Many deer hunters are interested in producing larger-antlered bucks, healthier does, and more robust deer populations, yet their food plot programs often fall short at providing high-quality nutrition when deer require it most – in spring and summer. Since it’s time for you to decide what to plant in your fall food plots, I’ve got five suggested additions that can help provide fall attraction while also meeting spring and summer nutrition demands!
When Do Deer Need Nutrition Most?
Most hunters primarily rely on their food plots to provide high-quality forage during the fall and winter. There’s certainly nothing wrong with this approach, as food plots can provide excellent hunting and viewing opportunities during these seasons. Deer benefit from forage in cool-season plantings, especially in areas with harsh winters when forage can become more limiting. However, fall and winter aren’t the times of year when high-quality forage is most needed for deer in many areas, as deer have relatively modest energy and nutrient requirements during this time.
Deer nutritional requirements peak during the spring and summer, when does are producing milk for their fawns and bucks are growing antlers. Food plots certainly shouldn’t be the sole source of deer nutrition where you hunt, as management techniques such as prescribed fire, forest management, and field management can greatly increase the value of native plant communities to deer. For those who use food plots as part of their management program, why would you not want your plots to provide forage during the most nutritionally demanding period of the year?
I’ve recently heard some discussion that deer forage availability isn’t limiting during the growing season, as deer “have plenty to eat then.” In most places, this is far from the truth if producing larger bucks is an objective! Although there’s generally lots of green plants available during the summer, many aren’t selected deer forages, such as grasses. Others are eaten by deer but offer relatively poor nutrition, such as older leaves of trees, shrubs, and vines. Even in areas with some agriculture, when do soybeans begin providing enough forage to support many deer? It certainly isn’t the week after they were planted! Thus, high-quality forage during the growing season is a limitation for most properties, and your food plot program can play a role in filling this nutritional gap.
What About Perennials?
There are several approaches to provide high-quality forage in food plots during the spring and summer. Perennial food plots provide nutrition during the growing season, especially if they are managed appropriately. I recommend most properties include perennial plantings in their program, but perennial plantings have shortcomings. Although they can provide excellent attraction early during the hunting season, in most areas they provide less forage availability and attraction during winter than cool-season annual forages. They also have limited forage during dry, hot conditions that are common in late summer.
What About Warm-Season Plots?
The use of warm-season food plots such as soybeans, cowpeas, or jointvetch is another approach to provide growing-season forage. Most warm-season plantings are sensitive to overgrazing, and many hunters with limited food plot acreage attempt to incorporate warm-season plantings by double cropping – planting a single plot during both the warm- and cool-season. Although this can be done effectively, such as by no-till drilling soybeans into dead annual reseeding clovers, most hunters “clean the table” by spraying or disking twice a year when they use a double crop system.
This results in two gaps in forage availability each year: one in spring when they plant warm-season plots and the other in fall when they plant cool-season plots. This strategy is much less efficient than planting separate warm- and cool-season plots, as double cropping usually results in hunters disking or spraying their plots while the previous planting was providing excellent forage availability.
A Third and Better Approach
There’s a third approach to providing growing-season forage in food plots that should be used more widely: incorporating species that provide extended forage availability into cool-season plantings. For those without the acreage, time, or resources to plant warm-season plots, they can simply adjust their cool-season mixes to include a few additional species.
Hunters with an extensive warm-season food plot program also benefit from incorporating species that help bridge the gap between seasons and maintain production while their warm-season plantings are being established. This strategy doesn’t require additional spraying, disking, or mowing compared to typical cool-season plots and fits well with most management programs.
Which species should you include to extend forage availability? Timing of production is an overlooked aspect when deciding what should be planted, as most hunters focus on attraction to deer, cost, and tolerance to various conditions within a particular plot. All of these are valid to consider, but the timing that a particular forage peaks in availability is critical for hunters interested in improving nutrition on their property.
For example, many hunters include radishes, brassicas, and cereal grains in their cool-season plantings. Radishes can be attractive earlier during the fall but tend to have limited forage availability later in the winter. Turnips and rape tend to be more readily available during the winter but are typically consumed before early spring.
Cereal grains can provide early attraction, winter forage, and forage after brassicas are consumed, but they quickly lignify following bolting. Thus, these plantings benefit deer and provide hunting attraction but do little to enhance nutrition during the growing season. Leaving some plots fallow is beneficial, but it’s also fairly easy to enhance growing-season forage availability by incorporating annual (and biennial) clovers into many of your cool-season plantings.
Spring Forage With Crimson, Berseem and Balansa
Crimson, berseem, and balansa clovers all provide excellent forage availability early in the spring. These clovers grow fairly quickly, provide attraction during the hunting season, and are highly selected by deer. All are good options to incorporate into cool-season blends, and they can even be planted in a mix together. Each has different traits that may be desirable depending on your objectives.
Crimson clover matures earliest of the three, with flowering occurring in April and forage availability declining as plants die in May in mid-latitudes. (The photo at the top of this article was taken by professional photographer Tes Randle Jolly on her land in Alabama and shows a doe feeding on crimson clover on April 11 of this year.) Berseem and balansa provide extended forage into late May or early June. Crimson and balansa both are prolific reseeders, which can help make food plots more economical by reducing seed costs if managed appropriately. Balansa and berseem tend to be more tolerant of wet soil conditions than crimson, which may be a consideration when planting fields with poor drainage.
Extended Forage With Arrowleaf
Arrowleaf clover is often an overlooked option for annual cool-season plantings. It provides less forage during the fall and winter compared to other, faster-establishing annual clovers. However, this trait allows other components of your planting, such as cereal grains and other annual clovers, to shine without competition from the arrowleaf. After crimson, berseem, and balansa clover have flowered and died, arrowleaf clover comes on strong with excellent forage production until late June or early July.
Perhaps best of all, arrowleaf clover is a strong reseeder that can easily be maintained in a plot several years after initial planting. If you are managing a cool-season plot for reseeding with arrowleaf clover, or alongside other annual reseeding clovers, allow the arrowleaf to produce seed in July, then spray the plot with glyphosate in August. Add any soil amendments or additional seed (such as wheat or non-reseeding clovers) in late August or early September, then mow the plot to promote reseeding. If time or money is limiting, it’s hard to beat the efficiency of this approach for a plot that provides forage for 10 months out of the year!
Going All-In With Red
As I mentioned before, planting warm-season food plots may not be the best fit for many hunters. Whether you have limited acreage to plant, relatively small food plot sizes, or limited resources, it’s worth considering alternative approaches. For hunters wishing to maximize summer forage availability within annual cool-season plots, including red clover in their blends can be a great option to provide forage for around 11 months of the year.
Red clover is a biennial or short-lived perennial, depending on latitude. It can be included in perennial mixes alongside white clover and chicory, and it also can be used in annual plots. Specifically, red clover is a relatively low-cost addition to annual cool-season food plots that can extend forage production past even arrowleaf clover.
Red clover provides relatively limited forage during the fall and winter after planting and begins producing more forage around May. The real benefit of red clover comes later in the summer, as it will provide nutrition during June, July, and August after various annual clovers have flowered and died. Forage production may decline during late summer in droughty conditions, but red clover is relatively drought-tolerant compared to white clover.
Managing red clover in annual food plots provides some flexibility the year after planting. If you have planted a mixture of reseeding annual clovers and red clover that you wish to maintain, simply spray the plot with glyphosate in August. In late August or early September, amend the soil, broadcast red clover seed, and mow the plot. This is the same approach I outlined for reseeding annual clovers above, with the addition of red clover seed each fall.
Alternatively, you may wish to maintain all or part of the plot in red clover to provide forage during the early fall. It can be tough to force yourself to spray a productive red clover plot in the fall just to turn around and replant. If you find yourself in this situation, it may be desirable to allow a portion of the plot to be maintained in red clover while the rest of the plot is reseeding. Red clover won’t be as productive as annual plantings in the winter, however, so there is a downside to this approach. No-till drilling winter wheat into standing red clover is an option to provide additional forage during winter if you choose not to terminate the red clover.
Plant For Fall and Spring At The Same Time
Providing nutritional resources in your cool-season food plots during antler growth and lactation is relatively simple with the addition of a few species of clover. It’s hard to beat fall attraction for hunting and nutrition during the growing season with a single, strategic planting!