By: Bill Winke
I managed a property in the Midwest for nine years that had a very high deer density. The farm had 96 different food plots — yep, that’s right. Try planting all those during a one-week window of dry weather! Fortunately, some were planted to perennials and some I was able to plant in late summer. But, it was still a big project. As you can imagine, those food plots came in every shape and size.
Most lay close to cover while some were actually tucked right into the timber. I learned some valuable lessons on that farm: what kinds of food plots work in areas with high deer densities and what kind don’t work. I also learned a few lessons during those nine years about which food plot designs set up best for hunting.
I no longer have a hand in that property, but instead I spend the majority of my spare time managing my own ground. It is not nearly as big and doesn’t have nearly as many food plots (thank goodness). It is also different in that it has only a moderate deer density by comparison. Yet, it is in the same rolling Midwestern farmland so the size and shape of the food plots are very similar. I took what I learned on the big farm and applied it to my own parcel.
After 17 years of intense deer management, the last half of which was done while spending my own hardearned cash, I have come to a few conclusions. You have to think your way through the food plot game carefully or you can easily throw away a lot of money and gain little in return.
A good friend of mine recently told me that he had made some mistakes on his food plot choices and that he could just as well have burned his money. But Brad conceded that planting the food plots had been more fun than sitting around a bonfire made from crisp Benjamin Franklins. The deer ate him out of house and home at a time of the year when it did neither my friend nor the deer any real good. It can happen — and will happen — if you don’t consider the dynamics of small plots and opportunistic deer.
This is the backdrop against which I am going to paint my “Clover is King” article. Our goal: effectively attracting and feeding deer in small spaces.
I no longer have a hand in that property, but instead I spend the majority of my spare time managing my own ground. It is not nearly as big and doesn’t have nearly as many food plots (thank goodness). It is also different in that it has only a moderate deer density by comparison. Yet, it is in the same rolling Midwestern farmland so the size and shape of the food plots are very similar. I took what I learned on the big farm and applied it to my own parcel.
After 17 years of intense deer management, the last half of which was done while spending my own hardearned cash, I have come to a few conclusions. You have to think your way through the food plot game carefully or you can easily throw away a lot of money and gain little in return.
A good friend of mine recently told me that he had made some mistakes on his food plot choices and that he could just as well have burned his money. But Brad conceded that planting the food plots had been more fun than sitting around a bonfire made from crisp Benjamin Franklins. The deer ate him out of house and home at a time of the year when it did neither my friend nor the deer any real good. It can happen — and will happen — if you don’t consider the dynamics of small plots and opportunistic deer.
This is the backdrop against which I am going to paint my “Clover is King” article. Our goal: effectively attracting and feeding deer in small spaces.
THE TYPICAL SCENARIO
Most food plots are small — an acre or two at the most. I have a number of plots that are well under one acre. Landowners and deer managers usually don’t have big blocks of clean tillable earth to work with so they make the best of what they have. That situation is very common. In fact, when I am talking to groups of hunters my number one question is: “I have one acre I can put into a food plot; what should I plant?” The answer is nearly always the same: Imperial Clover or Imperial Winter-Greens on half and Imperial Clover on the other half. Any other option will bring on the “bonfire of Benjies” syndrome.
Small plots are dynamite places to shoot a nice buck during any part of the season. I have a couple of them nestled into the timber and they are killing fields — no question about it. When I want meat, those are the places I go. I can count on them every year. In fact, my best tree stand locations, especially for bowhunting, are overlooking plots of one acre or less.
Bucks visit these spots at all times of the day. The fields are secluded enough that the bucks feel safe — one jump and they are back in the cover. My small, remote food plots become the hub for the local singles scene and when a buck swaggers out into the small plot at 10 a.m. before bedding down for a few hours, he usually ends up within bow range. He may then pop right back out into the plot first thing in the afternoon before eventually drifting off toward larger feeding areas nearby as evening sets in. These small plots are both meeting places for the local deer and staging areas used by bucks before they head out on their evening search for does.
Outside of the rut, these small plots become the first place the nearby deer feed before heading toward larger feeding areas after dark. In other words, your chances of catching a nice buck on his feet in one of these plots during daylight are much better than catching him in a larger plot in daylight.
But, these small plots are only killing fields if there is still food in them during the times when you hunt them. That is the key. It wouldn’t do to have soybeans planted in these plots if the deer decimates the yummy young plants shortly after they ventured out of the ground. Same thing goes for corn. The ears would have a very hard time ever pollinating and producing an ear when the deer can and will nip off the silks in these isolated places at all times of the day.
Nope, there aren’t many crops that will stand up to the yearlong demands of deer without giving up the ghost like Imperial Clover. That is why all my small plots are planted to clover.
CLOVER VS. BRASSICAS
Clover performs very well as a food plot for most of the year. It is easy to establish, has good resistance to deer grazing pressure and yields acceptable tonnage. It is also high in what the deer need most for six months out of the year: protein. However, clover suffers by comparison to other food plot options during late fall and winter when it goes dormant and loses its ability to deliver what the deer really need at that time: energy — fats and carbohydrates. Protein will convert to energy too, but not as readily as fats and carbohydrates.
So clover isn’t a one-stop shop, but it is a very important part of every food plot strategy. I feel that somewhere around 25 percent of my total food plot acres need to be Imperial Clover each year. Typically, I reserve the smaller food plots for Imperial Clover and use the larger plots for grains that contribute the needed winter “energy.” As I have already stated, the small plots are too vulnerable to support grain crops. The deer will pound them during the summer until there is nothing come fall. Remember the Benjie bonfire?
Imperial Clover, on the other hand, can endure this kind of pressure and still continue to grow, feeding deer all spring, summer and most of the fall. The only gap in clover’s seasonal advantage occurs in the winter. This is of course in the North and Midwest where the winters are cold and snow is deep.
As mentioned, grain crops are a great choice for winter food, but again, they simply won’t hold up through the summer if planted in small plots. For those who only have small plots, they have to either be content with clover or live with the fact that it is not the ideal winter food source, or they need to plant a portion of their plots in Winter-Greens, a very attractive brassica blend. I have planted Winter-Greens in my small plots and they definitely pull deer during the deep winter. In fact, a portion of the plants in the blend are actually more attractive after a hard freeze or two. My deer selected out some of the plants in the mix during the late summer, but they really hit it hard in December, after everything froze hard.If you have small plots and want to plant just one thing, go with Imperial Clover. If you want to supply something for the winter as well, split the plots up and plant half to Winter-Greens and half to clover. Because it is a bad practice to put brassicas on the same ground for more than two years, it is wise to rotate the clover and Winter-Greens every two years. The deer will love you for it. And you, in return, can shoot them.
LAYING OUT A SMALL PLOT
Usually we take what we get when trying to find openings in the timber that are big enough to grow a crop. I have some odd-shaped plots as a result. However, when you have options (like a brushy, overgrown field that you plan to reclaim in part, or when you are constructing a small plot with a bulldozer) two features make these plots produce a better crop and hunt more effectively.
First, I like plots that are narrow enough that I can shoot across them with a bow. Any buck that comes out and walks the distance of the plot — a routine event during the rut — will be in danger. However, unless I lay the plot out in an east-west direction, it will struggle to get enough sunlight to produce a good crop. So if you have the option, look for spots where you can lay out a narrow east-west plot.
Further, when setting up the ultimate killing field, ridges work much better than valleys. When it comes to simply feeding deer, the valleys are great, but it is dodgy trying to hunt bottom fields because of swirling winds. Whenever possible, I like my scent to blow out over a valley or even toward a road or other obstacle (a river or lake) where the deer are not likely to approach. This gives me a natural low-impact approach path and a stand where it is very hard for the deer to smell me when I am in the tree.
Most of my small plots came from natural openings in the trees, but I have also made openings with the chainsaw, bulldozer and the skid loader. There isn’t a lot I can say about hiring a man with a D5 to push trees over. That is self-explanatory, but you may not have thought about simply laying down a few trees along the edges of your small plots to open the canopy, allowing more hours of sunlight to reach the Imperial Clover. We did that on one of my plots last spring — a narrow plot that is 20 yards wide by 200 yards long. We lay back an additional 10 yards of hickory trees on both sides, enough trees to open things up. In fact, this east-west plot now gets enough sunlight that it will produce just as well as any of my other clover plots.
While you are at it, you may as well take a page from the playbook of a friend of mine. When Larry cuts trees along his small plots to increase sunlight, he drops them parallel to the edge of the field in such a way as to create openings where they are advantageous to his stand locations. The deer are much more likely to come into the plot through these gaps, right where he wants them. This small step can pay big dividends.
Small openings on ridges are awesome hunting plots — some of the best stands you will ever hunt. In fact, there are few things I like better than finding them, setting them up and hunting them. And when I polish these diamonds in the rough, I do so by planting them to Imperial Clover. Nothing holds up better to deer pressure in a small plot than Imperial Clover. Imperial Clover is king.
