During my years of planting plots, I have always emphasized that there is no such thing as a food plot that’s too small. I myself enjoy planting these little plots because I use them as my #1 tool in harvesting mature Whitetails. I’m very fortunate that I was able to grow up hunting Whitetails in central Illinois, where the deer were plentiful but not the easiest to hunt because of the small tracks of timber and the abundance of ag. fields.
Fifteen years ago, I was getting a little more discouraged every set because of how my property was laid out. I could always see deer, but they would never make it across the field to where I was sitting before dark. My property is 40 acres with a 12-acre ag. field on the south side. Now some of you will think that would be a great thing, but there is a 60-acre thicket on the south side of that field owned by an “anti-hunter”. Why? Because those resident deer know that is their safe place, and they stay close to that area, feeding on the field edge until dark before they head my way.
I set out ten years ago to change the way I hunted this piece of property. First of all, I built a blind for my daughter and placed it on the northwest field edge at the corner of a power line that cut through the property. I then took that open area under the power line and planted Antler King’s Trophy Clover Mix.
I have always been a diehard clover/chicory guy when it comes to food plots, but this property truly showed just how powerful a small clover plot can really be. The change in how I hunted this property was the best thing I had ever done. This small, lush, green plot changed the travel pattern of those resident deer which would lead them right past my blind before dark every night as they traveled to that Trophy Clover plot.
Over the past 10 years, my daughter and I both have been blessed to take multiple deer from this blind, as the deer traveled to the clover plot; but this past December, that clover plot was the #1 reason for me shooting the buck that I did. I watched the big nine for over an hour, walking up and down the south edge of the field, working scrapes, and destroying trees while at the same time looking across the field, watching the does feeding beside me in the clover. Then he couldn’t handle it anymore, and that’s when his mistake and my way of changing how to hunt the property came together as one.
There’s an abundance of different things out there today to plant in the food plot world, but for me, I will never have a piece of property without a Trophy Clover plot on it; most people look at clover as an early season food source, but that’s not the case because after you get a perennial clover plot established, it will provide food year around.
-Robie Pruitt (Or as my friends call me, “The Clover King”
Categories: Food Plot Program
