To the extent Ag practices and Food plot practices are comparable of course I am discusing them. If you choose to call them Ag practices, that doesnt change the fact that they are also food plot practices (Ex. lime does what it does regardless of whether you put it in soil and call that soil a food plot or a crop field).
As for there being people not understanding what they are reading, that is true of all written content regardless of the subject matter....all one needs to do is read some of the comments in this thread to see that! Lol.
If people don’t know, or understand, something they just need to ask instead of acting hostile to the messanger.....Just as I asked when I didnt understand why you were highlighting a video in which the host was discussing the sulphur component of his ag lime as if it was material.
And that is where I have changed over the years. I'm slowly learning that most Ag practices don't really apply to QDM. I've come to start with a new premise: The only benefit I see from a food plot is what ends up in a deer's stomach and only to the extent that the quality of that food exceeds what the deer would have otherwise eaten in naïve foods.
The deer herd will be limited but the fertility of the underlying dirt. We can not practically amend enough soil to change the underlying fertility of the soil over a large enough area to impact the herd. I don't think there is anything we can do to change that limit. Deer herd quality may be limited by other factors in the habitat as well. One of those factors is the volatility of weather in a given climate.
So, what am I shooting for? My first goal with food is to improve the availability of native foods by keeping sufficient land in early succession. Smart timber management improves the native foods while producing income. This is sustainable. My second food goal is to fill those gaps created by weather/climate volatility. Planted food plots give me the short term ability to decide when a quality food will be available. Cost efficient yield is the primary driver for ag practices and it completely unimportant to me. Deer are browsers by nature. All that beautiful high quality food left in a monoculture after the stress period contributes nothing to improving my deer quality. It matters not that deer are eating my food plot rather than native foods of equal quality. It is only when nature is stingy that the quality foods I produce evens out food factors that might otherwise be the limiting factor of my herd.
As I watch these discussions over Lime/gypsum, I think sometimes we miss the forest for the trees. I'm no soil scientist, but I have friends who are. When I look at this from a big picture perspective, I come to the conclusion that the important factor is nutrient cycling. All kinds of things including pH and microbiology of the soils effect nutrient cycling. There are a few things I've changed over the years as I've learned.
First is not to destroy what I have. "Ray the soil guy" has some great videos demonstrating how tillage impacts the soils. These are largely focused at big ag, but this is one area where the underlying principles of soil health apply as much or more to the food plotter. I have immensely reduced tillage.
The second area where I have changed is weed tolerance in clover and fall crops. Many of those weeds (but not all) have as much if not more wildlife value than the crop I plant. So, weed tolerance and smarter herbicide use is also something I've grown into.
While discussions like this are informative for those who can follow them, we need to keep things in perspective. Deer management is significantly different from agriculture.
Thanks,
Jack
