S.T.Fanatic's Land Tour

[Brian662]

Interesting stuff ST, what do you attribute the tighter buck to doe ratio to? Have you guys done some herd management recently or anything related to limiting does?

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

Interesting stuff ST, what do you attribute the tighter buck to doe ratio to? Have you guys done some herd management recently or anything related to limiting does?

The neighbor directly to the West of us logged their property about 3 years ago and they only try to shoot trophy deer.

Half of the hunters on my family property only shoot trophy deer and the other half just aren't good hunters.

The neighbors directly to the East of us are all older and only hunt from box blinds.

We all like to eat venison and shoot several does off of each property every season.

The farm to the East of us actually has a butcher shop right on the farm. He leaves his walk in cooler on all year and lets us hang deer in there any time we want. Several years ago MNDNR put an antler put an APR in place that lasted several years until CWD popped up in the county. The neighbors to the East never were trophy hunters (although the land owner did shoot a 185" back in the 90's) They quickly realized that with the APR's in place we had many more and larger bucks than before APR's. They started to pass up smaller bucks after the APR's were lifted so that has helped. I pass up bucks every year that a neighbor to the East ends up shooting but they are 3 year olds anyway not young bucks anymore.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Great neighbor with letting you use his cooler!!

APR's here led to more big bucks than before. Sounds like things are going well there, S.T. Yotes get those buck carcasses?

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

Great neighbor with letting you use his cooler!!

APR's here led to more big bucks than before. Sounds like things are going well there, S.T. Yotes get those buck carcasses?

YES

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

Couple more from Sunday.


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[S.T.Fanatic]

Selling all of my hunting stuff because I don’t have anything to use it on.

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[Mortenson]

Dang. That's a cool buck too.

 

[Brian662]

Man, that's horrible. The hits just keep on coming for you guys.

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

That really sucks. Any idea what happened to that one?

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

While it certainly sucks that you lost that many big bucks after the season, it is pretty crazy how many mature bucks you had on your place. I don't remember how many acres this farm is, but you had quite a crop of bucks there last fall.

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

My uncles can’t see well is the biggest problem.


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[S.T.Fanatic]

First fall plot of the year went in today. A bit early for what was planted but it is what it is.

This area at one time was a natural opening. Back in the day there was a turkey processing plant in the town I live in. Our family farm is only about 3 miles away. Short story long the plant would pay farmers to get rid of their waste. Blood would get spread on fields feathers and sawdust would generally get dumped somewhere else.

This opening was a location where they dumped. Not much had ever grown there after that but over the years it did start filling in with trees. Back in 2017 I opened it up tilled it by hand and planted a plot. It was a lot of work with all small power “tools”. The seeding all germinated fantastic and I had a green carpet.

Not long after that several patches started dying off. In the end about half of the plot died and the other half produced a decent plot. I always wanted to get back there with some larger equipment and dig it up better.

The renter took the hay off late last week so my uncle took the 3 bottom plow out there and turned it all over then ran the disk across it. The soil actually looks great and well mixed up. I pulled a sample from several locations throughout the plot that I will have sent off for a full soil analysis.

We planted it with an Earthway bag spreader full of sunflowers as a base planting and drug it. We followed that up with a bag of Imperial Whitetails Destination. I don’t generally by me seed from stores but I haven’t yet procured my fall plot seed and I had to run to town anyway. For those not familiar with that seeding, It is a mix of oats, triticale, berseam clover, kale, pacelia, and peas.

Depending on what the soil test says I will try to amend accordingly though I have a feeling that it is going to need more than I have the time, equipment, and give an F for. Regardless, I will be amending it to a degree this fall as well as overseeding it into a clover and chicory mix.

Supposed to get some rain this week so we’ll see.

Update on soil test and over seeding to come.

 

[Bowsnbucks]

Soil at least looks good. That's a start. Good luck with that spot.

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

Got the results back for the soil test. Any recommendations on how to amend if a clover/chicory plot is going to grow decent next year?


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[S.T.Fanatic]

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[SD51555]

Is this peat ground?

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

Is this peat ground?

May as well be. Waste product from a turkey processing plant from 30+ years ago mixed with midwestern topsoil.

 

[SD51555]

May as well be. Waste product from a turkey processing plant from 30+ years ago mixed with midwestern topsoil.

Ok, I’m gonna think out loud here, but I think we can reconstruct what might have happened.

I think you got excess nitrogen from all that waste and it stripped out all your available calcium and magnesium. What you have left is the larger particles that have broken down since the nitrate load leeched away as calcium nitrate and magnesium nitrate. This is assuming it’s well drained.

I think that hot rate of nitrogen caused your excessive acidification.

I think you need to put back the calcium and magnesium with a stout lime application, but you may need to cleverly source it so you don’t get too hot on either one. When I get to the cabin, I’ll get my chart pulled up and run some lime numbers.

How big is this plot?


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[SD51555]

The lime rec is enormous, like 8-10 tons/ac to get north of 5.5 pH. I would highly recommend getting a second opinion to mine. I don’t want to steer you wrong, but that’s how I read it.

I have heard of guys putting down Pell lime with their seed and having some luck too, but I don’t have any experience with such a move. That might give you a quick and effective boost for that crop, but would probably dissipate over time as it rains thru.

The other thing to consider is also leaning towards low pH forages. It would be really interesting to see the second line of that soil test. I’d be curious to see what the micros look like in that pH.

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[Kdog]

@SD51555 is pretty spot on. Apply a max of 2.5 tons per acre of lime once or twice per year to get that ph back up. Work with forages that will tolerate low ph and I (personally) would stay away from nitrogen affixing forages until you get that ph up to around 6.