Vet Judy

Have you read about using native grasses as part of your deer food plot strategy? A friend of mine and I recently had a discussion about the use of this native grass for whitetail deer food plots. Here are some thoughts:

It makes for excellent escape and bedding cover - Native grass stands like switchgrass, or plantings with more diversity, big bluestem, indiangrass etc, are excellent ideas for land managers improving wildlife cover for deer habitat. But I would use these types of plantings as stand alone habitat improvement projects - the larger the better.

I could see where these strips of switchgrass and brush, evergreens could break up a paddock enough to create a situation where a buck would need to investigate things a bit more. I can also see it on a site where it’s a large open area where these strips would add more diversity, edge and cover. But most paddocks sites, acre or so in size - I don’t see much value to it.  Large sites, yeah I can see it, but the plantings of switch
and trees would be more of a habitat improvement plan than a “hunting” thing. 

A person could structure the strips to converge at a tree stand area, as when they do become established they will create travel lanes.  I don’t see ten or twenty foot wide strips doing it though - more like 50′ plus. 

Also, you would want to plan a tall variety of switchgrass - there are several different varieties out there.    It may take, and usually does take three years for it to establish.These warm season grasses need good sun to soil contact for the grasses to come and they grow well from late June through August.  

Some people have recommended clover with it. However, I would not plant anything with it.    clover would already be up and would shade the ground and would certainly set-back growth of your switchgrass.   

If you manage your food plots well ie mowing, spraying and tillage I don’t see the switchgrass spreading much - so that wouldn’t concern me.  I do see a place for it if you have a large food plot area.  The best place for this type of an approach would be a larger area where dedicating both food plots and additional cover interspressed together. 

Say you have a fallow field of twenty acres or so, here you would really only need about five acres of food plot - which can be a lot to manage depending upon the equipment you have.  If you created cover areas, with native grass, evergreens and shrubs and spread the paddocks out in the area it would add a lot of diversity, edge and habitat. 

Trees, shrubs do take quite awhile to estiblish, as you well know, and the switchgrass, native grass planting does come much faster and is some really nice cover.  I really don’t see a 10 foot wide strip of swithcgrass creating much cover, or something deer would really use all that much.  The thing is though - there are sites where creating a corridor of grass cover may really help “dictate” deer travel.

So I can see some value to it depending on the site - sites would have to be large enough where the site demands both both food plot and habitat improvement “cover” together.   Most food plots are small, and if they are too big to cover from one stand, you likely would want different stand locations at the food plot anyway to address varying wind directions.

Native grass - switchgrass can be an awesome habitat improvement tool - I just don’t see small narrow strips of grass really doing much.  Now, a strip of natives, say fifty feet wide or so with some evergreens planted with it…. You may have something there!

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