Useful Planning Tool

[Quailman]

I just wanted to make you all aware of a useful website that we have available for the general public. It's known as the Web Soil Survey (WSS) and can be accessed at the web link provided below.

Web Soil Survey

You can look at land anywhere in the country and this website provides access to aerial photographs, topographical maps, soils maps and descriptions, as well as other features that may help you when managing your property. One of the key features that I like to use is the soil map with descriptions. It will outline the soil map units on your property, and can help you in determining if certain areas on your property are suitable for food plots, building sites (septic systems), ponds, etc.

The first step is to click on the green button on the home page. Then you can search for your property by using the state, county option. Once you have located your property, you then outline the area using the AOI (Area of Interest) feature. Once this is completed, you can pull up any information you may need by using the various tabs.

This website, of course, is a free service. Enjoy!

 

[Football Hunter]

cool,will check it out

 

[megalomaniac]

great website, but I couldn't get the layer for suitability for vegetative growing/ crop production link to work. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, though.

I'm totally pumped... the farmer leasing all my land for cattle wants to plant more crops to increase profitability... my grandad was always a fescue-hay sort of guy, so most of our big fields are monoculture fescue.

I'll be able to put in large 40 acre fields in bean-hay for summer plantings, leaving 5 acres for the deer, then winter wheat in the late fall. When he gets done, I'll have a significant crop basis built up and may be able to get a better payment for converting it into NWSG. (That will be one of my stipulations- when he's done with crops, the land will have to be fertilized/limed and NWSG will have to be installed at whatever expense not covered by NRCS programs.)

We experimented with bean- hay this year on 20 acres, and it was a huge success with the extra rainfall we had this year. Deer lived in the stuff during the summer.

 

[BSK]

great website, but I couldn't get the layer for suitability for vegetative growing/ crop production link to work.

Me either.

Actually, when I brought up my place, all it said was "Your soil sucks big-time. Good luck with food plots." followed by laughter.

 

[Quailman]

great website, but I couldn't get the layer for suitability for vegetative growing/ crop production link to work.

Me either.

Actually, when I brought up my place, all it said was "Your soil sucks big-time. Good luck with food plots." followed by laughter.

Hmmm, not sure why that feature is not working properly, but I'll talk to some of our soils people that maintain this website to find out what the problem is. However, you can still look at the productivity of soil map units with some other features.

One is to go on the Soil Data Explorer tab and click on "Land Classification" and then select "Farmland Classification." Once you do this, click on "View Rating" and it will provide a description on which soil map units are classified as "prime farmland" and good for crop production (BSK, you may have a problem here. :grin

You can also select the "Soil Report" tab, select "Land Classification" feature, then "Vegetative Productivity", then "view soil report", and look at different crop yields by soil map unit. Another thing to remember is to look at land Capability Classifications. it's on a rating scale of 1-8, with capability classfications of 1 and 2 being better farmland (from a crop production standpoint).

This website is very comprehensive, so it does take a while to figure all of it out. It doesn't help either that soil taxonomy is completely confusing to most people (myself included!).

 

[Quailman]

Thank you for the kind words outbackhunter. Hopefully I can provide some useful information from time to time.

Yes, I enjoy my job tremendously, even though some days may be better than others. There is no other agency I would rather work for than NRCS. I have truly been blessed.

 

[Football Hunter]

Hey Quailman,how much flat land do I need to get some quail?Most of what Im clearing will be slope.Slope,not Mt Everest type stuff.

 

[Quailman]

Football Hunter, typical home range size for bobwhites is 25-40 acres, depending on the quality of habitat. Whether or not you can see positive results with quail numbers will be dependent on several factors. How many total acres of "open" land do you have, does it connect with suitable habitat on your neighbors property, does your property have suitable terrain to use disturbance practices such as annual disking once you establish things like native grasses, and most importantly, are there wild quail within a relatively close proximity to your property already, etc.?

Land that is somewhat steep can be difficult to manage properly because you are limited as to what you can do. It can be done though.