Prairie Sportsman

(soft music) -

Bret

Roger Strand spends a lot of time looking at deer. And he can thank himself for that. (gentle music) How much fun is it to be able to take a piece of property and design it, construct it? I wanna put trees here, I wanna put a food plot here, I'm gonna put a stand here, I'm gonna put a camera there. And just construct a wildlife kingdom out here. I'm a firm believer that we've been given a lot of opportunity. And so it's my ability to give back and make that habitat. So they've got places to hide in the winter, shelter, they've got food sources with these food plots. -

Bret

Roger grew up in Western Minnesota and took a piece of ground that once held rows of corn and created a little slice of heaven. Like you said, I designed some things, yes. But the good Lord takes and does some things that changes the way it actually turned out, and got way better. (Bret laughing) Sometimes you get lucky. - Yes, yes. In 1976, my dad shot a real life nice buck about a mile from here. It scored 198 and seven eighths in Boone and Crockett scoring. At that time, I registered in 1980, four years later it was 57th in the world. Right now it's 4,000 and something. That has to do with lot of deer management, there's a lot of people that have land that do farm or game management on it, Food plots, mineral, we've got 19 food plots and we've got probably 16 mineral locations. And the mineral stuff that I've seen, yeah, we probably get some benefit on antler size, that was the whole purpose of doing it. But what I really see is the does are so much healthier, they are the ones that spend the most time at the mineral licks. So when you look at this spot right here, Roger, obviously, you got to stand here. But everything that you can see from this stand is here for a reason. Yes, it is. In 2001 in October, I collected all kinds of seeds, black walnuts, green ash, plus we purchased some acorns, and we just spread them out with a fertilizer spreader and packed 'em down, and let them just come up naturally. We tried to get a 10,000 tree per acre stand, we ended up with 7,800. We actually had... DNR came out and counted. -

Bret

Wow. So we had 7,700 trees. And the purpose of that is just to get them to grow fast. Okay. - And it's really turned out quite well. It got probably too well in the fact that it got so thick. There's 13 different hardwoods in here. -

Bret

Okay. -

Roger

There's some hickory, there's three other kinds of oak trees, there's green ash. Actually, we have some Ohio buckeyes, a friend of mine had a tree, and collected the chestnuts roasting on an open fire. And I put a pail of those in there, just ice cream pail, and they've come up really well. The deer really like those nuts. -

Bret

So this is just a random pattern of trees. Would you do any varieties different? Or would you add or subtract any of the species that you use? I found out that red oaks don't grow well in this soil. We have high pH soil and not the acid soils that they're more accustomed to. The baroque and white oak are the ones that have grown the most. The trouble with those, the deer just love them. And so I've had to build wire cages around little small ones, just so they can get up big enough to grow up. Now you've got a lot of tree plantings here. You've got a lot of the like the thermal cover in rows, which has some benefits, but you like this random patch of hardwoods. I really enjoyed the natural evolution of how it's grown versus rows. Rows are fine, but then you've always got that opening in between, I like it where it's just natural. We've ended up planting about 70,000 trees between this farm and another one that I have, so. -

Bret

Those rows, a lot of times will be travel corridors or well, maybe offer protection from the wind or snow. Have you found that a combination of those and these hardwoods giving them a travel corridor to get here, and then they like to just kind of move freely through here? You hit the nail right on the head. You need both, I think. I prefer this for just a natural habitat. And so I believe that the food plots giving them the protein and the carbohydrates that they need at different times of the year, is very important for a healthy management. And I enjoy it, this is what I live for. Yeah, why did you start this in the first place? Just because, I mean, I bought this place just for hunting. And you got to develop it. You've just got to take it and do it. I mean, this wasn't a program when it was first put in. And now it's no longer an NRCS program, and so there's no funding, this is just idle woods, but I wouldn't trade it for anything, so. (soft music) -

Bret

All right, so we're at another spot here. There's a stand right in front of us here. And then this is a food plot here, Roger? This is a food plot. It's about, I'd say an acre and a half to two acres in here. As you can see, it's really low right now, a month ago it was standing this tall with clovers. It's got a lot of clovers and there's some grass mixture in here. The clovers provide protein. The deer need protein all year long. But when it gets to be like the last week or so of August, first part of September, their diet likes to go more towards carbohydrates to get some weight on. -

Bret

And you put in different plots for different times of the year. Yep, they have a real need for protein in the summer, especially for antler growth and all that, they need that. -

Bret

And some of this is done with pheasants that mine too, I bet. Absolutely. in fact, actually, some turkeys. We are gonna go see the next food plot. I experimented with something that I read about called chuffa, C-H-U-F-F-A. And it's a plant that grows like this in a clump. And when you pull it up, it's just loaded with little seeds, they call them nuts. And the turkeys will grab those and dig them up with their feet and chew them. And it's a really great food source for turkeys. -

Bret

While Roger's hard work on the landscape means he doesn't have to travel far to hunt, he has ventured far and wide in pursuit of big game. (soft music) -

Roger

I have hunted elk in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Canada. I have hunted moose twice up in Alaska and brown bear up in Alaska. -

Bret

Not only is Roger enjoyed those adventures, but he did it after surviving an epidemic at an early age. I was two and a half, 1952, kind of the end of the what they call the polio epidemic. About the end of August, first parts of September was the end of the epidemic. And I got it to the third week of August. And I was in the hospital for about four and a half months. -

Bret

A hospital who finally opened their doors to Roger's father, after two hours of persistent knocking. I didn't learn this til about 10 years after he passed away. Dad put me in the car, we were down in the cities by midnight. And Sister Kenny's is where we went to, and they were locked up, they were closed, they were full. We found out that my dad started banging on the doors, and he still kept banging for two hours. And they kept telling him, "We're full, we can't take anymore." And he just kept on pounding. Finally, at two o'clock in the morning, they opened up. And said, "we'll put a bed in the hallway, and we'll put you in that." The two older sisters at the time had... We'd gotten like a flu. And that's what happens is you get like flu conditions and they got over it and I got sick again about a week later. And what they say is that polio was rampant in families, but only 2% of the people that were exposed to polio or had the polio virus in them actually got paralysis. So I was the only one that in our family that had paralysis in my left leg. And for the most part, I was able to do a lot of things. I participated in sports. I was in gymnastics and stuff in college. And been able to hunter walk pretty much okay till about 15 years ago, when I turned about 55. Things started changing, they have post-polio syndrome. And it started to affect the muscles in my leg. And so now I wear a complete brace all the way up to my hip. And without it, I can't walk, with it, I can do what I want. -

Bret

The paralysis may have slowed Roger down, but it didn't stop him from enjoying the outdoors. Alaska, if you ever get a chance to go to Alaska, I don't care for what the reason to go, it is something that's completely different than anything around here. You're completely at the mercy of the weather, the planes and everything just travel and just the actual hunting conditions, you're always at the mercy of the weather. And... But the experiences that you have are... I've just been so blessed to be able to enjoy those hunts. First one didn't go too well. It was a horse pack in about 10 miles, and I had not ridden a horse probably for 20 years. And when I got on a horse, my left leg that was polio afflicted, it pinched a nerve and my leg went numb. And so, my hunt got cut short real quick. Three days and I just didn't... I couldn't do what they needed to do with the horses. And so, that one got cut short. The next one we walked. And that was about the beginning of the post-polio syndrome. And with me, and we had about a mile and a half to two mile walk every morning. And five minutes on the last day, we had to wrap up and leave, a moose steps out, and fortunately, we got him, right at the end, yep. Just a wonderful experience, so. -

Bret

Quite a feat for anyone who dreams of an Alaskan moose. But for someone like Roger Strand, it's just more proof that good things come to those who work hard. It's just been a very rewarding experience. The good Lord takes care of things that I don't think of by far, and makes the stuff that I've tried to do and that I've tried to plan for way more than what I ever thought was possible to have. And because of it, there was just, the experience has just been fantastic, so.