thanks

Yep. A good hatchet and a spray bottle. Google Craig Harper TSI mix for a good herbicide cocktail.

All I’ve done is bushhog and put out feeders for several years now. Mostly just ryegrass and some clover still comes up, but we’ve killed as good or better deer. Certainly haven’t seen a negative impact by not planting. I use to do all that before legal baiting, but always thought it was overkill. Plenty of food for a deer around us year around.

There’s a difference between old field management and letting it all “grow up” lol.
That difference is managing for invasive and native species. If you let everything grow up without any disturbance, you’re just gonna be slam full of invasives. ( Privet, sericea lespedeza, exotic turf grasses or cool season grasses (basically hay). Disturbance stimulates the seed bank and and will produce a mix of native and invasives. Treat the invasives and promote the natives and do so within timber and open areas. You create a base foundation of native habitat (browse/forbs) which is about 70% of your herds diet. Then food plots and feeding becomes surplus feed which is the other 30% of herd diet. Then just let your 3.5yr olds walk and harvest does according to ratio and in a couple years you can kill mature bucks IF you have a decent hunt strategy and setup accordingly.

It isn't going to work because you aren't in a controlled environment.

I am pretty sure that anyone who throws out some blanket statement saying mowing is a waste of time.... is dumb as a ballsack. Another dumbass with another dumbass theory on Deer management.

I have about come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a cull deer. When you have a chance to watch a deer grow and see how it progresses, its pretty amazing. From what I have observed on my lease, which I started on in 2018, improving the nutritional quality in food plots goes a long way. I have some very nice younger bucks on camera, that would be shooter bucks in any hunting club short of a well managed one, and we never used to see very many. I used to see 1 or 2 rack bucks a year. This year I have seen 9.

There are factors that could influence that, like curtting members, but I think it has a lot to do with feeding them year round. When I watch how the deer respond to a whitetail clover plot, spending hours a day feeding in them, and I know its on limed and fertilized ground, I know that is the best nutrition on my lease they can consume.

Clover has been the backbone of that program, but the last 2 summers are forcing me to adjust some.

I can't do the habitat management Mbrock and a couple others talk about, so, this is the main thing I can manage. Even if a deer only eats in one of my plots 1 time a day, that is 1 time a day that deer is eating the best forage on the property. That moves the needle based upon what I have seen over the last 6 years.

You took that pretty personal. In mower sales or something?

He's the extension wildlife specialist at University of Tennessee and a professor whose primary field is soils and management practice impacts on deer along with wildlife food plots with an emphasis on deer forage plots.... in other words, the guy is a PhD whose research specializes in feeding deer and managing deer herds.

His statement was more nuanced than that and was basically that many many people mow too much. Calls it "recreational mowing". He's actually good with foodplots - thinks they should be mowed less. For example he thinks clover plots should mostly be treated with grass selective herbicide and mowed 1x/year. Most non-planted fields he thinks should be burned every 1-3 years or maaaaybe mowed 1x/year. That's in contrast to what are basically cut hay fields or fescue plots many people in Alabama hunt over.

Same could be said for plowing and disking.......