I was blessed to have been born to farm folks. My dad and grandfather operated a 500-acre potato farm in the heart of New York’s famed Finger Lakes Region. My father, Charles H., was also a deer hunter who felt his only son needed to understand the deer woods.
My journey as a deer hunter began long before I could ever legally carry a bow or firearm. When I was growing up in New York you could not begin hunting deer with a firearm until you were 16, so from age five to 15 I tagged along at my dad’s side or bird-dogged the local woodlots for other hunters. As I reflect back on those days I get goose bumps. They were great times to be young in America.
Researchers tell us that hunters pass through five stages in their life. In almost every case they go from The Shooter Stage, where they need success, to The Limiting Out Stage, where they need to harvest as many animals as is legally possible, to The Trophy Stage, where bigger antlers take center stage, to The Method Stage, where hunting methods and the need to better understand the animal become the center of attention, to The Sportsman Stage, where the hunter realizes he’s lived all the other stages and shifts his focus to the bigger goal of giving back more than he has received from hunting. Though all five stages can stand alone, I believe The Trophy Stage, The Method Stage and The Sportsman Stage are interwoven.
Up until 1973 my world revolved around the shooter and limiting-out stages. I had returned from serving in Vietnam, married, earned a college degree, and had yet to take what I refer to as an ownership stake when it came to hunting whitetails. With no real stake in the whitetail deer resource, I hunted whitetails with two goals in mind — hunt hard and kill as many animals as was legally possible. In October of 1973 this all changed when my wife and I bought a 200-acre farm — a farm that bordered the farm I grew up on. That fall my mind began to swirl with thoughts of what I was doing as a hunter and as a steward of the 200-acre resource God had placed in my lap.
My journey as a deer hunter began long before I could ever legally carry a bow or firearm. When I was growing up in New York you could not begin hunting deer with a firearm until you were 16, so from age five to 15 I tagged along at my dad’s side or bird-dogged the local woodlots for other hunters. As I reflect back on those days I get goose bumps. They were great times to be young in America.
Researchers tell us that hunters pass through five stages in their life. In almost every case they go from The Shooter Stage, where they need success, to The Limiting Out Stage, where they need to harvest as many animals as is legally possible, to The Trophy Stage, where bigger antlers take center stage, to The Method Stage, where hunting methods and the need to better understand the animal become the center of attention, to The Sportsman Stage, where the hunter realizes he’s lived all the other stages and shifts his focus to the bigger goal of giving back more than he has received from hunting. Though all five stages can stand alone, I believe The Trophy Stage, The Method Stage and The Sportsman Stage are interwoven.
Up until 1973 my world revolved around the shooter and limiting-out stages. I had returned from serving in Vietnam, married, earned a college degree, and had yet to take what I refer to as an ownership stake when it came to hunting whitetails. With no real stake in the whitetail deer resource, I hunted whitetails with two goals in mind — hunt hard and kill as many animals as was legally possible. In October of 1973 this all changed when my wife and I bought a 200-acre farm — a farm that bordered the farm I grew up on. That fall my mind began to swirl with thoughts of what I was doing as a hunter and as a steward of the 200-acre resource God had placed in my lap.
As the years passed, I evolved as a hunter, landowner and deer manager. For starters, it didn’t take me long to realize that winter wheat was not the “golden goose” of forage offerings for deer. Along the way I experimented and learned about the whitetail’s cover needs and the different seed choices available to whitetails — everything from clovers, to brassicas, to turnips. This experience, by itself, has been fascinating.
The ‘70s and ‘80s came and went and as they did, our farm’s wildlife journey began taking on a life of its own. Over time it was turning into the wildlife sanctuary I dreamed it would be. As the trees planted in 1974 grew, their individual plots gave the farm’s wildlife many more cover options to hide in. The years rolled on and we became more and more knowledgeable of the whitetail’s nutritional needs, which resulted in the planting of warm-season forages like Imperial Whitetail Clover. It took us a while to figure out, but eventually we came to realize how critical it was to have forages like Winter-Greens in place to help our deer survive our harsh northern winters. As incredible as all this has been for our wildlife, the human side is just as impressive. Winston Churchill was one of the greatest leaders of the last century. This Englishman once said, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” In many ways this sums up the journey I’ve been on since 1973. You see, my wife and I were fortunate enough to be able to buy our farm. Though unwritten at the time, our goal was to try and improve what God had entrusted to us.
Only time will tell if we did the best we could, but this I know after nearly 40 years of trying. Thanks to those who paved the way to help educate hunters like myself in the finer ways of land and deer management, the wildlife in my little corner of the world is far better off than it was when we bought our farm. Back then no one thought of planting food plots for deer. They do now. Back then no one felt the need to harvest more does to insure the natural habitat was in line with our county’s deer carrying capacity. They do now.
In 1973 no one even gave a thought to letting yearling bucks walk. They do now. Thanks to the vision of a handful of Steuben County landowners, a quality deer management cooperative was launched in the winter of 1990. Those of us who organized this group have spent hours educating and encouraging interested landowners on the importance of planting food plots, harvesting more does and passing up yearling bucks. The end result is that our local deer population doesn’t even resemble the deer population we had in 1973. The improvement in the areas I’ve mentioned has been astonishing. Yes, we’ve come a long way, but there is much more to this story.
In the fall of 1977 our son, Aaron, was born, the only child my wife and I would be blessed with, but oh, what a blessing. The kid took to dirt, deer, and hunting like a duck takes to water. When he was old enough to stand he went to the woods with me. When he was big enough to carry a one-gallon pail of clover seed, he began helping me plant food plots. It was because of his food plot experiences that he came to understand the true meaning of hunting, land and deer management. For 25 years he’s been helping me make the farm better, make our deer better, and make our hunting better. Along the way he’s eaten a lot of dust, cranked a lot of fertilizer through a broadcaster, and killed a lot of does. Long before he could release his first arrow or pull a trigger on a whitetail he knew the importance of giving back to the wildlife that roamed our farm. It was not only a win-win situation for the wildlife but for us as well.
One of the first things I realized back in the ‘70s was the way people managed their land totally changed the way they looked at the natural world. When we bought our farm deer were only on my radar screen three to four months a year. After I began planting food plots, deer were on my mind 12 months a year. A by-product of becoming a food plot practitioner was that I began thinking of ways I could help our deer through better forest management practices, everything from selective timber cuts to pruning the wild apple trees in the orchard we have on the farm. None of this went unnoticed by Aaron and my friends. It showed them a better way to steward the land. It also made for better hunting. In the early ‘90s we began to think of different ways we could improve on what we had accomplished. Before this our goal was to merely make sure our deer had enough food to eat. To accomplish this we planted big square food plots, with little thought given to how the plot’s layout could improve our hunting. As our food plot knowledge continued to evolve, Aaron and I experimented with different shape food plots, laid out with wind direction and natural cover in mind. As you would expect, our hunting opportunities took a quantum leap forward.
A side benefit of our food plot program is the way we’ve been able to help our fellow man. As our hunting improved and bag limits became more liberal, our family was faced with what to do with the does we were harvesting. We consume roughly three whitetails a year and my son and I are able to kill six antlerless deer each year between us. So, even without harvesting bucks we have to find a home for the others we harvest. Fortunately this has not been a problem because New York State has a Venison Donation Coalition program, which makes it possible for hunters to donate their harvested deer to food banks. Since its inception in 1999, over 750,000 pounds of venison have provided three million meals to needy families. It is safe to say that the increasing practice of food plot management has contributed greatly to this program.
I now consider myself firmly entrenched in the last stage a hunter goes through, The Sportsman Stage, which means I’m getting along in years. Consequently, I find myself doing a lot of reflecting, thinking a good deal about my life as a hunter and landowner. The journey I’ve traveled on our farm has been a huge blessing, one I wish everyone reading this could experience. Yes, I’ve made my share of mistakes along the way, but I also feel we’ve accomplished a good deal here. When I started, I was hoping to become a better deer hunter and leave the farm better than we found it in 1973. Well, I may be a little biased, but if you could see the before-and-after, you’d agree it has happened. I used to travel to other parts of North America to hunt quality bucks. Those days are over. Now I just walk out the back door because of the deer resource we have. That’s a blessing. And thanks to an understanding of what food plots can bring to the table, I find myself excited about the future, because I’m convinced the best is yet to come.
