March 2009 Food Plot Update

A Favorite Picture

A Great Find

Welcome to the March Food Plot Journal. It sure seemed like a long cold winter. I’m not sure if this is a sign of getting older or if it really was a long cold winter.

Since our last Journal in October there hasn’t been a lot of action in our food plots. The most used plot was probably the oat patch we planted in the hayfield. The deer seemed to visit this area throughout the fall and winter. I don’t think the oats survived into the winter, but this area was just greener than the surrounding field.

I have accomplished a little so far this year and I have a plan for the spring, hopefully the weather will cooperate.

Oldhouse Food Plot

As of March the oldhouse food plot looked pretty rough. The deer had eaten the Durana clover to the ground and had also trampled the plot into some muddy spots by spring.

On March 27th I overseeded the areas of the plot that were either thin or just mud. I think this plot has a good chance of coming back strong.

I spent a lot of time at this plot during deer season and saw deer using the plot on several occasions.

The Durana clover had just gotten started last fall when the apples started to fall. This caused the deer to trample the ground around the apple trees and the young Durana trying to grow there.

On March 27th I overseeded the areas under the apple trees and other areas that looked a little thin. We’ll see how it goes.

The Durana clover in the garden plot had a good start last fall and looked real good in some areas, especially in the exclusion cage. The problem areas were around the fruit trees where the deer trampled the clover into mud.

Once again on March 27th I overseeded the muddy areas and will leave the rest up to nature.

One early morning in mid-March I saw deer eating in the plot so they will give the clover a run for its money in this plot.

Right now I’ll have to say that I don’t have any idea how the Monster Mix will do in this plot this spring. I had thought about planting a summer annual in this plot but I’m now leaning towards letting it go and see what grows here. If it goes really bad I should still have time to put an annual in later in the spring.

I would like to get this plot into the late summer and put some oats in here. I like to hunt in this area and would like to see how long oats would draw deer to this small plot.

I’m on a wait and see with this plot. I didn’t see many deer stopping to eat in this plot during deer season.

Whippoorwill Food Plot

I’m not sure what will happen with this mixture of Bucks and Bosses, Monster Mix and Durana this spring. I don’t have any plans for this plot this spring. I would like to wait and see what happens. This plot surprised me last year so I’m hoping that it does the same this year.

Hayfield Food Plot

The Durana and AlfaRack in the older areas of the plot are a little rough, but I expect to still have a good bit of clover for the deer to eat here this summer. I am thinking about picking the worst areas of this plot and planting oats in them this fall. We’ll see how it looks as spring and summer progress.

The Winter Greens I planted in the fall were disappointing. I believe I didn’t get them planted early enough. The oats, on the other hand, did very well. The deer continued to visit the oat patch throughout the fall and winter.

I spent time disking this plot over three weekends in March. The first two visits saw dry weather and the ground was a little hard. The third visit was just after a good rain and it was too muddy to disk well. Hopefully I’ll hit it right soon, I would like to plant some time in April. We also applied 720 pounds of lime this month. This adds up to less than a half ton per acre, but we had limed this portion of the plot in the fall as well.

Once I get the ground worked up well I have Durana clover to plant and I also have a little Evolved Harvest clover that I would like to plant alongside the Durana so I can compare their performance.

Right Of Way Food Plot

I had planted Durana clover in this plot in July last year. This plot was a nightmare last year and this July planting was a shot in the dark.

The clover started up thin but nice and you can still see some of it is still there early this spring.

A large tree fell in the plot that we had to remove and that muddied up the plot so I overseeded the entire plot with some Durana on March 27th. I hope this plot doesn’t fail like it did last year.

We haven’t done much yet this year and the plots haven’t started to green up much yet, but we have had the opportunity to get out there and play a little. After having trouble last year I looked back at my notes and thought that plots that were planted later in the spring may have done a little better so I’m not in any hurry this year. I would like to get my planting done in April, but if it goes into early May that would be Okay.

Have fun planting your own plot this spring.

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. We get a lot of pictures of turkeys and I don’t feature many of them. I also don’t have a separate turkey picture page. I have coyote, bobcat, fox and black bear picture pages but no turkey picture page. To keep the turkeys from feeling left out here is a group of turkeys including two fanned out gobblers. You can take a look at our favorite deer pictures from March 27th here.

We had several racked bucks still hanging around after deer season this year so Ryan and I spent some time looking for shed antlers this winter. We found six sheds and our neighbor found one; including sheds from four eight point bucks.

The most interesting find was a set that I found from a 2007 buck. It didn’t take me long to realize that these were the 2007 antlers from the buck that Ryan shot in 2008. This was more exciting for me than shooting a buck myself.

We measured these antlers and found that this buck had added about 25 inches of antler size not including spread in a one-year period. This was great information and I think that this was a food plot added 25 inches.

Hopefully the bucks we had around this year will add similar size this year. If they do we should have some nice bucks to watch.

This is the buck in 2008. I found the sheds from the year before less than one hundred yards from where this picture was taken.