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You wanted to know, so here you go. Here are some actual questions sent into the BioLogic website and the replies that they received. We tried to choose questions that were asked the most often.
Q. Recently we’ve been getting bombarded with questions regarding planting for other deer species, mainly black-tail and mule deer. The industry is full of information and products geared towards whitetail, but what about mule deer or black-tail; can you plant a food plot for them?
A. Actually both mule deer and blacktail have a digestive system that can handle a lot more than a whitetail. Most anything that you can plant for a whitetail, both mule deer and back-tail will also eat.
Blacktail inhabit the Pacific coastal area so moisture is typically not a problem. They seem to love “green.” Clovers, brassicas, lablab and newly planted cereal grains like oats, wheat or triticale will do a good job at attracting and feeding your blacktail.
Since much of the mule deer’s range is much drier than most of the whitetail’s home, I would be more concerned about moisture and how the crop will do in the growing conditions. As I mentioned, mule deer will eat anything a whitetail will…and then some. You should be more concerned whether that specific crop will grow in the mule deer’s habitat. If you receive twenty inches of annual rainfall, you should be able to plant all of the BioLogic blends with success. Anything less than that and you probably will have a tough time with perennials but you may still be able to plant annuals during the cooler parts of the growing season.
I have done some work in Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska where the ranches get only 12-14 inches of annual rainfall. It all hinges upon how Mother Nature treats you with moisture, but we seem to grow pretty decent food plots. At least the local mulie population agrees with me. We obviously can’t grow perennials but good annual blends would include lablab for a spring planting. Outfitter’s Blend, Maximum, Trophy Oats or Full Draw should work great for late summer/fall plantings.
Q. It says on your website and on several of your packages that brassicas can be planted in the spring or late summer/fall in the transitional or northern zones. Which is better?
A. That’s a great question with a complicated answer. In the northern half of the US brassicas can be planted in either the spring or the fall. However, when planted in the spring, and the mature state that the plants are in when you get a freeze, there is a very slight risk that when the plants go through a freeze it can make them unpalatable to a whitetail. I would estimate that this happens less than 1% of the time, but I have seen it happen before. In fact, here on my home property in Minnesota I had always planted all of my brassicas in the spring until about 8 years ago when I experienced this. I had beautiful brassicas, 5 feet tall and the deer wouldn’t touch them. I had always experienced the deer eating them to the ground. I had a biologist explain this to me using very long words, but to sum it up, if there is too much water in the plant’s cell walls and too dramatic of a drop in temperature, it basically turns the cells to mush.
With spring planted brassicas the plant has longer to grow so you can grow some amazing tonnage. In the attached picture “tons of forage” I grew approximately 30 tons of forage per acre at average protein content of 34%!!! There’s nothing else that you can plant that even comes close to that. However, with spring planted brassicas you run the slight risk of what I mentioned above. With late summer/fall planted brassicas you obviously don’t attain as much tonnage (still a lot 8-20 tons per acre), but you’re always assured a palatable crop.
Since this happened to me Eight years ago I have always “hedged my bet” and planted half of my brassicas in the spring and half in the late summer. AND, I have not experienced the unpalatable spring planted brassicas since.
Q. I have property in the middle of a bunch of Federal land. My goal for the property is to suck as many deer off the fed land and protect as many young bucks as possible. The property has tons of cover and is a great piece for the area. It has a creek that runs down the middle with poplar slashing on one side and select cut oak on the other. The biggest problem is it is surrounded by fed land and they kill every buck they see!! So we never kill any good bucks around here. So I want to plant to keep the deer on my property as much as possible. I need your help and advice.
A. To do what you want you must provide them with everything that they need on your property so they don’t have to venture across the boundary to search for what you don’t have. You have probably heard of the “food, water, and cover” formula. It really can be that simple. You want the deer to come to your property for all of their needs.
I would first make sure that they have several choices for clean water. This is one of the most overlooked pieces of the puzzle but possibly the most important. They MUST have water. It sounds like you have a creek that runs through the property, but if that creek ever dries out during the year, I would make sure that I have several back-up sources. Live stock water troughs or burying half of a large drum or tank can be all it takes. Fill the tank if it runs dry. In most parts of the country the natural rain water will keep them full enough. If you want something a little better, it’s amazing what a person can accomplish in one weekend with a “front-end loader” and some pond fabric.
Make sure that you provide them with a variety of palatable food choices so that they have a food that will meet their needs regardless of the time of year or the conditions. You may need significant acreage to accomplish this; it depends upon your deer density, the quality of your native vegetation and other factors.
You say you have the cover and water so then I would concentrate on food. But concerning the cover; probably the biggest detail is that you must treat your area as a sanctuary. That means you must use a “low impact” hunting style and you must NOT put unnecessary pressure on your property. I’m not sure how big your property is but you can do this by creating sanctuaries or treating your entire property as a sanctuary. Every property that I manage has at least one sanctuary. This is one of the most important aspects if you wish to house mature bucks on your property. How much is kind of relevant to the total size of the property. Five acres is enough to hold a mature buck, but the more the better. I have one property where 380 of 400 acres are treated as sanctuary. The property that you devote doesn’t have to be all one chunk. You could have several areas that you deem “minimum impact” areas where you put very little pressure on them. Typically the sanctuaries are going to be the thickest stuff on the property and usually towards the center of the property. I do not step foot in my sanctuaries unless I’m tracking a wounded animal or possibly in the spring on a scouting trip.
If you look after all of their needs it should help you hold more bucks on your property and grow a few of them past 1½ years old.
Todd Amenrud is Director of Public Relations for BioLogic. If you would like to ask Todd a question about planting food plots or whitetail management you may contact him at
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Without a reliable, clean source of water on your property your deer will have to travel off of your property to find it. There are several ways to solve this problem, one of which is creating small ponds or dams. It's amazing what one person can create in one day with a "front-end loader" and some pond fabric. |
