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Food Plot Updates

Posted: Sun May 29, 2016 6:44 am
by Markus
We're re-doing our food plot this spring. I made a trip in yesterday to check the camera. Despite the poor food mix growing there, we've had 4 different deer in during the past 10 days. 2 does, 2 small bucks It's tought to see what they're browsing on, but it jus looks like random fresh green grass shouts...which is likely the timothy that took over the clover.

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We'll be tilling the plot and reseeding next weekend. We're going with a clover/brassica mix for the main plot and we're thinking about trying a bit of radish on the small side. I'm heading in today to mow all the vegetation down to the crown to help with tilling.

Re: Food Plot Updates

Posted: Sun May 29, 2016 10:33 pm
by smitty55
Nice to be thinking deer already. It would be neat to see how the plot progresses over the season.

Food plots take time and money of course, but specially in low agricultural areas I think they can be a fabulous benefit along with the mineral sites in helping to maintain a healthy local herd while providing potential harvesting of selected animals that you have monitored over the years.

I'm pretty sure I know what your answer would be if I asked you if you thought it was worth it. :wink:

Cheers

Re: Food Plot Updates

Posted: Mon May 30, 2016 8:15 am
by Markus
It's definately worth it. :)

We've take 3 bucks off the plot, but rarely hunt it. It was made for the doe's and the fawns. We felt if we could improve their food sources, it would not only increase our fawn recruitment, but would attract a few bucks around too....but doe heath/numbers and fawn recruitment is our number one objective.

Food plots arent costly, but there is a labor commitment to get them going....especially in deep woods locations like ours. Clearing tree's and working with no soil is challanging. but once its established, it takes care of itself. Our plot is 4 years old now and this will be the first time we're tilling it and reseeding.

We loaded the ground with horse manure when made it. We would have prefered cow or sheep, but we had a huge amount of horse avaiable to us and it was well composted. Unfortunetly, it had a guge amount of weed seed in it and the result was those grass seeds eventually took over the clover/brassicas we had inthe plot. Deer still eat it, just not as much as the clover and brassica.

Looking forward to getting it re-seeded.

Re: Food Plot Updates

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2016 12:00 pm
by fatluke
Awesome stuff as usual Mark. Keep the progress reports coming!

Re: Food Plot Updates

Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2016 7:52 am
by Markus
This hot dry spring and summer put a stop to any plans we had with the plot face lift. We decided it was too risky to till and reseed, so we let the vegetation go for another year and just kept it trimmed. And I'm glad we did. It never rained for 45 straight days and the plot would have been baked.

Despite the poor grass/brasica/clover mix, we did get deer stopping by occasionally. I honestly think the hot weather was too much for them to move far from cover and water sources. The flies alone must have drove them mad. We had about half a dozen resident deer stop by...nothing special except 1 buck. I'm hoping to see more pics of him this fall and see what he's grown into. He had a great start to his rack.

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With the recent rain and cooler days, we should start seeing more and more deer show up at the plot.