Winter Habitat Goals

In this conversation, Dan Johnson and Jason Thibodeau discuss their experiences and strategies related to deer hunting and habitat improvement. They share insights on late-season deer movement, scouting techniques, and the importance of creating a thriving ecosystem for wildlife. The discussion also covers specific habitat improvement strategies, including invasive species removal and the creation of food plots, emphasizing the need for careful planning and execution to enhance deer habitats effectively. In this conversation, Jason Thibodeau and Dan Johnson discuss various aspects of habitat improvement for deer hunting. They share insights on learning from past projects, creating effective habitats, utilizing natural resources, innovative tree management techniques, and the importance of access routes and safety during habitat work. The discussion emphasizes the need for collaboration and planning in order to enhance deer movement and hunting success, while also looking ahead to post-season strategies.

Takeaways:

• Dan is freezing in his office while discussing deer hunting.
• Late season hunting is crucial for scouting deer movement.
• Habitat improvement can significantly impact deer populations.
• Invasive species removal is essential for healthy ecosystems.
• Creating food plots requires careful planning and timing.
• Deer need cover to feel safe and comfortable in their environment.
• Habitat projects can be small-scale yet impactful.
• Understanding wind direction is key for hunting success.
• A thriving ecosystem benefits all wildlife, not just deer.
• It's important to take action, even if the outcome isn't as expected. Learning from failures is crucial in habitat improvement.
• Creating thick habitats is essential for attracting deer.
• Natural resources can be effectively utilized for deer food.
• Innovative tree management techniques can simplify habitat work.
• Access routes are vital for successful hunting strategies.
• Safety should always be a priority during habitat work.
• Collaboration can lead to differing opinions on habitat management.
• Post-season scouting is key to understanding deer movement.
• Soil testing is important for effective food plots.
• Engaging others in habitat work can enhance the experience.

Dan Johnson (00:00.674)
Alright, so if you're watching this on YouTube, you see that I am wrapped up in two blankets. I have a hooded sweatshirt on and I have a stocking cap on. That is because my dumb ass unplugged my space heater for some reason on Friday when I was up here. Now it's Monday morning. It is nine degrees outside and in my office, my thermostat says 30 degrees. And so I'm freezing my balls off.

up here in my office, but we gotta talk about deer hunting, dude. We just have to do it, I can't cancel.

Jason Thibodeau (00:35.749)
You actually look like you're prepared for a late season hunt. I mean, you got the full sneak gear on and your blaze orange and everything. So no, you look appropriate.

Dan Johnson (00:39.842)
Hahaha!

Hey, that's great. That's a great way to open it if We'll just we'll just say this if you're looking for some badass t-shirts stocking caps crewneck sweatshirts go to full sneak gear comm and Go check out one of my companies. So there. Thank you for that All right, dude, it's it's been kind of a pretty cool Cool past couple days in the literal sense. It's been freezing here

Jason Thibodeau (01:02.045)
You're welcome. Yep.

Dan Johnson (01:13.338)
And the other thing is, I got my eyes now, the Iowa season is over. January 10th was the last day that you can shoot a buck in Iowa, late season muzzleloader. They do have a non, a antlerless, excuse me, an antlerless season that goes on believe till the 19th. But there's been a lot of movement on the properties.

Jason Thibodeau (01:37.635)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (01:42.575)
and even a good, what I'm gonna guess is a four year old, maybe in that high 140s, low 150s, 10 pointer that I had early season with my daughter when we were kinda, and it might have been the buck this year that I drew back on and let an arrow go at, but it hit a branch and it kinda nose dived into the dirt type of deal.

And so he's back, he made it through the gun season, and he's on the property. He looks healthy based off of trail camera images. There's a couple other bucks that look like they've moved back into the property. that makes me happy, dude. That lets me know that there's good deer in the area.

Jason Thibodeau (02:28.921)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I kind of had the same thing. So our season doesn't end until the 19th. But we went out, my brother and I did last Wednesday and I saw 30 plus deer. I saw six bucks. One of them definitely was a mature buck. And he's an eight point that we've been watching for a little while. And then, so I, so I got like Intel where these deer were coming out of. So Friday I went and hung a new stand in like a

It's just basically the point of a funnel. And I just wanted to get closer to these deer. So I got the stand all set up and then I decided I'm there. I might as well sit it. So I sat that Friday and I saw two deer. But art. we have like a late season here with gun and you can use bow. You can whatever. It's kind of just a free for all as far as that goes, as long as you got the tags. Then it comes up. I think it's Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I think it's four days. It might only be three. So don't don't quote me on that, but.

I plan on going out maybe Friday, of course Friday is supposed to be almost 50 degrees here, so.

Dan Johnson (03:32.749)
Yeah, this weather is bananas this time of year. Like I've never seen, I don't know, this September. I mean, it's so dry. Maybe that has something to do with it. The hurricanes that went through, the drought mixed with like huge amounts of rain in short periods of time. I don't know what this all is. I'm not a climatologist or a meteorologist, but.

Jason Thibodeau (03:36.485)
It's crazy.

Dan Johnson (04:01.164)
I just know it just this past year, this past 12 months has been pretty crazy as far as weather's concerned. for everybody listening right now, my space heater is on. Just that noise you're hearing is probably my space heater. Hopefully I can edit it out, but just know that I'm doing this podcast for you even though I'm battling hypothermia right now. So I forgot to mention that.

Jason Thibodeau (04:06.529)
Yeah.

Jason Thibodeau (04:27.711)
You just got done being sick, so. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (04:30.646)
Exactly, all right. Any other late season news or anything like that that we need to talk about before we start looking into this conversation about habitat and food plots?

Jason Thibodeau (04:47.913)
I like, think, like I said last week, I mean, this is the time if your season's over, you know, you can, you can start doing the postseason scouting. potentially there's, there's deer dropping antlers and stuff too. So you could pick up a couple antlers, but I would spend the time wisely. You know, if you got some snow in your area and you can get on some trails, you know, go track them back to beds and everything. You'll learn a lot this late season and you're not going to intrude too awful much. I would just be cautious how many times you go in, be productive with your time in there.

be sparing about it and still, you know, be cautious with the wind, you know, and, and track and in there, not letting all your scent blow into the bedding and stuff. You don't want to spook them completely out, especially if they've been dealing with a lot of snow or cold temperatures. You could definitely hurt some of those bucks that have lost so much weight.

Dan Johnson (05:36.867)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Okay, I'm trying to think. I do have one or two bucks that have already shed one side on camera. Nothing major, nothing that's gonna make me go look at it. Plus, it's on a farm that's four hours away. So, outside of that, I'm just kind of, I'm in a treading water type state right now as far as.

activities that I'm gonna do. I'll probably go shed hunting, but I'm gonna mix my upcoming shed hunting trips with a habitat improvement activity in mind, okay? And so this is where I wanna talk a little bit about habitats. I wanna talk about habitat first because you can't plant any food plots in...

Jason Thibodeau (06:22.201)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (06:32.269)
January, February, I mean you can do some type of frost seeding type of things like that, but when you're getting into the dirt, that's not happening until April timeframe, April, May timeframe. So I want to talk about habitat right now and I just want to kick this conversation off straight to you and I want to say do you do any type of habitat work and what I mean by that is hinge cutting.

Jason Thibodeau (06:34.597)
Yup.

Dan Johnson (07:01.302)
invasive species removal, spraying, mowing, burning, anything like that in the next couple months.

Jason Thibodeau (07:10.245)
So we don't do a whole lot of hinge cutting, so to say. We actually do more invasive removal and some of the ice scrap trees will remove them and stuff, cut them down. And we actually dig them out to just so that way they're completely gone. So we'll do that here coming up, especially if we got temperatures like what we've had. Some of them we will still be able to dig out or we can level the area and then we'll burn.

what we can and then we'll just basically clear the site and get it ready for spring. And it looks like this year with no snow, mean, we'll be able to get equipment in there and do what we need to do and be set up in good in good fashion for planning our spring food plots and stuff.

Dan Johnson (07:54.349)
Yeah, straight up, we need snow. I mean, we need more moisture in the ground, period. So I hope we get it. So when it comes, like, what are you looking for? Like, what is your thought process as far as, hey, I am going to remove these trees and invasive species because, like, what is the because? Why?

Jason Thibodeau (07:57.048)
Yeah.

Jason Thibodeau (08:17.327)
So, so the because on ours is the property that I can, we can actually do this on is loaded with honeysuckle. It is loaded with box elder trees. There's some gigantic oak trees and over time, these oak trees, they just naturally are falling down. mean, they are dying and falling down and they, they create it to where there's no understory. You know, they got such a huge canopy on them. So, I mean, we need to get in and remove some of the oak trees as we go.

But our focus before we get to that, because the trees are still producing acorns. So I mean, that is still food that's beneficial. So we'll go in and we'll take out box elders and we'll do a section each year and then we'll take out the honeysuckle and we'll clear those out. And then we'll basically expand our food plots into those areas and create little not sanctuaries, but little like staging areas. You know, they'll be able to come out of the timber behind us.

and into the staging areas and they're still secluded somewhat with the trees and then they'll be able to come out into the regular ag fields. So that's our primary focus is getting rid of those basically two species, know, honeysuckle and box elder trees are basically the main concerns we have right

Dan Johnson (09:29.87)
Okay, all right. So in the past, when you've done this, have you seen a direct impact in deer, like, because the reason that we're doing this, these types of activities, is to try to get more sunlight to the ground and create a thicker environment for deer to feel comfortable in, right? Is that a fair statement? Okay. What...

Jason Thibodeau (09:52.963)
Yeah. absolutely.

Dan Johnson (09:56.265)
are the results. Is this an immediate result? Is this something that you see take a couple years? What's the story there?

Jason Thibodeau (10:04.143)
So it depends on how we do it. If we end up planting it into a food plot right away, we'll try to do something that's going to be beneficial for the soil. And it's just going to be an annual food plot. And it's going to be something that breaks down fairly quickly. If we plant it in a food plot, depends on what it is. If it's something that's the regular used to every year, the deer will be in there. They will get used to their surroundings within the first couple of months. If we let it go after we've removed the trees or invasive stuff.

and we just kind of let it naturally come up into grass and stuff. We've found that it actually becomes more bedding than anything. I have seen in spots where we completely clear something and they will change their routes on the outskirts of it. Either way, I don't think it's been negative because obviously in a year or two, all those examples are beneficial for the herd. And I keep looking at it and we keep discussing it back and forth with

If we get rid of some of this nasty canopy and these nasty trees and everything eventually, basically what a deer needs is five foot. If he has five foot of cover, he can walk through that or she can walk through that and feel safe.

Dan Johnson (11:13.166)
Yeah, yeah, okay. And is it, do you have any examples of you, I don't know, let me back up a second. When you take on a project like this, are you talking about like 500 feet by 500 feet or are you talking about like one, two, three acres? Like how big of projects are you taking on every year?

Jason Thibodeau (11:39.185)
So most of the time it's about a half an acre and we literally just dissect it and we leave what we can leave for good trees. And then we decide that, you hey, we know that the deer are coming out of here and we want to funnel them this way. But we also know that if we want this better down the line, we have to get rid of X. So we don't take, you know, the entire property or the entire section or two acres and we don't do a massive amount. We just do.

eighth of an acre, a quarter acre, a half acre at a time. But we found to is we've done it a couple of different ways where we'll actually dig a hole out in our open food, food plots, and we'll put the trees in there and we'll burn the pile. get rid of all the stuff that way. We've also found that if we take the trees and lay them basically like you would in a hinge, the tree would be laying down and we can create beds with just natural brush piles.

and create natural walking funnels and stuff for these deer. And that works, too. The only problem of it is, is when you leave all that debris like that, basically just makes it look like garbage and there's nothing beneficial to that either. So we found actually now it's just to not dig a hole, not not leave the stuff up, but just put a big pile out in the middle of the field and burn it all as much as we can. Spread the ashes out. And then we're actually, you know, creating more with that. So.

Dan Johnson (13:03.63)
Okay, all right. Now, it sounds to me like you're doing a little bit of the same thing, but it just depends on what you're doing with it at the end. So you're like, removing trees, box elders. On the farm that I hunt, there's a lot of Osage Orange and a lot of black.

black locust, I believe it's the black locust, the ones that have all the thorns on them, right? So a lot of those trees don't necessarily have a timber value per se, maybe for like fence posts or scrap wood or maybe even firewood or something like that. they, but they're, this is old cattle pasture that I'm talking about. And so I,

Jason Thibodeau (13:25.711)
Yep. Yep.

Jason Thibodeau (13:47.749)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (13:52.143)
Those are the trees that I plan on attacking because I had a conversation with the landowner and the landowner was like, I said, hey, listen, here's my plan. The natural browse on your property is pretty bad. It's pretty wide open from about six foot to down whatever the deer can reach. It's all eaten. So my goal is to...

cut down some of these lesser value trees and create sunlight that's gonna bring the forest floor up, create a higher stem count lower and give the deer something to eat, more natural forage. And on top of that, nesting for, and I said it's gonna improve everything from turkey to pheasants to songbirds to just really all wildlife creating protection from coyotes, bobcats.

whatever the case is. And so just a thriving environment and a thriving ecosystem. I really do believe, feel that that, and of course, I'm not an expert, but I've talked to a lot of experts and I feel like that is, like a good ecosystem is good for not just deer, but for all animals.

Jason Thibodeau (15:06.871)
Right. Right. I agree. And I think I think that's what you have to look at when you're going to do habitat improvement is do you want to create bedding or do you want to create food? And so when we go in, we normally go into the mindset of this is a small piece of property. We're going to clean it up the best that we can. And we are going to give them as much food as we can because we know our surrounding properties are bedding areas. We know that they have, you know, areas of switchgrass and in different cover spots that

we can't necessarily provide because it's going to take a long time to create those things. So let's give them immediate food.

Dan Johnson (15:42.306)
Right, right. And so that's your guys' focus is food.

Jason Thibodeau (15:46.115)
Right, pretty much.

Dan Johnson (15:47.961)
Yeah, okay. So I'm gonna share my thoughts on what my goals are and then we'll get into the food conversation because I think the food plot conversation, we're going to have another one later in this winter once we get into food plot planning season. So I'm gonna break down my habitat goals for the.

one specific farm. Now the other farm, if I wanted to, I probably could do a little habitat work like some hinge cutting and things like that. But there's not as many junk trees on this farm. It's more of like your elms, your oaks, your maples, stuff that could have better value as far as having it age and become timbered and getting a like a timber check.

from a timber company basically. The property that I hunt is a grown up cattle pasture. been, it has egg on it, but the family has owned it for over 100 years and it used to be straight cattle all over it, right? And so the places where there's no longer cattle, it has grown up into these trees, these Osage Orange, these Black Locusts.

Yes, there are some maples mixed in with it. Yes, there are some oaks mixed in with it. What's the tree that has the bean pods?

Jason Thibodeau (17:24.509)
are you the bean pods would be the total unless you're talking about a locust a locust will have the pods too. Yeah.

Dan Johnson (17:29.998)
The pods, yeah, okay, all right. So there's a couple different locust trees that do that too that don't have thorns, right?

Jason Thibodeau (17:38.499)
Yeah, yep, there is. There's a honey locust, there's a black locust.

Dan Johnson (17:42.947)
Yeah, okay. All so there's some of those in there. There's several other trees within this, on this farm that are actually good quality, but the majority is junk. So the property runs, the property that I'm interested in doing the habitat work on runs north-south, okay? And on the west side of this creek, really what you have is almost like a hallway.

So it's a wide open hallway. Once the leaves fall off the trees, it's still cover for them, but it's not great cover because you can see quite a ways. Like right now, I could probably almost see from one high point to the next high point through this timber. All right, so what I am going to try, here's my thought process here. I want you to think about this. All the travel runs north south or south north.

and it comes through a couple really good terrain features where the crick bends into the terrain and it causes steep drop-offs, right? And so the deer don't go east-west on those big, I guess you would call them cliffs or big cut-offs. They use where they turn back into the...

Jason Thibodeau (18:52.229)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (19:06.272)
out of the terrain and it creates more of a natural path for them, right? Okay, so knowing that, I am going to try and create a hallway. And then I'm going to try and create specific bedrooms on different sides of this hallway. Most of them are gonna be on the west side of this hallway because most of the time you're getting west, northwest winds, so I feel like

Jason Thibodeau (19:17.103)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (19:35.662)
If I want to hunt on a specific side of a bedding area, it needs to be the east side of a bedding area because I know that whether it's a southeast or a southwest, west, northwest, those are gonna be the predominant winds during the hunting season. And so I'm gonna go in there and I'm gonna create, I don't know, maybe...

200 square feet, know, like basically a person's living room. I'm gonna cut down and hinge cut trees down and I'm not necessarily looking for, it will come eventually, but my thought process is to get deer to want to bed there all the time. Not just in the spring and the summer when the vegetation is heavy, but after the leaves fall off as well. And that's only gonna benefit me.

Jason Thibodeau (20:00.485)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Thibodeau (20:23.653)
Right.

Dan Johnson (20:25.666)
Because they're gonna stay on the property. So the goal is to and I'm thinking This is a two or three year project where I'm gonna focus real heavy on one or two areas and then I'm gonna move south a little bit and I'm gonna work on a couple other areas in hopes I mean, it's very simple just get get cover in there lower to the ground if the if the tree dies

I'm still gonna have some cover lower to the ground. Sunlight's gonna get in there. It's gonna grow up. The only thing I don't feel comfortable doing would be burning inside the timber because there's a lot of multi flower rose in there because it is old cattle pasture. And I think it will grow up more multi flower rose. But it's something that I have to like, I don't feel comfortable doing that.

and I'm not gonna do it, but let's be honest, deer live in multi flower rows. Deer live in junk habitat. I'm just trying to create these little bedrooms for them where it's not gonna be maybe a whole deer herd, but it might be one buck. It might be two does, whatever the case is, and then they're gonna get comfortable there, and they're going to wanna stay there more, and just be on the property more, which also,

Jason Thibodeau (21:29.186)
Absolutely.

Jason Thibodeau (21:38.125)
Right? Right.

Dan Johnson (21:52.867)
more does to live on that property. And that means bucks come in the late October, early November timeframe. So that's, and then basically I access it from the East. I set up, I climb up one of those steep embankments and I basically have a highway in front of me and I'm just catching deer cruising up and down this hallway during the rut.

Jason Thibodeau (22:18.245)
Yeah, no, and that's that's the thing. Like you said, you know, it's if that's your goal for your habitat improvement is to have the bedding there, then it sounds like you know which way your wind's coming from. You know, your access and everything. I think it's a win. You know, just doing something is going to help. Right. I mean, because if it's a war down cattle pasture, I've hunted those in the past before they can be beneficial to an extent. But if you can take it to the next level by just manipulating some of the trees or something in there, it big return on.

Dan Johnson (22:48.375)
Right, absolutely, absolutely. So outside of that, I just, that's the goal, right? When it comes to habitat work, right, I really do feel that it can be done on a small scale to have a bigger impact, right? And so a lot of people, including myself, I've tried to take on some habitat projects in the past, like maybe cut down a couple trees, and I just felt intimidated by it.

And I had a guy who, runs a 2500 acre paradise, basically. And long story short, he said two things happen. Number one, it's a success. Number two, it may not turn out the way you want it and envision in your head, but it's still better than nothing, right? And then the third thing, and this is just life in general, you fail.

Jason Thibodeau (23:42.821)
Alright.

Dan Johnson (23:47.594)
at this project and then you learn from it.

Jason Thibodeau (23:51.237)
And that just goes right back to the roots of learning how to hunt deer. You know, you're learning how to do habitat improvements and stuff. And that's the thing we were intimidated from day one with, gosh, there's so many trees we've got to get out of here. there's so much to clean up. What are we going to do with it? You know, and we have access because we're self-employed to different pieces of equipment and everything. And we can get rid of it. We can burn it. We can cut it and all that. Time is a big thing, you know, so trying to budget like.

Dan Johnson (23:55.278)
Yeah, exactly.

Jason Thibodeau (24:18.457)
How much time do you want to spend on how much land? But when you fail, you actually do learn quite a bit from it. And we've learned that over the the course of having this property now for, gosh, what's it been 12 years? There's there's definitely different things that we can do to make this even better. And part of it's not necessarily putting in more food. Part of it's putting in screens and creating like what you said, like a hallway, a walkway, you know, and getting them to funnel in this way.

Because out in front of us, it's all wide open, you know, so to get those deer to come out from those staging areas or come out from those bedding areas, we've created those little staging pockets and then they will come out. But then when they come out, they're wide open. And so some of our stuff in front of us, because this is a really long piece of property, some of it in front of us, we need to create little buffers or little barriers. So that way they have to actually come in, investigate to get around it, to see what's in the next food plot or destination.

Dan Johnson (25:18.776)
Right, right. And so that's the goal is, I mean, it's not very complex and I think it's gonna take maybe eight hours to do what I want leading up for next season. This isn't a multi-day project. This is me going in, making a complete mess and creating thick, nasty habitat. And that's ultimately in my experience is what deer want. Now.

Jason Thibodeau (25:44.261)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (25:49.411)
The next step after that, like if I'm looking down a multi-year track on this particular farm, then I have to go back to the landowner and ask him what I can and cannot do, right? Do I ask if I can frost seed some clover or some alfalfa in his CRP or in his, you know, because he's getting paid CRP for some of this property. And within that, I believe you can dedicate 10 %

or some kind of percentage to wildlife. So that means out of this, I'm not 100 % sure. Let's say just for numbers, right? If there's 10 acres of CRP, I might, I think I can use one acre for food plots, for natural type food plots for wildlife. And so that means I might be able to do a little burn job or go in there with a plow or a...

Jason Thibodeau (26:18.959)
Yep.

Jason Thibodeau (26:37.507)
Yep, yep, yeah, you're correct with that.

Dan Johnson (26:48.033)
a cultivator and work some stuff up and sprinkle some frost seed, some clover into it. Another thing that doesn't have to be beautiful. It doesn't have to look like a hunting video. These big, know, box blind, perfect manicured food plots because deer spend majority of their time browsing on natural browse. And so if you can mix in

Jason Thibodeau (27:14.188)
Absolutely.

Dan Johnson (27:15.776)
some of that clover, alfalfa, maybe even some radishes or whatever the case is, in with some of this natural browse, I think that's just a win.

Jason Thibodeau (27:25.079)
Yeah, and that's that's why I say like our main goal on our property is simply just to give them more food, more opportunity at something different that they might not be able to get from the neighbors. You know, we know we can pull them off of there. We know we have, you know, acorns. We know we have natural natural browse. So we just entice them with a couple of different varieties of things. And it generally seems to work. But moving forward, yeah, definitely. We just need to get rid of some of the scrap trees and some of the invasive stuff.

But to what you had said earlier, you know, like with the multiflora rose, I mean, honeysuckle is the same way. You know, they're very invasive, but yet the deer love that stuff. It's thick. They can hide it, hide in it. You know, it's generally at that five foot height. They're better and it's perfect for it. So if you're not worried about necessarily a nutritional value and you're more worried about like seclusion for the deer or them to feel safe, maybe you leave pockets of that stuff and it's OK.

Dan Johnson (28:19.598)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let me ask you a weird question. This is something that I look at it as a shortcut. And that way it's not a lot of work. Okay, so you'll see when a tree dies naturally out in the woods, right? It starts to fall apart. starts to decompose. starts to like the bark, all that bark falls off. A lot of that nutrients kind of goes back into the ground. And then stuff starts to grow up around it. There's obviously no cover.

And as a landscape guy, do you have any experience with like poison nails to where you can just hammer a poison nail into a tree and it dies over time and it doesn't? Do you have any experience with that?

Jason Thibodeau (29:10.789)
Not not poison nails. And most of the time, if we want to get rid of something, we you know, we cut it flush in a fresh cut, then we'll put toward on, you know, stump stump killer basically on it. And it does work. mean, I've seen it. Matter of fact, here at home, the farmer wanted to clean up around his field edges. So one year I helped him out and he says, well, I'm going to be brushing each cut. So he literally had a little bucket and a paint brush and he had a guy in a loader who would literally brush each cut.

Dan Johnson (29:19.426)
Okay.

Jason Thibodeau (29:40.313)
Well, now those trees have actually died because of that. And it was fine because they weren't there were trees of no value or whatever to me, even though they were on my side. I chose to leave them for the time being because what I'm doing at home is I'm replacing trees. So we take, you know, five out. I put 20 in. Well, that does work. takes some time. But I think in that's been three or four years now, and those trees are completely dead. So.

Dan Johnson (30:06.594)
Yeah, yeah, because I look at something like that if it's, don't know if it's, I have to do research on that. So I'm looking at this. I think what happens is they may not be poisonous, but they might be like a copper nail. And the way that that copper deteriorates in the tree causes a chemical reaction that ends up killing the tree.

Jason Thibodeau (30:22.126)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Thibodeau (30:31.886)
Okay

Dan Johnson (30:31.905)
And so I don't know if you remember the story several years ago where an Alabama fan went to Auburn and Auburn at one of these intersections within campus had this tree that was like really like it meant a lot. had a lot of tradition. It had a lot. And he he said that this somebody nailed used a poison nail or a copper nail or something like that into that tree. And eventually it died. It ended up killing it. Yeah.

Jason Thibodeau (31:00.195)
wow okay no

Dan Johnson (31:01.742)
And so I look at something like that. If it's the right thing to do or not, I'm not 100 % sure this is something I should probably follow up on. But as an option, as a, as a poor man's option, you buy the nail, you got the hammer, you just go into the tree, you nail it in and in handful of years it's dead and it allows sunlight to get to the floor. You don't have to worry about falling a tree. Um, you don't have to worry about, you know, try trying to run a chainsaw. You just hammered in and it dies naturally.

Jason Thibodeau (31:31.789)
Yeah, so when you talk about these trees, are you talking something fairly significant in size?

Dan Johnson (31:38.019)
Well, it could potentially be. mean, let's just say some of these bigger locust trees, right? With all the thorns and things like that. just, I clear out a little path. I hammer one of those nails in and the, know, and it may not die instantly, but in two or three years it'll be dead. And then it does, obviously it's not falling to the ground, but it's allowing sunlight in.

Jason Thibodeau (31:40.324)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Thibodeau (31:53.364)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jason Thibodeau (32:00.791)
Yeah, so that's I was going to say, you know, to that point, it depends on the amount of time that you want to spend on this project. This is a five year plan. Is this a 10 year plan? One thing I will say when guys are hinge cutting or cutting any trees to remove them or whatever, maybe use extra caution in the woods because those trees get hung up up top. And if you're not a tree expert and you can really get to get yourself in a bind.

Dan Johnson (32:26.318)
Yeah, be very cautious. I've seen that firsthand where, yeah, so I did that last year. So I went in on a run and gun, right? So I went in on a run and gun, I brought a pole saw and I set up my tree stand and there was a big branch right in my face. All right? And so I went in.

Jason Thibodeau (32:31.246)
So,

Dan Johnson (32:53.261)
and I didn't, the branch was probably a five inch branch. Like it was a big branch on this Osage orange tree that came out right towards my stand. I needed it down. So I decided to cut the whole branch down and I didn't cut it all the way through. I just got it to the point where it started to sag. I didn't know and it got caught up on another tree branch. Then I left, I came back three or four days later and then I

Jason Thibodeau (33:11.173)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (33:22.508)
was in my tree stand and it fell. And so all these smaller branches slapped down across my leg and my tree stand. And so I would say if you are gonna do some kind of cutting, make sure that the tree that you're cutting is all the way to the ground so that you don't have a scenario like that happen. It's not going anywhere.

Jason Thibodeau (33:25.794)
Hmm.

Jason Thibodeau (33:49.719)
Yeah, I mean, I've seen them, I mean, firsthand where, we go in there and we try to cut them and they get caught up in the top canopy of another tree, you know, and then we got to get the backhoe in there or something to shove it over. But I mean, I've seen some really nasty stuff with people not knowing what they were doing. And then it comes back on them or, you know, falls the wrong way. Just use caution. That's all I say with it. You know, so that's why we try to we pick an area where we're on the outside and we can get a path going in and we start removing that way.

that's, that's only thing I would say with that. Otherwise, you know, like you're saying with these poison nails or if you can make a fresh cut somewhere on a tree and put some toward on, on it. I mean, those are great options too, is if it, if it's a five to 10 year plan of trying to eliminate those trees.

Dan Johnson (34:20.11)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (34:33.987)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so the one thing that I forgot to talk about with this hallway conversation that I want to create hallway with bedrooms is access routes. Like I would really focus on at least this is what I'm doing. I'm focusing on access route first to a good terrain feature type. And then I have my access route. I have my tree stand location. And then I am creating these

bedrooms on this hallway around where my tree stands or my saddle platforms will be hung so That's that's the goal is to access first stand location You know because in order you can't just go in create a bedding area and maybe what happens is I got this great bedding area deer coming in and out of it, but I can't access it now because of

Jason Thibodeau (35:10.51)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Thibodeau (35:27.321)
Right? Right.

Dan Johnson (35:29.998)
I can only access from a certain direction. Maybe the wind isn't... Let's say I set things up for an east wind. This year it would have been great, but next year I'm like, maybe I'll only get one east wind or something like that throughout the course of my rut vacation. So I really do think that you have to reverse engineer your habitat work to know

Jason Thibodeau (35:41.241)
Mm-hmm

Dan Johnson (35:58.915)
Where do you think the deer are coming from? If you're creating a place where they're going to be, you have to know, is this a morning hunt? Is this an afternoon hunt? What's my access route gonna be? What's the terrain feature that I'm hunting? And then build your habitat around that. Again, this is coming from someone who has never done that type of thing. One of the next podcasts that we will be doing on this will be with some sort of

quote unquote expert or someone who has way more experience than what we do. So pay attention to that. I want to have the Dan Johnson version of this, the inexperienced thought process on this, and then I'm gonna go in and do it because I'll be completely honest, man. I like to look into experts.

Jason Thibodeau (36:34.223)
Sure.

Dan Johnson (36:55.075)
but I like to do things myself to see what works myself. I don't know, maybe that's just my style. I'll talk with some pros about it, but at the end of the day, I have to be the one who does it. I have to be the one that makes the decisions, then I can't blame it on anybody if it does go wrong. It's my fault.

Jason Thibodeau (37:18.391)
I think that's the way you learn the best is when you're hands on.

Dan Johnson (37:22.294)
Yeah, right, right. Is there any other things that people need to be aware of if they are going to be taking on their first habitat improvement project this upcoming winter?

Jason Thibodeau (37:36.439)
I would say if you're doing the habitat stuff like you were saying with the access, I that's a huge thing because I was thinking ours kind of lies a little bit differently where when we walk in, we're walking, you know, the property is 1900 and some feet long and we're walking in and up and over a hill and that whole field is open, you know, so our food is right out in front of our woods. And so we don't have great access to this property because if deer are already in that field and they're feeding.

that they get, they pick us off right away. But what I would say is if you're going to do some habitat stuff, the biggest thing I would say is if you're going to put food plots in, do a soil test, know what your pH is and know what to put on. If you don't know what to put on, I you can ask the local farm service stores. They have a lot of the stuff that you can use and buy a lot of the farm and fleets or fleet farms or whatever. They have some chemicals. They have some fertilizers and stuff that can get you started.

But do a simple pH test. I think that's huge.

Dan Johnson (38:37.455)
Yeah, all right. The only other thing that I think I want to talk about is when we are out on the property and we are doing our habitat work, I almost feel like you should have another person with you, especially if you're brand new to this and you've never cut down a tree before or you've never, I don't know, like you've never done this stuff. Even if that person isn't doing anything, just.

Jason Thibodeau (39:05.626)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Johnson (39:06.702)
be there to watch you or someone who can make a phone call if a tree does fall on you. You know what I mean? Just have somebody else there that you might be able to talk it out with. Maybe it's a buddy. Maybe it's a person on the property that you hunt with. Maybe it's the landowner. Maybe it's your wife who just sits there and does nothing. And I think that might be a good idea.

Jason Thibodeau (39:13.912)
yeah.

Jason Thibodeau (39:27.887)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (39:33.934)
for someone who is brand new to this kind of thing. Because I will be doing this with another person. Who that person is, I don't know. It might be my daughter. At least she can call 911. And really, that's all I'm doing.

Jason Thibodeau (39:42.873)
Yeah. Right.

Yeah, yeah, I will say if you if you do decide to do habitat improvement with a fellow hunter that is hunting on the same properties, you I almost guarantee that you will be butting heads at some point because you're going to look at it in a different way. You're going to have a different perspective of how you think the deer are going to move through there or whatever. So be ready for that if you're if doing it that way. Otherwise, you know, it's like I same thing. You know, I take my kids with me or I take, my brother comes with.

But yeah, definitely. I think having somebody there is a must.

Dan Johnson (40:19.596)
Yeah, yeah, okay. All right, well, outside of that, I think we're good to go. I wanted to keep this somewhat short today. Jason, any final thoughts?

Jason Thibodeau (40:32.087)
Not much. Anybody that's got left season left, enjoy it because it's going to be another grueling, what, eight, nine months before we can do this again.

Dan Johnson (40:40.751)
Right, right. Well, the good thing is, you know, this is the How to Hunt Deer podcast, but there is shed hunting, right? There is maybe some habitat work. There's definitely season, turkey season. There's food plot season. There is trail camera inventory. There, another thing that we're going to be talking about here in the next couple episodes is the taking advantage. And this is in my opinion, where, where

Jason Thibodeau (40:50.521)
Yes.

Dan Johnson (41:09.664)
A lot of guys don't take advantage of post-season scouting with no vegetation on the ground or on the trees. You can look at the terrain and especially if there's snow, man, it is a roadmap to killing deer, period. And so we're gonna be talking about that and fishing and mushrooms and then obviously we're by the time July hits, we're back at it, man. We're back into the velvet game and so.

Jason Thibodeau (41:16.035)
Yeah. Yep.

Jason Thibodeau (41:24.261)
huh.

Jason Thibodeau (41:37.753)
Yeah.

Dan Johnson (41:39.503)
I don't know, man. It comes full circle. It's 365 if you want to make it. I know that I'm the kind of guy who I'm not as 365 as I used to be, but I am every couple weeks I'll pop my head in during the off season. I'll be like, okay, what's going on here? What do I need to be doing? Things like that.

Jason Thibodeau (41:56.877)
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I'm not as much as I used to be, but I definitely each year it seems like I get a little more amped up about this part of it or that part of it. You know, the last couple of years has been saddle hunting and being a little more mobile. And I think I think there's there's more to it. you can enjoy it, especially especially if you get other people involved and you have a buddy to do it with or the kids to do it with. You know, it is pretty fun to set up new cameras in different locations or do the habitat work.

And you can make it 365, absolutely.

Dan Johnson (42:30.262)
Absolutely. My man, Jason, I appreciate your time. Good luck to everybody out there who's finishing up the season, maybe trying to fill the freezer. If you're in the South and you're rocking and rolling, good luck on your rut adventures. I know that what we're talking about today is more Midwest type focus, but there are plenty of episodes that we've already done about the rut that you guys can go listen to from three or four months ago.

and you can relate to those outside of that. Be safe, have fun, good vibes, and we will talk to you next week.

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