Gleaton Chip Ranch Updates

[Stonecold69]

Y'all have a good looking place, enjoy following along.

[bgleaton]

Y'all have a good looking place, enjoy following along.

Thanks!

[Patton]

Y'all have a good looking place, enjoy following along.

x2 thanks for consistently posting and sharing

[TildenHunter]

Looks like you guys definitely fenced in a good group of deer. I predict you guys will really enjoy the venture!

[bgleaton]

Couple of Trail Cam Pictures from a Week Ago





As you can see we have quite a few bucks on our place. We will have to get a better understanding of their age and figure out how many we need to remove. We have seen two pretty nice bucks, one of them is in the second picture.

[Puncher51]

Wow! You definitely have a ton of bucks!

[SHSU18]

lots of bucks!

[Patton]

Dang I think I counted 15 deer in that first picture!

[ParishTiger]

Have you been able to identify the split G2 buck from the previous year?

[bgleaton]

Have you been able to identify the split G2 buck from the previous year?

We haven’t at this point but hope to soon.

[bgleaton]

Here is a picture of one of the blackbucks we stocked.

So far we have seen around 35 different bucks on our trail cameras. We will definitely need to do our best and get our numbers down this year. We registered and got our MLD permits (11 doe tags, 6 buck tags). We will most likely need to use them all to help lower the numbers. We will see what the wildlife biologist says.

[bgleaton]

After looking at our numbers and speaking with our biologist we are going to try to remove 20% of our deer herd this fall. We will be going after 11 doe and 5 bucks. We aren’t shooting any “trophy” bucks this year. We will be going after a 7.5yr old 8pt we have history with and find 4 other bucks. I’ll be able to post some buck pictures next weekend after I get the camera cards.

Our fall food plot fields are very tall and dry. We are going to have two fall food plots again this fall but we may try something different this year. We are thinking of spraying the fields with Glyphosate in late August and then broadcast our seed blend and fertilizer in late September or early October and then take our UTV cultipacker and try to lay the dead forage on top and create a nice mulch/thatch layer. We typically disk the fields and that works well when we get a lot of rain but disking dries up the soil quick and our topsoil/organic matter tends to be getting worse. Also, disking 5-6 acres takes a very long time. We may disk one field and see which style works better. I wish we had a grain drill but we don’t at this point in time. Curious to get yalls input as well on this.

[Big pig]

I think you will really like the alternative to disking. What I have seen is the field isn’t as “clean looking”, but performs better. It does take a lot of poison ($) , but saves tractor time and diesel.
I am not a farmer, but the later we plant, the better our late winter plots are.
More rain, cooler weather.

[yotethumper]

Our fall food plot fields are very tall and dry. We are going to have two fall food plots again this fall but we may try something different this year. We are thinking of spraying the fields with Glyphosate in late August and then broadcast our seed blend and fertilizer in late September or early October and then take our UTV cultipacker and try to lay the dead forage on top and create a nice mulch/thatch layer. We typically disk the fields and that works well when we get a lot of rain but disking dries up the soil quick and our topsoil/organic matter tends to be getting worse. Also, disking 5-6 acres takes a very long time. We may disk one field and see which style works better. I wish we had a grain drill but we don’t at this point in time. Curious to get yalls input as well on this.

This is how I do all my food plots, it works well.

[bgleaton]

8/14/19 Update

We put our last load of cottonseed out yesterday to ensure we have some through the end of August. They are hitting everything hard right now with the lack of rainfall. We will continue to feed protein free choice thru mid September and then start throwing corn and feeding protein on our timed feeders. So far we've fed around 20,000lbs of protein/cottonseed in total (12,500lbs of protein & 6,500lbs of cottonseed).

It's been really dry out there but we got 0.8in of rain on Wednesday which was a great surprise. Other than that it's been a dry July/August out there. I'm hoping that we get some tropical storms soon that will provide some moisture throughout Texas...fingers crossed.