Food Plot Clearing In The Minnesota Woods

To make a food plot in the woods, pick a spot with sun, workable soil and a way in for equipment, then clear the brush and small trees off it before the ground is worked and planted. A forestry mulcher does the clearing and leaves the edge trees you want; the soil work and seeding come after.

Start With Sun, Soil and Access

A deer food plot lives or dies on three things. The first is sunlight. Clover, brassicas and grains need open sky for much of the day, and a hole in thick woods stays shaded longer than people expect. The second is soil. Ground that holds water all spring or sits on bare rock will fight you every year. The third is access. You need to get a tiller, a disc or at least an ATV with a seeder onto the spot.

Walk your land with those three in mind before anything gets cut. A slightly larger opening on a south facing slope often beats a small pocket deep in the timber. An old log landing or a grown in skid trail is a common pick, since the ground was already opened once and a trail already leads to it.

Picking the Spot on Northern Minnesota Land

Hunting land across St. Louis, Carlton, Aitkin and Itasca counties is mostly popple, balsam, birch and alder, with swamp spruce in the low spots. Deer bed in that thick stuff and feed along its edges. A plot works well tucked between bedding cover and a route you can hunt without crossing in front of it.

Stay out of the wettest ground. Alder and willow swales look easy to open, but they rarely dry out enough to plant. Low ground near lakes and streams may also fall under shoreland or wetland rules, so check with the county or the DNR before any clearing there. Higher ground with aspen and hazel brush on it is usually the easier plot. Mark the corners with flagging so the outline is clear when the machine shows up.

What the Mulcher Does to Open a Plot

We open food plots with a tracked machine carrying a mulching head. It grinds the brush, saplings and small trees into chips right where they stand. There are no slash piles to burn and no brush pushed into the woods to block deer travel. The edge trees you want kept, like a big oak or a few mature spruce for cover, stay standing.

Calvin walks the plot with you first and asks how you plan to work the ground afterward. That changes how the opening gets finished. A plot you will till needs the stems ground low and the chips spread thin. A plot you will broadcast seed into needs the mulch layer kept light so seed can reach the soil. The hunting land clearing page covers lanes and stand trails done on the same visit.

What Comes After the Clearing

Once the opening is mulched, the planting is the owner's part or a job for a local farmer with ag equipment. Most plot builders start with a soil test. Forest ground that has never been farmed is an unknown, and a test tells you whether lime and fertilizer are needed before the seed goes in.

Then the ground gets worked. A disc or tiller mixes the mulch into the top layer of soil and breaks up the root mat. Some owners work it a second time later in the season to knock back sprouts from cut roots. Seed goes on a prepared bed and gets pressed in with a cultipacker or a drag. Aspen in particular sends up suckers from its roots, so plan on mowing or working the plot again over the first seasons to keep it open.

How Many Deer Will a Food Plot Support?

There is no honest single answer, and any figure you see online is an estimate for somebody else's land. It depends on what you plant, how well it grows, how many deer use the area, and how much other food surrounds the plot. A clover plot in big woods with little farmland nearby gets hit much harder than the same plot next to hay fields.

Think of a woods plot as a draw and a hunting spot, not as a way to feed a herd through winter. Several smaller openings spread through cover often get used more evenly than one big field. If deer browse a young plot to the dirt before it gets established, that is a sign the plot is too small for the pressure on it, or the planting went in too late.

Rules Worth Checking

Minnesota bans hunting deer over bait. The DNR baiting page says crops from normal farming, forest management or wildlife food plantings are not bait. It also says that exclusion does not apply to crops that are reintroduced and concentrated where a person is hunting. Some areas of the state also have deer feeding and attractant bans. Read the current DNR hunting regulations before you plant and before you hunt the plot.

Public land is a different matter. St. Louis County, for example, does not allow food plots on its tax forfeited land. Keep plots on land you own or have written permission to work, and know where your boundary runs. Our guide to clearing a fence line covers finding and opening a property line.

When to Clear a Food Plot

Clearing comes well ahead of planting. The ground has to be worked, tested and seeded in time for the plants to grow before the season, so most owners want the opening cut the year before or early in spring. Late summer clearing works for a fall planting if the soil work can follow right away.

Winter is a good window for the clearing itself. The hunt is over, frozen ground carries the machine across soft spots, and the plot is ready to work once the frost leaves. Calvin works all year, and our winter land clearing guide explains why frozen ground helps. To get a plot on the calendar, call or text (218) 461-7376 or send the form.

Quick Answers

See our hunting land service or call (218) 461-7376.

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