Sun hemp & browntop millet mix

Plot screen = Egyptian wheat & sorghum

Looking good Mr. Swamp. I see that cultipacker is being put to good use.

Have I mentioned before… y’all have REALLY sandy soil.

I’ve never utilized sun hemp. Always sunflower, millet and buckwheat here in the summer. Curious if you’ve ever tried the buckwheat? I like sowing my brassicas and wheat / cereal rye into it before spraying and rolling it down with my cultipacker for my winter plots.

I had a pretty good pea patch that got taken over by goat weed

Gonna do some things different next year

Debating spraying it or letting it go for the doves

Was able to get some protein out before I had surgery. These two are showing up the one is further along than the others I have on cam.

That cultipacker is a game changer in this sand. Hard to hold moisture. The cultipacker is saving a lot of seed.

We've been blessed with regular rains lately. So far, it has been a good summer plot growing season.

I have planted buckwheat (in mixes) in the past. It did pretty good. I'll likely plant some again next summer.

My plots aren't big enough to overload the deer pressure so they hammer those choice plantings. I may not be able to get the plots of sun hemp up to about a foot or so....time will tell. Mixing it with the bt millet is an experiment to see if the millet will "hide" it for a while. But, it's outpacing the millet...lol. BT millet will hide cowpeas pretty good for a while.

It ain't too late to burn that plot down with glyphosate and re-plant. You got plenty of time left for a re-do.

My biggest plot is 1 acre. Several are one half acre. Most are under one half acre. I usually plant about two acres or so in summer stuff. This year...2.5 acres in 9 plots, including 1 acre of chufa for the turkeys.

I have several (about 20 plots = 6 total acres) on 400 acres, but I have skimped on doe harvest past few years and it's difficult to grow summer plots with peas. Sunflowers and sun hemp are difficult too. I've gotta kill 10 or 12 does this fall or start fencing summer plots.

Nice Slipknot.

I usually wait until around August 1st to start the feeders back up. They've been off since a couple weeks b4 our spring turkey season opened back in late March.

Reason I wait until late summer is to the give the fawns and poults a little more time to grow so they can evade predators more effectively. The feeders bunch up the hens with poults and avian predators just perch near the feeders and pick them off. The fawns will follow the doe to the feeders and a crouched bobcat or coyote. Does waiting till August save a few?...not sure...but I think it does.

Talk about sandy soil.....this is one of the recently planted chufa plots.....easy for the turkeys to scratch 'em up this winter in that sand...lol

I’m looking for an umbrella and a Corona in that last pic!

Lol!

For sure! It is sugar sand. Only holds nutrients until the next heavy rain.

I am old and lazy. 25’ wide pass with a boom sprayer and 25 ft wide pass with a spreader and millet looking decent. Doesnt help field got flooded two days before this pic. We have NO sand

WhiteCliffs,
Appears you have struggles with finding a decent seed spreader, too.

I havent had much trouble out of this spreader as long as you dont put fertilizer in it. I run it up high like that so I can get over the top of weeds, and my sprayer will sit below it so I can seed and spray in one pass. I wouldnt say it is rock solid, but other than having to replace the electronic seed gate after running some ammonium nitrate through it, has been running fine since 2018.

Nice

Like me...rigging up something works pretty good sometimes.

How are you able to take 10-12 does?
normal hunting license or special permits?

I wish I could thin 10-12 does, when there are too many deer they really can get destructive.

curious, how many acres are you talking about here?

Georgia season limit is 10 antlerless deer per person per season.

My son, his wife and a select guest or two will kill does too...if I can talk them in to it...lol

Nobody wants to kill a doe. This is where we come up short in this area. We have so many deer that killing a buck (and usually an older buck) is not that difficult. This is all private lands (nearest public land is 30 plus miles) and everyone does some deer management (food plots/supplemental feeding/voluntary antler restrictions/etc......some do a little...some do a lot of habitat manipulation....timber thinnings/prescribed burning, etc.

I'm limited on the timber management part as I lease the 400 acres from a timber company. But, they allow me to do controlled burns and plant food plots.

400 acres of timbered riverbottom and sand ridge with very limited hunting pressure by my neighbors on surrounding 3000 plus acres.

Estimated deer per square mile = 40 to 45.

40-45/SQ MILE, WOW. we are est at 25/sq mile around here and thats really too much.
I've heard of areas with 75/sq mile. At that rate there is no regeneration of any trees.

When I leased this tract 26 years ago there was about 10 or 15 deer psm. Landowner changes, increased habitat manipulation, timber harvest resulting in clearcuts, storm damage to hardwood bottoms allowing sunlight to the forest floor, and a general lack of interest in doe killin' has got us to where we are today across a large area.

We are enjoying some great deer hunting and see a lot of deer, but numbers management has got to start.

Landowner/farmer has high fenced (10 feet) the fields on one side of my place. He utilizes double electric tape fence on all the other nearby fields. They grow commercial produce...100s of acres of bell peppers, squash, egg plants, and watermelons mostly. The farmer's family likes to deer hunt too and they don't shoot enough does either. I think they killed less than 20 on their surrounding 1500 +/- acres last fall.

My immediate neighbor to the south is a surgeon. He don't hunt much and only killed 4 does on his 700 acres.

I killed one doe last season....lol.

I've gotta do better this fall.

They are coming around.

Thanks for the pictures guys, love seeing then turkey poults.

… poor deer can’t get any privacy whatsoever out there in the woods these days lol

I would bet that the lack of doe shooting is a very wide spread issue.
I let a guy hunt my small plot (26 acres). First thing I asked when he asked for permission is do you shoot does?
He said he did.
Since then he has shot 4 bucks. One was a button buck so I guess you could say he was willing to shoot a doe that year.
Around here its small acreages. I'd bet most are under 40 acres.
Only one of my 8 neighbors has deer hunted on his property.
So its a hard situation to fix, not enough hunters, not enough land open to hunting and very tight bag limits.
At best between all the different seasons I suspect one could shoot maybe 4-6 deer at best.

Your fortunate in at least you can seriously wack the does if your inclined to do so.

What a shame.

Roadkill?

Affirmative Ghost Ryder.

He was an older buck, too.

Hate it when one like that gets eliminated in car vs deer.

We put in our food plots around first part of August. We want the deer feeding on those plots in late Oct. and November.
I get 4 doe tags where I hunt, and you can buy more in some areas.

Army worms and excessive heat limits fall planting in the deep South until late September/early October.

Have to wait until we get some daytime temps mostly in the 70s. Those 90s during most of September is a no-go down here.

This 8pt showed up this morning......

Sun hemp is outgrowing the browntop millet and the deer are picking it out easily. So, that experiment to protect the SH likely not gonna work too good. Gonna have to fence the sun hemp next summer. But, lots of bt millet coming along nicely for the turkeys...when it makes seed heads in a few more weeks.



Chufas sprouting pretty good too.

Couple more buck pics this morning.....