April 2011 Food Plot Update

A Favorite Picture

Deer Food

Welcome to the April Food Plot Journal. Winter held us in its clutches longer than we would have liked and we almost set a rainfall record in April. Needless to say we have not been able to do much in our plots. On the 21st I did get to spray some Arrest to try to keep the grass at bay and I also did get to do a little plowing.

Spraying grass herbicide is my big experiment for the year. Mowing was encouraging the grass too much so I thought that we would try to attack the grass. This may be difficult since grass has a pretty good hold in some of our plots, but we're going to give it a try. If it works, it will be a lot better than the constant mowing that we have been doing. I bought a 16 gallon broadcast sprayer and so far this has been a good purchase. I sprayed all of our plots in less time than it would have taken me to mow them.

Right now it looks like we're going to put some plots into annuals this spring as well. We're waiting to see which plots do not respond well to the Arrest.

Our fall plots didn't do well at all. The clover, oats and wheat blends didn't do well at all in the dry weather we had. Interestingly the brassicas were able to grow to a height of about six inches in the dry weather. The fantastic acorn crop kept the deer away and there were still deer eating in this plot in December. It was strange having turnip leaves still green and standing in November. By the time the deer hit this plot hard, deer season was essentially over. The deer have usually cleaned up our small brassica plots by mid-October.

I think I learned something. The brassicas did much better in the dry weather than the other fall annuals that I planted. Now I need to decide what to do this fall.

Oldhouse Food Plot

The Durana in the oldhouse plot is coming on pretty good this spring. There is a good bit of grass in the plot, but I sprayed with Arrest on the 21st and by the 30th I could see it starting to take effect. Hopefully the grass will start to die off quicker over the coming days. I expect that I may need to spot spray the plot again because some of the grass is well established.

If we can kill at least half of the grass we'll have good clover plot here again.

The Durana clover in the old garden plot is surviving amongst some grass and wild onions. We sprayed this plot with Arrest as well and I could see a good bit of the grass was starting to yellow.

I had experimented by mowing this plot with a lawn tractor all of last year and the clover grew well, but the grass did as well, so I'm going to try to kill the grass this year. Maybe I should continue mowing the plot with a lawn tractor even though I'm hoping to kill the grass.

The Monster Mix in this plot doesn't seem to be coming back this spring. There is a lot of green growing in the plot, but not much of it is clover. I sprayed it with Arrest, but I think I'll probably plow it up later this spring and plant an annual.

We'll watch this one close and see what happens.

Whippoorwill Food Plot

The Monster Mix and Durana in the this plot is doing well. I sprayed this plot with Arrest as well and it looks pretty good.

Last fall I thought that this plot would need plowed up this spring, but it may just make is a while longer.

Hayfield Food Plot

The Durana in Area One looks real nice this spring. I sprayed to kill the little bit of grass that is in the plot and the clover is thinner close to the treeline, but this should be a real nice clover plot this summer.

Area Two had annuals planted in it in the fall and needs planted this spring. I was able to plow about half of it on the 21st, but the rest was too wet. I tried to disk it on the 30th, but it was too muddy. I'd like to get to plant some clover here this spring.

The Durana in Area Three is split into two conditions. One part looks real good and will thrive if I can kill the grass. The other part could be bare ground if I kill the grass. This one's hard to call right now, this area could get split into two areas later.

The Durana in Area Four is doing much better than I thought it might last fall. If I can kill the grass this plot should do well this summer.

Area Five had annuals last fall and I was able to plow it up on the 21st. On the 30th I tried to disk it, but I was either going to hang the tractor up in the mud or slide it over the hill so I gave up. Hopefully I can disk it soon and plant some clover.

Right Of Way Food Plot

The Durana in the Right Of Way plot is probably about half of the plot with grass making up the other half. I sprayed the grass so it will be interesting to see what happens here. I actually drove into this plot with the disks attached intending to disk it up, but the clover peeking out at me convinced me to wait.

In the fall I didn't think this plot had a chance.

Here we are still talking about the weather. As I type this on May 3rd it is still raining and the forecast is for rain. I need a couple of days of sunshine to dry the ground up enough to do any work and these days have to line up with my days off. It's going to be tough getting my clover planted. I may end up putting in much more annual seed than I had planned.

Maybe I need to get some Round-Up and try to kill off the plants in the areas I need to plow. If I can do this I may be able to get some thing planted before the end of may.

I'll let you know what happens.

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 April. These deer may look like they're dancing, but I would say they are having a little scuffle. You can take a look at our favorite deer pictures from April 30 here.

I like to try to tell you about some of the stupid things that I do that I find are funny, but I haven't been able to laugh yet about the stupid things I've done lately, so I can't resist talking about the unbelievable acorn crop again.

Last September I had talked about the high volume of food available for the deer with the huge acorn crop, wild cherries and apples.

The deer gravitated to the acorns, which were everywhere. There were still acorns on the ground this spring. This spread the deer out so wide that during deer season it made it appear as though there weren't as many deer as past years.

We still got pictures of deer at our apple trees and feeders, but at a much lower volume than past years. This made hunting a little more challenging, but it was fun trying to figure out what we needed to do to see deer.

The food available through the fall and winter should leave our deer very healthy heading into this summer and should translate into very healthy fawns and possibly larger antlers on our bucks this fall. We'll keep watching our pictures to see if we can confirm these observations.