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[SPEAKER_03]: but it's always funny to watch the page views on greatdaysoutdoors.com about July because, you know, your common sense would tell you that during that time frame, fishing's going to be the most popular thing out there, but every single year, right about July, all of a sudden, hunting
[SPEAKER_03]: content goes back to the top of the most viewed articles that we have on the website.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I've been trying to figure that out for years, but you know what I think it is?
[SPEAKER_03]: I think people are just so-called agum hot.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was going to say they've already had two, you know, two months, two and a half months of that Southern real deal heat and everybody's starting to think about fall and that fresh cool weather and they're merely mornings crisp.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm guilty too.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't know about you, but with my food plots, I think about them year round.
[SPEAKER_03]: I really mean them.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm kind of always tweaking a little something.
[SPEAKER_03]: I take a lot of notes about what I did.
[SPEAKER_03]: the previous year and I'll tweak on that a little bit, you know, going into that next year about ways I could make it a little easier on myself or just more efficient.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I wish I would have had the podcast that we're going to do today the first time I ever tried to plant a food plot because if you're going from helping someone who's been doing the planning to actually planning and planting them yourself,
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's a big leap.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's a lot to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like you just said, I mean, it's a it's a three hundred sixty five day project.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm sure there are some people that just, you know, cope there whenever it's time to play in the fall and those some seeds and the ground are on the ground and hope for the best, but yeah, man, I mean,
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm talking about keeping records.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really good to get a baseline to see what you've got.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you did glam or fertilize it, you're your before it's good to see what you have going into the next season.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you may have to use a little bit more of something a little bit less of something, but you have a baseline to go off over.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you kind of always are curtailing that to your goals.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, and, you know, making that specific to the equipment that you own, too, you know, is a big thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's just so many variables in ways you can do this.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you want to plant fall food plots, there's no one way necessarily.
[SPEAKER_03]: There are many ways, and then each step has its own set of variables that you get into and you go, oh, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's so many different ways I could spray herbicide or not spray it all, and still accomplish the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You talk to ten different guys, ten different property managers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to tell you probably something different on every step of what you think too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody's got their ways that they like doing things.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the biggest thing in starting this process out is getting a plan together and July is a good time to do that.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a good time to take an assessment of what you've got, what your goals are for that year and go ahead and get a plan together so that when September rolls around, you're ready and you've got
[SPEAKER_03]: Everything you need to be able to plant, whether that planting happens in September, October, and unfortunately some years even in November.
[SPEAKER_01]: Last couple of years has been late.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you got to be ready ahead of time.
[SPEAKER_03]: So to talk through that today, we're going to be talking with Caleb Weaver of Southern Seed and Feed, and really just trying to learn the basics, the foundation, the calendar of events, so to speak that comes with planting fall food plots.
[SPEAKER_03]: Caleb,
[SPEAKER_03]: What you've been up to at your place, man?
[SPEAKER_02]: Man, not so excited when you guys contacted me about doing this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because this is the type of stuff I really love to do and appreciate the opportunity to get this information out there to help somebody.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like you said, if I had had this playbook that we're going to do today a long time ago, that would eliminate a lot of trial by fire.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I have to about this opportunity to be able to get this stuff out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: But man, I've been in the woods a good bit trying to
[SPEAKER_02]: keep my mental sights active trying to keep an eye on everything going on and just really enjoy being in the woods and but always preparing for the fall always looking forward to that and in this time of year like you said all of a sudden there's that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Ad start popping up with beer and food plots and fertilizer and all that fun stuff and just kind of starts getting in the gear really.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep, that's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Caleb has judges mentioned you know, July's a good time to start thinking about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: maybe at least getting your, your, your seed order ready, your fertilizer order ready.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that too early?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are we, are we jumping the gun here in July?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or, you know, what are some things that people can be doing right now to get their, their fall food plot plan ready?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's never too early to start doing some research and what you think you want to plant for the year or what your goals are going to be for your property.
[SPEAKER_02]: The first thing to do is just get out there and look at it.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're in July, it's going to be hot.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be muggy a lot we talked about, but
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a good time really to get your mineral size if you don't, if you're not using any minerals, that is the easiest way to keep your deer attracted to the area, to provide the most you can for antler growth, with doing very little.
[SPEAKER_02]: But just to get out there and see what kind of weed you're dealing with, to see what your roads look like, if you haven't been on your property, you know, since the season, just to go ahead and get your list together, if what you're going to need to do, what you
[SPEAKER_02]: What you feel like you want to plant this year when what your goals are going to be.
[SPEAKER_03]: July is a good time to for those.
[SPEAKER_03]: I call those the riding activities.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's easy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: People will breathe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, keep a little breeze going.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to stay out there to grab you a little dirt bucket.
[SPEAKER_01]: He'll sample bucket.
[SPEAKER_03]: Keep from walking in the tall grass too much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's make boots.
[SPEAKER_03]: I, you know, one of the things that I like to do is go pull saw samples.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that that's one of the most overlooked things that that people do, you know, they just kind of, they wing it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, they throw some triple thirteen out there and some seed and call it good and or do it once every five years.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and it's been real guilty to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's been eye-opening to me, you know, pull and soul samples.
[SPEAKER_03]: I pull them every year and I've pulled them, you know, some years I've pulled them more than once a year and that wasn't necessarily because I thought there was a big change.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was because I realized I did them wrong at the time before.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's, yeah, I mean, you can pull them too deep and you can pull them from not enough areas.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, like several of my food plots have multiple different soil classifications in the same food plots.
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, what's the first step in terms of assessing needs?
[SPEAKER_03]: Is it soil samples?
[SPEAKER_03]: Is it getting an idea your current weed competition or what you've got out there in the first place?
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you like to say is the very first step?
[SPEAKER_02]: You guys, we harp on this a good bit.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't think your soul samples are going to be first.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's really the foundation of everything you want to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I tell folks, you know, if I could tell you that ten dollars was going to make you successful this year, how fast could you get that out of your wallet?
[SPEAKER_01]: Very.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, by your extension office, what you can do when you're doing your ride loans and hang out from the property over the summertime, just take a little shovel.
[SPEAKER_02]: You want to dig down about two or three inches and grab some soil off of the top.
[SPEAKER_02]: run it by your local feed store extension office and that would provide you with exactly what you need.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if our listeners today have never done a soil sample, you'll get a sheet with exactly what's in your soil will exactly what you need to put down to amend your soil properly.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's tell you what your pH is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's tell you how much lime you need to bring it up to optimal levels, arguably six point five.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's how you watch your phosphorus, potassium, magnesium levels are.
[SPEAKER_02]: And one way to think about this is, no matter what your food plot looks like in the fall and winter time, that ultimately, no matter how palatable or deprotene content or fiber content it is, is ultimately just a vessel that transmits or transfers and nutrients to the animal itself once it eats it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so if you don't, if your ground isn't amended correctly,
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you could have one plot on one side of your property that the soil is perfect.
[SPEAKER_02]: Call of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you can have one for it's not.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, you're going to see a lot more activity over there because those deer know what they need to survive around.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I've mentioned this on here before.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've probably sold a bunch of these things.
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess we'll never know.
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you're not, if you go on Amazon and look for the collecting go soil sample bucket, it's so easy.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's got a little auger bit.
[SPEAKER_03]: You hook it into an impact or a drill.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you can just walk across that food plot.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as fast as you can walk, you can take a three or four inch total sample from a bunch of different locations on that on that plot all over it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Mix that soil all together and you throw in it easily pours into a bag.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then you take it by and get your soil samples done.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's been
[SPEAKER_03]: really eye-opening to me to see that triple thirteen would not have gotten it done necessarily on my place.
[SPEAKER_03]: I needed some professionalized blends when it came to fertilizer, but the other thing is lime, man.
[SPEAKER_03]: It seems like everybody wants to think about fertilizer, but if your pH is out of whack, you're just throwing money down the drain.
[SPEAKER_03]: putting all that fertilizer out there.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, one of the things I want to say to people that I get caught up in this myself is don't feel like you have to make your soil perfect this fall.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it'd be ideal if you could raise your pH.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you got five and a half
[SPEAKER_03]: and you really want to get to six and a half.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're going to have to put out tons of water.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and you're going to need an agglime spreader to be come into your food plot and spread it and not all food plots will allow for that.
[SPEAKER_03]: The roads are too rough.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're small.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're out in a rough, hard to reach location.
[SPEAKER_03]: Go get some pelletized lime.
[SPEAKER_03]: And put out what you can every time you go in there, put out as much as you can, even if you can raise it from five point five to five point seven.
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe you can get it up to five point seven this fall and you can get it up to five point nine next spring and six point one next fall.
[SPEAKER_03]: Eventually you'll get there.
[SPEAKER_03]: Don't feel like you got to make it perfect.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm falling to that trap.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_03]: All the time, any of the improvement is part of time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of times, you know, this is based on a budget too.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not cheap to go out there and quote unquote, get your soil perfect.
[SPEAKER_02]: But there is some alternatives too.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can go buy your local page door and you can run a buggy with lawn lawns not terrible expensive, but if you can get a buggy in and out like you said, that's great.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you can do Pelican's lawn by the bag, it's not always as cheap.
[SPEAKER_02]: But there are now some spray opportunities out there, some calcium-brace, may spray alternatives that some guys are having some good luck with.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, it doesn't last quite as long, but it is immediate.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's another way that you can go out and spray.
[SPEAKER_02]: You won't want to spray the bare ground, and they're both being able to raise one full point on your pH.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that will get you through the season and help out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's a great tip.
[SPEAKER_03]: Definitely.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, like, say, I just think the good thing about lime is you can do it anytime.
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you're head up there, you might as well make a, make a lime run, make a few passes get some lime out there if you can.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm always looking for a reason to go to this time of year like I'm cycling and it's been a while.
[SPEAKER_03]: I need to get there and check all things.
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's put out some lime and that's another one of those rad activities that you can do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you could easily do it with a UTV spreader.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it wouldn't, you know, just like go for a little ride.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know how to make a big giant production out of it with a big hopper and thousands of pounds and all that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just chip away at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a good tip.
[SPEAKER_03]: The other thing I've always been thinking about in July is all right, it's always shocking to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: when I go to the camp for the first time in July or August and I haven't been in month or six weeks maybe and it's just like holy moly I did not know stuff could grow this high this fast and if you've got a weed problem you're going whoa I got like a big weed problem and yeah what am I going to do here to get this seems like almost impenetrable sometimes you go up to these food plots and you got dog fennel over your head and
[SPEAKER_03]: it's you're going all right what what do I do where do I start the first thing I think you got to do right is you got to figure out how you're going to terminate that vegetative competition whether it's a weed or a forage crop like if you want to play something in the fall you're going to have to terminate that even if that's just knowing that I'm going to let the first fall frost do it you still it's still going to have to happen so
[SPEAKER_03]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_03]: How do you take an assessment of that and then make a plan of, well, do I need the bush hog first and then come back and spray or do it?
[SPEAKER_03]: Can I get it by, would school ahead and just spray it as it is?
[SPEAKER_03]: How does July play into that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, the first thing I'm going to do is take a deep breath because like you said, it can be very overwhelming.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and like you mentioned, cool, cool air is the enemy of your warm season grasses.
[SPEAKER_02]: So don't anybody listen, this don't stress too bad.
[SPEAKER_02]: over, oh man, my roads, my goodness, now that it's going to die out.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not going to be the end of the world, but as far as getting seed in the ground, I'm almost start by bush hogging.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that may reintroduce some seeds, but bush hogging, and you're just kind of getting down to where I can take an assessment of where I've got to go from there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's not so overwhelming feeling.
[SPEAKER_02]: Another thing we talked about, you know, if I'm going out there to ride to the first time of the year, carry a bag of minerals with you, get your soil samples while you're out there, put some of that stuff out, but
[SPEAKER_02]: For folks that have never used any chemicals, take some pictures of everything that you're dealing with, so that when you make that run by your local feed store or extension agent, go buy and say, hey, this is what I've got to deal with out here.
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you recommend?
[SPEAKER_02]: And then make sure you explain your goals to them, say, I want to leave this area bare so that I can see through here better during the fall or earlier during both season, which is not so brushy, or hey, I'm
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't plan on planning anything here for a while, or I'm just trying to kill everything you see.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then let them know, hey, this is on the property line.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not off the property line.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the reason I stress that that's so important, and everything is site specific, but you want to make sure that somebody that's looking at what you're actually dealing with on the ground and what your goals are can provide you with the correct product to meet your needs.
[SPEAKER_02]: And basically, and sometimes keep you out of trouble.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't want
[SPEAKER_02]: an herbicide that's going to drift over onto your neighbor's property or kill some of the trees that you've been playing in some of your fruit trees you've got growing on the side of your plot all of that said you know that's the first thing I'm going to do is go in there and say okay let me refresh from mental size maybe change some batteries on cameras get my soul samples together and what exactly I'm not coming back with probably going to come back with a tractor probably going to come back with spray to kill everything back or you know you need to be thinking ahead on this as well
[SPEAKER_02]: The past several years out here in Alabama anyway, and I think Mississippi and some of the neighboring states, we've had some really bad droughts, so you're fall-plot if you have one.
[SPEAKER_02]: It may be very important in September and October, so that's another thing to keep in mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can always bush hog it and disc it under close to when it's time to plant.
[SPEAKER_02]: Those deer may need that, so if you're just doing this on routine, keep that in mind that cut it back and you can actually receive some annual clover, so we talked about that before and soon ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: magazine articles, but you can receive some annual clovers by bushhogging high and just keeping an eye on your plot.
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, this past spring, I sprayed my plots with a herbicide combination that was designed to
[SPEAKER_03]: killed the annual grasses that were growing.
[SPEAKER_03]: My cool season grasses killed the broad leaf weeds that were out there, but leave my clover standing.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I did that intentionally so that I didn't totally clean the table for deer and turkeys in the spring.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it gave my ground some cover and that clover continued to fix nitrogen until I was ready to plant my summer plots.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, depending on where you are in this, this is where I go with all the variability.
[SPEAKER_03]: You may decide that you don't even want to herbicide at all.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you've got a really good stand of warm season, a warm season blend, you just may let that sit.
[SPEAKER_03]: And like you said,
[SPEAKER_03]: on it, you know, there's your, there's your both season plot.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's nothing wrong with that and wait until later in the, in the fall to, to plant the fall plot, especially recently, that would work out great the last couple of years.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know a lot of times I get so amped up for this that I'm like, all right, let's get there and get to work.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then come both season.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, I kind of wish I kind of wish I would have done that because now I got a
[SPEAKER_03]: I got bare dirt out there, the only thing I've got to hunt is.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if it's that early season stuff I can.
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, you know, when it comes to you mentioned you like to bush hog first and then spray.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why is that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, now I mean, I understand there's some criticism there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm only just going to bush hog to get a grasp on what I'm working with.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like to, I like to clean everything up and then say, okay, where do we go from here?
[SPEAKER_02]: Now that will reintroduce.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're essentially no till seating right there and we can talk about that later, but you're you are reintroducing seed weed seeds to your to your food plot area, but I'm really gonna I think a lot of guys will do a work weekend where they everybody's there with the tractors and you're cleaning up rows and your bush hog and your fields back to To start that, but I'm also gonna do that so that my disk makes good contact with the ground a little three point disk going through and turning the ground a little bit and getting that prepared I want to make sure I've got good contact
[SPEAKER_02]: for two reasons, once the soil is prepared to how I want it, but also time consuming, you have to go over and over and over and over the stuff to get it back.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, you can spray and a lot of times it takes one or two applications of spray to make sure you eliminate it all of your weeds depending on what you're trying to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, like I said, when it comes to bush hogging, you may bush hog half of your claw.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're walking through and you still got a lot of your pool season clovers that
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not too hot where they've terminated yet in the middle of the summer.
[SPEAKER_02]: Think about this.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't want to bush hog that tonnage to the ground because your deer are using it.
[SPEAKER_02]: They need it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, the same thing with a supplemental feeding program, you don't want your deer on a roller coaster where they walk in one day and all thousands of pounds of clover that was there the day before, it's no longer there anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you're going to run, I'm to find a new seat, a new food source.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So keep that in mind when you're walking around or when you're spraying or what, like I said, back to your goals, write them down.
[SPEAKER_02]: What exactly are you wanting to do this year if you make any changes?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we, we were talking about this today.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think for folks that maybe this is their first time doing this.
[SPEAKER_03]: But another reason I really like Bush Hawking before you spray is that if you go out into a head high field and you try to spray, you're just going to miss a bunch of spots.
[SPEAKER_03]: And because especially if you're using like a boomless sprayer, if you've got five foot tall weeds on the sides of your UTV or whatever you're using to spray, most of that spray is hitting the sides of the vegetation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not going to get a good coverage over time.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so when you knock it down, what I like to do
[SPEAKER_03]: is I like to knock it down with that bush hog.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then like you said, you are reintroducing those weed seeds.
[SPEAKER_03]: I give it a couple of weeks.
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe they'll sprout, you know, and we can kill it back a little bit later.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the other thing too is one of the things I had to wrap my mind around, especially doing this with minimal equipment is be prepared to do something twice.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're not going to get it all on the first round of herbicide if you're new to this you may miss a spot so don't go up in herbicide and then come back to the very the next weekend or two weeks later thinking that you're going to take the next step and just leave all your sprayer and your herbicide behind you may end up needing it again and
[SPEAKER_03]: that's kind of how I like to stagger my plan is I really like to give myself multiple weekends that I can plant seed multiple weekends I can spray herbicide because it may be a field to wet for you to get in there you know when you when you get there and you didn't realize that okay I gotta come back at two weeks and spray this one again
[SPEAKER_01]: Or maybe you're going to break an evidence.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're going to miss a big swath in one field.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you've got this brown field with a little green patch of weeds right in the middle of it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I thought that that's the real beauty of getting ahead with your plan and getting started is that you give yourself some flexibility.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: You've got some direct errors and deal with weather patterns too.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you've got your you've
[SPEAKER_03]: You've got your field terminated at this point.
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the things we didn't talk about that might even be a preemptive step to all of this is really just thinking about the timeline of when you want to get your seed in the ground in a perfect scenario.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can't control the rain, but assuming good soil conditions, assuming you've got rain in the forecast, if you could pick a date on a calendar Caleb to put seed in the ground, how do you choose that based on where you're hunting?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, we're out of live in Central Alabama.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I'm thinking about this in August, I'm preparing in September.
[SPEAKER_02]: And traditionally, let's say we don't have a drought coming up again.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm looking for that first week of October past two years.
[SPEAKER_02]: Unfortunately, it's been the first week of November that I've had a plant.
[SPEAKER_02]: But if I just had a pick a day, I'll be looking for that first week of October.
[SPEAKER_02]: It gives me something for the food plots.
[SPEAKER_02]: To jump up and grab and they should be in the neighborhood of three or four or five inches tall come open day of those season.
[SPEAKER_02]: It gives an attraction for the deer there and I can get established and get moving.
[SPEAKER_02]: As far as the the opportunity that football has to attract here now it's what's most important is raining.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know a lot of guys are based on a schedule where as I can only go to work on these fields on the weekends and
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't have rain inside, but that's the only thing I can get there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's where it's so important to have everything prepared and put down properly so that when you do get rain, it will come up and do well.
[SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of our premium blends of southern seed and feed are coated in delta ag, which gives it that boost and preserves that seed until you do get rain.
[SPEAKER_02]: And last year, I had a plan that thought we were going to do really well with
[SPEAKER_02]: On the tail end of one of those hurricanes that missed us, thank goodness, but I planted, we didn't get a drop.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I sat there for nineteen days.
[SPEAKER_02]: and I ended up coming up just fine on to my field.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I did the side thing correctly and that seek out and really guys pay off in the end to where you're not having to go back out and redo the whole thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it pays to be thinking about when you could plan.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the general rule of thumb I've always heard is like forty five to sixty days before your first frost date or your average frost date.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_03]: In Alabama, Central Alabama, you're probably looking around middle of November for your average first frost date, which put that first of October, puts you about six weeks ahead of that, which is kind of right where you want to be.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've certainly planted a little earlier.
[SPEAKER_03]: I did the same thing last year.
[SPEAKER_03]: I planted actually planted at night the night before that hurricane came through Caleb.
[SPEAKER_02]: We got the rain like we wanted our both in shoot lots at the same time because I finished at midnight.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I finished at two o'clock in the morning and then they put yeah, it's on those tractors for a reason, but oh, that's right.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know what I had happened to me last year was we got great rain got good germination.
[SPEAKER_03]: I had good green up right out of the gate.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everything's looking awesome and then it went dry.
[SPEAKER_03]: So what actually ended up happened to me was I had a bunch of weed competition that popped up with my fall food plot balloons.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so then I'm sitting there going, all right, what do I do here?
[SPEAKER_03]: And what I stumbled upon last year was a concept of layering.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're seed and saving a little seed.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think you have going back to my thought on being prepared to spray two weekends in a row or spray twice.
[SPEAKER_03]: I did the same thing with my seed last year is a bottle of extra and I put out the recommended rate at in front of a good rain and then I had some more there for subsequent rains.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I could fill in patchy spots fill in spots that didn't do very good.
[SPEAKER_03]: And was able to come back and do that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, I ended up planting in late September, but then I ended up planting not a total replant, but just I just went in with a hand, a hand spreader and put it in places that just didn't seem to germinate that good for whatever reason.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know why.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that really made my plots pop and get full and and lush going into the fall.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's another thing that you got to think about is like, how much seed do I need to plant?
[SPEAKER_03]: When it comes to, you know your date that you want to plant, you've got your competition terminated.
[SPEAKER_03]: How does the way the method that you're planting affect your seeding rate?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you guys on the bag are going to say, here's a fifty pound bag.
[SPEAKER_03]: We recommend depending on the blend, whatever.
[SPEAKER_03]: Fifty pounds per acre or fifty pounds per half acre or whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or half out.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, if somebody is, you know, maybe no trying to do a no-till like a throw and mode type planting versus a disk and cover type planting, how does that change the recommended seating rates?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, the throw and mode is becoming popular for a lot of guys doing what they call kill plots or some of them may not have access to a tractor or just a smaller area that they just want to jump off to the side and do and they don't have a disk or anything, but you can
[SPEAKER_02]: You can always, uh, the trail moers or, uh, popular these days to pull behind the ATV trail moers.
[SPEAKER_02]: The throw and mo is not going to be as effective as traditionally turning the ground spreading the seed and covering it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and one way it was put to me years ago is, uh, if you, if you have an idea how well someone's going to work, ask a row crop farmers that would do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: They've got this thing figured out to where what's efficient and most cost effective in the way to do it and it grow well.
[SPEAKER_02]: But oftentimes, we don't have those opportunities.
[SPEAKER_02]: So as a as a certain go, I would recommend probably, twenty five to fifty percent more depending on your standard vegetation.
[SPEAKER_02]: As you've gone through and killed everything back and and you don't have much to move and you're probably going to need to plant spread more seeds and
[SPEAKER_02]: Then you would traditionally your your germination and your first emergence is not going to your germination is probably going to be fine, but your first emergence.
[SPEAKER_02]: It may be limited, but sometimes that's all we have to work with.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it just depends on
[SPEAKER_03]: equipment you've got, and again, it goes back to go talk to someone and tell them what your goals are, what you're currently working with.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm just assumed that they know you're going to try to do this with a hand spreader and a weedwacker.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like if you're just playing killed lots and things of that nature, you really need to go talk to somebody and say, this is what I've got.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the equipment I've got.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the current state of things.
[SPEAKER_03]: Here's a soul sample.
[SPEAKER_03]: How do I tackle this beast?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because
[SPEAKER_03]: What works for the guy with fifteen acres of food plots that, you know, are all two to three acres.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not the same method you want to use for somebody who's planting a bow plot, you know, on a wood's road.
[SPEAKER_03]: And necessarily.
[SPEAKER_03]: So when you think about it, you really put that.
[SPEAKER_03]: But go ahead.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you put that perfectly just, just that whole line up right there in your list of goals to go to your, your feed store and lay out there exactly what you're doing because everything is site specific.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they'll be able to guide you to what kind of seed you need, based off what they see with shade or how wet or dry and looking at the ground, but they can take your soil sample and say, this is what we need to make you successful here.
[SPEAKER_02]: And here's exactly how you need to do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And even recommendations on height to cut or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the best way to do it right there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if nobody, someone listening to this podcast is not familiar with what throwing
[SPEAKER_02]: means that would be to take an ATV spreader or hand spreader and walk through brush number vegetation and seed into that and then cut on top of that and create a seed bed.
[SPEAKER_02]: on top of that seat.
[SPEAKER_02]: Therefore, your seat grows up through your cuttings.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it can be a good option for certain areas.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like on my property, I have a power line.
[SPEAKER_03]: I did a little experiment last year.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I have a power line there.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just wanted to see what the difference would be if one plot was bare dirt and one plot wasn't.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so what I did was spray both plots.
[SPEAKER_03]: One plot I burned the other plot I left standing tall I didn't even bush all get I just sprayed it tall and then I came back into that first rain planted in both bush and then I bush hoged the the power line and Honestly, you know, it would got real hot it got real dry having that ground cover
[SPEAKER_03]: that plot did better than the other plot because I feel like the whole temperature was lower and it held a little more moisture.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, you got to look at it and just try some things and I think the biggest thing I could say at least from my own experience is like, you're going to mess it up.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, you're going to have a failure at some point, be prepared to fix it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, and if you're planting in November, you don't have a time to fail.
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you plant them all early and try something a little early, you know, it's not a little fix it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's the other thing, too.
[SPEAKER_03]: You talk about going to the feed store.
[SPEAKER_03]: Go sit at the feed store in July because in September, those guys are rocking and rolling and they don't have a whole lot of time to talk.
[SPEAKER_03]: So go up there then and shoot the bowl with them then.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're going to sit there and have a conversation with you and have time to do it.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I don't want to show up on the front.
[SPEAKER_03]: First weekend after Labor Day and start trying to talk about what I need this guys are.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're moving pallets.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're slinging bags and that's a busy time.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a busy time for sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, we've got our we've got a frost date.
[SPEAKER_03]: We've got an idea of when we want to put seed in the ground.
[SPEAKER_03]: We know we can start to reverse engineer what we need to do.
[SPEAKER_03]: We know that
[SPEAKER_03]: If we want to put seed in the ground on October first, we've got to get that seed bed prepared in advance of that and that means amending the soil, terminating the competition, preparing the seed bed, whether you're doing that with a disk or doing it through no-till methods.
[SPEAKER_03]: You've got a reverse engineer that back out.
[SPEAKER_03]: The next question becomes choosing the right seed.
[SPEAKER_03]: You guys, of course, manufacture seed blends that you have tested to work well in southern soils.
[SPEAKER_03]: Walk us through throughout we should be thinking about choosing a seed blend because you guys make multiple different blends.
[SPEAKER_03]: And what I plant in an area that I'm going to throw in, though, and try no till it's going to be a little bit different.
[SPEAKER_03]: Then what I'm going to plant in a, you know, a conventionally tilled food plot, you know, I, I favor those smaller seeds when I don't have, you know, as good as seed soil contact.
[SPEAKER_03]: But how do you walk somebody through picking a blend based on their goals or their soils or their planting methods?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, a lot of times it starts with the budget and then you want to move into exactly what do you want to try out this year?
[SPEAKER_02]: You're looking to introduce more clover.
[SPEAKER_02]: So one area, are you looking at introduced brassicas or continue that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you looking for a higher wheat blend being that wheat?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it almost all way is great.
[SPEAKER_02]: It seems like it never fails.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then are you looking for a coated blend, which most of our premium seeds are coated?
[SPEAKER_02]: But do you have a really dry sandy soil?
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have a lot of shade, low pH and wet?
[SPEAKER_02]: We've got a lot of options for that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I deal plus would be a great clover option for our clover guys.
[SPEAKER_02]: that is code and delta ag and then we've got a product that everybody loves called superbook.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's some eight way.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's got your braskas, it's got your clover, it's got a lot of fun stuff in there.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we go down to the typical three way.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't consider your raw.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it really is based upon, hey, I've got ten food plots and I've got X amount of dollars to spend.
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the best thing I can get from my book here based on what my goals are?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we do offer something from the bottom to the top there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's always done to trust something new, trust something.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's a lot of guy that's sitting there to pay thirty dollars for a bag of food plus seed.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know, try one and see if it works and see how the deer enjoy it on your property.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes it takes a year or two to introduce something new, especially brassicas.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's always fun to watch and try and something new on a different property.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's very true that the deer may not, they may take them a year or two to find something palatable.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's often you can have one neighbor say hey that my dear love purple top turnips and so the guy next to work plants and or down the road anyway and he says they didn't touch mom all year long, but that could be very true Because do you happen to build the power for that that dear's mother never showed it to eat purple top turnips So that this got something that got a they've got to figure out, but along this is budget driven and then how do the seed blends specifically fit it into the goals that you want?
[SPEAKER_01]: I really enjoyed, I pointed two of the blends last year.
[SPEAKER_01]: The deer absolutely mowed it down and it seemed like, you couldn't get them out of there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our food plots, I mean, I have very rarely hunt food plots during the middle of the rut and I camped out on the last year.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was unbelievable how many deer we had in our field year round last year, all of our fields.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell us a little bit about the value of using some of these pre-mixed blends and why they can be so important for your deer throughout the season.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, but what we do is we go through and test and I specifically have tested a lot of these seeds to see how well they grow in southern soils.
[SPEAKER_02]: The coatings that we put on them, to make sure that they're forged varieties and most importantly make sure they're palatable to the deer and what time of the year does that become palatable.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just kind of neat to see some different things on that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it all comes down to time in my opinion, time is so valuable.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what we're doing and and oftentimes it's more cost effective to go ahead and buy that wind.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because we've done the homework for you to make sure that something doesn't over or under compete.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yet the correct levels of different seeds in that plan to make sure that your food plot is palatable all year long.
[SPEAKER_02]: It offers an ample nutrition from the time you plant, depending on what Clovers are in and all the way into June or July whenever heat terminates those.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you can often go so wrong and we've done some talk about this in the past with especially Clovers or some of these small seeds that are coated
[SPEAKER_02]: to where you get your your mixtures messed up really bad if you buy fifty pound bag of clover, but you don't pay attention that that clover is coated and there's actually thirty pounds of clover in that bag and twenty pounds of that is a coating.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well if you think you're doing five pounds of clover per acre.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you actually only put in three pounds of clever per acre.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you just shot yourself on the foot.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, I can tell you this.
[SPEAKER_03]: When it's Labor Day weekend and beyond and that those weekends in September, it's still really, really, really hot.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah, not that fun to be out the last thing that I want to be doing is sitting there away and see
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, count and seeds.
[SPEAKER_03]: Go in.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
[SPEAKER_03]: How big is this plot?
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: This one's three point three acres.
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I should calculate her.
[SPEAKER_03]: It says I'm supposed to have this many pounds per acre of this seed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've done it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've done it.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not possible individually and mixed them all right there in it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Man, I'm all about buying the blends.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely agree with that.
[SPEAKER_03]: On top of that, like you said, Caleb, you know, not only did I mix my own blends, because I thought I was going to save a little bit of money.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I thought, well, I just kind of mess around, get it the way I want it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I did it wrong.
[SPEAKER_03]: I come to come to find out, I did it wrong.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like you're talking about, like I'm weighing the going off of what the tag says, not realizing that some of that weight isn't seed.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, you're way under seated and then I put it in the ground and realized why didn't put it in not killing on this I didn't put a seat coating on this and it's just it's night and day when you can go all right we need three bags of ideal plus here and three bags for buck here put it in the hopper and go
[SPEAKER_03]: I really enjoyed that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I did also do enjoy, you know, I like books that I planted ideal plus and I planted superbook this year.
[SPEAKER_03]: I kind of like mix and y'all's blends together.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've had good luck doing that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: And also, you know, like I was saying with layering,
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll pick up a couple extra bags of cereal rye because it does much better in colder temperatures.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if I don't do a good job of getting seed to soil contact across the entire plot, I know I can come back in November, even December, and put a little cereal rye out there and fill in thin spots if I need to.
[SPEAKER_03]: But the thing I was impressed with this year was, may have not clover during Turkey season.
[SPEAKER_03]: incredible I mean there was so many bugs in there and you just got I mean it was knee high by mid April and I was really impressed with that that it came on in addition to all the other you know all the other things I planted in the blend I had radishes out there I had had all my my weed and my cereal wrap popping up
[SPEAKER_03]: But once I harvested this past spring, I still had that clover base going into summer where I didn't clean the table at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I tried to leave my established clover
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, whatever you want to call it patches plots and they crush it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, last time I went up there not too too long ago, it just mowed down to the know of they were crushing it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Caleb, one of the things I mentioned earlier is that
[SPEAKER_03]: several of my plots are have multiple different soil types.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I mean, you've seen a bunch.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you'll be in one spot and it's kind of sandy and dry.
[SPEAKER_03]: You get down in the other spot and it's wet and got clay soils.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, that's just in a three acre area.
[SPEAKER_03]: What if what if that's your main thing?
[SPEAKER_03]: What if you said, look, I don't really care.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I just want it to be attractive to deer and I want it to come up good, but I'm dealing with bottom land soils or I've got super sandy, you know, coastal plain soils.
[SPEAKER_03]: You all have blends that are going to work better for somebody that's dealing with something like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like a guy's in a really wet area or really dry area.
[SPEAKER_02]: We do.
[SPEAKER_02]: We do that super buck that you find that that one does really well.
[SPEAKER_02]: So fairly well-drained soils, loamy soils.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've got a product called buck magnet that's designed for shadier, wet ground, low pH.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think the biggest thing to keep in mind first time planting or long time planting is as sandy soils you really run a risk of covering your seed to deep.
[SPEAKER_02]: I see this a lot of times that guy say, I'm not fine in my clover or
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not fighting my turnips like I should and come to find out they've they've just down really deep Spread their seed and then the traditional old drag the palate behind the four wheeler and now those small seeds are four inches under under the ground and they never got that opportunity to come up.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's a quick way to fail is dragging into deep with some of those sandy soils which you have a lot of down here in the south.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, we have several different winds that are designed to perform
[SPEAKER_02]: in different soil types like that to give you the best opportunity.
[SPEAKER_03]: I really enjoyed planting y'all's new summer blends this year.
[SPEAKER_03]: I did the same thing I was mentioned earlier.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mixed the wing supreme with your white tail forage and just got a bunch of stuff out there.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean I'm as if bigger as big if not bigger a turkey nut than I am a deer nut and so I wanted to have a little something out there for everybody and
[SPEAKER_03]: I mixed those two together.
[SPEAKER_03]: What's been popular for you guys right now?
[SPEAKER_03]: You guys, those, those, those two blizzled to do for this summer, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the White Kale Ford Supreme has done very well.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've redesigned our, our summer blend this year.
[SPEAKER_02]: That one's got to work corn, which is really appealing to a lot of folks.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's got an Arnclay Calpies, soybeans, buckwheat, buckwheat is in small seeds.
[SPEAKER_02]: It pops up early for weed suppression, help out.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it also is a good pollinator.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of folks don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's good for your coil.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's good for your bees.
[SPEAKER_02]: Astronominy, deer vets in there, as well as sorghum for your turkeys.
[SPEAKER_02]: And some of end your dove.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that one is really strong.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then our wingspraying, we designed for our dove hunters in Turkey a lot, as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's got sorghum in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's got Japanese millet, prosa, millet, brown top millet, and paired up example hours.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that one went really strong, and sure how a lot of success out of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But those are coded and Delta.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had come in a fifty-pound bag and plant one acre and as you guys know, what about the fall?
[SPEAKER_03]: You guys doing anything new for this fall?
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're always looking for something.
[SPEAKER_02]: We want to make sure that everybody's in the best seat possible to be successful in the fall.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that means maintaining your duty or giving them ample nutrition to get them through this tough stress or late winter, but also you want to sit there and see deer.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no point doing all this to not have the best opportunity out there and that's what we really want to do is make sure that that our end user our products aren't just pretty and they look good we want.
[SPEAKER_02]: We want them to be beneficial to you guys want good price points and we want to be out there making you successful which is the whole point of this podcast you know is to get together.
[SPEAKER_02]: and put people on the driver's seat to be successful.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, well, like I said, I remember the first time I started planting my own food plus.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've been helping for years, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: But there's a big difference between, hey boy, go get that bag of seed and you're actually the one figure doing all the calculations.
[SPEAKER_03]: And when I first started doing it, you know, I'm interested in a naturally inquisitive person and I'm kind of like, well, that ain't what are all these seeds I'm hearing about?
[SPEAKER_03]: What are all these names?
[SPEAKER_03]: I never even heard of Vetch.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is Vetch?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, and
[SPEAKER_03]: you start reading and learning and you know several years of doing it on your own you get to where you're the one speaking that language now and it's not new to you but it can be very overwhelming when your first start and go and I don't even know what these words are much less how much to plant and where to plant and how to plant and all that kind of stuff so I think what's really important to note you guys I'd like we mentioned y'all
[SPEAKER_03]: Formulate blends that are going to make this easy on people and make people successful.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: How do y'all do that?
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: How do you go about feeling confident that what you put in the bag, the ratios you put in the bag are going to work for guys here in the South?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know, we, we designed all these seeds based on the South.
[SPEAKER_02]: Southern quantities.
[SPEAKER_02]: Temperatures that we're normally going to see in the past several years have been really neat.
[SPEAKER_02]: continuing to work on these research fields that I do, seeing what these extremely cold temperatures have done to some of our blends that we've chosen.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, every year, you know, talking about what we're trying to find something new, there's always a
[SPEAKER_02]: something catchy coming out or a different forged variety of something else.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, for years Southern C to get all this ride, we don't just throw a blend together, put in some potting so we won't see how well it grows right there.
[SPEAKER_02]: It takes years and where you're getting a lot of value out of this is to give you an example.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll plant, I'll plant with a thrilling moment, I'll plant with the drill and I'll plant with a traditional disc and cover.
[SPEAKER_02]: I planted all of that and then go back with a colty packer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'll plant these strips next to each other, usually half acre strips.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then go through and measure different times of the year.
[SPEAKER_02]: How well is this competing?
[SPEAKER_02]: How well is that competing?
[SPEAKER_02]: Did my cereal ride make it through?
[SPEAKER_02]: Did it have too much oats?
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it's really fun to watch when the deer actually utilize different plants.
[SPEAKER_02]: At what point does a purple top turn up become palatable over an ape and turn up, which is really neat to see.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it gives
[SPEAKER_02]: It gives us the opportunity to tell you, hey, this is what you're going to do well.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is what you can expect during different times of the year.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we also make sure that like I said, there's something they're palatable all year round and to make sure that this takes years and years on for because you can't plan a cool season plot during the middle of summertime and they'll do this research.
[SPEAKER_02]: So where there is a lot of value in buying these blends is that three, how got years and years and years now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then I go out there every year.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mark it off.
[SPEAKER_02]: We do it in Mississippi.
[SPEAKER_02]: We do it in Alabama.
[SPEAKER_02]: We go through in different soil types and plan our own product and then monitor it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But an exclusion cage on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: If nobody's ever put out an exclusion cage, I cannot tell you how much fun that is.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're not able to get a gauge on your herd density or that, if it's difficult, because you got smaller property and some deer travel into and from your neighbors,
[SPEAKER_02]: It'll give you an idea of how many deer eating in your plot, how well your plot's actually doing in your soil there.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's a lot of fun to see three years as a younger fella walking around in my food plots going to Cali.
[SPEAKER_02]: It just didn't grow like I thought I was going to.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you stick an exclusion cage on there and you realize, wow, the exclusion cage is five six seven eight nine inches tall in the rest of the plots.
[SPEAKER_02]: one inch and they're just hammering it because they need that that food or indifferent times of the year it's really cold you'll see them get in their harder but we do we do a lot of research we plant this stuff back back in different soil types and different planting methods and different out different mixtures and measurements to figure out exactly what is going to be productive all the way through and carry your deer into or through the winter stressor into your summer months
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to rebounding from the right.
[SPEAKER_03]: The exclusion thing, man, if you're not putting those out, then just don't even worry about what your food plot looks like, because yeah, you'll be thinking, man, my fertilizer must be jacked up.
[SPEAKER_03]: A city must be my pH is bad.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you, and then you put an exclusion cage on you like, no, they're just eating it all bad.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I understand what a solution cage is.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really any way to keep the deer from eating a certain area of the plot.
[SPEAKER_02]: And don't pick a spot that's got more seeds than other.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just kind of wait till everything starts to grow a little bit and pick an even spot.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's kind of think of a tomato cage.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're looking for maybe something round, put you some hardware cloth and a circle and stake it down where
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe rabbits can't get in there or just some goat wire.
[SPEAKER_02]: Make it circle, take your T first out there and hammer it in.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really that simple.
[SPEAKER_02]: But exclusion catch can tell you a lot of things about basically your deer.
[SPEAKER_02]: and your plot.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, and here's a hack.
[SPEAKER_03]: Go to tractor supply.
[SPEAKER_03]: Grab a T-post, grab a roll of whatever, you know, panel wire you can find, you know, make sure it's high enough, but grab it, get a couple zip ties, go out there, put your T-post in the ground, and put it about twenty-five yards in front of the bow stand that you've got.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then put your game camera on that T-post.
[SPEAKER_03]: And what you're gonna find is now you know, all right, I got a good range marker.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've also just seen it, I don't know what it is, but I've got these, I've got fairly big food plots for by Southeastern standards, you know, three and a half, four acre plots.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'll watch those plots during the year season and just about every deer will walk from wherever they are, they'll walk and they'll go up to that exclusion cage.
[SPEAKER_03]: They just walk, I don't know if they like to nibble on the edges of it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know what it is, but it seems to get them to walk across the plot to it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I've killed a lot of deer with both standing next to an exclusion cage.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I get a lot of pictures from that as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: And like you say, it's just so much fun to see.
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just wanted the funniest exclusion cages I've ever run across.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had a buddy that planted a lot of our blends and called me, she said, hey man, I just don't seem to be doing that well.
[SPEAKER_02]: and he wasn't too far away so someone run by and check on him.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so he and I met over there just property and we were walking in and I looked at the plot.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, and it looked good.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was nice and green, but it wasn't picture perfect.
[SPEAKER_02]: X-ray inches tall, thick and lush.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so don't cry.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know, I live in the area.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know the range of all amounts that he's been getting.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know how he planted it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we turned the corner and he'd been working on this, brothers, his rack hands.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he had left one of those big live traps laying out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we walked over to it and I said, hey, hey, this buddy, but the seed is doing just fine.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's that the deer really enjoyed it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because that big live trap was slam full of turnouts and everything else.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was really cool to see and he's like, well, that's works now.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was pretty neat.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah well like you said you pick up this stuff over years it's not you're not going to become an expert in one season and you do have to be paying attention and writing things down like right down what you did so that if it doesn't work you know what you have something to build off of and I know you guys have done that for years with the blends and you keep getting better and better and better as the seasons progress and you guys are always looking for ways to innovate but hey man
[SPEAKER_03]: We really appreciate you coming on and getting people primed up for this.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to be here before you know it.
[SPEAKER_03]: If folks want to check out the different seed blends that you've got, go to their local
[SPEAKER_03]: dealer and work and they find out about dealer information and work and they get a little more information to on the blends themselves like if they want to go in and request hey I want I deal plus or I want superbook or maybe they have something you know for their own needs work and they get that kind of information they can go to southern cc dot com all of our information beyond there they can even go right to it click on the tag and see exactly what's in everything we make manufacturer not only for
[SPEAKER_02]: deer, but poll tree livestock, we've got a lot of stuff that we do over there.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that would also allow them to scroll down to our dealer locator, continue your location and say who's nearby?
[SPEAKER_02]: The run by and pick up our stuff, or call ahead and make sure that they don't have it on the way, depending on the season.
[SPEAKER_02]: But feel free to call the office and ask any questions.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're always there if you guys, and we're going to try to clean corn people.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can use our corn before.
[SPEAKER_02]: You'll see a QR code on that bag.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can
[SPEAKER_02]: You can hit that with your founded, take you right to your website, as well as any of our other products that we make from manufacturer.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, let us always a pleasure, man.
[SPEAKER_03]: We really appreciate you joining us.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: Good luck with.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm late in the season.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm in the mood now.
[SPEAKER_02]: The gears are really turning out.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got to get out there.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks Caleb.
[SPEAKER_03]: We enjoyed a book.
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