The Farm - Eastern KY

[HB_Hunter]

Since the season is over and the days are short, I thought it would be a good time to get the property tour thread going again. I'll start things off with one of my favorite pictures.

I grew up on the farm and still prefer to spend the majority of my free time on it. As my wife likes to say, the farm is my beach . It's nice because it's closer to our house than her beach and offers free accommodations and food .

If I remember correctly, our first legal deer season that I could hunt on the farm was in the early to mid 1990s. Bucks only. The KDFWR did an awesome job restocking, but we just didn't have very many deer. It was huge just to see a track, much less an actual deer. As you can imagine, that wasn't much fun for a teenager. I spent the weekends sitting in the timber with a gun and didn't have much success. I would hunt 4 days a year (total) during gun season and had very little interest other than that. Long story short...a turkey hunting college buddy from OH and a lifelong friend that started shooting 3D got me back into it.

I got my bow in late 2009 and started shooting 3D. My first trail camera soon followed. After I saw there were actually mature bucks there, I was much more motivated to hunt. I read and tried to learn as much as I could about bow hunting and spent the first several years focused on that. I found the QDMA site and got interested in managing the land for deer. I planted my first food plot in 2014 and have been hooked since.

 

[wbpdeer]

Amen on your favorite photo. That is a great view. Makes want to pick a tree for a stand.

Glad to see you re-start your land thread.

Wayne

 

[HB_Hunter]

Amen on your favorite photo. That is a great view. Makes want to pick a tree for a stand.

Glad to see you re-start your land thread.

Wayne

Thank you sir!

 

[HB_Hunter]

I'll start things off with an aerial. The farm is almost 600 acres (in black) and the area that I will be spending all my time working in is outlined in red. It is roughly 300 acres.

There is a good mix of ag, mature timber, and thickets. I have four main food plots scattered throughout. To make things easier, I divided it up into four areas. They are the bowl, the mountain, the ridges, and the bottoms. The bottoms is my uncles ground and is mainly used to graze cattle and grow corn/beans/alfalfa. I can hunt it, but I will not be doing any habitat work.

I am trying to create one major food sources in each that will have food through the winter. We have plenty of food in the summer because my uncle raises about 20 acres of beans/corn and 10 acres of alfalfa. Dad and I also have about 10 acres of alfalfa. There are several groves of big timber that are full of red and white oaks. We also have persimmon trees scattered throughout.

 

[HB_Hunter]

I feel like it hunts bigger than that because there are lots of ridges and hollars and it is very long and narrow. Roughly 2.5 miles from the south line to the north line.

 

[HB_Hunter]

The bowl is roughly 80 acres and is at the south side of the property. There is currently one plot that I plan to expand to around 2 acres. I planted buckwheat this past spring and followed that with the LC rye mix this fall. The plan is to create two more openings for food plots this winter and get closer to 5 acres of food. It was cut hard for timber about three years ago.

I am very close to the top of the back in this picture.

 

[HB_Hunter]

Buckwheat making an appearance.

 

[HB_Hunter]

Food plot in the bottom of the bowl after planting the LC rye mix. It was tough to stand somewhere and get a picture of the whole plot. I've got lots of work to do this winter to open it up.

 

[HB_Hunter]

I'm going to enhance this area for bedding. It is adjacent to the food plot across a branch.

 

[HB_Hunter]

Here is an area I plan to leave for staging.

 

[HB_Hunter]

The road leading to the top. I need to figure out how to keep this from washing. There are several water bars that help redirect the water, but I plan to add more.

 

[HB_Hunter]

There are several persimmon groves that the loggers had no interest in.

 

[HB_Hunter]

The next area is the mountain. I have one main food plot here that is roughly 1.5 acres. The plan is to expand it to 2 acres this winter and plant the LC rye mix this fall. There are two 10ish acre areas here that are full of mature white oaks with one main ridge and several benches going up to the top of the mountain. There are four fingers coming off the main ridge. Plenty of opportunities to create bedding areas on the ridges and benches.

 

[HB_Hunter]

This is the other part of the L. I plan to remove the two big trees in the middle of the picture and expand it to the left.

 

[HB_Hunter]

I frost seeded crimson clover there last winter and it came in good with the white clover I planted with the LC rye mix.

 

[HB_Hunter]

This is the expansion I did this spring. Planted buckwheat and followed that with the LC rye mix this fall.

 

[HB_Hunter]

After planting this fall.

 

[dogghr]

What a great place, HB. Love its locale and you are indeed lucky. And your work plans and efforts look amazing. Congrats.

 

[HB_Hunter]

The next area is the ridges. I have two food plots planted here. One was in the LC mix this fall and the other was in clover and corn.

This is a tiny plot that I plan to make bigger. The deer hammer it. I have killed my last two bucks out of this spot (2014 and 2015) and hit one this fall that I didn't find. They were all 3yos. I have seen two 4yos from this stand but they are always just out of range. It has been killer late October through November. Doe bedding areas all around and it is in a perfect pinch point.

 

[HB_Hunter]

View from the stand.