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Whitetail Institute customer Brian Van Horn of Illinois decided to cull this buck from his herd. The young buck only had five points but still gross scored about 100 and weighed more than 225 pounds. The buck spent significant time around a thick PowerPlant food plot. Photo by Whitetail Institute |
Illinois is arguably the center of the farm belt.
Drive across the flat farmlands and one can see an ocean of corn and soybean fields stretching to the horizon. Even in the hilly regions of the state, just about anything that can be disked is planted.
The extensive agriculture provides a lot of food for whitetails, which is one reason the deer reach such gargantuan size. But make no mistake, provide deer with a nutritional program (quality food plots) designed for their seasonal needs, even in farm country, and the deer herd will improve in quality.
Brian Van Horn, a native of the Illini state, knows what a big deer is. He also knows how to kill them. Van Horn’s best buck to date scores over 200 B&C (the largest buck killed in Illinois that particular year). He also has a handful of deer that score well over 160 and weigh in excess of 300 pounds.
Van Horn is also a Whitetail Institute customer. Despite the fact that corn and soybeans are raised all around his property, he started planting Imperial Whitetail Clover nearly a decade ago and planted other Whitetail Institute products this past year. He wants to produce big deer, and when he finds a superior product, he sticks with it.
“I’m very blessed to have a 700-acre farm to hunt on – more than most hunters,” Van Horn said. “But just owning the land doesn’t assure you will kill big deer every year. I spend of a lot of time and resources on food plots and habitat enhancement, and I’m constantly trying to learn more about what I can do to improve my hunting. In addition, shooting does is a priority for my family. I currently have too many deer, and food plots won’t have the intended impact if your deer density is too high.
“I’m also very skeptical of many of the products on the market that claim to produce bigger bucks. I’ve used Imperial Clover for years and have killed one my best bucks in the middle of one of the plots. I know that it is very effective. But to be honest, until recently, I wasn’t convinced I needed to plant any of the other products sold by the Whitetail Institute.”
Last spring, Van Horn decided to try PowerPlant, the Whitetail Institute’s warm-season annual product, which is a blend including viney beans and peas.
“I have planted agricultural soybeans in food plots for years, and am usually pleased with the results,” Van Horn explained. “But this year, I decided to make a couple of my traditional soybean plots into PowerPlant plots.
“I planted two plots, one on each end of my property. I was pleasantly surprised with the performance of the PowerPlant, even though one plot never fully developed because of over-browsing.
“Let me explain why I’m impressed despite the fact that one plot didn’t fully materialize.
“First of all, one plot did very good, despite weed competition. The blend grew quickly, and with the sunflowers and sorghum in it, the plot stood six feet tall. It was very thick with viney beans and peas crawling all over the place.
“I checked on the plot frequently during the early growth stages and saw small bucks and does feeding there on many occasions.”
This particular PowerPlant plot is on top of a hill and surrounded by hardwoods. The area is well drained and receives lots of sunlight – ideal for the blend. Van Horn planted both his PowerPlant plots in late May. After significant rainfall in June, the area only received about three inches of rain from July 1 through late October. Despite the drought, when the rest of the landscape was brown, the PowerPlant continued to produce.
“As hunting season approached,” said Van Horn, “we started seeing several good bucks leaving the vicinity of the PowerPlant during the evenings. One was an excellent 8-point that would gross about 150. So I told my wife and parents that no one was to go into that area. I felt the deer were using it as a bedding area, and I wanted to use the plot, even though it wasn’t really big, as a sanctuary.
“As we speak, in early December, I still haven’t gone in or around the plot. We can see the edge of the PowerPlant from our house, and deer walk out of the plot at all hours of the day. A couple days ago, I shot a cull buck with my bow that spent a lot of time around the PowerPlant. Although I had passed on a buck approaching 140 just days earlier, I really wanted to get this buck out of the herd. He was aggressive with inferior genetics.
“I was hunting a couple hundred yards from the PowerPlant when I shot him. He was a 3 1/2-year-old buck that weighed 225 pounds, but only had five points. I’ve got that genetic line on my property, and I’m trying to eliminate it. But even though he only had five points, he was impressive. A lot of hunters would have mounted him.
“I feel certain the protein provided by the PowerPlant during the drought really benefited that buck. We saw him around the food plot many times.
“My other plot of PowerPlant was severely browsed,” Van Horn continued. “I put a grazing gauge in the field, and that told the story. Inside the grazing gauge, the product looked great. Outside the grazing gauge, the product was thinner and much shorter. As with any bean or pea variety, I realize a dense herd can wipe it out. As I mentioned, although we shoot as many does as possible, we have a herd that pushing the land’s capacity.
“Consider this. While this plot was being hammered by the deer, the various forages in the blend continued to grow, and there was still quite a bit of food for the deer to eat. Not too far away on the property was a much larger Round-Up Ready soybean plot. Even though the soybean plot was twice the size, the deer destroyed it. The beans never got more than a couple inches tall and certainly never produced bean pods. It was such a failure that I disked it up and replanted it with Imperial Clover.
“So the performance of the PowerPlant compared to the agri soybeans was noticeably better. I will certainly decrease the amount of agri beans next year and plant more PowerPlant.”