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Utilize
Your ATV / UTV to Prepare a Food Plot for Hunting
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Preparation for a successful hunt
for quality game starts well before the
hunting season with the utilization of food
plots |
(10/23/2008) - Driving down the
farm road at one of my favorite haunts years ago,
got me to thinking of why I liked this particular
farm so much. The hunting was always good, the terrain
was very easy to navigate, and it just seemed like
all the needed ingredients were there to have abundant
wildlife. That thought always remained in my head
when ever I hunted a new area and soon I started
realizing that there were things I could do on many
places I hunted to better the quality of the land
to give the animals some added food along with setting
for myself a place to hunt that I knew would bring
game in.
Food plots and selective plantings are reaching
their peak as for the past 20 years have seen
a huge rise in this practice. Big name companies
have devoted great time and monies to giving us
seeds to plant that will be the most beneficial
for everything from deer to ducks and if you’re
not using this practice, maybe you should take
a second look into just how easy it can be to
help elevate your hunting with some land management.
As long as you have permission to modify the land,
or happen to be the land owner, your first step
will be deciding where and what to plant. Of course
time of year will dictate when to plant, and to
a large extent what to plant, so some pre planning
may need to be in order.
What? You don’t have a clue about being
a farmer? Well don’t run away just yet,
because for most small scale food plots, you probably
have everything you need right in your garage,
and a trip to the local feed store will net you
some advice for your area and some seeds to get
yourself started. If your local farm supply doesn’t
offer anything, you can buy online as most all
of the well known names (Biologic, Moultrie, and
Tecomate) offer their products via good old UPS.
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Check with your local farm cooperative to
see which seeds/plants will do best in your
region |
Be sure to check which seeds are
included in your chosen bag by reading the
seed listing on the package |
But I don’t have a tractor!? Well, you
obviously have an ATV or UTV or you wouldn’t
be reading this information on a website based
entirely on them so it’s time for you to
get a little creative and blow the dust off your
machine and put it to work! Ideally, yes, a tractor
with a nice disc would be sitting in your driveway,
but in many cases, you won’t be able to
get a tractor or equipment of that nature back
into the area you want to grow a food plot, so
your ATV/UTV will be the perfect machine to help
with this undertaking. Of course your machine
won’t do all the work, as after you have
picked out your location, you will need to clear
away brush, maybe some tree’s and of course
prepare the soil for planting. Even with the bare
minimum of equipment you can find unlimited ways
that your ATV/UTV can help get the job done faster
then without one, and if you can swing the money
to pick up some of the new attachments available
for your machine, you will be quickly on your
way to getting things ready to be planted.
Selecting the area hopefully has your new plot
location receiving a fair amount of sunshine and
moisture, although if your doing a fall plot,
keep in mind that those leaves blocking the sun
will be leaving as fall grips your region, allowing
more sunlight to reach your plants. The trick
to the equation I have found is to prepare the
area and ground so that your seeding occurs about
4 weeks ahead of the leaves starting to fall.
This allows the seed to germinate and grow before
being smothered by the leaves that fall and will
continue to grow heavily until the coldest of
frosts hit or snow covers everything(More on what
to plant later in this article). Your regions
weather will dictate when you need to plant, but
a general rule of thumb is at least 30 days before
the first frost.
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Get resourceful to keep cost down. A discarded
pallet will help lightly cover seed to assure
germination when pulled by your ATV
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