September 15-Minnesota Deer Archery Season Outlook.

Big-N-Beasty Plot

Softball-sized Turnips

September 17th brings the opening day of the Minnesota Archery season.  Opening day is special.  It brings the anticipation of a new beginning and fosters hope for a successful season.  This year I have made a couple big changes to my hunting approach.  I have moved several stand locations to new areas.  These stands had historically been productive but for whatever reason have not provided recent success.  The landowner who graciously allows me to hunt his family farm, has also allowed me to plant 2 food plots this year.  This is the first year for planting food plots on this farm and they turned out amazing!  I planted Frigid Forage's Big-N-Beasty, and this brassica blend will hopefully pay dividends this fall.  I expect them to be very attractive to the deer starting after the soybeans yellow and into the late season when the ag fields get plowed under and food sources become more limited.  These 2 food plots were made out of an overgrown pasture with simple hand tools and a lot of help from mother nature.  I sprayed the area with glyphosate in mid-late July.  After a month of letting the grasses die off, I then used fire and a controlled burn to remove the dead grasses.  I then spread roughly 60 lbs./acre of Nitrogen on the plot using a lawn and garden spreader.  Lastly I spread the brassica mix according to the labeled directions and prayed for rain.  It is very important to not overseed brassicas.  This could lead improper plant spacing and thus not allowing the plants to reach their full potential.  The summer of 2016 has provided southeast Minnesota with quit a bit of rain the second half of the summer.  This caused damaging flooding in some areas, but provided the food plot novice the perfect conditions for a bumper crop of softball-sized turnips.  

A big thank you to JFN Farms for allowing me to enjoy the outdoors on your beautiful farm. Thank you!
 

Mature 10 pt. (needs a name)

My trail cameras have not shown many mature bucks using my mineral stations over the summer.  This concerns me, as there were 3 nice mature bucks that I saw on the hoof last year on stand that I was hoping made it through the 2015 season.  I suspect at least 1 or 2 of them did not make it. I do have one mature 10 pt. that has shown up that will be the focus during the early season until the bucks have fully dispersed into their fall ranges.  My strategy will be to sit on an oak flat over looking one of the new food plots hoping this 10 pt. will visit the plot on the way to the ag fields in the evening. I hope to get in the stand for several sits the opening week and will share my report in the September 24th blog.

KK