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BRAD:  (Whispering) What he’s doing there is uh urinating on his tarsal glands.  That was pretty cool.  We just had a button buck feed in front of us for probably over an hour, hour and a half.  He came in here just below, down wind of us, actually, did a little rub urination and then he actually licked his tarsal glands.  But as a button buck, you don’t necessarily want to smell too much or those bigger bucks may, uh, jump on to him a little bit.

ADAM:  (Whispering) See her?  This time of year you just don’t want to get down, but the wind has totally switched and went to a 180.  It’s not good for right now for this stand, so we’re going to climb down, pack our stuff up.  We’re going to move to another stand and, uh, hey you hang with us and see what happens.  We’re going to try to put a big one down here on The Proving Grounds.

WOODS:  It’s Tuesday, November 9^th, and Missouri’s gun season opens this Saturday.  I’m so excited.  Raleigh and Rae are going to be hunting.  If they happen to tag out, my dad’s right there and Monday, Connie and Jessica Barnes from Barnes Bullets are coming to The Proving Grounds to join me, so I’ve got a lot of hunters for Brad and I to take care of and we want to make sure they all have a great hunt.  And this time of year, of course, the rut’s going on in the Midwest.  Does are coming to feed, bucks are coming for the does, so food is still the key.  So, we’re scouting this week and tweaking a few stands.  Join us as we go through and see where the bucks are going to be moving based on the doe’s stomach.

WOODS:  When I’m home and I’m not hunting, I love to get up early in the morning right at the crack of daylight and take a walk, kind of checking everything and spend some time with the Creator and as I was walking this week, I saw one deer in this clover field, multiple deer in some beans and multiple deer in some hardwoods on down.  I want to come and confirm if that singular observation was correct.  So, I see no difference between outside the utilization cage where deer can browse and inside, I don’t see any tops nipped off.  So, I don’t think deer are spending much time foraging here.  So, we’re going to move on past the clover and now this will get hot a little later on, but right now it’s not the hot food item at The Proving Grounds.

WOODS:  We’re 40 yards from the clover field where we were just looking at and I’m amazed at the yield of these beans.  Now these are Eagle Seed indeterminate beans.  That means they grow until it frosts, basically, and the real story here is that we had a wicked drought all summer long.  I was very worried.  As a matter of fact, I was mentally prepared to mow everything down and plant wheat or some other small grain.  As a matter of fact, you’ll see some acres where we did mow beans down.  In hindsight, that was a mistake.  I knew these were indeterminate or long growing beans and if we happened to get some fall rains, they’d go ahead and fill out and make a great yield and that’s, in fact, what happened.  This looked dismal during the summer.  And we got some late, late, late season rains that made more production.  There’s more tons per acre here than what wheat or rye grain will make.  I never plant rye grass because it can spread real easy and just beautiful.  Now, I’m seeing where deer are browsing, removing some of the pods.  I’ve been seeing deer in this field as I walk.  So I know deer are just starting to use it.  No doubt Raleigh and Rae will probably be in the stand overlooking at least some beans this weekend, because I know the does are preferring ‘em.  The bucks are going to be here chasing those does around or checking – scent checking the area, so beans are high on my list for stand selection this weekend.

WOODS:  Brad’s adding the Muddy lock on right next to our Muddy ladder stand, so we can film out of it because this weekend Raleigh or Rae or even my dad may be hunting with me and I want to capture that hunt on film.  Muddy stands just make it safe and comfortable for everyone to enjoy.  I literally trust my family and their safety to Muddy treestands.

WOODS:  This is a little small plot and you can see some bean stubble from where we planted beans this summer, round-up ready Eagle Seed beans, but it was so small and without the Gallagher food plot protection fence, the deer only get, let it get about a foot tall.  It fed them all summer, but it wasn’t going to make any grain production for the winter.  So, we come in and just drilled right over the beans.  You still see the stubble with a mix of winter wheat and rye grain.  Now, I will plant rye grain because it will grow, germinate and actually grow in about 12 degrees cooler temperature than wheat will.  So, when it’s cold and cloudy and wheat’s just setting there idle, all the way 12 degrees colder, rye grain will be growing and that’s a huge advantage.  Another advantage of rye grain, it has a little bit more aggressive root system and it’s a better nitrogen scavenger, so these Eagle Seed beans were pumping out nitrogen in the ground all summer long; rye grain does a little bit better job of grabbing it, pulling that back up to the surface and either using it in this plant or when you spray and kill it, it’s there as green manure or green fertilizer for the next crop we plant here.  So, that’s the reason for that rotation.  Now, we’ve had a huge acorn crop, as we mentioned earlier, but driving down the road, Brad and I are getting ready to go fix some stands for my kids, Raleigh and Rae, you can tell that it’s lusher and there’s all pointy tips inside the utilization cage, but outside, everywhere I look, I can find squared off tips and they’re torn.  Deer rip it.  So, when you see these little fibers sticking out all over it, you know with great certainty, that was a deer browsing there.  So, deer are just switching to the green fields, if you will, off of acorns because the acorns are about gone, and I’m very confident, my kids are going to see deer and my guests are going to see deer hunting over green fields that haven’t been hunted this year because deer weren’t utilizing them.  So utilization cage is really helping me scout for my hunting in addition to helping me be a better food plot manager.  And this combination of winter wheat and rye grain is providing a huge amount of tonnage where these beans that were consumed would be having bare ground right now because of the small size of this plot.  We’re going to head on up the hill and get some stands ready.

WOODS:  I hope you have a great week.  I hope you enjoy season with family this year and really get a chance to appreciate Creation.  Thanks for watching GrowingDeer.tv.