New property feature - discuss here
Whitetail Deer
We have been busy designing our new property in Ohio. In this 3-Part feature I bring you through the decisions we made on food plot placements, and access strategies to get to my stands. In Part 2 we will discuss scouting, and in Part 3 (post season) we will evaluate what went right, and more importantly what we should have done differently.
Pat, it was hard to tell on your picture, but I think you are planning to put a stand in that little clump of trees in your bean field. If not, I would highly recommend it. If the deer don't have their own scrapes on those trees you should start a mock scrape.
Pat, it looks absolutely amazing. Congratulations and enjoy the fruits of your labor for years to come!
Looks like a really nice farm and well thought out. Will be interested to see how the plot on the border works out. How many total acres is the farm?
Fascinating. I've never used HuntStand. Of course I mostly hunt mountain land and don't do any planting.
I'm following this with interest.
Hybrid screen planted June 15th 9’ tall as of last week. Will stop growing at first frost but will stand all winter.
Hybrid screen planted June 15th 9’ tall as of last week. Will stop growing at first frost but will stand all winter.
Sunn hemp was a poor choice for a screen. Deer browse Sunn hemp. Even if they don’t graze it to the ground you don’t want deer where you might access. It also frost kills. I’ve planted Sunn hemp in mixes for fall plots and it never stays standing when the cold rainy fall weather comes in. I have never planted it thick though. Egyptian wheat or another hybrid that deer don’t browse would have been my choice.
100% spot on. I ended up planting Egyptian wheat after I realized the deer were browsing the Sunn hemp before it could get tall. I don’t know if the wheat will have enough time to get tall enough to screen. The video was shot in July and I planted Egyptian wheat on 7/25. I doubt it will get tall enough but we’ll see.
Glad you planted something different. It’s been dry in the Northern part of the state. Even late planted with a little help from the weather you could get some height. Not sure if you will be around your new property but if you are and you can time it with some rain broadcast urea into the screen a few times and it will help a lot.
I'd be curious what the neighbors on the NW corner and north end are doing. What are they planting in their ag fields....corn? Are they rotating their crops corn to beans to wheat and back? Me thinks that will impact your two plots....especially if they have standing corn for the bow opener. The other thought is what are the traditional prevailing winds for that area? Weather Underground will tell you that.
Corn to the west and beans to the north, they both rotate corn and beans each year.
RIT, I fertilized when I drilled the Egyptian wheat. It’s been dry but we’ve had good rains the last two weeks,
I guess you'll find out where the neighbors have their stands/blinds. Having hunted an ag field similar to the north one, that point of woods that sticks out into the ag field is where I (they) would bet they put a stand or blind. If they're gun hunting, they would have a better field of view of both sides of the ag field from that protruding piece of land. That would be close to your property line.
For your screening in the future, you might consider putting in switchgrass over the EW or other options. I’ve used EW in the past and it works really well, but doesn’t hold up to snow loads very well. Agee with RIT on top dressing your EW with some more urea right before a rain yet this year. It will still grow like crazy with good conditions. I don’t have much experience with establishing switchgrass, but I’ve been doing a ton of research on it and I’m going to have the entire area where it’s going to be frost seeded, properly prepped and ready to frost seed it this late winter. From what I’ve been reading on it, getting the seed bed properly prepped in the fall is the key to success in getting it established the most quickly and successfully.
If I read it correctly, did you fill each of the 4 planter boxes with a different variety of soybean? If so, curious as to why? I would think if you planted each variety in separate sections, you would possibly be able to better determine which variety was most attractive, tolerated browsing better, held up best late into the season, etc. Maybe that isn’t a concern.
Looks great Pat. Any TrailCam pics?
congrats on the new farm, the joys of figuring out how the deer will react to your plots, it keeps me up at night. I was about to comment on the sun hemp and saw RIT beat me to it. I also learned the hard way and now planning to add Norway Spruce early fall. look forward to reading the next two chapters.
Very nice and well thought out.
This is great! Looking forward to following your progress and results. I was just wondering where your water sources are? Do you concentrate on them at all, or, just as long as some are there, let the deer use them naturally?
Great stuff. Look forward to following along.
There is a creek that cuts my property in half. It's been pretty dry so far this august but there are still lots of pools around. I have not concentrated on water other than to identify crossings. The banks are pretty steep in many areas and where the slope is more gentle there's some really good deer crossings that I have marked on Huntstand. I will get a cam up on that creek next week.
Rupe - yes, I have many trail cam pics of some very nice bucks. I've got 2 shooter 8's, 5 mature bucks, and 20 individual rack bucks. These are all residents, I get several pics a week. Interestingly, not a single 10 pt yet. There is a genetic trait of nice 8 points in this area. They are around, just not as many as I'd like to see. Of course, come October new bucks will be showing up. But even if they didn't, I'm very happy with what I'm seeing. I've got better bucks here in one summer than in ten years at my NY property.
Looks good Pat. You have motivated me to take control of some of our crop fields and turn them into food plots. We have about 5.5 acres of food plots and about 47 acres of crop fields. The food plots are mostly old strip mine ground whereas the crop fields are mostly rich bottom land. We are about 45 minutes west of you. Nice job on your layout.
Looks great, congratulations. I will be following along and learning.
Pat, You have a lot more experience than I do so I hesitate to comment. Please give me your thoughts on my comments so that I can learn as we go. It seems to me that a lot of your plots are good food sources for summer and early fall with only plot 5 providing high preference food for mid October to early December. Plot 1 with all soybean will attract a lot of deer during the summer and maybe a great draw for the first week or so of season. After the leaves turn brown the deer may not use it much until December, January and February. I would consider broadcasting about 200#/acre of cereal rye in at least parts of it in September to provide a draw in October and November. Plot 2 may not have a lot of drawing power in mid October to the end of November because at that time deer seems to switch from protein to grains if they have a choice. Again a possible solution would be to broadcast rye in September. The same comments would apply to plots 3 and 4. Plot 5 should be a good draw in September , October and November and when mature bucks are the most active during daylight hours.
Thank you for such a valuable information. I was looking for a long time detailed explanation. Really appreciate your reply!
Pat, do you have glyphosate resistant waterhemp in that area of Ohio. We can’t keep a bean field looking so clean in southern Illinois without adding a different mode of action
My big soybean field
My big soybean field
No, I was warned about waterhemp by T-roy and was on the lookout but it doesn't appear to be prevalent in our area. I will say that my plots are not as clean now as they were when I shot the video. I do have Gly-resistant marestail here and there, and I need a foamer for my 30' sprayer since I missed a few rows, but my beans are now pretty tall and I'm not worried about the weeds at this point. I have an excellent bean crop in both my big field and my small kill plot. All my fall plots are in now as well so I'm in scouting mode now.
I have never planted plots at this scale before. Prior to this I only planted 2 acres of beans, here I planted 18. My process was 'decent' but can be improved next year. All the farmers here use pre-emergents and I dabbled with that in some areas, but I found it really screwed with my ability to plant diversity. I will admit that I'm no expert on herbicides when it comes to planting at scale like this.
Goyt, I don't disagree with you. I will have brassicas in 2 acres but that won't last long given my density. At my NY land, my beans are drawing and nourishing all summer, fall and into the first couple weeks of winter until the snows drive the deer into yards. So beans have worked amazingly well all season. After mid December, we would have 4' of snow minimum at my land in NY. At this Ohio property there's no snow depth at all. Maybe 10" tops after a big storm but it only lasts a few days.
I am considering broadcasting rye into my beans or perhaps brassicas. I'm not sure yet. It's an excellent call-out and I will definately be doing something after the beans get wiped out. I have no idea how long that will take, I will have 18 acres of standing beans. That's a lot of pods.
4 days after Interline, Gly, and AMS.
4 days after Interline, Gly, and AMS.
Liberty beans for a few years will help neutralize marestail. Liberty or Interline (generic liberty). Kills things dead in about 4 days including marestail. No waiting a few weeks to see if you missed something. Can work even better if you sew winter rye into your beans for the fall.
goyt, I am headed out to my place in early Sept to broadcast crimson clover and rye in my standing beans. I do the same as you and agree, it helps tremendously in late Oct through to Nov. They dont hit my beans again till the temps really drop or it snows in December.
Pat, I think that you have plenty of nutrient with all the beans both while the plants are green and in winter with the pods. I do not think that the deer will eat all of the pods before the ground freezes and maybe not ever. My concern would be that the deer prefer something else after about 10/15 to 12/1. That would reduce deer movement on your property when the bucks are moving during the rut. I think that your cold weather hunting should be great around your bean fields.
XMan, thanks for the response on the approach. It is nice to hear that others are getting good results with the same approach.
I don’t see that much drop off in the deer hitting my soybean plots In November, here in Iowa. They do, however, seem to prefer cornfields here, during that timeframe.
Pat....have you given any thought into planting any corn on your Ohio farm? It’s a bit more of a hassle prepping the fields the following year after a corn plot, but IMO, it’s probably my best draw in November.
Pat, wow, seems like you have a good group of resident deer and like you said who knows what the Rut will drag in front of you! Keep us updated. Looking forward to seeing how your season progresses!
Crazy question but do you have a security plan? As an out of state owner it might be tempting for locals to tresspass and steal stands, cameras, and etc.
Not a crazy question. I’m living there the entire season due to Covid. My company announced we are all work from home until April’21.
I will be hunting and patrolling it all season. According to my neighbors the trespassing there is minimal and I have video surveillance and alarms all around my camp. I’m completely surrounded by private and know every neighbor. I should be in good shape.
Sounds like a great fall Pat!
I'd like to hear you plans to hunt and not burn it out. The property is a decent size but if you hunt as much as you are able to it will be pretty easy to spook deer off there - or at least make them more night active.
Are there any public parcels nearby to spread your hunting out?
Well crap.... there goes my plan to sneak into Pats property this year.....
Just kidding....;)
No interest in hunting public. I will be bouncing around a bit. I have my big property in NY, and I have a small 30 acre piece in PA. I plan to spend a week hunting each place so that should help. I am still busy all day with work and I'm renovating the house so it's not like I have every day free to hunt. It should be OK.
I agree with that plan.....hoping around will help a bunch
I really enjoyed reading all of your prep on your Ohio farm Pat.It sounds as tho you are dialed in.Good luck with the "HERO " shots from this fall.Cliff
My first farm in Iowa was 100 acres and some of my greatest memories are on that acreage. I hope your beans hold as the years that mine did....it's amazing! Unfortunately last year they wiped me out by October and my brassicas never holds them like adjacent grain. I like the amount of beans you have and if you can broadcast into them---the open areas---you are gold!
Switch had been amazing as well. As you probably know, it spends its first year growing DOWN, making you feel like a failure, only to explode the next. TSI and switch were two of the greatest changes I made from my first farm to the second and made a huge difference.
Good luck!
Pat - Sent you an email...
