Sierra Plug Popper?

[Celtic Dragon]

Do any of you use the Sierra Plug Popper and how well does it work?

 

[REVIER]

Over the last 3 years or so I have been in this hobby and have been reading these forums these poppers show up once in awhile.
Some have posted about using this, lots have used or modified bulb planter, others have made their own from scratch.

In nice moist good soil they seem to work, in hard dry soil forget it, and I doubt it would have worked real good in my clay filled and rocky dirt I used to hunt back in the south, either.
Even after a hard rain.

If you don't pinpoint correctly you have a great chance of hitting and scratching the target, also.

For most is seems like a big hassle and you don't hear many people talking about using these for a reason.
Digging a plug correctly can be just about as fast or faster, and if done right leaves very little trace.

 

[Ism]

In addition, most will agree that leaving one side of the plug intact is better than completely removing a plug.
If not for the grass survival, it helps to maintain plug orientation and hold the plug in place after it has been reseated.

 

[Rainyday101]

They are a big no no in my book. About 8 years ago I used a modified bulb planter. About a month later when rehunting to the sites you could see all the dead grass from the plugs. This is a good way to get us kicked out or banned from hunting public properties. Cut a nice u-shaped plug and the grass will survive. Also as some else stated I was a tad off on the pinpoint and scratched the most beautiful 1888 silver dime I ever found.

 

[REVIER]

They are a big no no in my book. About 8 years ago I used a modified bulb planter. About a month later when rehunting to the sites you could see all the dead grass from the plugs. This is a good way to get us kicked out or banned from hunting public properties.

A little trick I learned from a Neswiper video I watched once that seems to work for this problem.
In my early days I had a park near me that I used to hunt all the time when I felt like swinging and didn't want to go too far.
When I first hunted there I did cut a couple of whole plugs at a few spots and even though I replaced them carefully I noticed on return trips some of these had turned into a bad case of "Yellow Eye"...a round yellow circle in a sea of green and very noticeable.
This was a much bigger problem back in that clay filled soil in Alabama than it is now in my much better black soil dirt here in Kansas.
The problem is when you stamp the plug in after replacing, the soil around it seems to compact and that makes it hard for rainwater to penetrate the soil and get to the roots and the area becomes isolated so the plug dies.
To combat this I made some cuts with my Lesche all around the edge and a couple in the middle to make paths for the rainwater to get back down in there, I just literally stabbed the ground a few times.

After doing this on some of those old plugs I kept rechecking and over time those plugs greened up again and you could never tell there was ever a problem.
I always cut flaps nowadays but I still got in the habit of stabbing the ground around the edge after stamping a few times and I never had a case of yellow eye happen to me again.

 

[BarberBill]

Rainyday, that sounds like a very good idea to me. I've also read where some actually carry a water bottle and water the area after retrieving the target. Can't hurt and may be a real help.
BB