I own 180 acres of which I plant 12 acres of food plots. My largest plot is 7 acres, I usually plant it with corn for the late season draw, this year I wanted to give the soil a break from corn and try SoyBeans, see if I could attract more deer to the property during the summer months. My deer absolutely love them and hammered on the plot August and September. My question is: Now that the soybean plants have turned brown and died, at what point do the deer start eating all the bean pods? Seems my trail cam pics are way down in the beans, they have started hitting my annual green plots. Do they usually come back late season and start cleaning up the beans? My land is in NY. Thanks
They should, I'd consider it a blessing that you still have pods with beans standing. If you get snow, those beans will be the last food source available outside of woody browse. You can make more efficient use of the plot with the beans if you just walk through them with a hand seeder and spread some winter cereal rye and hairy vetch or crimson clover on it. You still have time for those. Winter oats, winter wheat or winter barley could also be substituted for the rye but the rye will grow faster and it can be planted later.
Great thanks for the info! Yeah much of the plot is nothing but stems and bean pods. There's still some deer hitting it, but nothing like when the plants were green. I did broadcast 100# of oats through the lower half of the beans 2 weeks ago when they started turning brown, but we are lacking rain here in NY..
I'm with Covey. We had standing beans last year. If we would've had more snow the deer would've hit them much harder. The beans were still in the pod come april.
They'll be back you can count on it, right now there is just so much food around that they generally transition to acorns and other natural food sources this time of year but as soon as those are gone and you get a few hard frost I'd be sitting over those beans. Good luck.
This is what happened last year with my standing corn, didn't get cold till long after the hunting season ended, and we never got any snow. Unheard of in my area. Corn didn't get touched. Felt like I wasted 7 acres of ground. At least the deer utilized the soybean durring summer regardless if they don't come back and hit the beans.
Central NY. It was a crazy winter and fall. Between the warm weather and a bumper acorn crop last year, my corn was dead. The most snow we got all winter measured 2 inches. That's unheard of in my area.
Don't typically need snow on for deer to hit corn are you sure there was still corn there in the spring after winter? Deer will eat the ear out and leave the husk hanging on the stalk and it will just look like the ear is still there. Did you just leave it standing untouched? If that ever happens again, try running through it in places with an atv or truck or something. They probably just weren't used to it being there. I've never seen standing corn or beans make it through winter with grain remaining...it's just unimaginable to me.
Been planting corn in that field for 9 years in a row, they know where to get it. And yeah there were some kernels on the ground when I bush hogged what I had left standing in March. Trust me I was scratching my head all fall man. My property is a known yarding area for deer come winter, last year for the first time since I've owned the place, the deer did not yard on property. Corn has always been my main draw come hunting season. Nobody plants it around me. I have always layed down small sections at a time throughout hunting season, sometimes buy the time I get back to the barn I can look out in that field and they'll already be eating what I laid down. Anyways, i am anxious to see how the beans fare come late season. First time I've tried them.
We usually have about .25-.5 of an acre planted in corn and this past year we had really good corn considering the soil and the fact that we plant with the lil garden push planters, but its common for us to have corn make it all winter... and alot of it. Pretty sad... it shouldn't take many deer to eat that little of a plot.
It is hard to believe I know. The only thing I'm thinking at our place is, since it has been in pasture for the past 20+ years the deer don't winter around our place much. We are working on keeping them here with changes in security. These are pic's of what our beans looked like this year. We didn't plant a single bean. We just disked them under April 24th. Wasn't no need to waste seed.
I plant beans for late season attraction and food source. I live in an ag rich area, so early season attraction is nearly impossible with all the competition. Once they brown down and the leaves fall off, I have standing soybeans just waiting. All the farmers will have their corn and beans out by mid November and then I will have a much more attractive food source. They hit them pretty hard from that point on all the way through the winter.
Just an update, the weather finally turned cold, we've had several frosts and the deer are absolutely hammering the standing beans. I was also able to harvest a 5yr old buck a few days ago as he was stepping into the bean field, who was not known to my farm. Not the biggest rack but buy far the oldest buck taken on my land, and that's fine buy me it's exactly what I'm managing for. Thanks for all the responses I was def getting nervous buy the drop in activity, but I believe it was attributed to the above average temps and deer changing their feeding patterns. Either way the colder temps drew them back and I'm going to plant beans again next year. Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk
Man I love it when a plan comes together! Thanks for the update. There is few food sources more attractive than standing soy beans. Congratulations on that old buck.
