June 2009 Food Plot Update

A Favorite Picture

Bucks

Welcome to the June Food Plot Journal. Our update is late and we are now well into July but I thought that I would still give you a look at how our plots survived the spring. Our food plots came on strong and look real nice, they should provide good food for the deer into the summer.

Oldhouse Food Plot

The Durana in the oldhouse food plot looks pretty good. There is a little grass and a few weeds, but most of the plot is a low carpet of clover.

We have mowed the plot twice, once on June 5th and once on July 6th.

The Durana clover in the cornpatch looks real good. The seed that I sowed on a muddy day in March has grown well and filled in the bare spots. This plot is now connected with the expanded hayfield plot. Now that we have about two acres of clover it seems that the deer are no longer able to completely clean out this food plot.

This plot was also mowed on June 5th and July 6th. We have been using a lawn tractor to mow this plot and it is growing well.

The Durana clover in the garden plot is doing well. I saw deer eating in the plot late on Sunday evening when I pulled in.

The bare spots that we overseeded now seem to have started to fill in.

We mowed this plot with a lawn tractor on July 6th.

The Monster Mix in the middle plot is doing okay and we’re getting some pictures of deer eating in the plot. I’ve been watching this plot close but it keeps growing enough clover to keep deer visiting so I’ll just keep watching.

We mowed the plot on June 6th and Ryan used a weed eater to mow the taller weeds and grass on July 6th.

This plot may get a fall annual later this summer or we may just keep watching it.

Whippoorwill Food Plot

The Monster Mix and Durana in the whippoorwill plot is still growing. I think the deer are visiting the larger hayfield plot and letting this plot grow, although we are getting quite a few pictures of deer in the plot.

This is another plot on the watch list, so we’ll see how it goes.

Hayfield Food Plot

The older areas of the hayfield plot that were sown in Durana and AlfaRack are still providing clover for the deer to eat, but there is quite a bit of grass now growing in it. I’ll have to make a decision later this summer as to whether I will disk part of it up and plant a fall annual. We may just disk up part of the older area depending on how it looks in a month or so.

The long strip we planted this spring is now a nice clover plot. We watched deer eat in the strip on Monday evening.

On June 5th we mowed part of this plot and on July 6th we mowed the entire plot.

Right Of Way Food Plot

The Durana in the Right Of Way plot has continued to grow well into early summer. I saw a doe walk through the plot while we were mowing the hayfield plot which is right next to this one.

I mowed the plot on July 6th.

I am very pleased with the growth of our food plots and the deer are now using the plots quite heavily.

It seems to me that now that we have over two acres of food plots concentrated in the hayfield area, the deer are not eating them down to bare ground. Maybe we have finally planted enough acreage to stay ahead of the deer. Our next move could be to add additional plots to possibly provide additional forages to give the deer and further improve the health of our local deer. This would likely involve keeping clover as a base plant and other plots in different forages to provide nutrition for different times of the year.

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 June. Now that we have bucks with antlers turkeys have been pushed to the back burner, but we got this picture of some young turkeys in one of our food plots. You can take a look at our favorite deer pictures from July 7th here.

We were still seeing fewer bucks on camera than we thought we should be seeing so we put up a small bucket feeder on one of our tripods. Over the night we captured about seventy pictures and we saw at least two eight point bucks. There is some debate between Ryan and I. Ryan thinks that there were three eight pointers but I’m not convinced. I hope he is right.

We left the small feeder out so we’ll see what visits this feeder as well as our food plots and mineral licks.

This is the picture that convinced us that we had at least two eight pointers.