What did you do for the deer today?

[Wildlife]

I kinda meant like a roof over it so you didn't have to manually do anything other than fill it.

That's a good idea and that may happen in the future. I'll wait and see how much deer activity I get at the feed station over the coming weeks before I decide to modify that trough any further. Deer are slowly but surely getting used to the troughs and the corn one has been out just over a week. So far so good though. Thanks for the recommendation!

 

[giles]

I am really interested to see how many mature deer go to that in daylight. Seems like a ton of human scent and interaction.

 

[Chancegriffis]

I am really interested to see how many mature deer go to that in daylight. Seems like a ton of human scent and interaction.

^^^^^^

 

[Wildlife]

I am really interested to see how many mature deer go to that in daylight. Seems like a ton of human scent and interaction.

Honestly Dave, I see it to be no different than the previous years I've been tending to the feed station that's right behind our cabin. Below is an example of last year local deer herd that were showing up daily in daylight and I have just as many deer this year if not more. The regular bucks that I can identify so far are showing up once again, such as, 'SHYBUC', 'JR' and 'NINER'. All the others, I'm not quite sure just yet which bucks they are, but I will find out sooner or later. You can expect my sharing once again this year in what I've got going on within my neck of the woods in this year's hunt journal.

 

[Big_Holla]

Running back and forth with a lid to cover the feed because of a rain coming might just be that extra interaction Dave was talking about that may start bothering the deer. Maybe not. So many troughs you see in people's trail camrea pics out there with actual roofs over them might be the answer. Dump and go like you generally have done in the past. I'm sure you'll have good documentation to show one way or the other though. Those pellets shouldn't get wet though, they will eventually swell up, mold and rot.

 

[Wildlife]

Running back and forth with a lid to cover the feed because of a rain coming might just be that extra interaction Dave was talking about that may start bothering the deer. Maybe not. So many troughs you see in people's trail camrea pics out there with actual roofs over them might be the answer. Dump and go like you generally have done in the past. I'm sure you'll have good documentation to show one way or the other though. Those pellets shouldn't get wet though, they will eventually swell up, mold and rot.

I'm sure some are familiar with this YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/BrownvillesFoodPantryForDeer/videos) and it's what gave me the idea to build feed troughs this year for that location. We'll all see together if it works or not. If so, then I do have intensions of broadcasting that area live occasionally on my YouTube channel.

 

["J"]

*Trough
Since @Sgt Fury hasn’t showed up yet.

 

[Wildlife]

*Trough
Since @Sgt Fury hasn’t showed up yet.

Yeah, Chuck set me straight on that one, thanks! I'm the worst speller, especially when I have deer on the brain.

 

[Sgt Fury]

*Trough
Since @Sgt Fury hasn’t showed up yet.

 

["J"]

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[hickslawns]

Hope it works out for you well Mr Denny. Think I'm going to keep being cheap. Hope our herd rebounds a little more. About all I can do.

 

[5Cent]

Plain old salt block back out last week, the boys have found it.

 

[jagermeister]

I took most of today off work to get some much needed chores done around the home farm. I was able to spray about 55,000 row feet of hardwood tree seedlings to (hopefully) help control weed competition. The majority of my trees were planted into volunteer winter wheat. To make things easy and to prevent any injury to the trees, I sprayed a generic Clethodim product, which is a grass-selective herbicide. This allowed me to spray overtop of the individual rows and hit roughly a 3-ft swath on each side.

For anyone who may be in the market for a new ATV sprayer, I highly recommend this boomless spray rig made by FIMCO. It’s available at most Tractor Supply stores. It comes with a wand and also a wet boom composed of 3 individual nozzles… a center nozzle covering 6-ft straight down, and then one on each end that’ll reach out a solid 12-15 feet. All going at once this setup will cover at least a 30-ft width. And what’s really nice is each nozzle can be turned “on” or “off” with a simple twist of the nozzle housing cap. You’ll notice in my pictures that I moved the wet boom over to one side to offset my center nozzle to the left. This made it really easy to be efficient in my spraying effort… simply hug the tree row with my left tires… one pass, done.

 

[Sgt Fury]

I remember reading a year or two ago when @Big_Holla used one of these that he got from Sportsmens guide. Don’t know if it’s the same one but I think I need to get one of these to spray my quad path from where I park my truck to where I enter the woods to my blind. I have a guy who mows it for me now but don’t know how much longer that’s going to continue….he sold his land next to mine and doesn’t keep his Equiptment on-site any longer. When it doesn’t get mowed…the weeds can grow six feet high. It’s not fun walking to your stand through six feet of wet weeds…even less fun trying to navigate a quad, driving where you can’t see and knowing there’s a steep drop off on one side….too far to the left and you’re going for a ride downhill!

 

[Big_Holla]

Very similar set-up, only mine is a single nozzle. Has worked great so far and I’m not sure I’d want booms out to the side as the stuff I spray would definitely grab on and likely break them off at some point. Also something to mention, the higher you put the spray nozzles the more vapor you’ll have in the air though even on windless days. Not anything I’d care to breath in when making passes.

 

[jagermeister]

Very similar set-up, only mine is a single nozzle. Has worked great so far and I’m not sure I’d want booms out to the side as the stuff I spray would definitely grab on and likely break them off at some point. Also something to mention, the higher you put the spray nozzles the more vapor you’ll have in the air though even on windless days. Not anything I’d care to breath in when making passes.

Right. The nice thing is, when it’s set up on the centerline of the four wheeler, the boom doesn’t stick out past the sides of the bike. So you get a boomless profile with boom performance. My only complaint though is that the height is not adjustable. Like you said, that can cause issues on windy days if you’re not careful.

 

[Wildlife]

Built a couple of deer feed troughs.

I drew this up over the winter time on a little piece of note paper and today I got around to building them. I had some of the material already laying around, including the 55 gallon plastic drum. I ripped the drum in half which allowed me to make two separate identical feed troughs for the deer. Both will be placed at the feed station right behind our cabin this week.

I'm sure it will take the deer a little while to get acclimated to them, but I'm confident they'll get use to them and use them quite regularly.

I expect these troughs to last an awfully long time because I built them to last and to withstand all kinds of weather conditions and animal abuse. They are very solid . I also expect the whole corn to stay in much better condition over longer periods of time in the troughs
verses being thrown straight down onto the ground.

You all can expect to see them in use as soon as I launch this year's hunt journal of mine, which will be at the end of the month. I have a lot of deer this year and totally expecting more shortly after the does give birth later this month and onto the next.

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25 DAYS!

That is how long it took for the very first deer to eat out of one of the feed troughs since I placed the first one back on May 6th. Now I think the flood gate has been officially opened for the rest to follow before I consider it a true success.

This is an update regarding the two feed toughs I built last month and placed at the feed station for the new year.

This would be the fifth year ever since I cared to carve out a small, wooded parcel area right behind our cabin of all the honeysuckle shrubs, trees, tree stumps and debris so I could attempt feed any wildlife within the immediate area.

Each year afterwards, the number of deer and many other Ohio native wildlife species have been increasingly showing up at that location steadily and I am truly grateful to see it happen.

When the first feed tough was placed nearly a month ago, deer have been showing up regularly, daily, as usual, however each showed a frightened behavior when discovering the troughs, minimizing the typical amount of time spent at that location. As each day passed though, more deer displayed increased curiosity of the newly placed feed troughs and slowly attempted to investigate each of them over the course of the last three weeks.

I knew it would take some time for the deer to get acclimated or acquainted with them, and I was confident it would happen eventually. Of course, I did use a little persuasion to help things along, such as leaving a little bit of a corn on the ground that led right to the corn trough, and ‘WAWLA’, it finally worked as you’ll get to see in the shared video.

Within the video, the behavior displayed by the deer should provide some context as to what I observed over the course of the last few weeks; shy, timid, and scared while trying to warm up to the presence of the new feed troughs.

Now I expect to see more deer feed out of both troughs relatively soon since the first deer fed out of one of them yesterday. No more corn will be laid out onto the ground anymore going forward.

The video is a little over twelve minutes long of a trail camera photography showing two young bucks from yesterday that spent nearly forty minutes at the feed station in daylight.

I’m very pleased to provide this update to you all and I will continue to share even more within this year’s hunt journal later this month.

Thanks for reading & watching!

 

[Bowkills]

grilling out making a friend. Guessing bambi is laid down next to the yard.

 

[Tipmoose]

For the last few days the best thing I could do for the deer was leave them alone. Let them sleep in their shady beds and not chase them out into the sun.

 

[bowhunter1023]

Not that the deer care, but I put some intellectual capital into the pot today in prep for my weekend activities. My food plot plan is done and I'm committed to it after wavering a bit last month. They're gonna like what I have in store for them!