This food plot was many years in the making. It started off as the main logging deck when we logged about 35 acres 4 years ago. It was then expanded into a 1 acre plot with a "water" hole by the guys hired to come clean up the logging mess. Water is in quotes because they dug it in a terrible spot...pure sand and the highest point of elevation around. Needless to say, it did not hold water.
I envisioned an area surrounded by longleaf pine, bordered by chestnuts, and offering year round food. Unfortunately, I didn't envision this until the heavy equipment guys were gone. And that brings me to what I learned: if you are having logging done, make sure you have a long term plan before the work is done. I would have saved a lot of time and money if I had thought this through from the start.
Anyway, I planted the chestnuts, forrester planted 16,000 longleaf, and I cut remaining trees down with a chainsaw to open the canopy for the chestnuts. The next year I hired a guy to come in and destump the area so I could bush hog and also dig a new waterhole and fill in the old one. Somewhere along the way I planted 5 peach trees, the best of which died in the great flood of October 2015.
So here's what I'm left with today. Peaches in the near cages, chestnuts (dunstans, au buck 3 & 4, Chinese) in the tubes, waterhole in the middle, and LC mix in between. As I took this picture shortly after sunrise this morning, I could hear a gobbler in the distance. Heaven.
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I envisioned an area surrounded by longleaf pine, bordered by chestnuts, and offering year round food. Unfortunately, I didn't envision this until the heavy equipment guys were gone. And that brings me to what I learned: if you are having logging done, make sure you have a long term plan before the work is done. I would have saved a lot of time and money if I had thought this through from the start.
Anyway, I planted the chestnuts, forrester planted 16,000 longleaf, and I cut remaining trees down with a chainsaw to open the canopy for the chestnuts. The next year I hired a guy to come in and destump the area so I could bush hog and also dig a new waterhole and fill in the old one. Somewhere along the way I planted 5 peach trees, the best of which died in the great flood of October 2015.
So here's what I'm left with today. Peaches in the near cages, chestnuts (dunstans, au buck 3 & 4, Chinese) in the tubes, waterhole in the middle, and LC mix in between. As I took this picture shortly after sunrise this morning, I could hear a gobbler in the distance. Heaven.
Sent from my iPhone using Deer Hunter Forum
