Question regarding corn fields.........

[MUSKY18]

So there are A LOT of corn fields coming down this past week and this upcoming week. Which got me to thinking about this. Will the deer continue to use the fields even after they are chopped/picked. Will they stay in a picked field over a chopped field? Will the fields being chopped/picked steer them more towards the hay/alfalfa fields? Just wanna kinda get a grip on how these fields being harvested is going to effect deer movement.

[Stratosman]

From my experience..... When corn fields are chopped for silage they go dead because there is nothing left for the deer. When they are combined however there is alot of tailings and shelled corn and partially shelled ears laying around and deer love it.. That slows however once it is plowed or chisel plowed.

I have good luck on alfalfa until a hard frost kills it, then they go back to the grain fields and forage. Late season, I see the most deer hitting picked soybean fields because generally they are not worked until spring and there is a decent amount of beans left to eat for them.

Good luck!

[96trigger]

A freshly combined cornfield is money, a silage chopped cornfield not so much. A green alfalfa field that has about 6-10 inches of growth is also going to attract a lot deer right now. It will continue to attract them until the snow gets too deep for them to dig down to it. I have seen numerous deer eating alfalfa through the snow right through November, this is mainly when all the corn fields are gone though. The biggest problem with hunting fields is not knowing where the will come out and and feed in the field. Where I hunt, they can come from anywhere along the woodline, but with good stand placement, and a wind that blows back in the woods( I know not normal), I can often get them to feed in front of me.

[MUSKY18]

Thanks guys. The place that I hunt has a native grass/clover field that butts up to an alfalfa field on the south and there is a chopped corn field to the south of the alfalfa. Just off the fields is a little oak forrest (if you can call it that, about 10 acres) that has a creek running through it and is surrounded by tamarac swamp. On the other side of the swamp is mor alfalfa fields and some big combined corn fields. The oak/swamp area between the two sets of fields can't be more than 200 yards wide, give or take. So I am trying to figure out where to move my stand to within the confines of that area. Thinking more towards the combined corn fields now.

[deerminator]

I am not a farmers so I am not sure what you call it : ) but they just harvested a field near our woods where they left the stalks standing nad bent down on the ground and you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a doe or fawn last night just after dark. Now I know many, many deer have been hiding out in that corn and hopefully they start hiding out in our woods soon!!!

[MUSKY18]

Thats a picked or combined field. Ones that Trigger was saying are money!

[Finlander]

The main thing about corn being pick before gun season is that there daytime hiding place (corn) is gone so more deer have to go to the woods!

When the orange coats raid the woods the deer either head for the swamps with islands or thick willows and corn if it's up!

[JBone]

Picked fields are hot, but not once they are tilled!

[96trigger]

The nice part about hunting my uncle's property. His combine is really old, it leaves enough out there to make the deer happy, and that makes me happy I hope he doesn't buy a new one anytime soon.

[Code-Man]

approximately 10% yield is lost out of the back of the combine so simple math if 200 bushel yield= 20 bushels laying on the ground and that is on average. Not counting plants that are laying down and cannot go through the combine. That is a around a thousand pounds of corn just laying on the ground. Some people say this time of the year they drive over their corn plots because after it gets knocked down it seems to help attract more deer to the plot.

[deerminator]

So when they come and bale it for biomass whenever, like they've done in the past, do they typically leave a lot of corn on the ground in the process?

Also, in one of my other spots they just combined all the corn. I've been setting up in the woods and swampland on the edge of the picked beanfields the past few weeks but now I'm thinking its time to pull over to the corn. Thoughts on which deer prefer over the other once picked? I'm new to this field edge hunting this year. I've only hunted the big woods near cropland in the past.

[96trigger]

Get to the corn, haven't seen a deer in a picked bean field lately at all.

[Musky Buck]

All the beans and most of the corn in my area will be black dirt by opening day, it could be a long tough winter on them and knowing where they winter and seeing all the fields in that area as black dirt already, it's gonna be different. If she turns very cold soon, wondering how baiters will do this year, I think the pile could be a big magnet with very little left in the area for crops.

[BirdWhisperer]

Relating to this topic, I was out hunting the edge of a public property line the other night. I just got up into my stand, which is in a tree line on the public and right along a corn field on private property, when the farmer started picked his field! I thought for sure this was the money night for me, but not a single deer came out (only about 60 roosters). So I was sitting in my stand when I heard movement in the field, only to be 4 cows the farmer let out. Anyone have this happen to them? Will the cows in the field mess up the deer movement in the area?

There are HEAVY trails running under my stand alongside the corn field and I've passed up a young buck about a week earlier coming out of the field. The field is close to 1/4 section, so I understand the deer could be anywhere in there, but should I be worried about the cows in there? The farmer only got a few strips done that night too.

[bigbucks]

If it's still unharvested I doubt he let them out there, they probably just "got" out there. Either way deer don't necessarily want to be among the cows, but in the same token they're not really bothered by them either. I've seen them run through or just past a spread out herd.

[96trigger]

Big bucks is right, I don't generally see deer anywhere near cows unless they are passing through. You won't generally find them grazing in the same fields. The combine never helped you either. If it wasn't going away or was too close to the woods, the deer won't come out. When I see deer while I'm on the tractor, its generally when I am a 100 yards away from the woods, or when I am on long rows and they come out, and I chase them back in going one way, when I leave, they come back out, and I chase them back in going the other way. It's kind of entertaining.