Food Plots No Cure-All For Deer

Food plot establishment is currently front and center in deer habitat management on private lands. That's due in part to widespread advertising by seed suppliers and supporters of "quality deer management" concepts. The idea is to attract white-tailed deer to certain areas of a property, usually for hunting, by providing them with highly digestible and nutritious food.

Typical food plots feature mixes of white, landino, alsike and red clovers, or forage sorghum and forage rape, or several species of perennial grasses and legumes with a cover crop such as oats that shades the young plants as they develop. Food plots may even include traditional crops like corn, soybeans, sugar beets or turnips. Recently, some enthusiasts have recommended adding a few food plots of warm-season, native grasses such as big bluestem, little bluestem, Indian grass and switchgrass.

Business is picking up for consultants, suppliers and contractors, especially in Northern Michigan where agricultural land is scarce and many forested areas have poor soils. It will likely increase even more since deer feeding and baiting have been banned in Michigan to help prevent the spread of chronic wasting disease.

Establishment of food plots for deer may seem like a new technique, but it actually has been around for a long time. Biologists in nearly every state have long experimented with various annual and perennial plant types, fertilizer rates, soil preparation schemes, and plot sizes. They have learned how these variables influence levels of protein and micronutrients in the food produced and how food plots can help hunters "compete" with their neighbors who might have a corn field, and/or hold deer during key hunting times. Food plot experts can advise on how to establish plots that will be at peak attractiveness during the early bow hunting season in October, or conversely, on opening day (November 15) of gun season.

Food plots can be arranged like the spokes on a wheel or in other patterns to maximize their ability to attract shootable deer. There is nothing wrong with using food plots for such objectives. But many landowners mistakenly think that food plots, by themselves, equate to good deer habitat management.

Some landowners get carried away when they see lots of deer and deer tracks around a food plot, reasoning that more plots will mean more deer and better-antlered bucks. However, veteran wildlife biologists know that winter food (primarily woody browse) and cover, and sound population control are the keys to deer management in Northern Michigan.

On most properties, it is more cost-effective to cut timber, especially adjacent to winter cover, and follow-up with a prescribed burn than to use food plots to increase the nutritional value of deer foods. Burning returns nutrients to the soil and is a lot more cost-effective than food plot establishment which involves clearing land of trees, using herbicides or discing to remove other existing vegetation, fertilizing and/or liming the soil, and finally planting special plants. Burning and/or fertilizing the existing vegetation in openings both have longer lasting effects than food plots, which have annual costs of $200 per acre or more. Keeping deer numbers in balance with the habitat by harvesting does is another essential in maintaining the health of deer herds.

Food plots have never been an important management tool on public lands because of lack of cost-effectiveness. It is difficult to demonstrate significant benefits of food plots to the overall health of deer herds or even to individual animals. That was true 80 years ago and is still true today. But it is hard to convince a hunter who shoots a big buck over a food plot that the plants that attracted the animal did not benefit the area's deer.

Food plots are great for creating opportunities to shoot deer and as part of an integrated plan that also involves management of forest stands. It's just important to not put the cart before the horse.

Dr. Patrick Rusz
Director of Wildlife Programs