Blog Entries from the WeHuntSC.com blogging crew
If you?re around the Greenville area, or want to make a road trip in April, be sure to check out Trinity Baptist Church?s 2010 Sportsmen Fellowship! Door prizes include:
The Sportsmen?s Fellowship will feature guest speaker Frank Addington Jr. aka ?Aspirin Buster? + many vendors will be present with displays!
Event Info:
Location:
Trinity Baptist Church 324 Belton Dr. Williamston, SC 29697 864-847-5582 www.trinity-bc.org
Date: April 17, 2010 Cost: Tickets are $5 per person Time: Doors open @ 11:00 am - Meal served @ 1:00 pm For More Information: Call: 864-847-5582 EVENT FLYER
Regards,
Clint
In case you haven?t been following along or are new to the site, I?d like to catch you up to speed. We are in the early stages of our ?Food Plot Journey?. Up until now we have selected our areas where we are going to plant food plots and collected our soil samples. The WeHuntSC.com Team is going to plant several Tecomate Seed Food Plot products in various locations. Some of these locations will be remote locations where we install the food plots with a GroundHog MAX and others are tractor accessible.
The Readouts It didn?t take long for our soil samples to return back from the Agricultural Service Laboratory at Clemson. The data on the soil sample readout was very detailed and informative. We received a general information sheet that helped us to understand what the data in our readouts meant. There were summary sections for ?Soil Test Results?, ?Understanding Your Soil Sample?, ?Nutrients? etc. So even a web guy can make sense of what is going on with this readout (kind of!). Along with the general ?help you understand the readout? sheet was another sheet titled the ?Soil Report? which contained the actual results from our soil.
When we sent the soil samples in, we had to tell them what we were going to be planting so that they would best know what to recommend. The information section is structured in tables and has 2 columns denoting the specific analysis and the result of the analysis. The current pH and levels of Phosphorous, Potassium, Calcium, Magnesium, Zinc, Boron, Copper, Sodium, Sulfur, Soluble Salts, Nitrate Nitrogen, & Organic Matter were all shown in this table. Below this section was a section of calculations which discussed the acidity of the soil, the base saturation, and more scientific stuff that I can?t really spell correctly even with spell-check! Then followed the recommended amount of lime (in pounds) that need to be added to the soil with other nutrient information recommendations based off our proposed type of plant that we?re planting?in this case, a legume.
The top-most category on the sheet was the Soil Ph. With pH, the magic # is 7. The goal is to try to be as close to 7 as you can because a pH of 7 offers the best growing environments for plants. In the first readout, the pH of the soil was 7.0 so we are right on track with it. This soil in the area of this specific food plot has been managed along with having been farmed before. Some of the other readouts on the property were not as close and a lime application was recommended. Since we are planting legumes there was no recommendation for nitrogen because the plants will produce their own once the root system is established. This nitrogen balancing act is unique to legumes. In order for the plants to produce their own nitrogen they must be properly inoculated, especially in areas where they have not been grown before. If inoculants are not used, the plants may not properly develop a root system and a poor stand may result. Check with your local feed and seed store to get the correct inoculants. Make sure to check the expiration date and use more than what the minimum recommendation is on the package to make sure you get enough. For more information on inoculants, see The inoculants .PDF
Now that we know what we need to add to the soil, we?ll probably bush-hog the field and get it ready to be limed. When we take more steps?we?ll document them here! Regards, Clint
The WeHuntSC.com team is excited to announce that Tufline?s GroundHog MAX is getting involved with WeHuntSC.com in more ways than one! What is a GroundHog MAX you might ask? A GroundHog MAX is an awesome attachment for 4-wheelers used to create remote food plots. And by ?attachment?, I don?t mean a ?pull-behind?! The GroundHog MAX attaches directly under the back end of an ATV. Since the attachment can be flipped and carried in ?transport mode?, and is no wider than the 4-wheeler, so anywhere you can get the 4-wheeler?you can have a food plot. What?s probably best is for me to show you a video of it instead of trying to describe it in words. Check out what I mean?
Embedding that video sure saves me time trying to explain how it works! Now that all you deer hunting, ATV owners are drooling, I?ll tell you how can you get one. There are 3 ways that I know of? either win the ?Buck of the Year? competition next hunting season, go to your local Tractor Supply (after the first of April), or travel on over to www.ATVPlowPlus.com and place your order online. The thing that we deer hunters will love about the GroundHog MAX is that it provides the possibility of creating food plots way back deep in the woods?that?s right?exactly where the big bucks like them! I believe the GroundHog MAX will change the way hunters view food plots and food plot creation as the GroundHog MAX opens the door to new opportunies. As you can see below, the WeHuntSC.com team is already busy getting our remote food plot underway and yes, we are using the GroundHog MAX to do so!
Hunters Night Out If you read these blog entries, then you know that Mike Lee from Tecomate Seed is going to give a presentation at our ?Hunter?s Night Out? when he comes up in the Spring. Keith Frachiseur, the inventor of the GroundHog MAX, has also agreed to speak that same day. As I mentioned earlier, Adam Smith ([email protected]) is spearheading the ?Food Plot Journey? and our ?Hunter?s Night Out?. We will provide more information as the time gets closer, but just know that Tecomate Seed & the GroundHog MAX representatives will both be on hand to speak and we?re looking into getting food there as well! So all in all, GroundHog MAX will sponsor next year?s ?Buck of the Year? competition, co-sponsor our ?Food Plot Journey?, and will present at our ?Hunter?s Night Out? and we are glad they are on board. Regards, Clint
This past weekend we took to the woods and shot some HD videos that will be edited, produced, and come to the site soon. Trying to take myself serious in front of the camera proved to be a little difficult for me (and may prove difficult for you as well). Though, one of the neat parts of how we?re working our videos at this point is that we ask site visitors to suggest video ideas and contribute information to videos that we may not have included. We ended several segments saying ?If you do it differently or have something interesting to contribute, just let us know and we may come out and film you?. As the goal of this site is to be an information hub rather than a site to promote videos of the WeHuntSC.com team, we hope to get out and around the state to get video segments from different areas and see different ways of doing things. So be sure to let us know if you have any ideas or insight for future videos. If you aren?t use to having a big microphone hanging over your head, light reflectors in your face, and a camera right on you?it can be a little intimidating. We went around and shot some videos on stand placement, stand location, trail markers, and sign in the woods! Whenever they get finished, we?ll publicize them on the site. I?m really excited to see what Jason and Yellow Cape Communications can create. I know whatever it is will be quality as I?ve seen a lot of his work before + he shot video of the WeHuntSC.com girls on the site. Hopefully he?ll reduce the glare off my bald head! With that said, all I we can do for now is wait on the edit? more to come later. Regards, Clint
I?ve had hunters ask me which video cameras we use for our videos on the site. Well, that is a question with a two-sided answer. For any video that we shoot HD in 1090DPI that will be edited and professionally produced, our camera guy from YellowCapeCommunications.com brings his gear down and sets up shop. I can?t even begin to describe his cameras as they are every expensive and have more model numbers than I can remember. If you are interested in that level of camera, then you may want to contact [email protected] . I will tell you that everywhere those cameras go, so goes some source of lighting. So if you?re interested in getting into high quality video production, you must also get interested in learning about lighting!
Anyway, for our ?in the field? videos, several of the WeHuntSC.com team members carry ?Flips?. We carry them in our hunting bags and/or pockets because you never know what you might find in the great outdoors. Most often, we use these to shoot short videos that we embed in blogs or for videos that we post on the site. I go back and forth between shooting videos on my IPhone and my Flip. With my IPhone I can shoot a video and upload it straight to YouTube from a tree stand or really anywhere, but the quality of the IPhone video is not nearly as close as the quality of the Flip.
The Flip The specific model we use is the Flip Ultra HD which sells for around $189. The Flip Video Ultra HD is a small, lightweight video recorder that can fit in your pocket. It is very easy to use and only has a few buttons on the camera. You don?t have to be a ?tech-head? to understand how to use this thing. It has 8GB (120 minutes) worth of memory and you can play back the videos you shot on the internal screen on the back of the Flip for quick viewing. The Flip comes with rechargeable batteries, starts up quickly, and can record within moments. One of the features I like most is the ?Turn Sound Off? feature. I turn the sound off so that every time I click a button it?s not beeping out in the woods/swamp/tree stand. The flip has a USB port (the plug that plugs into your computer from the camera) on the side of the flip. You simply click the button and it opens up and it directly interfaces with your computer. The software you need to get your video off the flip is right there on the flip itself. If you own multiple computers, you can install it on however many you like. The program you install lets you edit and share the videos. For our purposes we use it to sometimes give our movies intros and credits at the ends of them. The software also allows you to merge multiple clips together and edit the length of the movies as well. (See an example of a video created with the flip using intros, merging clips, and credits here) Again, its user interface is very intuitive and simplistic in comparison to standard video suite software, so it?s nothing to be scared of. Once we shoot the videos, load them into FlipShare software for editing, we export and then upload to YouTube. Uploading the HD videos to YouTube does take a little bit longer, but the clarity in the videos makes it worth it in my opinion.
Benefits
Drawbacks
So, if you?re looking for a relatively cheap video camera that shoots HD and can fit in your pocket?look no further. As you see on the site, we love to integrate YouTube videos and you can contribute yours on the ?Game? pages. Whether you get a flip or not, we encourage you to start posting some videos! Regards, Clint
Do you remember the blog entry ? A long, cold winter ? that I wrote back in the middle of December? The gist of the blog entry was that nature gives signals about the upcoming winter. I had talked with a gentlemen about the large amount of acorns that were present this past deer hunting season and he told me that was a sign that we were going to have a long and cold winter. So I went and researched and it turns out there are many different signs that outdoorsman say can predict an upcoming difficult winter.
Well, so far, I would say that the gentlemen?s prediction is right on track. We?ve had more snow than I can remember in a while. It has definitely been colder, (and rekindled ardent conversation on global warming all on the news!), snow has reached parts of the coast that haven?t seen snow in a long time, and the groundhog predicted 6 more weeks of winter. It does seem that nature?s forecast of a long cold winter was accurate.
Here in Rock Hill we got 3 ? 3.5 inches of snow and Pageland got 4 ? 5 inches.
If you?ve got any neat pics from the snow in your location, send them to me and I?ll post them to this blog.