I spend a lot of time reading articles and watching videos of other hunters and habitat improvement folks.  My goal is to see what new ideas are out there and because I’m addicted to whitetail hunting and habitat improvements.  I can’t get enough.  I also spend time on hunting and habitat forums, and I’m signed up on a few social media groups centered around all things whitetail.  Without a doubt at all, the most popular discussion topic around whitetail food plots is what to plant.  Novice hunters chime in, describe their situation, and then ask what is the best food plot to plant for the circumstances they have. 

The next part for me is what always makes me chuckle.  Experts from all walks of life and parts of the country chime in to provide their professional opinions on what is best.  Some hunters even throw in a sponsor or two.  Ideas vary widely.  Some opinions are even accompanied by beautiful photos of lush green plots or game camera pictures of giants that were lured in to the food.  I chuckle, because this used to be me.  My number one goal when planting a food plot, and what I thought made it successful, was how good it turned out.  Was it weed free?  Was it lush?  Did grain crops like beans or corn yield a lot?  How did it look during hunting season?  Appearance was everything.  The answer to the question of whether a food plot was successful or not was always about how it grew and looked.  And so, it is still today…on just about every video, article, or post on social media.

I can throw stones on all this because, like I said, this used to be me.  But how a food plot looks is only a small portion of how good it will work.  It is absolutely true that we want our grain plots to yield high, and our green plots to be lush and attractive during the hunting season.  But more importantly, a man-made food source’s location and how it is hunted will have more bearing on how successful it is than how good it looks.  Location is everything!  April is a great time of year to plan out your food plots; deciding on their location is a critical forgotten step for many hunters.   

Setting a Bed to Feed Pattern

I’ve written about this many times before, but establishing a bed to feed pattern on your farm is one of the best ways to keep and hold deer on your property and sets the stage for season long hunting.  A great way to set this pattern, is to provide the deer herd with a large exterior food source of grains and green that is NEVER hunted.  Not only is it never hunted, but it needs to be in a location that you never walk by it on your way in to hunt or when you leave on an evening hunt.  This food plot’s goal is to attract deer for their most important meal of the day—the late afternoon feeding cycle.  When planning out its location, the destination plot should be located where you want the deer to end up at quitting time, keeping in mind where you will be walking out after your evening hunts.  You need to provide enough space between bedding and an exterior plot so that you can hunt in between in transition areas.  On smaller properties of say 40 or 80 acres, this usually means locating the destination plot on an edge or close to a property boundary or even a road.  This will leave you with enough space to create ambush spots as deer travel between their daytime bedding and their late afternoon destination. 

On bigger properties, as you start to have more land and cover to deal with, more options become available.  You can still locate the evening food source on edges, but if you have enough real estate to work with, you can now put them in the middle of your property.  Locating a main food source in the center of your property can also have the advantage of making it easier to avoid them as you never have to pass by the food source to access your stands.  And, it makes it much easier to be waiting back at bedding cover on morning hunts without having to bump deer off their food source on the way in. 

I used to establish bigger exterior plots wherever the land dictated them to me.  A corner of a field the farmer didn’t plant, or at a location it was easy for me to get my equipment in.  Then, because they were so attractive, I would hunt them.  Sometimes I would hunt them hard.  But this had very negative side effects.  First, if I wouldn’t locate them correctly, I would be forced to walk by them every time I entered the timber on morning hunts bumping deer off them and ruining my morning sits before I even got started.  Or, I would be forced to walk by them on the way out of my spots on evening hunts…bumping deer all the time.  Then, by hunting them, I would put pressure on the deer.  All three scenarios led to decreased sightings of daytime deer, and a more nocturnal deer herd.  Sometimes, by the end of archery season, it would be hard to even see a deer on these poorly placed food sources…all of my own doing.  That was 25 years ago.  Since transitioning to large exterior food sources that are located away from any of my travel routes, and by not hunting them, they attract deer for the entire season.  This makes for a fun game of cat and mouse for the entire hunting season as I plot (pun intended) to ambush them in different locations along their bed to feed travel routes.  This year, if you are a food plotter, plan your destination exterior plot location to take advantage of your access routes and where you can most easily ambush deer.

The Transition Plot

There was a time (also about 25 years ago) when I just planted every opening in the timber and every available tillable acre I could into food plots.  The more the better right?  Then, because I had all these “kill plots” and plots outside cover, my hunting partners and I would hunt those plots hard on evening sits throughout the season.  Every year, we would see less and less deer as the season progressed.  Once the rut ended, it was usually impossible to put a plan together to kill a deer at all.  Most years, I was still able to harvest a great buck; but if you didn’t get one by early November your chances dropped off significantly.  Our limited success kept us from seeing the negative consequences of hunting all those great “kill plots” and sitting our awesome grain plots of beans and corn on a daily basis. 

We had fallen into the whole “kill plot” fad.  Watched probably a hundred too many videos showing guys killing giant bucks over destination plots…only we didn’t realize these guys had thousands of acres to hunt, or dozens of farms, so the pressure was kept low.  Us?  We had 4 guys in camp all season, sometimes as many as 6 guys hunting at one time.  Sure, we had over 400 acres to hunt, but the relentless pressure was putting too much pressure on the herd.  Deer either left the property to come back at night only, or never came back at all.  All these “kill plots” and the locations they were placed forced us to bump deer almost every time we tried to hunt them.  The solution was to abandon the so-called “kill plot” and shift to the transition plot that would funnel or lead deer out to a destination plot.  The difference?  I abandoned the idea of placing small plots all over in the timber (the popular kill plot hunters still use) and instead placed plots in areas I could access without bumping deer.  This is usually just on the edge of cover, or just inside cover, with some space between the transition plot and the much better and larger evening food source.  Better access allowed me to get into stands on evening hunts, and then most or all deer would work past my set making their way out to bigger plot allowing me to get down at the end of the hunt.  If done correctly, these transition areas allowed season long hunting with barely a drop off in action. 

Today, the only plots I plant are transition plots and larger exterior plots.  I hunt the transition plots, funnels, back sides of bedding areas, fence jumps, etc. but I will NOT be hunting the main exterior plot.  This gives the local deer herd bedding on my farm a food source they feel safe going to each and every evening for their main feeding cycle.  The only time I will hunt the main food plot of corn, beans, and greens is when my season is about to end…let’s say late muzzleloader.  Then, it’s a one and done kind of thing.  The deer are so used to going to this main food source all season long it’s almost not fair going in and killing a great buck with a black-powder in hand. 

If you are a small parcel hunter, or have to share larger parcels with other hunters, I can almost guarantee you could improve the season long hunt-ability of your farm by only planting edge transition food and larger exterior plots.  Stay away from the lure of planting a bunch of hyped up kill plots in the timber.  And, hunt your main food sources with caution, if at all.  I have always loved putting in food plots, this one change has helped me keep my farms fresh and has led to some great hunting and some great deer.