Plant FOR NOVEMBER
Editor’s note: This is a reprint of one of the late Charles Alsheimer’s earlier works in Deer & Deer Hunting. Considered to be the pioneer Northern food-plot practioner, Alsheimer popularized both food-plotting and quality deer management during his time as a D&DH field editor from 1979 to 2017.
It was early December during New York’s gun-deer season: At 3 p.m., I climbed into one of the most productive stands on my family’s farm. We call the stand’s location the “mother of all funnels” because it’s situated in a 125-yard-wide spruce plantation that connects two big ravines. On either side of the 400-yard-long stretch of spruce trees were two Whitetail Oats Plus food plots, which helped to make the setup an incredible travel corridor for deer.
Within minutes after I settled into the stand, a doe, her twin fawns and a 2½-yearold 8-pointer began feeding in one of the plots 125 yards away. During the next hour, six more does and fawns joined them, and by 4:15 p.m., 10 deer were gorging themselves on the tender oat shoots. With a half-hour of shooting light left, I felt good about my chances of seeing more deer.
As I glassed a doe in the plot near the end of one of the thick spruce shooting lanes, a big antler
