How to Get Started with the Release Process Food Plots with Dr. Grant Woods

Food plots... all the rage just a few years ago, there is perhaps no other deer hunting tool that promises as much for the hunter as a food plot. But there is probably no other deer hunting tool that leaves more hunters frustrated, shaking their fists at the sky, and disappointed with the results. What if I told you there's a better way of planting food plots? One that is cheaper, easier, better for the environment and the critters that live on your ground, and will likely help you avoid many of the pitfalls of some food plotting methods?

In this episode of the How to Hunt Deer Podcast, Josh talks with Dr. Grant Woods about using the Release Process for better food plots, increased soil health, and bigger deer. Dr. Woods has been working on the Release Process and has perfected his methods as well as the blends he likes to use for his area. And while all the details and equipment may seem intimidating, this episode provides a step by step process to help you get started with the Release Process, even if you don't have heavy equipment. Enjoy!

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Josh Raley: You're listening to the How to Hunt Deer Podcast, which is brought to you by Tcam. This podcast aims to educate those who are interested in becoming deer hunters, rushing up on essential skills, or maybe just adding a few new tactics to the toolkit. We cover a variety of topics that will help you be more confident and successful in the field while you're hunting deer.

Thank you so much for tuning in this week. We've got a great episode in store for you. I had the opportunity to chat with Dr. Grant [00:01:00] Woods of growing deer tv. Now, if you have paid attention at all over the last, I don't know, five or so years of whitetail hunting media, or if you've looked up stuff online about food plots, or especially if you have gone onto YouTube looking for content about planting a food plot, the best way to get a food plot planted, or anything to do with habitat management, you have certainly come across Dr.

Grant Woods. He is certainly one of the leading voices out there today when it comes to doing food plots, not only to attract deer, but doing food plots in a sustainable way that will benefit all the wildlife on your property. In this episode, we get into the details of what he calls the release method.

We get into spring and fall plantings. We even cover exactly how, just to get started. I know for a lot of guys that, they look at Dr. Grant Woods or some other people who are doing food plotting at a really high level and they think, man, how do I ever [00:02:00] go from what I'm doing right now?

Till up the ground, throw out some buck forage os and hope it grows. How do I go from what I'm doing now to really, building the health of my soil with my food plotting regimen? And that's exactly what we get into today. So whether you are a veteran food plotter, or you're just getting started, this is a great episode for you.

Now, a couple things to cover here at the beginning. First up, man, I gotta let you guys know, I'm sitting here looking at a really beautiful buck. I got my mount back from Berger's Rut Strut and Stream Taxidermy in Wisconsin. Had the opportunity to head up there to do a little bit of Turkey hunting here over the last week or so.

And man, this thing turned out. Phenomenally. I couldn't be more pleased not only with being reunited with this deer. I had to I shot him and then had to leave him in Wisconsin. So I haven't seen this rack since November, but the quality of the taxidermy work, just super impressed.

If you are in, northern Illinois, [00:03:00] southern Wisconsin, I highly recommend you go check them out. Mes Burger's, rut Strut, and Stream Taxidermy. Josh Mes Burger does a great job. He also films for Midwest Whitetail, so he's putting out some good content based there in southern Wisconsin as well.

Yeah, and man, the other exciting update from me, I I just got back from, I don't wanna call it a Turkey tour. Everybody else is calling a Turkey tour. Anyway, I just got back from hunting turkeys. I got to go to Iowa first, and then I got to go to Wisconsin. Now. The weather was what I would consider trash weather when it comes to Turkey hunting.

It was. Cold outside. It was windy, it was rainy, it snowed while I was in Iowa. There were thunderstorms on different days. One day there was a big hailstorm that blew through just not ideal Turkey hunting weather at all, and I only had a handful of days to get it done. Now, if you're familiar with the tag systems in Iowa and in Wisconsin, they have what are like these [00:04:00] smaller seasons where you've got, five to seven days to, to seal the deal.

And I was fortunate enough to tag a Turkey on my third day in Iowa. It was the fourth day of my tag. I had one more day to hunt, and then I was actually able to tag out on the first day of my season in Wisconsin on a beautiful public land bird and actually harvest this bird not too far from where I got my buck this past fall.

So it has been a fantastic spring for me. I know this show is all about deer hunting, but man, I have a hard time until I get a couple of filled Turkey tags in the spring. I have a hard time keeping my mind focused on Whitetails, but now that I've filled both of those tags and now that the season is not really wrapping up here in Georgia, but we got, we've only got a couple of weeks left, and honestly, I'm probably not going to get out that many more times.

When you travel and hunt as much as I did over the last couple weeks, it really can't ask for a whole lot more. So I'm sure I'll get [00:05:00] out, I'll take my kids out, but man, I'm shifting hard, totally into whitetail mode. And so we've got a cool series that we're doing right now. Today we're talking with Dr.

Grant Woods about about his release process for food plotting. We are gonna talk with someone about food, plot, architecture, and design and placement on your property. We're gonna talk to someone about choosing the right seed, not only for your particular type of soil, but the best thing to, help you build your soil, the most attractive plants you can put on your property.

Based on where you're at in the country. And then we're gonna hit on some food plot hunting strategy. So the next couple of weeks are gonna be all about food plots. Now you might be saying to yourself Josh, I hunt only public land. I don't hunt food plots. I don't have access to food plots. That's okay.

There's still going to be a lot for you. You're gonna notice that I stop each of these guys along the way and say, Hey, all right, this is all well and good. If you're a private landowner or if you lease ground, or if you have access to ground where you can do something [00:06:00] to the soil. How does this information carry over to the guy who's hunting on permission and can't do anything to the ground?

How does it carry over to the guy who's going out in the big woods on public ground? I'm careful to throw those kinds of questions out there during the course of these interviews. So if you're thinking, man, I'm a public land guy. I don't, food plots don't matter to me. That's okay. Hang around. There's gonna be a lot of good information in here for you as well.

And if you've got specific questions that you would like for me to cover throughout the course of this food plotting series, please do write in and let me know. You can find me on Instagram at how to hunt deer, or you can also reach me at the Wisconsin Sportsman. And hey, even if you don't have a question, why don't you go follow me there.

Anyway, you can keep up with all the cool stuff that that we've got coming down the pipe. I'm actually really getting geared up right now. Pretty pumped about this spring and summer and the archery regimen and the practice that I'm gonna be doing. So hopefully gonna be sharing a lot of that online with you.

Now, a couple of big asks for you. Number one, [00:07:00] if you haven't already, please do go subscribe, follow whatever it is they let you do. Wherever you get this podcast, it really helps us out a ton. If you can leave us a written review, wherever it is that you review it, that is even better. Also, if you find this episode helpful.

Please do share it on on social media. Share it with your buddies. They will thank you, especially if they're food plotters for this specific episode. But one thing you can do while you're listening to the episode, just take a quick screenshot, share that on social media. Tag me in it. I'll I'll know that you found it helpful and so will the rest of your friends next ask.

We've got a awesome crew of sponsors that help us pull off this show each and every week. And I couldn't be more happy to be working with the brands that I do work with. Very proud to represent them. Very happy to rock their gear and it would mean an absolute ton to me if you would go and support the brands that support this show.

Number one, tcam. This was my first time actually getting to film a hunt with the new Tcam 6.0 camera over the [00:08:00] last couple of days when I was Turkey hunting. And it is phenomenal. I've had my hands on these things for a little bit, but I have not gotten to actually film a hunt with it yet. And man, these are awesome.

The touchscreen. It is a huge upgrade. One thing I didn't know I was gonna like as much as I do, is the new shape of the housing. Before you could have your 5.0 or 5.0 wide or whatever it was in a specific mount. And even though the mount could be straight, the camera could be just a little bit crooked or tilted.

So you pull up your app and you make sure your camera is straight When you're looking through the the viewfinder on your phone using the app, number one with this camera, you can tell if it's straight or not because it's got the little screen on there. But one huge benefit of the new shape of this housing is when it goes into the mount.

If the mount is straight, then your camera is straight because they're no longer, perfectly round. I've also found these cameras to have an excellent battery life. I have found that they take amazing footage and I look forward to sharing with [00:09:00] you here in a couple of days, possibly weeks. I don't know. Let me get it all put together and see.

Some of the footage that I got from my Turkey hunts. So you can go find the 6.0 and the solo extreme over@tcam.com. Next up, hunt worth. I have spent many days now in the hunt worth gear this spring from temperatures in the twenties and wind blowing and wet outside and snow to thunderstorms to hot days, well above 80, 85 degrees.

Each of those times, my hunt worth gear has kept me concealed no matter the foliage type that I'm finding myself in, whether it be in Wisconsin or down here in Georgia, but also has kept me comfortable. In fact, when I went to Iowa, when I left, the day that I left the forecast called for it to get a little bit cooler, but not quite as cold as it ended up getting.

But when I got there with the gear that I had packed, even though I hadn't really packed for as cold a weather as I ended up [00:10:00] experiencing, I was able to stay comfortable. I just had a little bit of an extra layer and boom, I was good to go. I never thought I'd be saying this, but the Saskatoon vest with the heat boost technology came in clutch during my during my spring Turkey hunt.

And let's see, that was on a Monday. And by Saturday by Saturday morning, I'm back here in Georgia hunting in the 70 plus degree temperature with the Durham lightweight pants and their lightweight top on. So no matter where you hunt, no matter what kind of hunting you do, hunt Worth has you covered, you should go check 'em out.

Hunt worth gear.com. And then finally, OnX Hunt. Guys, I've said it before. There's no other piece of gear that is as vital to everything that I do as an outdoorsman, as my OnX Hunt app. It goes with me into the woods every time I go. I was super dependent on OnX for these Turkey hunts that I've been on these last couple of days.

Even here in Georgia, like I know the [00:11:00] ground decently well, but to hear a bird gobble, be able to pull up a topo map and put together a game plan for how I can circle around the bird, use a logging road over here to make some ground up really quickly. Get behind him over here. Get to this high point where I think he's headed.

All of that good stuff. OnX makes all of that really simple. You should go check 'em out onxmaps.com, or you can find them on the app store of your choice and get a seven day free trial today if you're not already using OnX. If you are already using OnX, then you should consider upgrading to their elite membership.

The perks and bonuses of that membership just keep on growing, so go check 'em out onxmaps.com. Now guys, with all of those commercials out of the way, here's my conversation talking all things food plots with Dr. Grant Woods. All right, joining me for this week's episode of the How to Hunt Deer podcast is Dr.

Grant Woods from growing Deer tv. Grant, thanks for coming on the show. Josh,

Grant Woods: thanks for having me. Always

Josh Raley: good to visit with you. Absolutely, man. I I've had you on the Wisconsin [00:12:00] Sportsman Podcast where last time we talked about the state of the Wild Turkey and wild Turkey conservation and what we can do on the landscape to try to help the Wild Turkey along.

I guess it's been maybe a little over a year since we talked last and a lot has happened, it seems, in the Turkey conservation space at least, there's been a lot of conversation going on. So I'm curious, before we jump into talking food plots and deer and all that good stuff, how are you feeling and thinking about the future of the Wild Turkey with everything that's happened over the past year and a half or so?

Yeah,

Grant Woods: You're right. A lot of people talking about it, paying attention. Now, I called a mixed bag. For example here, on, on our new property, we're about eight acres and we've caught 30 plus raccoons. That turns out predator, every six acres. Wow. So to those that say, trapping has no roll, it doesn't matter how good your habitat is, if there's a predator every six acres and we [00:13:00] know that approximately 10, so that's 10 days on the ground from the first and incubate about 28 days, and then it's about 14 days where those popes are beating up the fly and roost off the ground.

That's 52 days on the ground from that first day to safety of a tree if that's safe given owls. But when you've got that kind of predator population, you know it one time during 52 days, some predators getting close enough down winter that nest to say, Hey, there's a, there's AUR over there and I'm grab, so do improved habitat.

I'm a huge habitat guy. We worked on that. But a combination at, in some areas, Populations by a lot of studies and a lot of thoughts are just an all time high, including snakes, crows, stuff like that.

Josh Raley: Yeah, that's a really good point that you bring up. And, there's been a lot of that conversation of it.

It's almost an overcorrection. Cuz you know, trapping has, was the, at least for social media, right? That was the beginning of conversations about Turkey. And [00:14:00] we didn't talk a lot about habitat, but we talked a lot about predator management. And so I think now the pendulum as I'm listening to different things and watching different things, has swung in the other direction where they're like, don't even worry about the predators until you get your habitat under control.

And it's because of this study or that study, but with a limited number of studies and with the difficulty of studying predation period I think we might be taking too many answers from the studies, if that makes sense. And I'm not, yeah, I'm not a scientist, but at the end of the day it, it certainly seems like removing predators can't hurt and you never know.

With those areas, the beginning predator population, like you said, one predator taken out for every six acres, who's to say that these studies were anywhere close to the population of predators that you were starting with?

Grant Woods: Yeah, we never know. We didn't, there's a lot of stuff. We do know several states, including Missouri do a predator survey every year where they put out stations and, sand or something down below there, and then the course, the trash predators just [00:15:00] but someone will go every morning to that site and there's think hundreds of these across Missouri at a certain time of year, same time every year.

And look for tracks, they sayum whatever here and they have that data. So we know that population on steep rise in Missouri, that's not question. And we have less habitat, right? So it's compounding. We also know that, and these are round numbers, someone's gonna correct me in year, get some hate mail, but roughly 20 years ago, roughly about 2000 raccoons were Missouri that, just, that, that year from that season statewide, and last year I think there was 3000 and they barely brought a dollar piece.

Wow. There. Anyway, you slice it any way you slice it, there's no avoiding the conversation about predators anyway. You slice it. I, to my colleagues out there, any anyway, you slice this, there is no avoiding the predator

Josh Raley: conversation. Yeah, man, that's a really good point and a good way I think to get us kicked off here.[00:16:00]

I think people can see from this answer as we've been talking about, number one, your knowledge about wildlife management as a whole, but number two, your passion for it. That's one of the things that first grew me, drew me to watching growing deer TV was. Every week or every episode that would come out, you could always feel your passion and your love for the outdoors, for the habitat and for the animals just as much as for hunting them.

Hunting. This wasn't all a means to the end of hunting. It was all one big package for you, which I thought was just fantastic. Such a, it was such a draw to me. So why don't you tell the listeners if they're not familiar with you, a little bit about your yourself and your background and growing deer tv and where all that came from.

Yeah,

Grant Woods: just real briefly, I was I'm in Missouri now down my brand from Missouri and I was raised about 45 minutes from here on that little family farm, about a hundred acres. I deal wildlife attack cause weeds and fence rows are big and no herbicide fields were weedy. So it was really good quail. We, I grew up a qua [00:17:00] a hundred.

There were no deer in the county where I was raised and I heard barbershop or somewhere that restock deer. The county and sometime remember before Christmas was in first grade. And I had my trap line. Now these were little homemade box rabbit traps and I didn't catch anything, but I get up every morning beautifully run my trap line like was a big Yukon trapper out there.

It was cold that morning and I went down this little hole in this little milo and checked my trap and I found a female that had been shot in the head. And ever since that moment, I actually believe it was divine. Looking back at my career now, no man, but I've been just passionate about deer and really dislike law breaks, people that violate game rules, stuff like that.

And so that just stuck in my brain. And I'm 61 guys my age, they wanted to be in the army or be a policeman. All very honorable. I work with term deer back then,

college [00:18:00] classes to. Got a job working in Nevada quickly with bm, and this is young people listening or whoever who you run around with is so important to your future. And I happen to be blessed with two great bosses in Nevada Depart bureau of Land Management. Be careful to see BM anymore, but Bureau of Management.

And they really understood wildlife and good science, really good science. Why are we doing this? Why can we justify doing this? And that really set my path on a career to do better. And then I got accepted in University of Georgia, which is Powerhouse Wildlife. Larry was my mentor in the. And Dr. Carl Miller who had just graduated time, another huge pillar.

And then I was there and I went, Clemon, Dr. Deb Gwen. So I'm just really doing the work of people that gave me good thoughts and put science in my brain is a proper way to do science. Not just publish more, but [00:19:00] is it really meaningful? Are we learning anything here? And so those men really just, I owe them a, the debt I can't repay, they really just helped me understand science and I never lost my passion for deer.

So you have to have passion along with knowledge to really excel. Not that I've excelled, but those two things have really helped me.

Josh Raley: Yeah. Wow. I think it's safe to say you've excelled at this point because man, you have influenced, I think the way so many guys are approaching their hunting land now.

It's so much different than it was a decade or 15 years ago. And not only have you influenced those guys, but you've influenced a lot of folks now who are also have shows or have podcasts, or have this and that, and have changed the way that they view, the, their, the landscape and the way that they communicate when it comes to deer and talking about deer hunting.

In the last year though, so growing deer has been around for how long? I

Grant Woods: think 13 or

Josh Raley: 14 years. Okay. So it's been around there for a good while. You had some recent developments over [00:20:00] the last year where folks really got to know a property, you called the proving grounds. So why don't you tell me a little bit about that process and how you came to your decision.

Yeah, so

Grant Woods: My wife's Tracy Trace and I were over time, over 20 years. People just think, boy, I'm, be the biggest boat out there. Usually doesn't happen that way. So over 20 years, Tracy and I built a little metal building and

up in our basketball, All combined on this little rocky farm in Missouri. And over time as an adjoining property might come for sale, we'd try to buy it. Didn't get him all over 20 year period of time. We put together pretty good size, chunk of land about acres. And people said, oh, was, but remember we're little metal place.

No one's driving a vehicle. It's just where your passion is, what your priorities are. Sure. And the front 15 acres was pretty nice. I spent 20 years of just, fire and tending trees, timber and buildings and doing whatever we could. And [00:21:00] it, I'll just tell you, it's pretty nice.

Could have been better. There's always budget constraints and time constraints, but it was in this area producing bigger deer than average and a lot of turkeys. And no would say, oh, I don't land on the back. The property roughly acres or more. That was just long ways down the creek and not a great road system.

Get there and it's full of theaters and lesi za and all of all stuff I really enjoy killing and improving habitat, restoring with and I just kinda got the idea. Boy I would like a new project. I like watching stuff develop rapidly when you're fine tuning that very last paint, it's a slow process, but when you start from scratch you can see progress yearly.

And I said, Tracy, why don't we sell this northern part? And by way folks, we try to live debt free. Literally. So it wasn't like a bank loan or something like that holding down and let someone else enjoy this that wants to enjoy it. I look at it like wildlife art. I'm not a guy that has real fancy wildlife art.

I got pictures [00:22:00] of my kids back here, but not fancy wildlife art cause I don't wanna take those resources and go on my next adventure. I don't do a lot of tax cause I wanna take those resources and go to my next adventure. Not that I don't like good tax for me. I just would rather take those resources and go chase another critter.

Sure. So Chase and I decided to sell this. We worked with National Land Realty and we thought, we got a couple years, don't need to worry about that. And dog gone. They had that baby so quick. And Chris, the new owners, a great guy, great neighbor, cause nothing separating us, but an old Bob Wire fence that's down more than up.

And the new owner, Chris, turned out to be a great guy and kinda shares our passion and all good stuff. And yeah, here we're at 61 starting over. Tracy gets a new house and I got a new project and we're all going. And so we've been Cedars and doing this spring we've done about 200 acres of prescribed fire.

We're just starting and I'm excited about it. I can share, you know what, I've made a lot of mistakes along the way, so I think I can get the ground too, as we call this [00:23:00] property. Same level as the grounds, but much, much quicker. Because I've already made all those errors I'll still make more mistakes and I don't have to make those ones I've already made again.

So I'm excited to see how fast can you turn the property around. That really motivates

Josh Raley: me. Yeah, that's a really interesting piece there is to see just how quickly can we get it to where we want it to be. Cuz man, you can make a lot of changes to a property overnight. You bring in some heavy machinery.

A lot of things can change real rapidly, but that doesn't mean that the property has finished responding to what you've done. You know what I mean? Takes time, budget,

Grant Woods: all that big yellow equipment. I dunno, we got callous we got chains, backpack blowers and things like

Josh Raley: that. Yeah, that's exactly right.

So leading in or before making this decision, you had that back part of the property let's call it that you weren't really improving. It was just access that was keeping you from it or. Or wasn't it just hanging,

Grant Woods: being really, we had to budget, keep this place [00:24:00] really on the top of its game and start from scratch, sure. It's just being, I'm just very honoring know. Just the real realities of it is we had hunted back there a little bit and we'd scratched out a couple of food plots, but it wasn't anything like the original

Josh Raley: property. Yeah. So how long did it take, how long did it take you to get the proving grounds to where it was?

Did you buy it and immediately start making those changes to get it where you wanted and it took you the whole time? Or did, were you slower at start and like I say,

Grant Woods: it's not quite done. Crystal will carry on, budgets change over time. So the first year, I think I had I don't remember, two or three acres of food.

So we ended up with about 80 some odd when it. And it wasn't like, there was one big year where we had a 20, every year we'd try to do another two or three acres or do a deal with a buddy that had some heavy equipment, and I you knock some trees down from me, type or something. And we worked with the nrcs national Resource Conservation Service.

They have a bunch of funding called equip, environmental Quality Improvement Program. And in my area, Eastern Red Cedars are [00:25:00] very invasive. So they didn't, they don't pay for it all, but they have what they call cost share funding. You got some skin in the game too. And we applied for some of those and got some grants that help us on the original property, but not the whole place at once.

So I think a lot of people get impatient, they buy land and they want it to be Mark's Place the next day. It's not, it's just not gonna happen. Cause I know Mark, I work in Mark and on Habitat stuff and all spend a lot of time. If you have d levels of resources, you can only speed up nature so quickly.

That's

Josh Raley: right.

Grant Woods: But yeah we were 21 years into it and made more progress as my company grew and we had a little bit bigger budget. But that's not, it's not just money. I also learned more efficiencies and how to do stuff better and when to burn to get the response I wanted out native vegetation, it's not just burning.

We, we spent all these decades teaching people prescribed fires. Ok. I was in New York yesterday working, it's still illegal to do prescribed fire as a landowner in New York. [00:26:00] I'm not talking about you a permit. It's just illegal period. Wow. And New York needs a big old match. There's so many invasive species in the timber and thick woods and whatnot.

It really needs some fire, but it's illegal. Recently, Pennsylvania just made it illegal. So those of us in states where we. Have a few more freedoms. We kinda take that for granted, but that's

Josh Raley: not the case everywhere. Yeah. I know a guy that I do some work with as part of the network that we provide podcasts for John Teeter White to landscapes out in New York, and in his most recent episode, he's talking about prescribed fire.

And he was doing some burning and he goes, not that I was in New York burning, I wasn't burning in New York. Yeah. He was really clear to, to emphasize on his show, Hey, I wasn't doing this in New York. I was somewhere else, yeah. Yeah. Man. What a thing to, to have a place where it's just totally illegal.

How close would you say the proving grounds was to maximizing that potential? Were you at the 98, 90 9% mark? Or would, where would you put it?

Grant Woods: No, I don't think so. Cause there's always [00:27:00] environmental factors of drought or a, a late snow or something. I don't know. Let's call it eighty five, ninety, somewhere in there.

It was good. We're, I think. I'm not a big guy, but here's just a way to kind get a relative index. So when Trace and I purchased a property, it's split by County Line Stone, you know how Stone County, Andy County for those out there that have been Branson, we're of Bran, Missouri, all highway on fish and stuff like that.

And it was really rough, but I looked up to pop Young and Bo and Crockett records and not all deer registered, but back in the day killed big deer. Probably paid was more of a thing back in the day than it now. And and so anyway the biggest buck recorded, I'm just saying recorded, was 131 inches.

We've had our hands on 170 inch deer. We did not harvest the biggest deer. I hope the new landowner does that. Nocturnal. I just, I just had to leave because that RAs just outsmarted me [00:28:00] Long ways from one 30 being the record of the area. Not saying it was, but at least recorded data and harvesting, those 1 41 50 classes with regularity and throwing out some even bigger bucks.

Remember, there's no ag here, you'll never see a combine, you don't see any grains. This is timber country. This is timber country and not production timber's a lot clear cuts. This is just timber low quality timber and pesky pasture. That's what we have here.

Josh Raley: Wow. And so to make the jump from, one twenties and one 30 s class, deer up to, having a reasonable expectation that your land is gonna produce one 40 and one 50 inch deer every year.

Man, that speaks volumes to not only the habitat, but also just. The, what is it? The National Deer Association says the most difficult half inch of Yeah. Of management trigger finger, the motion of the trigger finger. And I think that just speaks volumes to letting bucks just get a little older.

Yes, sir. Does

Grant Woods: So a is the biggest determin of size. Everyone wants to talk genetics, which we don't really know [00:29:00] that much about. And then quality of forage. So there can be a glass ceiling. We often hear about glass ceilings in certain businesses, or salary caps, whatever. But, and I've done this, I've actually published this years and years ago, but we had a project in South Carolina for 11 years and aluminum plant right in the middle and 6,000 acres around.

And I was actually in graduate school when started it to harvest X number deer.

I was allowed to do, they really wanted to herd take down a little bit. Cause there was a road coming this big aluminum find from me the way, and there was a lot of car dealer accident. So safety hazard for employees and vendors and stuff like that. So I set out, and this was course started maybe 19 90, 19, 1 loan time ago.

I'm not member, 18 of the old cum A and now nda. So you know, I'm an old man and I went through all these preachings and people almost wanting to fist fight you cause you're talking about shooting. Do I lived that? I didn't hear about it. I lived it. So I did something really radical. Maybe the first person to do it down there, I don't know.

But [00:30:00] for my team where we were getting paid to harvest these deer and do research, we harvested five for every buck. You did not get a buck. Now this not rules, this is grant. So could had harvest five before you got for 11 years. Wow. And we took that property from not producing very good deer. Too much better deer.

Sandy, I'm 17 miles off the coast in Charleston, South Carolina, Sandy soil, no ag. But we about, I dunno, year five or six, we realized that our seven year old bucks are five-year old bucks or whatever. Were about the same size as our two year old bucks. We hit a glass ceiling, there was no more nutrients and they started doing more burning and we started the food they were doing a little food pot program just to track her out so you could see 'em just, some wheat, just some more barn run wheat and no fertilizer.

And we started really, I asked them, can I take her to food pot program? Can I really up this, can I make this better? And added more acres and whatnot. [00:31:00] And we started harvesting bigger deer. And that was a another key point in my development as a professional and I practitioner. So I toson great guys, great mentors and gal mentors.

That will only take you so far. You have to have boots on the ground. You have to see how do they respond to these certain things with, and like my PhD was about four years old. My four years old, my masters was two years old. That's great. Kids are doing them. It's wonderful experience. But when you're involved in a project 11 years and you see all the changes and floods and droughts and hurricanes and literally Hur, hurricane Hugo and everything else, that's when you start learning.

So I'm a huge fan of, you have to have a baseline of knowledge, academic knowledge, huge. Obviously huge. But the practitioners take that a step further. And if we think this through, and this has been more of a recent revelation to me, but when we look at a lot of new things, [00:32:00] it's really changed society over time.

Not all of it come outta the university lab. A lot of times it's a practitioner and then the university verifies it. Yep. Which is also a fine process as a practitioner could be a one off and all that worked. This is great, but it only worked cause the conditions were just right that day and whatever we're talking about here.

But and so I read a lot when I go back and read a lot of the stuff. Big, heavy books practitioners have been world changers and I think it's sad that our students are wildlife students. I'm sure it's true for accounting or other fields too aren't doing more internships or we're not in more trade schools or whatever.

Cause we need boots on the ground. I think our society reflects this. We got all these theories. It worked in an economic book. Folks, it's not working really good right now. I'm just not being political, not working. So yeah, we need some prac, we need some practitioners. We need people that have done it and got bloody nose or busted their whatever [00:33:00] would want.

This guy, he just got, I'm a kidney transplant patient. A lot of people know that. And I don't want, the guy just graduated from some, awesome medical school and he 4.77, he's off the charts. He made points you can't even make, and the teachers all love him, but he is never cut on someone.

I don't want that guy doing a kidney transplant on me. Yep.

Josh Raley: No I totally get that. My background and I know we have similar convictions. So I went to seminary and then went into pastoral ministry for 12 years and yeah. Saw the same thing there of boy, we need a few people to step out of the academy for a little while and go and get their hands dirty with parishioners and individuals.

Yeah. Week in and week out. And more people sitting by hospital beds to be the ones that are writing these theology books and pastoral ministry books. But that's gonna get me off on a whole tangent. So we're here though to talk about food plots. You mentioned it briefly how you scratched out some food plots at the beginning of the proving grounds and increased over the years.

And then your, obviously your food plot experience on this property in South Carolina. [00:34:00] Correct? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So let's talk about the proving grounds and where you began food plotting eventually. Where I want us to end up is talking about what you're now calling the release method. Is that correct?

Yeah. Yes. I want to get to that because as I talk with different people, so many folks are curious, where do I start? Give me a 1, 2, 3 of how do I turn my food plotting from, I throw out some buck forage oats sometime around September and hope for the best, right? Yeah. How do I go from there to a fully formed food plotting program where I'm improving the soil, improving the habitat and providing, food for wildlife and habitat for wildlife all year round.

So where did you get your start with all of that?

Grant Woods: That's a, all that was great. So again, trace and I are living in this metal building and the first food plot I did was right behind it. Cause I wanted be able to see it. I wasn't necessarily gonna hunt. I wanted, see I love deer, I'm passionate about deer.

I see deer. So I had a, at that time I didn't knowdo [00:35:00] guy, it was locus trees and Cedars and Gnarling out there. It this the not bought everything. Grant was Rich, South Carolina and we come

cattle ranch to a hospital and to this day, I've never walked a property. I've worked from Canada, New Zealand, literally I've never walked a property have. So these cattle skeletons on it where they starved the death, that's how port land. Wow. Literally look literally. Wow. And so it's just, just literally just.

So I had a buddy knock down these locus trees where they'd fed cattle by the old barn here. And it's just trampled gravel. It's just yucky. Ain't gonna make food plot there. And course you couldn't it. And I hired, I went to mfa, Missouri Farm Association cause I'm from that academic background. I gotta gimme some NPK out there.

And I bought a load of fertilizers that go spread it based on my calculations from my textbooks [00:36:00] and soil tests, whatnot. And the guy comes there and makes one loop round the field and dries out My driveway doesn't stop. And I'm chasing the guy down the road. Cause I got limited amount of money and pardon my money back that guy's fertilizer truck.

Anyway, he says, you're, I'm not tearing up my equipment for somebody's food plot. Like food pot was a nasty, like leprosy or something, and so I got mad and I'm older now, I don't get mad and I drive down to Arkansas to post this tractor dealer and I'm gonna get a buggy to pull behind my tractor and spread more fertilizer.

And I'd get in there and there's this, I still with this day, great Mennonite guy and he. Course calm, like you might expect. He's boy you're kinda wound up Mr. Woods. What's wrong with, and he just really sages advice, I said I trying my food, blah, blah, blah. Said my uncle Galen down the road here.

I'm thinking, where's this story going? My Uncle Galen makes chicken compost, Turkey litter, poo compost and he's crazy. Here're driving hill. You got, I think you're drive that hill where going go. And that's a lot cheaper than buying a stainless steel fertilizer [00:37:00] buggy. And I didn't care anything, I heard compost.

I thought compost. You took your garbage and put in a bag and put some worm in there or something. So I go meet Uncle Gay, he's even older and more and I are still good friends to day. And he starts telling me about all the stuff they do in the microbes and microbes,

PhD high schools. And had, and so class never heard any of this. Wow. None. That's one time about getting your fingers in the dirt. And so gay, I hired Galen cause it was cheaper. Not cause I believed him cause it was cheaper. And he comes up and spread stuff. I'm pretty good crop. You're eating. And so I developed a relationship with Gay.

Went for many years. Now I don't use that product anymore cuz Galen's recipe was so awesome. We sold it to another guy and it was outta state and the shipping fees were just cost prohibited for me to use it. But I got a taste of microbes and what was potential in the soil releasing the soil's potential if you'll, and [00:38:00] also I had no dis, I didn't have that great tractor.

I had no. So I went to the local NS office and they rented no-till drill started. No,

that's the. The genesis and over time, through gal's help and other people's help in reading, I started improving my techniques and improving my techniques. And a lot of people don this, but me and another guy started a company biologic and I actually ended up selling that out to and for several years.

And we went from, you remember the starting of biologic figure that old, we went from just selling, buck for oats or a wheated or whatever to blends. And we introduced brass, which were kinda weird back then. And I got that from going New Zealand and working with deer farmers in New Zealand.

And they're going, they're for commercial purposes, these huge deer elk and red stag and all these other things and they're fields, theses and whatnot. [00:39:00] Not just turtles, but different varieties, Nebraska. So all these things put together in my experiences led me to do that. To the point now where I realized that in my textbooks, we were always taught that it takes a thousand years.

To make an inch of dirt. Think about that. A thousand years to make an inch of dirt. And I think that's true. If you take some limestone or granite and sell on your porch for it to weather down and make dirt, probably take thousand years. Oh no, no one's lived that long. But we know now that we can build dirt by using these practices.

And I'm here to, I'm probably building a quarter inch a year of really nutrient rich, just black smells good, looks good. Dirt. A quarter inch a year is huge. Cause we're going from, and some professors still believe this, but they get laugh at, cause many farmers, about five to 10 farmers Nation, why now are using these practices and they're infinitely more profitable.

Cause they're not putting all those synthetics in their soil. They're not having runoff, they're not local streams. [00:40:00] And we were taught N nitrogen phosphor potasium, the number. And this is not my field of science. I'm gonna go very far here, but we hear all the, the nightly news carbon and carbon world's ending carbon.

Carbon. Folks, we don't have carbon. We're all gonna die tomorrow. Yep. Period. Cause that's the number one plant food on the planet, period. Now the problem is we've beening for so long. Carbon makes soil black, rich soil. Everyone relates to that. When you dis actually the carbon in the atmosphere, when you have grow plants, we think about photosynthesis.

Probably everyone learned that in seventh grade or something. We think about that simple recipe, c6, that's six carbons, age 1206 C c6, 12, six Every day they're green photosynthesize pumping in soil. You state, northern. And it's in the wintertime, there's almost [00:41:00] never a cover crop. You've got land just leaking carbon in the atmosphere and these studies are done.

They're not arguable. You never done hear this on nightly news. You're not gonna hear it. But one the major contributors worldwide to carbon in the air is our farming practices. Not that, oh my gosh, grant drives a V8 truck. Lord have mercy. I'm just, I'll stop there anyway. No, that, that's, so we gotta get, we have to have plants and we need healthy forest folks.

We're not sending our forest. We got trees dying or sick trees and sick trees or as much so we're not pulling carbon out the atmosphere. Walking a forest. All the crowns are little bit type. I'm when Daniel Boone wrote, Couple things. He talked about hearing turkeys about the hundreds every day.

He never had a date in here. Turkeys goblin, summer fall. He didn't have a, in Turkeys goblin, he did not see raccoons. He did not [00:42:00] talk about, Clark, did not talk about were as bad as they'd writing these little crawl, some sucking blood out of us. None of his scores are talking about ticks. Cause there was fire all the time.

There was fire where we set in the habitat, early succession so we can look at these historical documents. Daniel Boone, there's in my area, the guy to come through here was school crop and he was looking for lead mines. He was kinda be trapper type guy. Kept a little Missouri heard, but he area he

inch.

So we know. And we know how the creator made this to work. That's right. So the release process is simply me and the other bright people feeding into me. Galen started it. Other people come on since Galen teaching me that [00:43:00] we're trying to force our way. Synthetic fertilizers, synthetic herbicides, all this stuff.

And if we follow, whether you're a believer in Christ or not, if we follow the creator's plan for the environment based on written documentation, I don't think even out there doubts Lewis and Clark made that journey. No, no one doubts Barham went down to coast. No one doubts this. You can read the original writings.

If you can get it outta museum, you can touch these. So this is fact folks. Do we agree with other observations? Daniel Boons spelled like I spelled right. B a r is bear. Daniel and I would've been buddies. We spelled just the same, but we know what it looked like and we know how these systems function.

Yes, there's billions more people now, but that doesn't change the system. So where we have natural areas, we know how to manage them and we can do better. And that's the release process. I just started applying these natural systems to food plots and work every year. No, I [00:44:00] mean if it doesn't rain in 19 weeks, things are gonna get ugly out there folks.

But my recover much quicker cuz my are like a sponge and the first moisture or a heavy dew or whatever. I'm gonna survive the drought better. I will say that cause I've witnessed it. You've process is simply down real simple principles based on watching nature, if you will. And I'm not the only one. There's Gabe Brown's, a real famous farmer.

David Br, a friend of mine, Ray Archuletta, worked for the NRCS for 30 years. And the NRCS was so resistant to these principles that Ray come out of an academic world like I did. And he's thinking it's a thousand years making inch of soil and, cattle or the worst thing we could do to the planet.

And all these things. Turns out just the opposite. Folks we had 60 million bison by the best estimates on the great planets. 60 million bison. Bison are big animals. Bigger in the cow. 60 million bison. No one was fertilizing, [00:45:00] no one was cutting hay, no one was adding nine. There was no herbicide.

Pesticide, fungicide, insecticide. There's more, there Were more bison than our cattle now. And look at all the work we do now. And would you rather eat a natural bison or a natural whitetail deer that's not eating herbicide? Not eating fungicide, not eating insecticide. Not eating plants growing on synthetic chemicals made at a high cost of petroleum, by the way.

Or do you wanna plan out? They're eating really good quality native vegetation. So one last thing I'm preaching, I'm sorry, but one last thing. When you follow the release process, this is so important, please tune in. Those plants are nutrient rich cuz they're acting in the soil with the microbes as they should.

Now, science has learned that a lot of our childhood diseases that you and I probably never heard about when we were kids, you got spanking and on there, no attention to death syndrome. Your mom's hand and you up real quick, right? [00:46:00] Or just, but there are other issues. Cause spinach right now on average has about 40% less iron in it.

Than it did just a couple decades ago. Cause we've depleted the soils. Wow. There are oranges that have way less or no vitamin C in them. Cause we've depleted soils and there are orange grows in California that have went back. Orange grows. They sprayed everything between the trees. They want no competition, just oranges only produced oranges.

And now the better orange grows, man. They're planting cover crops. They got pollinators, they got sheep in there, urinate, defecating, and salivating. That's how we get the microbes back in the soil. They got calendar grazing and those oranges are some of the most nutritious ever tested. We know how to do it, but you wanna eat out grants garden or someone practicing this man.

And here's how I do my garden. This sounds the way out there. I take 60 different varieties of veggies I gets from greens replica ancient native [00:47:00] squash and. 60 different veggies, melon squash, all kinds of beans, peas in one bag. I put up in my no-till drill and I drive the edge of the food. So Ms.

Tracy have to wait out the middle to picker veggies and it's like hunting. You get your five gallon bucket and you know you're waiting waste deep and there can be tick or copper, whatever. And you, there's some green beans. Oh, there's a yellow QuickNet squash. I don't know what that is, but I'm gonna pick, eat it anyway, it is so cool.

Wow. I don't have little, I'm not putting fertilizer on my garden. I'm not out there going, why I kill this insect. I kill insect squash. And here's the truth. Tracy put, she likes to grow. Put some squash plants right behind our house in little flower on there, trying to keep the squash bugs. 30 my food squashes.

I'm. No sinus squash bugs out there. Cause when plants grow together, they communicate and they feed off the pheromones. You think [00:48:00] about pheromone and deer, the pheromones of each other. And when you have a very vibrant insect community, there's more predators than pray. And the predators will eat the prey.

Wow. That's my insecticide. I love seeing spider. You know on the that Dewey morning in August, September when spiderwebs really show up really well and they're just less than an early morning in the field. That's my spray truck. Those spiders are killing the predators of my plants. That's my spray truck.

It's cheap, folks. So I'm not paying for fertilizer, herbicide, insecticide. Fungicide. And that lets Ms. Tracy allow me to make more food box, cause I spent all that money on other stuff.

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And to make sure I don't miss any of the action. To learn more and check out their full line of products, head over to their website, tcam.com. Share your hunt with tcam. I love that it, it's like a. It's like when we try to maximize efficiency for e even for things like planting our vegetables, right?

We're trying to maximize efficiency, trying to bring some order from the chaos that was there. We pretty much just messed everything up because that jumbled what to many might look like. Man, that's a jumbled mess of plants. In reality it's [00:50:00] giving those plants everything that they need because it's a more diverse community, therefore more diverse insect community.

Therefore, we're not having to worry about, like you said, the squash plants. That'll just about tear up everything in your garden if you let 'em get, yeah, if you let 'em get after it. Man let's talk about some of the essential tenets of the release process. You mentioned them briefly and if people can't tell by now, it's all about soil health and maximizing that soil health and releasing the soil to do what it's supposed to do.

What it's designed to do, what It's what it has naturally. In its capabilities already. You're not trying to sell people something. You're giving them a process where here's how you can help it do what it already wants to do, what the soil's already meant to be doing. So let's talk about some of those success.

Yeah. I got no product for cell

Grant Woods: folks. I don't have a little magic black box widget that's gonna make you grow bigger. Dear I have no products for sale. So

Josh Raley: if you come up with one of those though, let me know because we'll talk about that too. But in the meantime, we'll, you do. We'll settle for this.

Grant Woods: Yeah, me too.

Someone's going. Lemme know. Okay, [00:51:00] so let's just take our natural observations. Make this real simple. If you grade out your house or something and you don't do, decide not to build whatever weed growing, cause God built soil always be covered. You have to have plants taking that carbon outta the air and putting them soil to feed the microbes.

Yep. And the principle here is microbes. They're not photosynthesizing, so they can't make carbon, but they can break down rock or parent soil material and get NPK and Meum and zinc and all these other things. So those microbes literally go in and out of a plant route. And say, Hey, I'll give you some phosphorus if you need it.

They know from the plant hormones, if you gimme carbon, there's a interchange, there's a economy under the soil. It's the world's largest economy, by the way, by far. So we don't want our soil. We want something growing as many days outta year as it can be. It's 40 below, nothing's growing. As soon as it warms up, we want it already growing.

We don't have to wait to plant. We want growing. Second. If you leave that place, bear on a road, raindrops in it, wind blowing on it, it's [00:52:00] going to road. We want the soil covered every day outta here. So I no till and use a crimper. I never wanna see my soil unless I go looking for it. It needs to be covered.

Third, when we look at any prairie, the last vestiges of prairie in America, or here where we've cut cedars and burned, we've identified over hundred 70 native grasses and Forbes at the. You need diversity cuz different plants leak. It's called exudates. Different strengths of carbonic acid remember are all leaking carbon into the soil to feed the microbes.

They leak different strengths of carbon acid and those different strengths of carbon acids are going to free up different nutrients. So I never plant monocultures. I plant, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 where my garden 60 different species at once. Cause when you look at any native prairie or any native forest, there's a diversity of species out there, not a monoculture.

So that's kinda the third principle. Okay. [00:53:00] And then the fourth principle and this is a little bit of order, but hood mammals are livestock needs to interact because you think about a deer, you may have shot a little bit too far to the left one time and you're eviscerating or gut a deer and there's all that green smelly stuff in there.

Teaspoon has bacteria. It. Way more. One teaspoon of that has way, way more living organisms than all the people on the planet mini fold over. Deer, if you're ever watch 'em close, maybe you're watching a button bucks or something close. They're sloppy eaters. They salivate all time and they urinate and they defecate buffalo deer.

Do you know, all these critters do? And that's replenishing the microbes in the soil all the time. Cause all those microbes come outta ru or the gut of a criter. And when you have different critters on the land, you're getting different sources of microbes out there. Ray, my friend Ray Arch, who is brilliant, he says, looking back at this, that dirt without a plant can only be [00:54:00] dirt.

I'm paraphrasing, but when you add plants, you can make soil. Is. And all of our colleges, or almost all of them, have taught chemistry in soil classes for decades now, we need to be talking life. I wanna get up and think, I got this from Brown. How much life is on my farm? Not what can I get up and kill today?

Oh, what herbicide can today? What pesticide can I today? I don't think anyone, unless your herbicide sales goes well, y go gimme some roundup today. And I'm not anti herbicide folks. I look at herbicide like a root. Now, if you've got a bad root now and you don't address it, you're brought out some more teeth.

No one wants that. So if you've got a really invasive bad plant, you may need some herbicide to get that under control. But once you got your system from that manipulated state back to a more natural state, you can probably get outta using herbicide or at least cut it way, way down.

Josh Raley: Yeah, it's a hammer, not a paintbrush.

We're we may bring it in when we need some heavy lifting done, but it's not our first tool. [00:55:00]

Grant Woods: Yeah. Yeah. So those are some of the principles and they're easy to apply. Now I have a lot of little small food plots where I wanna hunt. There's no road there. It's back on the ridge I backpack into.

And so I can apply those principles and I won't make as much improvement rapidly. And I'll explain why in just a second. So I may take a backpack Bower in, or a hand rake, and I wanna make a 30 yard little high heel food block cause there's a big white oak over here drop. And I think, boy, if I add another traction, that bus that'll stop right here.

I can get my bow shot just right. So I'm gonna, the fire break and I'm gonna remove that leaf litter. I need to remove the leaf litter, the weeder so Steve can get in contact with the soil. So I've beared the soil, but remember, fire, the heat goes up, all the roots from those little saplings or weeds or whatever are still in the soil.

And as soon as I do that, I'm gonna broadcast some seed right before the next rain. I don't wanna broadcast it a week for the rain, cuz the dog on turkeys and cardinals and squirrels read up all my seeds. It's just called a buffet [00:56:00] for those critters. I don't know how they find it so quick. And then raindrops falling will actually splash up little dirt that causes erosion and that will help cover my seed and make sure there's ample moisture for those seeds to germinate.

And I think something that a lot of us, I've been guilty of this myself, we don't remember that seeds cause it looks so dormant, looked like gravel, but they're living organisms. They respirate, they're almost like a bear hibernating, not very much, but they're alive. And so if you throw something living out on a concrete parking lot at a hard play field or something, and it doesn't rain, it's just out there in the sun, of course they're gonna die.

The germination rate or amount of seizure are gonna survive, are gonna drop every day. So I like to, if I'm broadcasting seed, I like to do it right before or even during, or. And that's my system for making these little high heel food plots with hand tools and you don't even have to have gasoline.

You can do it by hand. Now if it's a bigger area, I like a backpack boarder cause it's quicker than me out the way. But I'm just [00:57:00] removing the duff and broadcasting at a heavy rate. Cause squirrels and birds are going to eat some of your seed, even if it rains before it germinates. And you can make awesome food plots in the timber.

Now do you wanna do that on the 40 acre food plot program? You probably want some tools. You probably want something a little bit better to get that done in a more efficient matter. But we use that system every year, fall and spring for our little heidi hole. Little small tucked in food plots. Maybe we can't even get a tractor there.

Or maybe it's just so small you be turning around 40 times to get the job done. And that system, again is replicating. Cause if we think about the buffalo going through vegetation, they tramp it down, they're trampling it down and making that seed bed. And so seeds need to make contact with the soil. They will germinate if they're on top of those oakes, but the roots not gonna get in the soil.

So they're starved to death. So we wanna make sure the seeds make contact with the soil. Again, just replicating natural processes. Yeah.

Josh Raley: So let's talk a little bit about if we really are wanting to build the [00:58:00] soil of our food plots. Let's say we've got larger food plots, maybe they're not hide hole kinds of plots.

And we wanna start employing some of this, some of these these tenants. Is there a good time of year to start that's better than the other? Should I kick this off with my fall planting? Should I kick it off with the spring planting? What should that look like?

Grant Woods: Great question. Now I'm even, when works, but I'm gonna hedge a little bit towards the fall just cause there's typically lessed pressure in the fall.

So if you're going from a traditional system, ofchemical fertilizer, AK probably pretty bad shape. And stressed out Soil has a lot of weeds in it. Cause weeds are early survivors. That's what people ask. Why did God make weeds? You got something that will just grow anywhere in the harshest conditions to start healing the soil.

I think that's Weeds. Purpose. Yeah. And minute. So Wise gay's probably not listening cause he didn't do a lot of media, but I wish he would. He should be a guest actually. But one time Gaylor and I go down the road and I'm trying to challenge him a little bit. Gay and I [00:59:00] can tease, we know each other well.

Again, why do you think God made ticks? I thought I'd stumped it. Like this time said, Grant, I don't know for sure. He is such a gentleman, when we used to have a lot of fire and stuff, population way low out, the weak.

But that's what a man of the earth knows. A guy that's out there doing it every day, he thinks in these terms where those of us in the lab, we got our calculator out, and we're trying to figure some regression model to figure this out, but a man of the land has time to think about these things, so it's just a big difference.

Again, I'm not saying that's right though. Oh, wood said, I just,

Josh Raley: oh, that's good. Alright, so let's say I do get a planting in this year. What should I start with? If I'm going from maybe a traditional food plot strategy where let's say I leave it alone all year long. I come through a couple weeks before the season, I till everything up and I usually plant from there.

Yeah. If I wanna start this [01:00:00] year, should I go in there and till like I traditionally have as a way to jumpstart it all? Or should I just skip that all together and try to maybe burn what has grown up into there throughout the year that I've just left it dormant. Yeah,

Grant Woods: great question. There's some wiggle room in there.

If there's really noxious weeds it, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna deal. Excuse me. I get about stuff. I'm not gonna dis plow. That's the most harmful thing we can do to, I would rather spray it twice with herbicide than disc. Okay. Literally. And when you dis I think it was Penn State that recently published this recently being last year, they did some samples all throughout Pennsylvania.

I think their number was, there's about 20 million weed seeds per cubic foot of soil. A huge number, I'm sure I'm wrong, but huge number. And you think, I can't be seeds cuz we're thinking pumpkin seeds or beans or corn or something. But you probably never seen a ragweed seed or pigweed seed. It's like flour, little fine [01:01:00] flour.

Those plants. So there are, and the, it seems like the more noxious the weed, the smaller seed gets in some cases. So if you disk or disturb the soil and you flip it over, you're gonna bring up weed seeds that haven't been exposed in a long time and they're gonna grow. So I would rather just herbicide it and not stir up that weed seed bank and not let a lot of oxygen in the soil profile cause too much oxygen in the soil profile, encourages bad bacteria and heal good bacteria, and the right amount of oxygen would've been infused in and worm hose and dung beetle hose and stuff like that.

And a quick aside, if you're allowing me this, so we talk about where we were and how awesome the system was. Many species of dung beetles are almost at extinct in American. Now, think about what dung beetles did. They got some dung, buffalo dung, cattle, dung, whatever, rode up my ball about eight to 14 inches deep in the soil.

They put fertilizer right where the roots [01:02:00] were going. Wow. And they put it down there so they're young, could feed on the dung. God had the perfect fertilizer spreaders all across this land and we killed them with insecticides. Wow. I grew up folks and this is practitioner cause I'm a practitioner. I grew up scouting turkeys in Missouri.

You went out to where your farmer buddy was feeding cattle, corn. He wasn't trying to bake Turkey, he was just feeding corn. Normal cattle back in the day feeds on back in the day and you Turkey, those fresh calp

are challenge many of y'all or the calpine last five years, not many. Cause every cat, almost every cow out there is full of ivermectin and it's just pooping waste pile and every going out. There's no insects. You don't see Turkey sliping cal pies anymore. Very rarely. Wow. We are changing our environment so rapidly thinking we're getting ahead and we're actually going

Josh Raley: backwards.

It's really interesting you mentioned that. We just moved [01:03:00] recently and where we live now, there's cattle pastures all over the place. And with Turkey season obviously, I was like, I'll get out there and see if there's anything going on with cause I've always heard that, but I've never lived in cattle country and I have yet to see a Turkey and a cattle pasture.

I have not seen,

Grant Woods: cause there's no insects in there too. They weren't going for the food folks. They're going for the insects. The grubs and

Josh Raley: maggots, whatever. Yeah. That's why. And I know there's turkeys in the area cuz I see him in other places. I've seen him in front yards and all that, but I don't see them following around the cattle.

Like I've always heard and thought, to be the case. Yeah man. That's really re really interesting. As I'm getting things kicked off, right? I'm gonna spray it twice. I'm gonna try my best to get this planted, even if it's really tough. Cuz I can hear some folks saying you don't know my ground.

It's really hard ground. I really need to get the tiller out. Grant. Are you sure I can't do it? No.

Grant Woods: There are some people, trace and I were on the new proven grounds now, proven grounds too. And I was making a food plot. It's a couple acres, maybe about three acres, and it [01:04:00] was timber, gnarly, not high quality timber.

So I had to get the equipment in there and they're up the stuff and it's all Rudy. So I, I have really heavy yellow equipment, compacting the soil, filling in stu, moving trees, burn piles, it's moonscape. I'm not gonna till it, I'm gonna no-till or broadcast right into that. Would I loosen the soil if I it?

Yes. That's a. But I will also put too much air in the soil killing the beneficial bacterias. And when you till, you know your tractor's going along and the physics of it, your disc or implement is behind there. So it's transferring some of the weight from the tractor to your implement and that's compacting the soil.

So you think you're loosened up and you are the top, five, six inches. But right below there you're making a hard plant. Wow. And those young roots, new young plant is going down, hits hard plant moisture, nutrients below that. So [01:05:00] roots 3, 5, 10 feet deep. Now you got six. So your do too good. And it's really tough to break that hard pan.

So I wanna reduce my chances of creating a hard plan, I'm gonna have a hard pan where, and I are doing this work and this fall I'm gonna plant some extra cereal rye in my blend. Cause it's got a massive root system. It's gonna build a fracture over time. That hard pan. And allow nutrients to go up and down and moisture.

So a moisture to go up and down through the root profile. Wow,

Josh Raley: That's really good. Very helpful. So what kind of blend are you gonna kick it off with then? I think you've got some preferred ones that you kinda like to use. Yeah, I'm biased.

Grant Woods: I I'm biased. I helped create the recipe for these blends.

I don't own the company. I don't tell you seed. I'll back my truck, but I have some, some work, some skin in the game in this blend. So I've worked for some great companies, Maio Biologic, great company, Eagle Seed. But I couldn't plant soybeans anymore, even at my place, 80 acres. Cause they get this tall deer amount.

Get this all my kinda expensive project. And if you don't have plants going above, you're not [01:06:00] going roots below. You're not making the improvement soil. Yep. It's kinda like an iceberg. What above on the plant, there's probably two thirds more below the soil. It's kinda like an iceberg. So I found this company green cover out Nebraska and they don't care anything about Deere Crop Ag Company.

They're one of the largest cover crop seed companies in the world. Great guys, Christian companies, great guys, family owned and they ha they carry about 150 different varieties of seed and I studied them for afar for quite some time. Then I actually drove out there just kinda, Hey, I'm Grant Woods.

Can we talk deer a little bit? And they're like, man, are eating your crop up? Watch deer. They, we need to kill some deer. No. I want deer. They got all these varieties of seed, but there's no deer on the front cover. There's no marketing like that. They're just selling seed. You can get in a, big container if you want, or like me, I can't handle that.

50 pound bag, whatever. But they go through such a high volume of seed. They're not carrying anything over. It's really fresh seed. That professional level of seed cleaners, you're not getting weed seed in your stuff. They're a real [01:07:00] thing. And I swayed the

mirrors going on. And so they let me have pretty free run of all one putting the blends. Cause they're not deer hunters. The two owners aren't deer hunters at all. They're like, why would he even sit out there for three hours? I'm like, don't start. Cause it'd be addicting. And so we have these blends and then above and beyond that they have teamed up with the world's best coating to put the microbes we've been talking about.

They've isolated these microbes in the coating order. Stay alive right on the seed. You don't have to get your packet out like we used to. And dust the seed. Oh yeah. You throw the packet on the, the, your truck and it sits in the heat for three days. All the microbes are dead by the time you get around the plant.

So it allows us to have this professional quality seed handling, seed sources and microbes at farmer prices. Cause farmers would not pay, $400 for a little thing in No farmer's gonna do that. Sure. So just allows us to tap into that network. [01:08:00] Wow. So com and this fall. I'm always experimenting, but I'm planting something very close to fall, browse pressure, release cause trace and I haven't made many food plots on our new place.

So I got a lot of deer to compete for not much food. So I need much as I can get and so I help create, blend for my needs. But I think there's a lot of people that have more deer than food plots. So that blend is called fall browse pressure, release browse pressure, meaning it's gonna grow a lot of tonna knowing that some of the species in there are really pable and deer are gonna eat them first.

Cause we almost see a deer in our food pot opening day. And then there's other species are drought resistant, other species are really good at improving soil and some that are gonna be pable mid and late season. It's almost like a time, yeah. If you don't have that problem, you can save a little bit of money.

You say, man, I got a great food program. We've been harvest due to. Fall release, it's a little bit less [01:09:00] expensive. You're not gonna grow quite as much tonna. You may, you're still have plenty of, but if you don't have a lot of deer you may not need that extra blend. And then we have one cuz you know, a little hide, a little 30 yard circle.

If you talk about browse pressure, I mean that baby can get nailed. I have a hide heel blend for me, but you can buy it. And that has a, another slightly different, it's made to be a little bit more shade tolerant, Heidi to have timber around 'em. A little bit more shade in the early season, stuff like that.

So I've just created that. Me and my friends, I work in South Carolina. I was just in all over me and my buddies would use and it's just available there.

Josh Raley: Wow. So I'm really interested in that browse pressure blend. I was on a property the other day with a landowner and working with him on some, placement of his food plots and that kind of thing.

Cause they, they've never really had any on this property. Sure. And We got to talking and it just became very evident, very quickly. There's no food left. He's got way too many deer. He's got 150 acres in North Georgia. And I turned to him and I said how many dos do you guys typically harvest off this property?

It just [01:10:00] changed hands from one guy that's hunted there for the last 30 years to this gentleman. He just, so they've all hunted there forever. So I said how many doughs do you guys take a year? He said, in the 30 years that I know of, we've only shot one dough off of this property. And the person that shot that dough almost got kicked off the property for shooting it.

Damn. Yeah, my suspicions were correct. And I think he may have a hard time, he was like, do you think we could put some beans out in these larger fields? And I'm like, not a chance. Not a chance. They will get mowed down to the ground. So I'm really interested in that browse pressure blend.

Yeah.

Grant Woods: There, there's a summer browse, pressure release. And a fall browse, pressure release. Okay. Obviously different species for different times of year. Sure. And what I do now, I do, no, I do no-till. But what I do, I drill, right now here in Missouri, we're finally warming up a little bit and the clover and thery, the wheat stuff is just really, it's, I'm six foot tall, it'll be chest tall on me by planting time mid-May, something like that here in [01:11:00] Missouri and on a year in the rain.

And I'll just drill right through that. So my standing crop, and I'll drill right through that. And there's several advantages. Hey, I'm not disturbing the soil. Literally, Ohio State big as school's done some work. And when your tractor tires are rowing on thick living vegetation course that vegetation a lot of water in it, you get more fuel economy and less wear and tear on your tires

acres. I'm talking about our nation folks. We can heal this land. We can do it if we know how to do this. But anyway. Wow. And then I have a crimper, which is like a roller that's got blades on it. I get this question all the time. Can I excuse my roller? No. Cause a roller, if you drive through your yard and you leave tracks in the yard right before your wife's gonna have, the Bible study over and she goes, honey, I can't believe it's ugly.

So honey, by the time your ladies get here to grasp stand back up cause we've all done this and seen it. It's kinda like food. So you need a CRI has these [01:12:00] flares on there, these, just s and that crimps these stock it circulatory system and that's what kills it to die. Now you can't crimp anytime, but when the plant's like cereal rye or wheated or something, it's making a seed head, it's pretty weak cause it's putting all that nutrients up to the seed head.

You crimp it. Then that baby smoked. So I'll drill right through my standing crop. I actually let it germinate. An institute, those young plants are so pliable, they're just, you drive where they stand back up. And the magic, here's a lot of magic. Everyone thinks it's shit about soul health, but you've got all those deer out there wanting to eat, but they're not sticking their head down in four foot of cereal.

To get a two inch crop. So it's like a greenhouse. It actually gets warmed out there. So your new crop is starting off in that greenhouse effect, just like the buffalo trampoline, the plants on the great prairie, and you get a good root system going good starts or a little bit more browse tolerant, more drought tolerant, and then I crimp that vegetation down.

That becomes my mulch or weed mat, just like in your garden or in your flower bed and all that. Four, five inches of mulch keeps weeds at bay [01:13:00] because we talked about earlier, weed seeds are very small and have what I call all seeds onboard energy. That's all they got till they make couple leaves and photosynthesize.

They gotta live off that stored energy. You take up, a pigweed seed, you can barely see it really small and it germinates, it's shallow on the soil so it gets warm and wet right time of year and it germinates. It's gotta go through four inches of mulch. Before it can make a couple leaves in full of Synthes size.

It starts to death. So this is my, another big part of my weed protection that mulch just like you're keeping weed in your garden or fire bed mulch. And then take that step further. Crystal. Those plants have been pulling nutrients up, right? They're taking nutrients outta soil. We hope deer consume some of those nutrients.

High crimp them down. It's dry. Not much is growing. If you got straw outside and it's dry, just stays there, right? It doesn't really Decompose very fast comes a little rain. My plants want to grow more and my mulch decomposes quicker. Making the perfect slowly fertilizer [01:14:00] you, no one can time it better.

There's no little dial in your garage. You go, oh, I'm gonna give my yard a little. There's no dial that will fertilize any more perfectly than God's plan, where when it rains and decomposes that existing vegetation, right? When the plants are wanting to grow more, it doesn't rain. It's not releasing the fertilizer.

And fur is not eroding offsite cuz it's tied up in these plant stems. There's no erosion. Yeah. Yeah. It's just an incredible how well this system works isn't perfect. No. Are you going to have failures? Yes. I've had plenty, but my success is far outweigh my failures and it costs so much less to in all life.

If we follow the plan, our life costs less. We're healthier, we do better. It's not as mucky, yucky, it's just fits.

Josh Raley: Yeah. So let's talk about what for me has been one of the most common barriers that I hear and it's that it's those pieces of a crimper and a no-till drill.

Yeah. I think those are probably more [01:15:00] accessible to people than they think that they maybe are. What do you how would you counsel someone who says, Hey, I want to do this. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to pull the trigger. I can't afford a crimper and I can't afford a no-till drill. Get that question all the

Grant Woods: time and I understand it cause I've lived that life.

Remember I'm on the other, I'm at 61, I'm on the other side of income early now. But yep. I've lived that life. I started out renting a no-till drill, I said earlier. From our local NRCS office. And many, almost every county in America has an NRCS office. And a lot of those offices rent no-till drills.

I think this is a good government program cause and they do this not to help you grow bigger deer to save soil, cut down on erosion, make our streams cleaner, all this kinda stuff. Ok. And usually it varies a little bit around America. Like 10 bucks an acre, it's super

Josh Raley: inexpensive. That's what I was gonna ask you library.

I was gonna ask you if you could share what that is. Cause I know for one of the counties that I was looking at recently, I think it was 1150 an acre. It's somewhere in that room.

Grant Woods: Some of'em have a minimum like [01:16:00] 75. If you're only planting two acres, there's a minimum to bring it to you, whatever, like five.

I hear different numbers around Americas that work, but it's somewhere in that 10 acre range, give or take a little, not 50 an acre, anything like that. Okay? And then again, on our small plots, I'm not getting a crimp or drill up in Oza Mountain back, toga, Idaho. So I'm gonna let my, I've got several of these right now.

I'm gonna let 'em grow and get a little bit more mature. Get that seed a little closer to mature than I would in my big, and I'm gonna blow a fire line around it. I'm gonna drop a match at that. Moisture has left the body of the plant. There's moisture in the seed head. You don't wanna wait so long that seed head ripens cause let's just take wheat.

One kernel of wheat may end up with 40 seeds and they're falling down to the ground and some percent of them will germinate so thick. None of them do well. That's why volunteers doesn't work well too thin or too thick. Because one seed may say bunch of seeds, right? That's the process. So [01:17:00] I'm gonna wait till right before the seeds are mature and you squeeze a seed and moisture pops out.

It's not gonna germinate. Seeds are hard, they're dry and hard. So I'm gonna wait till later in that maturing process. Then I'm gonna use prescribed fire, hopefully a rain in the forecast and nitrogen's gonna volatile and go up. But all the other nutrients that plant are falling, right?

There's just fresh fertilizer right on top of the ground. I couldn't have spread it in the evening, okay? And it costs me 30 minutes time and a, or whatever it takes. Okay? Now that's, and that soil really hot. That's another reason you wait to, right for rain to spread the, you seed out on something's 20 degrees, you're frying it.

But I'm just gonna burn it off and then I'm, and all that fresh fertilizer from fire. Remember, heat rises so all the roots and all the nutrients are, the roots are right there. And as those roots start decomposing and it's obviously successful, if there's a route there, it found moisture and it found nutrients.

There's a reason a route is [01:18:00] there that's called when its out, that's a root channel and the new route is going right down. Yeah. If you're route and you're pressing on a rock or a hole, where you going? You're going the hole. It was obviously successful cause that's how the route got there. If it wasn't successful, that route was starved, shive up and died.

But if you till one time, one tillage pass, you destroy all those root channels, you destroy all the worm holes, you destroy, if there's any Beatles where you are, all the beetle holes. One pass, the tillage set you back to ground zero.

Josh Raley: What a, so that, that's super accessible for most people. Either your county probably has a drill or a county around you.

If you've got a, if you've gotta do a little bit of a drive to, to get to a drill at. Even if it's $20 an acre, realistically not that bad. And the big scheme of cost for your

Grant Woods: property. Yeah. I'm seeing a bunch of guys doing, guys and gals. Two or three families will together. I 12 maybe I got four [01:19:00] Pull what?

All co-op. Co-op. Yeah. And we split it three waves and we just, we got a little handshake agreement. Okay. If you break it, you fix it, you break it, you fix it, or however you wanna set it up. But I'm seeing a lot, cause the drill, when you're really busy in the spring, you're really busy in fall and rest time somewhere.

So I'm seeing a lot of co-ops. You hear about deer co-ops and a lot of prescribed fire co-ops, man.

Instead of that neighbor being that guy and now of a sudden, Hey, that neighbor helped me do a fire, I'm gonna help him do a fire. I'm seeing that same mindset, which I think is so healthy for our nation sharing implements or maybe, Hey, I got a tractor. I got a drill. Or, Hey, I'll buy a drill.

If you let me use your tractor, then you can use my drill. There's all kind of ways to put this

Josh Raley: together. Yep, absolutely. And I think one more thing too that I wanna mention because that, that burning is such a such an important piece if you can't get [01:20:00] the crimper but as I've talked with a lot of people, there's still people are all for the idea of burning as long as it's someone else doing it until it comes to dropping a match on their own 40 or their own 50.

And then it becomes a very big and scary thing. And I think it's important to point out, you can burn a food plot in, in much different conditions than you can burn, let's say timber around it. You can do it not long after a rain. You can do it on days that, you may not get a great burn elsewhere, but the vegetation in that food plot has already dried up better than what's around it.

Yes. You can do it on days that are a little more moist, a little safer to burn than what you might run through your timber. A absolutely. And it's

Grant Woods: really easy to make a good line, five or six feet equal in the leaf litter, whatever's around you, around a, a quarter acre, half acre food plot.

You're not burning the side of a mountain down you're burning. Very controlled area. Just could make safe. So [01:21:00] is the wind is going this way? I'm going to start here cause I don't want the wind pushing it. Cause it might then push an amber across the line and get in an area we weren't really wanting to burn.

That's right. So if the wind is going this way, that would be called a head fire. If we burn this way, we want a backing fire and the flames, six inches tall foot, tall pit on the fuel amount of fuel out there. And it's back. Cause the winds wanna drive it this way and it has to ignite the next fuel.

So if you're new to fire someone with you, that's done it for almost every state now has a prescribed fire set, new. And, but once you do it and you do it safely on a small food area, it's just, it's always good to respect fire. But we shouldn't fear fire. It's a

Josh Raley: natural process. Yep. That's a really good point.

So we're not going to let the wind blow the fire in a direction. We're burning into the wind. And then also if you're in hill country, if it's on a slope or something like that, or even if you are burning your timber, you wanna start at the top, work your [01:22:00] way down. You don't wanna be burning uphill because that's where you get very hot fires.

They'll start sending your trees. Things will move a lot faster than you want 'em to. And if you're just planting a or burning it, like you said, a quarter acre food plot, half acre food plot. Get a couple of buddies, you can keep that thing moving real, real slow and keep an eye on it. You don't have anywhere else to be Right.

Just take the day and make that your project.

Grant Woods: Yeah. It's as it, but all intimidation for something brand. Oh yeah. And it's,

Josh Raley: yep. So the last thing that I want to talk about is when it, just from something that I've heard recently talking about on the Turkey Sci, wild Turkey Science podcast, something that I had never really thought about, but it was talking about no-till planting specifically for, PTs and how the, a thick thatch layer underneath can really make the areas difficult for PTs.

And I know you love wild turkeys. You are all about wild Turkey conservation. So I'm [01:23:00] curious to hear your take. Is there anything that you're doing specifically to say, I'm gonna, do this to the edge of my food plots to make it accessible to PTs a little bit easier? Or are you thinking, this isn't for the PTs?

I've got other habitat for the PTs.

Grant Woods: My place really low percentage, property, really low, couple percent, two percents plots. So it's an absolute for me. Yep. If you're out in Nebraska, Kansas, where there may be farmers doing a thousand acres of no-till or something like that, some of the properties I go to out there that are really big in the health have the best Turkey populations, best fe populations.

Remember we gotta put this all together. You disc, you spray it. There is almost zero insects out there. What's the number one food source for a insects? Yep. You go to Virginia Bag Farm insects everywhere. And those are feeding like crazy. They're getting bigger, they're body weights. I can't, Chamberlain, I can't testify this.

It's just from out there and. Dang, that's a [01:24:00] big Turkey. But yeah. Some of those farmers, I said absolutely. Some of the best pheasant populations left are on these rigidity bag farmers. Yep. Absolutely. I'm not worried about that. I'm very realistic. I've had two kidney transplants folks. Bad day is when you lay and go, I sure that thing goes beep again.

That's a bad day. Yeah. These other things are not worth arguing over. Let's quit this bickering and arguing and just look at what's happening on the landscape. And so we look at Kansas used you, you literally see a flock. I'm not, people are not gonna me, but I'm not being exaggerated. All a thousand turkeys in the winter flock birds in Kansas Wow.

Places I used to hunt turkeys like grant, kill em all. Kill 50 or getting in my silos or messing up my cattle feed. Do not allow any Turkey anymore. That habitat has not changed, folks. I've been going these farms for a long time. Wow. The habitat has not changed. We're adding Neos now to our corn, which is a really wicked insecticide.

You don't hear many people talking about Neos, let's say wick and turkey's gonna right down the of corn and eat those seeds. [01:25:00] There's a lot of things going on that we didn't have 5, 10, 20 years ago that are impacting Turkey populations. Habitats certainly won. Predators are a huge one and in seed coatings and other things are a huge too.

I would not pick on the Virginia bag thinking that's a big concern.

Josh Raley: Sure. Yeah, that's a really good point. I, there's a, there are several places in Wisconsin where I hunt that the farms are, I would say 20 down to as little as 5% timber on these farms. Yeah. They're mostly corn or soybean fields and these farmers are no-till farmers most of the time.

One thing I've noticed is they'll till a portion of it every year, it seems, I don't really know why they do that, but they're no-till for most of the farm, most of the time. Those are the farms with the huge Turkey populations. Gigantic Turkey populations. And like you said, they seem to be really healthy.

They seem to be doing extremely well. And man, if I see one more Turkey cut open with neon seeds inside of it on [01:26:00] Instagram I've seen too many of that already. It's disturbing every time I see it. And not because it's a Turkey cut open, but it's because, man, what are we doing to those animals when they're ingest All of that?

Yeah. Us and us.

Grant Woods: And there's a trickle down. Why are we doing the ate that Turkey? What are we doing to the ate that Turkey? What we doing? The coyote that ate that Turkey? Yep. What's going in our groundwater? Why are we drinking that? That coating does not stay on the, is researched, published in science literature.

Folks. I'm not mad. I just, now we have this information. Let's all work to do better.

Josh Raley: That's good. That's a really good point. We're not mad about it. We just know things now. So let's act on it. Like it's my society, right?

Grant Woods: There's several things we used to do that we now know were abhorrent.

Let's don't do 'em anymore. Yep. Let's don't do that anymore. If we can do better farming, let's do it. Because this is not just a farmer's income. I'm very concerned about rural [01:27:00] America and suicide rates, farmers and all this stuff. Yep. But it's our air. We're breathing everywhere. It's the water.

We're drinking everywhere. All these things are on global cycles. It's not that's just isolated Western Kansas. These are global cycles and we can do better. And one thing I will say last, I'm so sorry, I'm so passionate about,

I have seen just destroyed earth. Become vibrant habitat. There's a reason there's so many critters right now where Turor blew up and was a radiant nightmare because man in there boo it up anymore. We can survive a nuclear catastrophe in some cases, literally it than we can overgrazing or tillage.

We can survive some of these things better. We have examples through greening the desert in Saudi Arabia. I'm talking bald as my head saying. People working and planting and conserving water moisture are [01:28:00] making oasis out. Pure desert. We know how to do it, not just on your back 40 where you're deer hunting.

We know how to do this and we can make this better for our children and our children's children. The world is not ending. We just have to pay attention to what we're doing.

Josh Raley: Yeah, man, that's really good. Grant. I really appreciate your time today. Tell me about what Turkey plans you've got.

Grant Woods: Hey, Monday starts Turkey season here in Missouri. All, we're recording this one a Friday and Monday starts season, so you can bet be out listening for I'm seeing sometimes there's some strut marks in some areas. So I love Turkey season. I'm not just being out there everything about it, the new plants are going up.

I'll stop when I'm chasing a Turkey now I'm, probably get boo booed on this and see a plant that I don't know and whip out my app on my phone and, hey, what is that plant? Yeah. And learn and apply that. Cause if you're regenerating your land seeds are so amazing. They're standing soil 50 years, a [01:29:00] hundred years, and you're start seeing plants that, your county doesn't know what it's Yep.

And I've experienced that and so Cool. So Turkey. It is a big thing. I like catching me a white bass every now and then. There you go. Fill that crappy tugging on the end of my pole. I'd really like to see that crappy in my frying pan. That's where I really like to see it. Yeah, lots of good stuff going

Josh Raley: on in the spring, man.

That's awesome. I I head out tomorrow heading to Iowa. If I can get done in Iowa fast enough, I'm, I may dip down to Missouri, then up to Wisconsin to do a little Turkey hunting. So I've got a, I've got an action packed next couple of weeks, so I wanted to hear what your plans were. But Grant, thank you so much for coming on today.

Appreciate your time. Where can folks go to find more from you? More about the release process? Yeah, just

Grant Woods: search on growing Deere on the platforms you use. You're fine. It's just search on growing deer. And Josh, thank you so much for being a gracious host and let me go down a few rabbit trails here and there.

I really appreciate you

Josh Raley: and your show. Absolutely. Thank you so much, grant. That's all for this week's episode. As [01:30:00] always, thank you so much for tuning in. If you dig this show, be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever it is that you get your podcast. If you could leave us a five star review, I would very much appreciate that.

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Please go support the brands that support this show and help me bring you great content each and every week. If you're looking for more outdoor content, check out the sportsmans empire.com where you're gonna find my other podcast, the Wisconsin Sportsman, as well as a ton of other awesome outdoor podcasts.

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