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BioMass: Serious Summer Groceries
Written by Austin Delano
 Now that deer season is finished, one thing that should be playing through the mind of the serious deer manager is "warm season food plots."
If there is one thing that I enjoy more than hunting it is planting summer food plots and giving my resident herd the high protein groceries they need for optimum health and growth.
We all love to see pictures and watch video footage of those velvet-racked bucks and pregnant does wading through a bean field - gorging on all the superior food they can eat. Why not make that your property?
A question that I hear often is "what can I plant in the springtime to help my deer grow bigger bodies and better antlers?" My answer is simple - BioMass! Overwhelm your whitetail herd with vast amounts of high quality forage that they can't turn down.
BioMass is a spring/summer planting that consists of Iron Clay Cow Peas, Soybeans, High Gear Milo, Sorghum, and Giant Peredovik Sunflower. In terms of pure attraction and nutrition, there are not many plants that can compete with peas and beans. The forage that the peas and beans provide is very high in digestible protein and nutrients.
 Overwhelm your deer with warm season annuals for optimum body growth and antler production.The milo and grain sorghum provide a great seed head that deer love to eat and also a stalk for the peas and beans to vine up. Iron and Clay peas and soybeans will both put on lots of additional leaves if they have a stalk to climb up. This not only gives them a place to spread, but it also helps to protect the terminal bud. The Giant Peredovik Sunflower is also very attractive and nutritious to whitetails. They love to browse on the tender leaves that grow on the stalks and later in the summer they will eat the head of the sunflower before the seeds harden.
There has been some confusion between BioMass and our Round-Up Ready bean and corn mix that we have named BioMaxx - similar in name but two different products. With corn and bean prices ever increasing if you’re looking for a more economical planting your answer is BioMass.
To go along with BioMass in its traditional formula, this spring Biologic will have a new BioMass blend called BioMass Legume. This is going to be the ultimate spring/summer "100% legume" planting for your property. This blend will have the tried and true Iron Clay Cowpeas, Soybeans, and Lablab. Talk about an irresistible warm season food plot!
In the spring of 2006 BioMass was discontinued. The reason was because of the introduction of our new product at the time, "BioMaxx." Because BioMaxx is Round-Up Ready our customers could easily control weeds so we saw this "cannibalizing" our BioMass sales.
Things change… we had an influx of calls from serious whitetail managers demanding that we bring back the blend. Combined now with the fact that corn prices and the cost for the technology of genetically engineered seeds has sky-rocketed, and the discontinuation didn’t last long. After digging deeper into the requirements of today’s serious whitetail manager and the costs digging deeper into their wallet, we found that many wanted a blend similar to the original BioMass, but also one that made it easier to control unwanted competition with herbicides. In addition, you will be able to get BioMass for around $49.99 per acre, where BioMaxx will cost around $150 per acre. Both, the original BioMass and BioMass Legume will be available in 2009.
 Beans and peas use the sorghum and milo to climb up. This not only provides additional forage but helps to protect the plant’s terminal bud from being browsed.This will be especially helpful to those who have serious weed problems on their property. Being an all legume mix, you will be able to spray this planting with grass specific herbicides such as Poast or Select, or if you have broadleaf problems an application of 2, 4-DB will knockout those pesky briars and other problematic broadleaves.
In the summer of 2008, after a year of extreme drought and no mast crop I needed to get some serious food growing to help the deer to recover at the Biologic Proving Grounds. Quality summertime forage can be the difference between a buck being just "so-so" or being able to express his true genetic potential. We planted about 20 acres of BioMass and hoped for some much needed rain. We didn't get "a lot" of rain but we got it when we needed it.
The results were outstanding. Within 45 days of planting the BioMass plots were knee-high and filled with some of the best deer food you could ask for. The deer responded graciously by spending a lot of time in the plots. BioMass continued to live up to its name and at around 90 days after planting the fields were a solid "mass" of forage. The deer were beginning to actually bed in the "forest" of sorghum and sunflowers that were being overtaken by the beans and peas. If you want to offer your whitetail the best in summertime nutrition to significantly help with their health, antler growth and fawn rearing I suggest that you give BioMass a try. I guarantee your deer will "thank you."
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