You guys with no ag fields with in miles are sitting on gold mines with good food plots. I have my doubts you could ever plant enough deer are eating machines. I have pics over hours of grazing and they don't even come up for air !
Absolutely Pat. That's why I'm looking forward to putting in a lot more next year. Here's a look at our property. That small red dot in the north 120 is where the food plot I'm talking about is.
You're definitely on an island there, Dan. LOL No wonder they're drawing in like flies. You're a lot more isolate than we are. We've got a lot more open terrain, but none of it is planted. It's just scrub bush, autumn olive and wild grass. Decent cover, but not ideal food. I think the nearest planted field is maybe 1/2 mile away, as the crow flies. Somebody is going to pull a big buck off of our property this year (my money is on RYBO!), and it's going to absolutely make my day. It seems like the brassica mix is really lush, but the stems are wet, crunchy and kinda brittle, so once they're mowed off, I'm not sure how well they're going to keep regenerating. If the deer weren't slaughtering it, it would be legitimately 12" deep in less than a month. We need those bulbs to develop! I loaded up the corn thrower this past weekend, so maybe they'll fill their guts with corn and acorns. Any kind of diversion will do to get them to temporarily back off the brassicas. I'm excited for the next camera pull. It'll be the first time we had the cameras on the plots, so I'm anxious to see what's hitting them.
It is exciting pulling your cameras off a plot for the first time Fran. Finally get to see if all your hard work paid off.
Pat: My plot is mowed down lower than yours! I wish mine looked that deep! It's chewed-down to ankle-deep in most places. My bigger plot is a little deeper. We'll see if I can produce a bigger buck, but you've set the bar pretty high, based on some of the pics you've posted. Dan: I'm sure all I'm gonna see is a camera filled with 10,000 pictures of that haggardly-ass old doe and her merry brood of starving fawns and daughters. They eat like there's no tomorrow. It's maddening. I guess they'll be fat and happy leading into the rut. I hope the whole family gets raped and ravaged by every monster buck in the county. That sounded really horrific and tasteless, but I'm being totally honest.
I've got some turnips, clover, rape and oats in now and I seeded some more clover in the ground too. These pics were taken about a week and half after the plots were seeded. We've gotten plenty of rain since then so I expect them to be pretty full by October 1st. My clover plots were really humping along back during the spring when the clover was two feet tall and juicy as heck. Then came July and August and the heat and drought nearly did them in, but they've bounced back nicely after the fall rains. I don't have any pics of the clover plot as it is now, but it's thickening up and getting some more height again.
Fran, I'd love to conversate on you implement issue. I've fabricated some great stuff over the last few years. I lost my plot virginity about 6 years ago. My main testing grounds are in the middle of a ton of hardwoods and I have had to clear most of the spots. When do you plant what? Clover is tough. Unless you seriously prepped and seriously maintained, you usually end up with weeds. How much more open area do you have? I've planted just about every type of turnip that you can find over the last few years. Almost all of them get hit too late. Green globe has worked the best for me. The best advice I can give anyone looking at seed,esp from a box store is to read the % label on the back. There's alot of stuff in there designed to grow and look green to make morons think they grew something. The thing I've learned, unless you have a nice sized farm.....you're not planting for nutrition, you're planting for attraction. Timing is KEY. In most areas, the deer are getting adequate nutrition from natural browse and crop fields and you're supplementing them with mineral blocks all year anyhow. You know deer are going where the food is an anytime of the year period, and unless you plant enough on smaller tracts to feed all year SO plant for the months you want them. I've found that liming in Feb/March, killing weeds in July, and planting in Aug (depending on the seed for early Aug or late Aug) has worked really well for pulling/attracting deer. Establish a time line. I plant a bean/sunflower/buckwheat mix in the first/second week of August and it matures and the deer hammer it the first three weeks in Oct. I plant turnips in the third week and the first mix keeps them off the t nips long enough to get them grown. I plant oats in the last week of Aug to the first week of Sept and they are a consistant source all season. They grow anywhere and stand up to browsing. Anyhow....I ramble....got to run. In DC for the night and this is my brother in law's CPU.
Great points, Ben. I know you've been at this for a while, so I'm definitely going to lean on you a bit as far as planting goes. The clover plot looked awesome in the early going, but it's petered-out now, and is being overtaken by grass. While they're not getting prime agricultural feeding, our deer are fat and happy. I have no interest in feeding them year-round. I just want to time it so that something is always ripe and ready during hunting season (October-Late January). I like your idea of seeding the plot such that one plant matures, dies, and the next wave is immediately available. A rolling foodsource. Our biggest problem is just prepping the soil. Maybe you can help me out with this one: A lot of our plots are, for all intents and purposes, virgin. Just small weedfields that, at some point, may have been a cow pasture or something. I think they're just residual strip mine clearings. Anyway, there's about 500 years' worth of matted grasses, weeds, rocks, roots, etc., which make the soil impenetrable to our set of discs. We need something to tow behind the ATV that can hold a lot of weight and just dig loose the soil so that we can then hit it with the discs. This is something that I drew up that I think may work. It's just a piece of I-Beam, modified into a drag that will accept interchangeable (bolt-on) spades. Weight can be added down the middle of the channel. You'd just chain it to the back of the quad and pull it like a runner sled. My buddy is an ironworker, so he's supposedly going to grab a giant chunk of scrap beam and make this for me, so we're hoping it works. Any easier suggestions?
Only Buck I've Seen So Far Well season opens Oct 1st here in Oklahoma and I have seen plenty of Does and Fawns on my cameras and around my place, I got my first pics of a buck yesterday.... not looking very promising this year. Hopefully after a couple of more years of feeding and minerals this will start to improve, but this year looks like I will be filling the freezer with does.
Quick, sorry for butting in but farming is something I do know, it sounds like your making an improvised ripper? Judging from your picture in my opinion I think you will need bigger shanks attached to that I beam. The ones you show will only scratch the top and not penetrate deep enough. I would go with something like pictured above. Are you able to control the depth they penetrate? if not you could go a little shorter.
Quik, that's a start. I will take a few pics for you when I get home from this business trip. Do you know if you have any used farm machinery places near you? You're ahead of the game in you are only dealing with overgrown pasture. The "ripper" you're designing may work later on with more teeth, but for now it's just gonna do one of two things, draw lines or clog up. If you have access to steel and welder, you're practically home free. You just need to find "bottom" to a plow and do some welding. One other thing to look for on craigslist or at the machinery yard is a section of a spring tooth harrow. I use it for everything, but it's particularly good at getting rid of that grass after you've turned it over. I use it to knock down the overturned dirt and to cover seed. If you don't have access to the used farm machinery parts. I'll get something rigged for ya. I get out to western PA twice a month and I've got two hunting buds in the Pitt area as well, we'll make ya a real farmer next year. I do it all with a 500 CC quad, but we've also used my brothers 350 honda too.
We had a really decent looking pull-behind plow implement that a farmer gave us. Unfortunately, it was about 50 years old and was rusted to hell. We cleaned her up and took her on a one-way trip to the farm. Once the spades started digging in, all four of them just bent backwards and it didn't accomplish anything. We got two good passes out of it, before it was reduced to a pile of mangled steel. Colby - I only need to go about 6" deep, max. Everything that we're planting is basically throw and grow, but it's nice to have a good, clean seed bed to give them a good start. Each of our current or possible future plots are long and narrow, which isn't so bad for using an ATV, which is all we've got. Our plots are never much more than 20 yds wide. Your help is greatly appreciated bro. I'm like a 3rd grader out there trying to learn to farm. Here's my improvised brush hog. LOL We're hoping to find a good deal on a Swisher for next year. Yuppie farming at its finest. Ben - do you mean one of these? (I don't have one - just found a pic online) I have access to a welder, so if you have any designs drawn up with steel that I can readily get (Angle Iron, I-Beam, Tube Steel), you'll have to show me. There are definitely some used farm equipment dealers around, so I do have resources...
Yeah....I have two designs. One's been tested and a second's about to take flight. The second should be really good. The pic that you have is decent, but that's one that splits the earth to speak. I like a right or a left that you can turn it good and keep working along in a direction. Take me a picture of the type of hitch you have on the back of your quad when ya get the chance. Are you doing anymore planting this year?
I'll get the measurements on the quad hitch. Definitely no more planting this year. The next time we'll be working in there will be next spring, so I have some time to put a plan together. All is quiet in there now, and the property is closed to all activity except hunting. They don't know it yet, but they're about to be under siege. Here are the two existing plots. In the lower picture, I added what we'll probably do next year. This year, we were just too pressed for time, and out of fundage. The gameplan is to make a long, narrow foodplot winding back through this open area on the top of the hill. It's always littered with scrapes, so it seems logical to stretch a kill plot out through the brushy hilltop, right next to the bedding area. If you go to the northermost point of the current plot, there's an annual scrape in there, where these two guys kept making appearances last fall.
Plowing is a good idea because it will turn the soil over. Better soil is underneath whats on top. I think your on the right track. Good luck hope it works out for you. I wish we could plant food plots here in Colorado.
Mostly me though I am in a rutright now, cant seem to be ahead of them yet. Found first rub line this morning, with a big set of tracks within the last few days. Slow for me for the last 3 years Ive got my doe within an hour of opening light on the first day. Due for a slow start I guess, I have some bucks I really want to get on but the doe is eludin me right now!
It's official guys..... I suck ! shot right over a nice doe this morning. She was on edge which put me on edge and I rushed my shot. And I must say I've never seen a deer "duck" so low. Oh well, there's always next time ! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
