Question: What Food Plot Works For You

[suony5]

I was just curios what kind of food plots other hunters in nebraska are using right now with good success? Right now i have clover, chicory, alalfa perrenials and a couple annuals all by whitetail institute. Some of these have grown better than others. Any input would be greatly appreciated

[obert]

I had a seed mix made by a dealer that is close to lab lab by W.I. Comes up great. I'm not positive, but I think my friend gets it from a place in West Point,Ne. Supposed to be pretty close to the same mix, but cheaper.

[Black Lab 1]

Alpharack is great and turnips are not.

[obert]

Black Lab, you never had any luck with turnips? They go untouched or ??

[Black Lab 1]

Originally Posted by obert

Black Lab, you never had any luck with turnips? They go untouched or ??

A friend of mine planted about 2 acres of turnips, All last deer season, with all of the snow, his turnips were never eaten. He said it was the biggest waste of money. To this date, he's watched deer cross the turnip field to eat in the alpharack field about 300+ yards away.

Now a friend of his has land east of Nevada Missouri and he says the deer love them down there.

He' going to keep the field again this year to see if an additional year will make any difference.

[laughingwatr]

Over the past 10 years I've tried about everything there is. I live in north central Ne. on the Niobrara and I have found that any deer specific seed is pretty much a waste of $$. Without irrigation it only grows sporadically and the price limits the use of most seed to only small parcels. The only seed that has done what it was supposed to is Buck Forage Oats. They say it lasts longer than regular oats after a frost but it is only a couple of days however, the deer still used it for quite a while. We have alfalfa on the ranch so I don't bother growing anything for spring or summer as the utilization is not very high. For hunting, I would take turnips over anything else. They are cheap and you can interseed them with about anything and they will grow. The key to turnips is gettting them early enough to get bulbs before the first freeze and don't plant them too thick. 1 1/2 lbs. per acre is plenty here and if they don't get bulbs they don't get eaten. The other seed I plant that works exteremly well is triticale. Rye is almost as good and is better when it's tall in the snow. I hay both crops and rye produces more hay earlier but the deer will eat the triticale 10-1 over the rye if planted next to each other. This is my experience in my area only so things may be different where you are at.

[huskerbowhunter]

Last year we planted biologic clover plus and then we had chichory next to a cheaper clover (the name escapes me now), both came up great. We didn't plant until late august/early september because we wanted the field to get used all winter. I bet we had about 12 inches of growth in a couple months. We disked the ground up and then rolled the seed in with a sod roller. I highly recommend this if your have it. The other we put in kinda half a** and it didn't come in as thick. The deer seem to hit it decently hard too, but we never could lure the big bucks off the river. The one problem was getting to the stand unnoticed because there were deer in it 24/7 and it was located right under the stand. The woodchucks liked it also..lol An idea that I thought was cool was to put a small wire basket in the middle of the plot. That way you can see how much the deer hit it around the basket, while the plot under the basket will remain untouched.

Another one of my farms we left completely in standing milo last year witht the heads on(mostly for the pheasants) It worked great for them, but it also held quite a few deer. Never hunted it for deer but we would push quite a few deer out everytime we hunted it.

This year were puting in corn and leave it stand all year on a small plot. I think that this will bring the deer in better than any other food plot you can put in. Especially after all the crops around are harvested.

[laughingwatr]

Huskerbowhunter brings up a great point. If you can use a roller or anything to compact the soil you will be way ahead. Some seeds are different than others on the compaction thing but it really helps. Also, I planted some hybrid milo that worked out alright until the tweety birds cleaned all the heads off. This was only about 2 acres though.

[huskerbowhunter]

ya those darn tweeties will start to clean you dry. The pheasants dont do too bad of job at it either. I think we had like 15-20 acres though, but by the time we disked it under April it hardly had anything left on the head.

[jimbosan]

Soy beans,corn and alphalpha!

[smokeybear z]

We had some turnips planted last year too. But last year was a bad year. It froze hard early and snow covered the field from the first part of dec all the way to this spring. I think we would have seen better results if the frost would have came slowly, changing the chemical compounds in the turnips into sweet tasting sugars, which the deer like. Instead of hard frost, ground frozen solid, covered in snow early. Give it another chance this year and see what happens.

[obert]

Good point smokey. In our area it froze and we had ice pretty much the whole winter. That early storm left us with ice underneath and the weather left us with that same amount of ice until Feb. Was definently an odd year in our area.