Ep. 65: Whitetail Habitat and Hunting with Jeff Sturgis

on public land. He continues to hunt both public and private land in several states each year on DIY hunts, and he's used his experience as to design private hunting parcels for close to fifteen hundred clients in twenty six

states since two thousand and five. So he founded white Tail Habitat Solutions in two thousand and four after being awarded qdma's Deer Manager of the Year, and at the present time has a team of experienced habitat professionals that combine to work on three hundred clients proper and dozens of states each year. He continuously involves his family in all of his outdoor endeavors when he's not busy creating hundreds of videos each year for his social media platforms.

He loves to fish, and he's also one of the driving forces behind his family run food plot seed company Pure Wildlife Blends that they established in twenty twenty two. So, as you can see, Jeff has quite the resume when it comes to helping whitetail hunters, but he still places a priority on spending time with his wife, jen Son Jackson and the rest of their families.

always a special place. So Jen got to go with me Dylan and ended up shooting the buck on the second day, got to pack it out and that was a lot of fun. And then Jen shot a beautiful buck a couple of weeks ago in the blind with Jackson, our twenty month old, and that's always that's always a chore. We both hunted with him this year, kind of like we take turns and she still has bow tags available, so she'll be hunting and I'll be on Jackson duty too.

But it's been a really good season so far, and we're not over with Jen hit in the woods too. But yeah, it's it's almost depressing when it Sunday. I counted down the days, the hours, minutes, and Sunday was my last set.

each year out of seventy eighty. Ben does many of the one hundred and twenty five in one year that you end up keeping in touch with long term, as far as more of a friend where you actually see them at other clients or I've had a few stop up at the house, taking them on tours, and a couple of partnership relationships with some of them now. But yeah, we get a lot of really good feedback and we just actually I used to collect client testimonials, feedback their

hunting experiences back in the day. This is going back fifteen years, but we just started doing that in the last year so we could put them on the website. And it's been overwhelming as far as you get lots of pictures, lots of stories, and that's kind of what you feed off keep you keep you fueled up. And we get a lot of that on YouTube and our social media too, so it's fun really.

much about selling the call to somebody. I was more interested in what they went and did with that call, you know, So when you got the emails or the texts or the messages that that was more important than I mean, you need the business to to for a livelihood, but it's like that was that was what did it for me, was that to see the success they had with something that we designed and and well, yeah.

If you have questions for me or my guests on future episodes, please email us at CTD at Phelps game Calls dot com. So the first one was one that's just more of a generality I've got. You know, is you hear people talk about this or it's just a question that goes around out there. So as you're design and a property and you can only guarantee one, are you taking habitat or genetics to start with?

and obviously the genetics everything is coming together there. I have a lot of other clients, say a northern Michigan client or northern Minnesota, maybe poor soils where to them, one hundred and forty inch five six year old buck would be the king of bucks for decades. And so it's you know, that's all a matter of it's all relative, but changing the habitat and just they're already locked into

that site. There's always something that can be done better so that they experience a better hurd and hunt.

And what's interesting is is that you're really trying to do the best with the habitat, the best with the design, so that if they want to take it to the level where they're only shooting the oldest bucks in the neighborhood. And that's all relative too. That might be a two or three year old in some areas, in some areas

it's a five or six year old. They can really let them grow and tell that because it's that state or that county, that area, or that size of personal and you really just want them to do their best. So we're looking at One of the things I talk about is if you are hitting the property and hitting what you need to for white tails, now strategy aside.

You know, there's so much strategy. How it has to be laid out where you're not spooking deer, where you have the potential spook deer, how you get out on and off the property that I was spooking deer. That's so critical. But at the same time, if you're hitting the habitat for white tailed, then you're going to encompass a lot of indicator species. For example, around here, some of the best indicator species we're in mixed ag land

southeast Minnesota. I hunt in southwest Wisconsin too. If you have pheasant, grouse, rabbit, and you have good turkey nesting cover, then those are really important indicator species. If you get all four going down of property, then not only of course we have great wildlife, but then you'll have a great white tail person.

rut November tenth, November fifth, whatever that might be. Then I'd have them pick more of the first ten days of November. They want to see those bucks that are actually cruising and coming a long distance where you're not going to see that necessarily in the pre rott last ten days of October, so those are more of the local box, call them core box, and then the non cores.

So it depends on the property. But sometime around there, I always like, I shot my bucks October twenty seventh October thirtieth, so that's my favorite time to get in before they start leaving and you know, might get shot on someone else's property on the seventh of November.

but we hit like lockdown, we hit warm. And this year I would have told you that there wasn't a deer at times in our entire county, you know, in some of the best places in Kansas. Yet last year I was like at the edge of my seat the whole time because we had deer coming around or moving. And so yeah, it was like you said, that the guy's property, I get to hunting Kansas Randy, Who's awesome.

He agrees like either that late October kind of that pre rut staging yacher's still kind of covering their ground versus you getting that mid rud It might be tough, but like you said, if those deer may come from the neighbor's property or might be cruising, then you may get a chance at those. He may want to push that into November a little bit.

whitetail bucks. I'm still learning. Uh you know, it's not that I know everything about meal deer, elk, but I've I've been able to cut my teeth and then got to test my ideas and theories and and everything. But you know, white tails, they're new to me. So I feel like I'm still learning. There's a lot that I can apply from from some of my Western hunting. You know, you you're you're trying to do. You're trying to manage what's within your control, and then there's some things out

of your control. And so I try to look at it like that, what what can I take care of? What can I do to get myself kind of in the in the best position, And that's kind of you know, it all boils down to hunting. But there are some things that that you know, just in my conversations with the guys out out in the Midwest, you know, Chris Parrish, Randy Milligan, Brock Shelton, these guys that they get to hunt with that have did it for a long time, know their stuff. I'm like, what I I didn't think

of it that way, you know? Or they certain things, so, uh, what is the best management? So one thing like for me out west, I'm able to use optics my eyes right, and so right off the bat, I go into the white tail wood and sometimes I'm like, well, this is this is unfortunate. I can only see fifty yards, so it kind of takes that ability, do you ever, like you know, and seeing them in the daylight, that's a

whole nother thing. Like I live in blacktail Country, which is which is maybe even a more nocturnal than white tail. I won't go on record saying that, but I feel that they're may be just as nocturnal as so seeing these things in the daylight and giving yourself a chance, which a lot of times means maybe moving closer to bedding, which then some people are like, it's it's not worth the risk. So what's your what's your approach, what's your opinion on being able to see deer target deer in

the daylight? Like, what's your strategy for that? And I've got some all up questions, but I'm going to hear your answer and then kind of kind of run into these other, I guess, additional questions.

their own. To me, when we're looking at private parcels, and you can even extend this to public land. There's three percent to five percent of all public or all private parcels that actually hold daylight bucks. There's not a lot and so a lot of people are looking at well, we're getting pictures of that buck at two am and consistently middle of the night, you know, three times a week. He must be just over in this corner on this eighty acre wood lot, and he's just not coming out

till light. And I look at it like if you're in a normal white tail property and they're not coming in till middle of the night, it's because they came a mile and a half two miles a mile from a direction. So that's part of it. So why why are they around during the daylight in some areas? And mature bucks, to me have the knack for finding the best food in the area. Their home range is several

times greater than a dough family group. So they're going to travel three square miles instead of a half square mile or three quarters of square mile, and they're going to find that best food if that best food is unpressured, and they can go back and forth to betting, and it's unpressured. There's not too many doughs. You want to have a certain number of dough If there's no dose there, they're not attracted, then why would an older buck be attracted.

But that's where it starts getting a little bit difficult between public or private land. Is let's look at areas that for one, have good food, two have good cover, three have good movement between, and four aren't pressured at all by hunter, or at least have that illusion that they're not pressured. And when you look at those factors, it narrows it down to very very few areas that

actually hold mature box. And so that's part of it is, you know, hunting those on a private land, it's so critical that, yeah, you have to have great habitat, you have to plant probably food plots have you know, if you just work on the habitat but you don't have food plots, someone else a mile away, if they have a good food plot program, those deer are gone. You're

not going to see, especially as mature box. But it has to be set up and you have to hunt that private land very very strategically, so you cannot push deer off your property. And I just give an example, a long, narrow food plot that's starting the center of your land and goes to the outside edge. It's very lengthy. Let's say it's two hundred yards long by forty feet wide. That's just going to push and pull deer off your border. If you create that habitat provement parallel your borders, then

you'll keep them on your border and running parallel. That's just one example. But everything has to be a line so that you're controlling that three hundred yards and mature buck might move here in the daylight within your borders or around your borders, even taken into account your neighbors, what it's a safe neighbor and what's a high pressure neighbor as far as where you might pull dear from.

And then you look at public land, you're just instead of trying to do that on one hundred and twenty acres and create it and apply a lot of strategy and work really hard, you're trying to put a lot of boot time in on public land and find that over ten thousand acres or five thousand acres.

that based on what your neighbors like? If your neighbors already have all the act, would you maybe just is there ever a time where you'd leave it like this is good betting, like well, well you'll try to kill them on this wind when they come back to bed, or will you still want to have food in their form? Or how much do you take into account everything around your piece and the ultimate scheme of what they need or what your piece provides.

see what's going on. And the cool thing is, if your neighbors have food plots, ninety percent of the time they're probably over pressuring and spooking the deer off those plots, so then you can become the daylight parcel. It's the same with public land. If you're no a little secret. If you hunt public land, look for large tracks of land with lots of food plots. Go about a half

mile mile off their borders. Get in, even if it takes an hour and a half to walk in, and you'll probably have those deer come into your lap in the morning because most people or pushing them off your property. So the food around you is critical, but you never want to let someone else's food dictate your hunt. And what I mean by that is, let's say I have ag land around you. Ag Land is always rotating. For example, here we could have standing corn one year and then

another year, which is half the years. Around here, it's plowed down in early November, manued and chisel plowed down, so there's zero food. The elf alpha frost's out turned yellow, stormy, dormant or stemy and dormant. So you can really shoot yourself in the foot counting on ag land because it's always changing. Now on the flip side, if you're counting on someone else's food plots, then if they're doing a

good job. All those deer are going to stay within two three four hundred yards of that food plot, which might not even place any deer on your property. So to me, it's critical you have that food. And great habitat is critical too. You have to have daytime browse form and then you have to have that afternoon food source in a food plot. If you don't have both, they're not going to stand in your land just because you have great brows and great habitat consistently, It's gonna

be very random. You can't define or build a deer herd. And then if you have food and you don't have great cover, then why are they going to bet on your land? Even if you have great food, it turns into a nighttime parsal. So you always consider what's going on around you, your neighbor's access, what kind of food that they're planting, and where water sources that they might have.

But in the end, as far as the food control, that sets the structure for the movement on your parcel every single day, and ideally you'd have enough food, which doesn't take a huge amount, but you'd have enough food that would start really hitting in August peak in November as far as attractiveness, and if it runs out the

end of the deer season, that's okay. But that gets you in through all the way into December January most areas, and that'll give you an ability to actually not only have a great hunt, but to build a great herd.

smaller ones. Like what would be a recommendation like on these small food plots to get them to hit it prior to AG or what's your opinion on that?

neighbors since two thousand and two. Some real familiar with that area. But we have about thirty acres of woods and we have about eight acres fields that we can work with, and out of those eight acres, only about three acres is flat enough to plant food plot, and we do. And that three acres sets the tone and structure for the movement on that parcel for the entire hunting season. And so we have yet to hunt those food plots with a bow since twenty fourteen because we

can't get into them without spooking deer. They're in a big valley and that's like an arena of hillside all around them. But what we do travel to is we get around those points and we hunt deer on the way to those food plots, or we hunt deer up in the betting areas. So a lot of times we're killing deer up in the bedding areas in mornings afternoons when they're exiting a bedding area or on the way to food, down close to the food, but not so

close that we spook the deer. So even on a small parcel like that, the only exceptions are I've worked on five eight acre parcels where they just they're not going to have the room for food, and it has to be more like a pass. And obviously if they're personal is that small. Typically there's neighborhoods involved, subdivisions. It's less rural, it's not out now. If you had ten acres and it was surrounded by national force or a remote area, you'd want to plant five or six acres

and food plots if you could. And then you'd draw a deer from a mile and a half two miles in any direction, and I'd probably go try to kill them out on the public land and maybe sit on that food in the afternoon evening during certain times. But so those little heidi hole plots, we love them, but they have to be supported by consistent food. And so we'll have a three quarter acre plot here and then a tenth of an acre food plot off to the

side fifty eighty yards away. Will hunt those gears. They're coming back and forth. So it really depends you have to have those anchoring food plots to anchor that movement.

of that ridge system towards the crest. But you never want to break that crest and go down on the

backside because you can spook out the whole hollow. So the buck I can think of some of the buck betting areas in that valley in there one hundred and fifty two hundred yards fromhere, we're sitting one hundred yards fromhere we're sitting, and as long as those bucks are there every day, then we have a chance to shoot them because they'll come up to our ridge system on the funnels, we're hunting, on a water hole, we're hunting, while they're cruising for doughs on the way down to

our food. There's a lot of different reasons they could go through there. And so what I find is you just chip away at the outside of that betting area safely, and as long as you maintain them in that location, then you'll you'll kill them eventually. You know, eighty percent of the time, over a long period of time, you'll you'll shoot eighty percent of those target bucks by just chipping away at that move and play a safe.

how are you for sure? Or do you do like your best guess or you know, let's say you see a buck on one of your food plots and you come from this direction to that direction, Like, how are you placing the X on the ground without maybe knowing exactly where he's getting into or where he's actually betting? Are you giving it?

They get pushed off a long ways, but then they'll hit that bait pile an hour after dark and they probably came from three quarters a mile away at least to get there. On a normal whitetail parcel, though, those bucks are not going to move more than three hundred yards during the daylight, especially the older they get, or

they'd be dead. And so it's pretty easy to say, Okay, this buck is shown up right around dark hour, a half hour after, you just go the direction he's coming from, and you probably know the thick cover that he's at, and then you back up a little bit. Dozen fawns will typically bed right next to that major food source. That buck's not going to bed there, and then you might have younger bucks, and then you have that older buck.

And I call that depth of cover. If I've gone to a property southern Michigan, I can think of as four hundred acres near Jackson County, beautiful buck area. In every hundred yards one hundred and twenty five yards, they had another food plot twenty eight over twenty acres food plots. In that case, that buck never had that depth of cover. So they grow up and they year and a half, two and a half, all of a sudden they're gone

at three and a half four and a half. Neighbor shoots them two miles away as one hundred and eighty inch five year old. And the point was that grew out of its level of reclusiveness needs. It grew out

of the depth of cover requirement that it needs. It didn't have a space where it could go back and call its own, and so a lot of times you're looking at a private parcel if there's major food here and you have decent cover extending to the west, and then you have some knowles or little swamp edge, some diversity, like two hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty yards back. I can look at a client parcel and say, well, there's the food. There's an unpressured neighbor. You have about

three hundred yards back. You can say, is that where the buck's been? You know, is that where you're finding all the sign Could you just look at it? Food, layers of dough, betting young bucks, and then you have those old bucks. And it's no different on public land. You know, if you have major apple trees, white oaks near the road, and then you can look at that and say, well that's going to hold a lot of dose fawns, young deer, and then you're going back a

mile and finding now where those mature bucks. Are no different than I love hunting public land that's near privately and big public land chunks where you can come in from an opposite direction, walk back an hour and a half, get about half mile three cores a mile from neighboring golf courses, subdivisions, ag fields, food plots house and house and house, because then you know those bucks are going to be in that wheelhouse, those dozen funds will be

a lot closer. So I hope that makes sense. It's kind of part of its distance, but you have to have that depth form and then part of its timing. If they're not getting to your food plots still two am, they're literally a mile and a half away, probably two miles away.

playing it perfect because you can't. But how do you make sure when that deer passes your location he doesn't get your wind or you know what I mean? Like are you just hoping? Are you knowing what trail that he's on, or you're guessing what trail because if he if you don't do it right, like he can win you on the backside or if you're just off the trail by forty yards, Like there's a little bit of a you know, stand placement. There's a science to all of that, or or an art to it, maybe maybe

more so, like that's always been my thing. You know, the property I hunt, the stands are somewhat established, right they know the travel corridors. But say on a piece of public, how would you go in and are you going to use pinch points? Are you gonna use ri lines? Like what's your what's your strategy on going in there and hanging a stand on on a piece of public like that?

might not be there. But then at the same time you can use that elevation change in the thermals, so morning hunting up high, we can blow our scent right over a deer trail down below us and know that they're not going to get our wind. You know that if you blow it down in this steep face for the deer or not, they're not going to get your wind.

A lot of times when we're working with small properties forty to eighty to one hundred acres, lakes, ponds, open, mature woods, horse pasture, land, in a neighboring house, neighboring school, factory,

whatever it might be. Road, then you're backing up to that area where you can blow your sent into and I call them scent blockers, where you know that you're not going to spook a deer, but you're getting in close to the movement where you it's set balance where you're moving as close as you can to the movement without getting so far that you get deer back behind you. And then that's the way you have to hunt. And so every time, that's what a lot of times we're

working with clients is assessing that balance. So if we put a stand here, is that too close to your access? Is it too close to the movement, is it far enough way to not spook deer off the food plot every time you get in and out of the stand. And so it's all about if there's a question of if I move in on the stand and deer might get down wind to me behind me, then we just to me it's black and white. You just don't hunt it. You can't. You always have to have, always have to.

I had a big buck I was after it was four seasons. We had videos of them, pictures, been hunting in the last two years. He was a legitimate six year old, beautiful buck, and that was my number one target bock here in Minnesota. I went into an area where we had actually had a picture of him in the morning, going into a betting area, we had a stand back there. Went into that stand, sat there for ten minutes, couldn't wait to go sit in there. Gave myself about a four and a half five hour set.

Get in there in fifteen minutes later the wind was just iffy, and it was good two thirds three quarters of the time, and then it wasn't and then I'd do it again. So I gave myself fifteen twenty minutes and I got out and moved to a stand about one hundred and fifty yards away and ended up shooting that buck, probably as he was coming from that betting area. And you have to have that discipline to you can

never look at it like I sprayed this. I use this machine and it's going to block your scent if you do that. Then, for example, on that night, if it was bad, and I've done that before where I've gone out to sit and the winds just didn't feel right from what I thought, maybe a calmer wind than I thought, so the thermals were going down too soon

and being pulled down right. I wanted that steady wind, So I get moved somewhere else, and then all of a sudden check the trail cameras later and realized that he came in that night, and if you were there, you would have spooked him, and then you shoot him four days later in that same spot, kind of like I've had many opportunities like that. If you didn't, if you weren't disciplined, you wouldn't. And once you spook them, you're not getting them there two or three weeks from now.

It's maybe you had five six weeks from now if he's still around, but you're in big trouble if you spook them.

I love that. I've always just struggled when we go to the interior, right, we don't get a great win. We can't hunt the right perimeter stand. And I'm like, well unless I either shoot this deer before he gets behind me, like, and that means he's gotten within eighty yards of this tree that we're in, and we I

just noted. Thankfully they weren't target deer. But even these younger deer, they're fifty or sixty yards off, they get past you, and they they wind you, and and I'm like, that's where we don't have that freedom of being local or close where we just wouldn't hunt that day. Right, We're like, well we're there we got to try to hunt a stand that gives us a fifty percent chance.

And I've always just like, yeah, if you know out west, we would just you know, or our thought process like this isn't gonna work enough, or it's almost got to be perfect, like we got to know that deer is going to travel on this road and our tree is set up for that travel path.

I'll just say, you can never hunt it? Why even have me here? Why have me designed the property? You can't destroy your property. How long do you want to destroy your property for? Do you want to destroy it for two weeks, three weeks? You just can't do it. And I'll say, you know, if you're going to do it, at least wait till middle of November. Going there really early,

sit all day. But if you spook deer, and if you can imagine, even on two hundred acres, a deer run, these white tails run a half mile when they're spooked, and so you can be in the middle of one hundred and sixty acres, spook them and they're gone. And so our average clients about a hundred acres and you just can't hear on our property here it's two hundred and fifty five acres, So a big difference from Wisconsin. But what area do I want to destroy in the property?

So we have seventy seven acres over here, thirty eight over here, one hundred and ten over here, So which area each one of those? If I it's all connected, but it's weird shape, But which area do I want to destroy? And which area that we worked on for the entire year. And so that's kind of how you have to look at it, like you just can't do it. And that's where like I'll tell you we went Dylan and I it was back in I think twenty eighteen, we went on a guided hunt, and I've only been

on like three in my lifetime. And we went into the stand and from where they said the deer were coming from, and where you know, we thought they would go where they said the deer would come from. It's like these winds are horrible, and we just went to breakfast. We never even told the guide. We just got out, went to breakfast and came back. And it was like,

I just don't I don't want to, we answered. I probably put out some Instagram reels or something that was more like we we got stuff to do, you know, like and that's what around here. I just it's different when you live here and when you have the choice of when you hunt, because I got other things to do, you know, I don't hunt. I might set twenty five thirty times for an entire season forty times at the most, but that's over three and a half months.

This year was beans, you know, last year it was I don't remember what it was, but there's a lot of feed out there, and they kind of come back up that valley. But I'm like, dang, if I don't kill them right here, I'm gonna get winded.

cheek versus the wind hitting in the nose? Like do you need to give them a little advantage? Or have you found that that the bigger bucks, they'll slip up either way, you know what I mean? Like are they more comfortable moving when they think they got a little bit of wind in a direction? Or will they move in a direction with the wind that they're back?

Now there might be a football movement where they start in one spot they more cheat to the north and then come into that food plot or another wind they might cheat to the south, but they're starting and ending in the same spots either way. And where dose are more straight line movers, they just go from their betting area to food betting area to food in that afternoon without any care to the wind. When I see bucks using the wind the most, or when they're sent checking

for dough. And so we're sitting on the outside of a betting area, winds in my face or somewhat where the betting area, winds are blowing towards us, and he's on the outside of that betting area checking that dough betting area, just looking for dose because he can check in one hundred and fifty yards. So I always base the hunts not on what I think the buck will be using the wind by checking where he's coming, where he's movie he's going to use this trail with this wind.

I'm purely hunting because the wind is in my favor in this stand, I expect this buck to be betted in this location and going to this area, or he's feeding here in the morning, I expect him to be coming back to that betting area. And now I've seen him circle the betting area to get into that betting area, use the wind to get into the betting area. I've seen him coming on the downwind sign of a food source a lot of times when they're cruising and when

they're moving in between. I just choose to stand look based on where I think I can kill him and and have that wind advantage, and I find they move and they'll move with the wind. The Bucky shot in Wisconsin was moving with the wind because he comes from the betting area to the right. He was going to the water hole to the left, and he just came with the wind right in My wind was blowing to my left side and off the steep face, and so

he came win with the wind. I shot him at like fifteen yards, and so you know that that kind of thing happens all the time. I'm trying to think of the buck Eye shot in Minnesota. The wind was blown straight in my face, a little bit to my right, and then he was coming in directly from my last left, so he didn't have a wind advantage coming in either, and he was a six year old. The other one was a five year old. Yeah, so I don't really go by that too much. Or how can I hunt safely?

Is it a good weather day? You know it's not terribly hot or windy?

sure it doesn't get burnt? Like, do you believe you can create the betting area or does it need to be somewhat in the right spot, the same location or the right location, right terrain, right tree species, whatever it may be. What's your opinion on creating that versus does it need to be somewhat natural?

a two acre food plot. There's going to be cattle paths coming from area that weren't The locations weren't there before. If you put that food plot in there, that locates doze next to it, and then you'll have that buck betting. So let's say, okay, we're going to count on this little knoll back two hundred and fifty yards at all private buck betting. If it's wide open hardwoods, that's probably going to be part of a timber harvest. That's the easiest.

And then to get into the backside of that betting area, we might might want to leave the timber alone so that we can actually walk through open timber and blow our sent into it while we're waiting for that buck to come back. Let's say that's a solid seedar pocket area, then we'll probably remove fifty percent of those seeds in pockets.

Let's say it's a fifteen acre area, so we might move remove six seven eight acres of ceedar and pockets quarter acre acre and then try to get some herbaceous growth in there, some hardred regions, some shrubs which will help wildlife too. But now they have that daytime browse and then they have the cover of this ceater switchgrass.

We do the same looking for diversity. Pockets pollinator blends will put in the switchgrass so that critters have food and soda deer, but then they have that solid structure of the switchgrass to hold them in. So it really depends on the property. We'll try to enhance it if needed. But then I was, I remember those five properties. Last week, we go into an area and it's where a lot of bucks come from and go into a major food plot, and he sees them coming in from this area. We

walk in there and he's it was beautiful. I had vines hanging down. It had a lot of junk timber, some box celled or some crappy cherry trees, occasional oak. It had some shrubs in there, some little knolls and flats. And he said, what would you do with this area? And I said, absolutely nothing. This is a really low

priority on your property. They're already using it. But then that out of his one hundred and twenty acres, he had about forty eight as over to the east side that was just all open timber, and that was a big giant hole in his property where we need to work on that area and remove timber, leave the edges alone. And then on the other portion of his property, about half of the forty on the west side he had it.

It was just nasty brier feel filled thicket, gray dog wood mixed with white pine and it was hard to imagine a big buck walking through there it was so thick. So what they did is they went in with a rotary cutter and they made an amazing pocket effect all throughout there, so deer could actually use it. And then I was back now about a year and a half later after they did a lot of this, and it was amazing how the deer take to those areas. So it's kind

of you know, some areas you're leaving alone. Some areas you need to do something to fill holes, and then you need to do it different ways.

We could add some conference to those hardwoods, especially in pockets, start to diversify the landscape a little bit too. There's a lot of different ways to look at that, and it might be we've had clients where the big bucks are coming from the public land to the north, for example, and so you don't want to try to reinvent it and say, well, we're going to try to stick them one hundred yards from a food plot. It's okay. If they're four hundred yards back on that public land, no

one hunts it. It's really hard to access. And so you're considering that within the management plan too.

necessarily hunt in that. But that thing will be loaded up. That thing will just be loaded up with deer right there, right and and and my buddy Randy's property has a piece like that and some corners, and it's like you sit in your stand and you're like all the deer coming out of that junk.

they're a part of the brows. The acorns alone are not going to hold deer on the property. So always remember that the lower the quality of the timber, the better the value for wildlife. That makes sense, and that's a really hard concept for you know, for people buying

because they want to have these big, beautiful woods. But then and then the worst thing is, let's see at one hundred acres of hard woods, do you know much work and doze or time and land manipulation and diversification need to make that actually a good wildlife person a lot of.

You've got you know, wind, which we've already covered on. But you know, it is such a huge thing. But then to complicated even more, you get all these things that work in unit. You know, they got all these

variables that change with each other. They change against each other, and then one thing, like my buddy Chris Parrish has said, like he's always a big fan of like he wants it to change, but then sit there for two or three days, like he doesn't want to be it's not as good like during the change sometimes right, he wants to be like on the backside of that cold front a little bit. So how do you look at all these things? Like I guess maybe a better way to

pose the questions, like what's your perfect weather day? Like what are you looking for? Temperature wise, precip wise, you know, higher low pressure. You know obviously we want the wind, right, but but like what's a good day versus like what's a marginal day? Or does it come down the wind? And if you got the wind, are you gonna hunt regardless of those other factors of the weather.

for temperature change. And so temperature change to me is number one. And so let's say you have a time period where it's and it could be late October where it's unseasonably warm. It's seventy one, sixty nine, sixty eight, seventy seventy for several days in a row, and all of a sudden, there's a major cold front that goes through and it drops the temperatures down to fifty So even then it might be traditionally a little bit warm,

but it just dropped twenty degrees. Well, there's if it dropped twenty degrees, there's major weather that took place to get it to drop, meaning you probably had extreme winds, probably some extreme moisture of some kind, and it was volatile for a longer period of time that the longer it's dropping. And so deer feed five times in a twenty four hour period. If they misfeedings, they're really hungry on the backside. So if they're not going out into

the open agfield, it's because it's blizzard. Because it's windy because it's raining, thunder lightning storms, it's stressful to them. They're burning energy through stress because it's loud and it makes them nervous. They're creatures of stress. They're burning energy because they miss feedings, and they're burning energy because of the temperature drop. They're trying to stay warm. So you have three things that work for them. And then on the backside of that, what we see when that temperture

drops when the wind modifies. No, it could have been forty miles an hours dropped into twenty, could have been thirty miles an hours dropped into ten. The bottom line, that's the modification of the wind then and it still could be really windy. Let's say it was fifty miles an hours drop into twenty five. They'll notice that change. So once that change takes place and it modifies, then that's when I want to be on the stand. They'll

look at pressure. Let's say that that there's you know, five or six days of consistency, you have this big whammy of a cold front come through, and then all of a sudden, on the backside, it drops twenty degrees, winds, moderate weather, but the pressure is still low because there's another front coming, doesn't matter what the pressure is, you're going to move. They just missfeedings. The weather dropped, the temperature dropped, it's it's moderating right now. They're going to

put the feedback on and they're going to move. So that's a great time to hunt. If it's higher pressure. Let's say that it comes true and there's a high pressure, great time to hunt. If the moon's bad or good, it's still a great time to hunt. So I look at it like they don't have a pressure meter in the heady. Everything that they do is tangible, and so you can even look at So you'll have a pre front coming through a big blizzard, and you'll probably see this in Elk too, where they know not to be

caught out in the open. And I think they know that by wind speed, temperature, moisture, wind direction. They live out there at three sixty five, obviously they know not to get caught out there. But then you have a snow that's coming in. It's going to be three inches, it's wet snow, the winds are going to be moderate. Well, then you see them feeding like crazy out there in the fields. They know and I don't think it's and it could be the exact same pressure. They just know

by tangibles. So there's times where like you'll have it come through, there's a high pressure right at the backside. Awesome day to hunt. Low pressure doesn't matter. All those changes is took place. There's times where the second or third day show a higher pressure day because it's slowly rising after that front take place. Took place. To me, that first day, after the front, part of that second day is when you need to be hunting. By the

third day, it's just more of the same. So even if the pressure is higher, and I'll see some of the some of the formulas for looking at weather change and predicting deer movement, if you'll have those models showing that that second and third day is higher than that first day, and you just miss one of the best days of the year, just because the pressure is hired doesn't mean a thing you know on that second, third day.

So look at in a deer's world, they just it's kind of like us being lost out in the wilderness. We get rescued, We're probably going to gorge ourselves on food, but do we do it the second day, the third day? And that's what I look with deer, when that change goes through, they're ready to replenish that energy. But two days after that they're not doing the same, and that's when you want to be there, right there, So I hope that makes sense. It's kind of based on feeding,

based on temperature. Obviously we have right now just on those two properties. I'm talking about a total of three hundred acres. We have almost sixty cell cameras out in two states, and so we can see when the weather's windy, when it's super hot, when there's blizzard conditions. Deer don't move. It's pretty easy. It's pretty obviously they don't move. So weather does influence obviously, but it's fun to watch them and be able to predict it.

there in Kansas. Yeah, but then it was like the heat, you know, kind of stifling their movement a little bit. And then you throw this this rain and wind on which you know, we're like, well, they maybe it'll change it didn't they still, And then we got a high pressure the last day we were there, high pressure, and the weather dropped from that mid forties with the rain down into the high twenties at night. And you know, my buddy Randy that owns it, he's like, get on

the food. And sure enough, like that night was like somebody flipped the light switch on. It's like, oh, where have these deer been the entire hunt? You know, they all came out of the woodworks, and so we just needed that change. And it wasn't the change from hot to rain, which we thought may spark it. It was a change from hot to rain and then all that stress built up, like you were saying, and then the cold and the clear came and they were everywhere that night.

to anchor that movement. So it's really important to understand the weather and how it plays, and it's no surprise like in that situation where you see those deer move and if you look at it, you can see those major fronts usually ten days out, seven days out. You might not know if it's going to drop seventeen degrees or if it's going to drop seven, but you know there's going to be a change, and it's important to get out in the woods. And even during the front

some of those fronts. We had one just a little bit ago, we had over forty mile an hour wind, We got a little precipitation with snow during that. You can find those days where there's super wind and the temperatures dropped already a lot. And when you have ridge systems, or you have them the backside of a big seedar, swamp or conifers, you get on the lease side of the cover or the lease side of the ridge, and you can take a disproportionate number of deer that are

up on those ridges. They don't want to be in those forty mile hour winds, so they get down on the lease side. And you do that during the rut or something, and it's like throwing gasoline on the rock because you take a high percentage of deer, you put them all down on the lease side, and then you learn how to hunt those areas, and uh, it's pretty cool. So even in the wind, you can have some huge advantages by finding the column side of the cover and habit deep.

weez you know, snort, wheezes, any of that. Like, are you a quiet hunter? Are there times when it works? What's your opinion on that?

So when you have high pressure areas, people are calling all the time, and that's a really bad thing. And so we've even had a neighbor he was rattling, snort, weazing and grunting and bleeding and we had all the deer run from their property. He was probably four hundred yards away. And at first I got excited, I'm like, what's going on over there? And then all of a sudden the year run from that area. You realize it's a neighbor and they were actually guiding on that property.

And this is down in southwest Wisconsin, and that's what the guy was doing. Someone probably paid to hunt there and he's just throwing all the stops. Now that being said, I always have a grunt call in my handwarm or two. That's something my carrying the woods all the time. I like using a bleaqe can and those you can imagine

in my area, those are pretty low impact. You know, if I have a mature buck that's going by and I can't get a shot with a bow, I'm going to try to grun them back or bleed them back. And then also I'll use rattling antlers. There's some on the wall right behind me right here, but I use those rattling antlers more on public land, like for example, where we went in Pennsylvania, we didn't see another hunter for two days. So you can be in a really

remote area calling works awesome. Then, so I'll use combination of rattling antlers and grunt calls, but more I'd be more aggressive there even though it's public land, but it's big and open, not a lot of hunters. And then same with the southeast Southeast Ohio. I bring my rattling antlers out there because we didn't see a lot of hunters an hour and a half in and we're around here. I'm using them to try to get them to come

back when I can't get a shot. And we rarely blind call around here unless our downwind is completely secure, because a lot of times they'll go right downwind of you on circle around. So yeah, get especially the older bucks. Yeah that makes sense, but no, no, make kind of all over the chart.

it was they had ran past. And well that that didn't work, Like you didn't get it to stop in the right spo. It got him real close, real fast. But I'm like, well this this works, and yeah, I last year we hit the timing right where I'm like, dang, calling these deer in is maybe easier than calling Elkin out west. And then this year, like very very I mean, we grunted a couple in that weren't quite shooters, but the big bucks that were were interested in dose there was. It didn't didn't really work.

I was just thinking. Made me think of that when a rattle bag that works with a rattle bag too.

them together. But the rattling bags really need to be hammered. Yeah, they need to be hammered and rolled around. But no, a great idea, like all this stuff is going through my head as I'm in the stand, like I'd like to be able to do it down at the bottom of the tree or you know, out in my hands.

good at pinpointing exactly where that came. I'm not meaning like that came from twenty two feet up in that tree over there, if they know whereas if you can tickle those antlers down there and there's some brush between you and them, they that's that ground level. I mean, that's I think that's a great tactic that I didn't come up with that, but that's something I heard long time ago, and that's I really like that that tactic.

any of the other tips. I know this is just scratching the surface on all the videos and info you put out there, but how can people find more more about you and what you got going on?

We're talking about that in early October, you know, because that's coming up two weeks, so we're not talking about that in July. But it's white tail habitat solutions dot com. We're very active on Instagram too and putting out reels and pictures that's a little bit more personal side. And then also the books, the web classes. White tail habitats Solutions dot Com. The website, there's over six hundred white tail articles on there. We have our food plot company,

which you can find on the website. Also Pure Wildlife Plans WHS Wildlife Planging find that too. And most of all, if you don't want to buy anything, and we go to client properties, we booked those. Like my client schedule right now is book probably ninety five percent out through August,

and I might go to seventy clients this year. But if you don't want to spend a dime with us, to me, the whole business and what's been very rewarding is giving as much information as I know out as much as possible, so whatever fits for the for that time of the week or month. We try to help people out whether they ever spend a dime with us. And that's the most rewarding because we'll have people say

I bought some of your seed. I don't even really know if I'm going to plan a food plot, but I did it just as a way to say thanks for all the videos and stuff like that. We bought a book, you know that kind of thing, thank you, And we sell hats and stuff in the books and web classes but like I said, if you ever, it's not not trying to push you to buy something, it's we'll try to keep putting us out as much as we can as much free content. So it's always to have attached lollutions.