Clearing Land for Food Plots in Southern Illinois

Two kinds of food plot jobs

Before you clear anything, it helps to know which job you actually have, because a plot in an old field and a plot cut into the timber are two different pieces of work. Most of the food plot calls we get across Southern Illinois fall into one of these two.

• The grown-up field — an old pasture or CRP corner that has filled in with brush, briars, and young cedar. There is already sun on it. The work is knocking the growth back down to plantable ground, which is close to a brush clearing job.
• The plot in the woods — an opening cut into standing timber, usually near bedding or on a travel route. Here you clear the understory and take down enough canopy to let sunlight reach the ground, since a plot in full shade will not grow.

That second one is worth flagging, because it is the opposite of underbrush clearing, where the whole point is to keep the canopy and clean out underneath. A food plot needs light, so a wooded plot means opening a hole in the canopy on purpose, not saving every tree over it.

Why a forestry mulcher beats a dozer here

There are a few ways to open ground for a plot, and around here most of them cost you something you did not plan on. A dozer will clear it fast, but it scrapes off the black topsoil you want to plant into and pushes it, the brush, and the stumps into a pile you then have to burn or bury. Burning means a permit window, a calm day, and hours of babysitting a fire. A brush hog only knocks down soft stuff and walks right over anything with a trunk on it.

A forestry mulcher grinds the brush and small trees where they stand and lays that material down as a mulch layer right on the plot. The topsoil stays put. There is no pile, no burn, and nothing to haul off. On the soft clay and creek-bottom ground that runs through this part of the state, keeping the dirt in place is a bigger deal than it sounds — once a dozer strips that top few inches, you are planting into subsoil that does not hold moisture or grow much of anything.

The other advantage is that mulching is selective. The operator can pick around the white oaks and the good mast trees on the edge of the plot and take down only the junk timber shading the middle, so you end up with an opening framed by the trees that were pulling deer in to begin with.

Where to put a plot, and how big

Southern Illinois is some of the best deer country in the Midwest, and the plot that hunts well is usually more about placement than size. Two rough sizes cover most of what we clear.

• Kill plots — a quarter to a half-acre, tucked close to bedding or a stand for a short, high-odds shot. Small enough that a deer feels safe stepping into it in daylight.
• Destination plots — one to three acres out in the more open ground, meant to feed and hold deer through the season rather than set up one stand.

Whatever the size, aim it at four to six hours of sun a day and try to keep it off the wettest ground, since a plot that stays soggy will not carry equipment or a good stand of forage. When we walk a property, a lot of the estimate is just picking the spot that clears cheap, drains well, and sits where the deer already want to travel.

The seedbed part most people skip over

Mulching gets you a clean, plantable opening, but it leaves a layer of wood chips on top, and seed has to reach dirt to grow. On a lighter clear, that chip layer is thin enough to spray, broadcast into, and drag or cultipack, and plenty of landowners around here plant a plot with nothing more than that. On a heavier woods clear, the chips run deeper, and you are better off giving them a season to break down, or working them into the top of the soil before you seed.

None of that is a knock on mulching — it is just the honest next step after the machine leaves, and it is why we would rather tell you up front than have you throw seed on fresh chips and wonder why it came up thin. If you want a plot clean enough to run a drill or a disk across, we can also grind the low stumps down with a stump grinder so nothing catches your implement.

When to clear it

Late winter into early spring is the window we push people toward. The ground is firm or still frozen, so the machine carries clean instead of rutting the soft clay, and the brush is dormant and leafless, so the operator can actually see the plot taking shape and reach everything in it. Clear in that window and you are set up for a spring planting, or you let the mulch mellow over the summer for a fall plot.

Wet springs are the hardest time to do this work, because our clay is at its softest and most likely to tear. Late summer and fall clear fine once the ground firms back up, though clearing right on top of a fall planting date leaves the chips too fresh to plant into. If deer season is the deadline, plan the clearing a full season ahead.

What it costs

Food plot clearing here generally runs $1,000 to $3,000 per acre, and since a lot of plots are only a half-acre to two acres, the whole job often lands between a few hundred dollars and a few thousand. A grown-up field with light brush and sun already on it sits at the bottom of that range. A destination plot cut out of thick timber, with canopy trees that have to come down, sits at the top, because there is more to grind and bigger material to handle.

The things that move the price are the same ones that move any clearing job: how heavy the growth is, how big the standing trees are, the slope, and how far back off the road the plot sits. For the full breakdown of what drives the number, our clearing cost guide walks through it, and a wooded plot that needs the canopy taken down starts to look like a small land clearing job on the priciest end.

We are based in Patoka and clear food plots across Southern Illinois and the Metro East, with regular runs to Mt. Vernon, Salem, Centralia, and Effingham. Tell us where you want the plot and what you want to hunt over it, and we will walk the ground with you and get you a free estimate.