That's basically what I do. Not that I've had any great amount of success killing deer.

How close are you to water? I buried one of those little blue kiddie pools in the ground and tossed a couple sticks and rocks in it. Filled it with buckets once, and usually the rain will keep it full after. Had a LOT of critters (including deer) coming in for it.

Soybeans will likely be nipped off as soon as they sprout in plots that size and are definitely finished before the first frost. My suggestion would be clover then overseeded by winter wheat and cereal rye in mid Sept. Plots this size are for killing and don’t actually make a dent in their nutritional needs.

The turnips would be better seeded in August as well.  The suggestion of a buried water source like the 100 gal ones at TSC is spot on. Put a stand between the plot and water source.

You’ll definitely need to have a weed control plan. Good thing about a clover base is it’s easily maintained with Clethodim (grasses) & 2,4-DB (broad leafs). Make sure the broad leave control is DB (Butyrac) or you’ll vaporize the clover.

I’ve done the small plot soybean thing before but it’s a loosing battle without serious acreage. Grew them 6’ tall one year behind a double zone electric fence on 1/4 acre.   It can be done but once eaten or first frost you’ll be back to bare dirt.


…turkey love clover too!

My property is in the mountains. I have bottom, middle & top of the mountain. I plant in the fall & do about 9-12 small plots at different levels. Some places are slightly shaded but not much I can do with all the trees. I have no water on the property so I took plastic 55 gallon barrels & cut them in half, you have to sink them in the ground or they won't drink from them. One each at the bottom the middle & the top. I have cameras everywhere & always see turkey, deer & bear using the water holes. Last season I used Merit seed for the first time & was happy with the results.

OP - make yourself an exclosure for your mini plots - a circle of fence 2 ft (or more if you had more plot to work with, I do ~3 ft in a "normal" sized plot of 1/4-1/2 acre), so you can see if your plot is not growing, or being mauled by critters. Otherwise your cousins are going to say your plot never grew when it is nothing but dirt.

Regardless of what you read, plots need sunshine and fertilizer. Small can be effective, but bigger is better. The dominant doe will run a lot of deer off one small food source. Even bucks.  
Attached File

Depends on your deer numbers.  If I plant anything less than an acre in my area it's over browsed by mid october even with me being in an Ag area.  Also, hunting over plots has a challenge all it's own: Ingress/egress.  Just because it's dark and you want to head in doesn't mean those 3 doe eating in your "honey hole" will just watch you leave and forget about it.  They'll bust, blow out the area, and remember that encounter.  

I had PPT's the size of footballs 3 years in a row in one of my plots and they wouldn't touch em.  They just rotted away in the Spring.  I say that just to caution you that sometimes deer will, for whatever reason, refuse to eat something you'd think they'd love.

I personally have not had any success with anything like that. The thing with small plots is they aren't a magnet. At best they might get a deer that might walk 50 yards around in some brush to stop by the plot. Mostly they might just be a good open place to shoot deer. Light is a big issue. It looks like you have some underbrush, so it might be ok. You could trim a few branches above and get some surprising results.

I have a kinda sorta similar setup except not in the dead center of the woods. It's on the edge of old hard woods, and in an open area where some new hardwoods and thick brush grows. It's a significantly bigger plot than that, maybe 50 yards by 100 yards in size. It's planted with a mix of clover and chicory right now. In that area there's zero reason to plant beans or corn, as the deer only have to walk a few hundred yards in any direction to find thousands of acres of either. Mostly I was hoping this plot would give me better shooting opportunities for the deer that were already there. It hasn't drawn many, I'll have to check my trail camera to see if turkeys used it this spring. It gets a lot of summer and early fall use, but last fall it didn't really produce much. I'm going to try burying one of those plastic waterhole tanks to see if any water might be a draw.

The plot that did produce is an actual food plot. I don't know the exact size, call it 3/4 acre. It's fairly open, but good tall, like 8' or more tall grass on half, and a patch of woods on the other. It's got a decent hill on the other, so all sides is decently secluded. That is really the bare minimum I have found that really has any effect on deer come hunting season. Any smaller than that, and it's eaten within a month. Think like a garden, if deer got into your garden how long would it last? I planted half that big plot with a mix of oats and rye and some other stuff, peas I think. The other half was a brassica mix with turnip and radish and things like that. They didn't care as much about the grass side, but they loved the brassica side. This year I'm probably going to plant the outside edge in that wheat/rye mix, and the center in brassica. It doesn't draw deer from a long ways away, but deer you rarely saw, were suddenly a daily sight. It really did good in October. There was food left in November, but the hunting pressure reduced daylight sightings. If I owned that property, I would make it even bigger, but I don't want to push my welcome. I'm fortunate as it is to be able to do that. All I used for equipment was a backpack sprayer and an old disc maybe 6' wide I found in the junk pile. I sprayed roundup to kill the grass, then a couple weeks later pulled the disc around with the truck to till it up. I then spread seed with one of those cheap hand seeders, and ran the disc over once more to get the seed in the dirt. I messed up my soil sample, so I just threw a bunch of 10-10-10 fertilizer. I think 100 pounds when I planted, then another 100 pounds a month later. It all grew up good if you ask me.

A buddy of mine does super small plots like this and has killed deer in them. I have never done anything smaller than 1/2 an acre.

A plot that small won’t last long so timing will be key.

Where I hunt in MO the place is several hundred acres. The big piece of bottom ground we hunt over we try to keep in clover year round.

In august the turnips and brassicas go in for mid November hunting.

We built a permanent stand and we can shoot almost 270 degrees out of the stand.

There is also a mineral lick and a salt lick which is the first thing I’m toppi kg up next weekend.

We try to work on it continuously as time allows but Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day is when I come in for a 4 day weekend of projects and work on the place.

We have talked about putting the corn and pellet feeders back out this year but haven’t decided on that because they have to be emptied and pulled before the seasons begins.

One thought is to use rectangular tube iron as the bad and the. We can just snatch it up with the forks on the skid steer and a couple of ratchet straps.

We are also looking at doing a couple of smaller food plots near the treeline about 240 yards out from the stand. Our average shot is Italy runs from about 110-250 yards from the new stand.