On the first of a three-part series on land management with Matt Dye of Land & Legacy, Matt shares viable information with those who are interested in working and improving their habitat with a conservationist mind to not only reap the rewards from your land for years to come but also to improve your hunting success. Regardless if you have 8 or 80 acres, you can make the most out of your property by taking Matt’s advice to heart.
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Land Management Part 1 Land & Legacy with Matt Dye
I’m with Matt Dye. He’s with Land & Legacy. He and Adam Keith started Land & Legacy a while back and they’re doing gangbusters. They do land management, but it’s a lot more than that. We got together and said, “Let’s do a little series,” and that’s what we’re doing. This is part one and this is Land Management. Part two is going to come up later on and we’re going to talk about Food Plots with Land & Legacy. We’re going to break down in three parts. We’re going to break it down into, one, Why land management? Two, Boots on the Ground. Three, The Plan. I’m going to break them up into three different segments for your reading to make it easier, so you don’t have to read the whole thing straight through and wonder, “I want to get back to that place.” We’re going to make it easy. Matt Dye joins us. Matt, I’m so excited to have you back on the show. We are working on a project and see where it goes because you are doing a great job across the United States with your company, Land & Legacy.
Thank you. I appreciate you having us back on and bring Land & Legacy into this because this is what we do. We’re pumped to be able to do work on properties across the nation and share hopefully viable information with people who are interested in working in their habitat, improving the habitat, doing it with the conservation minds and making a difference to improve the habitat for years to come, but also improve it for hunting aspects too. I think what you’ve got going on here with this little series, Land Management series, food plot series, is a great idea. We’re happy to be a part of it and hope that your audience get some good information from it as well and get out in the habitat and do some great work and improve their hunting in their properties.
To our audience, any time you have questions to me and Matt after reading this, you can reach me at [email protected]. How would you like people to reach out to you, Matt?
If you have any questions about land management, any aspect of it, feel free to email us at [email protected]. We’ll get that email and respond to you. This can be any questions from whether it’s timber management, food plot management, on how to develop a sanctuary or good road system, anything or just consultation services as well, we would be happy to take time and share our information with you. We have that outlet or you can go onto our Facebook page, Land & Legacy or Instagram. Send questions through there. We will respond and be happy to take some time with you guys.
Professor Matt, class is in session. Let’s talk about, why land management?
Honestly, Bruce, many people asked that question, “Why do I need to do land management?” It’s important to note the very beginning why land management and most properties that we’re on are revolving around whitetail deer. It’s important to note that whitetail deer are a generalist species. What that means is they’re extremely adaptable. They have a certain habitat type and features to that habitat that is very specific to them and that’s when they prosper the most in that specific habitat. However, because they’re adaptable, we see them living in extreme conditions, we see them living in backyards, we see them living in cities, we see them living in very unproductive landscapes. They make a living doing that because of their diet. They can eat a wide range of things, from broad leaves to hard mast, and we see them make a living in agricultural fields and everything.
I think it’s important to say that upfront, and that gives some insight into, why land management? We can go to Ohio and look at the timber in some areas are not very good. It’s been cut years and years ago, and the undesirable species have come back. A whitetail deer, you still see them living in that. Let’s go Alabama and you’ve got pine plantations everywhere. Pines, they don’t offer food source, yet we see deer living in them. It’s important to know that if you buy a property across much of the country, you can still see and experience deer hunting on that property because of their general species. If you want to take it to the next level, if you want to improve that local deer herd, if you want to get more out of that deer herd, if you want to see them reach their fullest potential, then that’s where the habitat manipulation, the land management comes into play. You have to understand what it is that a deer needs, what is lacking in that neighborhood and then make the changes, make the alterations to the habitat, to provide the necessary habitat.
Take a deer, let’s say from a high school athlete. We’re going to make up a little knowledge of here from a high school athlete, a good player, an average person, up to an NBA star. We want to improve the habitat because that is where they live at 24/7. They are 100% dependent upon that. They can get by in a city or in a suburb. If we want to take it to the next level, we’ve got to provide more in our habitat and that’s going to help get them from that high school level player up to an NBA level All-Star.
If you can manipulate your habitat and make changes, those deer, turkeys, quail, or rabbit are going to respond positively to your work. Share on XOne thing people have asked me in the last few years, either on shows or through the podcasts, “I’ve got 40 acres, I’ve got five acres, I’m hunting five acres behind my house in Ohio and it’s a creek bottom. Every year I shoot a 150-plus deer, so how does that work?”
My first question is, “Does he want to sell?” That’s a common thing and if you are that person, and a lot of our clients we’ve been on, properties are 25 acres, 30 acres, 40 acres, 80 acres. It doesn’t take 1,000-plus acres to inch change or improve the habitat. You can make these differences on small acres. You’re not looking at a per-acre basis. You’re getting down to the nitty gritty, the square footage of that property and say, “How can I improve every aspect of this and provide security, provide cover, provide forage in that 40 acres?” Here’s the deal, I think if we look across much of the country, especially over past 500 years of this country, the productivity of the landscape has dropped way down and that’s because of our influences on nature, so on and so forth. If you’re a guy who has got 40 acres and you do all this work, you improve the habitat, you provide the best cover, you provide the best forage, improve food plots and especially through native browse, I know we’re going to hit on that later on. You provide the best security in that area. What is it you’re going to do? They’re going to use the best resources in that area if they’re secure.
If you do that work, you will see an improvement, you will see you’re starting to prefer your property versus others, because not many other people are doing land management. They’re not out there improving their land, that your land is going to stand out among the best in a neighborhood. You can immediately control or have a better understanding and a better thumbprint on that neighborhood with your property because you’re doing something that no one else is doing. If you can manipulate your habitat and make those changes, then those deer or turkeys or quail or rabbit are going to respond positively to your work.
Whereas a neighbor may have a negative response because those deer are spending more time on your property. Turkeys are spending more time on your property because you’re doing the work where they are not. Your habitat is getting better while theirs is getting worse. I think that’s another point to make on why land management where Land & Legacy is blessed to be able to travel across the entire country. We see every trip as we’re driving or flying, whatever it may be, habitat grows. Over time, things mature and a deer specifically, the best habitat for them is early successional habitat. That’s young woody browse that is broadleaf plants, stuff that you’ll see commonly referred to as a weed.
That growth, because of its level, it grows from six foot and down. That’s where a deer can utilize that resource the most. It’s accessible to them and it hides them as a cover and it has forage. We look across the landscaping when land isn’t managed, that six-foot-tall growth in a couple years is now twenty-foot tall or larger. At that point, the benefit dives way damp for the wildlife aspect of things. If you don’t do anything over time, your habitat is going to get worse growing season by growing season, so you’ve got to continue to maintain or manipulate the habitat so that you’re constantly, if you will, hitting a reset button and keeping that vegetation, that growth. All things that the deer are utilizing or the turkeys are utilizing at a certain level so they can use it more like an oak tree, often referred to as hickory tree.
Everyone thinks that the hard mast that tree is going to produce is beneficial, and it is. Don’t get me wrong, but it is. It helps provide additional forage and gets fat on deer so they can make it through the winter, so that’s important. However, there’s a small timeframe in which not even every single year that that tree is going to produce that much forage for the deer because of small window. If we have a mixture of those large trees and a mixture of the younger saplings, that woody browse is going to help carry them through the wintertime as well and the saplings form versus that small window that the acorns are going to drop.
I know I’m going to bring it up a bunch, but diversity in your habitat is key and understanding that if I don’t do anything, if I sit back and let nature run its course, and many times nature running its course is in return making the habitat gain species, especially deer, because their resources need to be within reach for them is getting worse. That’s why habitat and land management is so important. We need to understand that it’s going to take work. It’s going to take us, private landowners or people who have permission to hunt a farm, at least to go in there with permission and manipulate that habitat to get the most out of the property that you hunt.
You mentioned something that hurt my ears, optimum coverage that you said, weeds or forbs up to six-feet tall or really-good twenty-feet tall, they suck. That tells me that I better be watching my land because as it grows up, it maybe had a fire, maybe I did some cutting, maybe I did all these different things, I may haven’t done anything and the land is changing over by itself. We want to manage the land to its optimum caring capacity providing water, food and of course, cover. I think we could get into this in section Boots on the Ground or The Plan, but let’s visit that a little bit because I think people missed that. When you were talking about it, I’m thinking of some places they might stand, one of my stands. I’m going, “I better get in there and weed wash the crap out of that.” It’s beyond use.
There’s a stage, this has taken things a little bit more advanced. This is 103, but the orientation in the layout of these features that we’re talking about that are necessary to have on a property, the cover aspect, the proper cover, the way they’re oriented and laid out throughout the landscape is important. Let’s just say I’ve done all the habitat work I can, but I haven’t laid it out in a plan. I haven’t thought about how deer are going to utilize it. It’s on my property but I haven’t place them in the right areas or I haven’t thought about how deer would get from point A to point B. There’s no way for me as a hunter who wants to reap the rewards of the hard work that I’ve done to manipulate the habitat and offer this great resource. I haven’t thought that they’re going from A to B, but the way it’s laid out, I can’t hunt that area because I can’t get in there cleanly. That’s where it takes it to the next level of why is land management important to have the resources flat.
It’s important to have the resources laid out in the right fashion because let’s face it, you as a hunter, you want to be successful, you want to see deer on your property, you want to have great hunts, you want to reap the rewards. To do that successfully year in and year out, you have to be able to hunt the property. Offering great resources is number one having those deer on the property. Then two is the orientation so what we can go in, not disturb deer as we’re hunting and get back out without disturbing deer. Allowing the property to flow and setting it up ahead of time is number one. From there, doing the habitat work, you will be able to see, “I’ve got bedding over here. I’ve got food over here. I’ve got enough room in between and I can get in and get out, maybe it’s the topography too.” That’s a huge thing that we deal with.
It’s understanding how a deer is going to go from A to B because now there are topography changes or there’s a hedgerow. They’re going to use that hedgerow. We highly understand all of this and go in and manipulate the habitat in a way that we can concentrate deer down to make our hunting overall more successful. It’s a two-fold thing, land management. We’ve got the importance of manipulating the habitat to keep the deer on a property and allow them to spend the most time on your property. That’s when they’re safest. Once they leave your property, you can’t control or dictate what happens. You might have a neighbor that doesn’t agree with your harvest recommendations or have the same goals. You’re not saying they’re right or wrong, but if the deer spend the majority of the time on your property versus theirs, you have more control over what’s going to happen, what that age structure is going to look like from the point in which you start to five years down the road. Keeping them in your property is important. That’s where the habitat manipulation comes in but then the layout, the orientation, is that two-fold process.
Audience, we are talking about hunting deer. All this Matt and I have chatted is about successfully hunting deer or having the deer on your property, that you want cousins, nephews, family members, guests or whatever, to hunt your deer. Matt just said something a while back and I hope you’ve heard it, getting into your stand cleanly. It is fun talking to Matt because I play videos of my farm that I hunt and I go, “I need to move that stand because of past events.” Last couple of falls, I haven’t been able to, but I will and I’m not going to move it far and I’m moving it 50 yards, probably. Just because of what you’re saying, the growth and it’s covered up, it’s not the same stand it was when I put it was up, just not the same stand.
Let’s pick up that little tidbit about getting into your stand cleanly because you use the word manipulating. We can do everything right but if we don’t get in our stand and get busted. Sometimes we do the silliest things like we park the truck in the same place, we open the gate at the same time at 5:05 and then we walk the same 200 yards from our stand, the deer know that. If you don’t believe me, call Matt. He’ll tell you why they do it. I know they know that because I’ve watched them. It’s personal experiences and it happens to every single one of us. You’ve already busted so you get a backout, wait a couple hours, especially if it’s during a rut you might go in.
I’ll go back to my truck, have some tea, take a nap and go in at 10:00 or go to town, have breakfast. It’s just what was there isn’t there and it’s going to cycle through all that type of stuff. Getting into your stand cleanly is critical because there are so many things that attach to that. As we go through these little miniseries, think about the little nuggets and make a note and visualize your property, your stand to say, “I always have to walk around that big thicket.” Do you want to continue that or do you want to go the other way? That’s how I analyze this whole land management can be or if you want to take out that mini-thicket. You know what happens to that mini thicket. A fawn is laying there, a coyote is laying there, a rabbit is laying there. When they bust, you’re busted. Your thoughts?
As we go to different properties, we see stands that unfortunately we have to make the recommendation and build a case as to why despite success in the past years, a landowner probably shouldn’t be hunting in an area that he is. That is typically based on access. The access the way deer are going to work the property, use the property, you’re infringing on that. You’re interfering with that as you travel to a stand. Our best suggestion is, “I understand that deer are coming through here. I understand that you’ve been able to be successful in the past. However, I’m not saying you can’t hunt the deer that are using this area. We need to find a different place to hunt these same deer. We need to find a place that’s less intrusive. We need to find a place that you’re not going to spoof deer as you get to this next location. The way deer are going to travel, they’re still going to come past your stand. Honestly, we may be able to find two spots to hunt. One on either side of this great location. We may turn to one awesome location into two good location, but we have to change it because the access against that one awesome place is bad.”
You’ve been successful at this spot, but how many times have you alerted deer? How many times have you made your presence in that area now? What could have been a successful hunt didn’t pan out because of you alerting deer in that area. In the long run, in a probability standpoint, the stand in that location by moving it, are my chances greater or my chances less? If we make that one stand to turn into two different stand locations simply by changing where it’s at and then we’re hunting the same deer, I might be able to hunt it now on a west wind and an east wind on the same view in that area, but do two different stands. I can improve my odds because I have multiple winds to go and hunted on and now, I’m good so I think it’s important to understand that. A great stand may not always be the best place to kill them. Even though you found success there in the past, changing your mindset of interfering with fear is going to possibly allow you to get more stands in different locations and increase the time that you can hunt that area even though it’s not in that one spot.
If you want your hunting season to be better, you have to work on your land throughout the year. Share on XI just want this whole little series with Land & Legacy to make sense for you, to make you think. Sometimes in Wisconsin when I hunt, we hunted the same farm, it’s going to be 52 years. You get in a rut, you know where the deer are, you know where they should come through, you know where you’ve shot deer in the past and you don’t change it up to say, “I love the thought that you’re hunting it mostly. It’s going to be a northeast wind but if I’d change it, I can squeeze in two different winds.” I’m hunting exactly the same deer. The deer don’t change, the deer on your land, you just got to find out where they are or when they are there and be there. It’s pretty much that simple, but to get there is hard.
That means you’re in a land management standpoint of view. Let’s say you’ve got wide-open habitat, you’ve got big hardwoods and you hunted and you can hunt deer successfully, but they’re not staying on your property. You’re experiencing a great deer movement at the first five minutes of daylight or the last five minutes. They barely came to your stand during daylight hours. What you need to do is cut down the travel time from wherever they’re selecting to bed at. You need to trim that down by offering good bedding cover in closer proximity to your stand and that’s going to help get deer. They don’t have to basically travel as far. They might be traveling or bedding off your property, traveling 400 to 500 yards past your stand and gain there before the end of shooting light.
In that instance, we need to do habitat manipulation and change where they’re bedding and say, “I can still hunt that location but now it’s 250 yards from where they’re actually bedding because I’m creating a bedding area thicket and I’m offering, I’m improving the habitat and that’s directly affecting my success as a hunter.” When those deer get up from their beds that are now on my property and only 250 yards away from my stand, they’re going to get there a half-hour before shooting light ends and I have a better opportunity of seeing more deer because they don’t have to travel nearly as far. It’s that simple instead of if I do work on my property and I do the right work.
I can see a direct correlation to improving hunting on my property. I think that’s why land management is still applicable to everybody. Everyone can probably recall an instance or recall a stand where they experience movement like that. Imagine if you’re in a stand that is maybe a great pinch point, there are ridges that come together, maybe there’s a saddle or there’s a drainage behind you that forces deer up and around you. What happens now if prior to you doing any habitat work, there are open hardwoods? Probably that’s a deer hunter that hunted open hardwoods. Imagine now if there’s a bedding area on your right and a bedding area on your left that you’ve gone and created one to two-acre spot, which doesn’t take much time. Imagine now if you’ve got either one of those on both sides of you and during the rut, what’s the buck going to do? He’s going to be checking those bedding areas and thickets because he’s expecting those to be there. You’re situated right in the middle as he’s going from one to another or back and forth. Or you’ve got three bucks checking this one and they all walked past it and checked this one. Or a buck bumped a doe from the one on your right all the way and pushes it to the next closest cover where she can securely try and hide right back in front of you to the one on your left.
Whereas prior to doing that habitat work, you’ve got a couple deer funnel through was inconsistent, didn’t happen nearly as much, it wasn’t as predictable. Sometimes they’ve walked through there, that was the trail they would take. If I did habitat work, they’ve got a reason to look past there. There are certain times of the year that spot’s going to be that much better because I did land management and I manipulated the habitat. I changed it to offer something that wasn’t there prior. That’s going to directly affect your success in a positive manner from a hunting situation. That’s why land management, no matter who you are, no matter what stage of a hunter you find yourself in, we all want to be successful. Getting out there and doing the right type of work can improve your hunting and will improve your habitat.
Going back to hardwoods and place on our farm. I’m thinking of one place and ravines and gullies and topography and everything and sidehills and food, everything’s there but there’s no cover. I can see a quarter mile but I’d love the fact of having bucks either scent checking, site checking or just working the scrapes and having bounced back. You can put that at datable wind directions. Actually, I love the word manipulate. You can create exactly the setup that you want, that you can hunt to the optimum.
Especially in terrain areas. We hunt a lot at the Northern Ozarks. We’ve got terrain change and you know you hear the positive, the negative of hunting in terrain change. If you manipulate the habitat in the right way and plan ahead and have a land management plan put together for you and it’s done right hunting and topography because deer take the path of least resistance. You can create some absolute dynamite pinch-points and bottlenecks throughout that landscape if you lay out the habitat features in the right way. We’re working to develop a property and it has got a lot of terrain changes. Some of the techniques that we’re going to use are going to change the way to move throughout that property in a positive way. We can access those areas because we’ve got a timber operation going on. There’s thinning the canopy and we’re actually situating specific clear cuts throughout these areas to funnel deer through a saddle or through a bench that’s going to increase our success as hunters.
We’re improving that habitat. We have more place for fawns to bed successfully, turkeys to nest successfully, whereas right now it’s wide-open timber. If we don’t break it up, we don’t offer what a fawn needs from when it’s born to when it’s hopefully a four-and-a-half-year-old buck. Why are we expecting it to reach its fullest potential when we don’t even offer in that landscape the best resources? We don’t offer everything it needs. Why are we expecting it to become a 160-inch buck? Why are we expecting it to be able to even reach an age of maturity when maybe a neighbor has better cover?
They’re going to start to use that. He might get shot earlier so I feel like it’s easiest for us as hunters to point the finger and blow over there if he shoots everything that walks or you don’t get to the right age class. For me, it’s not worth my time to hunt. I want to hunt mature bucks, but there’s none around here. My question to you is not why are you blaming your neighbor for doing that? He can hunt and honestly shoot whatever he wants that’s a legal buck in your area. My question to you is the area that you’re hunting, does it have everything it needs to? Why is that deer opting to spend more time on the neighbors than on your property? Does it have the right cover? Do you have the right food sources? Because if you do, then the chances are that he’s not actually going to spend more time on the neighbors whose habitat is like yours, maybe even a little bit better. If you’re offering the best resources, he’s going to specifically stay on your property because that’s the best in the area. Those are my thoughts. That’s another situation that a lot of people can find themselves in but stop pointing a finger at someone else. My question is are you doing everything you can to your habitat to provide the most and the best in your area to allow you to reach your goals?
That’s a great segue into upcoming Boots on the Ground part 2 with Matt Dye and Land & Legacy. The takeaway is it’s your land and I like the word manipulate. You need to set that land up that Mr. Wonderful. His wife and his kids don’t want to leave. I don’t know what the carrying capacity of your 40 acres is and we can get on that next segment with Boots on the Ground with Matt Dye from Land & Legacy. Thinking about what Matt said, you take some notes and start thinking. Take out a notepad and if not journaling about your land, you’re not journaling about the change to your land, the roads and the fires and the snowstorms and the tornadoes, all that stuff impact your deer herd. Every single bit of that and if you’re not paying attention to that, it’s not going to ever be same old, same old. Same old, same old doesn’t exist. Let’s close on that, Matt.
I’ve got one point to make. A lot of the habitat things or practices that most people try and implement on their property is for the hunting season. That might only be three months out of a year or four months out of a year. Where in reality there are nine more months or eight more months in a year that a deer has to make a living on that property. If you want your hunting season to actually be better, then you have to focus on those eight or nine other months throughout the year than that small window that you’re trying to make your property the best. If you want the overall herd to be larger or you want those individual deer to be bigger, then you have to give them the resources from January 1 all the way through December 31 to make the biggest impact, not just a food plot situation or not just that the deer are going to use from opening day of season to the end of season. That’s where habitat manipulation comes into large scale when we’re focusing on the entire year versus just hunting season window.
Land & Legacy, land management, you’re serious about your land, how many acres you have, it doesn’t matter. You are a 365-day hunter. If you’re just a casual hunter, that’s fantastic. Go up north or head to your uncle’s farm and sit on tree stand and enjoy it and have a great time. That’s great and do it and never even question this. What we’re trying to accomplish here is even though you go to your uncle’s farm as a casual hunter and you’ve shot bucks every single year, if you want to change something, if you want to enhance something for your kids as Land & Legacy comes together hand in hand, then that’s where you start thinking about what little things we can do. We’re not talking about buying John Deere’s and backhoes and aerial sprayers. We’re not talking about that at all. Everything you can do as far as I’m concerned in the whitetail world, for the average person and I’m average, you can almost do it with your ATV and attach appliances or tools.
One of my favorite tools and that everyone can honestly either save up a little bit of money for they already have, is the chainsaw. That chainsaw can provide forage. That chainsaw can provide cover. With you rolling up your sleeves and honestly breaking your back, you can completely change a property with a chainsaw. That’s it.
That’s a great segue to the second segment of Land & Legacy and Whitetail Rendezvous on land management. We’ll be signing off here. Stay tuned for the next installment of Land & Legacy on land management.
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