Sunflowers food plots

Good Afternoon. Has anybody ever utilized sunflowers as part of their food plots in MN? I hunt in mid-central MN and have always had great luck with corn, soybean, turnips and clover/rye mixes but always looking to switch stuff up.

I do a fair amount of pheasant hunting in ND and this year our area out there was primarily black oil sunflowers and that they deer were in there quite a bit. Now, with that said there wasn’t a ton of additional cover/food for them given the remaining areas were hay, some wheat and some beans.

Wondering if they are worth giving a shot and whether they would hold up well until the later days of the firearm and even early muzzleloader season.

Thanks.

The people that I know of that have added sunflowers to food plots are doing it for birds, not because the deer like it.

I wonder how much of the deer activity you observed was the deer using the sunflowers as cover as/after the corn disappeared.

I’ve never blended in any sunflowers in my commercial food plot mixes. Never really heard anything that made me think it was a prime attractor and then there’s the growing issues that they would bring in.

The problem with adding sunflowers to other food plot crops like the brassicas is that sunflowers in any exposed area need to be “shoulder to shoulder” with other sunflowers so that they support each other and the wind doesn’t break the stalks and lay them down. If you were to plant them that thick when blended in with most other food plot crops, you would shade out the other crops and they would be stunted or die.

Grouse

Every time I have tried planting sunflowers the deer mow them off at about 1′ tall. I have even tried to plant them in August and they got hammered within a week once they reached 6″ tall. Everyone I know that has tried them in a plot had to fence them to get any kind of crop to grow. Even 4-5 acre plots get wiped out very quickly before getting a foot tall without a fence.

Sticker, what’s the word out there on do deer really like mature sunflowers? Of course, when food becomes scarce, they’ll eat a lot of stuff, but do they really go after mature sunflowers?

Just knowing a little bit about growing sunflowers from the ag side these things are pretty fussy and sensitive to grow, so it’s hard for me to imagine they would be worth the effort from a food plot side. Even if they were absolute deer candy when mature, I can think of a lot of other things that are very attractive and a lot less fussy to grow.

Grouse

From what I have seen the deer like them but it gives them the runs. Not sure hot else to phrase it. I think there are easier options for food plots that produce more edible tonnage.
DT

Grouse, I wish I knew. Like I said they never let mine get anywhere close to mature. I do know that the deer come to my bird feeder at home a lot and eat the sunflower seeds, but as far as a mature plant I have no clue.

Yes, I agree 100%, there are a lot of other things much easier to plant and grow than sunflowers.

In the years that I don’t run rows of corn to wall off a food plot from an open field, I plant about 6 rows of sunflowers along a 3 acre plot. Birds use it the most, but it has some really good functions.

Turkeys eat well when the snow is high

Deer eat them. But more importantly use it as a concealed run way between 2 patches of woods. Also, having the “wall” to block off the plot from an open field has proven to have more daytime visits from deer.

For me, the small black seeded sunflowers have been the easiest to grow. Additionally I was told that the seeds have a much higher nutritional value compared to other sunflowers. Come late winter, every seed will be picked out and deer have bedded in the down stalks