August 27, 2025 • 57 mins
Just got access to a new hunting property but have no idea where to start? In this episode, Jake Hofer asks Steve Hanson, Don Higgins, Skip Sligh, Mark Kenyon, Jeff Sturgis, Bobby Kendall, and Bill Winke what their first moves would be on a brand-new farm. When time is short and the season’s closing in, how do you scout efficiently, hang smart setups, and make the most of fresh ground? Whether it’s a lease, permission piece, or new purchase, the crew shares how they quickly evaluate a property, what signs to key in on, and how to avoid burning it out too early. If you're starting from scratch, this episode will help you hit the ground running.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You got a month to add three core, huge things
right there, and then you also have a month to
be like, hey, I'm going to get five really good
setups up.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
By the end of season. You know, I may have
a half a dozen or more on that property, but
I'm not coming in and hanging them all at once.
I'm bringing them in. On hunts, I'm hanging them.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Welcome to Back forty.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
I'm Jake Hoefer, and this week, if you just got
a new farm, you just got permission, or even if
you've been hunting a farm, the same farm for a year.
After a year, you're going to get a fresh perspective
from eight experts on what they would do right before
the season with limited impact or maybe large impact projects.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Set yourself up for this fall real quick.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
The Back forty's brought to you by land dot com,
the leading online real estate marketplace to find your perfect rural, recreational, agricultural,
or hunting properties here.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
In the US.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
Now, a lot of these things that we're going to
hear from the expert panel maybe things that seem obvious,
But I also think after finishing this episode, getting a
reset on hey, do I have all.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
These things that I can do here for this fall?
Have I done it?
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Also, if you haven't done the scouting, or maybe there's
a specific terrain feature that seemed to be very important,
or maybe you've been too nervous to go in and
make any impact on your farm because of the season
is getting closer. So you're going to get a lot
of different opinions and observations based off of our expert
panel of guests. And to kick things off, the question
is I just got access to a new farm.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
What can I do now? And we're going to start
with Bill Winki.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Okay, I just closed on a new farm, or I
just got a new piece of private It's August twenty fifth,
and a lot of the big fun offseason projects are
off the table. Where do I start right now? It's
August twenty fifth.
Speaker 5 (01:55):
Well, there's not much you can do from a improvement
perspective on that property. I would say the most important
thing would be to mow probably a few access trails,
something that you know, just have some way that you
can get around. It's still August, You've got time for
(02:18):
the deer to get used to a little bit of
human activity there. I think the first thing I would
do is just establish maybe a few ways of getting
around in that property, so you're not just busting through
a brush and making you knows, you need to be
able to hunt it. So I think that's probably priority
number one, and then I wouldn't be probably number two.
(02:40):
Then for me, it would just be running the cameras
and finding some shooters, you know, finding out what's there,
you know, getting an inventory, figuring out which parts of
the property or are the peris that you want to
focus on that season. But if you can't hunt it effectively,
like you can't get into it from the different directions,
maybe you know, because of you know, whatever reason, you
(03:03):
need to establish access first, and maybe that means talking
to one of your neighbors and you know, paid him
a little fee or somehow getting permission to come in
from that direction where you know, otherwise you would even
be able to hunt one into your property because you know,
on certain wins, you'd be messing it up if you
came in from the wrong way. So access is probably,
(03:25):
like I said, number.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
One, would you go in and tear through the whole
entire farm, let's call it let's stick to the eighty
acre example, and the back part has thirty acres, a
really really good cover where you anticipate there to be
you know, good betting opportunities, good good corridors.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Everything.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Would you go through in lay eyes basically on the
whole entire farm at that time.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
No, No, In fact, I used to hunt. Gosh, you'd laugh.
But when I was a kid growing up in the country,
I was related to everybody. I was like fourth generation
on both sides of my family, so I had permission everywhere.
I think I had sixty some different farms. I had
permission hunting a lot of them. I never scouted, you know,
(04:10):
on foot. I would just go in there with the
tree stand on my back. Based on the area. Photos
you can tell you buy a driving paths it or
whatever what the trade is. But the aerial photo kind
of gives you a visual and you can say, okay,
I see a pitch point here, I see you. You
don't need to even scout, you know. Back then, I
wish I would have had truck. It was because gosh,
(04:31):
there's no telling what I could have killed on sixty
some different farms. There had been some big deal there somewhere.
But anyway, I rarely scouted more than you know, five
to ten a year. But I hunted a lot of
different spots, and you don't need to scout pick good
standing locations. You just need to be handy with the map.
(04:54):
And so I'd say no, I wouldn't go in unless
you're going and stand on your back. But you know
the kind of the method that everybody talks about now,
you know the ultra mobile type of money. I was
doing that quite a bit when I was You're just
a young guy because I had access to so much ground. See,
(05:15):
you always keep the the uh element of surprise in
your favor. You always want to be you know, people
know after a few years of doing this is the
first time you hunt a stand is probably gonna be
your best chance because they dear don't have any history
of you being there that they don't have any reason
not to be moving comfortably and naturally. Every time you
(05:37):
hunt it after that, it can potentially get worse. So
I have been a few stands in my whole life
that that didn't happen on. But so going in there
to scout it, I mean, if you're gonna, if you're
gonna scout it, let me give you this one last
piece of advice. If you're going to scout it you
feel like I have to get in there, then I
would make all kinds of noise. I'd be the farmer
(05:58):
checking his fence with a chainsaw on a tractor. Just
be as you know, completely give them so much warning
that they're more curious than anything else. You know, I've
seen that work. But if you try to sneak in,
and usually that doesn't work, you better off you staying
completely out.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Okay, this real quick question. When you mentioned identifying different
pinch points, would you pick a pinch point or inside
corner just off a map? And I know that's so situational,
but you know, people talk about a handful of different
buzzwords of identifying, you know, from the scouting. What is
your favorite feature from an scouting perspective for you know,
(06:40):
something like this scenario.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
Well, the best ones are the most obvious ones, and
that's usually the kittie corner or the corner crossing two
large blocks of cover. So let's say you got you know,
a big chunk here and a big chunk there, and
they're connected, you know, through one little narrow whether it's
a creek bottom or you know, the open gate between
(07:04):
two or whatever it might be, those spots are really
hard to beat during the rut because they become super
highways for any bucks that are going from one area
where dotes are probably betted to another area where those
are probably betted. Then you don't need topography. You don't
need to know the topography to see those. The ones
that I like that are topographically focused are the ones
(07:27):
like the funnels at the tops of ditches where the
deer go around the top of the ditch. And that's
a no brainer because they're very apparent when you're studying
the topographic maps, and usually there's there's dope betting areas
on either side of that ditch. It is usually the
way the land lazes. That's why the ditch is there,
(07:48):
because you got a point, and you got a point,
and then the ditches between them, well, the bucks are
going to gain between those, you know, checking through the
different dough betting areas. So the very upper end of
that ditches is almost always, you know, kind of a
no brainer. Then you can get the wind to work
for you and you could use the ditch for access,
you know, for sneaking in and out. I've set up
(08:09):
a ton of those, and you usually you want to
go in there with a chase saw during the offseason
and clear that ditch out. But you can come and go,
you know, very well undetected now if you use that ditch.
So those are really good ones to find too. I
love those. But there's tons of different options out there,
but those are the two most obvious ones there.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
You guys have it.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
That is Bill's perspective for someone that just got new
access on what you can do most of access trails
if you do go in and scout, make a lot
of noise, and the most obvious spot could easily be
the best spot. So now we're going to get into
skips Lie and what he would do in the next
thirty days to make his farm the best possible and
(08:53):
a short window and the full project detailed list right now.
I just bought a brand new farm, or I just
not on a door. I got a piece of private ground.
It's August twenty seventh, Gune goes off. Time to go,
what do I start?
Speaker 1 (09:08):
You can make some exciting things happen. So late August
funding season opens what October one?
Speaker 6 (09:18):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Okay, so you definitely could still plant things. I would
get out there. I would I would beg borrow and
plead with anybody I knew to borrow a tractor and
a drill, rent one higher, one out, and I would
go plant a combo of like winter I winter piece,
(09:41):
when are we tri to kale, trit to kelly and clovers,
and I would quick get that seated down, like kill it,
set it down immediately, So there's your food for the year.
That it's not it's not ideal in that you know,
you don't have other things now, and that's really the
only thing you can really get going one in most
areas by that point. But it's actually an ideal time
(10:03):
to plant that too. So and I'd add oats in
there too, by the way. So I would immediately do that,
and then I would immediately go in there and just
be like, hey, I'm gonna go in there when I plant,
I do it the same day. And this is just
me being fussy, But the same day I would go
through there and be like, hey, while you're planting this stuff,
because I'm hiring you, or I'm begging you to do it,
or maybe I'm running it, I'd go take a bunch
(10:25):
of chainsaws with me, and I'd go in the timber
and I would find some things that, like, you know,
figure out what your undesirable trees are, your poor quality trees,
and just dump a few here and there to create
some structure. And that structure will last, you know, continually,
it'll definitely impact the whole fall. And by the time
even hunting season comes in a month later, they're going
(10:46):
to start using that as betting and structure and like
you know, even some of the brows that'll come down
and maybe a little bit will start to yeah, probably
not much, but they'll be definitely more betting, and that
dynamic will change by the fall. So that's really simple.
That's just two things. That's just quickly, add some food
(11:10):
if I can chain saw, some cover if I can.
I know that's being very specific, and there's more to
it to that, and this is if somebody can manipulate
the habitat. And then if you could add a watering
hole too, I definitely would do that. And all of
a sudden, you're like, so you got a month to
add three core, huge things right there, and then you
also have a month to be like, hey, I'm going
(11:32):
to get five really good setups up and maybe I
do some mock scrapes, maybe I put a rubbing post in.
Maybe I just have five stands that are in sweet
funnel locations with the dear naturally travel. I mean, going
back to the basics of how I started hunting, high spent.
It's spent decades hunting. I didn't need to do all
(11:53):
this stuff either. I didn't need to put in a
food plot to shoot a big deer.
Speaker 6 (11:57):
I didn't.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Most of the year I've still shot to this day.
Probably did not involve a food plot or a watering
hole or rubbles. Do all those things help, of course
they do, But usually it was hey, man, you can
just hunt my ground.
Speaker 7 (12:10):
I'm like, thank you.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
I got a place to go, and hopefully it wasn't
shared with like fifty thousand other people, and then I
would just go in there and hang. My basic approach
was like, okay, I got forty acres, let's go hang
six killer spots that make great sense and go hunt it.
Speaker 7 (12:28):
And I kill bucks just doing that.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
So sometimes it's very simple, and hey, I have no money,
but I can go.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
You know.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
So I can't do plots, I can't do timberwork, I
can't put it in a waterhole. That's fine, pick out
six sweet spots. And go hunt it. Hunt smart and
go find the natural movement of the deer. Use your
woodsmanship skills or learn your woodsmanship skills to set up
sweet six, eight, five, whatever. Just really good spots. Go
(13:00):
hunt them correctly, and you probably will have a chance
at a good deer if there's a good deer in there.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Really simple, some great information here from skipping.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
I think those projects he'd listed, whether it's permission farm,
maybe it's a farm you've had for a long time.
If you don't have those items, make a punch list.
Go out there, get it done, hand your cameras, find
the best five spots, get them set up, and patiently
be ready to strike.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
When the time is right.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Next up we have Bobby Kendall, and Bobby buys a
lot of farms, and so he is in this position
a lot, and you get to hear what he would do,
basically what it does every year. I just drew a
tag in a random spot. I knocked on a door,
got permission in an area. I have no clue where
to start. I want the powerball, and I spot a farm.
It's August, and where do I start? Feel that a
(13:45):
lot of the spring food plots long gone a lot
of these really big projects that take a while off
the table.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
So brown zero, where do I start? Race? Gun goes off?
Speaker 7 (13:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (13:56):
So I actually am in this situation a lot because
I buy a lot of farms, and a lot of
times I don't I don't control when I buy them,
So a lot of times I'm I'm past the point
of a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 7 (14:07):
So a couple of.
Speaker 8 (14:08):
Things to come to mind. Like one thing you can
you can, you know, get on the horn with is
if there's a farmer is reaching out to him and
starting to try and figure out if you're gonna be
able to buy back crops because that's huge, especially corn.
And the other thing is you're going to want to
go put cameras out immediately to see what's there. And
(14:29):
so that time of year, if you have beans, it's
a lot easier because you have lots of places to
put I was just on a farm earlier, and I
think we talked about this a little while ago. Beans
last year, eight or ten cameras, corn this year a
couple And so if you have beans or olf outfields
or stuff like that, it's going to make it a
lot easier. Some ponds, natural ponds go and trim down
(14:52):
a nice spot, or back your mower in and make
a spot. They're going to go to that easy spot
of the pond, you know. But otherwise, what I like
to do on a corn here, and what I'll do
on this farm down here, on a corn here, and
I always look forward to this day. I'll get my
backpack and I'll fill it up with sell cams, and
I'll get my hedge clippers, and i'll take some t posts.
(15:16):
Everything's all grown up and nasty, and I'll just go
around the edges of all the corn fields in like
mid September, and I'll i'll just study those licking branches.
You can tell where they're gonna want to scrape concentrations
a scent where a point comes up out of the
woods to a cove or whatever. You'll be able to
see the branches that have been hit years and years.
(15:37):
You can generally tell what licking branches look like. So
I'll and they're already starting to put their face in
them by mid September, so I'll just wait a little longer.
Speaker 7 (15:47):
Kind of Okay, let's just wait a little longer. We're
already this far.
Speaker 8 (15:50):
And I'll go in there and I'll hedge clip everything
down so it's nice and low, and I'll put a
camera up and I'll just load the farm up on
those licking branches.
Speaker 7 (16:00):
Also, if I'm.
Speaker 8 (16:01):
Studying a TAPO or whatever and i'm the obvious rough
funnels inside corners, obvious spots are gonna be good in
the rut, I'll it's like I'll dive down in. I'll
walk every inch I want to. I want to just
do it once and be over with it, and I'll
pick my stands. I always I use ONYX and I
always when i'm scouting, whether it's a winter or that
(16:23):
time of year, as I'm picking these trees, I always
put a pin and I take a picture of the tree,
and within the app you can attach it.
Speaker 7 (16:31):
Yeah, and I don't have any.
Speaker 8 (16:32):
Affiliation with these guys, but that way, I don't know
if you're like me, but like I can't remember what
happened two seconds ago. So that way, like when you
get in the game later, you can just pull up
your phone and be like, oh, yeah, that needs a
lock on, that needs sticks, that needs a lot. You
know that you can tell what that tree needs, and
a lot of times you know if the spot can
have two different wins.
Speaker 7 (16:52):
I'll take pictures of both of them.
Speaker 8 (16:54):
So I'm like scouting, but I'm also putting those cameras
out along the corn on the licking branches. And then
and it's very important those licking branches. Those that's where
that's where you're gonna probably shoot one in October is
on one of those straits.
Speaker 7 (17:10):
And so, okay, scrape spot.
Speaker 8 (17:14):
Where can I get with a north to a west
a northwest wind in October because that's going to be
the magic X days.
Speaker 7 (17:22):
That's all my design.
Speaker 8 (17:24):
Everything I do is based on a northwest wind north
to west because those are the days that the deer
we're after is most likely going to walk in October.
I don't know about you, but I like to shoot
my deer early as possible before he's dead by somebody else.
So I put a lot of eggs in that north
west basket in October. So I'm like, Okay, licking branch,
(17:45):
this spot makes sense, this is where I need to
be for the northwest.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Does it work with.
Speaker 8 (17:51):
The thermals, because the thermals will screw you worse than
the wind in October. You want a big ditch, so
if you if you can find those spots that sets
up for northwest with a big ditch.
Speaker 7 (18:01):
For your thermost a pull.
Speaker 8 (18:04):
Then you can be like, okay, well, if this farmer
is gonna let me buy that crop, this is where
I want to do it based off of access, but
also northwest. And because again maybe the access isthing good,
but the northwest setup and the thermal set up because
I can't bring a box line here is really good
for this spot, but the access isn't great. Well, I'm
gonna pick and choose my days in October, like we
(18:24):
talked about earlier, I'm gonna buy this little piece of
corn back and I'm gonna hunt right there. So you're
already visualize, you're thinking like a ear you're visualizing it.
And then like maybe there's some more scrape branches down
through here, and you're like, well, this one's gonna be
so powerful because this is where the point comes out
of the woods and there's a concentration is sent here.
You can see the corn damage, you can see it.
This is where they want to scrape because there's a
(18:46):
concentration of set So I'm just gonna eliminate these other
scrape branches around here anyway. And then they have to
come here to my camera, and they have to come
here when I shoot them in October. So yeah, I
just go around and I load the load those liking
branches up. I pop into the obvious rough donald stands
because in October I'm not diving into those spots anyway. Yeah,
unless there's really good access. We passed the.
Speaker 7 (19:07):
Full moon in the end of the month.
Speaker 8 (19:09):
I'm running out of my window because the mornings can
be really good in October.
Speaker 7 (19:13):
But you just have to weigh is it worth it yet?
Speaker 8 (19:16):
And sometimes it becomes yes because of the spot, and
yes because it's far into October, and yes because I
have this deer peg. You know, I shot a big
one two years ago October fourth, in the morning because
I had him pegged, had perfect access. I knew what
he's gonna do because of the front, Like he's gonna
be checking marking territory in the front because or marking
territory in daylight morning in the evening, because this pressure
(19:38):
front just came in and wound him up, you know,
so thinking like a deer.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
No, obviously, Bobby hunts in the Midwest a lot and
buying back the crops. It's gonna cost some money, but
can greatly extend your season for a late season opportunity.
It could be an anchor for the farm throughout the
majority of the year, depending if it isn't corner or
if it's in beans, and so some really good pieces
of information for anyone to go out and make their
season as best as possible with with it just right
(20:08):
around the corner, because we're running out of time for
some of these big exciting projects. But with that punchless,
you're gonna be a little bit closer. Next up we
have Don Higgins on what he would do on a
brand new piece that he just got at the end August.
I just got access to a new farm. Where do
I start?
Speaker 9 (20:23):
Now?
Speaker 7 (20:23):
What?
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Well, at this point of the season, you know it's
late August, I'd be I'd be walking the farm just
to learn the terrain as much as anything. I'm not
looking for, although yeah, I'm looking for deer signed to
some degree, I'm looking for old sign you know, old
rubs on big trees and things like that. Trying to
(20:45):
figure out potential stand locations, access points, How am I
going to access that property? What wind directions am I
going to be able to hunt this property?
Speaker 4 (20:54):
With?
Speaker 2 (20:56):
If the situation allows, you know, can I get a
fall food pot in? I'm taking When I'm doing that
initial scouting foray through the property, I'm going to have
a bundle of trail cameras with me. I'm going to
be hanging those to get an inventory of the bucks
that are on the property, doing everything I can to
(21:17):
make up for lost time, and doing it as quickly
as possible. I'm not going to be going and scouting
multiple times. That one trip through is going to be
to learn the terrain, to get those cameras out to
find potential stand sites. Then I'm going to be waiting
to see what my cameras tell me as to how
I proceed. If I can put a food pot in,
(21:38):
I'm gonna be wanting to do that immediately. You know,
September first is the magical date for fall plots across
much of the Midwest. I know, the guys up north,
I want to get them in sooner than that. The
guys to the south may still have some time, but
that's kind of the sweet spot for much of us,
or much of the Midwest for most of us.
Speaker 7 (21:57):
So that's how I would approach property.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
When you walk that farm for the first time. Maybe
you saw them on a gas station and you've been
hoping to run into them, and hey, can I you
might mind if I hunt that farm you never walked before.
That first time you go in there, you mentioned looking
for train, uh that may move to your old sign.
How fast are you actually going through that farm? Because
you and I imagining you probably take your time because
(22:22):
that's your one time. So I just want to make
that really clear where they hear fast urgency. Okay, now
I have to burn through this farm and I don't know.
You know, they don't make notes, they don't do what
are some things that you do?
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Well, I'm taking my my phone on my on X app.
I'm gonna mark potential pre stand locations. I love to
drop pins, and every time I drop a pin, I'm
gonna be making notes. You know, this would be good
during the rut. I'm gonna need a northwest wind. I'm
going to access you know, across an open cornfield. Gonna
(22:55):
be a better morning spot than the evening spot. So
every and when I put a camera up, you know,
I'm gonna mark mark that location. I'm just gonna use
that app to mark everything that I can as I
make my way across that property.
Speaker 7 (23:07):
That way, I don't forget anything.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
And then if a true target buck does show up,
a buck I want to kill shows up on camera, boom.
I've got all this intel right there on my phone
where I can take advantage of it and not have
to go back and refresh my memory. Oh yeah, I remember,
now I did see that tree. I mean, I'm going
to be taking spot.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
I'm gonna have I stand face this direction exactly everything.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yeah, I'm gonna be saying, you know, there's a pin
oak tree halfway up the ridge where the deer are
coming off of the ridge. That's the tree I want
my standing. I might even take flagging tape as well
to mark the tree, but typically my notes are going
to be detailed enoughing well, once I get to that
spot with a stand on my back, I'm gonna remember.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
You know.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
The other thing is I'm going to be detailing things like, uh,
what I need to bring in so when I come
to hang this stand. You know a lot of times
I'm going to do a hang and hunt. I'm going
to come in with end season with my bow in hand,
Novic's tree, stand on my back with climbing sticks and
I'm going to note that need to clear a shooting
(24:17):
lane to the south, so you know, I may trim
a few branches, put my stand up, see if I
need to trim more. Hopefully I don't, and start hunting
right away. Typically i'll do this midday and I will
put the stand up and I will sit the dark.
That's kind of yeah. I don't come in and I
see my target buck on camera. I don't come in
(24:39):
with six trees stands and you know, burger up the
whole property again. Getting all these stands in place, I
will carry them in on my back today. I'm going
to hunt each one. And you know, I may hunt
that stand two or three times before the wind switches
to where I can hunt another location on the farm.
And when that switch happens, I'll come in midday with
(24:59):
a another stand on my back and I'll leave the
original stand come in with another stand on my back.
And I think that's why it can be critical in
situations like that, the stands that you're going to have,
you don't want to be or I don't want to
be coming in with a stand that's noisy exactly with
a chain or you know, buckles rattling, banging on the
(25:23):
metal and everything. That's where I think the Noviac stand
really shines. You can come in and get that up
real quiet, real easy, and if you feel you're confident
nobody's going to steal it, leave it in place. This
is what I do. And by the end of season,
you know, I may have a half a dozen or
more on that property, but I'm not coming in and
(25:44):
hanging them all at once. I'm bringing them in on
hunts and hanging them there.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
You have it.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
Next up we have Thomas Milsner, and Thomas works a
lot on a permission farm, but works with a lot
of different folks and he's putting together detailed plans short term,
long term, and you're going to hear some of those
things are right now.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
I just got a new piece of private ground.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
I bought it, I got a lease, knocked on a door,
and got permission on a piece of private ground. It's
August twenty fifth, too late to do a lot of
the exciting off season projects, the off season scouting. So
where do I start to get a leg up for
you know what's coming two months from now.
Speaker 10 (26:25):
There's two perspectives here. One is going to be the
long term. One's going to be the short term. And
if your property situation itself is long term, you bought
it long term lease with some flexibility on what you
can actually do, and then I'm going to look at
it completely differently from a property that I have permission
(26:46):
to hunt this fall, right or you know, hidden piece
of public ground or something like that. Right, So there's
two completely different perspectives.
Speaker 6 (26:54):
If I'm focused.
Speaker 10 (26:55):
On the long term, in my long term goals, then
I'm going to play it a little bit safer. I
really just kind of want to sit back and see
what is this property producing, and how are the deer
operating on this property without the influence of human pressure.
That's the biggest thing, because if you're completely new to
a property and you go in there and you just
(27:16):
start hunting how you hunted the last property or you know,
or you're just diving into try and figure things out,
even in August, especially in August, then you're just going
to stir up the pot, you know. So the way
I kind of describe it sometimes is you have all
these different just visualize a bunch of different colors in
a pot, right, and they all kind of like settle
(27:38):
in it on spots. But if you stir it up,
now it's just all brown. You can't really decipher what
all these things are. You let it settle in. Okay,
there's you know, the does are betting over here, bucks
are coming from over here, you know, whatever it might be,
and you'll figure that out because all those things change
throughout the season. So you really got to approach it
from that long term mindset, starting in the summer, moving
to the end. And a lot of times I'll actually
(27:59):
say just to clients, so they don't do any habitat
projects the first year, even if it's July. You know,
maybe there's some easy access spots we can throw in
a food plot, or more often than not these days,
there was an existing food plot out of property. So yeah,
let's go in there, let's pull our soil samples quick,
throw down a good fall blend, and then we'll regroup
and figure out how to make things.
Speaker 9 (28:19):
Better and build the gar in year out.
Speaker 10 (28:22):
But for right now, as far as deer movement, we're
not going to go and make major changes. We don't
need to go and hang a ton of stands. Obviously,
we can go scout some pinch points, throw some cameras up,
throw a stand up, pretty simple, right, but always always,
always scout from the outside in and hunt from the
outside in, and it just works out that way really well. Anyways,
if you're hunting the whole season and not just waiting
(28:43):
until the rut right in the early season, you're those
deer are more app to come to those bigger food sources, right,
So why pressure and why put pressure on their betting
areas if they can come to you right and scout
from the outside end, hunt from the outside end. So
you're on the outskirts hunting these bigger food sources. Maybe
a transition plot leading to those food sources where you're
keeping all that pressure off, and then as the season progresses,
(29:05):
maybe you inch in little by little. But what I
always tell everyone is don't be afraid to get aggressive,
but understand the risk versus reward of those situations. So
with that mindset, if you're a short term guy, if
you just got permission to this piece and it's only
for this year, and you don't know is there you
(29:25):
know some neighbor's grandson that still has access to hunt
this property in November when you've been keeping the pressure off,
this guy is going to show up and hunt one
day without telling anyone, because the person that gave you
permission doesn't even own the land. To just connect, you know,
there's all sorts of weird things that happen. Then I'm
going to get a lot more aggressive. I'm going to
go in you know, I'm still going to start with
(29:46):
food sources, especially given the time of the year. Starting
with food sources, finding you know, potentially a community scrape
around the edge of a big food source. Don't expect
to see deer there during daylight very often, but it's
more of an inventory thing. What's in the area, Where
where are they coming from. I'm starting to put together
these theories. You know, where are they betting, where are
they feeding? I know they're feeding here at nine o'clock
(30:06):
at night, but where they start? And you know, where
can I intersect them? And then I'm going a little
bit deeper scouting, you know, trying to pick a rainy
day or windy day. Got a camera in my backpack,
throwing some cameras up. I'm getting more aggressive, but I'm
still mindful of my pressure. Right So I'm going to
take a I'm gonna take a shot early in the
season I'm going to get in there, I'm going to scout,
and then I'm going to back off. But while I'm
(30:27):
in their early season trying to find an early season
buck and make an aggressive move on him, I'm anticipating
what things are going to look like come October November
time for him for the rut, and maybe I'm hanging
on a couple cameras then if I'm you know, in
the depths of the property. But more often than not,
I'm not going deep into a property if I don't
have an intimate relationship with a topography and the habitat,
(30:47):
because I know that I'm going to lose that game
nine times out of ten when that buck knows that
property so well it hasn't been pressured and then I
go in there all willy nilly. So the biggest thing
is short term, long term mindset. But long term, I'm
really trying to learn that property without me stirring that
pot so that I can come back after the season
(31:11):
and put together a really good plan and start breaking
that plan down into a timeline of you know, priority
projects for that for improvement of that property. And maybe
you don't need to do a whole lot. Maybe it's
just improve a couple betting areas, get your stands out,
improve a couple of pinch points, and improve that access.
You know, maybe there's a lot of work that needs
to be done, but I almost want to kind of
get a feel for what's going on in that property.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
Something that's stuck with me with this segment with Thomas,
to start from the outside and scout in and be
very mindful that if you did, if you were lucky
enough to buy your first farm or a farm, or
a new farm, or a long term lease or a
long term permission farm, having a long term perspective is
obviously paramount for a long term success. And I think
Thomas nailed it here on the head regarding that. Next up,
(31:55):
we have Jeff Sturgis, So let's get right into it. Okay,
I just got a new piece of private ground. I
might have knocked on a door. I might have bought
it and just closed on it. It's August twenty fifth,
you know, the gun, the gun is getting really close
for opening day. What can I do now? It's brand
new and I don't have any stands, I don't have
any cameras out.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
What do I do? Where do I start?
Speaker 11 (32:19):
You know, the first thing we did and we bought
our property in June, we could start doing things. But
you know, like I said, I wasn't even I wasn't
even the core area of our property until after the
hunting season. The majority of it, about seventy percent of
the land I never even looked at because we couldn't
go in it and spoke to here. So I'm looking
at specific locations that I can hunt. I know that
I can get in and out of this funnel. It's
(32:39):
not just this is a good spot, it's is this
a good spot and I can get it and out?
Speaker 6 (32:43):
Is a huntable?
Speaker 9 (32:45):
And what is that game plan going to be?
Speaker 11 (32:46):
Is it going to be a morning stand because it's
more closely related to betting, or is this an afternoon
stand it's more closely related to food source. Then I
can start to identify a plan of this is how
access that morning stand away from the food. This is
how I can hunt near food in the afternoon. This
is a morning stand, this is an afternoon stand. If
it's a morning stand and likely not hunt that towards
until towards the rut, then what I'm looking at is
(33:09):
then I'm going in and identifying individual trees that I
can hunt, and I'm going to place those cameras at
those stand locations exactly where I expect to shoot them
on the trail, I expect to shoot them in the location.
Speaker 9 (33:19):
I expect to shoot them.
Speaker 11 (33:20):
And I'm going to add mox scrapes to all those
stand locations, something free and simple and make vertical will
I looked this morning for some reason, but it was
sixty two mox scrape videos that I have on my
YouTube channel, and so it's in a playlist. Sixty two
mox scrape videos. Feel free to enjoy but at nauseum.
But they I've been doing it for a long time
(33:44):
and it's free use no sense. But I'm going to
put those at the stand location. I expect that buck
to be shot in and around that mock scrape location
somewhere on that trail, and then that's a great spot
to haking a camera at the same time too. Now,
if I want to enhance it, we've installed a lot
of holes as late as early October. It's for a
rut on end of October November. If you're in a
(34:05):
dry area, people always say, well, I have a creek,
we have running water, and springs down in the valleys
and most of our location and a our entire property
in Minnesota, and same with the Wisconsin reached on.
Speaker 9 (34:16):
It's where the deer are traveling.
Speaker 11 (34:18):
So if deer are bedded in dry areas and they're
on the way to a food source and is dry
in between, great spot for waterhole. If there's dry bedding
areas and you put a water hole in between for
morning rut stands, awesome spot. Funnel cruising stands as well.
As you can picture a block moving from point A
to point B and he can't get water in between them,
it's a perfect spot for a waterhole, even if he
(34:39):
has water one hundred yards opposite direction, because then you
can keep them within the same movement. He has water there,
why is he going to go one hundred yards out
of his way.
Speaker 6 (34:48):
And come back.
Speaker 11 (34:49):
Typically, if he gets out of his bedding area at
four in the afternoon's getting dark at five, and he
goes one hundred yards off your property to go get water,
he's not coming back. They're efficient creatures, they're not wasting
two hundred yards of travel. So give them that water hole.
And that's one of the things a quick install we
use three hundred galon rubber maids one hundred and fifty
gallon does and it's a lot easier to shovel one
(35:11):
hundred and ten gallon cheap one from TSSE you use
to get those for under one hundred dollars. It's one
hundred and ten gallons that ends up about twenty four
inches deep. I like that depth to size ratio because
it holds water longer, it doesn't evaporate. You don't want
one of the big shallow ponds you like a kiddie
pool or something like that. So that's another quick enhancement
(35:33):
to your hunt that once you have those stand locations
narrowed down, you've narrowed down where a morning stand is afternoon,
you've narrowed down your access. Added some mox scrapes your
stand locations are in that water hole can be the
perfect sweetener. And when we're putting, people say, well, do
I use a waterhole or a mox grape? Always using
(35:57):
mox scrape every stand location, no more, no less. But
then a waterhole would be in addition to that off
the side to the point when we have camera on
that then the smack scrape is either in the background
or the foreground, water hole vice versa. And get this,
I get both of them in one picture, so I
can monitor both of them for the entire year.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
I found Jeff's perspective on this to be really interesting
on how careful he has been in the past when
he has fallen into this category. And what's great about
this is so many different perspectives from so many interesting
hunters that have a lot of the same things that overlap,
but little nuances, and so hopefully you're picking up these
small little things and you're figuring out what will apply
directly to you so you can make the next thirty
(36:41):
days as best as possible. Next step we have Steve
Hanson on what he would do and if he would
take on a large project this late end of the summer.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
It's late August. You just got access to a new
piece of ground. What do you do and where do
you start?
Speaker 12 (36:56):
Well, the first thing I try to figure out is
work on the access. You know, if if there's anything
you can do, whether that be mowing trails, you know,
just anything like that, even if it has to be
with a you know, a weed whip to go along
the edge of some crops. Just try to figure out
a way that you're going to be able to hunt
this or be able to access this to hunt. And
(37:16):
then assuming it's too late to do any food plots
where this farm's located, my next thing would be I'd
be trying to reach out to whoever that tenant is
on the farm, if there's crops on it, on the
odd chance that he would work with you and you
could buy a little bit of standing crop and give
yourself a permanent food source. You know, those would be
the first two things that I would be trying right away.
(37:37):
So then you know, then after that it would be
just you know, as many trail cameras as I can
set up and use any other way of scouting as possible,
like here in Iowa outside the season, we're able to
put some corn out near the cameras. I would be
pulling out all the stops trying to learn what deer
are there and kind of you know, fast track it
(37:58):
to that. That would be the first couple steps that
I would would take without a doubt.
Speaker 4 (38:03):
Would you if you had the ability and idea to
you know, with a being brand new and let's say
you did buy it, would you go in and try
to do any over major over overhauls like a new
pretty hefty trail system, or man, it's late August. I know,
the guy with the dozer can get in there this
week and we can get the food plot in the
first week of September. Would you do anything like that
(38:25):
this first go around?
Speaker 9 (38:27):
Yeah, you know, if it was.
Speaker 12 (38:28):
An owned property, I absolutely would if you had the
ability to work that quickly, and that would be the
big question. If it was an owned piece where you
had the control of the property, I think you still
have just a little tiny bit of time to do that.
I know the the year that I shot that two fourteen,
we dozed and cleared that food plot Labor Day weekend,
(38:52):
so that, yeah, we had picture.
Speaker 9 (38:54):
We got pictures of that buck and then went back.
Speaker 12 (38:56):
And altered our stand or our food plot setup up
and that's where inevitably ended up killing them. And that
was a food plot planted like the first week of
September where we did all the dozing and clearing Labor
Day weekend.
Speaker 9 (39:09):
So there's definitely still time.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
Okay, that's that's good. Now, what if it's a knock
on door permission? Would you go in and what would
be your strategy for potentially identifying stand locations and as
far as identifying what this farm, what time frame in
the year this farm might be good too, I think
is another part. So we're just we're talking about imaginary
(39:32):
piece of ground. So if you know, just for a
guy that just randomly gets a piece you mentioned, you know,
do some quick scouting the weed whacker and clean up
access is a big one. But is there any other
key things that someone should do on their first go
around going into a brand new place?
Speaker 5 (39:49):
You know?
Speaker 12 (39:49):
The one of the simplest ones is I would get
a copy of a lie to our map. A lie
to our map is is like ground or penetrating where
vegetation penetrate radar. That's going to show every little nook
and cranny of that farm. And I would be using
that to try to identify some rut funnels so that
you don't have to walk the entire place. So I
(40:10):
would do that, and I would probably pick the three
most prominent rut funnels, and then I would, you know,
put some boots on the ground and field scout those spots.
And then but when I went in there, i'd be
ready to set them up because you've really at this
point got to start limiting your amount of intrusion into
those interior areas. So I would be looking for three
two to three different wind direction key rut funnel spots,
(40:33):
and my first tool to do that would be a
light our map so some of the app, you know,
different apps can get you that. You can also get
it right from your county from like our nrcs. They
print those off for me. At times we can print
them ourselves through different avenues, but they're super super helpful.
(40:53):
You can do like I like the black and white
hills what they call hill shade. You can get a
color hill shade. It's all whatever you're used to looking at.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Mm hmm, yeah, honest.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
Actually this added light r to their app to click,
you click topo and then on the base maps and
you switch a lighter on, which is really nice.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
To your point, be really nice.
Speaker 12 (41:13):
That's a great that's a great feature that's going to
be super helpful, all on one platform.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:23):
I'm trying to think here, just because I know there's this.
There's if someone just randomly gets a new piece, you know,
whether it's a lease or they're closing on a farm,
or they knock on a door and they get permission
there's just so much excitement and anticipation all bundled in
right before the season two especially. Let me run this
quick scenario by you for someone that just knocked on
(41:44):
a door because they essentially heard there was a big
deer in the area and they wanted to get in
that ball game. And with that comes excitement of Okay,
now I have an opportunity of maybe tagging this specific buck.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
But on the flips out of it.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
You know, throughout this series, a lot of folks have
said that they wanted to be really patient, methodical, even
leading up into the season, of not pressuring a farm
too much. Where do you follow on that scale with
it being late August and you just got access and
you don't want to blow up you know, this potential
mature buck that you're after.
Speaker 12 (42:18):
Yeah, you know the fact that you just the fact
you already know there's a mature buck on the property
or in the neighborhood, so you're way ahead of the
curve there. You're not trying to find one. If the
time of year you're gonna you think you have the
best chance of taking you know, if harvestingham would be
late October early November, I'm going to look for what
(42:38):
food sources are probably still going to be there then
for that Halloween time, places where I can start out
hunting field edges and gaining a little bit more knowledge
of the area while i'm hunting, you know, because that's
those are the first areas that you're going to start
to see rubs and scrapes around the field edges and stuff,
and you still don't have to penetrate deeper into there.
(42:59):
Once you hunt that, hopefully you get some eyes on
the buck that you're after. And that's when I would
kind of switch into that first week in November and
start start being very very aggressive because obviously, if you
know about this buck, somebody else probably does too, and
you know, that's that's why you can't really be super
(43:19):
hands off and let him come to you. I would
use the last week of October sort of as my
hunting slash scouting, with the plan of having a few
quick setups with me and moving right in as soon
as I get the intel that I need. So it's
kind of a it's yeah, it's kind of a oh,
a passive aggressive approach to hunting. You know, the first
week you're you're pretty passive hoping he comes to you
(43:42):
the second week, you have to go to him.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
Absolutely, Yeah, no, it'll be that'll be here before we
know it. So anyone that tunes in and this throughout
the season, a lot of things changed. Maybe you lose
a piece that you were planning on hunting right now,
or maybe you get one, and there's just a lot
of a lot of things that can happen, you know,
in the next four months.
Speaker 9 (44:01):
Yeah, you know a lot of times.
Speaker 12 (44:03):
One thing that you know, kind of pushed me back
into What makes this question pretty relevant is we've had
years with EHD, or we've had a good scouting plan
lost the bucks that were after so even though we
had a great setup from June going forward, we had
to start over virtually in this late this is typically
when we have trouble with EHD, would be that kind
(44:25):
of mid mid August to early September. So it's a
very relevant question.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
So there you have it. That's Steve's perspective.
Speaker 4 (44:34):
And if you have a big project you've been kicking around,
or maybe you fall into this category, you still have
time to go make the big project, make the improvement
to make the season great, if you feel good about
the plan, and last but not least we have mister
Mark Kenyon to close out this episode to get his.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Opinion on a brand new farm. Where do you start?
Speaker 6 (44:53):
And here we go?
Speaker 4 (44:54):
All right, you just bought a new farm, you just
got a new lease, you just knocked on a door,
and you just got access. It's late August, all of
the preseason major prep projects may be behind us.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Where do I start?
Speaker 4 (45:10):
Because I'm excited and nervous at the same time, I
want to make this happen.
Speaker 6 (45:14):
Yeah, all right, So I am first starting with maps,
and I'm doing like a deep dive study of my
map at two levels. I'm doing a macro study, so
I'm zooming way out and I'm learning the neighborhood, what's
all around my property, How do other properties feed into
my property? How much deerb using the neighbors or the
neighbors neighbors, How does all that? How does my piece
(45:37):
of the puzzle fit to the larger picture? So I
really want to try to understand that. And then I'm
zooming in doing the micro map study, where I'm like
just focusing on my forty year whatever it is, and
really trying to as best as I possibly can with
the map identify likely food sources, likely, betting areas, likely
travel corridors, likely, pinch points of any kind. And I'm
(46:00):
pinning or circling or marking all of those key places
on the map and spending a lot of time thinking
that through. What's a lot of time, many nights, okay,
multiple nights or days around, just like studying and thinking
and like imagining all the possibilities, and like you know,
I'm looking at all the different I'm looking at cover,
I'm looking at topography, I'm looking at water, I'm looking
(46:22):
at maybe even soil type, or I'm looking at like
layers on Onyx where you can see where the oaks
are or where conifers are, and having vegetation types. I'm
definitely looking at crop rotations. So there's layers on a
lot of these apps now where you can see what
fields have been planted. So I would like to know, Okay,
where has corn been, where have beans been? What's the
(46:42):
likely rotation now this year? So I'm definitely looking to see,
you know, with like like Onyx or other apps probably
have a tool where you can see what fields were
planted and whether it's corn or beans or what that
rotation was. So I want to look at all of
those things to start thinking through where this deer might
be feeding, where they may be bedded, how they're getting
in between both, and that way, I have all of
(47:02):
this done ahead of time with my maps, I know
the key places. Now I can go in and do
a serious but kind of concentrate scouting exercise. So if
it's late August or early September, I am okay going
in and like intruding and seeing the place. But I
don't want to go overboard with it because my typical
rule of thumb is, if possible, I like to leave
(47:24):
any property that I'm hunting one undred percent alone for
at least thirty days before running season. If I get
so in this case, I'd be like right at that point.
So it's like I go in like Labor Day weekend,
and I've got one day and I'm gonna go in
there and pound pavement, and I have this map, I
have this plan, and I'm going to go and probably
(47:46):
do the outside edge of the property, and I'm going
to hit every one of these key points. So those
key funnels, those key convergences, the key food sources betting
area is the places that I think are hot spots.
On the map, and I'm going to go on ground
truth those places if they actually match up with what
I thought they would, I want to understand like the
pillars of this property. I'm gonna mark every little bit
(48:09):
of data that I see along the way, So every trail,
every scrape, every old rup, every masked tree, every you know,
either a soft mass tree like an apple tree or
a hard mask an oak tree, and mark all those things.
I'm gonna mark every major entry into the property from
the neighbors. I'm gonna be thinking through every topography future
I'm gonna add notes like if I see like a
(48:29):
super great looking vetting area on the slope, I'm gonna
pin that and maybe add a few notes about what's there,
what makes special. I want to learn and then be
able to remember the party actionable like information from this
all in that one day. I'm also gonna backpack the
little cameras when I do this, so if I didn't
you know, we talked on a previous episode about kind
(48:49):
of doing something similar with trail cameras. I'm looking at
kind of doing these two things together. So as I
go and do this one day scouting run, I'm taking
in my cameras with me. I'm setting them up so
I can set them and forget them. So there's likely
going to be what I'm gonna be setting up now
if this is like sometime like just before the season,
I'm setting up everything for hunting season information. So I'm
(49:11):
less worried about setting something up to get summer pictures
at this point because they're transitioning off their summer pattern
into their fault pattern. So I'm setting up on scrapes
or what I think will be scrapes. I'm setting up,
you know, a place that I think will be eventually
right funnels. I'm setting up in places that are close
to bedding where I think deer will be transitioning out
towards food. And again thinking about hunting season related intel.
Speaker 4 (49:35):
Are you prepping trees and picking trees where you pine
on hunting or are you bringing any tree stands or
are you pretty much fully a saddle guy in this scenario?
Speaker 6 (49:44):
Yep, in this scenario, I'm not prepping trees. I'm picking trees. Okay,
So I will be going throughout this school process and
picking And when I said I'm not prepping, I should,
I will be mostly picking trees. I often have enough time,
I will often have like a pull saw or yeah
and so, and if I have time and I've gone
through it did my full day, if there's like a
(50:05):
handful of those trees that I picked as like high priority,
and I have the time to go on there and
just cut some lanes or just cut player it out
enough you can get up in the tree nice and quietly,
I'll do that. If I have a weekend, I can
do that. In the second day, I'll do that too.
But I'm not worried about going and prepping a bunch
of trees anymore. I would rather just have a bunch
of places like picked out. I was like, hey, this
(50:25):
is pretty cool. I like this spy, like this spot,
like this spot, and then come season I can go
in there and hunt mobile with the saddle. And then
what I think works really well is that you approach
year one like that. You don't invest and double down
on any one location with a big built up setup.
And if you go in there and bring in a
big ladder stand or bring in sticks, send up hang
(50:47):
on and really strap it on their nice and carve
out huge shooting lanes and all that kind of stuff,
it's like an investment in that.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Place, you became biased to that area.
Speaker 6 (50:56):
Bias to that place, you become like there's that like
some Yes, now you've done all that work, you don't
want to move. And I think that could be a
huge mistake to go and like set up and invest
in a place like that before you really know it.
And so what you end up doing is you like
made this purchase, and you're kind of like want to
keep believing that purchase because he put in all this work,
and then you're not willing to truly listen to what
(51:19):
you've saw or learned about the area and make the
small movement. So by having low investment on the front end,
so again like just going in with a saddle and
do very little majorly time investment, I don't feel bad
when I hunt that spot. I'm like, oh, that's not
quite right. I really need to be thirty yards that one.
And so next time I go thirty yards that when
I hunt it for a saddle, I'm like, oh, actually,
(51:40):
you know, I need to.
Speaker 7 (51:40):
Be over here.
Speaker 6 (51:41):
And then I've done that. And now after that first
year of hunting this new property, I've learned enough, I've
tried enough things I wasn't scared or like in some
way resistant to change. Now I know, okay, actually that
oak there on the corner by the crossing, that is
the spot. Now for a year two I will go
fully prep that cut length, maybe put up sticks that
stay up, something like that. But I'm doing it with
(52:04):
a truly informed opinion rather than just my first gut
instinct after having just just barely soft place.
Speaker 4 (52:11):
So that's how I was don in my first year
when you said you would go in and map everything
out this picture of forty yep, how many pins and
annotations and notes would you have? And I guess even
that's a twofold question before you go there? And then
how many more are you adding when you're physically there?
Obviously dependent on the features, but this a general idea
(52:32):
so people can understand how detailed you're you know, really being.
Speaker 6 (52:35):
Yeah, I would guess like before, so just looking at
the map before going in, let's assume it's like a
mix of egg and timber, a couple of little fields,
a couple of fingers and movie. Yeah, that might be
eight to twelve things that stood out in the map.
Maybe I was like, Okay, I definitely want to go
check that out. It could be way more. It might
(52:55):
be a place is way less but somewhere that though
I don't know ten to twenty eight to well, something
like that. Probably that I was like, hey, check it out, interesting,
and then you go out there for the day, and
then you're probably at least doubling that with real stuff
on the ground. It could be you know, I could
walk out of there with twenty pins. I could walk
out of there with thirty five pins. How much time
(53:17):
do you take to organize those? Are you color coding them?
Are you actually you know, yeah, I'm guilty. I'm guilty
of this season the on xpin and they're like what
was that? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (53:26):
And then there's times where I do take the times
it'll be more detailed.
Speaker 6 (53:29):
I don't color code. I do try to icon code,
so like I will have a trail camera icon, I'll
have a buck icon of that icon of scrape icon, yep,
that kind of stuff, a stand icon. So that's how
I organize them.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
You know.
Speaker 6 (53:43):
Also one thing I'll do that first day or two
is if I find a couple of those first few trees,
I'm like, oh this is interesting. If it's like thick,
nasty stuff, I will walk and track the trail to it,
so I know what the best quietest or easiest route
into that tree is, because that's the thing, Like I'm
not going to have pre prepped trails necessarily at this
(54:04):
last minute. Yeah, it's a new place, but like that's
another thing that it's a small thing just track in
your walk there, but it can really help you when
you go on it for the first time. That's another
small thing all I at there.
Speaker 4 (54:14):
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And
it once again, you're excited. You just got this new
place and you want to go in there and burn
through it. But I think to your point once again,
being really methodical, and I picture in my mind, I'm busy,
just like everyone else. I am time blocking this and
I'm not thinking or doing any other obligations during how
this period. I'm solely focused on learning as much as possible,
(54:37):
leaving detailed notes, and so my time is efficient and
I'm not getting distracted. And I say that I want
to do that, but it doesn't always work that way.
Speaker 6 (54:44):
Sure, But I think the key thing with it is
because you're so close to the season starting, what you
don't want to do, in my opinion, is you don't
want to be like, all right, I'm gonna do a
little bit this Saturday, and I'll come back next weekend,
do a little bit next Saturday, and I'll come back
the next weekend and do another next Saturday, and they'll
do some the next and the season starts that someday.
Whatever it is, you don't want a bunch of repeated
(55:05):
intrusions and doing it. I'd rather blow it up in
one or two days versus like blow up corner here,
in the corner here the next week, and the corner
here the next week, at the quarter here the next week,
because that is just like consistent pressure. That's gonna have
those deer more and more and more and more educated
before the season starts. That's a huge mistake. Yeah, one
bad day deer can get over pretty quick. Repeated bad
(55:28):
days they don't tolerate nearly as well.
Speaker 4 (55:30):
Well, it's funny you bring that up, because that was
that was the ringing advice through all of the guests.
None of them said, well, I'm gonna go there on
one day and then I'm gonna think about it for
a couple of days, and then I'm gonna go back again,
and then and all these multiple trips. It's very clear
that if this happens to you, you're in this scenario,
you have to be you have to have a really
good plan, and you have to have one in one
(55:52):
out best case scenario to maximize your opportunity and minimize
the downside. So I think that's something that everyone should
really consider. It. Man, what an exciting time if you're
in this position. That's a really exciting time to go
learn a new piece and test your theories and then
affirm your theories for the following year if you're able
to go back. And so I think it's a really
exciting time. And hopefully all these experts give you some
(56:14):
clear and concise guidance, because I think that was the
case for this episode. And next week we have one
that everyone that's planted a food plot has been in
this scenario and we're diving into. If you're and you're
listening to this right now, you're probably can we release
it right now? Because you're probably looking at it. If
your food plots did not turn out how you wanted,
what can you do?
Speaker 3 (56:33):
What's a contingency plan. We're diving into that next week.
Speaker 4 (56:36):
With some people that have planted thousands of acres of
food plots. You guys have it. I hope you enjoyed
this episode. It was a lot of fun and I
just want to drive this home. I want to reiterate it.
Just if you do not have a brand new farmer,
you don't fall exactly in this category. The point of
this question was even if you've been hunting the same spot,
to get a fresh perspective to go in and maybe
(56:59):
do one last outing around, or go do the project,
or go hang another set, or the obvious spot that
felt too good and too good to be true, it
might be the best spot on the farm. And so
it's a good reset to revisit and look at farms
that you're already hunting or places that you're hunting, and
go through this checklist one last time. Because we're getting
so close to season. Hopefully this episode pointed you in
(57:20):
the right direction. And next week we're flipping the calendar
to September, and if you have some food plot questions,
you've been struggling the food plots over the years, or
you haven't got them in yet, that episode is going
to be just for you. So I hope you guys
enjoyed this episode, and we will see you next week
on the Back forty podcast.
You got a month to add three core, huge things
right there, and then you also have a month to
be like, hey, I'm going to get five really good
setups up.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
By the end of season. You know, I may have
a half a dozen or more on that property, but
I'm not coming in and hanging them all at once.
I'm bringing them in. On hunts, I'm hanging them.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Welcome to Back forty.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
I'm Jake Hoefer, and this week, if you just got
a new farm, you just got permission, or even if
you've been hunting a farm, the same farm for a year.
After a year, you're going to get a fresh perspective
from eight experts on what they would do right before
the season with limited impact or maybe large impact projects.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Set yourself up for this fall real quick.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
The Back forty's brought to you by land dot com,
the leading online real estate marketplace to find your perfect rural, recreational, agricultural,
or hunting properties here.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
In the US.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
Now, a lot of these things that we're going to
hear from the expert panel maybe things that seem obvious,
But I also think after finishing this episode, getting a
reset on hey, do I have all.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
These things that I can do here for this fall?
Have I done it?
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Also, if you haven't done the scouting, or maybe there's
a specific terrain feature that seemed to be very important,
or maybe you've been too nervous to go in and
make any impact on your farm because of the season
is getting closer. So you're going to get a lot
of different opinions and observations based off of our expert
panel of guests. And to kick things off, the question
is I just got access to a new farm.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
What can I do now? And we're going to start
with Bill Winki.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Okay, I just closed on a new farm, or I
just got a new piece of private It's August twenty fifth,
and a lot of the big fun offseason projects are
off the table. Where do I start right now? It's
August twenty fifth.
Speaker 5 (01:55):
Well, there's not much you can do from a improvement
perspective on that property. I would say the most important
thing would be to mow probably a few access trails,
something that you know, just have some way that you
can get around. It's still August, You've got time for
(02:18):
the deer to get used to a little bit of
human activity there. I think the first thing I would
do is just establish maybe a few ways of getting
around in that property, so you're not just busting through
a brush and making you knows, you need to be
able to hunt it. So I think that's probably priority
number one, and then I wouldn't be probably number two.
(02:40):
Then for me, it would just be running the cameras
and finding some shooters, you know, finding out what's there,
you know, getting an inventory, figuring out which parts of
the property or are the peris that you want to
focus on that season. But if you can't hunt it effectively,
like you can't get into it from the different directions,
maybe you know, because of you know, whatever reason, you
(03:03):
need to establish access first, and maybe that means talking
to one of your neighbors and you know, paid him
a little fee or somehow getting permission to come in
from that direction where you know, otherwise you would even
be able to hunt one into your property because you know,
on certain wins, you'd be messing it up if you
came in from the wrong way. So access is probably,
(03:25):
like I said, number.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
One, would you go in and tear through the whole
entire farm, let's call it let's stick to the eighty
acre example, and the back part has thirty acres, a
really really good cover where you anticipate there to be
you know, good betting opportunities, good good corridors.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Everything.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Would you go through in lay eyes basically on the
whole entire farm at that time.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
No, No, In fact, I used to hunt. Gosh, you'd laugh.
But when I was a kid growing up in the country,
I was related to everybody. I was like fourth generation
on both sides of my family, so I had permission everywhere.
I think I had sixty some different farms. I had
permission hunting a lot of them. I never scouted, you know,
(04:10):
on foot. I would just go in there with the
tree stand on my back. Based on the area. Photos
you can tell you buy a driving paths it or
whatever what the trade is. But the aerial photo kind
of gives you a visual and you can say, okay,
I see a pitch point here, I see you. You
don't need to even scout, you know. Back then, I
wish I would have had truck. It was because gosh,
(04:31):
there's no telling what I could have killed on sixty
some different farms. There had been some big deal there somewhere.
But anyway, I rarely scouted more than you know, five
to ten a year. But I hunted a lot of
different spots, and you don't need to scout pick good
standing locations. You just need to be handy with the map.
(04:54):
And so I'd say no, I wouldn't go in unless
you're going and stand on your back. But you know
the kind of the method that everybody talks about now,
you know the ultra mobile type of money. I was
doing that quite a bit when I was You're just
a young guy because I had access to so much ground. See,
(05:15):
you always keep the the uh element of surprise in
your favor. You always want to be you know, people
know after a few years of doing this is the
first time you hunt a stand is probably gonna be
your best chance because they dear don't have any history
of you being there that they don't have any reason
not to be moving comfortably and naturally. Every time you
(05:37):
hunt it after that, it can potentially get worse. So
I have been a few stands in my whole life
that that didn't happen on. But so going in there
to scout it, I mean, if you're gonna, if you're
gonna scout it, let me give you this one last
piece of advice. If you're going to scout it you
feel like I have to get in there, then I
would make all kinds of noise. I'd be the farmer
(05:58):
checking his fence with a chainsaw on a tractor. Just
be as you know, completely give them so much warning
that they're more curious than anything else. You know, I've
seen that work. But if you try to sneak in,
and usually that doesn't work, you better off you staying
completely out.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Okay, this real quick question. When you mentioned identifying different
pinch points, would you pick a pinch point or inside
corner just off a map? And I know that's so situational,
but you know, people talk about a handful of different
buzzwords of identifying, you know, from the scouting. What is
your favorite feature from an scouting perspective for you know,
(06:40):
something like this scenario.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
Well, the best ones are the most obvious ones, and
that's usually the kittie corner or the corner crossing two
large blocks of cover. So let's say you got you know,
a big chunk here and a big chunk there, and
they're connected, you know, through one little narrow whether it's
a creek bottom or you know, the open gate between
(07:04):
two or whatever it might be, those spots are really
hard to beat during the rut because they become super
highways for any bucks that are going from one area
where dotes are probably betted to another area where those
are probably betted. Then you don't need topography. You don't
need to know the topography to see those. The ones
that I like that are topographically focused are the ones
(07:27):
like the funnels at the tops of ditches where the
deer go around the top of the ditch. And that's
a no brainer because they're very apparent when you're studying
the topographic maps, and usually there's there's dope betting areas
on either side of that ditch. It is usually the
way the land lazes. That's why the ditch is there,
(07:48):
because you got a point, and you got a point,
and then the ditches between them, well, the bucks are
going to gain between those, you know, checking through the
different dough betting areas. So the very upper end of
that ditches is almost always, you know, kind of a
no brainer. Then you can get the wind to work
for you and you could use the ditch for access,
you know, for sneaking in and out. I've set up
(08:09):
a ton of those, and you usually you want to
go in there with a chase saw during the offseason
and clear that ditch out. But you can come and go,
you know, very well undetected now if you use that ditch.
So those are really good ones to find too. I
love those. But there's tons of different options out there,
but those are the two most obvious ones there.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
You guys have it.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
That is Bill's perspective for someone that just got new
access on what you can do most of access trails
if you do go in and scout, make a lot
of noise, and the most obvious spot could easily be
the best spot. So now we're going to get into
skips Lie and what he would do in the next
thirty days to make his farm the best possible and
(08:53):
a short window and the full project detailed list right now.
I just bought a brand new farm, or I just
not on a door. I got a piece of private ground.
It's August twenty seventh, Gune goes off. Time to go,
what do I start?
Speaker 1 (09:08):
You can make some exciting things happen. So late August
funding season opens what October one?
Speaker 6 (09:18):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Okay, so you definitely could still plant things. I would
get out there. I would I would beg borrow and
plead with anybody I knew to borrow a tractor and
a drill, rent one higher, one out, and I would
go plant a combo of like winter I winter piece,
(09:41):
when are we tri to kale, trit to kelly and clovers,
and I would quick get that seated down, like kill it,
set it down immediately, So there's your food for the year.
That it's not it's not ideal in that you know,
you don't have other things now, and that's really the
only thing you can really get going one in most
areas by that point. But it's actually an ideal time
(10:03):
to plant that too. So and I'd add oats in
there too, by the way. So I would immediately do that,
and then I would immediately go in there and just
be like, hey, I'm gonna go in there when I plant,
I do it the same day. And this is just
me being fussy, But the same day I would go
through there and be like, hey, while you're planting this stuff,
because I'm hiring you, or I'm begging you to do it,
or maybe I'm running it, I'd go take a bunch
(10:25):
of chainsaws with me, and I'd go in the timber
and I would find some things that, like, you know,
figure out what your undesirable trees are, your poor quality trees,
and just dump a few here and there to create
some structure. And that structure will last, you know, continually,
it'll definitely impact the whole fall. And by the time
even hunting season comes in a month later, they're going
(10:46):
to start using that as betting and structure and like
you know, even some of the brows that'll come down
and maybe a little bit will start to yeah, probably
not much, but they'll be definitely more betting, and that
dynamic will change by the fall. So that's really simple.
That's just two things. That's just quickly, add some food
(11:10):
if I can chain saw, some cover if I can.
I know that's being very specific, and there's more to
it to that, and this is if somebody can manipulate
the habitat. And then if you could add a watering
hole too, I definitely would do that. And all of
a sudden, you're like, so you got a month to
add three core, huge things right there, and then you
also have a month to be like, hey, I'm going
(11:32):
to get five really good setups up and maybe I
do some mock scrapes, maybe I put a rubbing post in.
Maybe I just have five stands that are in sweet
funnel locations with the dear naturally travel. I mean, going
back to the basics of how I started hunting, high spent.
It's spent decades hunting. I didn't need to do all
(11:53):
this stuff either. I didn't need to put in a
food plot to shoot a big deer.
Speaker 6 (11:57):
I didn't.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Most of the year I've still shot to this day.
Probably did not involve a food plot or a watering
hole or rubbles. Do all those things help, of course
they do, But usually it was hey, man, you can
just hunt my ground.
Speaker 7 (12:10):
I'm like, thank you.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
I got a place to go, and hopefully it wasn't
shared with like fifty thousand other people, and then I
would just go in there and hang. My basic approach
was like, okay, I got forty acres, let's go hang
six killer spots that make great sense and go hunt it.
Speaker 7 (12:28):
And I kill bucks just doing that.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
So sometimes it's very simple, and hey, I have no money,
but I can go.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
You know.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
So I can't do plots, I can't do timberwork, I
can't put it in a waterhole. That's fine, pick out
six sweet spots. And go hunt it. Hunt smart and
go find the natural movement of the deer. Use your
woodsmanship skills or learn your woodsmanship skills to set up
sweet six, eight, five, whatever. Just really good spots. Go
(13:00):
hunt them correctly, and you probably will have a chance
at a good deer if there's a good deer in there.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Really simple, some great information here from skipping.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
I think those projects he'd listed, whether it's permission farm,
maybe it's a farm you've had for a long time.
If you don't have those items, make a punch list.
Go out there, get it done, hand your cameras, find
the best five spots, get them set up, and patiently
be ready to strike.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
When the time is right.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Next up we have Bobby Kendall, and Bobby buys a
lot of farms, and so he is in this position
a lot, and you get to hear what he would do,
basically what it does every year. I just drew a
tag in a random spot. I knocked on a door,
got permission in an area. I have no clue where
to start. I want the powerball, and I spot a farm.
It's August, and where do I start? Feel that a
(13:45):
lot of the spring food plots long gone a lot
of these really big projects that take a while off
the table.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
So brown zero, where do I start? Race? Gun goes off?
Speaker 7 (13:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (13:56):
So I actually am in this situation a lot because
I buy a lot of farms, and a lot of
times I don't I don't control when I buy them,
So a lot of times I'm I'm past the point
of a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 7 (14:07):
So a couple of.
Speaker 8 (14:08):
Things to come to mind. Like one thing you can
you can, you know, get on the horn with is
if there's a farmer is reaching out to him and
starting to try and figure out if you're gonna be
able to buy back crops because that's huge, especially corn.
And the other thing is you're going to want to
go put cameras out immediately to see what's there. And
(14:29):
so that time of year, if you have beans, it's
a lot easier because you have lots of places to
put I was just on a farm earlier, and I
think we talked about this a little while ago. Beans
last year, eight or ten cameras, corn this year a
couple And so if you have beans or olf outfields
or stuff like that, it's going to make it a
lot easier. Some ponds, natural ponds go and trim down
(14:52):
a nice spot, or back your mower in and make
a spot. They're going to go to that easy spot
of the pond, you know. But otherwise, what I like
to do on a corn here, and what I'll do
on this farm down here, on a corn here, and
I always look forward to this day. I'll get my
backpack and I'll fill it up with sell cams, and
I'll get my hedge clippers, and i'll take some t posts.
(15:16):
Everything's all grown up and nasty, and I'll just go
around the edges of all the corn fields in like
mid September, and I'll i'll just study those licking branches.
You can tell where they're gonna want to scrape concentrations
a scent where a point comes up out of the
woods to a cove or whatever. You'll be able to
see the branches that have been hit years and years.
(15:37):
You can generally tell what licking branches look like. So
I'll and they're already starting to put their face in
them by mid September, so I'll just wait a little longer.
Speaker 7 (15:47):
Kind of Okay, let's just wait a little longer. We're
already this far.
Speaker 8 (15:50):
And I'll go in there and I'll hedge clip everything
down so it's nice and low, and I'll put a
camera up and I'll just load the farm up on
those licking branches.
Speaker 7 (16:00):
Also, if I'm.
Speaker 8 (16:01):
Studying a TAPO or whatever and i'm the obvious rough
funnels inside corners, obvious spots are gonna be good in
the rut, I'll it's like I'll dive down in. I'll
walk every inch I want to. I want to just
do it once and be over with it, and I'll
pick my stands. I always I use ONYX and I
always when i'm scouting, whether it's a winter or that
(16:23):
time of year, as I'm picking these trees, I always
put a pin and I take a picture of the tree,
and within the app you can attach it.
Speaker 7 (16:31):
Yeah, and I don't have any.
Speaker 8 (16:32):
Affiliation with these guys, but that way, I don't know
if you're like me, but like I can't remember what
happened two seconds ago. So that way, like when you
get in the game later, you can just pull up
your phone and be like, oh, yeah, that needs a
lock on, that needs sticks, that needs a lot. You
know that you can tell what that tree needs, and
a lot of times you know if the spot can
have two different wins.
Speaker 7 (16:52):
I'll take pictures of both of them.
Speaker 8 (16:54):
So I'm like scouting, but I'm also putting those cameras
out along the corn on the licking branches. And then
and it's very important those licking branches. Those that's where
that's where you're gonna probably shoot one in October is
on one of those straits.
Speaker 7 (17:10):
And so, okay, scrape spot.
Speaker 8 (17:14):
Where can I get with a north to a west
a northwest wind in October because that's going to be
the magic X days.
Speaker 7 (17:22):
That's all my design.
Speaker 8 (17:24):
Everything I do is based on a northwest wind north
to west because those are the days that the deer
we're after is most likely going to walk in October.
I don't know about you, but I like to shoot
my deer early as possible before he's dead by somebody else.
So I put a lot of eggs in that north
west basket in October. So I'm like, Okay, licking branch,
(17:45):
this spot makes sense, this is where I need to
be for the northwest.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Does it work with.
Speaker 8 (17:51):
The thermals, because the thermals will screw you worse than
the wind in October. You want a big ditch, so
if you if you can find those spots that sets
up for northwest with a big ditch.
Speaker 7 (18:01):
For your thermost a pull.
Speaker 8 (18:04):
Then you can be like, okay, well, if this farmer
is gonna let me buy that crop, this is where
I want to do it based off of access, but
also northwest. And because again maybe the access isthing good,
but the northwest setup and the thermal set up because
I can't bring a box line here is really good
for this spot, but the access isn't great. Well, I'm
gonna pick and choose my days in October, like we
(18:24):
talked about earlier, I'm gonna buy this little piece of
corn back and I'm gonna hunt right there. So you're
already visualize, you're thinking like a ear you're visualizing it.
And then like maybe there's some more scrape branches down
through here, and you're like, well, this one's gonna be
so powerful because this is where the point comes out
of the woods and there's a concentration is sent here.
You can see the corn damage, you can see it.
This is where they want to scrape because there's a
(18:46):
concentration of set So I'm just gonna eliminate these other
scrape branches around here anyway. And then they have to
come here to my camera, and they have to come
here when I shoot them in October. So yeah, I
just go around and I load the load those liking
branches up. I pop into the obvious rough donald stands
because in October I'm not diving into those spots anyway. Yeah,
unless there's really good access. We passed the.
Speaker 7 (19:07):
Full moon in the end of the month.
Speaker 8 (19:09):
I'm running out of my window because the mornings can
be really good in October.
Speaker 7 (19:13):
But you just have to weigh is it worth it yet?
Speaker 8 (19:16):
And sometimes it becomes yes because of the spot, and
yes because it's far into October, and yes because I
have this deer peg. You know, I shot a big
one two years ago October fourth, in the morning because
I had him pegged, had perfect access. I knew what
he's gonna do because of the front, Like he's gonna
be checking marking territory in the front because or marking
territory in daylight morning in the evening, because this pressure
(19:38):
front just came in and wound him up, you know,
so thinking like a deer.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
No, obviously, Bobby hunts in the Midwest a lot and
buying back the crops. It's gonna cost some money, but
can greatly extend your season for a late season opportunity.
It could be an anchor for the farm throughout the
majority of the year, depending if it isn't corner or
if it's in beans, and so some really good pieces
of information for anyone to go out and make their
season as best as possible with with it just right
(20:08):
around the corner, because we're running out of time for
some of these big exciting projects. But with that punchless,
you're gonna be a little bit closer. Next up we
have Don Higgins on what he would do on a
brand new piece that he just got at the end August.
I just got access to a new farm. Where do
I start?
Speaker 9 (20:23):
Now?
Speaker 7 (20:23):
What?
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Well, at this point of the season, you know it's
late August, I'd be I'd be walking the farm just
to learn the terrain as much as anything. I'm not
looking for, although yeah, I'm looking for deer signed to
some degree, I'm looking for old sign you know, old
rubs on big trees and things like that. Trying to
(20:45):
figure out potential stand locations, access points, How am I
going to access that property? What wind directions am I
going to be able to hunt this property?
Speaker 4 (20:54):
With?
Speaker 2 (20:56):
If the situation allows, you know, can I get a
fall food pot in? I'm taking When I'm doing that
initial scouting foray through the property, I'm going to have
a bundle of trail cameras with me. I'm going to
be hanging those to get an inventory of the bucks
that are on the property, doing everything I can to
(21:17):
make up for lost time, and doing it as quickly
as possible. I'm not going to be going and scouting
multiple times. That one trip through is going to be
to learn the terrain, to get those cameras out to
find potential stand sites. Then I'm going to be waiting
to see what my cameras tell me as to how
I proceed. If I can put a food pot in,
(21:38):
I'm gonna be wanting to do that immediately. You know,
September first is the magical date for fall plots across
much of the Midwest. I know, the guys up north,
I want to get them in sooner than that. The
guys to the south may still have some time, but
that's kind of the sweet spot for much of us,
or much of the Midwest for most of us.
Speaker 7 (21:57):
So that's how I would approach property.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
When you walk that farm for the first time. Maybe
you saw them on a gas station and you've been
hoping to run into them, and hey, can I you
might mind if I hunt that farm you never walked before.
That first time you go in there, you mentioned looking
for train, uh that may move to your old sign.
How fast are you actually going through that farm? Because
you and I imagining you probably take your time because
(22:22):
that's your one time. So I just want to make
that really clear where they hear fast urgency. Okay, now
I have to burn through this farm and I don't know.
You know, they don't make notes, they don't do what
are some things that you do?
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Well, I'm taking my my phone on my on X app.
I'm gonna mark potential pre stand locations. I love to
drop pins, and every time I drop a pin, I'm
gonna be making notes. You know, this would be good
during the rut. I'm gonna need a northwest wind. I'm
going to access you know, across an open cornfield. Gonna
(22:55):
be a better morning spot than the evening spot. So
every and when I put a camera up, you know,
I'm gonna mark mark that location. I'm just gonna use
that app to mark everything that I can as I
make my way across that property.
Speaker 7 (23:07):
That way, I don't forget anything.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
And then if a true target buck does show up,
a buck I want to kill shows up on camera, boom.
I've got all this intel right there on my phone
where I can take advantage of it and not have
to go back and refresh my memory. Oh yeah, I remember,
now I did see that tree. I mean, I'm going
to be taking spot.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
I'm gonna have I stand face this direction exactly everything.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yeah, I'm gonna be saying, you know, there's a pin
oak tree halfway up the ridge where the deer are
coming off of the ridge. That's the tree I want
my standing. I might even take flagging tape as well
to mark the tree, but typically my notes are going
to be detailed enoughing well, once I get to that
spot with a stand on my back, I'm gonna remember.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
You know.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
The other thing is I'm going to be detailing things like, uh,
what I need to bring in so when I come
to hang this stand. You know a lot of times
I'm going to do a hang and hunt. I'm going
to come in with end season with my bow in hand,
Novic's tree, stand on my back with climbing sticks and
I'm going to note that need to clear a shooting
(24:17):
lane to the south, so you know, I may trim
a few branches, put my stand up, see if I
need to trim more. Hopefully I don't, and start hunting
right away. Typically i'll do this midday and I will
put the stand up and I will sit the dark.
That's kind of yeah. I don't come in and I
see my target buck on camera. I don't come in
(24:39):
with six trees stands and you know, burger up the
whole property again. Getting all these stands in place, I
will carry them in on my back today. I'm going
to hunt each one. And you know, I may hunt
that stand two or three times before the wind switches
to where I can hunt another location on the farm.
And when that switch happens, I'll come in midday with
(24:59):
a another stand on my back and I'll leave the
original stand come in with another stand on my back.
And I think that's why it can be critical in
situations like that, the stands that you're going to have,
you don't want to be or I don't want to
be coming in with a stand that's noisy exactly with
a chain or you know, buckles rattling, banging on the
(25:23):
metal and everything. That's where I think the Noviac stand
really shines. You can come in and get that up
real quiet, real easy, and if you feel you're confident
nobody's going to steal it, leave it in place. This
is what I do. And by the end of season,
you know, I may have a half a dozen or
more on that property, but I'm not coming in and
(25:44):
hanging them all at once. I'm bringing them in on
hunts and hanging them there.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
You have it.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
Next up we have Thomas Milsner, and Thomas works a
lot on a permission farm, but works with a lot
of different folks and he's putting together detailed plans short term,
long term, and you're going to hear some of those
things are right now.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
I just got a new piece of private ground.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
I bought it, I got a lease, knocked on a door,
and got permission on a piece of private ground. It's
August twenty fifth, too late to do a lot of
the exciting off season projects, the off season scouting. So
where do I start to get a leg up for
you know what's coming two months from now.
Speaker 10 (26:25):
There's two perspectives here. One is going to be the
long term. One's going to be the short term. And
if your property situation itself is long term, you bought
it long term lease with some flexibility on what you
can actually do, and then I'm going to look at
it completely differently from a property that I have permission
(26:46):
to hunt this fall, right or you know, hidden piece
of public ground or something like that. Right, So there's
two completely different perspectives.
Speaker 6 (26:54):
If I'm focused.
Speaker 10 (26:55):
On the long term, in my long term goals, then
I'm going to play it a little bit safer. I
really just kind of want to sit back and see
what is this property producing, and how are the deer
operating on this property without the influence of human pressure.
That's the biggest thing, because if you're completely new to
a property and you go in there and you just
(27:16):
start hunting how you hunted the last property or you know,
or you're just diving into try and figure things out,
even in August, especially in August, then you're just going
to stir up the pot, you know. So the way
I kind of describe it sometimes is you have all
these different just visualize a bunch of different colors in
a pot, right, and they all kind of like settle
(27:38):
in it on spots. But if you stir it up,
now it's just all brown. You can't really decipher what
all these things are. You let it settle in. Okay,
there's you know, the does are betting over here, bucks
are coming from over here, you know, whatever it might be,
and you'll figure that out because all those things change
throughout the season. So you really got to approach it
from that long term mindset, starting in the summer, moving
to the end. And a lot of times I'll actually
(27:59):
say just to clients, so they don't do any habitat
projects the first year, even if it's July. You know,
maybe there's some easy access spots we can throw in
a food plot, or more often than not these days,
there was an existing food plot out of property. So yeah,
let's go in there, let's pull our soil samples quick,
throw down a good fall blend, and then we'll regroup
and figure out how to make things.
Speaker 9 (28:19):
Better and build the gar in year out.
Speaker 10 (28:22):
But for right now, as far as deer movement, we're
not going to go and make major changes. We don't
need to go and hang a ton of stands. Obviously,
we can go scout some pinch points, throw some cameras up,
throw a stand up, pretty simple, right, but always always,
always scout from the outside in and hunt from the
outside in, and it just works out that way really well. Anyways,
if you're hunting the whole season and not just waiting
(28:43):
until the rut right in the early season, you're those
deer are more app to come to those bigger food sources, right,
So why pressure and why put pressure on their betting
areas if they can come to you right and scout
from the outside end, hunt from the outside end. So
you're on the outskirts hunting these bigger food sources. Maybe
a transition plot leading to those food sources where you're
keeping all that pressure off, and then as the season progresses,
(29:05):
maybe you inch in little by little. But what I
always tell everyone is don't be afraid to get aggressive,
but understand the risk versus reward of those situations. So
with that mindset, if you're a short term guy, if
you just got permission to this piece and it's only
for this year, and you don't know is there you
(29:25):
know some neighbor's grandson that still has access to hunt
this property in November when you've been keeping the pressure off,
this guy is going to show up and hunt one
day without telling anyone, because the person that gave you
permission doesn't even own the land. To just connect, you know,
there's all sorts of weird things that happen. Then I'm
going to get a lot more aggressive. I'm going to
go in you know, I'm still going to start with
(29:46):
food sources, especially given the time of the year. Starting
with food sources, finding you know, potentially a community scrape
around the edge of a big food source. Don't expect
to see deer there during daylight very often, but it's
more of an inventory thing. What's in the area, Where
where are they coming from. I'm starting to put together
these theories. You know, where are they betting, where are
they feeding? I know they're feeding here at nine o'clock
(30:06):
at night, but where they start? And you know, where
can I intersect them? And then I'm going a little
bit deeper scouting, you know, trying to pick a rainy
day or windy day. Got a camera in my backpack,
throwing some cameras up. I'm getting more aggressive, but I'm
still mindful of my pressure. Right So I'm going to
take a I'm gonna take a shot early in the
season I'm going to get in there, I'm going to scout,
and then I'm going to back off. But while I'm
(30:27):
in their early season trying to find an early season
buck and make an aggressive move on him, I'm anticipating
what things are going to look like come October November
time for him for the rut, and maybe I'm hanging
on a couple cameras then if I'm you know, in
the depths of the property. But more often than not,
I'm not going deep into a property if I don't
have an intimate relationship with a topography and the habitat,
(30:47):
because I know that I'm going to lose that game
nine times out of ten when that buck knows that
property so well it hasn't been pressured and then I
go in there all willy nilly. So the biggest thing
is short term, long term mindset. But long term, I'm
really trying to learn that property without me stirring that
pot so that I can come back after the season
(31:11):
and put together a really good plan and start breaking
that plan down into a timeline of you know, priority
projects for that for improvement of that property. And maybe
you don't need to do a whole lot. Maybe it's
just improve a couple betting areas, get your stands out,
improve a couple of pinch points, and improve that access.
You know, maybe there's a lot of work that needs
to be done, but I almost want to kind of
get a feel for what's going on in that property.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
Something that's stuck with me with this segment with Thomas,
to start from the outside and scout in and be
very mindful that if you did, if you were lucky
enough to buy your first farm or a farm, or
a new farm, or a long term lease or a
long term permission farm, having a long term perspective is
obviously paramount for a long term success. And I think
Thomas nailed it here on the head regarding that. Next up,
(31:55):
we have Jeff Sturgis, So let's get right into it. Okay,
I just got a new piece of private ground. I
might have knocked on a door. I might have bought
it and just closed on it. It's August twenty fifth,
you know, the gun, the gun is getting really close
for opening day. What can I do now? It's brand
new and I don't have any stands, I don't have
any cameras out.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
What do I do? Where do I start?
Speaker 11 (32:19):
You know, the first thing we did and we bought
our property in June, we could start doing things. But
you know, like I said, I wasn't even I wasn't
even the core area of our property until after the
hunting season. The majority of it, about seventy percent of
the land I never even looked at because we couldn't
go in it and spoke to here. So I'm looking
at specific locations that I can hunt. I know that
I can get in and out of this funnel. It's
(32:39):
not just this is a good spot, it's is this
a good spot and I can get it and out?
Speaker 6 (32:43):
Is a huntable?
Speaker 9 (32:45):
And what is that game plan going to be?
Speaker 11 (32:46):
Is it going to be a morning stand because it's
more closely related to betting, or is this an afternoon
stand it's more closely related to food source. Then I
can start to identify a plan of this is how
access that morning stand away from the food. This is
how I can hunt near food in the afternoon. This
is a morning stand, this is an afternoon stand. If
it's a morning stand and likely not hunt that towards
until towards the rut, then what I'm looking at is
(33:09):
then I'm going in and identifying individual trees that I
can hunt, and I'm going to place those cameras at
those stand locations exactly where I expect to shoot them
on the trail, I expect to shoot them in the location.
Speaker 9 (33:19):
I expect to shoot them.
Speaker 11 (33:20):
And I'm going to add mox scrapes to all those
stand locations, something free and simple and make vertical will
I looked this morning for some reason, but it was
sixty two mox scrape videos that I have on my
YouTube channel, and so it's in a playlist. Sixty two
mox scrape videos. Feel free to enjoy but at nauseum.
But they I've been doing it for a long time
(33:44):
and it's free use no sense. But I'm going to
put those at the stand location. I expect that buck
to be shot in and around that mock scrape location
somewhere on that trail, and then that's a great spot
to haking a camera at the same time too. Now,
if I want to enhance it, we've installed a lot
of holes as late as early October. It's for a
rut on end of October November. If you're in a
(34:05):
dry area, people always say, well, I have a creek,
we have running water, and springs down in the valleys
and most of our location and a our entire property
in Minnesota, and same with the Wisconsin reached on.
Speaker 9 (34:16):
It's where the deer are traveling.
Speaker 11 (34:18):
So if deer are bedded in dry areas and they're
on the way to a food source and is dry
in between, great spot for waterhole. If there's dry bedding
areas and you put a water hole in between for
morning rut stands, awesome spot. Funnel cruising stands as well.
As you can picture a block moving from point A
to point B and he can't get water in between them,
it's a perfect spot for a waterhole, even if he
(34:39):
has water one hundred yards opposite direction, because then you
can keep them within the same movement. He has water there,
why is he going to go one hundred yards out
of his way.
Speaker 6 (34:48):
And come back.
Speaker 11 (34:49):
Typically, if he gets out of his bedding area at
four in the afternoon's getting dark at five, and he
goes one hundred yards off your property to go get water,
he's not coming back. They're efficient creatures, they're not wasting
two hundred yards of travel. So give them that water hole.
And that's one of the things a quick install we
use three hundred galon rubber maids one hundred and fifty
gallon does and it's a lot easier to shovel one
(35:11):
hundred and ten gallon cheap one from TSSE you use
to get those for under one hundred dollars. It's one
hundred and ten gallons that ends up about twenty four
inches deep. I like that depth to size ratio because
it holds water longer, it doesn't evaporate. You don't want
one of the big shallow ponds you like a kiddie
pool or something like that. So that's another quick enhancement
(35:33):
to your hunt that once you have those stand locations
narrowed down, you've narrowed down where a morning stand is afternoon,
you've narrowed down your access. Added some mox scrapes your
stand locations are in that water hole can be the
perfect sweetener. And when we're putting, people say, well, do
I use a waterhole or a mox grape? Always using
(35:57):
mox scrape every stand location, no more, no less. But
then a waterhole would be in addition to that off
the side to the point when we have camera on
that then the smack scrape is either in the background
or the foreground, water hole vice versa. And get this,
I get both of them in one picture, so I
can monitor both of them for the entire year.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
I found Jeff's perspective on this to be really interesting
on how careful he has been in the past when
he has fallen into this category. And what's great about
this is so many different perspectives from so many interesting
hunters that have a lot of the same things that overlap,
but little nuances, and so hopefully you're picking up these
small little things and you're figuring out what will apply
directly to you so you can make the next thirty
(36:41):
days as best as possible. Next step we have Steve
Hanson on what he would do and if he would
take on a large project this late end of the summer.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
It's late August. You just got access to a new
piece of ground. What do you do and where do
you start?
Speaker 12 (36:56):
Well, the first thing I try to figure out is
work on the access. You know, if if there's anything
you can do, whether that be mowing trails, you know,
just anything like that, even if it has to be
with a you know, a weed whip to go along
the edge of some crops. Just try to figure out
a way that you're going to be able to hunt
this or be able to access this to hunt. And
(37:16):
then assuming it's too late to do any food plots
where this farm's located, my next thing would be I'd
be trying to reach out to whoever that tenant is
on the farm, if there's crops on it, on the
odd chance that he would work with you and you
could buy a little bit of standing crop and give
yourself a permanent food source. You know, those would be
the first two things that I would be trying right away.
(37:37):
So then you know, then after that it would be
just you know, as many trail cameras as I can
set up and use any other way of scouting as possible,
like here in Iowa outside the season, we're able to
put some corn out near the cameras. I would be
pulling out all the stops trying to learn what deer
are there and kind of you know, fast track it
(37:58):
to that. That would be the first couple steps that
I would would take without a doubt.
Speaker 4 (38:03):
Would you if you had the ability and idea to
you know, with a being brand new and let's say
you did buy it, would you go in and try
to do any over major over overhauls like a new
pretty hefty trail system, or man, it's late August. I know,
the guy with the dozer can get in there this
week and we can get the food plot in the
first week of September. Would you do anything like that
(38:25):
this first go around?
Speaker 9 (38:27):
Yeah, you know, if it was.
Speaker 12 (38:28):
An owned property, I absolutely would if you had the
ability to work that quickly, and that would be the
big question. If it was an owned piece where you
had the control of the property, I think you still
have just a little tiny bit of time to do that.
I know the the year that I shot that two fourteen,
we dozed and cleared that food plot Labor Day weekend,
(38:52):
so that, yeah, we had picture.
Speaker 9 (38:54):
We got pictures of that buck and then went back.
Speaker 12 (38:56):
And altered our stand or our food plot setup up
and that's where inevitably ended up killing them. And that
was a food plot planted like the first week of
September where we did all the dozing and clearing Labor
Day weekend.
Speaker 9 (39:09):
So there's definitely still time.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
Okay, that's that's good. Now, what if it's a knock
on door permission? Would you go in and what would
be your strategy for potentially identifying stand locations and as
far as identifying what this farm, what time frame in
the year this farm might be good too, I think
is another part. So we're just we're talking about imaginary
(39:32):
piece of ground. So if you know, just for a
guy that just randomly gets a piece you mentioned, you know,
do some quick scouting the weed whacker and clean up
access is a big one. But is there any other
key things that someone should do on their first go
around going into a brand new place?
Speaker 5 (39:49):
You know?
Speaker 12 (39:49):
The one of the simplest ones is I would get
a copy of a lie to our map. A lie
to our map is is like ground or penetrating where
vegetation penetrate radar. That's going to show every little nook
and cranny of that farm. And I would be using
that to try to identify some rut funnels so that
you don't have to walk the entire place. So I
(40:10):
would do that, and I would probably pick the three
most prominent rut funnels, and then I would, you know,
put some boots on the ground and field scout those spots.
And then but when I went in there, i'd be
ready to set them up because you've really at this
point got to start limiting your amount of intrusion into
those interior areas. So I would be looking for three
two to three different wind direction key rut funnel spots,
(40:33):
and my first tool to do that would be a
light our map so some of the app, you know,
different apps can get you that. You can also get
it right from your county from like our nrcs. They
print those off for me. At times we can print
them ourselves through different avenues, but they're super super helpful.
(40:53):
You can do like I like the black and white
hills what they call hill shade. You can get a
color hill shade. It's all whatever you're used to looking at.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Mm hmm, yeah, honest.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
Actually this added light r to their app to click,
you click topo and then on the base maps and
you switch a lighter on, which is really nice.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
To your point, be really nice.
Speaker 12 (41:13):
That's a great that's a great feature that's going to
be super helpful, all on one platform.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:23):
I'm trying to think here, just because I know there's this.
There's if someone just randomly gets a new piece, you know,
whether it's a lease or they're closing on a farm,
or they knock on a door and they get permission
there's just so much excitement and anticipation all bundled in
right before the season two especially. Let me run this
quick scenario by you for someone that just knocked on
(41:44):
a door because they essentially heard there was a big
deer in the area and they wanted to get in
that ball game. And with that comes excitement of Okay,
now I have an opportunity of maybe tagging this specific buck.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
But on the flips out of it.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
You know, throughout this series, a lot of folks have
said that they wanted to be really patient, methodical, even
leading up into the season, of not pressuring a farm
too much. Where do you follow on that scale with
it being late August and you just got access and
you don't want to blow up you know, this potential
mature buck that you're after.
Speaker 12 (42:18):
Yeah, you know the fact that you just the fact
you already know there's a mature buck on the property
or in the neighborhood, so you're way ahead of the
curve there. You're not trying to find one. If the
time of year you're gonna you think you have the
best chance of taking you know, if harvestingham would be
late October early November, I'm going to look for what
(42:38):
food sources are probably still going to be there then
for that Halloween time, places where I can start out
hunting field edges and gaining a little bit more knowledge
of the area while i'm hunting, you know, because that's
those are the first areas that you're going to start
to see rubs and scrapes around the field edges and stuff,
and you still don't have to penetrate deeper into there.
(42:59):
Once you hunt that, hopefully you get some eyes on
the buck that you're after. And that's when I would
kind of switch into that first week in November and
start start being very very aggressive because obviously, if you
know about this buck, somebody else probably does too, and
you know, that's that's why you can't really be super
(43:19):
hands off and let him come to you. I would
use the last week of October sort of as my
hunting slash scouting, with the plan of having a few
quick setups with me and moving right in as soon
as I get the intel that I need. So it's
kind of a it's yeah, it's kind of a oh,
a passive aggressive approach to hunting. You know, the first
week you're you're pretty passive hoping he comes to you
(43:42):
the second week, you have to go to him.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
Absolutely, Yeah, no, it'll be that'll be here before we
know it. So anyone that tunes in and this throughout
the season, a lot of things changed. Maybe you lose
a piece that you were planning on hunting right now,
or maybe you get one, and there's just a lot
of a lot of things that can happen, you know,
in the next four months.
Speaker 9 (44:01):
Yeah, you know a lot of times.
Speaker 12 (44:03):
One thing that you know, kind of pushed me back
into What makes this question pretty relevant is we've had
years with EHD, or we've had a good scouting plan
lost the bucks that were after so even though we
had a great setup from June going forward, we had
to start over virtually in this late this is typically
when we have trouble with EHD, would be that kind
(44:25):
of mid mid August to early September. So it's a
very relevant question.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
So there you have it. That's Steve's perspective.
Speaker 4 (44:34):
And if you have a big project you've been kicking around,
or maybe you fall into this category, you still have
time to go make the big project, make the improvement
to make the season great, if you feel good about
the plan, and last but not least we have mister
Mark Kenyon to close out this episode to get his.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Opinion on a brand new farm. Where do you start?
Speaker 6 (44:53):
And here we go?
Speaker 4 (44:54):
All right, you just bought a new farm, you just
got a new lease, you just knocked on a door,
and you just got access. It's late August, all of
the preseason major prep projects may be behind us.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Where do I start?
Speaker 4 (45:10):
Because I'm excited and nervous at the same time, I
want to make this happen.
Speaker 6 (45:14):
Yeah, all right, So I am first starting with maps,
and I'm doing like a deep dive study of my
map at two levels. I'm doing a macro study, so
I'm zooming way out and I'm learning the neighborhood, what's
all around my property, How do other properties feed into
my property? How much deerb using the neighbors or the
neighbors neighbors, How does all that? How does my piece
(45:37):
of the puzzle fit to the larger picture? So I
really want to try to understand that. And then I'm
zooming in doing the micro map study, where I'm like
just focusing on my forty year whatever it is, and
really trying to as best as I possibly can with
the map identify likely food sources, likely, betting areas, likely
travel corridors, likely, pinch points of any kind. And I'm
(46:00):
pinning or circling or marking all of those key places
on the map and spending a lot of time thinking
that through. What's a lot of time, many nights, okay,
multiple nights or days around, just like studying and thinking
and like imagining all the possibilities, and like you know,
I'm looking at all the different I'm looking at cover,
I'm looking at topography, I'm looking at water, I'm looking
(46:22):
at maybe even soil type, or I'm looking at like
layers on Onyx where you can see where the oaks
are or where conifers are, and having vegetation types. I'm
definitely looking at crop rotations. So there's layers on a
lot of these apps now where you can see what
fields have been planted. So I would like to know, Okay,
where has corn been, where have beans been? What's the
(46:42):
likely rotation now this year? So I'm definitely looking to see,
you know, with like like Onyx or other apps probably
have a tool where you can see what fields were
planted and whether it's corn or beans or what that
rotation was. So I want to look at all of
those things to start thinking through where this deer might
be feeding, where they may be bedded, how they're getting
in between both, and that way, I have all of
(47:02):
this done ahead of time with my maps, I know
the key places. Now I can go in and do
a serious but kind of concentrate scouting exercise. So if
it's late August or early September, I am okay going
in and like intruding and seeing the place. But I
don't want to go overboard with it because my typical
rule of thumb is, if possible, I like to leave
(47:24):
any property that I'm hunting one undred percent alone for
at least thirty days before running season. If I get
so in this case, I'd be like right at that point.
So it's like I go in like Labor Day weekend,
and I've got one day and I'm gonna go in
there and pound pavement, and I have this map, I
have this plan, and I'm going to go and probably
(47:46):
do the outside edge of the property, and I'm going
to hit every one of these key points. So those
key funnels, those key convergences, the key food sources betting
area is the places that I think are hot spots.
On the map, and I'm going to go on ground
truth those places if they actually match up with what
I thought they would, I want to understand like the
pillars of this property. I'm gonna mark every little bit
(48:09):
of data that I see along the way, So every trail,
every scrape, every old rup, every masked tree, every you know,
either a soft mass tree like an apple tree or
a hard mask an oak tree, and mark all those things.
I'm gonna mark every major entry into the property from
the neighbors. I'm gonna be thinking through every topography future
I'm gonna add notes like if I see like a
(48:29):
super great looking vetting area on the slope, I'm gonna
pin that and maybe add a few notes about what's there,
what makes special. I want to learn and then be
able to remember the party actionable like information from this
all in that one day. I'm also gonna backpack the
little cameras when I do this, so if I didn't
you know, we talked on a previous episode about kind
(48:49):
of doing something similar with trail cameras. I'm looking at
kind of doing these two things together. So as I
go and do this one day scouting run, I'm taking
in my cameras with me. I'm setting them up so
I can set them and forget them. So there's likely
going to be what I'm gonna be setting up now
if this is like sometime like just before the season,
I'm setting up everything for hunting season information. So I'm
(49:11):
less worried about setting something up to get summer pictures
at this point because they're transitioning off their summer pattern
into their fault pattern. So I'm setting up on scrapes
or what I think will be scrapes. I'm setting up,
you know, a place that I think will be eventually
right funnels. I'm setting up in places that are close
to bedding where I think deer will be transitioning out
towards food. And again thinking about hunting season related intel.
Speaker 4 (49:35):
Are you prepping trees and picking trees where you pine
on hunting or are you bringing any tree stands or
are you pretty much fully a saddle guy in this scenario?
Speaker 6 (49:44):
Yep, in this scenario, I'm not prepping trees. I'm picking trees. Okay,
So I will be going throughout this school process and
picking And when I said I'm not prepping, I should,
I will be mostly picking trees. I often have enough time,
I will often have like a pull saw or yeah
and so, and if I have time and I've gone
through it did my full day, if there's like a
(50:05):
handful of those trees that I picked as like high priority,
and I have the time to go on there and
just cut some lanes or just cut player it out
enough you can get up in the tree nice and quietly,
I'll do that. If I have a weekend, I can
do that. In the second day, I'll do that too.
But I'm not worried about going and prepping a bunch
of trees anymore. I would rather just have a bunch
of places like picked out. I was like, hey, this
(50:25):
is pretty cool. I like this spy, like this spot,
like this spot, and then come season I can go
in there and hunt mobile with the saddle. And then
what I think works really well is that you approach
year one like that. You don't invest and double down
on any one location with a big built up setup.
And if you go in there and bring in a
big ladder stand or bring in sticks, send up hang
(50:47):
on and really strap it on their nice and carve
out huge shooting lanes and all that kind of stuff,
it's like an investment in that.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Place, you became biased to that area.
Speaker 6 (50:56):
Bias to that place, you become like there's that like
some Yes, now you've done all that work, you don't
want to move. And I think that could be a
huge mistake to go and like set up and invest
in a place like that before you really know it.
And so what you end up doing is you like
made this purchase, and you're kind of like want to
keep believing that purchase because he put in all this work,
and then you're not willing to truly listen to what
(51:19):
you've saw or learned about the area and make the
small movement. So by having low investment on the front end,
so again like just going in with a saddle and
do very little majorly time investment, I don't feel bad
when I hunt that spot. I'm like, oh, that's not
quite right. I really need to be thirty yards that one.
And so next time I go thirty yards that when
I hunt it for a saddle, I'm like, oh, actually,
(51:40):
you know, I need to.
Speaker 7 (51:40):
Be over here.
Speaker 6 (51:41):
And then I've done that. And now after that first
year of hunting this new property, I've learned enough, I've
tried enough things I wasn't scared or like in some
way resistant to change. Now I know, okay, actually that
oak there on the corner by the crossing, that is
the spot. Now for a year two I will go
fully prep that cut length, maybe put up sticks that
stay up, something like that. But I'm doing it with
(52:04):
a truly informed opinion rather than just my first gut
instinct after having just just barely soft place.
Speaker 4 (52:11):
So that's how I was don in my first year
when you said you would go in and map everything
out this picture of forty yep, how many pins and
annotations and notes would you have? And I guess even
that's a twofold question before you go there? And then
how many more are you adding when you're physically there?
Obviously dependent on the features, but this a general idea
(52:32):
so people can understand how detailed you're you know, really being.
Speaker 6 (52:35):
Yeah, I would guess like before, so just looking at
the map before going in, let's assume it's like a
mix of egg and timber, a couple of little fields,
a couple of fingers and movie. Yeah, that might be
eight to twelve things that stood out in the map.
Maybe I was like, Okay, I definitely want to go
check that out. It could be way more. It might
(52:55):
be a place is way less but somewhere that though
I don't know ten to twenty eight to well, something
like that. Probably that I was like, hey, check it out, interesting,
and then you go out there for the day, and
then you're probably at least doubling that with real stuff
on the ground. It could be you know, I could
walk out of there with twenty pins. I could walk
out of there with thirty five pins. How much time
(53:17):
do you take to organize those? Are you color coding them?
Are you actually you know, yeah, I'm guilty. I'm guilty
of this season the on xpin and they're like what
was that? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (53:26):
And then there's times where I do take the times
it'll be more detailed.
Speaker 6 (53:29):
I don't color code. I do try to icon code,
so like I will have a trail camera icon, I'll
have a buck icon of that icon of scrape icon, yep,
that kind of stuff, a stand icon. So that's how
I organize them.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
You know.
Speaker 6 (53:43):
Also one thing I'll do that first day or two
is if I find a couple of those first few trees,
I'm like, oh this is interesting. If it's like thick,
nasty stuff, I will walk and track the trail to it,
so I know what the best quietest or easiest route
into that tree is, because that's the thing, Like I'm
not going to have pre prepped trails necessarily at this
(54:04):
last minute. Yeah, it's a new place, but like that's
another thing that it's a small thing just track in
your walk there, but it can really help you when
you go on it for the first time. That's another
small thing all I at there.
Speaker 4 (54:14):
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And
it once again, you're excited. You just got this new
place and you want to go in there and burn
through it. But I think to your point once again,
being really methodical, and I picture in my mind, I'm busy,
just like everyone else. I am time blocking this and
I'm not thinking or doing any other obligations during how
this period. I'm solely focused on learning as much as possible,
(54:37):
leaving detailed notes, and so my time is efficient and
I'm not getting distracted. And I say that I want
to do that, but it doesn't always work that way.
Speaker 6 (54:44):
Sure, But I think the key thing with it is
because you're so close to the season starting, what you
don't want to do, in my opinion, is you don't
want to be like, all right, I'm gonna do a
little bit this Saturday, and I'll come back next weekend,
do a little bit next Saturday, and I'll come back
the next weekend and do another next Saturday, and they'll
do some the next and the season starts that someday.
Whatever it is, you don't want a bunch of repeated
(55:05):
intrusions and doing it. I'd rather blow it up in
one or two days versus like blow up corner here,
in the corner here the next week, and the corner
here the next week, at the quarter here the next week,
because that is just like consistent pressure. That's gonna have
those deer more and more and more and more educated
before the season starts. That's a huge mistake. Yeah, one
bad day deer can get over pretty quick. Repeated bad
(55:28):
days they don't tolerate nearly as well.
Speaker 4 (55:30):
Well, it's funny you bring that up, because that was
that was the ringing advice through all of the guests.
None of them said, well, I'm gonna go there on
one day and then I'm gonna think about it for
a couple of days, and then I'm gonna go back again,
and then and all these multiple trips. It's very clear
that if this happens to you, you're in this scenario,
you have to be you have to have a really
good plan, and you have to have one in one
(55:52):
out best case scenario to maximize your opportunity and minimize
the downside. So I think that's something that everyone should
really consider. It. Man, what an exciting time if you're
in this position. That's a really exciting time to go
learn a new piece and test your theories and then
affirm your theories for the following year if you're able
to go back. And so I think it's a really
exciting time. And hopefully all these experts give you some
(56:14):
clear and concise guidance, because I think that was the
case for this episode. And next week we have one
that everyone that's planted a food plot has been in
this scenario and we're diving into. If you're and you're
listening to this right now, you're probably can we release
it right now? Because you're probably looking at it. If
your food plots did not turn out how you wanted,
what can you do?
Speaker 3 (56:33):
What's a contingency plan. We're diving into that next week.
Speaker 4 (56:36):
With some people that have planted thousands of acres of
food plots. You guys have it. I hope you enjoyed
this episode. It was a lot of fun and I
just want to drive this home. I want to reiterate it.
Just if you do not have a brand new farmer,
you don't fall exactly in this category. The point of
this question was even if you've been hunting the same spot,
to get a fresh perspective to go in and maybe
(56:59):
do one last outing around, or go do the project,
or go hang another set, or the obvious spot that
felt too good and too good to be true, it
might be the best spot on the farm. And so
it's a good reset to revisit and look at farms
that you're already hunting or places that you're hunting, and
go through this checklist one last time. Because we're getting
so close to season. Hopefully this episode pointed you in
(57:20):
the right direction. And next week we're flipping the calendar
to September, and if you have some food plot questions,
you've been struggling the food plots over the years, or
you haven't got them in yet, that episode is going
to be just for you. So I hope you guys
enjoyed this episode, and we will see you next week
on the Back forty podcast.
Host
Mark Kenyon
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