The before & after shot

The WeHuntSC.com team headed back out to do some more work on a remote food plot that we?re installing as part of our Food Plot Journey.  It has finally started warming back up in our neck of the woods and I?m glad it has.  In between wedding showers, parties, the weekends of honey-do?s + flower/tuxedo/ring/invitation/ selections, birthday celebrations, and all the recent snow, getting a weekend to work has been some slim pickings.  With all of the business, it was good to get out and do some work and try to be productive again. 

As part of our Food Plot Journey, we are planting several food plots for the upcoming deer season.  Most of these food plots are located in fields that tractors can easily access.  With this easy tractor access to the food plot areas, it?s not hard to plow the dirt up, spread lime, or get the seed out.  Though, with a remote food plot, we specifically place smaller food plots in thicker, denser areas where tractors could never reach. Just to get to these locations is difficult sometimes.  For this particular food plot, we had to cross a creek, a few mud holes, and ride through the woods for a good ways just to reach the stand location. As you are probably aware, deer like cover and so placing food plots deep in the woods is just fine by them.  In some ways we are taking a food source to them instead of trying to get them to come to our food source. 

Taking the food source to the deer incurs a little work on the hunter?s part though.  I guess there are some prices to pay in order install a food plot back deep in the woods.  Though, the prices you pay mostly come at the expense of your physical labor.  Some areas are more open and naturally lend themselves to having a food plot installed in their locations whereas other areas may require a little more work.  In our case, this area required some work.  We spent a total of three days working on this remote food plot.  This area is situated in some planted pines where a lumber crew had previously come in and thinned out the pines a few years back.  The part that took the longest was cutting down the volunteer saplings that had taken up where the pines use to be.  We cut these down and eventually had to get their root systems out as well because the pointed stubs in the ground are prime suspects for puncturing the tires of a 4-wheeler.  Rakes, axes, bush-axes, sheers, clippers, shovels, chainsaws, you name it we used them all.  Over the course of working out there I caught poison ivy once, dulled a chainsaw blade twice, and had several blisters on my hands.  I think Will may have pulled an ab when he bent over once as well!  Though, I guess typing on a computer every day at work doesn?t really prepare my hands for this kind of labor either!  All in all, we had to put in some hours of work to get ground ready to be disked and I?m not sure if we could have done it without Sam Mungo in the previous week. 

Since we had cleared the ground, it was time for Adam to come in with the GroundHog MAX and throw some dirt around.  As we?ve mentioned before, the GroundHog MAX is an attachment (not a pull behind) that attaches directly beneath an ATV.  People have asked me ?How well does that thing really work? (with an emphasis on the word ?REALLLY?) and after today, I can confidently tell you that it works very well.  You?ll see the video of it in action below. 

The area where we are installing this food plot has some thick clay beneath the surface and I was interested to see how the GroundHog MAX would handle the clay land.  Another note that I mentioned in the video and will mention here is that Adam?s 4-wheeler is a 2-wheel drive.  The GroundHog MAX would probably do even better with a 4-wheel drive, but regardless we were still able to get the job done with the 2-wheel drive ATV.  We ran the GroundHog MAX lightly for a good while to get the top-soil broken up some and then later we dropped it down lower to get more traction with the soil.  As you?ll see in the below video, we were able to get the dirt turned up well, plenty well enough to get some seed in the ground.

Apologies... for some reason I was shouting into the Flip Video Recorder - I'll try not to shout at you in future videos

With the ground now disked up and soil overturned, we are now ready to come back in and put some lime down.  (NOTE: We know the ratio of pounds per acre of lime to put down based off the soil sample result that we previously had returned to us from our local Clemson agricultural extension.) Due to the snow and the aforementioned factors of a busy life, we are probably a little late getting the lime down as the soil sample reports indicated that the lime needs to be in place 3 ? 6 months before planting.  Lime needs time to work and in this case of our remote food plot, we?re a little late getting it down.  The pH in this specific location is 5.4 and (as previously mentioned in the soil sample blog) we are shooting for a pH of 7.  Thus, we need to get some lime down and some fertilizer in hopes of getting the soil as close to 7 as possible.  We may not get it to 7 quickly, but as we keep working this food plot the pH will get closer and closer to 7 every time we put down more lime.  So, this will be a work in progress and a continued learning experience.  Thanks to the guys for coming out and helping get this accomplished.

Next up will be a blog entry about putting some lime down.  I continue to learn more about food plot installation, management, and Mother Nature in general.  This time I also learned a little more about the GroundHog MAX.
 

*** Be sure to check out our Hunter?s Night Out that will take place on May 1st, 2010 where the inventor of the GroundHog MAX will be on hand speaking along with representatives from Tecomate Seed & QDMA.

Regards,


Clint