Balance is the Key
Ideally, you will be able to plant a variety of foods that deer prefer at different times of the year so that there is always something attractive on their plate. In a perfect world, each spring will provide a leftover bounty of high-carbohydrate grain and an early green-up of winter wheat or rye. As spring advances the deer will quickly shift to your high protein clover plots. During the heat of summer they will be hammering your soybeans and alfalfa. In early fall sorghum seed heads will be the tastiest thing around, as deer shift out of the beans and into the grains. Then, in late fall and winter they’ll flock to the high carbohydrate content of your corn plots to fuel their furnaces.
Unfortunately, this smorgasbord approach requires a lot from the deer manager. Obviously, there is the need for good tillable land, and lots of it. Without adequate acreage the deer will wipe out each seasonal planting before it even has chance to produce benefits. And just because you have the open ground available to plant the perfect food for every season, that doesn’t mean you have the budget or the manpower to pull it off. High quality food plots aren’t cheap and there is plenty of hard work involved. While this is definitely a labor of love and a good way to get away from your day job (unless you’re a farmer) it still takes time.
Suffice it to say that most of us will never be able to do everything we would like to do to improve nutrition, so we need to set some realistic goals and scale our plans accordingly. For most deer hunters, planning and planting one or two small food plots - about five-acres total - every year is a realistic starting point.
Unfortunately, this smorgasbord approach requires a lot from the deer manager. Obviously, there is the need for good tillable land, and lots of it. Without adequate acreage the deer will wipe out each seasonal planting before it even has chance to produce benefits. And just because you have the open ground available to plant the perfect food for every season, that doesn’t mean you have the budget or the manpower to pull it off. High quality food plots aren’t cheap and there is plenty of hard work involved. While this is definitely a labor of love and a good way to get away from your day job (unless you’re a farmer) it still takes time.
Suffice it to say that most of us will never be able to do everything we would like to do to improve nutrition, so we need to set some realistic goals and scale our plans accordingly. For most deer hunters, planning and planting one or two small food plots - about five-acres total - every year is a realistic starting point.
