Ep. 1055: Back 40 – Finding the Best Place on A Property That has Had Little to No Improvements

00:00:00
Speaker 1: All right, folks, welcome back to another episode of Back forty. I’m Jake Hooefer and this week we’re starting a new batch of guests. Our panel has been updated with some really awesome guests that you guys will get to hear their insight and intuition and advice for one single topic each week leading all the way to October first. So we’re going to be talking about a lot of things here in this next.

00:00:24
Speaker 2: Batch of Back forty.

00:00:27
Speaker 1: In this batch, we have Bill Winki that really needs no introduction. We have Adam Keith with Land and Legacy, We have Aaron Warburton from the hunting public, and we have Jeff Sturgis from White Habitat Solutions. So we have a little bit of diversity here throughout the Midwest talking about things that will be applicable likely no matter where you hunt white tails, and what problems you might be facing. And to kick things off, I often feel that the best spot on the pharmist sometimes can be pretty obvious, if the property has been improved over the years, or maybe you have some experience. But I wanted to go back to the ground level, very beginning stages and principles of finding the best spot and what does that mean? What are the potential terrain features, what are the key habitat items to keep in mind? And ultimately this should hopefully have you relook at an existing piece and understand if, hey, this I think is the best spot, but maybe after listening to this episode there’s some other areas that might make more sense.

00:01:27
Speaker 2: Or number two, if you have just got new access and.

00:01:31
Speaker 1: You want to create your quote unquote best spot, you’re going to have a jump start here with this episode of Back forty. To kick things off, let’s go ahead and start with Adam Keith with land Legacy. All right, we have Adam with Lane Legacy and we’re jumping into this. And what I think is interesting because when people listen to like how to find the best spot on the farm, a lot of times the answer is geared towards well, yeah, you put in this food pot, you do this work, you do all these different things. But imagine you’re either going to a piece that you just got, you just got at least you just knocked on the door.

00:02:10
Speaker 2: Nothing’s been done to it.

00:02:12
Speaker 1: And I want a kind of a step by step process of finding the best place on a property that has little to no improvement. So there might be some existing infrastructure like row crops, there might be some sort of a creek system, there might be an old cattle pond, so like, I’ll give you the canvas to paint on it a little bit. But it’s not like you have this bullproof set up and that’s the best spot. Like that hasn’t been constructed and won’t be constructed in this scenario.

00:02:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it’s very exciting. Thanks for having me back.

00:02:43
Speaker 3: I think this is this kind of these questions always make me look back, you know, going back to pre landing legacy, pre my career and going okay, I got permission, or I’m going on this new piece of public ground, what am I even gonna do? And I think primarily the first and foremost question is trying to figure out where they’re going to be daylighting on this property, and that means where are they betting or close to betting. The betting may be just adjacent, but for me, the whole principle of success is figuring out where they’re betting, which means where they’re at in daylight hours. So I’m looking at the property just diving in with with that in mind.

00:03:23
Speaker 1: So let’s run through a scenario. I’m gonna make this harder each step of the way too. The betting. The betting is you found a real thick area and it’s on the very back part of the farm. There’s row crops I’m picturing, you know, a square and accesses from the south for this example, and the best betting or where you would deduct where they would be betted, is on the very far north side.

00:03:48
Speaker 2: So you have to go through everything to get to that.

00:03:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I’m trying to figure out a travel corridor in between. So let’s just imagine it’s uh uh, it’s got some terrain features. So I’m trying to figure out those little side slopes or shelves or little steep draws, maybe highly eroded draws, like I’m thinking southern Iowa or Ohio portions of Indiana where it’s like it’s too steep for deer wanna they want to go across it. So I’m looking at Okay, there’s the betting area. Now where would they be going from that betting area to the crop fields or whatever the crop of choices at that time, whether it is still standing corn or it’s standing beans, or it’s early season, it’s alfalfa. I’m going from point A to point B and trying to figure out since I likely can’t get all the way back there, I’m trying to find that terrain feature that gives me that bottleneck to get in there with the appropriate wind and capitalize on it.

00:04:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, so with it sounds like number one step one is where do you think they’re betting? And for step two would be some form of terrain feature that you can utilize with that because imagine, imagine you know, someone’s like, oh, yeah, I think they bet over here, but I don’t really know how to hunt it or how do you pick the spot? Is a downwind of that betting area on a terrain putre, like what’s what are some ways of sweeten the pot to hopefully increase.

00:05:14
Speaker 2: Your odds pretty much?

00:05:15
Speaker 3: And then I’m of course looking at the weather trying to figure out the day that he is going to likely be moving in daylight hours, Like I feel like there’s so many different pieces or boxes that you have to check to make it happen on a mature buck that it’s like, oh, he’s in a spot, he’s actually on me, Like, first and foremost, he has to be bedded close enough that I can get him in daylight hours, and I feel like that’s that’s something A complete one eighty to what I did as a young man was Hey, I planted this beautiful food plot. Well that doesn’t mean at all that he’s going to be there in daylight hours. And so you’re like, Okay, I’ve got this beautiful food plot and he’s not here in daylight what am I doing wrong?

00:05:54
Speaker 2: Well, I’m not going.

00:05:55
Speaker 3: Back to the foundation, which is where is he laying in the middle of the day to get him to this food block. He may be here at night, and so for me is going I’m looking at that betting as first and foremost, trying to trying to identify that because if he’s not betted on the property or close to the property, I don’t have much of a chance except for wait for the rut when he’s up moving a lot during the day. Yeah, which is a frustrating game plan, if you even want to call it a game plan.

00:06:23
Speaker 2: I’ve been there.

00:06:24
Speaker 3: I know it’s fun, but it’s not fun, you know. As a young man, I love the rut. As I’ve gotten older, I hate it because it’s like, throw the plan out, because you’re just you know, you can have a pretty good plan, but a hot dough runs across the county road and runs him out through the middle of a wide open field, and all of a sudden, a gun hunter rows him down. Like it to me, it’s like as private land managers, which is what I usually am dealing with in my consulting business, and then as a private landowner, it’s like, huh, I want to kill him long before the rut comes in, because that’s just.

00:06:58
Speaker 2: The rut is chaos is chaos.

00:07:01
Speaker 1: And every day that you don’t connect with that deer you’ve been thinking about all summer, there’s another day that it could get killed by car or something.

00:07:08
Speaker 2: This is something real, silly. It’s like that elephant in the room.

00:07:11
Speaker 3: It’s a giant stop watch, and each time it clicks, you’re like, oh, it’s.

00:07:15
Speaker 2: Closer to the US, close to the closer.

00:07:17
Speaker 3: The rut it makes you gets you your anxiety raises.

00:07:21
Speaker 1: For sure, I want you to think about all how many farms do you think you’ve been on over the years now, like ballpark hundreds?

00:07:29
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure.

00:07:30
Speaker 3: I think we’re between Matt and I and a handful of other consultants, we have. We’re somewhere in between two hundred and fifty thousand and three one hundred thousand acres that we’ve covered in roughly ten years.

00:07:42
Speaker 1: Okay, so so think of all the different pieces of landscape, different habitat everything. Yeah, what how often is the best spot on a farm? Just it was how the earth was made? Like, how often is that really when you’re on a farm and maybe the guy he’s like, man, we’ve had this farm for a while for whatever reason, this spot seems to be the best. And then you talk to them and you’re like, oh, I can see why that makes sense, But like, how often is the best spot already there from a terrain feature or something else and you enhance that, or how often is it the best spot needs to be constructed?

00:08:15
Speaker 2: Does that make sense? Yeah? I mean maybe I won’t.

00:08:20
Speaker 3: I won’t answer it in direct sense, but I would say there is usually always great spots on the farm. And I’ll just say on average, we’re working two to three hundred acre size forms. That’s probably the average size when you add it all up, and I would say there’s always going to be a couple of really good spots, meaning you can tell that there is a buck who frequents the area, and that is almost always, in my opinion, based on terrain. When I roll in there, it’s like, wow, Okay, I can look at the topo I’m scanning on X and I see that little feature or it could be throw on light R and I’m looking at the little bend in the creek and it’s just a few feet higher elevation. Walk in there and sure enough you can see a perennial bed, a bed that’s used frequently, and you can see old rubs and new rubs, like okay, this is this is awesome. Those are typically there. But I’m always with the mindset we can always make it better.

00:09:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it’s almost like figure out what the best spot is, and then beyond that, it’s like, okay, how do we enhance that? Do we need to improve the habitat in the adjacent area or access or whatever the case may be.

00:09:38
Speaker 3: But or hit copy paste twelve times over and make that spot throughout the property?

00:09:44
Speaker 2: Yeah. Interesting.

00:09:45
Speaker 1: How often are you on a farm and you know, you obviously look at it where you get there and then you have boots on the ground. How often does the landowner say, you know, you find the spot that you think.

00:09:54
Speaker 2: Is really good, and they’re like, huh, never really thought of that.

00:09:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so it does happen more often than yeah, not that that happens a lot where it’s like you find those little spots. Typically, just trying to train the guy to understand that we’re we’re looking at this backwards and what he’s probably used to where your Yeah, your food plots are okay, they’re great, they’re whatever. But let’s go and figure out why you hired me, which is because you’re not getting this success you wanted. So let’s roll in, let’s look at the let’s find these betting areas, and so we just try to look at the topo features or look at maybe changes in the in the structure that have a ten structure of the canopy and roll in there and oh, there’s deer beds. Okay, now I’ve convinced you that I do know some lot of what I’m talking about, and so let’s figure out what makes this so good and see how we.

00:10:46
Speaker 2: Can replicate it.

00:10:47
Speaker 1: Okay, and just to put a bow on it, you said, typically it’s in relation to some form of terrain more than likely where this best mood is going.

00:10:55
Speaker 2: To be for sure.

00:10:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I would say that to to kind of piggyback on your last question. One of the more common things that I run into is not the Okay, this is a great spot and you knew it. It’s more of you think this is a great spot, but your access is horrible, like, oh, this is your favorite spot. We roll in, I can see the stand, I can see the old stand, I can see a blind that’s now placed here.

00:11:21
Speaker 2: What is making this? Like? Why why is there so much honey?

00:11:24
Speaker 3: Oh?

00:11:25
Speaker 2: This is our favorite spot on the whole farm.

00:11:27
Speaker 3: Well, your access is horrible, like what what?

00:11:32
Speaker 2: What are we thinking here?

00:11:33
Speaker 3: Without hurting the guy’s feelings that that’s probably the most common is you roll in, you find a spot that the guy just absolutely loves, and you’ve got to convince him that it’s not so great.

00:11:43
Speaker 1: And that’s just based off of riskers rewards. So like, let’s say he had the discipline to say, you know, I only come in here when the time is right, and here, Adam, look at this last year year before. I guess I’m probably not calling you if that’s the case, but you know last year and then four years ago, like yeah, I mean, what is that conversation, like, because I feel like everyone everyone, no matter what the farmer’s like, there’s this spot that you want to go into so bad, but it just I can’t wrap my head around it. And it’s like maybe it’s good once or twice, and then after that it’s truly diminishing returns.

00:12:14
Speaker 3: Very rarely am I dealing with the guy who it’s like repetitive success.

00:12:18
Speaker 2: You know, if he’s having that, he’s not hiring me.

00:12:21
Speaker 3: And then at that point it’s like, okay, so that guy’s irrelevant to me just from a working relationship.

00:12:29
Speaker 2: So you’ve got the guy who’s had success.

00:12:31
Speaker 3: Usually it’s his favorite spot because he’s killed the biggest theories ever get on his farm and it was ten plus years ago. Yeah, and he’s like, I just wish I had more, you know, more consistent success. It’s like, yeah, I wish you did too, So we need more consistent access because.

00:12:47
Speaker 1: I feel like they’re giving something up when you have that conversation, like I’m giving up this spot or do they see the ROI of making that decision.

00:12:56
Speaker 3: Basically I kind of take it with the approach of hey, I’m know you really like this spot. This is obviously your favorite spot on the farm, and everything else feels like a gar hole, So why don’t we go and make a bunch of spots that feel really great and less gar holes.

00:13:12
Speaker 2: And with that.

00:13:13
Speaker 3: Approach, it seems like they’re way more receptive of it. And then we add in a couple betting areas. I teach them how to run trail cameras, and all of a sudden, they’ve got big deer on the farm walking in daylight.

00:13:26
Speaker 2: No, now they’re a believer. Yeah that makes sense.

00:13:28
Speaker 1: Well, Adam, we’re gonna have you on back fordy Here a couple more times in the coming weeks. But where can people fallo along with what you have going on? You have a lot of great content.

00:13:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you social media, Land and Legacy. You can check out our podcast as well. Just search Land and Legacy and all your major platforms are there.

00:13:45
Speaker 2: You have it.

00:13:46
Speaker 1: That is Adam’s insight. Always appreciate getting a variety of different opinions, And you know, I think it’s pretty interesting hearing that oftentimes, even when he goes to a farm, the best spot might not be as obvious to the to the current landowner. So I think that is some great insight for the next part of this episode with Aaron from The Hunting Public.

00:14:06
Speaker 2: Here we go.

00:14:07
Speaker 1: All right, Aaron, welcome to a new season of Back forty. We’re gonna be running you through a bunch of different questions and dilemmas that will help people building up all the way to season, all the way to opening day, and this one I think will be very unique to you because a lot of these guys almost hunt primarily on private land. I know you hunt on some private land. I know you got a little bit of private land, but you have obviously the hunting public, and that’s almost two different animals in my opinion. You could say otherwise, but this here is to help folks that either are over complicating things and they just simply want help finding the best place on a property that has little to no improvement. So something that doesn’t have a food plot and a blind and it’s real obvious, Hey, that should be a pretty good spot. What is the step by step process to find quote unquote the best spot on any given piece of property?

00:14:56
Speaker 2: In your opinion, first.

00:14:59
Speaker 4: Thing I’d be looking, and that’s pressure whether it’s private or public, or small or large properties doesn’t matter. So if I’m going to a property. In consulting with the people that hunt it, just use forty acres as an example.

00:15:13
Speaker 2: I’m going to ask.

00:15:14
Speaker 4: Where are you hunting, where are your tree stands at, where your blinds, and how do you get to and from those, how frequently do you hunt them, what wind directions do you hunt them on, at et cetera.

00:15:27
Speaker 2: So I’m going to take a map.

00:15:29
Speaker 4: They’re going to show me all that information, and then I’m going to cross off about ninety percent of that map from where they’ve been and where they leave scent and where their camera is that they go in and out of to check all the time or whatever it is, especially if they have like two or three favorite stand locations that they hunt like every week or something. I’m just going to cross off all that, and then I’m going to I’m gonna make it very simple. A lot of times we go right to that spot and boom, that’s where the big buck sign is. That’s either where big bucks are are bedded or or that’s where they’re traveling through because it’s the one place they can kind of maneuver through the property to check dose and other deer and whatnot without being detected. You know, Eberhart Eberhart says it, well, you know when he talks about that, it’s like, you’re he’s trying not to be found by the deer. He’s trying to play, you know, if he can go to an area on that property where he can hide from other human beings. I guess that’s what he’s trying that I should back up. He’s trying not to be found by people. So if you if you perform that exercise in your brain and go to the area of the property where there’s no people, where would be very difficult to find you if you were a person looking out there, that’s usually where we find the best locations. That’s not necessarily true everywhere, but I mean almost, that’s like the number one thing that I’ve looked for.

00:16:54
Speaker 2: Does that ever shock those folks? They’re like, holy yeah, we never go over here. This is what we’ve been miss all the time. Time, Yeah, all the time. Yeah. It’s like, yeah, we never.

00:17:02
Speaker 4: We’d never really hunt the backside of this ridge for one reason or another, or it’s really thick in there. There’s you know, the wind’s always swirling down there, so we never go down there. Now, I mean, that’s another challenge in itself. You know, you find these areas and then they they are just difficult to hunt for a variety of different factors. But that is also consequently where most of the mature buck movement happens that we’ve seen.

00:17:29
Speaker 1: So in that scenario, I picture two different likelihoods, and you would have more experience to tell me, but one of them would likely be not far from maybe their house or off the road where they just completely avoid, so that one has really good, easy access, and then the other, you know, level of that is something real far back where the access is real bad. So the next step in that conversation like, all right, eron, Yeah, this is where the bucks are. Okay, now how do I hunt? How do I hunt it if it has bad access or if it is way back in the back of the property and that’s why we don’t go there, Like, what’s the next step to point them in the right direction?

00:18:03
Speaker 4: If they haven’t been having success doing whatever program they’ve been using. I’m always a big fan of just kind of throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks.

00:18:13
Speaker 2: Just try a bunch of different stuff.

00:18:15
Speaker 4: If you’ve been coming in to this property like it, for example, if you have a gate in a road. You know, on the forty acres that you’re hunting, and you pull into that gate and you walk in from that gate every time, I would do everything in my power to try to access that property a bunch of different ways. You know, maybe you can only come in from it from one road, but you can park there and swoop way around a fence line and cut all the way up your boundary you know, of your property and hook in from the back. That just something different, a different way to get in and out of there. That would be the number one thing that I’d start thinking about, and then I would I would go and hunt those spots, not being worried about book and deer the first year. I would just if it’s a spot that you don’t have experience hunting, some things you’re going to be able to figure out, you know, by listening to podcasts and thinking about stuff. But you really need to go and sit the spot. You need to see how deer use that particular spot, how the wind behaves in that particular spot, and then learn from that, you know. I mean, it may be a situation where you can only hunt it the last hour of the day when the day winds die off and the thermals fall into a creek bottom or something, you know, especially if it’s down low where you got swirling winds, or it may be a situation where it’s so thick in there and there’s so many deer bedded around the periphery of that thick area that you got to wait for a cold for like a wet, windy day, and go in there at three o’clock in the morning before any deer get back to bed, you know. But all those different things I just mentioned are doing something different than what you normally do, which is probably pulling up to the gate an hour before light, parking your truck, walking down the same mode path, and then jetting off of that to get into your stands or whatever. It’s same thing in the afternoon, getting there an hour or two and a half, three hours before dark, rinse and repeat. I would just be trying to think of different ways, different things to try, and don’t be afraid to fail, because you’ll try things and you’re gonna spook deer and they’re gonna smell you, and you’re it’s gonna feel like a daunting task at first. But what you’re doing is you’re just learning. You’re relearning all of this, these sort of uncovered or these hidden gems on your property. You’ve got to relearn all those spots.

00:20:40
Speaker 1: Do you think that by doing that some of the other old obvious spots become better again because you’re you’re not hunting there religiously and you know, burning out the spots. So it makes it a little farm better in that scenario.

00:20:52
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, And I would like to I’m always trying to catch them off guard somehow or another. But you know that all changes with timing and and that sort of thing. Like if you’re if you’re dealing with early part of the rut, when bucks are traveling long distances and your property links a bunch of different cover types together, a bunch of different vetting areas together, well, then people sometimes they’re a little too timid in how they hunt, you know they are, and especially on a small property, they’re so worried about blowing the deer out, blowing the deer out, blowing the deer out. But you may have one really big buck that uses that property two and a half days a year, and it’s October thirty first, November first, and then he’s gone on November second, you know, And He may come through there two other times at three am in the middle of October, but those are the only two days in the entire fall that he’s on your property during daylight because a hot dough or his rut you know, cycle brought.

00:21:51
Speaker 2: Him through that area.

00:21:53
Speaker 4: And if you could have been leaving sent there for a week before that, as long as you didn’t blow all the dose out of the area, he’s still going to make his trek through there. So keep that in mind. It just kind of depends on the time of the year, uh, and the other factors that are going on. But yeah, going back to it, I ultimately want to try to surprise him. I want to try to catch him off guard, and then once they start getting onto my game, I want to be able to throw.

00:22:19
Speaker 2: Another curveball at him.

00:22:21
Speaker 4: That makes sense, which might be going back to your old school stands that you really like hunting, that you haven’t hunting for a month, and then.

00:22:27
Speaker 1: And then they then you smoke a giant out of it, and you’re like, see, the spot’s always been the best.

00:22:31
Speaker 2: Yep, exactly, But what about this scenario.

00:22:35
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of people will run into this and they everyone can think of the best spot, you know, whatever, whatever piece that is. Uh And when I say best I also relate that to the best sign, And a lot of times those are in bottoms where it’s really challenging to hunt. Do you think the best strategy is to try to sneak in there, you know, right at last light when the thermals are pulling down in the evenings or or are you trying to what’s your strategy? Because I know everyone can think of a spot where they’re standing in the bottom like it’s ready to be but it’s not gonna work, Like, what are you do in that scenario?

00:23:04
Speaker 2: A man?

00:23:04
Speaker 4: It depends on the details of the situation. You know, if the deer betted real close and they’re starting to get up an hour before dark, it’s gonna be really difficult for you to get in there, unless you’ve got a creak or something like that that you could come up. But that’s not to say that it can’t work. It certainly can you know if it’s oh man, I’m trying to think those bottoms are very very challenging that for that reason. But you know, thermals don’t behave the same way the day winds. Do I guess that’s the first thing I’d start thinking about. So people get in their heads that well, you know, the day winds will be blowing my scent right back up the way the deer are going to be coming from, so I can’t go in there and hunt. Well, if the day winds fall to below seven or eight miles an hour and you’re down in a bottom, they the wind, your scent may do the complete opposite of what you think. It may go down into that creek or that drainage or whatever it is that has made the bottom. You know, it may get down in there and it may either pull or it may pull one direction. Once you start figuring out which direction it tends to pull, those thermals get very predictable. So I mean, I’ve had situations where I could hunt those bottoms as long as it was less than ten mile an hour wind, I could go in there two or three hours before dark set up. In every single time, regardless of the wind direction that day on your weather app my scent was always going down that ditch every time. Now, if those if those gusts or wind speed picks up, then you’ve got another animal to deal with, you know, and that’s your that’s kicking around and wind swirl especially if you’re in a bottom. You don’t want your wind swirling so much that it’s going around to the surrounding ridges, because then you’re gonna start spooking you know, adjacent bedded.

00:25:02
Speaker 2: Deer on every knob. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so on every knob.

00:25:05
Speaker 4: So you know it’s gonna take hunting it and seeing what the wind does. But yeah, that that has been an an add advantage in some of those situations is when you get to when you get to the point where you can start to predict those thermals in that spot, that’s.

00:25:22
Speaker 2: Gonna be when you want to hunt it.

00:25:23
Speaker 4: Yeah, that’s the number one thing for if you’re bow hunting, for sure, you got to get them close, and you ain’t gonna get them close with the wind swirling real bad, especially a big one.

00:25:32
Speaker 3: No.

00:25:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I think that’s that’s super helpful, and I think that gives folks a little bit of liberty to try some new things and also catch them by surprise.

00:25:41
Speaker 2: That’s the summary of that.

00:25:42
Speaker 1: So, Aaron, where can people follow along with with everything that you have going on?

00:25:49
Speaker 4: Mostly just at the hunting public on YouTube, that’s where we post most of our current content. We still got some content on Amazon Prime, and then on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and one on all the socials, but mostly on YouTube.

00:26:02
Speaker 1: All right, moving a ride along, We’re going to jump into our conversation with Bill Winkie. Bill has had a lot of experience on a lot of different farms over the years and has provided a lot of great educational content over the years. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and get into Bill’s take on the question of finding the best spot on the farm, step by step, starting a ground zero. All right, Bill, we’re back for another round of back forty. It’s a pleasure to have you, and I’m going to be running you through questions that will lead up to dilemmas or questions that a lot of people fall into, leading all the way up to October first. But to kick things off, I often feel that a lot of people want to simply find the best place on a farm, and so sometimes that’s a little bit more obvious if it’s been worked on, there’s a food plot, there’s been a lot of work that’s already been done, and the blueprint is kind of already in front of you. So now I want you to shift back to maybe days where used to knock on doors or maybe just a brand new farm. And what is the process of finding the best place on a property that has little to no improvements is kind of the root of this question.

00:27:06
Speaker 5: Well, it’s going to depend on the time of the season that you’re trying to hunt. So what time frame, like does it matter? Like this is any point?

00:27:14
Speaker 1: So this is more summer scouting, so you can still identify that, hey, this is going to be really good in November, or this could be really good in January, you know, So Okay, seasons.

00:27:24
Speaker 5: Not not necessarily good early season spots or anything like that.

00:27:27
Speaker 2: Yep, so anything you want.

00:27:29
Speaker 5: So I think the most important first step is always to find what they’re feeding on, to find the food. And I’ve always said you find the food, you find the deer, and you know during the rut, you know, you find the doe, you find the bucks. Well, the dose are going to be where the food is too, at least at first. You know, once they get harassed enough, then you know they’ll stop coming out to feed in the in the more obvious places. So that’s, uh, that’s got to be the first step. I always to figure out what are they likely to be feeding on, because they’re not going to be too far from that, And if it’s say a typical agriculture type of environment, then you know they’re going to be in the back corners of the crop fields, or you know, spots that are a little bit less visible from the roads or from the houses, someplace over the backside of a hill. You know that it’s not too hard to figure out where they’re going to come out. At a lot of times, there’ll be a draw that comes up out of the timber, and that’s you know, you figure, okay, that’s where they’re going to be coming out to feed. But the challenge really comes when you don’t have obvious food sources, so could just be big timber, Like maybe it’s an eighty acre property in the middle of a you know, a five six, seven, eight hundred acre timber tract. You might not really have much of a feeding area, So you have to identify that fact that maybe what you’re dealing with is only a bedding area or you know, a pass through area. You know, right now, we’re just starting to scout acorns and we’re finding a lot of them on certain types of trees. So that’s another thing is you know, you’re out there doing some scouting, pay attention to where the acorns are, because even if it’s an egg environment, the deer is still going to go where the acorns are because they would rather eat acorns than soybeans, are almost anything. You know, maybe alf alfa would rival acorns, but you know they’d rather eat acorns than corn or soybeans. So that’s another thing to look for again, find the food, find the deer. Then the obvious stuff is just the terrain related funnels, you know, and those generally jump out at you if you’ve done very much scouting. You know they’re going to go around the head of a ditch, or you know, they might cross a creek. You know, in the areas where the banks are the most gradual, if there’s a bluff edge, you know they’re going to walk along that ridgetops. They have a certain way that they move on those, you know, the usually on the down wind side of a ridge line that’s usually where the bucks will travel.

00:30:08
Speaker 2: So there’s a lot of.

00:30:09
Speaker 5: Really like common movement characteristics that you can look for. But that’s what I would do, is that I would start with an aerial photo and a topo map, and I would do a lot of my scouting right there, and then I would go on site to verify my hunches based on what I saw on the aerial photos and the topo maps, just to you know, to get that terrain part figured out and that travel you know, the obvious travel routes figured out. And that’s more of a rut pattern. The feeding areas are more of an early season pattern and maybe a late season pattern, depending upon how much hunting pressure is in the area. Is that Does that answer the question? If you got to start big, you start broad, You’re gonna learn as you go. I mean, it’s gonna be hard to identify the absolute best spots just you know scouting. I’ve learned that the hard way that you think I will I can find the tree. You probably won’t find the tree. You might find, you know, the right area, but it’s gonna be it’s gonna take some experience to find the tree.

00:31:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:31:09
Speaker 1: And I was gonna ask, you know, obviously you spent a lot of time here on your new farm when when you first you know, looked at the top of map, like, oh yeah, this should be the best spot on the farm. Has that seemed to be true or has it been a little bit more unpredictable than what conventional wisdom would tell you from looking at a map and your gut instinct too.

00:31:29
Speaker 5: No, I think they’re doing what I thought they would, you know, And I grew up hunting this type of train, and even the Southern Iowa farm was similar from a train standpoint, just not as as much relief. You know, where this one, you know, the tops of the bluffs and the valleys are five hundred feet apart. On the Southern Iowa farm they might have been one hundred and fifty feet apart, but it still had the same, you know, the same effect on how the deer moved, you know, where they bedded, where the bus traveled during the run, the types of funnels they moved through. So I don’t think I was surprised by that. The thing that really surprised me the most on this farm was how little these deer come out in the open. And that’s been really perplexing to me because every place I’ve hunted, you know, the deer kind of make themselves vulnerable by coming to you, and on this farm they don’t. You have to go to them which took me a couple of years to figure out. And they’re harder to kill when you have to go to them because you hunt them on your terms when they’re coming to you, you’re hunting them on their terms when you’re going to where they’re at, which that’s a lot different.

00:32:32
Speaker 2: Why why do you think that is?

00:32:34
Speaker 5: I don’t know. I think there’s there’s This was cattle country, so I don’t think these deer generation after generation have had fruit sources, you know, they just it’s just been you know, feeding on brows, feeding on acorns. You know, maybe they traveled someplace else for the winter, you know, in the past, because there was no food here. There was no food plots, there was no agg you know, anywhere nearby. So these deer where you know, they kind of had a little bit different lifestyle, I think than what I’m used to. Plus, the density is not real high, and there is tons of brows in the timber, and we’ve had a lot of really good acorn years and this farm is like ninety percent oak, and there’s just one hundred thousand oak trees. I don’t know how many oak trees are. I mean, it’s not like tens of thousands it’s more than that. And wow, I mean they don’t even eat all the acorns. You know, they’re in the fall, they’re still viable live, you know, good good acorns in april. That just can’t eat them all. So there’s just too much food in that sense. So these dere don’t have any stress. And the easiest deer to kill are the ones that are under stress. You know, whether it’s late season, you know, it’s cold and they’ve got to get the corner or whatever it is, or maybe it’s it’s really dry and they’re stressed because they got to have some water. You know, anything that makes them like vulnerable or you know, creates stress, gives you something that you can take advantage of, and these dere just don’t seem to have very much of that. So they’ve been they’ve been tougher to kill.

00:34:04
Speaker 2: Let me let me ask you this question.

00:34:06
Speaker 1: So obviously you had a book written Creeks and Ditches, and so it’s focused on creeks and ditches. What if there’s a creek that runs through a property. What is the first thing you do if you see a creek is running through property.

00:34:18
Speaker 5: On the top of that, well, I mean, you know, for one thing, there’s going to be swirling wind swirling, but you also know that there’s a bunch of really good funnels because if you look at the topographical map or the aerial photo even you can see the S curves in the creek. Well, the middle of the S is where the banks are gradual, Like each bend has a high bank because you know, the creek always cuts, you know, when it turns. The deer generally don’t cross on those high banks. So if you find big sweeping gradual turns with the you know s, you know the middle of the S, you’re gonna have a lot of deer funneling through that one spot where you’ve got gradual banks. So it’s pretty easy pattern hunt if you can figure out, you know, how to control your scent because you know, you get down in those valleys. If you’re hunting on a crosswind, then you’re gonna get a lot of swirling Sometimes when the wind dies, you can hunt them pretty effectively because you’re just gonna get the thermals pulling your scent right down in the same direction that the water’s going. And you know, I’ve had some success doing that over the years, and a lot of times in the evenings right before dark, last hour let’s say of legal sheoting time, that wind will lay right down and you’ll get that thermal effect. It’s just whether or not you can, you know, stay undetected long enough in that location for that last hour to pay off. But you and that’s an obvious one. The creeks, they create a lot of funnels and that’s what they’re good for. And in the deer we usually travel along the side of them also, but there are going to be some very obvious crossings in the middle of that big.

00:35:54
Speaker 1: Ass all right, Well, Bill, I appreciate your your insight and step by step guide to white people in the right direction. I think there’s a little bit of grace hearing it from you that you might find the area, but it might take a while to find the spots.

00:36:08
Speaker 2: So I think there’s some grace to that.

00:36:10
Speaker 5: No, I think that’s true.

00:36:11
Speaker 2: Awesome, Bill.

00:36:12
Speaker 1: Where can people find everything that you have going on? I know you’re still posting videos.

00:36:16
Speaker 5: Just the Bill Winky YouTube channel. That’s the best place, and you know I do check in there all the time. So if you watch a video and you have a comment or a question, you know I’m going to do my best to correspond with you there.

00:36:29
Speaker 2: All right, folks, there, you guys have it.

00:36:30
Speaker 1: We’re going to roll into the next and last guest here for this week. It is with Jeff Sturgis of White Tail Habitat Solutions. Jeff is probably consulted on more farms than just about anyone. This should be very helpful for anyone. Let’s go ahead and close it out here with Jeff Sturgis.

00:36:46
Speaker 2: Here we go.

00:36:47
Speaker 1: All right, Jeff, welcome back to back forty. We’re gonna be talking about different dilemmas and questions that everyone has building all the way up to October first, starting today July twenty third, and to kick things off, I want to ask the question of you know, sometimes there’s a very obvious best spot on a farm, maybe a really great destination food source, or maybe a spot that has great access, something that has been worked on and tinkered and it’s like the best spot has likely been designed to some degree, so we’re gonna scrap that, We’re thrown out that out the window for someone that is just getting access to something new or just got permission or a new lease, or just bought a new property. In your opinion, what is finding the best place on a property that has had little to know improvements. What’s that step by step process?

00:37:37
Speaker 6: Now are we talking for the early season or more of the rut? Now we’re looking up to October first, you know that timeframe.

00:37:42
Speaker 1: Great, great qualifying question, I would say overall, So for someone that’s that’s relatively new or this simply needs a refresher, So maybe we could break it down. What is it like early you know, before the pre rut, even then pre rut rut and so on, we could, you know, quickly kind of go through each pace.

00:37:59
Speaker 6: Sure, and I look at like the early season, I’m really focusing on food sources, so that afternoon hunt in the early season is premium to me, really hard to go into the morning. There are those setups in the morning where you can wait at the backside of a woodlot. There’s ag or food on the opposite side of the woodlot. You’re waiting for those bucks to come back into the backside of that wood lot ready at your feet in the morning. A pretty low impact to access, maybe off a road across the creek or something, and just kind of thinking of some circumstances. But unless you have a pretty defined morning setup, it’s really tough. So afternoon they’re hitting food, and that food that they’re hitting in the early season is usually not there just two or three weeks later, whether that’s beans, even early season white acorn drop, open hardwoods where they’re eating leaves. Bucks and their bedding areas are different. Then they’re more in open areas. They’re not going to crush your velvet. So I’m looking for areas that sometimes are out in the fringe areas of property where they’re going to a neighboring food source. Again, this is a property that hasn’t been set up, and so I’m looking at where are those bucks going from on the property right now, and where are they going to on the neighboring food sources, and how can I set up that It’s probably going to relate to open, more mature timber, easy access in and out, and then I’m not going into the heart of the property where I might destroy betting that’s going to pay off really good later. And that’s where when it gets later in the season, and you’ll see that those early season rubs, those first rubs in early September, and it seems like there’s a little lull after that. So if you really want to find an early season hotspot. There’s typically some rubbing going on in that area when it gets later. I’m looking for those betting area funnels, backside of betting areas where it’s almost like you’re flipping around. I’m going in the morning away from food, getting on the backside of betting and waiting for those deer to come back to me. Now I’m not just going and saying, well, this is a cool betting area. I’m going to get on the back side. I’m backing up against a cliff, against maybe a neighboring horse pasture neighboring or one hardwoods open ardwoods where I don’t think the deer are going to be, so that I can come in through that open type cover, get to the backside of that betting area, and then find some funnel, whether it’s a change of habitat, a swamp edge, a creek edge, an inside funnel where you have a change in habitat in two different directions. You’re getting in the middle where those movements form more of an X. Not necessarily looking right at a buckbed. I think that can be overrated. Where you think a bucks area you get in and on him and you spook him because he was fifty or one hundred yards away. I want to be on the outside edge so that I can find that perfect movement relating to some type of funnel system and then blow my scent into a non deer area. And those are some of my favorite spots. You’d say that less than twenty percent of my sits are in a morning betting area downwind spot like that on a funnel system, but they account for probably seven percent of my bucks throughout the entire year, especially the oldest box with a bow, And so late to October early November, I’m always thinking about the next great morning stand backside of bedding, opposite access from the food, and so it’s like in the early season focusing on food, and then as it gets into late October November, I’m really starting to look at those betting areas. And if you add a water hole on a new site, that can be golden because not only will that buck may be key on that in the early season if it’s next to an open, mature bedding area that he’s hitting, but if it maintains that movement of funnels cruising areas parallel to field edges, maybe a perfect saddle or a bench system, then you can expect it to really heat up late October November when he’s cruising and working up a thirst.

00:41:49
Speaker 1: So you’ve you’ve probably consulted on more farms than anyone. I think that might be a fair statement to say, would you.

00:41:56
Speaker 2: Say a lot? Anyways?

00:41:58
Speaker 6: It’s bright maybe sixteen hundred or so, like in twenty two seasons, so and there might be someone with more out there too, but yeah, a lot anyways.

00:42:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, so when you were looking at you show up at the farm and you know, you kind of go through your process. How often when you see a terrain feature on a property where you just get pretty excited? Is there a specific terrain feature or do you get excited when there’s a creek system? Obviously where you’re at in the country, like there’s would you would you call yourself in the driftless region, would you say that’s fair?

00:42:29
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:42:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so like the driff region where there’s a lot more terrain features a bluff country.

00:42:35
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, we have like on our property, it’s up to three hundred feet of elevation change cross server in Wisconsin, Right, I hunt where I hunted for a long time. It was more like four point fifty new property we’re gonna hunt Wisconsin’s more like one hundred to one hundred and fifty. But I like those features because terrain narrows downwards. Deer aren’t just as much as where they are, so a lot of the steam faces they aren’t, and that would include even self facing slopes. Deer want to have flat They want to be able to run across saddles, move on bench systems, bed in flat areas, and so if you use steep train to access where deer aren’t, blow your scent off, that steep terrain then allows you to get in and out of property without spooking deer that might be on the flat side on the backside, get up to a point, look at a bench down below. But it also allows you to navigate the wind and cheat the wind. So you can really cheat the wind when it comes to hunting. An elevation change because you can blow your scent at the deer from up high in the morning, and you can use the wind to run your scent into the side of a hill knowing it’s going to go downhill into a draw, which allows that wind to pull down in the afternoon evening and if I’m on flat terrain, it’s almost like you’re looking for the same kind of concepts. And what I mean by that, it’s how can I access through big, open hardwoods and then get up against a swamp edge. Maybe it’s a wet swamp, or I could blow my scent into the swamp. Maybe I can back up and blow my scent into the open hardwoods. But those hard defined habitat changes of swamp land to hardwood edge or upland edge I really try to focus on so you can look at a property and really when you’re looking for that diversity and edge, it’s a matter of you look at an aero photo from above and you’re looking at a woods field habitat. The more colors, the more sizes and shape change, the more habitat diversity. And when you can see that relate to a creek system inside corner of a woods or field edge, when you can relate that to terrain and flat features, then you can really take an area that’s five hundred acres and just start acting locations that have the greatest amount of diversity and the greatest amount of edge and funnels, and you might come up within that five hundred acres five to ten spots, and it’s pretty easy to go out identify historical sign of old rubs and scrapes that show history of sign in that location and narrow it down to three or four areas you want to focus on really quick in an upcoming home.

00:45:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that’s that’s a great starting point. And I those are all great things for someone that’s trying to figure out where to be and how to how to utilize the wind and predict your movement and be able to get in undetected. Like that’s the core principles of figuring out a good spot.

00:45:24
Speaker 6: Well, and I can think you can avoid some traps. When you see rubs in early October, they use it from early September, and they use it from those summer patterns, not fall patterns. A lot of times those rubs might be in a white oak acorn stand that’s not available in late October November, and you get you gravitate, especially as a newer hunter, to some of that sign, and you really have to ask yourself is this sign reflective of early season or is this this sign really reflective of a pattern that’s going to stay in through the rut and in through the heart of the season where I want to put the most time in and have my vacation time, you know.

00:45:57
Speaker 1: And so yeah, well, Jeff, where can We’re going to have you on every other week here leading all the way up to October first. But in case people want to get more of your content, you post a bunch on YouTube, really great information. Where can they find that?

00:46:10
Speaker 6: Then just look up white Tail Habitat Solutions on YouTube. I post a little bit on Instagram too, and then our site, Whitetail Habitat Solutions, you can easily find if you are looking for us white Tail strategy content. Doesn’t matter what it is, hunting the weather from building habitat. You can look at that title and just look on Google or YouTube and a lot of my stuff will come up towards the top. Even just typing in white Tail Habitat Solutions and stretch grass or navigating the rut or hunting the weather, and it’ll come up for you, just so you can get some free information, not even having to buy anything from us.

00:46:46
Speaker 1: All right, folks, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and enjoy this format. Next week we’re going to be bringing back Bill Winky. Jeff stur just Aaron and Adam, and we’re going to dive into a new question and dilemma, and I’m going to go and preview it now. And I think ultimately it’s what’s one thing every hunter is making way too complicated. So over the next week you get a chance to think about maybe something that you are over complicating, and you get to hear what they have seen as a potential pitfall of general folks that you and even them at the times, that could overcomplicate a thing, regardless of what angle it is with hunting white tails. So I hope you guys have a great rest of your week. We will see you next time.

00:47:23
Speaker 2: See if