Food Plot Success during the drought
This year the Midwest has seen the one of the worst droughts in recent history. The farmers are in desperate need of crop assistance. The corn and beans in Southern Wisconsin and Mid Iowa and Central Illinois look absolutely pitiful to say the least. Ponds all around our area are drying at an alarming rate. It's really sad to see.
When we started to get serious about the timing regarding planting our Whitetailed Deer Food Plots, we discussed waiting until the drought was nearing it's end and the rains came back. Then we collectively compared our schedules and it was clear that food plot planting had to happen around the 3rd week in July or not at all. So we loaded up and headed for Van Riper. We arrived only to find that our old 1965 Massey Ferguson T-35 farm tractor was running ( barely ) on 3 cylinders and without an intact head gasket. Bummer ! So we called the local implement dealer and rented a sweet John Deere 2640 with a 12 foot disc. Back on track, we disced up the fields twice.
Now, 2 weeks prior we had gone to camp to mow the fields and we sprayed round up twice. Great Tip!! Spray twice. The grass was so dead it looked like Arizona. So when we hit the fields with the disc the ground turned into screened topsoil. It was perfect. Thanks to the incredibly dry conditions, the soil just fell apart. We hardly had to drag / prepare the soil prior to seeding.
A rocky start to the Food Plot session to put it mildly, but we got phase 1 done.
We planted the next day with Big Rack Trophy Products Fall / Winter Extreme and we topped it off with local feed mill fertilizer. We used 10-10-10 this year because we were afraid to burn out the seed if the rains didn't come. The neighbors also planted that weekend. Now for the good part. No sooner than we got done planting and fertilizing our 4 acres did it rain!! and it rained for three days after that. A long slow moving soaker rain front. It was perfect!!
We were back at Van Riper this past weekend and the photos on our FaceBook page show just how lucky we were with our timing. Come visit our FaceBook page and let us know what you think.
The moral of this story = Luck, patience and persistence pays off !!
Bob Nash
Van Riper Hunt Camp
Co-Founder
www.deercampnetwork.com
