Dave Richey OUTDOORS

My neighbor and I have had food plots for seven years. The first year was terrible. We couldn't grow good weeds. A professional came in, worked up the ground, fertilized and limed in, and then planted it. We waited but no results.

The second through the eith years produced small but good crops. Last year, for whatever reason, was poor.

We've planted products like Imperial Brand Whitetail Clover, Imperial No-Plow, Imperial Extreme, Alfa-Rack and more traditional items such as corn, beans, brassica and a mix of rape and purple-top turnips.

The deer came at all hours of the day and night to feed. It's not uncommon to see them foraging at 10 a.m. or 2 p.m. Some walk in without fear. Others move stealthily through heavy cover.

Food plots of clover attract deer.

Our green fields have become magnets for deer. The trick is to get the soil tested, and use enough lime to sweeten the soil and use enough fertilizer to help make the ground just right for the crops we intend to grow.

Many hunters think corn is great for deer, and it most certainly is. But, it's not as high in nutrients and protein levels as many other crops that deer could eat. Soy beans or navy beans are eaten almost as fast as they can grow, and deer love them. Beans and other legumes are perhaps the highest in terms of nutritional levels.

Other good foods include items like Brassica, Chicory Plus, and such things as buckwheat, oats and winter wheat.

My neighbor and I added to our good food sources such mineral-vitamin supplements as Imperial Cutting  Edge and 30-06 or 30-06 Mineral-Vitamin supplement when it was still legal to do so, and the stage was then set for growing big deer with increasingly better racks.

Many types of crops will attract deer.

The food plot program is great but sportsmen can boost their food sources by also planting alfalfa, barley, beans, corn, forbs, oats, peas, rye-grass, sorghum, sunflowers and winter wheat. Add such traditional truck crops such as these, and plant some fruit trees, and the hunter has the best of a well-rounded whitetail diet. If your hunting area has oak trees, which we do not, a good acorn mast crop is wonderful.

There is a common phrase heard among growers of food plots: "Grow it and the deer will come." That is only partly true. Growing crops, and tending to weed problems, is a continuous and never-ending struggle.

One of the best things we have done is thinned out our woods. We can sell some of the timber with a select cut, and that opens up various parts of my wood lot. That causes the underbrush to grow up to briars and berry bushes, and it provides good winter deer browse. It also produces great winter cover.

We'll occasionally see a big buck near a foot plot.

Once the trees are cut, and the rest is used for fire wood, we place the remaining tree-tops in large piles scattered around the woods. These piles of wood provide a bit of cover from the elements, but more importantly, they also provide a source of winter food.

We used to add a few bales of second-cutting hay near bedding area, and this provided another nourishing food source when snow covers the ground. The important thing with the hay is to place it where deer can move to it easily during a bad winter storm. Since that stupid CWD scam a couple of yeåars ago, we've halted all deer feeding and baiting, and rely only on our food plots.

Make no mistake about it: putting in food plots is a major investment in money, sweat equity and time. It's hard work, but it makes us feel better knowing we are putting something back into our land for songbirds as well as game animals and birds. The brush piles also provide good cover for cottontail rabbits, and it seems we have an abundance of them.

We aren't naive enough to believe all of this work will keep the deer on our land. It doesn't happen, but it does provide deer with food and cover without having to travel great distances to reach it.

We enjoy watching deer and their fawns in the summer, and it is far more enjoyable than doing many other things. We kill very few deer in our area because there are very few deer around, but it seems as if there are a few more bucks with occasional animals with better antler growth.

Some of those bucks are never shot, and others are shot by the neighbors as well, but working on creating food plots ensures that we'll always have some deer in the area. What more can a person ask for?

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors