J-birds place

Well I got out again this weekend and took a few pics along the way.

Weather was to be better Saturday than Sunday so I took the kids to the pond and did some fishing.... The bass where spawning, but the crappie where active! Nothing with "shoulders" but they are still fun to catch...


Headed out to see how things are moving along on Sunday.....
My only mature white oak tree is flowering and waking up....


The Elderberry cuttings AND even the plant I cut the snot out of are doing well also...


My triangle plot has me concerned..... The natural woodland plants seem to be doing what they do best and I am concerned about them causing issue with the chicory and clover planted. Part of me says wait it out, while another says spray and see what happens. I was not able to see any germinated chicory, but there was some clover. What to do, what to do.....



The farm is planted in corn and we got a good rain shower on Sunday......not all of us however where able to wait out the rain shower in a nearby shooting house! The boy and I waited out the shower, while the dogs refused to just head on back to the house.....

The north chestnut trees seem to be waking up as well.....got my first actual nuts last year so I am very hopeful for these this year.


I also picked up some seed from a local place for a few trials and projects. The youngest wants to grow sunflowers...not a big deal....until she figures out how big these are going to get! I also have a hair-brained idea about growing beans and peas inside a cage for the deer and the let them have at it for a youth hunt in late September. I think I will have to have a couple of staggered planting dates, but it's worth a shot! I'll have a few bucks and some time in to it so if it fails.....I'm not out much.


Also have to make comment about the perfect hat for me. It was my birthday recently and my daughter bought me the perfect hat for me. It covers the two "seasons" as far as I am concerned.....Cubbies Baseball season and Hunting season!!!! My son bought me a new Browning trail cam, that I have high expectations for.....but so far all I have are pictures of me staring at it with my typical "what the hell?" look on my face while trying to figure out how to program the damn thing....hundreds of them! Don't laugh......you all have done the same thing!!!!! It kept taking a burst of photos while I was trying to figure out how to set the date and the like (which I tend to never do) as well as how to set it up for video..... I did get it figured out and it is on a mineral site so we will see how it does in a week or so.


My son has also been after a turkey and has had some close calls and is learning along the way, but hasn't quiet gotten thing to work out just yet. I'm rather tickled that we seem to making small strides in a better turkey population.

Looking good. That white oak at the edge of the woods should get a lot more sun than ones out in the woods. Do you notice a good acorn crop from it?

Native Hunter said:

Looking good. That white oak at the edge of the woods should get a lot more sun than ones out in the woods. Do you notice a good acorn crop from it?

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Native - that tree is so frustrating..... First of all it is the ONLY basic white oak on my entire pace. Secondly it seems to produce sporadically. Thirdly for some strange reason when it does produce only about the bottom 1/3 of the tree actually produces acorns for some reason! It also tends to drop most of it's acorns just before our deer season here opens on Oct 1st. When it produces the deer find it pretty quickly, but with everything else going on with this tree it can be real hit or miss as far as it's value for hunting is concerned. I considered growing more trees from the acorns, but am concerned about these traits being carried over.....

j-bird said:

Native - that tree is so frustrating..... First of all it is the ONLY basic white oak on my entire pace. Secondly it seems to produce sporadically. Thirdly for some strange reason when it does produce only about the bottom 1/3 of the tree actually produces acorns for some reason! It also tends to drop most of it's acorns just before our deer season here opens on Oct 1st. When it produces the deer find it pretty quickly, but with everything else going on with this tree it can be real hit or miss as far as it's value for hunting is concerned. I considered growing more trees from the acorns, but am concerned about these traits being carried over.....

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Yep, I can understand that and have seen trees like that before. I have one at the south edge of my main food plot that is a disappointing one too. One of the best ones I've ever seen is in my yard - where it is useless.

Trying to make the most of my holiday weekend and took an extra vacation day to try to get everything on "the list" done.....

Got some good news and some not so good news.

My MG cuttings seem to be doing well so far....interested to see how they do with the heat and humidity that I know is coming.


My apples and crabapples are doing well....seems like I will have more apples this year than last....


I even had some of my grafts take! it's only about 30 or 40 percent rate, but for never doing it before I am pretty tickled.


I also had to re-cage some of my sawtooth saplings as they had grown so that is a good issue....


I also looked over my "weedy" clover plot and it seems the deer seem to like the weeds as well.....which is just fine by me.


The bad news.....it seems I have a sick chestnut and I am not sure what the deal is as the other 2 in the same area are fine....


I sprayed gly on the north wood plot that had been taken over with weeds as well and should have my corn plots planted in the morning if all goes well......

I got my corn plots in as well on Monday and getting some rain today....

This is my SW plot of about 1/4 acre. It was soybeans with wheat overseeded. The wheat is heading out and dying.....I tilled all of it in and planted it all in corn with my little ford 309 plate planter.


This is my South bottom plot. The deer don;t seem to eat everything I plant here so I am cutting back and only doing strips. There are 3 strips where I can get 6 rows in and a narrow strip that will get 2 rows in. The unworked area will be used for fall annual plot when the time comes. It has some volunteer soybeans coming up and well as lots of brassica bolting.

Got my garden beans and peas trial out over the weekend. Had some help as well. The idea here is to plant garden peas and pole beans to get the deer used to them being there without them being able to kill them (hence the cages). Then a few days before our youth season hunt I will pull the cages and hopefully get my youngest a slam-dunk shot. We will see how this progresses.... the plot itself is planted in corn (planted last weekend) is just starting to germinate was well. Odd thing was we did this work and as we headed out of the area we jumped a turkey at the edge of the plot. It had to have been there the whole time but chose not to leave....

Corn just starting to pop.

Coming along nice J. Should be a great fall for your critters.


Sent from my iPhone using Deer Hunter Forum

Was out over the weekend trying to get a few more things done and took some pics along the way.

I got an early fathers day gift with 2 new Chestnut Hill chestnut trees (3 gallon size). I was going to replace a tree that the deer had attacked last fall and was nothing but a tattered 2 foot stick a few weeks ago. I went back to replace him and he surprised me with some growth and sings of life. So I removed the dead portion and figure if he want's to fight....I'll let him fight!

He went from this....


To this!


So that meant I had 2 more holes to dig to plant my chestnuts in. I had one tree die a few years back (my fault) so that one was replaced but added an additional one.

I plant these in my perennial plot/orchard. I was considering mowing it, but decided against it. Some weeds are fine and the chance of me hitting a fawn was too great. It may look like hell to others, but I think I made the right call. I will wait until I start seeing the fawns on cams and will then start strip mowing.


That was about all I got done as the rain moved in and gave everything a good drink as well. I did get the sprayer fixed (busted fitting....damn thing broke of flush!) and got the garage cleaned up and some order to it as well. I need to check on my garden veggies out in the plot as the ones at the house are doing well - I even put up a cage to give them something to climb on and to help shelter them from critters, but the ones in the plot are about a week behind those at the house.

I was one evening and decided to go take a walk to see how my "deer garden" was doing.....the stuff we planted a week or so earlier at the house is going nuts.

The corn plot needs a shot of Urea (I'll have to get on that).....and I need to hit the plot with some crossbow/crossroad as well.

I looked over the chestnuts as well and I one that doesn't look so hot, but has a few catkins, I have one that looks better but without catkins and I have one that looks great and is covered in catkins!

I also hit the edge of the clover plot a few weeks ago with some gly to knock back some weeds.......it looks bad now, but I am pretty certain the clover will bounce back....it has in the past. I'll keep track as things progress as some fear doing this and killing the clover, but I have found it's on of the best way to kill some of the tougher weeds.

I was back out and at it again this weekend.... Man is it hot and sticky here. Heat index of 100+ at times.

I did get an interesting farther's day gift from my youngest..... She is 14 and says we are BFF's, partly because she knows it drives the other kids nuts.....partly because we are pretty close buds.

So with gift card in hand, along with a few others I had stash in my wallet off to Rural King to try seeding the north triangle plot in something.....again.

Ended up getting a product I have used before and worked well for me and because I still want a heavy chicory presence - I got some addition of that as well. Typically I'm not big on using BOB seed, but for small quick projects....I don't see an issue. Below are the two products I purchased....due to gift cards it was all free to me.



I had sprayed gly a week ago or two and spread the seed and then attacked it with a weed wacker. This had gotten to where you couldn't see the dog before I sprayed so I was pretty happy with the result. I don't feel comfortable mowing with an actual mower due to stumps. I also found an oak seedling that I didn't know was in there, and hope it will pull thru.


Also had a wonderful surprise at the edge of this plot I jumped a turkey...which is rare itself. But after I got done doing my thing....I light bulb went off in my head that maybe, just maybe that turkey was on a nest. So I went looking and sure enough I found my first turkey nest! I don't know much about turkey, but I hope these all become little turkeys, so I need to stay out of this area to let thing be.

Not habitat related.....but you try to raise your children to make smart decisions..... My oldest rides bulls for fun.....and now my youngest has daredevil tendencies!

I'm scared to death of heights, but I used to climb glaciers and repel. It's a different world when you're strapped in. About all I use my equipment for now is cleaning the gutters .

Got more MG to turn from sticks into grass! Thanks to my bud in Jersey!!!

Your children need to be examined.
Kidding. Very cool.

Well I went out to check on my plot in the south bottom and it was as bad as I had expected. I show we had 2.5+ inches of rain last week and nearly 3 inches the week before so the creek flooded and put my entire bottom field (including my plot) under about a foot and a half or so of water! You can see below the pic on the left is where I still have water standing in my plot (I was hoping to be able to spray and fertilize - I would need a swamp buggy). The pic on the right is where I was able to get a good reference point of how high the water had gotten. The silt on the plants is roughly as tall as my knee.....I a hair over 6 feet tall.

I was checking my plot and fruit trees in this same bottom to see what damage was done as well. My older apples seem to have more apples than last year, which doesn't take much as they just started fruiting recently. However I was shocker to see that my newly planted dolgo's have fruit on them! I will have to get with Turkey Creek and see if this is normal or not. All three trees had fruit on them.


I also checked on the few grafts that took on my older crab apple and it seems the grafts that took are still alive but have died back some. I am nto sure if that is normal or not, but will post in other threads and find out.

Seeing the apples on the Dolgo's made me curious so I went and checked on my chestnut crabs as well. No apples on them and I found where the jap beetles have taken a liking to one of them as well. Not sure there is much I can do for it.

I also just for the hell of it went to check on a little project I did last year where I trued to kill a lot of the natural weeds and introduce some switch grass into the mix. I wasn't sure how it would work since I didn't work the soil and it wasn't drilled. I didn't want it to take over I just wanted it for some diversity in that area. It turns out some of it took and I was pretty pleased about that. Folks claim that switchgrass can become invasive, but I have not seen that personally and thus why I had to intervene a bit.

Fish said:

Your children need to be examined.
Kidding. Very cool.

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Oh, they come from a very interesting gene pool so some of this doesn't surprise me. Their grandfather on their MOTHER'S side once stole his motorcycle BACK from the police department as they had impounded it! He and his brother also used to run illegal slot machines back in the day as well. Turns out them folks with the grey hair and worn out bodies where not always that way and many of them raised quite a bit of hell back in their own times!

Amen to that J-Bird. May’s average for us was about 6 inches, we got 11. June’s average is 3 inches, we have 12 so far. Enough is enough