Turkey Top Results!

3 weeks after establishing my food plot, I checked my trailcams.  The plot was seeded on April 7th and by April 11th it saw its first good action.

This old boy and about 5 hens spent a good part of the morning hanging out in the plot on the 11th.  He gave me lots of great footage and pictures from up close!

One of 3 Jakes that cruised through

2013 Food Plot (Part II)

3 weeks had gone by and I finally got a chance to go check on Turkey Top.  My friend Andy that helped me establish the plot checked on it at the 2 week mark and reported a lot of grass, but couldn't see much clover germinating.  He then proceeded to walk down the hill from the plot and shoot a nice 2nd season Tom off a field closer to the river!!

When I went to the plot on April 28th (3 weeks exactly after seeding) I found a tremendous amount of clover had germinated!

Small clover in the center of the picture. 

Moisture for the plot has been outstanding over the last 3 weeks, but temps have been less than ideal.  Once we start getting some consistent sunny and warm days, this clover should really take off.

Some good green growth, but unfortunately most of it is grasses.

My next step will be to get some herbicide that kills only the grasses and see how that works.  Cabela's and Bass Pro sell a chemical called "Arrest" and the reviews are great for use with clover plots.  I've got some gift cards from my birthday for both stores and I might have to look into investing in some Arrest.

Spring 2013 Food Plot (Part I)

So this spring I've decided to try my hand at a "budget" food plot.  We have a clearing on top a ridge along the west boundary of our property that is perfect for a food plot.  I've decided to call it "Turkey Top" because my ultimate goal is to design the plot to attract turkeys.

On April 7th I did the site prep & seeding.  I had a ton of help from a good local friend.  We used a little prescribed fire to remove all the dead vegetation and grass and kill off a few multiflora rose and poison ivy shrubs.

The burn wasn't as complete as I would have liked it to be, but for the conditions we had, I was satisfied.

Keep in mind that this location is only accessible by foot on our property because of long, deep, and extremely steep ravine that bisects the property.  All the tools we had with us were brought in by hand.

I have a Troy-Bilt weedeater "combi" system that has interchangeable attachments.  I next used the tiller attachment to work up the ground in the areas where we had a good burn.  Following the tilling, we broadcasted the seed and then used a hard rake the rake it in.

This is after I've tilled about half the plot.

Here the tilling is complete and seed has been scattered & raked.

 The seed I bought was on sale cheap at Shopper's Supply during the going out of business sale!  You can still pick it up at most other sporting goods stores, but I bought it because it was cheap and worth a try.

I used Evolved Harvest brand, ProVide Clover with Chicory.  Clover plots are relatively easy to establish and the added benefit of it being a perennial crop made it even more attractive to me.

I set 2 trailcams at different angles up on the plot.  One was set to take pics & videos and the other is set to Plot mode.  Stay tuned for updates on how the plot progresses and hopefully some animal sightings!

Oh, they know!

Much like it always seems deer know when the hunting seasons start; they also must know when they are over.  As was the case this morning in my backyard.  Had I not been home with a sick kid, I probably wouldn't have seen the congregation puttin' on their feedbag!

My camera has a cool feature that allows you to "stitch" together 3 photos to make a panorama shot.  How many deer can you see in this picture???

The correct answer, which is extremely hard to tell because of the picture's size, is 13!

Whitetail Anomalies

I have to show the video first, because when I first retrieved it off my trail camera I thought it was pretty amazing.  Then a friend stopped in today and showed me a picture that blew my video out of the water!

First, the video.  When I first watched it I thought the buck was injured, either by a hunter or by a vehicle.  But as he continues to walk, it's plain to see that he is living with a genetic defect.  I had never seen anything like this before.

Now for the good one.........
This picture is 100% authentic.  A friend shot this deer in Iowa during one of the shotgun seasons.  Knowing he had something rare, he called the DNR who took the deer and issued him another tag.  They wanted to conduct further testing on the animal.



 

That's right, this deer has legs growing out of the middle of it's back!!!!  I can assure you that this picture is not fake in any way.  If I can get an update on this deer, I'll be sure to let you know!

The Gut Pile

Sorry there's been no activity on here for a few weeks, but I thought I'd kickstart things with an interesting post.

A couple weeks ago I was fortunate to take a mature doe with my shotgun during 2nd season.  Since she was shot along the edge of our corn field I thought it'd be fun to set the trail camera up on the gut pile after I field dressed her to see what might come by to clean it up.

I checked my trailcam yesterday and was quite surprised to find 448 pictures!  I thought for sure many of them would be from the blizzard we experienced last week.  But to my surprise only 3 of them were from blowing snow.

It was no surprise that the first visitors to the entrails were a few crows.  Then it didn't take long for a mature bald eagle to find the pile as well.

 

 

After that, the word spread quickly over the next couple days.  Two red-tailed hawks duked it out over the feast.  As did a red-tail and an immature bald eagle.  Some pretty cool pics.

Then about mid-morning on the 15th of December the real garbage truck showed up!  According to the pictures, this ol' boy showed up about 10:12am and sniffed around for a few minutes.  The real feast started at 10:15am and by 10:20am, the whole pile was GONE!!!

I'm sure hoping that this big animal isn't an inside dog!  It showed back up a few more times over the next couple days to make sure there wasn't anything left, but this dog has to have a digestive tract made of steel to handle the pile it horfed down that day! 

It was an interesting card pull to say the least.  The ground on our farm is now covered in almost a foot of snow or more in places and you can really see where the deer are moving.  It was encouraging to see that their main travel route is taking them across the field and right under one of my treestands.  I'll hope for a warmer day or two in the future where I can get out and maybe try to fill one of the two remaining bow tags I have. 

Tagged Out!

Well as I stated in my previous post, I was planning on filling my statewide bow tag with whatever walked by first, buck or doe.  On Sunday, November 25th, I had a monster doe step out in a cut bean field at 45 yards. It was a tad far but I've made farther shots in my day.  The shot was a bit high and the arrow found her spine, dropping her in her tracks.  I had to climb down and put 1 more in her to finish the job. 
It was a good season in that I filled all my tags but I did not have a single opportunity at a mature buck. Hopefully second season shotgun and late muzzleloader produce more antlers. We will soon find out!