Year-Round Food Plots Needed for Holding Deer

Original Article Year-Round Food Plots Needed for Holding Deer Published by Whitetail Unlimited

You are living in a cabin on a remote lake in Canada. Each week a plane flies in a good supply of your favorite foods. It doesn't require you to leave the cabin to find food; it's just always there. Life is good. Late one spring, the plane stops coming to your camp and soon you have eaten up all your food supply. What do you do? Do you hang around the mountains and forage for survival food, or do you move on to another camp you know about where the food you like is plentiful?

This is not a survival quiz, but it is similar to what a whitetail buck is faced with when a hunting club or rural landowner plants a food plot with a lush cool season crop in the fall, but does not plant anything after the hunting season is over. A hard winter will take out most of the plants in the food plot, and the animals that have been depending on that food source are faced with going into the spring and summer with less available food, or moving to a property where the manager has planted food plots with nutritious warm season plants. To quote well known deer biologist Larry Weishuhn, During the spring and early summer, nature produces considerable forage and seeds for wildlife. Unfortunately, these quickly disappear because of hot weather, drought, and heavy feeding. In many areas of the U.S., summer can be a stressful part of the year for deer due to dry weather, resulting in poor quality food. This is when warm season food plot crops are very valuable.

Food Plots Help Hold Deer

Holding deer, specifically bucks, on a year-round basis requires a combination of habitat features.

• First is security: There must be areas where the deer feel safe. Bedding areas and escape routes are a must.
• Then comes water: Deer require surface water to be available all year.
• Next is diversity: They like habitat diversity, so there is a need for openings, dense brush, open woods, and corridors offering cover.
• And last, but by far not least, comes food: Deer require a variety of food including young twigs, buds, and leaves of certain trees and shrubs. They like certain grasses, sedges, legumes, forbs, fruits, and nuts. Their consumption of these food plants varies seasonally, based on when the plants are available. It is here that the food plot plays a role in helping create the ideal year-round habitat or falls short.

A healthy food plot planted in Brassicas that the deer did not touch the first year. The second year they ate it to the ground.Whitetail Institute PowerPlant

Photo credit: Whitetail Institute

Like the Canadian cabin situation at the beginning of this article, as long as there is an ample supply of good food in the food plots, and all other factors are met, the deer both bucks and does are likely to stay in an area. Take away a choice food supply, and they may be forced to wander in search of a new food source.

Advantages of Warm Season Crops

As a wildlife manager, I have always found it easy to get hunting clubs and rural landowners to plant fall food plots since they are considered an attraction to bucks looking for choice food, and provide a place to sit in a blind or stand and see deer. But the spring/summer food plots are not grown for hunting, and they are more often than not given low priority.

We all know that deer, as well as wild turkey and other species of wildlife, need all the help they can get in the way of food for the winter. A food shortage can be life threating. However, we do not think of the spring and summer as being a time of need, when the woods and fields are green and wildlife appears to be healthy. In high-quality habitat during years of ample rainfall and mild summer temperatures, this may be so, but these ideal seasons are becoming rare, due in part to climate change.

The warm and hot months of summer are a stressful time for deer, and especially deer found in low-quality habitat. Bucks are growing antlers and if food is insufficient, the antlers will not develop to the buck's age and genetic potential. Does are pregnant, having fawns, and producing milk. Fawns are growing and being weaned, and the deer population is at its highest numbers. There is a sudden need for high-quality food, and lots of it. When much of the U.S. is suffering from higher summer temperatures, less rainfall, and drought or near drought conditions, much of the food available to deer is lower in moisture content than usual and often lower in quality.

The hot months can also be trying for wild turkey and quail. They are breeding, nesting, and hatching young. The adults and young depend upon openings for tender greens and insects. Warm season food plots serve this purpose.

Planning is a Must

High-quality, year-round food plots require planning to offer deer and other wildlife on the property a dependable, highly nutritious food source on a 12-month basis. By now, most food plot growers know that in order to get top crop production on any food plot, a soil test must be taken and the resulting recommendations for lime and fertilizer followed. Since most food plots are planted in annual crops for the fall and spring, it is necessary for the warm season crops to be listed on the soil test information sheet as well as the cool season crops. Far too many hunters list only what they are going to plant in the fall, and omit the spring plants. To get healthy summer crops they must have the proper lime and fertilizer as well. This crop rotation information must be a part of the soil test.

Planning the crops to plant in your food plots for both cool and warm seasons requires some thought and advice from an agricultural expert with experience in the area your land is located. Just selecting a plant mix highly advertised at a sporting goods store and scattering it on your food plots may not produce the food source you want to keep the bucks and other wildlife on your property happy. Each crop has certain requirements. Some do well on dry, well drained sites, while others do well in moist, bottomland-type soil. Some are hardy during low temperatures, while others do well under drought conditions. Some do well in the warm south, while others do best in the cooler north. Where there are high deer populations, you will want to select crops that can tolerate heavy grazing and keep coming back with new growth.

Consult With Your County Agent

One of the best sources of free advice for selecting both cool and warm season food plot crops is the local Cooperative Extension Service county agent. Almost every county in the U.S. has one. Ask at any farm supply store and they can tell you how to find him or her. Spend an hour with the county agent and you can plan your year-round food plot crops and get advice on soil testing, chemical weed control, planting recommendations, and planting dates. Follow the recommendations and your food plots will reflect it. This may be the best free advice you will ever get!

Plan Replanting

On large properties with numerous food plots, the planting dates for annual crops can be crucial, especially during late summer plantings. All summer, the deer and other wildlife on your property have counted on the food being in the food plots. Then suddenly you come in and plow up the remaining food and replant a fall crop. This shock period can be reduced by planning your food plots so that it takes place gradually over a period of weeks. You want it so when the last food plots are being plowed up, the first ones plowed have already been planted and are coming back in green growth. The same principle applies to spring plantings; I never want all my food plots to be nonproductive at the same time.

Warm Season Crops to Consider

Here are some warm-season crops that work well in food plots.

Mossy Oak BioLogic's LabLab is a vigorous, twining legume specially formulated for outstanding performance in food plots from spring well into autumn. It's resistant to insects and disease, grows well even in rough or acidic soil, proves resilient under heavy browsing, and produces a large amount of forage plants often grow two to three feet in height. Deer are strongly attracted to LabLab's large, succulent leaves, which are a source of protein and phosphorus for antler growth and development. A 20-pound bag plants one acre. www.plantbiologic.com

HS Vita-Rack Velvet Clover is very palatable and produces tons of forage per acre. It's blended with Velvet Brand ladino clover, white clover, alsike clover, PGI33 red clover, medium red clover and crimson clover. Velvet clover grows extremely tall for clover and spreads for a thicker food plot. Vita-Rack Velvet gives up to 150 pounds of nitrogen, per acre, back into the soil to make cost-saving crop rotation possible. A 10-pound bag plants one acre. www.hunterspec.com

Pennington Seed Rackmaster provides protein for antler growth and body mass, milk for developing fawns, and overall health for the entire deer herd. Soybeans, iron clay cowpeas, buckwheat, sunflower, and sorghum make up the mixture of seed ingredients to create a summer food source and excellent cover for deer. High in protein and extremely palatable, use 50 pounds per acre. www.pennington.com

Whitetail Institute PowerPlant is designed to provide high protein and large tonnage during the antler growing, fawning, and lactating times of late spring and summer. This mix includes a true forage-type, vining soybean that can tolerate heavy grazing better than agricultural soybean types. PowerPlant includes climbing forage peas for increased variety and pounds of protein. The mix has a small amount of sunflowers and wildlife sorghum to provide a climbing lattice for vining legumes. Twenty five pounds will plant one acre. www.whitetailinstitute.com