Grow Your Own Better Deer All Year by Careful Planting and Fertilizing
Food-Plot Planting in the Winter
 Editor’s Note:  If you want to take trophy bucks, you have two options. You either can pay several-thousand dollars to hunt a couple of days at a ranch or alodge with an extensive deer-management program that produces trophy bucks each season, or you can grow your own trophy bucks on the land you hunt. I’ve contacted some of the nation’s leading deer managers and developed a month-by-month guide, which if followed, will help insure you’ll have more and bigger bucks on your land each season.
November:
In November, if you live far enough south, you often can plant crimson clover. Spread lime on your food plot in November to insure that you get lime in the ground before the next year’s planting. Lime needs 6 months to neutralize the soil. Use a herbicide to develop shooting lanes in the woods from your tree stands or ground blinds. Fertilize these shooting lanes also because they can produce high-quality native plants for deer to eat.
December:
Hunt your honey holes and green fields. Too,  start planning your food-plot and native-plant management for the coming year. At this time of year, you need to put out something like  Amdro to eliminate fire ants in fawning areas and in nesting habitats for quail and turkey. Also use a herbicide to control fescue and other exotic weeds that choke-out native plants and produce low-quality wildlife food. By eliminating fescue, native plants can re-colonize. Fertilizing those native plants with a native-plant fertilizer helps you to increase the availability of high-quality native food for deer and other wildlife for the next spring.
Tomorrow: Preparing Your Food Plots in January and February |
