Ep. 1010: The Power of Prairie for Whitetails and Beyond with Kent Boucher and Nicolas Lirio

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the whitetail woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon, Welcome to the.

00:00:20
Speaker 2: Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, I’m joined by Kent Boucher and Nicholas Lerio of Hoxy Native Seeds and the Prairie Farm Podcast to discuss exactly why native prairie grasses and forbes and wildflowers are so beneficial to whitetail deer and wildlife of all types, and exactly how we can get more of that kind of habitat on the ground. Really, all right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light.

00:00:52
Speaker 3: Today in the show, we are talking prairie.

00:00:55
Speaker 2: We are discussing why native prairie ecosystems are so power or wildlife of all types, how they can specifically help you as a white tailed deer hunter, and a whole lot more. My guests today, as I mentioned at the top, are the driving forces behind Hoxeyed Native Seeds, and they’re the co hosts of the Prairie Farm Podcast, Kent Boucher and Nicholas Lerio, these guys are hands on experts when it comes to native prairie habitat, and given their experience running Hoxy Native Seeds it’s a company that develops and sells native seed blends. They have this very you know, personal experience with prairie habitat, with you know, putting.

00:01:36
Speaker 3: This stuff on the ground.

00:01:37
Speaker 2: But then they also have this very interesting kind of zoomed out perspective as hosts of the Prairie Farm Podcast, because what they do on that show is they speak to all sorts of experts around the country and the world about, you know, prairie ecosystems, about how all this impacts wildlife of all types, sometimes upland birds, sometimes it’s turkeys, sometimes it’s deer. They’re speaking to people about broader farm related issues, conservation related issues, and so by way of all of these interviews and then also that hands on experience working with native seas and native prairie ecosystems, they have this kind of like down in the dirt experience, but then up in the clouds understanding of how it all applies to things that are relevant to us. So for that reason I’m thrilled to have these guys in the show. They’re also just very likable, so they’re fun to chat with, the fun to listen to. We explore these two simple topics when you drill it right down. Number one, why should deer hunters care about prairie habitat? And number two, if we believe that prairie habitat is important, then how do we get about getting some of this on the ground in our neck of the woods.

00:02:45
Speaker 3: That’s it.

00:02:46
Speaker 2: To sum it all up as simply as I possibly can, that is the conversation today. And so with that, let’s just kick it to my conversation with Kent and Nick.

00:02:57
Speaker 3: Enjoy all right with me?

00:03:04
Speaker 2: Now on the line is Nicholas Lerio and Kent Boucher. Thank you guys for being here today. Yeah, I’m glad this is happening. You guys had me on the show on your show about a year ago, and I.

00:03:20
Speaker 3: Really enjoyed that conversation that we had.

00:03:23
Speaker 2: Your podcast and the stuff you guys have been doing has been recommended to me by a number of people over the years. And so once I kind of connected the dots between Kent, who you know, I had chatted.

00:03:35
Speaker 3: With you years before that.

00:03:37
Speaker 2: I guess on you know about first gen hunter kind of things, I think, right, And it’s all kind of circle back to where we are now. You both have been doing really really cool work, and I’ve just been slow to recognize the relevance and the overlap with what so many of us deer hunters are thinking about, especially these days.

00:04:02
Speaker 3: So that is my typical.

00:04:04
Speaker 2: Long winded Mark Kenyan way of saying, I’m very interested in what you have to say to this first question, which is kind of getting right to the heart of this whole conversation. What I want to know is why in the world should a deer hunter care about prairie?

00:04:23
Speaker 3: Why is that something?

00:04:24
Speaker 2: Why would wildflowers and native grasses and forbes in any way whatsoever be of interest or relevance to someone like me or our listeners who likes to get out there and shoot deer. Kent, you’re a deer hunter yourself. Do you want to tackle that one first?

00:04:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, I’d love to, and just really appreciate you having us on the show. And I got to say, one of the people that I know recommended our show to you because he told me so just sent me this jealousy inducing picture of a giant shed he picked up this morning with his son, said, I hope you’re.

00:05:01
Speaker 3: Not working today that same picture. Yeah, that was a dandy. But man, one day I was talking to Ken and he was he was he was a little grumpy. He was in the field. He was in he was planting someone else’s field is very bumpy. And then I’m not kidding, I mean he was kind of having a rough day. An hour later, he calls it, I just bound my first shed of the season. His day made just one little shed he bound to the field. Yeah, it will make it. That really helps.

00:05:29
Speaker 4: But yeah, ironically, you know this, this story can kind of answer your question mark. I was, I was planting a prairie, as Nick tells that story. And actually I didn’t call him an hour later. He was still on the phone with me during my grumpy rant, and I had to stop the tractor to scoop that shut up.

00:05:46
Speaker 3: But when you think of Iowa, where where we have.

00:05:53
Speaker 4: Cornfields and bean fields, which is roughly thirty million acres of our thirty six and some change million acres of surface area in our state, that would have largely been prairie, not all of it, of course, there would have been some wetlands in there that we’ve drained, there’d be forests in different spots that we have, and even some of the areas that we would classify as prairie would have been more of an oak savannah area. But I mean, for simple displacement, it’s largely just been that we got rid of prairie and we put in corn and beans. And to be honest with the story, and I probably actually learned this little fact off your podcast years ago, Mark, but we know that today we have more deer in North America than when Chris Columbus made his way over here, and so deer have benefited from just a population standpoint. They have benefited from land development, for sure. However, they existed here long before we developed that land, and they were thriving in our vast prairie ecosystems that we had here in Iowa, and not just in Iowa, all throughout the Midwest and and and in different regions of what we normally consider to be prairie areas. I know you’ve done some white tail hunting man all over this country, and I’ve had the privilege to do a little bit in places like Nebraska where western Nebraska where it’s you know, short maybe some mixed grass prairie, but places that you just do not think when you’re there, you kind of get that feeling like man of mine, like is this like some kind of a snipe hunt here?

00:07:37
Speaker 3: You know, like there’s deer in here, you know, And sure enough.

00:07:40
Speaker 4: They’re thriving on on, you know, even a much more arid and much shorter grass and even competing with you know, huge cattle herds that are out there too. They’re still able to to to make a go of it. And so prairie and deer we don’t really think of it this way, but but historic it’s hand in glove. They’re they’re an animal of the prairie. Now certainly they they’re a creature of the edge. So those those wetlands that I talked about, those oak savannahs, the forest and actually, ironically, I think it historically I was believed to have been about five percent forested, and that we’re still around that today. And so I wonder, Okay, where do we have forest today that we didn’t back then? And I think probably a lot of the places where we do still have forest there, they’re still forest there today.

00:08:34
Speaker 3: But but.

00:08:37
Speaker 4: You do need that edge for you know, deer to really thrive. But prairies were definitely a part of how they they survived. And then taking it back to shed hunting. Whenever I’m shed hunting, I get real excited when I see a little bit of timber with a big, old, south facing sloped prairie and that’s where I’m going to be.

00:08:56
Speaker 3: That’s where I’m going to be heading first.

00:08:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, Nick, what do you you know? I know, you guys have a lot of different customers. You guys, you know, market to a why swath of different types of buyers. But when somebody comes to you who has this wildlife perspective and they they you know, care about deer and critters like that, how do you explain to them why this, you know, why native grasses and forbes and flowers, why that might be something they should incorporate into their management.

00:09:25
Speaker 3: Well, I want to be really clear, as you know, a non deer hunter I will never change their mind, But I sometimes I use two little words that help change their mind. I say the words uh skips law I said uh and uh you know a ritual red skip slide. Usually if he says something, you know it turns out to be pretty good for the white tail. But in all seriousness, if they already understand, they get it, and I just guide them through different forbes that white tail are known to uh kind of concentrate select on, but uh if not. I use the metaphor that a Jenga tower pretty often, and I just tell them, you know, us, white tail deer, bison used to be there. We’re kind of all at the top of this Janngu tower and you can pull out just when you’re playing Jenga. You can pull out a piece or two at a time. It’s okay, that’s fine, But you pull out enough pieces, you get rid of enough diversity, the whole thing comes tumbling down. Maybe there’s a few bricks at the bottom that lasts, but those aren’t white tail deer, and it’s not us. It’s like it’s like crab grass, cockroaches and cottontail bunnies. You know, those are the only things that are going to be around. And so when you start walking through there, and I say, hey, by the way, if you have, if you’re doing forty acres of this prairie for your white tail, I hope you enjoy bird hunting as well. Because you’re gonna get a lot of those out there, or we actually there’s a gentleman that put and now he put hundreds of acres in and he was able to do that in Iowa saw an elk and so you know there and just more than one more than want occurrence of this. So to speak their language, I can’t do it all the way and to be able to connect with them on the things that they’re able to talk about. But I do know that you know, our ecosystem is a Jenga tower, and white teled deer are in that just as much as any others. And you know, habitat those are kind of the big words, right habitat. So is habitat made out of miscanthus? Is it made out of just straight switch grass? I would argue not, there’s some utility when you’re hunting there. I know they make screens and things like that. Not totally against those making a screen with switch grass. But if you’re wanting habitat, if you wanting to find places that people are betting or white tail are betting, then you’re gonna want that diversity. And if you want them traveling through all year round. Now we’re talking about having their diversity of different forbes that bloom different during different periods and different height grass coming up at different times. And now we’ve got a whole conversation where it’s very livable for most of the year for the tail. Yeah, I love that Jenga analogy. That’s a great one.

00:12:05
Speaker 2: Can you speak to a little bit, can you paint that picture a little bit more about how all the other Jenga pieces benefit from the from these types of ecosystems, because you guys just point out like there’s a lot of ways this directly helps deer. But of course, then you know, if you start to understand that the entire Jenga tower matters, then that also means that the upland birds matter, and that means the turkey’s matter, and that means that the butterflies and the songbirds and the ants and the cottontails and all that probably matters too. And from everything I’ve learned over the years, it seems like all of those species and many many others benefit from this habitat. But can you can you help us understand that in more detail, because you guys, you guys are masters of this world.

00:12:46
Speaker 3: In a way that I’m just not oh thanks. Well, uh, I would first start by even taking a step back and saying, uh, diversity is just what it takes to be healthy. For instance, at our office, Ken and I are not organized at all, but we desperately need someone in the office that’s organized. We’ve got to have people thinking different things. And Ken and I are arguing about stuff all the time about how we want to do business or what new species wi we want to grow and that, and that creates a much stronger work ecosystem. It’s just a principle of life. So now let’s take that and put it in with prairie. There are species, they’re called hem and parasites that literally can only grow on other species, and they zap these other species of their nutrients. And that’s the only way bastard towflax, a real a real name of a plant can only grow Yeah, yeah, sorry, sorry, but it likes to grow on sedges and there’s a few other things it needs that that ecosystem, that diversity in there. And if you don’t have diversity of let’s say your forbes, especially your lagoon forbes, well, big blue stem will get in there, it’ll totally dominate, and then it’ll zap itself dry and dead, and it will actually allow other woody encroachment, invasive wood encroachment, more than it would have otherwise because it doesn’t have the nitrogen and from the lagoons to be able to boost the grass right there, So there are I would dare say thousands or millions of relationships of plants to plants that are required for the ecosystem. That’s just at the flora base. Now let’s move to the fauna. I mean, big bluestem was carried here a little bit by wind, but they think probably mostly by hide. It came from the east coast all the way to the Midwest. It was carried by hide. There are some species that won’t, that really struggle to break dormancy if they’re not eaten by birds. Right, And so you start adding all of these things together again, thousands or millions of relationships between flora and fauna. And now you start taking away enough of those Jenga pieces and the other Jenga pieces can’t exist. And you know, in the Midwest we’re privileges some of the greatest soil in the world. There’s only two other places on Earth that compare ones in Ukraine you know, coincidentally enough, and one is in South America where they’re also growing a lot of corn, and that was because of two major components. It was the glaciers and the prairie and the diversity that came with the prairie and the worms that came because of the diversity of the prairie. And you dug up this really rich black soil that we as a Midwest have sustenance off of, not I mean just food, even economically, and so there’s all these things that go together, and if you take away too many of them, you start losing all of them. Would you add anything to that, Kemp? I think Nick did did a really nice job. They’re summing it up.

00:15:33
Speaker 4: But yeah, diversity, you know, you think of whether you’re talking about the Djenga Tower model or even just what we know about all ecosystems there or even I think probably the best. So I used to be a biology teacher, and I’d like it where you could take different sections of biology and use a you know, use a term or an illustration that transfers across to other, you know, studies within life sciences. So to me, it’s I like to compare an ecosystem with like genetics. Right, when you look at the science of genetics, you want the most individuals in a population that have a different set of genetic traits, because then you have what we call a deeper gene pool, right, you have you have more traits available among those individuals, so that if there’s some kind of disturbance to the environment that these organisms are living in, they can absorb that disturbance and roll with the punches through time. They can they can stick around. And it’s really a similar illustration with an ecology. The more components you have, the more you.

00:16:46
Speaker 3: Can absorb those blows.

00:16:47
Speaker 4: And to continue with Nick’s Jenga model, which he is just he’s playing it down right now.

00:16:53
Speaker 3: He is just doing victory laps in his brain.

00:16:55
Speaker 4: He’s been talking to me about this, this Jenga tower metaphor for years.

00:17:00
Speaker 3: Time I get us to speak in place, it’s like the easiest way to communicate you. That’s what his name will be on Suday.

00:17:05
Speaker 4: Well, you know, since you’re so much since you’re aging so much faster than me, Nicholas, I will actually your headstone. I’ll make it look like a Jenga tower. But the point is though that some of those Jenga pieces are gone and we can’t get them back. And from a prairie reconstruction standpoint, we see that just in putting together a mix now something I’ll give Nicholas a lot of credit for. He designs our mixes, our seed mixes. He works his tail off to find as many species as he can put into a mix without the mix becoming unaffordable to your average consumer.

00:17:43
Speaker 3: Right.

00:17:44
Speaker 4: And some people they come to you and say, no matter the cost, give me the best you got. But a lot of the prairie acres we see going back onto the map. Let’s be honest, it’s a it’s an old farmer who decided he was going to enroll some acres into CRP, and he, you know, he’s got some level of care in it turning out to be a good finished prairie. But a lot of times money is the biggest factor, right, And so Nick tries to create value not just for the people who are are willing to show up with you know, a fat wallet, but for people who want to just do the bare minimum. Because he’s trying to get as many of those Jenga pieces back into the into the tower as possible, but even still compared to what these uh, you know, these prairies were in their original state. A lot of times it pales in comparison to to what all was there. So it is important to recognize what can be there, what was there, and what we we can’t replace. But we need to try and compensate in other ways because of all those different benefits that Nicholas talked about.

00:18:56
Speaker 2: You know, I heard you say Nicholas wants that you almost get more excited when you hear about like a small landowner planting your guys seed because they can focus on like nurturing it and actually identifying like, oh, yeah, this speci is doing well and making sure that this speci is there. While you know, someone who’s planted hundreds of acres, you know, could never really keep tabs on all these different you know, such and such hogwarts or whatever.

00:19:22
Speaker 3: There’s probably not a hogwarts should there should be.

00:19:30
Speaker 2: But uh but but but I think you know what came what came out of that when I was listening to you, is this, like how much you actually cared about getting this prairie like back on the landscape, getting these native species back out there, you know, above and beyond just the business for you, it was more like like a calling, like you want to see these species flourishing out there above and beyond just the practical side of it. Why do you care so much about that.

00:19:56
Speaker 3: About diversity or about people caring about their uh CRP or their their their finished career.

00:20:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, about seeing that’s come to life on the landscape. Why why are you actually genuinely personally excited when you see like, oh, this person is nurturing this species and it’s actually working, and this prairie is actually out there. It just seems like it’s more than just oh, yeah, I want to see my customer succeeds they buy more from me.

00:20:26
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well that that is a good question, And I’d say there’s probably three major parts to it that kind of have compounded and sit in my have been sitting in my brain for the past several years. But I went to Bible school, studied Bible and counseling, went to Bethel School in Reading California. Reading California. Man, that’s the place to be that the mountains that surround it on three sides. Man, I was very different. So I’m moved back to Iowa. But what they taught us at that school was contentment. That was a big deal. They had a lot of slogans around contentment and being thankful for what you have. And and when when you see prairie not a lot of money, there’s not a lot of gain to be had out of prairie other than beauty that comes out of deep satisfaction in your soul. And I really care about humans in the state of human souls, and and and are they at peace? Are they not at peace? That matters to me a lot, me and my friends, and and so that would be peace number one. Peace number two is that it is a tragedy to me how much we consider ourselves the lords of the land and not serving the land. Our mutual friend, Doug Duran, he says this, I know what the hunter gets, I know what the the landowner, I know what the white tail get, But what does the land get? You know, who’s who’s actually helping the land. And that really struck me. And just like, can I care about something that could never give me anything material gain back? Can I do that? And then the third piece is just like our longevity here in the Midwest, there’s you know, political forces at play and all these things. But but can we set aside some akers to allow wildlife to live so our own health and the land’s health can be uh can flourish. And I understand that that’s a very complicated, difficult question that deals with a lot of different people, a lot of different interest groups. But just on a macro level, I would love to see us be able to be able to decide as a society we care about this and and what our futures. And I mean, in Iowa specifically, our kids are leaving. I mean they’re going to Michigan, they’re going to Colorado, they’re going maybe going to Kansas City, but that they’re usually going further than that. And I don’t want to see Iowa die away just because we decided, you know, it wasn’t worth having any any acres around. We ripped it all up. I’d love to see some of it put back down. So you put those three things together, and when I see someone excited about it, Prairie, I just like they just feel like a whole person, you know, they just seem real, They’re they’re able to connect with things more than their phone. And I really really appreciate that. And my wife and I we have these phoneless walks right, we’ll go out. We got a big lake near us, and we’ll just go walk around. Just make sure you don’t have your phone. And a lot of times I really wrestle on my inside, like, oh, I want to listen to something, I need to check my email. I’m worried to you know. And then about thirty forty five minutes in, you’re like you start to feel this this piece come over you. And I think we don’t have that as much as I would like us to, including myself. And so when it comes to prairie, Prarie represents a lot more than just the ecology to me, and I’m things, I’m willing to fight for fills, I’m willing to die on.

00:23:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, there’s a lot there and I can. I obviously don’t have as deep of a connection as you guys have to it, but certainly in my more fleeting experiences in grind grass lands, on the Great Plains, in prairie ecosystems, it’s undeniable the abundance of life there, the tranquility available there, the restorative properties.

00:24:14
Speaker 3: Of those landscapes. You know.

00:24:15
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people, you know, recognize the ocean maybe as being one of those kinds of landscapes that can restore you. But I think grasslands in many cases, like they’re a sea of grass. I think they can almost have the same kind of effect when you stand out there and it’s you know, the waves of wind rippling a grassland or a prairie patch. And in many cases, you know, in some of these bigger landscapes where you can really see that’s a pretty special place. And one of the things that I’ve noticed when I’ve been on you know, truly flourishing native prairie ecosystems, is that you can it’s undeniable that there’s something else going on. There’s something different. Like when you’re in a cool season grass field, which is a lot of what I have around where I live, it’s just kind of like a dank, low jungle. And then when you’re in an area where there’s native species and diversity, it’s it’s it literally sounds different, it literally smells different, and obviously looks different. You can feel it all around you. And a big part of that is all of these things flittering and fluttering around you and buzzing and nipping and biting and crawling and creeping.

00:25:25
Speaker 3: There’s a lot of bugs. There’s a lot of birds flying all around.

00:25:28
Speaker 2: Uh, there’s a lot of pollination happening in my my. My good friend and co host Tony Peterson, God bless him, is always giving me a hard time talking about pollinators. He thinks I’m a big nerd for pollinators. And I’m hoping one of you would be willing to volunteer to help make the case to Tony the pollinators that that benefit so much from native grasslands and wildflower patches and the prairie eco system. Can you tell Tony why it’s okay to be a fan of pollinators and why they’re pretty good for deer hunters and deer hunting in the wider world, and somebody please make that case for me.

00:26:09
Speaker 3: I’ll let you guys fight amongst your sites.

00:26:11
Speaker 4: I gotta say, Mark, I have an answer for you on this one because I loved one of your comebacks. This was a couple of years ago when I still can’t believe you had the courage to do this, but you had Dan Johnson and Tony on there at the same time. You’ve done it since, but it was super entertaining episode. But I remember one of Tony’s questions was he was making fun of like your love for reading versus your love for pollinators, I think, And he said, all right, Mark, you have to choose. Are we going to burn down all the all the prairies?

00:26:45
Speaker 5: Are we going to burn down all your favorite bookstores and and the If Tony knew anything, if you knew a dang thing about Perry, wouldn’t ask you that question because I’m so obvious.

00:26:58
Speaker 3: Right, burn the prairies because they need it. Burn the prairies, go ahead.

00:27:16
Speaker 4: I actually got to uh uh, you know, like a Thanksgiving ending type of argument with the relative ones, and they started screaming for him, it keeps things interesting, right, and they started they started screaming at me and and yelled, what do you think, Well, how would you feel if they burned all the prairies down?

00:27:38
Speaker 3: And I just kind of got that that that irritating smile on my face.

00:27:43
Speaker 4: Go ahead, baby, but anyways, make my day, That’s right, Go ahead, make my day. Uh So, the reason anyone should care about pollinators is, I mean, why should you care about, you know, feel mice, Why should you care about, you know, the orangutans in the part of the world I don’t even know where I think they’re they’re South American in the apart there, No, yeah, yeah, are the Southeast Asia? Southeast Asia? Okay, I don’t know. I’m not up on my uh my prime scary as monkeys?

00:28:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know, why should we care about any of those things?

00:28:21
Speaker 4: And and there’s something about life that’s just different than not life?

00:28:27
Speaker 3: Right.

00:28:27
Speaker 4: An ecosystem is made up of biotic and abiotic factors and how they exchange matter and energy between them, right, But there’s something about life that that is just different, you know. And so you have that level right there. But that’s not going to convince a guy like Tony. A guy like Tony is going to be more pragmatic I would.

00:28:49
Speaker 3: I would assume.

00:28:50
Speaker 4: I’ve never met Tony, but I’ve heard him a few times on on on his different shows. From a human standpoint, someoney, don’t know who it was, that maybe is like the Center for a Livable Future or something like that. Somebody calculated that one in three bytes of food depend on pollination on a on a on a in a human diet, one in three bytes of food, So that would be a pretty pragmatic standpoint. From a hunting standpoint, a lot of the different species of plants that white tails need. They in order to produce seed, they need pollination to take place in between the different the different plants, and and there are a lot of plants that will self pollinate. But the problem with that, going back to what we were talking about genetics earlier, is and then you’re just having clones over and over again, and you’re you’re allowing more fragility to enter into that ecosystem so that when that disturbance comes, which it always does, right sometimes it’s a you know, a big flooding season, or sometimes it’s a freaking meteorite that hits the planet and wipes out, you know, half the life. But whatever that disturbance is going to be, we we survive it by having more genetic diversity. And so when you think of then to extrapolate that to a super endangered ecosystem, which would be the tall grass prairie, the tall grass prairie is just as endangered as any other ecosystem on the planet, I believe, or at least is endangered as the rainfor the tropical rainforest. And and as we talked about the beginning of this conversation, white tails and prairie, they they go together and now they are surviving on on, you know, increasingly smaller amounts of that prairie, and they have so far been able to roll with the punches.

00:31:02
Speaker 3: But things have changed they Iowa.

00:31:07
Speaker 4: You know, EHD is such a buzzword, and I’m gonna get I’m gonna get you some nasty comments here. Someone’s gonna call me a crack. I’ve ever been called that once today, so I’m used to it. But uh, the what we’ve been seeing with eh this is just me hypothesizing here. I’m just spitballing. But what we’ve been seeing is just a i don’t know, an increasing prevalence maybe, And uh, there’s not really a reason for me to hope that it’s gonna, like ever get much better here in Iowa. I know it hasn’t from what I’ve heard, It wasn’t always here in Iowa. It’s something within the last fifty to one hundred years. I believe that that’s really started to show up here. But we have been having years and years of drought. Now this last year, thankfully, we got a break from that, but before that was four straight years of drought and what do you know, two terrible years of EHD in the middle of that, we’ve seen our growing zones shift north. You know, there’s there’s less rain, more dry days, and and you know, just these greater impacts that I really think are starting to impact deer hunting.

00:32:21
Speaker 3: And now I’m hopeful.

00:32:23
Speaker 4: You know, there was a terrible year of VHD in twenty twelve in southwest Iowa, and the deer bounced back for a while, but now here again. You know, it was basically eleven years later, twenty twenty three we had a terrible year of VHD again, and then twenty twenty four another bad year of VHD. And and if we’re getting that every ten years, I mean, and we figure that a trophy white tail is a deer that is five and a half years or older, you’re only getting two cycles of deer before the population is totally slammed again by EHD.

00:32:59
Speaker 3: And that’s if that’s.

00:33:01
Speaker 4: What the new normal is going to be. I don’t I don’t think that our best days of deer hunting are ahead of us. And something that what that I would be interested in is something that’s going to be make the landscape more how would you say it more useful for holding water? Right, something that’s going to make better use of the water that’s here. Well, we know field tile isn’t yeah, right, we know field tile doesn’t help with that that you know, we’re we’re losing a lot of our ground water as fast as it can collect below the surface. And something that does, though is living tissue, living plant tissue, and and not just above ground, because we do get that with corn. Corn is a grass. It’s an annual grass, and it holds moisture you know, above ground until it sinesses and then and then you know, dyes and crisps up and loses its water. But living roots are going to store a lot of that water below below the surface, you know, year round. And and so you know, just from a standpoint of how do we make deer hunting better, I think that you know, again I’m hypothesizing on some of that, but a lot of that is well known truth that prairies hold more water, and pollinating species make prairies function and make them last. And then you know, you have the whole nutrition side of it, whether that be for humans or for wildlife, including the animals that we love to chase deer, turkeys, pheasants, whatever else.

00:34:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, you make a really good point, which is that this isn’t something that I had thought ahead of this, but it’s it’s it’s actually one of the strongest cases I think for deer hunters to think about adding more of this kind of grassland prairie habitat. It’s the fact that you know, for so many folks, traditional deer land management has meant food plots, food plots, food plots, food plots, a lot of annual food plots, yeah, a lot of monoculture, single species food plots, right, a lot of you know, big buck on a bag kind of stuff. And in a new normal in which extreme drought, frequent drought is just kind of becoming what we have now, it seems like every year or very frequently those kinds of management practices, annual food plots, monoculture food plots, those become really risky if your whole deer.

00:35:35
Speaker 3: Hunting plan depends on that.

00:35:36
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people last year saw that a lot of folks thought they were going to put in a late season food plot, They’re going to plant something in August early September, and there was no rain none. I’ve never had a worst food plot year in twenty years than last year, and the year before that I thought was the worst in the year or two or before that, you know, I thought that was the worst. And so becoming more and more and more, you’re hearing stories like this where unless you’re incredibly rich and you can go out there and irrigate your food plots, somehow, it’s it’s not something you can depend on as much as you used to a perennial grassland ecosystem. Though to your point, that’s something you can hang your head on and that’s more resilient, maybe more I mean it sounds obviously more drought resistant, tolerant.

00:36:20
Speaker 3: It’s the kind of thing that.

00:36:20
Speaker 2: Can provide wildlife habitat that does not require you going in there and replanting every year and you know, possibly sucking up more of the moisture with traditional tillage or things like that. So, yeah, that’s a really interesting point that makes a lot of sense. Nicholas, Is there anything you would add on the pollinator things specifically before I kind of take a pivot.

00:36:42
Speaker 3: Just two fragile arguments that Judd McCollum. If you know that that guy’s awesome and lives out in Illinois, and he said that he was reading a paper like an officially posted paper that argued that it was like sixty percent of the water intake of deer in the dead of summer if they have the choice is from forbes, from native forbes. Now you know Native forbes are thriving in June, July into August, you know, and they’re not most of them aren’t drying out yet. They’re they’re really they’re they are holding a lot of moisture. And so I could see that argument being true. I’ve never read the paper myself. Is true.

00:37:26
Speaker 4: It is true that it’s known that deer get the majority of their moisture from from their diet, and not not just from I mean they do go and drink from a creek or drink from a pond or whatever, but but they do get during the growing season for plants, well, then get the majority of their water that way.

00:37:45
Speaker 3: And the argument jud was making to me was that if that is what they are choosing, that probably is their instinct realizing what has more nutrition in it. So if you’re a trophy hunter, then more nutrition means bigger bucks, healthier herd. And so I would add that in there, that the nutritional value adds in the middle that you just can’t get without you don’t have them without pollinators specifically, actually, like Ohio spider war and some of the ones that hold a lot more water these are or fox club pen smont these are actually ones that only get pollinated by native pollinators. So yeah, interesting. So one last kind of.

00:38:30
Speaker 2: I don’t know, it’s not necessarily philosophical, but another one of these, I guess, just like why questions Within the habitat world, there are some folks who are they might call them pragmatists, and they’ll say, well, if a plant does a job, I’m okay with it, whether it’s native or non native. And there’s other folks we might call them purists, who would say, well, known natives because natives are supposed to be here. Non natives aren’t supposed to be here. And then they have their reasons. Could one of you give me a take on why you guys believe that natives are more beneficial to having the landscape worth managing for, worth planting, worth you know, trying to get rid of those invasives and promote the growth of natives. There’s some folks that this is, yeah, just something they’re not willing to dive into. So I’m curious if one of you guys would be willing to give me a perspective on that before we kind of get into the how to.

00:39:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, Kent will have more after this, but I two things that I tend to share with people is that we were We’ve been promised about twenty times over the past eight decades that this brought in ornamental species will not be invasive, and we were wrong every single one of those, even when like no, don’t worry the seed’s sterile or there’s no seed on this one. You do not have to worry about this. And so I would love to say, like, you know, mis kitt is really popular, and I would love to say that they’re right, because I see how much of it goes in. I would love to think, well, that’s never going anywhere. But the same thing was said about the pompous grass, and you don’t you know, when I’m in the back, would somewhere plant for someone crp field. You have no idea how many times that just lines the ditches all the way for like miles. So I’d love to I’d love to say that’s true. It just hasn’t been the case yet, and it is not something I’m willing to put my faith in Up to this point, plants are unbelievably resilient. They have lasted this long through evolution because they are so resilient, they’re gonna figure it out. They figure it out. And then the other argument I would add is the the Djenga tower sometimes and this is actually why a pheasant is the hawks and native seeds logo. Pheasants are not native, but they reprien. We’ve changed the landscape. We’ve brought in something that’s not native and it made a good home. So it kind of recognizes for us we’re never going back one hundred percent to what was, but it needs to make sense, and it needs to be balanced, and it needs to be a healthy ecosystem, and pheasants. When we have healthy ecosystems that could like support bison which used to be here. Turns out that’s actually pretty good for pheasants as well. So that’s why we use pheasants at one of the two major reasons we use pheasants for our logo. But when going back to this Jenga tower, sometimes bringing in something like an invasive version of Reed’s canary or brome, it’s like putting a big weight on the top of that Jenga tower. And what I mean by that is the tower can’t support it and has no checks and balances for this species. So this species, it starts as a little block, and then it gets heavier and heavier and heavier, and all of a sudden, it’s a forty five pound dumbbell sitting on the Jenga tower. Jenga tower is hardly holding it together. And in a lot of places for acres and acres and acres and acres, it is. It doesn’t It doesn’t fit at all. And now I mean I would challenge anybody to go to a brome field versus a native a native prairie planting, even a bad native praier planting, and tell me the difference and diversity of flora and fauna and to be astounding.

00:42:15
Speaker 4: So those are my first two. But I know Kent’s got stronger, strong field. Just play yeah, just playing off what Nicholas said there. I can’t imagine there being a single listener right now who if you said, you can snap your fingers and all of that reed canary monoculture, all of that smooth brome monoculture, all of the you know, bush honeysuckle autumn, all of buckthorn monoculture that we have in Whitetail, USA. If you could snap your fingers and restore it to it’s its native diverse status. Who would say no? You know, we would? I mean, just imagine the difference what that would mean for for how many deer could be. The caring capacity for deer in Whitetail USA would would jump, you know, significantly. And and so I think right there illustrates, you know, a good answer to to or a good example to play out what Nicholas is talking about there and and you know the actually heard you ask Kyle Lei Barker, another mutual friend of ours about this.

00:43:26
Speaker 3: Oh, must have been two or.

00:43:28
Speaker 4: Three years ago, and he had he had a really good answer because some of those things they really don’t spread too bad, you know, Misscanthus, you know it as long as you are willing to be actively managing it. I don’t think you do have to fear a ton of it, you know, escaping very far right. It’s it spreads right on a rhizome. But if you’re you know, if you’re cutting it back or you know, maybe going in there with an excavator. Every now and then and ripping it up a little bit. You might you can keep it at bay, but the second you’re out of the picture and someone who cares about it less than you and is less attentive to to the chores that keep aware you wanted it as you’re screen to your stand or whatever, it’s going to stay on the land. And Kyle made the point of, you know, if fifty years from now we see all these these properties that used to be owned by avid deer hunters and they’re all loaded with giant muscanthos or Egyptian wheat or whatever else frag mighties. And somebody goes, Grandpa, what what’s with all the giant muscanthos over there? And he says, oh, deer hunters used to be really into that. Man, what a you know, what a bad mark on our resume as people who claim to care about the land to you know, be strapping a future generation with with another ecological problem.

00:45:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean so much.

00:45:05
Speaker 2: It comes down to, you know, so much that it comes down to the work that goes into managing it. Right, Like you mentioned earlier, how if you could snap your fingers and all the invasive non native automotive and honeysuckle and cedar trees or whatever might be. If we’d snap our fingers and all that was gone, who wouldn’t take that? Yeah, everywhere?

00:45:27
Speaker 3: Take it.

00:45:28
Speaker 2: The problem is to actually do the work to get rid of that stuff. It’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of time, it’s a lot of energy. And some people are like the cost benefit analysis for them, they’re not seeing it. Yeah, but to your point, I would say that the cost or the benefits far outway the costs. But there’s people who are constantly saying, well is it worth it? Is it not worth it?

00:45:50
Speaker 3: And I can’t remember where I where I picked this up.

00:45:53
Speaker 2: But one of the things that also drove this home for me, you know, you know, the jeng analogy again works really really well.

00:46:00
Speaker 3: But then there’s also this, there’s.

00:46:04
Speaker 2: There’s all these different specialist connections, like an ecosystem is like all of these different threads, all interwoven and all connected from this piece to that piece and all the other.

00:46:13
Speaker 3: And when species co.

00:46:15
Speaker 2: Evolve, they very often develop unique relationships from plant to bug or bug to bird, or bird to plant, and very oftentimes those are unique, special important connections that you know, like puzzle pieces fit perfectly together. Now, if you bring it in a non native species, maybe it fills the blank spot in the dirt and it can grow.

00:46:39
Speaker 3: They’re just fine. But this puzzle piece now does not match up with that.

00:46:43
Speaker 2: Native bird that lived there, or that native bug that lived there, it’s not going to that connection won’t work anymore. And so if you disconnect all the threads of this tapestry, you know, again kind of like pulling out pieces of the Jenga. If you were to snip all these different threads across the tapestry, which are these specialized connections between native of co evolving species, all of a sudden that tapestry falls apart, and you have relationships that aren’t working anymore. You have processes that aren’t working anymore. And so again it’s you know, all these things are connected, All these things do matter, but it does take time, it does take energy, it does take work.

00:47:17
Speaker 3: And that’s what I want to talk about next, is the work.

00:47:23
Speaker 2: If people want to put some of this on the ground, if people want to have some native prairie strips, or if people want to take what was an old field and convert it to a native grassland, or if somebody was planting some annual food plots, and they’ve gotten sick of the fact that drought makes it a waste of time every other year every three years, and instead they want to put in a perennial kind of cover slash food mix or something like that. They’ve gotten to the point where they want to try something different, or they at least want to add some diversity to their other food plot stuff. If that’s the bolt they’re in here today. What I would love for you guys to do is walk me through the process of how to do that for a small landowner, but not the actual process of like do this, do this, do this, because anyone can go online and get the base of constructions for how to plant a native prairie strip or something like that. What I would like you to do is is walk through the common mistakes or what people miss with the conventional wisdom. Typically for someone who’s trying to plan an acre prairie, trying to put in two acre strips or something like that for the first time, what does the conventional wisdom or the typical one two three steps, what are they missing that? Where do most people make a mistake or hit a rodblock or bump their head up against the wall and fail, or think they’ve failed and don’t want to do this anymore, or say this prairie sucks. I’m never gonna I’m never gonna try this again. I’m converting it back to Brassica’s or whatever it is. Could could you know, Kent, Maybe I’ll let you start here if you want, with a few of the things that you you know, have have heard about over the years or have seen yourself, that are a few of those common stumbling blocks. So maybe you can briefly kind of address with some of those steps that somebody has to take. But I’m most interested in, you know what most people don’t think about.

00:49:19
Speaker 3: What is What is that?

00:49:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, that’s a really important question. You could basically break it up into this prep plant, maintain all those all those that have to go into it, right, But the prep part is just so important. The other the other two, of course, they have their own little nuances which we’ll talk about, but but the the prep phase is one that and honestly, our founder, Carrol, who’s been growing prairie for forty years before he passed away this last July, he he would talk about this all the time. You need to get a double kill before you uh plant, and a lot of you know, historically people thought, oh, I got this spot in my yard, I’ll just spray it down and then I’ll plant, and then they’d have all this you know, non native seed bank come roaring back now that the Kentucky bluegrass is out of the way and isn’t shading the ground and using the resources and so getting getting a proper kill in uh double kill is the easy way to say that. But I’d also encourage people to think of it from a standpoint of cool season versus warm season kills. And so this is where guys who love food plotting are going to like me. Uh it’s it’s the best case scenario in my opinion, for planting a prairie. Planting a reconstructed prairie, it’s different if you’re maintaining a you know, ground that might have a remnant seed bank. And I’ll just say this right away. If you have a farm that’s mostly old pasture, it’s very hilly, you know, almost impossible to have been farmed. There’s a chance that it never was was significantly tilled. You know, most most ground, most prairies could handle one you know, maybe one hard plow up that that may have happened in their history. But usually what would have happened on that on those kinds of acres, somebody tried farming it and now, oh, good grief, you know, the the erosion, the you know, the horse could about killed the horse trying to drag a plow up that hill or trying to harvest it was a nightmare or whatever.

00:51:30
Speaker 3: It flooded.

00:51:31
Speaker 4: If it’s if it’s had a history of being old pasture, there’s probably a lot of remnant prairie plants already there that you aren’t seeing there getting you know, shaded out, or just a seed bank that’s still there. And so that’s a little bit different situation. But if you’re in a place like Iowa, or southern Michigan, or southern Wisconsin, southern Minnesota, you know, Illinois, much of the much of the heart of whitetail country, right if you’re in one of those areas, then it probably has been cropped for years and that and those areas they’re the easiest to do a prairie into because they’ve been planted with round up ready corn and soybeans for years and they’ve been the you know the weeds.

00:52:13
Speaker 3: Have been taken care of.

00:52:14
Speaker 4: So if you can plant into soybean ground, that’s your usually your best right nice smooth soil, and you’ve had both those cool season and warm season sprayings that have been taking place. Well, if you don’t have that and you you need to simulate it, then it might not be a bad idea to grow some round up ready corn and soybeans on the area that you’re envisioning being your prairie a few years later, because then you’re going to still get something out of those out of those acres that’s going to be useful to you as a hunter, and you’re also going to be setting back the all the non native weeds and other pressures that you need to be out of the way for you to plant. And so that’s what I would recommend from a hunting standpoint, just for the prep side of it. Then from a planting standpoint, the other main problem that a lot of people had historically, and thankfully the NRCS has come in and they’ve you know, they give their planting recommendations to people, and they they uh give a planting seed depth recommendation I believe on the NRCS website it says a quarter of an inch or or more shallow than that. So a maximum depth of a quarter of an inch. The vast majority of prairie species they certainly cannot handle more than that. They won’t. They just simply won’t. Germany, they’ll stay dormant in the soil column. And so you need to you need to have a seeding method that seeds right at the surface or just scratches the surface and just gets more so incorporated with the surface. And so, you know, a lot of people, you know, they get the cart before the horse, right, and they get excited. They don’t they don’t know about the prairie stuff yet. But man, they saw a drill on a good deal at a trade show, and and they uh want that drill.

00:54:08
Speaker 3: And they know how to spend money.

00:54:09
Speaker 4: They don’t know how to plan a prairie yet, and they go and they buy the drill and then let it, you know, resolve itself later, and then they start planning too deep and then their prairie just never comes up.

00:54:19
Speaker 6: Well.

00:54:30
Speaker 4: So start by getting the you know, start by getting your knowledge on what you’re going to be planting.

00:54:35
Speaker 3: It’s going to be prairie. It’s got to be really we use.

00:54:38
Speaker 4: The rule of an eighth of an inch or at max depth and and so plant real shallow like that. And you know there’s a seating rate if you’re if you’re buying from a reputable seed dealer, they’re gonna give you seed tags that provide a an appropriate seating rate. In Iowa, the Sea Peace standard is forty seeds per square foot. Illinois is twenty seeds per square foot. So general, the general rule is, I mean, there there is a maximum, but you don’t want to go too heavy. But you know, if you can be you know, forty to what did justin Myizin say, Nicholas, did he give you a number like if he had his perfect world? This guy’s like, like the prairie you.

00:55:24
Speaker 3: Know, researcher, he’s the covercy of Northern Iowa Tallgrass Prarie Center. But he said, was it eighty? If you could get eighty? He gave the classic scientific answer. He’s like, well, it depends, yeah, but you know it depends on the species. But if if I’m recommending something for someone’s yard, a big field is different because you’ve got it’s just easier, but it’s someone’s yard, we do sixty. Yeah, I mean an acre or less. Yeah, right, Yeah, there’s.

00:55:53
Speaker 4: A lot of things those seeds have to survive to make it to germination. And then I would add on to that with planting. If you can do a dormant season planting a lot of the flowers, a lot of the forbes. The things that we’re most excited to see, whether we’re a deer hunter or a little old lady birdwatcher are the flowers. And a lot of those flowers they need a period of cold stratification so to break their dormancy in the next or in some cases next to growing seasons. But most flowers need at least ten days of cold stratification, many of which need thirty or even sixty days of cold stratification. So if you can plant at our latitude here in south central Iowa, you know that November timeframe is about perfect. That’s when justin Maizen, the guy we were just talking about, that’s his ideal month. Get it on the ground then and let it over winter and then comes. Of course, the maintenance and maintenance is largely done through mowing. But you can’t you know, if this goes for people who just apply chemicals to do all their maintenance, right, whether they’re their spot spraying or they’re you know, doing a big broadcast you know with a you know, giant spray or something. A big part of of herbicide usage is scouting beforehand, right, you need to go out there and see what weed problems do I have? And and I think when people do that, then then comes the real hard part. You might have to get out of shovel, You might have to get out of garden hoe. You might have to get out a rake. You might have to get out a little pump jug of of round up or something and go and hit hit that targeted problem. You know, the classic is UH Canada thistle right, and you know you might have to get a little pump jug of some dric ore and go out there and or some milestone or something and and and hammer that. But you got to stay on top of it with the maintenance. Otherwise, you know, some of those other problems that choke out a prayer or you can can begin to U invade. Wow.

00:58:06
Speaker 2: Would you add anything to that, Nicholas, I would just add that we should habituate our minds to burning prairies.

00:58:16
Speaker 3: And you know there’s also I forget you know, there’s the twenty acre like or people have twenty acres of timber right next to it. It doesn’t mean your prairie doesn’t need to be burned. And there used to be a recommendation of disking, like do like a four or five year diit. Do not do that. It is not good for your prairie. I don’t know who. Every time I ask at the state level, they’re like, yeah, we don’t really know who recommend I think someone knows, they’re just not willing to out everyone.

00:58:45
Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:58:45
Speaker 3: But and then the other thing I would say is if you’re doing a yard specifically and you’ve got turf grass, turn that two springs into three springs. You really need three springs. And the reason is you need two cool season springs and you need a warm season spring because all this crab grass and other stuff that’s being choked out by your Kentucky bluegrass, it will come in. And that stuff is particularly harmful for prairie or pollinator patches and stuff like that, because it it thatches and it grows out and it does a really good job shading and choking. Right, if you have a little bit of foxtail or some that’s whatever that’s not going to outlast the prairie with good maintenance. But that crab grass or the other things that crawl along the ground that create that cover, that will cause an issue. And there are some non chemical ways too to prep the ground. You know, you can.

00:59:31
Speaker 4: I have a nice prairie in my yard. I mean, it still needs some maintenance. But I cleared about a five thousand square foot area with just giant silage tarps. I just you know, staked them down through a bunch of palettes on them and t posts and things like that to weigh them down through the you know, winds of Europe whipping across Iowa. And after enough weeks of that, you know, it turned it into dirt and I got you know, of course, multiple killings like Nick.

01:00:00
Speaker 3: Was talked about.

01:00:00
Speaker 4: But but I know a lot of people are sensitive to they don’t want to use pesticides. I don’t blame them. I hate that’s that’s that is the one part of my job I like the least is when I have to get out the pesticides. But it’s you know, there are other options out there.

01:00:18
Speaker 2: Were you going to add anything else, Nicholas, I feel like you were. You were kind of on another thing there, No.

01:00:22
Speaker 3: No, those those were the two was was mentally prepare yourself for fire and then uh, the three sprands on the yard. Yeah, those those are ones that cause headaches for people that I get a lot of phone calls about.

01:00:35
Speaker 2: Okay, So one thing that deer hunters do know and are excited about talking about, uh, that will be relevant to this conversation is actually picking seeds. That’s one thing I always love to talk about. It is like, give me the right food plot seed, what bag should I buy? What mixed should I buy? Et cetera. And you guys have this very interesting set of products that you guys sell. You have a white tail mix habitat mix, and then you have a perennial food plot mix.

01:01:04
Speaker 3: But it’s using like native.

01:01:07
Speaker 2: Forb species, flower species, some grass species, and some of those. It’s a very interesting alternative to planting traditional food plots like we would usually think about. And I would love to understand, Nicholas, how you guys go about picking out what the right mix is for something like that, Like what does your u you know, what does your white tail habitat mix achieve? What’s what’s the goal you’re trying to achieve there. How do you do that in this kind of unique way? And I’d love to know about you know, as much as you’re willing to talk about your specific product, because I think that’s great. But I do know that it’s only you know, native and appropriate for certain states, right Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, South Dakota.

01:01:50
Speaker 3: I think right, But I want to make sure that we can.

01:01:53
Speaker 2: I want to make sure that for people that live somewhere else, how do they go about using a similar framework to create the right for themselves. So I’m curious about the answers to those questions for the white tail habitat mix, but then also the perennial food plot mix. So kind of a two part question.

01:02:10
Speaker 4: There, I fix getting all excited right now, he is, man, I’m yeah, Man.

01:02:17
Speaker 3: You don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of hours I spend on the phone on these kinds of conversations. But so I came up with the idea of the perennial food plot because I believe it was a gentleman named Steve I was talking to was basically talking about how much like the deer seemed to just come in and nibble all these different species and his pollinator mix. And I was like, you know what, I bet I didn’t know anything about deer. Didn’t know. I just know that sometimes they hate your car. And that’s what I knew about deer. I knew that Iowa was a good place to hunt, you know, I didn’t know anything. I was like twenty two years old, and I was like, well, you know, I bet if we threw I threw a mix in together like this and and so that’s why I originally posted a mix for the Premia food plot on the website. And then honestly through the podcast have learned and I just selfishly ask people. You know, I’ve talked to skips Li about it. Hey, what do you see browsing? Jud McCollum, who I mentioned earlier, he’s got large acres of prarier? Hey, what do you see them the great or browsing on? What are they? What are they picking out there? Doctor Mark Turner? Uh, you know, people that just know what they’re talking about and have spent a lot of time on the landscape. And then there’s just general biology and speculation of you know, I know that this plant the seeds are very large. Uh, in general, you can kind of break forbes into two groups of quality versus quantity. Usually the things later in the in the fall when they bloom, those are quantity species. And the reason you can tell is because they have millions of seeds and a pound, but they’re a lot smaller, and their success rate, even if their germination tests high, their success rate is lower. Versus legomes are almost always a much higher quality. But what does that mean. That means there’s fewer seeds in there. That means the seeds have to be higher quality. That means they probably have more protein, They’ve got more nutrients in there, and so you start breaking that down. And then plus what other people are saying, they’re seeing the deer Grayson and that was kind of my original. And then just I’ve probably asked a hundred times, what do you see your deer bed in? You know? And then that’s what I did for the habitat. I just threw those species in there, and then I added some other species that I know intermingle with those specific flora, and I put those out and we’ve seen great success. And the truth is marked, like our mixes have like eighty or ninety percent overlap, like most of the species, I would saying it’s just general prairie, and then there are some more expensive things that deer like round headed bush clover. It’s a little expensive, but deer like it, so we’ll throw it in there. It’s another one of those legomes. But there’s a lot of there’s a lot of overlap on a lot of our mixes. So we have a friend named Caleb Key plants in town. He planted a little a faker prairie and two years in a row he saw a buck out there.

01:05:05
Speaker 4: Ye urban prairie mark he’s had uh uh, you know, at least a three and a half year old buck tending a dough in his his little thousand square foot prairie in his yard.

01:05:19
Speaker 3: And that was just like a show we mix. That was one that was supposed to have really pretty flowers, you know. But it’s like there’s so much overlap that in general, if you plant what is native and you get a lot of diversity, the white tail will show up. Now, you’re right. The mixes we have on our website are basically Iowa and states touching Iowa. Uh, But we get a lot of calls from elsewhere. I was just chatting with the guy from Georgia here a couple of weeks ago, and usually I have a general feel for what species are good out there, and I will take your call and I will handle all of it. But I’m gonna tell everyone listening right now, I’m going to call a seed provider in your area, and I’m gonna middle man it through them. So well, if you’ve got a really strong regional seed provider, call them and just ask for a pollinator mix, or ask for a tall grass mix. If you’re in that area and you have the privilege of having tall grass prairie to be habitat. Now, I know you get further west, the tall grass isn’t really a thing as much out there, and so you’re looking for different habitat right, But if you are eastern Nebraska, South Dakota, or further east, you’re looking at being able to have a mix to tall grass prairie. And the more forbes you have out there, they’re more there is for them to eat. Now, keep this in mind. You put a bunch of big blue and switch grass and Indian grass in there, which people do for the habitat side. There are forbes that can handle that competition. But it’s not the majority of them, right. Some of those include the prairie clovers, wild Bergamont, black eyed Susan could grow out of a rock. Several of the asters can handle that kind of competition. But if someone says, hey, it’s mostly big blue stem indian and switchgrass, and then I’ve got a list of these sixty other Forbes, save your money. You know what you want to do is if you want a lot of those Forbes have a little bit of Indian grass, big blue stem switch grass, and then mostly little blue stem blue grama, depending where you’re at, prairie drop seed, rough drop seed, some of these shorter grass that allow the Forbes to come in and flourish and compete, and then you’ll have your white tail out there what jud calls a full plate. He says, they’ve got something almost all year round that they can go and you’re basically habitually training them to be in that field or to travel there and browse through there every single day. So those are what is going through in mind. But I want to be clear, there’s no there’s not a lot of papers of like these are the exact Forbes that you know whitetail eat during this time, there’s a little bit of literature, and then it’s mostly just who’s been on the ground for years and years and who’s been watching the deer.

01:07:44
Speaker 2: So am I right that the white tail habitat mix that you guys have is heavy on the tall grass, the big blue stem what you mentioned there, lower zac orbs, and then your food plot mix still has you know, it’s the alternative, which is the heavier four because we’re really trying to king on the food there, but then also still some of the prairie, some of the grass, some of the flowers as well.

01:08:06
Speaker 3: Correct, Yes, that is exactly right. And one more thing I would add. If you put big blue stem in a mix and you’re not willing to do random burns or have something grays on it, and if you have enough of it in eight years, it’ll all be big blue stem. But even if you only have a little bit in thirty years, it’ll all be big blue stem. Big blue stem had one competitor, well maybe two if you count elk, but really one competitor throughout the evolution of the Midwest, and that was bison. It doesn’t exist anymore. Cows love it, But do you really want your cows crazing in that area, you know, And so that’s why in our perennial foodbot there’s just no big blue stem. There’s I think there’s no big blue stem or switch grass. Indian grass is okay some of that, but yeah, that’s heard to stay first, should no longer exist? Nick Is said, they’re all well? Are they like? They’re all right?

01:08:56
Speaker 4: Is there a group of people that say Canada doesn’t exist too or something?

01:08:59
Speaker 3: I don’t know. There’s people who say the earth is flat, brother, I know that you’ve been going to those meetings.

01:09:05
Speaker 2: People will say just about anything these days, gentlemen. I love this idea though. I love the idea of this, uh And it’s a growing thing like this, this messy field approach to wildlife habitat where we used to love our And this is not just for wildlife. This is farming right, like used to be clean field farming right. And now I think people are getting certain groups are getting okay with a messy field. And I think the same thing’s happening within the hunting management side of things. And there’s definitely been more and more interest in diverse blends, more and more folks talking about managing their soil carefully, no till, et cetera, et cetera. But now I love this idea of now taking the next big step, which is like let’s add in a little bit of grass, let’s add in some flours, some native forms, let’s get really let’s get really crunchy with it, and and be like supernatural. It doesn’t have to be everywhere like this. You’ll have to replace all of your traditional food plots with something like this. But I love the idea of this supplementing, this adding diversity because you could still really benefit your white tails in this way while also helping so many other things.

01:10:09
Speaker 3: And then it’s you know, in the.

01:10:11
Speaker 2: End, probably lower maintenance than constantly going in there every spring and summer and redoing your food blots over and over and over again. With all these inputs and all this chemical makes a lot of sense. So I love, I love that approach. It’s very heard, it’s very intriguing to me.

01:10:27
Speaker 3: Well managed prairies, you know, an afternoon or two per year lasting well over thirty years. So in terms of like ROI on your your food plot, that that is definitely a possibility. That’s incredible.

01:10:43
Speaker 2: You Nicholas particularly have mentioned this a couple different times you’ve mentioned like backyard stuff that’s becoming more and more of a thing myself. You’re a family, We’ve tried to add a couple of different little pollinator patches in our yard.

01:10:57
Speaker 3: We’ve we’ve tried to lose.

01:10:59
Speaker 2: A lit little bit of our regular lawn every year. We kind of give back a little bit more every single year, slowly adding to the native stuff and trying to manage that and improve that.

01:11:10
Speaker 3: You guys have some mixes for this.

01:11:11
Speaker 2: You’ve probably talked to a lot of people trying to do something like this. Can you address some of the common either little tricks that really help with that or mistakes that folks often run up against when it comes to trying to establish a little bit of a backyard prairie, a native prairie little patch in their garden, or they’re converting their backyard or whatever. You mentioned a few things, alrighty, but I’d love to kind of look at this a little bit more focused and see if.

01:11:38
Speaker 3: There’s anything that you want to touch on. Yeah. Yeah, Well, we get a lot of questions. So we sell down to five hundred square feet worth, you know, in like little packets, and people ask for smaller. The problem with smaller is it gets tough to make sure all the different species you have in the mix actually get into that tiny bag of one hundred square feet, and so we are we kind of bottom out of that. It’s like forty dollars or something for a fifty something different species to put in there. But there’s a couple of things. One, if you have a really small area ten you know, maybe ten feet by ten feet, plugs is not a bad option. It’s more expensive, but you know, it kind of balances between having a yard your hoa won’t complain about and and having that prairie those those natives on there. But if you’re wanting to spread seed, make sure and just like if you need to wait an extra year, it’s okay, make sure you eliminate the vegetation that’s there. You know. I had a guy tell me he did five springs on it, and I was like, great, you know you’re not gonna find you crab grass in there. And then the other thing is we don’t We’ll sell mixes like this, but it’s not as common planting your forbes one year and then coming back and planting your grasses the next year. The reason is your grasses just are more aggressive. They get a better head start. Even if you take out big blue steminion and switch grass, the tall grasses, even if you take those out, even the little blue stem the rough drops, you can kind of come up a little bit faster than your forbes. And so giving your forbes an extra year head start. Some of those forbes need two years of dormancy to even get through. It gives a little bit of an advantage. Or even starting your forbes in the fall and then planting your grasses the next spring, that’s a pretty good strategy. But I would say I’m adding a lot of details. For the most part, as long as you eliminate your vegetation, it’s not that hard to get something to show up and look pretty. The big thing that one year I kept track of it was one hundred and twenty two phone calls of just hey, nothing showed up yet, right the patient’s piece to it. So they say, year one it sleaps, year two it creeps, and year three leaps. But I would even argue that I tell people year one, you’re gonna think I sold you sand. Year two, I think, wait, I paid for that, all right. The year three it’s gonna look great. But there are species in there, some blazing stars, the cardinal flowers. Some of these they don’t like showing up first, two, three, four years. Some of them will show up year six, seven. A gentein things like this that have a high number of coefficients, and so they come later. So patience is a really strong game. But it also brings a lot of delight when on year six you see something in a two hundred square foot plot that you’d never seen before. It’s a really cool feeling.

01:14:32
Speaker 2: Well, they say, what with trees, Like, the best time of playing a tree was yesterday?

01:14:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the next best times today.

01:14:37
Speaker 2: Well I think it’s probably the same with a prairie, right, I mean, oh yeah, I appreciate some patience, but every day you wait as a day wasted.

01:14:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, man, Kent, would you add anything on the on the backyard front.

01:14:51
Speaker 4: No, just the importance of that maintenance, and maybe also a little bit on planning. You know, I’m mumble, I’m from Iowa, but planning with meeting without the tea in it. So if you’re going to be able to burn this thing, you need to make sure that it’s not too close to the house. Not you know, preferably not right under the power lines or or whatever. You know, make sure it’s a because otherwise what will happen is you just won’t manage it how it needs to be managed. And and you’ll tell yourself when you’re planting it, now, I’ll figure it out, I’ll get it, you know, I’ll get it burned. And then that you’re standing there with the box matches in your hands, you like, there ain’t no way I’m lighting the stame on fire, you know, And so may you know a little bit of a little bit of good planning on what’s going to be realistically manageable to you is critically important. Otherwise what ends up happening to those prairies is eventually they go without the proper maintenance and they just get mowed and then seeded back down into some kind of turf grass. So you want it, you want it to be something that’s going to stick around for the long haul. So a little bit of a little bit of planning goes a long way.

01:16:00
Speaker 2: Measure twice that once that’s right, well, we’ve only just barely scratched the surface of a lot of these topics. I mean, this is this is really some very basic introductory into a lot of this. But you guys, I have to commend you. You guys have put together a really great resource with your podcast. You do a great job with your social clips getting those out there. I think that’s that’s really well done. I’ve learned really interesting little nuggets over the last handful of years following that, and then in the podcast, just a tremendous marketing mechanism for your business, I’ll say, and then also great resource for anybody who wants to learn more. And it’s not just about, uh, you know, the specifics of planting a prairie or planting native grasses or anything like that. You guys are not telling you guys anything new, but to the folks listening, I’ve really appreciated you know, you guys explore a lot of conservation related issues, a lot of things related to the farming account of me and small business owners, and and just lots of really fascinating stuff. I’m glad that my buddy recommended checking you guys out, because every time I drop in and listen to something, I find myself thinking, like, these guys.

01:17:13
Speaker 3: Are doing this well.

01:17:14
Speaker 2: There’s a lot of podcasts out there and I don’t say that about a lot of them.

01:17:19
Speaker 3: You guys really.

01:17:22
Speaker 2: Well, you’re welcome, and I want to give you guys an opportunity here real quick before we wrap it up, to just let folks know where can they find your guys’s work, both the content and then also how can they connect with with Hoxy and the seeds and maybe get some of your products in their hands. Will either one of you guys like to share that?

01:17:41
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, uh, well, we have two different social media so we have Hoxy, h ok s e Y, Hoxy Native Seeds. I think it’s on basically everything, and what we do there is we talk about what we have going on the farm and we uh have little clips about that. Usually it’s ken to face, although Mark you want to hear something kind of sad. We had two guest videos from two different people. They are two of by far, the most watched videos we’ve ever had on the social account. That Maks Yeah that that art me ken or Riley is just like somebuddy. And then the other one is the Prairie Farm podcast. That one’s also ever I think you can watch the most. A few months ago we started posting them on YouTube as well, but otherwise the major platforms, the Prairie Farm podcast, and I want to give one more shout out. And my dad in the eighties one against farming and was made fun of by his neighbors to start a prairie farm. And he passed away this past summer from cancer cancer that is not proven because but highly correlated with water quality issues, the exact thing he was fighting against. And I’m very grateful for him, and so every time I show my face publicly, I just want to commend him as and I’m grateful to say he was a good dad and a good person behind the scenes as well, and so yeah, I really want to commend him. And this is all everything we’re doing is possible because of this. And before anybody ever listened to our podcast, he I bet he spent fifty thousand dollars on the podcast, believing in Kent and I just going around interviewing these people for you know, a year and a half before probably a single listener came on. So we’re very grateful to him.

01:19:25
Speaker 2: That’s that’s incredible, and of course very sorry for the loss, but also so so impressed with with your dad’s story and what you guys have built and what he built and the mission that you guys seen beyond it. It’s inspiring, it’s encouraging in a world where if you care about the natural world, if you care about native wildlife, habitat, clean air, clean water, if you pay attention to it, you can recognize the fact there’s a lot of wounds out there. You know, Leopold said, we live in a world of wounds once you kind of have eyes to see it.

01:19:58
Speaker 3: But work like the.

01:20:00
Speaker 2: Kind that you guys are doing gives me hope that we can we can address those wounds and we can make things better. So keep up the good work. I appreciate you guys, and thanks for being here on the podcast.

01:20:12
Speaker 3: Absolutely thanks for having us.

01:20:15
Speaker 2: All right, and that’s going to do it for us today. Thank you for joining me here on the podcast. I hope you learned a few things about native prairie habitat and ecosystems, native grasses, flowers, forbes. Now, all of that can help you as a deer hunter. It can help your white tail deer. It can help your turkeys, your pheasants, your grouse, your quail, your butterflies, your birds, your bunnies, all across the board.

01:20:36
Speaker 3: This is a good thing. I hope in.

01:20:38
Speaker 2: Your neck of the woods you can help put a little more of it on the ground. I certainly will be trying to do the same. So until next time, thank you for being here, and stay wired to hugg