70 in Texas, 50 in Oklahoma

[Brent]

Enjoyed reading through all of your posts. Congratulations on all of your success! That Clover Trio was the first food plot seed I ever planted and I had pretty decent results for it being a BoB seed mix. I also used cereal rye as a nurse crop to help get it established. Your clover should be filling in nicely by now if it hasn't gotten choked or shaded out by the surrounding vegetation. Go in there and mow your plots down and you might be surprised.

As far as the no herbicide rule is concerned I think it is good that your family is concerned about their overall environmental impact. It's something we could all be more aware of. In my opinion, herbicides can be a useful tool when applied correctly. We all know that there is a whole list of arguements and ethics that getting rolled into this conversation that belong in another forum, so let's avoid opening that can of worms.

That being said, you still have several options that you can use to prep for planting. One option is to smother existing plants using tarps, rolls of black plastic, or even cardboard from large appliance boxes. Just make sure to secure them using large rocks, pavers or stakes. It'll take a little while, but it can provide some good results. I've used this method to create flower beds. These same principals can be used around newly planted trees to suppress competing vegetation and act as a moisture barrier.

Another option that you can consider is horticultural vinegar. This stuff doesn't carry any scary labels or reputations, so it may be an easier sell. At 20-30% acidity it is stronger than the 5% stuff you can buy at the grocery store, and obviously more potent. Best time to apply it is on a hot sunny day with no rain in the forecast. The hotter the better. Use a backpack sprayer and treat it as you would any other herbicide. You'll see leaves begin to brown and wilt within a few hours. One of the downsides is that it only top-kills most vegetation, so you will likely see reemergence in the future. I've never personally used it on a food plot or garden, but we have used it at work to prep sensitive riparian areas for tree planting. I personally have concerns that after repeated use it could increase soil acidity, so it will be important for you to perform regular soil tests to monitor your pH and adjust as needed (which you should be doing anyways if you plan to plot). I've considered creating a small test plot, taking a soil sample, spraying with vinegar, and resampling a few weeks after application to see how much of an affect it has on the soil. Maybe it'll give this a shot soon.

Once you have a plot established there are several things you can do to reduce weed competition. Mowing, cover crops, crop rotation and plant ID are all things that you will need to focus on. Also, consider the fact that a majority of a deer's diet is composed of native browse even in rich ag areas. Many of those pesky "weeds" (as long as they are not invasive) could be adding additional browse and diversity to your plot.

 

[TexOk]

Well it's been waaaaay too long since I've been able to update this. I check the forum here often but been too busy to actually do much posting, so I've got quite a few things to add since I'm doing this thread as a journal for myself as well as sharing with others and getting ideas and feedback from you guys.

Speaking of which, thanks for the tip on the ag vinegar. My brother who works in landscaping mentioned it the other day as well, so I'm going to give it a try for my fall planting. Like you said, it probably won't give as good a kill as some other herbicides but hopefully enough to give the stuff I'm planting a head start.

So I guess I'll start back where I left off. I went down to hunt one more time in January. I know you northern guys will probably laugh about this but we had a nice snow at the Property in OK right before we went up to hunt. I didn't see any deer that hunt, but the beautiful view from my stand was more than enough to make it worth it.

A lot of my family and friends don't get how I can sit for hours up in a tree in the freezing cold and not see a single deer and still love it. I think just being able to hit pause on life's craziness for a moment and taking in the beauty and wonder of Creation is good for the soul. I'd like to think the world would be a better place if more people could do it.

 

[TexOk]

Of course the snow is purty to look at, but less fun to work in. My time up there is limited so after a couple of hunts my dad and I got to work planting our order from the Wildlife Group:

Two AU Buck IV chestnuts
Two AU Buck III
Two AU Buck IV seedlings (grown from chestnuts from Buck IVs, not grafted)
Two Late dropping female persimmons
Five Seguin chestnuts
Six strawberry bushes

The Seguins and the strawberry bushes we potted and kept at home to grow out a bit, and plan to plant them this fall once they go dormant. Unfortunately two of the Seguins didn't make it, so I'll probably order some more this fall along with a couple of Allegheny chinkapins.

The chestnuts were all planted on the perimeter of what I planned make our first food plot. One of the Buck IVs:

One of the Buck IV seedlings after we finished screening the bases and making remesh cages:

We also planted three Dunstan chestnuts in this chestnut food plot. They were three year olds in seven gallon pots when we bought them last spring. At the same time we bought two three year old Morris Burton persimmons. We transferred them into 15 gallon rootmakers and babied them throughout the summer. Here are the Dunstans:

 

[Mennoniteman]

Of course the snow is purty to look at, but less fun to work in. My time up there is limited so after a couple of hunts my dad and I got to work planting our order from the Wildlife Group:

Two AU Buck IV chestnuts
Two AU Buck III
Two AU Buck IV seedlings (grown from chestnuts from Buck IVs, not grafted)
Two Late dropping female persimmons
Five Seguin chestnuts
Six strawberry bushes

The Seguins and the strawberry bushes we potted and kept at home to grow out a bit, and plan to plant them this fall once they go dormant. Unfortunately two of the Seguins didn't make it, so I'll probably order some more this fall along with a couple of Allegheny chinkapins.

The chestnuts were all planted on the perimeter of what I planned make our first food plot. One of the Buck IVs:

One of the Buck IV seedlings after we finished screening the bases and making remesh cages:

We also planted three Dunstan chestnuts in this chestnut food plot. They were three year olds in seven gallon pots when we bought them last spring. At the same time we bought two three year old Morris Burton persimmons. We transferred them into 15 gallon rootmakers and babied them throughout the summer. Here are the Dunstans:

Hunting is many things, one of them is it fills a normal human need to get away from things sometimes. And very few people who are looking for inner peace are going to tell you they found it somewhere in a city. You could enjoy the hunt even though you didn't see anything; therefore you are a real hunter. Allen

 

[TexOk]

Thanks Allen! I can say without a doubt as a city boy (or more properly, a suburban) there is just something awesome about being in the woods.

So this we winter one of our OK neighbors gave us a box of pine tree plugs for free, probably about 250 or so of them. I'm guessing they're some kind of hybrid since the neighbor works for a local timber company. Most of them were planted for aesthetics, but a few were planted to screen the new pond. More on the pond some other time...

My parents planted some fruit trees around the campsite, different varieties of apple, pear, peach and plum. We had some issues with browsing, and one plum was destroyed by a rutting buck. My mom wanted to try something she read about on her gardening website, using fishing wire at two foot intervals on T-posts.

I'm skeptical as to whether this will work, although it has seemed to work so far this year. The idea is that the deer don't see the fishing wire and bump into it. This freaks them out and so they avoid that spot. Time will tell if I get to tell my mom "I told you so," or if she'll be the one who gets to say it.

 

[Native Hunter]

Great thread Tex. I love the cover you have there, and those young trees you planted are looking good too. Great pic of dad and the deer too.

 

[Mennoniteman]

Thanks Allen! I can say without a doubt as a city boy (or more properly, a suburban) there is just something awesome about being in the woods.

So this we winter one of our OK neighbors gave us a box of pine tree plugs for free, probably about 250 or so of them. I'm guessing they're some kind of hybrid since the neighbor works for a local timber company. Most of them were planted for aesthetics, but a few were planted to screen the new pond. More on the pond some other time...

My parents planted some fruit trees around the campsite, different varieties of apple, pear, peach and plum. We had some issues with browsing, and one plum was destroyed by a rutting buck. My mom wanted to try something she read about on her gardening website, using fishing wire at two foot intervals on T-posts.

I'm skeptical as to whether this will work, although it has seemed to work so far this year. The idea is that the deer don't see the fishing wire and bump into it. This freaks them out and so they avoid that spot. Time will tell if I get to tell my mom "I told you so," or if she'll be the one who gets to say it.

Fishing wires? You mean like 60 lb test monofilament? A novel concept! Let us know how it works. I might try this myself.

 

[lakngolf]

Glad you found some time to update. Always enjoy

 

[TexOk]

I'll be sure to update on the fishing wire trick works, I can't remember the exact type of monofilament we used, I'll see if we have some leftover.

Native, this property has some great cover. It was a pine plantation that was select cut about ten or twelve years ago, so lots of thick nasty cover throughout. Much of the land surrounding us is still pine plantation, so I think that makes us a tempting spot. So the plan is to add more food sources and a permanent water source to make this the local hot spot.

Speaking of food, at my dad's stand we planted several different varieties of persimmon, doing the same thing we're doing with the chestnut plot by planting varieties with staggering drop times. So far we've got 2 Morris Burton (should drop around September-Octoberish), 3 Deer Magnet (October-November), and 2 Wildlife Group's Late Dropping (December-January).

The Morris Burton are four year old trees, but we just put them in the ground this winter. I was really hoping there was a male persimmon close enough to pollenate these since they are all grafted females, but I've yet to spot any persimmons anywhere on the Property. So I was pretty stoked when I checked them two weeks ago and saw the Morris Burtons had about twenty persimmons on each tree!

The Deer Magnets and the WG Late Drop were just whips when we planted this winter, so I was surprised when I saw that one of the WG Late Drop had two persimmons on it.

Since these were all recently planted I went ahead and pruned off all the fruit so that they put more energy into settling in and growing.

 

[TexOk]

Also at my dad's stand, there's an old logging road that I planted last fall with a mix of crimson, red, and Durana clover using the throw and mow method. It didn't come in as thick as I'd like but it still had some decent spots here and there.

Also on the last trip, I spotted a tree within bow range of my dad's stand that was loaded with some kind of fruit. Native was kind enough to ID it for me, a wild Mexican Plum.

Further down along the clover logging road we planted a couple of three year old Dunstans we got at Walmart this spring. Unlike most of our other trees we managed to cage these and put down a Lumite weed mat. The goal is to get the Lumite down on the rest of the trees this year.

Later this summer we checked back at that Walmart and they still had some Dunstans left. My dad managed to pick out the best looking ones for just $5 each!

We transplanted these six into 15 gallon root maker bags and are babying them at home until we can plant them later this fall. Four of them will probably go along the logging road, while two will be added to the chestnut food plot.

 

[TexOk]

So back to the chestnut plot. The idea is again to have several varieties all dropping at different times. Dunstans typically drop in September, Buck III drop late September into October, Buck IVs drop mid October into November. There's no telling when the Buck IV seedlings will drop since they aren't grafted, so we'll have to see how those turn out. I'll also be adding some Seguin chestnuts and some Allegheny chinquapin to the mix, and they should drop anywhere between September and November.

So far they are doing well for the most part. A couple of the Dunstans:

And if you look closely each of these Dunstans have a single bur on them.

The Buck IV Seedlings are doing great:

Unfortunately my luck with the grafted Buck trees hasn't been as good. One of the IVs died but sprouted from beneath the graft:

One of the Buck III is completely toast. The remaining Buck IV and Buck III are doing good though.:

Hopefully in five years these trees will be dropping some tempting food leading up to and during the rut. In the mean time, I'm trying to make this a standard food plot as well. Again, I'm very limited on equipment (brush hog/lawnmower and weed eater) and no herbicides. So I'm trying my hand at the throw and mow method.

 

[TexOk]

So in mid May I went in with a plan to do some buckwheat and sunflowers. I also wanted to expand a bit on the south side of the plot. I seeded first, and I bought a legit handseeder this go around. However, I wasn't familiar with it and the directions weren't very helpful, so I started with the opening way too wide. I started on the north side of the field and made it about halfway before I was almost out of seed. Oops. So one side of the field got a heavy seeding of buckwheat, and the other side hardly any. I learned my lesson the second go round and seeded the sunflowers much more evenly. I didn't have a soil test for this spot yet, so I put down a 40 pound bag of 13-13-13 that had laying around. The total plot size is between 1/10 and 1/4 acre I'm guessing. Seeding rate for the buckwheat and sunflowers was 5 pounds each. Then came the mowing. Before (north side):

South side:

After:

Before and after of the south side that got brushhogged and cleared:

Drove around the plot with the ATV a few times to help with seed to soil contact. Then prayed for rain, which came about two weeks later. In the meantime the plot got hammered with doves, which is why I'm thinking there was no sunflowers anywhere when I came back for round to in mid July. Not surprisingly, there was some buckwheat over on the north end where I'd dumped all the seed, along with some volunteer corn:

My original plan was to do another round of buckwheat and sunflowers, but life doesn't always go as planned. I was unable to get any buckwheat in time for my trip, so I settled for some iron clay cowpeas and sunflowers instead. I was pleased to see that the buckwheat had gone to seed, so I hoped that I would get some reseeded buckwheat along with the cowpeas and sunflowers.

I was also happy to see some signs of browsing all through the field.

 

[TexOk]

I seeded the field with the peas and the sunflowers, and added 80 pounds of pelletized lime based on an old soil test I did on the old logging road adjacent to the plot. I then brush hogged the plot, but as I was finishing up I decided I'd expand the plot a bit more on the east side where some thick wild grapes were growing. As I brushhogged, what I thought was a big horsefly flew up and bit me in the face. Well that hurt, but I swatted it away and started to push on when I felt another stinging pain in my arm. I then realized that a bunch of big black insects were suddenly buzzing around me, and the stings multiplied. This of course all happened in the course of a few seconds. I quickly realized that these were bees, and that I must have disturbed their nest somehow. I tried to back myself out but they were coming fast and furious now. I quickly decided on retreat. I was swinging my hat around wildly and running but they kept after me, stinging as I ran. My dad was on the other side of the field weedeating and I screamed out "bees!" As I continued to run away from him towards the campsite, hoping they wouldn't go after him too. Fortunately for him they didn't. Unfortunately for me they continued to go after me as I ran yelling and swinging my hat. About halfway down the trail and still being stung I began to seriously worry what bees I was dealing with, and my mind flashed to all the horror stories I'd read about killer bees. About that time though they let up, and I staggered into camp and quickly disrobed and downed some Benadryl. In once sense I got lucky, because I was wearing thick brush pants and an ice vest (a nice piece of clothing to wear working outside in the summer, it has pouches on the inside for putting ice packs in-don't laugh, it works really well at keeping you cool, and also defends well against bees apparently). Everywhere covered by the pants and vest I didn't get stung. The rest of me (face, arms, and around my waist) had twenty stings. Good times. The fun part now was... how do we get the brush hog back? Clearly there was a nest near where I left it. It's a walk behind brush hog, so when I let go the dead man switch killed it. But it was wedged pretty good back in some grape vines, and that thing is really hard to move as is when it's not running. And cranking it on was sure to piss them off again. So the brilliant game plan? Dad found a can of wasp spray, and for some reason happened to have two thick hoodies with him. So he put on the two hoodies with some brush pants and pulled the cords tight on the hoods so you could only see his eyes (protected by safety glasses. He looked like Kenny from South Park. I'm still kicking myself that I didn't take a picture. I was on standby with the UTV ready to drive us both out of there fast if things went south. Fortunately it went off without a hitch. They were bumblebees that were nested in the ground, and we spotted their hole.

Dad soaked it with spray, then ran back and waited a few minutes. Eventually he was able to get in there and start up the mower and get out of there.

 

[TexOk]

With that ridiculous bit of drama out of the way, now we just needed some rain. The 60% chance we had for the weekend we planted of course disappeared. A week went by, and then came the downpour, over two inches. Then again this weekend, another two inch downpour! My dad was up there and took some pics of the plot and just texted them to me. As a novice plotter I can tell we've got something growing? Is it peas?

And of course, some more volunteer corn.

 

[TexOk]

Time for a few cam pics to top things off. First, one of my suspects for planting the corn:

Dang crows live at my feeder. I literally get about a thousand crow pics every time I check that cam. I'm pretty stoked about these new visitors though!

Not happy at all about these visitors though. This is why our feeders are fenced with cattle panels:

Since the end of winter bucks seem to have disappeared. Lots of doe pairs and trios though, so I'm happy to be the place all the girls hang out! First fawn pic so far this year:

Only one pic of a buck so far this year, seems to have some potential, maybe a little camera shy though:

 

[lakngolf]

Ahhh the hole in the ground black humble bee. The Sting that keeps on going. So many stories of he distance they will chase. Good luck on the plots

 

[TexOk]

An update on the food plot, unfortunately I haven't been able to go up there myself but had my dad and then later my brother go check it out and take some pics. These were taken two weeks ago. We've had a ton of rain come through for the month August so everything is very green and growing, unusual for this time of year for sure.

Pretty weedy but it looks like there were at least some cowpeas mixed in there, I can't really tell if there is any sunflowers. I honestly don't know what either plant looks like (unless the sunflowers actually had flowers). I wasn't too bummed about it since my main goal was to grow something there to mow down for thatch for my fall planting. Then this morning my brother and my nephew sent me these:

So the growth really took off with all the rain we've had! Unfortunately not seeing many signs of browsing. There's no ag for miles and miles, so I'm betting my deer have never seen a cowpea before. Hopefully they'll figure it out soon!