Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum Feathering in Greenfield

Any tips or ideas? I don’t have a ton of room to do it as in don’t have the luxury of 20 yards from the woods edge etc. pics would be encouraged as well. Thanks!

You mean allowing native vegetation to grow around the perimeter of your plot as a soft edge into the nearby woods?

Exactly…tips on how to do so? Would you plant sage grass or sorghum etc to help the barrier etc.

I used to do that at the house until my brother in law decided to bush hog it all down for me. I never really noticed a difference

Interesting…is it worth doing is a better and first question? I’d be interested in hearing other opinions as well. It makes sense in theory but if no difference then no sense in doing so

Mine was just natural vegetation just briars and sage id just fertilize the field edges heavy and it would grow. My wife killed a good deer standing in it one evening but who's to say he wouldnt have came on out before shooting light ended.Every few years I'd have to run over it with the bush hog just to keep everything from getting out of control.

I'd rather just have more planted plot. Mississippi State did some research and their ideal plot size is 4 acres, which is pretty darn big.

That is my dilemma. I’d lose food from not planting it. Yeah I wish I had the land/topo features to allow a plot that big 😂 mine range from .3 acres to 1.5acres.

If it’s worth it, then tips on doing so…otherwise will plant as much as I can

Just don't mow the edges of the fields.

We promote and do this on a lot of properties. Rarely do we plant anything. We encourage native vegetation by fall discing and adding that part of the field to the burn rotations of the adjoining timber stands. There are plenty of native grasses present in the seed bank so planting usually isn’t needed. Sometimes, chemical treatments are used to remove any cool season grasses like fescue or ryegrass so natives can establish. Do I think it works? Yes. It provides additional cover and security for deer, quail and turkeys. You’ll still need to limit pressure. It won’t fix a hunting pressure problem. Almost all of our fields have cover or native vegetation around them.

Wish i had a 4 acre field - the big field prob close 1.5

Now that i think of it - i did pick up my father n law 50 acre place and it actually has a 4 acre field but the neighbor has a shooting house backed up to it on the line so not too excited bout it. Prob plant some Egyptian wheat next year on the line

When i have done it i usually mow all of my plot in mid to late June. When I come back to throw and mow in mid to late October I leave a 2 or 3 tractor wide edge. CNC has a picture of a good example if he chimes in

Unrealistic for 95% of hunting properties.

That's the only problem with the experts...most are focused on IDEAL conditions.

One year when I had the time to do it right I tried using Biologic Blind Spot in the late spring and hand seeded a small buffer between my pines and my small food plot. Also put a very small 2 foot wide strip of Whistleback in the middle which the turkeys went nuts over and some quail found it. When Fall came I planted Green Patch Plus on both sides of the Whistleback strip. Most deer and turkeys I have ever seen that Fall. Blind Spot grows 6-8 feet tall and gave cover between pines and food plot so they were very comfortable going in and out of my small quarter acre plot. Even used a little to partially conceal my SC2. Only reason I don’t do it anymore Tiler is I don’t have the time but it worked great. If I had the time to burn down everything with Roundup, disk, fertilize and lime, plant the Blind Spot and Whistleback in spring and summer then plant fall plot I would do it every year. Now I switched to half nontypical clover and half GPP which worked pretty good and less work but nothing like results I had planting Blind Spot edge and Whistleback strip in middle.

Adding to this: Most hunters I know lease hunting property instead of owning it. You can only do what the property owner allows you to do. If the owner is in the tree business, there may be nothing you can do.

I plan to do this in February around a couple of plots. The plots are small, just under 1/2 acre, in the middle of pines that have been thinned once. I hope to grow the plot up to about an acre, then go through the pines, further thinning and discing.

I don’t sacrifice plantable acreage to feathering. What works for me is to hack and squirt inside the wooded edges around a plot to thicken up that buffer. It makes the plot less easily visible to cruising bucks but consequently decreases my sight lines into the woods.

Yep

Sorry but what is whistleback?

Great there is another word to add to the can't stand list.....feathering. Just say creating a soft edge.