Fall Food Plot Strategies: Summer vs. Fall Release Blends for Deer

0:00 This is one of my favorite things to do with one of my favorite people, Grant Woods. Grant, always a pleasure to join you to look at not only great cover crop plots, but great deer and wildlife. So, I'm excited about tonight.

0:14 Hey, Keith. Thanks for the opportunity. Me, too. It's always great to visit with people throughout the Whitetails range and kind of get a sense of what they're experiencing or what problems maybe we might be able to help diagnose and help them out with a little bit.

0:28 Yeah, that's right. Because, you know, most likely if one of our listeners has a question, most likely someone else on the call or someone watching this recording later is going to have that same issue, that same question, that same problem. So, by addressing it, we can help more than just you. We can help a number of people. So, love the format of how we do this and looking forward to some good conversations. We're going to do something just a little bit different here to kick things off this time than we've done in the past. And we want to do just a little bit of show and tell because Grant, you've got some great things to show, not just from the proving grounds down there in southern Missouri, but from some of the clients, some of the people you work with, some of the people that we work with have sent in some pictures, some videos, and we just wanted to share some of that to kind of wet everybody's appetite about what's going on here. So, let me share my screen and then I think what we'll do is Grant and I will kind of narrate this just a little bit.

1:38 Okay. Does that show up? Are you seeing that?

1:41 Got it. Are we good there? Okay. Beautiful. So, we've got a number of videos. This one is from John Gibbs, Twin Oak Farms. Grant, you want to kind of set the context here of where John is at? Yeah, John's in northeastern Missouri, friend of ours. He showed up at one of our field events several years ago and we stayed in touch. This is, of course, a beautiful patch of a summer release and deer really out there working on it. Just trail camera footage, but you know, Keith, when you get to the stage where sunflowers have made seed heads like that, that food plot is probably cooking with gas. And this one is. It looks really good. And some people I think maybe don't know this, but those sunflower heads at that point and you notice Keith, when they're making seed, they're transferring the nutrients from the rest of the plant to fill out that seed head. So that's actually full of protein and full of fat. And this time of year once we kick into August right now, those deer are starting to bulk up carbohydrates getting ready for the fall. God provided that mechanism in long ago. Deer can live off about 50% of their calories throughout the whole winter can come off body fat. So, they're going to start seeking carbs. And the beauty of summer release is it's time to provide what they need at the right time.

2:59 Yeah. And you know, one of the things that we have to convince people of on these sunflowers because we have a lot of farmers that say, 'Oh, I don't want to put sunflowers in my mix. I had to chop those out of the field when I was a kid.' Blah, blah, blah. Well, you know, these are completely different. These are black oil sunflowers. The seeds, the seed heads in these, it's 40% oil. I mean, 40% oil. It is a fat machine. Versus the weed, the sunflowers that grow as weeds and the road ditches and all that. They're about 0% oil. And so, you know, nothing likes to eat those things. And so, they're always there. They come back. Whereas these things, if the deer don't eat them, the birds are going to or the mice, some kind of critter is going to eat that seed because of that high oil content. And I think you've got some pictures later on of the deer starting to hammer that at your own place there.

3:52 Here's a video from Mark. Where is Mark from? Yeah, Mark's in Illinois. And boy, he's got some great deer coming on this year. Look at that buck in the background there. I think all of us would get googly eyed over that buck. And they're working on this field. But Mark had a great video, I don't know if we got it in or not, of deer walking through clover. It's not really the right time of year for clover right now.

4:17 Going to a summer release plot. I mean, they were cutting through a clover field just head up just saying, I'm going over there to where the groceries are. So, yeah, Mark's a skilled food plotter and does a great job.

4:31 So, walking through the clover to get to this. At this time of year for sure. Yeah. Yeah, because it's a more balanced it's more balanced diet. They can pick and choose what they need. Yeah. Well, that's the magic of blends, right? You can offer a variety and also something that's at prime palletability early, mid, and late season for that growing season. Not to mention the soil health benefits of having a diverse blend versus a monoculture. Yep. Yep. Love that. Okay, Blake Yarder.

4:59 Man, we're shooting all the way down to Georgia. Hot part of Georgia. Look at this. This is amazing. Who would not want this field? I mean, what cow guy doesn't want to turn his cows out in there, let alone a food plot guy, right? I mean, this is just tons and tons. I see peas and beans, of course, some milo, the sunflowers, some buckwheat stems in there. I mean, this

5:22 Is just incredible. It looks like he doesn't have any deer there, but I'm sure he does. But that is a really nice looking food plot. He's planted enough acres to match the amount of food with the amount of deer, which is real critical. You know, you can't plant one acre summer release in the middle of 500 acres of pines in the south and expect it to do much. You got to kind of work a balance in there. But yeah, Blake is just doing a phenomenal job here and got some great deer. He's going to harvest some good ones out of that this fall for sure.

6:01 Okay, Eric Lightool before and after there. Yeah, this is a great story. Friend of mine in central Missouri and he, like a lot of us, used to disc and add whatever synthetics was necessary or what a piece of paper told him to do. And he got convinced to try release process and plant our blends and, you know, the obvious erosion. And it doesn't look like much. Keith, you recognize it. But when you see those little drainage ditches, little rivets I call them in there, that adds up to tons of soil per acre leaving the field. Literally tons of soil. I'll remind folks that about the thickness of a piece of typing paper across an acre is a ton of soil. Dirt's heavy. And of course, using that release process, crimping down the fall plot there, zero erosion, actually building soil. Instead of losing soil, he's building soil.

6:56 Yeah. And that really should be the goal. And you know, the steeper the slopes you're on, the more critical this is. I just couldn't believe the first time I came down to Grant's place. First of all, man, nobody should be growing anything on that stuff. That's just a bunch of pile of rocks. But I was stunned and I tell people this all the time that that area Grant you said, you know, they used to have a bunch of tomato farms there and they farmed tomatoes until they just totally eroded all the soil off that mountain slope because it was steep slopes and they just walked away from it and so but it can be rebuilt and that's what you're showing and proving. You know, that's just one of the whole beauties of diverse blends and using a good process is you can rebuild soil. You can really rebuild inches of soil. It's hard to believe, but you can. And that comes through life in the soil, of course, the microbes and interacting with plants, all the stuff we've talked about before, but this is just a great testimony of turning an eroded field and starting the process rebuilding it. And I'll just add one other thing. The rebuilding process, if you follow the plan, happens amazingly quick. When we're thinking about something as slow as geologic items, you know, rock, dirt, you think thousand years or something. But no, you can see progress in a couple years.

8:20 Yeah, for sure. And I have said this before on these webinars and stuff too that the food plotters, you know, people who are managing habitat land have a distinct advantage over the typical rowcrop farmer because you're not hauling off all of your carbon in a truck or in a hay bale or something like that. So this is much more like my cattle guys that are grazing right out in the field and they can improve their soil five times as fast as a lot of the row crop guys and you're doing the same thing here because so much of those nutrients even what the deer are eating, you know, they're excreting 80% of that and so that's staying out in the field as well. All right, here's a I think this is Daniel having a pretty fun hunt here. Yeah, I mean, you know, we go through a lot of this work so we can see deer and harvest deer. Here's a nice buck. Look at that big chest on him. Broad shoulders. Daniel, of course, is a skilled hunter. And this is in a hide-ho food plot. Small plot, so there's browse pressure out there, but still early season. We have broadcast, you see the fall release coming up through the milo there. So we have summer still holding on and fall started. It's obviously hunting season and Daniel's going to make some venison here with a great shot and that plot's less than an acre. So a lot of browse pressure in the middle of timber, but still more than enough to attract deer.

9:47 Yeah. So, Grant, talk just a little bit about the timing of when this would have happened because that sorghum is still standing. Some of that warm season, you can definitely tell it's on its way out. You broadcasted the fall release, but what time of the year is this? What time of the year was the fall release broadcast? This is late September and we brought our Missouri season opens September 15th. So first couple weeks of season and when we're broadcasting like this into a plot that's been heavily browsed, you notice the beans and the other species sunflower stuff in our blends have been browsed out there. It's mainly milo. Deer don't consume milo forage unless they're extremely hungry. And so we let them eat that down if we've done a good job crimping whatnot. There's not a lot of weeds or you can use a herbicide and then we just broadcast over right before rain. And where we are, our first frost is about mid October on average. Seems to be getting a little later. So we want to broadcast from August 15th on whenever there's a good rain in the forecast. When I say good rain, there's an 80% chance of a half inch or more.

10:55 Don't gamble on 30% chance of rain. Yeah. So that time is coming.

11:05 I'm working with Colton for my fall seed order right now. Yeah. Colton. So if you're listening, buddy, we're gonna talk again soon. Get to work, Colton. Let's go.

11:14 All right. Some turkeys here at the proving grounds. Turkey populations have really declined throughout the turkeys' range. I can remember where you are in Nebraska. I mean, I used to go up there. Turkey season is so liberal. I would bow hunt turkeys. There used to be these massive flocks, but turkey population dropped so much in Nebraska that the landowner doesn't invite me up anymore. He doesn't want to give up these turkeys. This Ozark hillbilly coming up there. But we've had a good hatch here with a lot of native habitat and certainly our food plots. I love seeing those poults. Those are, you know, bantam chicken size or something like that. You see some larger hens there.

11:54 A good diverse food plot will have a lot of beneficial insects out there. Those turkeys love insects.

12:05 Yep. And that's one of the advantages of the diversity is that it will attract a diverse range of different insects and bugs, and they'll go in there and clean that up pretty easily.

12:16 You know what's happening here, Keith? I was out in a food plot today. The buckwheat here has made seed and it's starting to naturally shed. Deer knock it off when they're walking through. They're eating the other stuff. And so that's just turkeys love those seeds. This is I mean, who doesn't get excited about this, right? I bet even Kate's excited about this. So this is here in the Ozark Mountains. And I want to remind folks, you may have to play this time or two, Keith. Look at those deer. Look up close. You're going to see a lot of non-typical tines coming off the bases and split tines and whatnot in this baster group. This is in Taney County, Missouri. And the record is the last time I checked, people score antlers and record it—it's not everyone, but some people record them—was a 131, folks. You're looking at multiple deer that beat 131. There I personally don't record those antler sizes, but you were just looking at several bucks. Look at all the non-typical points on that buck that just walked out there.

13:24 This is an experimental blend that Zach and Colton and I worked on. Probably bring it to, you know, make it available to everyone next year. But if you can stop it on that one buck soon as he walks out there, he's got like four or five non-typical points right there. Stop. See all those non-typicals coming off his brow tines? Those extra points down there. Let alone just a nice rack. And then if you look at the buck to the left, look at those long tine lengths on there. He actually has a couple non-typical points coming off too. So and then that buck, if you look at the rack right between where that buck was, his antlers, that's a really young deer. The one, the second on the right when he picks his head up, look how long that tine length is. And that's a really young deer. So they're just doing great on that experimental blend.

14:14 We've got another picture, another video of that coming up where we can see that a little bit better here. But yeah, that's an impressive one of those out near plots would be impressive, let alone a whole group like that. Yeah. And you just see them challenging. They're just walking into the field. Obviously trail cameras on the edge of the field and they just get in and their head down and their bodies look good. They're full, full filled out. They look great.

14:46 Yeah, this is experimental blend. We have a species in here we're not really talking a lot about yet, but it's I think green cover may be the only, and it's not marketing, just you guys found it and it's super drought resistant. We planted it this year and I dragged my feet. I was like, Zack, I don't know, man. You want me to plant that? I don't know. But Zach was right, of course. And it's just doing great. And the secret is Keith, as you taught me through the years, we want to capture all the sun, right? We want tall, medium, and short stuff. We want different shaped leaves. And you look, it's dark down in there. We don't want any sun getting to the ground because that's wasted energy.

15:27 Yeah. You've got these sunflowers up high. Then you've got all this, you got the buckwheat, you've got the beans and the peas and the sunhemp, the vetch. All that is just kind of tucked down. It's like a rainforest, you know, where you've got multiple canopy layers. And that's just an incredibly efficient system at producing biomass, capturing carbon, turning it into groceries, as you like to say.

15:55 And also Keith, saving moisture. A lot of people say, 'Oh, those plants, man, they're draining all the water.' Because here in the Ozark Mountains, those soils are very shallow. Extremely shallow. Yeah.

16:07 Not deep or building soil, but when you shade it out and the sun's not getting to the ground, you don't lose that soil to evaporation and that makes a huge difference.

16:17 You were talking about the turkeys gobbling down on the buckwheat seed and that's why we love buckwheat. Buckwheat is one of the fastest growing plants. It'll be blooming in 30 days and in six weeks it'll have some viable seed made. I would guess that this plant here is probably not a lot more than six, seven weeks along. And that's a real advantage for the bird population especially.

16:47 You know, deer eat them, too. I took this today, folks. I was out in the plot and I said, 'Oh, I'll take these today.' And I have a friend that keeps bees here and he has just kept adding supers because if you think about going, buckwheat started flowering early and of course they get pollen off of sunflowers and all the other things going on. Man, he is like winning the county fair with the amount of honey produced per super. I mean, he's just we have one that stacked up seven tall. I'm like, that thing's going to fall over, man. And a lot of people don't know this, but if you have a really good pollinator population, you can actually get about 70% more seed production than a field that's struggling without pollinators. So, our sunflowers, our buckwheat, and the native pollinated plants out there, native flowers are just looking wonderful this year. Now, on the right there, of course, is a sunflower head that deer have bit about half off. And in that milk stage, the seeds are formed, but they're not hard or viable yet. A matter of fact, I popped some today. They're still real milky on the inside. That is both high protein and as Keith was mentioning earlier, full of oil, really high energy. And I mean, there's not much I could throw out of a bag that's any better than that. Talk about a perfect balanced blend or balanced ratio. I mean, they're just cooking with gas out there.

18:08 It's interesting. You know, I was mentioning the livestock guys hesitant to plant sunflowers, but if they can get those sunflowers to put a head on and then they're grazing those cattle out in the winter, that sunflower has long been killed, you know, with cold weather, but it's standing out there. And sunflowers stand really well.

18:27 When they turn those cattle out there, when those cattle figure it out, and I'm sure the deer are kind of like this, too, they will go around and pick every sunflower head off that they can find because they know that that's where that energy is at. And I'm guessing the deer do that, too, once they figure it out.

18:42 Absolutely. Yeah, it's a little bit learning curve first year, but yeah, they will. Maybe too much because maybe next year they hit it harder, but I mean, this is a beautiful field. Again, this is today here at the last of July. Our deer are looking great. There's still plenty of food out there. And Keith, we will just drill right through that. The deer are gonna keep browsing. So, it's a ways between now and, you know, August whenever we get a rain through this right here.

19:07 Yeah. We're gonna drill right through that. We won't do anything but drill right through it.

19:15 Yep. So, there there's Colton. We want to want to make Colton busy. So, yeah, if you are ready or you have questions, Colton's the man there. So, I'm going to stop sharing here, Grant, and then let's go to questions. We've got some good questions rolling in.

19:37 Let's see what we got here. All right. So, Doug says he's got about half an acre of a food plot. He planted the green cover summer blend this spring. Unfortunately, they had a very dry summer in central Michigan, so it came up mostly weeds. He's asking, 'Should I spray Roundup on this soon before I plant the fall blend plot?'

19:59 You know, a little bit depends on what weed species are out there and is it 10% of the field cover weeds or 50%. I have probably been a little bad. Bad's not the right word. I have probably stressed no herbicide a little more because people just starting this process or smaller plots when you have those weeds herbicides just a tool in the bag. I often say like getting a root canal. I don't want a root canal but it's better than the rest of my teeth rotting out. And I don't like herbicide. I don't think anyone gets up in the morning says boy I can't wait to smell Roundup today. But if you've got a weed problem, you want to get it under control so you can get another good crop going and get on a cycle where you can smother those weeds out. So from what you've shared with Keith and I sounds like maybe you do need a herbicide application.

20:50 Yeah, I would agree. And you know, some people would say, well, can I just go out there and mow it right before I plant my fall release? And maybe, you know, maybe the problem is though is that when you mow those weeds, they you're not going to kill them with mowing. You're just going to set them back. And if you mow the weeds and you plant your fall release, what's going to happen is that all those weeds are going to regrow from the root. And they're going to regrow really fast because they've got all the energy reserves in the root. You've got all your fall release that's happening to

21:25 Start from a seedling. So the only energy they have is in that little seed. So they're obviously going to come slower. And I think what you're going to find is you're just going to fall behind again.

21:36 So I would agree with Grant. It's sometimes it's a tool. Sometimes you have to use it. Costs some money. It's not the greatest thing in the world, but yeah, you have to use it as a tool. So wouldn't be afraid to use that as a tool to do that. But I would say this, don't do it now and then wait a month to plant your fall release. Try to time it to where you're planting that fall release within four or five days, within a week for sure of when you spray that out again because we want to get ahead of the next flush of weeds as well.

22:12 All right, Bill is asking, he says, 'I've read that you should plant brassicas separate from the rye and the oats, but a lot of mixes have both. What are your thoughts on this?'

22:22 Oh goodness. I don't know. You probably got what about a million acres of fall crop got a little brassa in it out there, Keith. And no one's whining. There's been some bad information about bras. And I will say this, many, almost 30 years ago I went to New Zealand with my wife Tracy to learn from the deer farmers there and they were heavy in Nebraska. If any were using brassicas, if they did, maybe just purple top turnip. And since then we've learned so much. Brassicas aren't bad. I don't like a monoculture brassicas. I'd rather have them in a blend. There's a lot of advantages to having them in a blend. Keith, don't you agree with that?

23:05 Yeah, for sure. And Bill, there's absolutely no issue with them growing together. They'll grow together just fine. In fact, they'll do better together than they would separately. The issue can become, and this maybe is the information that you're hearing, is that because brassicas are small seeded, your oats and your rye have bigger seeds. You know, they're difficult to plant. They're difficult to get even distribution throughout. And yeah, I mean, we get that question a lot, but like Grant said, man, we sell hundreds and hundreds of thousands and millions of pounds of this seed, not just to food plotters, but to livestock guys and crop guys all across the country. We sell in all 50 states. And sometimes we'll separate them because they say, 'Well, I've got a small seed box and I've got a regular seed box. I want you to separate them.' And okay, yeah, we can do that. But that's like 4% of the time or something. It's not very oft because most people don't have that type of equipment. And so here's the keys to not having that be a big issue. Number one, the more diverse the mix is, the less those seeds are going to separate. And so if all you had was peas and turnips, big round seed, small round seed, man, those things are coming apart fast. That would not be a good situation. You would not want to do that. But when I start putting in the oats and the buckwheat and the sunflowers and the rye, now I've got different shapes. I've got different sizes. And if you just think about the physicality of this, you know, those different shapes and sizes of seeds, they tend to lock into each other so much better than when you just have round seeds and they have lots of spaces in between. So the more diverse there is, the less issue there is with separation. And the other thing is, and Grant, I know you stress this a lot too. The biggest issue you're going to get into is if you're planting that whole mix at a depth that your rye and oats want, you can get it too deep for the brassicas or the clovers or alfalfa or whatever small seed that you have in there. You can certainly get it too deep for those things to come up. And so that's why we encourage people to plant this on the shallower side of things. You know, 3/4 of an inch is a really nice planting depth to be at. If you stick that in an inch and a half, the rye and the oats will like it pretty well. Some of the brassicas will come okay, but some of them will struggle from that depth. Grant, what's your theory on setting your drill for a depth on these mixes?

25:43 Yeah, exactly. Keith, I even go a little more. I just want them covered quarter inch deep. I'm real rocky, so I have to go on the shallow because when I do hit a patch of soil, it wants to dive really deep on me. And folks, whatever brand of drill you're using, just because there's a setting on the back says a half inch or whatever, it's not going to be a half inch in sand and a half inch in hard clay, right? You've got that's just an indicator and you got to get off the tractor and check behind the drill to see what's happening. And sometimes if it's been dry but there's a rain coming and your ground's hard, you may set that drill at two inches deep and you're only getting a quarter inch deep. So get off the tractor, put boots on the ground and check it is always a wise thing to make sure you've got a good crop. I would rather spend, you know, an extra hour or two planting and look at a beautiful field all deer season than go, 'Oh gosh, something went wrong.'

26:38 Yep. Good advice there. So yeah, no big issues doing that. Troy is asking, he says, 'Seems that drilling in the summer release here in Pleski County, Missouri, eliminates the milo. I'm assuming that he's breaking that milo over as he's drilling into it.

26:55 Says, 'Would drilling the fall release with a drone be okay to do to preserve the milo heads? In addition, is the fall release as beneficial for deer in the fall as say a corn or soybean plot?' So kind of two questions there. Talk about the first one first. You do broadcast. You showed we had a picture here a lot of fall releases broadcast, but you drill some. Talk about when you like to do which and, you know, pros and cons of both.

27:22 We showed a video of a small hideo plot that had a lot of browse pressure and so there was plenty of sun and room for the seed to make ground contact. That's the magic. You got to be able to make ground contact. If you got a really great stand and it's still thick, a lot of those seeds are going to catch on leaves or whatever and not make it to the ground. So my rule of thumb, this is hillbilly, but if I can walk through the field and see my boots clearly half the time, can probably broadcast okay. If I struggle seeing my boots, I'm going to need a drill to part the plants out of the way. And yeah, you're going to break some milo over. Depending on the stage of the milo, it may go ahead and ripen or it may not depend on the maturity of the milo. And it's okay if it ripens at a late stage. The deer are going to get right down there and eat it. I never see volunteer milo here. I mean like never. It gets consumed at some point.

28:22 Or the turkeys, the turkeys will hammer on it too.

28:29 Have you ever done like strips where you drill a strip, broadcast a strip, drill a strip? You know, would something like that work if you're trying to get kind of the best of both worlds?

28:39 I have, but I selfishly want a green plant growing on every square inch I can to improve the soil. So I like to get my fall blend. What I have done, it takes a little bit more labor, is drill and skip strips and then go in and broadcast as that other, that the non-drilled strips mature a little bit more. It's a little bit more labor, but it works extremely well.

29:06 Yeah, yep. That would be a possibility there too. So the second question that Troy has here is, is the fall release as beneficial for the deer in the fall as a corn or soybean plot? Okay. So beneficial, it maybe could be interpreted a couple ways. Is it going to attract deer? I mean standing corn or if you depend on the state, this is not legal in some states. If you mow corn down, scatter the kernels, that's a big attraction of deer. No one's denying that. Beneficial to the herd health. Boy, I think that diverse blend is always better than any single species. No one would feed deer just corn. No, really good deer biologist or just raw soybeans. That's not a balanced ration at all. I'm not saying they won't eat it. I eat fudge, right? So deer may come to it, but for the health of the herd, a diverse blend is going to win hands down.

30:01 Yeah. In addition to that, you know, corn and soybeans are not going to be green. You know, once you start getting past what, mid to late September, you know, those things are starting to mature out. They're going to sure, they're going to have grain, but to me the value in the forage is in the vegetative matter, not in the grain. Especially with soybeans, you know, soybeans have a trypsin inhibitor. So the protein in a soybean isn't available to a ruminant, to a human, until it's cooked.

30:33 So they may eat those seeds, but that protein is passing right through them. They're not going to be able to utilize the majority of the protein in a soybean seed. The plant they can, the seed they cannot. And so, yeah, I would agree that the fall release is going to be a much more balanced diet. And it's going to be green. I'm guessing down where you are, Grant, you see green stuff all the way through December later, don't you?

30:57 Oh, depends on the winter. It could be year-round. I mean, it might snow three inches on it, but it's going to come out green on the other side.

31:05 Yeah. That's incredibly attractive for an animal.

31:08 Incredibly attractive. And Keith's comment, something that deer hunters will relate to. A lot of deer hunters know or have heard about roasted soybeans. They're heating those soybeans up. They're roasting the soybeans. Raw soybeans are not, the grain is not ideal deer food.

31:27 Nope, nope. And just because you get 100 degrees doesn't mean it's the roast of it. That's not going to work.

31:36 Randy is saying he's really impressed with your extreme mix that, well, he got some of Grant's extreme mix is what I think we called it, that he purchased from Green Cover. It's his first experience with deer vetch. He's wondering how your extreme mix is growing for you on the proving grounds and maybe talk a little bit about that deer vetch or American joint vetch or Ashenomin, whatever word you want to call it, same plant there. Talk a little bit about why that is just really kind of an impressive plant.

32:09 Yeah, we showed some videos earlier, sir, and it's extremely well here. It's, I'll play on that stream. That is I will plant that or close. I may tweak it a little bit next year for sure. I mean, it's all our guests, you know, my staff, all our guests, the deer, the bucks, everyone's loving it.

32:27 It's been super for us. Ashenomi is a native plant of Florida and I'm going to tell a funny on me. I'd been out helping land owners for a week or so a month ago and come back and I'm an early riser. I get up usually crack of daylight and I'm out walking see what's going on and I walk through food plot and Daniel and Tim been saying boy that plot's looking good man. I mean it looks good. It's no weeds and ground cover. And I walk through there and I can see my boots everywhere. And it looks like all the veetch is dead. And I'm spitting mad, man. I mean, I can't wait for 8:00 people to show up to work and you know, hey, y'all told me this look good. I'm tired. I come home.

33:08 Veetch has a unique characteristic at night or when it's disturbed to fold up its leaves. It's a moisture conservation thing and a browse pressure conservation thing. And what I've even taken further to summer, I've really studied on this, re reading observing. So de falls at night, those leaves are all tight, tucked in, do hits the ground and the leaves make a canopy and kind of trap that moisture to some extent. And that's one reason it does so well in that mid Florida sandy soil. If you're familiar with Florida, the middle ridge they call it, it's like 50 feet higher, but the middle ridge is real sandy. And this plant grows well there. And we've had a couple weeks of dry for a rain last night. And man, that ashenomnney, it was just carrying a ball through there. So, it's very drought hardy.

33:59 It's really high quality protein. Once it gets cooking, it's slow out of gate, but once it gets cooking, it's able to suppress weeds. But it needs a blend because it's got to be a month or two before it really gets cooking. So, you need other things carrying the load. And that's where Zach and Cotton and I worked on that blend to have stuff that's taken up that gap until the Ashombia, but make sure we didn't shade it out so much that it couldn't get going. And I think the guys did a really good job. We're going to tweak it just a little bit, but I'm very impressed with that plant as well as the whole blend. That plant by itself would not be a good solution.

34:36 And one of the reasons that it's kind of slow out of the gate is it's spending that first month not just sitting around doing nothing. It's growing a root system. And that root system is what allows it to be browsed really hard, but it keeps coming back, keeps coming back, keeps coming back. It's what allows it, when you go through a dry period and a lot of other plants are kind of suffering, it does better than most of them in the drought, I would imagine. Doesn't it?

35:04 Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. We have a that actually that crop we showed that little plot less than an acre we showed Daniel tagging a buck out of we call that high top and right now the only plant really left in there except the utilization cage is the vet and it's 6 in tall but we get we have troll camera on there and I mean it's just getting hammered every night multiple deer they bed in that field they lay down they eat they lay down I mean that camera is just going all night long and they're not able to kill it which is amazing because that's just a rocky little hilltop. I mean, someone dozed off a log and deck there years ago and yeah, it it's doing great. But what allowed it to get going was those other plants that carried it the first couple months or so to get those roots established. By the way, it's a legume, so it's nodulating. It's making some nitrogen in there.

36:00 You know, we could probably all take a little bit of a lesson in that, couldn't we, Grant? That it's important to grow our foundation, grow our roots first before you go out in the world and you take all your beatings because then you can survive a lot and don't try to do it alone, you know, do it in a community with other people that help you survive. So, there are so many life lessons that we could take from plants, but that's maybe another webinar to do there. Okay, here's a good question. Grant, you said that you can't do one acre out of 500 in the south, you know, and expect the browse pressure to be right. Can you elaborate on that and how to gauge a good size relative to the size of the property? That's a good question.

36:44 That's a great question and dog on scientists, you know, we all say it depends all the time and it depends. So what we're trying to do is balance the amount of mouths with the amount of groceries. And if you're a closed canopy pine stand, maybe you have a lease from a timber company and they've given you one acre to plant, then you get a lot of deer coming to that little one acre because it's the best food on the property. And deer eat about dependent time of year and some other variables, 5 to 8% of their body weight a day. So let's just take a 100 pound deer for easy math. But in the summer, those plants are full of moisture. So in round numbers, 70% of that plant's water and 30% is dry matter in round numbers. So a deer has to eat about 15 pounds to get five pounds of dry weight. So you got three or four nanny does and a spike buck and a couple of fawns in one acre and your crop just got planted and it's couple inches tall. You only have a couple hundred pounds of food out there and they can damage it before it gets that root system established and gets going. That's where astronomy really comes in. But try to balance the amount of deer and there's no everyone says, 'Well, is that

43:11 He is struggling with pigweed and water hemp. So his question is, would increasing the rate of the rye to 100 to 120 pounds an acre in the fall blend be a reasonable way to increase spring cover to hopefully prevent these weeds? He's just open to lots of ideas. He's got quite a bit of deer pressure and is just thinking maybe his seating rate isn't high enough to compensate.

43:37 Based on some of the organic research out of University of Madison, the people there are planting very high rates, 150 pounds of rye and doing a pretty good job of suppressing those tough weeds in production crops.

44:00 Part of the issue is, in some of these plots, we're putting the winter oats, which for your area and others do great, overwinter great. That ain't overwintering in North Central Minnesota. So Steve, I think you do need to increase the rate of the rye because that's going to be the only cereal grain that's going to reliably overwinter for you up there. And certainly pigweed and water hemp, they are opportunistic weeds and if there's bare spots in the soil, they're going to come. So I don't think that's a bad idea to try at all. And yeah, talk to Colton. He could help work with you to figure out how to get some of those things adjusted so that you can give that a shot.

44:51 Here's a couple questions from our YouTube audience. We're streaming this on YouTube live. So thank you Colobby for that. Somebody's asking if Green Cover Seed offers a cover crop for spring, summer, fall, and winter gardens. Actually, yes, we do. We have a whole line of garden products. I would just encourage you to go to our website. We put a lot of time and effort into making really good text sheets and informational sheets on the garden products. So just go to greencover.com and you'll be able to find that information there.

45:27 Another YouTube question says, should I rotate brassicas and grains every other year? Is rotation for nutrients or is it for disease prevention? Can I stretch a rotation to two years if I always use buckwheat every summer? I would go back to earlier. I think you'd be better just use a blend. If you plant any crop corn on corn on corn or bean on bean on bean, you're going to have pest issues, whether that's fungus or insect, unless you use a lot of additives. But when you plant blends, you break those cycles up and improve the soil at the same time. So blends cover a lot of issues in the food plot and cover crop world.

46:13 You can plant a blend every year. It's kind of like rotation in a bag because you just simply don't have a plant's neighbor is not the same as itself. And when everything is the same, that's when you get diseases and insects and weeds and all those other things that just take advantage of that lack of diversity. But with a mix, with a blend, you really don't have to worry too much about that.

46:41 Jason is in western North Carolina. He's new to food plotting. Welcome Jason. He says he has no equipment. He recently received permission to hunt a piece of property that contains a fescue pasture. He'd like to start small and convert a couple acres of that pasture to a food plot. How does he get started? Fescue is a tough one.

47:04 Fescue is great for holding that clay on the slopes in the Smokies, that's for sure. But it's tough to eradicate. Jason, fescue does respond to glyphosate. Make sure there's not too much dead duff on top of it. And this is risky to say, but if you have permission and you're safe, an acre or two is pretty easy control, but you could mow that fescue. That dry duff's going to be on top. It'll carry a fire real easy. Make sure you have fire breaks in place. Don't be calling Grant because you burnt the neighbor's house down. And burn that off. And then that fescue will just jump from the roots. And at 3 to 6 inches tall, it is very susceptible to glyphosate. It will just terminate it easy. But if you spray over a lot of duff, there'll be green shoots down there that don't get the glyphosate on it. It's got to get to the crop, not the roots, but the growing leaf tissue. And you'll get a really good kill. And you can just broadcast right on that. You don't have to have a tractor. I use a broadcast spreader all the time for experiments in real plots and you can broadcast that seed. So you wouldn't want to burn that fescue off or terminate it, whatever you're going to do, until just a week or so before time to broadcast your seed, which is 45 days to 60 days before the average first frost date in your area. And when there's a rain in the forecast, that rain is critical. But yeah, I've converted a lot of fescue, helped people convert fescue into food plots. One thing you don't want to do is till, using tillage because that fescue pasture's probably been making seed for a long time, maybe decades, and you turn that soil over, it's going to be a great fescue weed crop coming up. You just want to kill it in place and then broadcast seed.

48:49 Tyler is asking about the difference between superfall release and regular fall release. What's the difference? What's the advantages, disadvantages of those two blends?

49:03 There's an overlap of species in there for sure. Superfall has more seeds per acre and a little bit different. If I was in an area that I either had small plots or a lot of deer, I would definitely nod towards superfall. If you're in a country and there's not a lot of deer around, not a lot of cover, something you're going to put a food plot, fall release would probably work fine for you. Where I am again with only 20 plus acres of food plots here, I'm on superfall for sure and superfall at a heavy rate.

49:40 A lot of it just comes down to how much is your browsing pressure because the superfall, it's just going out there at a heavier rate. More seeds on the ground. So good question there.

49:57 Shane is in Georgia and he says his property is dealing with a significant hog problem. While we address that through other means, is there any deer food we can plant that hogs dislike or will avoid?

50:13 Omnivores. They eat about anything you put in front of them. And they're wicked on food plots. If I gave any advice at all there, I would plant smaller seeds because if you get something big like a kernel corn or soybean, they're going to go right down the row and root it up. I've literally seen where it looked like 40 guys with a hoe went down row just rooting up all the seeds and that was hogs in one night. So I have a bow, love to travel, love to chase hogs, but hunting hogs is not a way to control them. You have to trap and trap a lot. You need to reduce hog populations by 70% or more based on research to make a dent because they're so productive. So trap, trap a lot. And I would not be planting very large size seeds that are just going to attract deer like a feeder or attract hogs like a feeder.

51:06 Fortunately, we don't have them yet up here in Nebraska. You southern boys just keep all those hogs down there. We have enough problems. We don't need that.

51:17 Roger from northern Alabama is saying his place is just southeast of the CWD buffer zone. He uses feeders for adding protein. He plants summer mix with peas and sunflowers. Can you speak a little bit on CWD and what he can do further to help his herd be as healthy as possible? What can he do to help with that chronic wasting disease problem?

51:40 CWD is such a hot topic and so much misinformation. I would encourage everyone to find online Dr. Jennifer Maulberg. She's a researcher for NRCS. She's not political. She has no bias, no sponsorships. That lab has probably done more work on CWD than any lab in the world potentially. They have CWD deer in their quarantine lab. They know exactly what's going on. So I'm going to default to her for the ins and outs of CWD.

52:14 Of course, I'm going to get a lot of hate mail here. Keep feeders are bad because it makes deer group unnaturally. You don't ever see that many deer. I've never seen an acorn tree where they root it out and it stays muddy year round because it's a pulse crop, right? Acorns fall and then they're gone. Or food plot is spread out. It's not a three-foot circle like under a spin feeder or something like that. I know some of you all hate hearing that, but reducing your feeders or getting rid of feeders if you're really serious about being safe and not putting deer nose to nose.

52:51 Mississippi State published, I think it was last year, some brilliant work. They took a brand new deer feeder out of the box. Deer had never been to it. Two of them, I think it was a quarter mile apart. You have to read the research. And one was just put out like anyone would put out a feeder and one they put out but they put cattle panels up over it and all around it so deer could not get to it but raccoons could go through the six-inch panels. It only took, I don't remember again, two or three weeks for a raccoon to move the CWD prion from the deer feeder that quarter mile to that feeder where deer could have no chance to get.

53:27 So anyway you slice it and not even CWD, parasites, deer have a lot of parasites. Normal loads don't really impact deer but when those loads get high, it can really hurt a deer's health, just like in cattle or humans. And if you have one of those tube feeders where all the deer stick their nose in those six inch opening and salivating right there, that is not healthy for deer. And I have no stake in any feeder company. I'm just sharing the biology.

53:57 I would stop feeding and work on your native habitat and food plots. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter how healthy a deer is or how much protein it has. This is a prion disease, not a bacteria or virus. And it takes down healthy humans, the human variant of it, or healthy deer or healthy cattle or healthy sheep. Those are all different variants, regardless of their diet. So you're not going to solve CWD through a diet. I wish it was that simple, but it's just not.

54:31 The feeders are just a very unnatural part of how they're

54:36 Used to browsing and it just exasperates and makes a bad problem worse.

54:45 Doug's got a good question here. We're coming up on our time, but we'll take a few more questions. Doug says he doesn't have access to a crimper. A lot of people don't. Is there another method of crimping the stand? He's got a cutter packer. Would that do a good enough job or do you have other suggestions on crimping that fall release as it comes out in the spring and that rise at the right stage? What are some options there?

55:10 So I get this question a lot. If you wait really late, like you time it right before that seed goes to maturity, hard and viable versus dough stage, a crimper might work on the small grains. It's probably not going to work if you have a good clover blend in there, maybe balancy or something like that, because grippers have fins, I call them half inch pieces of millet, say, which are designed to put a lot of pressure on the stem of the plant and crush the circulatory system. Cutters are made to be gentle, to gently press seed and make sure it's got contact with the soil. They're designed for totally different missions. I know they look round and they pull behind a tractor, but there's big differences outside of that. And some people always ask about flail mowing, but as Keith mentioned earlier, a lot of weeds, grasses, whatever, you mow your yard, the weeds and grass just comes back, right? So mowing's rarely a good option. Another big issue with mowing, maybe not so bad with flail mower, but a standard brush hog, it leaves clumps, right? Doesn't throw any here and it leaves a big clump over here, whereas crimping just lays it down as it comes to it. And so I would say in some cases it might be better to use a herbicide and terminate the crop standing and drill or broadcast into that crop. It's going to fall over pretty quickly after that stage anyway once the herbicide's been there, versus risking a crimper and certainly a mower. There's trade-offs all those, but again, a crimper is meant to be gentle and not crush seed, just make sure seed makes contact with the soil, firm the soil up a little bit. A crimper is made to crush the stem of a plant.

57:04 And you know, Doug, I would say too, and I tell farmers this all the time, you're not going to hurt anything by going out and trying it. It just may not work very well. There's no harm in going out there and trying it. And I would try it at different growth stages. I try it a lot of times when that plant is going to be more susceptible to crimping at night, when that stem is a little more succulent, it's taking in a little more moisture. So don't be afraid to try things, but Grant's right. You're not using it for the way it was designed. So if it does work, it's going to have a very narrow tight window of when it would work versus a crimper has a little bit wider window of opportunity there. So a cutter followed with a with your no-till drill. The drill is going to be doing some smacking and crimping and you just got to experiment with some things like that. So don't be afraid to do that.

58:04 Let's take another one from our YouTube audience. So this listener lives in southwestern Louisiana, owns about 80 acres, 40 of which are hardwood bottomland. How do they manage the undergrowth, which is thicker than deer hair, without also killing the mature oaks?

58:29 Yeah, that's a great question. There are several crews in the southern timber belt that will come in and they're going to use a herbicide. They're going to spray a triclopyr product, usually Garlon 3 or Garlon 4, which goes in through the leaf surface area, but if you sprayed across the stem of a mature oak it's not going to hurt it. And in fact, I had cut a pretty large tract of cedars here a few years ago and I was going to burn it last year. And the way the weather worked out, I just didn't get a burn. And all those dump sprouts and seedlings are 10 feet tall. And a fire hot enough to set those back was going to damage my mature trees also. So I had a crew, Andrew Laughlin, I don't mind sharing his name, out of Alabama, bringing his crew up. I even shared the price. They charge $150 an acre, that was turnkey herbicide, labor, everything. And right now it looks like fall, right out the window over here. And it looks like fall. And as a matter of fact, as those leaves are falling, I'm getting a green up under that, Keith, where it was shaded out. So I got a big pulse of food coming on right now with this last rain. And then I'll burn that this winter as a one-two punch, right? The herbicide, if it didn't get good coverage on something, I'll stick a fire through there too. So in that case, really don't mulch. Mulching doesn't, mulching is like mowing grass, right? It doesn't kill it. When you mulch a hardwood, the energy is down to root systems. It's just putting up more sprouts and it's super expensive and more likely to damage those mature oaks by the soil compaction of those shallow roots, especially in moist soils. So don't mulch, but in that case herbicide, probably triclopyr, some people call it triclor, would work good in you and not hurt the mature trees.

1:00:14 Yeah. And if you're going to do a fire through there, if you're managing your

1:00:17 Fire correctly, it's not going to hurt those mature trees as well. Correct. It's tough in those wetland, those southern bottomland hardwoods to get a fire when the conditions are such that it will carry a fire. It's probably going to burn a little hot in those wetter areas and it might damage some of the mature trees. If you get up on the ridge 20 feet higher, fire is a great tool, but those hardwood bottoms are tough to use fire and it's possible, but it's a very specific window where that works well.

1:00:48 Okay, good advice there. Let's do one more question because this is pretty timely with what people are thinking about right now. Stefan is asking he's got summer release in a couple fields right now. When and how does he switch to fall release? So what's kind of your gauge? We talked about this a little bit maybe, but let's maybe finish on this because this is the season that we're going into. When would people move from that summer plot to their fall release plot?

1:01:21 Great question, Steph. Thanks for watching. Thanks for sharing that question. So again, I like to plant and I'll push it a little tighter up north, but 45 to 60 days before the average first frost date where you live. You can put your zip code in on any of the search engines and find the first fall frost date on average. We don't know what's going to happen on any given year, so we go by the averages and then I'm going to walk in my plot. If I can see my boots half the time or more, I could broadcast if that's an option you want to use. If it's really thick, the deer have a browse set that hard. That drill is going to do quite a bit of damage to that summer crop, that late season summer crop. And I don't have any issues drilling through a summer crop and that's pretty lush and getting a good stand because the drill does enough damage. I don't crimp or anything because whatever of that summer crop is left standing, the deer are browsing on it while the fall crop is coming on. So I'm not worried about soil temperature. It's plenty warm that time of year. I'm worried about moisture and being in that 45 to 60 day window somewhere in there. If you and it's been really dry here before and I pushed it to like, two weeks before the first frost and I got a crop, it didn't grow as tall that winter, but there's no need to putting seed out there in the drought. So if you're moisture deficient, no rain in the forecast, I would hold off.

1:02:44 Yep. Good advice there. So I think we'll kind of wrap up here. I do want as we close here, I'm going to share this screen again because if you folks have questions about food plot seed, Colton is the guy. Colton spends a majority of his time talking to food plotters. Colton's a hunter, loves wildlife, loves being outside, so he's just a great addition to our team and understands these blends really, really well. So Grant, what closing words of wisdom or pieces of advice would you have for folks as they kind of move into the fall season here?

1:03:26 Well, I'm going to do this if it shows up. While I'm in here working hard, Daniel's out in a blind filming deer and he sent me that picture while we're talking. So in some summer release, I think Keith hit this earlier. There's so many great lessons from growing crops and watching how they mature and issues that come up and healthier the soil, more prep work you do, the more you're prepared for those droughts or storms in life. I would encourage all of y'all to do your homework. Talk to Colton. Get the right blend for not only your location, but the deer density and all the other factors. And remember, within a blend, you could plant another 10 pounds per acre if you got a lot of deer. Even another 20 pounds per acre if you got a lot of deer. And in your life, storms are going to come up, too. Keith and I both know that. And Keith and I shared this foundation of a belief in Christ. He's our savior, and we're going to rely on that when issues come up. Keith and I both strongly want everyone to have that same blessing of that relationship so you can call on our savior in that time of need. Read the scripture, find the verse that applies to your situation and hang on to it. Boy, so many times I've memorized a verse for a specific situation, kidney transplants, lost my, you know, whatever. We all get little storms in life and I'm not saying it's going to make it better overnight, but it will give you the peace and the strength to go through the situation.

1:05:03 Amen. That's great advice, Grant. And yeah, it's like that, you know, growing those roots and having that foundation so that when the storms come, when life browses you down hard, which it's going to do, you can regrow, you can be resilient and so much of that does come from our faith. So thank you for sharing that, Grant. And thanks everyone for joining us. Grant will be posting this video, I believe, on the Growing Deer channel. So if you've got friends that you think need to watch this, please direct them over there to the Growing Deer channel. They can rewatch this. They can take advantage of Grant's words of wisdom here as well. So Grant, thank you so much for joining. It's always a pleasure to do this. I always look forward to being able to visit with you, but mostly to interact with our customers and deer hunters all across the country. So thanks everyone for joining and have a great season.