FOOD PLOTS FOR DEER IN THE WOODS - WHITETAIL OBSESSION OUTDOORS
Whats up guys welcome back to another BLOG!
Hope you guys and girls are well. I am writing this blog because its a hot topic and its something i love to do. Food plots for deer and turkey in the woods can be super rewarding if done correctly and with a little effort. Remember if you put nothing into it you will get nothing out of it. Doesn’t all have to be done in the same year but you build on that as time goes on. You can only go as far as you have time and a budget.
We will be working on a kill plot in the woods here in the next few weeks as the weather get a little better (hopefully) Food plots in the woods pumps me up each time. I have done this for several years now with good success. As with any food plot you make, remember if you pressure it and constantly push deer off of it you are wasting your time and money.
kill plot on the edge of a bedding are..
With that said lets jump into it. The first step into this is picking a area. The area can be either some what open to the shy or closed canopy. Either way you will have to get a chainsaw rolling and get some more light in there. The area must be easy to access meaning you can get in and out without spooking deer (entry and exit) How big do you want it? Well id say anywhere from !/4 to 1 acre. I personally would like to stay around a 1/2 acre or less. Really depends how much are you have and how deep you want to take your project.
The next step is to take a soil sample. For some reason everyone seems to hate that and they skip this important step. They just want to throw some seed down and hope for the best. With doing that you will mostly be left with very poor tonnage and a plot nothing eats! You have to take a proper steps in order to have the best results. Soil samples are pretty cheap and you can get the results back in most cases in about a week. The most recent soil sample i collected in a plot i’m going to be working on in the woods is about a 4.7 which is very very low (acidic) so ill be adding a bunch of lime to get that rolling in the right direction.
Simple math will tell you how much to add. Its roughly 1 ton of lime per acre to raise the point by 1. So i would need to add 2 tons of lime to get a 6.7 if it was a acre. This is only about a 1/4 acre so divide that by 4 and i end up with 1,000 pounds of lime. I will probably add about 1200 to be safe. This may seem like a lot but its really not. Lime is fairly cheap and you can buy in bulk if its available in your area for even cheaper. The biggest issue with not liming is you end up with a non palatable plant meaning its not very tasty to the animals. With a low PH the nutrients get locked up in the soil and plants cant absorb them.
this is buck wheat. Deer typically wont eat it until it starts to flower up as seen in the picture. But its high in protein and very high in water content.
Once you know your number then you can plan on correcting it. Every test is different, but from what i can tell you from testing soil in many different states if nothing has ever been done to the area before its roughly around a 5.2-5.6 PH now if its in the woods it will probably be a little lower below a 5.0 Don’t be freaked out about this just make sure to fix it and move on.
Depending on your goals, budget and area will determine what you have to do next. If its a old open area in the woods, if you have to cut down trees or hire someone to come in and clear it out. In my case i can cut a few tress down and remove some dead falls and call it good. Once the area is cleared out you’ll have to get the lime down asap so it can start working its magic. Now you can plant at the same time you lime but its best to get the lime down first for a few months and then plant. Lime takes time to work. The main goal here is to have something green and growing in the soil for as many months out of the year as possible.
young buck in same kill plot as above next to bedding are.