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Food Plots in the Woods? Are They Worth it?

Poor Man Plots and Food Plots in the Woods

 

Food plots are such a widely discussed topic some people become overwhelmed by the ideas and the requirements.  Yes, much can be done to create the best food available for your deer. However, you should not be disappointed when access to wide open fields with the perfect pH is hard to come by. To achieve your whitetail goals you must think outside the box and work with what you have! Food plots in the woods and poor man plots can have equal if not more impact on the success of your season if you play your cards correctly.  Planting food in the woods takes a fair amount of sweat equity but the results can be dynamic! Making an effort to plant food in small secluded hideaways can give you control over tree stand locations never before possible.  However, to create the perfect trap for your target deer it is important to understand what you are getting into.

 

 

 

 

Creating the Trap | Food Plots in the Woods

 

Poor man food plots can be understood by the obvious name…equipment is either hard to come by or access is not possible into the plot. This creates the initial work. Clearing trees and brush with a chainsaw, using fire or sweat equity to expose the soil, and then finally planting. It is hard work. Take the time to consider this and the factors below. Just know that by the end of all this hard work, poor man food plots and food plots in the woods, in the right locations, are most definitely worth it!

 

 

  1. Timing: To successfully create a kill plot for deer in the woods looking at the calendar is everything. The idea behind a poor man plot is to create a killing plot…not a feeding plot. This is often the hardest thing to understand when it comes to poor man plots and food plots in the woods. You will be putting a significant amount of work in. The earlier you get started on this the better as you want the deer to be relatively comfortable with the area by deer season. There is also the timing issue in the planting sense. Depending on the species you go with, you will need to plant your food plot months ahead of time to ensure a lush green and attractive plot by September and October. Timing is crucial, but the species is also crucial.

 

  1. Species: food plots in the woods and poor man plots will not often go over an acre in size. This limits what species can be planted. The other issue here is the shade. Food plots in the woods will often get very limited sunlight. These two factors in combination leave you with not a lot of options. The clear choice for many is white clover. With the ability to sprawl, grow great in shade, and take a beating from browsing deer, clover makes the ideal species for food plots in the woods. Of course, cereal grains like winter wheat and rye can take the attraction beyond the limited timeframe of clover but be cautious as this will limit your herbicide use. Weed management and control will be crucial for you poor man plot as weeds, shrubs, and saplings will come sprawling out of the dirt once the sun hits the forest floor.

 

  1. Poor Soils: Many hunters regulated to hunting poor soils can use food plots in the woods to concentrate what is often a meager deer herd on their property.  If you have to hunt in an area with poor soil conditions and high elevations don’t get too disappointed.  This is where research is handy. First, it is imperative to do soil samples in the exact places you want to put food down.  Comparing soil samples to recommended pH levels on the bags of seed you wish to plant is a great way to start. After receiving the results of the soil tests back consider the amount of lime needed to bring about a balance to the particular area.  Lime is a base which helps bring balance to unbalanced soils.  If your chosen area has had the nutrients washed away on a steep grade or is higher in elevation, then you will want to find the right amount of lime per acre needed to balance the pH to help optimize seed growth. Second, choosing the right seed for the pH is critical.  Typically seed manufacturers will have the information on each seed and what pH the plant will grow in best. Taking into consideration what your goals are for a given location you will want to plant accordingly.  Some plants are more resilient in bad soils and can thrive. Clover, for example, can grow in most soils and is a nitrogen fixing legume which can help level out the pH and build organic matter for future plots.

 

  1. Picking Your Mouse Trap: Since this is all about boosting your shot percentage look for smaller open areas with good cover surrounding to make the deer feel more comfortable. Hinge cut areas feeding into your food plot to create a natural safe funnel for cover. Edge feathering is also a good option as long as you are not taking a significant amount of space away from your plot. This will provide opportunities to hang new tree stands.  Since this is a new source of food, deer may be slightly wary when feeding but more relaxed with good cover to slip in and out of constantly. Look for spots an eighth or a quarter of an acre while taking the prevailing winds into account especially when hunting mountainous terrain and the changing thermals dictate when stands can and cannot be hunted.

 

 

 

 

Making It Happen

 

When you locate the spot you’re going to plant food make sure to spray the area to kill weeds. Weeds in the woods must be killed quickly in order to give the food plot seed the proper place to grow. If you can mow or take a weed cutter with you and cut down the forage as close as you can to the ground. Within a week you should be back spraying the entire mowed area. Weed and brush killer is available at most home and garden stores. Spray everything in your planting area as it is worth the effort and will make your plot far more productive in the long run. Using a backpack type sprayer is more than sufficient as your areas ought to be fairly small. Within a couple weeks of spraying your chosen are will look different and you’ll be ready to take the next steps in cultivating the ground.  Pack a good rake or leaf blower to rid the covered area of leaves if your spots are heavily wooded. Do not turn the soils over until you are ready to plant.  This is in order to keep weeds from taking a hold of your inner woods spot too early even if you have sprayed.   Break up the soils either with a tiller or a hand rake like you would in the family garden and use the appropriate amount of seed for the size of the area you are cultivating.

 

 

Planting food plots in the woods provides a new opportunity for your deer season and new locations to hang your tree stands.  In a matter of a few months, you can transform your property from being a barren wasteland to a honey-hole. Proper planning and execution, advice from others, and genuine care for your food plots will be the difference maker come fall. Planting food plots in the woods is all about making your own luck. By taking matters into your own hands you become more invested in the pursuit and those venison steaks taste a bit better during the holidays.

private land hunting guide how to maximize your opportunity Big Game Tree Stands

Private Land Hunting Guide | How to Maximize Your Opportunity

Steps You Can Take to Make Private Land Hunting More Productive

If you’re fortunate enough to own some private land hunting ground, you should be very thankful. Whether it’s a small hunting shack situated on 40 acres “up north” in the woods or simply the family farm you grew up on, private land is a real blessing. You have so many possibilities before you. These endless possibilities include shaping the land the way you would like it to look. Not only do you have the ability to keep a property in your family’s heritage, but you can help mold it into whatever you want. Some landowners scoff at this, realizing they may not personally ever see the fruits of their labor. But this is sadly short-sighted, particularly if they have family members who will one day inherit it. Owning private hunting land allows you to create a real and lasting legacy on your property for generations after you. Even if you only intend on selling it instead of keeping it in the family, managing your property for timber, wildlife, or other purposes often adds value to it, which you can recoup upon sale. In short, a little work now is worth the end result.

For those who can only hunt on public land or private hunting land for lease, it’s inconceivable that anyone would even question this. Public land hunters have many possibilities open to them, but very few of the ones this article will discuss. They can’t alter the land they hunt or improve it in any real way, and they have to share it with everyone else who decides they would like to try hunting there. Private land hunting doesn’t have these issues. Aldo Leopold once famously said in A Sand County Almanac, “A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of the land.” It doesn’t matter if you like whitetail archery hunting, or prefer a firearm either. These techniques will work in either situation. Without further ado, let’s discuss the tactics you can use to make your property more attractive to wildlife, which effectively makes it more attractive to you as well.

Habitat Management  

Have no fear if you often wonder, “What do whitetail deer eat on my property?” Deer are well-equipped from getting everything they need from nature. So instead of fighting this or trying to outdo nature, sometimes the best course of action is to manage the natural habitat first. Smart management practices help improve the diversity of age classes, structure, and species in a forest or prairie. Management activities could include timber harvest, hinge-cutting trees, burning, or planting, to name a few. Let’s look at each one of these.

If your property consists of a lot of mature forest, you may want to consider a timber harvest. While mature forest is nice for bow hunting deer, it doesn’t offer deer very much in the way of food or cover. Consult a state or private forester to come tour your property so they can advise you on the best harvest practice. This is a long-lasting decision that could affect resale value if you’re going to take that route, so please consult with a professional before having a contractor cut anything. With some species and stands, a clear-cut is the best option (e.g., aspen trees), while for others it might be better to do a shelter wood cut (e.g. oak trees). The aftermath might look devastating, but it’s actually a fresh start for nature. The disturbance resembles a natural blow-down or fire event, and the sudden amount of sunlight to hit the forest floor will sprout up all kinds of herbaceous and woody plants, called early successional species. This young forest opening is perfect feeding and bedding habitat for deer, turkeys, grouse, and all kinds of other animals, which makes public land hunting even better. These areas are often the best for box stands for deer hunting, since you can hunt them stealthily all day while deer wander through a combined bedding/feeding area.

If you’re not quite ready to conduct a full clear-cut, but still want to improve your habitat and even add some variety to it, a hinge-cut could be a good idea. This practice involves only cutting non-desirable trees (from a timber or mast perspective) to release desirable ones, opening up the canopy, and adding horizontal structure at ground level. It can be done on a large or micro scale, and can easily be done yourself if you’re comfortable with a chainsaw. These DIY management activities are what make private land hunting so great. For larger canopy trees, many people fully cut them down and use the trunk as firewood instead of letting it rot. The hinge-cutting is best done on smaller trees, roughly less than 6 inches in diameter at breast height (dbh), for safety reasons anyway. To do one properly, slowly cut halfway through the tree on the opposite side you would like it to fall. Once halfway through, start slowly pushing the top until it leans over and falls. Cut a little more if you need to until it slowly falls over. You need to leave enough tree material connected so the roots can still keep the top section alive. This will extend the useful life of your hinge-cutting and allows the tops to produce tender growth at deer level, which they will browse heavily. This practice will also look very messy when you’re done, especially compared to surrounding mature forests with wide-open views. But that structure provides great bedding for deer, which can be great for bow hunting deer stands.

private land hunting guide how to maximize your opportunity Big Game Tree StandsIf your private property has a lot of old fields or native prairie remnants, burning is a very good practice. Many prairie communities evolved with natural fires, so they actually require an occasional fire to recycle nutrients, reduce the mass of organic material, remove woody species from taking over, and encourage tender new growth to sprout. Again, this is another practice you should do only with professional help unless you’re experienced in doing it, as it can quickly get out of hand and do a lot of damage. Prescribed burns, no matter how small, can do a lot of good at regenerating native species and providing lush new food for animals.

Finally, you could also plant native or beneficial tree, shrub, or herbaceous species on your private hunting land. Any wildlife planting you do should either provide hard or soft mast, or provide a good source of cover. For example, oaks and apple trees provide consistent food either now or in a few decades, depending on what you plant. Cedars provide a dense thermal cover for deer to escape from harsh conditions. A hedgerow of wild plum or crabapple through a field provides both food and cover. If you’re going to plant something, do it right by protecting your investment with necessary cages or tubes, and maintain it so that other species don’t immediately overwhelm it. In a few years, you should have a fairly self-sustaining landscape that provides much more than it once did.

Food Plots for Private Land Hunting 

Earlier we said that most deer populations don’t strictly need food plots to survive, but almost any population could benefit from them. A well-managed food plot can produce a tremendous amount of highly digestible and nutritious food that helps deer to reach their full genetic potential. And they are certainly nice when you plan on bow hunting deer. Food plots are probably the number one reason people would like to own their own hunting land. It’s no wonder, as planting food plots can be an extremely addicting hobby.

private land hunting guide how to maximize your opportunity Big Game Tree StandsWhile you can divide up food plot types in several ways, we’ll classify them as either feeding or hunting food plots in this article because they have very different outcomes. A strictly feeding food plot is meant to provide calories to the deer herd in an unpressured environment. Corn/bean fields and hay fields act as feeding plots from spring through summer. Private landowners often plant clover as a perennial food plot, which help nursing does and antler-growing bucks during the summer. Some people even plant fall food plots strictly to help deer through the winter and never hunt them. These plots are useful for building the resident deer herd on your property, and are amazing when used in or near a deer sanctuary area.

Hunting plots, on the other hand, are the secret weapon of private land hunting. They are generally much smaller than larger, destination feeding areas. Because of their size, they physically cannot support very many deer in them at any one time and are easier to hunt without educating the deer herd to your intentions. Bow hunting for whitetail deer is especially useful in these plots, since a hunter can shoot almost all the way across them in any direction. Additionally, deer are far more likely to use these hunting plots during daylight hours since they are so secluded and surrounded by cover. Hunting plots are usually planted with a highly attractive fall annual species, such as brassicas, cereal grains, or winter peas. When these species really start growing, you should have your best bow hunting stands hung nearby. By planting these plots on your hunting properties, you can strategically pull deer onto your land in the fall. Luckily, this is exactly the time you want them to hang out on your turf, so neighboring landowners can’t shoot them.

Private Land Hunting Strategies 

This is the fun part, when you can pull all the pieces of the puzzle together. It’s the time that makes private land hunting so much more effective than public lands in many cases. One of the curses of public land hunting is that you could let a deer pass by, and they might get shot within a few hundred yards by another hunter, giving you no incentive to let bucks mature into older age classes. You can’t completely remove this problem on private land, since deer can easily wander to a neighboring property, particularly if you own a few hundred acres or less. But you can mitigate it a little using the hunting strategies below.

It’s risky to leave ladder stands or lock on stands on public lands, and impractical/illegal to set up a box blind. But there are no such restrictions on your own property. While not completely devoid of theft risks, private land hunting offers a much better place to leave your tree stands in the woods or set up box blinds in a perfect location. With more permanent stand locations, you can also manage the habitat or plant additional screening cover to hide your entry and exit route. That way, you should be able to sneak in and out of a hunting situation without alerting deer to your presence. Box blinds offer high concealment value and are useful near food sources or bedding areas alike. They are particularly nice when the weather takes a down turn or you want to bring younger kids hunting with you. Big Game Tree Stands has a Trophy Box kit with wide window openings and a flip-up trap door opening.

private land hunting guide how to maximize your opportunity Big Game Tree StandsSpeaking of tree stands, they’ll only be useful if you hang them in the right locations. Expert deer hunting stand locations are critical as you chase older and more experienced deer. As we said, hunting on large destination fields is a risky move. It might pay off, but you could also alert a dozen deer to your tree stand location in the process, making them very wary of it or anything like it again. You’re better off sitting over a hunting food plot. If you plant feeding food plots near the center of your property with quality bedding cover on the perimeter of your land (which you can establish with the habitat work from above), deer have fewer reason to leave the area. Then you can strategically plant a few small hunting plots between the bedding and feeding areas, which will intercept deer in the mornings and evenings. By having a few well-spaced hunting plots that are different shapes, you can hang several deer stands to hunt different wind directions. Simply having multiple options for different conditions can be enough to fill your buck tag.

On this topic, you can find and kill a deer in most places without too much work. But if you’re after a specific mature whitetail deer, you need to always pay attention to the hunting conditions. The smaller your property, the stricter you need to be. Bow hunting whitetail deer in a tree stand with the wind blowing right into a food plot or bedding area isn’t going to do you any favors. To get a truly old monarch buck, you should wait for the perfect conditions before hunting a stand, which can be really hard to do if you’re getting daytime pictures of one. But hunting in anything less could jeopardize future encounters with him.

Whether you plan on bow hunting deer in the early season or firearm hunting in the cold fall, improving your property is a great way to invest your time and resources. With more homesteads and farms being sold to developers every year, private land hunting is disappearing in some places. But if you develop a lasting legacy on your property, it will be enjoyed for years to come.