After Deer Season

The deer season is over here, as it is in just about all of the US.  I enjoyed it, took my first buck, and had some deer jerky (it was awesome!).  What do you do now?  Well, here are a few things:

• Take Down Treestands: You don't need to leave them up 24/7, 365 days a year.  The straps and different metal clamps and such may need replacing.
• Start Mineral Licks: Mineral lick now will give deer a head start in nutrition needs to begin the new year.  It also allows for you to get pictures of deer a little easier, so you can see who survived.
• Frost Seed: In a couple weeks, you should be able to do that.  In February, the frost/defrost cycle will start, which will allow seeds to penetrate the soil.  Clover, Chicory, and other small seeds work best, along with some cereal grain seeds.
• Plant Wildlife Plants: I'm looking at American Beutyberry, a plant that most wildlife will eat and enjoy it's fruit and leaves.  I may eventually do chestnuts.  That is just an example.
• Play Around With Trail Camera's: Like I said, see who survived and where they hang out this time of year, as they will be in their winter patterns.
• Go Small Game Hunting:  Why not?  It's a fun thing for kids because you will succeed almost every time when you hunt squirrel.  But it's hunting nonetheless, and it's fun!

Prep For Hunting Season

Hunting season is just around the corner!  While summer is a great time to fish and swim in pools, it's also a great time to get outdoors in the woods and prepare.  Here's a list of things that you can do to prep for the final weeks till the season:

• Backyard bow practice!  Start drilling on your form, aim, release, and follow-through.  Backyard bowhunts are another fun thing.  You put out a target (a 3D makes it a WHOLE lot funner!) and you start from one side of your yard, and creep up on the target, and make a shot.  You practice your skills for a stalk or still hunt.  You can also do this on a treestand.  Go up, sit like normal, then act like the target you set up, say, a deer, walks into view.  Slowly stand up and draw, aim, release, and follow-through.
• Scout!  Look for tracks, trails, browsed plants.  Food sources, bedding areas, you name it!  If you can locate a trail that is close to bedding and food sources for around the year, your set!  For example, one place that I'm looking at putting a stand is close to a trail that passes oaks, a greenbriar patch (which deer like to eat), and bedding.  And when it rains, a small ditch actually makes a temporary pond.  Perfect spot for a stand! Which leads me to my next point...
• Hang Stands!  Looks for spots like what I mentioned above.  Not only that, but bedding near creeks, trails, food sources, near corn fields, and so on.  
• Sight in your gun!  If you don't sight in your rifle, you won't hit anything.  Not only that, but practice with it, let it become almost a part of you since your so good at handling it.
• Put out trail cams!  (I'm repeating myself) Near trails, bedding, food sources, mineral licks, so on.

Other things that I'll leave out of the "big" list is establishing mineral licks and food plots.  Now, food plots are meant to complement natural food sources, not replace them.  You might could just seed a place with naturally occurring seeds, or let the plants come up by themselves.  Sometime food plots can be a pear tree, or an oak stand.  They don't have to be a lawn of clover.  And they are not necessarily necessary to have a great hunt!  I just do a little bit of it because I enjoy doing it.

Stay safe, get your licence, and get ready to hunt!  Until next time!

Ice Storms

A almost two months ago we had a bad ice storm in my part NC.  Some people were without power for almost a week.  Personally, we regained power after half a day.
A lot of tree tops were down, causing brush piles in many places.  But whole trees went down as well.  In one place a tree caused other trees to fall on other trees that it created a nice sized opening.  My instant thought: food plot!  Bedding and night feeding is close by, and deer have been in those woods.  I've seen a doe and a couple rubs in that location.  I know some that have management plans different from mine, say, planting oaks where trees fell and created an opening, which is fine.

Keep camera's running and keep scouting, because something good will come out of it!

Trials and Tribulations of a Treestand

Hello from Snow Camp Outdoors!!  It's been a while, I know, things have been slow and I have some posts drafted, so be ready for some updates in the following weeks (even days!).  Besides that, I recently put up a treestand in my front yard!!  75 yards away from my house with a small food plot in front of it.  Not bad right?  It is a two person stand by Ameristep.

Behind the stand

Next to it, looking up

Looking at it from my plot

The stand is not that high, only 8 feet.  It is really only 20 to 25 yards from my stand to the plot.  It took me and the help of two 9 year old boys to put it up.  But we did it.  

  Once it was up, I tried to tighten the "installation" straps.  Did it, then went to the ratchet straps.  I couldn't figure it out, but eventually I did.  Then, I found the installation straps needed more tightening!  I took maybe an hour, but I was really proud once I put it up, my first stand.

  So, what is the plot?  Well, it's clover and chicory, but it's just coming up.

The feeder is out there mainly to get deer coming into the area.  So when the plot comes up, they'll eat it.  By the way,  I'll post some of my recent pictures soon.  

Until next time!! 

Food Plot Setup

I got this idea after reading about food plot shapes and native warm season grasses (NWSG). Here is a picture of this idea:

Here is the explanation of the illustration:

• The big green "S" is a food plot, it can be clover, chicory, peas, sugar beets,  whatever you want.  
• The brown stripes, on the inside bends of the "S," are NWSG, they are put there for cover for deer when they enter the food plot, cover for bedding, and cover for quail.
• The large green area with brown dots is, as you might have guessed, a forest.  If they are oaks, the deer have a great area for them.  Where else do they get, cover, lots of great food, and socialization all at once? 
• And lastly, the big black dots are treestands, which might have been obvious.  You can put them in different locations than shown, but this way you can hunt with almost any direction of wind blowing without it carrying your scent to the deer.

This is just a picture, okay?  Realize that there are no dimensions, it's that way so you have the freedom to do however big or small you need.  You might have done that even if I did dimensions.  

  But I want to do a note on the NWSG, if you want tall grasses (this would help with calling, because the deer can't see the "buck" or "doe" or even "fawn" that's calling to them, so they must come to investigate, putting them in your sights. 1 ), it is recommended by the University of Tennessee, that tall grass blends are usually made up of: big bluestem, indiangrass, little bluestem and switchgrass 2 .  You might also could add a little broomsedge in there.  But, the tall grass may not stay up in the winter, but they're still a good choice.

Short grass blend include: little bluestem, broomsedge and or sideoats gama, and other legumes and forbs. These types give cover for wildlife also, but maybe not quite as much for a deer.

  Another idea to make this even better would be to put a water source close by the area of this setup.

That's all for now!

1.QDMA How to Hunt Native Warm Season Grasses

2. Native Warm Season Grasses, University of Tennessee, pdf, pg.92

Food Plots

Food plots are very important to wildlife.  Providing food, and, depending on the type of plant and animal, even cover.

What to Plant

Plants that you can plant on your own are included here:

Clover
Clover is one of the most popular food plot plants out there.  A good food source that provides protein, deer love it.  Given good care (mowing, fertilizing), clover can last forever.

Corn
Also a favorite of hunters, corn is a deer magnet.  If the corn field is big enough, it can provide ample food and cover for a bunch of whitetails.  But, don't rely on corn as your only food source, it can run out (depending on how much you planted).  You may need to plant another type of grass or clover to provide more food.

Others
Other seeds include: the popular soybean, wheat, turnips, chicory, buckwheat, and others.

Popular food plot brands that sell seeds and food plot blends include: Whitetail Institute, Antler King,       and BioLogic.

Care For Your Plot

Food plot plants don't prosper by themselves, they need help to grow.  Here is a few tips on helping the plant get their maximum potential:

• Increase pH.  7.0 pH is the target for soil acidity, which is neutral.  Check your pH with a soil tester or send it to a lab.  Once you know the pH, if needed, lime your plot to increase it (pH).  The lower the acidity, the better the plants.
• Once you have improved pH, you can fertilize.  Use a fertilizer that will target your specific food plot plant (or plants) needs.  Antler King has come up with great fertilizer's Plot Max and Jolt.  Both help increase pH and increase the amount of food plot foliage.

Tip

• When you don't use brand name seeds to plant you plot, it may be helpful to plant a mixture of seeds,  because different plants provide different nutritional needs for deer.

A good food plot will pull in deer from around your property and the surrounding properties, if put in the right place.  Happy hunting!

Food Plot Tips

I am here to give a few food plot tips that will help your food plot greatly.


Lime your plot.  If you do nothing else but seed and water your plot, lime it.  Now I know that the optimum pH for soil is 7.0, you might have already tested your plot and found that your plot soil is 7.0 pH.  If it is, skip this step.  If it isn't, listen.  You can do all the fertilization you want, but if your soil isn't 7.0 pH, then you've just wasted some of or almost all of the fertilizer.

Put a game camera next to the plot so you can see if deer are coming to it.

If you can't afford a game camera, this is a great tip I heard from an Antler King food plot video.  Some people said that their food plot plants weren't getting tall.  So Antler King came up with an idea.  If your food plot plants are short, surround one small area of the plants with fencing on the sides and top.  So you are pretty much making a cage.  After a while (a couple days or so), check your plot.  If the plants in the cage grew while the others outside the cage stayed short, that means that deer are coming into your plot and eating at the plants (the deer couldn't get to the plants in the cage).  If all the plants are short, even in the cage, then you might want to add some fertilizer or lime your plot.

Bow-plots

Hunt plots.  This is where the magic happens.  Deer love to meet there, and hunters follow them.  Any small clearing can be made into a hunt plot.  These little plots are like small little "grocery stores" out in the middle of absolutely nowhere.  I 'm going to refer to them as "bow-plots" because you can shoot deer anywhere in the plot, and because of an ideal shape to plant the bow-plot.

Planting a huntable shaped plot
Though bow-plots can be any shape, and they usually range from 1 acre at most to however small you want it to be.  The a good shape for a mini plot is a capital L or a crescent (hence the name "bow-plots", because a bow is crescent shape).  If you plant this way, and if your plot is 1 to 1 half an acre in size, then you may consider putting two stands at that plot.  This way you can sneak away without the deer on the other side knowing you were there.  If your plot is smaller than half an acre, then I would suggest one stand at that plot, because deer will probably notice your going away if the plot is 1 fourth an acre or smaller.  For hunting purposes a narrow plot is better than a wide one.  This way any deer that walks into the plot is likely in bow range, even if he is on the other side of the plot.  But for plants, a wide plot is better.  In that case, plant the plot pointing east to west to give the plot maximum amount of sunlight everyday.  But take make use of what is available to you.  Any small clearing should do.  Even a couple of downed trees that are next to each other can work because it lets in sunlight.

What to plant
Okay, now that we have a huntable shaped plot, what do we plant?  Many brands of food plot mixes work well, such as Antler King, Whitetail Institute, Evolved Habitats, and Tecomate.  But if your not looking for a brand name, then I would suggest that you have a mix in your plot made up of chicory or rape with some clovers and some turnips or radishes for winter. 

Why they work
Bow-plots work because whitetails feel more comfortable in these little plots because they are only a jump or two from cover.  They also work because (as I have said earlier) that any deer that comes into the plot is likely to wind up into bow range.  Usually they are located closer to bedding areas so deer are more likely to visit them in the daylight hours.  They are places that deer will most likely visit a couple times of day, which will most likely be morning and late in the afternoon.  Every buck in the area adds the plot to his trips around the area looking for scrapes of other bucks to challenge them in the rut and sniffing for does that are ready to breed.  This is where the big guys are, because of their experience of looking for danger, they feel more comfortable in these secluded spots.  Fatal mistake.  If your there when he walks in, he's in your cross-airs.