A variety of crops may be necessary to provide high quality food year-round. If you have 50 to acres and want to draw, attract or hunt deer on your property, where do you start?
First, determine the quantity, quality, type and location of food sources near your land. Then, you can identify supplemental food sources for your food plot to make a significant difference for the wildlife. For example, energy in the diet of white-tailed deer is critical during late fall and winter.
So, corn or grain sorghum, which are high-energy forages, could provide much needed energy during that time of the year. This would especially be true in years of poor acorn production. See the nutritional considerations section for more information on food sources.
The shape and layout of the food plot also needs to be considered in your goals. Making an opening in a woodland or installing a food plot in an existing opening can change the ecosystem around the perimeter of the opening. This abrupt change on the perimeter, where one habitat type stops and another begins, is called an edge.
Increasing habitat edges can promote usage of the area by deer and other wildlife. The amount of edge created by a long narrow plot is much greater than a square plot with equal acreage. Also, wavy, uneven edges provide extra length and a more natural look than straight line edges. The distance from cover to the edge may be of concern for small species of wildlife.
If the distance is too far, the smaller species may avoid the area because of possible exposure to predators. To help reduce this concern, placing food plots near plentiful cover is beneficial.
Many larger game species of wildlife prefer to move along and inhabit woodland edges; however, these woodland edges may increase predation of small animals and cause relocation of some bird species. To prevent this, planting shrubs, vines and other low story vegetation adjacent to the plot creates a soft edge along the perimeter to encourage wildlife movement through those areas.
Also, consider your usage of the area when designing your food plot. If the food plot is designed for hunting purposes, archers may find smaller narrow plots more suitable to reduce shot distances. The width of plots may be less important to firearm hunters. Some logging roads are great places for food plots if there is direct sun for at least four to six hours each day to provide adequate sunlight for plant growth.
You may need to cut back the majority of the tall trees approximately 50 feet from the road, at least on one side of the road, to create adequate light.
Placing the tops of these trees near game trails that cross the road may enhance the crossing spot, by providing additional cover. For smaller wildlife species, such as rabbits or game birds, placing food plots near wintertime escape cover is important. If the goal in managing your property is to attract and keep certain wildlife species on your land, providing the right habitat is critical.
All wildlife need food, water and ample cover to thrive. You will be most successful by determining the most limiting, or prominent need, for a selected wildlife species, and then providing it. The first step is to determine the stage of habitat available on your property. The stage of habitat identifies food and cover resources available to wildlife. The successional stages of habitat are categorized by numbers one through five, and will change over a period of time, if left unattended:.
Once you have determined the stages of habitat on your property, you can evaluate the available habitat resources and plan for those that are limited. Sometimes, enhancing cover and natural food sources food plots can also be considered habitat can make more difference in attracting wildlife than installing food plots alone.
Single, small food plots have little impact on the overall food supply for wildlife, but creating thick, dense cover of brushy low growing shrubs or bushes, for example, may draw and keep white-tailed deer in a desired location. An example of thick, dense cover for deer is 3 to 5 acre blocks of dense vegetation consisting of bushes, trees, briars and other woody vegetation that limits visibility beyond yards. These areas, where little to zero human activity occurs, will create a secure bedding area and attract white-tailed deer.
Providing quality cover like this should be a top priority if nothing like this currently exists on your property. Again, more is better regarding available space, so establishing multiple dense-cover, or sanctuary, areas is preferred. If hunting is planned, strategically position food plots in relation to bedding areas to maximize success. Normally, cross wind arrangements provide greater advantage for the hunter.
Hedgerows also provide important cover and food resources for many species of wildlife. A hedgerow is typically a line of closely-spaced trees, shrubs, vines and herbaceous plants that provide both food and cover. These structures often form along old fence rows, but may also be constructed where needed. Hedgerows serve as great wind breaks for wildlife in open areas and provide cover for small animals.
Hedgerows also serve as travel corridors providing concealed travel areas for wildlife. Raspberries, blackberries, apples, crabapples, nuts of all kinds, persimmons, elderberries, sumac, grapevines, dogwood, viburnum, and many other natural foods can provide enormous amounts of nutrition for wildlife if you manage them properly.
Many of the above listed trees and shrubs can also be planted or encouraged in hedgerows and soft edges. Within woodlands, a technique called Crop Tree Release can be used to enhance natural food sources for wildlife.
A crop tree is one that a landowner wants to favor, or enhance, through the removal of less desirable trees around it. To stimulate tree crown growth, a landowner can provide additional sunlight by cutting down, topping or girdling competitors that are overshadowing and reducing sunlight to the crop tree.
Each species of wildlife requires a specific quantity and quality of nutrition to thrive in their environment. White-tailed deer, for example, will consume a mixture of grain, forbs flowering plants , woody browse leaves and twigs , fungi, grasses, and legumes in various quantities during different seasons of the year. This is necessary for quality antler production, maximum fawn conception, and winter survival. Because wildlife has such a diverse set of food requirements, providing something different, such as mast crops acorns and other nuts , apples, fruits, berries or other foodstuff not available in your area, may be the best attractant.
Remember, too, the length of growing season for each crop can vary greatly, so choose carefully to make crops available for wildlife consumption if you want them producing at a specific time of the season. Many wildlife biologists classify wildlife food into one of three food categories: primary, secondary, and starvation or filler.
To be the most beneficial for wildlife, food plots should consist of primary food species such as clovers and other legumes, large or small grains or brassicas, etc. On average, white-tailed deer consume food at a rate of 3 to 4 percent of their body weight each day, on a dry matter basis, which means measuring weight of food eaten without the water content. This amounts to more than pounds of dry matter per year.
To give you an idea of this quantity, an average acre of alfalfa in Ohio produce pounds of hay during the growing season. The age of each deer and the season of the year also dictate the amount of food consumed. While supplying high quality forage year-round is needed to maximize growth potential of bucks and does, peak forage consumption occurs at different times during the year. Bucks tend to increase food consumption during antler development, while a doe consumes more feed during lactation.
More information about this may be found by searching online for the Purdue University publication FNR about food plots for white-tailed deer. For an adult deer to simply maintain body condition, a diet of foods containing 6 to 10 percent protein is required. However, for yearling growth and mature buck antler development, the minimum average should be16 percent protein. Adult female deer require a diet of 11 to 15 percent protein during late gestation, but her requirement for optimum milk production may increase to 22 to 24 percent.
Fawns, after weaning, require 16 to 22 percent protein for maximum growth. As you begin your journey from raw land to incorporating a high-performance food plot system, you should keep one goal in mind: You want to end up with a food plot system which can even be just one or two plots that will make the property you hunt as attractive to deer, nutritious for deer and huntable as possible. Step 1. Step 2. Decide what to plant in each site. Step 3. Correctly prepare the sites for planting.
Regardless of whether your property is large or small, the steps that will take you from no food plots to a high-performance food-plot system are pretty much the same, and you should follow them in the same specific order.
One reason is that some steps depend on others having already been done. Whether your property is large or small, your best-case scenario is to have enough acreage in plots to maximize attraction and nutrition, but without planting so much of the property that deer have no reason to move.
Managers who use both hunting plots and feeding plots may plant 10 percent or more. Most folks who plant food plots for deer plant hunting plots. Their main functions are to draw deer for harvest and provide nutrition. Feeding plots, when used, are usually larger than hunting plots, and their main function is to serve as places where deer can feed and feel safe. When feeding plots are used, they should be hunted sparingly, maybe just during the rut, so that deer have a feeling of safety using them.
In such a situation, you might not want to stick with the formula. Instead, you might want to plant as much of your property as possible to maximize its attraction and available nutrition because you will be attracting and feeding so many deer. It always pays to put some thought into where you put your plots. Before we get into that, consider that it can be equally critical to think about where not to put them.
When making that determination, be sure to consider that screening vegetation, which may be there when you check in the spring and summer, may be gone in the fall and winter.
Also consider planting evergreens or other natural screening plants to help shield the plot from public view. Generally speaking, feeding plots should be centrally located on the property. Try to place your plots where their edges border cover such as a thicket, or anything else deer interpret as something they could quickly jump into if threatened. A corner of an overgrown field that meets thick woods on two sides is an excellent example.
Completely surrounded by thick cover is best. Take wind into account. No matter where you hunt, chances are that the wind comes from one direction more often than any other during hunting season in your area. Design your plots so your main stand sites can be placed down wind from the most common wind direction. If possible, lay out each plot so that it can also be fully covered by a secondary stand when the wind is coming from a different direction.
To make sure you choose the correct seed, take into account the physical characteristics of each site -- soil type, slope and equipment accessibility. Most seed blends should be planted in a seedbed that has been prepared with equipment. There are other seed blends that can be planted with minimal equipment or even with just hand tools.
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