Deer season is over, time to start for next year.

[bernie]

Since the season is now over, it is time to begin preparing for next year. Have any of you started yet? Net year I am going to have large food plot of soybeans in a hard to reach area. I believe this is going to be difficult to do, but could well be worth it.

I am also setting up a new deer rifle based on a K-31 Swiss with a scout mount and a long eye relief scope pushing a 150 grained spitzer at a moderate velocity.

Any of you planning changes for next year?

 

[Kurt S.]

I might be looking for a new lease. I was up at my east Texas lease a few weeks ago to pull the battery out of my feeder and the timber company that owns the land has been logging the heck out of the entire lease. The area looks like the pictures of that 1908 Tunguska meteorite explosion in Siberia, there's timber lying everywhere!

The loggers also appeared to have knocked down a feeder at another hunter's stand about 300 yards from mine.

I am not sure what effect all the logging activity is going to have on the deer herd or the hog population but I suspect it won't be a positive one.

 

[M Jager]

Well I am getting a .41 mag here very shortly so next year may be my first for hunting with a handgun. I'm pretty excited about that.
Other than that not much is new.
Matt

 

[MeekandMild]

I am not sure what effect all the logging activity is going to have on the deer herd or the hog population but I suspect it won't be a positive one.

Deer like cutover sites. Trouble is that timber companies use herbicides to suppress hardwood growth, otherwise a person could go in and sow clover and perennial grass seeds.

I've got access this year to a field which was cutover a few years ago and has head-high pines. I'm going to sow all the areas which have bare spots.

 

[Kurt S.]

Thanks, M & M. I've had this lease about 4 years now. I was more used to hunting west Texas, where I only had to share the land with great big red cows (red Brangus? or Limousin?), prickly pear, and a few scrub oaks and mesquites; not logging trucks and chainsaws. Nobody sowed food plots out there at all; if there was ever enough rain to get clover/grasses to grow the tumbleweeds would just overgrow it.

Come to think of it, I have seen a good number of deer running through the other cutover areas on this and the neighboring lease the past few years. I don't think the pulpwood companies been too religious about applying herbicides, because there's a lot of hardwoods, brush undergrowth, and weeds everywhere on the lease including the most newly cut areas. Well, at least I can hope.

I've heard somewhere that blackeyed peas make for a good food plot.

I sure don't like the idea of loading feeders all year round; but toting 50 lb sacks of deer corn around every couple of weeks during our lovely mild east Texas summers might do wonders for the old waistline. Could pack the old Model 629 while I'm there and maybe take home a piggie or 2. But that subject might be a whole 'nother thread.

 

[MeekandMild]

Kurt do you have a county Co-Op in your area? They can probably tell you what is easy to plant and maintain in your climate. Black eyed pea is an annual legume which won't reseed itself; clover is also a legume which is easier to set up as a recurring plant. Wheat grass will seed itself but most types of wheat won't. Think also of huckleberries, blackberries, native plums, paw-paws, mayhaws and especially persimmons! Hickory and maple trees are good for a few years, because the deer will nibble on their sweet bark until they get too big and tough.

Here are links I found about Texas deer food plots: http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/conserve/publications/media/food_plots.pdf
http://ckwri.tamuk.edu/PDF/bulletin3.pdf

I would caution you though the popular plant Lespedeza is a foreign plant and crowds out native plants. It isn't as bad a kudzu. Sure deer will eat these foreign weeds, but native plants are better. The only foreign plants I like are chinese chestnuts and that is only because native chestnuts were wiped out by the blight and chinese ones are blight resistant.

Finally, one thing I learned about here on THR is the use of soda ash from the Co-Op to make into a salt lick. I haven't done it yet, but will probably put some out this spring.

 

[Kurt S.]

Thanks again, M & M. Those are some great links. As a matter of fact I believe I pass the Polk County Co-op on the way up to the lease. I'm sure that mayhaw grow wild around there because I'm always seeing little roadside stands selling mayhaw jelly along Hwy 59.

I believe the people I was talking to may have had blackeyed peas and cowpeas confused.

I put salt blocks out last year, and it seemed like animals were coming around, but not while I was there. At the west Texas lease they used to put out big old blocks for the cattle.