Rit’s Parcel

[Rit]

Ultimately the first plot was a failure due to soil and weather conditions. It would be this failure that would lead me to this website in search of answers. I was 1 growing season into my habitat program but a change had occurred.

The first photo is from stand on my newly formed 1/2 acre kill plot. The second is a terrible photo of a mature buck. The relevance in this buck isn’t the size of his antlers though. It’s the date he is on my property. This photo is from November 7th, 2016. The fact that I now had a mature buck on my property this late in the season during daylight gave me hope that these habitat improvements might just work.

 

[Rit]

Hopefully this is the last of the terrible photos. I lost a lot of photos during a phone accident so some of these are pictures of pictures.

At the end of 2016 I did not shoot a deer but I did notice a little bit of a change. In December of 2016 and the early months of 2017 I continued working on habitat. I would install what seemed like miles of trails, hinge thousands of trees. Every hinge was to offer better cover, offer more browse, direct traffic, and screening cover. All of this activity was designed to set up perfect access and exits to stands.

The buck in this photo is from May 2017. This is significant because he is standing in a quarter acre kill plot I cut early spring 2017. It’s clear from the photo he is a mature deer. He was in this kill plot 5 times before he was hit by a car. I felt terrible for the deer but encouraged that the habitat improvements were starting to work. I now had deer starting to use my property more in the spring.

 

[Rit]

Just a break in the action while I search for photos. Probably one of my all time favorite signs. I want this posted out at the road of my access drive sooner rather than later. I just haven’t found the size or material I want it made of yet.

 

[Telemark]

Your place looks awesome. Incredible potential. I bet it won't be long before you turn it into the deer paradise of your dreams.

 

[weekender21]

Great looking place you have Rit! Love the mature trees and outstanding genetics you have. That sign is great! I see something similar in my future, after retirement of course.

 

[Suburbhunter]

Looks great!!! Looking forward to reading about your progress.

 

[Bill]

I started cutting but I didn’t have a plan or a clue what I was doing. I cut almost everything I could and made a giant mess. I wish I could have back those two or three weeks of when I started. But I think we learn from our failures. I can say that the area I cut I have not been back and fixed. It was a great deer area but now is mostly void of deer activity.

Still reading, this is as far as Ive gotten. Get back into that mess and clear them some trails. I did the same thing with about 5 acres when I started. Had to go back and cut trails through it. Then it got used. "A Lot"

 

[Someday isle]

Just Awesome! Keep posting.

 

[Rit]

Your place looks awesome. Incredible potential. I bet it won't be long before you turn it into the deer paradise of your dreams.

Thanks Telemark in all honesty I will be completely satisfied if it ends up with ample viewing opportunity and the occasional siting of a mature deer on his feet.

 

[Rit]

Still reading, this is as far as Ive gotten. Get back into that mess and clear them some trails. I did the same thing with about 5 acres when I started. Had to go back and cut trails through it. Then it got used. "A Lot"

It is certainly on the list. I don’t know how the guys with large properties do it. I am all over the place and often have to remind myself to finish one thing before I start another.

 

[Rit]

During the end of the 2016 and beginning of 2017 habitat season I still had so much to start. I still had so many holes in cover that I needed to plug. It was about this time that I found out how much buckthorn I really had. I was almost addicted to killing buckthorn and this often took much of my attention.

However heavy canopied and open areas like this drew the attention of my chainsaw. At this time the deer definitely stayed a little later than the previous 4 years. Was it the new food? The added cover? Perhaps both. Things were starting to change for the better but post season scouting still revealed there wasn’t much rutting activity.

 

[Rit]

Now before some of you cringe when you see some of this timber on the ground know this. I had a forester, a biologist and several loggers on my property before I cut some of these trees. I don’t own 100s of acres and for the money I was offered and the amount of trees that would have been cut these trees were worth more to me on the ground than hauled off on a trailer.

Some of these trees had issues like disease, storm damage or both. I have a few trees on this property that are truely majestic. I could’t bring myself to cut or sell them under any circumstance.

It was painful to cut some of them down but a necessity to improve the habitat. Seems the loggers wanted most of my best producing trees and honestly I couldn’t part with them. We needed to get cover and sunlight to the ground and I did just that. I don’t have any interest in producing money from timber. I am 100% go on quality habitat though.

 

[Rit]

Some areas I just hinged, some areas I hinged and burned. Both areas have responded well to the sunlight but in my experience the burned areas have regenerated faster.

There are a few places where I feel completely harvesting the tree would have worked a little better. But you might want to bring a lunch because cutting down and hauling out a 100’ tree with a 50’ crown is a Man’s game.

 

[Rit]

I’ll get back to the events leading up to the present but wanted to share a recent photo from the destination plot. Saturday we were hit with a good winter storm along with 40 mph winds. I didn’t see an official amount but believe we got every bit of 6-8”. The first year switch was still standing tall with no signs of laying flat. The field is a mixture of CIR and Kanlow. Most of the CIR is in the 4-5’ range. The Kanlow exploded and most is around 6’ tall.

 

[Rit]

As the early Spring habitat work came to a close in 2017 and the planting and growing season neared I was in no rush to plant any food plots. If my 2016 plot with perfect weather conditions fizzled out not sure how planting another plot the same way would work. I had also frost seeded clover into the spent Brassica plot so there would be a fair amount of new clover.

This led to the start of another adventure. I would find this forum, specifically the TnM thread. I actually found a smaller thread on another forum that CnC chimed in on first. A quick google search later found me here on a 20 page TNM thread. I spent hours and days reading it. First as a guest then as a member.

I knew I needed to fix my soil and this was just the ticket. This led me to days and weeks of reading about soil health, OM, cover crops, and so on. Ray Archuleta became a mainstay in my video library. Guys like Dave Brandt were also high on the list to follow. I read every article I could find and watched every video out there. I lived and breathed soil health. When fall of 2017 rolled around I pushed all my chips into the center of the TnM world. I extended my first 1/2 food plot to 1.5 acres. This would be the perfect test for TnM. The best part of the plot location was that it was in a transition zone so I could effectively hunt the kill plot and access it without any added pressure.

 

[Rit]

The new plot that was extended to 1.5 acres was a challenged for the first year TnM. It had a lot of tall brushy weeds with a clover understory. All the reading told me this would work and was a necessity for soil health. I now owned a tractor and a brush hog so I had the tools to make this happen.

On September 1st I broadcast a mix of WR, clover, and radish into the 5’ vegetation and mowed it to the ground. I walked away and hoped for the best.

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

Are you surrounded by large parcels with low hunting pressure? You have some great bucks in your area and I'm wondering how they manage to live long enough to reach those sizes.

I like having some shrubs in the food plot. It can be a pain in the butt to plant and mow around them, but I think they improve daylight deer movement. I've planted and released a lot of good shrubs around and in some of my smaller goofy shaped food plots.

 

[roymunson]

Good looking setup. Interesting to see the layout of some of the stuff with NW Ohio being famous for being flat.

 

[Rit]

Are you surrounded by large parcels with low hunting pressure? You have some great bucks in your area and I'm wondering how they manage to live long enough to reach those sizes.

I like having some shrubs in the food plot. It can be a pain in the butt to plant and mow around them, but I think they improve daylight deer movement. I've planted and released a lot of good shrubs around and in some of my smaller goofy shaped food plots.

Ben they are not behind every tree but they do pop up now and again. The road kills more big bucks than the hunters.

I am surrounded by huge Ag parcels. I would say there are 1000 acres in total surrounding me in Ag. The pressure is moderate. I don’t know how any bucks survive but I think you see it in all areas. A few years ago a couple parcels changed hands and those properties were pounded. I think that hurt a little. That was a mile or so from my place.

For example there are 15 houses on my road. Most everyone on the road has been here since the 60s. None of those folks hunt. But two sides of my property are roads and the other two sides are different owners. Most of their property is Ag with a little woods. They both hunt. The neighbor to my South shoots the best looking 2.5 year old every year. Annoying but nothing I can do about it. My other neighbor who harvested the giant above only looks to shoot mature deer.

I agree with your assessment of shrubs in the food plot. Those deer relate to that structure. I won’t give too much away yet but it has added a nice feature to my property by leaving them in the kill plot.

 

[Rit]

Good looking setup. Interesting to see the layout of some of the stuff with NW Ohio being famous for being flat.

Roy my property is flat. I used the term ridge some post back. This certainly is not the ridge that most folks are used to. I am probably classifying the terrain feature wrong but it’s exactly like a ridge just on a much smaller scale. It’s a limestone “ridge” (again might be wrong on the classification) but it is anywhere from 3-6’ higher than anywhere else on my property. It runs about 700’ long to the South of my house and terminates just before the swamp in the SW corner. Deer run the ridge to get out to the destination field. Or at least they used to before I made a huge mess.