Army Worms Killing Food Plot

Food plot was doing great, wheat, oates, and rye grain. Then it showed a slight yellowing.
It had been grazed heavily also but plenty of uneaten mass still. Then we thought deer had eaten it,
most of it. Looking it over this weekend standing in one spot I looked down and saw dark colored worm or catapillar looking crawlers. The harder I looked the more I saw. We I'd them as army worms via the interweb. Our farmer amigo who was with us said it's expensive to spray em.

So, is there a winter seed which deer like and army worms don't? Do they have any natural predators we could introduce? Anyone ever had army worms and got rid of em and if so how?

The freeze might be your friend.

Have you had a good frost on your food plot? That will usually knock them back.

It is not that expensive to kill Army Worms but the products used on golf courses may not be labeled for AG and maybe the AG products are more expensive.

I use Liquid 7 in a PTO driven boom sprayer to kill them. This freeze should stop them from anymore damage. If your plot had a good root system a good rain will bring it back just fine. Army worms got my oats last year on Nov 3 and wiped one 3 acre plot to the ground. I replanted by a different direction with my grain drill so I could see if the first planting came back. Got a good rain a week later and it looked like a checkerboard a couple of weeks after the rain. The first planting came back fine.

you better hit them fast when you see them.. iv seen them take out a hay field in a night.....id say the cold weather has gave you a good head start

What STX and NAV said.

Know your enemy, good read here:
http://overton.tamu.edu/files/2011/04/ArmywormFactSheet2008.pdf

We had a hard frost the night we looked at the plots and saw the worms,
and even colder the following night. The plots were green and thick opening
weekend so maybe they'll pop back up.

Thanks for the feed back.

As long as roots didn't freeze it will bounce back. They wipe out fescue on the golf courses but it comes right back.