foodplot prep and feed

[DocHolladay]

Went up to my lease Saturday after work. The guys beat me there, but they got some stuff done and I helped finish today. Last Monday, we bought a pallet of Record Rack Sportsman and a pallet of Record Rack Golden Deer Nugget to supplement the deer's natural browse and our little bitty food plots(about 2 acres on a 500 acre lease). We also bought some palletized lime for our small plots too.

We took it out of the bags and put it in 55gal barrels for storage and carried the rest to the lease this weekend to fill the feeders. We used 1000lbs to fill all the feeders and added a couple of new feeders too.

We were going to rent a skid steer to clear some tree since we got permission from the land owner to do it. One of our members was searching craigslist for some atv attachments and found a guy that did land clearing. He called him and for a few hundred dollars more, he could clear more than we could and that would free us up to do other things. When he was finished, we had increased out food plots to approx 5 acres. We have a logging road that is wide open, but we aren't going to plant it until they are done logging. That should give us another 1/2-3/4 acre.

Here are a couple of pics of where we stay. One of our members owns a sign company and we used some left over LED's to have lights and an old car battery to power them. We also used old awnings to make our "patio". We built a barrel stove that will run you out if you aren't careful and put to much wood in. Makes for a nice place to go hunt and bring the kids on the weekend for fun during warmer weather.

 

[Don M]

It's great to see what you all have been doing to improve your property...did you make your feeders?

 

[DocHolladay]

The barrel feeder above is made by a manufacturer. A friend of mine won it in a drawing. I like the design, but don't like how low it is to the ground or the fact that the feed is exposed at the feed tubes. Record Rack is water resistant, but it isn't water proof. We are thinking about raising it up and either covering up the feed tubes with a pipe or putting a roof over the whole thing. Our other feeders are made out of 33 gal plastic barrels cut in half or parts of signs that my friend was scraping out. I don't have any pics of the "sign" feeders. They are about 8" wide and about 6ft long. We put the lip of them approx 40" off the ground so the deer don't have to bend down to eat. The barrel feeders hold 4 bags of feed each. The sign feeders hold 1 3/4 bags of feed.

 

[DocHolladay]

I forgot to say, we have mineral sites also. We tried putting them next to the feeders for a "one stop shop", but the deer would only eat the feed. We started placing the mineral sites 50-100yds down the trail leading to or away from the feeders. They started utilizing them to the fullest. Not every feeder has a mineral site and not every mineral site has a feeder.