# 502 Grandpa Ray Land Management Part 2

Whitetail Rendezvous podcast hosted by Bruce Hutcheon

John: Yeah, and this has been something that I started doing at some seminars recently. Because the wildlife industry, we all hear about the great things. If you do this, this is what's gonna happen. But nobody talks about, well, if you do this, this is the down side, this could be a negative. And again, in life, everything has a positive and has a negative. Any action, there's a reaction. So that's something we discuss with people, you know, and those are things that I think more people need to look at. You plant trees here, you plant apple trees, right, what might happen? You plant switch grass. Okay, that could help divert deer. But what's the down side? There's... Not everything has a con, but most species... You plant certain desirable species... What happens if you plant too much of a desirable specie in too big a area? Harder to hunt. So that's one thing that, you know, I really wanna emphasize. We can talk about it a little bit here more about... And that's where I like to look at a property, have a plan, dial it in, tell people why we're doing certain things. But then I also will say to people, "Okay, we wanna do better, right? We wanna have better food plots. Well, you're gonna have more growth, right? If we have more growth, that mines more nutrients from the soil. That's a negative. We mine more nutrients from the soil, we gotta spend more money on fertilizer, right? But then again, if we do a better job at that acre of land, we maybe don't need to plant that second acre of land. That could be a pro." It can be a cycle. Bruce: So, you know, everybody, high schoolers, you know, every action, there's a reaction, and so there's response. Nature will respond to everything you do, just as a buck will, and a doe. So when you start thinking, and we said it in the last segment, kind of, ended up with this, you know, you gotta start thinking It's not just, "We've done it this way, and the point stand's been there for 15 years. We've taken 15 bucks. Why should we stop ever hunting them? And the only time we see bucks there is during the rifle season when they're funneling down into this ravine, and it works. Why? Because they're being pressured, it's an escape route, it goes down into nasty stuff and nobody's gonna go in there so the deer know they're safe, all the deer do." So you think about that, okay, so that stand probably isn't gonna go anyplace. But there's no food, it's climax forest, you know, it's just not gonna change. So that stand might be there for the reason...topographical reasons that I just talked about. But what about the other places that every once in a while you see the buck, every once in a while you shoot a doe? Why is that on again, off again, you know, stand site? And throw it all in together, and I can guarantee you, the on again, off again stand site is because something changed and you didn't look at it. I'd almost, you know... I'm not gonna bet the farm, because I don't own a farm, but you get what I mean. Your thoughts on that, John? John: Yeah. My background, and I've talked about this probably too much to people, my background is from managed intensive grazing. I talk about Mother Nature all the time. Okay, there's guys that might love their certain types of forage beans. There's certain people that just love oats. There's certain people, for five years straight, they've loved their chicory and ladino plot, right? Maybe weather's been perfect. Maybe your deer numbers are a little lower. There's a lot of factors that come into play. What happens if we have a plot that's basically, you know, a three-way clover plot, and all of a sudden we get a drought? And there's stunted growth, or no growth, on your favorite plot that's been very productive for a number of years. All of a sudden, it's not productive. All of a sudden, the deer are gone. Where have they gone? Maybe your neighbor's got alfalfa and chicory, or some other more drought-tolerant species that are surviving from the str...