Due to rainfall and hunting schedules we used slightly different techniques for our fall food plots than we have used in past years. We usually plant our food plots with the no till drill. This year the fields were muddy and we had a trip planned. We wanted to get the seed on the ground before heading to Kentucky for the archery season opener. This called for boots, seed broadcasters, and enough energy to cover some ground. Instead of drilling the seed into the ground we broadcast the seed on top of the ground and hoped for rain.
We received a rainfall within two days of broadcasting our seed, but it wasn’t in the amount that we hoped for. We checked our Reconyx cameras and noticed turkeys were in the fields almost every day. These turkeys were most likely eating the soybean and wheat seed (that hadn’t germinated yet) off the ground.
A small hidey hole food plot that was broadcast with seed and had great germination.
A lot of times a person who doesn’t have the equipment to use a no till drill on their food plots will use a broadcaster and spread the seed on top of the ground. If it doesn’t rain soon after broadcasting a lot of the seed will be carried off by birds. This is why it’s important to check your food plots after planting to ensure you have a great stand of food. This is especially true when broadcasting a food plot. You don’t want to return to hunt and be upset with your lack of results!
With rain quickly approaching we returned to check our plots and found that a couple of them hadn’t grown as well as we had hoped. So as it rained we broadcast more seed. After having over one inch of rain in 24 hours we’re confident we’ll have a great stand of Brassicas, wheat, and soybeans.
Remember to always check those plots to ensure a great food plot to hunt over throughout the hunting season. If germination was weak don’t be scared to go back into your plot and broadcast again.
It’s only a few days before Missouri archery season opens up. Yes, you heard correctly, IT’S LESS THAN A WEEK AWAY!!! YAY!!! It’s a very exciting time of year for not only the bow hunters in Missouri, but for all the bow hunters across the nation! With bow season opening up soon, it’s time to start thinking through where we’re planning on hunting.
Like late season hunting, it’s about finding the food source. Whether that is a soybean field, a white oak grove with freshly dropped acorns, or an Eagle Seed Broadside blend, these can all be early season hot spots. Here in the Ozark Mountains, we are dominated with trees and not just trees; we’re dominated with oak trees. Red and white oaks are everywhere! Some years over 80% of the oaks can be carrying acorns and dropping them throughout the season. This makes it very difficult to pattern not just mature bucks, but does as well.
When acorns are available, deer prefer them over most other food sources.
That’s why it’s very important to know your property. Are there acorns? Is there a soybean/corn field deer are frequently using? We had a late frost in this part of the Ozarks and thought there wouldn’t be many, if any, acorns this year. We were wrong about that. Grant and I have been watching the acorns form on certain trees throughout the summer. Not all of the oaks have acorns. We estimate only 40 to 50% of them have produced acorns. This means Grant and I will be taking a few scouting excursions trying to find that one oak that is dropping acorns and the deer are hammering! In our area, acorns have been the primary food source since deer populated the area way back when. This hasn’t changed even after highly craved soybeans have been planted across The Proving Grounds year after year. Acorns are king when they’re falling.
With all that being said, Grant and I will be watching the Reconyx cameras and slipping on the LaCrosse boots the next couple of days trying to find a pattern so we can have a successful hunt on Monday for Missouri’s opening day!
Be sure to know the food source in your area so when opening day gets here, you have a plan and you can succeed!
It never fails; when the calendar reaches August I have those buddies that call me saying they’re headed to the farm to plant their fall food plots. I usually do my best to talk them into turning around and going back home to sit in the air conditioning. Yes, a huge amount of fall food plots are planted in August, but there are several variables that determine the day(s) you can plant.
A stand of Eagle Seed Broadside that was planted with great soil moisture.
Before I discuss the variables that we use to help us determine when to plant, let’s first understand that a seed is a living thing. It’s not a dead organism that somehow magically comes to life when mixed with water and soil. If it’s too hot and dry for you outside, it’s probably too hot for the seed as well.
The most important factor with determining when to plant is soil moisture. If the soil is powder and dust you should wait for rain and not stress your freshly planted seeds. The first couple weeks the seed/plant is in the ground are the most important. They’re establishing root systems that will help them survive longer into the fall and even winter; if they’re stressed they won’t produce the healthiest root system they can, which means lower survival rate.
The second most important factor in determining when to plant is future rain forecasts. I’ve made the mistake in the past of having soil moisture and planting my plots only to watch them receive no rain and dry up and die. Watching your extended forecast and seeing rain predicted is a great sign to plant those crops. If the rain chances are high day after day you can plant your crops in dusty conditions knowing that moisture is soon to come.
Planting fall plots on the same day year after year is an error. Planting these crops all depends on soil moisture and future rainfall. This means you could be planting in the middle of August or September. This fall don’t make the mistake that so many of us have done. Understand both your soil moisture and future rainfall and plant the best fall plots you can.
I have a confession to make. Before I married Grant I never ate venison. You probably know the reason why. Bambi. That was all I could think about when my mother said that we were having deer meat for dinner. The first time she served it I refused to eat the meat. Guess what? The next time we had it she didn’t tell me it was venison. I probably ate a lot of beef that in reality was venison!
There are lots of people that I’ve talked to that say they have tried venison and do not like it. Now, confession number 2. I thought the same when Grant cooked venison for me in the early days when we were dating. There’s the old saying that love is blind, I think it must also affect the taste buds! Suddenly I was eating venison! Then with marriage and managing the budget, I realized that having all that venison in the freezer was a good thing for another reason! I no longer had to purchase red meat at the grocery store!
Marinate the loin for 24 to 36 hours in the refrigerator, turning occasionally.
Over the years I’ve tried just about every way imaginable to cook venison. After almost 20 years I have a few favorites that make a regular appearance on our supper table. One of those is this marinade recipe that our friend David shared with us way back when. It’s great for venison, chicken, or beef. I use it primarily as a marinade for venison loin (some people call this back-strap) and tenderloin. I marinate the meat for 24 to 36 hours in the refrigerator, turning the meat several times during the process. Then I broil the marinated loin in the oven or grill it over a low flame. We prefer our meat to be medium well, so I cook the venison until the center is slightly pink. I take the meat off the grill and let it rest for five to ten minutes before slicing.
Do you have a favorite venison recipe? If so, please share it on our facebook page! I look forward to trying something new!
Cooking deer meat,
Tracy
Venison Marinade
1. Dale’s Steak Sauce, ½ cup
2. Lemon Pepper Seasoning, 1 tsp.
3. Minced Garlic, 2 -3 heaping TBS
4. Basil, 1 TBS dried or ¼ cup fresh minced
5. Vegetable or Olive Oil, 1/3 cup
6. Lemon Juice, ½ cup
7. Oregano, 1 TBS
8. Salt (optional), ½ tsp.
9. Worcestershire Sauce (optional) 1 TBS I’ll pass along the advice that David wrote when he sent us the recipe: “This is the basic recipe. I have added things to it and taken some away over the years to arrive at the right combination for me. Do your own trial and error to see what you like.” Thanks, David!
A look at one of the beds Adam found while on the fire.
Late August can mean a couple different things for the GrowingDeer Team. If we’re receiving occasional rainfall and cooler temperatures we’re usually planting food plots. If the weather is hot and dry we’re headed out with drip torches in hand to practice some prescribed fire! I enjoy this management tool, but something I enjoy more than prescribed fire is scouting the terrain and trying to understand deer. This is where these two practices go hand in hand.
Prescribed fires here at The Proving Grounds usually consist of lots and lots of walking. We’re hiking up and down ridges, through valleys, over mountains, and back again. This is a great time for us to not only find bottlenecks and saddles on the ridges, but even more important, to find specific bedding areas that we might not have know existed. That’s exactly what I did earlier this week on one of our fires. While walking parallel down a north slope of a ridge I came upon a small ravine, or pocket. This “pocket” was a slight bowl-shaped spot in the middle of the slope where several trees had fallen over the years.
It was a mess to walk through, but then I noticed something. Located near the center of all the trees were several deer beds. These were not your typical smashed leaves where a deer had bedded one day and left. These beds were all dirt with no leaf material in them. This told me that these beds were being used on a more regular basis than most deer beds we find. Why this spot? Why would a deer be bedding here so much? I started to wonder more and more about this spot when I looked up and noticed the smoke from a fire just down the ridge. Most of the smoke from the fire was going up into the air and being carried away, but in the pocket the air was calm, still, and most importantly, swirling. Bingo, with the surrounding treetops serving as cover from intruders the small drop in the ridge also meant that the wind swirled and was unstable for most of the day. This was an ideal location for deer to bed down, feel safe, and survive!
I’m excited to know the location of this bedding area for the upcoming fall for a couple reasons. Butterbean, a hit list buck, has been very active on our Reconyx camera just down the ridge. Even better, we have a Muddy stand setup on both sides of this pocket in the ridge! Stay tuned to GrowingDeer.tv to see if we can capitalize on this new find!
Here we are in the middle of August and our deer season is less than a month away. On September 5th Grant and I will be packing our bags and rolling east to Kentucky for the opener on September 6th. We’re pumped about it! We’ve been excited about deer season since turkey season ended last spring! There has been a lot of preparation for the upcoming season: shooting our Prime bows, hanging and trimming our Muddy stands, and organizing our gear. There is still one more step that should never be overlooked – scent control.
This week we spent some time washing our hunting clothes and preparing for hunting season.
Scent control is a huge topic among hunters today. You’re opening up a can of worms when you bring up scent control techniques among a large group of hunters. As for the GrowingDeer.tv team, we believe wholeheartedly in scent control techniques, especially given the terrain we hunt in. The Ozark Mountains can be a tough place to hunt when trying to understand wind direction, thermals that rise and fall throughout the day and routine wind direction changes. That’s why it’s super important for us to give ourselves every advantage we can get when it comes to trying to harvest mature bucks. The preparation that goes into this doesn’t start the week of season. We are preparing for deer season all year round. Once season is finished we wash, dry and then store our clothing and gear in the ScentMaster Boxes. When deer season begins to come around again, we’ll drag out our clothing to be washed again. This helps control any scent that may have been absorbed while in storage. By hunting the wind correctly, using the complete system of Dead Down Wind products, and storing our gear in ScentMaster Boxes we have stepped up our game in scent control.
There are many skeptics in scent control, but there is only one question that needs to be asked to those skeptics. If scent control products (when used correctly) increase your success rate ever so slightly, why wouldn’t you want that advantage? “Ever so slightly” is in no way what Grant and I believe. After several years of using the system we believe that scent control plays a huge factor in our success rate.
Always remember that deer season preparation is year round!
I receive lots of requests to estimate the age of bucks on my Facebook page. Oftentimes all that is posted is a picture of a buck and a few words like “How old?”
I rarely know what state the buck is from or the quality of the habitat where he lives. The habitat quality is very important information. Bucks tend to show signs of maturity much faster if they are living in poor habitat versus good quality habitat (the same is true for humans – stress is tough on all organisms!).
There’s one commonality that makes estimating a buck’s age much easier no matter what the quality of habitat where they live. That is if another buck (or two) is in the same picture!
Try to focus on body characteristics and not the antlers when estimating a buck’s age.
Seeing multiple bucks in the same picture (or field) makes it much easier to compare body sizes, shapes, etc.
Martin from western Oklahoma shared this picture with me. At first glance it’s easy to tell multiple age classes are represented. Clearly the buck on the right is less mature than the buck on the left. It appears the buck in the middle is probably younger than the buck on the left – and older than the buck on the right.
The picture probably represents three age classes. We don’t often have three bucks in front of stands during hunting season. However by practicing estimating the age of bucks shown in pictures we can learn what characteristics to look for from our stands.
Does the noise of a gunshot spook deer? The answer is “it depends.” I doubt deer are born with knowledge that the noise of a gun or the smell of burnt powder is often associated with danger.
Deer can be conditioned to accept or reject smells and noises they associate with danger.
Deer often learn from experiences and other deer to fear many of the sources of danger they face. For example deer certainly run from low flying helicopters when I’m doing aerial surveys in south Texas. However, deer commonly feed close by pads where the helicopter refuels frequently. They’ve obviously learned or been conditioned to accept the helicopter in that area as something that doesn’t present danger whereas the same helicopter flying low over the brush spooks 100’s of deer.
A friend recently shared a great example of how deer learn or can be conditioned to accept or reject smells, noises, etc., as a source of danger. Recently the National Scholastic Clay Trap Program (SCTP) meet was held in Sparta, IL. There were 3,000+ shooters that shot 700,000+ rounds during four days. It was constant shooting from early until late each day.
My friend Dan Appelbaum’s son was participating in the SCTP meet. During a round with shooters up and down the line for literally hundreds of yards deer starting feeding 80 yards or so directly in front of the trap house where Dan’s son was shooting!
The deer didn’t seem overly alert. In fact it distracted the shooters much more than the deer. Clearly the deer living in that area are conditioned to gun shots, the smell of gun powder, gun oil, humans, etc.
I’m sure just a short distance away a gunshot would cause deer to seek cover instantly if it was pointed directly at them.
This same knowledge of deer behavior can be applied to the presence of ATV’s, etc. If deer are conditioned to their presence and don’t have a reason to associate them with danger, it’s doubtful deer alter their activity patterns when they are present. If the source of the disturbance is new then deer probably become very alert and alter their activity patterns. Hunters need to consider these observations when they are scouting and hunting.
