A year in the life of a farm

[Farmdog]

Nice work! Great results

[GMWWC]

It's been raining all day and I'm stuck inside so I thought I would make my first entry. I've just finished putting together the summer planting schedule with seed order. Will start planting late April thru early May.The combo's are"

45 acres--- 50 lb's/acre cowpeas, 3 lbs/acre sunflowers, 3 lbs/acre pearl millet

15 acres---50 lbs/acre soybeans, 3 lbs/acre sunflowers, 3 lbs./acre pearl millet

7 acres---- 50 lbs/acre cowpeas, 3 lbs/acre sunflowers, 2 lbs/acre sorgham

15 acre----- 10 lbs/acre joint vetch, 10 lbs acre Alyce clover

6 acres ---- 5 lbs/acre grain sorgham { to feed the chickens, Dont laugh! }

I'll be planting all this with a no till drill in to a freshly mowed winter cover crop of Elbon rye, wheat, oats, crimson clover, Austrian winter peas,and radishes [ whats left of them]. The idea is the thatch suppresses weeds while the new crop gets started. The legumes fix nitrogen for the sunflowers and millet, and the radishes break up the soil and sequester nutrients. Of course the deer [ and the soil] like all this!

Now for an opinion...I believe nutrition and animal health is THE biggest challenge and limiter in most deer herds. Age is simple. Dont shoot them. I believe genetics while important are far better in most herds than people understand. Rarely are genetics the limiter in a herd. However, getting nutrition in the 100th percentile year round for many years in a row is very challenging.But it takes that for animal health to fully manifest genetic potential. It is extremely hard to get wild deer free of all parasites, infections, and all the multitude of afflictions that compromise perfect health. But I believe that is what it takes to learn what a herd is capable of.

OF course that is just my opinion. I'm not a biologist just a red neck from La. unencumbered by the scientific method.

Have you tried turnips? or beets? maybe even carrots?
I have tried Safeguard wild game wormer pellets in the off season but I am not having any luck getting them to eat it. I am going to try the block made for cattle next.
They will eat corn of course

[elgato]

Was the quickest easiest hunt I've ever had for a specific buck!. Took less than 15 mins from time getting in blind till he walked out. 240lbs.hardly any teeth left with best guess being 8 yrs old . 184"

Working on video of hunt now.

[brown dogs]

Congrats and thanks for sharing all.

[Mex. Bowhunter]

Well done Rusty. Congrats to the lucky hunter

[freezerfiller]

Awesome!

[steve morton]

Toad!

[Ground Checkin' Heavies]

After watching the video, I got 186.

**I see the LDP now, 184, very cool, nice buck, congrats to the hunter!**

[elgato]

Here's a brief video of the nontypical hunt

https://youtu.be/-dCzi1ooZxY

[MASTERS]

Was the quickest easiest hunt I've ever had for a specific buck!. Took less than 15 mins from time getting in blind till he walked out. 240lbs.hardly any teeth left with best guess being 8 yrs old . 184"

Working on video of hunt now.

Weak brows, congrats on the skim!

[gemini2759]

Congrats.

Sent from my moto g power (2021) using Tapatalk

[Kingfisher789]

Methuselah!

[Mexico]

Congratulations to the hunter! Awesome!

[Daddy D]

Awesome buck!

[HOOKNBULLET2]

Thanks for sharing Rusty.