Taking Your Food Plot To The Next Level

Food plots are a big craze in the deer hunting world.  As they should be, they satisfy one of the three essential needs to keep deer in your area.  The one draw back I found in my area with a food plot, is it doesn't stand a fighting chance to draw deer in like it does in other regions. This can be explained by the simple idea of supply and demand. By my land there is more agriculture than a deer knows what to do with. With the amount of food the deer have to choose from, it is extremely difficult to entice them to regularly visit a food plot. It seems to not matter much what I plant either. So instead of giving up I changed my approach.  In doing so I have learned a trick that might be useful to others in a similar situation.

The trick isn't what you plant but rather how you hunt it.  So then what is the trick for optimising your hunt? First you want to select your stand location which is within shooting range of a good portion of your plot. Then but a roll of rigid wire garden fencing. You want the fence to be around four feet high. Cut several pieces of fence roughly twelve to sixteen feet long. Wrap each piece separately into a circle and connect the ends together. What you have now is several rings that you will use to block off sections of your plot. Now stagger these wire hoops around your plot within shooting range of your stand. They should stand up on there own and you can stake them down if you want. Once the plot gets grown up enough the deer will come to eat but will not be able to eat what is inside of the fence. Then the real trick comes into play. When deer season comes around, pick an afternoon to hunt when you have predicted winds in your favor. The morning of your hunt simply move one or more of your fences to allow the deer access to the lush greens. Then simply take a pruning shears and nip off the very tops of your untouched plot. For even better results at a trade off of more labor; make several cuts off of each stem. One cut or several, it will get the fresh aroma of food in the air for the deer to smell a long ways away. The more cuts you make the more scent gets kicked up. And when you are done hunting you simply leave your fence over a new section of the plot in order to allow it to grow in nice and thick without being eaten.  There are definitely some crops this method works better with than others one being clover. But it greatly depends on what the deer in your area are after.  I hope this gives you an edge the next time you plan on hunting over a food plot.