White-tailed Deer Food Plots for Central Texas
Article and Photos by Ricky Linex, Zone 5 Wildlife Biologist, USDA NRCS Weatherford, Texas
There continues to be a growing interest in using food plots to enhance the diet of native game animals and birds. Whether you are interested in using food plots to attract animals to hunt, observe or just appreciate, food plots can provide additional opportunities to see wildlife as well as to supplement their food sources.
We must understand and accept that food plots as well as supplemental feeding, are just that, a supplement to the native plants that grow within the animal’s home range. Deer and other wildlife make their living off of native plants that grow on the land.
Food plots can be established using annual or perennial plants or a combination of the two in separate sections of a field. Annual food plots are beneficial in that you can produce a high volume of seeds and grazing using both warm season and/or cool season plants.
Planting half of a fenced area to a warm season plant mix will provide a seed source for food and nesting cover for birds. Planting the remaining half to a cool season mixture of wheat, oats, Austrian winterpeas and vetch will provide high quality protein to all wildlife during the middle of winter when most plants are lowest in protein.
Perennial Food Plots for White-Tailed Deer in the Texas Hill Country
Perennial food plots are initially more expensive to establish but long term cost are actually lower than annual plots because all further mechanical seedbed preparations and seed cost are eliminated. Perennial warm season mixes in north central Texas should be planted between December 1st and April 15th while annual warm season mixes would be planted after the last expected frost for your area.
Engelmann daisy is a cool season forb that if planted in a pure stand would normally be planted in the September-October period. A few daisy seeds will germinate in the spring with the majority showing up in the fall and winter.
Plan your food plots to be in the best soil available on the ranch. Good sandy loam, loamy bottomland and clay loam soils are preferred. The perennial food plots should be divided into several plots no smaller than 5-10 acres each.
Reasoning for the large plot sizes is to prevent the deer from overgrazing and destroying a small plot. All perennial food plots must be fenced to exclude livestock and hopefully feral hogs from grazing the plants.
Annual food plots should also be fenced to be able to control how much of the vegetation is available for white-tailed deer. Patience is necessary when establishing forbs.
If you’re interested in learning even more about food plots, check out our comprehensive article written by Dr. James Kroll, Best Article on White-Tailed Food Plots in Texas.
The “Big Four” of perennial forbs are Bush Sunflower, Illinois Bundleflower, Maximillian Sunflower and Engelmann Daisy. These four are not only adapted to most of Texas and especially the north central part of Texas area, they were originally found on our native rangelands prior to the introduction of livestock in Texas in the 1840-70’s. These are native plants which are so palatable they were reduced by overgrazing and only remnant patches are found scattered on the prairies of Texas today. All classes of livestock, deer, antelope, song and game birds use the browse and/or seeds produced by these forbs.
| Perennial Warm Season Mix | Deer plots | ||||||
| Drilled or Broadcast- plant 11.3 PLS lbs/Ac* | |||||||
| % Mix | Species | Lbs/Ac | Lbs. to seed | $/Lb. | Total | ||
| 18% | Illinois Bundleflower | 13.6 | 2.448 | $20.00 | $48.96 | ||
| 14% | Maximillian Sunflower | 3 | 0.42 | $28.00 | $11.76 | ||
| 22% | Bush Sunflower | 2.6 | 0.572 | $25.00 | $14.30 | ||
| 17% | Engelmanndaisy | 15 | 2.55 | $30.00 | $76.50 | ||
| 16% | “Ladak” Alfalfa | 20 | 3.2 | $4.00 | $12.80 | ||
| 10% | Small Burnet, Delar | 20 | 2 | $2.50 | $5.00 | ||
| 3% | Leadplant | 4.5 | 0.14 | $65.00 | $8.78 | ||
| 100% | 11.325 | $178.10 | per acre | ||||
What about These New Plants for Food Plots?
Researchers are now experimenting with many plants trying to discover the “magical food plot to end all food plots”. You should keep your hand on your wallet and be cautious when reading about the tremendous pounds of high quality forage a food plot planting in the Southeastern states is producing. This is well and good in 60-inch rainfall Georgia but those same plants would not survive a normal 24-28 inch year here in north central Texas.
There are dozens of clovers and lespedeza’s that sound good but require 35 inch and greater rainfall areas. What you should use are the plants that are adapted to the climate and soil conditions in your area. Contact the local Natural Resources Conservation Service, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service or Texas Parks and Wildlife Department personnel to find out what species and varieties works in your area.
LabLab – A Proven Warm Season Legume for White-tailed Deer
Although this legume has been grown in south Texas for 20 years it may not be as familiar to you as the other legumes. This warm season legume is called lablab and was originally found in South America, Africa, Australia and India. This member of the bean family was first grown in the 18-20 inch rainfall of South Texas on loamy soils.
We experimented with Lablab grown in Taylor County way back in 1996 and early testing showed great promise. The lablab was planted with a grain drill with every other spout opening plugged to produce 20-inch rows. Heavy grazing during the first six weeks of growth can destroy lablab, like most food plot plantings. Lablab plants need to have at least 25 leaves prior to the initiation of grazing by deer in order to remain healthy.
The cure is to high fence the plot to exclude deer or plant large acreage’s (i.e. 50 acres) in the hopes that the central core of the plot will survive. Lablab grown in Taylor County produced a total of 4,300 pounds of leafy forage per acre. Leafy forage is defined as the leaves and tips of new runners. A summary of the clipping results is as follows:
Date lbs. leafy forage percent leaf
8-8-96 604 43% grazed
10-2-96 1183 46% grazed
10-22-96 4300 28% total production from cage
The clipping taken on 8-8-96 was during a dry period, however, the plants were loaded with new buds and leaves ready to grow with some needed moisture. The clip of 10-2-96 was 4-5 weeks after very favorable 5-6” rains fell and the plants were very lush in regrowth. The clip inside the grazing exclosure on 10-22-96 contained a tremendous amount of old stems and tough runner’s six feet in length.
To me this says if the lablab is grazed with a sufficient number of animals to prevent the plant from maturing you will maintain a higher leaf to stem ratio. The trick is to not graze it out during dry periods of no rainfall. This is where a high fence is necessary for management.
Two samples taken on 8-8-96 were sent for analysis, which showed an average of 22% protein although it has been tested in other locations as high as 30% protein. The establishment cost of lablab was $40.00 per acre (seed @ $30.00 and drilling @ $10.00 per acre) while August production was 604 lbs. per acre. This would convert to a cost of $132.40 per ton of 22% protein forage. At the time pelleted 20% deer feed was selling for $272 per ton. Lablab is a viable supplemental feed for managers willing to intensively manage it for optimum production.
The recommended planting methods in South Texas for Lablab might discourage most wildlife managers. Seed cost is currently $2.00 per pound with a seeding rate of 10 lbs/acre planted in rows. Planting methods are the same as dryland cotton:
Deep tillage in fall to capture moisture, apply pre- emergent herbicide one month before seeding, preparing a clean seedbed, planting in 40 inch rows with a row crop planter, cultivating with a row cultivator two-three times while protecting from deer and cattle grazing for five to six weeks after emergence.
There are two cultivars of lablab available for use in food plots. Rongai is the original lablab brought to Texas from Australia and it remains vegetative in growth and will not attempt to produce seed. Rio Verde is a lablab cultivar developed in Texas by Texas A&M AgriLife Research in 2006. It may produce seed if the first frost is late but in doing so the plant changes from vegetative growth to reproductive growth so quality of the forage may decrease in late fall. Either cultivar needs to be inoculated with a cowpea inoculant when first planted.
Cool Season Wildlife Food Plots in the Hill Country
It might seem questionable that with all of the different commercial mixes of food plot seeds available at sporting goods and seed stores that a simple food plot using only two species can be counted upon to reliably grow when most others fail and the same mix can provide food for deer, quail, turkey and dove.
To learn more about what White-Tailed Deer Eat, check out our comprehensive article on White-tail diets, What do Deer Eat?
A simple, basic mix is to plant a normal seeding rate of wheat along with 1-2 pounds of native annual sunflowers. The reasoning for planting half of the wheat with a bearded variety and half with beardless relates to the awns that the seedheads produce on the bearded wheat. As the seedheads mature the awns become stiff and catch in the mouth and throat of deer and turkey so they stop eating the heads.
The beardless heads are awnless so deer and turkey will consume all of the heads and the protein rich seeds contained within the seedheads. The awned heads will mature seeds that will fall upon the ground and be available for quail and dove to find. As the wheat matures and fades in June the native sunflowers begin growing and by September you will have a good crop of sunflowers to entertain some dove hunting. After the first couple of weeks of dove season you can plow and plant this mix again.
Once you get a good stand of native sunflowers you can drop the sunflowers out of the planting mix since they will volunteer for years to come. For a reliable food plot the wheat will need to be planted every fall. For this mix don’t use oilseed sunflowers, such as peredovik or the hybrid black oil sunflowers since they will not reliably volunteer every year as do the native annual sunflowers.
| Combo Season Annuals | Deer & Birds Mix – Heavy | >24″ rainfall | |||||
| Drill or Broadcast – 73 lbs/Ac | |||||||
| % Mix | Species | Lbs/Ac | Lbs. to seed | $/Lb. | Total | ||
| 40% | Bearded Wheat | 90 | 36 | $0.30 | $10.80 | ||
| 40% | Beardless Wheat | 90 | 36 | $0.30 | $10.80 | ||
| 20% | Native Sunflower | 5 | 1 | $7.00 | $7.00 | ||
| 73 | $28.60 | per acre | |||||
| (Provides deer and turkey forage during winter with sunflowers maturing during summer for fall dove hunting) |
Seedbed should be prepared as you would for normal small grain operation. Planting depth should be 1-2 inches. Optimum planting dates are September 1 to October 15th. You could add .5 pound each of grazing turnips and Tyfon (forage brassica) to the above mix for a test. Deer will readily consume both of these plants.
Food For Thought
The major drawback in the planting of food plots is that during a drought when you really need the benefits of extra forage in a food plot, you probably can’t get the plot to germinate and grow, or it withers and dies following germination. However, in an above normal rainfall year when it’s easy to grow a food plot, you probably didn’t need it as existing native vegetation will be sufficient for food and cover. This causes us to think about managing and using the native forbs that are adapted to our climate and soils and are more likely to be able to survive during a drought.