Ep. 868: Planning a New Year of Wildlife Habitat Improvements with Jake Hofer

Published Jan 9, 2025, 10:00 AM

This week on the show I’m joined by Jake Hofer to discuss best practices for planning out your upcoming year of wildlife habitat improvements.

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Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, I'm joined by Jake Hoofer to discuss best practices for planning out your year of upcoming wildlife habitat improvements. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their Camo for Conservation initiative. And today we are continuing to kick off twenty twenty five by looking forward into the new year and planning out what this new year might hold. Last week, Tony and I were kind of talking about our own personal plans. This week on the show, I want to look forward toward things on a wildlife habitat improvement kind of scale land management. How we can improve things for our deer hunting, for the biodiversity, for wildlife or recreation, whatever your goals are, That's what we are exploring today. How do we put a plan in place, how do we prioritize our projects? How do we choose the right things to work on. How do we do that in an effective way? And my guest today is someone who's really going to be able to help us do that. This is Jake Hoofer. He is the host of the Land Podcast, owner of the Whitetail Master Academy, previously was a host of the Exodus Trialcam radio podcast and ran their YouTube stuff over there and right, all sorts of great content in the hunting and management space. And today he is going to share his experience both as a landowner and habitat manager himself, as well as being somebody who has interviewed and toured farms of, and sold farms for, and learned from all sorts of great deer and land managers themselves. He's been able to kind of pick the brains of some of the best of the best when it comes to this stuff land improvement, land management, improving things for whitetail habitat and wildlife habitat. Jake's been able to cover it all. He's chatted with the best of the best out there. And so what I wanted to pick his brain about was all, you know, two things. Number one, his experience, what's worked for him, and then secondly, you know what he has learned from those best of the best, and how those might be applied or how we can apply those lessons to our own experiences. So that's the game plan today, and that is what I think we should just jump right into rather than beating around the bush. So here is my chat with Jake Hoford. All right with me on the line now, is Jake Hoeford.

Jake, how are you doing well? Happy New Year?

Happy new year to you too, man. I'm glad we're kicking off the new year here together talking about something we both enjoy, which is getting out there on the landscape doing some good work, getting the hands dirty.

Ah.

How much have you been able to give thought to the next year yet? Are you kind of still recuperating from New Year's Eve festivities and the last hunting season all that, or are you already like chomping at the bit thinking about twenty five.

I don't think it ever stops, tell you the truth. And I was in bed by ten o'clock on the Year's eve, but it never really stops. And I think that you know now that a lot of seasons are wrapping up. It's when the rubber meets the road and you start executing on some of those plans. And you know, I had a really fun and exciting season and I buked out here in Illinois. I think it was the third weekend of December. And that's a weird feeling. I haven't done that since twenty seventeen. I was like, man, I'm done done, Like I can't even you know, I can scout and I can drive around in this pretend I'm hunting and last year, but that was a weird feeling in itself, and so it's actual kind of bottled up more excitement to get out there and start doing work. And it's always a challenge too, because everything Ytai hunting is hurry and wait in a lot of ways. And so as much as I want to go back there and start working, you know, behind my house, I have a bunch of standing food and say, man, I don't really want to booger the deer up. It'd be nice to find some sheds and just trying to figure out what can I do or you know, just go ahead and work on this place and leave the other place alone. I mean, it's it's always a challenge, but yeah, I'm super excited to enjoy some of these cold months and the chainsaw will be outside and get a little bit of vitamin D as we all get pale and pasty during winter.

Man, Thank goodness, there's an excuse like that, getting out there on the on the landscape at this time of year, because if you're just stuck in the office the whole time, it can be it can be brutal. So I got a question for it, just for context. How much ground do you have that you actually can do work on yourself?

I would say a little over one hundred acres, probably one hundred and one hundred and fifteen with free reign, and that's across three different farms, so not a huge scale, but more than I ever could have dreamed of growing up. So I mean, it's it's uh. I've had the pleasure of being on some incredible farms that are just like, oh my gosh. And then you know there's other people with the land podcast for guys, they want to buy ten acres twenty acre. So I realized how blessed I am to be able to have that amount of ground to work on, but just enough to where you can scratch a lot of different inches. And what's interesting where I live versus the other farm. There are almost two completely different types of farms where I live. It's kind of an oak savannah on to the west of MEAs where it used to be all prairie, and this is like one of the last little slivers of timber. So this is a much different type of ecosystem, much better soils than the other farm, where it's more bluff country and it's pretty rugged, and you know, they're not very far apart, but you go to one farm and work one day and go to the other one, it feels like you're working on two completely different types of projects and landscapes, which is actually really exciting. And it wasn't really a strategic thing initially, but after I had both, I was like, oh, man, yeah, that's kind of cool that they're completely different and you get to try different practices on both of them.

Yeah, that's really cool, and that that seems like a sweet spot. You're one hundred, one hundred and fifty acres. That seems like a realistic size for a lot of people. And still, you know, it's it's for some people you said that would feel like a ton of ground. On the other side, it's not so much more than a forty or a fifty that what you're experience in there, you know, it's certainly still relatable to someone who's got forty or fifty or twenty or seventy. You know, that seems to be the window that a lot of folks can can someday aspire towards.

So yeah, absolutely, Yeah, and on ones a forty ones of sixty and another one is a really small one, you know, between five and ten acres, And so yeah, it's it's a it's they're very relatable. These farms are as reels like the issues everyone faces across the board. I'm not immune to those, and that's all part.

Of the fun. Yeah, So you talked about this kind of conundrum that you've got right now, which is you want to get working on things, but at the same time, you don't want to put too much pressure on your properties when they're standing food out there that you left specifically, so the deer would and wildlife would use your landscape now maybe drop antlers, maybe overwinter, whatever it is. So, how do you think about, you know, when you come into the when you come into the new year, what does your process look like when it comes to putting that plant together. You know, do you have a calendar almost were you come into a given year and you say, okay, these months I'm doing this, these months I'm doing this or is it kind of you know, every year is a little bit different. What's that look like for you?

Yeah, it's all a little bit different based off of I utilize the equip contracts to the NRCS quite a bit, and so that has different parameters and timelines of when you need to do things. And obviously the preparation in order to do the work and so some of that you know, helps you plant things out by the structure of that. And actually I bought the Lane of Legacy calendar that Ian Kirby designed that are work and every now and I look at that like, oh, yeah, that's a good idea. I should. I should? You know, that's in the calendar of what to do and what to do and not that usually you need ideas to go. There's always more to do than what you have time for. But sometimes that's a fun little thing. But I mean this time of year, I really like to tackle the invasive species. So you know, hack and squirt honeysuckle, cut the stumps and treat it with garl on four and kill out the honeysuckle, and that I've done like different pockets at my house and try to hit a pocket each year. And because the common theme that a lot of people say is, yeah, you take all that out, all the cover is gone on your farm. If that's the if that's the best cover on your farm, you take all of it out at once. It's all gone. So I've actually done different pockets where one year I'll I'll take it all out. The next spring I'll plant native trees and shrubs and help get that established and then go to a different part of the farm and start working on that. So this is a really good time of year for that. And the other thing too is it's a great time to get out and walk your farm very methodically and maybe not looking for shait anglers, because man, every shedhoun I have turns into a scouting mission. I'm like, I don't really want to find anylers that bad. I like, what's what went on over here? And you look for sign and keep really detailed notice. I know if I don't write it down, I'll probably forget it. And so I'm a I get a hard time for some of my friends, like you're just you go too fast, Like when you walk a farm, You're just go. I'm like, I look up mixing, you're over another hill over, and I just get too fast. And so I have to constantly tell myself, slow down. Why do I think this bet is here? What win? Was he maybe using this on? How could I improve my access from this bed? Can he see me walk in? Or can the dear walk me? Watch me walk in? And really slow down and take a minute to process all that information, because it's really easy to be like, oh, yeah, there's a bed, there's a rub, there's a scrape, and you just look at it at face value. I've known this for a very long time. But take a minute to really slow down. So that's probably the number one thing to do this time of year, regardless if you're planning projects or walking public ground or permission ground. So that's probably the biggest thing. And the invasives, there's a lot of I've interviewed at different people and I've asked this question specifically to a variety of different folks of it's almost a debate in the land management world of do you leave it or do you replace it? Yeah, and I think I fall on the side of I would just go ahead and replace it with something that is native and good, but a lot of guys don't have patience to watch that develop. I've planted trees and they bed in a little bit. But I've walked farms that were that tree planning is five to twelve years old, and those are the farms for your hair on the back of your next stand up with really great sign And the only way you get that is if you take five to twelve years to light the trees and do all that. And I think that the debate of native warm season grasses or planting trees, I have this conversation with guys all the time. I'm a tree guy. I like planting the trees is a lot more work, it takes longer, but I think it changes the landscape in a better way. For the warm season grasses, if you're impatient, happens faster. So I mean, those are some of the biggest things, and I think TSI is obviously a great time of beer to do TSI as well, out reducing crappy trees, bad trees and ferrier trees, and letting crop trees come into more sunlight and grow faster. And and that, I mean, all these things have so many different warmholes where you talk to I've talked to different TSI guys and even one of them specifically was Adam Keith with land a Legacy. I said, out of all the farms you go walk for, you know, you guys are doing a client visit and the guy says, hey, I did TSI on this farm, how often do you look at the TSI and say, yeah, you did a good job. And he said maybe one out of ten. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, okay, well, where's the gap that communication here where there's all these different things. But I don't want I don't want people to get paralyzed with not starting a project because I think that we all cannot start every project with all the answers and know everything, like you just have to get going. And that's that's been what I've done. And I think another side of things of just different projects of planting trees in the spring one year that we bought this originally three years ago in the fall. Now I'm so excited to just playing trees and the spread. I gotta do it. And I planted a bunch of trees and brow infest you and they're not any bigger than what they are. I planned it three years ago, so I realized, Okay, you have to do the prep work, get rid of the grass that's gonna choke out all the trees and shrubs that you plant it. And then I did that the following year, and those trees are like already two or three times bigger than the ones I planted much further in the in the background. So I think all these different things, we want to rush and get them done and kind of just do it to get it done and put it off the checklist. But maybe going into some of these projects this upcoming here, maybe make it your point to educate yourself on how to do it as best or as close to right as you can the first time, rather than watch a video on YouTube and you know, hey, I'm gonna do TSI and you don't really know how to do tree identification or you're not really sure what you're trying to accomplish. A lot of those are pretty big decisions that you don't get to undo. And so I mean, that's that's a lot there. But those are just some of the things that are of mind that mistakes I've made, things I've learned from other people and things that I've implemented. And the other thing, too, is the off season goes fast.

Yeah. One of the things you're talking about, though, though, is there's this temptation to want to do everything right now right. We want it all and we want it now. But I think that, to your point, can often times lead to us rushing things, not doing the real prep work that we needed to do, not doing things the right way, and then in the long run, you know, the payoff is half what it could have been if we just would have slowed down and made some better decisions. So I'm imagining that one of the antidotes to that is simply better prioritizing and planning what projects to do at a given time, instead of maybe trying to do twelve big things this year, maybe doing four things really well versus twelve things half assed. So number one, am I right about that? And number two, if so, how do you go about prioritizing and choosing, you know, what is the best use of my time this year or what should be in my list for twenty twenty five, Because like you said, there's a thousand things that could be on that list on any given year, how do we pick the right things and at doing them at the right times.

Yeah, I think the biggest thing, and this is going to be no surprise to anyone, but the improving your access is such a big, big part of that. And so ideally you would have sprayed this last fall to prepare to plant switch grass or whatever other screening you planned on doing, and I think that for this upcoming spring you can continue to spray it and prepare it for either a prot seed or maybe I mean there's the debate if you can spray it multiple times in the springting and do a late tune planning of switch grass. That's a possibility for sure, depending on what you're working with. And so I think planning your access is probably the big improvement that you can make. And making pockets throughout your farm just to make the deer feel more comfortable and direct traffic, I think that's the biggest thing, because you're going to get more use out of your farm and not scare as many deer coming in and out. And you also kind of funnel the deer where you want to go, or at least encourage them to do what you want a lot easier with just some of those edges, and so this year, this is a good example. Last year I did a lot of prep work to plant switchgrass, and I proceeded to switch grass last February, and so this is a one year stand. Next to that one year stand, I planned a one year annual screen to still accomplish the access, and then once the switch grass gets established, I'm going to take out that annual screen and extend my food cloth. And I think that's a really quick and easy way to accomplish both buckets all in the same year. And I think some of the other things too. When it comes to TSI is guys just get really excited, and I think it's a very powerful method to improve a parcel. However, a lot of guys, I think, forget the once again the prep work of getting rid of the undesirable species before you flush open the canopy, and then you have a bigger mess to fight, and it's really tempting to think, like, ah, you know, it can't be that bad. It can be. It can be if you don't do it. So, I mean, I think those are the those are some of the biggest things, is just nailing down the access, figuring out how to maybe improve something as simple as a as a mock scrape or some of these little, little tiny projects that can make a big, a big impact for your upcoming season. And I think just the biggest thing that it always boils down to is access and trying to put the deer where you can hunt them effectively. And I think that is something that is a common thread with name whatever, white tail expert. If you could just really boil down what the what their thesis is, it's improve the access, scare less deer, and have higher opportunity stand locations. Easy to say, hard to do, Uh, if you don't really have a really good plan.

Yeah. So with that being the case, and an access being one of the first things you recommend somebody look at you share one example of how you've been working on improving access. What's on your to do list for twenty twenty five? What projects have you prioritized as being the things that you're going to get done this year?

Yeah, so access is one of the On another farm, it's Uh, there's an area I remember walking it last year and grabbing candors and this exactly happened where I found a bunch of beds looking exactly where I park. Okay, something has to happen.

It's a problem.

And unfortunately I identified that last year, I didn't I didn't get it done, and so that's something that's just number one on my project list this upcoming year. Another good example is last couple of years, I've planned about four thousand trees where I live, and over three thousand of those have been by hand. And the reason I've done that is, I see, I just don't like straight rows, and I remember watching the video and reading a scientific study that animals don't like straight road tree plannings. It's like, Okay, I'm not going to do that, and so I've basically been creating a forest by hand, and which has been really cool. But the thing of this is where that I plan on planning another two thousand trees, it's old cattle pasture broman fescue, and I made that mistake previously where the trees just don't grow as rapidly as they should. And so this past year I have sprayed all of that down to prepare for the upcoming not this spring, but the following spring. And this year I'm going to plant basically a peasants forever and hotxy native seed they sell different blends where it's say, basically, there's a mix of timothy grass and clover and alfalfa to get a good base for your trees and then go ahead and plant your trees the following year. So I mean, I've made the mistakes, and so now I'm dialing back what I want to get done in the multi year fashion, because if we look at it this way, a lot of our deer seasons or even planned on a one season approach, everything's make or break one season, like, oh, this is the biggest year I have to hunt. I got to kill him and say, well, man, could you imagine it? Maybe you waited or bet on the deer the following year, maybe your following season would be twofold as good because of you know, whatever happens. And I think that comes down to the same thing with land management and planning, to where we always look at what's this year, we all can I get done? But if you stretched it out in a long term vision, you're gonna be way more productive. Because I've made like all these different mistakes of just trying to get as much done as fast as possible, and it's like, gosh, I wish I could do that again, and sometimes I do have to do it again because it's not been work.

So you did the rushing the trees mistake, and now they've been stunted. What are some of the other mistakes you've made over recent years that were, you know, real doozies that now you look back on and say, man, I should have done that differently. What are a few more of those worst mistakes that you've learned from not.

Listening into my own gush. I remember the first arm I bought, there was a blind already on it, and the best way to explain it was it's kind of a longer north the south food plot and it was on the east side of the plot, which makes sense for a win perspective, but you would have to walk through the plot in order to get to the blind, and you're putting a bunch of ground sent it. And I remember the first time I even walked, I was like, the blind really needs to be over here. It'd be really nice to put like two track road in. And so I didn't do that the first year, and then the next year, so okay, I'm just gonna do it. I know this is something that needs to happen, and so I moved the blind put in the two track road, and actually the first sit I had on that line, I ended up killing a buck doing exactly what I had initially envisioned in my head. That I don't necessarily think it would have worked if I would have left it where it was at. So I think a lot of the mistakes are just not doing what you know you need to do.

Uh.

And maybe that's easier for some people than others. But if there was a you hunted all season, like man, they all come out of this corner of the field, and I just I don't know why that is, and I wish I could get over there, but this or this, this, this or this doesn't allow me to do it. If there is a way to make it happen. And you notice that's what's always occurring during the season, make the move and plan for it. And it's November every single year at the same time, like we all make it. It's going to happen. This upcoming November is going to happen. And when you realize this November, you wish it was set up that way, use this time to actually do that. Or another example would be at my house, we used to be an old cattle pasture, and there's a lot of interior fencing, which is actually pretty cool that that's already in place. And I remember thinking, they all come out of this north corner of it, and it would be really nice if on this corner of this creek, if they could cross right there. And so I just cut out a chunk of the fence, and sure enough, all the deer like it. It's more of a split thing. I didn't plug up the other one, but it made a big impact. And so it's just a lot of it is just I would encourage people to think back on their past season and think really hard and say, what what did I notice? What could I do to improve things in order and this? Do it whatever that is, do the self research, figure it out, call buddy, figure out. You know you've done this project. This is another thing I do all the time. I call other guys that have done the projects I'm trying to do, and you give them a call. Hey, I know you planned some some warm season grasses two years ago. What would you do differently? Oh? Oh I did this, and oh man, I definitely wouldn't do that again. Like okay, well, I'm definitely going to take your advice here and do the different thing here. And I think all of it comes down to preppoor, which is the boring thing like when you paint, when you paint a house or paint your room, and you got to put up all the tap. You have to lay out a foundation or the claw, like, man, this is gonna take forever, and then you give the paint sprayer and it's like ye, and it's all done. And I feel like the white tail work is a lot of the putting up painters tape, and then the fun is actually the painting, and it's important to have the foundation ready to go.

Man, that's so true. So you did the you you mentioned the one set of trees you planted that were stunted because the growth. You mentioned another set another two thousand or something that you're planting here in like a future. I meant to ask you what other than not planting them in straight rows and now planting them in this prepped meadow of sorts with that mix you mentioned, what else are you doing different or what specifically are you doing with this new forest you're planting to make sure that it does, you know, pan out the way you wanted to so what species are you planting, when are you doing it, how are you doing it? Anything else around the details there, because I think there's a lot of guys that you have these big open spaces and they're trying to figure out what do you do with that? And like you said, there's like the quick fix things, but trees take time and a lot of folks, you know, steer away from that because they want that give me something right now kind of impact. So with the trees, what's what's the right way to do it? Or how are you trying to.

Yeah, so I mean this is a this is a pretty interesting case study that I did this past year in comparison to the previous year. So I used a dibble bar. And so a dibble bar is like a little spade. You push it down at your boot and open up a little pocket and then stick the tree in there and then close it up. And what happens You have to trim up the roots a bunch. And so a j root is when it curls back up and the tree is going to die. So you have to trim the roots in order to fit into these tiny little holes. And so I went down to the hardware store and rented a steel auger. It's probably like thirty forty pounds. It's gas operated at auger. I rented that for the weekend and it makes an eight inch hole. You can put it a lot deeper. And I quickly realized I needed to buy one of those, because I know what I was going to get everything down in a weekend. And so this past year I used an auger for ninety percent of my trees, and so I did not have to trim up the roots hardly at all. And there's some Chicksaw plums American plums that I planted this year, hazel not that I planted this year that's already taller than me. I'm six foot tall and they're already taller than me. And they started out as a little four foot bare roots, all.

Right, So there are three or four foot Another are already six foot six and a half foot seven foot And comparing that to even some of the trees I use a dibble bar where you had to trim up the roots.

They have to regrow those roots. And I'm not a forester by any means, but or arborous, but it's kind of common sense. They have to put a bunch of energy to re establish the roots and then grow. But when you have a big old root ball and you put it into a nice soft soil all the way around it, they grew phenomenally better. And that was a very clear indication that it tasts longer. It's more pain in the butt, but it's definitely worth it. And even I did use a treat planner for about seven hundred trees of the four thousand I've planted, and same thing. You have to trim up the roots and you know, side by side. I planted these trees the same weekend and those ones did not hardly grow at all in comparison to the other ones that I took the time to use an augur and created a forest. And as far as different species, I love swamp folks, swamp white oak I planted. I planted a bunch of different rides planets. Swamp white oak, which is a white oak variety, they hold their leaves really late, they have really sweet acorns. I planted pen oak and as a red oak variety, they hold their leaves really late. They grow pretty fast, and so it's actually pretty crazy to think I have all these different species and I'm hand selecting where each one of them go. And I planted per simons, different types of plums, hazelnut, red dogwood, great dog wood, planted some weird stuff like an anie berry, which I just wanted to see what those looked like when they got big and if the deer messed with them. And it's like all this kind of all these different little things that you're just trying and to be able to hand select where day I want a shrub line along the creek of the red dog wood where they should thride. And then I want a band of swamp white op oak, and then I want to put haze lut in a little bit more upland area and just hand select all these different little pockets and then I'll you see whatever is most desirable. But I think that one of the plants I like the most is actually the plums, because they grow really fast and they start to put out fruit in three to four or five years, and I think that's somewhat of the instant gratification side of things. But they also don't live super long either, so I think their lifespans fifteen to twenty years. And then also planning just a bunch of white oaks and I've just had the luxury of walking a lot of different farms and I just get to see the different stages of maybe an old abandoned CRP field where it's maybe twenty years old and you have a bunch of white oaks and all you know, shingle oaks, pin oaks, and it's just it always looks really good and they usually have really good deer. And that doesn't happen by accident. Someone took the time to do that, and whoever ends up hunting that farm twenty years later, it gets to reap the benefits of that, and it's uh, it's a long term plan. It's a very long term plan, and it's extremely gratifying to do that. And I think depending on where you're at, this is probably one of the biggest tips for someone. The state forestries sell tree species at a very affordable price. So Illinois has a sale and you have to be ready to go right when it goes live because a lot of the good species sell right away. Missouri has another really good sale. Iowa has a really good sale where you can get these tree species that are really desirable and they'll ship them to your door and they're very affordable then going to a nursery or buying them somewhere online, and I think that's where I pretty much, but based off what I buy is what's available that year, because they're growing these bare root trees and then they're selling it to a conservationist, and I think that's a really great resource to if you want to buy a bundle of one hundred, it's sixty dollars for a lot of species, for thirty five dollars for a shrub species, and those are a big thing. The other thing too, that I know a lot of guys have not all my trees, and so aesthetically it's kind of a little ugly, to be honest, but I know long term I'll be able to take them off. But I planted some where I did not tube them and they got eight to the ground. Or I planted some shrubs that were two foot tall tubes and that are still too foot tall, and I don't think they'll ever get dark and two foot it because are two feet because the deer just browsed them right away. So I think the biggest thing is protecting those trees. My plan is some fruit trees. I've not produced any fruit yet, but one mistake I did was I did not put a like you put a window screen around the base of the tree, because in the winter, rabbits can go in and girdle your tree, your fruit tree. And I've made that mistake. And so it's just a lot of different things. But that's and that's the crazy thing about hytail land management. We just have only talked about trees and schritz. I mean, there's a bunch of stuff we haven't covered that is so important to have a successful project. But tuning them, prepping the site, I think using an order is worthwhile and just sit back and watch them grow and it's very gratifying.

So one of the questions that I have wrestled with in the past when I have been able to do stuff on a property, and then I get whenever I talk to people who are curious about doing this themselves, and I guess I'm kind of gonna reask the question I already asked you once, I'm gonna ask a slightly different way. But when someone's trying to decide where my biggest weak spot is on my property, right, I've got maybe I've got a new farm, or I have a farm that I just haven't been able to do a lot of stuff on but this is the year I'm finally going to really work on the place. I'm going to do something. I'm gonna make it better this year. But to your point, like, gosh, there's all this stuff we just talked about with trees, and then of course, you know, food plots get a lot of press and they're really exciting and sexy, and then you talked about grasses, and we've talked about access routes and all that kind of stuff. I guess I'm wondering, from like a process standpoint, or like a high level standpoint, how do you recommend someone you know, determining where to start. I mean you said earlier access, Is it, excuse me diying over here? Is access always number one? Or is there something else or a different process someone can go through to decide, Okay, where's my weak spot or where's my area of most need? How do you think through that?

I think every farm has the best spot. I think you start there, and the best spot maybe is a tree stand or a blind that you can hunt. You know, you hear people talk about I can hunt that blind every day at the season and not get busted. And okay, well that's pretty interesting, But what about the other best spot that the axis is not that great? Where I feel my year this year the axis was not that great, and I hunted at one time and it worked and so and how that works is I stayed the heck out of there until the conditions were perfectly right and needed an east wind. I really wanted to fall between the fifth or Wealth of November. It was in between two betting areas. And to make that, I guess to boil that down is start with the best spot and then identify how often can I hunt it and when should I hunt it? And is there things that I can do to improve it? And I think that you know someone that's just starting with something brand new. A lot of times, the best spot is probably a location that has pretty solid access, maybe a seven out of ten, maybe a six out of ten, And then how can you go in there and improve that. Maybe that is a micro food plot. Maybe that is fell in a couple of trees to try to get them to go where they were, you know, dictate that traffic just a little bit better. Maybe not anything crazy drastic, but just a little way to up your odds. I think I just and maybe do you experience this when you look at a farm, do you just automatically gravitate towards maybe one or two spots of like, oh, yeah, these are two really good spots based off of the sign, based off the like I feel like as h it automatically kind of comes to us to say.

It's hard not to. Yeah, it's hard not to do that. But also I think sometimes the opposite is possible, which is you gravitate towards where the easiest place to make an improvement would be. Right. I think like you might look at a property like, well, there's my opening, Like, there's already an open spot. That's where I'll do the food plot, because food plots are fast and they're exciting, and there's an open spot. And so this is like a mistake I've made the past, where I got access to a property I can improve and there was already an opening in a spot, and I say, all right, that's it.

That's gonna be the first.

Thing I do. And I'm playing a big old food plot here in this open spot, and I go and do it, and then lo and behold, it's it's right along the route I need to access and every time I try going for a morning hunting, spooking deer off this food plot. And you know, two years later, I had to just let the whole thing go because I realized it was making things worse for me than it was in the you know, actually helping me. So I've made that mistake. So so I have struggled with answering this question myself.

I guess yeah, I think it comes down to to the actual I'm trying to just go through my own thought process here, because I think that sometimes not doing a bunch of stuff is just as powerful as doing a bunch of stuff. And I think you're exactly right that open area would be great. It'd be so easy to put in a food plot. But to your point, it may be more productive to leave it the way it is or improve it, because I think all white tail, if you have a piece that you can mess around with, you just your tinkerer. By default. You want to tinker, You want to tweak everything, you want to improve everything. And I have this internal debate quite often. It's like, I wonder how good that farm would be it just stayed exactly the way it is, and I just stayed the heck out of it, and I had to think that I had a permission, a new permission piece where I tested that theory and it works, and then I think like and then the whole time I was like, man, he's so nice to have a food plot, you know right over there. They wouldn't have to dive as deep. And I think that a lot of times, it's it just comes down to making effect, making the spot as effective as gospel without doing stuff just because it looks really good, Because we all get caught up in the aesthetic of a farm. It's so pretty. Do you see that food plot? You see how green that food plot is, or it's just all these different things that we think as humans and not necessarily is how the deer would perceive that when you put a really nice green food source right next to a giant alfalfa field, and was that really worthwhile? But I think the biggest thing is figuring out where the best spot is and then reverse engineering maybe how to make it a little bit better, and kind of going all into one spot because I think a lot of the theme from so many of the guys that I've talked to, one thing that is pretty common is they're aggressive in the sense of hunting when the time is right and making it happen with whatever mouse trap they developed, or maybe working with what they have. But they're not aggressive in the sense of it's November fifth, I have to get to this exact center of my farm on this one bridge point where I think it's gonna happened. It's They're very disciplined and very patient, and I think that's the hardest thing as hunters across the board, because they they listen to Cody de Quista, like, oh, he's got to get in there, he's got to do that, Or you listen to Dan Infoll if you're passive on it, dear you're teaching them and like those are that's in the back of your mind. But then you also understand that there's a tried and true method of just sticking to a discipline plan and trusting that plan. And I think that where you get in trouble is where you start telling the line between both of them, like yeah, I think I'm going to die back in there, and like, oh, I'm going to stick back to my plan. It's like, well, you might have shot yourself on the foot there, And that's something I battle all the time. Is how you got to get in there. You got to do it. And then at the same point like, Okay, I tried that, Now I'm going to go back to the the more disciplined version. And then it it's like you almost have to be all in on one or the other.

It almost seems like yeah, and it's also so circumstantial, right, Like some people, if you have just one little farm a certain way of hunting, it might be very different than if you hunt three farms worth three thousand acres, right Like Code can bounce around to a whole bunch of different places right that are all great or Dan can bump around thousands of acres there's a different public land that he's hunting and scouted. But if I tried that same attempt on my twenty acres that I is the only spot I hunt, you know it's not going to work out so well. So you need to understand, like, Okay, certain tactics work best in certain types of situations, and understanding if you are fitting a square peg into a round hole or not.

Yeah, I think this is probably the biggest piece of advice that's not land management, but it kind of works out in the same fashion. Go get permission on a few more spots, or go find a couple of public places that you can burn some hunts on. And sometimes not hunting your farm is just as productive as hunting it. And I think that a lot of guys fall into this trap to I have to hunt it, I have to week off. I really want to go and that's fine because you have you have someone that says you gotta be out there to kill him. And I question if those are the guys that are killing the deer or the quality of deer that they really want to I mean, if if we're being completely honest, and I think that where guys struggle is they just they have to hunt because they have to. And I think this leading farm as fresh as possible. And then you did the pop my whole, my whole ethosis upcoming season or this last season, just fall my gut. It's like really simple. We if you listen to white tailed podcasts, you're ate up by this. You know what to do. Just follow your gut and don't overthink it. And that's I called myself where I was the hunts where I would just go in on a on a gut feeling and just kind of just go a little bit more instinctual, way more productive. And then I would catch myself in the stand thinking, Okay, tomorrow is going to be a southwest wind. What are some good south wind spots, and just like really getting overthinking it, and then I'd go do that, and it's like, man, this I went here just because I thought it would be good in my own brain and reality. I just talk myself into thinking it would be good. And I think that comes down to the land management. It comes down to everything. It's like, follow your instincts, follow your intuition, and do what you need to do. And maybe that's not doing anything, or maybe that's doing a lot if something needs to get done that could rascally improve.

A carson, you know. You know, with with the hunting tactic, like you're talking about, like should I hunt here? Should I hunt there? You can get feedback on your decision pretty quickly, right, you can go out there and hunt today, and then you can determine like do the right thing or do the wrong thing. So it's a very furs fast turnaround as far as understanding your decision making process and if it paid off or not. When it comes to land management, though, you know, you can do something today, and can you see a difference next year or is it two years or is it ten years? You know how? How like what kind of timeline do you recommend someone looking at these things on and how quickly could someone expect to see positive changes seat progress?

That's a fascinating question, because you're right that feedback loop is a lot longer it. Man, that's an excellent question. I think some things you could see an improvement on rather quickly, and I think a lot of it is just a response of nature and habitat. Like, for instance, I killed a bunch of that rescue and brone grass, and then I had and I did a control burn and I had a bunch of new oak seat seedlings popping up out of the ground the following sprint. Now, how does that relate to hunting? It creates better brow like all these different things. But I think the feed feedback loop, that is an excellent question. I don't know when the time is to pull the plug or say that, yeah, this isn't working, because a lot of it does take time. You can't you can't make three year old switchgrass in one year, no matter what you do. And I think a lot of it is just trust seeing the process and then having enough self awareness to say, Okay, this didn't work, how can I improve it. I don't know when you'd pull the plug. I think the biggest thing would be if you think a stand location is really good because of the postseason scouting, and you go in there, and then the following fall you hunt it two or three times and you get busted and or this isn't A really good example is the wind does something drastically different than what you thought to where it swirls on. I thought it would be good for a north and west, north and south wind, but on a south wind it seems to swirl back over to where I didn't think it would go, And I think that that doesn't necessarily change anything. It's maybe just not hunting on a south wind, but that comes back to a quicker feedback loop. I don't I honestly don't have a firm answer on when to pull the plug on a project. I think, like, for example, the tree side of things, going into the first year, there was not much betting our activity around it, but following year there was more, and then this year there was even more. There was actually one sit that was pretty fun. I was sitting there doze around me and I was here this plastic like crashing, like what happened? I'm like, and I'm pinned down. There's doze all around me, like what is that? I ended up being able to pull my binoculars and there's this like junker old mature but just smashing all my tree tubes and all set and snapping them all off. And so I mean that then there's a corner of my planning where there's fifteen trees that got snapped off, like the steak that planted the trees, And that was pretty fun to actually witness and hear it. And I had a camera down there and I watched the cameras all bristled up, and so I mean that took three years to that for that to occur. And so I think the biggest thing comes down to patients. I think the other side of that is having a plan that you have a lot of conviction, and if you're a wishy washy on the plan, you're probably not going to see it through and you're gonna I did this wrong, I don't know. I like, people are constantly changing things before it would get good. And I think that's something that is probably a hard thing to battle on. This comes down to having a good plan and having conviction in that and easier to than done.

Once again, what makes a good plan?

Then I feel that it would boil down to what your goals would be, because I think for some people the plan would be this farm doesn't really hold any deer. I would just really like to go out and when I hunt, just see deer. Or I would like to be able to hunt this blind and have a seven out of ten chance to shoot a dough. And I think that plan's a lot easier in a much quicker feedback loop. I think the other side of I think it's so situational to where and I battled this initially where my idea of how I wanted to change the landscape was whitetail specific. What is simply the best for white tails. I don't care what the implications are. I just wanted to be the absolute best for white tails. And as I started doing more research and getting deeper into and it's like, well, maybe I could dial that back and be kind of cool to plant this and the pollinator and it'd be pretty cool to do the plant, you know, I planted quite a bit of native grasses, and I had a pheasant once and I hadn't seen a pheasant for everything. Okay, that's pretty cool. And so it's almost it's so situational to where there are guys that are it's white tail specific only and that's all I care about. And then there's other folks that have different varying levels of expectations. But the biggest thing is understanding what possibly the ceiling or maybe glass ceiling would be on a farm and being ultra realistic with that, which is hard to do. And I think that's something that just comes to comes with time. I mean initially when I moved on forty acres, like, oh man, I can't I'd love to shoot doing a crock of white tail behind my house. I don't think that's probably realistic in a ten year timeline. Maybe a twenty year timeline, maybe it is. But there's other farms where that expectation could be a once and a five year occurrence. And how you would develop a farm with probably cater to what the quality of the deer and the So that's why I kind of dial back some of the white tail side of things of Okay, it's probably you know, it's gonna be a really fun place to hunt. I'm really gonna enjoy it, but I probably don't have to be so extreme and do everything to the tenth degree. And maybe that's a mistake, but I but once again, that's the beauty of all this is you get it catered to what you want. And I think the biggest thing is being realistic to what you want and what is realistic and meshing those two things together.

Yeah, so you alluded to this earlier, the fact that you know, in your own podcasts you've talked to all sorts of people about these topics. You've talked to you know, the best land consultants, land managers, whitetail habitat tacticians. I mean you've you've talked to them all and I've talked to a bunch of them. Two and one thing I have noticed about many of these folks is they tend to be very and then this isn't this isn't a rule. There are exceptions to this, but many of them, I don't want to figure out how to put this properly. They're a little bit black and white. There's a lot of them there like this is the way to do it. If you don't do it this way, you're a knucklehead. There's a handful we are very opinionated in that kind of way, and they're all great, like, they're all doing their thing very well. So I'm not saying that their way of doing things doesn't work, but there seem to be a bunch of different ways that work from what I've noticed from afar. So I'm curious, from your perspective, having kind of specialized in this area more than I have, what are some of the things that have stood out to you as consistencies across the board, across all of these people. Are there any things that stand is like the absolute pillars of success for land management that whether it's Joe, John, Bill or Bob ever, one believes this kind of stuff.

Yeah, and you're right, there's a lot of I always, oftentimes when I look at something like how would so and so look at this? And then I would go to the what would say so and so think about this and this kind of go down the list, and I think that there's a couple of things that all ring true. They all treat their properties like a glasshouse, and I think that that's why I mean that's just like a lot of this, I think a lot of our A lot of the shortcomings could be from the person looking in the mirror and how you hunt and utilize the farm. And so I think the biggest thing that to do is they treat things like a glasshouse and something that I want to do with the Master Academies actually have like three or four different consultants come out and all do a plan and then compare them all and I think there would be a lot more common things than not maybe even more than what they would realize, and I think those those would be leading. It's okay to leave a lot of your farm alone, it's okay to not improve every single square ench of your farm to every every open area has to be food or every open area has to be converted to betting. Ok to maybe leave a two acre field into something that's fallow that allows you to access your property. I think all those plans would match up showcasing that. The other thing too is they're all very disciplined to your point with what they do, but it's they're disciplined to if you think about it, they all have success, right, so that means it's working. But they're all very methodical, methodical and discipline to what that plan is. And I think that where you get in trouble is you just take a little bit from here, a little bit from here, and you don't realize that they may be contradict what needs to happen, but you want to scratch both issues. Is probably one shortcoming. But I think the biggest thing is they leave on their farm alone, a lot of their farm alone, and they don't have to improve every square inch and you don't need twenty good spots. You need one or two good spots. And I think that's probably the biggest thing and something that I always like to ask people if I'm on their farm, like what's your favorite spot on the font and the reason I always like to ask that and the like, well, like my favorite spot for killing a deer? And I'm like, yeah, absolutely, So if you have where can you go? You have the perfect ideal conditions, where do you like to go? And then you'll show me on the map and let's go look at it. And typically it comes down to really good access with the good food source that's nearby, and so if you can reverse engineer that, you need one really good spot with those items versus I mean, where I live, I have two spots I hunt maybe three, and one of the spots I have one hundred in two years because it hasn't been a deer I wanted to shoot. But the point being is like this, have some absolute, dialed in spots and make those great. And I think that we all want to We all want to see what's over the next hill. We all want to see I wonder what's happening over there, And thankfully with cameras a lot of those questions can be answered. And whether people want to admit it or not, real time uh to what's going on. But the biggest thing is discipline. They leave on to the farm alone and they treat it like a class house, and and they have a plan and they stick to it. But they all come down to good cover, good food, and lead your to your alone. I mean, that's the that's the three things that they all agree on. Whether however, you get to that, those three things they all agree with, those are the three really important.

That makes sense, And I would say that stands out to me too. I'm curious about the flip side, which would be what are some of the things that stand out to you as most unique. So some can you are there any off the wall ideas that you've heard from someone over the years that you've talked to, You've walked a lot of people's farms, You've talked to all these guys on your podcast. Do any off the wall ideas stand out to you still? Is like, Man, this one crazy thing that Jeff said, or this one wild idea from Bobby or or anything like that that stands out to you is particularly unique and that you think really has some validity to it, or that you've been able to implement and see work for you.

There's a couple of things that more than one thing. One of them was I was a Bobby Kendall earlier this past summer. He had three stands in one spot, three stands for all different wins. So there was the spot within the spot, and it was actually exactly what I described really good betting transitioning to really good food. And he had three different stands for three different wins. I don't know too many other people that would go to that lengths to have it set up for that exact scenario. So I mean, that's pretty it's pretty genius, and it had me question, like, I want a lot of the spots if you could, you know, instead of being on that side of the trail or that side of the cover, what could you do to make it work more often if it is the best spot right. Another one that's really interesting, ironically, I was just on this farm this morning. Actually, Bill Whinky came out to a client of Minds property and there's a cabbin and then it comes out to where it's a really big cliff and then it goes into a at an area and he's like, you need to put a forty foot extension ladder right here so you can access down there. And I was like, really, he was dead series and that was Bill's idea, and I said, that is definitely to the level of extreme. I don't think I would have thought of I'd actually just I just sold the farm and I was walking with the cellar. And it's kind of the inverse of this. He had a rope off the side of a big steep hill. Because we walked back there and I was like, man, how the heck did you get back here? He's like, I was waiting for you to ask that he has a rope and he pulls himself up this giant hill to come up off a cliff face, basically to get to where he needs to go. And that, ironically unprovoked came up as this is my favorite spot on the farm. And so it's like we all we all know within our own brains and what's the best spot. And then those are a couple of creative ways to make it much more realistic, which I mean kind of a streamed. Those are a couple of extreme examples, but it I wouldn't have thought of either of those. I may have thought of the pull up rope, but I don't think I would actually do it. I'd probably be like, what about this word you over here?

Right? I got a buddy who's always said he's wanted to develop a white tail zipline system for access. Yeah, if anyone ever figures that one out, that might be useful to get into certain spots.

I bet you there's some white tail tunnels across the country that we do not know about to where you go underneat this little tunnel to get to the backside of a bod. I bet you somewhere across the country that is a thing.

Someone's figured it out.

Yeah, if someone's creative enough to do that.

Uh yeah, man, all right. So if someone is chomping at the bit to do this kind of work and they're excited for the new year, they really want to make some positive changes on their farm this year. Do you have any resources you would recommend folks check out. Are there any books or videos or particular podcasts or episodes that you've done, or anything at all that you would send folks to to kind of get this planning process rolling.

Yeah. I think the biggest thing for a lot of folks that are newer to this would be utilize the free source free resources that are out there, and that would be your local on RCS office. And so they have pheasants, forever biologists, and I've utilized these a lot personally, and I had a concern going into that to where they'd be like, yeah, you know, you're kind of videer hunter. That's kind of weird, like we only really care about nature. But they've all been extremely accommodating to you know, they suggest something like, well, you know, that's that's great, but how could we tweak that plan to make it more whitetail centric. They usually have a suggestion beyond that, So I think utilizing the NRCS office, the free biologists, utilize the equiped contracts that are available to do a lot of this work. The first year I planned, uh, like a thousand shrubs and trees. I pay for all all of it out of pocket because I was not aware that I could get costs here on that. And I think that's one of the biggest things. The one thing I would say is be patient with them, like they're they're busy folk and they have you know, they're all spread really thin. So I think utilizing those would be one of the biggest things. And navigating equip contracts is something that is pretty challenging to do for the first time. And so a shameless plug would be the White Tail Master Academy or break down equip contracts. What do you need to ask a lot of just like you need to know what questions you need to ask order to get the outcome that you would like, because a lot of it is unique and changing for the NRCS offices. And so that's something that I would encourage folks to look at. And there's a bunch of different land plans from Don Higgins, like over twenty land plans, and so you kind of get the the ability to look at different farms, maybe find one that is similar to what you're working with, and maybe you'll get an idea or two and make a big difference. And I think those are some of the bigger items that I really enjoy when it comes to just the pure native species and establishing those grasses and things of that nature. I really like the Prairie Farm podcast which they talk about they really nerd out on the different varieties of grasses and things of that nature, and so you kind of get an idea of the different processes and the ecological benefits and a lot of this. You always start as a white tail hunter, and I have no doubt by the end of it, you will be a true conservationist by the end of it, and you will get excited about little oak trees growing that I never thought I would get excited about. You'd get really excited about a clump of Indian grass that responded after a prescribed burn. And so the basis of it is to hunt and kill big deer more more consistently. But you will find along the journey a lot of different things that you will really enjoy, and you get a top to different biologists that have different backgrounds and get maybe they walk your farm and they like, oh, this is a very rare species. This is really cool. I haven't seen one of these three years. Well that's pretty cool, right, And so to start the process, and I think that utilize your NRCS office, utilize foresters once again, be persistent. They're spread then where I'm at the part of the state where I'm at, there's very few of them, so it's kind of hard to pin one down. But utilize those free resources and check out the whiteail Master Academy, check out the Prairie Farm podcast. And there's so many different things that I consistently tune into. I mean, there's some really good YouTube channels out there. It'd be a disservice to to nate many because there's a lot of them that are really good. And also, surprisingly Facebook groups can be really good too. There's a I'm in a group that is just switchgrass Switchgrass Facebook. That's amazing.

So neat I doubt Mark Zuckerberger imagined that when he built Facebook, like, someday there'll be people congregating here to debate switchcrasts varieties.

Yeah, And it's it's crazy because people will take a picture of their stand and say, hey, what do I need to do and improve? And there's guys that have been playing switchcrasts for twenty five years and they're like, oh, you need to mow this or spray this, or wait till next year. And so like a lot of these resources are out there. You just got to figure out what gets you excited and get up the old Google machine and start going and learning and applying and making this be comfortable to make mistakes and be have enough. I don't want to say all this A lot of this comes down to a lot there's a lot of ego and all this based off of me, Like I'm just speaking generally, like me identifying like I need to learn more about this, like I don't know as much as I really should, and just load the ego and just going to learn it as much as possible and utilize all these different resources and have fun, like at the end of the day, have fun doing it.

Yeah, so you mentioned the white tail Master Academy. You've got the land podcast. Can you just give folks a quick rundown of where they can access these things?

Yeah, so white tail master Academy dot com. We have new videos every single week. Land planned from Don Higgins once a month, and we actually have virtual a lot of events. For example, we have doctor Bronsis Strickland on this evening you can ask doctor Bronce Strickland any question you've ever wanted to, which is a pretty cool format to be able to do that. The Land podcast you can find that for every find podcasting. Then also a lot of the audio version, the video versions on this my YouTube channels just my name Jake Hoefers. So those are the places you can find all the different exciting things that get me excited and hopefully people find value in them.

Absolutely, but I appreciate Jake, great catching up, great talking Land, and I'm excited to get to work on my plan for this year too, even more so now awesome, Thank you so much for having me all right, and that's going to do it for us today. Thank you for joining me here on the podcast, Thanks for being a part of this community, and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.

Wired To Hunt Podcast

Dive deep into the world of whitetails with leading expert Mark Kenyon. Each episode covers specific 
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