Well, it's time...........

The running battle at our lovely deer camp over how to do our annual work on stands has arrived! Going Thursday or Friday..........for a week. The FIRST week! This one is to bush hog and cut down a pile of small pine saplings that the ice last winter bent over into our lanes..........and general camp work. Then we get a break (hey, even prisoners get a break!) for a few days, come home...... and then go back with a truck load of seed and plant all the shooting lanes.

I am not convinced this planting does a lot..........and many guys I know that have done this same thing for years, have stopped........and say they see no difference. Obviously, it doesn't hurt, but $2,000 a year to get tractors down there and buy seed, etc........is a big chunk, plus another week out of our lives. Not that it hurts, obviously.......we shoot a lot of deer eating food plots. But like corn, I think all it does is make our 12 deer nocturnal!

To be honest, I think the two Ringleaders (we ain't officially got a Camp Boss, but don't tell that to one of the guys, name not provided!!:)) simply have a tough summer (and they do) and this is just something for them to do. Neither of 'em fish, which is the danged problem. So they get off on going down there half the danged month of September.

I DO need to get 11 more hours (or 65 more miles) on my ATV before deer season so I can take it in for the "Initial 10 Hour Maintenance" that warranty requires........so maybe I can get that done hauling water and gatorade to the tractor drivers!

The weather appears about to break, at least a little..........no way I'm going in 99 degree heat, with this asthma! Should be decent weather after these fronts come through next day or two.

Going too plant my food plot tooday! I use a mixture of New Zeland brassicas and the critters love it! Holds up pretty good too frost too.

We used mixtures like that for years. Then we started reading the ingredients. 98% of it, at least the ones we were buying, was wheat and oats. Very little brassicas or clover. So we started buying bags of just wheat, and just Bob Oats. We mix 'em 50/50 when we plant. That and fertilizer and it comes up fine, assuming we get any rain at all.

Last year Cappy got me onto Winter Peas. They are twice the price of wheat or oats, but we put a bunch out. I saw about 10 deer all year, so I can't say if they work or not. I'm SURE they do, but they weren't a magnet........of course if you ain't got animals, nothing will attract them from the next county.

If I could afford it, I'd plant ladino clover everywhere. But to be honest, I'm just messing with deer camp "just because". If my family situation and my health ever let me, I'm going to work more on the farm. I don't much care what we do at camp any more. I'm just going to be sociable and have something to do.

We've been so dry here the past two months that planting anything would be a waste of time...

(With apologies to Cappy as he's got it way worse.)

cow peas worked miracles for me when I was in those 2 deer lease close to cappy's farm so I can attest, some deer does have a taste for them peas. This however might be geographical. Some of my NC mountain buddies swore by apples, in my travels up in the NC mountains I seen deer feeding on apples but in that that low country SC lease I never got a danged deer to stop for apples in the past....

Oh I don't doubt for a minute that deer are indeed geographical in what they eat, just like we are. I bet your deer would eat boiled peanuts, for example. Ours won't touch 'em.:toothy

Ours like grits! ;)

Boiled peanuts, another southern delicacy, if they wont eat it I sure will!!!!!

Our mares eat oats and our does eat oats, but our little lambs eat ivy!
and a kid'll eat ivy too!

Wouldn't you?


BKB