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What year did you start food plotting?

Rous14

Rous14

PMA Member
Curious to hear when most of you started seriously doing food plots. Also if you had to make an educated guess, what % of farms/hunters had legit food plots on them in the 2005-2009 range in your opinion and what % you think that # is today.

I didn’t own my own farm until 2013 and that was when I started the never ending learning process of food plots and all that go in to them. I’d suspect that in the mid 2000’s maybe 10% of farms had a decent or couple decent food plots? I’d guess today that number is closer to 30-40%? Your opinions?
 
1995…. I was 15-ish (my mom had to drive me around)…. Bag of sugar beet seed & a rake. Went to the middle of the forest & spent day scratching soil & putting SB seed down. Don’t recall seeing even a sprouting plant. ;).

Everyone thinks the food plot stuff is super recent. It was pretty big in 90’s. Even in the 90’s I remember gander mountain carrying a bunch of Buck on bag brands of food plot seed.

I had successful gardens from about 1988 (I still remember this cause I was 10 years old & started those & LOVED IT!!!). My first SUCCESSFUL legit food plot was maybe not until 2001. When I bought my first farm. I never did anything after the sugar beet disaster & did it legit on first farm 24 years ago. Built up to 4 wheeler very quickly just like above!!! :) harrow, sprayer, broadcaster, pull type mower for it & the 4 wheeler. Few years after that- met Dbltree- he was my neighbor about 3 miles from me & ate his information up & we did a lot of projects together. At that point I had a nice lil tractor, Peak of that was maybe like 2006-2010???? Man time flies by. His knowledge & skills- amazing!!!!
 
We bought a farm in 1991 that was in CRP and had a 3 acre food plot that the neighbor planted for us. When the contract ended, we flipped the whole farm back to agriculture and stopped food plotting. My view is that wildlife can benefit from eating growing crops (corn/beans/alfalfa) all summer and then glean ag waste grain due to normal ag practices in the fall/winter.

I'm leaning for more sustainable food sources like the swamp white oak planted in a windbreak, or the oaks I planted in the creek bottom. Apple/pear orchard in the back yard that deer visit at night. There are still riparian buffer strips and draws that offer some browse and cover. Really don't have any "timber" to speak of, neighbor has that covered and thus holds the deer, for better or for worse, I pick off the fringers.
 
Sligh1 said:
1995…. I was 15-ish (my mom had to drive me around)…. Bag of sugar beet seed & a rake. Went to the middle of the forest & spent day scratching soil & putting SB seed down. Don’t recall seeing even a sprouting plant. ;).

Everyone thinks the food plot stuff is super recent. It was pretty big in 90’s. Even in the 90’s I remember gander mountain carrying a bunch of Buck on bag brands of food plot seed.

I had successful gardens from about 1988 (I still remember this cause I was 10 years old & started those & LOVED IT!!!). My first SUCCESSFUL legit food plot was maybe not until 2001. When I bought my first farm. I never did anything after the sugar beet disaster & did it legit on first farm 24 years ago. Built up to 4 wheeler very quickly just like above!!! :) harrow, sprayer, broadcaster, pull type mower for it & the 4 wheeler. Few years after that- met Dbltree- he was my neighbor about 3 miles from me & ate his information up & we did a lot of projects together. At that point I had a nice lil tractor, Peak of that was maybe like 2006-2010???? Man time flies by. His knowledge & skills- amazing!!!!
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Good stuff, interesting! If you did a flyover in a balloon or whatever back in the mid 2000’s though of any random county in the Midwest what % of the farms had a legit 2 acre or more food plot on them would u guess? Think my 10% number is low?
 
About 2005.
Started with a small clover plot.
Have never had a big enuff field to plant corn or beans.
Yearly plots are clover, brassics and my fav..Pumpkins.
 
Rous14 said:
Good stuff, interesting! If you did a flyover in a balloon or whatever back in the mid 2000’s though of any random county in the Midwest what % of the farms had a legit 2 acre or more food plot on them would u guess? Think my 10% number is low?
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Very few. Here’s difference…. Iowa is/was about 10-20 years behind other states. Plots, leasing, access to land, OWNING LAND SO U CAN HUNT, u name it!!!
In 1990’s in MI…. “Most guys” who owned a farm for hunting (and a lot did back then in MI !!! Not so much in iowa) ….. I’d say most had plots in 90’s. I wouldn’t say “2 acres” but a lot of like clover plots or oats on basic stuff. Guys back then in 90’s were leasing land like crazy in MI. U shot a “big buck” in MI - u got kicked off as dudes would lease it. The “kids” (ME!!!) in 90’s had no $… I remember talking to my buddies saying “Imperial whitetail clover has an AD for FREE FOOD PLOT SEED!!!! It’s a sample bag that covers like 10 or 20 (guessing??) square feet!” “If we got 5 of us, we could get 50 square feet of plot!!!” We were absolutely broke but completely obsessed with hunting. Those “kids” that were crazed about it but broke are now the ones that bought a chunk to hunt & grew their plots like they did their land, businesses & ambitions. I was crazed about it as a broke kid that was 15 years old & im the same guy 30 years later with same fire ….. just different tools, land & abilities.
Everyone likes to paint change with a broad brush “it’s all bad”. There’s been some really negative changes to hunting….. pay to play, access & “rich man’s sport” being Fair accusations. But there’s also another side of that coin on how a generation of conservation minded folks want to GIVE BACK to the resource, environment, other hunters & the next generation. Hunters, IMO- take better care of our land than any other group. I actually view “large food plots” as a big net positive as it’s a symptom & result of guys wanting to help the resource. Say, vs a bait pile. Plots have some downswide & SOME only use them as a tool to “kill a Deer” but on the whole- I view plots & especially all the massive habitat work as HUGE net positives. Sorry on the ADHD meandering & rambling here! ;)
 
Late 90s. Started with an old walk behind tiller my parents use to use for a garden. I remember decaling it with a sharpie "deer slayer". From there a 19 hp tractor that I thought was KING KONG
 
Bought a book called Ultimate Deer Food Plots by an old boy named Ed Spinazolla and planted some of his seed back in the day. That is a really good book and I learned a lot from it. It actually holds up pretty good today, he had a couple plans that were kind of the fore runner to the current diversified species plots like summer release type stuff. At that time Dbltree was still around and he filled in the rest of the blanks. His posts were fantastic. I printed them off, laminated them and put them in a binder. That guy did a lot of good for a lot of people.

I don’t really know how long ago all that was.

My two daughters played competitive softball and played in college so I took a lot of years off foodplotting. Back at it now.
 
Sligh1 said:
Everyone thinks the food plot stuff is super recent. It was pretty big in 90’s. Even in the 90’s I remember gander mountain carrying a bunch of Buck on bag brands of food plot seed.
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I planted a hillside that people could see from the road. Late 90’s maybe? The mix had a lot of rape in it and people thought I was growing tobacco.

Guess they never saw anything like that before.
 
As to exactly when I started...I am not really sure. But probably about 20 years ago now. Those early days were REALLY bad from my perspective as I had little understanding and few tools/implements. One of my first plots was created by me chainsawing some crappy trees down, dragging them off by hand, raking all the leaves/etc off and then broadcasting clover. But...I still remember the first doe that stepped foot in that plot as I watched from above. I was hooked. :)
 
2006ish - was in 6th grade. My dad and I went through the trial and error together, some great memories! We still laugh about how dumb we were looking back on it. Did it all by hand but we had access to mountains of fine limestone from an old horse track - so we limed and limed and limed the little 1/8th acre just like the magazine said! One bucket spread with a McDonalds cup at a time.

Inspired by those whitetail Institute magazines we planted "Tall Tine Tubers". Sitting on the edge of that first plot in our brushed in Walmart pop-up blind really felt cool at the time!!! The turnips grew HUGE but the deer never touched them....
 
I think 1995 on property I owned. Small plots but effective. It usually took 2-3 guys most of the day to get it done. First plot was planted in November in Mississippi. For years we only planted wheat.
I believe we planted the first Dbltree brassica mix plot in 2008 in Iowa. I’d never heard of cereal rye. My good friend preached it. I learned a lot during those years.
 
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