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GRANT: And we set there for three hours waiting for that moment. Yeah.

BRAD: I thought it was only four hours.

GRANT: And then I take it by the (inaudible).

TERRY: If we can’t get it to hold the fertilizer, we’re just wasting our money. We’re basically fertilizing China’s product…

GRANT: The GrowingDeer Team had a great time at the Land and Wildlife Expo and we returned home to start working on our fall food plots.

ANNOUNCER: GrowingDeer.tv is brought to you by Bass Pro Shops. Also by Reconyx, Trophy Rock, Non-Typical Wildlife Solutions, Muddy Outdoors, Eagle Seed, Nikon, Winchester, Redneck Hunting Blinds, Dead Down Wind, Record Rack, Foxworthy Outdoors, Antler Dirt.

GRANT: As soon as you give us the “high” sign, we’re good to go. Do come see us, will you? Okay, we’ll look forward to it.

GRANT: I really enjoy sharing and learning new information and the expo’s a great place to do that.

GRANT: In addition to attending the seminars, the great thing about the expo is, there’s literally guides there from California to New York, and most states in between.

GRANT: It’s all gamble getting a trap ran over. Cause if one of my employees drives over it, I just dock their pay. And if I drive over it, I blame them. So it doesn’t really matter. Raccoons are very curious. I want ’em to see it. So I can do what’s called cross staking. So no matter which way the coyote runs, one way’s holding real solid. It just can’t get enough momentum.

GRANT: So we’re setting on a brown hillside in black camo. (Laughter) The Mars lunar rover could’ve seen us. (Laughter) They get totally focused on this and that coyote you kill in the video, if you watch the video, that coyote’s totally focused on this. John and I are going “You gonna shoot?”  “No, I’m not gonna shoot.” “You gonna shoot him?” John cheated; he shot before it got back to me.

GRANT: These things are incredible tools and of all the brands I’ve tried, this FoxPro, costs a little more, like a Reconyx camera, costs a little more, you get what you pay for. Love this thing. Love it. Here’s a mistake I’ve made, I’ll tell ya’ll, it’s got a lot of sounds on here, don’t use the male lion when you call (Inaudible) (Laughter). They don’t tend to come to that too well.

GRANT: After the expo, we headed straight to the Kentucky Proving Grounds.

GRANT: My personal friend, and fellow deer manager, Mr. Terry Hamby, allowed us to set up a field day at the Kentucky Proving Grounds so we could share one-to-one, some of the techniques we use for food plots, trail camera use, and of course, our hunting set up.

TERRY: Soil is the most important thing we do. I always get my soil sample, the first thing I look at is organic matter cause we can put all the fertilizer in it we want, if we can’t get it to hold the fertilizer, then we’re just wasting our money.

GRANT: All that stuff that stinks has been broken down and rearranged into a different chemical compound.

GRANT: Deer eat the pods. Anybody ever watch deer eat soybeans? They eat the whole pod and all. The outside of the pods has really high nutrient value, actually, and it’s really high quality, digestible fiber. Deer have to have that in their rumen. The way their gut works; they have to have a lot of fiber to make food process right. So. And does anyone know where the Roundup ready gene come from? Cause I think most people think it was invented by a three eyed scientists in a back, deep, dark lab somewhere real close to hell.

BRAD: Soil.

GRANT: Is in, it’s natural.

BRAD: Yeah.

GRANT: And someone figured out how it could be used.

GRANT: It’s one thing to show techniques on the big screen, but it’s another thing to get out there one-on-one, hands on.

GRANT: I hate doing this.

GRANT: It won’t kill you.

UNKNOWN:  Hold on to it then.

GRANT: It will hurt you, it won’t kill you. No, cause I don’t want my kids getting out there, tangled up under something like that.

ADAM: They’re so simple, so easy to put on. So you might want to check ’em out if you haven’t, but…

UNKNOWN:  What’s the most, what’s the funest part so far?

UNKOWN: Um, learning about the Antler Dirt.

UNKNOWN: The Antler Dirt, huh?

UNKNOWN:  The Antler Dirt. When you’re, when you’re uh….

ADAM: Bet you gotta go stick your hand in there and grab a big pile of it.

UNKNOWN:  Warm.

UNKNOWN:  ..when you’re a seven and nine year old boy, its dirt. That’s, that’s where it’s at.

UNKOWN: Yeah.

GRANT: As the day closed, we had some final conversations about sharing hunts and well wishes as we all headed back to our home states.

GRANT: I kinda see a trend in America that’s a real splitter in hunters. You know, you got the hunters that go hunt on the weekend or whatever. And that’s great, I do that a lot with my dad. And you got the really serious manager guys. There’s a big divide. And we don’t need any divisions in hunting. Uh, it needs to be for fun. And when I take my daughters hunting, uh, we didn’t kill a deer last year. We ate about four pounds Snickers bars and M&M’s, literally. And we had a lot of fun. So I just, uh, I would say to you all, keep the; be a manager, but keep the fun in hunting. Cause if you get burned out on it, you know, it’s, you just gonna do something else. Let’s go home.

GRANT: Back at The Proving Grounds, early this morning, we started at 6:00 AM because it’s a cool day and we had a little rain over the weekend and we’re eager to get those fall food plots planted.

GRANT: So August 15th, here in the Midwest, give or take a little bit, depending on how north or south you are, it’s time to start thinking about planting your fall food plot variety.

GRANT: It’s important not to wait too late to plant those food plot crops cause that frost will really hurt young plants and limit their productivity throughout the hunting season.

GRANT: Here at The Proving Grounds, we’ve experienced a wicked drought this summer, but the Eagle Seed beans grew, even on this west facing slope, and I really don’t know how. They didn’t make it waist tall or chest tall like normal. They’re not gonna make a lot of bean pods, but they clearly fed a deer herd throughout summer. I don’t want to destroy these beans because they’re still providing really high quality forage and serving as an attractant to the deer herd, and will until it frosts fairly hard.

GRANT: Because the drought limited their growth, some weeds and grass grew in between the beans throughout the summer. Eagle Seed Forage Soybeans are Roundup ready – that means that you can spray Roundup on them and it will not hurt that crop while killing the other grasses and weeds.

GRANT: So last week, Adam simply drove over this field spraying glyphosate. You can see; killing all the grasses and weeds in here and we’re simply come back and drill right through here, our fall food plot crop, having new growth coming up among the existing soybeans, never cleaning the table; keeping food out here all throughout the summer and hunting season. But we won’t disc because we don’t want to destroy these existing soybeans and we don’t want to turn the soil, bringing more weed seeds to the surface.

GRANT: So once we kill the weed seeds out on top, which takes a while, we’ll have fewer and fewer weeds each year.

GRANT: This is one of our little hidey hole food plots. A little small food plots, and it’s positioned about 200 yards from where we were.

GRANT: The mission of this food plot is to shortstop deer coming from cover, on the way to larger feeding fields.

GRANT: There’s a chance deer are gonna pass through here now, but there’s not an attractive forage base to really make ’em funnel right here in front of our stand.

GRANT: So we’re gonna spray this and re-seed it to make it a viable hidey hole for the fall.

GRANT: We’ll add fertilizer and probably add seed in about a week and we’ll be ready with young, lush, green forage come hunting season.

GRANT: That’s why, about this time of year, I start making one or two food plots and keep doing that so I’ve got new forage coming on throughout the hunting season. With that said, it’s important to kill the weeds now, out of your hidey hole food plots, because these weed seeds are just about to mature and we don’t want to get a big weed base over all our small fields. Go ahead and treat ’em, it’s too late in the year for more small weeds to mature enough to make seeds. And that way you have clean plots for next year also.

GRANT: I like to plant most fall varieties of forage somewhere between 60 and 45 days ahead of the first frost to give it time to germinate and grow enough tonnage so when that frost comes, we’ve already got enough food to hold deer in the area. In northern areas, you want to start a little earlier, in southern areas you’ve got a bit more time before you get serious about your fall food plot. Whether you’re working on your camera survey or establishing fall food plots, it’s a great time of year to get out and enjoy Creation. Thanks for watching GrowingDeer.tv.