Unknow Speaker: In November of 2018, Luke Brewster killed the largest free-range whitetail buck ever taken by a hunter.
He didn’t shoot it on a high-dollar ranch or on a thousand-acre farm that he had all to himself. Instead, Luke was hunting with his buddies on a working farm in eastern Illinois.
Those buddies had put in years of habitat work on those farms, with dozens of trail camera photos of the buck, which they named Mufasa.
Sure, all that habitat work helps to grow big antlers. But if it were only about antlers, Luke and his buddies could retire now — and they’re definitely not doing that.
Respecting the land that they hunt is a year-round thing for them. It’s a lifestyle. Their efforts make the land better for everything: deer, for sure, but also turkeys, small game, songbirds, and a host of other critters too.
This is the story of the country that grew the world-record buck.
Justin Cearlock: Our food plots aren’t what made Mufasa, Mufasa. Part of that is just genetics, and some of it is just freaky genetics. I also think an injury may have played a role.
But I do think the food plots make a difference. For one, I love being out and doing it anyway, across the board.
Will Brantley: It helps having acres and acres of row crops around here, along with a lot of little food plots placed pretty strategically right around your stands.
It’s kind of an old, grown-up battlefield. We’ve got a buddy with a backhoe on his way, and he’s going to tear out some bushes and stuff.
The plan here is to chainsaw some of this, just to be able to see, and then work on getting it ready to till, fertilize, and all that good stuff.
Justin Cearlock: Most likely, we’ll plant clover down through there. We may mix something with it the first year to have a little more draw, but then the clover allows us to have it year after year. We don’t have to do something every year with it.
Will Brantley: Cool. We’ll grab some chainsaws and start cutting, I guess.
Luke Brewster: The food plots pretty much just draw the deer. Typically, when the corn is still standing, not too much. But once the corn and beans come up, it gives them a little something extra.
Justin Cearlock: My brother, Josh, was the original person hunting all these properties for years. He had some of the same places where we make plots now, and he started years ago with one of his friends — probably 20 to 25 years ago.
We’ve changed a lot since then. Back then, it would have been one or two areas, and we didn’t have the equipment that we have sometimes now.
We really like the small plots. That’s the way it is for us. We don’t have many areas to make a big plot. There’s nothing wrong with a big plot — I’d love to have a finger where I could have one of those — but you have to take what you’re given.
For us, usually it’s just some grass waterways or small pockets where they can’t get their machinery in for farming. So, we turn that into something to bring the deer closer.
It’s my passion. It’s what I love. Other than my family, that’s what I eat, sleep, and drink. That’s what I’m thinking about a lot of the time.
If it’s deer season, I’m thinking about which deer are out there, what they’re probably going to be doing, what the wind is doing, and where I can get.
If it’s the off season, I’m thinking about how we can improve what we’ve got. What can we do to bring a couple more of the deer from the neighbors over here more often? What can we do to keep them here?
In the end, everybody has to have something to do with their time, or a hobby. For me, this is it.
Justin Cearlock: What we’ll do here is just a bow-range burn. So we’re not seeing a big habitat change of the whole woods or anything, but it’s just to burn off some of this leaf litter and get this understory to green up near one of your stands.
It creates a lot of new browse and stuff there, and deer come in and pick on that. It’s also a good way to get comfortable with burning.
It’s growing season, so it’s probably going to go kind of slow and kind of smoky, if we can get it to go. The main thing is that we’ll do a good firebreak around it, burn with this wind, keep it small, and have fun with it.
We did a small, prescribed fire here in the woods. It didn’t burn great, but it did okay.
What you’re looking for here at the end of a burn is that this leaf litter is down to ash, and it’s pretty well down to bare dirt. That bare dirt is ultimately what you’re after.
When this stuff gets rain on it, it’s going to sprout up into a lot of new green forbs and a lot of new growth. Deer like that stuff.
It’s a fun way to spice up your hunting spot.
Luke Brewster: You’re going to come out here and sit on your land, and it’s completely rewarding. You put in that work, and you get to see the buck come over.
