The Blue Collar Farm Project

Happy march 1^st everyone! What an amazing day it is, -30 and windy as heck. But regardless of those conditions I really feel spring is in the air. I've got some big projects coming up, and I'm going to introduce this one to you all.

A huge part of how I hunt deer is based off of a system of stand placement, seasonal tendencies and habitat management. I've taken a few different styles and systems that I've read about and then adapted for hunting in Canada. My “test farm” has benefited greatly and so has my hunting, but there's not much work left to do there. I think it would be more beneficial to share the work done from scratch, and I've been lucky enough to make that happen.

In December 2013 a friend, David and I gained exclusive access to a 210 acre property. Over the planing and permission granting stages David and I decided to share our scouting, prep work, habitat improvements, and then the hunts on this farm, and do it with a realistic time and monetary budget. So we've decided to call this the Blue Collar Farm. The idea is to show that property specific strategic whitetail hunting and habitat management (this includes the use of creative agricultural solutions) doesn't cost a fortune, and can be pretty much implemented by anyone.

This is what I know of this property as of right now. It's divided up into three parcels, one new alfalfa field, a pasture, then timber. As of last year there was no cattle in the timber. This timber also has a nice 30 acre alfalfa field that is at the end of its cycle. I also noticed when I had a quick look in

December that most of the timber is over mature mixed boreal forest with some small slough type water, and a seasonal stream. I've created this graphic outlining the farm in red white, red is roads/trails, green is timber and yellow is pasture/ag.

Dave and I have set a budget of $600.00 per year ($300.00 each) for stands, camera's, seed, fertilizer, fuel and other equipment. We're going to try our hardest to do all our spring work this year in three days. This includes scouting, pre hanging stands, selective timber harvest and hinge cutting. I will also create a three year plan that works on the weak points habitat wise on this property.

So right now the plan for year one is to focus our hunting plans around the new alfalfa. This alfalfa will be a deer magnet, pulling multiple deer off of the surrounding properties. This plan will simple in year one, scout out ambush sites that offer both safe access/exit and scent management zones, do some selective timber harvest at selected stand sites thus creating staging areas, hang sets and set up one or two scouting camera's. The plan also includes setting up some new bedding area's by hinge cutting in strategic locations.

Moving forward I'd really like to work some “creative agricultural solutions” into the mix, especially in the 30 acre alfalfa field. This would include the use of a cover crop that nurses frost seeded alfalfa and clover. This is a working farm and thus agricultural solutions such as this can be used to bypass the food plot laws here in Manitoba, something that I'm more than raring to share with the hunters of Manitoba.

So I will be sharing this project on my blog “The Blue Collar Outdoorsman”, on a thread on Manitoba Hunting Forums and also doing some segments on Blue Collar Outdoor TV on YouTube. I really hope that this particular project will be informative and help sportsmen of this province gain insight on how to both improve their hunting while at the same time helping wildlife out, and doing this within a budget that pretty much anyone can afford, and time-frame that is more than reasonable. So watch for my first post on this property some time in April (depending on thaw) and first BCO TV segment in May.