This is the video transcript. To watch the video for this episode click here.

GRANT: April 17th, tax day across the USA, but there’s good stuff going on, too. We got our Eagle Seed beans in. Shotguns are all patterned up and we had the opening day of turkey season.

ANNOUNCER: GrowingDeer.tv is brought to you by Bass Pro Shops. Also by Reconyx, Trophy Rock, Gallagher, Muddy Outdoors, Eagle Seed, Nikon, Winchester Ammunition, Redneck Hunting Blinds, Dead Down Wind, and Antler Dirt.

GRANT: Temperatures are much warmer than normal throughout most of the whitetails’ range. Leaves are already out. It’s green and it’s time for us to be getting that drill in the ground. So, we’ve got those Eagle Seed beans delivered. We’ll be calibrating that drill soon and getting ready to plant.

GRANT: Now, I typically plant my soybeans when the soil temperature at two inches deep is 62 degrees at 9:00 a.m. That’s the coldest time of the day for soil temperature. It’s been cooling all night, sun finally gets up and starts warming it up. But it’s been 60 plus degrees for several weeks now, but I held off planting because I just knew we’d get one more frost. I don’t see a cold front in the forecast and Adam and I are gonna be working on getting that drill calibrated and putting some beans in the ground mixed in with turkey hunting in the next couple of weeks.

GRANT: Oh, I love how easy that adjusts.

GRANT: These two targets are 20 yards for Adam and I. Now, I prefer the 3 inch Double X, been shootin ‘em for years. Adam, being a little bit more modern; tough guy; shooting that 3.5 inch, extended range, reaching on out there.

GRANT: There are a huge amount of positives to using a Nikon turkey scope versus a bead on a shotgun. Two that really come to mind is you’re aiming a shotgun, especially with the tight turkey choke and tight turkey loads. It’s not the scatter gun we all kind of grew up thinking about. You’ve got to shoot for the pattern.

GRANT: Another real important point about using a turkey scope versus a bead or even sights is that with the scope, you’ve got to keep your head down, right on the stock – good shooting form to see that turkey head right in the middle of your kill zone. Using a scope keeps that head right in perfect position and assures that the shot is true.

GRANT: I’m still using three inch Double X and Adam is using 3.5 inch extended range. And at 50 yards, Adam, sure enough, has a few more pellets in the kill zone although both of us have a dead turkey on the ground.

GRANT: It’s always a good time to learn and this week I had the privilege of College of the Ozarks wildlife biology class coming out to take a tour. And I had asked Professor Dr. Bob Snyder what subjects he wanted me to address on this year’s tour. He stated this year he’d really like to focus on managing smaller properties. What can we do to manage whitetails and make them more huntable on smaller acreages?

GRANT: That was an easy assignment for me because we gotta remember: deer always need food, cover and water. So, one of the first things I do when I’m looking at a smaller property is to study Google Earth or some mapping system and see if there’s food, cover, water on that property or where it’s distributed throughout the neighborhood. Knowing that deer are gonna be on and off the borders of smaller property, I want to make sure I have quality food during the hunting season.

GRANT: That’s not bad is it?

STUDENT: No. That’s not.

GRANT: No, that’s not bad.

GRANT: What you do is you gr-get a hold of it and then you grab the girl right behind you. (Laughter)

GRANT: So, Monday morning we went out where we’d heard some toms roosting on what we call 50 Acre Glade Ridge.

GRANT: As the sun come up, Adam and I had already been there 30 minutes just standing around, listening, on the highest point around, waiting to hear a tom and strike off on a cut and run. The morning did not dawn clear. There was a big cloud bank still in the east from that front, so it was a slow sunrise and that’s not good gobbling conditions.

GRANT: We drove around the mountain, got on another logging road and started easing down listening and getting in a better position to do a little prospecting.

GRANT: Sure enough, the bird cut our call and we’re going to the tree we’d already picked out, getting ready to set up and put the hammer down.

GRANT: This bird sounded like an old tom, raspy old gobble, by himself and not gobbling at everything we threw at him.

GRANT: After an extended period of time, I catch just a little bit of the fan through the trees.

GRANT: Adam and I, as almost all film crews have set up, that when the camera man kee-kee’s, it means he’s got a clear view and it’s time to shoot.

GRANT: I can see this bird’s head through a patch of weeds. It would drift back and forth just a few yards, but I didn’t think Adam was seeing it, cause Adam was calling extremely loud.

GRANT: Monday was the first day I was wearing my Wild Ear hearing protection while turkey hunting and I gotta tell you, I loved every bit of it.

GRANT: I was stunned at how much better I could hear. And several times, Adam and I would debate. “No, that bird’s 100 yards away.” “No,” he’d say, “It’s 200 yards away.” I just didn’t realize how much I had not been hearing.

GRANT: Yeah, I think it’s (inaudible) yards – that bird.

GRANT: As that bird drifted up the hill just a little bit and I snuck a peak at Adam, I saw a side of Adam I don’t see very often. He was clearly frustrated with me as I was frustrated with him because I couldn’t understand why he was blowing a kee-kee at the top of his lungs.

GRANT: Adam looked at me like I was some kind of old fogey and we both kind of later realized that it sounded so loud because he was kee-keeing into my Wild Ear hearing enhancement units. No wonder. I’ve been deaf for years without using these and a normal call sounds very quiet to me. When Adam did a normal call, I thought he was calling like the bird was 100 yards away. And it was simple miscommunication. So, the old tom lived to challenge us another day and you can bet the next time Adam kee-kee’s, I’m pulling the trigger.

GRANT: Now, I had a full day of hunting with my new hearing enhancement units and the thing I like about ‘em the most is I can tell direction really well. Matter of fact, it’s become a game for Adam and I. We’ll hear a turkey gobble or a truck on a road or something, and I’ll point to it to see if I’ve identified the direction correctly. It’s like a whole new lease on hunting after years of being handicapped by not having good hearing.

GRANT: No matter whether your hearing is perfect or you’re like me and you’ve used guns too often without protecting your hearing early on, I hope you have a chance to get out and listen to Creation this week, really enjoy it and I hope you have better communication than Adam and I had. Thanks for watching GrowingDeer.tv.

GRANT: (Truck stuck) One, two, go! Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.

GRANT: If I’m going to hire a property manager for one of my clients or a new wildlife biologist to work for us, I certainly want someone that assesses a problem, addresses that problem and moves on. That’s what those young men and women are taught to do at College of the Ozarks. I don’t work there. I’m not a professor there. But if you’re not familiar with College of the Ozarks, you might want to check it out, cause the students there actually work their way through school. There’s no tuition, but if they’re gonna be an engineer, they work in the power house or the plant or whatever. If they’re gonna be a wildlife biologist, they’re out on the school property. They own a lot of acreage. Hands on experience cannot be replaced. College of the Ozarks, you might want to check it out.