FOOD PLOTS FOR WILDLIFE

FEATURE Peter McDonell

I have owned a 40-hectare bush block in coastal Gippsland for a number of years. I bought it as the wider area is home to a small population of hog deer. However, once I took possession it became clear that deer numbers were very low and transient. If I wanted to increase my opportunity to hunt these little deer, I really needed to improve the habitat to boost their numbers and encourage them to make my land their permanent home.

There are three things all wildlife needs to survive: shelter, water and food, depending on the season as to which is more critical at that time. A friend once told me that achieving a goal is like filling a bucket with water that has holes - the goal is to fill the bucket, but you must plug the holes before it will fill.

Most of my land had never been cleared and farmed so it was heavily vegetated with a canopy of large trees and a dense understory of scrub. In short, shelter was not lacking. This hole in the bucket was already plugged!

Water, though, was clearly and issue in an area with 600mm annual rainfall and land that was low-lying and sandy with no permanent surface water. I dealt with this by digging a dam down to the shallow water-table and by installing three roofs, tanks and troughs as described previously in Australian Deer. Those actions plugged the second hole in the bucket!

OK, so what about the third hole in the bucket; food? To put it bluntly, what was there was absolute rubbish – some very minimal native grasses and forbs under the tree cover and dense introduced and unpalatable African lovegrass in the small areas that have been previously cleared and grazed. Feed might have been adequate in some springs but that was about it.

Having read about wildlife food plots on the Quality Deer Management Association (now the National Deer Association) website, I decided that food plots were the best way to plug this last hole in my deer habitat bucket. Food plots would also reduce the need for wildlife to move off my block and thereby also help them avoid poachers and road traffic.

Wildlife food plots are areas planted to attract wildlife for observation or hunting. A food plot does not have to be a crop, it can be grass, flowers, fruit, foliage or nut trees depending on what is to be achieved. Hog deer being grazing animals, my food plots would need to be either pasture grasses or forage plants. Tree lucerne (tagasaste) also seemed worth a try.

Tagasaste is a shrub or small tree that grows well in mild, temperate climates. It can provide good feed for farm livestock. It will grow up to 5 metres high, and almost the same across and has trifoliate leaves, hence its common name, tree lucerne. Annual yields of up to 10 tonnes per hectare of edible leaf and fine stem are said to be achievable.

Five years ago, a friend gave me a jar of tagasaste seeds, so I set about growing seedlings in pots. After five months I planted the seedlings out with individual guards to protect them and a small amount of fertiliser to get them started. The results were very disappointing as they really struggled and failed to provide any worthwhile feed. However, they may be worth trying again in the future with more attention paid to their soil and fertiliser needs.

While I waited for the tagasaste seedlings to grow, I moved on to thinking about food plots. How hard would it be to disc plow some ground in areas that were currently overgrown by love grass and sow them down to forage species like oats or maize? I had a grey Fergy tractor, a set of old discs, a slasher and harrows - we were all set to be ag contractors!

While slashing love grass and discing four locations, I noticed a significant difference in soil colour. That is, if you could call it soil. It was very sandy and the colour ranged from light brown/grey to black.

With the plots disced, how would I spread the seed without a spreader? The answer was by hand out of a bucket. I started with oats, but to be honest, I achieved little success. Bad locations, very acid and nutrient-deficient soil, poor soil/seed contact and drought, not to mention birds eating the seed and all germinating seeds being immediately grazed off all worked against me.

A rethink was required, and I decided that if I was to provide better and more feed for hog deer and other wildlife throughout the year, I needed a total change in how I went about it.

My first decision was to choose better soil areas for planting and either go bigger to compensate for the grazing by the many roos, wallabies, wombats and rabbits in the area or fence plots to keep them out until what I had planted became established. Rabbits I could control but roos, wallabies and wombats were different as my block is for all wildlife, not just hog deer. I run no livestock so they weren’t an issue.

Then I needed a bigger tractor and a slasher to manage the love grass and tussocks as the grey Fergy was struggling. And a spreader, plough, a set of discs, harrows and a home-made seeder. What a difference it made having a 70hp tractor with a front-end loader and a new two-metre flail mower!

After my early efforts with broadcast oats, I tried other forage seeds that I thought might cope with the climate and soils - the best growth with the lowest cost.

I obtained a seed mix that containing chicory, linseed, radish, turnip, rape, wheat, clover, broccoli, maize, oats, sunflower, rocket, cowpeas, beans, buckwheat, millet, mustard and rye and planted it in a fenced-off plot. With so many different species in the mix, surely some would give a reasonable result and allow me to make better seed choices in future!

This mix gave great results in the first year, but the next planting was not as successful due to the season being much drier. The better varieties were radish, chicory, rocket and turnips in the wetter season along with the ever-reliable oats, maize and peas.

Since experimenting with the seed mix, I have focussed on planting oats, maize and peas but there is still lots to do with regard to getting the best results while minimising costs. I have installed bait stations to control rabbits and this has been effective. Fencing plots gives seedlings the best chance of establishing but it is time consuming to erect and remove and wombats are just about impossible to fence out.

Cockatoos and corellas cause a lot of seed loss but covering the seed deeply mitigates some of this loss. Seed germination has also been improved by rolling to obtain better soil/seed contact.

Timing of planting is critical for success, but watching when local farmers are working up paddocks and planting new pastures or crops has helped me with my timing.

In the future I really need to bite the bullet and invest in soil testing, lime and fertiliser to give better results as taking the low-cost approach has returned mixed results. Like anything that you put more money and time into, the benefits should be there!

But the one thing that will make or break my food plots is mother nature and rainfall.

Will I keep experimenting? The answer is an emphatic “Yes” because I like observing wildlife and lots of different species have benefited from my work, including the deer that I hunt. Would I recommend that other hunters get involved in managing land for wildlife and hunting? Absolutely!