What an incredible place! I am not really into duck hunting, but deer hunting there would be a bucket list trip. Did you get to meet Jared Mophett? Like Gobble4me757 mentioned I would love to know the back story on how that place came to be. Thanks for sharing
So I’ll try to share a little bit but I’m definitely not the expert on it. It started out as cleared farmland. Part of a 100,000 acre row crop farm. One of the biggest row crop farms in the US. Over the years pieces were sold or whatever so this 20k acre piece is the largest piece of what is left of the original farm. When Drew Keith was hired to work there (along with Jared), it was just flat farmland. Zero trees on it besides the willows beside the ditches next to the field levees. The owner rolled a few acres into WRP program and in the first phase they planted around 350k trees on it. It took them 6 years to accomplish that. The next phase, they planted around 400k trees and it took them 6 days lol. They changed their methods lol. Now they have about 1.4 million trees. Every single one planted by Honey Brake. (I’m trying to be accurate with these numbers here but i may have gotten some wrong lol.) it is the largest piece of land in these types of programs. Of the 20k acres they flood about 8,500 acres. They pump about 3.4 billion gallons of water each year depending on rainfall. They use water to manipulate what plant species grow for the wildlife like we would use prescribed fire. Incredibly interesting to me.
I did meet Jared briefly. He was leaving taking some of their dogs to a super retriever series competition so I didn’t get to talk to him much. But he’s a character now. I met Drew Keeth as well. He’s a great guy with a great vision.
The lodge also sits on a public oxbow lake, which just happens to be one of the top crappie lakes in the US. The property basically sits at the bottom of the funnel that is the Mississippi flyway.
Appreciate the info on the history of the place. It sounds like they had a blank slate and created a mecca for wildlife! What a labor of love and unique experience to be a part of creating something so special. From the videos I have watched, Drew seems like a stand up guy with a vision, but Jared seems like the heartbeat of the place, and saying he is a character might be an understatement! This is my favorite Jared Mophett quote: 'Most people think they like it, but once they come stay with me for 360 days, they decide they really didn't love it, they just thought they did.'
Rhino have you seen Jared’s boy that they post on social media sometimes? He’s on their reels. Funny as crap and is definitely a talker like his dad.
I have not but I will be looking out for him now! I need to catch up on their videos
I didn’t think about willow oak but that would make sense for ducks…….It looks like most of it is on a 10 x 10 spacing…… I wonder if that spacing was done for the timber quality or if that was the only way they could keep the understory vegetation from choking out the young trees in the beginning……maybe both? I guess I’ve never thought much about trying to establish oaks on that type of a scale………That place looks really neat though….It might be even more intriguing than those southwest GA quail plantations…..I mean there’s dang near unlimited potential with the ability to flood and irrigate
I didn’t think about willow oak but that would make sense for ducks…….It looks like most of it is on a 10 x 10 spacing…… I wonder if that spacing was done for the timber quality or if that was the only way they could keep the understory vegetation from choking out the young trees in the beginning……maybe both? I guess I’ve never thought much about trying to establish oaks on that type of a scale………That place looks really neat though….It might be even more intriguing than those southwest GA quail plantations…..I mean there’s dang near unlimited potential with the ability to flood and irrigate
I saw a lot of the original trees they planted. Heck we even had air soft wars in some of them lol. I think they looked closer than 10’ but maybe not. The rows were probably 10’ apart but the trees within the rows seemed closer than that. I don’t know I really wasn’t paying attention to it. I was trying to not get pelted lol. I can get more info from my buddy on the varieties and spacing. He will know. I know they work closely with the governing agency that oversees all they. They use the property their for a lot of experiments as far as habitat goes.
I can get more info from my buddy on the varieties and spacing. He will know..
Its all good.....dont worry about it.....I was just curious
Well I want to know too so. I had about 100 questions the day after we rode around on the farm. I was seeing so much when we were riding around the questions didn’t all hit me until afterwards.
I can get more info from my buddy on the varieties and spacing. He will know..
Its all good.....dont worry about it.....I was just curious
Well I want to know too so. I had about 100 questions the day after we rode around on the farm. I was seeing so much when we were riding around the questions didn’t all hit me until afterwards.
Well.......when this thread goes on for 5 more pages I'm gonna refer folks back to this post then.......
I can get more info from my buddy on the varieties and spacing. He will know..
Its all good.....dont worry about it.....I was just curious
Well I want to know too so. I had about 100 questions the day after we rode around on the farm. I was seeing so much when we were riding around the questions didn’t all hit me until afterwards.
I bet that was just an all around cool experience! How much of the 26,000 acres do you think you saw?
I can get more info from my buddy on the varieties and spacing. He will know..
Its all good.....dont worry about it.....I was just curious
Well I want to know too so. I had about 100 questions the day after we rode around on the farm. I was seeing so much when we were riding around the questions didn’t all hit me until afterwards.
I bet that was just an all around cool experience! How much of the 26,000 acres do you think you saw?
We rode in a SxS for about 3 hours and he said probably 10%. It really was a cool experience. It’s kinda one of those things that words just don’t do it justice. I mean, it’s not the most beautiful land… it’s just the sheer size of it and their operation. And the undertaking of it all. And then the vision to use it for the glory of God and let Him use it to change lives. It’s impressive.
Yes I know I’m about to make some big inferences with only a little bit of information to base it on……..but this is Aldeer and we’re allowed to do that here…… …sooooo
I see the constraints they are having to deal with and there’s no way the understory vegetation is able to be managed optimally the way they have it now……You have highly fertile soil and hundreds of thousands of young oak trees……Basically what that means is you have the ability to rapidly grow massive amounts of understory vegetation with no ability to use fire to manage it without that massive amount of vegetation roasting the oak trees…..Even if it you do flood it out for 6 months in the winter and reset it that way…..you’re still missing out on huge potential because of the rapid growth rates that quickly grow through optimal stages……as well as the potential microbial issues mentioned earlier
The most nutritious part of a plant and what you would want these bucks to be foraging on all summer is the active growing tips of top tier plant species……In order to take full advantage of highly fertile soil like that you need to be able to reset the understory vegetation at the same speed its able to push it out……..in turn constantly providing the deer with stands of freshly reset vegetation with new active growing tips all summer long…..The more fertile the soil, the shorter the reset rotation has to be to optimize output
I feel pretty safe in saying that there is a lot of unrealized opportunity on that place and the only way you could realize it would be through grazing herds that optimally managed the vegetation under those oaks……Get that right though and along with a little herd management that place ought to consistently crank out some sho nuff toads……Yes I know they kill some big ones there now….BUT……that doesn’t define how much unrealized potential there may be
We rode in a SxS for about 3 hours and he said probably 10%. It really was a cool experience. It’s kinda one of those things that words just don’t do it justice. I mean, it’s not the most beautiful land… it’s just the sheer size of it and their operation. And the undertaking of it all. And then the vision to use it for the glory of God and let Him use it to change lives. It’s impressive.
Amen! I would be interested in hearing more about the men's retreats when you get the info and schedule. I watched some of the clips with Morgan Mophett, little feller seems like a chip off the ole block!
Somebody get us a feller-buncher and some cows and we can turn that ^^^^^^ into some sho nuff good deer hunting.....
What about some buffalo? I may know a guy
I keep debating the pros and cons of using them jokers…..It would by far be the coolest way of doing it…….right up until the day somebody got charged by one or they got out, etc……I was watching a video on a guy that keeps a big herd and apparently one of the issues in keeping them contained is dispersing males…..He said they respected the fence just fine until the day that one of these males gets run off or goes on that dispersal journey and then they just walk right through the fence like it aint there and keep going…..I forget exactly but he alleviated the issue by managing for a young male age structure I think it was…….He said it cut down on most of that happening
The bigger point being though that there’s gonna be more to dealing with bison than what it may be worth versus just going with cows and it not being quite as cool but being much simpler to manage……I mean you could do it with bison but you would basically be accepting up front that at some point “chit is gonna happen”……Probably be well worth forming some contingency plans is all I’m saying
…sooooo
