John's Journal...

How to Grow Body-Builder White-Tailed Bucks

Spring Green Field Plantings

Click to enlargeEditor’s Note: Do you want monster bucks on your property?  Would you like to have bigger bucks to hunt every season?  Well, here's the formula that will produce your heart's desire. As a youngster with a stomach ache, I'd willingly do almost anything to get rid of the pain.  However, when my mother came toward me with a bottle of bad-tasting medicine, I didn't know if the medicine would taste worse than my stomach ache hurt. The remedy to Click to enlargeharvesting nothing but small bucks on your property may leave a bad taste in your mouth, but it will solve your problem. To produce quality bucks through management, everything about the way you hunt and the way you manage your land must change.  A professional body builder doesn't enter a contest, if he hasn't eaten the right food 6 weeks to 3 years before the contest.  To have muscles that look like mountains and to meet the full potential of his frame, the body builder must consume the best foods all year long for several years. And, if you want to produce bucks that can win awards for big bodies and large antlers, you must understand what the deer need to eat and how to supplement their diets to insure they receive the proper nutrition.

If you live north of northern Pennsylvania , plant your perennial crops in the spring to insure you'll have food in your green fields in the fall as well as some food going into the summer. But maximum production will come in the fall. "The reason for planting during the spring and summer anywhere in the U.S. is that most native plants are non-digestible to deer and are low in energy and protein, especially where deer herd numbers are high," deer researcher Dr. Grant Woods reports. "Remember during the Click to enlargespring and the summer to continue to control weeds in your food plots. One of my favorite grass-specific herbicides is Poast. Like all herbicides, Poast works best when the plant is trying to grow. Remember that corn and milo, which are two commonly-planted summer crops, are grasses; don't spray Poast on corn or milo because you'll kill them along with the other grasses.  Poast should Click to enlargeprimarily be sprayed when you're planting. The easiest way to increase the tonnage of food for deer on any food plot is to control the weeds."

Never Have an Empty Table:

Never completely eliminate the food in a food plot to have the most-productive food-plot management. Be sure your green-field plantings lap over each other, so that the food plot always has food available for the deer. You can grow bigger deer and more bucks on your property just like a body builder can become a Mr. America champion. However, never forget that building muscles and bones requires intensive work for both the athlete and the hunting club who wants to produce bigger bucks. 

For more information on Dr. Grant Woods and his research, visit www.deermanagement.net.


Check back each day this week for more about "How to Grow Body-Builder White-Tailed Bucks"

Day 1: The Three Most-Critical Ingredients for Growing Big Bucks
Day 2: More Tactics for Better Deer Management
Day 3: The Three Most-Critical Ingredients for Growing Big Bucks
Day 4: The Proper Ingredients of Fall Green Fields
Day 5: Spring Green Field Plantings




 

Entry 523, Day 5