2013 Food plots(Picture Heavy)

Has your EW maxed out? When did you plant it?

I did mine first of June, and nearly all have seed heads on them, but was amazed at how tall it got.

 

Yeah, I'd say it's pretty will headed out. I can't remember exactly when I planted it. Where it's really growing good it's as tall as 14 to 15 feet. It has done a wonderful job of concealing my tower blind. The screen on the front side of the timber isn't doing as well. I should have put down some nitrogen first, but I'll do it in the future.

 

Looks great! Praying for some rain here. Planted rye, oats, and clover last week, and it's just sitting. Not much rain since.

 

I know the feeling, we need it in a bad way. My plots seem to do better than average because the sit down in a bowl around a creek. The bowl tends to trap a lot of cooler air and moisture. Most mornings there will be fog covering it and I think that moisture is helping my plots thrive. I have a friend that has plots on his land, about three quarters of a mile south of me. His have all but burned up, and I can only attribute that to is the fact that his plots are on the ridge tops.

 

any updates on the plots? they look like they have been progressing really well.

 

How is the deer activity in your tubers? are they hitting it pretty hard?

 

Plots are doing pretty well. The beans have completely dried down and the deer are back to eating them. The clover and extreme plots did pretty well. I mowed them once earlier this year, which eliminated most of the tall weeds out of the. I'm going to need to hit them with some herbicide next year, and will frost seed them to really get the clover to out compete the competition. One of my little clover plots looks awesome, there's almost no competition in that one and it looks beautiful. Moved a cam over too it and had over 500 pics in a week on that plot. The Tubers are doing pretty well, and the deer have been hammering them pretty hard. There's several areas there they cleaned the all the way down to the ground.

I'll take some pics on Friday after I hunt and try to get them posted up here. I've passed several doe already this season in these plots.

 

Just a little update, most of you have probably seen that I was able to harvest a good buck. I'll give you a little back story as how it related to the food plot. I have had lots of deer using my plots this year. It's fairly common for 8-10 deer to be feeding in the soybean plot in the evenings. Mostly doe and small bucks. I planted the Egyptian wheat as a screen to block an opening in the timber near my creek crossing. Knowing that deer have avoided that opening, I thought If I put a screen in there, I would be able to walk in and out with more stealth that usual. Through my observations from multiple sits in multiple stand locations, I had learned that in fact the does had found the EW to be an ideal bedding area. Once the pre-rut started and small bucks were out chasing, it was pretty common place to see a young buck come out and head right to the EW screen. Generally they ended up bumping a doe out of there. Fast forward to 11/15. I set up in the stand over my brassica plot. The beans are to the east of me and the EW is to the north east of me. Just a little after first light, I can hear a buck moving around in the bean and grunting in the general direction of the EW. Sure enough he bumped a doe out of there and they proceeded to move towards me through the beans and into the brassica plot where the both crossed me at about 20 yards. A little later I saw another, larger buck pushing a doe in the clover plot to my west, so I grunted at him a couple times, but I guess he was just locked in to the doe. It wasn't but a few minutes later when I heard a buck grunting back in the general direction of the EW screen. He was grunting a lot, so I decided to grunt back. I gave him one short grunt followed by one that was a little louder, longer and more aggressive. He turned, followed the EW screen down, and ended up just below my stand at less than 15 yards when I released the arrow. I firmly believe that the plots played a key role in harvesting the largest buck to date for me. Not necessarily in the way I expected, but it worked out none the less.

Another observation I have made is that the deer do eat the head of the EW, and apparently really like them because they are choosing to eat them when they have soybeans right there as well. I know that EW will be in my plots every year from now on.

 

Congratulations! I'm planning on using a bunch of it next year for screens along all the road borders around the properties here.

 

Do you have any pictures of the turnips and seeing how big they are. I just bought that product and going to use it for next season was curious of what it looked like.