Looking for a
forage that can attract deer in the fall and then have the deer pouring in
during the colder months of the year? With Imperial Whitetail Winter-Greens and
Tall Tine Tubers, the Whitetail Institute has you covered.
Perennials are
considered by many to be the backbone of a food plot system, and Whitetail Institute
perennials are designed to attract deer and supplement what nature provides for
deer on a year-round basis. If you utilize perennials, Winter-Greens and Tall
Tine Tubers can be the “icing on the cake” for deer during fall and winter. And
if you don’t plant perennials, Winter- Greens and Tall Tine Tubers can be the
whole cake.
The cake
analogy isn’t by chance. Nutritionally speaking, deer are primarily concerned with
energy during the fall and winter, and Winter-Greens and Tall Tine Tubers
provide plenty of carbohydrates. When the weather turns cold, an enzyme in the
plants converts starches to sugars — and once that happens, nock an arrow or
load your gun because they’re coming.
Winter-Greens
and Tall Tine Tubers are similar in many ways. For example, they’re both
annual, all-brassica products specifically designed for fall and especially
winter. They both become even more attractive as the season progresses. In
early fall, deer are trying to store fat reserves for energy during the coming
cold months. In most areas, though, fall is a time of decreasing availability
of natural food sources, and availability gets even worse the later it is in
the year. By the time the cold winter months arrive natural food sources are
generally scarce, and what natural food sources remain are often of relatively low
palatability. That’s when the energy demands on deer are at their highest — and
when Winter-Greens and Tall Tine Tubers are at their sweetest! Winter-Greens
and Tall Tine Tubers will draw deer to your property, hold them there, and
provide them with nutrient-rich food to help them stay healthier through the cold
months of the year.
The main
differences between Winter-Greens and Tall Tine Tubers are the types and ratios
of brassicas that are the main components in each product. When the Whitetail
Institute began to develop Winter-Greens, its goal was to create an
all-brassica product with the most attractive foliage from the time it emerged
and throughout the life of the forage. To meet that goal, the Institute tested
numerous brassica varieties at its research stations across North America and compared
deer usage to determine which were the most highly attractive. The varieties
for which deer showed the greatest preference were specially selected to be
included in Winter-Greens. These “lettuce types” (brassicas with a vegetable
genetic base) are quite simply the most attractive forage brassicas the Institute
has ever tested.
Like
Winter-Greens, the Institute’s new Tall Tine Tuber forage product is highly
attractive and purpose-built for deer. In fact, it is the first and only turnip
food plot product ever specifically developed for food plots. The Whitetail Institute’s
research goals with Tall Tine Tubers were to develop a turnip variety and
turnip product that would establish quickly, grow rapidly, produce high
tonnage, remain as an available food source even through the dead of winter in
most parts of North America, and most importantly attract deer in the fall and
winter. The backbone of Tall Tine Tubers is the new variety, Tall Tine Turnip.
This new variety took the Whitetail Institute six years to develop. Tall Tine
Tubers provides two food sources for deer: highly attractive, carbohydrate-rich
foliage for fall and throughout the winter in most parts of North America, and
tubers as an additional food source for the coldest months.
Winter-Greens
and Tall Tine Tubers have proven to be top performers. They are easy to plant,
extremely drought tolerant, produce massive tonnage of high quality food, and
no doubt they’re both extremely attractive to deer. The differences in how each
performs in different regions of North America can be subtle. For example,
Winter-Greens generally sweetens a little earlier in the fall, so it may the
better choice for planters in the Deep South, where frosts come a little later
in the year. However, some field testers in Alabama have reported that their
deer hit Tall Tine Tubers hard in September. Also, Winter-Greens has now been fortified
with a small amount of the Tall Tine Turnip variety, so it will also produce
the same large, sweet tubers as Tall Tine Tubers, although not in as great a
number.
You may wonder
why the Whitetail Institute offers both Winter-Greens and Tall Tine Tubers. Why
would the Institute go to the huge effort and expense to offer two all-brassica
products with such narrow performance differences, instead of just one that
would perform pretty well in most areas? The answer to that is the Whitetail
Institute’s underlying philosophy and the goal that drives its forage
development efforts: performing “well” for “most” customers isn’t good enough
for a product to wear the Whitetail Institute name. It must perform the best
the Whitetail Institute can make it, for each customer, where that customer
lives and hunts.
In fact, that’s
something that Winter-Greens and Tall Tine Tubers have in common with every product
the Whitetail Institute offers: they are the result of the Whitetail
Institute’s exhaustive process of research, development and testing under
real-world conditions to ensure that each Whitetail Institute product is the
very best the Institute could make it. That’s why field testers’ return and new
customers join the Whitetail Institute year after year. It’s a matter of top
performance. It’s a matter of trust. Whitetail Institute customers expect the
best, and that’s exactly what they will get.
For more
information or to order, call the Whitetail Institute’s in-house consultants at
(800) 688-3030, extension 2. The consultants are available from 8 a.m. to 5
p.m., Central Time, Monday through Friday.
