No Till Methods Suck!

dogghr

Well-Known Member
There was a day, that I knew that once the corn in my area was cut, and the deer finished their mop up feeding, then they naturally moved to other more natural foods and food plots . So now these dang farmers use no till techniques and planting rotations which include no bare soil and a winter crop of WR or WW or peas or such. So now the deer can still feed in the same fields and not leave. What a croc. Why do farmers think they need to save the soil like we food plotters have learned to do??? Give me a break, as if hunting isn't hard enough already? I say we re- educate the farmer to drop the moldboard plow into the ground, beat the heck out of the soil, and leave it bare as much of the year as possible. I hope everyone on here is on board with helping me accomplish these. Geez.
 
I see cover crops taking off as a trend. The plus side is that tillable acres can also be food plots. I'd be pretty keen to rent tillable with a cover crop stipulation.
 
Hahahahaha......cover crops are not wide spread in my area yet. No-till is very prominent however and the efficiency of the harvesting equipment is way better than it was. I have a 15 acre harvested corn field fight now and you will have to look and look hard...real hard to find an ear of corn on the ground right now. They have to come to my plots for that now....:D
 
I know some farmers that are growing cover crops for grazing cattle on then harvesting the winter wheat or just using it for moisture retention.I also have talked to some that think they will be going back to discing simply because of the issues with weeds control and gly resistant weeds.I know some that spent over 30.00 per acre for herbicide trying to control pig weed in soybeans
 
I remember the last QDMA field day I went to was a speaker on cover crops.Big issue locally going on right now is that some of the farmers that planted cover crops with rye in them had them sprayed with paraquat.This herbicide would kill a field full of weeds including marestail brown dry dead in 48 hours max.This is what me neighbor did this year and his field looked dead but now after 2 weeks the rye is greening back up along with the marestail.This is after being sprayed with what is maybe one of the hottest herbicides out there right now
 
The biggest crop farming operation around here; the last I heard they were cropping about 30k acres, seeds their cover crops with a crop duster. I watched them doing it last fall while working at a farm next to one of theirs. The local coop mixes the seed for them. Rye,radish and crimson clover, sounds like a decent food plot to me.
 
Forgot about this thread. Interestingly a farm down the road sold and while its been cover cropped farmed for quite a while, new owners have been turning the soil. In a way I'm glad as one of the fields is in a nasty curve and was always full of deer crossing the highway when it was cover cropped. No fall/winter deer in it now. They don't eat dirt.
 
The biggest farmer near me does everything no till, and for about 5 year has planted rye or triticale after the corn and bean harvest, except for this past fall, not a single cover crop, we were ending a drought, maybe they didn't think a cover crop would establish good last year, or maybe they are not seeing yield gains, but either way, it wont hurt my feelings if they quit planting cover crops either, more deer to my land!
 
Cover cropping would be a welcomed and much needed evolution in MN. That would go a long way towards rebuilding the deer population where it's been so badly beaten.
 
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