I hate it when the first deer I see during the season is a buck in the 130s to 140s; definitely a trophy but not quite up to my standards.
I was perched near the top of a gnarled, spreading burr oak tree overlooking a prime plot of Imperial Alfa-Rack the first day of Iowa’s late primitive-weapons season. Normally, I wouldn’t have been hunting that early during the late season, preferring to wait until deer settle down from the firearms season.
Plus, I prefer late December because frigid weather drives deer to food plots. But all my guided firearms hunters had filled their tags and headed home, so the deer on my leases had more than a week of peace, quiet and solitude. The unpredictable Midwestern weather had stayed warm enough to keep the hardy, resilient Imperial Alfa-Rack, Imperial No-Plow and Imperial Clover plots lush green — not exactly the hunting conditions you’d expect for Iowa in mid-December.
I’d climbed into the tree stand an hour before shooting light to let things settle down. As the pre-dawn blackness faded to ever-lightening shades of gray, I saw the shapes of several does feeding at the far end of the ridge top Alfa- Rack plot. The sun was still buried in a layer of clouds, shedding just enough light for me to see the brown form of another deer as it moved cautiously from the heavy timber to the edge of the food plot.
The deer’s blocky build and large frame indicated it was a buck. I focused through my lightgathering 8x42 Nikon binoculars and quickly verified my first impression. The buck’s white antlers stood out against the dark background, showing heavy main beams with long tines and 6-inch split brow tines. He was definitely a shooter, unless it was your first day of hunting, and you had access to several thousand acres of prime Midwestern whitetail habitat with 15 thriving food plots. Those plots were being hammered by more whitetails that were pushed onto our protected leases. Deer hunting for quality bucks doesn’t get much better than that.
So because I had two weeks to shoot the deer of my choice, I decided to pass on the buck.
BREADBASKET PLOTS
If you hunt the breadbasket states of the Midwest, flourishing food plots can substantially increase deer traffic on your hunting areas or leases. In fact, they can increase the number of deer inhabiting your hunting area, depending on the size, quality and holding capacity of the area.
The fertile soils of the Midwest produce most of the country’s corn and soybean crop, earning the region the name of the Breadbasket States. Producing an effective, desirable plot in the land of plenty — where a food plot is surrounded by thousands of acres of corn, soybeans, alfalfa, clover and other deer vittles can drastically improve your chances at a trophy buck. When I started an outfitting hunting operation in Iowa, I figured producing food plots on our leases to attract and hold deer would be a no-brainer. Wrong. I quickly learned that the rich, fertile loam soils of the Midwest were about 50 percent weed seeds just waiting for some joker to till, fertilize and plant them so they could take over.
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
One of the most important — and often overlooked or disregarded — aspects of breadbasket food-plot production is location. The easier you make it for deer to use your food-plot delicacies, the more use you’ll see at your plots. With the easily available abundance of nutritious and domestic and wild food sources in most Midwestern states, you can’t make it too tough for deer to use your plots. You must consider the lay of the land in your hunting area and surrounding properties.
Most of our leases are farms or have heavy timber to provide sanctuaries, escape cover and bedding areas. Several of our better properties are enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program, so they cannot be farmed or pastured for 10 years. However, 10 percent of the total CRP ground on a farm can be put into wildlife food plots and not harvested, which is ideal for an aggressive food-plot program. As mentioned, you not only have to consider your hunting land but also the surrounding properties, or you might get blindsided. One of our better leases has 700 acres of rolling hills, heavy timber and weed-covered CRP that has never been pastured by cattle. The area held a healthy population of deer when we leased it, and I figured the addition of several 3-acre food plots and some smaller plots interspersed through the woods would enhance the area’s attractiveness for deer.
The second year of the lease, everything went perfectly, and every plot was doing exceptionally well. As fall approached, I was looking forward to the food plots helping put clients within bow or gun range of the trophy bucks we had watched during that summer. Unfortunately, I didn’t fully consider how the lush, succulent plots would attract neighboring cattle, which bordered our land on three sides. Also, I didn’t thoroughly check the condition of the fences surrounding the lease. Within a month, all the herds of neighboring cattle busted through the fences and made a shambles of our food plots before hunting season. One farmer’s cattle were badly underfed. It’s difficult to imagine the damage that 30 hungry cows and calves can to do a clover plot in several days.
Needless to say, I was not happy, and after some serious discussions with the cattle owners about the value of my food plots, there was a joint effort to fix the fences and solve the problem. You can get bet your bippy I check those fence several times a year, not only on that lease but on all the leases with nearby cattle or horses.
Surrounding crop rotations are another factor in food-plot planning. You must lay out your food plots to take advantage of deer travel patterns from one major food source to another and pull them into your plots for a snack. It’s much easier to pull deer a short distance out of their normal travel patterns to visit a food plot than it is to get them to completely change their routes. Lay out your food plots so deer can easily access them as they travel, and your plots will see far more use. If you plant a plot in the open, where a deer feels exposed and vulnerable traveling to or from it, whitetails may ignore it or use it only at night. Either way, you lose.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
When planning food plots in any part of the country, a major consideration is the size of the plot. At times, food-plot size is strictly dictated by the size of the area available, and you might be limited to small plots on your hunting area. Size might also be predicated on the equipment you have. It wouldn't be practical to plant a 5-acre plot if you only have a spade, rake and hand spreader.
One of the problems I’ve faced with my food plots in Iowa is the sheer number of deer using them. Many of our smaller hunting food plots got hammered because our leases act as sanctuaries and are surrounded by vast acreages of prime agricultural land that support many deer. They got hit so hard they barely survived with enough growth to provide any attraction during archery season.
We abandoned several smaller plots that were limited by size simply because deer ate them to the bare dirt by Oct. 1, and they didn’t attract enough deer afterward to be worthwhile. Currently, we have several 2- or 3-acre plots that are holding up under the deer assault. This strategy keeps my plots thriving so they attract the deer throughout early fall and even into the late season if the weather stays fairly mild.
One way to alleviate some heavy pre-season use by deer is by planting in fall. We spray our plots with Roundup in late spring, usually after turkey season, and then hit them again with Roundup mid to late August, a week or so before disking and planting them. This fall planting almost eliminates the major weed problem that plagues spring plantings. We’ve had much better results with these plantings lasting through early archery season and into gun season. Generally, by the next spring, these plantings are in great shape for turkey season, which is a great side benefit.
Gobblers love to strut in the short Imperial Clover and Alfa-Rack patches. There’s nothing prettier than a glowing, iridescent gobbler lit up by the early morning sun as he struts his stuff for a bunch of hens in the middle of a bright, spring-green Imperial Clover or Alfa-Rack plot.
Fall plot plantings work especially well on smaller hunting plots, which tend to get obliterated by overuse. The drawback to fall plantings the past couple of years in the Midwest has been the extremely dry fall weather. If soil moisture is low and there isn’t sufficient rain after you disk and plant your fall plots, you can chalk another year’s food-plot venture up to experience. Weather always has been the greatest food-plot adversary, and I’ve yet to figure a way to beat uncooperative weather.
THE EXPOSURE FACTOR
Another factor I try to remember when laying out my breadbasket food plots is exposure. My food-plot planning is designed to attract the deer to the center of my hunting area and keep them from being exposed to other hunters or landowners. An, out-of-sight, out-of mind perspective should be an integral part of your food-plot location planning. Several seasons ago, one of my leasers figured I needed a late-season food plot in a tight corner of his fields, surrounded on two sides by dense woods and a thick cedar bedding area. So he left me a half-acre of standing corn. I hadn’t planted a food plot in that otherwise superb location because there was a gravel road 100 yards from the plot on the other side of a thin screen of trees.
It would have been tough for a road hunter to shoot at a deer in the field, but just the sound of traffic on the adjacent road was enough to keep deer from using the field in daylight. During a two-week cold period in late December, the deer devoured the farmer’s offering, and the only deer I saw in the field during shooting light were does and fawns. A quarter-mile over the hill, I had an Imperial Clover plot in another bottleneck of timber, isolated from traffic sounds or disturbances, and you could count about 20 deer — including a couple of dandy bucks — in that plot during good shooting light. One of my clients shot a heavy-antlered 10-pointer on a trail leading to the plot at 3 p.m. one sunny, cold December day.
CONCLUSION
Planting effective food plots in the crop-rich breadbasket states of the Midwest might not be the piece of cake it is in areas with longer growing seasons, milder weather and less food-crop competition. However, with the burgeoning whitetail population and proliferation of trophy-class bucks produced in the Midwest, plotting, planning and planting food plots might be the best tool for consistently getting within shooting distance of a trophy buck.
