Question For Landowners

[BrewCrew]

I was wondering how many nonresident/resident landowners hire out work to be done on their recreational/farming/whitetail properties?? In terms of planting food plots, harvesting, spraying, timber stands, aquatic concerns, or privately owned land management consulting?? How many people use help from wildlife experts to help increase pheasant numbers, decrease doe numbers, or whatever? Do some of you actually have a firm that does the land management for you? Does anyone go as far as to having GPS trail mapping or trail cameras being ran for them during periods when you are away? Or do some of you go with local farmers to help? I am just curious how many of you do most of the work yourselves or hire out for whatever reason? (short on time, dont live near your property, dont own equipment, etc.)

 

[DannyBoy]

Not sure of the answer, but I would love to be the guy hired to do the dirty work!

 

[THA4]

Hire me!!

 

[BrewCrew]

Thats kind of my point of asking this.. How much of a demand is there really for this type of business?? I know your degree would cover much of this area Danny (not sure about you though Thomas ).

 

[DannyBoy]

Thats kind of my point of asking this.. How much of a demand is there really for this type of business?? I know your degree would cover much of this area Danny (not sure about you though Thomas ).

Lol. We'll see how my grade in 451 (wildlife management) turns out!

 

[PYBucks]

Local Farmer

We hire our neighbor to plant our food plots. We have about 12 acres of plots on our 240 acres. I had him water my apple trees a couple times this summer as well. But that's about it.

We make it to our property about 6 times a year but only 2 or 3 times during the spring/summer when we can work on our ground. We can mow our clover and firebreaks in about 7 hours so we do this ourselves. The weather is just to hit or miss to take a week of vacation to try and plant our plot ourselves.

My neighbor is retired (he's 84) and has most of his ground is in CRP. Plus he hires out any harvesting on his ground so he has time to do our planting. He plants for two other landowners as well.

 

[Daver]

A mixture

I do most of my work myself, or so it seems to me that I do. What I cannot do I mostly trade with a local farmer for.

At this point, I do not have big equipment, (tractor, disc, big mower, etc.), but I do have an ATV with a homemade cultipacker, drag and sprayer and a good 'ol John Deere lawn tractor. So I mow, or one of my sons, what I can with that.

I have a couple of grain bins on my property that I do not need, so I let the farmer use them for free and in exchange he will disc up ground for me, sometimes spray Roundup, sometimes plant winter wheat/trunips, sometimes mow. It varies every year, depending upon what I need and when he can get there, etc. But we don't actually trade money back and forth unless I have him do work that is partially offset by NRCS reimbursement(s), etc, then I do.

Things are expensive enough as is, if I had to pay for everything I would not have nearly as many food plots going.

I do pay when I need a bulldozer to come in, but that is very infrequent.

 

[shrek1]

I run a small business of installing foodplots, running cameras, monitoring property, and anything else that landowners can come up with. I think its an area specific business. Areas with higher deer and people densities are naturally more productive. If the DNR ever opens up the out of state tags(which I hope not) than things would open up alot.