Creating a Hunting Hotspot
In the mid-1990s, when Haubner’s Florida business was booming, he indulged his hunting interests and purchased a small farm on the north side of the Ohio River. He named it River Ridge. Initially, the farm was 300 acres, but in the way of all things hobby-related, it has since doubled in size.
Today, Haubner’s pride in and enthusiasm for his farm are boundless. It was not always that way, however.
Haubner met Tim Hooey on a turkey hunt in New York eight years ago. Their mutual enthusiasm for all things outdoors formed an instant bond, and Haubner invited Hooey to hunt the Ohio farm he had recently purchased.
Hooey recalls that Haubner described River Ridge as “hilly.” In fact, the old place was in shambles, overrun with dense blackberry tangles. Thickets of brush choked the fields; no farm for miles planted crops any longer. The hardwood forest along the river was crowded with blow-downs. It was an excellent place to pick up firewood but also a big fire just waiting to happen with a bolt of lightning or a careless campfire.
Although he was not at all sure he was heading in the most suitable direction, Haubner had planted a few small food plots in corn. They were tentative, almost apologetic patches on the flat upland spaces – a couple acres here, a couple there. The green spaces were neither planned nor organized, and Haubner explained that it was “only a beginning.”
The bow hunter knew there were deer and turkeys on the place. He had seen a few. Nothing big in the way of antlers perhaps and nothing sizeable in the way of long beards, and that was disappointing, he explained to Hooey, but that was not the point. The point was the place was his. It belonged to him. He could fiddle with it, manipulate it, change it all he wanted … and he intended to do just that.
It has long been said that two heads are better than one, and when Hooey arrived to hunt Haubner’s farm, he was impressed with its potential and Haubner’s energy. With the right plan, Hooey suggested, Haubner could pull in game from surrounding areas and perhaps grow bigger deer and healthier turkeys. Haubner was immediately interested.
The first few years proved to be anything but a trophy showcase for River Ridge, however. The hunters took does and spikes and button bucks. They saw a few small 8-points, but the results were unimpressive.
Haubner and Hooey put their heads together. “Why are you planting corn?” Hooey asked.
Huabner replied that, combined with the abundant acorn trees, the planted corn helped his deer through the bitter Ohio winters. Besides, corn was standard in the area and relatively easy to grow.
“Fair enough,” Hooey said, “but what about the rest of the year? And why be so cautious? You have plenty of land for various types of food plots. Fall corn does not help bucks grow antlers or help does deliver healthy fawns.”
As they talked, Haubner began to see his farm in a completely different light. He thought of big racks, heavier deer, does with more than one fawn. He saw flocks of fat turkeys strutting along field edges, even plump squirrels and fat raccoons with attitudes. His enthusiasm for the wildlife and the hunting possibilities grew far beyond what he had ever imagined for his “little hobby farm.”
Haubner and Hooey eventually designed a year-round management program for River Ridge Farm. The objectives were to improve the health not just of the deer but of all of the wildlife. Although they did not think of themselves as experts in nutrition or farming, they knew people who were and where to go for information. Their program would expand the diversity of plantings and offer nutritionally-appropriate foods pegged to the season and the needs of the largest mammals on the farm – whitetail deer. They assumed that if the dominant species thrived from careful management, secondary species would also benefit.
One of the first steps was to determine the pH of the farm’s soil. Neither man was an agriculturalist, but they had read about soil testing and realized that a pH-neutral soil would benefit food plot growth and health. When the tests returned a predictable acidic result – soils in the 4.5 range – Haubner applied lime to the farm’s worn-out fields, raising soil pH levels to the 6 or 7 level, a requirement before he could expect to grow bountiful wildlife foods. The returned tests not only told him that he needed to apply lime, but in what quantity per acre.
The next step was to establish locations for several vitamin and mineral dumps. While it sounds less-than-scientific to call them “dumps,” it only means that beginning in 1999, the hunters poured the minerals directly on the ground in a designated cove of the hardwood forest. The four spots immediately attracted deer and other animals.
Because Haubner has continued to dump vitamins and minerals – the Whitetail Institute of North America’s 30-06 Plus Protein mineral supplement – in the same spots and rain has leached dissolving minerals into the soil, deer have pawed the area several feet deep. Haubner found that one bag lasts two to three months.
Haubner and Hooey were satisfied that they were on the right track. They knew results would not become immediately apparent and that their program would take several years to establish. The next step was to develop a year-round food plot program.
Working from an intimate knowledge of the farm’s topography and from recent aerial photographs – which showed broader contours than could be discerned on foot – the hunting friends increased the size of Haubner’s original food plots. Whereas he had begun with four to five acres of clover and 10 acres of corn, they realized this was insufficient for the results they wanted. Estimating that the higher, flatter portions of the farm – and hence the surface eligible for planting – covered a little more than 100 acres, Haubner mowed the entire area and bush-hogged the central mass of blackberry thicket.
Haubner’s objective was to plant fields with food that would yield significant benefit to deer and turkeys year-round but especially when they needed it the most: late winter and spring. His subsequent step was to plant a dozen acres of the Whitetail Institute’s Imperial Alfa-Rack, 12 acres of Imperial Whitetail Clover on old fields with gasping soils covered in ragweed, and 10 to 15 acres of corn, which he left standing until mid-February.
Supplementing the mineral licks and food plots, Haubner and Hooey erected five feeders and filled them with corn. They operate from mid-December until the spring “green-up.”
“Our feeders distribute about 40 pounds a day,” Haubner said, perfectly enthusiastic about his farming enterprise, “and I’ve built several feed stations solely for turkeys.”
Today, the wildlife management program at River Ridge Farm has settled into a predictable routine, which Haubner manages with periodic visits:
Winter: Minerals are replenished, the corn is still standing (until February), the five planted apple trees are pruned, and feeders are filled with corn monthly.
Spring: New ground is disked, fields for Imperial Clover and Alfa-Rack are fertilized, corn is planted, pelletized lime is added as needed, field edges are mowed and weeds sprayed.
Summer: 30-06 Plus Protein minerals are replenished, Imperial Clover and Alfa-Rack are sprayed with herbicide to kill broadleaf weeds, and the hunters pray for rain.
Fall: New ground is plowed in preparation for Alfa-Rack and Imperial Clover plantings the next year, a light re-seeding of Alfa-Rack and Imperial Clover.
If judged by “just having a place to hunt,” Lou Haubner’s hobby farm is certainly out of control. The work and the expense have increased significantly. Sometimes, Haubner said, when he should be concerned with contracts and returning phone messages, all he can think about is boosting River Ridge Farm’s productivity.
Although it did not happen immediately, Tim Hooey feels the results are impressive. “It’s a great success story,” he said. “Lou took this old farm and turned it into a whitetail paradise. When I first hunted there, we were lucky to see a doe wander through. Now, we’re holding a lot of does. When we ride around before dark, we might see 70 to 80 deer in the food plots and in the surrounding woods. We’re obviously bringing deer in from surrounding areas. Eight years ago, we were taking year-and-a-half old deer. Last year we took three deer that scored more than 150!”
Lou Haubner says River Ridge is not designed for commercial hunting, and that all of his efforts have been to benefit the wildlife and the enjoyment of friends and family who hunt deer, turkey and small game there.
“We have more deer sightings and higher deer densities than ever before,” he says. “We know what the deer like to eat because we regularly walk the fields and we use field cameras for surveillance. It is common to see deer with 8- and 10-point racks now, whereas the first few years we never saw anything like that. And my turkeys seem to be getting along better and better, too.”
Results have progressed so well on River Ridge Farm that Haubner has instituted an 8-point minimum for his deer hunters. Antlers must also have a 16-inch inside spread.
And what of the future? With a year-round nutritional program for wildlife at River Ridge, Haubner has his eyes on adding several tracts of land adjacent to the farm. “Five hundred, 600 acres sounds like a lot in the east,” he says. “A square mile is 640 acres, but like I told Tim the first time we met, the old place is hilly. We only have about 125 acres of arable land. So, we may need to expand.”
Haubner said every time he sees a doe with two fawns or turkey tracks in his mineral dumps, he thinks, “What should I do next? How can I make this better? Several people questioned whether with an unfenced farm as small as River Ridge we could make any difference in the deer and turkey populations, even the bobwhite quail and rabbits. Our results prove it can be done.”