Don Higgins Breaks Down His Favorite Properties of 2026 - Chasing Giants #320

Published: 2026-04-12 Episode page Duration: 67 min

In this episode

biochar

• Mike’s Mighty Micros’ website lets users select biochar application settings for garden beds, food plots, row crops, pastures, orchards, and livestock feed. 35:47

career

• Don didn’t become a full-time hunting industry professional until his mid-fifties, with far less competition than young consultants face today. 46:25

chasing-assurance

• Terry announces a new second YouTube channel, Chasing Assurance, since many churches use their dad’s material for small groups and Sunday school. 60:03

client-education

• Terry notes clients now often preemptively admit a stand puts too much pressure on the core and expect the consultants to reject it. 28:18

clients

• Don observes that many consulting clients now have listened to Chasing Giants for years and already implement the show’s strategies. 27:28

consulting

• Don’s 2025 consulting properties ranged as far east as Maryland, west to Central Kansas, and south to Kentucky. 20:12
• Don’s two favorite 2025 properties, in Illinois and Ohio, were small (40 and about 62 acres) but bordered huge no-hunting sanctuaries offering food potential. 20:57
• The largest property Don consulted on this year was over 1,400 acres. 27:03
• Terry recalls thinking for the podcast’s first two years he wasn’t ready to start consulting, until Don convinced him he was ready. 47:57

consulting-career

• David Mathews asks if Don plans to add more consultants to his team and how a young guy could be considered for such a position. 44:04

corn

• Terry credits lucky, well-timed rain—not his skill—for an exceptional food plot corn yield this past year. 13:36
• Don explains that corn largely determines its yield very early, around the V2–V3 growth stage. 13:54

coyotes

• Don believes trapping coyotes is harder than shooting big deer, since coyotes are just as smart as mature bucks. 39:37

dealers

• Many Real World dealers have started carrying Mike’s Mighty Micros, Gingerich Tree Farms, Novix, or Hawk products. 4:12

deer-behavior

• Don says deer near his cattle pasture accept his routine presence as non-threatening, but would react very differently if he intruded into their bedding area. 59:05
• Someone once told Terry that a deer will pattern hunters long before hunters ever pattern a deer. 59:39

deer-intelligence

• Justin Sheer asks how smart deer really are. 52:10

deer-memory

• Don cites red deer at the former Berlin Wall, which for twenty years after it fell still wouldn’t cross where the wall once stood. 55:23

drought

• In the 2012 drought, a well-timed rain during pod fill produced a fantastic soybean crop despite the worst drought of Don’s life. 9:43

elk

• Terry saw 14 elk while touring a reclaimed strip-mine property in Kentucky near an original elk reintroduction release site. 22:53

farming

• Big farmers typically hedge their bets by planting multiple corn and soybean varieties rather than a single variety. 15:46

fruit-orchards

• Don has about seven fruit orchards ranging from 6 to 40 trees each — apples, pears, chestnuts, and persimmons — for diversity against crop failure. 32:16

fruit-trees

• Jay’s apple trees were selected for late bloom and late drop, avoiding frost damage and timing fruit drop to hunting season. 17:21

gene-wensel

• Gene Wensel used to say you can read all the books you want on riding a bicycle, but until you start pedaling, you won’t know how to ride. 45:44

kentucky

• Terry describes a Kentucky property with black bear, turkey, and elk, where whitetail have been harvested since the mid-1970s despite poor nutrition. 23:26

land-management

• Rich Eddington asks what impact it would have if someone with a lot of money bought adjoining land and used Don’s management practices. 41:43

logging

• Don recommends telling loggers they can only work the property when the ground is frozen in winter or hard and dry in summer, not muddy. 51:51

master-class

• Terry announces they’re developing a new master class concept unlike anything done before in the hunting industry. 19:05
• Terry says their goal is to potentially roll out the new master class events this coming winter. 19:18
• Don confirms the new master class format is something nobody has done before, calling it a new spin on the concept. 19:41

mentorship

• An old Amish man from Pennsylvania told Don that ‘knowledge without mileage is worthless,’ meaning experience matters more than book knowledge. 45:20

mikes-mighty-micros

• Terry announces Mike’s Mighty Micros launched a new website, mikesmightymicros.com, with detailed application tools. 33:27

nutrition

• Terry credits Doctor Shipley and Duane Hopkins for helping design the elk and whitetail nutrition program on the Kentucky property. 24:17
• Don wants his deer to have the best possible nutrition year-round, not just a summer food source to create a doe factory. 33:02

ohio

• Terry’s top whitetail property this year is in Ohio, for a repeat client he’s now designed six properties for who recently acquired a new tract. 24:36

planting-timing

• Duane Hopkins says to watch ground conditions, not the calendar, when deciding when to plant. 5:43

podcast-milestone

• Terry notes that after 320 episodes, the core themes remain diversity and lack of intrusion. 17:47

prayer-time

• Terry announces Wes Delks, ‘the prodigy,’ is hosting the Sunday Night Prayer Time this week. 60:43

sanctuary

• Don says a small property bordering huge food-less hunting sanctuaries is a recipe for killing big mature deer. 27:52
• Don advises clients creating a new sanctuary to stay out completely for the first five years, not even for shed hunting, to build the deer’s sense of safety. 56:02

seed

• Terry drove a Duramax 3500 to Illinois for meetings and brought back a pallet of seed mineral to prepare for planting season. 1:43

soil-health

• Don describes a clover food plot treated with biochar and humic as a lush, uniform, bright-green carpet with no bare dirt. 30:51
• What does Don need to do this year before planting season, if anything, for soil health? 30:11

soybeans

• Don had his first year in 18 years of selling Real World soybeans where deer did not devour every bean, due to weather conditions. 6:36
• An Iowa customer shared video of deer hammering an Ag soybean plot while ignoring an adjacent Real World plot they weren’t touching. 10:56
• Don notes Real World soybean sales have grown every year for 18 years, which wouldn’t happen if the beans themselves had a problem. 11:41

stand-placement

• Don’s approach to a poorly placed stand is to ask the client how they access it and what wind they use, letting them realize the problem themselves. 28:55

trapping

• Don says trapping teaches you to read sign and terrain features to predict where animals will travel across the countryside. 40:08
• Don plans to do some trapping this winter with his grandson Walker. 41:09
• Terry says he’s never trapped because he can’t check traps every day, not being home consistently enough. 41:18
• Why has trapping become a lost art, and what has Don learned from his years as a trapper? 37:18

tree-farm

• Terry recommends contacting Jay Gingerich early, whether for spring or fall, so he can plan tree production accordingly. 3:00
• Jay Gingerich was delivering a big load of trees to Ohio, with about 60 people expected to pick up trees Saturday at JB’s Feed. 3:34

tree-planting

• Don and Robin planted about 75 trees — 25 persimmon, 25 chestnut, and 25 red cedars — at the Gingerich project. 2:12

tsi

• An anonymous listener asks whether logging-created stagnant water holes that drew away his mature bucks are creating a self-inflicted disaster for his buck herd. 50:30

weather

• In Don’s area, heavy early-season rain gave soybeans a fast start, but rain stopped from mid-July until early November, hurting pod development. 7:17

Deer activity

• unnamed buck (trail-camera) 10:56
• unnamed buck (trail-camera) 50:30
• unnamed buck (hunt) 54:23
• unnamed buck (sighting) 58:42

Listener questions

Question: What does Don need to do this year before planting season, if anything, for soil health? 30:11

• Answer: Don says he doesn’t need to do much this year since he’s already applied biochar and humic to his soil in past seasons. 30:20

Question: Why has trapping become a lost art, and what has Don learned from his years as a trapper? 37:18 — asked by Daniel Byler

• Answer: Don says animal-rights activism destroyed the fur market, crashing raccoon prices from $30-40 to about $5, which is the main reason trapping declined in popularity. 38:38

Question: Rich Eddington asks what impact it would have if someone with a lot of money bought adjoining land and used Don’s management practices. 41:43 — asked by Rich Eddington

• Answer: Don believes high-grading would occur since most people wouldn’t manage bucks as strictly as he does; the biggest impact on his farm is how he manages which bucks he lets walk. 43:17

Question: David Mathews asks if Don plans to add more consultants to his team and how a young guy could be considered for such a position. 44:04 — asked by David Mathews

• Answer: Don says he’s not currently looking to add anyone since his six consultants — Terry West, Derek Burkholder, Bobby Worthington, David Elliott, and Caleb Gehman — can handle the workload. 47:13

Question: An anonymous listener asks whether logging-created stagnant water holes that drew away his mature bucks are creating a self-inflicted disaster for his buck herd. 50:30

• Answer: Don says if EHD is going to hit an area it will, and while controlling water sources may help some, it likely can’t be fully stopped. 50:58

Question: Justin Sheer asks how smart deer really are. 52:10 — asked by Justin Sheer

• Answer: Don says deer adapt to danger quickly, describing a four-year-old buck that spotted his parked four-wheeler, locked up, and stared at it before altering his path to stay covered. 54:23

Prayer Time

Scripture: Daniel Theme: resurrection apologetics via the Shroud of Turin Wes reflects on the Shroud of Turin as scientific evidence for Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, citing Daniel’s prophecy that end-times knowledge will increase, and thanks God for a risen Savior and this tool for sharing the gospel. 66:15

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