In my hunting area here in Illinois, everything is virtually the same, agriculture fields and woods. We are blessed that whitetails have their choice of plenty of nutritious foods. I have found that if you give them a choice of something else they like that is not readily available, such as Whitetail Institute products, and choose the right planting site that allows the deer to feel comfortable feeding during anytime of the day or night, you have now given yourself a big advantage.
Deer are by nature curious and just like humans they like different things. By providing them with a lush new food source that is not in every farmer’s field, it peaks both their curiosity and their appetite. Just like you wouldn’t want to eat the same food every day, I am convinced that deer don’t, either. They love to browse on new green growth. Whitetail Institute products have been around a long time (more than 20 years). Why? Quite simply THEY WORK! Now I don’t know all the scientific research that goes into their products and I probably wouldn’t understand half of it anyway. All I know is that they got it figured out and my deer and I along with many other hunters are benefitting from their hard work and I want to thank them. I would also like to mention this about hunting around food plots. I try not to hunt directly over any one food plot too often. If I do hunt over one in the evening I always have someone come and “extract me” as we call it so the deer don’t see me climbing down from a tree or out of a ground blind that they just walked by. I think that unnerves a lot of deer and they become much more suspicious making them harder to harvest. By “extract” I mean after the evening hunt, if there are deer still in your plots have someone drive a truck or 4-wheeler out to your plot to let the deer see that and run off instead of you climbing out of a tree and walking across their dinner table. They won’t be as scared and this will allow you to be able to sneak out without the deer really knowing you were there. Most of the time based on my experiences and trail cam pictures, within an hour or sometimes less the same deer are right back feeding after they hear the truck drive out of the field. I wanted to send some pictures of our bucks from last season and a little story about each one. The first two pictures are of a beautiful 160-inch buck that grew all summer eating on a plot of Imperial Whitetail Clover.
Notice how healthy and fat he looks. Healthy bodies translate into big antlers. Deer have to be well fed before they can ever reach their genetic potential to produce big racks or healthy fawns. With the high protein levels in Whitetail Clover and Chicory Plus I think Whitetail Institute hit a home run with these products. I got more than 20 pictures of this buck from late July when I finally put out my camera over the Imperial Whitetail Clover plot. He was there virtually every night. Then on Nov. 6 I was fortunate enough to harvest this buck with my bow less than 200 yards from this plot as he was heading back to bed down for the day. The third photo is of my good friend George Huston and an incredible buck he shot with his bow. Ironically George shot this buck out of the same tree stand I had shot mine out of just 10 days before. George’s bucks grossed right at 190-inch as a basic 10 point. It took best of show at the Illinois Deer Classic in the 11 point and under category. George is always helping me plant my food plots and overall property management so it was great for both of us to be able to reap the rewards of all our year round efforts. Thanks Whitetail Institute for continuing to produce the best food plot products out there. P.S. We are getting some more great bucks in this same plot this year, so I hope to have a sequel to this story for the upcoming season.
