going as easily. Timber stand improvement should be a very important part of any whitetail deer (and timber) management plan. It benefits the commercial trees and it improves habitat and native browse. Since I’m on a 10-year program, every year I remove the junk trees from roughly 10 percent of the farm so that after 10 years I am ready to start over again from the beginning.
TOTAL FOOD PLOT PLAN I have two kinds of food plots on the farm, agricultural crops and Imperial Whitetail Clover plots. The agricultural fields feed some deer during the summer, but by far, the most important source of summer food is the high-protein clover. Deer need protein as early in the spring as they can get it. Granted, they find some good
Bill Winke
The author’s timber/native-browse program is ongoing, but removing trees with no commercial or wildlife value is at the top of the list.
early nutrition in weeds and browse (the result of my aggressive timber stand improvement efforts), but when the weeds begin to mature, the deer increasingly turn to my Imperial Clover plots. This usually happens around late May in my area, right when the bucks are really putting on their antler growth. I make it a goal to have a good clover plot for every 80 acres of land (every 40 acres would be even better). That way, any deer on the farm is within a short walk of a highly nutritious summer food source. To accomplish this goal, I use the back ends and steep slopes of the open field points that extend into the timber. These portions of the fields produce very limited crops anyway because they are so vulnerable to drought and deer or turkey damage. So rather than fight it, I use these areas for my Imperial Clover plots. When the deer come out of the timber heading for my crop fields, the first thing they hit is an Imperial Clover field. Most of these are small (one to two acres), but it is amazing how much valuable forage you can grow in such a small plot with well-maintained Imperial Clover. Even the local farmer who plants my crops is amazed by the production of these small plots. My agricultural fields also factor into the plan. They provide great winter food sources after continual freezing and grazing have all but flattened my Imperial Clover plots. The small patches of soybeans and corn that I leave standing at the back corners of the fields become the number-one food source. Again, these are often just an acre or two in size, sometimes a bit larger. I treat my Imperial Clover as vital food for spring, summer and fall and a great place to hunt during the early parts of the season; and I treat remnant patches of my agricultural crops as great late fall and winter food sources and valuable winter nutrition. It is not necessarily a cheap plan, but if you keep your deer numbers under control, it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg to supply them with a full plate of annual food either. HOW I PLANT MY IMPERIAL WHITETAIL CLOVER PLOTS
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I already offered a few thoughts on site selection, but let me go a little deeper into that subject, as I feel it is very important to the overall effectiveness of the clover plots. The sites I selected for my clover plots had three things in common. First, they were not locations where I could plant and harvest commercial crops effectively or efficiently. They were either small fields tucked back in the timber, corners of larger fields where it is hard to turn large farm equipment, or spots where deer damage would be very high if I planted conventional agricultural crops. Finally, all the plots were located in areas that I could get to during the summer with a mower to keep the plots clean and dominated by tender re-growth. The last criterion is just as important as the first two. Early on, I tried to plant an Imperial Clover plot at the end of a point field, thinking that I could simply mow it before the corn got too high, and the clover would take care of itself the rest of the way. That was a mistake. It became weed-infested and all but disappeared in just one year. If you are going to mow your clover plots early, you have to mow them twice – the second time in mid summer. It is possible, though not ideal, to get by with mowing the plots just once. However, that single mowing has to take place in early summer, well after commercial crop fields are too tall to drive through. For several years, I lived on a large property owned by a number of deer hunters (myself included) where we had all the equipment needed to plant and maintain every kind of food plot. It was my job to see the work
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