Warm Season Food Plots

Nothing screams ‘hillbilly took a wildlife habitat class’ like a fellow in this bib-overalls working his 1942 Farmall H with the sole purpose of putting in food plots for deer and turkeys. I have a 1942 Farmall H. She’s been a workhorse her whole life and by the looks of her you’d think she was on her last leg but she is still the best, toughest, easiest to work on, old tractor I have ever owned. Since she is also a magneto tractor I still use the old hand crank to start her up. Most folks have never crank started a tractor in their lives so it’s just too much trouble to mess with her and I like it that way. After I bought her I’m sure the old workhorse must have thought I had cracked my gourd the first time we dropped in the disk to plant exclusively for wildlife management instead of her usual row crops or hay production. Times have changed since 1942.

Until I entered college in the mid 1980’s wildlife management and food plot production was largely unknown in the hunting community outside of universities and game and fish departments. Back then I remember picking up an Outdoor Life magazine with a catchy article entitled ‘Quality Deer Management’, QDM for short. It described how these ubber-serious hunters had started actually rotational planting various crops strictly for wildlife and then harvesting wildlife on number, size, and sex quotas on their managed ground instead of the old “there’s one…Shoot” method. Wow, what a concept. And the results they were getting were unbelievable. Since that time every outdoor magazine you pick up has articles and advertisements for the newest and greatest crop to plant for growing 300 inch whitetails and 50 pound gobblers,…uh, ya. Times have changed since 1986.

For the most part folks in southern Missouri who have resorted to wildlife management efforts have mainly planted cold season, or fall time, food plots for deer hunting. What a lot of hunters don’t know is that there are actually two stress periods for wildlife in our southern Missouri climate. The winter time stress period and the summer time stress period. Each are characterized by differing needs for wildlife at that particular time of the year and each require different supplemental crops to be planted in order to fully maximize wildlife potential on the managed property. In winter, energy is the main concern and wildlife needs forage that provides for fat and carbohydrates. During the summer stress period, however, wildlife, deer in particular, need minerals and protein for antler development and milk production.

In the Ozarks, the predominant species to consider while developing a wildlife management plan are deer and turkeys. It is my opinion a multifaceted approach that provides for the best production and hunting opportunities for these game species while keeping in mind quail habitat and foraging opportunities is the best all around plan. The whole process must first be started with your local fertilizer provider. You can get soil sample bags at your fertilizer plant and for a few dollars a soil analysis will put you on the right track from the very start. A good rule of thumb when planting food plots is to plant plots totaling at least 1% to 4% of the total acreage to be managed (I typically plant around 7%). Plots should be smaller as opposed to larger - it is better to have 10 1-acre plots as opposed to 1 10-acre plot.

With spring turkey season just around the corner, warm season food plots not only provide for the often-times overlooked needs of wildlife throughout the summer stress period, they also provide for great strut zones for wild turkeys. These great green seas of delectable plant offerings are magnets for insects and subsequently, lots of turkeys. Big toms will spit and drum the late mornings away while showing off for the girls as they pick bugs and scratch legumes and grasses while grazing the food plot buffet. It is wise to plant food plots in combinations in order to best survive intensive grazing and variable soil type yields. In the Ozarks a combination of warm season legumes and warm season grasses as suggested by your local fertilizer and seed company is a sure fire path to wildlife food plot success.

If spring turkeys are on the menu this year along with the long range goals of fall deer and quail hunting, a wildlife management plan encompassing warm and cold season food plots in conjunction with proper harvest management quotas is a surefire way to get your property on the maximum yield trail. If you truly enjoy the Great Outdoors it is also one more excuse to get out in the open and play with the old tractor while improving nature’s ability to produce for wildlife quality and quantity. With youth turkey season little more than 7 weeks away, it’s time to start setting the stage for our young hunters to be successful in the warm season food plots. Instead of letting the kids play video games while you work in the fields planting the food plots, you might even recruit them to help. As I said earlier, times are changing and it’s up to us to make sure it’s for the best for our young folks. Good luck, be safe, and get a big one.