Ep. 1035: Inside the Mind of a 50-Year Michigan Bowhunter

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.

00:00:19
Speaker 2: What is going on? Welcome back to Wired to Hunt. This is Jake Hofer and this week we have Jake Ellinger with Habitat Solutions three sixty covering a wide cambit of conversation here today. Jake has been hunting for over fifty years. He’s been working on the same property for forty five years, and you could hear about all the impactful projects that have paid off over many years and how he would start over today if he had to. Wired Hunt is presented by Multrie. I hope you guys enjoyed this discussion. Jake has seen Michigan change over the years, and we talk about some of the current events in the state of Michigan towards the end of this episode, so I.

00:00:55
Speaker 3: Hope you guys enjoy it.

00:00:56
Speaker 2: Here we go, Jake, Welcome to Wired to Hunt. How’s it going?

00:01:05
Speaker 4: What’s going pretty good? Jake? Thanks for having me.

00:01:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, my pleasure, My pleasure. I think we were just talking. You have been working on the same farm for forty five years, which is a really really long time. And how long have you been hunting in the state of Michigan and what, like how much has it changed to Oh.

00:01:27
Speaker 4: Jeez, you know, I started bol hunting deer. I’m thinking when.

00:01:34
Speaker 5: I was twelve years old, so we’ll say fifty plus years ago.

00:01:41
Speaker 4: You know, I’m in my seventies, so anybody can do the math. Okay, wow, wow, and so and that was so different.

00:01:52
Speaker 2: What were some of the key things, like from even even with like let’s say your early twenties Michigan landscape to twenty twenty six, Like, what are some of the biggest changes that you’ve witnessed over your lifetime?

00:02:06
Speaker 5: You know, Number one, you know, the deer density really really big change.

00:02:12
Speaker 4: You know.

00:02:12
Speaker 5: I grew up in a small game hunting family and we were a big pheasant you know, a squirrel, rabbit, duck hunters kind of thing.

00:02:21
Speaker 4: And one of the reasons was there were very few deer. So when I was like, you know, eight to ten.

00:02:29
Speaker 5: Years old, it was kind of rare if you were up pheasant hunting to jump a deer and oh my gosh, if you saw them with antlers.

00:02:36
Speaker 4: That was that made the newspaper.

00:02:39
Speaker 5: In that part of the state where you know, where I live, because at one time the numbers had really gotten you know, trimmed way way back, and everybody that was a deer hunter that you know, my grandpa’s friends and my dad’s friends, everybody went quote up north, you know, which was north of here three four hours where there was a lot more or uh you know woods Is, and uh yeah, it was just a totally different thing.

00:03:07
Speaker 4: But I you know, I love deer, and I thought i’d try.

00:03:09
Speaker 5: It with a bow and had had some acquaintances, you know, uncle’s friends that were bowl hunters that you know, taught me how to shoot a bow and stuff like that. And of course I ran around shot frogs and chipmunks and stuff like that when I was a kid.

00:03:25
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:03:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, what what roughly time frame did you notice the deer density was drastically increasing in Michigan? And I guess was there an inflection point or a period of time where everyone’s like, holy cow, I can’t believe how many deer there are, and then you know, has just continued to compound.

00:03:44
Speaker 5: It was in that the first the first big change was in at late sixties mid seventies time frame, and what happened is there was a deer Uh they moved deer. They trapped deer from different parts of Michigan and brought them into southern Michigan and released them. All the time they were doing that, they never admitted, oh no, we’re not doing that. And there were you know, people that literally saw them, you know, at night, stop a big truck, open up the back tailgate and all these deer went running out.

00:04:14
Speaker 4: But now there’s actually a book where they’ve they they’ve wrote that, yeah, this is what we did, and you know, now the management team admits that was part of the process.

00:04:25
Speaker 5: So I remember as a teenager getting up one morning, we had pear trees in our front Yeah, you know, three great, big old paar trees and you know, always a mess in the fall.

00:04:37
Speaker 4: So we you know, this is.

00:04:39
Speaker 5: Early spring, like late March, early April, and we get up and we look out the windows and there’s like fifteen sixteen deer in our front yard eating all these pairs that were under the trees. And you know that it was through the winter, so it was early season, but still a lot of pairs that drop, and that was just something you never saw them. We stepped outside and the deer just stood there looking at us, and that just never happened.

00:05:00
Speaker 4: It was like, Okay, they must have opened up a truck last night right out here somewhere, and yeah, you know so uh yeah, so so that was a big change.

00:05:11
Speaker 5: You know, we noticed real quickly we went from having it be really rare to see deer to being able to see deer. And you know how quickly they multiply when uh, you know, when the habitat is good and the resources are not limited. So you know, in five or six years, we went from you know, seeing some deer seeing lots of deer.

00:05:33
Speaker 2: What do you know what that book is called, the one where they talk about that.

00:05:37
Speaker 4: I don’t. I can remember. I’ve seen it advertised online.

00:05:41
Speaker 5: I think if you search, you know, put put some keywords in the title under your search, that would come up. I’m wondering, you’re you’re you’re looking right.

00:05:53
Speaker 3: Now, I’m trying to find it. That would be.

00:05:58
Speaker 5: Remember seeing that, uh discussed on social media and like YouTube videos other people. So yeah, it’s it’s out there. I guess I never personally grabbed it myself.

00:06:10
Speaker 2: I should do you do you recall why they did not say that they were releasing there was that like against.

00:06:18
Speaker 4: A Yeah, I I don’t know why. You know, it’s like a lot of things.

00:06:25
Speaker 5: You know, certain game agencies really don’t want to level with the public what they’re doing, you know, all the way till today.

00:06:38
Speaker 2: Right now, that’s that’s pretty fascinating. Okay, So it’s it’s spring now, and it’s it’s May, and depending on what part of the country you’re in, uh, spring food plots or top of mind and something I want to dive a little bit deeper than just you know, the traditional what you can plan in the spring, but I think how you shape your plots or the architecture or all the additional thought processes to make a food plot better beyond of what you plant and how you take care of it and you know, fertilize soil and everything else. What have you noticed over you know, all of your experience over the years and forty five years of experimenting on your own farm, what have you noticed makes an impact on the actual architecture of a food plot. And I know I have an engineering mindset too, So that’s a great question for you.

00:07:29
Speaker 5: It is you know, and I’ve really gotten into playing with crating edges inside of food plots by growing different forages that grow higher.

00:07:39
Speaker 4: Okay, you know, you can grow.

00:07:42
Speaker 5: You know, particular soybeans, or you can grow sorghum, or you can grow milo. You can grow corn alongside something else and create that definitive edge.

00:07:53
Speaker 4: And gosh, probably a dozen.

00:07:55
Speaker 5: Years or so ago, I was one of the one of the early things that was very successful was going into my soybean fields in the late August and mowing paths through the soybeans, you know, destroying the soybeans, of course, but these paths were narrow, like three to four feet wide, and then I’d overseed them with annuals like crimson clover and winter rye and stuff like that. So by the time the soybeans turned yellow and it got to October first, and that’s about when soybeans have turned yellow and starting to get brown. Now I’ve got those paths, you know, thanks to rain, where the crimson clover in the rye has germinated, and so I’ve got this green trail that winds through the soybeans. And you know, as easy as it is for deer to meander around through a soybean field. It really surprised me how easily they follow that path and just.

00:08:47
Speaker 4: Walk right down in that green path right now on the edge of the soybeans, right out in front of my night blind or my stand.

00:08:56
Speaker 2: I’m just picturing a rectangle food plot. You know, maybe someone has two acres of beans that are already planted, or we’ll be planning here in the next thirty days, forty five days, and so you know, obviously most people have a stand location or a blind out of food source. Are you making like a U Are you making a sea? Are you making a couple of intersections that lead into in front of that hounting location?

00:09:18
Speaker 3: I mean, how walk us through? How you yeah? So decided?

00:09:22
Speaker 5: Imagine basically kind of a square with a couple of you know, divots in it, and uh, in the southeast corner, I’ve got a red cedar tree that’s about twenty five twenty to twenty five yards from each from the south and the east border, Okay, and then right in that southeast corner, I’ve got my blind that’s set up for using northwest wind. And also, you know, knew a lot about the property and knew generally where most of.

00:09:50
Speaker 4: The deer entered. So what I would do is go to the northwest corner and the direct north corner and moa path to that cedar tree and kind of mo a circle around that cedar tree, and that put those deer right at that, you know, twenty to twenty five yards from where my blind was. And some years I’d do two paths, some years I’d do three paths, but they all converged on that tree because there was a lot of scraping activity under that red cedar.

00:10:18
Speaker 5: You know, and I’m sure you’ve seen that a lot of a lot of places over the years. You know, if there’s a red cedar tree in the right location, there’s a lot of scrapes and rubbing takes place. So yeah, that’s you know, I converge those deer to that tree, and it worked really really good. And then you know what to say, Well, you know, because I had success with that, but it’s limited success. There’s no doubt that as the season goes by and the deer stout browsing and piling into that bean field more, that edge kind of gets knocked down because the deer activity and the feeding, you know, and beans are once they get frosted and mature they are, and all that stout.

00:10:57
Speaker 4: You know, they bend over pretty easy and that sort of thing.

00:11:00
Speaker 5: So then I started planting kind of like pinch points with the annual sorghum, and nowadays I plant it with the Mscantis grass and the same thing. You know, two rows of mscant Dis grass from the north side of that plot that runs out fifty sixty yards and stops twenty five yards in my blind. It produces like a structural cover the deer feel good with.

00:11:24
Speaker 4: And they’ve got edges.

00:11:25
Speaker 5: And then you know how how bucks are and those two they know they’re kind of path at least resistance. So I’ll just rather than you know, try and weave through that Mescanthus grass, They’ll just walk out in the field and go around that point.

00:11:39
Speaker 4: You know, I’ll put you right at twenty yards from the blind.

00:11:44
Speaker 2: When you’re when you’re pinting like a picturing, what are the how much are you allocating to beans and sorghum In that example too, where you mentioned like almost creating different interior edge within the food plots by switching the speed of what you’re planning, what does that look like?

00:12:04
Speaker 5: You know, I just got done working on a really cool project a year ago and it worked so awesome. And it was a total of about three acres of an area I had allocated to plant food, and I had an existing switchgrass finger that ran through their dividing line. You know, imagine again about approximately a square three acres and the northern one third was divided by about a twenty foot wide strip of caven rock switchgrass, and I had two openings in there that deer that came from a bedding area north of there would enter that first one third of the plot, move around feet, and then they’d walk up to those openings to enter say this, you know, the last two thirds of the plot.

00:12:49
Speaker 4: And then within that.

00:12:50
Speaker 5: That southern two thirds, I would designate areas for milo and sorghum and corn, and I’d make sure the edges of the corn and we’re beneficial with the deer movement that I knew.

00:13:04
Speaker 4: They liked to utilize.

00:13:06
Speaker 5: For certain winds, I would hunt that and you know, I had strip of corn on the right side and the strip of milo on the left side, separated by fifty yards of open soybeans. Okay, And the way they used both those edges was just man. I mean it worked just to a t okay. And of course the deer go into the milo, and they also go into the beans and the corn, and so the whole field would be drilled in beans, and then I’d come back and drill the corn real strategically in the direction I wanted it, come back and drill the milo strategically in the directions I wanted it to create the edge. And sometimes you know, with the beans and corn, you can use the same herba side, but I switched over to the milo. I had to use, you know, a different herb side, and a whole different process, you know, pre emergent versus post emerging, that sort of stuff.

00:13:56
Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean, you know, and.

00:13:58
Speaker 5: There’s a real big difference between forage heights. You know, when you look at corn, it’s typically you know, seven eight feet tall or taller, and then you’ve got soy beans that are more like waist high to you know, belly button eye, that type of thing. But it really, you know, if you were to see the layout of it, how I had everything kind of slowly pinched down as those edges got closer to where my blind is. So you can imagine a big funnel that I made.

00:14:27
Speaker 2: How much how much of a factor does that increase your odds?

00:14:30
Speaker 3: In your opinion?

00:14:31
Speaker 2: For someone’s like, man, that kind of sounds like a lot of work. I don’t really know if I want to do that. I mean, on paper, it seems like it would rastically increase your archery opportunities. Whether it’s the you know, the transition of a wall so you know, or all these different things.

00:14:46
Speaker 4: It has to help a ton, It helps an awful lot.

00:14:50
Speaker 5: And you know, there’s a certain segment in this habitat world, but looks at that it says, oh, man, that’s a lot of work.

00:14:56
Speaker 4: I just want to go out there and plant.

00:14:58
Speaker 5: I don’t want to have to worry about changing her sides or running my rows for my corn planter in this direction, you know, because it just seems, you know, to them, they go, I can’t see the see the worthiness of it. But if you take say two and a half to three acres of an open field, you know, of soybeans or whether it’s milow, especially here in the wonderful Mitten State, we know that mature deer aren’t exactly real happy about going into wide open fields and feeding. Okay, especially kind of mature deer. I’m trying to hunt other guys. So by creating that edge of cover, it’s actually you know, I mean it becomes you know, almost like stem density in a you know, TSI arrangement. Okay, now I’ve got corn that they can enter, and they’ve got that edge and they can step out of the corn or walk right down the edge of the corn where it transitions from all soy means to now so it means and corn. And it’s a it’s a big deal watching how these older deer, including older dose if you’re trying to you know, archery kill some older does how they’ll work that edge because they want to be literally one step from cover. Okay, if something’s you know, coyote shows up or another deer, or they get a whiff of a human, they want.

00:16:17
Speaker 4: Boom, you know, disappear real quick.

00:16:20
Speaker 5: Where I do know from previous years of managing that ground under a CRP program, where was all kind of a monoculture. Even though I had diversity in there, the deer used it radically different and my archery opportunities were really limited.

00:16:38
Speaker 4: And I’ll say, you know, last year, it you know it, it just it was a total game changer, and especially for you know, and that’s where I killed my you know, the best buck I killed on this property and that exact same planting arrangement I put together.

00:16:54
Speaker 2: I think that brings up another another point with CRP. I think it’s it’s it’s great. I’ve utilized it. It’s a good way to get income on marginal farm ground. And obviously there’s stipulations that come with c RP. Overall a proponent for it, I think it’s great to get habitat acres on the ground.

00:17:16
Speaker 3: And but you mentioned.

00:17:20
Speaker 2: Like, what’s what’s your what’s your advice to someone that is considering to enroll something into c RP the dos and don’ts, and you know, there’s difference. There’s so many different things to go into CRP in different programs that you can use that may have higher utilization than like CP one cool seasoned grasses like that’s I I couldn’t really encourage.

00:17:41
Speaker 3: Anyone to do that for habitact. I don’t think it carries a bunch of weight, which.

00:17:45
Speaker 2: So where where what is your thought process advice when it comes to c RP if someone wants to have it in order to help pay for ground and make a pencil out just you know, ever so slightly better.

00:17:57
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, definitely if if you’re the person to where it matters to have that income, you know, some type of income, I would advise it because it does boost the habitat capacity of your of your property.

00:18:12
Speaker 4: I think current.

00:18:13
Speaker 5: You know, my experience is the county I live in and the NRCS people I dealt with here, and so you know, when I enrolled into what was called the CREPT program, the Conservation Enhancement Reserve Program, they said, Okay, this is the mix you’re going to use, not here’s a choice of mixes. This is what you’re going to plant, and you know, you know, the cost here and all that was spread out.

00:18:38
Speaker 4: So it’s not like I went into it blind and not knowing much about it.

00:18:42
Speaker 5: And this was again a twenty year program that has expired a year or so ago. You know, it had a certain percentage of cavan rocks, witch grass, indian grass, big blue stem, a little blue stem, and then some.

00:18:56
Speaker 4: Native wildflowers you know for a forbes mix in there. So it was a neat blend. But the way it ended.

00:19:02
Speaker 5: Up was it was far too thick to get good deer utilization. It was really thick, and so over the years I learned through what they called mid contract management, where you could burn it and disc it, that I could make some change and some structural change and get some native you know, golden rod and pig weed and things to come up and which all of a sudden you’d see big changes and deer usies, you know. So yeah, you know, it’s if you don’t need the income, at least in my county, was what I went through the last twenty years. I wouldn’t suggest, I’d suggest planning it yourself, paying for it, and then being able to make modifications as you need, because you’ll switch grass seeds every year receeds. So it tends certain areas tend to get thicker on their own, and there’s always something you need to do to it.

00:20:09
Speaker 4: What.

00:20:10
Speaker 2: Okay, So let’s say someone that doesn’t need the income for CRP, or maybe they have a fallow field that’s just cool season grasses right now, what what are some potential options for people to really increase the habitat attraction, specifically for white tail deer, because I feel like it’s good for white tail deer. There’ll be other forms of habitat that decide to use it. But this is this is Deer Hunting podcast. So you know you mentioned forges, forbes, you mentioned warm season grass, is like, what is kind of in your bag of tricks of this might be one of the better forms of habitat for deer.

00:20:45
Speaker 5: You know, I can tell you that a foul field, you know, whether it was an agg field once and it hasn’t been planted in two years, six years, whatever. One of the best things a guy can do, and for not enrolling in a program, is to go in there in the springtime and spray it with a grass selective herbicide to kill off the cool season grasses because they really take over places like that. And then what it does it encourages the broad leaves, and broad leaves get taller. They’re much more attractive to deer in a browse species, and they also create structure.

00:21:20
Speaker 4: You know, you’ll get.

00:21:21
Speaker 5: Clumps of you know, golden rod, clumps of pig weed, mullin. There’s all these different natives, you know, depending on your soil and moisture and things like that.

00:21:30
Speaker 4: But that’s a pretty easy way to make really good deer habitat. During the early part of the season.

00:21:36
Speaker 5: Now when it gets cold and we get you know, heavy snows that tends to flatten down, but you know, it returns pretty easy, and there’s other management you can do, you know, following years with you know, whether you want to do a prescribe burn to it and follow it with a disking, or go in and plant you know, a clumps of evergreens as well, you know, and and it can be a pretty attractive cover and uh kind of a transition zone which is really a little bit.

00:22:08
Speaker 4: Of time and work each season. Mm hmm, you know without you know, when you when you plant.

00:22:15
Speaker 5: Native grasses, there’s a lot of prep and there’s a lot of cost in maintaining those native grasses right out of the gate, you know, pounce break or see, you know, the whole whole deal you’re familiar with.

00:22:26
Speaker 3: It’s a lot of work and a lot of patients.

00:22:28
Speaker 2: And then you get you get noxious weeds that decide to also want to try to come up, and it’s a it’s it’s I like planting trees and shrubs a lot more than I like establishing warm season grasses personally, and that might have to do with the seedbed uh that I have to there’s a lot of this whole and junk that is just you know, not.

00:22:49
Speaker 3: Fun to deal with.

00:22:50
Speaker 2: But I imagine that that it’s dependent on each farm for sure. But there’s a lot of a lot of uphill battles here, which is okay. So you had your your farm, You’ve been working on it for almost forty five years roughly. If you had to say, like, what what was the best long term project over those forty five years where you know, ten years went by, twenty years went by, and you’re like, gosh, I’m so glad I did that. Was there one that stuck out with you?

00:23:21
Speaker 5: I do have one, and it’s a it’s a fun uh, it’s fun to discuss. And so you know, if you roll the clock back to nineteen eighty one through nineteen eighty nine, a time frame you know.

00:23:35
Speaker 4: There was no YouTube.

00:23:36
Speaker 5: You could pick up a hunting magazine and you could not find an article that discussed habitat and if you did, it was so general or it was something being done in Georgia or Texas. Okay, So what I did is I personally purchased and no program. My wife and I and my two sons as they were growing up over about a six to eight year time period, planted about two to five thousand Norway spruce and Douglas furs in an eleven acre section of our property, you know. And they were some were seedlings, some were maybe sixteen inches tall, you know, and this was a foul field that I decided, Okay, I’m not going to plan any crops in here, even though I had had a local farmer that was renting it, and I said, nope, we’re going to take it out of production. I’m going to turn this into deer habitat. So winter thermal cover is really important, especially you know, as you get farther and farther north and we get our share of winter here. And it has turned out to be it is the deer holding spot. There are always deer in there. I don’t care what the season.

00:24:49
Speaker 4: Now. They’re huge. I mean, if you were to look at them, JA can go, Holy smokes.

00:24:52
Speaker 5: You planted those, yeah, so they’re you know, thirty five feet tall. And through that process I learned some interesting things. Back in the day, you know, people are like, oh, you know, you just plant them in line, and you plan them, you know, eight to twelve foot on centers, and and you just you know, you just just plant the rows. And whether you use a tree planner or you use the dibble bar, there’s all these different techniques, you know. And I did, you know the first couple of years, I planted.

00:25:21
Speaker 4: All these rows of Norway’s and then you know, it’s and and with that deer herd. I told you that was growing, you know. And I did not live here.

00:25:31
Speaker 5: I had a house about a half an hour away, so I was an absentee landowner at the time. So pulled in here, you know, to deer hunt one fall, and you know, as I’m walking back in, all my five foot Norways and rows have all the limbs are gone and they’re all shiny yellow because the bucks have rubbed every tree.

00:25:53
Speaker 4: It was just like, really, you know, so that changed how I planted the tree.

00:25:59
Speaker 2: It’s interesting now of the difference of how hard it is to establish some of these forms of habitat now with just the general deer density across the board. That’s something I’ve experienced firsthand. And it’s it’s uh, you know, like I assume back then, if you planted an oak tree, it probably didn’t get mowed down. Or I guess if you planted one hundred oak trees that they wouldn’t get mowed down.

00:26:22
Speaker 3: Would that be accurate?

00:26:23
Speaker 4: That’s that? Yeah, absolutely accurate.

00:26:25
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.

00:26:26
Speaker 2: And now if you plant one hundred oak trees and you don’t protect them, you’re gonna have probably zero oak trees at the end of the summer, which is which is interesting a change of time of just the general density and the different needs.

00:26:42
Speaker 5: And but I tell you, you know, so survive all right, and then I added additional trees as as years went by, and now it’s just it is it’s hard to say if it’s better or equally as good as the TSI work have done on the property, but it’s but it’s very important. And I can’t imagine anyone with sixty or more acres that’s that hires me that should not consider winter thermal cover if they if it’s not existing there or they’ve got the room to put it in, because it’s a very worthwhile investment.

00:27:29
Speaker 2: It is what over the years, how much has it helped you change your style of hunting over you know, the forty five years specifically, as all these different habitat changes took place, you know, your your conifers got bigger. How how different does your farm hunt today than what it did even ten years ago, you know ten.

00:27:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, even ten years ago, it hunts different.

00:27:56
Speaker 5: And uh you know because conifers, uh have larger in some areas. My TSI the detail, the amount of work that I’ve done, and because I’ve been doing TSI hinge Cutting, creating, betting for so many years that I’ve got multiple locations that are maturing or locations that are new cuts. And then you know just how I personally just treat the property.

00:28:23
Speaker 4: I’ve learned a lot by making mistakes.

00:28:27
Speaker 3: What are some of the mistakes.

00:28:29
Speaker 2: What are some of the mistakes you’ve made that you feel a lot of people are making now that you’ve wised up to avoid Now.

00:28:34
Speaker 4: I’ll tell you.

00:28:36
Speaker 5: And this gets talked about a lot, but it is really it’s so darn simple.

00:28:41
Speaker 4: I over hunted my stands. I didn’t take time of the.

00:28:48
Speaker 5: Year like you know, I’d say, oh, I think I can get in there.

00:28:52
Speaker 4: I know it’s not it’s not rot, but I think I can get in there. Well, you know, I just won’t do that anymore. Okay.

00:28:58
Speaker 5: I’ve got certain stands right into the thick of things where there’s major travel going on, and I am just not in there unless it’s the right time of the year and the when conditions are right, you know, and then I so I over hunted stands. I hunted the property too often.

00:29:17
Speaker 4: I My screening has really matured. I mean, I’ve got screening that is spruce trees. I’ve got Misscanthos grass screening.

00:29:27
Speaker 5: I’ve got you know, hinged trees with stem density screening that has you know, that’s really helped. So you know, deer can’t see me and I can get by food sources and the deer do not see me, and then I you know, I just am so careful about the right. What I’ve learned is there’s a set of conditions that work really great for this property. And when those conditions are met, I hunt. When they aren’t, I don’t hunt. I’ve got a couple of observation stands up close to my house. You know, if you feel like oh Man’s and you know it’s this time of the year, it’s been six days, the wind’s wrong, you know, I’m not. I can’t still can’t go to the one stand I want to get to. Well, I’ve got some fairly close to my house that I can sit in and using binoculars watch deer in the area I wanted to hunt, Okay, because I’m up.

00:30:16
Speaker 4: High and I’m blessed to have a spot that’s probably.

00:30:20
Speaker 5: Forty feet higher than other parts on the property, and so I can look down across this valley and see deer coming out of the bedding areas and that sort of thing. But yeah, I’ve really cut back on how hard I hunt how often. But I also am real strategic about my hunts.

00:30:38
Speaker 4: I go in.

00:30:39
Speaker 5: I’m not afraid to take a risk. When it’s the right time, and I know I got a deer in the area, I go right.

00:30:45
Speaker 4: In, you know.

00:30:46
Speaker 5: And I’m still very conscious of my scent, my human scent.

00:30:52
Speaker 4: Cons the only place I hunt.

00:30:53
Speaker 5: I don’t have six or seven properties I can swing between. This is the only place that I hunt during the fall.

00:31:01
Speaker 2: If you had a bunch of other places to go, how much of your strategy would be different? If you’re like I can be less measured, a little bit more sloppy, swing for the fences more often because I have these three or four other places to go. Yeah, do you think it would drastically increase your odds or decrease them?

00:31:21
Speaker 3: In this scenario?

00:31:24
Speaker 4: You know I like that because I’ve never really been asked that question.

00:31:29
Speaker 5: I think if I was sloppier, I wouldn’t have the success on this property, even though I would be here less. Okay, I still think every every precaution that I take earns its keep in my success and hunting here, you know. So I mean, man, if the wind isn’t right, I just don’t do it. And you know, but on the other hand, you know my success I’ve I’ve done good here. You know, I have a really good time hunting this. I don’t have any trouble killing big mature doughs, and you know those can be as challenging as a boon and crocket in the section. Okay, you know, trying to kill a six or seven year old dough with twins with archery equipment and still pretty good challenge.

00:32:17
Speaker 3: Okay, they get sharp, they get really.

00:32:19
Speaker 4: Start, they really know what’s going on.

00:32:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think they’ve they’ve encountered so many hunters so many different times, and they don’t get shot. But they, I mean, they can just pick you out. You do one little thing wrong.

00:32:32
Speaker 4: Oh man, I mean, just the slightest movement and they’ve got you.

00:32:35
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, what.

00:32:38
Speaker 2: You’ve helped a lot of people improve their farms over the years.

00:32:41
Speaker 3: I mean when.

00:32:44
Speaker 2: You’re visiting with these folks and you know, I feel most often they’re they’re reaching out because they’re not having the success of what they think they should be having on a particular piece. How often is it truly habitat and food or their own being their own detriment. And so what I mean by that is maybe they’re over hunting, maybe they’re saying their goals are this, but they’re not really performing based off what they’re saying or And what I’m getting is like, is it human error and element and decision making or is it honestly food and habitat on the deer side that you often have to address.

00:33:19
Speaker 5: You know, it’s a little of both, but it definitely ly lean’s heavy on what the landowner is doing.

00:33:27
Speaker 4: He’s the guy that’s in charge of his success or non success, and.

00:33:33
Speaker 5: There’s you know, it’s a very common scenario is to meet with some really good people and nice property. Maybe they’ve just played a little bit with food and they definitely need to put stands in different locations.

00:33:47
Speaker 4: But you know, one of the things they bring up to me right off the bat is.

00:33:51
Speaker 5: You know, we get we get good deer on camera, you know, from all summer long, and and you know, by the middle of October, all we’re getting them, is it?

00:34:00
Speaker 4: And the neighbors end up killing them. You know, nobody’s got to tell me what’s going on.

00:34:05
Speaker 5: Okay, they’re slowly moving those deer off, you know, because of you know, disturbance, you know, in human human odor.

00:34:12
Speaker 4: And yeah, so I would say that’s probably.

00:34:16
Speaker 5: A seventy thirty if I was to give it, you know, seventy percent the landowner and thirty percent the habitat.

00:34:25
Speaker 4: You know, sometimes it really is important to I.

00:34:27
Speaker 5: Mean know, if you’ve got to park effect a woodlot, you can see all the way through it and there’s no food, well, yeah, the habitat’s not all that good.

00:34:35
Speaker 4: So there’s just.

00:34:36
Speaker 5: Not that many deer utilizing that property, where if you made some pretty extreme changes over ten years, you could just completely change your success and what you’d see on that property.

00:34:46
Speaker 2: You know, had you have you ever been tempted to start over on a new property, And so you know, I feel like forty five years now later, now you have your farm pretty well dialed in from the sounds of it, you know, like the back of your hand. I bet you know every single tree on that farm. If I’m being honest, you probably know every.

00:35:05
Speaker 4: Single Yeah, I really do understand this farm very well.

00:35:09
Speaker 2: And so if you had to recreate, you know, this slice of heaven for you again on a piece, Let’s say it’s twenty miles down the road, how fast do you think you could get it? You know, ninety percent similar or similar quality to the farm that you know is taking.

00:35:27
Speaker 5: Given that was all I had to do was focus on that farm, and I had the resources three to five years, I could have it here.

00:35:35
Speaker 4: Really, what I’ve learned, Yeah.

00:35:38
Speaker 3: What are you doing in that three to five year spread?

00:35:41
Speaker 4: I am I’m going to do. I’m going to do heavy logging.

00:35:46
Speaker 5: If there’s a mistake I see people make is that you know the term select cut. You know that is as a financially select for the timber buyer and not to select for the landowner. As far as the habitat creation, you know, it just doesn’t open up the canopy enough. It gives them a little glimmer of hope, and five years later it’s quit doing what it was supposed to do. And also I dial in my access man, I would work on my access and you know, and preferably this piece of property has got twenty five to thirty percent of open tillable on it, and then I’m going to you know, create you know, really good food sources that I can get to to deal with a different wind and hunting conditions on that property. And I’m going to utilize the deer come to me mode instead.

00:36:33
Speaker 4: Of me go to the deer.

00:36:35
Speaker 5: It’s all going to be made to where I know where they’re betting, and here’s where they’re going to feed, and it’s going to be easy for me to get in and out of these you.

00:36:42
Speaker 4: Know, three four ideal hunting locations.

00:36:45
Speaker 2: So in this in this made up scenario, you have twenty acres or twenty percent of it being open tollable. If it’s a sixty at twenty percent, it’s like twelve acres of open ground.

00:36:52
Speaker 3: Are you putting twelve acres of food? Are you?

00:36:54
Speaker 2: Or is that like eighty eighty percent of really good habitat.

00:37:01
Speaker 5: It’s probably gonna be about six to seven acres of food with some really good screening cover to break up that food. And then you know, allow me to move along the edges of that once open ground to get to different hunting conditions.

00:37:17
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, we.

00:37:18
Speaker 5: Have things available today that I that just wasn’t you know forty five years ago. Okay, you couldn’t find miscanthus grass to plant, you know, and nobody knew anything about plant and warm seasoned grasses very well, at least in this area at that time.

00:37:34
Speaker 2: You know, what’s what’s something that everyone takes for granted? Now that was groundbreaking to you. You just mentioned that. The knowledge base and even having you know, different species available to plant first, you know, and increasing your hunting opportunity. But what’s a piece of information or a tool that’s like, oh my gosh, if I would have had this available thirty years ago, that would have been so impactful.

00:38:08
Speaker 5: Oh boy, I would say, uh quite honestly, it’s kind of two because both of these technologies have ramped up to be very helpful for landowners. And that would be trail cameras and the use of a drone. Sure, I mean now people just you know, they that’s just what you do, right, But if there was a time we didn’t have any of.

00:38:31
Speaker 2: That, but it makes it removes all secrets from the from nature. Honestly, Between those two tools.

00:38:42
Speaker 3: I want to talk a little bit about.

00:38:43
Speaker 2: You know, you you started bow hunting in Michigan was illegal to use tree stands, Which is this mind blowing to me because you know, tree stands and deer hunting or synonymous, they go together. When people think of deer hunting, they think of a tree stand, and so that when you started, that was not an option.

00:38:58
Speaker 3: Now Michigan has made a.

00:39:00
Speaker 2: Lot of a lot of people are paying attention to what’s going on with Michigan with a potential legislation change. I think it’s the decision may already be out by the time this goes live. We might miss it by a day. But from a Michigan native, a guy that’s lived there his entire life and loves deer hunting, what is your what is your opinion or temperature on the discussions available? And I guess the biggest thing is what is going on in Michigan. I live in Illinois. I’m not I haven’t paid super close attention, but I have slow, like very very ever so slightly paid attention to it.

00:39:35
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, it’s We’ve been a state that has been managed by our Department and Natural Resources. You know, the Michigan d and r more for quantity versus quality. So the state of Michigan has always been about, you know, we’re not too concerned about age class, where some states their regulations leaned towards it’s age clash, you know, from the timing of the firearm season, the link of that firearm season and then how many bucks can you harvest in that state. And for several years, Michigan has been a two buck state. There was a time in the eighties it was a four buck state.

00:40:17
Speaker 4: Two of the bone, two of the gun.

00:40:20
Speaker 5: Prior to that, when I first started hunting, when three stands weren’t legal, you had hunted on the ground. It was the only way, even with a bear recurve and cedar arrows, and that’s why I killed my first few deer.

00:40:34
Speaker 4: Then it was one buck, okay, you could kill you could kill one buck.

00:40:38
Speaker 5: So you know, the state’s been through a lot of changes, and through that the population increased, and the Department of Natural Resources was aware of that and made ant livers permits.

00:40:50
Speaker 4: At one time, it was a draw you put in for a permit.

00:40:53
Speaker 5: And then you know, you’d get you’d get notified whether you can purchase a permit or not okay, and then now it’s you know, for several years it’s been over the counter.

00:41:02
Speaker 4: You just go in and buy how many you want. And some.

00:41:06
Speaker 5: Deer management units were regulated for a maximum number. And then if you were a landowner, and I can even remember probably within fifteen years ago, if you were a landowner and owned over forty acres, then you could buy x amount of antler’s tags. If you owned less than forty acres, then you know, it was a smaller amount. But the state of Michigan has had a lot of firearms gun season on antlerd bucks in Michigan. You know, starting with they have a youth season. It’s usually about three or four days, you know, you know, early early, it’s going to be early September. And then we have the firearm season that traditionally starts on November fifteenth through you know November thirty. First, that’s a sixteen day season, and then there would be a four to five day gap and that first Friday in December. They’d come up with what they called the muzzle owner season. And at one time it actually was a muscle order season, but now any gun can be used in it and has run as long as fifteen sixteen days, and I think last year it was down to around ten or eleven days, So you know, you can add it up and get somewhere around twenty five to thirty days of firearms season on bucks. And so Michigan kills a larger proportion of antler bucks than they do antler steer, where the DNR has tried many methods and season links to get people to try and kill antler steer and it’s just not working. And you know, the hunters themselves have been They use this term in Michigan on social media bucks centric. Everybody’s buck centric. You know, I don’t know what that really means, right, I think it means they’re antler craized. You know, I appreciate every buck I see in the woods, and sure we all dream of seeing, you know, that really nice big the wallhowner, whatever that is. And it’s it’s great to as a land manager and landowner to manage each for that. It’s very challenging in this state because we have number one high numbers of hunters, okay, and our hunter numbers to cover is also really high. And where I live, it’s called Zone three because we have a lot of open farmland. You might have a square mile, you know, six hundred and forty acres, but literally one hundred and thirty of it is deer cover. The rest of it’s all quarantine’s alfalfa fields. Okay, So when you start putting eleven twelve hunters per square mile into that.

00:43:31
Speaker 4: One hundred and thirty acres, that’s a lot of pressure.

00:43:34
Speaker 5: And there are certain areas of the state where they really wipe out the buck age class, in other areas not so much.

00:43:41
Speaker 4: So.

00:43:42
Speaker 5: The proposals are to go to a one buck rule and one you know, ideally a one buck rule with an Antler point restriction. You know, a lot of things have been floated through. They’ve got these different teams. They call it a DAT team, a deer advisor team that was put together that’s worked side by side with the DNR for well over a year to develop recommendations to the to the dear biologists. And then those deer biologists and their upper management have a meeting and say, Yep, this looks good. We’re gonna go with this number of proposals. We like these, and then the NRC Commission National Resource Commission, which sets season links season takes bag limits, that sort of thing gets public input, and they’ve had these open meetings in which I went to the last one up in Lansing, and eventually they’re going to vote on what they feel of these proposed regulation changes would be good for the state of Michigan. And that’s where you know, you know, that’s where the elephant in the room has always been. There’s been a lot of expressed interest from people on both sides. Some people want to leave it the same one, see just they want to keep their two buck tags. And there’s lots of people, lots of hunters that have felt, jeez, if we went with a one buck season and possibly considered changing season links, this would encourage more people to take antler with dear and we could reach our goals and maybe kill more more ideally more doze than antler bucks in the state of Michigan, which would help the DNR reach their goal on population densities. I know that was a long answer.

00:45:26
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you know, and what’s.

00:45:32
Speaker 2: Your very what’s your position on it? Are you in favor to go to a one buck I do.

00:45:38
Speaker 5: I favor it because that’s pretty much what I practice on this property. And uh, there was a time I shot two bucks every year, most of the time killed them with a boat. And even though I was quote somewhat selective, you know, as I got better, as I got a bet, I became a better hunter, my habitat got better.

00:45:57
Speaker 4: I was pretty good at killing.

00:45:58
Speaker 5: Two two year olds, okay, but there was a time I was really happy with it. I couldn’t imagine waiting for a three year old, you know. And then I slowly moved, I said, darn it, I’m going to kill a three year old. I’m not going to kill any two year olds anymore. And so I have just my own math. Is, if I’m killing two bucks a year and take you take a year and a half old buck, and the time it takes for him to be a five and a half or six and a half, we could have.

00:46:24
Speaker 4: Four to five years both times two.

00:46:26
Speaker 5: That’s eight to ten bucks I’ve removed off of just this landscape.

00:46:31
Speaker 4: Well what if I only kill half of that many.

00:46:34
Speaker 5: That means, well, now four to five of those bucks have a chance to mature to that three, four, maybe five year old buck. And that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t step out in front of a truck on the road or the neighbor kills him, but at least I’m not the guy responsible for that. So I’m very pro in this region where I live, we need to take more antler with steer. And there was a time Michigan bow hunters were very good at harvesting does and that has really started declining and no one seems to know why.

00:47:04
Speaker 4: Okay, but it’s happening. The numbers bear it out.

00:47:09
Speaker 2: I feel like most states have issues with with lack of UH dough harvest. I understand every part of the country is facing different issues, and but across the board, it’s like the states try to make its convenient to shoot dose, but then people still just don’t actually shoot the dos. And it’d be interesting to come up with a solution of a way to incentivize people to shoot a dough and if it’s needed for that resource.

00:47:35
Speaker 4: It would. And so, you know, we’ve had a really neat process where a lot of people have had personal input and public speaking opportunities in front of the NRC, and it looked like the one buck rule with potentially an APR in the in the zones of Michigan that need that, because there’s certain parts of Michigan that you know, at northern Michigan where longer winters poor habitat, that really wouldn’t be the right thing to do for the hunters, but it was really moving along, and just just since in the last.

00:48:09
Speaker 5: Two or three days, social media has kind of gone on fire with some leaked information that members of the NRC Commission are now considering not going with any one buck rule and favoring what they call it and earn a buck for the second buck tag. And you know, there’s all kinds of you know, there’s all kinds of speculation. You know, how do you approve you killed the dough? Most states that have tried this didn’t.

00:48:40
Speaker 4: Do it for very long because they couldn’t get there was non compliance. Okay, that’s the easy way of saying.

00:48:46
Speaker 2: Basically, people would fake it, fake check in another a dough that they shot, and we have we have.

00:48:51
Speaker 5: To register our each year we kill uh online and spend that way about three or four years here in Michigan. So you know, I mean, I can just see somebody sitting there saying, yep, I kill my dough.

00:49:00
Speaker 4: Now I’m gonna purchase.

00:49:01
Speaker 5: My my buck tag so I can get my second buck tag. So that’s probably if it happens, it’s probably not gonna really move the needle when it comes to reducing the number of bucks that are killed and increasing the number of antler a steer.

00:49:17
Speaker 4: That are killed. If I wanted to Buddy was honest and you know we’re like people like you and me, it would work.

00:49:24
Speaker 5: But I know too many people that are just gonna do whatever that you know, you know, the takers in the world.

00:49:32
Speaker 2: I wonder if they could when they do the check in, if you have to have like a picture of the dough with your tag actually on the deer. And then also I think if the if the den ARDID spot checks of Okay, yep, you know this dough is registered, and you know we’re in the area, We’re going to go see if you know, see this dough hanging or make sure it’s at the meat locker or whatever the case may be, and and maybe make those those spines, you know, somewhat to where people would want to do that. And that’s the problems. Like human nature, people if there’s a loophole will try to find it. But if there was some sort of governance, But I feel everyone has a hard time with the resources they have already right, like all those state spread then.

00:50:15
Speaker 4: You know, Uh, basically what you said was brought up.

00:50:18
Speaker 5: I saw in some social media sites that I go to, and uh, it’s pretty much come out that the d n R really doesn’t have the resources. They don’t demand power, they’re tight on funds as it is, just like everybody right now, right, yeah, yeah, So I don’t know what the answer is, and who knows. We may be talking about something that doesn’t even happen, you know, Wednesday, these people get together, they vote, who knows where what direction it’s going to run.

00:50:45
Speaker 4: It’s uh.

00:50:47
Speaker 5: I would just say that history has told me typically the NRC does not favor deer regulations that benefit the hunter for whatever reason. You know, as far as in helping the d NR reach their goal.

00:51:04
Speaker 4: If the majority of the hunters in Michigan, which it appears, would like to improve the buck age class, I’ve never ever seen a regulation that’s really gone to workforce, you know, they like, we do have a we have a two buck limit right now, and in my zone three, one of those bucks have to have at least four.

00:51:25
Speaker 5: Points on one side. So one of those bucks is quoted APR buck. But Southern Michigan good habitat year and a half old bucks have four points on the side. Okay, that’s not a very good stretch to get an eight point year and a half old buck.

00:51:38
Speaker 4: Okay, so it’s not advancing eight struts.

00:51:41
Speaker 2: Do you as of last season, for example, I mean, do you feel that Michigan has steadily And I know you’re you’re kind of trying to think the best way to say, but kind of on your own island here, because you hut one property and it’s the one that you’ve managed and hunted forever. But so it’s kind of a loaded question. So maybe think of some of your friends or people in the area. Is the is the discussion that it’s getting better or worse? And I want your objective opinion too, from your own observations, like is Michigan improving because like, for example, Pennsylvania has always gotten beat up for not being great, but my perception of Pennsylvania is that it actually has gotten quite a bit better over the last ten years. Where would you say that falls within range with Michigan, You know, in your county and your in zone three for example.

00:52:25
Speaker 5: Oh you know, I will I will uh say it is better in Michigan now than it’s ever been. Regardless of the regulations, Today’s hunters, and especially our younger hunters want better deer hunting.

00:52:41
Speaker 4: And I think.

00:52:42
Speaker 5: That’s uh, you know YouTube the hunting shows, we it’s you know, some people can say, oh, that’s a negative, it hasn’t helped. Well, I think I think it has helped. With the younger hunter. They want an opportunity to kill that deer that the guys in Iowa and Kansas and Illinois get an opportunity need it to, you know, ear least see or know that something like that’s around. I score for commemorative bucks here in Michigan. So I get a chance to meet really a really neat cross section of the hunters in Michigan. And I’ll tell you these young you know, anywhere from seventeen to thirty year old hunters come in with the best dear they’ve ever killed, with their stories about how many bucks they’ve passed in the last few years to get this buck. So it’s happening regardless of the regulation.

00:53:31
Speaker 3: It’s a culturally, it’s changing culturally.

00:53:35
Speaker 4: I mean it’s it’s a slow change, but it’s it is changing. It’s getting better. Yeah, okay, and then myself.

00:53:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I know, I know it’s getting better for you.

00:53:48
Speaker 5: It’s getting better. It’s been you know, it’s it’s been good. There’s been no complaints for me. So, you know, a dozen or more years on this property.

00:53:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s truly impressive speaking with one property for that long because I know people usually people get bored and they move on to something else and start over. But you’ve you’ve stayed true to that piece. My last question for you, Jake is think of all the experiences you’ve had over the years. There’s probably a eighteen to twenty two year old guy right now or gal listening to this right now. What do you want to tell them that you wish you knew when you started this crazy journey?

00:54:27
Speaker 3: Uh, you know, fifty plus years ago.

00:54:32
Speaker 4: I wish you know.

00:54:33
Speaker 5: That’s a good one. I wish I knew just how big of an impact I had in my own hunting.

00:54:44
Speaker 4: It reallyful.

00:54:46
Speaker 5: I made this comment to a guy the other day. The person looking back at you in the mirror is in charge of everything when it comes to your honey.

00:54:55
Speaker 2: That’s excellent, excellent, Well, Jake, So if people want to fall along with what you have going on Where is the best place for them to best racquet.

00:55:05
Speaker 4: To view and see my content is my YouTube channel.

00:55:09
Speaker 5: Habitat Solutions three sixty ILLC and I upload a lot of good content everything from my hunting experiences to know my habitat work and my planting season and you know, my updates and some drone video and things like that, and.

00:55:25
Speaker 4: So that’s the best place to find my content.

00:55:29
Speaker 2: Awesome, well, Jake, thank you so much. I appreciate you sharing your wisdom over the years. Hopefully folks have a little bit of a better of a game plan and can diagnose some areas where they can improve, whether it’s how they hunt when they hunt, or how they might want to design their spring food plots or fall food plots.

00:55:45
Speaker 3: So thank you so much.

00:55:46
Speaker 2: You will have a good one, Jake, you guys have I hope you guys enjoyed this week’s episode of Wire to Hunt. Be sure to hit the subscribe button if you haven’t done so already, and we will see you next week. Hm