Off season “feed”

What are y’all feeding in the off season? Any special blend or just letting nature do the work like she always has lol. Buck muscle, and triple grip seems to be popular

There will come a time when my deer will abandon the feeder. They love the green shoots. I wont even feed during the spring and summer.

We feed a 20% Protein feed in our 24 feeders. It also has a lot of vitamins and minerals in it. Buy it in 50 lb bags

People that feed protein for one summer and then say they see "big changes" are fooling themselves. It takes 6-7 years to see bigger antlers.

The research indicates that nutrition is generational, and better fed does, then have better fed fawns which become mature bucks. So if you figure a 4-5 year old buck as mature, you've got to feed the mother a year or two before that.

So, no, I'm not doing that. I'm too cheap for that and I don't have a high fence around my place anyway.

This…data from Mississippi st is done on changes over multiple years in order to see the changes. Waste of money imho

Been doing for several years and I do see a difference in the overall look of the deer esp since the rut the bucks ain't as run down looking does are still fat and looking good. As for what I feed I use 4 different feeds that I mix they seem to do well with it and they seem to like it. Of course folks say you can't do all this and see any results off small tracts of property to

I don't feed. I hunt a small tract. I killed my best deer ever this year.

If I had been feeding protein for a year or two, I'd be $3-4,000 poorer and I'd be certain, in my mind, that it was the protein that did it. And I'd also happen to be wrong

From March through September any pelletized feed a minimum of 16% protein mixed at a ratio of 3:1 with corn is ok. In fall swap the ratio to 3:1 corn to protein.

Without habitat improvements you will not likely see measurable results.

^^^
Do u feed n off season Matt? If so - what?

I think i may do like JW but aint decided yet

I buy my 20% Protein feed from a mill in Hope Hull. It is mixed and bagged there and is no middle man involved. It does have some corn in it as well as minerals and vitamins.
All summer long I only paid $12.50 per 50 lb bag.

What feed is it?

According to y’all’s favorite wildlife guy,Mark Buxton, bucks need protein post rut to help recover and in turn giving more antler growing time

I don't remember what he labeled it .I buy it from Casey Feeds in Hope Hull, just south of Montgomery.

Probably max gro

I feed almost year round. What I can see is a healthier deer herd from my neighboring land owners and I’m seeing it help the horn growth vs not feeding year round. My two year old bucks look like three year olds and my three year olds look like four year olds and so on. When I bought the property a three year old buck looked like a two year old. Now every year my piece of property is producing some really good deer for the area it’s in.

Feed Triple grip grower mix year round will mix in some corn in season. Body weights are way up. We killed our biggest bodied deer to date this year 247lbs.

Triple grip is really good stuff! Cheeto Marlow is a great guy and really will hook you up! He unloaded 40 bags into my garage last year just because he is a good guy. I think if you have heavy browse areas with availability of green briar, honey suckle, and other forbes, you might not need as much supplemental feeding. If you have a large amount of heavy timber and dense canopy, you might need more feed and summer plots. I honestly work a pretty good bit on our mineral sites. The deer really hammer them from about April to October. We had a ton of young bucks on the property this year so I think we will plant a bunch this summer just to try to keep them around.

No sir. I’m not spending my hard earned money on feed that has negligible effects at worst and a 1.5-2% gain at best. There’s FAR more important things to be spending resources on. Habitat habitat habitat. Selective herbicides, tractors, drip torches and chainsaws are what I use. I’d put some of the places I work on against anywhere that’s feeding. I’m NOT against it. I encourage it if someone has the money to do it right. I just put my money into habitat that benefits multiple species, not just one. We don’t put out minerals or plant summer crops. We maximize habitat potential and our deer are as healthy as anything around. Average body weights are considerably higher than most of the surrounding areas.

We don't use corn or any other feed during the season. Day after season goes out, we fill our feeders with 50/50 mix of corn and All Stock protein pellets. Second feeder fill, we dial that back to 1:4 corn to All Stock and then we finally do away with the corn. We keep the protein feed going until green up. We also work on habitat improvements. Not sure how much good the feed does other than help them rebound during the high stress period following rut when other food sources are lower quality and scarce. If anything, it provides a great way to capture on camera what has survived the season.

This is probably the best way to utilize supplemental feed. There’s not much quality forage left from February to spring green up. That’s a two to three month window after a high stress period that the deer could really benefit from.

Having water near where you feed is also huge in my opinion. We are using banks water tanks and supplementing them as well.

Do any of you add anything to salt licks or just strait salt. I have put the red trace mineral in ours before..

Thanks Matt

Perennial food plots is all we feed and out quality is improving based upon the number of young bucks with nice racks.

“Do any of you add anything to salt licks or just strait salt. I have put the red trace mineral in ours before.”

We add dicalcium phosphate, trace minerals, and salt to our mineral sites. We also include Whitetail Institute 30-06 Plus Protein where we can (yes, I know it’s expensive). Our deer hammer our mineral sites. Put down the dicalcium phosphate first because the deer will dig down to reach it.

I use Whitetail Inst 30-06
It has about everything in it, just a little high priced

I'm going to try off season planting and supplemental feeding with protein this year. I'm not necessarily trying to fatten up the deer, I'm just hoping year around free food will attract more deer to hang around our property. Years ago on a piece of small farm land, before we started farming, we rarely saw a deer. We started planting about 10 acres of corn and 5 acres of peas and the deer came out of the woodwork! We started being over run with deer. I have no idea if planting is what did it but it certainly didn't hurt. I've got around 350 acres I hunt. If I can attract deer from surrounding properties is what I'm after. What I'm afraid of is I'm feeding my neighbors deer... I'll try it out his year and see what happens.

I buy those trophy rocks when I find them on sale and drop them on clay balds. They turn into watering holes pretty quick.
I only have 34ish acres that I can control these days but I keep something of value planted on my acres-worth of open ground year round. I am planting clover and chicory in my primary plot. I’ve added fruit trees(pears, peaches and persimmons) specifically for game as well as blueberries(which are caged for now) and crabapples. I’m opening up forest understory to encourage the existing honeysuckle, etc. to thrive and keeping a now 7-8 year old clearcut in an early succession situation with forbs and briars.
That said, four years of ownership and watching in, I have a core group of does year round. Only the occasional young buck during summer passes through. The boys start showing up in September and October. But I’m going to provide the best smorgasbord for those does that I can in natural browse with a few cultivated plots to add to it.