Get Your Foodplots Planted?

Interior Food Plot, done with an ATV and disc

Have you planted your food plots yet? It’s not too late! We had an extra-long winter here in Wisconsin, probably most of the Midwest, and we are currently trying to finish up our crop plantings for this year. We still have a good ten days left of the planting season, but don’t wait.

You don’t need fancy equipment to put in food plots, but the more equipment you have the easier it is on the body. It can be as simple as loosening up some soil with a rake, or maybe you have some farm equipment to use. Some things can be done by simply killing off grasses and weeds with a product like Round-up, then broadcast the seed 7-10 days later and running a roller over top of it. The dead stuff breaks down and covers the seed as mulch. This works great with seeds like soybeans and similar crops.

We typically try to plant our food plots so that the deer have a variety of foods to choose from throughout the fall and winter months. We begin by planting corn and/or soybeans right now and then come back during the late summer/early fall and plant brassicas, peas, winter wheat, buck oats, etc. This provides forage for the deer for an extended period of time. Most of these seeds can be broadcasted on to the ground, except for the corn which is typically row cropped.

Planting food plots can really be as simple or as sophisticated as you want it to be. Don’t be fooled and think that you need a ton of land or a lot of big equipment to make a food plot possible. Of course the better the equipment and the more land you have the better your odds are of holding more and quality deer. Not everyone has a huge chunk of land to hunt, so make sure that you position your food sources in a way so that the deer utilize the interior portion of your land. This allows you the ability to access and hunt the land without bumping the deer.

If you haven’t already planted your food plots, get out there and get it done! If you can't find the time in the next several days, don’t fret as there will be another planting season coming up at the end of August. Good Luck!