Property Layout Question

[HuronMtn]

One more thing I forgot to mention in my prior Reply post. On my land, irregular shaped plots seem to get more use in daylight than large open plots. The large open plots are good for efficiently creating the most quantity of food per area, but the the irregular plots with shorter-sight distances and a more intimate feel seem to be what gets the deer out more in daylight and are the plots that bucks tend to show in first.

Consider a layout where you have a large plot as a food-anchor/destination and then place small irregular kill-plots around the large plot. My best plots are long narrow irregular shaped plots with a pinch point in the middle of the plot where I leave a small diameter island of trees and shrubs in the pinch point. Those little islands are only 10-20 feet across and typically host 2 or 3 scrapes each.

 

[Matlax]

Thanks Huron! Awesome stuff. I’m thinking I’ll try to section off the large plots in to smaller ones by planting strips of switchgrass or Egyptian wheat almost like a peace sign. That will also let me try three different food sources in each. How small are your kill plots usually?

 

[HuronMtn]

Thanks Huron! Awesome stuff. I’m thinking I’ll try to section off the large plots in to smaller ones by planting strips of switchgrass or Egyptian wheat almost like a peace sign. That will also let me try three different food sources in each. How small are your kill plots usually?

Kill plots 0.25-0.5A

 

[yoderjac]

Thanks Huron! Awesome stuff. I’m thinking I’ll try to section off the large plots in to smaller ones by planting strips of switchgrass or Egyptian wheat almost like a peace sign. That will also let me try three different food sources in each. How small are your kill plots usually?

We have a rolling terrain pipeline bisecting our property that we use for food plots. It is about 80 yards wide. We planted strips of bicolor lespedeza across it as screening to divide it into smaller plots. We are planting for both summer and fall here. Back when we were planting Eagle beans, we mixed in corn at a ratio of 7:1 by weight. We were not planting corn for food. It gets wiped out by every animal in our area during the summer and never makes it to the season. The reason we planted it is for vertical cover in the fall. Back then, we were bushhogging strips through these plots in the fall and broadcasting our fall mix into the strips. The purpose of the corn is was to provide enough vertical cover to encourage daytime use, but not so much that you could not get a shot into it. The only reason we chose corn is that, at the time, we had a very high deer population and needed to use gly on the beans as the combination of weeds and browse pressure would not allow beans to canopy without it. Corn was the only vertical RR crop available.

In recent years, we have gone to sunn hemp and buckwheat for summer. The sunn hemp can perform the same function as the corn.

We use this approach in our destination plots on the pipeline. For our small kill plots, we keep them in clover. Sometimes we suppress the clover and drill daikon radish into the plot. The clover bounces back and fills in around the radish.

 

[Matlax]

Thanks yoder. So the hemp grows up tall in sporadic spots within the plot?

 

[yoderjac]

Thanks yoder. So the hemp grows up tall in sporadic spots within the plot?

No. I plant about 20lbs/ac of buckwheat and 20 lbs/ac of sun hemp. It grows up thick and tall.. The sunn hemp gets 8 to 10 feet tall. The sunn hemp and buckwheat provide summer nutrition when they are young, but by the time I'm ready to plant for fall, there is no food value left. I bush hog it before I plant for fall. Say I have a box blind on one of the fields for taking out kids. I will leave strategic strips of the sunn hemp stand sort of in a V shape radiating out from the stand. Vs inside Vs each at different angles. This provides vertical cover between shooting lanes. I then broadcast and cultipack my fall plant.

Looking Southwest from the box blind:

Looking Northwest from the blind:

Looking West from the blind:

 

[outdoorstom]

Great looking property and lots of excellent advice has been given. In a couple years your understory should change the woods completely. Our woods was park like until we had it logged off. It didn’t take too long and the deer were bedding in there after it thickened up. Have you considered miscanthus for screening? Works great and don’t have to replant it every year. Also, hybrid willows would work good in your wet areas and they are very fast growing. Good luck!

 

[Matlax]

Yoder - thanks for the info. Very cool setup with that easement going through...lots of unique opportunities. Outdoorstom, thanks for the heads up, I'll have to check on the miscanthus. Love this site for all the help.

 

[yoderjac]

Yoder - thanks for the info. Very cool setup with that easement going through...lots of unique opportunities. Outdoorstom, thanks for the heads up, I'll have to check on the miscanthus. Love this site for all the help.

No problem. Here is a similar approach with Eagle beans and a light mix of corn. The eagle beans are indeterminate so they stay green and attractive through most of our archery season. While my deer only use the pods if we have a mast crop failure, turkey use them. So in this case, I kept most of the crop and created shooting lanes with a bushhog. I did walk the lanes and hand broadcast my fall mix in them.

This was hard to do the first time psychologically. I was bushhogging great deer food. What I soon learned was that I was actually creating deer food. Deer did not like to be in the middle of the thick beans. Most of the browsing was occurring around the outside of the plot. Once I created those shooting lanes, I quickly found the deer used them and the majority of the browsing was occurring an the sides of the lanes. While there were fewer plants/acre, deer were actually consuming more of the quality beans. From a QDM perspective, the only quality food that is contributing to the objective is food that ends up in a deer's belly. So this technique worked well for both QDM and hunting.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Matlax]

Thanks yoder. Pretty interesting. I plan on keeping it simple for my first year going beyond tiny oat plots. I think I landed on each big plot being divided into three smaller with some type of tall grass forming the borders. For each sub-plot, I’ll do clover with oats/WW/WR as a nurse crop (one cereal grain in each different sub-plot) and some type of annual in the other (thinking soy beans, beets, and turnips with one in each of the different sub-plots). I plan on using the same clover in each so I can get an idea which cereal grain grows and attracts best. Next year I’ll swap which side of the sub-plot gets the legume and which gets the brassica or beans (if they do well). I may go with whichever cereal does best and try three different types of clover. Seem reasonable?

 

[yoderjac]

It

Thanks yoder. Pretty interesting. I plan on keeping it simple for my first year going beyond tiny oat plots. I think I landed on each big plot being divided into three smaller with some type of tall grass forming the borders. For each sub-plot, I’ll do clover with oats/WW/WR as a nurse crop (one cereal grain in each different sub-plot) and some type of annual in the other (thinking soy beans, beets, and turnips with one in each of the different sub-plots). I plan on using the same clover in each so I can get an idea which cereal grain grows and attracts best. Next year I’ll swap which side of the sub-plot gets the legume and which gets the brassica or beans (if they do well). I may go with whichever cereal does best and try three different types of clover. Seem reasonable?

It all depends on your objectives and location. If you are talking about a perennial clover, it is best planted in the fall with the WR nurse crop. I doubt you'll see much difference between cereal grains in terms of attraction. Turnips are also plant for fall. In general, you are better off planting a mix of complementary crops rather than planting a monoculture in each plot.

Keep i mind, perennial clover is generally planted with a nurse crop in the fall and then maintained as a clover plot for 5-10 years depending on the type of clover.

In my area crimson clover acts as a reseeding annual, it may not further north. There are other annual clovers you can use like berseem. If you are talking about an annual clover, you might do something like this. Plant your annual clover with WR and PTT in one field. In the next use WW as the nurse for your annual clover and use daikon radish instead of PTT. Soybeans are a candy crop. If you have high deer densities, you'll need to plant a large area or they will be wiped out before they can canopy. With soybeans, you need to decide if you are looking for forage during the summer or (further north than me) pods for winter. You then need to decided if you are going to use RR beans and gly as a post emergent spray (or liberty link) or whether you plan to mix non-RR crops and skip post emergent weed control. Beans would need to be planted in the spring. If you go the RR route, corn is the only option for mixing.

Those are my thoughts but keep in mind location plays a role and so does soil type. Experimenting can be fun. When we first started, our deer densities were quite high. I had to use forage beans and plant at least 5 acres before I could get them to canopy with the browse pressure. Forage beans tolerate browse pressure better but they produce tiny pods. In general, forage beans are a better fit for more southern locations and Ag beans for more northern locations.

Best of luck!

 

[Matlax]

Thanks yoder! Yes, I was thinking annual clovers since that’ll let me do more planting every year. Haha. Is the idea that the clover, brassica, and cereal all balance each other out as far as soil health goes? For deer population, I think it’s fairly slim right now but can’t be too sure. My property has never really had food or browse to hold deer. I’ll talk to the local Seedway I just learned about and see what they recommend.

 

[Matlax]

Also, would you mix something with the beans or just plant the beans on their own?

 

[yoderjac]

Thanks yoder! Yes, I was thinking annual clovers since that’ll let me do more planting every year. Haha. Is the idea that the clover, brassica, and cereal all balance each other out as far as soil health goes? For deer population, I think it’s fairly slim right now but can’t be too sure. My property has never really had food or browse to hold deer. I’ll talk to the local Seedway I just learned about and see what they recommend.

Also, would you mix something with the beans or just plant the beans on their own?

Yes, they are complementary. You've got a legume, and a grass (small grain), and a light mix of brassica. Keep PTT down around 2 lbs/ac and radish down to about 3 lbs/ac.

I prefer mixes over monocultures and so does the soil. If you go the RR route, the only real option is corn for mixing. If you go non-RR there are lots of options. If you are planting for pods, Milo (grain sorghum) work well as the grass component or you could use sunflowers (with low deer densities). Buckwheat (not much more than 10 lbs/ac in a mix) is a good candidate.

 

[Matlax]

Sounds like I may have my plan for this year then! Do you have any recommendations for the grass and clovers lbs/ac? Thanks!

 

[yoderjac]

Sounds like I may have my plan for this year then! Do you have any recommendations for the grass and clovers lbs/ac? Thanks!

For a fall mix, 100lbs/ac is a good target for a cereal grain like WR. For PTT, I like to keep it down to 2 lbs/ac so it does not shade out other components. If you are using radish rather than PTT, you can go to 3lbs/ac or so. For crimson clover I like about 10 lbs/ac.

 

[Matlax]

For a fall mix, 100lbs/ac is a good target for a cereal grain like WR. For PTT, I like to keep it down to 2 lbs/ac so it does not shade out other components. If you are using radish rather than PTT, you can go to 3lbs/ac or so. For crimson clover I like about 10 lbs/ac.

Thanks!