From spring until early summer, many hunters and farmers are hard at work planting food plots and agricultural fields either to hunt over or to harvest for income.

Groundhogs can damage food plot crops quickly, depriving deer and turkey access to quality forage.

Most hunters and farmers focus on the needs of the plants, such as fertilizer, ample rainfall, and lack of competing vegetation, but they fail to identify one major threat to young crop fields. Consumption of young plants by pest animals such as groundhogs can wipe out large sections of a field to the point that they may need to be re-planted.

This can be costly to the landowner as well as reduce the amount of quality forage available to the desired game animals. If no action is taken, groundhogs can remove the forage from several acres rapidly! This can be devastating to deer and turkeys that depend on that food source during the growing and late season!

Where legal, trapping and shooting of groundhogs soon after the seeds germinate might be what’s needed to allow the crops to be productive.

Nicolas Halchin