Why I Love Interior Food Plots - We Built Two More | Dream Farm w/ Bill Winke
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- Опубліковано 17 жов 2024
- Interior food plots create a lot of value for any whitetail hunting property. Not only do that offer great places to actually hunt, but they also increase property value should you ever decide to sell. In this episode, I talk about where to create them and how to create them. In the process, we make two more of them on the farm. Ben Sweeney: (563) 419-1709.
Whitetail Institute Pure Attraction: whitetailinsti...
This video gave me some great ideas. Love the “new” content you’re putting out Bill.
Thanks Mike. I really appreciate the comment and the support.
The bag seeder hack is genius!
Agreed. Have a great day and thanks for the comment.
Awesome video! I added two interior plots this season with the goal of directing deer to the 3 acre plot next to irrigated AG field of either corn or soybeans. Trick now is how can I hunt theses without spooking deer. Plan is to stay off of the plots and position some stands for the different winds in between them.
Great idea Ben had on the spreader! I will add that mine ceased up after only one season and what I did was sprayed white lithium WD spray on the metal component’s and it’s working great! Idk maybe it says to do that but I’m not a big fan of reading directions 😂
Good input Mark. I appreciate it and I also appreciate the support. Have a great day.
oh man! I'm heading planting my oats and peas this weekend before the big rain comes and I can't wait to slide a plastic planter into my broadcaster! No more folding over the edges or tipping seed over on the ground!
It is definitely a great idea and works perfectly. Good luck.
Oh and boy could i have used that bag seeder hack!!! planted food plots saturday and i have to admit, i spilled some seed, a couple times
Yes, Ben's bag hack is the best simple solution to come along. I am a little embarrassed that I went for 20 years without thinking of that.
Bill I took your dream big advice and after some leg work was able to get ahold of a skid steer rental. Had the family chip in with labor and was able to bang out a ditch crossing with a 4ft dia culvert and about a ¾ acre interior plot (not as quick as Ben likely) that should definitely pull in some deer.
That is awesome Alex. The difference something like that makes to your property and your hunting is hard to appreciate until you build one (or more). Good luck.
@@bill-winke I'm excited to see how it impacts the area this fall. Your skid steer videos with Ben and hours of UA-cam research on how to run them paid off! Definitely a wishlist item, so useful!
Bill how do you like that tiller on the front of the skid steer?
I love opening up stuff in the timber with my 333g.
I been just pushing stuff out with the blue diamond extreme cutter and the heavy bar it has on the front.
I have a grapple but hardly ever use it.
Yesterday dug 2 water holes in key locations with the 84 in bucket.
The skid steer is a game changer in my opinion.
I believe it is a game changer. I don't think I would ever get off it if I had one. Yes, the tiller did a really nice job finishing off that plot. I think if you had some kind of root ripper, that would be good too - for two reasons. 1. to rip up roots in the middle of the plot and 2. to cut through the roots of any trees on the fringe of the plot to keep them from stealing water from the plot. I think a single shank deep ripper would work for second application. Not sure on the best way to clean the roots out of the plot from the trees you cut down. Good luck.
Ben Sweeney is a fricken genius for that spreader idea!!! Get a patent on that ASAP lol
That was a great idea. Ben does a nice job with all his efforts. He is a diligent hard worker who knows what he is doing. He will go far - in the food plot bag spreader industry. Just kidding Ben - in whatever he chooses.
Great idea. Just too bad that earthway doesn’t last but one season maybe. I spread 6-700 lbs of fertilizer for my plot and that kills the plastic gears 1 year warranty. Save your receipt
@@craigkowalczyk3516 It might pay for you to get a spreader for your ATV (if you have an ATV). They handle high volumes much better than the Earthway.
Bill! You may have just changed my life forever with the bag spreader hack. This is amazing! In 32 years I have gotten to be quite the master at pouring a bag of seed while holding the bag between my knees!
I know. I have used one of these for more than 20 years and never thought of that.
Could do some hinge cut edge feathering on southern side for more sun,food, cover.
Yes, the southern side of all these small plots could benefit from that. I will drop the trees back into the timber to keep the plot as big as possible.
Make a burn pile right on top of those stumps Bill! That’s what I’ve done in my interior plot 👍🏽🇺🇸🏹🦌
Sounds good Nick. I have about 12 stumps though, unfortunately. I am trying to get my hands on a stump grinder I can put on my tractor. Have a great day.
Did you do anything with the 14 acres by your house?plant anything in it?
I was going to but it got to be all I could do to keep up with the projects on the farm. With so little rain, I had to plant twice and spray twice and that takes a lot of time. When it is dry, it seems that the only thing that grows is weeds. We will still hunt here, but there won't be a specific food plot. I could still plant a Poor Man's brassica (or cereal grain) plot along the edge. I may still do that. Have a great day.
Hi Bill, I am thinking about putting in 2 interior food plots in my 30 acre woods. I was wondering, if I sent you a pic of my property and where I was going to plant my 2 plots, if you could give me advice if it is a good spot as I have a few hunters that are baiting just off my property and don't know if I am helping or hurting myself putting these plots in. Thanks
Craig, I think you are helping yourself. I don't want to encourage people to send me aerial photos or I will spend all my time looking at those. So, I will give you a few times on how to find the best spots yourself. For sure, you want relatively flat spots, at least 1/2 acre in size. I would make sure there is a decent access route near them that allows you to sneak in from two different directions (one plot for each wind direction). Being able to sneak in is a big deal. I would stay away from known bedding areas (or at least on the downwind fringe). My point there is don't give up bedding areas to create food on a 30 acre property. Put the food somewhere else. I would not be less than 40 yards from the property line so neighbors can't see into them very well. If it seems that they will be able to se into them, then plant some kind of screen cover (like hybrid willow trees, for one). I hope that helps. Good luck.
@@bill-winke ok thanks
Lil humid? If I had one of those, the whole neighborhood would be a Food Plot! 😁👊🏻🏹
I know, I would never shut mine off. My entire farm would be one big food plot - just because building them is so much fun.
Hi Bill! video theme not totally on your topic list but maybe you could talk more about PH outdoors no till drills.
Good idea. I will do a "Setup" video about those drills. That is kind of what that series is for - the topics that don't quite fit into the hunting series or the land management series. Have a great day.
You need to look at getting the other style of stump bucket ive had more success with them especially with tipping over big green trees
What style have you used? I will take a look.
Ever plant cereal rye like what farmers plant for cover crops in your plots?
Yes, I did put down about three acres of it yesterday. I just broadcast it into a soybean plot that wasn't doing well. I did some of that last year too, with good success.
@bill-winke I find that to be a huge draw as well when bucks are starting to drop their antlers and into spring. We had 12 acres of it planted for a cover crop and found 13 sheds and of those, four matched sets. Nothing huge, but they were in it often.
Im also doing a interior plot on my property. My only concern is bumping deer in the mornings on the way in
Ideally, you can come in from the opposite direction of their primary feeding area. If you can't do that you can't hunt it in the mornings or you have to hunt in the evenings using a blind and then just stay overnight in the blind to be ready in the morning. Good luck.
Did you put any lime/fertilizer down in these new plots, if so what did you use?
I have not limed or fertilized yet. I will throw down some urea once I see something growing on the bigger one and then will get soil samples and do them right next year. I always figure it takes at least two years to get a new food plot worked out and into good production. Have a great day.
Congrats bill finally coming together ! happy for y’all definitely taught me patience is key
Thanks but there is still a lot of work for the next few years. It will be at least two more years before I have the biggest projects done. Have a great day.
I have made a many of those kind of plots over the years. But i am poor so it was all done with a chainsaw and muscle power. Very freaking rewarding though.
I have done most of mine that way too. Called them "Poor Man's Plots". It sure is rewarding. Good work.
What kind of stump bucket does he have?
MDS Tree Gator: mdsmfg.com/tree-gator/
Lots of hard work. Nice job. How many days to get it all done?
Ben works fast. It was six hours total time. We did spent about two hours on that first plot (location # 1) back in May, but he can get a lot of work done fast with that machine. Have a great day.
Tell Ben that is a the greatest idea I have seen in a long time on the earthway! Oh send some of that rain our way in SW Wisconsin I was expecting it right to the point where it cut south! Aghhhh!! Our seed is in also just waiting on the rain now. Great video Bill keep up the good work. As always love the videos have a great day!
Thanks. It is a great idea. Ben is the man. I am keeping all my rain. In fact, I want some of yours (if you get any). It has been really dry again. We may have gotten some yesterday. Haven't been to the farm in a couple of days. Good luck.
Good job Bill!
Thanks Lonnie. Much appreciated.
Hey Bill, I have a question to ask for plotting an area. Is it too late in the season to plant a plot and if it’s not to late what crops should I be planting. My interior area is very small 1/4 acres or less. Thank you.
The answer depends to some degree on where you are, but even in the northern states, I think you are still OK for a couple weeks planting brassicas like the Wintergreens. You will need to get lucky and catch a rain sooner rather than later, to get them up and growing quickly, but it can still work. Otherwise, the blends with cereal grains like the Pure Attraction I planted (or straight grain like fall rye) will still do well if planted in the next few weeks. Good luck.
@@bill-winke I live in MN. For the rest of the month temps are in the 80’s upper 70s and rain shower here and there. Thank you replying.
Bill, use some of those stumps and other logs to shape the way deer travel to your plots, block them from certain wind direction travel that you dont want them to do if that makes sense
I have a feeling this may make deer feel trapped. Even if it's a small portion of the plot I could see it backfiring.
That does make sense. I just don't like to look at those brush and log piles when I am hunting. If you notice all my interior plots look like they have been there since God created the earth. I just like that appearance. In the end, we are going to be sitting there for a lot of hours so we have to like what we are looking at. The key on these small plots is to figure out where they want to leave and hunt those trails. Most people make the mistake of trying to figure out where they enter and hunt those trails. In my experience, there is one main trail out and three or four trails in. In the evening they are heading to the nearest big ag field. You can more or less count on that. Good luck.
I have 2 different 40 acre parcels I can hunt and I have built interior plots on both. A ton of work, logging and pulling stumps but the results are awesome!
Agreed. I think it is the single best thing you can do to make your hunting area more productive. It is even something you can do on a permission farm if you can keep others away from it.
Are you concerned with the amount of sunlight getting to the plots?
Yes that is always a concern on these. We did cut back some of the bigger trees on the first plot to allow more sunlight, but I may have to do even more of that. The one we just made from scratch is never going to be super productive because it is so small, but I have had decent success on these 1/4 acre plots in the past but usually only on wetter years when the trees don't get all the moisture. It will likely be Whitetail Clover long-term. Good luck.
Definitely great for your own property. I leased a farm once and had this done. It was beautiful. Next year someone leased it for twice what I paid. Never again. I just do spread and pray for rain on lease/permission farms.
That's what I hate about leasing. I had an awesome lease before buying this farm - better hunting than my farm for sure. The landowner would have gladly let me create all the food plots and interior plots I wanted to. He might have even helped pay for them. But in the end I never improved the hunting because I knew I would just make the place more valuable and then would lose out in the end. I ended up buying so it all kind of evaporated. I would have loved to buy that farm. Good input.
what Drone you running Bill?
It is the DJI Mini 3 Pro. For the price, it is pretty hard to beat and being very small and light in weight, you don't need the FAA certification.
yeah nice drone, i have Dji mini 2
@@bill-winke
How large are these plots?
The smaller one is probably about 1/3 acre and the bigger one is probably about 1/2 acre.
dream farm is the perfect name for this series. You are living about every whitetail hunters dream. Good for you. My dream farm has been in my family for 9 generations and I have the last remaining 70 acres. I just try to copy and get ideas from guys like you to make it better. but I'm passing on sleeping out on the ground :). Ill leave that for you
Thanks for the comment ...Melman. I appreciate it and hope have great success with your property.
I added the garden pot to mine a few years back as well, now get your hands on a pool noodle and thread it onto the shoulder strap. You’re welcome.
My wood has no spot to build interior plots, too steep. So I’ve been adding trees to my exterior (former ag) and now after 20 years of planting trees I have a couple of nearly interior spots
Good tip on the shoulder strap pad. Building an interior plot by planting trees requires a lot more patience than building one by removing trees! Good job and good luck hunting that spot. I am sure it is really productive.
I'm looking forward to a video on how you set up a stand location for the small food plots. Will you set all three of them up for a different wind directions, or will it all be based on your method of entry and exit you are forced to use by terrain features? Did you pick a tree to leave for a stand when laying out the plot boundary?
I don't think that far ahead when I am making them. I just try to find good flat spots without too many big trees and then adjust to the deer movement after I figure out what it is. The smaller plot will be pretty straight forward as the deer will likely be bedding farther out on the point. I will sneak in via the lane we made when we created the plot and out the opposite direction (toward the bedding area and down over the side of the bluff. Will require two modes of transportation. Or, I could put a blind there and sleep in the blind and come in and out the same way at midday. The bigger one is straight forward too. The deer may enter from any direction, but most will leave toward the big cornfield to the west - there is an open gate there they can go through further making that a good option. I will do a video about how we are going to hunt these spots once we figure that out for sure.
That's a cool hack. I spent quite a bit on a rigid solo one because I was so tired of spilling seed.
Yes, I will never use that cheap Earthway spreader again without the insert. Have a great day.
I don't know how many times I've had to ask God for forgiveness for the words I've uttered while attempting to fill my earthway spreader lol. This hack may have just saved my soul lol.
If we saved a soul with our work we feel very good about things! That is a good tip.
Hoping there is a land layout video ahead to tie all of this together. Entry and exit seem like they could be difficult from each of these, let alone the thermals sucking your scent into the adjacent bedding in the afternoons
Garrett, we will definitely produce a few of those as we get closer to the time we hunt these spots. Have a great day.
No need for the spreader hack. Solo makes a nice rigid sided spreader.
But if you already have the bag seeder, a couple bucks or free is a lot better than $80-100.
Agreed, but like George says, I already have the bag spreader. Thanks for the input.
Bill, that's a huge tip for the spreader. I have a bunch of those laying around my garage.
Agree. Thanks for the comment. Have a great day.
Thanks for that tip. I ran right out and cut one. I have several. In case anyone asks, it takes a 3 gallon stock pot. Cut the bottom out and the top lip. Ive seen others use the lucky buck mineral buckets.
I’m really looking forward to your hunts this year. I like the look of those plots a lot.
Thanks George. It will be fun to start looking for bucks with the trail cameras starting pretty soon. Have a great day.
I plant a food plot to just help the deer out. That's for them. I do my killing in the woods
I am sure they appreciate that. In many areas, they can definitely use it. Good work.
Got me a 1 acre interior food plot set up just before a Oak ridge that is close to houses. The deer for years use my plot as a staging area before they hit the oaks after dark
Perfect Trevor. Nice setup. Good luck this fall.
Cool idea with the bag seeder Ben I’m going downstairs and see if I have that stuff around. Bill if you want and can do it in your area put some mineral on those green stumps and the deer will have it dead in a year, your going to have to many excellent spots to hunt and you and Jordan are going to need more help filming and hunting all of these spots on those prime days ✌🏻👍🇺🇸
David, agree. I hope we do have too many prime spots, then over time maybe we can get enough bucks here all spread out to make it a lot of fun. In the meantime, I expect that we won't hunt some of these spots (maybe Jordan will) because there are so few shooters that you end up going to them rather than having them come to you. Iowa has fairly restrictive laws on hunting near mineral licks so I am going to have to pass on your stump solution. Thanks for the support. Have a great day.
Great video Bill! I planted my food plots last Friday, got 1.5” rain Sunday, went out there today and it has already coming up! I live in west Michigan.
You are living right. That is perfect timing. Hopefully you get at least one more good rain to keep them going. Good luck.
Great tip on the bag spreader. Basically made a solo out of an earthway.
Man if you can get the solo folks to sponsor you are sure to like them. Love mine.
Yes, I tried my contact at Hooyman regarding the bag spreader and electric pole saw. He seemed interested at first, but then I heard nothing. They have a pretty nice one too. It is much harder getting sponsors than most people would think. Have a great day.
After the foliage is off, it would make great drone footage showing connector trails, crop successes, tree stand setups, access routes etc
Agreed. We will do that for sure. I have an idea they head from that bedding area out toward the big ag field, but exactly how they do that is still TBD.
Interior plots are awesome family hunting spots movement is so predictable with out over pressure!! Bill you can design a piece of plastic and put it in earthways ear.. they are my go to seeder for hand seeding
I should just make my own seeders and sell them. That is a pretty low-tech piece of gear. Right up my alley. Have a great day.
I've seen people struggling to fill bag spreaders. I always wanted to reach out to him to cut the bottom out of a bucket and set it in the cedar. First learn this trick back in the late 80s at a beagle club in Wisconsin.
Agree. I did it the hard way for more than 20 years. No more. Thanks for the input. Have a great day.
I also like these interior plots, consider checking PH in areas that were heavily wooded. They often are tough to get much growth due to bad PH levels.
Great idea on the bag spreader, gonna is that one!
You are right Adam. Decaying leaves tend to make those spots acidic. The other thing that hurts them is roots of the nearby trees. If it is dry, they suck up all the available moisture from the subsoil and the plants you want to grow in the plot shrivel up. On a good year, these spots are awesome, but they are much more sensitive to drought than plots in the open. Good luck.
Love these foodplot videos. Nothing more exciting to see than deer using something you made, well maybe shooting a big buck off of it. I love seeing what mine have turned into over the last few years.
Thanks for the support Darin. We will soon switch over to where we start thinking about hunting (some of the time over those same plots). Have a great day.
Good info. It would be great if you could show your entry/exit routes. I’ve found that can be the hardest part about interior plots. And they are often different for morn and evening sits.
Agreed. We will get into that when we start to hunt these spots. I will show the routes on maps so everyone can see it clearly - and judge whether it worked. Thanks for the input.
Having a plan and vision are so important to land layouts. Looks great, and also, those interior plots look killer.
Agree. That vision can be both a blessing a curse. You see projects everywhere you look! Have a great day.
These little interior plots are PERFECT for regenerative plotting! Those stumps will be no problem while you're waiting for them to rot and pop them out. Throw and mow is a great way to go, if you'd be worried about bringing in the no-till with those stumps still sticking up; just set the brush hog, or deck higher than the stumps and get after it. Also winter rye, as a nurse crop to clover, is very ph tolerant, as is the clover.
Not sure that clover is pH tolerant. I think it really likes 6.5 to 7.0 pH. But you are right, that cereal grain and clover this late summer would be a good starting point. Next spring that would be a good clover plot. I will have to soil sample in the spring to get it right, but if I had to guess I would think it will need lime as these timber plots tend to be acidic from rotting leaves. Good luck.
We've successfully grown clover with 6.0-6.5 ph, but I've also had great results simply using pellet lime on small plots like these.
💪👊👍
Thanks for the support Jim.
These internal food plots are the way to go I have found on my piece of land that the big bucks stay out later in the morning and come out earlier at night. Micro plots in the Timber are the way to go thanks for doing this episode this one definitely hits home and lets me know I'm doing things right.
I agree 100%. If I am going to catch one of those bucks that isn't very daylight active in a spot where he is killable, it will likely be as close to his bedding area as possible, and those interior plots fit the bill perfectly. Have a great day.
Everything is looking great Bill! Wouldn’t it be nice to own a skid steer like Ben.
ericbowhunter
Agreed. I would love to own one of those. I have rented them and they are a blast. Even had CAT as a sponsor back in the early Midwest Whitetail days and they sent me one to use for a month. Best month of my life! Just kidding. Have a great day.