Grow your best food plots with these new seeds, trees and an implement.
1. Chestnut Hill Dunstan Chestnuts
A reliable, sustainable nutrition program for wildlife involves a year-round approach to provide supplemental foods. Protein-packed mast from nuts, such as Dunstan Chestnuts from Chestnut Hill Nursery, gives deer and other wildlife a big bump that helps get them through the tough winter months.
American chestnuts once reigned supreme over the Eastern hardwood forests, but were wiped out by blight in the geologic blink of an eye. A blight accidentally introduced in 1904 wiped out 30 million acres of chestnut trees that stretched from Maine to Georgia and west to Mississippi. In the early 1950s, James Carpentar discovered a large, healthy American chestnut in a grove of dead and dying trees in Ohio.
He sent budwood from the tree to Dr. Robert T. Dunstan, a well-known plant breeder in Greensboro, N.C., who grafted it onto healthy rootstock with promising results. By selecting and crossing individuals that exhibited the best combination of nut and tree characteristics — blight resistance and the production of large, high-quality nuts — he was eventually able to develop a superior variety: the Dunstan Chestnut — the only chestnut to ever receive U.S. Plant Patents. He moved his second-generation stock to north-central Florida, planted 500 trees and today those are more than 50 feet tall and 16-20 inches in diameter.
Dunstan Chestnut trees can start producing nuts in only three to five years, depending on care and climate, and in time will rival their parent stock in size and bounty, producing up to 2,000 pounds of nuts per acre at maturity.
MSRP: $31 and up | chestnuthilloutdoors.com
2. Firminator
Planting food plots is enjoyable to most hunters because of the hours of dirt therapy. Prepping the soil, getting everything ready, plowing, planting, and then knocking back a cold one when it’s all done. Firminator can do the necessary heavy lifting from start to finish when it comes to disking, seeding and cultipacking.
For years, Firminator has been the top choice of hunters everywhere to turn fields into food plots. The models are built with tough, 3-inch heavy-wall square tube frames and have 9-gauge disk harrow blades on 6-inch centers, an agricultural-grade cast-iron cultipacker, and 18-inch heavy-duty center ripper. They’re formidable. Even the ATV model weighs 800 pounds and gets the job done. Whether the soil is loose and dry, tough clay that doesn’t want to yield, or somewhere in between, Firminator has tackled it and won.
The Firminator G3 comes in 4-, 5-, 6- and 8-foot models. The G3 offers a wide range of angle and pitch adjustments for different functions. To break up a new site, for example, the disk angles can be set more aggressively for deeper penetration. If minimal tilling is needed, the angles and pitch can be set to cut the top litter without excessive soil disturbance.
The ATV model has the same frame construction and comes with a tow bar sized for a 1-7/8” ball, but also retains the three-point hitch for use with a small tractor. A 500cc ATV or UTV is recommended for best performance. The Firminator RT has a PTO-driven rototiller, and along with the precision seeding system and cultipacker, the RT can do it all.
MSRP: Varies | thefirminator.com
3. Ani-Logics CRUSH Seeds of Science Food Plot Mixes
These new, advanced scientific seed blends are superior in nutrition and unrivaled in attraction to help you attract and grow trophy bucks with the best food plots around.
The Perfect 10 Mix combines 10 of the most preferred forages for white-tailed deer. The all-in-one blend was formulated specifically for use on Lee and Tiffany’s personal hunting grounds. This kind of diversity makes it a food plot mix that will produce all hunting season long, offering your deer herd 10 varieties of food sources in one quickly established food plot. The Perfect 10 Deer Food Plot Mix is an easy-to-grow blend with exceptional attraction, making it perfect for kill plots. Contents include forage winter wheat, rye grain, forage oats, winter peas, crimson clover, Ani-Crush™ radish, forage collards, Ani-Crush™ turnip, Ani-Crush™ sugar beets and rape. 10-lb. bag plants 1/4 acre.
Pro Clover Mix was developed with Lee and Tiffany Lakosky to create the perfect hunting food plot blend of clover varieties. The resulting perennial seed blend is a combination of six of the most preferred clover seed varieties for white-tailed deer, all in one of the best clover food plot blends on the market. Its extreme attractiveness, impressive protein content, and high feed value, along with exceptional cold tolerance, coupled with persistent drought tolerance, make this hardy clover blend popular across the country. Its diversity maximizes forage biomass and protein content, supporting herd health and antler growth; making it the perfect choice for kill and/or recruitment plots. This fast-growing, easily established clover food plot mix makes it simple to attract and grow trophy bucks. Contents include Ani-Crush™ white and red clovers, select white clovers, balansa clover and crimson clover. 8-lb. bag plants 1 acre.
4. Whitetail Institute Imperial Whitetail Clover
More than four decades ago a handful of Southeast deer hunters were planting “green patches” of rye, oats and winter wheat. These early efforts at food plots were going on about the time Ray Scott founded the Whitetail Institute and began urging researchers to create a super-clover for hunters. Imperial Whitetail Clover was the result, and today contains the only clover genetically designed for white-tailed deer.
Different strains of clover were studied, bred and cross-bred to improve the genetics for growth, heartiness, protein content and ability to do battle with Mother Nature. Soils in the Southeast and elsewhere can be fickle; what grows well in one spot might not do as well in another. The Whitetail Institute wanted a tough, nutritious clover that wouldn’t take any guff from fickle soils. Over the decades it’s been a mainstay for hunters building food plots.
Imperial Whitetail Clover has an extremely high protein content, which is critical for antler, muscle and bone growth along with reproductive health. It thrives in extreme cold, as well as warm, dry climates. The Whitetail Institute R&D team has continually improved Imperial Whitetail Clover over the years with new and improved clover varieties. It’s extremely cold tolerant, along with being heat-, drought- and disease-resistant. It also is coated with RainBond for enhanced seedling survivability.
Imperial Whitetail Clover, when properly planted, can return for up to five years. Food plots with this hunting mainstay help provide outstanding nutrition for white-tailed deer, turkeys, small game and other wildlife.
MSRP: $43 | whitetailinstitute.com
