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The 360

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    The 360

    As I’m sure many of you have experienced, elgato’s farm thread really inspired me to get serious about my food plotting. So first off, thanks so much Rusty for putting that together. I know it takes a lot of effort to keep that thread up, especially as long as it’s been going. I’ve really enjoyed the incredible detail and laid back attitude you’ve shown through the whole thing. The pics are pretty nice too J. It’s definitely my favorite thread on this site.

    I don’t contribute a lot on here, but thought I would give a little back and show what my dad, brother and I are doing on our land.

    To give you some background on me, I grew up hunting southeast Texas where I’m from. About the time I was old enough to hunt on my own and really got into it for myself (12-13), my grandparents bought a little ranch in south Texas. Then late in high school we got on a deer lease in the hill country. I’ve lived in central Texas since I graduated high school, couple that with other places to hunt and I never hunted here in east Texas until this past year.

    When I was in high school, I started planting plots on our place in south Texas, but as Rusty has said, it all depends on water down there. So I never had much success, but I learned a lot in the process.

    We sold the south Texas place last year and the lease has been gone for some time. Last fall, my wife and I moved back to my hometown, so I had my first real deer season on our land here. I’ve indoctrinated my dad into being serious about our management plan and planting food plots (thanks to a serious slide show based on Rusty’s thread and a couple of good beers)!

    A little on our land here. It’s been in our family for close to 40 years now. I’m incredibly blessed to have this land to use, as I know so many don’t have access to this type of property. Its 320 acres and almost completely timbered with probably 75/25 split of hardwoods to pine. It was originally 360 acres and we've always called it "The 360". We have a 3 acre field and another ½ acre field that are clear cut. Other than that we have roads and a couple of other small clearings that are clear of underbrush but have mature trees. We also are completely surrounded by small neighbors; I think 23 or 26 property owners with average property size of 5-10 acres. Managing is a challenge in this situation and trespassers are not uncommon.

    My dad bought a 32 horse john deere last fall and we got a 5 ft tiller with it. So that and a lot of sweat are what we're working with. My grandpa always had good tractors, but never a tiller. I always used a disc. The tiller is awesome. Get one if you can.

    Sorry for the loooong intro...

    #2
    On to the good stuff...

    Well right off the bat we broke one of the big rules and didn’t do a soil test. Was planning to test, lime and fertilize in mid March, then plant, as it was so warm this spring. But then the rain came down. Couldn’t get lime or fertilize out. It finally got to where we could around May 1st. By then, the lime supplier we were going to use was in full fertilizer mode and couldn’t help us, so we decided to just fertilize and plant and lime later this summer when it’s dry.

    We tilled everything and then got fertilizer out on 5/13. We hit our two clear cut fields to plant now and then the two other clearings with mature trees that we’ll plant in the fall. We got seed in the ground on 5/16 and then prayed for rain.

    2 acres were planted with Whitetail Institute Powerplant and the other 1.5 acres was in soybeans, iron clay cowpeas and sunflowers (same mix as Powerplant but without the sunn hemp). I did this to get a side by side comparison to see if the claims of the branded seed prove fruitful.

    5/21-5/22 we got right at 2 inches of rain. We hadn’t had any for at least 3 weeks before that, so it was getting dry.

    5/28 had another inch

    6/1-6/6 we’ve had about 4 inches.

    With all that rain and a couple of low spots in our fields that hold water, we’ve lost some of our seed. Besides that, the rain has everything else off to a great start. We’re 3 weeks in and some of the beans are a foot tall already. We’ve got sunshine the rest of the week, so I really think we’re going to get some big growth in the next 7 days.

    We’ve been seeing some tracks, more pigs than deer, and have already noticed plants already nibbled off. I went out there Monday night right before dark and saw our first deer in the big plot, a doe on one side of the field and 2 bucks on the other. A 1 year old little guy and probably a 3 year old. Both had roughly 6 inches of growth on their head.

    Great to see our work already paying off! I'll get some pics up asap.

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      #3
      In!

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        #4
        Nice!


        Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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          #5
          In for pics. Let's see the place!!!
          Where are y'all at?

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            #6
            Thanks guys. The place is just outside of Cleveland. Here's some pics to get us going.

            This is just after finishing mowing before we tilled. That's my 2 year old. He loves the tractor.



            A couple from getting it all tilled.



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              #7
              Thats gonna be awesome!

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                #8
                I forgot to mention that I'm really doing this to show what an average joe is doing/can do. Yeah we do have a decent chunk of land, but don't have the time or resources that elgato and probably many others on here have. We'll have a budget most guys that have their own land or pay for a lease can swing.

                I'd say we also have pretty poor conditions for growing mature deer. Like I said, we have lots of small neighbors in a part of the state that is notorious for people shooting anything that walks and not caring too much about property lines.

                So the odds definitely aren't in our favor. I'm just hoping we can persuade deer to spend as much of their life on our land as possible. Luckily we don't have to try too hard to offer better conditions than the surrounding area.

                We've set goals for a 5 year horizon. For bucks, we'd like to see the place produce a 130+ buck every year, a 140+ every 2-3 years and a 150+ every 5 years. We plan to hit plots heavy and feed protein, though plots will take priority as protein can blow the budget pretty quick.

                Enough for tonight. I'll get some more pics up tomorrow.

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                  #9
                  This will be a fun project and learning experience if nothing else. This is our first opportunity to really get serious and work with what we have. Hopefully a good opportunity to get our boys involved at a young age too. Glad to be doing this with you brother!

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                    #10
                    There he is! Me too!

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                      #11
                      Hi bounds..don't post much around here. I also enjoyed elgato's farm tread. I dream of one day having some land to 'play on'. I wish you all the best and will be following along.

                      I wanted to mention if you haven't checked out Grant Woods at growingdeer.tv I would highly recommend it. I have been following him for years and the transformation he made with his farm in the rocky Ozark mountains of MO is amazing. Big horns no doubt start in the dirt! Get that soil tested sir. All the best to you.

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                        #12
                        Thanks lilhoss. I hadn't seen his stuff before, but he's got some great content and results. Will definitely get a soil test done. Had full intentions to and then life's been happening…

                        Here's pics from 10 days after planting.



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                          #13
                          This is Saturday 6/3, 18 days after planting. Going to take more pics on Saturday. Can't wait to see what this sunshine has done.







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                            #14
                            Looks great! I understand the life thing.

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                              #15
                              Just catching up. You are going to have a blast and I look forward to the updates. Even better I look forward to watching your son grow up in this slice of paradise. What a lifestyle to be raised in!

                              Crops look good and and I bet you are already 'plotting' this falls strategy.

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