 ready to plant a food plot for wildlife, there's ways to do it and there are ways not to do it. Many people don't put much effort into it and just go out there and run a disc over it lightly and throw some seeds out and walk away and wonder why all the deer are attracted to their neighbor's food plots that he spent a lot of time and money and fertilizer and effort on. The amount of work that you put into your wildlife openings will pay off in the amount of deer that are attracted to them. The basic steps in planning a wildlife opening or a food plot is to get in there early and break your soils up. If you get in there anywhere from mid-summer into August and break it up initially when you have good soil moisture, this will allow you to break it up later in the year when everybody else's soils have gotten so hard a plow will just skip over them. Soil test it. Don't take your soil test just from one area, but go to a number of different areas in the plot and take a lot of soil samples, bring them back, put them in a bucket, mix it up and take a subsample out of there and turn this in to the county extension office and they'll send it to the soil testing lab. And follow your recommendation when it gets back. We stress soil testing a lot because we know it's important. There's no way to know whether a piece of ground needs additional lime or additional fertilizer without testing it using a soil test. If the recommendation comes back that you need two tons of lime per acre, spend that money on lime. Don't try to save all your money for your seed or your fertilizer. If you need lime, put the lime on it first. Then follow your fertilization requirement. If you've got money left over, then maybe think about buying some seeds to put out on it. If you don't have your lime and your fertility right, you're going to have a little short chlorotic looking plants that are needing additional nitrogen and additional foods that aren't going to be attractive to deer at all. So you got your plot broken up, you've limed it, you come back in, break it up again, spread the fertilizer out over it. Again, follow your soil test recommendations. If it says it needs 400 pounds or 313, put 400 pounds of 313 on there. Don't think that we have a deal with fertilizer companies that they're boosting up those fertility requirements that they send out on the soil test. That's not it. They just read them just like they come in. Follow those recommendations. After you spread the fertilizer, then spread your small seed over there. Most people put out a mixture of wheat, oats, and grain rye. There's different philosophies on this whole thing, but whatever your deer seem to like in your area, that's what you need to put on your food plots. After this small grain is spread over your food plots, come back in with your disc, lightly cut it in so it'll be covered so it'll germinate well. Following the small grain, clovers have become very, very popular to mix in with these green field plantings. Grayson clover, some of the red clover like Redland too, are a good mixture of clovers to put over the top of your small grains to entice deer to continue to use these plots not only during the hunting season, but all into the spring and summer following the hunting seasons.