By: Mike Anderson

A think there is a common misconception, you have to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to manage your hunting land for whitetails. This just isn’t the case.

This year, for about 40 dollars and a few days of work, I was able to put a clover food plot in the middle of our hunting land.
I didn’t have to rent expensive equipment, or even run PH tests on the soil. I simply did a little research, made a plan, and got after it.  The first thing you need to do is find the area you’d like to plant. I chose a wooded area, which of course, was more work to clear the land. If you are looking to make life a little easier, choose an area already clear of trees.

Once you choose your area, spend some time clearing out all of the wood and debris. I have stacked all of my trees together, and created a manmade windbreak.
After, you need to loosen the soil, so your seeds will take. I chose to plant clover, a seed that will grow on the topsoil and doesn’t need to be put far into the ground. To loosen the soil, I used a simple landscaping rake. It took a little time, but was a lot cheaper than renting a tractor or trying to wheel a tiller way out to my stand site.
Once the soil was loosened up, I spread the seed. I used a simply grass-seed thrower, which you can get cheap at any local hardware store.
After the seeds were on the soil, I drove my 4-wheeler around on top of the soil to pack them into the ground. If you don’t have access to a 4-wheeler you can just use the back of the landscaping rake.

That is where my work ended and Mother Nature’s began. I hoped for rain over the next few days and was lucky enough to get some. If you can, try to plant when rain is expected in the near future. I planted my plot in the middle of July, but you can plant clover anytime in July or August.

After, I would encourage you to set up a trail camera and see what is coming in for a little snack!

With a little effort, and even less money, you can have a nice little food plot of your own!