Kevin Alker – Louisiana
When we got the 120 acres of land almost 18 years ago, it had not produced a trophy class whitetail (130 plus) in over 15 years. I knew this was my chance to do my own program. After a lot of research, I decided to go with the Whitetail Institute’s products. We planted our two largest fields in Imperial Whitetail Clover the first year. We put out cameras and realized we not only had a horrible age structure, but our few older bucks weren’t what you would hope they’d be. We had a bulldozer come in and help us widen existing plots and strategically create some new ones.
We added one more perennial plot in Alfa-Rack Plus and the other four plots are annuals, including one that we use for PowerPlant in the summer, and we’ve used Winter-Greens, Pure Attraction, Beets & Greens and Winter Peas Plus in the others.By the summer three years later, we were seeing a significant increase in the number and quality of deer on our cameras. I took a trophy that fall, and my daughter took an old cull buck (Photo 1). The Imperial Whitetail Clover fields were amazing during this time. We would get over 1,000 pictures a week. Also, our annuals were loaded with deer every day. We were taking two to three good bucks a year on our little property, but the biggest was in the low 140s. We increased the size of our PowerPlant summer plantings and brought in a bulldozer again to increase the size of our annual plots. This is also when we decided that as great as the Whitetail Institute products worked for our food plots, we should try their mineral and vitamin supplements. We were blown away by the activity and frequency at these sites when we put down 30-06. Over the last two years, we have seen the mass and size of our bucks’ racks increase dramatically.
This year, I shot the largest buck we have shot so far, grossing just over 160 with my bow (Photo 2). We have done a lot of hard work, but I also know we owe a lot of credit to the products of the Whitetail Institute, which have been amazing. It has been an incredible and memorable journey, and I can’t wait to see what our little land does in the coming years! Thank you, Whitetail Institute.
