's worthwhile.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, I'm building a new place at my
Speaker 5: big farm, a new shop and very permanent type, you know,
Speaker 5: part of my plan going forward. It's an old cattle farm,
Speaker 5: but it was a very well cared for catle farm,
Speaker 5: so there's actually city water or what we call rural water,
Speaker 5: miles of water lines on that farm. So I did
Speaker 5: think about that about one of these areas where we
Speaker 5: took these drinkers out, is converting that to some type
Speaker 5: of orchard and then you know tree planning, because I
Speaker 5: have access to water, and I could put it in
Speaker 5: a pretty good spot from a hunting location. But that's
Speaker 5: a very unique and it would be close to where
Speaker 5: I'm going to spend quite a bit of time. But
Speaker 5: I also I would high fence the entire area. So
Speaker 5: if it's a half acre, I'm gonna do eight foot
Speaker 5: fence around the whole thing. Yeah, until it gets established.
Speaker 5: So you know, so maybe that's five years, maybe that's
Speaker 5: ten years. I don't know what, you know, the growth
Speaker 5: rate and it's going to depend on species and stuff.
Speaker 5: But yeah, yeah, will do one again. It's almost like,
Speaker 5: you know, by saying this, I've sort of thrown down
Speaker 5: the gauntlet of the challenge and I accept that challenge myself.
Speaker 5: And that's probably the reason I haven't had the success
Speaker 5: or seen the success. I think the people that do
Speaker 5: it really put a lot of effort into it, like really,
Speaker 5: really really. And we had a good friend or a
Speaker 5: friend from Pennsylvania who had a huge farm here in Iowa.
Speaker 5: And he had an amazing orchard back in Pennsylvania and
Speaker 5: an amazing orchard here in Iowa, so I know it
Speaker 5: could be done. But he was almost like, like I said,
Speaker 5: that was as much his hobby as was hunting itself.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think those are all very fair things.
Speaker 2: I sold an apple orchard a couple of years ago,
Speaker 2: and I was talking to a guy that that was
Speaker 2: his living he ran an orchard in Illinois, and I
Speaker 2: was just asking, like deer hunting apple orchard questions, you know,
Speaker 2: like you know, what what varieties and treatment, and he
Speaker 2: started rambling and and and giving me the whole you know,
Speaker 2: the pruning schedule, the spray schedule, this species that's hybridized
Speaker 2: with its like, holy cow, it's way more in depth
Speaker 2: to oh, yeah, you know it's I feel like the
Speaker 2: same thing with farming. You know, I'm gonna plant beans
Speaker 2: this year for my food plot, and then you talk
Speaker 2: to a guy that breeds soybean plants or you know,
Speaker 2: an actual farmer farmer, and it's like, holy there's a
Speaker 2: lot to you.
Speaker 6: Could deep dive into it for sure.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well I think that's you.
Speaker 2: I look forward to seeing a you know, ten fifteen
Speaker 2: years from now when you have you know, Steve Hanson
Speaker 2: apple seed backyard.
Speaker 1: There a big deer behind there or maybe not or
Speaker 1: maybe not, but maybe yeah, you.
Speaker 5: And Miranda can come pick apples in October some here
Speaker 5: when you're here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be great.
Speaker 2: So where can people find find you or follow along
Speaker 2: with what you have going on?
Speaker 6: Well, usually just.
Speaker 5: Put everything we're doing on Instagram. It's just my name,
Speaker 5: Steve Hanson the Third on Instagram, and it'll kind of lead.
Speaker 6: You to what we're up to.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: Next up, we have Jake Ellinger from Michigan with Habitat
Speaker 2: Solutions three sixty. We just released an episode basically what
Speaker 2: he's seen and covered over the last fifty years. Is
Speaker 2: a Michigan bow hunter. He has worked on his own
Speaker 2: farm for a very long time. He helps other folks
Speaker 2: and I hope you guys enjoyed Jake's perspective. Let's get
Speaker 2: into it here with Jake Allinger of Habitat Solutions three sixty.
Speaker 2: All right, Jake, I have a question for you, and
Speaker 2: I think oftentimes in the world of land and projects,
Speaker 2: when it comes to whiteoil hunting, there's so many things
Speaker 2: that you can do, and I want to narrow down
Speaker 2: what is a mistake from a habitat perspective, or maybe
Speaker 2: even from a hunting perspective that you want to avoid
Speaker 2: simply at all costs. You can do all these other things,
Speaker 2: but whatever you do, don't do this.
Speaker 1: What is that to you, oh, Minette?
Speaker 7: And that's relating to the piece of property that a
Speaker 7: land owner hunter owns, right, yeah, yep, we'll say that's
Speaker 7: the case.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 7: Okay, gosh, one that I see often, and it's a
Speaker 7: lot of times, once it's already there, it's difficult to fix,
Speaker 7: and it's it's where people decide, Okay, this is where
Speaker 7: I'm going to pull into the property. Maybe there's an
Speaker 7: existing ag driveway, and this is where I'm gonna access.
Speaker 7: I'm gonna park here and walk to this side of
Speaker 7: the property where I'm gonna drive up on this hill
Speaker 7: and park here along this pensil, and then I'm going
Speaker 7: to access.
Speaker 6: And often on what I find is, you.
Speaker 7: Know, after one or two years of ownership, depending how
Speaker 7: aggressive they are from habitat standpoint, they start putting in
Speaker 7: food plots and betting areas, and darned these access trails
Speaker 7: and ATV and tractor access trails go right through the
Speaker 7: food plot or right alongside these betting areas. Okay, and
Speaker 7: you know that that it has its challenges. Sometimes a
Speaker 7: layout of the property, the hills, wetlands, creeks, rivers, you
Speaker 7: really don't have much of a choice.
Speaker 6: But I see a lot of the others.
Speaker 7: You know, where there's chee you could have you could
Speaker 7: have going right along to East Pencrow. You know, from
Speaker 7: one end of the property the other you go right
Speaker 7: to the middle, and going up to the middle, you're
Speaker 7: crossing through five different food plots. So that that's a
Speaker 7: mistake because you're gonna constantly run into deer. Okay, that's
Speaker 7: the whole idea.
Speaker 2: But every time, every time you have a project or
Speaker 2: yeah yeah, planning or a project or every time you're
Speaker 2: on there, they know. And so how often do you
Speaker 2: run into that? And why do you think people inherently
Speaker 2: do it? Because I mean, gosh, anyone that listens to
Speaker 2: a hunting podcast, here's the word access probably every episode
Speaker 2: ever of any podcast effort. So it's like, with this
Speaker 2: access being so important has preached almost to death. You know,
Speaker 2: why do you think, like when you when you talk
Speaker 2: to a client or something like, what's the reasoning interrationale?
Speaker 1: Typically I'm just curious.
Speaker 7: I know, for a couple of people that have been
Speaker 7: really honest with me, it was like, well, when we
Speaker 7: first bought the property, there was only a trail that
Speaker 7: went fifty yards into the you know, and it was
Speaker 7: mainly woulded only went fifty yards in. So we started
Speaker 7: cutting the trail and then you know, this is where
Speaker 7: we opened up because there was a clearing here, so
Speaker 7: this is where we could turn the tractor or the
Speaker 7: truck around. And over the years we cut more trees
Speaker 7: and this was our first food plot, and that's going
Speaker 7: right through the middle of.
Speaker 8: It, okay, and then jeez, you know, we we uh,
Speaker 8: you know, we got a piece of equipment in here,
Speaker 8: and we had some timbering done, and we asked them
Speaker 8: to make us a road right up to the middle
Speaker 8: and to make.
Speaker 7: These two logging decks which turned into food plots, you know.
Speaker 7: And so, by no fault their own, the convenience made
Speaker 7: it happen, all right.
Speaker 6: And you know, other people, I don't know why they.
Speaker 7: Do it, you know, because I will tell you I
Speaker 7: was kind of guilty of that at first when I
Speaker 7: first bought this property. So I just know that it
Speaker 7: can happen to anybody, especially when you're you've got other
Speaker 7: things you're thinking of. You know, some people buy a
Speaker 7: property for more reasons than honey. You know, long term
Speaker 7: goal is a house, a pole barn, maybe living there
Speaker 7: someday like we did. And so you know, they're saying, oh, wow,
Speaker 7: this should be a great building site, and this is
Speaker 7: where we want the driveway to be. And that all
Speaker 7: makes sense, but until you're living there, how you're coming in,
Speaker 7: where you're parking the vehicles, where the deer are feeding
Speaker 7: or betting, if it's within sight, it's a you know,
Speaker 7: it's a conflict problem, especially you know, higher deer densities.
Speaker 1: So let's run through this scenario.
Speaker 2: Someone's listening to this right now and they say, oh,
Speaker 2: I fall into this category. Is this something that needs
Speaker 2: to get addressed and you need to bring in potentially
Speaker 2: equipment to directify the issue? Or like what for that
Speaker 2: example with the client that you're referencing, Like what was
Speaker 2: your prescription for them to fix it?
Speaker 7: And how you know they were very open to two things,
Speaker 7: moving the trail where they could and making'll still have
Speaker 7: say a spur trail that allows them the equipment to
Speaker 7: that food plot, but moving the trail you know of
Speaker 7: right or left side to avoid that. And then some
Speaker 7: of these food plots are pretty good size, maybe like
Speaker 7: acre and a half two acres of clearing, and then
Speaker 7: you know the opportunity for okay, let's move the trail
Speaker 7: all the way over to this east side of the
Speaker 7: food plot because it's the north south kind of rectangle property,
Speaker 7: and let's put some screening up in there. You know,
Speaker 7: let's put some ascanthus grass and you know, maybe twenty
Speaker 7: yards of thickly planeted switch grass or you know, long term,
Speaker 7: let's put you know, a couple three rows of spruce
Speaker 7: trees in here, and it's going to take a while,
Speaker 7: but eventually you're going to be able to get through
Speaker 7: here and there'll be a buffer between you and the deer.
Speaker 7: And that changes things pretty significantly, spurs you know, their
Speaker 7: level of a flight, you know, instead of just kind
Speaker 7: of standing there watching what's going on, rather than just
Speaker 7: running off tails in the air, you know kind of thing.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So, so there are ways to fix it, and then
Speaker 7: sometimes there just is no choice. It's the only high
Speaker 7: ground or swamp river creek wetlands and boy this is
Speaker 7: you know, this is only fifty sixty yards wide and
Speaker 7: it raised, you know, comes up ten twelve feet between
Speaker 7: these two wetlands. Is the only choice I have to
Speaker 7: put my two track to get to the other side
Speaker 7: of the property. It just also because the topography happens
Speaker 7: to be all the deer like to bed.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and so that's a that's a tough decision sometimes,
Speaker 7: you know.
Speaker 2: So in that in that scenario, I mean, do you
Speaker 2: just you just take the cars that you were dealt
Speaker 2: and yeah, or do you and it's just let's go.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it does not have you know, he doesn't have
Speaker 7: a lot of options, doesn't have the equipment and the resources.
Speaker 7: It's like, okay, well here's the deal. Then under you're
Speaker 7: gonna have to hunt under different conditions. You know, you're
Speaker 7: gonna pay attention to these wins this time of the year.
Speaker 7: Don't slip in here in the morning in early season.
Speaker 7: You know, wait, wait for this part of the property
Speaker 7: later into the rut and that sort of thing, and
Speaker 7: a lot of times that can make you know, a
Speaker 7: huge improvement in their hunting success. You know these I
Speaker 7: think maybe I said this to you one slash year.
Speaker 6: The easiest deer to kill is the one that doesn't
Speaker 6: know you're there, right.
Speaker 2: How I mean for the average guy listening to this,
Speaker 2: I mean, how often does that really happen where the
Speaker 2: deer does not know that he that he's being hunted?
Speaker 1: Because I feel like.
Speaker 2: We all put them, I mean we all have like
Speaker 2: it's a tough line to draw here because like you
Speaker 2: have to play on food plots and you have to
Speaker 2: hunt in order to get him, and obviously you can
Speaker 2: get lucky on the first try, but let's be honest,
Speaker 2: a lot of people don't. So like, if you had
Speaker 2: to guess how many times does that really happen over
Speaker 2: the course of ten seasons.
Speaker 7: That's a great question, because you know, deer have all
Speaker 7: these different levels of pressure, right. I think when the
Speaker 7: guys out there, when you and I are both farmer
Speaker 7: jake on our tractors and our ATVs. You know, regardless,
Speaker 7: we're spread in, we're drilling, we're whatever it is we're doing.
Speaker 7: You know, I don't think the deer really pay all
Speaker 7: that much attention and care because they don't feel that
Speaker 7: as a life threat kind of thing.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 7: Now. Now, on the other hand, if you're just in
Speaker 7: there all the time, and I do have a few
Speaker 7: clients that I run into that just can't stay away
Speaker 7: from their property.
Speaker 6: They're just on it.
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, every free day they have, they're
Speaker 7: in there doing something, walking around, cutting trees, and I
Speaker 7: get all that. You know, there's it's great to improve
Speaker 7: the property, and you only got so much time. But yeah,
Speaker 7: there's very few people that can hunt deer that don't
Speaker 7: know that people are there, but that particular hunt. You know,
Speaker 7: maybe it's been it's been a week since you've hunted
Speaker 7: the property. You've been pretty disciplined about wind directions and conditions,
Speaker 7: and you're slipping in if you do it right. Those
Speaker 7: particular deer that are coming by you at that moment
Speaker 7: have no idea you're there. And that's what I try
Speaker 7: to break it down to east in the moment, you know,
Speaker 7: within the moment, on the moment.
Speaker 1: M hm. Let me last question for this.
Speaker 2: You mentioned East East Access a handful of times, the
Speaker 2: East Access road. How there's I sell land for a living,
Speaker 2: so there's people that are just lying in the sand.
Speaker 2: I won't buy anything with West access. Where do you
Speaker 2: fall on that scale?
Speaker 7: There's no doubt that most of the Midwest you're gonna
Speaker 7: get a westerly southwest quote predominant wind, you know, But
Speaker 7: anyway it looks at a at a wind rows when
Speaker 7: I was the predominant wind is not really all that predominant.
Speaker 6: There's lots of other wind directions too.
Speaker 7: But for say, just maintenance and general use of the property,
Speaker 7: h East Access, does it turn out to be fairly
Speaker 7: convenient keeping you and your equipment your activities downwind of
Speaker 7: the deer during most of the fair days?
Speaker 6: You know? But I'm not hard and fast on that.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 7: I have a property that I that I access from
Speaker 7: the south, okay, And it's a rectangle. It's a north
Speaker 7: south rectangle property, you know. And I would always kick
Speaker 7: myself in the old days. Man, you know, I can't
Speaker 7: get in here because of this wind was You know,
Speaker 7: Over time, I've built access and you know, screening access,
Speaker 7: very good visual access, and you know we get a
Speaker 7: lot of easterly winds, northeasterly winds.
Speaker 6: Then now puts me over on the west side of
Speaker 6: the property. So I've got.
Speaker 7: Access on both sides, you know, to be able to
Speaker 7: be prepared for that when it happens.
Speaker 1: That makes sense.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, So to summarize, the biggest mistake is ignoring
Speaker 2: or or solidifying bad access from the get go. Of
Speaker 2: the path of least resistance might not be the best,
Speaker 2: and it's worthwhile to try to figure out a different
Speaker 2: option if if you fall into this category that you
Speaker 2: just describe.
Speaker 7: It is because, like with anything, if you can correct
Speaker 7: it right from the beginning, you haven't got the time
Speaker 7: and the energy. And you know, planting trees alongside of
Speaker 7: that trail that now needs to get moved, okay, or
Speaker 7: cut trees or whatever. So yeah, give us some serious
Speaker 7: thought before you just go in there and start saying, Yep,
Speaker 7: this is my access trail.
Speaker 6: This is where it's going to be. Especially give it
Speaker 6: a thought from a hunting standpoint.
Speaker 2: And close things out, we have Sam bill Horn from
Speaker 2: Whitetail Partners Season Wisconsin also.
Speaker 1: Helps people make good decisions on their farm.
Speaker 2: So we're going to kick it off here with Sam
Speaker 2: bill Horning close up this episode. I hope you guys
Speaker 2: enjoyed the panel of opinions so far. And here's Sam.
Speaker 2: All right, we have Sam with Whitetail Partners. We have
Speaker 2: a lot of mistakes that people can make. Everyone makes
Speaker 2: mistakes across the board, but sometimes I think finding out
Speaker 2: what might be one of the biggest mistakes to avoid
Speaker 2: at all costs when it comes to whitetail and land.
Speaker 2: You can pick from the millions of mistakes that are
Speaker 2: available in the world of white tails, but I want.
Speaker 1: You to boil it down to the one to avoid
Speaker 1: it all costs. Sure.
Speaker 9: Well, thanks a lot, Jake, appreciate the opportunity here to
Speaker 9: talk with you today. You know, in answering one thing,
Speaker 9: it's tempting to go into something specific, to go to,
Speaker 9: you know, a type of habitat work or where people
Speaker 9: choose to spend their time when they're tearing into a property.
Speaker 9: But on this one, I'm going to zoom way out
Speaker 9: and back up to the point of really the starting block,
Speaker 9: because I think that's where people often can go wrong
Speaker 9: in a hunting property, is when they're first acquiring it.
Speaker 9: And what I like to look at and one of
Speaker 9: the things I've been encouraging my clients with and anybody
Speaker 9: I speak with is to really see the big picture
Speaker 9: from the beginning, and specifically what I'm talking about is
Speaker 9: planning and budgeting towards that property. So what I'm thinking
Speaker 9: about all the time when we're walking into a new
Speaker 9: client property, is you know, what have they planned or
Speaker 9: set aside to do a property.
Speaker 1: I'm going to make up a property real quick, I'll
Speaker 1: just say it is.
Speaker 9: You know, if you have a half a million dollar property,
Speaker 9: a lot of guys, that's a bigger budget. They're going
Speaker 9: to try and work their way into that and you know,
Speaker 9: save and really maximize what they can to try and
Speaker 9: get into that property. However, they're leaving out the planning
Speaker 9: and development and all those other things that really make
Speaker 9: the property enjoyable. And you know, the older I get
Speaker 9: and the more I hunt, and the more I bring
Speaker 9: others into this. One of the things that I'm always
Speaker 9: focused on is enjoying that hunt and really enjoying that
Speaker 9: opportunity that you have to make your own property. For
Speaker 9: many this is a one time thing, a lifetime dream.
Speaker 9: And I think if you get into a property and
Speaker 9: have all of this invested into just basically just getting
Speaker 9: your foot in the door, and you fail to leave
Speaker 9: that portion of your budget available to do some of
Speaker 9: that management and development. And I'm not even necessarily talking
Speaker 9: about having to hire guys and you know, go out
Speaker 9: there and build. You know, you can spend hundreds of
Speaker 9: thousands of dollars, you know, on a property if you
Speaker 9: want to, but even to leave and I'd like to
Speaker 9: give people something actionable to leave something like ten or
Speaker 9: twenty percent of room in your budget to do these things.
Speaker 9: You can make a big impact on a property with
Speaker 9: ten percent of that the total amount of money you're
Speaker 9: putting into it to be towards land management. In fact,
Speaker 9: and I've built a ton of properties and you know,
Speaker 9: seeing people through the entire process, the design, the build,
Speaker 9: the implementation, and turning it over to them to hunt,
Speaker 9: and I would say you know, even on the top end,
Speaker 9: if you're spending twenty or thirty percent, you are fully
Speaker 9: developing that property. You're putting a tremendous amount of work
Speaker 9: into it and making it just you know, really that
Speaker 9: next level, you know, elite property that we can build
Speaker 9: for people if that's what they want.
Speaker 1: And so to zoom weigh out.
Speaker 9: I like to look at this and saye say, hey,
Speaker 9: the biggest thing we can do to help people enjoy
Speaker 9: their property is to help them realize to make plans
Speaker 9: for that. Now, we could get into all the things,
Speaker 9: the planning, the development, the maintenance, the activities, all this stuff,
Speaker 9: and we could break down and say, you know, talk
Speaker 9: about food plots, talk about tim and wirk, talk about
Speaker 9: stand setups, all this stuff. But really, when it comes
Speaker 9: down to it, I like to zoom out and say, look,
Speaker 9: plan to have some money set aside to do those things,
Speaker 9: and whether you're hiring myself or anyone else like us
Speaker 9: to go out there and accomplish this, you're going to
Speaker 9: enjoy your property that much more.
Speaker 1: It's called the Dittaro effect.
Speaker 2: When you buy something, there's a lot more expenses that
Speaker 2: you know you didn't necessarily we're planning on it, because
Speaker 2: when you're making this huge lump sum purchase, they've been
Speaker 2: working for towards for years and years and years or
Speaker 2: decades and in many scenarios like ah, we got there.
Speaker 2: And then to your point, the key thing that you
Speaker 2: had mentioned to me was the enjoyment of it.
Speaker 1: It's like.
Speaker 2: Sometimes a little budget goes a long way on these things,
Speaker 2: and time too, which is I think everyone myself included,
Speaker 2: once everything done yesterday and now, and sometimes it just
Speaker 2: takes time and planning, over your over your Maybe maybe
Speaker 2: this is tied into that mistake, but do you think
Speaker 2: that same philosophy falls into the realistic timeline of making
Speaker 2: impactful changes. Obviously there's things you can do that will
Speaker 2: make a big impact right away, but maybe to really
Speaker 2: move the needle up two or three notches, is that
Speaker 2: a five year process, a four year process, seven year process,
Speaker 2: lifetime process.
Speaker 9: Well, and if for those of us who love this stuff,
Speaker 9: we know it's never ending and there's always something we're
Speaker 9: doing on our properties, we can laugh about that for
Speaker 9: a while. But the the the impact you can make,
Speaker 9: I mean it is immedia. In one season, you can
Speaker 9: make that hop that that property that much more huntable,
Speaker 9: and enjoyable. No, there is development pieces depending on all
Speaker 9: the different facets we're we're looking at here. You got
Speaker 9: you know, tree plantings and warm season grass, and you know,
Speaker 9: we can assign timeframes to each of these which are
Speaker 9: years and multiple growing seasons, not just a year. But
Speaker 9: as far as that initial implementation, it can be done
Speaker 9: pretty quick. You know, you get a lot of that
Speaker 9: heavy lifting done with the right tools, the right people,
Speaker 9: the right team to get it all built. However, you know,
Speaker 9: the there is some maturity there that needs to happen,
Speaker 9: and that's certainly part of the time is a big factor.
Speaker 9: You know, you could chalk that up to and say
Speaker 9: it'd be better to get a smaller property. And I
Speaker 9: should have said this on the financial piece too, But
Speaker 9: you know, I would always encourage somebody when we talk
Speaker 9: about their budget is to if maybe they're trying to
Speaker 9: get one hundred acres, well, let's do eighty acres or
Speaker 9: seventy acres and just do it to the you know,
Speaker 9: n degree of all this development and then therefore enjoyment
Speaker 9: and quality that we're going to get out of it.
Speaker 9: I'd much rather have that fully developed seventy or eighty
Speaker 9: acre property than that hundred acre property with nothing that's
Speaker 9: been improved.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, let me run this scenario past you, same idea,
Speaker 2: same thought, buddle for someone that already has a piece
Speaker 2: that they have full control over and maybe they've been
Speaker 2: maybe they just haven't had the confidence to put to
Speaker 2: deploy capital. I mean, what do you see typically, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of in this same vein, they have the full control,
Speaker 2: but they haven't you know, spent the money or the
Speaker 2: time or whatever the case may be to get over
Speaker 2: the hump. I mean, what usually have you seen people?
Speaker 2: What is that sticking point for them to actually do it?
Speaker 2: Aside from the financial aspect of it, obviously it costs money.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, And I'll say that to myself.
Speaker 9: You know, I use myself as an example because I
Speaker 9: experienced this in life too as a younger man having property.
Speaker 9: I I did everything by sheer will and muscle and
Speaker 9: had the most basic of tools and equipment and really
Speaker 9: just fought through it.
Speaker 1: I fought through it. And I see guys do that.
Speaker 9: They fight through it, and then when they recognize the
Speaker 9: efficiency of what a professional can do and accomplish and
Speaker 9: get that work done, they're so thankful, and you know,
Speaker 9: they could spend that amount of time in there, call
Speaker 9: it there nine to five or there, you know, where
Speaker 9: their wheelhouse is, and maybe they can earn an extra buck.
Speaker 9: And that goes so much farther in hiring the right equipment,
Speaker 9: the right people, and having that game plan from the beginning,
Speaker 9: you know, to implement rather than just trying to muscle through.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 9: I don't want to discourage that young man that's just
Speaker 9: got his property, because there's a ton of things that
Speaker 9: he can do to go out there and impact it
Speaker 9: and make improvements and you know, have quality effects from
Speaker 9: his work. But that when it comes down to it,
Speaker 9: the major development, the bigger properties, getting into that stuff,
Speaker 9: the impact of hiring the right folks makes a makes
Speaker 9: a big difference.
Speaker 2: First property ever bought, I rented a mini excavator for
Speaker 2: I think one or two weeks and wasn't the right
Speaker 2: exact piece of equipment worked every spare minute I had,
Speaker 2: And I looked at how much it costs and how
Speaker 2: much you know sign of value for my own time.
Speaker 2: And then my next project, I hired a dirt work
Speaker 2: guy and they came in and smashed the project like
Speaker 2: in a day and a half with you know, the right.
Speaker 1: Equipment, and it's like, I will never do that again.
Speaker 2: No, I showed up and it was done, and it
Speaker 2: was done exceptionally better than what I would have been
Speaker 2: able to do it. And I think if you ran
Speaker 2: the math on it, you know it made sense in
Speaker 2: that fashion too, for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Focus, Yeah, a guy should focus on those little micro
Speaker 9: things that he can do, the tweaks, the the details,
Speaker 9: the really you know things, the hunting setups, the attention
Speaker 9: to detail of well, should have cut that branch or
Speaker 9: not cut that branch? Yeah, do that, but the heavy
Speaker 9: lifting hiring people in just makes it so much more
Speaker 9: effective and enjoyable. It doesn't make it a drudgery. Also,
Speaker 9: thinking about the home front too, you're not spending those
Speaker 9: hours on the property a little bit. You're managing your time,
Speaker 9: you know, keeping that in in balance with the rest
Speaker 9: of your life.
Speaker 1: I like it. Anything else to add into this, well, I.
Speaker 9: Think we've we've covered it pretty well, but I'll just
Speaker 9: say that I give a plug here too to not
Speaker 9: forget about planning.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 9: That's the core business of what we do with Whitetail
Speaker 9: Partners is helping people get that plan all right there.
Speaker 1: You guys have it.
Speaker 2: I hope you guys enjoyed this episode of Back forty.
Speaker 2: It's always interesting to get different opinions from different parts
Speaker 2: of the country on one specific topic, and I hope
Speaker 2: you guys enjoyed.
Speaker 1: Figuring out what to avoid at all costs for the
Speaker 1: time being.
Speaker 2: Maybe you agree with them, maybe you don't, and that
Speaker 2: is the beauty of whitetailan management.
Speaker 1: We will see you next time. See y