# 508 Land & Legacy Food Plot Part 2

Whitetail Rendezvous podcast hosted by Bruce Hutcheon

Well, the marketing people. I was stumbling over my words, but, you know, it's the greatest thing in the world and we all fall for marketing. You know, a huge buck, gorgeous green field, and you got too have X. If you have X in this bottle, if you put this on your thing, or you plant with Y, you're going to have...you know, you're going to have Booners, you know, out the network. I'll guarantee you if there's no sperm, there's no studs in the forest that have 180-class genes, you ain't going to have it. Adam: That's right. That's right. And, you know, I'll add to that. You got to give them what they want, but you also got to give them what they need, and then you got to give them what you can provide them. I mean if they need carbs and you don't have any open ground, as far as you can't give them corn or you can't give them soybean. So we'll digest this, I guess, the best we can from you got to give them what they want and you got to give them what they need. And, as we talked pre-recording, I think one of the biggest things we see with our Land & Legacy consulting business is looking at something and going, "Okay"... When we look at food plots, 9 times out of 10 we're planting food plots because we want to have more hunting success. We want to be able to at least attract more deer on the property. Maybe we're not hunting over it, but we know that there's more deer in the area because that food plot is there. 9 times out of 10 that's why we're planting food plots, is just so we can increase our hunting success. Now when it comes to "give them what they want," let's look at it and say, "Okay, what do they want? What do they need?" And when we look at what's in the neighborhood, that's one of the biggest things. I hunt...one of the properties I hunt is a working cattle farm and there is alfalfa fields, I don't know how many acres. Lots and lots and lots and lots of acres devoted to alfalfa because the farmer bales it for hay. So it's food for the cows, but it's also a great lagoon so it's great forage for the deer. But if I was to plant a clover food plant, which is right there providing the same thing, it's providing protein, I'm not going to have very good success hunting that because they have 200-plus acres of alfalfa that they can go eat on. And so coming in that little clover patch isn't doing them any good. So look at what's lacking in the neighborhood as far as what the deer need, and then try to fill that void. Don't look at it as, "Well, this is just what I'm going to plant and let's hope that it's fantastic," and expect to see the same food plot that you see on the bag and the same buck standing in it that you see on the bag. Bruce: Because that just doesn't work. And, as we said before... It might work, I better put a comment in there. Adam: It might work. Bruce: It might work, it might work. That was my disclaimer, it might work. But, you know, you think, about things and, you know, every...you know, July comes and everything has grown and Deer are out there, their coats are slick and they're looking good, and the fawns are romping and stomping, and some bucks are starting to, you know, grow out. And you're getting some, you know, what's coming along and you start dreaming about your hit list and August comes, and then all of a sudden something changes. And in your opinion what changes? It's at that magic time all of a sudden, "Where did all the deer go?," sort of kind of. Adam: Well, I think I know where you're going with this because we talked about it a little bit, but for me in the Ozark Mountains of Southern Missouri, notorious...I mean just as the sun comes up every morning, the same thing happens almost every single year. Every single year, I guess I should say and clarify that. But every single year, early fall, deer vanish from the alfalfa fields or the food plots, or they just vanish in their normal summer patterns. Where do they go?