PowerPlant: The Ultimate Warm-Season Food Plot Product

By Judd Cooney 

“I don’t know what the devil is in that new PowerPlant plot but the deer are munching it with a vengeance and it looks as if the whole plot has been leveled with a weed eater,” said Shirley, as she gave me a rundown on the food plots she and her husband, Larry, were overseeing on my Iowa whitetail hunting leases. One of my major frustrations with being the absentee operator of a hunting operation is not being able to monitor my food plots on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis.

Fortunately I have Larry and Shirley Lamb, a farm couple that lives up the road from my hunting camp. Shirley cooks for my hunters during the spring turkey season and fall deer hunts; and along with Larry, they have taken a keen interest in preparing, planting and maintaining the numerous food plots on my leased land.

Even though they have been farming in Iowa for many years, the Lambs had no idea what they were getting into when they agreed to help with my food plot program. They both laughingly agree that getting consistent and productive food plots can be a lot more critical and frustrating than any farm endeavor they’ve ever undertaken. However, over the past couple years, their perseverance and fortitude have made my food plot program more successful than ever and increased the number of deer, including trophy bucks, on the leases.  

This past spring when PowerPlant hit the scene, I immediately ordered a bag from the Whitetail Institute to give it a try. I wondered what value a summer maturing food plot would have in an agricultural-rich area. 

I had just the location to give PowerPlant a good test on the south end of one of my best leases. This long, narrow 1 1/4-acre plot was nestled on a small ridge between heavily timbered slopes.

After a severe drought, last spring's rains brought the soil moisture level up; and a new soil sample showed the soil was in excellent condition. Larry disked the field early in the spring, and I followed up with a light disking to level the field for planting.  

On May 12, I planted a full bag of PowerPlant using a hand spreader and then dragged the seed in with a five-foot piece of wire fencing towed behind a 4-wheeler. I couldn't have asked for better luck as it rained almost a half-inch within days. 

The Iowa spring turkey season ended shortly thereafter and I headed for home to Colorado but not before a final look at the PowerPlant plot. It looked great with only a couple of bare spots where I’d missed seeding thoroughly. I’d held back some PowerPlant seed for just such an occurrence; so I scattered the seed over the bare spots, and that took care of the problem.

I kept in touch with Larry and Shirley and one of my local guides through mid-June and was told the deer were really hammering all of the Imperial Whitetail Clover plots and especially the PowerPlant plot.  

In June, I headed to Iowa to check on my hunting leases and especially the food plots. Everything was going great with plenty of rain to keep things growing.  

The bulk of the PowerPlant plot was knee high. By the first of October the PowerPlant plot had matured into a veritable jungle of shoulder-high cover crisscrossed with deer paths. It was easy to see where the deer had nuzzled through the dense foliage to locate every tasty morsel. The long narrow plot had plenty of beds in its midst even though it was surrounded by heavy-timbered slopes.  

I realized PowerPlant would be an ideal planting to use in creating and enhancing deer travel-ways and corridors across open areas between patches of brush or other heavy cover. PowerPlant would also be ideal to plant around open waterholes or sloughs with little or no holding cover.

I know that we’ll be making use of wide strips of PowerPlant next summer to increase the amount of cover available along several of our narrow creek bottom waterways in Iowa and Missouri. In addition to creating great deer feeding and bedding areas, PowerPlant is also attractive to turkeys and provides excellent pheasant and quail cover. 

This past bow season, I finally got a chance to move a bowhunter into the stand overlooking the large PowerPlant plot. I’d kept all my clients away from this location, saving it for when I really needed it. The time finally arrived on the bowhunter’s last day of hunting. He had already missed two P&Y class bucks and was pretty depressed when I put him in the tree stand overlooking the dense plot.

His enthusiasm picked up considerably as the morning wore on and the total count of deer working around and through the plot grew. Over the course of the morning’s bowhunt he saw a total of 21 deer in and around the PowerPlant plot, including several very nice bucks.

The hyped bowhunter finally saw a 140-class buck working along the edge of the plot. The wary buck kept close to the edge of the dense PowerPlant plot where he evidently felt protected as he moved toward the waiting bowhunter. Had he stayed on that course along the inside edge of the plot, the buck would have passed within 15 yards of the waiting bowhunter.

The heavy -ntlered 8-point was 50 yards out and coming steadily when a doe suddenly stepped out the dense plot in front of the approaching buck, flipped her tail a couple times and moved off into the timber. PowerPlant may fulfill the need for a warm weather and early autumn food and cover plot, but there are just some things even PowerPlant can’t compete with – and a hot doe is definitely one of them.

PowerPlant offers a consistently high level of protein and thrives even during some of the dryest and hottest summer periods when other plots die off or go dormant. It is the perfect product to complete a food plot program and insure that bucks receive adequate amounts of protein from the middle to the end of the antler-growing season. And as mentioned, PowerPlant offers the dual benefit of providing outstanding cover. Don’t depend on soybean farmers to provide summer nutrition – agricultural soybeans just can’t compete with PowerPlant.