There are no clover or alfalfa fields within miles. I plan on planting a 1 acre plot. The land I hunt on is only about 15 acres, but all together the timber is around 60 acres. It' s hard to tell the concentration but I would say at any given time there would be between 10-20 deer in the 60 acres. Some nights I see 10 or 12 other times I see nothing. Buck to doe ratio is probably around 1:4; 1:5. Again its hard to tell becuase I can' t huntt the whole property so those numbers are strictly estimates.

Here is a picture. Due to the limitations on size I couldn' t show the entire timber. Basically it' s a strip that run N to S with fence rows and fingers that jet off to the east and west. To the south of the photo embedded in this post there is a small 2.5 acre patch of timber that is 75 yards from my g/f' s house. The deer use it mostlly at night and for bedding. The bright green circles are bedding areas. The red dots are stand sights that I have. The dark green is the proposed food plot area. I think in whole it is around 4 acres but due to money constraints I only plan on using around an acre of it. It is briers and waist high weeds right now. Deer bed in it but I figure if I make the plot in the middle of it and leave some of the tall stuff around it that would give the deer a place to bed yet and it would be nearby the food source. What do you all think?

titleist_03; It sounds like a good plan. The only thing to watch out for is what I' ve run into. My bedding area is swamp islands and the swamp abutts the clover field. If there is any pressure at all the deer stay nocturnal and it' s impossible to draw them out. It they can bed in the briers with a clover field next too it, some of your other bedding sites might become inactive.

Dan O.

With only an acre to plant we would suggest some clovr or alfalfa, depending on soil sample and top soil depth. We wuggest that you sart the liming process now so it has time to work in the soil for spring planting. Is the ratio youmentioned natural or do you manage? How did you arrive at this ratio?

I' m going by what I' ve seen. The ground that I' m on has never been hunted. The land to the north is gun hunted by an old guy that doesn' t know much of anything. I don' t know that he' s ever killed a deer.

Thats a good ratio.. still try to bring it down to the 1:2 or 1:3 and get better bucks. Let the buck fawns with their doe' s walk... Good luck.

Is it ok to plant half the plot in some lab lab or cow peas in the spring so the deer have something through the summer. Then I plant the rest of the clovers and brassicas in early fall before bow season. SO then I would have 1/2 acre of each?

It would be OK if there were more nutrition available in the area. From what you say it looks like your going to be the only game in town. The forages should produce from 2-6 tons of nutrition annually if done right. This will during the green up season until the brown out, which should give the animals the needed nutrition to survive the stress of the rut and ice out.

There are other places for the deer to get nutrition. There will be corn and bean fields around the property.

OK, so we don't want to plant beans, unless they are different tyoes of beans and we don't want to plant corn... Do some shopping. What about clover and alfalfa? Did you do the soil sample? Start the limeing process?