Dream Farm with Bill Winke

I have started another winter of Timber Stand Improvement work. Carsen and I cut 78 acres of TSI last year and during that time we learned many valuable lessons that will make your efforts safer and more productive. I also lay out my TSI project for this winter and show before and after for an area we cut last winter and how it grew thick during the summer. kwhunting kwwhitetail

Here are the projects we will be doing this year to make the farm better, but more importantly, I go into detail on how exactly all this work translates into healthier deer and more mature (and bigger) bucks on the farm. I am comfortable saying that this will pay off in the end - and we are already starting to see the progress.

Hard leaning trees can be very dangerous if you don't use the right method to get them on the ground. It is tempting to just notch the front and then start cutting in from the back, but that usually results in a split trunk and a very dangerous outcome. The goal is to remove the middle of the trunk before you cut into the back of the tree so there is nothing in the middle to split. This method w

Back in August of 2024, three specialists from the Next Level Consulting team came to my farm to look at what I am doing here. The idea was to learn from my projects while offering suggestions on things I can do better. We had a great conversation over the course of an entire day on the farm. Here are the highlights from that visit. This is what I learned and what they took away.

One of the biggest habitat challenges on my farm is the need to replace a few fairly large areas of mature cedar trees with other, more wildlife friendly, regrowth. Small patches of cedars are fine, but large unbroken sections are basically worthless. I have struggled with the question of how to get rid of the cedars once I cut them down. Last week, I had the chance to burn a 150 foot long pile

Jack Huston flew his thermal drone over my farm a year ago and counted every deer. Now he is back to see how the herd has changed. We shot five or six does last season. I was really curious to see if that was enough to keep the herd from growing. And, if not, how much had it grown and how had the buck to doe ratio changed. Understanding these dynamics is super important to the overall managemen

After two seasons of testing sorghum on the farm, I have decided it definitely plays an important role. While possibly not as attractive as corn, the deer ate it heavily during the late season. I will definitely plant sorghum again this year - especially in remote spots next to bedding areas where the deer would likely wipe out brassicas, beans and corn long before the end of the winter. Sorghum

The accepted way to plant chestnuts is the cold stratify the seed in the fridge all winter, plant in a small pot, and then replant the sprouted tree in late summer, early fall into the selected final site. This level of effort is too high maintenance for this farm. We need a method of establishing chestnuts here that is faster and covers more ground. Some day, I hope to have thousands of these a

I recently spent two days on a big working cattle farm in northern Missouri with the goal of helping the landowner and his hunting friends to make the farm better for deer hunting. Deer and cattle do not mix easily and given a choice, deer will avoid cattle. Plus, cattle eat the same things that deer prefer. Basically, they aren't really compatible. Here's what we came up with to make this pro

We were really excited about the prospect of being able to grow hundreds, maybe even thousands of chestnut trees on this farm without having to micro-manage every single tree. If this works, we can transform this property in just a few years. Welcome to the real world guys! Here's what happened!

Jordan and I go over the big picture plan for what we will plant on the farm this year. We are using a lot of the basics with the understanding that in many cases we will be adding secondary layers to the plots as the year goes. For example, drilling or broadcasting brassicas into bean plots that we expect to suffer deer damage during the summer. We are also going to experiment with planting soy

We cut 78 acres of TSI last winter, but I killed only a few stumps at that time. I wanted to first learn which ones would put up sprouts the deer would eat later and which ones wouldn't. Since I didn't know that in advance, I decided not to kill any stumps and come back through the TSI area a year later to clean it up. While Carsen and I are cutting down trees in a new TSI area nearby, Amos is goi

After cutting roughly 30 acres of the 51 acres on our contract, Carsen and I are taking a short break. We sure put a lot of trees on the ground and that will pay off in better habitat for the deer down the road. But, we also learned a valuable lesson covering every inch of that slope: there are lots of deer bedding in places where they can easily see us coming and going. We are going to have to ch

I go through two methods that make the most sense for removing bush honeysuckle on my farm and one method for removing prickly ash. These are two of the hardest invasive plants to control when creating high quality deer habitat. If you leave them, and do the required TSI work, you will eventually end up with a property dominated by these non-preferred species. Deal with them early or you will pay

As we near the end of our TSI projects for the year, I go into more detail about what I think is the perfect TSI crew (Carsen and Amos are great, but I am referring to their roles). TSI is hard work, and you don't want to waste your time, so it is critical to make sure that what grows back when you open up the canopy is beneficial - not a bunch of junk. It is also worth investing in high-quality e

I have learned that burning is a great way to severely setback or kill four plants from our farm that take up vital space and serve little wildlife value (at least for the species we are interested in): prickly ash, gooseberry, multi-floral rose and Japanese Barberry. In addition to controlling these plants, fire also sets back saplings of thin barked tree species like elm and hackberry - of which

If you have been following along on the Dream Farm series you know that we have what is called a "Goat Prairie" or commonly called a bluff prairie. I had some help from the US Fish & Wildlife to clear this area of cedar trees and now it is time to burn it. Gregg Pattison, from the US Fish & Wildlife, discusses why these projects are important and consults with my team on how to create the best fir

We wrapped up the burn season with a big burn. This one had two very large areas of dead and dried cedar trees that I knew would torch super hot and potentially kill the large age-old oak trees standing nearby. It was an interesting test of how we will eventually manage all the mature cedar trees on this farm. We definitely learned a few things here. But the biggest take away was a change in thoug

This was a working cattle farm when we bought it so there were a lot of open pasture acres. As we start filling those areas in with cover, I have been doing a lot of research, and using some personal experiences, to select the best shrubs to fill those open spaces. We need plants that serve both as cover and food and ones that are aggressive at creating thickets without being invasive. These are t

There are three types of places where I plant food plots on my farm. In this episode, I discuss how I prioritize my locations and the roles that each of these serve. I also go back to the most recent burn area and show you what died and discuss what I am hoping will come in to replace it.

I have been making small food plots since 1996 and have come love these spots for producing close range shots at undisturbed deer. During that time I have come up with my favorite super-simple rotation that keeps these spots fresh and productive. In this short video, I detail the steps to my simple rotation.

You don't need expensive equipment to make a real impact on your hunting area and your next hunting season. You can make small food plots for very little cost and without equipment. The key is to keep things simple and put in a little extra sweat. I have made many of these over the years (and we made another one on the new farm just a few days ago). In this episode I talk about how to make them an

After three years of working hard to change the habitat on this farm, it is finally starting to show the first signs of reaching my goal - the perfect whitetail and ruffed grouse habitat. The old pasture areas are starting to take shape with all the plantings we have been doing, but the most impressive thing for me is the way the timber is changing - improving. Jordan and I take you through all th

Recently, my friend Ben Sweeney brought two hives worth of bees to the farm. We need bees here on the farm (and all across the country) to aid in pollination of all the things that flower here. There are a surprising number of plants and even flowers within the TSI and burn areas on the farm, not to mention the hundreds of wild apple trees, plum trees and clover that is here. And when you consider