I just signed a 5 year lease contract with a 5 year extension option at the end of the 5 years right outside of George West. It isnt a very large place but it is 410 acres for 3 of us so it will work just fine. Since we are committed to this long term i would like to plant a plot of some sort. The land owner is planting 2 half acre plots of winter oats on the property but i would like to do something in the acre to acre and a half range on top of that. I know they have had the soil tested and she is getting me the results of that however i would like to start planning ahead. I will be looking to plant this in the spring time more than likely. What have yall found to be productive in the south texas conditions that can sustain without irrigation or anything like that. Thanks for the pointers.

Dingle Berries the deer love em...

Wheat and oats

RAIN

With plots that small you will likely not see much results if there are a lot of deer and/or any cattle on the ranch. Oats is your best bet since it is a bit more drought tolerant if you are set on planting.

Plant a protein feeder

and spin feeder in a feed pen.

the first year we will have just corn feeders out then next april or march we will put out a protein feeder as well. i believe we have either 6 or 7 corn feeders as of right now. So my best bet then is to just team up with the landowner and split the cost of the 2 plots of oats she already has in mind and just double the size of them then i take it.

Is there cattle on the place?

Or just make one as big as possible right in the middle of the property... that would be ideal to me since you can all still hunt the deer using the plot but not have to hunt the plot itself... or you could if all of you bow hunt...

Once you get over that 10acre+ size plots is when you get to see a huge difference in how many deer your actually pulling in... those deer would rather travel a mile to get to a plot that has guaranteed food rather than walk 100yrds to a small plot that has slim pickins

A couple months ago I was looking at doing a feed plot on my ranch outside Goliad. I pm'd the oracle of all things ranching, stxranchman and asked him for advice. He told me pretty much the same thing, with that size of feed plot and no irrigation all your hard work may go in vain. He suggested a protein feeder instead. So I went and got a protein feeder and just for funzies ordered 5lbs of spring/summer deer seed mix from Turner Seed Co. I set up my protein feeder and planted the seeds in various places around the ranch where hogs had already messed up the ground just to see what would happen and patch up the dead area. Fast forward a month and a half later where I planted the seeds are still barren patches of earth and I have more deer on my cams than ever before near my protein feeder.

As always your results may vary.

yes there is 20 cattle on the property however about a month to a month and a half before season opens she will be putting the cattle on one of the fenced in pastures by the bunkhouse which is not where they are planting the oats.

yeah the protien feeders will be coming after season ends and i am confident we will be putting 2 to 3 on the property and feeding until august or early september.

Navasot: one of the plots she is already putting in is going to be right in the middle of the property. So if it is less than 10 acres the benefits will be minor?

This is very true , we have about a 30 acr field and the deer just mow it down and we dont have cows either so it is all deer . We have a mix that we get at the feed mill in justin that has a lot of stuff in it i cant remember what all it is but it does pretty good for us.

Kenneth so you have a 30 acre plot and how many acres total is your property?

If you are close to or on the river then you will need as large of a food plot as you can plant. Lot more deer per acre on the river than south or west of town.

That was just a so so number. And will depend on how many deer you have. But the bigger the better. How big do you think it will be?

Why is she planting the plots? For the deer or to flash graze cattle on during the winter?

Little over 250
We also have a smaller field that is about ten acre and we only plant about 6 of it along with other small places i put out some bird seed yes bird seed because it will make it though the cold weather and dont take much water to grow.

Not the cattle. She is putting the cattle in a contained gated pasture they have been letting re sprout with natural vegetation sometime before deer season starts until after the season ends. So it will be for the deer. She had said an acre or so but if we volunteer our time and labor and MONEY to expand that to a much larger plot she would not have an issue with that. She has all the heavy equipment and everything needed so we would just need to pick up more seed and expand.

I am putting some cameras out this weekend on some feeders we are getting in there this weekend as well to try to get a look at what we got as far as deer are concerned. I know we have alot of turkeys on the property as she showed me where one roost is that is occupied by roughly 17-18 birds was her last count then on the other side of the property she has counted a larger group of turkeys that frequents the water tank which is the only water tank on any of the surrounding properties. Problem is she just acquired this property roughly a year ago and it has been hunted in the past 4.5 years so as far as deer go we dont know really what we are looking at. Hog sign all over the place so i know hogs are there. hopefully the game cameras will give me a better idea of quality deer and numbers. I also know that in conversation she has had with the neighbors who all have 1000 to 1500 acre properties that the whole area as a whole has not been hunted in roughly 3 years or so. So there may be a sleeper in there.

has not been hunted in 4.5 years sorry for the typo

I would not believe that area was not hunted around you with ranches that size around it. I grew up not far from GW and have family land in northern Live Oak County. Live Oak county gets hunted with a lot of pressure in some areas and pretty much every place that has deer on it has hunters. I have friends who hunted leases around GW in the past along the river and had a lot of deer with some decent bucks. Also, poaching used to be really bad in some areas years ago. So not sure what it is like today.

Milo if you get any rain. Actually I can grow almost anything in fall at my place near Alice. Good soil, no rocks, pretty easy to till. Rain is always the limiting factor. But i have had best luck with grain.