ADAM: Middle of
August is an exciting time of year.
We start really preparing for deer season because we’re only about a month away.
Plus this week, we’ll take a little bit of time to share with you a few techniques
when hunting new property.
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ADAM: Throughout the summer we’ve worked on hanging stands, trimming stands – working
on those lanes to enter and exit our stands.
This week we headed south to the southernmost part of The Proving Grounds and worked on
hanging on a new property.
ADAM: There’s a couple things I try to do when hunting a new piece of property.
Number one, I’m gonna avoid those thick areas or bedding areas.
I don’t want to alert the deer and ultimately make ‘em more nocturnal.
ADAM: Today we’re here on the southern part of The Proving Grounds where you’ve seen
us start a management project all the way back to the winter when AJ and I came in here
scouting the first time.
ADAM: Looks like a pretty good one coming in right there.
ADAM: When I’m scouting and hanging new stands on a piece of property that I’ve
only hunted a few times or maybe never hunted at all, I’m gonna set up a stand for each
wind.
I’m gonna hang one for an east wind, a south wind, north wind, a west wind, so I’ll have
a place to hunt for each wind.
ADAM: You know what’s all over that tree?
JOSH: Poison ivy.
JOSH: Because if you’re willing to sacrifice a little itchy skin…
ADAM: Two weeks of itchy skin.
Not little itchy skin.
Swell up and scratch your skin off.
ADAM: Yep.
There it is, right there.
Man, I wish we would have seen that last winter.
ADAM: AJ and I found this plot last winter.
We came in here, a couple trails intersected and there was a couple scrapes still fresh,
still kept up even during the winter.
We know it’s a hot spot.
We’ve got it set up for a north wind or a northeast wind; we can approach it with
the wind in our face; we have a nice big black oak, behind us – forked limb – gonna have
lots of cover and I’m super excited to hunt this stand this fall.
ADAM: Well even in the hot weather – got a heat index around 100 today, there’s no
breeze, it’s hot and humid – but we had to get stands done.
You can see we got a nice little area cleared out, plenty of shooting lanes now.
We can’t wait for deer season to start and hop up in the Muddy stand.
ADAM: So, it’s important when hunting new property to keep calm; don’t dive off in
the middle of it, put your deer on high alert and watch your success rate drop.
Stay back; observe; find those travel patterns and then move in for the kill.
ADAM: This week it took a little time.
Drive down to Tracy’s Field and see what the Hot Zone fence looks like.
ADAM: Geez.
ADAM: Well as you can see, beans on the outside of the fence less than a foot tall, lots of
stems, lots of leaves removed.
Then you look on the inside of the fence, beans are over two, almost three foot tall,
tons of leaves and tons of forage.
Look at the difference here.
We have a bean plant from outside the fence versus inside the fence.
It’s three times taller on the inside of the fence plus it’s loaded up with blooms.
Almost every plant on the inside of the fence has got blooms on it.
You look out here across the outside of the fence there’s very few blooms.
Those blooms are ultimately gonna become the pods.
So, we know inside the fence we’re gonna have lots of pods but on the outside of the
fence, there’s gonna be very few pods, meaning there’s not gonna be very much food for
the deer come late winter.
ADAM: So our plan – we’ll come in with Eagle Seed broadside mix; drill right through
the beans on the outside of the fence, so we’ll have a green carpet of forage on the
outside and have standing grain on the inside.
ADAM: After looking over the field and the amount of browse, Josh and I decided to take
the cameras out one evening and see what deer were hitting the fields.
ADAM: About a month ago, the interns and I would head out a couple of different nights;
put the glass on the bean fields and see what bucks were hitting the fields.
We saw a lot of great bucks so we couldn’t wait ‘til August roll around, we’d head
back out.
ADAM: I had just sat down in the Redneck blind when I had two bucks enter the field.
ADAM: After that, it was just a steady parade of deer throughout the evening.
ADAM: While I was seeing all these deer, Josh was having the same results.
The evening was starting out a little different than they were a month ago.
We were seeing does with a lot of fawns compared to a month ago when we were seeing a lot of
antlers.
ADAM: In two nights, in two different fields – about a month ago, we saw zero fawns.
And in one night between two fields, we saw six fawns.
ADAM: I’m not complaining, though.
Cause seeing this amount of fawns is telling us that our trapping program is paying off.
ADAM: It ended up being a great night for both Josh and I because we saw about 30 deer
between the two of us.
ADAM: I hope you get a chance to get out this week and finish up your deer season preparation
or even take the binos out and see some velvet bucks.
But most importantly, remember to do it all in the Glory of God.
And thanks for watching GrowingDeer.tv.
ADAM: You like it?
ADAM: One of the most exciting things we can do to prepare for deer season – did I stumble
on “prepare?”
Prahpare, prahpare – that’s what it sounds like I’m saying.
ADAM: One of the things we like to do prah, prah, prahpare.
ADAM: Clear the mechanism.
ADAM: Went to another piece – how do I st-go into that?
What did I just say?
And when we watch some grow and…
JOSH: Well, you were right there.
ADAM: Yeah.
I was right there.
Here in a couple weeks and drill Eagle Seed broadside blend in the seed.
JOSH: What?