New Food Plot Tips

The winter of 2014-15 was long and brutal in the northeastern United States. Still, a couple of us slogged away, fighting some bitter wind chills and thigh-deep snow so we could complete our chain saw work.

We wanted to make an opening for a new food plot. In some ways, the challenging conditions were a good thing.

The slow progress meant that we had lots of time to think and plan. Here are the ideas we forged during that long winter:

• Consider the prevailing wind direction when you're laying out the food plot, especially if you're planning to hunt the plot. Which trees in the area can be used as stand trees? Where are the existing deer trails into the area? Can existing stand trees be used which will be downwind of the deer trails, and the food plot? Are there areas that would be good for a ground blind?

• What is the first thing we should do once the field has been opened? The answer is, perform a soil test. If you're making an opening in a forest, you can go with the assumption that you're going to have to lime the area extensively.

• What should be planted? After much discussion, we're going with a thick broadcast of oats in the spring. The local farmers tell us that the oats, while providing some forage for deer and turkeys, will also work as some weed suppression. The oats will die off by the late summer, when we plan to plant a mix of turnips, rape and chickory.

• How can it be planted? One of the objectives we had, as we dropped trees down to stumps in anticipation of hiring a dozer guy, was how the field could be accessed with a farm tractor and implements. We widened an existing ATV path. Although I do have some limited ATV implements, for the first year we plan to hire a local farmer to come in with a piece of equipment he calls the ripper disc. The dozer will leave lots of roots and debris, and it will take some heavy farm equipment to break up the soil that the dozer tracks have packed tight. In future years we should be able to plant using the ATV.

• What's best around the field? We will be thinning some maple trees, which because they are so crowded, are little more than long poles. They will be replaced with four different types of evergreen trees. Pennsylvania's Hemlock Trees are being decimated by a pest called the Wooly Adelgid, so we'll need some evergreens for wind breaks and winter shelter.

The wild turkeys have already discovered the change in their world, and they're scratching the dirt. Soon we can rest, and wait for those first sprouts to break the soil. And look forward to a vision of bucks, munching on turnips.