The following pictures include one of this falls plots. The field
is a 6 acre rectangle, with 2 acres Red Clover (last yrs fall planting) 2 acres corn in the middle(this springs planting) and the new planting I'm doing with Rye, on 1 acre in the SW corner. The pics show it plowed, not yet disked in.

The SE corner is extremely infertile and grasses also very acidic. I brushogged it but will not plant it this fall.

Red Clover: North End of field

Corn(Middle of field) & South end (plowed 1/2 for Rye) - The corn did real well this year.

A Pic from my stand in the SW corner - The "deer" in the pic is my 3D Target - 30 yds from the base of the tree.

I'll plant and fertilize this week.

Nice stand site FH......looks like one of those from a mossy oak or real tree video!!!!

How do you do with the red clover attracting deer? I have used mixtures with red clover in it but never planted just red clover.
Looks like you have some grass and weed competition in the clover also.

That's a very nice settup farm hunter. Your edge growth seems to be coming back. And those fields look great. It looks like you've got a lot of ash and maple along the tree line. Are there any oaks or old apple trees for dessert?

Dan O.

Ilbback -

Thanks, The stand is about 20 ft to take advantage of the natural cover where the tree splits into 4 - its a little higher than I usually hunt.

The red clover does have quite a few weeds. I did not spray roundup, I plowed and planted it with oats last fall. The oats were combined, and had quite a few weed seeds too. The clover came in pretty well anyhow, its about a 60-70% stand. I haven't mowed it only one time, the reason for the planting was to rotate it with the corn every two years, and of course to supply some good nutrition, and attract deer.

The red clover does not attract deer as well as the ladino or white varieties, but it definitely brings some deer into the field every night. I want to leave it high this fall, if it'll stay green. I usually mow back the clover to 6-8" this time of year in the other fields, I'm curious what difference it'll make - if any.

Dan O. - Thanks, We make due with the fields as they were. I'd prefer them not to be so "square", to get more corner action and daytime usage, but the corner where my stand is is a low spot that you cannot see from anywhere else in the field - so it stays pretty hot.

We do have alot of apple trees. On the 170 acres, we have 5 distinct orchards from the 1800s ranging from 1/2 acre to 2 acres in size.
There are literally 100s, maybe even 1000s of "wild apples" in the hedgerows, and the woods that made up the old pastures and fields in the 1930s-1950s. This is an awful apple year for us, but its bittersweet. In years of good to great apples, we cannot begin to pattern the deer. Years like this, we can concentrate on areas where the apples are, though it looks like there will not be many this year.

We have no oaks - go 10 miles in any direction, and you get them, same with cedars. Our hardwoods are Hard Maple, Ash, Cherry, yellow birch and Beech in that order. The mature hardwoods are also full of mature hemlocks that stand a good 60 ft plus. The oldest woods was last logged in the 1940s, so there are plenty of big trees - My father is still against logging it - he really likes the open woods. The old woods only make up about 25 acres of our land - the rest were fields in the 1950s - and they are still plenty thick.

The deer seem to prefer maple browse where they can find it. The next best native browse here is Red Osier Dogwood, and we have alot of that in the thickets and creek bottom.


Edited by - farm hunter on 09/03/2002 21:25:50

We are doing a bedroom addition to the cabin this week. While I was up, I checked and the Rye was up 2-3" already. I was a little surprised, it hadn't rained here until today, since we planted. It had rained the day before we planted. We spread 100lb/acre of 15-15-15 with the rye and disked it all in, to take advantage of the moist soil. I guess that worked well.

When I finished plowing, I had some time left, so I plowed a 1/3 acre of low hillside on a pipeline that cuts through our property. I planted it in rye as well, and could not resist spreading 4 lbs of alfalfa over top it. I did no soil test, but if any land on our property could support alfalfa without supplemental lime, this would be it, its never been farmed, only mowed.

I'll let you all know how it does, it wouldn't suprise me if none of the alfafa comes in at all due to Ph, but life is full of surprises, and I'm only out $15.00 if it doesn't take (call it a test).

Wow, I'm really inpressed with the pictures of your success. How long have you been at it? About the only thing around here that's green is me-- with envy. You must have had a little rain there. Maybe I'll take a picture of my corn, everybody could use a good laugh.<img src=icon_smile_clown.gif border=0 align=middle>

LIVE FREE OR DIE

Those are really good pic's...

Romans 10:9 Psalms 42

We were lucky with our corn, it was soooo wet when we planted, then it didn't rain for almost a month. The soil is so heavy that it holds moisture well, and I think that saved us. When the corn was about knee high, I got 1200 lbs of urea, and waited until there was a good chance of rain. We spread about 100 lb/acre with a funnel spreader. We have the 2 acre plot in the Pic, and another 4 acre plot in another field. We got a 2-3&quot; real soaker of rain the next day. The Nitrogen really did its thing, and the corn shot up 2 ft in less than two weeks, some of it ended up getting almost 10 ft tall. It would seem that each time we got rain, it was a good amount (few and far in between) but always at a critical time for the corn.

We'll have more corn than ever this year, the 6 acres last year was spotty, but still gave us tons of standing corn, and the deer really ate on it all winter. Last year we only applied a few hundref lbs of urea, and only in selected areas to test out our application process.

Our clover plots look good, our best clover plot is a pure stand of whites, and it looks great. The others are OK, after going dormant for a time this summer. As green as they look, they do not compare with some of the neighbor's alfalfa fields.

fh, are the deer using your plots or the neighbors alfalfa more? What happens, in your experience, after a hard frost? Do deer movements or patterns change from field to plot or viceversa?
-ost

Our neighbor farm is what actually got us started in food plots over 10 years ago. Historically, the better deer were regularly seen in their fields, and only occaisionally in our woods, and thickets.

Corrently, they keep over 30 acres in alfalfa and 50 acres in corn. Last year there was more corn and less alfafa. Once a couple good frosts hit, they do lay off the alfafa a bit, but still feed there. Our clover plots tend to attract the deer better in October and November than the alfalfa does. Same goes for the rye plots we put in in the fall. The neighboring farm chops and picks their corn. Once the snow is around 1 ft, corn is the only game in town, with the occaisional pawing for apples or clover or rye. Since we started planting corn, and leaving it standing, they prefer this over the picked corn fields.

So yes we see alot of shifting food sources in the fall. While the alfalfa on the neighbor farm makes it a bit difficult for us at times, I rather it was there than not. Currently, our East border is against about 15 acres of alfalfa, new growth this year. It was in corn last year, I'm looking forward to seeing if it helps or hurts us.