Joined once again by Ann Jandernoa we answer listener questions on all things grouse and woodcock hunting during part one of our annual conversation.
Show Highlights:
MAP | with Scout N Hunt
SUPPORT | patreon.com/birdshot
Follow us | @birdshot.podcast
Use Promo Code | BSP20 to save 20% with onX Hunt
Use Promo Code | BSP15 to save 15% on Marshwear Clothing
Use Promo Code | BSP10 to save 10% on Trulock Chokes
The Birdshot Podcast is Presented By: onX Hunt, Final Rise and Upland Gun Company
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
When it comes to maximizing time in the uplands, without fail, Onyx Hunt is my most valuable tool. From planning my next hunt through a new bird cover to navigating in the field, Onyx Hunt is truly with me wherever I go. With detailed mapping and satellite imagery, along with a multitude of mapped layers from land access to forestry and habitat information, and easy to use tools to mark measure and catalog important information, Onyx Hunt seamlessly integrates digital scouting with boots on the ground time in the field. With offline mapping and apple car planning integration, you are free to explore the wild landscapes, our beloved Upland birds, and have it. Planning your next move in the uplands begins with knowing where you stand, and for me, that starts and stops with Onyx Hunt. Download the Onyx Hunt app today and use the promo code BSP20 to save 20% on your Onyx Hunt subscription. Hey, it's Kaylee Cuoco for Priceline, ready to go to your happy place for a happy price? Well, why didn't you say so? Download the Priceline app right now and save up to 60% on hotels. So, whether it's Cousin Kevin's Kazoo concert in Kansas City, go Kevin or Becky's Bachelorette Bash in Bermuda. You never have to miss a trip ever again, so download the Priceline app today. Your savings are waiting. Go to your happy place for a happy price. Go to your happy price, Priceline. Right now, get scary good deals on select ring cameras and doorbells. See who's there? Keep your scaredy cats company. Oh, it's okay, sweetie, I'll be home soon. And protect your crypt from the real monsters. Oh, come on, the sign says take one. Save big on select ring devices right now at ring.com. Jewelry isn't a gift you give just once. It's a way to remind your loved one of a beautiful moment every time they see it. Blue Nile can help you find the gift that says how you feel and says it beautifully. With expert guidance and a wide assortment of jewelry of the highest quality at the best price, go to bluenile.com and experience the convenience of shopping Blue Nile, the original online jeweler since 1999. It's bluenile.com to find the perfect jewelry gift for any occasion, bluenile.com. This episode of the Birdshot Podcast is presented by OnX Hunt, the number one GPS hunting app and final rise, premium quality made in USA hunting vests and field apparel, and upland gun company, custom built and fit handcrafted Italian shotguns. Hey everybody, welcome to episode number 289 of the Birdshot Podcast. Thank you for joining us today for our much anticipated annual conversation. Thanks for tuning in to our next episode of the Birdshot Podcast. We will get to the first half of our conversation with Anne in just a minute. I do want to thank Patreon Patrons of the Birdshot Podcast, those of you out there making contributions in support of the show to keep these conversations coming your way. Seven years later, this is the eighth hunting season we'll be talking to Anne Jandernaw. That means something to me, and I'm incredibly thankful to everybody that listens, but especially Patreon Patrons. Those Patrons are eligible for Patreon giveaways, we've got some exclusive discounts, there's one for Marshware clothing right now, we'll do some bonus content, we've got the Patreon group chat page, which I hope becomes a bit of a hunt recap place for Patrons to connect with other listeners and up-and-bird hunters, I'm going to work on that, and I hope Patrons would consider that as well. We also set everybody up with some Birdshot Podcasts, canned coolers, and stickers. You can learn more and sign up at patreon.com/birdshot. Okay, you can also leave the Birdshot Podcast a rating, review, subscribe to the show, don't miss upcoming episodes like part two of our conversation with Anne coming up next week, follow the show, whatever you can do in the podcast app or player you are listening on, all of those things do help to support the Birdshot Podcast and are very much appreciated. Okay, I'm putting the finishing touches on this episode and I am literally packing up gear to prepare for my first hunting trip of the year starting bright and early tomorrow. Can't wait to get back out on the prairie chasing sharp tailed grouse and I'm Gary Partridge. I did sneak out into the grouse woods once last weekend on opening weekend here in Minnesota, mostly uneventful, my son and I hiked a good long ways through some Jack Piney cover hoping to catch few birds out maybe in the clover and we did flush three including a pair of pretty small juvenile looking chicks but that's about all I have to report at this point, more of a ceremonial kickoff to the season. I am looking forward to some cooler temps on the horizon and getting to spend some more time in the grouse woods after my prairie trip this week. But for now and for all of you hitting the grouse woods this early season and in the weeks to come, we've got our annual conversation with Angianderna, listener Q&A, we had a long list and as such we've got a two-part conversation for you. Part one coming up today, part two next week for rough grouse and woodcock conversation. We've got you covered here on the birdshot podcast for the next couple of weeks and if you're craving even more rough grouse and woodcock conversation, there's a lot of valuable Q&A in the previous year's conversations with Angianderna. I will have those linked in the show notes so feel free to go back and listen to those or re-listen to those brush up on your habitat hunting and mapping knowledge. Long time listeners of the show will know that our guests today needs very little introduction. So with that said, let's welcome into the conversation and back to the birdshot podcast once again, Angianderna. And I've got asters blooming outside the office. The mountain ashberries are bright orange outside my window. It must be September and it must be time for Angianderna on the birdshot podcast. I guess so. If you say so, Nick. Welcome back. Welcome back, my friend. Thank you. This is eight times around with seventh year of the podcast and we had you on that first ball. So this is our this is our eighth chat and I've been looking forward to it as long as as much as the listeners have been. So thanks for joining us once again. No problem. I'm glad to be here and I appreciate you asking. So I have to ask you just you just mentioned sauna before we we started this as I would if I had to guess I would guess yours is a wood fired sauna but is that correct? That's correct. Yeah that figures. I have an electric one here at home which is which is convenient but it's not quite the same as as the old wood fired sauna. You know it's I like it. I mean I got a friend up in Canada who's got the electric and I mean I enjoy them both but it's just yeah it's something about that smell and the cedar and outside and all that. It's just I don't know and I'd go take a sauna and I'm awake. So I got a time when I take this sauna because if I try to take one before bed I mean it's like I'm totally awake. So yeah yeah I get that too. It is it is got you know your heart rate elevates and I've listened to it. There's a lot of research coming out on sauna's now and sort of how the what that temperature effect does to you and there's obviously lots of benefits to it but timing it around sleep. It is a it is a factor with whether you want to wake up or or go to sleep and I don't have a cold plunge yet but that's kind of kind of next on my list. I'm kind of curious about that. Do you have one of those or do you have a pond nearby or something? No no. There's been many nights I've traiphed out this is on and it's been 20 below and that felt like I didn't feel it. That's that's my strategy when I'm at home in the winter and it actually it actually gets dark at like four o'clock if I take a sauna then I will go out on on my back deck and and air out in the in the winter chill there. It's it's really incredible how cold it can be and and you just it doesn't even phase you. It's crazy it's crazy. Yeah and then if you were if you had been sitting on the couch for an hour and you step out there you know you'd be frozen in five seconds but just yeah it always amazed me. Well and that I mean friend of mine was over and she was she didn't want to go do it you know sauna so I wouldn't did it sauna and I come back and I had forgotten my hat and I came back she goes and your hair is so frosty. I said yeah I know hi I don't walk over. She's just laughing. She says he gives a new new picture of some monster with a frosted hair. Yeah yeah no white walker the white walker of the north what's up guy. Exactly that's now some listeners have called you the queen of gross and I think we might have we might have broached a new new area here this could be the white walker of the north. Yeah you're getting into a turbulent water that is a limit but no that is funny though that is really funny. If you want to see looking funny just go take sauna come out you know of course you towel dried your hair a little bit and you're not carrying what you look like and step out in 20 below weather and it's really funny. Let it freeze. Yeah it freezes. That's funny well we we could talk about sauna's more but I think I think there's plenty of birds and habitat and hunting related conversation that we need to have today and we've got lots of listener questions that I can't wait to get into. A couple things before we jump into questions you do have your own podcast now hunt the habitat and just wanted to you are up to 19 episodes and reading some of the some of the recent episode releases early season growe strategies and nail the grouse hunt target high density bird areas and avoiding count mistakes all that to say listeners will will have plenty more to listen to after they finish up this episode but how's the hunt the habitat podcast going for you. It's going well I mean it's not like everyone else which has a traditional we own once a month or every two weeks or every week or something like that I have to work this around my schedule with mapping. So there's peaks and there's peak times that I basically try to put the podcast out and there's times that you know you're in the dead of winter and I'm like well what am I going to talk about. You know you're past the hunting stage you know you can't run the dogs so there's there's only so much you could talk about sometimes at that time of year. So it's it's basically I do it so that it's a resource for education. I'm sure you get tons and tons of questions from people every year on the maps and scout and hunt and those I know I've found that those questions they they tend to become inspiration for podcast episodes so oh yeah yep they definitely do. So I'll have the habitat podcast available I would imagine anywhere you can find podcast listeners should definitely check that out. I will link it in the show notes and I had jotted this down when we were chatting the other day you mentioned a bakery that had giant cinnamon rolls remind me where that was. Nick in the sweet tooth huh. It's in Lawrence Michigan that's up in the UP that is west of Marquette and Nagani south east of Holden Hancock and it's right at the key one I'll be between barrow good lawns but it's actually on the lawn side and as you're going out of town on the headed east it's they call it the hilltop because it's on a hill. Hilltop bakery yep yep it's right on the main main road there. All right I have no plans to to head that direction yet but giant cinnamon rolls could they could alter my future at this point. Yeah there's some well like we were talking there's some really nice bakeries in different areas you just don't need that you need to know where to find them but maybe you don't need to find them as soft and. Exactly exactly. All right well we have a whole lineup of questions here and I've got them generally sorted in a couple of different buckets habitat hunting and bird dogs so we're going to dive in and we'll see where the day takes us and where these questions lead us but okay first one quite timely today we're talking today September 13th grow seasons open in the great lakes tomorrow and or the 15th for you folks over in Michigan but opening weekend what habitat are you walking and looking for what other things are we concerned about on opening weekend in. Heat is the big it's going to be the big factor to think about for Saturday Sunday you know it's just not going to be great weather for it so coming into it like in my area the low will be 56 on Saturday's Sunday the low is 59 and on Monday it'll be 61 it'll be the low and then Tuesday the 59 so we're in a heatwave of either upper upper 70s or low 80s and that's not going to give you a lot of time to accomplish anything so you know the obvious you're going to be thinking about the dog and you're going to be thinking about the care of the dog so when you think about that part I'm going to blend this all together but you need to do sort of like when I talk about one stop shopping in the fall except it's in this it's in the beginning of the season due to the heat because the reason why is that when those dogs are in full foliage running around in under the cover and you got a heavy heavy dude that's like a sauna once again the sauna thing for a dog so um and they don't they don't breathe I mean let's all let's put a fur coat on and run around in there and just put that visual in your head and think about it so having a dog well hydrated not how quickly go back to my racing days with sled dogs I started the hydration like noon the day before so I started making sure that my dog in my team or whatever and this is going to say they need to pee clear if they pee clear they're very well hydrated if they're peeing yellow they're not hydrated and if enough and if you can actually smell it then they're dehydrated so you want the dog to come in to that type of a situation when you know it's going to be warm and you know that it could be stressful you want to make sure they're well hydrated you also want to make sure you don't if you're going from one place to the next or you're giving your dog water don't give it so much that it's sloshing around in its stomach because that can actually cause a twisted stomach and a lot of times you can't get to that fast enough to save the dog right so there's that aspect so that you know basically your focus shouldn't be birds birds birds birds birds you have all season for that it should be less golden to some habitat let's hunt but it's the safety of the dog first yeah and so the habitat that I would be looking for isn't late season habitat I'm looking for a good habitat with a good stem density as somewhat of a clean floor because remember we're not dealing with pheasant chicks we were dealing with grouse chicks there are two different styles of birds and everything and obviously of course two different types of habitat so you're looking with something cut with a nice canopy maybe some trail edges to it these birds mostly will be still in a covey the first ones to leave the covey will be the males males testosterone is going off the charts right now and they're they're upset at each other and they're so territorial that that's what forces them to disperse and of course that's between now and the probably the first part of October and then the hens will actually go and find their area around the first week or so of um of sept of october so latter september males are going to disperse but they're still probably in a group right and a lot of times right now they also fly up in the trees when they're when they're yeah flush because they they're not educated yet um if you find an area where these birds are flying already they've either been trained on or it's a predator issue and so they got educated so those are things to think of what's the cover and we're in my finding birds if it's sent where the dog goes on point holds and then you have to relocate two or three times those are birds that know they they already know what the game is they're moving yeah and the big thing is is two depending on your dog if the dog goes on point and you have one that goes up but the dog she stands there that means it still has sent and there's typically another bird and yeah so those are things that you have to think about so if you have a young dog be ready because if one goes up you could have it busting through if it breaks you know which everyone's got a different um style that they want and i'm not here to judge it or anything i'm just saying if you know your dog's going to break and it could run there could be multiples just because you don't know if you have a single or if you have a cubby at that point but your quality of your habitat needs to be perfect for those young birds because they're coming out of the brood range so density floor cover some nice trail edges all of that and you're not going to get that in a 14 15 16 year old cut typically and you're not going to get that in a young a cut that's too young with a lot of trash in it yeah so you got to find that nice area right there where floor looks good bunchberries strawberries you know some shrub components fine but not overly and in every area is different i'm saying this based on my experiences here in other places i've hunted excuse me in northern michigan but when you go out think about what you're seeing where you're seeing at and what time of year so you can in your mind for your area say okay i move birds in this type of cut at this age this was a soil type roughly you know or the soil and the there wasn't you know think about putting how much trash was on the floor what was the shrub component like how much grass is on the floor that all of those things i mean it's almost like you need to make a mental checklist for your journals you know soil trails grass food sources you know like you know the cover on the trails you know is there any you know clover or you know strawberry leaves or you know just different things for them to eat and then if you get one what was in the crop was it was it aspen leaves and the density so when i if you're in a cut and you feel like you got a dance left to right left to right that's typically about the type of a cut that i'm in and of course you know my shoulders are not as white as you know the typical guy's shoulders so you're looking at being able to shift back and forth but not bang into too many trees i mean if you can start walking straight lines all over the place then it's probably too open yeah and then look up at the sun see what how much sunlight is hitting that floor so i take the early season that is the time to go out and shoot a whole bunch of birds you know if it's there great it's education for the dogs it works fine but i use it to take stock of what's there for the future where can i come back and train to get maybe a young pup some great opportunity um and delay of the land and i'm also what cover are they in so remember they're coming out of the brood range they're sort of there so right in those type of areas right now so now you'll get an idea of what the brood range looks like for grouse in the early season so yeah excellent good side as i sit here and think about there's a there's a chance i i hunt tomorrow and if i do i will likely have my six-year-old son along with us and so you know you've got different factors obviously there for where i'm going to pick and where i'm going to go but even if he wasn't coming along i probably would be doing the same i'm looking for a gated trail or gated forest somewhere that i that is that's not going to be all choked up with grass like i'm i'm trying to right i want like a sandy or gravelly trail somewhere that i can go walk and that there's hopefully some some good brood cover you know there's some stem density there's maybe a cut nearby but i'm probably just gonna i'm gonna wander along a trail and take the easy walking and and assume that there may be some birds out there getting fruit or insects or or using using that trail and like you the expectations are you know we're i'm out for a walk in the grouse woods that's and the dogs are dogs we're stretching our legs and we're checking things out that's that's kind of much one quick thing that i should have said in that narrative is that you're hot so the birds are going to be down closer to where it's cooler sure so that's an elevation change so that's your lower edge and typically you know think of it this way the first area is to get frost at the low edges there so think you can think of it that way as well i want to go to where if it was cold it'd be frosty or where the um do doesn't burn off quite as bit you know quite as fast in those shaded type areas a little bit around the edges of of them and then you also should take time to measure the distance from where you're going to go to a specific spot and try to think about if there's any water around when you're doing that and the other aspect is i typically spot hunt you know so i can get the dog out for a small amount of time i'm not on the the two to three hour trek or even an hour trek yeah 30 40 minutes yeah and watch your temperature jumps too because look at look at your weather forecast and if it starts jumping you know about four to five degrees per hour look for where those jumps are like you know three to four and then all of a sudden it's going to stretch out to you know five on up at five on up it's definitely going to be getting too hot you know you're going to have to hit it really early got it for many upland hunters along with their passion for dogs birds and the places we chase them comes a passion for shotguns upland gun company specializes in customizing shotguns for the upland bird hunter imported from italy and shipped direct to an ffl near you select from one of their side by side or over under shotgun platforms and customize the fit function and aesthetics to your liking design and build your next upland hunting shotgun with upland gun company today visit uplandgun company dot com this episode is brought to you in part by marshware clothing where style meets adventure whether you're hiking your bird dogs through the field or strolling the streets around town marshware clothing has you covered with premium quality coastal inspired apparel made a breathable and durable materials built with stretch comfort and made to move marshware clothing is designed for all your adventures listeners of the bird shop podcast can use the promo code BSP 15 to say 15 percent and patreon patrons of the bird shop podcast get an even deeper discount check out the complete collection and gear up your next adventure at marshware clothing dot com this episode is brought to you in part by true lock choke tubes whether you're in the field or on the clays course true lock choke tubes deliver unmatched consistency and better patterns shot after shot with a wide variety of choke tubes constrictions and available thread patterns true lock choke tubes are built to the highest standard if you're ready to take your shooting to the next level check out truelockchokes.com and discover why bird hunters all across the uplands trust true lock choke tubes well by the time listeners hear this the seasons will be it'll be post opening weekend for for a lot of people i guess not not everybody depending on where you had but most of this stuff will still be very relevant for the next few weeks anyway so um the other question i i was when you were talking about watering the dogs and kind of getting them started like the day before almost is there how do you because i've actually had this question recently i don't remember when or where who but how do you get a dog do you do anything to get a dog to drink other than just having water available to them like if you feel like a dog needs more hydration what are you doing um typically if you i call baiting it because that's what we did when we were racing sled dogs take some chicken boil it um or you could use a little bit of chicken broth but it it just make sure it's the non salty type um if you use the chicken broth and basically just a little bit of get that in there if your dogs are really finicky then take some chicken breast or a couple and um what i would say you could do is that you boil it and then you shred the chicken up super small you know just tiny little bits of it in there and if your dog doesn't drink that i think there's something wrong with the dog you know we asked used to say you know because we had two different things we'd do we had which i know people don't have access to the the next thing i'm going to talk about but the chicken was always for dogs you know for just it was mild and stuff like that but the um we used to use beaver a lot beaver meat and but that's a higher fat and higher protein uh and but it i don't i've never eaten it but when it's cooked it smells like roast beef and the dogs go nuts over that but when you have the dog that you're just trying to you know we use that for baiting and then we also use the chicken when they both work equally well it's just it was more working to dealing with the beaver than it was the chicken yeah yeah i've never really thought about i i guess i've never i never felt like i've had too big of an issue with my dogs getting enough water or drinking when they need to but i didn't really like if you had a little bottle of pre prepared chicken broth or something that you squirted in the water dish i mean that yeah i i have a feeling my dogs would eat that up or drink that up pretty quickly you can also make ice cubes of them yeah oh yeah i've heard that yep yeah if you do an ice cube and put it in there and and they like that another thing too that for the heat is uh rough wear makes a swamp cooler vest this isn't a vest to hunt in but it is a vest that let's say you're out there and you take that vest on you dip it in water and basically you let it freeze in the uh you know the freezer freezer whatever yeah yeah and you take it out just before you're ready to go and let it cool down you know not cool down but let it fall out you know you do not want to put a super cold vest but say it's cool you know it's a cool you can feel it it's cool we're not talking about something that you can't there's no flexibility in it it's it's so then you have it in a huge ziploc bag in your vest and you can tell oh you've got too hot on me too quick you put that on the dog and you will see it cool the dog down very very quickly but not with the speed that you could you know it would be shock and you can walk the dog back and it's just a really nice way to cool the dog down and especially i have a friend that i told about this and he uses it out west a lot yeah i could see it being potentially very beneficial out there you said it was a rough wear yeah rough wear and it's called the swamp cooler vest all right that down if i can find it and remember i'll put it in the link um yeah and then you can just you can also throw it like you know a lot of times i will have you when i was guiding a lot i would have a cooler with water in it and maybe just a little bit of ice you know that was melting not a lot you know because you don't want to get them to you know you don't want to put really cold water right yeah you don't want the extreme then all that yeah you don't want to extreme this is this is just enough to really you know make them feel cool but that that vest you dunked it in the water so you basically like i said you dunked it in the water you kept it cool and then you have it and it pulled it up in a zip lock and of course you're in the back of your vest and i've used it at times when oh we don't have any more water around it used to be water here and you could tell do you everything heated up or you went and chased a bird and it took a little too long and and it's it's time to cool the dog down and this really helped cool good tip all right next question what are some helpful tips on the first week of october so we're moving a moving along in the season here what's that what's that kind of first you know all the things about heat and everything are still in play but like what's that what are those first transitions you're looking for in the woods um you're going to have most of the aspen leaves gone so shrub and component is going to start to come in because think about the frost the frost takes the leaves first then then it'll start working on any shrub component and things like that uh but most of your aspen leaves will not be viable as even a source of food if they are still on because they're drying up and the other thing too is that well you got to think about if you've been in a even a minor drought it's going to cause the aspen leaves to come off earlier yeah uh so and we are some of the areas up here in northern Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota are in that type of situation presently nothing severe or anything like that just minor I look for um knowing where my low edges are and low edges are also the cool areas uh and where my conifers are and I start baking apart if you go into a cut think of it this way know know where your hardwoods are know where your lowlands are know where you're where the hardwoods transition to another habitat before they get into the knowing you know every edge has a definition and within the cut there's going to be openings there's going to be you know places that are regenerating back from logging there's going to be low pockets that maybe there's some winter berry and things like down around there that the birds will hold up if they're trying to move there'll be trails break apart all your edges that you're looking at in a cut your past your casting yes but at different times of the day they're usually come up from a cooler area to start out with and they move up to a higher area and therein the dispersal listen for drumming drumming is going to tell you that the male grouse the adult is getting pressure from a juvenile you could pick up one or two the fall drumming so you'll pick up maybe one two the most I ever found was three um three male like adult male drummers no three juvenile ones pushing pushing pressure on somebody's dad and see they're all challenging dad so to speak or the adult you know because these are juveniles still and and they're like hey hey I you know I know I want your spot and he's like no you don't this is this is when you see the two birds faced off and they're really they can't stretch their neck up any higher puff up anymore and the bigger bird wins you know it's like it's where you know the big guy's like I'm gonna back you right up off this trail and you're getting out of here and so that's what's happening and so when you hear multiple drummers you know in an area so you got one over here and you got one way over here you got two spots but they're getting pressure from juveniles so if you if you hear fall drumming that's uh that should be a ding there's birds around here I mean obviously there's one but but it's an indication of more birds well there's gonna be a smart one and a dumb one literally I kid you're not because you know the juveniles unless they've been pressured they don't know what it is and at that time testosterone and instinct are more being thought about than survival mode because they don't know what survival mode is that's it is sort of funny because I had one hunt and I think back on this particular hunt just what you were saying the guys were in the restaurant I told them we'd probably have to move pretty quick because I said it's going to warm up and I remember end date ordered the biggest damn breakfast and I'm watching it I'm getting up and he says why are you pacing you keep going the door and looking out I said and getting warm yep getting warm and then I went back to the cook and I said I need two to go boxes she says I figured you were going to say that I came out handed them to go boxes and they looked at me you know and this is me meeting them for the first time I said I'm sorry guys but you came a long ways for birds don't don't worry everything went flying into the go boxes and I had two guys eating one in the front passenger seat one in the back seat eating their breakfast on the way out and I got there just at the right time because I knew we didn't have to walk in very far got the dog out and I hear good and I think I says did I hear drummer I said yeah so that's one bird I said well it's a start when we moved birds there was a lot of dumb birds in there but this was like 15 years ago and it was just like and we were over and done in 45 minutes days yeah and uh but they had a tremendous hunt they got birds and these were not educated birds and and you got to remember the mailbird that's the adult will go off and hide because he knows all the escape routes but the juveniles don't they're focused on that log and adult guy he just vacated the log yeah he's gone no no I've been doing that for 12 months at least yeah and but jr's like oh he just left it all to us so that's something you know like I said I know I'm getting over onto that but you know I just sometimes word or tooth trick or something in my memory yeah yeah I love it I love it all right thoughts on hunting pure aspen cuts one to 200 acres in size straight aspen in prime so yeah considering it's it's it's all good looking aspen but it's a big swath of it how do you approach it um if it's early in the morning I'm going to swing over to wherever the low edge is um I'm going to take stock as I'm going through this for the first time the shrub component and what it looks like I'm also going to look at how much trash is on the floor I'm going to look for openings I'm looking for the raspberries in different areas not so much that but that's for the woodcock we we've talked about that um because of the soil I'm going to look for how and I'm going to think about how is that sun going to heat up that cut okay so when you look at a cut if it's if it's let's just say hypothetically the cut is 12 to 15 feet high and you also need to think about where the shade is going to get cast from other trees on those edges because it'll keep it cool it also gives shadows which helps conceive with concealment and you're going to look for drainage areas and you're going to look for you know the first time you're in a cut it's really more getting an education about that cut and so that you can think about how would I approach this the next time and is this cut getting pressured if it's getting pressured in your park and you look at it and say there's been plenty of people here um then what I would do you know especially if you're the second one in is that if you're the first one of the day you can probably hunt it the way you want to but if you're the second one of the day if it's after 10 o'clock I would slide to the back of the cut and try to find an area back there that is a combination where hardwoods and conifer come together and then work back and forth a little bit on that if you knew there was openings or other edges within the cuts that's another thing to look at um these birds at that point in the first part of October they're searching for where are they going to spend the winter and they're on the move so you might find a few groups but they're gonna that group is going to start breaking up and here's in the first part of the week of October it'll still be some birds together and then as you progress it'll become less and then the hens will regroup toward the latter part of October when they go into winter habitat so they're all looking like where do I go but break the cut up by habitat break the cut up by stem density break the cut up by shrub component break the cut up by trails break the cut up by elevation changes and break the cut up by how the shadows are going to cast into the cut I think I covered it yeah yep and and one thing I know in in talking to you a lot over the years the you know in this kid and this I don't know that this question this question wasn't specific to any time of the year so the thing the thing about if you have a big area of aspen you're always trying to kind of filter that through and look for what something I've heard you say many times the habitat within the habitat right so we know we've got a sea of 10 year old aspen so then it becomes okay our outer edge of the cut is one sort of micro habitat and then it's some of those things you talked about are there drainages are there bowls or swales yep any sort of little micro edge or micro habitat in there is there an opening that's choked up full of hazel brush is there a raspberry patch so you're you're breaking it down as you said and looking for those nuances within that sea of aspen yeah it's it's structural it's land change it's composition change all within that cut you know if you just have aspen aspen aspen aspen it doesn't do a lot for for a bird at that age but if you have a variety and think about as you lose the leaves on the aspen trees it's the stem density of the shove component that actually makes the density tighter in there which creates shadows which gives you a escape route for other birds so you know if your dog if you're in a cut and the leaves are gone and your dog goes on point and there's a big huge cluster of shrubs what are you gonna think there's i can't see it but there's something in there yeah and then but it's not just that when you go out and around you know take the take on where the dog's pointing but then also try to look ahead to see what's the next stop that bird might make if it was to run or is this it is this the only spot that's everything changes you're looking for a change yeah it's i mean it's one of the it's one of the neatest things i think about growe's hunting is you get to as if you're out there different parts of the season you see the woods change right and the way that that the way that that aspen cut looks in mid-September when the leaves come off if there's no understory or there's no patch of hazel brush or no transition of a stand of asthma looks starts looks pretty plain and boring at that point yep exactly something where you're looking for those other other factors and other changes and they can be they can be visual they can be elevation related um all of those things so cool all right what do you look for what do you look for in good quality woodcock cover stem densities a little bit tighter yeah floor needs to be uh not rock hard it needs to be so they could probe uh if it's a we talked about the raspberry bushes if you ever look at the soil underneath the raspberries kicking around it's it's it's really nice and fluffy it reminds me of like red warm bedding and that's the same thing with like you know you get density of uh maples it does the same thing the bedding and the maple and the leaf decay takes longer in the maples than it does in the aspen but just yeah yeah but that soil kick the soil back it looks like it could be just warm bedding um and so that's something that you need to think about there's going to be places where those birds feed and then there's going to be places where they're loafing and most of the time when we're hunting them it's where they're loafing so if it's a cold frosty morning and you know there's flights coming through find the side of the aspen that gets the sun first because those birds are going to try to catch that sun even if they're just sitting in the aspen I can recall a place that I went and it just you went up a little gravel area and it faced to the east it was a frosty morning because any lower you went you still had frost and then they are and it was I couldn't believe we got into a flight and it was just they were everywhere and it was pretty cool but that's what they were they it was cool and they were getting the sun there if it's if you got snow or super wet weather you're going to look for pines you know around the aspen you know or in the aspen little clumps uh where they can just sort of stay you know a little more dry I mean of course woodcock have more oil in their feathers than a grouse so it's a little different situation for them they can take more but little openings edges you know those birds are just they just flip down in there and they chill out all right how about some tips for identifying types of cover other than aspen cuts do you uh do you have any favorites that you like to look for outside of the aspen drainage is yep drainage is long you know you can have places with tag holders that the tag holders get established sort of in a floodplain where it you know things it takes water they get it's honest moist because everything drains into those areas but then it go down a little bit more and it's you know then it's wet that's what I would be looking for um I have found them you know for me I don't have beach and I know like in other areas of the country beach is a big deal for uh and there's other areas that you know these I'm just I can do I can talk on what I do up here but it would be drainages it would be um when it's cool right on the edge of those conifers or right in them right on that edge in those drainages those are places that I like yeah yeah you're uh you're describing some of my some of my favorite covers I feel like at this point it's something I haven't always hunted those it's it's one that I've kind of worked in in the last handful of years I'd say and kind of a sort of interesting how I came up just sort of hunting some areas there's some big areas that I hunt that they don't have as much cutting so they have a lot of mature aspen so it's like it's the soil type is kind of what I'm looking for and the cover type is what I'm looking for all their aspen spruce but there's not a lot of cutting so I've in in doing what we talked about a few minutes ago looking for okay well what are the variations what are the nuances in here those drainages are what stand out and that's where I you very quickly start to put the pattern together there's hazel brush there because you're getting sunlight in there and there's and as you get in the later season there's there's like kind of special especially later sweet later season yep so it's now I'm hiking through 30 40 year old aspen but the drainages are almost like you know like a small version of a cut yeah yep exactly so that's a that's a good one so if yeah if you're if you're lacking on aspen start paying attention to topography and where that water's going okay so I am from back east Pennsylvania he says not sure what hazel brush is is it which hazel question mark no it's not which hazel which hazel is more of a tree it gets like 15 feet high and then hazel brush is a shrub um hazel brush is a cluster and we have beaked an American hazel brush here they'll grow intermixed but it's a different they look totally different yeah it's and it's it's hazel nut right yeah hazel nut but because of hazel brush yeah hazel brush but it's it's it's it's it's like a secondary clear cut to wheel yes yeah yep you know basically is what you find and sometimes it's so thick you can't get through it um it's beneficial if you're short because then you can weave around and yes but then what if what happens if you can't see over it and um you're going to be working the outside edges and when the dog go in and yeah sometimes when I was guiding you know I'd be I'd let the guys go around the edge and the dog would be out in front of me in the hazel and I can weave around I mean so and so it was I sometimes felt like I'd had was the dog but you know I was trying to push you know it's one thing to have a dog go on point and you're looking at where the dogs on point and so you're hollering at the guys okay go to your left do you mean your left I said well I'm looking at the dog and and I'm looking toward and I'd have to pick out a tree way in the distance a little ways in the distance they're nice shift them over there now don't just stand together spread out fan out flank them yeah well that's the ease I want I want the bird to come out like a wall you know and you wanted each other the guys need to know where each other which where they're at I'm in the hazel brush and and but it was a lot of fun yeah yeah it's um you know the birds love it they eat there's food it's food component cover component we always talk about we have a ton of it here in Minnesota you'll you'll find it sprinkled throughout other areas of grouse but it's it's a core component of tons like most of my gross covers I would say but they uh they can use it you know they can use it again to especially early season when they still have their leaves on you know I'll you'll get a lot of gross flashes where he's just on the other side of the hazel clump but you never never saw him so then when the leaves come off it gets easier but you can get some because it can be patchy and clumpy every once in a while you'll you'll be in the right spot at the right time and you can get you can get a nice open shot at a bird if it just goes the wrong way yeah and it'll form escape corridors for these birds yeah it's pretty it's pretty cool and it's sort of like if you in relationships some of the patches get big enough that it's almost like a field and you're trying to push a pheasant or something yes yeah you you almost have to block you know to to actually stop the bird you know I think I remember you telling a story last year of a of a really memorable hunt you had with a guy where it was like it was like a whole corridor of hazel I'm making that up no no I've got I had about six or seven places like that yeah everything's gotten really old now and the beaver went and dammed up some of it flooded it but it is I mean you basically that hazel brush in a shrub component takes a place of what it asks and lacks when the leaves are all gone yeah you know so you tell someone to go hunt an aspen cut that's what the locals will tell them so if they go and do that especially once the leaves are gone they're walking around in the aspen cut but it's not so much the center of the cut is you're trying to go and start to get some habitat variation and any hazel brush is fantastic and others shut like winter berries look really great this year man do they have a lot of berries and the birds will eat the winter berries as well so and there's a nice stem density that a lot of times when those birds get in those winter berry groups they they basically you can't see them is there a is there a time a time of year that you associate with grouse eating winter berry because that's one that I know it I can identify it I've never really developed a like I just I don't find it nearly as many crops with winter berry as I do crops full of hazel brush so I don't know if it's maybe not as preferred of a food but it's it's it's it's like high bush cranberry it's opportunistic yeah but it does it provides more cover yeah of protection than a high bush cranberry would um you know if I had to rate it I'd say hazel brush number one yeah then winter berry number two and for me I don't have a lot of other choices after that yeah you know then then it goes to conifers you know and the density of the conifers and how high are the branches from the ground the conifers and so forth and does it form an escape route for those birds okay this this kind of plays really nicely into the next question but could Ann discuss the importance of evaluating understory layers in the appropriate age cuts could she list the top understory so we're kind of hitting on a few of them here oh one I like is ironwood and ironwood will happen around this third to fourth week uh you'll see them budding on the ironwood now a lot of your it's a junk tree as far as the forestry goes it's got slick you know like paper thin ripples of bark going vertical uh it's not a tall tree and the cat can's on the end are two typically two together forming a v so there's two there and it's very wispy at the top the branches are really small um and those birds just love that uh you know and the other thing too is like even prior like in cuts uh any you know thorn apple is really good just you know we're coming into that and right here they're loaded and I've looked at the ironwood it's loaded so my ironwood's going to be a little bit later in the season and of course the thorn apple will be earlier and the uh catkins of the um hazel brush will be more of a late season use into winter uh and the winter berry the when you get a lot of frost and get starts good school then all the berries will be gone but typically winter berry I see that sometime anywhere from the first of October to about the third or fourth week of October and if you can look at their droppings you'll see the actual seed of the winter berry in the droppings okay so and I'm I mean I basically I mean a young cut isn't going to have typically a good shrub component right just don't have enough room for it yet yep and you're still got decay going on a lot of that shrub component comes in around 11 12 and it just keeps expanding from one little bush to more to more to more to more and so as you get into late season that's you know part of it is in late season we switch to a little older cut because we know the aspirin isn't giving you the aspirin cut itself it's not giving what to the bird what it needs because the bird is into the point of survival mode but also it's not just from predators it's with the weather and you know how cold it gets the temperatures at night and how much it warms up or doesn't warm up during the day so what you need is they need a variation first off we covered go from point a to b we can't go through the cut because everything sees me move so these drainages the hazel brush all of that especially hazel brush they can walk around underneath it and it's like it's better than a clear cut because it's so thick I mean it'd be like a a six seven-year-old clear cut the density of that um you know got like a hundred percent overstory protection but they can be around freely and there's all this food yeah typically I so you know as you go on your shrub component in the beginning really isn't as much important as it becomes extremely important by the middle to the end of of October and you'll find exceptions to every rule but this is just a generalization and so I guess you know for me I think I don't know did I get the top I think I answered it yeah yeah I think yeah I we had and really I mean I guess what I would have added correct me if I'm wrong but because every area and has its own you know difference it regional differences and it's like you really just the they're going to use stem density if you can find something like hazelnut that is stem density and food that's awesome but even if something is maybe not a food they're still going to use that structural diversity of whatever shrub component is there well sometimes even just the tops of maples and other trees that have been uh hard near the cut they'll go into that to eat the buds real easy picking oh sure yeah yeah it means it's not a place that I would want to take my dog but if you have to walk through it come in and go into a cut just think about it a little bit in late season all right so my buddy Chris wants to know how do soil conditions light and ground cover affect an otherwise choice stand of gross habitat so we've kind of been weaving some some of these things here okay so conditions uh could be the difference of what dries out and what doesn't dry up out or soil conditions can be where hazel brush likes to go grow which is a little gravelly which would you know be in a drainage or past drainage area um and then basically the better soil the more density uh of the habitat if you have knolls typically you're going to have less trees you know stem density and the soil may not be as productive because it'll drain and there'll be less less aspen coming in or you know in any place you know a lot of times you know the higher the elevation the quicker it drains off so let's see ground cover without moisture you're not going to have the small plants and first off you need the trees with a good canopy to have the small plants because the small plants only want a little bit of light they don't want it all like a raspberry bush and tall weeds so you need to have pretty decent soil and with decent soil you'll have a good canopy and with a good canopy you'll have moisture and with good canopy and moisture you'll have small plants that are more applicable to what the uh grouse in the chick or brood range what they need and then in different soil types you may have a hazel brush component possibly an alternative because when there's openings eventually the grass comes in and then the shrub component comes in but it just could take a little bit longer depending on whether it's compacted or not if you're looking at a area where the skitters and the processors continually turn around down it's going to take you know with that compacted soil a lot of that's just going to stick to a grass uh because that's about all that's going to grow there it'll be you know so it'll be like that'll be your edges on the on these cuts and it'll take longer for those clets to actually I should say it'll take longer for the trails to actually canopy over uh you know maybe 16 to 20 years uh so you know basically having having good uh you know soil conditions it's like farming you're gonna have good crop yeah you're gonna have a good yield you're gonna better the soil the more it holds the moisture and so forth and you know it's not that any cut is perfect if you think about it by having variations of soil within a cut right it gives you variations in habitat structure and what's going to grow there and so you know it's not like you're looking at it like a 40 acre farm field uh there's typically it'll undulate you know elevation maybe not a lot but a little bit and that's all it needs is to change drainage the direction of the drainage and everything and you know maybe the southwest corner of that 40 sort of slopes um and you know the the shade if you have too much open sunlight you just are not going to get those small plants you know the strawberry plants and the bunchberry plants and everything that you're looking for yeah it's it's been very helpful to me i think to think the more i think about cover as it relates to water where does the water flow where does the water go because where that happens you're going to get you're typically going to get that increased biodiversity and so yeah if i'm in a cut i'm no matter what i'm looking at where is that where is there a one foot dip in the and drainage and and or a corridor or a riparian area more i think about it with respect to water as opposed to just the cover just a stem density i feel like that's been really helpful to me well they look that drainage is your funnels a lot of times in a cut yeah yeah it's a funnel it's an escape route yeah um just watch out if it's one of those escape routes it starts out with shrubs and then goes to boulders yeah yeah watch your ankles it happens you know all right snags and bolts have been a practice to improve habitat mainly soil as they would break down quickly and provide nutrients has this forestry practice been abandoned asking for my shins you gotta tell me what are snags and bolts well the snags is like you know a lot of times they're just dead you know we call them dead trees you know there's like a wildlife tree you know that some of them are just gonna nest in and the bolts is like the eight foot uh you know they leave it they leave it left over like a like a drumming log kind of thing or not quite well you ever you ever see where sometimes they didn't you know to me a bolt is what they you know it's a low quality eight you know eight foot six section of timber that sometimes doesn't come come out it doesn't get hauled off and it just breaks down okay so so what that would also be like another name for tops and limbs kind of thing no no okay a bolt is to me you know that's the tops you know it it basically that'd be the trash uh bolt to me is actually aspen bolts you sell them you know by the cord okay um and so that's to me is merchantable is what we call it here so but the point is is that there is a lot of grip with the processors and everything so you have to think about it this way a processor typically is nowadays taking the place from hand sawing hand sawing will be done with bigger timber sometimes because it's hard to have big enough processor head but in like doing an aspen cut removal or some other type of removal that these heads can easily grab you know anything fourteen sixteen eighteen inches usually but if it gets bigger than that it's a little more difficult so that fits what we have mainly up here other than in the hardwoods but these ponzies in other equipment like it they'll reach 30 feet on either side of the piece of equipment they can reach uh the trees so you they go out grab it tip it on its side run it through the header and where they're running it it's cutting cutting it's all preset that's where it's yeah and knocking everything off yep and then they bring the top put it down in front of them and then run over it you know so before they run over it they've brought anything from the left and anything from the right the top you know they'll take or any trash you know they'll just bring it in and they run over it so these are these wind rows of um basically trash you know if you look at an imagery it looks like a wind row you know when you look at it yeah so you know as far as you know there's still some of the tops out left in the woods where they reached out to but then there's also what they're running over so as far as soil you know if you're having trouble with your shins I think you're in a cut that might be too young yet that's just one thought um so you know it's everyone has what they like now there's a time of year and guys will go through these cuts that have only like four to five feet of a little aspen wisp and put their dog in it because the birds do go into it but it's very short lived yeah and I would never hunt them because I want to make sure my dog gets through the season and doesn't end the season right there yeah so everyone has I think that's what he's I could be wrong but yeah it does provide nutrients and everything but it's also it's probably being concentrated more in certain areas where they run over it where the decay will be sure are they uh just out of curiosity my my forestry education when they when they bring those in and they they basically put everything in front of the uh machine velibunter whatever you want to call it and then they drive and are they kind of like making their own timber mat like as they as they move forward on it yeah it breaks it down okay because they just drove something over with some huge tracks on it yeah and uh it's also if it was a wet area you can see well that would help too right yeah um it helps with compaction i mean because they're typically they're typically still on tracks um you know but it's it's helps it actually lets you stay probably with a rubber tire and then at one point you say okay we need to go to the tracks and then it even spreads the compaction out more you know it's basically not concentrated to where the rubber tire was but it's still running over the trash and then you get to the tracks and then there'll be even less compaction if you've had wet wet weather yeah all right uh our gross cycles less prone to drastic swings in areas where logging has taken over as the primary forest cycle mechanism versus areas where forest fires are the primary forest cycling mechanism any thoughts well the forest fires are going to be few and far between i think you're going to be depending on the actual harvesting to actually assist in the cycle think about it this way typically where they do the drumming counts there's decent habitat yeah and active logging yep active logging it wasn't for active logging and if everyone stopped the logging we would be in a world of hurt and the birds would really be in a world of hurt yeah i found that question interesting and i i'm assuming this is where it's coming from i've never really i've never really heard that pontificated about it and and i if i if i were to guess and i will say i'm i'm assuming here for the listener that asked the question he's probably he's posing the question could that be why there seems to be less of gross cycling now because there's less habitat we're relying on we're relying on forestry versus you know we tend to not let wildfires burn if we can help it but yeah and and the thing is is that you will make habitat faster with for a grouse with the logging yeah like i said versus waiting for a forest fire yeah a little bit more control over how that habitat gets put out there too with logging versus wildfire okay all right and talks a lot about the line of maples and i'm wondering if she could explain that a bit more is this an indication of soil type elevation etc how is she using this information i didn't know i was talking about lines of maples putting words in your mouth well you know i guess the thing is is that what am i thinking here um it's an edge yeah you know and if you're looking at the edge the line the edge of where you have the maples in the hardwoods that's a transition uh i remember one time then i didn't know this at the time when i started quite a few years ago but um i could see there was this cut and i thought how am i going to get in there and so i i was always notorious if there was a backdoor way into a cut i would find it if it was a cut that i thought no one else could get to it we're going to go cross country you know so i drug people through everything and i remember the cut i got staring from imagery you couldn't tell if it was maple or if it was aspen it had that look to it got in there it was maple we only put up a few birds and and that's where the aha moment came way back then about you know for me the birds were in more of a transition and they asked me but it's a breakup they will go up in the maples and they will come back down and you know especially in young maples you get some stands and sometimes you end up seeing you know woodcock in them i found that everyone has their different areas where they find find these birds but basically if there's a line of a certain type of habitat another another area of a certain type of habitat you have a transition and those edges where aspen and hardwoods and when i say hardwoods i mean it's you're going into a different you have a blend of habitat and typically it's not the best for hardwoods and it's not the best for aspen but it forms a density those are areas to consider you know when what how far are the birds going to move up to feed or to loaf around or whatever that's where you need to have a dog that cast and tell you tells you what elevation the birds are on yeah yeah i mean that's a that's another it's sort of built into a lot but that's one reason well to put yourself on the edge because you've got in theory you've got a dog casting left and right and that dog can poke out to the right and maybe into that line of hardwoods and oh yep the birds are out here feeding on acorns or maple spinners or whatever the heck or nope they're down here in the aspen so if you can you can put yourself on as many edges as possible then you can really take advantage of your dog covering that additional ground yep and it's just a matter of finding any time you go into a cut you're looking for any feedback even a double back on with dog double backs it's like yeah i smell something and then they go on and it's like within one minute or two or whatever all of a sudden it slams a point okay the bird was up there it heard me coming or it just moved on its own down to here think about where the track is you know what direction is that bird going are you forcing it into the deeper part of the cut or is all of a sudden it's starting to veer over to the pines so one more on the maples like my understanding of maples is they're a they're a late later successional species so like if you think about it like you cut and the aspen come up their early successional aspen grow up 30 40 years old you don't harvest them the the clone starts to thin out and then die out and then in the meantime you've got these maples coming up maples come up over everything shade everything else out and then your maples kind of not really not really no you need an elevation change okay and typically if you harvest a maple stand it's going to come back as maple that and that's that's where i was that's what was going to be my my question is yeah why do aspen grow one spot whereas maple growing different soils so it is kind of it's a soil related yes it's definitely a soil related issue okay and so when you see this you have the also you as we know with the cuts you have an edge um there's times that let's just say that you have a cut and it's aspen it's getting older and it's almost like the maples say i like this up here with the oaks you know i'll intermingle with you a little bit coming down the aspen but it's really not my growing it doesn't have my cup of tea down there yep yeah it's bitter so and so you know and you have to there's different times that transitions are being formed throughout the age of a cut whatever cut it is it's not but we know the grouse are in grouse boiled down to stem density they'll try to like farther south utilize oak stands and things like that yeah but it's a density issue with them you know it's what's going to give that density for protection and when any times the farther south you go down you know you're looking you have your hardwoods coming up it's a density issue if it gets too open then you know there's sitting duck um it's you know they have to have protection and down farther south a lot of times it's you know if you've got a little patch it's like the hand in the fox house you know they know where the chicken house is and and every predator knows exactly where to go um because there's not enough density within that pocket there yeah so you know there's a reason that a male grouse needs 8 to 12 give or take acres there's a reason the hens need about 40 some makers you know to raise a brood and about 25 to 40 in the winter time to shift around in between males habitats for population to grow if there's not the right habitat they can't grow the population all right what effect if any does buckthorn have on grouse and grouse habitat you guys getting buckthorn and some of the I mean I'm looking on my window it's all over here in in Duluth and it's uh despite my best efforts but do you see it out in the forest no I don't okay do you um are you familiar with it's a nasty little tree that goes every which way yeah I think you know if they like berries they probably do they eat the berries of the buckthorns or you're right hey that's I don't know because so I don't see it a lot I do it is out in the in some of the forest that I hunt which is kind of uh you know I think this this listener actually mentioned Duluth so he's um maybe nearby and I know it's a concern I've talked to some foresters about it um I don't know it's a it's just for list we've talked a little bit about on the show before it's a incredibly aggressive and it's a invasive species yeah invasive species to to begin with and it just I mean it will out compete about everything around it and it's really really really hard to get rid of because because of those berries like you birdie at the berries they poop out the seeds and this stuff spreads like tree it's all over the forest in Duluth around the city and once you notice it I mean you can't miss it because it's yeah and it's and now I did hear um actually where this person asked the question was on Facebook and there are some couple of comments back and forth and somebody had mentioned they had flushed grouse out of buckthorn so it goes back to what we I mean it's a density it's incredibly dense lots of structural diversity so it's it's great protection from grouse but the or fore grouse but the long term effects of buckthorn on the landscape I think is uh is a bigger concern well and the buckthorn also here I'm just looked this up it says it doesn't provide the same nutritional value as native species and that's what I've read before too yeah yeah and I don't see I don't think those like if what I was thinking the other day when this person asked the question was let's just say you know buckthorn starts out competing hazel brush like I don't think the buckthorn berries are hanging on and they don't have catkins as far as I know no I don't think they're they're giving that nutritional value into October November like hazelbrushes it's it's sort of like dogwood yeah it's it's a very narrow window yeah and but you know it can get really thick but when anything gets really thick like that type of a species because it's low to the ground the understory will be a desert yep there's nothing I mean this is this type of buckthorn you know it's basically invasive and it's hard to get rid of yeah you uh you cut it with a and this is the thing I have some like it's been here for so there's some there's some buckthorn trees back behind my office here that are just they're huge and you cut it and six months later the next growing season or whatever it will if you don't poison it or kill it with triple pier or whatever the whatever you got to use it will the shoots will come out of there like you I mean they will cover up swaths of ground it's just incredible how aggressive it comes back so I'll keep I'll keep trying but it was I was curious I have seen it and the other thing about buckthorn is the leaves they like don't change colors they pretty much stay green into November and then they just fall off so if you see fear out there and all the cover is down and and the woods are totally clean except you see these strange looking they're like a round glossy looking green leaf you might be looking at buckthorn okay so this was um this was a question that's a guy had emailed me a couple weeks ago anything we should be paying attention to within satellite imagery other than the actual cut data shape also we've got a couple questions here on scoughton hunt and and mapping and stuff and so obviously the highest quality information you can get is a there was a cut here this is aspen it's 10 years old or at least this is how I look at it but are there are there things that you are looking at on the map and in the satellite imagery beyond that you need to be able to identify your habitat species around that cut and that's what's hard for a lot of people because that takes more advanced knowledge of how to interpret imagery and now everyone has the time to really understand that um you know the age of the cut is really important but what's around it is really really important and I know scoughton hunt well you you have that that's a that's a big component of scoughton hunt is some of the surrounding areas and cuts that you've got in there are types of habitat I should say your top three tips when using scoughton hunt to explore a new hunt area first I'll find the cut to know what's around that cut so that you can anticipate your lowland edges and you can also anticipate where the possible bird shifts are going to be or if the weather's inclement you know where they're going to want to hang out you know we're pines and things of that nature have backups you'll know exactly how many backup cuts you have in that particular area and you'll know the age of the cut plan your hunts out before you go because if you get parked out a lot of people haven't taken the time to look what's around the area and it gives you the ability to you know look at the trails or whatever is in there on a lot of these and you may have to figure out how am I going to come into the back door to a particular piece of property but plan the hunt know what the cut is in the size but then also know what's around that cut so that's what I would say okay it's allowing to plan before you even get there yeah yeah use it to your advantage and have have some places and routes mapped out where you're going to go so you're not wasting that time when you're out there for the day thanks for tuning in to another episode of the birdshot podcast presented by Onax Hunt final rise an up-and-gun company don't forget to rate review subscribe and share and if you really love the show and want to contribute above and beyond what you already do by listening you can sign up at patreon.com/birdshot thanks for listening we'll catch you on the next episode of the birdshot podcast onax hunt is the number one hunting GPS app join millions of other hunters who trust onax hunt to find more game discover new access and hunt smarter onax hunt shows you nationwide public and private land boundaries they've got topographic and 3d maps you can track your route location and elevation profile you can save maps for offline use and take onax hunt with you wherever you go the most comprehensive hunting tool you'll own download the onax hunt app today and use the promo code BSP20 to save 20 percent on your next onax hunt subscription know where you stand with onax when the miles rack up faster than your flush count that's when you'll truly appreciate your hunting vest from final rise bill for the uplands and proudly sown in the usa the complete lineup of hunting vest from final rise from their all new summit xt down to the minimalist sidekick system are all built upon the foundational low bearing waist belt and low profile shoulder strap system which allow you to carry all the gear you need and do so comfortably while maintaining your ability to move freely and perform when you need to most with a complete lineup of accessories and newly released performance field apparel final rise has the gear you need to help you get the most out of every mile and every flush final rise gear is built for the uplands get yours today at finalrise.com hey what's going on everybody it's Bob from wound ducks gun dog chronicles podcast i hope you just enjoyed the episode you just listened to and if you did i think you'll enjoy hopping on hours we've got professional retriever trainers and upland bird dog trainers from across the country and world sharing their tips and tricks and great stories to help you and your dog get ready for the season we'll see you there
