Allgood Acres

[BenAllgood]

These hills of Kentucky are pretty, but also pretty hard on a guy toting a backpack sprayer full of chemicals to cull unwanted trees. I followed a forester around who was marking while I was spraying. It took 20 gallons to spray everything marked, but I got it done. The trees basal sprayed with a 20-25% mix of triclopyr 4 and 75-80% diesel were tree of heaven, royal paulownia, maples, beech, redbuds, and a couple more species.



I needed a break after climbing out of one holler and looked around to find a nice shady rock to sit on. He looked up at me as if to say, "Spots taken." So, I found another spot to give them some privacy.



Did not like finding this. I'm sure the coyotes as well as some other critters were well fed.



The farmer planting my corn field was busy getting it ready.



In late summer/early fall, I'm going to do some strip disking to encourage some more forbs and ready some more firebreaks to burn a couple small areas. There's good pockets of pollinator species mixed in, but the grasses are little too much in some areas for what I'm going for.

 

[BenAllgood]

I decided to take this 3 year old yesterday evening. My 11 yo daughter was with me and threatened bodily harm if I didn't.

 

[George]

Congratulations Ben, now you get to kill trees.

G

 

[BenAllgood]

Congratulations Ben, now you get to kill trees.

G

I'm ready for that. I did some checking on my basal spraying I did this spring. Some bigger tree of heaven was dead, dead.

 

[Native Hunter]

Congratulations Ben on a nice deer. Keep up the good work.

 

[BenAllgood]

The basal spraying through an EQIP program to remove invasives and unwanted midstory trees seems to have been at least 90% successful. The trees sprayed are crumbling and falling apart.





I found some persimmon saplings starting to come up in my old field areas.



The farmer planted corn again on my destination field. He periodically cuts some as he needs it, but there is corn throughout the season. That old abandoned road sure does make it nice to access stands on the other side.



Turkeys are liking the old field area for nesting. I bumped 2 hens in different spots.

 

[BenAllgood]

I opened a spot to see a travel corridor from a ladder stand in a cedar. This is facing north. There's an east-west major trail that is choked down by a ditch that cuts up from the draw below. To the west is bedding I created through edge feathering along the draw and old field transition line.



The deer have really liked the edge feathered edges for bedding. There were beds in the old field as well as just inside the tree line where I had done some earlier edge feathering. So, I made more. I avoided areas where oak saplings were starting to come up to make sure I didn't promote any oak wilt. I was really surprised how many oak saplings are starting to show up now that I've made way for them by removing other unwanted species.



This is a draw that juts out into my old field. There is a ridge on the right that I'm promoting for old field bedding and edge feathered bedding. The deer have a great travel corridor around the head of that draw to reach the food plot on the other side. I wanted to put a stand in that red mulberry tree to have a 20 yard shot to the corridor. I enhanced the corridor by doing some hinge cutting and removing some trees to promote browse.



I refreshened some minerals to help inventory bucks using the property. I see an old friend who has only one side. I found his shed also on a well used trail on the old field edge.

 

[KSQ2]

Nice find!!

 

[George]

looking good Ben.

G

 

[BenAllgood]

This one will be fun to keep up with. The first 2 pictures are from last year. I estimated him to be 2.5 at that time. The second 2 pictures are from this year. Judging from his mass at the bases, he doesn't seem like he'll add much mass this year.

 

[BenAllgood]

One of the trees I had killed by basal spraying became a home for a hive of bees.

 

[BenAllgood]

One thing I forgot to post was a problem tree I took down. This was a fairly large buckeye tree. I removed it for two reasons. It was producing a ton of shade in an area I wanted more browse production, and it was producing lots of babies that were coming up everywhere in the adjacent edge feathering. Getting rid of the momma trees of undesirables can save some headaches down the road.

Before:



After:

 

[BenAllgood]

Looks like the 5 year old one antlered buck we call Sweet tooth may put on some antler growth on that bad side this year.