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 Kenyan, and this is episode three thirty one Tay. In the show, we're joined by Jeff Sturgis of white Tail Habitat Solutions to get his on the ground reaction and recommendations for improving our back forty property. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, brought to you by on X. Today. On the show, we've got a couple of things going uh coming up here soon. We're gonna have the main event, which is an interview, a sit down I did with Jeff Sturgis. Jeff Sturgis, as many of you guys know, probably is the founder of white Tail Habitat Solutions. He's the author of a whole bunch of books related to deer hunting and managing properties for deer and deer hunting. Uh. He's a consultant, he's a YouTuber. He does a whole lot of stuff related to helping you become a better deer hunter and how to improve your property to do that too. So what I did is I actually brought Jeff down to Michigan in late August to go see the Back forty, and just because of the timing of it all, we weren't able to include that event in the Back forty show, but we record a podcast. We walked the property, took a look at it, and then took some time to develop a really, um a really specific plan for how he would try to renovate things out there. That the changes he would make, the things he'd planned, the ideas he had, even how to hunt it. Everything he possibly thought about the Back forty we covered in this episode. So it's very interesting as far as you know how you might be applied these to your own hunts and to your own properties. But then if you follow the whole Back forty story and the TV show and all that kind of stuff, um, this will give you some really interesting insight into things will be considering for a year two because we weren't really able to implement anything he said the first year because he came in basically the last day before we were gonna shut down the property before hunting season. Um. But it's interesting. There's even some included imagery that we discussed that I'll be posting on Instagram and Facebook. He put together some drawings outlining exactly how he would do things in the property, so make sure you check that on social media. But before we get to the main event with j Sturgers two more things. You can hear some fiddling in the background. That's my co host, Dan Johnson. He is here for a pregame show. But before the pregame show, we got a pre pregame show. Dan. Yeah, I didn't tell you about this um and it's not too exciting. It's more like a pre game show pre announcement, which which is basically this and it's it's only relevant for a small liver of people listening. But if you happen to be listening to this on the very first day that this podcast goes out to the world, that is Thursday, January two thousand twenty, if you're listening on that day, I want you to know that if you're listening on that day and you happen to be in Western Michigan, I'm coming to your talent. I'm coming to Grand Rapids tonight January for a book signing and Q and A and meet and Greek kind of deal at Schuler Books. That's Grand Rapids, Michigan, January sixteenth at Schuler Books. So that's tonight, seven pm. I'm gonna be there. If you're listening to this and you're here, I would love to see you tonight. I would love to shake your hand, chit chat a little bit um, that'd be awesome. So hoping to see a bunch of you here tonight. I just want to get that out there just in case you're catching this on the day off. So that's my pregame show pre announcement, Dan Johnson, Is there any chance you might be in Michigan on January six Schueler Books on set seven pm. Uh. If I show up, it will be with all three of my kids, and that would ruin everything you're trying to accomplish there, or it might make it. I'm just saying, ah, man, I wish you could be here, but I'll tell you what I I've got. I don't know. You know how sometimes you get back from a vacation, like a really great beach vacation, and for a few days afterwards, you still have like the halo effect, like there's this nice glow to your skin and you're relaxed, and I don't know, just everything feels right in the world. Do you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, I've been there before. Yeah, that's how I feel still today because just a few days ago you and I got to share some time together, shrinking beers, catching up some I've got the Dan Johnson Beach after glow right now, is what I'm trying to tell you. I love that because it's almost lie. It's almost like we fell right into the same routine where I made fun of your goatee and you've made fun of my hand. It was just like, oh, Mark, good to see a nice got buddy, and you're like, hey, Dan, can you pick a fork up? You know, if it's ever not like that, then we then we know there's some issues going on, right Absolutely, Yeah it was. And I think that's one of my favorite parts about the A T A Uh is going and getting the opportunity to hang out with people that you only see a handful of times a year. Yeah, exactly the same for me and for those that aren't familiar the A T A Show, And we've talked about it, I think every year. But just in case you knew, it's this great big archery trade convention, arch. It's the Archery Trade Association convention, but it's also a bow hunting convention, kind of the best largest quote unquote industry get together, um for the hunting world. So that's what was going on last week, and the two of us were there. Um, I had a good time. It was a different kind of year for me. I didn't really get to do the whole product thing. I just was running around meeting the meeting, talking to people and stuff like that. So I honestly didn't even if somebody asked me about my favorite three new products were or what I thought the most innovative thing was, I don't think I could tell you, um, but but it was still a good time. Did you do you have a good show? Yeah? Man, I just did a lot of recording for podcast, all products specific. So you think, yes, you got all the product intel. Yeah, so I'm trying to think. I know, Day one we did like seven podcast, Day two we did equal. Day three we did a probably five or so maybe four or five episodes or uh segments, And I just launched the first one today, well not today, but on Wednesday of this week or no Monday of this week. So like that's how confused to him. Right, So so if people want to get some actual product info, they should go check out some of the Sportsman's Nation podcast. Then, yeah, specifically the Hunting Gear podcast. It's gonna be like, uh, for the next hand several months, it's gonna be recaps of the interviews that I did at the A T A show. Nice, can you give me like a cliff notes on your favorite few things? Were there a few things that stood up to you as like the top stories of the show. I mean there's always, you know, there's always some buzz around a certain you know, product or or whatever. But I feel like every time I walked by the Tethered booth, there was just a large gathering of people and they brought a ton of guys to work their booth for them. But that was kind of the buzz that, you know, the buzz was you know, saddle hunting, you know, you know, it's coming back into popularity, and uh, the had their guys had launched a new product. And then I'm trying to think of any other buzz specifically, there was a couple of climbing sticks. Uh, let's see, it's lone Wolf. Custom Gear came out with a couple of new products. Um, you know, every bow manufacturers coming out with a new product, different broadheads from all the broadhead manufacturers, and I mean it's just kind of business as usual, yea, nothing too crazy, you know, nothing too crazy. But here's what I will say. I shot a shot a good amount of bows while I was there. And I never ever used to be a fan of Matthew's bows until this year. I was not a fan of like their draw cycle. But this this new bow that they put out, and I kind of I hate to say it because I don't know what it is about. You know, like every you hear the term fanboy a lot. Uh, you know, it's in reference to people after they meet you, they come walking back, Oh my god, I'm fan bowing just nine fingers right, But like Matthews right, it's almost like if you don't shoot their bow, you don't understand like how geeked up some of these people get about the brand and their bows and the hard Yes, yes, just like just like really any brand out there. But I shot their bow and for the first time in a long time, I thought they put out one of the top three bows that are out there. So my top three bows this year that I shot were Matthews and and this is in no order. Matthews Elite and Prime were the top three bows that I shot. And one thing that I was really impressed with is I also shot a handful of what I say this in quotations, but lower tier, you know, not typically the cream of the crop, something at a lower price point. Obsession bow bows and Athens bows are two bows that I shot that performed, in my opinion, very well. I was actually really surprised on how they would how they shot, and especially the lower axle to axles. I was really impressed at those particular two brands. And then I shot a handful of other ones that didn't upset me and didn't necessarily surprise me, you know, so um and then other than that just there. You know, every year, something new comes out or something neat you wish you had, but nothing, you know, nothing to groundbreaking, I'll tell you I've had, you know. I often get emails from people saying, hey, you know, what bows should I buy? Should I save up to buy the top tier one from this brand or that brand? Or can I just get away with one of these entry levels? And especially for new hunters, I've always thought, maybe you do not need anything fancy like the entry level bows. Those are still pretty darn good compared to anything that was available ten years ago. You know, the technology has become so um advanced across the whole suite of brands and the various levels that it's hard to go wrong. I do think it comes down to personal fit and feel. You want to find the right one for you and make sure it's the right you know, size for you and all that kind of stuff, And then a little bit comes down to just like you talked about earlier, kind of how you feel about the brand and if you trust it and if it kind of aligns with you know, things that you care about. Um. You know, I love my Matthews, but there's other people, you know, I couldn't argue with someone who says they love their Prime or they love their whatever. Um, So it does come down to some intangibles. But you know, I love my top tier bows, but if someone gave me one of the five, I would probably be killing just as many deer. You know, Yeah, absolutely, And I'll tell you what you like you said for someone who's brand new, I would hate to be the guy who you know, hey man, you gotta you gotta get you know, spend that money on a good bow. Well, if if you have X amount of dollars to invest into hunting in one year as a startup, you're definitely want to go to one of those lower tier bows too, you know. And even some of these some of these major manufacturers have lower tier bows or a second dary brand. Let's see what is mission right, mission from Matthews? I know, um, I'm trying to think bow Tech has the diamond. It's a secondary level. And then you know, like like I said, Athens and obsession as well. I mean there's several out there as well as going online and finding a used bow from a handful of years ago that someone you know, let's say experienced archer has to have the new one every year, so they decided to sell it. Yeah, I think I think the biggest point to get across is that I don't feel like you have to spend a ton of money to get to get started hunting, right absolutely, just just you don't need much to just get out there and start experimenting and experiencing this stuff. And and this brings me exactly to the next thing. I want to make sure we talked about Dan, which was this kind of group discussion, little media conversation that was organized. Um, they're on one of those days A t A. And it was basically a collection of younger folks within the hunting industry that we're all kind of organized down The A t A and Hunting Public kind of helped host this thing and had a lot of the new media contingent there, so there were digital folks. There was YouTubers and podcasters and writers and all that kind of stuff, and that group of people came together to talk about the issues of new hunter recruitment and how we are representing ourselves to the rest of the world. Um, so that was this group discussion. I don't know how many people who think we're there, fifty seventy something like that. I read an article that was launched recently and I posted it on my Instagram story, which won't be there. Maybe I'll post it again, but the e a guy from the A t A wrote it and it's launched on the A t AS website and I think he said there was eighty five people in attendance roughly, so, so it's a pretty good group of people. I think to be talking about this kind of stuff. UM, I got some thoughts on the whole thing. But what were your What do you think about this collection of folks talking about this topic? Um, this is nothing new, These topics are not new. But but do you think that we achieved anything in that conversation? I think this is a good starting point. Um. And what what I mean by that is everybody in that room agreed with each other. There was a guy from Vortex, Sawyer. He he brought that up. I think he did is the some marketing and social for Vortex. And I think this is a very good starting point on getting a collective group of people, getting a collective you know, are sharing our thoughts and opinions on how we feel about how hunting is represented on social media. Um, what specific what the industry and what the community are doing, and how we promote it to people who may not necessarily have a point of view on hunting. They they're not necessarily for it and they're not necessarily against it. But how we promote hunting to those guys and how we should act, you know? And I think and before we can even I don't know, I feel like we have we have to refine ourselves before we go out and try to try to refine ourselves and get an accurate written message put together before we can go and preach it. If that makes sense, Yeah, and I think I guess I should. We should preface this with an explanation of the issue that brought us all together, which was that hunter numbers continued to decline. So we are part of community that is losing membership every year, and the demographic data out there indicates that that's probably going to continue to happen as you know, a big chunk of the hunting audience kind of ages out. The baby boomers are, you know, getting past prime hunting years, and there are fewer young people getting into it because of you know, changes and where people live and the activities that people are into. A lot more time spent indoors, a lot less time spent outdoors. All of that does not bode well for the future of hunting. So that's why, you know, for years and years and years this has been talked about, and I think I think what I took from our conversation was, or what I hope comes from it, is a sense of the passing of the torch because there have been these kinds of panel discussions and you know, group conversations like like this set up at a t A and various other conventions for for decades. Probably right the R three issue UM that being recruitment, retention, and reactivation. That's basically just addressing this issue UM that's been talked about over and over and over again for decades. The issue is that we haven't found a solution yet and we haven't stemmed the bleeding. And so what I think the very best thing from this whole deal was wasn't that some new epiphany came about. It wasn't that we had some brand new spanking idea, but it was I think probably the first time that that group of people came together to discuss it. So a lot of people between the ages of eighteen and eighteen thirty five whatever, UM. I think this new generation of communicators has got to realize that the responsibility for future of hunting now rests in our hands. And that is and that's not just us that being like communicators, but also all the hunters out within that demographic too. So it starts with you and me and the hunting public and all these different people that you know, we're we're really fortunate to have a little bit of a platform. So we need to lead by example. That's the first and foremost things. So for all those people in that group there at the A t A, my hope was that we could realize that, hey, it's on us now. We need to lead by example and lead the charge. And then for everybody listening to this right now, it's also in you because we this. You know, whether you're forty five or twenty or fifteen or whatever. Um, you know, the future of hunting is in our hands. How we represent ourselves, how we open this community to others, what we do today, and what we do tomorrow and next year and the year after that, that's going to determine what people are doing years from now. So that was probably the biggest thing for me, was just getting this group of people to realize like, hey, this isn't this isn't the job of you know, the guys that own outdoor life or feeling stream anymore. This is a job for the kids posting YouTube videos. Yeah, and just with everybody who's listening right now, you know, look for a calling, look for someone like Mark my Stelf. You know, a whole bunch of other quote unquote influencers and uh, content providers to ask for your help. I mean basically in order to change this culture and get people to you know, more people excited about hunting and get people who maybe have hunt back into it that retention side and recruitment. Uh, we're looking to start an army and we're going to need everybody's help. So you know, it's one of those things where we're gonna we're gonna be asking you guys for some favors. To know for sure it is. This is something that requires the entire as many folks with the non community to step up and and be leaders as possible. And you know, you and we have had a lot of conversations on these topics over the years. Um. Shoot, I can remember, I don't know, maybe this is four five years ago you and I came back from a t A and had a whole like rant episode talking about the things we didn't like at a t A, some of the culture issues. Um, that's something that you know, I know that comes up around this discussion too. Uh. If we were to list like as I'm thinking about this, we're not going to go into a full deep dive on these things. But a few of the considerations or a few of the factors I think that will influence the future of hunting that pop out to me right now if I'm just like throwing some topics for future consideration. One is simply how we represent ourselves to the general public, especially online. So right there's the issue of the pictures we post, the videos we post, the comments we leave, and how first impressions on that stuff, especially from non hunters, you know, are very quick, and if we post something that you know negatively reflects on us, then that can have a really quick and negative and long lasting impact. So number one, thinking about everything you post and what a non hunter might think about that, That's something that I'm always thinking is at least an important filter to consider. Um. So there's a whole thing of of what we share online and how we talk about what we do, whether it's a TV show or an article or a social media post. And then that's kind of part one of the conversation. And then part two of the conversation is then how do we actively engage those people that do have an interest? So how do we get the new hunters out there? How do we get people that are interested in getting closer to their food, getting those people physically in the woods, learning that to hunt. So that's the whole other side of the conversation. Um of any of those things. Is there anything that you wanna pick on right now or talk in any specifics about or you there is this, you know, something we're to continue to dive into as we go. Yeah, obviously we could say here and talk about it all day. But I think a third part of all of this is conservation and and I think this all kind of ties in to the decline because as hunters decline, so does money coming in, which the money coming in goes to support a lot of these conservation organizations and conservation efforts. So just as equal, I think conservation and how we give back to the conservation efforts, whether it's time or money, is is going to be a big part of this. Very true, And it feeds right back into the beginning too, because we'd like to say, right the hunting community has this saying hunting is conservation, right, Um, well you gotta walk the walk. You can't just talk to talk. And I think sometimes there's this tendency to think that we can claim to be conservationists just by default. If you hunt, you're buying a hunting license. And and it's true that money does go towards conservation work. Excuse me, but I'm going to tell you that's not enough, right. We need to do more than just pay for our licenses. UM. So, yes, this is We've talked about it for years. We're gonna continue to talk about these things. So keep an eye out for more from Dan, for more for me, um and hopefully other folks within the hunting community, because this is one of those generational challenges that we all need to take seriously. And I'm glad it was something we discussed to a t A. And I gotta tell you all, for all of you guys listening, Uh, this is something that we're passionate about. Not We're not just gonna sit here and talk about it. We are so passionate about it. Dan Johnson in particular, that he had he kind of kind of blacked out in the middle of this thing, like like, I'm I'm kind of talking about some stuff, and you know, Aaron Warburton is talking about some stuff, and Zack Faron Bad was talking about some stuff and various other people and then Dan Johnson gets up to say stuff, and he gets like two words into his first spiel and then you guys know him, you love him for it. That passion and that love and that motion came pouring out of Dan and before he knew it, he was half crying, half swearing, not just actual being angry at the same time. It was a full blown Dan Johnson. I don't I don't want to call him meltdown because it was beautiful. I loved it. But it was a passionate outburst of full blown nine fingers right there. And uh, I think it's it showed people about how much this stuff matters. And I thought that was really good. And it just just imagined this mark And I say this, you've talked to me about it before, and I want to I want everybody to listen to this. What would happen if in ten years you could not hunt, or your children could not hunt, or your grandchildren were not allowed to hunt. I want you to think about that and think of what hunting has given you over the years, all that enjoyment and all that that there's there's there's something about nature that like for me, it's it's literally saved me. And imagine if you could no longer do that, think about that, and then make sure that doesn't happen. Yes, what are you What are you willing to sacrifice for this fight? That right there is I think a good place for us to leave and something that we're gonna continue to return to this year and next year and they after that, and as long as people listen to you and me, Dan, I think that's gonna be something that's gonna be top of our mind. So I will go down with this ship, all right, right there with it. But so with that, I think we'll wrap up our pregame show unless you've got anything finally want to mention. Otherwise, I'm gonna move on to the next phase of the show. If you are, let's move on. All right. Well, thank you Dan for the good times we had this past weekend a t A. And it was good to see you Mark. It was really good to see you, man. It was fun. We need to do it more often. If we didn't have all these damn kids, we can maybe we can maybe get out of here and do some more things that are funny. That's a fact, man. All right, Well, let's take a quick break and then we're gonna get right back here. With Jeff Sturgis. Alright, so before we're going to further, want to share an announcement and then a message from one of our partners. First, the announcement Meati Eator's next live tour is kicking off this spring. We're gonna be hitting three, no not three, eleven different cities that include spots like San Francisco, Detroit, Minneapolis, Chicago, a couple of spots in Pennsylvania, somewhere around Boston, a couple of spots in California. I think exciting stuff. It is going to be a different kind of show too. You'll definitely want to tune in for this one in person because you can't tune into it on the podcast. They're not going to record this as a podcast. It's gonna be shipped out to the media or audience. Only those in person there we'll get to experience it. It's gonna be Steve Yanni Kale, and then at each different city there will be some other guests, including myself there in Detroit, So make sure to pick up your tickets. You can start buying them exclusively January when you go to the meat Eater website to use the promo code mugs that's m u g s. You'll get those tickets several days earlier than anybody else otherwise. The rest of the tickets go on sale Friday, January. There's also gonna be some v I P ticket options as well for a meet and greet, book signing, all that kind of cool stuff, So check that out. All of it you'll be able to find over at the meat eater dot com. It's Hunter awake. I can't tell if your eyes you're gonna throw a crushing news for the reflective lenses. But what I'm trying to say is welcome to the Wired Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X. And we are sitting out here on the edge of the back forty property right by the road, sitting on the tailgate of the canam and some camp chairs next to my truck, and I am here with my camera crew extraordinaires Jordan and Hunter. Hello, how's it going good? And our special special guest back on the show for maybe the third or fourth time, I think fourth fourth time, Jeff Sturgis, White Tail, Habitat Solutions. Pleasure to be here. Yeah, just I really appreciate always always it is always a lot of fun to get to chat with you. And usually though it's about like abstract ideas like let's talk about whether and deer, or let's talk about high quality habit at. But it's always generic stuff. It's like hypothetically, if you have this, try this, if you have that, try this. Today, though, we're gonna talk in specifics. You just joined us for a walk around this new property we picked up this year, the back Ford you and we want to get your perspective on what you think about it, how we can improve it, what a what based off what we have so far? What are the next steps all of that? And so we took this walk about and I'll let you in a second here describe a little more detailed me what we just did. Um. But then you also put together a visual of your recommendations, which I just want everybody to know. Over the next however long we sit here and talk, we're gonna be reference referencing some pictures that Jeff has drawn up that help us diagram his different ideas of how to adjust things, what the property looks like now, and what we could tweak. And so I'm going to post these pictures up on the Wired Hunt Instagram account and the Wired hunt face page maybe up on the website page for this on the Mediator dot com too. So if you can check out those pictures first, that's gonna help you visualize all this. We're gonna try to describe it as best as as we possibly can. So if you can't see the pictures, you're not you're not s o l. But the photos I do think will help you see this come to life a little bit better. And you're gonna have to excuse the vehicles driving by. This is podcasting in the mobile studio, so there will be big rigs. There's gonna be like a really loud motorcycle that comes by every day really fast. We've heard him a lot. There's Lonnie the neighbor who's got crazy things burning and all sorts of projects going on in his yard. You just never know what're gonna get here, Hunter, he's just living the American dream over there. Yes. Yeah, the other day, Jordan's had a camera step to do a time lapse, and all of a sudden we see a bunch of black smoke going right up in the air above him and me and Hunter like, oh, did Jordan blow up the trail Hawk, which is your guys a vehicle so happily named the Jeep trail Hawk. Yeah. I was trying to get out of there, and then I realized that I didn't have the keys. Hunter had him on him a couple of fields away, So I just had to sit there and take that nice smell and fumes, get the black smoke mess up the time laps. No, dude, good might avand it to it probably would be cool. That sounds cool. I'm not quite sure what's going on over there, but I'm intrigue. So let's get to the basic idea of what we're trying to hear, Jeff, I guess at a super high level, we don't need to spend a ton of time on this, but we just did basically what you do with the typical client, right, yes, and can you give us like the thirty second overview of what it is that you just helped us, dude up to this point. So most of the time we sit down and what we did today. Get to know the property by the air, get to know your resources, your plans for the property goals, and then I can start to develop a framework based on the neighbors and neighbors food, what you're planning to do what your timber is, what your current habitat, start to really develop a plan in my head that might be the way there. While at breakfast, we move on to the property. We spend two, three, four or five six hours depending on the size of the property and um. And then while we're out there, we're talking about we would do this here that there. It all starts with food, the foundation of food. And then I'm going back and I'm putting down on a diagram on a picture. I'm drawing on the fine point stylus, what's actually going on on the property. What we talked about, stand locations, betting areas, travel corridors, food plots, switch grass, hinge cutting, whatever, timber, stand improvement, UM, whatever it might be. And then we're going back and discussing that we're at that point right now. So I spend an hour drawing this diagram up, which is what I do with my clients that day. I feel like if they're not gonna be there for the drawing and we can't talk about it, then we actually turn clients away. So if someone just wants me to show up, look at the property, draw diagram and send it. We don't do that because I find there's a lack of engagement. I want them to buy in, because I find that if they buy in, their successful and it's a far greater experience. Otherwise they're just throwing money at me, and and I want this to work for them. And so if they do it, it works, and we need that level of engagement. And that's kind of where we're at right now. I have broke this down into several pictures, come as far as from beginning to end. Yeah, so let's first do this, well you do you tell me how you think you would typically go through this, but we could we go one of two ways. We could either verbally walk through the property, so I could say, hey, we're at the field one or some of your thoughts on that, and we could walk through the property kind of like we physically did sure, Or you could start me off with your diagrams and talk to us the way you would talk about with a client. How about we just go through that quick and then we'll go through what do we have five pictures or six? One, two, three, four, five pictures? So how about we go through each one and we just see if there's any questions, and we go the second one. We're not gonna end detail go over everyone too much. Should just you know. That way we can kind of establish your framework and then we can get to the meat. Once we get to that last picture. That so good. That sounds good. So just as a refresher for anyone who's jumping in, I'm just gonna quickly describe the property again, just in case people haven't seen the picture. The property kind of looks like Oklahoma. You've got the panhandle on the left side and then drops off to the right. You can also think of as a pot. You can hold the panhandle. That's the far west, and the pot gets big to the east. Running right to the middle of that pot is our swamp. That's kind of a gorge shape ish, so it's thin up at the top to handle your gourd. It gets a little bit bulbous down towards the bottom. There's these old fields on either side of the swamp. You've got fields one, two, and three broken up by fence rows on the west side of the gordon, and you've got fields four or five and six on the east side of the gourd. And imagine these are kind of stocked stacked on top of each other like blocks that at a high level is what the property looks like. Now, Jeff, we're looking at image number one. Walk me through, Walk me through what that one is. Image number one is when I'm looking at the property. We need to establish the security of the property, how you can get on and off the property without spooking deer. And of course every property is so unique. This one is nice because it fits the mold where you can travel around the outside. There's no constrictions or waterways, you can't make it through. You don't have a cabin in the middle, and we don't have a road going through the middle. So it's typical core area in the middle. The first picture, I'm drawing yellow in there, and you can see that's starting that there's four yellow spots, uh fields one and two. I haven't drawn that in yet, but I wanted to use this just to show. I'm drawing that in a switch grass, and that could be a base form of cover for you, something you can establish in one to two years very effectively on the soil. And then we go from there with the progression what we add next. But that switch grass is a huge base for you, and you're gonna have a lot of switch grass planting around here. You talked about when we're out there, the idea of doing pockets of it. Yes, can you just cry what I'm seeing here? Are you? Are you recommending full switch grass in these yellowed out areas or you saying the pocketed well, um, the switch grass, Yeah, we'll get there, but um not. I I'm recommending switch grass next to your access and then diverse switch grass in locations where you want bedding, and we'll talk about that coming up here. Perfect. Moving on to the next image, You've got the yellowed out fields and then you have some green lines going throughout and then yellow lines going across the swamp to connect it. Yes, okay, what does all this means? So you have the switch grass in the first thing I look at on every property, and once we know that we can hide food in these locations, you can put that there and you're not going to spook the deer going on and off the property. Then we're establishing where that food should go. That food is going to establish the daily movement of the deer. Your feet five times in the twenty four period. We want your food to represent that third feeding of the day, which they're feeding feeding one and two, say mid morning early afternoon, that would be in their bedding areas with brows. And then that food plot define daily afternoon movement that establishes the entire hunt. That's gonna be the third feeding of the day about an hour before dark. And that's what that green food plot represents on your property. So not only is that supplying a very important third feeding of the day to the deer that's like our dinner time, it's also establishing exactly how you want the deer to move on the property within your borders, parallel to your borders. In this case and most any case, you're not trying to position the food to bring deer on and off your property. You're trying to position food so that when they come out of cover, they hit the food, turn left or right, and they relate to that food in a parallel fashion to your borders. So it maintains that they stay on your property for as long as proper possible during the daylight, and then after dark they released your neighbors. So these food plot designs are very different than what i'd say ninety of the food plots and food plot recommendations you see out there. Lots of times. Yes, you see big open fields or squares or rectangles or circled. Basically, we've got big lines here from you. Can you help us understand why you recommend that kind of shape and design a little bit? You know, it's interesting. I love one of my chapters my food plot book was um thin as in or something like that, but it talked about thin food plots and on the the property that own that's only acres and the true properties that I they hunt lease. They're forty and fifty two all those food plots are. They're still matched to the lay of the land. But I cannot put lines on them because it's so steep that I can't put those long, thin lines and I'd like to because they're running over a thick, you know, steep edge. Um, I'm putting them on the only flat areas in the terrain. I like long food food lines and food and lines move mint and you can connect that with small plots too. But for one like especially in your case, for your property, let's say that it varies by sixty ft in elevation over a pretty wide area, Well, you can tuck these food pots with each one of these green lines. Like when we were out in the field. We talked about how they would slip through those valleys that are there so that when they're gonna feel secure in there. Um, we're also ribboning those food plots through the valleys. You can't see them from the outside when the access. That also helps you capture moisture. You have a pretty light sandy soil out there, so you're there's a lot of reasons to put those in a long linear fashion. But most of all, again, those deer come out of your core area in the middle of your property you're trying to protect. They hit that food and they turn left or right, and then that leads them to stand locations, which we'll talk about in a little bit. But it also maximizes the time that they're on your property because instead of just going through a circle that's overrun with a bunch of deer and they just pass off right over to your neighbors. You know, they come out from the west to go to the east to the big blob of food, they pass through it, go over to your neighbors to the east. Now they hit that food and they turn left or right, and the beauty of the hills that you have in a lot of situations even if you're carving out these long food plots and cover and foot grass, is that there's a lot of corners in inside corners, outside corners, and so you don't go more than fifty to seventy five yards and any of those food plots that might measure five thousand feet in total length UM without finding a spot that you can hide around the corner. So you talk about people putting lines of switch grass through their food plots and big open food plots. Of reason they're doing that is they're trying to separate deer here by naturally the land flow the land that naturally separates deer when they're feeding, So you can have more deer hit the food while they're feeding and uh and in space them out around your property makes your property more efficient. And then again the whole purpose you're holding the deer on the daylight during the daylight, you know, running parallel to your borders, and then that's pushing them towards stand locations either past or from food plots that are going to bedding areas in the morning or um evening food source destinations in between cruising areas and um. And so it's really serving to set up in in safe feeding too. So when they're in these narrow plots, and I'm talking in your property, typically you don't want to go over a hundred hundred feet wide unless you're really big, sprawling over a lot of you know, three quarter mile food plots. Um. But in your case, fifty six wide is perfect. So when those food plots hit a fence role, you might constrict it down to ten ft wide. Haven't passed through an area that explodes out into food plant On the other side, you have a stand location there, and when you're getting that fifty six width, then great bowshot. Even if it's on the back side of the food plot. Even if if a buck doesn't come into that food plot, he's still in that range we talked out when they do cross fence rolls or adding mock scrapes. Um. I've drawn in a couple of water holes here in dry areas that we'll look at at the end. But the food plot sets that foundation of entire movement on your land. And the more you define how they hit that food every single afternoon and how they move on your land, you know, obviously narrow is better than white as far as on they move then that allows you to define how you hunt. So a lot of people kind of doing reverse, Well, I want to hunt this spot or that spot. They throw some food plot or habitat improvements out there, but nothing matches, and so we're trying to specifically define how this your do you're exactly move on your land so that you can define how you haunt and access to land without spooking them. And probably having this kind of linear shaped your food plots makes it much easier to get it and out without spooking because you're never going to have one spot that has twenty deer sitting in it. They're constantly moving, right, So if you spread those deer out enough to say, just to pick a number thirty deer bucks those and fonds on your property in the evening because they like to space out and they like space between them, then you know box might be looking for does. But those dole family groups are going to spread all the way around your property, so the odds that they're right in front of your stand location within bow shot when you get to that stand location are extremely low. And then you're using the lay of the land to get into those stand stand locations anyways, and you're losing using in those fence roads. You could have a nice trailer goes right down the middle or right down the side that has a tunnel between the switchgrass and the edge, and you can get right in and out of those food pots without without spooken deer or the stand locations. Yeah, so, so walk me through the access plan a little bit more unless you think I'm jumping the gun there. But your ideas on access were pretty similar to what I was thinking for the access in here. Um. But but the whole crux of this property for me has been how do I get in and out without spooking deer? How do I food in these fields and still not spook them? So because of that, I got pretty conservative with how I designed and and cutting the current food plus kept pretty small and tight just because I want more space and and less opportunity for them to visually see me from a plot. Uh, you recommend adjusting that a little bit, but access being something that would be important to perspective on that. Well, and it's really really along your lines. I'm very conservative and going in um. For example, if you're spooking to your out of a food plot, get rid of the food plot, shrink it, move it, move the stand, move the access. It can't happen ever. Um. Now not to say it never happens, but you're never setting yourself up for that happen for that to happen. UM. So similar access, you know that to what you're looking at. The difference is is I'm looking at a page right now that has all the brown dots in it in the middle of a giraffe looking hide, yeah, or an ugly butterfly or something. Um. But anyways, that those are those diversity pockets. And we'll talk about that in a second, but that's where I expect those deer to bed and then that interior swamp. So by defining where those dear bed, you see that there's a lot of solid yellow around the outside of that whole twisted butterfly. And that is what I find. If you're accessing behind eight to ten pounds per acre of cave and rock switch grass and it's thirty you know, some of those areas might even be six ft wide because of the lay of the land. But if it's six seven ft even down to forty inches to four ft I at the end of the first growing season, which would be the end of two thousand twenty. Then you can get in and out of the land without spoken deer. That what's nice about the switch grass is that it's like a sponge, So thinking of it as cutting down sound site and scent. So even if scent is going into it a little bit, it will help filter it out like a sponge. When I talk about switch grass, it is really important for your listeners to hear is that switch grass to me is the only grass, at least in the northern portions of the country most of the big white tail states UH four white tails, because it stands up all winter long. And so if it's stand up, if you have big boost and little boostem Indian grass have been too beautiful fields where they're ten twelve ft high ure in the summer, in their two ft high or a foot high during November, December, January, February, March. So not only can you not hide white tails or hide your access or keep from projecting your access across the hundred yard field because it's all laid down, but then you can't attract pheasants and rabbits. And so what I found I've worked extensively with clients around the country and when they start adding switch grass switchgrass lines, and you don't want to solid thirty acres, and that's what we'll talk about, a little bit or a solid even ten ten acres or five unless it's blocking your access. But when you have those small pockets of diversity and edge, and you have herbaceous growth, woody growth, woody stem regeneration within the pockets of the switch grass, meaning you're you're playing the sweatgrass thick and then you're leaving open pockets with no grass, then you attract wildlife. And and so I hear back a lot from a client set. Say, for example, they had some type of pheasant mix that they planted for years, and they'd have to replant peasants every spring because that cover lays down all winter long and it's useless. And so you add that switchgrass, you create diversity pockets. Now you have edge, Now you have pheasants, now you have rabbits, and you actually have sustainable wildlife cover the last the entire winter stands up to the snow. So tell me this. One of the unique things with what we're trying to do here is that in addition to also improving this for deer and deer hunting and all that stuff. We also are trying to do some things to be accounting for other species outside of the norm too, so pollinators and birds and small mammals like you talk to, rabbits and upland burds like pheasants and everything like that. So from some of the people we've talked to who are focusing more on those species, one of the things they've recommended for these old fields is some of that type of pollinator planting, like the pheasants forever, would have those grass native grass as wildflowers fores mixes like that would be really great for all these other things and for part of the year provide cover for pheasants and deer and stuff. But then, like you said, a lot of it lays down. Do you think that we can find do you think there could be like a middle ground where we would use would plant some of that, but then do solid strips of the switch grass along edges and then do the circles throughout to make the blocks of switch throughout. But then the insides and kind of everything else be this mixture of different kind of basis cover. Like you said, so you'd want about swift grass and the problem is with a lot of the plantings for other wildlife species. Is there coming in and they're planting with a tractor over a ten acre field and they're just laying it down. They're not putting any more steps to it than that. This is like taking that and putting it on steroids. So those pockets of herbaceous growth, you can plant pheasant mixes in them. I prefer natural. So the problem with a lot of any pheasant mix out there is that the cover is down during October, November, December and you have nothing and so not only do not have cover, you don't have food. So allow those mixes. You have a percentage of food and they're in forbes and forages and flowers, but then that's all gone during the most lean times in the year when the animals needed the most soul. At the same time, though, that upland mix, whether you're planting the pheasants the pheasant mixes in some of those pockets, and you're leaving some of those pockets to early successional growth the forms of woody stem and regeneration tree shrubs. I think you can actually have an incredible combination with the next step of work, where you establish that switch grass and all that yellow, and then you're establishing those diversity pockets within that switch grass. Now you've taken it to a step that no one plants around to or as far as you're coming in with machine or they're doing large operations, because they're not going to take the time to go out there and establish these pockets. And so they're putting in a blend. And that blend is good for brows, good for covered during the summer, but then it's almost all gone during the winter, and so you want to establish the best of both worlds, so you're you need to separate that. So you're putting on switch grass for high cover, and then you're putting those pockets in the form of hidden within that switchgrass. You can have those pollinators, you can have clover of offa flowers. Grasses. I'm not a big fan of various grasses because, for example, they'll put in a CRP mix and gon have big boost and we bloos and Indian grass switchgrass. But if switchgrass is only pound and a half breacre and it's only a small percentage of that planting, then it's all laid down in November December. So people say, well, yeah, that's diversity. But just more grass is not diversity. Some more grass. So the thing you're talking about with pollinators and shrubs, freees, soft maple, red maple seeds, box elder seeds, um, clover, alfalfa, And you can see a lot of the areas you moat around here, there's clover and alfalfa coming into it, and that's what's in that base. So there's a lot of really good stuff that can come in that switch grass. And so then you have that blend where you don't have the cover lane down. That switch grass is so important. You create that edge that is so critical. And right now you have such a diverse parcel. And we talked about earlier. Just real quick, you look at the outside of your border and then you look at the inside edge changes doesn't matter if it's food plot, egg fields, swampland hardwoods, cuttings, hinge, cut edge. He looked at all those edges. Your edge on the inside should be five to ten times more than your total edge on the outside. Now, when you create pockets like this in switch grass, I mean you're gonna be twenty times or you're outside the flip side of that. Just for understanding is if you have a hundred sixty are hardwood, it's all even aged. You don't have any edge other than the outside edge, and that's a very very poor wildlife. Might be really good timber and timber value, but what I find is high timber value is the opposite of high wildlife value. So you're creating those edge with those pockets, and if you do that, you should have the most pheasant, most rabbits um, the most diversity in the area, which attracts all kinds of birds. So much there there's been a lot of yeah, there's been a lot of research to this back that up like edge equals great wildlife habitat anymore edge you can have the war diversity, diversity and edge is like silky It seems like for everything. Were some of your best white til areas out west and then on public land it's probably not some giant big field. It's yeah, I know you've gone through some water, and so water and lowland um creates edge and diversity, and then you go up into the uplands, you're creating all these different and around here in Michigan, let's face it, I mean, you have a pretty hilly property for southern Michigan. And there's areas where extremely flat you can go two ft in Michigan and that's a ridge in some some areas. So, but even then the type of trees that grow down in the ash swamp down below and tag alder and then you go up two feet and all of a sudden you're in a hard maple and soft maple and maybe a white pine or two different Jordan's uh hunter hunter digging around on Snapchat or something over there? What what year old? I know? Oh man, the things he's been doing over the last ten days or so, just scars hunter things. Uh, do you guys have any questions? Like you're hearing all this? Yeah, I mean so like with I was just I was intrigued today while you're walking around just picking it apart. Because this is a piece of property that Mark just picked up a few months ago, hasn't been farmed in two growing growing season. What would like a typical timeline be, Like if you were to come in and just kind of flip this to how you want it to be for hunting. Obviously we've kind of got a late start on it this year, but like, where would you set your expectations? You know, for like this hunting season compared to next hunting season, just as far as you know what's growing and like kind of where what you expect as far as like the number of deer and quality kind of because obviously the deer are going to find the food if there's food here. But is this something with it being kind of like the first season, are you just kind of like hopeful that you know, some of this stuff will kind of get working and you can kind of tweak your plan or do you kind of know ahead of time, like in five years, you know, all this stuff will kind of fall into place, so you know when it's all relative depending on the area, how many deer, the age structure. That's what the cameras will tell you. Especially over the food. UM, if you keep that unpressured food, that's golden, So that'll tell you exactly what you have in the area. Mix scrapes off to the side, good camera locations, and I mark camera locations in black here on the final picture of little black dots and you'll see on their they're on the entrance exit. UM. But that's proposed for next year, so I have a lot of clients, UM December January. If I were already starting. I have clients through April next year, not that every month is full, but I'm you know, I have an appreciable amount. I know where I'm at um in through May, even with flying trips, and so people want me December January from March April because they can get a start on it for the entire season. And so we'll we'll take a property that as long as the people are engaged, you know, going back to the questions and and being there um for this type of wrap up. But if they were willing to do the work, then typically take a property that someone might have worked on five eight years. And the cycle I see is the first year they bought it was the best. They start putting food plots on habitat improvements in by year three they're starting to create a nocturnal herd because they haven't managed the level of attraction of those habitat improvements. So now they're creating a situation where they're attracting every year in the neighborhood they come on the property, they bookem off and then by year five or six, not only are they not seeing the box that they were that were nocturnal in year three, now they're not even on the land because they just avoid the properties. You find those four or five six year old bucks really come off on the flip side. I'll go to property like that that's been you know, their their experience of diminishing return each year, and it has to do with hunting pressure, alignment of habitat improvements. So you change the alignment. You make sure that their access is such like we're gonna do here, so that you're not spoken deer. And so now they get on and off the property that was spoken deer. Any food plots they have, you shrink, eliminate, move. If they're setting themselves up for spoken deer, you make sure they're not hunting on those foodpots over and over again and spoken in the year you're trying to never spoken deer. So all property that they've been working on eight years and they've had that diminishing return, they put thousands of dollars into improvements, and just in one summer it completely flips it back around where they had their best hunting in the first year. The deer can change in one year. They what they're reacting to his hunting pressure. And I don't believe from year to year now they might a big box line that they can see and they can you know, I like boxes to pass a hundred yard test. If you can't see it from a hundred yards or more than, it's pass the test. If you can see it from three d yards away, it doesn't pass the task. Um. But so you're hiding your your access, you're hiding your hunting, and boy, it's amazing what can happen. So then what you're doing is, yeah, you might have to grow a buck herd, meaning that even on sixty acres you're taken um thirty seven or forty seven acres you're putting in that core area, you might be able to hide a two year old or three year old or a couple that just rotate around enough that they spend a higher percentage on your property. So and then for that they have a higher percentage that they're going to live and make it to the next year. So the more box you have, you end up getting. I would say you're still here six seven years away from the potential of the buck herd, but as far as the hunting potential and aligning everything up the way you want, you know, this year, you know there's food plots and locations that I probably wouldn't you know, I wouldn't recommend for next year, but they have to be hidden now so we don't have that switch grass. But once you have forty inch high switch grass next year, then next year, that foundation a movement is set and the potential of bucks that are already here to me you can target. And so I never look at it like let's wait six years and hunt. I look at it like if a three year old is the best deer on the property, a couple of them, then go for it. And for that you probably have five or six two year olds around. You'll advance even more of those in the next age class the next year, and pretty soon within a couple of years you're targeting four year olds and then the occasional five year old it's yere, and that's probably what you're potential is here, and that would be by year three. And then your full true potential of really passing on a couple of four year olds to get that nice five year old six year old that might be around is is within reaching that year four or five, six. So but you established a foundation and you change everything around, you make the deer her daylight on your land. You can do that in one summer. I really, I've seen that over and over and over again, and it doesn't take it. And if you consider that access, hidden access, hidden food sources, and developing that quarter in the middle, if you take care of those things, then you'll have that that daylight heard if they're if you don't have the food to support the cover, then why you're gonna have a daylight, you know, daylight movement, they'll food focus somewhere else. And so that food is really important, important and private land, and that that establishes that foundation. Back to UM, back to the fields. I'm still stuck on that a little bit, just as it was the execution of it. What would be UM the actual order of operations? So would you come in and you would drill in your switch grass and then after or do we go to go in and drill in our pollinator mix first and then come in and drill switch grass over top of it in the circles we want? Like, how do we actually do that? I find the best way to do it is you can do it either way. Either go in right now in the fall, and you the best ways you can go in there and disk up those pollinators, pollinators. I call them diversity pockets because they might have pollinators. They might you know, it's um natural as best. But um, you can disk those in first or which I'd probably recommend the pockets like that. Um, you can disk those anytime. September is a great time if you have time. At mid September, the deer aren't going to spook away from your The bucks shouldn't be here anyway. So to go in there and turn a lot of those pockets to dirt and soil and get it down to soll. Now when you go in the following year tomorrow, next spring, then you can spray those areas and you know, make sure the weeds are down. Um, you can spray pre emergent on the switch grass areas of simosine and then you can go back in. And so what you're doing is you're defining a difference. You know, you're killing these pockets or killing the pockets and tilling the switchgrass. I wouldn't advise that because then you're exposing yourself more. You want to leave some of this weed growth through on the outside that at least establish a little bit of protection this year. UM. But so I would go in and disc up those areas of pockets, and then next year you have a definite difference of habitat going into the spring from the dish areas from this year and the area you're gonna spray for switchgrass next year. So then you're you're establishing there's just going out there. I mean, be like a drunken sailor. It doesn't really matter the shapes, there's no You don't want circles, you don't want squares. I mean, just um, I I'm I can't stand um. So if you want something straight on your property, you might put straight rows of pines and spruce on the outside for access. Straight means no wildlife, and so whether shrubs, conifers, any kind of plant thing, you don't want straight lines, food plots, um. These diversity pockets, just trying to match them to the lay of the land. Um. If there's a steep face, leave it alone. If there's a pocket in the bottom, you know, make a shape in it that matches that elevation. Maybe go up on a knull go twenty ft away, go twenty yards. It really doesn't matter. It's the point is you're trying to diversify that entire field. So yeah, it might look kind of cool when someone flies over and look like a cheatah, you know, years from now, but you're making it grow like an upland mix. Now, we went to that area on your property where you had the um. There's a really good mix of big blue stem, red ceedar, autamala, there's a big oak in there. So there's a lot of diversity in that area, and you see the deer relating to that, and you want to kind of put that diversity inside those pockets. Not necessarily autumnal of not necessarily a red seedar, not necessarily oaks, not necessarily a big blue stem. It's all the above and whatever you can get to grow in there and fill it in the one thing that really you know, grass doesn't really help you too much other than it's pretty. Let's not cover food less a switchgrass. The switch grass isn't food either, So what about the ah the switch grass along the edge, slid switch grass along the access edge? Right? And that how wide of a strip of solid stuff do we need for it to be effectives as your block as your screen. So I would establish the betting pockets that are in brown. I would establish your food plot lines and then everything else to the outside would be just pure switch crastion. And you want that because that's going to completely insulate your movements around the property and the value of that and being able to get in and out around well planet food plots and diversity blend on the inside diversity pockets is incredible around here because you're looking at in the the other picture that has white lines with the arrows kind of pointing out. Yeah, so that the current cover that can hold deer is that middle section the swamp what'd you guys call it the the gored chips. So you see the arrows and white line. Once you established those betting areas and those food sources, that's that new area where should be able to hold deer, and that solid yellow around it is what gives you the ability to hold deer in those areas because you can get in and out without ever spoken deer. Ye. So if you look, I mean, you're I would say, out of your land if you include that um you're now looking at instead of what the land you're now bumping that up to the land is all deer cover all the time. And let's face it, even going into some of that solid switch outside the food plots outside the betting areas, you're gonna have some deer use, but by the time you get to the outside access, there's no food in that switch grass, which is why you want solid And so now you're making it so the further you get to the hunter access, so less likely there are to be deer bedded in and around that hunter axis. And because you're making long, straight line access routes that you don't like, they don't like roads, they don't like straight two tracks, they usually move across them quickly. That's kind of the idea of what you want on that outside whether you're grinding it out through the swamp with a rotary cutter on a bobcat down on the bottom or or on the south side, or you're just grinding it out along the top of the switchgrass, just long straight roads. That's another reason there shouldn't mean deer bedding along that access. There might be deer bedded halfway or you know, a quarter of the way to that access, and that expands that bedding and effective core area in your land. But by the time you get to your hunter access, it really shouldn't be a lot of deer. So we've got what now looks like, you say, kind of a funky butterfly shape almost with a swamp right in the middle, and then a ragged butterfly wing extending off to the left and the right of the swamp. That's our new expanded core area that will have cover bedding and then these food plots on the outside edges of it. Right What's what's the next thing you're thinking about when you're designing this. So once we have the food sources established, and then once we establish where we're gonna actually bed deer and hold deer, in fact, those betting pockets, the further we can extend dear to the east or west within those pockets and right up next to that food those are gonna be the Doe family groups. They can take a lot less stress pressure. So you're taking Doe family group movement that's along the edge of the swamp right now, on either side east or west or in the center. You're expanding those well out into the grass around the edge, and that frees up your entire swamp and the edge for box. I'm going through there, and I'm looking in that brown here in the middle of the swamp, and I'm saying you know that swamp. We walked down into it. There's all kinds of growth in there. There's good low brush cover. The only thing I could say that when proven there you have rush in there, whether it's willow, tag alder, automolive, whatever it might be. There's a cherry in their chope jerry, so whatever it might be in there. There's areas where deer are not using because there's so many stems that can't actually even get in there. And so those are the areas that and this is the last ten percent because your swamps probably already h six or seven out of ten. So this is when you have time, like during the winter or next winter. Then you could go in there and you'll find some high spots in the middle of a lot of that growth because they're all centering around a lot of the highest spots and the wettest spots are not growing. Just go in there and clean them out with the chainsaw and make it so deer can actually get into those pockets a cover that are twenty ft diameter circles right now that can't be utilized by deer, so they're betting around the edge. And I'll take that highest spot in the middle, clean it out and those deer will really appreciate it. Give him a few three or four easy in and outs. And I'm just so I'm talking about. You go to a twenty ft diameter circle of brush and you spend ten fifteen minutes on it with one other person, help them clear brush and move on to the next one. This is me spend hours on open it up. Yeah, And and you have so much low brush in there and cover you do not need to go in there and hinge cut anything. You know, any of your trees are there, just leave them. There's not a lot. I mean, what's the percentage of standing vertical trees in their timber? It might only be And what is there is pretty small. Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of garbage. Now, box seller, any box seller in there, I would hinge. They hinge really well, they're they're already leaning in one way, so it's a safe hand. You put a back cut on it, but waist high. It hits the ground and then it grows a roll of box seller and then you can actually the deal will feed all the way along that line. So any box seller, UM not a bad idea to cut that down. I also the offense rolls that are an oranger. Yeah, so we didn't talked about that hole on one second. Sorry for those who are switching, we're switching through pictures now. There's a photo here that has numbered red dots. Those are stands that will get to eventually. But just referencing these of fence or as you should see the giraffe looking color yellow and brown. You've got the green lines. Now you're gonna see black. Brown was at core area in the middle. We're talking about just opening up pockets. That's a low priority because you know that those fields right now during the hunting season there's zero out of ten for cover and holding ability. We're trying to make those in eight or nine or ten out of ten. That brown's probably already a six or seven out of ten, So it's a very low priority. Yeah, very low priority. Bought box selld um the only thing. You have a lot more cover than there's food value in there. But you have more cover than food and that's why i'd be a six or seven. So if you have box seller in the edge and they're just tipping them over and letting them regenerate, that would that would give a good supply of fall and winter food. So now we've got this big brushy fence for I was like split up these fields across the farm. And they're pretty nice. They've got I mean, they're relatively thick. They provide a visual barrier for part of the year. There's a lot of cherries, there's some oaks and some parts of them. Um, there's even some good box selder. There's some box elder. So so what we're gonna tell us about the fencers. What I like about those fence rolls, Um, they're they're traveling east and west. And those fence rolls would end up being that are marked in orange right smack dab in the middle of your bedding areas and early successional growth pockets, pollinator pockets, switch grass bedding areas. I find that dear love to bed and islands of trees and cover, and those are right adjacent to stand locations. So to me, a very good opportunity to look for any box seller or junk cherry, junk timber. You have some beautiful timber in there. There's some really good oak cherry. So I would look at the junk timber and if it's hingeable size waist high below waist high cutting and six inch and six inches in diameter, unless then I would look for opportunity to hinge cut that into your established switchgrass to provide sunlight into those areas to regenerate. Also expand the fence rolls into more the wood lots, and and and you're making those cuttings so the trees fell perpendicular to the fence rows so that you're not blocking off deer from going in and out of the fence. Right, you're gonna say the opposite. I thought you're gonna try to block off the whole fence rows so they have to pass through with your stand locations. But you're saying the opposite, Dude, open it up so it feels more porous to then they get it out. But here's the here's the kicker. You can have a trail that goes right through the center of all that and ends at your stand location, so that's the t Then you block it off between your stand location and the te and and so you're utilizing those pockets. Great spot for a buck to slip through, come hit a water hole in the one fence roll or being right in front of the stand locations, and then turn left to right and go out in the food plots, and then you have mocked scrapes there. So you're giving him the opportunity to come through in a bunch of browlers and cover. You're expanding those little wood lots overgrowing fence rows. You're giving that tunnel through the middle that he can easily walk through. You don't want any overhead constructions, things that are going to fall in. There's generation happening on both sides along with food. And then he comes to that t he can turn left or right, go to mocks grape, go to food source. He doesn't even have to enter the food plot. And if you notice the line I have around the betting pockets on the outside corners of the green, that's that line that I'd like to him to be able to go right around the outside of the betting pockets and diversity pockets and come right back into your food plot. And now you've given him a line that he can actually scent check, because he'd rather go to the outside and downward edge of all that cover and creation that you're that you're installing in the form of those betting pockets, pollinary pockets and hidden in the swoot grass now you're giving him a betting or cruising line that you could just moll make it three or four ft wide, and he'll follow that, and now he can scent check everything on the inside. He's on the downward edge. You're on that same downward edge, but you're blowing your scent. You know, if you look at stand number five right there, you would still have over a hundred degrees that you could blow your your scent and really not get into that line of movement. So you're looking at there, you could get a west northwest wind, west southwest wind and anything west, more edge and more lines for him to and again nothing is extending awful land, which you talked about earlier to deer going to filter off the land, but you want to make it a slow filter. So if you're putting everything parallel to your borders, all your improvements are somewhat parallel to your borders. They come out of the land, they turn left or right. You're monopolizing the time that they're on your land during the daylight, and then they slowly filter off to your neighbors after dark. That's the same in the morning when they come onto your property. They're not just running right back into the bedding cover. They're slowly filtering. They're feeding on the food plots a little bit. They're slowly filter on your land. So when you come to stands ten, nine, eight, even seven or three, it might be instead of a hurt of deer coming back into that bedding area right at daybreak, you're shooting a nice box, mature box because it's the back end of the movement, meaning those doors are out in the field somewhere and bedded down. You're shoot him in two hours after later, an hour and a half after. Do it the slow filter. I like that you're creating the depth of cover, which is a do you guys understand that hunter Jordan's upped the cover with that hunter got his sunglasses on. I think he's got his poker glasses on, so we can't tell if he's sleeping or not. He is moving every once in a a while. Yeah, yeah, my feet are moving, soun. But give us the rundown of what that concept is just a little bit. More specifically, the depth of cover is from a food source to a screening line, two doze bedded behind that screening line to finally buck bedding. There's a certain amount of depth that you need to have depending on the region. For example, up north um up in Michigan, northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and upstate New York, there's areas where box will move from betting defeating through quarters three cords of a mile a day. That's a depth require round tier and mixed agg. In southern Michigan, they probably lived their lives in a two to three hundred yard window um from the beginning of the season to the end of the season outside of the rot and even then there's still tucked back in their bedding areas. So in the case where we have those white lines where there's that gourd shape marsh, there might not be a hundred and fifty yards of depth where you are currently living. And within that hundred fifty yards depth with the food out in the field somewhere there's no cover in the fields right now, then you have to house do family groups, immature box and older box within that hundred fifty yards on average. And depending on if there's food on the east or the west side, now you're you're confining that down where those doors want to bed next to the food on the east or the west that's right up on the edge of that, you're you're providing a probably a yard wide window or fifty yard or whatever it might be in the window in the middle for a box. By expanding that out with those white lines and taking in that portion the property you could be six hundred yards wide. Go from a hundred fifty to six hundred yards wide. Now you have that depth because when you go back in that middle portion, it's three hundred yards back, two hundred yards back, and you have a pretty big window in there where you have dos up in the fields or on the edge, and then you're taking that entire gordon area over that should be largely from mature box on a daily basis, just real quick, you put five acres in the middle of a forty acre parcel four hundred forty yards by four hundred forty yards, stick a five acre field in the middle. That means that from the edge of that food plot to the edge of the land there's only about a hundred and fifty five yards of depth all the way around there. So on a forty acre parcel, if you're six five acres in the middle, you're left with hundred fifty five yards of depth relating to four hundred and forty yards, so very poor depth to cover ratio. Take twenty acres. Put that five acres on the south end of a rectangle of twenty acres. Now you have three hundred thirty yards of depth going from the north side of that food plot all the way to the north side of the lane. And that twenty parcel, if I was looking at parcels to buy, would be far far more valuable than that forty if I couldn't change food plot location, because in that twenty I could get three thirty yards of depth that would be two twenty yards wide, and I can establish doozen fons, young bucks, and then older box back up in the three d yards away. That cover ratio three yards to four forty is a really good cover ratio. And if you look at this land mark, I think across the top it's probably a half mile wide. So if you're looking at in some of those areas, I think you're gonna have corner to corner, side to side, you're gonna have six to seven yards of depth within their food plot on the outside. And so a very very effective depth ratio. If you look at eight yards wide the widest and you're getting six to seven hundred yards in places, that's a very effective depth um depth and cover of depth ratio. And so when you just to reiterate or to break it down a little bit simpler, the biggest thing the depth of cover allows you to do if we're focusing on our hunting goals, is that if we have a greater depth of cover, it opens up the possibility for there to be more buck betting, more spots for mature bucks to hang out, because you're allowing there to be that space on the back end. They need that back because right the mature bucks typically in a bed further away from the food than the doughs. So if everything is crammed in a hundred yards, all those doughs are right there, then the bucks that have to be directly behind that and there's not a whole lot of space. You might one two year old buck a three year old buck and they're like, I'm not no other bucks go on to take up shop there. And at the same time, if and that's where it gets in the complexity not to open another can of worms, but if you well, when you when you add a lot of summer food and you create a lot of high stem count, thick cover on your land, including the diversity pocket switchgrass. Now you create the perfect fawning conditions because you have high quality summer food and high quality fall winter food. The dos just crave for their summer funding grounds. So you can actually create an excessive amount of dose on your land to call the dough factory to where you can imagine if you don't have a lot of depth and does and fawns take a lot more pressure than the mature box, you can easily And this is what I see in that progression of property. We have diminishing return as all of a sudden, five years later their properties overrun eighty acres and they have forty dos and fawns on it, and they have ten acres of food and a lot of good cover, but no box because there's so much stress. And then and then they've those doughs have taken up that entire depth of cover you know, on the land, so there's really no room, literally no room left for mature box. And in those properties, you have average hunting during the rout and outside the rut unless you have a bunch of standing food in December. You have really poor hunting the rest of the time because those box are staying off your land, their non core box, they don't come into the middle of night or the rut, and you get a ten day window to hunt and outside of that, a good property to me when you have effective depth, when you have balanced sex ratios, and you have those mature box that are coming on your land in mid September two October, then that's the type of property you should be a hunt from opening day to the end of the hunting season and have a realistic chance at a mature buck that you're targeting on the land and by chipping away at them preserving that core area, then to me, you have a very high likelihood that you will shoot him at some point during the season because you're maintaining a property that allows him to stay on the land and invites him to the land to stay. And then it all goes back to that depth. And you know, of course, if you're pressuring your food plots, that's not going to happen. If you're pushing your betting areas, it's not going to happen. But when you're putting it all together, it goes back to Jordan's question about um, you know this really doesn't take that long because most areas of the white tail habitat, anywhere they roam, the habitat provements are over pressure. There's two many doughs. It's it's hard to manage. And so we've worked on these fence rows. We've opened them up. We already have our diversity pocket. Since that we have our food plot creating our butterfly shape and its great depth of cover of protected area all throughout the inside. UM. I also see you put in a couple of recommended water holes. Yes, I want to talk about that a little bit. Why why water holes? Why they're water holes are incredible, especially during the road. Everyone thinks about water during the summertime, but during the summertime there's so much herbaceous, so much green growth, soybeans, alfalfa, that deer the moisture requirements that they need are met by what they eat. So a lot of times we'll see you like we'll have a camera on a water hole and this is going back fifteen years where we'd get eight hundred pictures, have been sitting for six weeks and it's one of those lantern desile. Remember the lantern batteries that used to use for the first digital cameras and m pretty cool because we you know, we graduated from thirty six exposure film and now all of a sudden we can get several hunter pictures. So we came back and there's foss to go through. It was an awesome thing and it took a while to go through, and we'd find that from August September even early October that the majority of those pictures on the water hole we're in the evening, let's say seven out of eight hundred and and then very few pictures in the morning coming back, and it was because those dear bedded dry all day and they'll hit that water on the way to their afternoon green food source, so they're thirsty all day. There's really if there's if these deer are bedded dry, they're not gonna go out of their way a hundred yards, go down to water, get it, and then go back to their food source in the evening. What's really interesting is we put a camera and we've had cameras and water holes for many years, is that they had the bucks will hit him here and there, They hit him in the evening. But where the action really heats up is the end of October at the bucks will tell you when the pre rod starts, because all of a sudden, you're getting pictures at nine o'clock in the morning, eleven o'clock, one o'clock in the afternoon, because they're moving and so they're thirsty, and that's where the water holes come in, so you're you're using water rules in mock scrapes, I recommend a mock scrape at every stand location. I love the mock vine scrapes. I love the vertical scrapes over the horizontal scrapes. I've been using them for years. Um but that combo of water hole, mock scrape or mock scrape itself really defines a lot of movement in front of those stand locations. And I'm not trying to push any scent company. I don't use any scent. In fact, I urinate on the scrapes myself, and and that's the start them in July. But we find the bucks in the deer all dear will hit them all year long. When you have those established vertical scrapes in the right in the middle of the trail. I like the vertical hanging about waist high because then the does grapevine or something grape vine, if that's native and natural to the land. Um up north, you might look at trees that deer commonly rub and they prefer to rub. And so jack pine up north, awesome jack pine branch three cores of an inch to an inch five ft long, and you want that weight so that you can rub the preorbital glands you want it for. Fawns does in all box, so all the years that go by keep accumulating their scent on that branch. Um. Beach trees, beach tree branches, beach tree rubs are very common. Poplar or aspen rubbed all the time. The only thing about popular aspen, it's cheaper. Wood doesn't last as long. I like a vine because it's flexible last for long. The jackpinal lasts for a really long time. Um. Oh, hemlock, hemlock in some areas. It's out in New York recently, there's some really good hemlock stands out there, some really good rubs in them. And so we took a hemlock branch and put it down over a mock scrape that we made um when I was out there. So hemlock is another well rubbed tree. So if it's well rubbed. Then it's one. It's a oak, you know, white oak, really good. UM. So there's a lot of if you're noticing that they're rubbing, you could use like sumac for example, but max an early season rubbing tree or bush whatever it's classified is but that um breaks apart and dries out quickly. So if you're thinking oak, hemlock, jack, pine, and then vines they last the longest. Vine. We have one right now. I shot a buck and if you look at I think it's like mocks scrape results. If you look that up on Google, UM, it shows we talked about putting the mock scrape in two thousand fourteen. UM later that gun season, I have a picture of a nice buck taking a nose dive right in front of the camera, right at the mock scrape, and you can see me my little orange dot up in the right hand corner. And then um, but that that scrape is still there today. The branch has lowered like ten ten ft. It's a big box seller. UM. But that that would that be it's I can't even think right now the fifth or sixth year that that mock scrape is in use. It's cut in half. The deer cut in half. They were stay ending two years ago. Now the vines right in their face. We need I need to position on a different branch. But it's just been there so long, I can't stand moving it. Um And you were saying too, and it's something that I just thought I out haven't put any thought too. But they'll like those vines. They'll hit them, like way earlier than you think, every every month of the year, and so we go out. We started typically in July with a rake or a stick or a boot, and we just rough it up and you'll find they'll start hitting it immediately. New scrapes we put out in July. Um, I have I have a mock scrape playlist on my YouTube channel. There's probably sixteen I think it's sixteen uh um scrape videos and even some recent as we put a new early July. I was hoping you met there's a series of songs you like to listen to. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. But yeah, I know it's uh that that playlist if you look on there, even the recent ones. We have mature box hitting new scrapes with in three to four days of of of really making it, putting it out and uh and creating that scrape. So always including the water hole to narrow down buck women at a stand location. And by the time you're making a thin pastor that we talked about through the fence room, you're adding a mox scrape. You're adding a water hole if it's dry. If you're a bedded dry and they're on the way to food, then the water holes appropriate. If there's water on the way to food or water in their bedding area already, then a mock scrape is you know, typically useless unless the water hole, yeah, water holes are is typically useless, useless just because they already have that water at either one. And that's why I don't like adding water to food plots or I don't like adding scrapes to food pots because it's already an attraction, and so you're losing the attraction of the water hole or a mock scrape that you could be adding right directly at a stand location. Put your water holes in sight or scrapes are essentially right. I mean they're at bow bowshot like, yeah, within bow range, yes, but the food plot is right there. It's not like keeping them far away from Yeah, so I'll see a food plot, and so that's where the thin lines are different because you're putting it on food. But it's bowshot. But I go to a lot where there's a two acre field and they have a scrape tree over to the side, and every time they go in and out of that stand, they spooked deer regardless of others. You know, they just too too large for them to be hunting without spooking. Dear, how big a water hole are you talking? Are you talking just like a little puddle or a pond or I really like, uh, we go back. I just look at a picture of my son Jake. He had to be five years old, and he's sitting over a twenty seven and a half gallon tank that we have dug down in the ground in the waters funneled into that area, and we found the twenty seven and a half gallon tank, plastic tank, you know, five gallon drum cut in half. It's just not enough. We'd put a camera on a dry in ten days, and then the deer when the when the use drives up, then they established a pattern somewhere else, and so you can't hold a pattern, and then it takes an other week or two to get their pattern back. So we're playing this roller coaster. Um so we found that right around a hundred gallons. For example, ten gallon tank from TSC costs about seventy five bucks and putting that in it's thirty inches deep three ft by four ft. It's a lot of digging, but that's about the amount. Like this year, our water holes m and dried up, and we've just had so much rain. I haven't filled the water holes since I think it was two thousand seventeen or two thousand sixteen was the last time I filled water holes because you've had so much rain. And so that is that good balance where, yeah, if you do have to fill them, fill them up in in mid October before the heat of the season, drive out there with a pickup, you know, come right into that spot and uh, those water holes are extremely effective. And just going in there and and filling them up and leaving in October and leaving the machine running whatever used to take it out is a great practice and then you're done. You don't need to add water in November during the rout. You know, that's the only might be the one time you add water to it, if it's for whatever reason. Very dry soo's water holes. Um. Now there's some machine dug water holes, you know, diameter circle getting a bobcat in. Um. I've used pond liners and um they turn out very messy tarps. Now, if you dig them under the ground of foot then and then you put a foot of soil, you dig your pond a foot deeper, put the liner down, put a foot of soil over it, tamp it down and pack it down. Then that that can work. But a lot of times that liner starts coming up, water gets under it, heaves it up, causes holes, rips. So we we've had a big mess before I've taken out. We actually used pool liner and and took that out. It didn't leak, it was just that the edges came up, the deer push it over, and all of a sudden we just have a big muddy mess with fabric sticking out and we're on the least land and just look up bad, look like crap. So so we remove that. But yeah, so the tanks are a good really good quick and you can put those tanks within the same visual frame as the mocks grape. That's a good question, definitely. So typically it's either mock scrape in the foreground or the water hole and the other ones behind it. And we have both ways. And it's pretty cool because you'll see we run fifty video So by the time they go into a scrape, you'll see them start to head a lot of times to the water hole, but they're coming from one or the other. A lot of times they hit both. The cool thing about both those all I mean we're talking at two minutes stop in they're off, So you're not putting deer in front of your stand location for a half hour. That keeps you from getting in and out of stand trouble. They're just moving. Now, what about what do you say to this? There's one school of thought who says, don't put your trail cameras right next to your tree stand locations because those cameras might spook butture bucks. Yeah, absolutely wrong. What's your argument there? Um, they just don't spook deer. So the problem is is the and and we've done this week, so I've spook spook proof video set up. Sweet, I run ratios where um, like last year, thirteen out of sixteen cameras we didn't even have a deer look at and and so when cameras are spooking deer at tree stands. Um. For one, I'll say I would invite all my neighbors if you're listening, don't use trail cameras. Don't put them at your stands. So it's yeah, yeah, it's uh so very very easy to make sure that cameras are not spoken deer. Um. For one, you put them six ft high or higher high and angled down. Definitely, we've been using that for many years. Um. Also a tree wider than the camera. Also the profile of the camera hidden with brush on either side or another trunk also blackout, so the red eyes are horrible. The red in for it, they'll they'll spoke dear all the time. If it's six just putting it six ft in the air probably eliminates all spooks. And then you're putting them at the tree stand specifically so you don't spook dear. The reason for that is you only change your cards when you go hunt that stand, or when you walk by from hunting another stand and you go in grab that. So in that case, you know, on these fence roles, for example, you put a camera in front of your stand, you put a camera that you don't access from the front where the deer are, your access from back where your stands at, and then you might have some brush in front of it. You're looking over a bush, whatever it might be. So you're just coming in from the side or behind it, and you're changing the card and getting out of there, and so you're not even placing yourself in position where you're gonna spoke dear. So I look at it like I did a troill cam ratio video for spooking, and that was a year and a half ago, and we looked at I stated that if deer looking at your cameras five times out of a hundred pictures or videos or more, there's a problem. I look at it now that it should be one or less two one two at most. And like I said, we had thirteen or sixteen cameras on three properties. We had thirteen out of sixteen where the deer did not look at those. With thousands of videos and picture the entire season, you can tell they look through it sometimes, but they're not giving it that stare and looking back and forth. And so definitely it is a unfair advantage. If you're using the mant your tree stands and but you can't put it on a you know, uh, a stick and just put it out in an open food plot. Those mature box will pick those out no different than a um box line. I believe Mark put one on a stick food plot. I do have them on sticks of food, but they worked for me, Like like like, I've had success with that a lot and have not seen the ratio of danger. But I certainly can't say that they couldn't get spoof sometimes from them, and they're in spots where we're like I really like using yeah, like I really like using a mock scrape tree in a food plot to get those are some of my very best locations on my farms to get pictures of mature bucks. And whether that be actual daylight usage or just like inventor, like if I know these deer coming through the area after dark and then it's getting daylight and then he starts the case time to start moving out there. And so I've always looked at these mocks scrape trees. For me, they act as like structure, like bass or attracted to structure in the field. So I've used that really successfully on some of my Michigan spots. But you can't there's no trees to hang Cameron. So I've ran these stick and pick type things off the edges and gotten away with it. But you just because they're focused on that that scrape tree, I think, and as long as you don't have your camera right in view of where they're coming up to, I haven't seen trouble with that. Now. One of the things too with those like a scrape tree. So if you have these long, thin food plots, they're defining where deer come in and out of your cover. So that's where I put a scrape tree, and then I'd put a camera on that scrape tree looking down the entire food plot, and then i'd have there's I'm thinking about my properties right now, there's only one or two cameras where I can't shoot the camera with a bowstand front with a bow, so they're always at bow stands. And so even in case like that, I put the scrape tree at the end of the food plot. That's where you're defining. You want them going in and out of cover, and then you have a stand location there they hunt evening stand you know, evening hunting with when they're coming out and then I'm hunting fifty yards back or seventy five yards back for more of a morning position where I'm waiting the deer for the deer to come into me. But that scrape tree is helping to serve to set up that movement that you're trying to define in and out of the cover. Even if it's on the edge and a long, thin food plot like that is perfect because then if you do have that camera, you can look right down the edge or right down the food plot. And uh, and I'm talking purely like when we have deer that spook by cameras, it seems like almost every dough that comes through the area gets used to them, even if it bothers them initially. Mature bucks are a completely different story. And most people out there, they'll remember a time where they got one mature buck picture of a certain boker two and then that was it. And I look at it, like a lot of times I see that online, you know, look at this box. It's on Instagram and they'll show a little video and the buck comes in and looks at the camera and you think, man, I wonder how many times are gonna get a picture of that particular buck again? And that's it. Yeah, So speaking of all these camera locations at tree stand locations you showed on here some of the spots you would want to put tree stands yourself. I want to talk through some of these or you know what the basic things where you were looking at for several of these. UM to kind of wrap up three six here, sure, yeah, I look at um when you look at stand locations five and six, UM, and you could extend that a little bit to seven, but definitely five and six and then one, thirteen and twelve those are all out to the extreme east or west. Those are all also very important evening stands. They're all on food. They're ones that you can get into, in and out very quickly. You're hoping box especially during the route, will follow those feeding lines or box in general just come out and follow left and right and go buy a stand location. UM, you have water holes or cameras and they'll they'll tell you what's going on. So those are your extreme stands that are all evening stand related. When you get into stand two, eleven, seven and four, those are all kind of intermediate stands where you could say, because you have food that stretched out over hundreds of yards, there's a really good chance like opening day of both season. Here in Michigan on October one, you could have a box that's even on your neighbors at daybreak, comes in, follows the food goes right back was covering. He's going right by a stand location, And so those are during the rock same thing. You might have a buck that actually cruises all the way around and then comes back in. So to me, those are the kind of stands that even you're in the rut um, could pass off for fairly decent morning and evening stands. Now, maybe not necessarily in the pre rot because they're either back in their cover or they're moving in the morning. They're active in the morning and evening. Um, you might sit in that same stand, but when in so really good intermediate kind of both both in you extend that to two, so to eleven four seven. Now, when you get into eight, nine, ten and three, those are pure cover related. Now not to say that your cameras might be telling you that, um, there's a possibility that there's a buck really moving around in there during the daylight during the rot um, but you're establishing those stand locations as pure morning stands. You want to get back into ten nine eight, and it might be that you think there's a giant buck you're after that's in twelve and thirteen one two, you know somewhere out in there, and you really want to get into ten or nine wait for him to come in. Well, you might go all the way around the property on the north side, down the east side, and then back to the west. And let's face it, you know it sounds like a lot, but what are we talking a fifteen minute walk? So you get into nine or ten and you wait for him to come back to you in the morning, and and you've gone on the outside of where you think he's at, and so you have fresh you're looking towards twelve thirteen one two. You haven't spooked anything. And so for those who maybe aren't looking at the image here each those three different categories that stands went from farther to the outer edges, and that was your your easy access evening locations where the outer edges. And then we took one step closer to the swamp those of those intermediate stands, and then now you're rut bedding cover related stands with those inside the swamp or just inside the edge type stands. And we're so if you were saying, like, if you put like a episode and you throw a dot right in the middle of the swamp, that's like the the center of cover, the deepest, darkest tangle of the swamp, and then you're just on the edge of that slow range from that. Yeah, and then you're also like I recommended a forestry maltron, a bobcat something like that, and that can create that travel corridor. For those that don't know what that is, that's basically just like a supertool that car paths. Yeah, if you look at um, it's almost like a giant curling iron with carbine teeth. That's um three ft in diameter two and a half foot in diameter, goes on the front of a bobcat. It spins, choose up the ground, a chew up too, sometimes a twelve inch maple and drag it down, shred it up even as the ground as it goes. And you could use one of those. I have a lot of clients that use them or have an operator come out for the day and they can make travel corridors for deer extending through that swamp that allow them to walk on a flat, um, treeless, shrubless area and you're defining where your stand locations are. First, I think that Bobcat it's gonna get stuck in that swamp. No, I don't think so. Where it is right now, Yeah, probably August or winter, And I like august um this time of the year right now because it's dry. It's the driest it's gonna be during the summer, obviously, not in April May project. So it man be a really good episode if Mark was stuck in this here. Those things there, they're tracked and they go through some pretty bad area. But I wouldn't take it in that black mock back there. I wouldn't take it with standing water. But they'll they'll go through a lot, especially because you're using that vegetation layer and they're driving on top of it, and the trees are knocking down, so that's turning into the top of the soil um And obviously you wouldn't you would not want to use round up or any kind of herbicides down there. You're you're hitting wetland grass and and um growth anyways. But once you kill that, you're losing the ability for the vegetation to take up the moisture. So you just create a beaver be very true. But that sets up those stand locations back there, does we If you look at this and you look at all the ideas you're suggesting and all the planting you you could, and mean, we're talking thirty five acres of switch grass and a three to five acres of food plots and multiple uh water holes and eight mock scrapes and thirteen tree stands, and anyone listening to this is like, holy smokes. Even I'm like, holy smoke. I feel like we've done so much stuff out here already, and I feel like that was holy smoked. There's so much to do, and this is obviously working towards like an ideal situation. When you are looking at like this is like your ideal scenario, you look, you put this together like this would be a perfect situation. Now, if a guy comes here and says, hey, I have got limited time and money and energy. If I were to do one phase of this, or or if if tell me my first step this year, and then every year, I'm gonna do one small phase of this, and it's gonna take you ten years to get there, but every year I can do a little bit. The first thing for the first one or two things to get started down this path. What's the most important first or second step? And I would say that's you know, went to ninety clients this year. I would say that's clients. They can't do everything all in one year, and it's a realistic so some pay to have it done and there's a few that do it um every year. They just put it all together quickly. I want to ask you one question the switch grass. How many fields do you have? How many acres of fields you have? So I don't know the exact acres, but I think it's something like acres. So I would look at you have about fifteen acres of switchgrass because you have the diversity pockets. Then you have all the food pots, maybe twelve um. So that being in said, when you just take the outside solid switch grass acres, you probably have six seven eight acres of switchgrass, and that would be that outside heavy yellow. That to me is more important than even the inside pollinating years and areas, because that establishes the protection of the of your property or access you can. Actually, that's why I started drawing in the switch grass first, because let's say you make all that those improvements in the middle including food plots, and then you don't screen them on the outside with an effective screen, then you can't get on and off your property. Now you just made your property worst. You turn it into a nocturnal property. So if you start with that switch grass on the outside, now you've established those walls of protection on your property that allow those deer to be on the inside of your property. Even if the habitatal us you know, you just just a something. Might use an easy analogies five acres uh five acre wood lot. It's all hardwood. So let's say there's varying ages in there, and you go in and someone makes thirty quote buck bets, you know, betting areas on the inside. And but you can look into that five acres across a half mile field that's been plowed and there's no security on the outside of that five acre, and you can look right into the middle of those betting areas. It's not a betting are now'll do no work on the inside, but just effectively screen off the outside, whether it's switch grass, conifers, hinge cutting a dirt berm, which I've had clients to. Now that five acres is a betting areas because a betting area because you've established the walls of protection. Now a few deer can bet in there and you can walk right up to that screen five ft away and and they're on the inside. They're protected. That's why it's a betting are because they're protected. Two acre swheels sway in the middle of with soft maple out on a hundred sixty acre field. You cut the outside edge of that and lay it down and create regeneration. Let's say it was box seller do the same thing. The deer they're in that two acre pocket are now protected and you can't see and they can't see out. Make that all a trampoline on the inside with betting canopy or something which I don't I don't advocate anyways, the deer that are bedded in there now can see you approaching from a half mile away, quarter mile away. So that's where that yellow switch grass comes in around the outside. The switch grass like to establish pretty easy with the tools you have. You're gonna be a d dollars hundred ten dollars with chemicals per acre to establish that. But then you're gonna get a good solid ten ten years without even burning it. So it's this is something that you know, compared to food plot cost pretty reasonable. No fertilizer needed, no lime needed, so you're just getting it. You're important thing. No markets. You have to control the weeds. So now the inside area, those brown pockets. Let's say you want to do that in year two. Well, you're establishing the switchgrass the outside. You can go up. You can just do this and layers and stops, and then if you have the yellow now or the switch grass now, you can establish the food plat lines. And the food plat lines are just a matter of killing and drilling, so you can establish that really easy to Now you have the whole framework of the property designed to put the cameras out. I'm sure you get enough cameras to cover these areas and these movements, and then let the cameras tell you where to put the you know, put from you know, you have to climb up a tree and and hang from a branch somewhere. Thinking of the yellow, we'll refer to switch grass continually as yellow for the rest of the year. Um in year one, we're lucky to get like four ft of growth, right, So we talked about maybe in the year one we should use a supplemental annual screen to Yes, you're gonna find that um of solid growth around here in that first year is going to be enough to hide you ninety percent of the area. Now, those food plots you put out there, let's say they're an average of sixty wide. Take fifteen ft of that ten ft twenty ft of it. And because you're not gonna have so many deer next year when you first established was food plots, you're starting to build that herd, invite him on the property. Then you could take ten ft whatever you can afford of the screening mix and put that on the outside edge, facing your access on that long, lengthy movement of the food. And then the next year after that switch grass the second year growth of six seven ft high, then you can take that out and convert it back to food pot space to food pot space, so you're keeping the same framework everything, everything is the same. To screen the food yes, yea, and then take it back for food on the following year because you're gonna need more food plot perfect Jordan or Hunter, any final questions. We've kind of covered each layer of Jeff's plan here. I like it a lot, it's really interesting stuff. But what else, anything else, you guys need clarification on no I think I got. I mean, I'm a complete rookie when it comes to anything that has to do with this stuff. It's all so new to me, even though I've been hunting deer for as many years as I have. But I'm just constantly shocked at the amount of layers that you can add to a property like this. It just kind of seems like you could just go as long as you know, there's just so many different things, even on you know, sixty four acres here, that you can do to really maximize what you can you know, be able to achieve. True, it's kind of I know, it's a lot of work. Um, a lot of the work can be completed quickly. The thing is, you know, look at it like you're establishing a foundation of a house. And you're standing you're establishing that framework of the home the people in the homer in the kitchen here, dining here, living room here, here's your bedrooms, and you're you know, a well laid and well thought out plan and is created by an architect. And make sure that you're not driving into the garage and then going through a bedroom in a bathroom to get to the kitchen. Um everything's laid out in complementary of each other, and you have the walls of protection. That's what you start with on the outside, which is a switch grass or the yellow and and so you know, once you have this set, it seems like the work would be endless, but then it's just maintenance. You're you're making sure the switchgrass is thick. If you need to burn it, you burn it. The food plots are in the same location. You tweak a stand location because when you're sitting there all season and you wish it was an that tree twenty yards away. But other than that, you might change camera locations, you might move a box scrape, you repair mox scrapes. But other than that, it'sis maintenance more so once you have the foundation set that that's where I encourage clients to work as fast as possible because once they have it complete, then it's just kind of sit back in these chairs were sitting in right now. Once you break it down like that, it's a lot less overwhelming for a guy like me to look at a piece of property. And you know, as long as you have those basic foundations down and you think about it like that, then it's you can kind of breathe a little bit easier. It's kind of like you know, as a contractor, you would you wouldn't ever have your second bathroom through a bedroom or your only bathroom to go through a bedroom to get to that bathroom, or you don't have someone walk all the way through the basement, go up some stairs and go all the way back to the front of the house with groceries after you drive it, after a drive built and garage at the bottom. There's just certain things that you don't do. The certain things like that's where the perpendicular access to the stands, making the improvements parallel to your borders, establishing that depth to cover those are all really important principles that you have to follow and designing the property, and if they don't fit into that mold, then something else needs to be done. Because it all goes back to you're establishing this land in a core area. Houses, your food plots are just as much sanctuary as your betting areas. But you're establishing that those areas that is forty acres thirty acres, that's going to be the largest area in this in this region, in this area of Michigan that probably has high quality food plots, high quality betting areas, deer movement that's not pressured by hunting pressure consistently every hunting season. You're really trying to take the pressure out of the hunt hunter. I mean, I think I've learned more in the last week than I ever wanted to about deer. I'm sitting good on knowledge here to come around by the end of this year. I think we will turn him. That's my help. He doesn't have a choice, no, he hunts rock corries at this time in his life. Sorry. Well, on that note, jeff Man, we can't thank you enough for taking the time to do this. I mean, it's really been fun to get to see a place like this through your eyes. And you know, over the course of the last few weeks we've been able to chat with all these different people, and everyone has all these different ideas, and they all come to it from a different background, from a different perspective, and it's been really interesting. And yours is always one that I've um enjoyed and respected so much over the year, so to get it specifically on a project like this is it's just great. So well, I I appreciate the opportunity, and you always have to think with this and everything you do, it all has to relate back to because we're all hunters, it has to relate back to how you would hunt mature box on the property. So if you're making improvements, if you're putting those improvements in areas that do not allow you to hunt the property as a predator and get in and out with a high level of mature buck hunting potential, then you're setting yourself up for failure. Sol I come from that, that hunting background, and and really, um, you that has to be applied. I mean you've you've shot some nice box. Um you found it on public land too and done really well. And so you think about how you would hunt on public land. There's a lot of private land I go to. I'd rather hunt public land because it's such a mess that it's not gonna allow mature buck to move around during the daylight and feel safe on that property. So all has to go back to that. And I think if you think of that in every situation, what would have mature buck do? This? Will this exposed mature box? Then that really answers a lot of your questions. It's going to be very interesting. It's such a weird property for me and like just a having like so much wide open space to work with and be actually being able to work with stuff. I'm so used to just being stuck with what I've got and then adapt to that that it's been like a bizarre Then We've had a lot of other outside factors like influencing what we can do what we can do it, but it's been like a weird, exciting but weird opportunity to finally have like the to finally have the paintbrush and the blank sheet. Um, probably it was overwhelming this year. I was like, well I can do this, and then I kind of like threw the paint at all the possibilities. But yeah, it's a very cool thing. So with all the habitat, you know, again, going back, the lowest hole in the bucket is how the land is hunted. You can take great property, do nothing to it, and have a really good chunk to hunt because you hunt it well and you're using the lay of the land. Yeah, and you have to take that um into consideration. That really is the lowest hole in the bucket. You can never overcome poor hunting. Habitats with any amount of habitat work. And I think that's what a lot of people do. You want. I want better hunting. So I'm gonna throw all this these dollars in the habitat improvement, and in the end they're far worse off because they haven't. They've ignored that gaping hole of how the properties hunted and how they move about the land without spooken deer. And so that's what you know, I'd like you to do this. Put this in playing, like I said, starting with that switchgrass, because that that begins to protect their property. Yeah, definitely like that. So folks want to learn more from you. You've got a jil and resources out there where. Just then folks to get more from Jeff Sturgis, you know, really um to places mostly. I mean I do filter things out through social media. Um. You know, I'm an Instagram have a big Facebook page, but my YouTube channel wait till I have to have solutions dot com. Um. You know, I I tried to have a lot of conversation with people in there, tried to. Most videos get about a hundred comments. I try to answer them all, and but I probably don't answer. I still try, though, and then my website, and so the website I'll get back to. I have over six d white tail articles on my website. I have about three videos sixty videos something like that on YouTube. On YouTube, I have a lot of playlists covering almost every category of everything we've talked about, even daylight, movement of box and trail cameras, UM, switch grass, betting areas, whatever it might be. UM. So even if you just sat interested in one portion, you can go to a playlist and I'll have ten to thirty five videos, depending on which playlist it is. But between those two, UM, you know, I you know that'll cover most areas. So I really appreciate it. You know, I honored to have you come out. I know we've talked a lot in the past and senior property up north with your father, and you know you've you wrote the forward for my food plot book. I think that was two four, So that's going back a little way. I'm getting old. I don't think you are. I'm feeling but yeah, no, I I appreciate it, and this has been fun. I love your property. Um. There's a lot of good properties out there that have great diversity, and that's you have edge diversity, low Land Highland, a lot of fields that you can carve out and make instant uh wildlife attractions. And it's not all about the white tales. I want you to tell me that after you put some sweachgrass in lines, you're hearing roosters out here and seen a lot of rabbits on the field, to be very excited birds and everything else. I'm very excited to see this continue to evolve over the next couple of years. So Jeff, thank you. Everyone. Make sure to check out his YouTube channel on the website. Lots and lots of good stuff. The books are all incredibly helpful. I've a lot of the things I've learned over the years. I've definitely learned from Jeff and uh, maybe in a year to come back out and let us know how we're doing. Yeah, that sounds great, Mark, I really appreciate it. And that is all for us today. Thank you for tuning in, and like I mentioned at the top, if you want to see the imagery that we discussed in this podcast with Jeff, make sure check out the Wired Hunt Facebook or Instagram. Otherwise. Appreciate you. Thanks for listening. I hope you're getting after some postseason projects already and until next time, Stay wired to h