A few thoughts for you. As DT mentioned, I’m in the food plot business. My company is Midwest Monster Whitetail Products, we are the largest specialty food plot seed dealer in MN and WI.
First off, I always tell newer property managers, EVERYTHING is different up here in the north. Forget or ignore anything you’ve heard about food plotting from southerners (where much of the industry is based). What you can do and HOW you do it, is completely different up here in the northern tier.
Most new food plotters worry, “Will I be able to grow anything?” Yes! You’ll do great with a little help. That’s not the problem! The #1 problem in food plotting is you will grow too much awesome food and the deer will absolutely eat everything you grow to the ground. Overbowsing is the #1, #2, and #3 problem for the northern tier food plotter.
When deciding what to plant and how much to plant, what matters the most to the northern food plotter is this: Tonnage (of food) produced per acre of plot. It doesn’t matter how great your crop is if the deer devour it in a matter of a few days.
So to your questions:
– Goal 1 – Clear as much land as possible for plots. A half-acre plot is VERY small. 2-4 deer can clean up a half acre of good tall clover in 2 weeks. That’s how much they eat! Make those plots as BIG as possible.
On a property your size, it would be ideal to have 10-20 acres of food plots eventually. Just to give you a benchmark, I have 80 acres at the Midwest Monster home farm and I have 12 acres of plots. We routinely have 10-25 deer dining with us every night from May to December. With 12 acres of plots, I am almost able to keep everyone feed, but every crumb is eaten to the ground by mid-December and grow for maximum tonnage.
– What to grow? Again, tonnage per acre is the goal.
Corn? Forget it! Worst possible choice for the food plotter. I know it seems like a great idea, but for the food plotter it’s not. Tonnage per acre of corn is best measured in pounds, not tons. With good corn, you would be lucky to grow a few hundred pounds of edible corn on a half-acre plot.
And that’s if the bears, coons, beaver, deer, and various birds leave it alone enough to mature. Which they won’t! You’ll get nothing from a half-acre of corn.
By comparison, a good clover blend like our Mega Clover Plus will yield 2-4 green tons of clover per growing season. Mega Clover Plus is a perennial clover blend, so you plant it once and it continues to produce for 3-4 years if properly maintained. A big bonus compared to an annual like corn that must be planted every year.
Soybeans? Maybe. We are the biggest MN and WI dealer of both Eagle Forage Soybeans and Real World Wildlife Products soybeans. This might be an option for you, but soybeans are deer candy so we’d have to discuss how this would work with your plots and deer numbers. It is very, very difficult even with protection to have anything left of a soybean plot that is smaller than 1 acre. I planted over 3 acres of soybeans this year and our deer had them to the ground by mid-September due to the dry conditions.
Brassicas (the family that includes turnips, forage radish, rapeseed, sugar beets, etc) are a great late-season draw. They resist browsing pressure to some degree due to the starchy taste of their leaves. A great choice for food plotters looking for a late-season attractor.
There’s more to talk about, but hopefully, that gives you enough to get the ball rolling. Call me anytime and we’ll work up a complete plan for you.
https://www.midwestmonster.us/about-us
Jay
