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Southern Illinois | I feel like I've made good progress on a farm with heavy deer pressure raising soybeans.
For soybeans, the farm I reference and have experience on is 180 acres split into multiple fields with heavy woods on three sides of it. Here are my thoughts.
It seems like if you can get the soybeans to around V5 or so they can generally start to outgrow most of the browse pressure so that should be a goal.
Planting population. With no deer pressure we usually plant around 140k seeds/acre. On this farm I plant the middle of the fields where I don't think I'll have as much pressure at 180k seeds/acre. The headlands and areas with more pressure I bump that rate up to 250k seeds/acre. I see people get this one wrong more than anything else. If you don't take anything else away from what I write, take this piece of advice, plant thick!
Replant. This one ties into population, be prepared to replant, put them back in thick too! Find a seed company with free replant, in my area they require seed treatment to get this. You may have to replant more than once. Buy a replant rider with your crop insurance, it is cheap and pays well especially in these scenarios. This rider is a private product so sometimes you can buy a replant rider from the company you have your government insurance with and then buy another replant rider with another company, usually if a company sells you the replant rider they want all of your business so this isn't always something that can happen.
If you have a loss due to wildlife for two consecutive years, insurance can deny your loss unless you are taking measures to prevent the damage, from my understanding that last part is pretty vague, I think upping your population to 250k on the headlands and spraying a deterrent may be enough. Don't take advice from a random guy on the internet though, check with your company to be sure on this one... Another related thought, usually deer damage is worsened by drought as the plant growth slows down and they cannot as easily get to that magic V5 growth stage. I'd try to get drought listed as the main cause of loss in these situations, or anything other than wildlife damage, causes of loss can be split so drought and wildlife damage isn't uncommon.
Cover crops/wheat. I've seen success with a wheat/soybeans cereal rye/soybeans wheat/soybeans cereal rye/soybean rotation. I think the cover crop or the wheat stubble actually deters deer from concentrated feeding. If you have a conventionally tilled or no-tilled field and soybeans are emerging, deer will often go down a row and eat off many plants in a row one by one, if a soybean gets eaten at the cotyledon stage there is no chance for that plant. I believe ground cover from a cover crop or the wheat stubble help deter this concentrated feeding.
I've had a nuisance permit. In my state they only allowed me to take out 10 does from soybean emergence for a month. This is ok but 10 more does won't put a dent in really any healthy deer population. Your presence out there is as much of a help as anything. I'd do this again if the property was closer to home. The state expects the normal fall deer season to be the main time that you do population control on your farms.
I've tried a few repellent sprays with my post herbicide application. There isn't one I can really recommend yet, more testing needed. I sprayed half my farm the first day. Went back the next to finish up and saw a deer walking through where I had sprayed it the day before...
Don't wait on harvest. This one is pretty basic but every day that crop sits out there you have a herd of animals feeding on it.
I don't have near as much advice/experience/success with corn. I actually quit growing corn because it wasn't working with deer damage but am planning to try again in 2025. The same comments I said about replant would apply to corn. I really don't know if thicker or thinner population would be better, I'd assume thicker but maybe not?
I will say with corn the don't wait on harvest is really big. If you have a drier that would be best, I'm going to try and get it closer to 20% than 14% next time I grow it. Every day you have a herd of animals out there feeding on your crop...
Good luck
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Soybeans- How much deer pressure is too much?
