Ep. 526: Foundations - The Realities of Buying Your Own Deer Ground

a financial impossibility, which is different. Others yet won't consider it because they don't have to. If your grandma owns five acres of prime ground and has promised to leave it to you in the family, then it might not be a smart idea to fork over some serious stough for a little slice of deer heaven. Well, there are a lot of ways to look at this, and I get that, but I want to detail my own journey a little bit and then talk about the pros and

cons of considering a land purchase for yourself. I grew up with a poor attitude and I fight it to this day. By poor, I mean two different things. I mean feeling like I'd never be rich, but also just kind of a shitty attitude. If you have my genes, and by the looks of it out there in social media world, the genes that millions of us possess, it's really easy to fall into a victim mentality, the kind of mentality that just says life sucks because someone else

did something. But life really doesn't suck. It's pretty amazing, and it doesn't do any of us any good to dwell on the success of others or own lack of success, when the only things we can really control our daily decisions. So that's my Tony Robbins pep talk for you, I guess, folks, because I want to get into a topic that some

people want to hear and some won't. Land ownership. Now, when I was about I don't know, seven or twenty eight years old, one of my hunting buddies called me up and told me he had just bought eighty acres of land in Wisconsin. To me, that was about like one of my friends telling me he just got drafted by the Patriots to be their starting quarterback. It was so far into the realm of never gonna happen that

I couldn't believe it had actually happened. Now I knew nothing about the area where he bought his land, and nothing about anything other than it was amazing that he had just gone for it. I couldn't believe it. And then a little while later after he bought it, I met up with him at a roach motel in northern Wisconsin to help him cut some rifle shooting lanes and mostly just check out his new place. And it all became much much clearer after walking his land for the

first time. The land is about half swamp, which means it's about half useless. The other half is a mix of high woods and some egg fields. That was much better, but it wasn't great. It also made a lot more sense on how my buddy could afford it. And as we worked away on his land so he'd be able to shoot some swamp bucks with his rifle while hunting with his dad and his brother, he kind of laid out his plans. He had big ideas for planting tree

rows to screen the fields from the county road. He also planned to put in a couple of acres of food plots and to dig a pond and plant a whole bunch of apple trees. Will you hear a plan like that, you can kind of conjure up images in your head of what it might look like, but you can't really see it now, you know, I don't know fourteen years later. So some of the first trees he planted,

we've put tree stands in them. The deer obviously feel safe there because the hunting is steadily gotten better, but it's by no means amazing. He's killed some big bucks there, and so is his ad, but he's also killed a pilot, little bucks, some bears, a bunch of grouse woodcocks, ducks, and mostly just had an amazing time there with his family and some of his lucky friends like me. And seeing what he did with that marginal ground kind of little fire under my ass, and I started to look

for land up there as well. My budget was a lot smaller than his, but I just wanted something to call my own. Eventually I saw a listing for twenty eight acres that was priced at thirty five thousand bucks. But the land on the aerial photos and in the listing it looked like half low, half high. It was a really odd shape. So, in other words, I don't know, it didn't look like it was worth. It looked like it was overpriced, so I didn't even drive over there

to look at it. But a month later that friend of mine who owns the land there, called me up and he said that that property had dropped to just fifteen thousand bucks. At that time, my wife was super duper pregnant with twin girls, so it was about as bad of timing as you could possibly imagine to spend money on so so dear ground. But the price was so low, I drove the two hours and twenty minutes

over to look at it. What I looked at that looked horrible from the road actually turned into something decent on the back side of the property. And there wasn't a ton of usable ground in that but it would hunt big due to its shape. Plus it was listed for just over five hundred bucks an acre. I didn't really think I could lose money on it, and I

offered him five hundred and I got it. Afterwards, the realtor told me that a college kid had inherited it and he just wanted anything he could get out of it. That was in December, and if my little girls hadn't decided to show up six weeks early, I probably would have been able to get over there and hunt it then, but I didn't. I did have something on my own to start working on, and I found a new kind of passion that I'm mostly terrible at, which is land management.

I also had done something I never ever thought possible, which was by my own dear ground. Since then I found other small properties that were too good to pass up. One I had to split with a buddy of mine because it was closer to the cities and a little more expensive, But after five years owning it, we sold it for a really good profit. The other, which was listed just down the road from that original twenty in Wisconsin, I bought a few years ago for twenty thousand bucks.

That property has a little kill plot on it, and it's produced too dear for my little girls, just last season alone. It's not a great piece of hunting ground in any technical sense of the term, I suppose, but it's still pretty special to us. We've got some apple trees on it that we've planted and some that were just there. Got some mode trails on it that I try to maintain every year, and we got that small

kill plot to keep us busy. There are always a few deer using it on any given week, and occasionally wolves, bears, bobcats and other animals that make the up North Bigwoods thing. What it really is now, what I've glossed over here is quite a bit, But I want to dive into something that I really wrestled with when I was dying to own land, I was absolutely terrified to get serious about the process. When I bought my first property, I got lucky and that I did it right before I

had kids, and I mean right before. Had I known what the real cost of daycare was or just two babies in general, I probably never would have bought that place in the first place. In fact, I know I wouldn't have, but I did. And it was, just like with those two infants, a powerful motivator to pick up any work I could to pay off that land loan as fast as possible. It was also a breakthrough moment for me. I went from thinking that it was impossible

that I'd ever owned land to being a landowner. Now. That didn't change the ark of my personal deer hunting a whole lot, because none of my properties have ever produced a big buck for me, but they've got value in so many other ways working on land. It's just fun, it's rewarding, and I often don't give it enough credit. I'm a huge proponent of the process of being a deer hunter, usually through the lens of being a public land bow hunter, and that process requires a lot and

I'm eight up with it. I'm biased toward it, and I can get too preachy about it. I know that I love it and I think it produces the best bow hunters out there skill wise, but that also leads me to lean too heavily into it sometimes and forget that it's a hell of a lot of fun to plant some trees, or till up half an acre in the spring, to plant some clover in it. That's a process too, and it can be a lot of work, which I think is the real secret to enjoying deer

hunting overall. The more effort you put in, the more you've got at stake. The more effort you put in, the greater the rewards. And no one has to do it. But if you own land, you will be compelled to do that. The whole thing hinges on an individual's ability and desire to make it happen. I'll never forget a boss. I had one time in a past life who told a woman who was inquiring about having us cater and event for her, and he said this line to her.

He said, you know, you've got champagne tastes and a beer pocketbook. She didn't like it, but he wasn't wrong. Now, there's nothing wrong with being a dreamer. But if you want to own land and you're unlimited funding, consider how to work with that beer pocketbook and forget about those champagne dreams. That might mean you're looking at a small property of only a few acres or ten or twenty maybe, or land that's a couple hours from home in a spot that isn't known for i don't know, high deer

densities and top end genetics. That's a deal breaker for some, but shouldn't be for everyone. Buying land is often buying peace of mind. If you're the title holder, you make the rules, you do the habit at work. You want to hunt only on the weekends, but have a place to yourself, well, go nuts for doughnuts, my friends, it's yours. Do what you want. If you want a place for your little girls to hunt, as a totally random example, but you don't want to worry about hunting too close

to other people. Then you've got your spot. In all of the things I've enjoyed since buying my first property, that's the biggest. Last summer, I spent several weekends setting up blinds and hanging cameras and just being with my daughters in the woods. Sometimes we'd quit early to go catch some brook trout or maybe try to find a bear to photograph or whatever, and in the process we ate a lot of junk food, We spoiled the dogs,

and we just got out in nature. When fall came around, I didn't carry a bow for the first month of the season. I just took them hunting, and it was so fun and so rewarding, and knowing that no one was gonna legally anyway mess with our hunts that was huge. It was huge for peace of mind. We just needed to do our things correctly and then hope the deer did their thing enough so that we could connect with a few of them. And owning land also came with

a pretty big surprise for me. I almost never hunted myself. I've killed a handful of deer on each of my properties, but my buddies and my daughters have killed more. I find myself saving my ground for someone else and going to hunt public land for myself. And I know that beard, but I just love having both options. Hell, I just

love having deer hunting options in general. That's why, just like with the traveling hunting thing, i'd encourage anyone with an itch to buy some hunting land to start getting realistic about it. This is not something i'd encourage impulsivity in, although if I'm being honest, I'm a pretty impulsive guy when it comes to hunting. I'll tell you a few stories, horror stories I guess next week about that unenviable trait that I possess when I really break down the things

that can go wrong with landownership. But for now, I'll say this, It might be in your grasp. It might not just be the dream dear ground you fantasize about or see on the hook and bullet outdoor channels where fifty seven deer a night storm into a food plot and fight over the calories. You might have to lower your expectations and reframe your desires around your financial situation and where you live and what you're really looking to

get out of the purchase. If you do and it all starts to seem a little feasible, it's time to start look. Hell, if you don't think it's feasible, you should start looking anyway. It's pretty hard to predict what real estate prices will be in the future, but it's sure looking like the market could soften up a bit

for a while. Inflation and a rising interest rate environment could do the potential land buyer a favor by scaring some folks out of the market, or by convincing others to sell the forty acre chunk that they only hunt a few times each season because it's not worth paying on the taxes every year. The best way to stay tuned into those trends that I've found is to download a realty app on your phone, set your parameters around

price and acres, and start looking. Then you should be able to filter between new properties have been enlisted in the last week and properties have been reduced in price recently. I'll show you the whole picture after that. Keep an eye on them wherever you think you might want to buy. I'm almost compulsive about this, even though I have zero plans to buy any new land anytime soon. But it just keeps me in the loop, and every once in a while I see a parcel pop up and it

looks like a really good deal. In the last several years, those properties have gone almost instantly, But that could slow down here, and it could slow down where you live. And of course, unless you got the money ready to go or a lead on how to finance a purchase, it doesn't do a ton of good to find a property that you want to buy if you really have no way to buy it. This part, in my experience, sucks. Banks and credit unions do not want to own hunting

land in general. Trust me, they have zero desire to take on the risk of a loan on an asset that they do not want to have to unload. You're not going to find too many banks and credit unions out there that would love to try to sell hunting land. They don't understand it. So this means saving up a decent down payment is usually a must. It also means that you might have to get creative financially to find a loan if you need one. The last property I bought when I went into my credit union was a

perfect example of this. Since I've got a good relationship with that credit Union and I could meet with a banker I've worked with a few times in the past. We got to go through some creative solutions considering they wouldn't give me a recreational land loan, and since I didn't need that much money. The banker asked me about my truck. I told her I was about to pay it off, which was one of the reasons why I was in the market for land in the first place.

And she ran the numbers on my truck and told me that if I paid it off, we could refinance that loan and use it for the land. That man, I got a low interest rate, which is pretty common for vehicles on a loan I could use for the land. Now this is important. The options that I had for a loan originally were at like six or seven percent, But because I got to refinance a vehicle loan, I got a one point nine nine rate, a big difference. That truck was collateral, of course, but the process was

pretty smooth, if not a little outside the box. Now, like I mentioned before, I'm going to go into the darker side of buying land next week in sort of a buyer Beware p s A. But for now, I'll say that I've had very very few regrets, but that you should also ask yourself why you want land. If you're just kind of sick of fighting the crowds and you want something of your own to hunt, that's a

great reason. If you've got a family and you want them to experience decent hunting under your control, that's a great reason. If you just want a little place of your own to experience nature whenever you damn well please way beyond the scope of deer hunting or doing anything related to deer, that's a really good reason. Maybe you want the chance to extend your season and have some

good opportunities beyond your home state. That's why I love having land in Wisconsin, even though I live in Minnesota. I love Wisconsin anyway, although I can't really say why. It feels kind of like when I'm down in Nebraska. They're just my people, I suppose, although I feel that way when I'm in Texas and out West and in a lot of places. So maybe it's all in my head, or maybe there is just something to certain places and

how we fit into them. Either way, instead of starting the season with one buck tag and maybe some dough tags, I can double my dear hunting opportunities by heading across the border. The season structure is similar, but not exactly the same, and the youth opportunities are definitely different. It opened up a whole bunch of new experiences, new opportunities, many of which are not really tied a deer at all.

If that sounds interesting, you might have a similar option for yourself, depending on where you live, So just think about it. If you listen to all of this, you must have some desire, however slight, to consider some day buying some land at your own. And if you do, please check in next week because I'm gonna tell you some of the things I've gotten wrong about buying land, and some of the horror stories of other folks who thought they were getting a dear paradise but it turned

out to be the opposite. That's it for this week, my white tail loving friends. I'm Tony Peterson and this has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast. As always, thank you so much for listening, and if you want some more white tail content, check out our wire to Hunt YouTube channel and visit the meat eater dot com slash wired. Again, that's the Meat Eater dot com um slash wired to see a whole slew of deer hunting articles h