Too big?

[Doc]

For the engineer in some....what is the annual tonnage a deer consumes? if we estimate the herd size that are in the area or that we are trying to hold and use some of the info I have seen for different crop types...would that give us a "minimum" to start from. if over feeding takes place they could be added to...right?

I think it better to start small and work up just from a cash invested stance.

That is exactly the kind of info I was looking for. I believe the DEC publishes a deer-per-square-mile figure by township. I think I have seen that in the past. From that info there should be a way of getting to an average plot size that is recommended, depending on what is planted in the plot. I'm probably making a whole lot more of this than it should be, but I do not have deep pockets, and have no spare money laying around to be wasted on developing excess acreage of plantings.

[G-Man]

Doc, a 24 acre field into a farm crop is a lot of work, i'd start smaller i would not recommend anything less than an acre for corn, soybeans or sunflower, or any other grain. I know winter wheat/rye can be used as an attractant but a little plot will be wiped out by just 1 or two deer. I have a high population where i am (despite my best efforts to curtail it) I planted an acre of sunflowers one year and only had 3 plants make it to flower. the deer ate the rest before they could get to that stage. . I would take the field and do 2- 5 acre plots making maybe 10 acres at most into food source, corners, and irregular strips would be the areas and shapes.A "over winter" crop of corn, brassica, winter wheat and at least one of clover, alfalfa,birdsfoot, or other perennial. do not just mow down the rest of the field as it is prolly golden rod/brush and will provide security as well as bedding/nesting for turkey and deer. . the field is 24 acres but the total property acrage is important. 24 acre in food out of 1000 is nothing. 24 out of 30? well now you have food but not much cover. I am close to your same situation, no farms left close by, had it great for quite a few years by having the only "crops" available. Had deer coming 3 miles in winter to feed on corn. Now a lot of hobby farms and food plotters have joind my ranks locally (heck i usually do the plowing for them). spreads the deer out a little more and reduces the size of feed field i have to plant to get carry over till spring.

Edited June 13, 2012 by G-Man

[Culvercreek hunt club]

That is exactly the kind of info I was looking for. I believe the DEC publishes a deer-per-square-mile figure by township. I think I have seen that in the past. From that info there should be a way of getting to an average plot size that is recommended, depending on what is planted in the plot. I'm probably making a whole lot more of this than it should be, but I do not have deep pockets, and have no spare money laying around to be wasted on developing excess acreage of plantings.

I knew exactly what our resident engineer would be looking for..lol. It does make perfect sense. I see the point in NOT growing tonnage and spending money that is not consumed. And in the same regard, like happened at our camp, the plots are small becasue I only have the log landing areas to plant and they got hammered to the point that the clover is barely coming up this year. There are more deer eating there than the crop can support, so every crop will be an annual becasue it won't last to next year

[G-Man]

Dec info is a good starting point for deer per acre but that is generalised, i can take 15 + deer off my property every year usually 10 doe the rest buck. but the buck take per square mile(640 acres) is 3.6 in my town there have been years where almost 20% of the entire town dec reported deer take is taken off my place...crazy but it happens . Every property is different and friends up the road a mile or so are lucky to see 5 deer all season. If you have cameras use them, identify as many different deer by your pics as you can. qdma has a section on doing a camera survey as well. My suggestion is still start small 2-5 acres and if need be expand to maybe 10. There are always more deer than you see. My experiance is in non-ag areas you will pull deer a long way. a buck i got 2 years ago that i had 12 pictures of was photo graphed all summer 3 miles away, but chose my property as his area for breeding season as the does are here for food. I doesnt take deep pockets to get planting,ag seed oats,and other grains are not that expensive,clover mixes are the most costly but can last for years and anything you do will be better than nothing!

[Bow Hunter Addict]

When you are ready to plant check your local agway or farmer co op for cheap seed. Cornell University has worked with many of these co ops to develop seed specifically for New York state. It’s a lot cheaper than buying a product you may see on TV. I will plant about 5acres of beans and another 7 to 8 acres of Rape this year. Seed will cost me less than $100.

[Doc]

Doc, a 24 acre field into a farm crop is a lot of work, i'd start smaller i would not recommend anything less than an acre for corn, soybeans or sunflower, or any other grain. I know winter wheat/rye can be used as an attractant but a little plot will be wiped out by just 1 or two deer. I have a high population where i am (despite my best efforts to curtail it) I planted an acre of sunflowers one year and only had 3 plants make it to flower. the deer ate the rest before they could get to that stage. . I would take the field and do 2- 5 acre plots making maybe 10 acres at most into food source, corners, and irregular strips would be the areas and shapes.A "over winter" crop of corn, brassica, winter wheat and at least one of clover, alfalfa,birdsfoot, or other perennial. do not just mow down the rest of the field as it is prolly golden rod/brush and will provide security as well as bedding/nesting for turkey and deer. . the field is 24 acres but the total property acrage is important. 24 acre in food out of 1000 is nothing. 24 out of 30? well now you have food but not much cover. I am close to your same situation, no farms left close by, had it great for quite a few years by having the only "crops" available. Had deer coming 3 miles in winter to feed on corn. Now a lot of hobby farms and food plotters have joind my ranks locally (heck i usually do the plowing for them). spreads the deer out a little more and reduces the size of feed field i have to plant to get carry over till spring.

Thanks for the info. I will pass it along to my Brother-in-law as well. Maybe I can talk him into a more reasonable size plot.

Interesting you should mention deer coming in from 3 miles. I don't think that's something I want to promote. My experience with the winter wanderers is that they don't pemanently relocate, and could wind up feeding a bunch of "yarding" deer that are no where around when hunting season is here. It might be that there is such a thing as being too successful ..... lol.

[G-Man]

I believe some will permanantly relocate is there is room avaible in the habitat for them, but i agree that bringing lots of deer together in one area is a bad thing... like wintering yards in the far north,habitat destruction will occur.

[growalot]

Well if they do come from three miles then they are bringing in tow there young...and when they leave they will eventually kick those young out for fawning...then you have young buck and even some doe that now have an area they 'll remember to return to and start their own groups....win win

[SplitG2]

When you are ready to plant check your local agway or farmer co op for cheap seed. Cornell University has worked with many of these co ops to develop seed specifically for New York state. It’s a lot cheaper than buying a product you may see on TV. I will plant about 5acres of beans and another 7 to 8 acres of Rape this year. Seed will cost me less than $100.

that's cheap! are the beans rr?

[Doc]

I believe some will permanantly relocate is there is room avaible in the habitat for them, but i agree that bringing lots of deer together in one area is a bad thing... like wintering yards in the far north,habitat destruction will occur.

Actually not necessarily all that far north. I had the misfortune of witnessing the huge yard at the south end of Honeoye lake. I'm not sure just what the draw was for a couple of years to a couple of farm fields over there, but it sure got way out of hand. It wasn't just a few deer, it was hundreds. I'm not sure just how far those critters traveled. But as soon as the weather cleared ..... poof!..... they were all gone. Of course after a couple of years of that, the whole population kind of collapsed. It wasn't a pretty sight.

Well anyway, That's not a result I would expect from the creation of one small food plot .... lol. Like I said, I don't know what was so special about those few fields. Certainly, it didn't take too long before everything in those fields and surrounding browse was stripped, and even today, you can see the results. So in almost no time at all, there wasn't any attraction there at all, and yet .... there they were (some dead some barely alive). Pretty gruesome stuff! That yarding stuff is something I'll never completely understand, but then that's another topic.

[growalot]

Doc...correct me on the Honeoye situation...I could be wrong and it may be urban legion...but didn't that occur on a farm owned by a man named Meuller...and it was due to many years of him keeping his property closed off from ALL hunting and attracting deer with feed?...and didn't part of that land belong to one of the Finger lake colleges?...I can't recall all I heard on the subject....

[dave6x6]

Doc, i wish you had givin' us your reasoning for wondering about big plots alittle earlier in the thread. Glad some other posters finally put you on to the tonnage/deer density info that may be helpful to you. As others have stated, 24 acres is certainly not needed. G-mans advice of 2-5 acres is a good guideline and working the edges with irregular shaped plots are a good idea. Try to work the grassy areas and leave any clumps of brambles or trees that are trying to grow. By the way, I am not far from you and would love to take a look at the layout and give you some advice if you wanted. PM me if your interested.

[Doc]

Doc...correct me on the Honeoye situation...I could be wrong and it may be urban legion...but didn't that occur on a farm owned by a man named Meuller...and it was due to many years of him keeping his property closed off from ALL hunting and attracting deer with feed?...and didn't part of that land belong to one of the Finger lake colleges?...I can't recall all I heard on the subject....

It all was centered around the Emil Mueller farm, but took in areas up and down both East Lake Road and West Lake Road. There were logged areas where you could see way up the hill through the woods and see all kinds of deer. There were household yards that were full of deer. There were deer standing in the roads, some of which you had to steer around because they wouldn't move. Out in one of the bigger fields, you could see the white mounds of dead snow-covered deer among the the ones that were standing there pretty much waiting to die. On the surrounding fences, you would see a few deer hanging that had tried to jump over, but lacked the strength to make it all the way over. The condition of the deer was obvious starvation. The quantity of deer that were there made it obvious that these were not resident deer. In fact on trips through the area in the summer months really didn't jump out at you as being an area that was over-populated with deer. So, I believe that these yarded deer represented deer from miles away including the resident deer. No real way of knowing though.

His land and others in that area were quite heavily posted. Actually that is a common trait with most of the land in the area even today. The only visible attraction was the fact that he had the typical farm crops planted that any of the area farmers grew. But when I first saw the situation, it looked to me like the ground was completely bare. There was absolutely nothing left.

It was a pretty unsettling sight that I will never forget. Unfortunately, I was not into photography back then or those pictures would have been quite spectacular.

By the way, when he died years later, the entire farm was left to the state with some kind of Finger Lakes Community College connection. The land is marked and used as regular state land, but I think the buildings and grounds are now the property of the college.

[Doc]

Last night I went over to have a chat with the Brother-in-law, and I kind of backed out of the whole deal. When I got to thinking about the whole arrangement, It started to look more and more like a bad idea. Traditionally, he has a huge gang of hunters that hunt there and most are of the "brown and down" persuasion. I know that isn't going to change. So when I got to thinking about me being the prime financial donor in the project, and not having a word to say about how the land was to be managed, I figured the best thing to do would be to quietly bow out. It probably would have been a situation that wouldn't have ended well anyway.

[Doc]

Doc, i wish you had givin' us your reasoning for wondering about big plots alittle earlier in the thread. Glad some other posters finally put you on to the tonnage/deer density info that may be helpful to you. As others have stated, 24 acres is certainly not needed. G-mans advice of 2-5 acres is a good guideline and working the edges with irregular shaped plots are a good idea. Try to work the grassy areas and leave any clumps of brambles or trees that are trying to grow. By the way, I am not far from you and would love to take a look at the layout and give you some advice if you wanted. PM me if your interested.

Actually, My questions about big plots were valid regardless of the discussions between my Brother-in-law and myself. And frankly I am still surprised that somebody has not boiled it all down to an actual formula that gets you roughly into the ballpark as far as plot size .... something to serve as a starting point or planning tool. Logic kind of tells me that there has to be some efficient size qualifications where if you go too far, you are simply throwing money and effort away, and if you don't go far enough you are not achieving your goals. And I would guess that deer density has to figure into it all. And I would also guess that field planting composition would give you the rest of it all. So I figured, why not ask the question and see if it has been turned into a formula or a process that somebody could explain to me.

[G-Man]

the problem with plots are besides wanting an equasion to give you a starting point, you need to ask yourself are you just trying to attract deer to shoot (baiting leagally arrording to some people) or trying to increase nutrition in the herd? they are done completly different, regardless of deer population... Most people plant small plots as attactants, A few delve into true herd management which is focuses more on nutrition

[SplitG2]

Doc, it's very hard to have a concrete formula? We are dealing with wild free ranging deer. Deer density changes all the time throughout the year. Deer managers usually like to have 5-10% of their land in food plots. It's just a guidline. Another factor is native browse. Like you mentioned in an earlier post, deer have a multi chamber stomach and are browsers. They eat many things. Like most have stated, start small, chart your data and make decisions based off of that. I have a 25 acre field that was all golden rod and I broke it up. I will try and post a picture of what i did.

[SplitG2]

the problem with plots are besides wanting an equasion to give you a starting point, you need to ask yourself are you just trying to attract deer to shoot (baiting leagally arrording to some people) or trying to increase nutrition in the herd? they are done completly different, regardless of deer population... Most people plant small plots as attactants, A few delve into true herd management which is focuses more on nutrition

very true gman!

[Culvercreek hunt club]

then throw into the equation the variance in the plot itself. weather effects on the tonnage and such. a plot of a fixed size could have triple the tonnage from one year to the next based on factors you can not predict.

[SplitG2]

Here is the 25 acre field I broke up.

Edited June 14, 2012 by splitg2

[dave6x6]

The number of variables are almost endless when trying to figure out your plot size but here are a few numbers that may help with the anal side of things. Whitetails eat about 1.5 tons of food per year. Food plots if well maintained can produce up to 2 tons of food per acre. I would estimate more in the 1 ton per acre for most first timers with limited experience. Nature is able to produce about 1/4 ton of browse per acre per year so if your depending on that to hold your deer over, then chances are your understory will never catch a break without the help of plots. Then there is deer density?? your quess is as good as ...Well ...The DEC i guess. So if you trust the deer numbers, you should be able to do the math from that info. I wouldn't bother. Here is another number. Provided you have the equipment, it will cost you about $300-$350 dollars per acre to plant a food plot and i personally would not skimp to save $10 per acre buying inferior seed or not liming or whatever. And i certainly would not do anything without getting a soil test first. If this is not do-able then i would just do like Growalot suggested and just mow the areas and hope for the best. I applaude the fact that your giving the plot alot of thought and would hate to see your BIL or yourself just plow up some land and throw something in the dirt. It's an investment that could change your hunting for years to come. Don't let it grow dis-appointment and frustration.

[SplitG2]

Doc, any update?

[nyantler]

Whitetails are not necessarily opportunists.. they seek out certain types of food based on nutritional need throughout the year... hence the reason we don't see deer feeding on the same spots before the season as we do during or after the season... I would think that a more diverse planting is more important than large tracts of 1 or 2 crops... although in a bad winter... too much browse might not be a bad thing... ample browse is sometimes overlooked by the novice foodplotter.

[Doc]

Doc, any update?

No, like I said on the previous page of this thread, I re-evaluated the whole deal, and backed out of it. After thinking about the quantity of hunters that my Brother-in-law traditionally invites to hunt his property, and the brown & down deer harvesting philosophies over there, I figured I have much better places to put my money. I figure it was a bad idea that I really hadn't thought through very well.

However, the resulting info that came out of this thread was really quite interesting even though there seems to be no clear cut agreement on over-sized plots.

[dave6x6]

sounds like the right choice for you Doc. Don't think anyone was going to change you already made up mind anyway. Clearly food plots don't fit very well with your hunting style or philosophy and it would have been nothing but stress for you.

Edited June 21, 2012 by dave6x6