Tall Tine Tubers
is an all-turnip food-plot product developed by the Whitetail Institute as a
food plot planting for deer. At the heart of Tall Tine Tubers is Tall Tine
Turnip, a proprietary turnip variety you won’t find anywhere except in Tall
Tine Tubers and other Whitetail Institute food plot products.
When the Whitetail Institute completed development of Tall Tine
Turnip, it first became available in Imperial Whitetail Tall Tine Tubers.
Although Tall Tine Turnip has been included in several other Whitetail
Institute food plot products, the popularity of Tall Tine Tubers has continued
to climb. There are several reasons why.
Tall Tine Tubers exhibits critical characteristics that are especially
important to hunters and managers — and to whitetails. It’s easy to plant,
establishes quickly and provides two sources of highly attractive food for deer
from fall through winter: foliage and tubers. The foliage from Tall Tine Tubers
starts producing heavy tonnage quickly. Many Whitetail Institute customers have
reported that deer feed heavily on Tall Tine Tubers foliage as soon as it
starts coming up but when frosts arrive later in the fall, the foliage produced
by Tall Tine Tubers becomes even sweeter and becomes irresistible to deer. At
this same time deer will also start digging the tubers from Tall Tine Tubers
out of the ground. The foliage and tubers produced by Tall Tine Tubers continue
to attract deer and provide them with critical nutrition through the cold
winter months, a time when few natural food sources for deer remain and most
planted forages are exhausted or buried under the snow.
It’s no secret that when it comes to research, development and
testing, no one goes to the effort the Whitetail Institute does. That’s true
of all Whitetail Institute forage products, and Tall Tine Tubers is no
exception. The Whitetail Institute’s research and development staff, certified
research stations and free-range testers spent six years developing and
testing Tall Tine Tubers to ensure it meets the Institute’s industry-leading
quality and performance standards.
Development of Tall Tine Turnip began by planting many turnip
varieties in defined rows in a fall-planted food plot and allowing free-range
deer to preferentially browse them. Initial selections and evaluations were
under natural feeding conditions with no fences of other restrictions to deer
feeding. Plants that showed the greatest preference by deer were then isolated
with exclusion cages to prevent further browsing so they could be evaluated for
traits such as seed quality and insect and disease resistance, and so the
plants could mature and produce seed. Plants deer didn’t prefer or that didn’t
meet the Whitetail Institute’s other strict quality and performance
requirements were eliminated.
When the remaining caged plants produced seed, the seed was collected
by thrashing each plant individually, and the process was repeated, each time
isolating plants that showed the highest preference by deer and other
performance requirements. After six years, the process resulted in a final
population of seed that was used to plant the first seed-production fields of
Tall Tine Turnips.
Is that effort worth it? The Whitetail Institute believes it is,
and our customers who have tried Tall Tine Tubers overwhelmingly agree. It’s
the reason Whitetail Institute customers know they can expect nothing but the
best from Tall Tine Tubers and all other Whitetail Institute products.
For information or to
order Tall Tine Tubers, visit whitetailinstitute.com, or call the Whitetail
Institute’s in-house consultants at (800)688-3030.
