Episode #113 Prepare Now… Results Come Later!!!!

Published: 2022-04-18
Episode page
Duration: 78 min

In this episode

bedding-areas

• Don says he focuses on identifying bedding areas like thickets where deer like to bed, rather than pinpointing a deer’s exact individual bed. 42:55

buck-bedding

• Carl Compton asks whether bucks and does use a different bedding area in the morning versus the evening. 38:58

buck-beds

• Don is skeptical of consultants who create artificial buck beds, arguing that if it worked as well as claimed, everyone would have a wall full of trophies from it. 41:19

chemicals

• Don states Real World does not provide application rates or methods for chemicals, directing customers to check product labels online instead. 24:54

church

• Terry shares that he attended church with his family, where his father serves as senior minister and his nephew as associate minister, and heard his father preach. 76:19

consulting-season

• Don plans one more consulting trip to Northern Indiana and Eastern Ohio, after which his travel season will be finished until July. 1:08
• Don states that combined with Wes, they visited well over 180 properties during this year’s consulting season. 4:38

consulting-takeaways

• Don announces that next week, after finishing his last consulting visits, he and Terry will discuss takeaways and common mistakes seen this season. 5:18

consulting-travel

• Don recounts visiting two properties in South Dakota on Monday before immediately driving home overnight. 6:40

consulting-workflow

• Don marks a red pin on Google Maps for each new consulting client and changes it to black once he completes that property visit. 1:59

consumer-education

• Terry advises that if a consumer can’t understand what’s on a feed or seed tag, they’ve already fallen for a marketing gimmick. 36:31

deer-cooperatives

• Drew Ramage also asks what Don thinks about deer cooperatives among neighboring landowners. 59:36

deer-management

• Don argues that nothing regulates hunters to only one or two properties; anyone could look at as many properties as he does if they put forth the effort. 13:51

family

• Terry shares that his son Jonathan, a high school sophomore, played violin in his final youth symphony concert. 18:08
• Terry announces his freshman daughter is ranked eleventh in Kentucky in batting average among all high school softball players. 18:38
• Terry announces his oldest daughter Caitlin is graduating from Georgetown College. 18:51
• Terry shares that Caitlin is graduating with a bachelor’s degree in medical science and has been accepted into the University of Kentucky’s advanced nursing program. 19:14

family-banter

• Don jokes that he got up and left the table when his father started opening a jar of hot pickled eggs because he found them so gross. 74:23 (light moment)
• Terry relays that Don’s daughter Andrea told him Don couldn’t tolerate the smell of the pickled eggs, while Don’s father gave them a thumbs up. 74:33

feed-industry

• Don states the feed industry has tighter profit margins than even the seed industry, so cheaper feed products necessarily cut corners on quality. 34:04

field-work

• Don says he’s just waiting for the ground to dry up before doing field work, and would already be doing it if conditions allowed. 75:12

herbicide

• Terry recommends that people needing herbicide guidance call their local Ag Chem representative rather than relying on Real World for application advice. 24:33

home-farm

• Don says that even on his own home farm, he doesn’t expect a shooter buck to show up this year. 14:49
• Don notes his home farm is only about 120 acres and most years does not produce a shooter, contrary to assumptions he has an elaborate trophy property. 15:00

hunting-pressure

• Brett Petty asks how Don can host multiple hunters and still kill five to seven bucks a year without lowering each hunter’s odds of killing a mature buck. 50:09

illinois-politics

• Royce Corbin asks what Don would want asked of gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey about fixing Illinois’s DNR through a contact on Bailey’s campaign. 27:28

iowa-hunting

• Don shares that he did not shoot a buck in Iowa last season, blaming it entirely on spending too much time on the road consulting. 8:03
• Don plans not to repeat last year’s mistake of neglecting his own Iowa scouting, despite looking at about as many client properties again this year. 8:16

lesters-feet

• Terry announces that Larson Farms of Minnesota and Fall Line Ridge of Georgia, two popular YouTube channels, have volunteered to help promote the Lester’s Feet raffle. 47:17

master-class

• Terry recalls Al Foster’s point from a live master class that people don’t see the years of setbacks behind success and want to skip straight to replicating results. 65:23

neighbor-strategy

• Don argues that fully sharing hunting strategies with neighbors erases any property advantage, since neighbors will simply replicate what works. 64:24

phone-issue

• Don announces that after a prolonged Verizon voicemail glitch, he discovered missed voicemails dating back to November 2020 that he’d never received. 21:25

property-selection

• Drew Ramage asks whether to buy a marginal property with great cover in a good hunting neighborhood or a better, more diverse property in an unknown neighborhood. 59:07

sanctuary

• Don explains his home farm’s sanctuary has been managed this way for thirty years, letting deer across many generations view it as the safest place around. 54:15

sermon

• Terry recounts his father’s sermon titled ‘The Rock,’ about the stone rolled away from Christ’s tomb symbolizing overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles. 76:31

solo-hunting

• Don advises that hunters aiming to consistently kill the biggest bucks year after year must hunt alone, though hunting with family or friends is fine otherwise. 66:03

stand-prep

• Don hung two tree stands on private property on Tuesday right after returning from his South Dakota trip. 7:07
• On Thursday, Don did a consulting visit in Illinois, then prepared three tree stand locations across two public land properties. 7:15

supplemental-feed

• Don relays that his client Danny was pressured by a supplier to switch to a particular big-name feed brand, prompting Danny to request its nutritional analysis tags. 33:14
• Terry credits Patrick Simpson as one of his best teachers for identifying bedding areas, placing supplemental feed elsewhere, and hunting the travel route between them without spooking deer. 70:29
• Jeremy Slooter asks whether Don would supplementally feed and use mineral year-round in Illinois, what feeder types he’d use, and how he’d situate feeders relative to stands. 66:38

switchgrass

• Terry notes Don has adapted his switchgrass plantings by adding Miscanthus structure in X patterns, a technique also used by Jay Gingerich of Gingerich Tree Farm. 43:34

tractor

• Terry plans to drive to Illinois Thursday night to pick up his new tractor on Friday, expecting both he and Don to start working ground soon after. 74:58

trail-cameras

• Don reports pulling trail cameras and counting about 16 bucks scoring around 160 or better, a couple near 170, all four-year-olds or older with shooter potential this fall. 12:30

Deer activity

• unnamed buck (management) 16:06
• unnamed buck (harvest) 60:42

Listener questions

Question: Royce Corbin asks what Don would want asked of gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey about fixing Illinois’s DNR through a contact on Bailey’s campaign. 27:28

• Answer: Don says Illinois once had the world’s best deer herd and could again, questioning whether Bailey is committed to restoring that and making the herd more profitable for the state. 30:06

Question: Carl Compton asks whether bucks and does use a different bedding area in the morning versus the evening. 38:58 — asked by Carl Compton

• Answer: Don explains that mature bucks rarely bed in one exact spot day after day; that belief is a misconception, since bucks use multiple bedding sites depending on conditions. 39:44

Question: Brett Petty asks how Don can host multiple hunters and still kill five to seven bucks a year without lowering each hunter’s odds of killing a mature buck. 50:09 — asked by Brett Petty

• Answer: Don explains that although they kill five to seven bucks yearly, it’s extremely rare for two hunters to be on his farm at once, since they always hunt one at a time playing the wind. 50:56

Question: Drew Ramage asks whether to buy a marginal property with great cover in a good hunting neighborhood or a better, more diverse property in an unknown neighborhood. 59:07

• Answer: Don says he’d choose the mediocre property in a good neighborhood, since he can improve his own land but can’t change the surrounding neighborhood’s influence. 60:03

Question: Drew Ramage also asks what Don thinks about deer cooperatives among neighboring landowners. 59:36

• Answer: Don says the more advanced a deer manager becomes, the harder it is to get neighboring landowners aligned with the same goals in a cooperative. 61:02

Question: Jeremy Slooter asks whether Don would supplementally feed and use mineral year-round in Illinois, what feeder types he’d use, and how he’d situate feeders relative to stands. 66:38 — asked by Jeremy Slooter

• Answer: Don says he likes gravity-fed feeders and strongly dislikes spin feeders, since spin feeders scatter feed on the ground instead of keeping it fresh and protected. 67:19

Don discussed wrapping up his consulting travel season, with one more trip to Northern Indiana and Eastern Ohio remaining before a break until July; he and Wes had visited well over 180 properties this year. He recapped a hectic week: two South Dakota visits followed by an overnight drive home, hanging stands, and prepping locations after an Illinois consulting stop. Don admitted missing a buck in Iowa last season due to consulting demands and vowed not to repeat that neglect, despite a similarly heavy client load. He reported pulling cameras and counting roughly 16 bucks scoring around 160 or better. Listener questions covered bedding behavior differences by time of day, hosting multiple hunters without hurting odds, choosing between a mediocre property in a good neighborhood versus a better property in an unknown one, deer cooperatives, and year-round supplemental feeding setups. Terry shared family updates and recapped his father’s church sermon on overcoming obstacles.

Unofficial fan project. AI-synthesized from public episodes; may contain errors.