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Speaker 1: What is going on?
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Speaker 2: Welcome back to a fresh episode of Back forty. This is Jake Hoefert and we have a fresh panel of four guests to talk about all the different things when it comes to managing whitetails. There’s no shortage of advice on what you should be doing, but sometimes the fastest way to improve your property is knowing what mistakes to avoid in the first place. In this episode of Back forty, we ask the question what are the biggest white tailand mistakes people make? And the answers cover a variety of different things. So as you’re building out a plan for this upcoming season, you can whittle down your project list that’s likely very long and narrow it down based off of crossing some things off that might not be worth the time effort for energy. We have West Elks from Illinois with real world wildlife products and chasing giants. We have Steve Hanson from Iowa, Jake Ellinger from Michigan, and Sam bill Horn from Wisconsin. So we are covering the heart of the Midwest where there’s a lot of deer hunters. So I hope you guys really enjoyed this episode. We’re going to kick things off with West Elks, who has consulted on a lot of farms over the years the scene different projects that have made a big impact on his own personal farms and clients, and he’s also seen things that maybe are worth avoiding depending on where you’re at in your land journey. So we’ll kick things off with the west Elks. Here we go, all right. Next up we have Wes Delks. Wes, you have traveled all across the country. You have been on more farms than I can imagine, and I think oftentimes people are thinking all these different things that they can do. Right, there’s these so many different projects. You can go on YouTube, you can read magazines, you can listen to podcasts, and there’s all these things you can do. But I want to remove all the things you can do and focus on what you need to avoid at all cost, whether it’s projects, behavioral, whatever the case may be. From you know, folks that you’ve visited with, or your own personal experiences. What are the things you just simply want to avoid at all costs that aren’t worth you know, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, good question, Jake, Thanks for the opportunity to be here and it’s funny you asked this is I made a post at the end of my consulting season after looking at these farms across the Midwest, and I kind of identified basically three things that mistakes to avoid, and I posted about this a few weeks ago. And first and foremost is buying a farm based on habitat rather than on layout.
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Speaker 4: And I see so many people.
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Speaker 3: That they’re attracted to that property because of good looking habitat, good dear sign, but that doesn’t necessarily equate to the potent to raise.
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Speaker 4: The bar to the level that you and I want.
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Speaker 3: So mistake number one, I would say buying a farm based on habitat rather than layout. You’ve got to have a farm that lays out well, which to me means being able to access a property from multiple different directions and then having a some degree of isolation from neighboring hunting pressure. So that would be the number one thing that I would say avoid.
00:03:33
Speaker 1: It all calls.
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Speaker 2: So even if even if there’s property with you know, a two out of ten access, but you know ten out of ten deer, can you break this rule or is it hard and fast for you?
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Speaker 4: I would say that.
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Speaker 3: It’s more important what surrounds a property than what lays inside a property’s boundaries. And if I’ve got a two out of ten access, but it connects to a property that’s owned by a science company or a nuclear power plant, and there’s five hundred acre no hunting area and we’ve got one sided access, we might take that one sided access and hunt it with one wind direction and go in there under very specific conditions because we know we’re connected to something really good.
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Speaker 4: So yeah, I would say.
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Speaker 3: I would break that rule if it’s a property where maybe I’ve got some other options. Maybe I’ve got a home farm that I’m putting a lot of effort into managing, and i can hunt it with a lot of different wind directions. But then I’ve got this other farm down the road that it’s a two out of ten for access, but it’s connected to a sanctuary, and I’m just gonna hunt it with the northwest wind, Then yeah, maybe I would be interested in that.
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Speaker 2: So, I mean, it’s for people that are hearing, are listening to this, I feel like that would simplify the process, right If that is from what you’ve seen on many many farms of you know, the best ones do have multiple sided access, And obviously you’re in the business of developing plans, which includes increasing the habitat and developing that. It’s like, figure out what you can change and then what you can’t change, and what you can’t change is a lot easier obviously than what you cannot Yep.
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Speaker 3: Access you’re I mean, sometimes you can do things to improve your access, but those access.
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Speaker 4: Points are normally pretty concrete. So so in.
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Speaker 3: That social media point I post I said three things. I said layout was number one mistake. Number two was you have to commit to a sanctuary. You gotta have a sanctuary. You got to identify where that sanctuary is, commit to it. And then number three, number on three mistake was not having nearly enough food. Is after looking at all the farms that I’ve looked at, is the I literally one time I have told somebody, Wow, I think we almost have too much food here.
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Speaker 4: But that just that just never happens.
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Speaker 3: Is h layout, commit to the sanctuary and got to have ample food.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, so let’s let’s talk about the sanctuary itself. So what how do you make a sanctuary? You know, very good obviously sanctuary you stay out of it, you don’t go in there. You you give that to the deer. You’re not going to go in there and mess with it. But in terms of maximizing those acres, because it feels like I’m guilty of this, Like you work really hard, you buy a farm, and you want to enjoy the full purchase, but you have to you know, for a lot of people, maybe they bought it for having, you know, the best hiding possible for that specific piece. And so you had the sanctuary. Okay, we’re gonna stay out of it. Well, let’s say it’s a giant oak ridge hickory flat that’s that’s wide open. Or let’s say this sanctuary is an old pasture with cool seasoned grasses with almost snow habitat value, Like, what is the next level to make it an attractive sanctuary versus just devoid of human human pressure and also probably wildlife wildlife desert potentially.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I’m a firm believer that cover is king, not food. This is coming for a guy that works for real world wildlife products. Is get to it to do a lot with real world and I fell a lot of food plot seed, but cover is truly king. And when you start off with the property and identify where that sanctuary is. You’ve got to get deer betted on you, not on the neighbors, not on one property away, you got to get them bettered on your property. And in order to do that, we want to have thick, nasty, gnarly cover free of human intrusion.
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Speaker 4: And I am a firm believer that by a time a buck.
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Speaker 3: Gets to his fourth, fifth, sixth birthday, he’s got somewhere to go where he feels safe. And as the hunting season begins and hunting pressure continues throughout the hunting season, by the time he’s reached maturity, he knows where that sanctuary is.
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Speaker 4: And so we’ve got to identify that.
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Speaker 3: And when you buy a property that sanctuary, the cover might not be very much different from the rest of the neighbors. And in the situation that you described, you have an oak and open oak hardwood. Yeah, when you first purchased that property, we’re going to have to go into that sanctuary and cost some intrusion with these projects at the beginning to make that cover different. And that might be a timber harvest, it might be warm season grass planning, might be a tree planting.
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Speaker 4: So there is going to be.
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Speaker 3: Some intrusion oftentimes with the property at the very beginning, to make sure that your sanctuary is different and then it’s completely staying out. So get in, get those projects done, and then stay out.
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Speaker 1: Let’s run.
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Speaker 2: This is a very generic question, but hopefully it’ll help someone out there. So let’s say someone has a forty acre track, sixty acre track, you know something, SEB one hundred acres. Obviously, the bigger the sanctuary, the better, But is there a rule of THEMB that you try to try to, you know, educate folks on to like man as big as you can potentially makes the most sense, but you really needed to be at least ten percent of the property or twenty percent or five percent.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, A great question is and that’s something that I see a lot of times with sanctuaries is people say that they have a sanctuary, but they might have a two hundred acre farm and there’s this fifteen acre patch of multi floor roads that they don’t go into, and that is their sanctuary. I want to devote as much acreage as possible for sanctuary, and the smaller a property is, the more important that becomes. If you’ve got a forty acre property, we need to vote every acre that we can to sanctuary. If you’ve got five hundred acre property, you can access around the perimeters of it and hunt the edges of it. But if there’s an interior of that that is I mean you might with a five hundred acre property, if you’re accessing around the primer, you still may have a three four hundred acre sized sanctuary and intrude off the property from the property lines into the interior of your property a little bit, but you still have a massive sanctuary.
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Speaker 4: Whereas with a case with a.
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Speaker 3: Smaller property, Yeah, it does not take much to ruin a forty acre property. So with the smaller ones, you got to commit every acre you can perimeter access.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: And then so the last one you mentioned, you know, out of a lot of visits, there was maybe one or two where they had enough food. So when I think of food, I think of obviously destination food sources. I think of natural brows. I think of you know different you know, there’s deer eat a lot of different things. Right, when you say not enough food, is it simply low quality brows or is it also just simply not enough destination food to to have?
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Speaker 1: Do you not leave?
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Speaker 3: I mean when I said that I really meant quantity as far as acreage, but quality as well as far as diversity. For comparison, on my property, we got a two hundred acre farm here.
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Speaker 4: And a lot of that is a wide.
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Speaker 3: Open agg fields and cattle pasture that is not deer habitat. And I’ve got about thirteen acres of food, and that is enough food to get me.
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Speaker 4: Through until spring greenup each year.
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Speaker 3: And that thirteen acres is diverse, meaning it’s got twenty one different I counted the other day and in my plots, I’ve got twenty one different species and the first twelve I get to twelve really quickly with deadly.
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Speaker 4: With the fall plots, they got twelve right there.
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Speaker 3: Then corn, soybeans, clover, chickory, alfalfa, sorghum. So I mean, it’s twenty one sounds like a lot, but it really it’s not that hard to have fifteen plus different species in your plots. But you’ve got to have enough to get to spring greenup. And a lot of times I’m looking at farms throughout the winter months and I want to evaluate how much food did I have at the end of winter, because if I get to the end of.
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Speaker 4: March and I’m out of food.
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Speaker 3: I want to either reduce the mouths that are on my property, take out some doze, or increase the acres of food that I provide. And that’s easier said than done on some properties more than others. But I want to have plenty of food plot acreage to get my dear herd all the way through the winter months till spring green up.
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Speaker 1: Awesome, Well there’s the answer.
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Speaker 2: Those are the three things you gave us some extra ones to avoid it all costs, and I feel like if you just focus on those three, you’ll find I would imagine quite a bit more success and just you know, you’d be working much closer to the goals that you likely have. I mean, those are three really good things to focus on that’ll help a lot. Yep, Wes, thank you so much. Where can people follow along with what you have going on or how people can get a get in contact with you?
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Speaker 3: I would just listen to the Chason Chasing Giants podcast with Don Higgins and Terry Peer, or you can get me on social media on Instagram or Facebook just at my name, Wesley Delks.
00:14:07
Speaker 2: All right, next up, we have Steve Hanson from Iowa and Steve has been a real estate professional for a very long time. He’s worked on a lot of his own farms, He’s helped friends clients along the way, and we get his opinion on something that you can disavoid at all costs for the time being.
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Speaker 1: So let’s kick it off here. It was Steve Hanson.
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Speaker 2: All right, Steve, welcome to back forty. In the world of white tail projects, there is so many different things that you can do. The list could be hundreds or thousands of items long. But I think for this point, what are the things to either delay or avoid at all costs, just it’s not worth the effort, or a project that maybe gets misused and you need to have the parameters in order to utilize it. So I know a lot of different things there, but I want to hear what jumps out to your mind.
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Speaker 5: You know the one that I see them the most, that people, you know, everybody seems to want to do and I’ve seen probably ninety five percent failures and almost none make it to what I would call total completion. And people aren’t gonna like this. But it’s fruit tree planning. You know that that one there just for the amount of risk, money, time, to final reward. I’ve just seen that fail so many times. That’s one if you do have it, or you’re going to use it in your playbook, I would absolutely put it towards the back of your planning, meaning once you’ve it’s a micro project, you’ve got to fish fix all the macro projects first, otherwise you’re you know, But it seems to be one people want to do early and that I’ve I’ve probably done it half a dozen times myself. Some were big projects where we spent three thousand bucks on trees and amendments and you know, a couple good spring days doing it and in the end to have zero survival. I’m talking five years ten down the line. So and I’ve seen that over and over again.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, you will make some people up.
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Speaker 2: Some people just love fruit trees and they love the idea of them, but I feel like you really have to have the ability to baby them. I’ve planted probably twenty fruit trees here at my house, and I’ve had of those twenty, I got some that are doing great, and I have some that are doing really poorly. And that’s with me living here too, right, And I think that’s the challenge.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, and I would say that is part of the challenge. We deal with a lot here with out of the area landowners. They may be non residents, they may be from Des Moines there an hour and a half two hours away. I would say that would be the one thing if if you are full time, have the ability to be at your farm full time, or it’s your place of residence where you can literally spoon feed them, water them, spray them. The amount of spray you need to actually do it right is mind boggling. I mean the different dormant oil sprayings and you know, stuff for bugs. And then the other reason we probably struggle here more than most people would is and there are blight resistance varieties, but we have a lot of cedar trees, eastern red cedars, and the cedar apple rust.
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Speaker 6: Is one that really we really battle here.
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Speaker 5: So and the other thing that people seem to forget about apple trees, they’re not native. You know, you’re truly planning a non native species, which everybody loves to jump on me scant as, oh it’s not native, blah blah blah. It’s like, what about your apple tree? What about alfalfa? You know, it’s that part of it’s funny too. But yeah, that’s probably one that I see the most, that I see fail the most often, and is fairly expensive.
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Speaker 2: It’s expensive and it takes time, and to buy the tea post, to buy the fence, you know, you have the cost of the tree, and then you add everything in there additionally, like it does add up. Is there an instance where there was a random apple tree in a cattle pasture somewhere in Iowa or something like that that was just like this divine location for deer hunting too, because I feel like that might that would potentially sway your opinion if there was an example like that.
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Speaker 5: I have seen a few examples of that. In every case they were around abandoned homesteads. But I mean very very very few more pairs than apples you know, that have persisted naturally or you know, from being planted as a homestead tree twenty thirty forty years ago. You know, I personally haven’t seen one where I thought, wow, this is really putting out the apples like we would hope to. Yeah, and we’ve had a few, you know, I’ve had a few landowners that literally it’s almost like their side hobby as much as they’re into hunting. As much as they’re into hunting, they’re into you know, maintaining their orchard or stuff like that. And I get that. I’m speaking to the context of simply, hey, i’ve got this hunting farm, I’ve got X amount of dollars I can spend. Where is the best use of my resources? And that’s that’s why I would put that on the list of you know, very low on the list or not on the list for sure. So and we’ve had everything kill them, I mean everything you name it.
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Speaker 2: So well, yeah, you have rabbits can girdle them, and you can just have I mean there’s you can have a raccoon climb up on and snap off a giant branch.
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Speaker 1: I mean right, We’ve had that happen.
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Speaker 5: We’ve had fires, people burning adjacent switchgrass get away and kill them. We’ve had that. We’ve had some overspray di camba from crops being sprayed, not even adjacent, just in the area. It’s they’re a very sensitive plant, you know. It’s I think of them as a permanent tomato plant, like any Everything wants to kill them.
00:19:34
Speaker 6: It’s it’s crazy.
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Speaker 2: So, yeah, okay, you mentioned very low on the list or not on the list. Will there be a point where you think you’ll put out a twenty you know, a twenty to forty apple and pear grove on a permanent farm of yours, just just to out of sheer boredom and experimental of I’m gonna baby these things and I’m gonna see if it’s worthwhile.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, I’m building a new place at my big farm, a new shop and very permanent type, you know, part of my plan going forward. It’s an old cattle farm, but it was a very well cared for catle farm, so there’s actually city water or what we call rural water, miles of water lines on that farm. So I did think about that about one of these areas where we took these drinkers out, is converting that to some type of orchard and then you know tree planning, because I have access to water, and I could put it in a pretty good spot from a hunting location. But that’s a very unique and it would be close to where I’m going to spend quite a bit of time. But I also I would high fence the entire area. So if it’s a half acre, I’m gonna do eight foot fence around the whole thing. Yeah, until it gets established. So you know, so maybe that’s five years, maybe that’s ten years. I don’t know what, you know, the growth rate and it’s going to depend on species and stuff. But yeah, yeah, will do one again. It’s almost like, you know, by saying this, I’ve sort of thrown down the gauntlet of the challenge and I accept that challenge myself. And that’s probably the reason I haven’t had the success or seen the success. I think the people that do it really put a lot of effort into it, like really, really really. And we had a good friend or a friend from Pennsylvania who had a huge farm here in Iowa. And he had an amazing orchard back in Pennsylvania and an amazing orchard here in Iowa, so I know it could be done. But he was almost like, like I said, that was as much his hobby as was hunting itself.
00:21:37
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think those are all very fair things. I sold an apple orchard a couple of years ago, and I was talking to a guy that that was his living he ran an orchard in Illinois, and I was just asking, like deer hunting apple orchard questions, you know, like you know, what what varieties and treatment, and he started rambling and and and giving me the whole you know, the pruning schedule, the spray schedule, this species that’s hybridized with its like, holy cow, it’s way more in depth to oh, yeah, you know it’s I feel like the same thing with farming. You know, I’m gonna plant beans this year for my food plot, and then you talk to a guy that breeds soybean plants or you know, an actual farmer farmer, and it’s like, holy there’s a lot to you.
00:22:23
Speaker 6: Could deep dive into it for sure.
00:22:24
Speaker 1: So yeah, well I think that’s you.
00:22:29
Speaker 2: I look forward to seeing a you know, ten fifteen years from now when you have you know, Steve Hanson apple seed backyard.
00:22:37
Speaker 1: There a big deer behind there or maybe not or maybe not, but maybe yeah, you.
00:22:43
Speaker 5: And Miranda can come pick apples in October some here when you’re here.
00:22:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be great.
00:22:47
Speaker 2: So where can people find find you or follow along with what you have going on?
00:22:53
Speaker 6: Well, usually just.
00:22:53
Speaker 5: Put everything we’re doing on Instagram. It’s just my name, Steve Hanson the Third on Instagram, and it’ll kind of lead.
00:22:59
Speaker 6: You to what we’re up to.
00:23:00
Speaker 1: All right.
00:23:01
Speaker 2: Next up, we have Jake Ellinger from Michigan with Habitat Solutions three sixty. We just released an episode basically what he’s seen and covered over the last fifty years. Is a Michigan bow hunter. He has worked on his own farm for a very long time. He helps other folks and I hope you guys enjoyed Jake’s perspective. Let’s get into it here with Jake Allinger of Habitat Solutions three sixty. All right, Jake, I have a question for you, and I think oftentimes in the world of land and projects, when it comes to whiteoil hunting, there’s so many things that you can do, and I want to narrow down what is a mistake from a habitat perspective, or maybe even from a hunting perspective that you want to avoid simply at all costs. You can do all these other things, but whatever you do, don’t do this.
00:23:46
Speaker 1: What is that to you, oh, Minette?
00:23:49
Speaker 7: And that’s relating to the piece of property that a land owner hunter owns, right, yeah, yep, we’ll say that’s the case.
00:23:58
Speaker 1: Yep.
00:23:58
Speaker 7: Okay, gosh, one that I see often, and it’s a lot of times, once it’s already there, it’s difficult to fix, and it’s it’s where people decide, Okay, this is where I’m going to pull into the property. Maybe there’s an existing ag driveway, and this is where I’m gonna access. I’m gonna park here and walk to this side of the property where I’m gonna drive up on this hill and park here along this pensil, and then I’m going to access.
00:24:25
Speaker 6: And often on what I find is, you.
00:24:27
Speaker 7: Know, after one or two years of ownership, depending how aggressive they are from habitat standpoint, they start putting in food plots and betting areas, and darned these access trails and ATV and tractor access trails go right through the food plot or right alongside these betting areas. Okay, and you know that that it has its challenges. Sometimes a layout of the property, the hills, wetlands, creeks, rivers, you really don’t have much of a choice.
00:24:56
Speaker 6: But I see a lot of the others.
00:24:57
Speaker 7: You know, where there’s chee you could have you could have going right along to East Pencrow. You know, from one end of the property the other you go right to the middle, and going up to the middle, you’re crossing through five different food plots. So that that’s a mistake because you’re gonna constantly run into deer. Okay, that’s the whole idea.
00:25:16
Speaker 2: But every time, every time you have a project or yeah yeah, planning or a project or every time you’re on there, they know. And so how often do you run into that? And why do you think people inherently do it? Because I mean, gosh, anyone that listens to a hunting podcast, here’s the word access probably every episode ever of any podcast effort. So it’s like, with this access being so important has preached almost to death. You know, why do you think, like when you when you talk to a client or something like, what’s the reasoning interrationale?
00:25:49
Speaker 1: Typically I’m just curious.
00:25:52
Speaker 7: I know, for a couple of people that have been really honest with me, it was like, well, when we first bought the property, there was only a trail that went fifty yards into the you know, and it was mainly woulded only went fifty yards in. So we started cutting the trail and then you know, this is where we opened up because there was a clearing here, so this is where we could turn the tractor or the truck around. And over the years we cut more trees and this was our first food plot, and that’s going right through the middle of.
00:26:18
Speaker 8: It, okay, and then jeez, you know, we we uh, you know, we got a piece of equipment in here, and we had some timbering done, and we asked them to make us a road right up to the middle and to make.
00:26:31
Speaker 7: These two logging decks which turned into food plots, you know. And so, by no fault their own, the convenience made it happen, all right.
00:26:42
Speaker 6: And you know, other people, I don’t know why they.
00:26:45
Speaker 7: Do it, you know, because I will tell you I was kind of guilty of that at first when I first bought this property. So I just know that it can happen to anybody, especially when you’re you’ve got other things you’re thinking of. You know, some people buy a property for more reasons than honey. You know, long term goal is a house, a pole barn, maybe living there someday like we did. And so you know, they’re saying, oh, wow, this should be a great building site, and this is where we want the driveway to be. And that all makes sense, but until you’re living there, how you’re coming in, where you’re parking the vehicles, where the deer are feeding or betting, if it’s within sight, it’s a you know, it’s a conflict problem, especially you know, higher deer densities.
00:27:27
Speaker 1: So let’s run through this scenario.
00:27:29
Speaker 2: Someone’s listening to this right now and they say, oh, I fall into this category. Is this something that needs to get addressed and you need to bring in potentially equipment to directify the issue? Or like what for that example with the client that you’re referencing, Like what was your prescription for them to fix it?
00:27:49
Speaker 7: And how you know they were very open to two things, moving the trail where they could and making’ll still have say a spur trail that allows them the equipment to that food plot, but moving the trail you know of right or left side to avoid that. And then some of these food plots are pretty good size, maybe like acre and a half two acres of clearing, and then you know the opportunity for okay, let’s move the trail all the way over to this east side of the food plot because it’s the north south kind of rectangle property, and let’s put some screening up in there. You know, let’s put some ascanthus grass and you know, maybe twenty yards of thickly planeted switch grass or you know, long term, let’s put you know, a couple three rows of spruce trees in here, and it’s going to take a while, but eventually you’re going to be able to get through here and there’ll be a buffer between you and the deer. And that changes things pretty significantly, spurs you know, their level of a flight, you know, instead of just kind of standing there watching what’s going on, rather than just running off tails in the air, you know kind of thing.
00:28:58
Speaker 8: Yeah.
00:28:58
Speaker 7: So, so there are ways to fix it, and then sometimes there just is no choice. It’s the only high ground or swamp river creek wetlands and boy this is you know, this is only fifty sixty yards wide and it raised, you know, comes up ten twelve feet between these two wetlands. Is the only choice I have to put my two track to get to the other side of the property. It just also because the topography happens to be all the deer like to bed.
00:29:25
Speaker 6: Yeah.
00:29:26
Speaker 7: Yeah, and so that’s a that’s a tough decision sometimes, you know.
00:29:30
Speaker 2: So in that in that scenario, I mean, do you just you just take the cars that you were dealt and yeah, or do you and it’s just let’s go.
00:29:41
Speaker 7: Yeah, it does not have you know, he doesn’t have a lot of options, doesn’t have the equipment and the resources. It’s like, okay, well here’s the deal. Then under you’re gonna have to hunt under different conditions. You know, you’re gonna pay attention to these wins this time of the year. Don’t slip in here in the morning in early season. You know, wait, wait for this part of the property later into the rut and that sort of thing, and a lot of times that can make you know, a huge improvement in their hunting success. You know these I think maybe I said this to you one slash year.
00:30:13
Speaker 6: The easiest deer to kill is the one that doesn’t know you’re there, right.
00:30:18
Speaker 2: How I mean for the average guy listening to this, I mean, how often does that really happen where the deer does not know that he that he’s being hunted?
00:30:26
Speaker 1: Because I feel like.
00:30:29
Speaker 2: We all put them, I mean we all have like it’s a tough line to draw here because like you have to play on food plots and you have to hunt in order to get him, and obviously you can get lucky on the first try, but let’s be honest, a lot of people don’t. So like, if you had to guess how many times does that really happen over the course of ten seasons.
00:30:45
Speaker 7: That’s a great question, because you know, deer have all these different levels of pressure, right. I think when the guys out there, when you and I are both farmer jake on our tractors and our ATVs. You know, regardless, we’re spread in, we’re drilling, we’re whatever it is we’re doing. You know, I don’t think the deer really pay all that much attention and care because they don’t feel that as a life threat kind of thing.
00:31:10
Speaker 6: You know.
00:31:12
Speaker 7: Now. Now, on the other hand, if you’re just in there all the time, and I do have a few clients that I run into that just can’t stay away from their property.
00:31:19
Speaker 6: They’re just on it.
00:31:21
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, every free day they have, they’re in there doing something, walking around, cutting trees, and I get all that. You know, there’s it’s great to improve the property, and you only got so much time. But yeah, there’s very few people that can hunt deer that don’t know that people are there, but that particular hunt. You know, maybe it’s been it’s been a week since you’ve hunted the property. You’ve been pretty disciplined about wind directions and conditions, and you’re slipping in if you do it right. Those particular deer that are coming by you at that moment have no idea you’re there. And that’s what I try to break it down to east in the moment, you know, within the moment, on the moment.
00:32:04
Speaker 1: M hm. Let me last question for this.
00:32:09
Speaker 2: You mentioned East East Access a handful of times, the East Access road. How there’s I sell land for a living, so there’s people that are just lying in the sand. I won’t buy anything with West access. Where do you fall on that scale?
00:32:24
Speaker 7: There’s no doubt that most of the Midwest you’re gonna get a westerly southwest quote predominant wind, you know, But anyway it looks at a at a wind rows when I was the predominant wind is not really all that predominant.
00:32:40
Speaker 6: There’s lots of other wind directions too.
00:32:42
Speaker 7: But for say, just maintenance and general use of the property, h East Access, does it turn out to be fairly convenient keeping you and your equipment your activities downwind of the deer during most of the fair days?
00:32:58
Speaker 6: You know? But I’m not hard and fast on that. You know.
00:33:01
Speaker 7: I have a property that I that I access from the south, okay, And it’s a rectangle. It’s a north south rectangle property, you know. And I would always kick myself in the old days. Man, you know, I can’t get in here because of this wind was You know, Over time, I’ve built access and you know, screening access, very good visual access, and you know we get a lot of easterly winds, northeasterly winds.
00:33:28
Speaker 6: Then now puts me over on the west side of the property. So I’ve got.
00:33:31
Speaker 7: Access on both sides, you know, to be able to be prepared for that when it happens.
00:33:36
Speaker 1: That makes sense.
00:33:37
Speaker 2: Well, okay, So to summarize, the biggest mistake is ignoring or or solidifying bad access from the get go. Of the path of least resistance might not be the best, and it’s worthwhile to try to figure out a different option if if you fall into this category that you just describe.
00:33:56
Speaker 7: It is because, like with anything, if you can correct it right from the beginning, you haven’t got the time and the energy. And you know, planting trees alongside of that trail that now needs to get moved, okay, or cut trees or whatever. So yeah, give us some serious thought before you just go in there and start saying, Yep, this is my access trail.
00:34:16
Speaker 6: This is where it’s going to be. Especially give it a thought from a hunting standpoint.
00:34:19
Speaker 2: And close things out, we have Sam bill Horn from Whitetail Partners Season Wisconsin also.
00:34:25
Speaker 1: Helps people make good decisions on their farm.
00:34:27
Speaker 2: So we’re going to kick it off here with Sam bill Horning close up this episode. I hope you guys enjoyed the panel of opinions so far. And here’s Sam. All right, we have Sam with Whitetail Partners. We have a lot of mistakes that people can make. Everyone makes mistakes across the board, but sometimes I think finding out what might be one of the biggest mistakes to avoid at all costs when it comes to whitetail and land. You can pick from the millions of mistakes that are available in the world of white tails, but I want.
00:34:59
Speaker 1: You to boil it down to the one to avoid it all costs. Sure.
00:35:04
Speaker 9: Well, thanks a lot, Jake, appreciate the opportunity here to talk with you today. You know, in answering one thing, it’s tempting to go into something specific, to go to, you know, a type of habitat work or where people choose to spend their time when they’re tearing into a property. But on this one, I’m going to zoom way out and back up to the point of really the starting block, because I think that’s where people often can go wrong in a hunting property, is when they’re first acquiring it. And what I like to look at and one of the things I’ve been encouraging my clients with and anybody I speak with is to really see the big picture from the beginning, and specifically what I’m talking about is planning and budgeting towards that property. So what I’m thinking about all the time when we’re walking into a new client property, is you know, what have they planned or set aside to do a property.
00:35:59
Speaker 1: I’m going to make up a property real quick, I’ll just say it is.
00:36:01
Speaker 9: You know, if you have a half a million dollar property, a lot of guys, that’s a bigger budget. They’re going to try and work their way into that and you know, save and really maximize what they can to try and get into that property. However, they’re leaving out the planning and development and all those other things that really make the property enjoyable. And you know, the older I get and the more I hunt, and the more I bring others into this. One of the things that I’m always focused on is enjoying that hunt and really enjoying that opportunity that you have to make your own property. For many this is a one time thing, a lifetime dream. And I think if you get into a property and have all of this invested into just basically just getting your foot in the door, and you fail to leave that portion of your budget available to do some of that management and development. And I’m not even necessarily talking about having to hire guys and you know, go out there and build. You know, you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, you know, on a property if you want to, but even to leave and I’d like to give people something actionable to leave something like ten or twenty percent of room in your budget to do these things. You can make a big impact on a property with ten percent of that the total amount of money you’re putting into it to be towards land management. In fact, and I’ve built a ton of properties and you know, seeing people through the entire process, the design, the build, the implementation, and turning it over to them to hunt, and I would say you know, even on the top end, if you’re spending twenty or thirty percent, you are fully developing that property. You’re putting a tremendous amount of work into it and making it just you know, really that next level, you know, elite property that we can build for people if that’s what they want.
00:37:57
Speaker 1: And so to zoom weigh out.
00:37:59
Speaker 9: I like to look at this and saye say, hey, the biggest thing we can do to help people enjoy their property is to help them realize to make plans for that. Now, we could get into all the things, the planning, the development, the maintenance, the activities, all this stuff, and we could break down and say, you know, talk about food plots, talk about tim and wirk, talk about stand setups, all this stuff. But really, when it comes down to it, I like to zoom out and say, look, plan to have some money set aside to do those things, and whether you’re hiring myself or anyone else like us to go out there and accomplish this, you’re going to enjoy your property that much more.
00:38:39
Speaker 1: It’s called the Dittaro effect.
00:38:40
Speaker 2: When you buy something, there’s a lot more expenses that you know you didn’t necessarily we’re planning on it, because when you’re making this huge lump sum purchase, they’ve been working for towards for years and years and years or decades and in many scenarios like ah, we got there. And then to your point, the key thing that you had mentioned to me was the enjoyment of it.
00:38:57
Speaker 1: It’s like.
00:38:59
Speaker 2: Sometimes a little budget goes a long way on these things, and time too, which is I think everyone myself included, once everything done yesterday and now, and sometimes it just takes time and planning, over your over your Maybe maybe this is tied into that mistake, but do you think that same philosophy falls into the realistic timeline of making impactful changes. Obviously there’s things you can do that will make a big impact right away, but maybe to really move the needle up two or three notches, is that a five year process, a four year process, seven year process, lifetime process.
00:39:36
Speaker 9: Well, and if for those of us who love this stuff, we know it’s never ending and there’s always something we’re doing on our properties, we can laugh about that for a while. But the the the impact you can make, I mean it is immedia. In one season, you can make that hop that that property that much more huntable, and enjoyable. No, there is development pieces depending on all the different facets we’re we’re looking at here. You got you know, tree plantings and warm season grass, and you know, we can assign timeframes to each of these which are years and multiple growing seasons, not just a year. But as far as that initial implementation, it can be done pretty quick. You know, you get a lot of that heavy lifting done with the right tools, the right people, the right team to get it all built. However, you know, the there is some maturity there that needs to happen, and that’s certainly part of the time is a big factor. You know, you could chalk that up to and say it’d be better to get a smaller property. And I should have said this on the financial piece too, But you know, I would always encourage somebody when we talk about their budget is to if maybe they’re trying to get one hundred acres, well, let’s do eighty acres or seventy acres and just do it to the you know, n degree of all this development and then therefore enjoyment and quality that we’re going to get out of it. I’d much rather have that fully developed seventy or eighty acre property than that hundred acre property with nothing that’s been improved.
00:40:56
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:40:57
Speaker 2: Now, let me run this scenario past you, same idea, same thought, buddle for someone that already has a piece that they have full control over and maybe they’ve been maybe they just haven’t had the confidence to put to deploy capital. I mean, what do you see typically, you know, kind of in this same vein, they have the full control, but they haven’t you know, spent the money or the time or whatever the case may be to get over the hump. I mean, what usually have you seen people? What is that sticking point for them to actually do it? Aside from the financial aspect of it, obviously it costs money.
00:41:31
Speaker 1: Yeah no, And I’ll say that to myself.
00:41:33
Speaker 9: You know, I use myself as an example because I experienced this in life too as a younger man having property. I I did everything by sheer will and muscle and had the most basic of tools and equipment and really just fought through it.
00:41:48
Speaker 1: I fought through it. And I see guys do that.
00:41:50
Speaker 9: They fight through it, and then when they recognize the efficiency of what a professional can do and accomplish and get that work done, they’re so thankful, and you know, they could spend that amount of time in there, call it there nine to five or there, you know, where their wheelhouse is, and maybe they can earn an extra buck. And that goes so much farther in hiring the right equipment, the right people, and having that game plan from the beginning, you know, to implement rather than just trying to muscle through.
00:42:21
Speaker 6: Now.
00:42:21
Speaker 9: I don’t want to discourage that young man that’s just got his property, because there’s a ton of things that he can do to go out there and impact it and make improvements and you know, have quality effects from his work. But that when it comes down to it, the major development, the bigger properties, getting into that stuff, the impact of hiring the right folks makes a makes a big difference.
00:42:47
Speaker 2: First property ever bought, I rented a mini excavator for I think one or two weeks and wasn’t the right exact piece of equipment worked every spare minute I had, And I looked at how much it costs and how much you know sign of value for my own time. And then my next project, I hired a dirt work guy and they came in and smashed the project like in a day and a half with you know, the right.
00:43:08
Speaker 1: Equipment, and it’s like, I will never do that again.
00:43:10
Speaker 2: No, I showed up and it was done, and it was done exceptionally better than what I would have been able to do it. And I think if you ran the math on it, you know it made sense in that fashion too, for sure.
00:43:20
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:43:21
Speaker 9: Focus, Yeah, a guy should focus on those little micro things that he can do, the tweaks, the the details, the really you know things, the hunting setups, the attention to detail of well, should have cut that branch or not cut that branch? Yeah, do that, but the heavy lifting hiring people in just makes it so much more effective and enjoyable. It doesn’t make it a drudgery. Also, thinking about the home front too, you’re not spending those hours on the property a little bit. You’re managing your time, you know, keeping that in in balance with the rest of your life.
00:43:51
Speaker 1: I like it. Anything else to add into this, well, I.
00:43:55
Speaker 9: Think we’ve we’ve covered it pretty well, but I’ll just say that I give a plug here too to not forget about planning.
00:44:01
Speaker 2: You know.
00:44:02
Speaker 9: That’s the core business of what we do with Whitetail Partners is helping people get that plan all right there.
00:44:07
Speaker 1: You guys have it.
00:44:08
Speaker 2: I hope you guys enjoyed this episode of Back forty. It’s always interesting to get different opinions from different parts of the country on one specific topic, and I hope you guys enjoyed.
00:44:19
Speaker 1: Figuring out what to avoid at all costs for the time being.
00:44:23
Speaker 2: Maybe you agree with them, maybe you don’t, and that is the beauty of whitetailan management.
00:44:27
Speaker 1: We will see you next time. See y
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