Koro traps and peanuts! You'll catch several a day if you're there to remove and reset the traps.

That definitely works. My dad had a pecan orchard and crows would come in by the hundreds when they were mature. He would have a big hunt every year and hang the ones we killed by limbs and they would abandon the place.

My little patch has grown a lot in just 4 days. It also serves double duty as my redneck sporting clays range. I was shooting this morning and a crow had the nerve to fly over and see what the shooting was about. He was about 50 yards and only dusted him with #9 shot. Gotta believe I at least ruined his morning.

I bought a squirrel trap years ago when I had squirrel dogs and tried to catch one to use for training. I never could get one to go in it. Then a neighborhood kid stole it and I didn't try again.

I'm thinking the chufas are getting big enough that the nutrients in the tubers should be about gone. Turkeys usually give up digging them when they get over 4" high; maybe the squirrels will give up soon.

I think this is a learned behavior by the squirrels, and they will pass it on to the next generation. I probably need to eliminate this generation come squirrel season.

Squirrel season is just for dumpling squirrels. You've got nuisance squirrels. That season runs year round in Marshall county.

12 month season on nuisance squirrels, coons, possums and feral cats

The little experimental chufas patch continues to do well. It could use a good rain now, but the plants are still pretty healthy:



They aren't gonna get real tall in this poor soil, but should still make a lot of chufas. They are around the 60 day mark now and some plants are flowering. I pulled up a flowering plant just to see what it looked like and was surprised to see it already had a lot of tubers:



I have seen chufas that looked really healthy not produce a single tuber until they hit the 90 day mark, so I have no idea why this plant has produced some so early. I think there is still a lot we don't understand about chufas. If I ever get my appointment as the Turkey Czar I am gonna give Auburn a billion of taxpayer dollars to do a chufas study. And I am gonna blackmail Monsanto until they produce a RR chufa.

60 days, That's great!

Could it be they are producing lots of tubers early due to being stressed ? Similar to drought stressed oaks producing a bumper crop of acorns ?

Could it be they are producing lots of tubers early due to being stressed ? Similar to drought stressed oaks producing a bumper crop of acorns ?[/quote]

I don't think so. They aren't really stressed all that much. It's been a decent year for rain, and all the lime and fertilizer has made the field reasonably fertile.

I've had years when they were stressed far more than this and still didn't start producing this early. They are gonna make a decent crop even if it doesn't rain in the next month, and should make a great crop if it we get rain

The heavy seeding rate seems to have worked out well because of all the seed I lost to varmints. On a larger field, I think they would have been too thick.

They look good Mr. Steve. Watch the varmints now that they're putting on. We've had some smaller patches like that dang near completely wiped out by coons and squirrels. Seems like there's a cut off between when they start putting chufas on and maturity that the critters actually leave them alone then all of a sudden they'll hit them really hard.

Trust me you do not want RR chufa. Nutsedge is already giving us enough trouble as it is and gly isn't the answer.