00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyon. This is episode number two hundred and nineteen, and today on the show, I'm joined by outdoor writer and whitetail habitat consultant Steve Bartilla. He's a tremendous resource, and today we're taking a deep dive into his white tail habitat management principles and philosophies. All right, Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, brought to you by Onyx Maps. And I guess this bears mentioning just a little bit extra today because we do have a new title sponsor, Onyx Maps, who's come on board in a big way to support Wired Hunt and the rest of our team over at meat Eater. And I'm pretty excited about this because onyx Maps is actually a tool that I've been personally using for a long time now, well before they ever became any kind of partner. So very briefly, if you're not familiar, onyx Maps has this hunting GPS app that provides some really impressive digital mapping features. Some of the most useful things that I found out there, and in particular as a white tailed guy who's always out there searching for new properties to hunt or new public land sections to explore, I really love the onyx Maps shows all of the property lines and property owner information. This has been hugely helpful for me as I go out and try to find new spots to hunt or when I'm planning out of state trips both public and private. So over the coming months, I'll definitely be sharing some more insight into my experiences using this product, but for now, I just wanted to introduce you to what this company is all about and why I'll be seeing them on the show. If you want more information, you can visit onyx maps dot com or search for Onyx Maps on whatever app store you use for your phone, and that's on X that's o n X maps. Now. As for today's show, like I mentioned at the top, we're joined by Steve Bartilla and Steve as an outdoor writer who's been published in magazines such as North American White Tail and Deer and Deer Hunting Magazine. He's also the host or co host of several Deer Hunting TV and web shows. He's the author of a handful of books such as Big Buck Secrets and White Tailed Deer Management and the Habitat Improvement. And it's that last topic that we're going to cover today with him, habitat management. And you might have noticed this spring we we've talked a pretty decent bit about habitat. We've actually had three different habitat management experts on the show here just over the last couple of weeks or months, um And what I think is cool now after having chatted with all three of these guys and other than Steve, the other two were Jeff Sturgis on episode and Jake Ellinger on episode two fourteen, you know, after chatting with these guys, it became very quickly apparent to me and anyone who's listened to this that there are a million different ways to approach improving habitat for deer and wildlife. But just as it is with other aspects of deer hunting, there are a whole lot of different ways to skin this cat. But what all three of these folks had in common was that they have this really strong passion for and excitement for the animals and the land and for ways that we can both give back to the resource and also improve our hunting experience. And that's what I love about this whole habitat thing. You know. I'm fortunately I have a couple of properties where I am able to do some tinkering with the land, and that that has given me this really neat opportunity to more deeply get to know these properties and the local deer and then move around the pieces of the pals of myself and and see what happens. And I found that very very interesting, very fascinating, you know, being an addict to the whole strategy element of deer hunting, being able to now adjust habitat it just adds this whole new exciting layer to the hunting equation. But above and beyond all that, you know, being able to do habitat work, I think at least it offers this this meaningful opportunity to engage with the land and animals in a different way. And I know I've mentioned this on some previous podcasts, so forgive me for being a broken record, but we once you dive into this habitat work, it's it's like this veil is taken off. Your eyes are open to this whole new world, and once you get into the stuff, you develop a whole new appreciation for an understanding of soil and sun and rain and plant life and all sorts of things like that. And I think, in my opinion, that just really enriches your experience as a hunter. And that's at least why this has been so compelling for me. Now for all of you out there who don't have a property where you can manage habitat, you know, I can relate to that too, as as most of the rest of my properties that I hunt, I'm in a similar boat. I'm not able to manage any habitat. I'm not able to change things. But there's this whole other, really interesting, different type of strategy and challenge and excitement that's available with those sense of hunts, you know, where it's all about understanding natural movements and how terrain and hunting pressure and all those things impact dear and how you hunt them. And I think even though you might not be able to take habitat improvement advice from a podcast like this and apply it directly to a property you own, you know just exactly how they're talking about. You might not be able to go take food plot information and use it to plant food plot. You can still use many of the things we talk about in your own hunting by just better understanding what types of features or habitats deer prefore prefer, or different ways to approach your hunting strategy using some of these habitat or terrain focused ideas. You know, even without changing habitat. I think there's ways to put this stuff into play. Especially in today's episode. I think you're gonna find some concepts and philosophies that can apply to really any deer hunting situation. Steve has been one of my very favorite guests on the podcast. He's been on twice before, back on episode twenty two and episode one hundred and sixteen, and if haven't listened to those, I'd highly recommend you check them out there. Like I said, two of my favorites, jam packed with information, much more focused on hunting, timing your hunts, patterning deer, lots of stuff like that. Um, it's good stuff, but today he brings it back. He's brought his a game. He didn't have disappoint So that said, I guess, without further any ado, let's quickly think our partners at White Tailed Properties and then let's get to that interview with Steve. So this week I wanted to call out a helpful resource put together by the land and deer and management experts over at White Tailed Properties, and that is their land Beat video series on YouTube. Now. I've been mentioning this for a few weeks now, and today I wanted to call out another specific video that I recommend you check out. And this new video features the one and only Dr Craig Harper and he is one of the very most interesting and well versed habitat experts in the country. And speaking of past podcast guests, he was on episode number one hundred and three and it is amazing, so be sure to check that one out too. But in this video, he discusses the value of improving brushy fence rows and other small random areas on your property for wildlife. By removing non native grasses and encouraging the growth of other native forge, the wildlife can actually benefit from. It's short, but sweet, and if you head over to the White Tail Properties YouTube channel or just go on YouTube and search for the title which is maintaining brushy fence rows, you should be able to find it. It's well worth a watch. And if you want more from white Tail Properties, you can visit their website at white Tail properties dot com. And now let's get to my conversation with Steve Bartilla. I really think you're gonna enjoy it. I hope you do. So here we go. All right, I'm back here today with what is now his third appearance on the podcast, Steve Bartilla. Thanks for joining us against Steve. Oh hey, my absolutely my pleasure. Mark. It's it's been every time you've been on the show before, they've been some of my absolute favorites. I think you do a really nice job of of of helping people understand things in a in a language that makes sense and that people can actually apply to their to their real life. So so I've always appreciate that about you. But on those past two episodes, we really focused on the hunting side of things, you know. I think that first episode was really all about patterning bucks, and then the second episode we talked more about you know, how to stack your odds from a hunting standpoint, you know when to hunt, where to hunt, uh, you know, using trail cameras, thoughts on the ruts, stuff along those lines. But we haven't really covered ever in much detail, though, is what we can do from from a management perspective, whether it be habitat or actual herd management. Things you can do, you know, in the off season to improve your hunting. Things you can do during the season, um to impact future hunting seasons. And that's kind of what I want to talk about today. Um, Since the last time we talked, I did read one of your books that covers this topic called White Tailed Deer Management and Habitat Improvement, and you've covered a lot of really interesting stuff. I loved the visual approach you took to things with lots of diagrams. UM. So I'm kind of hoping that we can somehow articulate as much of what you covered in that book or at least introduced in those concepts. But we're not to do it with our voices. We can't do it visually. So UM, I guess excuse me. Number one? Does that sound like a good plan to you? Steve? Okay? So the number two what I'm curious about. First, you talk about this a lot in your book and in some of the different video series you have, you talk about the importance of Before you get into any of these habitat projects, then the importance of understanding and mapping your property, really having a good plan in place and maybe even a physical map in place. Can you talk about why that's important and how you how you do that? I sure will, But keeping with my tradition of our podcast s, I'm going to take us off on a tangent, and that is you mentioned something in the in the build up here about you making it so that the stuff is, you know, the audience can understand, you know, putting it in simple terms, all that type of stuff. We are we are blessed and cursed right now, and that there's so dang much information out there, and that is awesome. Problem is just trying to figure out what information is good what information is bad right off the bat, if we're talking hunting, or if we're talking habitat improvement, if somebody's trying to make this stuff sound way too complex to understand, either they don't understand it or they're trying to sell yourselfthing. We're we're talking, we're talking to white tails, We're talking I hate to swear here, but we're talking simple animals. You know that this stuff is not overly complex. If as I said, every time somebody tries to make it so the first two thoughts to pop into my head is either you don't know what you're talking about, or you're trying to make money off me. Because nothing, none of this stuff is overly complex, and what once once? You wants to see the picture now and painting the picture isn't that hard it Actually, in this case, it all starts out with goals every one of us has. We're all the same in a lot of ways, and that we're driven by white tails. We want to make it our property if we own Speaking of this specific topic, um, we want to go ahead and make our property as good as we can if we own it or lease it and have control over it. If we don't. A lot of us someday we want to, but we all have different goals. The key to achieving goals in this or frankly, in my humble opinion, life in general, figure out what it is you want. First identify what your goals are. And that sounds silly because especially in something like this, well, obviously all our goals are to raise the biggest, the most and the biggest bucks we possibly can. Know. That's not true. I've actually sold this business now a couple of years back, but I did that. I did habitat evaluations, slash plans for clients based stuff of aerial photos. Now did a whole bunch of those. I'll tell you what the goals are all. I mean, George has got George's fifty eight years old, He's starting to have grandkids, and man, he wants a place for his grandkids to play. And yeah, if they can go ahead and kill some big bucks, awesome, But really he wants a place for them to go ahead and be able to goof around though, have fun. We just to make darn sure I don't miss this. Now. One of the biggest myths and all this stuff is you have to have deep pockets and you have to have sprawling, sprawling acres of ground to make any kind of difference in habitat improvement bologning. You hear about the stuff that costs money, because I mean, I have to be preaching the player here with you. Market We're we hear about the things that cost money because this is a business, you know, the hunt like it or not. The outdoor industry is an industry. You know, the magazines and TV shows, all these places need money. Flowing in and um or they cannot they cannot present their message. Well, you know what, there's not a lot of companies that produced the simple handsaw that are sponsors of the stuff. You can do an awful lot with his handsaw. You go, you get a change, so you can do a heck of a lot more. Now, there's all sorts of stuff that we can do that doesn't have to cost us hardly anything. I'm one of the biggest things I'm doing this time of year, well all times a year, is bending down licking branches. But it all begins with identifying your goals. Okay, if I know what my goal is now in virtually anything in life, now I can backtrack and how lay out a plan and how to achieve that goal. Is it going to go that nice and smooth and simple and easy. Heck no, No. I go ahead and try to try to live by live by the credo of being rigidly flexible. I got a plan, I've got a plan. But man, when my plans there's going south, you know, And I'm going to figure out a different way of I'm going to figure out a different approach. I'm gonna change stuff up now. Um, So first figure out what it is you want, and they have to be realistic wants. If you own a if you own a twenty in norther in Wisconsin, Odd's Hire, you're not gonna be You're not gonna be setting up to kill booners. Well, jeez, maybe once in your life you'll have the opportunity to kill a booner. And when do you do awesome? If you're if you're down in Florida, you're not setting your ground up to manage for hundred and sixty inch bocks. It once the lifetime, maybe, but you have to have realistic expectations. Part of the way you figure out what's your realistic expectations is is what what's going on around you. If if the biggest bucks in your colony, that's what is consistently being drugged from your colony is the biggest box, that's about the best you're gonna hope for, and that's awesome, that is that is awesome. But if your area is producing consistently, the top end is one one thirty, and there's a lot of areas out there to stick on my tangent deal. The worst gauge of how good a hunter is is what they put down for inches, because you know what, there's a lot of areas where heck, you don't have a hundred and thirty buck, and it's real hard to kill a hundred and thirty inch buck when it isn't there. Um, But go ahead, look around the area. What what is this area consistently producing for a top end? That's my goal? Am I going to be able to kill, to draw and kill the top end? Dear every single year onto my ground? No, but that's gonna be my goal because that I can achieve at least a percentage of the time. Um that learn your habitat. You have to know what you have on that ground before you ever start making improvements. One of the biggest mistakes I think so many of us make, I know I made when I first started, is Okay, I got me a bag of seeds? Where can I slap it? Now? If you take that approach, how does that be in the best place to put in a food plot? Really aren't that good? How are you going to get to that location? How are you going to hunt that location? How are you going to get out without deer knowing you're there? Because one of the biggest things that I me personally I'm trying to do whether it used to be when I was setting up these plans for clients or now I do uh um, long term consulting for a handful of people each year. You want to manufacture high odds, low impact overstand locations because we can hunt the snot out of our grounds as long as deer don't know we're there. But that doesn't happen. That does not happen naturally hardly at all. So what you do is you look at your ground. How can I access? What areas can I get to and get out of without messing anything up? And now how can I go ahead and lay out a deer flow A gentle When I'm talking dear flow, I do not mean that every dear and this property is going to do what I'm going what I'm trying to convince them to do every single time, that's not going to occur. What we're going to do those We're going to encourage them to flow through our property in a way that takes them hie high high odds low impact stands and waste their time on our ground. But the way you do that is you start first by identifying what am I really trying to trying to achieve because if I'm that guy who wants his grandkids playing out on my ground, that doesn't mean that I can't hunt it. And I have great hunting too. That means that I need a division of church and state. This area over here, the area that isn't that great for deer. Oh heck, they can ride a t v s around here, they can shoot squirrels, they can go rabbit hunt, and they can be stupid kids playing out in the woods just like I was. And I'll tell you what that is some dangn precious time for a kid. But this area over here, we leave that area alone. And now, because we happen to have this this the neighbor has a twenty acre field and we have woods that butts up against it. Okay, And there happens to be a nasty, nasty erosion ditch running from the edge of his field down into the creek that goes through our property, and on that side he'll along our property line. Well, geez, if that ditch is tough enough that the deer can't cross, that's the funnel right there, and you're gonna be pushing most of the deer down to the bottom or wrapping the tip because crossing that erosion ut is too tough for them, assuming it's a nasty, nasty erosion cut. Okay, well, I want them to be walking along at that edge quite a bit because I can pop just five six ten yards into the woods, and I'm hunting those deer that are wrapping that tip, and so if I can get them to flow that way, jeez, I just went ahead and manufactured of pretty darn high odds low impact stand. I'm five yards in the woods and I might as well be hunting the center of my woods, but I've got the wind blown over to the out into the neighbor's field. I can hunt that stand over and over and over and over and over again, as long as I stick to the wind and and slip just barely inside inside that the um woodline down my property line to pop into that stand. All that type of stuff begins by identifying what your goals are, studying your ground on, figuring out what you've got that you can take advantage of, and then you can take it another step. And that is what don't the neighbors have? What do the neighbors have? What don't they take inventory of? That because if and not every not every property set up well for this. But if if your goal is to get dear to spend the disproportionate amount of time on your ground, I need to pause there for a second. What does disproportionate amount of time on your ground mean? It means that they're spending more time. If you want a forty, they're spending more time on that one forty of their home range than they are on every any other forties on their home range. Does that mean they're gonna leave? Of course they're gonna leave, But the more unless you put up a high fence. But the more time they spend on that property during daylight, the higher the odds of you being able to get the shot and or actually, we get this animal another year because you don't want the neighbors. As long as that's a legal dear, they have every rate in the world to shoot that animal if it once it jumps defense, whether you decide to pass it or not, that is their right. And if they shoot it, they deserve nothing but our praise because the stuff is supposed to be fun. We don't have that. I don't have the right to impose my will on every other hunter out there. But giving them to spend that disproportionate amount of time on our property helps me control things. But it sure isn't a high fence, all right. Um, So how do you get dear to spend a disproportionate amount of time on your property? You give them better food, better water, better cover, better feeling of security, and better comfort than they can get anywhere else in the area, and they're going to spend more time there. That is an extremely it sounds extremely difficult and streamly labor intensive, and it candy to to a certain extent. But I'm telling you right now, if you're not enjoying this stuff, you might want to find a better, different hobby, because the stuff is supposed to be fun. And don't look at it, don't look at it as a race. Just sit there and pick away at it, because you know what, five years, especially these days, five years seems like forever away. But and I'm not going to get a lick. I'm not going to get a lick of production out of those fruit trees. And then I planted some some mass tree, some oak trees, and then I want to head it through in a couple of dungst and chestnuts as well. I'm not going to get a look of use out of that for probably five years. But if I don't do it today, where am I in five years? I'm the neighbor that's sitting there complaining that the other neighbors got all the deer. So, so, Steve, you've got all these different things you just mentioned, right if we're trying to if our goal is to have deer spend a disproportion amount of the time on our property, and you know, let's let's take my goals. For example, I'm hoping that I can get but sure bucks to spend a disproportionate amount of their time on my small properties. So in that case, when I'm now looking at this scenario just painted, which is okay? To do that? We need food, cover, security, um, and then you can do you mind me hijacking list for a second. Let's talk if you're comfortable with it, Let's talk about your ground because by talking about your ground now we can go ahead and apply this to a bunch of other properties out there. So tell me how big is your property? Okay, So so let's let's talk about this property that I'm working on right now. My family has a forty acre property in northwestern Michigan. Okay, okay, what's the what's the hunting pressure like our own? So the hunting pressure around it too, to two sides of it is moderate and towards the back of it is is almost none because on the front side of the property it butts up to some private land where there's a handful of hunters. On the back side of the property butts up to a very very large piece of public land that's far from a road, so hard to get to. Its deep swamp, big cover, kind of big woods, typed terrain, awesome, awesome, awesome, um. And the reason that it's not funded very hard. It's just way too much of a pain to get that fire back and through all that junk exactly. And there's just low hunters up in this part of the country relative to this part of the state relative to other areas, because deer populations are relatively lower too, so people aren't heading up there as much as they used to. Okay, um, And this is not I know, there's one area of Michigan that's called Club Country because there's a great big chan This is not that area, not that area. No, I think that part is more in the up or in central northern part of this is the northwestern part of the Lower Peninsula. Okay, all right, Um, so you've got forty acres the idea of being able to hold and I know in many cases here I'm gonna be preaching the choir mark. I'm just going into this level of detail because everything's brain surgery until you hear a once. Yeah, and there's certainly people who don't know this stuff, so so yeah, let's cover it all. Um. So right off the bat, now, a mature bucks home range is well, it is going to go ahead, and we're talking pure averages here. Um, it's going. Home ranges is the area that a mature buck lives in throughout his and from the time he disperses, as my definition, from the time he disperses as a year and a half old mom kicks him out. So to keep the gene pool strong, he averages, according to radio telemetry studies, relocating one to tend my else away. Okay, Now, when he sets up shop at that after that yearling buck dispersal, his average home range is about sixty It's going to increase and decrease um inside based on frankly, what the habitat has to offer to a very very large extent um. As I said, every deer, every buck has one home range, so that home range has to give them absolutely everything they need. They're gonna die now because they don't know what's outside of that home range. That said, they have many core areas or potentially many core areas within that home range. And core area is just the area that at that at that given time they're spending the majority of their time. Now, what I specifically zero in on is when it comes to management is daylight core areas. We can't hunt at night. So right off the bat, I'm full becased on far more what are these bucks through doing during daylight? Potentially you can get one to two mature bucks to set up home range core areas on your ground on the forties. Here's the catch, though, you got to offer the best to everything both swamps. I'm I'm betting you can't touch that for betting now without as I said, take for year ground. Take all this with a grain of salt, because I haven't looked at odds are pretty darn good that you're not gonna be able to You're not going to be able to match or exceed the quality of betting that that swamp has. And at the same time, at the same time, if I'm you, I don't care. I'm looking at that. I'm happy, no problem, great, because what I'm really gonna do is I'm going to focus in your situation on creating a buck trap. And that is they have all this ground out here that they can live on, and it is swampy, it is nasty ground that you know. What is is any other hunters ever going to drag bucks out of there? Yeah, you're gonna have some happen. But you know as well as I do that hoptally what that's that's too much work. I mean, we're we're a couple of the idiots that actually do go back into situations like that, and it has been great until you kill something and then all of a sudden you really start questioning what you're doing. Way the heck back here, you know, um and not jobs like us. We do it again and again and again. But a lot of people are not a lot of people. That's not fun for them. For as I said, I hope you don't mind me continuing. We calling you and I not jobs for us, it is I'm right there with you for most people. That not for most hunters going ahead and dragging a pair of waiters with you having to change and I'm actually thinking of public land buck I killed doing just this, having to go ahead and switch in and out of those waiters three times to get to that spot an honest mile and a half back in they are going to do that. So you have outside of the exception of the nut jobs like us, you don't have people in our back door, and you in that situation take that use it. So I wouldn't what I would be focusing. So this is more of a more of a big woods swampy area, correct, Yeah, yeah, So You've got to give you a little bit more detail. So this is, yeah, where you have all that called for, all that potential betting area, okay, um, in an area where you don't have a ton of candy crops. I can all but promise you your best road is to focus on having some doze bet up around your food, laying this food out so that when Mr Big comes from that swamp to check your girls or get some food, that odds are really high they're going through this one or two or three pinch points on that forty and on a forty In a situation like this where you can go ahead and re remodel their world, you can set it up so that pretty much every deer that comes, every buck that cruises either for into your ground for food or for girls, you can't go ahead and do some pretty significant rearranging and make it so they are going through here, here or here. Now, go ahead and put to three stands sites for each of those look casions for various wind directions. Lay them out so that they said, I'm guessing you don't have that natural funnel. No worries if you don't. The overwhelming majority of people don't have funnels like that on their forties. But I'll what, bulldozers are not very expensive to rent. They really aren't. You can get I mean you can in one day for a thousand bucks, you can get a ridiculous amount of stuff done on that forty acres that is going to pay for itself over and over and over and over. And I don't want to say this to try to now, but I'm going to. You know what, people are out there spending a thousand bucks a year on bows for crying out woud there are guys out there, and God love them guys and girls out there that are buying a new bowl every stinking year. All a person has to do is skip want us one year, and you know what, they can get an awful lot of darn stuff done in that on their ground for for a thousand bucks. So so let me let me hit pause real quick and and take us back, because I want to understand your thought process here, um, and I think I understand it, but just so everyone else does when you when we talk, when I describe my property and then you said, oh yeah, so then we want to focus on food. So what I would would love for you to expand on a little bit is how you make that decision, Like how do you determine the order of operations? If you if you think back to our old math problems back in the day when we have to do had to do kind of long form math way this order of operations when you're figuring out algebra and stuff, you determine, Okay, I have to do food first, and then I can worry about access, and then I can worry about water or whatever this order might be. How do you prioritize the different pieces of the habitat puzzle. You need to focus on um like you started to do here on my property. Can you describe just how other people can be thinking through that? It really start for me at one starts with betting. If you if you study dear long enough, especially if you study how deer react on specific properties long enough, what you see is it's a repeating cycle. Now, dear do not have the power to analyze things like humans do. Deer have deer very instinctual. They have great senses of they have great senses, in many cases better than ours, But they don't have the power of analytical thought. They are they are a product of their environment, what Mom taught them, and their instincts. Because of that, every dear is different, but they all tend to share certain traits. And one of the things you noticed, and I am n sure we talked about this and one of the other ones podcasts, is that ms Mr Big, especially especially in heavily hunted areas, how does Mr Big get old? He gets old because he figured out how to survive. Okay, if he figured out how to survive, that means that the next year in line now is probably gonna probably gonna stick pretty darn tight to those that survives is gonna stick pretty darn tight to what the previous year did or their dad. Um. You you really see that play out in betting areas when you and I know I've said this, um, when you find that buck bed, that that lone bed in the middle of winter, when you're out there scouting in the snow, you know, maybe it's got a peace spot in the middle of it. But I'm sorry. The idea that every time a buck stands, every time a buck is betting the year and eight, as soon as they stand up, I don't buy that. Um. They may take a step forward, they may take instead back. Who knows, so that peacepot doesn't really I'm sorry even got into that, um. But there's a big rub there. There's no other different sized beds around. You know what. Odds are fairly decent. That's a buck bed, not a guarantee, but pretty decent. Now you go over to over the next ridge and here's a whole bunch of different size beds in the snow. Odds are pretty darn good that those are. That's a family group betting area. Those fons young bucks, Okay, squat down in each of them, look around, ask yourself, why, out of every place is this animal betting here? Okay for those for the family groups, good luck, Um, they aren't anywhere near at ticky. For the box. Should do that ten twelve times, and you start seeing patterns emerge. And then you do it year after year after year, and you find that the same buck or the most mature bucks are betting in the same general locations, the same grounds every year. It's because that betting area has something that is superior. By doing the squats in these beds, what you notice is either it's thick and nasty to the point where absolutely nothing sneaking up on you. You can use wind direction to cover one area, your ears are covering the rest, and you can just heck two jumps in any direction you're vanished. Okay, that's a common scenario. Another common scenario, and that's what no doubt you're dealing with. I need on with that swamp awesome, awesome protective cover bedding where nothing sneak I mean, do you think you can slash through that swamp without something hearing you come? Probably not? Yeah. Um. The other really really common example is based on topography, that will that knob at the end of the ridge. Hell, heck that bulge. You're going off the side. Now someplace where I can lay right year and I can see everything down below me. I can have the wind. I'm not saying they always do this, but I can't have the wind going over the ridge, protecting my backside, my eyes going ahead and scanning for the front. Good luck beating a spot like that. It's it's really really tough. Okay um, to go ahead and try to get those deer. Those bucks, specifically the doose are easy. But get those bucks. They're betting in that swamp to bet on yourthority. That that's pushing, that's pushing the rock uphill, because that swamp most likely has the advantages when it comes to betting. And at the same time, these deer are trained that this is where I want to be because they've seen they've seen there, the older bucks do that. Now it gets to be it's it's hard to break training. And now I've been betting here for a while. I feel safe. This works for me. I'm surviving. Does that kind of answer. That's why I start with betting the very the very first well, the very first thing. I start with the goals. Okay um, figure out goals. And then the next question in my mind is how if it is trying to get deer to spend as much time on your property as possible. Now, jeez, if I can't, then the next question is is will they bet there? Okay? If I believe that that's going to be tough, then okay, Well, what's the next thing we can do? Well? The next thing, jeez, especially in big woods foods, king baby, know you offer when look at look at what's in the least supply in the area. Based on what you described to me, we're talking about a heck of a lot of timber and swamp. Well, that means that there probably isn't a heck of a lot of egg in that area. There might be some, no doubt, but not a tremendous amount. There's a heck of a lot of cover mm hmm. That means that I could focus on bedding and and hope then I could draw some deer over here. But they've got to stir plus a bedding everywhere. Or if they're short on food, and I can offer them brassicas, and I can offer them cereal rye, and I can offer them some fruit trees, and I can throw some clover out there all of a sudden. It's not gonna be real hard for me to offer a whole bunch of food that they can't get other places. And I offer a whole bunch of food they can't get other places. I can all but promise you that at least at times during the season I'm going to have a ridiculous number of deer on my ground for that area. Um, So it's really it's really start with goals and then figure out. Okay, as I said, are these realistic? Mark? I hate to tell you it's probably not realistic for you to get a buck to spend a disproportionate amount of daylight time on that forty He's going to be spending that disupport disproportionate amount of daylight time back in that swamp. But that doesn't mean you can't you can't give him a really good reason to make it the very first place he goes when he gets up, because you've got really good food. And now we start getting into the rot and geez, I'm gonna be hanging around Mark's place an awful lot because he's got food, water, and girls. What more do I want? So the trick for Mark is to set his ground up so he does have food, water, and girls, and take it a step further and set it up so that as Mr Big flows through that property to check it for dose to go for food, that there's a really really good chances he's going to go through here. Yeah, So so tell me this, Steve. And I think I either read about this in your book or saw you talk about this in the videos somewhere, but you had mentioned that before planning food. So if we're if we're focusing now, okay, yes, on my property, food is going to be that that lever I can pull and get an extra big boost of impact if food is what I want to do. Now, I read somewhere that you said before planting any food, at least if you plan on using this to hunt in anyway, you should first think about tree stand locations or things like access or different things there. Can you can you tell me a is that? Is that right? Do you think about access in the locations before you actually think about where to put a food plot or how to plant food plot? And then if so, can you tell me why tell me how that helps? Yes? With one can yet, and that is there's certain places that I peck, I'm gonna be leaving for their pretty much as soon as I hang up. There's one property that I'm doing management right now that has has a big bottom, plants and food that has nothing to do with hunting. That has to do one. I mean, you can't get to the bottom. You're gonna have swirling winds. It's one surrounded by deer cover pack deer bedding three hundred and sixty degrees around there. Could I go ahead and make it so they didn't bed there? I could, but I pretty much take clear cutting. There was no. Um, you're not going to be able to get into that bottom to hunt. But they have this person here controls about a hundred and twenty acres and they're surrounded by meat hunters, and God love those meat hunters. And I'm being could not be being more sincere when I say that, Um, the day act to get off on a very brief tangent. But you know what, when we sit there and we are complaining about each other, and we are slamming each other for their choice of weapon for all this stuff, all we're doing is the anti's job form. Whether we want to or not. You know, our hunting numbers are dwindling, they're not increasing. Every single person we drive from this sport is we're cutting off our own nose to spire or face. But God loved the meat hunters around him, and they have every right in the world to do what they want on legally on their side of the fence, just like I have every right to legally do what I want on my side of the fence. So that that bottom is planted in food merely merely the suck dear to the center of that property. So in that case, if there are there are situations where what I'm about to describe does not apply when you're using food strictly for holding purposes to get them to waste more time on your ground. Otherwise, I've learned the hard way. Before you ever start breaking dirt, before you ever bring in a bulldozer to clear out in woods plots, and I'm telling you, look into those dozers. They are so much cheaper than people realize and so much more effective. But before you go ahead and have somebody come out, you find the stand, the tree you're gonna put that stand up in. You figure out, as I said when we first started talking, Now one of The first things you do on your ground is you figure out what areas you can get to, what areas you can hunt and get the heck out of without educating. Dear, one of the biggest things we do is hunters. One of the biggest, in my opinion, mistakes we make is we when we're trying to manage property as we hunt way too darn much of it. Look at that, Look at that area, a public ground that butts up against you. Once deer season starts, where most of the deer I'm without ever having step foot out there, I'm guessing they ain't. They're not right around those parking areas, because those those parking areas right around there, they get hunted. So what do the deer do. They shift two areas of their home range where they feel safe. Once they start feeling pressure, they don't leave that home range. But as I said, it's sixty acres and it's not laid out in a square. It's more like a python that's that's swallowed a medicine ball, a couple of volleyballs and softball, and another medicine ball twisted all sorts of But add that whole entire python up and it equals about six hundred and forty acres, but it twists and turns off all over bulge here, narrow there to achieve their needs. Okay, Um, and somehow I lost where the heck I was even going with all that? Well, can you can you give us a little more? Yeah? Yeah, So so back to when we have those these perspective food plot plans and we're thinking through okay, picking those stand locations first, picking the access points, and you were describing a lot of that, and I kind of encourage you to go off on another tangent when it comes to access because, like you mentioned, so important and I've i've I've seen where you've talked about thinking about edge access versus central access, and that you prefer, you know, planning your access routes from the outside end versus the opposite way. Can you can you talk about that a little bit and then how that might fit into what I'm talking about here in that forty piece too? Yeah? Um. And I actually was able to connect a few of the dots and then left out there for myself. Um. But what I was getting at is you have six Okay, that's six. They know that six forty, Like the back of their hand because that's where they live. Three under three hundred and sixty four days a year. They're they're living there, I think, actually, jeezus, can't you remember how many days are in the year right now? But they're living there, they know that, so they know those areas that don't have pressure. You want that area to be your ground, and you do that by hunting less of it. Then, rather than hunting more, the more your property hunt, the less you're leaving for deer to feel safe. Okay, um, And now set me back on course, and I'm sorry, Okay, So that all makes sense about that dear home range and hoping that now that you know part of my forty might intersect with his home range of sixty acres or so. Um, Now, how can access, good access fit into that to make it feel like your property isn't being overhunted, to make those deer feel safe on it? And you know, how does access filter your factor into the equation and when you're thinking about where to put food as well? And this it all goes back to trying to keep give dear the illusion of safety on your property so that those those as I've tried, and I hope that this is coming through sincere, because it couldn't be more sinceres. I've tried to hammer that neighbor has every right in the world to shoot whatever legal dear he wants or she wants. And you know what, we really should be nothing but happy for them. That said, now, as they're pummeling their ground, as they're going out there the day before season opens and going to scout their eighty acres and they're whipping around out there, you know what, I want them pushing dear to my ground. And how do you accomplish that? You accomplish that by making them feel safe on that ground by hunting from those low impacted locations. If that gear does not see smell here, you you're not there as far as they're concerned. Um So, what works so very nicely for trying to accomplish that is take your ground your forty MM. I've got two choices. I can go ahead on your specific forty work. This is hypothetical. Obviously, I can go right through the center of this ground to access my stands, or I can go along the edge of my ground to access my stands. If I go through the center, what what wind direction isn't blowing into a huge part of my property. There is none if I go But if I so, what ends up happening so often for hunters is they go ahead, they show up their hunting ground. They hunted the first day, Oh man, this is great. They hunted the second day, this is pretty good. Hunted the third day, well this ain't bad. Hunted the four where all the deer? Now it does and take that many times to explode a forty eight or chunk of dirt to turn it pretty much worthless for for deer activity right then too well, now to put a serious ding to the amount of deer hunt deer activity that occurs in that ground. Now compare that too, you know, taking that forty and having edge access as a matter of fact, when you're going down the west side of that property. Now, well here, let's make it even simpler on forties like years, if I can design it exactly the way I want the wind directions. TELLEL is answering what part of the property I'm hunting that given day, Because if I have edge access on a forty, I'm going to make it so that whenever I'm accessing that property, that wind is either blowing down the property line or it's blowing into the neighbors because I want the deer to believe that this ground that I control is safe. And by blowing that scent down the line or into the neighbor's ground, it's not blown into mine. And then you can go ahead and even take it a step further and do what I call edge feathering. And as you hinge cut, a hinge cut a band of trees. Hinge cutting is And please anybody listening to this, don't go out and do this if you're not exceptionally comfortable with chainsaws. Frankly, you can do it all with a hand saw. Follow all chain saw safety rules, all that good stuff. We're just talking deer hunting. It's not worth going home without a leg or an arm, or worse yet, making your kids orphans. Now, remember there's a lot of this stuff is dangerous. Don't push it, um, but you can't. Hinge cutting is cutting. What I do is cut about half to six the way through a tree. Bend the darn thing over. Now it retains that the top retains that connection the root system, So so percent of those trees are going to continue to grow. Only now all that canopies down there at down there right on the ground level for deer, both for cover and for food. Go ahead and stick to trees no bigger than your bicep. And if you don't get much to worry about if the if the timber works, for what you can do is you can go ahead and edge feather hinge cut about a five yard wide band on your property side of that access trail. Now, so what ends up happening is, I've got this access trail going down my property line. The wind is either blowing down my property line or into the neighbors at the same time, on my property line, on my property side of this trail, I've got a five yard wide band a hinge cut. Ok that's creating a screen. So the deer within my burt can't see me as I'm going down that line. At the same time, neighbors are setting up on the fence line can't see it anywhere near as good, which they have every right to set up on the fence line. They don't have a right to shoot into my ground. Ok Um. But now, simply by using the wind, I can make it so that the wind is, except for swirls, never bump blowing into my ground. And at the same time those neighbors over there, they're running around their property and man, they're ruining the hunting for this area. No, they aren't not a not a the dear think my forty safe. They're not ruining my ground at all. Instead, I've just took those people that have been working against my goals. Now they're working towards my goals by kicking up deer. Because every time they kick up deer on their ground, they're training them that, hey, you're not safe over here. But every time they're coming on my ground, they're not smelling me, they're not seeing me, they're not hearing me. I'm not there, You're safe here. And that it access has a huge, huge impact when it comes to that, because if you're going down the center of your property and you're hunting it on every single wind direction, you know what, it's only a matter of time before every single year in that ground knows that, you know what, I'm not safe over here either. Maybe I should go over to Gertrude's place because she doesn't let anybody hunt on that ground at all. That kind of connected that somewhere in there for you. Yeah, yeah, it does. So let's let's let's continue down with this line of thought. Now, so we've we figured out, okay, this this property, this area has got tons of bedding cover, so food is going to be where I can have that impact. We've talked about making sure that we have smart access into the spots we might want to hunt. So now we've decided we want to plant some food. We're on a planet in a place it's easy to access. What else should we be thinking about when choosing what to plant or you know the shape of that plot, anything when it comes to what we need to thinking about just before actually digging in and putting something in there. Now, so we know this is we know we can get to this area, we know we can get out of it, We know that we have a potential safe wind direction. Now it's blowing over into this wetting the area of the swamp that has standing water. Where they can go ahead and walk this peninsula over just a couple of hundred yards to the other side. Now, keep with your feet whatever some type of what I call dead zone. What you can do and actually I do more than I care to, uh is actually manufactures safe zones as well. Be creative when it comes to this type of stuff. You can go in there and you can knock down a bunch of trees, which is waste if they're if they have any timber valley to them. But you can make a mess to the point where deer don't want to go through here. You call us a tornado zone, right yep, exactly. Uh. But one way, shape or form. You have to be able to get to this location without getting busted. You have to be able to hunt this location. Meaning I need a safe one direction from hunting, and I need to be able to get out of here. That doesn't happen easy. So that's why you start with what areas can I access? All right now? This area here, Oh, and I go ahead and remove a few trees here. I can put a food plot in over here? All right, where would my stand be? I can go ahead and put a stand up in this tree right here, have a blow into that that wet area with it with any type of southeast or south wind this area over here. Oh geez, I could use this too, because this goes up against this goes up against a nasty creek, you know, real high creek crossing the creek bank. You know something some type of a barrier, or I'm going to create a tornado zone. So now I've got a got a place store I can hunt with another wind direction that works with my edge access as well. All Right, so I go ahead and I select those specifically select the trees first. Now, how can I lay this plot out to make it safe or you know, um, for example, where I have the stand, I might want that to be a bend a bend in the food plot because that may potentially increase the amount of the safe wind cone I can hunt the stand with. It might be able to stretch that cone out a little bit more. The there. It's a really tough thing to answer with specifics because there so much of this habitat stuff is one part art, one part science. There is not that this is the size and shape that this food plot should be. No, the food plot should be sized and shaped to try to achieve my goals. This is just for example. You know what you're doing this fifty yards in from a big egg field. You're what you're trying to do is you're going to bring a dozer in here. You're gonna open up a quarter acre spot plant some food. You're not counting on that food being the primary food source. Actually, really, what you're doing is you're gonna go ahead and slap a whole bunch of licking branches out in that. Make sure that there's a whole bunch of licking branches around that food plot. Heck, am I even cutting plants a scrape tree in the middle of it. You're trying to create this into a staging cub, a social hub of sorts. Okay, so they're that situation. Excuse me. In that situation, the food plot size and the amount of food that's being produced as long as it's green and that can withstand browsing and the deer like, and I'm cool. You know, I'm probably either going with cereal rye or um Antler King's trophy clover in there or whatever. Clover um. That's just what I'm using. So ah, but I wasn't trying to do a sales pitch there. Actually, Uh, now take that in a different way to put that near situation. Your situation, you don't have a big you don't have the neighbor's great big egg fuel to take advantage of for a destination food source. So that means if you want dear to be coming into your ground for food. You need production, you need acreage. So therefore I'm gonna if i'm if I'm setting up your ground, I'm gonna focus a lot more on Okay, I mean, jeez, there's probably I'm gonna guess here, there's probably fifteen deer per square mile up in this area. I'm suck and a whole bunch of them in you know what I have, I'm probably gonna be feeding. I'm probably gonna be feeding on low side twenty deer here. I mean, I need some acres to put into food. If I wanted to pull this off overseason. Um, so that situation is going to be very different than the one I just described there. There isn't that remain originally flexible. It's really what it comes down to on so much of this one of the one of the biggest challenges for trying here. I'll share a little bit of personal stuff with you right now. In my career. The reason that I am focusing more on this, more on this type of stuff than I ever did in my work before, it's because it is so incredibly diverse and challenging. You know, the cookie cutter approach just does not work. It just doesn't work when it comes to this type of stuff, because every single person's ground is different. So ultimately, ultimately, everybody who's doing this, excuse me one second, Ultimately everyone who's doing this is actually playing mad scientists on their ground. The catches. There isn't one formula to do it what And that's why the book you read that, that's why I tried to lay it out in the way I did. Is that here a whole bunch of tools you guys can use, because ultimately, and here are some here are some general philosophies on well, here are some very specific philosophies on exactly how I set up this property of this property. I don't know. I think I got a dozen of them in there. But there's a reason that there's a dozen different properties are more in that book, and that's because there just isn't one way to skin this cat. You can have two people with identical goals, now, each of them with authorities set created by nothing more than a fence line, and odds are that the best route for both of them isn't the exact same thing, because both of their habitats different, their access is different. Little things like that make it so that you just you just can't lay out a cookie cutter approach. And that is why spending that time up front and really studying your ground, really honestly answering what is it that I want to accomplish here? Now before you go it, then educate yourself on the tools that are available, because there's all sorts of tools, and quite frankly now in on shows and in magazines and even in most books now a lot of them aren't even covered because well, frankly, a lot of people write the bout this stuff. Don't do it um. And you know, again going back to the money in the industry, now you don't. You don't make money for writers, TV shows or outlets by talking about chainsaws. You make money by talking about food pots. No um. But go ahead to educate yourself on what's available out there and then play man scientists for yourself. But really lay this stuff out and think to yourself, I need to create I want to create a deer flow that works towards my goals and minimizes my weaknesses in your situation. You know the weaknesses. You don't want the deer jumping the fence to the neighbors. You said, if I recall correctly you said there were a couple of neighbors that that do hunt pretty aggressively up in there on one side of property. So I'm guessing you don't want them jump in that side of the fence. So you know what, You're really don't want to put bedding right up against the fence over there, do you. It was the first thing that happens when they wake up, They've got to choose which way to go. And yeah, nine times out of ten they're choosing to go into your property to get that food. But that tenth time when they jumped the fence on November three, and Ted happens to be sitting stopping that tree over there, he's going to shoot that buck when he walks by. More power to him, buddy. So you really get I think you're starting to understand why I talked more hunting the first two times, because it all fits it all together. Yeah, and and because frankly for a while, more straightforward. So so so this I think I think you can give me a straightforward answer on this question, which is back to the food piece. As we talked, can you you're you're talking about how we can think about how diverse of options there are when it comes to developing the shape your plot and the location of your plot based on all the different things that are very specific to different situations. But something here that I've heard you talk a lot about is once you do decide on the right shape and the right location, now you're actually planting food of some kind. And when you're choosing what to plant. I've seen lots of times you recommend that what you call it a smartest board type of effect where you have a lot of diversity. Yeah, so so can you can you tell us why that's important and what you mean by that, because now we're actually planting something. This is something that people always have questions. Almost the most common food plot questions what should I plant? What should I plant? And of course there's a lot more to it than just buying a piece or a bag of sea that's got a big buck on it. Um, can you just walk us through your your thought process there and then this whole smortgage board deal, it all comes back to the whole Okay, food sources are changing dynamically over the course of seas. You got those those late plant to the soybeans. Man, there's those ones that that first week of season, they're still perfectly green. Oh geez, go han them because at that point those those deer are going to be all over those green soybeans. But now they start to yellow. Oh geez, this isn't so good. Oh, and geez, the acorns are dropping now too. Hey, I'm gonna go shift into the woods to feed on some acorns. Um well, and oh, there's happens to be an alfalfa field over here, so I'm gonna eat some else alfie too. Oh geez. Now we've got a couple of frosts. Now that alfelf isn't quite as good. In the acorns, most of the good ones are cleaned up, and now we just have the wormy ones. But oh that corn, that corn is getting nice and dry, now high in carbs. And you know, geez, either the ruts going or it's about to come, or it's done. And I need fat because I just lost percent body weight during the rout. Now you have different biological needs and the changing ecosystem all occurring at the same time, making it so there is not that one thing that you can plant that I'm aware of, and boom, this is what they're gonna want every day. All the way through season. So how do you counteract that you offer from a bunch of stuff. So go back to we were talking edge feathering along that along that access trail to serve as a screen. Okay, well you know what else it does. It produces an awful lot of food. So now that we've got this food plot in, let's go ahead and edge feather a five yard band around that food plot of those safe trees that we can go ahead and drop down to ground level or creek. We're doing a couple who were killing a couple of birds with that stone right there. We're making it so that Mr Big when he walks by fifty yards in the woods and he looks out in that food plot. Oh wait, he can't look out in that food plot. He actually has to stick his head into check. Since we're hunting that food plot. We really want him to do that. Um. Besides, even if we're not hunting it, it's wasting as time having to go in and check that food plat light. As long as I'm there, I might as well work a scrape or two, um, you know, as well as I do that. Hunting oftentimes comes down to that thirty minutes the first and last outside of the rut, the first and last thirty minutes of the day of legal shooting light. If I can go ahead and waste fifteen minutes to him doing that stuff here, awesome because then he's not doing it over in the neighbors during legal shooting light. Um. And at the same time, all those tops now are down ground level. I don't care if we are talking the richest farm land in Iowa or northeastern or northwestern Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Do you eat a lot of brows, no matter what other food options they have. So we now have another food source here. We have the brows from those tops that are down, the leafy and the leafy growth in the bugs over winter as well as food. We opened up a five yard band along the edge of this food plot, so it's getting sunlight. So now we have cool seasoned grasses and weaves and all sorts of regrowth. We just created a salad bar form surrounding our plot. And at the same time we made it slap plot gets more sunlight by taking out some trees that would shade the outer edge, but the outer edge is still going to get more shade and still going to have more competition from trees and stuff. What works well there culver. So I'll go ahead and slap in a ten yard bank white, a ten yard wide band of culver around the food plot. Because that ten yard white outside band isn't gonna produce brass, because real well isn't gonna produce corn really well isn't gonna go ahead and produce soybeans. Sure is going to produce clover well though. So now in the inside of the plot, if it's a if we're talking to several light plot, I've got all sorts of options. I can go with corn, I can go with soybeans, that can go with brass, because I can go with the combination of the three if I want to. But I'm gonna nine times out of ten I'm either planting the honey hoole, which is a brassica mix, or I'm planning soybeans or corn in the center of that plot. Okay, So now we have three food sources already. We've got the edge feathering and all the salad bar that's creating. We've got the trophy. We've got the clover going out around the food plot in an area where we can't get other most other plantings to really thrive. And in the center of that food plot, we've got either brassica's corn or soybeans. Awesome. Now, once we start getting into fall, if it's brass if it's corn, or if it's corner soybeans I planted, I'll go out there and i'll top seat. When those with the leaves start yellowing a little bit, I will do nothing more than throw a hundred pounds per acre of three part cereal rye one part ben oats. And by ben oats, I mean just fetos, just cheap oats, cheap as oats you can get your hands on, um, about a hundred pounds and acre. I'm going to throw that right on top of the dirt. Just go through with a hand seat. If it's corn, it's about every fifth row, I'll go ahead and walk down and just with a hand seater, hand seating cereal ryan oats out into this stuff. Because now I've got yet another food source option. And at the same time, and what becomes subrassica as brassicas you can go ahead and do spring plantings to get by you you may want to seriously consider it. Um doing spring plantings a brassicas. If you use the right type of brassicas, you can, man, you can have some serious food by fall. Now it's not quite as nutritious, it's not quite as desirable. But when m I can go ahead and I can eat swamp sticks, or I can eat brassicas that are a little bit overmature brascas. Your sound good in that situation. You're down in Iowa, and I can eat overly mature brasticas, or I can eat LFL FU clover um, soybeans or corn. Well, that's not quite as good of an option, okay, um, But so there's a little side bonus side tip. How's that? Uh? Most times I'm planting brassicas in August, when those brassicas get up about over four to six eight inches, I'm gonna go ahead and top seed that same three parts cereal rye one part bent about a hundred pounds pre acre, you know, right on top of the dirt into that braska as well. The whole reason behind that is, now you're I don't care for talking braska. We're talking corn, we're talking soybeans. They can only would you know, you eat them? They're gone, Okay, They're not like a clover that keeps growing back over and over and over. Um, So those more candy crops, they've got a limited lifespan. But and especially if you're only planning an eight or two of it up by you there, that ain't that ain't probably even gonna make it through the rut. The grains the brask Is probably would. But the grains probably won't even make it through the rut. But that's okay because when the grains are gone, I still have oats, and well, the oats are probably froze out by them, but I still have cereal right out here, and that cereal right doesn't freeze out. So now you add and then I'm gonna go ahead, and I'm going if I'm especially if i'm sucking a northern state up by you, even with all that water around there, I'm gonna go ahead and put in a couple of water holes on that food pot. But I'm gonna put definitely a water hole by one of the stands in a safe wind direction. So now I have food and water. And then what the heck, I'm gonna go ahead and slap in half dozen fruit trees and maybe even a couple of dungs in their oaks as well. Add it all up, and why am I going to go anywhere else to eat first? Is now, look at just planting that opening in soybeans. Soybeans great food choice, But this heck up until those leaves the yellow. Once those leaves the yellow even up heaven up by you where there isn't tremendous food options in the area, those leaves yellow, they're gonna be shifting too something else for a while. Now they go ahead and they dry out in harden. Now they're gonna shift back. Um, I don't want them shifting around. I want to offer him everything they could possibly want in one location, because that is going to make them so much more predictable. It's not even funny now when it comes to planting another thing. And I mean, there's there's so much information out there online as far as the basics of how to plant something like clover or brassicas or whatever. There's plenty of step by step instructions of how to do this. Um, we don't need to cover that. But but one specific example I've heard you talk about, I think is is kind of unique and worth mentioning. And it's your poor man's no till way of planning a food plot. So if you don't have all the big equipment, UM, the way you recommend putting in some type of food plot without that big equipment, I thought was worth touching on. UM. If I'm in that situation, can you talk us through that poor man's no till you you have in your area and I'm just actually feeds into this UM. In your area, you have the disadvantage of a shorter growing season, but you have the advantage of higher I mean higher monthly rainfall averages, lower monthly temp average temps than Indiana per se. Okay, UM. How one of the bigger things I learned is man, these northern states food plats very easy. They are, UM, and this method is going to work better in your northern states because the daylight temperatures during the during the hot season, they're getting as hot, and we tend to have more monthly annual precipitation. UM. If you're going to if you're going to be talking Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, UM, there you need you really need to focus this technique on lower areas that get adequate moisture. You try doing what I'm about to describe up on a ridge top, a dry ridge top. It isn't gonna work real well. But really, all it is is using using the weeds to go ahead and blank at the seed between the dirt and the weed. If the seed itself doesn't care if it's if it's covered with dirt or if it's blanketed by a combo of dirt and dead weed. So what I'm doing is I'm going in. I am top seating this area with nine times out of ten. Uh, just a hand seater because there's a reason that I'm not working the dirt in this area. Um. But you know it's a great trick for people that don't have equip big equipment. Um, a ferminator. Ferminator is the best a TV implement I've ever used in my life. But you don't have to have one to put in a food pot. You can't go out there and do nothing. You can put in a food pot with nothing more than a backpack sprayer and a hand well, hecky wouldn't even need a hand seater. You could throw them out by hand if you really wanted to, but I'd suggest getting a hand seater. So you go to this area, you do nothing more than spray it with roundup regeneric equivalent. As a side note, please do not buy this from a chain store. Instead, go to local coop and they won't have a bottle. That's that's small enough for your use. But it's okay. It's it keeps and you're gonna be able to buy enough round up to last year for twenty years for less money than you're gonna be able to buy it down at the big box store. They rip you off on chemicals. A big box store so bad, it's beyond ridiculous. Um, But just go in there spray it. You can top seed right after. Because roundup is actually a cont hacked her beside, meaning that it has to come in contact with actively growing plant tissue be absorbed into that plant for it to work. You can Heck, you could soak. I'm not suggesting anyone does this, but you could soak seeds and round up before you plant them, and they're still going to germinate because it's not going to go It can only affect living plant tissue. Okay. Um, So I'll go ahead, right after I spray, I'll go ahead and throw the brassicas or clover. You need to use small sea varieties for the six stuff to work. Well, Um, I'll throw Brassica's clover right on top of the dirt, and nine times out of ten I'm walking away. Right then, If if this is an area where I'm worried isn't gonna get enough moisture, what I'll do is I'll come back in about a week or two. I won't seed right then, I'll just go ahead and spray. I'll come back in a week or two before all the weeds are fallen down, but yet they're dead. Now, toss the seeds and just fashion some type of a drag now to drag the weeds down to create the blanket there. But that a person. The biggest really, the biggest key in all this is just the realization that we're not we're not cash cropping here. We're not trying to create uh cover photo for Farm Digest Weekly. All we're trying to do is create enough food for deer. Weeds are oftentimes most weeds are deer food, at least during various stages growth stages of their life. Now, what we really have to worry about isn't so much weeds but grasses, grasses. They there are enemies there. What ends up, choking stuff out and getting ugly and all that good stuff, but a few weeds in food plots. Who cares? As I said, that's dear food now. Um, and you take that approach, you can get food in all sorts of I won't my and I'd love to take credit for this idea. My brother actually is the one who first thought of it and started doing it. Um. His his ground has a bunch of has a bunch of swamps. Okay. On what he does is in those swamps they fill up. They're just little pockets. They fill up in spring and over summer they slowly recede till your time you get to fall. All he does around those swamp edges is tossed right on top of the dirt, tossed the cereal ryots mixed I was talking about, and just be be creative. They're all you need to do is getting enough food off there for deer. It doesn't have to look if you're trying to make your food plots look like what like your neighbor's farm fields, there's nothing wrong with that, But you sure you don't have to? Is there is there anything else that you do when it comes to food plots that that helps take things above and beyond. But then maybe it's a little unique beyond just the basics of getting something to grow. Is there anything that you're doing this kind of next level that we haven't touched on On the food plot side, the big thing is looking branches. Uh, go ahead and well, let's say big things. When you're laying this stuff out o that edge feathering. Awesome, you just created a nice little thick band around this around the food plot. Well, there's especially a year or two after that when it really starts growing up. There's no reason that you can't cut a trail through that stuff where you want the deer to enter and eggs. It's not going to mean every single year is entering an egg thing there now. But if it's the buck you want to kill, that's all that really matters. Um putting that going ahead, in putting a scrape tree twenty yards out in front of your stand with licking branches pointing back towards you. You can either plant a tree and protect it until it gets to that stage where licking branches are about nose level the deer, or even go ahead and cut a tree, cut it off, dig a hole two and a half three ft in the ground and plant it now if you're gonna go ahead and go that route, and when now, when it's planted, you've got the branches right about it, nose level to deer pointing back towards the stand again, you know, because that's going to help both draw them and position them for the shop. You don't want to, if you're going to go that route, use hardwoods because soft woods break too easy. Or something I started messing with this past year is just taking a treated fence post, slapping a slap in a chunk of two by ten on top of it, drilling some holes in, attaching some U bolts, and putting putting those outen plots. Now, all I have to do each year is replace the branches that the U boats are holding with new cut branches. You know. But what I'm really getting at here is again creativity. Make it so that that food plot has a ridiculous amount of licking branches sitting right at nose level. You know, I'll go ahead and on one of them. More often than not, I'll go ahead and slap out a magnum scrape dripper with some gold and scrape trying to chum the area just to start with. You don't absolutely have to do that, though, if you don't want to go out and get a magnum scrape dripper and spend money on scent, don't but get those licking branches down at nose levels. So now I'm creating as much of a social hub and this food plot as I am a food source, and I'm laying it out where. Okay, when that buck is working that scrape tree safe wind, taking his attention away from me within shooting distance, I got all day to come to full draw. When that buck is over there drinking in that water source of one head and backstop the water source, so he has to be facing broadside or away from me to get a drink. That happens to be in a safe wind location, just like the scrape tree was within shooting distance of the stand. Put that entrance, that trail through the edge, feathering in a safe wind direction twenty yards from the stand. So if he comes out on that trail, you're killing him. Think about all these little things you can do. Not any one of them changes the world. You had enough of them together, though one it can be a pretty darn big game changer. About the only other random food food plot tip that I can think of that not everybody in the world already knows is fulliar fertilizers. If you're in a jam, so you go ahead, you put in two acres of soybeans up at your place, and oh man, those deer are just hammering the snot out of them. You know right now, they're just they're wasted on them. Um. And at the same time, you know, it's starting to get to the point where where the weed competition is starting to get bad. Which is good because those weeds you can use them to protect your soybeans as they're growing up. But let's getting to the point where they're starting to choke it out. They're wiping out the areas where they can get to and the stuff that can't is choked with weeds. Well, I gotta say, I put off spring as long as I could to use those weeds to protect those soybeans. But man, I got a spray. Now we'll go ahead and add a at a full fulliar fertilizer to that spray. So now what you're doing one is here actually increasing your kill rate by getting those weeds and grasses to absorb even more chemical because they're actively trying to absorb the fertilizer that was sprayed on them along with that chemical. And at the same time, you're giving your planting a growth spurt. You're giving it a nice boost of a nice boost of growth to kind of help you get ahead of the curve a little bit more. That that's that's a nice little trick that. I mean. It's not something that I use every year on every food plot, by any stretch of the imagination, but every year, I mean I've got a whole bunch of food plots and a whole bunch of different properties. Every year, I'm using it a couple of times. It's just a nice little trick there. What about this scenario. What if I went ahead and I planet soybeans or something in the spring, or maybe I planted brassicas in August, like we're talking about earlier, but the rain that was supposed to come doesn't it. I get hit with a drought, or maybe the beans just get hammered by the deer so much they're never able to really get over that hump and they're eaten down to the ground. And I get to sometime in September and I'm looking at a blank slate, like the plots have failed and what are you doing that? Scenarrow. Cereal rye is a great diaper um. It doesn't unlike unlike oats, for example, where you plant them, it hits a certain temperature and they freeze out. Cereal rye doesn't freeze out the same with actually the winter wheat. If it gets too cold, the winter week can freeze out um cereal right, does it just merely goes to dorman and winter wheat. By the way, it's far better than just regular oats um for being able to handle that. But so what you can do is you can get in there now in September and planted and grain in either to wheat a serial rye. I personally, I keep going back to. I keep going back to three parts cereal right. One part been o It's it's the best combo for what I'm trying to accomplish that I can find you. All The oats pop real quick and easy, um cereal right. It takes a little bit more work to germinate them, but the oats pop real quick and easy in the second pretty much the second to come out of the ground. That's when they're most desirable, so they take some initial feeding pressure. As the cereal rice starts to get going. As a serial right gets going, it ends up. That's about the time when the when the oats are starting to die off a little bit and you get a nice little two punch combat of the deal. That can as long as long as that ground isn't frozen, that's cereal right, can germanate versus a versus you try to If you try to plant soybeans that time of year, you couldn't even get them to uh, couldn't even get them to Germany because soil temperatures have to be uh have to be up to a certain point before they can or a serial ride. Now, as long as it's not froze, that stuff can Germany and you can just you can just broadcast that topsy that when there's some rain coming and that will be all you need to do. Probably you can, Yes, it is. I'm not going to kid you though. You're going to get a better stand if you actually work the dirt. But as I said, so much of this is is Okay, this is what I really want? Now, what can I have? I'm going to get as close to what I really want as I can. But you know what, as I said, I'm going to keep. Hopefully I've hammered this enough to get it through. We're not cash cropping here. All we're trying to do is grow some stuff that dear ell ete. So it doesn't have to look perfect, It doesn't have to be a uniform stand, it doesn't have to be any of that stuff. All it has to do is offer them food that they want, nothing more and nothing less. Something is better than nothing, yes exactly, um, speaking of which he don't be more than once over the years, you know you're hunting back in the timber um, and you happen to be hunting a little bit of an open well, you can go ahead, and you can go ahead and throw cereal Ryan Oates right down on the ground of the forest, flour, do a little raking, and if the leaves are off, it's probably gonna come up, and it's There's be creative, is really what I'm trying to hammer in all this stuff. Don't just because nobody has said you can do something, that doesn't mean he can't. And just because everybody says you can love God, don't listen to him if it's not working for you. Stop and that that includes me. No matter how many people, including myself, are telling people to do something, if it's not working for you, for the love of God, stop and no matter how many people are telling you that this is a huge mistake, don't do that that will never work. If it's working for you, keep doing it. Because each and every one of us have different experiences, different ways of doing things, different environments were working in, and everything doesn't work the same for everybody. It doesn't all somebody like me is doing. Really, Ultimately, all I'm doing is sharing one of my successes and failures. But the people that, in large parts, the people that are listening, enabled me to have Now that, I'm not pretending that everything I do is the smartest way of doing it or the best, and I'm sure not pretending that everything I do is going to work equally well for everyone else out there. Each of us has to figure out what works for us and run with it and ignore all the noise that goes along with it, and be creative. Don't don't be free. I learned. I can tell you I learned so much more from when I fall on my face than I ever do from when I succeed no, failure isn't a failure unless you don't learn anything from it. Yeah, I think that's that's one of the most important things that always keep top of mind when it comes to deer hunting, because there's gonna be lots of quote unquote failures. But to your point, take something from it, grow from it, and you're being a better You're being a better position afterwards. Speaking of um to to kind of a change course is a bit speaking of popular things that people recommend a lot. One of those really really common catch phrases out there is sanctuary. You know, people, authors, experts recommend having a sanctuary on your property. Can you give us your take on saying stuaries and if which I think you do, think there's some value to them. What's the requirements of our sanctuary? How do you make one or make one better? Um, we'd love to hear about your thoughts on that, and really, really if you peel the onion I've been talking about sanctuary for a large part of this entire conversation. UM, to me, sanctuary, all that means is this is an area that I tend not to go. UM. It doesn't mean that I'm never going to go there. As a matter of fact, it is a the definition using air quotes here that nobody can see um of sanctuary. That that I've come to gather most are talking about is all right, this area here, you just plane, do not go into it for anything other than to retrieve a deer. I'm sorry, I think that's ridiculous. How do you if okay, you're sanctuary, what you're really In my mind, it always it always comes back to what am I trying to accomplish. I'm trying to get dear to spend a disproportionate amount of time on my ground. How do I do that? I do that by giving them the best food, the best water, the best um comfort, the best breeding opportunities, and the best feeling of safety they can get in the entire area. Okay, so if I want them to feel safe, I stay out, But geez, I can have that area achieve more than just that. Hey, that that that's good. I'm glad I was able to put pluck that low hanging fruit of making them feel safe by not going in there. That's easy. But let's give them some comfort, Let's give them some betting, Let's give them that. How do you do that? You get in there and you do some work. I I don't think that anybody is doing themselves any favors by never stepping foot into this hundred acre area of their h property. Please go in there and scout, improve it. Just don't spend a ridiculous amount of time in there, now, try to What I do is every spring I go in there, I shed hunt and scout. And while I'm sheding, hunting and scouting these sanctuaries, I'm also looking, Okay, how are they used? How are they specifically utilizing this? Can I set up on the outside of it to take advantage of that? Um? Their main entrance and exit rope? Is there anything I need to do to improve this from a comfort and safety standpoint? Maybe? Maybe if I go ahead and plant a bunch of uh ten acres in Norway spruce in here. Now, we'll go ahead and space some fifteen feet apart between trees and between rose, and will stagger the rose so they get even more sunlight. Man ten years, that's awesome. Now I got some thermal cover back in here too. Um And oh jeez, there happens to be absolute killer stand side in here. Wow. I can't get I can't get here safe. I can't. But oh jeezus, is good. You know what, I'm setting up the stand. I'm gonna go ahead, and I'm gonna set it up. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna hope, like a son of a gun that I never have to hunt it. But you know what, if it gets into Bow mid November and that buck that I'm getting trail camera picture of after trail camera picture of all in the middle of the night, in the dark, if I believe that he's actually bedding back in that sanctuary, okay, it happens to be a great dear weather movement day happens to be a great day for dear movement. As far as the phase of season goals, you're talking during the rot here. You know what, I'm gonna go in extra early. I'm gonna sit in that sanctuary all darn day or until I killed that thing. The catches is that at max. I'm gonna do that to three times a year. Okay. So what I'm trying to do is I'm trying going to first establish what I'm actually talking about. By sanctuary, it doesn't mean that I never go in here. It doesn't mean that I never hunted. It means that I try my best not to, and I'm only going in there when it serves a purpose, you know, to do the scouting and work in spring and then come fall because I just can't get it done from the outside, and I really want to take this buck, so I'm going to take one or two swings at. I treat the majority of just about every property as my definition of sanctuary. Um I would say that of the deer cover on the properties I have set up over the years, I don't think I've ever suggested anybody hunt more than their deer cover. Now what I'm trying, And that's the beautiful, beautiful part about habitat improvement is we can manufacture the high odds low impact gear stands simply by getting in there with a chainsaw and or dozer. Now you do that, and now why do I Why do I want to hunt deeper in there? I got the fame advantage by going ten twenty fifty yards into the woods. There's no there's no incentive to go in there deeper still because the best spots I got I made around the around lower impact areas. Okay, But yet if I still can't get it done. I'm getting pictures of him. He's coming from the sanctuary each night or a couple of times a week, our two hours after dark. That's telling me that he actually is betting in that sanctuary. He's living there. But man, he's not coming out, and he's not coming out. He's not coming out, he's not. Eventually, i'm gonna say forget it. I'm going in there after him if I can't get it done from the outside. The way I define sanctuary simply put the areas that I cannot get too safely on that ground, the deer cover areas. If I can't get there, if I can't consistently get in and out of that area without disturbing deer, I'm going to make it a sanctuary because by because by hunting that area, it's actually working against my goal of getting deer to spend a disproportionate amount of time on this ground. Now, if you're talking a situation more along lines of years where you're going ahead and creating a you're not you're better suited for creating a buck trap than you are forgetting bucks to live on this ground. In that's its scenario, I'm still going to have sanctuaries. I may have sanctuaries and the dolls stay there because the dolls are my baked um. But in that case I can actually hunt very much, a very higher percent of my dirt without negatively impacting me because I don't have Mr Bigley living there. All I've got to do is make sure that I keep those one or two family groups of dose happy. So in that case, I will actually design my sanctuary more far more around them than anything else. But as you can see from all this, again there's no clear cut answer. It's it's remaining rigidly flexible and just using that one part art, one part science what am I trying to achieve, and then using the power that we have that dear don't analytical fount this is my goal. I'm now going to rely on my own, my own knowledge and creativity to figure out how I can best achieve this. Because if you pick up a book, or you watch a television show or a web video or whatever that is telling you giving you specifics on this is what you need to do to manage your ground. Don't pay a lack of attention to this person either doesn't know what they're talking about. And they're trying to sell you something, because every single situation is different, and if you try to lock yourself into that cookie cutter approach, it might. You may improve things on your property, but I promise you you're not going to come anywhere close to improving them as much as you potentially could. We haven't. We haven't talked very much about betting area improvement, probably because our original example. You know, I already had lots of a lot of great cover on on our small property here. But if you have a sanctuary area, if you have some percentage of your property that's hard to hunt. You know that there's dear betted in there um, but you want to either banned the amount of quality betting or you just want to improve whatever is in there um other than the things we've talked about already, Is there anything important on the betting area side of things that you want to touch on or that you uniquely recommend um? And really, more than anything, I think the most important thing I can possibly say is, right now, there's this Oh heck, it's been around for fifteen years, but lately it's become with key person or too real popular to talk about dough factories Oh my goodness, if you put out any food over summer, what you're gonna do is you're going to create a dough factory, and those doughs are going to drive all the bucks away. And you just plane cannot go ahead and improve your ground for anything but deer season without creating this dreaded dope factory that drives all these dear let's pure ignorant ds. I'm telling you property I've I've managed somewhere over I've honestly can't give you an honest answer, but somewhere over thirty different properties from multi year spans um almost almost without exception. There was one, but there was an that ball deal, and uh but almost without with the exception of one property, I can think of, every single one of those properties ended up holding more dear than the surrounding ground. They all had more doughs living on them three hundred and sixty five days a year per acre than the surrounding properties. And you know what else, they'll add more mature bucks living on them per square acre the entire year long. It's not that there's nothing to this bologny about how and they offered ridiculous amount ofs of nutrition there is nothing legitimate about this idea. It if you offer offer nutrition outside of hunting season that you cannot hold mature box. What it all comes down to is property layout. If you improve every inch of your ground, you are not doing yourself any favors. You want dead zones in your property if you don't. Right off the bat, if you don't have dead zones in your property, how are you going to access it? Because every that means that you've improved every inch. That means there's deer every inch of your ground at times. Now, I don't want that. I want areas that the deer don't want to go, because That's how I'm getting in and out. Okay, um, next, by improving every inch of your ground, what you're doing is you're spreading the dose out and goes back to goes back to the bedding. And That's where I'm getting into all this stuff. Um. Bucks are way more selective when it comes well. Bucks place a much much, much much higher premium on personal safety than family groups do. Therefore, where where when are they most vulnerable? They're most vulnerable when they're betting. So Mr Big has the extremely high tendency of putting so much more importance on betting safety than the family groups do family groups in general. You know what, just just give me a place that I can lay down that I feel somewhat safe, that's close to food, because I'm lazy. So would I typically do is I try to stack the dough bedding around the food, and I tried to put that food away from known buck betting areas. I want to leave those buckbedding areas alone because what is true is from what I've seen, it does seem like Mr Big doesn't really care for a bunch of women and kids running through his bedroom all the time. He wants a mancave. He wants an area that he can pretty much just be left the heck alone and feel safe. At the same time, I suspect, I can't swear this, but I suspect that the reason that he doesn't want the does and fawns around is because they're making disturbances. And now I gotta keep word. What's that twig snapping there? Oh Jesus, just a kid again. God damn, I'm trying to sleep. Um, So go ahead and stack the doughs around the food. You can do that by plant heck, you can do it. By planting trees that UM Norway spruce example, I just gave earlier for something else UM to give that security cover and thermal cover. You can do it with by hinge cutting quarter acre or half acre area acre area UM that's relatively flat where the deer would feel otherwise comfortable bedding UM. In other words, you're not walking by it, you know, within within fifty yards every other day, kicking them out uh stack. You can do it with warm season native grasses as well. There's company out of Michigan's who I get it from Mscanthus. It's a oriental it's a perennial sterile oriental grass. You go ahead and you plant switch grass or big blue or indian up by you, and guess what's going to happen the first or second first or second storm that goes through snow storm that's sofs gonna be lay flat. But you go ahead and use that mascanthus and that although that's pushing, that's actually pushing the growth. Its oone pushing it. But you might be able to get away with it yet. UM. You plant Muscantus there, that stuff is gonna stand up far better. Works great for screening as well, um, but but between native grasses or a muscantus, or planting trees or creating hinge cut bedding areas, I'm gonna go ahead and try to stack the doughs around the food. That's where they want to be anyway. You know, they want to be as close to their food source as they can be while still feeling safe. There's all sorts of talk about creating buck beds. You can go on YouTube right now and see some exceptionally good videos on creating buck beds, and that's good and great and sexy as hell. But I can tell you I virtually that I virtually never make them for management stamp. I'll make twenty thirty a year, but really, honestly, that's for my own sake, trying to learn what am I missing here? Can I get this work? Because my experience has been I have unbelievable look making a many little igloo with an entrance and an exit at locations that bucks want to bed. But man, I make them other places where they don't want to bet and I maybe get five percent success, and I'm probably exaggerating at that. I think. I think the idea of creating buck beds is the most over aspect of all of management. As I said, they work awesome when I make them in spots bucks already want to bed. But guess what, they already want to bed there, and they're already bed there. So what did I just accomplish? I'm maybe they bet they're a little bit more afterwards. But I'll tell you what, I've yet to have yet to get to a property where that becomes a top priority because there's so many other things that are so much more important. Now where this will work, and when I do go ahead and suggest this from a management standpoint, is one of those areas where the bucks would otherwise like to bed, there's something wrong with them. For example, during summer, dear love betting on overgrown fence lines. You know, bucks to bachelor groups frankly because they're out of the woods and they don't have to deal with as many bugs, and well the foods right there, all that good stuff. If that you go ahead and create some pockets that deer can crawl into in that overgrown fence line, Now all of a sudden, they'll they'll use it, whereas if it was so thick they couldn't snuggle in there, as as they weren't before you take that point that bucks have been bedding on for years and years and years, you have a tornado, go through, dump a whole bunch of big oaks on that point to the point to the extent that they can't bed there anymore. Now going in there and cleaning that up so they can still bed in there. Oh heck, yes, that's extremely beneficial. But the dirty, the dirty little secret, at least for me, is I don't make buck I hardly make buck beds for management at all. I focus on dolls. And the reason I'm focusing on dolls is to keep them away from those existing buck bedding areas. I do that, and that works pretty darn well. That makes sense. Now, speaking of our mature bucks, and one of the goals that many people might have is how to get more mature bucks to use your property. Um, I've I've I've read about something you call a checkerboard approach to how you take all these habitat things we've been talking about, and then you use a checkerboard approach to try to make it a little bit more feasible for multiple mature bucks to set up shop. Can you describe that? Sure? Can? Um? And what it is is again, it all goes back to, really, if you think about it, everything we're talking about goes back to one of the first things I said, and that's about goals. If your goal is too for example, you just want someplace for your grandkids to be able to come out and have fun and do some hunt, you know you're probably better off setting up that forty. So you have one may, you have one grandson who wants to do the set up one main food source, because now you're concentrating as many deer on that one main food sources you can. Odds are pretty darn good that every single time that old fellow goes out, he's gonna see deer and he's gonna come back shaken, and he's gonna come back all starts to happy. As you divide up these food sources and bedding areas and such, you're spreading der outmore. You're deluding the concentration effect, making it making it harder to hunt. So you want to you want to figure out where your goal falls on the sliding scale. If you're looking at trying to hold the maximum number of mature bucks on that ground, having one food source, one primary food source, one primary betting source, one primary water source is not your best choice because during most of the fall, at this point, you got the ruck going on. Now the bachelor groups have broken up and you're looking at competition instead of a group of happy, go lucky idiots like they were all summer long. When that domin and I probably should back up just one second here and talk about dominance just for flit second. And that is because everybody thinks of the biggest buck in the woods, is your dominant buck. Not necessarily, it's a matter of fact, very often not especially when you're looking at rack. It takes a lot of energy to produce on top of the head. Generally speaking, those bucks that don't have a ridiculous amount of bone on top of their head, they're putting that energy everything else being equal, they're putting that energy into their bodies instead. Body and attitude is what dominance is. Where dominance comes from, not rack size. Rack size has nothing to do with it at all. It has to do with so much to do with attitude. And then next, can you back it up and your your rack? You're probably I rack is nothing more than nothing more than essentially a blunt instrument that you're pushing against um, so very often you're more your most dominant bucks are not your biggest rack box. Very very often. UM, Now you have that one food source on that property, and here you got the dominant buck and this gorgeous buck that subordinate that you just happens to have an extra twenty inches on his head. When they end up getting in a fight at that food source and the dominant one chases them off, I really want to have a secondary food source on my ground where that bucking shift too. Yes, having the two food sword, taking your forty and dividing it up, looking at it as two twenties instead of one forty, and going ahead and offering the bedding, the water, the food over here and one of them and the bedding and water and food over here on another one. That does go ahead and make it more challenging for hunting because now you have two options instead of one. But it gives you the potential of holding having more mature bucks set up their dairylight core areas on your ground than when you have just one. Because on any single property anywhere out there in the deer country, there is one buck at a time on that ground that's dominant, and if there's two of them that think they are, those two are going to more than not fight it out until one of them leaves or dies. Now So, rather than offering everything in one location, splitting up a property and offering everything in multiple locations helps reduce social stress. And if we are going to talk about deer management, which is real hard to do on a private land scale. Um, when when I talk deer management, I'm not talking anywhere near the management that most people are assuming, because you know what, you got forty acres of ground. There's only so darn much you can do. But if you're talking management, a huge part of that is social stress, as a matter of fact, is probably the most ignored topic in in deer management and most horribly misunderstood. Social stress is think back to when we were back in high school, grade school, middle school. Sometime virtually every one of us got ticked on at one point in their life. How bad did you want to walk down those halls? Now you I can't speak for anybody else, but I had a when I was a kid. Um, yeah, I shouldn't go into because it makes me sound really the My brother got in a my younger brother got in a fight with the kid who was in special education, who was two years older than me and three years older than him. I made the mistake of trying to defend my brother. And I'll tell you what, You've got an entire class of kids, they're older than you, that want to beat up I was not real comfortable going to school during that. It's the same type of stuff, for dear, look at all the studies out there on health impacts of stress and how they in humans, and how it leads to so many such an elevated risk of heart attack and stroke and all this stuff. I I firmly believe the exact same thing goes on in the dear world. Firmly believe it. That stress. You can see it play out so often when you kill that dominant buck on the ground, that subordinate buck that was making very good jumps from year to year. That next year, look out, buddy, because nine times and he puts inches on his head that he's never put on before now, all due to stress. You go ahead, you divide these grounds up. You reduce the stress of the family groups, you reduce the stress of the box, and generally speaking, you have happier, healthier dear as a resolved and by dividing it up, you help minimize that stress while making it so you can potentially hold more dear. That makes all the sense in the world. And Steve, you never you never failed to or you never what's the way how do you phrase this? You never disappoint is what I'm trying to say. I knew that we would, but I knew we would get a ton of interesting ideas and value from you. And the only thing I regret is that we didn't get to cover than many other things I was hoping to talk about. But but that's because we covered some any other great things. And I don't want to keep you any longer. We've been talking up. That's your best quality, Steve, is that you've got lots to share, UM, So I don't want to keep you any longer. I've kept it here for for quite a while already, but I appreciate it so much, Steve. And if people want to to learn more about what you have to say, and they want to either check out your books or your web shows or anything else out there, can you point us in what direction they can go to find all the other things that you're working on. UM, well, I've got two different web shows that I'm doing for Deer and Deer Hunting their web shows exclusively. One is Grown Big and the others Hunt them Big. Um. They're oh five to eight minute shows that just covered one, just drilled down on one tip. They are aired every Wednesday on Deer and Deer Huntings Facebook page. I also air them as well on and then Uh. Speaking of shows, uh, co host Deer and Deer Hunting TV. I'm pretty sure they're on Pursuit again this year. Um and uh otherwise I have I'm going to go ahead in this year. At some point I'm going to create my own website, which no doubt will be Steve Bartellow Outdoors and have all this stuff on there. But for now, um another Facebook page Steve bart Hello Outdoors. I post post five tip of day during the work week free, well yeah free. Actually, all my companies that I pro staff for, thank god for them. Um, they they're sponsoring them, but it's I love the company as I work with. None of them pressure me to say anything about any of their stuff. The Facebook junk really is me just sharing stuff and them being happy to be associated with it. Uh. So for now, i guess that's that's that's about it. Um Books. I no longer sell any of any of the books myself. Ah, you can always jump on Shop Deer Hunting. Deer and Deer Hunting's website sells two of them, including the management book, and then uh um you can get virtually anything off I Amazon by just doing a search on my name there if you're interested. But that said that Facebook page, I'm trying to share all this stuff for nothing. It's your audience, and I imagine at the state you're at your career, you'll be able to understand this and appreciate this. I really like my life, I really really do, and it is at least due to your audience. Now, they're the ones who allowed me to do this stuff, and I'm to the point where I'm dug in as deep as a kick and a coon hound and they ain't getting me out anymore. And that's because of them. So what I'm trying to do as much as I can is use this phase in my career to say thanks and just dump the dump whatever I think I may have learned from these audiences empowering me to do this stuff for free, and now I know it sounds kind of silly and cheesy, but honestly, it's the absolute least they can do. This idiot from northern Wisconsin who who his homeroom teacher had twenty bet with my freshman wrestling coach that wouldn't even graduate high school. I'm living my dream because of everybody who's listening to this stuff, and that's never lost on me and talk that's that is pretty awesome. I can definitely relate. There's a lot to be thankful for, no doubt about that. And I think it's great that you, you know, continue to give back to to that community, and I know a lot of people have benefited from it, and I can I can attest to that. The Facebook tips of the day and stuff that you're sharing that is really good stuff, really in depth. You're putting some some really good original content out there on your Facebook page. So everyone listening, check out the books, check out the web shows, and like Steve said, definitely follow him on his Facebook page where it seems like there's going to be more and more good stuff. So Steve, thank you so much taking the time to do this for a third time. It's as usual, was great, my pleasure. My friend and that is the end of this podcast, so we'll make this short and sweet. Please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or whatever podcast app you use if you're not already doing that. And Google actually just released a brand new podcast app that's supposed to be pretty good, so if you use an Android phone, that would be a great way to listen to this podcast in the future, so check that out. Otherwise, hit us up on Instagram and Facebook and YouTube. Thank you so much for your time, thanks for being a supporter, and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.