When you are talking about planting apple trees as a food plot you have to be first clear about what are your intentions. Do you want apples strictly for the deer or do you want some to eat some apples, yourself, also. If it is strictly for deer you have lots of inexpensive choices. My suggestion would be to buy either dolgo or B118 rootstock - both of which you can get very inexpensively from Willamette nursery or Lawyer nursery. They are both vigorous growers, rapidly produce fruit (lots of it) and the deer will eat them. The trees are very cheap and hardy - Dolgos will grow in Alaska, even. If YOU also want to eat some of the apples, then the expense goes up somewhat because now you are looking at grafted apples. Here I would go with one of the many "no spray" apples like Enterprise or Liberty or Freedom where you will get good apples without much trouble. Someone mentioned Nova Easygrow. It is not a good choice for a food plot. It fruits early meaning in the summer or late summer when most areas do not permit hunting. It is a very sweet apple and sort of boring - no balance of sweet and acid. It is strictly a grafted apple so it is expensive.
If you want to feed both you and the deer - go with one Enterprise, one Liberty - both are no spray - and the rest dolgo and/or B118 rootstock. The deer will go for YOUR apples first so forget about anything within their reach. After they eat up all of your apples, they will next go for the dolgos and B118 - both of which trees are dirt cheap to buy. Another good compromise is Kerr seedlings or antonovka seedlings - both of which can survive the coldest zones and both of which produce fruit which you and the deer can eat. Not the best apples to eat but edible enough - some people even go out of their way to get them as people food. There are better apples but these two can survive zones 1 or 2 without blinking. The Russians claim they can even grown them in Siberia .....not sure if that is an exaggeration but so they say. Pristine is a good yellow summer apple and is no spray - drops its fruit (lovely yellow large apples - all disease free) all over the ground in July - so Bambi will come running for it. Unless your area permits hunting in the summer, it will do you no good in the food plot. Bambi esp loves this particular apple - one of his very favorites, in fact, and it makes great pies.
Also don't forget about pear rootstock. Deer like pears also. OF x F333 is cheap as rootstock and makes an OK pear to eat. Deer are not picky. They produce pears which are smallish but tasty - not the greatest pears but perfectly fine for most people to snack on. It will keep both you and the deer happy and there is no work involved. Another "no work involved" pear is Maxine pear (Stark calls them Starking delicious). You will have more pears - and huge pears, at that - than you know what to do with. With 10 of these trees, you both will have more pears than either you or Bambi can ever eat and they are totally disease free. With these trees, you don't have to do an absolute thing to get perfect pears and more of them than than you can possibly consume. It will keep both you and Bambi quite well fed. Maxine is a grafted tree not a seedling, however, so it will cost you more initially. For a food plot, buy them whole sale if you are going to buy lots of them. By contrast Bartlett pear rootstock is cheap and commonly makes some good pears and also some not so good pears but the deer will eat all of them anyway - good or otherwise...... that is, AFTER they eat up all your best pears. Barlett is fireblight susceptible so don't plant this rootstock in areas where this disease is a problem. Dead trees don't do you a whole lot of good. Whatever you do, do NOT buy betufolia pear rootstock. It makes totally worthless tiny fruit that even Bambi won't eat. It is an aggressive tree with big thorns. It grows so rapidly that if you turn your back on it, it will overgrow it's site and come and get you while you sleep. It is susceptible to no disease and it will grow sky high in but a few years. Too bad it makes such worthless fruit. It is near impossible to kill this tree. I use it strictly as a rootstock for grafting pears. Absolutely do NOT buy it for a food plot.
Remember, all trees need protection from Bambi until about 6 feet or so hence plan on building small wire fences around each tree. Sometimes I grow them in 7 gallon pots until they are six feet then I plant them with just a vinyl wrap. In that case, you can dispense with the initial fencing. Absent that, the deer will eat ALL of your seedlings right down to the ground as soon as you put them in. They won't last even a week. Bambi loves apples. His next favorite food is apple seedlings and he is not smart enough to know that if he eats up all the seedlings, he won't get any apples. These animals are not rocket scientists.
