...and what you plant. Most folks in the north plant for pods. I'm not sure how quickly an acre of pods would get consumed when the deer decide to hit them. Another strategy that I know works is to plant for early season. Our archery season opens in early October here (VA). One year, I planted Eagle RR Forage beans. They are and indeterminate bean that focuses their energy on forage production rather then pod production. They do produce pods, but the pods and beans are small compared to ag beans. I planted about 5 acres that year and protected about an acre with a Gallagher-style e-fence. The beans inside the fence grew like mad. The deer hammered the beans outside the fence but could not kill them. The beans staked naked all summer and every time they would grow a leaf, the deer would eat it. So, the beans outside the fence were also full of weeds since they never canopied. That gives you an idea about my deer density to quality food ratio at the time in the summer.
Beans inside the fence got about 5' or so tall. I took the fence down a couple weeks before the season to get the deer use to using them. They hit them right away but the field was so thick with beans that the deer had a hard time getting into it. They hammered it around all the edges but the beans were so thick and fast growing that it was no problem. I actually started thinking about it and deer are edge creatures. As hard as it was emotionally, I ended up bushhogging strips through the beans. While this seems counter intuitive, it actually created more food. First, the deer had more edges to work. Second, it opened up those strips for me to surface broadcast a fall cover crop. Those beans stayed green and attractive to deer through October in my area. They were starting to yellow the last week or so. They had plenty of small pods, but once brown, my deer ignored them. They would come to the field to eat the WR in the cover crop strips but would ignore the pods. Turkey loved the pods. In my area, deer only seem to hit pods when we have a mast crop failure.
The reason I did this was NOT for hunting although it worked out great for hunting purposes. The reason I did it is because my partners were beginning to believe I was doing something wrong planting beans and they would not grow back when I tried planting the first few acres. I decided to use the e-fence to prove to them that it was not the planting techniques but browse pressure that was the problem. It worked!
So, I can tell you that in my area if you were looking for the early season attraction it would likely work. I can't speak to late season up north with pods as the objective.
Thanks,
Jack
