How much seed per acre food plot

one 50lb bag per acre

50 lbs/ acre
Buck busters

That's I am doing as well, first time with it, going to try it at that rate and then over seed if necessary.

Bag says 1 per acre. I always do 2 (give or take).

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Mix some rye in if you need more.

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Cereal rye, not rye grass.

With pre-mixed bags like that I usually end up putting out 1.5x the recommended amount if I’m planting late.

If planting earlier in the growing window I’ll plant the recommended amount knowing I’ll come back and overseed.

I’ve had good results with buckbuster, but just find their price quite high for such a grain heavy mix

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I would recommend adding about 6 lbs of Durana clover per acre

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I usually add fixation balansa clover instead of the Durana. If we get a very hot/dry summer it will burn out in July, but I find I get better results in the spring.

I also re-plant every year, so I don’t get the real benefits of perennial clovers

I generally double what I drill. If I was planting 100lbs/A with a drill I would spread 200Lbs/A.

I have never used that product though. I don’t like products that don’t specifically tell you the rates of the seed are. Is it half wheat and the rest everything else? Anyone know?

Here is an example of what the MSU food plot app recommends. Approximately 120# per acre if broadcasting. Almost 2.5 bags of seed.

1/2 acre field





1.2 acre field

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How did you come up with 120lbs/A of Buck Busters from that?

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From this:



They don’t list a mix with everything in it that buck busters has, but they have recommended rates for blends that contain most of the seeds. Here is what buck busters consists of. It is a little sketchy they don’t tell you percentages like pretty much every other seed company. But anyway, here is what buck busters contains.

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This mix contains wheat, Triticale, Elbon Rye, a forage winterpea, 3 forage rapes, and Dixie Crimson clover.

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Refer back to MSU’s recommendations, they recommend:

Wheat/oats/clover - 137 pounds per acre [(61+61+18)/1.2]

Wheat/oats/clover/clover - 107 pounds per acre [48.8+48.8+18.3+12.2)/1.2]

Oats/wheat/rape - 85 pounds per acre [48.8+48.8+4.9)/1.2]

Wheat/oats/peas/clover - 112 pounds per acre [(48.8+48.8+24.4+12.2)/1.2]

Unless buck busters is half rape, .50# is going to be very light. From experience, I am not a big fan of rape. It seems to be the least attractive to deer of anything on that list. Deer seem to avoid it until you have had some freezes, then they hammer it. But unlike other things on that list it won’t keep growing in colder weather . Because it crowds out other more desirable forage, once they eat all the rape nothing grows back there. You just end up with patches of bare field.

I trust that MSU app. I started using it to calculate green field size. But the recommendations on seed rate are legit.

I will say that most people over estimate field size. I did until I actually started measuring them. So I think what happens a lot of times is a guy has a half acre field. He thinks it is an acre. He plants one bag of buck buster and it does well. He thinks it is awesome to only plant 50# to the acre. He doesn’t realize he actually planted 100# to the acre.

You can make a mix similar to buck busters for $35-40 dollars a bag depending on how much rye, peas, clover and rape (the more expensive seeds) you put in there instead of $70 a bag.

Seed Wheat - $15 bag; $.30/pound

Forage Oats - $35 bag; $.70/pound

Triticale (a wheat/rye hybrid) - $30 bag; $.60/pound

Elbon Rye (grain, NOT rye grass) - $60/bag; $1.20/pound

Crimson Clover (coated) - $90 bag; $1.80/pound

Essix Rape - $65 bag; $1.30/pound

Winter peas - $60 bag; $1.20/pound

If you do a mix of 15# wheat, 8# each of oats/triticale/rye, 5# peas, 5# clover, 1# of rape it will cost $41 per 50#, or $41/bag as opposed to $70/bag.

If you are only planting a couple acres it is worth spending some extra for convenience. But if you are buy 35 bags a seed, saving $20 to $30 a bag is real money. All it takes is a little math and a little mixing.