Food Plot 101

Food plots are an important management tool but just one part of a complete management program. They can certainly help a deer herd, but there is more to it than tossing out a double handful of seed from a glossy bag covered in big buck pictures. How, where and when food plots are installed has a lot to do with how successful hunters will be either harvesting deer in them or improving a deer herd's health.

Brian Sheppard owns a consulting company, Wildlife Landscape Services, and makes a good part of his living helping deer hunters and managers grow bigger bucks through intensive nutrition programs. Each year, he and his crew spend about 1,300 hours on a tractor installing and maintaining more than 300 acres of food plots across the South. Sheppard was so serious about learning the ins and outs of food plots, he left a good job to intern for eighteen months at Tecomate Ranch near McAllen, Texas.

"At Tecomate, we didn't plant food plots to kill deer. We used them to grow bigger deer," Sheppard said. "We focused on dry-land farming and warm-season food plots to increase nutrition for deer quality. We wanted to take a Midwest farm with all its agriculture and move it to Texas."

Sheppard helped Jeff Foxworthy and his property manager, Glen Garner, implement a nutrition program on Foxworthy's 2,000-acre, west central Georgia farm. The culmination of those efforts was a 265-pound buck nicknamed Zeus that scored over 170 Boone & Crockett points. Food plots were a key component.

"I don't think there is any question, if a deer hunter can plant food plots, he should," Sheppard said. "But a guy has to make some decisions early on in the process and look at what resources he has on hand. Does he want hunting plots or nutritional plots, or both?"

Most biologists and deer managers divide food plots into one of these two categories. Hunting plots are designed from day one to help hunters harvest deer. Planning starts with location, how the plot is shaped, how its shape relates to prevailing winds, the cultivars planted and when those plants are expected to mature. Nutritional plots have one express purpose: to boost the amount of available nutrition for a resident deer herd. Generally, they will be maintained year-round and are never hunted. In a perfect world, hunting properties have both types of plots.

According to Sheppard, nutritional plots are the least understood by hunters just getting into a management program.

"It's seems pretty crazy to put all this work into a food plot and then tell a guy he can't hunt over it," Sheppard said. "But limiting pressure and making high-quality forage available to a deer herd any time they want or need it will really improve a deer herd over time. There is no question you can hold deer on your property with a good food-plot program. The only time their range would expand is during the rut."

Nutritional plots are usually larger than five acres in size and located near a property's center, good bedding cover or sanctuaries. Hunters have to think beyond deer season and have plants growing almost twelve months of the year. No expense should be spared to lime and fertilize the plots each year, and in most areas of the countr, weed control is essential. A plant is simply a conduit for the nutrients locked away in the soil, and a neutral pH will allow plants to carry the maximum amount of nutrients to a deer. Liming and fertilizing a food plot is as close as a hunter will ever come to growing a big buck by pouring something out of a bag onto the ground.