• Home
• Purpose of Food Plots
• Design of Food Plots
  • Design of Food Plots
  • Liming
  • Soil Testing
• Products & Sales
  • Seed
    • Frigid Forage
    • Whitetail Institute
    • Wildlife Buffet
  • Equipment
    • Plotmaster
• Links

Whitetail Deer

 

Turkey

 

Pheasant

Location of your food plot is the most critical factor in your success. You need a minimum of four hours of sunlight and good soil in a location where deer will feel comfortable in daylight. You need to plant species appropriate for your locations.  If your food plot is bigger than an acre or two with no cover, deer are likely to feed only at night. Try to locate your food plot where the deer already frequent:  near cover, travel corridors, and bedding areas. This will provide more hunting opportunities because the deer will feed during legal shooting hours. Think about your options before you start clearing land. Know how the deer move through the area and consider which areas to leave thick for deer to travel.  You may want to block off areas to funnel deer past good stand sites.  This can be done by bulldozing the site to one side or doing TSI (Timber Stand Improvement) work and laying trees parallel to the edge. One acre of field is 30% edge:  ¼ acre of field has 65% edge. A rectangular field also provides 25% more edge than a square field. An irregular edge provides even more, so always be thinking when exploring your options. 2 to 5% of your property should be planted to food plots to feed your deer all year round. % of Field Type Examples 65% Cool Season Perennials Buck Spring™, Imperial Clover, Alfa-Rack 15% Cool Season Annuals Buck Forage Oats, Buck Fall™, Big- N- Beasty Brassica 20% Warm Season Annuals Power Plant Cool season plantings grow the best in the spring and fall and tend to go dormant in the hot, dry summer. Warm season plantings are more drought and heat tolerant and provide great forage during an often overlooked stress period. June and July are often almost as hard on deer as January and February. The goal with a food plot program is to provide excellent nutrition all year. Your bucks are growing their antlers all summer and your does are nursing fawns which are starting to browse and can gain more nutrition and weight from the high protein forage. Easy to digest forage varieties from food plots can easily make a big difference in your deer herd; and can grow your deer 20% or more bigger than those in surrounding areas. You also have native forages like raspberries, dogwood, and other woody browses; as well as forbs (weeds) that can be fertilized, trimmed around and periodically mowed for extra forage production. You can plant trees like Apple, Oak and Hybrid Chestnut. Gobbler Sawtooth Oak flowers can easily freeze off in our weather so those aren’t recommended. You can fertilize and do TSI (Timber Stand Improvement) around the trees you already have. A crowded tree can expand its crown 35% five years after liberation. This of course increases the amount of mast these trees can produce. Use caution with Apple trees.  Too much light can cause too much crown expansion for a thin stem to support. These trees can bend to the ground and die. The ones that survive however; can produce a lot of browse and apples.  Bucks love to scrape under their overhanging branches. Your property should have at least 25 or 30% brush. This brush should be thick enough that it can’t be seen through at fifty yards.  There should be a thick pocket or two designated as sanctuaries. These should be off limits and situated so you will not spook deer out when you are hunting. By doing your best to provide your deer herd with the best nutrition possible; you will start seeing bigger bucks and having better hunting opportunities. Having more deer around your property will greatly increase your chances of filling your tag. This will greatly increase the number of times you get to eat venison in the coming year.

Turkeys will usually flock to your food plots planted for deer. Turkeys like red and landino clovers in Buck Spring, Imperial clover, alfalfa, birdsfoot, trefoil, sorghum, millet chufa. Plant at least one acre of chufa or it can easily be destroyed by raccoons. Chufa can be difficult and costly to experiment with. Bugs can provide up to 30% of a turkey’s diet in warm weather. Broadcast wheat around hen nests (do not pile) so that poults can get a nutritional boost. This can help them set their wing feathers a week or two earlier allowing them to roost in trees and avoid predators. Pay attention when you see turkeys roost in the same trees and do not cut them. It is much easier to keep turkeys on your property if their favorite trees are not cut unless there are plenty of others they like to roost in. I have also seen hens that nest in the same area every year. Do not tamper with these areas until you don't see one nesting there.  When a hen finds a successful nesting area she may return to it until she dies. These hens are more likely to know how to raise their young because they are becoming more experienced.

Pheasant are rovers and will stay moving until they find an area that provides good food and cover. They need thick brushy and tall grassy areas for cover as well as feeding, roosting, and nesting. Food and cover in the same area reduces the exposure of your birds to predators and bad weather.  Mowing should be done to keep brushy areas from becoming woods and grassy, weedy areas from becoming too brushy.  In general; mowing should be done before May 15th or after July 15th. This protects birds from having their nests and nesting areas destroyed when they are needed most.  Pheasants need heavy cover more in the winter months for roosting and protection from the elements. Many pheasants will die from exposure if not adequately protected. Small clumps of conifers (like White Cedar surrounded by brush) that grow upwind of food plots will provide great food and cover in one area. Food plots should be planted down wind of heavy cover areas to protect them from being buried in snowstorms. Pheasant are not very willing or able to dig through deep snow to reach food. Food plots need to be large enough that snow drifts don't cover the whole plot if the prevailing winds shift.    Strong standing crops like Ringneck Ranch, sorghum, corn, and sunflowers will continue to provide food and cover; even in deep snow because their stalks are strong enough to support them so their seed won't get buried. After deep snows have fallen, drive a four wheeler through your food plots to bend the seed down so your birds can reach them. Do not flatten the whole field; these paths can become snow traps that will fill in with drifting snow. Just flattening a few trails at a time to provide an ongoing food source. Hen pheasants need to gain weight during the first half of winter to replenish the weight they lost during the spring nesting season.