A year in the life of a farm

[Tester]

Any luck with sheds this year?

[18ncs]

Tagged

[Tester]

Any updates? Sure do miss seeing this thread pop up.

[jason86]

Any updates? Sure do miss seeing this thread pop up.

Yep patiently waiting brush country episode 3....

[AgHntr10]

We need some velvet pics!

[Solocam9]

Following

[Solocam9]

Awesome stuff man

[elgato]

Suppose its time for an update. What an interesting year it has been! Started with hurricane Laura last August followed by nearly 20" rain Sept/Oct. That greatly limited what we could do in the fields plus a lot of the fall plantings simply rotted.

Flash forward to spring planting and the rains came again. Where normally I am thru planting by early May, most of the fields were not planted till July. Interestingly the later planted fields did much better than the couple fields I was able to plant earlier. In fact they look pretty good now. Been a wet spring summer and overall very lush.

Last summer I took a trac hoe and cleared lanes thru the woods to create paddocks for mob grazing{ part of the regenerative ag program I am moving into } Over the last few days it has been dry enough so we are going back over the lanes with an off set disc to prep the lanes , fill in stump holes and level them out best we can. I am blown away!!! at how thick the woods have become. As mentioned before I think I lost from 50-75% of the timber on much of the farm. Now the woods are grown up eye level with the tractor. there is also much greater diversity than I expected.

In years past it would be typical to take a late evening drive { cocktail safari } this time of year and see 20-30 bucks. This year on a typical drive you might see 5-8 does and if lucky a buck or two. Now I understand why! It will be interesting to see impact the incredible forage growth in the woods has on antler quality. Native forages vs. more reliance on cultivars. This said even though I have always managed timber to have plenty of undergrowth. But nothing like what is there now.

After a year I have finally hired someone to run the regenerative ag program I am embarking on with the farm. He started Monday. My consultant is coming next week and we will assess grazing potential and develop a one year plan to start the program. After looking the woods over from the tractor, I'm not sure there are enough animals in North America but nonetheless excited to see the impact focused grazing has on the ecology.

Cameras went out yesterday. Will start to post any bucks of interest that are willing to come out of the jungle. We have seen 2-3 of the known bucks thru the summer and I don't see a lot of change but it's way too early to form opinions.

I'll try to do a better job of updates

[GarGuy]

I think you are in for a hard year. Not because the bucks are not big and there but because you may not see them. I predict 4 years from now, a couple of World class deer will appear that you have no clue of their history. Gonna be an exciting/frustrating couple of years.

[elgato]

I think you are in for a hard year. Not because the bucks are not big and there but because you may not see them. I predict 4 years from now, a couple of World class deer will appear that you have no clue of their history. Gonna be an exciting/frustrating couple of years.

I think your right on all counts. If there is an acorn crop this year we may not be able to find anything. Buddy and I were laughing that there aren’t many places where it’s even safe to shoot a deer. If they run 25 yards into woods May take a dozer to find them

[Gumbo Man]

OMG. We FINALLY got a “Rusty Fix” !! The withdrawals have been horrible this summer.

[ethic1]

Awesome!


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[elgato]

Put cameras out yesterday. Got this one last night. Think he's either 5-6. He's on a YouTube video from last yr. Looks about same to me though his frame may be a bit bigger

[GarGuy]

He has that extended wave in his main beams like another monster you once had

[elgato]

He has that extended wave in his main beams like another monster you once had

Good eye. yes he is 3rd in the lineage of that feature. The first we noticed was a 202 I got several years ago. He had that same pronounced " squiggle" on his main beam. We have an older buck out there now we call squiggly that has tremendous mass, has been in the mid 190's- 200 range for several years and has that exact same main beam feature. This one we call Jr. cause he fits the mold perfectly.