Let's Talk Food Plots

[timeout]

So this was year # 4 in my food plot experimentation. I live in an agricultural area where the deer have a smorgasboard to eat say April to end of October. All the Corn, soybeans, alfalfa and more readily available to them. So I dabbled in a few different things along the way and decided to plant brassicas in my main food plot the 3rd week in July. The plot was well fertilized and had sufficient rainfall to provide a good crop. I have approximately 80 acres of mature timberland and 120 cropland. I have 40+ acres that are sanctuary where I have not entered them to hunt or otherwise, in the past two years. My food plot sizes are small, with the largest one being 3/4s of an acre. I have some small clover plots and some small corn, soybean plots. My focus this year was to provide a great food source for after the ag crops were harvested. Now I do have a neighbor that probably has somewhere around 50 acres of corn still standing (he had corn standing all of last winter also). So my brassica plot consisted of Winfried brassica, purple top turnips, and a white radish sugar beets mix. The sugar beets did not germinate however. I read great things about the Winfried brassica. We have had plenty of cold weather to supposedly turn the brassicas to a sugary taste. In my plot from day one the only plant the deer are touching is the white radishes. One caveat is that my deer population isn't super. To see 6 or 7 deer at any time feeding is tops. So to say that I am quite unimpressed with the brassicas is probably an accurate statement. The kicker is that all of my cropland was in soybeans this year. Following the fall harvest, my observations are that the deer are almost always more numerous out in the soybean fields eating the bare bean stems that came out the back of the combine. Blows my mind! I have a luscious brassica food plot and they are eating dry soybean stems!! So in my experience, I'm leaning toward planting soybeans early in the spring as a food source for the does and fawns, then disking them under and planting the white radishes about August 1st. Let's hear your food plot experiences!

 

[wvlongshot]

I've been told this, someone correct me if I'm wrong. Deer like the cut soybean fields for the beans that have already hit the ground and gathered moisture, IE swelled already. They won't hardly eat any in my area, only the leafy part early on.

 

[timeout]

I've been told this, someone correct me if I'm wrong. Deer like the cut soybean fields for the beans that have already hit the ground and gathered moisture, IE swelled already. They won't hardly eat any in my area, only the leafy part early on.

Yes, they love the leafy tops when green. Also , they will hit the beans when the cold weather sets in. The part that puzzles me here is why they would gather late afternoon and eat the stems that are empty of beans after going through the combine? I'm saying why eat those when I have a lush brassica plot standing ready to eat? I'm not seeing that brassicas are much of a draw, other than they have been eating the white radish tops. Even then it's typically one to four deer and there are a half dozen out eating bean stems. I would love for someone that has had great success with brassicas to chime in. The food plot sales rep will sometimes exaggerate a tad to sell seed, or so it seems.

 

[Kramerica]

Winter rye is great for late season hunting. It’s also good through winter and into early spring. Grows easy. You can literally throw it on my hand and it’ll catch.

 

[msalm]

I had a mix of grazing clovers in one patch, next to a plot of solid chicory, and a daikon radish/rape blend next to that. Right now I have a cut cornfield (80 acres) to the south and 30 acres of harvest beans to the north. My food plot (1 acre max) looks like a feed lot, all tore to hell with deer sign everywhere. The radishes are mostly eaten flush with the ground and the forage rape is being hit a little lighter. Maybe if there was more of a mix that had them coming in through the summertime it would help? In the past I never saw the draw to the brassicas quite as heavy, but still managed to find sheds in those plots the next spring which tells me they were being utilized fairly frequent.

 

[Ccrider]

All brassicas are not the same. You planted the wrong brassica.
Over the last 25 years I have tried most of them. Deer will pass over mature leafy plants for young new growth. Once the rape matures, I have seen deer pass over it until it is their last alternative and it has been through many hard freezes. Then, over night they may mow through it.
There must be something in the cut field that has their taste attention.

 

[Gary in MD]

I have a farmer friend down the street that I let plant corn or beans in each year as he sees fit, it helps him out and I don’t have to mow my 7 1/2 acre field behind the house. Also it attracts the deer for me - win win.
He always puts some kind of winter wheat or similar in the fall and the deer will usually come out and pick around. This fall the deer have been feeding in there like it’s going out of style. I watch them coming up with mouth fulls like a horse eating hay. He said this year he planted barley. He doesn’t know it yet, but that’s what he’s going to use every fall !!!
Gary

 

[Spike A]

I have a farmer friend down the street that I let plant corn or beans in each year as he sees fit, it helps him out and I don’t have to mow my 7 1/2 acre field behind the house. Also it attracts the deer for me - win win.
He always puts some kind of winter wheat or similar in the fall and the deer will usually come out and pick around. This fall the deer have been feeding in there like it’s going out of style. I watch them coming up with mouth fulls like a horse eating hay. He said this year he planted barley. He doesn’t know it yet, but that’s what he’s going to use every fall !!!
Gary

That sounds good to say but when it comes to cover crop usually what ever is cheapest is what gets used, or what is available .. barley is one of those things not always available. But I also have heard of it being good .. next year my food plot mix will be ( assuming I can get my hands on the seed) will be barley, rye, sunflowers, and either radish or something similar

 

[msalm]

My best fall ‘hunting’ plant is hands down straight chicory. As soon as the beans brown up and the grasses start to dry out they seem to just hammer it. I wasn’t terribly impressed with the clover this year but there was a point in late summer the deer really hit it hard. I did have to mow both the clover and chicory, twice for the clover and once on the chicory, and both came up thicker and more lush which keyed up the deer even more.

 

[msalm]

Pretty lush IMO

 

[msalm]

I think they like it

 

[Gary in MD]

Here is a picture of some of mine taken this evening. LOL

 

[17cal Fan]

Wow interesting thread. Me and my brother are kind of in the same boat. Beans and or corn everywhere but no deer on our clover except a few at night. Really bad deer season this year. I saw a total of 4 deer from my 20 year old stand. Never even got a shot this year. Super dry fall, low pond levels. Not sure what to do. I did talk to one guy that put a frog pond type tank in the ground and fills it every couple of weeks. He said it's been the best tool ever for patterning deer. Says they walk right past his small lake to drink from the tank.

Sounds like maybe we should add some chickory and maybe try the tank idea. Past that we are stumped for ideas. Pressure on the deer during deer season has dropped over that past 20 years and we think that may be part of the problem but not convinced. The coyote population has increased and we think we may be losing too many fawns but it's only speculation, no real proof.

 

[Preacher]

I usually plant 1/4 acre of brassicas in late July and the deer never let it grow higher than 2 inches if that.
They did it again this year, so in early Sept I planted winter rye, it came up and they are eating that already.
Heard that it will still grow a lot even with eating pressure..
Time will tell I guess..

 

[LHSmith]

First off, I am not a farmer, but come from a long lineage of farmers, my dad actually used horses and mules to do the work. But maintaining food plots has become an obsession for me since I rarely shoot anymore. Soybeans are a warm season legume and require a minimum ground temperature of 60 ' F for best germination. They will take at 50' F but the germination rate will be much lower. I have learned to use a soil thermometer and record actual soil temps in the spring and maintain a log to better hone in on optimum planting dates. Also, most sources claim a 3 to 5 acre minimum even assuming light deer density due to the biggest limitation for soybeans as a forage is it has low resistance to grazing pressure in the early stages of plant growth. My notes show my planting date for soybeans in N.E. Pa as mid May into June.
Cereal rye aka winter rye is good for over winter but like winter wheat it goes dormant so small plots are usually browsed clean early on. I am trying out Balansa clover also as it will survive down to minus 11' F, but again it will go dormant with no new growth until spring.
For my sandy loam soil 5 acre plot with high deer density my plans for this year are sustain with fertilizer/ lime existing clover, chicory and plant buckwheat (a good soil builder) once soil warms to 50' F, then before it goes to seed , disc under and plant oats, sorghum WGF, and later daikon radish and rape. I don't like seed mixes, I prefer to plant monocultures only. Through trial and error I prefer to use seed as recommended by the local feed stores as opposed to the big name products which are mostly based in the south. Crops that have been a failure for me are turnips, sunflowers, soybeans, sugar beets, lab lab - all over-browsed early in leaf stage. Corn is not an option (BTDT) as the bear population in our area is out of hand.

 

[timeout]

First off, I am not a farmer, but come from a long lineage of farmers, my dad actually used horses and mules to do the work. But maintaining food plots has become an obsession for me since I rarely shoot anymore. Soybeans are a warm season legume and require a minimum ground temperature of 60 ' F for best germination. They will take at 50' F but the germination rate will be much lower. I have learned to use a soil thermometer and record actual soil temps in the spring and maintain a log to better hone in on optimum planting dates. Also, most sources claim a 3 to 5 acre minimum even assuming light deer density due to the biggest limitation for soybeans as a forage is it has low resistance to grazing pressure in the early stages of plant growth. My notes show my planting date for soybeans in N.E. Pa as mid May into June.
Cereal rye aka winter rye is good for over winter but like winter wheat it goes dormant so small plots are usually browsed clean early on. I am trying out Balansa clover also as it will survive down to minus 11' F, but again it will go dormant with no new growth until spring.
For my sandy loam soil 5 acre plot with high deer density my plans for this year are sustain with fertilizer/ lime existing clover, chicory and plant buckwheat (a good soil builder) once soil warms to 50' F, then before it goes to seed , disc under and plant oats, sorghum WGF, and later daikon radish and rape. I don't like seed mixes, I prefer to plant monocultures only. Through trial and error I prefer to use seed as recommended by the local feed stores as opposed to the big name products which are mostly based in the south. Crops that have been a failure for me are turnips, sunflowers, soybeans, sugar beets, lab lab - all over-browsed early in leaf stage. Corn is not an option (BTDT) as the bear population in our area is out of hand.

Great info! We have had snow cover here for just over a week. My brassica plot with 3 different areas and a different brassica in every area is a huge disappointment for me. I don't have a ton of deer on this property, but what is here prefer to dig through bean and corn stubble that have been harvested over the brassicas. They have not touched the brassicas and have dug only a little bit in the clover. Of the 3 brassica varieties I planted, only the white radishes garnered any attention. Purple top turnips and Winfried brassica have gone completely untouched. I recently read an article of a farmer in Illinois that has this fall planted a 3 test plot of soybeans. It will be interesting to see how that turns out.

 

[hogpatrol]

timeout, did you do a ph check on your plots?. I lime heavily. It does wonders for most food plot plants.

 

[timeout]

timeout, did you do a ph check on your plots?. I lime heavily. It does wonders for most food plot plants.

I did soil tests 3 years ago. This year I didn't. I did get advice from the local fertilizer guru and got custom mixtures depending on the individual crop I was planting. I know that lime really should be applied in the fall, as it takes some time to do it's job. All this being said, plant growth was not an issue. The deer just plain will not eat the turnip tops, turnips, or the Winfried brassicas. I had a beautiful stand of those. I agree with LHSMITH that I don't care for mixes. I find them mostly way over priced and had a problem with a KFP mix this year, in so much as one of the two seeds in the mix did not germinate. When I contacted them about it he of course wanted to know about soil tests. I'm a small scale farmer and grew up on a farm. I don't believe the soil test has anything to do with whether or not the seed will germinate. A lot of BS by some companies in the food plot business. Just takes awhile to sort it out.

 

[bsekf]

Been doing plots for 15 + years. Brassicas work well for us, nothing else eats them, take little maintience and they are high in carbs. If the deer are grazing them before a hard frost, they are really hungry. The turnips and greens are very bitter till they freeze. We use purple globe, seven top, dwarf essex rape, daikon radish with a cover crop of oats, cereal rye and buckwheat. The second year we drop back on the brassica and add a clover mix. That is usually good for 4 or 5 years and then we start over. We stay away from commercial mixes, too expensive. We buy all our seed from the Amish, Merit Seed Co. Lime every 3-5 years, try to keep Ph at 6+. Do a lot of mowing and use herbicides. Understand we are at the mercy of the weather!

PS: We figure venison cost us about $20 a pound!

 

[timeout]

Been doing plots for 15 + years. Brassicas work well for us, nothing else eats them, take little maintience and they are high in carbs. If the deer are grazing them before a hard frost, they are really hungry. The turnips and greens are very bitter till they freeze. We use purple globe, seven top, dwarf essex rape, daikon radish with a cover crop of oats, cereal rye and buckwheat. The second year we drop back on the brassica and add a clover mix. That is usually good for 4 or 5 years and then we start over. We stay away from commercial mixes, too expensive. We buy all our seed from the Amish. Lime every 3-5 years, try to keep Ph at 6+. Do a lot of mowing and use herbicides. Understand we are at the mercy of the weather!

PS: We figure venison cost us about $20 a pound!

Thanks for your response. The deer ate the radish tops quite well early and some munching on the radishes themselves, but not much. I know that everyone says they don't taste well until after the freeze. We have been at that point almost two months and the radishes themselves, turnips and Winfried remain untouched. Perhaps these ag land deer are just spoiled?