5 years ago, my first article appeared in Iowa Sportsmen Magazine. The title of the article was Soybeans, the Best Food Plot Choice, Most of the Time. At the time, I was having so much success planting and using soybeans for my hunts that I couldn’t or wouldn’t even consider other options. The logic was simple, soybeans will attract deer from the moment they emerge until every last bean is consumed in late fall or winter. While this remains mostly true, I have witnessed first hand when it is not.
Let’s go back about 20 years, around 2001. I was planning a late muzzleloader hunt on a great 400-acre farm that was home to more than a couple mature bucks. One buck in particular was a giant massive 10 point that had eluded our hunting group for a few years. My thought process to harvest this animal was a late season hunt over standing soybeans. The stage was set but when the late season came, I found very few deer using the soybeans at all. Most deer were using a neighboring picked corn field as their main food source, including the giant buck I was hunting. The weather was cold with snow, but that didn’t change the fact that for some reason, the beans just weren’t getting hit? The hunt and the soybean field were a bust! Why?
Fast forward to 2013. I had many great seasons using soybeans as my larger exterior plots and I had literally forgotten and written off the experience I had in 2001. This year (2013), I had three different plots of soybeans that I was using as my destination type plots, and was just waiting for the deer to start hitting them all season long. As the season progressed, the local deer herd showed little motivation to use these soybeans. Even during the late season, I struggled to get on deer. I was shocked to see deer walking straight through my soybeans traveling to a picked corn field that was under snow. They preferred pawing up cut corn? What? Why? When spring came, those standing soybean fields still had roughly half their pods on. Deer simply weren’t using them. Again…just a fluke, right?
Well, 2019 was another fluke. On both my farms, and another that I leased, the local deer herds didn’t show the same enthusiasm I had for my soybeans. In fact, as of the writing of this article, I have an acre of soybeans on my 80-acre “home” farm that isn’t being touched. During the late muzzleloader season on my “cabin” farm, a friend of mine watched consistently each evening as deer would exit my bedding area, nibble their way through my beans, making their way to cut corn. All late season, all winter, the deer stayed clear of the soybeans. For me, this is unacceptable. In all three years where I witnessed a shying away of soybeans, there was a corn type food source around.
Now, 17 years of great attraction and hunting over 3 years of poor results doesn’t mean I will abandon soybeans any time soon. But, these three seasons have me thinking that expanding my food plot planting to include more corn is not a bad idea. The case I made for soybeans 5 years ago still stands…ease of growing, cost effective, attractiveness (most of the time apparently), are all still good reasons to plant soybeans. But I don’t want another year like those three I described! Reviewing my 2019 season has led me to believe that there is more room and need to have corn as part of my grain arsenal, especially when I hunt in areas that are sure to have a corn food source in the area.
The Case for Corn
Yield potential for corn is 3 or even 4 times that of soybeans. Soybeans can yield anywhere from 30 to 70 bushes to the acre. Heavy browse pressure can limit yield to below 30 bushels or less. A decent stand of corn can easily give you a yield in the lower 100’s. A nice stand can push 200 bushels. It’s easy to see that an acre of corn can give you 3 times the yield as an acre of soybeans. This could mean your corn plot will last three times longer as well. On years when both plots would seemingly get hit hard, a corn plot will outlast a soybean plot simply because there is way more grain available.
Although corn is not all that attractive during the summer months (something that could actually be a good thing), corn is very attractive during the hunting season. A freshly combined corn field will generally attract a ton of deer until every last kernel of corn is scavenged. Standing corn actually provides food and cover. I have witnessed first hand deer walking right by corn to make their way to standing beans, but as described earlier I’ve also witnessed just the opposite. Having more than one grain option ensures you have both bases covered. Between higher yield potential and great attractiveness, corn is an excellent choice for many food plotters.
Weed control in corn is easier than in soybeans in many cases. For me, grass control in my food plots is a pretty easy fix. Spray a grass specific herbicide in any broadleaf plot (like beans, clover, alfalfa) and the grass is dead. The bigger problem has always been broadleaf weeds like water hemp, marestail, and palmer amaranth. With a corn planting, because corn is technically a grass, broadleaf weed control is much easier and more herbicides are available. Therefore, weed control in a rotation from soybeans to corn and back is far superior.
The downsides of planting corn for deer are also there. Corn is costly to plant, with input costs as high as $300/acre or more. Smaller corn plots can be decimated early on reducing or even eliminating any yield potential. But these problems can be mitigated making corn a yearly go to for me, starting in 2020. With this one simple change, I should be able to eliminate duplicating those three off years.
Planting
Many hunters overthink planting their plots, especially when it comes to corn. The thought goes straight to needing a corn planter or fancy and expensive equipment. Well, unlike small seed that gets planted very near the surface of the soil, corn seed does need to be placed 1 ½ to 2 inches deep. This can be accomplished using a planter or by discing in the seed deeper than you would say a soybean seed. A planter will give you nice looking rows and perfect populations of 28 to 34 thousand seeds per acre. But the same can be accomplished by simply broadcasting that same number of seeds on an acre, and then discing them in. Sure, stands won’t be as uniform, but for a food plot broadcasting and discing in corn works just fine. I’ve done this for decades! Most corn is sold today by the unit or seeds per bag, so figuring out population is pretty simple. At 80,000 seeds per bag, half of that bag would give you 40,000 seeds per acre…I would go no more than that! Corn that is planted too thick will yield very low so be careful and make multiple passes when broadcasting as opposed to getting only half done and then realizing all your seed is gone.
Fertilization
I know everybody always says you have to soil test, but you don’t have to soil test to fertilize correctly for a food plot. I learned a long time ago from a dairy farmer that if you simply replace nutrients from a crop at expected yields that you will then maintain fertility in your soil. This is about keeping it simple. Let me break it down for you to illustrate what I mean. Example: Corn grain removes nutrients from the soil. In order then to have a yield of corn you must have at least the amount of nutrients required to produce that yield available in the soil. Short those nutrients, your yield will be less than optimal (or you drain the soil). Absent those nutrients and you will have no yield at all. So, I know that a bushel of corn removes .90 pounds of nitrogen, .35 pounds of phosphorus, and .25 pounds of potash per acre from the soil. This is known as the nutrient removal rate. If I simply replace those nutrients at my desired yield level, I am going to get it pretty close to my fertilizer needs. If I’m shooting for 180 bushel/acre corn, I need to fertilize (replace) 162lbs/nitrogen, 63lbs/phosphorus, and 45lbs/potash. No soil test for fertilizer needed!
When planting, you can spread your seed AND fertilizer at the same time and disc it in together. You can overthink this or you can put in some pretty good corn plots using the method I describe.
Planting in Smaller Plots
If you are planting a smaller plot of corn or the plot is near cover and away from other good food sources, you will most likely have problems with deer browsing the corn at different times throughout the summer. A few deer can wipe out an acre or two of corn in silk stage with very little effort. The best method I have used to eliminate this problem is to electric fence in all my grain plots…corn and soybeans alike. With corn, once you reach September, the fence can be removed or brought down for hunting season. An electric fence is another added cost to make sure your corn plot will succeed, but it is a one-time cost that will keep working for you for years. Without it, and you stand a high chance that your corn plot will perish during the summer.
Having all your bases covered going into fall will make sure your hunting season will be successful and you continue to draw deer to your property. Adding corn will make sure you have a preferred plot even during years when soybeans are less attractive. I will be adding corn to my mix every year starting in 2020!