| Wouldn't it be great to plant one plant in your | | | | your neighbors or native habitat during the peak |
| food plots for deer and know that it would give | | | | of the growing season. Food plots for deer is |
| good nutrition year-round and provide great | | | | certainly a balancing act. |
| attraction during hunting season? Even though that | | | | With some work, you can rotate warm and cool |
| may be wishful thinking, you can have that very | | | | season annuals to provide fairly defined peaks of |
| scenario by rotating different plants for different | | | | attraction for the entire year because the |
| times of the year. | | | | forages are designed to be available during |
| A great plant rotation in food plots for deer would | | | | alternating seasons of use. If you go with a mix |
| be a highly attractive summer plot that could be | | | | of soys, buckwheat, peas, and brassicas for your |
| planted in May followed by cool season annuals for | | | | summer needs, and then use the cool season |
| August to September and through the winter | | | | annuals for the critical time of early fall through |
| early spring. You also really want the rye or | | | | early spring, and still have a plot in chicory and |
| wheat in early spring, but with a lot of work | | | | clover so during the summer they have an |
| rotating all the plots with the warm and cool | | | | incredible variety of forage and nutrition. No one |
| season annuals, it would provide some pretty | | | | or two forages could ever compete with that. |
| intense attraction and nutrition while maintaining its | | | | When the warm season annuals are declining in |
| peak efficiency on the plots!" | | | | usage, you can cultipack in cool season annual |
| The #1 problem with any single planting is that | | | | forages including rye and brassicas into the mix. In |
| they all have a fairly specific window of | | | | the end, no tilling, no discing, and no plowing. It's |
| production. | | | | fairly easy to do and you hit some pretty heavy |
| *Clover - mid spring to early fall-periods of heavy | | | | peaks of nutrition for all seasons that no 1 or 2 |
| drought. | | | | forages alone could accomplish. |
| *Chicory - little in spring, little in mid summer | | | | It's all about balance, but if that balance is not |
| drought, little in early fall. | | | | achieved, the deer, your hunting, and your |
| *Brassicas - most areas mid-fall to mid-winter. | | | | management efforts will be nowhere near as |
| *Wheat/rye - early fall, portions of mid-winter, | | | | efficient or productive as they could be. Think of |
| early spring. | | | | the gaps. When do you want attraction and |
| *Oats - early fall to early winter. | | | | nutrition? |
| *Buckwheat - mid-spring to late summer. | | | | You'd be hard pressed to find any other period of |
| *Corn and sugar beets - mid fall to mid-winter | | | | time outside of the dead of winter that is more |
| early spring. | | | | critical to the deer herd but most food plots for |
| *Soybeans - summer and then again in mid fall to | | | | deer completely miss this. What makes it a tough |
| mid-winter if still standing. | | | | time too is that most food plotters aren't |
| So if you rely on a particular planting, there are | | | | watching the local deer at this time enough to see |
| always huge gaps of no nutrition or attraction. If | | | | what they are going through, what they are |
| that gapping hole is during the peak of hunting | | | | eating or not eating. You can have no snow and |
| season, then you will lose deer to your neighbors | | | | good temps so everything seems fine, but if |
| and it can substantially limit your efforts to build | | | | there is no green in the woods, just about any |
| or hunt a quality deer herd that includes mature | | | | food plot forage other than wheat or rye is not |
| bucks. On the other hand, if you have nothing | | | | going to be available, so it's an important aspect |
| during the summer, the deer herd has to rely on | | | | of any food plot program in northern regions. |