Ep. 907: Janis Putelis’ Land Management Journey From Zero to Hero

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 the one and only Yannis
Pitelus to discuss his land management journey, going from ground
zero all the way to the implementation of significant wildlife
habitat improvement projects such as creating wildlife openings, oak savannahs,

(00:40):
timber stand improvements, and much more. All Right, welcome back
to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by
First Light, And this week on the show, I'm joined
by my good buddy, the one and only the Latvian Eagle,
mister Jannis tell Us, and we're talking about a topic

(01:02):
that is near and dear to my heart and something
that in recent years has really come on for Yanni,
and that's habitat improvement. Wildlife habitat projects work on the ground,
improving the landscape for deer and turkeys and other critters.
And this is something that you know, Jannis for a
long time was not interested in this at all. He

(01:24):
has lived out west for many years, but in recent
years he has had a kind of restirring of the
soul around white tails, which has led to him spending
more time in Wisconsin at his family hunting property and
in the last handful of years actually diving really deep
into the habitat side of things. So today's story is

(01:46):
this really interesting look at someone going from kind of
you know, not having any experience and really interest at
the beginning in improving a landscape for wildlife, to then
diving in headfirst and learning everything he possible he could,
talking to all sorts of people, consuming every different resource
he possibly could, and then starting to try these things
on his own. And now you know, four or five

(02:08):
years later, he has made some real changes on his property.
He's made a big difference. Some real things are happening now.
So this is a story and a conversation that I
think if you are new to the habitat improvement world,
or if you're just getting started, or if you're intrigued
about maybe someday trying to do some work on your
back forty or your family farm, or a new property

(02:30):
that you are wanting to buy, if any of that
is in your future if you have been curious, maybe
you know, intimidated by this kind of stuff. Our chat
today is going to be a big eye opener because,
you know, making a difference on the ground is something
that anyone can do, whether you have been doing this
for decades or if you're brand new, like Giannis was

(02:52):
just a handful of years ago. So our story today
will be documenting that entire path, that entire process, the
journey from kind of quote unquote off the couch to
doing some real stuff now. So that's our chat today
with Yanni. I think you're going to enjoy it. In
my world, lots of exciting stuff happening. I need to

(03:13):
do a podcast here soon about a recent bit of
turkey hunting success that we had that's very exciting here
with my family, but I will hold that off for
another time, and I think we should just get right
into it. The only other piece of housekeeping I guess
I will let you know is that this week, if
you are listening to this, the week this is coming out,
which is oh, let me just tell you here in

(03:35):
a second, this podcast will be dropping May fifteenth, twenty
twenty five. So if you are listening that day or
the next it's Dog Week at meat Eater, which means
that you are going to be getting all sorts of
really fun and informative dog related content across the media network,
whether it be the Houndation's podcast that Tony does over

(03:57):
in Cal's feed, or the YouTube channel to meet YouTube
channel across the website. I know there's a dog photo
contest and all sorts of stuff. So going over to
the meat eater dot com to engage with our dog
and hunting dog content, lots of stuff there. I'll remind
you again as I said last week, please subscribe to
this podcast, leave a review on iTunes or Spotify or

(04:19):
wherever you do that, and then check out the rest
of the meat Eater podcast network. I think a lot
of people don't realize that there's actually a bunch of
other shows that we produce in addition to this. In
addition to the flagship Meet it or podcast, We've also
got you know, Cal's Weeken Review, which is going to
give you conservation and hunting and fishing related news. Uh,

(04:40):
there's the God's Country podcast, which is a really fun
look at the intersection of country music and the outdoors. There's,
of course Tony's Foundations podcast and Foundations here on this
speed there is the Cutting the Distance podcast again more
tactics and Western focused hunting. Uh. And then we can't
forget Bear and that country life over there with play

(05:02):
Newcome and Brenton Reeves and the heck, I might be
forgetting something, but lots and lots to check out if
you are into hunting, fishing, conservation and you know, spending
your time and energy in the outdoors. So without further ado,
let's get to another member of the Mediator crew, my
good friend, the one and only Jannis, who tell us

(05:25):
and the story of how he went from zero to
hero when it comes to whitetail habitat management. All right
with me now on the line. It's my good pal,
mister Jannis tell us, Yanni, I enjoy our chats off air,

(05:46):
so I'm excited to have one on air here for
the first time in a little bit, so welcome back.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
Thank you. Yeah, I do as well. I always appreciate
that you are willing to take the time, although as
busy as you are, it's uh, it's almost like trying
to get a hold of Stephen Ranella. I have to
like talk to Steve's assistant to just get like a
five minute convo about what we're doing this weekend with
the kids. And I feel like it's becoming that way

(06:13):
with you too.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Oh. I don't want that to be the case.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
But I know, well priorities, you know, but I do
want to before we get started. I do. I feel
like I owe you an apology because really episode two
fifteen of the Wire to Hunt podcast. You had to
go way back, but I just found it somewhere now
now I'm not look, Oh, there it is yep us.

(06:38):
You interviewed Steve and myself to talk about white tails
when we were in Michigan hunting white tails, I believe
right on.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Turkeys.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
Wasn't that when we were hunting our friends farm?

Speaker 2 (06:54):
I think we're well, I thought we were Matt's hunting turkeys,
but maybe it was Dear. I can't remember it was Mats.
Could have been it could it could have been anyways.
I won't speak for Steve, but i'll, you know, speak
for myself, but we I definitely had uh sort of
a standoff ish I'm too cool for white tails attitude,

(07:18):
and I'd like to say I could blame that on
just being like young and dumb.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
But I mean, it wasn't that long ago, like you
were just five years ago.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Huh, you were just middle aged and dumb.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yeah, totally middle aged and dumb. And you know, it
was just a time in my life where I just
wasn't that into the white tails, but it was. It was.
It was literally the the leading cusp, the leading edge
of where I've gotten to now. And uh, as everybody knows,
I've done it my whole life, but never really had

(07:55):
I guess just taken the next step to just you know,
really call it a passion or just really get into it.
And at that time I actually had was given the
opportunity to hunt white tails more and to do it
more often back where we have some property in Wisconsin,
and I really kind of got the bug. And so listen,

(08:19):
I'm not saying any other hunting is any less interesting
to me. You know, bugle and bulls and goblin turkeys,
they rank very high and what I love to do,
but whitetail deer and white tail deer habitat management and
that includes you know, habitat management for all the other

(08:40):
species that live with white tail deer. But all that stuff, now,
is it occupies a large chunk of time in my
mind on a daily basis. So anyways, apologies for you know,
slandering your love for white tail deer hunting general white
tail deer hunting, and uh, yeah, that's all I can

(09:02):
say about it.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
That was amazing. G Honest, I think I need to
have you talk to my wife about how to do that.
That was terrific love of may a couple like that.
It's been so fun though, to watch you know, from Afar,
to see your your new excitement around it. And you know,
we talked about this a few years ago when you
were on the show and we I had just gone

(09:25):
down and visited your place with you. But seeing that
fresh excitement around it is it's it's kind of a
what's the word I'm looking for, Not addictive, but uh,
contagious contagious. Yeah, and uh and you know I'm the
opposite in to you, and that I've been so deep
in the white tail world that I've I've gotten cover

(09:49):
up in it, completely consumed with it, and then being
with you again it helps kind of make it fresh
again for me. And uh, and that's been fun too,
So I love getting a geek out with you. When
you're sending text messages and and trying to figure stuff out.
So I'm curious though, you know, I know you mentioned
that stuff started to get rekindled when you start going

(10:10):
back to the Wisconsin property with your family. Was there
any more specific inciting incident or moment or or something
happened you're like, oh, wow, Like now I'm now I've
really got it. Was there anything that really turned the
corner for you that brought you back into this world
more specifically?

Speaker 3 (10:32):
I wouldn't say it's one specific incident, but what I've
realized about myself is that I like just to have
fresh stuff right to be working on, and stuff that
I don't know about. And you know, it's one of
those jack of all trades, master of none, you know,
like I'm a pretty good turkey hunter, pretty good elk hunter.

(10:56):
Am I as good as you know the greats out there? Definitely?
I know means but I think that white tailed deer hunting,
even though I've been doing it for so long, that,
you know, jumping into it again with sort of you know,
a fresh set of eyes and a fresh amount of
time to put towards it, that's really what did it.

(11:18):
And then realizing that, oh, I don't don't really know
that much about it. There's a lot to learn here,
there's a lot to explore, even just on the same
acres I've been hunting my whole life. So I think
it was more that that just sort of like, oh,
here's this whole thing that you know, I've got at
least five to ten years of really you know, jumping

(11:40):
in headfirst into it before I'm going to sort of
feel like, oh, I get it. You know, I'm confident.
I always put it this way, where like, there comes
a time where it was even this way. It was
squirrel hunting, right where like the first ten times I
went squirrel hunting, I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing,

(12:00):
Like where should I be? What trees do they like
to be in? Is it better to be out early
or midday? I mean, they still humble me. But it
got to a point where I knew I was good
enough at scroll hunting where I could guide my kids
scroll hunting and have a good day. I got good
enough at turkey hunting where I could take people turkey
hunting and probably kill a turkey with them. You know,

(12:23):
I guided elk hunts. I could take people out elk
hunting and kill turkey. So there will come a day
where I'll feel confident enough whitesell deer hunting that I'll
be able to say, oh, yeah, come with me. I'll
put you in a spot where you'll probably see a deer.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
Yeah. Well, there's something about those big, those early phases
of any new love, right, There's just something so intoxicating
about the curiosity never being fully quenched, Like there's always
something new to learn, there's always another rabbit hole to
go down. There's always more and more and more that

(13:00):
I mean. I mean, you know, I'm always reading. I'm
just like that person is to constantly learn new things.
So yeah, when it comes to activities that way, same
same thing. Now, four years ago I went back and
confirmed this too. Four years ago, I visited your place
there in Wisconsin. We walked it, We looked at all
sorts of things, talk through ideas, hunting strategies, whatnot, talk

(13:21):
through some possible habitat, things that you might want to do.
We began a very little, tiny project and we did
a podcast recapping kind of the long history of your place,
everything that's gone on there, what your hopes and dreams,
are for it everything, so on and so forth. For
folks that didn't hear that one, can you give us
like the cliff notes version, just a really quick recap

(13:44):
of what's the property situation, Like what are we talking
about here, what are we working with? And then what
are the goals with this place now? So how do
we get here and what kind of set the stage?

Speaker 3 (13:58):
For sure? I probably should have listened to that podcast too,
that would have been beneficial to spur this on.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
But assume most people probably didn't hear.

Speaker 3 (14:10):
So yeah, well go back, go back and listen. I will. Hey,
give me just a second, my dog needs inside.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah, no problem.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
Yeah. So I've been hunting the same spot since I
was a young boy, I don't know, eleven or twelve
in south central Wisconsin. We're basically at the northern edge
of the driftless area my dad had had owned with
a partner of his uh a forty acre chunk. They

(14:44):
actually sold it and bought one that was a little
bit closer to the lodging that we stayed at. And
reason beings because there's other labbyans that own there's like
a total of roughly four hundred contiguous acres that kind
of everybody hunts together as sort of a co op,
I guess, you know, and we all work together on it.

(15:09):
And so about I don't know, Well, I guess it
might have been had I bought the property when we
did that. Had I bought in yet when we did that,
I don't think I had.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yeah, So I don't know. Maybe three years ago my
dad's partner wanted out of the property and so it
was an opportunity for me to buy in. And timing
was great because we had just sold a house, had
some extra cash, and so we rolled it right into that.

(15:40):
And then basically immediately my dad hands me this contract
that says MFL Managed Forest Law in Wisconsin. I'm like,
what's this. He's like, well, it's his program we're enrolled in.
You know, it keeps our taxes really low. But it
basically the states telling us how to manage our timber,

(16:02):
you know, like they want you practicing silver culture. And
I'm like, okay, I don't know anything about this, but yeah,
I'll check it out. And so I was basically like
thrown pushed headfirst into having to do like some sort
of habitat management. I mean, it was just logging at

(16:23):
that time the way I was looking at it, But
that's sort of what really got me thinking a lot
about it. And so as I was talking to the
forester about what needed to be done, because they basically
had already written a sort of a prescription for you know,

(16:43):
what the next fifty years looked like on that property.
And after talking to the forester a bunch, I realized
that in his own words, he's like, look, Because I
would always ask him, well, can we do this or
can we do that? And in his own words, he's like, look,
as long as you're doing something, I'm going to be happy.
Because I think that for the most part is I

(17:06):
don't know what the percentage is, but I think he
has a long list of delinquent MFL landowners that have
been in the program for twenty years, twenty five, thirty
years and haven't done anything. And so you know, there
comes a time where he has to start writing letters
that say, hey, if you don't, you know, start managing
your forest actively, you're gonna to start paying these back taxes. Right.

(17:30):
He doesn't want to do that. That's not fun for him,
but anyways, so yeah, basically he's like, we can mold
whatever it is to fit into the plan. Really, I'm
sure there's some extremes that it wouldn't work. But like
I said, the MFL program is it's a state program

(17:50):
for Wisconsin, and basically, you know, we pay little to
no taxes in exchange for them sort of you know,
making sure that we are actively growing and harvesting timber.
But I realized well before we get into the weeds
about it. I guess that's sort of like the rough
history that brings us up to you know, when the
habitat work really started, and I would say early on.

(18:14):
The main goals obviously was to improve the habitat for
all wildlife species including deer, including turkeys. Meet the goals
of the MFL plan, and hopefully what's nice about this
chunk is that the little ridge that we have on

(18:34):
it is very climbable, walkable even for people in older age.
The rest of the properties pretty flat. The other four
hundred acres are very hilly, so as my dad and
his peers age. Unless we get some side by sides
there can am If you're listening, you know, it's just

(18:58):
going to be harder for them to use utilize all
of that property, right, So this is nice because out
of the forty acres, there's I don't know, maybe ten
that's like a hill and the rest of its flat,
so very accessible. And so one of the main goals
I think was once this was all done, is to
have you know, very accessible hunting for guys that are

(19:21):
in their seventies and beyond.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
Right, Yeah, from a hunting perspective, expand a little bit
on like how many people do you envision hunting this?
Is this going to be like a just a bow
hunting spot or is this bow hunting and gun hunting?
Is this deer? Is this deer in turkeys and everything?
A little bit more in the use of it.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
Sure, I would imagine that for bow hunting it will
be all the above. I mean, we'll utilize it as
much as we can. For bow hunting, it'll probably mostly
be my dad and I And if it seems like
that's too much pressure, and again we're lucky because we
have access to the other four hundred acres and so

(20:08):
we can you know, rotate through and you know, maybe
only hunt that forty you know, on the right wind
every two or three days or whatever in rifle season. Again,
if it's if it can hold two hunters or three
hunters and be worthwhile to hunt that way. Once it's

(20:30):
the habitat is matured into what I'm hoping, then great,
we'll do that. You know. Again, these guys they hunt,
you know, two to three days for the opener of
the rifle season, and that's really about it. But so yeah,
I would say as much as possible, but the I'd

(20:51):
say the the hardcore hunting will happen in BO season
when my dad and I are there usually together sometime
early in Nova member and I'll give him first DIBs,
you know, and let him kind of work it and
try to give him as much as advice and direction
direction as I can to hunt properly so that if

(21:14):
we are holding a good buck that we you know,
we don't run him out of there.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah. So one of the most common questions that I
get from folks or or like little anecdotes I hear
from people kind of similar shoes to you, is just
around how do I make a plan? How do I
figure out what to actually do? Because there's so many possibilities.
You hear podcasts, you read articles, there's there's a thousand
different things you can do or that people say you

(21:42):
should do, and then you're trying to look at your
actual piece of ground and figure out, how do I
make a priority, how do I make a plan? How
do I do this stuff? You know, coming into this
kind of cold turkey the way you were, how did
you go about putting together a plan and figuring out
what's steps to take in what order? What was that

(22:04):
process like for you?

Speaker 3 (22:06):
Certainly just talking to a lot of people. And that's
you know, started with our the MFL forester that works
for the state of Wisconsin, you know, people like you.
I started calling. I got numbers of other neighbors in
the area there from my forester of people that were,

(22:28):
you know, going above and beyond the normal MFL plan
requirements and actually doing habitat improvement in his eyes, all
the way up to you know, prescribe burning and so
talking to neighbors, Uh going there and then you know,
going to neighbors places, looking at what they have done,
looking at results. I mean, I'm still doing that now.

(22:50):
I was. Actually I set up a I'm lucky to
have so many neighbors that are into this sort of
thing and are doing it, but we had I went
to a prescribe burn when I was there just a
couple of weeks ago and helped to help the neighbor out,
got to see his place and got to see a
prescribe burn in the woods go down. And then we
went on another tour on a really big property that

(23:15):
you know, you can almost pick any sort of oak
regeneration time frame and oak regeneration style and sort of
the I don't know the tactics or the processes that
were implemented to see and go, oh, here's oak regeneration

(23:37):
five years out with no fire. Fire, here's oak regeneration
with five years out with fire. Here's oak regeneration where
they did a bunch of forestry mulchain but no fire.
And then we went and saw some oak regeneration that
was you know, ten years old right after just a

(23:57):
straight clear cut with nothing having been done. So I
think just going and seeing, you know, neighboring properties. You know,
there's a big group in Wisconsin called the Mississippi Valley
Land Conservancy, I believe, and so you know, they conserved
areas for public use and but they you know, actively

(24:20):
heavily manage it. And so talking to those guys, because
we've been talking about putting our place into a conservation.
He'sman too. But talking to them, they're like, oh, yeah,
there's a place not far from you that where we
burn often and there's oak savannah there, and so you
know I've gone there and looked at that and see
what that looks like. You know, again, I have a

(24:51):
lot of resources that probably a little bit more than
a lot of people. But talking to people like Jared
van Hyes, who has also been there and you know,
wrote me up a very quick sort of plan of
you know how he would envision it. So yeah, we're
definitely forced into it through the MFL plan that we

(25:14):
I had to do something and that and that doing
something was a lot of logging, and sort of in
a way, you know, that was the plan. I could,
I could tweak it, I could be flexible with it,
but like, we had to log and a big thing
that I learned too, I think that people should know

(25:34):
it gets hard, Like just loggers in general. I think
from what I hear, there's more like bad ones than
good ones. And and I'm not trying to put any
loggers under the bus. I got really lucky. I've had
a great logger. He's been great to work with. But uh,

(25:57):
it's gonna It's like any home improvement project is gonn
to take way longer than you think it is, and
they might not be interested in your forty acres. I mean,
if you're covered up in you know, walnut trees and nothing,
but you know one hundred foot tall white oaks, Sure,
no matter how big the companies, they're gonna come look

(26:17):
at it. But I think a lot of these Midwestern
close canopy properties like ours was, they're probably sixty to
eighty years old. They were maybe high graded at some point,
and so you get loggers that walk through there and
they're like, man, it's really not worth it for me
to bring up my equipment to do this right. You're

(26:38):
gonna have to find someone smaller that needs to do
a smaller job. And it took a while. I mean
I talked to ten different logging companies and probably had
half of them at least come and walk the property.
And half of those said no, half said maybe. And
then it took you know, again, getting lucky talking to
Doug Durham and he recommended a lot and he said, look,

(27:01):
this guy's a little bit more in tune with habitat
projects as opposed to just doing logging, and to me,
I see a big future in that where hopefully there's
some loggers that can mesh those two as opposed to
just coming in and doing the logging work, but that

(27:21):
people like us are going to say, hey, yeah, we
want it logged, but there's these other things that we
want accomplished while the equipment's in here and whatever. And
so yeah, the plan it is still dynamic. It probably

(27:46):
always will be dynamic. I don't know if it's ever.
It's definitely as we all know with habitat work, it's
never going to be done. It's like it's not and
like Craig Harper says, it's not an event, it's a lifestyle.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
And so look at you, Yanni, you're quoting Craig Harper.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
Like you're in officially tattooed.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
Pretty soon you're officially in the crew. Man.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
Oh yeah, there's I posted a picture the other day
of me walking around chainsaw on one hand and then
a squirt bottle of Craig Harper's cocktail in the other,
and uh, it's like that's my happy place.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Mm hmm. Man, if you have told me this a
decade ago and never would have thought.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
This crew in the woods, cutting trees, spraying, you know,
the trees that I'm not interested in having around. Yeah,
your question about making a plan.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
It does, it does. So I want to I want
to dive into the parts of your plant you've moved
forward on so far. But before we get into the
details of each, can you just like list out for me,
like if you can imagine the top of an Excel doc,
like the columns, can you list for me, like the
major projects that you have, you know, put as like
I'm going to do this or I've started doing this,

(29:05):
Like what are those main things that you ended up
putting as bullet points on your plan? And then I
want to dive into some of those.

Speaker 3 (29:12):
Yeah. Well, and one of the first ones that I did,
which can take up a column, is just general TSI
work timber stand improvement. Yeah, I won't get into the
details of it yet, but that was one. And then

(29:33):
the whole logging operation in of itself is another one
to get ready. And again I'm trying to balance what
this MFL plan needed. And then you know, my sort
of habitat goals, which in a nutshells basically make it
really good for deer and turkeys, right, make them want
to be there, and it doesn't seem like it's that

(29:56):
too hard to balance them and really mesh them. But
the logging project is by far like the biggest, biggest thing.
But in preparing for that so that I get good
oak regeneration, because that's the goal with this NFL plan
was to you know, limit competition and so hacking and

(30:20):
scorting or just you know killing off any you know, undesirables,
which mostly for us is just the red maple is
going to be the biggest competition. Ah, so getting rid
of those, we put in a water source. Uh that

(30:40):
that was top of the list. You know, you and
I did that food plot. It kind of sort of worked.
That has morphed into what are now these wildlife openings.
But I would say, you know, I could break down

(31:01):
the logging project into different zones because you know, the
forty acres doesn't look the same, you know, in each quadrant.
So within the logging, you know, there was one zone
that was really going to have most of the trees
taken out because they were all oaks and we were
going to get them out. The southern half was white

(31:24):
pine dominated with a lot of maple in there. Too,
a lot of birch in there, some aspen in there,
but none of it was very merchantable. I mean there
was maybe a dozen fifteen of these you know, giant
sixty to eighty year old white pines that had some

(31:45):
you know value for boards, but otherwise it was basically
nothing but pulp wood and slash. Figuring out what to
do with that was a big column. So yeah, I
would say that's a oh and I guess and again
kind of part of the logging operation. But access and

(32:09):
roads slash, fire brakes was another big one.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
Okay, so with that logging operation, since that's the big,
big job here. Yeah, you mentioned that you had to
you know, you had a forrester already have a plan
like a prescription, and then you had to go out
and call logging companies. You had some of them be
willing to come and take a look, and then a
smaller percentage of that actress that they would be willing
to do it. You finally narrated down to the one

(32:35):
guy who would be a good fit. What did you
guys actually do to then make the decisions about what
you just described, Like in this part, we're going to
do this, and in this part we're going to do this,
because that's a big scary set of decisions to make.
I gotta believe, and I'm sure those people thinking like, hey,
if I bring in this guy who's going to come in, like,
how do I make sure that what he or she

(32:56):
or they do is you know, gonna meet my goals
for the wildlife stuff while also meeting their financial goals
or my financial goals or whatever it is. How did
you guys like work through all that and put together
that part of the plan.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
Yeah. Again, I was lucky because this fella came highly
recommended from Doug dr and Doug had worked with him,
and so I feel like I didn't really need to
have that another layer of protection because I think what
a lot of people do, and it's recommended, you know,
especially if you have a lot of value in your timber,

(33:30):
is that you would hire a forester to basically work
on your behalf. And so instead of you and the
logger just walking through the woods and marking trees not
to cut or to cut or whatever, the forester actually
goes in there they do it and then they're sort
of they take a cut, but they're responsible for basically

(33:52):
getting you the most amount of money out of your timber, right,
and they do it in a ton of different ways.
But like some of them will actually get the work
done and just pay out the logger to get the
work done, and then they'll have all of the wood
stacked and they'll literally have an auction and then they

(34:13):
can get the highest bidder for it. Right, Like, there's
all different kinds of versions of that. Because we didn't
really have that much value. I was just happy to
have a logger first of all, right, and basically all
of our you know, any financial gain that we get
got from the timber was we knew it was going

(34:33):
to be completely reinvested back into the property in the
in the form of these wildlife openings and roads and
access and fire breaks. We knew that basically just doing
that would eat up, you know, our profits. So it
just it wasn't huge. So the way the logger and

(34:56):
I went in to make those decisions was like, I'll
get I'll go back to one more thing. Because our
property was so small and there wasn't such high quality timber.
The original MFL plan said, hey, you do a shelter
would cut, which means like you take out depends on

(35:16):
the percentages, but you're going to take out a large
chunk of the trees, but you're going to leave a
layer of oaks. They're going to act as the seed
source to make more oaks. Once those are established, the
new young ones, then you come in for another cut
and remove these overstory trees. Well, being that there weren't

(35:37):
that many of them. The property is small to have
to get a loger to come back ten years later
to remove thirty big oaks. It just wasn't like it's
not going to happen, right, And so I pushed for
more of a clear cut tactic, and again the forest

(35:58):
are signed off on it, and so we went in
the logger and I and basically just said, okay, we're
gonna leave some oaks so that we can promote oak regeneration,
but it's gonna be a lot less. And like again,
there's been other a lot of logging in the area
that's happened. So we were able to go right next
door and I'd say, well, what kind of cut was this?

(36:20):
What is mine going to look like, you know, compared
to this one? And the logger would say, well, just
way more open because you're gonna have less trees standing
right because you're gonna go for the clear cutming process.
So I was okay with that, and so yeah, we
basically just walked through and we saved a couple pockets

(36:42):
of semi mature oaks, white oaks, and red oaks. We
saved trees that I thought were in good spots to
be uh tree stand trees where you know, either historically
we'd have of deer movement or thinking about what the

(37:03):
future would look like where the deer would move, you know,
it had said all right, let's not cut these, and
then even behind those trees or near those trees, I
would sort of make a little five yard by five
yard zone where we didn't cut anything at all, just
so you could have you know, breakup. Because when you
clear cut and there's a couple oaks left standing, those

(37:25):
oaks are not going to be great to get up
into for honey, I mean, unless you go like John
Eberhart plus ten and you're like, you know, as high
as a high as a hunter. Everyone wants to get
You're just it's hard to hide right in in that
kind of a scenario. And so that was really about it,

(37:46):
because the main goal was to really just like get
rid of a lot of trees, and so there wasn't
too much left if I had to look act at
that now, because the logging is finished as of just
I don't know, three weeks ago or so. The logger

(38:08):
actually ended up leaving a few more oaks than I
had even marked, because the whole thing is is you like,
you put your stamp of approval on it, and the
whole time you're thinking, oh my gosh, am I gonna
cut too much? Am I gonna cut too much? He
ended up leaving a few more, And that'll kind of
we'll talk about how this morphed into another project. But

(38:31):
I would have been happy if he would have taken
them or left them. Either way, It's like what's left
looks good to me because I can see what the
future is going to look like there. But yeah, it's
a weird place to be in because again, there was

(38:53):
the MFL plan. It's a fifty year plan. They require
you to do these things, and you don't want to
get that like liquent notice right from your forester. So
that sort of, you know, that pushed a lot of
my decisions to be like, Okay, I'm going to get
this done. So that like, the forester is not going
to tell me to do anything until I resign up

(39:14):
forty years from now, and then maybe he won't even
talking to me. He'll be talking to my kids about
you know what, what has to happen with the timber.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
Right, So with this logging, I know, as you've described,
you were mandated to do something, But what is like
the end state that you're hoping this will become? Like
what are you managing towards?

Speaker 3 (39:35):
Now?

Speaker 2 (39:36):
So what you just took it out of one state?
You reset the deck primarily with a clear cut like that.
Now what are you going to manage it for? Are
you going to let it all regrow? Are you going
to keep it at a certain successional stage? What's what's
the end goal here?

Speaker 3 (39:51):
So and originally basically with the MFL plan, it's like
you they just want you to be making trees, right,
and your higher value trees are gonna be you know,
your oaks and your walnuts. We mostly have oaks. So
you're trying to do oak regeneration because it's gonna it's

(40:12):
gonna be good for the you know, business of silver
culture in Wisconsin. It's gonna be good financially for you.
Within the NFL plan, you're allowed to have it twenty No, yeah,
twenty percent can be what they call non productive. So

(40:32):
if our forty acres is enrolled, I can have eight
acres that aren't producing trees, So that gives you the
room to do some food plots or you know, maybe
cut all the trees down and turn it into a
prairie in that eight acres. Right, Originally, I had had

(40:53):
that sort of gonna be my rich top, and I
was just gonna do heavy TSI on it and keep
it fairly open and not really be allowing too much
you know, woody growth to come back. But again, talking
to Doug, he introduced me to a fella from the

(41:14):
US and Fish Wildlife Service Partners program. And get this straight. Yeah,
he's a private lands biologist for the US Fish and
Wildlife Service, and he works within a program called the
Partners for Fish and Wildlife. And basically what they do

(41:37):
is they help private landowners do good conservation. Seventy of
the land in this country is private, and so they
feel that like if they put this energy and uh,
you know, money into private lands conservation, it's gonna help everybody.

(41:59):
And I told you, I mean there's no doubt that
in our neighborhood there. I'm talking about a big giant neighborhood,
you know, like fifty square miles or something. There's no
doubt that all of the private land habitat conservation work
what's going on there is benef fitting all the public
land stuff that's interspersed within there too, like one hundred

(42:22):
So anyways, he introduced me, I've made a phone call.
These guys came out, did a walk, and then they
came back and said, hey, you have something that we
like where you happen to cut heavy where you did
this clear cut in the northwest corner and you only
have you know, five acres or sorry, five oaks per

(42:43):
acre standing like that would be a great place to
do an oak savannah. Basically, in oak savannah is just
that like imagine a forest, but like if a tree falls,
it's probably not going to hit another tree, So very
open and the understory is, you know, three to five
foot grasses and forbes. I've heard some of these habitat

(43:08):
guys say that some of the best deer hunting they've
ever experience has been in oak savannahs Uh, just a
lot of a lot of a lot of benefits, a
lot of food, a lot of cover in there.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
What's that for critters of all types too, not just deer?

Speaker 3 (43:25):
Yeah, one hundred and So these guys wanted to do
this project, and the way that it work, it's a
it's a true partnership where they're like, this is the project.
It's going to cost twenty five thousand bucks. We're going
to cover half of it, and this is what our
half is going to cover, and you need to cover
the other half. You need to take care of these things.

(43:50):
The cool part about it is that a lot of
it can be what they call in kind. So they
might budget, say five thousand dollars to burn these giant
slash piles that we have now on the property. Well,
if you go and burn it yourself and the work
gets done, then you don't have to, you know, kick

(44:10):
out that money for a contractor to do it. And
so I'll be I'm on the hook for some stuff
like herbicide buying and then applying and we're going to
need to buy a little bit of equipment to put
it out there. But the nice thing was was that
oak savannah. If you only have these few oaks, like,

(44:31):
it's not a like, you're not producing oak trees anymore, right,
So I had to go to my forester and go like, oh, hey,
can this seven acres be an oak savannah because we're
not going to be producing oaks anymore because we're going
to be killing any young oaks that come up in
the future. And he goes, oh, yeah, we'll just move
your non productive from that ridge top since you're still

(44:52):
technically growing you know, oaks up there. Although you've done
some TSI you've you've taken out some and dropped them,
but you've left a lot of them and they're gonna
get bigger. You're growing trees. So we'll just move your
non productive to that oak savannah. And so this really
was like it was a huge win for me because
early on, like the first thing I wanted to do

(45:14):
when I got in there was like, I'm gonna do
eight acres of corn beans four and four. Just got
to figure out how to pull that off because I've
got neighbors that have that, and like they kill bucks
off their corn and beans every year. Right, difference beings
they live there, they have farm equipment, they can put
it in. I live a thousand miles away. It's a

(45:37):
little bit harder to manage. So I was thinking, well,
maybe I can trade or the farmer that he'll you know,
take half of it and you know leave the other half,
things like that. In the end, I decided it's it
wasn't going to work financially, so we were just going
to kind of go with a very natural state of

(45:59):
these couple one wildlife openings. Well, when the US Fish
and Wildlife Service project kind of came in and said, hey,
let's do five acres of your oak savannah, I said, well,
let's maybe add my two to one acre wildlife openings
to that project. We'll make it seven and we'll do
all of it as an oak savannah. And so they

(46:20):
are going to provide the native urb and grass seed
mix that we're gonna plant next winter. And so basically
instead of having my eight acres of corn and soybeans,
I've sort of through this whole process ended up at
seven acres of an oak savannah and I'm gonna have

(46:43):
unbelievable you know, forbes and grasses. And I'm a believer
now that that's gonna be way more valuable than if
I did have my seven or eight acres of soybeans
and corn, mostly because I think it's going to be
a little bit more year round source of food cover

(47:05):
versus the corn of soybeans having a much more limited
timeframe when they're really valuable. So yeah, that's that's been
super exciting. That is what. Now seven acres of this
forty is gonna be oaks Savannah and it's gonna be

(47:25):
absolutely awesome. Whoam may old bird of prey? Just I
think maybe knocked like a chickadee or something out of
a fir tree outside my window. Looks pretty exciting what
I could see there. Sorry for the interruption.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
It's always an adventure outside the window in Bozeman.

Speaker 3 (47:43):
Oh, it totally is. Okay, So there're seven acres right
oaks Savannah. I don't know. I've never I've never owned
an oak savannah. I've never really hunted an oak savannah.
So I can't tell you how we're gonna hunt an
oak savannah. I know it's gonna be a huge attractant.
I know it's gonna there's gonna be deer feeding in there,

(48:05):
there's gonna be deer bedding in there. So how we
hunt it? I don't know yet.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
What do you have to do to make it though
you mentioned that they're gonna plant forbes and grasses, and
you mentioned that you've got to apply herbicide, But is
that it is it just gonna be there to come
in they're in a plant, and then you're gonna do
an erbicide treatment or two or or what does ongoing
management look like?

Speaker 3 (48:38):
So we so basically there was this you know, the
perimeter edge is fuzzy right where it starts and ends,
but there's basically this northwest quadrant that uh was you know,
dang near clear cut but a few oaks left, but
there was slash everywhere. So one of the first things

(48:59):
that happened as a contractor came in and made these
big slash piles. They're going to be burned this upcoming winner,
so that when we seed all of it can be seeded. Right,
We are going to do two herbicide treatments and basically
chemically burn it this summer a full full.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
Like like like round up, you know, non selective herbicide
kill everything.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
You know, the biologist is going to come and once
we have i don't know, eight inches a foot of
growth and he can see what sort of is what's
the competition is going to be what's coming up in
this clear cut that's responding to all the sunlight. Now
they're going to come in and see what's there, and
then they're going to give the recommendation of what kind

(49:48):
of herb side to buy and use, So I should
know that in the next month. So yeah, we'll basically
do two big sprays. The second spray might be only
spot spot spraying. We'll see, but you basically want a
new kid so that you know. The seeds that we
put in have limited competition. So we'll burn the piles

(50:10):
over the winner and then frost seed late winter and
then it's basically a waiting game the way they described
it was with these seeds for you know, to fill
in the understory. It's a three year process. And the
first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, the

(50:31):
third year it leaps. So the first year you really
don't see much. It's frustrating with you, like it's hard
to wait another three five days, and then the second
year it's kind of creeping along. You see some response,
and then he's like the third year you'll have stuff
that's over your head and it'll be flourishing. So that

(50:53):
is basically, well, that's to make it to that point
and then it'll it'll go into a a fire cycle
where we will I don't know if it'll be every
year or every other year, but we will burn that.
You know, there's like a quadrant that's probably about five acres,

(51:15):
and then I've got two kind of separate openings that
are that are an acre a piece, and we'll burn those,
like I said, every year every two years. We just
had to kind of see what's the best for it,
you know, and timing, you know, if it's best to
do a you know, a dormance season burn or a
growing season burn. I mean that's all to be determined,

(51:37):
but that you know, that's basically the management plan for
the Oak Savanna.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
What's your experience been so far in these early stages
working with that Fish and Wildlife Partners program?

Speaker 3 (51:50):
Incredible? So we I also you know, called everybody always
talks about in our CS, right, I called them and said, hey,
don't you guys come out, and they're I think very
willing also to you know, help give money, help you
accomplish this, you know, conservation work on your property. But

(52:13):
like they didn't really find anything that was appealing on
my property. Now, they also went and walked some of
the you know, my adjoining landowners property and they did
find like a giant, you know, almost an acre of
buckthorn that they'd be very happy to help kill off. Right,
So they're working with that landowner and you know, through

(52:34):
some partnership figuring out how to how to whack that.
So that would be a tip to anybody. It's like, hey,
if the NRCS didn't necessarily find, you know, something to
help you with, like keep asking and calling uh other
other folks other you know, uh, I guess government conservation groups,

(52:57):
because there's probably somebody out there that will see, you know,
something beneficial that can be done on your property that'll
benefit them, benefit the public, benefit wildlife, and benefit you.
But yeah, these guys were like I think the first
time I talked to them was early January, and then

(53:18):
by late January they had walked it, they had sent
me a proposal, and then basically the balls in my
court to decide, well, you know, do I want to
because if you look at you know, financially split in
twenty five K down the middle just to do habitat work,
that's not in my budget. But knowing that I could
have some friends that would maybe help me burn these piles.

(53:41):
I could have you know, my dad and his buddies
come up and do the herbicide treatments, you know, all
of a sudden, that brought down the costs a lot.
So once we decided to sign on and go forward
with the project, I think they had a contractor out
there within a couple of weeks to start doing the piling.

(54:01):
That guy got that knocked out in I don't know,
six seven days, and so basically the next step now
is is like seeing what's going to grow and then
doing the herbicide application. So overall, I'd say, yeah, nothing
but good things. These guys have been, you know, on it,

(54:22):
moving quickly and getting stuff done. So it's been, uh,
it's been great.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
Do you know. I know you got connected through Doug,
But do you know if this is if this is
a program that any person could possibly get involved? Like
could any random guy like me? I call the US
Fish and Wildlife local offices and be like, Hey, is
there an opportunity for my property? Can can anyone get
involved in this? What's that look like? Do you do?
You know?

Speaker 3 (54:47):
No? Literally, I just before we started talking today, I
just googled like partners Fish and Wildlife. We use Fish
and Wildlife Service, and that pay comes up and you
don't have to scroll, but you know to two scrolls
with the fingers, and there's a there's a header that

(55:09):
says how to get started, and you probably just need
to find the biologist in your area and make a
phone call. And then oh literally says a phone call
or email is all it takes to get started. Contact
your state coordinator to schedule an official an initial site visit,
and learn how Partners for Fish and Wildlife can help you.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
There you go, and it's great.

Speaker 3 (55:32):
It's a great page because it like show there's like
laws and regulations around this legislation and economic impact and
it's all there so you can see, like, you know,
the benefits of why the government might want to help
private landowners make better habitat.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
Yeah, so so that's your big one. I mean that
this project the Oak Savannah is the clear cut the
logging there that really is that's going to change everything
on that part.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
It's it's already changed it. I mean, a clearcut is
as it's a change, all right, you know.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
Yeah, you get to see it for the first time,
just a couple of weeks ago, right.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
Yeah, exactly. And it's interesting, how, you know, my own
sort of view on it and mindset has changed, because
I think even ten years ago, I would have been
like clearcut, you know, who wants anything to do with
a clear cut? And now I'm like, proud to have
Steve call me clear cut Yanni. But it's interesting, you know,

(56:38):
we have often we have invited the neighbors over, you know,
for a beer or whatever and chit chat. And I've
had a couple of neighbors be like, what are you doing,
you know, like very skeptical about like, I'm not gonna
do that to my woods. Look over there, it's beautiful
sixty to eighty year old trees, and I love the
fall colors and all that. I'm like, hey, if that's

(57:01):
what you want, there's nothing wrong with it. If you
wanted to produce higher timber value, you might want to
go in there and you know, cut some of the
ones down so you can let the good ones flourish.
But it's not the best habitat right, Like when you
can walk through there. I don't know who said this one,
but this is a great way to look at it.

(57:24):
But like, if you can walk through your woods and
like shorts and flip flops and comfortably just cruise around,
it's not good for wildlife, right, Like you want the
kind of habitat where you're like, oh, I better put
on some car hearts in my work boots and definitely
long sleeve shirt if I'm going to go just marching
through there, Like that's where the deer and everything else

(57:47):
wants to be. Right. So it's been interesting because you know,
it makes you question it yourself, like am I doing
the right thing right? And obviously I've never done it,
so I'm sort of justking on what I'm believing that
in three to five years, you know, we're really going
to see the responses to all of it. But yeah,

(58:09):
major change, but I will say that. So we have,
like again the seven acres of this oak savannah and
these two wildlife openings are connected. But I was telling
you earlier the whole southern half was just this and
you saw it. To me, it looked like a wildlife desert.
It was just these It had been pretty close to

(58:30):
Clearcut in the early nineties and then it was just
this nothing. But you know, three to six inch white pines, aspens, maples,
some oaks mixed in and just like all competing against
each other, had never been thinned, and the understory was
nothing like if you got down at you know, deer level,

(58:52):
you could pretty much see across the whole property, right
and sure there was a few trails going through there.
You'd find a couple of scrapes, but the deer were
not hanging out there by.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
Any It was past past their territory for sure.

Speaker 3 (59:07):
Yeah, pastor, that's a good way to put it. So
that one probably that section, that twenty acres probably took
the most thinking than any other section of like what's
going to be the plan? How are we going to
accomplish this because most of its non merchantable timber. Right,

(59:27):
So again you're like, oh, I have a lagger here,
but probably he would rather not touch that twenty acres
at all, just working the northern twenty acres, work with
giant oaks and giant aspens, maybe a few big maples.
Take those nice big trees out and be done with it.
Like when they're looking at pulp number one, the pulp

(59:50):
market kind of stinks right now, So like just finding
a place to get rid of the pulp wasn't easy.
And then, like the lagger told, and we did a
walk through when I was there, he spent eighty hours
in a harvester, which is that's the machine that has
the big arm that can grab the tree, cut the tree,

(01:00:10):
and then measure it and cut whatever lengths you've set
it to cut out. He spent eighty hours cutting and
stacking non merchantable timber. Okay, so two full weeks. And
I forget what he says he charges per hour sitting
in that machine, but it's in the hundreds of dollars, right,

(01:00:31):
so do the math. I think that you know, he's
massaging it because he wants me to be happy. But
I keep telling him like, look, man, I don't want
you to go broke doing this project, so we need to,
you know, find the happy medium. And there was all

(01:00:51):
kinds of ideas, you know, throwing around. It was like, well,
don't do anything, and you're just gonna have to do
it by hand, which is like, oh my gosh, you
know Acres with me and Asaw like that's you know,
who knows how many years work that would take, you know,
Matt Ross and the nda was like just do strips
do like a big turkey futt. You could like sit

(01:01:12):
in one spot and look down strips and kind of
hunt hunt the whole thing that way, and then you'll
limit it. Because everybody thought like, if you actually clear
cut it and you can take out your pulp woards,
you're still gonna have so much slash on the ground
that regeneration is going to be tough. Critters moving through
it is going to be tough. Well in the end,

(01:01:33):
I talked my logger into basically like I'm like, okay,
take out all the pines, all the you know, maples,
all the basically anything that wasn't an oak, and we'll
just try to get rid of it through the pulp market.
Anything left, we'll try to pile as best we can,
and then we'll try to burn these piles. And uh,

(01:01:56):
he executed against as best as he that he could.
It definitely costs him a little bit. And again, I
don't want the guy to go in the red on.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
It, but.

Speaker 3 (01:02:07):
There's so many oaks left. The positive of it is
that there's so many four to eight inch oaks left
that it almost doesn't look like a clear cut. It
just looks like an oak stand it's only fifteen to
twenty years old, even though it's actually thirty. But because
these oaks were suppressed by all this competition, you know,
they didn't get big. So I'm going to say, in

(01:02:30):
the year or two, what's left is gonna really just
pop and we're gonna have it's gonna be thicker than
an oak savannah, maybe an oak woodland, because there's definitely
some spots where there were no oaks, and so you
got an acre or two that's just gonna be open
and stuff coming up. The cool thing about it is

(01:02:51):
because we're chemically burning this oak savannah and it's not
gonna really come to fruition for three years. The southern
and half where we've got these you know whatever they are,
thirty forty foot skinny oak standing. We've got these two
wildlife openings in there that will be planted with this grass.
But everything in between that is like slash piles, some

(01:03:14):
debris on the ground, Like whatever is gonna grow now
with all the sunlight, it's gonna go bananas in there.
We're not gonna really touch that. I think even just
this fall, like it's gonna produce amazing bedding, cover and food,
right like that's gonna be the if you're gonna hunt
our forty, Like, you're probably gonna want to concentrate in

(01:03:37):
that southern twenty because it's gonna have the cover, it's
gonna have the thickness, it's gonna have food that the
deer gonna want to be hanging out and they're not
gonna hang out where you know, it's been it's been
nuked by chemicals for you know, twice and there's really
nothing growing, right, so I'm pretty excited about it. That's
the one where you don't really we don't really know

(01:03:58):
what it's gonna look like. And again, there's plenty of
oaks standing where I'm like, oh, that's pretty cool. Like
it's not a full clear cut, there's a lot of
trees standing. They're gonna flourish now because they have no competition.
Hopefully they'll start throwing some acorns and we'll get some
oak regeneration coming up in there, and it's gonna be thick,

(01:04:21):
which is great, right, Like I'm gonna have this oak
savannah that's gonna be a little bit more prairie grassy,
and then I'm gonna have hopefully this just crazy thick
slash pile oak regeneration stuff. That's it's it's gonna be
nasty where like you're not gonna want to walk through it.

(01:04:41):
But again, we reinvested all of our profits back into
the access and that's kind of what what you know
brings it all together is that right now, the bulldozers
in there, and we're gonna have a it's a square.
We're gonna have a perimeter road that goes on on
three sides because our main access road is on the

(01:05:03):
forest side or the main whatever, the main road is
on the fourth side. But he's putting in a full perimeter.
And then we're gonna have a east west road that
kind of meanders through it. We're gonna have a north
south road that meanders through it just about through the middle.
And then I've got a couple other strategic spots where
he's gonna do not quite full roads, but more trails

(01:05:26):
because again I need access, I need fire breaks. And
then I'm gonna see all these roads with you know,
some basic clover mix of some sort, right, so they'll
also act as deer travel ways, you know, food plots,
I guess. But that will make it so that again

(01:05:47):
my dad can very easily take the southern perimeter road
park not have to walk far, get into a stand
and be almost right into the middle of what's gonna be, well,
not the middle, but like the middle east west. But
what's gonna be this giant, you know, five six acre
bedding thicket. I'm hoping and be able to hunt the

(01:06:08):
edge of it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:10):
Yeah, that's gonna be. It's gonna be pretty sweet. Now,
this is all in the southern part. The northern part
is where you are primarily leaving that for your di
y T S.

Speaker 3 (01:06:20):
I work right, well, the northwest corners where that oak
savannah is the.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
Ridge though, is the north like it's northeast then right?

Speaker 3 (01:06:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
Yeah, so I is so what exactly are you doing
with that? What are you what are you hoping to
achieve there? And what have you actually been doing there?

Speaker 3 (01:06:39):
Yep? What's cool about that is that that is one
of the things I probably started doing right after you
and I walk the property.

Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
Yep, and.

Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
You know, bought a brand new two sixty one and
all the goodies that go with it and have been
you know, keeping that chain nice and sharp, but mostly
just started with by just dropping trees. And again it
was that kind of northern part was a pretty good
mix of oaks. We've got some white pine, we've got

(01:07:15):
some jack pine, we've got some red pine. There are
some maples in there too, not so much on the
ridge because I don't think that soil is great for
those maples. But really just getting rid of I probably went,
I did, I went again, felt like a lot. And
now when you go back there, you go, oh, I
could probably still do more, but I don't know if

(01:07:36):
I quite reached fifty percent, like right on the ridgetop,
but it was a spot where you, because of canopy
and the way the ridgetop rolls a little bit, you
couldn't really see from one end to the other. But
now you can. It's open enough now, and I mean
obviously the understory's coming up, but it's open enough that

(01:07:57):
you can see through there. And that's it interesting thing
too that it takes a while to understand, and like
the difference between being a sea like a whole ridge
top as a human standing there with my eyes at
six feet roughly, or getting up into a tree ten
or twenty feet like as long as it's thick from

(01:08:17):
four feet down low, the deer gonna love it. Right,
And sometimes you can look at and go, oh, but
it's so wide open and I can see all of it.
But all you gotta do is like crouch down to
three or four feet and you're like, oh, no, I
can't actually see all of it. And this is what
they're talking about with that understory coming in and being thick,
and the deer being happy and feeling secure in here.

(01:08:41):
And what's been great is that you know, that's already
now three four years behind us, and like the the
positive reaction from both deer and turkeys, which is what
I mostly pay attention to, is incredible. I had before
I did the work, I had a camera in this saddle.

(01:09:05):
I'd get a picture of a deer once a week,
you know, because it was just like a saddle in
some close canopy woods. It wasn't really a saddle that
connected two major whatever food sources or betting areas or nothing.
It was just like kind of a random saddle. But
now that it's open and it's got you know, but
it's got plenty of cover on it. Like there's deer

(01:09:25):
pictures on it almost every day. There's turkey pictures on
it every two or three days, and like just this morning,
I was looking at my Moultary app and there's a
dope bedded like right in front of the you know camera.
To me, there's like, I don't feel like there's nothing
more exciting, whether I'm actually hunting or whether it's a

(01:09:46):
it's where I've put a camera. But if I see
a deer bed down, I'm like, okay, I'm doing things right,
Like that deer is so comfortable and so stoked it's
going to just go ahead and sleep and rest here
for a little while and obviously feeding around too. So
the actual work, I would say, it's basically just been

(01:10:06):
cutting trees. And then once I cut the trees, if
I feel like there needs to be a little bit
of a path because the richetop is eventually going to
also be a fire break, so that needs to remain
fairly open so that it can be you know, traveled
to do that. But yeah, otherwise, like I went in

(01:10:28):
there and some stuff that had already grown up and
had gotten you know, over six feet, I just cut
it down again, right, Like keep the stuff down close
to the ground where the deer can get to it.
Are these fall.

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):
Cuts be honest or are you hinge cutting or anything
like that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:45):
So I had it on my to do list this
for my spring trip, and I didn't get to do
any hinge cutting because I feel like it could use
some of that, just a little bit more of that
structure cover. But so up until now, I've just been
just literally the goal is just like cut the trees

(01:11:05):
down and get sunlight, you know, to the to this area.
And that's been like I said, the response has been great,
and now I feel like I could manipulate it and
make it even a little bit better by actually doing
some hinging. I've never done any hinging, so I can't,

(01:11:27):
you know, because hinging is still so controversial, right, I mean,
and I guess not that the hinging is controversial, but
is it better than if you just knock the tree down? Right,
that's sort of the debate. So anyways, I'm definitely gonna
try it in like some small little pockets and we'll

(01:11:49):
see how the deer respond to it. But yeah, it's
mostly just been like just getting rid of more trees
because I think that the answer is sunlight to the
forest floor and then you get that food and cover
that the deer actually want.

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):
Well, yeah, I was just gonna say, you could think
about another way, which is rather than getting rid of trees,
it's you are adding suddenly you are a sunlight creator.
That's the more. You can do that on a lot
of properties. Now, you know, it's different some places that's
not the limited resource. You know, some places you need
the opposite. But so much of the Upper Midwest, like

(01:12:29):
you're talking about, especially the farther north, you go close
canopy semi mature, overstocked woodlands like that, you know, they
just need sunlight in diversity, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:12:40):
So h.

Speaker 2 (01:12:53):
So, okay, I want to close with this, Yannie. Given
everything you do you just said, given the journey you've
been on for the last ten years and especially the
last four, you know, you went from being on the couch,
you know, metaphorically to being you know, in the race,
from from no experience doing this stuff to a land

(01:13:15):
manager that has now been a part of some really
significant changes. What would be the three most important lessons
you would pass on to someone who's in your shoes
five years ago? So somebody right now who was like
you five years ago, fresh and not having any done
anything like this, but now all of a sudden being like, yeah,

(01:13:37):
I want to try to do this to the family farm,
or to this new place I bought, whatever it is.
What are the three most important pieces of advice or
lessons that you would pass along right now?

Speaker 3 (01:13:49):
M get started yesterday, Yeah, because it just it takes time.
You know, all of it is more work than you
think it's gonna be. You know, I always show up
for our spring work trip with like a list so long,
and I end up getting through, you know, a quarter

(01:14:09):
or a third of it, and a lot of it
is little dinky things like oh yeah, go move some
cameras around, or you know, go spray some roads with
you know, four gallons of herbicide or whatever. But uh,
it's like, yeah, if you're gonna see anything, get done,
Like get started. You know, don't be scared to cut trees.

(01:14:30):
You know, make sure you got yourself a nice chainsaw,
learn how to use it properly, read that book how
to Fell a Tree, and and get started doing that.
I don't think that one person with because again it's
scary just to start cutting trees down, you know, but
you need to identify what trees you know you're cutting.

(01:14:52):
But like for me, it's like I could just walk
through the woods and cut hundreds of red maples a day,
and I'm not gonna doing any kind of negative you
know thing. It's all gonna be positive and I'm not
gonna mess anything up, right, So like, identify what it
is that you feel like you can't screw up, because

(01:15:13):
you know, first time Doug Durham watched the place with
me after I've done TSI, He's like, man cutting a
lot of oaks down, you know. I'm like, well, like,
if that's all there is and you want to get
sunlight to the forest floor, you're gonna have to cut
some oaks, right, So what do you do? You pick
like the crooked oaks or the ones that don't look
like they're producing. If you have time, you could like

(01:15:35):
wait till a good acorn here and go, oh, this
one's got great acorns. These three don't. Then you cut
the ones that aren't producing. I didn't have that time.
But anyways, even like when you're looking at a stand
of oaks, you can pick the ones that you're like, oh,
this one's gonna be robust and be able to handle,
you know, winds. Sitting here by itself when it doesn't

(01:15:56):
have its buddies around it anymore might be a great
tree stand because it's straight where it's got a nice
branch coming off of it that'll help hide you. So yeah,
number one, would we get started. Number two, I think,
like call around and just talk to a lot of people,
because that's that's been so helpful man, you know my

(01:16:17):
I mean, I know I'd probably heard Craig Harper's name before,
but one of my neighbors as soon as I after
I talked to him on the phone the first time,
he sent me a couple of pictures. He's like, these
are my favorite books, and one was like a guide
to Wisconsin's Wildflowers and Forbes, and then the other one
was Craig Harper's book, and he's like, if you get

(01:16:40):
these two, you're you're gonna be getting you know. I
just feel like the amount of advice that's out there
for free just by calling your neighbors, and you know,
it's always a great thing to do is to know
your neighbors. But just ask around, get get People that
are into this are very happy be to I think

(01:17:01):
help others most of the time. So when you talk
to them, they're probably going to offer, like, hey, I
would love to come out to your place. And walk
it with you Mark. And then I mean before we
started logging, I bet you I had at least six
different people that I did that with and uh yeah,

(01:17:22):
each one of them looks at it a little bit different.
And then but you also hear recurring themes and once
like the fourth person says like, yeah, definitely do this,
like that's the thing. You're like, all right, got it,
you know, like I'll start there. So yeah, call around,
talk to a lot of people, call your the nrcs,

(01:17:44):
call these private lands biologists. There's just there's a lot
of help out there for you. You just gotta put
in the effort and make some connections. And number three, man,

(01:18:05):
I don't know, there's so many little bitty things that
are I can give as sort of hot tips. I think,
like think about it. Yeah, I guess holistically where you know,

(01:18:26):
the logging has been a has been a sort of
a big part, and then there's but there's also the
habitat and then but there's also this thing, you know,
hunting that we all really want to do with our properties.
So you know, think about all those things put together.
Because for a while I even thought like with our

(01:18:46):
roads that are going to be put in that's gonna
cost us a lot of money as opposed to like
putting that money into the bank account. I was like, ah,
maybe we can skimp on that. But now realizing what
those roads are going to get us and what that
access is going to give us, and comparing it to
what the access was like where you really couldn't get
into these spots properly and be able to hunt it

(01:19:08):
from the outside in, Like I'm glad. I thought about
that a lot. A lot of people mentioned that, and
you know, it's again a recurring theme. People walk it
and they're like, oh, well, if you can make sure
you put in a perimeter road and it's gonna be
a big time. So yeah, I guess I would just,

(01:19:30):
you know, make sure that you're even if you're just
looking at like logging, or even if you're just looking
at putting in this, try to always step back and
look at it holistically and see how the whole thing
is gonna work, and you know, not just your property,
but holistically with like the next mile out. I think
it's so easy to always be staring at on X

(01:19:50):
and only looking at forty acres and thinking like, well,
on my forty the deer going to bed here, and
they're gonna come here to drink, and then they're come
here to eat. And the bucks are always going to
do this when they're checking my little betting area. But
it helps so much to go, Okay, well, let's bump
it out of half a mile and then think about
how like, really the big not it's not even the

(01:20:13):
big picture, it's the picture because the deer aren't going
to live on your forty acres. The buck's not going
to only be cruising doughs on your forty acres. He's
going to be cruising a much bigger area around it.
And then think about how more of that flows. You know,
how did the deer flow from you know, a mile
that way through your place and a mile the other way,

(01:20:34):
or however it works. That's been helpful, and that's definitely
I think it's influenced decisions that we've made, because yeah,
because it's like you're always saying, like, what don't the
neighbors have right yep? And if you don't, if you're

(01:20:57):
not thinking about it that way, because that's the thing.
With the corner of soybeans, we've got, like I don't
know how big those fields are, but there's you know,
two three fields that are probably you know, a couple
hundred acres of corn and soybeans every year, Like, are
my corner soybeans really going to be that attractive when
right across the street there's that different no one has

(01:21:19):
around there is an oak savannah.

Speaker 2 (01:21:23):
Yep. Yeah, I love it. I think there's a good
good advice and really inspiring. I think just seeing like
encouraging and inspiring to see what you've been able to
do in just a few years and your journey is
really cool. It's really cool to watch them afar so

(01:21:43):
some nice work way to just get after it and
jump in head first and figure out stuff along the way.
I think there's a lot of people that get paralysis
by analysis, myself included sometimes, uh, and then afraid to
take those big swings and try stuff like that. Oh
pretty cool that you have have just gone for it.

(01:22:03):
So yeah, I mean I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:22:06):
It just doesn't seem like any cause I the mentality
is even my kids, like they joke, even though I
talk to them a lot of time, They're like, you're
doing deforestation and I'm like, no, we're not. You know,
that's what happens down in the Amazon when they're clearing

(01:22:26):
you know, hundreds of thousands of acres and burning it
so they can run cattle. Right, Yeah, that's that. And
this is different, like we're actually what we're creating does
way more for you know, flipping carbon dioxide back to
oxygen than just the standing trees that were there alone, right,
And so yeah, I guess like, don't be scared to

(01:22:51):
to cut trees down. It's uh yeah, the sale so
it's so been a official, it's so beneficial, and like
it's going to be so good for your for your
deer hunting, you know, if that's really what your what
your goal is.

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
Yeah, and if and if that kind of thing scares
you or you're you know, still don't quite see how
that can beneficial. We had a really good chat about
this a couple of weeks ago with Ethan Tapper, and
he spoke kind of about this, you know, how there's
there's a time and a place for leaving stuff untouched
and growing is you know, mature force, and there's a
time and a place for restarting the cycle and adding

(01:23:30):
diversity and managing in this kind of way. And uh,
and what you're talking about, Giannis is a great example
of of the latter. So lots lots to learn there,
But to your point, give it a shot. Try some
of this stuff, learn, ask questions, call around, and start yesterday.
So be honest. If folks want to see the stuff

(01:23:54):
you're doing these days, you haven't yet done anything big
around the habitat that I've seen. But folks want to
see your content. You're hunting films, your latest cooking exploits,
anything like that. Where could folks see all that? Connect
with all that?

Speaker 3 (01:24:08):
Oh, it's all mixed up there on the old meat
Eater YouTube channel really for the most part, about most
of it. You know my hunts, you know, there's there's
different iterations of the of titles these days. So you
can just search my name and there's been some haunts
that have happened on that property. Actually haven't hunted on

(01:24:28):
camera on our forty yet Again, I often give my
dad kind of first DIBs there and I hunt the
neighboring stuff. But yeah, I just search my name on
on YouTube and you'll see content. We do have a
new cooking show on meat Eater called meat Eater Roasts,
and seems like folks have been liking it. It's a

(01:24:50):
very lighthearted cooking competition show where we have two of
our crew members cooking and then we have two crew members.
Sometimes we invite folks from outside of our crew to
judge them, and then I sort of just try to,
you know, steer the conversation in between and have fun.

(01:25:11):
And kind of gist of it is is they don't
know what they're cooking with until I reveal it, so
they sort of have a mystery chunk of meat and
then they have, you know, some amount of time to
cook a meal out of it. And so far, I mean,
I tell you, I've been really impressed and really inspired
actually by a lot of the meals that have been

(01:25:32):
made in you know, ninety minutes, to the point where
I've probably made like I know, I made krins stir fry,
one time, I made Spencer's potstickers, made sets smash burgers,
and it's great to just see like even though I
make smash burgers, it's like, oh, Seth did this and

(01:25:53):
did this and it was a little bit different. So
you know, it's been educational and like I said, people
are liking it. So check that out. It's called meat
Eater Roasts. That too, is on the mediater YouTube channel.
You can hear me on the Mediat podcast Mediater Trivia sometimes.
But as far as the habitat stuff goes, really, I've

(01:26:16):
just posted videos on my Instagram doing stuff. It's uh.
As much as I'm enthralled with it and so passionate
about it, it's hard to make habitat work sexy, you
know what I mean. It's just like there's a niche
group of people that are like really into it, and

(01:26:38):
we'll watch, like I'll watch a video on YouTube with
some people burning in oak Savannah, right, a lot of
for everyone, though, Yeah, it doesn't do it for everybody,
but yeah, you can kind of follow along with what
we're doing over there. So yeah, now basically because all

(01:26:58):
the work, the major work has been done. Yeah I
say that, and then I think, well, not really, but
the logging has been done, and so now it's a
little bit of a waiting period to just kind of
see how everything is going to respond, which obviously I'm
super excited about. It's very hard being a thousand miles away.
I constantly deal with fomo, the fact that I can

(01:27:19):
just swing over there and just see how the oaks
are butting out or whatever you know.

Speaker 2 (01:27:25):
Have you have you started strategically placing your cell cameras
yet to just give you views of habitat changes. Do
you have like a savannah cam and a clear cut
cam or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (01:27:35):
Yeah, oh for sure, for sure. Yeah. I mean, obviously
they're in spots where they're going to catch some animal
movement too, but yeah, no, no doubt. And it's amazing too,
even without Like there's a couple of spots where they
did some stump grinding and some and some mulching, and
so it's very flat and clear, and like the turkey

(01:27:57):
gobblers have been strut in there like crazy, you know,
and they didn't used to strut there when it was
a close kind before us. And so yeah, for sure,
for sure, it's great to see. But the problem is,
again you're getting such a just a sliver of what's
actually going on there. Like I can't zoom in on

(01:28:19):
my cameras to be like, oh, that is golden rod
growing or that's little blue stem growing. I'm just like
it's grass, I think. But yeah, it's funny doing all
this stuff and being so into it. Again, I kind
of give first DIBs to my dad, the other old
guys like if my kids are gonna want to hunt it, sure,

(01:28:41):
And for me, I've actually been starting to explore some
of the public land that we have within an hour's drive.
And I've always hunted the hill country because that's what
our place is, right. It's got hills that are roughly
two hundred and fifty feet of elevation, you know, relief,
and a lot of this public land around there is

(01:29:03):
swampy and flat, and so it's like a whole new
adventure for me. Like I haven't quite run into a
spot where you need waiters. I've gotten close, But I
tell you what, it's been almost easier for me. I
feel like to learn and pick out where I want
to hunt, because it seems like the deer trails are

(01:29:24):
just like more pronounced like you in the Hill Country.
Just seems like those jokers are just anywhere they want
to go. We're in this swamp country. I'm like, Oh,
they're not going to go there because that's a lake,
and they're not going to go there because it's wide open.
So oh, here's a great funnel and here's three trails
going through it. Oh, great place to get into a tree,

(01:29:47):
you know, and clear out a couple of shooting lanes.

Speaker 2 (01:29:49):
So that's pretty cool that you've got a spot though,
where you have that diversity of options both yeah, you know,
to keep it fresh, to learn new places, and just
to kind of figure out what works. But but I gotta say, yannesty,
you should make a point to let old Papa Giannis
uh slide on over and give you a seat on

(01:30:10):
the forty so you can see the fruits of your
labor a little bit this fall. You gotta try to
hunt it at least a time or two and see
see what's happening there. We will, yeah, for another reason,
because we want to We want to see, We want
to see the.

Speaker 3 (01:30:22):
Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, it'd be good to
get a first first person report. What am I trying
to say?

Speaker 2 (01:30:31):
I yeah, yeah, yeah, first person. I think I know
what you're trying to say, but I don't know the
words either. Ye in person in person? Thank you well,
my friend. I appreciate sharing this with it. I'm excited
for you. Super fun to watch.

Speaker 3 (01:30:50):
We can get to half the stuff that I had
written down in my notes. But want's say that for
another time.

Speaker 2 (01:30:55):
We never do. There's always there's always way more to
cover than we can get through in a dec the
time on these things. So thanks for joining us, Yanni.
Let's touch base again when we've got another year or
two of progress and you can tell us all the
things you did wrong and what you do different next time.

Speaker 3 (01:31:12):
It was a pleasure Mark as always, Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:31:14):
Thanks buddy. All right, thanks for tuning in, folks. I
enjoyed this one with my buddy Yanni. I hope you
did too. Hopefully it inspired some of you to give
this stuff a try, to dive into the world of
wildlife habitat improvement, to do some good out there on
the ground that has done so much good for you.
So without any further ado, I'm going to wrap it up.

(01:31:37):
Thanks again for being here, and until next time, stay
wired to Hunt.

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Mark Kenyon

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 907: Janis Putelis’ Land Management Journey From Zero to Hero