Scout now for an October’buck

Start Preseason Scouting Soon

Anyone who greets the dawn in the field is getting a big jump on the day, and will most likely find game animals and birds moving about. Do it just right, and it can be a kick-off to your preseason deer scouting.

I visited one of my hunting spots two days ago, and it was fairly cool. It felt good to be a bit chilly, and I walked in to a high hill where I could watch for whitetails without being spotted or winded.

The sun was still blushing the eastern horizon when a doe with two fawns wandered by, stopping here and there to nibble on alfalfa. They walked along the edge of a nearby winter wheat field, and sniffed at some new green growth, apparently to see if it was ripe enough to eat.

Scouting means finding bedding areas, food, sanctuary and water.

Two bucks, both fuzzy-antlered with velvet, cut the corner of a fallow field, dipped down into a gully, came out the other end and disappeared into the woods. They were quickly followed by a spike-horn that had got sidetracked along the line, and was now playing catch-up with his buddies.

The sun was above the horizon when I spotted a veritable gold-mine of turkey gobblers. Six gobblers were moving like a combat platoon as they came across the top of the hill and crossed within 20 yards of me. I was sitting on the ground, knees up and Swarovski binoculars to my eyes. I had to lower the binoculars to better see the gobblers.

Look for deer crossing fields & through bottlenecks.

One bird had an honest 12-inch beard, and two had 10-inch beards, two had 7 1/2 to 8-inch beards, and the other was a jake. The sunlight glistened off their feathers, turning the colors from russet to gold to black and back again. They didn’t know I was there, and they passed within 20 yards and headed down into an open field where they were out of sight of a nearby road.

I saw a glimpse of some animal, and never could see it well, but it appeared to be a coyote heading for a place to lay up.

I didn’t spend much over an hour sitting, and it become apparent the critters were done moving. I walked the edge of an alfalfa field where drying mud remained from an earlier rain, and checked it for tracks.

One big splay-hoofed deer track was visible, and it looked two-thirds larger than any other deer track seen. Buck or doe? Hooves splay out in mud, and that could account for some of the size, but it could have been a deer of either sex. I knew of a very large doe in that area last year, and had heard reports of a good buck as well.

I used to hunt with a man who claimed he could tell the difference between a buck and doe track, and under certain circumstances, I believe I can too. But, tracks in mud never seem to offer quite enough clues to its sex, and I need something more to go on than a widened track in soft mud.

Scouting is fun, instructional and can lead to a successful hunt.

Was today a scouting day? Absolutely. I could determine where the bucks entered the woodlot in the morning, and with a westerly breeze, even picked out a perfect tree. I’ll have to watch in the morning more often, and then get serious about a stand once I know the bucks are using the same trail every morning.

I learned years ago, when hunting bucks in southern counties, that farmland deer will travel one of two or three trails in a given area. We sometimes had to flip a coin to determine which of two trails to choose from, and often the coin would lie to us.

Preseason scouting doesn’t need to be a major investment in time nor does it have to be done every day, but hunters should spend time scouting three or four times a week whenever possible. Keep track of directional travel changes when the wind moves to a different quarter. Being downwind of deer is one of the first steps to a successful hunt.

Scouting is not only an important part of deer hunting, but it can be fun. My wife used to sit in a stand, watch the deer and videotape them during the summer. By early September, she would have the buck of her choice on tape, and she would later lay claim to it with a well-placed arrow.

She always shot the buck she videotaped, and that proves that preseason scouting, from the spring on, does work. The more effort one puts into it, the more successful one may be.

Food Plots Need A Good Soaking

A good food plot, with enough rain, can produce fine bucks.

I’m a bit too young to remember The Dust Bowl days of the early 1930s, but well remember talking to people who lived through that era when the ground was baked under a brutal sun, hardened, cracked and turned to chalk-like dust from an ongoing drought.

Crops were impossible to grow for a few years, and dust storms covered roads, seeped into houses, and some people with respiratory problems did not survive those years.

Things aren’t that bad right now. It’s not even close but people who have put in food plots or gardens or are trying to establish them are having a tough way to to go to make things sprout.

“Last year was a bad year for me with Purple-Top turnips,” said a friend. “I planted after a nice rain, but then the rains ended and the turnips weren’t any good. They came up small and rather woody looking on the inside. The deer didn’t pay any attention to them.”

I’ve had good and lousy food plots, and often the difference is the amount of rain.

Anyone who plants a food plot is subject to all of the very same problems as any farmer. Some years the weather turns against us. Many people are getting ready to put in their fall crops now, but the soil is hard, cracking, and lacks enough moisture although we did a light rain last night. A series of rains are still needed, and we usually get some rain in late August to jump-start our fall planting season.”

One can only hope the weatherman cooperates. If not, some fields and crops will be useless.

Two fields of mine were ready to plant in early August, and we got a good rain right after

planting. There was green growth within six days, and some good rain since. But this is what makes fall planting so tricky, and admittedly, this will be my fourth fall planting. Two produced a lush crop and one could barely grow weeds. Only time will tell how this year’s fall planting will fare.

Many people like fall plantings or annual crops while others like some favorites when the soil conditions are conducive to growing a crop of brassica such as Dwarf Essex Rape and Purple-Top turnips. Poor soil conditions can be built into good organic soil by planting buckwheat, oats and rye, and discing it into the ground for two or three years in a row.

Good soil and rain are two key ingredients to a good food plot.

“This is called ‘green manure,’” an elderly farmer told me. “Two or three seasons of a green manure crop will usually build enough organic residue into your soil to produce a good high-protein crop such as alfalfa, clover or rape.

He did caution me to keep records of what is being planted every year. Keeping records of planting dates, crops planted, and what kind of a yield it produces is very important. He says a lack of records means that sportsmen have no way of knowing what they did right or did wrong.

He said the ideal plan is to provide for a year ’round food source for animals and birds. Proper planning means soil tests before anything is planted. Some soil is so poor that nothing but weeds will grow until the soil mineral content is built up.

One should never consider a food plot as a replacement for baiting. One problem with food plots on large tracts of land is the land is heavily wooded in many cases, and it takes time to build a good soil content that is capable of growing high-protein crops. It just doesn’t happen overnight.

Many food plots that are planted to legumes (beans and peas) are literally destroyed by deer eating the crop as it begins to grow. A small food plot will be quickly annihilated by hungry deer.

Try mixing crops that go together well. Talk with seed companies.

One suggestion for sportsman is to mix other things that will grow in the fall and come back early in the spring. A mix of winter wheat offers good green food and cover in the fall, and it comes back up as soon as the snow melts. Rape and Purple-Top turnips, with some alfalfa and clover in other nearby fields, will produce good fall and early spring food for hungry deer.

If you see a man with a white beard standing outside about this time of year, and gazing skyward, it probably means I’m either praying or scanning the skies for sign of rain clouds.

A bit of each may be needed late this summer and in the early fall. I know that my food plots are in better shape than most, but they can use a good drink, and the sooner the better.

Plant It Right And The Deer Will Come

Dave Richey (left) checks his clover plot.

More and more people are putting in food plots every year. Some people use them to attract deer so they can watch the animals from their house, and some people hunt over them. Either way, putting in a food plot is good for all wildlife in the area.

So what is a perfect food plot? Perfect means it grows well and provides extra nutrition.

This question was put to Bruce Grant of Rogers City. He’s become the expert at putting in large and small food plots in the northeastern part of the Lower Peninsula, in the so-called Club Country.

Food plots can grow well in northern counties if properly planted.

“What is a good plan for a year ’round food source?” Grant asks, before answering his own question. “Some type of plan that will carry our wildlife, such as deer and wild turkeys, through all four seasons and still provide an excellent food source during hunting season.

“We need a plan and must keep good records. We need to know what does and doesn’t work. Remember, it takes a whole growing season to learn what may have went wrong.”

Grant breaks down his food plots in various ways. Alfalfa/clover is high in food value and important for fawn development and antler growth. It is good in the spring, and most valuable in January and February. He does not cut his crop after Aug. 1 because he wants all the growth possible before cold weather and snow sets in. His alfalfa/clover fields provide a food source while annual plantings are getting started.

He wants his ground pH to be at 6.5-7.0, and warns people not to buy seed in the spring. It often is last year’s inventory and may be outdated. Chicory is a good crop but requires 18 months to produce. It doesn’t grow real well the first year. He also warns sportsman that a primary diet of pure clover can cause deer to bloat. He suggests mixing clover with orchard grass.

In early May, Grant works the fields he wants to plant by June 1. This could be a small patch of rape and turnips. His major spring planting will be a soybean, forage peas and brassica mix. It grows fast and makes an excellent summer and early fall mix. It also keeps the deer off new alfalfa/clover or chicory plantings. Soybeans and forage peas have a protein rating of 38 percent, much higher than corn.

He said that in early May he works all the fields he plans to plant, and lets them sit for two or three weeks before reworking the fields to be planted. He spreads fertilizer and seeds the same day in hopes of getting ahead of the weeds. He uses herbicides, but only on new fields to be established.

Fall plantings should be planted sometime in August, and the earlier the better.

Fall plantings, he said, begin in early August when oats, wheat or rye mature. He will disc them, spread 200 pounds of fertilizer per acre and let them grow. This is a soil building crop.

This crop also will provide excellent fall grazing. Oats and wheat planted in the fall, and handled in this manner, offer a place for spring fawns and turkey poults to hide. It also is a great food source.

Aug. 1-30 is when he does his fall plantings. He works his fields two to three weeks prior to planting for weed control. His major fall crop will be a brassica mix.

Dwarf Essex rape and purple top turnip are the magic crops for many hunting camps. It they are planted by the first of August, by October 1, there will be a very good crop of rape and turnips. Deer normally will not eat this crop until the first heavy frost. After that first frost, the animals won’t stay out of it.

Kay Richey poses with a nice 12-point.

Grant said deer first eat the turnip bulbs and tops. They also feed in a brassica field until the ground freezes so hard that they can no longer dig or they have completely destroyed the field, usually by early January.

“Fall is a great time to plant a mix of winter wheat and oats,” he said. “The oats come up first and fast. The first hard frost freezes out the oats but the wheat will be the first green crop next April.

Plant a mix of annuals and perennials for attractive food plots.

“A good plan includes both annuals and perennials. When you consider the cost to maintain perennials, like mowing, fertilizing and weed control, I believe the cost between annuals and perennials is a toss-up.”

He is a strong believer in diversification. He says it is best to rotate crops between areas, and change what is planted in each field from year to year.

“Go plant it,” he said. “The deer and turkeys will come. Diversify, maintain and rotate. Just don’t expect a perfect food plot the first year. It often takes two years to get growing well. Hope for some rain and warm weather.”

Take a spring deer scouting hike

This buck bedded in tall grass during hunting season. Find these spots now.

The weather for the past three days has left something to be desired. Normally, by now, it’s quite easy to get around in the woods, but in my area of the northwest Lower Peninsula, we’ve had 18 inches of new snow in the past 72 hours.

So give the snow a few more days to melt, and then go for a walk in new deer areas. You may just find this fall’s new whitetail deer habitat on federal or state-owned land.

A two-hour hike can be great fun. Especially when this little jaunt enables hunters to check on where deer are traveling.

Now is when to find hidden bedding areas, seldom used trails & other hotspots.

Actually, hunters can get some good winter exercise while scouting for old and new deer sign. The third fringe benefit of this early-spring hike is to look around near feeding areas or bedding areas for shed antlers.

To me, the walk gives me some exercise while allowing me to check out various nearny areas. There are always spots that are seldom or never hunted hard, and I like to use this opportunity to check out different locations before the snow is completely gone..

Deer are amazing animals because they can — and will — hide out in some of the strangest areas. Some of these spots are used year ’round, and very few sportsmen take the time and make the effort to go there to study the terrain for good deer sign.

This buck bedded in cedars and pines but traveled through this pinch-point.

Let’s face it: some deer have more ambition than some hunters. But deer, also are a lot like hunters: they choose the easy spots. It’s the big bucks that sometimes settle into a pattern of laying up in places where humans never go.

It’s up to you to find these locations. They often are in very heavy cover that can barely be penetrated in an upright position, but imagine how happy you will be if you find such an area this spring and follow a buck’s tracks out of there. These areas can be an ace in the hole next fall.

Get out and look before all the snow disappears.

I’ve seen countless whitetails laying up in cattails around a swamp. Some head for the densest part of a cedar swamp, and other deer will hole up wherever they can get out of the coldest winter weather. Deer in this area favor thermal cover that offers good bedding habitat.

Creek bottoms are good spots to check, and I still have some food plots that will begin growing once it warms up. Deer lay up back in heavy cover, and it provides them with available food and cover throughout the winter months when deep snow piles up.

There is a narrow funnel in one of my hunting areas that has a deer trail running through it that looks like a cattle path. That spot has thick cover at both ends of the funnel, and I check it often during the winter to look for big tracks moving through the area. I know that many of the largest bucks in the area bed down at opposite ends of the funnel, and I have good stands at both ends of the cover.

There are some deep tangles in some low-lying areas. The cover  is thick and tangled, but even the largest bucks seem to ease their way through such spots without making a sound. If you or I were to move through it, we’d make a great deal of racket. The bucks, they ease through without making a sound.

Walking and looking, stopping and checking out tracks along major and minor trails, is perhaps the best cure I know for cabin fever. We all suffer this problem to some degree during the winter months. This offers a temporary cure for a winter-weary hunter.

Check those areas you really wouldn’t want to walk through,

Pick a nice day, dress comfortably for the weather, and go for a stroll. Stop often, look around, and study the area for some “eye candy.” This is one term used for a big buck, and I’ve walked up on such animals on many occasions.

One never knows what they may find during an early spring walk in the woods. If nothing else, it is great exercise and provides us with some fresh air.

It’s something we can’t find while sitting on the home sofa.

 

A touch of spring fever

George Richey unhooks an 8-pound Manistee Lake walleye.

A breeze, as soft as an angel’s kiss, drifted through the warm air. The temperature hovered around 40 degrees, but it felt like summer.

The ground is still a bit too soggy to sit outside under a tree and luxuriate in the perceived warm of a gentle sun. The sun rays beat down, and instead of sitting, I sprawled out on my deck railing to stare up into the sky.

Today was the my first taste of spring fever, and with it came thoughts of life, death and renewal. The end of a tedious winter, and hopefully the beginning of a new growing season.

Relaxing and thinking grand spring outdoor thoughts.

It felt nice about 2 p.m. to lay back for nearly an hour and do nothing. Sure, I could have been writing my blog or whatever, but I was doing what I most wanted to do — nothing, but be outside in the sunshine.

Laying back and thinking. Remembering the past, and looking forward to the future. Mixing some good and not-so-good thoughts. Thinking of other days when I would sit on the bank of a steelhead stream in drowsy warmth, and spend an hour watching two steelhead spawn.

I didn’t feel like a voyeur; instead, it was as if I were watching the rebirth and renewal of steelhead at that one point in time when fish eggs were fertilized and covered with gravel. In time, those eggs will hatch, and of the multitude of fertilized eggs from one hen steelhead, only a few fish will live long enough to return to recreate their kind.

I was momentarily touched by thoughts of twin brother George, and how he and I enjoyed this special time and place on the Platte River, sharing a wild spectacle of spawning fish, and knowing full well we could be fishing for and catching those fish. However, we also knew that watching the spawning act was more important to the future of this fishery than us catching those fish.

Remembering 63 years of outoor life with twin brother George Richey.

George is always in my thoughts, and even though it is closing in on eight years since his death, I think of him daily. I wish we could have shared today, but I know that we shared many other days when fishing was far less important than us being on the stream.

I heard the brief put-put-put of an early but ardent male ruffed grouse practicing his love song on a drumming log. In the distance came the throaty gobble of a turkey, and a few whiny sounds of a hen turkey complaining about something.

I thought about getting the second-season hunt in this heavily hunted Area K, wondered about the apathetic folks who own land but can’t draw an early-season tag. I wonder why more people don’t complain to the DNR and ask why private-land tags are available in the U.P. and the southern Lower Peninsula, but not here.

There were fleeting thoughts of trolling for spring brown trout off the piers at Manistee and Frankfort, and the chance — albeit slight — of catching a 25-pound brown. Only had one that size hooked, many years ago, and it was lost at the boat. Caught thousands of browns to 18 pounds, but never personally cracked the 20-pound barrier.

There were somewhat pleasant thoughts of upcoming work that must be done to lime and fertilize our food plots this spring, and try to get rid of the grasses and weeds that invariably grow with the clover. That is coming up in the next month or so, and it is a busy back-breaking time.

This year will mean cleaning out some overhead limbs on some food plots to allow more sun to hit the clover. Our crops were new last year, and while they produced, it seemed the weeds came and choked out the other crops. Planting food plots means a major investment in sweat equity, but my neighbor and I believe in helping nature thrive.

Some thoughts about spring fishing and hunting.

Now, if only we could make Mother Nature rain enough so we didn’t have to water our plantings. We, along with other farmers, either get too much or too little rain.

My tranquil hour on the deck railing delivered several thoughts on the upcoming turkey season, the upcoming trout and walleye opener in about about six weeks, and then it’s fixing up ground blinds and tree stands once again. One or two tree stands may have to be moved.

A sportsman really has little time to kick back and relax, but an early spring day like today is a wonderful time to take a well-deserved break, and think about what we have and how we can make it better.

Thanks for sharing some of my spring fever dreams with me.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors