Land & Legacy Land Management Part 3 with Matt Dye

May 23, 2018

WTR LM3 | Land Management

 

On this third and final stretch of the land management series with Land & Legacy, Matt Dye details the three types of plans you can choose from which offers concrete recommendations on how to shape up and maintain your property to its desired state, with the end goal of leaving a legacy. Find out which plan works for you and how it can affect your hunting success.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Land & Legacy Land Management Part 3 with Matt Dye

Welcome for the final segment of Land Management: Land & Legacy presented by Whitetail Rendezvous. I’m here with one of the owners, Matt Dye. He and Adam Keith own Land & Legacy. And we’re going to talk about The Plan, the first segment. You can go ahead and read it. The second part with Boots on the Ground, read that as well. We’re going to wrap it up with Matt, The Plan. You’ve done all this work, you’ve been on the ground, now what happens?

This is where we get down to the nitty-gritty, Bruce. This is where our recommendations become written form. As we’ve talked in the past, when we got started with Land & Legacy, we wanted our product to live on and influence people. We want to share information that’s going to change people’s lives and change properties because there’s such a draw to land and to people. People want to be a part of it. It’s so natural, it’s so raw, so real.

Our product, our plants that we produce for people, they have to have that same importance, that same intensity and that same knowledge share. It goes back to our name, Land & Legacy. There’s a legacy that needs to carry on with each ownership of a property. Property changes faces. It wears different hats overtime in different years, but one questions we like to always ask, “If you were to walk away from your property right now, what would change? What would the next landowner say about it? What would the next landowner say about you as the previous land owner? Would they be happy that you owned it, would they be sad that you owned it? What would their thoughts be about you as a landowner?”

That could be your kids, a completely different guy from out of state, but what have you done to the land that we live on, that our resources are built upon. What have you done to conserve, to enhance, to protect, to improve? What have you done to influence that positively or have you influenced that negatively? What change do you need to make in your management on that property on that time that you own it? We take it seriously is what I want to say and what I want to convey. I hope everyone does, who has property in their name or in a trust. That’s a resource and that’s a huge importance to us.

Think about the American dream. It’s freedom and own land and have the ability to dictate what happens on your own property. That’s huge. That’s where the importance of a plan comes together because there’s a legacy that we need to carry on with this plan. There’s importance down the road that we need to keep in mind. We want to share information with everyone, so we don’t have just one option for potential landowner to buy into basically. We have three different options, I don’t know honestly if that is a common thing for land consultants, but for us that’s exactly the way we feel we need to be at, and offer services.

Everyone’s different in their steps in which they classify themselves as a land owner. The knowledge that they have, the knowledge that they want to gain. Wherever they’re at in that walk, we have a plan that can start up and provide them with the information that they need.

If you were to walk away from your property right now, what would the next landowner say about you? Share on X

First off, after we’ve done the boots on the ground. We have the three plans for them to choose. One is a Walking Tour. This Walking Tour is pretty simple. It’s exactly what it sounds like, we don’t have a fancy name for it, but we come to a property, we walk it with you. We spend as much time with you on that property as you need and basically, it’s in your shoulders to take notes. To get the information that we talk about in the field, for you to implement. Maybe it’s another guy that you have, maybe it’s your brother who has the property with you, he’s there taking notes as we’re touring around the property. Then we’d sit down once we’re done, over a map with you and simply annotate a hard copy map of that property. We find that this management plan is best for people who’s just getting started, entry level.

That plan is for the person who’s got a not taker with them or they can take notes on the way or they’re just getting started into this property management and they want a taste or it’s a smaller property and they may not have the resources to pay for a full plan. This is going to get them started actively working their property. Actually a client who’s hired us before and they have multiple properties, and they want a full plan on this property, a full plan on that property but this one, they’re okay with just a Walking Tour because they’ll get a lot of information from a full plan that they can correlate and use on this property. No matter where you’re at on the spectrum, this plan could fit your needs.

Secondly, we have a Hybrid consultation. This consultation is honestly one of the more popular consultations that we do. There are podcasts and through other resources that are out there, those people who listen to podcasts have existing knowledge habitat management. There are ones out there who are actively working their property and doing that thing. When they hire us, this Hybrid plan the cliff notes version of our full plan.

If we get to a property and they’ve requested a Hybrid plan, Land & Legacy is going to produce for them five to seven pages of basically the how and the what for them to implement on their property. Then we create a custom map for them. We’ve gone to the point we’ve been able to team up with Hunterra map and our recommendations that we make on our custom maps. Then we overlay it on their high-quality maps and printable version of the map. The customer will get a Hunterra map with our recommendations on it. That’s a neat feature of that plan.

For that Hybrid plan, if you’re doing great techniques for improving soil health, I’m not going touch on soil health on that plan because I gave you a thumbs up in the field. Keep on doing what you’re doing. However, let’s say you’ve got a cool-season fescue grass or smooth brown grass that’s spread throughout the property that’s interfering with the possibility of native plants growing. I’m going to make the recommendation to you in this Hybrid plan, “Control your cool-season native grasses. Here’s how to do it, here’s when to do it and here’s what to do. The result is going to be this.” It’s a very clean, short, to the point section on exactly what you need to do, whether it’s sanctuary placement or establishment. Even down to the point of, “Your trail cameras are in places where they shouldn’t be. You’re interfering with the natural flow. You’re disturbing too much of an area.” I’m going to put that into a Hybrid plan. A big one is timber management, here the steps that you should take to improve your timber or your bedding area efficacy you need to implement in your property. “Here’s how you do it, here’s where you do it and here’s when you do it.”

It could be prescribed fire or it could be invasive species management. That’s a huge topic now. People are starting to get aware of invasive species on their properties. We’re going to point those out in the field then we’re going to tell you in the Hybrid plan, the cliff notes version, “You have this on the property, here’s how you control it, here’s when you control it, make sure you get out there and do it.”

That’s the Hybrid plan, that comes with the custom map. Usually, it’s two or three maps. It’s a hunting map, it’s a management map and it’s a varying unit map. Then you have the option of that Hunterra map as well.

WTR LM3 | Land Management

 

We step up into the Land & Legacy Full Management plan. That is the Cadillac version of information and knowledge for your specific property. We write 20 to 25 pages of property specific notes, of topics, of areas that you need to work on. Those can be anywhere from soil improvement, food resources, native food resources, timber management, things for your development, water resources, trail camera placement or management. Anywhere from invasive species control, prescribed fire and predator control. We’re going to hit on all those topics and how each one of those needs to be implemented or it’s already implemented, but guide you through the how, the what, the where, the when, the why. All of that explained from one of those sections specifically for your property. There’s no question as to what to do, when to do it, how to do it. It’s there in that plan. You can always go back and refer to in this plan.

This is a plan that lives through that property. Once we make the recommendations to get the habitat into a specific level or height. Then you graduate into a management phase, and then in that plan too, we tell you how to manage that habitat once you get it to that desired height. There are not only the steps you take to get it where it needs to be, then there’s the steps to maintain it at where it’s at.

This property isn’t just, “Here’s for the next three years, you do what you need to do.” This plan is, “The entire time that you own this property, these are the steps that you should take to manage and get the most out of your property and its resources.” That’s the Full Management plan of course. We’ve got our custom maps, four to five maps, that we create specifically for that property and then the option of that Hunterra map as well, with our recommendations.

I hope that everyone can understand the importance of the legacy that is left no matter what. Whether you’re thinking about it or you’re not thinking about it. The next person who takes ownership of the property is going to think back on what you’ve done or what you haven’t done to the place. There’s a certain legacy that’s left, whether it’s good or bad or whether you think about it or not. It is left behind because you were at one point tied to a property.

That’s why we take these plans seriously and try to offer something to everyone no matter where they’re at in the spectrum of land management. There are options for you and I hope that we’ve been able to convey the importance and the right legacy to be left with land and the right management practice, and why overall land management is as important as talking about it. You understand the importance, you want to do a whole series on land management. This is weighty, if a landowner’s got kids, and he wants to pass it down in the right form and the right manner. Make that land as productive as possible. We get those emails weekly, “I love what you guys are doing. I’ve got kids and you guys are helping me to make my land the best that it can be, so when I’m dead and gone, I know that this resource is offered to my kids in the best state that it can be.”

If every parent was honest with themselves that they’d say, “I don’t want to leave my kids with a bunch of debt from my life.” If you’re a landowner, you should offer the same thing and say, “I don’t want to leave my kids with a property that’s in shambles and not upkept.” What’s their likely action if it is? Probably just to sell it and move on. Take the money and run. If it’s a resource, if it’s alive, if it’s productive, if it can be managed, if it’s got resources that they want to introduce their kids to or hang on to, they’re likely going to keep that going through their lifetime too and not just put it up for sale once you’re gone.

When you know how deer use your property, your hunting becomes so much better. Share on X

It’s important to understand that and understand the value of landownership, and know what’s at stake with it and the responsibility that comes along with it. That’s our plans. That’s what we offer with Land & Legacy. I think that’s why we stand out among consultancies. The influence, the factors of why we make the recommendations we do. The services that we offer and hopefully can convey the importance of the legacy and the responsibility and comes along with land ownership.

Thanks for that. For the audience, one thing that I’ve learned through my journey here in Whitetail Rendezvous is there are a lot of ways to make your land better. People ask me because I live out West, “What do you think about this basin? I’m thinking about coming out to Colorado. I’m thinking about this. What do you think about X, Y, Z?” One, if I haven’t been on the ground, I can’t tell you anything because you know and I know about as much as anything, we can read the same maps.

Whitetail hunting it’s more than that. Growing up, going to college, marrying a gal from Wisconsin, and being on the same farm for 52 years. That’s a legacy. I’ve been invited by the people that own the farm who are in the second generation now. I’ve seen the changes in the farm. We killed a lot of deer, we killed small deer, big deer. It’s a family affair. Where I’m going with this is t don’t get on social media and say, “Can you look at this Google Earth? Here are where my stands are. Where should I move?” Why would you even move? We get stands name as everybody does.

The more I listen to what’s happening in the Whitetail world, a lot of people have permanent stands, a lot of people are running and gunning, “We’re going to run and gun too.” How are you going to manipulate this land so that run and gun places is a good place? Are you going to let the deer figure out that’s where you need to be and then you have to go there? One day, you’re not even hunting your long-range observation to see where that buck’s running because you know where the does are bedding. Then you’re going to put your stand up there and you’re only going to hunt three days the whole season. “What do you mean I’m only going to hunt three days?” If you’ve done it right. Dan Johnson, Nine Finger Chronicles, pins this down in measuring John Sloan, and they talk about you can hunt only three days a year and kill the biggest deer on your land. If you don’t know your land and you’re not managing your land, you’ll never get to that place. I’ll salute that. Can you lock in on public land? You sure as heck can.

That’s a good point. If you’re managing your property, you know it inside and out and you know how deer are utilizing that property through every portion on that season. You’re in tune with that. You can observe trail cameras. You can observe from observation stands, but you know how deer use your property. Your hunting becomes so much better because you just know it. Two, it’s easy to pick stands. You sit at home, maybe more because that deer’s going to do this, he’s done it the past two years. I’m going to go in there. I’m going to kill him and it’s going to be that simple. It’s a matter of laying out the property and enhancing specific features in a manner that’s going you to do that and be consistent.

If you have a consistent property, if you have consistent cover, if you have consistent food resources. The only thing left for deer to do is be consistent. That’s what creates patterns, that’s what creates better hunting. It’s consistency. If you’re having a habitat that’s constantly changing its security, you’re not offering security throughout the property or of course into the property. The deer’s not going to consistently bed there. It’s things that we need to think of as hunters. We want to be better hunters. Be consistent with what you’re offering in your property and the deer will respond in consistency and patterns that you want to capitalize on.

I’m just going to wrap up The Plan section. Matt, how does somebody get in touch with you if they want to follow up and ask some questions?

If you are interested in consultations, questions, habitat, whatever it may be, you can email in at [email protected] or you can find us on Facebook, Land & Legacy and Instagram, @LandAndLegacy as well. We’d be happy to help, happy to answer questions and get you started in the right path. Those are great resources, don’t be afraid to reach out and we’d be happy to help.

Matt, this is fun. I can’t wait to get to your partner, Adam Keith, and talk about food plots. We’d be getting that scheduled. Thank you for reading. I hope that I created more questions than I gave you answers. I want people to think about whitetail hunting and how to become better hunters. Even more than that, truly keep the hunting tradition alive, whatever that means to you, because it means a lot to me and Matt. With that, Matt Dye and Land & Legacy. Thank you so much for being a participant in Land Management.

Thank you for your time, Bruce.

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