How I do It
Deer Hunting Evolves into Year-Round Passion Thanks to Institute Products
By Capt. Michael Veine
Food plots have been a part of my overall deer nutrition and hunting strategy for 10 years. I remember my first food plot back in 1997. I divided that first plot up into six sectors, each planted with different seeds. One of those seeds was Imperial Whitetail Clover and the rest consisted of various commercial deer-plot seeds along with some cheap stuff from a local farm supply store. The results were dramatic as the Imperial Whitetail Clover outperformed the rest of the competition hands down. Since that humble beginning, my total acreage of food plots has more than quadrupled. I have taken a keen interest in seeing that “my” deer get a complete package of nutritious forage and minerals. Ten years of using Whitetail Institute products has helped my deer hunting evolve into a year-round passion.
My home state of Michigan has a long, rich deer hunting heritage. Unfortunately Michigan’s deer hunting has been declining in recent years. With a shrinking deer population and fewer bucks to go around, deer hunters in Michigan certainly need an edge to be consistently successful. Despite Michigan’s deer hunting problems, since I implemented my complete deer nutrition program on my properties, my hunting success has skyrocketed. I have taken my Michigan limit of two bucks per season every season for the past 10 years and all of those bucks have been adult specimens with big bodies and some nice racks. During the past decade, as my education on deer management has increased, my deer hunting philosophy has changed. Instead of focusing primarily on antlers in my deer hunting pursuits, now the focal point of my harvest strategy is on older, big-bodied bucks and does. If they have high-scoring racks then that’s just a bonus.
This past season I bowhunted every day for a full month before an opportunity at a big buck finally came my way. I was hunting in one of my favorite U.P. stands on Nov. 4. That tree stand is situated along a stream that’s flooded by beavers. Two narrow ridges come together at the spot and that terrain feature, along with the funneling effect of the beaver ponds, focuses three major runways right in front of my stand. It’s a classic funnel that I season with a heavy dose of 30-06 Plus Protein Mineral Supplement for added attraction.
Two adult does and a fawn passed by my stand at 1:30 p.m. One of the does lingered and sniffed around by the 30-06 Plus Protein. Suddenly she swung her head towards the west with both ears forward and alert. Turning slowly, I spotted a good buck heading towards the two other deer; he was grunting all the way. The doe and fawn scurried away and the buck stopped about 40 yards from me. Spinning around, the buck took notice of the other doe standing 15 yards in front of me and came charging in. She trotted away as the buck came busting in with dirty thoughts certainly on his mind. I came to full draw and as if on cue, he stopped giving me a broadside-shot opportunity. The shot was perfect and he only made it about 50 yards before slowing to a stagger and falling over dead, all within sight of this very happy hunter. The chunky 8-pointer was butterball fat and provided me with 90 pounds of boned venison.
Food Plots on U.P. Property
My U.P. property consists of 160 acres of mixed high and low forest lands with a stream running through it. About half of the property was intensively logged in 1996 and 1997. I have one large food plot that encompasses an irregular four acres and another medium-sized two-acre Imperial Clover plot. I’ve also installed six smaller plots that range in size from one acre on down. Three of the plots were cleared from the forest with a dozer and the other ones were installed in natural, semi-clear areas and are managed as no-till plots. My soils are very heavy loam to clay in consistency and are very acidic. I live 420 miles away from my U.P. property and my work schedule as a Great Lakes charter captain limits my available time to work on my property during spring and summer. The most important thing that I’ve had to accept about my U.P. food plots was to have lots of patience. Good things come to those that wait.
My small, no-till plots were fairly easy to install. Working from natural openings, I used a chainsaw to clear the area, piling all the removed brush and trees into strategic spots to help funnel deer. All the remaining vegetation was then killed using a glyphosphate herbicide like Roundup. Spraying the plots with three applications of herbicides at a rate of two quarts per acre did the job. The first application was during the spring when things were growing good. The second application was during late summer. Liming was done during the summer as well. The final Roundup application was done the following spring right before I planted. Prepping those plots for an entire year was necessary to properly adjust the soil pH and to get rid of all the unwanted, competing brush, weeds, grasses and bracken.
After that final spring herbicide treatment, it was just a matter of roughing up the ground to prep the seed bed. I raked the ground by hand on the smaller plots or used a homemade drag on the larger plots. The drag consists of a chain-link fence wrapped around a pallet weighed down with sandbags. The drag is easily pulled behind my ATV. With the soil roughed up, I then broadcast the seed using a hand-crank spreader. I’ve had great success using Imperial Whitetail Clover on my no-till plots. The small seeds will slip though the litter well and they have a very high germination rate. The seeds are packed into the ground either with the back of a shovel or by running them over with my ATV, all depending on the size and location of the site. A generous amount of potassium and potash are added during the spring and late summer and I mow them once a year using a large, commercial-grade weed whacker during the summer. Selective herbicides like Slay and Arrest are used annually to keep weed and grass competition at bay. Prepared and maintained in this manner, my no-till plots produce lush, knee-high clover for five or more years and draw deer like crazy, especially during the fall. I hunt right over these small kill-plots.
My three larger plots were cleared with a dozer. Again the debris was pushed into strategic locations to help funnel deer. My ground is studded by a fair number of rocks, which I remove by hand. The freshly cleared fields were also littered with sticks, roots and other woody debris. Even after clearing the field of most surface clutter, those plots still contained too much trash just under the surface to work a disk through. Instead of disking I just leveled the freshly dozed fields with a heavy drag and seeded Imperial Whitetail Clover using a push-behind, Earthway Even-N-Spreader. Then a liberal amount of 20-20-20 fertilizer was applied. You might be questioning the nitrogen aspect of that fertilizing. The nitrogen supplement, combined with the nitrogen-fixing qualities of the clover, really helps to break down the woody debris in the soil. I keep the nitrogen levels high for several years. By then most of the woody debris is rotted away and I can easily disk the field. I also mow these plots using a large lawn tractor once a year. I have found that used lawn tractors are the most economical way for me to perform mowing chores. I mow my yard, roads, trails and food plots with them. I fertilize using a broadcast spreader pulled behind my ATV. My larger plots also receive regular treatments with selective herbicides to keep out the trash vegetation.
Because my soil is so acidic and those larger plots require such a large amount of lime, it is not practical for me to apply it until I can disk it in properly. Since it is impossible to disk those fresh plots, I have to sacrifice some forage production for a few years until the woody debris rots down. I have found that Imperial Whitetail Clover will grow halfway decent in my 5.5 pH soil especially if you fertilize it real heavy. It won’t grow like gangbusters, but it will fill in quite thick, but just not very tall.
I’ve applied lime by shaking it from bags or shoveling it from a trailer, but when you have to add the tonnage that I require, those techniques, while doable, are very labor intensive. You’ll also pay a premium for bagged lime. I’ll be doing some heavy liming in a couple years and plan to rent a bucket/tractor with a lime spreader and have bulk lime delivered to my site. My disk is designed to be pulled behind an ATV, but I can also pull it behind my truck too, which is actually my preference. After disking, I level and compress the dirt with a drag then fertilize it, drag it some more with the heavy fence-covered pallet, then seed it with clover. Then I drag it once again with just a piece of fencing. After adding the lime, the Imperial Clover will grow about twice as tall as before and will feed a lot more deer and other critters.
I don’t hunt right over my larger food plots. Rather I have stands set up at least 100 yards away around the perimeter of them, near deer funnels and staging areas. My stand access routes are also planned very well so I don’t spook deer from my plots while entering or exiting the stands. This strategy keeps the deer pouring into my food plots and gives me consistent action all season.
Southern Michigan Food Plots
I own and live on 39 acres in Southern Michigan. That property consists mostly of a large swamp with some ridges. My property is boarded by fertile farmland, so my food plots are all strategically located and carefully set up for optimal ambushes. My property serves as a sanctuary for a bunch of whitetails. It’s largely a bedding hideout. I’ve installed two small plots in heavy cover close to those bedding areas. My strategy is to attract the deer during the daylight in route to the agricultural fields where they feed primarily at night.
One of my plots is about one-quarter acre in size and was cleared of brush and small trees with a chainsaw, cutting everything very close to the ground. I mowed it for two years before planting to let the small stumps rot down. The plot is not easily accessible with an ATV, so I just used an old garden roto-tiller to prepare the seedbed. The soil had a neutral pH and did not require any lime. I’ve had that plot planted in Imperial Whitetail Clover for seven years now, but will be replanting it this spring. I just spray it annually in the late spring with selective herbicides and mow and fertilize twice a year.
Every year during the late summer I bury two fresh pine trees in the plot using a post-hole digger. The trees are about 4-5 inches in diameter. Those rub-poles attract bucks like a magnet right to perfect spots for a shot. Those rub-poles and meticulously maintained, overhead licking branches along the perimeter of the small plot creates the ultimate buck magnet. In fact I’ve had opportunities to kill dozens of dandy bucks off that plot and it gets so much use that by the end of fall about one-quarter of the plot is pawed out from buck scrapes.
I have another plot located right in the swamp, which dries up during the summer and early fall. I dug a water hole there several years ago and planted Imperial Whitetail Clover on the elevated dredge spoils. I also cleared about one-quarter acre of brush around the dredge spoils and planted that too. Since that ground floods about eight months out of the year, it requires annual plantings. I use Imperial No-Plow for that application. For the No-Plow planting, I spray it during the spring with Roundup and then plant and fertilize a week later. I just drag the plot with chain-link fencing to pack the seeds, and presto, I have a thick lush plot to hunt over by fall. You wouldn’t believe the activity that waterhole and food plot get. The trails leading to it look like cow paths.
Minerals
Michigan has some funky laws concerning the baiting and feeding of deer. Minerals are considered either bait or feed by Michigan’s letter of the law. Placing bait is only allowed during deer season and feeding is only allowed near dwellings. To comply with Michigan’s laws and still provide the deer with good nutrition, I have developed an effective, legal mineral supplementation method. Deer use of minerals peaks during the spring and summer, however they will also visit the sites during the fall and winter primarily out of habit or social curiosity. At the tail end of Michigan’s deer season, I fill in the holes excavated by the deer at my mineral sites with clay. I then apply a full bag of 30-06 onto the clay. Then I mound up a thick layer of ant hill dirt over the minerals. The ant hill dirt will shed water off the minerals preventing them from leeching into the ground. Ant hill dirt is freeze resistant, so the deer can easily dig down to the minerals during the early spring, when the rest of the ground is still frozen solid.
I maintain four mineral supplement sites on my U.P. property. I have one mineral site right behind my house for both nutritional purposes and for recreational viewing. That site also has a lush patch of Imperial Whitetail clover around the minerals. You just wouldn’t believe the deer we see there. Last summer we had two big bucks coming in regularly. It’s a blast to watch those deer and my family is always looking out the back windows to see what might show up.
That’s how I do it.