1. Food Plots

2.  You can make any piece of deer hunting ground better in two ways with the right food plots.  Even small efforts made in improving the quality of food available in your hunting area will be rewarded.  First, better nutrition, even on a small scale, will promote a healthier herd. In areas that lack adequate food, such an effort can make a big difference.

3.  Even in the richest farm country where deer are never hungry for long, a well-chosen and well-sited food plot can attract and hold deer in one area making them easier to hunt.

4.  Plots are pivotal to most deer management plans and they are becoming a more valuable part of hunting strategy, as well.  But, simply scratching the earth and throwing out a little seed isn’t going to produce fat deer, more fawns or bigger racks.  Nor will just any planting automatically pull deer to your stands like moths to a flame.

5. Balance is the Key

6.  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.

7.  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.

8.  In early fall sorghum seed heads will be the tastiest thing around, as deer shift out of the beans and into the grains.

9.  Then, in late fall and winter they’ll flock to the high carbohydrate content of your corn plots to fuel their furnaces.

10.  The smorgasbord approach requires a lot from the deer manager.  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.

11.  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.

12.  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.

13. What to Plant

14.  Corn?  Sorghum?  Rye?  Alfalfa?  Clover?  Soybeans?  Brassicicas? http://www.foodplots.com/

15. Making the Final Choice