Kill Plot

I used to have a great spot to hunt right behind my house. I was in a club whose property abutted my own property. When I say "my property" I mean my 3 acre lot that my house sits on. Well, I got "booted" from that club. The land-owner decided to limit hunting to the "caretaker and his immediate family". I really think it was because I was actually killing deer regularly. Anyway....

The back of my property is a natural funnel, but it's fenced for horses. I have seen deer traveling through there and have even managed to take a couple of does there. Still, the traffic has become minimal since the horse fence went up.

Que my neighbor. I have the greatest neighbors in the world. He has the 3.6 acres next to me. He doesn't hunt, but he allowed me to clear an area on his property to plant a small food plot to hunt on weekends when I don't want to travel.

It's probably only a little bigger than my house, but I worked my butt off on this one. The growth was unbelievably thick. I must have cut down and dragged out a couple hundred small saplings ranging in size from 1/2 inch to 2 inches along with cane, briars and wild grape vines. I used the teeth on a box blade to dig it up because of all the small stumps. I planted it this past Saturday with Mean Bean Crush and Shot Plot from Evolved Harvest and harrowed the seeds in. I also put in a mineral site, put up my first ever trail camera on it (I ordered a Covert Extreme Red 40 since Covert was nice enough to donate to my St. Jude auction) and hung my Lone Wolf Alpha 2 for our prevailing southwest wind.

Since it's only 150 yards from my house, I scraped together all the water hose I could find and set up a sprinkler to water it. There are two small road sections I made that I have to water by hand. I'd wager that I'm the only person who is using their house water to grow a food plot. :D Anyway, everything is coming up already.

I'll have to post some pics of it once it starts to grow. I do know that it's in a sweet location and there are some big deer that travel that corridor. This is a satellite image of my place with the plot roughly drawn in yellow. The white square is where I hung the stand.

Like I said, this is just a place for a hunt when I don't want to travel or a quick hunt after work.

 

The owner of this land is more like family to me than a neighbor. He's in his early 70's and I help him every chance I get.

I know this area very well, including the club land it sits next to since i used to hunt it. I'll be drawing their deer over to me now.

 

Here's one trail cam pic of the plot before stuff started coming up and another with my first non-raccoon/opossum pic. I didn't even know we had these critters this close to my house.

The mineral site I mentioned is at the base of the leaning tree in the center of the pic. The daylight you can see back in the back behind the trees is the levee of the pond shown in the satellite pic in the first post. I know from experience that deer will either travel my property or travel the levee and drop down right there.

 

Yep. When I was in the adjoining club I took this guy just about 200 yards from where I put this plot in. He wasn't a high scorer, but he was mature and had great mass that he carried all the way to the tips of the tines - a really decent deer for this area.

 

Part of me would like to, but this plot is hidden from their sight and I'd like to keep it that way. If I do get lucky and take a good buck there and they know about it I'd be worried that one of the younger guys in that club would move in and cut me off.

Nah, I'll keep any successes I have at this spot quiet in my home area.