The last part is kinda us. Don;t want any payment nor thanks just would be nice if people think before they post stuff on sites like this.
We only post about half the land we could and it is just mostly around home. (Don;lt like people I don;t know, even some I do know, in our back yard with high powered rifles) I have three boys a daughter a Dad (this year a Mom) and me that loves to hunt rifle and bow for me and the kids. Have a few friends and relatives that also hunt these few quarters around home. We put a lot of work into creating a place where deer and birds can thrive and we like shooting good bucks and managing does if we can. Have had 7 different people coming in shooting does out of a heated elevated stand after rifle season and would like more.
Anyone want to drive up and see how many deer are in the CRP left around here? Single tree rows? Save your gas, it is none.
Left 10 acres of corn standing for the birds and deer. Left a bunch of cat tail sloughs we could have worked up. Kids raise and release a couple hundred pheasants each year. What we combined ran about 130 bushel so roughly $2500 left out there (cost about that to grow it) . Half is drifted in with snow above the cobs maybe be there for spring time.
We are taking out a couple alfalfa and forage barley bales every week or so to try and keep them out of the hay yard. After this last 24 inches they are piled in there. Net wrap helps on the damage but they are still eating on the ends and are now out eating right with the cattle when we take feed out.
There is roughly 400 deer coming into our place. We have followed tracks from 10 miles down the road to our place. Coyotes follow the deer. Have shot 10 coyotes already just doing chores.
Have found 7 dead deer already.
We have our ground corn in a "bin" we built out of bales stacked on end two they are climbing over the bales. We have not found a way to keep them out of the silage pile.
By the time spring rolls around we will have at least $5000 into keeping what deer we can alive and keeping them out of our feed supplies. Add in acres of sloughs we don;t farm and tree rows we plant we invest a bit in wildlife. They have decimated most of the green ash and cotton woods in a newer 3/4 mile long 5 row tree row eating them down to the ground when they were first growing. We replaced them by hand one year only to have the same thing happen two years latter in a tough winter.
Deer migrate to where there is feed and shelter. That is most often ranch yards. We have a large grove roughly 200 yards by 100 yards 1 3/4miles away. A regular deer haven in the summer and fall. There is a pasture that was not grazed after June 15 (tons of regrowth grass) there with tons of russian olive thickets beside it. There are no deer left there.
Mother nature has a way of dealing with things. She usually wins if she wants. Deer numbers will grow and they will drop and stockpiling numbers doesn;t work for long. A few years of easy winters sure......then along comes one like this and too many deer are just that, too many deer and Ma Nature does her sort.
And the old "go into winter with more deer equals coming out with more" doesn;t work in these winters cause more deer eat the avalible food sooner and there is nothing left come the long cold spring months and we have watched more deer die in March than Jan.
So ya CRP is good fawning habitat to create more deer. Single tree rows provide cover for wildlife in the warm months, not now. But Old Man winter works with Ma Nature to level the field.
Still looking for people to shoot does with their bow tags.
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