April 2009 Food Plot Update

A Favorite Picture

White Feet Deer

Welcome to the April Food Plot Journal. Our April weather has been both dry and wet. It seemed that we either had several wet days in a row or several dry days. For some reason it always seems to be difficult to get there to disk when the conditions are just right, but we did get to plant our newest clover plot before the month ended.

Oldhouse Food Plot

By the end of April the Durana clover in the oldhouse food plot had started to green up. It wasn’t a lush, thriving, tall plot of clover yet but it looks like it will be a nice plot of clover again this year.

I haven’t seen any growth in the overseeded areas yet but I’ll keep watching.

The Durana clover in the cornpatch plot is spotty. The areas under the apple trees that were trampled by the deer are still bare. The overseeding has not shown to have helped yet. Other areas of the plot have some real nice clover. Hopefully the overseeded clover will start to grow in May.

The Durana clover in the garden plot looks pretty good. I put a camera on this plot and most of the visitors were turkeys.

The middle food plot is going to be nice and green this year, but I’m not sure how much of the green will be clover and chicory. I’ll admit that at this point this plot looks more like a weed plot with some clover mixed it. I’ll try to keep it mowed and see if the deer use the plot much.

There is still time to put an annual in this plot if the clover and chicory is too sparse and the deer do not use the plot.

Whippoorwill Food Plot

I started to see some growth in this plot this month, but it was not all clover. It looks like I’ll need to mow it soon.

There does look to be a fair amount of clover in the plot so I hope it will continue to draw deer.

Hayfield Food Plot

The AlfaRack in the older section of the plot is mixed with quite a bit of grass and weeds but there still looks to be good bit of clover and alfalfa in the plot.

The older Durana plots have a good bit of grass mixed in, but there is still a lot of clover for the deer to eat. Some areas already need the grass mowed which I hope to get to soon.

I disked the new extension on April 17th and 27th. I was finally able to apply 200 pound of 10-20-20 fertilizer and another 40 pound of lime. Total lime applied this spring was 760 pounds. I then dragged the plot with bedsprings and planted Durana and Provide Clover and Chicory. The majority of the plot is Durana clover.

The addition of the latest extension gives us close to two acres of food plot in the hayfield area. Hopefully this will provide a lot of good forage for the local deer. We’ll watch this field real close this summer.

Right Of Way Food Plot

The Durana clover in this plot is a little spotty but after the struggles we had in this plot last year I’m pleased that we have the clover we have. Hopefully the overseeded clover will pop up and complete this plot this month.

Unless we have an old plot that turns bad on us over the next month we are done planting for the spring. I was happy to get the extension in the hayfield planted this year. This will give the deer a lot more good forage and hopefully will improve their overall health.

The rest of our plots have various amounts of clover, but I think we have some good green areas at the very least.

So far the deer haven’t flocked to our food plots and this is probably a good thing, giving them time to grow.

We get thousands of pictures each month with our digital trail cameras but we narrow down each set of pictures to our favorite six or seven and these are usually buck pictures. As you can imagine there are always several more that are very good but don't make the cut.

Below is one of our favorite pictures from March. Sometimes I guess the water in our mineral licks can be a little bitter. You can take a look at our favorite deer pictures from April 27th here.

Last year we started seeing a set of twins, a buck and a doe, that had more white around their feet than normal. These “white feet” make them easier to pick out from among the other deer.

It will be interesting to see if the young buck will stick around our place or disperse to another area as we go through the year.

I often joke that I wish I could put nametags on the bucks so that I could tell them apart, but sometimes nature gives me something that helps me out.

This is a picture of one of them at a feeder earlier in the month.