Ep. 754: Sustainable Habitat Management for Deer and Native Ecosystems with Thomas Mlsna

Camera for Conservation initiative. That means a portion of every sale of First Light's whitetail camel pattern, which is specter, a portion of everyone those sales is donated to the National Deer Association, something I'm real proud of. And today's conversation is about conservation. With our guest Thomas Milsna, we are getting back into habitat month the month of February. We've talked to Doug Durham, We've talked to Kyle Perry, and today Thomas Milsna, who is a habitat consultant and

whitetail coach with the Untamed Ambition. You can learn more about everything's got going on at the Untamed Ambition dot com. He's got courses, he does consulting, he does videos, and all sorts of different kinds of content of podcast.

And by doing that, Thomas makes a really compelling case that by doing that, it's going to make your dear healthier, it's going to make your deer hunting better, and it's going to make every other link on that food chain more healthy, sustainable, and long lasting. And that's something I think is pretty darn cool. I really enjoyed this conversation. We get into a bunch of interesting topics. It's one that I really think you're going to enjoy I think

you're all going to learn a lot from it. And I don't think that I should beat around the bush here too much longer. I think we should get to this one because Thomas and I talked for a very long time. It's a long podcast, but this one is full of a whole lot of meat on the bone. I really really like this one. So without further ado, let's get to my conversation with Thomas Milsnup. He is

a trained wildlife biologist. He has an education in that and he has real life applicable experience on the ground doing this stuff. So you're gonna enjoy this one. Here we go, all right, hear me on the show. I'm joined by Thomas milsna Thomas. Welcome to the show.

tail habitat management world that I'm particularly intrigued in. And as I was doing that research and asking around and thinking about things, your name popped up again and I was like, oh, yes, this is a guy I need to talk to. And I went to Instagram to reach out to you, and then I saw that you had already reached out to me like a year or two ago about this very thing, and I completely missed it,

never responded. I felt horrible about that, So I appreciate you being understanding of me leaving you unread and being here to day to chat.

your stand locations in this spot? And I've talked to other people who are more thinking, you know, hey, how do we manage our oaks in relation to our this kind of timber, in relation to this kind of habitat? And you came to mind as a great fit for this conversation because, in particular, something I noticed on your website. A few things I noticed on your website, the Untamed Ambition dot com. I'll paraphrase a few things here, but for one, I saw you say that hunters can save

the world by saving nature. I saw you say something on the lines of the fact that hunters have the potential to make a massive impact, a massive positive impact on the world by protecting wildlife habitat and promoting healthy

native ecosystems. And I will quote you here. In turn, that land will provide an abundance of opportunities for us and our families to thrive, not just with deer and hunting opportunities, but with other nutritious wild bounties, diverse income opportunities, and the all too often overlooked importance of clean air and clean water for generations to come. So those are some pretty bold statements to have on the website right out the gate, Explain what do you mean by all this?

Is that something that you lead when someone shows up to the untamed ambition.

to college for wildlife biology and natural resource management. In a strange turn of events, I ended up changing my career path. My father was injured in a farming accident. I ended up transferring some credits. Long story short, I end up working for a trail camera company for ten years, and so instead of becoming a biologist, I worked with biologists on the technology side. Fast forward, In due time, I went back to pursuing my passion in biology and

natural resources. And my passion has always really been with white tail hunting, love the allure of big bucks obviously most of your listeners probably feel the same. But once I got into the consulting field, you know, thinking I'm gonna come out, I'm going to show people my approach to land management, you know, again from the things that I've learned over the years and my education, and then

also my approach to targeting big mature books. Once I got into that space, I was constantly presented with this question of how is the best way to do this? What's the best way to do this? And it just led me down a lot of rabbit holes. And I like to read research papers. I like to dig into a lot of different ways of you know, different perspectives, different ways of doing stuff, and ultimately the answers to these questions on land management always came back to this

more holistic approach. And then you add in the fact of having kids, right, So that's really where this generational sustainable thing comes in. Where I kind of shifted away from what can I do right now to kill a deer, you know, and therefore, what can I help my clients

do right now to kill a deer? To how do we set up a sustainable system to ensure that we can not only kill big deer in the near future, but ensure that we can kill big deer for generations to come, and obviously protect all the resources that produce that, you know, or that provide the ecosystem or environment that grows big, healthy deer. That's kind of how I got to that point. And the holistic approach, you know, the idea of holistic management is just the concept of managing

as a whole. So instead of going in and doing things specifically for deer, which you know, i'll say outright in my opinion, I think that this whole concept of white tail land management is an overall net negative to the environment. And it wasn't that long ago that I

thought it was a really good idea. You know. Again, this allure of oh what can I do to manipulate habitat and focus specifically on deer, all of that's very, very appealing, but at the end of the day, it's very detrimental to the ecosystems that these animals live in. So that's what kind of led me down that path.

And then you know, my background in general, growing up on a farm, seeing these you know, local communities that were thriving back in the day, you know, and there's a lot of rural activity, and then seeing them kind of dwindle and the habitat loss that came with the

growing expansion of these farms and obviously urban development. It really made me take a step back and go, oh, man, like, you know, so how much has changed in the last twenty years of my life, and if we continue this trajectory, what's going to be left twenty years from now or

forty years from now for my kids? Right? And not just the habitat alone and the hunting opportunities, but also you know, again when you look at the water system and the air quality and all the things that go with, you know, hand in hand with our land use practices, what where are we going to be in a generation from now and how do we get ahead of that?

So that's that's really how I got to this point or started to take this approach of analyzing land differently, you know, looking at from a different scope or different perspective and trying to solve these problems. And then you start to realize, you know, this whole white tail thing is really a pretty minor thing on the grand scheme of things, But at the same time, it's a really, really good excuse to improve the quality of your habitat. And also, you know, tech that habitat going forward, and

it's a byproduct of it. Again, you know, killing big maturre tier is a byproduct of a healthier ecosystem that they live in.

good for everything. But first, in what ways is the status quo white tail specific way problematic in your view?

dialing things in. So when I say white tail land management, I'm talking more specifically about this, you know, for a lack of better analogy, this landscaping technique that people are employing to put white tail deer in their lap for hunting, right, and you start looking at some of these situations where you have very a big lack of biodiversity at the

end of the day. You know, so, first and foremost, managing specifically for white tail deer is a bad idea because white tail deer are a generalist species right there, and they're pretty far up on the you know, the so called food web. So when you start managing for a generalist species that ranks as high as they do, everything below them starts to suffer and eventually disappears. And and that's a big, big problem. I mean, by themselves,

white tailed deer are creatures of diversity. So when you manage for diversity and obviously native habitat of which they are a product, then everything thrives. But when you manage specifically for the deer themselves, and you start looking at things like, you know, how can we feed them very specific monocrops like soybeans or corn or you know, whatever you put in your food plots. And that's not the

worst thing. At the end of the day, right, But when you start to make that your entire approach to managing deer, then there's a lot of other things that suffer in that equation. You know. One of the things that I bring up frequently when I talk to my clients who oftentimes come to me, you know, again with this idea that I'm going to help them produce really big deer and make it easier for them to hunt. And they've got all these ideas because they've been influenced

by other people in the space. They start looking at different you know, call them consultants approaches. And I'm not here to throw anyone under the bus, right, trying to bring some awareness to the situation. But one of the main techniques that a lot of these guys will use, and it's very effective. I mean, I will say that as far as hunting goes, is to separate food from cover, so you ultimately have an area of dense cover, be

it switch grass. You know, maybe they'll tell you that bringing in diversity by adding pockets of giant muscanthos or something, or some guys will even promote leaving invasive shrubs because it provides really good cover value. And then on the other side of the property, they have all their food, again generally broken up into various monocultures. So you're separating your food from your cover, which I like to refer to as the half a tat approach, not habitat, because

habitat is the combination of food plus cover. Right, So that presents a really good situation for hunting deer because you're forcing them to move to you know, go from cover to food. But at the end of the day, it's it's bad for both ecosystems. Right, Your forest ecosystem suffers. Your ecosystem, you know that is in that food plot suffers ultimately too. And also you're not really providing the deer with the quality nutrition that they need to really thrive.

And there's a lot of potential issues with that that we're seeing through a lot of research studies as well. So those overall concepts of you know, again that kind of that landscape architecture that comes with deer hunting. I'm not one hundred percent opposed to that, but it kind of goes back to the same thing. You know, I work with some small property owners that don't hunt at all,

just trying to increase diversity on their property. Maybe they want more butterflies and birds or whatever it might be.

It's the same concept, right, what we're going in. We're trying to replace some of these alien, cool seasoned grasses or lawns with more native plants that are going to benefit the native pollinators and local insect population, which in turn benefits the birds, which you know that it kind of scales up throughout that system, and then you know, we're placing invasive ornamental plants with native shrubs, again benefiting all the players in that system and actually creating a

sustainable system in their backyard. It's the same thing we do on a property, just at a bigger scale, so we can have the same type of architecture and create the same type of movement, predictable movement, right that makes it easier to hunt. But we can do it with natives.

The only real difference that I've seen is just this time, the time that goes into the development of it, where you know, a lot of it is just the sales pitch of convenience that comes with this magic being or this process, because it's so fast and so convenient see results right away, versus hey do these things and in a couple of years you're going to see these results and kind of work up to it. But it creates

a more sustainable system. So as a whole. Well, again, managing just for deer, I think is problematic because you start to reach a point where you're not really managing for wildlife. You're kind of more so just farming certain species of wildlife, which you know, if we start looking at the conventional agricultural systems, it's pretty easy to punch a lot of holes in the sustainability of that as well. And that's where I say hunters are on the front line.

You know, we're on the front line of conservation, so we have kind of an unspoken responsibility to do things the right way. Yeah, and you made a good point earlier when you said that, you know, deer are generalists. They can actually, in fact live in many different habitat types with varying degrees of habitat quality and still get by.

So what if you are managing specifically for white tails, you are it's like you're throwing a basketball at a basketball hoop the size of a bathtub, But you have many other species on the landscape that are equally important

to the whole that are specialists. There are many insects, there are many different critters out there who are you know, dependent on specific things, dependent on certain relationships between different animals, different pollinators, different habitat types, all that kind of stuff. So if we don't manage for the specialists, they just disappear.

And so, like you're talking about deer pretty far up the web, but these other critters down towards the bottom are more specialized, are important, and invasive species really do impact them.

you know, shoot bigger bucks. I've seen that on you know, folks Instagram pages. You're saying hunters can save the world. Yeah, you're not saying I just kill a booner buck. You're saying hunters can save the world by doing this kind of thing. Help me understand that, Help me understand the power, the influence, the impact that you believe we can have if we look at things this way.

increases or promotes biodiversity. And that's where that leading by example comes into play, and that what I always refer to as that impact with that subsequent rippling effect. One of the things I tell my clients all the time is community communication creates common goals. So where a lot of whitetail consultants out there, will you know, they use as kind of a sales pitch of oh, how to kill your neighbor's buck, or how to you know, hold

you're on your property and not let your neighbors kill them. Well, unless you have a really really big property, we know that that's kind of a line of bs because deer cover a lot of ground, so it's really hard to hold the mature buck on your property. All the time, what I preached to my clients is work with your neighbors when they start asking questions. And we see this all the time. I just last week did another community cooperative meeting where we had a client property, we had

some projects in progress. The neighbors started asking questions, and I just tell my clients all the time, and I kind of preface the whole consulting process to them and say, at some point people are going to ask questions, and I would strongly encourage you to share whatever you're comfortable with sharing, because you're going to have an impact, and the bigger the impact you have, the better your hunting is going to get. At the end of the day, again, I try to use that hunting as an excuse to

make everything better. But with that community communication, we start talking to these guys, Now you have one property, you know, call it the point of impact. You have one property in the center that we're going through and we're improving all the native habitat. We're taking degraded crop land, improving that, we're taking over used pasture land, improving that all with

native habitat. And then the neighbors start asking questions. We tell them what we're doing and why, and all of a sudden they start to look at their property from a different perspective. Now too, how does that fit into the big equation? How can we make it better for hunting? And then the other thing that I do on that same note is we try to get landowners to cooperate together.

At the end of the day, you know, with cattle are a big, big part of the equation, and in any situation where they're involved, they're a very valuable land management tool, specifically for nutrient cycling. So if we have a neighbor that has beef cattle rather than mowing our native pasture land or what was pasture land is now just native prairie, habitat rather than just going in there and mowing that all the time, we'll work out in agreement with the neighbor to come in and graze his cattle.

And that's a double win, right, because it costs us less on our inputs as far as how we're managing that land, and the neighbor's happy because it takes pressure off of his land, and that in turn makes his land better because his caring capacity can go up now. And it kind of ripples from there, and when you start to see that, you know, outside of that immediate community, then other people start asking questions or you know, when they ask you your technique or how you're managing your land,

then they are more intrigued. And again, I think we have a big responsibility not just on improving biodiversity and managing our land appropriately, but also just again leading by example so that you know, the non hunter can look at what we're doing and have a better understanding, because how many times are you asked that question right like, oh,

you're just farming deer, and I get it. You know, people that don't understand it, and even people that do understand it look at it like, well, you're just farming deer. You're just doing that so you can kill deer. I

just had this conversation this morning. I have this like strange guilty pleasure of starting conversations online with the vegans like wow when I'm when I'm bored, because I follow it and I try to do it like tactually right, mostly because I'm trying to understand their perspective outside of just you know, the virtue signaling that comes with that type of lifestyle. And most of the time they're not

productive conversations, and they are what they are. But sometimes you get into really productive conversations and I always bring it up. You know, I am a true animal lover, right, I think most hunters are. And then people always ask, well, if you love them so much, how can you kill them?

as a management tool. And the byproduct of that management tool is we can feed our families or the surrounding communities with this extremely nutrient dense meat or food that has very little negative environmental impact in fact, it has a very positive environmental impact, and that kind of brings me all the way back around to why I think hunters can save the world is because they are really the only population of people that own land that are willing to stick the time and money into that land

to improve the wildlife habitat without expecting a dramatic financial return from it. Right. We're you know, like farmers are kind of in the same boat, but they always have to have profit at the end of the day. Where hunters, you know, they bought that land for that reason.

it's not it's not inconsequential at all. You know, the best number I can come up with, based off of a land you study that came out a handful of years ago, is that there is about three hundred and fifty six million acres of land across the country that's owned primarily for hunting. Three hundred and fifty six million acres. That's larger than our National Park Service lands across the country.

That we could change. That we can change that, we could do the things you're talking about on and address you know, some serious things, because I think something that we haven't talked about. It's something I you know, mentioned probably earlier in this month. But you know, deer are doing pretty darn good across the nation, right We're basically

in the golden days of deer. But a lot of these other things, those specialists I talked about, those birds and those bugs, and many plant species and all sorts of stuff are struggling in many ways across the country. And if we lose that stuff, which we are, you know, trending in that direction, then all of a sudden, our

beloved white tails are in trouble. So I think there's this selfish incentive, like we want better deer, and then there's this more altruistic incentive, which is, hey, we can make a big picture impact, Like you're saying, that's going to help everything. It's going to help our air quality, our water quality, the health of everything around us. So so your argument is falling in what's the word I'm trying to say, you're hitting me right there where I'm interested.

But I guess the thing that I want to explore next is this, if all of this sounds pretty good to somebody, if someone likes the idea of it, what are the three or four big picture things that we need to be thinking about doing differently on our land if we want to manage sustainably, if we want to manage holistically. I'm sure there's twenty seven different tactics you could recommend, but what are the three or four philosophies or principles that we need to write down right now?

Is like, these are the most important ideas or things I need to learn about or practices I need to start digging in on.

make will affect generations right where. I think that's one big issue also with kind of this mentality of the white tail land management, so like, oh, how can I buy land and kill deer? Like we're not thinking about the value of that land outside of deer, which again is another negative. But I always come back to this quote, and I don't know if someone else said it or if it kind of, you know, was a conglomerate of

other people talking books I've read and whatever. But I always tell my clients every convenience comes at a cost if you focus on that're not necessarily focused, but always remind yourself every convenience comes at a cost, and that you know by that, I mean it might be a week down the road, it might be a generation down the road, whatever it might be. We have to, as hunters and as land managers, first and foremost understand that those conveniences are going to cost someone at some point

in time. So cutting corners, punching the easy button, you know, taking those shortcuts in things that in our mind. And I've been there, I've been guilty this many times, Like what can I do right now? It's going to help me kill it here, especially if you're in the middle of the season doing something crazy. Right there's one thing

to adjust your habits and make bold, aggressive moves. That's only going to affect you, right, But it's another thing to just constantly cut corners, try to, you know, look for again these easy, convenient ways of improving that you know, habitat situation on your property, and then it ultimately it comes back around and cost someone or something at some point. And you already kind of hit on that the specialist

species that are suffering from these management practices. At the end of the day, beyond that, it's not that complicated, I think, you know, again, it goes back to that holistic approach, which you know, the concept of holistic land management. We're looking at that land and how it functions as a system in and of itself, right, So that's that's really the hunting layout, and that's how I explained to my client. So we can look at that and you know,

this is a big part of what I do. Where we come into a property and we're not just necessarily consulting on where to put a tree stand, where to put a food plot, where to improve a betting area, but we're trying to create a system. How can we create a system on that property where you know, our main goal at the end of the day is to at least get our management practices to pay for themselves or balance out in some way, shape or form so that it's sustainable. Because if it's if it costs us

a lot all the time. At some point in time, whether it's you know, the current landowner realizing how much money he's sticking in this property, or maybe he passes on and then his children inherit the property and they realize, wow, I can't really manage it this way. It costs too much. Then they're more likely to just get rid of the property or you know, develop it, whatever whatever comes up. Right Again, that dollar, you know, it controls a lot,

so it has to be sustainable in that sense. So we're looking at the property how it functions as a system in and of itself, and then we're looking at how that property fits into the bigger system, back to that community aspect, And I think that's a big thing people should look at on their property is you know, we all have this idea where we have to have a betting area and we have to have a food source, and we have to have this, and we have to

have that. And sometimes that all works out really well, but sometimes with smaller properties, which you know, more and more with the price of land itself going up, and obviously the you know, the financial situations in this country, it's going to be harder and harder for the average person to purchase a big tract of land. So when you start talking about smaller pieces of land, we need to look at how that land fits into the overall community. And that might be you know, how it produces food

for other wildlife in the area. It might be where it fits into the watershed. You know, everyone loves the idea of having their own personal fishing pond, but if we go and we dam up the river the stream, that's going to have consequences downstream, right And also you know the things that we spray on the ground or how we treat that dirt. If that dirt ends up in the water, again, we're causing problems that bigger watershed.

So looking at how it fits into the big picture, that bigger systems big And then you know, we look at the property and how it's made up of smaller systems, and that's really where that habitat comes into play. What are the different ecosystems on that property and how do we how do we use those ecosystems on the property to our advantage without completely altering or manipulating them, right, So there's always some compromise that has to be had.

We can't just go in and say, well, you know, ideally it'd be better if the betting area was over here and the food is over here, so let's go and clear cut this whole area and or bulldoze it and put in food and then plant switch grass over here. When we you know, we basically flip flop these these ecosystems on the property. So a lot of it is working with what you already have and trying to build off the strong points on that property versus trying to you know, be the hand of God and alter things

in a dramatic fashion purely for personal gain. You know. When it comes to the hunting and being successful in hunting, habits play a bigger role than anything. You know, Having the deer there is the reason why we focus on habitat again, and that's why we need to focus on the sustainable side of that. But once the deer are there and we have the quality of deer there, then

it just comes down to the habits in your approach. Obviously, there's some strategy involved there, but again, we can do those things without sacrificing the bigger picture.

plant some screening cover. You should plant some apple trees or something like that. You should design these kinds of things in such a way that it encourages deer movement in a way that will benefit your hunting. You should put your habitat improvements in places where you're not going to spook deer when you come in and out. You know, you should add some water, some combination of that kind of stuff with various expansions on any one of those particulars.

Is about what you're going to hear when it comes to what somebody should do with a habitat management plan for white tailed deer, how is your suggested philosophy different than that or within those sets of examples, like what would you do differently or is it not different at all? It's just choosing the right types of things to plant or not plant, or manage or not manage.

that you're trying to pursue. So my approach, you know, as a whole, you're always going to be better off with a systems type approach versus relying on any one single aspect of anything. Right. It's kind of like, you know, you're going to be healthier if you choose a healthy lifestyle versus just exercising once a day, but eating a poor diet or you know, everything together has that cumulative effect.

So the way I approach everything is you know, we'll start will break down the property, visualize everything that's going on, and I do a lot of mapping stuff, so we'll map everything out, what your current situation is, and then we're obviously looking at goals. The next thing we're doing is we're scouting that property to assess the actual habitat types.

And you know, from the hunting side of things, we're really just trying to locate pinch points or figure out where we want to create pinch points that are accessible. Because once you have that opportunity, once you've improved the habitat to put deer in your on your property, then the next key to the white tail side of things is to ensure that you're not pushing them off your property by unnecessary pressure. So we're scouting to find the

best hunting locations that have the least impact on the property. Again, you kind of touched on that, and then the next thing is that actual habitat design. So with that, you know, again, same thing you just brought up, where do we want to add screening cover so that we have better access. Do we even need to do that in some situations where do we want to improve more dense betting cover, where we hold our deer during the day that daytime security cover, and where do we want to create higher

food value areas to draw those deer into. So my approach is very very similar to most guys, except again I try to always go back to that convenience factor, Like we don't want to just settle for convenience. We want to think about the big picture. And it's really it's not that difficult. The end of the day, we're

just addressing things based on the ecosystems. And you know, I don't try to be one hundred percent of peerst at the end of the day, right I understand that at this point in the game that we're never going to reach that level again. So I try to follow more of like a ninety ten rule on our client properties, where ten percent is dedicated to our wants and needs and the other ninety percent needs to be focused on

the wildlife. Though again we might manipulate that habitat in ways that encourages certain activities, but it's ninety percent native in various forms and fashions, and then that ten percent is what is going to fall under, you know, the food plots and the more focused on our specific needs at the end of the day, and it creates a little bit better way to approach things right, It takes a little bit less pressure off. But ultimately at the end of the day, I tell my clients the same thing,

don't over it. If we focus on native habitat and diversity within that, you can't really go wrong. Once we have our overall hunting strategy laid out in our design, then you just go back to the native habitat and part of that too. You know, I actually work, you know, so my background is in biology, but I'm really really good at assessing the habitat and the native vegetation in

my area, southwestern Wisconsin. But when I start to go up into northern Wisconsin, yeah, I know most of what's going on there, but I'm not as good up there. And if I go south, you know, I've got clients as far north as Duluth, Minnesota, and as far south as central Missouri. When I get in those areas or anywhere out of my element, and even sometimes in southwestern Wisconsin, I've got a whole team of biologists that I can network off of that work for the state. They're a

free resource. So if I go to them, and I already know what I want as far as the structure and habitat types. They can help me figure out the native habitat and those native ecosystems in a way that I don't understand as well outside of what I'm familiar with. So I think that's important too.

time at least. So we've kind of dibbled and dabbled kind of around why native is better, But can you give me your explicit take on why native, why I focus on natives is better than kind of succumbing to the temptation of the non native or invasive, which is, as you mentioned, usually sometimes at least sometimes more convene. It might be quicker, or it might already be there

in serving a purpose to some degree. But why is native the better option and worth the inconvenience it might take to add it back to the landscape or restore it.

breaks them down. You know, whenever an animal consumes a plant, it utilizes certain minerals and nutrients from that plant to do whatever it needs to do. And then the byproduct of what it doesn't use is a change in form of the nutrients that it didn't utilize that go back into that ecosystem, and you know, maybe that byproduct might help to promote growth of a different plant or whatever it might be. So when you have a non native in an ecosystem, it doesn't fit into that cycle.

that's a huge element of it. So, you know, we start talking about let's just take native grasses for example, and I'm a huge I'm very, very against giant muscanthus grass, you know, and I've heard you talk about it before. I think you had a really good conversation with the Native Habitat Project on here about giant muscanthus. And you know, by definition, an invasive is an alien plant that spreads throughout its environment, right and has limited competition, or it

limits competition. Some invasives have an aleopathic aspect to them, or most of the time what we see with most invasives is they green up sooner in the growing season, and they stay green longer in the growing season. And when you take a plant that averages, you know, thirty to forty more days of photosynthesis than all the native competition, it doesn't take long for it to choke everything out

with that advantage. Giant muscanthis, there are those out there, you know, and I have I'm sure everyone knows who we're talking about. I have a lot of respect for these guys. But they will argue that it's not invasive. Well, if you go back to that definition of what they or something that's sterile, Yeah, but by definition on what's invasive, yes, maybe this plant's not spreading by seed right now, but if it's being distributed throughout the country and planted, that

kind of is following the same suit. And when someone's going in and eliminating the native habitat or whatever vegetation's growing to promote the growth of this specific plant, it's kind of accomplishing the same goal, but forced upon nature by the human hand. So when you start to look at that, giant Mescantho is perfect example, right if you look at let's compare it to a native grass like big blue stem. Okay, there's a lot of bird species

that feed on the seeds of big blue stem. Giant Mescanthos doesn't produce a seed that feeds any native birds. If you dig a little bit deeper into that food web, there's like seventy to one hundred different species of insects that feed on big blue stem at some point in its life cycle, and subsequently there's hundreds of species of

birds that feed on those insects. Actually rely on the those insects to feed their chicks so that they have enough protein to grow big enough, fast enough, strong enough so that they can migrate before winter.

see it on social media. You know, maybe I do more because I'm on the land management stuff, but you all see these ads for land clearing companies, and I always got a kick out of them because they always push the same thing, enhance or improve your usable space on your property. And that term or that phrase usable space drives me nuts because what is usable space? Again?

A lot of us look at like, oh, it's a lawn where you know, maybe two days out of the entire summer we actually take our kids outside and throw football around versus you know, what could that actually be to again improve that local ecosystem. And we're talking about a hunting property. Every single square inch of that property should be utilized in a beneficial way to the wildlife

that we're promoting. And you plug an invasive in there by design, it really only has an advantage for you and you alone, and it has no part in that ecosystem. So again, the nutrient cycling in that system is completely gone at that point with these invasives. So that's the biggest reason.

years they get a lot more cover. But again it's that convenience factor that comes at a cost to that local ecosystem. Those will be the main ones when I'm looking at screening in general. You know, there's really two

things I'm looking at. Are we trying to screen deer from seeing into a certain food plot or screen deer from seeing other deer in that situation, there's a wide variety of things that you can put in place from you know, a variety of native shrubs, combination of native grasses, all of them are going to create really good structure

and cover for bedding or screening. On the other side of that, if you're trying to screen off an area and not not actually add attraction to it because you don't want to draw deer into your access route or something, then switch grass is a great way to go. But I want to say that and remind people that switchgrass, you know, planted with a no tail drill at a high seed rate doesn't really produce the same native quality

of stand that switchgrass would produce in the wild. You know, switch grass and a lot of these other grasses we're talking about, like big blue stem and little blue stem and such. You know, they're a perennial bunch grass, and when they grow in a more native or natural setting, they provide pretty good cover, you know from a deer's level,

eye level, or you know, even on up. But on the ground level they have this umbrella effect because they grow in a bunch and that provides this whole highway and network of places for ground nesting birds and chicks and stuff to navigate through and also search for insects and be protected from hawks and other aerial threats. But if you go out and you drill in your switch grass at a high seed rate, it actually creates a situation where those ground nesting birds can't move through it

as freely and it can be problematic. So you know, in certain situations like a ten foot wide swath for screening, it's probably not that big of a deal. But if you're talking about creating a whole massive betting area. Going pure switchgrass can again be a problem for the grand

scheme of things. Now, on that same note, there's guys out there that will promote killing forbes in your switchgrass plantings, because you again this whole idea of separating food value from cover value to force movement, which I think is a huge, huge negative as well. In what we see through that again the nutrient cycling is you've got native grasses that have this incredible potential to harbor nutrients from real,

real deep in the soil. I mean, you've probably seen the graphics or the pictures of a native grass with like a twelve foot root system. Yeah, and what happens is those plants they're pulling, they're mining for minerals real

deep in the soil. They pull them up into their biomass, and at the end of the year, you know, it's a perennial plant, so at the end of the year, it dies off, or the top of it dies off, creates kind of a thatch layer, and all those nutrients break down on the surface layer, and then your forbes with a much shallower root system can sequester or pull

in those nutrients. And then when your deer come through, or you're ground nesting birds whatever they might be, they feed on those plants, or maybe insects feed on those forbes, and the birds feed on the insects. You know that again the cycle. Then those deer get the benefit from that native grass without actually feeding on that native grass.

So if we're constantly killing all those forbes in those plantings of native grasses, then we're just pulling up those nutrients, but they're not really cycling through that system again, and it kind of cuts off that nutrient cycle. So that I guess I kind of went on that tangent there, But again, there's there's plenty of alternatives. It's kind of looking at your specific need. And another thing on the screening aspect is, you know, there's two different ways to

screen deer from seeing your access. One is screening you or your access route, and the other is just thickening up betting areas so that they can't see.

Then if if your screening gets blown down from a wet, windy storm one day, you still have you know, the secondary cover in the betting area, and with that cover in the betting area, more often than not, you're gonna have brows, which is going to provide food value at the same time. So it's kind of a win win there.

I used to plant a screen of Egyptian wheat and or sorghum to screen in one of the food plots I've got on a property I can hunt. I haven't done that in the past few years, just out of time, but I've noticed less deer movement in those plots during daylight as a result of it, especially mature bucks. I used to have mature bucks in those plots feeling pretty comfortable in daylight, and it's not happened as much since

I stopped planting the screen. The problem being that this area is visible towards some houses and some roads without that screen. So going into this year, I know I have a little bit more time to get a screen in of some kind if I wanted to. But now I'm thinking, Man, I probably shouldn't do this Egyptian wheat thing that I've done the past if I'm trying to manage more in this kind of way, given the fact

that I'm looking like, how can I get something? Or is there what am I trying to say here, Tomas? Is there anything I can do in a single year that will get me some level of screening. Knowing that conifers will take time, switch grass will take time. I've heard from some folks that maybe there are some types of shrubs like a maybe a hybrid willow or something that might be native and that might grow fast enough

to get something. Is there anything you'd recommend to get me started for that first year that will give me some level of screening a bit, or do I just need to suck it up and be patient and know that's going to take a few years.

being overly patient, but some combination of the two. So what I do with all my clients is we build out a five year timeline, and you know, rather than saying, here's a plan, go do these things, we break it down into a five year timeline, and when it comes to the screening a lot of times what we will do is we will utilize sorgum, an annual grass like that, and we'll plant the switch grass and or conifers, and then we'll just say, you know, you're doing the sorgum

and basically you're losing ten or twenty feet of your food plot for the next three to five years until the switch fills in or the conifers reach the appropriate height. And you know, with conifers, usually the first few years they're not doing a lot, but usually by year five or six they're up there in that five foot six foot range, and then you gain that twenty feet of your food plot back. You know, the sorgum stuff. It's not the worst thing in the world. But again to

the sustainable side of things. Sorgum's you know, it's a grass, so it consumes a lot of nitrogen when it grows. And obviously when you're dealing with the grass that can grow fifteen feet tall in one growing season, it's pulling a lot out of the soil and then it just ends up. You know, there's a big load of carbon on top of the soil, which pulls more nitrogen out

of the soil as that carbon degrades. So it can be a pretty expensive or costly crop to plant year after year after year, you know, unless you're in there fertilizing it with a heavy dose and nitrogen every year, which you know, most guys are using a synthetic fertilizer,

which again has its negative side effects. But back to that approach, what I generally would do is we'll say, you know, we're gonna do the sorgum here, switch grass here, conifers here, whatever it might be, and then once the native or the perennial starts to the cover that we want, then we can get rid of that sorgum. Now, the only caveat there is, and this is true for all

of our land management. At the end of the day, really what you need to focus on is how you're managing the sunlight and how it hits the ground, right, It's the harnessing the sun's energy. Ultimately, that's what the

world revolves around, is that energy for the sun. So if you're, for example, if you're trying to screen off the north side of a food plot and then you go and you plant sorghum along that north side, you know, and the sun's hitting that sorghum from the south first, then you're not going to get as much growth on your switchgrass if you're completely choking it out. So you

have to be mindful of that. And sometimes it might just mean you know, pushing that screen in a little bit further giving some space for that switch grass, or going with a conifer, you know, like a white pine or a spruce is going to be more shade tolerant and still grow with less sun versus a switch grass, which is going to grow the best with more sun. So you know, a lot of situations you can get

away with it. You just again you just kind of have to be mindful of where that Sorgum's casting the shadow. If that's going to delay stuff.

can choke out a landscape. If I were to walk out on one of the properties that I've got access to and that I can do some management work on, I think I could spend the whole day pointing out different non natives here and there and everywhere, and it'd get really overwhelming. How do you recommend someone go about prioritizing what to get rid of If the thing we're talking about next is how do we get rid of invasives that are there that are non native, that aren't

achieving the goals that you've been talking about. How do I know, like what to tackle. Is there some particular couple species that you really think, man, you got to tackle those first, or is there some way to rank order what's on your property, or how do you go about figuring out where to start, how much to try to do, what's the most impactful. What's your take on that, because it all seems very intimidating.

all invasive. It's not as good as you know, we thought it was my approach, you know, ultimately, you know, again it kind of comes back to mindset. So first and foremost, you have to understand that at this point in the game, there's no such thing as one and done when it comes to invasive species management. This is an ongoing battle, right, it's an ongoing war, I should say, right, every year is going to be a separate battle. So the way that I try to do it with my

clients again, we're breaking things down into a timeline. And then generally what we do is we will look at the property and will break it down into separate management units. Generally we'll use logging roads, access trails or topography to break it down into units. And oftentimes we do that because those those land features help when we run fire

through there. You know, it's an easy way to break it down from the bottom of the hill to this logging road or bottom hill, top hill, whatever it might be. So obviously that goes it kind of leads to what I was getting at with managing them and fire being a valuable tool. And I understand obviously people don't necessarily take the fire easily. You know, it's hard for the

average person to accept that, and that's okay. So what we'll do is will break it down in the management units, and then I always like to start on the edge. The edge habitat is some of the most productive habitat on a property. Edge habitat is also where most of your invasives are going to show up first. And at the same time, it's one of the easiest places to manage.

So if we break down a property into zones and say you're one, our project list is focus on improving edge habitat on zone one and attack invasives and zone one. And what we'll do is we'll go in and we'll clean up that edge. We'll cut out all the invasives and treat them. You know, it's a relatively easy task, all things considered. You're just following a line, right, that's the beauty of that edge. You're not meandering through the woods and finding invasives at the turn of every corner.

So we attack that edge, we get that cleaned up. You know, maybe we are expanding on that edge, if we're trying to re claim some egg fields or something and trying to add more habitat, or maybe it's an actual, you know, an active farm where we can't gain any more habitat. So we're trying to improve that edge and push it back into the woods and feather it. Right, So we'll go in, we'll clean that up, and then if there aren't really many natives on the property, that's

when we'll come in and we'll plant native shrubs. You know, we want to look at our local ecotypes as much as possible because they're going to do better in that environment. So we'll go in and we'll plant our native shrubs along that edge that what that's going to do is it's going to ensure that we have a seed source of natives in the area. And then we'll start pushing

back into that property, into that zone. And you know, again year one, we're really trying to attack those invasives before we open up that canopy and promote any growth, any regeneration, because if we do that without attacking the invasives, then more often than not, they're going to take over.

But as we remove those invasives and create a situation for regeneration, now we have, you know, and fast forward a couple of years when our shrubs that we planted on that edge are maturing and producing a seed source. Now we have the potential of birds feeding on the good stuff and carrying that back in that wood lot and spreading it throughout the woods to help fill in

that space that we're creating by removing those invasives. So I think one of the biggest things that's overlooked is going in and attacking invasives or removing them and then just sitting back and waiting for something to happen. That's not the worst thing at the end of the day. But if we want to cover all of our bases ensuring that we have a seed source of more native varieties, again, we can kind of double up by improving that edge habitat.

So one, you know, we're ensuring that we're creating quality habitat on that edge, which is where deer are going to spend a lot of time anyways, and it's also going to draw them up to the front of the property. You know. With that, we start looking at betting structure and cover. The analogy I always use is the it's

a multi layered cake. The base layer of that cake is our food source, the layer of cover is the icing, The next layer of that cake is the dough betting, and then to stack another layer on for buck betting, we have to have another layer of icing or cover. So if we have really good edge habitat, we hold our does closer to the food source, which gives our

bucks more space and the property. So that's just kind of the strategy the hunting strategy side of things, but again setting it up where we're providing a quality seed source going back into that property. And then another thing, when you're looking at improving betting areas, we're doing clear cuts of any sort. I really like to leave a

handful of trees stand in those clear cuts. You know, if you have a couple good productive oaks, obviously you've got a good seed source there a valuable food source as well, so we'll leave those. If there are no productive, mass producing trees in that vicinity of that clear cut, then we'll leave a couple of trees stand and girdle them and let them die. But that encourages those birds to take those seeds into those clear cuts and spread them in the areas that we want, and then again

we get more natives in that seed bank. But we have to always ensure that we're managing for those invasives because again there's no one and done. But that's where fire is effective. You know, once our natives are more established within a couple of years, they can handle fire

pretty well. Most species of native shrubs can be burned off or mowed off, top killed in their dormant they've got enough energy reserves in their roots, so they can push up new growth that year, and that growth is more palatable to deer and wildlife anyway, So it's advantageous to cycle through that way.

dogwoods are nice too, because they're relatively shade tolerant. But you know you've got red osier dogwood, silky dogwood, gray dogwood, there's some bigger flowering dogwood stuff like that, So those are advantageous. You know, it kind of comes down to that sun exposure again at the end of the day. You know, like plum American plums a really good shrub, but it needs a lot of sun to do well. If you have it tucked in a hedgerow or something where it's only getting a couple hours of sun a day,

it'll grow, but it's not as productive. So the vibernums, you know, there's a lot of plants within that family that are very productive for the birds. Nine bark is a good one. You know, that's going to be a more shade tolerant shrub. And a lot of times I like to look around on those properties too, and if you start seeing any native shrubs, which unfortunately, i'd say probably fifty percent of the properties I'm on have no noticeable native shrubs at this point because they've been completely

choked out. But what we'll find is a lot of times just going in and clearing out the invasives and managing those, all of a sudden, you see some of these natives pop back. So there's generally some seeds in that seed bank waiting for the opportunity to grow, But again you have to give them an opportunity at the end of the day and create space for them.

cover when it comes to hunting. And then if there are any other kind of favorite ways that you like to approach adding or enhancing cover that we haven't talked about, could you mention those.

to the bottom. If you have a property that doesn't have a lot of cover or a lot of food, then those deer generally move through it very quickly, so that all you drop from the top it only bounces off a couple of pegs that it's relatively quick from

the top to the bottom. When you start to add cover in there, especially when you add cover with food value, then you really slow down that deer movement and hold deer because they have the sense of security along with the food value, and that food is ultimately what's going to hold them in an area and also define or drive the movement during you know, the crepuscular periods of

the day of morning and night. And adding the two or the combination of the two is huge for mature bucks because mature bucks don't really move by random, right. They're always very tactful with their movements. And if you watch them when they move through the woods undisturbed, they're always nibbling on something as they go. And I think that's a big reason why a lot of times you're not getting pictures of mature bucks consistently on the same trail as other deer. You know, those doughs are much

more linear with their movement. They get out of the betting area, they take that same trail out to the food source gorge themselves. Maybe they go back in the woods bed down, Maybe they bed down in the middle of the food plot. Bucks don't do that nearly as frequently. They are very tactful and they can't take the same trails all the other deer because it's already browsed off. So again, adding that cover and food with it is going to ensure that those deer move through the property

a little bit slower. They're unpressured and they just kind of meander through and they feed a little bit here, they feed a little bit there. If they sense any threats, you know, they see, they smell, they hear something, then they just freeze up. They're still in cover. They've got no problem there. So that's a big, big part of holding mature bucks on your property is just having adequate

food and cover. Again, that's the element of habitat. You know, if you have topography or you know, fluctuations in topography, that is the greatest form of cover there is. So you're going to hold deer with that. But if you add the food value in there, it increases the amount of time that they spend there and the more consistent amount of time that they're there. And as far as you know, improving cover, good timbersand improvement, you know, you can't can't really beat it at the end of the day.

As far as regeneration goes expanding edges, one of my favorite things to do if we are expanding an edge is while the grasses are dormant. You know, right now is actually a good time because we don't have any snow on the ground, it's not really frozen. Run a real heavy disc through there a couple of times to stir up that native seed bank, and then we'll still sometimes go you know, again, it depends on the rest

of the habitat. We still might go in and plug a handful of shrubs in there, but otherwise we're just letting it fill in with native regeneration, which is going to go through succession. You know, it's going to end up start out with a bunch of forbes and annuals and then you know, might evolve to more brambles and eventually fill in with trees and shrubs, and then we just have to decide how we want to manage it.

But deeper in the woods, again, it just comes down to that solar management, right punching holes in that canopy that are big enough where it's not just one year there's light on the ground, it's you know, enough space where when the trees surrounding that canopy or that hole in the canopy start to release and fill in, it doesn't just fill that hole right away, and then you know, we go back in there five ten years later and we don't really see the progress that we want. So

with that, you know, again solar management. If you have a hill, if you're on the south facing slope or you know, east west, whatever it might be, you have a huge advantage because the way that that land is pitched. You know, a lot of times you can cut trees on the crown or that hill are going down the hill and you get a lot more sun deeper into that forest on the top. Versus flat land, you have

to cut a much bigger opening. And in most situations, you know, and most foresters I deal with, they'll tell you on flat land minimum of an acre if you're going to open up the canopy or do kind of

a clear cut type situation. But again, it all kind of comes back to also what's growing in that area, because like, for example, if you're trying to regenerate a popular stand or aspen, then you really need to make sure you're getting as much sun in there as possible, because it's not going to regenerate without full sun, and then other things fill in and choke it out, and then you kind of defeat the purpose of your your management technique there.

food side of the equation. Food plots in particular, it sounds like food plots in that man seen food plots are still a part of your game, despite the fact that many times they require, you know, introducing a species that's not necessarily native to the landscape. So what's your take on using food plots. How do we do it in a way that is more healthy for the overall ecosystem, not just white tail focused. What are your principles of sustainable food plot usage in this kind of context.

So again, you don't want to be in a situation where let's just use a forty acre property for example, if you have a forty acre property and half of it has a potent be a food plot and the other half has potential to be cover but that cover it doesn't providing food value, You're probably going to require all twenty acres of that in food to support that herd. And at the end of the day, that's kind of the weak link in the situation versus having good quality

habitat that provides brows. You know, and white tailed deer are going to get eighty to eighty five percent of their nutrition from the brows. You know, they prefer the brows, they need the brows. And you know a big part of that too with that browse I should touch on

is when you start looking at those native perennial plants, shrubs, grasses, forbes, whatever. Again, in that nutrient cycle, they have a much deeper root system, so if we address the needs of those deer, and you know, let's go back to the ultimate goal here of killing the biggest buck we possibly can. Right again, this is kind of the guys or the excuse of good quality management for our habitat. If we want to produce the biggest deer, we need to get a lot

of vitamins and minerals into those deer. Native habitat with a deeper root system is going to mine down and pull up a lot more minerals once we start getting in those food plots. Those food plots should just supplement that habitat in a way that it creates an attractive, nutrient dense and luscious food source to create that consistent movement through the most huntable areas on the property, you know.

So there are situations, in fact, even on the property that I hunt on my own most of the time, a lot of my food plots aren't very huntable just given the location. But I'm also competing with four hundred plus acres of alfalfa, So the attractiveness of those food plots doesn't really increase until late in the season on

the attractiveness of the alfalfa declines. Right, It's all a relative scale, but on most my client properties, you know, again assessing that overall situation, we're looking to add food specifically in the most huntable areas, or maybe not in the exact area we want to hunt, but drawing movement

through a huntable area to that food plot. Right, You're always going to have the best or increase your opportunities by reducing pressure when you hunt the transitional area between food and bedding, because then you can get in and out without bumping deer. At the end of the day. When it comes to the food plots themselves, kind of the same concepts, except to your point, we're not really planting natives in those situations, but they are what I

would refer to as more intensively managed situations. So we're not really planting stuff that's you know, at risk of escaping the confinements of our food plot, like you know, an invasive shrub or something that's going to go to seed and spread by the birds. But we are intensively managing that primarily for the nutrient content of the plant, you know. And that's where I fold back on the

egg industry. You know, the practices within the egg industry for that because they've obviously perfected that when they have to produce a profit at the end of the day. So I come from a dairy farming background, and I've actually in the last couple of years now worked more and more with companies that are involved in that space because they have the same goals at the end of the day. Right, when you look at the similarities on a physiological standpoint from a dairy cow to a white

tailed deer, their nutritional demands are very very similar. And so we can look at how do we manage the soils on dairy farm to produce the highest quality forage for dairy cattle and utilize those practices for deer. Now, on the other side of that scale, we don't necessarily want to manage our food plots the same way that a cash cropper manages his fields, because he's managing for a yield and a yield alone, Right, And we look

at the statistics. I think most people know at this point that if you take a cab of corn or a lot of the produce in this country the way it's farm and compare it to the produce in a European country, or even what the produce was twenty years ago. The nutrient content is anywhere from twenty to forty percent

less than what it was. So if we want to again get as much nutrition in those deer to grow the biggest, healthiest deer, and at the same time, our ultimate goal with that food plot is the attractive power or utilizing that as an attractive tool to pull deer through certain areas. Nutrition equals attraction. Deer are not attracted to soybeans or brassicas or alfalfa. They are attracted to the palatability or the nutrient density of that plant. Deer,

I've said it before, right, they're very diverse creatures. They feed on diversity. Are you familiar with doctor Fred Provenza if you ever read any of his stuff I have not,

he'd be a good one to dig into. I think his book is called Nourishment, but he talks about some studies that they did or he was involved with monitoring domestic populations of sheep as well as wild populations as sheep, and how they found this cultural as to these herds where the more mature animals within that group would teach the younger animals that they could feed on certain plants that we thought were completely toxic to all animals, but by feeding on a little bit of a certain plant,

it would change the biology of their stomach enough where they could feed on more of another plant, both of which being toxic, but it changes the biology of their stomach to where now they can digest it. And you know, whether it's a medicinal reason or nutritional reason, you know, there's a lot, a lot that goes into that research, and I could go on for days about that stuff.

But the diversity aspect is very important. You know, when we start looking at a food plot, whenever you plant a diverse planting, you're far better off than planting a monoculture on every aspect of it. Right first and foremost, the soil health is the most important aspect of it. So having diversity with that with those plantings brings diversity to the nutrients in that soil. You know, some plants are going to harbor nutrients and break down other plants

are going to utilize those nutrients. So instead of having one type of plant that pulls everything out of the soil that it needs and not really putting anything back, you have that balance with the diversity. And at the same time, from a hunting aspect, it's like well, are deer going to crave brascas today or are they going

to crave clover? Well, if I have that all mixed together, not only does the clover as a legume feed nitrogen to the brassica plant, but now if the deer is showing up for clover or they're showing up for brascas, it doesn't matter. We're all going to the same party at the end of the day. So it simplifies things there. But it all comes down to the nutrients and the nutrient management in those food plots. So the more sustainable approach that I take is first and foremost trying to

wean off of chemicals and synthetic inputs. It's probably one of the most important aspects of it. And I'm not entirely anti chemical. I think they're a very valuable management tool. But there's a difference between implementation or established and an annual routine, and we always strive to have an annual routine that's as chemical free as possible. And you know, there's a lot of reasons for that. One of the biggest things, you know, obviously one of the most commonly

used chemicals the food plotters utilize is glyphosate. Well, we all look at that as a very effective, broad spectrum herbicide. But glyphosate was originally patented as a mineral kelator to descale boiler systems and clear out pipes. So what it does, you know, the keelation process. If you just think of like a magnet right now, how magnet can pick up

tiny little particles of metal. That's what chelation is. So that glyphosate, every time you spray it on the soil, it chlates minerals in the soil, and now those minerals are no longer bioavailable to the plants, and therefore they're no longer bioavailable to the animals consuming those plants. So again, if we go back to growing the biggest, healthiest deer, we want to get as much nutrition in them as possible.

At the same time, glaf state's an antibiotic, so it disrupts the microbiome of the deer if they go and feed on anything that you spray and even in the soil.

I've tried to do this. I've tried to reduce my use and I've achieved that to a degree as I've instituted a number of more regenerative principles to my food plots. But I still I'm still kind of like needing to knock down the weed girls at least once with herb side.

And even though I'm doing several cycles of like two cycles of plantings throughout the year and I'm never trying to wipe clear the whole menu off and I'm trying to maintain you know, cover on the soil, and I'm trying to follow the principles of soil health as much as possible, I still seem to need some degree of additional fertilizer to get that boost, especially when you know it's dry, we're not getting out of water, and the crops struggling, and I'm like, man, I've got a failure

of a food plot coming in here, and so I then feel like I got to put something on there, so I've yet to really knock it out of the park. Is what I'm getting at. Is that just a reality of this that it's going to be a challenge and sometimes it'll be better, sometimes it'll be worse. Or is there some better way to do it than what I'm describing.

but maybe you have to alter the approach. So you know, I mentioned before that whenever you have a systems approach, you're always far better off than relying on one specific aspect of whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish. And at the same time, let's bring back the whole idea of every convenience comes at a cost, right, So why do we use chemicals as much as we do

They're convenient, right, It's the easy button most people. And I would argue, you know, and I'm not again trying to throw anyone under the bus, because I've been there many times, but I would argue that the chemical application used in food plots is far worse than the can ventional egg model because most food plotters aren't overly precise with their application rates. You know, their timing is not

the best. It's again, it usually comes down to, oh wow, I've got one weekend to get this food plot in. I'm already behind the schedule. I'm going to go out. I'm going to mow it, spray it, till it, whatever I can do in two three days time. So first thing would be coming up with a better system in general, you know, an annual routine is going to be an important thing. And understanding the timing element of when you're planting,

when you're disturbing soil, whatever it might be. The next thing comes back to the soil itself and having healthy soil, having a balanced ecosystem in the soil itself is going to produce a situation where weeds aren't as much of a problem. Right. The biggest thing people overlook with weeds in a food plot is weeds are generally I shouldn't even say generally, they're always there because of the soil itself, right,

They're there to heal something in the soil. Now, you might have some noxious weeds in there that are just really good at filling in space, but they're healing something. You know, maybe you disturb the soil and that's nature's way of creating cover to protect the soil. Maybe there's a mineral deficiency or a nutrient deficiency in that soil, and those weeds are showing up to sequester, harbor those nutrients to fix and put that soil back in balance.

So that's that's the first thing you have to understand to get away from the chemicals, because every time you disrupt that ecosystem with chemicals, you take another step backwards. And you know, that's where cover crops, like you're talking about cycling through cover crops, planting more diverse species at any given time versus a single monoculture all the time.

That's going to help balance out that ecosystem. But one of the things that I've been doing the last couple of years, and a company that I've worked with now pretty closely for the last year. Midwestern bioag is the name of the company and the reason I was drawn to them again the dairy background and understanding the soil acogy and how important that soil health is. They produce fertilizers that are a minerve based, homogenized and remineralized fertilizer.

So their whole approach is a system's approach to agriculture. And what I love about them is they've got a ton of data and all the numbers to prove the system's approach. And actually, at the end of the day, their approach is more cost effective than the conventional approach because they can go in you know, we can dial in these fertilizers to balance out your soil. Once you reach that call it state of homeostasis. In that soil where things are more balanced and equalized, weeds aren't really

that much of an issue. And then when you go in there and you plant a crop, it has the advantage because you placed it at the right depth at the right time, given the right amount of moisture and everything, and it's going to more often than not outcompete the weeds.

At the same time, if there are some weeds you know, it's just kind of one of those things where we have to understand that a lot of time those weeds, you know, we call them weeds throw up air quotes, but more often than out, they're a native plant that you're going to feed on anyways, and a lot of times they're as high or higher in nutrient content than

a lot of the crops that we plant. But the nutrient compounds or the makeup of these fertilizers are a huge, huge advantage, and that's why I've really started to love them more than anything. You know, I talked about nutrients cycling in general. Well, if we back up, you know, not that long ago, a few hundred years ago, Up until a few hundred years ago, our habitat was managed

by large animals, right. You had everything from wooly mammoths which were actually you know, obviously gone a lot longer ago than a couple hundred years but all we up to like bison that were just eliminated a few hundred years ago. Those large animals had the role of creating disturbance, which created space for regeneration, but also they move nutrients around those ecoss and across the landscape. We don't have

that anymore. So you know, a lot of times what we see and I think a big reason for a lot of the invasive issues is we just don't have as nutrient rich soil as we used to have in general. You know, even in a forest ecosystem that's well managed, you're still just cycling through the nutrients in that system and you never have the added bonus or you know, thrush of nutrients that's brought in from an outside source.

And now with these fertilizers, which is again why I love them, is we can go and we can basically spread manure that's been it goes through a digestion process, so it's broken down to its most usable form, all the impurities are removed. We have that it's pelletized and homogenized, so it's even we put that in our food plots. Now we're putting real nutrition into those plants or into the soil, which ends up in the in the plants,

which ends up in the deer. And now those deer are distributing those nutrients throughout the habitat on our property, versus a synthetic fertilizer that really promotes growth but doesn't promote nutrients, right, it's kind of those empty calories. It like I can go grab fast food and fill that void of hunger, or I can eat something that's actually

got nutrition and it's going to benefit my body. But the difference is, again you have deer spreading those nutrients throughout the rest of the habitat, and then all your

habitat gets better from there on out too. So again it all comes back to the soil in the nutrients cycling in that ecosystem and the surrounding ecosystems, and those deer are now the landscape managers or the vegetation managers of that habitat, and we're just there kind of overseeing what can grow and what can't grow, but they're ultimately

moving the nutrients through that system. What was the name again of that fertilizer company, Midwestern bio Egg And is that something that's regional or is that something that's more widely available Yet it's widely available. Actually, I'm working with them right now and we're trying to solve logistical problems to get smaller quantities to food plotters for this exact reason. They're they're actually located in southwestern Wisconsin and so and

they distribute throughout the entire country. In fact, some of their bigger research trials were done in the Dakotas, so you know, you're taking a completely different climate with relatively poor soils, and they can get those soils balanced out with these fertilizers to where they're this year. I think they set multiple county yield records and in doing so, they've dramatically reduced the chemical inputs on these fields. So that's a you know, that's a big, big positive to me.

But you know, this kind of comes back to to the deer side of things again. If our ultimate goal as a deer or habitat manager is to produce the biggest, healthiest deer possible, then getting real newttrition into those deer is obviously a critical element of that. And when we start looking at the soils in any given area, the nutrient or the lack of nutrients, I should say that's happening more and more with row crops because of all

the added synthetics. This is a way to ensure your herd is getting high quality nutrition and minerals back in their diet without congregating them around a supplemental food source or a mineral lick and obviously there's advantages and disadvantage

to those things. But I often will use the analogy where you know, you can take a multi vitamin every day, but we know that you're far better off getting the nutrients that you need through the foods that you eat versus just popping a pill or drinking a supplemental drink every day. So that's kind of the same approach we take.

Let's get the nutrition in those deer through these perennial native food sources and through truly nutrient rich food plots, which again it's going to create a really really strong source of attraction because of the nutrient content there, and that goes hand in hand with our ultimate goal of creating that huntability on the property.

not using synthetic fertilizers. All those kinds of things don't end up, you know, running off into your waterways, they don't end up being you know, chemicals drifting onto the native vegetation adjacent to those food plots and killing the milkweed, killing the forbes and flowers, all that kind of stuff. So it seems like by doing all these things that lead to bigger, healthier deer in this case, it is

also helping the rest of the ecosystem. So this is one of those things where it really seems to be the best of both worlds in that managing your food plots in this kind of way is very whitetail specific, beneficial and also very whole ecosystem focused in such a way that it's like a positive feedback loop, if you will. It's hard to argue with from that perspective.

that has recreational property. We're actually reevaluating a lot of these land use contracts and trying to work more closely with the farmers to utilize these fertilizers too, because again, if we're eliminating the chemicals going into that local environment,

it's reducing a lot of those problems. But at the same time, if we're going to grow crops in the surrounding area and we want the biggest, healthiest deer possible, and those deer are feeding on those surrounding crops through much of the growing season, then you know, we want more nutrients in those crops at the end of the day. So that's another big advantage there. One other thing to note, you know, from the conservation standpoint with hunters and this

particular fertilizer company. Another reason why I was drawn to them. This fertilizer is produced in a carbon negative manner, so it's you know, it comes off of a dairy farm that has a surplus of manure, and it goes through a digestion process. It's broken down by microbes and during that process methane gas is given off. They capture all

that methane. It powers generators that power the entire manufacturing facility for the fertilizer, and then a byproduct of that, when they separate the water, they reuse the water to irrigate the fields. So there's a huge advantage on that side of things versus all of your synthetics that are mostly petroleum based, right where there's the carbon effect there. So you know whether whether you're concerned with the carbon cycle, you know, and this the climate issues that are shoving

our face all the time, or not. This goes back to that leading by example where if you get approached or you get in some sort of confrontational conversation with a non hunter trying to tell you that the things you're doing are just to kill deer, you can fold back on this and explain like, well, actually you're not wrong, but look at the big advantage to all the things that I'm doing versus you know, And this is the conversation I have a lot of times with some of these vegans.

about climate change. We're actually, you know, actively working to improve food security and sustainability of these ecosystems.

chemical disturbance or mechanical disturbance. So we've already talked about the downsides of chemical disturbance but sometimes needing to use it. We haven't talked as much about the downsides of mechanical disturbance. But you know, as you know, and as we've talked about in this podcast in the past, you know, repeated disking, tailling, aggressive disturbance of the soil in that kind of way does break down the life of the soil significantly reduce

in the ability for it to produce nutritious vegetation. Down the line, So one of the things I wonder about is we got to pick a poison. Though sometimes we could either disc entil something to get rid of a weed, or to open up a food plot, or to get rid of a grass that's taken over a prairie, or we can burn it down with glyph or something like that.

With a nervous side, if you had to pick your poison metaphorically one of those two, which is which is less negative or vice versa, which is the less which is the more positive option?

of that cycle within a couple of years. And that's another way I kind of pitch it to my clients is we try to look at the chemical application as a credit based system. If I tell you you've got three credits to burn, use them appropriately. Don't just go out all willy nilly and spray, you know, not the best timing, like, use them appropriately so you get the most effective kill. Usually within three applications we can reduce or eliminate most of that weed competition, and then we

get that soil balanced out. But again there's no silver bullet solution, right, so once we get the soil, you know, getting that soil balanced out, I think is absolutely critical because once that soil is balanced out, everything else is a lot more manageable. But you know, if it's been foul ground for a long time, or it's in CRP and CRP you know, I like CRP in general, but it's a reserve program or a resting program. It's not a rehabilitation or regenerative program by any means. So a

lot of times CRP ground is pretty bad ground. You know, it's been overfarmed, they planted in native grasses, and a lot of times you'll see the CRP never gets very tall. At all those situations when you're going there and trying to add a food plot, there's a lot of nutrients that are missing from those soils to get it to

where we can grow that crop. Ultimately, once we get it to produce a healthy crop, again, that crop is better at out competing the weeds and keeping that soil balance and check or that soil health in check, which gets away from it. Now, one thing that I've learned, and you know, if we would have had this conversation a couple of years ago, I would have pushed hard for a no till regiment, right. I think that's a

pretty strong talking point. It's pretty common talking point with food plots, and in most situations I would still tend to lean towards that, even though on the conventional egg side, no till is not a it's not a long term answer or not a fool proof answer because there's a lot of other issues at play again, nutrient cycling, ground compaction, water infiltration, stuff like that. So those guys in a

lot of situations are going to have to till. And you know, so when you're driving around the countryside thinking from a food plot perspective, no till is the best, and you see someone tilling or turning dirt, every situation is different. You know, in northern areas of the United States, if these guys don't turn the dirt in the fall, it doesn't dry out or warm up fast enough in the spring to even get a crop planted with the short growing season they have. So that's part of it.

But what I've learned in working with companies like Midwestern bioagg and gleaning information from these guys who have farmed organically or using what they refer to as a biological systems approach, what I've learned over the years is that light tillage has tremendous advantages. And the reason why that always kind of stuck with me or was appealing to me is back to the sustainability standpoint, right, It's it's unrealistic to expect all the guys out there food plotting.

You know, what's the average food plot size less than an acre quarter acre. You know, maybe a guy is fortunate and he's got three or four eighth acre quarter acre plots on his property. I'm not gonna expect those guys to go out and buy a no till drill. And at the same time, a lot of guys, most guys like to diy things, so they're not going to want to go hire a land manager to come in and pay them a bunch of money to do a

no tail drill. So in those situations and even in situations where they have options light tillage very light, and I'm talking like the top inch inch and a half max. Incorporating the organic matter or thatch layer into that top inch is at advantageous. It's going to improve water infiltration, it's going to help break down the organic matter and feed the biology and the soil faster, and it's going to eliminate that weed competition without the use of an herbicide.

The you know, we soil health guys talk a lot about the micro rhizal fungal layer, right that layer lives sub two inches, So if you go and you bust up that top one inch of soil, you're not really affecting that fungal layer. Now, having a thatch layer there is still advantageous. And again understanding your situation, you don't want to go until on the hillside, especially if there's

rain in the forecast. But having healthy, balanced soil, you know, trying to maintain as much groundcover as possible at all times, and incorporating that residue into that top inch is going to promote a lot of growth, so you get that weed competition out of the way, promoting or accelerating the growth of the crop that you're actually planting. So you know,

again there's two avenues to look at that. But I just like to say that or bring that up, because most guys out there exit the conversation on soil health as soon as you start saying no tilling is the best way to go. And I'm here to tell you that although I think no tilling is very advantageous in a food plotting situation, you know, again, all the elements at play, the timing aspect of it, can be a lot more lenient with no till. But if you are in a situation where all you have is a light

disc or a tiller, that's good too. Just don't go so deep. I mean, I think the biggest issue is we like the idea of turning the dirt until it becomes this like fine powdery medium, but in doing so, we completely destroy all the soil biology and we also destroy the soil structure itself, and we cause a lot of problems that way. So one of the things that I do, and you know, on most of our client properties, we are doing no till or very light disking my

property here by my house. I've never sprayed my food plots. They're right next to where my kids play, not far from my garden. I've got a beehive back there. I just don't want to have anything to do with it. But what I do is every year I go out.

I've got a kind of a perennial basin there of alfalfa and clover, and then I'll go out, you know, late summer fall food plot time, and I take a rototiller and I set that puppy out about an inch and I just go through it one time, and basically I clip the root crown off of the clover and alfalfa and it sets it back. And then I plant

my fall blend. And you know that fall blends nice because you've got grasses in there, like rye and oats and stuff that germinate relatively quickly and they fill in, and then the brassicas and the peas and stuff fill in after that. But you get a really nice fall plot, and there's a lot of nice rogen sitting in the soil available to those plants because you had that living

root there the whole time. And then this next spring or the next spring, the rye fills back in and they'll slowly mature and die off and that clover that there fills back in. Clover and alfalfa are relatively hard to kill. You know, most guys probably know if they've tried to kill it, sometimes the wrong timing or just one shot of glifa say it won't even kill it. So you can get pretty crazy with your tillage if you don't go too deep and you're not going to

kill that. And again, the idea is to really just set it back long enough to let that initial crop fill in, and then you know, it becomes a kind of a perennial cover crop at the end of the day and it works out. It creates a good groundcover. And again, we're doing everything we want to do as far as following those six principles of soil health, but we're doing it in a way that works for our own system. And that's another reason why I love those fertilizers,

Because you talk about those six principles. The sixth principle is animal integration. Well, how do we integrate animals into our food plot system for really good soil health. We actually do that in some situations I talked about the

beef cattle earlier. In some situations, we will actually go in and we'll drill in or broadcast food plot seed into our cover crop, our warm season cover, and then we'll dump cattle in that food plot for twenty four to thirty six hour period, let them smash everything down, spread the nutrients around, integrate the seed, and then we pull them out and we get pretty awesome food plots that way. But again, it's not feasible for most guys.

So these pelletized minerve based fertilizers are the next step there in a more manageable way to have that same level of animal integration as far as the nutrient cycling goes, without having to worry about, you know, the inconveniences of moving cattle across the landscape.

line if you're up for it. But before I let you go, where can folks go to learn more about what you're talking about here today? Your courses, your other resources. How can folks learn more from you? Because obviously there is a lot we can learn.

active on social media, the Untamed Ambition. So yeah, if anyone has any questions on anything we talked about today, I mean, this is what I do every day, is answer questions, So feel free to reach out and I'll do the best I can.