Question about brassicas

Randy6471

Buck Fawn
Long time lurker and first time poster. I would like to say that I’ve always been impressed with the knowledge of the folks on here and the willingness to share information, without the arrogance that I find in other forums. For that reason, I thought I would post what I feel is a growing problem that I seem to be having and get some input from some of you as to some changes that I might need to make.

Before I do that I will give you some quick background....
I live in NE Pennsylvania and this year will mark my 20th year of food plotting. Over the years I’ve learned a lot, cussed a lot and even cried a little, but for the most part it’s been fun and definitely provided many good hunting opportunities.
Most years I plant around 10-12 acres of foodplots with about 50% in corn, 25% in brassicas and the other 25% in clover. The corn and brassicas plots are planted in small fields with strips of clover around the edges and I have one on each end of the property.
I also have several hunting plots, which are planted with clover and back away from the destination plots. These clover plots are pretty secluded, surrounded with cover and around 1/3-1/2 ac. each.
I’ve tried to mix it up with some different crops over the years, but this mix has been pretty effective and for the most part it seems to work well. Plus by having all three crops in my destination plots I’m able to rotate, but still insure that there is plenty of food available throughout the year.

Now to my problem....
For about the last 3-4 years I’ve noticed that the deer have developed a taste for brassicas much earlier than in past years. Now it seems that as soon as the plants get up around 6-8 inches tall, they begin to feed on it and they feed so heavily on it that it just never has a chance to grow. It’s to the point where when cold weather hits and I would want/expect them to be feeding on it.....it’s totally wiped out. This year they completely cleaned up around 2 1/2 acres of brassicas by the end of October. Fortunately I do have the corn and although it’s not the greatest food source....at least it’s something to help carry them through the winter. Plus they focused so much time feeding on the brassicas in September and October that I had some clover and tons of corn available going into cold weather.

My observations are....
1. Deer density hasn’t really changed during this time.
2. I can watch deer walk right through thick lush ladino clover to get to the young brassica plants.
3. Inside my utilization cages the brassica plants get up to 18” tall with nice big bulbs and outside it is bare dirt.
4. Before this all started, I could grow brassica plots with tall, thick tops and consistently large bulbs.
5. It hurts my early season hunting plots of clover, because the deer are heading for brassicas.

My thoughts are...
1. Replace brassicas with the Lickcreek blend of WR, Oates, etc.
2. Try a different blend of brassicas. Current blend that I plant is PTT, Daikon Radish and rape.
3. Don’t worry about it and switch hunting plots to brassicas.

So my question would be...do others see a similar problem or does anyone else have ideas/suggestions?

Sorry for the long post, but wanted to provide as much info as possible toward a fix.
 
What about planting a LOT more brassica and less corn, or just dont plant any brassica at all so they have no choice but to use your other food sources?
 
I find deer react to different brassicas differently in my area and it also depends on food alternatives. In normal years with typical acorn crops, my deer hit radish and rape as soon as it is planted but seem to avoid the PTT forage. I typically get good bulbs on turnips and GHR in normal years. My deer tend to hit my PTT forage after we get a good hard frost. I'm not sure if the frost actually has anything to do with it, it may just be coincidental timing. My deer typically hit the GHR tubers next followed by the PTT bulbs.

In years with heavy mast crops they don't hurt my food plots at all. In mast crop failure years, they hammer everything as soon as it germinates. This was one of those years. They were in my plots every night but all of my plots looked like putting greens.

If you are not OK with the way they are over using brassica, I would suggest a few possibilities. One is to plant mixes I like PTT/CC/WR as a mix for my area. They complement each other and require less fertilization in a mix like this. This may help some. Moving more toward PTT and less toward the other brassica my also help some.

Thanks,

Jack
 
I don't suspect changing your seed selection will help. But, I would over seed brassica into all of your corn acreage as soon as the leaves start to brown down, hopefully in August.
 
Don’t know it will work but I would remove the rape seed from the mix completely. That’s usually what they start eating first in my mix.

Curious why so much corn and no beans? Corn is expensive.
 
Try a plot of spring planted/full season brassicas.


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1.) why is this a bad thing? And when do you plant?
2.).you’re usage is exactly how my experience is in central wisconsin. Every year around sept 1st my brassicas start to get hit hard and attract like crazy. I think the “first frost” part is a mostly a myth. Maybe the chemistry in the plants change but deer don’t care. I think the thing I can contribute most to it is that ag beans start to yellow at that time. I’m guessing brassicas provide a more tasty water retention treat. Plus bucks and deer feeding in those be for rut, definitely will check them out during the rut. Even if usage goes down in November.
3.)it does sound like you have a great selection of crops to hold deer throughout the hunting season. Is this happening? If so, why change? If your able to promote bucks to next age class because they spend more time on your property than the neighbors through all of the hunting season you set out and achieved what most people strive for.
4) if the deer like it, keep it but if your trying to get extra time out of the plots because they aren’t producing bulbs, broadcast winter rye into it sept 1st and call it good. A change to planting dates might be a sufficient enough change to make the difference too. Planting in early July vs. late July might give you the extra 2 weeks of growth needed to get you over the hump and produce bulbs.
 
I've seen the same thing going from having waist deep brassica growth to anymore deer browsing them after they are only a foot high. The Daikon is the first to eliminate from the mix as the deer love them most. Keep the others as you know the real reason for planting brassica is their promoting soil health by their mining soil amendments well, even if they don't make it to tubor stage. I always plant, or later overseed a grain to continue the soil coverage as the deer browse the brassica. A mixture is what promotes soil health of its ph and elements and the micro and macro organism community within the soil. Youtube some of the cover crop mixtures of multi mix plantings promoting soil health of Gabe or Dave. I'm sure you are already familiar with their thinking. Good luck.
 
I'd do what a few of the others have mentioned. Try a plot of only PTT and then late summer or early fall spin on cereal rye real heavy. In your nice situation, it doesn't seem like you need to overthink things a whole lot. We are a long ways apart, but my deer clobber turnips fall into winter, until they're gone. When they look gone, they'll keep digging around in the rye.
 
Thanks for the great input guys. It’s much appreciated and it sounds like what I’m seeing isn’t really all that different than others, which is good info. Plus, you’ve given me some good ideas of changes that I could make.

One thing that I forgot to mention and Jack’s post reminded me, is in addition to the plots, I have 2 dozen mature red oak, way too many beech trees to count, 40+ wild apple trees and 18 apple trees that we planted. So in a good year, I also have a tremendous amount of both hard and soft mass available and in those years my plots hold up a little better.

As to the specific questions....

After much trial and error, I plant my brassicas somewhere around 7/15, but of course it’s based around weather. Sometimes later, but never earlier.

I planted soybeans for 10 years and yes the deer would devour them practically from germination until they started to turn yellow. Then later in the year the deer and turkeys would feed on the pods until everything was gone. I actually made the switch from beans to corn to try to have more food still available in late winter and for the first few years it worked. That is until the deer stopped listening to the experts (or realized it was only a myth) and started hammering my brassicas in September/October, rather than wait for a couple of hard frosts....like they are supposed to do. Haha

All of this only matters to me for two reasons..

1. Most of our hunting is done with archery equipment and our season usually runs from early Oct through the first couple weeks of November. So while the deer are hitting the brassicas in my feeding plots, (which we don’t hunt) we’re hunting around the hunting plots of clover and chicory, overseeded with WR....which may become brassica plots. Lol!

2. Really the deer and turkeys have a pretty good amount of food for most of the year and it’s not like they’re going to starve during the few weeks, when my plots are not providing much. It just bothers me to see brassica plots that are completely bare by November, knowing that it would be a big boost if some/any of that food was available in February.
And like everyone here, I’m always looking for ways to provide more and improve what I’m doing. Thanks again!

Randy
 
Thanks for the great input guys. It’s much appreciated and it sounds like what I’m seeing isn’t really all that different than others, which is good info. Plus, you’ve given me some good ideas of changes that I could make.

One thing that I forgot to mention and Jack’s post reminded me, is in addition to the plots, I have 2 dozen mature red oak, way too many beech trees to count, 40+ wild apple trees and 18 apple trees that we planted. So in a good year, I also have a tremendous amount of both hard and soft mass available and in those years my plots hold up a little better.

As to the specific questions....

After much trial and error, I plant my brassicas somewhere around 7/15, but of course it’s based around weather. Sometimes later, but never earlier.

I planted soybeans for 10 years and yes the deer would devour them practically from germination until they started to turn yellow. Then later in the year the deer and turkeys would feed on the pods until everything was gone. I actually made the switch from beans to corn to try to have more food still available in late winter and for the first few years it worked. That is until the deer stopped listening to the experts (or realized it was only a myth) and started hammering my brassicas in September/October, rather than wait for a couple of hard frosts....like they are supposed to do. Haha

All of this only matters to me for two reasons..

1. Most of our hunting is done with archery equipment and our season usually runs from early Oct through the first couple weeks of November. So while the deer are hitting the brassicas in my feeding plots, (which we don’t hunt) we’re hunting around the hunting plots of clover and chicory, overseeded with WR....which may become brassica plots. Lol!

2. Really the deer and turkeys have a pretty good amount of food for most of the year and it’s not like they’re going to starve during the few weeks, when my plots are not providing much. It just bothers me to see brassica plots that are completely bare by November, knowing that it would be a big boost if some/any of that food was available in February.
And like everyone here, I’m always looking for ways to provide more and improve what I’m doing. Thanks again!

Randy

the other option is to reduce doe numbers and maybe just maybe you’ll reduce the browse on the plots. You mentioned that your kill plots are clover. If you don’t want to shoot does... you can still reduce numbers buy switching those to something else a fall annual mix of some sort. In theory and I’ve been trying this myself the last couple years, this could reduce capacity because they find a different summer food source off the property and start bedding closer to that. I’ve had mixed results with this. It definitely works because deer don’t use the plots and I certain can tell bedding areas have less deer. I can’t say for certain it allows my plots to last longer though. Especially Brassica plots. As soon as you start getting that brassica smell.... they flock to it anyway.
 
Randy6471 - My camp is in NC Pa. mountains. We plant brassicas in a mix of PTT, Dwarf Essex rape (DER), Groundhog radishes, and Pasja hybrid brassica. I've noticed our deer have taken to hammering them earlier than the first 2 years we planted them. The first 2 years, they got nice and big - 18" to 2' tall and made big bulbs - probably because they were new to the deer and they barely touched them. Now ours, like yours, get hit earlier and they get hammered. We've taken to over-seeding WR into them at the advice of one of the gents on here and that helps keep some pressure off the brassicas and keeps food available in winter. They'll dig through snow to get brassicas and WR or WW.

We try to plant more brassicas too. Brassicas take a good amount of nitrogen, so we hit them with 19-19-19 per our soil tests. Fertilizing correctly puts more growth on them faster. We gave up on corn - too expensive to plant correctly, and we have bears that destroy it when in the milk stage. We tried soybeans, but we can't plant enough acreage to let them grow. The deer eat them to the dirt from about 5"tall. As you mentioned - good acorn years we have less plot pressure starting in late Sept. into November. As acorns are eaten up by every critter, or begin rotting under leaf duff, the food plots kick in and take them through the winter. Scarce acorn years - plots get hammered earlier - but I don't know an easy solution to that short of more plot acreage, and we're limited in that regard. We also have about 10 to 12 acres total planted in something or other.

Our plots are mainly various red & white clovers, the brassica mix I mentioned, buckwheat, WR, WW, oats, and some AWP mixed in with the rye at times. Since getting more into food plots back around 2012, we've seen more and bigger deer hanging around our place with cam evidence & sightings. These plot varieties have worked pretty well for us over in NC Pa. We also have about 75 newer apple and crabapple trees planted since 2013, along with Washington hawthorn, serviceberry, American high bush cranberry, Norway spruce, white spruce, balsam fir, and witch hazel. Give me a shout on a PM if you'd like!
 
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