It can be a depressing time of year for some people now that turkey season is wrapping up and the heat of summer is rapidly approaching! That’s not the case for the Growing Deer team as we started checking our Reconyx cameras! We are finding that bucks are already showing antler growth! Bucks have started showing up more regularly at our Reconyx stations, so tracking their growth will be exciting throughout the summer and into the fall.
This buck is one of many frequent visitors to this Trophy Rock station.
One of the biggest factors in being able to following their progress is the use of Trophy Rocks. Trophy Rocks are one of the most attractive things you can use to lure deer in front of your cameras allowing you to monitor herd health, fawn survival, and antler growth. We use Trophy Rocks on The Proving Grounds year round, but a lot of people overlook the importance of having Trophy Rocks out during the spring because it isn’t hunting season. As a deer manager don’t forget that having the appropriate minerals and nutrition out year round will not only increase antler size and fawn survival but ultimately result in healthier deer.
Not only are Trophy Rocks great for improving deer health but they also make for some great Reconyx pictures! Stay with us this summer as we share the continual growth of our buck’s antlers!
Turkey season has closed in several states across the nation. What’s next for the GrowingDeer team? We’ve got a busy summer planned with lots of management projects! We’ll focus our time on our food plots both new and old, tree stand preparation, and most importantly, prescribed fire. With all the summer projects planned there is one activity that can’t be overlooked. It’s very important for each of us that participate in bow season to practice shooting throughout the year and not just the few weeks before season opens.
Grant, David, and John posing for a picture after a 98 yard shot on a moose!
Now let me define “practice.” Some hunters will practice this off season competing in 3-D tournaments. Others will head indoors for archery tournaments where they practice shooting targets with an “X” on a piece of paper. These are great ways to get you ready for the upcoming archery season but it’s even more important to do “perfect practice.” Perfect practice isn’t the act of shooting your bow over and over at one target and saying you’re ready for season. Perfect practice is getting as close to a real hunting setting as possible. If you hunt in a hat, you shoot in a hat. If you wear binoculars around your neck while hunting, you practice with binoculars around your neck. If you hunt from ground blinds, you practice from ground blinds. These are only a few different examples of perfect practice but all practice should be done with the same equipment that you’ll use hunting and the same mechanics. Same anchor points, same way gripping your bow, same body position, same focus. When we practice, we’re trying to imitate what we’ll be doing this fall when we’re hunting, so we’re getting as close to that as we can when we practice.
Another way of improving our practice and ultimately our shooting ability is practicing from farther distances. Those of you that have shot at long distances like 80 and 90 yards know how incredibly easy it seems when stepping in to real hunting distances of 20 and 30 yards. Unfortunately not everyone can shoot at these distances in their yard. To solve that problem Grant and I recently returned from Seven Springs Resort in Pennsylvania where the Prime Total Archery Challenge was held. This archery Challenge is not for the faint of heart but it’s very close to real world hunting settings. There are several courses with over twenty targets on each course from distances of ten to over 90 yards! All of these targets are in different locations with different angles and slopes. Practicing in conditions like this will unquestionably make you a better shot and inevitably a more successful hunter!
Hopefully the weather isn’t too hot where you live this week and you get a chance to practice for the upcoming deer season! It’s only a few months away!
Yesterday a friend wrote asking for our favorite turkey recipe as his son had just shot his first ever wild turkey. Grant is off to shoot this weekend in the Total Archery Challenge with the crew from G5 so he has asked me (wife, Tracy) to write the blog. Many of our readers now have fresh turkey in their refrigerators and freezers so I will take this opportunity to share a recipe for cooking wild turkey.
(If you are unsure on how to remove the turkey breast from your recently tagged bird watch this episode of GrowingDeer.tv to see how Grant does it!)
We use wild turkey breast to make Slow Cooker Southwestern Wild Turkey.
It’s traditional for a lot of hunters to cut their turkey up and fry turkey “nuggets” or strips. We did this for many years but as we strive to eat healthier I’ve searched for different ways to prepare the meat. I’ve found the key to cooking wild turkey so that it isn’t tough is to slow cook it with enough liquid to almost cover it.
This year I created something new that the family just loves. It’s pretty easy and tasty, if you like a southwestern/Mexican type dish. It’s very flexible and can be modified based on your personal preferences. For instance, a can of black beans could be added if everyone in your family likes them (Grant doesn’t so I put them as a side dish instead of in the main dish). It can be eaten as a stew or the breast removed from the broth and chopped for burritos, enchiladas, quesadillas, tacos, or wraps. I guess it has to have a “name” so I’m going to call it…
Breast from a wild turkey
32 oz chicken broth (or enough to almost cover)
1 large can (28 oz) diced tomatoes (fire roasted or Rotel tomatoes to add an extra “zing”)
1 large can (29 oz) green chili enchilada sauce
1 4 oz can chopped green chilies
2 ½ tablespoons cumin
1 tablespoon chili powder (or to taste)
2 cloves finely diced garlic
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 medium onion and 1 medium green pepper chopped (can substitute a bag of frozen pepper/onion mix)
1 bag of frozen mixed vegetables (or 1 can corn, 1 can lima beans or green peas, 1 can green beans)
Cayenne or red pepper to taste
Black pepper
Cook for 6 to 8 hours on low in crockpot. For a little more southwestern flavor before serving add 1/4 cup lime juice and 1/2 cup chopped cilantro (cilantro is optional – some folks don’t care for it). Serve with shredded Colby-Jack cheese and traditional taco or burrito toppings of shredded lettuce, fresh chopped tomatoes, onions, refried beans, salsa, tortillas and/or tortilla chips.
One full turkey breast makes A LOT of food. We have it for several meals and also freeze portion sizes of it to have on hand for a quick future meal.
This time of year is very busy here at The Proving Grounds. We have been chasing turkeys, spraying food plots and lately we have been planting Eagle Seed soybeans. These are all good reasons to be excited. However, there is one thing that has got us a little down.
Adam planting Eagle Seed Soybeans this week before the forecasted rain.
In Southern Missouri we are eight inches behind normal rain amounts! That is not what any wildlife manager wants. Drought is extremely tough on wildlife. Fawn survival decreases during drought and bucks rarely express their full antler potential. Spring is the time of year when rain totals usually catch up. This leaves us worried for what summer may bring.
It takes rain to grow quality food and it takes quality food to grow deer and turkey. The Growing Deer team is praying hard for substantial rain. There is a chance of rain the next few days so Adam has been working long hours all week making sure all the food plots get planted. The seed is in the ground and all we can do now is sit back and hope to be blessed with precipitation.
If rain is sparse in your area I encourage you to watch the forecast closely and when the rain is coming, get that seed in the ground! Remember, without risk there is no reward. I hope everyone is blessed with healthy food plots and healthy deer this fall!
Even though we’re rolling into spring planting season and the Eagle Seed beans will be hitting the dirt soon, turkeys are still on the brain for the GrowingDeer team! It’s been a great season for us so far, and the season isn’t even over yet! Overall, it’s been a relatively strange year here in southern Missouri due to the late spring. Typically during Missouri turkey season the leaves are popped and almost fully developed, the dogwood blooms are in their final days, and the Redbud trees have lost almost all their blooms. The biggest difference between past seasons and this current turkey season is the amount of hens staying with toms throughout the morning. I’ve heard numerous people talk about the number of hens being with toms. They all mention the silence right after fly down, the unresponsive gobblers, and the overall tough hunting they’ve experienced.
Adam Brooke, GrowingDeer Pro Staff, and Adam Keith enjoyed some mid-morning success by finding this lovesick tom.
The good news I’ll share with you is these turkeys will still respond to your calling and maybe even come into shotgun range, depending on your approach. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s been a great season for us thus far, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t shifted our game plan to adjust to these “henned up” toms. If we find ourselves hunting a tom that has hens with him first thing in the morning, but he’s still responding to our calls, we’ll wait him out! At some point during the morning the hens will begin to fade off and that’s when our tom will start gobbling more and become more susceptible to our calling. That’s why the mid-morning hunts can have such a high success rate during this period of the hunting season. We’ve had some great success this spring during the mid-morning hunts! One of the most exciting parts about mid-morning turkey hunting is that if a tom gobbles at your call, there’s a good chance he will come check you out!
I hope this helps you in your pursuit of the weary toms and you’re able to capitalize on a mid-morning tom!
Brian spraying weeds in a clover plot early this week at The Proving Grounds.
Clover food plots can be a valuable tool in a wildlife management plan. Clover grows quickly and becomes palatable early during the spring. Minimal acreage is needed of clover because it produces a lot of tonnage per square acre. How do we take care of this great tool?
When managing clover there are two important things to remember, the first being that clover requires a lot of fertilizer. Secondly, weeds and grasses can choke clover out relatively easily so weed control is very important.
We fertilized the clover plots with Antler Dirt a few weeks ago. This week I’ve been working to control the weeds. We choose to spray our clover plots rather than mow them. Spraying with herbicide actually kills the weeds versus mowing that simply reduces their height. I sprayed the clover plots with two different herbicide solutions. For the broad-leafed weeds I used a mixture of 2,4 DB and crop oil. In order to control the grasses I used a mixture of Clethodim and crop oil. Mixing these two herbicides will lessen their effectiveness. I followed the amounts prescribed on both labels. In some plots weeds can be patchy, in those areas just spot spray rather than spraying the entire food plot. This will help to conserve expensive herbicide.
Find some time this week between turkey hunts to get out and show those clover plots a little love. The Growing Deer Team will be out finishing up clover care and punching a few more turkey tags!
It’s been a fun week for the GrowingDeer Team and the fun is not over yet! I’m writing this from the Kentucky Proving Grounds this week as Grant, AJ, and I arrived yesterday afternoon ready to start chasing long beards. We were blessed enough to spend the beginning of the week near Tompkinsville, Kentucky hunting turkeys and staying at the beautiful River Breeze cabin. After a great hunt Wednesday morning, we loaded our gear and headed west to meet up with our friend Terry Hamby, owner of the Kentucky Proving Grounds.
On a hunt earlier this week, three long beards came in to check out our decoys.
When we arrived, Terry and his farm manager, Andrew Clifton, informed us that the turkeys were working really well. Terry’s grandson harvested a bird over a set of decoys just a few days prior. This brings up questions asked at thousands of turkey camps every spring, “When is the appropriate time to use decoys? When should I use a strutting decoy and when should I resort to just a hen decoy?”
First off I’ll say that every property is different due to hunting pressure, time of the year, and the overall attitude of the birds. Typically, I’ll only use a strutting decoy with a hen early in the season when dominance is still being sorted and the turkeys are still in larger flocks. As the season progresses and a number of turkeys have been whooped or kicked out of the flock, I will start using a semi strut or standing gobbler decoy along with a hen decoy. This is the setup we’re currently using at the Kentucky Proving Grounds. There are still flocks of birds in areas but also the occasional satellite tom roaming the area. Terry and I saw this first hand Thursday morning as we decoyed in a flock of hens and 3 big toms came to within 15 yards! You can watch that hunt unfold soon of GrowingDeer.tv! As the season starts to wind down and the turkeys have been pressured more, I’ll generally only use a lone hen decoy. This setup enables me to put the turkey eyes on a decoy and off of me. If used at the appropriate time all of the different setups can be extremely effective.
Missouri youth season for turkey hunting opens tomorrow morning and hearts rates are increasing at The Proving Grounds. We love this time of year and we have done everything we know how to do to prepare. The shotguns are patterned, we’ve checked all Reconyx cameras, and the blinds are in place.
The Growing Deer Team’s first Hay Bale Blind setup on a clover plot for youth season.
This week was a particularly exciting week to be setting up blinds. Every year we position our Redhead ground blinds and Redneck trailer blind in known hot spots, but this year we have a new addition to our blind repertoire. Monday we received two new Hay Bale Blinds from Redneck Blinds. We weren’t sure what to expect.
Let me be the first to say that they are AWESOME! Just two guys can easily move the blinds into place and they require no brushing in. My favorite things about the blind are the sliding windows and the magnetic door. They are silent! The blinds are large enough that we plan on hunting with three people and a camera in one blind during youth season. The windows have a “hay” side and a “black” side, so we flipped the sliding window to black side out. This will leave the blind looking the same whether it is being hunted in or not.
The Growing Deer Team will be out all weekend hoping to put a couple of long beards on the ground. I hope you have a chance to get out and do the same!
