Food Plot Shapes

[BJE80]

Share your tips for designing a food plot shape. Do's and Don'ts. Pictures and sketches are good. :)


The hour glass is something I really want to try. I've done the baseball diamond shape and it was "ok".

 

[tooln]

Mine is kind of like an sloppy 8. Small on top larger on the bottom. I wanted the pinch point between the 2.

 

[sandbur]

I like a W shape with a stand at the base of the W. Or call it a crow foot design.

 

[wiscwhip]

Our's were just rectangles(oriented the wrong direction I might add), but we put them in back in the early 80's before all this fancy-pants management stuff came about. Since then I have helped friends clear and put in a couple of the hourglass shaped plots. I particularly like them due to the amount of stand locations one can put around the plot. The ones I have helped with are similar to the drawing below and those guys have had good success with all the stand locations that are marked in red. One of the guys tried to put his orchard in the pinch points on the sides and figured out the hard way that wind drift when spraying gly on the field was not his friend when it came to apples in those areas.:eek:

 

[bat man]

I like plots that capitalize on natural travel. Deer like their current trails. Put the plot somewhere they like to travel with bullet proof hunter access in mind.

I also like dozing or piling the downed trees and brush to make blockades and funnel the deer. Makes picking stands way easier and lower impact.

 

[j-bird]

I'm too lazy - mine are triangles or square/rectangles. Most of mine are small however (largest is .75 acres). I can easily cover them with a gun and prefer to hunt trails with a bow. So hunting plots and kill plots are different as does the hunting weapon of choice. Like I said - I'm just lazy - I like planting and mowing in straight lines.

 

[gunther89]

So far we have 2 rectangle plots that are 1.5 and 1 acre in size. This year we will have a oval shaped clover plot about .5 acres. Coming off of that clover plot, I will be mowing 3 strips that will be roughly 12 feet wide and 50-100 yards long. 2 strips will be in soybeans and the last strip will be in winter rye.

 

[Bluecollaroutdoors]

I really like my figure 8 plot. You can shoot to the circles but with a little trash in the center there is basically no option but to walk by 15/20 yards broadside if anything does from side to side.

 

[Bluecollaroutdoors]

The last picture is the south portion.
This is north. 7 years of mineral in the middle.

Alot less trees to shade out the plot now but you get the idea. Way more deer killed off the plots than in them for me.

 

[foggy]

I call my plots "fingers". Fingers of food (maybe 15' wide into the forest. The more the better.

 

[phil@thesidehill]

My main plot is "L" shaped. Where the short leg is actually more of a rectangle in and of it self with a narrow finger as the long leg of the L. The "crotch" of the L is a tremendous funnel...it also has an autumn olive bush that always has a massive scrape/s on it. I have a camera on the fat leg of the L, the long narrow finger of the L, and in the crotch...the crotch produces the most pics hands down. I may only get pics of a specific deer on one camera or two but not all three...that one camera or one of the two will always be in that crotch.

 

[phil@thesidehill]

Also forgot that I will be experimenting with plot shapes this year on my buddy's property. Looking to try hourglass or figure 8....same principle as the L shaped plot that uses the crotch as a narrow funnel. We will also be looking a long narrow plots as well....might end up being a long narrow network of skinny long plots that are broken up between.

 

[phil@thesidehill]

Autumn Olive??? gasp....:eek: :D:)

I knew that was coming...even if with a hint of sarcasm.....while I have persecuted them with extreme prejudice thru out the rest of my property.....I just hate the fact of removing this one because of scrapes that show up under it and how it helps neck down the crotch funnel. I supposed I could cut it and treat it and plant something else...but it would take a couple years to get back to where it is now.

 

[phil@thesidehill]

Just giving ya crap Phil...I'm off the AO is evil bandwagon. Heck...I almost ordered some to plant here this year

I knew it was tongue in cheek....but I still don't like AO....I hate to see it when it forms massive monocultures. But I have greater evils to contend with like Japanese barberry and MFR....they seem to be much quicker to establish and dominate than AO.

 

[phil@thesidehill]

You can keep the barberry...MFR and AO...I wouldn't go out of my way to fight here. I'm thinking our winters must keep them both in check because I've found zero of either here. Haven't seen any on other properties in central MN either.

I did plant some rugosa roses here. Hoping they form a nice, impenetrable hedge at some point.

Barberry is tough....and spreads rapidly as those red berries are highly attractive to birds. Good news is that they leaf out up to several weeks ahead of everything else so it's easy to give them a folia treatment of gly without killing everything around them.

The rugosa is surviving your winters? We had that stuff on Long Island all over the dunes and dune swales....formed impenetrable thickets for acres. The hips are really good tho...sweet and very high in vitamin C. We also had acres of beach plum....they made great jams.

 

[phil@thesidehill]

Yup...they made it through last winter in good shape. We'll see if they do this year without snow cover to protect them. I remember seeing beach roses (Rugosa) all along the beaches of central Maine a few years ago. The hips were huge...about the size of a quarter. I'd love to get a big patch of them growing here.

Yep same stuff....if you can gather hips there are many uses for them. They are supposed to be a very healthy wild edible.

 

[kabic]

Our's were just rectangles(oriented the wrong direction I might add), but we put them in back in the early 80's before all this fancy-pants management stuff came about. Since then I have helped friends clear and put in a couple of the hourglass shaped plots. I particularly like them due to the amount of stand locations one can put around the plot. The ones I have helped with are similar to the drawing below and those guys have had good success with all the stand locations that are marked in red. One of the guys tried to put his orchard in the pinch points on the sides and figured out the hard way that wind drift when spraying gly on the field was not his friend when it came to apples in those areas.:eek:
View attachment 3784

I read some wehere (magazine article or book) and the hour glass shape was mentioned because deer would be drawn to the middle. Also an S shape was suggested I'm sure there was more but dont remember.

 

[buckvelvet]

This is no joke, we did this food plot in 2012 unknowingly until GE was updated did we find out it looks like, well......

 

[wiscwhip]

I know another hunter who has what he calls a "skull and crossbones" plot. It is primarily used for gun hunting, as he does not bowhunt, but I think with proper setup it could be used for both. It is basically a 1.5 acre circular plot with an X crossing through the center. The "arms" of the X run east and west, as he has great east access and his winds are mostly W/NW. The 4 "arms" are each about 100 yards long and 4 tractor passes wide protruding from the center and he has shooting towers on the 2 east ends. About a 250-275 yard shot from the tower to the west end.

 

[wiscwhip]

This is no joke, we did this food plot in 2012 unknowingly until GE was updated did we find out it looks like, well......

Do you call that the Droopy D*** plot?