#109 | Inside Headhunters TV: Whitetail Management, Trapping & the Long Game | Randy Birdsong

Ike Eastman sits down with Randy Birdsong of Headhunters TV for a genuine conversation on the long game of Midwest whitetail hunting, land management, and predator trapping. A southeast Missouri kid who followed the best whitetail hunting to Southern Illinois University (on what he calls his "Van Wilder program"), Randy got his first break filming for Whitetail Freaks with Don & Kandi Kisky and Lee & Tiffany Lakosky before Jeff Wayne handed him his shot at his own show on Outdoor Channel. The heart of the conversation is the Raven Project — his 1,000-acre Missouri property that six years ago held maybe 15 deer, and today holds over 100 mature deer, along with the story of the 8-year-old buck he took there last fall. Ike and Randy get into food plots, water, cover, doe reduction, being "only as good as your neighbors," and Randy's real passion: trapping. From running a 20-mile trap line before school at age 10 (with grandma tailing on a four-wheeler) to 113 coons in three weeks on his Oklahoma property, he breaks down when to hit coyotes, coons, and possums to protect fawns and turkey nests — and why you can't just trap a property out, because knock a coyote population down and they'll simply throw bigger litters.