Trees and Bushes Bowhunters Can Plant to Increase
Their Success
The Truth About Honeysuckle + Creating Sanctuaries
 Editor’s
note: Many have written about the advantage of planting
food plots to manage wildlife. You can provide quality
nutrition for your wildlife when you plant crops, but
you’ll also have to invest time and money managing
those food plots. You may find planting permanent food
plots comprised of trees and shrubs instead of just
small grains a more-economical alternative. Here are
some tips for planting permanent food plots to attract
wildlife.
For years, hunters have known that deer like to eat
honeysuckle. They’ve also reali zed
that deer will utilize fertilized honeysuckle more than
unfertilized honeysuckle. While many hunters say they
already have honeysuckle on their properties, they must
determine if they have the honeysuckle in a place where
they can hunt over it and attract deer within bow range.
“We suggest that bowhunters buy honeysuckle and
plant it in 100-foot strips on the edges of their greenfields
and build wire cages over the plants,” Allen Deese,
a nursery manager for the Wildlife Group of Tuskegee
says. “I suggest you use 4- to 6-feet tall 2X4
wire to make an A-frame over the honeysuckle plants.
Then use wire to box-in each end, and stake the A-frame
to the ground. Once the cage is built over the honeysuckle,
fertilize it so the deer can eat the leaves and stems
that grow outside the cage. Otherwise, they’ll
eat the honeysuckle all the way down to the ground and
kill the plants like they tend to do with the strawberry
bushes.” By protecting the honeysuckle plants
with cages, you’ll have a high-protein food that
feeds deer year-round. Fertilizing the honeysuckle in
your land regularly can bring the protein level of the
honeysuckle up to 16 or 18 percent.
The Creation of Sanctuaries:
To hold deer on any property, you need to create a sanctuary
for the deer consisting of cover at least 4-feet high.
Then the hunters can’t see in, and the deer in
that sanctuary can’t see out. Deese recommends
planting the Chickasaw plum tree in a thicket to create
a sanctuary and provide food for whitetails. “The
Chickasaw is a small plum tree that is very easy to
grow if you have an open space where you haven’t
planted a greenfield.
If you’ll plant a patch of Chickasaw plums, you
can create food for deer and a thick-cover bedding area
where the deer can dodge hunting pressure and grow those
olde r-age
classes that hunters prefer.”
The Chickasaw plum yields its fruit in late July but
produces cover all year long. Turkeys also will nest
in regions dedicated to growing Chickasaw plums. An
ideal sanctuary situation will have a plum thicket within
100 yards of a greenfield with small-grain crops on
it. By micro-managing your property, you can provide
food and cover throughout the year so bucks will stay
on your land instead of drifting off it and onto your
neighbors property.
To learn more about the Wildlife Group, visit www.WildlifeGroup.com,
email wildlifegroup@mindspring.com
call 1-800-221-9703 or write the Wildlife Group at 2858
County Road 53, Tuskegee, Alabama 36083.
Check out this information:
http://www.nighthawkpublications.com/freetips/charts/deerfeed.htm
http://www.nighthawkpublications.com/freetips/charts/zonemap.htm
Tomorrow: The Best 1-Acre Bowhunting Plot and Honey
Holes
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