ThinkingAfield.org

Let’s face it, sometimes planting in the late summer through the early fall can be tough. Except for the extreme North, the ideal planting time for cool season food plots coincides with three of the driest months of the year, August-October. Much of the country starts seeing the summer thunderstorms dry up around the first of August. With many landowners, hunting clubs, and outfitters planting in August and September, the conditions can be really dry. With the absence of rain in the forecast and soil moisture being almost non-existent, a lot of folks will have fields that are not up and growing until late fall. Not having a nice, lush, tender field to hunt over on opening day of bow season seems like the worst thing to some guys, but don’t give up yet. Late planted plots can be plenty effective for attracting deer and also providing cold season nutrition. Read more

By Glen Wunderlich

When Michigan’s new hunting and fishing license structure was introduced, along with increases in license fees, reactions were predictably mixed.  With jaundiced eyes, many of us took a wait-and-see attitude.

With the cost of food and fuel at all-time highs, who wants to pay more for anything?  Nobody.   Government, on the other hand, likes to employ code words and phrases, such as “investments in the future” to soothe our trepidation.   “Grants” is another word which meets with widespread approval from those on the receiving end but raises suspicion from those funding them – and, in this instance, it’s the outdoors enthusiasts that pay to hunt and fish.

Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has expanded its efforts to do what it said it would do with our money through the issuance of wildlife habitat grants, specifically designed to enhance food and cover for deer on private land.  Again, this is only one means cited in a dizzying array of grant programs available to applicants, but evidence of the new thinking has already materialized. Read more