The older deers get, the smarter they are, and getting a mature buck certainly gives a different level of satisfaction. Heartland Pride Outfitters owner Cody Kuck, shares proven strategies that they practice to ensure that a piece of property has a balanced herd for hunting mature bucks. He elaborates how building good relationships with partners, neighbors, and landowners can make deer and land management a lot easier. Cody tackles the technical side of the industry when it comes to land management. This episode, he talks about the evolution of hunting in the rural areas of Nebraska and Kansas and how a handshake can still go a long way.
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LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE:
Mature buck are elusive – ask Cody Kuck to tell you where they are
We’re going to head out to Sutton, Nebraska in North Central Kansas. We’re going to visit with Cody Kuck. Cody Kuck is the Owner and Driver of Heartland Pride Outfitters. There’s something to be said about that story. Cody is going to talk about how hunting has changed. He calls it the old days. Why he’s an outfitter and why that’s important for even DIY hunters to know and get to know some outfitters in the area. They can be a great resource. He’s also going to talk about managing his property, whether you get your own 40 owned section, whatever you own it’s important to have a balanced herd. Cody’s got some great insights that everybody’s going to want to hear.
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We’re heading out to Kansas-Nebraska area and we’re going to talk to Cody Kuck. Cody is one of the main men at Heartland Pride Outfitters. Cody, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
It’s certainly a pleasure. Let’s take a couple of minutes and tell people what Heartland Pride stands for.
Not a lot of people understand our company name, what it means is we grew up pretty much in rural Nebraska. We’re all very ambitious and independent, highly-motivated people. We considered ourselves as a pride of lions. The people that we run with, we like to make sure we’re getting the job done, it ended up just coming up. We come from the Heartland. It was one of those deals that Heartland Pride Outfitters ended up working out for us. It’s a pride of lions, it’s something that we consider ourselves. That’s pretty much where it stemmed from for the most part.
How long have you been in that country?
Our entire lives. I was born and raised in that area. I was born in Kearney, Nebraska and grew up my entire life and graduated from Burke High School.
You’ve seen a lot of changes I’m sure, not just in people, places and things, but in agriculture and especially hunting. All the guys I know that go out in Kansas-Nebraska in that area, it used to be knock on somebody’s door and go hunting. That’s not the way it is anymore. What are your thoughts on that?
It’s definitely been something that has evolved over the years. That’s pretty much the number one reason why I got into the guiding and outfitting service. When I was a little kid, we grew up taking friends and relatives, hunting. Going through high school, I never went on any guided hunts. My dad, he went on one hog hunting down in Texas and that was all I knew about guiding and outfitting. That was all the way up until the age of fifteen or sixteen. I didn’t even realize going through high school that there were guides that made a full-time living in guiding and outfitting.
I looked at our resources and everything and knew it was inevitable. The industry was coming. At that point in time Pike County, Illinois was top of the charts. That’s where everybody wanted to whitetail hunt, knowing that a lot of hunters come from the East Coast. Once those areas get burnt up, over hunted and overcrowded, that crowd is continually moving westward. We knew we were in a good area being between the Rocky Mountains five hours from Denver and the East Coast there. We knew that it was inevitable and it’s going to be developed. It’s why we took that idea and ran with it and had pretty good success because guys are always looking for great places to go.
Everybody wants a great hunt whether you do it yourself or on a guided hunt. Share on XMy head guide and best friend, right and left-hand man most days Jorden Schwarz, when he and I grew up in that area, he’s a pain in our butt. There wasn’t anything to do besides hunt, play sports, go to school and then work. When we realized that we could have guys come in and provide them all the things that it takes, a safe atmosphere, good land, private land, put a roof over their heads, put some food in their belly. We realized that it was going to be something that was going to grow hopefully. It has without a doubt. There are a lot more programs. Nebraska and Kansas both are doing a lot more with their open fields and waters programs and their WIOA programs in Kansas. A lot more landowners nowadays are getting a knock and a phone call. Whether it’s from private guides to outfitters guides, private groups or even the state calling and saying, “We need your ground for hunting.” The more you drive the countryside and you see some of the signs out, things of that nature.
I know a lot of guys that did a lot of DIY hunting in Nebraska over the years. I talked to one guy and he said, “It’s getting harder and harder.” He’s down in the mouth because it’s getting so competitive even on DIY. He spends a lot of time on it. He’ll hunt 45 days a year in multiple states. He said, “What a change.” He’s a DIY hunter. That’s what he does. I don’t think he’s ever hunted with a guide for whitetails. He’s taken some gorgeous deer. Let’s stay on that train of thought. Guys are getting squeezed out and then all of a sudden they say, “I’ve got a choice. I don’t hunt Kansas and Nebraska or I hire an outfitter.” Why are outfitters so critical for guys that have been DIY hunters all their lives?
There are a couple of factors, I would say time management for some people where they have a lack of time to go out and prepare for those hunts. Everybody wants a great hunt whether you do it yourself or on a guided hunt. For the do-it-yourselfers, they have the time to go out. They can find the land. They can go out and scout, run some cameras. That’s awesome for do-it-yourself hunters. They have the time to do it. That’s the way that we grew up hunting, too. I didn’t even know guided hunts and outfitters existed until I was probably fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, right around in that age range. There are the guys that don’t want to go through the resources in doing it. It’s like anything in life. It’s like going and buying a prefab, put together building and having it dropped on your property. Having the weekends to go and do-it-yourself with your buddies and build it yourself and have that satisfaction of doing it yourself. It depends on the satisfaction guys want to get out of it. Ultimately, the time that they have to do it. Even more so, the budget that guys have in order to do it.
These landowners, they’re very gracious. We wouldn’t be in operation if it wasn’t for our amazing landowners. The bottom line, those are the first people I thank when we go to thanking and counting our blessings. It’s those guys because they have trust in us. They continually have trust in us. We build that relationship over the years. It’s not something that is established overnight. There’re some years that go into these relationships and nurturing them. Showing them that we can run a professional operation on their place because it’s not just letting in your neighbor down the road. What we do, we go in there and manage these properties for several months out of the year. Food plots, we put out alfalfa, protein, corn throughout the winter, make sure that they know they’ve got a good healthy spot to relax and drop their shed antlers on us.
There’s a lot of different factors that go into choosing a guided hunt versus a do-it-yourself. We’ve realized that too, over the last few years. We’ve started offering a little bit more do-it-yourself because we’ll have a landowner that he’ll have 4,000 acres four hours away from where our main operation is. He wants us to provide him a revenue because he understands those hunting rights are worth value on this property. He’s like the rest of us. He not only has personal taxes he has to pay for, but he’s also got real estate taxes that nowadays are not cheap. If you’re a landowner yourself and reading this, you understand those taxes are not going down. The incomes and some of your profit on that property are going down. They understand that that’s an invaluable resource and we sometimes put together little camps where we’ll offer do-it-yourself hunts for groups of guys and book the groups for the landowner. He’ll be able to know that he’s got good trusting people on his place hunting his ground throughout the hunting season.
Do you ever consider subleasing? If you get the right guy and he says, “I’m going to come in. I’d love to get a hold of a couple of hundred acres and hunt it, scout it, and maintain food plots.” Everything but owning the land because as we both know, land prices are not going down. It’s like taxes, it’s coming.
There were a couple of years where we did do some subleasing. We got out of it about as quick as we got into it. What ended up happening was even though you have contracts and everything that you’re signing with the landowner in the subleasing, there’s so many things. There’re some great companies out there that do that subleasing type thing, it wasn’t for us. We started an outfitting company to guide people. We would run across an awesome piece of property. For example, there are 330 acres on a creek bottom in Southwest Nebraska that was primetime dirt for whitetail deer and turkey. It ended up turning into a deal where we weren’t there to manage it. He’s limited to do a certain amount of animals per year. X amount of turkeys, X amount of deer only during the lawful hunting seasons. That could be where there were some cases where even though there was paperwork, we still couldn’t quite trust people.
It turned out to where we didn’t like that route. We said, “If we’re doing the back work to establish these relationships with landowners, the last thing we ever want to do is have a relationship turn south.” Next thing we realized, “Let’s do some unguided hunts.” When we earn access and right to hunt that property exclusively, we want to maintain that control. For us, we’re going through the efforts of signing everything up and everything. We try to focus on shooting whitetail in Nebraska over 130 inches and whitetail in Kansas over 140 inches. With subleasing it, some of those guys have some loopholes that, “I didn’t know this deer wasn’t 130.” We start shooting deer that shouldn’t be shot. They’re too immature. What was once a fantastic property turns into being a little bit less a couple of years down the road. That’s not our goal in mind. We felt like that it was going to be best for us to be able to take back control and lease right directly from the landowner and run the hunts. That way if I stub my toe, that’s my own fault. There are companies that do that but that’s not the way that I like to operate. We’d rather work directly with our customers, directly with the landowners and be that middleman that you needed.
Let’s talk about the first subject that you wanted to talk about, hunting property development. What does that mean? To what ends do you take that?
You take the hunting property development to the ends of pretty much your checkbook. The thing about it is we grew up, for example, our family farm that we’d inherited. It was a trashy little area when we first inherited it from our grandpa and grandma. We spent our whole childhood cleaning that place up. I had aunts that were drill sergeants in a good way. We were cleaning this place up, redoing buildings, cleaning up old scrap that’s going to the junkyard. With that mentality and everything, the work ethic was always ingrained. We decided when we finally got into the guiding and outfitting, the same way that we were managing properties for livestock and for agricultural use and things of that nature. You can develop those same properties into very good quality hunting properties.
There are tons of people out there developing the recreational property for better hunting habitat. They can see benefits the next year and then also a few years down the road. Maybe their son or daughter gets to enjoy that benefit. For us, when we lease a rancher’s farm, we ask them, “What will you allow us to do? What do you not allow us to do?” Those things, we’d pretty much say, “Yes on food plots, no on food plots?” We give them a rundown of how we develop that property like anybody else would for trying to maintain some good hunting on their dirt. It’s something that we’ve grown passionate about over several years. The best thing is probably the new improved equipment, gear and products that are coming out. These are products and gear that we didn’t have over the years ago. Now, we’re able to put new products out, awesome seed companies that we’re working with for growing food plots. It’s definitely got a lot better over the years.
How long did it take you to develop the land that you got from your grandparents, to where it was producing 130 and up class bucks?
It all starts with the harvest management. We strongly implement that 130-inch minimum which in Nebraska you can have a good 3.5-year-old at 130. We try not to shoot that 3.5-year-old. If you meet shot minimum, he’s going to meet that minimum and be able to be shot by a hunter. If you can throw that animal from three and get him up to five or even six, that’s where you’re going to see the best for the deer. Turkeys, make sure that no jakes get shot. Let those hens know that they’ve got good, comfortable areas to go nest. They have roost areas that are sanctuary areas that no hunters hunt underneath of them or around them for 100, 200 yards. Establish those areas very confidently and make sure that that’s known for everybody, that those are the sanctuary areas. Over time and sticking to that game plan, it’s going to work out.
You’re going to have to feed, plant a certain percentage of your property into grains that are going to hold those deer and turkeys year-round. We have some properties, like our family farm. There’s not an animal in that place beside a couple of coyotes I bet. The deer and the turkeys, they winter over on the neighbors because his place has a lot more area to be able to hold a denser population of deer and turkey throughout the winter. Good thing for us, we have that property leased so it’s not a real big deal if they’re over there wintering on his because we still go over there and hunt them. For example, our family farm even over long periods of time, it’s a small enough track right there that they simply don’t winter on it. As soon as that winter flock of turkeys breaks up, I would say the end of February. March hits then deer and turkey they start going back through it. On comes hunting season.
What advice would you have? We’ve got readers all over North America and they want a real solid plan to develop their property. What are the three things they got to do?
Number one thing is, make sure that you’re not having anything or anyone fouls up your game plan. Sit down and say you have a family farm or with any luck you can maybe own the farm yourself and then you know what the game plan is and can stick to it. For example, I’m partners with our family farm with three of my aunts. My game plan, I’d have to sit down with them and develop that plan with them and do that in cooperation with a few more people.
You got to make sure that everybody’s on the same page. That’s paramount to what you’re doing. The next thing is to develop good relationships with your neighbors. That’s going to be the next ultimate goal. Everyone has their thought about outfitters. We treat our neighbors the exact same way we want them to treat us. If they shoot a deer and it runs into us, we are going to be more than happy to go and help them track it or recover that deer with them. We would hope that they would allow us to the same. That’s the way that we grew up. We don’t know any other way.
When we run into complications, it’s foreign to us because usually a handshake and things of that nature still go quite a long way for us in that rural part of the world. Making sure your neighbors, if you can get them on the same game plan, having the minimum set up for your deer. Don’t shoot jake turkeys so you can grow a little bit older and more mature of a turkey. Do things of that nature. That’s all going to help. We run a pretty intensive feed program. We have to feed these animals. We want as many animals on that property as it’s going to be able to hold. We want to have that thing at the all-time carrying capacity.
We’re making sure that there’s ag in the area that’s going to hold them. Running water year-round because this time of the year we have to make sure you’ve got running water. A lot of ponds are frozen up. Farmers will drain their stock tanks, things of that nature. You got to give them protection, shelter, food and water, and make sure that everybody sticks to that game plan. Through time your habitat and your properties enhance. Sometimes it takes longer than others. It depends on if you have a hunting hole or if you are starting from scratch. Starting from scratch is tough. I know some ambitious hunters out there that they won’t give up. Hats off to them. It can be done. It takes a little bit of time. You have to be very selective in the hunting season because harvest management plays a vital role. You can always attract them. You don’t want to shoot the wrong animals. Make sure that anyone else hunting that property is shooting the right animals as well.
How do you keep a balanced herd? I’m speaking about if you get imbalance, you typically have more does than you need over the carrying capacity. How do you handle that?
Develop good relationships with your neighbors. Treat them the exact same way you want them to treat you. Share on XWe do our very best to try to kill two or three does per buck that we get killed. I don’t like to shoot doe after the November rut. Once they’re bred, especially in our Kansas ranches, where I know that I have some absolute stud deer down there and some good five, six, sometimes even seven-year-old bucks. When they go through November and if we don’t get them killed and they’re out there breeding, I do not like to shoot those does come December or January, whenever that late-season is. I always have this feeling that we’re going to end up shooting the next mom that could have been and should have been. Early season, September, October, if you have a doe tag, we are trying to kill does right behind the bucks, sometimes even ahead of the bucks.
Guys that will come into the camp. If they have an itchy trigger finger and they want to get something under their belt, let’s go shoot a doe right off the bat. Get the jitters out and go ahead and move forward with the bucks from there. You have to take some doe. For us, and anybody that hunts with us, you understand that once that middle of November hits, you say, “Let’s not go after the doe anymore.” Chances are they’re bred or they’re going to be here for much longer. We need to hold off on them until next season. It’s important that you have to have a good number of two, three-year-old bucks. That for us is absolutely something that has to be there every year. If we don’t have our two, three-year-olds, we’re not going have mature bucks that we want to take later on down the road.
It is all about age class recruitment, no question about it. Thanks for those insights. Cody, why don’t you give people your contact points, how to get in touch with you?
We’re pretty simple to get in contact with. We run a website, it’s HeartlandPrideOutfitters.com. We’re also on Facebook and Instagram. Usually, Facebook and Instagram have more current pictures and updated news on what we have going on. Also, our phone number is (308) 991-8456. Those are pretty easy and solid ways to get a hold of us there.
Check out Whitetail Stalker, Mike Grandstaff, Shannon Sitton and Justin McCoy. We partner up and we’re doing some neat things on social media. Check us out and see what’s new with Whitetail Stalker. Let’s talk about conservation and what that means to you and how you carry that out on your properties.
It’s neat that you asked that because we’re heading out with some guys from FLIR and Armasight. We’re going to go into Nebraska and do a little bit of thermal imaging and kill some coyotes, raccoons and some bobcats. That’s something that we do as far as conservation. We have to send those predators out and this is the time of the year that we do it. We’ll go in and we’ll do it every once in a while, in the summertime, things like that.
Generally, we have a pretty short window on when we can go in there and hunt predators. We have some pretty cool gear that we’re going to be using. Trying to even the playing field out with those little buggers, knock some coyotes down, some bobcats, raccoons. For us, we cater to deer and turkey hunters. We want to make sure that we have healthy fawns that aren’t getting ran around by coyotes and killed by them in the spring. The same thing with our turkey hatches, our raccoons, they devastate them. If you’ve seen any of our trail camera pictures, our running record of coons on a single sitter is eighteen at one night in Kansas. Eighteen coons for one frame of a stealth camera picture. Who knows how many are within 300, 400 yards of those coons? When you look at those trail camera pictures, you absolutely get disgusted as a turkey and a deer hunter. That’s something.
I grew up trapping, unfortunately now I don’t have time to do it as much as I’d like. That’s one of the first things I ever did was trap something before we ever called coyotes. I did the decoy, calling, sets, anything like that was trapping. That’s something that’s pretty important to us. I wish we could get more days in the field to do it but unfortunately we don’t because I’m always near the phone and computer scheduling things for the upcoming season. The guides, they go back to work and trump it a bit until the next season rolls around.
Readers, there are two things that I don’t care if you have a 40 or you’re running 500 acres of ag land in Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, any place. Do yourself a favor, if you don’t want to go out and trap and shoot coyotes and do predator control, hire somebody to do it because they’ll come in. I don’t know what the hides are running, but there is a market for coyotes, bobcats and raccoons. Do yourself a favor because if you want to hunt turkeys and you want to hunt deer, you got to keep the predator in balance with your herd. You’re not going to take them all off your land. That’s never going to happen. You’ll never see the biggest buck on your property unless you’re a good hunter. Back me up on that, will you Cody?
100%. Essentially our thought on it is we have about a couple of months of hard predator hunting before we get into turkey season. As far as predator hunting in general, I will tell you this much, that your doors will probably open a little bit more if you’re approaching a landowner in order to control some predators in that area. Because I got into trapping before we ever called predators. The reason that I got into trapping is that we had a neighbor across the road that was calving out a bunch of calves. One of the calves got swiped one night by a group of coyotes.
His brother knew how to trap. I went with him the next two days setting up snares and footholds. That was pretty much the start of it. I’ve found that in a few instances we’ll be able to get access to predator hunt because they’re sick of coyotes. They don’t like hearing them around their cattle or their horses or whatever livestock they’re raising. Even if it’s on your property, you need to protect those deer and turkey if that’s your main goal and your main trophy at your place. You got to protect the resource that you’re going after. It’s all about conserving the resource and protecting it as much as anything.
Cody it’s been a pleasure. I can’t wait until I get an opportunity to spend some time with you guys out there at Heartland Pride Outfitters. Give some shout outs.
Definitely, probably the main ones are always going to be our guides and landowners. Without them we don’t have a company, without good landowners and guides. Jorden Schwarz is the number one man of mine. He helps me through thick and thin. We’ve had some great times together. Another one is probably our new partnership with Pelican products. That’s been an ultimate partnership as well as LaCrosse and Danner. They’re three partnerships that we have established to be able to provide good products for our customers because they’re companies that we believe in and we highly promote.
Cody Kuck, on behalf of thousands of readers across North America, thank you for giving some insights to Heartland Pride Outfitters. We enjoyed having you on the show.
You’re always welcome.
Important Links:
- Heartland Pride Outfitters
- Facebook – Heartland Pride Outfitters
- Instagram – Heartland Pride Outfitters
- Whitetail Stalker
- Mike Grandstaff
- Shannon Sitton – YouTube page
- Justin McCoy