Food plots in Nov

Here is what our food plots looked like in Nov. We planted them in early Aug & didn't have any rain til mid-sep, still some of the seeds germinated and those plants grew really tall & big. The other stuff filled in nice when they finally got rain in mid-sep. There are 2 seed mixes in the plots. One mix was winter rye, white clover mix & winter peas (didn't grow at all) & the other mix was PT turnip & groundhog radish mix. In one plot we did just a big square with a small tail this plot was 2/3 rye mix and 1/3 brassica, the other was a small square and then a bunch of lanes that were about 100 yards long creating trails. This worked out well and we watched a buck one night go & check all the lanes to see if there were any deer in them, whereas the square plot when we saw deer to it they would walk up the edge and leave because they could see the whole thing. From now on when at all possible we will break up the plots so the deer have to move more, making killing them easier!! The deer have really eaten the winter rye down on that part and the clover is coming in strong but is really small yet, they will be hammering that in the spring/summer as it grows bigger.

View of square food plot, the right part is brassica's & left is the rye mix which they have hammered, it looks like it was mowed.

View from the stand of food plot with lanes, rt side is winter rye mix, left side it radish/turnip mix.


Big buck coming down one of the lanes checking for does


View down one of the lanes


Ground hog radish


Purple top turnip

Layout of kill

Here is the layout of the kill.

Close in food plot

Here are a couple pics from the video when I was close to killing him in the food plot.

Ross IL 9 Point

I was able to kill this buck on the morning of 11-11-11, it was the 4th encounter we had with him during the week and finally we were able to close the deal. He was a scrapper he had broke off one of his brow tines, G4 and the end of his main beam. Hopefully Brent runs into the buck he tangled with and can put some lead in him!! I also included a trail cam picture of him before he was all broke up.

Briana's doe & early Oct trl cams

So we took Brent's daughter out for the IL youth season again this year, last year she killed a 7 point about an hour into her first morning ever hunting. This year on opening morning she passed on a small 5 point and a doe. In the evening we sat on one of our food plots and she killed a doe. This doe came out about an hour before dark, but she kept waiting to see if a buck would show up. Although several more does showed up a buck never did, so with just enough camera light left she shot this big ole' doe. It was fun to be behind the camera catching it all!!



Here are a few pics of bucks we got on trl camera.






Here is 2 picks of a funky buck, his right side is a big fork with beam below it.

Trail cam Pics

So this last time we hung the camera down in IL didn't go so well either. We kind of rigged up the camera since the ground was so hard we couldn't get a steak into the ground deep enough to stay up. We tied the pole to a branch we cut down that was laying on the ground, as the branch settled the wind blew it cause the camera to point higher & higher up, by the end we weren't really getting any pictures because in order for the deer to trigger the sensor it was too far from the camera. Oh well. Here are a couple of pictures that show the little bit of growth in the food plot (not much since they haven't had any rain) and then a cool picture of a doe we are training to walk on her back legs.
One of the first pics where you see some growth.


Last picture of food plot growth, the left side it a turnip & radish mix, the right side is winter rye, winter peas & clover mix.
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Doe on back legs.

Few trail cam pictures

Here are a couple bucks we got on trail cams in early August. The location of the camera was not very good, so I think we are lucky to even get these. Now we have it on a food though so we should get tons of great pics and be able to watch the plot grow!!