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4 of the Best Fall Food Plot Setups

August 23, 2018/0 Comments/in Get Muddy /by Muddy Outdoors

4 of the Best Fall Food Plots for Deer Hunting

As most hunters figure out, hunting mature Whitetails is a game of chess. Hunters are constantly strategizing, analyzing, and scheming to be one step ahead of these sly creatures. One of the best ways to gain that upper hand is to learn how to be a better hunter; i.e. become a better chess player. But what if you took it one step further? What if you could actually create your own chess board? Essentially, you could then predict their next move and know where that buck is going to be at certain times of the season. Some of the very best fall food plots for deer can do just that…provide a chess board that nearly guarantee’s a win!

Food plots do a lot more than just providing a healthy source of food for your deer herd. They also shape travel patterns, create hubs for social activity, and recruit neighboring deer. These are all great benefits of planting food plots, but what most hunters overlook is how to effectively hunt those plots and maximize the output of that resource.

How many times have you sat in your tree stand with a proud grin on your face as you’re overlooking the plush green vegetation that you’ve worked endlessly to create during those summer months? It’s a rewarding feeling, no doubt. Now imagine seeing your target buck walk out into your plot 15 minutes before dark. You’ve only seen nighttime trail camera photos of him and thought he was virtually unhuntable. Now he is broadside at 20 yards and has no idea you are there. That proud grin just turned into a full ear-to-ear smile. Give yourself this ultimate advantage by following these top 4 food plot setups to bring in mature bucks.

Food Plot #1 – Early Bird Buffet

This is an early season plot that can be a dependable location for that first sit of the year. It’s purposely designed so that it’s not too invasive and you should try to use the taller grasses and foliage as a screen when accessing your stand in these warmer months. Play your cards right and you could be first in line at the taxidermist.

Where: Ideally you would like to hug tight to a water source such as a creek or pond, but not too far from bedding areas in order to draw in mature bucks from their bed in daylight.

Seed: Soybeans and sorghum are rich in protein, green during this time of year, and the deer can’t stay off it.

Shape: Wrap this plot around the water source so the deer can’t skirt around when traveling through. If you can, design a pinch point as the entry into the plot from the nearest bedding area.

Trail Camera: Set the Pro-Cam 20 on time-lapse mode to capture those entry and exit points.

Stand: Avoid working too hard and getting hot and sweaty when climbing into your early season stand. The Odyssey XTL ladder stand is reliable, comfortable, and easy to access with minimal effort on big plots like this.

Food Plot #2 – Temptation Island

The Temptation Island plot is a staging kill plot that needs to be planted early to minimize intrusion in the months approaching hunting season. The goal of this food plot is to position this island plot in a way that bucks do not have far to travel when getting up from their beds to satisfy their famished bellies. Hunting this close to bedded bucks will result in a higher number of daytime sightings and shooting opportunities.

Where: Placed in between buck bedding and communal food sources.

Seed: Clover is your best choice since its reliable, browse tolerant for small plots, and low maintenance.

Shape: This plot doesn’t have to be large in size. Just big enough to entice mature bucks to stop for an appetizer on their way to the main course.

Trail Camera: Make sure your Pro-Cam 14 or 20 is setup close to your tree stand. You don’t want to be dropping your scent when pulling cards on the opposite side of the food plot. Try placing a mock scrape in front of the camera on the edge of the plot, which adds something a buck will have to check if working through the area.

Stand: Shifting winds on a small plot can ruin your hunt real fast. Use a Muddy Vantage Point stand with Aerolite climbing sticks to allow for ample mobility.

Food Plot #3 – The Show Time Plot

This is where all the magic happens. The purpose of the Show Time plot is to create a stage for rutting activity. You want to focus on attracting does to this food source, which will lead to bucks cruising through with their noses on the ground looking for a girlfriend. Love is in the air, so take advantage of those testosterone filled bucks who let their guard down.

Where: Best locations are pinch points, funnels, and downwind of doe bedding areas.

Seed: Oats and peas, even combined with winter wheat and rye work really well here since they are highly resistant to early season grazing, ensuring your plot won’t be picked clean before the rut begins.

Shape: Shapes can vary depending on the landscape, however, you want to create a wide view for yourself so you don’t get surprised by bucks chasing at high speeds. Multiple fingers like a turkey foot food plot design could work wonders if you’re hunting with a rifle.

Trail Camera: Pro-Cams are best placed in front of scrap trees and rub lines where you will typically see a lot of activity in and out of the plot. If the plot is not designed with multiple fingers like a turkey foot, you can simply set the Pro-Cam high and on time-lapse to gather general daytime feeding intel.

Stand: The Nexus XTL provides the height and the large platform to maneuver around for a better position when that rutted up hit list buck comes within range.

Food Plot #4 – The Binger Plot

As the late season begins, bucks are worn out from the rut and have shed a lot of weight. In order to survive the winter, they need to pack the pounds back on and indulge on as many sugars and carbs as possible. This is where you can really take advantage of shooter bucks that typically spend their home range on neighboring properties. If those surrounding areas do not have a late season option to help sustain those deer populations, you can bet they will travel to your Binger plot to bulk back up. Bottom line…. If you have food, they will come.

Where: Plant this plot in the interior sections of your property. You will find bucks adjusting their core areas and a main food source will allow you to inhale neighboring deer.

Seed: Brassica’s, such as turnips, generate an elevated level of glucose when hit by a cold frost. This can be combined with a strategy earlier in the year for standing grain, buy planting early maturing soybeans (turn faster for brassica planting). You can also mix brassicas with winter wheat, rye, and even oats to provide more tonnage and draw deer in before the brassicas become attractive. Bucks will hammer this type of fall food plot to get energy for recovery, as well as scent check remaining does and fawns feeding in the plot.

Shape: Planting in long rows to create shooting lanes for firearms, muzzleloaders, and crossbows can be extremely effective during this time period.

Trail Camera: Positioning Pro-Cams on field edges overlooking the food plot will fill up your SD cards with quality intel. Don’t be surprised if you have a few bucks show up that you have not seen before. The Muddy Pro-Cam features the hybrid mode, allowing time lapse cameras to also catch any movement, so set the camera up overlooking the field and a potential funnel to tighten your hunting setup.

Stand: Investing in a Muddy Bull or Penthouse blind provides different window options depending on your weapon of choice and keeps you nice and warm during these frigid winter months.

Conclusion

Food plots aren’t just a means of generating food on your property. Besides helping to sustain a balanced and healthy deer herd, food plots can (and should) be used as a tool when planning out your hunting strategies. Invest your time and energy in the offseason and you will capitalize on your sweat equity if you utilize these food plot setups. Procrastination only leads to excuses and frustration during the season. Well procrastination ends now. Take that next step. Creating environments that make mature bucks more predictable, placing yourself in those areas during the right time of the year, and investing in quality equipment will ultimately produce consistent opportunities at trophy bucks year over year.

Box Blind Food Plot Strategy

5 Ways to Locate & Pattern Your Top Hit List Buck

July 26, 2018/0 Comments/in Get Muddy /by Muddy Outdoors

Muddy Trail Camera Tactics | Trail Camera Tips for Finding Hit List Bucks

By: Aaron Outdoors

Can you feel it? Yep, that’s right. It’s the anticipation of your next trail camera card pull. It’s like Christmas in August. The food plots have been planted, the stands are being hung, you spend your evenings glassing for your next trophy buck, but the most exciting part of the pre-season is that mid-day card pull. Now is time to take your scouting to the next level with the certain trail camera tips that help develop your buck hit list. Trail cameras are a vital tool to all hunters nowadays and there is no better way to take inventory on your deer herd than top notch trail cameras like the Muddy Pro Cam 14 or 20. For that reason, hunters have to know where to place these cameras. Here are 5 sure fire trail camera locations to locate and pattern your hit list bucks for this fall!

1. The Edges of Food Plots

This time of year the deer have one thing on their mind… FOOD! There is also no shortage of it. Food plots and agricultural field edges are perfect locations to set up a Muddy Pro Cam. I prefer either a soybean field or clover plot as these are both very popular food sources during late summer for whitetail deer. The Muddy Pro Cam 20 is a perfect tool because it includes a time-lapse feature that allows you to create a custom period for photos in your food plot. My favorite time to use this feature is before dusk, because this is the time I generally spend hunting these types of food sources in the early season. A Pro Cam in the edge of a food plot will help you pattern a shooter buck for opening day!

Food Plots for Bow Hunting

2. Mineral Sites

One of my favorite locations to set a Pro Cam up in the preseason is over an established deer mineral site. More than likely, your shooter buck has used an established mineral site several times over his lifespan and he feels comfortable using it. I have found that in many cases, bucks will spend several minutes at a time at one mineral site, providing me with tons of photos that I can use for the current year and years to come. Different types of deer minerals can work for your piece of property. Find one that works for you and set out a Muddy Pro Cam! You won’t be disappointed.

3. Entry & Exit Routes to Known Bedding Areas

This tactic may have actually started with some post season scouting from last season. Many bucks tend to use the same bedding areas each year, if at all possible. Of course, there will be some bucks that change their patterns, but if you can locate where a particular deer is bedding, which way he is entering and exiting the bedding area, then you can find a pattern you can work with. The Muddy Pro Cam’s trigger speed is key to capturing mature bucks entering and exiting his bedding area. This can be a risky tactic at times, you must be sure to not bump a buck out from his bedding area. I recommend leaving this camera location unbothered for several weeks in between card checks to leave as little human scent as possible so the deer feel comfortable. If executed properly, you may just find where your top hit-lister spends most of his time.

4. Deer Scrapes

Yes, scrapes. I know it’s not mid-October yet and no I am not getting ahead of myself. Over the years our Muddy Pro Cams have shown that particular bucks will use the same scrape year round. Of course, most of the activity comes during the pre-rut period, but don’t count out old scrapes. If you can find a mature buck using a scrape in late summer, you know you’re in his home range and you just may have the ticket to a successful hunt this fall. I prefer the Muddy Pro Cam 20’s Video Mode over these types of scrapes. One you can see which direction the buck approaches the scrape and two, who doesn’t love awesome video of a velvet buck?! Scrapes are another fun and successful way to pattern big bucks!

5. Water Sources for Deer

Of course I couldn’t leave out one of the most important if not THE most important for deer habitat…WATER. Obviously deer have to have water to survive, and the summers across most of the country tend to be very hot and dry. This makes water sources an essential place to set out trail cameras during this time of the year. A Pro Cam over a watering hole, creek, or stream could be vital in patterning a mature buck. Deer will often leave bedding areas and food plots in search of water, making it a perfect place to hunt late in the evenings of the early season. If your hunting property does not have a water source, make one. Large tubs and even kids swimming pools can be made into a great tool in attracting whitetails to a water source. If you have a large water source such as a creek or river running through your property like I do, you may have better luck setting your camera over well used deer trails leading to the water. This could help pinpoint your top hit-lister.

We all have our favorite tactics in patterning mature whitetails, but of course, all of mine lead back to the Pro Cam series by Muddy. They are small, concealable, and reliable tools for patterning big bucks! Get your Muddy Pro Cams today so you, too, can execute your favorite tactics and have your Muddy Moment this fall!

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What Do Deer Eat During the Late Season?

How to: What Do Deer Eat During the Late Season?

This video dives straight into finding out the answer to the question: What do deer eat during the late season? While this is a very basic question, the more advanced tactic of looking at a deer’s stomach answers the question. This process offers very valuable intel when it comes to hunting. Figuring out what a deer’s diet consists of regarding the late season food sources on your property, can help you determine where bucks might be patterned. Looking into a deer’s stomach contents can show you not only where to find deer at, but where to hunt, where to hang your trail cameras, and where to concentrate your late season efforts on.

What Do Deer Eat in the Late Season? | Trail Cameras Weekly “Week 10”

By opening up the stomach of a deer that is killed on your property, or by a neighbor nearby, you can quickly determine what late season food sources your deer are concentrating on your property. This video shows you two stomachs, one from a doe in Indiana, and another of a buck Steve Smolenski killed in Pennsylvania. It is important to remember, the property’s habitat and available food sources greatly diversify the results from analyzing the stomach contents. Every property is different, this is why it is a very successful tactic!

A Deer’s Stomach

There is more to this than simply slicing the stomach to find the answer to, “what do deer eat”. Deer are ruminants and have a four-chambered stomach.

The Rumen where deer store their food as they eat serves as a mechanism to allow deer to quickly eat large quantities of food without much chewing. This is a trait that helps limit the time they are exposed to predators. When they get back to a safe bedding area they proceed to re-chew this food or chew their fermented slightly digested “cud” going into the second chamber of the stomach the Reticulum, where the majority of microorganisms of a deer stomach really start to work. From there it moves to the Omasum the third chamber where water is absorbed, then proceeds to the final chamber the Abomasum where the food is further digested…Now why is this important? For the most part you will be able to easily identify what food sources they ate in the first chamber the rumen, and for the most part the second chamber. After you move on towards the final chamber it gets obviously harder.

Timeline?

By opening up stomach we can actually identify what the deer has eaten. Now you may be wondering how big of a timeline does it give us?

The answer assures us that this process is very high quality and accurate intel. From the time a deer eats to the time it passes through and comes out the other end, most of the material (about 80 %) takes only 48 hours to go through. This means during anytime regardless of harvest the gut pile and stomach contents will actually at least the last day or so of feeding. There is much to take into consideration after this as some food sources digest much faster than others.

While you can certainly see what the deer has eaten in the past 12 hours, you cannot determine when they ate food sources due to the vast range of different digestibility. AKA winter rye and species like clover digest easily compared to woody browse and mast such as white oak acorns. This is why It is important to understand what you are looking at before making any assumptions or conclusions.

So What are They Eating?

After the point when you identify the rumen and least digested contents of the stomach, you can pick apart the contents and try and apply percentages, or a conclusion to where the deer on this property are spending their time feeding.

The Buck:

The buck’s stomach contents revealed most visibly corn, but you have to realize this is probably only 20-30% of the contents. It just happens to be the most visible and easily identified. 60-70% or the majority of the stomach contents were grasses and forbs, with about half being winter wheat in the surrounding cover cropped ag fields. They also witnessed a basic estimate of 10% woody browse. There were no food plot species or acorns in the stomach. This directly reflected what food sources were available and not available on the property this year as Steve’s property does not hold food plots or a vast amount of oaks.

The Doe:

Now this doe is a different story. The property has popcorn (which shatters more easily once eaten and is far less desirable than regular corn) many oaks and acorns, several areas of early successional growth ( woody browse) and of course the large winter rye cover cropped AG fields that were discussed last week on Trail Cameras Weekly. The percentages come out to be roughly 20-30% corn and acorns, 60-70% Winter rye/grasses and forbs, and an estimated 10 % of woody browse.

It is important to remember these are roughly estimated numbers but they do closely resemble what a deer’s diet and nutritional needs are this time of year. The graph below is taken from Nutritional Requirements of White-tailed Deer in Missouri produced by the Extension Department of the University of Missouri.

As you can see the average percentages between fall and winter roughly fall in line with the percentages the hunters witnessed in the stomach contents of the two deer killed in December.

Conclusion

Over the course of the next week or so, if the hunting is slow, take a doe for the freezer or for management purposes, or just try and examine the stomach contents of a deer killed on or near your property. Do not waste the gut pile! Often times this is a far more accurate representation of what your late season food sources are, how much time your deer are spending in the food sources, and where you might want to think about hunting as the temperature starts to fall! If you are asking “what do deer eat in the late season” take it into your own hand to find the answer!

Prep for Late Season