Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the whitetail woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile
Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by the twenty twenty three National
Speaker 2: Dear Association Deer Manager of the Year, Doug Durrean, to
Speaker 2: discuss a more holistic approach to managing wildlife habitat for
Speaker 2: deer and other critics. All right, welcome back to the
Speaker 2: Wired Done podcast, brought to you by First Light and
Speaker 2: their Camo for Conservation initiative, which supports the National Deer Association.
Speaker 2: But today's episode is with the recipient of an award
Speaker 2: from the NBA just recently. It is my friend, mister
Speaker 2: Doug duran He is a land consultant. He is a
Speaker 2: well known modern philosopher of the hunting and conservation world.
Speaker 2: I'd say he's a really good guy. He's a wise
Speaker 2: man and a friend, and he today is joining me
Speaker 2: to do two things. Number One, we're gonna chat a
Speaker 2: little bit about the hunt that I share with him.
Speaker 2: This past season in September, as he gave me access
Speaker 2: to a nearby farm through his Sharing the Land program
Speaker 2: on which I was able to hunt killed a really
Speaker 2: nice buck and a dough out there back in September.
Speaker 2: So we're going to talk about that hunt a little bit.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about his Sharing the Land program,
Speaker 2: which helps connect landowners with access seekers, folks who want
Speaker 2: to get out there and find a place like can hunt.
Speaker 2: He's got a really cool way to help people do that.
Speaker 2: So we're going to talk about that, and then we're
Speaker 2: going to spend the bulk of our time together talking
Speaker 2: through Doug's approach to managing wildlife habitat, managing is private property,
Speaker 2: managing the during family farm in a way that's good
Speaker 2: for deer. It's good for deer hunting, but it's also
Speaker 2: good for the rest of the ecosystem. We talk about
Speaker 2: this biotic focus, the larger biotic community, the larger ecosystem,
Speaker 2: and how we can do things that are good for
Speaker 2: our hunting but also good for everything else out there.
Speaker 2: This is the theme I talked a pretty good amount
Speaker 2: back during the Back forty Project for those of you
Speaker 2: who remember that show in that time period, but I
Speaker 2: want to bring it back to the table here today
Speaker 2: because we are kicking off a month long series on
Speaker 2: habitat work, and one of the themes I want to
Speaker 2: continue to return to is how we can utilize the
Speaker 2: properties that we manage not just for shooting deer, but
Speaker 2: also to make sure that everything else around us is
Speaker 2: flourishing too, because all of these things are connected. So
Speaker 2: the fate of the birds and the bees and the
Speaker 2: rabbits and the soil and all that stuff is intricately
Speaker 2: intertwined with the white tailed deer and all the other
Speaker 2: things that we care about, you know obviously as hunters.
Speaker 2: So what we're gonna try to explore here today with
Speaker 2: Doug and probably in some of the other conversations this
Speaker 2: month is how we can do these kinds of projects
Speaker 2: in ways that help our hunting and everything else and
Speaker 2: it all circles back. So that's the plan today, That's
Speaker 2: the conversation we're going to have. We're gonna have some
Speaker 2: other folks this month that are more tactic focused. We're
Speaker 2: going to talk to some people that are going to be,
Speaker 2: you know, talking through how to strategically place or create
Speaker 2: food plots or strategically create betting improvements or different ways
Speaker 2: we can funnel deer through a landscape the way we want.
Speaker 2: But that's that's not today. Today, we're going to take
Speaker 2: a kind of thirty thousand foot over you. We're gonna
Speaker 2: step back, and we are going to look at you know,
Speaker 2: how can we approach this habitat management way with a
Speaker 2: little bit more diverse viewpoint? I suppose so, as I mentioned,
Speaker 2: the first part of the conversation is a little bit
Speaker 2: more hunt focused as far as our story and my
Speaker 2: experience with Doug. If you just want to get right
Speaker 2: to the habitat conversation, fast forward, maybe about thirty ish minutes,
Speaker 2: that's about when we get into the habitat dialogue. I
Speaker 2: think it's some good ideas. There's gonna be some good
Speaker 2: ideas for us all to ponder. There are some good
Speaker 2: questions to think about, and hopefully this will leave you
Speaker 2: with a few new ideas, maybe a new way of
Speaker 2: looking at things, and some inspiration to get out there
Speaker 2: and get to work on your own back forty if
Speaker 2: you have one, or volunteer on a friend's property, or
Speaker 2: volunteer in public land, any way that you can get
Speaker 2: out there and get your hands dirty. Improving habitat for critters.
Speaker 2: It's fun, it helps, it makes a difference, and I've
Speaker 2: certainly seen the positive benefits in my own life. So
Speaker 2: that's my pitch today. Hope you guys enjoyed the episode.
Speaker 2: Thanks for being here. Now let's get to my chat
Speaker 2: with mister Doug durrec All right here with me now
Speaker 2: on the line is my pal, mister Doug Duran. Welcome
Speaker 2: back to the show. Doug.
Speaker 3: Hey, thanks for having me Mark. This is fantastic, great
Speaker 3: to catch up.
Speaker 2: It's always a pleasure and I love any excuse to
Speaker 2: get to chat with you more, but today is extra special.
Speaker 2: I've got to embarrass you by talking about in front
Speaker 2: of you the fact that you are not only famous
Speaker 2: now but award winning. You are the famous and award
Speaker 2: winning National Dear Association Dear Manager of the Year now, Doug, congratulations.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Mark, and congratulations to you. I can turn
Speaker 3: that right around on you to and being appointed to
Speaker 3: the board of Directors for NBA, And it's great that
Speaker 3: we're both involved with the organization and it's really I
Speaker 3: think it's been really gratifying to see how the organization
Speaker 3: has evolved, and I think by awarding me, uh, in
Speaker 3: my efforts this this award, it's maybe a you know,
Speaker 3: they're they're really highlighting the kind of stuff that we've
Speaker 3: been working on, and I think that's the most important thing, right,
Speaker 3: the ideas that we've that I've been working on a
Speaker 3: group of people that I've been working on it with
Speaker 3: and you know, and how that impacts the bigger conservation
Speaker 3: community and and deer and deer hunting. So yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3: But it's that that's the cool part about it about
Speaker 3: it for me, is that it's highlighting all these ideas
Speaker 3: and and uh and other folks that are working with me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I think it's a great example of
Speaker 2: NDA putting their money where their mouth is kind of
Speaker 2: and and showcasing someone who's you know, doing the work
Speaker 2: that that we want to be doing and talking about
Speaker 2: and using your platform. And it's and it's not just
Speaker 2: about killing a big giant buck, right, It's it's really
Speaker 2: about the bigger picture kind of things, which we'll be
Speaker 2: talking a lot about today.
Speaker 3: So it's sure, yeah, great and maybe slightly controversial. I mean,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't I wouldn't shy away from the fact that
Speaker 3: there are times when I say things that are in
Speaker 3: stand for things that there might be people in our
Speaker 3: community that would have a little bit of issue with.
Speaker 3: And but I think that I think that not only NDA,
Speaker 3: but you know, guys like you and I can have
Speaker 3: these conversations and sort of thinking evolves over time and
Speaker 3: and so that's, uh, that's part of it as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's well deserved. So I'm happy for you.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you got that recognition. I'm glad that people
Speaker 2: are seeing you know. I don't think there's many people
Speaker 2: who have not yet been exposed to you and what
Speaker 2: you're doing. But if this is an opportunity for more
Speaker 2: people to be exposed to that, I'm very glad for that.
Speaker 2: So so that being said, then I want to rewind
Speaker 2: the clock maybe four months now, four or five, four
Speaker 2: months something like that, back to September when you were
Speaker 2: so gracious as to have me out to your farmhouse
Speaker 2: to spend some time hunting in your neck of the woods.
Speaker 2: We didn't get to do a podcast right after that.
Speaker 2: I did a show with Tony talking about the story
Speaker 2: from my perspective. But today, what I was hoping to do,
Speaker 2: if you think this is a decent idea, I was
Speaker 2: hoping to spend a little time kind of getting your
Speaker 2: your perspective on my time there and my hunt there.
Speaker 2: I want to talk a little bit about how I
Speaker 2: got access in your program that I kind of got
Speaker 2: to trial run, and then I want to talk about
Speaker 2: a little bit of what you alluded to there second ago,
Speaker 2: which is kind of what you and your property has
Speaker 2: come to represent or stand for in the deer hunting community.
Speaker 2: So that's that's my framework. I just want to make
Speaker 2: sure you know I prepared for this, Doug. And with
Speaker 2: that said, I came, I hunted, We spent some time together,
Speaker 2: we had some great conversations, and then before you knew it,
Speaker 2: I was gone. What did you think about our time together?
Speaker 2: What did you think about what was your perspective on
Speaker 2: the hunt? The story?
Speaker 3: Well, I have to say that one of the things
Speaker 3: I like about you and people that I become friends
Speaker 3: with and stay friends with, it's almost as if the
Speaker 3: conversation never ends, right. It's like, sure, there's segments to it,
Speaker 3: but I felt like when you pulled in, you and
Speaker 3: Lauren pulled in, and we had done some preliminary discussions,
Speaker 3: but you guys pulled in, and you know, I'd worked
Speaker 3: with Lauren before, certainly have been hanging around with you
Speaker 3: long enough, and it was just like we just picked
Speaker 3: up kind of where we left off. Yeah that the
Speaker 3: same birds under the saddles are still there, but the
Speaker 3: good fun part of it was still there. And the
Speaker 3: real disc ushians that we've had about deer hunting and
Speaker 3: conservation and land management and and philosophy and all of that,
Speaker 3: we just picked it up. So from my perspective, we
Speaker 3: had a bit of an outline. I mean, it was heck,
Speaker 3: it was that you got here on the opening weekend
Speaker 3: of the bow season, which I think was like the
Speaker 3: fifteenth or sixteenth of September this year. Nobody hunts here
Speaker 3: that early, which was a really interesting thing for me,
Speaker 3: you know know, and then I'm not a bow hunter, uh,
Speaker 3: to kind of see how that was going to play out.
Speaker 3: Honestly as a little like, I hope this works out
Speaker 3: pretty well, because I know there's always a little bit
Speaker 3: of pressure to to produce and you know, and especially
Speaker 3: here at the Durham Farm, where it seems like every
Speaker 3: time cameras show up that we have great success and
Speaker 3: great fun and all of that, and but that's it's
Speaker 3: almost like how times you how many times you do something,
Speaker 3: you still get that feeling in the pit of your stomach, right,
Speaker 3: And that's one of the cool things about hunting. So
Speaker 3: what I thought was most interesting about it was that
Speaker 3: you and I had some exchanges. We went back and
Speaker 3: forth on with some onyx maps, and you know, I
Speaker 3: pointed out a couple of things, and you asked some
Speaker 3: really good questions about what's going on up there. And
Speaker 3: I should point out the folks that because of some
Speaker 3: arrangements that I have with bow hunters. With with some
Speaker 3: bow hunters, I didn't want to hunt have you hunt
Speaker 3: the farm, but I have I managed the property next
Speaker 3: door and have the hunting rights for it as well,
Speaker 3: so I was able to give you access to that.
Speaker 3: And my friend who who's a part of that program
Speaker 3: with me over there, Chip Bird, also was gracious enough
Speaker 3: to say, heck, yeah, I have Mark he can hunt
Speaker 3: over there. And so we don't know that property that well.
Speaker 3: I know this place like the back of my hand,
Speaker 3: so that time of the year, a bowhunter taking the
Speaker 3: thoughts and the stuff that I have noticed. Having that
Speaker 3: exchange and then you pulling in and we had a
Speaker 3: really good conversation about where you're gonna hunt, how you're
Speaker 3: gonna hunt, and well it all worked out pretty well.
Speaker 3: So from that standpoint, it was a really cool It
Speaker 3: was a really cool beginning to it and then sort
Speaker 3: of the setup and it wasn't anything different than I
Speaker 3: would I do, like with my bow hunter guys who
Speaker 3: come here the short standards as I like to call them,
Speaker 3: those guys, you know, they come and they ask a
Speaker 3: lot of questions and then they go out and kind
Speaker 3: of do things on their own. You kind of went,
Speaker 3: you went a little bit different than that. Really, you
Speaker 3: really were interested in what my perspective was on it all,
Speaker 3: and I guess you were most interested in the local
Speaker 3: knowledge there, and there's nobody more local than me. So
Speaker 3: I thought it was we had great fun, We have
Speaker 3: good you have good success. I thought we had great fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't argue with that at all. It was
Speaker 2: a it was a really good time. And I do
Speaker 2: think that, you know when when whenever I go to
Speaker 2: hunt a new place, the fun of it is putting
Speaker 2: this puzzle together. Right, You've got like a blank slate
Speaker 2: and you're slowly trying to put things together, and so
Speaker 2: you arrive to a brand new place like this and
Speaker 2: it's like, Okay, I've been able to look at the
Speaker 2: maps online and I've got all these ideas and I
Speaker 2: have assumptions, but then coming in it's like, hey, you know,
Speaker 2: if you have the opportunity to like fact check a
Speaker 2: little bit, why not. So so yeah, some of the
Speaker 2: most valuable time spent. There's two things that were the
Speaker 2: most important for me. One was when I got is
Speaker 2: from a hunting perspective to clarify. One when we arrived
Speaker 2: there and we've got that big map on the wall
Speaker 2: of farmhouse and I was like, hey, Doug, let's talk
Speaker 2: about the map. And I was like, here are the
Speaker 2: things that I was looking at, and I was thinking
Speaker 2: and and is that right? Is this really what this
Speaker 2: thing is? Or is this really what I think it is?
Speaker 3: Here?
Speaker 2: And you're like, oh yeah, that thing's this thing. You're like,
Speaker 2: oh no, not that that And then you or one
Speaker 2: of your buddies there mentioned, oh yeah, I'm down in
Speaker 2: that spot. I was pointing at this drainage and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: down that drainage, there's apple trees. And when I heard that,
Speaker 2: that was like whoa. That was like such a key
Speaker 2: little thing that I would not have known from just
Speaker 2: looking at the maps, right. But as soon as I
Speaker 2: heard that, I knew, like, okay, we got zero in
Speaker 2: on that and pay attention to that. So that was
Speaker 2: number one. And then the second thing, you know, the
Speaker 2: first night I rushed into it, I was I was
Speaker 2: over excited and I wanted to hunt, and I thought, okay,
Speaker 2: I can hunt based off of just what I think
Speaker 2: is there on the map. And so I went. And
Speaker 2: you know, as you know, that first night, it was
Speaker 2: different than I expected. Where I went, it didn't work
Speaker 2: out the way I thought. I couldn't see what I
Speaker 2: was hoping i'd be able to see. I was assuming
Speaker 2: i'd be all to see a lot and learn a lot,
Speaker 2: and I just didn't put myself on the right spot.
Speaker 2: So that next morning, you know, I told you just like, hey,
Speaker 2: you know what, I don't think I should hunt tomorrow morning.
Speaker 2: Think I need to like lay eyes on a few
Speaker 2: more things. And and you know, we talked about the
Speaker 2: fact that you drive around on your side by side
Speaker 2: a lot, and I thought, you know, I wonder if
Speaker 2: I could just tag along with you as you drive
Speaker 2: around to you know, pretend like you're doing your farm chores,
Speaker 2: and I could see a couple of these things, like
Speaker 2: with my own eyes and maybe actually set up a stand,
Speaker 2: you know, without the deer noticing anything's different than Doug
Speaker 2: doing his normal stuff. And and so that was that
Speaker 2: was key because that was what allowed me to go
Speaker 2: and see that apple tree spot that seemed so intriguing
Speaker 2: and then be able to confirm like, oh, yes, this
Speaker 2: is exactly what I hoped, and then be able to
Speaker 2: get in there and get set up in the right
Speaker 2: spot with you know, the cover of the UTV being there.
Speaker 2: You know, if if I try to go in there
Speaker 2: without that, you know, those bucks might have been bedded
Speaker 2: nearby and spooked out of there, and maybe they wouldn't
Speaker 2: have moved through in daylight two days later, the dough
Speaker 2: might have spooked worse and not have been there the
Speaker 2: next day. So so those two things were huge, and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, wouldn't have beenossible if I didn't have your
Speaker 2: local knowledge and your amazing chauffeuring skills there on the
Speaker 2: side by side. So thank you for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, the old canam comes in handy, and you
Speaker 3: know it's a that a that was an interesting little
Speaker 3: drive and I'm glad we were ready, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: part of it was Okay, I'll just take you by here,
Speaker 3: and you're like, no, no, I think i'd like to
Speaker 3: be ready to go and maybe set up, because why
Speaker 3: you drive by there twice? Right? So we went by
Speaker 3: and I kind of went there's the apple tree, and
Speaker 3: what about that walnut tree over there? And I don't
Speaker 3: know it was thirty five or forty yard distance, but
Speaker 3: a farm road that goes up through there that gets
Speaker 3: traveled a lot. So we went past it. I slowed down.
Speaker 3: You kind of looked at both and I remember your
Speaker 3: eyes kind of like this. I like the looks of this.
Speaker 3: We went up past, like I would often do, just
Speaker 3: checking on things. I turned around, came back down. I
Speaker 3: never shut it, can am off. I just sat there.
Speaker 3: Lauren stood up in the back. You hopped out, and
Speaker 3: I'm just observing you this whole time, because you know,
Speaker 3: I'm taking lessons from the master, and watched you go
Speaker 3: over there. SA same look when you're up in the tree.
Speaker 3: You got up in there and you looked over and
Speaker 3: your eyes were really big, like this is really nice.
Speaker 3: If you remember, there's the cornfield that we drove up
Speaker 3: through that that road comes up through. There's water and
Speaker 3: tag alders down on that bottom, which comes into play later,
Speaker 3: of course, and then betting area up above, and gee,
Speaker 3: you know, it's just there's just so much about the
Speaker 3: terrain of that property was so cool. And I don't know, Mark,
Speaker 3: were you in there ten minutes? It seemed like you
Speaker 3: got in and out of there.
Speaker 2: You had to get set up. Yeah, it was something
Speaker 2: like that was pretty quick. I just I remember getting
Speaker 2: in there, getting my sticks and saddle platform up there.
Speaker 2: I trimmed a couple of branches confirmed range on where
Speaker 2: I thought deer might come through, and then it was
Speaker 2: slip right out to walk my exact path back in,
Speaker 2: so I didn't lay any more scent than I had to.
Speaker 2: I noticed that, and off we went.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was and I mean it was a slick setup.
Speaker 3: And then you left it alone until the next morning,
Speaker 3: as I recall. Yeah, and then and you parked over
Speaker 3: by the buildings, walked in on that road where again
Speaker 3: there had already been that the tractor and the ATV
Speaker 3: and the farmer goes up to the ridge over there.
Speaker 3: All that activity had been there. So you guys really
Speaker 3: were able to make a pretty stealthy entry there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, worked out, worked up very very well. Even
Speaker 2: I knew it was going to be good, but I
Speaker 2: could not have predicted that it could have been that good, right,
Speaker 2: two days in a row, two deer, I mean, it was,
Speaker 2: it was. It was the dream scenario. It's everything that
Speaker 2: you hope for. But you know, nine times out of
Speaker 2: ten when you find a spot that you think will
Speaker 2: be great, you know, nine point nine times at ten,
Speaker 2: even the best spots don't actually work out, right, So
Speaker 2: it really really worked out.
Speaker 3: You know. I know you've told the story when you
Speaker 3: were talking with Tony that so that first morning you
Speaker 3: killed that dough and you knew you had killed her,
Speaker 3: but being the ethical hunter that you are, you gave
Speaker 3: it an hour before you went after and she went
Speaker 3: right into those tag holders down there in the bottom.
Speaker 3: And you know, I remember marketing it on Onyx and
Speaker 3: looking at it and everything, and that deer wasn't that
Speaker 3: dear wasn't one hundred yards from where you shot it? Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean pretty much straight to the west. And when
Speaker 3: we're getting that call from you, gee, this is really strange,
Speaker 3: and you are describing what happened to me, he said, Well,
Speaker 3: I already took the head off of it because it's
Speaker 3: clearly the deer that I shot, but it's half eaten.
Speaker 3: And what an interesting thing when folks get a chance
Speaker 3: to see this whole thing. When with with the the
Speaker 3: episode that you put out, I'd asked him to look
Speaker 3: at bobcat activity. Since then, there was a whole kind
Speaker 3: of speculation, Right, we have a neighbor who's got a
Speaker 3: beer on it. Yeah, And I remember Ronella was like,
Speaker 3: as a coyo, you know, so, yeah, this doesn't look
Speaker 3: like what a coyo does at all. And there's a
Speaker 3: bear in the area, so maybe that. But that thing
Speaker 3: had to be right on top of it, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: it had to run by it and smell it. But
Speaker 3: then recently I've seen some studies and some work done
Speaker 3: on bobcats, and I remember how it had to hide,
Speaker 3: peeled back and it it's like it removed the back
Speaker 3: strap and clean that was taking the meat between the
Speaker 3: ribs hadn't really actually the rear end hardly at all
Speaker 3: like a coyot typically would. To see all that was
Speaker 3: just I was just fascinating to me, and I know
Speaker 3: to you. We speculated about a lot. I actually got
Speaker 3: a lot of questions about it. And then putting the
Speaker 3: trail camera up and getting nothing.
Speaker 2: That was the most surprising. I couldn't believe that something
Speaker 2: else didn't come to get get a piece of it too.
Speaker 3: Well, the kyote went by and kind of gave it
Speaker 3: a glance like this, and that was it.
Speaker 2: Really weird.
Speaker 3: Vultures and a hawk And then after about a week
Speaker 3: a grinner apossum got in there and he worked on
Speaker 3: it for a while. But yeah, it was pretty, Uh,
Speaker 3: it was really interesting. The whole thing was really interesting.
Speaker 3: There was something foreboating about it when we got there
Speaker 3: and looked at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like the rest of the wildlife in
Speaker 2: the area kind of felt the same way, apparently because
Speaker 2: they steered clear. There was something something not quite right. Well,
Speaker 2: it would have been interesting, you know, if that was
Speaker 2: a diseased deer, you could have wondered, like, I, can
Speaker 2: they sense something here? But she wasn't. She was not
Speaker 2: CWD positive, So it wasn't like there was some kind
Speaker 2: of problem that, you know, a predator could possibly somehow sense,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't. I don't know if that's a thing,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I don't know what. I have no explanation
Speaker 2: except it was interesting.
Speaker 3: And for me from my management perspective, not only from
Speaker 3: my deer herd, but also from the disease issues and
Speaker 3: all those concerns that I have. Here was a six
Speaker 3: to eight year old dough. She was a big old girl.
Speaker 3: Obviously we didn't I guess you didn't. There was really
Speaker 3: nothing there at salvage after it had been everything that
Speaker 3: I'd been done to it. But that she was CWD
Speaker 3: wasn't detected was a little bit of a surprise because
Speaker 3: it seems like with older deer were getting more of that.
Speaker 3: But uh, but not and uh yeah, the whole the
Speaker 3: whole event with that dough was just really uh, it
Speaker 3: was just really interesting. It's it's been on my mind
Speaker 3: ever since. It's just so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was it was bad luck, bad luck that
Speaker 2: a predator got her so quickly, but on the flip side,
Speaker 2: very good luck. And that I killed two mature deer
Speaker 2: in your area, that six to eight year old dough
Speaker 2: and then probably a four year old buck and both
Speaker 2: were CWD negative or not positive, I guess as the result.
Speaker 2: So so yeah, that was that was lucky and I've
Speaker 2: been happily eating that buck, being very thankful it wasn't positive,
Speaker 2: So that was that worked out? Well? Yeah, So, so
Speaker 2: you talked about the fact that right you have this
Speaker 2: permission next to your farm and you were able to
Speaker 2: grant that to me, and we talked, you know, this
Speaker 2: summer about me coming up and hunting with you, and
Speaker 2: we talked about, yo, well maybe I could get you
Speaker 2: access to this property next to us. And then you
Speaker 2: had the idea like, Hey, if you want to hunt here,
Speaker 2: why don't we treat it just like anyone else else
Speaker 2: in the Sharing the Land program that you run, Doug,
Speaker 2: And why don't you run through that process and we
Speaker 2: can kind of, you know, show you what this is like.
Speaker 2: And it gives us a great opportunity to talk about
Speaker 2: a little bit And that's what I want to do
Speaker 2: here now, Doug. Is for people that don't know about
Speaker 2: Sharing the Land, Can you give us a rundown of
Speaker 2: what the program is? What could someone expect if they
Speaker 2: wanted to get involved in this like I was able to.
Speaker 3: So Sharing the Land is a private land access initiative
Speaker 3: that myself and a group of other people started a
Speaker 3: few years ago and I've been sort of experimenting with
Speaker 3: and now it's become you know, now it's a real thing.
Speaker 3: And it's a it's a cooperator's network in which we
Speaker 3: connect the access seekers and private landowners to the purpose
Speaker 3: of providing conservation cooperation on properties and in exchange for access,
Speaker 3: so that access seeker is spending some time helping the
Speaker 3: conservation on a property and in return they get access
Speaker 3: to it in whatever way they work out with the landowner.
Speaker 3: And in some cases it's it's you know, wide open access,
Speaker 3: and in other cases it might be very limited. The real
Speaker 3: theme of it is is that people are providing that
Speaker 3: they're they're providing conservation benefits to either that land or
Speaker 3: somewhere else. So one of the questions I first started
Speaker 3: asking people when I when I started thinking about this
Speaker 3: was what's your contribution to conservation? And really it started
Speaker 3: with with me with a guy who had been volunteering
Speaker 3: for some of our local conservation programs. Seeing a young
Speaker 3: guy and conversation with him. One day, he had told
Speaker 3: me that he lost his his turkey hunting access and
Speaker 3: I was like, well, what season do you have and
Speaker 3: he said, well, you know, told me what season. I
Speaker 3: was like, I don't think I have anybody hunting the
Speaker 3: farm that weekend or that week So if you don't
Speaker 3: find another place, let me know and we'll be able
Speaker 3: to work something out on the farm. And he goes, well,
Speaker 3: that's very nice of you guys, like, look, man, you're
Speaker 3: volunteering to do this conservation work for the community, not
Speaker 3: necessarily on my farm, but for the community. So that
Speaker 3: was sort of what motivated me. So sharing theland dot
Speaker 3: com is where you go to do it, and there's
Speaker 3: an opportunity for access seekers, which we have a lot of.
Speaker 3: And I will tell people right now that Cal and
Speaker 3: I did a podcast when we was here recently for
Speaker 3: the deer season and poiwe has just got hundreds of
Speaker 3: access seekers and two landowners signed up. So as you
Speaker 3: might imagine, we have a lot of supply on the
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, a lot of demand on the access seeker side,
Speaker 3: but less supply. So we're approaching a thousand access seekers
Speaker 3: who have filled out conservation resumes, and these are folks
Speaker 3: from all over the country and we have only but
Speaker 3: still a lot I think thirty properties in different parts
Speaker 3: of the country. Interestingly, I get a lot of requests
Speaker 3: to hunt here and then we have at there's another
Speaker 3: property that's not far from here that we're just started
Speaker 3: getting access to and as you might imagine, landowners are
Speaker 3: a little they like slow walk this in. Access seekers
Speaker 3: are like heck, yeah, let's go, and you know, landowners like, well,
Speaker 3: let's we'll see how this all works out. So well,
Speaker 3: you can understand that a landowner would be a little cautious, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, this is their place, this is their thing,
Speaker 3: this is their property. So there's been a lot of
Speaker 3: interest from landowners and then they it sort of takes
Speaker 3: there's a number of steps we kind of have to
Speaker 3: go through with them for them to really embrace this idea.
Speaker 3: But the conservation resumes are really important. The fact that
Speaker 3: these access seekers are you know, I mean it's a resume,
Speaker 3: just like if you're applying for a job. And so
Speaker 3: with this idea that we're connecting people put your best
Speaker 3: went forward as and not you know, filling them full
Speaker 3: of blowny or anything, but that that an access seekert
Speaker 3: really has some uh something to offer. And you know,
Speaker 3: we've had landowners who are looking for very specific things
Speaker 3: like I need a carpenter or I need a somebody
Speaker 3: helping me with prescribe fire and those sort of things.
Speaker 3: And so of course that kind of thing is in
Speaker 3: higher demand than somebody goes, oh, I can come and
Speaker 3: help you fixed fence or rock roll a ployer or something.
Speaker 3: Pick rock. You can always pick rock. That So when
Speaker 3: I when people ask me, well, what can I do
Speaker 3: to make myself more attractive to a landowner, I was like, well,
Speaker 3: develop your conservation resume, join an organization like a like
Speaker 3: a Pheasants Forever, or go to you know, university extension classes.
Speaker 3: Go to these landowner days where landowners are learning about
Speaker 3: land management, and go there and learn the same things
Speaker 3: that they are in. Gee, you might even meet a
Speaker 3: landowner there. The idea, of course, is that we're trying
Speaker 3: to be a meeting place and a connector. But what
Speaker 3: we really want to do first and foremost is to
Speaker 3: highlight these stories and put examples out there, and we've
Speaker 3: been doing that. We recently filmed some stuff with on
Speaker 3: X down and we went to a place down in
Speaker 3: Iowa and a farm where it's actually a native seed
Speaker 3: company who became both a sponsor of sharing the land
Speaker 3: but then also became a participating farm. And we had
Speaker 3: about a half a dozen people who came out there
Speaker 3: and who helped for a day of you know, on
Speaker 3: a native seed farm, there's a lot of manual work
Speaker 3: and some of it was like digging plants undesirables out
Speaker 3: of a particular field, and then we were doing hand
Speaker 3: stripping and that kind of stuff. And then we went
Speaker 3: back and we filmed the day of hunting as well.
Speaker 3: So they are real, you know, great arrangement there, and
Speaker 3: it worked out really well on both sides at a
Speaker 3: blast we went pheasant hunting. We've also there's there's these
Speaker 3: properties in North Dakota that I was talking to you
Speaker 3: about that where they're doing shelter belts and removing wire,
Speaker 3: but then also doing plant other kinds of plantings. And
Speaker 3: and then the exchange was they got to come back
Speaker 3: pretty much whenever they wanted, as long as they contacted
Speaker 3: the landowner to upland bird hunt. One of those landowners
Speaker 3: just contacted me and said that he is also now
Speaker 3: interested in limited deer hunting because they're deer hunters. And
Speaker 3: you know, it's sort of like with me, I'm not one.
Speaker 3: I have this arrangement with these bow hunters for the farm,
Speaker 3: and I have the well's lease arrangement that I have
Speaker 3: next door. It's a management at Lisa was sort of
Speaker 3: a hybrid. I helped manage the property and or you
Speaker 3: were able to hunt. So bow hunting's kind of out here.
Speaker 3: And then the opening weekend of gun hunting, my brother
Speaker 3: and my nephews and well, we had a We always
Speaker 3: have something going on, it seems like with with you know, Medior.
Speaker 3: This year we had a thing with Canam. But then
Speaker 3: the rest of the season, the people who were my
Speaker 3: who are my conservation cooperators, access seekers had access to
Speaker 3: come in and then gee, the the later bo seasons,
Speaker 3: the dough Derby antlerless hunt, and then the holiday hunt,
Speaker 3: and we did squirrel hunting, we did we've we've done
Speaker 3: some foraging, we've done uh man, we just had days
Speaker 3: where people got to come here and shoot and you know,
Speaker 3: just a lot of different things that you can you
Speaker 3: can think of. So what I asked landowners to do
Speaker 3: is to think about what it is that they do
Speaker 3: on their property and then what are some of the
Speaker 3: other possibilities, and we list some other possibilities so you
Speaker 3: don't have to give up you know, one hundred percent access.
Speaker 3: It's sort of like, you know, it's almost like you
Speaker 3: have a menu of things that that won this this
Speaker 3: is the menu of things I need help with and
Speaker 3: then here on the other side is the menu of
Speaker 3: things that I'm willing to provide access for. And then
Speaker 3: we what we do when these things come in is
Speaker 3: we try to match them up. And really what we
Speaker 3: do is send the most likely conservation resumes to the
Speaker 3: landowner and then they take kind of ticket from there.
Speaker 3: There's an agreement involved, and there's you know, there's insurance
Speaker 3: involved there. They can the landowners wonder about reliability, and
Speaker 3: there's an insurance policy that they are the access seekers
Speaker 3: can get and so we've kind of kind of run
Speaker 3: through every you know, issue that we can so if
Speaker 3: people are interested in it, and boy, this twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four is the Year of the Landowner. We're going to
Speaker 3: be doing a bunch of recruitment of landowners. I'm going
Speaker 3: to a thing this Saturday where there's a bunch of
Speaker 3: landowners who were presenting. Following Saturday, I'm going to another one.
Speaker 3: I'm out at pheasant Fest then after that. So we're
Speaker 3: really going to try to recruit more landowners because, as
Speaker 3: I said, we have plenty of demand and not enough supply,
Speaker 3: and especially in areas where you could imagine one of
Speaker 3: the things we did last year also working with the
Speaker 3: National Dear Association and with Pheasants forever. Is that we
Speaker 3: did a learn to hunt in the early season, during
Speaker 3: the bow season. Because it was DNR sanctioned, we did it.
Speaker 3: We were able to do a gun hunt in September.
Speaker 3: It was the weekend after you were here, I think.
Speaker 3: And man, we had you know, we had fifteen properties.
Speaker 3: It was almost like fifteen hundred acres as it all
Speaker 3: adds up, and twenty two new hunters, twenty two mentors,
Speaker 3: and some of those mentors were the landowners. So they took,
Speaker 3: you know, folks out and these are guys, who are
Speaker 3: you interested in big giant bucks? But they also understand that,
Speaker 3: holy moly, I got a andlerless concern here, management concern.
Speaker 3: So all of these things kind of come together. We
Speaker 3: can introduce people to hunting, get them out there early
Speaker 3: in the season before the best bow hunting is going
Speaker 3: going on. And we had a real successful hunt. I
Speaker 3: think we took twelve or fourteen deer. We had. We
Speaker 3: did a butchering demonstration and he heck, even one of
Speaker 3: the landowners because it was sanctioned and as a result,
Speaker 3: if the landowners said it was okay, they could shoot
Speaker 3: a buck. And so he's sitting there in the blind
Speaker 3: with one of these hunters and his buck comes out,
Speaker 3: and the access or the learn to hunter was like,
Speaker 3: you know, wow, that's really cool to see it. He goes,
Speaker 3: you want to shoot it? So can you imagine? I mean,
Speaker 3: the landowner got so wrapped up and so interested in this,
Speaker 3: and I don't know, had the bigger smile that hunter
Speaker 3: or the land So that that whole thing of where
Speaker 3: you're getting something out of it, I get so much
Speaker 3: out of it. I mean, you and I had a
Speaker 3: blast together. But it's not that much. It's no different
Speaker 3: really when I have my my cooperator's access seekers come
Speaker 3: and we do things together, and it's just if it
Speaker 3: wasn't fun, I wouldn't do it. And that's one of
Speaker 3: the things I keep telling the landowners. It's really nice
Speaker 3: to do this, and it's really fun to do it.
Speaker 3: And then you talk to the access seekers on the
Speaker 3: other hand, you know with the same idea that this
Speaker 3: needs to be beneficial to the land It needs to
Speaker 3: be beneficial to the land owner, and it should be fun.
Speaker 3: And let's talk about what it's like to be a
Speaker 3: good guest. And you could do a you could do
Speaker 3: a seminar and what it's like to be a good guest.
Speaker 3: You really could. You're a great guy to have around.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Thanks for saying that. Yeah, you make a
Speaker 2: good point that actually wouldn't be a bad podcast actually
Speaker 2: either like an episode just talking about how to be
Speaker 2: a good guest or how to be a good hunter
Speaker 2: on somebody else's land, right, I mean, there's some certain etiquette,
Speaker 2: there's a certain set of things that can help you
Speaker 2: maintain access and permission by doing the right things, by
Speaker 2: helping out, by creating relationships, all those different types of things.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we assume like, oh, it's just obvious, but not always.
Speaker 2: So that's more than just a compliment, which I thank
Speaker 2: you for, but also a good idea. So yeah, something
Speaker 2: to think about, Doug with with this, Like you're talking
Speaker 2: about this menu of different ideas, and you mentioned the
Speaker 2: menu could apply both for the access seeker and the
Speaker 2: access provider, right, So the access seeker they can have
Speaker 2: a menu of things that they can add to their
Speaker 2: conservation resume, all these different skill sets or experiences. But
Speaker 2: then on the flip side, for the landowners, there's always
Speaker 2: something more you could do, right, And and that's kind
Speaker 2: of where I want to push you a little bit
Speaker 2: or or points you, I guess because you are someone
Speaker 2: in the deer hunting world. Now that you are the
Speaker 2: NDA Deer Manager of the Year, you have you have
Speaker 2: now the authority, Yeah, you have the you know, the
Speaker 2: authority and the title to speak to, to speak to
Speaker 2: a little bit of how unique your own personal menu
Speaker 2: has been compared to some others in the deer hunting world.
Speaker 2: And this is something that I think, you know, Steve's
Speaker 2: giving you an opportunity to talk about. So people I
Speaker 2: think are well aware of the fact that you manage
Speaker 2: your property a little bit differently than the typical property
Speaker 2: we're going to see on the Outdoor Channel or something
Speaker 2: like that. Right, you have gone to great lengths over
Speaker 2: the years to manage the Duran family farm in a
Speaker 2: more holistic way with a more of an ecosystem focus
Speaker 2: versus just a make big deer focus. And that's kind
Speaker 2: of where I want to spend a little more time here,
Speaker 2: because we've talked around the edges of this over the years,
Speaker 2: but we've never really dove dove deep into it. So
Speaker 2: I'm curious, first, what was the impetus for that with you,
Speaker 2: Like how did that philosophy get into get under your
Speaker 2: skin and become the way you want to do this?
Speaker 2: Because I know, like you had a journey when it
Speaker 2: came to really focusing on big giant bucks and then
Speaker 2: you've you've kind of traveled along a slightly different route
Speaker 2: over the years. But also when it comes to just
Speaker 2: like how you worked with the land, was that from
Speaker 2: an early age or early in your management kind of
Speaker 2: journey that hey, I want to do this a different
Speaker 2: kind of way or at first where you just thinking, man,
Speaker 2: I want big deer and this is how we're gonna
Speaker 2: do it. Can you just give me a little insight
Speaker 2: into how this came to be where we are.
Speaker 3: Sure? So you know, you know the long story about
Speaker 3: the farm being in the family for so long. We're
Speaker 3: in our one hundred and twenty first year now, and
Speaker 3: it was it was never about This wasn't a property
Speaker 3: that was ever The primary reason for it was to
Speaker 3: have for hunting. My great grandparents bought this property for
Speaker 3: the timber and they were they had a sawmill and
Speaker 3: they managed the woods. I you know, I don't know,
Speaker 3: I can't I can't say. Oh, and here's how they
Speaker 3: managed it exactly I can tell you what the results were.
Speaker 3: I don't know what their intentions were at the time
Speaker 3: because it was one hundred and twenty years ago. I
Speaker 3: never met those people, but I can tell you that
Speaker 3: I cut my great grandfather's trees a few years ago,
Speaker 3: right because it was there. Some of those trees were
Speaker 3: it was their time to go. I did speak with
Speaker 3: my grandfather a lot a bit about it. He died
Speaker 3: when I was eighteen, and he also had sawmills. So
Speaker 3: it was first and foremost a place that was producing
Speaker 3: timber for saw mill production. And then this farm, you know,
Speaker 3: quintessential Wisconsin dairy farm. You know, the red barn, the
Speaker 3: white house, the white milk house. It looks like the
Speaker 3: Wisconsin license plate was carved out of it. And of
Speaker 3: the four hundred acres, you know, one hundred acres tillable,
Speaker 3: sixty acres of pasture, two hundred and forty acres of woods.
Speaker 3: So from that perspective, when I was as a kid,
Speaker 3: we it was a farm, and we went out to
Speaker 3: the farm to work. I grew up in town two
Speaker 3: miles away, you know, I didn't didn't grow up in
Speaker 3: this house, and so hunting was something I was squirreling,
Speaker 3: rabbit hunting and that kind of stuff. I mean, this
Speaker 3: is you know, the early nineteen seventies, and you know,
Speaker 3: my buddies and I went squirrel hunting and rabbit hunting
Speaker 3: and stuff. But when you came time to go deer hunting,
Speaker 3: we actually went up north, which is a whole other
Speaker 3: We could have a whole discussion of what was going
Speaker 3: on in northern Wisconsin right now, but we went up
Speaker 3: Worth a few years because that's what my dad did,
Speaker 3: you know, after World War Two, because that's where the
Speaker 3: deer were, and so it wasn't really a consideration. But
Speaker 3: but then by the time in the I guess the
Speaker 3: first year I deer hunting was nineteen seventy one. Boy
Speaker 3: does that make me feel old. But by the mid
Speaker 3: by the time I was getting through high school, we
Speaker 3: were deer hunting around here because gee, there were deer
Speaker 3: around But it was never about oh, when we're going
Speaker 3: deer hunting, you know, like or we're going deer hunting
Speaker 3: for big giant bucks. She just went out. You had
Speaker 3: an antler, he had one buck tag and in those days,
Speaker 3: four people had to apply to get to maybe get
Speaker 3: a dough tag. That's how few deer there were, but
Speaker 3: they the Department Natural Resources, are trying to do so.
Speaker 3: It was it was about farming, you know, if I
Speaker 3: say it was a yardstick, and still to this day
Speaker 3: it may seem a little different now, but you know,
Speaker 3: if the farm is a yardstick. Hunting was in those
Speaker 3: days maybe three or four inches. Now now it's maybe
Speaker 3: a foot, you know, but it's still about these other
Speaker 3: specifically about deer hunting. Though. When my younger brother Matthew,
Speaker 3: my late brother Matthew coming up on or just past them,
Speaker 3: sorry is the twenty eighth anniversary of his death, he
Speaker 3: was he was, he was into it. The rest of
Speaker 3: us kind of left the area, and matt was the one,
Speaker 3: he was the youngest of all of us, and he said, yeah,
Speaker 3: I want to stay around here. He became an electrician
Speaker 3: and he lived here in the farmhouse, and he was
Speaker 3: a bow hunter him and I know you'd have got
Speaker 3: along great with him. Ironically enough, he's exactly he would
Speaker 3: have been exactly Steve's agent and U. But he also
Speaker 3: gun hunted and he fished and they small game hunted
Speaker 3: all that. And he's really the first one who said
Speaker 3: to me, you know what we gotta let some of
Speaker 3: these little bucks go and see what happens. And you know,
Speaker 3: that was thirty five years ago, and so that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff was happening. I remember, Oh there was some
Speaker 3: noise about, but I mean a big giant buck in
Speaker 3: those days was you know, a two year old. And
Speaker 3: so yeah, thats changed quite a bit, and and we
Speaker 3: certainly had the potential for all that. And every once
Speaker 3: in a while, some big ol' hog haud get killed
Speaker 3: and it would just be like, where did that thing come?
Speaker 3: As you get that up north and oh, no, I
Speaker 3: got it, you know, domind Hawkins crit or something. People
Speaker 3: just were surprised by that. And so all of that,
Speaker 3: you know, is evolved. That evolved, and Matt sort of
Speaker 3: got me thinking about it, and we'd agreed that we
Speaker 3: were going to start doing that, and then unfortunately he
Speaker 3: died in a car accident right down here in the highway,
Speaker 3: and uh, I sort of took that idea. And you
Speaker 3: always get a little emotional when I start thinking about
Speaker 3: him and talking about him, especially especially this time of
Speaker 3: the year. But took that idea. He said one time
Speaker 3: when I killed this deer, that that was the best
Speaker 3: buck I killed my life. Up to that time. He goes, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: but he'd have been a nice buck next year, and
Speaker 3: and I'm like, what do you mean that? That was
Speaker 3: his point, right, It's like, you know, like the deer
Speaker 3: you see behind me. Then we didn't have that kind
Speaker 3: of thing are out here then? And uh so that's
Speaker 3: kind of what Guy's going in sort of in his memory,
Speaker 3: maybe even in his honor, you know. That we started
Speaker 3: doing a little more of that, and I got a
Speaker 3: little wrapped up in the idea of let him go
Speaker 3: so he can grow and U and then our neighbor
Speaker 3: killed on agg tags killed like twenty four antler, this
Speaker 3: deer one winner. And the next year it was like bucks.
Speaker 3: You know, I like to think I pay attention. And
Speaker 3: I looked at that and went, well, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: We needed to kill more antler this year. So that
Speaker 3: was twenty five years ago. We started killing more antler
Speaker 3: this year. From a habitat perspective, we were just managing
Speaker 3: our forests for our woods in a managed forest kind
Speaker 3: of way. You know, we were doing it was a
Speaker 3: productive forest kind of way. And boy, I learned pretty
Speaker 3: quickly that if if you're doing good forest management, you're
Speaker 3: probably doing good habitat management as well. You know that
Speaker 3: you're you're you're creating edge and you're getting younger successional
Speaker 3: for uts, and gee, why isn't why aren't those We
Speaker 3: don't see as many deer hanging out in those big
Speaker 3: trees most of the year except for that time when
Speaker 3: the you know, like in the white oaks start dropping
Speaker 3: their acorns and then they're in there like crazy, you know,
Speaker 3: and all of that kind of stuff starts happening. So
Speaker 3: you know, you think about that, and I mean, ultimately
Speaker 3: we were we were managing this property sort of in
Speaker 3: the traditional way of my great grandparents and grandparents, and
Speaker 3: and then what of the things that my dad taught me.
Speaker 3: And then we started getting foresters involved because I you know,
Speaker 3: I mean I have a bit of a conservation background
Speaker 3: and horticulture background, but it's like I learned a long
Speaker 3: time ago that you don't have to be the smartest
Speaker 3: guy in the room. You need to find the smartest
Speaker 3: guy in the room, right, or the smartest guy about
Speaker 3: or a smart person about that subject that work with
Speaker 3: a whole lot of different foresters out here now and
Speaker 3: biologists and you know, I you know, looking for that.
Speaker 3: So we did the let him go so he can
Speaker 3: grow kind of thing for a while and killed more
Speaker 3: more does and then you know, twenty two years ago
Speaker 3: now CWD showed up sixty miles to the south of
Speaker 3: US and we were immediately in the CWD management z owner
Speaker 3: the herd reduction zone is what they actually called. And
Speaker 3: it kind of made sense to me from an animal
Speaker 3: husbandry standpoint, right that you that that if you have
Speaker 3: a bunch of animals crowded together, they're more apt to
Speaker 3: get if there's a disease and more apt to spread
Speaker 3: it around. So that was it sort of made sense
Speaker 3: to me. And it also gee, when we were killing
Speaker 3: more deer, especially our antler. This year, we're getting bigger bucks.
Speaker 3: So all these things were going together. We're doing this
Speaker 3: forestry work, and I started putting food plots in, thinking
Speaker 3: that was cool and being a farm kid. You know,
Speaker 3: I got a tractor, I got a disc, I got
Speaker 3: a seat planner, I've got all this stuff, and it
Speaker 3: was interesting to do that. But then I ended up
Speaker 3: sort of seeing the I don't know the folly in it,
Speaker 3: but sort of the it wasn't multi dimensional enough, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, you and I have have this joke of
Speaker 3: course when I say food plots in farm country like
Speaker 3: taking sand to the beach, and it is a little
Speaker 3: bit like that. I mean, I go out for a
Speaker 3: drive this even after we're done, and I'll see a
Speaker 3: hundred year on a drive and they're gonna be just
Speaker 3: out on fields. So why would I go and put
Speaker 3: more of that in? What is it that they what
Speaker 3: is it that they need? And what can I do
Speaker 3: for the whole the entire biotic community. And you know,
Speaker 3: I was read Leopold when I was in high school
Speaker 3: and certainly was influenced by him then and as I've
Speaker 3: gotten older, So one thing I'll warny you about is
Speaker 3: as you get older, he become more philosophical. And when
Speaker 3: we were doing the let him go so he can
Speaker 3: grow in management here the nice buck next year management,
Speaker 3: we talked, you know, we talked about I didn't it
Speaker 3: was pretty loose. I mean, you had to wear sombrero
Speaker 3: if shot too small of a buck. You know, it
Speaker 3: wasn't like, oh, this was like we were finding people
Speaker 3: or yelling at people or anything like that. And when
Speaker 3: it was younger hunters and when it was newer hunters
Speaker 3: and that kind of stuff, it's like, go ahead and
Speaker 3: shoot a deer that you're going to be happy with.
Speaker 3: Let's get some deer under your belt. Then my nephews
Speaker 3: and my daughter, you know, all of that was happening,
Speaker 3: and then I had a kind of an incident with
Speaker 3: a family friend who you know, made a really egregious area.
Speaker 3: He shot a real tiny buck fifty yards from him,
Speaker 3: and you know, I kind of barked at him about it,
Speaker 3: and he felt bad about it, and I felt bad
Speaker 3: about it. I was like, you know, I don't want
Speaker 3: to do that anymore. I don't want to manage people
Speaker 3: or have people wondering if that's going to be big enough.
Speaker 3: Britney Brothers, who was in an episode that we filmed here,
Speaker 3: apologized for shooting and she had full permission. She never
Speaker 3: shot a gear before and she goes shot a little
Speaker 3: one and I'm like, okay, I never want to hear
Speaker 3: that again. So I'm not saying that you have to
Speaker 3: shoot the first buck that comes by, but you can
Speaker 3: shoot the first buck that comes by if you want to,
Speaker 3: Like you did you shot the first buck that came by?
Speaker 2: I guess, well, I suppose that's true. The first buck
Speaker 2: I had, the first buck I had been shooting range
Speaker 2: was was a shooter. But I want to I want
Speaker 2: to clarify something, which is you had this trajectory, you
Speaker 2: had like a deer management trajectory and a habitat management path.
Speaker 2: Like there's the two parallel things, right, and your your
Speaker 2: deer management decisions have changed right as you went from
Speaker 2: you guys are shooting anything to then let them go,
Speaker 2: let them grow. And now more recently that's changed because
Speaker 2: of CWD and you know, getting more folks involved. But
Speaker 2: the habitat side of things and let them go, let
Speaker 2: them grow. What am I trying to say here? Managing
Speaker 2: for what's right for the landscape, or what's right for
Speaker 2: the larger ecosystem, or what's right for the forest, what's
Speaker 2: right by what Leopold might say, like that does not
Speaker 2: have to be mutually exclusive from somebody wanting to practice
Speaker 2: let them go, let them grow. I want better deer
Speaker 2: hunting too, right. I think when I look at what
Speaker 2: you have there, I think what I'm getting at here
Speaker 2: is when I look at your situation, you are someone
Speaker 2: who said that I want to manage my landscape for
Speaker 2: the health of the ecosystem, not just big deer, but
Speaker 2: the product of you managing your landscape for the health
Speaker 2: of the ecosystem is that you do have great deer
Speaker 2: hunting and you do have big giant bucks. So I
Speaker 2: guess what I'm trying to say those things doesn't have
Speaker 2: to be an either or decision for someone listening. It
Speaker 2: can be a yes and type situation. Right, I think
Speaker 2: you are living improve for that.
Speaker 3: You're exactly right, and living proof is you know. I
Speaker 3: guess that's one of the things that the benefit of
Speaker 3: time and age really is. I talked to folks all
Speaker 3: the time who ask me about sort of shortening the
Speaker 3: learning curve on, you know, on improving their property. My
Speaker 3: question is is who do you want to improve it for?
Speaker 3: And they're like, well, for deer, And I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, the most part deerre going to live real
Speaker 3: well around here, no matter what I mean this and
Speaker 3: this is you know, this bigger southwest Wisconsin area. But
Speaker 3: you're exactly right, those things are not mutually exclusive. We
Speaker 3: can do we can do what's best for the biotic
Speaker 3: community as a whole. You know, Leopold said that whole
Speaker 3: thing about a thing is right when I actually wrote
Speaker 3: it down. A thing is right when it tends to
Speaker 3: preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty, which I thought was
Speaker 3: an interesting word for him to have in there, the
Speaker 3: beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it
Speaker 3: tends otherwise. So what's the biotic community, right? It's not deer,
Speaker 3: it's not turkeys alone. It's all of these other things.
Speaker 3: But like I said about forest management, like managing our woods, well,
Speaker 3: gee uh, one of the smartestportishers that I've worked with,
Speaker 3: who's not even a deer hunter, asked me after we
Speaker 3: did some work, well, you know, how's this affecting your
Speaker 3: deer hunting? And I said, it seems to be better,
Speaker 3: and he goes, yeah, isn't that interesting? Good forest management
Speaker 3: is good deer habitat management. And then again, just making
Speaker 3: a vague reference to what's going on in northern Wisconsin,
Speaker 3: part of what the habitat part of one of the
Speaker 3: issues they have up there's a habitat issue. It's just
Speaker 3: it's a degraded habitat and you know, maybe some overmature timber,
Speaker 3: but when you look at a piece of property like ours,
Speaker 3: and you know, and I didn't get we've spent a
Speaker 3: little time out here, but you know, we've got some
Speaker 3: brand new woods starting over where we did the shelter
Speaker 3: would harvest, and you know, one hundred years from now,
Speaker 3: by god, there's going to be a big oak trees
Speaker 3: up there again. And the next whatever how many generations
Speaker 3: that is frum now they're going to be cutting great
Speaker 3: Grandpa's trees too, and only this time it'll be dugably
Speaker 3: great Branda, right. And then we have areas that we
Speaker 3: you know, we're just letting it go, sort of a
Speaker 3: legacy area. There's big, old, giant oaks in there, and
Speaker 3: we're in this wonderful position because of that two hundred
Speaker 3: and forty acres, eleven different stands of timber where we
Speaker 3: can do that. And I don't take that lightly, but
Speaker 3: every decision I make about the management of this property
Speaker 3: is done thoughtfully and with the advice and help of experts,
Speaker 3: and then it all gets held up to the mirror
Speaker 3: of it's not ours, it's just our turn that we're doing.
Speaker 3: We're planning and implementing today something that's honoring the past
Speaker 3: and doing the best we can for the future, for
Speaker 3: the present and the future. And I think philosophically that's working.
Speaker 3: I know, the philosophically is working really well for us,
Speaker 3: and I think that that was what Leopold was getting at.
Speaker 3: I mean, just stealing all this stuff from Leopold, you know,
Speaker 3: the land ethic, that idea, that and I've been there
Speaker 3: with the land ethic the reason he evolved into that.
Speaker 3: And he died when he was younger than me. He
Speaker 3: was sixty two. He had evolved and he talks about
Speaker 3: that in the Sand County Almanac about this isn't this
Speaker 3: is the land ethic is something that he came to
Speaker 3: over time. And I think that the lesson of Leopold
Speaker 3: is maybe we can get that land ethics. We can
Speaker 3: rather than it being the the result of a lifetime,
Speaker 3: that those lessons can be learned that and even the
Speaker 3: lessons need to be learned over time, I guess, but philosophically,
Speaker 3: you can develop a philosophy pretty early on. And it's
Speaker 3: been really gratifying that it's in our just our turn
Speaker 3: has been has resonated with people because it's pretty straightforward, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, Okay, it makes sense to me, and so
Speaker 3: is this a good thing to do for now in
Speaker 3: the future. Man, I've done plenty of things in my life,
Speaker 3: not just on this farm, but it all seemed like
Speaker 3: a good idea at the time, and maybe they didn't
Speaker 3: work out that well. And we certainly had some of
Speaker 3: that in conservation as well. It's really interesting when you
Speaker 3: start to read Leopold's notes on Vacation. I was reading
Speaker 3: a collection of essays that hadn't really been published, most
Speaker 3: of it hadn't been published before that, and you know,
Speaker 3: he was really into upland game birds, and which was
Speaker 3: kind of interesting because it was like peasants. You know,
Speaker 3: there's in the natives, of course, but pheasants are an
Speaker 3: exotic but he liked hunting pheasants. And the cool thing
Speaker 3: about that was is that the habitat that he was
Speaker 3: concerned about and was creating was for more than that
Speaker 3: one particular species. And that's what I find to be
Speaker 3: really interesting that if you can work on a property
Speaker 3: and do conservation on a property that is thoughtful and
Speaker 3: looking forward, doing the best we can now for the future,
Speaker 3: learning from the past, the diversity that can happen has
Speaker 3: a lot more impact than managing for one particular species.
Speaker 2: And it's not even just because it's the right thing
Speaker 2: to do, but it's also it practically leads to better
Speaker 2: results too. So by that I mean like everything in
Speaker 2: the ecosystem is connected, right.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: What you do impacts the bugs, which impacts the birds,
Speaker 2: which impacts the plants, which impacts the deer. And what
Speaker 2: you do with the deer impacts the vegetation, which impacts
Speaker 2: the small mammals, which every little you know. I think
Speaker 2: it's mirror who said that you pull one thread in
Speaker 2: the world and everything else is connected. And so I
Speaker 2: think that it's having that kind of multi species or
Speaker 2: bigger picture set of goals, like managing for the community,
Speaker 2: not the individual. It leads to better results for your
Speaker 2: deer hunting or whatever it is, your focus on your pheasants, whatever.
Speaker 2: And I think there's this this opportunity though, because people
Speaker 2: listening to this podcast want quality deer hunting, right, That's
Speaker 2: what I've always wanted, and so I've always looked at
Speaker 2: what can you do to get better deer hunting? And
Speaker 2: so often what we realize, though you brought this up earlier,
Speaker 2: is that our deer situation most cases is like the
Speaker 2: least of our problems in the area. Right. Deer do
Speaker 2: pretty darn well and a lot of habitat types around today.
Speaker 2: They are incredible survivors. They're overpopulated in many places, But
Speaker 2: all around them are all these other animals, all these
Speaker 2: different insects, birds, game birds, songbirds, you name it, amphibians,
Speaker 2: all sorts of other critters that are rapidly disappearing population
Speaker 2: declines fifty sixty seventy eighty percent, even common critters around me,
Speaker 2: I mean around you, like we are, everything around deer
Speaker 2: are kind of in crisis mode, unbeknownst to a lot
Speaker 2: of us. And then deer just kind of standing there
Speaker 2: as the bathtub are draining around them. And so I'm
Speaker 2: increasingly realizing that if we, as folks who care so
Speaker 2: much about deer, if we don't plug the hole in
Speaker 2: that bathtub, because the whole thing is falling down around deer,
Speaker 2: eventually it will impact deer and the thing that we
Speaker 2: first and foremost care about or brought us to this table.
Speaker 2: And so it would behoove us to start doing some
Speaker 2: things to help the rest of that system, to keep
Speaker 2: the thing that we originally loved around too. And I
Speaker 2: think we've got a huge opportunity to do that. And
Speaker 2: it's not it's not just altruistically, it's also self serving,
Speaker 2: Like if you want to enjoy the thing you love,
Speaker 2: we probably have to look beyond just how do we
Speaker 2: grow bigger deer? How do I get the best food
Speaker 2: plot or the best tree stand location? Right?
Speaker 3: But yeah, I couldn't agree with anymore. That's been the
Speaker 3: interesting thing to me about all of this. You know,
Speaker 3: it's like the accolade, like the deer manager thing, trying
Speaker 3: to do the right thing for the entire community biotic
Speaker 3: community ends up being the right thing and best thing
Speaker 3: for the thing that we are most in the case
Speaker 3: of people who are most interested in deer hunting. So
Speaker 3: then what happens Then what happens when that thing that
Speaker 3: you are most desirous of deer becomes a detriment to
Speaker 3: the rest of the biotic communit And that's what we
Speaker 3: have in southwest Wisconsin. And it's becoming a detriment to itself.
Speaker 3: And this is where I get into arguments with people,
Speaker 3: or people take offense at some of the things that
Speaker 3: I you know, but other people, you know, the offense.
Speaker 3: Why do you want to kill all the deer? I
Speaker 3: don't want to kill all the dear You know. What
Speaker 3: I want is I want healthy deer. I want a
Speaker 3: smaller population. I want a healthy population, and I want
Speaker 3: a healthy ecosystem. Those things can all happen at the
Speaker 3: same time, but here's what we need to do to
Speaker 3: do it. Unfortunately, there's a lot of discussion these days
Speaker 3: about box biology, you know, like out west or up
Speaker 3: out west. I guess with the hunting lions all that stuff,
Speaker 3: and then in northern Wisconsin people just want to kill wolves.
Speaker 3: Big wolves are cool. I think they belong in the landscape.
Speaker 3: I think we need to manage them, and I think
Speaker 3: it's really unfortunate that we're not getting to manage them.
Speaker 3: But one of the things that I've noticed is that
Speaker 3: about about a lot of folks, but particularly about deer hunters,
Speaker 3: is that they want to project more than they want
Speaker 3: to go. What what is it that I can do better?
Speaker 3: Looking in the mirror is kind of a tough thing.
Speaker 3: I had this conversation with a neighbor about you know,
Speaker 3: it's just not like it used to be. You know,
Speaker 3: I've been hunting on that same stump for twenty years,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, you got to move stumps, man, But
Speaker 3: it's you know that they're not if they're not evolving,
Speaker 3: and he thinks it's well, it's because this or that
Speaker 3: is happening, and It's like, there's all of these things
Speaker 3: that are happening happening around you, but the one thing
Speaker 3: that you can really impact is what your behavior is.
Speaker 3: It didn't that doesn't work anymore, Let's do that at
Speaker 3: U school like that. No, it goes like this. You
Speaker 3: know that that is really one of the things. But
Speaker 3: people calling for science based management, you know of wolves
Speaker 3: of bears, of cougars, whatever, what about science based management
Speaker 3: of deer. If we were following science based management and
Speaker 3: white tail deer in southwest Wisconsin, we would have still
Speaker 3: have earn a buck. We'd have I would think that
Speaker 3: we would have an earlier done season. We don't start
Speaker 3: deer hunting until the week before the Saturday before Thanksgiving.
Speaker 3: And the reasons for that are they're political. Right now,
Speaker 3: We've got politicians want them being involved with the deer
Speaker 3: hunting up north and we're going to They want to
Speaker 3: outlaw killing does for the next four years. The biologists
Speaker 3: are all like, that's that's not that's not the problem.
Speaker 3: If the problem is I'm not seeing the problem, you know,
Speaker 3: And then you have these politicians have these public hearings
Speaker 3: and people are hollering about the deer hunting is no
Speaker 3: good anymore. It's like, well, what are all the reasons
Speaker 3: for that? And what they look at is wolves or
Speaker 3: we're killing too many doughs or you know, and rather
Speaker 3: than one specific thing, there are all these it's multi
Speaker 3: layer and that's where the scientists, where the biologists come in.
Speaker 3: Let's talking to a dear friend of mine who's a
Speaker 3: dealer wildlife biologist yesterday, and one of the interesting things
Speaker 3: that he has said to me in the past. He
Speaker 3: didn't say it yesterday, but one of the things that
Speaker 3: he said was, you know, it's really hard to being
Speaker 3: a deer biologist because I thought that our job was
Speaker 3: to manage and the resource for the benefit of the
Speaker 3: people of Wisconsin. It seems like, because of the way
Speaker 3: the system has worked and the politics and whatnot that
Speaker 3: are involved, is that what we're really managing, or being
Speaker 3: allowed to manage because of the laws that have been changed,
Speaker 3: is just the deer hunting experience. And people don't seem
Speaker 3: to think we're doing a very good job of that.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, I don't know, man, I think you
Speaker 3: do a hell of a job of it. Part that
Speaker 3: is because we're looking in the mirror and here and
Speaker 3: doing it you know, we've had an incredibly successful year
Speaker 3: this past year, and we've had, you know, in terms
Speaker 3: of just numbers of deer killed killed, forty seven deer
Speaker 3: on this six hundred acres this past season. So six
Speaker 3: hundred acres is less than a square mile, and this
Speaker 3: certainly is an all habitat. But and people will say
Speaker 3: to me, I can't believe that. You think there's sixty
Speaker 3: five deer per square mile of habitat in this county.
Speaker 3: And I was like, I think there's more, because that's
Speaker 3: I mean, that's kind of the number that gets banteed above, right,
Speaker 3: So I actually think there's more because over the past
Speaker 3: five years now, we've averaged almost forty deer a season
Speaker 3: that we've killed, so two thirds of the deer. And
Speaker 3: I've got trail cameras out right now and we'll fly
Speaker 3: a drona on that and those numbers are still way up.
Speaker 3: Part of it is, of course, that neighbors are not.
Speaker 3: There's you know, a bunch of different variables in it,
Speaker 3: and a big part of it is is quite honestly,
Speaker 3: the six hundred acres is freaking deer habitat.
Speaker 2: Great habitat.
Speaker 3: They might be going out and in the winter time
Speaker 3: and spending time in those you know, those fields and stuff.
Speaker 3: But they are living here, and so I'm not you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not taking sand to the beach. I'm not putting
Speaker 3: food plots in. I'm doing habitat improvements. Sure, I'm overseating
Speaker 3: trails with with with clover and doing those sort of things,
Speaker 3: but we're we're we're doing it on a high level.
Speaker 3: And then we're also really taking that deer herd down.
Speaker 3: And look what we did this year. You got a
Speaker 3: four year old, cal got a five year old, We
Speaker 3: got three, you know, we had four or three year olds.
Speaker 3: We killed some younger bucks. Also. I still got really
Speaker 3: nice deer on camera. I mean, like I didn't send
Speaker 3: them to you because you might have been hey, you know,
Speaker 3: little late season. I actually did welcome a couple of
Speaker 3: my operators that come in late season hunt. They never
Speaker 3: got a shot tomorrow, I think it's the last day,
Speaker 3: but they saw some of those deer. My neighbor shot
Speaker 3: a five year old buck that, unfortunately that I had
Speaker 3: on camera a bunch of times. Unfortunately, he was CWD
Speaker 3: positive and he was starting to show the signs. My
Speaker 3: other neighbor got a five or six year old buck.
Speaker 3: He doesn't test, so we don't know, but that deer
Speaker 3: was definitely in decline his antlers the year before. I
Speaker 3: think even sent you a picture, big giant buck, big
Speaker 3: drop time on him, cal and I saw him the
Speaker 3: night before opening day, and then the neighbor shot him
Speaker 3: the next morning, and see and the other way there
Speaker 3: was another one. So really, you start to take these
Speaker 3: overlapping areas here and we're killing a half a dozen
Speaker 3: big mature deer and there's still some left. And the
Speaker 3: guys over to Durant Farmer, we're just laying them down.
Speaker 3: And I've got some other neighbors now they're doing the
Speaker 3: same thing. You know. I mean when I say neighbors,
Speaker 3: they're not necessarily touching this. But you know, a half
Speaker 3: a mile away property another half a mile away, we're
Speaker 3: not going to run out of white tail deer from
Speaker 3: killing them with with guns and boats or cars. But
Speaker 3: the impact that that the disease is having is is concerning.
Speaker 3: So again it's sort of balance and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: You keep on bringing up the food plots thing, bringing
Speaker 2: sand of the beach, right, so I gotta I gotta
Speaker 2: do my pushback on that to you and see.
Speaker 3: It to the bait.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, a bite on a bite. So so you
Speaker 2: and me had this debate when I was down there visiting,
Speaker 2: and I understand your take. Your take is that there's
Speaker 2: food all over the place, so why are you putting
Speaker 2: more food out there? Right? And my rebuttal to that
Speaker 2: was twofold. It was one part which was, well, yes,
Speaker 2: but with a food plot, you can be more strategic
Speaker 2: with it in ways can help you actually shooting deer,
Speaker 2: you know, hunting, putting the plots where you want them, better,
Speaker 2: positioning or designing the food plot to give you a
Speaker 2: better shot opportunity. With a bow, you can plant something
Speaker 2: that's unique compared to what's on all the farm fields
Speaker 2: around you. So you can be the ice cream shop
Speaker 2: in the in the neighborhood and draw deer in because
Speaker 2: of that, et cetera, et cetera. So there's all these
Speaker 2: hunting things and you kind of rolled your eyes and said, yeah, whatever,
Speaker 2: you weren't impressed with that. I stand by it for
Speaker 2: folks who for folks, for folks who especially bow hunting,
Speaker 2: you know, want to increase their opportunities. There's there's a
Speaker 2: reason there. But I think my best argument, which I'm
Speaker 2: curious if you have done some more thinking, and I
Speaker 2: think I'm wrong on this, But my best rebuttal to
Speaker 2: you on this is that I think that food plots
Speaker 2: are a great entry way. They're a great entry drug,
Speaker 2: you could say, into the conservation wildlife habitat world, in
Speaker 2: that they are usually the first thing that a deer
Speaker 2: hunter tries when they're thinking about trying to improve habitat
Speaker 2: because it's the sexiest thing, because it seems to be
Speaker 2: the thing that is most you could be the most impactful.
Speaker 2: So it's a thing that everybody talks about and everyone
Speaker 2: sees like, oh, wow, so and so has food plots
Speaker 2: and they kill deer, and so I'm going to try it.
Speaker 2: And so my argument is that that is not a
Speaker 2: bad thing. That is a good thing, and that people
Speaker 2: see a food plot on TV and they say, oh,
Speaker 2: I want to try that because it might make my
Speaker 2: deer hunting better. I say all that because if that
Speaker 2: person goes and buys a buck on the bag food plot, seed,
Speaker 2: whatever it is, and they plant a little food plot,
Speaker 2: I recognize that is not the end all be all
Speaker 2: of improving wildlife habitat or helping your deer population, but
Speaker 2: I think it's a really good way for people to
Speaker 2: dip their toes in the water. And then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden realize like, oh wow, I this food plot thing,
Speaker 2: and I learned that I have to pay attention to
Speaker 2: soil quality. Hmm, what new rabbit hole might that they
Speaker 2: take me down? Or Hm, I'm doing this food plot thing,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, I'm realizing like, I'm spraying
Speaker 2: this roundup stuff. How does this kill everything? What does
Speaker 2: this do? And maybe you read an article about it
Speaker 2: and then you realize like, oh, yikes, there's this thing
Speaker 2: called spray drift and it's killing all the milkweed around
Speaker 2: here and that's why I don't see butterflies anymore. Or
Speaker 2: maybe you do this food plot thing and you realize like,
Speaker 2: oh wow, when I cleared out this little patch of
Speaker 2: forest to get the food plot in, not only are
Speaker 2: the deer feeding on the little clover patch I planted,
Speaker 2: but actually there's a ten yard strip of just weeds
Speaker 2: and stuff that are grown around it, and there's all
Speaker 2: these flowers in and out, and now there's all these
Speaker 2: bugs in there, and the deer feed on that too,
Speaker 2: So maybe there's something to this, like early secessional habitat,
Speaker 2: and maybe I should read more about this. And if
Speaker 2: that person who at first was just interested in planning
Speaker 2: a food plot to kill more deer, if you give
Speaker 2: that person the opportunity to do that, not all, but
Speaker 2: many people I think end up in their own little way,
Speaker 2: having conversations with themselves or their hunting buddies or their family,
Speaker 2: kind of like what we're having here today, in which
Speaker 2: they realize there's more to it. And if you have
Speaker 2: that opportunity to start realizing that there's more to it,
Speaker 2: then you have an opportunity for more people to start
Speaker 2: thinking about managing their timber, for more people to start
Speaker 2: thinking about early secessional habitat. There's more opportunity for people
Speaker 2: to maybe think about, hey man, not only can I
Speaker 2: improve this place for deer, but I could also make
Speaker 2: it better for the birds and the bugs and the
Speaker 2: water quality. And none of that happens on my mind
Speaker 2: unless that person. I'm not saying this is the only interway,
Speaker 2: but I think it is one common enterway into that world.
Speaker 2: So that is my argument to you, mister Doug Darren,
Speaker 2: for why food plots aren't so bad.
Speaker 3: What do you say, Well, what I'm not saying that
Speaker 3: they're bad. What I'm saying is my response to that
Speaker 3: is that you're saying that it's introduction to conservation, and
Speaker 3: it sounds to me like it's an introduction to farming
Speaker 3: because that's what they're doing, right, I mean, or gardening.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's what you're doing. You're putting in a
Speaker 3: little garden for the year. So that's something that's you know,
Speaker 3: it's very it's very specific. So rather than an introduction
Speaker 3: of conservation, it's it's an introduction to farming. If you're
Speaker 3: gonna introduce somebody to conservation, let's introduce the conservation. And
Speaker 3: it's it's not if you're gonna put that energy in,
Speaker 3: Let's put that energy into simple habitat improvements, feather edging.
Speaker 3: And I'm not saying you can't do food or that
Speaker 3: it's a bad idea. I'm just saying that I think
Speaker 3: that it's it's over focused on And the other part
Speaker 3: of that is what kind of a food plot and
Speaker 3: if you are going out and you're tilling it up
Speaker 3: every year in your spraining and you're doing the I
Speaker 3: mean all of that, right, I mean, because you know
Speaker 3: when you do you you watch a food plot video
Speaker 3: or go to a food plot seminar. They're talking about
Speaker 3: they're talking about spraying, they're talking about pH or the soil,
Speaker 3: they're talking about fertilizing, they're talking about farming. And I'm farming,
Speaker 3: you know, or at least it was that's what that is.
Speaker 3: That's farming. But at the same time, I work with
Speaker 3: a do some work with a seed company feeing of
Speaker 3: our sponsors, Hoxy Native Seeds, And before I started working
Speaker 3: with those guys, I went on their website and you know,
Speaker 3: let's kind of see stuff that they have because Noxy
Speaker 3: Native seeds. And then I saw food plots and I went, Okay,
Speaker 3: I guess I'm gonna have to take a look at
Speaker 3: what they're recommending for food plots. And maybe they're in
Speaker 3: the grassica business or corn and beans business too. And
Speaker 3: I went on there and their food plots were one
Speaker 3: native perennial and they were formulated for different species. I
Speaker 3: was like, that's a food plot I can get behind.
Speaker 3: I have giant food plots out here, it's called CRP.
Speaker 3: I have prairie strips in there, and those prairie strips
Speaker 3: are not providing corner beans. They can get and they're
Speaker 3: not GMO corner beans either, which is what most food
Speaker 3: plot corner beans are. Right, it's round up ready and
Speaker 3: there's raying round up. I've had many discussions with guys
Speaker 3: about food plots who you know, They're like, my food
Speaker 3: plot's kind of dirty. I'm like, so what yah, you know,
Speaker 3: it's a lot. It's like I was thinking about going
Speaker 3: redwock ready, so I thought maybe I go and sprayed again.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, that's what I mean. It's an introduction
Speaker 3: into farming. And man Like, sometimes I feel like I'm
Speaker 3: that guy at the AA meeting, Like I used to
Speaker 3: be way in the big giant bucks and I used
Speaker 3: to be way into food plots. But I guess I'm
Speaker 3: still into both of those things. But I just evolved,
Speaker 3: you know, over time, and I and and I just
Speaker 3: I and maybe everybody's got to involve and maybe I'm
Speaker 3: just like trying to, you know, push people along to
Speaker 3: learn things faster than I did. That let's worry about
Speaker 3: the habitat. Let's worry about if you want to do
Speaker 3: something rather than keeping that in CRP or or in field,
Speaker 3: put it in uh CRP and have a nice mixture
Speaker 3: in there. That's going to be providing food and habitat
Speaker 3: to more than just white tailed deer and or wild turkeys. Yeah,
Speaker 3: as soon as we're getting Now, we had a bunch
Speaker 3: of snow here, but now it's clearing off, and I'll
Speaker 3: look on the side hill over here tonight where a
Speaker 3: crp is, and there's a bunch of forbes in there.
Speaker 3: There deer out there scratching and stuff that's scratching it,
Speaker 3: just like they will in a in a cornfield or
Speaker 3: a beanfield for the leftover grain. So it's this we're
Speaker 3: we're we're accomplishing the same things without yearly inputs, you know,
Speaker 3: and all of that. And you've actually talked about the
Speaker 3: hell when are we doing the back fourty? You talked
Speaker 3: about that. So you don't disagree with me about this stuff.
Speaker 3: I just I would I would rather see people or
Speaker 3: I was maybe even rather is the wrong word. Maybe
Speaker 3: I would just challenge him because I don't want to
Speaker 3: run somebody down from putting in, you know, food plot
Speaker 3: because I don't disagree with what you're saying. More I
Speaker 3: do disagree with who might chill you. But I'm but
Speaker 3: it's like my buddy Chip, you know, Chip, you met
Speaker 3: Chip because what do you think I want to do
Speaker 3: down here, you know, on this and he's had the
Speaker 3: the Deer Management Assistant program. While I'll just come in
Speaker 3: and talk with him and he's like, oh, I was
Speaker 3: thinking about doing the food plot. Guy's kind of like
Speaker 3: it's all one big food plot. You got here already,
Speaker 3: and say, hey, feel why don't you let's think about
Speaker 3: seeding into it? Well, but structure, and they started talking
Speaker 3: about this guy's Chip started talking about switchgrass and all
Speaker 3: that stuff, you know, borders and protection and all of that,
Speaker 3: and like seems like plant some trees or some native
Speaker 3: shrubs in that sort of thing would be a good
Speaker 3: thing too. I think for almost every annual food plot
Speaker 3: kind of thing, you're going to find something that's perennial
Speaker 3: that's going to do as good as that's native, that's
Speaker 3: going to do as good a job, or semi native
Speaker 3: even you know, like an apple trees and stuff, and
Speaker 3: we're gonna going to provide what it is that you're
Speaker 3: looking for, and you're not going to have those constant
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the trick. I think the trick to
Speaker 2: a lot of this is really is realizing that for
Speaker 2: people to for most folks, most of us, you and
Speaker 2: I in many cases, right for us to for us
Speaker 2: to put time, energy, money, whatever it is, into a thing,
Speaker 2: into a project, into a property, it still has to
Speaker 2: satisfy like our our initial needs or wants out of it,
Speaker 2: like our selfish desires, which you have to look at that,
Speaker 2: like the simple base and incentives. And for a lot
Speaker 2: of us, for a lot of folks, still it begins
Speaker 2: with I want to kill deer. I want to kill
Speaker 2: big deer, And it might stay that way for long,
Speaker 2: for a long while. I think the trick is finding
Speaker 2: ways in which we can satisfy that based desire, like
Speaker 2: that initial desire, while also expanding beyond that to satisfy
Speaker 2: the rest, realizing that when we satisfy the rest, it
Speaker 2: comes back around and helps with that initial desire too.
Speaker 2: There's some people who don't need that initial thing, who
Speaker 2: just want to do the right thing for the ecosystem,
Speaker 2: and that's enough satisfaction. But it's not. No shame on
Speaker 2: anyone else who also like, Hey, I'm spending this money
Speaker 2: because I really like big deer, and the rest of
Speaker 2: it's great too, and I want to help it, but
Speaker 2: I still really want my big deal. That's okay too,
Speaker 2: And so I think the idea that I want to
Speaker 2: keep hammering is like both are possible. But to your point,
Speaker 2: don't just get stuck in the original thing. It's a
Speaker 2: much larger universe. Explore those other things. Is there are
Speaker 2: better ways. There's always a better way, and if we
Speaker 2: can continue moving down that path towards a better way,
Speaker 2: it will help with the original thing. That's like my
Speaker 2: that's like my thesis coming out of this, and that
Speaker 2: I think is where more attention, to your point, more
Speaker 2: attention needs to be focused on that stuff, because there's
Speaker 2: a lot of people talking about the obvious stuff, not
Speaker 2: as many people are talking about that next step.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's that's why I like to spend time
Speaker 3: with ecologists, you know why. I'm a big supporter of
Speaker 3: pheasants forever. I'll be at peasant Fest coming up the
Speaker 3: first weekend in March, two falls. I'll be speaking actually
Speaker 3: five times my pitches in here now. And the part
Speaker 3: of what we're gonna be I'm gonna be talking about
Speaker 3: is this right, I'm meant to be balling people off
Speaker 3: doing food plots. But what's really interesting to me is
Speaker 3: how even that you know that that Pheasants Forever is
Speaker 3: that who started the Farm Build Biologists program, right, they
Speaker 3: pay for a portion of those salaries and all of
Speaker 3: that that happens, and we have farm build programs that
Speaker 3: are focusing on doing the best thing for the land.
Speaker 3: Last year I spoke at a landowner and operator forum
Speaker 3: and it was about essentially getting those people to talk.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that another presenter talked about
Speaker 3: was red acres green acres, and so green acres are
Speaker 3: is the best land, right is the land that's going
Speaker 3: to be the most highly productive. Let's farm that. Let's
Speaker 3: not farm those red acres. So you might see a
Speaker 3: field and you know how you saw how the fields
Speaker 3: are around here, right where they're kind of go in
Speaker 3: and out of these hillsides and into these wood edges
Speaker 3: and stuff like that, and you know you're losing the
Speaker 3: first twenty five feet to shade and to deer and
Speaker 3: to you know whatever, you know, the wildlife. Well, rather
Speaker 3: than that being another twenty five feet a corner bean,
Speaker 3: so let's put that into twenty five feet of CRP
Speaker 3: or thirty feet of CRP. That's a perennial cover. That's
Speaker 3: a better filter for runoff. That's a that's for carbon sequestering.
Speaker 3: We're not ripping that soil up every year. And really
Speaker 3: interesting talking to a couple of guys who were doing that,
Speaker 3: and they were actually whether they're outfitters, and they were
Speaker 3: leasing land from farm their farmer outfitters, so they were
Speaker 3: commodity farmers and so they had their own farm, but
Speaker 3: then they were also leasing land from other other farmers
Speaker 3: and they were showing them what they were doing on
Speaker 3: their property. They said, we will pay you whatever the
Speaker 3: rate is for the whole thing, you know, for all
Speaker 3: the x amount of acres that you guys are currently
Speaker 3: being paid for. But what we'd like to do is
Speaker 3: take the red acres and not put those inputs into
Speaker 3: that area, put that into CRP, and if the CRP
Speaker 3: had paid is less than what the base rental payment is,
Speaker 3: will make up the difference. So you get to see
Speaker 3: our payment and we'll say if it's one hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy five, and then we'll pay the other twenty five.
Speaker 3: If it's two hundred dollars an acre for everything else,
Speaker 3: and we'll put that in and we're not putting our
Speaker 3: inputs into marginal land. Then we're we're putting you know,
Speaker 3: we're focusing on the best land, and then we're creating
Speaker 3: that habitat and then as upland I think they're also
Speaker 3: doing deer deer outfitting. They were creating better habitat for
Speaker 3: not only the animals that they were that that was
Speaker 3: a part of their operation, but for everything. I was like,
Speaker 3: and these guys were young bucks like you, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: holy moly, you guys are killing it. I mean, just
Speaker 3: from a thought process, right and and you know, here
Speaker 3: I'm sixty five, and what are you like twenty seven now?
Speaker 3: Or I just wasn't that far along in any of
Speaker 3: this as you are, and those guys were so so
Speaker 3: I think that's great, you know, I think I think
Speaker 3: that's kind of that's great. I also wasn't. I've always
Speaker 3: been kind of a casual hunter. You know. Ninety nine
Speaker 3: percent of the hunting that I've done in my life
Speaker 3: it's right out here. You know. A couple of couple
Speaker 3: of trips that you know, end up on television and
Speaker 3: kind of looks like, WHOA, you can do that stuff
Speaker 3: all the time. No, I did it once, you know,
Speaker 3: and it was a heck of a trip, you know,
Speaker 3: and so it's never. It's never. It was never my
Speaker 3: primary focus to begin with. I mean, I like killing
Speaker 3: big john bucks. You know there's a few on the
Speaker 3: wall back there, putting that big fella right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and pretty good for a casual hunter done.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's so funny about that. I meant
Speaker 3: to bring that up earlier that we'll just leave a
Speaker 3: little bit. I meant to bring that up earlier where
Speaker 3: we were talking, to go all the way back to
Speaker 3: the beginning of what we talked about. That's exactly how
Speaker 3: I what you and I did that day when and
Speaker 3: you ended up killing that buck that's back over here
Speaker 3: on the on the table.
Speaker 2: I should I getta turna turned the camera against so
Speaker 2: they can see my beautiful deer back there.
Speaker 3: Dad, I'll just pull it up here, pray not to
Speaker 3: break its nose off. Here's your here's your big giant buck.
Speaker 2: Oh man, look at that. I got to figure out
Speaker 2: a way to get back up there and grab that
Speaker 2: thing soon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's that hole in it everything.
Speaker 2: It's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's sitting right over there with Cols. You know,
Speaker 3: Cal killed a really nice one too. Yeah, But I
Speaker 3: did the same thing with that buck. With with with
Speaker 3: the standard, which this is smaller than I might add
Speaker 3: if we were going to compare.
Speaker 2: Thanks thanks for then by several orders of men too.
Speaker 3: But I did the same thing with that. You know,
Speaker 3: there was an area back there that I had spent
Speaker 3: this time in. I saw this deer. I figured him out.
Speaker 3: I went back to the tractor and was brush hooking
Speaker 3: the edges like I always did, left the tractor running
Speaker 3: and the thing is and I ran over and strapped
Speaker 3: to a climber to this elm tree that wasn't really
Speaker 3: big enough to hold me. And two weeks later I
Speaker 3: crawled up in that thing. I had deer walked up
Speaker 3: the same spot and that's where I killed it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there was just the same Oh, and there was an
Speaker 3: apple tree there too, and it was it was the
Speaker 3: end of October, and in those days we could hunt
Speaker 3: at the end of October with rifle. So I shot
Speaker 3: him at thirty five yards with a rifle. Kind of
Speaker 3: felt bad about it. I was like, man killed him
Speaker 3: with a boat, But then I probably just wounded him.
Speaker 3: But it's that all of that is, you know, I
Speaker 3: get excited about it. I'm real interested in it. But
Speaker 3: the thing that I'm real.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: The thing that I like most about all of this
Speaker 3: is how much fun it is, for how interesting it is,
Speaker 3: and how it's just a part of conservation. Like I said,
Speaker 3: we went back to that yard stick thing right up
Speaker 3: the farm that if the farm's a yardstick used to
Speaker 3: be three or four inches. Hunting was something we got
Speaker 3: to do when we got the choice. N That's why
Speaker 3: we were never bow hunters when it just I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna be sitting in a tree first part
Speaker 3: of we're picking corn stuff. Have time for that. And
Speaker 3: one of these days I may get back out there
Speaker 3: with the boat. You've kind of inspired me.
Speaker 2: I'm going to keep pushing you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it'll be a crossbow. But yeah, uh so
Speaker 3: I want to it's all a part of it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I want to assume let's assume that there is
Speaker 2: at least one person listening to this, who's heard what
Speaker 2: you have to say and what I have to say,
Speaker 2: and who thinks to themselves. Huh. You know, I've been
Speaker 2: dabbling with the food plots. I've been dabbling with deer
Speaker 2: habitat improvement and trying to get better hunting. Some of
Speaker 2: these things that Mark and Doug have said makes some sense.
Speaker 2: There's probably value in expanding my horizons of what I'm
Speaker 2: looking at here, and maybe I can start trying to
Speaker 2: do some things that help the larger biotic community. As
Speaker 2: Leopold put it right. You know, I don't know where
Speaker 2: I heard this first. I think it might have been
Speaker 2: my friend Craig Doherty, but I heard this idea of
Speaker 2: Leopold landscapes and that being like a land of property,
Speaker 2: an area, a landscape managed in this kind of way
Speaker 2: that we're talking about, with a little bit more of
Speaker 2: a holistic focus, with an ion doing what's right for
Speaker 2: the whole ecosystem, for the biotic community. So this idea,
Speaker 2: if someone's listening and thinks themselves, yeah, you know what,
Speaker 2: I want to try to shift my little back forward
Speaker 2: into more of a Leopold landscape. What would be the
Speaker 2: guidelines or what would be a handful of principles or
Speaker 2: guidelines to think about as someone embarks on that project,
Speaker 2: either from your perspective, Doug, or what you think Leopold
Speaker 2: would say if we wanted, if we wanted to look
Speaker 2: back at the original og of this idea, what do
Speaker 2: you think some of those things would be that that
Speaker 2: we could think about.
Speaker 3: One of the first things I encourage any landowner to
Speaker 3: do is to engage with their local conservation departments. And remember,
Speaker 3: I spent a lot of time in Wisconsin, but as
Speaker 3: I've expanded, my people have contacted me from all over
Speaker 3: the country about land management. One of the things that
Speaker 3: the number one thing I say is take advantage of
Speaker 3: as many resources that are available to you as possible.
Speaker 3: Of course I'll tell them to read, you know, Sam
Speaker 3: County Almanac, or excuse me, some of these other writings
Speaker 3: of Leopold, but engaging with a local land conservation department
Speaker 3: like we had in Wisconsin. We have them on the
Speaker 3: county level, most you know, and most of the folks
Speaker 3: that we engage with whitetail deer hunters in the in
Speaker 3: the Midwest and the East. Almost every state has a
Speaker 3: Department of Natural Resources, and they'll have like a forestry department.
Speaker 3: Almost every state has a natural resource conservation service. And
Speaker 3: there those are the farm that's where the farm build
Speaker 3: biologists are. I think it's really important to engage with
Speaker 3: those people. But and don't be intimidated by their job.
Speaker 3: I mean, in a lot of their this is reservices
Speaker 3: to you. I mean it's your tax dollars at work.
Speaker 3: Is that they'll come out and they'll spend some time
Speaker 3: with you learning about that. But I also think it's
Speaker 3: important that you can meet try to meet people that
Speaker 3: are are are like minded, you know, engage with with
Speaker 3: the National Deer Association chapters, engage with Pheasants Forever chapters,
Speaker 3: woodland owner chapters. I mean, if you're a landowner, you
Speaker 3: should be in Those are things that you should at
Speaker 3: least have a cursory knowledge of. And then and then
Speaker 3: you kind of go, yeah, I like the idea that.
Speaker 3: I don't like that. I don't like the idea of that.
Speaker 3: But some of the the I one of the things
Speaker 3: that I tell people who contact me about land management
Speaker 3: consulting or I ask them is to talk think about
Speaker 3: what their goals and objectives are. You know, they might say,
Speaker 3: I'll want big giant bucks, and then my question usually
Speaker 3: is and is there anything else? Or why did you
Speaker 3: buy the property? The other thing is to get yourself
Speaker 3: a I mean, Onyx is a wonderful tool, but get
Speaker 3: yourself a laminated aerial photograph of your property and look
Speaker 3: at it from the five thousand foot view right, and
Speaker 3: then just you can laminate anything. You can take a
Speaker 3: erasable marker and mark on there and and think about
Speaker 3: the different things about that property. Just sort of take
Speaker 3: take stock of what you have. You know, like this
Speaker 3: is where the water is. And then there's apps that
Speaker 3: you can put on your phone. The plan identifying absolutely necessarily. Yeah,
Speaker 3: seek is the one. Actually that I have an old
Speaker 3: man head. I was forgetting there for a second. Uh,
Speaker 3: And that's fantastic that you're learning on your own a
Speaker 3: lot of what these things are. You don't have to
Speaker 3: be carrying a book around with you. You just tick
Speaker 3: a picture and that has been one of the most
Speaker 3: valuable tools for me. And then I have on X
Speaker 3: on my phone and I'm constantly I'm walking around. If
Speaker 3: I showed you my on X screen right now, I
Speaker 3: mean there's layers in there. But of all the properties
Speaker 3: that I'm involved with, I've got all kinds of different notes.
Speaker 3: Some of it's deer hunting notes, some of it's turkey
Speaker 3: hunting notes, some of it's trails and all of this.
Speaker 3: But it's also cool stuff that I say, you take
Speaker 3: a picture and you know, and that's what it is.
Speaker 3: So you're gathering information about your property and then you know,
Speaker 3: learn about your your watershed. You know, I'm in the
Speaker 3: in the Little Baraboo River watershed here and our crek,
Speaker 3: our little trout stream here is unnamed, but it empties
Speaker 3: into McGlenn Creek. You know, know how everything is connected.
Speaker 3: Get involved with a you know, if there's a neighborhood
Speaker 3: organization like a you know, like an NDA chapter, that
Speaker 3: might lead to a cooperative or something like that. Just
Speaker 3: kind of figure out who what your neighbors are like,
Speaker 3: and who your neighbors are is there are there things
Speaker 3: that we can do together. That kind of goes back
Speaker 3: to some of that og farming stuff when I was
Speaker 3: a kid, when it came time to bail and hey,
Speaker 3: i'll tell you part of the reason I got to
Speaker 3: hunt on other people's properties because when it came time
Speaker 3: to bail and hay and they need people stack in
Speaker 3: hand wagons areunloading them. Yeah, we got that call and
Speaker 3: b Barry just knew you had to be there for it, right.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't in exchange for it, because they've come
Speaker 3: and help you with yours too. But that was that community,
Speaker 3: that cooperation, that sort of thing, and I think that
Speaker 3: that's a great opportunity for fun, but it's also that
Speaker 3: great opportunity for cooperation, for becoming neighbors, and you know,
Speaker 3: sort of everything's connected, and that's those connections I think
Speaker 3: are super important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what would you say would be like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe your top two off the cuff two for kind
Speaker 2: of projects. So when I say at two for I'm
Speaker 2: thinking of a project someone could do on the land
Speaker 2: that is great for deer and deer hunting, but also
Speaker 2: great for overall biodiversity or ecosystem health. Can you think
Speaker 2: of a couple of your top projects that would be
Speaker 2: good for both of those things that someone could be
Speaker 2: listening today and say, okay, if that's something I got
Speaker 2: to look into further that I could actually do put
Speaker 2: on the ground this coming year. To two.
Speaker 3: Sure, creating edge and feather edging, Like in our case,
Speaker 3: there's in a lot around here and guys that I know,
Speaker 3: people that I know that owned property, you know, for
Speaker 3: recreation or hunting is yet you see a lot of
Speaker 3: these hard edges right where the trees go straight up
Speaker 3: and here's the edge of the field, and that's what
Speaker 3: it looks like and what we really want is more
Speaker 3: of this. So feather edging is one of those things
Speaker 3: there you need to learn how you know what's good
Speaker 3: and what's bad, right, I mean good tree, good tree,
Speaker 3: bad tree, good shrub bad shrub. But those are the
Speaker 3: kinds of things that you're immediately creating habitat along a
Speaker 3: field edge, and especially if it's kind of a you know,
Speaker 3: it's not a productive field or I mean when I
Speaker 3: say field, I mean openings. You know, that's one of
Speaker 3: them specifically for deer. Were just in general.
Speaker 2: Two first, so one that would be good for something
Speaker 2: that's good for deer and overall biodiversity or ecosystem health.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, so feather edging is one of them because
Speaker 3: that provides so much. It provides both for deer and
Speaker 3: it also provides for everything. H and uh and that's
Speaker 3: really one. If you get the opportunity and you get
Speaker 3: involved with conservation departments and nrcs, they get funding for
Speaker 3: that too. So so uh so that's one of them.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say food plots, but I can't say.
Speaker 2: That you do your super diverse native seed food plot.
Speaker 2: That'sud of cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, and that's that's actually what I'm uh, what
Speaker 3: I've got going on uh coming up this spring is
Speaker 3: we're doing a pollinator habitat part of the Conservation Stewardship Program.
Speaker 3: I've been involved with so many different things that the
Speaker 3: CSP program is for for folks who've been involved with
Speaker 3: a bunch of different programs. So part of my agreement
Speaker 3: this time around is I wanted to do these things anyway,
Speaker 3: but is to to do these the pollinator habitat and
Speaker 3: and you can look at what seed mixes are are
Speaker 3: part of that, uh, and the pollinators are interesting, but man,
Speaker 3: a lot of that stuff is grasses and forbs, and
Speaker 3: so it's not only just for pollinators, but it's for
Speaker 3: you know, uh, it's for a lot of the bird
Speaker 3: the species. But then deer get in there and eat
Speaker 3: that too, And it's great betting because there's gonna be
Speaker 3: big grasses along with those forbes up to game birds
Speaker 3: utilize that kind of stuff. So yeah, the perennial U
Speaker 3: the perennial food plot and in this case calling it
Speaker 3: really what we're doing, which is the pollinator habitat and
Speaker 3: those are we're transitioning those too. That's I guess an
Speaker 3: important point on ours is that we're there's a pollinator
Speaker 3: habitat that's being connected to another pollinator habitat there with
Speaker 3: we're feather edging all the way along the edge of
Speaker 3: the road that goes up to it, so there's almost
Speaker 3: like this you know, connectivity. One other thing that I
Speaker 3: would mention that I did, it's coming up on ten
Speaker 3: years ago now, was on a real steep slope back here.
Speaker 3: I didn't think i'd ever planned another pine tree because
Speaker 3: of some things, but we planted pines on some real
Speaker 3: steep slopes back here as a part of our and
Speaker 3: as a part of a part of our plan. That
Speaker 3: land that you know we've been farming, it was on
Speaker 3: the side hill like this, and we planted trees and
Speaker 3: that we planned planted pines exclusively, and it formed a
Speaker 3: It formed a you know, a connection wildlife connecting area.
Speaker 3: And I thought, well, the deer were going to use
Speaker 3: that a lot. But it's been amazing. I've had trail
Speaker 3: camera back there. How other species are using that as well.
Speaker 3: And then of course there's thermal cover and all of
Speaker 3: that as well. So I really want to see a
Speaker 3: more hardwoods planet in our area. Seems like we have
Speaker 3: plenty of planes. But then I'm you know, contradicting myself,
Speaker 3: and I planted for acres of four acres of of
Speaker 3: of pines back here on these hillside strips, and they
Speaker 3: worked out really well for a lot of different species.
Speaker 3: But dear love them.
Speaker 2: It's great. That's three three good ones, Doug. So if
Speaker 2: I didn't have to, if I didn't have to go
Speaker 2: and make sure my son got picked up from school
Speaker 2: at a relatively punctual time, I would say we could
Speaker 2: talk for another hour on this, But but we can't.
Speaker 2: So I guess I want to. I want to do
Speaker 2: this again in more detail, because there's still I'm diving
Speaker 2: deep into this world.
Speaker 3: Doug.
Speaker 2: You'd be you'd be happy to know that I'm going
Speaker 2: further and further down the trail in your footsteps, trying
Speaker 2: to find ways to to expand my habitat horizons and impact.
Speaker 2: But since we can't do it right now, if I
Speaker 2: wanted to, or if anybody else wanted to go more
Speaker 2: into these ideas, dive more into the stuff, could you
Speaker 2: give us some recommendations. Is there any of your own content,
Speaker 2: of your own work that's out there right now that
Speaker 2: you'd recommend we go see. I know there's some cool
Speaker 2: short films that came out within the last year, So
Speaker 2: maybe that's something you want to plug, and then plug
Speaker 2: anything else of your own as well as if there's
Speaker 2: any other books or content from anyone else that you
Speaker 2: think would be worth us checking out to get deeper
Speaker 2: into this idea of you know, creating land or creating
Speaker 2: Leopold landscapes, this bigger picture kind of work.
Speaker 3: Sure, reach out to my friends at the Eldo Leopold Foundation.
Speaker 3: Go to their website, the Oldo Leo Foundation dot org.
Speaker 3: That's just a wealth of of Leopold stuff. I've been
Speaker 3: writing and working with Uh Savage and we did Savage
Speaker 3: Arms Company and Onyx and in both of those I
Speaker 3: wrote some articles about you know, chronic wasting disease. In
Speaker 3: this year now coming up, I'm gonna be doing more
Speaker 3: work with Savage about about exactly this conversation right, the
Speaker 3: pilosophical stuff. But if you go on to my website,
Speaker 3: Doug Duram dot com. Oddly, you know, you can find
Speaker 3: some of my content there. You go on Sharing the
Speaker 3: Land and you can see some of the content there.
Speaker 3: We will be doing more about farm this year again,
Speaker 3: and Uh, there's some short stuff about about sharing the
Speaker 3: land that I think is real, is really important, and
Speaker 3: so sharing the Land dot com, Doug Dura dot com.
Speaker 3: You can just kind of dig around in there, and
Speaker 3: I really encourage people to watch the video that's on
Speaker 3: Savage's website. It's actually part of their Serve the Land series.
Speaker 3: It's twenty two minute video about Leopold and the Riley
Speaker 3: Game Cooperative and you can pretty much figure out I'm
Speaker 3: in it for like two seconds. But I was part
Speaker 3: of the production of the whole thing and put it together,
Speaker 3: and I wrote about Leopold there and how he's influenced me.
Speaker 3: But also that really introduces the idea and the thought process.
Speaker 3: How too is one thing. How to think about it,
Speaker 3: I think is really you know, basic level developing a
Speaker 3: conservation philosophy. Think about that. What's my place in the world.
Speaker 3: So I know, I just threw all kinds of stuff
Speaker 3: at you, but that's who I am.
Speaker 2: I guess all good stuff, Doug, And we wouldn't expect
Speaker 2: anything less. And I appreciate you. I appreciate you talking
Speaker 2: about this with me, and hope we get a chance
Speaker 2: to do it again soon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hope so too. So say hello to Everett
Speaker 3: and Coley and and uh yeah, I hope to see
Speaker 3: you guys again soon, and you know, thanks for the
Speaker 3: involvement everything with you that you have been involved with.
Speaker 3: It was fun meeting up on that on that triple
Speaker 3: the land at the back forty stuff I think was
Speaker 3: really important to Yeah, man, I'm a big admirer of yours.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. And uh and thank you again for
Speaker 2: uh for sharing the land. It was was a heck
Speaker 2: of an experience down there with you. I had so
Speaker 2: much fun and I can't wait to share that story
Speaker 2: with the rest of the world. I think folks will
Speaker 2: enjoy it and I will always look back on that fondly.
Speaker 3: So, uh, that's cool. And one last thing, Man knows
Speaker 3: how to run a chance saw I was trusted, man,
Speaker 3: I was yeah, yeah, I was like, I was watching
Speaker 3: I'm in the skid steer, y'all see it. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: Mark knows what he's doing. Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I was surprised by that, but I kind of was.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's an underhanded compliment or not, Doug,
Speaker 2: but I'm gonna take it, all right, let's talk against
Speaker 2: So all right, thank you for listening. Hope you enjoyed
Speaker 2: that one appreciate you being here and let's just send
Speaker 2: it on out here quickly. Until next time, Thank you
Speaker 2: and stay wired.
Speaker 1: Tome mm HM