“Help, My Food Plot Died”

By: Braden Arp


There are very few frustrations in the outdoor world more disappointing than spending countless hours and dollars on your self-made “honey hole” only to have it look in six weeks the way it did when it was plowed. This year has been the worst year that I can ever recall for a drought. I have seen dry spells and went through the dog days in the Deep South, but never witnessed a place so dry that an eight foot cutover looked like a Christmas tree farm after two months. The briars didn’t even survive this year’s drought. For all you avid small game beaglers like us, you are fully aware of the condition. The rabbits even packed up and left. I mean it is dry!

I wasn’t as pessimistic over the situation back in the spring. I watched as comrades planted their spring plots and I answered their questions of why I hadn’t prepared mine.

“I think I will wait it out,” I told them, hoping that the torrential rains would come. I went by the theory of what goes up must come down so if I wait it out and hold off, the rain would surely come. It would have to. I had a plan, or at least I thought I did.

It was nothing but sad talking and slow walking over acres of burnt orange during the spring months. The first reports came of a front moving in and I made haste to get my food plot ready. I had plowed it early and had been liming the ground to prepare for what was surely going to be the new cover photo plot on the new Pennington brochures. I had spent hours upon hours with my boys cutting brush and piling limbs. Planting day came and we were ready.

“When we come back, boys, we should be able to turn goats loose in here. It will look like a pasture.”

OK so we have an odd way of explaining things, but nevertheless, we were ready for the rain.

By mid afternoon the clouds rolled in and we sat out on the porch waiting and watching for the rains to arrive. It thundered for three days. NO, I don’t think you got that. Three days, and all it did was thunder without a drop, not the first drop. Three weeks passed and I knew I had to do something quick. I went out and bought a feeder head and mounted it onto a fifty five gallon barrel. As you can see, I as well have trouble with the idea of paying one hundred seventy five dollars for a feeder. My blue barrel worked just fine.

I devised a plan to be able to empty fifty gallons of feed in at one time so that I wouldn’t have to refill it. I have to give you this tidbit because it worked. I drilled two holes in the top of the barrel and inserted and piece of inch and a half galvanized pipe through the barrel. I then ran a chain through the pipe and hung my feeder between two eyebolts between two trees. What this did was allow me to fill the barrel to the top without the barrel losing its shape so that the lid would go back on with the locking ring closure.

I had left two young oaks in the middle of my plot so I put the feeder in the center of the plot. When it was all said and done, it looked like I had planned it that way all along. The Saturday afternoon four wheeler patrol came by as we were finishing up.

“I wish I would have done what you did. You cleaned the ground so that the deer could easily find the food as it spreads from the feeder.”

I never told them any different. I didn’t let on that I had spent over three hundred dollars on this site to be a lush green food plot. It was just too painful to even recall.

The feed ran out and deer season came and we christened the “Food Court” stand on opening morning. You have to give your stands snazzy names so that if you kill the state record you can include it in the story. On opening morning the deer filtered in first, followed by a drove of turkeys, two raccoons, and a hog. I realized immediately that a lush food plot wasn’t the only means by which to sustain the herd. Out of thirty eight club food plots, the Food Court was the only one with food in it and that was because I put it there.

I had spent allot of time trying to determine a planting day as it coincided with the rain. It just didn’t work out. I couldn’t predict the rain and couldn’t stop the drought, but I could tell you exactly the precise time that supplemental food would land on the ground at the Food Court. There was no guesswork to it. Next year I will attempt another food plot I’m sure, but I will put allot more emphasis on supplemental feeding. It is guaranteed nutrition. You also have the choice to fill your feeder with your choice of food, be it corn, pellets, or soybeans. Those odds are hard to beat under any circumstances.