White-Tailed Deer Habitat: Ecology and Management on Rangelands

6. The Plow: Food Plots

Key Concepts ❍ White-tailed deer are attracted to food plots and may derive nutritional benefits from food plots in habitats relatively low in forage nutritional quality. ❍ Converting good quality white-tailed deer habitat to cultivated food plots should be avoided. ❍ Planting food plots is not a substitute for proper habitat and population management. ❍ Food plots do not increase carrying capacity of the habitat—they are a supplement to natural vegetation. ❍ The use of food plots in rangelands is restricted by low rainfall and by soils that are unsuited for cultivation. Role of Food Plots in Deer Management Planting food plots for white-tailed deer is a popular form of supplemental feeding (fig. 6.1; Koerth and Kroll 1994; Donalty, Henke, and Kerr 2003). In a recent survey of hunting lessees and landowners in south Texas, 56 percent of respondents said they plant some form of food plots (Bryant, Ortega-S., and Synatzske n.d.), and 41 percent said they planted them in both summer and winter. Twentythree percent of landowners in Texas who lease hunting rights plant food plots (Adams, Thomas, and Ramsey 1992). Converting native habitat to food plots is not habitat improvement. They should be planted on sites where natural vegetation has been destroyed by previous cultivation, root plowing, or other factors. Good-quality native habitat is preferable to food plots because it provides deer forage with minimal or no human input and is relatively permanent. Food plots require substantial human input and are highly susceptible to crop failure in semiarid environments. Land managers should not assume that native habitat cleared to create food plots simply grows back when the plots are abandoned and no longer cultivated. A new stable state or a pioneer plant community less productive than the original vegetation may develop instead (chapter 3). Food plots and other forms of supplemental feeding are not substitutes for proper deer population and habitat management. Maintaining deer densities within the carrying capacity of the habitat and avoiding overgrazing by livestock should have priority over food plots in management planning. Food plots are planted mainly to attract deer to increase viewing and hunting opportunities and to increase the nutritional quality and quantity of forage available (Waer, Stribling, and Causey 1997; Payne and Bryant 1998; Leidolf, Dew, and 121 The Plow: Food Plots 6 Jacobson 1999). White-tailed deer are attracted to them even when natural forages of high nutritional quality are available in the surrounding habitat (Hehman and Fulbright 1997). Presence of food plots and other forms of supplemental feed may result in changes in patterns of habitat use (Vanderhoof and Jacobson 1993; Hehman and Fulbright 1997). Radio-collared deer tracked in Mississippi during 1984 through 1989 did not shift home ranges in relation to food plots; however, they heavily used food plots within their home range (Vanderhoof and Jacobson 1993). The core area of the home ranges of radio-collared females using supplemental feed in the South Texas Plains was half the size of the core areas of radiocollared females that did not have access to supplemental feed (Cooper et al. 2002). In Nebraska, deer shifted home-range centers 174 m toward cornfields once the grain was developed, and then shifted centers 157 m away from cornfields into woodland after harvest (VerCauteren and Hygnstrom 1998). Although food plots attract deer, supplemental feeding may not necessarily increase overall visibility of deer. During summer in a study in south Texas, deer fed in food plots exclusively at night and were not active during the day (Bonner 1996). Males also avoid them during the day in the southeastern United States (Koerth and Kroll 1994). Availability of supplemental feed reduces the amount of time deer spend feeding, hypothetically reducing the amount of time deer are active and more visible to humans (Toso 2001). Documentation of the effects of planting food plots on nutritional status of deer is meager, and there is little evidence from published studies to support the idea that providing nutritious forage to free-ranging white-tailed deer increases body mass or antler sizes, except in habitats with relatively low forage nutritional quality. Maintaining 0.5 percent of an area in year-round agronomic food plots in a Mississippi study increased body mass, number of antler points, beam circumferences , and beam lengths of white-tailed deer (Vanderhoof and Jacobson 1989). In Louisiana, live weights of yearling male white-tailed deer increased fol122 Chapter Six Figure 6.1. Food plots are a form of supplemental feeding and are often used...