Experienced Bean planters:
- Thread starter BobinCt
- Start date
It almost feels terrible not letting the deer eat the green leaves all summer. However I like stockpiling food for that special time of year deer season. I roll up the fence the weekend before the season with electrical cord rollers so it won't tangle for next year's use. I do strips so I have a strip of brassicas, wheat, and rye. Right next to the fenced in beans. You can also open the beans little by little as the season progresses. This year we opened it up little by little too see what type of browse pressure they could take. The corner we opened lasted 7 days with around 8 different deer feeding nightly.
I have had 2 acres of pods totally wiped clean in 2 weeks right before gun season in WI. Granted they didn't produce pods like they should because of browsing, but there was a good amount. My brassicas last much longer into the winter even thou they also get hit hard. The deer seem to keep comming back for ptt throughout the winter. I have since disced in or over seeded my beans with wr/ww. It just isn't worth leaving the pods for how fast they get whipped out. The turkey don't help the matter either.
Bassattackr
5 year old buck +
Varying responses as everyone is in different areas. I have a decent amount of ag around me (Central MO) and I can plant 1 acre of beans and have pods in the fall. 100 miles to the south you'd be lucky to have 2 acres survive a few weeks after planting.
BobinCt, are you located in ag country? If so I believe your beans will last into late winter if unprotected until rifle. When I tried brassicas for a couple years they weren't ignored but they were wasted compared to the beans. The vast majority went unused. I don't bother with them anymore. If you go with the fence it will guarantee you have beans until then and depending on your deer density you might be able to take fence down sooner or even go fenceless. The deer will still use the bean field if you broadcast rye when the leaves start turning. They'll be on that until you kill it or it grows to big/loses palatability apparently.
I have chicory/clover mixes and soybeans as the plots. I'm in ag country and I have2 plots with a total of 3.5 acres of beans and I have beans into April. No fence. They use them from the day they come up, take a break from them when the leaves start turning and then come back when the leaves are off. At that time the rye has germinated that I broadcasted when the leaves started turning. It's a great plot combo, almost year round, especially when the weather goes bad and is toughest on the critters. This is in a high deer density area.
We just got 7 plus inches of snow today and I watched the deer come out into the clover plot and scratch and then go into the beans/rye and were still there until I couldn't see anymore.
I have chicory/clover mixes and soybeans as the plots. I'm in ag country and I have2 plots with a total of 3.5 acres of beans and I have beans into April. No fence. They use them from the day they come up, take a break from them when the leaves start turning and then come back when the leaves are off. At that time the rye has germinated that I broadcasted when the leaves started turning. It's a great plot combo, almost year round, especially when the weather goes bad and is toughest on the critters. This is in a high deer density area.
We just got 7 plus inches of snow today and I watched the deer come out into the clover plot and scratch and then go into the beans/rye and were still there until I couldn't see anymore.
S.T.Fanatic
5 year old buck +
I still have plenty of pods in my 1/2 acre plot of beans. I don’t see them lasting another 2 weeks with the amount of pressure they have been getting the past week though.
I had over 20 deer in there Saturday night. I passed on a upper 30’s 3 y/o 8 pt then proceeded to throw a slug over the back of a doe. I grazed her enough to get hair but zero blood. Snow covered ground.
I did overseer ptt in mid August but with zero rain and not an early enough maturity beam they didn’t amount to much. They are pawing at them but there isn’t much there.
Next season I’m getting the earliest maturity group bean will overseed with ptt again and with normal rains for us it should turn out much better.
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I had over 20 deer in there Saturday night. I passed on a upper 30’s 3 y/o 8 pt then proceeded to throw a slug over the back of a doe. I grazed her enough to get hair but zero blood. Snow covered ground.
I did overseer ptt in mid August but with zero rain and not an early enough maturity beam they didn’t amount to much. They are pawing at them but there isn’t much there.
Next season I’m getting the earliest maturity group bean will overseed with ptt again and with normal rains for us it should turn out much better.
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Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
No fence, 5 acres got mowed down by before July for me. Waste of time and money! I need a fence
You'll need a fence for sure. In the ag area I'm in corn and bean fields are generally 80/160 or larger., and they're continuous, property after property for the most part. Spreads out the love.
Not a lot of choices in your area. I can see why they hit the brassicas there. A bean/rye combo should be good with fence. I wouldn't get rid of the brassicas totally if you have a spot for them as well.
swampyankee
Yearling... With promise
3/4 acre plot I used beans from eagle seed and they got up to about 14” tall and the deer ate it to the ground. Same seed at my buddy’s 1-1/2 acremade it to 3ft tall before the deer really started in there and they couldn’t keep up and the beans ended up 6’ tall.
Next year my buddys place made it 14” and the deer ate it to the ground. It changes year to year I think.
I’m going to fence it the next time I plant.
Next year my buddys place made it 14” and the deer ate it to the ground. It changes year to year I think.
I’m going to fence it the next time I plant.
swampyankee
Yearling... With promise
We just broadcast when we planted
S.T.Fanatic
5 year old buck +
Update on my 1/2 acre ag bean planting
As of Sunday I would say that I have 50% of the pods yet. Like mentioned many times on here. For some of us a deers diet consists of much more than just our food plot plantings. 3 Saturdays ago I was hunting a box overlooking this plot and had 20 deer in it yet it is still providing plenty of food.
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As of Sunday I would say that I have 50% of the pods yet. Like mentioned many times on here. For some of us a deers diet consists of much more than just our food plot plantings. 3 Saturdays ago I was hunting a box overlooking this plot and had 20 deer in it yet it is still providing plenty of food.
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S.T.Fanatic
5 year old buck +
I must add that I planted a full bag of beans on this half acre and didn’t do it until the farmers beans were up.
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swat1018
5 year old buck +
You must not have a heavy deer density, a half acre of beans would never live to produce pods in my neck of the wooods.
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
I think it is a combination of deer density and what other foods are available. If your place is next door to a farmer with hundreds of acres of beans and you let his get started first, you can probably get a field like the one pictured, where someone with the same deer density or even lower who does not have an equally attractive food source nearby may have them completely wiped out. I'm in that second group that gets heavy browse pressure. Even after getting our deer densities under control, I still needed 5-7 acres to get beans to canopy and produce pods.
S.T.Fanatic
5 year old buck +
We have what I consider to be acceptable deer numbers. The plot is between the woods and the ag crops. The deer bed near it in the winter but other than that it is nearly left alone. I do not plant plots for harvest reasons (other than late muzzleloader season). I plant them to feed deer through the winter and it works out well for us. (This year has been unusually mild for us. Temps in the upper 20's most days and only about 2" of snow cover as of now.)
The plot is located on the East side of a centralized finger that extends into the property from the North. In the winter they filter into the plot and eat for a while before heading up to pick through the waste grain in the neighbors ag field 200 yards to the south. He is a no till farmer. Even though he uses good modern equipment the biggest factor is that he does not turn his fields into a black desert every fall like most of the farmers in the area.
Our woods for the most part is overly mature with decent browse around the edges. Even though there is standing beans in this plot and brassica in another the deer still spend plenty of time eating dead alfalfa in the hay fields. This may change a little bit next season. It sounds like the guy that started running it after my uncle was in an accident last year wants to put most of into corn for next year. (He only runs about 1/3 of the ag ground though so there will still be plenty of alfalfa in other areas of the farm.
S.T.Fanatic
5 year old buck +
FF 10 days. I hung a camera yesterday and checked on my bean plot. Best guesstimate is that there is only about 15% of the pods remaining. We had a cold snap and the deer really got on them. I’m guess one more week they will be a distant memory.
For me, I’d say it was a success. I would have had another 1/2 acre plot 50 yards North of this one but for reasons out of my control it didn’t happen. Another 1/2 acre plot would have easily extended the life into mid to late February.
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For me, I’d say it was a success. I would have had another 1/2 acre plot 50 yards North of this one but for reasons out of my control it didn’t happen. Another 1/2 acre plot would have easily extended the life into mid to late February.
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Wild Thing
5 year old buck +
It depends....mostly upon your deer density. My property is one mile long and I have 2 distinct deer herds. On the north end where my property is adjacent to a farm that kills a lot of deer during the summer on crop damage permits, the deer density is much lower so I can sometimes get away with planting and not fencing, whereas on the south end I would really need to fence my beans to get any pods out of them. On the other hand, I can plant beans on the south end to give the deer some early season forage, knowing that I will be planting brassicas over the top of them in mid-July to get some late season forage.
This is a 2 acre plot on the north end where there is a lower deer density after having been pounded on crop damage permits all summer - October 16th
The same plot on December 5th - still quite a few pods left...
Smaller plots need to be E-Fenced - no question about it.
2+ acre plot on the south end on July 30th. If your beans get pounded like this you will be double cropping like I do...
Exclusion cages will definitely tell you the story...
All is not lost though, as you can broadcast brassicas over top of the heavily foraged beans just prior to a rain event and get a decent crop of brassicas after the beans...
I have even had good success broadcasting brassicas into standing corn...
This is a 2 acre plot on the north end where there is a lower deer density after having been pounded on crop damage permits all summer - October 16th
The same plot on December 5th - still quite a few pods left...
Smaller plots need to be E-Fenced - no question about it.
2+ acre plot on the south end on July 30th. If your beans get pounded like this you will be double cropping like I do...
Exclusion cages will definitely tell you the story...
All is not lost though, as you can broadcast brassicas over top of the heavily foraged beans just prior to a rain event and get a decent crop of brassicas after the beans...
I have even had good success broadcasting brassicas into standing corn...
