Planting a pumpking patch to attract deer
#1
Planting a pumpking patch to attract deer
I've heard about pumpkin farmers who've lost their entire pumpkin crop due to deer damage. Now I'm thinking about planting a few pumpkins to see if it works. The deer around me have so many food choices - I want something a little different from the neighbors.What do you guys think?
#2
RE: Planting a pumpking patch to attract deer
Where I hunt the farmer grows pumpkins and sells them most years. I have never seen deer trying to eat the pumpkins. I did see them doing some cart wheels over in the bean and corn fields though.
#5
Nontypical Buck
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Harford Co Maryland USA
Posts: 4,966
RE: Planting a pumpking patch to attract deer
I cringed when my neighbor decided to convert a small 2 acre cornfield next to me into a pumpkin/gourd plot for his kids for a roadside stand. Then I saw how the deer responded to it and quickly got over it!
It's true, they seem to come to it more readily once there's frost -- and most of the pumpkins are already gone by then, but they do seem to like them.
It's true, they seem to come to it more readily once there's frost -- and most of the pumpkins are already gone by then, but they do seem to like them.
#6
RE: Planting a pumpking patch to attract deer
Last summer I planted a strip of pumpkins between my sweetcorn and white clover field. We harvested about 70 pumpkins plus 8 five gallon buckets of decorative gourds.
Never sawevidance of thedeer bothering them much except before harvest when there was teeth marks in a couple. But with sweetcorn, soybeans, winter wheat, and white clover close by, the pumpkins seemed fairly safe.
Plant pumpkins for you not the deer, there are too many other plants the deer like better.
Never sawevidance of thedeer bothering them much except before harvest when there was teeth marks in a couple. But with sweetcorn, soybeans, winter wheat, and white clover close by, the pumpkins seemed fairly safe.
Plant pumpkins for you not the deer, there are too many other plants the deer like better.
#7
RE: Planting a pumpking patch to attract deer
I agree with 1saqittarius. I think the small pumpkin patch that i'm going to grow this year near the cabin will be safe since I'll also have many other preferred "Deer Deli" food crops such as corn,soybeans,clover,chicory,brassica,lablab,sunfl owers etc etc etc. You get it.
So as stated by 1sagittarius, plant the pumpkins for yourself.
Good Luck.
So as stated by 1sagittarius, plant the pumpkins for yourself.
Good Luck.
#9
RE: Planting a pumpking patch to attract deer
ORIGINAL: GR8RALLY
I agree with 1saqittarius...So as stated by 1sagittarius, plant the pumpkins for yourself.
Good Luck.
I agree with 1saqittarius...So as stated by 1sagittarius, plant the pumpkins for yourself.
Good Luck.
-fsh
#10
Nontypical Buck
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Delhi, NY (by way of Chenango Forks)
Posts: 1,706
RE: Planting a pumpking patch to attract deer
my uncle had a lot of problems with deer and his pumpkin crops. they would stomp them and eat the innards and not all of the pumkin, just some of it and then move on to another. He thought he the continuing problem, year to year, was that the fawns would be taught by their mothers to eat the pumkins and then continued the next year (and so on). Even though they like to eat the, I am not sure it would be my first choice for food plot. I would pick an proven winner (clover, soy, corn, etc)