If your parcel is located within a 50% agriculture and 50% cover region, a general guideline is to offer approximately 5% of the wooded portion of your parcel in food. It’s the hardiest variety of green-field planting we know. “I’m simply exposing the ground. Daniel Bumgarner of Wildlife Management Solutions (WMS), who has degrees in fish and wildlife management and natural resources management, explains, “When planting small green fields in the woods, here are some of the mistakes people make: On larger fields, Deer Magnet may be a good crop to choose because not only will it come up in the early season, some of the plants will last through the spring and into the hot, dry weather of summer. Plant a stand of forage oats in the fall (a good food plot strategy anyway) But, even with small plots, the more intensively you till the ground before planting, the better production you’ll get from your killer food plot. However, the best time to plant turnips is going to depend on the region in which you live, which I will go over below. In 1999, my wife and I purchased 120 acres of tag alders, mixed conifer, red maple, and scattered young beach, aspen, and pin-cherry that was located behind our home in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Check out "Food Plot Success On Poor Soils". One of our favorite plantings for killer food plots that are shady is driller radish that tolerates shade well and doesn’t store starch like other brassicas do. ZERO deer! Instead of focusing into the inner portions of our parcel just prior to dark to feed on the food plots that we provided, the deer quickly focused outward towards the agriculture fields that surrounded our property within 1/2 mile in virtually every direction. Decide what you hope to gain from your food plots and plant accordingly. The driller radish in the Deep South typically doesn’t winter kill but keeps producing deer food until the end of gun/deer season. If your food plots for deer in the woods is shadier, clovers and brassicas are better suited. While eating Christmas dinner the next evening the reason for the lack of deer sign became extremely obvious, as a line of over 50 deer traveled from the woodlot a quarter mile to the North, across the fields to attack the only standing corn field left in the area. Sure, your best food plots for deer will be in fields, but … Food plots are pivotal to most deer management plans and they are becoming a more valuable part of hunting strategy, as well. A linear food plot of 6 to 12 feet width can easily be fitted in between the pine rows with 6 or 8 feet to spare on each side without injuring pine tree roots. A 1/4 acre food plot may seem pretty small, but when it is planted within a 1/4 acre opening on a small parcel it has the potential of being harder to hide and disrupting the natural flow of the deer herd through the parcel. Then no matter the weather conditions or other factors that cause food plots not to be productive, their food plots for deer in the woods always will have some type of plants coming up in them. For instance, if you have a 1/4-acre food plot, and the soil test calls for one ton of lime per acre, you’ll only need three bags (150 – 200 pounds total) of Aqua Aid per acre.”. The brand my company likes is Aqua Aid (www.aquaaidsolutions.com), usually found at any farm-supply store. Lacking the balance between food and cover in 2008, a large portion of our property was inefficient, as we unfortunately experienced a surplus of cover that was certainly too much of a good thing. The one thing above this task, would be taking the time to put in the right food plot. You’ll drastically increase your deer-hunting success. Wildlife Management Solutions Deer Magnet seeds are an annual planting that aren’t damaged by the weather and can be planted in freshly-cut clearcuts, on the edges of pastures, along the edges of agricultural fields or in openings that receive full or almost full sun. Therefore, while it's important to have an appropriate amount of food in a high-cover area and to set up your food plots in a way that minimizes social stress while the deer are approaching and feeding, the food sources should still be established in locations that encourage a consistent pattern of deer movement throughout the parcel. A higher percentage of food is appropriate for parcels smaller than 80 acres, while a lower percentage of food may be needed for parcel sizes larger than 80 acres. Fruit and mast trees. You’ll usually have about twice the sucralose in the triticale that wheat has. Another Simple Way to Create a Small Killer Food Plot, Dr. Keith Causey, retired wildlife professor from Auburn University, says, “If you fertilize naturally-occurring plants and trees, deer will select those plants to feed on much more readily. Planting your food plots and establishing them well can be one of the most important things you do during the next two months. Some new innovations have been made in calcium products specifically designed for small food plots. A consistent concept has carried through for decades - the lack of food can eventually equal a lack of deer, even within a high quality cover parcel located in an area starved for cover. Planting food plots is the most popular habitat management practice among landowners wanting to enhance habitat for wildlife. Before I get started on the best time to plant turnips, you need to keep one important thing in mind: turnips grow very quickly. A recent client of mine had an outstanding 8 acre parcel, located between an 80 acre sanctuary of unpressured habitat on the north side of his parcel and mixed high-quality cover transitioning into agricultural land to the south. And we're better than Michigan Food Plot Services Frosty berseem clover won the trial, and fixation balansa came in a close second. You trick the late season plants by starting them 3 months later than mother nature would, and they can not mature by winter. Deer love the triticale we recommend that produces much more tonnage than wheat, oats and grain rye do and offers good sugar content. For instance, if you have a 1/4-acre food plot, and the soil test calls for one ton of lime per acre, you’ll only need three bags (150 – 200 pounds total) of Aqua Aid per acre.”, To learn more about WMS seeds and blends, go to, https://www.facebook.com/productsforwildlifemanagement/, To learn more about hunting deer in killer food plots, hidey-holes and small hunting sites, check out  John E. Phillips’ books, available in Kindle, print and Audible, “How to Hunt and Take  Big Buck Deer on Small Properties” at, and “How to Hunt Deer Up Close: With Bows, Rifles, Muzzleloaders and Crossbows” at, Choosing the Best Pond Weed Control Practices, Alabama Turkey Season 2020: Thoughts from the Wild turkey Committee. Some plants, such as brassicas (turnips and rape), even remai… “In the last few years on many properties where I’ve hunted, deer have become scarce in established food plots and most open-wood places. We have a 20 acre field we were going to plant our beans in, but it is still flooded. Then when there’s nothing more for them to eat, the deer will be there.”. Most folks who plant food plots for deer plant hunting plots. This load-tested to 1,100 pounds small cart makes hauling and unloading large loads easier, while reducing physical strain and enabling you to get more work done quickly and with much less effort. What I mean by this is that the food that you offer is not the only game in town. Instead, the amount of food depends on the size of the area from which deer are being attracted, including their daytime bedding areas which may or may not be found within the parcel borders. Do want an annual food plot (must be planted every year) or a perennial food plot (re-grows every year) Planting depth (how deep does the seed need to be when planted) *If you’re using hand tools, look for something that doesn’t require much planting depth. The location was North central Ohio and it was early January. combines a rear-offset dump-pivot point for greater control with a hydraulic-assisted tub lift for easier heavy-load handling. At the same time, too much food on a small patch of cover can destroy the parcel's ability to attract, hold, and offer a daytime deer herd to actually hunt. Planting food plots in the woods provides a new opportunity for your deer season and new locations to hang your tree stands. Topic: Best Seed for Shaded Food Plots: One of the best seed choices for a field lane or trail is Frigid Forage Autumn Quick Plot. For instance, if you fertilize one end of a large patch of Japanese honeysuckle or blackberries, deer will come to the fertilized patch.”. To learn more about WMS seeds and blends, go to https://www.facebook.com/productsforwildlifemanagement/ and www.productsforwildlifemanagement.com, or call 1-800-877-4089. The amount of food needed in a setting like this does not necessarily relate to the size of the parcel. Deer may favor greenbrier (smilax) next, honeysuckle, blackberries, sumac, wild plums, persimmons, pecans and acorns, to name a few. In the case of my client, I suggested a quarter acre planting that was 12-14 feet wide and stretched for roughly 250 yards long. This Deer Magnet Blend includes driller radish, chicory, frosty berseem, fixation balansa, Persian clover, crimson clover and arrowleaf clover with the frost master winter pea.”. Another advantage to the WMS No-Till Blend is that when the wheat matures that we put in this blend, it doesn’t have any hair (awnless) on the ends of the seeds. Their main functions are to draw deer for harvest and provide nutrition. I try to create these green patches where my hunting buddies won’t find them. Because the deer are not feeding on your parcel multiple times during the night, you may actually find that a smaller amount of acreage is needed to plant. (Video) – Small food plots and deer food plots in the woods are extremely effective kill plots, but only if you plant them with the right species. How many acres of food plot plantings do you need specifically for your land, to accomplish the majority of common hunting and herd management goals? That being said, you can expect turnips to reach maturity between 75 - … Today most deer hunters prefer to use food-plot plantings with a variety of different seeds blended together. Growing Apple Trees for Deer Food Plots Part of the pleasure in planting apple trees on your property derives from luring big boys like the one in the adjacent photo into your fruit tree orchard. Most people do not think of planting fruit trees or nuts trees as a food plot, but … Different crops draw deer at different times in the year, and if you want your food … When growing food plots, Woods likes to give deer something to eat all the time. Cool-season plants are the ticket as they can withstand several rounds of frost. Identify foods deer enjoy, and fertilize them. It's great if you have hidden and secure plots on your parcel that are conducive to mature buck movements, but if those plantings are located such that you can't access your property without spooking deer, then those plots either need to be relocated, reduced in size, or eliminated. He plants his plots so something is always growing and providing food. Planting and managing food plots also provides recreational activity, and You can purchase a conversion kit accessory that turns it into a farm cart/wheelbarrow in seconds for use in land maintenance and hunting prep. When the driller radish is planted and emerges out of the ground, it grows quickly and handles warmer conditions than other radishes do. I found that although the bulk of the doe family groups lived within the parcel borders, the majority of the buck population chose to bed along the fringe areas of the parcel borders, behind the doe family groups, and up to a quarter mile away. They hang their tree stands right on top of the hidey-hole, instead of putting up their tree stands 20 to 40 feet away. Long and thin food plots have their place on a parcel of any size, but on a small parcel they should be the rule rather than the exception. Because of the low hunting pressure on the surrounding public land acres, the movement between bedding areas and the evening food source encompassed a minimum of 500 acres. So, if there’s any way you can get into a small food plot with a disc on the back of your four-wheeler, the plot will do much better. Not taking a soil test. Similar to what I have experienced in other high-cover regions, this need for food was independent of the number of deer. I was still several acres away from being able to provide quality food throughout the entire hunting season, and it was not because of a deer population that was too high. An area doesn’t require cool weather or a frost to convert the starches in it to sugar. Even though I learned over the years that the need for food was very high on my parcel in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, it was necessary to eliminate one of my prettiest plots simply because it offered too much of an opportunity to spook deer while accessing an important part of the parcel. For instance, 400 to 450 pounds of this new lime is equivalent to 2,000 pounds of bulk ag lime, it comes in a bag, so that it’s easy to spread, and it works much faster than ag lime to adjust the soil’s pH. By fertilizing native plants like Japanese honeysuckle, blackberries, greenbrier (smilax) and poke sallet, your hidey-hole won’t look any different than the vegetation around it. Not surprisingly, the deer herd increased with the food plot expansion, from one spikehorn captured on camera, to a total of 17 different bucks caught on film in 2006, with several dozen scrapes and hundreds of rubs. Instead of deer camping out within and around your plots all night, look for a large portion of the deer herd to filter off your parcel and into the nearby agricultural fields. In general, a minimum plot size of a 1/4 acre should typically be used wherever food is needed, even on the smallest of parcels. Many food plot forages grow best when temperatures are 60-65 degrees F. These "cool-season" plants include clovers, brassicas, birdsfoot trefoil, winter peas, winter wheat and oats. Find out what species are great for drawing in bucks to small deer food plots. In areas that are roughly 50% cover and 50% agricultural, you should expect a different type of focus on your food plots. Another variable to consider is the amount of your area that is devoted to agricultural production. By pulling down overhanging limbs and creating mock scrapes along the edges of long narrow plots, you can offer highly defined patterns of movement that will help you to better position stand locations and access your parcel without spooking deer. In order for a food plot to be hidden on a small parcel, the plot has to be small. In states permitting the baiting of deer, hunters use the OxCart too for carrying corn to feeders. Across the white-tailed deer range then there is a myriad of naturally growing plants, shrubs, fruits, bushes, weeds, grasses, and trees to supply food resources for deer. Visit www.oxcart.com to learn more. The opposite is true for areas that feature a higher percentage of agricultural production than cover. Finally, I also co-edited and co-authored the book Quality Food Plots, Your guide to better deer and better deer hunting with Lindsay Thomas and Karl Miller. Use an exclusion cage to see just how much deer are browsing your plot. Don’t hunt that site for two to three weeks, so the deer will discover that little green patch and start feeding on it. This triticale can have 10 – 12 inch leaves. *Buckwheat is a great Summer starter planting for poor soil food plots. Rather, the food plots were attracting deer in this low-population deer herd from a very large surrounding area. So, he suggests that you choose plants that will mature and become palatable to deer at different times. It was apparent that the need for food in this region was critical. Many hunters also consider the OxCart an invaluable tool to move seed, fertilizer and other items to make hidey-holes in the woods. Realizing that planting a small green field in a tiny clearcut on the side of an open pasture or any other site that gets plenty of sun, gives many-more options. “Come down out of your tree after hunting in the morning, get your leaf blower, seed and fertilizer, go in and create a hidey-hole, and then return to camp and eat lunch. “People make two mistakes when they create hidey-holes like this. To check out the reviews or to place an order please visit "Whitetail Habitat Solutions: Books". In a matter of a few months, you can transform your property from being a barren wasteland to a honey-hole. Another handy piece of equipment to prepare the soil, seed and fertilize the ground is an OxCart, and in states that permit baiting, this small trailer can carry corn and supplements to the feeder and provide a place to stand on and pour the feed into the feeder. Because the combined 8 acres of food plots was the only high quality food source in the entire area, the planted forages received an unusually high amount of feeding pressure. The deer were long gone and the reason was an unpicked bean field a mile to the North, across an entire section of plowed agricultural fields. 15 acres of food plots could have pushed my food plot acreage to well over 12% of the total land acreage that I owned, which still would have only been 3% of the area that I was attempting to attract, hold and pattern deer from. The Wildlife Management Solutions (WMS) No-Till Blend is what’s called throw-and-go. Fixation balansa – an annual reseeding clover – can tolerate a pH of 4.5 – 8.5 and handles very-wet soils and very dry soils that drain well. The deer population was small, scattered, and lacking only one thing: a quality food source. I recommend the book to anyone planting food plots in the North. *This is an updated excerpt from my latest book, "Food Plot Success By Design". Food plots should still be used to attract deer, hold deer and define movement but efforts should be made to mimize the effects of the food on the remaining core acres of cover. Trees can be grown the same way. For example, if I was truly drawing deer from a 500 acre area that included the 120 acres that I owned (as well as unhunted public land), then my goal should have been to offer between 10 and 15 acres of food throughout the hunting season. Thank You! Remember, this is a hunting spot, not a food plot. However, deer are typically used to a lot less elbow room in regions such as this, and small amounts of cover often support large #s of deer. The number of deer, the climate, the % of cover and of course the type of region, including: Wilderness, mixed ag or cover starved. Even in just-thinned pine stands, you can create these types of food plots and be highly productive over them,” Woods noted. If you can imagine a mature buck cruising through the food plot on your property at anytime during the middle of the day while he is feeling safe, secure, and unpressured, that's a good start! The answer to that question varies greatly from region to region, and there is absolutely no set % that will work for more than just a fraction of all whitetail parcels. If you have wild plums on your property, be sure to fertilize them for the early-season bowhunter. By planting small hidey-hole type green fields next to thick cover, you can increase the number of deer you see on each outing. Long and thin plots on a small parcel minimize the potential of negative impact, while encouraging the likelihood of daytime mature buck movement. I also discovered that 8 acres of food was not enough! As parcel size approaches 40 acres within a coverless agricultural region, 2-3% of your total acreage in food plots is a good, rough estimate without overdoing it. To make sure that you are meeting the needs of your local deer herd, check out "Balanced Food Plot Blends For Small Parcels". Throughout the years, a concept of food that I have experienced is that a certain amount of cover needs to be supported by a certain amount of food, in order for the parcel to reach its maximum potential in attracting, holding, and building a deer herd. To learn more about hunting deer in killer food plots, hidey-holes and small hunting sites, check out  John E. Phillips’ books, available in Kindle, print and Audible, “How to Hunt and Take  Big Buck Deer on Small Properties” at http://amzn.to/1vIcj4m  and “How to Hunt Deer Up Close: With Bows, Rifles, Muzzleloaders and Crossbows” at http://amzn.to/11dJRu8. 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Phillips | Jul 30, 2019 | hunting, land management a 1 mile of! Small deer food on the plot has to be hidden on a property Services this blend the... 20 to 40 feet away from a very large surrounding area is a hunting spot, not weekend!

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