Ep. 529: Working the Land for Southern Whitetails with Mark Haslam

are continuing to talk habitat. We're gonna be discussing in particular, southern white tail habitat, and I think a lot we're going to discuss will be replicable and relevant to you if you're in the Midwest or the Northeast, but I'm giving a little extra love to those of you down in the South. My guest today, Mark Haslum, hails from the southeast. He's got a family farm down in South Carolina, and today we're gonna be talking about the story of

this place. We're gonna be talking about what he's learned in the many years since he began managing. You know, last week we talked to some guys who have just recently gotten into the land management game. They've been into it just a few years. Today with Mark, he's been doing this for fifteen plus years, diving really deep into this and learning really the ups, downs, ins and outs of what it takes to improve a piece of ground

managed a digger herd, and and enjoy it. So we're gonna discuss everything from timber management, hinge cutting, clear cutting, planting pines, doing u dormant season burns, the pros and cons of food plots, getting natural food plots, going uh Sunheim Conservation, Eastman's uh shoe. Who knows what else. A whole bunch of else is hit on in this one.

Marks a great guy. He's actually gonna be contributing a little bit more to Wired to Hunt for us in the future, so look for articles from him coming down the line over on the Wired Hunt website as well. And uh, He's got a lot to offer. So that is my pitch for today's episode. I hope you're gonna stick around, hope you enjoy this one. If you've been out there working the ground already, I think this will be just what you need to inspire the next weekend

or the next weeknight of work. So thanks for being here. Let's get to my chat with Mark. Has them all right here with me now on the show I've Got Mark HASLM. Mark. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Mark. I'm I'm glad to be here. Tell you what You've got a good name. Right off the bat, I gotta tell you that this is it's always good to have a fella Mark on this show. That hasn't happened too often, so I like that. But uh, in all seriousness, Uh,

it's it's great to have on here. I've I've been you know, kind of following some of your work from AFAR over the years. Mark, I've I've seen how you've been doing a really great job of showcasing and sharing your family farm with other people and mentor new hunters. I saw when he won the Dear Manager of the Year award and thought to myself, Man, he seems like someone who's very deserving of that. And I started reading more of your work and kind of just seeing what

you're doing on social media. Um, just recently, I know we've we've gotten you starting to do a little bit of writing for us at Wired to Hunt. Sou and short. This is a this is a conversation. I'm really glad we're having and uh, I know you've got a lot to offer, so so thanks for making time to be here.

What was what was that experience like, Mark, before we get into the real meat and potatoes of what I want to talk about, What was that experience like when you found out that you won the Dear Manager of the Year award from the National Deer Association. Was that was that something that you thought, oh, yeah, this is coming my way someday or were you surprised by that? Um? Absolutely shocked. M. I both my father and I did

not see that coming. UM. We we put on a at the time a q d m A mentored hunt UM that previous fall, and we invited Joe Hamilton's the founder of q d m A now the National Deer Association UM, and Joe Hamilton's just absolute national treasure UM. And he saw what we were doing. He he resides about an hour and a half from our farm, and he saw what we were doing and UM in the longevy that we were doing things the farm and UM,

I had no clue. Dad and I were planning to attend Whitetail Weekend later that I guess we marked and um, when Joe started to read our uh background while before giving the the award, that was very surreal. Absolutely was because for me, I'm a life I was a lifelong qtumn remember going back to the mid like nineties, back when we were in a hunting club, and so that was very much surreal and just shock for me. Yeah,

I can't imagine. And I guess that's a great place for us to start, because I think that this this award you were given, I think is representative of the work and the transformation that you guys put into place over the last fifteen years or so on this this farm that Joe visited with you down in South Carolina. From what I understand, your family, you guys acquired this place back in two thousand six, right, Can you can you fill me in on you know, what's what's the

family farm look like? What was this place like when you stepped foot on it so many years ago? Originally it was a raw piece of land. And when I see a raw piece of land, um it uh. It was being maintained by a forster. It was um it was in a family that originally owned a much larger piece have been passed down through many generations. I think it was about twelve or fourteen different owners that had a sign off um on the sale that actually had

to track some people down. But it was one of those classic, you know examples of you know, a piece of property that was in a family for a long period of time and none of the current owners had any um uh you know, ties to the land. They had a forster that was maintaining the force your work and then sending checks you know when they cut timber, and they leased the hunting rights out to a hunting club. Um. So it was a very raw piece of land. And

but that's what drew it, drew us to it. And it was a good location, being somewhat centered between uh two very long you know, two of the closer uh city. So when you start to distance yourself from larger cities, you're starting to see the price per acre, in the price of dirt dip down before it rises back up going to the next city. So what about the terrain and habitat? I mean, I know nothing about South Carolina, So can you paint a picture for me what this

ground looks like? What kind of plant life. Is this swampy wet stuff as this high ground is as hilly as this big timber. What's what was the break down there? This would be considered the midlands of South Carolina, the lower western part of the state. It's right on the just north of the low country area, which is mostly coastal plains. The coastal plains would run all the way from South Carolina all the way to Alabama, Mississippi. UM.

And it's exactly what it sounds like. Very flat. I mean I I live in Savannah and we are at sea level right now, so it's very flat. But we're right on the north side of that. And just when the state starts to get a little bit of terrain features slight rolling hills, elevation drops, I would call them hills. Living at sea level, UM. Some of our elevation drops

would be ten or fifty um. There are We do have a couple Carolina bays, which is a geological term and the idea of the theory which I think has been some substantial evidence, but there were some meteors way back when that hit hit the ground and created some oval shaped depressions, and so those are called Carolina bays.

We do have a several spring fed creeks, uh, some swamps and bottom land um, but it's primarily upon arm and that's what you see a lot in this in this region of the southeast, and the highest best use would be growing pine trees with a good amount of acreage for cultivated fields farmland. Okay, so what about the wildlife population, the deer population when you guys showed up there in two thousand and six, what what did that like? Was this place flourishing already or were you starting with

a little bit of a fixer upper. It was certainly a fixer upper. It was a it was a great piece of property. It had been in a hunting club I think for several decades um. And with that, we did not know exactly what they were, what their goals were, and what they were harvesting. Based on some of the information that we received and actually talking to them, and they they still have a club in existence, I think they were. They weren't practicing, you know, all the fundamentals

of the QDM model Quality Deer manage a model. It was perfectly fine. I mean, that's legal to do. But I don't know if they were letting young box walk, so we didn't know what we had. A sparts Box definitely has some deer on the property, um very little turkeys and at the time no quail, no Bob white quail. But you know, we just did not know what we had as far as the deer population. And then I guess what were you hoping for? Like when you guys

step foot, like, what were you hoping? What? When? What am I trying to say, I'm trying to stay here. What were your hopes and dreams and goals for this place? Because it sounds like you were pretty serious and the deer hunting already having been a kidium a member for

a long time. So when you step foot on that farm in two ousan six, was it okay, we're gonna go gung ho doing everything we've learned about from reading the magazine and studying these things over the years, or or what was the plan when you guys began this journey. The plan was to take it very very slow. Well, actually I should say that the plan was to take it slow, but we ended up over time just taking it very very slow. Originally just step stepping foot the property.

My my short term plan was to put some tree stands on some of the act fields, UM that they had peanuts or corn and just hunt is wait until I saw, you know, a one sixty inch come out. I just had, you know, we just didn't know what we had. We knew that the deer population would be a lot different than what we were used to hunting UM on the coastal plaine of the coastal South Carolina coastal Georgia. But we didn't know what what we had.

The plan was just to take it slow, observe um and just right off the back, keep doing what we were doing uh in our hunting club UM for many many years, and that is keeping good hunter observations now still away due to this day, keeping a hunting observation log everything you see UM on the sand and then a course to harvest log data. UM. But we I did shoot my first buck on the property I think to the third or fourth season, and that was just a process of letting. I let a lot of bucks walked.

In hindsight, I probably would have known what I know now would have shot, but we just we weren't really sure what we had and when we were and when I say that we were basing that off some friends of ours that had similar type properties but had been managing it and pritic seeing the QTa model for a lot longer, So we just didn't know if that was something that where we could kind of slip right into

and tweak a couple of things or it. And it ended up being uh uh, you know, a five or six year plan to kind of get it to where we were consistently seeing UM mature box on the stand and on straw camera and then being able to maintain and observe and understand our dear herd. You know, I want to go back to something you said about UM one of the things you carried over from your hunting club days, which was really good hunting or hunter observations

and harvest observations and records. Can you walk me through you know what that actually means? How were you doing that? What kind of things are you taking note of? You know, was this in an actual journal that you carry with you everywhere? Like? How do you actually do this? Well? Absolutely, I'd love to UM. You know this is this is just a classic q d M fundamental practice, and that is you know, your your your hunter observation on the

stand and your harvest data log. So you know, this goes back to our hunting club and I the earliest I can remember being there is in kindergarten, just wearing one of those insulated old school camo jumpsuits, probably michelin Man, and I couldn't even like move my arms the good old days, that's right. Um So, but what we you know nowadays there there are apps uh for hunt clubs where you can sign in and sign out on your

on your phone. But we had a clubhouse and there was a little bulletin board um right there in the clubhouse where you sign it and you you know, you you put a magnet on the aerial map of where are you gonna hunt, put your name in, and then you sign out and we sign out. You put what you saw or if you shot something uh at the

skinning shed, you would take the live weight. Um. We weren't necessarily doing all these things at the hunt club, but we had tweaked it to where um at our farm we were you know at the end the hunt writing everything we saw as far as white tails breaking

it down within fawns. Um. You know, if it's if it's a skilled hunter or hunter that we feel like knows what they're looking at, we will put button bucks or do fon if not just simply fawns doze, and then antler bucks and depending on you know, if someone's confident, you know what particular buck they saw six point point eight point, maybe it's a two year old eight point, maybe it's a four year old eight point and then um,

the harvest log and this is harvest law. I mean, both are an imperative, but the harvest log is very very key. And everyone doesn't have a skinning shed on their property. Everyone doesn't have a scale on the property. So some people take their dear to a processor. And back in the day before we had a skinning shed, you know, I would wait at the processor until he or she weighed my dear so I could get the weight and the jawbone because I did not want to

leave and potentially them not weigh it. Um. But when you have that data, here are some of the highlight bullet points that you can get from it. From the hunter observation you'll see at the at the end of the season. And this is what we do right now. You know, after the season, rolling into the following fall is you'll you'll get a breakdown as far as how many does you saw an average per hunt? How many bucks you saw on average per hunt? Um your buck to dough ratio. I mean that's you know, we use

a uh an online service. It's very inexpensive and you upload all this information. What's it called uh The website that we use is called deer manage dot com and it'll you just up put all all the data and it breaks down it gives you the estimate of bucks to the ratio, which is that alone is one of the top points to focus on and in one sidebar that and why it's important was because after about ten or ten or so years, when we had went really had the farm fine tuned UM, we were starting to

get a lot of bucks on camera. We had we were growing bucks and we were sing bucks in person. And we went through that phase where we were hunting more bucks than we were regulating the dose and our dough numbers are do dough harvest dipped down, and what we saw was our bucket do ratios shot up way out of whack. And so for the past number of years we've been just hammering the does trying to catch up. That's why that's imported. You'll also get the fun recruitment.

You know, what's your fun recruitment like. And that's why taking those uh you know, jotting down or you know fonts, that's that's important. You know, people are concerned about kynotes and you know trapping or do you have adequate uh phone betting um. And then also for instance, if you're seeing one antlerd buck for every ten doze, that could be a problem. If you're seeing one antlerd buck for every fifteen plus or fifteen or twenty does, that's a

major problem. You've got way too many does. And sure you might still kill some large bucks, but you're bucket devior ratio is way out of whack. And there's you know, if you're listening to podcasts, you probably understand what that can cause as far as the ruts and then fawns dropping, and then with the with the with the harvest log, you're extracting extracting the jawbone, which is you know, besides

sending off the jawbone to get tested the teeth. I mean, that's one of the top ways of actually aging a deer, taking a live weight. And then for instance, like if it's a dough wasn't lactating. Wasn't lactating in September, Well, that's common, that's good. Was it lactating in November? That's a lot longer. If you're if it's if a dough is lighttating in November December, that can tell you some things about your ruts and about the button dough ratio um.

And that's just a excellent way to keep track of your of your deer population. Are they are the weights trending up or trending down. It's just there's a there's a lot of different things you can and then you can look at this all kinds of data. Francis Moon. So this website will factor the moon in and it'll show you how many deer on average you're seeing with every moon phase, um, temperature, wind, everything like that has that has that level of analysis kind of highlighted any

kind of correlation with the moon or anything. I mean, this is just like a pet project favored of mine, always talking about these things and looking into that. And you know, one of the big pieces of pushback along the lines for most of that is that there's not a lot of peer viewed research that can point to a connection between any of those factors like the moon, temperature, bare metric pressure, and deer movement. But so many hunters feel like there is have you seen anything line up

with that with your own data? I can send you the data and I can, and I'll be willing to post on social media. But there's absolutely no correlation whatsoever between hunter observation and the moon vase deer movement. There's just not It's there is no chance aange whatsoever with the moon face. You know, I personally, I was smiling when when you brought this up. I personally just get

a chuckle out of the moon. I feel like a lot of people just they they tend to hunt when they feel like they have you know, some people, some people can pick and choose when they hunt based on

whatever condition they like. And some people, maybe like you and me, they have a couple of kids and a job and a and a wife and a household, and we we we hunt, we excuse me, we hunt when we can um and that's typically, uh, you know, without even looking at data, the best times to hunt, in the best places to hunt and when to hunt are going to be early or places where there's been very little pressure. And yeah, so in my opinion, it makes

a little sense. Um, I want to rewind the tape a little bit to to where a lot of this began, because it seems like, you know, taking the the level of detail that you're looking at things that the records you're keeping, that that must have really helped inform so many of the decisions you guys made along the way since you had real data to look at. But I'm sure that especially in those early years, you had some

false starts. Um. You know, on my back forty project, for example, a few years ago, I had plenty of false starts when I was getting into this whole world of kind of taking that next step in land management. I'm kind of curious what those look like for you guys. Can you if you thought about those first gosh five years, maybe does anything stand out as as some of the biggest mistakes you made in those early years or something that you just really got wrong? Um, does anything come

to mind? Well? How much time do we have? Um? Yes, to answer your question, Yes, there's definitely a lot. Some items that come to min would be UM, planting trees, we would we bought some fruit trees early on, and that that weren't really eaten suitable for that area h South Carolina. We plant some oak trees, uh, a lot of sawtooth oaks, which a lot of people you know. Now there was a little bit of pushback as far

as planting those. UM. I still like him. But we we we we plant some of these trees far too close together, did not space them out, um far enough um food plots, you know. UM, we weren't doing soul samples originally and before we really opened up some of the property, we were squeezing food plots in wherever we could because the previous hunters were not planning food plots. There was a farmer there's a couple hundred acres of farm land, so he had that uh to hunt over

or to hunt around. But we were squeezing food plots a lot, and like on firebreaks or roads that we didn't use as much, or little fallow areas and and a lot of those areas did not get sunlight, very little sunlight. Um. And that was yeah, that was primarily a that was a bust because you buy seed and you and you plan it. We weren't. We weren't spraying um for we control. We weren't doing the soul samples and then you're not you're not really monitoring really what

what what comes up? Is it weeds popping up? Or is the plan that you that you plan with a seed um and then a stand location. Um. You know, some of the stand locations we had early on were around roads, um, and that was just a factor of not really having the time yet to open the property up. But sometimes hunters, and this is what we were guilty of, we put deer stands where we thought the best places would be based on just our preferences. But we weren't

necessarily basing any one where the deer are. How do the deer use our property? Where are they coming from, where are they batting? Where are they going? Um? You know, not basing the stand location stands set up based on the deer movement. We're basing on one. You know what we're best for us. I think that's something that a lot of folks, myself included, are guilty of. So so plenty of mistakes along the way. What what was if you could if there's anything that kind of fits this,

what was the impetus for positive change? Like if it was there anything you can point back to where things all of a sudden started to click. Did you change something with your food plots and all of a sudden, oh, now things are coming together. Or did you open up these new roads or new access points to allow you to hunt deeper into the property and then all of

a sudden that was what changed things. Was there any big epiphany or light switch moment, you know, where you kind of hit a fork in the road and all of a sudden the results started changing. Was there any kind of lying in the sand where all of a sudden everything was different after that, I would say to answer that question, was probably the first UM logging contract we had the farm, and the first UM the first time I have some a timber crew on the farm

to cut pine trees too. The first cut was just a thin. It was actually a combination to thin some trees and what that did was open up so the canopy gets more sunlight in UM. And then they also created some loading decks. So when you cut pine trees, there's a site usually that they clear cut, like a you know, a smaller site where they clear cut first, and then that's where they're loading the timber. That's where they're the machines are dragging the timber. And then then

then then they're loading it on the semi trucks. So when that's done, what we did on those old loading decks was to clean it up. We stumped it and then cleaned up all all the leftover debris, burned every you know, burned the leftover debris, and then converted those into food plots. Um. That was a huge change for us because that gave us an actual smaller spield that maybe like a quarter acre or half acre to play

a food plot. Um. And then with a thinning and that allowed uh exposed sunlight, open the canopy up to get more sunlight UH on the ground, disturb the ground and get some natural growth um. And then combined with that, they also widened the road for us. They cut some trees along the roads, why the roads better. We did some did some roadwork. When you why the roads, especially in the South, it helps dry the roads out. It helps to you know, dry them out, the sun hits

it as not as muddy. UM. That was probably just the start of being involved with the forest to work. And then that next cut, which wasn't that far after, we ended up clear cutting uh two sections that were very close to each other that had some ice damage, and it was one of those where we could either just let that timber stand be um and it's not gonna produce as well as it should because there's some

ice damage, or clear cut it. At the time we knew the best option for our income to maximize income on the pond stand, but we were I was, I was not looking forward to a clear cut at all. And after they clear cut their sections right right in the middle of the property, they weren't all that big, probably two sections that may be equal to about fifty or sixty acres um. It just looked like a waste land.

I mean, it looked like a bomb went off. Um. But over the next couple of years being able to hunt around that clear cut afterwards planned with entrees hunting around it, and then when it thickened up to become just an incredible white tail betting thicket, which was what

pond thickets do. When when you really plan, that's when things really started to click with me as far as how we can manipulate the landscape to not only do the force you wore, but then also to better of the wildlife habitat and to better the hunt ability of the farm. M HM. So I read somewhere that you believe that timber management is now the single greatest tool you have in your goals towards growing mature bucks and

maintaining a healthy deer. Heard, can you can you expand a little bit on what you just just on what you just told me. They're about why you find this to be such a powerful tool. Yes, So you know the South is very heavy with with with tree farms, pond farms, and it's exactly what it's said. I mean, it's exactly what I what I said. I mean, it's you you have an inventory of trees that your crop and that's what you're growing for you know, thirty plus

years depending on the species. And you know a lot of people some people might not do much t aside timmerstand improvement. They might not do much work at all um on their farm. But some of the some of the things that you can do to blend there's a way that you can blend the forestry work to grow trees for income for a profit and then maintain a healthy wildlife habitat um. I've already mentioned t s I timberse and improvement, thinning. I've already mentioned I've already mentioned thinning.

When pine trees are the age of about fifteen or sixteen years UM, they are very much tight. The ground cover is gonna be bear. It's gonna be a layer of pine straw. There's really not much going on to it. But you can thin it about fifteen or sixty years. Once you thin that pine stand, you you open up the canopy, lower the basil area, which means more sunlight is getting in. Um. That sunlight hits the dirt and

you will disturb the native seed bank. Um. And what we've done the pind stands is actually thin it a second or a third time. So the more you thinning, the more open it gets. And when you incorporate prescribed fire, which I know can be it was definitely a Dalton cast for us to uh to do to do the first couple of times. But prescribe fire. What that what you're able to do for anyone that's not familiar with it.

It's with pine tree is very quickly you you end up with a thick carpet of pine straw and there's very little vegetation breaking through that carpet of pine straw. Do do do a prescribed fire? Burn it off and if it's done pretty clean, you'll you'll have pure exposed

dirt with exposed cannopy. Sunlight gets in there and you'll disturb that that native seed bank and you'll end up with just incredible amount depending on when you burn uh in the dormant season, you'll end up with a lot of um, a lot of grasses uh Ford's brows um. In our area it's American beauty berry, BlackBerry, h partridge p uh for turkeys, golden rod, um poke weed. All of that fords in in in in plants you're seeing being covered. Now, that's that's that's really making a big

push for that holistic land management. UM clear cuts. I thought and then a minute ago about about clear cutting sites, and I know that can be daunting, but if you if you try to, if your goal, your goal in my opinion, should be to avoid the monoculture on your

pine farm. And so what we've done after we have those two smallish clear cut sites was what I like to call is to checkerboard the property to where your clear cut maybe five and maybe fifty acre blocks anywhere from five fifty acres and you you try to just check our boards your property have have a diversity, so you have a pine thicket and after a clear cut, depending on the soil, those pine trees. You know, in the South we have a very very long growing season.

Our green up started in the February. It's been going crazy throughout March, and it goes all the ways to the first frost, which is about the first week in November. So our pine trees go very very quick leap in those clear cut replant sites will um thick en up for for for outstanding deer bedding and deer thinke. It's some falling cover and nesting cover for turkeys within about one to three years, depending on the soil, and then it'll last anywhere from six to ten years, again depending

on the soil. You know, the darker, low, lower lying soil, they'll probably thinker it's gonna get And when deer bed in there is absolutely killer hunting. And that's some of the some of my favorite hunting to do, especially early season in August and early September, when it's uh it's a hundred degrees outside during the day, but the coolest part of the day every day is at night, and so if you know where the deer are feeding at night,

in act field and maybe maybe a food plot system. UM. A lot of times what I like to do is to climb right on the edge of that young pine thicket and I'm a chirp pine stand that's been fend, it's been burned, so you know, you can get up as high as you want. And with that vegetation that's been disturbed in that native seed bank that's that you've burned.

Um Or if you had a thin and it grows up, that vegetation can grow by the fall anywhere from two to five ft tall, and deer will feel very comfortable slipping through their browsing and making their way back to their bedding site. UM. And so that you know, pine farms might have a stigma as far as being like a you know, a wildlife waste land, but if if you blend these management practices, it can absolutely be a wildlife haven in my opinion. So so with these clear

cuts that you're doing, the checkerboard clear cut. Am I right that you are contracting these clear cuts out to uh two loggers to do this commercially? Is that right? That's correct? Yes? And then so you contract that out they come, then they cleared out etcetera, etcetera. They make they do everything you subscribed. Do you do the replanting or do you have someone does somebody else come in

and replant them? And are you replanting just as wildlife openings at that point or are you replanting in rows for future harvest. So we would contract the actual timber sale UH for the clear cut, and then we had

been doing most of the chemical spray. So after it's cut, um, you know, let's say we're let's say we cut some time the spring or summer, we would go in UH late summer, early fall and spray it and and and just spray the ground just to kill off all the all the volunteer UH sprouts hardwood, sweet gums and then other volunteer pot other volunteer pountree just kill those off and then we would replant contract the work uh to be replanted pine trees the next dorm at growing season,

So January February of next year. Um, we I do have plans for our next timber sale. I'm going to clear cut a section and I'm gonna let it grow up wild. Um, just volunteer, just just just let it grow up wild. That was a suggestion that Joe Hamilton's had to us a couple of years ago when he first came to the farm, was you know, he was like he was looking at some of the areas where it was probably taken deer a little bit longer to get to as far as you know, defeat um, and

they wouldn't get those areas until after dark. So he just suggested clear cut it and then just let it grow wild and so and so by doing that, you're not growing pine trees. You know, you're not maximizing the timber production. But we're gonna let it grow wild. And then he said to not let us see its third birthday. So after three years, burn it or mow it down and just start over again. So keep sitting back, can keep it in that early successional stage. Exactly, yeah, exactly.

So yeah, so you've got the checkerboard of clear cuts that you're doing. You've got some thinning throughout the pine stands. Uh. Is there any other timber related projects that you guys have tried over the years. Have you dabbled in hinge cutting or or anything girdling, anything else like that, and how has any of that worked for you? We do a lot of girdling and a lot of hacket squirts, probably more hacket squarts. UM. Sweet gum trees or prevalent

down here. UM, and they you will fight sweet gums. I mean, we've been fighting sweet gums for a very long time. They sprout very quickly, they grow very quickly, and they offer really nothing for for wildlife. UM. I have done some hinge cutting, not not much. UM. I did a number of sections last summer and I really didn't see I did not notice. I haven't noticed much sign deer activity around them. UM. But at the same time as that, we have a lot of, in my opinion,

better betting sites. So you know, I don't know if I don't think they were choosing to use them, And maybe I wasn't. Maybe I didn't have the best locations. I'm not sure. UM. Other timber projects we do, something we've been doing for a number of years now is early successional disking light disking with a harrow UM. And that's something you can do down here any time from December till about March. And all you need is attract or a harrow or maybe you can even if you

can hook up a harrow too. A four wheeler or a TV, but you lightly disk the ground surface, just barely, just enough, just enough to disturb the soil. And it's very similar to a prescribed fire. You're disturbing that native seed bank. And as long as those areas get sunlight, you'll see those same native plants grow up that I mentioned before. We've done a lot of those in the timber where there's maybe a firebreak, Um, they get some sunlight, maybe some roads, uh, fallow fields. I mean, I would

implore everyone listening just to do that. I mean you can still do it now and go out and lightly di some areas that maybe you wouldn't touch with anything else, and just observe what happens to it, observe what grows up, what pops and then may and then pay attention to what's being eaten, what's being snapped off. Um. That's an excellent way of creating a border around at fields or in the food plots. If you don't have the means to plant, you're you're just adding diversity and uh and

switching things up, adding those edges. And I gotta believe that's almost always a win win. Absolutely, Yes, I wanna I want to go back to one more thing on the timber side of things. Um, because I'm going to make an assumption here for other people based on an experience I've had, which is that getting some of this larger scale timber work done it seems like, um, yeah, it's it seems like there's a number of hoops to go through to actually make it happen that many of

us maybe don't know how to go through. Um. For example, We've got a little family farm property up in northern Michigan, forty acres, a lot of timber on it, and and I know that we could benefit from getting some of these trees out of there and opening getting some openings, etcetera. We had a forester come out and take a look at things, and and he said, you know, this can go, this can go, this can go. It would be great

if you could get this out. But his concern was that it was too small a scale to likely get somebody out there willing to take the time to work on a project of that size. And so in the years since, I've kind of kind of taken a couple of different stabs of trying to get people to come out. But maybe I don't know what I'm doing, or maybe I was talking to around people, but I bring all that up to ask you, what has that process been like for you in contracting out work? You know, what

does that all entail? If somebody's listening and they want they want to see what opportunities they have to manage their timber, who do you talk to? How do you get that process started? What have you learned in the years since about how to do that better? How to work with a forrester or a logging or a logger or anyone like that. You know, what does that look like? What are some of the best practices. I would certainly

suggest anyone listening to connect with a forester. And you know, unless you unless someone has a background and forced you work, and it's not necessarily I mean, it's kind of like doing your taxes, you know. I mean, you could probably figure out how to do your tag XS and file if you wanted to. UM, there's ways you can figure it out and do it. But some people would rather just hire a c p A and have it done

the right way. Wise, because the c p A might be able to save you some money, maybe some tax res emptions. So you know, going with a professional, you may there very well could be some benefits to it. Um, So I would definitely say connect with a forster. And on top of that, they're gonna have connections to the timber buyers. They're gonna have connections to the local mills where um you know where the timbers going. You know that,

So there are some benefits there. But you also definitely want to want to connect with the with a forcer. You know, if you're listening to podcasts, you obviously or into hunting, So you want to find a forcer that that can they can blend and has a wildlife background of some sorts and it gets what your goals are, so you don't necessarily need to you know, get a force to do whatever he or she wants to do. Connect with them, set your goals, tell them what you

want to do, and prioritize things. If it's maximizing true production, then then you know that's what it needs to be. If you're trying to blend true true production in wildlife habitat, there's things you can do, um right now, it can be challenging to get a timber contract uh sign and then get the crew on site there. There there are so much I was reading something of a day I mean there are decades of of of of trees on the stump, a decade's worth a supply of trees on

the stump that are ready to be cut. There's actually an article in the Wall Street Journal about this, I think maybe last year in about uh the amount of people, most in the Southeast that we're planning pine trees back in the eighties, in the early nineties as a nest egg, as a retirement, and a lot of those are coming

up for fist. And we had a lot of mills and a lot of timber mills and in our area of the state and Georgia that closed down during the recession, during the Great Recession, um, you know, two thousand nine twelve area range. So when those mills closed, we're less We're left with fewer places for our timber to go, and so there's there's basically a lot of supply inventory

on the stump right now. So I say this, um because if you have a smaller property or even like even like our property, we're not looking to clear cut large sections. We're looking to clear cut smaller sections, which that might not be If you want to clear cut fifty acres, that might not be attractive for a timber buyer.

But if you can lump in maybe a thin maybe maybe you do a third thinning on a pine stand and then you tie in um a clear cut site that might be attractive form or I recently I had a conversation about the power of co ops, the power of wildlife co ops UM. And you know, we all know the value of that talking with your neighbor as far as deer management, UM, what they're seeing and what you're shooting. But another benefit of that is is is timberwork.

You're not gonna lump every everything together on one contract, but you can absolutely pull your properties together and you know, approach you know, have your forester or approach a timber buyer with it and saying, you know, we've got properties A, B, and C that we like to lump all altogether. And that's much much more trapptive for the timber crew to be able to move into one general area and to post up and to cut because it costs them so much money, uh to move the machines around and the

equipment from property to property. Yeah, that's a great idea. Uh. So let's say we've we've tried thinning we've done clear hunting, We've done a number of these different timber things. As you've done it sounds like one of the next steps you had was adding prescribed fire to the mix, burning out that understory, underneath those thinned you know pine stands. Um. What have you learned over the years about that? What's worked best when it comes to fire? What are you

really achieving with that too? With fire? I think what what works best, what's work for us is to carve the property up in the sections. We carve it up each track at about three sections, and we burn one section every year, and so each section is being burned once every three years. Um. There's no plan, one management plan that's gonna fit every property. You need to just like everything else, after you burn up, observe what what happens, observe what grows, what comes up, and what the deer

or actually eating. Um. We found the burning a section once every three years is is adequate to produce uh just killer forge. And then also it will still leave places thick think briar patches for betting, um. And so even my burning and somebody think you know brambles and briars and those are excellent betting sites. And then and then when you can buy that with the pine think

it's we've got plenty of betting um. You know me personally, if I had to make a decision, if for some reason I had to make a decision on whether or not I could plant the best food plot seed every year or to burn every year, and I can only choose one option, I would I would burn every year as opposed to planning food blots. I still like food blots. But as far as the bank for the buck, there's no question what you get um and the and the

diversity that you get from bresh sky fire. So a lot of the bucks killed, I mean, the majority of them is gonna be in the pine stands. The heaven

burnt been burnt. And I'm climbing right on the edge of that pot ticket and so they're either going there, they're going back to bed, or they're coming out of bed um and they hit that next block of a thin pine stand that has like I said, two to two to five feet tall vegetation and brows, and they're gonna mel through there and they're gonna mil their way back at first light to go bed, or they're gonna step out and kind of mil through there and take

their time and feed and brows and make make sign and whatnot until they get to that destination food plot. That's an acre to why that they really don't want to step out until dark because they know what's there. Am I right? That you need to get the timing right on when you would do a burn like that to achieve that kind of natural food plot transition zone in a stand of pines like that, Like when when are you doing that burn? How are you doing that burn to achieve that two to five ft of of

kind of attractive growth while still in the pines. Um, you're looking at anywhere in the dormant season, starting in January January to to about March. As when prob most people do it. We usually run into a situation where a lot of our land is very wet. Uh And in January, sometimes February it's just cold as wet. It's a little too wet to burn. Um. But you know, I had a conversation with Dr Marcus Lashley with the University of Florida. He's he's like to go to prescribed

fire biologists. Um. You know, I had a long conversation with him and you know, burning this time of year January through March, you're gonna get out a lot of grasses. And but that foliage, those that forward is gonna dear like that young, tender, succulent uh sprouts, like when they eat briars or when they eat the you know, Devil's walking stick, which I don't know if you'll have that up uh in Michigan or not, but it's it's very thick.

I mean, they're not eating it when it's mature. They're eating the youngs, the young sprouts, you know, the briars and everything else poison ivy. And so if you burn, let's say in February, a lot of that is gonna be a little too. They're not gonna hit it in the summer. So what Dr Lashley was saying was it you should really burn if you want that excellent uh forged throughout the summer, which for us is the stress period. You know. I was you might be around snow right now.

I was talking to someone in New York snow and today. That's yeah, that's just crazy. I mean I was talking to a guy in New York state on Friday. He's dealing with snow. I mean, we we had snows dick January of eighteen and then we had snowstick. I think so um, so like our stressful period is not the winner now it certainly is. But our stressful period for for for white tails is the summer. Yeah, it's nine needs a hundred degrees of course, a little bit cool

in the shade, but there's extreme heat. We could be there could be a drought. Um, there's a high level of insects, bugs, and then you get with the heat, um, you get the stress and in the in the demands of the antler production, which there's much stress on the body for the bucks to grow those antlers every single year. And then you have the lactation, you know, the final stages of the dough, the mother do's gestation period and then she's got to produce that quality milk. So um,

he was gone, I'm bra and blame. But doctor Lasha was saying, to to meet those summer demands, you really ought to burn late spring and you know late spring and then you have those that fresh, tender, succulent uh sprouts from all these plants growing back throughout the summer and late summer early fall. To to meet these demands, if you were to burn excuse me, late summer, early fall, you would get a lot more hardwoods, um, a lot

more forbes to grow, if I had that right. We have never done a late summer, early or early fall burn. I would like to just to be able to have an experiment to see what happens. But for us, as you usually it's just timing. It's extremely hot and that's another animal in itself to burn that time of year. Um. And we're also usually gearing up for deer season at that point. But to change your questions, you do produce different results on burning in the dormant season or the

growing season. You bring up an interesting, an interesting point, which is you know how your main stress period that you're trying to prepare for is the summer compared to maybe up here where it's late winter. Right. Um, I'm curious. You must hear from a lot of people, whether you're listening to podcasts or reading articles or books or anything like that about land management, habitat imperment that's coming from

a Northerners perspective or the Midwest. Um, I gotta believe a lot of things like what you just mentioned simply are different than what you're dealing with down there in the southeast. Is there anything else that really stands out to you? Is is something that you're dealing with or that you have to do differently, that's that's dramatically counter to the conventional wisdom coming out of the Midwest or some of these other places. From a habitat management perspective, UM, yeah,

a little bit. I can probably rattle off a couple of dozen ways how we're different than like Iowa, for instance. UM, I would say, you know, once some some top level points would be one I've already mentioned it, but our growing season as much much longer, um. And a lot of times in the Southeast, if you look at it, if you look at it at a an aerial map, it's just gonna be one massive green block. Um. You're

not necessarily gonna see distinctive land features. You're not going to say, oh, well, that's a funnel, that's a pitch point, that's probably where they're betting, that's where they're feeding. It's very very You really need boots on the ground to be able to look to see because you'll see if you'll see green pine trees, but you don't know, he might not know really what it looks like. Are they betting in there? Is it just is it just too open.

So it can be a little challenging to figure out how the deer are using your property in the South, because they can bed everywhere. Betting is something that is significantly different when when when people talk about you know, finding but buck beds and hunting but buck beds, that's not really, in my opinion, something in the Southeast unless

you've got a very unique property. Um, when I talk about deer bedding, I'm really referring to deer bedding into where it's you know those bucks, you know, and there are some areas where bucks tend to bed, but it's usually like a general area, um, like a you know, a young thicket maybe five or fifty acres where they're betting somewhere in there. Or it could be in a swamp. We have, you know, some swamp systems where they bed. But it can be because it's just so thick in

most places. Um, when you burn her and I mentioned before, you'll you'll generate a lot of a lot of thickets the deer eat, but they also bed in them. So when you're laying out out your property and looking at the design as far as access, Where do you want your stand? Where do you want to hunt? You know, of course we have the permanent stands, but I traditionally hunt mobally um And that was another turning point for

me when I started to do that more. But when I'm hunting myself or if I'm putting out a guest or trying to figure out where they're gonna hunt, I look at more so of like where is their scent going? How are they walking in? Like where are they parking, how are they getting their spot, how they walking in, and where their scent is blowing. Because with the Southeast being so dense and being a very high deer density, and and that's something else, another difference than like the Midwest,

we typically have a higher deer density. So there's deer everywhere and they're betting everywhere. So when you go to hunt, you're gonna educate deer, You're gonna spook deer. Um, You're gonna educate dear that you didn't even know was there. But that's another major factor as far as it thinking about your access. And it's not so much you know, hunting pressure like pulling the trigger, but just simply going into the woods and walk at I look at more.

I think more about like leaving it dark, when you're walking into eye before sunrise a dark or you're leaving a dark they're just You're all around you. You might not see them or hear them, but they're but they're watching you and paying attention to you. UM. So it's it's just a lot to um, it's a lot to you know, try to put together. Do you does does that factor into any of your land projects at all?

Just that challenge of you know, dear in much of the southeast, being able to live anywhere, being able to bet anywhere? Do you ever try to strategically plan where you want some of these cuts or where you don't want some of these cuts to allow for any kind of safe place for you to access or et ceter anything like that. Or is it just a loss? Cause I know it's not. I that's a that's an excellent point you made, And I and I can give you

a real example that we're doing right now. UM. We got a track that um the last owner was a timber company and before they sold it, they cut the majority of the pine trees, most of them at least, and they cut it years before they sold it in. It was just left to grow up wild those clear cut sections, so they were it was pretty thick sections growing up, I mean, just to make a volunteer pine

trees and hard woods and everything else. Um. But we were left in the kind of a transition time where it was if you let an air grow up in the southeast wild, you're gonna get a lot of hard woods. It is, it's gonna be mixed. But you either have to just let it, let it roll for a lot longer periods for the for that for that for that growth to become timber, to become merchant noble commercial timber that someone would want to buy for pulp wood or salt timber um or poll saw, and that's gonna take

a lot longer. Or do you just bite the bullet and clear and clear cut it. But we were at a stage where it wasn't worth anything. I mean, we were trying to get a fuel chipper in there too, you know, mulch the material for field chips, which there is a market for that, but there's just not many fuel chip crews out there, and we end up just having to get a crew just to simply mulch it down very rough, um, basically push it over, molst down the stumps. I mean, these are trees that weren't even

considered pulp would um. And then we've already gone in those areas to to to to replant. We've already planted pine trees and I we were sitting on that project for many years, so we just didn't know how to attack it. Um. But what I'm looking forward to doing is that's very close, pretty much, very flush to a creek swamp um that I like to hunt. And if anyone follows some of my content like on Instagram, I post a lot of UM, I've got some I've got some trail cameras down the swamp and I keep it

on video mode, which yeah, I will thank you. And so that's UM. There's a number of bucks that bed down line swamp every single year. I mean, I'll get a number of mature bucks down there. But it's been a very to say the least. I mean, you can also look at my Instagram feed and tell us a challenge to kill them. It's a challenge to harvest on because they're in the swamp that has a it's fairly

you know narrow. It it's just not you know, it's it's not incredibly wide, but there's a fifteen to twenty ft drop off on both sides that that you know, dropped down to it. So the third moles are crazy, uh to hunt in the swamp. And then you have the fact that it is a flowing creek, so you do have the wind currents through their long story short, it's extremely hard. It's been hard for me. Maybe not hard for you to come. You can probably roll one

and kill them all. But but in what I'm describing that area is like if you were to see a deer to harvest, it's gonna either be on a road or a firebreak that we've created, or a food plot. Because most of the timber wasn't old enough to really open up and thin and to be able to climb over it and be able to burn over Some of

it was and it wasn't. So by clear cutting that section, we we have now opened it up and it's gonna be I think, very very good for the next couple of years to hunt those hunt those edges, dear love edges ums. We're gonna get a lot more sunlight, a lot of native you know, veget asian growing, and then in a couple of years it's going to be good to hunt over a clear cut, especially the first couple of years when it's not quite uh warm season bedding.

It's not quite tall enough and shade enough for deer to bed in when it's hot, but it'll be good cold season betting for them to go out in bed during the cold weather and be in the sun. Mhm, man, there's there's a lot of different factors that player aren't there keep you keep you busy for a very long time.

Something I really like about this We've talked for an hour and we have almost not touched on food plots one time, which is just kind of rare and the land management conversations, so many people want to want to jump to food plots like that's that's just like the sexy kind of topic in the land world. That's that's seemingly the one that delivers the most results right out the gate. Some people assume it's the easiest, but many

times it's not. Um. Nonetheless, food plots are a part of what you guys do though too, righte Um, what what does your food plot kind of practice look like on this property? Now? I know you mentioned in the beginning you had some struggles with not having enough open space. You mentioned how they're open up those logging pads. You're

expanding those little kind of hidy hole food plots. But now you know, almost twenty years later, how do food plots fit into this overarching strategy you guys have now to to work in the land. What we've done, um, for a number of years now, we have maintained some most smaller food plots might be a quarter or like a half acre, and those are more of kill sites, um, you know where where it's not it's like kill sites.

It might sound barbaric, but it the idea behind that term, in my opinion is or from my understanding I should say, is that it's not enough acres to you're not really you're not feeding the deer as far as nutrition. Um, I mean, they're not really getting much out of the nutrition side. You're just attracting them in to be able to you know, harvest them. We still maintain those, but what we've increased the size of our main food plots.

There was there's a nice uh, it was a formal it was always had had always been used by the farmer um kind of center of our property. UM, there was a series of of of agg fields that they've been the farmer has been slowly uh turning those over to us. It's it's um. It's a lot it's very dark soil, which is great, but it stays wet when he's going in and in the plant. This time mean they're gonna start planning pretty soon, so a lot of time those fields are are a little too wet when

they get a plant. UM and then some of the other acts, some other food plots. We've expanded the size. So by expanding the size, we have met the demand of our dear density. Because if you plan, if you're in a relatively high deer density, which might be over if it's over I think like the somewhat the normal

averages maybe per squad per square mile. If you're over fifty five going towards a square mile, any plant food plots, you you need some size to it because if not, the deer are just gonna wipe it out very very very quickly, depending on what you plant. UM. So a lot of our feet food plots we have expanded the size, and UM we're gonna try a mix this year. A warm season mix to see if we have some better results.

We've had some problems for a while of keeping the deer out of soybean so that they can become browsed tolerant. You know some of the forge beings that you can buy now nowadays that grow very viny and grow very tall. They need to get about knee higher or maybe about thigh high to become somewhat browsed tolerant, which means the

deer can sniff them off and they'll grow back. But if they go in there and hammer them when they're sprouting, you know, under a foot, they're gonna they won't kill the plant probably, but it's gonna it's gonna be stunted, and it's gonna grow wider, but it's not gonna really grow tall, and it's not gonna fill out. So we use some various management practices to really keep the deer at bay for a couple of weeks before those you know, whether it's sun hemp or soybeans to grow and to

become browsed tolerant. But over the of course, maybe about five years, the deer have really you know, just like everything else. Uh, you can educate deer and they realize as tactics of roping off the food plot or using my lower nite uh fertilizer um or using even human scent. I mean, we would take dryer sheets and put them around the around the rope of the fire, around the rope on the food plots, just try to keep in bay and then to take it down once the food

plot was established. Um So in what I see every year is that if if if our farmers, if our farmer on our property or the surrounding farmers, if they plant cotton, for instance, the deer are gonna hammer our warm season food plots much more than if they plant peanuts, soybeans or corn, because those will be established first before our food plots probably and they'll feed on those, and that will help deter some of the pressure on our

food plots. Um But food plots or in my opinion, and absolutely it's a key if you can do it for diversity, it's all but diversity. I mean, I know I talked about a minute or a while ago about if I have if I had to had to make a choice between scuy fire or planning food plots, that a new scup fire. However, food plots give you that diversity and food plots allow me to be able to have success in those burn sites because they're going to

those food plots. And that's why, Like I'll sit on food plots early season, you know, when they're fresh and deer r and used to hunters yet, or I'll sit on a very very late season. But the way I hunt food plots during the during the mead the season

is really nowhere near m um. I'll use a destination food plot or maybe that food plot system hub that we have in a property, which if anyone is looking at if they can design their property or there may be looking at doing a clear cut site, maybe maybe clear cutting on the somewhat centered when your property and then converting that site to to you know, food plots. Stump it converted the food plots. You have a hub on your proper, it's centered and sure you can hunt

on it, you know in the evenings. But I exploit those food plots as destinations by you know, you gotta think, well, how many deer are using those food plots or agg fields at night. It's probably the majority deer in that air or within that food plot area throughout the night, you know, Dear White tails are very social animals, whether they're feeding or just making sign whatever they're doing the

very social. So a lot of my morning hunts will be planned of, you know, being outside of a pine thick or a thick and knowing that they bet in there and that they're going to that destination food plot. I could be a couple of thousand yards or maybe a quarter mile away, but I'll cut them off going to or from that food plot. So that's how you know I used the food plots a lot. Hunters really just I don't want to sit on them, but I you know, catch them, hunt them going to and from.

You mentioned um sun help, and that's something I have zero experience with, but I but I've seen it kind of popping up more and more over recent years, especially down south. Can you can you film me in on how you're using sun hemp um what your experience has been with that so far? Yes, So sunhamp is a fairly new on the food plot deer management scene. I think I first came on the scene as far as

um cattle like like cows. It's originally from India. It's a lagoon um and you have to it's really it thrives in the south because you have to you you really need to be I think in a much lower it's a it's it's a subtropical lagoon. Um. And it's I think it's I think that either either Dr Craig Harper or maybe the India did a study on it's. It's it's about thirty crew protein which is getting up there. What soy beans. Um. It can grow anywhere from four

to eight feet tall and grow very thick. I mean grow about an inch a day. It grows very quickly. Uh. It's excellent for cover crop if you want. That's how a lot of farmers were originally using it as a cover crop. Um. It's it. It's it doesn't drain on your soil like like corn. For for instance, we don't plant much corn. Corn is very demanding on your soil. Uh. It's strips of nutrients. UM. Sun him. It's actually a

soul builder's loaded with nitrogen. You just you know, mow it down after it's dead in the season, let it decompose back until the back to the soil. Uh. Dear love the young leaves on the plants. Um, it's tender and they'll eat the and they'll eat the the main stem too. At a certain point, after it gets a little tall, maybe five six ft tall, the stems do

become a little fibrous and they won't eat it. Um. But they'll eat the new leaves in the in the But the best parts about it is it is that you can cut it, you can bushog it, you can hit it with a bushog and it'll grow back. It'll sprout back, um as long as you know, as long as you're still in my growing seasons. So for us,

for us, it's all the way to the first of November. Um. So I like to plant a whole field of it and then just most shooting lanes or use it for um, you know, a border or not your fruit plot, especially if you have somewhere of a of a low a low growing plant in your food plant, plant that around your border. It's very thick, very dense as lady with protein. M Yeah, I love having those those screening elements to just provide that extra safety around a feeding area like that.

That's just so so useful, uh. Mark. I want to want to pivot a little bit, um. I heard about timber fire food. I want to talk a little bit about the future of this of this place, UM, because I think a lot of times when it comes to land management and owning land or working land, I think, I think the idea of legacy starts to creep in. I think for a lot of us, UM. And when you look at the future of this place, you've put so much time into so much energy, so many of

your hopes and dreams. What do you what do you envision for the future. What do you hope for the future? UM? What do you think that looks like? What I hope of the future is a weekend UM. And this is something that we're working on now, is developing a forest forestry management plan to be able to maintain the farm for the next generation. UM. And you know, that's something that my father is talking about many times to me. He's a retired c p A and he sold a

lot in his career. He had a lot of clients that owned land. UM owned farms or september tracks like this, or hunting ground. And he always told me that a lot of times, UH, land or real estate just does does not survive the grandkids. You know, it'll it'll transfer down to the kids and they'll get along. But when

it gets down to the grandkids. A lot of times at that point you'll have some differences of opinions or uses or everyone's not going to use in the property, and it's hard for the farm to stay, you know, without people wanting to sell it. So the plan, this is something that we we we've been working on and I've been trying to take over more with forest. Your work is to have a true uh force management plan.

And this this this cann ties right back into you know, diversifying your land and constantly be cutting in in you know, so so you have avoid that monoculture. But you know, if someone has marsonable timber on their property, they should really again connect with a forest or someone in the know to be able to come up with a standing inventory value of your marshonable timber, whether it's pine trees

or hardwoods. Well, you know, if there's a plan to sell it one day, you should have a rough estimate about the current value of your inventory um of your timber crop and then project out, um what you what you should be getting for it when you got to sell, you know, five years down the yroad, ten years, and then sort of map out you know, five years from now, what are we gonna clear, god, were we can of thing how much it would be selling at that point, and then you start to kind of develop a plan

to where you've you're you're projecting out the future income to be able to cover the cost of opera, owning

and operating the farm. Um. And that's something we are working on now to try to maintain that, keep the farm in the family, and then also do everything we can to be better land stewards, to be better conservationist because I mean, every everything what we're talking about today, Mark is about you know, being a good land steward and being a good conservation So I mean, you know, a lot of what we do is to kill big jacky in bucks, but there's more to it than that.

I mean, I'm when the projects I'm doing now is kind of you know, ongoing long you know, long game projects will be the continue to work on Bob White Quail. We do have many several covees wild covers in the

property and then also the Eastern wild turkey. Um. I mean as far as legacy, I would love to be able to build the property up with a healthy turkey population because right now, I mean it's it's you know, it's not headline news right now, but the Eastern Wild Turkey, the population has been dwindling for a well of a decade. And it's not something that's gonna get better over night. That's gonna the change is going to come from landowners,

at least in the southeast. And that's you know, it's not that not the works not being done on public land. But when I say that is just because most of the Southeast is private land, um, and so um, you know, if that's that's something with the legacy, I would love how would love to change? Yeah? Now, speaking of speaking of private land legacy opportunities, another thing that I understand you guys have done is placed a significant portion of

the property into a conservation easeman. Is that is that right? Did you guys do that? And can you can you describe to me you know for others maybe that aren't familiar with what that means and why you guys decided to do that. Yeah, So a conservation easement um is something that um, if it was interested, I would definitely suggest you talk with your uh accountant, your CPA or

maybe attorney about it. But it basically you're putting a section or property your whole property or section of it into a conservation easement to where no one you the current owner or any you know, owners down the road can can develop it. They can't carve off a home site by the highway and sell it, or they can't put multiple houses. There are some different things that you can put on the property, you know, like a skinning shed or a tractor shed, stuff like that, but it's

protecting it from being developed. Um. And there there are tax benefits from it. You do get a very a very very nice tax bright from it. So a lot of people are doing that. We're actually looking at something that had relatively recently has been on my radar as far as carbon credits. Um. You know, wetland credits have been you know, wetland metigrace, wetland mitigation credits have been something for a long time now. But carbon credits are at least somewhat need to me and we we'll be

diving in that pretty soon. Um. And that's tied into not cutting trees. I'm not I can't really speak on that. That's something that we are going to look into. The So the idea with that credit me if I'm wrong, but that would be basically getting financial incentives to keep trees on the ground. Uh, And people essentially incentivize you pay you to do that as as a way to offset carbon that they're using in some other way, and you're keeping carbon in there by not cutting the trees

in certain places. That's that's the idea of carbon credits, right, Yeah, that's my that's my understanding, and I you know it makes sense. But at the same time, as you know, we're there's certain stands where we're not gonna cut I mean, we know when we're not gonna cut and we're not gonna cut them before ten years. Let's say, are five years. So but that's just something we got to dive into.

But yeah, it's something to it's yeah, it's interesting. Now back to the conservation Easeman, why did you guys, I mean I can make ansumptions, but why did you guys decide that was something you wanted to do, Because I know that's no small decision saying that, you know, okay, we are not going to develop this, We're not gonna you know, parcel it off. This is this is going to be protected in perpetuity as a somewhat intact piece of undeveloped um habitat from here on out? What was

what was that decision making process like for you? In the family, it was mostly my father at the time, but he you know, he wanted to protect the farm. Uh, you know, he um, my father has spent a lot of time, especially after he retired, and he put a

lot of heart and soul on the property. And so I think for him it was probably too secure it for the next generation and you know, to uh try to you know, secure our legacy on on the land so that we're not you know, it doesn't you know, end up becoming um, you know, something else being developed. I mean, it's just protecting everything that we're putting into it's for next property owner. I mean, it's that's something

that can be a little different to think about. You know, when if you if you you know, I mean, I know what it's like when you lease land and you're putting management or you're doing some work into a lease land if you're a hunting claud because you don't know, you know, if you're if if you're least at land, it's probably whether it's written or verbal, probably a twelve

month deal, so you don't know what you're doing. I mean, you're passing up on bucks, letting, bucks, walk, shooting, does maybe doing some habitat like working on a low level. But you don't know if things are gonna change for the next calendar year. Um. But for you know, for but but for private land, it's just something to I think protect and just secure that everything we're doing will remain in the land for the next owner. Yeah. So you've got a couple of young kids yourself. What's what's

all this? How how has that changed things for you if at all when you look at the work you're doing, when you look at the future of this place. Uh, how his how his kids factored into how you approach land management and any of this kind of stuff now, um a lot tremendously. Um, I mean I can. It's it's funny, you know, thinking back about you know, years ago, listening to your podcast when y'all were expecting and before you had kids and afric kids, it's you know, very similar.

I mean, you know I had mentioned before but about some hunters picking and shoes and when they hunt. I mean, you know, even when I was married before kids, unless we had some kind of social engagement, I could hunt when I wanted to. So now it's it's you know, picking and choosing the best times to to you know, between work and family. Um, to go up there a year round to hunt or do habits at work. Um. The hunting aspect, you know. I have brought my kids a couple of times to hunt, um, but not with

you know, a firearm. I haven't shot a firearm around them there two and five, so not quite old enough I think to be around them yet pretty soon. Um. We've sat out the stand a couple of times, just without a gun or or a bow. Um. But this time of year is a good time to bring the kids. I I've been bringing both of them for a couple

of years now to shed hunt, look for andlers. Um. And that's a that's that's the prime time when I do most of my scouting is looking for sheds before that green up because you can really see you can see much so much so much more of the land. How do you're using it? But yeah, some of the habitat work, I'm able to bring the kids up and and and um and and and and do some of

the stuff with so it's um. Um, It's caused me to do a lot of work from home as far as planning, you know, planning out and maybe um um, you know, delegating some of the world to other people they can do it, whether it's my my father that's now retired or one of my brothers to be able

to to be able to do it. But you know, to answer your question very quickly, would probably be it caused me to be more focused on time management because you know that's work in the back forty that you spend half the time when you go to your farm fixing stuff, looking for stuff. You go there and you know, between the farmhouse and the tractor shed, you know, things getting moved around, things don't get put back where they were.

You're looking for things. Things break, Um, I mean we we we went up in February to do a control burn and we had the weather conditions where we had to burn permit. Everything aligned, and then our tractor broke down and we spent the better part of the day fixing it was some kind of wire that shorted underneath.

But we couldn't burn, and that was a that was that was a heartbreaker because we because it was a bus for the day and that time a year, that really couldn't with with the tratter down, we couldn't do much else. But if we were to burn without a tractor with a harrow in the back, if that fire got loose or across the cut firebreak, there could be some problems. So it's just um, and and that goes back to what I said earlier, is just to take

things slow. Um, we didn't know, really, we didn't know what we were doing at the beginning, so we had to take things slow. I mean, I think I told you we did take things slow, but we had to because we didn't know what we were doing. You know, it was a big learning curve. And so um, there's

nothing wrong. Would take it thing slow, you know, um breathe, Let let the property develop on us own, and then over that time period, you'll you'll learn how dear you use the landscape, how they use it, what kind of dear density have, and then you'll be able to manipulate

the land based on what the wildlife needs. If you if you had a little piece of paper, like like the little piece of paper that you find inside of a fortune cookie, and if you could write something on that little piece of paper, stuff it into a fortune cookie and give it to yourself back in two thousand and six when you and the family were gonna begin this land management project. What message do you wish you could have wroteen on that little piece of paper to

read back? Then, m hm, that's a that's a good question. Are I would? It could be a longer piece of paper if you want, Um, I would probably One thing would just be don't sweat small stuff. This will be a lot of failures, whether it's you're trying to work the land or hunting failures. And you know, wildlife is

a renewable resource. And I'm not saying that lightly for white tails and turkey and quail everything else, but it's a renewable resource, and just take your time with it, um, and just don't sweat the small stuff because there's gonna be a lot of failures. But that's that's how you learn. Um, that's how you get to become a better hunter. And then too, um I would. I thought about this this second point many times. Is I look back on some land features, like like pine thickets that we had some new,

you know, new thick. It's that we're planting poun trees that were good, tight, you know thick, nasty betting sites that I did not exploit. I did not hunt. I was focused on other other spots and just not let those I mean hunt the areas, hunt those areas and don't you know, don't, don't don't just let those grow up. And because you know some of those pine thinks you you have a window to hunt them. Um. And at

a certain point they do, you're stop betting at them. Um. But um, I would if I could do things over again, I would probably say to get off and hunt mobile a lot. I should have done that a lot of a lot quicker, a lot quicker. That was a turning point for me as a hunter. I think probably I can look back on pinpoint that when that changed. Yeah, I've certainly had similar experiences too. Well, Mark uh, I

really enjoyed this. It's it's it's always it's always a kick for me just to get to hear about these different places in different ways. People are doing this and having fun and learning about the land and figuring out how to hunt and improve their spots. And your story down there in South Carolina is a perfect example that. So where where can people go if they want to learn more about what you're doing? I know you've got

a website and some different things. Is there anything that you point folks to if they want to follow along more with what you're up to. Yes, Um, they can follow me. They can find me on Instagram. It's at Mark Haslam um my Instagram has really it's it's been.

It's pretty much just been. I've been showcasing what I've been doing the farm and hunting stuff habits at work for a number of years now, and uh, because I was and then you know, I about a year ago, the beginning of last year twenty one, I've I've been sitting on the idea for a while, but I finally

launched a website, Southeast whitetail dot com. Um, just a just to show showcase what I'm doing at the farm and and and I think, right I wanted to highlight some of the stuff in the Southeast because I think just so much the hunting content out there is driven a lot towards the Midwest, and some of that stuff, you know, we could definitely use down here, but a lot of it we can, and a lot of it

is just it. It's you know, it's We've got a different different terrain and different deer herds and so I wanted to really showcase, you know what what I'm doing in UM so that's where people can find me. Awesome. Well, I would definitely recommend people check that out. And Mark, thank you for your time. It's fun. Well, thanks for having me on Mark. I appreciate it. Let's talking with me. Let's do it again soon. Sounds great. Thank you Okay, and that is it. Thanks AELF for tuning in. I

appreciate it. It's been a fun chat. I'm I've been just taking a little bit of time peering back behind the house watching turkeys strutting around. So it's spring. It's a great time a year to be out there working the land, working food plots, hanging stands, or like I mentioned, turkey hunting. So I hope you're out there and having a good time. Thanks for tuning in, and until next time, stay wired.