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Bruce: Four, three, two, one. Welcome to another addition of Whitetail Rendezvous. This is your host, Bruce Hutcheon. Today I have Guy and Shannon Howell with us, Center of the Nation guide service. And they’re located in north eastern Wyoming. Guy, welcome to the show.
Guy: Thank you, Bruce.
Bruce: Guy, how long have you been hunting that section of land up in north eastern Wyoming?
Guy: Oh, boy it’s been 13 years we’ve been doing it. And my wife’s family has owned it for over a 100 years.
Bruce: Were they original homesteaders up there?
Guy: Yep, they were. They was original homesteaders. And then they bought a bunch of homesteaders out as they left the country, and moved to different places in the Black Hills.
Bruce: Wow. So you’ve got family tradition every time you walk out the back door or the front door?
Guy: Yep. Yes, sir.
Bruce: Let’s just talk about the whitetails you have on the property. How big a piece of land is it?
Guy: You know, Bruce, it runs about 35,000 acres right there in north east Wyoming. And it’s all in one chunk. So there’s nothing divided up. And it’s just a nice piece of land. A lot of variety and a little bit of timber and a wooden area. And then there’s a lot of open country, also.
Bruce: Let’s spend a minutes and talk about the terrain. Is it hilly and rocky? Or is it just long fingers? Just tell the listeners what the land composes of.
Guy: Okay. Well, we run big ridge lines, is what we have in that country. It’s basically grassland. But it has some long ridges that run, I suppose no shorter than a mile and a half long. They’ll run with the trees on them. And that’s where the whitetail like to hang out. They got the open area where they can see you coming and get back up into the protected area. The cover is pretty good. But it’s not so covered that you can’t get a good look at a decent buck from a long ways away. So we got some high ridges you can get up on. You can do a lot of glasses and not be really seen from that spot.
Bruce: What class of deer do you have on your property?
Guy: Well, typically, without the biggest ones. But typically we have deers that are gonna range from 150, 130 to 160 is about the class. We jump in that 180, 200 mark once in a while. It’s like every, you know, if the deer don’t come around every day. And we don’t have deer. So it’s good hunting. But it’s a of of fun, because you can see the deer before you go hunt them. And bigger ones are a little sneakier. They’re a little harder to get on.
Bruce: You hear a lot about food plots today. Do you grow any specific food plots for the deer? Or are they eating the same food that your cattle or other critters are eating?