"Hello Jeff,
I want you to know how the "Success by Design" concepts have worked out. After spending untold amounts of hard days working and massive funds spent to create a hunting bonanza here, I was failing year after year. By failing I mean my hunting results were not improving. Ideep downknew I was missing something important. The decision was made to contact you for a visit. This move changed it all.
You are a good teacher who has the answers, thank goodness I video taped your summary. After scores of evenings watching it and milking every ounce of info from it, the light came on. I am much more successful now,but more importantly the enjoyment of the hunt has risen tenfold. I mean now I get to see the true results of my efforts to improve the land. In summary the decision to have you consult here was a pivotal moment for me and this land. By far a bargain when you compare all I have invested.
With great thanks for "Success by Design"
-Luke
Evergreen Preserve
Greenwood, Delaware
Delaware Whitetail Success
"Would you come to Delaware?" asked Luke. And with that question Luke and I began the process of scheduling a visit to his home state to design his own, personal plan for Delaware whitetail success. It has been hammered to me over, and over again; but "whitetails are whitetails", anywhere that they live and breath. For 20 years before I founded Whitetail Habitat Solutions, LLC in 2005, my classroom were the swamps, hills, ag fields and hardwoods found in IN, MI, PA, KY and WI. Both on private and public land! What I found out through many years and many hours, is that deer relate to each other the same, they relate to food the same, they relate to hunting pressure the same and finally they relate to the rut...the same. There is a balance that needs to be applied, but I found that in order to learn more about one state's whitetail behavior, you had to experience whitetails in other areas. Simply if you stay put in your own stomping grounds...your success will always be limited purely to those experiences in those same stomping grounds. Virtually, "no perspective". What was great about Luke's land in Delaware? It was very similar to areas of Southern MI, the home stomping grounds of my youth!
There are many of my clients who go the extra mile to make sure that not only their plan is implemented, but that they leave no stone unturned. Luke went the extra 2 miles! From planting over literally 10s of thousands of shrubs and trees, to completely re-designing his food plot layout and location program and to overhauling his hunter access; Luke did it all. His "flat land" is mixed with ag and woodlots, and a sizeable deer herd. To me it was fairly easy to come up with a plan that included hidden food sources, doe family group and buck bedding layers, and predatory hunter access, but the work that followed, by Luke, was 2nd to none. The design for most lands can be created in 1-2 days, but the work can literally take weeks. Luke even went "above and beyond" the plan, by adding trees and shrubs in areas where he just didn't want to wait for native regeneration to take place. Does a person need to plant 100,000 shrubs and trees? No, but it certainly doesn't hurt and Luke drastically advanced the quality of the potential habitat on his land.
The broken recored continues, but Luke is another example of hard work being completed within an effective whitetail habitat design specific to his own land. There are many landowners who complete 100s of hours of work...but not all work is created equal, and not all work is actually helpful to the effectiveness of habitat and hunting design. Luke's Southern Michigan, Delaware design was extremely effective very quickly, when combined with the level of work that Luke accomplished. Congrats Luke...and I can't wait to see more pictures and stories in the future! Keep up the great work....