kebo
Elite Member
- Joined
- May 16, 2006
- Messages
- 2,910
- Location
- Lexington, SC
- Tractor
- 2001 John Deere 790 4x4, bar tires
Here's a series of pic's of the food plot on the gas line on the property where I hunt at. This is the 4th year I've been hunting this property, and it's the 3rd year I've had this food plot on the gas line (same place each time) and so far, it's looking like this might be the best one yet. It's only had two good rains since planting it, and one of those from hurricane Matthew. It was on the fringe area of the storm, so it only got 1.5" total there.
First plowing with the cultivator on Labor Day weekend, made about three passes to break it up good. It's about 30ft wide at most, and about 100yds long. The plan was to let it sit for a week and come back with the disc harrow to break it up into finer clumps. In the 2nd pic, if you ZOOM WAY IN and look to the right of that yellow sign, you can see part of the stand about 250yds away. Yeah, I got some limb trimming to do.
Sorry, these first two pic's are down at the bottom, not sure what happened there??
One week later, I worked it over with the disc harrow, but for some reason couldn't find the pic's I took of that. Anyway, another week later on 9/17 I came back with the cultipacker and turned it onto a really nice seed bed. I then spread out the seed mix on top of it, and then went back over it again to pack it down lightly. If you are doing food plots and don't have a cultipacker, you don't know what you are missing. For the record, I spread out 100 lbs of Pennington Rackmaster seed mix.
Here's a week later 9/24, I came back and used a regular lawn spreader to put out 80lbs of 10-10-10 fertilizer. The seed had come up better than I expected, so I made just three passes with the spreader so it wouldn't trample the young shoots more than I needed to. I had planned to put out the fertilizer before this, actually when I was using the disc harrow, but it didn't work out like I had planned. I will plan it better next year.
Here's a week later on 10/1, coming up nicely. Got the excluder fence put up too.
Another week goes by, these pic's taken on 10/8 the day after Matthew dumped rain all over SC.
Finally, the long wait is over and the fun begins! Our rifle season opened on 10/11 in the upstate, but I had to work most of the week, but I did take off Friday for a two day hunt. Here's the view from the stand, the closer end of the plot is probably 120 yds from the stand, the back end is probably about 250yds away. I have one of those measuring wheels, I need to get out there and measure it one day.
This was Saturday morning just after daybreak, had a nanny goat step into the salad bar for a 15 minute breakfast.
I am sure some of you are curious.... I saw a small buck cross on Friday morning, but he didn't meet my criteria to shoot. On Friday evening, I had 6 antlerless deer step into the plot at the back end about 15 minutes before dark. Saturday morning, I had the doe in the plot at daybreak, then about an hour later I had a pretty decent looking 8ptr chase a doe into the right hand side of the gasline, right at the bottom of the hill where a small creek crosses. Even though he was only about 70 yds away, it's thick there and he never slowed down so I didn't take a risky shot at him. (look at the pic with the gun in the frame, he was just beyond the barrel tip and to the right slightly) I'll be back there this coming Friday evening.
First plowing with the cultivator on Labor Day weekend, made about three passes to break it up good. It's about 30ft wide at most, and about 100yds long. The plan was to let it sit for a week and come back with the disc harrow to break it up into finer clumps. In the 2nd pic, if you ZOOM WAY IN and look to the right of that yellow sign, you can see part of the stand about 250yds away. Yeah, I got some limb trimming to do.
Sorry, these first two pic's are down at the bottom, not sure what happened there??
One week later, I worked it over with the disc harrow, but for some reason couldn't find the pic's I took of that. Anyway, another week later on 9/17 I came back with the cultipacker and turned it onto a really nice seed bed. I then spread out the seed mix on top of it, and then went back over it again to pack it down lightly. If you are doing food plots and don't have a cultipacker, you don't know what you are missing. For the record, I spread out 100 lbs of Pennington Rackmaster seed mix.
Here's a week later 9/24, I came back and used a regular lawn spreader to put out 80lbs of 10-10-10 fertilizer. The seed had come up better than I expected, so I made just three passes with the spreader so it wouldn't trample the young shoots more than I needed to. I had planned to put out the fertilizer before this, actually when I was using the disc harrow, but it didn't work out like I had planned. I will plan it better next year.
Here's a week later on 10/1, coming up nicely. Got the excluder fence put up too.
Another week goes by, these pic's taken on 10/8 the day after Matthew dumped rain all over SC.
Finally, the long wait is over and the fun begins! Our rifle season opened on 10/11 in the upstate, but I had to work most of the week, but I did take off Friday for a two day hunt. Here's the view from the stand, the closer end of the plot is probably 120 yds from the stand, the back end is probably about 250yds away. I have one of those measuring wheels, I need to get out there and measure it one day.
This was Saturday morning just after daybreak, had a nanny goat step into the salad bar for a 15 minute breakfast.
I am sure some of you are curious.... I saw a small buck cross on Friday morning, but he didn't meet my criteria to shoot. On Friday evening, I had 6 antlerless deer step into the plot at the back end about 15 minutes before dark. Saturday morning, I had the doe in the plot at daybreak, then about an hour later I had a pretty decent looking 8ptr chase a doe into the right hand side of the gasline, right at the bottom of the hill where a small creek crosses. Even though he was only about 70 yds away, it's thick there and he never slowed down so I didn't take a risky shot at him. (look at the pic with the gun in the frame, he was just beyond the barrel tip and to the right slightly) I'll be back there this coming Friday evening.
