Top_Heavy's World

Quality Deer Management is so often looked at as harvesting a few does, passing yearling and 1 1/2 year old bucks and maybe planting a food plot. While all of those steps are in a good management plan, they stop way short of what we are trying to accomplish on our farms. I jumped in the truck after work on Friday and drove 5 hours to the farm of choice for the weekend. While this may seem extreme to some, it is an annual ordeal for a few hardcore deer hunters. The plan is to burn the older switchgrass and native grass plantings, we hope to get 6 burns done Saturday. This will create a flush of new growth, stimulate germination of some native grasses, kill the woody materials trying to get established, and remove most of the 2 or 3 year old, dead material that is now thick enough to inhibit growth. The old stems and leaves will nourish the soil as well. The winter wheat, planted last fall as green forage for the winter will be fertilized in areas it is going to be allowed to seed, and ignored for now if not going to be left. The layout or design must be prepared for the 100 or so acres of food plots to be planted towards the end of the month. Corn, beans, peas, sorghum, wheat, beats and turnips, brassica, chickory and rye will all be planted at specific stages this year. The Alfalfa and clover need to be checked and fertilizer needs to be added this weekend, and all of the tillable soil needs to be walked to find any shed antlers before they puncture a tractor tire. Our weekend is going to be packed, so I will try to report progress each evening.
A forgotten part of QDM, in my mind, is practicing with the method of harvest. Lets face it, we need to manage the herd size and density, so we will be removing excess animals this fall. Practicing with bow, rifle, muzzleloader or pistol, is very important. Wounded and lost game are not easily figured into the management plan, so as ethical hunters we need to put as much energy into practice as we do scouting, ground prep, stand prep and population counts. I hope to get some rifle practice on the range in the morning before the wind gets up. I don't like the forcast, warm and windy, upto 25mph winds, but we will figure it out as the day goes on.