sailinghudson25

I bought the dutch white clover from hancock seed. That stuff is larger than ladino clover. Thought it would be a better lawn like clover. Planted it in a mix in the plots, and planted it alone where i put young shrubs and christmas trees on the food plot and property border.

IT's been about 3 weeks since my dutch white and ladino clover plots have been mowed last. Lots of white heads, a quarter of them starting to brown . When's the right time to mow. Does anyone have a good pic of a fully matured clover seed head?

Thorny brush.... Rent a walk behind brush hog first, then you can maintain a good plot with a quality weedwacker like a stihl FR70. Brush hog it late july, then borrow a backpack sprayer. Then next week when the weeds grow again a bit and the weeds are dry and will be dry for the day, usea about 8oz of 41% roundup in a 4 gallon sprayer. Just enough to get it wet is needed. You probably need to refilll the sprayer once. Ideally add about 2 or 3oz volume of ammionium sulfate. IT helps to absorb the roundup from the leave on stubborn weeds better. Give the roundup a few days, then spread your seed, then weedweack close to the ground. Rake the plot if you can well, if not then, spread your seed before you weedwack. IF possible use an ATV to roll it in well. IF your not raking, i'd use the rye over anything else, or the oats 2nd. Ideally the cereal grains should be about an inch deep in the soil, and clovers 1/4" or less. 50x100 is .11 acres.. Something like 6lbsof ladino clover and 60lbs of either oats, wheat or, winter rye would be a good start, this is per acre. These numbers are for an ideally prepped plot sown with the right equipment, sown to the right depth. So, for you 2lbs of clover and 20lbs of cereal grains. Buy a bag or two of pelletized lime to mix with the clover to help spread it in a hand thrower. Your germination rate will be poor with poor soil prep. Something will grow. However, when the frost kicks up the soil inot ice shards in late feb or march, spread another lb or two of clover in the soil. With all this a bag of fertilizer when you plant. IDeally, a soil test is good. But one bag of 12-12-12, or even better 6-24-24 if you can get it. Most agway's sell ladino clover, cereal grains, and 6-24-24. You keep weedwacking every few weeks, spray early summer and late summer, and seed/weedwack a week later, you'll get a clover plot. Stihl makes a string trimmer you can swap heads on. You can get a rototiller head. Also, for mowed grassy material removable, a good backpack blower can be handy. Fertilize and lime your mast trees! HIckories and oaks. Planting fruit trees is a good idea too. No equipment needed for either. Just keeping weedy areas weedwacked can be pretty decent in itself. Keep your edges brushy. Deer like seclusion more. An ATV with improvised implements can be real helpful. Just the ATV tires alone will help those seeds grow by pushing them into the ground. I have made a food plot with my FR70, a seedway 2750 spreader, and solo 425 sprayer. It will not be perfect, but after a early summer start, a late summer spraying and reseed, it looked pretty decent.

I like plotspike's forage feast. Clover, oats, wheat, some peas, and a bit of chicory. I like oats / clover combos. If the soil is that bad, rye might be a touch better. You got an ATV? Put some good sized bolts through a large tire and drag it. Scratched soil that is mostly bare. Then enogu hcover to keep birds out of it and moist for longer. A deep till takes alot of work. A surface scratch of an inch or two does great on most food plot seeds. Keep them edges brushy, deer will be there more often during daytime if you do.

Tried apples a few times without fencing them. Never took hold, deer ate every bud off them in the winter.

Deer need low brush for cover and protection. Absolutely go for it. Open mature forests are close to useless for deer. Loggers coming...... Have a plan..... What you want to keep, what you want left alone. What extras they might do, what you will do yourself afterwards.

I never weighed it but my browning blr lightweight weighs less than my marlin 336 with scope. I have a 1pc steel Burris mount on the marlin and a 2pc steel leupold mount on the marlin. The 450 marlin is a short action. The only 1pc mount I could find was the long action blr, 3006 is in that group. I've dropped the gun a few times, and the bushnell 3200 elite in 1.w5-4.5x32 still holds. Stay focused 30-06 is great and cheap to feed. In NY it's hard to shoot past what a 30-06 can do. If they're that open, theyre crusing. Several hundred yard moving targets needs double digit ft lead. Easy to get a bad wound shot.

I'd pass on the takedown part. If I remember right, you can buy a good scope for the price difference. I got a browning blr lightweight stainless in 450 marlin. Kinda pissed my spare magazine jambs on me. Original mag is just fine.

I love my guns. I have too many and I can't think of a particular one I want to part with.... I had too many guns before I had good hunting clothes, an atv, food plot equipment, or deer processing equipment. I'd easily trade half of them for my canoe and my 13ft hexagonal 2 layered Woodstove tent. So many awesome hunting memories in that tent. A real treat is a flintlock rifle. Christmas day till the end of January I hunt in PA with a gun I built. Gladly trade a few guns for a custom flintlock. Rock, charcoal, lead, deer.... The equipment provides the experience. Keep it about the experience... the equipment you have or not leads to these experiences, or not. 2 deer rifles and your good.... I didn't mention rimfires, varmint guns, target rifles, and your good old campsite pals. One a 20ga 870 the other my Glenfield model 30. A marlin 336 with beech wood. Cheap game cameras are the bomb. Awesome to be fearless about putting them in a spot for awhile. I got 21 guns. Wish u could thin them down to a dozen.. I just don't buy new ones.... except for flintlocks, but they take time to build...

One thing I like about the 30-30 cartridge. I load it down to 1300fps with speer 110gr heads and small game hunt with it. I wait for squirrels to come in at 40 yards. Coyote, woodchuck, grouse, and a piss ed off beaver with his foot stuck in a 330 conibear. The gun comes with me on coyote trap lines, but I mostly trap Mink and fisher.

I have 2 marlin 336 rifles and a browing blr in 450 marlin. I use the blr alot, I even take it hunting open fields at times instead of a 3006 or 270 win. Blr had 1.5-4x scope, one marlin is scoped 3-9x, the other is my backwoods companion when checking trail cameras or scouting, that had a peep sight and big fiber optic front sight. My advice stick with common affordable calibers. Especially since you can not order ammo online in ny. 35 remington is a bit better, but not for almost twice the price in ammo. And it can be hard to find at times. I'd get a marlin in 3030 or a blr in 3006 if I did it again. Marlin is the easiest gun to take apart and clean of the lever guns. Bonus is the hunting stores have seasonal bargains on 3030 ammo. I've gotten it for 10 bucks a box. Reloading it's cheap too. About 230 rounds per lb of powder. If the gun is scoped, you can shoot 200 yards without compensation if you zero at 175. It's a about 2-3 inches high in the 50-100 yard range. 450 marlin isn't that bad 37 a box of 20. For what it offers its not expensive. You pretty much have a grizzly bear gun for the price of premium 3006 anmo. Keep in mind 45-70 and 450 marlin are just heavily necked up 3006 rounds. About 50-54 grains of smokeless powder fills their cases. 300 win mag is close to 65 grains. Avoid 325wsm,270wsm, they're so hard to find ammo for.

I Reseeded everything except one spot where is seasonally floods. Once the spring puddle goes away, i'll clover that spot up. The lawn around apple trees spot, I spread the seed and then rolled it in with ATV tires. Overall, the spots were about 80% - 90% bare. Thinking a little snow will cover it tomorrow afternoon.

I waited until now. And I'm still waiting. Should I just wait until the snow is clear, or wait until the night before some rain or snow to frost seed clover. 2 spots are reseeding existing plots started last year. 1 spot is a bow hunting spot 20x40 yards. It's typical weedy lawn in a spot of apple trees. Just looking to make it look healthier and with some clover. Location is Columbia county 2 miles west of the hudson river.

I've been struggling to get this grinder to work well over the years. The guts of the machine get clogged with sinew often. I like to chop up the lower leg section that is filled with sinew. How do you guys deal with it? Seems trimming all the sinew takes forever. Maybe an easier way to trim. I noticed kitchenaid grinder plates come in bigger than 1/4" holes. Would a bigger hole help. They also sell cast blades that seem harder to get sinew wrapped up and plugged. The blade I have is thick sheet metal with double sided blase section bent out. Also, the last time I used it, it started to melt the telfon washer. I can not find a replacement anywhere, I'm thinking some don't have it. My guess mine is about 5 years old. The metal washer face of the auger drive also spins on the shaft. I do not remember that it does that. I am wondering if I cooked the plastic on the auger face too. I go through about 4 or 5 deer a year. We do alot of roasts. Not much the jerky type here. I'd like to see maybe 10lbs of grind from each deer. Mostly for meatballs.

Zag, A few things about your plan. Do you need income from logging for taxes? What equipment do you have to keep the food plot. Do you have much free time for stuff like mild thinning and hinge cutting? What else is done at this porperty or next door to your property. Do you have kids who want to ride atv's. Family members who want to summer camp. Are you planning to put a camp there or not. Hunting is a only a few weekends a year. Enjoying a rural spot can be done year round. Do you have a prefered method or season of hunting. Work is nuts and I can only hunt late season. Or I hate the cold and really like early muzzleloader. In mainly wooded areas, deer focus on certain areas for a month or two, then go elesehwere where their needs are better suited. Do deer yard in your area, or stay all winter long? Do you enjoy grouse hunting or snowshoe hare I do what I can within the rules wherre I hunt up in the adirondacks. I focus on the pre-rut muzzleloader season and do stuff to attract another group or two of does to our lease when they return from yarding. Focusing on the buds that bloom earlier on brush and in areas where our landlord doesn't care about. I also focus on the water edges making habitat better for furbearers. Alot can be done with just a shovel and lopping shears. 1-2 acre food plot is nice, but I like to break them into smaller 1/2 to 1/3 acre spots and hunt travel routes in and out. Stripped maple is a main staple of adirondack deer. In typical non logged areas, deer love mature beech trees for their nuts. Especially for early season. Where deer density is low, the first to harvest a good buck wins..... I'm in a leased camp where a dozen guys compete for 3 or 4 nice bucks..... See if you can get the logger trade a bit. Stump removal, trucking in lime.

I got a camp near moose river, big moose stillwater area. I'd bring a head net just incase. IF you get a warm spell, you may have some flies if your near water or wet areas. Likely, you'll be ok. May, june, July, around late august they calm down. Remember, not only black flies but mosquitoes too. Seems it begins with flies, goes to mosquitoes, then back to flies again. I've even had some decent weekends in july. Mainly late may and june is horrible time. But, thats all on the weather. I've seen them around in late april if it's warm enough.....

Look up hinge cutting

Chas, You got a good plan. I left my stumps 4ft high or so. IF you get a bulldozer rented, tip them over then. Don't go too nuts leveling the ground. Most places have a good 4 to 10 inches of good soil, then crap clay underneath. It's real easy to destroy a good spot with a bulldozer. As for now. LEave them, so you can see them. IF you do not have one already, buy a quality string trimmer. You can do a 1/2 acre in a little over an hour. I use a stihl FR70, about $300 or so. Buy 2 or 3 extra spools of line, so you don't waste your time restringing. You got it easier than I had it. You have an ATV and a sprayer. A clover cereal grain mix would be great. Scratch an inch of soil. Get about 3/4's of the ground you see in dirt. Then spread 1/2 the clover and the cereal grain. Cover with one pass. Then spread the other 1/2 of the clover seed, then do another light pass. I use an earthway hand spreader. I mix a half acre spot with 2 or 3 bags of pelletized lime. Clover is tough to seed straight. Much much easier to get the right amount of seed spread if you thing it with lime. Do not over seed. You got left over, save it for spot reseeding, or frost seeding. I have used tractor supply's plotspike forage feast with good success, as well as their clover. However, their clover seed is not innoculated with rhibosomes, which is the bacteria that attaches to roots that makes nitrogen for the clover. So, I mix it in with some coated ladino clover, like whitetail institute. I use this seeder. https://www.zoro.com/earthway-handheld-broadcast-spreader-25-lb-1-hole-2750/i/G1343675/feature-product?gclid=CjwKCAiAt8TUBRAKEiwAOI9pAAyAAfNjQDXvKujSRomuivqFx256AhHJfPpsL7IvECuBfebvfRbGIxoCxV8QAvD_BwE A walk behind spreader needs big tire with low air pressure to work ok. All the lumps and bumps makes it hard. Also, If you don't have a spring harrow drag, make one of these.

From what little we see of the timber around there, it looks a little cramped. Competing tree should of been thinned out a few years ago. Take the reject and use them for funneling areas. Even a spot or two away from the plot, to make a bedding area. I've had just as much success making bedding areas as I have making food for deer. Especially if you are competing with a neighbor who manages their property for deer. Also, just managing the forest in a fashion where you make a more denser line of trees can be really helpful during bow season. Give the understory some more light in a line and the deer will use it. IF you do harvest trees or do any other tree work, try to do it in the winter if it can be done safely then. You will be provide them with food if you do it in january or February. That use to be my goto move for muzzleloader season in NY. Cut down a few trees last week of rifle, then come back in a few days and cut the branches laying higher up on the felled tree.

The nitrogen in the fertilizer is for a fresh clover spot. I scratched up the lawn grass in this area, in hopes of helping the clover get bedded into the soil a touch better. Also, wanted to kill some of the grass. Did this right before last week's storm with about 3 light passes with my spring harrow. The existing clover spot got wrecked by the deer here. There are tons of deer in this part of the state. However, finding a place to hunt is tough. Overall, this spot is a backyard. The (2) 1/4 acre plots are bordered by young red dogwood, prairie willow, and what's left of some young white cedar. They chewed the heck out of those things this year. Temped just to plant more white spruce to make the border..... The 1/10th acre front corner is doing well, but I never sprayed that area. There's several 3ft-5ft tall red cedars. I will spray there this year. That spot wil get frost seeded too. However, I will use 6-24-24 over there because the clover held well there.

Wow 5.1 Looks nice. Keep those edges brushy if you can. They'll walk right in instead of playing the "is it ok or not" game outside of bow range for the last part of the day.

I am in columbia county. I scratched a 1/10th acre lawn spot under the apple trees where my hunting blind is. I put 3 bags of lime in the fall in the area. Can you put amendments at the same time when you frost seed? Adding some 12-12-12. I always broadcast clover with pelletized lime, so I can get a even spread. I've never had luck with my seedway bag seeder doing straight clover. Also, looks like we might get some warmer days when last nights 1 inch of snow will go away. Think it'll be ok to spread. I have 2 identical 1/4 acre food plots next to each other. MY plan is to make one clover for the whole year, and the other I make a more active plot. Last season I started the project. I scratched up one side and planted oats and dutch, red, and ladino clover. The other side got the same treatment in the spring, but in august, I sprayed it roundup, added more oats, turnips, and a bit more clover seed. The active side with turnips got hammered this fall and winter. I am going to frost seed, but want to add oats too. Can oats be frost seeded? This spot is an old apple orchard coverted to lawn. There is about a 4- 6 inch dip where the tractor path between the apple orchard rows were. IT does flood in spring. However, I dug a drainage channel. Our melt we had last week drained out in a day, which seemed alot better. The other 1/4 acre spot I am leaving alone until august. I will spray roundup, turn up the soil with a plow, pick rocks by hand, and likely do a cereal, clover, turnips mix like last year.

I got a 3ft section of spring harrow, it takes a few passes, but it works fine for clovers, cereal grains, and it make a great turnip bed last season. However, I am planning to make one of these. Seen them to do ok. Deep root vegetables and corn. Not a good idea for shallow till.

What ATV do you have? MY honda 2017 honda rancher has too fast a 1st gear to use one of those. I use a spring harrow. Also, with the gear speed. Your automatic clutch needs to be fully engaged at the speed your doing. Otherwise, your going to be slipping the clutch, beating it up, and roasting the oil and adding alot of clutch material in the oil. I know a few folks who change their oil after using their discs for the season. 1/4 acre plot is not large. You could always put some large bolts into a tractor trailer tire and drag for a soil bed. What you plant may or may not require much soil work. Wheat, Rye, Oats, and clovers can be done without a deep till. A 4ft drag harrow is not a bad choice either.

I planted oats for horse feed and it did well last year. Non seed grains are always a gamble. Got a half bag left of it for the spring.