In this episode, Matt Dye and Adam Keith talk about Land & Legacy, hunting and habitat management. Matt and Adam take a look at the land and figure out the best use for the properties using terrain and places to put food plots. Matt and Adam dive into land management and give some strategies on how to improve your land and create a great habitat for hunters to hunt deer on. They also discuss the importance of legacy and leaving a great one to the next generation of hunters.
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Land & Legacy – Matt Dye and Adam Keith
We have Matt Dye and Adam Keith from Land & Legacy. What’s Land & Legacy? Everybody knows that deer need land to grow, live, food, cover and water. You have those strings and you get things in balance then you’re going to grow a deer herd. That’s what Matt and Adam do. They take a look at your land and figure out the best use for all its properties using terrain, places for food plots and all that. They are traveling across the country and sharing their knowledge with people and the other thing they believe the legacy that they are going to leave is more important than anything. The legacy we leave is the life we live. The life of Christ in us and through us, pass on to others through the power of the Holy Spirit. A couple of standup guys know exactly where the moral compass is headed so I’m happy to have Adam and Matt on the show.
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I’m with a couple of friends of mine, Matt Dye and Adam Keith. I met them both a couple of years ago when I was doing some internship for another organization. They’ve taken off on their own and they’re a couple of guys that are making a difference in the wildlife habitat business. Matt and Adam, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having us, Bruce. We appreciate it. It’s good talking with you again.
Tell people who you are, where you came from and what are you doing in the wildlife management area?
We will give a little bit about our background. I grew up in a small town in Southern Missouri. I cut my teeth on hunting cattle farms and public ground. I developed this passion for trying to improve the habitat and improve the management and the overall health of the deer herd, turkeys and everything because it was bad. We barely saw any deer hunting and it was like we’re watching Mark Drury and Terry Drury kill a giant in Northern Missouri. We were seeing Will Primos and all those guys killing a huge deer. I was like, “I want that rather than what we have.”
We started managing the farm way back. As I got older, I went to college and I went into agriculture because I thought I always want to hold a camera and get into the hunting industry, but I still like the agriculture side of things. I majored in agriculture and took a job with the Missouri Department of Conservation. That leads into a career in the wildlife world and then that leads to holding the camera for a couple of shows and here we are. Over time, I built this tremendous passion for improving habitat and loving the land. Matt will go into his story, but that’s what got me to where I’m at.
Adam grew up in the Midwest and I grew up on the East Coast in Virginia in a strong farming background, family crop and hay production. I grew up around that cattle and my dad was a big hunter and introduced me to hunting at a young age. Between both of those growing up, I was always outside doing something. I knew that in a career setting, I want to be outside working the land and I absolutely love hunting. I came on to the idea or the job career possibilities of like, “I finished this.”
I start to pursue that, looked at internships and did a couple of those while in high school and college. I went to college and I got a biology degree and a concentration in wildlife management. During that time, I met Adam. I was an intern and he was a full-time employee at a business here in Missouri. I finished that and it was a great experience. I got my degree and went to work in Maryland in the wildlife aspect of things. I helped manage a company and ran that EcoArt Project. They manage some farms and they had a whitetail deer renewal team and all that. Through all these, I realized that there is much more to wildlife and hunting than just that deer itself. It’s what that deer and turkey need to survive from day one all the way on.
Adam and I linked back up after I moved west after that position in Maryland. I worked for them for a few years and now, here we are with Land & Legacy planning to grow this and get as strong as we can. We’re doing a lot of consulting work through Land & Legacy traveling the country. He talked a little bit about his background and you heard my background. When we took those two backgrounds back in December when we started Land & Legacy, it was like, “What can we provide?”
I heard a phrase years ago that said, “They’re who I needed when I was a kid.” When I was managing as a kid, I was doing almost everything wrong. It was managing on a budget, managing on cattle farms, plow on food plots and tearing up the soil. I looked back and I’m like, “We did a lot of things wrong and we learned a lot the wrong way or the hard way. We need to provide a service where even the guys that are managing on the weekends on a budget on 20 acres, that they can relate to and then use our tactics for their 20 acres.”
When you think of Land & Legacy, where did that come from?
What you can do on the weekend with land management makes a big impact on your hunting. Share on XThat came from a realization that what we’re working at, we want to go and take it a step further and reach people. You’re with the weekend warrior or they thought more than deer hunting. They were a duck hunter, hardcore turkey hunter, and work the land and understood that, “What I can do on the weekend makes a big impact on my deer hunting or my turkey hunting.” Branch off and continue working with the land, but taking it in a different aspect that meets and instead of thinking of the deer, thinks of, “How can I improve it for the deer?” I want to think about the big picture. “If I improve this, it helps the deer, but it also helps the quail, the turkeys, rabbits, and helps balance predator-prey relationships because we have more prey out there.” Instead of focusing on one species, it’s the whole land aspect in general. With that being said, that’s the legacy. Instead of making improvements for the next month, but years down the road, maybe they’re not around here.
Does that go into your sales presentation when you’re talking to a farmer or an absentee owner about the thing, “We’re not only doing this for this year or next five seasons but for your grandkid seasons?”
I don’t think it’s more of an over talking. It’s more of people knowing that when they hear us talk about the improvements, “If we can improve planting a bunch of fruit trees, we know that it may take years before that ever develops, but your son is going to appreciate it down the road.” People come to act and pick up on it.
It’s not something that we just throw out there, we’re trying to build a business around. Through our techniques that we are using and prescribing when we get to a property and say, “Let’s look at this oak tree. It’s young, but we’re going to trim out around and it’s going to be a great profit-making income-producing tree later on. In the meantime, it’s going to produce acorns for you and your kids to hunt around and so on and so forth.” They understand what we prescribe and recommend is not the immediate benefit, but long generations down the road. What we do now and the choices that we make, especially with land, definitely affects that in years to come.
Especially with timber.
Can I put a treestand in that oak tree?
Absolutely. I was working in Delaware and there is a property. Both sides have been clear-cut many years ago because of the ice storm. It came through and wrecked a bunch of the property. On one side, they had come back and replanted pines and are doing active pine management to enhance some forestry in there. They made an income and now, it’s a lot better wildlife habitats because I have come in and thinned that versus the other side where they didn’t do anything and it had an overgrown clear-cut many years ago. He’s looking at black and white. In one area, that’s unproductive and one that’s productive. Years ago, an event happened that impacts it now and he sees the result of that in his place. Good versus bad and the lack of management versus management in that fine forest that is now productive. We are trying and share those examples for people to see, “What I’m doing now is going to impact things later on.”
I’ve got 100 acres in Wisconsin. I’ve got crop land all around me and all are registered timber. Out of 100 acres, we’ve got only 30 to 40 acres of timber ridge land and everything else is cropland. We’re cropping and standing crops. We’ve got some beans, alfalfa and corn. I will call you up and say, “We do okay for deer because they come out of the bottoms, they run our ridges and they grow up on a nice farm.” What can we do on my farm to help grow deer not just have it a transition zone? It’s one big transition zone.
Immediately, when you said timber, I’m like, “When was the last time that timber was managed rather than sit back and let it manage themselves? When was the last time there was a TSI, Timber Stand Improvement, go on in there? When was the last time there was a harvest? Is that a closed canopy forest? If it’s a closed canopy, we need to do something to get more sunlight coming into the forest floor.”
It is closed canopy.
Immediately we go, “What’s the DBH of those trees? How big is the Diameter at Breast Height? Are they marketable? Can we get in there and make the landowner a little bit of money?” By making a little bit of money, we can take that money and invest somewhere else in the property. We can maybe create a few more food plots up in the timber on those ridges or we remove some of those trees and let more sunlight hit the forest floor. More sunlight means there is going to be more early successional growth of young forbs, ragweed, pokeberry or blackberries. Instead of having cover 100 foot up in the air with the trees, we’ll remove that and we’re going to have cover from forest floor to 4-feet tall right where a deer lives. Not only that cover, but it’s also food during the growing season. We’re going to take a little bit of browsing pressure off the crops. We’re going to have them feed to the timber and then it’s going to mature later in the summer and the fall. That’s going to be covered and you’re going to feel more secure there. There are going to be treetops from the harvest.
Overall, we’ve taken your area, your 100 acres and you’ve done all this heavy management in the timber. Your deer feels secure there during the summer and most importantly, during hunting season when everybody else is hunting. If you have that cover on your place and no one else is going to manage it around you, during fall, they are going to seek especially when hunting pressure is at its finest. They are going to seek the area that’s got the best coverage and most secure. Because of that work, your property best standout and it was a transitional property. Now, you’re going to see it as it’s holding deer more versus a deer that is moving through.
You’re adding an element of cover and security through that place versus food and deer move through the bottom and onto the neighbor and so on. They’re going to bed there and feed there. That’s what you want from your help control and make those harvest options. You want the 3.5 years old deer, you have a better chance of him staying on your property because you have the cover versus, “I know he is going to walk to the neighbors,” but I see that happen all the time. If you are able to do a harvest, you make money. You get money for the landowner and you get better habitat.
What about water? There is no water up there.
It’s time to get some water up there then. If you don’t have water on that 100 acres, that means that they will get a lot of water from their forage. If you are in a drought situation in the middle of October or November, you have to know that they are going to the neighbor’s property to get water. If they are over at the neighbor’s property, there is a better chance that they are going to get killed over there rather than in your own place.
How do I do that? Do I put in bed night with a liner? How do I put in a watering hole?
It all depends on the features of the land. If there wasn’t all the type of creek bed, there is a spring and it’s not bent up, or if you have water access flows, you could do the tubs.
I don’t know what the soil type is, but in Kansas or Iowa, you can go out with a shovel and dig a little hole and it automatically holds water. Here in Southern Missouri, it’s rocks. We have to do a lot of work to get a pond, but in other places, it doesn’t take much work at all. You rent a little backhoe or a truck with a bucket and you scoop out and all of a sudden, it gets to rain and you have a pond. Another idea here in Missouri, there are government programs where there is no water in your area or on your farm then they will help all set 80% to 90% of the cost to make a pond so you do have water in your property.
That’s one thing in their plan. They are timbering it, but they couldn’t timber it in summer because there’s much rain. They couldn’t even get there in. It’s not going to happen and we have to look at, “There is a couple of places that we can put a little water hole in and there is one place maybe, we can dam some stuff up.” Other than that, it is climax growth or high canopy that hasn’t been logged forever. The deer pass through because they go, “I’m going to go over here.”
In that environment, they want to cover. That’s what they need to bed in and it feels secure. Out of curiosity, do we go from hunter foot-tall trees to quick drop off and crop field and not any edge or not any transition?
The edge is the little transition. To the south of the state, they clear-cut it 40 years ago and left it. It’s a great bedding area and then down below them, there is a large ton from where we’re sitting that’s 0.25 mile or more. There is water around, but we want to have water right where they are. We’ve got a couple of micro pots there so we’re starting to build it up because we know these deer are going back and forth. I want to say, “Why don’t you hang out here for a while?”
We find a lot of deer typically lazy. If there is a resource close by and safe, they’ll absolutely choose that one over traveling a further distance. They’re choosing that over the neighbor’s place because it’s a matter of laying it out and having all those features worked together so that you can get in there and hunt successfully.
When you think about food plots, let’s talk about the 365 days a year hunter. How are you going to help your client see that?
365-day hunter, do you mean a manager?
What you do now with land management and the choices that you make definitely affects the land in years to come, especially with timber. Share on XYou’re a whitetail hunter 365 days. You only hunt deer 18 days to 20 days. I’m talking about being a 365-day wildlife manager on my property that I only hunt during lawful legal shooting hours.
A huge benefit here is that you’re thinking about the deer herd even when it’s not hunting season. That’s a huge plus. Oftentimes, the best way we can improve the property is by trying to manage for the deer herd when it’s not deer season. We can provide food, cover, water and security during the summer months and during the spring when they’re fawning and they start to grow antlers. We want to provide all that during that time of the year. They are already used and conditioned to be on the property, surviving on the property and having everything they need on your property. When hunting season comes around, they don’t leave the property because everything they know is right there.
If you think about antlers grow outside of the season, they need to be at the healthiest outside of season. The cover that they are going to use during the season grows outside of season and the same with the acorns that they produce more forage than trees during the growing season because of what happened during the growing season. If we’re not managing, we’re not getting the best for the fall time for our hunting experiences. We got to have helping forage around the entire property to have better fawning, habitat, better production of fawns, lactations of does and antler growth. That way, we are going to enjoy their fall time. It’s an easy sell when we arrive at the property and talk about that and they quickly understand that. My idea of the fall is stretched throughout the entire year because I see the connection and I know that I haven’t been doing that. It’s time for me to either step up my game or change its approach a little bit.
The two big stress periods of a deer’s year happen when it’s not hunting season. In early spring or late summer, and honestly, not hunting season. During those times, you try to manage for the deer herd to improve it drastically. One example is that if you got a deer or a buck and your target buck is 3.5 years old, you run it hard and he has worn down his body quite a bit. It’s late February or early March, that’s the stress period whether early spring. You don’t have the adequate forage for that deer during those times. You are just managing your food plot during the hunting season, you don’t have standing drain or another resource there, then that deer’s body condition is already low.
When spring or rain occurs, he is going to have to make up that ground that he lost because he is running hard. If he was healthier coming to that stress period, he would develop and start putting more energy into antler production earlier in spring versus if he was unhealthy. Antler growth is a secondary sexual trait, so they need to focus on their bodies first. Improving its health in it to a state in which they can do and put on inches of antler each spring. They have to reach a certain level in which antler production occurs. If they get there quicker, which is out of season, what you’re doing happens out of deer season, then people are like, “I want bigger bucks.” I see a need to do that and it’s the easy sell.
What are we feeding them in January, February and March?
Here in Southern Missouri, we start getting some warm days during that time and clover starts jumping. Weights are going strong during that stage and a lot of trees start to bud at that time. We may be dropping some trees in the middle of the timber and let them eat on the buds and into the twigs. That’s another great thing we can do. You got a timber harvest up there and your regeneration is going to produce a lot of woody browns which at that time frame is highly selected for deer. If you have done that work, then you got an adequate food supply. They don’t have to go around the food plot. That’s an alternative.
What about lactation? When they drop their fawns and they’re feeding them, what mineral should we give them? What food should we give them?
It is finding the best highest protein meals and during spring if you did the work, they are eating everything from soybeans, ragweed. They’ll eat anything during that time frame. If it’s a broadleaf, they’re typically going to be eating it. If your landscape has a lot of the early successional stuff growing, that’s blackberry, pokeberry, ragweed, beggar’s lice, and all that stuff, that’s what they’re hitting and focusing on.
For the readers to understand what we’re talking about, in spring, go to your wood lot and during April or May, look at the undergrowth and see what’s growing. If you have a closed canopy forest, you look around and you still see a lot of leaves leftover from last fall, you need to do something. Your deer herd is going to struggle with surviving in that wood lot. It might as well be a slab of concrete. During the timber harvest, you should prescribe fire that helps stimulate the early successional plants to where you can have plenty of forage throughout that growing period and throughout the rest of the year.
In the summertime, everybody sees deer because they are visible throughout eating the groceries. What type of groceries is the best for deer during the summertime?
Anything that grows. It’s hard. Soybean is tough to beat at that time of the year, but early successional growth like the common ragweed, giant ragweed and pokeberry. All of those are close to soybeans and during that time of the year, they are growing strong. For our properties, that’s what we are looking at. Soybeans, if you have them, crop fields and some of our food plots. We have other species. Sunflowers are great at that time of the year and much anything that we plant. A spring mix is going to be great during the summer months. White peas and buckwheat are great, but when we look at the native stuff, it’s ragweed, prickly lettuce, pokeberry, blackberry and greenbrier. There is greenbrier all the time. There is a long list of early successional plants that deer eat during the summer months.
As farmers or crop people, if we learn how to cultivate those wild plants, that would help our deer herd even more.
It may take for a lot of guys that we deal with. For some reason, we all think that the food plot is this huge type. We talk about food plots all the time but when we go to properties, oftentimes that’s less than 5% of the ratio of food plot for acres of farm ground or of the property. Food plots are such a small thing. For example, on the main farm we manage, it’s 610 acres. When it’s all said and done, we’re going to have 25 acres of food plots and we’re going to have a bunch of bottom ground that is going to be alfalfa and a bunch of other mixes. For the most part, that’s designated to cows, so we have 400 to 450 acres designated in the deer and only 25 acres of food plots. If we make a complete Timber Stand Improvement, start doing prescribed fire every year, we have 400 plus acres that are a food plot and that is for free. We didn’t have to buy the seed. All we did was prescribed fire, let the sunlight hit and it grew.
If you think way back before the current state, wherein before the first food plot was ever planted or for the first crop field was ever planted, deer were still here. They made their living off these early successional plants and the regenerations of forage after a fire or a tornado came through. It opens up the canopy and that’s what the people have been on. If we neglect that and get away from their natural forage and browse, there was too much emphasis on food plots themselves. Food plots in our management strategy and what we prescribe are simply the supplement on what’s naturally growing there. That property doesn’t have that naturally grow in there and then we’re going to prescribe the techniques and promote that growth and then have our food plots. We are able to supplement that.
It’s amazing how much marketing and the marketing dollars well spent has changed your thinking. “If I do this, if I get the tractor and this then go back and forth to put some stuff in and put some roundup on it. Fertilize around it and then watch it grow. I want to have deer. I’m going to shoot the biggest deer in my life.”
“I’m going to throwback and then relax. They’re going to be non-typical and they are going to be giants. I’m going to shoot them.”
It is sad, in a way.
When we go to a property, I suggest that you can have all that equipment that you stated, Bruce. “That’s going to cost thousands of dollars or every 3 to 5 years, you could come through and burn this area and have productive stands. You only have to do is pay someone to come in and you prescribed fire once every five years.” If they are smart and then an investor manages your money, then you’re like, “Wow.” The numbers of science are there to prove that based on tonnage of production of early succession versus a growing season food plot. They’re equivalent. Let’s save you some money and manage this aspect of native browse in this manner versus allocating all your funds for a given year into food plots and then you’re only managing 5% of your property throughout a small portion of the entire year. It’s Timber Stand Improvement and you make money. In food plots, you spend money and then it all comes down to signing the back on the check rather than the front.
I like to have the checks going to my account. We could burn a lot without causing any havoc to anybody. I’m thinking, “Do this.” I’d like my food plots because it’s neat for kids and put grandkids up in the stand and they’re like, “There is a deer.” It’s unbelievable. It’s wow but taking that aside, the billion dollars, we’re talking B that is in the food plot industry now. I know a lot of guys that have minerals and everything, and yes, they do bring deer and there is no question about it. This is why I like how you guys think. If you think about it, if you take everything that God put out there and sort it out, be a good steward, don’t get carried away, we can do a little bit over here and little bit over here, we’re going to have the type of deer that we’re going to have. Every place can have 200 bucks, unless you changed up the genes, in my opinion. What are your thoughts about the size of the buck?
We love food plots like everybody else, but we don’t look at them as the saving grace. We look at them as a hunting strategy and containing supplements.
I love to hang on stand and overlooking at food plot and kill the deer as it was going to it. For us, it’s more of a hunting strategy versus the overall property management aspect that we’re focusing on.
Some of our clients, if they don’t know us too well, hear others and we come to the property and they immediately go, “You want to take us to the food plots.” We’ve already seen the map and we know how little of an effect that has on a property. You want to see what the majority is. Oftentimes, people look at us like, “You barely look at the food plots,” and I was like, “Yeah, because that’s a small place. We’re focusing on the big picture.”
When it comes to the management side of things as you were talking mineral and everything, in Land & Legacy, our way in managing is working with Mother Nature rather than against it. “Let’s look and see what was natural and native to this area before we settled it and stop firing. It causes everything to go out of balance. Let’s look and see how it works best before we got here and let’s try and replicate that.” It’s such a cattle farmer’s dream. What was here before were native grasses, native warm-season grasses, and native fall season grasses and forbs. That’s when we had quail everywhere and the buffalo did just fine. What the buffalo did was they rotated around and ate a little bit and then moved on. Let’s use that for the cow aspect, but then that’s going to benefit the deer and the quail just as much as well as us. We’re using cattle instead of being a wrecked property and now it’s a working cattle farm. Everything we do is trying to replicate Mother Nature.
Look at food plots as hunting strategies and supplements versus an overall property management aspect. Share on XHonestly, it was done right from the beginning and everyone honest with themselves knows that the landscape across the entire country has changed from pre-settlement to what we see now. Explaining that and showing that the people are tough because no one likes change and let’s say on that 600-acre place not all of it was timber. By any stress of your imagination there used to be meadows and glades and grasses mixed in and oaks, savannas, but now it’s closed canopy or it was before the timbering of the closed-canopy forest. We have to realize that’s not what was there and what you are used to shouldn’t be like that.
It’s unproductive, so you have to change that mindset and say what you’re going to see what we’re going to prescribe is going to change what this looks like. Don’t be afraid because what’s going to respawn and what’s natural here is honestly the best that this property, these 40 acres, this 4,000 acres can produce if we get it back to that state. Another little story for you, the prey hull property that he is talking about 600 acres, there is a creek that still runs on the south end, but another creek that runs part of the year right through the center of it and it’s called prey hull creek. For the majority of the year, it’s bone dry, but when I was a kid, my dad always told me about my grandpa catching fish out of that creek. Now, you can’t even catch a frog out of that creek, let alone with the fish and everybody talks about the water table drop. I don’t mean it’s dropping and popping.
Many look at the habitat and they’re like, “It’s dropping. Look at all the trees that are closed up instead of having early successional plants. Made it grass that has huge roots and is better at letting the water infiltrate into the soil profile and going to the underground caverns. Come out in the form of springs to fill up creeks and everything like that.” It runs off, it runs to the creek, it runs to the river, it hits Mississippi, dumps into the golf and it’s all because of lack of management and not doing timber harvest. No prescribed fire and just saying, “Manage yourself.” In our beliefs, God put us on this earth to be managers of these things and frankly sitting on our high ends isn’t working.
What about the 200-inch buck? I’m not going to let you dive in.
There was a study that was done and I looked at not soil quality, but the expression of negative forage across the entire country. They took samples from areas of unproductive soil and comparing that to areas of the Mississippi Delta where it has good soils. They sampled these plants and found that no matter the soil quality that both the plants still expresses the same based on the amount of fruit protein or accountability. What that tells us, as a manager, let’s say you’re in the Smokey Mountains and you’re in steep country. If you promote the early successional habitat and that forage deer we talked about through the spring and summer are foraging on, you can have good deer and that forage meets the minimum, the deer needs to express his full potential. The minimum that needs to express those forages, no matter where you are at, if you promote them. If you grow them, a deer will express its full potential. A 200-incher can be done.
I’ll step in and say, Since Matt is from Virginia but now lives in Missouri, we hunt and manage on my home turf where I cut my teeth. My great, great granddad owned it 1892 and growing up it was always my brother and I used to joke about how if God must have a great sense of humor because he made two of the most passionate obsessed hunters and put them in the armpit of America. We thought when it came to habitat and deer hunting, and now knowing what we know about early successional, it is a goal of mine. Not because I love to shoot a 200, but I would rather say, “You can’t grow giant deer on poor soil in timber country, you have to manage it differently than we have in the past.” We have done quite a bit of management, but not a full facelift of the property like we’re talking about doing in the future and we already had deer.
We had one that the neighbor found and it was probably in the upper 70s. We have another that is probably in the 170s, the other in the 160s. We’re definitely seeing major improvements, but a 200-inch deer for our area, he’s a freak genetically speaking. He’s a superior genetic than all the other deer. He is the Michael Jordan of the deer herd in our opinion, so we can do it one day. It’s going to take different management than we’ve done in the past.
Saying 200-inch deer, that was thrown out there, 4.5-year-old deer is a quality deer any place in the United States, any place in Canada is a quality deer. Sometimes, we go and whipped up and say, “I want to grow a 200-inch deer.” Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. I’ll be spending a few days in Buffalo County. Is there a 200-inch? Yeah, the Pope & Young buck is full 200-inch deer from Buffalo County. I even see one. Who knows? The thing is if you see and you have 4.5 or 5.5-year-old deer, you’re doing something right on your property.
Most people don’t have a chance to be able to target an upper age class deer, a mature deer of 4.5-plus-year-old deer. If you’re doing that and you’re seeing them on your cameras or you’re seeing them and experiencing it. If you encounter it during fall time in hunting seasons, you’re doing a lot.
There is something working for the property, but I’m going to go a little bit off that. There are a lot of hunting shows out there now and there are a lot of guys killing 200-inch deer, but then you look. For me, I look at seeing some of their farms and be on some other farms, there is a lot that’s lacking in their habitat. It makes me wonder if they improve the habitat on that property instead of focusing on crop fields and food plots. What could they grow? How much further up the ladder could they go? That’s a good point. You always have to look at the averages on what those areas of the country are. Let’s say I was in Kansas. What’s the average mature deer that is being produced? It’s a 5.5-year-old level, it’s not a 200-inch deer.
In those areas, it’s 150 or 160. Those 200-inch deer are Michael Jordans. They are the ones that go way above and beyond that average, but if we want to make a big impact, we’ve got to look at the average. Say if I’m in my area with quality habitat I have whether below good or whatever, if I averagely see 140-inch 4.5-year-old deer. I want to look at that level and say, “After I’ve done all the work, has that level increased?” If so, then what you’ve done has been beneficial and bumping that average up the 160 range, that’s something in my book that I love to see. We got some of those great deer on camera, but I’d rather see that average mature deer that level bump up 10, 15 or 20 inches to what we’re typically seeing.
How do people get a hold of you guys? How can you be reached? Telephones or emails?
Email us at [email protected] and [email protected]. You can get on our website and shoot us an email. Subscribe to our podcast, that’s www.LandAndLegacy.tv. We’re on social media, Facebook and Instagram @LandandLegacy.
When you guys talk about these, what is it usually based on?
Location and size of the farm and what type of plant they want. Sometimes, people are more note-takers themselves. They want us to come to walk the farm and talk to them and they write everything down, and that’s the cheapest type of consult we do. We have hybrids where they may want a map and we will make them a map and do the walking tour or we’ll make short notes almost like cliff notes for the property. The main one that we probably do in the majority of everyone, that’s the full plan where we write every detail about the property of 15, 20 pages report. We have probably several maps for the property and maps devoted to fire units, one that is devoted to habitat management plans, one that is devoted to overall trails, hunting access, stand locations and food plots. That’s much on the top. That’s the diamond out of them.
That’s probably the most popular option that most go with. If they wanted the consultation, they want as much information to absorb and then they have that plan for the rest of their time. They own that property, the life of that property, they can always refer back to and say, “I need to be doing this,” or “I need to be focusing on this,” or “I’ve reached this goal. What’s next?”
There are some people that hire you as a consultant, you go walk the land and say, “This is what you need. Go do it,” because he is from San Francisco and owns the land in Iowa. He doesn’t have the time nor could he care less. How do you get that done?
Honestly, we much stick to writing the plan and recommending what needs to be done. We can help assist and find, let’s say an incredible logger in that area or a subcontractor that has some contract depending on how it is. A lot of times we found on our clients are why didn’t they do the work themselves? It could be a guy who owns 100 acres or a guy who owns 20 acres and they want to get their hands dirty. They want the satisfaction of working with the land, so that comes up part of it. In the case it is a non-resident landowner, we’re going to do our best to find the credible guys in the area to help them manage that property and give them what needs to be done.
It sounds cliché when we say we don’t do it for the money, but it is. We want to do everything we can to get that guy’s arm flip to where it’s a productive farm for wildlife. For me, that’s the whole part of it. It’s going to farmland and work out and the landowner does it or we find the guy and they improve it. I can sleep at night knowing there were 1,000 acres that’s more beneficial and better for the environment and everybody is benefiting from.
With that, let’s give some shout-outs.
Shout-out to my lovely wife, Nikki, my parents and my brother Chad.
Shout-out to my lovely wife, Emily, and my parents and the rest of my family on the East Coast. I represent the East Coast.
Thanks. On behalf of thousands of readers across North America, you guys are a joy and I wish Land & Legacy much success.
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We’re heading back down to Tennessee. We’re going to connect with Cory Sutton. Cory has got some great stories. The hunting story that I love best is that one day, in the fall, a couple of years ago, he decided, “I’m going to go out on my land and hang out. I get this little funnel. When deer are going to move, that’s where they’re moving.” He geared up in his flip flops, cut-offs with his T-shirt and his ball cap, and he didn’t bring his bow. All of a sudden, an hour into the set, he’s sitting there and thinking about things. Cory has a lot of things to think about. Cory has half-a-heart but that doesn’t stop this guy. This buck walked down and started munching on the forage available and Cory put him down. More importantly, Cory is a beacon for us all. What you can accomplish is the attitude. He got some drive in everything but he has this attitude to say, “I love the outdoors. That’s what I’m going to do with my life.”
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- Cory Sutton – next episode
About Adam Keith
Born and raised in Southwest Missouri, this local calls the Ozark Mountains home. This drives his passion to make home a better place for future generations.
From a young age Adam knew his calling was to leave things better than he found it and share God’s Creation with others!
About Matt Dye
Native of Virginia, Matt Dye got his start in the outdoors at a very young age. His family’s farming and hunting background has guided him through his education and career dedicated to land and wildlife management.
Matt’s goal is to educate others in land conservation while reaching folks through the enjoyment of God’s Creation.