Show Notes
In this episode, Nate Krick discusses his upcoming hunting plans and experiences. He talks about his recent lease in Nebraska and the process of finding and negotiating a lease. Nate also shares his transition to shooting a traditional bow and the challenges he has faced. He discusses his strategies for hunting with a traditional bow and the adjustments he has made in his hunting approach. In this conversation, Nate discusses his approach to setting up tree stands and trail cameras for traditional bowhunting. He emphasizes the importance of keeping shots within the 20-yard range and adjusting tree stand locations accordingly. Nate also shares his annual trail camera strategy, which includes leaving cameras out all year, focusing on food sources, and conducting burns to change the habitat structure. He discusses the use of mock scrapes and the benefits of creating focal points for deer. Nate highlights the progress he has made in improving his property and the satisfaction of seeing mature bucks using the land.
Takeaways:
- Finding and negotiating a hunting lease can provide convenient hunting opportunities
- Transitioning to shooting a traditional bow requires practice and adjustment
- Hunting with a traditional bow may require getting closer to the target and using different hunting strategies For traditional bowhunting, it is important to keep shots within the 20-yard range and adjust tree stand locations accordingly.
- Leaving trail cameras out all year can provide valuable information about deer movement and shed hunting.
- Conducting burns in the late growing season can change the habitat structure and improve deer movement.
- Creating mock scrapes and focal points can attract deer and provide opportunities for hunting.
- Improving habitat and managing the property can lead to increased deer activity and the presence of mature bucks.
Show Transcript
Dan Johnson (00:00.846)
All right everybody, welcome to episode number three at reveal week here. This is the Nine Finger Chronicles podcast and today I have Nate Crick, one half of the identical jaw brothers. How are you doing today, bud? I'm good, thank you. Hey, I'll tell you what man, you just watched a little bit of my life kind of unfold just now and that like this microphone keeps falling off and we have a scenario where
Nate Krick (00:16.734)
I'm good, how are you doing?
Nate Krick (00:22.334)
Yeah.
Dan Johnson (00:30.605)
My, like today has just been a rough day. Kids are arguing. Like both myself and my wife have short weeks because of the 4th of July. And so it's getting a little out of hand.
Nate Krick (00:44.99)
Yep, I hear you. Yeah. We had a pretty good week. My daughter's in swim lessons this week and it's her first lesson where it's like no parents are there. We're just dropping her off. And yesterday the swim teacher had to basically pry my daughter off of my wife. So she's, yeah, she wasn't. So the first day she was real hyped. Second day, not a fan.
Dan Johnson (00:52.78)
Mm -hmm.
Dan Johnson (01:06.123)
she was pretty scared about it. Yeah. Yeah.
Nate Krick (01:13.15)
Today was a little better, but it's kind of been a struggle, but yeah, it's and I don't know I think it's gonna be good We're just doing like two weeks straight of swim lessons with her just gonna knock it out So we're just gonna gut through but yeah, that was interesting so
Dan Johnson (01:21.034)
Mm -hmm.
Dan Johnson (01:24.778)
Yeah. Yeah. My my middle or my oldest son, he was deathly afraid to get in the water to the I mean, like not even a toe. So for the first man, like year of swimming lessons that we had him in, I had to be in the water with him while the instructor was teaching or he would not do it. So, yeah, there's
Nate Krick (01:37.662)
Hmm.
Nate Krick (01:47.902)
Yeah. Yeah.
Nate Krick (01:52.03)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's my summer. Yep.
Dan Johnson (01:54.28)
That's fun. That's fun. That's exactly what I want to be doing today. Okay. I know that we caught up recently at the vortex, ambassador meeting or rendezvous or whatever. And I got to connect with you a little bit there, but, talk to me a little bit about what the next, as far as hunts are concerned, you know, the next.
Nate Krick (02:08.99)
Yeah, dude.
Dan Johnson (02:23.016)
Six months, man, this is our busy time of year. What's that look like for you?
Nate Krick (02:27.934)
Yeah, like we talked in Wisconsin me and Tom we kind of got screwed over in our draws this year Usually we're hunting Colorado for sure a couple tags We've been drawing archery and rifle Didn't draw either of those so our September which is usually pretty busy is like empty we have we have one Nebraska lease this is our first year we have released in Nebraska and We've got a really good couple deer showed up on that thing
And that's an early opener. So that's, that's probably going to be kind of our first white tail stuff. we've, he's got a, Tom says that South Dakota antelope tag. So we're going to be doing that some Nebraska stuff. we've, we're going to be hunting South Dakota. We're going to be hunting Oklahoma. And then of course you've got, I have a tag on our 80 in Kansas. draws also didn't go our way that that way. Thomas and I, we've drawn the non -resident tag.
Dan Johnson (03:19.429)
Mm -hmm.
Nate Krick (03:25.726)
every single year. And it's getting harder to draw that as it is pretty much everywhere. But we've always drawn that tag. And this year, neither of us drew the non -res tag because both we live in Lincoln, Nebraska, but we own that Kansas ground. And so the way it is in Kansas is you get one landowner tag per 80 acres. So we're like, who wants it? So we have this other project in the works with Bear Archery.
Dan Johnson (03:31.748)
Mm -hmm.
Dan Johnson (03:47.651)
Right.
Nate Krick (03:55.166)
And I'm going to be shooting a deer on there with a trad bow this year, which is going to be a different deal. we, yeah, we're just doing a kind of doing a collab with bear and I'd already been shooting a little bit and getting comfortable with that. And so when we didn't draw, we're like, well, since we're doing that, I'll just have the Kansas tag and we'll go from there. But, people are like, how did you decide that? It's like, we figured out, we both kind of just swap some different hunts and stuff, but.
Dan Johnson (04:00.994)
wow.
Nate Krick (04:24.798)
It's really weird for Thomas, who like we put in, I mean, 50 days a year managing this place and then obviously hunting on top of there. I mean, for him to not hunt our own property, it's weird. Like we're still trying to like, like come to terms with that, but just got to buy more ground, I guess. I don't know or become residents down there, but that that that's kind of throwing a wrench into our fault. And there are some very
Dan Johnson (04:40.898)
Yeah.
Dan Johnson (04:46.786)
Yep.
Nate Krick (04:54.91)
very good deer down there this year that these reveals have been catching. Usually our 80 in Kansas, the summer picks are like not that great. It's just, it's thick timber. Since we bought it, we've been putting food on it, but the deer, first few summers, we didn't get any picks really until late August, September, and then they start rolling in in October, obviously, with all the cover. But this year,
Dan Johnson (04:59.81)
Yeah.
Nate Krick (05:24.958)
I don't know if we've just hit that level of management that our property's just holding more deer more often, or they're just, hey, we've had food sources in these spots for five years now, those deer know that those food sources are there. But we've had so many good deer on trail camera this fall already, or this summer. So it's gonna be an interesting year. It kinda scared the hell out of me. Monday night this week, R80, we had, I mean we have for sure,
Dan Johnson (05:44.61)
Yeah.
Nate Krick (05:54.174)
probably at least one 180 to hunt this fall, if not potentially a couple. Which for me, that's a giant deer every single day of my life. That's a deer I'll shoot and be over the moon for. I've never shot anything that big. But seeing some specimens like that out on our trail cameras this week, I was like, I gotta start shooting the trad bow a lot more. So I'm trying to do 100 arrows a day, wake up, knock some out.
Dan Johnson (05:56.45)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Dan Johnson (06:03.65)
Yep.
Dan Johnson (06:09.09)
Mm -hmm.
Dan Johnson (06:18.402)
hahahaha
Nate Krick (06:23.166)
do some midday during kidnap and then in the evening, which I think yesterday I did about 100 and it didn't take me too long just kind of splitting them up and knocking them out fast. But I need my groups to go like from like this at 20, like, I don't know, a little bigger than a paper plate to like really feeling honed in and confident because I still have those flyers where like I'm barely at the target at like 15 yards. I'm like that.
Dan Johnson (06:25.218)
Yep.
Dan Johnson (06:43.81)
Yeah.
Dan Johnson (06:48.962)
Yeah.
Nate Krick (06:50.302)
scares me unbelievably. So I have, I still have a few months that I can really hone that in, but that's going to be the big, big hunt for us this fall. But other than that, I think our only other hunt is a Montana rifle tag. So we, we've never did any gun hunting up until like two years ago. We started working with CVA. So we got into muzzleloader stuff, some rifle stuff. And we've, we've really enjoyed it kind of figuring out the guns. I
Dan Johnson (07:03.586)
nice, nice.
Dan Johnson (07:10.978)
Yeah.
Nate Krick (07:18.814)
To this day, I have never killed anything with a rifle. I've shot a couple deer with a muzzleloader, but we've just been archery guys. But we're trying to just dabble out west a little bit more and learn some different areas and different hunts and things like that. So that's gonna be just a late season snowy hunt. I don't think I'm missing, well Thomas did, we talked about this, Thomas drew Iowa muzzleloader. So now saying it all out, it's like we have a busy fall, even though we didn't draw several things. But yeah, he'll have that late season muzzleloader.
Dan Johnson (07:26.882)
Yeah.
Dan Johnson (07:38.85)
Yep. Yep.
Nate Krick (07:48.414)
must have in Iowa so that's kinda the next six months for us.
Dan Johnson (07:49.89)
Awesome. Yeah, awesome. Okay. A couple of things that you've mentioned in this conversation here. and one is, okay, you went and you found a lease in Nebraska. All right. I know you guys live in Nebraska. I've never leased any type of ground before. So talk to me a little bit about the process of saying, okay, I want a lease. And then what you
Nate Krick (08:03.422)
Yessir!
Dan Johnson (08:18.978)
we're looking for or shopping around for when looking for a lease.
Nate Krick (08:23.358)
So this property just kind of landed in my lap. So I think we discussed, I'm a land agent as well. I'm with American Legacy Land Company. So I sell some land on the side. And this guy I've actually worked with in the past. And this fall, I was just talking to him about I'm losing hunting spots, blah, blah, blah. He's like, well, I just picked up this piece. You can hunt it for the rest of the fall. He's like, I'm gonna close on it like.
mid -December, but you can still have a few weeks there late season with the muzzleloader to try to shoot something. And so we were like, great, hunted it, saw, we saw some good deer on it and I ended up shooting like a, like a last, last day, like three year old, two and a half year old, I don't know, just a young buck, fill that tag and talked to him into that, that next year, cause there were a ton of turkeys on it. We were like, man, I'd love to have this leased up. And he's like, well, I'm going through base camp leasing.
and you can talk to the agent. So I was really hoping just to do like a, like, hey, I'll pay you what you want to do instead of going through a whole like camp like a leasing thing and have to worry about losing it or something. But they made, they made it work with us, kind of met with us on price and stuff. It's 160 acres technically, but it's only got like 40 acres to cover it. The rest of it just open, open.
open farm ground. It's not like it's split up. It's just like, it's a 160 and just the corner of it is like 40 acres of timber. So like outside of it, it's like basically paying 160 acres of lease ground for like 40 acres of hunting. Cause we're not going to hunt most of it, which is kind of where they get you in those leases. They base, I feel like they base it off of how many acres are leased up, even though a lot of those leases, it's like a small percentage of it is huntable. So that kind of annoyed the hell out of me. I was like, you should be,
Dan Johnson (10:13.186)
Huntable, yep.
Nate Krick (10:16.702)
you should be pricing this like a 40 acre lease instead of 160 acre lease. Cause you're not going to hunt in the middle of a cornfield. but whatever. So, yeah, I don't, I mean, I was like, dude, I told him straight up. I was like, I'll pay a few grand, I mean, for hunting this year. And they had a price, I forget what they had a price that like on the actual camp base camp leasing site, like maybe 4 grand or something like that for basically 40 acres of hunt.
Dan Johnson (10:20.93)
Yeah.
Dan Johnson (10:25.666)
Yeah.
Dan Johnson (10:40.898)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Nate Krick (10:44.318)
We didn't pay that, we met in the middle a little bit, but it was kinda like, it was something different, cause it was just too perfect of a location, because it's literally, we pass by it when we go to our Kansas place. So it was just like, it was too easy. I mean, we basically had to go pretty much like not out of the way at all to be able to stop by there on the way down to the AD and stuff and just put out cameras or do whatever. So it was just a little too convenient that we were like, man, we'll...
Dan Johnson (10:52.77)
Yeah.
Dan Johnson (10:56.93)
Mm -hmm.
Dan Johnson (11:03.714)
Yeah.
Dan Johnson (11:08.674)
Yeah.
Nate Krick (11:11.422)
we'll do this. And that is the first time we've ever paid for a lease. we've always just had some permission stuff in Nebraska. I still just do full Turkey permission. I don't pay for anything in the Turkey side. and we kill enough turkeys on public too, but on the deer hunting side, I was like, man, we need something in Nebraska. Like all the permissions pretty much gonzo. we used to have buddies that would just let us come out and shoot a buck here and there. And then I think we got too good at hunting and they're like,
family only. So which I totally get like I'm not hating on that at all. That's part of the game. But yeah, we we full send on the lease and it's given us some good opportunities. I mean, we already shot Turkey off of this spring. We've got a probably Lisa 160 on there. Had him on Monday on camera. So it's like it's given us another opportunity to be able to hunt archery opener in Nebraska kind of early season. So yeah.
Dan Johnson (11:42.316)
Yeah.
Dan Johnson (12:05.9)
Yep, yep, that's good, man. I mean, that sound that least sounds like it's just convenient, like, like you got it for convenience. And so do you have any plans to manage that like you manage your Kansas farm as far as food plots or any type of timber work?
Nate Krick (12:12.51)
Yeah, it is. Yes.
Nate Krick (12:24.478)
I don't think so. Basically just gonna kind of hunt it as is. Getting some tactical cams on there big time. Just getting those reveals out and just covering the place, trying to learn like that a little bit. We were able to do some shed hunting on it this winter too, which was helpful to kind of figure out what deer are using it for. It seems like looking at it from an aerial map, it seems like it's like some of the best cover within
Dan Johnson (12:47.82)
Mm -hmm.
Nate Krick (12:53.598)
at least a couple miles. There's just like little fingers here and there, but it's like a good actual pretty good chunk of timber, which is helpful. But I don't think we'll, we'll go do any work on it just because I just don't know what's going to happen. I doubt this is a long -term thing. And so it's just like, well, how does this, it doesn't, it's very comfortable. Like as is if it like needed some clearing or stuff like that, that'd be something that we'd have to discuss. But it's like, it's lots of trees we can hang in.
I think it's just kind of figuring out the movement, how they're using it in one night. I think accessing the piece is gonna be the hardest part. It's because it's all bedding. And every time I tried to get in there this winter, I just bumped, I just found bedded deer, like everywhere I wanted to be. So that's gonna be kind of tricky, but yeah, nothing on the management side for that piece.
Dan Johnson (13:29.452)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Dan Johnson (13:36.588)
Yeah.
Dan Johnson (13:42.22)
Gotcha. Okay. The second thing I wanted to talk about is like, okay, I'm going to shoot a trad bow. Like you can say it and it sounds like it's going to be easy. What is your experience been so far transitioning over to this trad, this trad bow?
Nate Krick (13:50.942)
Yeah.
Nate Krick (14:00.094)
Scary, scary, really scary. A little bit of regret, I'll be honest, like especially seeing like the caliber of deer that we have on the 80 this year. It's not normally like this. Like usually we have like one freak of nature, like at least one, like 170 plus, which I call a freak. And then it's like trickling to some younger deer. I mean, this year we legitimately probably have like three deer that'll do over 180 inches. It's like, that's insane. And that also, it's like,
Dan Johnson (14:09.452)
Yeah.
Nate Krick (14:29.854)
I want to have opportunity. Like I was thinking how, I mean, I'm going to have to be within 15 yards of these things. Like there's going to be no 35 yard walking away, quartering away shot. It's like, I'm going to be on top of these things. we moved some stands around cause we're just like rethinking the whole hunting process. We're not going to hang freaking 20 feet up in an Oak tree and hopefully walk by. Cause I'm already taking a lot of my shot distance like in through the air. I mean, I'm going to basically want to be on ground level with them to
Dan Johnson (14:42.508)
Yeah.
Nate Krick (14:59.742)
ensure that I get the most area of shooting possible. So we've already taken down a bunch of our stands. We've lowered some of them, but we hung one on one of our food plots the other day, and I'm just like, we're gonna get picked off immediately. And the first dough that walks out in this plot is going to be onto us so fast, because we just lowered it to try to be a little more eye level, not completely eye level.
but I'm just like, man, you can't be up high, like hiding a little bit and feeling safe and comfortable. So we've even thought about just doing some natural brush blinds throughout the property so that we just have some more on the ground locations we can hunt. One thing we've done a little bit already is cut some really good trails through there. Cause I think we're just going to be on our boots a lot more. We talked about possibly getting the decoy out and just making sure that we can get them in tight because sometimes like a
20 yard within shot just happens pretty easily in the white tail woods But a lot of the times I feel like they they work they skirt Yeah, or whatnot and getting that close shot is it's tricky But if we can fire them up during that last week of October into the rut possibly have them just come storming into a decoy be distracted not focused on us and Be able to give me a close shot. I think that's what we're gonna try to pull off. But it's been It's been a different ballgame. Honestly until this week. I was like
this is gonna be rough. I've been shooting it quite a bit for about a month. And this week was the first time I was like, okay, my groups are actually getting better. I'm shooting consistently. My first 10 arrows aren't nuts. My first 10 arrows are actually pretty consistent. Because I was getting to the point where my first 20 arrows were just garbage. And then after that, I started to feel it and getting the rhythm and know where I need to be. And then I'd be shooting good. But I'm like,
Dan Johnson (16:28.736)
Yeah.
Dan Johnson (16:39.872)
Yeah.
Dan Johnson (16:51.072)
Mm -hmm.
Nate Krick (16:56.254)
That doesn't work in the woods. I need my first arrow to be perfect. So this week finally I've had like those first five shots really focusing in and making them good. But it's just gonna be a different ball game. I mean, we have a Garmin like chronograph that has the arrow speed and whatnot that we can use. And I think I shot, when I shot past there, it was like 170 feet per second or something. I'm pretty sure that's accurate. So it's like, it's gonna be, I was even thinking like that.
Dan Johnson (17:12.096)
Mm -hmm.
Dan Johnson (17:20.256)
Wow.
Nate Krick (17:25.854)
I need to consider that for what I'm gonna do. I haven't shot any broadheads out of it. I wanna do just a really heavy fix that if it hits him, it's gonna cut him up really good. And so I still need to go down that rabbit hole, but yeah, it's going to be a process. I will say if it all comes together, it is going to be unbelievably fulfilling, but I got a lot of work to do before then, so yeah.
Dan Johnson (17:31.104)
Mm -hmm.
Dan Johnson (17:37.28)
yeah. Yup.
Dan Johnson (17:50.72)
Right, right. And you mentioned it here, what you said, and I'll elaborate a little bit. Like for me, my trail, my tree stand locations, and if I set them up or I'm getting in a saddle or whatever the case may be, I'm looking at that 20 to 30 yard shot. That's what I'm looking for. I don't want to, like, I don't like them any closer because they could potentially spook.
Broadside 20 yards, that's where I try to set everything up. Does it always happen that way? No. But with different equipment like trad, are you thinking like, okay, I have to readjust my tree stand locations to tighten that range instead of 20 to 30 from like 10 to 15 to 20?
Nate Krick (18:35.774)
Yeah, yeah, so just for an example we have this food plot that we call the shed plots not far from our family shit like you can The buck that Thomas shot two years ago like 180 in sure you could have watched out our shed back window You could watch the whole hunt play out. So it's like literally right there. It's a clover plot and We used to have our stand just on the south side Which just like overlooked like the whole plot and they usually just come from the north down this line and enter the plot and now we have our stand we move that one because I was like
Dan Johnson (18:48.128)
Mm -hmm.
Nate Krick (19:05.374)
Closest shot you're gonna have is like 30 ish yards. We move that one to the trail They take to get into the plot. So I literally was on the trail I'm like we're like eight yards off the trail. That's the one I'm like that first dough if that first dough walks by into the food pot It doesn't bust us. I'm gonna be shocked. I'm gonna be absolutely shocked So I'm like that's one where we're just gonna have to like be okay with like a little trial and error and not beat ourselves up and just
Dan Johnson (19:15.904)
Mm.
Dan Johnson (19:24.512)
Yeah.
Dan Johnson (19:31.808)
Yeah.
Nate Krick (19:33.886)
If we have some hunts where they just blow up, we're just gonna have to be okay with that and mentally just stay positive on top of that and know that there's gonna be more opportunities. But yeah, I think in my lifetime of shooting wide tails, I've shot a lot of wide tails 25 to 35 yards. And less than that, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I have not shot very many within 20. I mean, just a few. So it's just trying to figure out how
Dan Johnson (19:59.296)
Yeah. Yeah.
Nate Krick (20:03.134)
how that all is gonna work with the slower arrow speed and everything. I mean, yeah, just basically just wiping everything that we have on the 80 and just like start from scratch. Even just like our food plots for early season stuff. Like we've debated just like cutting some, cutting some food and trying to like minimize, tighten those deer up to where we wanna be, to get them instead of their feeding throughout the whole plot, try to get them to feed in tight areas. But at the end of the day, it's just gonna be kind of a little stroke of luck.
Dan Johnson (20:12.96)
Yeah.
Nate Krick (20:32.062)
thing with with with a lot of a lot of practice with the bow I need I 100 % need to make it count when I get that opportunity but like just getting one in that tight is is just it's 50 -50 so
Dan Johnson (20:44.256)
Yeah, when you look at the future, towards the future, and you say, okay, I got a trad bow in the tree with me, what does your gut tell you that your maximum range is gonna be?
Nate Krick (20:59.038)
Hmm, I think I think 20 I Think 20 I mean I've been shooting arrows at 20 and I've been hitting okay But I'm like actually finding a spot in a deer feeling confident with that and the other thing is I I've listened and talked to very very good trad guys and they're like, I don't shoot past 15 20 and I'm like, Shoot like like it'd be tempting to try to get really proficient at 25 30 yards But I think your arrow speeds just shit by then
I think, with how much a whitetail can dodge a compound arrow moving at 25, 30 yards, they can completely miss that arrow. And with the trad bow, you can hear flying through the air. I'm like, there's no chance that arrow's gonna get to him in time. So I'm like, I think that's probably a big thing I need to think about. If I wanna aim 10 inches underneath a deer and guess where it's gonna go, then.
Dan Johnson (21:47.712)
Hahaha
Nate Krick (21:57.534)
that I think that's pretty much impossible, so I'm never gonna do that. So it's like, yeah, I think realistically, if I have opening day, which I don't even know what it is in Kansas this year, usually it's like mid September, if I'm sitting in the tree and I'm like, I can hit an apple at 15 yards, I'm gonna be very satisfied. So I'm just like, that's my goal. If I can make them out to 20 yards, that'll be great, but I don't think, honestly, I think I'm just gonna try to keep it within that.
And I'm sure, I'm gonna have hunts that'll pull my hair out. I'm sure we're gonna have big deer at 30, 40 yards, you know, just, but I'm just gonna have to. Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be bad. It's gonna be bad. I'm gonna be questioning things big time, but yeah, I'm just gonna get full send and see how it goes, so.
Dan Johnson (22:34.816)
Just wishing you didn't make this decision. Yeah.
Dan Johnson (22:45.344)
I like that mentality, my man. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about your annual trail camera strategy. I want you to tell me how you're using that tool throughout the entire year. Let's start with January 1.
Nate Krick (23:04.99)
January 1, so we leave our cameras out pretty much all year now obviously with with the cellular applications, I mean we just we just leave them running. We want to see when deer are shedding. We want to see who made it through the season. That's our biggest thing. We honestly January 1 when it's cold, we pretty much move all of our cameras out of the timber. Get them all on the food source. We'll leave a couple of our best cameras out of the timber just on really good.
travel areas and things like that but we pretty much just get the food sources covered and just see who's hitting in see who's alive and when they drop and get in for shed season I mean that's that's pretty much what our our January February March time frame goes and then we kind of based on management stuff we do a bunch of burn and usually late February into March and we always get cameras on those burns because we learned a lot about that stuff we
Dan Johnson (23:58.048)
Yeah.
Nate Krick (24:01.662)
This year we had turkeys strutting on one of our burns literally within an hour after that smoke was out. And it's really cool to see that stuff. We've caught quail on our reveals after burns and stuff like that. So that's one thing that's been really cool is we get those cameras on those fresh burns in the spring, catch a bunch of turkeys, just different wildlife using it and stuff like that. But yeah, kind of progressing into the later spring is when we actually
We just do a big, usually mid to late June, we do a big camera bust and we get them on all of our, we get them on all of our food sources. Again, we make sure we cover up some, just our old trustees on the 80, just the spots we know are going to be good. And we get some mineral out, things like that. Cause we can do that in Kansas. So it's different in different States where we can, we can do that kind of thing, but we put some mineral out, put some, we have two feeders on the 80 that we run from.
Dan Johnson (24:47.136)
Mm -hmm.
Dan Johnson (24:55.36)
Yeah.
Nate Krick (24:59.646)
pretty much March until the end of July that we just keep stuff in there and then we pull them off through the season just because we don't like filming and hunting over those things. So yeah, we get them on those things and that's pretty much from May until August. It's like we really have that, let's get some mineral out. Let's get kind of those, just understand what deer are using the area and food sources. I mean, just like I was talking earlier.
our bean plots in our clover plots, super green and lush right now. And it's awesome to see the movement through there. We put a lot of them on our beans, honestly. Like we stagger them out just to see who's using it. You might think like if you have four acre plot, a couple of cameras would be enough, but we try to stagger quite a few of them on there. We've only had like two or three on there, but Thomas and I were talking, it's like we're missing deer out in those food sources. So we're gonna, we just like, we really cover up the food in.
Dan Johnson (25:54.784)
you
Nate Krick (25:58.078)
July and August, just kind of try to catch some of those deer that are moving and eating and doing that kind of thing. So, but then yeah, when it gets into the hunting season, we usually kind of let those summer cameras ease into September because we could try to keep them on those same sort of patterns. But again, kind of like, kind of like we do in June, usually in October, we pick a, like a mid to late October rainy day and we do a huge trail camera shuffle. And we just, we,
Dan Johnson (26:15.232)
Yep.
Nate Krick (26:28.094)
cover every inch of our 80, which for some whitetail guys, it hurts me too, but some guys are like, I would never do that. I completely understand it's a lot of movement on the 80 and we always bust a few deer out of there, some does and stuff, but we're just like, we want to get cameras on fresh sign. So that is our only goal. We move pretty much every camera onto scrapes. We still keep some of the food sources, but we just get those heavily used areas with the sign.
Dan Johnson (26:44.256)
Yeah.
Nate Krick (26:57.118)
covered up with cameras. And that stays through pretty much October, November, early December. And then some of that December timeframe when they start getting back onto that food bag, then we'll pull some of those off the scrapes and whatnot into the food source again and try to kill late season buck. So that's kind of our year of moving cameras around. So that's at least in Kansas where we can do some of that. In other states, we have a little different approach, but that's what we do in Kansas.
Dan Johnson (27:14.016)
Gotcha.
Dan Johnson (27:24.48)
Gotcha. Let's see here. Do you ever use mock scrapes? Put a camera over, like if you can't find any fresh sign, have you been ever played around with mock scrapes at all?
Nate Krick (27:38.558)
Did that in Nebraska on an old piece of permission we had and we have OKLuck in Kansas. I never give them to hit mock scrapes. I don't know what it is, but there's only a few spots that we really get it scraped up. And I honestly think it's because of our understory in Haiti. It's just so thick they can't find good spots. Obviously field edges are easy, but the only thing that really works for us for like making mock stuff
Is if we just put a like a licking branch in a food in a food plot Sometimes they'll hit that but it's not like it never becomes one of those like religious scrapes We just those things we just we have to find those naturally and then That's usually the the hot thing and I think sometimes when you find one of those scrapes that are just gonna like I've heard you talk about like they'll hit those almost a year around The year will just kind of be interested in those things
Dan Johnson (28:16.602)
Gotcha.
Dan Johnson (28:20.858)
Mm -hmm.
Dan Johnson (28:31.661)
Mm -hmm.
Nate Krick (28:35.006)
Once we find one of those and we might just like mess around and freshen her up like a little bit, kind of in that October timeframe when they're thinking about it and you might get some early action on it, but we don't really spend a lot of time doing mocks, so. Yeah, yeah.
Dan Johnson (28:47.127)
Yeah, okay, that's fair. Yeah, I'll tell you this, man, it's been eye opening. You know, I think what happens is like on these scrapes and these licking branches, everybody looks, everybody focuses on the scrape. And then they go, well, there's no fresh scrape here. It doesn't look fresh. But what I've kind of learned using mock scrapes and documenting that with trail cameras is that the deer are just smelling.
Sometimes they're not laying sign all they're doing is they're checking and maybe they do a little a little rub on it But they smell it and then they go on and it's almost like they're checking their emails where they're just like, okay. Yeah, so and so yeah, okay, okay I'm here now and then they move on and they're they're not scraping per se but but man I I'll be honest man. I just cannot like my setup this year
is whenever I once baseball's over and I'm able to dedicate some time to go into the woods and start putting all the all of this playing together. I am I'm going to have a mock scrape within shooting distance of every single one of my tree stands. And so like I just I don't know in the last three years, I've just seen such good results using them. Yeah, man, it's simple. I use that. I use the rope a dope.
Nate Krick (30:04.702)
What's your setup? Like, do you have like a rope or do you just use natural pergons?
Dan Johnson (30:13.587)
from Code Blue Scents. It stands out. It's a big blue rope about two foot long and you zip tie it to a tree branch and then it comes with pre -orbital gel and you rub that on there and then I put a trail camera over it. Man, you would be surprised. I show you a set of pictures sometime of the deer throughout the course of the, I would say the month of.
August, September, and then all of the deer hunting season, the deer that came to just smell it, just investigate it. And it was pretty sweet.
Nate Krick (30:49.822)
Yeah, yeah, we've, we've had, we've had good luck with like, just out in the middle of a food plot, kind of just like putting a tree branch in kind of deal. just because I feel like it is like that. They don't want to scrape on it, but it's just, it's just like a meeting point of where they can just go check out and see who's in the area. just smell around and do that thing. I mean, we've had really good success shooting bucks off of those just like, cause it's a, it's a focal point that they want to get to. but yeah, maybe that's something we've got to mess around with this year because
Dan Johnson (31:02.483)
Mm -hmm.
Dan Johnson (31:15.633)
Yep.
Nate Krick (31:18.622)
We've messed around with that and it seems like we're just hunting like basic, just natural scrapes and haven't like put anything artificial out there, but I mean, I'm sure it works, so yeah.
Dan Johnson (31:25.296)
Yeah Yeah, yeah now I just got to get the time to go freshen them up and and get the tree stands up and shooting lanes cut and you know places Well, I've had mine out since last year and so I have a couple out now that all I and then during March when I went and shed hunt I put a little bit more of the gel on it and so here in August or probably late July early August I'm gonna then
Nate Krick (31:31.454)
Yeah.
Nate Krick (31:35.006)
When do you put those out there?
Dan Johnson (31:54.864)
head out, I'm going to freshen up all the scrapes. You know, what I did was I took a weed eater and an electrical weed eater and I just destroyed all the grass underneath of it and made it bare dirt. And then I didn't even put any scent in that. I just used the rope a dope in the in the pre -orbital gel to do that. But now the way that I like the way that I've seen it's like, I think.
This is going to sound crazy, but I know guys who do it. My goal is to do some hinge cutting on. So I got this rectangle shape of property and in this rectangle shape there, there's a, a crick bed that has eroded away certain points of the landscape over time. And what this does is it creates a bank, right? So the deer don't go straight up and down the bank. They
Nate Krick (32:43.582)
Mm -hmm.
Dan Johnson (32:52.588)
they go like I can walk up it but the deer don't and so what that does is it pinches them down in so from the fence line from the from the straight line from the fence line to where a potential tree stand could be that's a little bit of a pinch point and I could take fall some trees make some kind of barrier per se and really funnel them down in put a mock scrape there get them stop stopping to investigate it that way
I don't necessarily have to stop them and it just... So I don't know man, that's just an idea that I had and it's just... I'm thinking about it all the time now. I just have to implement it.
Nate Krick (33:35.198)
Yeah. Well, honestly, that could be something that me and Tom mess around with this year with just having to get things in tight, you know, just kind of put some of those things out and some strategic areas where, Hey, let's give them this hold up there at 13 yards for just a second. You know, sometimes it's just like a, you can just get them delayed just a little bit. So that might, yeah.
Dan Johnson (33:41.897)
yeah.
Dan Johnson (33:51.145)
Yep.
Yep, that's the truth, man. That's the truth. What else? Let's see, as far as habitat work on the Kansas farm, what else you got going on this year?
Nate Krick (34:06.59)
Gosh, this year we've kind of been playing things differently. We just want to change the structure in our past years big time. We burn it every year, but this year we've thought about late growing season burn, which would be sometime this July, August timeframe, which really changes the structure. Like the dormant season burns in February, March. It kills everything that was dead and it's fun, but it really doesn't change the structure of a lot of what's coming up.
Dan Johnson (34:31.817)
Mm -hmm.
Nate Krick (34:32.094)
But these lake growing season burns will actually really change the structure of what things are popping up knock back invasive things like that So that's kind of what we want to do some more Into this year But we've kind of hit a point where a lot of these areas that we started working on five years ago when we bought the place They finally have sunlight they this the 80 that we have is just so Shaded and thick that a lot of these areas. It just was very little sunlight and now they have sunlight. So this last
Winter was our first year. We had actually good burns in the timber because it just finally had dried out Finally had enough Sun finally had some species growing up off the ground to give us fuel things like that So we just want more of that we want to be able to have more areas that we can just do this full -service stuff because Right now there are still a lot of our 80 is still just like choked out with I mean Timber that we don't want hedge locust stuff like that. And so it's just kind of getting rid of that. We've been like
Dan Johnson (35:11.045)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Nate Krick (35:31.134)
thinking about upgrading on some equipment, but it's like, it's expensive. Like we need a, we need like a bobcat or a tractor or something because these trees are too big for us with saws and a, and ATV. So that's kind of been our next kind of thing is what we need. We either need to get some people hired out that we dig and help us move some of this big stuff or maybe just rent out some equipment for a little bit and just attack these trees big time. But yeah, just, it's always, our battle is always just how can we get more sun in the place and
Dan Johnson (35:49.189)
Mm -hmm.
Nate Krick (36:01.086)
just keep pushing back invasives because we do so much work. And then this time of the year I drive through there and I'm like, there are so many parts of this ground that are completely impassable. You cannot get through them. Deer cannot get through them. And you want to have little niche pieces like that where it is thick. That's all it is. It's just thick and nasty and it's great cover, but that's it. But there's too much of that on our 80s still. So I still want to have some places breathe a little bit.
Dan Johnson (36:12.13)
Mm -hmm.
Nate Krick (36:30.782)
And that just means saw getting them out of there and more of that, which is just, it's just a long -term thing. It's just, it's just, I got to continually remind myself as just like, it's not an overnight, it's not an overnight plan. You just got to kind of work as whenever you get time, while that's in the off season, some of it's kind of sprinkled throughout the summer months and whatnot, but it's always, it's always just cutting and fire. Those are our two big things that have really changed our property. They've changed it drastically. I mean,
Dan Johnson (36:36.961)
Yeah.
Nate Krick (36:59.998)
Just like I was saying, I mean, the amount of bucks that are used in our ground this summer is 10X what it has been previous years. And I've seen that grow every single year with our management and our food sources and things like that, and our turkey numbers. The first year we bought our ground, opening day, you could hear like a couple gobbles, like from all around. Like there were no turkeys. And opening day this year I was listening to 15, 20 birds. And that's, I mean, that's...
Dan Johnson (37:26.305)
Yeah.
Nate Krick (37:28.958)
That's management stuff. That's also some mild winters and things like that. But yeah, it's just all those things kind of playing a part in it. But yeah, it's cutting and cutting and fire and hopefully get one of these late grown season burns completed.
Dan Johnson (37:41.629)
Yeah.
Man, it must feel pretty good to start off, like buy a property and be unsure of it. Okay, yeah, we do have some deer on this farm, but we have this idea in our head of what we want to turn it into. And so it must feel pretty good to all of a sudden now have three deer that could potentially be in the 180 class, mature, big, white tails. Like that's gotta feel pretty good, man.
Nate Krick (38:13.502)
It's pretty crazy, like, it's crazy. Yeah, it's rewarding as heck. And just hunting is one thing, but just having the property that these animals just wanna call home, it's awesome. And it's been, some of it feels like a really gradual turnaround. And then some of it when you check your trail camera an hour after burning this spring and there's a couple of strutters out in the burn, it's like, that's immediate. I mean...
Dan Johnson (38:25.565)
Mm -hmm.
Dan Johnson (38:40.285)
Yeah.
Nate Krick (38:40.478)
They're there. That is a thank you from the animals like immediately. They just they love that kind of ground. They're just picking out there for hours, just getting bugs and stuff. And it's really cool to see that progress. But one of these deer that we had on camera this year is a deer that we had when we bought the place. We're pretty sure he's like seven or eight. And seeing him out there, I'm like, man, that dude is that deer has seen a lot of change on this place. But it's just funny that he's he's just still
Dan Johnson (38:56.973)
really?
Nate Krick (39:10.014)
He's still using it how he's been using it all these years and it's it's it's it's pretty sweet. Hopefully Hopefully the plans just keep coming in together and we can do more things to where it just gets better and better of you That's that's that's all I can hope for so Yeah
Dan Johnson (39:27.033)
Heck yeah, man, heck yeah. Well, I will say this, man, I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to hop on and BS with us for a little bit. If people wanna learn more about identical draw, where do we send them?
Nate Krick (39:42.43)
Well, we've got identical draw on YouTube. We're putting out some films every once in a while. We've got a bunch of good ones coming out in the next month or so. We've got Sandhills mule deer hunt. We've got a Colorado elk hunt. We've got a Kansas publicly in white till hunt. Those are all dropping in the next month. And that's on YouTube. And then just identical draw on Instagram. That's probably where we put most of our stuff out. Facebook, things like that. We've gotten banned too many times on TikTok. We don't bother.
Dan Johnson (40:11.033)
I feel that man
Nate Krick (40:12.254)
Yeah, that's where you can find us, but yeah, appreciate the time, Dan.
Dan Johnson (40:15.385)
Yeah, absolutely and good luck this upcoming season.
Nate Krick (40:18.206)
Yeah, thanks dude.
