Food Plots

[Jes]

Have any of you put in food plots? What type? Single crop, mix, spring/summer/fall plant?

I just picked up 100# of the Pennington Rackmaster Deluxe Spring/Summer mix. It is mostly soybeans and cowpeas with buckwheat for quick cover and sunflowers and Sorghum for bean structure. Hope to get it in by the first of August.

Deluxe Spring/Summer Deer Mixture

Anyone ever used the Rackmaster products?

[DJ58]

I'm surprised you haven't had any replies.
The property I deer hunt the owner and his son put in a type of grass for deer but didn't seem to take off real well. Not sure of the brand will look next time out and see if I can find some info for you. There is a big food plot just down from this property and it sounds like there's is working real well. The property I hunt is only 18 ac this doesn't give us much room.


DJ58

[AR Hammer]

We do a little bit of everything, the garden fence is usually covered with climbing vines, like climbing peas & beans, and we use it to keep the tomatoes off the ground instead of cages since you can get to both sides of the plants,

The little woman likes flowers, so we usually have things like sun flowers and other edible seed bearing flowers.
I don't much care for some of the stuff, but she likes the 'Pretty' part, so it's OK with me.

I'm not much on 'Foraging', so I do GARDEN plots,
Feed the scraps to rabbits, let them breed as much as they will, and slaughter for meat in the fall so we don't have to feed them all winter,
VERY good use of garden scraps, and the little bunnies produce a PILE of the best fertilizer you can hope for along with meat...
(MEAT! Like I said, I'm not much of a 'Forage type'...

We do allow Sorghum and Milo to grow, mostly wild, in the event we need sugar substitute (I'm allergic to bee stings, so no honey for sugar unless we just HAVE TO)

I would rather have fruit trees, nut trees, berry brier stands instead of what is basically 'Weed' plots, but that is a personal choice...
Anything I don't have to mow is a GOOD THING in my book!

The Deer and Turkeys REALLY love the milo and sunflowers!
No shortage of game in the late summer/fall around that patch!
The guys were hunting for turkeys all season, came and saw 40 or so in my side yard,
Wound up filling their tags out my bathroom window!

That's the patch I like best, no mowing, and produces fruit/nuts, AND GAME MEAT!

If you want big racks, then don't forget the mineral blocks and salt blocks!
Give them buggers some vitamins and minerals and they turn into 'Rack-Zilla' in a hurry!

[Jes]

I finally got a couple replies. I guess most people on this forum aren't into hunting. Or don't think about it until the week before gun season.

Thanks to the ones who took time to give input. I have not put out mineral/salt. The farm we lease has a couple natural scrapes that yield nice mid-night photos, but they almost never visit during shooting light. Our property is surrounded by large corn plots, but most is chopped for silage so it is usually gone by the time gun season rolls around. I am hoping that the soybeans and cowpeas will pull them in. We put out free choice feeders last year with corn mixed with dried molasses and saw exactly ZERO deer in that corn. We did a little CSI on the deer we shot last year and they seemed to be eating a little feeder corn (from the neighbor I guess) and WEEDS. I may try making a mineral lick when we go up to put in the beans.

Good luck to all this coming season.

[wolfhunter]

Sorry I didn't give you a reply on feeder plots. I don't use them and haven't helped with one, so my non-reply was the information I had.

Good luck with your efforts.

[ricbak]

Sorry I didn't give you a reply on feeder plots. I don't use them and haven't helped with one, so my non-reply was the information I had.

Good luck with your efforts.

That sums it up.

[AR Hammer]

Seems there are a ton of 'Scared Of Their Own Shadow' types here that don't actually get to the range or out in the woods much...

For myself, since I live in the 'Boonies', and our feeder plots are close to the house, I prefer to keep them something WE can eat also,
Along with attracting wildlife.

Also good for keeping pesky critters from raiding my garden!

We have a tendency to have a double fence around the garden, woven wire around the garden, then a two or three strand electric around the outside of that to keep the deer from eating EVERYTHING...

The open pasture feeder plots help,
If it's easier to get to, they will do that instead of doing my garden!
I've seen as many as 30 deer in the side yard/pasture and as many as 50 turkeys at one time out there,
So the feeder plot DO WORK to keep them coming back...

Soy beans and corn grow all around us, so they aren't big attractants, but the 'Sweets' really bring the deer in!
Sugar beets is one thing they will paw up out of the ground once the tops are gone! Looks like hogs have been rooting out there!

Milo and Sorghum plants will bring them in, the sugar content is real high, and they just LOVE them.

If you want big racks (I don't rack hunt, just freezer hunt.. And I usually leave the racks to multiply) don't forget the mineral and salt blocks!
Mineral deficient bucks won't grow big racks even if they have the genetics for it.

I try and leave the racks in the Gene pool, where some guys take all the big racks, then can't figure out why there aren't any good racks anymore!
One once in a while is OK, but when they get over-hunted, then you wind up with small, atypical racks (instead of symmetrical racks) that don't really make good mounts...

[buckslayer]

I would have posted a reply if I would have actually looked in this area more often.

I'm a big fan of food plots for deer and other game. Not really to grow bigger antlers really (though it is nice), but for more of a healthy herd reason. We don't have a lot of quality natural foods on our land, so by putting food plots on it, we are improving the health of the deer. We use mostly high protein foods for early in the year, but we also have corn and other winter foods to keep them fed all winter long.

[Scarecrow]

I have yet to get my first deer, so still learning all I can. I like the idea that this thread gives, but not having my own land (yet... I hope) it would be hard to grow something to keep the deer coming around... the thing that sucks is there is a huge field of corn right behind me but 1 don't know the owner and 2 this is not a hunting zone. and I guess people see deer out there a bit.

[Jes]

Well, we got up to the property last weekend. We put in 3 new ladder stands and repositioned one from last year, so we now have 8 good ladder stands. The 3 ground blinds we left up were flattened and we pitched them in the trash, so there is some more money we need to spend. Even my good primos blind with heavy duty 10in pegs was blown down and ripped.

The good news is the farmer was willing to put in 3 food plots for us if we supplied the seed, which we were happy to do. He is putting in the 100# of Rackmaster spring/summer and will put in some winter wheat if that runs out. I can't wait to get back up and check the trail cameras the first of October.