Planting for deer

[pops6123]

Just thinking, and this will ramble, if you were planting to attract deer to your property does it make sense to plant plants other than a food plot so they have food all year long?
Thinking various oaks, muskadine grapes and other foods that come in thru out the year.
Any thoughts?

 

[Milkman]

I agree. Anything you do to help the deer stay healthy and raise healthy fawns is great.
From my experience and reading clover is the closest thing to a year round food.

 

[Mackie889]

Agree with you ... on a more long-term strategy. If you own a piece of property or know that you have long-term access to hunt a piece of land, that’s great. It can take years for oaks, persimmons, crabapples, muscadines, etc. to produce. Food plots can give the deer food within a week or so of planting with rain, so it is a much quicker producer that the tree plantings. A lot of people (myself included) plant food plots in Spring AND Fall, so they do have food year-round. When I plant in the Fall, I leave a strip from the spring / summer plants alongside the new plot. I follow an “everything but the kitchen sink” approach on my land ... I give the deer a variety w/ Spring and Fall plots, clover plots that provide food most of the year, corn feeders, and I’m planting trees (seedlings) for them as well. This past Winter I planted swamp chestnut oaks and persimmons. This Winter I will plant more oaks and crabapples (persimmons didn’t do so well). Is it all necessary... probably not, but I enjoy it a bunch. It’s rewarding to see a doe with twin fawns come into and feed in a clover plot that I planted. Good luck to you!

 

[Ihunt]

If I owned land that’s exactly what I would do. Clover feeds deer all year long and I have some on most of the properties I hunt.

 

[Jim Boyd]

In a word, yes.

Provide cover also.

Summer and winter plots, oaks, pears, persimmons, etc are my goal.

Good luck

 

[SakoL61R]

Year round quality food is always my goal as well, be it food plots, mast, fruit, etc. Food plots do this consistently, year after year, with a variety of plantings to provide every month. Offer up the all-you-can eat, tasty buffet on properly amended soil and it will become their favorite restaurant.... We’re no different.
As far as an attractant, I find pears and other soft mast hard to beat. Plant multiple varieties that ripen/drop from August through December. Not for everyone for many reasons. It’s a multi-year effort, a bunch of work, and sometimes a total bust with a late frost.

Of note, don’t overlook natural browse sources as attractants. Many, many years ago as a young (new) member on a large lease, an old-timer advised to find a hidey-hole the deer like with good browse (and a tree to climb), cut back the standing vegetation in early spring, fertilize/lime and do the same mid-summer. Those two “secret spots“, no one else knew about, paid off splendidly with a minimum of effort.

 

[Ihunt]

Just thinking, and this will ramble, if you were planting to attract deer to your property does it make sense to plant plants other than a food plot so they have food all year long?
Thinking various oaks, muskadine grapes and other foods that come in thru out the year.
Any thoughts?

Since you own the land, do a search and read about alfalfa. You need a soil that’s not heavy clay and has a good ph but it feeds deer all year long, is drought tolerant, and is RR so you can keep it clean and weed free.