Imperial Whitetail Pure Attraction is one of the Whitetail Institute’s most popular annual food plot products for hunting season. The reason is simple: That’s precisely the purpose for which the Whitetail Institute developed Pure Attraction — to push the upper limits of attraction from the beginning of hunting season through the late season.
If you’re a longtime reader of the Whitetail News, you likely already know
that Whitetail Institute product development is goal-oriented and follows
strict protocols to ensure that its research, development and testing are
highly accurate. Even so, I’ll go a little deeper and give you some inside
information about why, like other Whitetail Institute food plot products, Pure
Attraction is a blend of multiple seed varieties. Whitetail Institute product
development emphasizes specific forage characteristics that are important to
top performance of any food plot product. These include rapid growth; resistance
to disease; tolerance of heat, cold and drought; and most important,
attractiveness to deer. It’s rare, though, for any plant variety to excel in
all of those categories. That’s one reason why carefully designed blends of
compatible plant types can maximize the overall performance of a plot. Another
reason is that having various types of highly attractive plants at the site can
increase attraction further by offering deer a variety of food options within
the plot. With Pure Attraction, the Whitetail Institute took this a step farther.
All the forage components in Pure Attraction establish quickly and are highly attractive
to deer immediately. As with other Whitetail Institute food plot products, the
components in Pure Attraction are designed for compatibility with one another,
ensuring top performance from the planting. Even so, the critical reason Pure Attraction
maintains its extraordinarily high attractiveness consistently through the
entire season is that it’s designed with forage components that reach maximum
attractiveness at different but overlapping times.
Early-season components: Pure Attraction’s early-season components include the Whitetail Institute’s proprietary Whitetail Oats and specially selected varieties of winter peas. Small amounts of triticale and winter wheat are also included to further enhance winter-hardiness. Each of these components establishes and grows quickly and offers phenomenal early attraction. They’re the reason Pure Attraction begins attracting deer soon after it starts to grow, and they continue to do so into the cold late season. Whitetail Oats are the primary early-season component in Pure Attraction. Whitetail Oats are astonishingly attractive to deer because of their high sugar content. They’re also drought-resistant, which can be a huge benefit if rainfall in early fall is unusually low. Whitetail Oats are also cold-tolerant, allowing them to keep attracting deer longer into the hunting season. (If you’d like to read more about how attractive they are, you’ll find an article about Whitetail Oats Plus on page 44 of this issue.) It’s no secret that deer love winter peas. Even so, some winter pea varieties are more attractive to deer than others. Pure Attraction contains winter peas that proved the most highly attractive to deer in Whitetail Institute testing. The triticale and winter wheat round out the early-season component list for Pure Attraction by boosting attraction through variety and longevity of the early-season forage group well into the cold winter months.
Late-season components: Pure Attraction’s late-season components include the Whitetail
Institute’s proprietary WINA-210 Forage Kale and a smaller amount of Tall Tine
Turnips. Although these components reach their maximum attractiveness after the
first frosts of fall, they are also often attractive during the early season
and add early season tonnage to a plot. When frosts arrive, Pure Attraction’s
late-season forage components get even sweeter. The late-season foliage and the
underground tubers produced by the Tall Tine Tubers in Pure Attraction continue
to attract and hold deer during the cold winter months. Take a look at the seedbed preparation and
planting instructions, and you’ll find that Pure Attraction is easy to plant.
(You can find the instructions on the back of the product bags and at
whitetail-institute.com). Getting the seedbed as smooth as possible before
planting isn’t as critical when planting Pure Attraction as it is when planting
perennials, because unlike perennials, Pure Attraction should be covered under
a thin layer of loose soil. Just disk and, with the soil still loose, put out
the fertilizer and Pure Attraction seed, and then lightly drag over the seed.
(Do not disk the seed into the soil). If you’re looking for something to plant
this fall that will establish quickly, attract deer during the early and late
hunting season, produce lots of succulent and carbohydrate-rich forage in the
early fall, and keep performing through winter, Pure Attraction is an excellent
option. If you have questions about Pure Attraction or would like to order,
call the Whitetail Institute’s in-house consultants at (800) 688-3030.
