00:00:00
Speaker 1: What is going on this Jake Hoefer and welcome to another episode of Back forty. This week we have the same crew. We have Aaron Warburn, Jeff Sturgis, Adam Keith, and Bill Winky providing their insight and information based off of one question, one theme. And this is something I feel that as hunters, we often like to take in all this information. And when you take in a lot of information and haven’t applied it year after a year, like some of these guys, it’s easy to over complicate things. And so I wanted to reverse engineer that a little bit and get to what are some things that we’re all likely overthinking and how it might be impacting a variety of different decisions. So simple question this week, what’s one thing every hunter is simply making way too complicated. We’re going to kick things off with Aaron from the hunting public. Here we go, all right, Aaron, there’s a lot of hunting information out there, there’s a lot of different hunting styles. There’s just so many different things, and I feel that some people can just simply get a little in the mix of trying too many different things. Whether that’s good or bad. But to boil it down what’s one thing every hunter is just simply making way too complicated. It could be anything. It could be food plots, it could be how aggressive to hunt, how not aggressive to hunt, whatever the case may be. What is one thing you think it’s just simply getting over complicated. It’s not that hard.
00:01:25
Speaker 2: Trail cameras, Okay, the trail cameras and reading the information off of them. I think I think people spend this is just I guess this because this is a hot take here, Jake like it, But I think I think the average hunter spends way too much time worrying about them. They they can help you in certain situations, but more often than not, they’re they’re just giving you a tiny snapshot as to what is going on. Even a cell camera that’s you know, place deep in a betting area or whatever, it’s still you can only put the thing over so much, you know, and there’s so many other things that are happening in that area.
00:02:11
Speaker 3: I think people just put if they took.
00:02:14
Speaker 2: The amount of time that it takes to get the cameras, to put batteries in them, to set them up, and they converted that time into just scouting and trying to understand how deer use their property, and then how bucks use their property, and then how mature bucks use their property, and start thinking about all those things and really cataloging that information over time. I think that’s going to make you way more successful than worrying about just trying to get a picture of a big buck and going and hunting it.
00:02:45
Speaker 3: So that’s my I do that.
00:02:48
Speaker 2: I’ve had that issue before personally, especially with the cell cameras, where I was unsuccessful because I was being too reliant on the cameras.
00:02:58
Speaker 1: So how do you for someone that everyone everyone is guilty of that at some point, every every single person’s way guilty of this. What is the how do you overcome this or how do you give yourself permission to trust your instinct more so than trust your show cameras.
00:03:14
Speaker 2: For me, personally, it was easy because I was just I’ve I’ve tried it two different seasons where I just kind of went whole hog into the cell camera thing and I had a whole pile of them, and I got pictures of the giant deer and I was trying to hunt those specific deer based on the camera pictures. I was unsuccessful both those years. I messed up like way.
00:03:35
Speaker 3: More than usual.
00:03:36
Speaker 2: And then I have went completely to the opposite side of the spectrum where I haven’t used them at all, and I’ve been way more successful just just basing my decisions off of those instincts you mentioned and what mostly which is which comes from woodsmanship. So the only time when I’ve when I’ve really felt like I learned a lot from cameras is when it was I was using it to aid in my woodsmanship. So when I set them up in a particular area, not to get pictures solely of just a big buck that I wanted to hunt, but when I put them in an area so that I could use it to learn how the deer use.
00:04:16
Speaker 3: That particular spot.
00:04:18
Speaker 2: All year, Maybe I run a camera over a crossing, a creek crossing for six months, and for two weeks out of that six months, that creek crossing was really hot with action. Then I’m backtracking in there and I’m trying to understand why those deer were there at that time, how I could have hunted it during that time, and how to capitalize on it in the future. That’s been the best way I’ve found to use them. I’m not saying that’s how anybody’s got to use them. There’s a bunch of different ways to use them. I just think that it’s very easy to get sucked into the trap of just being so reliant on those things, especially with cell cameras now, where you’re just getting notification all the time. The more of them you have out there, the more notifications you’re getting, and the more uh, the more that’s taking time uh your brain. You’re thinking time away from what you need to be thinking about, in my opinion, which is, you know, what are the upcoming wins? What scouting information do I not have that I need to get in order to be successful, How to correctly set up in a spot to get a good high odds chance at a target animal. All those things are just those are kind of like the fundamentals of you know, bow hunting white tails, if you will, And the better that you get at those very very simple fundamentals, the more opportunities you get over time. It’s like a compounding effect. Whereas if you if your brain gets pulled in these little different corners and directions chasing pictures, then that.
00:05:54
Speaker 3: Takes you away from that.
00:05:56
Speaker 2: That’s what That’s what my experience has been at least I don’t know if that answered.
00:05:59
Speaker 1: Your question, but no, I think people can inherently overcomplicate trail cameras as oh i’ve had pictures. I haven’t had pictures. Oh it’s dead out there and you know, or I’m sure there’s been times where you’ve hunted and you know, you check your phone and you check your phone and ultimately you have no pictures of deer, but you saw seven different bucks cruising around and you just I mean, I think that is an easy way to overcomplicate it and really self hinder yourself. I could see someone listening now and saying, well, yeah, that sounds great, but what about when you’re hunting a specific deer. What do you say to that guy? Like I need to know he’s a live or I need to know he’s in the area. What do you say to him?
00:06:33
Speaker 2: Or well, if you’re having great success doing it, then don’t listen to me. That’s all I got. I mean, it’s kind of like the Broadhead debate. You know, It’s like people swear by a rage or they swear by a magnus or whatever it is they use. Like, dude, whatever you’re using works, then you don’t have to listen to what I’m saying. But if you’re chasing a specific deer and you’re having difficulty closing the deal on them just using cameras, my most generally my solution is going to be, well, do you know how deer use your property? Do you know why there are certain trails where they are? Do you know how mature bucks cross dough trails at the beginning of the rut?
00:07:14
Speaker 3: You know?
00:07:14
Speaker 2: Do you know why that scrape is in that creek crossing or whatever? Do you I mean, it just kind of goes back to that woodsmanship stuff. If you don’t have like good spots that you have confidence in, good spots that you can get in and out of that you understand how the wind behaves, and you understand how deer moved through those.
00:07:35
Speaker 3: If you don’t have all.
00:07:36
Speaker 2: Those things, then just getting pictures of a buck and hunting a specific deer doesn’t doesn’t help you in some ways.
00:07:44
Speaker 3: I mean, unless that specific.
00:07:45
Speaker 2: Deer is so unique that he never does anything like the rest of the deer, which is possible. I mean, if once they get to be a certain size and age, you know, they they obviously have personalities and they start the start acting a little bit different. But I have noticed that, you know, regardless of where we go, mature bucks tend to hang out in similar spots. You know, it may not be just like the rest of the deer, but mature bucks do mature buck things in most of these areas that we’re in.
00:08:21
Speaker 1: Describe a spot where they like to hang out in Iowa, Illinois, northern Missouri, something like that.
00:08:29
Speaker 2: Basically across the board, they’d like to spend their daylight hours in something that has got high stem count. So you know, if you had Adam On not long ago, I’m sure he was talking about betting areas and creating habitat and stuff like that, that’s where mature bucks want to spend their time. Like if you just went in and you did TSI on an acre and a half of your property in a year one to three years time, mature buck’s going to be spending time in that area, very likely because the habitat has changed.
00:08:59
Speaker 3: It’s not white open woods.
00:09:01
Speaker 2: You know, they like I mean, Bronson and some of those MSU guys have got quite a bit of data on this and we see the same exact thing. You know, we often talk about mature buck betting areas, but it’s the same thing. People overcomplicate the betting area thing. It’s like mature bucks want to be in an area where they feel safe and secure. That’s the number one thing. So high stem count you know, they love to travel in corridors. So if you’re talking about like you you just mentioned some states kind of farmland type ecosystems, If you’re talking about that, they love to travel in corridors where they have security and escape on both sides. So I’m thinking in my mind, like northern Missouri. Say there’s a cornfield and a draw running down through the middle of it with a creek with some water in a pond or something. That draw is eighty yards wide, and it’s got some thick brush in it and multi floor rows and some hedge trees whatnot. But there’s corn planted corn all the way around it. Well, where that corn meets that edge is a corridor. They will travel up and down the edge of those corn strips where they can either escape into the corn or escape into the woods. Now, if it’s it’s totally different. If that’s a wheat field or soybeans you know that are knee high, he doesn’t have the same amount of security. Then although that may be the only option that he has to travel, so he may use it. But I like areas like that. When you find a good corridor like that, it’s it’s almost an instinctual thing. It’s like you don’t often see like a beaten trail or anything. But you might see dotted rubs, you might see the occasional big track or two. It might be ten yards wide, it might be fifty yards wide. But it’s often makes sense why a buck would use that to travel. They do not want to be seen when they’re going from A to B. So like I got thirteen eggers here I live on. If a mature buck is going to come through our property during daylight, there is two or three trails at the back of the place here that are back in the timber that that buck can take. And it’s not overly thick, but it’s the thickest place that they have, you know, to transition through this property. We see those and young bucks and stuff in the backyard here all the time. But if we’re going to see a mature buck, he’s going to be on the back ridge. There’s two or three trails that run up through there, and he’s never seen by anybody back there. He can walk up that ridge, he can look out over our yard, he can see our house from that ridge, but we cannot see him. That’s a type of an area that they really like to be in.
00:11:46
Speaker 1: I like it so, so don’t rely on your cameras. And then also.
00:11:51
Speaker 3: Don’t solely rely on your cameras.
00:11:53
Speaker 1: You can use them, but don’t everyone. I think anyone that’s ran any amount of cameras has falling into this trap where they’re just you just spend a season chasing your tail and it’s frustrating when you get to the end of the season.
00:12:03
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah.
00:12:04
Speaker 2: If you get pictures of one that’s there on a scrape, you know you should have been there that day. And if you were worried about getting a picture of him first, well then you’re you’re late. Like you need to be hunting it before the camera takes a picture of so you can shoot him when he walks in front of it.
00:12:20
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely so. I’m sure everyone can track you down, but if you want to feel free to let people know where to go. Paul.
00:12:27
Speaker 2: Thanks to Hunting Public YouTube, most of the social media’s you can check us out there.
00:12:33
Speaker 1: All right, there, you guys have it. We are going to roll right into the next guest, Bill Winkie, and get his insight. No nonsense, what are we over complicating? So here is Bill Winkie’s approach and thought to this question. All right, Bill, we’re back on back forty and I feel in the world of white tail media content, and maybe this has been going on for a long time, but I feel like ultimately hunters are over complicating, maybe a little bit too much. And so I want to get your opinion on what’s one thing every hunter is simply making too complicated. And the root of this question is more of what are the fundamentals and like what what do you need to focus on? And what can you potentially forget? But I’ll let you, you know, give your take here.
00:13:20
Speaker 4: Well, there’s two things I’m gonna throw out. You said one thing, but people make bows too complicated, you know, especially if you’re a white tail hunter. I mean, gosh, you’re gonna make a thirty yard shot. I think I could duct tape a twig onto my riser and hold the arrow with my two fingers, you know, in front of the grip and kill that deer. So nothing against all the cool stuff that we carry into the woods. But don’t get so concerned with all the minutia of of you know, the products that you’re carrying, that you forget that this is only a twenty five thirty yard sport forty if you’re really good. But deer doesn’t stand still long enough for it to be much longer than a forty yard sport. I mean, you might be able to hit a dime at seventy yards if the dime is still there, but what if the dime moves three feet while the arrows in the air. So anyway, we way over complicate the stuff that we carry. But the I know what you really want to know is strategy wise. I think we over complicate the rut. I think we try to figure out what the buck is going to do next when he doesn’t know himself. So what we need to hunt are trends, and you know, what are the most likely things like playing the odds more. And you don’t have to know where he beds. You don’t have to know where he feeds. All you have to know is that there’s a group of does over here, and there’s a group of does over here, and there’s a funnel in between those two spots, and when the rut comes, that buck is going to be looking for doze. You don’t need to know anything else about him. You just sit in that funnel until he walks through, and if you want to push your luck a little bit, you can hunt right up close to those does because you know he’s going to be there. He’s going to be looking for the dose. He’s not going to be doing whatever he did in October when the rut comes. So I think we try too hard to pattern the bucks that were hunting again when they don’t know themselves what they’re going to do next. You don’t need a trail camera during the rut. You only need to know what’s part of your hunting area. There’s a buck that you’d like to shoot that’s living in because that camera you might tell you where he was this morning, but he’s not going to be there this afternoon. I don’t even want to know that stuff. It just makes the whole process too complicated. I just need to know where I can kill that deer, like where are the spots where I can kill him? And I need to know that I’m within his likely range in a spot that makes sense. Don’t need to know anything more about that deer. Then it’s just a matter of putting in the time. So it’s it really is a lot simpler, you know, because I’ve written so many articles about the rut over the years. It’s like, oh, you know this scrape or that scrape, and it’s like none of that stuff matters, you know, it doesn’t matter how big a certain rub is or any of that stuff. It’s just finding spots where the deer doesn’t know that he’s being hunted and putting in your time in areas that makes sense.
00:16:31
Speaker 1: Man, That’s not I mean, that’s that’s not as fun though, when you when you have this whiteboard of trail camera photos and this sparamecter pressure, this mood face, all these different things that you’re saying, just throw it away.
00:16:43
Speaker 4: But that but that’ll work during other parts of the season. It just doesn’t work during the rut.
00:16:49
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:16:49
Speaker 4: You know, you can pretend and you can say that you figured it out and that’s okay. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just you probably didn’t. You know, it’s just there. They don’t know. You know, if if they knew what they’re going to do next, then we could say, okay, I can figure this out. But when they don’t know themselves, how do we pretend like we can figure it out? All we can go by is you know, general trends and you know typical behavior.
00:17:14
Speaker 1: So in a nushell, when it comes to the rut, figure out where he can hunt a grade funnel. Park yourself there, don’t get busted by deer and hope for the best.
00:17:24
Speaker 4: Put your time in it. And as long as you’re you’re not getting picked off, they’re not detecting you. And you’re in an area that makes sense, like near does or between two dough concentration areas, you’re you’re probably gonna have as good a chance as any any spot. I mean that that buck, he’s probably going to be around there somewhere, you know. So yeah, he might be with the dough one day and you’re like, oh dang, you know, but then the next day you might catch in between does or you know, like I said, if you want to push it a little bit and you know where the dough’s bed, you can get right on the downwind fringe of those dough betting areas and then hope to catch you know, maybe a little bit more aggressive you know, searching action from the bucks versus just that that you know, large scale, you know, traveling through funnels. But the bucks are going to be where the doughs are, and sometimes it’s hard to find the dose, to be honest with you, during the rut because they don’t like being her assed, so they start finding places to hide. So I remember it was a It was a real eye opener for me because Mark Jury was saying and some I don’t know if it was an article or a TV show or something that. You know, sometimes the doughs disappear, and when that happens, it makes buck hunting a lot harder because if you can’t find the dose, you know, how are you going to find the bucks?
00:18:43
Speaker 1: Have you found yourself over complicating something like over complicating the rut or over complicating some sort of strategy for a buck? And now now you look back in hindsight, like what was I thinking? Was I over complicating that? Or was I trying to connect us that really didn’t connect? Or do you have such a straightforward approach where it’s just like fight for another day and try again.
00:19:04
Speaker 4: I think, you know, I have a very analytical mind. You know, my background is kind of that way too, And so so I’m always looking at the odds. I was trying to play the odds, and so I get away from the you know, the trying to pattern a book. So I haven’t really tried that in a long time because early on it got really frustrated because it didn’t work, you know, during the rut. Yeah, again, I think the last week of October is a different story. I think you can pattern box and you can kill them that last week of October, but you get into November throughout most of the whitetails range and you just kind of throw all that stuff out the window. So, you know, I would say the only thing I’ve probably overcomplicated sometimes maybe I’ve given the deer too much credit. You know, I don’t hunt them, maybe quite aggressively enough. But again, you know, my situation is different. You know, I’m not hunting public land. You know, I can, like you said, I can live to fight another day. So if I’m an air, I would err on the side of being too careful, too conservative, and I know that I’ve done that a few times, you know, where if I’d have gone after the buck, you know, a little bit harder, you know, might have had a better chance at him. But hindsight’s I was twenty twenty. You go after him and then you bump him, and then it’s like, well, now he’s not going to be daylight active there anymore. It’s like now you got to start over. So I don’t know. I don’t think in the last twenty some years that my strategy has changed very much. And I’ve stayed really pretty conservative. But you know, if I’ve done anything, if I’ve over complicated it, I’ve just given them too much credit because they’re not they’re not supernatural, you know, they’re not ghosts. You know, like the old Sports of Field magazine, you know, forty years ago, it’s like the deer was like a ghost. He came out of the thicket tonight, didn’t see him, and all of a sudden he was there.
00:21:01
Speaker 1: You know.
00:21:02
Speaker 4: It’s like that’s what my mind reverts back to all the time, that somehow they’re one step ahead of us. They’re not one step ahead of us, they’re not. They just aren’t moving in daylight. We think somehow they’ve got us figured out. That’s why we’re not seeing him. Well, we’re not seeing him because they’re not moving in daylight, or they’re locked up with the dough.
00:21:32
Speaker 1: Well, I think that’s a that’s a refresher for this stuffcoming rut, because that’s where a lot of people put a lot of stock into their season. I mean, if they’re still carrying, they’re tagg into the rut. It does get to a point where it feels like make a break. And I think it’s easy to over complicate things, So I’m glad just to hear a refresher to park in a spot where you don’t get busted and bring a magic eight ball and say, well, I kill a big buck today, Shake it and say yes or no.
00:22:00
Speaker 4: Eventually it’ll say yes, perfect if you sit there long enough.
00:22:05
Speaker 3: I like it.
00:22:06
Speaker 1: Bill, Where can people fall along with everything that you have going on?
00:22:10
Speaker 4: The bill Winki YouTube channel is the best place to catch up with me?
00:22:15
Speaker 1: All right, next step, we have Adam Keith and I really appreciate his insight. I’m not going to spoil it, so let’s hear what Adam has to say about something that we’re all simply over complicating, making too hard. There we go, all right, Adam in the world of whitetail comment, if you listened to let’s say the average guy listens to two or three hunting podcast a week per a year. So you know, there’s guys that listen through one hundred and fifty two hundred whitetail hunting podcasts a year, and I feel sometimes that might create an unneeded complexity when it comes to hunting a mature buck. And so what I want to do here is remove the noise and what’s this one topic? What’s one thing that every hunter is simply over complicating. So it could be a complex topic or something that could be complex once you layered at all, but it’s just as a whole. All right, we’re making that way too complicated. What’s the eighty twenty? This is what you need to pay attention to. Yes, so.
00:23:14
Speaker 5: Immediately, you know, with my job and working with private landowners, and so that’s the lens I look at majority of things through and I would just say that from my perspective, obviously everything is the right answer.
00:23:28
Speaker 1: But we can’t do that.
00:23:29
Speaker 5: So we’re gonna say, let’s pick one, and it’s the most probably not exactly deer hunter related, but deer huntered land manager related. Is the direction I went with this question in my head is going food plots. I just feel like when it comes to food It gets so complicated for guys, it’s the most number one asked question, or this the most asked question that I deal with far and away is what to plant in a food plot or understanding the food sources? It seems like is so complicated. Is it beats or is it brascas? Or is it beats or is it turnips? Is it radishes? Is it clover? Is it wheat or oats? And it’s like it.
00:24:17
Speaker 1: Doesn’t have to be this complicated, So all right, so what is it then? What is the most? The most just needs to be attractive?
00:24:26
Speaker 5: Like for me, it’s like our deer really going to notice the difference between wheat notes maybe is it going to be noticeable enough for you? Probably not? And eighty nine percent of guys out there, and so to me, just the complexity of food plotting because it is, I mean, it’s the most talked about thing I would I would imagine in YouTube is talking about food plots, and it just it’s so complicated. Now we have guys trying to crimp and trying to do all this other stuff, and it’s like we forgot I think the fact that clover’s pretty marvelous and really easy to grow it is, and so to me, it’s just like that is far and away. What guys as deer hunter’s like, what should a plant that’s going to attract them in more?
00:25:16
Speaker 1: And it’s like, did you do soil tests?
00:25:19
Speaker 5: No, so you didn’t do the soil tests, and you didn’t add fertilizer and you haven’t lined. Oh never, Okay, cool, there is our problem. That’s the biggest hole in the bucket. And so to me, it’s like I would, and it’s something I’ve changed so much over the years. Like I love blends, I love summer blends, I love fall blends. I’ve done them, but early on I realized that I can’t do them repetitively a year after year after year, because oh look now my field there’s nothing but crab grass. Oh look, it’s all goose grass. And so for me, it’s like the complicated side of food plotting. It’s just like, okay, cut.
00:25:59
Speaker 1: It all out.
00:26:00
Speaker 5: Let’s for the next three years, let’s just follow the soil test. Let’s spend our money on fertility, and let’s go plant from the co op a four dollars an acre blend of brassicas and maybe top dress some wheat at twenty dollars for one hundred pounds, and let’s just see what that does. It’s far easier than you realize. It doesn’t matter if it’s this blend from Basspro or that blend from Shields or that one from online. Like you didn’t do the sole test anyway, Let’s just keep this simple and follow a soil test and throw some cheap seed out.
00:26:43
Speaker 1: See what happens.
00:26:43
Speaker 5: That will be more noticeable than whether you use this XYZ blend versus that ABC blend.
00:26:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of value in that. I think oftentimes when people are picking their food plot seed, it almost feels like they’re at the horse racetrack and like, all right, what horse am I going to bet on this year? And then they always feel like they get the wrong horse, like I tried this this year and it didn’t work. And to your point, it’s like, what’s the real root issue? It’s probably the soils.
00:27:11
Speaker 5: Soil and weather, yes, and we can only control one of them.
00:27:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I guess now there’s irrigation. But yeah, so for example, someone’s like, all right, I’m that guy. I’m listening right now, and I’m one hundred percent that guy. I want to go get a soil test. Think of general regions. I mean, and I understand the history of the farm and how it’s been treated is going to be impact of impactful of what the soil is like. But you know, think of a below average soil and they say, Okay, I know I need to add lime. I’m going to need some NPK and work all this stuff. How long does it take to really start making a noticeable difference where my food plot does seemingly feel way more attractive than what it was three years ago, four years ago, five years ago? Like, what is the what is the breaking even have seen that reward of doing that work?
00:28:02
Speaker 5: I mean within the season if you do that, if you do that this fall, it’s you know, we’re July, and if you prep the next two months, you’re going to see the noticeable difference this fall and you can do quicker. You know, we think soil amendments takes a while. Yeah, with pole rise lime, it’s going to take four to seven months to really see that.
00:28:24
Speaker 1: But we can go get pelotize lime. Throw that out there.
00:28:26
Speaker 5: You can get some liquid lime to really get immediate impacts. Now it’s long, not as long lasting, but it still is going to have impact, and it may cost a little bit more upfront, just because we don’t have a true feel of our fertility and we haven’t amended correctly.
00:28:42
Speaker 1: We haven’t correct with the pH.
00:28:44
Speaker 5: But if you just go and add, you know, one thousand pounds of pelotize line per acre and oh we went and got five hundred pounds of triple thirteen, you’re going to see a difference, and your deer are most likely going to notice the difference in the overall benefit of those of those plants. So it’s pretty quick now, change in pH from five to one. Like I’m in the ozarks southern Missouri, and naturally we are a five five or less, so anywhere from a five to five to five, So it takes a little longer to make those drastic changes, but you can still add some quick fixes to get a pretty quick bump, a bump that I think is more noticeable than whether you planted this blend or that blend.
00:29:31
Speaker 1: And I think you know, there’s some.
00:29:33
Speaker 5: Great blends or great varieties out there that advertise for higher performance, whether that be for more pod production or holding the pods longer, or higher oil or higher protein in their corn variety, and you know, I think that a lot of that I love first and foremost. I’m probably as guilty as anyone at getting excited about new species and new varieties. But I think at the end of the day, I would love for every deer hunter and deer manager to ask the question, is the cost increase going to be noticeable in the performance? And is it going to be noticeable enough that I can you know, I’m now harvesting a four and a half year old or whatever my goals are because I planted that variety, or would it be more noticeable if I just put it into fertility.
00:30:27
Speaker 1: I think that’s a great, great piece of advice. Here’s an elementary question for someone that’s like, Okay, yeah, I have my food pot and I’m going to go get my soil sample, and I need to make amendments and I’m going to buy a bunch of triple thirteen. Do you feel that they can just broadcast that on there before a rain? Should they work that in? Like what does that next step look like now that they’re excited they want to do it?
00:30:47
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would just look for a decent rain chance where you’re you know, it’s not just like a quarter inch flash, because it may that may not be the best service. So let’s look for maybe two to three days. Is this some rain chances, go and just throw it on the soil. Throw it on the ground if you want to work it in, you know. I’m that’s another thing that I feel like we’re complicated with food plots. It’s like, oh, no, you cannot till soil anymore.
00:31:14
Speaker 1: We care about soil health.
00:31:16
Speaker 5: And it’s like, tell that to all the guys that are doing this for a living that use tillage as a tool, Like it feels a little harsh to now, we just throw the baby out with the bath water. No more tillage, We’re all, we’re all, no till Well tell that to the guys who just have a four wheeler or just have a small tractor and a disc. That’s all they got, Like they can’t plant food plots anymore, They’re just going to broadcast. Like I feel like that’s a pretty harsh approach. So if you’re doing tillage, sure broadcasting on the ground, or if it is lime broadcasting on the ground, work it up, work it into the soil.
00:31:51
Speaker 1: Let’s let’s again, let’s not overcomplicate this I take pride. I have not worked the dirt of my where I live good for you and for five years, but there’s also times for like man, it would be pretty nice to turn out.
00:32:06
Speaker 5: The first food plots we ever planned, we had a massive ferguson like a little thirty horse power.
00:32:11
Speaker 1: I think they were mass produced. Everybody’s seen this tractor.
00:32:14
Speaker 5: And we had a two a big two disc plow, and I mean it was just sink that sucker.
00:32:19
Speaker 1: I can still smell that dirt and it was dirt.
00:32:22
Speaker 5: It wasn’t soiled by the time we were done and disc it up and plan it and then we had amazing food plots. And then over the years we’ve started using no tilling, and I’m a huge no till guy, and I’ve got a corn planter now and I think it’s wonderful. But there is something about boy disking it up or turning it over and smoothing.
00:32:44
Speaker 1: It all out. I know why guys do it well. I think that’s a great piece of advice of what’s getting over complicated. Maybe it’s not what you plant, it’s what you planted into, and that would be the dirt or soil, hopefully soil, but more likely dirt. Yeah, and I think that’s that’s really great advice and timely when this comes out. So where can people follow along with what you have going on, or maybe they want to see some of these projects in motion or send you a message and say this seed is the best and you have to play it.
00:33:20
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can find us on social media, Land and Legacy, or on all the major platforms for podcasting searching Land and Legacy and close.
00:33:27
Speaker 1: Things out, we have Jeff Sturgis with his take. Let’s go ahead and get into it. Here we go, All right, Jeff, we’re back, and this is something I want to get your opinion on. I feel that there’s a lot of content out there, there’s a lot a lot of different opinions. There’s a lot of different things that maybe we overcomplicate or maybe make it a little bit harder than what it needs to be. So I want to ask you point blank, what’s one thing every hunter is making way too complicated? In your opinion?
00:33:58
Speaker 6: You know, I should have looked at these nodes you sent over, Jake. I could have come up with somebody up literally probably off the cuff is the best. And I would think anything to do with scent and I’d be curious what the other guys have said. But anything to do with scent, hiding your scent, whether that’s putting scent on mock scrapes or thinking that you can hide your scent while you’re deer hunting, I think I’ve seen people go through a cent regimen that takes an hour of their day every single day in the morning, just absolutely ridiculous. The best form of scent control of stand location, making sure that you back up to non deer areas, making sure you access through non dear areas. And I can see the one thing that I like doing is just simply keeping my clothes clean. I keeping a rubber mad set. If I’m on a hunt out of state somewhere for five or six days, then I might cycle through closed to where I’ve used this outfit. A day or two, I hang that in a tree or bush. If it’s not going to rain, or if it is, it doesn’t really matter, and then I’ll go on to the next set. And so the point is I like clean clothes. I do think there’s something that can be said for spraying down your boots, your legs. You’re not leaving a scent trail through the woods every time you go in and out. But other than that, if a deer is downwind of you, you’re done. And when it comes to mock scrapes, I think I have over sixty seventy mox scrape videos and one of the biggest is best sent for mock scrapes. And I’m in there talking about no scent at all, So I’m sure the scent companies don’t like me. But the point is that I’ve had decades of experience of using mock scrapes and no scent and free material. So you can just use a vine. You can use a hanging vine, a vertical vine, vertical jackpine branch up north, maybe a white oak branch, aspen beach, anything that deer prefer to rub. Hang it it’s free. You get thirty cents a pair cord. Hang it up. There’s a lot of videos that I have out there on how to do that. But if I wanted to overcomplicate the scent out of it, then I would actually have a scent company. I would have materials for making mock scrapes, and you can bet I’d sell a lot of it because I own, you know, basically those positions on YouTube for how to make a mock scrape, how to make a vertical scrape, max scrape vines. And I think people can spend way too much not only money, but way too much time either trying to hide their scent or full of deer’s nose. Always remember, we go buy a bread bakery and we smell bread. Deer goes buy a bread bakery and they smell the ingredients and they can rank them in order of strongest to greatest, even if there’s twenty ingredients, and so we can’t even comprehend their nose. My lab can smell a shed antler from twenty yards away with the wind in our nose, and we can’t even smell a scent on the antler. They can smell a fingerprint. We can’t smell a fingerprint. So it’s just if you think you can fool them, that’s your first mistake heading into the woods. And the time and money is spent trying to do so just drives me nuts.
00:36:58
Speaker 1: Have you did you ever go through an evolution of where you try to be sent free? I put that up in air quotes like very very methodical at some point like did you try that? And figure like, hey, it didn’t really make much of a difference, or have you kind of had that principle for a long time.
00:37:14
Speaker 6: I’ve had that principle for a long time because I started hunting to wind.
00:37:17
Speaker 3: See.
00:37:18
Speaker 6: It was different because I didn’t grow up with my dad or uncle telling me where to sit or buddy it was. It was all done on my own. We were a fishing family, so my brother and I started so I tried to find information out there that was accurate and to help me hunt. I just soaked up as much information. I loved it. I was very passionate about it. So I was always concerned about my wind and from that, when a deer would get down wind to me, even though I was trying to be careful, I’d know that they they they blew at me and they take off they run. So then you go through the carbon sent phase really using a lot of sprays and to try to hide your scent. And although I’d see deer walk over my trail if they were downwind to me, it didn’t matter what I did. I’ve always used rubber maid and tried to keep my clothes clean, my boots clean. That seems to be the case, but I can go back to nineteen eighty six. I was sixteen years old, didn’t have a lot of money. I’m ode lawn, shoveled snow basically, And I remember I conned my dad or talked him into buying me some deer yurine rut p and I remember going out to public land by us in Waterford, Michigan. It was Pontiac Lake Recreation Area. So I go out and sit on an area where there were some scrapes and rubs. Hardly knew what they were at that time. I think, well, I’m just going to take that little bottle and I’m going to go sprinkle it on something, and deer going to come running. Well twenty minutes later, because it was expensive, it’s good stuff, and it stuck. So I put it out, nothing comes in. I put a couple more drops. You know, this summer’s supposed to last me a month, I told my dad, and you know, and all of a sudden, uh, you know, an hour into the set, the bottle was empty. And I remember, I still remember that sick feeling in my stomach, like I wasted this money. And of course I didn’t see any deer that set, and I think a lot of was money driven to Jake, like, I just didn’t have the money to waste, so I didn’t have a lot to try and uh and that was you know, it has to do with that scent too.
00:39:23
Speaker 1: So yeah, well with your dad not being familiar with hunting at that time or I guess a hunter did he did? He call you crazy and you’re like, you want to do what with your money? Or you like, what do you want?
00:39:33
Speaker 3: You want to buy?
00:39:34
Speaker 6: Yeah, kind of yeah, you’re buying, You’re earning a bottle. I mean, he was my dad. He passed away in twenty nineteen, you had been almost eighty two, and he was a very kind hearted person and he was not now. We would joke around make fun of each other as a family and he fit right in. But as far as really tearing you down because you might want to do something, it was either a yes or oh. It was more like not, you’re an idiot. It was more like, I just don’t think that’s something that we need to prioritize right now. I don’t think that’s something that’s in the budget. I don’t think that’s something you should be spending your money on. More like that kind of advice, But I’m sure he was. I can see him shaking his head and you would always say something like, oh, Jeffrey, that was what he would say. So I got that comment a lot.
00:40:25
Speaker 1: Well, that’s great. I think that’s that’s some clarity, somatic clarity for folks for this upcoming season. Once again, where can people fall along with everything that you have going on?
00:40:34
Speaker 6: Just search anything white Tail Habitat Solutions, whether it’s YouTube, Instagram, a website, and really if you’re looking up white Tail strategy information, I think I’ve covered it all with you know, fifteen hundred videos and hundreds of articles throughout the year on my site, so over two thousand pieces of content. So if you search a topic and can’t find it, then just drop white Till Habitat Solutions in there and you’ll be able to find it. So you know, we have our seed company, Pure Wildlife Blends, and we have we go to clients and all that kind of stuff, but you really don’t need to spend a time. I have over two thousand pieces of content on Google and YouTube, so just go check it out and I appreciate you watching or reading along.
00:41:13
Speaker 1: All right, there, you guys have it. I hope you guys enjoyed this conversation with the fore guest, and ultimately, I think we all can extremely overcomplicate things. And I think when you remember learning any new skill or anything like that, it was always learned the fundamentals. Stick to the fundamentals, stick to the eighty twenty principle. What’s the eighty percent that I need to apply versus the twenty percent outlier information? And I feel like this is a good grounding episode to remember, keep it simple, stay focused, and don’t over complicate things because it’s easy to do. So I hope you guys enjoyed it. Next time on the back forty, we’re breaking down some hunting rules, some deer hunting rules, and I hope you guys will stick around until then. We’ll see you have a great rest of your week.
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