March 2012 Food Plot Update

A Favorite Picture

Lesson Learned

Welcome to the March Food Plot Journal. We had a mild winter and summer-like weather in March. This allowed us to get more done this month than I can remember accomplishing in several years.

Looking back at the fall of 2011 saw weather that was cool and wet which allowed our clover plots to thrive. We saw deer in our clover plots late into the hunting season. We didn't have any apples and the acorn crop was below average so the thriving clover was a big plus for our deer. On the other hand the brassicas that we planted last fall didn't seem to thrive although they did grow and the deer took advantage of them.

Last fall our spreader gave up the ghost so we bought a drop spreader. We got the cheapest drop spreader, but it still wasn't cheap. I had some doubts about the new spreader but it performed well last week. It did a great job with agricultural lime, which is great since it's much cheaper than pelletized lime. Once we got the settings figured out we also had success spreading fertilizer. I'm trying to be smarter with this spreader by rinsing it out after using it. One of the problems with our last spreader was corrosion caused by the fertilizer.

In the last week of March we got two plots planted in clover. One was the new area we plowed up last fall and planted in brassicas (Area6). We disked, spread lime, fertilizer, dragged and sowed Monster Mix. The Monster Mix we planted last spring in another area of the hayfield thrived and looks great this spring. This dirt worked up real nice so we have high hopes for this planting.

The other area is the small area we planted in brassicas last summer (Part of Area 2). We disked, limed, fertilized, dragged and planted a combination of Imperial Whitetail Clover and Biologic Clover. This ground didn't work up as nice as the other area, but we've planted in much worse conditions.

As an experiment we also planted a small area, about 20 by 30 feet in corn. We just threw it out and ran the disks over it. This is a steep difficult area so we thought that we would give this a try and see what happens. It's a little early to plant corn, but we aren't worried if it fails.

This is a picture of the hayfield plot. You can see Area 6 on the left and Area 2 on the right.

All of these older plots could use some grass herbicide. With the nice weather we've been experiencing we need to do this soon. The only problem is that I don't have enough to do them all so I'll have to prioritize.

This is a picture of the Whippoorwill Plot which is one of our oldest plots, planted in 2007. It still has a lot of clover in it for five years old.

We also planted two apple trees along the edge of the middle clearing food plot. They are small, but we hope to take good care of them and have apples on them before too many years go by. We planted apple trees a few years ago, but we didn't fertilize them or give them much attention so they haven't thrived. Last week we fertilized every apple tree we have to try to spur them on. Next year we should prune them some to help them out.

We had some real nice deer on our property last fall and I believe that our increased acreage in food plots is at least part of the reason for these deer. This year we've already increased our clover acreage so hopefully we can provide more good nutrition this year as well.

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. I used this picture on our picture page, but I couldn't resist showing it to you again. Come on now, you can't call this a pretty bird! You can take a look at our favorite deer pictures from March 30 here.

As I said above, we had some nice deer on our property last fall. One buck was a nice nine point buck that we would probably have shot in 2010 if we had seen it. Ryan got an opportunity in bow season and shot this buck in early November this past season. It was a real nice buck rough scoring 140's gross and weighing about 150 pounds dressed. It's always fun to take another opportunity to show a picture of this nice buck.

The down side to our season was a big ten point that we had been watching for three years. This buck would likely have rivaled the big ten point Ryan shot in 2009. We decided to let this buck go again this year and hopefully get a chance at him next year after he grew into a true monster. We got pictures of him up until the mid-way point of buck season and then he disappeared. I'd had more than one opportunity to shoot this buck, but turned them down to wait until next year. Now it looks like there won't be a next year for this buck. Our lesson, if your really going to kick yourself if a buck doesn't make it until the next year then you had better take him when the opportunity presents itself.

Below are pictures of the buck we got and one of the last pictures of the one that got away.