00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyon in this episode number two and seventy nine, and today in the show, I'm excited to be joined by doctor Grant Woods to discuss a new, more ecologically friendly methodology for planting food plots that mimics how vast herds of buffalo and the native grasses of the Great Plains co existed to create one of the most bountiful ecosystems on the planet. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Onyx and today I'm joined by Dr Grant Woods. And if you're not familiar, Grant is one of the foremost experts on deer and habitat management for wildlife. He's a wildlife biologist, he is a consultant, and he's the host of Growing Dear TV, which is an online video series which documents all of his work improving and hunting his proving grounds property in southern Missouri and then consulting with with other landowners across the country. And you know, I've been a fan of grants for a long time now. I followed a lot of what he's been doing, but I want to have him on the show today because he's one of the first people with a significant voice within the hunting space to embrace a new, more ecologically friendly and productive method for managing and planting food plots, and something that recently I've gotten really excited about. Uh, with many of the good things, I guess in my life, this was this is an idea that was actually turned on me by my wife. It was about a year ago, just a little over year ago, I guess. It was when she confronted me about how I was planting my food plots. I had just been out on this property and I was trying to control this plot that just got overcome with weeds, and it was really frustrating. I was talking about all the different chemicals I was gonna spray on it, and how many times I was gonna have to do it um and she was She just kind of looked at me, She's like, why are you doing that? Why are you spraying all this poison out there on this place that you talked about you care about so much, you know. It seemed to her a little bit, uh, I don't know, a little bit backwards, and I just told her, well, it's just just what you gotta do. There's no other way. And in her own special way, she told me that that was kind of a bullshit excuse. She said, there's gotta be a better way. Don't be lazy, figure it out. And at the time I didn't really like it. And I still went and I used those chemicals because I had to get the job done, I thought, Um, but it kind of stuck with me. You know. She had a good point there, as you know, as is the case, we're probably you and me and many other people like us. Um. You know, I care immensely about the natural world, you know, the earth, the environment, whatever you wanna call it, the animals and plants, water, the air, all this stuff. These things, Um, they are responsible for the most incredible special experiences in my life, right hunting and fishing and being in the outdoors. I mean, these are the things that that get me up in the morning and keep me going all day. Um. So because of that, I've tried as much as possible to make sure that I'm treating you know, these places and these things with respect and with care and speaking up for when I can. Um. But my wife kind of made a fair point that maybe some of the stuff that I was doing, um, which in my mind was was trying to help wildlife by playing food plots, maybe I was doing some some not so good stuff to get there. So so I got researching. I started looking into it earlier this this late winter, I guess, late winter, early spring, and started trying to better understand, you know, number one, understand what I had been doing, you know, conventional agricultural practices. What you know, what's the rationale for doing that? And are there any downsides to it? Um? And if there are downsides to it, are there alternatives? And the long story short on that is that yes, there are a bunch of downsides to the conventional way of doing things, unbeknownst to me. And I'm just starting to learn all about this stuff now. But unbeknownst to me, you know, aggressively tilling the soil, frequently, spraying herbicides, loading up on synthetic fertilizers, all this stuff in a lot of different ways is damaging to soil and water and plants and animals, and um, you know, I've been doing that and I didn't really realize that at the time, but it does turn out that there are some other ways to go about it, that that isn't the only way. And I'm not saying, you know, it's horrible to people do that stuff, but maybe there are some better alternatives. And I figured, if I knew they're alternatives, I should probably explore them. So that's what I've been doing, lots and lots of reading, lots of watching videos, start to talk to people about these different ways to go about it, and and there really are some cool ways of doing this. So there's some things within the traditional agricultural world called what other people are calling read genitive or restorative agriculture, in which people are successfully planting crops without disking them all up, without tilling it all up, without spraying all these herbicides and secticides, without dumping all these synthetic chemicals and fertilizers into the ground, and and they're doing this in a way that is, you know, first, it's better for the environment, it's better for the wildlife. It's also much less expensive in the long run because you're not dumping money into all those things. And at the same time, what they're finding is they're producing just as good, if not better yields. Um. So that's that's big news. And like the food world, but from a food plot perspective, it makes a whole lot of sense too. And and that's where Grant Woods comes in because as I was doing all this research, I ran across some of the stuff that Grant's been talking about, which he calls the Buffalo method of food plotting, which is essentially his take on this regenerative agg process and how he applies it to deer and wildlife food plots. So that's what we're talking about today. Uh, Grants going to walk us through his ration and the science behind and the how to for his buffalo food plot methodology, this system that he's developed that mimics the Great planes and how they are grazed by vast ards of buffalo to create this immensely healthy and productive food source for wildlife and um man, I'm really excited about it. It's really interesting stuff. I've never personally gotten this into agriculture and food and planting, um but but this kind of is a different way of looking at it. That's that's particularly interesting. So in the meantime, we should probably just get to our chat with Dr Grant Woods. All right with me now is Dr Grant Woods of Growing Dear TV and Grant. Uh. It's always a pleasure and a treat for me to get to catch up with you. Um. So, first off, thank you for taking the time to do this. Hey, thanks for the opportunity Mark. Yeah, and and and as much fun as it is just to chat with you about what's going on in the proving grounds or what's new with me over here. Um, I'm particularly excited for this conversation because I personally have gotten really interested and just kind of started learning a little bit about some different ways to approach managing forage and producing food plots. And I've been doing a ton of reading over the last couple of weeks to kind of learn about this stuff. And I've gotten maybe more excited than I've ever been about the kind of food plotting work I might be able to do on the properties where I can do that. And as I was diving into all this stuff about about a new way of producing food plots, a more ecologically friendly way and maybe more productive way. As I've been diving into all this, your name keeps popping up and your resources kept popping up and and I said to myself, well, I'd love to catch up with Grant and I'd love to learn more about this stuff. So it was a great way to have these two worlds collide. And uh, and that's kind of what I wanted to talk about, Grant. Is the system that I've heard you refer to as your Buffalo food plot system or methodology. Um. And I guess before we I into what exactly that is and how to do it, I guess I'm really curious to understand what was your inspiration for trying to go about putting together food plus system that's different than the normal conventions out there. How did this idea spark for you? Yeah, it's really a long history that led to a pretty short change or short story. So I've I've been incorporated as an I'm a consulting biologist. I just didn't really like the university system. So in June we're celebrate twenty nine years have been incorporated, and I've literally helped landowners from New Zealand to Canada and every state that has white tails in between, and in food plucks a big part of what I do. And guys, I started disking and sol tests and fertilizer and herbicide and kind of what I now called maximum input, but worse than that, I only focused on what was above the ground by this plants growing more tons, or deer really eating this one, or you didn't like this one too well or whatever. As I kind of moved through my career, my wife Trace and I went to New Zealand to work with deer farmers short story, and they were drawing these really funky broadly plants we all now know as brassicas, not just turn ups with many different species in Nebraska family and and I actually brought some of them back and planted them on a project I was doing in South Carolina for a couple of years and noticed a bit of a weight gain and some other factors moving really quickly, and NAT turned into the company Biologic partnered with Mossy Oak. They were great partners, still really good friends with them, and designed all those blends for several years and just had an opportunity to sell my shares to Toxic. We're still buddies. And you know, I was going to stuff mark meetings more than I was being a field ballogist, and I'm a field ballogist at heart so did that. And then here at my place in Missouri, we've got a few acres of food plots and like every other guy, trying to save money and you know, not put quite so much in them and have better fraud to track more deer, blah blah blah, And just realized that plowing, planting whatever wasn't the best it could be. And about that time I started reading a bunch of the ad guys kind of what you're doing now, I'm trying find a better way, and come across some guys and North Dakota all the way down to Florida that we're using what they call regenerative agg or regenerating the soil, improving the soil, and I I kind of talked improving the soil. Men should go to the feeding and gets another buggy load of M P and K and spread it on your pots. And these guys were talking about looking at natural systems, and I do a lot of native halftab management, prescribed fire, tumber stand improvement, whatever, and replicating what was going on for forage crops anyway in the native prairie. And that just rang a huge bell with me because and and she's twenty now. So several years ago, Uh, I had my oldest daughter when she was about three, and my wife Tracy in Yellowstone. I was actually teaching some summer courses they're back in the day, and we watched a huge herd of bison and buffalo getting ready across the Yellowstone River and there was a little calf standing right in the front and there's hundreds of bison behind. They're getting across. My little daughter scream and daddy goes say, but goes say, of course, you know it had been in the death of DA didn't go out there. And uh. And by the way, the cat made across the river just fine. But you know, I'm a biologist by training, and I'm sitting there going, huh, you don't cross here much because that many bison crossing this river would have massively eroded banks and just scarred land. And it wasn't that way at all. It was vegetation. And where the bison had went was pummeled to the ground. I mean, you know, hundreds have heard of bison when you know fiftd pounds on average, I'm guessing here two thousand pounds on average whatever cows, gas bulls and where they walked they you know, in group, not a single one. They pummeled that vegetation. They trampled it into the ground, and they journated and defecated a bunch. But they've been doing that forever in that area. And if you've ever seen a beautiful meadow and yellowstone, it's incredible for its fertile soil, beautiful in a tough environment. And that really got me thinking along with these other guys talking and writing about how rich native prairies were. The remaining few acres excuse me, Naty Praier, we had and I do a lot of prescribed fire here. We've cut about tunered acres of red cedar that just was dense. You couldn't see why I hunt do anything. We cut it, left in the place, didn't haul it off, greate thing and burned it. And the state botanist and I went one of these areas and only spent a few hours and like all day, you know, looking everywhere we could. We spent a few hours and identified a hundred and seventy six different species of native grasses and fords flowering plants. Fords A hundred and seventy six, that's that's rainforest diversity on an old south facing rocky slope and the Ozart Mountains Branson, Missouri for y'all to don't know the other arts. So I leave by Branson, Missouri, steve really rocky country, and I'm thinking, how can this native habitat be so productive and so beautiful? Lots of wildflowers bloom met and so productive, and it's kind of putting all us all together. It was a result of me terminating that vegetation. In this case, it wasn't buffalo trampling and it was wildfire, but kind of terminating it all at once and having tremendous species diversity, plant species diversity, let alone, as I've learned later, all the beneficial insects and that aasty word bacteria in the soa. So my place is so rocky. Fortunately, in hindsight, I've never disc a food plot here in seventeen years. I don't own a disc. I've never owned a disk here. Everything has been a no TELL drill. I couldn't afford one at first, so I rented one from the county. Most counties across America have an n RCS office and they rent no TIL drills if you don't know that, and later just because boy, when you go to rent a drill of its planting season and other people are trying to get the drill, so we end up purchasing one. We have one now for our own convenience of planting when we want anyway, So I never disturbed the soil more than just a little slot where seeds are dropped in. If you're familiar with the no til drill, there's no till that You're just making a slot and seed drop in. And at first I was terminating that vegetation, whatever it weeds or the pass drop, whatever it's her beside. And then I figured out what the buffalo didn't use her to side, And I did some reading online and I worked with a grouping notes called URTP Outdoors. And I'm not engineering at at all, folks, I'm a logic brained biologist. Don't ask me to change your spark plugs or do anything like that. And but they are great at that. So I asked them to make me what I called a still buffalo. Know they branded it called the Goliath Cripper, But to me, I wanted to replicate those buffalo going across the Naty Prairie. So it's a basically like a roller. It's but rather than the flat world where it's got I don't know, six or seven inch metal flares that are designed or all the way around about eight inches apart. But they're not straight across it like you might think. They're at a a almost like a triangle if you older a slope one for on the other. So if you can imagine this over voice, when the back of one flayer leads the ground, the front of the next player is already touching the ground that way, it's not bouncing. If this was just like a comb if you will, and everything's in a row, as your tractor pulled it with any speed at all, and it was hit miss hit miss, hit miss, and start bouncing off the ground. And I wanted this to break at these stems of the vegetation. Not breaking ap just crimp. It's called a crimper. Crimp it about every eight inch or so. Because if you stop the circulatory system of a plant or your arm or whatever, it's going to die, you're terminating it. So we went from using really candidly a lot of round up two or three times a year, so now we buy literally maybe about a tenth or what we used to and we don't use it maybe once maybe twice a year. And explain line a minute. So if you would imagine this that's got the inspiration, that's just a thirty thousand foot overview, then we'll get into it. We've got like right now we're doing this, right now are standing fall crop which had cereal grange, you know, wheat, ryo, oats whatever. In Braskas. I've always got some brassas in there. I know the benefits of them, Samani clovers and stuff like that. And there maturing now that most people across America were seeing the wheat heads or the cereal right heads or the old heads starting to form. If you squeeze them between your thumb, there's probably a little moisture coming out. That's called the doe stage, and plants in that stage are producing seeds die really easy. They're very easily terminated. So we take our crimper to steal buffalo and we pull it behind a tractor and it's cramping the stems on average about every eight inches, maybe a rock that skips since every sixteen or something. But it's breaking that stem, that's not cutting it. Because like if you cut grass that grows back. Right, like cut your yard, it goes back. If you cut wheat until it d really mature, it will try to grow back and compete with the next crop you're going to plant. So we use this cramper to replicate a her to buffalo. I'd rather have buffalo. Some people use cattle to do this, but I'm not running electric fence all the time, folks, So I've got to use something mechanical. Uh, and trample down if you will. It's cramper, trampled down the vegetation and terminated. And then I started thinking about the Great Prairie more and get learning from bag people, and we would terminate it and then take our no childrill through there. But if we didn't drive the same way, the crimper had been pulled and bogged up a little bit. Right. You're you're getting vegetation in the cultures and the you know, in the disk, and it's bogging up. And I took it a little bit of skill. So start thinking about and a lot of see needs on the prairie. A lot of the plants on my bedding areas here make seed before I burn, and so they're falling to the ground down in the duff I used to describe fire. Those seeds are not consumed in the fire usually. Now they're setting on pretty much bare or at least exposed soil. It's not truly supposed because there's a big root system. Fire only does from the ground up, done new thing, blowed ground um, and those seeds germinate really rapidly, but they fail in a natural system before that vegetation was terminated. So I started playing with my blends back in the day's of biologic Now I just do it for fun. I started playing with my blends and coming up with with food plot blends cool season winter crops, fall crops and warm season summer crops. Uh, that would mature about the same time, or fifty buffalo system, if you will. And so now I drill. I take my no till drill, and I plant in that standing fall crop right here at my place. Now it's been on the food plot. It's four to six ft tall. I'm six ft one, and it's at my head top in some plots, and I'm driving my tractor planting into luck. To a stranger, might look like a weedy miss. My guys, you're putting seeds in that jungle, and I let Right now, I'm planning soybeans, and I let the soybeans germinate. This freaks a lot of people out and get about four inches tall in the second leaf stage, and they don't take a lot because they're so young, they don't have to have a nuch of nutrients. And son, you know they're gonna grow. And about the time before inches tall, I've already planned it. I've planned through standing crops, so there's never a chance for erosion wind or water erosion. And listen to this, hunters, there was always food out there. I never cleaned the table my annual cobra. I got bucks head down on annual cobra right now, and I'm so pleased with the ant of growth. I'm already sin because they've had food all year long. There was never a day, not one day, there wasn't food my food plots. I never disked, I never telled, I didn't kill it with the herbicide. There was always food two and sixty five days out the year. That gives you incredible ant. Bear dirt doesn't feed any critters or any hoof critters anyway. So and then after I've drilled and my feedlings are up three four inches. I take my steel buffalo to crimper to be live cripper and run right over that crop. Because now the seedheads on last falls crop planted last August here are so mature that dies real easy. And while I run the crimper over, yeah, I'm running not already these beans for inches tall. And the first time you do it, you're going, oh my gosh, it's painful. Yeah, but those plants are so young and pliable. They just popped back up, like driving across grass in your yard and your wife goes, I can't believe you put those tracks in the yard, and two days later you can't even tell where you drove. Just plant stand back up. Came away with young soybeans. So I wouldn't do this over a foot and half tall soybeans at all. But young soy beans are so appliable. Other young crops the same way, so appliable. They just stand backed up. And now what I've done, just like the buffalo, I've created this three to four inch thick mulch laying on the drowned And there are many any wonderful features of moults that could never be accomplished when you plow the soil. Never one is and and I didn't think about this until I learned, and I don't think a lot of guys think about it. It keeps the soil cool and warm so here. I planted soybeans on April tenth this year, the earliest I've ever started planning by a month, and right after it wasn't because I thought, well, guys, it's gonna be warm spring. And I don't you know, the farm's almanac and the National Weather Service, they don't never see him to get this up right, and showed up two days after I planned, it got below forty degrees three nights in a row, and two thos had a real code range, like, oh my guys, I've messed up. I'm gonna be replanting those and those fields are beautiful right now, beautiful beautiful. I planned about two and twenty thousand soybeans per acre. I never planted by weight, Folks, I don't say, well, I plant fifty two pounds breaker, because soybean seeds, even if you're using the same varriday I everyone knows I work with the eagle seed. I plant their beans. But even even see or any varriety if you've got a really wet year, to each individual bean pod would be bigger. You got a really dry year, it will be smaller, and that makes the difference going through your seed meter. So it's not fifty pounds of beans is the same from year to year. Year. You want to look at the seed count on the bag, and a lot of folks I don't think, no this the federal government regulates. So for example, corn is always sold at eighty thousand kernels. They sell by kernel count eighty thousand kernels per bag. If you're buying a legal bag at corn in America, it has eighty thousand kernels in it. It may weigh thirty two pounds and may weeh forty one pounds, may weegh fifty pounds. Being on the Briday, corn soy beans must be sold at a hundred and forty thousand seeds per bag. The weight will change, but it's always one hundred forty thousand seeds per bag. So I do some simple math, come up with how many pounds I need to plan to get two hund twenty thousand. I'm planning that a little bit of a high rate because you know you're gonna be eaten some groundhogs are gain some ravage, are going some after the first month. I want to end up with a good population. That's why I'm planting a pretty high rate. I've pulled it him for right over those beans, and I've now got this motion. They're just like much in your garden. There's almost no chance for a weed to grow. It's under four or five inches of mulch. And then that's just one thing. It cools the soil and it's hot. And I've done this test, We've published it. I have a pretty high dollar infrared gun that measure's temperature. I can point it at your forehead, pointing at soil, point at a car, and we all know it can be a pretty nice sentified degree day outside stun's been shining a little bit. You lean up against a dark colored vehicle and you about burn your hand. Well, that's the solar energy being collected by that dark color. The same is true, exact same is true on the soil you've got, you know, a brown, and on where you are, you know, maybe a black. You're lucky soil. And that's so I from Wally heat Up. I was amazed last summer on a day and the morning, about nine am. That was seventy two degrees here and I took my gun out and listen to this this, folks, this is amazing. There was a little place where I turned the corner and my tractor tire and pushed all the multiway. So the soil is bear I try to never have bear soil for many reasons. But the soil is bear by deal. Look turn and at nine am that soil the surface of the soil was a hundred and thirty two degrees. This is published. You can see the video on top of the mulch close by. You know, I'm talking eight inches away, not across the field, eight inches way, so exact, same wind, xact, same son, everything the same on top to mulch, which was a light ground. You know it's dead vegetation, thinking about dead grass. Dead vegetation been late in a month, really light brown, bleached out. It was in the eighties. Right beneath that mulch. Just take your fingers spread apart real quickly shined the gun on there, for it can start heating up with seventy two degrees seventy two in July. Now I want now, I want to share some data. This is not my data. This is from my big research university, Okay. At seventy degrees soil tempation, we're talking surface soil tipasure. At seventy degrees, it's the ideal temperature for most plants to grow. And on the moisture in the soil is available to the plant. None of it is being lost to what's called evapo transporation or evaporate. Now the soil at ninety degrees soil temperature, plant growth definitely slows. It's stressed. Remember top of my soil without protection was a hundred thirty two degrees. At a hundred degrees, just only fifteen percent of the moisture in the soil. We can't arrogate food clots, most of us can only is available for plant growth is lost through evaporation. Evaporation at a hundred and thirteen degrees soil temperature surface, some species of bacteria start to die. Now mostly is all that's good year. It was dog on bacteria. You know, bacteria kind of has a bad name. Uh, bacteria like the human body. Yeah, we we have we get six from some bacteria, but we're covered every gainst by bacteria. Never believe some cent kilar product folks. And I'm not talking any brand that says kills hunercent bacteria, because if you did, and you bathe the next stuff, you would die in a matter of minutes. We have to have bacteria on our body to live. Same with plants. There's thousands of positive species of bacteria, beneficial species of bacteria for everyone bad. And if you manage your soul right by the way, the good ones will swamp out the bad rooms to take care of it. You don't have to use any chemicals. At a hundred thirty degrees a hundred and the moisture is lost, and a hundred forty degrees also, bacteria dives. You go from soil to dirt. It's just chemicals down there. That's why keeping that soil temperture moderated it's so beneficial. So I'm in an area's really rocky soil, it's we're pretty prone to drought. We can get a toomuch rain and five days later so they can kind of dry out there. But since I've started having this martial layer down, my plants can go through much more of a drought than they used to and not show any sign of stress. Because I'm conserving soil moisture. It's not about getting more moisture. I can't control the weather. I can't irrigate. It's about using the rain and the snow that we get and saving it on site for when I do need it. And that's why we all learned the seventh grade bology right, swamps and prairies and whatnot. They used to act like a big spun range and then let it out as plants or springs or whatever needed it. But when we disc all the time that huntson that goes away, a hundson that goes away. So once I was kind of learning the biology or science behind that, I really started doing more into this and my message. So my first step was keeping the soil covered as many days out of year as possible, many days out of years as possible, And that got me pretty much out of herbside game. Now I still use some herboside uh in my little small what I call hide old food plots. You know, maybe a quarter acre, you know, a half acre pin one, you are basically a hunting plot. Right, You've got a little high go. Maybe it's a couple of yards from bigger food plot. You call it a stage in area. You can get there, not alert deer, and the deer can move on to the big food plot. Now you're not alerting them when you get out of stand little highe old food plot. I plant those two. They're great hunting strategies, but deer used them first, right because they're very secure there, and so they eat all the fouds to ground. I'm not building up a muties layer. Since I'm not building up a mute layer and the deer eating the vegetation, I don't have a canopy. Weeds are gonna grow. Weeds are just nature's way of saying this soil must be covered to be healthy. Nature doesn't diffriate, shape, differentiate, excuse me, between a weed and a soy bean, or a wheat or a braska. It just says I want the soil covered because that's looks healthiest for the soil. Otherwise I'm kind of erosion and moisture law. So weeds are gonna grow, and there's weed seeds everywhere, folks everywhere everywhere. Seeds are viable in the soil, some of them for decades, some of them for more than a hundred years. I don't care what you do to soil, and I'll give you. Perfect example, I used to panty to all the deer at Callaway Gardens, big fancy golf place just out of Atlanta, Georgia, and the family makes some choices were poor big golf courses there. He's like legalized poaching right arount night with spotlight shooting deer to eating up all the pansies and zelius and stuff. And and they let one golf course go, and and golf courses if you don't know this, get more herbicide and secticide, fungicide, whatever side do you want to talk about, than anywhere more than actilous, because the guys keep it looking perfect, and it takes a lot of synthetic inputs to keep it looking that way a lot. And let one golf course go that spring that fall when we started collecting, a nice way of saying legalized poaching collecting deer. That golf course was eight feet tall in ragweed and all kind of even nasty weeds and ragweed because they hadn't been pining all those chemical inputs. And nature will cover the soil somehow, It will cover the soil. So I figured out that covered the soil was good. And I started learning that not all back too is bad like most of us. A talktor is really good. Back to your soil again. Remember I spent most of my career looking at above the ground. Now I'm about focused onlats below the ground, because that's that determines how well above the ground does. Can you expand on why soil health matters and what that translates and and I think you're probably about together before I interrupted you, But also what makes healthy soil? I know there's a whole lot going on underneath or you've alluded to it, but um, but I mean I would love to hear better understand the why. Okay, yeah, so soil health is obviously you know, soil level and bloil a lot of it, and it matters because you know, again the natyve prairies. Where does everyone want to dear hunt? Right? I look, if we're honest, Iowa, Kansas, Indiana, the big prairie states I live in. Others aren't melansinsuf Timber And it's my home and I love it. But I should do like a week and hunting out in Kansas every now and then make me feel like a better hunter and see bigger dude. So those states are banking on are using what was developed for hundreds of years by buffalo and wildfire and tremendous plant diversity, creating healthy soil and healthy soil. First, the appearance should look like really rich chocolate cake. Really rich chocolate cake is moist and has a lot of structure, has all the pores in it. It's not just like solid flour. There's space in between, there's pores. It's kind of light and fluffy. That's exactly what good quality, healthy soil should look like. It's dark, and it's dark, folks, not because of where you are on the planet that stay live dark because of the amount of carbon content. And every time we disc or till soil, we allow massive amounts of carbon to go into the air. You probably heard about carbon and the arena or he start seeing a lot of nasty email. I'm not a great big you know, global climate change, carbon summits, whatever, whatever, I'm mistaking the facts that when you tell carbon leaves the soil by huge quantities, and carbon is the number one element of plant life. Everyone talks about nitrogen, phosphor fascium, carbon out system, plants dead period that day, Um, I have found my soils went from kind of a light tan about the color of a wooden turkey pop call to chocolate. And that space in between is critical for the right amount of air and water to infiltrate the soil. Infiltrate the soil again saving water, not counting on the rain next week, because we know sometimes during summer that's not gonna happen. Saving the water we get the soil is actually a little spongy, and it's got the right amount space for roots to work really well and for he's beneficial. As I talked to or your bacteria single celled, multi cell organisms and then the ever critical man and I tell folks this and they just they think, no, boy, that woods guy even idiot. I kind of went from a deer manager listening to folks to an earthworm manager because earthworms, I mean, this is so serious, right, earthworm are the most important thing for building healthy soil. I want to just share a couple of numbers with you. And this research is out of Penn State, but it's been redone by bunch of universities. You've got a pretty healthy earthworm population. You think about earthworms are work, you know they're working twenty four seven three sixty five and they winter the working deeper, warm and moist, are working pretty shallow. They errate the soil. They decompact to soil. No tractor can ever fracture or reduce soil compaction as well as earthworms don't. Actor's gonna touch every inch. If you've got a tiller, you flock the top watch six eight ten inches. But now you've got your tiller set, but right below that you're making tremendous compaction. And I'm gonna tell everyone how to prove that to your cells, because it may not believe me. The standard test is you get a half insteel robbed like a piece of reed ball or something, something that's solid on the end, not hollow like a type, and you're just putting your weight off. You just kind of leaning on and pushing on it. You're not standing on one hand or something. And it should go through the soil just fine. And when it just all of a sudden stops and you didn't hit a rock, that's your hard pain layer and it will always be just an inches. Toube blow where you disk or where you till, like a rhodo killer. And the reason is think about a tractor moving forward and it's pulling that implement behind. So the physics are such that a lot of the way the tractor is being transferred to that implement. And on a disk, the disc is you know, eight inch quarter inch wide, so tremendous amounts of weight are being applied to that very thin space, and it absolutely compacts the soil blow words working so it earns the top, releases a bunch of carbon, kills all soil structure kills it. You took something that was loose and now you grind it up and it just settles. You actually can shrink soil. You can reduce to height the soil by killing it. And then also by the way, we're talking about earth worms, when you do that, you kill millions of millions of earth lumps. You grind them up, makes a little bit of fertilizer, but not as much if you've got them breeding, making more eth lerms and pooping all the time. That's why I never feel I almost refused to help any client that tells anymore, because I know so much better. I'm talking lines like I go work on their land. So a typical earth worm population can easily easily pop out to not be crude. Two tons a poopy year prayer two tons. Now, if y'all are sitting at home and you google stuff mark right now and you want to buy vermic culture, vermic culture is very expensive fertilizer, this worm food. There are farms that do nothing but collect worm food in big troughs and sell it as vermic culture for playing people either farmer, big scale farmers or eat a house plant people. And it's right now about fifteen dollars for two or three pounds. And just think you've got a healthy earthling population as you can get two tons, and that's the logan or more of that applied break or just by letting the worm suitor thing walk to wormsy decomposing plant material goes back to that buffalo or the crimper laying vegetation down, not when you disc it in. You old farmers talked about green manure and you disc it in the soil, well, then he's got so much air going in here with it that that green manure breaks down really quickly. When you lay the multi layer down with a crimper or i e. Buffalo trampling it, it decomposes really slowly, which prevents weeds from German eating and slowly makes worm food all summer long. The worms will come up, grab a little bit e piece of the decomposing vegetation, take it down in the soil and eat it. They're varying the mults for you at just the perfect speed. And this is so amazing. Now you have the world's best, perfect, perfect slow release fertilizer, and the worms are doing it for you. In species of bacteria too, they're doing it for you. And in another factor we've you've probably heard of tea or compost, molt molting compost and the tea that's the water that drips off that. Some people raise one little home compost and they catch the water come out of bottom, put that on their plants and they grow amazingly. Right, you've got this multi layer on top of the ground. If it doesn't rain and it's dry, your plants don't need much fertilizer because they're not growing because there's lack of moisture. The rains a little, they grow a little, range a lot, they grow more. You've got this must layer on top and when the rain goes through it, it takes minute amounts of nutrients m P n K and all the trade mentals down into the soil. If it doesn't rain, it doesn't release any nutrients. If it rains a lot, it releases more nutrients. This is the perfect time release fertilizer. No system can be better, no manmade system can be better. And you can do it in the food pot. That's what amazes me. So at my place, literally I wish we were showing graphics here my soul test. So it's like I'm in the middle of eye, but most of my fields are at the high are very high level of all nutrients. I pay for a fourteen way nutrient test every year. I test every food pot for research purposes. And I haven't added any line, any fertilizer, synthetic or organic like poltry litter in six years. No expense, no attractive time, no paying the contract or, no buying the product, no running order soil and compacting it. More time to turkey hunt, more time to mushroom hunt, more time to fish because I don't have to spread any line or fertilizer at all. Now my plans to do it, and let's go ahead. Sorry, I was gonna say. Now there might be people here in this and they're thinking, well, that's all great, and good quality soil sounds like a good thing to have, etcetera, etcetera. But they might be wondering what does this mean for the deer and the wildlife? Does good soil quite to anything else? And I've I've heard you say that plants are the ultimate nutrient transfer agents, and I've heard you talk about how how good soil equals good food equals a law Hunters are interested in which is healthier and or larger deer, maybe a better attraction. Does all this stuff that we're doing to the soil, maintaining moisture, improving organic matter, etcetera, etcetera, does all that lead to better outputs for wildlife too? Yeah? Absolutely, I want to face there's just one last thing. If you're getting a starter system and you've been using mpn K or synthetic inputs, it's like an addiction to your soul and you can't stop all once. So I advise people all the time. If you've been doing that, that's fine, we all learn that's that's awesome. Reduce your synthetic inputs by twenty don't do it all at once, because you don't have the bacteria to earth worms to build up, and it takes those populations of the wall built. So if you're doing it, do a soul test the first year, apply hunt get a good base. Second year, apply seventy five cent. Not about old soil tests of new soil. Test because your soul is changing. Third years, you know, drop it, knock it down by twenty cent a year and wean off. Otherwise you will not like the results. Healthy soil is full of not just the nutrients, but all the micro nutrients, not just the mpn K, all the micros because these billions, and I want to paint a picture here. If you have healthy soil, you're feeding these bacteria, protozoa, earth worms, beetles, other critters the equivalent of about the weight of two elephants a year per acre. That's why I said, you can't go this all once. You're gonna be mulch on your soil. You've been disking, you've been adding n think whatever. And when you have a really healthy soil life, we're gonna call it all the earth turns, bacteria everything below the soil. They're consuming about the weight of two elephants a year, and they're getting that from plant matter and really deep rocks. Maybe mi place is not very deep, some place to ten deep, and they're breaking down that rock and bringing those nutrients to the surface. If you've seen, and almost everyone's seen, this tree growing out of a solid rock buffalo, how they cut or something. You're going, man, how does that tree do that? It's doing up by these things I'm talking about bacteria living there helping that tree break down the rock and converted to a usable form for the tree. When you have really healthy soil, you have healthier plants. Everyone, almost everyone has watched a deer sniff acorns, passed one, eat one, walk twenty ft into a bean field and eat a leaf here e leaf, here e leaf here. Only cattle just staying there need everything in front of them. Wild animals are very picky feeders, and most scientists believe they sense either through light refraction into their eyes, smell, a combination of both, whatever which plant leaves are healthier. So let me take that step further. You've got a one acre soybean field, they eat every dog on plant and leaf and stem out there. You're in Iowa and you've got a forty acre bean field or forty acre bean filled here eat the edges, of course, because they're sensing opinion predations around at nighttime. They're feeding all over that field, your feet not in the middle, and they're eating one leaf at a time, going to the next best leave. So you grow the biggest deer where they can be extremely selective feeders on the high quality vegetation. I'll be the first to admit of one acre food plot is never as good as a forty acre bean field because on forty acre bean field they don't have to eat any disease plants, insect and pack the plants. They're just picking the very best leaves. They're eating the very best. But on a one acre food plot that had n p n K, there's a lot of petroleum products in mp n K synthetic fertilizer versus a natural healthy fertilizer. There's no doubt which one is more palatable. And this is shown an all kind of text and a really easy one. It's called a bricks b r i X test. That major is a real simple major. I have a bridge meater we use on our phone. Majors. This sugar content of plants. Do you have a sweet tooth? We all know that the sugar the more sugar CONTENTA plan is usually the healthier it is you want to have deer to just I mean, man, they're just men. They can't wait to get in that food plot. Have really healthy plants, and healthy plants require really healthy soil. If you're putting a bunch N P and K made off of patrolling products out there, what do you think your plans tastes like? Now there? Deary, deary, sure they do. You know, I don't really like sushi, But if I'm the last guy on the boat and all that's left of sushi, I'm gonna eat sushi. And that's kind of way deer are too. So yeah, on my place, my deer are bigger. I'm in the Ozart Mountains just north of Branson, Missouri. A lot of people been to Branson. Uh. My property is split by two counties, Stone named appropriately in Kaney County Stone and Taney County. Our record for both counties combined recorded Now not all deer recorded, I granted when at but like hunters, like the brags, a lot of deer are. Our record in all of the records keeping for these two counties is a hundred and thirty one inch pop and young no booden crocketts. None. You think if they're killing a lot of booden crocketts, somebody would have recorded one over time back when I used to be really popular. Our best deer tag, not our best deer grown, our best deer tag. There's a hundred seventy three inches. We produce multiple hundred fifty inch deer every year. We slam the rest of the county. I'm not bragging. We've improved our soil or deer really healthy. More phones for dough. I cannot kill enough dose here. I have really healthy deer. We struggle to get our dear population back in check and we shoot it. We're not like, well, we're gonna wait after about to start killing dose. We tag every day we can, from September or fifteenth from boat season opens for January fifteen coses. Our deer herd is extremely productive because we have very healthy soil perfect. I mean, the testimonies extremely clear. And some of the farmers I know they're using regenerity bag or the buffalo system. Good Nou's great and something. You know, a lot of my farmers are really busy. They don't take a lot of time to hunt. Man The bucks are producing an amount of pheasants a producing that quality. Those pheasant a's and the survival rates are incredible. There's no doubt about folks. Another way to look at this is most estaments believed by the researchers that really study this stuff. There was about sixty million buffalo just to the Great Prairie. You know, there were woods and buffalover in South Carolina, Tennessee. They're in Buffalo and every state literally not now, of course, sixty million buffalo in the Great Prairie. That's way more than we have cattle right now on feedlocks. There's no question how productive soils can be if they're managed as they were meant to be managed. So I'm going more times per acre of higher quality food with less inputs. Big cost savings. I imagine the long run with that, right, big big cost savings. Now, you know trasing, I did get a no till drills. That's a big hit. But you think about over time, no herbicide, no fertilizer. Must guys, you know, if you've got an ag or two food pot, no, you're not really justified here. What you might do is give it two or three buddies and buy a smaller drill so you can share the costs and have it when you want it. Like I'm starting to see a lot more people do that. Uh, but for me an the amount of food pot acres I manage. Man. Yeah, the drill is paid for itself many times over by the cost saving. Yeah. Yeah, So we're we're reducing costs, we are retaining moisture, we're improving the quality of the soil. All these different things beneath the surface are leading to a much higher quality plant, which leads to healthier deer. And you're doing all this kind of in in step with how nature design things to be, So you're having all these other larger kind of ecosystem benefits to the to the to the rest of the wildlife around there too. I'm sure that there's some benefits to a whole slew of different species. From everything I've read and from everything I've heard you say, this seems like an absolute no brainer if we're willing to get past like the normal status quo, if we're willing to say, Okay, yes, that kind of worked in the past, but this seems to be a just a much more holistically better process to go through. Um. Some of my next questions then are and you've you've alluded to little bits and pieces of this as we go along. But I'd like to talk start from this from the very beginning and walk through each step, And that is how do I actually do this? And that's the question I'm asking right now because I want to start doing this now. I've got a couple of food plots planted on a property that has been you know, managed conventionally. Right I've typically just ran. I've got one perennial food plot, but the other two are our annuals. So basically it goes to weeds in the spring and summer, I spread a couple of times, try and knock them down, and then in August I plant some kind of fall blend of of of cool season crops. But I want to stop doing that now. So right now I've got a couple somewhat barren chunks of dirt with the beginnings of some weeds starting to grow. What would you if we're gonna do this and start the buffalo method, how would I start it and walk me through each step from from today if you could? Okay, so let's start today. We're talking springing and being really candid. Most soils in America are degraded. Therefore they're very weighty and nutrient core. So step one is I'm gonna take a soil test and just see Ryan, and I want to see you know, nitrogens have streaming ballatole. May I add that above every acre on the planet are more than thirty tons of nitrogen in the air. The air we breathe is over sevent nitrogen. Now, nitrogen would kill us, but fortunately our body is created to breathe it in and excelled out. None of them stays. Nitrogen has a three way bond. It's extremely strong and our lungs can't break it, so it goes in and goes back out. But when I learned that I had thirty tons of nitrogen for free in the air, and all I had to do is make sure always had some lagoons in my blends summer and fall, I can put that nitrogen soil and not pay for anymore nitrogen. Grant is a happy camper and that's what I have not And then when you build organic matter this mulch on top, it's stores nitrogen better than any of the system non demand. So I'm out of nitrogen bid business. Period. You're starting with let's just say, let's call wall is degraded. Soil has probably been disclogue at lower earth worm population. By the way, folks, an easy test when you're starting, take your shovel. Nothing beats boots on the ground. Nothing normal science beats boots on the ground out in your food pot. Just think us innag shovel or some people called a spade. Pop you over a big shovel ful of dirt and see are there holes in there? You can tell earthrum channels are lazy, or there holes in there where earth lums are. And you should be seeing if the soil's moist, not you know, in a big drought, but it's pretty moist. And a shovel fool you should find a minimum of five. And like last year, in one sollfool here in the olds are mountains, folks, we found thirty six earth looms three dozen and one shovelful three dozen. And really, honestly, when I bought the place, I couldn't flip enough ROMs and find enough firms to take my kids fishing. Literally Now I got three dozen that day anyway, in one shovel fool. And it's not uncommon to find ten or so on the shovel fuel every time I go out there. So anyway, if you're not seeing earth worms, so we know we're starting the ground zero. That's just a really easy indicator of billions of beneficial species about tree, and I do mean billions. If you've got that, you may want you gotta do a soil testing. If your soil test results come back very low, you probably kind of want to add a little n PNK to first year. Now you make a decisions, man, amnest solely committed to the buffalo system. Then I'm gonna add of what's recommended for that crop. And by the way, when you do a soil test, always tell the lab I'm gonna plant soybeans, dr I'm playing a cereal grain blend or whatever. Because recommendations differ by the crop you're going to plant, so you tell them what I do. I say, I'm know plants soybeans, Gonna plants soybeans every summer, or at least something in the window soybeans, and I plant small grains in the fall. So I get two recommendations I sold to us once a year. My next step is if I've got a bunch of noxious weeds, out there. I'm not just talking ragged, but you've got some bad stuff, maybe horse nettle or pig weed or something like that. You're gonna have to control that with herbicide. You're compensating for decades of mismanagement. You're not just gonna start all at once, so you're gonna be probably the first year or two maybe use a little herbicide. So I'm gonna plant my first if I'm planning starting this in the springtime, you know, once my first crop almost always is round up ready soybeans. So if I have a weed column, I can get on top of it and not let more weed seeds develop in that top little bit of soil profile. I'm going through the still that i've got, but I'm not disking the soil period period. I'm gonna rent a no til drill. I'm gonna purchase a no tell drill. I'm gonna get the buddy and you know, buddy up on the nochel drill. Some deer coops now or buying the no ChIL drill for the co op, which I think is an awesome system. I'm not using no til drill, and that does minimal soul disturbance. Unless the soil start healing. We can't kill the soil by disking. Disking always degrade soil period always. Did you know the average solos per acre in Awa is about five thousand pounds per year. That's the most valuable consona of any farming. You can google these folks. That's the most valuable thing the farmer owns is a soil, not as tractor, not as silos, not as barns. It's a soil that keeps him in business. And they don't treat it that way. Okay, soil box. So I'm going to control existing weeds, maybe there's fescue. Maybe you're starting with a pastor that's real tom and food practice. I'm going control those existing weeds with the herbicide, and I'm going to drill right into that terminated vegetation. Man, Sorry I started to interject, but really quick question on that front before we dive too much further on the drilling side. What if what if there just isn't a way to get a drill. I don't I can't afford it. I don't. I don't have buddies. I can't get one from the NRCS office because they're they're all booked out. I've heard a few people talk about ways to kind of implement this with broadcasting and some other alterations. Can you speak to that at all? Sure? Yeah, I had actually had that email question this morning from a guy in Michigan. UM So, hey, Daniel, if you after listen, we're gonna talk about again. Um So, a lot of people like that. You know, they got a two acre food pot, or they got you know, on one acre idio food pot on the back of the forty acres, but they're tired to see an evosion their food plot. What I wrote to Daniel was, I understand that's very realistic, and I've been there myself trace and I started with thirteen acres. I have been there. Um, what you can do. You're still going to use her beside, even with the backpack sprayer or you know however you're getting it done for with or sprayer or whatever, and you're gonna terminate that crop. And if there's a lot of duff on the ground like an o cow pass your big weaedy mess or whatever, when you terminate it, the standing vegetation will shrink up. That's that's a non issue. Son will go right through if you've got years and years of duff on the ground. That's good spreadilizer, but be you either have to dis that the first time to get rid of it, or use prescribe fire. Very careful when I say use firefolks, that doesn't mean drop a match and letlon hatch. It means you've got a plan um and you're gonna remove that duff with fire. Fire will allow nitrogen to volatilize, but all the rest of the mentals just go right in the dirt. You're not losing anything. So uh, you can remove that duff. And the reason you have to remove duff is you need your seed to make good contact with the soil. If the seed is caught on top of duff and it gets warm and wet and germinates, it's unlikely it will get a root in the soil through the duff in time for it to start getting in ergy in and it dies, it starts to death. So we've got to have seed to soil contact to get the system started. And in that case, I'm certainly planning around up pretty soybeans so I can keep the weeds at bay. And then it was fall time. It's really easy for me to broadcast my fall blend of you know, cereal grains bras because I like the brity. I liked at least eight species in the blend, not less than eight. There's a lot of reasons for that. Uh. And not like eight different brieties of wheat. I'm talking eight different types of plants, eight different types of of of general. Uh. And I broadcasting the soybeans because now they're weed for either around up brading. And I've got a clean seed bed and the secret that makes this work and it can't be violated. This is the one short set people always want to take. Do the work, schedules and stuff. I get this. You have to uh broadcasts the seed right before or during a rain. If you don't, a lot of seed will die of either desiccation or you will be shocked at how many rodents and I mean, you know, not just squirrels, All the rodents and birds eat seed. And what percentage of the seeds A will remove in a five day waiting period for it rains and they'll see its Germany astonishing. I harvested a turkey two days ago, not bragging it all right off the roots called him off. The rus come in boom dead ring up the house cleaned him and his crop had a you know, a half of a handful of soybean seeds. Where that rascal been digging in my food plot getting soybean seeds out. Pritters eat seed, they love seeds. And you spread, you know whatever, fifty pounds break or on top the ground, and you think, well, no one's gonna know. I tell you, They tell their buddies. The squirrels start calling all their buddies, and no people running out there till a cheaps full of soybean seeds. So do not plant unless it's gonna rain the next day or sometime real soon, or it's raining right then as much of the plant before a rain and after a rain for and also the raindrops get it to soil with a lot of force, a splash, a little dirt up on the seed. It helps to germinate even more. And do you need to do anything even if even if we're talking about the spring planting right so before in the fall planting, you've got the standing crop from the summer that you can then use um. But what about the first planting, So you mentioned we're gonna have to use herbicide to get that stuff killed off. But I'll just use my example um to make it simple. So my situation right, there's some weed growth, but there's definitely open soil still. So I'll go in there and I'll terminate the weeds um at some point here soon kill off the weed growth. But then I want to get my summer, my warm season crop growing now. But I want to do it without my usual disking and then call to packing all that in So how would I go? I'll just go about broadcasting with with that rain? Do I need to roll over it? Do I need to do anything else to get that first one? Going rolling hills to call to packer, hilps, get seed to soil contact matches it down. If you have that available, that's great. If you don't, I have. I have buddies that you know do this all time. They don't, And typically what they do is they depend on the quality of soil where they are. They plant one point five the two times the mouse seeds. So if what if your planting equals fifty pounds breaker, plant seventy five two hundred pounds breakers and seed is cheaper than you know other other ways of getting this done. So so you've got to increase at planting rate when you're broadcasting to get enough seed germinating, and it won't be a it's not gonna look like an eyeba field where guy uses a twenty thousand planner a hundred thousands or planner to make it happen. You just accept that and go one. Okay. And so in the summer you're you're typically planting it sounds like straight soybeans for that warm season. But but is that not true? Do you sometimes do a summer blend? Yeah? I do. Uh, if I'm starting off and I know weeds are gonna be an issue, I'm planting straight round a pretty soy beans, I'm planting negle seed soy beans boom. And I still do that on some of niplots. Is like said, the smaller plots where I know I'm gonna have weeds because they're deary to cannot be off and I don't get in the multi layer built up because all the browse pressure in there. I'm planting a round up ready soybeans so I can control weeds and keep that seed based down because if I don't disk, I'll get on top to weeds. Those weeds. Weed seeds, if you think about are very small. Pig Weed is you know, I don't know millions of millions of seeds per pound, where soybeans are like been on the branden you get three thousands of seeds per pound. I mean there's a massive difference. Ragweed is very small. Every weed seed there's a problem in food blocks that I'm aware of, has a very small seed. So if it's very very deep in the soil and you don't disk, it's too deep for it to germinate, they're still there. They're just they're just they're not gonna be able to grow. They're not gonna get enough sun to pull them out of soil. So that's another part of just getting on top of weeds. In a couple of years, you're not disking, you're not putting any new weed seeds on top. So I'm gonna do that in the summer. I'm not getting established by terminating, making sure I bear soil, whether I have to disc or it's just like you said, You've got weeds, but not a bunch of mult built up. And then in the fall, I'm gonna have the soybeans standing there and they're weed for you, because I could use black pisade on top of them, and if I have to, by the way, folks, I always rather use a herbicide at least common her besides like black State, then I would do. It does way less damage to the soil, way less, way less damage to the soil. And then in the fall, I'm just gonna broadcast my fall cool season blend right on top of the beans. And if I'm using this system, I want a little bit earlier mature and beans. So if you're north you might use like Ego Seas Northern Manager blend. You know, you don't want to plant a being to taste forever to mature and it's green until the first frost, because then you don't have enough daylight reaching the soil or your for your crop to germinate, your fall crop to germinate unless you're disking into it now. I plant eagles really late maturing being because I love having, you know, beans that are green and productive until the hard killing frost to hunt over because dear, you know, dear love soybeans more than anything, so I love that. But if I've got a really good stand with closed canopy, I drilled right through there I drew my fall Blend right through there because I want something drawing as many days out of a year, and with my drill, I only damage about fift beams. So I end up with the perfect foot plot. I've got the fall greens and dear love on one days, I've got the pods or high energy that love on code days, I've got the perfect foot pot. There's no food plot better in my mind then one that's about half pods and half greens. I'm not talking side by side, I'm talking all together. I love that. That's my favorite plot, most productive to hunt by far. And you mentioned, sorry, you mentioned a little bit earlier ago, the fact that you really like diversity in those in those plots, and you mentioned that you it's at least in the fall blends you're trying to make sure eight different, completely different species. Um. I guess now I might be a good time to explain why that is. Yeah, so different plants need different minerals. They all need conder same but all in favorite one like for example, bucket really likes phosphorus. Phosphorus is huge nanodevelopment. Just you know, sunflowers taking a lot of different trades mentals out of ground, and they have a massive root base that becomes organic matter because I'm never disking, So when those roots decomposed, they become worm food. And the next route, the next plant can just follow those roots, and if it's a successful route, it obviously found moisture nutrients. So I want to go down that same path again. It's okay to have a blend in the summer if you're not having a big wheat issue like some of my fields are now. So I've got what I call the summer buffalo blend, which is primarily soy beans, but I've got some sunflowers and buckwheat and other stuff mixed in with them to give me that diversity. Different plants will have different size roots. Some have a single big bulb like a turn up or something. Serry has a massive, big, real fine root just builds a big, massive bowl mass in the ground. Wheats kind of in between um turnips. You know, if you think about turnips in that bulb and the and the deer don't eat the bowlb. That's just a giant, slow released nutrient package for the next crop. I took a picture of your day. I had a new soy being seedlaid about an inch tall right next to a turnip bolb. That plant will skyrocket because there's that turnip bulb decomposes that story beings. They're going to give it to me, give it to and give it to me. I mean, it's just you know, it's a perfect solwaies fertilizer. Again, and and so, different plants grow roots to different depths. Minerals kind of stratify sometimes some are available at different depths, and other soft pretensive settle about eighteen to twenty two deep. Uh So, and again I learned this from natural habitat on my land, where I cut seaters, planted nothing, and have tremendous native vegetation. There's always diversity. The only place I can think of in nature, I'm not talking man alter, just the true natural ecosystem that's kind of a monoculture plants speaking, not quitter speaking, is a salt sea marsh where it's a really harsh environment. Everywhere else I'm talking natural here, not a pine plantation or something, has a lot of diversity, because that's the way our system works best. In these summer blends you're looking for. Uh you mentioned different diversity, and species will give you the different depths and roots structure, which is going to help you build up that soil. It's gonna help you deliver the nutrients to the next crop. But then also you mentioned biomass, so that's that's getting different amounts and in structure and stuff above ground so that you get that thatch when you knock that down and you plant your fall blend, that's what helps you get that that's covering right. Well, let's talk about that thatch or multiple bit. So if you plant a pure Egyptian wheat or soldiums today and grass and you can get ten twenty tons per acre literally, Now deer don't eat that, so don't get off side of folks. It's not like the magic being deer food pot. We all look for the magic being I found it yet. But you can build a lot of biomass doing that if you're playing a high seed depty bit. Let's remember some basic seventh grade signs, and there's a nasty word. I don't want scarline off the photo synthesis. Plant leaves are the world's best solar collectors. No man has ever build a solar panel is efficient as they leave, nor will they ever so in a food pot blend. I don't have you know, a crop a monoculture ten feet call like Egyptian wheat. I've got some plovers down low. I've got some buckwheat mid. I might have a you know, a big soil being up high because no monoculture catches the sun. And I don't want to waste any because sun is the source of all energy for all life period and it's doing that through photosynthesis. Photosynthesis, you don't have to remember see six A twelve or six and all that stuff. Just thinking about this, it's taking carbon dioxide a waste product, and water and making clean oxygen O two and carbon. Remember, carbon is the most important element to plant life, to any life. Human bodies are primarily carbon, and that carbon is converted through photosynthesis and really cool things in plant leaves and about. Depending on the species of plants, so don't quote me on this, it varies. But on the unaveraged fichu cent is called leaked out or plant exu dates coming out of plant roots. It's putting in the soil. That's how we turned soil black. This is so cool, and listen to this. This is this is kind of deep science. I'll be real light on this, but the microbes and the soil that I've been talking about, the soil life that is so beneficial. They can't photosynthesize, so the plant. It's always an economic exchange. I don't care where you go, folks, socialism won't work. I'm not being political. There's always an economic exchange. Plants are trade in these microbes carbon, and the microbes are given the plants whatever nutrients they need that they rolled from a rock or you know, soil or whatever. There's an exchange going on seven blow to soil. The science gets really deep, and I don't want to going deeper that, but it is the most interesting science in my career I've ever studied by far by far and it's fascinating how to soil works together with these microbes. Remember, the Great Pairie was never fertilized except for buffalo pooping on it. Never fertilized, and the buffalo got that from what they're eating. There was no synthetic inputs. And you can do it in a two acre food plot. You don't have to have the millions of acres a great prairie. And it doesn't happen overnight because your land has been degraded by pass practices. We didn't know any better. It's not say anything bad. I'm just before I've added tons of synthetic fertilizer. I didn't know any better. But you don't have to. I'm just saying there's an option you don't have to, and so feeding these microbes by the photosynthesis. So one reason I like a blend. I've got a low growing plant or maybe two or three, a medium growing plant maybe two or three, and a higher growing plant. They all have different plant leaf sizes and plant leave structures, and the leaves may come off, you know, kind of a wrecked or sticking up or flat or sideways. Those are all made so they can catch every bit of sun. I want shade down to soil level, keeps it cooler. I'm not losing any moisture to evaporation. That one rain can last me a month, you know, past don't take much. Guys. If you could get twenty inches of rain a growing season, but you just got at a quarter inch of a week, every week you got a quarter inch or what they depend on where you live and how long growing season is, it'd be awesome. No one would complain, right, never, No farmer, deer gate, but that never happens. So farmers are a gate because they're not storing soil, water, soil, moisture, and food plotters go. I spend all this money on seed and fertilizer. Now it's a drought, and that dog on food plots a slick as a pool table out there. You don't have to live that way. There are better ways. So we experienced a wicked drought here last summer at the provement grounds my place, a wicked drought and deer pretty much eight most things to the ground, except in my electric fences where it's protecting some bean pods to you know, late season hunt to make sure they didn't need a too ground in a wicked, wicked drought. I had beans over four ft tall producing a gada pods. I'm just an accutive estimate, probably forty fifty bushels breaker a great crop of bean pods. And when I opened up those fences this last winter, talked about a deer magnet. So you can store moisture and you can get there's nutrients. There's plenty of nutrients everywhere. I want to I want to share something here. You're not being too deep and soil recently there was a conference. There's a guy who owns the soil ABB. He mainly does to Western States, so a lot of us A probably aren't going to use this lab. It's a good lab, real high quality soil ABB and uh. And he was kind of fighting this reginity back then. We're talking about here because I mean, he's he's a soil scientist. He's all about MP and K And I'm not knocking the guy Tollways, a brilliant guy and a really smart firmer. And this lady, this brilliant scientists from Australia has been doing some great work in Australia about improving soil health. I mean they you know, they don't have all rules. America has Nakan spraining her beside test deicide thun Decide or whatever down there. Her soul has really gotten degraded, yields her way way down. It's a national concern down there. And she's talking about, well, sir, how much fospterus is in your soil? Orders it on the soil test it says available phosphorus, not fosterus phosphorus. That's that's now any form that plants can use the phospterus report of a fertilizer bag is toxic to planets. It has to go through a change before plants can take it up. Literally, So he's he's told her, I got you know what he said, eighty pounds break or whatever? Said, No, no, no, I want to know the total osperus in your soils. He whipped out his nap gun. You dust stuff, and you can tell he's got now that can't be biting me, does it again? Well, about ten thousand pounds breakers now, ten thousand pounds breaker if that was available plants, it's not now. But if it wasn't available, if you had to write microbes doing this and stuff going on, how many years could you go without Ferdi lives these ciphers and ciphers and well, I don't know if sure, but my grandkids would certainly never heard lives, never, not one time. These nutrients are into soil, folks, but we've killed the soil alive that makes it available to the crops. So is this right for everyone? No? Man, you got to corderate the food plot, and you're taking your lawnmower and the garden tiller out there and get them something green to go shoot a deer over man, I've done that. More power to you. That is awesome, awesome. I want everyone involved with the soil because I think just an understanding of soil and gardening or flower pots is really healthy for mankind because you're just at it more respectful of what it takes. But if you have the time or the inflammation, or you're in the co op and you get it, you know, have an opportunity improving soul health. Not the first year, but over time will significantly reduce your tost food plots, which what I've done here proven now it's that cost savings. I've taken not much but a few acres a year, added more food pots. I kind of got a food pop budget. My wife Trace and I, you know, tind of talk about act over time. As I have less inputs, I can make another acre too the food pots and we all have more food pops, right, more places to hunt, hanging stand So over time does this work. Absolutely. There's some really awesome examples in in the egg side of taken the towallan desert down to Mexico to if you've ever hunted coupas deer down to anything. I mean, it's I don't know. I'm gonna guess here, sad you sent bear dirt showing a few cactuses and safe brush plants and whatnot to lush seeds of grass for cattle, and their cattle are gaining weight like crazy by doing it differently than grandfather did. And it's kind of the same way about us and my I grew up on a farm, folks. I had pulled a disc of blue million miles, thinking I was doing good work. But it just takes an open mind and learning a little bit more and replicating nature. So some people say, well, that's a different traditional act, and I say no. I say the Buffalo hence I nade, not the Buffalo system. And the Great Prairie, the richest soil is known on the planet, folks. Before man got there and really messed up a few acres of native soil. We have left in the prairie. Scientists go during test and it is shocking, shocking. Now rich it is. I call that traditional act. And I call maximum maximum till each and maximum synthetic input conventional act, because that's the convention of what we're doing these days. But even in Illinois, I work in Illinois, line I was dritten then. And I've just noticed the past two or three winners used to like called Illinois the lands of chisel plow. Everything was chisel power. Ever win it. I've worked for Greg Ritz there and a bunch of other people, you know, and there's like, now I grow a bit bigger, dear, And I said, Greg, you've got a timberland. Greg, this is on great show, so I'm not speaking minds back. Greg put this on his on television show. Your timberland is mature, cannot be forest. There's nothing, not much going underneath it, and all the agg land surrounding you that's so lush and so productive. In the summer it is as bald as my head. Five months out of the year, there's no cover or food for deer or turkeys. If you want to grow bigger deer. We got velts some food plots that have food twelve months out of year because deer, deer can store a lot of fat, and they do all through the Midwest and grow some awesome deer. He We all know the juries and a lot of my buddies are are growing awesome deer. U the conventional aglays think about now, and I'm really good friends in market Arry and I talked to minder back at all been friends for decades. But they've got some really good food plots too. Right when those when those agg fields are gone, and they leave a fair amount of bean standing whatnot. But when the neighbors agg fields are gone, they got some one food in the neighborhoo it of course they're growing great deer because they got food all winter along. Mark would not have it where his dear did not have food all winter along. And I'm busting all kinds of county records and doing great. But I've got high quality forage year round. And if I dis like in the fall, let's just think about this. I disk in the fall right for a hunting season and get my fall food plots ready. But I feel good. And everyone kind of does this on Labor Day. Labor Day, and let's load up tractor, gonna make food blots rightful deer season. And I turn on my ground from some kind of forage weeds or whatever to bar dirt. There's a difference with dirt and soil. Why do I just tell my dear, no food here, go somewhere else. And so I disc maybe I disc implant the same day. It's two or three weeks before there's enough food growing there to really attract the deer. He might little get a little green fuzz in the first week, but you're not providing any tonnings for a while. Why do I just tell my dear, he's deer season and you need to go feed somewhere else. You're not welcome here. I call that cleaning the table, and so here we never cleaned the table like so right now, I've got a clovers in my fall blend, and until my soybeans get big enough to run the crimper over them, my deer eating on clover right now. And this is another cool thing. How many y'all planted soybeans or something really lush like that? You plant an anchor and men, you go out there, maybe a week later, you got pretty good germanation. Oh man, it's gonna be an awesome ye year. You go out there, three weeks later, it's lip high because a dear aid everything. I don't have that big issue with that anymore, because now I've got a four foot tall fall crop after being a greenhouse over my young soybeans, and a deer eating the clover. Because deer don't like to stick their head all the way down in that foot toall clover where they can't see smell, or here the boga bear coming up behind them. And it's it's like a little mini greenhouse where my soybeans that lets them get a good root system going a good start, so deer vows isn't as much as an impact. I got a question about that a little bit great. You mentioned how you're now planting right into the standing um, into the standing summer crops. I'm talking to the fall. Now you've you've your own here soybeans or your soy bean blend with other things, and it sounds like a really important thing is if you're gonna have that blend be in addition to soybe's, you want to make sure it's the lagom so it fixes a lot of nitrogen into that soil, which essentially your natural fertilizer for your fall blend. But you mentioned that you're not fully terminating it until after you plant right to get that greenhouse effect. What if I'm what if I'm going to do the broadcasting thing though, Yeah, okay, in the fall, all I do is drill through my standing beans. I never terminated. Never, I'm gonna let the beans drill, go ahead and ripen and make full pots. I want them to ripen and make full of pots. And if I broadcast and I feel a broadcast here, let's say I got again on these smaller plase, so did derate to top off the beans, I got some weeds in or whatever. I might spray that plot and then either drill or broadcast my fall seed right into that plot. So I'm still even a lot of our beans are left, and it's warm up on plant here in mid to late August and on when I've got enough so a moisture I want to plant. Everyone should plant their fall crop. And there's at least forty five to sixty days before a really hard frost, so you've got some time to girls some tunny or some bile mess to feed deer and for your next year, but more importantly to feed deer. So I don't terminate anything in the falls unless I got a lot of weeds, and I might use a herbicide. I only primp in the spring, and you can get you can get enough sunlight down to to get that stuff to Germany, even through standing beans and stuff like that or is that just not matter, because again, no it does. If it's a really thick crop and I drilled through there, about half the beans are going to survive, the other half are laying down. I'm getting sunlight, gotcha. And if I broadcast, I'm not broadcasting into a really full stand because I know it would shade out and I wouldn't get a good fall crop started. I planted the eagle, I play an eagle. I'll just tell you exactly what I plant. I either plant eagles, whilfe managers, wind Order Group seven, uh, big fellows, and those rascals stay big green leaves until the first hard frost, which is awesome for Maxtionalum chileoni feeding deer. So that's not so good for getting the fall crop established. So I just drill. If the deer didn't need him real hard, I drill right through there, and I knock about half of them down. Someone will stand back up, some of them won't. And I have about a roughly a half a crop of beans, and I have a full crop of my fall blend coming on. Can you describe what that fall blend is in detail? Because from what I understand, you're not only trying to pick you know, attractive forage blends for feeding the deer during the fall and winter. But I also understand that you're trying to plant things that will be there the next spring, right to keep this cycle going. So can you describe what those all kind of describe in general? Not just I'm hiding. I don't have any magic secrets or anything. I don't tell any seed or anything like that. It's because I changed as I learned more. I change every year. So let's take this, I think a more accurate way. I'm probably gonna have one to three and probably two to three small grains youre rye oats and wheat, and I'll probably have a bit more ride than the others because it grows taller, makes more bio mass, and puts more roots in the soil. And check this out, folks. So I'm not I'm just telling you here, rye has the lieopathic qualities. Big word. Let me break it a little simple for you. You probably noticed on a walnut tree to grass don grow too well. If people don't like walnut trees and yard because grass and grown well, that's because walnuts put out a toxin that keeps other plants from growing so they can get all the moisture nutrients to their cells. When you terminate rye, a lot of species of serial rye and does the same thing, it won't hurt us the way being or corn buckweed or even a big two over seed. It's just not that strong. But as we talked earlier, pig weed, rag weed, a lot of these weeds have extremely small almost like pollen floating through the air side seeds. It will work on this. One of my big weed control features is when these plants brastes that's have a different set but also a lily path in qualities. So I'm gonna have some some sereal grains, including a cereal rye and some type of Braski in my blend to help control weeds. In addition to feeding deer. I'm gonna have a clover too. I'm always gonna have annuals, not perennials. I've become a huge fan of annual clovers because I used to maintain a lot of premial clock perennial cover plots, and I've written a lot about this and showed it on video and whatnot. But in reality, I'll learned over time, guys, those are expensive, and they take a lot of herbside and fertilizer to keep going. It's tough to keep the weeds of a premial clover plot. And if we're all on us, then you may be a little better Northern Nichigan or something. But for most of us, you know, let's say from Awa south uh, we have some hot drive periods here and almost every summer and our clover you won't die, but it'd be dormant. It's not feeding anything, and I need I need food out there at three and sixty five days a year to go to Big Sandner's and the most turkeys I can. So I found that a really strong annual clover in my fall blend works perfectly. So a regular clover pot is really strong from when the tempertures start warming in the spring they got the moisture until maybe June, may depend on how the moisture and the heat goes that year. Does dormant, are not very productive through all summer and may or may not pick up in the fall late fall once the temperature school and we get some moisture. That's a bunch of months in there. I didn't feed anything. So you can have just a couple of acres of clover can outside your proper or less. And when it's really productive, man, it outgoes the deer. They can't eat it fast enough. I'm sure y'all have seen this. And when it's dormant, I don't care if you got five hundred acres of clover, it's not feeding anything. But when I went to the annual clover in my fall blends, the fall buffalo blends, I call them because they worked with the buffalo system. Man, it comes on when clover is gonna go great, late fall or late winter, early spring it's producing tons. Is about the time it's starting to rain. Is when my soybeans are coming on, which are much more drought hardy and heat tolerant. So I for me you personally here, I'm out of the premial clover plot. I'm gonna have an you clover to in a blend. I'm gonna have some cereal grains in a blend. I'm gonna have a brassica in the blend and maybe too, maybe like a rasih and some type of turn up or a wave, but a rape it's just a non boat producing turn up. And I'm probably gonna have a broad leaf in there, which will probably die at the first frost, and maybe a buckwheat or something like that. So I've got all these different root structures. Plants are pulling way different minerals out of soil. So when they are termite either consumed by deer, because it's like feeding your deer, multi videment either consumed by deer or it's terminated on the plot, and and putting those nutrients right back at the surface for new new plants that to have an introng route. You have all the nutrients you want twenty inches deep, but your crop will start to death before it gets route to them. So I'm what I'm doing what's called mining or recycling nutrients. I'm taking nutrients from the deep, bringing them up to the surface for either critters to consume or to decompose and be released on the soil surface so they can start working the way back down through the soil for different depths of the different plant roots. That makes sense, And and so then you've got this diverse blend of carefully selected foragers that they grow that fall. You're feeding your deer, You're enjoying some great hunts over it. You're making sure these are healthy deer heading into the winter, now closing out the cycle or the cycle begins again the next spring. Now, in my in my example scenario, now I've got a fall crop that's been on these food plots. Now it sounds like what you're doing is and you're you're crimping terminating that whatever has come back the next spring. Right, So can you just describe can you close it out with what happens that next spring, now that you do have something that's across all the food plots. If I don't terminate in the spring, I'm not worried about in the fall at all. Right, My, my soy beans or even sometimes whatever I got out there is not going to produce an st seed unless you've got way more food plots that you've got deer, and very few of us have that for eagles. Seeds to become a weed, and a weed is is to plant growing. We don't want it. So, you know, a sunflower is almost never a weed. But if you let a sunflower seed go to a full head, that makes you know, hundreds or thousands of seeds and all of a sudden they come up when you're trying, you know, a hundred of them come up and to square a foot. Nothing good is gonna grow there. It's just too much competition. So I really don't like plants volunteering. It seems like, well, I can say so much money. But Southerners get this. You almost never count on a volunteer pine stand to pay your kids way through college because that pine tree is gonna put off so many cones and seeds, is too thick or too thin, and none of the woods really productive. That's why people plant pines on certain spacings to maximize production. The same thing with food, pop seed, same thing. So I'm gonna plant crops in the summer that there's just no we're deer gonna eat them on plant and stuff designed for deer to eat, and they may get big, but the deer brows and enough, like soybeans, they make pods that the deer don't eat, but sometimes they're in the winter or a deer, turkey, a squirrel, a dove, whatever's gonna eat those things. I'm not worried about valling tira soybeans. I don't think anyone really is, unless you're a nag farmer and you're worry about two soybeans in the middle of a turn at the cornfield or something uh in my winter crop with all the cereal grains you know, common ones are cereal rye, not rye grass, cereal rye, oats, wheets, those are all common our braskets. If you've ever let a brasket go to seed, those little rassles make one bulb and forty million sea. I'm exaggerating thousands of seed per plant, and they're very viable seed if you let them get hard. So right now my braskets have that little two insulung spike looks like a pea, but much smaller, ten or leven seeds in there. Before those things are black and hard. I'm terminating with the crimper. That's why I terminate in the spring eight to get enough sunshine for my soybeans, real good and beans. So don't have a bunch of volunteer coming up at the wrong time of year. You don't want wheat or rye or oats drawing in the summer competing with your soybeans. That would be that would not be good. So I want to terminate that fall crop in the spring to give my spring crop ample room to g oh without weed again, a weed, it's just a plant growing at a place you don't want it to grow. So, like you know, if you've got marked four rows and your rabbit patch, it's a really good thing. You've got multiplour rows in your food plot or in your wife's garden or somewhere, it's a really bad thing. It's a weed or a good thing. Come on where you are. Um, So I terminate in the spring. I brought a full cycle, and and I'm and I'm drilling and and folks, some people ask me, well, you know how you break that bean cycle. I've been plant beans in the same plot here it's equivement grounds for sixteen years in a row and still growing great beans. And and the magic there is I've always got a fall plot, and it's a very diverse fault plot. And I may have diverse through the beans. I may or may not, but I've got a very diverse fall plot. So I am rotating crops. So I'm just doing it faster than some people do. I'm rotating. I've got that eight way plus wind in the fault. It's really working on the soil and different root depths and nights and structures and different chemicals being again excluded out of root tips. I'm rotating every year twice a year. Now, what if in this scenario we make it to the spring and we want to terminate, But what if we don't own a crimp? How can I keep the basic um tenants of this principle without a crimp? You can terminate with her beside. I'm I'm not anti herbside at all, guys. Should you know helps feed a bunch of people right now, But I think we're moving to systems worldwide where they may not be as important. Um. But so I want to use I'm not anti herbside. I want to use the least amount I have to purchase for many reasons. Hey, you know you're putting chemicals in soil. We can't deny that and be it's expensive and see it's time consuming to put on the ground. So if you can terminate with herbside small flox, I do this myself. You use a backpack sprayer. So we've come up with and pass it on our TP A little foot primper and the folks. If you want to train for l cunting, this is the tool. It's a like a Tuba sig. It's not It's like a Tuba six about I don't know, three or four ft long and got a couple of anger arms on the bottom. There's much more sciences than that. And I'm just kind of painting the picture in a rope and you just you put one foot on there and you use the rope to pick it up moving forward six and just step down and your weight becomes a crimper. And I use this in my small food plots where I don't have time to get the tractor in order. Back in the roods, I can't get the tractor too And on my small plots, I broadcast seed and then I crimped the existing vegetation with that foot crimper. And I wouldn't recommend this for a ten acre field because unless you're a really good athlete. But small small fields even I can do. And it's a tremol. They're a great tool. And that's that's a that's avail for seller. That's just a prototype thing you were using. No it is no, no, no. They took it and improved it and changed it, and this stuff better. And you know, they have Heaven for sale. I don't even know the price, but they have for sale. Mine my prototype is not near as good as what they have, but yeah, we've had done on the show, and I especially like it again from a little ideo food plots where it's either can't or seeing convenient to get attracted to. Rather than disc it up, I can just broadcast in a net standing crop and then using my foot crimper to going there and mash down the mulch. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Now I've heard some other people um mo instead of crimping, and if they don't have a big crimper, they've done kind of what you just describe, but then they mow to get the vegetation down and to form a you know, a greenhouse effect over that seed to get to Germany. Is there any downside to doing that or what are your thoughts on using that as an option? Yeah, that would be so simple and I would love to do that if it were could be simple. But every mower I've used, I mean I've used Clell Moore's and I've got the bush Hawk talk More and whatnot in my lawn mower, they don't throw the mulch out the clean pattern. So if you remember earlier we were talking about soul temperature, I'm not aware of anymore. To just lays it down like a crimper does. And then a lot of weed species, the grass weed species, you know what they're going back. You can't. You cannot mow Johnston grass out of existence. You know, it's just not going to terminate as good Mowing cutting of plants is not the same as breaking the whole plants reflect toward system, and it's spending all this tergew trying to heal those breaks. So a couple of factors. One, you're not gonna get an even spread. A multich just gonna be really thick in some places, which will shade out your crop, and no much in other places, which allows that soul to heat up and kill the beneficial bacteria and evacuate a lot of moisture. So you know, if you've got a more that just lays it down perfect, that would be ideal. I've yet to find that more. Hey crimpers, you know, I was raised on a farm. Hey crampers, whatever day, you know, there's a reasonably rate because hey, crimpers don't put it in the right place all the time. So I don't think mowing is as good of option. Okay, So that's that's the process, I mean, that's the cycle. The only other question I guess I have about the process is when it comes to using a drill, if if we can find a drill, if we can share a driller, rent one or whatever um, At least me personally, it seems a little intimidating. That's an implement I've never used. It seems like a little bit more involved, a little bit more to it than just dragging a you know, disk behind my fore wheeler. Do you have any just do you have any advice or tips for things to think about when using a no tail drill for the first time, or just anything we should be thinking about. Yeah, you know, they're they're really not the two things too. I mean, besides the normal mechanical stuff you could have a mind mind doesn't have any tires. Minds a three point hits model, which I really like. It makes turning. I equate a cool type drill and the three point hits to a regular more in a zero turn more. When we got rid of our regular more in which zero turn more. Right, now spend half the time moreing the yard. It's amazingly faster. And when you've got the pool type, you've got high drolly cses and not more parts to break or slow you down and you pull up, and you gotta back up. You gotta get it just right within a few inches where the three point hits. You just back up or you want to drop it and go. There's no highdrolly cses the right thing to break. It's much simpler, much much simpler. Hey be. The only thing to use in the drill, no matter which type of drill you use, is calibrating, and you want to calibrate every year because again, steed size is very you know it, maybe a wet year in boded corn and soybeans, seed, octwolber or whatever is really big, and the next year it's really drying and really small. So even if you're planting the exact same products, you still want to calibrate so you're planting the right amount of seeds breaker not too many so they outcompete, and not so few that you get weeds everywhere. Uh And and different drills calibrate differently. I will just share with you. I have a genesis and it's really cool. Let's got a little seed tray, So all I do is turn to all drills and have some contact with the ground and that drives. If you will the seed meters. So as that wheel on the ground turns, it knows faster and slower, how fast to turn the seed meters, how much seed to put out. So you turn your your your drive will if you will x amount of times. I do the math and do a hundredth of an acre. It's really simple. Most drills have dis published the manual to turn it twenty two times or cree five or whatever. And I put my seed in the drill, and the justice has a little seed trade. You just turn over and catches all seed. Others you gotta put a tarp down, boild, a drill or something to catch it, turn it and just stimulate planning a hundred hundredth of an acre and then wait seed and it should be a hundred If you want to plan a picky pounds breaker, then you know it's a Catholic pound or a hundredth of that. And you just adjust your seed meter up or down and calibrate it. That is absolutely toughest thing about using any drill. You just calibrate. And why wouldn't you want to calibrate because with this you get a well things are ever perfect, but an almost perfect planting versus well, I'm not a broadcast, and we've all done this. You put it in your broadcast, eat on a four wheeler or over the shoulder model you're seeing and you're doing you're feeling good, and you get halfway through the plot and you've either used all your seed or you have to use never much. We've all done it. I've done it. Yeah, we've all done it. And with the with the drill, you know, you get never perfect, but an almost perfect stand at just the right spacing. All that stuff. And some people use old chord planners, which is fine, but most of old pod planners are like on thirty inch rows or twenty four inch rows. Just think about this. Now you got all that sunshine coming down and causing weeds to grow that was made that way because of the sides of the combined head. It's never good plant biology, do that. Never. I plant mine at seven half intros. I plant all my species at seven half intros, and you're planting the same amount of seeds breakers, so they're still spaced out. But if you think about it, so being a third intro and really competing with each other's side to side. Now I've got equal spacing and they pull them a canopy quicker and keep the sun from it and sol that allows weeds to grow and that young little seed and seeding when it first grows, you know it has a really small root system. Well, when you're on thirty intros, you got all that down in the middle with fertilizer or linement on or whatever that the plant can't utilize, but on with every seven half intro, which means it has to reach three and a half inches. Man, in just a week or so, they're tapping all that ground. Nothing's going to waste. So seven half intros are really really good. If you don't know turf grass and they want to get coverage really quick is usually turf grass triels are usually three inches. They're planting every three inches. And also if you beings one more thing, if you put all your beams ont row, it is super easy for that old nanny dough to walk down the row and by the top off every one. I mean literally, there's been studies on this. But when you're in steven Atkins row, she's got to work a lot harder and probably won't consume quite as many of your seedlings before they have a chance to get up and survive. That amount of brows pressure. I guess I'm gonna be testing testing these theories soon, hopefully learning how to use a tool like that, and I'll report back in the in the coming months. And if I haven't been able to figure out how to properly calibrate and do these things, but it sounds like something I should be able to figure out, hopefully with a little bit of fiddling. Um, it's easy, It's easy, it really is. So how if we do this, if we implement a system like this, when, at what point and in what way can we measure success, whether that be success as far as improving the soil or the greater habitat provements and or dear, how do you look at success with something like this, and when do you start trying to quantify that in some way? I'm not sure. There's one indicator that I had to pick one, it would be a utilization cage, which is just simply some structure wire basket, wire cylinder that keeps deer from browsing. Let's say a three foot circle or four foot circle. Plants. I don't like the small ones because the deer's adult deer's tongue is about eleven inches long. So if you got a twenty in circle or reached all the way through the after hungry and need ever being inside of it, or whatever crop you got. So I put a utilization cage literally in every food plot, big and small. And I'm looking at the plant growth inside versus outside, which tells me a lot. You know, if it's three times tall were inside the gates versus outside, I got too many deer and not enough food. And if there's no weeds inside where I'm shading it out and a bunch of weeds outside, you know, I've got some other issues going on. So that's really simple. I look at dear body weights every year, and there's a lot of factors. Okay, what did the neighbors have planet I'm in an nery, or there's zero. When I say zero, I've never seen a grain beIN a silo. There's nothing like that for counties around me. I'm in timber country, so acorns are factor. I might having really heavy acorn crop and body weights maybe up a little bit in the later season, not to early season. But I look at that. I look at average chantler size and a really good indicator of how you're doing it. Your soil is before you start this, go out there with a shovel at random places, floppy a couple of shovelfuls of dirt over and see if there's wormholes or worms. Again, when the soil's got some moisture. If you do this in julyne hadn't rained the two months, the worms are down there six feet deep and you're not gonna see them. But you know, an average screen day, you go out there in whippelow soil over CPC signs earth worms. Or if you got really good or for populations like I do, you start seeing their droppings would be like a little teeping piles on top to soil. That's when you know you're getting there. I mean, that's all incredible fertilizer. When you have so many worms, you're making droppings on top to soil, you are growing some crops. If you want to get little more sophisticated, you can always take sporage samples and send it to any good lab. I use waters Agg in Kentucky W A. T. E. R. S Agg dot com and I can send them some leaves and they're telling me the nutrient value of the leaves, so you can measure a lot of way days. But for most of us that are dear guys, are utilised are utilization cage showing us the difference of inside and outside, and a shovel can tell us an awful lot when you when you pull a root up or you shovel a root up, are you getting a lot of root growth or is it really shallow and compacted and and your telexes roots do down a few inches where that hards on is and in turn sideways they turning nine needs your angle. Then you've got a real hard pan and you probably need to plant some radishes or something with a really strong root system to bust that hard pan. Yeah, I think that's I think that's really helpful and and pretty easy to follow. Yeah, I think I said earlier in the in the podcast when the best thing you can do is have boots on the ground and go out to your fields. Don't just plan them and come back and hunt over them, you know later, go out there and see what's going on. Are you are your cobra plants making a lot of big boons or the booms look kind of puny um, you know, Or are your beans making a lot of pods or they all browsed off is the is the the annual small grains wheat Ryoh are are they brows about? Lipie and Jane work? You know, just kind of some common observations will let you know how you're working. Yeah. And the best test, of course is for you Mark especially this takes a little bit more time, So don't suggest a lot of people do this. But you conventionally agg teal and maximum input on a part of your plot in the buffalo system on the other part, and watch it the first year. I can tell you convinceal ag we went. I'll promise you that. Uh, but watch it for three years, and also watch how much money you're spending on each part and how much time. That's uh, it's really really, really intriguing. And like I mentioned at the top, just over the last couple of weeks, as I kind of discovered this idea and then just start diving into the literature and the articles and and all the different things out there, it's it's the most excited I've been about new habitat related work because it just seems to it seems to make a whole lot of sense, both from from the goals that you can accomplish with it and then just like the way you go about it, which just seems like much more in sync with the natural way and much healthier for the whole place. And I always like to think that when we as hunters always talk about how we are you know, some of the very very first and greatest conservations out there, and we do a whole lot of things that that benefit the wildlife and wild places around us. But but sometimes I feel like some of these conventional practices have been damaging stuff. I mean, you talked about the damage done to the soil and how that it really is the foundation for all the rest of the fauna and floor out there. So I feel like this is a way to kind of plug a couple of those holes in our in our processes out there and the ways that we can be good stewards. So so I'm just really excited. I really appreciate taking the time to walk me through all this. And uh, I guess my last question would just be for me and or anybody else out there who is interested in learning more about this stuff. Um, I guess number one, where can we learn more from you? And then number two, do you have any recommended books or other online resources? Maybe where we could learn more about regenerative our culture or any of the bigger picture stuff. Yeah. Great, great questions. I stepping over here and get some books on myself. When you said that, I buy them on and read a bunch on this. I'm really into it. Um, you can learn about it, not a matter of fact, our current episodes all about this. You can just go to growing deer dot com and you know YouTube, Roku, Apple tv probably anywhere to streams you can find us, or just go to our website go one deer dot com and there's episodes in past years or current wines all about this. Uh, there's some great books out there. I want to start by saying that a couple of organizations, uh that are really awesome. And these some of these are government's supported, so you know, it's kind of your tax dollars at work here, but they're doing some great work. And I don't say that a lot about a lot of government agencies out there, uh, but uh, one of them that I read a lot and care on is is s A R E. S A are easy acronym. You can google this, you find it and it's Sustainable Agriculture research and Education in this group just does an incredible job and they don't ask for anything from US land managers and return. There's all kinds of books and publications. A lot of them are available for free as a download. I like to read a book holding by the hand, so I think the most princy book I ever bought from was like ten or fifteen dollars. I think it's really good. A great book, A really great book that goes over these principles, probably even in more detail. Is A Soil Owner's Manual, A Soil Owned Owner's Manual by John stick Up s t i k A. He was a soil scientist in North Dakota. John stick To s t i k A. He had a long career and man he made a lot of observations from going from native pastures out there, I mean original prairie to maximum till it's too people trying to regenerate and restore those and you know, a long career of watching these changes and becoming to believe himself. It's a small book of about eighty pages, and it's an I give that book to people. It's just a a great book for people who want to learn about this. Uh. The Rodale Institute the Rodale Institute, which is I'm getting me to spell that for you, and I don't want to butcher, so I'm actually gonna look in here and see, oh is uh R O d a l E. R O D A l E is a nonprofit farm started thirty plus years ago by businessman in Pennsylvania that was concerned about the nutrient quality of foods. Were eating nutrient quality foods. And I'm sure all your listeners know a lot of people think a lot of the major diseases we're facing in critters and certainly humans because of our nutrient poor food for example, And I bet some of your listeners may not know this. Common crops like broccoli and spinach are forty or more less in nutrients in the same crop thirty years ago. What we do to deplicate soils. There are oranges grown now that have zero vitamin suit totally to to depleted soil, synthetic fertilizer, er whatever. Uh, we're not eating as a nation. You may be eating the same amount of calories, but you are not getting the same amount of minerals that your parents got. Unless you're a you know, an organic gardener. You know you're you're raising your own. So folks, what I do, literally, I buy thirty some ub species of garden plants. There's no magic to this. I just go to the store and start loading up my buggy, put all the five yallon bucket, mix it all together, put it in my no til drill and drill some strips right in the middle of my food pop right in the middle. There's no magic to this. It's I mean, there's melons and squash and several times the beans of peaks, and some of the work, and some of them don't. Some of them I never see. And uh man, it's a garden. It's a weed free garden. And the only thing I do is drill it one day, and then about midsummer start picking produce and bring it in the house. And you know, you can buy an acre or seed pretty cheap when you're buying in that volume. And and all of a sudden, your wife really likes food plot and so it's a it's of course, deary, whatever we don't eat. So it's a great thing. And I put them all together. This is a little rows of carrots and tomatoes like you know in your parents guard that you had to weed. I mixed them all together, all of them, playing them all together and just let whatever comes up come up. It's it's incredible. Yeah, there's some great resources out there. Those just a couple of easy ones that are good starter ones. The s A r. E Institute online, they've got all kinds of great information. Excellent. Well, Grant, I can't tell you how helpful this has been. And and you mentioned the most recent episode that you guys have out. I took a look at that as well just before we chatted, and that was a really great visual um supplement to I think what we talked about here today. So would highly recommend anyone out there definitely go watch that because it will really illustrate what Grant has walked us through as well as UM. Like you mentioned, Grant, you have a whole lot of past videos. I saw that on YouTube. You had a playlist that had all the day for episodes over the years you've done that we're related to this. You put them in a Buffalo Food Plot Systems playlist. If you want to go back and look through the archives of growing to your TV. Your team there did a great job of organizing them all there so you can see the different things you've done over the years and how your system has progressed. Um, and I found that really interesting too. So this is really really interesting and I appreciate you, Graham, thank you. I want to say just one last thing and do what I do. Just go to YouTube and uh, you know, search on regenity bag or cover crops and those keywords and one tip on ad I've been doing this for years, but I would watch like two thousand and seventeen, two thousand and eighteen and four because we're all learning all the time. So even stuff I thought about this in two thousand fifteen, I may have changed my mind or done differently. So there's thousands out there. So I just watch some more current Once you get the most current information and offer it a little bit to apply to your food plot situation and have fun with it. Great, great advice. Well, I'm gonna be putting all this into action this year. I can't wait to see how it goes. And I'll keep you posted, Grant, and uh, I'm sure it's gonna help. Mark. Thank you for the time to share with your audience, and I look forward to hearing about your project. Sounds a good plan and that is a rap UM, hopefully you guys enjoy this one as much as I did. As you can tell, UM, I'm just really personally intrigued by this stuff. Like I mentioned up to the top, UM, nothing against conventional methods of agriculture, like there's a place for that, I know, And I also know that I don't know everything, so I'm just figuring this out myself. UM, but I'm at least intrigued and excited about the opportunities to maybe, in some small way, do something a little bit differently than might be positive. So if you guys know more, if you want to share me your experiences or insights or different opinions, I'd love to hear that too. UM. I'm just all for learning, and I think this is gonna be a great opportunity to do so. So until next time, thank you for listening, thanks for being a part of this community, and until next time, stay wired to hunt the Broken Book to getting bet