As soon as deer season ends, you need to reflect back on how well your food plot plantings have performed during deer season. One of the secrets of producing great food plots is to experiment with different food plot plantings to determine what type of plantings - annuals or perennials - perform best for you and the area where you hunt. If you had a food plot planted on top of a hill, and that food plot didn’t produce as much food as you thought it should, then after deer season, the best thing you can do is go to that food plot and take a soil test. Testing the soil every year helps to ensure that you get the right combination of lime and fertilizer to produce the richest soils where your seeds can grow. The least expensive yet most necessary ingredient for great food plots is a soil test. You can have your soil test analyzed for as little as $8. Go to our website, tell the scientist who’ll be doing the soil test what type of wildlife plantings you want to plant and send in your soil test. The scientist at the lab can give you recommendations for a custom land fertilizer for that particular plant based on the type of soil that you send in from the food plot that you anticipate planting.
Let’s say you want to plant LabLab, a hardy twining legume that’s resistant to insects and diseases and grows in rough soils from spring into autumn. So, send in your soil test, and let the scientist know that you want to plant LabLab, on the food plot where you’ve taken the soil test. Then he’ll send you back a recommendation for what type and what amount of fertilizer you need to apply to the ground to produce the best crop of LabLab that this ground can yield.
One of the things that makes the BioLogic lab unique is that the scientists at our lab know the needs of each individual plant we sell. That’s why knowing what specific crop is to be grown on each wildlife food plot enables the scientist to make better and more specific recommendations than if the scientist doesn’t know the exact seed blend you’re planning to plant on that property. So, as soon as deer season ends, I recommend that a landowner evaluate each one of his food plots, give each food plot a rating, do a soil test on each of his food plots and start making plans as to what he’ll plant in each food plot and what type and how much fertilizer he needs for each food plot to get the best results.
Early spring is also a good time to put out BioRocks. BioRocks are very helpful for camera surveys too. If you put BioRocks out near your food plots, you can begin to evaluate your deer herd, even before spring green-up. We’ve noticed that deer utilize the BioRock through the spring and summer months. Often they’ll tend to prefer the BioRocks to feeding on corn. Another advantage to putting our BioRocks out now is that the deer become accustomed to coming to the BioRocks. When the deer’s antlers start to come out in the velvet, which is late July in our area, you’ve already got the deer concentrated where you can do camera surveys on them. Planning what crops you're going to plant in each of your food plots, getting a soil test on each of your food plots, putting out BioRocks on each of your food plots and doing camera surveys at each of your food plots requires a minimum amount of time and expense, but it can pay deer and turkey dividends this spring and next fall.
To learn more about how to manage the wildlife on your property, go to our website at http://www.plantbiologic.com. BioLogic also produces a quarterly magazine called “GameKeepers.” The articles in the magazine are all about how to make your property better for hunting and for wildlife, and your ponds better for fishing. The magazine is also distributed at Walmart and Tractor Supply, or you can go to www.gamekeepersclub.com to learn more about the GameKeepers magazine.
Day 1: More Groceries for Deer and Turkeys = More Deer and Turkeys on Your Land
