New Dove Field

[Chap]

We have about a six acre pasture that we would like to plant in order to hold a few dove hunts this fall. Given the small size, I'm not real sure what would be best to plant. Given the overall absence of deer in this neck of the woods, I'm thinking sunflowers and millet. Others swear by wheat up here. Anybody want to wegh in? The field is 6 acres, but we will not be planting a solid 6 acres. Way too hilly up here.

[DRDUCK]

Millet!

[Tater]

Plant wheat early and leave it so you can have it around to "manipulate"...

[Sportin' Woodies]

plant it all in sunflowers may1.
if the deer get some, youll have time to replant some browntop.

[Moatsy]

I had a similar 2 acre area (but with a shitload of deer) and blistered them with brown top...

if it's limed well and prepped well though I think sunflowers would do better. Maybe strips of both?

[quackaddict]

manipulated corn is a good thing to have out there too

[Chap]

I defenitely want to plant some sunflowers. Maybe we'll do strips of millet, too. Thanks for the advice.

[grey ghost]

Pennington has a dove mix of Sunflowers, Dove Proso, Millet and I think some sorghum. Used it on a 15 acre field and loaded up through the first 2 seasons.

[bud-man]

Sunflowers all the way. Where i hunt we have several fields, and i promise the birds will fly right by the corn and the millet to land in the sunflowers. If ya get the chance, get you a couple of old lightwires with powerpoles and stick'em out in the middle of the field. .

[SCTurkeyGuide]

Originally posted by bud-man:
Sunflowers all the way. Where i hunt we have several fields, and i promise the birds will fly right by the corn and the millet to land in the sunflowers. If ya get the chance, get you a couple of old lightwires with powerpoles and stick'em out in the middle of the field. .

I'm a firm believer in having a wire on the field for the birds.

I am probably too involved in dove hunting, but it's what we have (bird-wise) here in SC so that's where I spend the majority of my time and money. That being said, for the past several seasons I've noticed that sunflowers were the food of choice in the early seasons, while (burnt) browntop and "manipulated corn" were the foods of choice in the late season. I'm a member of three clubs, only one of the three had a lot of browntop and the majority of the late season birds were shot over it. This particular club and one other club are in the same county - the birds just decided to stick with the browntop and corn and left the sunflowers alone.

If I had a six acre field to plant I'd plant a third in sunflowers, a third in millet and a third in corn. Alternating rows would be, from the outside in, sunflowers, dirt, browntop, dirt, corn, dirt, etc.

Good luck with it, sorry to be so long-winded !