Pardon my ignorance, but tons of you guys have winter rye as a go to. Is that what I call Cereal Rye here in Georgia? My seed store doesn't carry it under either name. On another note, the recent rain and cooler temps have turned my struggling red clay fields into a carpet of clover, oats and brassicas. Got a couple of shooter bucks on cam in the legal hunting time. I suspect rut is brewing here. I am already wanting spring to arrive so I can see all 4-5 acres of plots in lush biomass. I need that to help me get on with my minimal disturbance plantings. Also, with the ragweed having gone to seed, I was out harvesting plants and shaking them all through some fresh burned areas. I swear I may just order a bag of seed and plant some plots in it!
Food Plot Ideas that won't get scorched
- Thread starter roymunson
- Start date
I have not read all of the replies, but two things jump out at me.
1. You have tons of property around your place to provide summer food sources, so don't bother with those. Wait until late summer or fall to plant a browse-tolerant mix.
2. You're planting ice cream crops when you know your density is too high and you can't realistically control the numbers of deer.
Depending on your latitude, plant the classic Lick Creek mix and then top-dress it every two weeks with another 50-100 pounds of winter rye until the first frost is imminent. This is a mix of solutions from Paul Knox and Jeff Sturgis, so there is nothing revolutionary about it. You just have to adapt to the circumstances you find yourself in.
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1. You have tons of property around your place to provide summer food sources, so don't bother with those. Wait until late summer or fall to plant a browse-tolerant mix.
2. You're planting ice cream crops when you know your density is too high and you can't realistically control the numbers of deer.
Depending on your latitude, plant the classic Lick Creek mix and then top-dress it every two weeks with another 50-100 pounds of winter rye until the first frost is imminent. This is a mix of solutions from Paul Knox and Jeff Sturgis, so there is nothing revolutionary about it. You just have to adapt to the circumstances you find yourself in.
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scott44
5 year old buck +
Winter rye and cereal rye are the same, my elevator here said they are having a hard time finding people who are planting it.
S.T.Fanatic
5 year old buck +
Barley, wheat, or triticale will work fine.
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
As others have said, Winter Rye and Cereal Rye are the same thing, but different from Rye Grass. Don't confuse those. Winter Rye has some distinct advantages over toher cereal grains depending on your purpose for using it. It germinates better than other cereal grain when surface broadcast in my heavy clay. It is tolerant to low pH and infertile soils. It is a great nurse crop for fall planted perennial clover. It has and chemical suppression on weeds. It will grow in quite cold temperatures. In my area, deer don't show a strong preference for one cereal grain over another. It is highly attractive in the fall and winter here when it is small and tender. It can also provide nutrition in the early spring but as soon as it toughens up deer stop using it the next spring. If you let it grow, deer and turkey will use the seed heads to some extent. You can often let it mature and then mow it to get a second crop. It is a great component of soil building. It used to be less expensive than other cereal grains, but in recent years, USDA has recognized the soil building benefits over other grains and has incentivized farmers to use it as a cover crop component. This had put the price in the same ball park with WW in my area.
Thanks,
Jack
Catscratch
5 year old buck +
Don't dismiss winter wheat. It is great at cycling nutrients, awesome at building soil tilth, requires no fertilizer (as a cover crop, different story if you are harvesting it's grain as a cash crop), and is a wonderful weed suppressor. It's easier and cheaper for me to find wheat seed than rye, and wheat is preferred on my place over rye by deer. I plant both every yr. The only plus I've found rye having over ww is chemical allopathy and taller summer cover. It might or might not be your answer, but its certainly worth looking at.
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Do you bother trying to find awnless wheat?
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
Anything that germinates quickly and grows thick can be a weed suppressor simply by taking up space and resources from weeds. That is how Buckwheat works. In addition, WR has a chemical effect on weed seed germination that others don't have. There was a great Paul Knox thread on WW verses WR on the old QDM site. Too bad it was lost. Paul made a great case for WR over WW.
That is not to say both can't be great for deer. I think the better your soils are, the less the differential benefit of WR is. It is interesting how regional differences come in to play. Here deer only show some temporal preferences for different cereal grains depending on when they peak, but in general there is no overall preference shown. Guys in other areas like you report preferential difference. If it makes sense economically, mixing than can give you the best of both worlds.
Thanks,
Jack
Catscratch
5 year old buck +
Yes! Been planting awnless for a very long time. It's cheaper than other varieties and deer love to strip the heads in July. The seed has decent protein levels during a hot part of the summer when many plants have lost palatablity. Win win!
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Catscratch
5 year old buck +
LC's stuff is still out there on other forums. Check Iowawhitetails (I think that's the one). I still have all his stuff (including his comparisons of wr and ww and some pm's) saved on documents. Lots of valuable info came from that man!
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yoderjac
5 year old buck +
If you still have that WR vs WW thread, it would be a great one to repost here. I saved and reposted a bunch of stuff from the QDMA forum here when they announced the termination, but I missed that one. As I recall, that thread had a lot of steel sharpening steel with different viewpoints and perspectives.
Thanks,
Jack
Catscratch
5 year old buck +
See the post you quoted, the info to find it is there. He also posted on Outreachoutdoors forums quite a bit. There hasn't been much posting on that forum for quite some time but his words are still there. Photobucket started charging for service after Paul's death so most of his pics have been blurred.
It's true that Paul promoted rye over wheat at times, but if you read his threads on it you can see the difference is minimal (except for as I explained earlier that wheat does not have the allotrophic properties of rye) and he did in fact also plant wheat for plots. It's true that wheat uses a lot of nitrogen to make grain, and if you remove the plant as a farmer does that nitrogen does not return back to the soil. But if it's used as a covercrop or for grazing that nitrogen is release back to the soil upon vegetative decomposition. Do a quick google search "wheat cover crop" and you'll find extensive information about it's ability to improve soil tilth, stop erosion, gather nitrogen, etc. It's a very comparable substitute for rye if needed. While reading up on Paul's info remember that he was a tillage guy, so for us who don't till some different principles apply.
Here is a snippit from his thread on nutritional comparisons. Rye has a slight edge in crude protein levels and palatiability but it isn't much.
"Crude Protien levels:
Rye 13
Oat 12
Triticale 11
Wheat 10
Total Digestible Nutrients %
Oat 65
Rye 63
Wheat 60
Triticale 56"
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S.T.Fanatic
5 year old buck +
It all depends on why you are using it in the first place.
If I'm starting a clover/chicory plot I use rye (because for me it is more available, cheaper, and is a little bit better at weed suppression)
If i'm planning on leaving it stand for a throw and mow plot the following year I prefer awnless barley. The barley matures before any other winter cereal and the deer do readily eat the tops when mature. If you are using a roller crimper for summer annuals, having the cereal in dough stage earlier so it can be crimped can be a huge advantage where yield is concerned on your summer plot (in my case the back bone of the mix is soybeans)
If leaving it stand for a mid to late summer planting of brassica, barley for me is much easier to deal with. It doesn't grow nearly as tall so it is much easier to walk through with a bag seeder and broadcast the seed much more evenly. I also like the advantage of an awnless variety for this type of planting because of the fact that the deer will eat nearly all if not all of the seed heads. I have not had good stands of brassica come through WR because the deer dont eat the seed heads and the rye will out compete the brassicas. It can be terminated with a grass specific herbicide but i'm not about to tie up the funds for multiple different chemicals, especially since i'm trying to eliminate them in the first place.
If your main concern is soil building then Rye may be for you but I don't have that need. If I did I would let the rye mature broadcast peas, radishes, and an annual clover in it and mow it down. There would be no need to ever broadcast more rye because the mature seed heads will germinate and provide you with a free stand of rye every year after it is mowed off. Heck i'm sure you'd get a fair amount of germination even if you didn't mow it. Rit has had success with that type of plotting.
If I'm starting a clover/chicory plot I use rye (because for me it is more available, cheaper, and is a little bit better at weed suppression)
If i'm planning on leaving it stand for a throw and mow plot the following year I prefer awnless barley. The barley matures before any other winter cereal and the deer do readily eat the tops when mature. If you are using a roller crimper for summer annuals, having the cereal in dough stage earlier so it can be crimped can be a huge advantage where yield is concerned on your summer plot (in my case the back bone of the mix is soybeans)
If leaving it stand for a mid to late summer planting of brassica, barley for me is much easier to deal with. It doesn't grow nearly as tall so it is much easier to walk through with a bag seeder and broadcast the seed much more evenly. I also like the advantage of an awnless variety for this type of planting because of the fact that the deer will eat nearly all if not all of the seed heads. I have not had good stands of brassica come through WR because the deer dont eat the seed heads and the rye will out compete the brassicas. It can be terminated with a grass specific herbicide but i'm not about to tie up the funds for multiple different chemicals, especially since i'm trying to eliminate them in the first place.
If your main concern is soil building then Rye may be for you but I don't have that need. If I did I would let the rye mature broadcast peas, radishes, and an annual clover in it and mow it down. There would be no need to ever broadcast more rye because the mature seed heads will germinate and provide you with a free stand of rye every year after it is mowed off. Heck i'm sure you'd get a fair amount of germination even if you didn't mow it. Rit has had success with that type of plotting.
SD51555
5 year old buck +
I have a similar situation, I have similar deer densities but a much smaller parcel (85 acres). I simply cannot plant enough food or kill enough does. Once my plots are toast (near that point right now), my property becomes a near deer desert as they'll scrounge for waste grain in the ag fields and move their bedding closer to those areas. Later in winter they'll move back into my browse cuts.
The solution I've decided on is outlining all my plots with soft mast. I've planted nearly 200 apple, pear, and persimmon trees in the last 3 seasons. Since only a handful have just started to produce, I can only speculate on the results. My thought process is that with mostly late and slow dropping varieties, there should be continual food becoming available throughout season that they'll never be able to totally decimate. I'm still a few years away from realizing any results, but I'm very optimistic.
The solution I've decided on is outlining all my plots with soft mast. I've planted nearly 200 apple, pear, and persimmon trees in the last 3 seasons. Since only a handful have just started to produce, I can only speculate on the results. My thought process is that with mostly late and slow dropping varieties, there should be continual food becoming available throughout season that they'll never be able to totally decimate. I'm still a few years away from realizing any results, but I'm very optimistic.
rocksnstumps
5 year old buck +
^^^ Haven't planted that many fruit trees but close to that number between fruit trees and oaks. Probably about 40-50% survival over 15 yr period but if you have most of yours in full sun you can probably do better. Lost a fair amount between trying to utilize small openings and along edges of mature trees that just extended their shade too much over time. I also have a long east-west ridge and southern exposure (when talking about northern parts of the country) is growing double the rate of the north side. The north side does have its benefits though. Things bloom later and late frost years are not as much of a concern. You already have yours in the ground so maybe some considerations for others at this point.
My other observation is that all critters not just the deer will notice and become more prevalent on your land. That includes coons, possums, and unfortunately lately some bear. Maybe in S Michigan you don't have to contend with the bear problem. I also have more yotes too but maybe they really like coons and possums....
Hopefully you have great success and can match Native Hunter pic for pic. He sets the bar pretty high though.
My other observation is that all critters not just the deer will notice and become more prevalent on your land. That includes coons, possums, and unfortunately lately some bear. Maybe in S Michigan you don't have to contend with the bear problem. I also have more yotes too but maybe they really like coons and possums....
Hopefully you have great success and can match Native Hunter pic for pic. He sets the bar pretty high though.
Weed Wacker
5 year old buck +
What a great opportunity to introduce kids and new hunters to a fun doe hunt.
roymunson
5 year old buck +
We're headed out tonight. Wife, 3 kids, and my FIL is meeting us there. We're going gunning in the morning with my 5 and 7 year old. Should be fun.
