Fall 2013 Food Plot Update

A Favorite Picture

Black Bear Problems

Welcome to the Fall 2013 Food Plot Journal.

2013 started out dry and then turned very wet making for another interesting food plot year. Some of our new plantings did well while others didn't do all that great.

One plot that we got in early started very slow and turned into a nice plot, while another that we put a lot of time into and waited for rain to plant didn't do all that great. Maybe we need to stop thinking.

The wet weather in the summer even made it tough to mow the rest of the hayfield and what we did get mowed we mowed pretty late so it provided minimal extra forage for the deer.

Oldhouse Plot

We didn't get anything done in this plot this year other than finally removing all of the trees that had blown into the plot in the storm of June 2012. I guess that's some kind of accomplishment.

The good news is that the Durana planted in 2008 is still there although grass competition is very high and we mowed the plot several times helping the clover that was still there. Given all of this the deer still had some clover to eat.

This plot is now our oldest and we'd like to plow it up this spring, but we're still trying to make up our mind. We know we want to work on our dirt so we want to at least hit it with lime and fertilizer. The other option is to plow it up and plant a summer annual. Right now we're leaning towards planting.

This picture from July shows a lot of grass, but the clover is lurking below.

We continued to mow this plot throughout the summer and the clover stayed at about 50% of the plot. We planted the Durana here in 2008 so it's our oldest plot along with the old house plot.

This plot has us scratching our heads as well. Do we hit it hard with lime and fertilizer or do we plow it up and put in a summer annual? I think time will dictate what we do.

Even if we don't get a chance to plow it up we still think the little bit of clover in the plot will provide something for the deer to eat. It was common to see deer in this plot even late into the fall.

In July the garden plot looked like a lawn, maybe because we mowed it like a lawn.

This plot made a big turn-around once the rain arrived and the Monster Mix and Alfa-Rack came on strong. It looked like the Monster Mix thrived more than the alfalfa but we'll take it. It seemed that the more rain we got, as summer progressed and we kept mowing the clover came on stronger.

We plan to lime, fertilize and over seed this spring to keep this plot thriving.

The middle plot looks a little wild here, but it's a nice plot.

In May we planted a long strip of the hayfield in Durana and Alfa-Rack. Unfortunately it didn't take off and grow like we hoped. To be honest we were dissapointed with the whole plot. The good side is that since the plot is so large there is still something for them to eat, just not the quantity we hoped for.

We're not sure what happened. The ground worked up real nice and we limed and fertilized before planting. The only thing I can think of is the affect that the dry spring weather may have had. Whereas the middle plot is a wetter area, the hayfield is dryer due to its top of the hill location.

One unknown for this location is a possible pipeline that may run through this area. If the pipeline goes through, a good portion of the hayfield plot will be involved. The good side to this pipeline is that we should pick up extra food plot area in a current wooded area but it may turn some of our current plot into dirt for a while.

We would like to lime, fertilize and over seed the areas that wouldn't be affected by the pipeline.

Both the 2011 and 2012 Monster Mix plots performed real good throughout the summer and the deer continue to spend a lot of time in the 2011 plot. We would like to lime, fertilize and over seed both of these plots to keep them thriving.

The Durana planted in 2010 still has areas that are poor and an area that has real nice clover. Fortunately the area of nice clover shouldn't be affected by the pipeline so we'll try to help it this year with some lime, fertilizer and an over seed.

The area planted in Imperial Clover looked good, but fell off as the summer went along. I'm not sure what we'll do with this area due to the pipeline location.

The area in Provide Chicory and Clover came on real nice this summer. There is a little bit of a natural spring that keeps part of this plot wet. We'll probably lose this plot once the pipeline is started.

We plowed up and disked the last plot of Durana that was planted in 2010. We ran out of time so we fertilized and sowed some Biologic Maximum on September 14th. The Maximum grew thin and to a couple of inches before the deer took care of it. This would be a great area to disk up in the spring but the pipeline would take this whole area so we'll likely leave this spot alone.

There is a lot in this picture. The food plots are all mowed and it all looked pretty nice in July. You can see we hadn't yet had a chance to mow the rest of the field.

We had also plowed up close to an acre in our front hayfield. Because this area is right off the road we've stayed away from planting it, but we finally decided to put something in here. It was late for planting so we used some ladino clover seed we had that also had fescue seed in with it. We also added some sunflower seed.

We weren't very successful and the wet weather we had in the summer even kept us from mowing this plot. This spring we hope to lime, fertilizer and over seed. The vegetation never got real thick so we could have some good success with an over seed.

The area in the lower part of the field where you can see the dirt is the food plot.

We have plans for the spring. We'd like to lime and fertilize our established plots to try to improve our dirt. We need our plots to be the greenest food source in the area. If we get some dry days this winter and we can get some lime we'd like to start as soon as we can.

We would also like to put summer annuals in the old house and garden plots after plowing and improving this dirt as well. We're leaning towards Lab Lab at this point.

Finally we want to over seed our established plots that won't be destroyed if the pipeline goes through.

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 2013. We told you about this wounded buck in the spring journal. As you can see he healed up although he didn't seem to add much antler size. He also made it through the deer season unscathed. We expect him to add some decent antler size this year since he won't spend the winter and spring healing. You can take a look at our favorite deer pictures from December 20th here.

In November and December a black bear visited us and destroyed three deer feeders. At his November visit he destroyed the feeder at the old house. This was the week before rifle season. During rifle season we we put up an old bucket feeder we had to give the deer something to come to. Then, the week after rifle season, he came back two times destroying a feeder each time. He carried off the bucket feeder and demolished the feeder we had at the middle clearing.

Right now we only have one feeder left out, hopefully he doesn't find this one. We didn't have another feeder to put out so he doesn't have anything to ruin in those two locations. Maybe he'll wander elsewhere and leave us alone for a while. We wouldn't mind if he stuck around if he weren't so destructive.

Here is one picture of him and you can take a look at our 2013 Black Bear Pictures page to see the rest of the pictures.