FarmerDan
5 year old buck +
Let's kick this off! My first post!
No doubt you know the habitat and food sources on the land you call your own. But, just maybe, you should -- and can -- consider the situation on adjacent land, not all of which you can easily determine.
I'm in the middle of some good Virginia ag country. Great hunting! I have 10 acres for food plots, 30 tillable acres leased to a real farmer (I've given up), 250 acres of early succession forest, and about a hundred acres of good duck and goose marsh.
Here's the problem. There's easily another 5,000 acres of habitat adjacent. Something over a thousand acres is planted in row crops with the rest in swamp marsh.
One of my objectives is to keep deer on my place with strategic plantings. For example, not long ago (I guess the price of corn had something to do with it) "my" 30 acres was in corn and nearly all the other farms around me were in corn. Around here corn is harvested by the middle of August. The price differential is sometime a dollar high than in the midwest. It's unusal for us becasue we don't really have the climate to grow corn competitevly.
Other than gleaning, there was no ag crop during the prime part of our hunting seasons. Wheat, if it does get planted, isn't in the ground until early to mid November.
Maybe you're starting to get the picture. To cut it short, what gets planted around me has more impact on deer movement than what I have at home. That year, the 10 acres was wall-to-wall rye, oats, & clover. Normally, the crops are soybeans-wheat and that presents a differnt food plot opportunity. I can't see all the crops my neighbors plant. And if your in the same boat as me, here's a resource that might help you gain understanding of the bigger picture should you need it.
I'm a map guy. Sometimes you need to work hard to understand a map. Even for me, this one's difficult. I've run on way too long, so let me just say, if you want to see cropping in your area, check this out:
https://nassgeodata.gmu.edu/CropScape/
The Natioanl Agricultural Statistics Service is a USDA agency. This map shows what crops are planted where with uncanny detail and accuracy.
Have a look. Struggle with it a little. There's a serach feature on the toolbar at the top. You'll need to hover your cursor over each button until you find it. If you do, you can type in almost any geographic search term to find your area.
Good luck!
No doubt you know the habitat and food sources on the land you call your own. But, just maybe, you should -- and can -- consider the situation on adjacent land, not all of which you can easily determine.
I'm in the middle of some good Virginia ag country. Great hunting! I have 10 acres for food plots, 30 tillable acres leased to a real farmer (I've given up), 250 acres of early succession forest, and about a hundred acres of good duck and goose marsh.
Here's the problem. There's easily another 5,000 acres of habitat adjacent. Something over a thousand acres is planted in row crops with the rest in swamp marsh.
One of my objectives is to keep deer on my place with strategic plantings. For example, not long ago (I guess the price of corn had something to do with it) "my" 30 acres was in corn and nearly all the other farms around me were in corn. Around here corn is harvested by the middle of August. The price differential is sometime a dollar high than in the midwest. It's unusal for us becasue we don't really have the climate to grow corn competitevly.
Other than gleaning, there was no ag crop during the prime part of our hunting seasons. Wheat, if it does get planted, isn't in the ground until early to mid November.
Maybe you're starting to get the picture. To cut it short, what gets planted around me has more impact on deer movement than what I have at home. That year, the 10 acres was wall-to-wall rye, oats, & clover. Normally, the crops are soybeans-wheat and that presents a differnt food plot opportunity. I can't see all the crops my neighbors plant. And if your in the same boat as me, here's a resource that might help you gain understanding of the bigger picture should you need it.
I'm a map guy. Sometimes you need to work hard to understand a map. Even for me, this one's difficult. I've run on way too long, so let me just say, if you want to see cropping in your area, check this out:
https://nassgeodata.gmu.edu/CropScape/
The Natioanl Agricultural Statistics Service is a USDA agency. This map shows what crops are planted where with uncanny detail and accuracy.
Have a look. Struggle with it a little. There's a serach feature on the toolbar at the top. You'll need to hover your cursor over each button until you find it. If you do, you can type in almost any geographic search term to find your area.
Good luck!