Land Plans - Habitat Podcast

Habitat Podcast LAND PLANS

A habitat consulting product & service offered both DIGITALLY and IN PERSON

by our HP LAND MANAGER Team

These plans are specifically designed for your property. As we know, all properties, goals & situations are different. These plans are created to help you achieve your goals by improving your habitat and hunting strategy. We like to say "Where Habitat Meets Hunting" when speaking of our mindset and niche/specialty.

Reasons for a Land Plan:

To improve overall habitat for wildlife
To improve hunting on your property
To help decide what habitat to improve/plant and where to begin
To help choose food plot locations, shape and forage types
To help define hunter access & deer bedding security
To locate the largest gap in your habitat & hunting regimen & improve
To help determine which forestry practice is right for you & your property
To help you become more satisfied with your property

I have grown up hunting in MI on very pressured properties. Our cohost Brian, has hunted all over on PA pressured properties. We understand the true strategies needed when setting up the habitat to hunt these pressured deer.

We are now offering 2 options of Habitat Podcast LAND PLANS:

Digital Land Plan

Initial Planning Phone Discussion & Emails - We will collect multiple data points, ask questions, and learn how your property currently hunts from you. We will need to understand all of your goals for your property.
1 Digital Plan - We will provide you with a digital plan that maps out specific habitat improvements for your property. We will recommend stand locations, access, food plot locations, bedding area locations, etc. We will include a list of resources, notes, and descriptions for future reference.
Follow-Up Conversation - Once you have reviewed the plan, we will have a discussion walking you through our plan. This is where you can question, and understand our recommendations. You can always feel free to contact us down the line for follow-up questions.
Jared and Brian will have approximately 4-6 hours each, into this project.
Each plan will come with a FREE Habitat Podcast decal, laminated field maps, and ball cap.

This option is limited as it is only digital, but with this digital consultation, I am confident you will understand how we would approach your property if we owned it. If we complete all of this and you want the next step, we could possibly get boots on the ground post-season for step 2, depending on location.

Tour Land Plan

In-person property tour on your parcel - This involves a full tour and review with boots on the ground from either Jared or Brian.
Initial Planning Discussion - We will collect multiple data points, ask questions, and learn how your property currently hunts from you. We will need to understand all of your goals for your property.
1 Digital Plan - We will provide you with a digital plan that maps out specific habitat improvements for your property. We will recommend stand locations, access, food plot locations, bedding area locations, etc. We will include a list of resources, notes, and descriptions for future reference.
Follow-Up Conversation - Once you have reviewed the plan, we will have a discussion walking you through our plan. This is where you can question, and understand our recommendations. You can always feel free to contact us down the line for follow-up questions.
Please email us for a quote as each project and property location is different.
Each plan will come with a FREE Habitat Podcast decal, laminated field maps, and ball cap.
The amount of Tour Land Plans will be limited this year.

As stated above...we know all properties, goals & situations are different. These plans are created to help you achieve your goals by improving your habitat and hunting strategy. There is no guarantee with these plans, but I can confidently say our plans will help you in achieving your habitat and hunting goals. We can definitely get you in the right direction and fill any gaps in your current situation. We are always available to discuss your plan once it is complete.

If you have any questions please let me know! We would be very interested in getting you a Habitat Podcast LAND PLAN for your property.

Please fill out the contact form below to discuss a LAND PLAN for your property:

Testimonials

This is awesome, thank you Jared and Brian!! It has been a pleasure to tap into your extraordinary habitat knowledge and discuss my property's potential! I really enjoyed seeing my farm through your eyes with your creative approach. I'm excited to see some of my initial ideas matching the plan but blown away by a couple of areas that I simply never pictured in the way you laid them out. Lots of work to do, super jacked to head out and get to work! Thank you for sharing your expertise.

- James (MN)

After listening to the podcast for a couple of years, I decided to inquire about the land plan services. I
filled out the online contact form and submitted it. Jared emailed me later that day with information
regarding the service, cost, options, etc. Our family decided that it was a no-brainer to go with the
“boots on the ground option.” We own 60 acres in south, central Pennsylvania. Brian met with my
nephew and I for a tour of the tract. We spent several hours combing the property and talking about
various improvement options. A week or so later, Brian had the preliminary plan complete. Jared,
Brian and I had a zoom meeting to review the plan. The digital plan was well thought out and easy to
follow. It was refreshing to see that Brian had listened to what our goals were and incorporated those
thoughts into the plan. There were near-term goals and an overall long-term solution for the property.
Both Jared and Brian have been quick to respond to questions before, during, and after the process. I
would recommend their services to anyone looking to improve their wildlife habitat.

- Marl (PA)

Habitat Podcast Land Plan Review

After listening to the Habitat Podcast for about a year, I was impressed with the knowledge, understanding, and continual learning that Jared and Brian presented. As they are also in northern areas that experience winter cold and snow, I was interested in enlisting their help through their Land Plan for some basic suggestions and ideas to move forward with my habitat improvement project on about 600 acres of family land in NH. With some basic information, aerial photos, and a Zoom meeting for input, they produced a full plate of suggestions for improvements right down to details and explanations for stand locations, travel corridors, bedding, transition, and timber stand improvement. Jared and Brian far exceeded my expectations with the final product they presented and I could not be more impressed. I look forward to implementing their plan on the property and continuing to work with Jared and Brian in the future.

- Mike (NH)

Habitat Podcast

Hi Jared, Wanted to share this with you and Brian and Al. I was blessed to get this today. I have learned a lot from your podcast. It is great when the hard work pays off even though I don’t consider it work. The buck just got done working a mock scrape and was heading my way but chose to turn and go on another trail. Thank goodness for the grunt call because he turned on a dime and came right to me. Thanks again,

- Gary (PA)

Land Plan

I've been listening to the podcast for a little over a year and have learned a ton. I'm even working my way through the older episodes. I worked with Brian on a digital land plan and even though I've only had the chance to incorporate a couple of the items so far, I'm seeing a definite improvement in the quality and quantity of deer on my 12 acres. I can't wait to get back out there after the first of the year and continue the process. Thank you Brian and Jared!

-Scott

Good Morning Jared

After consuming hundreds of hours of habitat and hunting media and many hours of pondering how I could improve the hunting on the land my family home is on, I reached out to Jared and his team for help. The response was very timely and we scheduled a visit from Phil in early April. We walked the property (which by itself was helpful), toured the neighborhood and discussed my experiences on the property and the proposed strategies. I had a digital plan in my hands in a couple weeks and had our digital review shortly after. Jared and Phil have been available for any questions since I began execution of the plan. I can honestly say that the land plan has been a positive experience. I know this is a several year project, but I am confident in the strategy proposed. This investment has definitely made me a better habitat manager.

-David H

All Pictures from Jared's 15 Acres in HEAVILY PRESSURED Southern Michigan

NEW FOR 2022 - HP LAND MANAGERS

We are expanding our team of Habitat Podcast HP Land Managers. We are doing this to combine the knowledge of our entire team and provide the best hunting and habitat plans available to our clients. Our team members are strategically located throughout the Midwest and will afford us more Tour Plan opportunities (the in-person property consultations) where we will get a chance to meet our clients face to face and see the parcel in full detail. Digital plans are also still available.

Meet the Team

Jared V. - Michigan

Hometown: Brighton, MI

Interests: God, Family, Habitat Management, Bow Hunting, Podcasting, Fishing & Boating

Fun Fact: Thinks Nickelback’s older music was hardcore.

“The day I passed Hunter’s Safety, I begged my Dad to take me duck hunting. We walked down to the Grand River in Grand Haven, MI and he told me to be ready. As we stalked up to the water’s edge….we jumped 3 mallards and I shot my first duck!

Since then, the obsession has gotten worse each year. College came along, where I scheduled my classes around bow season. This made for long Tuesdays & Thursdays on campus but gave me lots of time to become the bow hunter I am today. I learned the basics of chasing mature bucks. Since then, my number 1 target is usually Mr. Big….but I still believe the trophy is in the eye of the beholder.

These days when I am not working on our HP Land Plans for clients or producing content for Habitat Podcast, I am spending time raising my family. One day I will have 3 little hunting buddies, so raising them outside is important to me. When I do get free time, I am in the woods or on my property & client properties developing our land for better hunting and habitat.

Brian H. - Pennsylvania

My name is Brian and I’m just a simple hillbilly from the hills of western Pennsylvania who has been blessed by the grace of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I’m 46 years old and I’ve been married to my incredible wife Karen for 23 years. We have 2 amazing daughters, one is a sophomore in college and one a junior in high school. We also have a 6-year-old yellow lab named Cody.

My dad Patrick was taking me camping and fishing since I can remember. The outdoors were a necessary escape from his PTSD as a result of his time spent as a special forces paratrooper in Vietnam. It was torture watching him, my brothers, uncles, and cousins go off hunting until I was finally able to legally go at age 12. There were no mentor or youth seasons back in the 1980s. We mainly hunted whitetail deer on public land and occasionally small game and bird hunted. I lost my dad to cancer in 2014, he was only 64. The love of the outdoors was one of the many great things he instilled in me.

Since then I’ve been blessed to have hunted and fished in about 20 states, a few provinces in Canada and the Caribbean. I began freelance writing in the late 1990s and had numerous articles published in local, national, and international publications. I fell in love with traditional archery and began building my own longbows and recurves. At the time, there was no centralized resource for bowyers so I launched The Bowyer’s Journal magazine back in 2005. I published that through 2008 and I had subscribers in 33 countries when I accepted a buy-out from a publisher in Wisconsin. They expanded the magazine and it is still in print as TradArcher's World Magazine.

From there I accepted a position as editor of Pennsylvania Bowhunting magazine and served as Director of Media Operations for the United Bowhunters of Pennsylvania. After several years with those organizations, I accepted a co-host and Vice President position with the Habitat Podcast.

My habitat management journey began in the early 2000s when I began hunting a friend’s farm in Ohio. I exchanged work for permission and part of that was figuring out how to plant food plots. Since then I have owned two farms and have been a part of two leases in Ohio. I’m pushing 20 years of habitat management experience and I’m still learning new things every year.

Fun fact: I’ve ridden a motorcycle to Canada and Mexico

Jesse K. - Iowa

My name is Jesse K. & I live in Fairfield, Iowa. I am an avid hunter, trapper, and angler. I am originally from Lapeer County, Michigan. My dad was Paul Knox aka Dbltree. My dad was well known on IowaWhitetail.com, Outreach Outdoors, and Michigan Sportsman. When QDMA had its forums he was known as Lick Creek.

We moved down to Van Buren County, Iowa (south of Fairfield) in 2004. I think most of you know or know of my dad, but in case you don’t; he was essentially a whitetail habitat management guru. He loved the habitat work for it was the perfect hybrid of his love of hunting and farming. My dad, Paul, became well known in the whitetail community mainly due to his devotion to serving others. He spent thousands of hours posting hundreds of pictures of how to plant brassicas, how to do hinge cutting, how to plant switchgrass. Volumes of information are available for free. Over time my dad grew a following and some popularity. Eventually out of state landowners called my dad to take care of their farms. Farms literally down the road from our own!

I helped my dad a lot as a kid. I spent many hours on the tractor running the tiller or pulling a cultipacker. As I got older I started to run the chainsaw for TSI and hinge cutting. I planted many trees as well with a dibble bar as my dad’s business, Dbltree Habitat, was growing I went to college. I have a degree in robotics and got a job at a pork plant as a scale technician. I hated it. I worked the night shift on weekends, by choice. Mainly to get the week off so I can do what I want. I did help dad a lot during those times. The good times came to an end when my dad was diagnosed with ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease in January of 2013. He asked if I wanted to take the business over and I said hell yeah… no idea what I was getting into. However, since 2013 till now I kept honing in my habitat work. Becoming more detailed on what tree is necessary to cut and not to cut. Learning how to calibrate and set a native grass drill. Studying more about soil health to improve food plots. Also exploring upland game bird hunting and waterfowl hunting.

The key part is taking ownership of my farm. My dad left my mom and me with a trust that encompasses our farm of 135 acres and a house. I rent the house out to our local representative while managing the farm for habitat. We have 40 acres in tall native grass CRP and about 95 acres in timber. Currently, I am working on 24 acres of brush management. We removed over 20 acres of cedar trees off the farm that has choked everything out, even the fescue won’t grow under the cedars!

I am constantly looking for the next new project to take on. If I can squeeze in an acre or two of short native prairie or clear some more cedars. If I can light a fire there or here. What invasive I need to spray. I look at my land as a very serious endeavor. It’s a gift that I almost threw away and I work hard to keep it. I look at others people’s farms the same. We are the temporary steward until we are called home. So, let’s take care of our land bring it back to its fullest potential. I am a big supporter of restoring oak savanna habitat. It was and is a huge part of our biome of most of the Midwest and so many species of wildlife would thrive in that environment for it is a constant state of early successional habitat all the time. I am God’s servant to His land and I intend to be a servant to others who have questions to be answered.

Phil L. - Indiana

I grew up on the west coast mountain hunting deer, elk, bears, and birds of all kinds. The Air Force sent me to Alaska right out of high school in the late 80s. Met my wife (from Indiana) up there and we married. Our twin daughters were born and raised in Anchorage. We bought the 77-acre farm we now live on in 2012. Early on my wife referred to it as “deer camp”. After almost 30 years of working, hunting, and professionally guiding hunts in Alaska we now live on the Indiana farm full time.

I became obsessed with whitetails about 21 years ago frequently visiting family in Indiana. After buying the farm in 2012 I became obsessed with habitat work and spent 3 days working and learning from Jim Ward. We spent two days on one of his client's properties and one long day working my farm. Jim made me realize you have to look closely to truly see how deer use a property. Since those days spent with him, I’ve taken Tony Lappratts whitetail boot camp, Jeff Helmers Big Rack Whitetail Academy, Don Higgins’s Whitetail Master Course, and completed Deer Steward level 1. Additionally, I’ve had habitat plans drawn up for my 77 acres by Don Higgins, Jeff Sturgis, and an areal plan drawn up by Jim Brauker. I read everything I can find on the subject!

I feel many habitat managers have a cookie-cutter plan for most properties. Put a food plot here, make this a sanctuary, hang stands over the plots and stay off the entire property unless you are hunting. I feel I specialize in a habitat plan based on the way the property owner wants to hunt not necessarily the way the manager would. We’ve recently purchased a 50 property just across the border in Illinois. Between our two properties, we are constantly experimenting with new and proven habitat techniques. I’m planning a YouTube series soon based on our two highly modified/modifying properties as well as other properties I’ve helped improve.

Phil H. - Pennsylvania

My name is Phil. I live in Sullivan County, PA. It’s a small rural county in the NE portion of the state. I grew up in central PA but my family made several moves when I was in high school and college. I’ve lived in 7 states (PA, NJ, MA, NY, GA, WA, MI). I’m married to my lovely wife, Laura. We have our son Jackson and we currently have a foster son, Xavier. We have a treeing walker coonhound named Hank, two cats Olaf and Whisper, and 9 chickens….don't ask me their names!

I went to Syracuse University. After college, I worked for Cornell Cooperative Extension in Suffolk County, NY on the very east end of Long Island. I was a resource educator and I was an outdoor and environmental educator for youth at risk court-ordered alternative education program. I also was the camp director for a summer camp program. A large part of my role with both programs was to lead youngsters in performing wildlife habitat improvement projects. Everything from pollinators, waterfowl, upland bird species, trout, and shellfish.

I now work for a large corporation as a manufacturing plant technician. You all most likely have products made at my plant in your homes! I work a 12 hr rotating swing shift schedule so I go back and forth between days and nights.

I own 8.6 acres of land that has been in my family since the 1960s. I have spent a lot of time doing habitat improvements and manipulations in order to increase the quality of the hunting experience. I’m in my second decade of being involved in and obsessed with wildlife habitat and specifically habitat improvement, modification, and manipulation of habitat for the purposes of hunting deer. I’ve had the opportunities to do deer habitat projects on several friends’ properties ranging in size from 15 acres to 400 acres. I have also done some consulting work the past several years for landowners looking to improve the quality of their hunting experiences.

Having such a small property, I need to scratch my hunting itch elsewhere in order to manage pressure on my piece. I spend a lot of time hunting and scouting public land. I am fortunate to live in an area surrounded by several hundred thousand acres of public land. It is generally very remote, rugged, big woods, mountainous country. I have been in contact with PGC’s land officer for my region and we will be planning some habitat work days on one of my local game lands this winter. I’m looking forward to that!

I spent quite a bit of time on the old QDMA user forums, and then a few of the offshoot forums. At one point I was an active QDMA member and I was a board officer for a local branch. I love to hunt, fish, hike, flintlock hunting, garden, cook, butcher and process deer, smoke meat, drink beers and whiskeys, do European skulls, shed hunt, scout new hunting areas, kill nonnative invasive plants, run chainsaws….just a few things I enjoy doing.

I’m a member of the Emergency Response Team at work. I am on the Fire Brigade, the Confined Space Rescue Team, Medical Team, and Hazmat Rescue Team. I am also a member of my local fire-rescue department. I joined mainly to be a part of the Search and Rescue Team and Technical/Rope Rescue Team. We have large and remote public lands and people get lost or go missing frequently. We also have a state park with 3 dozen named waterfalls, and many large rock ledges and cliffs….and people fall or become critically ill and need to be rescued via ropes and haul systems.

I am also a part of the PA Bowhunters Festival. It’s the largest and longest continuously operating event of its kind. My grandfather and great uncle were both some of the original founding members of the event. My father was involved for a couple of decades, and I have been on the board of directors for close to 15 years now. Two years ago I became the president of the board. It’s an awesome event and we raise a lot of money for our local community. My son is now the fourth generation to be a part of the event.

Interesting fact about me…..I love big mature 6 and 7 points. I think big giant 3 point sides are so cool!

Zach H. - Wisconsin

Hometown: Eden, WI

Interests: Faith, Family, and Friends....as well as outdoor writing, woodworking, practicing land management, mentoring my children and nephews/nieces with everything hunting, and I am absolutely crazy about shed hunting.

Fun Fact: I produced and hosted a hunting television show called Haastyle Hunting TV.

My name is Zach. I grew up in and around Wisconsin my whole life. I currently live in Rosendale, WI with my beautiful wife Hailey and my amazing two kids (Wyatt and Summer). I grew up on a small horse farm in the country with my parents on the outskirts of Eden, Wisconsin. I graduated from UW-Stevens Point in 2011 where I obtained a bachelor's degree in aquatic biology and water resource management. I used my degree to become the Director of Operations and Senior Aquatic Biologist at Wisconsin Lake & Pond Resource LLC, which is a private pond and lake consulting firm based in Eldorado, Wisconsin.

Growing up I always was a country boy and outdoorsman at heart. My father, Dan, got me into hunting at a very early age. He took me everywhere when he was heading out to do some type of outdoor activity. Whether it was baiting for bear, setting up bow/gun stands for deer, calling in a big gobbler, reeling in big bass and bluegills, or just taking me out to shoot a couple of rabbits and squirrels, I learned a lot from him. As soon as I legally could hunt at age twelve I was in the woods. Throughout my hunting career I have had many mentors, but above all my dad taught me the most. My dad was the fire beneath me to start my own land management company, and losing him in 2016 has only fueled my passion more.

Taking this passion for hunting, I took it one step further and started to learn the processes involved in managing a deer herd. From my classes at UW-Stevens Point, my QDMA Class 1 stewardship course, and other land management professionals I began to fine-tune the process to holding bigger and healthier deer and turkeys. Unlike many land managers, I am able to take a wide range of wildlife biology and management into the planning of your land management plan. Based on research, experience, and teachings I will help improve your land to the quality that you always dreamed of having.