May 2008 Food Plot Update

Digital Trail Cameras - Price

Black Bear

It sure has been an interesting spring in our food plots. March was a wet month, April was a dry month along with a broke down tractor and the first half of May was a very wet month. Thankfully May finally dried out a little and we were able to get some things done.

Overall our food plots have not done very well this spring. Our previously planted plots came back with mixed results and our newly planted plots are doing poorly. Thankfully the dry weather in late May allowed us to do some more planting, although it may be a little late.

Oldhouse Food Plot

Durana clover was planted in the oldhouse food plot in early April and has not come on nearly as strong as I would have liked. Grass and a few weed varieties did come up quickly but lately the clover has started to show up. I'm curious to see how well it competes.

This plot has not been a complete disappointment but it sure isn't impressive.

I watched this plot for the last year hoping the clover would recover, but I finally decided that it just wasn't going to happen so on May 5th I started disking the plot.

On May 25th I disked, applied 100 pound of lime, 30 pound of 10-19-19 fertilizer and planted Cabela's Seclusion blend. The Seclusion blend is a combination of wheat, brassica and clover that is an annual seed blend.

The next morning a turkey spent a lot of time eating in the newly sowed plot. I wasn't sure if it ate any of the wheat seed so I lightly sowed some leftover Monster mix in the plot as well. There was a lot of locust bloom in the plot so I'm hoping it was eating those instead of the wheat. I'm anxious to see what comes up over the next few weeks.

The old garden plot looked bad in April and hasn't done much better in May. The dry weather after the plot was planted last fall was apparently too much for this plot to overcome. The small strip I planted back in late March has also failed to come up strong.

We mowed the plot with our garden tractor mowing mostly wild onions. It gave off quite an aroma.

I'm going to watch this plot close over the next few weeks and may disk it up and plant an annual for the summer. I have purchased some Lablab and may plant it here and see how it does.


Middle Clearing Food Plot

The middle plot is about half clover and chicory and the other half weeds. A heavy crop of weeds has taken over the plot and the leaves resemble chicory so it's hard to tell exactly how much of each we have.

I would have liked to have seen a little better growth here this spring.

The deer haven't spent a lot of time eating here yet either, but we'll continue to monitor it with one of our cameras.

Whippoorwill Food Plot

The whippoorwill plot came on strong in May. The clover in about two thirds of the plot is tall and thick and the deer have been spending some time eating here. The clover inside the exclusion cage is about four inches taller than outside the cage.

This growth has been somewhat of a surprise but a welcome one.

Hayfield Food Plot

The Durana and Alfa Rack we planted last spring have continued to come on strong while the Durana we planted last fall is patchy. The small area of Monster Mix is very sparse.

On May 5th we started disking the extension and on May 24th and 25th we disked, applied 70 pound of 10-19-19 fertilizer and planted Durana clover. We limed this area back in March.

A late May planting of clover may be a little late but we are hoping for the best. Our early planting efforts this year have fizzled so I'm hoping that the later date may be what the weather has been trying to tell us this year. I also think I have planted clover into late May in the past with some success, so I gave it a try.

Our plantings from last fall look like they may need to be redone this fall and if this springs planting doesn't fare well we can just do the whole thing over again in the fall. We'll see how the weather cooperates and how last falls clover does over the summer.

We noticed that the deer started eating the clover about mid-May. It's interesting to watch how the deer move to different food sources as some become available and others are lost.

Right Of Way Food Plot

The Monster Mix we planted in this plot in late March didn't grow much except for a small strip close to one edge. I'm not sure what happened here. When we sowed the seed in late March the ground was wet so we just sowed the seed on the wet ground and didn't run over it with anything. I thought that the seed would do well in the moist ground, but obviously I was wrong. It was interesting that there wasn't even much in the way of grass or weeds growing in the plot after two months.

On May 24th I got tired of the bare ground and disked it up and planted Monster Mix again. This time the ground was dry and I disked lightly, dragged it with bedsprings, sowed the seed and dragged again.

We'll see what happens.

It has been a crazy spring weather wise with either too much rain or too little rain and relatively cool temperatures. I'm not sure how much this has affected our food plots but they sure aren't thriving.

I do not in any way consider myself a food plot expert and after this spring I'm even more sure of this. I was just starting to think I knew a little bit of something and then my food plots failed miserably this spring.

I've tried to step back to figure our what the problems were, but so far I've not come up with the solutions. I'm curious to see how these later plantings do, maybe that will tell me something.

I also haven't seen any benefit of the over seeding I did earlier in the spring so I’m not sure I’ll do much of that in the future.

This month I would like to discuss the prices of digital trail cameras.

The cost of a digital trail camera varies from under $100 to well in excess of $500. It would be nice if I could simply say that the more expensive cameras are the best but this isn't the case. It would be even better if I could say that the cheapest are as good as the most expensive cameras, but it shouldn't be any surprise that this is not the case either.

The truth is somewhere in between and is actually a difficult answer.

From my testing, the best digital trail cameras are those that use real digital cameras. Generally these are made by individuals and are not mass-produced but you can find them for sale on the Internet. The closest camera to a mass produced trail camera in this caliber is the Camtrakker line. Since a real digital camera isn't cheap these cameras are certainly not the cheapest cameras available.

Those that do not use real digital cameras, what I consider the major market cameras, are available from Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops, Walmart and many other locations. It has been my experience that about one quarter of these cameras have operational problems either when purchased or very shortly thereafter.

Please remember to take the cost of replacement batteries into consideration when you purchase a digital trail camera. The cost of batteries could quickly become more than the cost of the camera if you use it year-round and it eats batteries quickly.

You can take a look at our digital trail camera reviews here.

In the past we had the feeder follies that documented our battle with raccoons. We are now trying to figure out how to beat a black bear that has showed up at our feeders.

The bear had been a harmless visitor that first showed up last summer, but this month he decided that he wanted more from our feeders and knocked one over. The feeder broke off of the bottom of the can ruining the feeder.

I decided to take the feeders down hoping the bear would move somewhere else, but I doubt that he will do that. His pattern has been to show up at our place every few weeks, so I think he roams pretty far searching for food and will continue to stop by our place from time to time.

I now think I'll try putting out one of our old bucket feeders and see what he does. If he doesn't continue to tip them over I may put the original feeders back out after some repairs. I don't have a lot of confidence since our last set of pictures show him pulling on one of the tripod legs that didn't even have a feeder attached to it.

The damage to our feeders hasn't been the only damage he has done. A local honey producer has had his bee hive boxes torn up so he put an electric fence around them. A couple of weeks ago the top strand of wire was broken, maybe the bear got stung and will now leave them alone.

It's been very interesting getting pictures of the black bear but once he started damaging things he has quickly wore out his welcome.

The picture below was taken right before he pushed the tripod over.