Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the
Speaker 1: modern white tail hunter and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt Podcast. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyan, and this week on the show, I'm joined
Speaker 1: by Mark Haslin, the two thousand nineteen n D a
Speaker 1: Dear Manager of the Year, to discuss his lessons learned
Speaker 1: and best practices for improving whitetail habitat in the Southeast.
Speaker 1: All Right, welcome back to the Wire to Hunt podcast,
Speaker 1: brought to you by First Light Tan the show, we
Speaker 1: are continuing to talk habitat. We're gonna be discussing in particular,
Speaker 1: southern white tail habitat, and I think a lot we're
Speaker 1: going to discuss will be replicable and relevant to you
Speaker 1: if you're in the Midwest or the Northeast, but I'm
Speaker 1: giving a little extra love to those of you down
Speaker 1: in the South. My guest today, Mark Haslum, hails from
Speaker 1: the southeast. He's got a family farm down in South Carolina,
Speaker 1: and today we're gonna be talking about the story of
Speaker 1: this place. We're gonna be talking about what he's learned
Speaker 1: in the many years since he began managing. You know,
Speaker 1: last week we talked to some guys who have just
Speaker 1: recently gotten into the land management game. They've been into
Speaker 1: it just a few years. Today with Mark, he's been
Speaker 1: doing this for fifteen plus years, diving really deep into
Speaker 1: this and learning really the ups, downs, ins and outs
Speaker 1: of what it takes to improve a piece of ground
Speaker 1: managed a digger herd, and and enjoy it. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna discuss everything from timber management, hinge cutting, clear cutting,
Speaker 1: planting pines, doing u dormant season burns, the pros and
Speaker 1: cons of food plots, getting natural food plots, going uh
Speaker 1: Sunheim Conservation, Eastman's uh shoe. Who knows what else. A
Speaker 1: whole bunch of else is hit on in this one.
Speaker 1: Marks a great guy. He's actually gonna be contributing a
Speaker 1: little bit more to Wired to Hunt for us in
Speaker 1: the future, so look for articles from him coming down
Speaker 1: the line over on the Wired Hunt website as well.
Speaker 1: And uh, He's got a lot to offer. So that
Speaker 1: is my pitch for today's episode. I hope you're gonna
Speaker 1: stick around, hope you enjoy this one. If you've been
Speaker 1: out there working the ground already, I think this will
Speaker 1: be just what you need to inspire the next weekend
Speaker 1: or the next weeknight of work. So thanks for being here.
Speaker 1: Let's get to my chat with Mark. Has them all
Speaker 1: right here with me now on the show I've Got
Speaker 1: Mark HASLM. Mark. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Mark.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm glad to be here. Tell you what You've
Speaker 1: got a good name. Right off the bat, I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you that this is it's always good to have
Speaker 1: a fella Mark on this show. That hasn't happened too often,
Speaker 1: so I like that. But uh, in all seriousness, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's great to have on here. I've I've been
Speaker 1: you know, kind of following some of your work from
Speaker 1: AFAR over the years. Mark, I've I've seen how you've
Speaker 1: been doing a really great job of showcasing and sharing
Speaker 1: your family farm with other people and mentor new hunters.
Speaker 1: I saw when he won the Dear Manager of the
Speaker 1: Year award and thought to myself, Man, he seems like
Speaker 1: someone who's very deserving of that. And I started reading
Speaker 1: more of your work and kind of just seeing what
Speaker 1: you're doing on social media. Um, just recently, I know
Speaker 1: we've we've gotten you starting to do a little bit
Speaker 1: of writing for us at Wired to Hunt. Sou and short.
Speaker 1: This is a this is a conversation. I'm really glad
Speaker 1: we're having and uh, I know you've got a lot
Speaker 1: to offer, so so thanks for making time to be here.
Speaker 1: What was what was that experience like, Mark, before we
Speaker 1: get into the real meat and potatoes of what I
Speaker 1: want to talk about, What was that experience like when
Speaker 1: you found out that you won the Dear Manager of
Speaker 1: the Year award from the National Deer Association. Was that
Speaker 1: was that something that you thought, oh, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: coming my way someday or were you surprised by that? Um?
Speaker 1: Absolutely shocked. M. I both my father and I did
Speaker 1: not see that coming. UM. We we put on a
Speaker 1: at the time a q d m A mentored hunt
Speaker 1: UM that previous fall, and we invited Joe Hamilton's the
Speaker 1: founder of q d m A now the National Deer
Speaker 1: Association UM, and Joe Hamilton's just absolute national treasure UM.
Speaker 1: And he saw what we were doing. He he resides
Speaker 1: about an hour and a half from our farm, and
Speaker 1: he saw what we were doing and UM in the
Speaker 1: longevy that we were doing things the farm and UM,
Speaker 1: I had no clue. Dad and I were planning to
Speaker 1: attend Whitetail Weekend later that I guess we marked and um,
Speaker 1: when Joe started to read our uh background while before
Speaker 1: giving the the award, that was very surreal. Absolutely was
Speaker 1: because for me, I'm a life I was a lifelong
Speaker 1: qtumn remember going back to the mid like nineties, back
Speaker 1: when we were in a hunting club, and so that
Speaker 1: was very much surreal and just shock for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine. And I guess that's a great place
Speaker 1: for us to start, because I think that this this
Speaker 1: award you were given, I think is representative of the
Speaker 1: work and the transformation that you guys put into place
Speaker 1: over the last fifteen years or so on this this
Speaker 1: farm that Joe visited with you down in South Carolina.
Speaker 1: From what I understand, your family, you guys acquired this
Speaker 1: place back in two thousand six, right, Can you can
Speaker 1: you fill me in on you know, what's what's the
Speaker 1: family farm look like? What was this place like when
Speaker 1: you stepped foot on it so many years ago? Originally
Speaker 1: it was a raw piece of land. And when I
Speaker 1: see a raw piece of land, um it uh. It
Speaker 1: was being maintained by a forster. It was um it
Speaker 1: was in a family that originally owned a much larger
Speaker 1: piece have been passed down through many generations. I think
Speaker 1: it was about twelve or fourteen different owners that had
Speaker 1: a sign off um on the sale that actually had
Speaker 1: to track some people down. But it was one of
Speaker 1: those classic, you know examples of you know, a piece
Speaker 1: of property that was in a family for a long
Speaker 1: period of time and none of the current owners had
Speaker 1: any um uh you know, ties to the land. They
Speaker 1: had a forster that was maintaining the force your work
Speaker 1: and then sending checks you know when they cut timber,
Speaker 1: and they leased the hunting rights out to a hunting club. Um.
Speaker 1: So it was a very raw piece of land. And
Speaker 1: but that's what drew it, drew us to it. And
Speaker 1: it was a good location, being somewhat centered between uh
Speaker 1: two very long you know, two of the closer uh city.
Speaker 1: So when you start to distance yourself from larger cities,
Speaker 1: you're starting to see the price per acre, in the
Speaker 1: price of dirt dip down before it rises back up
Speaker 1: going to the next city. So what about the terrain
Speaker 1: and habitat? I mean, I know nothing about South Carolina,
Speaker 1: So can you paint a picture for me what this
Speaker 1: ground looks like? What kind of plant life. Is this
Speaker 1: swampy wet stuff as this high ground is as hilly
Speaker 1: as this big timber. What's what was the break down there?
Speaker 1: This would be considered the midlands of South Carolina, the
Speaker 1: lower western part of the state. It's right on the
Speaker 1: just north of the low country area, which is mostly
Speaker 1: coastal plains. The coastal plains would run all the way
Speaker 1: from South Carolina all the way to Alabama, Mississippi. UM.
Speaker 1: And it's exactly what it sounds like. Very flat. I
Speaker 1: mean I I live in Savannah and we are at
Speaker 1: sea level right now, so it's very flat. But we're
Speaker 1: right on the north side of that. And just when
Speaker 1: the state starts to get a little bit of terrain
Speaker 1: features slight rolling hills, elevation drops, I would call them hills.
Speaker 1: Living at sea level, UM. Some of our elevation drops
Speaker 1: would be ten or fifty um. There are We do
Speaker 1: have a couple Carolina bays, which is a geological term
Speaker 1: and the idea of the theory which I think has
Speaker 1: been some substantial evidence, but there were some meteors way
Speaker 1: back when that hit hit the ground and created some
Speaker 1: oval shaped depressions, and so those are called Carolina bays.
Speaker 1: We do have a several spring fed creeks, uh, some
Speaker 1: swamps and bottom land um, but it's primarily upon arm
Speaker 1: and that's what you see a lot in this in
Speaker 1: this region of the southeast, and the highest best use
Speaker 1: would be growing pine trees with a good amount of
Speaker 1: acreage for cultivated fields farmland. Okay, so what about the
Speaker 1: wildlife population, the deer population when you guys showed up
Speaker 1: there in two thousand and six, what what did that like?
Speaker 1: Was this place flourishing already or were you starting with
Speaker 1: a little bit of a fixer upper. It was certainly
Speaker 1: a fixer upper. It was a it was a great
Speaker 1: piece of property. It had been in a hunting club
Speaker 1: I think for several decades um. And with that, we
Speaker 1: did not know exactly what they were, what their goals were,
Speaker 1: and what they were harvesting. Based on some of the
Speaker 1: information that we received and actually talking to them, and
Speaker 1: they they still have a club in existence, I think
Speaker 1: they were. They weren't practicing, you know, all the fundamentals
Speaker 1: of the QDM model Quality Deer manage a model. It
Speaker 1: was perfectly fine. I mean, that's legal to do. But
Speaker 1: I don't know if they were letting young box walk,
Speaker 1: so we didn't know what we had. A sparts Box
Speaker 1: definitely has some deer on the property, um very little
Speaker 1: turkeys and at the time no quail, no Bob white quail.
Speaker 1: But you know, we just did not know what we
Speaker 1: had as far as the deer population. And then I
Speaker 1: guess what were you hoping for? Like when you guys
Speaker 1: step foot, like, what were you hoping? What? When? What
Speaker 1: am I trying to say, I'm trying to stay here.
Speaker 1: What were your hopes and dreams and goals for this place?
Speaker 1: Because it sounds like you were pretty serious and the
Speaker 1: deer hunting already having been a kidium a member for
Speaker 1: a long time. So when you step foot on that
Speaker 1: farm in two ousan six, was it okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: go gung ho doing everything we've learned about from reading
Speaker 1: the magazine and studying these things over the years, or
Speaker 1: or what was the plan when you guys began this journey.
Speaker 1: The plan was to take it very very slow. Well,
Speaker 1: actually I should say that the plan was to take
Speaker 1: it slow, but we ended up over time just taking
Speaker 1: it very very slow. Originally just step stepping foot the property.
Speaker 1: My my short term plan was to put some tree
Speaker 1: stands on some of the act fields, UM that they
Speaker 1: had peanuts or corn and just hunt is wait until
Speaker 1: I saw, you know, a one sixty inch come out.
Speaker 1: I just had, you know, we just didn't know what
Speaker 1: we had. We knew that the deer population would be
Speaker 1: a lot different than what we were used to hunting
Speaker 1: UM on the coastal plaine of the coastal South Carolina
Speaker 1: coastal Georgia. But we didn't know what what we had.
Speaker 1: The plan was just to take it slow, observe um
Speaker 1: and just right off the back, keep doing what we
Speaker 1: were doing uh in our hunting club UM for many
Speaker 1: many years, and that is keeping good hunter observations now
Speaker 1: still away due to this day, keeping a hunting observation
Speaker 1: log everything you see UM on the sand and then
Speaker 1: a course to harvest log data. UM. But we I
Speaker 1: did shoot my first buck on the property I think
Speaker 1: to the third or fourth season, and that was just
Speaker 1: a process of letting. I let a lot of bucks walked.
Speaker 1: In hindsight, I probably would have known what I know
Speaker 1: now would have shot, but we just we weren't really
Speaker 1: sure what we had and when we were and when
Speaker 1: I say that we were basing that off some friends
Speaker 1: of ours that had similar type properties but had been
Speaker 1: managing it and pritic seeing the QTa model for a
Speaker 1: lot longer, So we just didn't know if that was
Speaker 1: something that where we could kind of slip right into
Speaker 1: and tweak a couple of things or it. And it
Speaker 1: ended up being uh uh, you know, a five or
Speaker 1: six year plan to kind of get it to where
Speaker 1: we were consistently seeing UM mature box on the stand
Speaker 1: and on straw camera and then being able to maintain
Speaker 1: and observe and understand our dear herd. You know, I
Speaker 1: want to go back to something you said about UM
Speaker 1: one of the things you carried over from your hunting
Speaker 1: club days, which was really good hunting or hunter observations
Speaker 1: and harvest observations and records. Can you walk me through
Speaker 1: you know what that actually means? How were you doing that?
Speaker 1: What kind of things are you taking note of? You know,
Speaker 1: was this in an actual journal that you carry with
Speaker 1: you everywhere? Like? How do you actually do this? Well? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I'd love to UM. You know this is this is
Speaker 1: just a classic q d M fundamental practice, and that
Speaker 1: is you know, your your your hunter observation on the
Speaker 1: stand and your harvest data log. So you know, this
Speaker 1: goes back to our hunting club and I the earliest
Speaker 1: I can remember being there is in kindergarten, just wearing
Speaker 1: one of those insulated old school camo jumpsuits, probably michelin Man,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't even like move my arms the good
Speaker 1: old days, that's right. Um So, but what we you
Speaker 1: know nowadays there there are apps uh for hunt clubs
Speaker 1: where you can sign in and sign out on your
Speaker 1: on your phone. But we had a clubhouse and there
Speaker 1: was a little bulletin board um right there in the
Speaker 1: clubhouse where you sign it and you you know, you
Speaker 1: you put a magnet on the aerial map of where
Speaker 1: are you gonna hunt, put your name in, and then
Speaker 1: you sign out and we sign out. You put what
Speaker 1: you saw or if you shot something uh at the
Speaker 1: skinning shed, you would take the live weight. Um. We
Speaker 1: weren't necessarily doing all these things at the hunt club,
Speaker 1: but we had tweaked it to where um at our
Speaker 1: farm we were you know at the end the hunt
Speaker 1: writing everything we saw as far as white tails breaking
Speaker 1: it down within fawns. Um. You know, if it's if
Speaker 1: it's a skilled hunter or hunter that we feel like
Speaker 1: knows what they're looking at, we will put button bucks
Speaker 1: or do fon if not just simply fawns doze, and
Speaker 1: then antler bucks and depending on you know, if someone's confident,
Speaker 1: you know what particular buck they saw six point point
Speaker 1: eight point, maybe it's a two year old eight point,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a four year old eight point and then um,
Speaker 1: the harvest log and this is harvest law. I mean,
Speaker 1: both are an imperative, but the harvest log is very
Speaker 1: very key. And everyone doesn't have a skinning shed on
Speaker 1: their property. Everyone doesn't have a scale on the property.
Speaker 1: So some people take their dear to a processor. And
Speaker 1: back in the day before we had a skinning shed,
Speaker 1: you know, I would wait at the processor until he
Speaker 1: or she weighed my dear so I could get the
Speaker 1: weight and the jawbone because I did not want to
Speaker 1: leave and potentially them not weigh it. Um. But when
Speaker 1: you have that data, here are some of the highlight
Speaker 1: bullet points that you can get from it. From the
Speaker 1: hunter observation you'll see at the at the end of
Speaker 1: the season. And this is what we do right now.
Speaker 1: You know, after the season, rolling into the following fall
Speaker 1: is you'll you'll get a breakdown as far as how
Speaker 1: many does you saw an average per hunt? How many
Speaker 1: bucks you saw on average per hunt? Um your buck
Speaker 1: to dough ratio. I mean that's you know, we use
Speaker 1: a uh an online service. It's very inexpensive and you
Speaker 1: upload all this information. What's it called uh The website
Speaker 1: that we use is called deer manage dot com and
Speaker 1: it'll you just up put all all the data and
Speaker 1: it breaks down it gives you the estimate of bucks
Speaker 1: to the ratio, which is that alone is one of
Speaker 1: the top points to focus on and in one sidebar
Speaker 1: that and why it's important was because after about ten
Speaker 1: or ten or so years, when we had went really
Speaker 1: had the farm fine tuned UM, we were starting to
Speaker 1: get a lot of bucks on camera. We had we
Speaker 1: were growing bucks and we were sing bucks in person.
Speaker 1: And we went through that phase where we were hunting
Speaker 1: more bucks than we were regulating the dose and our
Speaker 1: dough numbers are do dough harvest dipped down, and what
Speaker 1: we saw was our bucket do ratios shot up way
Speaker 1: out of whack. And so for the past number of
Speaker 1: years we've been just hammering the does trying to catch up.
Speaker 1: That's why that's imported. You'll also get the fun recruitment.
Speaker 1: You know, what's your fun recruitment like. And that's why
Speaker 1: taking those uh you know, jotting down or you know fonts,
Speaker 1: that's that's important. You know, people are concerned about kynotes
Speaker 1: and you know trapping or do you have adequate uh
Speaker 1: phone betting um. And then also for instance, if you're
Speaker 1: seeing one antlerd buck for every ten doze, that could
Speaker 1: be a problem. If you're seeing one antlerd buck for
Speaker 1: every fifteen plus or fifteen or twenty does, that's a
Speaker 1: major problem. You've got way too many does. And sure
Speaker 1: you might still kill some large bucks, but you're bucket
Speaker 1: devior ratio is way out of whack. And there's you know,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to podcasts, you probably understand what that
Speaker 1: can cause as far as the ruts and then fawns dropping,
Speaker 1: and then with the with the with the harvest log,
Speaker 1: you're extracting extracting the jawbone, which is you know, besides
Speaker 1: sending off the jawbone to get tested the teeth. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's one of the top ways of actually aging a deer,
Speaker 1: taking a live weight. And then for instance, like if
Speaker 1: it's a dough wasn't lactating. Wasn't lactating in September, Well,
Speaker 1: that's common, that's good. Was it lactating in November? That's
Speaker 1: a lot longer. If you're if it's if a dough
Speaker 1: is lighttating in November December, that can tell you some
Speaker 1: things about your ruts and about the button dough ratio um.
Speaker 1: And that's just a excellent way to keep track of
Speaker 1: your of your deer population. Are they are the weights
Speaker 1: trending up or trending down. It's just there's a there's
Speaker 1: a lot of different things you can and then you
Speaker 1: can look at this all kinds of data. Francis Moon.
Speaker 1: So this website will factor the moon in and it'll
Speaker 1: show you how many deer on average you're seeing with
Speaker 1: every moon phase, um, temperature, wind, everything like that has
Speaker 1: that has that level of analysis kind of highlighted any
Speaker 1: kind of correlation with the moon or anything. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is just like a pet project favored of mine,
Speaker 1: always talking about these things and looking into that. And
Speaker 1: you know, one of the big pieces of pushback along
Speaker 1: the lines for most of that is that there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of peer viewed research that can point to
Speaker 1: a connection between any of those factors like the moon, temperature,
Speaker 1: bare metric pressure, and deer movement. But so many hunters
Speaker 1: feel like there is have you seen anything line up
Speaker 1: with that with your own data? I can send you
Speaker 1: the data and I can, and I'll be willing to
Speaker 1: post on social media. But there's absolutely no correlation whatsoever
Speaker 1: between hunter observation and the moon vase deer movement. There's
Speaker 1: just not It's there is no chance aange whatsoever with
Speaker 1: the moon face. You know, I personally, I was smiling
Speaker 1: when when you brought this up. I personally just get
Speaker 1: a chuckle out of the moon. I feel like a
Speaker 1: lot of people just they they tend to hunt when
Speaker 1: they feel like they have you know, some people, some
Speaker 1: people can pick and choose when they hunt based on
Speaker 1: whatever condition they like. And some people, maybe like you
Speaker 1: and me, they have a couple of kids and a
Speaker 1: job and a and a wife and a household, and
Speaker 1: we we we hunt, we excuse me, we hunt when
Speaker 1: we can um and that's typically, uh, you know, without
Speaker 1: even looking at data, the best times to hunt, in
Speaker 1: the best places to hunt and when to hunt are
Speaker 1: going to be early or places where there's been very
Speaker 1: little pressure. And yeah, so in my opinion, it makes
Speaker 1: a little sense. Um, I want to rewind the tape
Speaker 1: a little bit to to where a lot of this began,
Speaker 1: because it seems like, you know, taking the the level
Speaker 1: of detail that you're looking at things that the records
Speaker 1: you're keeping, that that must have really helped inform so
Speaker 1: many of the decisions you guys made along the way
Speaker 1: since you had real data to look at. But I'm
Speaker 1: sure that especially in those early years, you had some
Speaker 1: false starts. Um. You know, on my back forty project,
Speaker 1: for example, a few years ago, I had plenty of
Speaker 1: false starts when I was getting into this whole world
Speaker 1: of kind of taking that next step in land management.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious what those look like for you guys.
Speaker 1: Can you if you thought about those first gosh five years,
Speaker 1: maybe does anything stand out as as some of the
Speaker 1: biggest mistakes you made in those early years or something
Speaker 1: that you just really got wrong? Um, does anything come
Speaker 1: to mind? Well? How much time do we have? Um? Yes,
Speaker 1: to answer your question, Yes, there's definitely a lot. Some
Speaker 1: items that come to min would be UM, planting trees,
Speaker 1: we would we bought some fruit trees early on, and
Speaker 1: that that weren't really eaten suitable for that area h
Speaker 1: South Carolina. We plant some oak trees, uh, a lot
Speaker 1: of sawtooth oaks, which a lot of people you know.
Speaker 1: Now there was a little bit of pushback as far
Speaker 1: as planting those. UM. I still like him. But we
Speaker 1: we we we plant some of these trees far too
Speaker 1: close together, did not space them out, um far enough
Speaker 1: um food plots, you know. UM, we weren't doing soul
Speaker 1: samples originally and before we really opened up some of
Speaker 1: the property, we were squeezing food plots in wherever we
Speaker 1: could because the previous hunters were not planning food plots.
Speaker 1: There was a farmer there's a couple hundred acres of
Speaker 1: farm land, so he had that uh to hunt over
Speaker 1: or to hunt around. But we were squeezing food plots
Speaker 1: a lot, and like on firebreaks or roads that we
Speaker 1: didn't use as much, or little fallow areas and and
Speaker 1: a lot of those areas did not get sunlight, very
Speaker 1: little sunlight. Um. And that was yeah, that was primarily
Speaker 1: a that was a bust because you buy seed and
Speaker 1: you and you plan it. We weren't. We weren't spraying
Speaker 1: um for we control. We weren't doing the soul samples
Speaker 1: and then you're not you're not really monitoring really what
Speaker 1: what what comes up? Is it weeds popping up? Or
Speaker 1: is the plan that you that you plan with a
Speaker 1: seed um and then a stand location. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: some of the stand locations we had early on were
Speaker 1: around roads, um, and that was just a factor of
Speaker 1: not really having the time yet to open the property up.
Speaker 1: But sometimes hunters, and this is what we were guilty of,
Speaker 1: we put deer stands where we thought the best places
Speaker 1: would be based on just our preferences. But we weren't
Speaker 1: necessarily basing any one where the deer are. How do
Speaker 1: the deer use our property? Where are they coming from,
Speaker 1: where are they batting? Where are they going? Um? You know,
Speaker 1: not basing the stand location stands set up based on
Speaker 1: the deer movement. We're basing on one. You know what
Speaker 1: we're best for us. I think that's something that a
Speaker 1: lot of folks, myself included, are guilty of. So so
Speaker 1: plenty of mistakes along the way. What what was if
Speaker 1: you could if there's anything that kind of fits this,
Speaker 1: what was the impetus for positive change? Like if it
Speaker 1: was there anything you can point back to where things
Speaker 1: all of a sudden started to click. Did you change
Speaker 1: something with your food plots and all of a sudden, oh,
Speaker 1: now things are coming together. Or did you open up
Speaker 1: these new roads or new access points to allow you
Speaker 1: to hunt deeper into the property and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden that was what changed things. Was there any
Speaker 1: big epiphany or light switch moment, you know, where you
Speaker 1: kind of hit a fork in the road and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden the results started changing. Was there any
Speaker 1: kind of lying in the sand where all of a
Speaker 1: sudden everything was different after that, I would say to
Speaker 1: answer that question, was probably the first UM logging contract
Speaker 1: we had the farm, and the first UM the first
Speaker 1: time I have some a timber crew on the farm
Speaker 1: to cut pine trees too. The first cut was just
Speaker 1: a thin. It was actually a combination to thin some
Speaker 1: trees and what that did was open up so the
Speaker 1: canopy gets more sunlight in UM. And then they also
Speaker 1: created some loading decks. So when you cut pine trees,
Speaker 1: there's a site usually that they clear cut, like a
Speaker 1: you know, a smaller site where they clear cut first,
Speaker 1: and then that's where they're loading the timber. That's where
Speaker 1: they're the machines are dragging the timber. And then then
Speaker 1: then then they're loading it on the semi trucks. So
Speaker 1: when that's done, what we did on those old loading
Speaker 1: decks was to clean it up. We stumped it and
Speaker 1: then cleaned up all all the leftover debris, burned every
Speaker 1: you know, burned the leftover debris, and then converted those
Speaker 1: into food plots. Um. That was a huge change for
Speaker 1: us because that gave us an actual smaller spield that
Speaker 1: maybe like a quarter acre or half acre to play
Speaker 1: a food plot. Um. And then with a thinning and
Speaker 1: that allowed uh exposed sunlight, open the canopy up to
Speaker 1: get more sunlight UH on the ground, disturb the ground
Speaker 1: and get some natural growth um. And then combined with that,
Speaker 1: they also widened the road for us. They cut some
Speaker 1: trees along the roads, why the roads better. We did
Speaker 1: some did some roadwork. When you why the roads, especially
Speaker 1: in the South, it helps dry the roads out. It
Speaker 1: helps to you know, dry them out, the sun hits
Speaker 1: it as not as muddy. UM. That was probably just
Speaker 1: the start of being involved with the forest to work.
Speaker 1: And then that next cut, which wasn't that far after,
Speaker 1: we ended up clear cutting uh two sections that were
Speaker 1: very close to each other that had some ice damage,
Speaker 1: and it was one of those where we could either
Speaker 1: just let that timber stand be um and it's not
Speaker 1: gonna produce as well as it should because there's some
Speaker 1: ice damage, or clear cut it. At the time we
Speaker 1: knew the best option for our income to maximize income
Speaker 1: on the pond stand, but we were I was, I
Speaker 1: was not looking forward to a clear cut at all.
Speaker 1: And after they clear cut their sections right right in
Speaker 1: the middle of the property, they weren't all that big,
Speaker 1: probably two sections that may be equal to about fifty
Speaker 1: or sixty acres um. It just looked like a waste land.
Speaker 1: I mean, it looked like a bomb went off. Um.
Speaker 1: But over the next couple of years being able to
Speaker 1: hunt around that clear cut afterwards planned with entrees hunting
Speaker 1: around it, and then when it thickened up to become
Speaker 1: just an incredible white tail betting thicket, which was what
Speaker 1: pond thickets do. When when you really plan, that's when
Speaker 1: things really started to click with me as far as
Speaker 1: how we can manipulate the landscape to not only do
Speaker 1: the force you wore, but then also to better of
Speaker 1: the wildlife habitat and to better the hunt ability of
Speaker 1: the farm. M HM. So I read somewhere that you
Speaker 1: believe that timber management is now the single greatest tool
Speaker 1: you have in your goals towards growing mature bucks and
Speaker 1: maintaining a healthy deer. Heard, can you can you expand
Speaker 1: a little bit on what you just just on what
Speaker 1: you just told me. They're about why you find this
Speaker 1: to be such a powerful tool. Yes, So you know
Speaker 1: the South is very heavy with with with tree farms,
Speaker 1: pond farms, and it's exactly what it's said. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's exactly what I what I said. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: you you have an inventory of trees that your crop
Speaker 1: and that's what you're growing for you know, thirty plus
Speaker 1: years depending on the species. And you know a lot
Speaker 1: of people some people might not do much t aside
Speaker 1: timmerstand improvement. They might not do much work at all
Speaker 1: um on their farm. But some of the some of
Speaker 1: the things that you can do to blend there's a
Speaker 1: way that you can blend the forestry work to grow
Speaker 1: trees for income for a profit and then maintain a
Speaker 1: healthy wildlife habitat um. I've already mentioned t s I
Speaker 1: timberse and improvement, thinning. I've already mentioned I've already mentioned thinning.
Speaker 1: When pine trees are the age of about fifteen or
Speaker 1: sixteen years UM, they are very much tight. The ground
Speaker 1: cover is gonna be bear. It's gonna be a layer
Speaker 1: of pine straw. There's really not much going on to it.
Speaker 1: But you can thin it about fifteen or sixty years.
Speaker 1: Once you thin that pine stand, you you open up
Speaker 1: the canopy, lower the basil area, which means more sunlight
Speaker 1: is getting in. Um. That sunlight hits the dirt and
Speaker 1: you will disturb the native seed bank. Um. And what
Speaker 1: we've done the pind stands is actually thin it a
Speaker 1: second or a third time. So the more you thinning,
Speaker 1: the more open it gets. And when you incorporate prescribed fire,
Speaker 1: which I know can be it was definitely a Dalton
Speaker 1: cast for us to uh to do to do the
Speaker 1: first couple of times. But prescribe fire. What that what
Speaker 1: you're able to do for anyone that's not familiar with it.
Speaker 1: It's with pine tree is very quickly you you end
Speaker 1: up with a thick carpet of pine straw and there's
Speaker 1: very little vegetation breaking through that carpet of pine straw.
Speaker 1: Do do do a prescribed fire? Burn it off and
Speaker 1: if it's done pretty clean, you'll you'll have pure exposed
Speaker 1: dirt with exposed cannopy. Sunlight gets in there and you'll
Speaker 1: disturb that that native seed bank and you'll end up
Speaker 1: with just incredible amount depending on when you burn uh
Speaker 1: in the dormant season, you'll end up with a lot
Speaker 1: of um, a lot of grasses uh Ford's brows um.
Speaker 1: In our area it's American beauty berry, BlackBerry, h partridge
Speaker 1: p uh for turkeys, golden rod, um poke weed. All
Speaker 1: of that fords in in in in plants you're seeing
Speaker 1: being covered. Now, that's that's that's really making a big
Speaker 1: push for that holistic land management. UM clear cuts. I
Speaker 1: thought and then a minute ago about about clear cutting sites,
Speaker 1: and I know that can be daunting, but if you
Speaker 1: if you try to, if your goal, your goal in
Speaker 1: my opinion, should be to avoid the monoculture on your
Speaker 1: pine farm. And so what we've done after we have
Speaker 1: those two smallish clear cut sites was what I like
Speaker 1: to call is to checkerboard the property to where your
Speaker 1: clear cut maybe five and maybe fifty acre blocks anywhere
Speaker 1: from five fifty acres and you you try to just
Speaker 1: check our boards your property have have a diversity, so
Speaker 1: you have a pine thicket and after a clear cut,
Speaker 1: depending on the soil, those pine trees. You know, in
Speaker 1: the South we have a very very long growing season.
Speaker 1: Our green up started in the February. It's been going
Speaker 1: crazy throughout March, and it goes all the ways to
Speaker 1: the first frost, which is about the first week in November.
Speaker 1: So our pine trees go very very quick leap in
Speaker 1: those clear cut replant sites will um thick en up
Speaker 1: for for for outstanding deer bedding and deer thinke. It's
Speaker 1: some falling cover and nesting cover for turkeys within about
Speaker 1: one to three years, depending on the soil, and then
Speaker 1: it'll last anywhere from six to ten years, again depending
Speaker 1: on the soil. You know, the darker, low, lower lying soil,
Speaker 1: they'll probably thinker it's gonna get And when deer bed
Speaker 1: in there is absolutely killer hunting. And that's some of
Speaker 1: the some of my favorite hunting to do, especially early
Speaker 1: season in August and early September, when it's uh it's
Speaker 1: a hundred degrees outside during the day, but the coolest
Speaker 1: part of the day every day is at night, and
Speaker 1: so if you know where the deer are feeding at night,
Speaker 1: in act field and maybe maybe a food plot system. UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of times what I like to do is
Speaker 1: to climb right on the edge of that young pine
Speaker 1: thicket and I'm a chirp pine stand that's been fend,
Speaker 1: it's been burned, so you know, you can get up
Speaker 1: as high as you want. And with that vegetation that's
Speaker 1: been disturbed in that native seed bank that's that you've burned.
Speaker 1: Um Or if you had a thin and it grows up,
Speaker 1: that vegetation can grow by the fall anywhere from two
Speaker 1: to five ft tall, and deer will feel very comfortable
Speaker 1: slipping through their browsing and making their way back to
Speaker 1: their bedding site. UM. And so that you know, pine
Speaker 1: farms might have a stigma as far as being like
Speaker 1: a you know, a wildlife waste land, but if if
Speaker 1: you blend these management practices, it can absolutely be a
Speaker 1: wildlife haven in my opinion. So so with these clear
Speaker 1: cuts that you're doing, the checkerboard clear cut. Am I
Speaker 1: right that you are contracting these clear cuts out to
Speaker 1: uh two loggers to do this commercially? Is that right?
Speaker 1: That's correct? Yes? And then so you contract that out
Speaker 1: they come, then they cleared out etcetera, etcetera. They make
Speaker 1: they do everything you subscribed. Do you do the replanting
Speaker 1: or do you have someone does somebody else come in
Speaker 1: and replant them? And are you replanting just as wildlife
Speaker 1: openings at that point or are you replanting in rows
Speaker 1: for future harvest. So we would contract the actual timber
Speaker 1: sale UH for the clear cut, and then we had
Speaker 1: been doing most of the chemical spray. So after it's cut, um,
Speaker 1: you know, let's say we're let's say we cut some
Speaker 1: time the spring or summer, we would go in UH
Speaker 1: late summer, early fall and spray it and and and
Speaker 1: just spray the ground just to kill off all the
Speaker 1: all the volunteer UH sprouts hardwood, sweet gums and then
Speaker 1: other volunteer pot other volunteer pountree just kill those off
Speaker 1: and then we would replant contract the work uh to
Speaker 1: be replanted pine trees the next dorm at growing season,
Speaker 1: So January February of next year. Um, we I do
Speaker 1: have plans for our next timber sale. I'm going to
Speaker 1: clear cut a section and I'm gonna let it grow
Speaker 1: up wild. Um, just volunteer, just just just let it
Speaker 1: grow up wild. That was a suggestion that Joe Hamilton's
Speaker 1: had to us a couple of years ago when he
Speaker 1: first came to the farm, was you know, he was
Speaker 1: like he was looking at some of the areas where
Speaker 1: it was probably taken deer a little bit longer to
Speaker 1: get to as far as you know, defeat um, and
Speaker 1: they wouldn't get those areas until after dark. So he
Speaker 1: just suggested clear cut it and then just let it
Speaker 1: grow wild and so and so by doing that, you're
Speaker 1: not growing pine trees. You know, you're not maximizing the
Speaker 1: timber production. But we're gonna let it grow wild. And
Speaker 1: then he said to not let us see its third birthday.
Speaker 1: So after three years, burn it or mow it down
Speaker 1: and just start over again. So keep sitting back, can
Speaker 1: keep it in that early successional stage. Exactly, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so you've got the checkerboard of clear cuts
Speaker 1: that you're doing. You've got some thinning throughout the pine stands. Uh.
Speaker 1: Is there any other timber related projects that you guys
Speaker 1: have tried over the years. Have you dabbled in hinge
Speaker 1: cutting or or anything girdling, anything else like that, and
Speaker 1: how has any of that worked for you? We do
Speaker 1: a lot of girdling and a lot of hacket squirts,
Speaker 1: probably more hacket squarts. UM. Sweet gum trees or prevalent
Speaker 1: down here. UM, and they you will fight sweet gums.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've been fighting sweet gums for a very
Speaker 1: long time. They sprout very quickly, they grow very quickly,
Speaker 1: and they offer really nothing for for wildlife. UM. I
Speaker 1: have done some hinge cutting, not not much. UM. I
Speaker 1: did a number of sections last summer and I really
Speaker 1: didn't see I did not notice. I haven't noticed much
Speaker 1: sign deer activity around them. UM. But at the same
Speaker 1: time as that, we have a lot of, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: better betting sites. So you know, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I don't think they were choosing to use them, And
Speaker 1: maybe I wasn't. Maybe I didn't have the best locations.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. UM. Other timber projects we do, something
Speaker 1: we've been doing for a number of years now is
Speaker 1: early successional disking light disking with a harrow UM. And
Speaker 1: that's something you can do down here any time from
Speaker 1: December till about March. And all you need is attract
Speaker 1: or a harrow or maybe you can even if you
Speaker 1: can hook up a harrow too. A four wheeler or
Speaker 1: a TV, but you lightly disk the ground surface, just barely,
Speaker 1: just enough, just enough to disturb the soil. And it's
Speaker 1: very similar to a prescribed fire. You're disturbing that native
Speaker 1: seed bank. And as long as those areas get sunlight,
Speaker 1: you'll see those same native plants grow up that I
Speaker 1: mentioned before. We've done a lot of those in the
Speaker 1: timber where there's maybe a firebreak, Um, they get some sunlight,
Speaker 1: maybe some roads, uh, fallow fields. I mean, I would
Speaker 1: implore everyone listening just to do that. I mean you
Speaker 1: can still do it now and go out and lightly
Speaker 1: di some areas that maybe you wouldn't touch with anything else,
Speaker 1: and just observe what happens to it, observe what grows up,
Speaker 1: what pops and then may and then pay attention to
Speaker 1: what's being eaten, what's being snapped off. Um. That's an
Speaker 1: excellent way of creating a border around at fields or
Speaker 1: in the food plots. If you don't have the means
Speaker 1: to plant, you're you're just adding diversity and uh and
Speaker 1: switching things up, adding those edges. And I gotta believe
Speaker 1: that's almost always a win win. Absolutely, Yes, I wanna
Speaker 1: I want to go back to one more thing on
Speaker 1: the timber side of things. Um, because I'm going to
Speaker 1: make an assumption here for other people based on an
Speaker 1: experience I've had, which is that getting some of this
Speaker 1: larger scale timber work done it seems like, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it seems like there's a number of hoops to
Speaker 1: go through to actually make it happen that many of
Speaker 1: us maybe don't know how to go through. Um. For example,
Speaker 1: We've got a little family farm property up in northern Michigan,
Speaker 1: forty acres, a lot of timber on it, and and
Speaker 1: I know that we could benefit from getting some of
Speaker 1: these trees out of there and opening getting some openings, etcetera.
Speaker 1: We had a forester come out and take a look
Speaker 1: at things, and and he said, you know, this can go,
Speaker 1: this can go, this can go. It would be great
Speaker 1: if you could get this out. But his concern was
Speaker 1: that it was too small a scale to likely get
Speaker 1: somebody out there willing to take the time to work
Speaker 1: on a project of that size. And so in the
Speaker 1: years since, I've kind of kind of taken a couple
Speaker 1: of different stabs of trying to get people to come out.
Speaker 1: But maybe I don't know what I'm doing, or maybe
Speaker 1: I was talking to around people, but I bring all
Speaker 1: that up to ask you, what has that process been
Speaker 1: like for you in contracting out work? You know, what
Speaker 1: does that all entail? If somebody's listening and they want
Speaker 1: they want to see what opportunities they have to manage
Speaker 1: their timber, who do you talk to? How do you
Speaker 1: get that process started? What have you learned in the
Speaker 1: years since about how to do that better? How to
Speaker 1: work with a forrester or a logging or a logger
Speaker 1: or anyone like that. You know, what does that look like?
Speaker 1: What are some of the best practices. I would certainly
Speaker 1: suggest anyone listening to connect with a forester. And you know,
Speaker 1: unless you unless someone has a background and forced you work,
Speaker 1: and it's not necessarily I mean, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: doing your taxes, you know. I mean, you could probably
Speaker 1: figure out how to do your tag XS and file
Speaker 1: if you wanted to. UM, there's ways you can figure
Speaker 1: it out and do it. But some people would rather
Speaker 1: just hire a c p A and have it done
Speaker 1: the right way. Wise, because the c p A might
Speaker 1: be able to save you some money, maybe some tax
Speaker 1: res emptions. So you know, going with a professional, you
Speaker 1: may there very well could be some benefits to it. Um,
Speaker 1: So I would definitely say connect with a forster. And
Speaker 1: on top of that, they're gonna have connections to the
Speaker 1: timber buyers. They're gonna have connections to the local mills
Speaker 1: where um you know where the timbers going. You know that,
Speaker 1: So there are some benefits there. But you also definitely
Speaker 1: want to want to connect with the with a forcer.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're listening to podcasts, you obviously or
Speaker 1: into hunting, So you want to find a forcer that
Speaker 1: that can they can blend and has a wildlife background
Speaker 1: of some sorts and it gets what your goals are,
Speaker 1: so you don't necessarily need to you know, get a
Speaker 1: force to do whatever he or she wants to do.
Speaker 1: Connect with them, set your goals, tell them what you
Speaker 1: want to do, and prioritize things. If it's maximizing true production,
Speaker 1: then then you know that's what it needs to be.
Speaker 1: If you're trying to blend true true production in wildlife habitat,
Speaker 1: there's things you can do, um right now, it can
Speaker 1: be challenging to get a timber contract uh sign and
Speaker 1: then get the crew on site there. There there are
Speaker 1: so much I was reading something of a day I
Speaker 1: mean there are decades of of of of trees on
Speaker 1: the stump, a decade's worth a supply of trees on
Speaker 1: the stump that are ready to be cut. There's actually
Speaker 1: an article in the Wall Street Journal about this, I
Speaker 1: think maybe last year in about uh the amount of people,
Speaker 1: most in the Southeast that we're planning pine trees back
Speaker 1: in the eighties, in the early nineties as a nest egg,
Speaker 1: as a retirement, and a lot of those are coming
Speaker 1: up for fist. And we had a lot of mills
Speaker 1: and a lot of timber mills and in our area
Speaker 1: of the state and Georgia that closed down during the recession,
Speaker 1: during the Great Recession, um, you know, two thousand nine
Speaker 1: twelve area range. So when those mills closed, we're less
Speaker 1: We're left with fewer places for our timber to go,
Speaker 1: and so there's there's basically a lot of supply inventory
Speaker 1: on the stump right now. So I say this, um
Speaker 1: because if you have a smaller property or even like
Speaker 1: even like our property, we're not looking to clear cut
Speaker 1: large sections. We're looking to clear cut smaller sections, which
Speaker 1: that might not be If you want to clear cut
Speaker 1: fifty acres, that might not be attractive for a timber buyer.
Speaker 1: But if you can lump in maybe a thin maybe
Speaker 1: maybe you do a third thinning on a pine stand
Speaker 1: and then you tie in um a clear cut site
Speaker 1: that might be attractive form or I recently I had
Speaker 1: a conversation about the power of co ops, the power
Speaker 1: of wildlife co ops UM. And you know, we all
Speaker 1: know the value of that talking with your neighbor as
Speaker 1: far as deer management, UM, what they're seeing and what
Speaker 1: you're shooting. But another benefit of that is is is timberwork.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna lump every everything together on one contract,
Speaker 1: but you can absolutely pull your properties together and you know,
Speaker 1: approach you know, have your forester or approach a timber
Speaker 1: buyer with it and saying, you know, we've got properties A, B,
Speaker 1: and C that we like to lump all altogether. And
Speaker 1: that's much much more trapptive for the timber crew to
Speaker 1: be able to move into one general area and to
Speaker 1: post up and to cut because it costs them so
Speaker 1: much money, uh to move the machines around and the
Speaker 1: equipment from property to property. Yeah, that's a great idea. Uh.
Speaker 1: So let's say we've we've tried thinning we've done clear hunting,
Speaker 1: We've done a number of these different timber things. As
Speaker 1: you've done it sounds like one of the next steps
Speaker 1: you had was adding prescribed fire to the mix, burning
Speaker 1: out that understory, underneath those thinned you know pine stands. Um.
Speaker 1: What have you learned over the years about that? What's
Speaker 1: worked best when it comes to fire? What are you
Speaker 1: really achieving with that too? With fire? I think what
Speaker 1: what works best, what's work for us is to carve
Speaker 1: the property up in the sections. We carve it up
Speaker 1: each track at about three sections, and we burn one
Speaker 1: section every year, and so each section is being burned
Speaker 1: once every three years. Um. There's no plan, one management
Speaker 1: plan that's gonna fit every property. You need to just
Speaker 1: like everything else, after you burn up, observe what what happens,
Speaker 1: observe what grows, what comes up, and what the deer
Speaker 1: or actually eating. Um. We found the burning a section
Speaker 1: once every three years is is adequate to produce uh
Speaker 1: just killer forge. And then also it will still leave
Speaker 1: places thick think briar patches for betting, um. And so
Speaker 1: even my burning and somebody think you know brambles and
Speaker 1: briars and those are excellent betting sites. And then and
Speaker 1: then when you can buy that with the pine think
Speaker 1: it's we've got plenty of betting um. You know me personally,
Speaker 1: if I had to make a decision, if for some
Speaker 1: reason I had to make a decision on whether or
Speaker 1: not I could plant the best food plot seed every
Speaker 1: year or to burn every year, and I can only
Speaker 1: choose one option, I would I would burn every year
Speaker 1: as opposed to planning food blots. I still like food blots.
Speaker 1: But as far as the bank for the buck, there's
Speaker 1: no question what you get um and the and the
Speaker 1: diversity that you get from bresh sky fire. So a
Speaker 1: lot of the bucks killed, I mean, the majority of
Speaker 1: them is gonna be in the pine stands. The heaven
Speaker 1: burnt been burnt. And I'm climbing right on the edge
Speaker 1: of that pot ticket and so they're either going there,
Speaker 1: they're going back to bed, or they're coming out of
Speaker 1: bed um and they hit that next block of a
Speaker 1: thin pine stand that has like I said, two to
Speaker 1: two to five feet tall vegetation and brows, and they're
Speaker 1: gonna mel through there and they're gonna mil their way
Speaker 1: back at first light to go bed, or they're gonna
Speaker 1: step out and kind of mil through there and take
Speaker 1: their time and feed and brows and make make sign
Speaker 1: and whatnot until they get to that destination food plot.
Speaker 1: That's an acre to why that they really don't want
Speaker 1: to step out until dark because they know what's there.
Speaker 1: Am I right? That you need to get the timing
Speaker 1: right on when you would do a burn like that
Speaker 1: to achieve that kind of natural food plot transition zone
Speaker 1: in a stand of pines like that, Like when when
Speaker 1: are you doing that burn? How are you doing that
Speaker 1: burn to achieve that two to five ft of of
Speaker 1: kind of attractive growth while still in the pines. Um,
Speaker 1: you're looking at anywhere in the dormant season, starting in
Speaker 1: January January to to about March. As when prob most
Speaker 1: people do it. We usually run into a situation where
Speaker 1: a lot of our land is very wet. Uh And
Speaker 1: in January, sometimes February it's just cold as wet. It's
Speaker 1: a little too wet to burn. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: I had a conversation with Dr Marcus Lashley with the
Speaker 1: University of Florida. He's he's like to go to prescribed
Speaker 1: fire biologists. Um. You know, I had a long conversation
Speaker 1: with him and you know, burning this time of year
Speaker 1: January through March, you're gonna get out a lot of grasses.
Speaker 1: And but that foliage, those that forward is gonna dear
Speaker 1: like that young, tender, succulent uh sprouts, like when they
Speaker 1: eat briars or when they eat the you know, Devil's
Speaker 1: walking stick, which I don't know if you'll have that
Speaker 1: up uh in Michigan or not, but it's it's very thick.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're not eating it when it's mature. They're
Speaker 1: eating the youngs, the young sprouts, you know, the briars
Speaker 1: and everything else poison ivy. And so if you burn,
Speaker 1: let's say in February, a lot of that is gonna
Speaker 1: be a little too. They're not gonna hit it in
Speaker 1: the summer. So what Dr Lashley was saying was it
Speaker 1: you should really burn if you want that excellent uh
Speaker 1: forged throughout the summer, which for us is the stress period.
Speaker 1: You know. I was you might be around snow right now.
Speaker 1: I was talking to someone in New York snow and today.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's just crazy. I mean I was talking
Speaker 1: to a guy in New York state on Friday. He's
Speaker 1: dealing with snow. I mean, we we had snows dick
Speaker 1: January of eighteen and then we had snowstick. I think
Speaker 1: so um, so like our stressful period is not the
Speaker 1: winner now it certainly is. But our stressful period for
Speaker 1: for for white tails is the summer. Yeah, it's nine
Speaker 1: needs a hundred degrees of course, a little bit cool
Speaker 1: in the shade, but there's extreme heat. We could be
Speaker 1: there could be a drought. Um, there's a high level
Speaker 1: of insects, bugs, and then you get with the heat, um,
Speaker 1: you get the stress and in the in the demands
Speaker 1: of the antler production, which there's much stress on the
Speaker 1: body for the bucks to grow those antlers every single year.
Speaker 1: And then you have the lactation, you know, the final
Speaker 1: stages of the dough, the mother do's gestation period and
Speaker 1: then she's got to produce that quality milk. So um,
Speaker 1: he was gone, I'm bra and blame. But doctor Lasha
Speaker 1: was saying, to to meet those summer demands, you really
Speaker 1: ought to burn late spring and you know late spring
Speaker 1: and then you have those that fresh, tender, succulent uh
Speaker 1: sprouts from all these plants growing back throughout the summer
Speaker 1: and late summer early fall. To to meet these demands,
Speaker 1: if you were to burn excuse me, late summer, early fall,
Speaker 1: you would get a lot more hardwoods, um, a lot
Speaker 1: more forbes to grow, if I had that right. We
Speaker 1: have never done a late summer, early or early fall burn.
Speaker 1: I would like to just to be able to have
Speaker 1: an experiment to see what happens. But for us, as
Speaker 1: you usually it's just timing. It's extremely hot and that's
Speaker 1: another animal in itself to burn that time of year. Um.
Speaker 1: And we're also usually gearing up for deer season at
Speaker 1: that point. But to change your questions, you do produce
Speaker 1: different results on burning in the dormant season or the
Speaker 1: growing season. You bring up an interesting, an interesting point,
Speaker 1: which is you know how your main stress period that
Speaker 1: you're trying to prepare for is the summer compared to
Speaker 1: maybe up here where it's late winter. Right. Um, I'm curious.
Speaker 1: You must hear from a lot of people, whether you're
Speaker 1: listening to podcasts or reading articles or books or anything
Speaker 1: like that about land management, habitat imperment that's coming from
Speaker 1: a Northerners perspective or the Midwest. Um, I gotta believe
Speaker 1: a lot of things like what you just mentioned simply
Speaker 1: are different than what you're dealing with down there in
Speaker 1: the southeast. Is there anything else that really stands out
Speaker 1: to you? Is is something that you're dealing with or
Speaker 1: that you have to do differently, that's that's dramatically counter
Speaker 1: to the conventional wisdom coming out of the Midwest or
Speaker 1: some of these other places. From a habitat management perspective, UM, yeah,
Speaker 1: a little bit. I can probably rattle off a couple
Speaker 1: of dozen ways how we're different than like Iowa, for instance. UM,
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, once some some top level
Speaker 1: points would be one I've already mentioned it, but our
Speaker 1: growing season as much much longer, um. And a lot
Speaker 1: of times in the Southeast, if you look at it,
Speaker 1: if you look at it at a an aerial map,
Speaker 1: it's just gonna be one massive green block. Um. You're
Speaker 1: not necessarily gonna see distinctive land features. You're not going
Speaker 1: to say, oh, well, that's a funnel, that's a pitch point,
Speaker 1: that's probably where they're betting, that's where they're feeding. It's
Speaker 1: very very You really need boots on the ground to
Speaker 1: be able to look to see because you'll see if
Speaker 1: you'll see green pine trees, but you don't know, he
Speaker 1: might not know really what it looks like. Are they
Speaker 1: betting in there? Is it just is it just too open.
Speaker 1: So it can be a little challenging to figure out
Speaker 1: how the deer are using your property in the South,
Speaker 1: because they can bed everywhere. Betting is something that is
Speaker 1: significantly different when when when people talk about you know,
Speaker 1: finding but buck beds and hunting but buck beds, that's
Speaker 1: not really, in my opinion, something in the Southeast unless
Speaker 1: you've got a very unique property. Um, when I talk
Speaker 1: about deer bedding, I'm really referring to deer bedding into
Speaker 1: where it's you know those bucks, you know, and there
Speaker 1: are some areas where bucks tend to bed, but it's
Speaker 1: usually like a general area, um, like a you know,
Speaker 1: a young thicket maybe five or fifty acres where they're
Speaker 1: betting somewhere in there. Or it could be in a swamp.
Speaker 1: We have, you know, some swamp systems where they bed.
Speaker 1: But it can be because it's just so thick in
Speaker 1: most places. Um, when you burn her and I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: you'll you'll generate a lot of a lot of thickets
Speaker 1: the deer eat, but they also bed in them. So
Speaker 1: when you're laying out out your property and looking at
Speaker 1: the design as far as access, Where do you want
Speaker 1: your stand? Where do you want to hunt? You know,
Speaker 1: of course we have the permanent stands, but I traditionally
Speaker 1: hunt mobally um And that was another turning point for
Speaker 1: me when I started to do that more. But when
Speaker 1: I'm hunting myself or if I'm putting out a guest
Speaker 1: or trying to figure out where they're gonna hunt, I
Speaker 1: look at more so of like where is their scent going?
Speaker 1: How are they walking in? Like where are they parking,
Speaker 1: how are they getting their spot, how they walking in,
Speaker 1: and where their scent is blowing. Because with the Southeast
Speaker 1: being so dense and being a very high deer density,
Speaker 1: and and that's something else, another difference than like the Midwest,
Speaker 1: we typically have a higher deer density. So there's deer
Speaker 1: everywhere and they're betting everywhere. So when you go to hunt,
Speaker 1: you're gonna educate deer, You're gonna spook deer. Um, You're
Speaker 1: gonna educate dear that you didn't even know was there.
Speaker 1: But that's another major factor as far as it thinking
Speaker 1: about your access. And it's not so much you know,
Speaker 1: hunting pressure like pulling the trigger, but just simply going
Speaker 1: into the woods and walk at I look at more.
Speaker 1: I think more about like leaving it dark, when you're
Speaker 1: walking into eye before sunrise a dark or you're leaving
Speaker 1: a dark they're just You're all around you. You might
Speaker 1: not see them or hear them, but they're but they're
Speaker 1: watching you and paying attention to you. UM. So it's
Speaker 1: it's just a lot to um, it's a lot to
Speaker 1: you know, try to put together. Do you does does
Speaker 1: that factor into any of your land projects at all?
Speaker 1: Just that challenge of you know, dear in much of
Speaker 1: the southeast, being able to live anywhere, being able to
Speaker 1: bet anywhere? Do you ever try to strategically plan where
Speaker 1: you want some of these cuts or where you don't
Speaker 1: want some of these cuts to allow for any kind
Speaker 1: of safe place for you to access or et ceter
Speaker 1: anything like that. Or is it just a loss? Cause
Speaker 1: I know it's not. I that's a that's an excellent
Speaker 1: point you made, And I and I can give you
Speaker 1: a real example that we're doing right now. UM. We
Speaker 1: got a track that um the last owner was a
Speaker 1: timber company and before they sold it, they cut the
Speaker 1: majority of the pine trees, most of them at least,
Speaker 1: and they cut it years before they sold it in.
Speaker 1: It was just left to grow up wild those clear
Speaker 1: cut sections, so they were it was pretty thick sections
Speaker 1: growing up, I mean, just to make a volunteer pine
Speaker 1: trees and hard woods and everything else. Um. But we
Speaker 1: were left in the kind of a transition time where
Speaker 1: it was if you let an air grow up in
Speaker 1: the southeast wild, you're gonna get a lot of hard woods.
Speaker 1: It is, it's gonna be mixed. But you either have
Speaker 1: to just let it, let it roll for a lot
Speaker 1: longer periods for the for that for that for that
Speaker 1: growth to become timber, to become merchant noble commercial timber
Speaker 1: that someone would want to buy for pulp wood or
Speaker 1: salt timber um or poll saw, and that's gonna take
Speaker 1: a lot longer. Or do you just bite the bullet
Speaker 1: and clear and clear cut it. But we were at
Speaker 1: a stage where it wasn't worth anything. I mean, we
Speaker 1: were trying to get a fuel chipper in there too,
Speaker 1: you know, mulch the material for field chips, which there
Speaker 1: is a market for that, but there's just not many
Speaker 1: fuel chip crews out there, and we end up just
Speaker 1: having to get a crew just to simply mulch it
Speaker 1: down very rough, um, basically push it over, molst down
Speaker 1: the stumps. I mean, these are trees that weren't even
Speaker 1: considered pulp would um. And then we've already gone in
Speaker 1: those areas to to to to replant. We've already planted
Speaker 1: pine trees and I we were sitting on that project
Speaker 1: for many years, so we just didn't know how to
Speaker 1: attack it. Um. But what I'm looking forward to doing
Speaker 1: is that's very close, pretty much, very flush to a
Speaker 1: creek swamp um that I like to hunt. And if
Speaker 1: anyone follows some of my content like on Instagram, I
Speaker 1: post a lot of UM, I've got some I've got
Speaker 1: some trail cameras down the swamp and I keep it
Speaker 1: on video mode, which yeah, I will thank you. And
Speaker 1: so that's UM. There's a number of bucks that bed
Speaker 1: down line swamp every single year. I mean, I'll get
Speaker 1: a number of mature bucks down there. But it's been
Speaker 1: a very to say the least. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: also look at my Instagram feed and tell us a
Speaker 1: challenge to kill them. It's a challenge to harvest on
Speaker 1: because they're in the swamp that has a it's fairly
Speaker 1: you know narrow. It it's just not you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's not incredibly wide, but there's a fifteen to twenty
Speaker 1: ft drop off on both sides that that you know,
Speaker 1: dropped down to it. So the third moles are crazy,
Speaker 1: uh to hunt in the swamp. And then you have
Speaker 1: the fact that it is a flowing creek, so you
Speaker 1: do have the wind currents through their long story short,
Speaker 1: it's extremely hard. It's been hard for me. Maybe not
Speaker 1: hard for you to come. You can probably roll one
Speaker 1: and kill them all. But but in what I'm describing
Speaker 1: that area is like if you were to see a
Speaker 1: deer to harvest, it's gonna either be on a road
Speaker 1: or a firebreak that we've created, or a food plot.
Speaker 1: Because most of the timber wasn't old enough to really
Speaker 1: open up and thin and to be able to climb
Speaker 1: over it and be able to burn over Some of
Speaker 1: it was and it wasn't. So by clear cutting that section,
Speaker 1: we we have now opened it up and it's gonna
Speaker 1: be I think, very very good for the next couple
Speaker 1: of years to hunt those hunt those edges, dear love
Speaker 1: edges ums. We're gonna get a lot more sunlight, a
Speaker 1: lot of native you know, veget asian growing, and then
Speaker 1: in a couple of years it's going to be good
Speaker 1: to hunt over a clear cut, especially the first couple
Speaker 1: of years when it's not quite uh warm season bedding.
Speaker 1: It's not quite tall enough and shade enough for deer
Speaker 1: to bed in when it's hot, but it'll be good
Speaker 1: cold season betting for them to go out in bed
Speaker 1: during the cold weather and be in the sun. Mhm, man,
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of different factors that player aren't
Speaker 1: there keep you keep you busy for a very long time.
Speaker 1: Something I really like about this We've talked for an
Speaker 1: hour and we have almost not touched on food plots
Speaker 1: one time, which is just kind of rare and the
Speaker 1: land management conversations, so many people want to want to
Speaker 1: jump to food plots like that's that's just like the
Speaker 1: sexy kind of topic in the land world. That's that's
Speaker 1: seemingly the one that delivers the most results right out
Speaker 1: the gate. Some people assume it's the easiest, but many
Speaker 1: times it's not. Um. Nonetheless, food plots are a part
Speaker 1: of what you guys do though too, righte Um, what
Speaker 1: what does your food plot kind of practice look like
Speaker 1: on this property? Now? I know you mentioned in the
Speaker 1: beginning you had some struggles with not having enough open space.
Speaker 1: You mentioned how they're open up those logging pads. You're
Speaker 1: expanding those little kind of hidy hole food plots. But
Speaker 1: now you know, almost twenty years later, how do food
Speaker 1: plots fit into this overarching strategy you guys have now
Speaker 1: to to work in the land. What we've done, um,
Speaker 1: for a number of years now, we have maintained some
Speaker 1: most smaller food plots might be a quarter or like
Speaker 1: a half acre, and those are more of kill sites, um,
Speaker 1: you know where where it's not it's like kill sites.
Speaker 1: It might sound barbaric, but it the idea behind that term,
Speaker 1: in my opinion is or from my understanding I should say,
Speaker 1: is that it's not enough acres to you're not really
Speaker 1: you're not feeding the deer as far as nutrition. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're not really getting much out of the
Speaker 1: nutrition side. You're just attracting them in to be able
Speaker 1: to you know, harvest them. We still maintain those, but
Speaker 1: what we've increased the size of our main food plots.
Speaker 1: There was there's a nice uh, it was a formal
Speaker 1: it was always had had always been used by the
Speaker 1: farmer um kind of center of our property. UM, there
Speaker 1: was a series of of of agg fields that they've
Speaker 1: been the farmer has been slowly uh turning those over
Speaker 1: to us. It's it's um. It's a lot it's very
Speaker 1: dark soil, which is great, but it stays wet when
Speaker 1: he's going in and in the plant. This time mean
Speaker 1: they're gonna start planning pretty soon, so a lot of
Speaker 1: time those fields are are a little too wet when
Speaker 1: they get a plant. UM and then some of the
Speaker 1: other acts, some other food plots. We've expanded the size.
Speaker 1: So by expanding the size, we have met the demand
Speaker 1: of our dear density. Because if you plan, if you're
Speaker 1: in a relatively high deer density, which might be over
Speaker 1: if it's over I think like the somewhat the normal
Speaker 1: averages maybe per squad per square mile. If you're over
Speaker 1: fifty five going towards a square mile, any plant food plots,
Speaker 1: you you need some size to it because if not,
Speaker 1: the deer are just gonna wipe it out very very
Speaker 1: very quickly, depending on what you plant. UM. So a
Speaker 1: lot of our feet food plots we have expanded the size,
Speaker 1: and UM we're gonna try a mix this year. A
Speaker 1: warm season mix to see if we have some better results.
Speaker 1: We've had some problems for a while of keeping the
Speaker 1: deer out of soybean so that they can become browsed tolerant.
Speaker 1: You know some of the forge beings that you can
Speaker 1: buy now nowadays that grow very viny and grow very tall.
Speaker 1: They need to get about knee higher or maybe about
Speaker 1: thigh high to become somewhat browsed tolerant, which means the
Speaker 1: deer can sniff them off and they'll grow back. But
Speaker 1: if they go in there and hammer them when they're sprouting,
Speaker 1: you know, under a foot, they're gonna they won't kill
Speaker 1: the plant probably, but it's gonna it's gonna be stunted,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna grow wider, but it's not gonna really
Speaker 1: grow tall, and it's not gonna fill out. So we
Speaker 1: use some various management practices to really keep the deer
Speaker 1: at bay for a couple of weeks before those you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's sun hemp or soybeans to grow and to
Speaker 1: become browsed tolerant. But over the of course, maybe about
Speaker 1: five years, the deer have really you know, just like
Speaker 1: everything else. Uh, you can educate deer and they realize
Speaker 1: as tactics of roping off the food plot or using
Speaker 1: my lower nite uh fertilizer um or using even human scent.
Speaker 1: I mean, we would take dryer sheets and put them
Speaker 1: around the around the rope of the fire, around the
Speaker 1: rope on the food plots, just try to keep in
Speaker 1: bay and then to take it down once the food
Speaker 1: plot was established. Um So in what I see every
Speaker 1: year is that if if if our farmers, if our
Speaker 1: farmer on our property or the surrounding farmers, if they
Speaker 1: plant cotton, for instance, the deer are gonna hammer our
Speaker 1: warm season food plots much more than if they plant peanuts,
Speaker 1: soybeans or corn, because those will be established first before
Speaker 1: our food plots probably and they'll feed on those, and
Speaker 1: that will help deter some of the pressure on our
Speaker 1: food plots. Um But food plots or in my opinion,
Speaker 1: and absolutely it's a key if you can do it
Speaker 1: for diversity, it's all but diversity. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: I talked about a minute or a while ago about
Speaker 1: if I have if I had to had to make
Speaker 1: a choice between scuy fire or planning food plots, that
Speaker 1: a new scup fire. However, food plots give you that
Speaker 1: diversity and food plots allow me to be able to
Speaker 1: have success in those burn sites because they're going to
Speaker 1: those food plots. And that's why, Like I'll sit on
Speaker 1: food plots early season, you know, when they're fresh and
Speaker 1: deer r and used to hunters yet, or I'll sit
Speaker 1: on a very very late season. But the way I
Speaker 1: hunt food plots during the during the mead the season
Speaker 1: is really nowhere near m um. I'll use a destination
Speaker 1: food plot or maybe that food plot system hub that
Speaker 1: we have in a property, which if anyone is looking
Speaker 1: at if they can design their property or there may
Speaker 1: be looking at doing a clear cut site, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: clear cutting on the somewhat centered when your property and
Speaker 1: then converting that site to to you know, food plots.
Speaker 1: Stump it converted the food plots. You have a hub
Speaker 1: on your proper, it's centered and sure you can hunt
Speaker 1: on it, you know in the evenings. But I exploit
Speaker 1: those food plots as destinations by you know, you gotta think, well,
Speaker 1: how many deer are using those food plots or agg
Speaker 1: fields at night. It's probably the majority deer in that
Speaker 1: air or within that food plot area throughout the night,
Speaker 1: you know, Dear White tails are very social animals, whether
Speaker 1: they're feeding or just making sign whatever they're doing the
Speaker 1: very social. So a lot of my morning hunts will
Speaker 1: be planned of, you know, being outside of a pine
Speaker 1: thick or a thick and knowing that they bet in
Speaker 1: there and that they're going to that destination food plot.
Speaker 1: I could be a couple of thousand yards or maybe
Speaker 1: a quarter mile away, but I'll cut them off going
Speaker 1: to or from that food plot. So that's how you
Speaker 1: know I used the food plots a lot. Hunters really
Speaker 1: just I don't want to sit on them, but I
Speaker 1: you know, catch them, hunt them going to and from.
Speaker 1: You mentioned um sun help, and that's something I have
Speaker 1: zero experience with, but I but I've seen it kind
Speaker 1: of popping up more and more over recent years, especially
Speaker 1: down south. Can you can you film me in on
Speaker 1: how you're using sun hemp um what your experience has
Speaker 1: been with that so far? Yes, So sunhamp is a
Speaker 1: fairly new on the food plot deer management scene. I
Speaker 1: think I first came on the scene as far as
Speaker 1: um cattle like like cows. It's originally from India. It's
Speaker 1: a lagoon um and you have to it's really it
Speaker 1: thrives in the south because you have to you you
Speaker 1: really need to be I think in a much lower
Speaker 1: it's a it's it's a subtropical lagoon. Um. And it's
Speaker 1: I think it's I think that either either Dr Craig
Speaker 1: Harper or maybe the India did a study on it's.
Speaker 1: It's it's about thirty crew protein which is getting up there.
Speaker 1: What soy beans. Um. It can grow anywhere from four
Speaker 1: to eight feet tall and grow very thick. I mean
Speaker 1: grow about an inch a day. It grows very quickly. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's excellent for cover crop if you want. That's how
Speaker 1: a lot of farmers were originally using it as a
Speaker 1: cover crop. Um. It's it. It's it doesn't drain on
Speaker 1: your soil like like corn. For for instance, we don't
Speaker 1: plant much corn. Corn is very demanding on your soil. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's strips of nutrients. UM. Sun him. It's actually a
Speaker 1: soul builder's loaded with nitrogen. You just you know, mow
Speaker 1: it down after it's dead in the season, let it
Speaker 1: decompose back until the back to the soil. Uh. Dear
Speaker 1: love the young leaves on the plants. Um, it's tender
Speaker 1: and they'll eat the and they'll eat the the main
Speaker 1: stem too. At a certain point, after it gets a
Speaker 1: little tall, maybe five six ft tall, the stems do
Speaker 1: become a little fibrous and they won't eat it. Um.
Speaker 1: But they'll eat the new leaves in the in the
Speaker 1: But the best parts about it is it is that
Speaker 1: you can cut it, you can bushog it, you can
Speaker 1: hit it with a bushog and it'll grow back. It'll
Speaker 1: sprout back, um as long as you know, as long
Speaker 1: as you're still in my growing seasons. So for us,
Speaker 1: for us, it's all the way to the first of November. Um.
Speaker 1: So I like to plant a whole field of it
Speaker 1: and then just most shooting lanes or use it for um,
Speaker 1: you know, a border or not your fruit plot, especially
Speaker 1: if you have somewhere of a of a low a
Speaker 1: low growing plant in your food plant, plant that around
Speaker 1: your border. It's very thick, very dense as lady with protein.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, I love having those those screening elements to
Speaker 1: just provide that extra safety around a feeding area like that.
Speaker 1: That's just so so useful, uh. Mark. I want to
Speaker 1: want to pivot a little bit, um. I heard about
Speaker 1: timber fire food. I want to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the future of this of this place, UM, because
Speaker 1: I think a lot of times when it comes to
Speaker 1: land management and owning land or working land, I think,
Speaker 1: I think the idea of legacy starts to creep in.
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of us, UM. And when
Speaker 1: you look at the future of this place, you've put
Speaker 1: so much time into so much energy, so many of
Speaker 1: your hopes and dreams. What do you what do you
Speaker 1: envision for the future. What do you hope for the future? UM?
Speaker 1: What do you think that looks like? What I hope
Speaker 1: of the future is a weekend UM. And this is
Speaker 1: something that we're working on now, is developing a forest
Speaker 1: forestry management plan to be able to maintain the farm
Speaker 1: for the next generation. UM. And you know, that's something
Speaker 1: that my father is talking about many times to me.
Speaker 1: He's a retired c p A and he sold a
Speaker 1: lot in his career. He had a lot of clients
Speaker 1: that owned land. UM owned farms or september tracks like this,
Speaker 1: or hunting ground. And he always told me that a
Speaker 1: lot of times, UH, land or real estate just does
Speaker 1: does not survive the grandkids. You know, it'll it'll transfer
Speaker 1: down to the kids and they'll get along. But when
Speaker 1: it gets down to the grandkids. A lot of times
Speaker 1: at that point you'll have some differences of opinions or
Speaker 1: uses or everyone's not going to use in the property,
Speaker 1: and it's hard for the farm to stay, you know,
Speaker 1: without people wanting to sell it. So the plan, this
Speaker 1: is something that we we we've been working on and
Speaker 1: I've been trying to take over more with forest. Your
Speaker 1: work is to have a true uh force management plan.
Speaker 1: And this this this cann ties right back into you know,
Speaker 1: diversifying your land and constantly be cutting in in you know,
Speaker 1: so so you have avoid that monoculture. But you know,
Speaker 1: if someone has marsonable timber on their property, they should
Speaker 1: really again connect with a forest or someone in the
Speaker 1: know to be able to come up with a standing
Speaker 1: inventory value of your marshonable timber, whether it's pine trees
Speaker 1: or hardwoods. Well, you know, if there's a plan to
Speaker 1: sell it one day, you should have a rough estimate
Speaker 1: about the current value of your inventory um of your
Speaker 1: timber crop and then project out, um what you what
Speaker 1: you should be getting for it when you got to sell,
Speaker 1: you know, five years down the yroad, ten years, and
Speaker 1: then sort of map out you know, five years from now,
Speaker 1: what are we gonna clear, god, were we can of
Speaker 1: thing how much it would be selling at that point,
Speaker 1: and then you start to kind of develop a plan
Speaker 1: to where you've you're you're projecting out the future income
Speaker 1: to be able to cover the cost of opera, owning
Speaker 1: and operating the farm. Um. And that's something we are
Speaker 1: working on now to try to maintain that, keep the
Speaker 1: farm in the family, and then also do everything we
Speaker 1: can to be better land stewards, to be better conservationist
Speaker 1: because I mean, every everything what we're talking about today,
Speaker 1: Mark is about you know, being a good land steward
Speaker 1: and being a good conservation So I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of what we do is to kill big
Speaker 1: jacky in bucks, but there's more to it than that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm when the projects I'm doing now is
Speaker 1: kind of you know, ongoing long you know, long game
Speaker 1: projects will be the continue to work on Bob White Quail.
Speaker 1: We do have many several covees wild covers in the
Speaker 1: property and then also the Eastern wild turkey. Um. I
Speaker 1: mean as far as legacy, I would love to be
Speaker 1: able to build the property up with a healthy turkey
Speaker 1: population because right now, I mean it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's not headline news right now, but the Eastern Wild Turkey,
Speaker 1: the population has been dwindling for a well of a decade.
Speaker 1: And it's not something that's gonna get better over night.
Speaker 1: That's gonna the change is going to come from landowners,
Speaker 1: at least in the southeast. And that's you know, it's
Speaker 1: not that not the works not being done on public land.
Speaker 1: But when I say that is just because most of
Speaker 1: the Southeast is private land, um, and so um, you know,
Speaker 1: if that's that's something with the legacy, I would love
Speaker 1: how would love to change? Yeah? Now, speaking of speaking
Speaker 1: of private land legacy opportunities, another thing that I understand
Speaker 1: you guys have done is placed a significant portion of
Speaker 1: the property into a conservation easeman. Is that is that right?
Speaker 1: Did you guys do that? And can you can you
Speaker 1: describe to me you know for others maybe that aren't
Speaker 1: familiar with what that means and why you guys decided
Speaker 1: to do that. Yeah, So a conservation easement um is
Speaker 1: something that um, if it was interested, I would definitely
Speaker 1: suggest you talk with your uh accountant, your CPA or
Speaker 1: maybe attorney about it. But it basically you're putting a
Speaker 1: section or property your whole property or section of it
Speaker 1: into a conservation easement to where no one you the
Speaker 1: current owner or any you know, owners down the road
Speaker 1: can can develop it. They can't carve off a home
Speaker 1: site by the highway and sell it, or they can't
Speaker 1: put multiple houses. There are some different things that you
Speaker 1: can put on the property, you know, like a skinning
Speaker 1: shed or a tractor shed, stuff like that, but it's
Speaker 1: protecting it from being developed. Um. And there there are
Speaker 1: tax benefits from it. You do get a very a
Speaker 1: very very nice tax bright from it. So a lot
Speaker 1: of people are doing that. We're actually looking at something
Speaker 1: that had relatively recently has been on my radar as
Speaker 1: far as carbon credits. Um. You know, wetland credits have
Speaker 1: been you know, wetland metigrace, wetland mitigation credits have been
Speaker 1: something for a long time now. But carbon credits are
Speaker 1: at least somewhat need to me and we we'll be
Speaker 1: diving in that pretty soon. Um. And that's tied into
Speaker 1: not cutting trees. I'm not I can't really speak on that.
Speaker 1: That's something that we are going to look into. The
Speaker 1: So the idea with that credit me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: but that would be basically getting financial incentives to keep
Speaker 1: trees on the ground. Uh, And people essentially incentivize you
Speaker 1: pay you to do that as as a way to
Speaker 1: offset carbon that they're using in some other way, and
Speaker 1: you're keeping carbon in there by not cutting the trees
Speaker 1: in certain places. That's that's the idea of carbon credits, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my that's my understanding, and I you know it
Speaker 1: makes sense. But at the same time, as you know,
Speaker 1: we're there's certain stands where we're not gonna cut I mean,
Speaker 1: we know when we're not gonna cut and we're not
Speaker 1: gonna cut them before ten years. Let's say, are five years.
Speaker 1: So but that's just something we got to dive into.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's something to it's yeah, it's interesting. Now
Speaker 1: back to the conservation Easeman, why did you guys, I
Speaker 1: mean I can make ansumptions, but why did you guys
Speaker 1: decide that was something you wanted to do, Because I
Speaker 1: know that's no small decision saying that, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: we are not going to develop this, We're not gonna
Speaker 1: you know, parcel it off. This is this is going
Speaker 1: to be protected in perpetuity as a somewhat intact piece
Speaker 1: of undeveloped um habitat from here on out? What was
Speaker 1: what was that decision making process like for you? In
Speaker 1: the family, it was mostly my father at the time,
Speaker 1: but he you know, he wanted to protect the farm. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, he um, my father has spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time, especially after he retired, and he put a
Speaker 1: lot of heart and soul on the property. And so
Speaker 1: I think for him it was probably too secure it
Speaker 1: for the next generation and you know, to uh try
Speaker 1: to you know, secure our legacy on on the land
Speaker 1: so that we're not you know, it doesn't you know,
Speaker 1: end up becoming um, you know, something else being developed.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just protecting everything that we're putting into
Speaker 1: it's for next property owner. I mean, it's that's something
Speaker 1: that can be a little different to think about. You know,
Speaker 1: when if you if you you know, I mean, I
Speaker 1: know what it's like when you lease land and you're
Speaker 1: putting management or you're doing some work into a lease
Speaker 1: land if you're a hunting claud because you don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're if if you're least at land,
Speaker 1: it's probably whether it's written or verbal, probably a twelve
Speaker 1: month deal, so you don't know what you're doing. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're passing up on bucks, letting, bucks, walk, shooting, does
Speaker 1: maybe doing some habitat like working on a low level.
Speaker 1: But you don't know if things are gonna change for
Speaker 1: the next calendar year. Um. But for you know, for
Speaker 1: but but for private land, it's just something to I
Speaker 1: think protect and just secure that everything we're doing will
Speaker 1: remain in the land for the next owner. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: you've got a couple of young kids yourself. What's what's
Speaker 1: all this? How how has that changed things for you
Speaker 1: if at all when you look at the work you're doing,
Speaker 1: when you look at the future of this place. Uh,
Speaker 1: how his how his kids factored into how you approach
Speaker 1: land management and any of this kind of stuff now,
Speaker 1: um a lot tremendously. Um, I mean I can. It's
Speaker 1: it's funny, you know, thinking back about you know, years ago,
Speaker 1: listening to your podcast when y'all were expecting and before
Speaker 1: you had kids and afric kids, it's you know, very similar.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know I had mentioned before but about
Speaker 1: some hunters picking and shoes and when they hunt. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, even when I was married before kids, unless
Speaker 1: we had some kind of social engagement, I could hunt
Speaker 1: when I wanted to. So now it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: picking and choosing the best times to to you know,
Speaker 1: between work and family. Um, to go up there a
Speaker 1: year round to hunt or do habits at work. Um.
Speaker 1: The hunting aspect, you know. I have brought my kids
Speaker 1: a couple of times to hunt, um, but not with
Speaker 1: you know, a firearm. I haven't shot a firearm around
Speaker 1: them there two and five, so not quite old enough
Speaker 1: I think to be around them yet pretty soon. Um.
Speaker 1: We've sat out the stand a couple of times, just
Speaker 1: without a gun or or a bow. Um. But this
Speaker 1: time of year is a good time to bring the kids.
Speaker 1: I I've been bringing both of them for a couple
Speaker 1: of years now to shed hunt, look for andlers. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's a that's that's the prime time when I
Speaker 1: do most of my scouting is looking for sheds before
Speaker 1: that green up because you can really see you can
Speaker 1: see much so much so much more of the land.
Speaker 1: How do you're using it? But yeah, some of the
Speaker 1: habitat work, I'm able to bring the kids up and
Speaker 1: and and um and and and and do some of
Speaker 1: the stuff with so it's um. Um, It's caused me
Speaker 1: to do a lot of work from home as far
Speaker 1: as planning, you know, planning out and maybe um um,
Speaker 1: you know, delegating some of the world to other people
Speaker 1: they can do it, whether it's my my father that's
Speaker 1: now retired or one of my brothers to be able
Speaker 1: to to be able to do it. But you know,
Speaker 1: to answer your question very quickly, would probably be it
Speaker 1: caused me to be more focused on time management because
Speaker 1: you know that's work in the back forty that you
Speaker 1: spend half the time when you go to your farm
Speaker 1: fixing stuff, looking for stuff. You go there and you know,
Speaker 1: between the farmhouse and the tractor shed, you know, things
Speaker 1: getting moved around, things don't get put back where they were.
Speaker 1: You're looking for things. Things break, Um, I mean we
Speaker 1: we we went up in February to do a control
Speaker 1: burn and we had the weather conditions where we had
Speaker 1: to burn permit. Everything aligned, and then our tractor broke
Speaker 1: down and we spent the better part of the day
Speaker 1: fixing it was some kind of wire that shorted underneath.
Speaker 1: But we couldn't burn, and that was a that was
Speaker 1: that was a heartbreaker because we because it was a
Speaker 1: bus for the day and that time a year, that
Speaker 1: really couldn't with with the tratter down, we couldn't do
Speaker 1: much else. But if we were to burn without a
Speaker 1: tractor with a harrow in the back, if that fire
Speaker 1: got loose or across the cut firebreak, there could be
Speaker 1: some problems. So it's just um, and and that goes
Speaker 1: back to what I said earlier, is just to take
Speaker 1: things slow. Um, we didn't know, really, we didn't know
Speaker 1: what we were doing at the beginning, so we had
Speaker 1: to take things slow. I mean, I think I told
Speaker 1: you we did take things slow, but we had to
Speaker 1: because we didn't know what we were doing. You know,
Speaker 1: it was a big learning curve. And so um, there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong. Would take it thing slow, you know, um breathe,
Speaker 1: Let let the property develop on us own, and then
Speaker 1: over that time period, you'll you'll learn how dear you
Speaker 1: use the landscape, how they use it, what kind of
Speaker 1: dear density have, and then you'll be able to manipulate
Speaker 1: the land based on what the wildlife needs. If you
Speaker 1: if you had a little piece of paper, like like
Speaker 1: the little piece of paper that you find inside of
Speaker 1: a fortune cookie, and if you could write something on
Speaker 1: that little piece of paper, stuff it into a fortune
Speaker 1: cookie and give it to yourself back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and six when you and the family were gonna begin
Speaker 1: this land management project. What message do you wish you
Speaker 1: could have wroteen on that little piece of paper to
Speaker 1: read back? Then, m hm, that's a that's a good question.
Speaker 1: Are I would? It could be a longer piece of
Speaker 1: paper if you want, Um, I would probably One thing
Speaker 1: would just be don't sweat small stuff. This will be
Speaker 1: a lot of failures, whether it's you're trying to work
Speaker 1: the land or hunting failures. And you know, wildlife is
Speaker 1: a renewable resource. And I'm not saying that lightly for
Speaker 1: white tails and turkey and quail everything else, but it's
Speaker 1: a renewable resource, and just take your time with it, um,
Speaker 1: and just don't sweat the small stuff because there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a lot of failures. But that's that's how you learn. Um,
Speaker 1: that's how you get to become a better hunter. And
Speaker 1: then too, um I would. I thought about this this
Speaker 1: second point many times. Is I look back on some
Speaker 1: land features, like like pine thickets that we had some new,
Speaker 1: you know, new thick. It's that we're planting poun trees
Speaker 1: that were good, tight, you know thick, nasty betting sites
Speaker 1: that I did not exploit. I did not hunt. I
Speaker 1: was focused on other other spots and just not let
Speaker 1: those I mean hunt the areas, hunt those areas and
Speaker 1: don't you know, don't, don't don't just let those grow up.
Speaker 1: And because you know some of those pine thinks you
Speaker 1: you have a window to hunt them. Um. And at
Speaker 1: a certain point they do, you're stop betting at them. Um.
Speaker 1: But um, I would if I could do things over again,
Speaker 1: I would probably say to get off and hunt mobile
Speaker 1: a lot. I should have done that a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot quicker, a lot quicker. That was a turning
Speaker 1: point for me as a hunter. I think probably I
Speaker 1: can look back on pinpoint that when that changed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've certainly had similar experiences too. Well, Mark uh, I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed this. It's it's it's always it's always a
Speaker 1: kick for me just to get to hear about these
Speaker 1: different places in different ways. People are doing this and
Speaker 1: having fun and learning about the land and figuring out
Speaker 1: how to hunt and improve their spots. And your story
Speaker 1: down there in South Carolina is a perfect example that.
Speaker 1: So where where can people go if they want to
Speaker 1: learn more about what you're doing? I know you've got
Speaker 1: a website and some different things. Is there anything that
Speaker 1: you point folks to if they want to follow along
Speaker 1: more with what you're up to. Yes, Um, they can
Speaker 1: follow me. They can find me on Instagram. It's at
Speaker 1: Mark Haslam um my Instagram has really it's it's been.
Speaker 1: It's pretty much just been. I've been showcasing what I've
Speaker 1: been doing the farm and hunting stuff habits at work
Speaker 1: for a number of years now, and uh, because I
Speaker 1: was and then you know, I about a year ago,
Speaker 1: the beginning of last year twenty one, I've I've been
Speaker 1: sitting on the idea for a while, but I finally
Speaker 1: launched a website, Southeast whitetail dot com. Um, just a
Speaker 1: just to show showcase what I'm doing at the farm
Speaker 1: and and and I think, right I wanted to highlight
Speaker 1: some of the stuff in the Southeast because I think
Speaker 1: just so much the hunting content out there is driven
Speaker 1: a lot towards the Midwest, and some of that stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, we could definitely use down here, but a
Speaker 1: lot of it we can, and a lot of it
Speaker 1: is just it. It's you know, it's We've got a
Speaker 1: different different terrain and different deer herds and so I
Speaker 1: wanted to really showcase, you know what what I'm doing
Speaker 1: in UM so that's where people can find me. Awesome. Well,
Speaker 1: I would definitely recommend people check that out. And Mark,
Speaker 1: thank you for your time. It's fun. Well, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me on Mark. I appreciate it. Let's talking with me.
Speaker 1: Let's do it again soon. Sounds great. Thank you Okay,
Speaker 1: and that is it. Thanks AELF for tuning in. I
Speaker 1: appreciate it. It's been a fun chat. I'm I've been
Speaker 1: just taking a little bit of time peering back behind
Speaker 1: the house watching turkeys strutting around. So it's spring. It's
Speaker 1: a great time a year to be out there working
Speaker 1: the land, working food plots, hanging stands, or like I mentioned,
Speaker 1: turkey hunting. So I hope you're out there and having
Speaker 1: a good time. Thanks for tuning in, and until next time,
Speaker 1: stay wired.