Summertime is not only for catching walleyes and backyard BBQs, it’s also a great time to get a head start on making sure the woods are ready for the upcoming whitetail season. Why so early? There are a number of reasons, and I will explain a few.
Food plots may need to be tended to during the summer months. If your plot consists of clover, timothy or other grasses, you may need to mow your plot to encourage new young growth just in time for the bow season. If your plot has wheat or rye in it, it too should be harvested or cut and tilled over, maybe even over-seeded to allow for the re-germination of the seed into a new-growth field. This new-growth greenery really acts as a magnet in attracting deer late into the hunting season.
For those hunters whose food plots consist of purple top turnips or other bulb-type plants, now is prime time to get your ground prepared and your seeds sown. You may ask, why so late in the season? It’s all about the timing or maturity of the plant and the time frame of the upcoming hunting seasons. Maturity on many of these plants is around 60 days.
Another great reason to be in the woods at this time of the year is to make sure your woodland roads have not been blocked by trees blown down from summer storms. After completing this annual road clearing task with the chain saw, I really like to mow the roads to knock down the vegetation and new growth trees which are trying to overtake the trails. When it comes to mowing the trail, I use a pull-behind brush hog on a John Deere tractor. There are many options available to do this task, including units which work nicely behind a four-wheeler. I personally try to mow the vegetation quite close to the ground. Mowing the vegetation tight to the ground sometimes scuffs the ground, exposing the soil. This practice allows me to overseed my woodland roads with clover seed, which then acts as a linear food plot on the woods. This strategy really works well!
Summertime is also a great time to relocate stands or add additional stands to cover well-used trails that have not been covered before. Identifying these travel corridors between bedding areas and food sources is a task we do mid-winter when there is plenty of snow on the ground. We will flag the trails with pink ribbon looking for stand advantage points and multiple trail crossings. This flagging is then very visible to the eye in the summer thick foliage, taking the guess work out of whether or not you are in the right location.
I am a strong believer in completing as many of these deer hunting enhancement projects as early as possible in the summer months to let the critters of the woods know and acclimate to the human activity in the woods. I always get a bit worried that if you interrupt the deer woods to get your deer hunting preparations done just before the season begins, all the commotion and human scents which are left behind may keep the deer on high alert right up to opening day.