I like the sun hemp idea of incorporating sun hemp in the spring. How attractive is it to deer? Is it something to mix in a fall mix as well for early season hunting or would it not do well?
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For me, rather than looking to improve soil first by adding OM artificially (manure, compost, and such) and then focusing on deer food, I like the idea of doing it simultaneously. Building OM is a very slow process. Depending on your soils, it could easily take 10 years. You can't just pile on OM from an external source, because plants need soil. Folks who apply a lot of OM artificially at one usually till it in. That adds OM, but the tillage burns it quickly and disturbs the soil tilth and causes other issues. Many farmers top dress with smaller amounts like manure over multiple years, but again that takes a lot of time and effort. By growing your own "compost", you are feeding deer at the same time you are building OM. As OM slowly builds, the microbiology improves, nutrient cycling improves, and the less fertilizer is required for the same results. It is amazing the tonnage of vegetative matter that can be produced with the right combination of grasses and legumes. We only see what is above ground and sometimes forget how much the deep rooted grasses have root systems that penetrate and drive OM into the soil without tillage.
As for sunn hemp, it is a subtropical plant so it is sensitive to frost. It is slower to get started than buckwheat, but once it gets going, it grows fast and tall. I probably would not use it as a fall attractant as there are other warm season annuals that are less expensive that come up fast for an early season attractant. When I want to add a warm season annual to a fall mix for early season attraction knowing it will die at the first frost, I usually talk to the manager at the local coop. Once farmers are done planting soybeans, their bin beans and broken bags usually go to waste. They sell them to me cheap and I'll add them to a fall mix. The issue is that they can't be just surface broadcast, you need a no-till drill. Another thing that works well is a volunteer plot of buckwheat. When you plant buckwheat in your summer mix and let it go to seed, you will get a volunteer crop of buckwheat as part of your fall plant. How thick the volunteer crop is depends on your planting rate and your soils. Some folks with fertile soils have to terminate buckwheat before it goes to seed because the volunteer crop is so thick it shades out the rest of the fall plant. I don't have that issue with my soils. I don't adjust fall planting rates because I know that if the deer let any of the buckwheat live in the fall, it will die at the first light frost making room for the rest of the mix.
As for attraction of sunn hemp, my results have been mixed. I did not use any exclusion cages, so I don't have an in-field comparison, but my field to field results were quite different, and my property to property results were even more dramatic.
On the good soil, low density, property I did not see much use, but the field was so thick, deer may have been using it a lot and I just could not see it because of the regrowth and low deer density. The planting rate was higher here and it grew well over 6' in places.
On the pine farm where I hunt, some fields had 90% of the plants with obvious browsing and it never got more than a foot or so tall. A field a few hundred yards away had moderate browsing (maybe 30% of the sunn hemp plants) and the plants in that field were 3'-4' tall. Another field another couple hundred yards away had very light browsing (a few plants here and there) and got 4' to 5' tall.
Sunn Hemp is a nutritious deer food. Maybe it is not quite as nutritious as soybeans (25-30%) verses (20-25%), but it is close. My deer hammer soybeans at the pine farm and it is hard to get them established between the browse pressure and weed competition. This was really the first year my deer had any significant volume of sunn hemp planted. It could be that it is just taking them time to learn the new food source is valuable to them. Deer sometimes can take a number of years of planting before they realize turnips are a good food source when they are first planted in a location. Perhaps something similar is happening to a lesser degree with sunn hemp.
It is not just sunn hemp, but the combination of crops and rotation that builds the soil. Other legumes could be used like soybeans or cowpeas or such. I like the tonnage and amount of N that sunn hemp can fix into the soil which is why I'm leaning that direction for the long term.
One last thought on warm season annuals. In my area and with my high deer densities, the main purpose for me to plant warm season annuals for summer is to cover our summer stress period here in zone 7A. Are summer and winter stress periods are pretty balanced here but summer is probably a little more stressful to deer in most years. My purpose is to provide quality food to deer during this period if they need it, not to attract them. I'm doing QDM, not just trying to improve hunting. So, less attraction is actually better for me. Reduced browse pressure during establishment means quality food is available when they need it in the heat of summer when quality native foods dry up. When I was planting soybeans, I was not planting them for pods, but for the summer forage. They were too attractive.
Thanks,
Jack
ha). What type of plantings have people had success with to build OM in sandy soils? I am planting winter rye ASAP mixed with some clover and peas for this fall. Not sure what to do for the spring yet. 
