Show Notes
The guys are back for another episode, leading closer and closer to the opener of the fall hunting seasons. This week the guys recap their past week at home and in the field. Paul is finishing up some… extended projects, while Andrew is fine tuning some set ups for the fall season.
The meat and potatoes comes from a 2 part episode. Andrew talks with Craig from Hero To the line to discuss the program he has created. Hero to the Line is an organization that helps veterans adopt Labrador puppies to become working dogs, and best friends. They will be hosting an event in Bucyrus on August 26. Visit Hero2theline.org for more information.
The other part of the show comes from our friend Mitch Shirk, aka the Pennsylvania Woodsman, aka Johnny Appleseed. Mitch is a trained agronomist, and works day in and day out with farmers in the Keystone State. He is on with the guys talking about fall food plots and some of the ins and outs of what you should be considering in order to bring in the big deer.
Have a great week and enjoy the O2 if you get out into Ohio’s great Outdoors!
Check out the Sportsmen's Empire Podcast Network for more relevant outdoor content!
Show Transcript
[00:00:00] All right. What's up everybody? Welcome back to this week, the O two podcast, the Ohio Outdoors Podcast. Andrew and Paul, back at it again. Paulson is outside office tonight. Paul, with man, I am. I'm sitting on the deck. Dude. Got thermo cell fired up, got beer sitting next to me months. It's a good night to be in America.
I was gonna ask if the Skeeters were bad out there. Dude I think that I could find a mosquito. Like they, they seek me out, man. It is seeking destroy for my big ass. They love me. Yeah, dude, the Turkey cave is under renovation that's, you started to talk about that. It's a great topic right now.
Is it is. Now's a great time to scratch off that honey do list. And I know you've been plugging away hard. I have. So we. Just a little brief history with your friend Paul. 2020 Covid, [00:01:00] right? Bought some doors, new doors. Replace all the doors in the house. And I'm be honest, dude, there's still a couple pieces of trim in this house that I haven't put up, right?
Replace all the trim, all the doors. There's a couple spots, right? A couple spots that don't have trim. 1, 3, 4 year, five-year plan for the trim. Got that done. And so I, my office is cool, it's fun. It's just kinda like a dungeon. So Turkey cave, Turkey, camel cave, whatever you wanna call it was getting a remodel.
So I bought the stuff to do it. New floor, new wall decorations and everything. New lighting, just so it's more comfortable. And my wife was like, I'll divorce you right now if your office gets redone before my bathroom does. So I have all of this stuff for my, like I did the floor and she's that's it.
She got all fired up, dude. So I spent the weekend and then a little bit today, dude, remodeling this bathroom. New floor, new wall. Shower, all of it, man. Oh boy. Yeah. Walls are done. Lights are up. Painting. [00:02:00] Happy wife, happy life. That's it, man. That's it. Oh dude I just drag my feet on some of these projects for whatever reason.
I dunno. So if you can relate, you suck just like I do. No, you're good, man. It takes time. You can't rush perfection, right? You're damn right. You can't. Oh, what else is going on? Oh man. I got a trip to Nashville this weekend for work. That's gonna be a lot of fun. Lot of work coming up. Applied for a bunch of, some duck lottery hunts, some small game hunts, and.
Yeah, man. Nice. Yeah, I what you get those knocked out? You your permits or your lottery's applied for? Yeah, it got the Michigan license set up and you got the Pennsylvania stuff. Yeah, I got that today in the mail. I need to check and see if I got mine yet. Pennsylvania stuff's ready to go, so over the weekend I built a double ladder stand 'cause my daughter wants to go out and she says she, she does.
And that was a lot of work. I've built one of those before actually out in the woods and I [00:03:00] don't remember it being so cumbersome, but man, it's like a Hawk two man stand and it's gonna be as comfortable as can be to sit in just, I can tell you that right now. He's Canvas chairs or whatever.
But dude, if anybody from Hawk listens to this, it seems like great product. Not, I can't, I haven't, it's not up in the tree yet, but the you sent me this bag of washers and bolts and nuts and it was one bag with like literally a thousand pieces in it. And to just, man, it took me long as, as long to just divvy all those up and separate 'em as it did anything.
So I worked on that and then still trying to flink a few arrows here and there. And then pulled my MyVision scope out and was shooting a few rounds the other day with that. We had some, oh boy, had some battles with raccoons and the chicken coop. Oh, it's dirty pastures. Yeah, they're Turkey.
You talk about 'em being nest predators and stuff. They're coop predators in my house. Yeah, man, that's that's about all that's happening over here. Let's see. Paul, why [00:04:00] don't you hit up the pay the bills real quick. Yeah, man. Find news stories. So thanks for listening to us. Talk about the people that support this show that the support you as hunters and anglers.
Midwest gun works.com, we've talked about them for almost a year now. Andrew, know Cameron, who I guess is no longer at Midwest. So Cameron, if you're listening, we know you listen every week, man. We appreciate your support. But awesome selection of gun parts of the gun enthusiast for rebuilding air.
15, if you're getting a rifle three 50 legend, four 50 Bush masks, or whatever you got for deer season here in the gray state of Ohio or elsewhere months, they got everything that you need. Ammo, optics, they've got parts, every part that you can possibly imagine for the gun enthusiast. Ohio Outdoors, five saves you.
5%. Check out Midwest Gun works.com. They've got a really good resource library. If you are hung up, trying to put together a Remington eight 70 or Winchester 1300, whatever you got working on. They're your go-to place with a firearms enthusiast in this country. Midwest gum works.com, Ohio Outdoors.
[00:05:00] Five. Save yourself 5%. Thanks for friends at Half Rack. What's their saying? It's fond memory. Good year. Fond memories, good times. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Good times. Fond memories. And man what a great company. What you know good values, man.
They got some really cool stuff. Shirts are awesome. So thanks to those guys for this port of our show Ohio Outdoors. 15. Save yourself 15%. Thanks to X expedition, X vision optics. You just mentioned you were out plugging away, shooting some rounds for that thing. That thing's pretty cool man.
They need to get on their website and get some stuff ordered from those guys. Thermal scopes, rain fighting, thermal binoculars, just regular old binoculars, rain fighting binoculars. Man, they got it. They got it all. They got a binocular. So if you're into that stuff, if you're into the tech, into the gear, those are your guys to check out your company to check out.
Andrew. First light. First light. I just got an email. Oh my gosh. We got the, oh man. Dang it. Where'd it go?[00:06:00] What are they gonna call it? Season opener Sale. Okay, so season open sale, it'll technically starts tomorrow, but so that'll be August 1st. The show will air August 2nd. But there are some great things for early season on there.
And the Catalyst system, which if there was one system in general, it's not gonna be great when it's 90 degrees out, but I would say anywhere from 60 down to 30 if it's layering it's that bread and butter Perfect time window that's on there. So check that out. And then we've got all right, black gate hunting gear.com.
Is that what it is? Oh man, man, we are really bad at that stuff. Black eight Hunting gear.com. Black eight Trail. Oh my God. Moly, did you see the picture I sent you today? Yeah, I saw that dude whole, that was pretty wild man. Cool looking buck. But at the same time, it's just that the image quality is unbelievable.
Yeah. The clarity the clarity is no joke. It's not, you don't have to order hd, you don't have to go pull the card. That's just the normal image. [00:07:00] And I'll keep posting on some of the social media and stuff, but big shout out, Ohio based company. Code on there for 10% off is O two podcast. I know my buddy Tyler, he ordered a couple.
We got those hung yesterday. Yeah, man, those are great cameras. So thank you to those guys. Man they they are no joke. Really good guys. So yeah, check 'em out. They've got yeah, they got some really cool products. And last but not least, our buddies at Go Wild Time To Go wild.com.
Check out the app, your online social media for hunters and anglers and all things outdoors. We've obviously gotta be good friends with those guys. What a bunch, man. And they are top-notch, of course, then they've got their shop on there just adding thousands and thousands of items, all kinds of things.
I wanna get into trapping and we'll talk about that Paul. As time goes on, we've got some connections with the Ohio State Trappers Association. We'll get them on here, but go out's, got some trapping stuff on there, so I'm probably gonna be pulling the [00:08:00] trigger on some of that as we get closer to trapping season and all that goes with that.
But that's a major learning curve. Anywho, time to go wild.com. Appreciate you guys and everything you do for us. So news from around the state. Now, Paul, I don't have a ton of like individual news stories. I've been getting updates every day from O D N R on what is going on at the Natural Resources Park at the state Fair.
Yeah. And I will tell you, I my wife took the kids yesterday for a few hours and they spent all the time in the, oh yeah. In the natural resources area, checking out the trappers, doing the archery, everything there is there. So if you get a chance to get down to the state fair, make sure you check out the natural resources park.
They got all kinds of stuff going on there. And then I think the only other news story that I thought was cool, I just got to go to the natural resources park. That was a lot of fun, man. That was neat. That was a neat event. Oh yeah. You had a cool dinner the other night. Was that at the Yeah, I [00:09:00] did. It was the Sportsman's Dinner or Sportsman's Night hosted by by Director Mertz and Chief Weer Rob Keck.
Former c e o of the N W T F was the keynote speaker and it was agency partners. Of the natural Ohio Department of Natural Resources. So it was pretty neat. There was a lot of conservation minded folks there. A couple some legislators, a lot of really good people from the agency that that you and I have both gotten to know I've probably gotten to know a little more just just through work.
So a bunch of our law enforcement agents were there. Yeah, it was really neat, man. It was really cool. Then it got meet, got to meet the governor, which is pretty neat. Yeah, man. Yes, sir. So let's see. OD and R selects a new group of teen conservation leaders. So the department has announced 70 students that will be part of their conservation teen advisory Council.
So congratulations to all those teens out. There's pretty working to make a difference in the conservation world. More information about that@ohiodnr.gov. Let's see. Man, I think[00:10:00] as far as. The episode goes this week we got a two-parter. The first part is a quick blurb with our buddy Craig from Hero to the Line.
And I think it's Hero, the number two, the line.org. Lemme just double check that. Make sure I'm right here. Yes. Hero the number two, the line.org. And this is a group that helps veterans places puppies, Labrador, puppies with veterans to help them cope with different things. Helps them to also become involved in working dogs, sports, all kinds of stuff like that.
I'll let Craig tell more about it in the first blurb. And then and they're having an event August 26th up near Bucyrus, I think he said. Okay. Pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. More information on his clip. And then we've got our buddy Mitch Shirk over to the east in Pennsylvania. And we've had Mitch on before.
He's a brethren of the Sportsman's Empire, but Mitch's like day-to-day job is an [00:11:00] agronomy consultant. So he goes around to farms and helps farmers grow their crops. So who else better to talk about food plots than a guy who does it for a living? Wow, man. So Mitch is very intelligent. He's very super passionate, intelligent, great hunter, checks all the boxes, very good.
Hunter knows what he's doing, has experience. This is part of our little series here. We did we had Greg from Ohio Whitetailed Partners there early in July talking about Habitat. This is the next go around with habitat. More on what you should be thinking about food plot wise as you head into the fall and gear up for hunting season.
So here, gear talk. I'm doing the O two Roadshow Wednesday, going down to see our buddies at Sirius Air Tree. There you go. Tuning a bow, bringing everything with me. Mu We're gonna dive into it, buddy. We're gonna get all down in the weeds. Yeah. And I want you guys to as we get closer into the, or as we move forward here closer to the season, we've got some pretty [00:12:00] cool ones on.
And I'm just gonna, we're just gonna drop some little hints here. So we're gonna talk about hunting in Kentucky. We're gonna talk to Sirius. We got our food plots with Mitch. We're gonna talk to Drone Deer Recovery. And we've got a few more that we're working on Black Gate cameras. So trail camp tactics, early season scout, all sorts of stuff.
Yeah, it's gonna be a blast. So it should be good. I think as we move forward, we're, you see a lot of episodes that'll be real relevant and helpful. Hopefully answer some questions as we move closer to the season. Yeah, for sure. So thanks for listening guys. We really appreciate you. We see the numbers, we see the growth, and it's all 'cause of you guys.
Thank you for the support of your show. And hopefully we brighten your week every once in a while and you learn a little bit. Absolutely. So if you guys let's see. We're on Instagram, the O two podcast. Go Wild is o two podcast. You can leave us reviews on any of your major podcast platforms.
Our website is the o two podcast.com and we're [00:13:00] there. Let us know if you got anything and we'll be here next week. Appreciate you guys. Take care.
All right. What's up everybody? We are back. And tonight I've got special guest Craig from Hero to the Line. Craig, how are you tonight? Good, man. Good. Was it hot enough out there for you today? I wasn't too terrible, to be honest. We got a pretty good breeze here in, in southeast Indiana, so it's been pretty steady.
There you go. That's good. It was warm. At least I felt like it was warm out today. But Craig, you're part of a pretty cool group and we wanna, you guys reach out to us, did a little bit of a chat there, and then you sent me some stuff. It was really cool [00:14:00] to watch. The video that you sent me, hero to the Line right, is the name of the organization that you're a part of?
Yeah. All right. Can you give listeners a rundown of what Hero to the Line is? Yeah. Here at the line, so we're an organization that gives well-bred retriever puppies to veterans active duty gold star families. The goal is to get 'em involved in the retriever sports get 'em outta the house, get 'em involved in a community that's been established for decades and give 'em something else to do.
How long have you guys been at this? So we started back in 2020. We've given away roughly about 25. I think total recipients so far is what we have. We give puppies away four times a year once every quarter. We do three to four puppies generally during those p c s events it's when we send our puppies home with their new recipient and get 'em started on their journey.
And how did you come up with an idea like this? What's the importance of just giving dogs to the [00:15:00] vets? Man, this is we can go into quite the story. So in 2020, I had a mental breakdown in 2019. I lost everything and my dog saved my life. And that kind of, and then the sport kept me outta that funk.
So I had a lady reach out to me. I run a, I'm a dog barker is what I really do for a living. And I had a lady reach out, wanted to breed her stud dog to a female and produce a litter of puppies and donate one to a police department. We all got the chitchat and then it evolved into this.
Let's just give 'em away to some veterans and some active duty people. And here we are, man. Now we do this once every quarter. We we got quite the community of people. We, everybody goes home with the Freddie King retriever trainer series. We got professional trainers, pro breeders, dog brokers mental health, substance abuse specialists.
All kinds of people in our organization that, that are there to answer questions and help people along. Man, that is an absolutely wonderful thing. [00:16:00] And I know my retriever now, he is not a working dog. He is a lazy dog, but the compan, the companionship that he brings I. He is, he's special man.
So I hear you on some of that and I know all that. Yeah. So I got a, so I have a three-time grand hunter retriever champion, upward hunter, master hunter. We, he's duck hunted. We did some s r s stuff, but he is my full-time service dog Really is what he does now. So there's just such an opportunity for people to build a brand new community, get involved with people that you normally don't get involved with.
Get you outta the house and give you back that comradery, that sense of purpose. And that sense of brotherhood and belonging, the group is just absolutely massive. You could do everything from shed hunting, doc diving, rall, sports agility, mushroom hunting, retriever trials, upland.
The list is a mile long. What you're able to accomplish with a dog like this. And so when you guys give the puppies away, it's not, it doesn't just end [00:17:00] there, right? Do you help with the training? No. And all that kind of stuff. So we don't help with the training per se. So what we do is we send you home we try our best to match you up with people that are close to you, whether it's a retriever club, pro trainer, amateurs, friends, clients, whatever.
But you go home with the Freddie King Retriever, the retriever trainer that's a great place to start. You can get, you can go from a started dog all the way to a finish level dog with that series. They get it free of charge for them for life. It's a great way to get a foot in the door, find you a local club, go to some training days.
Go to some tests you'll find local hunting people, you'll find new hunt buddies, new guides. There's just a bajillion things that you could find. But just within that dog community. And the organization itself is nationwide or is it just regional? No, so we operate nationwide. Okay. So our p c s events, which are permanent change of station military term, if you're familiar anytime you get [00:18:00] rets, it's either a duty chair or a P c s.
That's when you move. So what we do is four times a year, February, may, August, November, same every year. We bounce around all over the country. So we were just in Huntsville, Texas. Back in May. We were in Union City, Tennessee. In February, we're gonna be in Ashland, Ohio, Osirus, Ohio here in August 26th free to the public.
And then we're gonna be in Oklahoma in November. And then next year we're starting to plan out where we're bouncing around next year. That's awesome. So do you wanna talk a little bit about the event that you're gonna be holding up there in Cyrus? Yeah, for sure. So it's at Elk Ridge hunt Club. It's a one day event.
It's just a big training day. If you're interested in coming and seeing some professional competitive retrievers come run some really cool setups. Some really ducky water. We're gonna be training from about nine o'clock in the morning till two. If you have a dog and you wanna bring it there's a few things that I need to ask you prior to that and you're gonna have to [00:19:00] get ahold of me directly so that I can put you on the list.
We have about 10 open slots. So we probably have close to 50 something dogs coming. Quite a few pro trainers some really good amateur trainers. So we're gonna have quite the show and you're more than welcome to come participate. Buy shirts, raffle tickets. There'll be a food truck on site.
Just a great way to network, communicate with people, find out a little bit more about dog training, meet your, meet these recipients and start building community right there. That's what it's truly all about. Is there a cost associated if you're just coming up to enjoy the event? None. None whatsoever.
None. Not unless you wanna buy raffle tickets or buy a shirt or a hat or whatever the case is. But it's free, open to the public. You're more than welcome to come. If you are coming, just let us know. Reach out to us on Facebook, Instagram. My contact information's all over our website. It's pretty easy to get ahold of us.
Okay, so what were the dates again on that? So it's August 26th. August 26th. Okay. And you said Elkridge Lodge? [00:20:00] Elkridge Hunt Club. Hunt Club. Okay. Your website is Hero, the number two, the line.org. And then the same thing on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter. You should be able to find our promotional flyer for that event on our Facebook page as well.
Gives you the address times, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, and I'll make sure we put that in the show notes so that anybody watching can pull that up. From there man, there was something else I was gonna ask you. If somebody how do you go about selecting the recipients? So it's pretty, pretty painless process.
So online, go to our website, there's an application. Go out the application and ask very basic questions. Where do you live? Are you allowed to have a dog? A little bit of time about your time in the service, just to make sure that you're eligible. And then from there you get put on a list.
That list, our breeder or recipient coordinator goes through that list and makes phone calls and conducts a phone interview. That's really where [00:21:00] your vetting be starts. He trains dogs on a professional level. He's active duty. Works in psychological warfare type stuff in inside the military.
So he's really hard to lie to, understands dogs, understands breeding, understands how to run hunt tests. So quite the guy to ask you questions. And then from there, if he says yes, you get put on a list and basically a rank list from top to bottom. And if we bounce around to let's say, Texas, the closer you are to where we're gonna be, that's how we select who gets our puppy when.
And it's the same process for breeders as well. So we vet all of our breeders. They do certified hips and elbows, genetics. We make sure that they weld puppies properly. And we're not just getting random dogs from random people. We source our puppies from some of the best breeders out there.
That's awesome. And that's at no charge to the vet. That a hundred percent. That's awesome. Puppies are donated by all of our breeders. We have [00:22:00] some great sponsors that help us bounce around the country. We got like r and r dog gear. They help us with collars and leashes, donate every single recipient.
They build these really cool American flag slip, lead and training lanyards pop's, custom calls. Jimmy Westman, he's actually a recipient of our program. When he reached out to me the first time, he said, man, what else can I do? So now he builds a custom duck call for every single recipient. He builds handmade American flag whistles that are on our website for people to purchase.
It's just, it's such a great community of people. They've all started a podcast. So there's a couple recipients that have started a podcast just to, so that we can, you can follow along with recipients sub progress and where they're at with their puppies. Talk to professional dog trainers and breeders and get to know that bond between, animal and human.
Man, that's great. As a dog person, I can completely get behind this and as a very big supporter of our military men and women. Craig, I will make sure we have [00:23:00] the show notes here to the line.org August 26th, right? And yep. And we will we'll keep reminding people as we get closer to that date up there in Bucyrus.
Is there anything else follow you on Facebook? Is all Instagram? Yeah, so we got a community page on Facebook. There's about 1600 people on there. Bunch of pro dog trainers, breeders, amateurs, non dog people. Jump on there, be a part of the community, help support our recipients in their journey.
And if you ever want to get involved on a sponsor level, there's an application on our website as well. We can go through that process. If you're a breeder, you want to become one of our breeders there's an application on our website as well. You can go start that process. But other than that man, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, follow us and help us change lives.
One dog at a time. Love it. Absolutely love it. So Craig, appreciate your time tonight and we'll keep spreading the word. Thanks my man. Appreciate it.[00:24:00]
Where we at? Way goes. Give me up to speed. Mitch, keep you up to speed yet. We're we're we, were sitting here waiting on you. We're just BSing about podcasting, so we're back. Oh, okay. We're back. And there's we have a no man left Behind Policy when we do a podcast, man. I appreciate that. Yeah. We're, this is what third or fourth time trying to start with this interview.
Something like that. Something like that. Something like that. It happens. It's a Wednesday night. It's July. Nobody likes July. I hate July. I really do. Wow. Yeah. This it's this has. Exceptional podcast just written all over it. You to get rich, get through. Mitch, hold on. I did this in the mail yesterday.
Is Caly Jen? Dude, you got yours already. There are some things in July that get you excited for I season I didn't, I still didn't get mine, although I did buy mine. You bought yours the first day you could, right? Yeah, when I had 92,000 people in front of me. And that's not an exaggeration. Yeah, that was, yeah.
That was just recorded. You [00:25:00] should have just waited. I waited till Thursday and I was done in five minutes. It was great. Yeah, it wouldn't change. It's not like a quota, right? There's not, pa guys are just limitless. It, the reason that we had this big push, Paul, was because Pennsylvania just changed the way they do their antlerless license.
For years, you had to submit a paper application, send it in this pink envelope to a courthouse, and they would issue you dough licenses. 'cause there's certain allocations for every wildlife management unit. And this is the first year that they did it through an online system. The way they did it is whenever you sign in, that is when you basically, you're pulling a ticket.
The system had 90 some thousand people in it, and there was like a, I think it was over a 12 hour waiting period at some points to get your dough license. But the thing is, it's Hardly any sellout first round, at least not that quickly. Like the only unit that sold out was one in the Northern Tier and it still had them Wednesday.
Like it was [00:26:00] not a problem. Oh man. The voice, it should be the voice you hear. There is none other than the great Mitchell Shirk from over in Pennsylvania. Our Pennsylvania Woodsman podcast, sportsman Empire Brethren Mitchell, welcome. Hey, thanks for having me back, boys. It's always fun chatting with you.
Always a pleasure, man. Last time we saw each other would've been a t a back in January, so Yeah, it was a little colder than it is now. And I'm not gonna lie, I missed that weather over this weather, but that's just me hot, muggy. I'm sitting on my deck, the mosquitoes are feasting on me. I've in my Yeah, you're spraying a cocktail of off all over you.
Yeah. Yeah. It's a, and I'm sitting in my basement. I got sweatshirt on because it's cold down here I actually was thinking about doing the same thing. I'm in my basement doing the same thing. It's a little bit NiPy down here, but I'll live you guys. You guys are a mess. So Mitch, you're talking about the PG c and the Pennsylvania Game Commission for you folks who don't know what that stands for, but I'm working on a mentored hunt.
I've been working with the P G C for a fall Turkey [00:27:00] mentored hunt. It's coming. Awesome man. There it's, we're talking turkeys. Yep. Already. Does that surprise you? You should know this by now. You guys are married to this for, a hundred episodes or almost a hundred episodes. Almost at least a hundred episodes.
Yeah. You should expect that it's, that Turkey talk's gonna be coming in and it's, this is almost, and get it outta the way. Tell me about it. I am interested about it. It's November 3rd and fourth, so during the ruts. It's no problem if I have my buck tag filled. Hopefully.
So we're gonna be on some power company land. They got a few people that, that Turkey hunt or deer hunt those. But I'm like, man, we're gonna be in and out. So yeah. Is this gonna be with hunt with dogs or is this gonna be It'll, yeah, it be, it's gonna be a guided mentor hunt. The PGCs gonna run the application process.
It's joint venture between the P G C and the National Wild Turkey Federation. So it's gonna be pretty neat. Five, five mentee hunters. We'll have five mentors including the the director of the pg c is one of our mentors for this hunt for Prime Birmingham. Pretty neat, man. That's awesome.
Yeah, it's gonna be pretty, pretty cool event. So talk about it for your listeners. Hopefully the parameters for the [00:28:00] hunt for the application process will come out soon. I'm actually meeting with the P G C folks tomorrow to, to go over that, so it's gonna be pretty neat, man.
Looking forward to it. Good deal. Cool opportunity. Mitch, you had a cool opportunity recently. I want to cover real quickly the last couple episodes you've put out on your show. Pretty important person in the world of archery hunting. You wanna tell us a little bit about that? Yeah to try to make a long story short my dad went on a golf trip this spring and he was telling this group of guys that he was with on this golf trip about my podcast that I've had now for, over two years.
And one of the guys said you need to, I need to introduce him to this guy I golf with on a, in a weekly league, not far from our area, and starts to tell me about it. And it's none other than Sherwood shock. And for those of you who don't know that name, Sherwood Shock 89 years young.
And he is he was at one time state champion archery shooter [00:29:00] national champion shooter. But he he. Himself into the 1 3 4 instrumental in. Producing the first compound bow. He worked side by side with Tom Jennings to produce the first Jennings compound bow. And he was pivotable, pivotal in getting compound bows legalized and hunting, and told us his story from shooting to, all the work he had to do networking with state agencies and told us about, when it was legalized in Pennsylvania in 1972.
And, with that, he had a ton of stories with people in the industry. He was throwing names out like Ben Pearson and Pete Shepley and, he, he worked at Grouse Haven Lodge with Fred Bear. It was good friends with Fred Bay, Tom Jennings, and Larry Wise, Ted Nugent. He just threw all these crazy names out.
It's oh my gosh, absolutely have to have this guy on the show. We did a two series with him, highlighting a lot of his career and stuff. [00:30:00] It was really cool. It reminded me, Paul, when we got to talk to Dr. Ashby and some of the, yeah. Just the history there with people who, they've really paved the way for a lot of what we do nowadays in our hobbies.
But, yeah, 'cause what, what has revolutionized the world of Archer more than the compound? Be crossbo. Yeah, that's the next generation, I guess that is stoking the flames there. Yeah, absolutely. Oh man, it's, those flames are they're intense old nine fingers got into it on stoking the flames across bow hunting today on Instagram.
So his most recent guest, nothing about that surprises me. And it's, that's gonna, that's gonna be the case in point. Anytime you get something that major, it takes a generation to subside before that becomes normal. It literally took, let's face it, 1972 was when compound bow was legalized in Pennsylvania.
And it was generations of that being bad mouthed. And now [00:31:00] we're into the same thing.
Yep. Yeah, I there, there's a clip that, that's made the rounds on the internet. We won't dwell on this topic too much, but we're, the guy's I why should a kid get to go out and shoot a, 180 inch deer with a crossbow? It was basically advocating for kids not being able to shoot big deer.
And I made the comment, I'm like, I hope a six year old with a crossbow breaks Melo Hansen's record for the all time white tail. That's what I, that's what I want. I want, I wanna see a, like a seven year old girl with the number one tail typical white tail of all time with a Barnett crossbow from Walmart from like 1998.
That's what I, that's what I wanna see. Just to piss all you deer Bross off. I'd love it. All right. I'm done. Mitch, what are you doing in the for, for deer season, man? Are you, get you got any outstate trips planned? Are you just gonna hunt? No old pa and That's a great question, Paul.
I've been back and forth with Andrew a bunch about trying to figure out when I could come over and do some hunting over in [00:32:00] Ohio with you guys. And I still have not thrown that out the window, but one thing that has got me a little bit excited I've got wind. Through the grapevine.
This isn't announced to the public yet, but I got wind through the grapevine that somebody told me that New Jersey is gonna reopen their bear season again this year. So I'm hoping that's true. Supposedly, if that is true, it's gonna get, announced pretty soon. But if that's the case, I was planning on trying to spend some time over there I got a couple of leads on some places I'd like to scout, and if they do institute the season, they're gonna have their two part season like they always used to years ago, which is gonna be an archery hunt in October, a muzzle loader hunt in October, and then their their firearm season in December.
And I'd really like to take advantage of the October hunt just because it's such A good time to try to kill a bear. And I'm, for whatever reason, I went for a couple years where, [00:33:00] shooting a bear didn't bother me. I've killed two in Pennsylvania, but for whatever reason, man, I just got bit by the bear bug.
So I'm trying to do anything I can to, I really wanna shoot one with a bow, but I'm at the point where, gun, bow stone and I don't care. I just wanna shoot a bear. I'll tell you what, Mitch hanging out with lesser last year gave me the bear bug. That guy was a bear dude. He knew all the bear stuff.
And I was like, okay, this sounds pretty cool. There's very few people that have the interest of bear hunting like him. It was funny when we were hunting deer last year, months, and we'd be talking with him, he's I saw no sign on that drive. I'm like, whatcha talking about?
It was polluted with sign the first part of that drive. He's I'm not talking about deer. I'm talking about bear. I'm like, oh, yeah, you would. But yeah. So anyway, as far as plans for hunting I really, when I hunting,
My TO before season comes on properties,[00:34:00]
getting things done, busy.
I'm gonna try to hunt jersey a little bit and who knows what happens. Hopefully I can make it over to Ohio. If nothing else, maybe I go over buy a license and come over in the late muzzle loader season because that's the time of year I'd really like to hunt in January and that'd be an opportunity to scout for next year.
So that's what's on my radar. Mitch, you're always welcome over here, and I tell you what, man if you do that jersey bear hunt again, I really hope it goes better than last year. And I don't even remember the timeline, but I remember when I met you up at your cabin, which is it's in its own little time zone warp up there with no cell phone service at all.
Thursday, I think you're like, yep, we're going to Jersey on Monday or Tuesday and we're gonna do this bear season. They opened it and then as the weekend went on, there was all this legal litigation stuff going back and forth, and somebody was suing somebody and it had been closed and then reopened and closed and back and forth.
And then, I don't know, they eventually did open it for a couple days, didn't they? [00:35:00] Yeah, they did it. The Jersey Bear Hunt last year opened because it was opened by an emergency action, and, anti-hunting groups fought it in court, said it was an un, unlawful use of power, and they put a moratorium on it right at the opening day.
So the first day of their gun season was a Monday. Deer season was open, the woods got, polluted with hunters. But Monday and Tuesday it was closed. And Tuesday afternoon I got a text message saying that the court hearing found that it was valid. And right then and there it opened.
So I basically dropped everything. I went down Wednesday, I hunted Wednesday and Thursday, and I think it was like three or four of us that hunted, hunted solo, but we all drove down together. Between the four of us in two days, one of us saw a bear. But what we learned is, basically what you'd expect, you got the first two days of gun season pressure, which, people talk about hunting pressure.
[00:36:00] If you wanna see hunting pressure, go to New Jersey on public land the first week of gun season, because that was about as crazy as you can imagine. There was a lot of hunting pressure and you get people start rooting around the woods, guns start cracking, even though bear wasn't open. Put that pressure in and where are the bear gonna go?
They're gonna go to the deepest, nastiest, ugliest parts of the swamp. You can imagine. And they're hard to find. And I minute.
It lit the fire for another year. So yeah, it was a mess last year. Hopefully better this year. Yeah. Mitch, let's talk about what we actually wanna talk about in regards to land management. Oh, I know we're sitting here in the middle of July, but this will probably come out sometime in August.
You're the food plot man. You are the food plot expert within our circle. And I want to discuss what hunters should be land managers should be looking at when it comes to food plots in. [00:37:00] This late fall period, and I think there's a lot of things that go into play, but man, let's just go from like step by step, picking out the area.
Do we need to do soil tests, fertility, what crops we're put, picking out, designing it. Any, anything that you think are, it'd be important for people thinking about if they didn't get their early food plot in and they're gearing up towards this late season food plot edition.
Yeah. Good point you brought up there, Andrew. I'm, I always, anytime I do a food plot conversation with anybody or people asking for ice, first thing I always ask is, did you take a soil test? I think we talked about the last time we spoke. To me it's a couple bucks. You can, put a fist full of dirt and send it to a lab.
You can go to any of your extension agency officer, county extension agencies and get a soil sample kit and get it sent off and get your recommendations of what you need for your N P K Micros, your pH, all that good stuff. That's gonna be the best money you spend in trying to, to.
Grow [00:38:00] equality foods. And on that note, because I will, the Buckeye heart, through and through here, Penn State does a really nice job with their soil tests. Man, how did that taste coming outta your mouth? I think I just threw up a little bit. The other one, if you wanna support an Ohio based company you could go to Spectrum Analytics in Washington Courthouse.
They do a really nice job. You get on their website and you can send 'em in there. So if you're, doing your soil test, like Mitch said, you can get all different things across the board. Now, Mitch, when you're looking at a soil test or a food plot, I deal with turf all day long. But is there some things that you'd want to consider, whether it's, your c e c, organic matter, phosphorus levels, stuff that comes into play?
Yeah, I look at a soil test as five gallon bucket with holes from the top to the bottom. And the lowest holes in the bucket that I wanna fill are gonna be your phosphorus, your potassium, your pH, and those are what's really important to me. And those holes they pro, you plug those holes and you probably plugged up three quarters of the bucket and you got three quarters of the bucket [00:39:00] filled when it comes to fine tuning things and really maximizing it beyond that there, there's a lot of other things to get, but for the, most bow hunters and not to get into a nerdy food plot, soil talk if you guys can manage a pH anywhere between a 6.0 and a 7.0, and you can have, this is basing off of parts per million extraction.
We use Spectrum Labs, Andrew, for all the soil samples that we do. And on that spectrum level parts per million phosphorus, 50 parts per million and higher. You're gonna be able to grow any food plot under the sun with that. And 50 parts in or higher is gonna be, you can grow good food plots when they're below that.
Those are just the minimum optimum levels that we shoot for and going forward and, with that soil test you can ask for recommendations. You can ask somebody, like Andrew or a specialist or whoever, what should I put on this? Or you could put it right in your [00:40:00] lab recommendations, what should I put on address this?
And they will give you pounds per acre of fertilizer Orly to put on address that problem. So it's all done for, you'll get that information and you can do that. Alright, so I am gonna geek out a little bit, and I can't remember if we've covered this in the past, but. If you catch a soil with a P, you said pH of six to seven, we get a lot of them over here that are gonna be more in that 7.5 range.
Is it worth trying to Yeah. Mind boggling to me. Is it worth in your mind trying to put down some sulfur to lower that? Or is it something you can work with in the food pot world and the, in the turf world, it's not ideal, but we can work with it for the most part. Yeah, I would say the same thing.
It's definitely not ideal. We can still grow a food plot, but we're gonna, we're gonna have some barriers that we have to overcome through time. I've had very mixed results with using elemental sulfur. I've seen it help, but gosh, I would probably, I don't know, Andrew, I haven't had many [00:41:00] experiences where I would, was in that position.
The few that I have, I. We think it helped, but it had, didn't really move the soil test that much. I think it helped us in the current year situation. But that, that's few and far between. That's a tough one. Yeah. And I, my 2 cents on that one is that as I was always taught, we're sitting on a slowly dissolving bed of limestone, which is gonna be a higher pH, more alkaline.
And when you're starting to put sulfur down on something like that, you're just pissing in the ocean. So it's not Yeah. Something that unless you're going to be seriously doing, trying to lower your pH long term, it is a very difficult thing to do for the backyard hobbyist in this, I'm not talking professional agronomist, but so anywho, now that we're off of the nerdy soil pH discussion, Paul nerds shaking your head at me nerds.
I, Mitch and Andrew, you feel free to chime in on this. If I have a patch of dirt that I've cleaned out and I. If I, just a small clear cut. I've gone through, I've done, I've gotten the brush [00:42:00] out, I've got some sunlight coming down. How hard is it to establish a new food plot in August in Ohio?
If this is just former forest that I've just kind stripped out and is that possible? Absolutely. We do it all the time. I've been been part of many situations where those are cleared ground in July and August. The food plot was seeded and it looked great. Again, you're gonna be dealing.
Again, in my neck of the woods, I'm typically dealing with heavy deciduous force with an t an acidic soil. So most of my situations, if you clear a wood lott out, I have an acidic soil and I know that I'm probably gonna limit my growth potential a little bit just because of that acidity. It might not be the same where you guys are at over there, depending on your soil type, but you're still gonna be probably dealing with low, maybe moderately low fertility and stuff.
But that doesn't mean you can't get started. You hit the nail on the head, it takes sunlight, it takes water, and it takes seed to soil contact and [00:43:00] stuff will grow. It's just a matter how much it's gonna grow. So how, like with food plots, how much. How much care does a landowner or land manager have to take for like soil compaction?
Food plot has not, food plots have not been a major concern for compaction. Where I see compaction becoming a problem is when you brought up logging. Let's take a logging operation. Let's say we do a big logging and, they have a centrally located section that they had cleared and landed the logs.
And when it's all said and done, maybe they, they scratch the dirt up a little bit and throw some grass seed on it for erosion control. But you look at that and go, I can plant a food plot in that. That's a perfect situation where I would say, yeah, you're probably gonna have some pretty deep compaction with all that heavy equipment.
Same thing with logging roads. Those are all places that are prone to compaction, which is just physical tightness of the soil because, a lot of the time you're in and outta there regardless of how much moisture's in the [00:44:00] soil. You pack it down, dry it out, and it just gets hard as concrete.
Yeah, that's a pretty, pretty tough situation. But if you're clearing food plots you can manage that a little bit better. Compaction something we deal with a lot in ag world, but I'm not too worried about compaction. My, my biggest thing is when we're talking about food plots this time of year species selection is important to me and trying to maximize food potential.
But the biggest thing that I think is not talked about enough is the food plot you are choosing in the right location. Can you get in, can you get in and hunt it and get out from hunting it and not bump deer or see them, have them see you, hear you, or smell you in that food plot?
Because food plots to me I don't like hunting private ground without food plots because they, that, that's how much. Power they have to me. But I've also learned the hard way that when you set it up inappropriately, where you attract all these deer to [00:45:00] this food source and just to bump 'em off in daylight, that's the way you turn a property nocturnal.
So that's the big question and the big thing concern of me is this food plot even in, in the right setup in the first place from a hunting perspective. But anyway, so it's a very high let's dive into that. It's very high risk, high reward then in your opinion, right? It's very high reward.
And I think it's low risk if you're smart about first of all I'm just thinking in a couple situations that. Every food plot that I'm hunting this year or have hunted in the past, I can walk to the tree stand or blind or whatever is there, and I cannot see into the field until I'm sitting in the stand or sitting in the blind with that logic, nothing can see me approaching it.
And, I'm always gonna be hunting it in a situation where my wind is not going to be blowing anywhere where I'm expecting [00:46:00] deer to come from designated betting, which, no, no big surprise there. But another thing that I really learned too is when the average show right, has probably a.
A block of timber property. Maybe not in Ohio 'cause all you guys have is tree lines in certain parts out there. But most of the places I hunt over here it's just hardwood timber that you, that somebody owns a chunk of ground and you can hunt and you doze a food plot out in there. What I've learned is that same age deciduous forest, when you cut an opening into that and you get a predominant west wind and it gets, and it hits that wall of trees and sinks into that.
Food plot that's cleared out. It just swirls in the, in all those leaves. It just hits that. It just creates like an eddy almost like you'd see in a stream when you, when it hits that pool and it gushes back. And I've seen so many cases, it took me a while to learn this where you'd see good deer coming out in food plots, mature buck.
I wanted to harvest coming out in food plots. And you'd sit there and you'd see the first couple [00:47:00] dough come out and they'd be there for a minute or two and all of a sudden you whip their head up and boom, they're gone. So a game changer for me, for sitting on food plots has actually been permanent box blinds that are enclosed 'cause they encapsulate your scent.
Kind of minimizes that dispersal for if a swirling wind does occur. I know that's not for everybody, but I say all that to say. You have swirling wheeled winds to deal with, you're better off not hunting right On food plot. You're better off trying to find a spot where they're not gonna be stopping and running that risk of wind swirling, that, that's great. So in regards, you talked about Ohio having tree lines and all that kind of stuff. You've got your plot there. Figure out your access and how you're gonna hunt it. When choosing the species that you're going to plant, do you ever take into consideration what is on the ag field next door?
If they've got corn in there this year, or beans, or vice versa, whatever or other nearby sources. From a deer's diet perspective, I know they don't just eat [00:48:00] corn even though everybody thinks that, there's other things you can plant that might be more appetizing at certain times of the year.
How do you go about picking your species? Yeah, that's a great question. There's a, there's, I personally think there's not a right or wrong answer in this a lot of the time, there's more than one way to skin a cat. I do, like, whenever I'm making decisions from any kind of property management standpoint or food plot decisions, I like to zoom out what is in the surrounding area?
Is there a significant percentage of corn? Is there a significant percentage of soybeans? Is that corn gonna get chopped in September for dairy silage, or is it gonna be standing until November? Are the beans, were the beans planted early in the year and they're gonna get cut in September, early October?
Or were they planted after wheat and are they gonna stay greener longer than the deer? That's all gonna ha, have some impact on what the deer are doing. In their daily lives. From a food source standpoint your property type is important. If you're sur, if you're a 10 acre property and you're in [00:49:00] a sea of corn surrounding you, to me, corn is not the answer because if you're a 10 acre property, you're gonna have a very small section of corn that depending on your deer density, if you're moderately high, they're gonna wipe out a small section on your 10 acre property very quickly.
Versus having, if you're planting bootles and noodles of corn acres, that's one thing. But, catering your species to browse tolerance, depending on your deer pressure is pretty important. And that's a rabbit hole right there, but I like to try to figure out, When is the sweet spot of my property's use?
And that's something you might not figure out in season one. There's a couple properties. I know that I have a sweet spot between about October 15th up until peak breeding. And I know at that time that if I've got something that has a bras in it, has a cereal grain in it and has some clovers in it those are all really palatable things.
If I [00:50:00] would've planted late beans, peas and just had solar, that I probably would frost out and wouldn't maximize that time. So I like to maximize the time of the year on small properties where it's gonna benefit. If I've got larger properties and I've got enough food pot acres, I wanna have enough food from the beginning of the season to the end of the season.
How I've been doing that lately is multi-species something that you plant together? It's got a per little percentage of a lot of different species. Clovers, brassicas, cereals the whole nine yards and putting that in one mix and having stuff that kind of piques interest throughout the entire season and having a smorgasbord type thing.
And it does last a lot longer in a situation like that. So a lot of ways to skin the cat. I dunno if that answers your question. It does. I was just thinking if I was to go to Tractor Supply or rural King, Walmart, whatever, and I'm walking and looking at whatever potential deer food plots they have, how to pick out which one might be the best.
But I think that makes sense as [00:51:00] far as, choosing the time of the year that's gonna be the best for your property. And I guess, in your, in that world, if you said, I'm very ignorant on this, if I wanted to go buy Clover brassicas and peas or whatever, pick three things.
What'd you say? Cereal green. Can you go to a co-op or something and request a blend of something like that? Is that something they sell in individual species or is it basically you have to decide which pre-blended mix on the shelf is best for you? I think it's all matter who you go to. There's seed companies out there, feed mills and stuff like that.
If you're looking like, Hey, I wanna do some kind of blend yeah, they might be able to cook something up for you. You might not. The question is, Are the people you're talking to, do they have any experience and know how to make that ratio? There's already some great food plot seed companies out there that already have pre-made bags with the right ratio of each to plant at one time.
You don't want to [00:52:00] have too many cereal and a mix that has a cereal grain. And Nebraska, you don't want that cereal grain to have too high of a feeding rate, or your brass aren't gonna really do diddly squat and vice versa with a lot of other species. So if you get, if you go up to a, a farm store and just say, Hey, I, Mitch Mitchell shirk on the Pennsylvania Woods Podcast said, I need to put bras, peas and cereal grains in the same food plot.
Gimme a 50 pound bag of each. That's not the way you're gonna wanna handle that. You're either gonna do some research yourself, buy from a reputable seed company or Converse with somebody who has experience and can guide you a little bit closer to how you wanna fine tune that seeding rate the species within your program.
So one of the things I would, I've seen in my world, if you go to a box store and I'm not saying I'm not advocating for one, one way or the, but I would imagine in the food plot world, it's the same thing when you have a seed label on the back, right? And that's gonna give you a [00:53:00] percentages of the different species in there.
One of the most important things I've found is the sell by date or the test date in the turf world, you've got about 18 months from that test date before you start losing germination. Do you guys have similar type of thing in the forage crops? That is a great thing to bring up. Nobody talks about seed labels and they're so important.
Yeah, you're gonna see, the date it was packaged, you're gonna see the percentage of germination depending on there may or may not be like a, an expectation of percentage drop in germination. One of those things. I think that's always subject depending on how it was stored from year to year two.
But yeah. Other things to consider on your seed tag. Throw and grow food plots, that's a real common one. Guys get in a pinch and wanna do a throw and grow food plot. And you, you look at a a seed tag or a advertisement on a bag that says, this'll grow anywhere a no plow food plot, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And what you'll [00:54:00] find is a lot of those food plots have annual rye grass in them. And annual rye grass is. Not the worst thing in the world, but man, it's really low on my preference. I don't find a lot of value in gra. It's something that gives you instant green 'cause it grows anywhere and it makes you feel like you did something good.
But as far as the quality of plants, there's a lot better things that we could plant. Speaking of seed tags, looking at the percentage of of germination, like you said if you find a seed tag that, you're supposed to put 50 pounds acre on and you've got a 60 pound germ, that's a problem.
You have to adjust your seeding rate, how much seed you buy pure live seed. That's things to consider. And seed coatings, some seed labels will have way more seed coatings than necessary. And you just have to ask yourself, is this a seed blend that I wanna buy? Yeah. I wanna touch on that seed coating real quick.
Do you find a lot of seeds coated in the forage world? Yeah, we do. It's more common to see [00:55:00] heavy seed coatings in perennials. So your alfalfas, your clovers, your chicory. Sometimes you'll see bags that'll have 18, 20, I've seen as high as 24, 20 5% inert matter, which is seed coating on those clovers and stuff.
And there's a lot of reason for that. And sea coatings are important in a lot of cases because they'll have have a lot of preventative measure for, disease potential on early seedlings, insects, and really trying to maximize the life of seed. 'cause one, one thing I always keep in my mind is in a food plot world, a lot of food plot seed beds aren't prepared to agricultural standards.
So you might be putting a seed into a more harsh environment. So I do get that seed companies gonna put A lot into seed coating to try to maximize the quality of the food plot that person experiences and make sure that they get the stand [00:56:00] established. Because if it doesn't, if a seed doesn't take for some reason in the, first portion of that planning you're off to a rough start and you're gonna have someone unhappy customer.
So I get it. But my experience has been in, in fairly moderately well managed food plots starting perennials. If you've got six, 8% is seed coating that should be all you need. That's normal from the agricultural world standpoint, is what I'm getting at. Yeah. And so when you're talking about inert matter, okay, so if you see a 10 pound bag of seed on, on, on the shelf and it says 50% inert matter, That means that literally what's inside that bag, 50% of it is not grass seed or forage seed.
And you got it. I will see that more often in my world getting up in that 50% range. So as Mitch is saying, 8%, six to 8%, that's probably normal. You're getting up into 24, 25. That's getting a little bit excessive [00:57:00] potentially. But keep that in the back of your mind. If you're picking out your seed, you know that you need 10 pounds for, and you, your bag is 50% inert, it means you really only have five pounds of actual seed in the bag, if that makes sense.
So a little ticky tacky things there, but they can make a difference in the long run, so for sure, for absolutely can. All right. And I think one of the stupidest things that we all over you and I don't overlook. Once you put that seed in the ground, it's gonna need a certain chemical from the air or certain molecules.
From the air called water. Okay. So should we be timing our planning up around, a decent stretch of potential rain or is forage seed tend to just be able to lay there and hang out? Or how's that working in your guys' world? I try to always plan it as close to rain as possible, forecasted. But this past year it seems like it doesn't matter what you do based on the forecast, you're gonna be wrong anyway.
Ideally if you [00:58:00] can get rain immediately after, that's gonna be ideal. I had some weird experiences this year in the ag world, man, we had a may that we, some areas did not have a single measurable rain event the entire month of May. Some of them would've
saw some really crazy things just on the end. It was so dry and we got delayed emergence. It did come, it just sat in the ground a really long time. The ground was dry. The thing you gotta watch and what kills you is if there's moisture in the ground and you plant and there's enough moisture in the ground that the seed takes moisture and starts that in, inhibit bishop process to Germany, and then you go dry because then the seed will not be viable, it's gonna die off.
But if it's bone dry, the dust is flying and you don't get rain for a while and you're thinking, oh my goodness, what am I gonna do? I have to replant. And then you get a shot of rain three weeks later, it's possible it'll come back 'cause the seed just sat there.
Very good. Mitch [00:59:00] I've got a question about, so back to that like little patch that I've cleared out in the woods. What kind of me preventative steps do people need to take for weeded pressure within. Newly established plots, mid to late summer.
Yeah. I'm not anti chemical. I use chemicals as a tool. I think they're a very important tool for food plots, especially new ones if they're, cleared out and weedy messes and a hedge row, or even in a wood lot or something like that. Let's just say it's cleared land like you're talking about Paul.
I, typically I'm expecting bare dirt, right? One, one problem I typically have in wooded lots in my area is we have a lot of Japanese stilt grass. We have not weeds, smart weeds, things like that can quickly overtake an area like that. So I might do one roundup application to keep that clean.
But as long as we have a clean seed bed going into planting or at planting that [01:00:00] we have no competition from early seedlings, I'm okay with that. For instance, I the food plots, one food plot in particular that I have this year, I I planted in spring with just a leftover seed from last year.
The reason I did this, I had this new field. It was a pH was 5.2 fairly low fertility. And I decided with the roughness of this field and everything else, I wanted to take a tillage implement. I applied lime at the recommended rate per acre and took a tillage implement to smooth the field out and incorporate the limestone into the soil profile.
And then because I exposed soil, I wanted to have something green grow quickly for erosion purposes. And also it'll help feed wildlife and stuff like that. So I just had leftover seed from last fall. I had some clover and some rye and some radishes and stuff like that, and I threw that out and the deer eating it now.
But what I'm gonna do for my fall plot is I'll have all that remnants [01:01:00] of the stuff I planted. There's definitely some weeds in there too. I'm gonna broadcast my fall blend in which I'm using this year I'm using vitalizes carbon load, which is a 14 way I think, mix of multi speech. I'm gonna broadcast right into that and I'm gonna try to I'm trying to make a little drag system.
I don't have aaker for my four wheeler and this is, a remote section. I can't take equipment with me, so I'm gonna take my four wheeler. I'm gonna try to make a. A drag with a baseball chain link fence and some weight and just drag the seeds over the top. And then I'll spray the existing vegetation with Roundup and, all that existing vegetation's gonna die.
It's gonna basically be like mulch over top of those seeds, get some rains and it's gonna grow up through it. Just like you're throwing straw on a lawn for grass seed. Yeah, Mitch, I did that last year. I don't know if you remember those pictures, but man, that worked great. And just one note there when you say you're gonna spray with [01:02:00] Roundup, for anybody who's out there taking notes, picking your Roundup or your glyphosate product, make sure you do not pick something that has any words along the lines of extended control because that means that product is going to include another active ingredient in there that is designed to keep weeds away for six, eight.
Months, et cetera. So just get straight your straight glyphosate product. You don't want any type of extended control on that. Yeah, that's a great point. I've fortunately I haven't run into that too much, but I've heard horror stories. Yep. It happens. Paul, what else are you thinking?
So we've gone through the seed selection process. We've gone through soil prep, seed bed prep. Is there, fertilizer, is there, if I get it in late, can I juice these suckers up just to get some growth in time for deer hunting season? Like I said, when we take that soil sample I'm [01:03:00] hoping that at planting we're gonna address some of the stuff on the soil sample, the p the K, and but when it comes from a nitrogen perspective, the basic soil samples we take, you're not have nitrogen or sulfur on those samples.
That's a very mobile nutrient. Unless you specify that you wanna know nitrate levels you're not gonna get that. But we know that certain crops, if you're planting a monoculture of brass, you're planting something that's heavy, heavily heavy volumes of cereal, grains, those all need nitrogen.
They're not gonna fix their own nitrogen from the atmosphere like a legume. So in a situation like that, after you plant, you wanna, as Paul described the juice things up, green things up, give 'em a little bit of push, adding a little bit of urea on a food plot. With a rain in the forecast, it does wonders.
You can incorporate, I say that because nitrogen is mobile, so if you put it out there and it sits there and bakes in the sun 3, 4, 5 days, there's a good [01:04:00] chance that it's gonna break down and it's not gonna become plant available. But if you apply it and get a rain within 24 to 48 hours and incorporate that nitrogen into the soil, slowly, it'll be plant available and you can take some of that into those plants.
A lot of the time for food plots, if guys really wanna do something like that, brassicas, cereal, grains I'm looking at just doing something like 75 pounds per acre in in most cases I have I have, in recent times, I've done way less fertilizer. Than than years ago. Couple reasons for that.
Fertilizer's not cheap. Second reason, I'd say fertility is moderately better than it once was. So I got a little bit lax it easy, but what I've learned is the nutrient exchange ability when I plant multi-species is way better than when I plant single crop. Started doing a little bit of tinkering with.
Different seed mixes. [01:05:00] I started doing it myself and in my hunting partners, and we would just make mixes on our own with the ra, with the species and the ratios of stuff we wanted to see and tinkered with that for a while from broadcasting and drilling. And now I'm using, this year I'm using vitalized seed, and Al is a guy who does a great job of tinkering.
I call him Mr. Tinker. And he's really got it pinned down when it comes to these multi-species, what ratios of seed need to be in that mix. And plants do a great job of communicating each other and exchanging nutrients. And yeah, I'm excited doing that. I'm I'm seeing biological benefits to it that are reducing my chemical and synthetic use in fields, which, again, I'm not anti that stuff, but if I don't have to, why would I?
Just to clarify, Mitch suggested urea, which the chemical analysis on that is gonna be 46 0 0 at 75 pounds an acre. And that [01:06:00] Mitch is not necessarily one of those things where some is good, more is better. So really try it's 75 pounds, that's a bag and a half, a 50 pound bag fertilizer. So you gotta get that across the entire acre.
Don't just go dumping that stuff. All, I had to think about this the other day, Andrew, I was talking about this with somebody who was non-ag agriculture and I said about throwing urea on a lawn, and they're like, oh my gosh, you can't do that's gonna burn this and that. And I've come to the conclusion that the reason everybody says that, because nobody knows portion control of any sort.
So they overly it and then they burn it. But I throw urea on lawns all the time and the greenest grass. Might not have any root system, but yes, you're right Mitch. That's really, here it is. There it is. So Mitch, with some of these late summer, early fall food plots that we're getting in the, in, in the ground how long are these food pots gonna provide a food source for the critters we're chasing in the fall and winter?
I think it all depends. Is this season long? Okay. I think it all depends. A [01:07:00] again, it goes back to how much are you planning? Are you planting a quarter of an acre on. Yeah, I'll give you an example. One of the properties that I hunt there is, I think if I added up, there's almost four acres of food plots, but it is smack dab in the middle of a giant big woods forest.
And I don't care what we plant, it's all eaten before rifle season. It's lit high. Sometimes I'm wondering what they're even going out and they're eating. It brings every deer into the neighborhood and that's four acres of food. You can have that same kind of situation. If you're planting a quarter acre in a high deer density area, they're just gonna wipe it out very fast.
So deer density is very important determining this, and that's why I had brought up earlier look. Don't put a, don't try to put a square peg in a round hole. If you've got a high deer density and you've only got a half acre food clot, corn is not the answer. 'cause corn's not very browse tolerant. But, what [01:08:00] is browse tolerant?
Bry is browse tolerant clover's fairly browse tolerant once you get it established. I've found that, brass aren't really that browse tolerant. They can get eaten pretty quickly, but when you put it in a blend with things and they can pick and choose, they're concentrated selectors.
They pick and choose what they wanna eat, lasts a little bit longer than just wiping out something when it's, the cream of the crop. Hey, I dunno if any anybody has ever noticed that if you plant a brass plot I've seen it where they come up, they're looking beautiful, and then the snap of a finger in a week or two, they're all gone.
I've also seen it where you plant 'em and they never grow outta the ground because the deer eat 'em the minute they come outta the ground. So it's all it. I, it's such a hard conversation to bring in for new people because there's so many factors that can determine why or how this food is gonna last throughout the season.
And I think getting started, the easiest thing to do if you've got a. Moderate, moderately [01:09:00] well soiled from the angle of your soil test. You can't go wrong with multi-species for getting started, and you can fine tune from there. You might find that, hey, this property's gonna peak the first week of archery season and then it's gonna suck.
It's hard to beat clover because if you've got soybeans in the neighboring area, what are soybeans doing in September? They're starting to turn brown and they're not palatable. But what's the next thing that they're gonna transition to Clover and alfalfas? And if your property's capitalizing early in the season, then why not put a food source there that's gonna capitalize for that point.
But I do have properties that I get to hunt that we can have season long control, then I'm gonna adjust what I plant to maximize throughout the entire season. So I know that's vague to what you're asking Paul, but it's, I could probably talk in circles for hours about it. Yeah. Are there what plant species will provide forage deep into winter [01:10:00] that Yeah, we can manipulate standing grain if you can get it there.
If you can get corn and beans to to produce grain and then not be all consumed by that, standing grain's hard to beat in the winter if you can get it to that point. The mo the best thing in my opinion, and I'm talking the northeast here, where I'm at is cereal grains. Rye grows to like, Something like 37, 38, 39 degrees Fahrenheit.
It's still actively growing. It's still actively trans, not a lot, but it's still actively translocating nutrients throughout the vegetative portion of that plant. Wheat's a little bit warmer. Same thing with tri oats. Oats die out in the fall after a frost usually. But those cereal grains, they are not really a glamor crop by any means, but they really hold food late.
So when I was, again, going back to me talking about multi-species, [01:11:00] this year I have. With Vitalize. I know we've got some peas in there. There's a couple different types of clovers. We actually got chick, he actually has chicory in there. All that stuff's gonna be really attractive early, early part of the season, but I know that's gonna diminish at the longer we go on.
And I think they'll mid-October start really hammering the brass part of it. And then as that starts to diminish, I would imagine that they're gonna, they're going to eat the raw and that doesn't even always hold out true guys, because, I've sat in food plots with multi-species in it. And never forget this.
I watched this dough come out and was watching her, my binocular, she's 30 yards away and I'm watching her and she is just annihilating every pee that was in this plot. She just won to the next no. Eating all these peas. And 15 minutes later, a nice buck came out, was not a buck I wanted to shoot.
And I figured, oh, he's probably gonna do the same. That seems like they're really eating a piece. He did not [01:12:00] touch anything other than a blade of rye. And it was the same time of year. When people talk about, the, like I just did, trying to match the quality or the, not the quality, it's not the right word.
Trying to match the the most nutritious, what's the word, most palatable time for a plant. Trying to match that to a time of year and stuff that doesn't always hold true. I think I, I truly believe deer individuals and some of 'em are just have different preferences, but all things can considered the characteristics of these plants.
They do themself peak at different times. So a lot of your leggings are early, brassicas, grains in the cereals late. General, very basic rule of thumb, Mitch, I have to say, you have to be a real agronomy nerd to sit there and decide what each deer is consuming and liking more than anybody else.
So I gotta kick out of that. It might That's awesome. Taking kids to the, it's observation you gotta observe to learn. I love it. Paul. Paul, [01:13:00] how many times have you been sitting in the Turkey woods and observed something crazy that this big gobbler did and had this very unique characteristic that you followed him for days on end until you, I've heard all you Turkey wackos talk those stories.
So it's the same thing. I'll tell you, I'll tell you what this Turkey season, I got to see some of the best hand displaying that I've ever seen. And it was I had two hens, probably 15 to 20 feet from me, and they were cleaning or printing themselves. It was fascinating dust baths.
It was great. I could have watched that all day and walked out with a smile on my face. And I did. It was so cool. I took tons of videos and these hens are just beautiful. Oh, yeah. I like it. Observe to learn, man. That's how you learn. So I gotta dig in the archives somewhere.
I think I have footage. The one year I was sitting Turkey hunting and I had a hen who was strutting and spitting and drumming in front of me. That was really cool. That's yeah. It's so cool when they do that. Mitch, I [01:14:00] appreciate your time tonight, man. Where can our listeners find you on social media?
Hey, you guys can find this anywhere. Where you find the O two podcast. I believe we're on Google Play. iTunes, Spotify Sportsman's Empire. You can follow me from the social media standpoint. I've tried to be better on that whole activity. I do. Okay. But Instagram, at Pennsylvania Woodsman podcasts same thing on Facebook, although I really don't do anything on Facebook.
Whatever I post on Instagram that translate, transfers over there goes to that. And I always tell people too, feel free to email me because I get a lot of food plot questions. I get a lot of people that email me their specific questions and I take the time to talk about it because food plots scouting, a lot of the stuff you can only highlight so much in a conversation on a podcast.
Getting specific, my email is, Woodsman podcast@gmail.com. It's not in [01:15:00] Pennsylvania. It's pa So yeah that's how you get ahold of me, Mitch, we appreciate man, appreciate you man, as always and we'll be talking to you here soon. Appreciate it guys. Thanks for having me, Mitch.
