Yup, the book from Ed Spin is great. The QDMA magazine "Quality Whitetails" is also a must have for anyone looking to improve their habitat, be it by food plot, tree planting, tree hinging or tree cutting. It's the best deer magazine out there and it's worth the price of membership...
http://www.qdma.com/corporate/quality-whitetails We've been doing plots/fields for deer since the 1970's. My place is in the southern end of the NLP of Michigan, about an hour north of Grand Rapids. I've spent many of hundreds, if not 1000's of hours over the decade clearing plots and doing prep work. Much of it was making clearings from forest.
I don't hunt over my plots, if I plant them in a given year. I consider plots to be a food source a good general draw to the general area and I try to hunt trails leading to and from. Hunting over a plot in heavily pressured area's will almost certainly mean that the plot is mostly used after dark.
With that said, trust me on my mistakes and what I've learned.
1. Have realistic expectations. If your soil is acidic and sandy, you're never going to get many/most plots to grow, like you'd see on TV or magazines, unless you spend a ton of money on lime, fert and perhaps manure. On the same token, have realistic expectations of rack size in such places. While you can attempt to help achieve age classes, realize that a 3-4 year old buck in sandy acidic soils isn't going to be what most call "trophy class", but instead likely a very respectable 120 class buck. Just sayin'.
2. GET A SOIL SAMPLE. I cannot stress this enough. You'll save tons of time and money. Find out what you're working with.
3. Work with what you have. If it's sandy, you could get your ph up after lots of time and money, but then a dry summer will take it all away. I've had great looking clover plots that I frost seeded in March completely burn out in a 90 degree July with little rain. Keep in mind, with the sand, the moisture line will be far deeper than the root system of the plot plant. Also keep in mind that much of the recreational hunting land in MI/WI is hunting land because no settlers wanted to farm it. That's a clue.
4. If you already have an opening that looks fairly ready for a food plot, keep in mind that little grows there for a reason. It's likely very dry and very acidic.
My end advice, if typical northern sands, is concentrate on doing fall annuals, like oats, winter wheat, rye and brassica's.
If you do brassica's, do a mix of turnips and rape. If poor soil, your turnips will be more carrot size than regular turnip size. Also, in poor soils, I suggest planting around a big rain in late July or early August, despite most bags saying to plant in late August or early September. Brassica's grow really slow in poor soils, in my experience. Also, since the seed is tiny, you can work up the soil and just spread it on top and don't do anything else, if seeded right before a heavy rain. The rain will beat it in, since it's sized like #9 birdshot.
If you do grains, do a mix of rye, winter wheat and oats. The oats typically don't do well with frost. Also, turkey and deer love the grains come Spring melt off.
I personally like the grains mix the best, with 40% rye, 40% winter wheat and 20% oats. They grow in about anything, the deer hammer them in forest settings and they're pretty bullet proof, plus they are there at Spring melt off, when deer need food the most.
Just keep in mind again, it's really hard to make a silk purse from a sows ear. Go with the flow and work with what works best with what you're working with.
Topic: food plots (Read 554 times)
