A mature buck standing in a soft edge that leads to a food plot. Different food plot varieties can supplement deer nutrition and provide year-round forage.
(Photo by Jim Cumming, Shutterstock)
April 16, 2025
By Dr. James C. Kroll
In our last issue, I discussed supplemental feeding as a way to augment deer nutrition during stress periods. Whitetails over their range experience two primary nutritional stress periods, late summer and late winter. They are uniquely adapted to getting through these periods, but to realize their true potential in your management program, you must employ supplementation. In this final installment in this series, I will discuss the use of food plots to do the same thing as feeding, especially in states where feeding is illegal.
COOL VS. WARM SEASON We know that the whitetail experiences two stress periods: one during winter and one in the summer. In the North, the winter stress period is prolonged, while the summer stress period is more abbreviated. Yet, in the South, it is the opposite! There are varieties you can grow best during the cool season (cereal grains), those that produce forage in the warm season (cowpeas and soybeans), and those that do both (clovers, alfalfa, etc.). In the North, most managers plant cool season legumes in the spring and fall, and cereal grains in the late summer or early fall. Clovers and cereal grains, such as wheat, often survive most winters (if they get snow cover) and emerge to grow in the spring.
I can safely say southern deer managers have it much easier than their counterparts in the North. Although we often see freezing temperatures throughout the South, most cool season plots continue to provide abundant forage for deer into spring and early summer! Northern deer managers have to contend with extremely low temperatures and often heavy snow cover, reducing plant growth to near zero. That leaves a northern manager to a strategy of producing as much forage as possible prior to winter, hopefully “banking” forage beneath the snow so deer can paw down to feed. If the food plot acreage is too small, deer virtually eliminate the standing crop of late summer and early fall forage.
That is not to say that southern deer managers do not have their challenges, too! In the North, forages such as clovers thrive throughout most summers, but the extremely hot and dry conditions in the South can reduce growth or even cause senescence (especially in white clovers). So, it is in the South where warm season crops like cowpeas and soybeans are most relied upon for late-summer nutrition.
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The greatest difference between northern versus southern food plot strategies is when you plant plots. For cool season crops north of 35° latitude, you generally should plant in August; while, south of that latitude, you would be taking a chance to plant before September. Southern managers who plant early often learn what an Army Worm is! As for warm season crops, northern managers seldom plant before late April or early May. Conversely, in the south, you can plant as early as late February to early March.
I am in danger here of over-simplifying warm and cool season food plot strategies as they relate to North vs. South, especially since droughts are becoming more frequent in the North. More and more managers in the North are relying on warm season crops, such as soybeans and corn, that are more drought tolerant. Afterall, corn is produced in areas with as little as 25 inches of annual rainfall, and soybeans are grown as far west as the Panhandle of Texas with 20 to 26 inches of rainfall. In essence, the successful deer manager nowadays is highly adaptable, with many tricks in their “management toolbox!” As we will see, this causes the modern deer manager to devote more land to food plots.
HOW MUCH ACREAGE? The amount of acreage you devote to food plots is determined by the intended use for the plots. If, for example, the primary use is to attract deer to the gun or bow, a few small plots can suffice. However, to truly supplement nutrition on your property during stress periods, the acreage devoted to plots can be significant. A deer on average will eat about two pounds (dry weight) of supplemental forage per day. In the past, I have recommended you plant 1 to 2 percent of your property to food plots; but more recently, my data suggests as much as 3 to 5 percent.
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So, our 80-acre whitetail landscape would require as much as four acres of food plots. Less acreage requires an adjustment in this number. Later, I will discuss how you should apportion and locate these plots. I might add, if feeding is legal, I also include a free-choice feeder with each food plot. At the Grand Rack Hunting Club in the northern Upper Peninsula of Michigan (where feeding is not legal), we provide a water source alongside each food plot. When combined with good natural forage management nearby, it amounts to producing “one-stop shopping” for our deer!
WHERE TO PLANT? It is safe to say you should not plant food plots on ridges or in frequently flooded bottomlands. The former are droughty, and the latter often have saturated soils after heavy rainfall. Next, the nature of the soil on your property sets the stage for success or failure! The perfect soil (which we seldom see) has a pH hovering about neutral (7), texture that combines clay and sand, rich in organic matter and both macro- and micro-nutrients. Even to this day, the average manager focuses almost solely on nitrogen, phosphorus and potash (N-P-K), and most often phosphorus is the key limiting factor. Yet, micro-nutrients such as boron, zinc and copper are seldom considered.
This map serves as an example of how the 80-acre deer management unit can be applied to a property with less than 80 acres (61 acres in this case). Representing an 80-acre area, the red circle covers a series of other habitat features. Ultimately, Dr. Kroll concluded that the property has great summer thermal cover, browse, but lacks water. (Map courtesy of Dr. James Kroll) Rather than attempt to fill you in on every aspect of site selection for food plots, let’s take an example property (see map above) containing 61 acres in a more or less rectangular shape, then overlay an 80-acre circle over it so that the center of the property is at the center of the circle. Again, the average landowner managing deer probably has less than 80 acres of land, and most properties are not square.
During this exercise, you can see the thought processes going into food plot site selection. I have come to recommend 5 percent of the area be devoted to food plots, so that calculates to slightly over three acres for this example property.
The property is rectangular in shape, and made up of only two soil types, both loamy fine sand, meaning they can be droughty. However, one of these is relatively flat, creating few engineering issues for food plot construction. The northern half of the property is occupied by a 14-year-old southern pine plantation (29 acres) planted on an 8 ft. x 8 ft. spacing; every third row of trees was thinned eight years ago. That opened the canopy to allow light to get to the ground, creating browse.
As part of the natural forage management program, we probably will divide that area in two and impose two different burning programs (annual or bi-annual, every three to five years). The southern half contains a young, 19-acre plantation which apparently did not have good survival, leaving several openings and gaps in the sapling canopy; that stand will be thinned in the future. Mixed hardwoods (six acres) were reserved on the southeast corner, with a continuation of about two acres of the young pine planting. The total area occupied by trees is 55 acres.
The remainder is in openings and roads (six acres), which also can be planted to forages. So, what we have is a property with excellent summer thermal cover and browse on 47.5 percent, escape cover on 29 percent and mixed hardwoods on 9.8 percent. Water is conspicuously absent. So, what are our options for food plots?
This map — and the upcoming one below — detail two food plot plans for the example property outlined by the author. Although option one satisfies the property’s needs, a single large plot isn’t best for diversity or future timber values. (Map courtesy of Dr. James Kroll) One possibility is simply to develop a three-acre plot and situate it near the center of the property (see map above). This would require clearing a large area as a block. That is certainly an option, but I prefer to break food plots into smaller units. In this case, I would recommend three, one-acre plots located as a cluster near the center of the property (see map below). However, why are the plots just south of the midline of the property? The northern portion is made up exclusively by an older timber stand, which would be more expensive to clear; it also would cause lost revenue from timber sales later. Also, the “down rows” between the trees can be top-seeded with cereal grains and clover to augment nutrition.
One aspect of food plot location is considering how you will gain access to your plots. You would be amazed how many folks purchase a 12 feet wide planter, with their roads only 8 feet wide!
Option two, however, breaks up the food plots and gives the land managers more planting, hunting and supplementing options. (Map courtesy of Dr. James Kroll) There is a road across the property, and access via ROW down the eastern side, so access for equipment will be easy. I marked a location for a water trough (blue), which will be easily accessed for filling from the east ROW. If feeding is legal, this also would be a great location for a free-choice feeder. If you are concerned about the large green field to the west, do not worry; that is a coastal Bermudagrass pasture, which deer do not eat.
WHAT TO PLANT? After five decades of research on every food plot variety known, I am wise enough not to make specific recommendations, other than general categories of plants. To begin, there are the three basic categories — cool season, warm season and extended season. Among these are cereal grains, legumes and non-legumes species and varieties. Cereal grains include oats, wheat, rye, barley and triticale (cross between wheat and rye).
Legumes include clovers (white and red), pseudo-clovers (Alyce clover), soybeans and peas (cool and warm season). Popular non-legumes include chicory and brassicas. Which ones you select will depend on what you are trying to accomplish and the climate of your area. Within the whitetail’s range, annual rainfall ranges from 62 inches to 17 inches. Decades of research have taught me to not attempt food plots in areas with less than 25 inches annual rainfall.
Another consideration is the growing season, which can be as short as 90 days or as long as 330 days. Imagine planting the same crop with these extremes, then computing the cost per pound to produce the forage. So, in making a decision on what to plant, consider the published expected per-acre yield and the cost of production.
This photo from the Turtle Lake Hunting Club in Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula establishes whitetails’ preference for oats over wheat. During winter in the North, deer will paw through the snow to get to the cereal grains growing beneath it. (Photo courtesy of Dr. James Kroll) Here is another consideration. You may already know that deer have browse preferences, designated as first, second, third and emergency choices. These were determined both by the digestibility of each and the amount of documented use by deer. Just like browse plants, I discovered that deer also have food plot varietal preferences; and it turned out not to just be my research. A much-publicized study by Mississippi State University showed that deer not only have preferences for varieties, but also shift from one to another as nutritional needs dictate. In general, however, I found that all said and done, the recommendation I received in 1974 from dairy farmers to use cereal grains and clovers has held pretty true.
We also found benefit to non-legume varieties that have a broader season of availability. My experience in the longer growing season South has been that deer switch preferences for cereal grains and clovers throughout the year.
According to NIH, “When comparing oats and wheat, oats generally have a higher proportion of water-soluble carbohydrates (WSCs) compared to alcohol-soluble carbohydrates (ASCs), while wheat tends to have a higher percentage of ASCs, with both grains containing a mix of both types depending on the variety and processing method; the primary alcohol-soluble carbohydrate in both grains is typically considered to be a type of sugar like sucrose, fructose, and glucose.”
Our experience has been that deer prefer oats to wheat, as supported by the image from northern Michigan. At the Turtle Lake Club, deer routinely dig through the snow to feed on oats and wheat that are somewhat protected by the snow cover. This photograph clearly shows a preference for oats over wheat. Later in the winter, deer dug through the snow to feed on clover.
So, how do you decide what to plant? I suggest you become a “junior scientist” and make test plantings of various species and varieties, then observe the preferences and use of each by your deer. It only costs you one growing season, and as my friend and colleague, Ben Koerth, once said, “A good test is worth a thousand opinions!”
SOMETHING NEW As time passed, we began conducting research on ways to “hedge your bets” when it comes to benefiting your deer with food plots. One of the problems with food plots is deer are like children in many ways; they consume food plots even when there are perfectly good native foods available. My question was, “Is there merit in keeping deer out of food plots until one of the two stress periods occurs?” What I learned about “banking” forage beneath the snow brought my attention to using fencing to exclude deer until they needed the added nutrition.
Banking forage (fencing in crops until one of the two stress periods for whitetails arrives) is a great way to support your deer herd during harsh conditions. The author has done this successfully with both electric and polypropylene fencing material. (Photo courtesy of Dr. James Kroll) In 1977, we began research on electric fencing, in cooperation with the Gallagher Electric Fence Company in New Zealand. First using high tensile wire, then later polywire, we tested a three-strand fence design based on how deer see the world. Almost 50 years later, we have successfully employed forage banking and even “rotation grazing” for deer. At Turtle Lake Club, for example, manager Wayne Sitton routinely banks plantings of corn and soybeans until late summer using electric fencing. I have used this design from Michigan to Texas to manipulate deer grazing, even using a strip grazing strategy on rights-of-ways.
More recently, I began doing the same thing with polypropylene netting with tremendous success. We featured this approach in the 2024 season of North American Whitetail TV at our Kentucky hunting lease. For both electric and polypropylene fencing, the cost is very reasonable, especially if you take good care of the fencing materials in the off-season.
We have come a long way since I began my first food plot studies in 1974! The landowner/deer manager today has a whole toolbox full of options when it comes to food plots. This not only includes advances in breeding forages specifically for deer, but also small-scale, cost-effective equipment and implements for improving deer nutrition during stress periods. As for me, it has been a whole lot of fun, and I am proud of what we accomplished at the Institute for White-tailed Deer Management & Research! Yet, there is still more to discover.
