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Should be a good night on food or in a part of the field that's out of the wind! I'm heading out about 3:30

This is spot on....it all starts with habitat loss and every time I see a good timber block being dozed, a draw getting dozed and tiled, or crp going back into production my stomach hurts. Some of the habitat being destroyed is irreplaceable. It is gone for good.

These conditions are as good as it gets for sneaking up on a pile of deer!

Biggest clue here is the deer bedded down within 200 yards. To bad he got bumped.

dark to dark, 1 doe at noon, big one locked down with doe at 4:30, out of range.

Dark to dark yesterday in bedding...morning slow, good buck cruising at 1:30, flurry of activity at dark with some chasing. No shooters.

You should be in a tree as much as possible this last week and a half of the season, stragglers come into heat and a few yearlings will pop early. Hunting might be slower, but the bucks that are turning up the throttle on day time activity tend to be the 4 1/2+ giants.

When I first started hunting if you SAW a deer in one week of hunting you were doing ok. Would also like to point out that many farmers are clearing habitat to make room for cattle or so they don't have to make a turn around a draw in the tractor, so they wipe out the trees, tile it and plant...

I feel your pain, I'm on 800 acres have logged close to 200 hours in stands, many all day sits since Halloween and have yet to see anything over 125. Deer numbers in general are way way down in my timber too.

The farms I hunt are basically dead and have been dead since I started on Halloween.....that includes 5 all day sits since Nov. 4th. Just not seeing mature deer snooping around like normal....or seeing any lockdown.

Dead for me in Dallas....a few dinks sniffing around, occasional 2 1/2 year old chasing, but giving up shortly after....all does still with fawns. Looks like October 25th in my timber.

What weeds are indicating you may have a problem in 2013? Plantings following RR soybeans are usually pretty clean and the #1 method. Most are annual and can be controlled by 3 or 4 mowings the first year. Having said that here are my observations for central Iowa to this day: The warmest our...

LOL, Eastern red cedar will get so thick around me in our ditches, prairie, and pastures I think of it as invasive and non-native....but you're right it is native to Iowa. Fire takes care of it really well.

Do you suppose the April seeding wasn't as good due to stratification?

Non-native, invasive cedar trees in an open grass habitat block light/warmth and inhibit growth of valuable native forbes, legumes, and grasses. This landowner is likely managing for diversity in his vegetation. If it were mine I would of just ran a fire over it :) He also could be shaping a...

I am seeing the same. One field I hunt close to had 18 deer in it 2 days after shotgun season ended....haven't seen one out there since. Gave up trying to hunt where no deer are and have been driving around trying to find them, I am seeing most of the deer in people's yards at dark, and some...

Found ungerminated seed in one of my plantings yesterday after a little scraping here and there. Is it rotted and done or will it continue to germinate next year? I am reseeding this plot at half rate, but staking off two sample 100 square foot areas that will not get new seed...to see what...

Well, with the awful growing conditions of 2012, how did everyone's new plantings of nwsg or prairie mixes fare?

Dbltree...you also have to wonder if seed to soil contact was improved a little in the areas of higher erosion, if the seed was surface broadcast. Prairie I planted last winter (surface broadcast on fescue that was sprayed for several rounds and burned) appears to be a failure except for a few...

I have killed a lot of deer from the ground..number 1 difference is blood. There won't be as much blood, especially on a non pass through. Even a lethal hit will show red muscle blood initially, so don't let that deter you. You say you got about 7-9 inches of penetration. So I would guess...