Show Notes
In this episode of the Mid Atlantic Outdoorsmen podcast, Kevin Creeley interviews wildlife biologist Jared Knight about fall food plots. They discuss the importance of choosing the right location for a food plot, considering factors such as soil type and habitat diversity. They also emphasize the need for a soil test to determine the pH and nutrient levels of the soil, and how to address these levels appropriately. The hosts also discuss the process of spraying herbicides to kill vegetation and weeds before planting the food plot. In this conversation, Jared Knight provides valuable insights and tips on planting and managing food plots. He discusses the importance of selecting the right location, adjusting soil pH, and spraying herbicides to kill weeds. Jared recommends using resources like plant guidebooks to identify beneficial plant species for wildlife. He also emphasizes the significance of proper seed depth and soil preparation before broadcasting the seeds. Jared advises on the ideal ratio of annual and perennial crops and highlights the importance of access and hunting strategies for food plots. Some other topics covered are running trail cameras on food plots, implementing mock scrapes and just having fun with it!
Show Transcript
Kevin Creeley (00:01.404)
Welcome back everybody to the Mid -Atlantic Outdoorsman podcast. Today is August 4th and I'm having my buddy Jared on. Jared is a wildlife biologist in the state of Alabama. I met him travel turkey hunting on public land about three years ago, think ish on a public land in Alabama turkey hunting. And today we're going to be talking food plots being that it is about that time of year. So yeah, Jared, how you doing buddy?
Jared Knight (00:28.364)
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Kevin. Excited to be talking about some exciting times. Food plot season, it's here.
Kevin Creeley (00:32.058)
Absolutely,
Kevin Creeley (00:36.678)
Yes, yes, sir. Yes, sir. What are you been up to, my man?
Jared Knight (00:41.262)
Well, realistically raising a youngin and catching a lot of pigs lately. So out on some of the lands I help manage down here, we're trying to get rid of them. So we're hammering them right now. It's been hot. It's not easy work, but this time of year it's a lot of work. Putting in the ground, getting the pigs out of the ecosystem.
Kevin Creeley (00:48.977)
Okay.
Kevin Creeley (01:02.013)
Yeah.
Jared Knight (01:10.22)
trying to reset it and get it back to the native restoration time.
Kevin Creeley (01:15.9)
Yeah, it's been hot here. So I can't imagine Southern Alabama is probably brutal right now.
Jared Knight (01:21.772)
Yeah, I pretty much come home and just spray off head to toe, like with my clothes on, just from the mud and the sweat and it's just gnarly. And then I just, you know, come on inside after that and take a shower every day.
Kevin Creeley (01:29.36)
Kevin Creeley (01:37.68)
Yeah, that sounds pretty, that sounds pretty brutal. For the listeners, why don't you real quick just introduce yourself, kind of what you do and stuff like
Jared Knight (01:46.754)
Okay. So I'm Jared Knight. I'm a biologist. I work here in Alabama in southwest part of the state. I help manage some public owned properties down here. Mainly just scheduling hunts and things like that. And then also managing the habitat, whether it be prescribed burning or planting food plots, for instance, or any number of things that may go along with dealing with public land that you can imagine.
the good, bad and the ugly. But it's a fun job. It keeps me entertained and that as well as raising a little family here down in South Alabama, we've got a two year old who's about to be three. So that's been an ongoing fun saga for us. We're loving that and just showing him all the cool ins and outs of just day to day life for my job and what we like to do in the outdoors.
Sharing that with him has been pretty exciting. So, I spend a lot of time at the beach and at the river lately though, trying to stay cool.
Kevin Creeley (02:48.412)
That's awesome. And I
Kevin Creeley (02:52.421)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. I could see that. I liked the story of you and Wesley, your kid, and where you were telling me, I think you were putting trail cameras out or something like that. And you went about elbow deep in a red ant hill.
Jared Knight (03:04.75)
yeah, so trying to get a preseason inventory last year and he was, you know, a year and a half or so, he was about to be two, I guess. like, you know, kind of let him walk along beside me. We're parked 10 feet from the tree. I'm going to put a camera on. It's not like we'd walk very far. And of course he sits down right in the only spot that's kind of a bare ground area. It just happens to be an ant bed hill. And I'm like, my gosh.
Kevin Creeley (03:32.058)
you got
Jared Knight (03:33.026)
So, had to deal with that. He got a few bites, but he's good. He's not allergic, so he didn't break out or anything, anyway.
Kevin Creeley (03:40.082)
Yeah, that's good. well, teach him a lesson, you know? But yeah, I've been, I started this year on my first ever food plot. so Jared has been my resource for asking endless questions. So I've been just bugging Jared, calling him every other week with some kind of food plot question. And I'm like, Hey man, I promise this is the last time I'm going to call and ask a question, but what type of weed killer?
Jared Knight (03:43.007)
That's right, that's right.
Kevin Creeley (04:09.5)
And then the next week, Hey man, I know I said last week that that was the last question, but this week I'm doing this. What type of, you know, it's just something else. So, I figured, Hey, we'll just, we'll just for both selfish reasons and for reasons beneficial to the listener, just have Jared on the show and we'll just talk food plots. Cause, I visited Jared, I visited Jared's, state for three years in a row hunting turkeys now on public land down there being that they open before us here in Virginia.
Jared Knight (04:16.62)
Mm -hmm. That's what I'm here for.
Kevin Creeley (04:39.046)
but last year I had the privilege of actually tagging along with Jared on one of the WMAs that he manages, or I guess it wasn't a WMA. would have been a, special opportunity area,
Jared Knight (04:48.6)
Mm -hmm.
Kevin Creeley (04:50.512)
Yeah. tagged along with him and, you know, actually posted a video on the Instagram the other day of us calling out a Turkey on there. Like I think it was the day before the state's opener or something. But anyway, we kind of toured around that spot a little bit and I got to put my eyes on some of Jared's food plots and learned a little bit while we were there. So figured it'd be cool to hop on here and pick your brain about food plots from kind of A to Z, you
Jared Knight (05:14.488)
Sure. Well, I'll kind of back story that too. Like I've been planning and dealing with food plots since I was a kid, well before I ever became a professional biologist by any means. My dad is always planning food plots on our home ground up in North Alabama and Coleman County. we've had four food plots as long as I can remember and we built, I've kind of.
Kevin Creeley (05:17.223)
Awesome.
Jared Knight (05:42.25)
added some and let some fallow over the years, but I've kind of been dealing with them experimenting with food plots for a long time. just out of curiosity and then out of just hunting, you know, wanted to have good success and things like that. you know, that's, that's kind of a little bit of a background on top of managing some bigger properties, you know, was, you know, with down here in South Alabama.
Kevin Creeley (06:06.652)
Yep. Totally. So guess we'll break right into it. Food plot talk. I guess first step in my opinion, and you can correct me, I guess first step in my opinion would be choosing a location. so perfect. Yeah. So choosing a location for a food plot. like said, this is my first food plot. So don't take my expertise cause I don't have any.
Jared Knight (06:20.62)
That's exactly what I have on my map.
Kevin Creeley (06:33.448)
We're going to listen to Jared, but I'll tell you what I did anyway, for anybody who's interested in learning, the spot that I picked out this year, it's, it's on a timber track. That's about 400 acres and the property is mostly about five to seven ish year old cut over. I don't know the exact number because when I joined the lease, it had already been harvested for a number of years. and the area that I selected was, on a high point, it's an old log bed.
And, it was kind of like a log deck where they would park the equipment and stuff like that. A large area that was already somewhat of a clearing in the middle of this cut over kind of in between two riparian zones. So you've got the riparian zones, one 200 yards to the east of the proper, or to the food of the food plot and one 200 yards to the west of the food plot. So you've got travel corridors there, a plentiful amount of bedding with the cut over the broom straw, the green briar and the short pines and stuff like
and then you've got that log deck there. So what I did was just took a DR Bush mower and cleared some of the, short broom straw. This particular timber tract is not planted in pines. Again, it's just, it's just fallow. was cut, harvested, and then just gone fallow. So it's just a bunch of stuff. And so I was able to talk with the landowner and he allowed me to take the bush hog in there and open up that log deck and make it about double the size, in the middle of, in between those two travel corridors
That was kind of the spot that I selected. did last year when I discovered this spot, like mid season scouting, I put a cell camera on it and I got photos of multiple deer in daylight, some bucks, some small bucks, a couple of nice bucks and just a bunch of does. So I was like, okay, they're already using this area. This would be a good spot for a food plot. So that's also, I just thought it'd be really fun to kind of experiment and see what I could do with the food plot. So that's kind
That's kind of why I picked the spot I did. what do you have to say about location for food plots?
Jared Knight (08:31.171)
So that's half the fun is experimenting with it. I feel like every food plot is like a game, know, kind of like strategizing and getting yourself in the position to be successful as a hunter, you know, as well as providing nutrition and just, you know, having a good time to see just a bit of wildlife in general. but yeah, location can be very important and there are a lot of variables that go into picking a location. You can go on and on and read about.
the strategies on how to pick them. But, you know, one thing to keep in mind is your soil type. Like you're saying, probably the most common place that people with that lease land, especially, and those opportunities to build food plots exist because of those log landings from timber harvests. Because typically you lease land from a timber company or some sort
landowner who's interested more in the timber value. And so they're not, don't want to cut trees down just to build a food plot. want to like, you could just utilize the existing whatever's not going to grow a tree anyway. So sometimes those aren't the best, you know, most ideal places to, if you wanted to, if you had your choice, you know, you wouldn't probably pick that because of that compacted soil. That's where the log for all stags is where equipment was constantly ran over.
And it can be a little challenging getting a food plot going in a spot like that, but it's not, you know, for not, because it's, again, it's very common. goes on all over the state here in Alabama. I've seen it all over. We've used it in our own properties, as, just opportunistically, but just know that you don't have to plant those. They can just be even manipulated and just fairly successional habitat too. But it is a good opportunity. If you were to want to put a food plot in, you really don't have any other options. It's a great place to start because
cleared out and it's readily available to access. Usually it has a road system going right to it. It's already kind of easy to access that way. So there's a lot of things that go into location, but I like the point you made about being near some riparian areas. As far as transitions go, habitat type, if you find a spot where diversity is there, we have two or three different habitat type components coming together.
Kevin Creeley (10:28.198)
Yep.
Jared Knight (10:46.124)
and then you include another food plot or a food plot in the mix of that, in a, kind of like in a, you know, a hub system, that can create some excitement. That can, that can, you know, definitely attract just animals naturally move along those corridors and those habitat types as they transition and they're going to end up in that food plot regardless. One of my favorite food plots, I'll tell you story about just growing up around food plots, just the one
It never fails. My dad, he's the one that again introduced me to this. So he calls it the bottom field. And that's where he turned it. We all know it as the bottom field. And there's, I don't know how many clubs across the state and across the US have the field called the bottom field, you know, it's a real common name, but this one just happens to hub where two creeks converge and form one larger creek system. And it, the timber changes a little bit from
upland and it falls off a big hill and comes down into a hardwood area. And they initially cut that hardwood area into that V shape where the corridors came together. And this was prior to my dad purchasing the property. He just saw it and it was a big field of stumps. And he was like, can we just do something with that? And it just has become the best field because our neighbors just to the west of there have clear cut a portion like 15 years ago now.
So now that, and then they didn't do anything with like you're talking about, it's just going to follow up. It's just kind of gnarly thicket right now. And, and then we've managed our timber, we've actually thinned it and we clear cut it not too long ago and it's replanted now. But then around that we left some mature hardwoods around it. So there's like multiple habitat types and a timber age. There's pine, there's hardwood, there's creeks. and then you got this big bottom field that just like flows across. like, if you look at it on a landscape,
just looks like where animals would just naturally funnel. And so when you find a spot like that, that just makes sense. Like it's hard to deny that's a good spot for a food plot. You look at enough maps and see those areas and you start, you know, those, where those rockerians areas transition. That's a, that's a great spot to put a food plot. But one thing I want to know, I'll go ahead. Go
Kevin Creeley (13:01.723)
And not to mention too,
I'm sorry. I was just going to say, not to mention like you'll see on a lot of like the popular outdoor shows when they plant their food plots. Let's say it's on like the outside corner of an ag field. Like maybe it's a, I don't know, a hundred acre field of standing corn or something. And then they'll plant like five acres of some kind of green food source just on the inside corner. And a lot of times they'll plant some kind of screening cover around that for that way that once the corn is harvested, the deer can still feel safe using it. I've found that in the timberland.
Like for example, my food plot, that quarter acre where the log deck is, it's open right there, but it's extremely thick all around it. So there's no reason for me to even need to plant screening cover because the broom straw, the short pines, the green briar and all that stuff is already so tall around the food plot that I can just take like my steel hedge trimmer, cut trails to where my access points are to where I want to hunt the food plot. And I've already got tons of natural screening cover that was already there.
So all you have to worry about is the soil and the food, you know, which is one thing that makes that location beneficial.
Jared Knight (14:05.122)
Perfect.
Jared Knight (14:11.81)
That's right. That's a great point. that's you skipped ahead on my list, but that's on my list of things to bring up. yeah, edge feathering and things like that. So we'll circle back. That's a good point, though. You made a great point. Access and edge feathering, that sort of thing. But so as far as location goes, to kind of just summarize that is like one thing I always recommend if I'm talking to somebody who's new or just want to get into food plots or you're able to pick a location, pull up your NRCS Soals Maps.
Kevin Creeley (14:19.473)
We'll circle back. We'll circle back to access.
Jared Knight (14:41.004)
and it'll tell you what soils are on your ground, on your land. You can pull up a map and it'll tell you the soils that lay there, that have been there historically, and you can actually depict which soils are more ideal for planting a food plot versus what are, know, soils less productive. It'll tell you like farmland available soils, or it'll have like a spreadsheet or a little, I'm not sure if every state's different, but I know here in Alabama it'll tell you, know, specifically like this is good for farmland.
things like that and it'll say this is not good for farmland so like if you have a site that's really good for... go ahead.
Kevin Creeley (15:14.726)
Okay, for
For the listeners and for me, admittedly, what is that? You said NRCS.
Jared Knight (15:23.722)
NRCS, so Natural Resource Soil Conservation Districts across this, I think they're pretty well across the southeast. I imagine there's, I don't know how extensive they are, but I know they're definitely in Alabama in the southeast. But you have an extension office that you can also access, but there's a website you can go on. have to, you might be able link it to the notes. I don't have it right off hand, but there's a website you can pull up, a soils map of my area.
Kevin Creeley (15:51.175)
Okay, yep.
Jared Knight (15:53.434)
and it'll say, you know, click your county, get down to your town, all that, and then you can find your actual property, pull that up, and it'll tell you the exact like KUB soil. It'll have these little acronyms, and then it'll give you an idea off to the side of what those mean and how productive they can be. That's something that's important to just start with because if you're planting on soil that's just straight sand, not productive soil, and you're starting there, you're going to be kicking yourself in the foot all the time trying
grow a food plot, it's just going be not productive. So that's just a way to kind of help alleviate some headaches down the road to just pick in a good souls type spot. So that was definitely number one. I wanted to bring that up as a resource for folks. It's available to anybody. You don't have to be a professional. Anybody can look that up.
Kevin Creeley (16:26.888)
Okay.
Kevin Creeley (16:33.298)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Kevin Creeley (16:39.174)
Yeah, I'll include it in the show notes.
Yeah, I'll include a link or something, or maybe just some simple instructions in the description for the podcast. So y 'all can go on there and find that and utilize that tool. On the subject of soil. So let's say you've selected a location that you think is advantageous for deer movement, a location that is advantageous for deer feeling safe in daylight hours to use. And you've decided that that's where you're going to plant your food plot. guess the next step would be a soil test. Is that right?
Jared Knight (17:14.294)
Yeah, so definitely get a soil test done. If you're going to be, you know, if you're passionate about food plots, you want it to be productive. You don't want to waste your time trying to figure out if it's productive or not, throwing seed out and hoping for the best. You can know exactly what your soil is going to do. All you have to do is take a soil test and submit it to any soil sampling facility. Some people, like in Alabama, we have an Auburn Extension lab. They do soil tests.
You could send to some private entities, know, it's like like less than $20 for a sole test for the most part I'm pretty sure the last one I sent in was $11 or something like that. That's when I did
Kevin Creeley (17:53.416)
Yeah, for you, for you Virginians, I just sent mine in, it was $15 and I sent it to Virginia Tech and I got it back within a week.
Jared Knight (18:01.174)
Yeah, and it's worth every penny because it tells you, like I said, they can tell you exactly the amendments you need to make to put the right groceries in the ground to get a good yield. And you can tell them even to the point of what seed you're going to be planting, things like that. And they'll tell you this much lime and this kind of fertilizer, this much per acre on a per acre basis. So yeah, that's super important. It's just an easy step. It's one
It doesn't cost you a lot of money up front and it's going to save you money on the inside or on the end because you may not need to put a bunch of nitrogen down or a bunch of whatever, whatever your soil test calls for. You may not need to put anything down. I've definitely sent samples in and my pH was perfect and nitrogen was a little low so I boosted a little nitrogen right off the front and it kicked right off. didn't put any other fertilizer down and it did perfect. did great. You would never known.
I've also just not even fertilized crops before because the pH was perfect and the nutrients were there already. Sometimes you get lucky. It's good to know. You could save a lot of money because fertilizer is very expensive. That's on my list of things to bring up here next. Those kind of things can add up quickly.
Kevin Creeley (19:14.856)
Yeah. And on the note of the soil test, one thing you could do is definitely go watch a video before you take the soil test. There's tons of videos on YouTube of how to take it appropriately. Cause if you're not getting like an accurate sample, like if you just pull one piece of dirt from in the middle of that log deck, but you don't check the soil that's 20 yards into the brush where you plan to cut and expand the food plot or whatever it may be. Make sure you're getting multiple samples throughout the area that you're going to food plot.
Jared Knight (19:24.522)
yeah.
Kevin Creeley (19:40.998)
You know, some people say mix it together in a five gallon bucket. There's a couple of ways to do it, but there's a bunch of videos that are really easy explanations of how to get an appropriate
Jared Knight (19:45.628)
Sure.
Jared Knight (19:51.768)
That's right. Good point. And a lot of times the people that you're getting the soul sample from, you can even contact them at a time and say, hey, I'm planning to do a soul sample. How do I do it? And they'll tell you, they'll send you exact instructions a lot of times. So that's easy enough too.
Kevin Creeley (20:05.958)
Yeah. So let's talk about soil. You get your soil test back and let's say it says, you know, it gives you the NPK formula. Okay. You need this much nitrogen, this much, whatever, blah, blah, blah. And then before we break into the fertilizer thing, talk about pH a little bit. So you can read on any crop that you're going to plant, whatever it is that you're planning, it'll tell you what like, depending on what company you use, most of them will tell you in my short amount of experience that I've had so far.
the ideal pH range that you'll want your soil in for a productive crop that year. And so what can you do if you get your pH back and it's like, let's say five, five, and let's say you want to plant clover and it says clover is going to grow best at a seven. Like what can you do to achieve that seven in the food
Jared Knight (20:54.158)
Well, believe it or not, clover is actually a little more resilient. You don't have to have it out of seven specifically, but for hypothetically, if you had a crop that required a really high pH or a more balanced pH, then yeah, you're going to need to get the recommended lime dose in the ground. And what that does, so 5 .5 pH is very acidic. And that's probably the most common reading we get in South Alabama, like way south, like coastal plains where I'm at, just because of
the nutrition is not here, we just have really acidic soils. We have pine trees, they create a lot of acidity in the soil. I it's just part of the ecosystem down here. But that's something that you got to just be aware of. So if you want to make those food plots productive and be able to uptake the nutrients of the fertilization, then they have to be balanced. That's what pH does. pH actually allows, if you have a balanced pH, like between a six and a seven is usually ideal.
Kevin Creeley (21:32.978)
Yeah.
Jared Knight (21:51.758)
If you have that range of pH, that allows your crop to actually uptake the nutrients that you're putting out. So if you have an acidic soil, say 5 .0, and you're putting fertilizer out, say triple 13, for instance, just generic triple 13 fertilizer has equal parts, nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus out. And then your actual fertilization uptake from the crop that you plant is like an insignificant percentage.
Like even though you put enough fertilizer, you can put all of it you want. The crop can't use it because it's too acidic in the soil. The soil acidity just won't allow that transition of the nutrients. So that's what your lime, that's how liming gets it to that more basic status between six and seven. So you put lime in the ground and lime helps convert that soil acidity to more basic. It balances that pH.
And typically it takes, on the kind of lime you put in, whether it's, there's all kinds on the market. There's liquid lime, you can spray, there's pelletized lime, there's ag lime, there's all kinds you can put in there. They all act a little bit differently. They all take a little bit different times, you know, for the soil to uptake that, you know, to like actually be activated in the soil.
Kevin Creeley (23:11.174)
Okay. Talk a little bit about how to put lime into the food plot. know there's like you just mentioned, there's, there's various types of lime. So obviously the application is probably going to be a little bit different for each. So I guess we'll start with pelletized lime. That's probably, feel like probably one of the more common use limes. It's probably the cheapest option as far as like price per bag. It's probably the cheapest option. That's what I went with with my food plot.
So talk a little bit about how to put lime in the soil and how to get the most out of it and kind of like the time window you want to be
Jared Knight (23:42.203)
yeah.
Yeah, so like I said, some lime, it's going to take several months, like three to four months. Some limes, if you put it in there, it may not take quite as long. It may take only about two months, but it's going to take time regardless. So, pelletized lime takes about three months -ish to actually get activated into the soil. So, you'll want to apply your lime three months or longer ahead of time of your planting to make that crop that you're going to be planting be able to be in that acidic ...
the right pH range to then uptake your fertilizer. So as far as applying pelletized lime, what you have to do, you actually have to incorporate it into the soil. couldn't just go top sow it and be done. You need to actually disc it into the ground and get it incorporated into the soil so that when the roots sprout, soil that the roots are touching is what is going to be in that pH range.
Jared Knight (24:43.062)
It just takes a little time to get there, that's all.
Kevin Creeley (24:46.47)
Okay. All right. And so you're saying with the pelletized lime, ideally you'd want to be out there. let's say if you were going to plant labor day, you'd probably want to be putting that in around like Turkey season. Really.
Jared Knight (24:57.42)
Yeah, I mean, the good thing about Lyme is that you don't have to do it every year if you do it right the first time. So that's something that not only does it take a little bit of time to get activated and incorrect in your soil, but it also can last for three to four years. Sometimes it only lasts a couple years. Sometimes it may only last a year. It just depends on your soil. There's a lot of factors that go into that and how much drainage you're getting and things of that nature. But yeah, there's a lot of factors that can change, you know, but ultimately,
You're going to want to do a soil test every year regardless. And then that'll tell you like, say you put lime in this spring, this past spring, and you're good to grow crops for the next three years. Your acidity may be perfect. And then you check it on that fourth year and you're like, wow, it just dropped way back down to five, five again. I got to start all over. Well, if you've done a soil test every year, you can actually see that little bit of incremental decline in pH and that's fine. And it's okay if it drops a point, you know, a decimal point or two every year.
Kevin Creeley (25:45.832)
Mm -hmm.
Jared Knight (25:55.862)
until you get back down to a level that you need to really add lime again. So it can be, it can take a while to wear back off. So that's a good thing about lime. It's a lot, it's actually a little cheaper than fertilizer in some areas that I've noticed anyway. But if you had a budget, I would rather just line that field than fertilize a field. I've literally told like people before, like you can literally, if you can only afford to do one or the other, then I would just lime it and get your pH right. Otherwise you're
Kevin Creeley (26:10.77)
Okay, yeah, so for me, I
Jared Knight (26:25.59)
you're throwing seed in the ground and the turkeys are going to it and the seeds and the birds and things like that is not going to grow very well. You're just not going to get a good crop
Kevin Creeley (26:35.304)
Okay. Yeah. So for me, did, my per my soil test recommendation, was a thousand pounds of line for my quarter acre food plot. I was fortunate enough that I had a buddy that let me borrow a ag spreader that would attach to my side by side as well as a disker. So I put the thousand pounds of lime in that ag spreader, about like, I think I did 120 pounds at a time and spread that throughout.
the quarter acre obviously, and then I disc it in. I was on the phone with Jared and he told me I was a little bit late on the process. Like I didn't get it in until mid July. And in reality, I probably should have had it in early June at the latest. But I was just, I was just a little bit late on the jump, but I got it in mid July. I think my soil pH was like a five five. So I got that line broadcasted and got it dist in about mid July to hopefully see some benefit from
in my crop that I'll be planting August 31 is when I'll be planting. so that's one way you can get it in there. If you don't have access to any of that type of equipment, I mean, you could certainly do it with a like a push behind, you know, fertilizer spread or like the little green one they sell at Home Depot. It would it would take forever and it would probably not be ideal. But that is another way that you you could broadcast it, I suppose.
Jared Knight (27:48.952)
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, even if you got to do a portion of that, you can do a little bit of lime this year and a little bit of lime next year. You can do it over time as well. Like if you just do a little bit every year, that works too. And in fact, that's what we do in Coleman now that we've got our pH about where we want it. We've just done a little bit of lime every year just to kind of help maintain. It's not a full dose. It's not even a partial dose. It's just about as much lime as we put fertilizer out. That's what we do, even like an even distribution. And it just kind of helps maintain it. And some years we don't need to do it.
And that's nice. But yeah, if you just got to do a little at a time and you've got a small food plot, you're just kind of, you know, roughing it a little bit. If you want to, if you don't have equipment or whatever, then yeah, you can definitely do
Kevin Creeley (28:26.824)
Yeah, no doubt.
Kevin Creeley (28:38.92)
Okay. All right. So we've selected a location. We've gotten a spot that we think is a good spot for a food plot for a couple of different reasons. We've gotten our soil test back and now we've broadcasted lime or some various form of lime to figure out, to get the pH where we want it to be in the soil. What in your words would be the next step in the food plot process?
Jared Knight (29:02.68)
So now you wait. You wait until time to plant. And this is kind of an art. This is where they tell you food plots a little bit of an art. So not only are you selecting your species to plant, in the meantime, you're like, OK, what kind of seed am I going to buy? What am I going to plant now? You've kind of already had an idea of what you want to plant, but you may be thinking there could be other options. So you kind of want to pick a seed or multiple seed types.
So you want to focus on that. then in the meantime, you just wait until planting season. about, I like to do it at least two or three weeks ahead of time. When I know I'm going to be, you got some decent rain coming in the forecast, it's getting to be about time to plant. About three weeks ahead of time, I start looking at, hey, is it going to be a good day to go spray this field with some Roundup or glyphosate?
which is the active ingredient. can just not just have to be ground up, it could be anything, but my dad used a brand called Eraser for a long time. Anyways, it's just some type of glyphosate, just a non -selective herbicide to kill the vegetation in the field that's grown since you've distilled your lime. You're going let that kind of die down and give it a few weeks. You're not going to see it overnight. You're going go back the next week and be like, did we
Did we miss anything? It's not dying quite yet. It may die quickly, just depending on how much you dose it, but just always follow the label. I will say that. I'm not going to give any prescriptions on that here because I don't want people to take me wrong because every brand is a little bit different. Every concentrates different. So just follow the label, whatever the label says on herbicide. But yeah, I always spray it down, let it die. And then you're able to...
more easily disk in that batch layer if you're going to be disking and Broadcasting and spreading and that sort of thing a traditional will say a traditional planting If you're not planning a tradition if you have something high -end I mean, they're definitely like you could just buy a seed drill and just drill it in but if we're talking Traditional, you know don't have all the equipment in the world. You got to kind of work with what you got a lot of times folks can disk and they can cover a seed that's
Jared Knight (31:15.884)
you know, that's basic stuff or bush hog. If you need to knock that, if it got really good growth in that summer and you need to knock that thatch layer down, feel free to bush hog it and then disc it. And you want to prepare the seed bed very, very well to allow good seed to soil contact for when you are planting those seeds. So like three weeks ahead of time, you're going to want to spray the field. Essentially, that's what I'm getting at. And then follow that up. Like I said,
Kevin Creeley (31:42.194)
Yep. OK.
Jared Knight (31:45.463)
Now go
Kevin Creeley (31:47.816)
I was just going to say, before we move past, the spring of the food plot, want to touch up a little bit more on the different weed killers that you can use. you already mentioned Roundup or glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Roundup. And there's a couple of different concentrations you can buy, like the farmer's grade or the grade that you buy at the store, which is, you know, 40, whatever percent and 50, whatever percent or whatever they'll both do the job. there's some other weed killers out there
If you're like me and you start researching and going down the rabbit hole of like what weed killer is going to be best for this. It's pretty easy to get lost in the weeds quickly of like all the different herbicides that there are available on the market. so like there's the two 4d, you know, obviously glyphosate and then a couple of others. What I guess is the best, easiest, most budget friendly method for a guy that's got like, let's say, you know, a backpack sprayer
just wants to kill a quarter acre to a half acre plot. would be like, what do you think would be the best
Jared Knight (32:52.832)
So, you know, it all depends on what's growing there too. I mean, if you're trying to kill, if it's straight blackberries, know, Roundup's not going to hit it too hard. And you're to have to try something a little more brush, brush friendly. So something like trickle up here, something that's going to actually hit the, the brush type species. So if it's just grass and some forbs, then Roundup is your go -to. that's all you need. Just keep it simple.
Roundup is a non -selective herbicide. It'll do just fine on pretty much any weed that you want to kill. But just know that this is a food plot for a plethora of critters. So it doesn't have to be an immaculately clean landscape when you go to planting. if you get a few weeds that didn't die here and there, that's not the end of the world. Just whatever disc under, disc it under and get it as clean as you
There's no need to try to overkill or try to go back and retreat or whatever like you do you get what you get and kind of take it in stride and just know that It's for wildlife. It's a wild plant that's growing out there a couple of the resources at the end of the day. I'm a recommender This is probably my favorite go -to Plant guidebook and then there's another one here that is like the food plot Bible that most folks that are serious about food plots should have this by dr. Craig Harper
but it tells you about the weed species or there's some native plant species that grow. Yeah, that first one I held up is forest plants of the southeast and their wildlife uses. So this is a pretty cool book. Not only does it tell you and then have pictures to identify the plants themselves, but it also tells you if they're beneficial to and to what wildlife species are beneficial to. And then this one is wildlife food plots and early successional plants.
Kevin Creeley (34:21.992)
Can you read off the names of those for the audio listeners?
Jared Knight (34:45.602)
And that's by Dr. Craig Harper. He's at the University of Tennessee. And he published that. He's actually got a remake. I think he's about to publish a new version of that. But he's kind of updated that since he's published it. But it's a fantastic resource. Again, it goes through the steps of how to plant, kind of all we're talking about today. And then also about in the back, it tells about common weeds and common plants you'll find in openings and early successional fields and food plots and things like that and kind of how to manage that.
and he has a good philosophy about food plots. If you ever want to know anything about food plots, go look up Dr. Craig Harper. The dude's a genius. But yeah, I would just say just generic roundup.
Kevin Creeley (35:25.736)
Very cool, very cool. All right, so now we've like, okay, got it. Easy answer to the question. So location selected, pH brought to where we need it. It's three weeks prior to planning. We've sprayed. Now what's the next
Jared Knight (35:44.859)
Alright, so that vegetation, you're going to wait for it to die off. And like I said, depending on what kind of growth you get, if it's pretty extensive, if you're looking at knee -high or higher, you're going to want to probably go ahead and bush hog it. Or just mow it down. If it's less than that, if it's like ankle -high, you're probably fine to just go ahead and disc it in. As long as that vegetation is dead and like, you'll notice when you go up to it, it'll be brown, like dying. You could just...
crush it and crumble it in your hand. That kind when it gets just dried out, then just go disk it in and get that where you're turning your soil up. You're mixing that thatch into the soil. You're actually incorporating that organic matter into the soil, which is a good thing for the plants. Again, there's a lot of different ways you can do this. This is just how I do it and how it works, what works for me. There's like a thousand different ways you can do this. This is just what I know and what works for me. But I disk in the field really well.
Maybe go over it, I might go over it two or three times. Just depending on how much statch is there. It may take me twice. It may take me three times to really get a you know, soil bed prepared. And if you can, I like to, if I disk it one time and I'm feeling pretty good about it, I do actually like to wait till after a rain. So you have a little moisture in the ground when you're disking. Otherwise, it's dry that time of year. So you are disking on
Down here, it's like concrete. mean, the ground is so hard. And so some places that you're disc and you're scratching the top edge of the ground at best, and it's just not turning under, you may just have to wait until you get some moisture in the ground to really get the results you want, disking wise. But if you let too much moisture get in, it'll clump up. So I like to do on my first pass a standard pretty deep, pretty aggressive disc setting where my discs are actually alternated pretty hard.
And you'll notice sometimes on disk you can actually get them more lined up, more straight, and that'll be a less invasive or less aggressive setting. And that'll kind of allow a little smoother dirt. But then when you turn it real aggressive, it's really pulling the dirt up and mixing it really well. That's the kind of setting I have it on first. And then go back with a little less aggressive technique and then smooth that out. You don't want like big dirt clots and things like that. You want it to break up to be pretty
Jared Knight (38:09.848)
pretty fine on the surface as best you can. And then you're ready to sow. So you're ready to sow seed.
Kevin Creeley (38:21.084)
Right on. So yeah, so we've got it. We've got our location selected. We've broadcasted lime. We've killed the weed layer, dissed in that thatch. We've got the soil works. Let's say we've got some rain in the forecast the next couple of days and we're ready to plant. So at this point we've already selected what type of crop we're going to grow. Do you now, okay, I'll just give you an example to make it easier for you. Let's say you're planting oats and clover, right?
So from my little bit of research that I've done, oats is going to sow deeper than clover, correct?
Jared Knight (38:57.974)
Yeah, you're going to want to sow oats a little bit deeper in the ground. Clover you can get by with just almost top sowing it. So yeah, oats are going to need to have a little better seed to soil contact.
Kevin Creeley (39:05.936)
Okay, so basically.
Okay. So basically go by the manufacturer recommendation of whatever seed you're using to figure out what depth you need to broadcast that at and whether you're using like a commercial broadcasting piece of equipment or like an over the shoulder crank bag either can do the job. But after we desk and before we sow, do you recommend like packing down the soil or anything like
Jared Knight (39:32.664)
So it just depends on how your soil is. If you have a pretty fine bed and it's like real fluffy, then yeah, I would probably go ahead and try to pack it down with a Colte packer of some kind if you have that option. A lot of people don't have that option, but if you do, that's a great way to go ahead and prep a seed bed is to pack it down just a little bit on that surface. If it's pretty evenly distributed and if you're, basically if you're walking on it and you're leaving a pretty deep footprint,
as you're walking across, you're going to want to pack that soil down. There's just too much air in there. You're going to want to pack it down to get a firm seed bed. And then once you do that, you then broadcast your seed.
Kevin Creeley (40:16.87)
Okay. So, obviously if you have a roller, like a Colt packer or some kind of drag behind piece of equipment for like a tractor or a side -by -side, obviously that's going to be the most ideal situation. What are some other options for like the common man who doesn't have all the fancy ag equipment to be able to pack that soil down?
Jared Knight (40:37.006)
Well, it depends on what equipment you got out there. If you don't have anything to pack soil down, don't let it be the NW. Let it rain a little bit and then broadcast right during the rain. And what that water does is it helps settle the seed bed anyway. So like I've literally sowed seed in the rain, like right before or right after a rain and it works fine. If you can then go in, if you go right before rain, it's ideal.
I'm talking about like it's going to rain in two hours. Like I'm to go ahead and broadcast right now. That's been my most successful seeds without cultivating. Just go let it rain or top sow and then let it rain right on it. That works fine. If you can top sow it and then drag it. Like with, even if you just, it just had like a old chain link fence or a, mean, I've seen some people just drag logs across to kind of help smooth out the firm up the beds.
Just tie a rope on each end of the log. I've seen all kinds of ways to do it, but something that'll not pile, you don't want it to pile up the dirt. So a log is not ideal, obviously. That's why I say it's like a chain link fence or a pallet. I've done it with a pallet before. Just literally tie a rope to each end of a pallet and drag it across the field just to smooth that out and it'll help pack it down a little
Kevin Creeley (41:53.884)
Yeah,
Kevin Creeley (41:57.444)
Right. So you want to drag and smooth the top layer. You don't want to plow it. You know what I mean? It's basically what you're like. You don't want to push it like a, like a snow plows, like what you're trying to avoid. yeah, I've even read that if you just have like a four wheeler and that's all you have and you're not like, let's say you don't build any kind of drag, Haro, cold to packer. You don't have anything to drag across the soil. I'd imagine even just taking the four wheeler and driving back and forth on the soil to pack it down a little bit could be, could
Jared Knight (42:02.486)
No, no.
Yeah, yeah, you don't want to that,
Kevin Creeley (42:27.238)
you know, help a little
Jared Knight (42:29.634)
Yeah, that's a lot of fuel, that's a lot of time. If you got that kind of energy, go for it. It's not the worst thing that can happen. Full -wheeler's not too heavy, so you're probably fine doing that. That can take a lot of time though, and that's just up to you. If you want to spend the time doing that, could be useful. It's probably not necessary, as necessary as you'd like to think. The whole time, I'm just putting myself in that situation. If I were to have to resort to that, I'd be
Kevin Creeley (42:35.651)
Hahaha
Jared Knight (42:58.026)
I think I'm gonna be okay. The whole time I'd be driving around trying to cover my tire tracks, you know, and be like, is this worth it? I don't know if it'd be worth it at the end, I don't know. But you could, mean, hypothetically, it's kind of a similar concept of packing it down.
Kevin Creeley (43:01.82)
Yeah, I got you.
Kevin Creeley (43:08.135)
You're right, right.
Okay.
Kevin Creeley (43:16.762)
Okay. All right. Right on. Again, guys, keep in mind, this is me, novice food plotter who's never planned a food plot in his life is literally planning his first one this year and hoping it goes well. Talking to Jared, he's planted plenty. So I'm just throwing stuff out there that, you know, I think listeners might think and, you know, see it, see him what sticks, but, anyway, so cool. We've got the soil dist
Jared Knight (43:36.907)
Yeah, I mean, some people may like that idea. Yeah.
Kevin Creeley (43:41.434)
We've got the soil dist up, we've got it, Colt -O -Pak, dragged, whatever you want to call it, down, and now it's time to broadcast. So I guess talk a little bit about that process.
Jared Knight (43:53.228)
Yeah, so depending on the blend you get, if you're going to go with an annual kind of crop, such as wheat or oats, something pretty hardy, that's going to be your most common planting. Those are fairly big. They're not big seeds, but they're bigger than clover or brassica by a pretty good stretch. So you're going to want to get those seeds put out first.
And if you're going to include clover or brassicas, a smaller type seed with that in that same field, I recommend doing that separately. and it's what I've done every year and it works great. Now you can definitely incorporate the clover or brassica right into it and blend all the seeds into one, you know, pouch, like if your hand spreading it or if it's on a four wheeler spreader whatever you can, and it'll do okay. but my,
I guess my experience has been that I plant my bigger fall annual crops, whether it's like Austrian winter pea or wheat or oats or triticale or whatever, those seeds are a little bigger and they need to go out first and then you can cultivac or disc those in. I say disc in, but really if you could just cultivac it, that would be ideal.
If you can't cultivack it and you do have an option, like a little disc or something, put it on that real straight, non -aggressive setting and just real lightly touch the surface of that and just kind of scoot the dirt over top of those seeds just a little bit. And then after that, then you go in and you top sow your small seeds with a hand seeder. I do that with all, I don't care how many fields I plant, I plant a bunch of fields. That hand spreader, it gets a lot of fields planted for me.
Kevin Creeley (45:18.322)
Jared Knight (45:42.242)
When you top sow that clover, those seeds are so small, you get a more even distribution of that clover versus if you blended all those into that one spot, you're going to have that clover is going to be kind of in patches in your field. It's not going to be as evenly distributed across the field like you'd want it to be. So that's why I always do them separately. Just because they're so small, they're going to kind of work their way down in the spreader, in the hopper as you're going and they sort of come out in clumps.
Kevin Creeley (46:01.436)
Okay.
Jared Knight (46:09.624)
And I don't like that. I like it to be pretty evenly distributed. yeah, spread the fall crop and then come back in and do. Yeah, don't mix the very small clover or brassicas in with the bigger. So you can mix like wheat, oats, and all that, the Austrian winter. But you can mix all those together and they're fine. They're bigger seeds. They're fine. They blend well. But the small, small seeds, you're going to want to do those separately.
Kevin Creeley (46:10.692)
Okay, makes sense. kids. So don't mix them all together in the
Kevin Creeley (46:33.638)
Okay. now, so let's say you're planning an annual and a perennial. We'll just say oats and clover for the sake of keeping it simple. is there any kind of percentage that you want to stick to for like this much annual, this much perennial, or is it all just a matter of preference?
Jared Knight (46:41.154)
Mm -hmm. Okay.
Jared Knight (46:51.882)
And so again, it's gonna be a little bit dependent on pound about how productive your soil is. So you're gonna wanna still stick to the recommended dosage that your seed bag is gonna say. Hey buddy, my son just woke up from his nap. So you're wanna still do what the wheat, or let's say the oats for instance, you're gonna be like 30 pounds per acre, right? And then you're gonna add around two to three pounds an acre
Kevin Creeley (47:08.681)
That's all right, man
Jared Knight (47:20.654)
Clover So you doubt me like 32 or 33 pounds worth of seed of total like pure live seed so say you get a bag now keep in mind a lot of times like your bag's gonna say like 85 % germination rate and this much inner organic matter and this much pure live seed so you're gonna go and actually read the bag and say how much Pure live seed is in this bag that will germinate and then knock off that you
get your 85 % or whatever, and that's going to be your recommended dose. So it's not just like, go buy a 30 pound bag of seed and then that's going to be your oats. It's like, well, that may only plant 20 pounds of oats at end of the day. So just keep that in mind. So if you get a 50 pound bag of oats that might plant, that might be, you know, you'd have to do the math on that, but just depending on what the bag says, that may be what you'd need to plant in your one acre field and then do your two to three pound of clover.
after the fact.
Kevin Creeley (48:23.174)
Okay. I think you already touched on this a little bit, but I'm going to ask anyway. so you've got, let's say you've got large seed and small seed, like a large seed annual, and then like a small seed perennial, like clover. I'm assuming, you know, you were saying you're going to want that annual, especially oats to be lower in the soil bed than you would clover. could almost top. So, so, being that you're, you're sowing them separately. Excuse me. I'm saying, I'm, I'm, I'm assuming you would drag Colt to pack.
Broadcast your oats and then would you drag again before broadcasting the clover?
Jared Knight (48:58.582)
Yes, that's the point. You want to bury the bigger seeds, essentially. And then the clover is going to a lot of times just fall. You can drag again after clover, but I wouldn't disc clover in. guess the point I'm trying to get at is like, once you disc your fall annual crops in like oats or whatever, you disc those in, they get buried. That's perfect. Then you can literally just top sow your clover and walk away and let it rain. That's literally all you have to do. You don't have to recover it. If you have a cultivator
Kevin Creeley (49:22.394)
Okay, right on.
Jared Knight (49:27.074)
Cultipack your oats and your bigger seeds in, then top sow and you can cultipack again if you have a cultipacker. You can cultipack in clover if it does well, but it does not need to be far deep into the soil. It's so small it doesn't have enough energy to sprout if it's too deep. So think a lot of times what you get is people will incorporate their clovers or their bigger seed with their smaller seed and then they disc it all in and they're like, well, wow, I didn't have a really good
clover stand and it's like well maybe because you disc it in and it just didn't it got too deep in the soil it couldn't sprout or it came out in a clump and then you know whatever you know who knows there's all kind of I'm just trying airing it but that's just what worked for me that's what I that's what I do and it works I usually just literally top sew the clover and let it rain I don't even cover clover I just let it
Kevin Creeley (50:04.776)
Makes
Kevin Creeley (50:11.388)
Yeah, no, gotcha. All
Kevin Creeley (50:18.716)
Got it. Okay, so we broadcasted C and now we're praying for rain. What's next?
Jared Knight (50:24.396)
man, then you just wait. So I want to, you're done at that point. Once that happens, you're done. You're ready to get ready to watch it grow. Yes, if you've got a wet year, great. Let it rain. Fantastic. If you don't, you have a dry year and you have a way to water it, then go for it and water it. But if you
Kevin Creeley (50:36.134)
Mother Nature does the rest.
Jared Knight (50:48.246)
A lot of like we have, we've had dry years before here over the past three or four years down here. It's been pretty dry in fall. We've had a couple wet falls, but most of the other couple or two or three have been pretty dry. So literally had crop failures. You may have to plant again. So just keep that in mind as you're moving forward. But you know, one thing I want to touch on is access. I don't know if you wanted to get to that or not. And just hunting the food plot itself. And that'll kind of wrap up what I have anyway.
Kevin Creeley (51:11.858)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right on. Go ahead.
Yeah, yeah, take off, take off with
Jared Knight (51:17.614)
I guess I do want to mention too, like once you have everything planted, you're completely done. You're going to walk away. Build some exposure cages. Like it doesn't take much to get some cheap wire, build a little cage and put out there in that field in some random spot that you, you know, that got pretty good seed coverage and stake it down. Maybe put a flag on it or something, just kind of know. And you might even do it like strategically, like 30 yards from your bow stand or whatever. Like you put it wherever.
But like put one out there so that you can kind of monitor that growth because you may get excellent growth and the deer hammer it. If your density of deer is too high, you may think, wow, that food plot just completely failed. But then you look inside the exposure and you're like, wow, no, didn't because this is all this is growing. So, so great. So it's just an easy way to kind of notice if you just had a total crop failure, how well you did, what kind of things worked, that sort of thing. What crop, maybe you have some species that came up that in
Kevin Creeley (52:03.644)
Mm -hmm. Yep.
Jared Knight (52:14.708)
exposure and then other species are around it and you're like well why didn't the oats do well or why didn't the red clover come up and you look in that exposure cage i've seen that before where deer will hammer red clover you're like well it's all over this enclosure cage so they must have just really liked it and they ate all that so but yeah keep that in mind but then as far as go
Kevin Creeley (52:30.278)
Yep. Yeah, I actually
Kevin Creeley (52:36.352)
I was just touching on what you said. I actually had that written down in my notes as well, just because when I was at your place down in Alabama, I found that really interesting. yeah, basically, like you said, it's just a cage in the middle of the food plot. You can build it with, I mean, really anything you could use chicken wire or whatever, and just a small area that the deer can't browse. And it just shows you the amount of browse pressure that that food plots receiving. Like if you're not, maybe you're not getting the best survey with your cell camera or whatever you have on the plot to show how much the deer actually hitting it.
That's a real time example of like you can look in there and be like, okay, if nothing was eating the food plot, this is what the whole thing would look like. And that's pretty cool. Pretty cool stuff.
Jared Knight (53:13.56)
That's right. Yeah, that's an easy, cheap way to do it too. Yeah, absolutely. Also to know like, if you're like, man, did we just miss a rain? Like some people will go out and be like, wow, we just totally missed it. And like, no, you didn't. The deer just hammered it as soon as it got up out of the ground, you know, whatever. And that may be, and that's gonna, that's gonna sort of transition me into your hunting strategy.
Kevin Creeley (53:30.31)
Yeah, it's doing what you planted it for.
Jared Knight (53:36.686)
So like how you're gonna hunt this food plot, not only access wise, but what you're actually gonna remove from that, or if you're gonna harvest anything from that food plot. So just real quick on access, if you can get in and out of your tree stand that oversees that food plot without, and say for instance, you have a two year old, we'll just say a two and a half year old buck grazing in the field right now. You have to get in your food, in your tree stand.
and then you have to get all the way back out of it and then leave without that deer ever knowing. That's your perfect situation. Entrance exit scenario. So if you can... That's gonna be what makes and breaks your food plots because how many times are you walking in in the morning, you're gonna hunt it right at daylight, you're walking in before daylight, well deer are already active a lot of times, they may already be in the field, you bump them out of
Jared Knight (54:33.11)
out of field, make money. But a five and a half year old buck's not going to come right back. He's probably not going come back in the daylight at all.
Kevin Creeley (56:28.754)
All right, perfect. All right. Circle back. Sorry about that folks. A little bit of technical difficulty. Circle back. We're talking about access. I basically lost you after, as soon as you started talking about access. So just start over on the access point.
Jared Knight (56:39.585)
Okay. Okay. All right. All right. So back to that. Imagine there's a buck in the field, two and a half year old buck. Doesn't have to be a mature buck. Just any deer. Just imagine there's a relative mature deer in the field. You need to get into your stand without that deer ever knowing you existed. Not only are you hunting the correct wind direction, but you're also entering and exiting that stand completely inconspicuous. So the deer do not know you exist. That's your ideal scenario.
So if you have a stand that's like in the field or on the edge of a field, just consider how you hunt that stand. Are you going in in the early afternoon before the deer get to the field? Sure. You're going to hunt that evening. For instance, you're going to this field, say you're going to 1 32 o 'clock in the afternoon, there's no deer in the field. You sneak in just fine. You're clear. You're clean. Well, what happens at the, at the end of the hunt? It gets dark.
And then the deer start piling on the field and then you don't have a shot. It's too dark. Now you got to climb down. Now you got to leave. You're in the field. The only way you can leave is bumping deer. So every time you access that stand, you're pressured deer, regardless if you think you are or not. And it may not be a big deal. Some deer will come right back, but those mature bucks are going to have a harder time building that trust coming into that field. So that's something to consider with food plots. It's like, I think Lee Lekowski said it the best.
Kevin Creeley (57:58.372)
Absolutely.
Jared Knight (58:03.447)
You can have the most beautiful and incredible food plot in the world, but if you can't get in and out of that stand without deer knowing, it's useless. It's like, there's not even worth having. It's just feeding deer and you're not ever going to get to hunt it because you're going to bump deer immediately. They're going to just be straight nocturnal. So they'll use the food plot, but it'll just be at
Kevin Creeley (58:17.5)
Yep. Yep.
Yeah. So the, yep. So to give you an example, the situation that I had, the access path that I created in mind, like I said, it's a, it's a log deck, old log deck that's up high and below that parallel, probably less than a hundred yards behind it. There's an old log road and in between that log deck and the log road, there's nothing but cut over. So what I did was took my steel hedge trimmers and trimmed a one person wide path from that log road.
up to the food plot, which actually brings me all the way around the backside of the food plot and to it. So I don't have to actually ever walk through the food plot. And that's what I use for my access. And that takes me right to my blind. So that'll be, I actually have two. have one that goes to a small rinky -dink tripod stand that I have and another that goes to a ground blind. And, anyway, my point is I don't have to ever step foot once in the food plot itself when I enter and egress the stand. So that's like the ideal situation.
Jared Knight (59:19.001)
Perfect. Perfect. And then last thing I do want to mention is like, if you're going to harvest does that way, guess two things. If you're going to harvest a dough out of there or multiple does out of a food plot, just know that, kind of know, get it, get an inventory of your deer, know what you need to harvest. you don't want to go in there and just start, you know, smashing does right and left. and then next year you go in there you're like, well, why don't I see any deer? And you're in the same field. You didn't move locations. Those deer's home range didn't, you know, shift.
just all of sudden to fill that void, now you've kind of created a void. So keep in mind when you do your dough harvest, like what you're up against, like if you're going to just say you're hunting a thousand acres and you want to kill 20 does on it, for instance, you don't want to kill all 20 does in the same food plot. Okay. All you're doing is killing the same family groups in that same pocket of timber. not, you're not killing, you want to sort of spread that out across the landscape.
Kevin Creeley (01:00:07.398)
Makes sense.
Jared Knight (01:00:16.259)
when you have a dough harvest recommendation. That's something I wanted to point out. And then the last thing that I think is really cool as far as food plot goes is as of late, it's been a lot more popular these days, but a mock scrape in or on the edge of a field and preferably in bow range.
Kevin Creeley (01:00:32.582)
Yeah, yeah. Yes, sir. Dude, I actually have that written down in my notes right here. I was gonna touch on that next, but go ahead, take
Jared Knight (01:00:41.367)
Nice. you go. No, no, you're good. If you want to touch, I just wanted to bring it up. You got some high points. Let's hear
Kevin Creeley (01:00:47.878)
No, you're the guest buddy. You carry on.
Jared Knight (01:00:49.199)
Okay. Okay. Well, okay. So yeah, like I said, typically if you want to set up a mock scrape on, if, if you have an existing overhead branch, that's kind of perfect in a spot that's on the edge of the field, use that just, just make a mock scrape there, scrape the ground. You can kick it with your boot. It doesn't really matter. And then you're an aid in it. It's not that complicated. The deer will come to it and they will use it. and you don't have to buy some fancy product. You don't have to do all that. You just put a camera on
Kevin Creeley (01:01:11.1)
Really.
Jared Knight (01:01:19.221)
after you make the mock scrape, because nobody wants to see that after the fact. And then you put a camera up and watch it and you're going to be surprised.
Kevin Creeley (01:01:30.236)
Dude, it's so funny you say that. Yeah. It's so funny you say that because I literally, so I have a mock scrape that I created. I think it was two years ago now. this was in the timber, but it was on a transition and I created this mock scrape and I actually used a Cedar branch for the vine and I zip tied it up to a chestnut oak tree and hung it down to about waist height, kicked the dirt up around it. And then I had a cell camera on it already. I preset it and I have a photo.
Jared Knight (01:01:49.091)
Hmm. Hmm.
Kevin Creeley (01:01:58.94)
I'm not going to post this on the Instagram, but I have a photo of me urinating in that scrape. And then if you look at the timestamp, eight minutes later, after I leave, there's a dough with her face down in it. And I'm like, that's freaking cool.
Jared Knight (01:02:11.407)
I can't tell you how many times that has happened to me. And this in just different areas, I have put cameras up right after a scrape and within 24 hours have a buck on camera working that scrape. It's crazy how effective it can be. and then if you don't have an edge, but you can also do like a scrape tree. I've even gone out like with some post hole diggers, dig a hole, put a little hardwood sapling, like a beach tree sapling or something in the field.
Kevin Creeley (01:02:23.922)
That's awesome. Yeah. Besides that man
Jared Knight (01:02:37.231)
Like, and at 30 yards or 25 yards or whatever, 20 yards, whatever you're comfortable with. And then make your box scrape there in the field where it's a visual thing. The buck has to come out all the way into the field to work the scrape. That's a cool, that makes for some cool image for some photos for trail cameras. Yeah. Usually. I mean, you can do it like right before the season, like this, you know, crops are growing and then it's right like a week before season, you go up there and do it. They'll start using it pretty much right. In my experience, they use it pretty much right away.
Kevin Creeley (01:02:52.71)
Are you doing that after you plant?
Jared Knight (01:03:07.437)
They see that visual and they get that scent. As long as the deer is using it, every deer will come. Well, I say every deer. A lot of deer will come to it. Most of the deer in the area will work. That's great.
Kevin Creeley (01:03:19.108)
Awesome. Yeah. Besides that, man, just have fun with it. Put some trail cameras on the food plot, haunt it, kill some does if you want. If you don't want to, great, you know, whatever, whatever you're into, but have fun with it. Experiment.
Jared Knight (01:03:23.617)
yeah. Yep. Sure. Go watch deer, watch turkeys, bears. You guys have bears up there to contend with. That's something I didn't even put in my notes, but like there's definitely non -target species out there. You may not want in your food plots and there you may want bears in your food plots or, know, down in South Alabama, we have hogs. If you have hog problems, you may want to do some work on the hogs. yeah, they're horrible. So, just something to consider.
Kevin Creeley (01:03:44.463)
yeah. Thank God we don't have those.
Kevin Creeley (01:03:51.942)
Yeah. Well, tell you what, man, think this has been pretty good, pretty good, topic coverage on the food plot subject. So, I appreciate your time, man. We're about at an hour. Sounds like a kid's done woke up from his nap and is ready to ready for some playtime. So I'm not going to hold you up too much longer, but, I appreciate your time, man. I really appreciate you coming on. absolutely, man.
Jared Knight (01:04:02.701)
Yeah, that's right. That's right. Cool. I appreciate it, man. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, man. Thank you, Kevin.
Kevin Creeley (01:04:15.504)
Yes, sir. For everybody listening, you know, I really appreciate it. If you guys can go leave us a review podcast, Spotify, all that stuff. and if there's any topics you want us to cover, anybody you think that would be a good guest for the show, please reach out Instagram, Facebook, mid Atlantic outdoorsman. And again, Jared, thanks for your time, buddy.
Jared Knight (01:04:33.196)
All right, thank you, Kevin. We'll talk to you later.
Kevin Creeley (01:04:35.878)
Yes, sir. Have a good one. Good luck this season.
Jared Knight (01:04:39.282)
you too.
