The 2.5 year short but informative project has come to an end! Can’t say I’m real sad, but it was a place to experiment and learn. This property had one function when I started leasing it: it held the earth together... that’s it.
The goal here was to create a high opportunity for success with the kids by:
1. Extremely low impact and disturbance
2. Providing the best/safest place to be during season
1. Was easy. Find where they travel to and from food and bedding and.... stay out until everything is right.... unfortunately a fly by night oil company moved in shortly after lease paid and that went out the window. Absolute train wreck
So with that plan impossible to achieve for 1000x shady reasons....
2. We have the most pressure I’ve ever seen surrounding us, but we also have the thickest cover over any neighbor. Habitat is horrible for spring and summer deer... but in this situation that wasn’t my goal. I wanted them there in season, in shooting hours.
2 feeders were set up on opposite ends of property. Both were bombproof on entry and animal approach. These weren’t for deer but to “pay off” the pigs. This worked AMAZING!!! We never hunted them for deer anyway... which was great cause they were never there. But hogs are typically there in daylight for shooting pleasures...
The food plots and locations where where we spent most of the attractions efforts and that’s where most of my interest was. The soil is horrible with a starting pH of 5.5! With no way to get a fertilizer truck in there for ag lime I looked for other options.
98g!!! A product that was pimped to me as magical claimed 400 pounds = 1 Ton of ag lime and worked faster. Dr Higgenbotham told me years ago that “consider everything a lie, until YOU prove it to be true”. ... so I applied 600 pounds per acre according to extension recommendation and planted. Plots were better than year before but not as good as others. Then spring came around. I terminated plot and drilled just as others that were exploding with positive results. Fail
It’s taken 7 weeks to get lab work back and it don’t matter since the place sold soon after I mailed them off, but the data was still important to me
So after a year starting at 5.5....... this wonderful iron ore, oil field trash wonderland now boast an impressive... pH of 5.2? We went to wrong way
Called my friend who’s an extension agent and went over results. He also did a controlled study this past year. Testing at 3,6,9,12 months @ claim of 400 per ac.
His results were almost exact. He’s showed a peak at around 6 months of 1/2 a point then falling to base levels at 9... so in two trails it ain’t as advertised.
It was still fun to see, that if you start with trash, you better be prepared to work and open your wallet... cause results ain’t fast or cheap. There are no shortcuts to farming that will yield the results of proper preparation. If your not testing your wasting money. PERIOD
All things must end, and it’s wasn’t all sour grapes. I truly love learning and gather REAL factual numbers. After 2 seasons I saw 2 deer on the property from a stand. I killed both. Both were P&Y mature bucks that every neighbor was after. I’ll credit that to being blessed and creating entry into sets that was outside the norm and undetected
The goal here was to create a high opportunity for success with the kids by:
1. Extremely low impact and disturbance
2. Providing the best/safest place to be during season
1. Was easy. Find where they travel to and from food and bedding and.... stay out until everything is right.... unfortunately a fly by night oil company moved in shortly after lease paid and that went out the window. Absolute train wreck
So with that plan impossible to achieve for 1000x shady reasons....
2. We have the most pressure I’ve ever seen surrounding us, but we also have the thickest cover over any neighbor. Habitat is horrible for spring and summer deer... but in this situation that wasn’t my goal. I wanted them there in season, in shooting hours.
2 feeders were set up on opposite ends of property. Both were bombproof on entry and animal approach. These weren’t for deer but to “pay off” the pigs. This worked AMAZING!!! We never hunted them for deer anyway... which was great cause they were never there. But hogs are typically there in daylight for shooting pleasures...
The food plots and locations where where we spent most of the attractions efforts and that’s where most of my interest was. The soil is horrible with a starting pH of 5.5! With no way to get a fertilizer truck in there for ag lime I looked for other options.
98g!!! A product that was pimped to me as magical claimed 400 pounds = 1 Ton of ag lime and worked faster. Dr Higgenbotham told me years ago that “consider everything a lie, until YOU prove it to be true”. ... so I applied 600 pounds per acre according to extension recommendation and planted. Plots were better than year before but not as good as others. Then spring came around. I terminated plot and drilled just as others that were exploding with positive results. Fail
It’s taken 7 weeks to get lab work back and it don’t matter since the place sold soon after I mailed them off, but the data was still important to me
So after a year starting at 5.5....... this wonderful iron ore, oil field trash wonderland now boast an impressive... pH of 5.2? We went to wrong way
Called my friend who’s an extension agent and went over results. He also did a controlled study this past year. Testing at 3,6,9,12 months @ claim of 400 per ac.
His results were almost exact. He’s showed a peak at around 6 months of 1/2 a point then falling to base levels at 9... so in two trails it ain’t as advertised.
It was still fun to see, that if you start with trash, you better be prepared to work and open your wallet... cause results ain’t fast or cheap. There are no shortcuts to farming that will yield the results of proper preparation. If your not testing your wasting money. PERIOD
All things must end, and it’s wasn’t all sour grapes. I truly love learning and gather REAL factual numbers. After 2 seasons I saw 2 deer on the property from a stand. I killed both. Both were P&Y mature bucks that every neighbor was after. I’ll credit that to being blessed and creating entry into sets that was outside the norm and undetected
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