It’s March 1st and we’ve officially survived the month of February. Now we’re taking on March. This time of year can be very boring for a whitetail hunter. Cabin fever can be a deer hunter’s worst enemy if they haven’t started shed hunting or found some off season management projects to keep themselves occupied until turkey season. One of these management projects that we are currently doing here at The Proving Grounds is frost seeding clover. We’ve posted a few pictures of the team frost seeding on our Facebook and Twitter pages. After posting, we’ve had some questions about what frost seeding is.
When frost seeding clover we plant at 10 lbs/acre.
Frost seeding is the technique of broadcasting a small hard seed onto the ground and using the natural act of frosting or the freezing and thawing of the ground to help pull the seed into the soil. This technique is usually practiced from mid-February to the beginning of March. This allows seeds, like clover, or other small hard seeds to lie in the soil until adequate warmth and moisture are available to germinate. This technique does not work well with large soft seeds like corn or soybeans because they can soak in moisture before it is warm enough to germinate and this causes them to rot and not grow, which can be costly.
When we’re frost seeding clover we tend to plant more seed per acre than we typically would in a fall or spring planting. Generally we plant 5 lbs/acre for a new stand of clover. When we’re frost seeding we will double that and plant 10lbs/acre. We do this because the seed may lie on the ground for weeks before germinating with the possibility of things like birds carrying some off or heavy rain washing seed away, so we want to have plenty of seed left for growing.
Clover along with Eagle Seed beans allows us to provide deer forage 12 months a year!
The additional seed cost is well worth it in the time savings for not having to employ more sophisticated equipment. A broadcast seeder is quick and inexpensive, making it a tool that everyone can use.
We are planting clover here at The Proving Grounds to help carry that void of growth in early spring. You’ve probably heard Grant talk about soybeans and how they provide forage eleven months out of the year. Clover can be that forage for the twelfth month. By providing enough clover along with Eagle Seed beans you can provide deer forage twelve months out of the year!
You can catch more information about frost seeding on the upcoming episode of GrowingDeer.tv (GDTV 171)!
As we head into March I hope you all can get out and cure your cabin fever with various management projects, combine it with a little shed hunting or maybe do a little scouting for turkeys!
It’s Friday February 22nd and Grant and I just returned late last night from a coyote hunt in Hamilton, Illinois with Jason Gilbertson and Mike Stock from Winchester Ammunition. Along with their friend Tyler Sellens of Riverview Outfitters. As most of you are aware there was a large winter weather front sweeping across the Midwest on Wednesday and Thursday, so Grant and I headed up on Tuesday hoping to get a couple days of hunting coyotes in before the winter weather hit.
With the threat of wintry weather Grant and I thought it would be a great time to catch some predators trying to find a quick meal before the storm hit. Plus, we would also spend some time with our friends at Winchester Ammo doing something exciting like chasing coyotes! On Wednesday Grant was busy working on a property near Princeton, Illinois so I teamed up with Mike and Tyler for the day. We had a fun day chasing coyotes. At the end of the day Mike headed home just as Jason and Grant arrived to hunt the following day. Before I give away the outcome of our success, you can catch this two day coyote hunt on the upcoming episode of GrowingDeer.tv (GDTV 171)! During this hunt I noticed some different techniques that I’ll share with you now.
Using these techniques could ultimately lead to a successful predator hunt.
Approach. You often hear Grant talk about MDE (minimal disturbance entry) for deer hunting, this is also important to coyotes. Our most successful trips happen when we use a hill or slope to our advantage. Approaching from a backside of a hill and just breaking over the top so we’re not alerting anything when approaching is a great way to sneak attack coyotes!
Crosswinds. Of course when deer hunting, a wind that is consistently in your face is ideal, but sometimes with coyotes they can hang up out of sight because the situation is too risky for them. We typically want our wind direction to be blowing across a field or open area so when a coyote does approach downwind he’s in sight and you can take the shot!
Be ready! A lot of times coyotes can run into your setup in under a minute of turning on the caller. This happened numerous times during our Illinois hunt. Once the caller had only been on for 36 seconds! With that being said, when the caller is turned on be ready!
Timing. Coyote breeding season here in Missouri is typically mid to late February so its prime time to call coyotes. Coyotes are very vocal during this time so don’t be afraid to make a few howls either, it might be the only temptation you need to bring one within range.
It’s a slow time of year for deer hunters but an exciting time of year for predator hunters! It’s a great way to ease your cabin fever during these slow months between deer and turkey seasons.
That winter storm swept cross Missouri it dumping everything from freezing rain, sleet, to snow in northern parts of Missouri. Reports of up to 17 inches in places, but in Branson, Missouri there was primarily just sleet and freezing rain. Conditions were very hazardous when we made our venture home; generally it’s a 6 hour drive from Keokuk, Iowa where we were staying to Branson. Last night it took just over 12 hours. Today we are thankful for making it home safely with memories stored away of exciting and challenging days hunting those wiley coyotes!
As always – stay safe and good luck removing predators!
If you’ve paid any attention over the past couple of weeks you’ve seen our GrowingDeer.tv episodes, tweets and Facebook posts have consisted mostly of bucks that have been found dead on The Proving Grounds due to the outbreak of EHD late last summer. Now if you’re anything like me you might be getting sick of talking about deer that you’ll never be able to hunt. So today we’re changing things up and thinking “happy thoughts.”
Split Brow is a 6.5 year old or older buck
There are still a few nice bucks running around here, one that you’ve probably heard us talk about before is a 6.5 year old or older buck named Split Brow. Another great buck that showed up on Boomerang Ridge this year is Two Face. Both of these bucks were still holding their antlers in early
Two Face is another great buck that showed up on Boomerang Ridge this year
February when we ran our Reconyx cameras, but it’s that time of year when they can fall off at any moment, so we’re taking any spare moments we get to do a little shed hunting!
One of the great things about shed hunting, besides finding those treasured antlers, is finding the trails, scrapes, rubs, and all the other sign that you didn’t know existed because they were in areas you didn’t want to intrude on during hunting season. That’s the great thing about walking your property during January and February, all the deer sign that was left during hunting season is still present. This means you might be able to find those trails that the mature bucks were using to sneak through your property unseen. With this in mind, anyone who’s ever shed hunted with me knows I’m terrible at it! I have to almost step on the antlers to find them. The biggest reason why I’m so bad at shed hunting is the deer sign I mentioned. When I’m walking through the woods and find a very active deer trail, then maybe a large rub on a tree, followed by a scrape, I’ve stopped focusing on finding sheds and I’ve already started looking for a tree to hang a Muddy treestand in.
While collecting soil samples and shed hunting last week, if I noticed a large deer trail coming into a food plot, I would take a short recon mission and see what I could learn. As the week came to a close I had found nine new locations to hang Muddy stands in. Nine new stands in places we didn’t hunt at all last year, plus they’re loaded with deer sign! Needless to say we are only a few weeks into February and I’m already excited about the upcoming season!
It’s a great time of year for shed hunting but don’t forget to keep those eyes peeled for possible hunting locations. You could be missing out on that secret spot where your Hit List bucks hide!
In my last blog post I outlined my initial plan for shed hunting our property, The Proving Grounds. My initial focus was to resist the call of the easy food plots and the lure of the open hardwoods and search along all the creeks and water sources for deer that succumbed to EHD this past summer.
I have to tell you that looking for the skulls of deer is not as joyful as hunting for the thrown shed antlers. Seeing the antler sticking up is a real rush that quickly is tainted with sadness when you see that it is attached to the skull plate.
Over the last three weeks we have found seven bucks that died seeking water as EHD drove them to water sources.
The first buck Crystal (my shed hunting Labrador) and I found along the creek bank is one that we called Clover Mountain 10. Upon finding that buck I made my usual call to Grant to let him know I had found an intact set of horns. I felt like I was calling to tell him that one of our friends had died. As I waited for him to join me to evaluate the buck the usual joy from finding a big shed antler was missing.
Over the last three weeks we have found seven bucks that died seeking water as the disease drove them to water sources. These bucks included: Clover Mountain 10, Bean Flipper, 8 Ball, and Last Lick Lefty. In addition to these bucks AJ, our current wildlife student, found a fifth buck – Cave Stickers. Each buck had been appearing on the Reconyx trail cameras over the summer with Adam noting the last known sighting of the bucks. He had hopes that they had simply been avoiding the cameras by spending more time in a different part of their range. With each buck those hopes were dashed along with the anticipation of having one less mature buck to hunt this fall.
Finding the remains of the deer that passed this summer due to EHD is not an easy task (Watch GDTV 142 for more info) They’ve been lying around the creek bottoms long enough for scavengers to eat and spread the bones. Leaves have fallen and covered up the skeletal remains. The bucks get all the glory of being shared on facebook posts and here on the blog while the various scattered bones go undocumented. We have had very little heavy rain to clear the leaves until just this last week. That rain helped to uncover the remains of two of the bucks we found as they were lodged in snags/log jams in the creek.
I have to give Crystal some credit for assisting with the finds. One of the keys to shed hunting with a dog is to know your dog and watch their body language. Although Crystal doesn’t like to retrieve a skull with antlers attached (I believe this is because in her early training I had her retrieve an intact skull/antlers and she hurt herself), she does go to them and stand over the remains which makes me follow to see what she has found.
One of the keys to shed hunting with a dog is to know your dog and watch their body language.
In the next weeks, we’ll share more of our shed hunting adventures and explain why the antlers on the bucks that died in velvet look and feel different from cast antlers. In the meantime – share your shed hunting success stories and photos with us on our facebook page.
It’s been a busy week here at The Proving Grounds. Missouri trapping season is coming to a close and we’re also in the middle of our post season camera survey. These days are usually busy for the GrowingDeer.tv Team as we check our Duke Traps every morning and replenish the Record Rack feeding stations. It was during this time when I received a phone call from Mrs. Tracy saying she had found a “sure enough big buck.”
With the outbreak of EHD shed hunters will have their hands full of EHD stricken deer remains.
As many of our loyal viewers know, Mrs. Tracy loves to shed hunt with her dog, Crystal. Grant, Brian, and I are leaving January worn down from the long haul of deer season but Mrs. Tracy is just getting fired up! With the close of archery season on January 15th Mrs. Tracy heads to the woods to start looking for sheds and skulls of the bucks who didn’t survive the season. Especially after this year, with the outbreak of EHD (Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease), as the shed hunting enthusiasts start their search for those treasured antlers, they will have their hands full of EHD stricken deer remains. There are a couple reasons why I feel this will happen.
We assume Bean Flipper died from EHD early this fall.
We are beginning to switch out of hunting and back into the management side of things. We are starting to enter into parts of the property that have been left untouched during the hunting season. As we’ve started doing these projects we have been finding carcasses, both recent and from months ago when EHD hit the hardest. For example, Monday we began collecting soil samples and in a few hours of work we had already found two carcasses by the creek we were working by.
As the season progressed here at The Proving Grounds we noticed that some of our bucks had come up missing. First there was Bean Flipper in late August, then Tightwad in mid-September, next Giant 8 in late September and finally Pumpkin face (after a firsthand encounter in early November). Typically bucks are not as easy to pattern during the rut but as we enter a late season feeding pattern we would expect to see them on our Reconyx cameras. We’re now almost into February and still haven’t seen “hide nor hair” from these bucks, until I got the phone call.
I could hear the excitement in her voice and I was just hoping she couldn’t hear the disappointment in mine. She had found a large buck dead and now my only thought was, “Who is it?” She sent a picture to my phone and based on what looked like split G2s my instincts told me it was Bean Flipper. After we hiked down the valley to her and the buck, I put my hands on the antlers and crossed Bean Flipper of the MIA list. You can catch the entire recovery on next Monday’s episode at GrowingDeer.tv (GDTV 167).
As we make our way into the post season/shed hunting time of year, the GrowingDeer.tv Team will start focusing on who survived and who still remains MIA, and we’ll bring it all to you right here semi-live!
Good luck to all of you planning on hitting the woods searching for sheds!
This morning I toured a 280 acre tract of land recently purchased by the owners of Redneck Hunting Blinds. The property is in west central Missouri. It’s about 50% tillable land and 50% hardwood forest. A power line and a gas right of way cross the property. Basically the timber is on the west of the property and the crop ground on the east.
It’s a long way from finding one set of sheds to producing and harvesting two mature bucks annually.
The area has much potential as we found both sheds to the buck in this picture. However, it’s a long way from finding one set of sheds to producing and harvesting two mature bucks annually.
My goal is to design a habitat management and hunting strategy that will yield an average of two mature (4+ year old) bucks to harvest annually – or a mature buck per 100+ acres. That’s a very tall order! However, the habitat is conducive to that objective. I’m not sure about the neighborhood yet.
I always begin by assessing the availability and quality of food, cover, and water. It seems most folks focus on food – either row crop or food plots. However, deer, especially mature bucks, spend the majority of their time during daylight hours in or near cover. This is especially true in areas where row crop ag is the primary land use – especially after the crops are harvested.
The Redneck Proving Grounds has some cover, but no sanctuaries. That’s to say there were no areas where there wasn’t sign (treestands, ATV trails, etc.) of hunting activity. One of my first thoughts during the tour was that I need a plan to encourage mature bucks to spend a majority of their time on the Redneck Proving Grounds. I will accomplish this by creating three sanctuaries in different corners of the properties!
Let me know if you’d like to follow this project closer and I’ll share step by step my plans and the progress.
