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Food plot forages

OrionWhitetails

New Member
I would greatly appreciate any input anyone may have regarding your experiences with planting food plots for deer. I'm a novice when it comes to farming (although my family has farmed in north-central Iowa for 3 generations!) and up until this year, we have had poor success with our food plots in southern Iowa.

Our goals behind planting food plots are (1) to provide deer with nutritious forage during as many months out of the year as possible, and (2) to make hunting for mature bucks more successful. We targeted forage types that would still be attracting deer in January, when we will be hunting during the late muzzleloader season.

1998 - We planted soybeans on one-half of our food plots. The soybeans were doing great until the farmer renting the adjacent crop land sprayed our beans with Round-Up! Fortunately, one plot of soybeans escaped the sprayer. Deer use on this plot occurred during the summer, but the plot received very little deer use after the plants matured.

The other plots, with the exception of one plot of corn, were planted in sorghum. The sorghum grew great, but for some reason received very little deer use. Then, before getting a chance to hunt over these plots, the neighbors cattle broke through the boundary fence and demolished the plots!

The corn plot did great (one of my partners actually pushed his lawn mower between the rows to mow the competing grass and weeds!), but the acreage planted (approx. 1 ac) was too small and the deer (and turkeys and coons and....) ate the vast majority of the ears of corn before shotgun season opened.

1999 - We experimented with Whitetail Institute's "No Plow" and BioLogic's "Fall Attractant" with little success. A communication problem with the farmer resulted in the "No Plow" seed not even getting planted (we found the seed one year later in the barn loft still in the bag!). The "Fall Attractant" was planted late and then was hit by an early frost, which stopped plant growth at 2-8 inches. We never saw any evidence of deer use in this food plot.

This year we mixed corn with the sorghum plots (2 rows corn, 2 rows sorghum, etc.), but evidently the corn seed was of poor quality because very few plants put out ears. The sorghum again grew very well, but once again we had very little deer use in these plots. In addition, the seed coat was soft and therefore received less pheasant use as well.

2000 - This year we experimented with Whitetail Institute's "Alfa-Rack" and BioLogic's "New Zealand Premium Perennial." So far, the "Alfa-Rack" has come up very well (planted during spring) and has already been mowed once. The BioLogic forage came up but has not been doing as well as the "Alfa-Rack."

We planted several new plots in corn, which are doing great.

On our remaining plots, we mixed corn with millet (again 2 rows of corn, 2 rows of millet, etc.). The millet was chosen instead of the sorghum because of poor deer use in the past and because we hoped to get a plant variety that would put out hard-coated seeds for the pheasants. Unfortunately, the seed corn used for these plots was of very poor quality (we received the seed free from the National Wild Turkey Foundation) and it hardly even germinated. We chose to replant with commercial seed corn, but the corn was planted late as a result and is not doing as well as the other corn plots.

We will not know until this fall and winter what the final outcome of the 2000-year plots are.

Any success and/or failures that any of you have had with your food plots would be greatly appreciated.

OrionWhitetails (Mickey Hellickson)
 
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