I had a nice buck and multiple doe's in one of my plots last night. It's basically whitetail clover, Fusion, and whats left of tall tine tubers. And they stayed there for a good while too.

I did email the biologist and asked her if I could plant something or add a soil amendment to help replace minerals since we aren't allowed to use them anymore, and she said my fields and natural browse will give them everything they need. Sort of makes me wonder...... if the mineral mix isn't hype? I would think if you have properly limed food plots, the plants should be taking up minerals from the soil.

And if you eat a well balanced diet, you shouldn’t “need” ice cream or candy. Yet people still eat it. Sometimes creatures are attracted to things they don’t even need at all.

If you’re talking about salt/mineral licks……I believe that is mostly something they use to help with fluid in their system. The salt is supposed to be a way of getting rid of excessive fluid when they are consuming a lot of forage with high water content. Does this allow them to eat more??.....I don’t know but that would seem like the logical answer.....On the other hand, maybe it gives them high blood pressure.

Or “maybe” they don’t need a salt/mineral lick at all. Maybe they can live just fine with their normal diet but they still like it, and are attracted to it. The role of sodium, calcium, and trace minerals is not a mystery at all. But people and animals frequently take in more calories and salt than they need. I know that comes as a surprise to no one living in Alabama and Mississippi.

Well the upside is I hit all my mineral sites this year before I got word from Westervelt. And I have been doing them for 4 years now, so there should be plenty there for years to come. I put out 140 pounds of mineral/salt mix and 50 pounds of stock salt with it. This is more than I have done in prior years. And I have it in places they haven't been hitting, so if they really want it, it's there.

I suspect WTI will come out with some sort of product you can spray. They have a new forage I saw that is supposed to be like a cover crop, soil builder now. If I can keep them in my clover/fusion plots, then I should be good. I am pretty much done with disking now. On reason I could see it is new ground.

Optional mowing if you want to keep it short for turkey season.......Mowing will thin out the cereal rye the more you do it, especially if its starting to throw out seed heads.

I wanted to get out and do that, but now, with fertilizer where it is, I sort of want to wait and let the cereals get tall before I cut it, that way it will help with natural slow release fertilizer (mulch), and help keep the soil temps down as we head into summer.

I noticed this log deck that the skid steer guy cleared 2 years ago that I have struggled to get something to grow on seems to have a better stand of cereals this spring. I planted some WTI extreme on it too, and I see some of that germinating, so I am hopeful this will develop more. The deer are eating in it, which is a good sign. I may try to expand it a little more this year. It isn't a huntable spot really, its more like just an actual food plot to feed them since its right alongside the road. If I could get a good stand of clover in it, I bet the turkeys would hammer it. I may try to get some lab lab to grow on it.

I have another log deck if I can get it cleared I would plant. It would be the same as the one above. Just a food source. Those spots all require building the soil unfortunately. If I had a dump truck and could bring a load of top dressing in or something, then it would be easier.

The good news is I am seeing doe's on the 2 fields I have cell camera's on. That is encouraging. I hope this move to having alot more clover is going to pay off, because they sure seem to like to eat it. This fall I have to go heavy on cereal grains, that is going to be my fertilizer for the clover, and then I will add in some annual clover to add nitrogen.

I’ve mowed it in the past just to see how many times I could recycle the growth back and for the most part it seemed like the first mowing it just rebounded right back from…..the second not as much and then by the third I was starting to thin the rye a good bit and impacting it and the crimson from maturing to seed. If someone wanted to do one spring mowing right now though sometimes within this time frame of the cereals bolting then it would probably give the soil a little boost from the green manure…..especially with a large % of it being clover clippings. Sorta like pumping the gas pedal and revving the decomposition engine a little……throwing some slop to the soil hogs and getting them stimulated………helping to say bye-bye to any remaining surface biomass that was put down last fall.

I will mow mine as soon as turkey season ends. That is what I did last year and had good results in the fields I had clover in. Then I can see what they do and decide if I want to supplement them with something. I sort of want to plant some more sunn hemp, because of the large amount of biomass it creates, and I can always use that. But I think I am going to do some lab lab.

I have one really big field, at least for my lease that I want to plant something down the middle of it, at an angle that is inline with the shooting house. The idea is that would essentially divide it into 2 smaller plots, and hopefully make the deer more comfortable coming out in it. They mainly came out on the far left side last season. I was thinking maybe some milo or sorghum, or even corn for that matter. Just something to add some cover. Maybe put a slight curve in it. If it was thick enough they might slip in and out of it.

It's going to be hard not to be out disking and planting. I really like doing that.

Nice you mow with a 48 " deck Troy Bilt mower?

Umm , Sorghum IS milo. They are the same thing. You may know weeds like no other, but crops, Not so much obviously.

22" Toro.......

I never claimed to know weeds..... perhaps you have me mistaken for someone else? And thanks for the clarification, I have heard it called both.

These pics were from March 13, 2018……. This was when I was still applying nitrogen in the fall and winter……..

LOL. Yep sorry. There is only one King of the Weeds. Or smokes too much weed..or something like that

I let my fields go just in case the turkeys are trying to nest in them.

The little bit of white clover I spread is jumping pretty good too now……



Picked up a second hen as well………

What I found interesting is the second year at my club, I came in and bush hogged a field of cereal grains after turkey season. When I went back later to disk it, there were small turkey poults hiding in the cut material that had dried. Lot's of them.

I think I may broadcast some lab lab into some of my fields and then mow them and see what happens once turkey season is over. Just add it to supplement the clover. I have a couple I need to kill the grass in. I hit them with roundup last year before I planted them, but it still came back.

[img]https://imgur.com/gallery/2CSH9gi[/img]

This is one of my pure WTI clover plots. I burned all the chicory out last august like a dummy and have re-seeded it. Seeing it start to come up now.

I don't know why it won't post an actual pic instead of the link.