Deer Aren’t Eating My Food Plots
Filed under: Ask Grant, Food Plots
Based on your recommendation from a previous e-mail that I sent to you I placed 3 cameras out on my 180 acres this past weekend. I have had several cameras out during the month of July over Trophy Rocks and have captured a lot of pictures of both bucks and does. I have approximately 1 acre of soybeans, 1 acre of Bio Maxx and 1 acre of clover and the deer are barely touching it. With the exception of the clover, the beans and Bio Maxx have only been in the ground for a month because of the rain. Since I have deer on the farm and they are not hitting the beans and Bio Maxx does that mean they are filling their nutritional needs from native habitat on my place? The surrounding farms basically raise cattle, so very little agriculture is taking place within 1.5 miles of my place.
Steve
Steve,
I don’t have a definitive answer for your question, but will share some thoughts.
1. If deer aren’t eating soybeans, it usually means they don’t recognize them as a source of food (this happened at The Proving Grounds the first two years I planted beans here), or the quality of the forage is lower than other forage available in the area.
a. Did you perform a soil test and add the appropriate amount of fertilizer to the food plot crops?
2. Many areas in the Midwest have received so much rain during the 2010 growing season that many nutrients in some soil types have literally leached deeper than the plant roots can reach. Plants stressed in this manner usually don’t taste very well (to humans or deer).
a. Don’t hesitate to taste some of the leaves from your food plot crops. If they taste really bitter, or the forage is tough to chew, that’s another hint that the crops may not be healthy.
b. If there are soybeans 1.5 miles from your farm, are deer consuming the soybeans there? If so, that is a very good indicator that soybeans at your property are malnourished and aren’t palatable to deer.
3. It would be rare that native browse in the Midwest is found to be more palatable that appropriately fertilized soybeans and other forage crops. Later in the year deer commonly prefer acorns to many food plot crops, but during the summer, soybeans are usually one of the most preferred sources of forage to a deer.
As a test, you might place some shelled corn near the Trophy Rock and see if it’s readily consumed by deer. If it is, I strongly suspect something is wrong with your crops.
Growing Deer together,
Grant
