Food Plots Unexpected home run???

[megalomaniac]

ThIs hill is STEEP, pics don't do it justice. We won't bushhog it without the tractor with dual wheels. It's managed as a native browse food source for deer. Nothing but coralberry, blackberry, and weeds. Normally bushhog end of July or beginning of August, and with normal rains, I have 6 in of new succulent growth by Nov and it's an insurance policy if plots fail.

This year with the drought, there hasn't been much new growth, so as an experiment, we put down 75lbs of cereal rye on 1 acre of this 3ac hillside 3 weeks ago. 2 small rains on it since, but the rye is doing great! Deer are hammering it with droppings everywhere. I'll layer another 75lbs down before next rain, and if this keeps panning out, I may start doing this on a lot more of my native browse habitat

 

[muddyboots]

So you just spread the rye grain on the existing growth? If so awesome. Yes. Home run!

 

[megalomaniac]

So you just spread the rye grain on the existing growth? If so awesome. Yes. Home run!

After bushhogging this native vegetation, you are left with nothing but brown stems at the height you cut the field. The vegetation is so thick, all the green is 2-4 feet above ground level. Over the next couple months, the remaining stems sprout back out with young and tender regrowth, which is extremely preferred by deer. It's just that this year due to only 1.5 in rain in the past 9 weeks its regrowing much slower than normal. So we just took a hand crank bag spreader and broadcast the rye in about a third of the hillside just as an experiment to see if we could get some faster palatable regrowth/ food.

I really didn't think it would work (which is why we only did 1/3 of the field), but after seeing how well it is germinating and how much the deer are feeding on it, it is going to be something to incorporate in my habitat management plans in future years.