Food plots lately give me an upset stomach. A lot of guys these days think there the new deer magic. Nothing wrong with a great sales pitch right, but food plots for deer is like saying to any four year old kid, here have all the candy you can eat, and if you as a hunter swallow or get into that digestive track, here's where its runs a foul of the big game animal, you should hunt like a small game animal.
Whitetail deer are primarily considered herbivore's that browse and or graze. They tend more often than not in there local environment to feed upon the highest nutritional or most nutritional foods available during each of the four respective seasons. Not just your deer season. So how does that make a food plot bad, it doesn't, if it's a part or a piece of your feeding regime.
Please keep in mind deer have specially designed teeth made in that long jaw to include clipping lower incisors up front, and large grinding molars for chewing or masticating in back. They are not carnivores, they are chewers. Also bear in mind that in any typically healthy deer, you don't see to may overweight or underweight deer. They, all by themselves, consume and eat a very balanced healthy diet to include many foods naturally available to them. They know what to eat, and when and they eat small amounts over a long feeding period when not bedded down.
So as a hunter to rely solely on a food plot, to the exclusion of knowing what the deer browse on naturally in your deer's backyard can leave you missing as many deer hunting opportunities as one may imagine by plowing up the hallowed hunting ground, planting some wonder crop to increase antler growth or entice a deer away from what it is naturally going to feed on any how during the fall deer hunting season, could leave your precious deer tag empty.
Two more points to mention, deer drink water, and deer browse the second growth or understory of the forest. So if you're planting a wonder crop to far from a nice cool drink you're planting, may be in vain. Also deer don't naturally feed under large growth canopy style timber. The exception here is, occasionally, deer will browse an orchard or oaks with acorns, corn fields, but those food sources don't last and once munched the deer don't linger long or under large timber, its just not in there nature. The point, they browse, be it fresh greens or convert to a woody winter browse, but they browse all year, they munch for a few weeks.
The big sting with most food plots, simply stated, is monoculture, and considering that deer browse such a wide variety of foods, its better not to put all your eggs in one basket as it were. If you want a deer with big horns, learn what's available in there cornucopia naturally grown, autumnal horn of plenty, all year round. The trout whisperer
