#500 Rackology Food Plot Part 3

Bruce: Hey, folks, welcome back to Whitetail Rendezvous, the special edition with Rackology. We’re heading up to Eric and Jason’s shop up there in Loup City, Nebraska and this is the final segment of food plots. And we’re going to talk about planting 365, and that kind of encompasses everything we talked about with these guys this week. And, you know, we started off with the land management and looking at the land, getting hard eyes on it, you know, fresh set of glasses, however you want to call it, and then figuring out where we’re going to do things. And then we talked about the food plots and seed, what they are, what they’re not, and what they can’t do now. You know, we’re going to wrap it all up into a 365-day planting and growing session, if you will. So, guys, let’s bring forth some knowledge and share. And in the break we just had we just talked about does are stressed. And I threw in my two cents. You know, the doe is bred in November, November 10th, she goes through December, January, February, March. Then she’s, you know, sometime in the springtime she’s going to, you know, have the fawn. And the better you can help them carry that fawn, the better deer herd you have. And that’s what this is all about, is helping deer become healthy deer, liking your place to live on, and living there 365. So, guys, take it away. Eric: Right. Well, you hit it right on the head. I mean the first key in planting a year-round program, whether it be feeding or food plots, when we talked about the land management, we kind of go year over year. We don’t just do this year and we’re done and we’ll see you next year and we’ll just start a new game plan. Knowing the life cycle of what you’re hunting or what you want out there is very important. I mean Jason has taught me so much being, I mean, with his knowledge of not only biology but and specific with deer herd development and deer herd health. I’ve learned, I mean, by just soaking in like a sponge next to him hearing him talk to people and just asking questions. And knowing…of anybody, knowing…and he knows really well that life cycle of a doe, the life cycle of a buck, and where you’re going to be able to take the stress off of those animals. And like we were talking before, if there’s more of a visual key to understand and see, you know, the stresses that these wild animals go through on a given year. Because every year is not the same, on a dry year versus a wet year versus a cold winter year where you’ve got 20 snowfalls and 40 inches of snow. Those deer are out there, they don’t get to go inside and relax and refresh and regroup for the next day like we do. But knowing that life cycle of the animal is huge when it comes to planting 365 year-round stuff. And, you know, a lot of people will see deer out there and not know how much stress that they’ve got on them and they might just say, “Oh, they’re eating out there, look at all of them out there. They’re just walking around and enjoying themselves and they’re fine. You know, I don’t need to do anything.” Well, looking at trail camera pictures from closer than 50 to 100 yards you’re going to start picking up, like Jason just showed me, some things to key in on on, “Okay, is that doe, you know, is she”… I mean she’s got… You know, what we don’t know about the deer, I mean there’s a lot of times they have twins and triplets and that’s a lot of stress and vitamin and mineral and protein that that doe has got to do to get to that fawn, whether it be a fawn that’s a doe or a fawn that’s a buck. And if you want them bucks to develop and to be their genetic potential, they need to hit the ground running and they need to be efficient. So a lot of times with food plots, the ones you have on your land and water,