Grant woods
- Thread starter Howboutthemdawgs
- Start date
And to be honest, I have one food plot where I do a throw n mow each fall. Been doing it for six years now. Never had what I would call great results. I plant wheat, rye, and various clovers - mostly durana and Imperial Whitetail. Have yet to get even a semi decent clover stand. I have even posted pics on this site a couple of times - seems it is too much thatch like last year, not enough the year before - maybe it is too dry, or the hogs get the seed. It is always something. There is normally a minimal amount of cereal grain growth to provide enough attraction for a few deer. Back when I planted with tillage, it looked like a golf course and two deer that made my wall of fame came from that plot. We dont even hunt it anymore as there is not enough deer usage to warrant it. The soil type is what I would call bottomland gumbo. It does flood every few years. I am not trying to build the soil as much as I am just experimenting with the throw n mow method.
omicron1792
5 year old buck +
Crimson, when you replant in the fall do you spray then mow or just mow? Do you find the cooler temperatures takes care of the rest?
Crimson n' Camo
5 year old buck +
I just mow…….I plant on the first good rain in October…..By that time all the summer stuff is pretty browned down and we are only a few weeks away from our first frost. Anything that’s still green gets zapped so it works out well.
omicron1792
5 year old buck +
I’m in Alabama too btw. I live in Birmingham but my 300acre farm is in Perry county just north of Marion on hwy 5
omicron1792
5 year old buck +
I tried to plant my fire lanes (which were basically bare dirt) in clover and it didn’t do much. I am now taking your approach. Just letting them grow up with native vegetation and will plant with cereal rye and crimson clover this fall. Will just plant heavy and mow, and not spray after talking to you. My PH is low, do you find that planting green will help correct ph over time? I am putting out lime when I can, but will never be able to lime as much as tests call for for all my area.
Crimson n' Camo
5 year old buck +
To be honest I havent pulled a soil sample in years now......The last time I added lime was maybe 6 years ago.
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
Probably an unpopular opinion but I think the whole soil health thing is noble but maybe a little overblown on most peoples scale. If we are planting a couple 1/4-1/2 acre plots I don’t think it matters a whole lot. Just do what you need to make it grow. I would love to see production ag focus more on soil health but for the average food plotter planting a kill plot just get it to grow.
Wind Gypsy
5 year old buck +
Good point. It makes sense to have good soil to be a good steward of the land and for its aid in making your plots better. It does seem like lots of folks are prioritizing soil health over deer attraction in plots, which is a harder sell.
I listened to the chasing giants podcast on crimpers yesterday and Don seemed to miss the boat on the opposite end talking about what is best for corn. People aren’t buying crimpers for corn far as I can tell..
Crimson n' Camo
5 year old buck +
I mentioned in another post that I blood track deer for folks in my area with dogs.....This gives me an opportunity to see what everyone else's food plots look like......A lot of soil health is simply the knowledge and understanding of how to "just get it to grow" like you mentioned......Lots of fields I see look like this.
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Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
I love the soil heath movement and try my best to adhere to it. I think there is a ton to be learned from the practice as well. I also see guys getting all hot and bothered by making sure everything is perfect on a 1/4 plot in the middle of the woods. At some point time, effort and money are wasted on something that small. Personally I’m a deer hunter and manager. I want to do what it takes to grow and hold and hunt big mature whitetails. I think some guys like to make sure their plots are better than their bucks! And that is totally cool and if that moves someone’s meter I’m super pumped to hear and learn about it. Just not sure all of it equates to better hunting.
Crimson n' Camo
5 year old buck +
I don’t have a problem with someone putting time and effort into a ¼ acre kill plot to make it the best ¼ acre kill plot it can be……I think that’s great. That’s what I’ve done with about 4 acres. Where I think people go down the wrong path is taking the same ¼ acre field and losing perspective on what it is…….It’s a 1/4 acre kill plot…..It’s not what you’re gonna use to grow your next booner during the summer months……..Even my 4 acres is just that…. a 4 acre kill plot.
That gets easily lost on folks because everyone has a summer blend to sell and they need everyone to buy it. This is where you end up with folks killing the evil “weeds” during the summer in their ¼ acre plot so that they can grow something “better for the deer”……when in reality, whatever it was they were calling a weed was likely growing there for a reason and repairing the soil…….which would have made their fall kill plot better and accomplished a real purpose.
SD51555
5 year old buck +
A regen system should be the easiest, most durable, lowest cost, and highest output system available. It's doing stuff the old fashioned way that takes the most time, money, and equipment. Frankly I don't have the money for it, and I am more interested in getting a well, septic, house, and fish pond done first.
The thing I like most about low-input/stay-green is that the extremes of weather and temperature are far less of a factor in success or failure. Think about plot failures you may have had, or think about what could prevent you from growing a good plot. How durable is a conventional till/kill/magic pellet system?
What if it doesn't rain?
What if you get blasted with monsoon rains?
What if it doesn't quit raining for two months?
What if you can't get fertilizer?
What if you can't get seed?
What if you need an applicators license to get access to the chems you need to win?
What if you hit a hot spell?
What if you get an early frost?
What if you get a late frost?
I don't worry very much about any of that anymore. It's not bulletproof, but those events either don't apply or need to get extremely bad to impact a regen system.
The thing I like most about low-input/stay-green is that the extremes of weather and temperature are far less of a factor in success or failure. Think about plot failures you may have had, or think about what could prevent you from growing a good plot. How durable is a conventional till/kill/magic pellet system?
What if it doesn't rain?
What if you get blasted with monsoon rains?
What if it doesn't quit raining for two months?
What if you can't get fertilizer?
What if you can't get seed?
What if you need an applicators license to get access to the chems you need to win?
What if you hit a hot spell?
What if you get an early frost?
What if you get a late frost?
I don't worry very much about any of that anymore. It's not bulletproof, but those events either don't apply or need to get extremely bad to impact a regen system.
What features of food plots do you feel equate to better hunting?
Mortenson
5 year old buck +
I went for it anyway, not having any better options this year (poor planning). Had a forecast giving rain showers on a few consecutive days. Not about to call this a success for a lotta days yet, but I was able to get some to germinate. Hope they can withstand the heatwave. Tiny little seedlings.
Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
Oh that is interesting Mortenson! I have never seen one germinate before.
As a matter of fact, I was out yesterday checking my soils for earthworms and checking roots for N nodulation and I discovered this:
I drilled RR sugar beets in this plot on May 18th of 2021....so this seed has been sitting on top of the soil for nearly 13 months and it still hasn't germinated. True Story!
You have to figure out what works for you. Everything doesnt work everywhere. There are a lot of plants I cant successfully grow - soybean seeds with be rooted up by hogs before they germinate - and if they arent, my deer density is such that they will strip a five acre field bare two weeks after germination. My deer will bite the tops out of every sunflower in a five acre field before they are knee high. Folks will immediately come to the conclusion I need to reduce my deer density. My fawn recruitment numbers are .3 per doe. That means it takes 30 does to produce ten fawns. I have fifteen adjacent landowners who’s property touches mine. Eight of those landowners own less than fifteen acres. They arent growing deer - they are killing deer. That means no doe killing for us on my 300 acres - because the neighbors do it for us. We dont shoot does so the neighbors can. Milo? Nope - as soon as it reaches the milk stage - the hogs go to work. Corn - the same. Control my hogs U say. I have killed as many as 153 in a six month period to no avail. I have brought in the USDA hog trappers. I hunt with a thermal a couple times a week. I have learned to embrace my hogs. I did not pull the trigger last year while deer hunting. It isnt that I could not have killed multiple deer - i didnt get a chance to kill THE deer. But I have pulled the trigger on a LOT of hogs. I probably spend more time hog hunting than deer hunting.
My hogs have actually driven me to the best case food plot scenario for me. Clover and wheat. The wheat is for me to hunt in the fall and winter, and the clover is for the deer in the summer. Unfortunately, I have not found a planting method of any type that establishes clover as quickly or as evenly as conventional tillage. It doesnt have to be deep tillage - but a smooth, clean, clod free seed bed - even if only two inches deep - is what gets clover producing the fastest. I can pull a 2000 lb, 8 ft disk, over most of my ground and cant hardly tell where it has been on the first pass. I have used tnm on numerous occassions - and while I am ok with the wheat growth, I have never got excited about the clover. I have drilled clover in existing, sprayed vegetation - and again - it is passable - but on my ground - not as good as planting in a clean dirt seed bed. Once my clover is established, my plots might only see an annual wheat planting with the disk gang set straight ahead on my Woods seeder. No more tillage than a drill.
When planting forty acres - you cant just run out and spread seed before an approaching rain front. You plant it when you can - the best way you can - and hope you did a good enough job planting for the seed to still be viable until weather conditions are favorable for gemination.
My clover is the key to my deer herd and my deer hunting - along with the supplemental food I provide. It is imperative that I keep the local bachelor herds on my place as much as I can during the summer. I have about 20 acres of clover in eight different plots. I have three or four feeding locations.
We typically have a couple of big, mature bucks that make my place the center of their range - 135/155” deer - which are big deer for southern US piney woods, non ag area deer. Production of game - from crawfish to deer - is my primary interest and concern. Soil health is secondary - and even including my duck and dove plots, we are talking fifty acres with plantings out of my 350 acres - so the other 300 acres is free to develop whatever soil health it sees fit. Coincidently, my hogs and the amount of acres planted - have driven me to largley a non-disturbance planting effort on my soil. I dont do that with soil health as a focus, it is a by product and coincidental to what works best for me.
My hogs have actually driven me to the best case food plot scenario for me. Clover and wheat. The wheat is for me to hunt in the fall and winter, and the clover is for the deer in the summer. Unfortunately, I have not found a planting method of any type that establishes clover as quickly or as evenly as conventional tillage. It doesnt have to be deep tillage - but a smooth, clean, clod free seed bed - even if only two inches deep - is what gets clover producing the fastest. I can pull a 2000 lb, 8 ft disk, over most of my ground and cant hardly tell where it has been on the first pass. I have used tnm on numerous occassions - and while I am ok with the wheat growth, I have never got excited about the clover. I have drilled clover in existing, sprayed vegetation - and again - it is passable - but on my ground - not as good as planting in a clean dirt seed bed. Once my clover is established, my plots might only see an annual wheat planting with the disk gang set straight ahead on my Woods seeder. No more tillage than a drill.
When planting forty acres - you cant just run out and spread seed before an approaching rain front. You plant it when you can - the best way you can - and hope you did a good enough job planting for the seed to still be viable until weather conditions are favorable for gemination.
My clover is the key to my deer herd and my deer hunting - along with the supplemental food I provide. It is imperative that I keep the local bachelor herds on my place as much as I can during the summer. I have about 20 acres of clover in eight different plots. I have three or four feeding locations.
We typically have a couple of big, mature bucks that make my place the center of their range - 135/155” deer - which are big deer for southern US piney woods, non ag area deer. Production of game - from crawfish to deer - is my primary interest and concern. Soil health is secondary - and even including my duck and dove plots, we are talking fifty acres with plantings out of my 350 acres - so the other 300 acres is free to develop whatever soil health it sees fit. Coincidently, my hogs and the amount of acres planted - have driven me to largley a non-disturbance planting effort on my soil. I dont do that with soil health as a focus, it is a by product and coincidental to what works best for me.
Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
Wow! 15 neighboring landowners abut your property? That does make it difficult to focus on and hunt one particular buck! Perhaps "impossible" would be a more appropriate word. It is amazing that you can still grow 135" - 155" deer.
My property (160 acres) is long (1 mile long) and narrow (1/4 mile wide). I have only 5 neighbors whose property abuts mine although 3 of them own over 600-700 acres each, and it is still difficult to pass on a 2 or 3 year old buck and expect it to make it to the next age class - and we have yet to grow a 130" buck here - even our 4 and 5 year olds.
I am just happy we don't have any wild hogs to contend with. Sounds like you are doing very well in spite of the limitations you face.
Mortenson
5 year old buck +
My hope was that between 8 batwing tires and 4 tractor tires I'd press some of the seeds a little. The ground was damp when I did that. I thought the thatch seemed heavy so I reversed direction and mowed it all a 2nd time, putting more tires to the seed. I don't know if the beets will amount to anything, but it wasn't hard to find a few. I have a decent amount of clover in there too, so needing to discover the next step of the plan. Basically when to spray roundup.
The bulk of our 4 and 5 year old buck probably would score 115 - but there is typically an outlier or two. We typically hunt the four year old - and older deer - regardless of what they will score
