Before you hit send on that email questioning my sanity, let me start by saying that I love food plots as much as the next person. There’s something extremely satisfying about working the ground, planting seed, and then watching that seed grow into something deer and other wildlife use and enjoy. And occasionally filling a deer tag while hunting one of those plots is just icing on the cake.
However, if your deer management strategy begins and ends with planting food plots, you’re leaving a lot of great habitat potential on the table. On a properly managed property, food plots should be the “dessert” for deer, with the main course coming from a buffet of native forbs, browse, and mast.
Before we jump into some ways to provide those important native food sources, let’s take a quick look at why food plots aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be.
Food Plots are Typically Small
Most deer hunters don’t have the time or resources to plant more than a few acres of food plots each year. And while even a small plot can serve as a great place to harvest a deer, it’s not likely to move the needle on the overall health of your deer herd.
Even if you’re planting 10% of your overall acreage in food plots, that leaves as much as 90% of your property unmanaged and not reaching its full potential for deer.
Food Plots are Expensive
Another downside to food plots is that they are expensive to plant and maintain. With up-front costs like lime, fertilizer, and seed, as well as maintenance costs for things like herbicides, the investment in even a small plot can be substantial.
There is also a need for equipment to plant and maintain the plots, as well as fuel to run it. On a cost-per-acre basis, food plots are generally much more expensive than other beneficial habitat practices we’ll discuss later in the article.
Food Plots are Seasonal
Most food plot species are only available for a limited period of time over the course of a year. Spring-planted plots provide forage during late spring, summer, and early fall, while fall-planted forages provide food in late fall, through the winter, and into spring. To have food plot forage available year-round typically requires either double-planting a plot or planting multiple plots.
And once those food plots have run their course, it’s time to start all over.
Planting perennial clovers can extend the overall life of a plot, but they still require regular maintenance — herbicide treatments, overseeding, and fertilizer — to maintain a productive, healthy stand.
As a former public lands manager for two different state wildlife agencies, we typically steered away from planting food plots for these very reasons, and we caught a lot of flak for it. Many deer hunters visiting the WMAs where I worked felt that if food plots weren’t present, we weren’t doing anything for deer, turkey, and other wildlife.
Actually, nothing could have been further from the truth. But instead of focusing on a handful of food plots that would have provided little wildlife benefit and would have certainly concentrated deer hunters, we focused on improving habitat on a larger scale through some of the techniques we will discuss below.
Forest Stand Improvement
Often, the most overlooked areas to improve on a deer property are the ones covered in trees. Even if those woods contain plenty of acorn-producing oaks, that doesn’t make it good deer habitat. If you can look around and see over 30 to 40 yards in every direction, your woods are likely in need of forest stand improvement.
In the simplest terms, forest stand improvement involves removing trees less desirable to deer, and, in some cases, removing inferior individual trees of species preferred by deer, to open the forest canopy and provide more sunlight, moisture, and nutrients to the remaining trees.
By doing so, you also stimulate understory growth, which will ultimately provide valuable food and cover for deer.
If you’re not knowledgeable about which trees are beneficial to wildlife or which trees are most valuable from a timber production standpoint, then this is best done with the guidance of a licensed forester, particularly one who understands the needs of wildlife for which you are managing.
Your state wildlife agency or forestry department may have someone who can help you with this process at no charge or at a reduced fee. The extent to which you improve your timber for wildlife will depend on your expectations of future timber revenue. Someone who wants maximum financial returns will likely have to take a different, more conservative approach than someone who is completely focused on providing great deer habitat.
Prescribed Fire
Once you’ve improved your woodlands through forest stand improvement, they will likely benefit from prescribed fire. There are few habitat management practices available that can impact as many acres as quickly and as cheaply as prescribed fire.
By burning a tract of woods, you remove the leaf litter, putting nutrients back into the soil, and allow sunlight to reach the ground, which stimulates understory growth. If done correctly, prescribed fire can also knock back hardwood saplings that can quickly take over the understory, and, in turn, help maintain desirable forbs.
Fire can also be a great tool for old-field management, which we’ll discuss in the next section. Just like in a wooded setting, prescribed fire removes the thatch layer, returns nutrients to the soil, and sets back woody encroachment. The end result, depending on the timing of the fire, is the promotion of valuable native grasses and forbs.
Obviously, prescribed fire comes with its own set of challenges. They should be conducted by someone with training and a thorough understanding of prescribed fire and fire behavior. You may be able to get assistance through your local wildlife agency or state forestry department, or through a local Prescribed Burn Association.
Early Successional Vegetation
Early successional vegetation is one of the most beneficial, yet overlooked, types of deer habitat a landowner can provide. Not only does it provide high-quality, year-round forage, but it also functions as important bedding, fawning, and escape cover.
If you have some open areas on your property, keep in mind that not every field needs to be plowed and planted to a food plot. A simple herbicide application and/or light disking may be all that’s needed to turn a fallow field into great deer habitat, which can then be maintained with periodic fire.
If you have a large opening and still want to plant food plots, consider breaking the field into blocks, planting some, and promoting early successional vegetation in others.
Non-Native Species Control
One of the biggest suppressers of good native deer habitat is invasive, non-native species. In fields, this may be fescue or bermudagrass. In wooded areas and early successional habitat, it may be a variety of vines, shrubs, or trees like bush honeysuckle, autumn olive, Chinese privet, kudzu, Callery pear, or a whole host of others.
Again, if you’re not good at identifying these types of plants, you’ll want to work with a biologist from your state wildlife agency to help identify the offenders on your property. At the very least, you can do some online research to see which invasive, non-native plants you are most likely to encounter, and learn to identify those.
Once you’ve identified some of these pests, prioritize which one(s) you’ll tackle first according to the threat they pose and the treatment required. Don’t get overwhelmed if you have a lot of invasives to deal with. Non-native plant control is a marathon, not a sprint. It may take multiple treatments over many years to get them completely under control.
Plant Trees
If your property lack a good diversity of hard and soft mast species, then a tree planting may be in order. Before you start ordering trees, however, take a good inventory of what is currently there and focus your efforts on filling in the gaps.
For instance, if your timber is mostly white oaks, then it may be a good idea to plant some red oak species, or vice versa. If you already have a good mix of oaks, but no soft mast species, consider planting trees like persimmons, wild plum, or crabapple, to name a few. Stick with native species, and don’t be afraid to contact a local forester or wildlife biologist to see which trees do best in your area.
As discussed in the forest stand improvement section, you don’t want to have so many trees that you end up with a closed canopy. Keep the stocking density low so you can enjoy both the mast of the trees along with the native vegetation growing at ground level.
Final Thoughts
Food plots are fun to plant, and they can certainly improve your odds of putting deer in your freezer. But they are just one small piece of the overall habitat puzzle. Don’t get so focused on that one piece at the expense of the others. Instead, work to maximize every acre of your property to provide great deer forage and cover.
In the end, you’ll be much more likely to hold deer on your property, improve the health of the deer that call your property home, and those deer will be more likely to move during daylight hours. And all that adds up to better odds of putting your tag on a great buck.