2016 Land Management Case Study

At the end of 2015 my food plots were bare ground that had been harrowed and raked to be ready for planting. I divided my large central plot into three parts, one of which was fallow, so I had a total of eight plots to plan for. In order for the soil to grow the optimal amount of forage, I would need to adjust the pH and add the right amount of nutrients. I couldn’t assume that all the plots across the 61 acres would be the same, so I sent eight soil samples to the Whitetail Institute. When the snow melted in 2016 I had my spreadsheet ready, telling me how much lime and fertilizer would be needed for each plot. The fertilizer could be spread along with the seed when planting, but the lime needed to have some time to work, so lime would be the first priority.

Land in the northeast is naturally acidic, and lime neutralizes the acidity to raise the pH up to the level where plants can best absorb nutrients. My soil tests recommended adding between 4,375 lbs. to 5,000 lbs. per acre, depending on the plot. There are generally two ways to spread lime in this situation - either you contract with a bulk agricultural lime specialist to come in with a big truck and spread it, or buy bags of pelletized lime and do it yourself. I had almost three acres in total, and my spreadsheet showed a total amount of lime of about 14,000 lbs. I had spread bagged lime on my food plots in southern Maine so I knew what a back-breaking job spreading seven tons of lime would be for me, and I have a bad back. Unfortunately my food plots were not accessible for the ag lime truck, so bulk lime was out. As I was talking to people about my options, I came across a product called Solu-Cal that is more effective than regular lime - you only need 1/4 the amount. It came in 2,000 lb. bags, so I had two bags delivered to my barn. The Solu-Cal pellets were easily scooped into my cone spreader and I had most of my plots limed by early May.

I had a couple other projects that I wanted to attack early. The food plot near the barn needed to be cleared of brush and the soil turned over. Another plot had a ton of rocks in it (ok, several tons) and the garden area also needed to be de-rocked. I used my rock grapple to rip out the brush at the Barn Plot and my two-bottom plow to turn the ground over. This small, third of an acre, plot of ground was the only part of my parcel that had soil deep enough to actually get a plow into. The soil looked very good, lots of organic material, though there were a lot of rocks too. At times I would get a whiff of manure, making me think that this area once held livestock. Years later I learned that my land had once been part of a dairy - this must have been part of the cow pasture. After plowing I used my Flexxifinger rock picker to gather the rocks from the plot and dump them off to the side. Then came the harrow, and the rake, and Solu-Cal to neutralize the pH of the soil.

The food plot that’s southeast about 150 yards from the barn had a significant rock problem. The soil had good organic material, but the rocks were abundant and there were a couple sections of exposed ledge. I named this plot Ledges. An old red oak with a wide canopy dominated the east side, and it was the perfect tree for a stand - I located the plot here because I knew that a tree stand up in those branches would do a lot to hide the hunter from view. But I had to deal with these rocks.

When I was preparing the large food plot in 2015 I experienced the frustrations with rocks that farmers have felt for centuries. In 1997, while hanging out in the village of Pheriche, just two days downhill from Everest Base Camp, I saw two farmers struggle all day using a yak to pull a large rock from their potato field. Nowadays, when I come across an old stone wall back in the woods, I see an enduring monument to the frustration of farmer versus rocks - and since these walls are now overgrown with woods, it was a fight that proved futile in the end.

Working on the large food plot, I used my rock grapple, and that helped, but I needed something better. Something that would allow me to pick up rocks, but leave the precious topsoil in the food plot where I needed it. I searched online and found the Quicker Picker by Flexxifinger. Mounted on the front of a tractor or skidsteer, and hooked up to the hydraulic system, you force a mixture of rocks and dirt into the barrel and then push a button to rotate it. The rocks are trapped in the barrel while the dirt shakes out, so you can dump the rocks where you want. It doesn’t make pretty stone walls all by itself, but you also feel like you’re not in the stone age anymore. As the rocks rotate in the barrel, the big ones slam around with a lot of force - scooping and rotating puts a lot of stress on the picker, but it is made from heavy steel and is built to take it. To read my review of the Flexxifinger Quicker Picker click here.

I used the rock picker to clear the Ledges plot of most of its rocks, and then attacked the garden area. The garden was located next to the barn for convenience, not because that patch of dirt was suitable for gardening. It had decent organic material, but was full of rocks, so I used my backhoe attachment to loosen the ground and the rock picker to spin out the rocks. I then purchased a few loads of loam and manure to give me the added soil depth that I would need for a vegetable garden.

The Maine Expanded Archery season on whitetail deer starts the second week of September. I hunted during the fall of 2016, but I saw only a few deer. We hadn’t had much rain over the summer and my clover wasn’t growing very well, so there wasn’t enough food to keep deer on my land and attract them to the harvest plots. Deer like oats, but I haven’t found them to be such an attraction as to get them to go out of their way to seek them out - but they will eat them as they are passing through. I concluded that I just didn’t have enough organic material in the soil of the large plot and also the plot on the inside corner of the southwest part of the “boot” that I called the Instep plot. That soil wasn’t holding moisture and maybe didn’t have enough nutrients. I decided to buy 100 yards of cow manure and spread it on those plots. I bought a manure spreader that I could tow behind my side-by-side, and I used a dump trailer to haul the manure back to the plots. I also saved some to add to my vegetable garden.

I learned a great safety tip when you’re spreading manure - one you might not figure out without experience. As I was spreading I noticed that occasionally stuff would go whizzing out of the spreader - some of it not the cow crap you would expect. The back of the spreader is a shaft with paddles that rotate to give the manure a fling as it exits the spreader. Those paddles would also fling any rocks or chunks of broken concrete that happened to get into the load of manure, the natural result of filling the truck with a large front-end loader. It took until a grapefruit-size rock landed on the hood of my ATV that I realized the seriousness of this issue. I promptly zip-tied a section of fence to the roll-bar of the ATV to serve as a protective cage!

I never had a shot opportunity on my land during the 2016 season. I came close a couple times. One sticks in my mind: a pair of does heading right toward my position in a well concealed stand overlooking the Pond plot (that’s the one along the southern property line). At the last minute they stopped and circled the plot. The wind was favorable, and I didn’t think I made a sound, but maybe they saw me move to get my bow. I had several cameras out and I think I had six to 10 deer living on or near my land in 2016. In the photo to the right you can faintly see the antlers of a very nice buck that cruised through the Barn plot at the very end of the rut - he was looking for one last doe. I never got him, or anything close to him, again on camera that year, but it was great to see that a buck of that quality was in the neighborhood. I filled my freezer in November 2016 with a fat doe I shot on my brother-in-law and nephew’s land during the end of the gun season.

To find out what happened next, click on: Go Forward to Early 2017 Land Management.

To go back to the previous page, click: Go Back to 2014 and 2015.