With an extra day off work for President's Day, I headed down to the cabin last Sunday to spend 2 days working. I had planned on the trip for awhile, but just last week my dad asked if I would like some help on Monday. With plans to expand a small food plot in the woods, I welcomed the help.
The weather was unseasonably warm with highs in the 60s but lows still dropping below freezing. I arrived just before lunch on Sunday and set to work on pruning the apple orchard. It took me about 2 hours to get through the entire orchard but I felt really good about how things looked when I was finished.
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| Apple Orchard |
After that, I spent some time walking the food plots searching for shed antlers. I didn't find any antlers but once again the fields were trampled with deer tracks. I was surprised, however, to see the remains of a lot of leftover turnip bulbs. In previous years those had been picked clean and I'm still not sure why there was so much left this year.
I had planned on taking down all of the t-posts and cages from the failed tree planting last spring, but as I started to walk around looking at the cages, I was able to find 8 scattered blue spruce trees that were actually in very good shape and had all put on growth. Of course there were only 8 out of 36 that survived but I decided that was enough for me to change my plans. Instead of ripping them all back out, I plan to try to keep the 8 growing and add a few more older trees each year. By leaving the cages in place, it will make for less work in the future.
With no other way to avoid it, I fired up the chainsaw and got to work on the ridge food plot. This secondary ridge on the South end of the property has been a good spot since buying the property in 2012. In 2015 we cleared out about 1/8 of an acre and created a small food plot that did fairly well. Last year the plot didn't grow as well so very little forage was available for the deer. This year, I decided that I wanted to expand the food plot to get more sunlight to the ground as well as to make it easier to maintain with the ATV.
When we created the food plot a couple of years back, we cleared away the brush and debris on the ground and girdled several trees in the middle of the plot, but we didn't take many trees down at all. The plan was to take down the dead trees in the middle as well as an island of trees on the north side.
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| Dropping some trees |
I worked for about 3 hours before running out of energy and gas for the chainsaw, so I headed back to the cabin before the sun went down. Knowing that dad would be down to help in the morning, I felt that I had gotten a good start.
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| Enjoying the sunset |
The next morning, I headed into town to go for a run as well as stop at Menards for more supplies. Dad and I both arrived back at the cabin shortly after 8 and we were working by 8:30. We worked until 11:30 when we broke for lunch. By that time we had the entire north end of the food plot cleared out.
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| Using the ATV to pull down a leaning tree |
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| Cutting up a downed tree |
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| Cutting out stumps was our least favorite part |
After taking a lunch break at the cabin, we headed back out to work on expanding the food plot to the southeast. Back in 2012 we had cut an ATV trail into the woods on this ridge, the trail wrapped around the food plot and then had a large turnaround at the end of the ridge. We widened the trail down to that turn around then cleared out all of the trees and debris in the middle of that turn around. The opening ended up looking like an hour glass with a much wider top then bottom. The tree stand that I shot my first buck out of last year is just off the narrow part of the hour glass. We did end up leaving 1 tree standing on the south portion because it would have fallen right into the tree stand. Luckily it was in the middle and should be easy to work around with the ATV.
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| All ready to head back out after lunch |
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| Dad taking down a tree |
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| 1 of 6 big log and brush piles that we created |
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| View of the south end of the food plot from the tree stand |
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| View of the north end of the food plot from the tree stand |
All in all, we expanded the food plot from about 1/8th of an acre to 1/4 of an acre. We used some of the brush to block off a few deer trails in hope that the deer will funnel closer to the tree stand. I am planning to put a ground blind on the far northwest corner of the plot, where the ATV trail enters, to allow hunting with an East or South wind. Next month I will mow off any remaining brush and work to rake off the plot in preparation for planting in late May. I really feel that we just made a good spot even better, and I look forward to hunting over it come fall.
