LET EM GROW

This past card pull brought some bucks, 2 of my top hit listers on 2 different cams. A couple bucks looked to be getting very grey in the velvet color.. Guessing its about time for peeling.

I have soo many does and fawns in my plots everyday on and off all day long, I cant believe they have done as well as they have. Cant wait to fence them for a couple months next year!!

I love those kind of racks!! We had a buck named Bullwinkle about 15 years back. he was an absolute slob. Huge bodied slammer of a 12 pt. Im glad you mentioned that name, i had forgotten all about him. lol

Quite a few pics here in 8P this year. Id have to do some digging to get to them. Somehow i manage to have a couple cams that still work after face to face encounters with the camera lol. Sow with 3 cubs several younger looking bears. 1 or 2 big boys..

My first ever plot Throw and Grow(14 ish years ago) was just like yours here, hand saw and a steel rake. In the middle of mixed hard and soft woods. Little under brush. They didn't eat much of it but i would like to think just the fact that there was a big bright green patch in the middle of a fairly open forest floor brought there attention. At the time My 35mm trail camera would have to have a film installed every day or two. This was in the middle of Amish country and zero Ag.

We need rain badly, hope it comes today and comes down hard. The ground all dried up and cracking. All my Brassica and bulb plantings germinated but now seem to be stunted in growth. The south end of one plot, my rutabaga is doing well, Beans getting hammered lol. This is where the thatch was thickest when i sprayed and rolled soybean seed in back in June. Gotta love leave the dead matter there for moisture help..

The last couple years we had a big coyote problem. But after running dogs and calling them in and killing them as much as our lives would let us the hunt last 2 years, I have only gotten a picture or 2 of coyotes. In the 2015 archery season, between my neighbor and i we killed 5 coyotes with our bows opening week!

Looks good Jay! Next spring the clover will look much better!

Its all about preferred available food sources. Im having the same issues this year. And as luck would have it, loggers destroyed my perennial plots and with a wet spring we dont have much for summer ag food. So the neighbors thaqt didnt have their plots ruined, have the bucks, the pictures and such.. They will be on your cams in another month or so. I pulled a cam that was out for 3 weeks over one of my "SOYBEAN" plots.. 1700 pics, not 1 buck lol. All does. same with another soybean plot. My 3rd Soybean plot has some minimal buck activity on it but the beans are pretty well hammered. I feel you pain! i usually have shooters galore on summer cams. not this year lol but they are there!

Just a simple 3 pt disc. If your soil isn't rocky go with the tiller. only need a little soil contact and rain and you cna grow most anything. a post hole digger is always nice too. If you ever get into bigger several acre plots. a seed drill will be nice. Theres just something about row crops! lol. Any investment on attachments cant be wrong!

Go with Whitetail Forage Oats Plus. I always paid the extra because they work. I am not one to plant big buck bags anymore but haven't had the chance to pick apart each seed specifically from this bag. But I am sure if you went to a local ag shop and asked for forage oats or winter oats, winter wheat and winter tritacle you would be satusfied. Regular oats will rot with frost. I know this WI Oats plus will turn surgary with frosts and thrive for most of the winter. Then regrow come spring which is great to nurse clovers.. In fact i have pulled a few of these greens that were left in February and ate them myself. Still very sugary tasting! My neighbor planted them side by side with an Agway brand forage oat and didnt notice too much difference in deer preference. But the Whitetail oat stayed a darker green longer into Winter.

I would do a blend consisting of Cereal grains (Forage oats or Winter Wheat or Cereal Rye) with a brassica mix( turnip, radish, kale etc) and maybe annual clover, depending on where you are in the state you should have time to grow brassicas and some bulbs. All of these will grow in lower ph soils. And if only a 1/2 acre a pure stand of brassicas would likely be wiped out. In the other plot you can do Cereal grains with Radish and Winter peas. if looking for a bag off shelf (WI Winter Peas would work here).

Im a big fan of regular and jumbo ladino, kopu II and durana .. and a red mixed in as well. I tried this mix plus some alfalfa and chicory seeded with brassica blend this year. See how it does next year..

Got a couple goof ball bucks like that every year on our place too. same this year again. some very wierd small racks. Main beams down to the jaw bone, another has a main beam that follows the top of his face down towards his nose. some with only one antler and not even a bump on the other side. All young bucks and or does that grew antlers.. Have had 1 doe like that in the past.

Just make sure whatever you buy isn't full of Ryegrass. Should be fine then Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

Deer love fresh dirt.. looks like a lot of sweat and calluses might have happened in the making of this Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

I will take a picture of the one in my backyard at camp next time, it has a more coarse bark, unlike the smooth bark of a Beech. It has the same type of nut as far as I can remember though. Same hard thorny and Brown in fall..

I have Beech all around and never ever noticed Beech nuts before. A couple of blocks of woods are nearly pure Beech trees, and never noticed hardly any nuts lol. They just logged the heck out of the woods this tree is in back in April, So maybe the extra sunlight and a good growing year really helped the tree? I used to be really good with my trees in my younger days, Im starting to not recall as much as i used too these days lol

I get mostly Doe pics all summer. The bachelor groups roam around quite a few properties in the summer and winter months, with fields being cut or harvested and planted. Patterns change slightly. Ive got a ton of doe around again this year and ZERO Dmp. kinda sucks. But ill take the doe pics now to get the bucks come fall!! i know they are there, the neighbors let me know lol

I agree lol guess I was wrong. Never seen one before. Though I do think the one in my backyard is a chestnut. Most certain. And it doesn't have the same leaf nor bark as a beech Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

See the leaves to me look like a beech but I didn't know they put on a nut like that. Have tons of beech around too Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

Grow, Are these dunstan chesnuts? Found this tree totally loaded the other day overseeding a food plot. Never have seen a nut in this tree ever before! On my murder plot edge. Also have a mature one of these in my backyard at camp..

Brassicas would work great but in a plot of that size it wont last long at all. Id do a cereal grain or 2 as well as more clover seed.

Will do, those are some nice groups! Also, looking to load my own rounds for mine. Its a first fo rme but something ive always wanted to get into.

Whether one puts food out, plants food for wildlife, sets stands up according to natural food, or commercially planted fields. Your using it to your advantage .. call it baiting.. call it scouting call it whatever. But I think "building up" a property only adds value to it. In more ways than one. A corn pile doesn't. Water holes and manicured fields/plots also supports more then a few whitetail or coon mouths.. vs bait piles Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk