Beav, the first couple weeks of archery season everything hits the field during daylight hours, it’s after that when the bucks start getting more solitary and irking out the hierarchy. I’m not saying they WON’T hit the plots during daylight, but I know they’ll be on the trail to it during daylight with 100% certainty.

It is less about the food plot and all about how you are treating that area. They should feel just as secure in kitchen as they do in the bedroom. You need both to anchor a line of movement. Unless you have both, you only have morning or evening stand locations.

You make them secure on both ends of that movement, and I will guarantee your hunting gets better each day of the season. You see more deer on last day of firearm season than on opening day of archery.

Best of all, you will no longer need the neighbor to scare a few deer over to see deer moving on your property and you can take a whole lot of luck out of the equation. When new deer move in, they are sucked right into that line of movement.

This is all good stuff unless you live in Virginia east of the blue ridge. Then all you have are trespassers from opening day of bow season till the first Saturday in January. They are looking for their dogs!!! What a joke.

Hunt the wind. If It's not right don't hunt. Get In and out as quiet as you can.

That wouldn't work around here. It would become overloaded with unwanted invasives. Some management is required, at least once in a while.

If a whitetail feeds 4-5 times per day keeping a kitchen closest to the bedroom is a good plan- I think the whole food plot concept is a lot of marketing hype that draws our attention to the big rack on the overpriced seed bag- I have friends that are super proud of their 1/3 acre ankle high soybeans but you can't compete against Ag fields. We currently have 8 kill plots and numerous browse plots that are deigned to offer a smorgasbord of rumen packed vegetation but as standalone - would never increase the carrying capacity of our property. Eyes on the prize- our deer are moving toward our aspen clear cuts and Ag field during low light conditions- intercepting them from bedding to feeding is out main objective. I don't have good photos but heres a drone pic from early winter and you can see two snack bars leading to our Ag fields- the 26 acres of alder shown surrounding the field has since been sheared.

Sorry- I meant to show the stand location: Here's my son with a respectable P&Y taken 1/2 hr before shooting hours ended and same location for the trailcam pic of July1st this year.

When you talk about kill plots vs browse plots vs food plots, you have me confused. To me they are 'food plots,' but maybe I am missing something

In my HUMBLE opinion, bucks in November don't care about food, only romance.

Eagleye, that looks like some killer deer habitat and an even better setup. Lots of good info in your post as well.

If the does are in that plot, ole boy will be patrolling downwind checking them out.

Our gun season starts On the 18th of Nov. WE may have a secondary rut but for the most part the rut Is over. Around here the rut starts around the 12th of Oct.

Your above quote on bedding area and this is Bingo IMO

I watch bucks during the rut cruise and skirt the edge of those kill plots, they often stop to head bob those opening looking for does but most often will not cut through them during the seek phase of the rut. I have found if I hang a stand on the kill plot- it's hard for me to get in an out without being busted by does- I prefer to hunt the funnels. This is bow only, our gun stand strategy is totally different.

It's really semantics... kinda.
I don't consider anything a food plot unless it's over 5 acres or over. If I had one, 1/2 acre food plot of soybeans planted, it would be dirt by summer. Our intent with kill plots, browse plots and seeded logging roads is to give options for daylight bow shots on the way to AG field "food plots", positioned between buck bedding areas and food. Does are predictable and will bed within closer proximity to those ag fields and food sources, during the rut the bucks are checking doe bedding areas and cutting perpendicular to as many does trails as possible. I also prefer browse plots to food plots, if I look at my 29 acre bean field after harvest- there's not a lot of residual beans left on the ground and it gets plowed and disced within days of harvest. Browse plots also offer great winter emergency food sources. Here's an example of a 5 acre Red Osier Dogwood browse plot, in the spring every tip will be white and nipped off.

??.. oh boy!

Eagle-eyed, why ryegrass?

The honest answer is: it came as part of the seed blend and I figure Deer Creek is more advanced on agronomy than I'll ever be. With that said, before I plant anything I always look at the pros & cons (Byrce could weigh in on this)- I believe Perineal Rye is considered a nurse grass for other beneficial grasses, it cannot spread through rhizomes or stolon's - it clumps, this might be why Bryce said "it won't sod out" the road.

Eagleye, you ever plant a cover crop of rye after soybeans or corn in ag field to help keep the movement?

Absolutely- but that's Winter Rye, it helps with weed control, produces green manure and helps with soil protection from wind erosion- important in the spring as it's the first thing to green up in cold temps. This year I planted a couple new plots in the spring with Winter Rye because it performs well in poor soil quality that I haven't had the chance to improve yet and helped with weed surpression.

Thanks Eagleye. So many differences but yet so many similarities. Hunting in a county that is dominated by ag, it sure has an impact. Here is an acre soybean plot on last day of the season.

Deer had no issue pouring into the field before dark and I had no issues getting out clean even though I was sitting “on the plot”. 26 antlerless and 9 bucks came within shooting distance.




Here is a buck with this girlfriend in the same food plot on November 7th. Not one I would shoot, but they use at all times if they don’t feel pressure.


Are soybeans the silver bullet? Nope. Here is the same plot in greens and here is a good buck going across the plot in the middle of the morning during the firearms season.