In the spring six years ago, my Dad and I decided to plant 10 acres of Imperial Whitetail Clover up against the woods on a 100-plus acre crop agriculture field. We rotate the farm land back and forth every year between corn and beans. I live on the Delmarva Peninsula where there are a lot of agriculture fields, water and bottleneck woods. We have the perfect whitetail deer habitat.
I had experimented for years with other food plots that did not give the results that I wanted. We wanted to make this farm a deer hunting Mecca so we decided to try Imperial Whitetail Clover. The results were better than we expected. We had five great years of hunting on this particular property. It was nothing to see 75-80
deer on the Imperial Clover while we were hunting during bow or gun season. We harvested some really great bucks.
Enclosed is a picture of my dad with one of his bucks. This past hunting season, the clover was five
years old and was getting choked out by weeds and it was time to rotate into another crop. We chose roundup ready soybeans for the entire farm. The deer love soybeans when they’re green and leafy, but as hunting season approached and the beans died off I planted some winter wheat for the deer, in addition to the bean stubble remaining. It was like a different piece of property with very few deer sightings.
It was unbelievable the night and day difference between this past hunting season and the last five
years. The only thing different was no Imperial Whitetail Clover on the property. Going forward, we’ve decided to never again completely phase out Imperial Whitetail Clover. We plan to always have some Imperial Whitetail Clover there. To prepare for next hunting season, this spring we will plant the Imperial Whitetail Clover back into the land along the woods edge. Growing up on a family farm and having access to farm equipment and great hunting properties over the years I’ve realized through experimenting with different food plots that there’s nothing I’ve ever planted that even comes close to Imperial Whitetail Clover.
