529 Premier episode introducing Own the Season TV – Art Helin

, we manage things a little bit different than…I shouldn’t say everybody, because there’s other people that do it the same as we do. For us we have private land, so we can manage things the way we want as we own it. We look for four-and-a-half-plus-year-old bucks. You know, if we have a 140, 150-inch three-year-old, usually that deer gets a free pass. And if we have a 130-inch five-year-old, that deer is going to get shot before that bigger antler buck because that bigger antler buck has potential. There’s also, you know, you flip the dice. Because something could happen, EHD, CWD, hit by a car, predators, there’s a lot of different things that can happen to that.

So, you know, you roll the dice and hope for the best. But when we, you know, try to manage our deer herds, we shoot X amount of does, and then usually try to shoot that, you know, four-and-a-half-year-old or older. Now, if I have special needs hunters or I have youth hunters, then that’s a whole different ball game. For the ones that are experienced hunters, you know, it’s four-and-a-half and older. Usually we then have a list. You know, we’ve started compiling a list because I’ve got so many trail cameras out that we compile a list from year to year to year so we know how old they are. And as we know how old they are and compile this list, we look at some deer and say, you know, “This deer here”…

Like we’ve got a three-year-old this year that last year he did the same thing, he comes out and he’s got a big eight-point side…or a four-point side on his left, but he’s just got two big spikes sticking straight out of his head on the right. Did the same thing last year. That deer needs to come off the farm. So one of the, you know, handicapped hunters or one of the youth hunters, they just want to go up and shoot a buck and get their first buck. Deer like that are great.

You know, you can come out and we’ve got a lot of those deer that are really goofy or, you know, genetically goofy that we want off the farm. Will you ever take… And this is a big…people are like, “Well, you know, you shoot all these, you’re going to get rid of that genetics.” You’ll never get rid of that genetics in wild deer. It’s pretty much impossible from every study I’ve ever seen to get rid of that. But if you can try to help moving it forward, you know, you do anything you can to try to help move it forward.

So that’s kind of the way that we do it, and we do that, you know, in Kansas and we do that here in Wisconsin. South Dakota on the other hand, that’s a whole different ball game. They have a lot of deer on the property we hunt, so everything goes out the door. And if it’s 130 inches or better, they don’t care, they just want their deer shot. And so if we’re not going to shoot them, they have other guys that come in and shoot them. And so they manage it different out there. It’s their farm, you live by their rules. Just like, you know, you come to my farm, we have certain rules that you’re going to live by. And so it’s their farm, we live by their rules. If they say, “Hey, you know what? If it’s 130 inches or better, I don’t care how old it is, you shoot it. Because if you don’t, I’m going to have another group of friends or people come in right behind you and shoot them anyway because I need to get rid of some of these deer.”

And so it’s management is a different tool. And that kind of brings me into something else that we talked about the other day with hunters and hunters not getting along anymore and social media and all these things that are destroying our hunting heritage. And it’s really…it eats at me a lot and it tears me up because… And I know it does you, too. Because if we keep arguing like this, we’re done. Okay?

As I said, there’s, you know, 10% of people that are truly hunters, 10% are truly anti-hunters, that leaves 80% that could go either way. So of them may even try to hunt once in a while and go, “Eh, it’s not for me.” But, you know, and then some are like, “Yeah, I’m an anti, but I’m not really an anti.” They’re the people that we have to sway to keep on our side. But the more we fight amongst ourselves and the more we look like idiots out there doing stupid things, the more that these people want to switch and fight against us. And that just…that eats at me because this is a sport that I absolutely love. I love the shooting sports, I love the hunting, I love the photography work. What’s going to happen to it if we keep fighting? Where’s it going to go?

And so, you know, I look at it with this management thing. Again, you know, you’ve hunted Wisconsin, you’ve hunted all these places, and you look at management, I don’t know what you do on your farm. You know, do they have a management plan on your farm that you hunt, Bruce?