How To Plant Fall Food Plots | Steps To Create A Hunting Plot

JEREMY FLINN

08/22/2016

Fall is on its way, now is the time to follow these steps on how to plant fall food plots and hunting plots.

Planting fall food plots is not simply planting a food plot and leaving it until the season, but instead collaborating it intensely between your ground blind, tree stand, or box blind set ups. Chances are you will be hunting over the food plot, labeling this basically as a hunting plot instead of a feeding plot, if that’s what you are shooting for, then you might want to consider a few of these tips as I set up my fall food plot and hunting plot to merge it with my plans for deer hunting this fall.

Steps on How to Plant Fall Food Plots

Step 1

Now the first step in any fall food plot program is taking care of the weeds, in this case we have an very well established clover plot, this will do excellent in the early season when we will begin focusing on doe management, however once the frost comes, this plot will lack attraction. To combat this we are going to broadcast our fall food plot mix, in this case a mix of turnips and wheat, and again this is to ensure we have some attraction in the later months of deer season… but before this we do need to take care of some of the weeds that are in this fall food plot. If you’re starting from scratch this means a round up application, but in my case it will mean a quick application of Butyrac 200 to control the broadleaf species in here. You also see us mixing in a food plot spray called PlotBoost, to help boost the hunting plot before the season.

Step 2

Now after taking care of the weeds were broadcasting our fall food plots mix. I went straight to the local feed and seed store on this one, it kept my cost down and allowed me to purchase exactly what I want in this plot, some clover for the early season, and turnips and wheat for attraction later in the year. This mix rate is 4lbs turnips and 50lbs wheat, just a hair heavy, to spark germination in this already established clover. Now you can choose to broadcast your grain attraction, oats or wheat now or you can wait a little later in the season, so when they do come up they are lush a very palatable and a great attraction for deer. We are going to go ahead and plant today to make sure our turnips settle in.

Step 3

So at this point we have our weeds taken care of, fall food plots planted, now what is the next step? Well a lot of guys would simply walk away at this point, but that’s exactly not what we are going to do, this will take off just fine by its self, but you’re not going to want to come in here often especially this close to the season, We need to stay out as much as possible, so while your down planting your hunting food plot like in my case go ahead and set up your trail camera on the food plot, on time-lapse mode if your just simply watching the plot, or set it up on an entrance into the hunting plot, in my case I am actually going to put out some corn to determine what bucks if any are utilizing this plot before their home ranges switch to different parts of the property. Setting up the Muddy trail camera now will keep you out of the area, but allow you to monitor the progress and deer use.

Step 4

Now normally the final step when you are planting food plots is to go ahead and set up your tree stand and ground blind in preparation for bow hunting in the early season, Go ahead and get the stand hung, or put the ground blind out, brush it in, and let the deer get used to those in the landscape, in my case I am simply running out of daylight to fast. On this particular food plot I plan to hang both a tree stand and install a ground blind for different wind and options for hunting this year. If you have the time, go ahead and install them.

So just to recap the steps you should take in planting a fall food plot or hunting plot, especially for bow hunting, is to one take care of the weeds, two plant the plot after determining what you want to plant, three install food plot monitoring systems in the form of an exclusion cage and a trail camera or multiple cameras, and four if you have the time go ahead and set up your tree stand and ground blind. We will keep you updated on the fall food plots, and come October we will be ready to hunt.