Ep. 631: Creating an Elite Whitetail Hunting Experience with Bobby Kendall and Toby Stay

hunting properties. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light. Today we are continuing our Habitat Month series and we've got two really interesting guests. We've got a set of ideas, concepts, and philosophies that I think are very next level. We get into the nitty gritty on some stuff that I think the real white tail habitat crazy is out there that are listening right now like me, are going to find really interesting.

My guests today are Bobby Kendall and Toby Stay of the White Tail Group, So two guys who are absolutely addicted to taking white tail properties to the next level and their own hunting to that level too, and they've done it not just for themselves, but on a wider scale for other people through their company, the White Tail Group. The white Tail Group does a number of things. They provide land consultations, They've got a logging division that focuses

on conducting logging projects with a white tail focus. They build a bunch of different products for hunting, their own tree koise, box, blind stuff like that. But most notably, they buy and sell developed farms. And it's this last part that caught my attention. Over on their YouTube channel

where they showcase all this stuff. Over there, you can follow their projects as they buy these raw pieces of ground and then transform them over the course of months, sometimes years, into what they call elite white tail hunting experiences. And in watching these videos, I've been able to witness, you know, Bobby and Toby's extreme attention to detail, and I think I think it's fair to say are a pretty outside the box approach in many cases to building,

manipulating and improving white tail habitat. They're they're really building true white tail Mecca's absolute dream scenarios, and they're sharing a lot of the ideas that they're using to create these places. Um, which is why I found their video series, very very interesting, and why it seemed like they would be the perfect guests to join us here for another

installment during our habitat month. Now, I will say, um, I think it's probably fair to say the approach the Bobby and Toby you in their land work might not be for everyone. It's probably not going to be for everyone. There's there's a level here of manipulation and influencing of deer movement through some of their projects that is definitely

more extreme than most. Uh. It's it's quite effective, it seems, but it's probably or possibly going to seem like too much to some people, not to mention, you know, very time and resource intensive as well. So this this stuff might not be for everyone, and there might be some people who hear this and say, oh, this is this is too much, this is too heavy handed. You're forcing the deer to do things, um that are outside of

the natural, and that's fair feedback. I guess I don't have a position on it that I'm going to put out here right now. I think I have um a level of intrigue in the ideas that they're presenting, and I will leave it up to all of you to decide whether or not it's appropriate for the hunting experience or the goals that you have. So whether you want to follow Bobby and Toby's prescriptions to a t or just borrow a few small ideas here and there and you know, disregard the rest um. I do think there's

something we can learn today. And I guess that ties into something that these guys focus on, which is this group part of the white Tail group name and what it alludes to, you know, according to Bobby, is the fact that you know, they've been trying to develop a crew that wants to pull an idea from all sorts of different people, you know, and talking to Bobby prior to our conversation, he emphasized the fact that, you know, there's no one right way to do this, there's no

single way you have to do this, uh, And that's why they've pulled in a lot of different people to partner with, to work on projects with, to consult with, folks like Lelakowski, Ben Rising, Mark Luster uh and a number of other folks. And I think it shows in the diverse approaches and ideas that they bring to the table for you know, land improvement and hunting. So I guess that's all to say. I think today's episode is is a banger. I mean, I think it's really interesting.

If you are a white tail habitat junkie, this one is for you. This is this is an advanced conversation. We go into some realty nitt nitty gritty details, some different kind of concepts with a with a strong eye towards this very strategic, highly planned set of improvements that can create high odds hunting scenarios. So we're talking strategic,

you know, very strategic food plot designs and setups. We're talking next level access ideas, some really unique approaches to creating betting areas that are specifically designed for hunting opportunities, and and much much more. So, give this one a listen. Filter it through. What seems appropriate in your scenario, what seems realistic in your scenario. Take some ideas, leave some ideas, find what's right, but learn something that's my wish for

you today, and I think you certainly will. So, without further ado, let's get to my conversation with Bobby Kendall and Toby Stay all right here with me now on the line. I've got Bobby Kendall and Toby stay, gentlemen, thank you so much for making time to do this. Thanks. I'm looking I've been looking forward to this since. Man, it would have been this past October or November. I started thinking, Man, I gotta get these guys on the show.

I had been sitting in the tree watching over some food plots of mine hunting and thinking to myself, I want to do this thing. I really gotta tweaked this thing next year. I gotta tweak this other thing, you know, this coming winter. I was thinking through all the different ideas like we do during hunting season. And I don't know, I can't remember the exact moment, but somewhere along the

way I was triggered. I remembered a YouTube thumbnail I saw from you guys at some point, and I remember thinking, I gotta go watch that video. I remember seeing it and thinking about it, like I gotta watch that. And then when I was hunting, I said, Okay, I gotta I gotta do it. And that night remember laying in bed and I just went down the White Tail Group wormhole. I mean I just watched everything, kept watching and watching

it and watching. And then the next night and I remember in my rut my first week of rutcation in November, I remember watching some stuff and then listening to a conversation that Bobby You had with maybe Ben Rising on one of his shows, and I just went really deep into the Bobby and toil Be wormhole. I got to thinking,

all right, it's time we gotta have this conversation. So this has been a long time coming, and you guys are part of what's basically our our month of deep dives into habitat here in the podcast, everybody this month is focused on how to improve habitat for white tails and for hunting um. And you guys do that like a lot of people, but I feel like you've got

a little bit different angle than many folks do. And I'm curious about something you guys have written right across the top of your website, and it's something you talk a lot about and you mentioned within the introduction to a lot of your videos and different stuff like that, And that's the fact that you guys are trying to develop the elite white tail hunting experience. You developed farms

for the elite white tail hunting experience. You've got plans and designs and ideas for an elite white tail hunting experience? What does that mean? How how do you guys define what the elite white tail hunting experiences that you guys are trying to build for yourselves or your clients. Um, I don't know, Bobby, if you want to kick things off there, but what comes to mind when you guys define that for yourselves. Yeah, well, obviously, you know, we're

die hard deer hunters. We're after, you know, the biggest buck in the woods, try and grow and hold them, all that stuff. But ironically, that question is the elite hunting experience white tail deer hunting experience is kind of a loaded question is different for all people. So some farms we developed, you know, we're developing specifically for a person that's having us find them a farm and develop it. And sometimes that's just somebody that's wanting to get out

of the city. They want general deer hunting, they want plenty of stance for their their kids and family, they want to be able to write four wheelers in the offseason. So that experience is different for everybody. Although our our Forte and what what we what it's all built around, what we strive for is is to create the best chances of putting the biggest must mature deer in the area in front of you in bo range uh, consistently. So that that to me kind of defines what the

elite white tail experiences. Would you add anything to that, Toby, Yeah, I agree. You know, we're we can do the development for anybody anywhere, you know, anything that they're looking to do on the property, but we do lean more towards

the the two. You know, the super elite trophy hunter that wants that special deer, and you know, to be able to consistently have an opportunity at that special deer or to grow him to hold them, it takes some outside of the box thinking and some over analyzing sometimes of things. And it's you know, we we want to shoot two and Innust year and we want to shoot blue and crocket deer on a consistent basis. And that's

that's what I see the elite experience being. Okay, so if you had, if we were, if we were maybe standing up in front of an auditorium, there's a whole bunch of camo clad you know, drooling white tail hunters in the in the audience, just like dying to learn about how you guys do this. You're up there with a white white boar in the marker, and you were gonna write here one, two, three or one to three

four the the core pillars of what creates that? Like what you must have to achieve that elite white tail hunting experience that you just described Tolby? You know what would be those three or four or however many things you would list off as like must have this, must have this, must have this, as this beginning foundational elements. What would be that thing to open up the classroom right now? Tell me what do you think you would write up there? The right neighborhood, correct access and low

pressure three? What do you miss Bobby anything? Um? Well, no, I think he hit on, hit on it. So I'll tell you what I what I start out telling people, whether I'm going out and looking at a logging project we're doing for somebody, or you know, our our consults

we do. I try and get people rethinking and you know, reevaluating and answer that is it's something that everybody in that room can do, whether whether that it's just you know, a lease, or it's a farm that they have full control and are gonna go bananason or if they just have the means to do a couple of things, that's

something they can all do. And when I start my conversations with people um about and a lot of them are all gung ho about doing habitat work and all this stuff, is I say, would you rather hunt a thousand acre nature preserve wildlife refuge just wide open hardwoods? Or would you rather hunt? And this is not anything against public grounds, just an analogy of pressure. Would you

rather hunt pressure? Or public land in Iowa that's managed by biologists and foresters and you know there's grasses and you know all this stuff, but there's but it's open to hunting and there's lots of pressure. Well, I think all of us would choose the wildlife refuge. Nature preserve has no habitat work even done because of pressure. That's you know, in my opinion, that's the number one thing, the tool and arsenal that we all have as deer

hunters to make our farms better. And that's where all begins. And my whole point usually is two people. Nothing works without a strategy and a plan. Some even a great plan and strategy on a farm that's got no habitat work will be more successful. And somebody's got a hodgepodge together, um, habitat plan. They're doing all this stuff, but none, none of it makes sense as far as a pressure standpoint, access, dominant wins, thermals, all these other things. So uh, and

that's a big rabbit hole to go down. But um, I would say it's pressure and it's having a solid plan from the get go to implement so that you can hunt as little of your farm as possible, but do it effectively because you're literally trying to recreate that wildlife refuge place, uh for a deer to feel safe and get to the age we're trying and get them to um to to to be as big as we're wanting them all to be. Yeah. Yeah, that planned thing

is uh is somewhere that I stumbled to. I remember, you know, early on when I started dabbling with habitat stuff, I was just so excited to do something, to do anything. I was just looking for like the easiest opportunity to you know, put some seed in the ground, and I thought I'd be growing big bucks, you know, right out the gate and and in two different places. I remember I planted these food plots in the one easiest place to plan a plot Like plots seemed like the sexy

thing to do. It seemed like the easiest way to get, you know, a great bang for your buck as far as like making an impact. And then I just found the opening and I was like, all right, this is where I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna put my seed down, I'm gonna grow this lush green plot and there's gonna be you know, big deer coming out of the woodwork.

Little did I you know, know, or think about how that would impact my access and my exit and what me moving past that food source, educating all these deer every time would do, and all the ripple effects you know from that. I think a lot of people fall

into that kind of mistake. Right. Um, So, when when you guys start a process like this for yourselves or on a new farm that you're building for someone or that you're gonna you know, work on in one way or another, what does that plan building process look like? You know, where do you start and then how do

you personally go about building that? Um? Because this seems like if we can't figure this out, nothing else is worth doing, right Bobby, Right, yeah, and it's kind of it's kind of uh, you know, no two farms are the same. Um. And like Toby said earlier, sometimes it it takes thinking outside the box. Um. I'd say the big things though, like are obviously access dominant winds and then um, you know, and and that kind of gets you a general idea of kind of what you can do.

And then from there, like we're kind of I almost say, we're creating a foundation of the farm because sometimes the foundation, like you said, oh, I can put a plot over here because it's why it's open, and I can put it here, Well, it might not make any sense to

put it there. It might actually be detrimental. Um. Whereas what we're kind of doing and we facilitate a lot of this through with our long um division, the ingress, the grass, dominant winds, Where do we want the deer to bed based off of where we could put a food pot and uh, and we start working from there and again this is kind of rabbit hole to go down, but you know, we'll go in that area, let's say, where we want to make them or up our odds,

because that's all we have as hunters, all right, So um, you know, we all have our thoughts and ideas. There's no right or wrong. There is no right or wrong. I think the only thing that we can all agree on is that we we have the ability to stack odds and raise probability, and we can do that exponentially.

So if we can, if we can coax the deer into bedding in a certain spot because of the way we're wanting to access a food pot that we're creating, it ups our odds of not spooking the deer and having him come into the plot the way we want him to. So we'll go into that let's say south facing slope that makes sense because he's wanted bed there anyway, makes sense from our ingress egress and a dominant winds.

And then we'll literally go in there and I'll be like, and it's not the entire south facing slow a lot of times, it's the exact point that he would want to bet on based off of, you know, terrain, You go there, you find beds, and then literally it's just kind of simple. It's just looking at looking up at the sky and the south sky and trying to figure out what trees are robbing light from that one knob.

You know a big proponent of like not just stickening the whole entire It doesn't all need to be thickened. Sticking in key locations I think can go further than just stickening a whole farm, because then there's strategy behind it, and you know, there's some there's some things that we can talk about. How that looks um that we've been doing lately that I don't hear a lot of people

talking about. You. You mentioned this idea of of kind of thinking through where the bedding would be and how they would impact your food and how they would impact your your entry and exit and winds and everything. Is there? Is there a when you're putting this plan together, when you're thinking through, you know, okay, where do we want things? How do we want things? Do you always start with okay,

betting first? And then how does betting impact food? And then how does access get in between all those things?

Or is it always different? Is some some properties you're thinking, Okay, I don't know about betting, but I know that we're going to have to put food here and here, or I know we have to access from this side, and that's going to dictate where we do all these other things so I guess my my question here is do you always have an order where you try to plan out the connections between these things or is it going to vary wildly? And how do you go about, you know,

prioritizing those things. Uh, well, I I think that every farm is totally different. I think total we would agree with that. Some I always refer to it like as a canvas. So you're delta canvas to create, right and you know that might be your timber canvas that's there to create something with. Um, They're all so different, you know, so you really got to get boots on the ground.

And honestly, kind of my approach, and I'll tell people, Look, I might say that some things that make no sense at all while we're here, but all of a sudden, it will all start making because I gotta see the farm, I gotta feel the farm, and I'll throw ideas out and it's kind of like this process I go through, and at the end of the day, I'll usually have this kind of light bulb moment where i think I've got it all, you know, all together, until Toby comes

and sees it and has a better idea about something that we throw that away. And that's kind of the whole playtel group mentality is it's a group of minds, um kind of all putting it together on the canvas there to create something. I don't know if that answered answered that question, but they're definitely it's it's always exciting when when Bobby and I walk a farm together, or you know, all three of us are Mark or Lee

or somebody who's we're together. It seems like those are the most exciting ones because everybody's brain is going, you know, a hundred miles an hour and where you're just spitting out your thoughts and and it's it's just a really good exciting thing. And um, you know, every farm that you go into is obviously it's so different there. You know, you're you're asking for like a plan, and there really isn't a plan because every farm kind of has a

different flow. You know, it's got a different vibe and it's got a different objective. And some farms have covers

so you don't need to create cover. Some farms have a ton of food already and you don't need the food, Or some farms have major access issues that need to be corrected, or some farms may have a neighbor issue that needs to be corrected, or you know, you know, our our farm developments even go as far as renegotiation farming contracts because you need a guy that's easier to work with because it's better for your deer hunting, or

like the level of development. I feel like what we do is so far beyond just someone who's a food pot guy, or somebody who can come in and manicure your farm and they can look like golf course, you know. With selling real estate and stuff, I get the advantage of being wrong. You know, more property in a month's time than guys will seeing in two lifetimes. And because of that, I get to compare you know, properties and properties.

And I've been on some farms that you know, they should be on the cover of a magazine just because they're so beautiful. And you you go in there and everything is so manicured and trimmed, and but it's a terrible layout. It's a terrible deer hunting farm because you did all the things you thought you wanted to see, but they're in the wrong places and the access is wrong and you're killing yourself. But you get to sit there and look at this real pretty farm, but you're

not gonna hear any big deer on it. So it's just there's just a lot of levels to to what we do. And um, like I said, we need three shows to probably cover all that stuff. But yeah, so so can you describe for me? Then, Toby at maybe maybe we need to just explore like hypothetical example or an example of a place you've done this yourself. But I'm curious if you can kind of walk me through how someone and you know, if someone were trying to do this themselves, how you would recommend them trying to

start thinking through how to analyze the property. Let's say they maybe they just picked up a farm, they bought a farm, or maybe they're considering buying a farm, and they're sitting here and thinking they're, Okay, what does this place need? How do I make this place better? Like? What are the steps that you would recommend someone go through to start determining how to prioritize these things? You know,

how to create that flow that you're talking about. Um, you know, and again I know every farm is different, every card, you know, every hand is different. Um, but like what's the what's walk me through some kind of hypethingle process that someone should be thinking through as they're analyzing their place. That's don't like what what Bobby opened with is what's the purpose? What are you developing it for?

Are you developing it to be able to take your wife and your kids and your family out there and shoot fifteen bucks a year off of it and have a great time, or are you developing it because you're the only one that's going to hunt it and it needs to be set up to shoot the biggest most that you're here on a farm, So there's just a broad spectrum of why you're doing it so that we know how to do it. And that's kind of what you know with with us doing the consulting as well,

you're asked to where to start. I would probably start with having Mark come out to your property and paying him to do a professional console and then telling him in the beginning what the reasoning is for for starting it. And then that's kind of how our process starts. And that would be if somebody buying a farm and you're

wanting help. It's different when we are buying them for ourselves, and obviously we're doing all that ourselves, and that honestly that iron me And I'm not one of the hard sell or push You've never seen any of us hard selling or anything on our videos. It's all really just follow us and it's free education and stuff. But the more and more we do these consults, Mark Cluster goes out and does the on sites and then I jump on zoom to go over and lay in. But it

it is like it is truly amazing. I mean, people are spending a lot of money on a farm and a little bit extra to do something like that and have a group of professionals kind of help. Like the value that's provided is it is so much fun. It's amazing to watch. I mean, like we did one a few weeks ago for a guy that's shot several hundred ninety class Deyer and he was just looking for one

little edge. But we do a lot of them for guys that you know, they don't they they're very new and they and it's just amazing to watch the fast track that they get. Um, you know, they're just so far out ahead and it's not a hard sell to get our consults. But like that was a first thing that popped in my head because it is like it is so it is incredibly helpful. Um, if if you're gonna do it on your own, like your question originally asked, you know, I'd say, dive into a bunch of our videos.

And I get emails every day about you know, how many ideas they had and thank you and this and that, and it's just it's just a bunch of free education. Try and learn some concepts and theories, you know, learned theories about I think like a deer, like big deer want to quarter into the wind as they're looking for those you know. Um, and try and set your farm up so that he always is feeling comfortable. He's feeling

comfortable living there, he's feeling comfortable moving through there. Um. And you know, we're just we're just trying to I say, treat your farm like a glass house. You know. I don't hunt as little of it as possible, but hunted effectively, you know, don't let them know you're there. We use all kinds of things you can see on our videos. Strategies.

We use lots of switch grass and stuff. Um, not so much for betting, like a lot of people want to think about it, but to take food or plates off of the table, force them to where we want to have them create create uh design or shape of plots to create pinches which concentrates scent. Where we put treacys to up the beer being there. We use the grasses for ingress and perfect e grass with a low box blind. We use the grass edge to be able to move that blind down the grass edge drop of

season as you moke corn letter. There's so many things that there's so many things. I would say, watch our videos, watch other people's videos, learn, get as much information as you possibly can, and then just try to build your farm in a way that you can tiptoe around. It can never be known that you were there or as close as possible as you can get to that. Yeah, I probability, no impact. Yes, I always talk about risk rewards. So like is diving into the hardwoods in the middle

of October? Is the reward worth the risk? Well? Probably not in most cases. Is it November five? Most likely? Is it in November five? If you've you know, fell some some less you know desirable trees and created took that fifty yard gap and turned it into a thirty yard gap, and they've got a deep ditch behind them, and you know they have to come through there. Yes, the reward is worth the risk at a certain point, you know. So just and I call it like hunting defensively.

So hunting offense both offensively would be like being ramming and charging it over here and charging it over here and getting impatient and just hunting all over the place like you're on the offense. Hunting defensivity is like, no, I'm not gonna hunt today because it's not right now. I'm not going to go in there because it's not time now. It's usually like less is more, you know. It's it's not some magic potion to be more successful.

It's usually just being more patient and and hunting smarter and doing less. That makes sense. Is it your opinion, Bobby, that hunting defensively is the best approach just on private pieces like this that we're talking about, where you can manage and some to some degree, and then the more offensive style hunting is the better approach when you're hunting highly pressured places. Or is it more situation dependent than that?

You know, I you gotta use some common sense, but I tend to just stay stay in my lane, think like a deer and me versus the deer. I tend you know to like, For example, this year, I still even though you know, this business has grown into something I never could have imagined, I still run a trail camera and every nook and crannity that I can define a big deer, because that's that's the key is you gotta gotta have you gotta have one to kill one. Um the farm I hunted on this year, I shot

a big deer. Um he was he officially scored, but it was probably twenty acre area and I hunted it last year as well, and um, I killed the big one in there. Last year, well, there was there was you know, ten tree stands on this property. Uh, in that area I was hunting, there's probably four or five other ones from other people hunting. There was trail cams all over the place. And I just I just kind of stuck to my principles and and and haunted the deer.

I knew him from the last year, so I knew kind of what he was gonna do, you know, same day, same place type concept. And so um, you know, I'd say, even if even if there's other people hunting, or there's pressure or whatever, just you know, you gotta learn to think like a deer. That's what one thing amazing about Mark Cluster when he's doing our consoles that he's a

master of thinking like a deer. And that's why you know he does such a great job doing our consoles, just because it's all he first, before they even get started on the farm, he's teaching them these principles about a deer and how they live and how they how they move about, so that then when he starts designing and talking about setups, they can understand the principles, you know, behind those setups, not just oh, let's throw food on here, because you know, yeah, let's let's dive into that a

little bit further, this idea of of thinking like a deer and then building or creating or preserving you know this, this, this glass house or whatever this perfect situation would be, so that I'm mature. Buck feels super comfortable, and let's start, you know, in the place he spends probably more time than anywhere else, which is his bed, his bedroom, his his the core of his core, of his core. You alluded to this a little bit, Bobby, with some of

the things you guys are doing. How are you how are you guys thinking about buck betting areas and creating betting areas, and what are the things that need to be done to make sure that a mature buck or as many possible mature bucks feel comfortable within your property and whatever betting areas you have. What are some of those key things that you are you know, making sure you have or making sure you create right, Well, it's kind of back to that nature preserve um public land

analogy there, which goes back to pressure. If you give dear no pressure, they big bucks love line open our woods if there's no pressure because they can see and they can get out of there quickly. Back to that deer I shot this year, those woods, you know I could it was why it was just wide open. That the deer I shot the year before. He was probably seven and he when I after I killed him. Well,

the deer I killed killed was five. And after I killed him, the neighbors sent me some pictures and they said, hey, congratulations, I killed decay. And I said, what's the decay? And they said dark Knight. We call him dark Knight because we never saw him. Yeah. I got a lot of day like pictures on and stuff. And the difference was it was it was just a twenty acre area that

he grew up and spent a lot of time. Uh that there was no pressure in there, and so you know, he there's there's two pressures, like you have to give them safety to live their life, to their so they get to the point where we want to hunt them and they're not going to tolerate you know, you know, human intrusion and activity over the years. But then once they get to that age, it can be hard to kind of run them off, you know what I mean. So like I had all kinds of bone head and

mistakes I made last year. There's this is kind of getting confusing because there was two big dear. I was hunting one of them. I hit one of them. I ended up killing. But the one I hit was probably one nine And um that dear, I mean I made five six, seven, eight mistakes. I mean he winded me, I missed him, I hit him, and uh, he just would not leave because he spent seven years in an area and he was at age, and it was hard.

It was hard to run him out of there. And people, I don't think people realize that a lot of people think of them as like unicorns, you know, like one mistake and they're gone. Well, once they get to a certain point, it can be hard to run them out, but you have to give them that security over the long haul to call home to where they become that big buck. And so what that looks like starts with pressure. All everything I just said, I guess gets back to

pressure regardless of the habitat. So you have to have a place you're going to give them security. Um, and then what that looks like in my in my eyes, instead of going into an area where we have a south facing slope, you know that makes sense, it's tucked in, it's not going to be affected by our ingressive grass winds. Rather than go back there and just you know, if

let's say, are logging division to own in there. Rather than go in there and hammer the woods and make a clear cut essentially or whatever, we're just kind of do a healthy select cut. And then, like I said, we'll pick that one spot. It's like, where would the biggest buck in the woods want to live her way, We'll probably right there on that point because he can

see everything. And sure enough, you go up there, there's beds, and then we just start, you know, trying to open up the sunlight to hit that exact spot, and now you have some strategy because if you've got a food plot under yards down that ridge and you get consistent pictures, you can start kind of you know, telling um where he's coming from or whatever, and you can kind of

guess that he's on the point. However, I think that creating just betting areas in general can be more impactful to your hunting strategy than trying to make a quote betting a buckbed betting area or whatever. And this is kind of why. So we've all come up to like a deadfall or a tree in the woods, and you've got you know, a quarter acre of of of briers and stuff that exploded because there was like one or two trees that got blown over a windstorm. And sure

enough there's beds in that right. Um, So if we can start trying to create these pockets that make sense for egress um and a hunting set up, Like let's say we we can slip in this ravine in the rut and we can get up there's a draw that goes up to this flat and they're gonna pinch around the top of it anyway, and there's a so we go up there, we find a tree stand or a tree, and we start laying it out around that tree, and then we would we would open up that pocket of

light in front of that tree, but we would make sure to do it in a way that there was a path of least resistance in all that mess that we created between us and the stand about twenty yards and we figured it all out, you know, to let's say, on a southwest wind. What we're doing is we're creating a destination kind of like a kill box. We're creating a desk nation in the woods for a buck to go to to look for a dough in the rut.

And that's what happens is if you think like a deer and he wants to be on the down wind side of that half anchor thicket you made or quarter ancor thicket or whatever, he's gonna go to it, and in theory, he's gonna be on the down wind side of it. And when he does that, he's now going to put himself at fifteen yards or twenty yards because he's trying to stay in the path of least resistance

on the down wind side of that. And it just so happens that there's a horrible tree there because you built it around that and there's a ditch behind it that gave you perfect as good of access to get to that point as possible. And you create two or three or four of those around your farm, Now you've got some strategy because those become even more more powerful than like a kill plot, because the kill plot, like

I look at kill plot as a scent concentrator. It's a place that by big buck wants to go to and pick up sent from a dough. However, it's a lot more powerful in the rout when and he could be out at any given time of the day. It's a lot more powerful when that destination is is in the woods and it happens to be a point place

where the does are at all day long. And you could have a big deer get up on his feet and go like connect the dots, and he could hit every one of those little patches in one walk in a matter of ten minutes, and every single one on him he'd be boomed down in down when down When and when you lay them out around that stand and that pinch that's already there, you have strategy, really powerful strategy, I think, more powerful than even you know hunting a

food pat on the rut. Yeah, instead you've got Yeah, its a lot of betting area. Yeah, like a kill thicket or something thinking thinking like a deer. And it's not like a lot of people want to talk about that buck betting areas is not. Like so if you think about like, Okay, I'm gonna go hunt a buck in his betting area. And again there's no right and wrong.

Different people have different approach is but like you know, to me, that's here, miss, you know, it's like I'm gonna go back in there, chance blowing him out when I get in there, even in the dark. And then if he's not there a daylight, you know, maybe you'll come, maybe you won't. But if I can get into a patch that becomes a destination in the rut when the risk reward is worth going back in there and be like I don't care where he is right now, because

this is his body, He's gonna come. Yeah. So these you know, kill plots. When we're making kill plots, I'm usually thinking about something small, something that has a specific size or designed to it to give me the best possible shot opportunities. Uh So when it comes to your kill betting are your kill thicket, whatever you want to call it. How big do you like these to be typically give or take? And then what's the design? Do you like it long and skinny to try to keep

them within range? Or how do you try to ideally shape and design and even what's the actual act of how you create it too? You know it's it might be a little looser than like, you know, everyone's a little bit different. I guess, um, how do I explain it? Uh? I think smaller is better, you know what I mean? Like if you're thinking like a deer and there's you're in these hardwoods and there's one brushy knob over there, you're gonna go check that for a dough because you

can't really see in it. You know, I almost think the smaller is better, But it kind of is relative to the type of woods. Draft you have wide open hardwoods, you know, and you have a little If you have one blowdown on a point and the rest is wide open, it's going to be a piece of structure that a you know, a buck is going to maybe go to to look for a dough against it. And like I did, a bunch of did some logging up there, on Leela Coostys, and he was big on that, like this one would lot.

He just wanted to put some some tops on the ground to give them structure, you know too, to bet up against. You know. So it's kind of like it sounds crazy, but it's almost like fish relating to structure. They do the same thing, you know what I mean. So I don't think huge is good. I think, well, I think I think just having them to where they're huntable. And we could get into that in the food pluts.

We can take a five acre standing rain plot oversee the entire thing with rye and make it honnable with woven wire fans or different things like that to create pinches. It's kind of the same deal as situational. You just want to be able to hunt it. So if you've got a wicked pinch point already in those woods or whatever it is, it can be bigger because you're forcing them,

you know, through what's already naturally a funnel. If that makes sense, Yeah, it does, Uh, Toby, what would you add anything on on this before I take it a stuff further. Well, it's kind of you know, getting into the pinch points and the shapes food pots and all that stuff, And it's kind of we say this a

lot of simm of videos. It's most of the time we're just enhancing an area or something that deer is already using or a place that they already want to be in, you know, and then you're attaching strategy to that spot. You're it's not about just installing a food

pot and looking pretty. It's how that food plot flows, how do you get into it without being seen, how to get out of it without being seen, and then shaping it in a way that the deer You're you're actually telling the deer exactly what openings to come in and out of and using to breed too, funnel traffic and building world wire fences. It's like there's so much micro strategy that goes into each betting area or each

true thought that gets created. Like that's where you know, we're kind of taking it to the next level and that elite the running experience thing kind of comes in and play again. So like, for for an example, I was I was out on Greg Ritts this place a few weeks ago, and they had a point that they had and we're just kind of like putting our minds together. We were looking at doing a logging project and they had a point that they had done a big hinge

cut you know, t s I type stuff. And you know how a lot of times when you hinge and it kind of plays into that whole strategy I was talking about, you hinge and you got all those trees laying down, like, yeah, they'll go out in it to bed. But as far as a buck cruising you know, through it, he's definitely gonna be on the down wind side because it's an entangled you know, master to go walk through.

So we got to this point, you know that they had they had done basically a hinge cut on and we basically kind of put our heads together and came

up with this concept. There was a perfect gift from above of a white oak that was on the it was on the down wind side with the north wind um and it had it had really good access to it in the morning, and uh, it was just a simple like, hey, why don't you guys take some chainsaws and and go through here fifteen yards twenty yards in front of the stand and just just chunk these things up just enough to get your skids to your grapple

go down there and pick it up back out. So in other words, you were left with this clean lane right in front of your your stand, you know, right through that massive hinge cut that was about an acre big,

but still on the down wind side. And now and then put a hamproke right right in front of you, because there's gonna be a massive concentration ascent on that that kind of roadway, if you will, that you're building through your your hange cut and then that, like he just talked about in the micro strategy, and we talked about everything in mac of strategy and micro strategy, that's

your last layer. So like I talked about it like it's like your overall strategy is kind of like like a game of Jinga, right, and every every block is like a layer of strategy. Right, and sure enough, it's the last stupid thing you didn't do that ends up. We've all done it. You know. It's like you know, you forget to it's just the one stupid thing that you don't have an extra release in your pack. It's something like that. It's that one last layer of strategy

that can make or break you. And so you know, by putting the emperor on that road, whereas a place they're gonna watch scrape anyway because there's a concentration ascent which get into in a little bit. But it just ups the odds that he stops right there, you know what I mean, and gives you a broadside shot. So that was kind of that's kind of an example of one of those you know, it's you're taking something that's you know, T S I, and you you're you're connecting

the strategy with the habitat work. If that makes sense. Yeah, it makes makes a lot of sense. And nothing works without strategy. It's like not in the food pots where you go down that hole here in a minute. But it's all about strategy. Food plots are I mean, I'll

plant whatever you want to plant. It's strategy. It's how you it's probably starting with the most important part is egress and then ingress and then you know, shape, creating a pinch point, creating a transition between two different types of food sources in order to up probability of concentrating those which a probability of concentrating set which of the

probability of whether there's deering the field or not. That he comes to bill range, you know, there's just so many like layers that you start compounding and just shooting probability through the roof. Because when we see a big deer, we're already like they're so low that they just walk so few days and daylight, we need to stack odds tour when we see them, we can shoot them. We don't just see them. Yeah, Yeah, it's the This is the fun stuff in my mind, is going deep into

that strategy. Um. A couple more things on the on the betting improvements here because I'm geek. I'm really enjoying this part. This is interesting taking taking that same detailed approach that that folks are doing the food side and applying it to your betting areas and making them. You know, these these very huntable in the timber betting locations. Uh. Question about you know, you've got these small kind of micro betting areas that become more huntable because of that size,

and you mentioned having these throughout your property. Can you have too many? Is there is there the risk of them losing their effectiveness if you have so many of these that it becomes less predictable, or you know, can you have them too close together? Or is there any other the thing like that that you're thinking about when designing these kinds of improvements, as far as how many of them are connecting them anything like that, and back

to the one size fits on. I don't want people thinking, like every farm that we just do this exact thing on it. It's not like that. Some don't lean themselves towards it. Some do. I would say the answer to that question is I I don't think you could have too many as long as they stay horrible and accessible, and the concept of of a pinch in a horrible tree being on the downwind side of that thicket. I don't think you're gonna find enough spots that warrant that

risk reward and that set up. I don't think you're gonna find enough spots in order to make too many of them, if that makes sense. Pinches. You mentioned pinches there again. I feel like that's something you guys really really key in and across many parts of your properties. In the timber, in the food plots that he has, are always creating pinches or finding pinches and enhancing them.

Can you elaborate a little bit on these In the timber pinches that you are either trying to take advantage of already or creating you know inside or down into these betting years. How do you guys do that? What are you looking for? I don't want to steal the mic, but I'll probably take this one too because I I run the logging division and so we do a lot of this. That that cool, Toby, Yeah, go ahead? So um oh man, this is this is a good one.

We kind of have become known for the walls. We talked about the wall and you've probably heard us talking about them and in our you know, so you know a lot of the big walls you see, that's during an excavation project like more actually clearing. Cooper will use the debris to create these pinches and these walls that also serve as access and they end up growing up just you can't even see them after a year or so. They just look like a berm with stuff shooting out

of them. Um. Then and a lot of times when I go in along and probably that they're wanting us to build walls all over the place, but they don't realize that that's more excavation. What we can do during the logging project is you know, I'll give you a good example. We're logging for a guy right now, um up in Fultall County, and we're kind of doing some

of this around a specific deer um. But he had this kind of bowl, big ball of big mature hardwoods, had a point that kind of came out facing southerly. It's on a bluff. It's like the most obvious spot in the world through deer to just be loaded up, bedded all over in this bowl. And so and where the left side of that tongue, the left gut of that tongue went up to the top of the hill, came up to a flat and then you had about

fifty yards to the neighbors there's a crop field. And I'm like, man, we cut this bowl and we create a pinch right here. This deer is going to put all this cover, all this new you know where these those are be loaded up. He's gonna put all this on the down wind side. Um, And there's already somewhat

of a funnel up here. But we can we can directional fall all these tops in here into this ravine and we can kind of we can create a wall of these tree tops going up the hill to the top and then stop it lay it all out around this hackberry and then there's enough like dead falls up there where we scoop them up with the skids here and the skinner and we'll make another wall from that

hackberry back to the field. So we created basically, you know, twenty five yard gap on the down wind side of essentially like a I would say, probably a ten acre area that could hold beds, but we made a wicked huntable because that wall where ended at the top of the hill where started going down with all those tops in it. I mean that wall is probably a hundred

yards long going down through there. So now like when he wants to put all that on this down you know, when he wants to be up end of all that stuff and and he's gonna take the path of lease resistance. Were four were seeing him through a gap, you know, and we're up high where our wind this is consistent, you know. Um, So that's kind of how we use

a logging project to build pinches in the woods. Like you can either directional follows trees, or we can pull the tops a little bit with the skinters, but only so far because it's picturing like big giant wrecking balls. Like we can we can take a fifty yard gap and turn it into a thirty yard gap pretty easily during the logging project. Um, we also can use Wolven wire fence. There's different you can implement the same strategy

so many ways. Like un Rising, he's in the logging industry too, and he's a he'll he'll drop, you know, kind of the same type of species trees that you would girdle or inch out. Anyway, he'll drop some of there more mature trees in order to create those same types of pinches. So there's a lot of ways of going about it. But anyway you you use to pinch deer, you're exponentially up in your odds. I think about it. You hunt the whole rout and your target are you

see him what two or three times? Well, how what does your probability look like when you've taken a spot where it's a hundred yard area he could come through, and you've cut it down to a dirty yard area, like your your odds you go through the roof? Yeah, now what about the opposite. So you kind of alluded to this already in one of the earlier examples, but so you just you just talked about like building blockades, walls, different things that pinch them, you know, into a place

you want them. It sounds like sometimes though, the opposite can be effective to which is opening up a place for them to go through and that's all already blocked. Is that something that you're you know doing as well? Yep, like that And that's why that's where we talk about.

Every situation is different. Like sometimes we're taking away like like we have a video coming out pretty soon here that me, Mark Luster and Ben Rising all that to console and we wanted to do it for fun because it's like they'll listen to everybody's kind of thought process behind the same spot and then you you end up at a you know, a bigger, a more powerful, you know plan for that spot than you could have with just one mind. Well there we kind of like jam

session on this one spot. I said what I do and then Ben turned around he did something completely opposite, and then we kind of hashed it out and Mark was like agreeing with both of us. Well, at the end of the day, we implemented both both strategies, both both things benj was kind of idea was more set up for a specific window of the deer season. The specific mindset, and then I was like, well, yeah, that's awesome.

Why don't we take the multing head go straight down this creek bottom that's super thick that way, and straight down it this way, and marks like, yeah, let's put a over the wire fence from that tree back to the creek. And then, like you just said, we're creating a path of least resistance through this thick stuff, helping our odds that they step out where we wanted to step out. So you can reverse engineer at a lot of times. Um, you know by taking away it's just

the canvas that you're dealt. Yeah, it's touching all that path of least resistance. You know, we talked about the benefits of the logging project and stuff here several times. Another big benefit is, you know, the road system that you create during the logging project. You know that's not always in the common sense places that they would do during a normal logging project. That's part of the strategy as well. You're gonna go in there and make roads

anyway to get to timber out. So you you placed these roads in the best spots for UH access, and then you also use them to program the deer on how they're going to move through that property, and how they're going to check each betting area, and how they're going to enter and exit each true thought. So you know, the clearing areas is kind of the same things putting

these roadways in, you know, making creek crossings. You know, you've got a lot of these properties have steep creek banks, and you know, these dear they like to they like to use the easier spots, so you can use the logging project and the escalmating project to put to nice gradual crossings into the deer end up pounding. So it's like you know, your your programming, you know. And not only will the bucks that are already there and big start using them, because the dose will be using them.

And again concentration is set when the does start using these roads as their main travel corridors. The bucks are going to start using the roads because the does are there. And we've got several video clips of you know, ten twelve does in a row, single file right down the logging road and then here's the buck right behind them. I mean, they're like us when they generally when they move through a piece of property, you know, they like to take the easiest path to get where they're going,

whether it's better and feeding him. You know, on my personal farms, we've done several of those two. It's like the most beneficial thing that I think is the road systems, like that's that's my personal opinion is is you could eventually shoot every book on farm out of the right road intersections in the right placement property. Another when it comes to mind is a Montgomery piece. I mean that was that was an awesome example of what the roads

can do on a big piece of ground. Yeah. Yeah, And sometimes, like you said, sometimes those road it's all

it's all strategy. You know. Sometimes that road instead of going down the center of a ridge like it would be you know in the traditional longing project, it might be on the side hill in order to have good ingress egress to something where you don't want to beer on the next ridge overseen, And a lot of times, you know, we might have to use the upper that original skater trail up top just because it's dryer and stuff.

But if it's part of the plan and it makes it better, and that's what we're trying to accomplish through the logging project. Before we leave, we will cut that road, you know, on the lower side. But when you have the when you've got the timber project there, it gets all the equipment there and you can start doing you know, you can start implementing um. You know, a lot of the hunting strategy. I always say, like the logging project is like the It's like it's like you're building the house.

You know, the plan. You gotta have a plan first. That'd be you know, studying up, kind of coming up with your plan. You doing console whatever you gotta do. You gotta have the plan. It's like trying to build a masterpiece house without a blueprint. And then uh, and then the foundational part of it would be, you know, the logging project uh or excavation project or whatever. The nice thing about the logging project is it funds the project,

you know. So um, but that that's where you're kind of roughing in trying to get these deer to bed in these certain spots. We can open up plots in these certain spots, and we can put these roads in certain spots. Sometimes those roads will have them come off, you know, We'll just put a creek crossing in a certain spot relative to a certain stand, you know, so that we have that path of least resistance in the

rut right in front of a stand. So again it kind of comes back to there's no there's no rigid

uh uh you know, set of guidelines. But like the logging project is just a tool to be able to to be able to implement a lot of these concepts and strategies, you know, Like on that we did a full who county, big Bolton County farm for what we did for Steve, and we had a big, fairly open block of timber, and the most noticeable terrain feature and kind of what really funneled most of the deer traffic was a huge ravine that went straight down the middle

of that block of timber. So all you're doing the select cutting there, we put a huge giant Colbert pipe in the middle of that ravine, in the middle of that woodlock and made a big flat crossing, and then we connected all the roads from the timber project like a spiderweb down there to this one crossing and created just super pinch point in the middle of what was a super wide open piece of woods, just like putt the Colbert pipe in there and doing a little estabatingum

and and it was a crazy good spot. Yeah, I think I remember seeing that, so so my one. I don't know if it's a question, if it's like a worry, but I wonder for for people that don't have a logging project or don't have the valuable timber to make this a cost effective thing, and they're thinking, Man, I'd love to make big roads. I'd love to create these better crossings and different things, but I just don't have the way to either hire someone to come and do

this stuff, and I don't have the timber to fund it. Um, is there like a budget version of this? Is it? Can you do some version of this by renting a skid steer for a day or two and making some miniature trails and crossings and things like that? Like, is there some kind of you know, junior way to achieve some of these things in your mind? Toby, Sure, Yeah.

I mean there's all kinds of tools at your fingertips, whether running equipment or you know, having somebody help you with the planned part of it and then implementing it yourself over time. You know, you don't need to jump in there and do it all at one shot. And then that way you can kind of stretch the costs and the effort out over a couple of years. Um. Yes, to answer your question, yes, there there's a way to

do it. Um. And that's where it goes back to not every property needs a huge excavator or needs a bulldozer and needs a logging and skinners or something. It's you know, every piece of ground is it's its own animal. And to expounds found upon that, Like back what I first said, a good plan and a good strategy may not need a whole lot like those those creating those destination like dough betting type areas I was talking about.

You can do that just by going out and and and you know, girdling and and hinge cutting trees and putting trees on the ground in little areas. I mean, so it doesn't it doesn't require this big, massive, you know, orchestration. But another thing about that is like, and that's kind of part of the value we're providing. We're out here

in the game. We're buying, you know, we're buying. We have to buy the farm, right, but we have a list of people that are having to help them find farms, and a lot of times once we find a farm, getting under contract you know, we'll already have somebody that's been waiting on that exact fall arm. Then we will

actually implement that project and we will involve them. So like if let's say they're nonresident in Iowa and they want to developer for late season, well, actually as part of the deal, will we will do all of that stuff you're talking about. So, you know, at first it might sound like, well this is far fetched, we're not really,

you know, the average guy can't do this. Well, we're actually you know, we sell farms to school teachers, all kinds of different people we've dealt with, and we're actually doing a lot of this on the front end with alongside of them, you know, to help them get and create a farm like this, because some people don't have the know how, but some people don't have you know, the machinery some people, you know, everybody is a little bit different, but we kind of work together as as

a team too. Like that farm he was just talking about, Steve, you know, we built that whole thing for him, you know, and he paid market value for that farm. Yeah. Yeah, you guys have got to figured out because not only do you get to you know, be on the side of of buying, selling these places. But you get to do the fun stuff on a lot of and too, the actual work and the improving And I mean that's that's at least for me, that's the real joy of

the stuff is the projects and seeing it all come together. Um, so that's pretty good. Back to the consulting stuff. That's been really fun for me lately because you know, at night I'll get on one an hour long watching like helping these people, Like I I keep telling them, like a lot of them have a big deer. You know, we're kind of we're developing it, but we're kind of developing some things around a big deer. We're like call Centrail camps will help you, you know, we'll put our

mind together and figure out to kill this deer. And like I tell him, I'm I'm literally like hunting vicariously through you now, like because we're on so much ground now, it's just odds and probability. We're seeing, you know, this guy's got this big special deer, and this guy's got the big special deer, and me, Bobby Kendall, I can only find it's hard to find them, you know what

I mean. So so it's like we're hunting vicariously through these guys, and it's just so much fun to watch watch them, you know, be successful and help him, help him be successful. That that guy who just talking about Steve, We did a video around the whole project and then and then we put the video out and then he's like, oh, by the way, I didn't know if I sent you this, and he sent his picture he shot like a hundred and eighties something each deer or like should have said

that before we edited the video. Um, yeah, fun. And then we had a guy this year, Toby over there in Fulton County said and he was pretty new hunter, right Toby, He said, Toby of a two deer like getting them pictures of him, like every day he's gonna know what to do. He's like, just get in the box. And that was another example. Think of a general. There was the same same kind of a deal. You know, we bought that farm and just had barely started the development and then as well as we had the first

couple of phases of video out. You know, this guy kinda was looking for a real high quality farm in that area and he bought that farm, you know, off of us before that project was done and kind of jumped in on the back side of it. And then the first time he goes up there and hunts and he's got this gigantic deer running around and he's texting us back and forth. What do I do? Where do

I sit? You know, there's where I got his pictures, And you know, then it's just just super exciting just to watch and to hear somebody's enthusiasm about, you know, the farm that they bought and helped develop, and it's you know, it's it's very exciting, rewarding kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, bet so speaking of you know, telling that guy, hey, jump in the box. Um, let's let's shift from the

timber out towards our food sources. Uh. You know, from seeing the guys, the things you guys have done and what you've talked about is you designed these different properties.

I know there's like everything their strategy behind how you place your plots and how you design your plots to to achieve eve the kind of movement you guys want tlby Can you start maybe by walking me through some of the things you're thinking about when deciding how to place your plots on a property and how you design them um, what does that planning process look like specifically

on the food plot side, the food side of this equation. Well, if it goes right back to pressure again, you know, how can you hunt these spots consistently and not blow gear out of there every time you're you're coming and going. So and this was kind of on a console that

me and uh, Bobby and Mark did yesterday. We were talking about something just like this, and you know, I refer back to a big acre piece that and I have personally, and I told Mark, I said, you know, I gotta I gotta farm that's almost five acres here in Adams County, Illinois. I said, We've got it so fine tuned and so set up the strategy so right on it that we hunted out of three food plots with three box lines five acres. That's it, you know.

And it's that's all about having that that premium spot with a set tight box line and the right way to get in and out of. They were out spooking everything, and you just watch your cameras and you keep the pressure low, and we will kill our target deer on that farm out of one of those three box lines, like clockwork every year and never have to step foot

in the woods. Can you can you walk me through an example of one of those setups, like just in detail kind of how you actually achieve what you just described. So we got one food pot called the South pot, and um, we've got a certain area that you're able to park a vehicle in a low spot, stay out of sight. There's a certain role in the field for access that you can get in. There's a little waterway to get on the other side. So you've made it all the way to the box, but you've parked your vehicle.

You get ready, You've walked all the way to the back side of the box without any detection at all. So that step one. You're in there. And then when you have a fieldful of deer and you didn't shoot something and you need to get back to your truck, you repeat that process. So you've solved the in and the out without blowing the place up every time you're in there. So that's step one. Then you have the plot.

I always like to do grain to green because then you have something in its prime for every phase of the season. So we have to do them big because we only have three plots on that big of a piece of ground with that kind of deer density. You have to take that into consideration as well, because you can't go through all that effort and all that time and then end up in your prime hunting season and

you have no tonnage of food left. So that has to be something you assess to is your deer numbers and and is there going to be anything left when

you want to be there hunting it. So we've got two or three acres of standing your grain, and then we've got to plot shaped in such a way that the green that's on the other side of it comes together at the pinch point right where the grain, because these deer when they come out, they'll bounce back and forth from green the green usually, and you kind of want your your highest probability spot to be in that narrow point of the food plot on the transition from

grain to green. And like Bobby talked about before, you know, if that's that field shape happens to put that at sixty or seventy yards, you could actually take fence or tops or some kind of a structure, hay bales. You could stack hay bales and pinch that sixty acre spot down the thirty and then on top of that, in that thirty thirty yard gap, you could put a tree coil over the hemp rope and in a licking branch. Now you've hands it even more. And then you know

Bobby's big advocate of this too. He'll actually go around the perimeter of that food plot and cut off all of the low hanging scrape branches licking branches, so that they become dependent on those one or two tree kois that you've got out in the food plot, which are all in bow range of your hunting position. And I must again, in my opinion, is a set type box line.

You sit there with the windows shut until it is time to open it and shoot whatever it is you're trying to kill, because that you know, you you create these spots and these primal food plots, and you've taked attention to every detail, and you know what's going to happen in those type plots is you're gonna have thirty or fourty or fifty deer out in that kind of

a place before your target animal walks out. So when you're trying to do that in a situation where you're sitting in a tree stand and the wind's gonna swirl those thermal start to cool and it starts to do some goofy stuff. You're not getting away with that most of the time. So that box blind, that set type box blind becomes a very important tool in that kind of a hunting situation where you're going to have massive amounts of deer coming to your location. So you've solved

the getting smelled part. You've paid attention to the shape of that food plot. You've got grain for late season, you've got green for early season, and you've got to correct way to get in out of there without boiling it up every time. And then you just repeat that in the different zones of your farm um as the opportunity allows for, you know, and working with your farm

was pretty key too. You've gotta have the ability to buy back those crops or plant them on your own, because you know, you've got to have both types of food and those kind of hunting situations. When it comes to the grains and the greens, Toby, do you have do you have a preference? Do you prefer you know, do you prefer beans over corn? Does it shift based on specifics as far as the greens? What are the

greens you like to plant. Um, can you give me some more detail of what you found to work the very best for you at least, Well, I'm that kind of a plot, you know, we like to have clover, fairly big green plot with the clover mix in it. And then in a situation where you've got standing beans in one year, you know, when those leaves start to turn yellow in the beans, you know most of us will will go there and sling rye and turn ups

to radish out in the standing beans. And usually you'll at least have the tonnage of the leafs coming up, even if they don't put on a bulb. So now you've got standing beans underneath your standing beans, you've got rye and turn ups coming up. And then next door you've got lush clover, so you're just giving them. You're throwing a smartest board at them. And you can even

do that overseating into standing corn plots as well. And then you know, so when you got standing corn and you start to mow that corn, you obviously start mowing it from your pinch points, so that the first mo everything's in bow range, the second mow everything's in bow range. You know, by the end you're getting in November and you're starting to stretch it out there a little bit. You're coming into your first gun season. You gott a

hundred fifty yards you can shoot like. You're paying attention to the times a year you want to hunt and what you're using to hunt during those times of years, and you're just adjusting your plot as the season goes on. And the beauty of the box, Lindes is it. You've a situation we're really high to your numbers and they are just pounding stuff. You may have to scoop that box line up and move it a little bit to keep up with you know how hard they're hitting your foods.

You're always in the hot zone of the plot. M Yeah, that makes sense. Uh, One fall up real quick to be on the design of this. You mentioned, you know, trying to have some kind of pinch within it, so you could have you know, a sixty yard wide gap that maybe you pinch down further with you know, some additional treetops, hay bales, whatever. But have you found now?

I know every property is going to give you something slightly different to work with as far as the space and everything, but all things being equal, is there any kind of specific designer shape that you prefer when trying to create a setup like this. Do you prefer long and skinny, or like a boomerang that gives you that full crumb that you use a pinch or anything else

like or hour glass? Um, is there anything you found to be your favorite designer shape or something for a starting point where you want you want to you want to try to not make it so big or shape that you there's parts of it you can't hunt. You know, you're you're doing it to be able to to shoot the deer off of that place. So when you design them, you want to try to keep it in mind that you know, if I'm going to hunt here, you know, if it's here in Illinois and you can help the

shop gun muzzleloader. You know, if I'm hunting this plot late season, I really want to make sure that anything that steps in this plot I can shoot, so a hundred and fifty to two d yards at the furthest you know, if you're primarily a bow hunter, you want to kind of squeeze that stuff down even a little bit further, you know, And that's kind of we're moving the box comes into if your primary a bow hunter, and you know, the deer when they come out of

the woods, if they're coming from a certain way, they're generally gonna start at that end of the plot and start eating their way out to the center. So you can adjust your box line to always stay up in the part of the grain that you still have tonnage left in, you know. So it is kind of different because you're going to have to work with what kind of space that you've been given, if it's on a NAGG area or the CRP area that you only allowed

a certain amount of acreage to use. But you know, I like to make sure that everything revolves around I'm not doing this. I'm gonna do all this work just to sit there and watch dear that I don't have an opportunity yet. So shape and distance has to come into play, because you know, you want to up your odds to having a shot opportunity at that deer when he comes out. So if you're making them too long and skinny or too big, it's just going to be

a wildlife viewing session. Sometimes when you're in there, you really don't want to do that. Bobby, what's your take on all this um as far as I should have been right now then right now, rovol They wanted to go down what's been bursting out of the scenes for it. You really want to say, well, he pretty much hit on all of it. So I might go down a

couple of little rabbit holes here and there. The first thing I would say is for guys are listening, They're like, well, this is like kind of out of reality for me, because I can't do this. We got a video. It's called face. I think he says, taste face with the monster is a big deer. I hunted last year on permission piece, and I just simply went to the farmer. I negotiated by an acre corn. I mowed the corn.

I mowed it in a specific shape. I took all my leftover food plot seed and put it on there like the smartest board, all my you know, um cereal grains in my in my Braskas, just threw it all out there, greened up a little bit. I ran through that corn each direction to where I thought he was coming from, to where he popped out where I wanted him to come out. Like. So I implemented some of these strategies on a piece that was permission. Then I

negotiated something with the farmer. So there are ways of doing some of this stuff even if you can't do it. I actually love working with farmers because there's so much easier, Like the bigger this has gotten that try and works warder in the heart. Um. So that's one thing I would say. Another thing really quick before you go any further, I gotta ask one question on that topic working with farmers.

Do you have any any advice for people trying to do that, because that's something I've considered, but I have never done it, and I don't know the right way to approach it, how to the right way to offer to pay for it, How to you know, how do

you do that the right way? Bobby, Yes, sir. So ironically, we actually have a leasing program now on our our our platform, on our on our page that we partnered over the company that offers like um we can basically help people put their tillable out to least to a farmer in an auction style format and it gets you know, uh, it's just awesome. It jacts your your cash rent a up.

But the thing is we helped the person negotiate their farming contract to where it gets all the bells and whistles that they that helped them as a farm manager hunting farm manager, you know, uh, do as little work as as possible and put more of it on the farmer. And there's a lot of different things in in the that least that we use and stuff. There's little things

you've never think of. But as far as buying back crop, you don't want to really get into doing it the way that I did it in that example I was talking about where you're you're paying after the fact when it's your field. You essentially want to do a cash for rent. Breaker have the right to buy that two acres of crop. They'd be credited their cash rent on that two acres and all you will pay is their input costs. You have the leverage to negotiate that on

the front end. However, if you haven't negotiated it, you're sitting there paying uh, you know, six an acre right now for corn instead of you know. So there's ways about that, and that's something that we can help people do and we can we can hook them up with our contracts and stuff. There's a lot of other little things like you know, farmer doesn't have the right to chisel plow the field without written permission um until the

end of deer season. But you know sometimes in your strategy you might you might want them to chisel, plow, to take plates off the table. So there's like that is a that is a huge There's so many different things,

um uh to talk about. Now? What about what about just what I thought if you just lease the property so you don't own the property, you least ground from a farmer and you're thinking, man, I wish this farmer would leave an acre in the back here, uh, which sounds maybe kind of like what your permission situation was last year. So you know, you just you just want

to be friendly. You want to Most of them, you know, don't understand how crazy we are about deer, so you can kind of you know, I try to make it light and poke fun at you know, I know this seems crazy. I know the deer seems crazy to you. But this would be just like changed you know, my my season and uh uh. Some tips I would give people is I would say, you know, I don't want you to be out any money. I want you to

be whole. I want you to make just as much as you would if it's corn you're leaving, offer to mow that corn after deer season because they don't want to deal with those stalks out there. Um, if you want to oversee over say, would you mind if I overseedd some turn ups? You know, don't go down to If you do want to oversee rye or something, tell them that you will go in and spray in the

spring because it will come back. Not that you know they're spring will probably kill it, but just the same things like that will let them know that, like you're thinking about these things and you're not going to leave them with something they got to deal with, because as long as they're made whole and they don't have to deal with a mess, they're gonna they're fine, you know what I mean? Yeah, that that makes sense. Okay, UM, so sorry, I unfortunately right now that can cost some money.

But yeah, so you were you were going to go on to the next kind of food plot. I thought after that, you know, so, like he said, access important, I'm always trying to pick, like you know, box lines. So here we have our own line of box lines that we have built. We have two different types of box one as we have a traditional one that goes up on um, you know, four by four which you can ad adjust the heights. And then we have another newer style one that was made for the strategy of

mowing corn. And it's got jack stands his legs and it's purposely meant to be real low. The basically thing is about two or three ft in the air, and what's meant to do is go in, mow corn, stick the box. You know, Actually it starts before that. It's being efficient when you go to this farm to to mow that cor and set the blind out. That year, it's one truck, one trailer. It's a blind tractor goose

neck mower gone. Whereas you know, some people like a trailer and stuff, but then that requires a blind on the trailer. That requires two trucks. You know, it's just less efficient. So when this rig it's one rig. You go up there, you mow your corn. You drive out in the farm with your box on the front. You set it to the side, you mow your corn, take the blind, drive it into the edge of the corn on the side you want to come in from, and then get out really quickly. Level the jack stands so

the blinds level. You're not messing around. You know, wooden legs and metal platforms, all this stuff, and then you just break some stalks out the back and you have perfect egress and ingress. That's the beautiful thing about corn. But you know, hunting mode corn is it's it's just the most deadly tactic there is. I mean, it gives you perfect ingress and egress, and when you're out of food, you just mow more and you move the blind in two minutes and you don't leave a lot of set

and whatever. Well, now one of the offshoots of that is in the blind is like kind of the color of corn. You've got big rubber bands and stuff corn. And whether or not that does anything is you know, who knows. But we also use it two the same thing with switch craft. So a lot of what we do in the consoles, we're taking the plates away. So we might recommend CRP go converting to c RP. Well, a lot of CRP programs they want you to plant, you know, mixes of big blue, little blue Indian fours

all this stuff, and that's great. It takes the plates off the table. But the problem is a lot of that stuff doesn't get dense enough to screen as tight as we want. So I'll recommend to those people do the CRP and it takes the plates off the table. And then I'll say when it gets established and and it starts coming up in the spring after you burned it, go through their backpack spray and spray out a little

three ft trail that stays dirt throughout the summer. And that way you can fly through there and you'll be by quiet right to the back of the blind. And then and then instead of doing that mix that CRP requires against your food plot that we've created, do like a ten yards ten ft strip of solid switch. It's gonna be more dense and do more screen and um. And then when I'm looking at those to lay them out, whether it's a tree stand or a blind, I don't I'm not crazy about hunting in a blind. I use

a blind as a tool. It's an arsenal in my in my pack of tools. No vics. Tree stands are an arsenal in my pack of tools. It's something allowing me to get in any tree straight crooked when I have to quietly, Like, I look at stands and blinds and stuff as tools. So so that low box blind is a tool for corn and then hunting the edge

of a screen like switch grass. So I'll approach my stand or my blind location from egress, ingress and egress, and sometimes it's just a wide open field that we're gonna start creating with grasses and stuff, but it's always ingress and egress. And then that tree stand, that blind, it always has to be in a place that aligns with the thermal draws. So like picture God pouring water on your blind or tree stand, where is that water going to run? It's gonna run downhill into that ravine

in October. Sometimes I pay I pay just as much attention to thermals as I always try to get that set up to where my win direction is in line with the thermal draw because they will screw you if you're not paying attention. And the box line can kind of help you hedge some of that because it's set free.

So it's a tool of standing game. Like Toby said, um, you know, it's an odd up or like I always joking say, I'm gonna write a book someday about math and probability and deer hunting, because literally, whether you're talking about trail cams in the summer, trail like tree stand locations,

the direction you face a tree. No matter what you want to talk about deer hunting, it comes back to odds and probability um, and so back to the food plot stuff, you know, thermals ingress, egress and then creating that pinch. Concentrations are cent like Toby talked about, that's something that's not really talked a lot about hunting world.

If you start paying attention, like when you're walking around a farm randomly, and all of a sudden you come to the giant scrip or you know, a cluster of scrapes or a giant rub or a cluster of rubs. More often than the not it's related to a concentration the scent. So like humans see with their eyes. Get a kid that goes down on the beach and spring break and there's a bunch of girls, get trumbunctious, takes

his shirt off, starts flexing his muscles or whatever. Deer a big buck when he's walking around in the dark, Think like a deer, and all of a sudden you go through a concentration scent because there's a cliff and a creek crossing and blah blah blah and all of a sudden, you get hit in the face with a bunch of scent. You get rambunctious, and you start flexing and tearing stuff up. And so that's where a lot

of times that that sign explodes. If you really start paying attention and so tree COIs and scrapes there, a lot of people will put them out and they don't they get mixed, you know, results If you put them in a spot that's a concentration scent where a deer and naturally wants to scrape and rub, you're gonna find that they're gonna annihilate. I mean, we've got some tree COIs that haven't been out a couple of years and

they're about whittled and half. You know. So when you can take that plot and like as far as size and stuff like that, you need a lot of times it depends on how honeable it is to how big it needs to be. So with the use of some wogen wire fence um, you know, mowing corn strategy, you're able to stay in the game because you're able to hunt a larger area because of the strategy behind how

you're hunting it. Um. But like if I get a big bean field, and I don't have some type of wilver wire fence or something creating a pinch in and out that you know, end of the plot or whatever.

I'll oversee just the area that's within bow range to up my odds that the doe was feeding within bow range, which up my odds that he's you know, on a corn ear, it's so much easier because you're just you have that natural egress, you know ability, and you also have the ability to keep mowing the corn and keep

putting them right in front of you. On a bean year, when you've got that line of switch grass that we design, you have that line of switch your grass to keep moving the blind if he's coming out the other end, or he's you know, they're eating it back away from the blind or whatever. UM. I like keeping it simple. I I like big cloths that he talked about, where everything the whole, the whole, you got the golden corral

out there, you got you got your your clover. And then I like putting my braskas and my cereal grains in my in my sere, in my corn and beans. It doesn't get his robust the braska's um. But you again, odds, instead of having four acres of food out there are two acres of grains or cereal grains and turn ups two acres of grains corn beans. Now you have two acres. It's got it all in there, so it just ups

your odds the hunt ability of it. And I will say, like Brassica strategy, Um, I think I think you can plant Braskas like you can plant the early round Nebraska's on. Let's say you've got an acre field, You've got a pinch that you've laid out in front of you. That's where you're gonna shoot him. Is in this pinch? Well,

you could take a Braska field. You could plant the same mix in the end of July and let those bulbs get huge leaves you get huge, and then you can plant the same mix in the middle of September and uh and they get small and more palatable. And you could literally create a transition of deer feeding in front of you by playing the same exact thing but

planning at a different time of year. I do think those big bulb turnups and stuff are like there's a period from like November to December ten or eight that I think that you know they just if you don't have like miserable miserable weather. I think that they almost prefer more than corny beans that they become powerful. So once again, it's strategy. It's not so much what you're planning. I think it's putting it all in one spot in a way that's hountable and having perfect agress and grass,

making sure your thermals don't screw you. Um. Sometimes I'll have a tree stand in the tree over the top of the box, and I'll hate the same exact spot the plot set up for this one spot. I hunt the box in October when I have, you know, light and variable and thermals to deal with all this stuff. And in the rut, I'll get in the tree where I think you've got to use your ears a little more and you know your eyes and you gotta see

more stuff happens quicker. I'll have the same spot just out of a stand when thermals and everything are a little more true. In November, m can you just clarify one thing on that brassica topic you mentioned. You know, you could plan them in July and you'll get the big balls. You could plan them in September and get the more palatable younger growth are you saying actually planting the same acre twice so you're planning the July and

then your top seat or what are you saying? No, I'm just saying you could take one field and split it and plant plant half of it now and half of it later, and you can have two totally different like results. You know, their strategy for two totally different times periods. Not that they won't eat the big stuff, especially if it's heavily heavy on radish in my opinion, but it just those bolds have definitely become a lot

more desirable late season. You know, I fail you know? Okay? Um, so overseating you get us have both talked about this overseating standing beans or into like a mode down corn plot something like that. Um, I know some people have even you know, I think you talked about us to negotiate with a farmer that they can do it right. Um, can you fill us in on what you found to be the best timing, Like when's the right time to do that? What are the conditions you need for that

to actually work? Because that's one of those things that seems like a relatively easy thing to do. You don't need a bunch of equipment. You can kind of really increase your food output relatively simply, but you've got to do it the right way to have it actually work out. Right. Oh yeah, what's the right way to do them? Um? Well, you know, as soon as they start turning yellow, you want to you want to oversee them, and you want

to use The key is small seeds. Um. I pretty much keep it simple and just do win a rye. I'll do like two bags to the acre um, not not rye grass um, but cereal cereal grain rye. Two bags of the acre as soon as they yellow. And then um, as far as Braskas go, you know, you just want good seed the soil contact, which the smaller seeds tend to get that. But I think any of the Braskas you know, turn ups you know radish, right.

I think all of it works well. Um, A lot of times I just end up kind of throwing you know, all the all my left overseas out there at a certain point. You know that I don't think it's gonna keep to the next year or whatever. Um. One other tip I would give you on overseating is if you're truly planning corn yourself, and you're and you're wanting to oversee that stuff, run your rose north and south because

they'll get better light in there. And the best way to oversee corn, if you truly want to get out there and get after it, is to use a leaf flower spreader, and that way you can shoot it, you know, shoot it up in the air and whatever. But a lot of times I don't go to that effort because the mowing of the corn is so powerful. What I do is my first mowing of the corn getting ready for deer season will be like September here in Illinois, a few days before the season, a week for a season.

You're still early enough then to oversee it. So I'll mow that first area, and then I'll oversee that one area, you know, and that will serve me a little green plot through most of October. Okay, I follow you now. Something I've seen you guys talk about in some of

your videos where you're enough farms. You've talked about, Well, if if the person behind this farm wants to just firearm hunt this, we would recommend setting up these plots in these food sources differently, versus if this is somebody who wants to bow hunt it. Um, how would the things you're just talking about right now, Bobby, change if I told you, well, I'm an out of state in Iowa and I really can only get that every year gun tag. Or maybe I'm just a guy who prefers

gun hunting most of the time. Or we've got a big family camp and that's really when we're gonna focus on things, So I'm not as worried about you know, a bow hunting set up. How does that change your food source, food plot plan. Well, I'll give you a real world example. UM. Me and Toby are a nonresidents, non residence obviously in Iowa, and we've got a thirty acre tillable field that we bought up against the no

hunting property and it literally is a tillable field. UM. And we are essentially designing a a screen if you will, about fifty to switch grass in the road. It's a long, skinny thirty against the no hunting property. So we have a fifty yard stretch of switch grass to screens from the road, and then we have a narrower uh screen of switch grass. It turns and heads north of the property line out in the field, away from the cover

from the door hunting property. UM. And it's probably about I think it's about six six so it's twenty yards wide, and it runs the length of the thirty and the thirty is pretty it's it's fairly narrow. Um man, it's got to go up there. It seems like it seems like a half mile, but it's probably probably not quite that.

And then at the far end it will turn back to this big no hunting property and it will have you know, fifty yards of grass up there on that east side where our e grass will be will be almost like a two track, you know, something to walk up, something that keeps our grass a little away from the adjacent farmer field so we don't get any wind drift

to kill our grasses. Um. And then from the road when the and I'll stake all this out with snow plow steaks, you know, this year when we go to the frost seeding the switch grass soon, I won't have him pull in and cut straight to the switch where you can look like a lane down into our our field of paradise back there, which is about end up being about twenty two or three acres um. It'll kind of go at an angle or it will be like a kind of a half moon shaped entrance road for

the farmer into the big field. And then if you go halfway up that screen on the right side, the east side of the property, our box blind will be. You'll cut into that grass twenty yards and you'll get into the blind perfectly ingress, perfectly grass. And when you get in there and you sit down, you look out, you'll be looking at a twenty acre hidden field. Um,

you know, up against no hunting. And essentially we kinda we we went round and round about different strategy, but what we're doing there is we're keeping our our cash RNT high. He's gonna plant the entire field for us, um and then he's gonna leave standing crop for us a couple of acres of it. So again we'll get our We're not having to do anything once his grass is established because a farm is doing it everything for us,

and we negotiated to have him cover crop it. So now we're gonna have a twenty acre acre you know, win or rye or turn ups or combination field you know, into cut beans with you know, two three or four or five acres of standing beans. And we literally turned a tillable field into a world class big buck killing machine and the noose is just less tight. There's still a bunch of strategy there. But you know, it's just it doesn't have to be as tight, you know what

I mean? You can back off, you can. It's it's just a little easier to do, if that makes sense. So so do you have or do you try to create any kind of pinches still even if they're a hundred and fifty yards wide, or or you're not as worried about that because of you know what you just describe. I know, I don't think so. Um, it's it's just all about perfect ingress and agress like picture. You know, you're nonresident, you got authority up there in Iowa. You

just want one gigantic food source. You just need perfect You need to be able to hunt that field probability. You need to be able to hunt that field every day for two weeks. If that's you know, if that's what it means you got a big buck in there. You can't be held at at the mercy of of odds and not be able to hunt it on a certain wind, and or you can't be hurting your odds every day by blowing deer when you come out of that field. So I'd say gun hunting, it becomes it

becomes a lot you're doing the same thing. It's just the new studdn't have to be tight as tight. And actually the kind of the the side effect of it is you pressure your farm less, you know what I mean, because you don't have to dive in quite as much. We did a consult for a guy up in Decanyer County, Iowa. Oh man, it was one of my favorite farms I've

ever been on my life. And we kind of quadr in the farm off into four places, had four giant food sources with absolutely perfect ingress and egress um to each spot. And I mean done acres for for food sources. You know, all your eggs in one basket big and we did two corn plots to bean plots. They rotate every year. You asked told me that question that that

would be one thing I'd add on there. If you are going to have two big areas, I try and rotate it to where it's corn beans, so you have both every year because they will favor one or the other on a given day. I don't think we can totally figure that out as hunters. So it seems like all this one day they all go green, one day they all go to gens, one day all go to corn um. But it's good to just have a variety,

you know. Yeah, tell me, would you add anything to that, you know, if I had a firearm specific farm or area or if that was just my thing. Uh, you just you know you have that. That gun is kind of a great equalizer. Is kind of what I pulled it, you know, the way I put it in our four farm before farm project we had in Iowa this year.

We kind of set that whole deal up as a as a late season you know, more of a late season project and or being plots were just a little bit bigger, and we paid way you know, the most attention to the the access because it goes right back

to what I said before. Especially in a late season situation, you're gonna have a lot of deer coming in and going from that field, and you know, if you can't get in and out of there without blowing them up every time, I mean, you're kind of you're spinning your wheels.

So access is super important. And then making him making sure you have enough tonnage of food to still have those deer hitting that plot of the last day of the muzzle or season, so you can't run out of food and you can't be blowing your plot up coming and going every day. Yeah, and one thing I would say about gun hunting specifically, and this is more like strategy, less about habitat or food plots or whatever. But I love gun hunting. I mean, obviously I'm big, die hard

bow hunter, but I love dun hunting. And the way that I kind of approached this this deer season is like I'm like risk reward. I'm getting a little more invasive, a little more invasive as the time goes. I'm tightening the noose if I haven't killed him by gun season, Like I'm dropping dot on the map where I think he's at, and I'm trekking in there with a climber, you know or whatever, just something mobile, and I'm getting right in the thicker things with him with the gun.

And so, you know a lot of times in in in the contolts and stuff, we'll lay out a standard two for gun that's just blaze in the media things, you know what I mean, And it's like, don't go in. And this is the Illinois specifically, because our gun season comes in like right and right in the heart of what I call the post lock and cruise is like November twenty, you know, so that's kind of like that risk reward thing gun strategy, like dive in when it's

when it's right, you know. Yeah. Interesting. Uh. One more thing on the on the food side, and it's it's not really food related, I guess, but it is sort of coming back to creating these or finding these locations of scent concentrations. Toby, you you'd mentioned this early, the tree koise um and I know you mentioned that Bobby, you'll sometimes actually get rid of other scrapes in the

area to to further concentrate where you want it. Can you expand on that a little bit and just just give me a little bit more detail about why that is an important thing and is that something you do on all of your food sources and plots. And then secondly, I know you guys create your own tree koi product um.

Can you can you talk to me why that style you guys do is more effective than sticking a cut down tree in the middle or you know, one of these other tactics that people use to create a fake screen, fake scrape tree. It's just probability. So like you know, if you're a big deer and you you you know, and this kind of dives into the hunting strategies side

of things. But if you're in the mindset in October of a territory cruise and you're not really heavily on the dough mindset and you're just you're marking territories, is the high pressure night You show up to a food pot and you can just kind of bang into that back edge and you know, maybe lip curl flaxer muscles, hit a scrape and go on to the next one. Well, if you didn't have a scrape in that back cove or fifty yards or what do you have come to the tree koi that is right in front of your box.

It also happens to be a massive concentration the set. Who knows, you don't know, but to me, you know, it makes sense that that just ups it's just upping odds. It's it's it's that it's that last jinga block that you pull and his world comes crumbling down. Yeah, So as far as the tree koise go, we just they're just there. You know, they're pretty simple they're just but they're made out of cedar. They have a hemp rope on one side. They've got a bracket on the other

side to stick whatever whatever brand you want. They're just, you know, they're robust. We put them in with a with a you know, um an augur or whatever. So they're down in concrete them deep. So they're just they're robust. They're gonna stay there. You can put them in the

exact spot you want. They rubbed the heck out of the cedar and then um we also have a we have a weather vein that we put on the top of the tree Koi, and that weather vein allows you when you're sitting in a box again, that last box of Jenga, and that that last block got me last year. Even when I was in a set free blocks, I didn't have on that face face with the monster video. I didn't have a tree COI, I didn't have that

weather vane out there. And I opened that window and the thermals had turned and we're cutting across the back edge of the plot and the doe caught me and took off and then he ended up smelling me. So if I was watching that weather vane. If I had one of them out in that plot, I would not have opened that window yet. So that weather vane gives you the ability to essentially, you know, no when to

not open the wind. It also teaches you a lot about kind of air currents and what's going on, and you realize real quick there's a lot more going on than you kind of thing. Yeah, that's pretty interesting. That that's the that's the deal with those things. So site there you can actually there's a video that kind of keys in on those tree kois and there's some really cool trail camera video of you know, watching these books and watching the those and and see how they communicate

through scent. But this tree coy is even the those when they come by it, each one of them will smell a different part of it, and they'll reach up and they'll actually lick and nibble on the hemp rope and they'll rub it on their face. And then you know, the next day you'll come in, they'll do something different. They'll smell the rubbing part of it. But it's you know, deer communicate through scent primarily, and that's you're just giving them a place to do that, a place where they

do that on our terms. Yes, yeah, and that seems that's like a a theme of everything you guys seem to be doing. Is you correct me if I'm wrong here, but I feel like one of the one of your secret sauces is being really good at at noticing and analyzing what the deer want to do naturally and then enhancing it where you can, or hedging, tweaking, twisting, shifting a bit to make sure that what dear naturally do happens in a place that's advantageous to you as the hunter.

And everything seems to be connected. Yeah. Yes, you have to be able to think like a deer in order to you know, and anybody can do that, you know, but you have to be able to think like a deer in order to kind of you know, work backwards to set set the pharm up, you know. And it's even like the blinds. You know we talked about we have our own minds made. Well. We didn't do that because we wanted to, like, you know, we didn't do it by default because we want to build a big

blind company. We did it because we wanted to build in little layers of micro strategy. The way that we wanted to utilize a blind the way we wanted it set free. Like our windows are glass, so they don't scratch that. We have Matt Vinyl blackout on the outside, the bouse the blind black. The inside is black. When you open the window, there's no flash because it's final blackout film. On the outside, there's no glass, there's no glare. That's that last Jana block that you open. You open

a glass one, a replexi glass one. It reflects and the dope catches you and starts wagging out, you know what I mean. So there's so many like little tiny micro strategies and it all adds up like one thing might be silly, another thing might be silly. But when you have like fifteen year twenty things going on, it starts changing the game. Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of like famous football coaches and different folks in the sporting world to talk about this idea of the

accrue of marginal gains. It's just the tiny thing today, and the tiny thing tomorrow, and the tiny thing every one of these little pieces stacks up just like you're saying, Bob and I have two thousand percent agree that that is that's the difference between you know, your your guy or girl who can be consistently successful and the person who looks into it for once in a while. It's it's just stacking them, stacking every little marginal gain and

it grows into something, um paying attention to. Yeah, Like I said, we all have different strokes of the brush. That's what's kind of cool about like this kind of group of white tail kind of minds. Everybody's got a different stroke. It's like art at a certain point, you know, everybody's successful or whatever. It's just everybody got a little different twitter cake on it, you know, a little different stroke of the brush. Um. But I do feel like the one thing that we can all agree on is

the ability to increase odds. Yeah, and we're kind of um, we're jumping on top of the final thing I wanted to talk about before I even ask the questions, So we might have just answered the question I'm about to ask you. But but I want to wrap it up here. I've we uh, we could definitely talk through these things. Were about four more hours, So we do probably need to set up a future get together to do more of this because there's a lot I still wanted to

cover it. I just can't keep it here till midnight. Um. But but you guys do have this really unique opportunity where you get to, you know, bring on you know, the best of the best and spend time with them, either helping them with their properties or them joining you to go out and do this kind of stuff for other people. So you've you've been able to pick the brains are the best of the best and work with

the best of the best. So other than you know, those people or situations where you know, you have a lot more money to use for this kind of thing or a lot more time to spend on this kind of thing, other than those two variables that are outside of you know, every person's particular circumstances. What what do the best of the do? Sorry, what do the best of the best to do that the average guyler girl doesn't? So what separates the top one percent from the other? Um?

Is it just what we talked about or is there anything else that you can point a finger to specifically kind of on the you know, working on a habitat side of things that stands out to you? Tell me if you want to start, UM, I just think education, like Bobby talked about earlier. The more whether it's our stuff you're watching, or Bend stuff we're watching, or anybody else who's who's big into the management and development, I mean, the more knowledge you can get and then figuring out

if that particular knowledge applies to your peace. You know, it's again it's coming right back to no peace of the same, you know, and and everybody's got a little bit of spin. But the more knowledge you can gain, no, the better you're gonna be with with how it applies to your place. And you know, these guys that we deal with and that are the bigger, you know, bigger names in the industry. I think these guys they eat, sleep, deer hunting like like we do. It's like it's it's

it's part of every conversation. It's it's you know, the boots on the ground every day. Or you know, everybody's phones are going off with your cell cams and you're continue to building your hit list, and you're you're just paying attention to all these little things. And you know, I hear what you're saying. You know that you know

more or less the average guy. You know, they don't have the advantage of time to pay attention to nothing but deer hunting, like some people do, And that's that's fine. But that's where watching the videos and listening and learning from the guys that do have the time to spend endless hours in the woods learning, that's that's that's the biggest thing to me, is learned from what everybody else has to say. Yeah, great point, Bubby, Bubby, what would

you say you've seen? Yeah, I agree with with that too. You know, there's definitely gonna be people that are listening that feel like, you know, they can't relate or whatever. But um, you know, I grew up I didn't have anybody in my family even hunted. I was in the suburbs of North Carolina. For some reason, I had this like burning passion to deer hunting. Ended up finding an older gentleman to take me and this and that and but as time, when on I got in on a lease,

I got my dad into hunting. Our lease was a dog hunting club in South Carolina, and I remember we even joined it on some of the dog hunting deals, and you know, and then I've moved up to upstate New York and I hunted in the Adirondacks with guys and did drives and that rendecks. And you know what I'm getting at is, no matter where you are, different styles of hunting come about, um, just because of the way the deer are, the way the habitat is, or the food down south of the pines and stuff that

it's hard to hunt. You know, in the mountains of the Adirondics there's not a lot of deer and so they're doing drive. So my point is like, don't I would tell people, don't ever have like you know, um, your guard up or preconceived notion about somebody else's dear knowledge. They're all just deer and you can learn. Like the dog guys for example, I mean, they know better about the deer's escape routes and how they travel than anybody. The guys in the outer ondex they know a lot

about that as well. You know, the Kansas deer or nomad they will wander fifteen miles for food. Like everywhere you go, the deer are different, and you have guys that are consistently successful in those areas, they become masters of that. So like you know, listen to those guys that are successful in their areas. Pull snippets and then before you know it, something you learn from the guys in a different area you can apply, you know, to the Midwest and it just makes you a bit better

hunter there. Um, I think I think just in general, people being a little more open to listening, you know, like, for example, we have the opportunity to be around a lot of big, mature deer. Um. Like I even listen to a le a lot leads around a ton of mature deer. He's he's become a master of growing old deer.

He's passing deer. They're two hundred at five because you want some seven you if you can learn more about how a seven year old deer behaves, well, then when you do have a seven year old deer to hunt, you're ahead of the curve, you know. So kind of what Toby said, just listening, learning from everybody, um, not not thinking that there's a one size fits all approach, because there's not, um, you know, And definitely they don't need to be a big name person to be listening to.

I know a lot of guys that look up to and stuff that are killers, and you know they don't you know, they just do their things. So just listening and learning and and and definitely learning from the deer. That people always say, well, how do you know how to hunt a farm? With you? It's your first year. It takes a while to learn it. And I always say, well, I'm learning a deer and he's teaching me the farm.

Just pay attention to what he's doing, and he'll teach to the farm, you know, and then pretty tun you know how to basically you kind of know how he's gonna use a farm because you've seen it before, you know, Yeah, yeah, I gotta yeah. This is um, this is the fun stuff, Like this is really really fun stuff, trying to pick apart those different little nuances, learning the deer, learn the property, learning how this little change here affects this little thing

over here, and how it's all connected in between. And uh, and I appreciate the level of thought that you guys put into it that that stands out and uh, and I enjoy it. And obviously the results are are indicating that what you're what you're putting out there is working. So if if folks Bobby want to learn more, if they want to see what you guys have up to, if they want to see future properties, that might be all available for sale. I mean, you've got a lot

of things going on. Where can people find all of these different things? Um? So our YouTube channel, the white Tail group, basically has a lot of series where that we just follow, you know, the cameras follow the farm. The first video might be, uh, you know, the play and the next one might be the logging project or you know, excavation project or whatever it might need, and then you know the food plots and stuff, and then the final product. So it's almost like kind of like

an h G TV type you know format. Um. And then our Facebook page, you know, gets a lot of stuff on there. Not strong on Instagram yet, we need to work on that. Um. We got stuff on TikTok. On our website, we have a farm's page. It kind of shows what's coming down the pipeline, and we have a pre market buyer list and that list we kind of we kind of and we're kind of changing our

format a little. A lot of times we've been doing the plan on the farm, but we're starting to come back and do the plan on a zoom style meeting where we talk about and physically show it all on on Onyx on the maps um, and that way it

makes more sense before we get into developing it. UM. So we just did one the other day, and I will send you a link to that when it's up on YouTube, and you could maybe put it out there on your on your platform people watch, because that's gonna take everything we just talked about and it's gonna hie it all in and they're gonna be able to see it happening, you know, in the layout of a farm

and kind of our approach with all these different strategies. UM. And you know, generally our a website has got a lot of information. It's got until belief in program, it's got you know, UM, it's got the logging information, it's got farms for sale stuff, it's got blind entre Cooi has kind of got a little bit everything. So very cool. Untilby is there anything else in your end with with

real estate or anything else that you want to mention? UM, you can see you can get on a white tail group dot com and look for all the projects you're coming out of pipeline that Bobby says, and we talked a little bit about, you know, the pre market thing in a couple of examples, but you know, I just people.

You know, if you're looking for a piece of ground, you can actually reach out to us and say, here's what I'm wanting, here's the area I want to be in, and you know, I'd like for you guys to find it about it, you know, and and when I take over, I want to finish product and so there's a process that can happen. Feel free to reach out to us and just talk about that and watch the videos on it. Other than that, um, we don't have something you're looking for, you can get on the land guys dot com and

see some other farms in the area. And even if you know, something develops to where you buy a farm that we don't own, we'd still be happy to do the console and jump in there and help you with any part of the project or the plan. So it's a couple different ways that you can get involved. And the console side of our business is kind of blowing up. That's where it all begins. I mean, that's where the

magic happens. I tell people, you know, forty bucks and you have this group of people help you shave off the years of trial and air and property value. You know, I say, if we can increase your property value a hundred dollars per acre, which is it's probably gonna be more like several hundred. You know, for every hundred acres that we increase by dollars and acres ten grands double

your investment. So it's a no brainer from the standpoint of what you learned that will follow you forever on that console, regardless of property, the use you get out of the property while you own it, and the resale value. It's it's it's a no brainer. And for me, I'm so passionate about that because it's we're truly like changing the course of people's on experience by helping or even on their own farms with consulting, very very cool stuff.

I can certainly see the appeal to having you guys and some of your pals come out there and share your perspective on a place. Uh that sounds like a fun, very interesting day. So guys do a project together. Hey, let me know. I'm all for it. I love that kind of stuff. And uh, I'm guilty of always selfishly wanting to pick the brains of the best and the best myself, which you guys qualify us. I appreciate you, guys.

Thank you so much for for staying up lay here tonight's talk through all this stuff and sticking around for so long. Um, this is uh, this is some great next level habitat and know how that I know folks are gonna enjoy. So thank you, thank you, thank you, and that is a rap. Thank you for joining me, Thanks for sticking around for a long one here today. I hope you found some valuable concepts, strategies, ideas, tips, tricks, uh, something you can bring to the table when improving your

own white tail properties. Uh. I know I certainly did so well that all said, let's wrap this one up, let's get out there and get to work on our own places. And until next time, stay wired. Tom