By Capt. Michael Veine
Read on for some awesome food plot
strategies that require a minimal investment of your precious time.
In
today’s modern world, people are busier than ever. The demands of work, family
and other important functions make finding enough time for hunting activities
difficult to say the least. Unfortunately, many people are turned off from food
plotting because they mistakenly believe that they just don’t have enough time
in their busy lives to take on food plot projects.
I can certainly relate as my
busy spring and summer work schedule as a Great Lakes charter captain makes
finding time for food plots very challenging at times. My main hunting property
is located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (U.P.) and is approximately seven
hours of driving time away from my home in southern Michigan. My fishing
charter business keeps me extremely busy from ice out (March) though
mid-September. I typically fish seven days a week throughout the spring and
summer. During my charter season, I’m busier than a rutting buck in a deer herd
with a 1-to-20 buck-to-doe ratio. Fortunately, I have lots of time to hunt
after my fishing season is over, but finding time for food plots is always
tough. I steal away a day or two during the late spring and head to the U.P.
and steal another day or two for a second brief effort later during the summer,
but that is about all the time I can spare during my fishing season. Even with that
meager effort, I still maintain nine food plots that encompass about eight
total acres. Those food plots have really helped me to achieve a high level of
consistent success on adult bucks for over a decade. If I can do it, you can
too.
BASIC
NECESSITIES AND PRIORITIES
The
key to having great food plots on minimal time is planning and timing your
efforts to maximize your efficiency. It also helps to have a food plot strategy
tailored for minimal upkeep in the first place. You’ll also need the right
equipment, which doesn’t necessarily mean expensive stuff. An ATV with food
plot implements can be great for small to medium-sized food plots. I have been
using such equipment for many years with great results. I use an older 4x4 with
an ATV disc, drag, boom sprayer, broadcast spreader and a drop-style lime
spreader. I mow with an old lawn tractor with the deck modified to rise up to a
height of about seven inches. Sure, it would be great to have a tractor and all
the accessories, and someday I will invest in those niceties, but it’s just not
in the cards for my immediate future. Besides, most of my food plots are small
little rascals that I created and maintain with just hand tools. I can’t even
access them with an ATV. It’s those little micro plots that really put the deer
in my sights during hunting season so they are priority-one. The basic hand
tools that I would consider essential are a backpack sprayer, leaf rake,
shovel, chain saw, string trimmer and a crank-style seed spreader.
PLANNING
AND TIME MANAGEMENT
In a past life, I used
to be a project leader where I managed huge computer upgrades that would
sometime involve more than 100 people and years of work. That job taught me the
huge value of time management and task lists. I’m still a big-time task list
guy. You can use a simple word processor to maintain task lists of all the
projects, big and small, that need to be done on your land. When I head up to
my hunting property for a work stint, I always have a prioritized, coordinated
task list showing what I want to accomplish. I try to estimate the time each
task will take and will hit the highest priority jobs first and then I’ll knock
off the lower priority tasks as time permits. As I accomplish tasks, I cross
them off the list and update my main task list when I get back to my computer.
That way I can start planning my next work trip to my property. My hunting
property task list is a living document. Before a work trip, I like to shop
ahead to make sure that area suppliers will have any needed bulk materials such
as fertilizer and lime. By shopping ahead, I can oftentimes negotiate favorable
pricing on bulk purchases, and they will usually have my order ready for me to
load up when I arrive, which saves time too. I always pre-buy all the
hard-to-find items though, like seeds and herbicides. That way I know I’ll have
the right critical ingredients for my food plots and won’t waste time searching
for supplies.
SITE
PREPARATIONS AND SEED SELECTION
When
available food plotting time is very limited, perennials give the most bang for
the buck. I rely very heavily on Imperial Whitetail Clover for the bulk of my
food plot acreage because it is easy to establish, hardy, takes minimal time to
maintain and the deer love it. Imperial Whitetail Clover is hard to beat when
it comes to a spring-through-fall food plot. I feel that it gives me the best
overall performance of any product given my time constraints during the growing
season. One of my Imperial Whitetail Clover plots was planted 10 years ago.
Every year the deer graze it down to the dirt by season’s end, yet it still
keeps coming back strong; now that’s the kind of hardiness and performance anyone
will appreciate. I plant Imperial Whitetail Clover everywhere possible on my
U.P. food plots. My main food plot is several acres and it is seeded entirely
with Imperial Clover. I also have two medium-sized plots and they too are 100 percent
Imperial Clover. Those three larger plots were bulldozed out of the forest and
the seedbed was prepared using an ATV with implements. I also have a bunch of
small micro plots that are of the no-till variety. All those micro plots were
prepared the same way, using nothing but hand tools. I first cleared the site
with a chain saw and removed all the debris from the ground by hand. A soil
test was taken at each site and lime was applied as prescribed. I sprayed with
Roundup throughout the growing season until everything was brown and dead.
After that, using a large, handheld leaf rake, the sites were thoroughly
cleaned up, exposing and loosening the bare dirt. Then, either during late
summer or the following spring, I seeded the plots with Imperial Whitetail
Clover and fertilized liberally. It is amazing how well Imperial Clover will
thrive on a properly prepared, no-till seedbed. I have a few locations where
seasonal flooding, tough soil types or heavy trampling by deer or turkeys is
not conducive to perennials of any kind. On a new food plot, I typically seed
the whole thing with Imperial Whitetail Clover because it requires minimum
annual maintenance. If any zones of the plot fail, like areas that flooded,
I’ll then plant annuals on those failed zones from then on. That way I’m
maximizing forage production while keeping things as simple as possible for
minimal maintenance. I’ve had exceptional success using annuals like Imperial
No-Plow and Secret Spot. These products are extremely easy to use and super
attractive to deer. Site prep is simple: Proper pH is achieved by adding lime. Spraying
with Roundup using a backpack sprayer will kill all the plants off. After
everything is dead and brown, rake the site down to the dirt, spread the seeds
and fertilize liberally. I have a bunch of plots that are a patchwork of
Imperial Whitetail Clover and select annuals. Those plots have proven to be
deer magnets.
MAINTENANCE
Because my time is
often very short for food plot work, I’ve learned to compromise by cutting as
many corners as possible on my plots, but there are some tasks that are
critical for optimal food plot forage production. Using herbicides on a smart,
regular maintenance schedule has been a huge time and money-saver for me.
Weeds, grasses and other nuisance plants can out-compete your desired forages.
As I mentioned earlier, I free up a couple days during the spring and this is a
perfect time to spray herbicides and kill unwanted grasses in my perennial
stands. The Whitetail Institute’s Arrest grass herbicide is perfect for this
application. Mixed with Surefire Seed Oil, Arrest typically clobbers 99 percent
of the grasses with one application and it does not harm clover or alfalfa.
During my spring trip, I also spray Roundup on all my annual seeding locations
to kill anything taking root there. The Whitetail Institute’s Slay broadleaf
herbicide mixed with Surefire Seed Oil is perfect for knocking out those tough
weeds that can take over a food plot. It is also a selective herbicide that
will not harm clover or alfalfa. I have found that it’s best to vary the
application date of Slay from one year to the next. For instance, one year I
will apply the herbicide during spring and the next year I will spray it a
little later. This way you’ll key in on different types of weeds as they emerge
and ultimately keep the whole plot more weed free. During my spring work trip,
I also fertilize my perennial stands. I fertilize my food plots using three
methods. On my larger plots, I use a broadcast spreader that I pull behind my
ATV. On my smaller plots, I use a hand-crank spreader or on the real small
areas, I just toss the fertilizer out by hand from a bucket. I’m looking for
speed and efficiency. Lately, due to financial reasons and time constraints, I
only fertilize my large plots once a year. However, my small plots get two
fertilizer applications annually—one in the spring and the other during the
late summer. My soils are very acidic on my U.P. property, so I’m constantly
soil testing and applying lime to keep the pH up. I typically do the soil tests
during the late summer or fall every year and spread lime whenever I get the
chance. On my small plots, I typically apply a little lime every spring. On my
larger plots though, liming is a major project that requires a bulk lime
delivery and a couple days of labor. I shovel it from a pile into my drop-style
lime spreader and then deposit the lime onto the fields using my ATV. To be
honest, I hate liming those big food plots, but it is a necessary evil. Because
I just don’t have time for a regular liming routine on my big plots, I lime
very heavy when I do get the chance. Oddly enough, I typically find time for
big liming jobs right during the fall deer hunting seasons after all my deer
tags are filled. It’s a symbiotic relationship: Imperial Whitetail Clover feeds
and draws deer so I can fill my tags early. Then in turn, I have more time to
feed and care for the Imperial Clover. I did some testing where only portions
of some food plots were mowed. I found that the unmowed areas actually grew
better. Based on that, I’ve stopped mowing my food plots on my U.P. property
over the last couple years. It’s true that mowing helps to stimulate growth and
that new growth is highly preferred by deer. However, on my plots, the deer are
doing the mowing for me. I have put up small fencing enclosures in my plots and
was shocked to see how much grazing the deer really did all through the growing
season. I still mow my roads and trails and if needed I can mow problem areas
in my food plots at that time. Mowing also helps control weeds, but the only
way mowing can be skipped or reduced is if you maintain a rigorous herbicide
spraying regiment. I suggest doing your own testing with herbicide applications
and mowing strategies. You’ll be able to see what works best and may be able to
save some time and money.
