Breakdown of Food Plot Materials Per Acre Cost
The Outdoor Smorgasbord 08.23.12
In years past, there has been a lot of deer hunting material and a smattering of western big game stuff to go along with it. With our big Colorado adventure coming up in 3 weeks, white-tailed deer have been in the background at best in recent months.
This fall, I’m teaching (again) an undergraduate course titled ‘Wildlife Food Plot Establishment’. In the first lecture, I talk a little about what is and what is not a true food plot and then discuss a bit of the economics involved. The most interesting bit of the opening lecture is a breakdown of the per acre cost of establishing a food plot.
I know this a common question that hunters have so I’m going to write up what we chatted about last Thursday in class.
Soil sample – $10 – don’t skip this step. Either you are going to spread too much lime and fertilizer and waste money – not likely – or you are going to skimp on how much the soil actually needs and get subpar results from your planting efforts – likely.
Lime – $100 – This is based on the average figure of an acre of freshly turned, never planted soil needing roughly 2 tons of bulk ag lime ($50/ton if delivered by truck) to raise the pH in the soil. If you go the 50 pound bag route, you are looking at spending roughly triple for the same amount of lime.
Fertilizer – $100 – Again, very rough average numbers but an opening dose of 250 pounds of 8-12-12 is pretty reasonable. At $20/bag, you’re again at the century mark.
Seed – $50 – highly variable depending on what you want to plant, but two things to keep in mind here. #1 – Deer love wheat! Research shows time and again that the most highly preferred deer forage is wheat. It’s also cheap. Some cool season mixture of a few clovers with oats/wheat should run you somewhere about $50/acre. #2 – If you are buying seed for food plots with a picture of big buck on the bag, you are wasting money. Go to a feed/seed store and mix your own food plot seed combinations.
Initial herbicide application – $20 – Burn the area with Roundup, disc a week later, whatever germinates back, burn it again with Roundup. Follow the recommended application rate on the bottle and herbicide applications are not near as expensive as most people think. This will kill off most broad leaf competition.
Follow up application of something like 2,4-D to control a Johnson grass invasion – $10. Again, pretty cheap as long as you don’t overreact and spray 10X the recommended dose in which case spraying can get expensive.
A couple things I left out, initial land clearing cost (easy as a bush axe and weedeat or as complicated and expensive as a dozer/mulcher), cost of diesel (tractor work), etc.
Bottom line is that if you are doing food plots right, $300 is sort of a baseline cost to expect when establishing new food plots. This information is out there but can be hard to get a clearcut explanation of the figures that are thrown out. Hopefully this resource will help somebody out this fall when planning their hunting expense budget.
I’m 28 years old and I am currently stationed at Auburn University where I am pursuing a doctorate degree in wildlife sciences. Before this stage of life, I spent the better half of my life living in Alamance County, North Carolina. I’m convinced that my father’s love for deer hunting fostered a permanent infatuation with the outdoors in my life. As a 12-year old, I killed my first deer at my grandpa’s farm in northwestern PA. From the time that bolt-action .243 barked in 1996, it was a slippery slope towards obsessive addiction. My passion is white-tailed deer hunting, especially with archery equipment.
However, as my blog name would suggest – I don’t consider myself a one dimensional outdoorsman. I am just as likely to be wading shallow lake waters trying to arrow prehistoric bowfin and torpedo-shaped grass carp, busting the January brush for cottontails, combing hillsides for antler sheds, calling ducks in a timbered swamp, battling monster flathead catfish, or setting traps for beavers and raccoons. My passion also takes me outside NC boundaries – bowhunting elk in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, glassing pronghorn in Wyoming’s plains country, stalking mulies at the base of the Bighorn Mountains, waiting for a Kansas whitetail to funnel past a treestand. The list could go on.
I guess the thing that makes me somewhat unique is that I have taken my love for the outdoors and genuinely made it my life’s pursuit. I received a 4 year degree in wildlife sciences from North Carolina State University in December 2006. Since then, I’ve also completed a master’s degree that focused on using GPS collars to examine how adult bucks react to hunting pressure at Chesapeake Farms, Maryland.
My current project at Auburn University also uses GPS technology but my objectives are different. I am looking at breeding strategies by different age class bucks in a very unique, high-fenced deer population. I also intend to address the controversial issue of fair chase, as well as spearhead numerous side projects while at the University.
Well, enough about me, my wife is extraordinarily beautiful if I do say so myself. We were high school sweethearts and were married in January 2008 and were joined in September 2011 by our beautiful daughter Raelyn Mae.
Finally, what can you expect from my blog. I will bring you many exciting experiences, practical how-to tips, and candid product reviews, but I also want to bring you a unique perspective from the science behind the great outdoors.
