The tillable acres will be planted with beans again this year. There's about 50 acres right across the road that will be beans too. The guy down the road does corn and IMO the deer like the corn more than the beans. The deer are around for sure when the crops are up and after they come down. What I'm looking for is what have you guys found to be really good to bring them in even moreso after the crops come down. I don't want to crapshoot a guess so I'm here looking for experience. All of the soil is good pH and soft, so a no-till would be nice.

Also I'm not looking to do any really BIG plots. I would prefer to put in some little candy stores for the kids to come around to.

Clover and alfalfa or standing corn/beans. May try peas and brassicas also my buddy had good luck with them.

Turnips work pretty good too, basically all you have to do is rough up some ground in about August then scatter seed and lightly cover it with dirt (dragging a piece of fence on it will work fine). They stay green (the tops) pretty much all winter long and the turnip itself will be good till about midway through November and deer love them.

You can plant some buck oats, with turnips, in August.

I agree with birdhunter1 & lynn the deer tear our turnups and oats up at our hunt club.We also have clover they like to eat on also, and we're located in southern IL.

Where do you get bulk turnip seed? I'd talked w/ my father in law about planting them up on his farm, and got the green light. Can you plant a mix of turnip and oats at the same time?

i agree turnips are great late season food as well as clover plust its high protien. we feed about one five gallon bucket stuffed with clover to our pet deer and the protien has made his antlers explode

Might try here at Gurney's for your bulk turnip seed:
http://gurneys.com

FYI a pound of turnip seed will plant lots of acres.

In fact here is a link to what I would plant for a winter time food plot if I was doing so:
http://gurneys.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_14715

If you were to plant them in a row by hand and evenly spaced 600 seeds at 2" spacing will plant a 100' row, 3" spacing will make a 150' row. If you broadcast them into an area I woudl say that package of 600 seeds will do a 30' by 30' area rather well, too thick and the turnips won't grow to well.

Buchheits in Sparta has bulk turnip seed, along with ladino clover, alsike clover, red clover, yellow sweet clover, white dutch clover, lezpedzea, etc. all in bulk and alot cheaper than than the heavily marketed seeds like imperial. I usually buy a few pounds of each mix them together and broadcast over fresh disk'd soil. works well, one of the best october early november plots we ever planted was a mix of winter oats, clover, chicory, and some brassicas, we planted it in late summer. the deer and turkey would be in it like clock work every morning, i stopped hunting over it cuz it seemed too easy but couldnt resist staying close enuf to watch the critters using it.

Forgot to mention, any farm supply store should have bulk turnip seed.
A few years ago I planted 8 rows of milo around a small field and that fall sewed about 6 acres of red clover inside of this. I don't deer hunt but my unlce and a neighbor seemed to love me for it. The milo was for quail feed.