Discovering - Food Plots, CWD Update

welcome to discovering tonight we're talking dear we'll take a look at the engineering behind a successful food plot it's not just the boat scratching up some dirt and throwing seed in the ground and hoping for the best and CWD in the U P what does it mean I met with the DNR for an update patella tonight right here on discovering so stick around secrets trees that flows beneath the cliffs colored stone force the gang healthy with birch and pine and Hogan surrounded by the greatest lakes in this world has ever there's awesome presents as a Romans the hills and fields call of the timber wolf one seat rub the eagle soaring high above the trowel lies deep and still these are what I the only way I measured feelings that I have for the spine there is so much to discover when your long time lover northern Michigan [Music] food plots are much more than a growing bait pile that can provide an important food source throughout the year for deer and other wildlife particularly at times when they need it most their benefits stretch far beyond that of a place to shoot a deer the number and quality of the deer you see as well as when you see them are all factors that should be considered when planning your plot I met with John Kampf of North Woods whitetails in Menominee to find out more tonight we're gonna talk about food plots we're going to show you that it's not just about scratching up some dirt and throwing seed in the ground and hoping for the best we're going to show you what we've created here in Upper Michigan we've created a central feeding location for whitetails we've got hidden access getting in and getting out of your deer stands so your hunting is undetectable you're hunting gets better as a season gets longer we'll show you how we've broken this food plot up into two separate food plots we've taken a 15 acre field with the structure knocked it down into a three acre hunting field we've created the best nutrition on this whole sectional land and they know it and they're here they're eating we've got green food from September all the way till next September there's 20 different species planted out in this food plot this is our destination food but tonight we're going to talk about your main food plot we're going to talk about kill plots how to create kill plots how to get in and out of your deer stands undetected this is one of our examples what we call a kill plot this 1/3 acre of our Brassica mix the deer come out of the swamps here we've got a clover path right here we're standing on there's deer bedding all through here here's where they stop to eat first before they head out to the big destination food plot and those bigger bucks they don't want to be out in that open area so what they're gonna do is they're gonna come out stand on the edges and feed here 15 minutes maybe 1/2 hour before dark hence we call it the kill plot there's a deer stand right behind us easy access we can get in and get out without that knowing the deer even know we're here and we're gonna shoot down in this food plot 80-yard shot versus hunting on the big 4 acre field now you can see the deer trail here worn down this is designed to be this way this is coming out of the swamp from the south there's a lot of bedding down in here and seriesin why we're not talking too loud there's deer bed nearby they come out of the South walk along this buff strip and they can stop and eat so they can stand where I'm at right now look over the big destination food plot and still feel secure one of the very important things you have to keep in mind what if you're going to sit on a food plot is that you have to have access into the deer stand and out of the deer stand without letting the deer know you're there because once you bump the deer off the food plot two or three times suddenly you've got nighttime movement and set a daylight movement so you can see the deer stand back here on the back side of this Milo and grain sorghum we come in from the backdoor this is our backdoor access the the screening cover and the topography the deer down in that food plot we're out on the main plot won't see us getting in and getting out we have a nice clean rake to trail right down to the bare dirt there's no sticks there's no leaves we don't leave any scent behind us we call that area behind it it's a deer less area the deer do not use that particular spot so we can leave out the back door at dark or come in during the morning before daylight get into that deer stand the deer don't even know we're there obviously we hunted on a west wind which is prevailing winds we can hunt it on a northwest wind okay if we've got a south wind that blows our scent out into the food plot we don't hunt that stand but if you're going to hunt a food plot you have to keep that food plot sacred you cannot let the deer know you're hunting them otherwise the food plot quickly becomes a nocturnal you [Music] what we've got here is a mix of green forage sorghum and some Egyptian wheat and some hybrid sorghum but I wanted a buffer strip between the deer stand and our kill plot of about 20 yards the tops got knocked off which saves me the work of going in there and clearing shooting lanes so we can see the food plot so we've got just under a month before deer season I'm sure we're gonna get some more wins so it's planted so thick the deer do not want to walk through here and it keeps them away from the deer stand so we can get in and out of that deer stand without being detected by deer to make this food plot go from an acre opening down to a third of an acre we've put a buffer strip of our food plot screen right there so the deer they come out they can't see along the backside of these Bruce trees we're creating a sense of security for these deer and this this particular food plot will have deer in it two hours before dark the planting we have in this kill plot it's got turnips rutabagas we've got some of our foraged greens forage brassicas and you can see the deer on it pretty heavy in two weeks time it went from two feet tall down to a foot tall there's a little bit of rye coming back we use that as a soil builder in the spring but by and large this is going to be very attractive probably mid November when rifle season starts and then muzzle loader season it's going to be very attractive they're eating all the greens right now there's a lot of tubers in here big bulbs so there's there's a lot of food there's literally tons of food in this 1/3 acre that the deer going to have for the next two months but we don't want them to spend the night here eating this is just kind of a pit stop but we want them to end up at the destination plot to our north so when they leave this food plot we can get in and out of that rifle stand undetected now we're in what we call a destination food plot this is a food plot that rather large very diverse plantings we've got five different strips of food there's 12 over 20 different species planted in these strips and basically what we're creating is a spot that we want the deer to end up for their their nighttime feeding early evening feeding we know where their bedding the hunting plot the shooting pods just off the side of this this is where the deer on this 80 acres is going to end up every night so what we've got is a strip of our Brassica plan thing that's got eight different species we've got a strip with what's called fall forage plus radishes or different clovers in it we've got another strip brassicas and some rye right up against the wood line we've got white clover and chicory and then we've got an early season plant thing that was buckwheat radishes some soybeans that we planted in August and there's Ryan oats and there also and basically what we're trying to create is there's not one thing planted it's not good for the soil and be deer are looking for diversity we've got like I said 20 different species here you can see they've knocked this green planting down now they've started on our Brassica planting and there's going to be food here all the way up into March so we're feeding the deer we're building really good soil with diversity last year this Brassica planting was here this spring we came in and let the Rye get about four feet tall we mowed it down we let the red clover come and that fed the deer all summer then we tilled it with one pass of our tiller and that food produced a lot of organic matter as well as nitrogen for this Brassica planting and then this spring we came in where the brassicas was where you put in oats an annual clover some peas and some rye we tilled that under in August with one pass on our tiller and planted here and we're basically flip-flopping this we're building organic matter in our soil which is very critical to having good food plots and we're creating diversity a for the deer beef for the soil we don't have the same planting every year now what we're looking at here is a half acre exactly half acre planning of our sweet feast Brassica mix we seeded it at 3 pounds an acre one of the reasons I feel that this year it was so successful it was three feet tall solid green very little purpling in the plants we did a soil test prior to planting this particular Brassica plot and our fertilizer requirements were much different than what we needed in the past so we use a real odd cocktail of fertilizers and we've gotten to me the absolute breasts Brassica planting I've ever seen in my life and I'm not just saying it's because it's one of that we did but it's just I've never seen Nebraska planting this good there's probably less than 1% purpling and the leaves these are very healthy plants this has been in the ground since late July this isn't your everyday purple top tournament this is just one of the large turnips that we use in this mix we've got probably on this particular food plot an acre and a half of this and there's literally tons of forage in an acre and a half three weeks ago these leaves were almost three feet tall and the deer are just starting on the leaf part of these plantings which is good because then once they get done with all this green and it's gonna take them awhile to knock it down plus we still have clover and greens rye oats for them to eat and we really want this it's very nutritious for the deer especially when those Bucks are just entering the rut now and they're gonna need a lot of good food and good nutritious food not just something green this is there's all the nutrition these deer that are going to recover from the rut are going to need that's gonna equate to healthier deer this winter they're gonna enter the spring antler growing season and much better shape than if they were just eating sticks and berries and piles of corn so you know there's a lot of reasons a it's a great great food source for the deer and for us to hunt over but it's gonna be healthier for the deer herd these food plots are [Music] you [Music] you look at the carnage that has started on this Brassica they're in here eating every night and a really nice thing about this particular food plot I haven't been in here in three weeks nobody's been in this field in three weeks so you know if you compare that to a corn feeder bait pile and I'm not against baiting you know some places you just have no choice but this food pot will have deer in it two hours before dark because they're undisturbed nobody's out here bugging them there's no human scent out here we're out here right now talking with our River boots on we sprayed down an hour from now there's gonna be deer out here and you know if you're looking for that that that option other than baiting or in addition to we've got this food plot that's actually in about a 15 acre field now the deer only think this is an acre and a half they're gonna come out here well before dark and there'll be a lot of deer out here and they've been conditioned to come out here and nobody bothersome there's good food here and there's a lot of dough's out here and in the next two weeks where the doors are that's we're gonna find the box one of the things we like to do is we try to dictate deer movement and we took the brush cutter drove in as far as we could into the woods and then we went back into the woods and created what we call a sidewalk for the deer we cut some trees let them fall each side for another hundred yards so we know they come out right here when we did sit on this food plot and observed they all pile out right here one of the things that with our food plot system that's a must is you have to hide the deer and hide your access so now if you look out here we're standing in the middle of a boat of 14 to 15 acre field no self-respecting mature buck is gonna come out here unless he's chasing the dole but follow me I'll show you what the deer see this is what you want your food plots to look like right here secluded well hidden our food plot screen had three feet of the top taken off because of some storms but it's still standing we've got structure on the side we've got structure in the middle we've got diversity we've got 20 different species of plants growing here this food plots going to draw just about every deer with an acres because this is the best green food they're not looking for corn right now they're not looking for soybeans they're looking for green food and we've got plenty here we've got plenty of food for when December rolls around that's the environment you want to create in this food plot screen it's an annual that we have to plant every year I mean we've got switchgrass growing it's going to take three years to get that tall and we can put trees and they're gonna take 10 to 15 years to create this environment but until then we can use this food plot screen which is a hybrid sorghum and some Egyptian wheat to create this structure for these deer it kind of looks like it's falling down but keep in mind we had a blizzard in 250 and mile an hour wind storms and I can't break this I mean it you bend it down it's not going anywhere it's just pops right back up it went from 12 to 14 feet down to anywhere from 10 to 8 feet which is perfect cuz the deer is only three and a half feet tall if this wasn't here and this was just an open field you might see him 20 minutes before dark and you'll see all the doze and fawns but now the Bucks have come out an hour before dark because they've got a safe space a wide open space they can chase these deer but yet they still feel secure because this structures here again another example of access to get to your deer stand if you're going to sit on your food plot you can see there's the pop-up tent on the platform that we were looking at earlier and the access to that tent is on the back side of that willow and we hunt it with a north wind or a west wind so we're leaving with the wind at our back and we're sitting with the wind in our face so at dark when we climb down we walk out of there you know there's a bunch of deer oh and that food pot they have no idea we were there that's the kind of environment you want to create when you're gonna hunt on a food plot [Music] CWD found in the U P what does it mean I met with the DNR for an update on October 18th unfortunately we got confirmation that a four year old doe that was harvested in Dickinson County came back positive for chronic wasting disease we were hoping that this would never happen but I guess we're not terribly surprised or shocked that we finally did get a positive deer chronic wasting disease is a fatal neurological disease that affects members of the deer family and basically it's caused by a Mis folded protein or a prion that when it gets into a deer it can build up and eventually cause lesions in the brain and it's always fatal unfortunately deer in advanced stages of the disease will become very thin they'll they'll look like they're wasting away basically they may stagger around show very little fear of humans act disoriented to have a lot of thirst maybe foaming at the mouth or salivating a lot and within about a 6-week period of becoming that symptomatic they'll typically die it takes about 18 months 2 to 2 years from the time of infection to get to that point so these deer that do become in fact it can go a long time shedding these these misfolded proteins or prions that can then be picked up by other deer so you don't know they're even infected till the very end and that's the unfortunate part I say we're not totally surprised by this happening because we now have chronic wasting disease in about 25 states in the United States since it was found in Colorado in 1967 it jumped over some pretty large land areas became established in Wisconsin in 2002 in lower Michigan we found it in free-ranging deer in 2015 and have confirmed it now in six counties down there with about 64 positive deer since 2015 given that kind of spread across the United States and indeed into Canada and even overseas to South Korea Norway I guess it's not a total shock what we'd like to do now is is not overreact it's important that people continue to hunt right now this is one deer that we found in southern Dickinson County we don't know if it's a single deer that may have wandered in from somewhere or if there are multiple deer that have this so the strategy right now is to take advantage of the upcoming hunting season and using the great cooperation we get from the hunting community we want to collect about 600 samples deer heads from deer harvested in what we're calling the core surveillance area of southern Dickinson County and into Western Menominee County and in a more expanded zone that we're calling the expanded surveillance area going up into Marquette County and a little bit into Delta and even into southern Menominee we'll try to collect an additional 300 samples and try to determine the prevalence rate of the disease and the geographic distribution let's hope that it's one animal one place but by sampling this many animals we'll be able to tell if it's multiple animals involved in just how far spread this might be then based on that kind of information we can get together with deer hunters wildlife organizations the general public and try to strategize like what what do we want to do for a response what is appropriate what might work the best and especially what would be acceptable to the people we've learned in other states that there's no sense in making all kinds of big rule changes in laws to address a concern if people don't believe it's true or don't believe it's serious or don't want to follow those new rules so before we even get going down that path we'll want to see just how big of a problem do we have and then consult with the public to to get their input on it then we'll come forward well the DNR will come forward with recommendations for the Natural Resources Commission who who will ultimately make the final decisions hunters that harvest a deer that they want to have tested it's a pretty easy process you just need to come to one of our dnr offices we will sever the head from the carcass if you haven't done so already and send the head in for testing we probably will be removing the lymph nodes which are analyzed here locally for for most of the deer we've been trained to do that now by the disease laboratory and East Lansing that way we can air mail the lymph nodes and get results much faster than making runs with a truck down state so hunter all you need to do is like after you've processed the deer and you have that head you can drop it by one of the offices we can do a regular deer check with the head then age it measure the antlers if it's a buck and and then take the head from you you cut the antlers off first even we don't need that what what we'll need to do is get into the lymph nodes that are kind of on this area of the deer here buried deep inside the inside the head and if you don't want to cut the head off yourself you can come in just like normally to a deer check station with the deer in the back of the pickup or whatever and we can work with you to to collect the head at that time or or just make arrangements to get it from you later we're going to have be really well staffed here at Escanaba Crystal Falls and Norway field offices because that kind of brackets the main core area and in addition we're going to probably set up some drop boxes with maps to make it convenient for hunters that you know aren't coming in during normal business hours or if if they don't want to drive this far we'll try to set those up in strategic places as you can just come by fill out a tag yourself and drop the head and we'll get it tested for you there we're we will test the heads from deer from anybody that wants to have it tested I mean if you're really concerned it's important to note though that chronic wasting disease has never been found to infect human beings it's a disease of the family surveyed a deer elk moose and a reindeer basically and so you we don't believe there's anything to worry about nonetheless when you if you are worried about human health the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization always recommend that if a deer came back positive for CWD that you not consume it well that's it for this week thanks for watching I hope to see you next week right here on Upper Michigan's very own discovering [Music]

Channel: 906 Outdoors

Views: 3,026

Rating: 4.7090907 out of 5

Keywords: discovering, up, u.p., upper, peninsula, michigan, mi, 906, outdoors, food, plot, plots, northwoods, whitetails, menominee, hunt, deer, whitetail, hunting, bait, baiting, komp, cwd, cronic, waisting, disease, dnr, chronic

Id: fGKH7PxsSoE

Length: 22min 32sec (1352 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 29 2018