Ryan from Indiana asks,
Hello Mr. Bill first off I’m a big fan of yours. Your information with Midwest whitetail has helped me to learn a lot about hunting over the years!!I have a question. I’m thinking about getting into contracting out to people installing food plots and making people’s properties better for hunting and kind of starting it on the side. Just curious if you could give me any tips or advice on ways to do it?? And if it’s a good thing to get into and in high demand??
Bill responds,
Topic: Land Management Consulting Business:
Starting a land management service is a pretty solid idea but it requires a lot of money up front to buy all the equipment required to do it well. Plus, all your customers will want you on their property at the same time since the spring planting windows are often fairly narrow.
Ryan,
I appreciate the support. Thanks.
I have actually looked at this and I do think that is a decent business, but there are some problems related to it. First, the only reason they are going to hire you to put in their food plots rather than do it themselves, is because you have equipment or time or both – which they don’t have. That means you will need to buy all that equipment and have a way to get it to the customer’s property.
If you live in an area with lots of deer management, you might be able to just drive the equipment to the site, but more than likely you are going to need a big trailer and that requires a big truck. I think you can see where this is going. It costs a lot of money to get into it.
Time is the other issue. When the weather is good, everyone wants their projects done at the same time. It is hard to spread the work out over the year, though summer clover and brassica plantings and maintenance is one way, etc. Spraying, fertilizing – those can be summer projects too. But, the bulk of your demand will be in the spring. You might have 20 potential customers, but you might only be able to get to half of them. Keep that in mind.
You can get the word out via all kinds of ways, but a simple method is posting on those bulletin boards at most gas stations. You would be surprised how many services I have found on those boards that I utilized over the years. Word of mouth is also good. You will figure the marketing part out. That is really not the hard part, buying all that equipment is the hard part.
It is much less expensive to get into the TSI and the management planning part, but that requires a fair amount of experience and credibility. It can be done, but it will take longer to get the required reputation for knowing what you are doing.
I think it makes sense if you have the equipment anyway, or have access to it inexpensively (family, for example). Then I would do it on the side at first until you figure out whether it makes sense to dive in full time.
Again, there is demand, for sure, but it is hard to actually make a good business out of this kind of work. Good luck and Merry Christmas. (12/17/21)
