Food plots are no doubt one of the most popular topics in the deer hunting community. It makes sense because the power of food plots to attract deer is no secret. There is so much to know and learn which makes food plotting both challenging and rewarding at the same time. Hunters have long debated what the best fall and winter food plot is for deer hunting. The answer is not cut and dry because you want a variety of different options to provide a deer in a food plot. A variety of food is better than just one monoculture food plot. Everyone’s situation is a little different so keep reading along to find out what the best option is for you.
Planting food plots that are high in carbs and protein are essential to a deer’s ability to thrive and survive during winter months. Some of the common seed types are corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, rye, turnips, radish, and rapes. The list of seed types can keep going but these are the major players. Corn and soybeans are very common in the midwest states and they dominate the majority of available agricultural land.
Planting corn for deer
Corn and beans can be extremely attractive food sources during the winter. By December, most of the corn and soybeans have been harvested by the farmers. So if you have standing grain when there is none left everywhere else, it can be very powerful at attracting deer into your plot.
There are some downsides to planting corn. When deer are feeding in corn it can be almost impossible to take a shot on a deer that is standing within the cornfield. Unless they are feeding on the edge of the field the options are pretty limited for you to take a shot, and deer can walk right by you without ever getting a shot off. You could cut some shooting lanes in the corn to give you a better chance at taking a shot. Another downside of corn is that deer can bed down in it and hide and feed without ever revealing themselves to you. They could be in the corn and you not even know it. Another downside to planting corn is that you typically don’t want to plant it multiple years in row in order to maintain soil health and keep growing productive food plots in the future at that location.
The corn kernel is a large seed that needs good soil depth when planted and space to grow between each plant. Therefore, planting corn typically requires specialized equipment to successfully grow a productive stand of corn.
People use corn for other methods other than to feed deer. Because of the height that corn grows, many people use corn as a visual screen. Even though blocking deer from seeing your entry and exit should be a top priority for stand access, I would not suggest planting corn as a screen unless that screen is a far distance from your entry/exit path to the stand or perhaps it’s screening a road where people are driving by. Generally you don’t want to encourage the deer to be in a spot where you could eventually spook them. Even if you don’t spook deer when you are there, the deer will eventually eat in the corn and smell that you were there. That’s a good way to educate them on your movements which is not ideal for getting deer to move during daylight hours near that location.
Planting soybeans for deer
I really like soybeans. Soybeans are an incredible plant for deer because they’re going to feed them all summer long and through the winter, if you can make them last that long! Deer are highly attracted to the leaf of a growing soybean plant and they maintain a high level of attraction up to the point when the leaves turn color and start falling off the stem. The bean pods are going to attract deer during the late season. The bean itself is highly preferred deer food and when the soybean variety has a shatter resistant pod then those beans will not fall on the ground and will make them very easy for deer to consume.
The shatter resistant pod genetics is something that you can buy, so if you are planting soybeans for deer then don’t purchase soybeans without shatter resistant pods.
I don’t have a lot of negative things to say about planting soybeans. Probably the number one negative is that a small food plot of soybeans won’t last very long if you have average deer numbers. The exception to this is if you protect them with an electric fence or something similar. Installing an electric fence can turn into a complex project if you have never built one before. I would suggest buying a fence kit with everything you need to avoid headache and frustration. If you are considering building an electric fence around your food plot then I recommend this kit on Amazon.
Beans don’t grow very tall so you will be able to see deer when they are feeding in them and typically don’t have a problem taking shots on target animals that are standing in the beans. An exception might be during early season when all of the leaves are still on the stem and the beans are standing tall enough to block the vitals on a deer.
Planting brassica’s for deer
Brassica is a generic name that is used when referring to a specific family of seed types. Most popular types for deer food plots are turnips, rape, and radish. When I plant brassicas I’m planting a variety and not just one type of seed. What I love the most about brassicas is they are tiny seeds that don’t need much seed-to-soil contact to germinate. They are super easy to plant and offer a green food source that deer love. Deer will eat the leaves prior to winter and when mother nature gets cold and frosty the bulbs of the brassica’s increase in attraction.
There are a few downsides to planting brassica’s. Just like corn, you don’t want to plant them in the same spot multiple years in a row. Also, if your deer have never been exposed to or eaten brassica plants in previous seasons then deer may need a few years to learn that the bulbs taste good. It can sometimes take a few years for them to get conditioned to them especially if there are other food sources in the area to eat. If there isn’t much food during the stressful times of winter, deer are pretty much eating everything. So once they get their first bite of the bulb they learn right away and will consume them.
Planting oats, wheat, and cereal rye for deer
Deer are highly attracted to oats, wheat, and cereal rye. I am typically using at least one of these in my food plot and land management strategy.
Cereal rye is my favorite because it creates a lot of forage, suppresses weeds from growing, and like wheat it will last through all of the winter months and into the spring.
Planting them is easy and can grow in poor soil conditions. If your plots are planted in oats, wheat, or cereal rye and they aren’t performing well then all you have to do is give them a shot of nitrogen (46-0-0) to get them back on track.
One of the downsides of oats is that they might die off in the bitter cold, which doesn’t lend well to sustaining deer through the tough winter months. Wheat doesn’t produce a lot of forage and you have to be mindful that you are planting an awnless wheat variety. If you don’t plant awnless wheat then deer won’t eat them as well because the other variety’s make a seed head that is like eating a ball of hair. I wouldn’t like eating that either. Click this link to read my article about planting oats.
Should you hunt over your food plot?
Food plots can definitely improve your hunting, but they can also have the opposite affect. Having an attractive food source is going to draw deer to the plot, but are those deer coming in to eat at night or during daylight hours? If you can hunt your food plot without deer hearing, seeing, or smelling you at any point during your hunt then you should be ok to hunt over your food plot.
If you don’t have a way to hunt a food plot without educating the deer, then don’t hunt it.
All you’re going to do is make the hunting experience worse over time. Consider if you should even have a food plot to begin with if its doing more harm than good. You may need to plant the food plot and don’t hunt over it in some situations depending on layout of the land where you hunt. Try hunting the outside perimeter where deer are entering and exiting the plot. Think of a food plot as something that keeps deer close by and persuades them to stick around your hunting property where you can take advantage of their movements.
Where you should plant your food plot
So many variables come into play when choosing the exact location of a food plot. There are so many considerations to take into account. Should I plant on flat ground? Can I get planting equipment to the location? Should I plant where the best soils are? Should I plant a food plot close to my neighbors property, near a road, or in the center of my property? Questions like this go on and on. Every property is unique so these questions will be answered differently from property to property. Additionally, every hunter is unique in with their goals, their available amount of time to spend on hunting and habitat improvements, how they want to use the property for non-hunting related activities and so on. With this being said some conditions and scenarios are move favorable than others when discussing where to plant your food plot, but there is not a one size fits all answer to all of these.
I plant my food plots in locations with a specific purpose, but here are a few considerations:
Planting on flat ground is ideal so you can broadcast seed on the ground without it getting washed down a slope from a heavy rain shower. If you plan on planting food plots with implements or heavy equipment then hills can make that planting a more difficult process. If you follow my step by step no-till food plot rotation strategy, planting on a hill is not as big of a concern because the existing vegetation will aid in keeping the seed from washing down the slope. You also don’t need heavy equipment with a no-till food plot strategy.
The condition of the soil is important but soil type, fertility, and PH shouldn’t be the sole reason for where you plant your food plot. No matter where your food plot location is, you need to do a soil test and let the results of that test tell you what to do to the soil for optimal food plot results. Some crops do better than others when it comes to PH requirements. Also, some crops need different nutrients and fertilizer than others.
If you have a super low PH of (<5.5), you’re probably not going to want to plant corn, soybeans, and many brassicas. For the first year or two you should focus on putting down the recommended amount of lime to get the PH back up to between 6-7. I keep records of my soil sample results so I know how the food plot is doing from year-to-year.
Why seed selection is important
A rule of thumb to live by is make sure you are planting the right seed type based on what your soil PH is.
If your PH is inadequate then maybe plant buckwheat in the summer and cereal rye for the fall/winter.
Both of these seed types do well in very poor soils and will help introduce organic matter in your soil. Cereal rye also has the added benefit of attracting deer around the time of year when bucks start to shed their antlers in the early spring!
Sustaining deer throughout the winter is an important part of keeping your deer healthy and helping them reach their full genetic potential.
Part of your thought process in seed selection should take into account what your neighbors are offering for food. You should try to offer the deer something that the neighbors aren’t already providing. By doing this, you’re not only offering the deer a more balanced diet, but the diversity in their diet is something they prefer. In a perfect world your property should provide deer with as much variety as possible so that you are offering everything that your neighbors are offering and then some.
Deer are just like people when it comes to variety in their diet. Pizza might be your favorite food but I don’t think you would want to eat pizza for every meal every single day? Eventually you will look for something different to eat and deer will do the same. The more variety you can offer on your property the more likely you are to keep them on your land more frequently.
Give the deer a variety of different food to eat and they will be much happier and more likely to spend more time on your property than the neighbors.
Do you see more deer as the hunting season progresses?
Do your deer sightings go up as the hunting season passes along or does just the opposite happen? If your deer sightings go down it’s typically not because all of the deer are getting shot. There are two reasons that are likely causing your deer encounters to become fewer and fewer.
The first is your hunting practices are educating deer. They know you are there and hunting them. Many times they learn this after your hunt is over from the scent you leave behind.
The second reason is you don’t have the food or there are better food sources on other properties.
If you want to see your deer numbers increase as the season goes along, then do everything you can to not educate deer to your presence and have the best food sources in the area.
In most parts of the country your neighbors probably aren’t thinking about managing their hunting practices and planting food plots with the idea of increasing deer sightings. And even if you have one or two neighbors that do manage these things, the majority of the lands your deer roam are not being managed like this. Outcompete your neighbors hunting and food plot practices to have the best fall and winter hunting opportunities in the area.
Do your food plots last through all the winter months?
Have you every heard of buck recruitment? One of the best ways to recruit bucks is to educate them early that your property is a place where they should be spending their time.
You can educate ALL of the deer in your area about what your property can offer them during the winter months when hunting season is over.
When there are no attractive food sources in an area and your property is loaded up with a variety of food, then you’re going to draw every deer in the area to that food plot at some point. This is how you teach deer to become comfortable with being on your property and get them to include your property as part of their home range.
You need to try and make your food plots last all winter long. Many times this comes down to plot size, seed selection, and protecting your plots with an electric fence kit. If your plot size isn’t big enough to feed deer through the end of winter then you need to make a change. Perhaps you need to plant brassicas instead of beans or keep an electric fence up through the fall when you aren’t hunting. You could always take your electric fence down during the rut and monitor your food plot the first year to see how long it takes for the deer to eat all of the food in your plot.
Put a utilization cage inside your food plot to help you monitor how quickly the deer are eating the food. A utilization cage is just a wire fence that is wrapped in a 3’ diameter circle and held in place with two t-post stakes. This will keep the deer from being able to eat anything inside the cage so you can compare what the food looks like inside the cage as opposed to the rest of the plot.
If your plots are getting destroyed then start shooting does, increase your food plot acres, or both.
Variety is king for fall and winter food plots
Variety is important. You don’t want to just plant one type of seed for several reasons. If you’re competing with your neighbors than it won’t be hard for them to outcompete your food plot efforts if you are only offering one type of food.
Also, different crops are attractive at different times of year. There are types of brassica that sweeten up after winter provides its first frost of the season. This will make for an ideal late season food source. Some food plots such as clover will lose attraction during the winter so that’s another reason why planting a variety of different food will help keep deer in the area and return for more.
Variety of food is important because it helps support your hunting efforts as deer season progresses, encouraging the deer to use the property all season long.
I mentioned it before, but deer don’t want to eat the same thing every day and different food sources peak in attraction at different times of year so plant a variety of seed types with this in mind.
Sometimes it’s a good idea to plant seeds that aren’t highly attractive to deer
You can also NOT offer certain foods based on your management goals. For example, if you have too many does on your property then you probably don’t need to worry about planting spring food plot seeds such as clover and alfalfa. Spring food plots will encourage deer to use those food plot areas and may increase pressure on fall food plots that you are trying to keep the deer away from.
Does are looking for high quality food and cover during the spring when they are giving birth to fawns. Don’t encourage them to use your land during this time if your deer numbers are too high.
If you are worried that this strategy will repel bucks away from your property then don’t. You may not see them on your property much in the spring months but that’s ok because your primary focus should be attracting bucks to your property during hunting season and the winter months when you are able to decide which deer get shot and which get to survive another year.
When deer density is high my favorite spring food plot seeds are buckwheat and cereal rye. Buckwheat is also a great soil builder if you are trying to increase the organic matter and soil condition of your food plot area. The strategy behind choosing these seeds types is that you want to plant a less attractive food plot seed than what other types might provide and do what you can to not encourage does to stay there.
Know what you are buying before you buy it
So, what’s the best food plot product out there on the market? There are a lot food plot seed companies selling the same type of seed, but seeds have different varieties. As I mentioned earlier, soybeans have different varieties that you can buy that have been bred to have specific genetics such as pods with shatter resistance. Specific varieties of a seed type are very important and that doesn’t just apply to soybeans.
If you are going to plant the best fall and winter food plot then you need to learn how to read a seed label. If you learned this already you know the seed label will tell you how much percentage of each seed type is in the bag. Providing an accurate seed label is a law that every seed company has to follow.
Many people don’t read the label and seed companies know this and are taking advantage of consumers.
They sell low quality food plot products because they can profit from it by selling a cheap seed at a high price because the picture on the bag looks pretty. I learned this the hard way, which leads me to the next topic.
Don’t make the same food plot mistakes I made
There are some seeds like rye grass (not cereal rye) that companies will sell because it’s super cheap and easy to plant providing a green “food” source. Even though green grass might look pretty in your plot, this is extremely low quality deer food. Some companies will put this kind of seed in a bag with a picture of a big buck on the front of the bag and uneducated people buy it. I have been a victim of this marketing trap when I grew my first food plot. My “food” plot looked really green and grew well, but in my many hours of hunting that season I never saw a deer take a bite of that “food” plot and neither did my trail camera. Deer just walked right through it.
You need to understand what you’re buying and the seed label is where you start. There is information on the label like weed seed and inert matter that should be understood before buying. Inert matter can sometimes be seed coating, which is like a powder on the seeds that help them germinate. Sometimes it’s not so cut and dry to understand what you are getting, but the percentages of each item in the bag is listed on the seed label, and that label will give you a good idea if it’s a quality product or not.
Don’t buy old seed because the odds of it germinating get worse and worse the older it gets.
No matter how good the product is, don’t buy it if it’s a few years old or more.
The times I ran into trouble with this is when I was buying seed from a local store. Sometimes these stores will stock seed in the back of the store that won’t hit the shelf until the following year. Try to buy your seed directly from the source when possible or buy it from stores that sell through a lot of inventory. This will help ensure you are getting fresh seed. As always, read the seed label and look for the date when the seed was tested.
My biggest mistake when it came to food plots was thinking I could get by without doing a soil test.
After my first food plot failure and reading more about soil tests and educating myself, I never skipped doing a soil test again and my results showed. There is nothing more frustrating than buying seed, putting in the work to plant it and the result being a food plot failure and waste of time and money. It’s already hard enough to get mother nature to cooperate with you to grow a successful food plot. Don’t skip a soil test.
Do the soil test and amend the soil with the suggested amount of lime and fertilizer. The soil test kits are cheap, so just do it and buy one. Here is the soil test kit I buy on Amazon.
Lastly, have a plan in place for site preparation. You need to make sure your area is going to be ready to plant when you need to plant it. This takes some planning and foresight. Check out my step by step no-till food plot rotation strategy to help put you in a position to grow a successful food plot.
These are the products that I buy
Because I know that seed has a tendency to sit on the shelf for a while I’m very particular on how I buy my seed. Also, I’m very busy and I rather have my seed delivered to me than having to pick it up myself. For both of these reason’s I buy my seed online.
The majority of the time I buy my seed directly from the suplier or on Amazon because I know that these popular products are constantly getting ordered. I have had a lot of success with Amazon and they deliver within a day or two of me ordering it. Also, if I happen to get a bag of seed with a seed label I don’t like then I can easily return it at no charge for return shipping.
I have tested several different food plot products and these are the companies I like buy from because of their attention to quality.
- Whitetail Institute
- Real World Wildlife Products
- Northwoods Whitetails
Like I mentioned before, I’m a huge fan of buying on Amazon so I find myself buying whitetail Institute products most frequently because the other two companies don’t sell their products on Amazon as of 2020 when i’m writing this. The Amazon links below are the Whitetail Institute products i’ve used and had success with, but you can also go to the Real World Wildlife Products or Northwoods Whitetail websites and order their products directly from them. They offer great products as well.
If you decide to buy Whitetail Institute products, there is a useful tool they provide to help you know when your planting dates are. Here is the link to that tool on their website.
Oats, Brassicas, Winter Peas (1/2 acre)
Kale, Turnips, Radish, Sugar Beets (1/2 acre)
Brassica Blend with Tall Tine Turnip (1/2 acre)
Winter Peas, Oats, Kale, Radish (1/2 acre)
Summary
In a nutshell, the best fall and winter food plot for hunting deer is not cut and dry. The simple answer is that you need a variety different food types. A lot of thought and strategy should come into play when you are making a decisions about your food plots. Think about how your food plot strategy relates to your hunting strategy. There are a lot of seed options available to buy that peak in attraction at different times during the hunting season. Plant your food plots with a specific purpose.
If you really want to have the best fall and winter food plots then offer the best food sources in the area by offering a variety of different foods. Your property should offer something more attractive and different than your neighbors property. If you are having trouble separating your properties attraction from your neighbors then one way you can really set your property apart is by planting fruit trees like apples, persimmon, and pear. Just do your research if you go down that road because they can be extremely difficult, expensive, and time consuming to keep them alive in some cases, especially apples.