Oilseed Sunflower food plot?

O

OldHunter

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Anyone used Black Oilseed Sunflowers for food plots? Picked up a bag at our PF banquet this weekend. Birds seem to like them, but what about deer, do they leave them alone? Buddy has to replant about 26 acres of CRP this spring. He's planning on heavily discing the existing stand of CRP which is actually a pretty good stand of warm season grasses and replanting warm season grasses, a mixture of wild flowers, legumes and some Maximillian Sunflower. Thinking about just broadcasting the oilseed sunflower by hand in several spots in the disced areas which are adjacent to another stand of warm season CRP grasses that won't be disturbed. Will this work or do we need to just plant a dedicated plot of an acre or so of the oilseed sunflowers?

He's also planning on some other milo food plots, but hasn't had a lot of luck with it.
 
They do love it, but to be successful you generally have to use herbicide, insecticide, and eliminate a lot of the competition in order to make seed. If you have a significant deer herd around, they can do it a serious injustice just as they are making seed. There are plenty of better options. Options that the blackbirds won't take all of.
 
On the other hand if you want to have spectacular dove hunting, and some pheasant cover, it works great. I have no pheasant population except for what I stock to train my dogs, but I sow black oil sunflowers, and croton for doves, mow part, or let the hogs and or cattle hog it down, (read harvest), about a week ahead of dove season. Remaining crop is relished by everything, including blackbirds.
 
It's even more important when managing for dove to have that bare ground under the flowers. Doves don't feed well in cover.
 
There was an article in the Wichita paper last fall about sunflowers and dove hunting. Like was said above, bare ground for doves. Anyways, the guy was planting about an acre of sunflowers, then mowing all but an outside and center strip a week before the season or so. Him and his buddies would hunt it with some rules, I think they'd only hunt it in afternoons and every 7 days or something along those lines. Over the season they'd shot several hundred, like pushing 1000 doves over that 1 acre field. This year he had a couple of his other buddies make similar fields so they could rotate the pressure and not push the birds off as bad. Very tempting for me to do that myself.
 
I had a ten acre patch of sunflowers that I harvested and later in the fall I disced the ground, come spring I went out to work the ground and I had volunteer sunflowers coming up spaced really nice, so I just let it grow and didn't plant anything else there that year. There were some annual weeds along with the sunflowers. The dove loved it and in December in the snow there were flocks of dove there that had not gone south yet.
 
I lightly disced in some oilseed sunflowers as part of a mix (1/2 sunflowers / 1/4 sorghum / 1/4 buckwheat) 2 years ago on an almost 1/2 acre plot. The sunflowers grew great until about knee high when the deer keyed in on them and wiped them out. I think I had a 1/2 dozen that actually headed out decently because the deer got the rest.

I've considered trying them again, but I'd run an electric wire around them to try and keep the deer out.
 
oldandnew said:
On the other hand if you want to have spectacular dove hunting, and some pheasant cover, it works great. I have no pheasant population except for what I stock to train my dogs, but I sow black oil sunflowers, and croton for doves, mow part, or let the hogs and or cattle hog it down, (read harvest), about a week ahead of dove season. Remaining crop is relished by everything, including blackbirds.
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Are black oil sunflowers the same as whats grown commercially in SW ND. Please explain how and why "croton"?
 
croton is a low growing plant, (weed), used to be grown many years ago for oil production. Has seeds doves in particular love. Sometimes volunteers in disturbed soil in many areas of the country. In fact when farmers had hog lots, it was volunteer croton which lured in doves. Seed is difficult to find these days. You can broadcast on disturbed soil lightly, as someone said, doves like open ground, or mow strips through it, it won't leave you much cover to hide in! Mixed with sunflowers in alternate strips gives you cover and two preferred food sources, doves will seek out. Sunflowers are either stripe, known as confectioners sunflowers, usually for the human food trade,or black oil, for crushing,bird seed, etc.I believe both are grown in ND, but black oil are the most common. I should advise the "croton" I'm talking about is wooly croton, not the african species of the same name. That is a shrub, this is a low growing, no more than 3 foot height, weedy plant, with fuzzy leaves, seeds like seaseme seed.
 
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There are a quite a few varieties of sunflowers.
The black oil type is by far the most common and whats used for sunflower oil. And what you would see in the Dakotas. And the common bird food you buy anywhere.
Then there is the confection type that is for human use, also grown commercially but at a much smaller scale.

It's hard to imagine anything that makes better wildlife food and cover then black oil sunflowers.
I plant it with millet and it does very well, makes softball to volleyball heads with a lot of seed.
Bigger patches are better then small areas. 30 acres would be a good patch, but you will need more then 1 bag. Mixed with say, millet plant about 50 pounds for every 3-4 acres. Hardy, grows fast, colorful, early maturing.

If there is 1 problem with Black oil sunflowers it's wildlife like it to well. Deer start on it early, nipping off the tops. Lots of the plants recover and will sprout out several smallish flowers.
That's why you need a big patch with lots of plants, let the deer have it.
 
oldandnew said:
croton is a low growing plant, (weed), used to be grown many years ago for oil production. Has seeds doves in particular love. Sometimes volunteers in disturbed soil in many areas of the country. In fact when farmers had hog lots, it was volunteer croton which lured in doves. Seed is difficult to find these days. You can broadcast on disturbed soil lightly, as someone said, doves like open ground, or mow strips through it, it won't leave you much cover to hide in! Mixed with sunflowers in alternate strips gives you cover and two preferred food sources, doves will seek out. Sunflowers are either stripe, known as confectioners sunflowers, usually for the human food trade,or black oil, for crushing,bird seed, etc.I believe both are grown in ND, but black oil are the most common. I should advise the "croton" I'm talking about is wooly croton, not the african species of the same name. That is a shrub, this is a low growing, no more than 3 foot height, weedy plant, with fuzzy leaves, seeds like seaseme seed.
Click to expand...

oldandnew tell me more about wooly croton. Is it toxic.And how invasive is it. I'd like to plant about an acre of a goat pasture into a dove plot.It would be sunflowers out of the end cup of a six foot drill, foxtail millet or wooly croton out of the other five. So it would be a double row of sunflowers alternated by ten foot of millet or croton.
I'll run a hot wire around it but more than likely the goats will get into at least once and mow down my sunflowers.:mad:

I read somewhere that livestock won't touch it, is there any truth to that?:)
 
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