Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals better dear hunting, present it by First Light,
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
Speaker 1: First Light, Go farther, stay Longer, and now your host
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast,
Speaker 2: which is brought to you but First Light. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and this episode is all about the realities
Speaker 2: of planting a kill plot from clost whitetail owners. Most
Speaker 2: of you listeners probably know the feeling of being young
Speaker 2: and driving a beat up truck or a car, and
Speaker 2: maybe pulling into a gas station to fuel up, and
Speaker 2: then having someone pull in next to you with a
Speaker 2: brand new ride. You look at your rusted out, hand
Speaker 2: me down truck and think, man, it'd be nice to
Speaker 2: have that, because you're not thinking about the payments or
Speaker 2: the maintenance or anything other than just owning it. That
Speaker 2: feeling of jealousy. That's kind of how I felt when
Speaker 2: I started seeing hunting shows where they were hunting over
Speaker 2: food plots. The idea putting in a little field of
Speaker 2: greenery just for the deer. I was crazy and It
Speaker 2: made me super jealous, because, after all, it really looked
Speaker 2: like the answer to a lot of my deer hunting problems.
Speaker 2: Probably does to you too, if you've never planned one.
Speaker 2: The truth is, food plots aren't really a magic bullet.
Speaker 2: They are worth it if you have the ground and
Speaker 2: the means. That's what this episode is all about, And honestly,
Speaker 2: it's really mostly about planning tiny kill plots, not four
Speaker 2: acre beautifully groom destination plots. So even if you will
Speaker 2: never have a two hundred thousand dollars John Deer should
Speaker 2: probably listen up. Anyway. Have you ever watched somebody tie
Speaker 2: a fly? It looks so easy. See them pick up
Speaker 2: a hook, often a ridiculously small hook, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: have to be Now, place the hook in a vice
Speaker 2: so that the hookshank is horizontal, scattered around that vice.
Speaker 2: If they are like me or I don't know, probably
Speaker 2: organized around the vice like surgeon's tools. If you're like Mark,
Speaker 2: you'll see all kinds of interesting tools and bags of
Speaker 2: feathers and thread and tiny scissors, all kinds of highly
Speaker 2: specific things that should help you create something that looks
Speaker 2: like a bug or a minnow or a helgramite or
Speaker 2: something that would probably be found on the menu of
Speaker 2: a trout's favorite restaurant. Now, the first step, it's usually
Speaker 2: just to wind some thread on the hookshank. Maybe that's
Speaker 2: black thread or green or brown thread. Maybe it's a
Speaker 2: full rap all the way down the shank of the hook,
Speaker 2: or a partil wrap just near the islet with slow
Speaker 2: rotations of the tool. You know, that holds the thread
Speaker 2: in place and allows the fly tire to keep things
Speaker 2: nice and tight. You know, it looks pretty simple so far,
Speaker 2: you know. Then they might pinch off some fuzzyal and
Speaker 2: work it onto the thread. This dubbing then gets wrapped
Speaker 2: around the shank to produce what would essentially be like
Speaker 2: the insect's body. After that, the fun begins. Maybe it
Speaker 2: involves carefully measuring out a pinch of elk or deer hair,
Speaker 2: the kind of hair that is naturally buoyant because it's
Speaker 2: hollow and also happens to allow a dry fly to float.
Speaker 2: This hair, it'll get held along the dubbing and wrapped
Speaker 2: over and over with a thread. Once that's finished, that
Speaker 2: little patch of hair is secured on top of the dubbing,
Speaker 2: the miniature scissors come out. You do your best great
Speaker 2: clips impression and snip the hair off evenly. Now the
Speaker 2: fly has a body, you know, a main body, and
Speaker 2: what looks like some kind of wings, probably if you
Speaker 2: have an iq of one and are looking up through
Speaker 2: the water column of a fast moving stream at it. Anyway,
Speaker 2: Then after that comes the hackle, you know, the dried skin,
Speaker 2: complete with the feathers of a wildly colored chicken or
Speaker 2: maybe a rooster pheasant in the hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 2: feathers on any small patch of that. You'll pluck out
Speaker 2: a perfectly sized option for just this size of fly
Speaker 2: and rub away some of the feathers, those fuzzy little
Speaker 2: feathers at the stem of the individual feather, and then
Speaker 2: hold it to the body of the fly near the head.
Speaker 2: A few thread wraps later, and you can grab another
Speaker 2: specialized tool that looks kind of like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: like a tiny pair of tongs you'd create if you
Speaker 2: were a veterinarian and had to help like a hamster
Speaker 2: sized critter give birth like a particularly difficult berth, by
Speaker 2: getting a hold of the youngster during the process and
Speaker 2: yanking it out. I know that's a weird visual, but
Speaker 2: bear with me. Here with that baby hamster pulling tool.
Speaker 2: You'd spin that feather around the fly and watch as
Speaker 2: it separates wrap by wrap to make it look like
Speaker 2: it has been hit with a heavy dose of static electricity.
Speaker 2: If the deer hair kind of looks like folded wings,
Speaker 2: this hackle, when done right, must look like the outstretch twings,
Speaker 2: maybe the legs a little bit too of a small
Speaker 2: flying insect. A few more wraps with a thread, and
Speaker 2: maybe a tiny doll up of glue, and then a
Speaker 2: few specialized knots to keep the whole thing from unwinding,
Speaker 2: and it's done. You have a cats fly, easy peasy
Speaker 2: lemon squeeze. You think, since, well, it looks so easy
Speaker 2: from the casual observer's perspective, but in reality, it takes
Speaker 2: a lot of practice and going through a lot of
Speaker 2: really shitty flies to get to that point. You know
Speaker 2: what else is a hell of a lot harder to
Speaker 2: do than it looks. Golf, probably, but also creating a
Speaker 2: decent kill plot that will actually grow and produce something
Speaker 2: the deer will consistently eat. You know how I know
Speaker 2: this because I was not put on earth to grow stuff.
Speaker 2: I don't think anyone in my family was. To be honest,
Speaker 2: we can barely keep the heartiest of plants alive and
Speaker 2: have been known to kill a few cacti in my day,
Speaker 2: which brings up the Dimitri Martin joke about being less
Speaker 2: nurturing than a desert. Well, that's what we are. But
Speaker 2: I have messed around with food plots quite a bit,
Speaker 2: and I know a few things about making kill plots,
Speaker 2: mostly from the things I've done wrong. It has been
Speaker 2: a slow process, but I have managed to get some
Speaker 2: clover to grow and some moats. My little girls have
Speaker 2: managed to shoot a few deer in these plots, which
Speaker 2: is pretty satisfying. The process really is pretty simple, like
Speaker 2: tying flies, but there's a lot of nuance to it.
Speaker 2: And the best thing you can do before clearing ground
Speaker 2: and starting the process, as long as you have a
Speaker 2: place to do it, is to ask yourself if you
Speaker 2: really need a kill plot. If you hunt around tons
Speaker 2: of agfields in Iowa or Illinois or somewhere, it might
Speaker 2: be a hell of a lot of squeeze for very
Speaker 2: little practical juice. That's not to say it isn't worth
Speaker 2: it still, because there's more to planning and maintaining a
Speaker 2: food plot than just killing deer in it, but it's
Speaker 2: worth thinking about now. If you're in the northern Wisconsin woods,
Speaker 2: or maybe the mountains of Pennsylvania or some other region
Speaker 2: that is heavy on timber but light on destination food sources,
Speaker 2: a kill plot might be one hell of a good idea.
Speaker 2: Giving the deer something they don't have easy access to
Speaker 2: is kind of a no brainer, like putting a pond
Speaker 2: in where water sources are scarce, or hinge cutting the
Speaker 2: crap out of some trees in an area where food
Speaker 2: is plentiful but betting cover is rare. The thing is,
Speaker 2: no matter where you might want to put a food
Speaker 2: plot in, you'll want to get your soil tested.
Speaker 1: First.
Speaker 2: I thought this was stupid, and I told a good
Speaker 2: buddy of mine just that when we bought a small
Speaker 2: property together in twenty thirteen. The soil, I said, you know,
Speaker 2: it looks as black as the soil in southeastern Minnesota
Speaker 2: where the crop yields are real high, and so I
Speaker 2: figured we didn't need to test it. My buddy, who
Speaker 2: can fix anything and that makes me really jealous, said
Speaker 2: you can't tell anything by looking at soil. He was right,
Speaker 2: of course. It's kind of like a different friend of
Speaker 2: mine telling me very recently that the Golden Retriever puppy
Speaker 2: he ordered has a dad that looks like a dog
Speaker 2: he owned twenty years ago, and since that dog was
Speaker 2: a good pheasant hunter, some crazy esthetic transcendent properties will
Speaker 2: come into play and the new puppies should be a
Speaker 2: rooster flushing machine. That's not really how it works, unfortunately. Anyway,
Speaker 2: get your soil tested. Follow the instructions so you do
Speaker 2: it right. You want to know the pH a your soil.
Speaker 2: You know what the soil consists of for organic matter.
Speaker 2: You want to know what the fertilizer recommendations are from
Speaker 2: the pros. This is like the instruction booklet sort of
Speaker 2: for how to build a little deer buffet. Starts with
Speaker 2: the soil. Y'all also want to eyeball your plot just
Speaker 2: to see how much sunlight it'll get. Sun is real
Speaker 2: important to plants since it delivers tiny little packets of
Speaker 2: energy called photons. Plants need these. And while you might
Speaker 2: think about putting a kill plot in on a logging
Speaker 2: road in the timber and then just using some kind
Speaker 2: of shady seed mix, that's a tough one in my experience.
Speaker 2: Without a decent amount of sunlight throughout the first months
Speaker 2: of the growing season, just going to be in trouble
Speaker 2: quite a bit. I mean, I find myself cutting down
Speaker 2: shrubs and trees around my kill plots every spring in
Speaker 2: the interest of keeping the sunlight in and the shade out.
Speaker 2: I also find myself fighting weeds a lot, and you
Speaker 2: will too if you march into the woods and start
Speaker 2: clearing out an eighth of an acre to plant some
Speaker 2: clover or something. The soil just about anywhere, but especially
Speaker 2: in the woods is going to be ripe with seeds
Speaker 2: of all kinds. It's just waiting for the canopy to
Speaker 2: open up and so it can sprout all kinds of
Speaker 2: undesirable grasses and weeds and other plants. This is a
Speaker 2: lesson just about every food plot first time or learns.
Speaker 2: How you deal with this is up to you. I
Speaker 2: once wrote an article for Outdoor News about spraying a
Speaker 2: small food plot with roundup to kill it off, and
Speaker 2: you'd have sworn. I advocated drowning Labrador Retriever puppies just
Speaker 2: for fun, while simultaneously kicking toddlers in the face with
Speaker 2: steel toed boots, also for fun. I guess the people
Speaker 2: who got super mad at me conveniently ignored the widespread
Speaker 2: use of the herbicide and many others by people working
Speaker 2: thousands of acres of land and producing the food that
Speaker 2: the world eats. Kind Of like how anti hunters focus
Speaker 2: on us being just horrible people because of what we
Speaker 2: do to animals, but not really focusing on the general
Speaker 2: public and their appetite for m pigs and cows and
Speaker 2: chickens and stuff. And you know the factory farming that
Speaker 2: goes along with feeding a population of billions and all
Speaker 2: the bad stuff there. Any huski, maybe you have to
Speaker 2: clear out and till up your spot and then spray
Speaker 2: it or burn it or do something cast a curse
Speaker 2: on it. I don't know, Harry Potter. That shit the weeds,
Speaker 2: they're going to be an issue every year. This is
Speaker 2: especially true if you're making an elbow grease food plot
Speaker 2: and don't have any real equipment besides what amounts to
Speaker 2: sweat equity and manual labors. First timers opt for a
Speaker 2: seed blend to start with as well, figuring that if
Speaker 2: I don't know, we like a variety in our diet,
Speaker 2: why not the deer? Also? Why not give all kinds
Speaker 2: of edible plants the chance to grow instead of one
Speaker 2: type that might be susceptible to drought or too much
Speaker 2: rain or whatever. Listen. Results vary, of course, but my
Speaker 2: experience in this realm is that my seed blend plots
Speaker 2: become an awful lot like weed blend plots. That's a
Speaker 2: dad joke for you guys. I find it's easier to
Speaker 2: pick something that should grow in my world and should
Speaker 2: be appealing to deer almost the entire season. That rules
Speaker 2: out the blends, but also some of the stuff like
Speaker 2: brassicas and other food plot plants that might be more
Speaker 2: beneficial as the season gets later and later and later. Personally,
Speaker 2: I want something the deer will eat in September, October,
Speaker 2: and at least early November. That's just me, though you
Speaker 2: do yours according to what your hunting strategies are and
Speaker 2: where you live and what your soil's like. Now. I
Speaker 2: also like planning perennials, which means it's going to come
Speaker 2: back year after a year without receding. This leads me
Speaker 2: right back to clover typically because the deer love it.
Speaker 2: It's pretty hardy, and a good planning will last me
Speaker 2: up to about five years. Because even my clover plots
Speaker 2: are so, so I will also throw in a handful
Speaker 2: of oats, usually in August. Oats will damn near grow
Speaker 2: on pavement if they get a little rain, so this
Speaker 2: is like an insurance policy in case my clover sucks. Plus,
Speaker 2: where I have kill plots, good deer food is pretty
Speaker 2: hard to come by, so even oats, especially fresh oats
Speaker 2: that haven't headed out yet, pretty attractive. This is sort
Speaker 2: of my go to from year to year. Now I
Speaker 2: do spend quite a bit of time eat spring, hauling
Speaker 2: in bags of lime and sometimes fertilizer. It's like my
Speaker 2: soil is always in need of a pH boost that
Speaker 2: line provides, and it's always in need of the extra
Speaker 2: juicy juice that fertilizer provides. I've learned all of this
Speaker 2: through trial and error. In the places where I can
Speaker 2: mess with a plot, you're gonna have to find your
Speaker 2: own way. But if I could offer up general advice,
Speaker 2: it would be to stick to the instructions and keep
Speaker 2: things simple. The simpler you go, the easier it is
Speaker 2: to figure out your problems and remedy them. I'd also
Speaker 2: advise this keep your expectations in check. My absolute favorite
Speaker 2: part about putting in kill plots is putting in kill plots.
Speaker 2: It's fun to get your hands dirty and clear out
Speaker 2: a little spot for the deer. It's fun to watch
Speaker 2: the forecast and cross your fingers and realize that you
Speaker 2: have a bet a deer munchi's growing out there that
Speaker 2: you did yourself. What's not fun, at least for me personally,
Speaker 2: is hunting over a plot. I don't know why, and
Speaker 2: it's not to say I don't, because sometimes I do.
Speaker 2: But I get far far more enjoyment out of work
Speaker 2: in the land, getting something to grow, and then going
Speaker 2: to hunt somewhere else. I do, as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: love taking my daughters out to a kill plot when
Speaker 2: I know at least a few year have been using
Speaker 2: it somewhat consistently. And I do love to see the
Speaker 2: grouse and the bunnies show up too, and occasionally bears.
Speaker 2: Black bears eat a lot of different stuff, being the
Speaker 2: not too picky omnivores they are, but I also know
Speaker 2: that they love eating fresh oats and absolutely destroying the
Speaker 2: raspberries that sometimes grow around my plots. I think that's
Speaker 2: pretty cool, although I can't really articulate why. Another thing
Speaker 2: that you'll learn to love about food plots is that
Speaker 2: if you want to keep them going, you gotta do
Speaker 2: the work. A lot of white tail hunting isn't really
Speaker 2: that much work these days, which is one of the
Speaker 2: reasons we love trail cameras. They just do so much
Speaker 2: of the heavy lifting for us now, unless you pay
Speaker 2: someone else to put your plots in, which if you
Speaker 2: do that, you're not really worried about a small kill
Speaker 2: plot in the woods. Anyway. You're just gonna have to
Speaker 2: do some work from year to year. There will be
Speaker 2: brush to clear in the winter, soil to work in
Speaker 2: the spring, maintenance like mowing throughout the season, and probably
Speaker 2: if you're like me, you'll just find yourself piss sing
Speaker 2: off some yellow jacket and nests in the process. Because
Speaker 2: of those feisty som bitches seem to love food plots,
Speaker 2: and it gives me super great satisfaction to find a
Speaker 2: nest of them that has recently been dug up by
Speaker 2: a bear. Take that, you stingy pricks. So is a
Speaker 2: little kill plot the answer to your deer hunting woes.
Speaker 2: Probably not, but it's another part of the process to love,
Speaker 2: and it just might keep a dough group or two
Speaker 2: around one of your favorite stand sites, or maybe you're
Speaker 2: into it just for your first buck, and that little
Speaker 2: six pointer who kind of got booted out of his
Speaker 2: home range and he's looking for someplace new decides to
Speaker 2: set up shop in your clover. Maybe that's good enough
Speaker 2: and you're gonna be able to go in there and
Speaker 2: shoot him, Or those dough groups that swing through for
Speaker 2: a mouth full of clover happen to decide that your
Speaker 2: kill plot is going to be a part of their
Speaker 2: day to day life, and on one of those days,
Speaker 2: maybe about the first week of November, one of the
Speaker 2: big boys in the neighborhood will follow them into the
Speaker 2: plot while you're sitting over it. Or maybe maybe you
Speaker 2: know someone who's never killed a deer and they'd be
Speaker 2: tickled pink to arrow dough and you could facilitate that
Speaker 2: right quick with your little clover plot. Or perhaps you
Speaker 2: have twin girls who want to contribute to the family
Speaker 2: dowry of venison, and so they hunt hungry in a
Speaker 2: spot where a few doughs and a few spikes and
Speaker 2: forki's are likely to show up at some point in
Speaker 2: the season, and then when they do, you see one
Speaker 2: hell of a benefit to work in the soil and
Speaker 2: sweating your ass off and dodging some bees. Now, listen,
Speaker 2: I know some people who are going to hear this,
Speaker 2: and they're going to say food plots or bait plots,
Speaker 2: and that's essentially cheating to them. I say, I don't
Speaker 2: care you do you and you hunt natural travel roads exclusively,
Speaker 2: that's what blows the wind up your skirt. A lot
Speaker 2: of hunters aren't like that, And honestly, when almost any
Speaker 2: hunter has the chance to put in a kill plot,
Speaker 2: they usually do. A lot of them fail, which is
Speaker 2: not a story you hear out of the hunting industry
Speaker 2: very often, but it's true. It's not as easy as
Speaker 2: it looks to take a patch of woods or a
Speaker 2: natural meadow and transform it into a lush, beautiful spot
Speaker 2: full of the kind of calories that deer just can't ignore.
Speaker 2: But it is fun. So get out there if you
Speaker 2: can and start thinking about how to babysit the soil
Speaker 2: a little bit to get something beneficial to grow. And
Speaker 2: tune in next week because it is the one hundredth
Speaker 2: episode of Foundations, and just for the hell of it,
Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you some deer hunting stories that
Speaker 2: might make you laugh, might make you ponder your own success,
Speaker 2: and will probably make you question how the hell I
Speaker 2: ever killed a single deer with my bowe in my life.
Speaker 2: That's it for this week, my friends, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for tuning in. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been
Speaker 2: the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to
Speaker 2: you by First Light. If you want more deer hunting advice,
Speaker 2: you want to read up a little bit more on
Speaker 2: on how to hunt hunting strategy, styles, tactics, whatever gear,
Speaker 2: go on over to the medieater dot com slash wired again,
Speaker 2: that's the medieater dot com slash wired, and you'll see
Speaker 2: a pile of hunting articles there, written by a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of different hunting experts.