Secrets to Early Green Field Planting for Deer
Day 4: The Bowhunting Deer Season Special with Bobby Cole of Mossy Oak’s BioLogic
Editor’s Note: If you'll get your green field crops in the ground early, then they'll come up in your green field prior to deer-hunting season. Let's look at some of the advantages you can enjoy by planting your green fields early, fertilizing natural plants and creating unconventional green fields.
 Bobby Cole of West Point, Mississippi, the national sales manager for Mossy Oak's BioLogic, tells how hunters can use their food plots to balance their deer herds. As Cole explains, "In the early season is when you want to take-off the surplus of does on your hunting lands. If you have them off your property before cold weather arrives, and there's a shortage of food, then the better the land’s habitat will be, and the more food that will be available for the rest of the herd. There's another advantage to taking-off surplus does during the early season. Research tends to indicate that when buck fawns are orphaned early in the season, they are less likely to disperse off your property later in the season.  Therefore, if you remove the surplus does early in the season, you can probably keep and hold more of your buck fawns until they grow to maturity. But a mistake that many hunters make in taking deer early in the season is in hunting and bagging those deer over green fields."
Instead of taking deer over the green fields, Cole suggests that you make your green fields sanctuaries. Well-known deer biologist and researcher, Dr. Grant Woods of Reedsville, Missouri, reports that, "When you put hunting pressure on your green fields, especially early in the season, all you're doing is creating a place where bucks won't come. A far better way to use your green fields is to use them as sanctuaries by allowing the deer to come and feed unmolested in the green fields until you're ready to harvest a buck later in the season." Woods and Cole both recommend that you hunt the trails leading to the green fields instead of hunting over the green fields for whitetails early in the season. Determine not to take a deer any closer than 100- to 200-yards away from your green field. Too, Cole advises that you, "Have two or three green fields planted that you don't hunt over and that you don't hunt the trails either going to those specific green fields until the rut. If you do, you're jerking the rug out from under the buck. If you have two or three green fields that you never hunt before the rut, both the bucks and the does will feel safe and comfortable feeding in those green fields at all hours of the day. Those sanctuary green fields will act as doe magnets.  Then when the rut arrives, the bucks feel they can go to those green fields at any time during the day or night, more than likely find a doe and not encounter a hunter. Using this technique, you often can take the biggest bucks on your property out in those green fields during daylight hours once the rut arrives. However, until the rut comes in, those individual green fields have to be sanctuaries."
For the early season, Cole recommends planting BioLogic's Full Draw or Green Patch+. "Both of these green-field plantings come screaming out of the ground.  They both germinate really quickly, and if you have any moisture in the ground at all, you'll see a green shadow in your freshly-planted field within 4 or 5 days. This product comes up so quickly that if you plant it on one Saturday, and a good rain falls right after you've planted, you may even see deer feeding on that crop the next Saturday. You'll also spot does training their young fawns to come and eat in those green fields. So, when you get ready to balance your herd by taking off the surplus does, the deer are already trained to come-down those trails and go to those green fields. Early-season green-field plantings will be a tremendous aid for the hunters to take the does off during the early season, and they can even be much more productive if you set aside two or three green fields as total sanctuaries where you don't hunt the fields or the trails leading to the fields until the rut."
Tomorrow: Dr. Keith Causey and J. Wayne Fears Tell Us Why and How to Create Inexpensive, Highly-Nutritious Food for Deer
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