Food Plot Basics
by Gary W. Campbell

I'd appreciate a column on preparation of food plots and/or pre-deer season preparation to increase your hunting chances for a deer.
Eric Meuller

I received this at the old KFOR.com outdoor address. Since I didn't know anything about food plots, I went to find out. There may be some legal issues that are different in different states. Be sure to check with your local wildlife folks.

I called my friend Robert Coffman, the owner and operator of Lost Cabin Outfitters (lostcabin21@aol.com). Lost Cabin manages almost 1500 acres bordering Quartz Mountain State Park in Southwest Oklahoma. Robert has spent the last three years working on building up the health and increasing the size of the deer herd on his land. Turns out the answer is just as simple or as complicated as you care to make it. The more you do, the more you gain. It breaks down like this: By using food plots, feeders, minerals, and managing your deer herd, you can increase both the health of your herd and your chance of bringing home a big buck.
 

Three nice bucks browse an alfalfa field near Lost Cabin in Southwest Oklahoma.
 

Food Plots, Feeders, and Minerals

Gary: What can you do to put food out on your property to make the deer healthier, plus when does that become baiting and illegal?

Robert: In Oklahoma it doesn’t. You can feed deer in Oklahoma. You can feed whole grains or manufactured food, like the one I use called deer and elk pellets. You can plant anything that you think a deer will like, and there are many different things they do like to eat. Top on their list of green forage is clover. In our part of the country clover is not easy to raise. In Eastern Oklahoma, it would be easier to raise because they have more moisture.

One of the things you need to do before trying to start a food plot is get a soil test and find out what the pH level is. That tells you how much lime you’ll have to add, if any. It will also tell you what nutrients you’ll need, nitrogen, phosphorus, and the like. It’s relatively inexpensive. You get a soil sample and take it to your extension office, and they’ll get it tested and send you the results. How many pounds per acre of fertilizer you’ll need, and your lime, that’s very, very important. Otherwise you’ll be throwing your seed dollars away.

A young buck caught by an automatic camera near a food plot.

There are things that are easier to raise -- the no-till or no-plow products are relatively easy. They’ll germinate where other things won’t. And the more you do with those products the more germination you’ll get. If you just clear the ground and toss the seed on top of the ground and don’t do anything else, you’ll get some germination. If you can drag a chain-link drag over the top of it, drag a chain over it, rake it a little bit, you’ll get more germination. You’ll have a higher quality plot.

What’s raised a lot around here is wheat. Deer actually prefer oats over wheat. I’ve raised oats, alfalfa, clover. I’ve used the no-till products. The oats, wheat, and no-till are the easiest ones to get to germinate and produce in Western Oklahoma or Southwestern Oklahoma where I am. The alfalfa and clover are not as easy. It takes more work, more attention, and you have to get it just right. Alfalfa and clover like a smooth, firm seedbed.

Most seed manufacturers recommend what they call a culti-packer. Most people don’t have them. It’s a piece of farm equipment that’s basically a big roller that rolls the seed into the ground. It firms the seed bed, pushes the seed into the ground, and gives a good seed to soil contact. To buy one, even a used one that’s only about 12 feet wide is about four to five thousand dollars.

This buck shows the health and bulk of being raised on the right combination of food and minerals.

Most people use a chain-link drag. Get an old piece of chain-link fence and a couple of 2x4’s, put a little weight on top of the chain link and drag it. That smoothes and firms the soil. Then you broadcast your seed out at the recommended rate and run the drag over it one more time. That incorporates your seed into the soil no more than a quarter to a half an inch deep, which is all it’s got to be.

So it’s really a pretty simple operation to do food plots but, there are several important factors. Number one is a soil test. If you don’t get a soil test, you don’t get the pH right, then you don’t get enough or the right amount of fertilizer in the ground. You’re going to throw your seed dollar away.

Site selection is another. You want your food plots relatively close to the animals’ travel area or their bedding area. You want water nearby. You also want different sizes of feed plots. You have true feeder plots, which are usually an acre or larger. Then you have hunting plots which are back closer to cover and smaller, usually less than an acre. They don’t have to be very big, but when you get down to less than ½ acre in size, they aren’t very effective, especially if you have a very high concentration of deer. They’ll keep it eaten down where it won’t really do them any good, and you won’t attract as many. So you want your hunting plots about ½ acre to an acre and your feeder plots at least an acre.

Gary: Are you going to have to work these every year?

Robert: Not necessarily. If you’re able to raise clover or alfalfa, those are perennials. If you maintain the plot by mowing it and if the deer aren’t eating it down, fertilizing it annually like you should, it could last as many as 5 years. Clover and alfalfa make their own nitrogen, so the only things you’ll need are potassium and phosphorous. They’re supposed to produce as much as 20,000 pounds of green forage per acre per year. And they’re supposed to be as high as 36 percent protein. If you can get at least over 20 percent, you’re in good shape. The pellets I feed are about 18 percent, and the deer get a lot of good out of 18 percent. In the wild, they only get 8 to 11 percent, so anything you can do to increase their protein intake is extremely beneficial.

One other thing, if you’ve got fruit trees or nut trees, mast crops. If you can fertilize your mast crops, your fruit trees or acorns, pecans, and things like that, you will improve the attractiveness of your area. Put it along the drip line of the tree, then the tree will produce the mast crop that you want.
 

This little guy will grow into a monster buck given good nutrition and herd management.

Gary: What else to you do at your location, other than the food plots?

Robert: I use corn, not as a staple or as a true food source but as an attractant to bring the deer in so they’re easier to locate. I use minerals, too. A lot of places are short on minerals. They’re not as readily available for the deer,. You will see a great increase in the number of points, in the size of the antlers, and in the overall health of the deer with the minerals and the increase in protein from your food plots and the supplemental protein that you give them. Like I say, I feed the pellets pretty much year round, but more in the summer and into the fall whenever food is not as readily available in the wild. Agriculture products [have been harvested], grasses and weeds that they browse on have less protein [when no longer green]. They’re less stressed if you give them that extra protein, and you’ll see an improvement in the number of points and size of the antlers in the male deer.

The female deer will start having more fawns. If you commonly see good, healthy does that have twins or triplets, you’re doing pretty good. I’ve begun to see more and more sets of twins. I used to see them occasionally, but since I’ve been feeding the pellets, mainly, I see them a lot more often. They’re healthier than they were. In the first year, I saw an increase, and in two years, I saw an increase in the bucks’ antler points and size.

Gary: How many plots on 1500 acres?

Robert: I think what I’ve got right now is probably 20 to 25 acres total, and I need more than that. My saving grace is there’s also a lot of agriculture down there and the winter wheat helps a bunch in the food plot category.

Shrink the Core Area

My main purpose in the food plots is not just to add the protein. My main purpose is to give a variety of things they like to eat in my general area. That in turn is supposed to do what they call shrink the deer’s core area. Deer will travel a certain distance for their food and water. If you can provide them with everything they need and like in a small area, they won’t go as far. If they’re traveling two miles and you can give them everything they want in the center of that two miles, they’ll pull down and only travel a mile or less.

That’s my purpose. If I can pull the deer down into a smaller area, they have a better survival chance because I’m managing my deer. Everybody should be managing their deer, not just going out and planting food plots then harvesting the first animal that comes by.
 

In the early morning, a young buck nips acorns, adding mast to his diet.
 

I’m seeing an improvement in a relatively short period of time. Three years is not very long. I’m anxious to see what it’s going to do in the next two years. I want to get more food plots in and see how many deer I can hold, how many will shrink into the core area. This is interesting and a lot of fun -- a lot of work, too.

Gary: How many feeders do you have?

Robert: Six mechanical feeders -- timer feeders, and five gravity feeders, called poor man’s feeders. They are PVC feeders. Take a piece of large PVC pipe, I use 10”, cut it into sections almost five feet tall. Glue the caps on, then cut a slot at one end, using that for the bottom. Then tie it to a tree. You can fill it with corn, and it feeds out the bottom. It’s a gravity feed, basically. As they eat it, more comes out. And, they work. I’ve seen many, many deer come along eating the corn out there.

The best are the sling feeders, the mechanical feeders. They are set on a timer, and when they go off [they spray] a metered amount of food [for several yards in all directions]. The deer will be standing around waiting for them to go off.

Manage Your Herd

Foods plots, supplements, and minerals are not a magic bullet. The most important thing to improve the deer where you hunt is don’t shoot the young deer. Don’t shoot a deer that has say less than six or eight points. Try to harvest a male deer that is three and half years old, better four and a half. Because it take at least three and a half years for a deer with the right nutrition to reach its full potential. At four and a half to five and a half, it can grow into a higher scoring animal with a bigger body weight..

A nice buck browsing a food plot, caught by a Lost Cabin automatic camera.

But if you just continually shoot the younger ones, you’ll never have as many big ones. Try and harvest the older deer and that way all those younger deer have a chance to grow up and mature. Your opportunities will be better; your herd will be healthier. The other thing you need to do as well is harvest does. You need to reduce the doe population. The perfect buck to doe ratio is one to one, but I don’t know anyone who ever reaches that. The optimum in management is three to one, three does to one buck. You get it down to close that, you’re doing pretty good.

Gary: You have hunts other than deer hunts on you place, so are the things you’re putting out also helping other species?

Robert: Well, some things like the alfalfa, the clover, and the no-till help turkeys. Turkeys also like insects. Insects are attracted to the clover, alfalfa, and no-till that the turkey will eat, and that way it’s beneficial to them.

Wild turkeys also benefit from food plots and feeders.

This is the first year that I’m going to try millet for dove. Millet has about a 60 day growing season, or life span to make a mature seed, and the seeds are what the dove are after. Millet is also liked by deer. And, I’ve contacted the Oklahoma Wildlife Department and the U. S. Fish and Game Service, and I’ve also looked up the regulations on the internet for both, and Oklahoma actually directs you to the federal, the U. S. Fish and Game site, for their regulations.

If you plant millet or any other crop that you’re wanting to use to attract dove, give the crop time to produce its fruit, and you are allowed to actually mow it and knock the seed out of the head. Dove won’t knock the seed out of the head. Quail will, pheasant will, but dove won’t Dove want the seed on the ground. So say you plant your millet the first of June and about the 15th of August, you can take your mower or your brush hog and mow so many feet of it, knocking the seed onto the ground. That’ll start attracting the dove, then the next week or two weeks, you come back and mow some more, and you can keep doing that until you’ve knocked all of it down. That’s legal.

It’s considered baiting and is not legal if you just throw the seed out on the ground. Say you want to hunt dove, and you’ve got a field, and you want to sow some wheat. You can’t do anything different than the normal, agricultural practice. It is normal to sow wheat the first of September, but it’s not normal to go over the same field four times and put out four times the amount of seed. You can’t do that. You’ve got to put out the recommended rate and follow normal practice. You can’t just scatter seed on the ground and hunt over it.

Another thing in the regulations is that an area that has seed tossed out on it as bait is considered baited for ten days. It’s up to the hunter to know. If you hunt a place that somebody has baited and you don’t know it, you’re going to get a ticket.

Now, you can’t hunt waterfowl over a grain field that has been manipulated in any way other than normal agricultural practice. Say you’ve got a field of what they call haygrazer. Haygrazer is a real tall grass, looks like a large Johnson grass. It puts out a head with seed in it. If you raise that and run your mower over it, 1st of September for dove, when teal season rolls around about the 15th of September, you can’t hunt teal over it because of the difference in waterfowl regulations. They’re both migratory game birds, but the waterfowl regulations are different.

In order to hunt waterfowl over it, you would have to bale it. You could swath it, rake it, and bale it, then you could hunt waterfowl over that field. And you’re going to knock the seeds out of when you swath it. You accomplish the same thing, but the way the statues are written you have to stick to bona fide agricultural methods.

Gary: What kinds of hunts are you guiding?

Robert: My primary goal is deer hunting. I’ve been guiding turkey, dove, but so far, that’s it. I’ve had a lot of success with turkey and with the dove. That’s why I’m going to try the millet. To get more dove on our property. They’re not as easy to hunt as they should be, and I’m going to try to improve that.

Gary: Have you any deer hunts this year?

Robert: I hope to. I’m always going to stay small. I don’t ever want more than 2 hunters on it [the 1500 acres] at a time. I don’t ever want to get bigger than that. My purpose is not really to make money; I just enjoy what I’m doing. I just basically want to pay the seed bill. I offer fairly short hunts, and you will be successful. They are fair chase whitetail deer hunts.

I want to thank Robert Coffman of Lost Cabin Outfitters for his help in putting this column together. If you want to be one of only two hunters on 1500 acres of prime deer hunting land, you can contact Robert at Lost Cabin Outfitters, lostcabin21@aol.com, or call 405-642-3707. I can testify to how good his deer are. I took one of those corn-fed bucks off his place that was some of the best venison I’ve ever eaten.

The Lost Cabin of Lost Cabin Outfitters.