Bagging Big Bucks on Small Properties!

This week, we mix things up a bit on the How to Hunt Deer Podcast! We air a recent episode of the Design. Build. Hunt. Podcast which features the Whitetail Partners Crew breaking down a 40 acre whitetail property design. No matter the size of your parcel, you can capitalize on its strengths to improve your hunting. This episode will show you a few ways you can do just that.

Check out the Sportsmen's Empire Podcast Network for more relevant outdoor content!

If you'd like to learn more, check out Whitetail Partners online at whitetailpartners.com, on YouTube, on Instagram, or on Facebook.

Find the Whitetail Partners Habitat Consultant for your region here.

Learn more about Whitetail Partners Design and Management services here.

Connect with the How to Hunt Deer Podcast on Instagram.

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Welcome to the how to hunt deer podcast, which is brought to you by Tacticamp. This podcast aims to educate those who are interested in becoming deer hunters, brushing up on essential skills, or maybe just adding a few new tactics to the toolkit. Here we cover a variety of topics that are going to help you be more confident and successful in the field.

While you're hunting deer, thank you so much for tuning in with us this week. We've got a great episode in store for you. Actually, we do have a good episode in store for you, but it's not the how to hunt deer podcast. It's actually the design build hunt podcast. That's another podcast that I'm hosting with Whitetail partners.

Now I've mentioned it before here on the show. I'm a [00:03:00] habitat and hunting design consultant with Whitetail partners. And this is that time of year when we are thinking about the upcoming habitat season here as we're, we're getting into the latter parts of the deer season for a lot of folks and for us, January late December, January, all the way even into May is habitat season.

That's when you can get the most done on your property. And we did an episode recently. And we did an episode recently about hunting big bucks on small properties. And I thought it was one that was relevant for everyone. And guys, it's actually a really great episode. We've gotten a lot of good feedback about it.

And I just launched a week ago and it's gotten a lot of good feedback. So I thought, you know what I'm going to do this week? I'm going to double down on that content a little bit. This design build hunt podcast is not on the sportsman's empire podcast network. If you are following along with the other stuff that I do, you may not even be aware that podcast exists.

So I'm going to throw it on here today. This is the design build hunt podcast. I believe it's like episode nine or [00:04:00] something like that, but there's certainly going to be a lot that is relatable for you. In this episode, it doesn't matter what kind of property you hunt, whether it's a small property, big property, public ground, whatever it is, there's something in this episode for you.

So I hope you enjoy the show. You're listening to the Design Build Hunt podcast presented by Whitetail Partners. Here we cover all things Whitetail property design, habitat improvement, and hunting strategy. Let's change your property for good.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the design build hunt podcast brought to you by Whitetail partners today. I've got almost the whole team here on the line. I've got Greg Kaczmierski from Ohio, Sam Bilhorn from Wisconsin and Lee Dixon from Tennessee guys. I I haven't seen any deer hit the ground yet.

What's going on? We're all quiet. No one has to answer that. It's been 80 [00:05:00] degrees and 30 mile an hour winds. That's my excuse. I haven't even gone. Oh man. Okay. I was getting ready for a podcast. I had mine in a water hole about four four o'clock this afternoon. So I should have been there, Josh. Oh, that's absolutely brutal.

That is brutal. You know what I will I'll try to do a better job of scheduling these things than if I'll try to get coordinated with your buck and we'll try to figure that out. Greg, you had a little interesting encounter. Yep. I ran into a good one up in the hills. Just It was one of those things that at the right place, at the right time, and then also at the wrong place at the wrong time, and just didn't quite work out for me.

But that's that's haunting and it's better to see them and know they exist than keep chasing ghosts all year is a good way to look at it. Keep the morale high. Absolutely. I've I'm a couple of days into my rut hunt right now, and I'll tell you In the first four days, I saw, I had encounters with three different shooters skimmed to the very back of [00:06:00] one, and I have not seen a good buck since then.

And I'm in this weird place of okay, they were here. Now what? Yeah, man, the rut can be so hit or miss. This is a, it's been a good reminder for me that you can really be on the action one day or for a couple of days and then next thing you know, you are really not on the action.

Anyways, guys, tonight we've got our very first. I guess plan or design overview breakdown, however you want to think about it. But one of the things that we want to do on this podcast is to take designs and plans that we've put together as a team and highlight them for our listeners. So if you're listening to this to the audio version only, you may want to head over to our YouTube channel and check out the video format of it, because we will have.

The design up on the screen, and we're going to be referring to that quite a bit throughout this podcast, we'll try to do a good job of explaining it as we go for those who, won't be able to actually watch the audio [00:07:00] or watch the video, if you get a chance, please do go watch the video.

I think you're going to pick up a lot more from it. So Sam, I want to kick it over to you first tonight and just start off by asking the question, why is it important or why is it a good thing for us to do for our listeners and viewers? To do this kind of stuff where we break down designs what are you hoping that people take away from this?

Sure. Josh, we talk a lot about the tools and tips that we do, but bringing the pieces together sometimes becomes a little bit more difficult than it's every property is different and every owner or hunter landowner is different in the, how they're going to approach the property, what they're going to do with it.

How they're going to hunt it, the type of hunting they want to do and all those things. So you take all those combinations and you're going to have a different design for every property. So it's not necessarily that this can be replicated. People might pick up some tips and different things they might be able to do.

But at the same time, it's showing how everything comes [00:08:00] together and we're going to be, not necessarily covering all the plan. When we introduce a plan like this, and this is 40 acres, I'm going to go over here now. We might have an hour or more of introduction for the owner that we do a video recording of these plans.

I'm just going to give some basic overview and some of the highlights, things, the reason I picked this plan to show everybody today and hit some. Points that are, I think, important to talk about some major things we look at. We'll get into some of the details and I'm sure as you guys ask some questions of it, we'll get into more.

Yeah. And I don't think we can stress that point enough, just because this plan looks like this. If you have a square 40, which is what this is, if you have a square 40, you cannot necessarily just take this plan and go duplicate it on your property. This is specific to the terrain.

This is specific to what you already have there. This is specific to what the deer are already doing on the property and capitalizing on some of that some of that movement where the home is all of that. And this isn't going to be a one size [00:09:00] fits all deal for people, but at the same time, there are some general principles that you can pick up on, or we can pick up on.

So Sam, let's kick it off tell us why you chose this property for us as our first design breakdown. Yeah. I like the size of it. We did we designed properties. There are hundreds and hundreds of acres too, but there's a lot of people out there that can conceptualize 40 or a 60.

There's a lot of those properties out there. So I like the size for starters. It's got mixed habitat, some properties are all timber or mostly open. This has a blend. It does have a fair amount of topography. One of the things, as I pan around and show this too, there's this big horseshoe shaped hillside with these fingers that come out and that's pretty typical in hill country that we deal with.

Mixed ag and timber some lowland even to the west here. Just a variety of habitat types. And then also the hunter themselves. They, there's some a lot of bow hunting setups here, but there's also guns hunting setups as well. And has a [00:10:00] little bit of everything. So that's why I decided to grab this one and jump in on it.

Very good. So this is going to be relatable to probably 95 percent of hunters out there. A good portion. Sure. All right let's kick it off, Sam. When it came to this specific design, where were you wanting to start? What were some of the key features or, movement patterns of the deer or whatever that you needed to say, all right, this is something that's fixed and has to be taken into account for the design.

As an anchor or a starting point. Yeah. One of the things I always like to do is zoom way out and see what's going on in a big picture. For example, this continuous section of cover to the east here, this, there's some major deer movements north of south here along the edge.

We wanted to capitalize on using that. Some people who will look at a design might just instantly say you got to put hunter access on all property edges all the way around this thing and that, then you hunt from the outside in. Not always. And that's one of the reasons I like this plan too, because it [00:11:00] shows an inside out approach with hunter access.

And what I mean by that is we are coming, the home is down here in this in this tight little valley in here. But we are, Using this hunter access, they have a main road that goes up through the property. Very well established that they can easily access quietly through here. We're not necessarily having a lot of bedding and deer living in this area per se.

It's actually open. So anyway, the major. Things I'm starting to look at are the macro movements, the big movements, as well as how are we able to access that? So those two things without getting into every detail is we have a lot of North South major movements for deer, and we have this. Interesting inside out approach, which gets us actually to these edges.

And we'll break this East side down. That's something that's really special there of, as to how we approach that a little bit differently. Let's jump right into that then tell me a bit more about [00:12:00] the this East side. And, one thing that's very interesting to me, just as I look at the plan and guys feel free to jump in, with any points or questions that you may have one of the things that I've, that I find interesting.

Is you've capitalized on the bedding based on topography. It's obviously away from hunter access, but, um, it's, dispersed. It's not, when I look at some plans or look at the way some other designers, let's say, or habitat managers will set up their plans. They want all of their bedding in the middle or a ton of their bedding on one side of the property.

This is pretty evenly dispersed and you've got it, not super far from. From the home site and, not super far from that main road. So can, before we get into that East side, can you tell me a little bit about your thought process with the bedding and how you've set that up? Because this would look to maybe not capitalize on what some called depth of cover.

And I'm not sure how valuable that concept is. In every [00:13:00] setting, but yeah, tell me a bit more. Yeah, no, and where are these in these orange areas, as I have them indicated here are primarily bedding. They're very strong existing bedding areas. So scouting and determining both from topography as well as.

Different wind directions and things like that. They're very good existing quality bedding areas. There wasn't a lot of bedding in the middle. Like I said, this was a little bit thinner and that can be thickened up. But at the same time too, how we're accessing this, I didn't necessarily want to put bedding in the middle.

So a lot of these bedding areas were existing there and very strong. And one of the major things that I want to pick up on here is this is. All conifer plantings up in this parcel to the northeast and north. This is extremely thick, incredibly dense bedding areas that are going to hold a lot of deer.

And we know that we're not going to change that. We're going to have a lot there, no matter what. And so we want to have [00:14:00] supplemental bedding. Maybe there's going to be some areas you might have buck bedding and certainly dull bedding next to these food sources. But at the same time, uh, we're utilizing bedding that's adjacent.

And then by having food on this property, really having some excellent points to intercept them, which again, this T6, this tree stand here is one location that is really probably my favorite stand on the property that, that that takes advantage of that. So let's jump into the east side of this property then.

And break it down a little bit further. I got sidetracked on the bedding there just cause it, it caught my attention. Yeah. What I have here, Josh, and just to give some flavor to it, cause the topography is a little bit challenging here to see is this is an incredibly deep drainage, deep ravine here.

And very jagged and steep and the deer pattern, the deer traffic, and even though there's a property boundary here. It really wasn't much for a fence or anything existing there. It's an old, a hundred year old fence that really is gone. [00:15:00] But the movement around this edge, which is onto this property, is one of the tightest pinch points you can find in Hill Country.

This drainage is so tight here, and this water hole is really at the top of that drainage. So we looked and said, there's, and this bedding area here wouldn't necessarily be one that I would have. included. This was actually an existing habitat improvement that we were going to functionally work with.

But the pattern through here is really one of the strongest on the property and by having opposite access. So this is some screening with hunter access coming to it, having access to the stand, never disturbing anything over here. We're hunting this huge bedding area, this huge travel corridor by only touching just the.

And that's what I really like about this property is, if we didn't have, we don't have all this ground to work with [00:16:00] on the adjacent piece, but we're really leveraging that to take advantage of it by drawing deer through this pinch point and having food sources, either West or South that they're trying to get at, and this point to intercept them with mock scrape corridor and tree stand is about as good as it gets in Hill Country.

Even if you did own the surrounding. This would be a dynamite stand site. That's right. Yeah. Even if you had this ground, you'd still be hunting here. All right. So the area to the east there that was open already, was it in ag or was it. Old field or what was going on there? I would say old field, this had been ag years ago, but it was I don't know if it was in a CRP program, but it was.

Tall grass and some, just, some shrubs in there, a few volunteer trees here and there, but really open field that could all be developed. So everything in this large open area with these solid colors is all what I [00:17:00] would call open field development, which is one of my favorite things to do with plans is take these open areas and turn them into something.

And really what we have here too, is. Both a, and I'll just talk about these locations, a blind and a tree stand here on this edge. We are able then with switchgrass, with different types of crops and so on, make travel corridors through these areas, but also have a opportunity for a quality rifle or a shotgun set up here, either one, firearm set up, to have some longer distance shots out to these.

Longer food plots. Hey guys, just want to take a quick minute to let you know that the how to hunt deer podcast is brought to you by Tacticam makers of the best point of view cameras on the market for hunters and anglers there on the cutting edge, making user friendly cameras to help the everyday outdoorsman share your hunt with friends and loved ones.

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com. Tell me a little bit about the thought process when it comes to, developing open fields in general, you've mentioned that's, one of your favorite things to do. So what are you trying to do to break these up and make them huntable beyond this illustration of it that we see here?

Yeah, so general concepts there are just, breaking it up, as we said. Not a lot of [00:19:00] straight lines. You might have some straight lines to make it functional for food plotting. if Lee is going to bring his tractor out there, he wants to be able to go somewhat in some logical fashion.

But, Anyway if we're gonna, if we're gonna do that, we still want to have, and this would be more of a perennial, I would use throughout these travel locations, and I reference here Clover, maybe we'd mix in some chicory or we'd consult with John Komp and figure out what he'd want in there, but, these more grain areas, we need to be able to use equipment on and be a little bit more strategic about how we're shaping that.

But back to the original concept, we want to break it up and have diversity in, shape and size, as well as, some of these things I'm indicating here are plantings. We're going to use conifer, hardwood shrubs, different things. We're going to pull in there. Some of these more larger areas, we regeneration that we would try and bring in all kinds of different development here we have.

a conifer row planting that we can get done really quick and efficiently by doing [00:20:00] some large open row planting and good sun out in the open to get those conifers growing. And then really breaking the whole thing up, switch grass, noting that a lot on the perimeter. Finally, then there's a couple other highlights here, some edge feathering on these edges to bring in to soften those edge and make them more approachable and also funneling, so some of these.

If we're going to do heavy edge feathery here, it's almost like a bedding area where it's harder to get through. But then we have corridors that lead out to these locations that we're able to control that deer movement with a much higher probability than it naturally exists right now. Guys, y'all have any questions for Sam so far?

No, I really like this. We haven't seen this. This is one of Sam's and when you zoom out. I know we've only focused on that northeast side, but I really do like when you zoom out and that's one of the first things I do as well, Sam. And when you're looking at your neighbor's properties, like that northeast corner pinch right there, this [00:21:00] is, this is really some solid bedding on that northeast side, but it's also extremely difficult for whoever owns that property.

to effectively hunt that without exporting a ton of deer into your habitat plan down south. So I'm not sure where his access would be in there or even how he would hunt that effectively without major league intrusion on that area, they're bedding in there. No, it's this was a really good design because a lot of designs like Josh was pointing out a minute ago are, there's a lot of outside in your sanctuaries in the core, you blow the deer into your core.

This is a really good example for our audience to see sometimes that distinct value is different based on the DNA of your neighbor's property. And your distinct value is, you provide the food. This place looks, in this particular area, there are some ag fields around, but food is gonna be king here for sure.

And you can use [00:22:00] your neighbor's bedding for free. That is almost, you can add some of that into your sanctuary integrity. Of your property, even though you don't own it. So it's really a cool design. Yeah, for sure. All right, Sam, what do you have? What do you have next for us? Yeah. So just a couple other things that I like to pick off whenever we can.

I like roadside setups. So this stand number 10 right here, just popping off the road. This is literally 20 yards in from the road. And there's going to be a parallel movement to this roadway. So roads, a lot of times, you're going to parallel them. And it may not be, perfectly parallel, but as I've emphasized this north south movement, there was a extremely strong trail here that were That we would go in and improve it and make it really the only trail or other than what's up top here.

But if they're going to run along this side hill, with a high probability they're going to be on this trail. Bedding is up here. There's actually some uh, sharp rock [00:23:00] outcroppings here. And this is steeper than it looks. And really they just run this. This break here in the hill all the way around.

And this movement, you can hunt with, any hint of an east wind north or south, true north, south wind. You're probably okay. And there's so much here that you can hunt in this movement without really disturbing, not even 1 percent of this property. We got to, on smaller properties, we got to hunt them efficiently and we're going to utilize that.

The other thing I want to show here too is. By having this hunter access on this hillside and this existing bedding area, I probably wouldn't put there. This was one of three areas they had cut already. It wasn't being used too much and it was dull bedding adjacent to the road. Anyway, the buck bedding was more higher up.

this hunter access in here, another strong movement up top. So really at either one of these, you could hunt these two major movements within this section of cover. And then if they [00:24:00] wanted to have food plot hunts, especially for the rifle late, late muzzle load or things like that, they have a blind set up in here or an early season food plots set up here to maybe shoot some does on this tree stand on this edge.

So depending on. What time of the season, morning, evening, the emphasis, which are whether it's a doe hunt, buck hunt, you're on a early season, late season, many different types of setups all throughout that is that we have even just in this little run right here on the West side, right? So they have a.

They have a season long approach here. They've got, plenty to do. This isn't just set up, for pre rut or for late season or for early season or whatever. You've got setups for pretty much to, to run the gamut. Tell me a little bit more about the about the access right there through the middle.

So you alluded to it earlier that's, not something that some are going to say is, or that you may see [00:25:00] it a lot and some other plans. We're, you're focused on an outside in approach when it comes to your access. What are you doing within there to minimize human and deer interactions where we don't want them to happen?

I know you said that it's open in there already. So probably not a lot of threat of that, but it is in the heart of the property. So how do we keep from, as in words, Lee would use exporting deer from the core of our property. As we're heading into hunt. Great question. And first of all, just to explain.

The yard and buildings, outbuilding, as you see here, extend really halfway up into this hillside. There's nowhere a deer is going to be within this within this area, the, the hillside all the way around through three sides around this home and these buildings that it's going to be They're going to see what's going on, and that's why we really didn't bank on it having any bedding in here.

But we did want to allow [00:26:00] this north south travel. This specific right here, you'll notice this little retention pond. You see these in hill country a lot of the people dam that up and have a create a little pond there. Not necessarily utilized much for wildlife. In fact, it was drained out. It really wasn't too much there, but this land bridge that occurred was a very strong movement.

We wanted to preserve that and have deer still cross through that. They're going to cross up top. They run this road and then went into this movement. So these, most of the movements that are on this plan are existing strong movements. We're just going to really restrict travel down to those. And this was pretty steep through here, along with doing some blockers or some screening by cutting some timber.

The hunter could basically get to the back of the yard and then start to scoot up the hill without having too much visual to these hillsides. And like I said, it isn't very probable that a buck's hanging out in there anyway. And once you get to [00:27:00] the top, you're into your screening and into your other open field developments.

This. This up here was really an elongated ridge all the way around this top field. And you are lower than all of it, and once you get out of the, into the, to the field edge, you're lower than all of it, so you're, once you're utilizing all your screening options that you have to get to these stand and blind setups, you're never going to be spotted up top, and actually, once we get that development in place, there will be a lot of bedding that occurs higher up, and even into this open field such that, Open, mature open timber.

That's down here really won't be utilized as much for bedding. Let's now, pivot just a little bit as we continue to think about that access, one of the things that came to mind was when you have a property with a home and if you were maybe designing a property, you might put the home in one corner of that property.

If you got a brand new 40 without a home on it, you might put it at a [00:28:00] corner or something like that. When you're working with a yard that's pre existing and outbuildings that are pre existing and places with a lot of human activity that are already going on, how are you leveraging that and then are you able to get away with a little bit more?

Around some of those areas when it comes to hunting setup. So for instance, with this strong movement right there could you get away with hunting that a little bit more often or being a little bit more aggressive with that? Because of, human intrusion or human activity is a very normal thing right there.

Yeah. You really nailed it. A lot of times too, what I'll do is show human activity. In fact this was the neighbor's property, but this red area that I have boxed off here with his driveway and his yard and everything else, one of the things we were talking about with this owner is that on this adjacent property, there wouldn't necessarily be a lot of.

buck activity, mature buck activity. He's probably going to be back into this denser cover that is, not [00:29:00] disturbed as frequently, which is why we emphasize the habitat developments on the Eastern half of this property. But back to your original question. Yeah. Because of the activity here, they're used to that.

They see that. And if somebody sneaks a little bit further beyond hopefully with some of these features we're putting in, they aren't going to be. bothered as much, and it's not likely you're going to have a buck bedding right adjacent to that road. In this stand, just to draw attention to that, this is just steps away from this outbuilding, up into the timber, you have two major movements, mock scrape on either side, waterhole, so you can hunt above.

Below you from this stand and really have some great opportunities 30 yards away from, your outbuilding. And I think that's a, what I like to call a free hunt. And that as long as you aren't blowing too much scent up into the cover, you can get in and out of that stand without disturbing too much and possibly have some really nice movement in front of you.

So we're talking early [00:30:00] morning before I need to leave for work early after, or late afternoon when I get home from work and. Want to run out and hit the stand real quick because my target buck might be at one of my water holes at 4 PM. Is that right on what you're running into? All right.

So tell me a little bit about that Northwest corner. I see some different colors there that I don't see in some of the other parts of the plan. So tell me what's going on with that. Yeah. So what this was that pink is what I put in for a pollinator blend. So this is going to be some summer habitat, some summer forage as well as, it does provide some height in the fall and then the switchgrass, which is more of a screening and they might be bedding on the edges of this.

So this could be fall bedding in here for sure. a little adjacent food plot, but still within range for a longer shot with archery or certainly with firearms to get to this plot from this blind, or you have a tree stand that's hunting, these tight spots in here. [00:31:00] Similarly, in the yard, we talked about just making this a little bit more secluded from The roadway and such.

Some cosmetic yet, enjoyable privacy here to still have grass around the house, but pollinator blend switchgrass against, by the roadside here and try to seclude this cabin a little bit. One other feature that I have that I like to do. with having this pollinator blend adjacent to food plot as it allows for future expansion.

You might decide you want to make that food plot a little bit bigger. It's a lot easier to do through a pollinator blend. Versus the switchgrass, once you get that switchgrass established, it's actually, you can fight it to get it out of there again. And it's I'd rather be expanding into that pollinator blend area than I would be into the switchgrass.

What kind of pollinator blend are you recommending? Yeah. John Kopp, Northwood's White Tails, he's got a good blend that I've been using on my property. There's other. And I would say this is really going to [00:32:00] be specific to the region you're in. You're going to make sure that you're studying does well within your your range and soil types and all those things.

So I don't want to say too specifically what works for me will work for somebody else. But certainly looking at some of those. Pollinator blends that are region specific is where the listener should. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Any other unique features about this property that we need to make sure that we get to?

What I did mention to both firearms and archery, I think I've talked about that and hitting on some of those, but. I think, well, I'll just touch on this because I didn't do southeast corner too much. There was not a lot of movement criss crossing in here, but there was a, they wanted to cut this corner, which is common.

They might cut this corner, and this was thicker down here. There was some brushier habitats than what this image is showing, but they want to clip the corner. I really want to invite [00:33:00] that movement, that corner clip that they may come in and, elevation wise, this is a little bit higher up here and this is lower, so they might, feed just in this corner passing through waterhole mock scrape on the edge of the timber where they're likely to come in and out.

And again, we're going to let them come and go on the neighbor's property if they're going to do that. He's going to have a hard time hunting these movements. It's not like he can just move in And hit those much like Lee was emphasizing before, anybody who's trying to hunt these edges from their property is really going to have a challenge doing that because they're going to blow it out, but we can get in there.

It is at certain times of the day, a safe movement to cross a plot to get into a stand certain times of the year. I would do that. It wouldn't be doing that every day of the week. This is a higher risk setup, but to get that movement through there, it could be really good. Gotcha. So I do want to hear a little bit more about that.

That piece when it comes to crossing a plot, right? I think there are some who you know down in the south, you see a ton, I guess you see it in the [00:34:00] Midwest, a good bit too. You see the tower blind right out in the middle of the food plot. People want to go and climb it. That's a hard sell for me, right?

Like I've just seen deer react too negatively to that, but you're talking about, at times it can be acceptable, what would be that time of year and how would you want to go about doing that to make sure that you're not creating too much of a disturbance? First of all, it's understanding where that.

That hunter access comes from, if we're calling from down the valley up here and we have screening up to here, you can get to this blind pretty safely most times. Okay. And then it's just a matter of being, being wise about when to cross. So I might look at this and say, this is a post daybreak crossings.

You might wait until it's light. There's no, no deer in this plot and you run across, get the stand, and then you're going to catch maybe a mid morning movement, right? Or in reverse, you go out there in the afternoon. Sit till evening. Once the plot's clear, you can get down, cross [00:35:00] get across it quick and back out.

And just being mindful of when you're there again, it's higher risk scent control is important, if you can get to this point and all you got to do is make a crossing, then it's just about, a little bit of luck and chance of when you're doing that. All right, Greg Lee, anything to add to this?

When it comes to this design or any questions for Sam, before we log off of this episode. I had a quick one going back to that stand that you had at top of the funnel and like the Northeast corner that you said that was arguably probably the best spot on the property. I was just curious if you find a spot like that, cause I feel like we all run into that when we're on a property where it's just, that there's something special about this particular area.

How far out around that zone will you like design the rest of the plan to make sure you're optimizing that like grade a spot, because that's something that I find myself, I'll circle that area for 30, 45 minutes before I really figure out how I want to make the most out of it. I was just [00:36:00] curious what you thought with when you come across a spot like that?

That's a great point to bring up. And it's absolutely true. If I find a. spot. That's a 10 out of a 10 for me. I'm going to say, how can I get to hunt this? And this one, fortunately, the topography and this, the, looking at the plan this way doesn't quite do it justice, but there was a little bit of a saddle here, and rather than, let the deer cross through here, I think with our habitat development, they're going to maybe cross a little bit further north, and then using this for a heavy plot screen, that you could just run back and forth here all day long, so I utilized the middle of this, made it void of food, And you'll notice this big piece of switchgrass here.

I didn't put bedding and, uh, regen and all that in here. I left this pretty, pretty void and that's because I don't want to encourage bedding right there. I want to encourage bedding to be further down here to the south, either side of this [00:37:00] food. Further over here next to the food and some of these other edges all along, the edge in through here and all that, there's not a lot of development in here because I want to get to that spot.

To your point, I look at it and say, I want that spot. How do I get there? And then I work the plan backwards to make it happen. That's a really good question, Greg. Thanks for bringing that up because. Now that you said that, looking at it and hearing Sam's thought process is like, okay, a lot of this Eastern half and then especially the Northeastern corner a lot of the design is based on that stand.

A lot of the, a lot of the other dominoes fall. Based on that Stan location and where it really needs to be. Guys, I think that's going to wrap up this episode of the design build hunt podcast. Again, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. If you liked this episode and you want to see it in person, maybe not in person, if you want to see it on the screen, so you can actually [00:38:00] see the plan head over to our YouTube channel where you'll find this.

And hopefully we're going to be doing these a lot more often coming up. So guys, thanks for your time. Thanks a lot, Josh. Thanks for listening to this week's show. If you found this helpful, do us a favor and leave us a review wherever it is that you get your podcasts. And if you want to keep up with us, you can find us on Instagram at Whitetail underscore partners.

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