00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyon, and this episode number three and one, and today in the show, Steve Vanilla and Janice Potelus they're joining me to share the very exciting news about how and why we bought a farm and then habitat consultant Jake E Linger hops on for an audio tour of our new chunk of Dirt and now welcome to the wire Dhunt Podcast. As I just mentioned today in the show, we have got all sorts of exciting news, lots and lots of exciting news. So here in a minute, we're gonna hop over to a conversation I had with Steve Ranella and Janice Ptelis from Meat Eater to discuss one the heck which did why we bought a farm, what we're planning to do with it, and why I think all this is going to be particularly interesting for pretty much all of you, including some very very cool giveaways coming up, so stay tuned for that. And then after that we're gonna get into a conversation that I had with White Tail Habitat consultant Jake Elinger earlier this summer to give you all an audio tour of sorts of the new property. We walked up with Jake. We're gonna get his perspective, his first impressions, and all sorts of ideas he has for how we can start shaping this thing into something new. But first, let me just say this, I am super excited about this new project. Over the last decade or so that I've been putting out content for Wired to Hunt, I've always kind of looked at myself as a guinea pig. You know. My job here has been to seek out the best experts and resources in the deer hunting world, learn as much as I possibly could from them, put their ideas to the test in the real world, and then report back to you on what's working, what's not, what I learned along the way. Now, I've been able to do this across a pretty wide swath of of types of deer hunting. You know. I've been able to do a lot of d I Y type hunting on by permission properties, on small lease properties, done a bunch of public land hunting across different parts of the country and to a small scale. I've been to the dabble here and there with some habit at work on a couple of small spots, but I've never really been able to dive deep into private land conservation and whole scale land improvement projects until now. So with this new project, the aim is to guinea pig a whole slow of new idea is related to how to turn a tiny property into a killer hunting spot and ways that we can manage and improve the entire ecosystem from everything from bees to birds to bucks and everything in between. So that is the game plan for this year. I'm going to continue to hunt my spots by permission, keep putting. The Big Woods Family Deer Camp got three out of state public land hunts. But now I'm going to add to all that this deep dive into small scale land management. So really hopefully going to be like to have a little bit of something for everyone, really flesh out a whole wide spectrum of different ways to deer hunt, test it all out, and maybe pass something along you guys. It's helpful and interesting along the way. So that's what's coming up. Enough beating around the bush, though, Let's just get right to Steve Ronella and Janice patel Us and myself to give you the full scoop on our new project. Alright, we're back in another one of those Front of the Truck podcasts. I got Steve Ronella and Janice tell Us sitting up here with me and in Front of the Truck podcast something that happens a lot. It kind of is yeah, because I'm always traveling around and inevitably end up recording. Here's the best podcast studio I have. Do you think our podcast studio is stinking? But we're doing this thing. We've been half in the rain for the last four hours. Yes, we'll be, we'll be smelling it up, but we are here for a good reason. We have something exciting to share. Do you want to do you want to break the news? Like like you've got a really great line at the beginning of our video. The enthusiasm is spot on. Yeah, exactly. This farm that is it? We did by a farm, and I want to tell everyone what we bought, why we bought it, what we're doing. So it's the back forty, but the back forties what we're calling it, what it actually is is acres. Yeah, under selling it by like a significant By calling the back forty, you're under selling it by under promise over delivery. Right out the gate, we're surprising with how many more acres we have instead of exaggerating the acreage downald selling the acreage a modest, a mo honest, half abandoned farm. Yes, in southeast Michigan. And it was one of these things where, gosh, back in January or February of this year, we were talking through, you know, through this whole idea how we wanted to try to do it, and it was funny. My whole life, I've always thought if I ever was able to go out there, if I had the means and the ability to go out there and get a farm, it'd be easy, right. It was just always about having the means to finally do it. And I thought, oh, you'd find this wonderful, amazing place and then it would be rainbows and butterflies and your dreams would come true. So we finally came up with this idea and in a way we could try to try to do this, and that was not the case. There have been few rainbows or butterflies. Have been a lot more challenging than I expected, but we did find it. We found the sixty four acres. I mean, you felt that was challenging to find even just trying to find it was challenging trying to find you if I told you this. But I think we've spent several months looking for it, trying to find something to fit the bill. We found several that we thought would but we got sold out from underneath us. Oh. And I actually the day I found out the property we wanted it got sold, I was just frustrated that it was really nice. I mean it was sweet, but I feel I feel like we found something with similar pieces at least um. But that day I found out in the morning, I looked again online and I've spent so many days looking on line different portals and different real estate sites, and nothing else looked interesting within our general realm of possibility. And I thought, you know what, I just need to go take a drive and like burn off the steam and just look around. And there was one property I'd seen online that was not all that enticing, but I thought, I'll go just look at it. Maybe it's different person. And on my way to that property, I passed a sign here at this place had never had never popped up online before. Was it just like a sign nailed to an olk tree? Yeah, well no, just sign stuck in the ground, that kind of thing. Oh what's that? Pull it up on the map. That looks interesting, and lo and behold here we are. So a little bit of a stroke of good luck. Let us the back forward and here we are. Now we bought a farm. And what we are trying to do at a high level, and you jump in here, Steve, but at a high level, we are hoping to showcase what can be done on a small property like this, whether it's in Michigan or Missouri or South Carolina or Nebraska, when you're trying to have great hunting in particular deer hunting, but also looking at a bigger picture point of view as well. Yeah, it's wildlife in general and deer. And I think that when you get a place, I mean, it's easy to imagine, uh you know, if you have hundreds or thousands of acres in the Midwest, Like, it's easy to imagine that how things take care of themselves. But it's interesting to look at something I'm just like the micro scale of just like what would be regarded as a very achievable chunk of property for a lot of people. Definitely not everybody. It will still be like a huge jealousy factor, like we I'll never have something like that. But it's like, in terms of buying a piece of ground, it's big enough to do a little hunting on, big enough to see some impact from your labor. I mean, you know, this is like toying with the threshold of what that would look like. Yeah, it definitely. It's It's interesting because I think there's a couple of different storylines that we're we're kind of exploring here from I mean, we're documenting this whole thing in a whole lot of different ways. First and foremost, we have, of course, we'll be telling the story of what's happening in this property through the Wired Dun podcast. We've got a whole series of how to videos coming out from it, um a bunch of different articles related to the types of things we're trying to do out here. But then we've launched this new video series, the Back forty, in which we are telling that story as well, and not just you know, showcasing what we're trying to do, but we're bringing in a number of different experts to help us try to understand what it is we have here and how can we best manage it for everything from bees to birds to bucks. I think they don't forget the squirrels, and squirrels don't know we're going to really I don't think you can really manage for him the squirrels. Is there anyone does Kevin ever like, would he know anyone to talk to who would give us an idea as far as what we could do if we wanted to. I think if you planted corn and left to sit, that'd be good for squirrels. And if you and if you raise hell on these pine squirrels, I feel like that might be good for squirrels. But I don't know. I don't know who who knows you might see an increase in squirrels. But one of the more interesting things to me about doing a project like this is there's this there's this sort of idea in in in people's minds in a general sense, was this idea in people's minds that the best thing for nature is always just to like leave it alone. Right, You're this all the time, and it's it's easy to magine they're just leaving it alone is the best thing for nature. Um And in a lot of places, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for instance, that's all that it needs. Right, There are a lot of places that really do and undisturbed ecosystems. Leaving them alone is largely the best thing you can do for him. To let natural processes play out is like great, But in the place like this, that ship sailed, man, that ship sailed a couple hundred years ago. Right, this is all manipulated landscape. It's been manipulated and then manipulated again, and then manipulated again and changed and whole new plant species brought in. Everything has been everything's been messed with. And we should point out this is the middle of like major agricultural land right now. You're like in the you're not quite the you're not in the suburban urban interface, but there are large urban areas within a couple of hours drive from here. But yeah, you're just in. It's just an egg area and things have been you know, farmed half to death in a lot of places. Uh, there's not that much. Uh there's no big woods left. It's just wood plots and wood lots. And it's such a way that when you walk away from it. Um if someone walks away from it, it oftentimes just goes to pretty useless non native wheats, you know. I mean if you walk around and just and kind of like look at the landscape, it's a lot of introduced species. It's a lot of disturbed ecosystems and and disturbed plant communities. And so when you realize that, you're like, in a case like this, the best thing for the landscape, the best thing for the animals is to come in and do a new, more thoughtful round of land manipulation. Right, Like letting it sit isn't the best thing for it. And in terms of just like increasing increasing bio diverse, making better deer hunting, making better turkey hunting, is like you can do great productive stuff. And I think there's these two trains of thought. Are these two parallel paths that were following here with the back forward it one is right for most hunters buying a little farmers like the dream, right, Everyone kind of dreams of getting their own little piece of dirt and being able to mold that into whatever it is they've always dreamed of. So there's that whole storyline which we're going to be showcasing. For sure, we're gonna get deep into the the white you know, the white tailed geek kind of stuff. People really want to know. How are you going to design food plots? How are you gonna have great entry and exit routes? How are you going to run trail cameras? How are you going to hunt a small property like this with lots of hunters all around it and still maybe find a good buck or two. We'll definitely talk about that. That's not, though terribly unique within the white tail media world. What sometimes it's a little more unique is looking beyond just deer. And I think that's the interesting thing is can we do story number one? Can we turn a little farm into a deer hunting mecca? But can we also do that while thinking about bees and butterflies and squirrels and turkeys and native plant life? Can we achieve both those things? And why does it even matter to do that? Like, those are some of the ideas that I want to explore that personally are like really interesting to me because I geek out about deer, but I like the idea of pushing myself to learn about the bigger picture. Yeah, I think it's valuable because every day, more and more of the country um is disturbed. It's like the lands are broken up into smaller pieces generally, right, we're like generally going and we I mean, this is nothing new. We've been going since we became a country, of going toward increasingly fragmented places. And so I think that not that not that like we're pioneering something here, but I think that anything that can add to this, anything that can kind of add to build out an semple it of how to do small scale um land management projects to benefit wildlife and showing people that it can be done, what it requires to do it, the lessons of how how you can mess it up, how you can get it right, to just generally improve hunting and improve wildlife habitat on small chunks of ground, because that's in in the eastern US and and big portions of the big portions of the West. Like that's how sort of the war for wildlife is gonna be one. It's gonna be one by people making decisions for wildlife. It's like making wildlife based decisions or at least factoring wildlife into your decision making as you exist and work and live on the property. So something interesting we found while trying to try to research what we're trying to do here. When you think about at least a lot of times, when I think about how we can do significant positive things for the natural world still here in the United States, sometimes the first thing you jump to is our big wild public landscapes, and for good reason, we have six hundred plus million acres of that land. Um, but private land, these little small chunks like you're talking about, should not be ignored because a number I saw recently show that more than three hundred and fifty million acres across the country are owned or least by hunters. Really, so just imagine, like that's a lot of land that you can make a positive difference with six sixty million of federally managed public land and private half that much. Again of land it's sort of owned for purposes of hunting, owned least for least for purposes of hunting. So we as a hundred community, Yeah, like that's a normal, like an enormous uh area for potential impact. Yeah. So I think the pine this guy aspiration is is what if we could in some small way help inspire some small portion of that to to try to do a little more like we're gonna try to do a little more here and maybe we're able to share some ideas to help others. And there's a whole lot of million acres out there possibility, so that you know, of course, i'd love to see some big deer, and I hope we do that. But at the but the world's bigger than just big deer. Worlds bigger than the big deer, and so I think that that does get me excited. So even while we've had certainly plenty of challenges already when it comes to trying to turn this thing into a hunt in paradise, um, I still am excited about what we can do on that other side of things. I don't think that I don't think that one needs to be and you're not. But I don't think one needs to be apologetic about wanting to uh achieve good hunting or grow big deer out of property, because you have to have there has to be like the incentivizing sort of like the incentivising gateway to want to care anyway. I mean, so, argument, if we're gonna keep talking about like big Western public ends, a thing that comes up is that people argue that those landscapes need advocates, and you find great advocacy among hunters, meaning there are a lot of people who, like, you know whatever, on some big national forest, there's a lot of people who like to hunt elk there. Uh sort of the goal is you create all these people like to hunt it, and then those are people who are going to be inclined to advocate on its behalf and to watch out for it. So I don't think that one. You know, you don't need to be apologetic about Let's say you bought a bunch of land just to hunt deer. It's like, if you're gonna do that, and you didn't buy it just to subdivide it and put a golf course on it or build it into a bunch of condos, It's like, great, if that's what it took, the promise of hunting deer is what it took to get you to get the place. Fantastic because that allows it to stay like as a wildlife producing area. I own and I own one quarter of two acres and half of point six acres. I own that land for like very uh selfish purposes. You know, most people are not like in a position to um buy big chunks of property they're not in a position, but they don't really have the desire to buy big chunks of property, set them aside for wildlife, and then not derive some personal benefit and some interaction with it. So if growing big box, that's great. If growing big box makes you want to go out and like buy some little chunk of ground and sort of like protected for wildlife, um, fantastic. If you can do even more on that without hurting that, but in addition to that, do more that that increases bio diversity, and it kind of like helps nature out in places where she might be a little bit struggling, you know, helping out in certain species. It might be not doing too great and and allowing certain like plant communities to thrive. That might be sort of like gradually vanishing from the landscape. One of the things we talked about was like milkweed and monard butterflies. Right, you can have big box, you can grow dear. You can also do like cool things that create the experience of being out there just more vibrant and full of life. If the gateway is is dear, I don't great. Personally, I wouldn't buy a property if it if it didn't have the if it if it didn't have hunting potential and just wouldn't do it. Let except for where my house sits, but then that's gonna have a place to live. Anything beyond that, I'd be like, is a good hunting if not? Or could it? Could it be? Is it? Or could it become? You know? And I definitely think what we have here is a a a yes, And I think it is decent hunting and I think it can be great. So we've got One of the criteria I was looking at was something that had a lot of potential, something was kind of raw, but that we would have the opportunity to mold. And I definitely think we have that here. But we are kind of leaving out a huge punch line of this whole project to this point, because right we bought a farm, we're gonna try to manage it for great hunting, but also look at the bigger picture too. But then what are we gonna do on it? Number one other than hunted ourselves. We're going to do a giveaway, Steve, I hope you know about this. We're gonna give away a hunt with you and me and maybe be honest too. Out here on the farm so we're gonna bring some fan out here to join us. Check this place out, hopefully it's gonna be pretty great by then, and have a fun hunt during the heart of the Michigan hunting season season. What's that? Oh, yes, that's correct, giveaway a hunt for season. We eat a bunch of wild game at night, hunt during the day, and then eventually sounds like a good time. Are you into that? That? And we thought about what we don't know what we're gonna doing as far as accommodations, but we'll figure out some cool place for us. I'll stay and and have a good time. Hopefully see some deer. Oh, dude, that we'll see here. Yeah, there's bunch run around. Maybe not one of your dreams. Yeah, but this we're still talking about way down the road. By the next By next year, the deer of my dreams will be here. We'll be living here somewhere. And then what are we doing? What you tell the We're gonna give the whole damn thing away. We're gonna give it away. I gotta stay two the farm. We're gonna give the farm away. Remember not saying I was trying to think of yes, And now I'm blanking onto farm. We're not betting the farm. I was confusing betting the farm with by buying the farm. Given the damn farm away. We're giving the farm away. We're going to share over the course of the next year how exactly we're gonna be doing that. But I think the point being is that we're going to build something, hopefully that's awesome, and we're gonna pass it on and hopefully it will be a really exciting thing to share, and we're gonna squeeze some honts out of it first. Absolutely, we'll have some first time hunters get a chance a hunt. We'll have some hunters who have some challenges, that's true, some hunting challenges get a good hunt. We're gonna have someone someone who uh wins our hunt giveaway come out camp out here with us and hunt it, which would be fun. And we're they'll kind of but they'll be in the driver's seat on that one. I mean, they'll get the sweet spot. They're gonna get to go right to the honey hole and uh and then in the end, Mark has to do all this work, and Mark will have to he'll have to walk away, as we'd like to say, give the give away the keys to the gate, even though the gates gone right. Um, so what do you guys think you your honest just got to see the farm for the first time today, Steve, you've now seen it twice. Um, we tried to squirrel hunt it today. Yeah, well no, we didn't do any good on squirrels. But then we pulled the Yeah, it was just I mean, it's looking pretty good. No, they're here, but Mark. The thing is Mark's trying to not He doesn't want to like overly disturb it all out. We gave it a good little push. Now we're gonna go to our spot. We pulled a trail camp that Mark had up and realized that while we were out squirrel hunting there was a fox squirrel out of the field, a couple of them. But no, we didn't we didn't pull it together rained the blue wind. It's not really you know, if you were going to buy us, this is more of a deer property, definitely not a squirrel farm. It's not a squirrel deer and turkey. And there's not your great, big, wide open timber, a bunch of oaks. We've got a series of old egg fields that used to be farmed, they've been out of production for two years, has been two years, and then fast and then a big acre swamp in the middle that connects into a larger system across their naming properties. And then a thick brushy cedar native grass swamp, not swamp, prairie, ridgeline. It's got some really cool habitat on it. So there's a nice diversity of different habitat types. Uh, there's turkeys, there's deer, there's squirrels, not as many as we wish there were rabbits. There are lots of different birds species. Yeah, so we've been trying to serve like what do we have here now? How high quality is the habitat? Now it's raw at this point, but bird species six birds, something like ten mammals um and we're gonna, you know, get to work. I thought it was pretty interesting what I learned today that you told me about the like the two major criteria you had when you were shopping from the farm. Which were those two that I told you that you would have a neighboring farm that doesn't allow any hunting, or you would have a swamp. Yeah, that that would and those two things you felt like are very strong factors possibly producing a Yeah, so what I was saying was to try to find a place to hunt where you'd have a chance of seeing like a big mature buck in Michigan. Those are the two things I look for, Like a big swamp system, something nasty that could become a sanctuary for deer where hunters won't go into it, or yeah, a place that just doesn't allow it. But I apply that not to buying a farm, or not just to buying a farm, but also even when I'm trying to get permission, like I will seek out big swamps spots. So in this case that we had a part of that swamp on the property, that was like a big flashing green light that got me excited. But then I was also looking for something that had like all those building blocks. This is kind of like a blank canvas. What I like about all the old fields is that you have the opportunity to try a lot of different things. If it was nothing but sixty acres of pure, big hard timber, it's a lot harder to manipulate Aventure forest versus this kind of habitat. There's tons of room to do stuff. Yeah, So so that's what we're working with. We're gonna show step by step by step everything we're doing. The new video A series is launching when this comes. I'll be launching next week, and you'll get to see from the beginning everything from trying to fare out what do we have here to bring these different habitat and wildlife experts, to then actually starting to try to do the work. And I've alluded to some of the challenges in previous conversations on the podcast, but always kind of loosely. I haven't shared the full ah set of frustrations. But as you guys have probably got to know over the years that you've known me, I'm not the handiest. I don't have farming background. I don't have you pick. Does it not handy? Dude? No, you're not handy. Not handy. I'm trying trying to get better, but I'm not naturally handy. My dad was a computer guy, so I got that thing grown up, but I did not get like the hands on work stuff. So I'm just always struggling through trying to figure it out. Yeah, so this has been like all sorts of struggling through type of things, figuring out how to get this piece of equipment to work or how to get this thing going or so we've had those things, but we're pushing through it. We're making some progress. Our first set of habitat projects are in the books. Very small steps so far, but we have something. And the first hunting season and we just did the whole squirrel thing. Deer starts in two weeks. Yeah, and then next summer you can just like, oh yeah, starting this winner, starting this winter, it's gonna be a lot. And it should point out too that this is an area. This is an area in Michigan that produces some big bucks. It is I mean like right around here. Yes, that is very true. And and that was one of the other things I did look for was trying to find when you're looking for a small property, especially and if a deer is one of the things that are most important to you, a very very helpful thing is to be in the right neighborhood kind of like generically talking about the zone where there's other people that might be on the same page as you as far as management efforts. So that was another thing I looked at, was trying to get to know, like who are the people around here? Are other people interested in managing for wildlife and deer, and I was able to talk to friends of friends and do a little snooping around and chatting around and found out that there are some neighboring landowners who are in the same kind of same kind of page. Well, for perspective, how big, how big was the buck? And how big was the property that you got the buck on last year? So I killed a five year old hud buck last year on what sized property? Eighty nine acres, but more than half of that's just wide open field. So really it's like forty and you knew and that buck was there, and you knew he was like living in there. Well, he was living somewhere else, and I saw him like once a year until last year. Then all of a sudden he showed up for a month and camped out, camped out. But that's like, that's that's like a comparable kind of thing here. Yeah, so like you could make us it wasn't like it wasn't accidental that he settled into that zone. Well, what I was telling the honest earlier day is like that has been a neat little micro cosum or a small example of what might be possible here because on on that little farm. I'm able to do just a tiny little bit of habit at work and a couple of spots that don't mess with the farmers property with his I don't know. I just have access to it. Um. But what I do, what I do have control over is you know, when it gets hunted and so by. You know, we talked about this gun season sanctuary idea. I do a number of things like that to try to make this property really hospitable to deer at certain times of the year. And I think over the years that has led to the general population of deer in the larger area getting you know, a more and more Well, that's what I'm looking for, you a higher age class across the board. There's more older deer, there's larger deer. There's I think, you know, in in small micro ways. I've been able to make a positive impact there simply by making a handful of decisions. But then when you have something like this where it's all fair game, that kind of success with so little control gets me so much more excited for what could be possible here. When anything's possible. Um. But what that challenges I mean acres, I mean, it's it's it's it seems like a lot to me because I've never had anything to work with like this. But on the grand scale of things, it's it's pretty small. The deer aren't really living just here right there, all over the neighbors too. We just need to try to create something that all you know, deer, turkeys, etcetera. Will find the sweetest spot in town. Yeah. Well, I think just a kind of a final thought on it, man is, haven't been involved now and sort of the business of hunting television for a long time. Uh. One of the top conversations I have with people, um who like to hunt and then they sort of look at representations of hunting from magazines and represent presentations of hunting from TV shows is that they're often like seeing a world. They're seeing a world that's not their world, meaning that they're they're watching people hunt these like like giant least properties or hunting you know up in the Arctic and alask whatever, right, and it just doesn't look like it doesn't look like what they're doing, when what they're doing is they're out pursuing their passions on again, like modest small patches of ground right down like the property down the road, the property across the road, their uncle's little place, right, Like, that's where if you want to talk about just like nuts and bolts American hunting, that's where it's taking place. It's it's people hunting white tailed deer. A little ship in chunks of ground is what it is. And so let's talk about that for a while, right, I mean, like, I really you can show all this stuff that's like aspirational. It's great, and I engage in a too. Man, we do all kinds of aspirational stuff. We're like at a point, yeah, let's let's like examine that thing that might at this from from that might to some people from the service level, be like, it's not that exciting, it's not that interesting. It's just a small patch of ground. The bucks aren't you know so far as no like Boone and Crockett Box, It's like, okay, sure, but that's what we're living, man, and that's what most people are living in. So let's let's kind of like show and discuss and kind of explore a very real world for most people and see what you find out. You should add and celebrate because that's uh pretty uh special thing to have. That's very true. So what we're going to start today is fleshing out a picture of what it is we're doing here. And after we end this little introduction chat with the three of us, were bringing on Jake e Linger, who's a habitat consultant who was one of the people that came out here toward the property with us earlier this year, and he's going to help us kind of kind of give you an audio tour of the property and share with you his thoughts on everything he saw and ideas for some some steps we could take to move into this new direction. So that's the rest of today's episode. That's what we're gonna talk about. If you're interested in what we were what we're trying to dive into here, if you go to the Meat Eater dot com slash back forty, you'll be able to eventually see maps of the proper pretty some of all the content that we're creating around it, and all sorts of the video series everything we're talking about. You can also do that right now as today at the media dot com slash win a hunt that will take you right to that sign up as well. So I'm guessing a good way to stay abreast of everything that's going on here at the back. Forty would be to sign up for the weekly White Tail. Yeah, the same place you sign up with that link I just mentioned. You'll be on the newsletter. So think. And when you win this hunt and you shoot your buck, I will make hot buttered buck nuts for you. Who could say no to that? I will cook when you get your bar. Mark's licking his lips right now. That doesn't even have a dough tag. Right when you get your deer, I'll cook every damn thing you want to eat and some things you don't want to eat. All that, and with that we'll let you go. Thu, Stephen Jann for coming out here checking it out, and uh, we're gonna have some more adventures out here soon. Thanks Mark, Thank you. Mark. Alright, so we are doing um one of these on location podcasts, but we're not in a cabin, we're not in a house. We're actually sitting on my back deck here with Josh ford or Hilliard and Jake E Linger. We got a nice view with the bean fields and stuff behind us. Um, there's been a lot of does and fawns feeding back there. So five bucks to anyone who sees feeding out there. While we recorded podcast. Alright, I'm watching for Deer the whole time. Um, But what we did today was a lot of fun as far as what I'm concerned about, and that's what I want to talk about in this episode the podcast. What I'm hoping we can do here is do like an audio version of what Josh and I just got to experience with Jake, which thank you Jake for doing. For spending the time you spent with us today walking our new property with us. If if any of your clients get the kind of which I'm sure they do, plus some if they get the kind of like interesting insights and advice and recommendations and and enthusiasm like we did there in for a treat. I was telling Josh on or drive back. Probably my favorite thing about spending time with you in the woods, whether it be this property or when we toward yours, it's like just your genuine excitement about it. It just gets me even that much more because I can telege as you are about it, the the the the opportunities you see in places, and that is cool. Um, So that's a special thing. Well, thank you. You know. I often struggle with do people see the vision that I do, and I know a lot of guys that hire me don't. That's why I'm there. But for me, you saw, I can walk into a place and I can see in my mind what it can be. And that's why I get all jacked up because I just know a little bit of TLC a couple three years of time. Man, can this be a great place to hunt? Yeah? And that's that's you know, that's what we're looking for here today? Was right? We we we bought this new property in southern Michigan. It's sixty four acres of raw potential from what I saw when I eventually first scout it out and picked in and we were able to purchase it. And I've had all these different ideas and all these different visions in my head and things I want to do or things I think we could do, or things that maybe we could do, but I'm not sure how to quite pull it off. Um. But to this point, it's been mostly just me and a couple other people I know that have been able to really take a look at it. I was really hoping for an outside new perspective on them, Like, was I right? And the ideas I saw, the opportunities I saw. Are there some other potential red flags that I didn't catch? Um, how would somebody else approach this? That's those are the questions I've been having. And I want to bring someone like you in who has that kind of skill set and and just a long background of experience to pull from to take a look at the property and say, these things look good, these things not so much. Here's some different ways to think about improving your food source. Here some different ways and think about improving your betting. This is how I think deer might be using it now, this is how you could change that. Here's some things to think about from a hunting standpoint. I mean, that's that was like my dream situations if you were able to come in and share those kinds of ideas, And that ended up being exactly what we did. We walked all over the place, stopped in a lot of different locations and kind of broke it down. Um. Some idea for this conversation now is let's rewalk our steps, Let's park our truck at the front of the property and walk through it again and talk about what's of interest and just we'll dive into more detail now than we did earlier. Today when we were just walking about with the video cameras and chit chat. So, so we pulled into the parking lot. It's not really parking lot. We pulled into the drive. I've got a lousy screen that I tried to plant at the front of the farm to try to block it from the road. It's it's it's actually one of the best on the property. So cam in Okay and with some nitrogen, I think will be able to get the boost and will work. But we started out in that front field. We call it field number one. It's basically the property kind of looks like the state of Oklahoma a little bit. If you imagine like a pan kind of looks like a make a pot almost, and the panhandle is where the property starts. That's the road front is the narrow portion of the panhandle there. That's field number one. It's a big brushy field overgrown with all sorts of stuff and then thick, nice fence rows all around it. So we started walking down the north property boarder. I've got a little two track kind of cut in there. Just I guess give me your first perspectives on what you saw when we started walking through that portion of the farm. Well, what I liked was you've got the really neat what i'll call the traditional old fence rows. They're quite wide, probably five to ten yards wide, big trees, cherries, some oak trees, some hickores, things like that in there. And then you've got you know, kind of this patch where of fields that at one time we're cultivated but are not this year. So you know there's all kinds of good natural betting already in their golden rod, pig weed, uh, ragweed growing in there. There was a lot of natural food sources and good cover right now the way it is. But because of that, your access is a little bit tight because you're in that when you say we enter into the panhandle, so it's narrow. You've only got one or two choices where can I walk? So you pick the north fence rows makes as much sense as anywhere, and as great as it is with some cover and opportunity to food for food, that's the last place you want to put food. If you're in and out of there, you park there. I like the idea of your screen. I think if you get some two things, hit it with some nitrogen, and then maybe go back in with a broad leaf killer and knock off the competition, and you'll still see it be five six ft tall for the years over, and that'll be good for you pull in there and be hidden. I do think that it's as when I originally got on here early in the spring, I was like, well, this is up front in the road. There's not gonna be much activity. But now with how well all that gold run everything has grown up. I mean it's once you get just back a little ways, I mean it feels quite secluded. Yeah. I think at a minimum we'll be able to do a lot of dough hunting up there, don't you. You pointed out a couple of things when we were there, like the high spots versus the low spots. Um, can you touch on a little bit of that? How you thought, dear? Might you know? So we we walked maybe I don't know, a hundred and fifty yards heading east along the north border, and we came to i'd probably guess primarily the high point in that field, and it was a nice little, nice little flat shelf. And so typically because of wind and uh, just the way air moves in high ground, deer like to cross where they can have the best ability to have their noses work for him. And then directly east of there, maybe fifty sixty yards, it was a pretty good, nice little low spot, which again depending on the conditions the wind direction, things like that, dear are gonna across and utilize that as well too. So there's two neat little spots right there where you're gonna have encounters with deer. And then when you came to the corner of the very first food uh fence road that went north and south, you've got a gap to bring equipment through, and what a place to kill dose. We hadn't been there five minutes right there basically, and we what was it three four There was a couple of three and they were just in that tall golden ride and all that pig way, and they weren't five or ten yards away from us. Was really cool. We're just standing there talking. All of sudden they jumped up and ran away. So I think long term, depending how long you own it, you might consider into the core of that first field. The food source was some screening all the way around it for like early season in late season doe harvest, but it would require your screen do really really well, so nobody from the road can see what you got going on in there. So okay, so how far across do you think that like the panhandle from north to south, so the narrow old length of that panhandle, how far do you think that's a hundred yards wide? Maybe? So how far do you think from our access trail would we need to put that food source? If we're going to get into food source, they're screened in little plot, which I did think I have thought about them that can you get that in there? Would be nice to have a little something up here? How far away do you think we have to get that? We get to quietly getting enough if you have a good screen and and it would require two screens, one along that trail and then one also on the inside edge of the food plot, so you could definitely get into them. So you could have kind of a long, narrow, hourglass shaped plot in the center of that field. And with the screens plus the natural goal and round, all that stuff has to be real, real thick, that'd be uh, you know, from a priority, there's lots of other things you can work on, but a couple of years from now, if you've got everything else working for you, that'd be a place to focus on and another thing you mentioned though that could keep it low key, but maybe just sweden it just enough to help our early season dough hunts was the idea of doing some strategic mowing through there. Yeah, can you expand on that, so you could go into the lower area and across that high spot that deer like to cross, and just literally mow a four foot wide winding trail through that high golden rod and and pigweed and maybe make a couple of openings. You know, think of a clover leaf with two or three and and so you'll have that the exit trail go up and then end up next to another fence. For all that's easy for you to access. And so you and those deer are going to use those edges. They're gonna use those internal openings. Even though there's not food per se. You'll mow that. Something's gonna come up, probably some clover and a lot of volunteer stuff is going to come up. So you'll have green in there this fall, probably something for it a six inches tall, and de you're gonna congregate in those openings. They're gonna use those edges. I mean, if you get creative and just do some winding trail systems with some openings in there and then have them ending where you want to stand location. I think that's a really easy way to just take advantage of that field one end field to really which are the two parts of the panhandle? Kind of that I you know, like you mentioned, access is the big question mark with a lot of things on this farm, but especially there at the front because it's the Panhandle. It's a very narrow area I have to come in and out of every time I hunt. I originally, okay, these first two fields that formed the Panhandle, I'm just gonna not gonna plant anything because I was afraid of spook and deer in a night. But I think this is a really clever way of still doing something that can help you just a little bit, just improve your chances hunting up there a little bit. And I think there's no question that there are deer already up in there. Yeah, Like were we spooked them? When I've walked out from a Scotlan trip the other day in the evening, blew a bunch more deer out of there than I realized. Um, And it would be easy, quick project to do for something. This is the first week of August. So if you know, man, if you just get in there in the next two weeks, get that done, I mean you're you're good to go. And just keep in mind, don't do any straight lines. Make sure those trails can deer can't see into an opening into where you're walking or where you're walking into an opening, there has to be a big enough you know, s curve in it or something to block their visions so when you are walking through, they're not able to see you. It's a good point. Now is that more? Is that mostly just for that reason so they can't see you, or is there also something to be said about that encouraging their movement down the trail. It's twofold one, so they can't see you. But secondly, when you do get bucks cruising, you know they use their eyes a lot, and if they can look out and say, oh not need dose that little opening. But if he can't see into that opening, then then it will force him based on when to walk down around that curve look in there, and he just might go all the way across and walk right through another mode trail you have going to a oak tree that you've got set up and you're happy to be hunting there that day and it can just you know, um okay, So Field one, that's the story there. It's it's mostly gonna be our access and exit route. It's going to be a spot we can get some good dough hunts in early and who knows, I mean a buck could come cruising through there. But it's a safe location to get to, very easy to access, very nice place to harvest. Goes you're not even in the property per se, piece of cake. We found a really nice tree five yards off the road that we think Josh will hunt from. We did see location. I'll be sleeping in while you guys are. Then I'm super early to hike all the way the back. I'll show up just before daylight there. And that you can find the silver lining and anything that's that's a good um. So then moving to Field Too, very similar to Feeld one, and that it's this overgrown old farm field. I guess we shouldn't know, like Field one must have very high quality soil or something going for it, because it did have like the best growth. I mean it was already above our heads in that field. So imagining in entire farm field covered in six to eight foot tall, we growth of falls or stuff, golden rod. There a lot of diversity, and you moved into field too, so we just got, like, like you said, a five or ten yard thick fence row of just trees, cherry trees, brush. You get to feel too again mostly the same thing, except for it starts to drop off down towards the bottom and then on the neighboring property you've got a small chunk of timber that connects into this field. Um, and that the bottom of this hill is where our big swamp begins. Was there anything and field to worth noting? Outside of what we talked about the field one? You know what I did like about Field two was the topography change and the fact that just as you transitioned from field one to field two, there was at north south fence row and that little tractor gap, and that's where those funds were laying up high on the hill, probably for sent scenting conditions and other things, but again just a perfect location for dough harvest. Easy in, easy out, don't have to drive back very far and pick it up. And I do think I think for sure there's gonna be movement coming in and across there from that timber on the side of the ridge across our old field. And then if we do the food plot that we'll talk about in field three, that could pull dear across right through there and use that the you know, two thirds the way up the ridge kind of typical ridge type moving across there you might see. And the fact that say, the eastern end of field two was the lowest level and that's where you're swamp and thick cover sanctuary type environment was. I think there's gonna be a lot of cruising opportunities the eastern end and and the northern edge because of that thick cover that the neighbors got. Yeah, that's a good corner. Um. What would there be anything? So those two fields as of now we're talking about mostly leaving relatively in touch. Maybe put a little food plot in their tuck then there, maybe do some strategic wing um. But you saw the types of vegetation in there right now in those two fields diverse, um, a little bit of everything. Would you recommend or is it something not worth prioritizing trying to do anything to manage that vegetation there, or is it pretty darn good as it is and you should let it be you know, for a couple of years it's going to be fine. Eventually other succession comes in and it will change. But you know, maybe two years down the road, if you have people or have experience doing backburning control burns, you can actually burn the bris and maybe do a very light disking through there. Man, it'll be up eight nine ft tall again the following year, given rain and the conditions this year. Okay, that's that's kind of some of the things I was thinking about, trying to just revitalize, and then we'll talk to some of the other fields that aren't as good. You know, We've talked about some other ideas, but I really do want to make sure we one thing about those fields in the early spring when they're you know, extentia is a foot eighteen inches tall. That is a lot of deer food. I think people totally miss how much good natural food is right there fields coming back up. Man, that's good at early successional growth. Certainly, the times I've been on turkey hunting the spring and stuff, they were hitting it there in their feet. There's a lot of good food for him. So that's nice to see. So we headed down that hill. We got to the bottom where the edge of the swamp is. When we continued on towards field three and you get to this kind of big cross intersection where you get the power line which is the edge of the swamp, intersects with this two track that goes down into the swamp across the high spot in the swamp that also intersect with the offense row coming down and then there's a gap. So imagine like take a t, make a t with your hands, and then make a little gap right where those two lines come together. Imagine there's a little gap in the trees there that deer could come easily through back and worth along each line. That's the kind of situation we have where fields two and three come together. And I stopped and I said, hey, this was an area of interest for me. Do you see it too? Um, can you describe what you saw and if you if you agree with that at all? Yeah, And number one, it's kind of steep right there where it's heading to the east going down the hill, and yeah, there's a power line that you know it's been opened and the utility people keep it clear. And you've got a fence row that comes to an end and leaves a nice gap right there, and I think especially during the cruising phase of you know, pre rut, what a location to get into. And it might even be a good evening stand in early season, say the tenth to fifteenth of October, given good conditions. Again, there's just a great edge there, and because of the opportunities the deer to kind of show up from anywhere, come out of the swamp from the east, come from the west, and that's the only gap they can go through. It would be very easy for you to get in and out of that. That's what I like about it. Access is great, and that that whole tree, the whole fence row that comes up behind it is really thick, and it's actually a big ditch in there, and just a bunch of junk and tangled mess in They're like, I don't see many deer wanting across that. They're gonna want to come through that game. I think they're gonna use that game, especially if you take the time to mow it or something like that to give them a little path to walk through down there. Now, is there the barrier like those kind of brush barriers and those in the uh has that been built up along that? Like we saw up towards the front. No, I don't think there's that like up towards the front of the property. More towards the beginning of the panhandle. The previous owner or several owners back could like stacked a bunch of trees and stuff like that. That doesn't continue there. But it's just like there's it used to be a ditch. It looks like they filled it with a bunch of trash and junk. So there's a bunch of junk junk in there, and then it's just tangled briers. I mean, it's I've never even tried to walk through. It's like so nasty just for me to walk through. Uh So, I gotta believe most deer would rather not at least probably. Um So, it's a nice big I can't remember what country it was. It was a big tree, was an oak, a big cherry, because a cherry right there, big tree they all looked at. That's where you put the stand, yep. I think we could The question can we get a if we do a saddle sit up there? I don't know if we can get a saddle tether around because it's so big, So what to look at that? Maybe you'll have to do the ladder stand or something to get around a big enough tree like that. But yeah, easy spy, you could sneak right into the back of the hype climbing there. See in the field three, maybe'll see the little I don't know, the food plus pretty tucked down in there, but you can see you can a little long ways hopefully get some cruising along that edge. Also, deer might be coming up and down that uh line of travel along the fence rather extends down the two track through the swamp to um, so those are I think you also will see up into fields four and five swamp to the other side. We could also kind of, um, you know, buddy up as an observation stand for you because you know we're it's sitting and you can see right across your swamp in the fields three and four. So it could be a very beneficial stand for the right time of the year. Yeah, I mean, I could totally see the first couple of days the season maybe even like I kind of wanna be in the action because you never know. At the same time, I want to just be able to see a lot of stuff. Being a low impact that's kind of just enough in there that I feel like there's a chance that something could pop out the same time, I can see a lot of country and not really be messing stuff. And when you go to Leaven evening when it's dark, there's no food around here, so you can just slip right out and slip any deer. Well, that's the beauty of that spot. So the one downside about filming or recording podcasts outside of my deck in farmland is that when the guy who farms the farm right next to you decide to spray everything right when you record a podcast, it just happens. So we're gonna get some round up spread on us or something here, Yeah, in the next few minutes, but we'll be okay. So we saw that intersection point thought that would be a good place to hang a stand, And then it took you to field number three, which was this next field that is a little bit larger than one and two. It's another one of those overgrown farm fields. This one is not quite as thick as the others. There's some spots where was higher, some spots or it wasn't quite as good. And you've got um some mayor's tail and different things like that. Um but this is a location that I thought it would be a good place to possibly put a food plot, because it's far enough from that north access route that I didn't think you'd be spoken deer when you come in and out. And I wanted to have some kind of attractive food source on the west side of the swamp, so i'd have somewhere to hunt with wind directions, you know, on that side. Um, I didn't want to have to always go to the far side of the far right, so I thought, I gotta have some kind of food source on this side to work with. So my original idea was to plan a pretty substantial food plot in that field, and I planned a screen of Egyptian wheat and sorghum and sunflowers and various things along the what would that be the western border, um, along this neighbor's property, and he's got there's like a barn and a garage and a bunch of junk and stuff there, and then even in one corner you can even see the house. So I thought, I need a thick screen there to block this whole neighbor's yard and stuff visually from this field. If we're gonna do it and make this work from a food plot standpoint, the screen did not come in well at all, So basically it's unscreened. Now with that situation place, if you imagine neighbor's house can see all these things overgrown field and then a swamp of the bot on the hill. And I came to you, Jake, and said, okay, now what do I do? Can I plan a food plot here? Should we not do a food plot here because of how how visible it is by that neighbor? Um, what do you think about that area? Well, you know, lucky for you, you had a really nice little depression about two thirds of the way to the south and close to the east side of the third uh field tree, and it was low enough to where if you put food in there, the neighbor is never gonna be able to see it. The deer when there, you know, it must be twenty feet of train change and it's probably gonna get a half acres worth by the looks of it. So I encourage you to go in there and moment spread and plant some food in there. And that's going to really help that that stand that we just previously talked about in that gap, because you're going to get a lot of north south deer movement right along that that fence row using that same train. Yeah, they're gonna follow it along that thick edge, and there's the food and it could be a really good spot. And I think you'll be able to get in and out of there real easy into that stand because that food is down over the hill. I mean, I don't think the deer will ever know you're there, right, And the beauty of it, you could hunt the stand. We talked about the t intersection. You could have a stand there and hope that you'll get deer traveling on the edge towards it. Um. We also talked about the idea of brushing in the ground blind just above the food pot so that you could access it from the back slip in and then just once you're in, you'd be able to see down the crest and from the west and that would be a great ground line. You know, probably wouldn't want to hunt much. Yeah, a couple three hunts, a couple of times at the right time, and then maybe you could even hunt. We never even went to it, but the far south border there on that edge, you could probably throw a stand and catch deer moving out in that direction. You'd have to. And then you could walk right up by the neighbor's house walk neighbor is a junk pile and go down to that stand exactly and not bother any deer. You know, Yeah, I think that's gonna be. Ah. I think that's gonna be a little better location than I'm even giving a credit for, because I do think that deer, there are going to be some number of deer. They're gonna want to move out that direction, head towards those crop fields across the road. Natural movement would pull them out that way. On certain wind directions. It might be it might be a nice little sweet spot. It could very well be. And then that from there is just this big swamp. And I described it to you was kind of the shape of a gourd, like one of those cords, like a long handle on it, kind of. And um, so at the far northern side of the swamp is the handle of the gourd, and as you go farther south, it widens out into this big, bulbous shape. So that's this big swamp. And we we crossed the narrowest portions, we crossed the handle of the gourd. We've got a little two track that runs across the dry spot, and we got into the beginnings of that wet land, and then we walked a little bit a couple of that. We entered it into several different parts to look in what we're kind of looking at as a sanctuary. We're kind of I'm kind of almost entirely leaving the swamp as a sanctuary because it's acres maybe of really incredible cover and tough to get in and out of, very tough for a human to get in and out of there without something no when you just stepped in. And I think that's one of the biggest reasons why I liked this property from the beginning, because I had that. I don't know what you think, Jake, but so often when I'm looking for a property here in Michigan, just like when I'm looking to get permission or something, I always try to find a property that's close to like wetlands swamp something like that, or or another thing could be like a farm that's awful the mist hunting, or something that's going to protect a buck. To maturity. I feel like a big swamp is one of those things that can give to maturity because I can hunker down there during gun season and survived the orange dr army. So when I saw that, I was like, right there, that tells them it's probably a mature buck around here because he has that. Um. So tell me what you thought about what that looked like, how you would be using it or manipulating or leaving a touch or world. Just where we entered first, you know, it was kind of thick and there were some cherry trees and you've gotten invasive buck thorn we didn't talk about, but you've got some buck the worn. But once we you know, that was ten or fifteen yards and it went into read canary grass with some uh, there were some dogwood edges, but they were a very natural deer trail right along the cover where it was dry enough to not be wet and they're keeping them from getting their feet sage. Okay. A lot of trails going in and out of there. And so I saw that as a great location. There was a couple of cherry trees that you could put a stand in and that would be more of a rut period stand to watch deer and probably with a south and a southwest or west wind, that would then be more on the east side of that swamp, trying to use their nose to set check what's laying or using or crossing that swamp, trying to cut trails of doors. And then those deer would come right via in that stand and you would actually be hunting, you know, just into the the edge of the swamp, but you'd be up in a nice high tree, you know, that's part of a big old fence row right there. And it's it's kind of a natural pinch that's formed because of how everything grew right there. It's almost like if you imagine a triangle, a right triangle, so you've got that right angle, and then you imagine you're holding your gourd and then you take a right triangle and just jamming into the side a little bit, and so you've got that angle cut into the gourd of your swamp. That's sort of what's happened here. And that inside corner there of the right triangle that you pushed into the gourd creates that pinch that you have now, and deer want to move on the edge of the swamp, the corner forces them around it, which just I think becomes that special little focus of activity, right I think you know, again, when it comes to a you know, at seeking cruising phase at ten days of the year before they're actively chasing and running and and all that, that would probably be a high activity area of buck screwsing through there. Now, how do you think deer are using the Gordon general? Um, you saw we didn't go way deep into it, but you saw a couple of little points within if you imagine it looks mostly like that. You know, some of it's wet, there's some there's some islands where you've got some maple trees and some cottonwood trees and some willows growing on. And then on the narrow end of the gourd towards the north, that's where it again became higher ground. So I think the deer are using that north higher ground, and then they're they're using whatever is dry, depending on the season, along the edges of where it's dry. And then probably when it comes to gun season, just because of pressure, you've probably got some little islands and things out there, some little clusters the size of this table, maybe twice the size of this table, and you're gonna have deer useing nose just to get away from people. So do you think that most of the dope do most of the dough betting is happening, like up in the hills and the fence rows, and something right up close, maybe right on the edge of your swamp, but right up close at first ten yards of cover where it's still high ground. And then bucks. Do you think bucks even now might be betting on some of those islands in the swamp or they stand up? I think there's some, you know, depending how many mature bucks you have right now, But of course this time of the year, they're all pals in there and at each other's thin Yeah. Yeah. So what about sanctuaries in general? What's your perspective on like this idea I have of leaving that thirty five acres relatively untouched. Um, is that something you generally like? Is that something you recommend? I mean, I love having a sanctuary having that area you do not hunt, okay, But on the other hand, manage it. Clear out trails in the off season to know where these deer are moving and then set your stands according to be on the entries and the exits. But you've got to have a sanctuary. You've got to have place that the deer on that property that you're trying to advance to the next age class can go get away from you and get away from the other hunters and still, you know, we all have a pretty good life without a whole lot of stress and everything else. So the the argument from some people would say that's stupid to leave a best party of property in touch because that's where they want to move in daily. Um, what's your answer to that person? You know, there's there's one or two days a year I set stands. You've been in my place. I do go into my quote sanctuary, but it's just once or twice and again, we're hunting a high pressure state. You're a little bit different here and depends what your goals are. And I think your goals are to try and move dear that you used to be happy to take now and to advance him to the next age class. So if you've got a really good one, kind of a homeboy, it spend a lot of time there and you'd really like to see him next year, then give him that spot. Don't don't go in there and and push him so hard that he leaves. Then he might go over in the neighbor's property. Even getting a little trouble um, But I mean, I love sanctuaries for what they what they are, and it is a safe place, a safe zone for those funds and bucks of different ages. And I like that they offer you, as a landowner, opportunities to hunt mature DearS. They come and go, but I'm a big believer in leaving them alone most of the time. But it's worth taken to risk, especially when you've got a buck that's on your list, he's in, you're getting pictures of him coming and going. Then when everything's right, go in and hunting. Yeah, you know the Hall Mary Shop. Yeah, from a from a management perspective, you know, talking about sanctuary stuff. In the off season doing some work. I know you mentioned trails cot some trails in there. What would be like your number one recommendation in that area to do this offseason too. I would I would go in there in the off season and follow those trails, see where they go, and they're gonna some of them are gonna lead into some really thick cover and it's gonna be so thick it's you're gonna see it's very hard for deer to move through there. So go in there and open those trails up to you know, three ft wide, you know, two two and a half feet wide or so, get them tall enough so that you're tall tined. Ten inch bucks that you grow around here can move through there when they are in velvet because they don't like to mess up their antlers as they're moving around. And clear that debris out of the way. And then cut kind of some side spurs that go to some high ground for dose to use, so they actually you can just you can double the amount of deer use in that sanctuary by opening up new trail systems. Maybe you maybe the trail has got a bit of an arch curve to it, and you you cut a snaking trail that goes from one part to another and just adds a little another feature of movement. And so I do a lot of that in the off season. Cut openings and locations for dear to move freely, but still give them all the cover, make them feel like, man, we're in here and it's great. And then strategically ending those that's points where we want to have a stand set up, direct those out tours and you know, yeah, any of those trails that that you're cutting should be connected and eventually come by a location you've got a stand, and those are the stands are easy for you to get into. Your literally going in five yards, you're in that stand. You haven't really entered the sanctuary. So talk about how you think, uh, these bucks will be operating during the fall or with that swamp a little bit around. Um, how you imagine them using the wind to check what's happening in the swamping. Because we talked about setting you know that little right triangle into the gourd, We're like, hey, we should stand there because they'll be cruising it. But why are they cruising it? What are they trying to do there? Um? Because I'm always I'm always interested to know what direct what wind direction are they going to come this direction? And what wind direction when they go that direction? Can you just allow? So Number one, we're talking about a mature deer, and here in Michigan, I consider that three and a half and older. Some might say four and a half and older, but for sure three and a half and older and then a three and a half Michigan deer's pretty well pressured, knows a lot about hunters, starts avoiding people, and also deals with a lot of competition. There's not near as many three and a half here, there are an other states, so that puts him in line to be a breeder, okay, active in the rut. So what that buck's trying to do is literally just be very efficient, cover enough ground quick enough so he can go from one location to and to the next. So he's gonna use his nose most of the time. He's gonna be down wind or he suspects does are betting, or he's gonna he's going to use a parallel trail along an edge of that swamp where there are dough trails that are perpendicular that are going crossing maybe the the reed carry grass and going up into those maples. So there might be three or four places where does like to frequent. So his goal is through that hundred and fifty yard walk that he's taken that morning, he's gonna cut four or five of those trails and hopefully come across uh a dough that smells like she'd be worth you know, going and checking out. And in that process he's also going to keep tabs on his competition. Some of these Now you start getting into your four and five year old bucks, you know, they're in the top of the hierarchy, and they maintain, you know, their ability to stay at the top of that hierarchy. So they're pretty pretty concerned about who their competition is. And through that process, they're making some scrapes here and there, they're doing some rubs and that's hiss, you know, say, and it's always on the down wind side, so under you know, that last pinch point that's ideal for west south and southwest. If the wind happens to be out of the north, then that buck is going to be completely over any other side of that swamp, over on the west side of that swamp, on the south side of that swamp, doing his cruising because he wants to smell the want a cross, and you know they're they're nomadic animals that don't follow us. Gripped a lot, but in general, you know, I'm just because hey, anybody who's hunted and watched, you're gonna see deer that do things completely different than what I'm mentioning. But in the grand scheme of things, their goals they get down wind and use their nose as possible. When you're in really good cover where there's never a person like your sanctuary. They never run across human odor. Then they start letting their guard down because it's thick, it's security cover, and then they'll do things called tail winding and maybe not really worried about the wind for this to fifty yard jaunt that they take through the read canary grass where it's it's kind of an opening, so the wind in one moments from the north and the next moment it's from the west. They don't, you know, they just it's the right time of the year for them to take a risk because they feel like they can. But you won't see them do that in open field, that type of thing. So when you say tail winning, you're you're saying walking somewhere with the wind actually coming from behind them. Yeah. Um. So we checked out that little right triangle in the gore, checked out the sanctuary. We talked about the sanctuary. You know, one other things on the sanct where standing point that should be of note, And this is something I've talked about in the past, but I'll bring it up just one more time because you asked about it while we were walking through. It was if I planned to use my gun season sanctuary idea in there, which which I do um and and it sounds like you've maybe done something somewhat similar or heard of, at least the idea of leaving almost the entirety of the property almost untouched during the gun season. And now, I know some people want to hunt during the gun season. That's fine, and I sometimes go out a couple of days. But I've kind of found the most valuable thing I can do during the gun season is make my property the safest place around, because all of a sudden, you get tons of hunters everywhere else coming out. Every deer rushes to the one place there's no one bugging them. If that ends up being your property, all of a sudden, you've done two things. You have a better chance of the bucks that you are interested in killing surviving long enough that you can be the one that gets hun the most. I'd much rather hunt my buck when I'm the only person around for six acres versus when I'm one guy of fifty other guys that are in that six acre block, depending on where you're at, So one gives me a better chance to have that mature buck to still hunt in a more controlled environment in December, late season of my bow or musler or whatever. And then number two, I think you have a disproportionate impact on the larger population as far as what bucks can make it to the next age class. If all of a sudden, you can have the place that all these bucks come to for safety, all this year and a half old and two and a half year olds and three and a half year olds, and you're not going to bother them in there all of a sudden, those bucks aren't getting killed. That might otherwise if you were hunting and walking in and out bumping all this deer off your farm. Now they're going everywhere, and everyone else who was out there who wants to shoot them all all the deer get killed. So just by leaving my place on touched for a couple of weeks, I think I can have an extra large impact on the quality or an age structure of deer in the general area by gave him in that safe spot. So I do that in a lot of my property. Is not saying I'm not ever out there. UM. I'll still make my presence known every once in a while, and you know you gotta be careful, but low impact, um, And I think it really helps. You're doing it just the way I tried idea to do the same thing. You know, my place becomes a real sanctuary from gun season on. It's uh, if if you're willing to sacrifice a little time now, it's of course it's a good time to kill deer. So I understand people want to get in there deer run around all over the place and fun tradition and get that. But if you have somewhere where you're willing to lay off, it's it's a very it's it's a little trick to really improve things. I think, well, I think Jake, you're saying this that you had a buck maybe moving was if it was it maybe last year season and just stuck around. Yeah, there was a total stranger and he's stuck around. I've always wondered that if you come in you've got a really great situation, like, oh this is over here. Yea. Yeah. And I never ever got pictures of him. He was a whole new guy, and he was, you know, fairly nocturnal. It seemed in daylight a couple of times. And then all you know during uh March when they said he was just getting pictures of him all the time, watching him grow this summer and now he's becoming a little more nomadic like they get at this time of the year. But he's still there and that's what's pretty cool. So he didn't leave you. Yeah, I am. It's very excited about it. That's good. That's it's nice to have those kinds of get excited about. So, so we we left the right triangle of the gourd. Man, I just got you're on fire with your shapes as descriptions between a gordon, a triangle and Oklahoma. Yeah, very good visual listeners to see where we're walking. So I'm gonna describe what Josh looks like if you imagine lots of ovals and does we we leave the gord we had up We head up in the field number four five. We feel five. So imagine your pan, your Oklahoma pan, and imagine the way this should be oriented from like a northeast west would be if you imagine the northern border of the property is the top of the panhandle, top of your pan, your pot right there. Okay, So field five is like right in the middle of your pot, kind of smack dab in the middle of that pot. So we entered that field. It's low where the swamp is and that steadily rises up a series of hills heading up towards the far eastern property border. And this is where I showed you our first food plot work. We've done so far, what I assump we have tried to do here in the pot, you've got these two large fields. So imagine two long rectangles the top of your pot, and then the second tier down is another field, same size, separated just by a thick fence row. My idea was to create a food plot system there that essentially looks like an hour glass in one of those open fields. Is the top triangle of the hour glass, and then the pinch point of the hour glass is that fence row. Because I thought put a tree stand right there that middle, and then the bottom triangle extends down to the south and two field number five. So that was my idea of the food I thought these locations. I thought to put the food plots there because you could they were central enough in those fields, and I thought I could access around the outside edges of the property. Depending on when directions stuff I would be able to get this. I could still have a food plot in those fields, but be far enough away on those edges that if everything was screened properly, I could get in and out and move to a number of different places in the property in early morning or late evening, hopefully if you were in that field without them knowing him. At the same time, I wanted a location that would be far enough away from the neighboring property lines that neighbors wouldn't be taking advantage of that food or spooking deer off of that food. And the last thing is I wanted something that would transition deer in a some predictable way across the property. And my idea with that setup was that I wanted the edges to be able to move. But I knew there'd be deer bedding in the swamp and along those just in that ridge system that we're about to get to. So I also knew there was a crop field to the far north, and there's a crop field to the far south. So I imagine there's two lines of movement. There's the north to south movement coming heading up to feed in one way or heading down to be the other way, and then there'd be this east to west movement from deer in the swamp heading into the food. So I oriented this food plot kind of north south to kind of transition across that, but I could intersect him coming either way. This is my high level idea when I was kind of planning it out. So what I did this spring was I went and I tried to do a no till food plat screen planting in June. It failed miserably, so we got about failure on the screen. Me and Josh just went in there the other day and replanted it. Most of that we replanted in a quick growing hybrid sorghum. I don't know what we're gonna get. I'm hoping for four or five six ft. Anything will be better than nothing, So we're hoping these things will still be screened. I just don't know to what degree. Um. The two triangles of the hour glass are both situated and kind of little balls or shelves in the hill, so it's kind of a low spot in each one of those fields. I thought that would be the best place to place it within there because it'd be a shielded a little bit visually because of the topography. Be those a little bit of low spots might have a little bit better moisture. UM. And then lastly, I assumed deer would feel more comfortable probably staying in the slightly lower topography a little bit themselves. So with then like there's my whole mindset. That's what I've done so far. That's what I was thinking. I kind of outlined that too, and we walked up there today. Walk me through how much of an idiot I am? Or if that sounds good? Well, actually, you know, it's a good idea, and it's a it's a good location the pinch point because of that fence row dividing your pinch point. Super good idea. Um might have a little excess issues depending on the season and how many deer are you using that food? Okay, but generally more those deer should be in the the large bells of your hour glass versus being at that pinch point. But it's very good and with screening, those could be great. And I think you said they were gonna each you add up to about an acre apiece, right, So that's all. That's a lot of food for those areas and it and it brings your deer into the core of your property too, that's what I like about. It keeps you away from all your borders. Okay, So so seeing what I had there, if we took all that away. If I didn't, if I hadn't done anything yet, if you just saw those two fields now, or or maybe even all six fields are yours to play with, where would you put your food plots or what would you do differently? I would definitely, you know, food is king, and even though you've got food on the neighbor's property, you know, when you have food and you have a great sanctuary like you do where deer are going to spend time and call at home, you've got to have a very good food source. And you've got some natural food sources and some eggcorns, some mass crops, and that's good. But it's a short term thing. So I would have looked at very generally the same thing I'd have looked at. Field four and five probably is my ideal locations for large what I called destination food plans, because it was far enough away at the number one, I wouldn't be going walking by them, and I wouldn't be there all that often myself. Then I got to deliberately go in and hunt, and so I you know, I might have done a little bit different shape. I might have done two separate plots and just use that fence row is dividing, but it probably wouldn't have taken very long to hunt in there and figure out where that natural north south movement is. And you're probably more familiar with it because you have turkey hunted in there. And I think it's gonna work out real good. I mean, so you were not a dummy. You did a real good job. Well, it might still be dummy for other reasons. It's exactly um yeah, And I think, um, is there anything else? Well, you did recommend one other spot, but would there have been if let's say, if if we because another idea I had was should I shrink those instead of two big triangles to become an hourglass acre each? Should I have scattered really small ones throughout, like have a little corner with a little one little corner with a little I didn't ended up not doing that, But I don't know, are there any totally different like shapes or sizes, because we really aren't locked into this, and we could do something, you know, we're regardless of I mean, I'm an irregular shaped guy. I'm not a square in rectangle when it comes to food plots. If I can avoid it when I'm creating them, just because how dear naturally use the edges and things like that. But when you when you're tired for the listeners to see. But when you're on that property and you look at some of the slopes southern exposure, which means they're gonna get beat with a lot of sun, and then other slopes, you go, well, where can you plan a food plot where would retain moisture? And you pick the two best places in both those fields. And you also use the topography to hide those deer to kind of be in a bowl. It's not a deep bowl, but it's enough to hide them. And when you think about access coming up that hill or going down that hill, you'll be able to hide from those deer. I think I think we fought out quite honestly as far as where to put food, because that's that can be your achilles heel. You can be real successful growing food, but if it's in the wrong spot, you can't ever get in and get And that's been like my big stressor trying to like figure out the right way to place it in there to get it and out and and so much of that was originally dependent on the screens, and now we just don't know what how that's going to pan out. But I do think through most of the spots, as I imagine, like walking around those edges and trying to get there's pretty well covered between how tall the vegetation already is and the natural topography like the way you'll admit of the hills. But there's a couple of spots where I see like danger zones, like for example, when you come across the two track across the swamp and you get to that intersection where fields four and five story, and if there's not a good screening cover blocking that those food plots, especially the food plot in four, if they can see right down to us that I'm screwed. You got danger zone. Is there anything like we kind of talked about up front with maybe mowing some trails, is there anything that we should think about doing back there that might dictate some movement because too and from those food plots, we may be able to maybe keep them back further instead of up front where they may be able to see down. I don't know, maybe some micro plots or something that we could do. You had had a couple of corners on some of your food plots as well. Here's a nice little bowl in this corner. Yeah, it's kind of close to your neighbors, but if you could screen it, it would be a great place. But a perennial. It's always nice to have some perennials, not always focus on on annuals um But again, you know, you your new landowner, You're gonna learn a lot of information this year, you know, and you're gonna find out how it is during the season, just really what's going on. But you know, I'm a trail guy. I mean, I'm mo trails to guide dear, whether it's in woods is that I've done hinge cutting and t s I work on, or whether it's early successional growth and even in my soybeans last year when the soybeans get really tall, I mean I mowe these trails and the deer followed them, you know, just like they were highways, and it worked out real good. So you know, deer are pretty lazy and they take to those trails really easy. So you know, the trouble is getting in and getting out and not not running into those deer into those trails. We we try our best not to have those encounters with deal deer where we're walking, you know, I can't eliminate all of them, but I don't try to plant food where I'm going to walk for access if I've got to get to a stand somewhere, I'm trying not to go down trails that are planted in food and that sort of thing. And and you brought up a good point in that I never really described fields four and five like we're talking about putting food plant in there. But you gotta remember even the four and five aren't quite as thick as Field one. We're still talking I don't know, belly high tall all weed growth like almost to the entire field. So it's not even like you're planting something. And when I when I say a field, I think a lot of people think like a clover field. It's not open. It's it's like you're you're carving in a little opening into what's eventually going to be hopefully shoulder tall walls of vegetation. You're gonna have so much edge once you create those food plots, and those deer are gonna feel very safe in there. So so even though you didn't have your screen workout here, there's a lot of good things are gonna happen because you're carving into something chest high, and I think the big, the big. I feel really good about how it's gonna look through October. But once the leaves I'll come down that stuff dies. That'll be my big question mark is at what point or how well does it still in the first heavy wet snow is really going to be going to show what's going on. And that's gonna be I think, well, we'll see, Okay, here's where our dangers new danger zones are, or this is how dear behavior is going to change. Um. Another thing we talked about when we were back there, excuse me, was mock scrape locations, either real scrapes or mock scrapes. There's a lot, least at lots of great natural edge already where there's gonna be natural looking branches. Deer are going to be naturally moving through they're making scrapes. But then one of the questions I had for you was, you know, given how open it is a lot of relatively open it is in places, um, should I be putting in more scrape trees or more mock scrapes different things to to move dear kind of the direction I want them to or stop them in the places that I want them to. There's lots of opportunities for that if we wanted to, um, what are your thoughts on all that? Well, you know when it comes to mock scrapes and whether it's limbs that you pull down and the grape vines, I guess there's ropes you can buy online. There's all these different methods and and they all work, you know, relatively well. But it really is about location. I seldom put a put a mock scrape somewhere to change dear movement. All I'm really trying to do is concentrate and slow down, dear. So it's got number one. It's got to be the location. If you've got a location where there is frequent deer activity, and that could be you know, all those and fauns and box of different age classes, then having a mock scrape in there is going to buy you more time, going to have more activity. And it becomes that place at that mature buck all of a sudden goes and either scent checks down, gets downwind of it, or visually goes up to it and works it because of all the other deer that leave their calling cards there. And I've watched that change with you know, big time with areas where I didn't have the scrapes and there was just one natural one, and I've put three or four mox scrapes in there. Now I got mature bucks in there during daylight because they're busy keeping track of Big Louis. You've got a somewhat unique, uh way of doing mock scrapes with sometimes hanging a rope or cord and some vines and stuff. Can you describe how you do that set up? So let's say you're in a some either the trees are too small or the timbers big and mature, and there's nothing in the right size for you to pull a limb down or attach something too. But you might have two oak trees or walnut and oak tree that are say eighteen inch diameter sixty foot trees, and they're twenty yards apart. You can run two strands of wire, two strands of rope fairly tight one another, and those have to be up in the air, probably liking at six to seven foot. And then what I use is you know, plastic electrical tized to either put oak limbs, basswood limbs, or grape vines now usually put at least two and dangle them and tie them on on both pieces of wire so that they have they're fairly ridge in. The deer can have some resistance and leave their scent on them. And if they're in the right location, usually where one or two trails or three trails converge or cross, you're gonna get a lot of activity. Um, the ground should be fairly level, it should be open enough, open enough understory, not be so darn thick that they can't get in there and move. I mean, it's got to be open. If you've watched any area where deer scrape, they aren't gonna do it in a real tight quarters. They've got to have openings and some areas where they can move. But I've had real good luck doing that with him. And then also, you know, just pulling a limb down at the right place on the edge of a food plot or a travel corridor, attaching a grape vine to a limb with some wire, just having an arch down and be in the right location from literally chest a shoulder high in an area and it works real good. Yeah, I feel like there's because of how much edge on this farm there is, I feel like there's a great opportunity for some smart mox scrapes you do. And again you got to think about where can I place those so that when I'm accessing certain stands I'm not visually, I can't be seen. So you gotta always think visual, you know, can if I can see it, the deer can see me. And that's a thing, especially when, especially later in the season, have be thinking about that often. UM. Food plot diversity. What I was actually planning. I told you my idea this year was to try to have a diverse blend of things, um, both from like a soil trying to build up that soil, trying to do some things that're gonna help from a soil standpoint, but then also provide a diverse, diverse buffet that will last, you know, all through the season and then continue on into the spring and smother weeds and then I can replant some stuff in there, trying to develop us us not cycle, but a rotation that will work well. So, as I described to you, I've got a blend of Brassica's variety of turn ups, greens, radishes, then some annual clovers, some winter wheats, some oats, some cereal rye that kind of Smorgasport approach is that I'm trying this year. I've not I've never gone that diverse before. I've usually done like strips of Braska's strips of boats. It's worked great. But I'm trying this new deal. Uh thoughts on that, you know, I've I've done both. I've done the strips individual strips over the years. I've combined the more just to basically have different diversity because one product is more attractive at this time of the year, and two weeks later now the oats are right and around the oats. So what I'm trying to do is keep er in the same exact field, feeding in the same locations. They're just feeding on different species. And I'm a I'm a blended mixed guy. I like it. I think what you just told me is really good. Those annual clovers are very nice. I've had really good luck with your crimson clover and that that type. And you know, not only uh, not only is it awesome in the fall, but in your spring. I know you're a turkey hunter, that crimson clover comes back up and the spring the deer, not only deer, but your turkeys will be in there. They'll be strutting turkeys will be picking on it. You know, it's the first place for bugs to show up because it it blooms pretty early in the season. But yeah, I think that's a really good idea. But you can only do that for so many years, and then you want to move into something else. So always rotate, and ultimately you want some you want some perennials, some perennial clovers and chickery. And I'm you know, I use that that very high level checker clover because I have found it. The box just go nuts over it. They just feed themselves. So I've got you've seen no small little plots and you you know, it's just amazing to see how many bucks feed and no small chickery plots all fall along. Interesting. I never I've actually never planned chickery, never experienced it. So I've got one right now. It's a little over an acre and there are you know, not only are the doors and falls, but there's a lot of bucks in it. Interesting. They're hitting it pretty hard. So this takes us sounds like our food plot plan is is Okay, We're gonna test it out and see how things work with access and exit. That'll be our like touch and go situation. I think that's like a big crux of the whole season, is how we're gonna be able to get in and out of there. If we can get away with it, we can pull it off. I think we'll be aholdsome deer. I think we'll have some success. If we're blowing deer out every time. Then so we're changing things up five yards off the road, Josh will be safe on the road. And then if there's any advice I can tell you, I've seen when it comes to paying attention to details. Planning your food plots is where you need to pay attention to details. You've done your soil test. You know you know where things set, so plant the right the right blends. Take the time to eliminate competition as just as you can, UM, because without doing that it'll be a failure. And you said in most of those fields, especially fields four and five heavy and Mare's tail, which is tough to deal with, invasive weed that in many places developing glycos fate resistance, the round up resistance. UM, your thoughts for dealing with that were, well, you know, uh too, for d is a broadly selective and we'll kill Mary's tale very well regardless of the age. And the trouble with glyci fate a round up is, they say, and I've experienced it. When your mayor's tail starts getting eight ten inches tall, it's very hard to kill and and sometimes you can hit it. It It will turn yellow, but it just won't die. The trouble with using two four D to kill it. At this time of the years, you will get some residual, which means it it re sides in the soil. You can put seed in the ground. It will german and it will come up and grow a little bit and die. If it happens to be a broad leaf. Now it wouldn't bother any of your grains, but it would bother your chicken eas and your brassicas and or and your annual clover too, So you might have a waiting game. So I guess the sooner you can get in there and all those openings, or just going there first and spray that marrisdale and try and kill it, but realize you're gonna have about two weeks as long as you follow the label. What the label tells you know more is not follow that label, So that puts you you know you might be looking at the third week of August or later before you plant. That's not too late for your grains. And and sure you're not gonna get huge brassicas, but you can go with kale and rapes and things like that and still have a whole bunch of forage. Or the other alternative would be to mow it all right now and spray with glyph. Just mow it and spray with gly and then get your seed in the ground and just take what you go. See. My issue is that it's just a funky situation. I don't have my mower yet, so I can't mow right now to do that. I could spray with two four D right now, but I wanna I don't want to film until I've got like you know, the guys that are helping us, we're trying to film it. So I'm trying to line up the timing of like I don't know, I might have to do the we might need to do the mowing and the glyph because I could do that all one day and we're not gonna have the mower for like a week. But at that point I can mow, I could spray, and then we could plant the next day. If we wanted maybe just knock call out in one day or two, that's probably gonna be what I meant to do. Yeah, you can go right behind gly and plant and you're gonna be using a drill to Yeah, you're in good shape. Knock on wood. If somehow that falls through, then I do. I'm calling you, Jake and trying to see what kind of magic you can pull out of the area. Man um. But we're in field four. No for phill five or at the bottom of the hour glass. There's another gap in the thick brush east ence rose and now okay, we're let's look at our pot again. We're holding our Oklahoma pot. We've been in the middle of the pot. Now we're about to enter the bottom of the pot. The bottom of the bottom of the pot. Let's envision if you're looking at your pot, you look at the bottom. Now put a line through it vertically to split that bottom portion of the pot. The left side of the bottom of pot is this big brushy ridge system, which we'll talk about. The right side of that pot is another field. It's field six. Let's talk about the field six first, and then we'll move to the ridge system. Last, so Field six is um blocked from the food plus system by another one of those brushy tree rose friends rows. And then there's a small gap, and that small gap in the fencer I planted in a screen that actually did come in pretty easy, pretty good. So I think by the time hunting hunting season comes through, that gap will be mostly blocked by that screen. So visually, dear in field six at the bottom of the pot, they're not going to be able to see much that's going on the main food plus systems. So kind of nicely keeps that back section secluded Field six. I originally had this idea Jake, and I told you this earlier today, but we'll spell it out again. This is the very farthest point on the property from my access, so it's the hardest spot to get to without blowing stuff up. It also is right next to a neighboring property owner that I know hunts that has a tree stands right in the edge, has trail cameras right in the edge. Um so, and it also is adjacent to that rich system I just talked to you that had lots of great betting and habitat just looked really great. So I thought to myself, maybe I should just leave field six untouched, make it part of the sanctuary because it's hard to get to anyways. If that all, if that grew up into great, you know, head high vegetation this summer, and I also thought I'll plant some some kind of strips of winding screen cover. They're just to break it up more and add some more of structure and stuff that man, that could be awesome additional betting sanctuary or whatever visually will block the neighbor that hunts on the edge from the rest of the property. That was my idea coming into the summer. Did all that got back from our western trip in August, went out there and looked at it. The screens failed. The vegetation itself throughout most of the field did not grow very tall at all. I mean some places only knee high. Um, So it didn't really achieve much at all of what I originally thought it would. That's the circumstance we have known. That's what you saw. Um. Given what you're seeing now, can you walk us through your recommendations for what to do with this maybe three acre field ish of maybe knee high to thigh high marriage tale and stuff. So clearly, um it looked like it was gravelly sandy soil, and that pretty much probably explains why everything is low to the ground. You know, no organic manner, well drained, not holding any moisture, less nutrients, so you're just not getting the spectacular growth like you're getting the other fields. So because of that, you know, you don't even want think about trying to grow anything in there because of the soil building that's ahead of you. If you were here for twenty years, that'd be one thing. But uh, you could though go in there, uh and do some herbicide treatment and prepare it for warm season grasses and probably get some really in create sanctuary, and then move towards the north side of that, next to that fence roll that divides field six and deal field five, and put a small little food plot in that low area that parallels that fence role. And not that you'd ever you might put one stand down in there, but it would just be a great attraction and it would hold more dear farther away from your neighbor. Not your neighbor is gonna kill some deer. He's gonna see some deer. I mean, that's just all part of the deal. He's got a big egg field right over there, but it would create it would answer the problem for you for taking that field and doing something strategic with it, turning it into bedding. You know, most of the time around your year three year switch grass, big blue stems going to do pretty good. And I know your blue stems gonna grow well because you've got some growing different places. They're already talk about the idea of mixing in some other stuff with your warm season grasses to get some better height and cover in the first couple of years before your grasses reached U technique I tried several years ago. I've shared it with a number of different clients and friends of mine, And that is when you're planning your warm season grasses, you plan them at the regular rate you're gonna plant them, and then you come in and you replant over the top of them with Sudan sorghum grass, which is very inexpensive. It's fairly thin. It doesn't stand up to snow and wind and rain and ice like these big hybrid sorghums in Egyptian wheat. But it creates a great cover and it allows your warm season grasses to not have any other competition other than that Sudan grass. So your second year of switch grass, big blue stem indian grass that you have that you're growing will come up really good and not not fight the broad leaf like the Mayor's tail and the golden rod and pigweed, and it's going in all the other fields. And the great thing is the first year you've got eight feet of cover. Yeah, I like that, and you get a real good feel for how you can approach and things you can do. And carving out that little food plot down along that fence row. And you know, if I if I was to plant that down in front where your access is, you can probably hide yourself from that small little food plot. So it's worked out real good. Sure you've got some debris the second year, the dead sorghum goes through the frost, it's gonna lay on the ground. But that but the switch grass and blue stem or whatever it is you plant, it's going to come up through there and just really do well. And I've seen year to four foot switch grass grown. Now can you walk through just how to plant warm season grass like, because that's a little bit of process right, it's there, and the most important thing to remember about warm season grasses. They do not like competition, so it's all about preparation, and it's kill and kill and kill, and you what your goal is to try and remove the existing seed bank whatever is banked in that soil. There are seeds that are not German eating, but will anytime that soil is disturbed, something German eats. No, I don't care if it's a drill, because the drill still is going in there with cutters and opening a gap, put a seed down, covering it back up, but you're still disturbing it. So the one thing I learned with warm season grasses is preparation. And a lot of guys follow the midsummer spray all the way through falls, where in the fall you've got this bare open field with absolutely no pains me. And it pains me to go through that process. But then you can go in there in the spring with zero competition, put in your seed and some guy's frost seed and things like that as well. So you think the best thing to do would be actually going there and start spraying now, and so it'll be dead this fall if you If you want a really good looking stand of warm season grass, is the best thing you can do is start killing now, and you do too sprays this year, you do one now, probably come back to one in mid September, more towards October. They say, that's the most beneficial kill you can have out of the entire season, is doing that kill. So what if I don't care about looks, I'm all about personality. What happens, And you're just like me, what I was like, I can't give that up if I cover, What if I just spray in the spring? Yeah, and you're gonna you'll have multiple springs in the spring, and often one it's done. As you spray, let it come up, turn green, spray again. Then a light disc, say two inch disc. Just disturb the soil. And your goal was to disturb it, open up that seed bank, make it German eight, let it get up for spray it again, same thing, kill, give it another and and that will get you to late June early July planting time. And when I did mine, that was four kills, and I planned on the last day of June. And now if you saw my my fields are just and they're eight feet tall and the air beautiful. I did burn this ring and had always enhances it the following year. So okay, So in the spring, I do this multiple kill, let come back spray, Let it come back lightly disc now it comes back kill it. It gets me to late June or the July. We drill in all of our warm season grasses. In July, I overseed with some sedan sorghum grass or sorghum? Was it sort of sudan? So I think it's I always gonna make. It's been a long time since I bought it, so I oversee it with that that first year you're telling me I could have eight foot talls sedan grass plus three ft tall switch grass. Yeah, that's what I had. I like that old pictures of mine when I first did mine, I wish I had done my entire fifteen acres that way. Only did just a couple of acres that way. I bet you that'd be that'd be really nice. And even even portions of Field three, the one that's close to that house there that's not it's very similar fields sick lock that area completely off. That could be pretty cool and warm season grasses like that. Um okay, And again that's a completely diverse type of habitat. Does love it for fawning in the spring. It's great running cover and it's very random. You know. The only way it becomes defined is if you go in your motrails and then they're gonna follow trail through that warm season grass. But like, what I think would be cool is if we were to have that, we'd have several fields with warm season grass. We have several fields with a very diverse blend of big weed, poke weed, golden rod, some maryor's tail. There might be some things we can do to manage that, maybe do some selective springs, or I don't know, maybe eventually we'll want to do a prescribe burn through some of those and get it to regrow um. And then so you have that kind of habitat, you have the warm season grass habitat, you have some wetland habitat. You'll have all I mean, there's a whole slew of different things in that sanctuary swamp. You saw all sorts of different types of vegetation in there, and then you know, three acres of food. Then we've got these brushy fence rows full of lots of red oaks. It's got acorns, um. We found some other soft mass in the next look cation, we're gonna walk to um. So it's a pretty nice, diverse, blended habitat across this front. And one of the best things is every every next field we go to is all that additional edge. Man, there's a lot of edge on that farm. And all animals were like, especially deer, especially deer a key in on edge. They really do. So we're at the bottom right corner of our pot, which was the field number six. We're gonna go to the bottom left section of the pot, which is the ridge system, which is the taj mahal of the farm. I think in certain ways this was like when when we arrived at the property, I asked, you, like, when you see the spot you like the very most, Let's spend spend some extra time there and walk through exactly how you set it up, how you hunted, what your thoughts are. And I said to Josh, I bet you I know the spot and this is the things. Like everyone of my friends that I walked through and check it out, we're all like, ah, this looks like something you see, you know, the TV show. So I'll outline like the high level of what it is, and then I want to you know, hear some more of your thoughts on what you like about it. But basically, if you imagine these fields we have been been describing to you that are in the pot part of the property. So this is the far eastern side of the property, fields four or five and six. Most of those fields are up high, and then again it drops down into the middle of the property, which is where our big swamp is. Going from field six the bottom right of our products, it goes down to the swamp and there's this ridge system that connects it. And that ridge system is kind of blend of tall grasses, cedars, um, there's a bunch of buck thorn that you talked about, there's some autumn olive or something um scattered other small treeze I mean, just a whole lot of different cover types. And there were these little openings at the openings um. When I walked in the first time and you said, it's funny, you said the exact same thing, said, this looks like something you see like on a dreary video with all these scattered tree, cedars and grasses, and just like looks bucky. And when I got in there in March, I remember going in anything looking underneath these cedars, and there's just scrapes around all of them. All this, all these old seater treos are just rubbed up from every year getting um. And then we went in there today, walked me through what you saw when walked in there, what you thought about this whole little ridge system. So as we entered and there was like an old tractor gap or something. You went in there, and the first thing I noticed was the warm season glasses, you know they were. There was big blue stem and it was all seven eight ft tall, and it just looked beautiful in there. And as soon as I got into the opening, the first thing I noticed, I said, holy smokes, you got a pear tree right here. And there was a pair pretty loaded with pears, not a big pair, but i'm eight ten inch diameter, probably something twenty five years old. Well man of mass tree right there and and dear love pairs. And then fifteen yards uh west of it was a really nice red oak loaded with acorns and warm season grasses six seven ft tall all the way around it, but it was slowly dropping down towards your swamp. And then we came to a large cedar tree had last year's big rubs on it, and there was three well used beds all the way around underneath those overhanging limbs, and I would imagine based on time of day and wind direction, you got one lone deer bedding in there, and it just it was a big deer. It was all flattened out. It's being used a lot, probably I would guess, yeah, probably a buck laying in there, and you had some you had some mixed cherry trees in there was some autumnotives down at the base, and a little buck more in here and there that kind of broke it up and really compartmentalized it. But there was two definite lines of movement in there, and and it just looked like depending on the time of the year in the wind, there's two places I would hang stands one in particular. And if you can't have an encounter here, something's wrong because the signs there, there's historic sign from year after year before with all these old rubs. You know, that's that's the action spot. So what's the situation when you would hunt that walk me through, I would hunt that. I would definitely wait for that late October early November pre rut time period seeking phase, and that would be myself post cold front high pressure, so you're gonna have a northwest wind, north wind home. I'm gonna go in the morning, I'm gonna plan on hunting all day. I'm gonna go in there. I'm gonna stay all day or until i'm killing. And we're thinking, you're thinking, these deer doing what they're doing, a lot of cruising, there's there's there's socialization because there's rubs and scrapes, so you probably sometimes have different blocks of different age classes kind of you know, look at me, you know, man, I'm I'm I'm you know, I'm I'm big boy on campus. You know, my auntler's a bigger in near a sort of thing. A lot of scraping, less scent communication because of the scraping, and then just that incredible cover and the way that was compartmentalized everything from the warm season grasses, the buckthorn, the autumn alive. There's not one spot there that deer can see a whole lot farther in about twenty to thirty yards in any direction. But it had nooks and crannies and a lot of edge, and I think with the with the slope, uh, it makes for great betting for the afternoon. I think it's probably very good. From a scent wind anything out of the west and southwest deer can enter regardless of the end and sent check that and you would want do you think the smartest way to hunt that would be the primarily hunt with your wind blowing back behind you over the dead field. So you're gonna try to get yourself down in the southeast corner of that area, get yourself one of those bigger trees, use cover to hide yourself, yep. So that bucks will be entering and moving their goals to get down to that southeast end and use their nose to send check everything from does to competition. And they're gonna rub and scrape while you're there too. That's the cool part, you know. You may it may antagonize you to watch a deer for an hour before you can get a shot, you know, which is really tough. Okay, let me let me I want to back up for a second. Well, it ties into this. How would planning warm season grasses in that backfield affect how you would hunt that spot. I don't that particular spot because of the cedars, because of that slope is unique for what it is. I think those warm season grasses behind us in field six would not change how that gets used. It's just another place for especially does does really like those warm season grasses for putting, you know, putting their fawns in there in the spring. And how I'm not gonna say there isn't some reading activity that will take place in there, but that you know, you're focus, you know, and this is primarily all bow hunting for you, right so you know our shots are short, So whatever is going on sixty yards behind you, who cares? Yeah, I just want the shirt. Like if we wanted to blow the wind back over that dead field right now as a few start, and it's just gonna cut you know, the way that tree that we that we looked at not a whole lot of years scent with a northwest wind is gonna end up in that field. You're just gonna go across that one corner heading towards the neighbors and maybe you take that corner, don't put any warm season grass right there, kind of leave it open. I think it's a good it's a good set up that early November, right conditions set there and big boys got a cruise through, definitely, and it was you know. I mean, I saw some rubs on different cedar trees. It just look it's trying to heal. I'd say for the last ten years those trees have been rubbed. So that's a really good sign. That tells me the big boys cruise through there. Off, that was the deal. That was the deal maker for me. When I walked into that section, it was like the last part of the property I got to and I stepped into the edge there and just my jaw kind of dropped. I was like, oh, yes, yeah, you saw that. You said it all works now at all. Yeah, everything I've been seeing was getting me more and more excited than I got into that and like, yeah, this is this is cool. So that's the basic gist of the property, and that's the basic gist of kind of your thoughts that are seeing what we saw. Um. So when we when we got done with it all we did we did a little more of a circle around. You saw more field four, but essentially just looking at where the food plus system was, walked on that edge, seeing what's on the neighbors and whatnot. Um, after having seen it all now thought through or heard through our ideas, thought through your own ideas, Um, can you give me a couple of like your big two dues or like if we were if if you would walk the property and we're like a paying client and you're gonna say, hey, this is a couple of things you can do to make this better. Would a couple of those things be you know, the one thing you don't have on that property is win or thermal cover. Yeah, and that's a big deal. I mean, look at last winter we had gosh, how many days at twenty below zero? So white tails are looking for a place to get out of the wind and stay one. So, uh, if you were paying client and you're gonna hang on to this for the next forty years, instead of warm season grasses and field six, I'd say put some white spruce and Norway spruce in there and turn that into a conifer sanctuary, and boy, would you have a place to find ships. Would be awesome. It is, and it's a it's an investment in time, it really is. And you're you know, trees are dying. It just part of the life. You're always replacing them. But ten fifteen years down the road and everything now is ten twelve ft tall, you're gonna now you're gonna the area that we said is, oh man, look look at this spot. Now you're going to create another one in there. You're gonna have a little opening because you're gonna plant those trees instead of in rows. I always recommend doing it in a more random pattern, which is more like nature. So you'll have some little openings that will show up in there, and you'll have another spot that you can throw a stand in and have that. Well, Okay, it didn't work real good over here. This morning, I'll go over here. I'll hunt this one to killing there. And although I still don't, I don't think you're gonna mess that one spot up too bad, do right right? I see you killing something pretty good, I hope. So I add some thermo cover, so that's really important to have some thermal cover. And then as the years go by, because I really don't have a good handle on your deer density, you had some brows lines that were obvious, so there may be more deer there than I think. But as you grow food, one thing that happens is you concentrate deer. So maybe you're two and three, you have more miles to feed, so you might have to look at another location that you're going to just stay away from and you're just gonna grow food. You're not gonna hunt it. It's just all about producing food. And then the takeaway in any of your dry ground where you've got autumnile, buck thorn, a combination of buck brush, all the stuff around the edges of your you're sanctuary swamp. Get in and clear those trails and open up locations so dear can move and cut some trees here and there to get some early successional girls, so you can get young cherries, young young maples, young oaks coming up. Because it's important to have a lot of food for deer to eat in that swamp, and late in the season instead of early in the spring like it always is when everything turns brown. Other than a few eggcorns, they don't have a whole lot to eat down. I think, um, I think coming out of like our day to day, I feel more confident. I feel more excited about certain locations I was already excited about, but getting you know, another set of eyes on it has me that much more ready and rare to get. After that, I feel like much more confident about my ideas around what to do with some of those mayor's tail fields. Now that we've talked throughout warm season grass ideas, UM, I'm glad that my food plot idea seems not horrible and on point, I think that's gonna be a little bit of learning experience where you see how it works out this year and will adjust on the screens. Um. But man, this has just been really helpful, I opening in a lot of ways and fun for sure. This is a great So if I could give you one more tip, just thinking about that food plot where that pinch point crosses the fence row which we're talking about of those two food plots, where the narrowest party crosses from field four and five, So that's a fairly wide fence row five yards wide. There some trees or some brush. You're definitely going to clear that out so dear can move through there. That would be an ideal location for a licking branch. I like that. Every deer is going to come through their pinching in anyways, and they're gonna stop and use it, And it's a lot easier to kill a deer stand instead the ball when it's moving. I definitely, I definitely agree with that. Um, Yeah, that's gonna be a cool little set up. I think one of the big things I'm interested in seeing is is what kind of chure buck activity will get during daylight in those fields? Will they feel comfortable moving out there? Or will they will still be too open for a four year old buck to come out there? Will our will our mature buck encounters be happening in the swamp on the edge of the swamp and the honey hoole spot, or will we get october I said that our glass pinch point, and a nice buck does come out and follows a doe to there. And and here's something I'll let to kind of chew on. Um. Right now, we don't know what those deer are, like, what kind of encounters they've had elsewhere, um, how how they are about your odor? But if you were if you said, four years from today, and there was a button buck that's running around her right now, young buck, and all he knows is that food plot. When he's four, he'll be in that food plot because that's home to him. That's all he knows. You might have a buck this year walks in there, maybe just cruises through three times a year in the fall, cruising for for getting dates and he sees those openings, he's like, oh my gosh. But usually if there's girls hanging around, they don't think it's such a bad idea. If we if we play smart hopefully keep it feeling safe for them. I think it's I think there's a chance, and you know, work on your scent control. You know how important that is. Yeah, I'm gonna have to play real well intry and access is going to have to be real, real smart. But my my thoughts in the beginning are still the same, which is, if we do things right, it can be great. Oh yeah, we hunt it smart. It has all the pieces it needs to be really good. It really does. It's got all the potential will be just as good as my place or better because of something, because you've got a great spot. Well, Jake, thank you. I had a lot of fun. Thank you so much. It has a lot of fun, Thanks Jake. If folks are looking for this kind of help for themselves, they'd like to learn more about what you've got going on. Where should they where they going to learn or to get in touch with you? Uh? Website, Facebook and YouTube, habitat solutions three sixty L perfect that's easy. Yeah, we'll go check it out, folks. Jake has got lots of helpful things out there. He's just I mean, as you can tell from listening, amazing guy, very knowledgeable, very helpful. Hit him up and he will help put you in position for a great hunting season. A right, thanks Jack, and that is a rap. Hopefully guys enjoyed this one. I cannot wait for you to see all the new stuff that's gonna come out of this project. As we mentioned in the introduction with Steve and Janice, if you head over to the Meat eater dot com slash Win a Hunt, you can sign up to win a hunt with me and Steve on the back for the property. And very soon we're going to have a new video series in the media to YouTube channel. We're gonna have new articles and a whole lot of our podcast content will have updates on the project, stories from the project. UM. You know, this time of year, we're not gonna spend too much time in actual land management UM conversations on the podcast because lab of Us are actually out there hunting. But definitely in the off season there's gonna be a lot of interesting things will be diving into as well, So make sure you are checking all all those things out. The Wired Doing Instagram account's going to have a lot of updates and Instagram Stories in real time updates as well, so follow along, thank you, and until we chat next time, stay Wired to Hunt.

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