I'm getting a tractor

[shaman]

Tomorrow, I'm getting a Kubota L2502HST delivered along with a rotary mower and rotary tiller. I've had my farm for since 2001, and up until now, I've been just a dabbler in food plots. I'm retiring there full time, and I'll now have more time to take care of things. What I'd like to do is throw some questions out to y'all and see what yout think.

First off, I thought I'd go through my long term goals.

1) I'd like to improve the number of large buck sightings. As it is, our end of the county (SW Bracken County, KY) is crawling with deer. However, large bucks are only occasional visitors. We had a couple of years where bigguns were everywhere, but it was because a neighbor had moved out and stopped putting $700/year worth of corn in a feeder near the back corner of my property.
2) I have 40 acres of hay pasture. Some of that ground hasn't been turned over in 50 years. I'm going to hit some of these new plots with the rotary tiller to get started, but I want to migrate to minimal tillage. At this point, I'm experimenting a lot just to see what works. I'm targetting about 5 acres total-- the most likely places where deer and turkeys will benefit and be easiest to harvest
3) The family deer camp and turkey camp are both run out of these 200 acres. Right now, it's a really good year if 4 of the 6 of us take a doe and a buck and 1-2 turkeys each. I'd like to bump that up.
4) We always had good years and bad years, but lately things have gone rather slack for both turkey and deer. My guess is that there has been a lot of turnover with my neighbors. They've gone from brown-n-down guys who rode ATVs everywhere and chased the deer onto my property to serious hunters doing more with their own land. I need to up my game.

Additional info:

1) I'm also receiving an ATV from a buddy. He's been riding it out to his blind for about a decade after his quad bypass operation. He's turning it over to me. I'm ordering a tank sprayer, a seeder, and a drag harrow for it-- much cheaper than trying to so all that with the tractor.

2) I took advantage of Memorial Day sales and ordered a bunch of seed.

https://antlerking.com/product/food-plot-blend/

https://antlerking.com/product/honey-hole-mix/

https://www.evolved.com/5-card-draw/#description-section

https://www.evolved.com/throw-gro-no-till-forage/

https://antlerking.com/product/antler-king-game-changer-clover-mix-2/

https://anilogics.com/product/crush-seeds-of-science-clover-plus-alfalfa/


3) I've divvied up my targetted areas into 1/4 acre plots. That way, I've got 4 chances to try a different blend in a 1 acre field and see what works.

4) I've told the guy who's been doing my hay to get his work done by 15 July. I want to start planting by the second week in August so that everything is ready for the 8 Nov Rifle Opener.

5) I'm currently planning 1 40 lb bag of 13-13-13 per 1/4 acre plot. I did soil tests and all my ground was 6.5 PH or above and fairly well situated with N-P and K.
6) If you're looking for more info about the farm, you can find 20+ years of posts about it at Genesis9.angzva.com


Questions:

1) So the hay dude finishes 7/15. What should I do next? Should I use Gly or just till?
2) What do I do with the hillier pastures? I'm afraid of soil erosion.
3) I'm concentrating on the deer at the moment, but I want to improve things for the turkeys as well. What do you suggest?

This ought to get things going-- give y'all something to respond to. I'll stop for now and let you know about how the tractor delivery goes. Thanks in advance for all your help.

 

[Native Hunter]

Question 1. If you are going to till, I see no reason to spray beforehand. Either way you are killing what is growing and will then get plants coming out of the seedbank to replace what you killed.

Question 2. I would not till places where erosion is probably. If you must plant places like that I would recommend spraying. You could spray/throw/mow but better yet, spraying and renting a seed drill would be better. PS - I've been told that some of the Regional Wildlife Biologist in KY will bring out a seed drill to landowners to use for free. I've never done this myself, but this is what I've been told. You can find contact info at the following link: https://fw.ky.gov/More/Documents/regional_biologists.pdf. One more thing - just completely avoid trying to plant places that are really steep.

Question 3. You are making very little money on that 40 acres of hay, which I'm assuming is cool season grasses. Consider turning it into NWSGs, which would attract nesting hens. You might even still be able to cut it for hay once the eggs have hatched and the poults move out. Warm season grasses mature much later in the year than cool season grasses (typically fescue and/or orchard grass in KY). You might be able to cut for hay and still get enough growth before the end of the year to attract nesting turkeys the next spring. Also by that time fawns are much more mature and less likely to lay still and get hit with a mower like they do when cool season hay is typically cut.

Best wishes

 

[shaman]

Thanks for the quick comeback. That's a lot of good ideas.

 

[RGrizzzz]

Consider more than 5 acres of plots. Maybe 5 for you to play with and another 5-10 of something like corn or soybeans. Those always seem to be the biggest draw, if you have the acreage to do them right

 

[Mennoniteman]

Congratulations on your retirement, hopefully it is a fulfilling and enjoyable time.
Congrats on the tractor and equipment purchase, it should make working your land much easier.
A few observations, you are thinking correctly that management is the correct path to improving your hunting, and food plots are probably the second most important part of deer management.
Just because you didn't mention the rest of your habitat here doesn't mean you don't have good cover, and I understand that you are asking food plot questions, but I want to point out first that thick undisturbed cover is the number one most part of deer management, and the time you spend making thick cover will have twice the return in big bucks as time spent on food plots. So, the best answer is, do both! Any improvement for deer is usually an improvement for turkeys as well, just making sure that you preserve nesting trees for turkeys and work on removing predators.
Ok, back to your questions about food plots. You mention starting in late June and July. Those are bad months for planting almost anything, hot and dry is a poor recipe for planting food plots. About the only thing that I would consider doing in July is spraying glyphosate on a level plot to prep for a fall plot. But if I'm doing thrownmow in mid August I probably won't be spraying in July, I'd rather keep growth going as long as possible. As mentioned above, tillage will make a difference on your spraying needs as well.
We plant fall plots in zone 6 from mid August to Mid-September, mid August works good to plant brassicas like a mix of salad&plot topper and deadly dozen. The sucess of planting in early August hinges a lot on watching the weather and planting right before a heavy rain. You can plant like this in July and do ok some years, but not on an average year.. When you have planted seeds sitting in hot and dry dirt waiting for rain the germination rates go down every day.
We plant winter rye on or after Labor day. Add clover to fall plots and you will have a good clover plot the next summer.
A note on the seed you are buying, buck-on-bag seed is not affordable year after year for larger acreages like you are talking, find out where local farmers buy their seeds and see if you can get bulk pricing.

 

[Mennoniteman]

Setting up those new plot locations is very critical, they absolutely must be upwind from access points and hunting stands. Concealed access is also important, but not as important as prevailing wind direction.

 

[shaman]

Congratulations on your retirement, hopefully it is a fulfilling and enjoyable time.
Congrats on the tractor and equipment purchase, it should make working your land much easier.
A few observations, you are thinking correctly that management is the correct path to improving your hunting, and food plots are probably the second most important part of deer management.
Just because you didn't mention the rest of your habitat here doesn't mean you don't have good cover, and I understand that you are asking food plot questions, but I want to point out first that thick undisturbed cover is the number one most part of deer management, and the time you spend making thick cover will have twice the return in big bucks as time spent on food plots. So, the best answer is, do both! Any improvement for deer is usually an improvement for turkeys as well, just making sure that you preserve nesting trees for turkeys and work on removing predators.
Ok, back to your questions about food plots. You mention starting in late June and July. Those are bad months for planting almost anything, hot and dry is a poor recipe for planting food plots. About the only thing that I would consider doing in July is spraying glyphosate on a level plot to prep for a fall plot. But if I'm doing thrownmow in mid August I probably won't be spraying in July, I'd rather keep growth going as long as possible. As mentioned above, tillage will make a difference on your spraying needs as well.
We plant fall plots in zone 6 from mid August to Mid-September, mid August works good to plant brassicas like a mix of salad&plot topper and deadly dozen. The sucess of planting in early August hinges a lot on watching the weather and planting right before a heavy rain. You can plant like this in July and do ok some years, but not on an average year.. When you have planted seeds sitting in hot and dry dirt waiting for rain the germination rates go down every day.
We plant winter rye on or after Labor day. Add clover to fall plots and you will have a good clover plot the next summer.
A note on the seed you are buying, buck-on-bag seed is not affordable year after year for larger acreages like you are talking, find out where local farmers buy their seeds and see if you can get bulk pricing.

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking. The haydude finishes 7/15, and then I'm not going to start planting until August, and only then when I can get the seed in before a rain. If that means things slide to September, I'm cool with it. Our Rifle Season starts 11/8 this year.

I thought I'd buy the buck-on-the-bag stuff this year and see what grows and what the deer seem to like and then go from there. We have a Southern States store in the next town over. Long term, I'll buy from them.

As to the rest of the habitat, I'm on a set of finger ridges. Along the sides are a mix of cedar thickets and hardwoods. The deer and turkey seem to have plenty of cover. I've had the place for 25 years, and I've been letting as much as I can grow wild around the edges of the hay fields. I had to invade some of the doe bedding areas this past year. We're building a big addition to the house in preparation for moving there full time. However, the deer and turkeys both have adjusted well-- just moved back an extra 100 yards from dozer clearings. One of my goals is to get those bare spots planted. The net by the end of the year should be a net gain in habitat. Beyond that,the places Im digging up for plots are all sections of the hay fields that they travel through, but never use for beds.

 

[Mennoniteman]

Cedar thickets sounds like good cover. Maybe some selective hinge cutting could be a benefit. I think you are on the right track with your plans. Putting more time into the property and having some of the top food in the neighborhood should really help bring the mature deer in. Outcompeting the neighbors in food and cover is a winning combination.

 

[shaman]

Cedar thickets sounds like good cover. Maybe some selective hinge cutting could be a benefit. I think you are on the right track with your plans. Putting more time into the property and having some of the top food in the neighborhood should really help bring the mature deer in. Outcompeting the neighbors in food and cover is a winning combination.

It depends. Lord, do I know about Cedar thickets. Turn your back on a plot of land around here, it'll have 4-foot cedars growing in no time. They grow during the winter. Within a decade, they are as tall as a house.

I've got ones at just about every stage. At some point, about the time they get thick enough to blot out the sun, deer start avoiding them. I have a 40 yr old thicket that is an absolute desert. I'm going to bulldoze the center of it and put a trail in and out. The deer will love it. You have to make big trails and big holes, though. The cedars will grow up and fill it in again in no time.

Red cedar next to oak/hickory savanah is awesome for squirrel. We have a lot of that interface. The squirrel use the cedar for protection and then feed under the deciduous trees.

 

[yoderjac]

Tomorrow, I'm getting a Kubota L2502HST delivered along with a rotary mower and rotary tiller. I've had my farm for since 2001, and up until now, I've been just a dabbler in food plots. I'm retiring there full time, and I'll now have more time to take care of things. What I'd like to do is throw some questions out to y'all and see what yout think.

First off, I thought I'd go through my long term goals.

1) I'd like to improve the number of large buck sightings. As it is, our end of the county (SW Bracken County, KY) is crawling with deer. However, large bucks are only occasional visitors. We had a couple of years where bigguns were everywhere, but it was because a neighbor had moved out and stopped putting $700/year worth of corn in a feeder near the back corner of my property.
2) I have 40 acres of hay pasture. Some of that ground hasn't been turned over in 50 years. I'm going to hit some of these new plots with the rotary tiller to get started, but I want to migrate to minimal tillage. At this point, I'm experimenting a lot just to see what works. I'm targetting about 5 acres total-- the most likely places where deer and turkeys will benefit and be easiest to harvest
3) The family deer camp and turkey camp are both run out of these 200 acres. Right now, it's a really good year if 4 of the 6 of us take a doe and a buck and 1-2 turkeys each. I'd like to bump that up.
4) We always had good years and bad years, but lately things have gone rather slack for both turkey and deer. My guess is that there has been a lot of turnover with my neighbors. They've gone from brown-n-down guys who rode ATVs everywhere and chased the deer onto my property to serious hunters doing more with their own land. I need to up my game.

Additional info:

1) I'm also receiving an ATV from a buddy. He's been riding it out to his blind for about a decade after his quad bypass operation. He's turning it over to me. I'm ordering a tank sprayer, a seeder, and a drag harrow for it-- much cheaper than trying to so all that with the tractor.

2) I took advantage of Memorial Day sales and ordered a bunch of seed.

https://antlerking.com/product/food-plot-blend/

https://antlerking.com/product/honey-hole-mix/

https://www.evolved.com/5-card-draw/#description-section

https://www.evolved.com/throw-gro-no-till-forage/

https://antlerking.com/product/antler-king-game-changer-clover-mix-2/

https://anilogics.com/product/crush-seeds-of-science-clover-plus-alfalfa/


3) I've divvied up my targetted areas into 1/4 acre plots. That way, I've got 4 chances to try a different blend in a 1 acre field and see what works.

4) I've told the guy who's been doing my hay to get his work done by 15 July. I want to start planting by the second week in August so that everything is ready for the 8 Nov Rifle Opener.

5) I'm currently planning 1 40 lb bag of 13-13-13 per 1/4 acre plot. I did soil tests and all my ground was 6.5 PH or above and fairly well situated with N-P and K.
6) If you're looking for more info about the farm, you can find 20+ years of posts about it at Genesis9.angzva.com


Questions:

1) So the hay dude finishes 7/15. What should I do next? Should I use Gly or just till?
2) What do I do with the hillier pastures? I'm afraid of soil erosion.
3) I'm concentrating on the deer at the moment, but I want to improve things for the turkeys as well. What do you suggest?

This ought to get things going-- give y'all something to respond to. I'll stop for now and let you know about how the tractor delivery goes. Thanks in advance for all your help.

In my opinion, you should look into no-till and min-till techniques. Early in my journey, I used a 2-bottomm plow and tiller. Food plots were pretty but required high inputs. I ruined the tilth and microbiome of my soil. It has taken me many year to rebuild the organic matter and return my soil health. It has improved nutrient cycling and I've used no commercial fertilizer for many years. Keep in mind that we are different than farmers. We do not harvest our food plots. Much of the nutrients that deer consume from the field are returned as droppings. Compare that to a farmer who harvests all of the above soil nutrients for sale. For more on soil health, google "Ray the Soil Guy" and watch some of his videos (infiltration is a good one). While he focuses on farmers with large equipment, the same concepts can be applied to food plots with small equipment.

Beyond tillage, another thing I've picked up along my journey is a tolerance for weeds. Again, for a farmer, a weed is anything in his field that he did not plant as it is consuming resources his crop could otherwise use. For folks managing for deer, "weeds" are very different. Many weeds are as good or better deer food than the crops we plant. I'm in the process of converting some of my food plots to weed management areas. Here is a good thread on weed management: Weed Management Thread. Watch Dr. Harper's video in the first post.

Turkey will eat most anything that doesn't eat them. They typically don't need planting for food, but food plot arrangement and timing can really improved your turkey population. With turkey, everything revolves around poults. In the spring, hens will select roost sights near good nesting cover. So you first want to identify these areas or create them, but location is the key. Most poults die in before they are 2 weeks old and can fly up into shrubs to roost. Good nesting cover helps reduce nest predation. The proximity of that cover to brooding is key. The less hens need to travel to brooding cover the better. About 90% of a young poults diet consists of insects. You want crops like clover near nesting cover. You also want taller crops with bare ground under them. Fescue and other non-bunch grasses are the worst. They flop over and young chicks can't easily maneuver through them. The taller crops act as escape cover from avian predators which are the biggest threat to young chicks since most are protected and can't be legally controlled. The biggest killer of poults is weather and viruses, but we can't control that.

One last word. Once folks get a new tractor and mower, they want to mow. Keep in mind that what looks neat and tidy to a human is not an attractive deer habitat. That is a hard lesson for most of us to learn.

Best of luck in retirement. I just retired myself. The first couple transition years will be quite busy for me, but I'm looking forward to the flexibility of planting when the weather forecast is right rather than when I have time to do it.