Food plots require diligent effort
The lowering sun touched the fields with golden beams, lighting up the clover and turnips with a soft glow. At the bases of smaller aspen and autumn olive shadows were already growing and creeping out.
A nice buck fed just out of range of our crossbows. Jim Acker and I watched, entranced, praying he’d feed within range before darkness came or he wandered off. I’d aimed at a heavy 6-point earlier but the 8-point held my fire.
Then, the buck began feeding away from us.
Shooting light was rapidly disappearing when, unexpectedly, a doe and two other 8-points appeared from below and behind us. Would they move ahead far enough to allow a shot? After milling around they finally began feeding forward. I slipped off the safety and twisted my body forward as much as possible for a quicker chance at a shot.
Finally, one of the bucks moved just far enough forward. Heart pounding, I kept repeating to myself, “Squeeze the trigger, squeeze the trigger.” The crossbow fired and the glowing Lumenok streaked through the dusk like a tracer bullet, striking the buck perfectly behind the shoulder. He spun and bounded down the hill. Seventy yards away we found him and were overjoyed no tracking marathon was required.
Even well-hit deer can run quite a distance.
The lush food plot had drawn the deer in and Jim and I were overjoyed with our success. This doesn’t happen as often as you may imagine, a great majority of the time it’s impossible to get a good shot or any shot at all. The wind’s your enemy, the deer come in late or stay at the far end of the field or a doe feeds so close she sees or smells you and spooks, scaring the others away.
It’s not uncommon for a member of the camp crew to hunt food plots all archery season and see bucks but never harvest one. I’ve heard mixed opinions about food plots from other hunters — some who seem to believe food plots guarantee success and perhaps are unfair.
My experience is that the deer win far more often than they lose. Here’s some things to consider before forming an opinion.
The very first thing that pops into my mind is work: effort and hours and hours of hard labor, sweat and muscle aches. Second is expense and third, maintenance. Absolutely nothing is free in this world and food plots are just as big a pain in the tush as anything else worth having. In life, there’s an “opposition in all things” always attached.
Your first opponent is our area’s soil. Though authorities seldom admit its severity, we receive acid rain here. For this and other reasons our soil is very acidic and weeds love acidic soil, crops don’t. In order to grow healthy food plots you have to buy lime — lots of it, every year. Lime is not cheap and neither is applying it.
But before you can spread the lime you have to kill the weeds that have sprouted up in profusion during the early spring. It’s simply amazing how fast, how tall and how thick weeds grow, often choking your fields. To put things in perspective, remember, just keeping your lawn mowed is a challenge and grass doesn’t grow near as fast as weeds do. There’s no way you can give your fields the same attention you do your lawn; they’re acres of them and you have other things to do in your busy life. So you have to spray those nasty weeds with weed killer.
So you prepare, mixing glyphosate and water. Hopefully the strainers work so the nozzle doesn’t clog, the switch is operational and the connections don’t leak. Sprayers clog and break down with alarming regularity. But when the fields are sprayed, you’re done, right?
No. You have to wait a bit and spray the fields a second time; weeds are resilient and extremely difficult to keep down. If you kill around 90% of the weed coverage in your food plot after two sprays it’s successful, but, don’t forget, weed killer keeps shooting up in price every year.
If the tractor’s working you can now buy fertilizer and seed. Great, another cost. Plow the field first, then harrow the ground, mix the seed and fertilizer into the spreader and plant. Don’t take too long, the fertilizer will clump rather quickly and clog the spreader, that’s if the spreader’s still working. Cover the field, then repeat the process. Twice is always better.
After all this you pray for rain to fall quickly. Those seeds won’t sprout properly unless it rains and until it does every bird in the county is searching the fields for your expensive seeds. Birds are very thorough and love this eating bonanza.
Of course, you also have to maintain your stands, brush hog, cut multiflora rose and keep trails clear while maintaining your stands — and don’t forget trail cameras.
Food plots, so much fun, it never ends.