Ep. 895: Small Acreage, Big Impact - Habitat Strategies That Work with Skip Sligh and Jake Hofer - Wired To Hunt Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven
versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. This week on
the show, I'm joined by Jakeofer and a surprise guest
to talk about private land conservation and habitat work that
can help wildlife. Right now, all right, welcome back to

(00:41):
the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First
Light and their Camo for Conservation initiative. And today we
are back to wrap up our Conservation Month series, and
we're wrapping it up in a really cool way because
I think it's going to be very applicable.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
To a lot of folks.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
So far, over the last four or five weeks, we've
talked high level, you know, the status of deer and
deer hunting in America. We've talked public land policy and
conservation issues. We've talked kind of big picture making nature
and conservation nonpartisan again. And today I want to talk
kind of on the ground, hands in the dirt conservation

(01:21):
and to help me do that and to really lead
the way doing that is my pale and podcasting content
creating extraordinary in his own right, mister Jake Hoefer. So, Jake,
welcome to the show in a different, unique capacity today.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, super unique. I feel it's for someone that listens
to a radio show or something and they have the
step in guy. These are these are This is a
tough position to walk into, but I'm extremely excited and
I feel that didn't get my hands dirty and finding
someone that can talk about how people can put some
things into action right now instead of theorizing about it.
I'm extremely excited. Yeah, so so so.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Like Jake just said, the plan for today is actually
to let Jake take the reins on the show, because
if you've listened to the podcast over the years, you've
heard me mention this a couple times that I've always
thought that Jake is the best podcast host out there
outside of myself. If I were in a second, there's anyone, obviously,

(02:22):
I don't listen to myself. If there was a podcast
I listened to that I actually enjoyed the host the most,
it was always Jake. And so Jake and I are
working on some possible collaborations coming up here soon. That
hopefully we'll be able to announce soon. But in the interim,
I thought, why not let Jake take this puppy out
for a walk and actually host the Wired Hunt podcast

(02:44):
for a week. He is someone who has a lot
of experience in the world of private land conservation and
habitat work of course, with your own podcast, the Land Podcast,
and a lot of the things you've done the past, Jake.
So today, what the kind of man date or objective
I guess I'm putting forth for you, Jake, is to
go out and find a really great expert guest who

(03:08):
can talk to us about ways that we as land
managers or owners or folks that just simply have somewhere
we can do something good on the land, How we
can do that, how we can make things better for
deer and or other wildlife and or the natural world. So,
with that kind of task and that objective, Jake, I
would like to do two things now before I run

(03:31):
away and let you take this take it from here,
Can you really quickly for folks give people a quick
background on again you know how you got to this
point and what you're up to right now and why
you're who someone I think is a really good person
to help lead this conversation the rest of the way.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yeah, I'll be happy to put some words in your
mouth here now I'm just kidding. Aside from that. No,
So my name is Jake Hoefer and worked with Exodus
for a super long time and throughout that process has
built the podcast and anyone that there's a lot of
people that don't know. But Exodus closed this doors at
the end of December, and I was in an interesting
position from a career standpoint of what am I going

(04:10):
to do next? Really enjoy these conversations, and actually bought
back the Exodus YouTube channel and the podcast and just
relaunched that on March twenty fifth, and it's this WHTL
and the Social Hatters a white Tailed Deer. So a
lot of the conversations and type of content people have
experienced in the past is going to continue and will
continue to evolve as well. And then also run a

(04:32):
show called the Land Podcast, and that was birth out
of me. You need to learn a lot and recognizing
that a lot of other people need to learn about
land ownership and everything that goes along with that. And
we've helped over one hundred people by their first farm
whether they emailed in or texted, or whatever the case
may be. So this conversation is right up my alley,
close to my heart, and I love seeing the landscape

(04:54):
improve and helping people find the information that will help
them do it too.

Speaker 4 (04:59):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
So here's the game plan from here.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
I am going to step away, and I'm gonna let
you bring in your expert of choice to have the
conversation from this point forward. Jake, I will just say this,
take good care of my baby.

Speaker 4 (05:16):
Be.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Number one focus always is providing the most possible value
per minute that we can to our listeners, and I
know that you know exactly how to do that. So
I'm gonna say, let's let you take it from here, Jake,
with one hell of a conversation about private land, conservation,
land management, and real stuff that we can do right

(05:38):
now to make the world and our deer hunting property
or lease or Buddies farm or wherever it is, how
we can make any of those places better.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
Let's do it, Skip. How's it going great? How are
you I'm doing great. I'm stepping in from Mark here.
This is a little out of my traditional recording approach,
but I'm really excited to have you on here where
we're wrapping up or he's wrapping up habitat month, and

(06:08):
I figured who else to bring on? Then a guy
that's been through the gambit started with no knowledge? Is
that fair to say? To very advanced I will say.

Speaker 4 (06:19):
Yeah, zero knowledge. Yeah, so that's the opposite of bragging.
So I'll definitely take that badge of honor having zero
knowledge on any of this stuff and making every bone
headed mistake known a man. So yeah, yeah, let's start there.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
What okay, so I give you a five hundred dollars
gift card to go anywhere? What are the must have
essential tools for someone to perform some habitat projects on
their farm? And maybe it might be a little bit
more than five hundred dollars, or maybe you get a
little crafty can go to in a state sale or
garage sale or Facebook marketplace. But what are the key

(06:55):
things that guys really should have in order to start
tackling some habitat projects on their farm.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
I'd say a bag seater, a chainsaw, and a backpack
sprayer would probably be Yeah, it'd be my five hundred dollars.
I'd get it done for five hundred bucks, Okay, red
bag seater, and then I'd want to pro sauce, so
i'd be over the five hundred. So I'd find a
deal on a professional grade saw, and then I would

(07:22):
buy a backpacks prayer that has a diaphragm pump. And
you don't need to get a real expensive sprayer either,
just get one with a diaphragm pump. They don't they
don't get clogged up, and they can take like powders
and different liquids a lot better through it without clogging.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
What's your favorite saw model? You mentioned professional grades, so
what's your go to?

Speaker 4 (07:46):
Steal to sixty one with a sixteen inch bar and
a full chisel chain would be my instinct go to.
And you don't need for habitat you don't need anything
bigger than a sixteen. Really a fourteen would be fine,
but at sixteen's on the smaller end. A lot of
guys are running out there with eighteen and twenty inch bars.
You don't need it. And then just run a full

(08:08):
chisel chain, which if you buy like a steel chain,
it'd be the yellow chain as opposed to a green chain,
and as long as you have some experience cutting, so
the green ones are like anti kickback chain safety. They
call them safety chains, if you will. But for me,
for a guy that's cut with any bit of time,
or even somebody, as long as you're not doing super

(08:31):
aggressive things, you know, running that safety chain just cut
so slow. And I never figured that out until later
in life, when I'm like, why do I have this
chain that always seems dull? That sucks? And I finally
figured out. I was buying the safety chain and I
threw them all away. There's a plaice form, but I
just personally don't like them, all right.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
And then is there a favorite backpack sprayer model that
you just really love?

Speaker 4 (08:56):
Yeah, so I actually buy this cheap one and I
might even have to look it up on my phone,
but it's like king or No, it's a cheap one
on Amazon, but it's a diaphragm diaphragm pump. And I've
got like more expensive ones, like I have a steal.
I have this red one that everybody would know that
it's super expensive and I haven't used it for so long.

(09:16):
And then I have the electric ones too. But I'll
look it up and I'll fire it back to you.
I'll pop my phone on real quick and see if
I can find with that back it's not expensive and
it literally doesn't leak on your back. There's another one
with backpack spears. They always leak on your back, which
drives me nuts, and then they get clogged up or

(09:37):
they just break and they go bad. And this one,
I've just used it for so long that I have
really good luck with it. So I'm going to delay
here and tell you what I have.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
No, that's good, And I think that this is a
baseline because anyone that's starting habitat projects, I think there's
probably some confusion of what do I really need? What's
the bare minimum because a lot of this stuff is
expensive and people that are just getting started out need
the bare bones. And I think those three items are
it sounds like you'll become.

Speaker 4 (10:06):
Here we go the field King dB. It's a dB
smith Field King, but you get the uh, you get
the diaphragm pump. I don't know if that's specific to
this or maybe all of them have that, but it's cheap.
And then when you read the description, like it'll say

(10:29):
can can be used to with wet table powders and liquids,
so that yes to work of okay, work of both
a piston and a diaphrag backpack pump. Okay, just get
the diaphragm backpack pump is the simple part, and the
field king that's what I use. Now. There's plenty of
other good ones. I have not no affiliation with them,
but I do like them, and they're very cheap and expensive.

(10:50):
And I've got like one for fruit trees, one for
killing trees, which I have to label very succinctly, so
don't get those mixed up, one for regular weeds, and
I've got like four of those sitting around for various uses.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
Love it. What when you were starting out with habitat,
why did you want to improve the habitat? Was it
for deer hunting? Was it for a holistic approach to conservation?
What initially had you motivated to dive into this world?

Speaker 4 (11:18):
Deer hunting, for sure. So I started with a garden,
which I had to learn from scratch at maybe ten.
I don't know why. I can't think back why I
wanted to start a garden. But I wanted to start
a garden in our big backyard and just grow things.
And I just thought that was cool, and that came
out of the blue. I can't explain it to this day.

(11:39):
And then from that I got into deer hunting and
people think, like food plots are new well in Michigan.
So I'm forty six now this would be twelve thirteen,
maybe fourteen years old. Yeah, it's probably fourteen when in
Zealand Michigan, there was this little seed store called the

(11:59):
bread In Seed and guys were starting to do food
plots a lot, and like when you get the magazines,
I was a kid that was like waiting for the
magazines to come in and they were starting to talk
about food plots. And then I went there and I'm like,
what what should I do? I want to do this
food plot stuff right about it in the magazines. And
so I know I told you this story before, but

(12:19):
I tell it really briefly. I bought a bag of
sugar sugar beat seed and then I went to the
middle of the forest with my rake, raked up the
leaves and planted the sugar beat seeds and then came
back and there's never anything that grew. And even back
thirty years ago, there was articles like like I didn't

(12:40):
know this at fourteen, like little fads or hey this works,
or that like they're talking about fertilizing oak trees. Well,
I remember buying a bag of fertilizer like that was
all my like all the money from a lawn job,
and I'm hiking this bag of fertilizer into the hunting
land that I just had permission on and fertilizing the
oak trees. And that was my game plan. I'm going
to make these delicious acorns and the hunting would be better.

(13:04):
So when I was young, I definitely fell for every
little gimmick or want to replicate what what the more
serious group was saying to do. So I try all
these things, and I literally tried everything known to man
that came out in the last thirty years until I
figured out, okay, maybe that's not the best route to go,

(13:26):
or actually figured out how to legitimately do it.

Speaker 3 (13:29):
Yeah, what what do you think right now today? Is
one of the biggest habitat misconceptions? Or I don't I
don't necessarily want to call it a fad, but what's
one of the biggest habitat misconceptions that you hear and
talk about with folks And you're like, man, I just
I don't quite think the the fruit is worth the
squeez or the juice not it is not worth the
squeeze on a project like fill in the blank.

Speaker 4 (13:55):
I think there's problems with every every food plot thing
or every habitat improvement because they're so there's just such
a variety of information on any given topic, Like like
one guy will be planning seedars because they want to
have thermal cover and they don't have seedars on their land,
and I think that's a great thing to do if
you do it correctly, And then there'll be another video

(14:15):
right after it or another podcast or somebody talking about
how they are eradicating all their seeds, like you don't
want seedars, it's bad for this bad habit at. All
these things, is there is there a solution probably in
the middle there. Yeah, there is, And I definitely think that.
You know, well, I went and planted seedars for in

(14:36):
this example, I planted seedars. I put a thousand per
acre in there, and I planted all seedar monoculture and
I spaced them really tight. Yeah, you're gonna have a
problem later. Or the guy that's like, I want no
seedars on my ground. Seaters are worthless. Seedars are junk,
And this is more Midwest. You know, you get up
north and you get back into pines, which could fill
the same the same discussion topic as cedars do here,

(14:59):
so I don't. So they burn every seed or they
mulch every seed, which I think is a big, big mistake.
Like I have a seater thinning project right now where
it's like one hundred acres of seeds that when I
bought this farm was a mess, and they're like, you know,
the government's like, you can doze all those up them
Like I'm not dozing them all lout. I'll fend them,

(15:20):
and I fend them. You know, iind ninety percent of them.
But now they're space properly and I can I can
put other trees in there. So but I'd say, you know,
juice not worth the squeeze. If a guy's starting out,
I probably wouldn't get heavy into tree planning. I think
that's that's kind of a progression down the road. Now.
At the same time, I would get to it as

(15:42):
quickly as you practically can, because a lot of times
that's a project people put off because it is a
project that's a down the road project, but they put
it off for so long that they just end up
not doing it where they could have had, you know whatever,
a handful of trees even just you know, do a
handful of trees every year. So other other like fads, misconceptions, uh,

(16:07):
you know out there. I mean, I would just say
there's a lot of information, and I would just make
it a general comment. There's a lot of information on
YouTube podcasts all over and just if you follow it enough,
you dig in enough, you'll find so many contradictory opinions.
One guy says, to eradicate these trees. One guy says,

(16:29):
ys like the other day, give you another quick example.
I'm going back to trees. But I posted I posted
a video on vaneer walnuts, and I know, just like clockwork,
that guys are gonna say walnuts have no white tail value,
get rid of them. And I knew that was coming.

(16:49):
But here's the thing. It's like, dude, anybody stand maybe
has two three four vneer walnuts perakre. Maybe a lot
of them don't have any. Yeah, And what I would
say to people who say, you know, walnut doesn't have
any deer value, does it? Actually does? It has an
ecosystem value where you know you have a higher I'm

(17:11):
gonna go into the weeds here, But it's ecosystem. Everything's related. Well,
you have more squirrels, well, more squirrels are gonna are
propagate more not transfers, and they're gonna they're gonna dig
up more acorns and transfer more acorns. With more walnuts,
you have more food for the squirrels and they're gonna
eat less aco All these weird dynamics like that. But

(17:31):
what I'll say to this when somebody says, I don't
want vineer walnuts, so I'm gonna cut them down. I'm
gonna cut down these thousands and thousands of thousands of
dollar trees. A farm that is managed for veneer walnuts
is having a lot of work done, it's opening a
lot of canopy up. They take such little space. And
I would say the farm that's managed exceptionally well, which

(17:52):
is which is very rare, but its managed exceptionally rare
or exceptionally well for veneer walnuts will have bigger deer
because they are going to have so much open area.
They're gonna have so much new regrowth and brows and
bedding and just thick covering these bottoms and bottoms periodically

(18:12):
or typically are very open. So most bottoms icy in
the Midwest are like you know, they're very open. You
can see hundreds of yards through them. And by going
and doing timber stand improvement to improve your veneer walnuts
or whatever else is in there, you're just you're going
to kill the eight to ten birds with one stone
doing timber stand improvement to you know, foster better veneer walnuts.

(18:35):
But you're also going to be able to have different
oaks in there and different regeneration. It's not necessarily all
about what the mast is falling from the trees either, right, Well,
they don't eat a walnut, Okay, Well, so do you
want all eight oaks because you know there's a lot
of ears where oaks don't put out acorns. It's not
about what the mast is coming down so much, and
that's a component, but it's more about what's growing on

(18:58):
the fourth floor. The regeneration. Maybe it's ok regeneration other
trees you like. Maybe it's you know, like box elder
and other things, or maple or elm or things that
the dear will brows when they're younger. So having an
open canopy is the bigger point to why a guy
would want to manage for veneer walllance to have all

(19:19):
that extra tonnage. And we're literally talking like if you
can visualize in your mind and Michigan, I remember seeing
this all the time, the maple stands and the open
forest there. When you're picturing an open forest, it's like
really shaded in. You're talking about zero to one hundred
two hundred pounds per acre of brows tonnage breaker. When

(19:41):
you open that canopy up to a substantial level, like hey,
I let a lot a lot of new sunlight in there,
a lot of new regrowth depending on what regrows you
can bring that to. You know, one thousand, two thousand
and three thousand pounds of natural browse breaker well across
the whole forest. That's significant. And when you don't have any,
those deer are not in good nutritional safe shape. That

(20:03):
is not an ideal near environment for nutrition for any deer.
And you know, to go back to the walnut example,
you know, picking on the walnuts, well they put out
a little bit of a toxinto the other trees and
so on. Most people are doing nothing. Okay, so ninety
nine percent of the forests out there that you look at,
nothing is being done. They're usually just canopied over. Guys

(20:25):
aren't debating whether to have walnuts, whether to have this,
they're just doing nothing. And those situations, if somebody is able,
have so many economic and nutritional values to improve your
timber at some level. And clearly we can go a
million different examples based on the region you're at. Well,
I'm in Michigan and I got these trees, or I'm

(20:46):
in a conifer region of the north. You know, there's
all but there's all sorts of different things you could do.
Probably the easiest way to start is to say, get
more sunlight to the foreslow.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
What about I'm in bush honeysuckle country, and there's other
people that are in the automolive country or insert whatever
aggressive invasive what's your strategy or thought process of you know,
someone hears that, like, all right, I'm gonna go open
up the force floor. I'm gonna open up the canopy
and the understory right now is a bunch of junk.

(21:30):
What's what's your process of prepping?

Speaker 4 (21:33):
I would I would get rid of the bush honeysuckle.
Now the other the other side of that coin, people
say you're removing the best cover, and I understand that.
So there's several practical approaches to to address that at
the same time. Now, I see bush honeysuckle very much
like I see cedar thickets or pine thickets that grow

(21:54):
so close together that deer can't utilize it. I see
that with bush honeysuckle, and it does get to that,
and that is a threshold where you're like, listen, it's
so choked out. The deer can't use it. There's no browse,
there's no food, there's just this nasty thicket that maybe
they can get around this area and that and that's
an extreme but I see it quite often and I would.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
Get rid of that.

Speaker 4 (22:15):
And one way to do it is to say, like, hey,
I own a fifty acre piece of woods. I don't
want to do it all in one year because I
don't want to remove all the cover. Okay, do ten
acres per year then, right. And here's the other thing.
When you're removing the bush honeysuckle the first time you
do it, it's that's the hard part. When there's regrowth
and new bush honeysuckle that comes in, that's just light

(22:37):
maintenance compared to the initial work. So when you remove
the bush honeysuckle, I would do timber stand improvement at
the same time. Maybe it's some hinge cutting, maybe it's
you know, just having the canopy open period and bush
honeysuckle is closing that canopy in a different way too.
So you can have a thick, nasty, ideal betting farm

(22:59):
with a lot of diversity without bush honeysuckle. And I
don't want it in my farm. And listen, I want
the thickest, nastiest stuff in certain places. I want remote
big buck cover, but I do not want bush honeysuckle
because I know what it does to everything else, and
I know it's going to impact their nutrition. It will

(23:19):
be a nice, thick mess for a certain period of time,
but that certain period of time usually expires, and then
you're really sacrificing your nutrition at a huge level by
having a shaded out, just bush honeysuckle, nasty mess on
your farm.

Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yeah. The reason I bring that up is sometimes in
a lot of conversations they just hear the TSI part
of it, and they're like, all right, we're gonna, We're gonna.

Speaker 4 (23:42):
So really, simply, anytime you disturb your woods, it is
the same thing as disturbing your soil. Hey, I went
out and you know when I started, I rote to
retill my garden. Now I don't rotory till anything. I
do everything, don't tell. But you go till up your garden,
I don't care if it's with a shovel, with a rake,
with the rotor etail. You're spinning all this stuff up

(24:03):
and all you're like, what in the world is all
this junk coming up? And every example is different. Your
forest is the same way when you allow sunlight in.
It's very much like if you were to go till
up a field. If you till up a field, you
will have more weeds, and you're gonna have all these surprises,
like what's that, what's that you're stirring up this huge
weed seed bank. A forest is no different than that.

(24:26):
So if I had a forest that you know, was
just full of bush honeysuckle berries, and I open that up,
you're gonna have regrowth. Now the key is there is
you can if you stay on it. It's not that
complex to just continually treat the new little plants. It's
actually quite easy. Like, hey, a day year. I took

(24:48):
a day year to keep up on the bush honeysuckle.
But there'll be other things too.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
With the backpack sprayer.

Speaker 4 (24:54):
Yeah, yeah, there's the main ways to do it. You
could do it with fire, you could do it with herbicides,
you could do it mechanically and anything habitat. Here's the
good part is I had to learn how to do
things on a budget of not five hundred dollars. I
had a rake, and I didn't even probably own that rake.
It was probably my parents. I had no money, so
I had to figure out how do I get these

(25:15):
sugar beets in the ground. I'll borrow, borrow mom and
Dad's rake, no fertilizer, and rake the leaves. And I
just wound up with some blisters and that's all cost me.
And then I look like an idiot to myself, and
I'm like, hey, this didn't work at all. So you
can do it with the most basic of tools. So
somebody says, you know timber stand improvement, Well I could

(25:35):
go do timber stand improvement with a hatchet and a
little squirt bottle, right. I could also co take my
multure out there, and I've got a like a veil
treesaw that rotates and it's got a herbicide button, I
could go do it with a Well it's a big difference,
big difference. So any problem generally can be accomplished with

(25:56):
like ten different tools or ten different ways of doing it. Know,
do you have to do everything no till? Do you
need a no til drill? Of course not, you don't.
There's ways around it, does it? You know? And you
got to think of the scale you're doing. Well, you know,
I'm working with a half acre. The guy working with
the half acres does not need a tractor in or
no tail drill. They just don't. But if a guy says,

(26:18):
you know, I've got ten food plots and I own
a thousand acres, you know whatever, something crazy, Yeah, you
might be thinking about that. And the guy with that
much more ground probably has the means to buy more
expensive equipment. So a million different ways to solve the
same problem.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
Which I want to dive into this because I think
TSI seasons starting to wrap up here with leaves coming out,
and I want you to say what you can and
can't do kind of from April to season when it
comes to the timber, because I know that's you're a
big proponent of fixing timber and what I mean by
that is basically a weeding it.

Speaker 4 (26:58):
Yeah, there's not one inch my farm. I don't want
to improve you know, fields, waterways, waterways. What a waterways
doing for deer? Well, actually you can do some things,
but I don't want erosion. Right, So every ounce of
my ground there's something that can be done, and there's
something that should be done. Now I will prioritize that.
And that's why I revert to forest. And you know,

(27:18):
food plots, cropland native grass stands, you know, those are
probably the big emphasis on improving them. And remind me
the question again, just so I have this.

Speaker 3 (27:31):
The seasonality of sas.

Speaker 4 (27:33):
Okay, so sorry, So right now the trees, the SAP
is starting to flow and basically your trees are coming
out of dormancy. Well, when your trees are dormant, you
can open wounds, you can cut limbs, you can do
all sorts of things. It's not going to hurt the trees.
It's a way for them. It's the time when you

(27:55):
do these things, when you start putting big wounds in trees,
when they're out of door dormancy. You know, now all
the all of a sudden, they'll get different funguses or
they'll get you know, different pressures where they can really
get sick. So it'd be like, you know, call it'd
be like if if you were to cut yourself and

(28:17):
it was just you know, dirty and unsterilized, you could
get infections. Right. Well, that's kind of versus like super
clean in a sterile environment and using all the you know,
antibiotic stuff like that. That's kind of the comparison with trees.
So right now they're coming out of dormancy. So like
oak blight, you don't want to get that, so you
don't want to you don't want to open up these
fresh wounds. Now. The way around that is to say, hey,

(28:41):
you know there is oak issues. Just understand oak trees.
You don't want to be putting injuries on them, or
any desirable trees that you're like, hey, I want to
promote this type of tree, just don't injure them, don't
cut them. Now. The way around that is to say, hey,
there's undesirable trees in my timber and I still want
to do a few things real quick, and you could
you could do this today, you could do this in
a month. Just find the undesirables, you know, It could

(29:04):
be hickory, it could be maybe it's cedars or pines
that you want to thin, stuff like that. Anything that's
a non desirable tree, you can cut that as long
as it's not you know, tipping into a desirable tree
causing wounds. That's as simply as I can put it.
So you know, I would probably wrap this up very quickly.

(29:24):
But you know, I'll buy a farm where I'm like, hey,
I bought this thing in June. Uh, you know, I
miss the window? Do I wait till next winter? I
don't I go in there and start cutting some inferior stuff,
and I just I'm just very careful about it. But
I want structure on the ground so that so I'm
breaking it up kind of like you know, saying there's
a big, wide open pond with nothing in it versus

(29:46):
a pond with rock piles and brush piles and trees. Well,
I want structure in my woods, So I'll go knock
some of that stuff down, create structure and thermal cover
stuff like that and the other thing it's doing. If
I buy it, say I did buy it, or may
now I have, you know, months of full sunlight coming
in there, and I'm gonna get forbes of memes, all
sorts of different things that are going to pop up.

(30:07):
Some of them good, most of them good, some of
them bad. But that's gonna be food, brows, more betting.
You know, visual barriers for you and the deer. You know,
my timber, you can't see a lot of it twenty
yards through it, where when I got it you could
probably see three hundred yards through things. It was wide open.
So just having timber that is full of structure, full

(30:32):
of visual barriers, full of thermal cover, full of brows,
full of more betting, those are all the benefits to
doing these things. But yes, I'd say just do it very,
very carefully, more with like a scalpel, now, very strategically,
and baby those trees that are you're desirable, so you
don't cause your self issues.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
Do you feel you have been on a bunch of
arms over the years. Do you feel that for most
guys that are just getting started and they're thinking of
wherever they hunt or have mission or the opportunity to improve.
Do you think that the timber, if there is timber
on it, one of the best starting points for most farms.
Is that safe to say?

Speaker 4 (31:12):
Is timber stand improvement being the lowest hanging fruit for
most farms, oh for sure, for sure. And you say
timberstand improvement, Well that's just an acronym, really, that is
just it's such a high level term timber stand improvement
that it could mean so many different things. It could mean,
you know, well, wait, so I could do timber stand
improvement on a pine or a cedar stand, but I

(31:35):
could also go do it on these beautiful oaks. Yeah,
you could do it on both, and they're both very,
very different. So it's a very broad term.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
But there's i.

Speaker 4 (31:43):
Would say ninety nine percent of cases there's some level
of timber stand improvement, So improving your timber, whether that's
thinning out you know, a certain stand. And I would
say this one's a real common one. Why see the
forest what it is is right, it's stocked correctly, No,
it's not. Ninety percent of the time is far over stock.

(32:05):
There's you know, ten trees in this spot where there
should be one, and a lot of times if you
want some openings, that means there's ten trees in this
spot and I bring it down to zero, you know,
and little pockets here and there. So most most timber
is overstocked. By definition, just because you look and see

(32:25):
what's there doesn't mean that's ideal, and the vast majority
of the time it's not. So it could be, you know,
it could be opening the canopy up. It could be
crop tree release, which is taking your best quality trees
and freeing them up. Now you can take that step
further and say, oh, I'm going to really free them
up and just start knocking back a lot of your junk,

(32:45):
which you know, one you're you are freeing your crop tree,
but you're also you know, allowing all that new sunlight,
new growth and new brows and more betting. So and
I'll find if I'm doing crop tree release to improve
my crop trees, I'll find areas where I'm like, hey,
there's no crop tree here, It's all a solid hickory stand,

(33:06):
and I might just nuke it, I mean, just wreck it.
And maybe you know, and if you have solid stands
like monoculture stands of junk, which do happen, you know, like, hey,
I just have one or two species of trees there.
You know, I can thin it back, I can pick
the best one and free it up. But I still
am stuck with this this blend of this handful of trees. Well,

(33:27):
then you can get into like interceding different things and
just you know, hey, there's no oaks on this on
this and I'd like oaks or or I'd like some
different softwoods, or I'd like shrubs. Well, you know, doing
timber stand and prove me you can do those both
at the same time. And then a lot of times
there's ways to combine those, like, well, now you get
tree tops on the ground, maybe I'll try and plant

(33:47):
some of these new trees in the treetops. So they're
kind of a natural deer caage. It's not perfect, but
it's it's a technique that does have its benefits.

Speaker 3 (33:56):
So you know, in a one acre hickory stand, let's
say there's create hackberry and some black locusts. Let's say,
and that's the general gist in this one acre plot.
You you basically start over, how do you know or
how do you encourage positive regrowth? And maybe you would

(34:16):
like to see a variety of different oaks in there.
I assume have you ever just thrown out, you know,
buy a bag of acorns and put them in piles
and say, get to work squirrels, or I mean, like, what,
what are some some things that people could do?

Speaker 4 (34:27):
Okay, so like something like a black locust, you're gonna
want to treat that and kill it so it doesn't
come back. That's key. So you might cut it down
and be like, hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna start over.
If you didn't kill that, you're not starting out. You're
creating a jungle. So yeah, you could, you could intercede things.
Like what the approach I would take if I'm going

(34:48):
to interceed acorns is to overload the squirrels because they'll
dig them back up, but then they'll replant them. Two
overload them. And what I do is just find like
any park in most states will have a diversity of
oak trees, and a lot of times they're on like
paved roads. Well I just go like sweep them up

(35:09):
and fill like barrels with them. And you know, I
filled truckloads with these things and didn't take that much time.
And this is when I was younger and I had
more energy. And then you could intercede them, you could
scatter them, and then it's just a numbers game. Is
your success rate going to be real high? Depends depends
how you do it depends how far you go with it.
If you were to like direct seat each one of

(35:31):
them and put them down in there and put them
in like sheltered areas, you actually probably have a pretty
good success rate. And I would do that. Like here's
how I think about it. Like I go anything the
government's involved in, Like look along your highway, and a
lot of times there's really desirable shrubs in there, like
like high bush, cran barrier like whatever.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
I mean, there's a bunch of dogwood on the Wisconsin Highway.

Speaker 4 (35:54):
Yes, I mean you could grab all that, grab seeds,
spend to pull over, hopefully you don't get trouble with
the police, and uh, you know, pull over and go
fill bags up with dogwood seeds and so on. I mean,
you know, silly ideas like that. I've done all that
stuff and it does work, So you could do that now.

(36:15):
It's probably slightly more practical if you're talking about a
small scale though, like hey, I'm working on five acres,
two acres, one acre, then I probably would just say
go less and buy like barroot seedlings and just protect them.
Just put put a tube with a really good steak.
Probably in both sides. I use the tea posts because
I just pulled tea posts around my farm. Somebody go, oh,

(36:38):
that's more money and more work, and they're free because
they pull them. But then your success rate it's way
up with the tea post in you know, tube them
or cagem for example. Because the biggest failure on trees
is just I'm just gonna throw a bunch of stuff
at it and hopefully if you survive, and that's just
not a good tactic. It's just not so have some

(37:00):
strategy behind it, and I would just say plant less
of them and get a higher success rate versus doing
a lot of work and just hoping a few things
stick without really thinking it through. So less is more
for sure with tree plannings. But yes, when you're doing
timber stand improvement, there is a lot of times where

(37:21):
you're dealing with a handful of species of trees and
you can do as much as you can to open
that canopy and try and encourage other things to grow there,
but there is a point where you need to change
the composition of that forest through either plant direct planning
or you know, nuts berries, And I do a major

(37:41):
diversity on what you added to that too.

Speaker 3 (37:46):
What are some good sources for someone that needs to
find what are good species depending on what part of
the country they're in and where to source them. Like
I know, Illinois has a tree sale, Iowa has a
tree sale, Missouri has a tree sale.

Speaker 4 (37:59):
I always would start there. I'd always start with your
state nurseries because it's native trees. They're generally going to
be the lowest price. And every every nursery could have
complaints like and you know, every nursery still employs people
by the hour that make mistakes. So somebody's like, well
I got this batch and it was no good. Yeah,

(38:21):
it happens. You know, you've got an employee that maybe
let it sit in the sun. But that's not a
reflection necessarily on the nurseries. Just stuff like that happens,
and it's happened to me with private nurseries and the
state ones. But you say, well, the state's a little
bit bland. They don't have, you know, the cool stuff. Well,
a lot of times they do, because you know, they'll

(38:43):
have so many diverse choices on like oaks and shrubs,
and I'll guarantee you you're messing a pile of those
a pile and they're very very good. So find the
native things that your state nursery sells the natives and
buy the things you don't have, or the things that
are you know, desirable to your farm. And maybe you say,

(39:03):
you know, my farm's just got bur oak. Okay, go
buy pinoak and swamp oak and maybe even some white oak.
Well white oak aren't going to have acorns for all
these years there. It's actually faster than you think. If
you don't have red oak, plant some red oak and
understand the sites they grow on. But I would add
all those things. But if your farm is and this

(39:25):
is one maybe a little bit contrary to what some
forsters would recommend. But but if my farm is full
of burroaks, I'm probably not going to go out and
plant a pile more bur oaks. And somebody say, but
but that means they grow real well on your site. Yeah.
I still like having diversity too, and I want to
I want to add some different things that will grow
ideally on those soils. But and you can start adding

(39:49):
some staples that like, Okay, the state nursery is not
carrying Chinese chestnuts or Chinese chestnuts going to be invasive. No,
they're not they're not. Somebody might disagree with me on this,
but they're not. You could add those, you could add
American person and they do just fine. In most zones
you start getting way too north. Maybe not. I would
probably add like crab apple, and I would add I

(40:12):
like growing things from seed, too, So I have my
little nursery in the backyard or nothing.

Speaker 3 (40:18):
Really, I guess you get the little nursery and then
you have the cher too.

Speaker 4 (40:21):
But both of them are of scene for the location.
So my house in a subdivision, I look like a
hillbilly because I have this big cage train dustry to
keep the squirrels out. Really, and I'll grow like chestnut
and hazel nut and per simon and dwarf chinkapin oak
and chinkapin oak and these hybrid oaks that I found

(40:41):
that's a mix of probably three different types of oaks,
all these weird things. And then I'll actually grow pair
from seed, and well, I don't quite know what I'm getting.
That's fine. That part doesn't bother me. I like dis
messing around with it. And so that's in like town
kind of. Then you come to my farm and you're like,
oh my gosh, you way overdid your tree nurseries and

(41:04):
your orchards all over the farm, and yeah, I overdid it.
Just do way way less than what I do, which
most people won't know what I do, but it's too much.
Just do start low, like, hey, I want two hundred trees,
start with like twenty, then I want two thousands, start
start with one hundred.

Speaker 3 (41:21):
Just because it's so important to treat those twenty like babies. Yes,
and two thousand, no tube, no prep, no nothing, because
you probably won't even end up with twenty trees.

Speaker 4 (41:31):
Yes, yes, And you know we're digging into the tree
stuff and you know it's definitely a huge component, no
doubt about it. And I would say, you know, managing forest,
your forest is going to be your number one. Planting
trees and stuff like that is generally down the list
of importance, and the bank for the buck is just

(41:53):
it's a delayed gratification. And you know, but the four
just your forest can have so many instant benefits where
you know, if I go plant a paratree, which I will,
I'll go plant a paratree, Well that might be five
years before it's been now a good amount of fruit. Well,
when I go and do timber stand improvement. That's instantaneous

(42:13):
benefits like the next day, and then throughout that whole
growing season there's just astronomical benefits, nutrition being a huge
one of those. It's not like I said, it's not like,
well I want more acorns on which I do. I do,
but that's not the main reason. You know, the TSI
kills eight ten birds with one stone. It's just phenomenal.
Now you know the food plots is and what I

(42:36):
plan now I farm, so I have to get down
that whole can of worms too, and you know my
brain goes just as deep on those things as well.

Speaker 3 (42:45):
Yeah, which I do want to talk about food plot.
One thing I want to ask is, obviously you've done
just a ton of projects and your main farm there

(43:06):
you've had for over a decade. What beyond the deer
have you noticed on your farm? Do you see all
different types of birds, wildlife, birds, butterflies, bees across the
board from all these different things. Cause if you take
a cruise around anywhere in the Midwest, a lot of
pasture by overpastured ground. There's a lot of forests that

(43:30):
have not been improved over the time, and so like
yours is a playground. What have you noticed beyond just
more deer and more mature bucks.

Speaker 4 (43:40):
The whole ecosystem flourishes when you do things correctly. So
like I'm in deer country, and I'll tell people that
if I wanted to go out and shoot my limit
of pheasants in thirty minutes, it'd be no problem. Like what,
I don't have pheasants around here. I have billions of pheasants,
I have tons of quail. I've got all sorts of diversities.

(44:02):
My turkey numbers are through the roof. And then you go, well,
you know, is that just from your habitat? No? No,
because people in there there's the question. People will hit
me with it. But I have really good habitat too,
and I don't have that many turkeys, and I don't
have many pheasants. How many coons are you getting rid of? Well,
we haven't. We haven't trapped coons for a decade. Yeah,

(44:25):
you have thousands of raccoons out there now, like I'll
trap You know, we counted before, I mean I was,
I was trapping like six hundred raccoons in one year.
The times we counted six hundred draccoons. So you say, well,
that's a lot of time. Well, just take a a
dog proof trap and put a couple of them at
all your gate entrances. And when you're at the farm,

(44:47):
film with cat food or peanut cat food and peanut
butter or corn or fish or whatever you like, marshmallows.
Just fill them up. Takes two seconds. And here in
Iowa we got to legalized where we can trapped coons
you round, because they're at epidemic levels. I mean, they're
doing massive crop damage. And here's the thing is when

(45:08):
you go take six hundred raccoons off the landscape, these
things that are just walking around every day just sniffing
out nests. It's why when I was doing my chores
or doing farm work, I would find and I'm out
here every day, I'd find all the nests ripped apart
by coons almost always. So it's like, is that really
that big of a surprise that turkey numbers are down?

(45:28):
When you have fifty gazillion raccoons and possums and skunks around,
it's not a surprise to me. And then somebody says,
so you're loaded with pheasants and quail and all these
other things, and you don't see ness get torn apart hardly. Ever, No,
I don't. I'm loaded up with them. And you know,
and I don't disagree with some of the theories on

(45:48):
like you know, like bird flu impacting turkey populations, or
the seed treatments or the sprays. I mean, some of
the insecticides very concerning on like turkey populations. But at
the same time, in every direction from my farm, they're
putting the nastiest stuff on seeds known to man. In
my turkey population, I'm like, I need to thin them.

(46:11):
There's millions of them. So I do think there's some
detriments to some of the you know, insecticides and fungicides
and stuff we're applying to our crops, and I would
love to see a lot less of it, absolutely, But
you know, is that the reason that turkey populations are decimated?
I don't necessarily buy it, because I've got an extreme

(46:33):
example where I just took out the nest predators and
there's gazillions of turkeys with the same dynamics as everybody
else who's suffering. And I would say the worst turkey
populations I've ever seen, where I've seen them tank is
when I go down to Kansas and that's just, you know,
my firm belief there is everybody's just gotten, you know.

(46:54):
And I hunt there every year and I love Kansas.
But I'm just gonna say it, like guys have gotten
so lazy with I'm just gonna throw a corn piles.
So they don't do habitat improvement. Yeah, there's They hardly
do food plots. The amount of foot bluff timber stand
improvement in Kansas when you ask people, are you doing
timber stand improvement, it's a tiny fraction of what it
has done in Iowa. And I'm back and forth all

(47:16):
the time. Nobody does it because like, man, I just
do a corn pile. And then you look at their photos.
Look at this deer. I don't look at the deer.
I go, dude, you got fifty raccoons in that photo
with the deer. Don't you do anything? Nah? Man, you know,
like I don't want to mess with it. I just
do corn piles. And they get lazy. Yeah, and the

(47:37):
habitat and the ecosystem suffers, so you know, and then
they can't figure out whether there's no turkeys. There's my
point is I went there twenty years ago.

Speaker 3 (47:47):
This is fact.

Speaker 4 (47:48):
I went there twenty and twenty five years ago to Kansas,
and you would see hundreds of turkeys. Just like Iowa,
you would see very few bait piles. I never I
don't think I ever saw a bait pile when I
start going there, and I was all over the place.
If they were there, they were extremely rare. Now they're
littered across the landscape, like distasteful in my mind, They're everywhere,

(48:12):
and you go, what happened to all the turkeys? They're gone?
I mean there's a few, but it's nothing like it
used to be. Well, you've kind of supplemented this raccoon population,
plus nobody's trapping them, plus you're throwing out massive corn,
plus you don't want to take the time to deal
with it. And now you guys have probably double triple quadruples,

(48:36):
I mean some staggering figure of raccoons that are raiding
the nests every year. It's like, how can a turkey
have have a nest out there? I don't even hardly
get it how it's even possible. So you know, that's
when you start impacting the whole ecosystem by making certain
choices that ripple the different animals. And this is coming
from a guy who doesn't turkey hot, and I'm not

(48:58):
going to go shoot a pheasant off my phone. I'll
go up to northern Iowa where it doesn't mess up
my deer hunting, and then I'll hunt. But I'm not
going to turkey hunt. My guess. Well, so I like
there to be turkeys, I like there to be quail.
But I like the ecosystem. Those are indicator species. They're
indicators of health, and just like the bees and the
butterflies and all these things, you know, I like having

(49:19):
them around, and I think it's indicative of a better
quality environment and a healthier ecosystem and things. Things are
far more linked together than anybody would realize. Like, you know,
I want I just want big deer. Okay, Well you
know coyotes. How many coyotes do you have? That's that's
a big component of it. It's a huge component of it.

(49:40):
You know, all these things are just interlinked. So you know,
if I go to a farm that has in general
just lots of brows, lots of good nutritious food, whether
it's plots or forest, along with robust habitat, and then
people are taking out, you know, the highly populated things

(50:01):
that are that are rippling through the ecosystem that maybe
aren't natural, like yeah, not trapping raccoons for ten years.
Maybe they are at you know, too high of a
level that isn't sustainable, and you balance that out. And
let's let's just face it, any big game, small game, really,
any animal in the Midwest is going to be managed
by humans, good or bad. So we just have to

(50:23):
figure out do we want to do the good things
for them? Do we want to try and balance them
ourselves and take the time to do it, and and
does it work? Absolutely, it works. It makes a huge
difference on the health of this or you know, the
balance here. Man's intervention is key here. It just is.
So a lot of people don't want to do that,

(50:43):
and that's okay if you don't, but just understand it's
going to have consequences. And like, hey, I have a
you know, huge ranch here and nobody is allowed to
shoot a coyote ever and nobody's trapped for decades. You're
gonna have detriment because of that. It's going to cause
you major problems. So all these things are just interlinked
and intertwined.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
That's a really good point because I think we all
get stuck on the fun stuff, unless you like trapping raccoons.
I mean, most people look at it as a chore,
right mostly it is kinda it can be fun. It's
kind of rewarding though, absolutely, But I think for most
people are like, yeah, I'm not gonna do that.

Speaker 4 (51:21):
So here's and I hear that all the time, so
and I just tell them, I'm like, dude, just get
a couple of coon traps at every gate. Maybe it's
five of them, and they're around. Sometimes you'll have all
five filled and just put them and you know you're
gonna do your chores, and when you're there, set them
for the night and then dump them all it takes you.
And once they're set in the ground, you know you

(51:42):
could leave them there get a little rusty. But we're
talking a matter of a few minutes. And that's with
anything though, that's with anything, if you want it to
be better. There's the people that are like, I'll take
the few minutes to do this and their farm is
better off for it. Then there's the guys like I
don't have time and I can't and I don't want to,
and okay, I mean that's human nature on anything. Anything.

(52:04):
That's why you know the habitat on most farms is
far from ideal. Yeah, keep going with this. It's why
most of society is overweight. Do you not know how
to stay in shape? Do you not know that if
you eat healthy and go to the gym and being great?
Well I do, but I did don't want to do it,
So I don't want to do it human nature, Yeah,
it is one hundred percent. I want to weave back

(52:26):
into the food plots you mentioned. For most people, they
probably don't.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
Need a drill if they plant an acre food plot
half acre food plot. So how from a habitat and
conservation minded approach, how do you plant a half acre
food plot? In your mind? And let's get more specific too,
whether it's a clover or a fall blend of greens,
What's what's your approach?

Speaker 4 (52:53):
So you know, everything truly does have its pluses and minuses.
So somebody might say I don't like herbicides. Well, if
you tell the soil, don't think there's not environmental impacts
from that, right, and soil loss and huge detriment. Now

(53:13):
am I a proponent of herbicides? I guess I would
be kind of in the middle where it's like, I
don't want to be constantly exposed to herbicides. I don't
want them drenching on everything all the time. But used,
you know, so I just try and minimize their use.
And if a guy has like half an acre, you
could and you'd say, well, what what's practical without you know,

(53:37):
tillege equipment or a drill or whatever. Clovers fit right
into that and that's easy. So a half acre you
literally could go out and frost seed that. You could
still probably do it now there's still frosts that's coming
in a lot of the forecast, which just sucks that
seed right up to the soil. It just just hold
it there perfect. So that's a great time to do it.

(53:59):
So you spread the clover. And even if you're like,
but right now, I just got this grass patch, Okay,
take your backpack sprayer, then fill it with clethenhum and
crop oil and just go over it with the backpack.
But that's that took me thirty minutes an hour. Okay, fine,
bring an extra few jugs to fill it up and
just sit there and spray that grass with clethenum and

(54:20):
crop oil when it comes up later, and you could
have a clover plot, and you know, you could take
that a step further and be like, you know, I'm
generally in a area with low pH soils. So you
take your same backpack sprayer spreader and you put pelotize
line in there, and then you put a bag of
P and K in there and you spread that. Oh

(54:42):
that took me fifteen minutes minutes on each of those.
I mean, this is very minimal stuff, very very easy.
Even if you're like, hey, oh yeah, I mean to
put to do one hundred pounds of poetize line, for example,
which is all right on a half acre clover one,
it will make a difference absolutely. And two, I mean

(55:04):
that might take twenty five minutes. For example. Usually you're
getting frustrated if you're by yourself because you're trying to
hold the bag open if you have a bag as
opposed to like something for and then it's spilling over,
and then you're getting ticked off, like, I get that's
still this day, I'll spill seed or whatever, and I
get mad.

Speaker 3 (55:24):
I just got that. I got that, I got the
bucket Earthway spread Yeah that year, just because I got
so sick of spilling stuff. I'm pretty clumsy.

Speaker 4 (55:32):
Those are definitely nicer. And I ordered one of those
the other day and they sent me so I heard
the Earthway and they sent me a different brand, Chapping
or something, and I went to spin it and it
was so hard. I'm like, man, I'm not in bad
shape at all. I'm in very good shape. But I'm like,
after sixty seconds, this thing is so hard to turn.

(55:53):
So I sent it back. But I'll probably get that
that Earthway one if they can get it right. But yeah,
you know, a bag spreader can do a lot of stuff.
And you know, clover, for example, would be a staple
for nutrition, not just shooting, and we can dig into
that a little bit deeper. But like, I don't look

(56:15):
at food plots or crops or or even the stuff
I was talking about with timber stanmprovement is like, well,
I'm going to have this opening here or this food
plot here so I can just kill a deer. That's
not why I do it. It's some of the reason.
And I would say most people's reason for planning food
plot is like that's where I'm going to shoot a deer.
I don't think along those terms, and I'm not saying

(56:37):
others should think the way I do, not necessarily, but
a big component of what I'm thinking about is optimal
nutrition across my whole farm, across my food plots, across
my timber. Optimal nutrition year round is what I want.
And clover is a great staple to offer that, and
clover can do both. Clover can be a component of

(56:58):
optimal nutrition. And I would say clover has to be
a component every single person's farm period, and a story
has to for nutritional reasons. From right now, look at
the clover right now. Those deer, especially the bucks that
are like run it out, they're just picking at every
little green thing that pops up, and it's green, and
it's popping up right now where You're like, is there

(57:20):
any soybeans right now? No, We're a long ways from that.
So clover is replenishing these deer skeletal structures, replenishing their
bodies and giving them high rates of protein actually along
with other nutrients. So clover will be desired really even
in the winter when there's snow, they'll pull at it,
eat it all the way to Yeah, I hunt over

(57:43):
it in the fall, and I mean it's almost a
year round food source.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
It really is.

Speaker 4 (57:48):
It's almost a year round food source, so clover has
to be a component.

Speaker 3 (57:52):
So would you say, would you say clover is the
most attractive for the most amount of time out of
any food source.

Speaker 4 (57:58):
One hundred person. It's definitely more attractive. It has more
benefits than alfalfa. And I have alfalfa fields. I love alfalfa,
and alfalfa is more like, I gotta have alfalfa fields
because that's cool. It's different, it's next level, and it
is it's harder to get established, it's plusier.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
Do you like it?

Speaker 4 (58:17):
You can bail it, But clover versus alfalfa, I'll take
clover every time, and all of my alfalfa fields where
I bail them, or I put a grazing type alfalfa
with a very leafy type of alfalfa, I'll still have like,
hey man, that's a ten acre alfalfa field you have
there that you bail, and one acre of it is clovers.

(58:39):
And I can sit there and watch the alfalfa field
and be like, I know when they're in the alfalfa
when they prefer that, and when they're in the clover
room when they prefer that. And I would say, just
to make a long story short, if you want to
do alfalfa, that's fine, and there's a place for it,
and it has its benefits, some of the benefits over clovers.
But overall, if you weigh the two alclover is going
to be better. They're just going to be more desired

(59:02):
and used far longer into the season. And that's my
experience over and over and over, year after year after
year watching these fields with alfalfa and clover in them.
So just to wrap a quick bow on it, establishing
clover for anybody, even me, dummy me that planted sugar
beets with a rake in the forest at fourteen and

(59:25):
used my mom's rake just to recap. I could go
get clover done. That fourteen year old could get clover done.
And literally a bag spreader or any kind of a
spreader and probably a backpack sprayer with cleft them and
crop oil maybe butterac. If you get different weeds in there,

(59:45):
broad leaf weeds, and if you could clip it, you
know I would, Yeah, there we go. I got my
grandparents old lawnmower. When they upgrade their lawnmower, they gave
me their lawn boy, and I would do my food,
you know, I'd mow my clover with that. Not not ideal,
but you know, if you could clip it. Well, here's

(01:00:07):
the other one I did too. I'd use a weed
whipper forever, took forever, but again another tool that's cheap
that everybody has to solve the same problem. So maybe
you clip it once, especially the first year. I probably
would clip it because you're gonna get weeds in there.
But yeah, you could frost. See that. Now, if a
guy wanted to go drill it and wait and add oats,

(01:00:29):
or I want to do this or smooth out soil
a little bit and lightly disc it and cold to packet,
that's great too. It's great have a little more weeds
to deal with. But if you can do that, then
you can probably clip it. And you can probably split
spray with cleft and crop oil and butter act two
four d B not two four D but two four
d B. And if you read the alfalfah read the

(01:00:52):
label on alfalfa, you can tank mix those two. And
I tank mix those two. I guess it's that's technically
for alfalfa, but I did tank makes it. Maybe it
somehow cross that line and got into my clovers and
it turned out fantastic. Takes care of every weed. I
don't I don't need round up ready alf alpha. You

(01:01:13):
can use clothing them, crop oil, and butterac and it
really should cover about everything other than maybe sedge, which
you can use sed shamber.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
So there you go.

Speaker 4 (01:01:21):
Anybody can do this super simple now, really quickly. To
answer your other question, though, what if I want to
do greens, Well, greens are going to be this like
like brassicas or rhymex. You could do the same thing.
It's going to be a little bit a little bit
trickier because you're not dealing with like frost suck in
the seed close to soil. But you could spray it,

(01:01:42):
kill it off. You could maybe lightly scratch it and
broadcast brassicas into there radish turn ups and you know
you got one component there. If you do want to
add nitrogen, you either have to time the nitrogen application
right for a rain, which most people know, but I'll
still mention it, or you just get agurtain and treat

(01:02:06):
your urea so it doesn't evaporate, and then you can
just go right over the top in your bag spreader
again with treated urea and that won't evaporate. So and
literally a guy could be like, man, I got to
go to the co op to get treated. Youuia, you could.
You can buy a jug of this, put it in
your backpack sprayer and put a tarp out with your
urea and spray your urea with this stuff and then

(01:02:29):
it doesn't evaporate and it's worth taking the time to
do that versus being like, yeah, I put urea out
and didn't rain for the rink and it was ninety
degrees and it's all gone. You know, don't do that
or you know, well I'll just disc it all in.
How much time does that take?

Speaker 3 (01:02:45):
A lot?

Speaker 4 (01:02:46):
What does it do to your soil? It's not great.
So doing treated aureas has huge benefits and a little
bit of time to treat some with a backpack sprayer
with agurtain and a little bit of cost. Well a
jug costs me a couple of undred bucks. It' last
a long time, super super effective. So again, bag spreader,

(01:03:07):
backpack sprayer, kill off gly, kill off whatever is there,
heavy gly maybe ammonium sulfate with it, maybe two four
D if you've got some really nasty stuff, and just
make sure it is dead and then maybe scratch it
and intercede it. And you can do a lot of
things like that. You can do rye like that, you

(01:03:28):
can do clovers like that in the fall, like late summer.
You could do breasts because like that, he's not so much. Oh,
it's not so much. They're a little fussier, but like
rye win or wheat we'll do. Okay, there's a lot
of things you can do.

Speaker 3 (01:03:42):
That. One thing I want to bring up to and
you've touched on this with nighte Gen and basically MPK,
how important in terms of conservation and for the nutrition
of all animals eating out of these plots is soil

(01:04:04):
health because I think a lot of people want just
the simple aesthetics of a good looking food plot, but
the soil health. What is your opinion on it? And
I and that's a that topic has a lot more
buzz than probably three years ago in my opinion, but
I think it's important to bring up and get your perspective.

Speaker 4 (01:04:22):
There's a lot of there's a lot that's missed with
soil health. So people are like, you know, the general
ones like being kay, that's soil health, right, No, No,
that's a component of it. But your organic matter will
probably be your number one component. Well, that's not what
he's asking kind of is you know, if your organic
matter is five versus two, it's a huge difference on

(01:04:45):
your nutrition, on the success of your plot. What's going
to grow there, what's going to be able to be utilized,
all the all the nutrients that are going to be
able to be utilized by the plants with your organic
matter and surviving a drought, Well, how do I improve
that organic matter? Well, plant high biomass crops or plots
high biomass. Don't till I add, like compost a grade

(01:05:11):
of food matter. That's how I fertilize or cattle manure.
People aren't going to do that, they're just not so
high biomass. Things like rye corn sorghums, milos with probably
some legumes blended in there for nitrogen will be a
great way to build your soil. Don't tear it up.
And you know your pH will probably be next, because

(01:05:34):
you know, if you say, I keep hearing P and
K fosterous and potassium, but your pH is wrong one,
you're all the calcium that critters need will not be there,
and then everything that the plant needs to grow PK
and then a whole nother list which I'm going to
get into and address this, because this is missed all
the time. Those plants can't uptake that. So pH would

(01:05:57):
be like next, with organic matter next in importance. So
getting your pH right, you know, six five to seven
is ideal. In some areas, it's like, well my pH
is eight, I'm in this you know, uh spot where
the soils. The other way, well, you'd have to add
a lot of sulfur to deal with that, right, which is.

Speaker 3 (01:06:19):
Probably a lot more rare.

Speaker 4 (01:06:21):
It's it's more rare. But in Iowa there's a line.
If you get into northwest Iowa, you start getting into
higher phs. So guys will use more sulfur, and once
in a while they use gypsum, which is fairly neutral.
It's got calcium and sulfur. But you do got to
address it in the same for the same reason. So,
and if your pH is like six or five. If

(01:06:43):
it's five, you got big issues. You know, stuff isn't
really going to want to grow there and it's not
going to take up the nutrition that it should without
the proper pH. So and what you would notice if
you ate two plants, like you had a garden with
the proper pH, and you had a garden with the
wrong pH, one would taste very bland. You'd be like,

(01:07:05):
and you'll notice this at the store. If you buy
like cheap produce that's grown in like Central America and
junk soils and they're just putting the basics on it,
it will taste bland. Like an apple. Go eat an
apple from the store that's from Central America, and then
go eat an apple that's grown in the Midwest. Your brain
will instantly know it. One is packed with nutrients, one
is bland. Well, that's what would happen with a garden.

(01:07:25):
If you put two gardens next to each other. One's
pH is correct, one has the proper calcium levels and
all the other nutrients to which are critical, and one
the pH was wrong. One one would have smaller plants,
less healthy plants, but they would taste bland. The one
with the proper pH would be flavorful, and it would
your brain would would recognize this, and it would crave

(01:07:48):
without you even knowing, it would crave the proper pH.
Garden with packed with nutrition. So when your pH is correct,
now your plants can uptake all the other things and
It's not just P and K. I cannot emphasize this enough.
It is not just P and K. I mean, granted,
you have nitrogen, which is the other huge component, which

(01:08:09):
is a different subject. I'm going to leave nitrogen out though.
But like our sulfur deficiencies are very rare, are very
common across the Midwest. Okay, so almost everybody listening to this,
I will guarantee you if you pull a soil sample,
and you should pull a soil sample, absolutely you're going
to be fifteen to twenty pounds deficient on sulfur. I
almost guarantee it. I guarantee you you will be low

(01:08:32):
on boron. Ninety percent of the people listening to this
will be low on bora. You will be probably low
on manganese. You will probably be low on zinc. You
will probably be low on copper. You will probably be
high in magnesium. And you probably have people, if I
say a strong majority, will be high and iron. Thus,

(01:08:52):
I need to figure out how to supplement boron manganese, copper, zinc.
What the heck? This guy's a chemistry teacher, boring me
out of my mind? How do I fix this? Just
understand that a co op and a lot of the
different folio sprays you can get. You can. There's ways
to fix this and most of the co ops now
because there's such a Midwest problem with all these deficiencies,

(01:09:15):
offer most of these things. They're for sure your co
op for sure, if they're any bit decent, is going
to be able to get or have sulfur on hand.
Solfur is the biggest efficiency problem. We have a crowd
some Midwest that people pay attention to. Now you can.
You could get online and say, hey, I'm going to
order some boron, I'm going to order some zinc.

Speaker 3 (01:09:35):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:09:35):
But but what you need to do really so so
I don't confuse people and make this sound like a
chemistry discussion, is just go get your soil samples.

Speaker 3 (01:09:46):
Do it.

Speaker 4 (01:09:46):
Just get a probe any way to get a soil
column that's six inches deep. They get you a good
representation from the top to down six inches doesn't need
to be perfect. Send it in and get the full analysis.
So all your macros and all your micros, and with
that it will tell you on every sample you know,
one A, one B, one B C. You're gonna label

(01:10:09):
them all different around your field. There'll be different results.
It's gonna tell you what your organic matter is, which
is a big deal. That's the first thing you want
to look at. It's gonna tell you what your pH is.
The second thing you're gonna look at. It's gonna tell
you what all your macros and your micros are. That's
the third thing you're gonna want to look at. If
you're a nerd like me, you're gonna start looking at
your exchange ratios and your buffer index and all this

(01:10:31):
stuff to worry about that. Don't worry about that. That
will be region based like sandy soils stuff like that.
But pH, organic matter, macros, and micros. Test for all
those and address all of those is the work you
can do.

Speaker 3 (01:10:48):
It Is it worth doing that on a half acre
FOD plot? Because I guarantee someone listening right now is thinking, man,
it's only a half acre food plot. Is it really
worth all that effort? You know, the twelve or twenty
dollars soil sample and then going and getting whatever it is,
two hundred pounds of product from the co op. Is
it worth it?

Speaker 4 (01:11:06):
So put put it in context, then you know half
acre you're you know, if I added all the high
level if I'm really deficient on all these things. Yeah,
you have to.

Speaker 3 (01:11:17):
You have to.

Speaker 4 (01:11:18):
I mean, you'll grow a mediocre plot at best. But
if you're really deficient, even on a half acre, you know,
you'll see a huge difference with the results, like the
amount of tonnage it will produce. The desirability to the deer.
If you are very deficient versus deficient versus like, hey,
I fix this will be vastly different. So you know

(01:11:40):
we're talking about you know, in a half acre, I
mean the most the worst soils. I could think of
a few hunds. Yeah, you know, I had to add this,
and I had to do this, and I had to
do this a few hundred bucks to make your plot
far more desirable. I think it's worth it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:59):
Well, that's and I think you would say all I
have is a half acre, So you would want to
make that half acre as great as possible.

Speaker 4 (01:12:06):
Yeah, I would. It'd be like seeing, I'm going to
take the time to carve out a little garden in
my backyard for my family. Are you gonna pull the weeds?
Are you gonna you know, are you gonna take care
of that? Are you gonna skimp on everything? You know?
Then just don't plan it, right, I mean, if you're

(01:12:27):
not gonna do anything. These are basic things. Though it's
not that complex, it might be the first Here's the
most complex part of it is doing it for the
first time. Well, I don't know how to do a
soil test, and that was hard to figure out which
one to ask for. I went to Midwest Labs and
I realized it was SC three was the code I
needed to submit, and it was a little bit hard

(01:12:49):
for me to get through the website. Well, just call
them up and say what soil sample do I need?
How do I send this in? And you spend twenty
dollars and a half acre plot maybe forty because you
pull two samples, and then you been two hundred bucks
correcting the worst parts of your plot. Well, you don't
ever really have to go to that extent ever again,
and next time you do, now you know how to

(01:13:10):
do it, so it's easy. Just doing it the first
time is the hardest part period.

Speaker 3 (01:13:14):
Which would probably be all of these projects we talked about. Yes,
it's the learning curve of doing it, and I think
that Skip, can you give everyone permission right now to
not do every project perfect?

Speaker 4 (01:13:27):
I've done every project, the wrong way, the sideways way,
just I've made every mistake. But I also had to
go from no knowledge, no tools, to hey, I got
a riding lawn. More to hey, I got a four
wheeler with a carrow. And then all of a sudden,
I got a small tractor. Then I have a medium

(01:13:47):
sized tractor. Now have a big tractor with auto steer
and precision planning and you know variable rate spreading on fertilizer.
And you know, so in every step throughout that process
of trying to accomplish the same goals at different scales,
and made huge mistakes. I planned when it was muddy,

(01:14:08):
don't play in the mud. Why because it will be
a compacted mess. Play in the mud. Your crops will
be a dud plant the dust, your grain bins will bust.
Whatever the saying is silly things like that. I had
to learn every single one of these things the hard way,
all of them, because nobody was there to teach me
these things. And now you do have some things that

(01:14:32):
I didn't. I was maybe too stupid to utilize or
they didn't exist, which is you know, all the the
information online and you know that's when I got involved
in like iowaytail. I'm like, oh, here's all the solutions,
all these things, and you know, spending a year on
that website, I'm like, oh my gosh, I did a
lot of dumb stuff. Uh, and that fixed a lot

(01:14:53):
of my issues right there. And now you you know,
there's websites, there's content like this. There's all sorts of
sources for people who are seeking wisdom or seeking solutions,
or seeking to eliminate mistakes and do things more efficiently.
I mean, there's plenty of information. I would say, it's
almost like the opposite now where it's like there's too

(01:15:15):
much information. Yeah, so you're trying to sort through what's
the garbage, what's the garbage, and what's great? And there
is a lot of garbage out there. That's the only
discouraging thing I would say to people. There's some things
that are just.

Speaker 3 (01:15:29):
What percentage? What percentage do you think is well, let
me ask you this. With the content that you watch
or hear about, or whatever the case may be, do
you think it comes from a place of ignorance or
a different motive of the person that's sharing it. Maybe
they have something to sell or they're just trying to
be an expert when they're not quite an expert yet.
Why do you think that is the case? And what

(01:15:51):
would be a tip to make sure you're getting good info.

Speaker 4 (01:15:53):
All of the above? I think when you're if you're
really sponsored a certain way and the money's info into
you a certain way, you're going to push a certain
mindset and a certain type of products and a certain method.
I think the other way though. The other thing though,
his guys are like, listen, I did this system at
one point to make a successful food plot, and I

(01:16:15):
continue to have a pretty darn good food plot. So
I'm going to say that's the best way for everybody, Like, like,
hey man, yep, see, watch me use my rotary tiller,
go down eight inches in the soil, then pack it
to plant a clover seed that's going an eighth of
an inch deep. It works, it will turn out. Now.
Is there huge downsides to that, huge problems that come

(01:16:37):
up with that?

Speaker 3 (01:16:37):
Yes?

Speaker 4 (01:16:38):
Yes there is. Is that the incorrect way to do it? Yes,
I'm going to say it. That is the incorrect way
to do it, But you will see people doing it crazy.
The rotary tillers should all be sold for scrap. It
should all be torn apart and made into no hotel

(01:17:00):
drills or or packers or harrows. There's a few pieces
out there like it does not belong in the Midwest
and maybe rare circumstances, you know, well, and my buddies
will be well, dude, I only used it one time
to smooth out soil, and a will never use it again. Okay,
you know there's little caveats there.

Speaker 3 (01:17:20):
But.

Speaker 4 (01:17:22):
Yeah, uh so I would say there's a lot of
ignorance and it worked this way. And I have buddies
they're like, well, I'm gonna keep killing because my plots
turn out fine. And they do, but they and I'll say, well,
how many times do you have to spray for weeds
a bunch? It's like, dude, I don't have to spray
for weeds with my brass because I never spram and
then and then the other one like Braskis is a
great example because it's always grown in a vulnerable time

(01:17:45):
of year where success where failure rates are higher. And
had you grown corn the same way or anything with
the same things going against it as brass, because you'd
see a lot more failures. It's just you have more
forgiveness planning things earlier. But Brasskis is a great example
because guys are like, well, dude, if I tear up
the soil and I do this, I still have a
great brascal pot. But I'll ask them a lot of years,

(01:18:08):
how many times did you have to spray this year?
A bunch and then the common one. I'll bet you
half the guys I know, if not seventy five percent
to do that, have Brasica failures. Now that's a lot,
like over half fifty one percent at a minimum, Like, yeah, dude,
they did. Nothing's grown there. I have never had a
Brassica failure. Ever.

Speaker 3 (01:18:28):
Why do you think they're failed?

Speaker 4 (01:18:29):
Because they're tearing up the soil and all their moistures
going away, and they're getting all this weed pressure which
is taking even more moisture out. It's competing with their plants,
and they're degrading their soils year a year for a year.
So while I'm building my soils and my organic matter
went from like four to five and a half, they
probably went from like four to three. And little by

(01:18:52):
little they're like, hey, it's still working. But ten years
from now they're going to be like, I'm having more
failures and I can't really grow things. And I'm not
even gonna play Brascus anymore. And I know a lot
of guys. I'm just sick of the failures. It's always dry,
we have a drought. It's like you part, you're part
of the reason for that, on what you did to

(01:19:13):
your soils. So uh, just because there's a successful way
to do something, it's it's it's a lot like how
corn is done here. I mean, guys, on these you know,
really erodible ridge tops that are two percent organic matter,
have to go till the living daylights out of the
soil and they have a good stand of corn. Now

(01:19:34):
with the hybrids, they can tolerate some of the more
poor soil, but they're they're continually degrading their soil. It's
just getting worse and worse and worse. And they're in
a way their hope is the hybrids will just get better.

Speaker 3 (01:19:46):
So they've.

Speaker 4 (01:19:50):
But had they been enhancing their soils the whole time, uh,
they they have less inputs and they'd have a more
robust crop. And now where you really see the farmers,
this is like real world. I have to grow things
to live. The farmers that do that, you know, they
might shine on a year when the weather's great. But
hey man, I degraded my soil. It's junk, it's two

(01:20:13):
percent organic matter. And then they get hit with a
drought and their yields really whatever hybrid just get just
get clobbered. Where had they taken great care of that
soil and built it up, they probably wouldn't have had
such a devastating result.

Speaker 3 (01:20:27):
Yeah, well, I think the theme of this is figure
out a way to add more to your ground, improve
it rather than extract. Yes, which would be in my opinion,
like the definition of conservation.

Speaker 4 (01:20:39):
And you know, I would just say, the more you
do to add to nutrition, you know, which all all
these things intertwined, just like the ecology we were talking
about earlier. But the more you do to add to
your nutrition of your plants, of you know, there's more brows.
This translates into bigger bucks, absolutely bigger bucks. And you
might say, well, the bucks around you only get to four, fine,

(01:21:02):
but that four year old will be bigger. He'll have more.
Like I'm looking at a table full of sheds that
are just like all full of like beating and splits
and kickers. And when I got this farm, you didn't
see that stuff, you will have bigger deer because of it.
You'll see that. You'll see it in the racks, like
you'll see all the beating and like, whoa, the three

(01:21:22):
year olds used to look like this. Now man, they
have a lot more of you know, the extra stuff
you give them, the proper nutrition, which some of that
can be like artificial stuff too. I mean there's supplementation,
there's mineral there's you know, even even stump sprouts, you know,
and and areas that have soybeans or alf alpha versus

(01:21:43):
areas that not that don't are gonna make huge differences.
But you know, getting the nutrition on your farm done
in a variety of ways, whether that's through the forest,
the plots, is going to create bigger deer. It will
make substantial differences in the inches that deer can actually
put on. And then you know where you tie habitat together.

(01:22:05):
It's like, okay, now the cover component, what does that
do well? That allows those deer with proper cover to
get to those older ages right and not get shot
at the younger ages because they don't have ideal cover,
they don't want to be there, they leave all these
other regions. So proper habitat really does combine ideal nutrition

(01:22:27):
with safe habitat to reach the older ages, which is
what people need in any region. Maybe you're trying to
grow three year olds because everybody shoots one year olds.
I mean, you know, the habitat component is a big
part of getting those deer to age. It's a safety component,
it's a desirability of the deer to be on your ground.
So there's all these reasons where those two issues, nutrition

(01:22:52):
and safety and seclusion and wanting to be on your
farm go together. And so bigger deer, older deer with
proper nutrition and proper habitat. Its sounds easy, it sounds easy,
it's not.

Speaker 3 (01:23:06):
We gave We gave folks a punch lists to start,
and that's where that's where you just have to get started.
And I say it next year, next year, next year,
and never get anything done. So this is the thing,
just the kickoff. This is the kickoff right here for
someone right now, they're gonna say I'm gonna do this,
I'm gonna go do this, I'm gonna go and figure
it out. And that's where you.

Speaker 4 (01:23:24):
Can start today. Start today, even if you have no
money in your pocket and you got to pick up
some popcins uh and redeem those to get a little
bit of a little bit of money to get going
on something. I mean, very very basic to do something
today for anybody, and just keep going down the rabbit hole,
because if you enjoy it, you're gonna want to keep
going down the rabbit hole and you'll just get bigger

(01:23:46):
and learn more things and and this learning will never end,
and you're never You'll start buying all this stuff and
it'll obsess you and it never ends.

Speaker 3 (01:23:57):
It's fun though, It's yeah, it's the wormhole that doesn't end. Well.
This is this is fun because we just finished up
a live Q and A last week on the Master
Academy and we answered you answered direct questions of very
very specific things, which was was pretty fun. So I
feel like that's the next level of this conversation with
really specific examples and questions. And I want to give

(01:24:20):
you an opportunity to plug Iowa White Tail. I find
myself on there sometimes by accident when I Google something
and I'm like, oh, I'm on Iowa y Tail trying
to figure out whatever problem I have going on. And
there's a lot of really good threads on there too.

Speaker 4 (01:24:33):
It's great. It was part of my progression, you know,
being the guy that knew quite a bit at that point,
quite a bit, but then discovering Iowa Tale and being like,
oh my gosh, like I said, there was all these
mistakes I made. So my good good friend ended up
being my neighbor in Iowa. This guy named double Tree
who contributed to like all these different forms back in

(01:24:56):
the day, and he passed away maybe like decade decade
and a half ago, but you know, twenty fifteen ish
years ago. I did some projects with him. We learned
a lot of stuff together. I learned so much from him,
and he contributed to Iawhitetail. So when I could buy

(01:25:16):
iowait Tale, it was kind of like, hey, I got
to preserve this information and keep his legacy going. So
all that's still there, like the Doubletry section, habitat, anything
related to habitat. There's so much there. And it's like
if I post a video or talk about a certain topic,
like people want to ask me like all these questions
and I do try and get to them, but it's

(01:25:37):
like it's all there. It is all there. Please save
me a little time, especially during farm season, and just
go there and it's all like so I just to
be like transparent, iowait taal is like, you know, no
profit I don't do. There's no money that comes from
it. It costs me money, right which to most people doesn't
make any sense. But it's just a way to get

(01:26:00):
back in a way. You know. Maybe there's some things
I'll do that make some money at some point, and
maybe I have to spend a little pivot a little bit.
But right now, you know, I'm just farming and uh,
you know, I work on land and that's that's my living.
But iowait tail, you know, and this won't change. Ioway
tail will always be there for a resource for people

(01:26:20):
to help for the causes on you know, regulations on habitat,
how to how to you know, keep the the Midwest
a better place environmentally or for deer hunters, or be
just like that that hardcore information source that sifts through
the garbage. Like when you see information on there, it's
not going to be the missing Like like, there's things

(01:26:43):
I'll say that is wrong, that is the wrong way
to do it. I completely disagree, and I'm not saying
I'm not wrong on some things that I'm far from it,
but the information on there, especially double trees information, and
the members there at at a level, a top tiered level,
and I would be extreme, dreamely confident to take any
information there and implement any information there.

Speaker 3 (01:27:04):
Twelve So that's great. Well, what a way to cap
off habitat month and people are equipped to go get
to work. Yeah, thank you, yeah, thanks once again, thanks
for having me

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Ep. 895: Small Acreage, Big Impact - Habitat Strategies That Work with Skip Sligh and Jake Hofer

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Host

Mark Kenyon

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