BigJon
06-15-2006, 11:38 AM
When most of us think about the word “maintenance”, it’s usually in the context of equipment. We perform preventative maintenance on our ATVs, firearms and other items so that they will last as long as intended and perform optimally throughout their lives.
The same is true of our hunting equipment. Consider climbing stands, for example. Most folks realize that heading out for an opening-day deer hunt with a climber that has not been properly maintained is not a smart move; it can be extremely dangerous and, at best, is likely to leave us standing at the base of a tree in the pre-dawn hours and wondering why the stand, which had worked so well just last winter, is now rusted shut or missing parts that have somehow vanished over the summer. Taking time at the end of deer season to thoroughly clean, inspect and repair our stands is not particularly fun, but we know that we have to do it – that is, if we expect them to be in good working order when we get ready to use them again the following fall.
But, I want to take this train of thought one step further and toss a hypothetical your way to make a point. What if you knew that performing season-end maintenance on your climbing stand would not only help prevent problems but also actually make it grow and improve itself over the summer? What if you knew that by giving your beaten-up old climber a little end-of-winter TLC you’d pull it out next fall and find that it had repaired the little rip in its seat cover, given itself a new coat of camouflage paint and replaced its worn safety strap? Or, better yet, what if you knew you’d find your old climber gone and a newer, better model in its place? Wouldn’t you be even more diligent about performing post-season maintenance on your climbing stand?
I can hear you mulling the proposition over. “Now let me get this straight – you’re saying that if I perform a little maintenance at the end of deer season, my stand would repair or even upgrade itself by spring? And that it would do all the work on its own? Well, SURE! BRING IT ON! I’d be NUTS not to put in the effort!”
Of course, even the best off-season maintenance is probably not going to make our climbing stands any bigger or better, but we do it anyway, and that just begs the question: Why wouldn’t we perform off-season maintenance if we DID know that that the thing we were maintaining could improve itself as a result?
Apply that same logic to the deer you’ll be hunting next fall, and you’ll see that making the effort to improve your deer herd in the spring is just common sense. The bottom line is that if we want our deer to be as healthy as they can be and grow the biggest racks their genetic blueprints will allow, just heading to the camp for a work weekend or two in the fall is not going to get it done. It’s going to take diligence in the off season too, and early spring is an especially critical time for a number of reasons.
By now, most folks are aware that bucks need a LOT of protein in the spring and summer antler-growing season if they are going to maximize their antler-growth potential. Unfortunately, native vegetation rarely provides the levels of protein bucks need to really fulfill that potential. Planting Imperial Power Plant in the spring can provide a massive amount of high-protein forage right when deer need it most.
Some spring / summer annual blends consist of a mixture of warm season forages that work together to offer an ultra high-protein food source. Look for one that also has structural plants in the blend so that the forage species will grow up and not just across the ground, which can help the forage survive heavy grazing.
Like any other agricultural crop, perennial food plots should be maintained according to guidelines if they are to perform as well and live as long as they were designed to, and early spring is a great time to get started. Perennial maintenance includes, among other things, controlling grass and weeds, and the best time to start control efforts is in early in the spring, just after green up.
Grass and broadleaf weeds can be controlled in many perennial plots with selective herbicides. Most of these, though, are often referred to in the industry as “small-plant” herbicides, meaning that they are designed to work best at controlling “seedling” grass and weeds - those that have not matured beyond 6-12 inches in height. So for best results, spray early in the spring, right after grass and weeds start growing but before they mature. Note that not all selective herbicides are appropriate for all forages, so READ AND FOLLOW ALL LABEL DIRECTIONS!!!!
Many perennial forages also benefit from mowing in the spring and fall, which can help keep them even more lush, nutritious and attractive, but mowing also provides another benefit – if it is started in the early spring. That benefit is weed control - mowing can break the re-seeding cycle of many upright, annual weeds. In order for this to work, though, weeds must be mowed before they flower, or make seeds, and that means that mowing must be started early in the spring. (Do not mow when conditions are unusually hot or dry, and if you plan on using a combination of mowing and herbicides, be sure not to mow or spray within one week of each other.)
Also, spring is a great time to plant perennial plots. If soil pH is at optimum level in the spring, planting a perennial in the spring can be a great option in most areas of the country, especially the farther north you go. Certain legumes tend to germinate at a temperature lower than that required for many native weed and grass seeds to germinate. Also, perennials planted in the early spring will provide deer critical nutrition during the antler-growing period of spring and summer and then be fully established and ready to provide maximum attraction during the fall hunting season.
Fall is also a great time to plant Imperial perennial blends, especially in the Deep South. Planting perennials in the fall gives the forages’ roots additional time to fully mature before they have to tackle their first hot summer, and with the unexpectedly severe droughts that have befallen many areas of the country over the past few years, the extra drought resistance this provides can be a life saver. Also, perennials planted in the fall are available even earlier in the next year’s antler-growing season of spring and summer.
When it comes to planting forage perennials in the fall, the preceding spring is a great time to start getting the seedbed ready. Preparing a seedbed in the spring for a fall planting can offer some preparation options that may not always be available at other times of the year. Two of the most important relate to incorporation of lime, and grass and weed removal.
The first step in preparing your seedbed, whether you plan on planting in the spring or the fall, is to perform a soil test with a high-quality test kit that sends your soil off to a reputable lab for testing - don’t rely on one of those little probe or slurry testers because they aren’t consistently accurate.
If your soil-test report shows that your pH is low, lime should be incorporated (disced or rototilled) into the soil to raise it. If possible, this should be done several months prior to planting to give the more lime to time to raise pH. In the North, though, the ground may be too solidly frozen for lime to be incorporated during the winter months prior to recommended spring planting dates. Incorporating lime in the spring can be much easier, and doing so in the early spring will allow lime even more time to raise soil pH before a fall planting.
Also, preparing a seedbed in the spring allows additional options for removing grass and weeds during seed-bed preparation. Non-selective, glyphosate herbicides such as RoundUp can be a great way to remove grass and weeds from a seed bed prior to planting. These herbicides, though, must be applied to actively growing weeds in order to work, which means after spring green-up at the earliest. In some areas of the country, spring green up doesn’t arrive until toward the end of or even after the spring planting dates, and in those areas, spraying RoundUp before planting is simply not an option if spring planting is intended. By preparing the seed bed in the spring for a fall planting, though, these folks can use the spring and summer months to rid the seed bed’s surface of grass and weeds with RoundUp.
If you’re going to use RoundUp to remove grass and weeds during the spring and summer in preparation for a fall perennial planting, here are a couple of tips that will help you get the most out of your efforts: for best results, incorporate lime in the early spring, smooth the plot with a weighted drag or roller, and then allow grass and weeds to return. Once they’re a few inches tall, spray the seedbed with RoundUp, and then spot spray as needed throughout the rest of the spring and summer. Once you have tilled in your lime, smoothed the plot and started applying RoundUp, try not to till the soil again. That way, you’ll reduce the risk that you’ll re-infest the plot with grass and weeds from dormant seeds. Also, be sure to wait at least ten days after you last spray RoundUp before you plant, and always follow all label instructions on RoundUp or any other herbicide.
Making the effort in the spring to plant Power Plant, maintain your existing perennial plots and start preparing your seed beds for fall perennial plantings will reap big dividends. If you take those steps, you’ll be doing a LOT for the overall health of your deer. Even so, you still have one more step ahead of you if you intend to push your deer to the limit of their genetic potential. And, can you guess when the most important time to take that step is? That’s right - in the spring.
A buck’s hardened antler is about 55% minerals. Most areas of the country offer sufficient minerals for deer to survive but are lacking in one or more of the minerals vital to antler formation. Accordingly, if you’re planning to push your deer right to the top of their genetic potential, you’ll need to consider mineral supplementation.
Mineral supplementation needs to begin as early as possible. By fall, bucks will have shed the velvet from their antlers, and the antler-growing process will be at an end for the year. If you consider that the antler-growing season is of limited duration, and that a buck will always put his body back in shape after winter before he devotes his nutritional resources to antler formation in earnest, you can see how crucial it is that you start your supplementation efforts as early as possible - if you are going to help him build the best set of antlers. That means that the earlier in the spring you provide your bucks the minerals they need, the sooner they can focus more fully on the business of producing antlers, and the longer time they’ll have to build them.
Approach your selection of a deer mineral as an educated consumer. The minerals in a hardened antler are very specific, and they’re in precise ratios, so don’t fall into the trap of just putting out cattle mineral or putting out salt for your deer. Cattle minerals are great for cattle, but they are not optimum for deer – remember that cattle don’t have to grow a new sets of antlers every year. Salt does little to nothing nutritionally for deer. A hardened antler is only .03% - that’s only THREE ONE-THOUSANDTHS – salt, so before you buy a product labeled as a mineral supplement for deer, check the ingredient label to be sure that what you’re buying is really a useful mineral supplement for deer and not made up mostly of salt or sodium.
So, take a little time this spring to improve the quality of the deer you’ll be hunting next fall. Give it the same diligence you give to maintaining your hunting equipment. The benefits are definitely worth the effort.
Best,
Jon
The same is true of our hunting equipment. Consider climbing stands, for example. Most folks realize that heading out for an opening-day deer hunt with a climber that has not been properly maintained is not a smart move; it can be extremely dangerous and, at best, is likely to leave us standing at the base of a tree in the pre-dawn hours and wondering why the stand, which had worked so well just last winter, is now rusted shut or missing parts that have somehow vanished over the summer. Taking time at the end of deer season to thoroughly clean, inspect and repair our stands is not particularly fun, but we know that we have to do it – that is, if we expect them to be in good working order when we get ready to use them again the following fall.
But, I want to take this train of thought one step further and toss a hypothetical your way to make a point. What if you knew that performing season-end maintenance on your climbing stand would not only help prevent problems but also actually make it grow and improve itself over the summer? What if you knew that by giving your beaten-up old climber a little end-of-winter TLC you’d pull it out next fall and find that it had repaired the little rip in its seat cover, given itself a new coat of camouflage paint and replaced its worn safety strap? Or, better yet, what if you knew you’d find your old climber gone and a newer, better model in its place? Wouldn’t you be even more diligent about performing post-season maintenance on your climbing stand?
I can hear you mulling the proposition over. “Now let me get this straight – you’re saying that if I perform a little maintenance at the end of deer season, my stand would repair or even upgrade itself by spring? And that it would do all the work on its own? Well, SURE! BRING IT ON! I’d be NUTS not to put in the effort!”
Of course, even the best off-season maintenance is probably not going to make our climbing stands any bigger or better, but we do it anyway, and that just begs the question: Why wouldn’t we perform off-season maintenance if we DID know that that the thing we were maintaining could improve itself as a result?
Apply that same logic to the deer you’ll be hunting next fall, and you’ll see that making the effort to improve your deer herd in the spring is just common sense. The bottom line is that if we want our deer to be as healthy as they can be and grow the biggest racks their genetic blueprints will allow, just heading to the camp for a work weekend or two in the fall is not going to get it done. It’s going to take diligence in the off season too, and early spring is an especially critical time for a number of reasons.
By now, most folks are aware that bucks need a LOT of protein in the spring and summer antler-growing season if they are going to maximize their antler-growth potential. Unfortunately, native vegetation rarely provides the levels of protein bucks need to really fulfill that potential. Planting Imperial Power Plant in the spring can provide a massive amount of high-protein forage right when deer need it most.
Some spring / summer annual blends consist of a mixture of warm season forages that work together to offer an ultra high-protein food source. Look for one that also has structural plants in the blend so that the forage species will grow up and not just across the ground, which can help the forage survive heavy grazing.
Like any other agricultural crop, perennial food plots should be maintained according to guidelines if they are to perform as well and live as long as they were designed to, and early spring is a great time to get started. Perennial maintenance includes, among other things, controlling grass and weeds, and the best time to start control efforts is in early in the spring, just after green up.
Grass and broadleaf weeds can be controlled in many perennial plots with selective herbicides. Most of these, though, are often referred to in the industry as “small-plant” herbicides, meaning that they are designed to work best at controlling “seedling” grass and weeds - those that have not matured beyond 6-12 inches in height. So for best results, spray early in the spring, right after grass and weeds start growing but before they mature. Note that not all selective herbicides are appropriate for all forages, so READ AND FOLLOW ALL LABEL DIRECTIONS!!!!
Many perennial forages also benefit from mowing in the spring and fall, which can help keep them even more lush, nutritious and attractive, but mowing also provides another benefit – if it is started in the early spring. That benefit is weed control - mowing can break the re-seeding cycle of many upright, annual weeds. In order for this to work, though, weeds must be mowed before they flower, or make seeds, and that means that mowing must be started early in the spring. (Do not mow when conditions are unusually hot or dry, and if you plan on using a combination of mowing and herbicides, be sure not to mow or spray within one week of each other.)
Also, spring is a great time to plant perennial plots. If soil pH is at optimum level in the spring, planting a perennial in the spring can be a great option in most areas of the country, especially the farther north you go. Certain legumes tend to germinate at a temperature lower than that required for many native weed and grass seeds to germinate. Also, perennials planted in the early spring will provide deer critical nutrition during the antler-growing period of spring and summer and then be fully established and ready to provide maximum attraction during the fall hunting season.
Fall is also a great time to plant Imperial perennial blends, especially in the Deep South. Planting perennials in the fall gives the forages’ roots additional time to fully mature before they have to tackle their first hot summer, and with the unexpectedly severe droughts that have befallen many areas of the country over the past few years, the extra drought resistance this provides can be a life saver. Also, perennials planted in the fall are available even earlier in the next year’s antler-growing season of spring and summer.
When it comes to planting forage perennials in the fall, the preceding spring is a great time to start getting the seedbed ready. Preparing a seedbed in the spring for a fall planting can offer some preparation options that may not always be available at other times of the year. Two of the most important relate to incorporation of lime, and grass and weed removal.
The first step in preparing your seedbed, whether you plan on planting in the spring or the fall, is to perform a soil test with a high-quality test kit that sends your soil off to a reputable lab for testing - don’t rely on one of those little probe or slurry testers because they aren’t consistently accurate.
If your soil-test report shows that your pH is low, lime should be incorporated (disced or rototilled) into the soil to raise it. If possible, this should be done several months prior to planting to give the more lime to time to raise pH. In the North, though, the ground may be too solidly frozen for lime to be incorporated during the winter months prior to recommended spring planting dates. Incorporating lime in the spring can be much easier, and doing so in the early spring will allow lime even more time to raise soil pH before a fall planting.
Also, preparing a seedbed in the spring allows additional options for removing grass and weeds during seed-bed preparation. Non-selective, glyphosate herbicides such as RoundUp can be a great way to remove grass and weeds from a seed bed prior to planting. These herbicides, though, must be applied to actively growing weeds in order to work, which means after spring green-up at the earliest. In some areas of the country, spring green up doesn’t arrive until toward the end of or even after the spring planting dates, and in those areas, spraying RoundUp before planting is simply not an option if spring planting is intended. By preparing the seed bed in the spring for a fall planting, though, these folks can use the spring and summer months to rid the seed bed’s surface of grass and weeds with RoundUp.
If you’re going to use RoundUp to remove grass and weeds during the spring and summer in preparation for a fall perennial planting, here are a couple of tips that will help you get the most out of your efforts: for best results, incorporate lime in the early spring, smooth the plot with a weighted drag or roller, and then allow grass and weeds to return. Once they’re a few inches tall, spray the seedbed with RoundUp, and then spot spray as needed throughout the rest of the spring and summer. Once you have tilled in your lime, smoothed the plot and started applying RoundUp, try not to till the soil again. That way, you’ll reduce the risk that you’ll re-infest the plot with grass and weeds from dormant seeds. Also, be sure to wait at least ten days after you last spray RoundUp before you plant, and always follow all label instructions on RoundUp or any other herbicide.
Making the effort in the spring to plant Power Plant, maintain your existing perennial plots and start preparing your seed beds for fall perennial plantings will reap big dividends. If you take those steps, you’ll be doing a LOT for the overall health of your deer. Even so, you still have one more step ahead of you if you intend to push your deer to the limit of their genetic potential. And, can you guess when the most important time to take that step is? That’s right - in the spring.
A buck’s hardened antler is about 55% minerals. Most areas of the country offer sufficient minerals for deer to survive but are lacking in one or more of the minerals vital to antler formation. Accordingly, if you’re planning to push your deer right to the top of their genetic potential, you’ll need to consider mineral supplementation.
Mineral supplementation needs to begin as early as possible. By fall, bucks will have shed the velvet from their antlers, and the antler-growing process will be at an end for the year. If you consider that the antler-growing season is of limited duration, and that a buck will always put his body back in shape after winter before he devotes his nutritional resources to antler formation in earnest, you can see how crucial it is that you start your supplementation efforts as early as possible - if you are going to help him build the best set of antlers. That means that the earlier in the spring you provide your bucks the minerals they need, the sooner they can focus more fully on the business of producing antlers, and the longer time they’ll have to build them.
Approach your selection of a deer mineral as an educated consumer. The minerals in a hardened antler are very specific, and they’re in precise ratios, so don’t fall into the trap of just putting out cattle mineral or putting out salt for your deer. Cattle minerals are great for cattle, but they are not optimum for deer – remember that cattle don’t have to grow a new sets of antlers every year. Salt does little to nothing nutritionally for deer. A hardened antler is only .03% - that’s only THREE ONE-THOUSANDTHS – salt, so before you buy a product labeled as a mineral supplement for deer, check the ingredient label to be sure that what you’re buying is really a useful mineral supplement for deer and not made up mostly of salt or sodium.
So, take a little time this spring to improve the quality of the deer you’ll be hunting next fall. Give it the same diligence you give to maintaining your hunting equipment. The benefits are definitely worth the effort.
Best,
Jon