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It seems that opinions of the Biologic products are mixed, at best. Scientific reasoning is probably going to be hard to come by and the ones touting Biologic are usually the ones selling it. We tried a couple of plots of Biologic a couple of years ago and the results were very poor, in fact we finally disc it in. Many on this forum have posted similar results while a few have had success. I don't know if you can plant any kind of food plots that will be prefered over good agriculture crops.

Deer want and need diversity in their dietary intake. Clover and Alfalfa have been longtime favorites and I imagine they may help supplement a deer's diet along with the farm crops. No one crop will give a deer all that it needs. In the area I live, I can have a huge impact on the diet of my deer because I have no farms, nut crops, fruit crops, or other food plots in the vicinity. My deer may spend more time on my fields than others, but still need diversity. I try to give them diversity by planting different crops, but they eat whatever I put down because they don't have much of a choice for other high nutrition food sources. Lots of Biologic is brassica based-canola,rape,whatever, the deer like it in my area, but then again they don't have much of a choice. In agricultural areas I imagine they would rather eat the corn, beans, clover, or alfalfa. A friend of mine in a lower MI farm-belt area uses a lot of brassica mixtures, and lots of Biologic. Those plots do very well after the 1st frost, and are especially preffered in the wintertime, when other crops are near dormant or less palatable. In warmer climates...I don't know.

I do know that Biologic can be very high in protein, as are most brassicas, and if the deer get to eating them they can benifit greatly. But there are a lot of variables to think about.

Also, is it possible that by planting adjoining food plots, that more deer will gravitate to the area, thus increasing crop damage?? Something else to consider.

Jeff...U.P. of Michigan.

If you really want to do some scientific research. Fertilize and lime a alfalfa/clover field to the recommendations per soil test. Then monitor the deer activity increase in this plot compared to the rest of the surrounding alfalfa/clover fields. I can bet you the deer will prefer this field to all others alike.

But, as mentioned above, you will never detract deer from corn/soybeans/brows. Deer need a variety, just think if you had the oppertunity to eat corn on the cob for the rest of your life, I bet it wouldn't last too long.

Our land has quite a bit of agriculture around it. Most are dairy farmers that grow Corn and Alfafa. To draw deer from their crops - we used Clover (white and ladino - also the Imperial Clover Blends). It works quite well as most dairy farmers do not use clover in our area (uplands). We saw a 50% drop in deer feeding in the alfalfa feilds of plenty the second year of our clover, and a corresponding increase in our plots.

As a side note: The first year we planted clover (4 acres - late spring) we also planted 5 acres of feild corn next to it. The deer ate most of our corn before it matured. In the second year, we had very little damage to our corn as the 4 acre clover field was now mature and attracted most of the deer.

I think farmers call deer plots near cash crops, "lure crops". When we were looking into this 3 years ago, I found alot of info on the web. Its a fairly standard practice, especially used by outfitters that lease farmland in the midwest.

Good luck.