What Does it Cost to Install and Maintain a Food Plot?

What a disastrous food plot year, with planting problems and record-breaking rainfall (who would have thought we would complain about too much rain.)  After a particularly hard day of tractor work, trying to fix a failed plot,  I turned to one of my clients and said “why are we even doing this.”  I was seriously doubting the benefits outweighed the cost and the time and effort.  I had to ask myself “are food plots worth it?”

I want to do a cost vs benefit analysis and weigh the benefits of food plots against the cost both in time and effort as well as the monetary cost.  

For many landowners, the cost of starting a food plot in the woods is a non starter.  Once I tell them what it costs to properly clear an area, site prep it, apply amendments and plant it,  the conversation is over.  This is a very expensive proposition.  To do it right costs some serious coin.

Food Plot Cost – Step by Step

1. clearing/stump removal
2. leveling and stone removal
3. soil amendments
4. planting
5. maintenance

Clearing

First, there is the land clearing.  Once a suitable site is found, if you can find one, we have to clear it of trees or brush.  The price tag for this kind of work from cutting and removing trees, removing stumps, and leveling up the site is going to be around $1,500 per acre.  I like to work food plots into a timber sale to defray some or all of this cost.  Since the logger needs a landing anyway, we can pay for the extra work to level up the site and do some extra work.  The logger or sawmill needs a dozer on site to get a landing in anyway, so the cost of moving the equipment has already been taken care of by the price they bid on the timber.  I can also negotiate with the timber buyer to get road work and food plots done while they are working on the project.  The two things are not mutually exclusive so they are often down with doing it as it can actually make it easier for sorting logs, getting trucks in and out.

Leveling and Stone Removal

Once the trees and stumps are removed, there is still quite a bit of machine time necessary to get the ground to the point of being able to be worked with farm/planting equipment.  Machine time is about $100/hour.  A site usually requires at least a days work per acre to level and use a rock rack attachment on a dozer to get rid of the large stones.  So, including moving charges, that is another $1,000/acre.

Here in Pennsylvania, any ground that isn’t full of stones is farmland anyway.  The main reason the forest is still forest is because the early settlers know what they were looking for when they planted food and they cleared it to make farmland.  The mountain ground often has large stones and always has small stones.  Lots of them. The soil types include terms such as channery, shaly and rubble.  The best way too get rid of them is the old fashioned way – pick them up and move them off your site by hand.  However, we do have some really cool stone removal tools to get stones out of a field.  The process is to run a chisel plow to bring stones up to the surface, then run a rock rack to windrow the stones, then run a rock picker over them to pick them up and take them off to the side.  There are very few contractors who run this type of equipment.  So, that’s another $100/hour if you can find a guy to do it and the amount of time spent depends on the amount of stone and how, stone-free you want to get the field.

There is another way and that is to run a stone crusher tool over the surface that will pulverize the stones into the soil.  This can be very good for the nutrient value of the soil and create a good seedbed ready to plant.  If not bigger than a baseball and if there is a lot of woody debris, a forestry grinder would do the trick.  This equipment costs about $250/hour and depending on the situation, one or two acres can be worked in a day.

Application of Soil Amendments

Now that we have a cleared, relatively stone free site, we test our soil.  In most forest soils, since we have a fungal dominated soil with breaking down of leaves, and an acidic parent material, the pH is usually very low.  For a more in-depth article on soil fertility click this link, it will open in a new tab and you can come back to this later.

Lets say our food plot has a pH that, according to the soil test, requires 3 tons of lime.  To have this delivered and spread will require at least 3 acres to take a ten ton truck load.  That will be about $500-$600.  However, for a small plot you may want to buy pelletized lime and spread it with your tractor, which will take all day for two guys and about the same money.  Or, you could rent a spreader trailer and spread pulverized lime behind your pick up or tractor.  This would be the most effective option for a smaller field.  That cost would be about $250.

Furthermore, your soil test shows that you are short on macronutrients.  You must spread fertilizer.  Assuming you are planting legumes, you could apply a Potash and Ammonium Phosphate at the rate of 300 lbs per acre.  Cost is around $150.  The cost of Nitrogen is much higher and you could double that if you want to start grains, brassicas or a mix.

Work all that into the soil with a light disking.  Thats some machine time and fuel.  Then, lets say you need to rent a seed drill at $150 per day.

Now for the seed cost.  Seeds will run you around $50 to $100 per acre.

What Did it Cost to Create This Food Plot?

Let’s tally this up:

1. Clearing = $1500
2. Leveling and stone removal = $1500
3. Lime spreading = $500
4. Fertilizer = $150
5. Seed = $150

That adds up to about $3,500.

This cost will be much less if you have an old field or if you buy a farm and convert some crop fields to food plots.  Then its a matter of weed control, soil amendments and planting seeds.  In that case a $250/per acre price tag is average if you have equipment, more if you need to rent or hire equipment.

You can follow this entire process on my youtube channel: https://youtu.be/zMWlgSkRmzU

There are videos on this channel that covers all of the above processes.

Are Food Plots Economically Feasible?

Are food plots worth it?  Looking at it from a strictly economics standpoint, no.  But then, neither is Timber Stand Improvement cutting, herbicide work, planting shrubs, deer exclusion fences.  If you do an ROI calculation for any of this stuff, its a bad place to invest money.  However, the benefits of land stewardship can be less tangible than what can be justified using dollars as a measure of benefits.

Furthermore, any time you create a food plot and get it looking good and attracting wildlife, you can argue that you land has increased in value.  A recreational land buyer will pay more than a farmer or timber investor.

Another intangible is the feeling you get from being a good land steward and providing good feed for the wildlife that uses your property.  Also, how do you measure the value of seeing a bunch of deer feeding on your clover plot and attracting deer to your land for the excitement of seeing deer while hunting.

I once was speaking with a state legislator about the changes in the deer management laws.  He told me he understood the importance of the food source that venison provides for rural people.  He didn’t understand a thing.  Guys buy ATVs, guns and ammo, pickup trucks they don’t need, thousands of dollars worth of specialty clothing and equipment.  Even if you just hunt public land and collect a deer yielding 30 lbs of venison per year, you would be way better off buying Cobe beef at the grocery store – that’s only $40/lb.  Venison costs over $100/lb to go get.  And the taste – there is no comparison.  Lots of public land hunters go out every year and come home with nothing.

The Poor Man Food Plot

I was talking with a landowner who was selling timber from his hunting property.  He had a logger splitting 50/50 on his timber.  I can’t remember why the logger had me up there, maybe to mark ahead of him.  So, the landowner was throwing money away by not hiring a Forester to sell his timber.  He had a old field the guys were using for a landing so I suggested he get it back into forage since he would be the only cultivated forage within a half mile and he could attract a lot of deer.  When I told him what it would cost to get rid of the grass, till, lime, fertilize and plant, he scoffed at the idea of spending that much money.  Some guys just don’t want to spend money to attract a deer when they see deer anyway.

But, some guys want the attraction but don’t want to spend a lot or can’t.  For them, it is possible to create a “bait” plot.  I suggest working on your forested areas with a chainsaw to thicken them up, creating daytimber resting areas and keeping clear of them.  Nearby, you could use rakes, clippers, chainsaw, rototillers and walk-behind mowers to develop an opening.  Then you can use a hand spreader to apply lime and fertilizer and seeds.  Also, pick and shovel work and Mister Turtle pool to create a watering hole in a dry bedding area.  Use grapevines to hang and develop scrapes. around it.  Voila! You have enhanced habitat and made a really attractive spot that could be hunted.  Hang a treestand strategically here and you could have a good time hunting.

This method is a good way to go if you have good cover and the main food source is out in the ag fields.  I would rather own a thick, swampy tract with lots of cover than a tract with great planting soil provided there is plenty of food around all year.  Just create a social area near bedding with some food, water, licking branches and you will have a kill spot.  For food in a spot like this, some annual clover chicory and oats/wheat are a good choice to spread.  These will green up and deer will come to the area to feed throughout the day and stop there to check scrapes, get some water and feed a little before heading to the destination plots after dark.  I always make these spots even when I have expensive large food plots installed.  This is where I want my landowner to hunt, not on the food plot.

These Poor Man Plots can be worked and expanded each year or multiplied to line up with a travel corridor between bedding and feeding.  They are a way to guide traffic where you want the deer to travel to get to food.  Set up multiple stands where the wind won’t swirl much and hunt just of the wind.  By that I mean hunt a stand where the wind is blowing toward but slightly angling away from where you hope a buck to walk.  Better yet, have your stand so the prevailing wind is blowing out over steep ground or water or somewhere deer don’t want to travel.  An old survivor type buck will not spend much time walking with the wind and will always want to travel with some breeze blowing toward him from some angle.  Think it over and hang your stand appropriately and you will see your buck sightings go up.

Are Food Plots Worth it?  Hell Yes

Sure, they are a bad investment.  But so is a nice car, a big TV a bigger house than you need, a swimming pool.  When you see 15 deer feeding and you shoot one and its full of nice greasy fat and the meat tastes good, it all seems worth it.  The photo below is the midday view from my brother’s Redneck blind.   The fawns you see bedded down stay in the plot most of the time digging through the snow to get the radish leaves that are left over from the summer.  Deer fed extensively on this plot consisting of sunflowers, radish, cowpeas mostly.  They demolished the pease, beans and sunflower leaves and are polishing off the brassicas.  The winter plot seeds we put down did not do well because of the record rainfall, but they mowed the wheat in that mix up until we got ten inches of snow.

This next photo shows a deer I shot on this property.  I have never seen so much fat on a deer.  This level of subcutaneous as well as the intestinal fat found on this deer is unheard of in poor quality habitat.  I had to carve big chunks of fat off the carcass before I could see what I was doing when I de-boned the meat.  A deer with this much fat and access to winter forage will make it through the winter in great shape and produce a healthy fawn, plenty of milk for that fawn which, in turn, can grow meat and antlers.

Maintenance

I want to close this article with a section on maintenance.  If you have gone to the effort and expense of installing a plot, then plan on having maintenance chores to do several times each year.  If you don’t the plot will revert to native plants and aggressive invasives like pasture grasses, stiltgrass, thistles, etc.  Some native “weeds” are excellent deer forage and will be consumed over planted plots at certain times of the year.  However, some of the grasses and prickly weeds not consumed by deer that are very prolific and aggressive will take your hard-earned forage ground and you will fight an uphill battle to get it back.

The biggest expense by far is your initial setup since you will need lime, fertilizer, herbicides and lots of tractor time with equipment rental.  The plot you see above is in great shape for replanting next spring.  All we need to do is run the equipment we have on site and buy the seeds.

One of the most economical food plots is a clover plot.  Once established, you can maintain it forever if you spend a few days each year on maintenance.  Early spring is overseed time.  A light application of new seed will ensure the plot will stay in clover.  A light application of grass and broadleaf herbicides in June and in the late summer will keep weeds at bay.  And mowing anytime the grasses and weeds start to bolt – or get tall and go to seed.  You must mow the plants before their seeds mature.  That’s about 4 days of easy work.  There is no excuse for letting a food plot get into bad shape.