Unshackled
Active Member
I greatly respect public land guys and will be trying it out this season for the first time. For those of you that do hunt private land and plant food plots I wanted to pass along some wheat info. It is well documented that deer prefer awnless or non-bearded wheat. I noticed that there were also preferences between awnless varieties of wheat accidentally last month. I work in agriculture and conduct variety trials in cotton, corn, soybean, and wheat across our territory. Attached is a picture of a strip of Pioneer 26R45 where every head was eaten in a 12 ft wide 300 ft long strip. There were 11 varieties planted in the trial, awnless and awned, but the deer obviously preferred this variety. When you stepped in to the strip it smelled like a goat pen! They had bedded and ate in this particular strip for some time. Yield was 0 bushels/acre solely do to deer damage and the variety to the right cut 99 bushels/acre. I am not affiliated with Pioneer, I am not a salesman and actually will not be recommending this variety to growers due to the potential for deer damage.
Also made me rethink my approach to food plots. Planting winter food plots for me in the south has never paid off for me personally. It doesn't seem to get cold enough till after season is closed where they really use it. Too many options. Also, pressured big bucks aren't going to come there in daylight anyway unless the rut. Winter food plots a lot of times get terminated in the spring for something else. This showed me that if I plant wheat, maybe a blend with clover or tillage radishes, I should be letting the wheat mature. In my area, that comes in June and that would give the deer a great food source during antler growth and while does are supporting fawns. After they eat all the mature wheat heads, plant soybeans and you will have a highly preferred, nutritious food source that also can offer cover from June - October. New on here, just my two cents that I wanted to pass along.
Also made me rethink my approach to food plots. Planting winter food plots for me in the south has never paid off for me personally. It doesn't seem to get cold enough till after season is closed where they really use it. Too many options. Also, pressured big bucks aren't going to come there in daylight anyway unless the rut. Winter food plots a lot of times get terminated in the spring for something else. This showed me that if I plant wheat, maybe a blend with clover or tillage radishes, I should be letting the wheat mature. In my area, that comes in June and that would give the deer a great food source during antler growth and while does are supporting fawns. After they eat all the mature wheat heads, plant soybeans and you will have a highly preferred, nutritious food source that also can offer cover from June - October. New on here, just my two cents that I wanted to pass along.
