Episode #25 - Don and Terry give an update on their hunting spots and discuss getting into the hunting industry.

Published: 2020-07-13
Episode page
Duration: 76 min

In this episode

bow-season-plan

• Terry said that if he manages to kill a decent deer this season despite his surgery and recovery, it will be a memorable story given the extra effort required. 25:44

buck-behavior

• Don observed that at his rope scrapes, the smallest bucks or yearlings in a bachelor group approach first while the bigger, more mature bucks hang back and watch. 19:20

career-advice

• A listener asked Terry whether someone needs a college degree to work in the outdoor industry. 55:32

celebrity-endorsements

• Don observed that big-name celebrity endorsers have jumped to whichever company pays the most, which is why celebrity endorsement deals have declined. 44:01

culling-bucks

• Don announced the next episode will cover culling bucks and whether culling can actually make a difference in a wild deer herd. 74:57

episode-schedule

• Terry said he has surgery Friday, so it will likely be one to two weeks before the next episode, episode 26, airs. 74:40

faith

• Terry urged listeners to stop tearing down history over others’ past wrongs, saying only the blood of Jesus Christ truly erases anyone’s history. 70:01
• Don said his hope isn’t in Donald Trump or Joe Biden but only in Jesus, believing the country will keep worsening until Jesus returns. 72:25
• Terry said Don has repeated in his seminars that the best way to be blessed is to be a blessing to someone else. 73:41

fall-food-plots

• Don plans to rotate two soybean plots into Deadly Dozen this fall, following his usual two-years-soybeans, one-year-Deadly-Dozen rotation. 20:45

fall-plots

• Don planted a corn test plot for the first time this year using seed corn provided by one of his consulting clients. 20:58
• Terry plans to replant a clover plot he lost this year to drought and weed pressure. 22:03

fatherhood

• Don said many of society’s problems stem from men failing to lead their families, noting prisons are full of men whose fathers weren’t there. 72:48

food-plot-strategy

• Don advises consulting clients with bigger plots to plant the whole area in soybeans, then disc up the heavily browsed edges in early fall for fall food plot seed. 22:49

food-plots

• Don credits timing a residual herbicide application closer to his planting date, rather than well before it, for cleaner soybean plots this year. 6:56
• Don said pheasants and rabbits on his property have repeatedly eaten emerging soybean seedlings as soon as they sprout, contributing to past food plot failures. 8:07
• Duane Hopkins advises planting food plots based on soil and weather conditions rather than a fixed calendar date. 8:38
• Terry believes wild turkeys scratched up and ate a large amount of his broadcast soybean seed on a dry knoll before it could germinate, causing a thin stand there. 9:27
• Don noted that dry ridge tops or ‘clay knobs’ on his land rarely produce much of a crop when conditions are dry. 10:00

hunting-industry

• Listener Adam Rosendale asked Don where he started, what his first steps into the hunting industry were, and how his career has evolved. 36:05

hunting-industry-advice

• Don advises young people to get a job they enjoy and use that money to buy hunting ground or fund trips later, since very few people get rich from the hunting industry itself. 66:22

hunting-industry-history

• Don recalled that in the mid-1990s hunting industry, companies would give away free gear to anyone who wrote a single magazine article or killed one nice buck. 38:20

influencer-marketing

• Terry said companies now often spread sponsorship budgets across many social media field-staff members rather than one costly celebrity deal, getting cheaper, better returns. 50:41

mathews

• Don has been sponsored by Mathews for twenty-seven years and says their early belief in him created a loyalty no competitor could break. 61:04

pro-staff

• Terry said Real World, though a small company, received twenty-two requests for pro staff or promotional partnerships in a single week during the off-peak season. 46:12
• Don said Real World added Kevin Thayer to its pro staff after noticing he had been genuinely promoting and buying their products on social media without ever applying. 56:58
• A former Real World pro staff member told Terry that if he killed the 200-inch buck feeding in Real World’s beans, Terry would owe him a large check for the footage. 58:45
• A prospective pro staff candidate told Terry he’d shoot for whichever bow company gave him a free bow, so Terry ended their working relationship on the spot. 59:31
• Don said many aspiring pro staffers don’t care which brand takes them, working down a list from Mathews to PSE to Hoyt until someone accepts them. 58:07

quietkat

• Terry practiced locking his leg brace and riding the QuietKat to see if he could still operate it without pedaling or bending his knee ahead of surgery. 24:30
• Terry’s contingency plan is to ride the QuietKat with his crutches in the saddlebags and his bow on the handlebar rack to reach his stand without bending his knee. 24:49

rainfall

• Don reported getting timely rain, including eight tenths of an inch overnight, and says his soybean food plots look better than they have in several years. 6:35

rope-scrape

• Don said a single bachelor group passing his rope scrape can generate several hundred trail camera pictures within a few minutes since every buck stops to work the rope. 19:43

scouting

• Don has spent lots of evening time driving roads and using the QuietKat to glass for a velvet-antlered giant buck, but the big bucks have eluded him so far. 1:48

seminars

• Don has three more speaking seminars booked before the end of July: two in Michigan and one in Ohio. 1:27
• In early August, Don plans to travel to Kansas to give two different seminars in one day at the same location. 1:36

social-media

• Terry said there’s a place in outdoor-industry social influencing for everyone, whether they’ve killed a 200-inch buck or are just getting started. 68:08
• Terry announced Don has a new, growing YouTube channel and encouraged listeners to follow Higgins Outdoors and Terry Peer on Instagram and Facebook. 75:28

soybean-agronomy

• Don explained soybeans have a unique ability to fill whatever spacing they’re given, whether planted in narrow or wide rows. 11:25

soybean-planting

• Terry said Real World advises broadcast-seeding soybeans at sixty to sixty-five pounds per acre. 10:40

sponsorship

• Don said he proves himself to a company by buying their product first and building a genuine relationship with people there before ever seeking sponsorship. 41:50

sponsorship-credibility

• Terry said Lee and Tiffany, who had used and credited ARC’s Expect Healthy Deer feed for years, switched sponsorships to Ani-Logics this year. 63:05

supplemental-feed

• Terry is doing heavy supplemental feeding with Maximizer Complete Feed to get as much Expect Healthy Deer technology into his deer as possible. 5:45

surgery

• Terry and his family took a vacation to Panama City, Florida just before his upcoming Friday surgery, after which he’ll be down for the rest of the summer. 2:04
• Terry’s doctor said he’ll be on crutches six to eight weeks after Friday’s surgery, timing that lines up with roughly the opening day of Kentucky’s archery season. 23:41

trail-camera

• On his first card pull of the year, Don reviewed almost 17,000 trail camera pictures across five farms and did not save a single one, unusual for him. 3:23
• Don said a young buck’s photo only gets saved if it’s exceptional for its age class, noting he rarely saves a yearling buck’s picture at all. 4:17
• Terry observed that even if a young buck never becomes a giant, tracking him via trail camera photos still teaches hunters how he shifts and moves over time. 5:15
• Terry has identified at least one seven-year-old buck among his trail camera pictures this year, along with a couple of decent but unremarkable bucks. 6:24
• Don said the buck coming across an alfalfa field in a single overexposed photo looked decent, with visible mass and antler, but was unidentifiable due to a white-out image. 15:28
• Terry asked Don what specific traits make him save a photo of a young buck rather than discard it during a card pull. 3:49

trail-camera-test

• Don has roughly forty trail cameras of different models deployed as part of an ongoing side-by-side test. 13:39
• Don said the point of his side-by-side camera test isn’t price, but confidence that a camera captures every animal that passes with a clear enough picture to identify it. 17:35

trail-cameras

• Don theorized that a now-defunct Chinese-made trail camera brand was designed to work great for one year before failing, encouraging repeat purchases. 14:25
• Terry plans to hang two suspect cameras in his backyard to test whether humidity-related white-out photos are caused by condensation inside or outside the lens. 16:04
• Terry noted camera reliability matters even more on Illinois travel corridors and pinch points, since deer don’t linger there the way they do at mineral sites. 18:22

Deer activity

• unnamed buck (trail-camera) 6:24
• unnamed buck (trail-camera) 15:28
• unnamed buck (sighting) 58:33

Listener questions

Question: Listener Adam Rosendale asked Don where he started, what his first steps into the hunting industry were, and how his career has evolved. 36:05 — asked by Adam Rosendale

• Answer: Don said he started as an outdoor writer so he could earn money to buy his own hunting equipment without taking money from his family. 37:31
• Answer: Don said Gordon Whittington at North American Whitetail published his first magazine article in August 1996, and his career grew from there. 37:42
• Answer: Don said his early assumption that pro staff members had to be elite hunters was wrong; what actually matters is having a unique angle. 42:33

Question: Terry asked Don what specific traits make him save a photo of a young buck rather than discard it during a card pull. 3:49

• Answer: Don said a young buck’s photo only gets saved if it’s exceptional for its age class, and he rarely saves yearling buck photos at all. 4:17

Question: A listener asked Terry whether someone needs a college degree to work in the outdoor industry. 55:32

• Answer: Terry said no degree is required, but you do need a basic understanding of consumer buying behavior. 55:39

Sponsors this episode

• BuyAFarm.com
• 360 Hunting Blinds
• Lone Wolf Treestands
• Mathews Archery
• QuietKat
• Real World Wildlife Products
• Vortex Optics

Don and Terry covered trail camera results, food plots, and sponsorship dynamics. Don reviewed nearly 17,000 photos from five farms without saving one, while Terry found at least one seven-year-old buck among his pictures and continued heavy supplemental feeding with Maximizer Complete Feed. Both discussed food plot conditions—Don’s soybeans looked their best in years thanks to timely rain and better-timed herbicide application, while Terry lost seed to turkeys and planned to replant a clover plot. They tested camera reliability issues, including white-out photos, and discussed Don’s ongoing forty-camera side-by-side test. A large portion covered the outdoor industry: how sponsorships have shifted from celebrity endorsements to social media field staff, Don’s history breaking into outdoor writing after Gordon Whittington published his first article in 1996, and his long-standing loyalty to Mathews. Terry discussed his upcoming Friday surgery and plans to hunt on crutches using his QuietKat. The episode closed with a faith-centered reflection on leadership and forgiveness.

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