Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum My biggest frustration with throw and mow

Absolutely correct. But I like it flattened out. Kinda like pressure washing with the no till drill. 😂

That’s a tough spot. It’s also made you more vulnerable this year to every neighbor with a spin feeder since you can’t even counter it. I agree it’ll get better in time.

Going back to the beginning of this thread, don’t underestimate the nutritional value of those “weeds”. Couple of years ago I collected forage samples of soybeans, ragweed and vervain. The vervain is non-native but my deer hammer it and it’s naturalized so I don’t bother trying to kill it.

All three samples were submitted to the lab at Auburn for analysis. All were above 20% protein and had similar relative feed value numbers. Can’t recall the actual numbers but the soybeans didn’t have the highest protein levels. The soybeans did produce more biomass per acre, but at a much higher cost per acre. I’d guess $250 or more per acre figuring seed, fertilizer, herbicide and tractor time versus $0 for the weeds. Oh, and I had to put up a dual layer electric fence to get the beans established. That’s more money and time spent although I’m using the same fence in a single layer arrangement to grow chufa.

Yep………Unless you’re a high end property that has significant acreage to plant during the summer you’re just not making enough of a difference planting a summer plot for it to matter in my opinion…..You’d be better off spending that bean money on lime and nitrogen and work on improving the long term soil fertility…..The deer will still be in it feeding on top tier browse plants

What I have observed doesn't agree with that assertion CNC. For example, on whitetail clover, when it's actively growing, I have deer that will hit it multiple times a day. It's a very nutrient rich forage, and they can't eat it to the ground. While I am sure I could get some native forage to that level on a field I actively manage, the bottom line is the rest of the native forage on the lease won't have the nutrient value, because it's sitting in high 4 to low 5 PH soil. My plots have been limed. Usually when I deer hits one of my WTI clover plots, they spend 30 minutes to an hour browsing. The only time I see deer do that is under white oaks when they drop. Moving through the woods, they move along. I even get pictures of the deer bedding in it for a while, only to get up and feed more. Turkeys also eat it, multiple times a day, and I am sure there are plenty of bugs in it too.

Right now, deer on my lease are keying in on every food plot I have a camera on. Daily, multiple times. It's a culmination of factors, but the August to October rain void is a huge factor. I have been watching it since August. I saw this last year too. I went in during August and planted some RR alfalfa on a field. It came up was doing well, and then wiped in a week. Same plot, this summer, got brassica's up, looked great, wiped in a week. That tells me that the native forage is not doing well or is subpar in quality, since deer tend to seek out the higher quality plants to consume.

It's really a matter of getting the right mix up in the spring. If I get it up and it gets going well before about Mid June, then it will generally make it thru the no rain doldrums. If I can't, then it tends to flop.

The one field I enjoyed the most success on this year was one I went in, bushhogged,, broadcast lablab, and IC peas, plus some buckwheat, and then ran over it with the disk 1 time, just to make some seed to soil contact. Then after a month or so, I went back in with more IC peas, and just broadcast them into the standing bean crop. It got 5 or 6 feet high, and the deer started to key in on it in late August once the rain stopped and have hammered it down to about a foot tall now.

The biggest issue with any field, or area planted that gets alot of direct sunlight, is the soil has to be covered once its temp reaches 85 degrees, otherwise it doesn't hold moisture. It doesn't matter what its covered with, be it thatch or a canopy like under peas/beans, but it has to be covered.

I don’t think you’ve actually tried what I’m talking about…….When you have a field with rich topsoil, high levels of nutrients, and a good pH….deer will hammer just about whatever is growing in them…..and it will typically be high end broadleaf species…..When we planted my field a few weeks ago it was covered in deer beds…..This pic was several years ago but it was taken on Aug 4…..I could post a bunch of pics of different plant species they were browsing on at the time…..and it didn’t cost me a dime or any time…..

I’ve posted this pic before but after I started liming my field and holding high levels of Ca…..teaweed started popping up all over the field…..I stuck a couple baskets around some of it where a nice patch was growing just make sure some went to seed …..I think the pic tells the story….The exclusion baskets are in the back of the patch....you can see the t-post sticking up that holding them.....Look up the nutritional value of teaweed…..Are you growing teaweed in your cutovers and native areas??....Probably not…..I don’t know this for sure but I think it probably requires the higher end soil conditions and why it started popping once I had established rich topsoil and high Ca levels....It seems to be that higher end soil conditions grow higher end plant species

So if I have a 2 or 3 acre field full of plants like those that the deer are in all summer browsing on…..why do I want to spend the time and money to eliminate them just to replace them with ones that are likely to be less browse tolerant and less drought resistant??.......To each his own but if I’m spending money and time during the summer its gonna be to spread lime and maybe some nitrogen

Oh yeah.......and to mow once in early July.

I’m slowly making progress toward thinning my closed canopy areas and reclaiming a six acre parcel of unmanaged 12 year old clearcut back to ground level browse. If things go well I’m going to be able to drop a match in there every other year and create 4 acres of prime buffet. Where I started dropping trees in my hardwood bottomland I got a strong response from jap honeysuckle and privet. Both of these get heavy use. It’s not ideal browse but it is testament to how poor the surrounding area is much of the time. Something is way better than the nothing that was in there.

To the OP’s original point; last year I got up a head of steam and sprayed my already quite dry plots with glyphosate. Left them standing and when Hurricane Helene was looking to pass so that we’d get the outer bands I ran north, threw seed and mowed over it. The east side of Beatrice got quite a bit of rain. A few miles west where I am didn’t get a drop. I had 17 hen turkeys in my plot for the next week. They found everything. It stayed dry. I finally planted the weekend after Thanksgiving with a second rain. Nothing was left to mow down so I just broadcast seed and dragged it with my chainlink fence and tires. It was raining again as I put my equipment away. That plot took off. Dirt to green pics are three weeks apart(and before the turkeys stuck their heads in and ate out of the cage).

Sounds like you only can use what you got. May could pay leassor to not plant pines on about 3-5 acre plots in strategic areas. If not just thin down does to manageable numbers and hunt it.

I don't think its a doe issue. It's more about plot size, and to a slightly lessor degree, soil. It doesn't matter what I plant on a plot, besides clover, if its 1/4 acre, only a few deer hitting it consistently will demolish it. The trick is to plant something, like buckwheat that jumps up fast and provides cover for what I really want to plant, and let's it get established. In the spring and summer. In the fall, rye will more than keep pace.

I just have to walk a fine line. I have to get out there in April and start planting the fields I want to plant. I need to plant buckwheat to cover the real forage. And then I need rain and the deer to stay keyed in on my clover plots until about mid June.

Them spraying 125 acres really set me back. It will be better next year. I have 1 place I could stick a really big field, but it would be tough to keep poachers off it. We may rent a skid steer next year and try to expand a couple of the log decks and see if that will help.

I am just going to quit planting wheat. I like it because it's cheaper, but I am tired of turkeys wearing it out. Maybe I need to just dump a pile out every so often to keep them focused away from the fields.

You can always toss in a pound per acre of white clover into your fall mix and just let it ride through the process without trying to “grow clover”……Let it fill in with grasses and broadleafs during the summer…..spot spray here and there if you want….. then throw more seed in October….Rinse and repeat….. lime and fert if/when needed…..it doesn’t have to be complicated…….You’re not really gaining anything from it when plotting on a small scale....Same year as the pic from earlier with the stand of mature rye 4 weeks after mowing then 6 weeks later then 10 weeks......It eventually just became a "weedy" clover field as some would call it with virtually no effort or cost other than the cost of the pound of seed

It doesn't have to be all or nothing. I'm going to disk 7-8 acres of old field here pretty soon to see what kind of forb response I get next spring. I'm also going to plant 6-7 acres in vetch, cowpeas and may a little milo here and there next summer. I enjoy the process.

No but you do need to have a good understanding of the impact of your actions……For example, “just disking” that black layer of soil I posted earlier in the thread will set you back years in the soil building process and have you take a big back slide in fertility…..A field of sand is easy to destroy…….I’m saying all of this with having experimented with things just to see what would happen……”Forb responses” are also dictated by the fertility of the soil…..The chittier you make sandy conditions the tougher the plants have to be to grow there and the less desirable they become

That “less desirable” state of the plant community as soil conditions get poorer is a part of the natural design…..Its like that so that there will always be something to put down roots and cover the land even when things get bad…..Its so that as conditions get to where they are so poor that the land just needs something/anything to grow….that the animals wont wipe out those plants that are preforming that action…..The plants even start developing defense mechanisms if it gets poor enough…..The take home being that the sweeter you make the soil the more desirable your plant species will be AND vice versa…….You’ll be fighting spurge nettle instead of growing teaweed if you wipe out your topsoil

What will trick some folks when they disk that layer of black dirt will be the fact that busting up a big layer of topsoil like that causes a big nutrient release as all of that topsoil gets disturbed and decomposition and mineralization speed up……You’re probably gonna look at the response and be like Wooo hooo looky there!!......Its the long term that gets you though if you keep disturbing it and find yourself 2-3 years down the road with no topsoil anymore and fighting those old nasty “unwanted” weeds…..Once you build up a layer of topsoil like that on a food plot there’s not a whole lot of need for disturbing the seed bank anymore unless you just have a biomass buildup that isnt breaking down or something like that….You start feeding the seed bank from the top……Deer hoofing action and good microbial activity will take care of most of the soil surface breakdown and disturbance over time on small plots when the deer stay constantly concentrated on them……Just think what the ground looks like around where people have feeders…..Same concept is occurring across the food plots but just to a lesser degree than around a feeder……hoofing of the topsoil

Here’s the pics to go along with those last posts……Even trying to lightly disturb poor soil you can fudge it up pretty quickly……The second pic shows the topsoil separating and washing away with the rain…..Those are “eddies” where topsoil fell out of suspension…..I know everyone doesn’t have crap sand but a lot of folks do and from what I’ve seen….a deep layer of topsoil helps just about any soil type

The places where folks are getting away with repeatedly disking areas to disturb the seed bank and are still getting a favorable response of forbs is likely places that have some of the best natural soil conditions…..like low lying fields of nice loamy soil or soils that have a little more clay content without turning into a brick…….The soil itself in those situations has decent nutrient and water holding capacity and its naturally somewhat loose…..It doesn’t rely as much on organic matter to carry that load like the poorer soils do…..Still though…..organic matter is important in all soils if you want them to properly function the way they are meant to and most folks are dealing with those less than ideal soils ^^^^^

I hear ya. I have 50 acres of old field. I don’t mind experimenting on a small portion of it. It may not be optimal soil building, but I would say it’s an improvement over the last 100 yrs of farming cotton.