Food Plots 2025

I don’t know if y’all have caught on, but we have been seeing an overall reduction in deer numbers during the past several seasons. I was talking with my neighbor last year and blamed him fully for it– but in the nicest way possible. You see, he moved in a few years ago and occupies most of my western and northwestern boundaries. Almost immediately, the deer started responding. In previous years, his was the land of the Orange Army, a bunch of ATV-riding hunters that would crank up their engines 15 minutes before The Opener. By 0900, all the deer had fled in fear onto my property and stayed their for the season. My new neighbor is into food plots and habitat management. If I was going to see big herds again, I was going to have to up my game.

I have 200 acres of property. 40 of it is in pasture and the only work it gets is a good mowing once a year in September. Nothing else has been done to it in more than 25 years. This year, we identified 8 acres of pasture for plots. Most were connected with our current hunting venues. Beginning a month ago each got a close mowing, followed by tilling with a roto-tiller. I then added 1 bag of 12-12-12 per 1/4 acre. This past weekend, Labor Day, we got our seeding done, followed by a pass with the drag harrow.

This is continuation of a post I did about a month ago:

Catching up on Food Plots

We might have gotten a bit of rain overnight (Tuesday), but there is due to be as much as a half inch more before Friday.

General Methods

I split each of the larger plots into 1/4 acre plots and planted each plot separately. This is all one big experiment, and I want to explore what works and what doesn’t. If a plot fails, I don’t want to have the whole venue barren until next year.

For each seed, I broke open a bag and measured using a stadium cup. I then split the bags into a standard 1/4 acre amounts. For the clovers and brassicas, there was no way I was going to be able to metre out those tiny seeds with my ATV spreader, so I doped each with 6 cups of Oat seed. Oats was probably the least desirable choice (oat, rye, wheat, etc.) however, I came to the realization late and the feed store was out of everything but oats. Probably, rye would have been best, as it will survive the winter better, but the oats were cheap ($10/50 lbs) and it got the more expensive seed metered out properly, and it will sprout and protect the clovers and brassicas in the initial stages.

With the brassica mixes like Honey Hole , I also added a 1/4 acre’s worth of dutch white clover along with a dose of oats. This is so there’s a clover plot next spring for the turkeys in what would have otherwise been a spent plot.

Let me break things down by plot for you, in no particular order

Midway North and South

Midway is a 2+ acre site consisting of two fairly narrow 1.25 acre plots with a treeline between. My luxury blind sits in the middle

Starting at the north end the plots got:

CRUSH^® Clover Plus Alfalfa: + oats
Evolved 5 Card Draw™
Antler King Honey Hole +oats + clover
Antler King Fall/Winter/Spring Food Plot Blend
Antler King Game Changer Clover + oats

Mind you, none of these are endorsements. I just picked what was on sale and bought a bunch. These Buck-on-Bag plots are pricey, and probably no better than what I could source from the local feed store, but I wanted to pick a variety.

Hollywood

This is a 1-acre plot starting at the Hollywood tower blind and stretching east.

The four plots at Hollywood got

CRUSH^® Clover Plus Alfalfa: + oats
Antler King Honey Hole +oats + clover
Antler King Fall/Winter/Spring Food Plot Blend
Antler King Game Changer Clover + oats

Virginia

This is a sub-1/4 acre plot that sits at the head of a long finger ridge. We included it, because it was already torn up from clearing a brush pile from the middle and just needed tilling. It sits less than 50 yards from the Hollywood tower. It got a small helping of Antler King Honey Hole +oats + clover

Jagendehütte

We planted about a half-acre in front of the blind, plus a small 1/4 acre plot next to the old barn