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Post by Catscratch on Jan 23, 2019 9:39:44 GMT -6
I had a thread not long ago asking for idea's on how to hold dominant bucks on my particular place. Lots of great ideas were thrown out and I intend to implement some of them. It got me thinking though about the overall picture. I tend to manage holistically, meaning that I do things like planting chicory (it mines minerals well), clovers, and alfalfa in the pastures. I try to create edge and promote forbs/wildflowers as well as woody browse. I work to have a balanced mineral content in my soils outside of food plots. Etc....
I got to thinking about local ag... I think it's pretty well thought that ag is a big part of several midwest's states large bucks. I spent the last couple of years surveying local fields. Beans are king and the deer utilize them. When the beans are out of season the fields are bare. Nobody is planting cover-crops or really doing rotations (there is one guy doing fantastic rotations but that totals about 100acres). I question just how much nutrition my deer are getting from ag.
This morning I called up an area calculator and did a total area vs ag area map. Out of 106 square miles of land there is a total of 3.6 square miles of possible ag. Most of that 3.6sq miles of potential ag is in brome fields... (would venture a guess of more than 50% is in brome or native hay). So, I'm going to assume that less than 3% of the total land available to deer for nutrition is improved. I'm also going to add that to get to this ag some deer would have to travel up to 10 miles which is simply not happening.
What do you guys think about this situation? The land that isn't ag is pretty much 100% grassland. I'm incline to ramp up my efforts in improving my soils and native vegetation on them... more fertilizer, more minerals, more chicory/clovers/alfalfa's in the pastures. Or more year round plots? Or more cover?
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Post by MoBuckChaser on Jan 23, 2019 10:03:46 GMT -6
Prepare to explain to the old lady why so much money is flying out of the fucking checkbook.....
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Ideas?
Jan 23, 2019 12:31:51 GMT -6
Post by jbird on Jan 23, 2019 12:31:51 GMT -6
Keep in mind fertile soils encourage agriculture....not the other way around. Also keep in mind the natural fertility and terrain of those soils tend to dictate land use practices...and not the other way around.
We grow row crops here because the soil fertility allows the farmers here to make the most money doing that vs growing forage crops and pasturing animals. Most livestock farms here are confined operations (poultry, hog and dairy cows)....because the land can make more money raising row crops (corn and soybeans).
I think you may be trying to "force" the situation a bit and I like the idea, but the practical impact of doing so I think is lacking. Raising the nutritional plane is what people are trying to do with minerals and supplemental feeding programs...because it's more cost effective that way. I think by trying t raising the fertility plane of your soil across the entire property you are talking about thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars a year in costs...not counting the time involved.
Every property has limitations...alter those you can within reason and work with or around those you can't change. Its much easier to work WITH mother nature than against her.
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Post by benmnwi on Jan 23, 2019 12:54:21 GMT -6
You seem to see and shoot lots of big bucks, so the deer seem to be in good shape. If you are trying to get to 200" or similar class you probably need to get lucky and prevent a neighbor from getting future monster buck a year or two before he gets huge.
IMO you could probably spend a couple grand on fertilizer, minerals, etc. and not see a big difference in antler size. But I bet if you spent a couple grand on fencing and excluded cattle from several strategically placed thicket sections you could hold a lot more deer on your place and maybe one of them will be that buck that gets to 200" the next year. But if this land is owned by your in-laws who make a living selling beef cattle this might not be a realistic option.
When we hunt on grazed public properties out west we always find the most wild game in areas with the fewest cattle that are islands of thick stuff in mainly open pasture ground. If you keep out the cattle and your ground is thicker than the neighboring properties, you will hold more deer than they do and maybe one will be the monster you are after.
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Ideas?
Jan 23, 2019 14:00:09 GMT -6
Post by Catscratch on Jan 23, 2019 14:00:09 GMT -6
Lol, everything I do is limited by money and how much the wife knows about it!
I see what you guys are saying. As far as fertilizing, mineral, etc... a lot of that can be justified as pasture management for the cattle. It's similar to fertilizing ag ground to increase production in that better pasture increases cattle production. In this way the improvements are two-fold (cattle and deer) and is really the reason it's appealing to me. To be clear though, I don't intend to do these things to the entire place. Improvements would be in comparison to areas the same size as plotting, just with less input costs of spray, gas, and seed. As far as fencing off chunks; I would love to do that but it isn't realistic yet. Right now the in-laws are making a living off it and even though I own a chunk of it outright I'm not going to kick him off that pasture to let it grow up. And even when he is no longer ranching there is no guarantee that the land won't still need to make every penny it can. I'm going to have to be satisfied with cattle on the place to some extent.
Ultimately I suspect the "island of cover" idea is the ticket. I can promote this in some ways. The 200 inch buck is a dream to me but it's something I truly think is realistic at least once in my lifetime. What I'm after is to turn those 150-160 bucks that I have running around into the occasional 170-180 incher. It seems that no matter how long I let a deer go or what age it hits, they top out at around 160. I continuously get pics of deer that reach 150 pretty quickly, then stay there for several years afterwards. I guess I'm searching for the hole in the bucket that's holding them back.
Thanks for the input guys! It's all duly noted.
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Post by benmnwi on Jan 23, 2019 14:26:38 GMT -6
Are the deer typically bigger on properties closer to the ag fields a few miles away? If your bucks get to 150 quickly but then stay there maybe some extra food at a critical time would make a difference.
Is off season (or in-season) feeding allowed? If nutrition is a hole in the bucket that would probably be the fastest way to make a difference. Stop at the feed mill on your way home from work tonight and fill up the back of the truck and start the experiment.
Are there ranches/farms in your county that routinely kick out the big bucks that you're looking for? If so, what's different about those properties/areas?
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Ideas?
Jan 23, 2019 15:13:01 GMT -6
Post by Catscratch on Jan 23, 2019 15:13:01 GMT -6
Some of the biggest deer I've ever seen, and some of the biggest sheds I've found were several miles away from ag. Not saying they don't make the trip but it is a long ways. With the distance between ag and the lack of mast trees my inclination is that nutrition is mainly from native forbs and browse. I don't think natives=bad nutrition. We have heifers that average 2.2lbs gain over the summer (on grass). I know cattle aren't deer but they are both on the same soil...
I get to hold a 200 most yrs. The properties that produce them seem somewhat random. Sometimes they are near ag and sometimes they are pasture bucks.
Feeding is allowed here with no restrictions. I'm not against that idea at all and I've actually started feeding protein near the house. I'm doing it near the house because I can't afford to feed every deer in the county, I need them to weed themselves out somehow. So I figure that the few that will brave the yard can benefit. I just started a few weeks ago so that verdict is not in yet.
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Ideas?
Jan 23, 2019 15:25:39 GMT -6
Post by sd51555 on Jan 23, 2019 15:25:39 GMT -6
I had a thread not long ago asking for idea's on how to hold dominant bucks on my particular place. Lots of great ideas were thrown out and I intend to implement some of them. It got me thinking though about the overall picture. I tend to manage holistically, meaning that I do things like planting chicory (it mines minerals well), clovers, and alfalfa in the pastures. I try to create edge and promote forbs/wildflowers as well as woody browse. I work to have a balanced mineral content in my soils outside of food plots. Etc.... I got to thinking about local ag... I think it's pretty well thought that ag is a big part of several midwest's states large bucks. I spent the last couple of years surveying local fields. Beans are king and the deer utilize them. When the beans are out of season the fields are bare. Nobody is planting cover-crops or really doing rotations (there is one guy doing fantastic rotations but that totals about 100acres). I question just how much nutrition my deer are getting from ag. This morning I called up an area calculator and did a total area vs ag area map. Out of 106 square miles of land there is a total of 3.6 square miles of possible ag. Most of that 3.6sq miles of potential ag is in brome fields... (would venture a guess of more than 50% is in brome or native hay). So, I'm going to assume that less than 3% of the total land available to deer for nutrition is improved. I'm also going to add that to get to this ag some deer would have to travel up to 10 miles which is simply not happening. What do you guys think about this situation? The land that isn't ag is pretty much 100% grassland. I'm incline to ramp up my efforts in improving my soils and native vegetation on them... more fertilizer, more minerals, more chicory/clovers/alfalfa's in the pastures. Or more year round plots? Or more cover? Are you saying only 3% of the land around you is farmed?
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Ideas?
Jan 23, 2019 15:37:45 GMT -6
Post by benmnwi on Jan 23, 2019 15:37:45 GMT -6
Does anyone buy land in your general area specifically for deer hunting? Throw up a fence to keep the cattle out, plant some alfalfa and other food plots and you would have hunting better than 99% of Minnesota. Hell, you could probably skip the food plots and just fence out the cattle and throw up a corn feeder and make it even easier.
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Ideas?
Jan 23, 2019 15:55:01 GMT -6
Post by Catscratch on Jan 23, 2019 15:55:01 GMT -6
I had a thread not long ago asking for idea's on how to hold dominant bucks on my particular place. Lots of great ideas were thrown out and I intend to implement some of them. It got me thinking though about the overall picture. I tend to manage holistically, meaning that I do things like planting chicory (it mines minerals well), clovers, and alfalfa in the pastures. I try to create edge and promote forbs/wildflowers as well as woody browse. I work to have a balanced mineral content in my soils outside of food plots. Etc.... I got to thinking about local ag... I think it's pretty well thought that ag is a big part of several midwest's states large bucks. I spent the last couple of years surveying local fields. Beans are king and the deer utilize them. When the beans are out of season the fields are bare. Nobody is planting cover-crops or really doing rotations (there is one guy doing fantastic rotations but that totals about 100acres). I question just how much nutrition my deer are getting from ag. This morning I called up an area calculator and did a total area vs ag area map. Out of 106 square miles of land there is a total of 3.6 square miles of possible ag. Most of that 3.6sq miles of potential ag is in brome fields... (would venture a guess of more than 50% is in brome or native hay). So, I'm going to assume that less than 3% of the total land available to deer for nutrition is improved. I'm also going to add that to get to this ag some deer would have to travel up to 10 miles which is simply not happening. What do you guys think about this situation? The land that isn't ag is pretty much 100% grassland. I'm incline to ramp up my efforts in improving my soils and native vegetation on them... more fertilizer, more minerals, more chicory/clovers/alfalfa's in the pastures. Or more year round plots? Or more cover? Are you saying only 3% of the land around you is farmed? sd- On draftlogic I drew an area that covered 130 square miles total area (where I hunt). I then mapped the fields inside that area that are actually planted to ag and came up just shy of 590acres (.9 square miles). That comes out to .69% of the land being farmed. The rest is either pasture grass, brome, or native hay. Very little of it has trees on it. I could have gone further north without finding ag, but that would have skewed the numbers because it's outside of my hunting area anyway. Of course I could have just outlined the area right around my property and came up with significantly different percentages also. I think what I came up with is a fairly accurate representation of the area.
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Ideas?
Jan 23, 2019 16:07:30 GMT -6
Post by jbird on Jan 23, 2019 16:07:30 GMT -6
I understood his comment about the 3% as being "row crops".... Sounds like his area is dominated with forage crops and pasture.
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Post by Catscratch on Jan 23, 2019 16:43:35 GMT -6
This is what my part of KS looks like. Mile, after mile, after mile of grass. I can literally map 130 square miles of this and less than 1% would have had a tractor on it in the last year. I was rounding up when I said 3% as I had just done a quick look at the area without detailing the map.
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Post by snowracerh on Jan 23, 2019 18:00:17 GMT -6
As a side thought, farm equipment today is 1000% more efficient and very little crop "spillage" is left behind as opposed to 15+ years ago. This is actually causing problems in areas of WI after crop harvest. The cover and food is gone come rut recovery time of year. The lack of timber harvests after many loggers went out of buisness in the economic downturn around 08 has amplified the problem due to a lack of browse.
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Ideas?
Jan 23, 2019 18:10:16 GMT -6
Post by sd51555 on Jan 23, 2019 18:10:16 GMT -6
This is what my part of KS looks like. Mile, after mile, after mile of grass. I can literally map 130 square miles of this and less than 1% would have had a tractor on it in the last year. I was rounding up when I said 3% as I had just done a quick look at the area without detailing the map. Have you got a soil test on that native ground? Having been grass for all of time, I'd think you might get pretty good output just from organic matter. Lots of goodies get mineralized into availability if you can get some rain. Would yellow sweet clover be a big tonnage thief on your pastures? That stuff seems to go like a raped ape if it gets some rain, but it may be a problem for grazing (I don't know). The plains up here get covered in it when we get some rain. From here into Montana, it'll be yellow like a canola field. The guys I used to walleye fish with in Montana said when the sweet clover was good, the wildlife did a lot better. Of course when it was dry, it was a desert of sage brush.
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Post by Catscratch on Jan 23, 2019 18:14:27 GMT -6
I don't really know anything about yellow sweet clover. You've seen a soil test from the native grasslands here. I posted it or sent it to ya some time back (maybe a couple of years ago). Not sure if I can dig it again.
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