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nw NC | Bad, bad deer damage around here in every crop and homeowner's gardens. Guys have planted soybeans twice and did not get any beans at all to harvest. I do not grow beans, couldn't if I wanted to. I grow corn for silage and deer start grazing it as soon as it is out of the ground. Grazed seedling corn will be stunted and damaged for the season. When corn puts on ear shoots, deer take them all from outside and the ends of rows, sometimes moving into center of fields and living there only leaving to get water. I had a few acres of corn I did not need for silage this past fall so I combined it and deer had taken half the yield. I had a few acres of wheat a few years ago. Deer lived in it and ate half the heads of grain. Deer manure droppings on top of the wheat they had tromped down. I did not have a grain platform for my old JD 45 combine so I gave the field to a neighbor just to harvest what was left of the grain yield, I kept the straw. The wheat in his combine bin had deer manure pellets in it so it could not be sold or fed. He used the wheat as a cover crop seed. Deer dropping pellets in it probably grew into more deer! I shoot some deer in corn fields during summer. Guys hunting our 150 acres killed 25 deer this past season. I hope it put a dent into the population, but there are still lots of deer tracks seen all over the farm after rainfall softens the ground.
Best advice for an area like you are describing ........ Forget it. | |
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Soybeans- How much deer pressure is too much?
