June 2012 Food Plot Update

A Favorite Picture

Raccoon Shocker

Welcome to the June Food Plot Journal. I had called May "a little dry", well, June was just plain dry.

Our established plots looked good through the spring although we had trouble with our new plots. In the dry weather our new plots struggled and our established plots have begun to brown.

Our activity in the plots was limited to mowing. We had mowed some of them in mid-June but saw no reason to mow them any more afterward due to the dry conditions.

The new plot in Area 6, where we planted Monster Mix, is trying to hang in there. There is some clover and chicory but it needs rain bad.

The new plot in Area 2, where we planted Provide Clover and Chicory, is struggling. There is some clover popping up, but there are patches of grass and weeds starting that are beating the clover and chicory.

The best looking plot is probably the Whippoorwill plot. It seems to be doing well in its shady location with some of the best dirt we have. The rest of the plots are starting to get a bit brown.

The one good side to June was that we got a good bit of the hayfield that isn't in food plots cut which gives us more green, or almost green, space for deer to find something to eat. With a spotter on an ATV and some creative mowing we were able to mow more than we had thought and we should be able to mow more when we get the chance.

On our last visit we had hoped to mow more of the field but the weather had other plans. On Friday evening the storm that ravaged the eastern US hit us hard. When it was over we had to clear 20 trees to reach the blacktop road and civilization. Ryan estimated that we have about 70 trees down between the house and the oldhouse food plot which is about three quarters of a mile. After 10 hours of work we were able to get to the blacktop and get an ATV to the old house. The path to the old house is just that, a path. We are riding over and under trees to get to the old house.

This is a picture of an uprooted tree at the edge of the middle food plot. There are some brassicas trying to grow, but most of what you see are leaves from the storm.

We'll likely spend much of the rest of the summer cutting trees. Those that we are now riding under will likely continue to settle and we'll be cutting our way towards the old house for quite some time.

We would like to put in some oats in some of our oldest clover plots later this summer, but we'll see what the weather does and how much time we spend clearing our roads.

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. We caught two deer walking through a food plot during a full moon. You can take a look at our favorite deer pictures from June 29 here.

After all of these years you would have thought that we would have defeated the raccoons at our feeders, but you would be wrong.

Our latest great idea is to put fence chargers on the feeders to keep the coons away.

Initially Ryan wanted to hit them so hard that it would kill them. I told him that would be a mistake because whatever we put on the feeders we would surely end up getting shocked with ourselves.

We purchased a fence charger and sure enough Ryan shocked himself with it the first time he powered it up. No need to test it, we know it works!

The first week it was installed we didn't get one picture of a raccoon on the feeder above the charged wires, but on Friday night the storm blew the feeder over and the raccoons had a field day with the wires disconnected and the feeder lying on the ground.

We had a rough start, but I think it's going to work. I'm hoping that the raccoons will learn that they will get shocked and leave the feeders alone so that we can move the charger from feeder to feeder and keep them from stealing our corn.

We'll let you know how it goes.

This is our charger and wiring. You can see that we had tried wrapping the legs with barbed wire, but the raccoons just used it to get better traction.