June Food Plot Update

Game Camera Review Update

Feeder Follies - Again

The month of June has been a dry one here in our part of West Virginia. The food plots are not lush and overflowing with green but they are doing well. The grass herbicide has worked well and now the weeds are getting my attention. Some weeds do not like being mowed so maybe this will knock some of them back. Weed killer may be on the agenda. I could see the deer in our newest food plot Friday evening. They were hanging around one of the apple trees that is dropping green apples and milling around in the new plot.

Oldhouse Food Plot

The oldhouse food plot is still the stalwart of our plots. The Arrest herbicide has killed most of the grass, but now the weeds have popped up. They are not taking over the plot but they sure make the plot look bad.

I wasn't able to tell any difference in the clover inside and outside of the PlotSaver. It has been up for four weeks and we've reapplied fresh PlotSaver at two weeks instead of the four weeks that it is supposed to last. I reapplied again this weekend and have put one of my scouting cameras on the plot. I should know for sure if the PlotSaver is keeping deer out next week when I get to take a look at the pictures. So far the PlotSaver has been disappointing but I'm holding my final opinion until after I get the photographic evidence back.

I mowed the plot to knock the weeds back. I tried to just take the weeds off and leave the clover relatively uncut.

This is the Oldhouse food plot before we mowed it. You can see the clover and the weeds.

Corn Patch Plot

Our newest plot is doing quite well. There is some grass and weeds in the plot but it isn't real bad. I think the early application of Arrest a month ago helped keep some of the grass out but I wasn't able to treat the whole plot. I think the plot will be just fine and can go after the grass and weeds next spring.

We've seen deer hanging around in the plot in the evenings the last week or so. One of our apples trees that is near the plot is dropping green apples and the deer try not to let them lay on the ground too long. They've been washing the apples down with a little fresh clover.

This is a close-up of our new corn patch plot. It looks real good so far.

Old Garden Food Plot

This plot is still doing real well, especially after looking so bad in the winter and early spring. The grass is pretty much gone but like the oldhouse plot there are some weeds.

I mowed this plot to knock the weeds down also. This is another plot that we can see from the house and have seen deer in it in the evenings. So far it's holding up quite well.

This is a close-up of the garden food plot after it had been mowed. The clover looks good.

Middle Clearing Food Plot

The plot is starting to fill in a little. I've started to see some of the clover that I over-seeded in the plot earlier in the spring. Right now there is competition with some grass and weeds so I mowed it to try to set the weeds back and give the clover and Extreme a chance to come on. It's going to be interesting to see how things go. If the clover thickens up I can at least have a decent clover plot here.

The whippoorwill plot is an interesting one. There is a weed that is growing like crazy. I'm not sure what it is but it is taking over. The fortunate thing is that the deer must like to eat the weed. I have an exclusion cage in the plot and the weeds are much taller inside the cage. Since the whitetails are eating the weed I'm not going to worry too much about it right now. There is some Extreme in the plot but you have to look hard past the weed. I could get some herbicide to try to kill the weed but I might as well just let the deer eat it. Maybe they'll take out all of the weeds and leave me a nice plot of Extreme.

The weeds also have some pretty purple flowers on them. If you can't grow what you want to you might as well grow something pretty.

So far this summer our plots are doing quite well. Hopefully the deer are getting a good dose of nutrition from them.

Our digital game camera reviews have continued. We've bought a Penn's Woods Digital Scout to test. Preliminary tests have shown it to be a pretty good camera. It has a Minolta 2.0 megapixel camera in it and takes better pictures than the cheap cameras. The picture color is as good as the 4.1 megapixel that is in the EagleEye but the quality doesn't hold well when I blow the pictures up. I'll be testing this game camera more over the summer so you'll be able to see the pictures yourselves on the site.

The Bushnell that I had purchased earlier developed some electronic difficulties so I had to return it.

You can see how our testing is going at the game camera review page.

I know we haven't had that many deer feeder follies updates but it sure seems like it to me. We've been battling them longer than there has been a Food Plot Journal E-zine.

This week we made cages that are 2 feet in diameter and put them on the feeders. If they can reach through these we may just give up.

We've been keeping track of the raccoons with our scouting cameras and they definitely aren't camera shy.

I'm dreaming of the day when the deer feeder follies become a thing of the past. I'm starting to think they are smarter than us.