What to plant for deer and when?

[N80]

I live in SC and I've cleared some small food plots for deer. My budget is small and my available implements include a box blade, a FEL and a rotary cutter. No plows, disks or harrows and I can't afford to get any of that this season.

I've used the BB teeth to rip these plots up and I've turned them over 3 or 4 times in the last few months.

So my question is, given the constraints of my equipment, what would you suggest that I plant, how do I do it and when should I plant. All of these plots are small enough to seed with a handheld or push type spreader.

Thanks for any info you can provide.

P.S.: Several local folks have suggested that I plant oats.

 

[EddieWalker]

I realize soil and geography make a big diffrenece, so I'll just tell you what I've tried. First I disk the land. I found a 5 foot disk for $295 in the local classifieds. I'd been watching for awhile, but was always too slow until I got this one.

After I get the land disked, I spread lime. My area is thick with pines and they grow in high accidic soil. One ton of lime per acre is the minimum for my area. My neighbor did 2 tons per acre a few months ago.

I've tried just about every food plot seed I could find. I've been to Bass Pro shops in the DFW area to buy different types. I've ordered them from Cabela's and bought them from Walmart. I've used everything from pure clover to rye grass seed.

So far, they all work the same. My observations are that it doesn't really matter what you plant, they will eat just about any new shoots as it starts to grow. After the plants mature, it seems the deer pass right through the food plots just like they do the native pastures.

The older I get, the more I realize that what I've read in the magazines is just pure salesmanship and hype.

For this year, I'm just gonna plant rye grass. It's cheap and the deer eat it just as much as anything else. But I have a wild hair that keeps me wanting to find something that really does work at an affordable price.

My wife is a huge bird watching fanatic and we have all sorts of different bird seed. Ten feeders take allot of bird seed. Anyway, I was reading what's in the bird seed since it sprouts real quick and easy under the feeders. You can get a fifty pound sack of seed from Walmart for $10. Compare that to a 2 pound sack of food plot mix for $40 or $50.

Bird seed has millet and milo, plus other stuff in it too!!! Seems to me that's as good as anything you can buy, but for a fraction of the cost.

The most activity will be close to the trees. So a food plot is better if it's long and follows the tree line, rather than a bigger area all in one spot. I'm gonna put rye grass along most of it, but put a few areas of bird seed. I want to see if they come to it over the rye, and if there's any attraction to it for the deer.

Depending on the weather, I wont put out any seed until Holloween. If it's raining before then, than I'll plant a little earlier, but on a week or two. I'm gonna start disking here in a few weeks to get it ready and kill off any weeds that come up early. Then just before I plant, I'll spread some lime to lower the PH in my soil and disk again real quick and easy. I'll spread the sead and then drag it with a log to smooth it out and cover the seed.

Good luck and don't take it too badly if it takes a few years to find the right combination for your area.

Eddie

 

[scesnick]

I just made aplot 2 weeks ago with the exact same equipment. I tore up the soil like you already did with the scarifiers. I then threw down a lot of lime and churned it up again.
I then just went to the local Ag store and bought a bag of Tyrone Soy Beans. I think the 50 lb. bag will do something like 1.25 acres. I just threw it our by hand. I believe the bag of soybeans cost like $25 or so. It is already growing!!
My buddy at work has been doing this for a few years and he said the deer tear them up.
I planted Bio-logic last year and it didn't grew worth a darn and where it did the der didn't seem interested in it at all.

 

[CDsdad]

I'll probably get called an outlaw. Plant rye grass, soybeans, deer mix, biologic, bird seed, or whatever you want. If you can get the ground reasonably roughed up it'll grow, ryegrass and deer mix anyway. Then go buy a feeder and keep it full of corn. Rye grass helps draw them to find the corn, corn keeps them coming, and grass lets them graze long enough coming and going to shoot them, if you want to shoot them. Yes, I feed them year round, and yes I eat them. I generally plant for winter end of Sept or first of October.

 

[N80]

Thanks for the tips guys. As for feeding, in the up-state of SC, feeding is illegal. It is legal in the lower state. Go figure.

 

[Egon]

Buckwheat, sunflower seeds and any garden vegetable!

 

[PineRidge]

In past years the deer and coons have decimated our sweet corn patch. I once found them (the deer) lying in it when I went up to pick a few ears.

So this year we planted a large patch of field corn bout' 500 feet from our sweet corn patch, just fer' them dear deer. Well the field corn is now bout' 8 foot high with large full ears while the sweet corn patch is but 5 feet tall with small dwarfed ears.

But the dear deer have yet to touch the field corn. And they still prefer to trounce through my dear vegetable garden. go figure......

Maybe, just maybe next year I'll put a sign in the field corn patch that says "sweet corn" maybe the dear deer can read.

 

[HGM]

I'm still learning myself, but I agree with most of the other advise, especially Eddies about using just about anything.... I planted some "special" clover mix that I bought last year, might have been Bio Logic ... But anyhow, no lime(but I should have) and a heavy doese of fertilizer helped it grow prety good... They ate it so fast that I cant tell there is anything but the wheat grass(feild grass, or whatever it is, I'm not good at identifying particular types of grass) that surrounds it.. The whole area is about 4ac, but I only planted about 1/2ac... I have kept it mowed this year and it has stayed green and the deer keep coming back.. If you have grass there already, I would try cutting it and fertilizing it along with whatever you decide for a food plot.. That would be a cheap test for a spring/summer plot and rye grass it will be for me this year in the main plot, maybe some peas and clover, but if things go like last year it wont last.. Some guys have told me to fence it off somehow to allow the plot to grow a bit before the deer figure out what it is though I'm not convinced it would be worth the effort since they will likely jump it anyhow...This picture is from the plot last night.. The two deer closest to the camera are in what used to be the plot, notice how the rest of it has blended together, they still like it.....

 

[knute_m]

. . . I've used everything from pure clover to rye grass seed.

. . . So far, they all work the same. My observations are that it doesn't really matter what you plant, they will eat just about any new shoots as it starts to grow.

. . .The older I get, the more I realize that what I've read in the magazines is just pure salesmanship and hype.

. . . I was reading what's in the bird seed since it sprouts real quick and easy under the feeders.

. . . Bird seed has millet and milo, plus other stuff in it too!!! Seems to me that's as good as anything you can buy, but for a fraction of the cost.

Eddie

Eddie's comments sound like I could have written them. I couldn't agree more. Years ago I found that fancy stuff doesn't do any more good than the cheap and easy approach.

I have about a 5-acre power line right-of-way through my property. I bushhog it every August (just did it last week). That causes things to start happening. The deer started arriving in small herds this week. Last night there were two young turkey strutting around out there.

In mid- to late-September, I'll buy about 50 pounds of mixed bird seed and 50 lbs of winter rye. I have a cheapie pull-behind broadcast spreader for my lawn tractor. It holds about a half-bushel of seed. I spread the bird seed and rye where ever my little lawn tractor will go. I do nothing more than that -- no tilling, no liming, no fertilizing. I usually watch the weather forecast and try to spread the seed before a rain.

About a week after spreading the seed, a lot of it will start to sprout. We have quite a few deer out there every morning and every evening until late-October. That is about the time the deer all seem to disappear to who knows where. That is also about the time we can legally start hunting -- just when the deer all seem to go on vacation.

But, the deer don't eat it all. It continues to grow until it is regularly below freezing. All winter and spring we have a lot of critters, especially a very wide variety of birds, visiting our field and the forest-edge transition. The rye and a lot of the bird seed start growing again in the spring. Both self-seed quite a bit early the next summer.

Good luck,

Knute