October 26, 2021

Cold Season Food Plots vs Warm Season Food Plots

Powered by OnX Hunt

OnX is a valuable tool for taking care of your land. It can help you map out where to plant, identify valuable areas of interest, and keep notes on management tactics for your land, like when a plot was planted and where the best access point is.

Here, Gamekeeper and “Food Plot Guru” Austin Delano explains the difference between different types of food plots, like warm season food plots, cool season food plots, early season food plots, and late season food plots.

Types of Food Plots

There’re many different ways to use a food plot. Fall is a great time to use food plots to attract deer, of course, but summer is a great time to plant food plots to nurture your bucks, does, and fawns.

The most important thing to remember is to plant a food plot with a purpose. Know what you’re going to use it for and how your deer will use it.

Warm and cool season food plots are the primary types, so we’re going to break down the two a bit further.

First up are cool season food plots—the type most people are familiar with.

Cool Season Food Plots

Cool Season Food Plot Plantings:

Cereal Grains
Oats
Wheat
Triticale
Brassica
Hybrid Rape
Turnips
Clover

Best Early Season Blends:

Best Late Season Blends:

Next, we take a look at warm season food plots.

Warm Season Food Plots

Warm season food plots are essential to the health and wellbeing of your critters. Bucks are growing their horns, does are nursing, and fawns are growing quickly. They need all the nutrients they can get to make it to the fall healthy and happy.

Warm Season Food Plot Plantings:

Forage Soybeans
Peas
Sunflowers
Clover

Finally, we look at how we can use the “Area Shape” tool on OnX to plan the plantings of food plots.

Using Area Shape Tool

Using the area shape tool, you can map out areas for food plots and plan for the exact acreage that you’ll need to plant that area. The tool takes the guesswork out and any room for error—it nails food plot planting down to a science.

For more tips on planting food plots, subscribe to the Gamekeepers Magazine or visit the Gamekeeper site.

For 20% off your first OnX Hunt subscription, use code “mossyoak” at checkout.

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