Catscratch
5 year old buck +
Outstanding! Congrats!
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The Land of Milk and Honey
- Thread starter T-Max
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Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
I’d say without a doubt
Catscratch
5 year old buck +
I'd say he's mature. I'm no good at aging deer after their first couple of years. I've had history with bucks that I know are over 6.5, but look the same as they did as a 3.5. I'd say yours is 3.5 or +
Turkey Creek
5 year old buck +
Did you put PEX heating under your current house? If you did I assume you like it or you wouldn't be doing it again.
Catscratch
5 year old buck +
I wanted to do floor heating but was talked out of it. Told me KS isn't right for it due to temp swings. You'd turn it on during a cold day, then it would be 60 the next day. Problem being that once all that cement got warm it would take forever to cool back off. Then you'd be stuck with a hot house on a hot day. Looking back, I wish I would have went ahead and done it though.
Place is looking great!
Place is looking great!
Turkey Creek
5 year old buck +
Your good late season food is going to pay off for you. My deer disappeared for the most part since the cold weather hit hopefully some of my better ones made it through the gun season.
MN Slick
5 year old buck +
Do I dare say the swear word that is........Crossbow!
Catscratch
5 year old buck +
That's a bummer. Did he spray the hedge that he cut? If not they'll come back from root pretty quick. You could add rows or patches of switch or miscanthus. I find cover where there is no cover doesn't have to be huge. Just a clump of 5ft tall grass every 50 to 100 feet might do wonders.
Another to consider are sawtooths. They grow fast and don't drop their leafs in the winter. You'd have to protect them but they are easy to grow from seed and relative quick.
Another to consider are sawtooths. They grow fast and don't drop their leafs in the winter. You'd have to protect them but they are easy to grow from seed and relative quick.
Catscratch
5 year old buck +
To the right is a clump of switch that a transplanted via shovel, and some Sawtooths still holding leafs. All great cover and easy.
Turkey Creek
5 year old buck +
Post up the aerial again of the neighborhood and your area of concern highlighted or PM me if you want . NWSG probably with a trail mowed through it most likely to suggest to the deer where you want them to go.I need some advice and possibly a pep talk. I got a bit of a gut punch today (in a first world problem kind of way). I’ll attempt a bit of background.
I’ve made it no secret that we have essentially zero bedding on our place. I have been working on the small chunks of timber and I have a couple nice little bottom fields that have been loads of fun getting crops to grow, but I am banking on deer coming off the neighbors and getting them to do it before dark is a challenge.
I finally convinced my dad to plant the big 22 acre brome field way up on our North property line to native grass and we were going to fence it as part of the project. There were two tiny fingers with a few cedars and several hedges that gave deer from the North a bit of cover as they traveled off that neighbors onto ours. While that activity was also mainly at night, I had hoped that would thicken and someday be the base for some thicker cover on our place.
We had the brome killed, native grass planted, and the fence built in the last month or two. As part of the fence project, the guy had to cut a couple trees right on the property line. No big deal. Well, it appears dad had a neighbor come in and clear those little fingers. He was all excited to show me, like I would be impressed with it or something. He clear cut everything and stacked them into brush piles.
My question becomes, what to do with the bottom fields. I don’t have the energy or finances to keep doing something like that if my dad is going to make generational changes in the opposite direction for far cheaper on the back end. We went from almost no cover on our place to no cover on our place. I had already planned on converting the field I put into corn this year into clover. It’ll be 2 acres. I am thinking maybe doing the same with the other 3.5 acres field. Thoughts? Plant it and kind of let it be. Basically I am looking for a cheaper (than corn which won’t be hard), less maintenance option to put in place. What would you do?
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I need some advice and possibly a pep talk. I got a bit of a gut punch today (in a first world problem kind of way). I’ll attempt a bit of background.
I’ve made it no secret that we have essentially zero bedding on our place. I have been working on the small chunks of timber and I have a couple nice little bottom fields that have been loads of fun getting crops to grow, but I am banking on deer coming off the neighbors and getting them to do it before dark is a challenge.
I finally convinced my dad to plant the big 22 acre brome field way up on our North property line to native grass and we were going to fence it as part of the project. There were two tiny fingers with a few cedars and several hedges that gave deer from the North a bit of cover as they traveled off that neighbors onto ours. While that activity was also mainly at night, I had hoped that would thicken and someday be the base for some thicker cover on our place.
We had the brome killed, native grass planted, and the fence built in the last month or two. As part of the fence project, the guy had to cut a couple trees right on the property line. No big deal. Well, it appears dad had a neighbor come in and clear those little fingers. He was all excited to show me, like I would be impressed with it or something. He clear cut everything and stacked them into brush piles.
My question becomes, what to do with the bottom fields. I don’t have the energy or finances to keep doing something like that if my dad is going to make generational changes in the opposite direction for far cheaper on the back end. We went from almost no cover on our place to no cover on our place. I had already planned on converting the field I put into corn this year into clover. It’ll be 2 acres. I am thinking maybe doing the same with the other 3.5 acres field. Thoughts? Plant it and kind of let it be. Basically I am looking for a cheaper (than corn which won’t be hard), less maintenance option to put in place. What would you do?
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I'd think native grasses would offer good cover for the majority of the season. There are two fields near my house that come to mind: the first is only 8 acres and has been native grasses for a long time. It has the occasional stand of spruce trees or various shrubs sporadically throughout, the deer love to bed down in those high grasses or in/around those spruce for a bit more cover all year long. Obviously getting some spruce or shrubs of size is a longer term investment but as one of the above posters said, a few here/there for some structure seems to go a long way in making them feel comfortable.
The second field was disced in prep for a crop of some sort a few years back but the farmer never got around to planting it. Over the past few years that field has become over run with native broadleaves like ragweed, milkweed etc. By end summer and into fall that field stands over 6ft high and draws more deer to it than any other field I've seen. There must be tons of forage throughout and the high vegetation seems to help them feel comfortable in to bed and pass through in daylight.
With that in mind, I think an easy and economical option would be to run a disc over the field and see what the seed bank has in store for you and just let mother nature run its course. If you want to try to intervene maybe a few islands throughout of something with a bit more height like conifers/miscanthus/shrubs or whatever grows well in your area. In my area, my favorite places to hunt are the old abandoned farm fields that are in various stages or regen.
Can you get in an equip program or something similar that will help pay for a tree and shrub planting? If not you may be able to borrow a tree planter from state forestry.This is if you didn't want to go just grass.If you do go graass you could do what I did in some of my CRP since you can't let trees grow in the grass when in CRP I would drag tree tops out there and make smaller piles that weren't stacked tight enough for animals but would be good for nesting birds and where the sun could hit the south side of them for deer to bed.Creat any type of structure and it will attact deer.Don Higgins talks about planting migthanthis "not correct spelling" in patches in his NWSG
Can you get your dad to sell you the back 40 so you can make some changes? It doesn't seem that his goals match yours, but if he is the owner then he gets to make the rules.
If the deer currently bed in the neighbor's woods, I'd try to replicate that on your land. I'd first permanently fence the cattle of that section or they will eat the trees and shrubs that you are trying to grow. I don't know if simply fencing off an area will allow natural tree/shrub regeneration to occur, but I'd also plant a variety of trees and shrubs in case nature moves too slowly. With a tractor tree planter, you can plant 10,000 trees pretty quickly and have a nice 10 acre bedding area a decade from now. You could also move more slowly and expand some of the existing wooded sections an acre or two at a time with hand tree planting. 2 guys and a dibble bar can plant 1000 trees on a full day.
If the deer currently bed in the neighbor's woods, I'd try to replicate that on your land. I'd first permanently fence the cattle of that section or they will eat the trees and shrubs that you are trying to grow. I don't know if simply fencing off an area will allow natural tree/shrub regeneration to occur, but I'd also plant a variety of trees and shrubs in case nature moves too slowly. With a tractor tree planter, you can plant 10,000 trees pretty quickly and have a nice 10 acre bedding area a decade from now. You could also move more slowly and expand some of the existing wooded sections an acre or two at a time with hand tree planting. 2 guys and a dibble bar can plant 1000 trees on a full day.
