Durana/Ladino clover winter forage
- Thread starter ToddG
- Start date
Someday isle
5 year old buck +
What if you just spread some winter rye into the clover? I did that in one of my food plot trails last week hoping to get the best of both worlds.
ToddG
5 year old buck +
I thought about trying that. I really don't have anything to lose. I have already purchased the seed.
Livesintrees
5 year old buck +
Definitely nothing to lose. You know why? Bc it will work. And fast.
bbcoach
5 year old buck +
Durana is a fall and winter attractant here in 8A. I am in Eastern NC, a couple hundred miles south of you, and the deer and turkeys utilize my durana all through that time period. The avatar to the left is a half acre, 300 yards long and about 25 to 30 feet across plot that gets visited regularly. I do have 3 other smaller plots close to my stand, grains and brassicas, that get a lot of attention as well. My durana will be thick and approximately 8 to 10 inches tall by our first frost, 15 November, and the deer and turkeys will have it eaten down to about a 1/2 inch by spring, just in time for the spring growth period. Adding WR or WW would definitely give you some added variety.
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
Todd,
I'm in central VA so our situation is similar in that respect. I'm on the ratty edge and trying to do QDM but not sure I have quite enough scale. We have about 400 acres with about we've made tillable. We have a neighbor with 150 ac that doesn't allow hunting and another with 100 ac that only mature bucks. We have another with 60 that only lets is son hunt when he comes home for a week around Christmas. We have one more neighbor with 100 ac. He talks like he only harvests mature bucks but I doubt his actions match his words. All total that is about 800 acres with some level of restrained harvest (minus any poaching). I'd say 1,000 ac is a typical minimum number for home range but we are trying to reduce that with timber habitat projects. We may be too small to have an impact on heard health but we are trying.
Here is how we have been operating. All of our small kill-plots are based in Durana. Every year or two, there are a few that are ready for rotation. I generally rotate them through buckwheat. Depending on condition, there are usually a few that I can suppress with gly and drill with GHR. This Durana is the anchor of our food plot program. It provides more months of quality food at a lower price than any other crop. There is a period during Jan and Feb where it is not providing a lot for deer. In the summer, if we have a dry year, it goes dormant for about a month. In wet years it does not go dormant in the summer. Roughly 1/2 of our plots are in Durana. It is time consuming and expensive to plant many small plots because of the equipment transport around the farm. Sometimes it takes as long to drive to a food plot with the tractor than it takes to perform whatever operation I'm performing on the field. Durana is ideas because once it is established it requires very little maintenance and lasts for 7 to 10 years.
Our large feeding plots are what I call Dual Use. They are first aimed at covering the summer stress period. For many years I used RR soybeans (forage or ag depending on conditions of my herd) with a light mix of corn. The corn was not to provide food as much as it was to add some vertical cover to make deer more comfortable with daytime use and protection for the beans during establishment. In recent years, an issue with a weed called marestail has caused me to change this for weed control. This year we planted buckwheat to cover our summer stress period. It is not as nutritious as soybeans but has a wide planting window that allowed us to use 24D ester with a soil residual effect for control of the marestail. Eventually I hope to go back to beans and corn when the weed issues I under control.
When the soybeans begin to yellow in the fall we surface broadcast a cover crop into the standing soybeans or buckwheat. With the beans, I let them stand so the turkey can use the pods, but we throw and mow the buckwheat. I like a cover crop of WR, CC, and PTT. The WR provides a fall attractant along with the crimson clover which is also an annual. It acts as a reseeding annual in our area. Both of these will bounce back strong in early spring providing good coverage until plant the beans or buckwheat. The Purple Top Turnips cover that later winter period. WR will grow in quite cold temps, not much above freezing, but after we get a good hard frost, the PTT tops become attractive to deer. It took a couple seasons for deer to catch on that turnips are a good food source. The PTT Tubers cover the late season well. Deer hit these in late Jan through Feb. They cover our winter stress period. Usage varies with the year. In good mast crop years they get light use but in poor mast crop years they get torn up.
That is how I balance the equation. If you have sufficient scale to do QDM you might consider something similar. If you don't, I would not worry about winter forage for feeding deer, I'd focus on in-season attraction. For that approach, I'd forge the summer annuals. I would keep the Durana fields over the ladiono unless they are much older and ready for rotation. I get 5-7 years out of ladino and 8-10 out of durana. Durana goes dormant for a much shorter period in the summer than Ladino in our area.
I'd consider the cover crop mix of WR/CC/PTT as a replacement for the ladino for attraction. This combination will give you attraction through the hunting season. You can also add GHR. Unless you clover is in bad shape, you won't have much luck broadcasting WR into established perennial clover unless you top kill it by 1 qt/ac gly or bushhogging it flat. The clover will reduce the WR seed/soil contact and will shade it out reducing germination significantly unless suppressed. I suppress it and have good luck drilling GHR and WR into established perennial clover. Others have reported varying levels of success surface broadcasting after suppression but I have not done that myself.
BTW, WR seed will keep pretty well over the year if it is kept cool and dry.
Thanks,
Jack
ToddG
5 year old buck +
Thanks for all the great info. I really appreciate it. This is my first year with perennial plots. I have been planting CC and WR in the fall and Buckwheat in the spring. I did this for 3 years and last fall I decided to try Durana/WR and Ladino/Chicory into my plots. I wasn't sure ow good a fall attractant they would be. I know the deer love the WR and CC. I think next year I will switch one back to ant annual rotation.
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
I find different crops peak at different times. If you don't have ag nearby it won't matter much. While there is some difference in attraction, daytime deer use is much more driven by the location of the plot and hunting pressure than the crop.
Deer use my Durana as much as anything else across the course of the season.
Thanks,
Jack
