Florida Plantation

[FL Plotter]

FLplotter, we are speechless; your determination in the face of such adversity is absolutely awesome! I hope you get in some great hunting this season.

Thanks. Everything I posted I did myself....not because I don't have any friends (ha ha), but because they all have damaged houses, businesses and families to take care of. A lot of people around here wrote off their season, but I value my December-February time in the woods too much to let that happen. All plots and stands are now back in some sort of order. My house roof is patched up and dry. We are healing and our "stuff" will too over time. Luckily I have great insurance!

 

[FL Plotter]

Here are some pics of the hunting lease and the result of the headlight planting. I only missed a few spots with the cultipacker, but you can see the difference a packer makes. Also a pic of one of the 8 anchors I put in the ground to keep my condos from tipping over again. I really think the 4x4 falling over saved it as it's older and the winds of a Cat 4 storm would have shredded it. But the 5x5 is in some young pines and would have been fine if it stayed up. Either way, they are anchored down for life!

 

[lakngolf]

Good work. Hard work but a man with a mission. Just a little bit more, a little bit more. And then 8 hours turns into 13.
Good luck and blessing to all who suffered thru that storm.

 

[FL Plotter]

A pic of a doe that walked up to me this Saturday and ate corn while I watched....this is on my hunting lease.




Dealing with that Sunn Hemp residue last week on my 20 acres.


A picture of a buck leaving the back of my 20 acres on Sunday, while me and the wife are walking in from the front.



Having a snack while looking out over our 20....before we head back home to the Hurricane war zone:

 

[cutman]

What rate did you plant the sunn hemp?

 

[FL Plotter]

I bought 50# of Sunn Hemp at a ridiculously low price and seeded 1 to 1.5 acres with it.

It took two weeks, but the grains are finally coming in. I don't have a cultipacker out on this land and I can sure tell the difference between a cultipacked plot and not. Also, backblading the hemp stalks also took off way more grain seed than I wanted. It's growing in the hemp stalk piles along the plot...at least the deer are eating it. In the places the seed was just on top of the ground, the germination and cover is better than where I disked or backbladed the stems off. About the only thing I did right was broadcasting the extra grains I had directly into the ICP that got burned off by a freeze a week later. Got some nice grains coming up through the dying ICP vines.

One of my favorite pics ever. I am standing behind the tailgate. I hunted a plot about 1/2 mile from this one on Friday after Thanksgiving and took a 90# doe (average for our area).


Me and the better half moving a feeder with 100# corn in it on the hemp field. This used to be easier!


Nocturnal boys and girls

 

[Deadeye]

Good to see you out again.

What type of Grains did you plant this time? If you said it I missed it.

I'm finding my plots are coming along very slow, much slower than I expected. The WTI Clover is coming along the best but only in a couple of spots. It seems where the sun is getting through the pines it is doing the best, makes sense.

I was telling my SIL that if I OWNED the property where I would be doing some cutting to make fields for planting, but since we only lease it I can only work with what I got.

 

[FL Plotter]

It's all about the soil samples....my property needed about 1T lime per acre that I applied in July....my leased land needed 4T per acre when we got on it 10 years ago....once that's addressed, it's easier to grow plots.

I do Wren's Abruzzi Rye, Coker Oats, and wheat.....then add white ladino clover and chicory on top after tillage. I cultipack or drag it after that if I can; otherwise, I let the rain wash in the smaller seed.

I get little if any clover growth in the winter.....it's growing it's roots and really takes off in the spring.

 

[cutman]

I bought 50# of Sunn Hemp at a ridiculously low price and seeded 1 to 1.5 acres with it.

It took two weeks, but the grains are finally coming in. I don't have a cultipacker out on this land and I can sure tell the difference between a cultipacked plot and not. Also, backblading the hemp stalks also took off way more grain seed than I wanted. It's growing in the hemp stalk piles along the plot...at least the deer are eating it. In the places the seed was just on top of the ground, the germination and cover is better than where I disked or backbladed the stems off. About the only thing I did right was broadcasting the extra grains I had directly into the ICP that got burned off by a freeze a week later. Got some nice grains coming up through the dying ICP vines.

One of my favorite pics ever. I am standing behind the tailgate. I hunted a plot about 1/2 mile from this one on Friday after Thanksgiving and took a 90# doe (average for our area).
View attachment 14088

Me and the better half moving a feeder with 100# corn in it on the hemp field. This used to be easier!
View attachment 14089

Nocturnal boys and girls

View attachment 14090

Don’t give up on sunn hemp. You planted it way too thick. Add 7# per acre in a mix or 15# per acre if a pure stand. It’s a great plant in the South.

 

[Triple C]

At least you gave the better half the lighter load on moving that feeder . Looks like she was kinda dragging you along. I've never planted sun hemp but been leaning toward possibly adding that as a summer forage. Cool pic with the doe admiring that GMC truck!

 

[FL Plotter]

At least you gave the better half the lighter load on moving that feeder . Looks like she was kinda dragging you along. I've never planted sun hemp but been leaning toward possibly adding that as a summer forage. Cool pic with the doe admiring that GMC truck!

So, when you move one of those types of feeders, the legs almost always fall off. She was holding that top leg in....then the bottom two fell off when we were halfway across the plot and she had to scramble to put them back in because the weight of the feeder was crushing me! We laughed...and laughed...and laughed. NOT!

Did you see me in the picture behind the tailgate? I was taking pictures of 2 more in the plot while that doe was sneaking around. I have a great video of 2 does and twin fawns running right by me in that same plot on Thanksgiving morning.

 

[dogghr]

Really liked the better half pic. Good luck rest of season, place looks great.

 

[FL Plotter]

Well boys, time for a little update. Been a wet fall/early winter in Florida...we average 3-4" in December, and we are at 10-12". Hunted my leased land over the Thanksgiving holiday and harvested a nice adult doe without a fawn. Hunted again the Sunday before Christmas and took our oldest doe (10+ years old). 90# and 103# respectfully....good size for our area. So I've got 30# of snack sticks and 50# of ground in the freezer. Good start considering.....

Monsoon types of rain have really been a problem with my 20 acres. It's hilly, so there is runoff and some erosion in my food plot. Definitely helps to disc cross-hill vs with the hill....I'll get it right next time. Good news is that the deer are in there thick working on the grains. Same basic 18 deer or so and largely nocturnal, especially the bucks. Didn't get around to building my elevated blind, so I'll either hunt from the ground during the January rut, or give it another year. The logistics of killing there and getting to a processor are a little wonky....I'm more setup for that on my leased land.

I was able to fertilize both properties before the last rain, so I've got that going for me.

Old 10+ y/o doe:


2 plots on my 20 acres:

 

[FL Plotter]

Fertilized both properties over the holidays. Here are some pics of my hunting lease. Haven't been to my 20 since I fertilized:


One week after fertilizer was put down. 4 bags of 13-13-13 on this 1 acre plot:

 

[E_308]

I like the mud flap to keep the fertilizer of the ATV, good idea. Nice looking place you have there too!

 

[FL Plotter]

I like the mud flap to keep the fertilizer of the ATV, good idea. Nice looking place you have there too!

Thanks. It's a piece of foam board that's zip tied to my ATV frame. Even with that, I was finding that some fertilizer would come up and over and hit my back (and go down inside by pants!). So I strapped an empty plastic fertilizer bag to the spreader frame above the foam board and problem solved! Not a granule of fertilizer came forward after that.

Here's a closeup of the double flap:

 

[FL Plotter]

Well boys, I took Friday, Jan 11th off and got a good one from my hunting lease (5.5 y/o, 134#). Sat my 20 acres last night for the first time ever after working on my first elevated blind there. Been a good week....cooler temps and the rain has slowed down a bunch.

My buck chasing the night before he took a ride home on my tailgate:


After a short drag back into the plot:


Some updated pictures of my 20 acres. Greening up after fertilizer:


Back 1 acre plot looking good:


Back fenceline is amazing. Every tree rubbed. Many, many scrapes:


Front 5 acres. House will go up on that hill:

 

[Deadeye]

Looks awesome.
Nice Buck you got there. It's been tough for us with the hrs of travel needed to get there and back. Hope that this was the correct place and it works out in the end. Where a lot of guys can sneak out whenever they want, we have to make a plan to get there and hunt.
I'm planning to head up the last weekend of January and hunt that week. See what happens. Been a real good experience in any case.

Have found out we are loaded all around us with Coyotes. the Boy shot a Doe during Doe Days and we heard some other shots that day as well. That night the woods lit up with Coyotes as they found the dump piles from the shot deer. I've never heard that many at one time before.

 

[FL Plotter]

Well, with empty weekends, decent weather, and still lots of season left, I worked on my stand on my farm just to give me an option to sit if I want to. After I got the stand done, I had time to sit last weekend, but I also had a sharp chainsaw so I cut up downed pines from the storm rather than hunt. Weird, I know, but sometimes work is more fun and I really didn't want to fool with cleaning a buck on Sunday night. One wide 8pt has been shot across the road by the lease guys, but I still have the stud 7pt alive in the area from the summer...but no daylight pictures of him. We'll see how I feel this weekend about making the drive at 0400.

Here's some pics of the stand over the former Sunn Hemp plot and some deer in front of it:

 

[Deadeye]

Nice Job once again.

I was up at ours, but when I saw the temps were dropping into the low 20's for the overnight, I bailed and came home. Wimp yeah I know. But sleeping in a tent at 20 degrees doesn't appeal to me like it used to.

It's been a real learning experience and I'm slowly figuring it out. I'm going to add some pics in my thread to update it.

Hey BTW where do you stay when you up there? At your property or one of the Hotels near by? Just thinking maybe we could meet when we are both there one day.