When Johnny, my friend who is letting me place a dove field on his land, agreed to my endeavor, I was excited. Dreams of flocking doves settling into the field, accompanied by the sound of a civil war battle, put me to sleep that night. But to make a portion of these dreams come true would take some work, and before the work, some planning.
My first thought was to plant sunflowers. After all, thats what everyone likes to hunt over. When I was younger, we would walk a mile to a sunflower field, bypassing the corn, millet, and other grains. Johnny sent me a couple of links to seed distributers and I immediately went to the sunflowers. But when I told Johnny about this plan, he said "yeah, that would make a great summer food plot for deer, but it won't produce because the deer will not let the plants get over 12 inches."
So I called the friend who let me hunt his field last year. It was clear by the field and the results that he would know what to plant. His advice? I could either put a six foot fence around the sunflowers or I could "plant Brown Top Millet and follow it up a few weeks later with nitrogen."
I soon found that I could get all the advice a man would ever want. All I had to do was to tell people what I was doing and they would tell me what to do. The problem is that everybody tells me something different. I spent hours online on wildlife food plot seed pages and at sites google found. Again, lots of advice.
I settled on http://www.cooperseeds.com/ as the site to purchase seed. They have a large variety and at least meet my budget. They have many varieties of millet and recommend the Brown Top and Dove Proso for Doves. This seems to be a good recommendation, but not overly creative.
On the more exotic side, they recommend Sesame for Dove fields. I thought Sesame seeds were something that came on the bun of a Big Mac. Apparently dove love them too. The seed store goes on and on about how Sesame is the perfect plant for doves and quail. But at $75 for 10 pounds, Sesame is by far the most expensive seed. They have egyptian wheat, but the horticultural practices recommended for this plant seem to be way beyond my level of farming expertise. They have sunflower, but again, I want to shoot doves, not feed the deer. They have beans, corn, mixes, and all kinds of different seed to choose from.
Finally, I narrowed it down to Sesame, Brown Top Millet, and Dove Proso Millet. I still have not decided and am leaning towards planting a portion of the field in one and the rest of the field in another. I'm still getting advice from people and its not too late for you to jump in, just take the poll.
There's also advise about fertilizer. Cooper Seeds recommends either getting a soil test or purchasing their 19-19-19 fertilzer to dump on the field. One friend recommended to just put some nitrogen in, and most everybody, including Johnny said I needed a ton of lime.
When I looked at the cost of fertilizer, I was shocked. Fertilizing a yard is cheap compared to what it would cost to prepare the soil for a healthy Dove Field. I have new respect for Johnny who must have spent a small fortune to fertilize the food plots he has. I decided that if I'm going to spend this much on fertilizer, I should try to do it right. So the next part of my plan was to go to the field and take a soil test.
And I made the plans to meet Johnny at his property.
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