Dgallow back in the day used to talk about having to recalibrate your eyes to see things differently when you look a field or an understory.…… The picture below is one that I always look back on and see exactly what he meant by that. This picture is probably from 10 -12 years ago and it was of a little spot where I was gonna try to grow some sunflowers one summer. The funny thing about the picture is that at the time I originally posted it way back when, I was doing so because I was excited to show the little seedlings that were emerging and that was all I saw……Years later when I look at the same picture, I don’t even hardly notice the plants or care what they may be because of the erosion that’s taking place around it on a near gulley washing level. You have to recalibrate your eyes to see the things that are the most important. Far too often we get hung up on what magic bean to plant to fix our problems instead of seeing the real issues at hand

I stand corrected!!.......It wasn’t just where a coyote had pooped……its where one had pooped over and over in the same spot……. Good call Detective!...........

So looking at our little spot that’s doing better than the rest of the field it would appear that what we need is more poop…….



It still isn’t JUST as simple as a coyote pooped there though…..

Yes I have to tailor what I plant to take advantage of what is decomposing. This is why I started with beans and peas in the spring, and then went to cereals and brassica's in the fall. The problem was I don't have big enough plots to really plant peas and beans and not have the deer mow them down in a week or two. And that is what I saw with clay peas. The deer would leave them alone until August, and then one weekend, I have a beautiful stand, and the next, all that was there were stems. So I tinkered around some, and really the solution is a mix if I want to do that. Buckwheat, soybeans, clay peas and sunn hemp. All fix nitrogen, and the deer will eat all 4, the least consumed one being the buckwheat.

That works well, and gives me a ton of biomass, but, when I get towards fall, there is no way to broadcast seed into it and then mow it. It's just to thick. Which means I have to mow it, disk it, and then plant it. I want to get out of disking, because one of the things I want in my soil is worms, and disking kills them.

What I have been trying stop doing is what I see every club do. They plant peas in the spring, and then in August, they go and mow them down, spray the fields with roundup and then its another month before anything is planted. So just about the time the deer are really using the plot, you mow down their food, and its 6 weeks before anything viable is there. This is when, especially if August is dry, the deer are struggling in the woods to find good succulent native browse and we are transitioning over to mast.

So I tried broadcasting cereal grains and brassica's into standing beans. That works pretty well. I could probably do this on a couple of my fields. Then its just a rotation each time I plant. But what I also found is I needed something better on the small plots. And this is where I got into the Whitetail clover and Fusion. I actually prefer Fusion, but you have to be careful with broadleaf herbicide, get a little hot and you will kill all the chicory. What I found with these two plantings is the deer hammer them. Especially in August, they seem to really like the chicory. And they stay in them and eat for a while. Usually 30 or more minutes. The turkeys also like the clover. I have one field that has been mowed down since august and no matter how much I fertilize it, between the turkeys and the deer, it stays low. I expect it will start taking off this spring once it warms up. So I probably will not cut it much, if at all this year.

So now, I have to figure out what I can plant in the small clover fields in the fall to increase production, and am going to add some brassica's and awnless wheat. I may need to add some radishes for aeration. What I see with the turnips is they tend to sit on the top of the soil.

I really started all of this 3 years ago. This will be my 4th spring. I seem to run into a new issue each time I solve one. But I am totally convinced the small fields need to be clover/fusion. So that is what I have been focused on from last fall. I think I just need to add in some annual clovers in the fall to add nitrogen in the spring.

And I got some good advice on fertilizer based on my soil sample. So now I get 18-48-0 and 46-0-0. Basically 1 bag of the first and 2 of the second per acre. If I was buying regular Triple 13 or 17, it would take about 10 bags per acre. I need 100 pounds of nitrogen and 50 pounds of the phosporus (or whatever the middle number is) per acre for cereal grains and brassicas. Then I usually do 0-20-20 in the spring, but I will do the 18-48-0 this spring instead. I need enough cereal grains to mow down to start create the biological fertilizer the clover needs. So in theory, at some point, I should need very little additional fertilizer, and can come in with pellet lime now and easily maintain my PH. All I know is it takes a while when I have to put a ton of pellet lime on one field with my 3pt spreader. That is why I would rather just run around to each field and make enough passes to lay down an even layer of it and maintain.

Spring fertilzer bill will be around $200 unless the stuff has gone out of sight. Then in the fall, it will be around 3 times that. And I may have to come back and add more nitogen since that seems to be the engine for decomposition.

So tell me again where the screen name Lockjaw came from??

[img]https://imgur.com/a/wwzJf8y[/img]

I don't talk much in person.

Ok so here are two screen shots. 1 is of a video of me mowing my sunn hemp with clay peas from last fall. The other is my first Whitetail Clover plot.

The mowing one is cutting stuff 6 to 8 feet tall. You can see how thick it is, and you can also see off to the left what the flail mower did to it. This field was planted in beans and pea's with a little sunn hemp from the prior year, and then cereal grains and brassicas were boradcast into that. Then I came back and limed it with pellet lime, and broadcast the same back into it, and fertilized it and then cut it. After the screen shot of the video, I subsoiled it and disked it, and replanted in alfa rack, fusion, clover, cereal grains and brassica's. This spring I will just mow it and fertilze it, and I have some johnson grass I have to try to manage.

The whitetail plot I didn't devote much attention to, it needs some more grass and weed control this year. That is what the plot looks like once it warms up, it looks more like a putting green in the fall. I think all I am going to do to it is add some more pellet lime and spray and fertilize.

I bought a commerical flail mower, so it has a door on the back side I can open. It can be closed, half open or fully open. When I cut heavy thick material, I usually open it wide open. That prevents my 1026R from bogging down and allows me to cut it and a decent clip.

What I also like is the big roller on the back acts somewhat like a cultipacker, so if I have a field I can broadcast seed into before I cut it, I can basically run over it and pack it and lay a layer of mulch right on the top of it. It's the best I can do without spending the $ on a drill.

Looks nice!

Mythbusters: Food Plot Edition

So it’s a common theme to hear folks say that they like for their food plots to be short because its more tender and the deer prefer it that way.…..So I thought we’d do a simple little test here to see if there is anything to this or if it’s just a myth.

In theory here, the deer have an entire field of short forage that has been browsed down and should be the young tender shoots…….The forage in the exclusion basket has been growing untouched since just after planting…..If the theory is true that they prefer the shorter forage then this spot should go untouched after removing the basket…..If it is quickly eaten down then I think we could conclude that this isn’t necessarily true…… Agreed??.....Will they eat the tall forage or leave it alone??



Basket removed............

Well……that didn’t take long…..First night it was heavily browsed……. Myth busted???

Now here is something even more intriguing about this situation………..The deer attacked this taller vegetation just as soon as I removed the basket yet the spot in the field with the coyote poop pile has been sitting there untouched for weeks….To the point that the coyote poop is nothing more than just decomposing fur…..I don’t think the fact that its “coyote poop” would matter its been so long….Heck we had 7 inches of rain a couple weeks ago……..It makes me wonder if there is something going on with a high ammonia content that is deterring the deer from feeding on it.

I think they’ll be on it like a chicken on a junebug

You're spot on......Look a couple posts back.....I just posted the results from the first night. I was actually surprised it happened that quickly.

I said in an earlier post that what I need is more poop……but the exclusion cage test here really has me wondering if more fertilization would actually have a positive impact from the deer’s perspective……Sure, it would likely look prettier to our eyes but would the deer like it better??......Would more N or ammonia actually be a deterrent??

Here’s something to keep in mind……I imagine some folks will read this and the first thing that will come to mind as a comparison will be the N application that most folks spread during December and the accompanying green up……Most of those situations are going to be an apples to oranges comparison with what is occurring in my field. The reason being that in a traditional planting that has been using tillage for years your “unfertilized” situation is going to be one that is likely pretty void of nutrients all together and the plants are heavily dependent on the fertilizer to have vigor and produce growth. That’s a big difference versus the “unfertilized” area of my test field that still has a large nutrient reserve built up for the plants to pull from. Its not a matter of All or Nothing…..It’s more like you’re comparing “Fertilized and More Fertilized”……and I’m speculating that your Goldie Locks Zone is the natural cycle that I have going without adding “more”.

The problem I see with a short field is there isn't much biomass there. So take clover, its not really actively growing at the rate it would be if it was warmer. It's starting to perk up a little bit, but its not growing at a level where its growth is outpacing the deers consumption of it. At some point it will. And I don't have have some super high density either. My most heavily used clover field looks like a putting green right now. I doubt there is anything there over an inch tall.

When it is actively growing its 8 or more inches tall. And the leaves are much larger.

I also moved a feeder to a field, and set up a cell camera on it. From the pic's I have been getting, it looks like the deer are moving away from the brassicas and eating clover and cereal grains. And I expect to see the chicory start to grow soon too.

Nitrogen would help the rye, what you need is phosphorus and or potash for the clover. I don't need to apply potash to my fields based upon my soil sample, so this spring, I will put DAP out instead of 0-20-20.

Are you going to plant anything there for a spring crop? Didn't you say its mainly crimson clover and cereal rye?

One of grant woods video's he was on a property where the property manager planted clover on half the field and eagle buffalo mix on the other half. Then they came in and planted eagle beans in the spring. The deer clearly preferred the beans on the side planted in the buffalo blend over the clover blend. His contention was that the rotation of buffalo blend and soybeans created the nutrients the other crop needed as it decomposed. I have seen that in my last hunting club, where they would plant clay peas, and then come back in the fall and plant cereal grains. There was a very distinct color difference in the cereal grains that were planted in the section of the field where the clay peas were.

I think we may be bumping up against the law of diminishing returns here

Here is what I mean by that…..When I look at the forage in my field I don’t see any visual signs of nutrient deficiencies. I see healthy plants that are just being heavily browsed. You could look at from the standpoint that I need to add more nutrients to produce more yield but I think you reach a point where there is only so much yield that can be pushed out of 1 acre of land. If overloading nutrients to try and achieve more yield reaches a threshold where the forage becomes less attractive or palatable to the deer then are you really gaining anything by adding it??......As far as overall growth produced at the end of the growing cycle I’ll be fine because it’s about to all go boom and growth take off as spring temps continue to warm up.

Well Grant is in a position where he gets to do all the stuff most of us cannot do. And he is a biologist. I am a part time green field guy. And no one is sponsoring me.

I don't mind having to fertilize. I think you look at your crop and see what its doing. Yellowing cereals or brassica's means you need to add nitrogen. Slow clover, phosphorus and or potash. I think having it limed right is what makes it taste better. I tried some of my greens this year, they were all pretty sweet. If you have ever gotten ahold of some bitter kale, its gross. If I didn't have a 3 pt spreader, then fertilizing would suck.

What I have learned over the last 3 going on 4 years is the deer really like the clover. They like the chicory in the summer too. They like beans and pea's, but I don't have the acreage to really plant that and provide food like I can do with clover. They like sunn hemp, and if i want biomass, that is my go to plant. They like the brassica's and cereals in the fall. Adding ag lime helped, but getting the right mix and amount of fertilizer did the most. As far as production. Next fall, I will add some annual clovers and back off the brassicas a bit and see if that works.

The thing I wish I could do, is have a timed release fertilizer. Or have a crop that addes nitrogen as its decomposing. But its tough even with that to get a field that I can completely plant to the edge of the woodline and get stuff to grow. So the edges of the fields always tend to have less production and show more evidence of improper fertilizing. One of my old friends always told me to plant clover on the edges, and other stuff in the middle. But the edges are the toughest to get to grow well. I don't know if its sap from the pines, or what.

Less sunlight, nutrients and moisture from the trees around the edge.

Time release fertilizer is a game changer. Slow and controlled growth throughout the season. It never gets too tall that they won’t eat it but always growing when it gets browsed heavily. The most “flavor” and nutrition is in the developing and actively growing portion of the plant. Old growth hardens off and the amount of nutrients diminishes over time.