Show Notes
This week on the Missouri Woods & Water Podcast Nate gets the pleasure of speaking with Joel Turner, founder of Shot IQ, a system to control and overcome target panic. Joel first gets into his background and how this all came about. Then we dive into archery and the age old problem alot of us have, buck fever, and steps Joel wants people to think about when shooting their bows. From practice to the money shot, we as humans are susceptible to this issue, and Joel has started a process to help eliminate that. Thanks to Joel for coming on and sharing his knowledge and thanks for listening!
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Show Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to Maximize Your Hunt, the podcast dedicated to those who want the most out of their hunting property. This podcast explores land management habitat improvement and hunting strategies that will help you maximize your time in the field. Follow along as industry professionals that live and breathe Whitetailed Deer, share their secrets to success.
And now the founder of Whitetail Landscapes, your host, John Teeter.
Hi, I'm John Teeter, Whitetail Landscapes. This is Maximize Your Hunt. Welcome back everybody. I've got some housekeeping to do off the bat. I've been appreciative everybody's feedback to me and giving me. Suggestions, recommendations, et cetera on, things to talk about on the podcast. And I'm taking that all in during hunting season this year.
I'll take all your inputs and ideas and suggestions and come up with kind of a game plan for next [00:01:00] year. I develop some of the discussion points. Sometimes they're ad hoc, sometimes they're just ideas that I come up with. Sometimes they're, other folks that participate on this on this podcast.
And we just just go from there. I also wanted to get back and I'll do this next week. I gotta find his name. I picked it out of a hat the other day. The individual is actually gonna get a hat and I will find that while we're on the podcast. And I really appreciate, like I said, all the feedback from everybody.
I got cameras out today. I put out about 10 cameras today. And I'm starting to, diagnose what's going on in my property. I made a decision this year, and I think this is different in the past, I'm usually pretty obsessed with data. I think a lot of people want to hear, oh what do you got going on in your property?
Or, what are deer doing on your property? I actually shied away from that this year. I wanted to concentrate on a few other things in my life and not focus so much on deer all the time. I'm in the field all the time. I'm working with clients. All I do is talk and see and think about deer.
So I took a step away from the cameras and I just put out some cameras tonight. [00:02:00] So I'm excited. It's funny, I was deploying to the cameras and I had those just walking around me. Now that's not a, not normal, but in this case, these dos had fawns around 'em. And again, the presence or my presence in that particular situation, not pushing these deer off the landscape, shows how comfortable they are, shows that there's low ation rates, show that they're not really opposed to me being in those areas.
The other thing is, I always had my equipment running the entire time. Typically, when I'm deploying cameras, I always have my equipment running. And that's just a pet peeve of mine. It works, it creates this, energy or feeling for me where I'm not disturbing the deer too much.
That's my strategy and just throwing that out there. I can't find the gentleman's name, but I believe he was from Nebraska and I will find it during this podcast. And I will announce it at the end so he can send me an email. And I appreciate his feedback from from telling me things that he wants to hear more about.
So thanks everybody for doing that. Keep rating the podcast and I appreciate everybody's valuing this particular discussion that we have. Alright. I got a new guest on, Hey Colin, are you on the line? [00:03:00] I am. Alright, man. You and I have had a lot of conversations over the past several weeks and I'm excited to have you on.
I want you to introduce yourself, talk about where you are, talk a little bit about your business and the services that you offer. Sure. Yeah. First of all, thanks a lot for having me come on here. I love coming on different podcasts and like you said we've talked a lot and it's been nice to share different ideas and strategies and all that stuff with, like-minded guys such as yourself, so I enjoy that.
Yeah. So I grew up in a small farm in Dryden, Michigan which is at the base of Thele of Michigan for guys who are not familiar with the state. And so yeah, I grew up in a small 15 acre farm, started getting into Q D M A and food plots and all that stuff at a young age.
And then one thing kinda led to another, got into Q D M A more heavily, went through their, both their dear steward courses. Ended up meeting a lot of really great guys. A couple of guys you've had in the podcast, and Jake Inger, Jim Ward Jim [00:04:00] Brocker. So a lot of different guys that I've worked with, throughout the industry and as well as a lot of different people from different backgrounds and foresters and stuff like that.
So I've really tried to focus in on, the hands-on type of learning and then the observation, data type of learning. And so I'm excited to, break some of that down. I know me and you have talked a lot about that, of, obviously there's a lot you can learn online.
There's a lot, you can learn videos and all that stuff, but when you really start applying this stuff to properties, you really start. Learning, at least for me, through observational data and every situation, every property is different. So learn to adapt those different strategies to every property is it's challenging, but it's also really rewarding and fun.
Yeah. Yeah. So that's a little background about, about myself and I think that covers everything. So your business, legendary Habitat, you are out of Michigan, but you work all over the place? Yeah. So it's a white tail land management and consulting company. I basically worked throughout Michigan and then bordering states.
I was in Kentucky, Ohio, [00:05:00] Iowa this year up in the U P D I've been to several different states so yeah, I love I love exploring new areas. I try not to go too far out of what I'm really familiar with and comfortable with. As far as trees and vegetation types, terrain and all that stuff.
Although a lot of those same, terrain features and soil and a lot of the same principles, I think apply. But obviously as, traveling around, your vegetation type changes, your climate changes, all these different things, change from property to property, but they're state to state.
But yeah, you just have to learn to learn new things and adapt to. Every client's needs. All right. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna hit on a question. It's unrelated topics that we didn't pre-talk about before the show. Sure. You set up a lot of blinds. You set up at 360 blinds. Is that pretty much your favorite box blind that you set up on a property?
It probably is. Yeah. I've set up quite a few different blinds. I've done I've been in blank banks blinds. I've done the redneck blinds. I think I've seen some muddy blinds. I haven't built any of those. And then, yeah, just [00:06:00] got a connection with the guy who was a local dealer here in Michigan with 360 and had seen the 360 bins a couple times and really liked the quality of 'em, the way the windows worked.
Just the comfortability out of 'em. The visibility was a huge thing. Just the overall package, the overall quality of the blind, including like the really nice metal stands they got. So yeah I was approached by him to become a dealer. And so yeah, I'm beginning in 2024, I'm gonna be official dealer for my own dealer and distributor for 360 Blinds here in Lapeer County.
So that was pretty, that's been pretty exciting. And yeah I definitely do like them. I like the, one of the things I really like about the 360 Blind is it's, I. You, you actually have to build it. And for some cases that can be, some guys don't really care for doing that. They like the ones that are built.
But we also pre-built 'em as a dealer. So you can buy the buying completely pre-built, and then if you got equipment or something, we can load it on your [00:07:00] trailer. If you got a skid steer or something like that, you can go put it up, just like your redneck blind or if you can't get equipment in there, anything like that.
You can always haul it in with a four-wheeler, u t v tractor, trailer, whatever, and then you can just build the thing right on site. So we do a lot of those where, guys can't normally get equipment in whatever, and you can build a blind in the timber. I love doing that, with guys that wanna hunt closer into, bedding areas that I've cut in and all that.
So that's one of the cool features to the three sixty's. And you can also customize it when you build it with whatever windows they've got bowl windows and they've got gun windows that are different size. So you can really customize and they're all interchangeable panels, especially on the actual 360 blinds.
So that's cool, for different shooting situations, and locations where you're gonna put the blind. So hopefully that's answered your question. Yeah, that's good. We just got off this whole blind discussion in the past two episodes 360, we didn't really hit on too much, so I wanted to get your opinion on 'em.
And I think they're good blinds have been in them. Those in the next [00:08:00] gen are really similar to one another. A company outta Pennsylvania. I just feel like to each their own, you've gotta see the blinds and feel 'em out. I do like the window setup, like you talked about, the 360 view plus, there's limited gaps in between windows.
So the spacing's awesome. Your visual's fantastic. And I, I do like the window approach and the, I guess the dressing's around the windows, it's a nice setup, so I'm not opposed to those. I'm just not big on panel blinds, just having been, and that's just my own parti particular opinion.
I think some guys love them, and yeah, teach. No, for sure. There's definitely pluses minus to every one. And I, I mean the redneck blinds I really like the one piece composite blind. I think it's awesome. I just don't like the windows near as much as the 360.
It's a, you win some loose something, you kinda, you have to just compare, each blind and see whatever best fits you. So yeah. And maybe it's a call out to the blind manufacturers or maybe a new manufacturer to come up with a one piece blind that is rigid enough to hold multiple windows in a formation like we're talking about now.
I have seen a blind company out of [00:09:00] Texas, I think it was metal. So it's heavy and hot would be immediately what I would think. You know anybody who's listening to this and I'm sure that there's dealers and obviously manufacturers that listen to this podcast. If you come up with a product like that and have a solution, we're all ears here.
Alright. Let's kinda, let's get into, one of the topics we want to talk about was fixing soil. I think we wanted to get there and dealing with bad soils. And I also, wanted to get into maybe some of the trials and tribulations you've had over the years and prescriptive changes that you've either recommended to clients or things that you've done on your own property.
So I wanna go through your planning season this year. Talk about, maybe things that you did on your own property or client properties that have worked or things that have failed and your kind of remedy to, resolve those issues. I know that some of us have dealt with a lot of drought and and another example I gave on a prior podcast, we talked about foliar s spraying and a way to.
Introduce, water and, minerals. The other concept I think I might have briefly talked about was this [00:10:00] compost tea brewer that I had built and I actually was able to to deploy it and with some success. I'm actually noticing a positive response. I'll talk a little bit about that on the podcast and we'll get into maybe some of the things that, you learned in your kind of equal region.
And, I know you deal with sandy soils a lot, so I want to talk about tough soils and your approach to tough soils. Yeah, so that's definitely been a big topic it seems like lately with the regenerative agriculture no-till, food plots, all that stuff. And that's really been one of the things I've tried to focus on and, mainly just because of the situation that I'm in.
Little bit of background about the soil I'm dealing with. So we've got a farm on the west side of the state of Manistee, and I've had it for a while and been doing food plots in it for, oh, probably five or six years now, pretty consistently Before then, it wasn't really, consistent. So then, probably about three years ago I got really serious about, really stepping up my game [00:11:00] with, building soil and really trying to have quality food plots after just being frustrated with, not having, very successful growth and, any real tonnage to speak of.
Obviously we've got, harsher winners up there and. The having late season food is really critical. The, obviously holding more deer, more hunting opportunities, and then healthier deer going this the winter. So yeah. One of the things that, that has been huge for me has been foliar applications, like you're talking about with fertilizers and then also at the same time as cover crops.
As soon as I started really getting into cover crops I was working with a couple different companies and started creating my own blends and, trying to figure out what was working best for sandy soils and, really trying to add as much organic matter as I could.
And that's at the same time when I met Brad Harper from Growing Solutions. And he's got a full line of liquid products that are a carbon based fertilizer. And so I started [00:12:00] using those. And that was about this year, I believe will be the third or fourth year using his products. And another thing also that's pretty unique about the situation, I guess I'd like to explain let guys in so they know is this farm, I basically, it's, I wouldn't say it's a hundred percent organic, but it's really close.
I really haven't used hardly any herbicide at all. Some of these plots I'll be talking about really I've used zero herbicide in them. So it's really all been a minimal kill situation. And really relying almost a hundred percent on cover crops to suppress my weeds.
That's a big thing, to tackle at first. I wasn't really sure how it was gonna go and in the last three years I've learned a lot to say the least. There's a lot of challenges, with doing that. And you can't do that with every property in every situation, but I've had a lot of clients that have wanted to start backing off on using herbicides and stuff like that.
So that's really driven me to, start trying trialing and error [00:13:00] a lot of different cover crop strategies and stuff as far as, building soil and reducing my herbicides. Yeah. So yeah, really the way I started was doing limited till and I was really heavy on my grains.
And I also was really fortunate to be able to rent a no-till drill from our local conservation district. So that's been really huge and I've always tried to. Not just cater to one planting method or another when I'm doing different trials or, different blends. Because I know every guy in every plant that I work with is, has a different situation as far as equipment and budget and soil and all that stuff.
So I've done a lot of different things all the way from, minimal tillage to, heavy tillage, broadcasting really high rates of cover crops to using no-till drills. I've done the summer release blend through many, you probably are, familiar with Grant Woods summer release blend that they do where you're basically you're planting your spring mix and then you're coming back with your no-till [00:14:00] drill and drilling your fall mix right into it.
But there's a lot of different challenges that go with that and one of the biggest challenges that I've found, No matter if you're gonna do the no-till drill or if you're actually gonna do the, if you're gonna pack down a cover crop or whatever that is, is to really suppress weeds. And at the same time, build that organic matter is you've gotta get a really good cover crop established.
And that's really where Brad Harper's product, came into play for me because I was having a hard time just getting a cover crop established, like rye or type of annual clover. And that's gotta be really the base and the foundation of your, no-till process or building soil.
So I started using his products and that really, helped me out tremendously with just having a, a halfway decent cover crop, to start out with in the spring. And I. So then I, once I got that cover crop started to get that established and [00:15:00] then I could really start suppressing weeds, building some soil, and then, I would plant through that and then I would hit it again with a foliar.
And then I was using his liquid line products and we were fixing my pH at the same time. This soil's got a pH of about five and a c e c, cation exchange capacity for those who don't know about 1.3. And organic matter was about one, I think, when I started. So it was, it was tough, starting out there and, you've seen everybody around you grow these really nice food plots and it's what, how in the world are they doing that?
So it's been a long time, a long process of, getting to where I am right now, which, I'm by no means, have really mastered this, but I've learned a lot and I've tried to. To share this with as many people as I can. And the more you know guys like yourself and other guys, we, the more you try things, the more you share ideas.
Even with clients I've got that are trying different ideas it's fun to really learn together and see what works and what doesn't. Yeah, no and to hit on the sandy soil topic, and this is really a [00:16:00] topic for really any soil. One of the keys to success is building, IC material or humid.
And to do that is you have to have decomposing material. Being president of the soil all the time. So my theory over the years, and let's go back. I started this nine years ago, so yeah. This is before Grant Woods. This is before any of these guys were actually doing this. My theory was simply this, I'm really cheap.
Okay? Yep. And a lot of guys can relate to this. I wanted, I didn't have the equipment at the time. I didn't even have a tractor. I was just basically doing things with an A T V. And I said, okay, what is the most economic means of planting that I can get? And so the one thing that I focused on are what do things grow?
What things grow really well that I can just throw on the ground? And the most obvious is rye. Okay? A cereal grape like rye. And when you start playing with all these different seeds, you start realizing, oh my goodness, the seed that I can throw on the ground grows and oh, in nature the same thing applies.
So when you start playing with these different types of seeds, even corn does it, so you know, to go as [00:17:00] far as corn and beans and some of these larger seeds, where you think that they have this maximum depth and they do for ideal soil growth or op opportunity for root structure, et cetera.
However you may have to, oversee or increase the seeding level. And so through that process I was able to play with, different seed types. And then I said, okay, I'm gonna build this roller crimping system because I had seen it and I knew it was something from the sixties and seventies where they were creating these weeded mats and they were using it basically as a mat to create moisture.
All it was a barrier and that's all it really is. And then I realized, okay, if I just use one species, if I did Jeff ST's method where it's just buckwheat. Even though it creates a good canopy layer, there's a tendency to have other varieties of plants in combination with buckwheat developing.
So then I said, okay, if I have these synergies of plants, maybe they'll outcompete because they'll balance the soil and the nutrient uptake will be a little bit more, leveled. And then the other piece of it, I started playing with the root material. I said, okay, if I start thinking about the dispersion of [00:18:00] these seeds and these plants, and then I think about it's, it's a viable root spacing.
And then I think about it's, it's tilling or leaf structure above the ground, and I think about that spacing. Then I'll come up with this like optimal kind of combination. So then I started playing with combinations of plants, and then my next evolution, so this is probably, I don't know, maybe six years ago.
What I started doing was I said, okay, I'm gonna fight the plants around the food plot, because what happened was I could control most of what happened within the food plot, but exterior to that, I was getting a lot of seed dispersion, et cetera. Now, it's gonna, they're gonna come from all over the place.
But, I started building and thinking about around my food plots. So now I'm managing the exterior and the interior of the food plot. And then in combination of that, what I was doing was I was selecting, plants that would meet. And I would grossly overestimate usually, a lot of times I'd put down too much seed and I would try to figure out timing of everything.
So I was timing these plants where, I [00:19:00] had a higher percentage of a grain or grass, you, whatever you wanna call it, at a certain state. And I was able to time up this sequencing. And then I figured, okay, if I had a 60 day crop for 110 day crop, how would that result for me?
I'm feeding deer longer, but what is my gap between the next planning? Now, again, in any of these cycles, I never used a no-till drill. I've used no-till drills, but not in these scenarios. So what I did was I just, was Johnny Appleseed, I was throwing seed on the ground. I was managing with a, a backpack sprayer, some of the plants around there, and I was timing up, all these individuals.
Granted, this is nine years ago, okay? So over that time of learning, I've simplified things even further. And not only am now I'm managing everything. I'm adding foli years into the equation, and I'm timing them at the correct time based on the vegetative state of the plant. So I've advanced my ideology and.
On top of that I've basically stabilized my [00:20:00] ground when I say that is I've added the right amount of nutrients that are, some of them may be now I've actually gotten back. I've added some synthetics, but previous to that I was adding rock dust and I was adding some natural amendments.
And depending on your soil type, and a lot of, I would suggest for everybody go analyze the type of soil that's on your landscape. Yep. And start studying, for that particular soil. For like sandy soil, I need to build a lot of organic material. You need something that develops a root, at a fast rate that can deal with droughted conditions.
And, in the case where you can't irrigate or water those particular areas, the focus is overwhelming. The seed bank with. A huge volume of plants. You're trying to develop root establishment and growth. So the best thing you can do is have a longer growing plant versus shorter growing plant.
And yep. That, that kind of establishes this 'cause biome and you're building habitat within the soil to create these activities cycles where you're getting [00:21:00] a lot of microbial activity. And when you go reach out and you can tell, and we've talked about this in other podcasts, you'll be able to physically see those difference.
And there's materials out there, lenon, it's one of the ones that people use to incubate your seeds. There's just a lot of things you can do. To improve and create these great environments for seed development. But it all has to do with timing of rains and nutrient cycling and thinking, how to have minimal disturbance and you can meet Johnny Apple seed on the spot like I was for years and years of just throwing seed on the ground.
And then you look at my evolution and I've actually simplified things, Colin, where I'm not. Planting, 13 species. I'm planting these seven exact species that I think will have the right combination of upper and lower growth on the land, on the landscape. So I get good root material and then good biomass above the ground.
And I'm weighing that in my equation, at this point of how I developed my food plot sequencing. And I went on a rant there, but, I just wanna explain what I [00:22:00] do in my evolution. 'cause I don't think people understand. People think I'm this timber guy and I'm like, I spent a lot of time on trying to figure out how to do food plots the cheapest way possible.
And yeah, I never had a no-till drill. So I don't know if that echoes with you at all. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. That's definitely very accurate to a lot of my situations. Obviously I mentioned I, I do use no-till drill, but not exclusively, so I didn't have that, I didn't have that for the first a couple years.
I've just now in the last. I think two years I've been using no-till drill. And that's one of the other things too that I think has gotten a lot of hype lately. And not to say at all that no-till drills aren't good or anything in that way, but, I have seen some different struggles using the no-till drill, and I can just list off a couple of the different things that I have as far as my situation.
One of the things that I've noticed over using no-till drill is, from a weeded suppression standpoint and, establishing cover crops which basically, all of my, whether it's a [00:23:00] fall annual brassicas or what's a spring mix or anything like that, that is my cover crop.
In the fall I'm planning to rye in with my brassicas and I'm layering the rye a lot of times. That is my next spring cover crop. So it's really critical for me to get that established, at that, in that time period, like you talked about with timing is really critical, with cover crops and we can dive more into that.
But one of the things that I really noticed with using a no tilled drill was, obviously every no-till drill, you're gonna have row spacing. You run your no-till drill through and, let's say it's just a lightly tilled ground. Obviously every soil's gonna have weeded seeds in it.
Some are obviously worse than others. And every time you leave, I guess you will put it in perspective, a square inch of soil that doesn't have something that you want growing there, something is naturally gonna grow there. Typically, it might not be right away, but it's gonna fill in.
And that's just the way, I created our, The soil and the seed bank and everything like that. That's one of the things that I've learned through doing these no-till drills and doing these cover [00:24:00] crops is a lot of times when I've used the no-till drill, I've actually had worse results than when I'm actually heavily broadcasting, these different cover crop mixes because I'm getting really good seed distribution on almost every square inch.
And obviously I can do that with blends like rye and stuff like obviously, you're not gonna go super heavy with brass stuff like that. But that's one of the struggles. Another struggle too that I've seen on property with no-till drills is really hard clay ground. I had a client that that has a Genesis no-till, I think it's the Genesis five and He's got real clay, loamy soil and he is up on the east, east side of Michigan.
And he did some planting in the spring to do a cover crop. And of course this year we had really weird weather. We had a fairly wet spring and then it went right into a drought. And what happened is that soil was wet when he planted and then he planted into it and basically I think part of [00:25:00] it was he planted a little bit too deep.
But the main majority, after going back up there and observing everything is that ground just became super hard. And obviously sometimes you gotta come in and lightly fluff that ground. And some of that might have been because he was going with more of a tillage, system before and a lot of times you get that compaction.
But some of these areas were completely virgin areas and it was a very similar situation. Sometimes you've gotta really assess what your soil is, what your weather conditions are, before you. Just get a no-till drill and start grilling, and wondering, what happened after you're not getting the type of germination and growth that you'd hope for.
I think there's just some things to consider. Obviously no-till drills. There's a lot of different benefits to 'em, time savings, the soil health aspect, and another thing too that's really important that I've learned going into a couple different major factors into, establishing cover crops is really dear browse.
Pressures another thing that I've, that's been a [00:26:00] big struggle for myself and a lot of other clients that have tried to establish cover crops. And so that's where I've learned to. Adapt and do different seeds that deer really don't want to eat. And it seems like an, a a bad thing for most guys.
But that's really been important for me in the kind of the off season. So I'm talking about typically, spring through the summer and obviously we wanna have plants on the property that the deer are utilizing, like clover, alfalfa, stuff like that that we're we're having supplemental, vegetation on the property.
But, in your main destination place, these other areas, one of the big observations I learned this year with doing summer release, we had a really wild drought for probably two months at our farm. We probably only got, I don't know, maybe an inch of rain, probably less than that. And, with sandy soil that's pretty bad.
I did. I did go through and last year I prepped an area out. This was zero herbicide, went through, mowed the grass, short, lightly rotor, tilled it, let [00:27:00] it sit all winter, and then actually went through there and frost seeded clover, crimson clover a red clover, and then a Alfalfa in there too.
And with the fairly dry spring we had, it didn't have really good germination. I had a fair amount that made it and the frost really helped with that. But so I had to change directions a little bit, with not having as good of a, the cover crop as I was hoping, outta the gate in the spring.
And so I ended up going through that and drilling right through with no-till drill with the summer release from cream cover seed. And so I, I luckily I had a little bit of moisture in the ground when I was drilling and so I got germination about three weeks and I was surprised when we finally got some rain, it didn't really do a whole lot for probably a month.
And we finally got a decent rain and it started to grow. And then, right when we hit that, Beginning of July, we really started getting a lot of rain. And man, did it explode. I came up there late July, early [00:28:00] August and it was just, I had really good grain sorghum, and so I went through and really observed what I had growing, what did good with the drought, what were my deer not targeting.
And I am really impressed with the grain sorghum. I've done it for a couple years now, and it's been really good for building a lot of root structure and organic matter. And of course, a lot of us talk about cover crops and organic matter, but really what I'm looking for is a lot of root structure and stuff that's really pumping that.
That organic matter down underneath the soil surface. And a lot of us focus on what's on top because it's easy to see. Organic matter is really what we're building underneath that soil. And so I had a lot of really good root structure and I even had some corn that was next to that grain sorghum that I drilled.
And of course, you know that with the drought it didn't really make it well, but just the deer brows on the sorghum compared to the corn was just crazy to see, if you plant the [00:29:00] two together, deer beam, just those sun concentrated selectors, they were just hammering that, that fresh corn, but they wouldn't touch that, that green sorghum that really gave that green sorghum a chance to get established and gave me a really good cover crop.
And also a late season food source. It's not quite as good as corn, but it's pretty darn good, when you can get it to put a seed den on and late season. So I know that was a little bit of a rant, but. I to give you guys a backstory on where I'm at right now and how my growing season went.
Colin, you mentioned something a little bit ago about having plants in the cycle that deer don't eat. What are the, what are some of those as an example that you like to have kind of in your blends, and it could be a blend for the summer months or the fall months. What do you think works in your scenario?
Yeah a couple of 'em, just off the top of my head would be Harry Vetch. I've done a couple different trials with Harry Vetch and it, it seems to hold, withstand quite a bit of deer brows. And I don't [00:30:00] think it's really high on the deer preference, as far as what they like eating a lot of, as far as tonnage and the actual pressure that it receives from deer brows.
And it also I've done quite a few just, simple analysis of just pulling up. The root structure on those compared to crimson clove or red clove or stuff like that. And you can actually see the nitrogen, root nodules on that hairy vet. It just put, it puts a lot of nitrogen in your ground.
And so I've looked at a lot of those and been really impressed with that. And then another one that's I've been pretty impressed with, obviously with the grain sorghum, I've talked about that. Milo is another one that seems to do pretty well with withstanding, the deer don't really bother it, and these are mainly warm season an annual crops.
Another one would be sun hemp. I've found pretty good success with sun hemp. Obviously that puts in, that puts a lot of carbon in your ground and, has a real big stalk, if you can get it to grow. Good. So those are a couple that I, kinda off the top of my head that I can think [00:31:00] of.
I don't know if you've ever experimented with any other any other ones for warm season crops. That was the main ones I was focusing on. Yeah, I've done flax, canola I've done all sorts of different types of seeds and the millets and I've just, played around with a few things. I liken my.
When I do my food PPL blend, I've got my perennial and my annual side. And typically my staple is throughout my annual is, something like I think I said a high level carbon producing, kind of plant like, like an oat at least in the spring months. And then, going into those fall months, I try to introduce the OAT again at a lower rate and then something that will be winter hardy.
But in that, I always had the red clover. I've consistently used red clover. That's been my go-to. It's my cheapest option. But having, something stable in there just for ground stabilization and adding texture to the soil. Remember, a lot of people that are doing this throw and grow method and I liked your example of just, covering the landscape.
You need texture on the ground and good [00:32:00] example. I have a food plot right in the center of my property, and I've got oats and buckwheat growing. And right now I planted it late. I'm on I think I'm on day 35. And that's a 52 to 62 day crop, right? So it's got a 10 day window before it kinda gets to the point where it could be crimped.
And I was, I basically what I did is I went and I just broadcast about, I wanna say about about 60 pounds an acre of wheat and about six pounds of red clover. And that's just a holding food plot. But it, we had just these heavy rains, right? If I didn't have the texture of that, grass growing in there, and buckwheat I would've been in big trouble.
And so I didn't till it, I didn't roller crimp it, I didn't do anything. I just throw a seed on the ground and I could go back and I could just mow the. Oats right now, set 'em back as low as possible and, at a young growth stage, they're gonna be edible and the buckwheat will actually come back even after mowing because it didn't [00:33:00] reach seed stage.
There's an example of something you can do that's pretty inexpensive. And something I like to do. I wanted to kinda get the foliar real quick, and I know we, you've been on this quite a bit and I know your experience with, Brad Harper's solutions there, what have you used his foliar and what have you noticed as a result of using the foliar on your particular property or clients?
Yeah I've noticed quite a few different things. So I guess I'll break you through one of the struggles that I had and a solution that me and Brad kind of worked through. And that was with my annual sorghum screen. I believe it was my first year we were working together. I put on.
His regular foliar spray that he does. And which, you can apply, at planting or you can apply it as a foliar, right on the actual plant. And so I actually did that at planting, I believe, for the sorghum screen. I also put down his calcium and then I also put down his liquid lime [00:34:00] too.
And one of the things I started to notice I had pretty good germination. We had good rain started to come up and I started getting, I. A lot of different brown dots and stuff in my sorghum screen. So I sent pictures to him and I'm like, what, what do you think this is? He's really good at, kind of problem solving.
He works with a lot of other farm stuff and so he's he is I think it might be, a magnesium high magnesium soil. So we go on there and he started giving us some, different recommendations on what we should do moving forward. So he said, let's hit it with a pen cal and a calcium, which is another one of his products.
And so the pen cal is more of a more for your actual soil and calcium, actually more for your actual plant uptake. So we hit with both of those products and that really was ticket to, raising my calcium levels in my soil and because of my sandy soil. It had higher [00:35:00] magnesium and Brad can go in a lot more detail on that if we do a later episode or later podcast with him.
So that was one of the things. Another big trial as pertains to, fall food plots had big success with, was I started using his product, which is a liquid nitrogen that he came up with. And so that was a pretty cool trial we did. That's actually, I'm a YouTube channel for those of you are interested in going on there and checking it out.
I did basically, I broke it my destination plot up into about three different test plots and they're all right about an eighth of an acre. And so what I did was I used his foliar product and then I used his a liquid nitrogen product too together, which is what rad recommended I did. And then I also did a granular, just a regular granular urea nitrogen and So I did a half rate in one of the plots and then I of the liquid product, and then I did a full rate of liquid nitrogen, and then I did about 30 pounds of granular nitrogen.[00:36:00]
And and so I, I recorded it, tested it all out. We did get some timely rains. We didn't really get a lot of rain in the first probably two weeks that I did those. I actually applied that to my brassicas and my brass were probably about three weeks old when I did that, after planting, just to give you guys a timeline.
You figure if you're planting, whatever first, second week in August and you're, right around, labor Day coming up here, a lot of guys are doing, our we're putting on our foliar and our liquid nitrogen, on our brassicas. So then we came up and Brad actually came by our farm.
We shot the video and we really compared our leaf size with, each one of our plots. And it was really cool to see the difference in not only the leaf size, but the actual color of the leaf. And, I have utilization cages in those two. And to know the deer brows on each one of those, different plots was really cool too.
And I think there's a couple different reasons, obviously, that liquid nitrogen is a slow release nitrogen which is really [00:37:00] nice because you can get that, a couple different jumps every rain where it's really coming into that plant. And then another big thing too is obviously when you switch over to liquids, That plant is absorbing it a lot faster because your molecule, and especially with be it being in nitrogen, it's a lot more volatile to, to going back into your atmosphere.
When I did that granular, we didn't have rain for, I believe it was probably a week or two and how much of that actually evaporated and, back in the atmosphere? I don't know. But that's a big thing, with doing the the liquids is that plant is actually, taking that in.
And the other thing I did too, and I recommend for you guys to do is if you're gonna do a liquid nitrogen, you can go through, spray your plants and then you can come back through with a whole nother sprayer full of just straight water and you can just soak your plants and it'll soak it right in your dirt.
And that's what I did for the trial and so it seemed to work out really well. I. I've had, lots of other different things that I've worked with, with [00:38:00] Brad and had really good success with. I'm by no means, I've mastered these foliar sprays. Brad giving me a lot of guidance with these is, this was completely brand new to me three years ago, so still you still learned a lot with them.
But so yeah that's a couple different examples of successes that I've had and, working through some problems and stuff that I've had. Yeah, and I think those are great examples of, using a product, trying it in different ways and doing the testing. And I'll go through some of the basics for me, and I'm such a simple person when it comes to this, is as an alternative I use, fish fertilizer and you can buy it, and I do roughly, I can make about a hundred gallons and I'll add a fish fertilizer.
A fulvic or humic acid. Okay? So those are some examples. I will also add maybe a little sea kelp in there if I have some available. And these are all soluble, right? So they're able to dissolve. So they're able to go through like a pump sprayer pretty easily, and you can spray it either, with a [00:39:00] backpack sprayer or in my case I run it off my a t v.
I've got a nice little, small, I think it's I forget what the the brand is, but it does a nice job, push putting out some of those foliar. Yeah, and the one thing I've noticed at least in those examples is, I've got, water that isn't hard, right? So you can test your water, you don't want well water over I think 150 parts per million and that ties up some of the nutrients.
You want something that chelates or provides opportunities for other micronutrients, et cetera, to co-locate some nutrients don't do well around each other, so you gotta focus on kind of that. I like to put phosphorus in my mixes and so I've got a grading of phosphorus. I do not use a slow release nitrogen in most instances.
But I think to Colin's point, that's a great example and does really well. I like the idea where you added water to it so it not only just sits on a leaf, it actually it might drip down to the roots, and give, you good opportunity to kinda have uptake in that capacity as well.
Some of these plants that have really [00:40:00] waxy surfaces, it's really hard to get them to the Tata doesn't open as well and it doesn't necessarily absorb the foliar as easily. So those Vic, if you add a fulvic acid, that's gonna help big time. And so in those examples, I would add a fulvic and. That's for foliar.
For drenching, which is a totally different thing. And that's where I was talking about my compost tea, adding a ic it, it also creates an opportunity at least to stabilize and what we call it a buffer and other podcast allow a lot of these, other, I guess we'll say minerals to co-locate and be more available to plants.
It allows basically better absorption of the nutrient and there's certain nutrients that do better in soils and calcium is one of those. A lot of times you'll see calcium, you apply directly to the plant. It does work. And a lot of it's just timing, so you don't want to apply it when it's really hot.
You don't wanna apply it when it's under, 50 degrees Fahrenheit and you don't wanna apply it during a heavy rain. And so usually when the birds are chirping, that's the [00:41:00] best time. So that would be the rule of thumb. And the sada is most open at that point. There's this whole, intake of, c o two and expiration of oxygen and cycling and basically, some, I guess when you think of the plant itself, there's this cambium later and there's a xylem and a em, and basically things go up and down into the plant and some things do better at the root level as it, transverses into those roots and travels up into the plant.
So as it travels, the xylem that upward flow. And those could be things like, calcium or manganese, like those would be good examples of, things that do better than those examples. Phosphorus would be one that you wanna put. On the leaf surface and it does a good job translocating down the em into the actual structure of the plant.
And a lot of this is the flows driven by like the pressure, in, in the air as well as the pressure within the plant and it moves things down these pathways. So there's a science piece of this and it's knowing [00:42:00] what were those, I would say key nutrients that do really well.
Phosphorus, magnesium, sulfur, nitrogen, sodium, chlorine, those are the top ones that actually do well as applying in a foliar, some of the other ones that don't do as well as iron doesn't do as well. Iron doesn't do well in the roots either. Iron's a really important nutrient and a lot of times, there's strategies applying foliar as a window ply 'em, like I said earlier, applying 'em with a IC is a good idea or Vic's a good idea.
So just think about that as a strategy. I want to be, give people Colin, like options to think outside of just going to your typical. Soluble nitrogen, they've got these, mix in chemicals that allow it to be a little more stabilized and, slowly releasing, to that plant so it doesn't necessarily volatilize as easily.
So it's just kind of these things to think about. But really, you can get really simple, a hundred gallons. You get a I B C towed a hundred gallons and you add in like fish fertilizer molasses and a little bit of ic. And right there, if you spray that in your food pot, you'd be [00:43:00] amazed at the the productivity.
One of the things with fish fertilizer for example, it smells really bad. And it's a pace basically that's broken down when you apply that to a plant. The deer like, come for big time. So this is a little secret to one of my food plot layouts where I'll put fish fertilizer now and a backpack sprayer and I'll go and I'll spray a section of the plants, maybe even the St Shrubbery, and you'll watch those deer concentrate around those areas.
So that's a strategy, and I don't know if you had heard about that before, Colin, but that's just some little tricks that I do on my property and I think that helps people out. Yeah, no, for sure. And that's funny you say that because I haven't heard of that specifically, but.
I also have, I've been messing around a little bit recently with some other stuff, other products and one of 'em is a Redmond mineral and I'm doing some different trials on that this year. For those of you who know who Jim Ward is, I know he is been on this podcast, he's done a lot of different stuff with with Redmond Minerals and our soil condition over the last couple years and had really good [00:44:00] success all the way from the timber to food plots.
So there's a couple different things. I'm doing a couple different trials right now. And I broke down some of them in a recent YouTube video that I shot and I'll be uploading the next week or so. And, I've been using, I'm gonna, doing a trial of their Redmond fine tan mineral as well as their soil conditioner to and I go into more detail on that video explaining, what those two products are.
And so I've done a couple different test strips and I've had talk through talking to Jim Ward and a couple of his clients and stuff, they have had really good success with applying that year after year. And I know because it is more of a salt based product I know that was one of the concerns, with using it as having those sodium tie up or just building up too much sodium in your soil, which can lead to a lot of other issues.
But he's had a couple clients that have, he, I believe he's got one QU client that is. Been doing it on his property for eight years. And he said literally when his [00:45:00] deer come out of his food plot in his property, they go past all his other food plots and they're going, the one that he's been applying that rhythm and mineral to.
And I don't know if that's just because his soil is depleted in one specific mineral and those plants are getting that from this, supplement. And there's a lot of other, factors that play into that. But of course you could probably figure that out if you had a soil test.
Which is as well as this trial. I'm also, me and Brad are working on a couple different trials right now where we're gonna, we're pulling soil tests. We're doing, trialing a couple different products and then we're gonna pull soil samples again and really go over, the before and afters of these Break down these soil tests and really show, what the results were.
And we're actually gonna try to do another one podcast, in the next coming weeks where we break down my soil samples. 'cause I've got one from 2020, I believe it was 2021. And then we've got one from this year. And it was really cool to see, all the changes,[00:46:00] not only in the soil and actually in my plant health, but then to actually see it on paper too.
So that was cool. It's really encouraging to see that. So we're gonna break down, branches really good with soil samples and breaking that stuff down so guys can, understand it easy including myself. Oh, absolutely. It's highly complicated. I agree with you.
A thousand percent. Yep. Yep. One of the other things I did wanna mention too, that I've had quite a few clients lately that I've. Been working with or doing a couple food jobs for stuff like that. And I try to really emphasize, and for you, you that are guys that are listening is the over, or I guess underuse I should say, of utilization cages.
And I think they're such a simple tool and they've given me so much intel on a lot of different things as far as deer density. What your soil is, we've got a drought, that in a rain gauge can give you a lot of intel, and what's [00:47:00] going on your property and on your food plot.
And that's given me a lot of intel, on what plant what plants deer want to eat, what plants they don't. Obviously a lot of that you can just observe by going through your food plot and you'll very quickly find, realize what plants are actively growing and what plants are almost demolished, and have a lot of browse pressure, but.
A utilization cage has really been a key part of, a lot of my data and observation and it's a really a simple thing. For those of you who don't know what a utilization cage is, it's just a small, maybe a three foot by three foot cage, and then it's, it's maybe three, four foot tall.
You can put a, some guys will enclose it so the deer can't reach down with their heads and get in there, and it's just basically measuring, if there were no deer, if your deer were. Not on the property. What those plants would be like with absolutely zero deer browse, versus the outside of the cage where they're, they're browsing it.
That's a really simple thing, often overlooked. And so anyhow I, and I echo that. [00:48:00] I think it's important because it gives you a. A measuring stick. And also to that point is, like you said there, did the deer gonna be, it's gonna be devoid of deer pressure in that particular location.
Yep. So you get to see, how well your plants are doing in that particular soil, and you'll find some areas across your food plots that do better than others. And Yep. If you're giving up, a small three by three, three foot by three foot, a footprint, and you're getting intel and data and you're worried again, you're worried about, I, I've actually considered this season going and using that as a blockade of putting fencing in just to move the deer around, but actually using it as an enclosure cage just to get data on that Yeah.
Particular section. It's a really good idea to move deer around your food plots. Yep. The, the other thing is, taking actually samples and look and calculating the biomass and multiplying that out and figuring out what your actual volume is for. And the comparable, what your volume was, and you can actually compare what your output may have been.
And what you can do is over [00:49:00] time you can look at your numbers as they change right from your camera data, et cetera. You do account and come up with, the, through production value across that landscape I work with my clients. Colin, I wanna go back to one particular topic and I don't wanna let go of this 'cause I think this is an excellent point and something that we talked about on other podcasts with, salting your landscape.
And I wanna just bring up this point, I brought up the fish example and some of these fish are harvested in seawater and, they're basically pulverized and essentially it's a paste and it smells really bad. And, you apply it in this foliar application like I was talking about earlier.
But one thing I'm gonna recognize is, we're talking about seawater. And sea kelp or algae, any of these kind of plants that grow in these environments, recognize the uptake, the nutrient uptake of that, and sea salt. Just a great example and this you can find [00:50:00] variations of sea salt very inexpensively, right?
It contains like a large amount of elements. And so we concentrate on about, 10, 15, 16 different elements and no different from the rock dust example where there's 50 or 60 elements and yep, gold is an example that would be in something like that. Yeah, there's these very finite elements that are, being applied to these areas that are derived from seawater and, basically provide a lot of nourishment.
And, eventually, as a plant kind of processes, this foliar feeding cycle, and you give it like a dose. And when I say doses, I'd rather give a plant, three doses than one dose, or two doses rather than one dose I would cut down. So if you don't wanna spend like $38 on a gallon of fish fertilizer and or you do, and you wanna apply it over two times so you get a whole season out of it, that might be an option for you.
And like I said there's other options. The one [00:51:00] thing with that fish fertilizer is it's fermented, right? Fermenting some of these plants like dandelions, nettles there's natural ways that you can and these are Korean philosophies. I've read 'em, read about them in books and I've actually applied some of it now on my own property.
I'm learning natural remedies that really can emphasize, Japanese knotweed, oh my gosh. There's more nutrients in Japanese knotweed than you can shake a stick at. And it's like one of the, most bombarding plants in the landscape. People are trying to get it, get rid of engraves, cut it down, and you can ferment it.
And it's a great, you can use that as a as long as you're aerating it and you're adding some of these other elements, you can add it and apply to landscape, a broad brush spectrum of micronutrients that are gonna be helpful. And literally it costs you nothing but time to cut it down, put it in a toe, aerate it things that we're talking about on a prior podcast.
So I just wanna emphasize the fact that you're mentoring Seeso and the reality of it is, that has the broadest spectrum of micronutrients and Yep. The [00:52:00] benefit is so great that. The animals are recognizing it, and as a result of it, they're highly attracted to these food plots. And apply this example on your property, it's, it should be a eureka moment because you can do it pretty inexpensively, assuming you can, you have the infrastructure, but you could use, you could use a backpack sprayer and as simple as that, with a diaphragm, you can go and you can spray.
It may take you some time. But my example, nine years ago when I didn't really have anything and I was just trying to figure this stuff out and doing it in a basic way, seed grows in the ground. And we had that example with one of the guests said, go to the ocean, and harbor sea salt, we explain how to do that.
Yep. If you're in those areas like Maryland or on the coast, invest in that. That's an opportunity for you. So I don't know, Colin, I just wanted to add that to the discussion. Yeah, no, for sure. One of the things that, that if you don't mind, I wanted to kinda circle back to, I did mention obviously, With our farm that I've been doing more, organic and almost zero herbicide on, [00:53:00] on, or zero herbicide on several of these plots.
And some of the different, struggles I've had with several different types, of weeds. I've, I do have an invasive weeded. It's a common nap weeded. If anybody's up in that area, I'm sure they've probably seen it before. It's kind a mistaken as like a purple cone flour. But it's really a nasty weeded.
It's hard to get rid of. Doing limited tillage has definitely helped and support it. And I've started to get that more so under control. This year I did have to do a little bit of spot spraying, just with a back like sprayer. But another thing too, And I wanted to talk a little bit about, and I know we had talked about this previous in kind phone conversation is fighting grasses with other grasses, and this is going back to that grain sorghum thing.
I love this is, I do the same conversation. My clients. I love that you're saying the skull. Yeah. Yeah. Going back to the grain sorghum, because I guess corn stuff like That's something we want growing. And it's obviously, especially with green sorghum, more corn, that's gonna actually produce us a lot more biomass, a lot more late [00:54:00] season food.
And then of course you've got that cover element to it in the late season. So that's something where that has, I have really seen that shine this year even with a drought, because a lot of times you get a lot of these perennial jo grasses, whatever, Reed Canary or you get Johnson Grass or Timothy, there's all these different grasses that we have to deal with and, for those of you who don't know, most deer managers don't want grass on the property other than, maybe some warm season, switch grass, big blue stem, stuff like that for cover and some bedding.
But for the most part, we typically don't want those in our, within our bedding areas when our food plots unless we're talking about your grains which would be, Any of your cereal grains or, your actual, grain sorghum or corn. That's one of the biggest things that I've seen is how well some of these other grasses that I planted these grain sorghums, stuff like that, have really helped suppress my, perennial cool season grasses, stuff like that, that are just [00:55:00] really hard to get rid of.
Something for guys to consider. Another thing too, while we're hitting on this, if you're thinking about backing off in herbicides, A couple of things that, that I think you need to consider is, I think just through social media and these hunting channels and stuff like that, and not that there's anything wrong with that, we get, we see a lot of these manicured food plots that, they look perfect.
There's no weeds in 'em, anything like that. But I really don't think there's a problem with having some weeds in your food plots as long as it's the right type of plant. For as an example, I've got I've got some ragweed, growing in one of my food plots. If you ever went out and observed, during the summer, late summer, early, at least memory summer when deer are really hitting on ragweed, the browse pressure on that plant and the actual protein, content in that plant, you know that's could almost be better than some food plot plants that you're actually gonna end up spraying that killing and planting.
Some of those things, some of those plants, when you go out and observe. What the deer eating, at different times of the year. [00:56:00] Sometimes I don't really, wanna get rid of all those plants. Now, obviously, we're talking about fall, annual crops, stuff like that.
Ragweed is really not gonna be near as compatible, when you're talking about warm season plots and stuff like that definitely something to consider, I think for some guys is if you're wanting to go into more of that organic side, reducing your herbicides, you've gotta kinda lower your expectations I think a little bit, going into that.
And I think that'll really give you, a better satisfaction kind going into it versus, if you're trying to just, completely, go cold Turkey on herbicides. There's a lot of different, challenges and stuff to that where you're not gonna see these perfect food plots, right away.
So that's just a couple things that, that I wanted to mention. Obviously, going to zero herbicides, like I mentioned, there's a lot of challenges to it, and it doesn't, we can't do that in every situation. There's a lot of different invasive plants. There's [00:57:00] these cool season warm, perennial grasses that are very hard to get rid of.
There's different things to consider on, on every property. But I've tried to do this for several different reasons. Some of 'em just being my own personal health. I just wanna know, we've discussed and I've discussed on my podcast and overall our soil health, our actual deer that are consuming it, and our wildlife, they're consuming this.
So there, there's several different reasons, but I just wanted to cover that a little bit, because I mentioned it earlier. Yeah. And I'll end with one little thing for me and this is, pertinent to the time right now, is if you're planning brass and they're at the vegetative stage and they're, they're starting to blossom.
A lot of people have planted, and remember there's been a climate shift. You've seen changes where, we get these extreme temperature shifts, like we're back in the eighties next week in my area. We've had these great growing conditions, at least in the northeast. Over the past few weeks, great rains.
We've just been fortunate. I planted my plants around, I think August, I wanna say about August 11th, somewhere in that timeframe. So I hit the rains. Perfect. [00:58:00] And that's late for a lot of people. A lot of people are planning in mid-July. And what I've found is I'm getting away from ball plants.
I don't like purple top turnips. I don't plant anything like beets. I don't do anything big. I want, a limited amount of radishes, but just the rape. I like rape and yeah. What I like to do is I put down a good dose of boron this season and I look to put that in granular form.
And that's what I said. I'm putting down certain fertilizers now to, help my deficiencies. And I'm gonna tell you right now, fish, fertilizer, it's gonna be my addition with a fulvic acid and sulfur. Okay. The combination of those three in the morning due, with it not impending rain, I'm spraying that roughly, maybe 10 gallons an acre, thereabouts with my concentrate.
And it's gonna cost me right around, I wanna say right around $8 for, about an acre. Okay, yeah. So I can do about 10 gallons a, and thereabouts. And [00:59:00] the comparable ness to your crop against your neighbor is going to be exponentially higher. And so I just wanted to share that with everybody.
If you're planning brass or you have brass and you want a solution right now, that's what you can do. And it's an easy solution. Very inexpensive. Like I said, it'll be about $8. You can use that combination. Add a little sea salt in there, maybe a tablespoon or two of sea salt. And that's absolutely gonna be fine.
I would do probably a tablespoon for that 10 gallon mixture, thereabouts. And, see what happens. And if you don't have success I'm sorry, but it works for most people. So I just wanna give a kind of a broad brush opportunity for people to think, more about simple Simple additions.
Oh, Colin, I did find that guy's name that I, his name's Trevor. Trevor. I will email you. You're from Nebraska. I appreciate you listening to my podcast, and I will get you a hat. And Colin, I need to get you a hat too, but I want some ear gear 'cause I like your stuff, man. Likewise. I gotta get you one of mine.
[01:00:00] I'll trade. All right. I'll wear it on my client visits and I appreciate it. Anything else from you today? I hope we get a chance to have a part two discussion and we'll hit on some more things, but anything else on your end? One of the other things I did wanna hit on real quick that I have seen is a, a problem or an issue that I commonly find on client properties.
It's another one of those kind of real basic things is plants and food plots in general. Just not getting enough sunlight. A lot of guys wanna plant back in the timber or they wanna, Make clear this area or whatever. And I come to the property and they're just not seeing the results.
They're not seeing the plant growth, the tonnage, and plants have to photosynthesize and they've gotta have sunlight. And, I guess when we're talking about minimum sunlight requirements, depending on plant, species I'm, for fall annuals, stuff like that, I'm telling guys like a minimum of six hours of sunlight.
I think that's a good average. Obviously our days are getting shorter here, coming into fall, so we're already losing sunlight. So I think that's one of the [01:01:00] things if you're talking about, or if you're thinking about, Creating a new food plot or if you've got a food plot.
I know most of you guys have already planned at this point, but, going around I do a lot of different, obviously just like you John, I do a lot of timber work and which is critically important and we could do a whole nother podcast on, timber work and fundamentals of that before you even get into food plots on a property.
But anyhow one of the things that I think is important is, I do a lot of edge feathering around food plots, creating that feathered edge. We get a lot of sunlight into the plot. We open up around, mass producing trees or oaks. And then, we get a lot of those dose that are real close to our food sources as well, and we get more screening.
That's just one of the things to think about is how much sunlight is your plot getting, obviously the direction, orientation and food plot. Yeah, I think that does matter for sure. When I'm trying to open up a food plot, I'm trying to open it up, almost both sides. In almost all four directions, depending, obviously east and west, seems to be, [01:02:00] better, but it just depends on how the property's orientated and stuff, and how I'm gonna cut it.
But, so yeah. Another just simple thing that I, I see a lot, happen a lot on client properties and it can be a simple thing to get a lot more production out of a small area or a small plot. Yeah, no, that's great. I think that's good food around the edges.
Manage that vegetation correctly, like I talked about. Yep. And back to my early example is, we want plants that we like fighting grass with grass. Good example in there. You hit on a lot of stuff today and a lot of knowledge, man. I'm super impressed with you. Individually. And I think that you're offering people a great service.
I know you're a grinder, you're out there in the field a lot. And cutting timber and timber is really where it's at. And as much as people, keep commenting, I'm a timber guy, I am a timber guy, because I can create more food in that timber than I can in those fields 'cause they've got more to work with.
And I just wanna emphasize the point that, we should all be timber people, but more importantly, managing your fields, your struggle lands, your wetlands. There's a lot you can [01:03:00] do. We've contributed a lot on this podcast to think about these different vegetation types and managing them, optimizing them for your particular.
Demands or goals and realistically, you're never gonna maximize your property, but we're trying to maximize your hunt. So I just want to, thank you Colin for being on here. Your business legendary Habitat. I appreciate you. Hopefully you have another discussion.
Hopefully you have another guest on together with you and me and him, and we can talk a little bit more about his products. But hopefully we've given some folks some things that you can do to your food plots right before hunting season that's gonna take it to the next level. Thanks a lot and appreciate it, man.
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate a lot for having me come on here and the relationship and sounds like you've got a great network and big following on the podcast. So I really appreciate you having come on here and thanks all listeners for Tuning in and hopefully you got some good input out this.
As if you've got any questions, obviously myself or John, always reach out to us and we can get you covered. All right, man. Alright, we'll talk again soon. Thanks [01:04:00] Colin. See you bud. Sounds good. Bye bye. Maximize your hunt's, a production of whitetail landscapes. For more information on how John Teeter and his team of experts can help you maximize your hunt, check out whitetail landscapes.com.
