- It is the age old question.

How do we  get more game animals on the landscape, whether it be deer, ducks, upland  birds?

Well, no matter the topic, the answer's always the same.

It's  preserving and creating more habitat.

When it comes to creating habitat for wildlife,  the key lies in the complex, a variety of grasses, thermal cover, food and water are all part of  an ideal landscape for wild critters like deer, pheasants, ducks, and even small games such as  rabbits.

A quality habitat complex will attract wildlife year round, but in the spring,  as the males and females go through their annual breeding rituals, they'll be more  visible before vegetation grows tall.

Here are a few of the things I've been fortunate  enough to film in this well-managed complex.

Surviving the harsh Minnesota winters can  be challenging for wildlife, but giving them thermal cover and shelter such as cattails and  woody cover like this can make a big difference.

Shrubs and short trees offer protection from  overhead predators, and evergreens can provide safety during winter storms.

It's recommended  though to avoid planting other trees which can attract nest predators and give aerial hunters a  perch to scout from.

Willow thickets and phragmite stands can offer suitable natural cover as well.

These willow thickets may be one of my favorite places to target late season for pheasant hunting  and there's a reason why.

If you look right here, you can see we just had a big snowfall.

Big  storm came through and the snow inside this thicket is just trampled.

Not just pheasants,  but deer, rabbits, other small game have been using it as well too.

Wetlands in a complex can  offer multiple benefits, including something as simple as giving wildlife a drink, but cattails  may be the best all-around cover on the prairie.

If possible, a food plot situated  close to thermal cover and large tracks of grasses can be the perfect  complement to a habitat complex.

A mixture of foods such as corn, soybeans,  brassicas, and sorghum benefit wildlife at different times of year with different conditions.

As snow piles up, food is covered.

Beans and corn that grow tall feed pheasants and deer  during those long, cold, snowy months.

This complex has everything you need to help  pheasants get through a tough winter with a lot of snow.

They'll use the willow thickets  nearby, and at least twice a day, they will fly into the food plot using the tall corn as cover  as they jump up to pick kernels along each row.

Having a variety of grasses and woody  cover is important because after a big, wet, heavy snowfall like this one, a lot of  this big blue stem can get knocked down and it's unusable.

But during the spring, this  grass provides nesting cover for pheasants, other upland birds, and waterfowl  like mallards and blue-winged teal, which have been known to nest up to a mile  away from water sources in grass like this.

If you wanna build more birds  or deer or other wildlife, consider creating a habitat complex on your  property.

And there's plenty of organizations out there like Pheasants Forever, or even the  Minnesota DNR that can help you get started.