Anyone who reads this blog knows how much I respect Matt Duffy and the way he and his crew go about their business at The Country Lodge. Low number of hunters, sound management practices = mature whitetails. These mature whitetails often have impressive head gear as well.
As the deer hunting hormone seems to fade – many deer hunters turn to waterfowl to scratch their hunting itch. The Country Lodge offers limited waterfowl opportunities, and I was interested to learn more about them. I grabbed Matt’s ear for a few minutes, and learned a little about the duck hunting opportunities at The Country Lodge.
OF – Matt, what was the driving force in starting the duck hunting portion of your biz?
Matt – Our deer hunters started noticing how good our property was/could be for waterfowl. It seemed like the smart thing to do. Also, I started getting several calls from guys wanting to lease certain tracts of our land for waterfowl.
OF - Are there ever times when both duck and deer hunters are at the lodge, at the same time? Do any guides play for both teams (duck and deer wise I mean)?
Matt – Yes. But, our deer season is pretty much winding down by the time the ducks get here. Duck season opens on Thanksgiving and I am pretty much done with our paid hunters by then. Except for me, we have deer guides and duck guides. We really don’t have anyone else that does both.
OF - What type of management practices go into having a duck hunting operation? Clearly there is a lot of things involved with deer management – but what about ducks?
Matt – None. We just try to put our guys in the right place at the right time. We do plant some plots specifically for ducks, but the deer usually have them wiped out before the ducks get a chance. –rolleyes-
OF - What are the dates that you run the duck hunts? Do you offer combo hunts? Continue Reading →
The Country Lodge is a small outfitter situated in Southern Illinois. I’ve watched from afar how Matt runs his operation, and am very impressed. He doesn’t run The Country Lodge like so many other outfitters who try to make money by having tons of hunters. He understands that deer are a limited resource, and if not managed properly – the quality will diminish. I visited with Matt a little bit, and got the low-down on how they’ve been so successful, and how he plans on keeping it that way. He’s a cool dude who lives and breaths deer hunting and deer management, like so many of us.
1) Matt, how many acres is The Country Lodge, and how long have you been in the outfitting business?
We own 640 acres and that’s what we hunt. We also provide assistance and lodging to lessee’s of several thousand adjoining acres in which we have co-op’s with. We started outfitting hunts in 2008.
2) One of the many things that impress me about The County Lodge is the incredible quality control. As you know, there are tons of outfitters out there spewing statistics of crazy shot opportunities, and tons of hunters. You don’t do that. It’s crystal clear to me, and lots of other folks that you do things based solely on pleasing and a very little number of hunters, on some very good ground. What got you started in this line of thinking?
Very early on in our discussions about starting this venture, we had long talks about what our goals would be. It was very important to all of us that we make it something special. We wanted our guests to feel like they were part of our family and not just a number. There are several other outfitters in our area that try to run as many hunters as possible through their farms to try to make as much money as possible. Making a bunch of money was never in our goals. We simply wanted to provide a unique experience, from A to Z, try to make it affordable and be able to pay the bills. We talked about how many hunters we thought we could accommodate during the hunting season with the following things in mind:
How many quality bucks we thought we could harvest and maintain the current health of our herd.
How many days we could spend afield and not pressure the older deer.
How much time we are able to give to our hunters (we all have full time jobs).
Our total acreage is relatively small; we did not want to over hunt the property.
We want our hunters and guests to feel like they are “members our deer camp”. I am pretty confident we have created that atmosphere. Our re-booking rate has been amazing. We have 2 hunters coming back this fall that were not successful last year and one of them is bringing another hunter with him. 3 of our 6 for the upcoming season are coming back for the 3rd time.
3) First of all, as one of the people that follow your Facebook page (click here), I know you guys had a heck of a year. What are the top 3 things you attribute this to?
This past fall was almost surreal. The success that our paid hunters and our lodging guests had was unlike anything I have ever seen. I felt like I was in the twilight zone, my phone just kept going off…”big buck down”…”I shot the Big 10”….”Rage Butt is dead”. What are the top 3 things I attribute that to?
Our relationships with our neighbors. I can’t describe how good our relationships are with our neighbors. Most of them stay at our lodge, a few of them guide for us and the rest spend considerable amount of time at our lodge. I run trail cameras for most of them. We all share every picture we get; we share every buck sighting, where we are hunting etc., etc., etc. There is no way we could have the success we are having without these relationships.
The pressure (or lack thereof) we put on our deer herd. I tell all of my hunters that these deer don’t even know they are being hunted. A big percentage of our hunters are from the south and they have a hard time understanding this. We are VERY strict about hunting the wind. I promise you, I don’t care what you saw the day before, if the wind is wrong, you are not hunting that stand.
Trail cameras. We know basically every deer on the farm before we ever climb into a stand. We have our harvest goals set based on that info. We don’t use the cameras to pick a stand, but we use them to pick which farm we might be hunting.
4) How is this year looking?
Better than ever. It just keeps getting better every year. I am not sure how it could possibly get any better than last year, but I’m certain it will. When the season ended last year I had trail camera reviews of 12-15 bucks that were 3.5+ that were not harvested by us or any of our neighbors. That is very promising considering our goal is take 4-5 mature bucks each year from our farm. One thing is for sure, we have made some great friendships over the last 3 seasons and I can guarantee you those friendships will be stronger when our last hunter leaves this fall than they are today.
5) From following your posts on the QDMA Forum I know that you keep amazing, truthful statistics. What all stats do you keep, and why?
We keep a lot of stats. Some are important and others are just fun. Some of the stats we keep and why:
Live weight of every deer we harvest. Of course it is good to know the condition of your herd. We see weights continuing to go up, not by leaps and bounds, but they are going up. It is also just a fun stat to talk about. We had a doe harvested last year that weighed 165# and one of our lodgers shot a 5 year old buck on the 2nd day of season that weighed 272#, the largest whitetail I have ever seen.
Detailed stats of every hunter sit. We use the QDMA “Hunter Observation Log” which includes date, time on stand, quality bucks, other bucks, does and fawns. It also has a place for comments. After the season is over we compile this data into several charts and graphs and spreadsheets to determine what patterns are occurring on our farm. Again, it is also fun just to look back over the years and see what each stand and or farm has produced as far as hunter sightings.
I keep data from my trail cams. The main thing I am looking for is a total number of bucks we have on our farm and then we break those down into approximate age classes. We also try to get a count on our does so we can set our harvest guidelines for them as well. We have been running trail cameras hard for about 4 years now, and going into the 2010 season, we had 4 different bucks that we had 4 years worth of pictures of. We harvested 3 of the 4!!
We keep a few stats to help us promote our business as well. I keep track of shot opportunities, shots taken, and successes. Last year we only had 1 hunter that did not have an opportunity at a quality buck and he had to leave after day 3 of his hunt. 5 of our 7 archery hunters harvested a buck last year.
It’s kind of hard to fudge the stats when your hunter numbers are as low as ours. If we were running 40 or 50 hunters a year it would probably be pretty easy to make stuff up. But, when you are only running 6-8 and most of them keep in very close contact online, it would be impossible. We have been very lucky so far, but who knows what the future holds. Getting within archery range of a mature whitetail buck is no easy task, but we do our very best to get them the best opportunity possible. We cannot guarantee a harvest, but I guarantee every one of my hunters that I will do my very best to put them in a position to kill a quality buck.
6) Tell me about your trail camera strategy – what, when, where, and why?
There is one constant with my trail camera strategy, it’s always changing. Typically I would have a few cameras out right now, but this year I decided to wait until July. Good thing too because the river is up right now and about ½ of our land is under water. I decided it wasn’t important to get pictures of the bucks in the early stages of growth. I found that the deer pretty much live on our property year around, so it wasn’t necessary to try to get pictures of them over a 3 month period while they were growing their racks. I have used probably 10 different brands of trail camera and they all have their good and the all have their bad. Every camera we use is in the $250 or less price range. I have not taken the leap of faith to go the higher end cameras yet. Plus, I run about 20 cameras when I have them all out, that could get pretty expensive. My plan for this year is to run them hard from July through November and then I will slow down until January. I always pull my cameras in January because of the rivers. We have 6 different farms that we hunt ranging from 60 acres to 160 acres, so with 20 cameras I get a pretty good handle on what we have. We are fortunate to have some old oil wells on a few of those farms that have created some “natural” mineral licks. I am very successful with pictures at those sites in the summer. I take my cameras to where the deer are. When they leave the licks I will place them on a food source, whether it is a food plot or a big white oak. I have not had good luck placing my cameras over scrapes. Seems like they don’t come back and visit the scrape after they get their picture taken. I also place cameras on heavy trails. This works pretty well and I get pictures of a very large percentage of the deer on our farm. 3 years into this we have yet to harvest a buck we didn’t have a picture of.
7) I know you’re majorly involved in the QDMA organization, what can you tell us about that, and how The Country Lodge has benefited?
I am not sure I would classify myself as “majorly involved”. I try to do my part. Not one bit of anything I have said to this point would have happened without QDMA. Prior to August 2007 I had never heard of QDMA. John Brown Jr. introduced me to QDMA and the QDMA Forums online. I got involved in the forums and started learning about everything we had been doing wrong for the last 20 years. We starting changing the way we looked at deer hunting and things started getting better. I use the QDMA Forum for enjoyment, but I also use it as a resource. Any time I have had a question about anything, whether it be food plots, trail cameras, aging deer, anything, I can get a solid answer on that forum. I am the president of our local QDMA branch (www.siqdma.com) and have met a lot of great people in doing that. We also donate a hunt to the QDMA National Convention each year. Again, without QDMA none of this would have happened, I feel these things are the least I can do to try to pay it back.
What will your food plots look like for this coming year? What are you planting?
Well, right now not every good, all of our food plots are currently under water. We have never had much luck with spring plots due to the rivers, but this is the worst I have seen it. I’m guessing we will plant a lot of brassica’s, oats and rye for this fall. We have a great working relationship with Biologic and they help us choose what to plant in our plots. If things dry up in the next few weeks we may still get some beans planted. We are fortunate however that we have some of the most fertile land in the area. The deposits these rivers leave save us a ton of money and time on lime.
9) How did The Country Lodge make out with all of the horrific flooding that has been doing on in your area?
We will be fine. We started our cleanup this weekend. We probably lost a few thousand dollars worth of stuff, but our lodge is ok and that’s what’s important to us. Like I said earlier, it’s good for the land, but it’s hard on the farmers. Usually they are pretty much done by now and many of our neighbors haven’t even started. There will be a lot of beans around us this year.
10) Tell me about your doe harvest strategy. It is no secret that many, many outfitters skimp in this area. It’s clear that you understand the importance of this.
Like I said earlier, we use our trail cameras to set our harvest guidelines. Based on our camera surveys up until now, we do not have a “doe problem”. Our current and past goals have been to harvest at least as many does as we harvest bucks. The first we struggled with that, but over the last 2 seasons our hunters have harvested as many or more does than they have bucks. We offer our hunters a $250 refund if they harvest a doe. We had 1 hunter harvest 3 does last year, he told me after the 3rd one that the way he had it calculated he only needed to kill 9 more and his hunt would be free!! Well, it doesn’t quite work that way, but again, our hunters have been very helpful in harvesting does on our farm.
What will your food plots look like for this coming year? What are you planting?
