Photo-monitoring food plots
 A trail camera plan is a very effective tool in calculating deer movement, behavior, and dynamics on a property, but strategically placed around food plots, graphically demonstrates the success of your food plots. Not only do trail cameras identify feeding frequency throughout the food plot, they also provide feeding duration, time of day, and an animal inventory. Skip Valentine of Valentine Land and Timber in Raleigh, North Carolina (www.valentinelandandtimber.com), recommends the use of trail cameras on food plots to identify bucks and does on your property.
 “Cameras are a reliable tool to identify and develop harvesting strategies, including the most mature does and bucks within the herd,” says Valentine.  
Trail cameras should be placed around the perimeter of each food plot adjacent to trails entering and existing the plots, but should be angled facing the expanse of the field to capture other deer moving through other portions of the plot.

 Dependant on harvesting conditions, moisture content, and crop maturation, farmers are in full swing gathering the years crops for the market. Soybeans, corn, millet, peanuts, and other energy rich crops blanket the Carolinas providing fury and feathered wildlife with a supplemental food source. As the crops mature and become harvested, only scattered residue remains. Wildlife become adjusted to the abundance of crops grown in the fields and are left with little to feed on. Not only do standing crops provide a rich food source, but also abundant cover for deer, rabbit, quail, dove, and other game/non-game species. Negotiate with farmers tending the lands to leave strips of unharvested crops along the field and ditch margins.

 The added cover and food resource will supplement native wildlife throughout the winter and creates a prime hunting area for the previously mentioned game species.