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 Wire to Hunt Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan in this episode number two eighty three, and today in the show, I'm joined by my buddy, Josh Further Hilliard and my father to discuss our hopes, dreams and plans for restoring and reviving our family deer camp. All right, welcome to the wire Hunt Podcast, brought to you by Onyx And as you just heard me say a second ago, I'm going to be joined here in a minute by my dad and my buddy Further to discuss a little bit of the history of our family dear camp from a habitat standpoint, we haven't really done that before, and then talk about how we're trying to build things back up, kind of trying to get back to what it used to be er hopefully even better. Um, and there's a lot to talk about. There a lot different projects we've been working on. We we met with a Forrester here recently, so I want to share all of that. But before that, I do want to let you know that yes, we are taking a break from this series that we kicked off three weeks ago, in which we've been examining different lessons about peak performance from outside the hunting world and then exploring how those routines and practices and ideas can be applied into the hunting world. So, yeah, we're taking a break here today, but don't worry, We're going to be continuing. We're gonna get more episodes like this very soon. I'm in the works trying to get more scheduled out, so keep an eye out for that, because we've been getting a lot of great feedback and I personally have just really been enjoying these topics too. So if you haven't yet listened to episodes two one and two eighty two, I'd highly recommend you go check them out. Just as a refresher into eighty we discussed the power of habits and how habits and how creating good bits can help us gross hunters. In two eighty one, we spoke with Olympic gold medal winning skier David Wise about how his training and different routines that have helped him achieve professional athletics success can also translate to hunting, and in two eighty two, I spoke with author Brad Stahlberg about his research into the science of pe performance and passion and what all of that can mean for pursuits as hunters. And man, I just think I think the ideas covered in these last three episodes they might be some of the very most important that we've ever discussed. You know, how to execute on goals, how to be mentally tough, how to handle high pressure situations, how to keep your passion for hunting from going overboard, how to develop good habits. You know, all this stuff. Probably more than some new trail camera tag or more than some hunting strategy. These things, I think are what will really help you take your hunting to the next level. So go back and listen to those if you haven't now. Secondly, I do want to bring up one more point of along the lines of these past few episodes. That's been just kind of festering on my mind since our our last episode, Just been thinking a little bit. You know, we've been talking so much about, you know, how to be a peak performer, how to do all these things to get better at this, to get better at that, to develop a better life that's gonna help you as a hunter. YadA, YadA YadA, all these ideas, all these practices and ways to take control of your life. Develop mental toughness, develop physical toughness. You know, none of that stuff is easy. And if you're at all like me, you you so badly want to be the best hunter you can be, and you want to see positive results right away, and you want to reach your potential. But it's not easy. It's it's not just gonna come overnight. And I think there's there's this human tendency, or at least I follow THO sometimes that you don't you hear about stuff like this, when you hear about peak performers, Um, it's really easy to to hear and to see these people and think, oh, man, I can never do that. I'm just not good enough. Or maybe you try to do something and doesn't go as well as he thought it was gonna be, or you whatever change you implement, you're not as good as the person you heard in the podcast or the person you see on TV, the person in the magazine. And if that's the case, then you start to feel like a failure since you can't be just as good as this other thing that you put on a pedestal. I think that's human and that happens. But it's just so important to remember that we all have our challenges. Even the TV hunters, even the professional athletes, even the super successful CEOs and the New York Times bestselling authors, they all struggle. And I'm a perfect example that I struggle with all these things. I mean, that's why I'm so fascinated by this stuff, because I know I struggled with it, and I want to get better and I want to keep pushing on that. But I mean, I struggled to keep up on my physical fitness. I struggled to not get lazy and drop off on my archery practice. I struggle with procrastination and getting all the projects I want to accomplish getting done on time. I struggle in high persure situations. I struggled keeping a good mindset and a positive ad atitude. I absolutely struggle with controlling and moderating my passion for hunting. And I think I think that's okay to say that, to to acknowledge it, to just let it, to let it kind of slip off your shoulders. There's a big weight I think that we carry around when we at least to the outside of world and even maybe inside our own heads. We try to try to be perfect, and we try to make it seem like we got it all together. But guess what, I'm not perfect. I'm betting you're not perfect. Um. So I think it's okay to just to say that, to own it, to to just name it, to to freely admit, hey, you know what, I'm not a peak performer in all these ways. Yet I'm not the best hunt in the world. I'm not the best businessman in the world or the best athlete in the world. Um, But that's okay. I can I can take a step in the right direction. So just remember, I mean the next time you've I don't know, the next time your preparation for the season isn't going as well as you promise it was going to. Or maybe you just had another blow up fight with your wife about your hunting plans, or maybe you just blew your best opportunity at a buck all year you just missed. You whift it all the work, and then you whift it. Just remember, it's okay. We all do it. None of us have it all figured out, and that's that's part of it. It's okay. Not to be perfect, take a deep breath, and then move forward again. And I mean, I'm obviously no expert, so I'm just sharing with you some thoughts I have here and how I try to process these things. But I do think that taking that step to just to just I don't know, to just be okay with who you are now and like, hey, that's all right, I can take another step forward though, that is something that helps me. It helps me to grow. Um, I don't think that, at least, I don't think I can have progress, whether it be as a hunter or anywhere else in my life, if I'm constantly living in fear of not being perfect or beating myself up about not being good enough. And I'm telling you I struggle with those things, but um, it's something I'm trying to get better at. And so you know you are good enough, I'm good enough, but we can't get better too. And I think that's why, you know, I'm so excited about these topics because hunting is this this for so many reasons, we love hunting. But I said this before, hunting serves as this canvas or is this Uh, I don't know what the way or describers, but Hunting is this model of how we can take on a mission and try to get better and work towards a challenge. And and that's something I really love about it. It It helps me grow. Not only do I love the actual act of it. I love getting great meat, and I love being outside with my family and friends, but it also is this thing that's kind of like a big piece of grantite that I have to keep on chipping away at, chipping away at, chipping away at and slowly but surely I start seeing that there's something there. There's a statue, there's a there's maybe maybe somebody there's a work of art. But I gotta keep chipping. I gotta keep chipping. And while I know that's a lot of work, it's also something. It's it's it's a process that brings me for film in and uh and I don't know, maybe I'm rambling, Maybe this is all too deep. Maybe you just want to hear about hunting. But if you have found any of the things we talked about the past few weeks, I hope you'll stick around for more. Um I certainly am planning on doing that myself. So without any other rambling, talking in circles. I think we should take a quick break to thank a partner of ours, and then we will head to Deer Camp to chat with my buddy Further and my dad, David Kenyon. Alright, so first I want to thank our friends at Vortex Optics. As I've been mentioning over the last handful of weeks, I've been using a number of the different products over the last year. Now and right about now it's June, I'm gonna be busting out the spotting scope to start doing some of my long distance observation for white tails out in these bean fields. They're just starting to come up. Those are my favorite things to do. Last year, Um, there's a bean field across the road from my house and you see lots of deer out there. And so last year I got the Vortex Viper HD spotting scope. I set it up on my front porch and I got a phone scope for it, so you can attach your phone to the spotting scope and then see through it and record through it. And it was just so much fun to have a spotting scope set out there to be able to see these bucks up close, to get a little bit of cell phone video. Um, just a lot of fun. Not to mention if you've got somewhere you can hunt where you can do this kind of thing scout from a long distance, you can learn a lot too, especially in the summer, at least getting an inventory the bucks available Man High Quality Spotting scope is a great tool. I had great results of the Viper h D, and then I also used the Razor HD on my Mexican Cus deer hunt and really enjoyed using that scope as well. So definitely think those are options worth checking out, and you can learn more at Vortex Optics dot com. All right, we are here at deer camp. It's May, very late in May, last day, man, I think, And um, I'm here with my dad and for and we got up here last night and we're here today to meet with a Forrester. The goal being too better understand a little bit about what we might be able to do from a forrestry standpoint. And we're getting this more detail later, but basically to learn a little bit about what our options are out here with logging and doing some different habitat things related to timber. So that's why we're here, and because that's kind of like the topic of conversation for us natural this weekend. I thought it would make sense to maybe take a look at what we have, kind of what it used to be like up here at Deer Campbell or the last thirty years from habitat standpoint, talk about what's changed, what happened, and then what we've been trying to do the last handful of years to improve things, and then maybe a little bit about some of our ideas and dreams for the future. So, Dad, are you up for talking about that further? Yep, sounds good. So where I'm sitting right now, I'm sitting in his leather chair in the corner of the cabin right. I got the wood burning stove to my right. Usually whenever we record a podcast up here, this is where we're sitting by the fire. That crackle and pop of the fire. So many great memories about sitting in here, But usually it wasn't me that used to sit in this chair I'm in for many years as my grandpa, and then before that it was his buddy Jerry. And Jerry always used to sit here in this in this chair and krim if I'm wrong, Dad, but as I remember it, he would sit here in this chair and you can see out the one kind of big window in the cabin that looks out to the east, and that used to be a big, wide open field, and that field used to have deer moving across it relatively often. And they would always joke that they'd have the guns sitting next to the cabin right and then one of these years maybe they'd be able to grab the guns, step out and actually get a deer just outside the cabin. Did that ever happen? Then? Never, Well that's not true. Yeah, it actually did happen one time where Jerry saw a deer and moving across a big buck, snuck out of the cabin grab the rifle. Unfortunately, by the time we got around the side of the cabin, the deer moved beyond the point where you could get a shot. But yeah, that was the That was a big joke. There were there were times that we thought that, you know, if it was a big enough deer, we just shoot right through the sprain of the window. We can repair that. Um So, so I bring that up because what used to be this big white open field where we see all sorts of deer now now it is a thick, young forest. You can't see more than I mean thirty or forty yards into it. Now, if you were standing on the edge of our yard looking into there, I mean, yeah, you can see a little bit, but it's it's thick. You can't see nearly as far as it used It used to be able to see hundreds of yards across this thing. Now it's all new pine shoots and maple shoots, trees and stuff and all overgrown. It's changed drastically just in the time I've been coming up here. Yeah, the last like five years has changed. And so that's kind of the story of what's happened here. There's been a lot of habitat change over the last thirty years since we bought this place. Um so, Dad, can you describe what our forty acres is like in the surrounding area? Maybe a little bit? Um when we first you guys first started coming up here back in the I guess late eighties. Yeah, so when we came up here in the late eighties, early nineties, that sort of thing, you know, the the property still had a lot of timber on it. We had a big pine stand at the cabin is kind of embedded in maybe five acres, maybe a little bit more than that that was planted back in the fifties and uh so that had matured to some point. Um, but even you know, twenty thirty years ago. Uh, you know, that was a big timber stand that you could look through out to the east, as you described Mark, you could look almost entirely across what was at that time virtually an open field all the way maybe to yards to a stream, and you'd see the deer walk along the edge of the stream. In particular, we had a number of birch and other trees that you see there, but again pretty wide open. To the south, just on the other side of that big pine stand that I mentioned was another open field and um and at that time again we had some small, very small um uh pines and others that were coming up, but for the most part it was completely open. And again three yards across that was another line of timber where I got a little bit lower level. And again the stream as it wound around to the south side of our property. On the other side of the stream, which is also our property, was another open field and uh a lot of browsing, a lot of you know, a few trees that were scattered in that open field, but you know, gp my dad had a number of blinds set up in that area, and um, you know, during hunting season he would that's typically where he would hunt because there would be four or five six deer at the time just wandering through that that field close to dark, and he brought home a number of deer um from that stand. So, um, you know, to the west of our property has always been that you know, part of that pine stand that I talked about before gets um quite low, very swampy, and then as the river or the stream continues to wind around to the west again, you'd run into the stream at some point to the north estate land and that's mostly timber. And but you know, it has changed a dramatic amount over the years. Yeah, and I think it's should we pointed out that those couple of fields he described were the only openings for long ways unless you kept going east along the road. There's there's a few, but otherwise if you head west, north or south, it is all pure timber or swamp. Right, so there's lots of cedars and hemlocks, and then you get into the really wet stuff. It's like tag alders and cattails, whole sorts of stuff, but cover. I mean, it's just cover timber, cover thick. And now you I guess if you go farther uh west, you'd eventually get to places where there's been some logging on some of this public land. Um. But that was all going on, you know, thirty years ago, several decades ago. Now, over the last twenty five years or so, we've seen each of those fields you described has completely overgrown, and the fields on the neighboring properties have mostly all overgrown. So now we have other than there's one neighbor that has to grass field, everything else is all cover in timber. There aren't any fields anymore. There's no real early successional habitat. There's no real fields or great food source in that way. So right now, the deer other than some things we've been trying to add to the mix, um, you know, nipping and feeding here, and they're browsing on on just little bits of scattered native vegetations that go along, right. Um, So how have you seen the deer activity in sightings and stuff changed over that twenty five year period? As though as those fields have grown up, as our habitats change around here, is all matured, right, Yeah? What did you see what's what's the I mean, I know the answer, but described to us what we've seen. Well, certainly we've seen a pretty dramatic change and both the deer population and their movement throughout the property. Thirty years ago when we first you know, purchased the property and started hunting here and in set our stands up because of the number of fourage areas and and fields and areas where there was a lot of browsing for the deer. Um, we had a lot of deer in this area and uh um, there was a destination for the deer to come and stay and move through this area. And the size of the deer and the number of deery was much much was much greater. And then about fifteen twenty years ago that started to change. And some of that I think is correlated to what you just described. Mark. You know, the habitat has changed significantly, um and over the course of you know, the last ten years, in particular the frequency and the number of deer, especially big you know, mature deer there there. You know, all of that area you talked about. We have eight thousand acres of of land that we're adjacent to. That's a deep swamp, deep forest. You know, there's certainly plenty of cover, plenty of places for the you know, big mature bucks and dough to to live, but there's really no reason for them to move through our property. And uh so, I think that's one of the primary ways that things have changed up until recently when we started doing some of the work that we've done around the property. Yeah. I don't think. I don't know if you guys remember, but I feel like in the past couple of podcasts we've done up here, I don't think we've ever dove deep into what we've been trying to do. Have we No, I don't think much at all. I don't think so yeah so so yeah, I mean, like you just said, we've seen like our deer hunting, and we've we've thought about this, the sightings, the actual success the bucks on the poll have gone down dramatically over the last twenty years. I mean, I feel like the heyday was like the late nineties, mid to late nineties was like the hey day. So as soon as I started coming up here consistently, it wasn't dramatically downhill. Yeah, I mean, we would. It was not uncommon for us to have three nice big bucks on the pole that was not in common. Yeah, I always talk about that. I think it was ven was the year I remember so well when we had two big, really big seven point in the really big eight pointer you were ten years old? No, well, I guess yes, you're right year old. Um, se right, ye, let's see what you were born in. I'm trying to look at the wall here it says ninety five actually, so maybe I'm wrong, so it was nine if you're listeners. We have one entire wall of our cabin that's full of uh antlers from you know, over the course of the last twenty thirty years, and I think we did talk about that in our podcast over the h our hunting trip. Unfortunately, we had a break in maybe twenty five years ago where a large number of the biggest racks were stolen, but the entire walls covered with antlers. Unfortunately, the vast majority of those were taken twenty years ago. Yeah. So when we last killed like a nice buck up here in a somewhat mature buck three year older. So that's a long time ago. Um. Since then, it's been like a steady decline. Now, I don't know, probably when I was in college. Maybe I think I started trying to encourage the family, like, maybe we should do some habit atwork, maybe we can try to do some things to fix stuff up. So I have to interject something here. So my dad GP, as we referred to him, Um so he's uh, he loves Ken Rovan, the in our camp, he loves the area. Um and but he he was not a real big fan of some of the things that Mark was talking about. When Mark started, uh you know, talking about making some food plots or or clearing some of the land. Uh, you know, Grandpa was extremely reluctant, right, and so Mark would try to find creative way sticks still, you know, not upset Grandpa to to start, you know, planting his food pot. One of those was we had an a t V and we had some a TV trails through some of the area. You know, Mark would say, hey, can we can we can we plant on the in the a TV tracks and between the tracks and you know that won't hurt anything Grandpa and Grandpa sort of conceded, but you know, uh, yeah, you've been working at that for a long time. Yeah. So so, yeah, GP was very reluctant to do stuff like that. He was really big on planting trees. He didn't not like the idea of for moving trees. That's the reason we have two big forces, which is why you kept which is why our fields are gone and they're now all It was interesting today we heard a little bit about how some of the trees they crap a plant and now are like big trees. Um, maybe not the best trees to have planted, but at the time, I mean, it was really well intentioned and he was up here just trying to be a steward of the land and I was that was a big fan of blue spruces. So we have blue spruces everywhere. And one of the things we heard from the forest or today is they aren't native to Michigan and they really aren't the best tree for it. Yeah, you know, but it is. It is kind of wild if you if you look out there, how big those trees are now. And you can look on on our door. We have this door full of pictures and there's a picture of GP planting those trees, you know, in that field is wide open. He's playing these little tiny seedlings, little saplings ten inches tall or something. And that was I'm like that was in the nineties, So in twenty some years, twenty five years, thirty years, I mean he grew a forest almost which well we buy to three trees at a time. Believe me, I was out there shoveling and planning, you know, for hours. He even brought Grahama out there. Yeah. So, so I feel a little bit bad that I'm now trying to undo his work. But I think I hope he knows that our intentions are are good because because yeah, so, as you mentioned, he was a little reluctant about some of these things, and I understand, um, but uh, you're right. I tried to plant the food plot along the a TV trail. I got approval, I started raid to try to kill some of the ferns to plant, and I think before I was able to plant that, he came back. He was like, no, I don't want you to do it. Um. So so that was all right, you know, I, um, that was fine. But I also know that something Grandpa always cared a lot about, and something he always wanted was for you know, for the wildlife to flourship here for us, and for his family and friends to come up here and enjoy it and spend time here, and so I think what we saw over the last twenty five years was a slow decline in how much people want to come up here because people we weren't seeing deer anymore. So different members of our camp slowly stopped coming up. Um, we stopped coming up as much because you've got limited time, limited time to hunt. If you're gonna come up and spend a couple of days a hunt, and you're like, well, I could go somewhere down south and I could see two dozen deer and I've got a great chance of shooting something. Or I could go up to the cabin and I won't see a deer at all. Um, you know, it becomes harder to justify that from like a hunting standpoint at least. So eventually we started saying, hey, we got try to turn this ship around. We need to try to revive this or restore what was once a really really uh robust place as far as the amount of animal life you would see, and now we just weren't seeing it. So maybe six seven years ago, how long ago do you think it was that that we actually started making changes? Six years Yeah, Yeah, I don't think it was that long ago. I think it was more like maybe five five years ago and we started cutting the first food pot. Yeah, so five or six years ago. And um and and again I bramped the fact that I think Grandpa would be okay with that because at that point, you know, he wasn't around. But we I think the things we have done have been with um like his his legacy hangs over this place so much, right because this was his place that he built, not literally built the cabin, but built what this place means. And and UM, I think we've tried to make changes in the spirit of what he would have wanted. Well. In fact, that very first food plot that we did was exactly that same field that Grandpa used to sit in, um, you know, late nights during deer season and shot many of his deer. So and that it turned into a young forest. So we essentially restored that to uh, to a food plot, to you know, to a grazing in a browsing area. So I agree with you, Mark, all right, I want to take another quick break to thank our partners at First Light for their support of this podcast, and I want to let you know about a product of theirs I've been testing just over the past I don't know half yearor so, which is their new sawbuck brush pant. This is a it's kind of like a hybrid pant. Half of the pant is like a light, stretchy, really comfortable, breathable fabric that comes from it's very similar to the corrigate guide pant um. And the other half though, is what's interesting is it's like a really heavy double night a long type panel like canvas pant that you would see for maybe bird hunting or working through the brush. Well, this pant has those panels in the front. And what I wasn't sure about what with the soft stretchy stuff on the back get ripped up in thorns and brush, or could the pant handle you know, shed hunting or working out in the summer scouting and doing things like that. And I was pleasantly surprised to find I used all this past spring shed hunting and now I'm using it on these scouting trips in the summer and different habit at work and stuff. The holding up really well. They're very comfortable but tough. So thinking the saw about brush pant is gonna be a great all around white tail offseason project pant. I'd highly recommend checking that one out and you can learn about it at first light dot com. Yeah, so so let's talk about what we've done so far. Because we decided we want to try to do something, are we we looked at what's available, like where are the what are the weak spots. The way I kind of started this processes is what do we have a lot of what don't we have? Where are we missing things? And as we just discussed, what we used to have was a lot of openings, a lot of edge, a lot of food. We do not have that anymore. And now we have almost a monoculture, not a monoculture because it's a lot of different things, but we have just cover everywhere almost on on the property as of like five six years ago. So the first idea was, Okay, we need to try to make some openings that we could hopefully plant food plots. And so the first year we just went out there, the first spot we were located. We tried to pick a couple of places that had relatively smaller number of trees you'd have to remove to get some kind of clearing, and relatively younger trees it would be easily cut out right. And that happened to be in that old field that used to be GPS spot where he killed that great big seven pointer that I just looked at on the wall in um So. I remember the first year, all we managed to do was cut and opening, Like we went out with the chainsaws and spent a couple of days, handful of days cutting, and that was hard work. You nearly had a heart to couples. I just remember seeing you all red and sweating and jeese. I don't know how do need to sit down? Do you have any water? Glad I missed out on that. Josh has conveniently missed all of our work projects on the food not so far, um but we're trying to change that now. I got you up here today. Um So first year was just getting that open. But you know that in itself is like a powerful thing, because not only do we have a lack of openings for food, but we also have a lack of openings just as sight lines like you can't hardly see more than forty yards anywhere in our property. So half of our problem, maybe not half, but a little bit of our problem that we don't see any deers simply that you just can't see him because it visually black. Yeah, you know, I'm not sure many people can appreciate just how thick our woods and our our swamps are here. I mean, it really is the case that, um, you know, you you almost don't want to bring a rifle because frankly, they're they're wasted just a slingshot. Well, and to that point, I went on, this would have been two years ago now, I went on and walk back into the swamp and and saw that old GPS old stand back here, little Knox blind. I mean, you couldn't see more than ten or fifteen yards, so just so thick back there and everything. Yeah, you couldn't see anything. And I never knew anything different like that growing up. I just thought that was the norm. Um. I mean, it makes things challenging. So having some sight lines is certainly a nice thing too. And lots of times growing up that would be what would determine where I would hunt when I'm walking around. Back in the day, it wasn't like for any type of reason that I thought dear be traveling was like, hey, just find a place where you can see a little bit and that'd be where you sit. Um. So now the idea has been let's create a few places like that. So that first year would just cut and it probably wouldn't. We weren't able to open up more than I don't know, a quarter acre, but we got a quarter acer opened, just chain song stuff down low, pulled all the tree tops out, and there's a lot to clear out, like a ton of small trees all bunched in these fields. Now, So that was the first year, and um, we got it open. We didn't get to plant anything, but at least got something open and that was progress. And I can't remember if we started trying to put lime down or up, but I think we took soil tests that first year, and I think we did, and I did think we because you know, our that soil was so acidic. Soil tests came back that I think we did, as I recall, was fIF pounds or line that we brought in that first year. And um, the other thing we did not do because we didn't have the right equipment, as we couldn't de stump right, we couldn't pull the stumps of most of those trees we cut, so we caught him down. We cleared what we could because it was full of you know, uh underbrush, and and everything else. UM put down the line and at least started the process of changing the soil acidity. Yeah, so to this point we've did We did everything with nothing but chainsaws and then just bringing in bags line, no tractors, no equipment at all. UM. So the first year I just put a bunch of line out because you said super acidic. We knew that was gonna be a challenge. Like in a lot of areas, even where there are some sunlight coming in, mostly all that grows is bracken ferns. There's not a whole lot of other really positive stuff growing in many places. So I knew that would be a challenge to getting some kind of food plot growing would be improving the soil. So that led us to the second year. That second year we added lime again and we tried to widen the open by a little bit, not a lot, but we try to expand a little bit. And then tried planting for the first time. And if I remember correctly, we brought in a four wheeler with my little groundhog disc on it and trying to disc around the stumps and stuff. So the first year we dissed around stumps. So I think I think we came in, sprayed once in the early spring, came back in the late summer. There's lots of ferns grown. Again, spray those ferns again. Then ran around with the disc behind the four wheeler to break stuff off up a little bit, and planted some oats and and then fertilized lime, cetera. But you know a little bit of color to that. I mean that that soil was so dense because of all the roots systems and all of the you know, the mat that had been created. I remember we had a really hard time disking that. That was a big challenge that first year. And it's like it's really just not great soil either, lots of pine needles. I remember talking to you after you guys did that that weekend. It's like, how did it get? Like the classic frustrated Mark? Is thatther thing? Classic? I hear that from you a lot, so so Mark. That second year I don't recall. Was that the year that we expanded the food plot over to the second side of the barbell. No, so this was just the this is the first day or the first year we actually had something planted. Was just food plot one at that point, and so just food plot. One was oats and we can't. We came back in September October, like holy smoke, something actually took. We planned the oats and the oats came in and it was actually really nice. We were really excited about that. But that was it was very excited. We had like a decently you know, there was it was patchy, but we had something that was growing that deer would eat. For the first time ever, we planted something that deer would eat, and we had trail cameras running and lo and behold they were deer coming to it. And we for the first time ever got him ature buck on trail camera too. So how how exciting was that when we checked those cameras dead and you I remember this because we must have checked those cameras for the first time during a gun season, because on the same day we came in. I go to hunt the food plot for the first time. And I think we've told the story again, but I'll briefly mention it again just for those who haven't heard it. We come in opening day, I go to hunt the food plot for the first time. It's very exciting. I go, I get set up. I brought in I didn't have a tree stand set up, so I was bringing like a mobile mobile. No, I brought in my climber, so I shim me up the tree. And you, meanwhile, are going to your old trusty location. You have this box blind that's about twenty yards away from the cabin. The whole staple gun experience. Yeah, this is the staple gun story. But for those that don't know, it's really great. Um so it's about maybe a hundred fifty yards in the cabin or hundred yards in the cabin, something like that. And and yeah, so you went out there, got to the ground. Do you want to tell the story or because I like to embellish it, you know, so well, so so real Quickly you walk out to the blind hundred yards away, You get into it, you rummaging around, you get settled in, and you notice that a little bit of the carpeting on the blind, because that's how we do our blinds up here with what is the indoor capet, and so that was flapping around. You didn't like that, so you walked back to the cabin. You got a staple gun. You walked back to the blind. You start stapling carpeting to the side of your blind um, and lo and behold a deer arrives. Now I am just getting to the top of my tree. I'm just getting settled, and I'm pulling up my firearm. Um, and all of a sudden, it's like three thirty or four in the afternoon, and but womb a gun goes off like real close to me. About crap my pants, and I thought, there's no way that's anybody. But my dad was right here. My dad just accidentally shot himself. Like, you know, I am really offended. You know the first thing that you thought. You didn't think that your dad shot a deer. You assumed the shots. Yeah, absolutely, that's what I thought. Well, that might go to that might speak to the fact that we haven't been seeing Yeah, I mean that's it was exactly that. So we had like, I mean, you haven't shot one up here in a very long time. No one shot one up here in a very long time. And so yes, a buck. Actually miraculous that came back. You shot the buck. It was awesome. But um, that led to the first time over the food plot being a very short one because I showed me down the tree after five minutes and came over here. Um, But what was cool as we came back into the cabin, checked the cameras and not only did you kill the buck that night, but there were two different mature bucks on trail camera for the first time ever. Yeah, that one in particular. Mark described that, well there was and there might actually been three mature bucks. Not take it back, because there was. We got a picture of a buck in the summer, a velvet buck that was really wide, really big. Impressive because the only time we saw him, But that was cool. And then there was a buck that came by several times in October and into November they had a drop time. And then there was another nice big buddy day pointer two. All that first year with the food plot and we actually seen and never before we were seeing mature bucks at this and that there hadn't been a buck of the caliber of these three deer at least I've ever been seen since. And now we get a little quarter acre third acre food plot in and we're getting pictures of these deer in that food plot. So that was like, I remember you and we were in here like hi Fi, and where we go, Like how cool is this? Like we put in all this work almost having a heart attack. That was a really big step, Like it was a small thing we did, but right away sell results and and I don't know, that was like a really exciting inflection point and like, hey, we can do something here. We can like Kendrovan can come back, we can change like the narrative because for a long time, the narrative is always kind of negative. And it wasn't just like we're feeling negative. We also had our wives. I was going to say, the negative narrative came from our wives. Particularly, you don't want to go hunting there. There's no dear. They can't tell you how many times I've why are you even going out there? What are you even doing? Why are you going? I'm like, guys, come on, this place means so much to us. You don't you don't get it. So yeah, constantly dealing with that um. But so that was year one we got that planet solved results. Year three was I think the year where we expanded it into the barbell shape, right, do you want to describe that? Yeah, So food plot one, as we call it, is the first food plot that we created. And that's maybe, as Mark said, probably a quardreaker. So there was kind of a natural connector from that to the second food plot that we identified, which was a little bit further east. Um, it was a wetter area, not as big as space where we could easily cut out maybe a little less than a quarter raker. But but but you know, a nice potential area we could do. And we assume that we could also leverage that connecting component to turn into a you know, an additional portion of that uh, that food plot. So um, it was a little bit easier um to take out the small brush and that sort of thing, but there were some pretty good sized stumps that he had to be taken out. Um. Our neighbor as a tractor, he came in and did some initial clearing for us. Uh that that helped, but left a really big mess because he really didn't pull out the trunks of a lot of the roots. So I had a friend who's a landscaper. Um. He agreed to come up with his bigger tractor, a koboda and you know, big enough to be able to pull things out. And he spent a day not only taking care of food plot two, but also coming back to food plot one and helping us remove all those trunks and the big roots and so on and so forth. So there was a pretty significant improvement to both food plots and that that connector in between. So I don't know how much how much food plot area we have between the two, maybe a half an acre or maybe a little bit more if you include the connector, but but there was a nice dense space between both of them. Both of them kind of sit um are adjacent to the stream and there's a nice timber that deer moved through and across the stream to both foot plots. And then we have a um ten acres eight acres of hemlock on the south side of both of those food plots. That is a significant yarding space that the deer like. Yeah, and that was that was improved the size of it um and the probably the biggest thing was getting rid of the stumps though really helped and just leveled outlets made the area much easier to work with. And we again planet oats and some buckwheat. I think that year and again saw deer movement pretty consistently in and out of there. Um. I remember hunting over it, and no, I'm not gonna remember exactly here, but I do remember for the first year I hunted it. After you killed your deer, I went back and I saw a decent buck that ran through really quickly. And so every year now since I've hunted it, maybe not this past year, but I've seen bucks in or around it, and I had only seen like two bucks or three bucks in all of my years hunting here ever, from you know, from the time I remember probably up through two thousand whenever, this was two twelve. So are you including the three deer that we saw over in the north when you when you were like nine years old and you told me that you wanted the guns so you can shoot them. Yeah, I remember that that was one buck. That was one buck that you couldn't see, but I could see it, and I wanted the gun. So that's one buck. I remember another buck I saw when I was old enough to hunt by myself. I was hunting maybe just a couple hundred yards from that spot, and I had a buck run through, So I was buck number two. And then the third buck I ever saw was in two thousand seven when I killed that eight point or seven point or whatever that was up here. So those are the three bucks I had ever seen at our deer camp from nine to two thousand and seven, and then we had our food plots that we put in here. I don't know what it was, two thirteen or something would have been the first year, and then I started seeing a buck or two, multiple bucks every year after that point. So again, really positive results on the trail camera. That year we saw I think it was one mature buck that we had a camera that year, but still cool. It was nine point, I think Um, and I think Josh, there was one day where I was sitting there and saw this eight point run through and I think you saw him about a couple hundred yards away too, right, because you you've hunted often times I'll be hunting close to the food plot. There's this big chunk of timber that Dad described, and you've been hunting recently a lot over on that side, a lot of deer kind of transitioning through their towards the plots. It seems like, all right, I try to pick them off before they get to you. I've noticed that. Yeah, you know what. Just another comment real quickly one is uh, Um, not only were seeing deer in the food plots, but we're seeing many other animals. So we're we're seeing a lot of bear. Remember those first few years in particular, we almost saw more bear, and we saw deer that camera, yeah, I camera, but we're also seeing coyote. We saw, we've seen some bobcat, We've seen a lot of turkeys. I mean, it's just changed the habitat, I think, not just for Dare, but for our entire the entire ecosystem. Yeah, and it's it's probably less than half acre. I mean it's it's not a big thing. It's a small space, and just that little bit made a big difference. And another thing to point out is that we we mentioned the beginning how acidic the soil was, so every year we've been adding lime and it's been getting better and better, to the point than last year or all that year, we we again planted things that we thought would handle that city. So we're trying to plant things that could handle it in tough conditions, so as oats, it was buck eat stuff like that. Then, Um, I guess it would take us to them last year then, because I think that last year was the third year stuff being planted, and we came in again and I think we tried to do a little bit more cutting. Like every year we do a little more cutting expand it's a little bit, not much, but just a little bit to get more sunlight in. Um aligned it again, fertilized it again, and in the August came back in disked it planted. And this year I thought, hey, we try a blend of things, see what might come in. So I planted oates again. But there was also some brassicas mixed in there, and there was also some clover mixed in there. So for the first time ever, we were going to see could brassicas and clover make it in miss Assidic soil? And plots came in pretty down good again last year, right, I mean I think it looked pretty good. Um. I don't remember if I saw a buck while hunting, um, but you a good one. Yeah, that's not that good one. I'm I'm sure he was coming from the food plot, right, It wasn't too far away from there. So even though when we might not actually be seeing deer on it, I do think that it's it's it's like a it's one of those focal points. It's pulling deer and through the property. Yeah, how they're using the property for sure? Yeah, And we got some didn't have any like big, big mature shooters on camera last year, but a lot of deer still consistently using at a minimum, there's at least one dough family group that is consistently there all the time in that area. And I think that's just, uh, that's helped us tremendously during the rut because now there's a reason that bucks are going to consistently pass through our property now because there's something to keep these doughs there versus you know, probably in a lot of these deers range a very large territory because there's no great concentration of food anywhere, so they just kind of nip and pick their way across huge swath of country. Here, we're able to focus things a little bit more so again we only have like a half acre maybe a food. Yeah. Last year though came in pretty nice and we have a little bit more diverse blended stuff. We had some braskas that came up, we had a lot of oats that came up, UM, a little bit of buckwheet that came up. UM. At that point, it was mostly what you're seeing and um, lots of bears coming on camera. And then, like I talked about last year on the podcast, I had that night where um, I had a black bear come right underneath my stand for the first time, which is pretty cool. Um, So that was quite a hun say, Mark, One thing I want to mention is we actually have a third food plot two but it's really close to the cabin. That's maybe another eighth of an acre, maybe a little bit bigger than that. Um. But we we've done well there in terms of the food that that's come up there as well. And I don't know if you think that's really changed or helped at all in and you know, keeping the deer in the area. But but you know, we have three total. Yeah, I always kind of look at that. It's it's pretty negligible what it is right now. It's it's kind of a little patch, but it's something. Um And yeah, I mean that is another thing that just added to this sum total of food that we have, gives us a little bit more so. So yeah, that's that's what we've done to this point. All right. We we have created little food plot openings. We've talked about a number of different things, but something really encouraging that we just saw we got here today. We started talking about things we want to do with a little bit from the forestry standpoint. So this is the first time I've been back to the cabin since last winter, and we went over to the food plot area, and I was kind of expecting, all right, we're gonna have to do what we do every year, which is replant. You know, we got annuals and replanting every summer. Before you say that, the first thing we have to do is get rid of the ferns. So usually we have to spray and spray a couple of times because they grow. So I mean usually they're just they are everywhere. They're carpet of ferns. Get a bunch of ferns, and so we get out there and I'm like, man, well it's green. And I get closer and it's clover, and it is a lot of clover. And so as part of our mix last year there was some clover in there. I kind of really didn't have high hope. I wasn't even thinking that we would get it to them back. Not much at all that I could see came up last fall. Um, but holy smokes, it came in beautifully this spring. So we basically have a perennial clover plot going on right now that just needs to be maintained. We don't need to replant a whole new food plot this summer, which is really nice. Like I'm shocked it's it looked really good, look really good. So that right there is like that's the product of what we've been doing to try to improve the soil. There was never never would you have that growing and that stuff before him, So that is that is really encouraging. So we've had a nice lush food source all spring now for the deer here, and we just pulled trail camera cards and saw that the deer have been using it a bunch. They've been enjoying that all spring now, um, and now it's the continue through the summer. So all we need to do is manage it. So I think we need to mow it one time here in the summer, and then when we get closer to the end of summer, I think we'll do a one time pass with a grass selective herbicide. It's just there are some grasses growing it and someplace is really thick, so just knock back the grass once and then we're just gonna nurture that clover so fertilize it um, maybe do a top seating so go over hopefully can come up here once before rain and broadcast some more clover, maybe some other annuals to just fill in the gaps. We'll I'll run some oats or cereal rye or something, maybe some Braska seeds that will easily take just by broadcasting on top of everything with a rain coming the next day, and that'll fill the gaps. And we'll have this great food plot of mostly printing the clover and then some of these other annuals filling in the gaps. And then next year we'll get the clover will be back and it will probably even thicker and more less patchy. Um, And then we'll just continue nurturing that. And that's I mean, that makes things a lot easier for us. Plus, clover is one of the best possible options you can have out there because it's gonna attract deer and feed deer with a high protein really attractive um, really attractive for from like March or April right through the winter. You know, I mean, they're gonna it won't be quite as attractive in December it's super duper cool, but lots of times I still still see them hitting it right through. Um, So that is just like I'm blown away. I was not expecting that. I think we're all pretty excited to see it. We were. So that's the food plot game. But the thing is is that it's really hard to carve in food plots. And even though we're seeing some nice results with our little half acre food, it's still relatively minimal and there's still like only you know, one or two people can be hunting around that it is making a difference, but it's there's so much more. I feel like we could be doing and we could really turn things around if we could create some more opening, some more diversity in the habitat, some more edge, some more food to just draw more deer into the area. Because right now there's a very scattered herd, but there are deer. But if we create a more concentrate, high quality food source, it would just be that much better. So I've started, like we started talking I think it was last year, maybe Dad, that we started talking about this, the idea of like, hey, maybe we can get some of this timber cut out and plant some bigger food plots. Maybe in the center of some of this timber, maybe we can pull out some timber, um cut some stuff, create more openings, create more food plots, things along those lines, and spread them out so we can hunt over a larger area, so we can pull the ear from wider area, so there's more things going on. Um. But the question was like how do we do that? How, Like we don't really have the means to go and clear an acre or two acres of like big mature timber or the time. Um. So we started wondering, like, maybe could we find someone that would come in here? Could we could we do it in such a way that a logging company would come in and you know, maybe it would be cost neutral. We would get the trees taken out the way we wanted them to and then they get the lumber and maybe that'd be even exchange. Or maybe we can find a way that's not too crazy expensive. UM. So I ran that past you dead, and you and and you know your brother, you guys are on board with that, right. It seems like a good idea. UM. And so the next step was I'm trying to find like how do you find someone to do that? Who do you talk to? And I'm right to talk to you, Josh. You see, if you haven't known anyone through your que you make connections as far as like, we want a forrester to come in because basically the first step from I understood, is getting get a consulting forrester or a state forester to come out and figure out what's what do you have, what's available, what might be marketable, and you know, if there's something there, then they can connect you with a either another forrester who can sign and set up contracts or connect you directly to a logging company to then do those things. So over the last handful months, I've been calling a bunch of different foresters trying to find someone that could do this. Had two other people I talked to but just couldn't end up getting them out here. What ended up being a little bit of a challenge was that we have a small it's a small property. It's a small amount of area where you can actually take timber out of its right forty acres of which at least half of that is wet ground without any really decent timber in there at all, sticks, nasty alders and stuff. Um. So finally he was able to get in touch with the State Forrester, who this is their job to come out and do these things. They do it for free, like so we didn't have to pay a consulting fear anything. But their job is to come out and connect to you with you know, other forresters or logging companies that might be able to do the job that you have. So that's why we came here today. We came here to meet that forrester and he was going to walk the property with us and tell us what we saw or tell us what was going on here and what might be possible. Um, I don't do either one. You guys want to walk what did you think that? Walk me through what you experienced and what your thoughts were. Well, so we walk the property. Um, Josh was the was a forester that we worked with, a very very knowledgeable, very impressed And it wasn't Josh Hilliard. There's a different guy named Josh. So we'll say there's a further further came along to reserve and then the other Josh was for us to the cha. Yeah, so Josh kind of level set uh and and he walked us through. We walked him through every segment of the property, different types of training, the high ground, the low ground, north, south, etcetera. And we described both, you know, what our goals were, and as we did that, you know, he provided a lot of good information, gave us some perspective. I would say. One of the things that struck me um and and I guess this is no surprise. His perspective was really about habitat, right. It was habitat protection and in um um encouraging and providing uh, you know, opportunities to increase native forage, um remove and and discourage non native forage. Uh, you know, improve the habitat for all wildlife, not just dear And that was really fascinating, I thought, um and he was. I thought he was outstanding. So I think the information we've we've gathered from him was very good. And he's going to create a technical report that looks like it's gonna be very detailed by by different components of our property. And um, you know, I mean, I think we we didn't hear everything we were hoping we're gonna hear. But but I'm not sure that wasn't surprising also, so um but it was very good. And we're gonna pause for one last break to think our partners at Morton Buildings for their support of this podcast, and more Than is the builder of wood framed steel side of buildings. You've probably seen them all over the place. If you ever drive through the country, you might see, Oh gosh, folks are using these types of Morton buildings for hunting camps. They're using them even for homes. They're using them for storage facilities for guys. You're using for tractors, a t V S, side by sides, food plot equipment. UM, you can use them as a skinning shack, of butchering shed, just a place to hang out after hunting. Gosh, there's a lot of options you can do with those. As I've mentioned in the past, I've always imagined having one of these pol barn houses. It's it's still a dream. And with a hundred ten years building experience, Moren has become one of the most renowned names in the industry. Their custom buildings include things such as their exclusive energy Performer installation package, which is going to lead to improved heating and cooling and nearly zero maintenance high rib steel. If you'd like to learn more about Morton buildings, you can visit Morton buildings dot com. So so I want to get more detail, UM, so we took him across the property to observe each different cover type is what he wanted to see. So we came with a map that showed the different soil types and the property. So you knew there was two upland areas and then there was a lot of lowland. So you want to go to these different upland areas where there was most likely to be manageable forest. And then he wanted to see different cover types. So, for example, there was one section that large stretch of pines you talked about the beginning, We have this big block of planted white pines UM. So he wanted to observe that. Take a look at that. He saw it. He said, hey, this is planted way too thick. There's we need to thin this out for sure. Um. That'd be good for wildlife, be good for habitat, and for future value of ever selling any of these trees um as well. So he said, you know, he didn't he didn't mention too many very detailed management prescriptions, but he did say this is a place you'd want to thin it and you would basically take out all the subordinate trees, leave all like the prime healthy trees and then that would open up the canopy, get more sunlight down to the bottom, which would allow some regrowth, because right now there's no white pine regrowth, no white pines regrown, because there's nothing coming through. The only thing that's grown and very sparsely. There's a couple of maples that have grown. And he pointed out that that is like the native thing that will be coming back, Like if you lose your pines and your hemlocks and your cedars, which right now, basically nowhere do we have regrowing cedars in the lowlands or in that pine except for in the old field. Um. If when those eventually die out, what you're just gonna give a bunch of maples coming back poland protecular, right yea. Um, So the first thing we saw that that stand and Um. Then we moved to some of the old fields that are now overgrown with cherries and maples and those norways and the blue spruces and stuff that gp planted over the years. Um, some white pines, cherry trees, um, stuff like that. And so we observed that cover type and took a bunch of notes and as we go, he's got this map, that soil map. I talked about, and he's writing all these notes in there about each different set of cover we're seeing. He observed different layers, so we observe what the canopy layer was, So what does it look like a high he observed and wrote notes what the mid canopy looked like, So you're young trees that are growing midded canopy kind of part way up there. And then what's growing at the ground level, So what kind of forbes and bushes and things might be growing. And a pretty consistent thing other than the fields, is that we don't have a mid canopy or a ground cover. It's all high canopy stuff. And then you can just see right through all the pines. You can see right through all the hemlocks. You just had these couple of old fields that now provide some of that stuff. And then you've got the whole lowlands where there's all these alders and cedars, and then that's thick, but it's just really wet, thick, swampy stuff. Um. So yeah, he said, hey, we're gonna want to thin this this pine stand in the old fields. He said, well, you can pick and choose some of these different things here. You want to um, pull out some of these maples. You can selective the cuts and maples and thin it out and make some openings, and there will also be the most excuse me, those would also be the most natural places to try to reopen up to put food plots in. Again, of course too. Um So we talked about that, and then I think the area though that like at least where I you know, one of the ideas I had. We have this like seven to ten acre block of mostly hemlocks, some cedars, just all mostly conifer trees, very mature and very dense, yes, big dens. And so I've always known that that is great yarding. It's great winter cover, like that's always been this place where you know, like deer going there during the winter, but the rest of the year it's pretty much a dear desert. You can see across the whole thing. You know, there's no ground cover at all, even though it's seven or eight acres worth of of you know, uh stand, I mean you can see you right through a place hundred you see hundreds yards across. There's no deer level cover, there's no deer level food. It's about ten acres, so it's about a core of our entire property, and half of our property swamps, so we really only have half the property you can do anything with. So we've got twenty acres of of of opportunity area. Of that twenty acres, five acres of it is the cabin and the yard and the surrounding stuff. So now we're talking we've got like fifteen acres of mandul stuff, ten acres of which is this dear desert of of old trees. So my idea coming into us was like, hey, there's an opportunity where we could create some kind of opening in there to make that whole side of property, but better by putting a food source over there. Um. The forester disagreed with me on that because he was of and and and I still might veto him, I don't really want to do it. I really want to do it. Maybe we'll maybe we'll find some other options. I want to do some more research. But his rationale is that the value of that ten acres as yarding covers, as winter Habitatfort Deer so high and so important that breaking it up at all would be it would be too much of a negative. And so his recommendation was to try to work on implementing food around the edges of it, outside of it. Um, we have very limited opportunities to do that, so and you've already kind of done something. We've done some of it. We can definitely expand that. And maybe the right way to do it isn't to put a one acre food plot in the middle of it over two acre opening in the middle of it. Maybe it's maybe we just choose to do that on one of the edges so that you still keep this connected big block. You just take an acre out of one side. Maybe that's the way we can still do this. UM. But basically that was you know, kind of put the kaibosh on my big idea there and said that, yes, there is some marketable timber in there though, so like we could probably get something out. But he kind of said, like his thoughts were that we maybe shouldn't do it. It It would be hard to get equipment back in there because of the nature of the ground. It's kind of low. There's these big like potholes and like rises and knobs, and I don't know how to describe that habitat, but um, but that was, you know, that was the one like that was kind of what I thought was gonna have a big opportunity area. UM. And some of his concern too, is that once we would get rid of that, we'd have a hard time regenerating that down the road if we wanted to, UM, because stuff was getting browsed so heavy, like we we'd need to write plant something and protect it, tree tubes or things like that. Yeah. Underneath and his his thing too is like if we wanted to keep that, even the yard itself, that that ten acres, there's no regrowth at all, as you said, So if we don't do anything, that is going to die out and be replaced by something else someday. So if we wanted this to still be a great yarding area fifty years from our hundred years from now, we would need to go in there, take out just a couple of things here, take out the maples where there are maples, to open up some sunlight and plant hemlocks or things like that that hopefully fifty years from our hundred years from now would refill UM. So maybe that's gonna be what we do. Maybe what we do is we're gonna go in there. We take a handful of little trees out here, and they're just enough to start regrowing some yard type stuff again from the ground up, and then we're gonna put food on the edges maybe, Um, I'm not sure exactly how. I think our biggest challenge still in our biggest The biggest reason why we haven't been able to make bigger food plots is that it's so timber, so thick, and we don't have equipment. So all we have his chainsaws. None of us are really good with him. Dad nearly had a heart attack two years in a row. I think the second year you had the same thing. Um, So we need to figure out a way two more efficiently both the time and money get openings made. You've got to look on your face, what are you thinking. I was just thinking. The way we fixed that is way for your your respective two boys to grow up. And then we got slave labor to do other cuttings. We got a little weight on that, though I'd like to make some progress before that. Um. But yeah, so that's where we're at right now. We need to figure out a way to open up these old fields some more, because I think we're making progress there, but it definitely could be much more and maybe we can get like basically the end The net net of our conversation in the forest today was like, you know, here's your your biggest challenge is that you have a very small amount of marketable timber here that someone's gonna come in and work with. So you gotta thin these pines. You're gonna take some red maples and handful of things out of here. Maybe we'll take out a little bit of the edge of the hemlocks or something that's a relatively small amount of timber that the company is gonna want to come in and do. So maybe we can get someone to do that, but we're probably low on their list of priorities. Um, so that's where we're at. We're gonna wait and see. We're gonna get connected with a couple of people and see if someone will take that job and how long that will take. I think the interim, I don't know what are your guys thoughts in the interim. I think because of what we experienced with the existing food plots, I mean, we ought to go back and look at how we expand those food plots further. You know, one of the things we didn't say is that those two food plots are almost adjacent to that big hemlock stand so if we could move them even closer. Now you have an area where you have really heavy duty yarding in the winter, and you've got this hopefully much significantly improved UM feeding area. You know, to some extent, we're gonna have to see what comes back from the forest or we're gonna have to look and see if we can find, you know, a partner that would help us do this. UM. But if we can't, I think that's our option. Yeah. I think there's some spots too that he pointed out where if we just got rid of some saplings and some smaller trees there there was some good natural brows coming up in certain spots. UM. If we could make that better, more open area, for get more sunlight to that, UM, that could potentially help us out and kind of create another edge. Then from we got the food plots and then to some natural vegetation that they'll they'd want to browse, and then to the the hemlocks. He kind of had that layered edge that could help and that wouldn't be a ton of there's nothing huge and there's a lot of just small saplings. I think a lot of red maple in there. Again. UM, that could be something. There's a couple of different spots that he pointed out that we could potentially do that. Um, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think it's just gotta go in there with a chains or or what would be nice. Especially on the other side creek, we're food plot one and two are which essentially one connected plot, but like a barbell um. I was thinking it might be worth renting a dozer and an operator to come in here, because you just push all that stuff out stuff, and it gets through the stumps, it gets everything, and a lot of the treason there could be easily taking care of the dozer much more quickly than us with a chainsaw. And then you're stuck with stumps, dragon tops and yeah, and so high. You know, chipping a lot of money. Will throw in five bucks or whatever it is for the day to get someone to come out here and just say, hey, here's he could push out another acre acre and a half probably of of ground there on those food plots. And then so between that and then taking chainsaws and doing some selective patches here and there in some other spots, all of a sudden we could create another two acres or more openings and food um, and that's pretty good progress. You could we could more than we could more than double what we've got going on now, probably with some stuff like that afternoon to work for someone with a dozer. And I really like the idea that you had markup, you know, being able to take out a protected area within those hemlocks that was adjacent to the hemlocks themselves and the swamp on the other side, and it was closed to the other food plots. To me, that made a lot of sense. But given what we heard, given you know, our our goals and objectives, I think what you just described probably makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I think for now at least, I still really wish we could find a way to get something on the other side of the property, because right now, having all like the good it's better than nothing. I'd rather have more where it is. But I'd also rather have stuff spread around too, so that that gives us a wider area of influence of which will be attracting deer and moving deer through different parts of the property, just so that you know, all of us have a better chance to seem more deer to um. Like, I'd love to have food source closer to closer to your spot, dad's a better chance to deer through there um and we can spread ourselves out and have deer path seen through a larger area. Now by having even one really good food source, it pulls deer from all over, so it is helping. Let it be nice to have multiple spots like that, you know. So we talked about food plot three, which is a small food plot close to the cabin. It's not a place where you really want to hunt, but it is something that would pull deer through the area. What do you think of expanding that? So the issue is that and why I really have not, you know, put too much time or energy into is that I don't think we want We don't want to have a great, big food plot there because already our biggest challenge, other than creating food, our biggest challenge is not spooking deer. And if you already we have certain people with we have a challenge with everybody getting on board with low pressure hunting tactics. And so if we go waltzing around all over the place and spooking deer, that reduces our chances of being able to see them during daylight. That's what big challenge. But what I'm here you're saying is we're going to bring deer closer to the camp where they're going to get spooked, effectively drive all the deer around exactly. And I don't want you don't want to do this like attract and repel thing, Like if you attract a bunch of deer to a place where they're naturally going to come into contact with with us and people, that's gonna make things worse. As soon as we walk out the door to get ready to go right hunt, you know, in the morning, they're going to be right there. Those other food plots are already pretty close. Yeah they're close. They're they separated by a visual barrier the creek and timber and stuff, but yes, like there within ears distance you can hear um. So that's always been a challenge we have simply because of how big the property, how small the property is, where our fields are in locations, like that's something we're working with already. I'm you know, having a little patch of stuff there has been like something, but I don't think it's been such an attractant that like we're pulling a bunch of deer and spooking them. I think if we try to really expand that you would have that risk. So anything that we were to try to plant on this side of the creek, so within this like ten acres around the cabin, if we do it, we need be really careful about thinking about ways to block it from the cabin and making sure we're not spooking deer. They're all time. So I always thought like, for example, on the far west side of the pines here, you can maybe try to if we could remove some of those pines enough to open up like a quarter acre or something like that, that could be a cool spot to put a little food plot because it'd be huntable for you. But we would have to have some kind of visual barrier to block it from here from the cabin. So you could do that maybe by cutting down a bunch of trees and leaving all the tree tops like form wall of tree tops that visually block it. Stuff like that. Um So I think there's some creative solutions, but there's gotta be enough distance, and there's gotta be some waste to block it, and and then we have to be thoughtful about how we approach it, because again, you don't want a food plot that we have to walk by every time you're leaving or coming by whatever, I'm just spooking all the deer. And that's I think like that continues to be our biggest challenges. I think deer very quickly catch onto when we're here, and so the best hunts, I was it the first day you're here, and then it usually goes down subsequently, unless you've got like you know, in the rut and stuff. They'll be deer coming from long distances and they'll pass through not realizing it. But your core dear, your local deer herd is going to move in daylight close to the cabin less and less as we make a ruckus and stuff. So that's why i'd be nice to have habitat improvements further away from the cabin that we can be hunting and taking advantage of that aren't as impacted by our presence. So one thing we've you and I have talked about Mark a little bit is in the interim things that we could do is it is so thick back here, you know, take a chainsaw and go into some of these thick areas and just kind of carve out some trails shooting basically well or or deer trails to where you're kind of influencing. You know where they're going to be traveling. You can kind of dictate where you want them to go with how thick it is. If you clear some openings, they're they're likely to use those um dear creatures of least they want the path at least for this resistance. So it's true you can find some ways to influence. You might attract dear, but you can find ways to funnel deer. But again, it's like any way to concentrate deer activity in some small ways helpful here. Well. And you know, the other thing we really haven't talked about much, which is kind of what you're alluding to, Josh, is are the things we can do to our property that would enhance the movement of deer on the adjacent state property that we could hunt. Uh, yeah, I don't know about that. I think the biggest thing is like, we can't influence the public land, of course, so the only things we can do here is like make this as as attractive of a thing as we possibly can. But then you could hunt the public land surrounding us as deer passed through the public land to our spots absolutely, But it's just a matter of in a perfect world, we'd have more attractant of some kinds of food, because that's the thing that's not everywhere else. So if we could have multiple food sources on our property, on different sides of our property, that would pull deer from all sides of the public surrounding us, then you have the opportunity to hunt that public and catch them passing through, hunt all sides of our property and catch them passing through heading to these core regions on our farm that do have food. UM. And so that's what we're doing on a very small scale. Now. We just need to get some more openings made to increase that. I think that's the big thing, the big challenge. And we're making progress though a little by little, making progress. Yeah, we are. It's significant and that is that is encouraging. Yeah, it's exciting. It's great to see. You know. When we looked at the trail camp pictures today, I was really excited to see what we saw. We saw a number of um. There was that one deer mark that you saw maybe it was in March, hadn't to um and didn't have a set of antlers because he had out to drop them. But it was a big bodied, mature deer. There was no question that was a buck um and a big buck. So I mean, I think we're we're making progress. So uh So, my my dream is, like we talked about this yesterday, my big goal this is by the time ever son is old enough to like shoot a deer, that this would be to a point where he could really realistically have an opportunity to come up here be a deer camp and there was like a great chance that he could shoot a deer, like he'd be excited to go out for opening a day because yeah, like last year we had two bucks on the pole and the year before that Dad's shot in the year before that, Grampa showing My hope is to have it back back to what it was like in the early nineties when I first came up. You know, there's a picture we talked about this last November in our podcast. There's a picture um with two deer, at least two deer on the buck pole behind the cabin, and a little mark in his orange standing underneath them, looking up at the deer with his face and awe of what it would be like to shoot those deer. That's I think what you're talking about. I'd like that today, and then I guess we gotta make sure it's around for Josh's a little one too, right, what are we going to call your little one? If you're you know, Frankfurter. Yeah, right, there's a baby further further junior or something Murder Junior and Oscar Meyer. I think my wife's gonna have a problem with that. But yeah, I don't know, that's that's my dream. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean that's the same thing. I mean, I've I don't think we said any but I do have one on the way, a little boy in the way, So I mean that's that would be awesome to have a spot up here that you know, I haven't been coming for very long, maybe six seven years, but it's been a really special place for me to come and to have him have an opportunity to come up here and talk about what you were saying with Everett, to have those same sort of experiences with him would be awesome. Yeah, from what about you did, well, I'm just thinking, as we're talking about this, how excited I am to be able to experience that all over again and uh. You know, you know what, probably the worst thing that could happen to Ken Rovan would be for us not to have the next generation love to hunt and love to come up here and love to experience the things that we're experiencing. And I think what you guys are doing and what you're talking about, and then I know the way you're gonna, you know, introduce your kids to um uh, to the place and to the woods and to the area around us, they'll have the same love. Because you know, quite honestly, I'm a little worried about, you know, what's gonna happen twenty thirty years. Who's gonna who's gonna take care of the place, Who's gonna want to come up here? You know, especially as the number of people that are hunting and fishing continues to decline, at least in Michigan. You know, um, um, this is important to me. I know it's important to you. And I'm just so thrilled to hear that you you plan on, you know, having your kids here and and and making it their own. So hopefully before I die, um, I have the opportunity to see your kids get a couple of you know, monstrous bucks and be able to celebrate that with you guys. That'd be pretty cool, a lot of fun. You know. Well, I think I'll try to be conserved here. I'm pretty modest. I'm quite a realist when it comes to a lot of things. So my guests that ever will shoot his first monstrous buck within four years as well, I think I think that will pride anyway, he'll put his first of wall hanger on their legs. Yeah, we're talking about that yesterday. I remember when you were four years older, I guess that'd be five years old, and I brought you out to the blind out here about to yards north of where we're sitting right now, and that blind that Grandpa had built for us, which was a nice box blind, and Mark marks like five years old, and he's down on the bottom of the blind playing with toys and doing his thing, and here I'm up there trying to looking for a deer. Right. Every once in a while, Mark's head would pop up and say, just hear Derry got dead? Where's the deer head? Yeah, let's let's be real about this. We know that I was playing on the floor and you were sleeping. It did change pretty quickly. I will admit that. Yeah, I think I became really trying annoyingly bossy in the woods at an early age. Well, I had a pretty right page six seven, eight years old. We were sitting in the same place for sitting now when you'd be reading the Outdoor Life and the you know, the various magazines telling us everything about deer and you know their habitats and their patterns and habits and everything else. You should have seen this whole career coming death and the Boston nous is stuck with hasn't changed with it all. Right, time, it's time for you stop talking, Josh, and I think that that will end the podcast. Thanks guys, Let's come back and do this one again this fall, hopefully over bigger, better habitat improvements. And maybe I was just saying yesterday, I think this is the your dad, that you're gonna kill an eight pointer up here excited. So maybe we should record a podcast right after that. That Ben alright, that's a plan, and that we'll do it for today. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed these stories and a little bit of insight into what we've got going on up with our deer camp. Hopefully have a lot more stories to share in the coming months and years as we continue to progress down this road of trying to rebuild this really special place for us, and um, I'm sure we'll learn some things along the way that I'll be sharing, So make sure you're staying tuned on the wired don Instagram account. That's where I'm sharing a lot of these stories, a lot of quick videos and stuff there as well as our Facebook page. And UM, I think with that, I'll let you go. Thanks for joining in, thanks for being a part of this community, and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.