Next Level Whitetail Strategies & Farm Prep With Josh Bowmar

We just got from Illinois Farm. We got a problem. We got a tree down on the road here. Tree is dead. Wait a second. What are all of these big, beautiful green leaves? That is poisoned oak. Oh my God. See the three leaves? All of it poisoned. Are you guys getting itchy? Oh God. I gotta get this thing off the road. We just leave it and we drive around it like this. Wasn't this massive rainstorm coming? I would probably take time to do this right now. The worst storm in history is coming straight for Josh Bomar's Illinois Farm. So we might just abandon that and go get the chainsaw going. Another spot so we need to get back to the main plot's the plan. All right. It is race against the rain. Let's roll, folks. Does a freaking tornado go through here? See back here is an absolute epic spot that I love. And I spent a lot of time doing that. And it looks like there's tree after tree after tree back there. We have to get out the chainsaw. We've got maybe 30, 40 minutes before it really starts getting nasty. And we gotta get seed in the ground. All right. So I'm gonna get the chainsaw. Start cutting and ripping and getting this thing going. All right. Let's get started. We got one down. Not too bad. Who knows how many more until we get there. Oh man. Gotta beat the rain. Here we go. Let's go and drive in the plot. And spin around here. Ooh, that's not good on the old paint job. That's my favorite spot. It should just be timber. And now, look at this beauty. Just this big old beautiful food plot. This spot's good to go. Get the tractor back here. Oh, come on. Look. We got another down tree right here. Gosh fricking dang it. It's a big tree too. Here's what we're dealing with. See, I need to be able to get up that trail. But we've gotta get this giant ass tree out of here. Shit. I don't know what to do about this. My buddy Chris Brackett's coming. He's helped me plant. Maybe with his tractor, if I cut this up, maybe he'll be able to push it off. Problem with this is this is a really good spot for pictures. Little camera trick for you. You always want to optimize your trail camera so you maximize your chances of getting the deer on camera. So I actually set up my food plots like this. I set up my scrapes, my trails. Everything that I possibly can do, I get as much as I can from each individual camera. So this particular camera, and why this tree is a real pain in my freaking butt, is because if you look here, my camera's still here from last year. That camera gets the deer coming off this trail, gets the deer hitting the scrape, catches a good section of the food plot as well, but then also covers up both those trails that come down here. So this tree could not have fallen in a worse spot. Let me give Chris a call and see where he is. Hello? What's up dude? Oh, I'm back by the water plot. Where are you? What plot? I'm over by the lake. Oh yes. Oh, that little, that tiny like micro clover plot. I'm going to punt on this tree right now and just kind of come to you. Oh my God. Another tree. Dude, it is like never ending over here. All right, let's roll. Oh yeah. Look at that. My boy. What's up dude? Dude, this looks so good. Look at this, dude. Good seeing you, man. Gosh, check that out. This looks so good. Something big is going to die in this field. We're in the middle of the timber, dude. This looks great. So this might be green first week October. Oh my God, dude. It's going to pull all the deer from all the neighbors as soon as all the beans start turning. And we still got our nice little green patch, not to mention all of our fall plots. Dude, it's going to be great. Well guys, this is going to be awesome. Obviously I told you earlier, Bracket has helped me. Big thanks to you, buddy. I really appreciate it. I mean, you look at it, it's really got very little weed and I don't think the deer are going to care. And the browse pressure doesn't look terrible. Where I've hired deer densities, I'll actually plant beans close to the bedding area where I'm going to convert it into a fall plot. Bingo. And you don't ever hear anyone talking about that. Yeah, dude, it's so smart. And guys, to summarize what we just talked about, we literally planted decoy beans. I've never heard it termed that way. And that's actually a great word to be able to describe it because if you plant it close to where they're bedding, they're going to eat those beans first, but that's not where you want to hunt them in the winter. And I don't like hunting right next to the bedding areas in the winter, just because no vegetation's on the tree. So it's really hard to get into those spots without getting busted. Because access is king, no matter what you're hunting. Got to be able to get in, you got to be able to get out. Those areas that are closer to bedding, I like to plant those type of plots, like in fall plots, where there's still vegetation on the trees to where it's thicker, you can get in and get out early season, which is exactly what we did. We planted the bean, they devoured them, and left the beans that are more optimized for late season entrance and exit, because this is pretty far from where they actually bed. Like they bed up and over that ridge there, they bed deep over there, and then they bed about 250 yards that way. And this will allow me to get in and be able to get out. My access is so much better here. But if I just planted these beans here, these would have been devoured all summer. There just wouldn't be as much for them to feed in the winter. So that decoy bean plot really paid off for us this time. Rough dirt too, so this is a win. Dude, so guys, check this out. So this is something that's really interesting. Where I'm standing right here was a huge five acre concrete slab. Where this used to be was the largest brickyard in the world, like, I don't know, in the late 1800s. So there used to be a huge factory right here. Chris said it's rough soil. He's not lying. Literally that hill right there was timber. We took soil off that hill and buried this concrete with two and a half feet of soil. Everything you see here was solid concrete, and now we're growing freaking soybeans on concrete. And to see the beans looking as good as they are, I mean, this is just so cool. This gets me pumped up for this fall, guys. I hope you guys are enjoying this video. A little behind the scene vlogging. It's a little different than our traditional, you know, cinematic stuff. But based on our last video, you guys liked this. So this is cool. Both plots are done. Is that timber plot done too? So we'll reload the brassies and stuff, radish heavy, and then go get the last one done. Let's roll. Man, I've known Chris for a really long time, and man, he's always been good to me. Coming onto my farm helped me out like this. This is being a really good friend here. But guys, go give him a follow. He has an awesome podcast. The dude is extremely knowledgeable. I'll put a link down in the description for him. We gotta refill, don't we? Woo, boys, that was close. We better get this last plot in before the rain has started. Got one plot left though, guys. I mean, just one plot. In today's news, a local deer hunter gets struck by lightning and dies. What'd you say? Dude, I don't want you to get struck by lightning. Yeah, this is pretty serious. It's really hard to kill a big buck if you get struck by lightning. That's just awesome, bro. You're the one riding on a tractor. It's a good way to die. Well, we're not getting struck by lightning now. We're back where we left off last night. Chris has arrived. Yeah, it's awesome, man. We still have this big beast to deal with right now. This could become your tree. Oh, yeah, I didn't even think about that. He's already cut there. Cut there. Grab him, grab him. We'll be able to manage that. And you can leave him. We can plant around him. You know what? I like this, but I want it over here. Then we get rid of the rest of this stuff. Okay, so here's what we got going on. What we're gonna do is we're gonna set this up here to where I can cover a section of the food plot that's really not that easy with the cameras and cover the scrapes. This is now going to be the perspective of the camera. I'm gonna set this up to where this scrape comes out right here like this. So then if a deer hits the scrape, I'll get him on the scrape. But then any deer in the background, I'll also get them so I can cover this big ballooned out section of the food plot and the scrape with one camera. When you guys are setting cameras and doing stuff like this, you gotta think multiple layers in advance. This is really, really important. And the best deer hunters are the best at doing this because if you can do this, you take out all the potential errors and mistakes ahead of time because these big deer, when you're trying to kill a five, six, seven-year-old buck, you don't get the luxury of mistakes. You gotta get it right the first time. It is so rare to get two chances at a big mature buck. Shooting four-year-olds like most of you guys do. That was wrong, I shouldn't have said that, I'm sorry. So when you're shooting those old bucks, you gotta really go the extra mile with this stuff. Obviously I don't live in Illinois, I live in Iowa. So I am a camera hunter when it comes to this stuff because I have to rely heavily on my cameras in order to kinda let me know what's going on in the farm. And so I don't wanna run 8,000 cameras. So I wanna optimize each and every single camera to get the most coverage and give me the greatest chance of getting that buck on camera. So we're gonna get this all set up. I'll set this up in the perspective of the trail camera so you guys can see this. I want you to notice, I took out all the branches underneath. This is gonna be perfect. I can see under it, the deer can go completely 360 degrees around. They love that. And then it's right there within shooting distance, about 800 yards. Just kidding, it looks that far. But it's probably like 40 to 42. He's in a scrape, baby. He's gonna be distracted, you know? He's gonna have all the branches going by his ears making noise. He ain't gonna hear that thwack. What a great strategy to kill deer. And you see all this, and I know some of you are like, man, I hate the deer huntings go out this way. That's just coming from a guy that wants to go out in the woods and sit and just chill and be fine, which I'm all about those guys, if that's your goal. If you're following this channel, you guys know I am always chasing giant old deer. I need to be very calculated with every single step that I do. For doing that, you've gotta optimize your setups and maximize your output. You guys can hate on me all you want with this. You feel like these strategies are cheating. It's not. Putting out a big fat corn pile, that's cheating. Me optimizing freaking a spot for a buck to walk in front of a camera or manipulating the land or optimizing a trail for him to use it is not cheating. That's just being smart. We're just trying to be smart deer hunters here, and the guys that are the smartest are the ones that consistently kill the biggest deer. My advice is all geared around shooting those big old bucks. I don't know. I'm just hot. Ran over. Here we go. We got work to do. Let's roll the freaking tractor footed. Well, that's a wrap, boys. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. We got to do a whole bunch of stuff on my Illinois farm, which is fun, and I hope you guys learned a lot. When it comes to killing big bucks, gotta pay attention and think the next level. And always remember, details matter, and don't cut any corners. Remember, these big bucks will not tolerate mistakes, so make as few of them as possible. We'll see you guys in the next video.