stand site preparation

[msbadger]

Hi guys....not even close to you...NY and here it's...it's wet or soggy..... grey clay and rock..... move 10ft and sand and rock....hill country....any how....the ...hhmm "secret" ingrediant in WTH. Extreme is burnnet...I bought some to put in with my jumbo clover... alfalfa ...chicory plot.....man it has taken off and deer are hitting it more than the alfalfa....sooo Goggle burnett...(not sure which sp is right) you may want to check it out..........

[Legnip]

Our treestands are an evolution. Each year we spend a week in the woods with chainsaws and hand tools trying to extend or add new shooting lanes. Our timber is too thick not to cut and manage it. The shooting lanes would grow up too thick to see in two years.

[burnnurse1]

Passin,  with the no plow do you just throw it out on the ground without any topsoil covering? I've seen it but never tried it. Was always leary of seeds that you don't sow into the ground due to our weather conditions, birds, etc. But if you have pretty good success with it I might give it a shot since we pretty much hunt the same terrain. we got some pretty good showers at the house friday but didn't get hardly a drop at the camp. ya'll get any of the rain? I got my camera put out Friday on a pretty good crossing. We got some really good pictures of some nice deer last season that, to my knowledge, are still out there. Anxious to see what it picks up. Put my feeders out this weekend as well. Bought 5, 40# bags of corn for 6.99 a bag at academy sports in s'port. With gas prices and everything else going up, this deer season is going to break me!!! One more thing... have you heard when rifle season opens in our area? I saw a tentative schedule on LDWF's website that shows it opening Oct. 25th. Better get out the short sleeves and mosquito dope if this holds true!!

[passin through]

Burn --- I do generally disk when planting NoPlow.  I'm kinda leary of no till planting myself.  The best success I ever had with it went kind like this:  2 loads of poultry litter, disking, drag for a flat seed bed, seed, drag again.  You really don't want to push it in the ground more than a 1/4" or so.  Even with out this though I still thing it will work good.  We scratched up a old logset last year with a hayrake and broadcast it across there with some trip 13 and it did very well.  Word of caution though, don't expect much until the first frost,(something to do with bringing the sugars up in the leaves/stems) mine was knee high and deer wern't touching it  so I added a feeder to the mix --then it dipped below 32 degrees and my whole plot just about disappeared in a week or so--- luckily it keeps right on growing and has long term appeal.  We killed a total of 5 deer from that plot that year and there were two gobblers taken while working hens in it's vicinity that spring.  We got our first rain today and I hope it goes on for weeks![:D]
I spent all day yesterday putting out cameras, spraying round up and generally piddling around the lease.  I did not notice that schedule change on the website until you mentioned it --- Wow!  Every year it seems they change a reg or two to increase harvests.  I think its good but the Thermacell is gonna be kicked on you can bet.  Corn's gonna be outrageous this year.  I generally try to buy it by the 55gal barrel and where we where paying $20 each 2 years ago and 25 each last year I'm hearing $40 this year.  Yuck[:-]

[burnnurse1]

Dude, I think we've hijacked this thread!! I am going to defininately try the noplow. There are some chicken houses down the road that I get some litter from. Do you hunt a lease or family land? We only hunt about 400 acres of family land but the most hunters you will have out at any time will be 4, so we've got a pretty good hunter per acre ratio. Send me a pm sometime and maybe we can get in a hunt. Since we're neighbors and all [:D] 

[passin through]

Please let me know how you like it!  I've really enjoyed using it since about 2003.  If you go online and order one of thier sample kits they'll sign you up as a field tester.  I've never bought anything direct from them but they send me thier quarterly mag every few months anyhow.  We hunt a lease of about 10k acres my family and some others started surrounding the area where we live and farm.  We still retain about 25 % of the original families from 20 years ago and we've added a little acerage here and there, but overall the original is still the core.  Our ratio hunter per acre is better during some parts of the season than others.  During bow its fabulous(we've only got about 14 total that even own bows including the kids), still season is kinda packed due to every body being there and few folks really wanting to get where its too thick(avg of about 40 or so guns in the woods on the weekends).  December or dog season has less hunters actually on stands but still quite a few running hounds on the weekends(probly about 30 is max that shows up to eat lunch).  Late muzzleloader and bow the place is just about a ghost town except for a very few die hards.

Its now been raining for 3 days here and I am loving it!  I do worry though the round up I put out this weekend may not have taken all that well before the bottom fell out[8|]

[msbadger]

Well all plots are doing well...the main ones...did loose a couple to flooding and since it has rained EVERY single day for months.....I put out round up on an area 2x's a month ago and finally every thing died....I scraped off excess thatch...and turned over and removed the big rocks in a 50yrd x 30yrd bottle neck....its at the end of a clover plot ...surrounded by apples and brambles and mulberry trees....it has a pine grouping on the woods edge...I'll place a ladder stand to the east directly next to one of the bigger pines....just inside the woods on the other side I'll place a ground blind in front of a wall of brush....this is all in front of .... a wet area(small pond) with all the rain it's stayed a few feet deep and 50ft x 20 ft......
  I'm liming /fertalizing tomorrow if it doesn't rain tonight and then...I'm planting buckwheat and top dressing with either turnips or perhaps a clover ...still thinking...the deer are hitting the buckwheat plots in the oak flat hard ...over seed that with rape I had left over from last year...this whole set up is 200yrds south of the goats barn and next to their pasture...My buck is stinking things up BAD...the does are in heat and I hobbled him so he can't breed them too early....Huge deer tracks in the loose soil tells me I should be sitting pretty come Oct...[:)]