May 2011 Food Plot Update

A Favorite Picture

Bobcats and Coyotes

Welcome to the May Food Plot Journal. The wet weather continued through May only letting up right at the end of the month when we finally got to work in our plots. The problem now seems to be that there isn't much rain in the forecast now that we finally got to put some seed in the ground.

The good side of the rain is that most of our current clover plots are doing great. The cool wet weather was just what they wanted and they have thrived.

The Arrest herbicide that we sprayed on our plots has also helped a lot. There are some weeds but most of the grass is gone. We bought some weed herbicied (Slay) to spray on a couple of our plots, but we have not had the opportunity to do that yet.

Our next activity will be spraying Slay on some of the plots and possibly plowing up a plot or two and planting an annual. We may also need to mow some of our clover plots.

Oldhouse Food Plot

The Durana in the oldhouse plot looks pretty good. The grass is gone, but there is a weed that has taken over about a quarter of the plot so I'll spray it with Slay as soon as I get a chance. This plot has jumped back very nicely this spring.

The Durana clover in the old garden plot is doing great. The grass is gone and the clover is thriving. I wanted to continue mowing this plot with a garden tractor, but I haven't had the time to do it.

The Monster Mix in this plot which was planted in 2007 is now losing the battle. The arrest killed the grass, but the plot is not mostly weeds. I would like to go ahead and plow this plot up and plant an annual.

Whippoorwill Food Plot

The Monster Mix and Durana in the this plot is doing very well. The grass is dead and there are only limited weeds. This plot has been on the chopping block but keeps surprising me.

Hayfield Food Plot

The Durana in Area One looks great. The grass is dead, but there are some weeds in one area so I'll try to spray them with Slay when I get a chance.

I finally got into Area Two to do some work. On May 11 it was dry enough that I was able to make one pass with the disks, but it was barely dry enough to do this. On May 30 we finally disked, applied 160 pounds of lime, 125 pounds of fertilizer, dragged the plot and sowed Imperial Whitetail Clover. There is still a portion of Area Two that I've not yet touched.

The Durana in Area Three is still split into two conditions. Half of it looks real good and the other half is sparse. I may spray it with Slay to see what happens.

The Durana in Area Four is doing real good. I had doubts when I planted this area last spring. I didn't have the opportunity to work the ground as much as I would have liked and there was a lot of grass left, but the Arrest has now killed the grass and there is a lot of clover.

I finally got into Area Five on May 11 as well. There was a really wet area that I had to baby the John Deere through, but it disked up real nice on May 30. We applied 160 pounds of lime, 125 pounds of fertilizer, dragged the plot and sowed Monster Mix. Now I can hardly believe I'm praying for rain.

Right Of Way Food Plot

The Durana in the Right Of Way plot is doing much better than I thought it would. I've been real close to plowing this plot, but it has done well enough to keep me out. There are some weeds that I'd like to spray with Slay, but there is a good bit of clover in this small plot.

You never know, I may still plot this plot up and put in an annual if I want to experiment.

The weather finally dried up late in the month and allowed us to get some work done, but this had us planting clover probably later than we ever have. If we don't have a dry June we should be okay. Once again we're dependent on nature.

Our efforts spraying Arrest have payed off big. The grass is dead and the clover is thriving. In my opinion this was money well spent. Now I hope to get the chance soon to spray the Slay, hopefully with the same results.

Also over the next month I'd like to plant some annuals. The middle clearing plot looks like a good candidate and the rest of Area Two in the hayfield is a possibility as well. We'll wait and see what happens. I'm running out of areas to plow and the rest of the clover plots are doing to good to plow up.

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 May. A young fawn and mama. The fawn is still small enough that it looks like it could walk right under its mother. You can take a look at our favorite deer pictures from May 29 here.

If you follow our site closely, which I'm sure you all do, you have seen that we got pictures of coyotes and a bobcat in our May 24 set of pictures and we then got a picture of a coyote again on May 29. When I put the 2011 pages together I looked back at the 2010 pages and saw how few bobcat and coyote pictures we had from 2010. I can't figure this out. How can we go for so long without seeing them and when we do why would they appear on two sets of pictures in a row? I sure haven't figure these critters out. The two pictures of a bobcat from May 24 were both of it walking past a feeder. We monitor these feeders 24/7 and rarely see a bobcat walk near them and this time a bobcat walked past on two different days.

Do they travel a lot farther than I think they do and are there fewer of them than I think there are? Maybe that's the answer. Or, maybe I'll continue to get more pictures over the next several weeks. We'll just have to wait and see.