# 505 Gandpa Ray Food Plot Part 2

Planning for Food Plots with John O’Brion… Hi folks, it’s the second segment with John O’Brion of Grandpa Ray Outdoors, and John and I are talking about “do it right the first time”. And what happens to us all, and I’m guilty as anybody, I go…oh, I get all excited, and we get the plan in place, and then we go to work and we forget something, we forget one component. It could be any number of the components. The first thing that we never, never wanna forget is, of course, to do the soil test. But after that, it becomes a slippery slope sometimes. And others, you could go out there, I mean, you could build a food plot in downtown Manhattan without water and without dirt, and it would still grow. Well, there’s dirt in the street anyway, so it’s got that, so…you know what I mean. But most of it, you know, it’s a struggle. So why do we need to do it right the first time, John? John: Well, when I talk to people that either are brand new, or even for those that are very experienced, I ask a list of a lot of questions. The more questions I ask, the better I can give for a recommendation. The problem that we see so often is you get guys that are like, “Well, my buddy didn’t take a soil test and he had a great food plot this year.” He might have, he might have a great food plot next year, but if you don’t fertilize right, you don’t maintain your pH, eventually, it could be two years, could be five years, at some point in time, your soil will be mined, and then you’ll have a…you could have a total failure. You have a year with a total failure, you spent money on the rifle, the shells, all these inputs, and then all of a sudden there’s no deer on your property because you don’t have an effective, growing food plot. Best laid plans of mice and men. So we wanna plan not just short-term. So many people wanna just buy that mix that their buddy told you to buy, the celebrity, the hunting show, whatever reason, but… It might be a great mix on your buddy’s land, but it might be a terrible thing to plant on yours. So every situation’s different Whether you ask me, “Hey,” help you, and I ask you questions and you answer them, to give you some time to think and reflect, or even if, you know, you don’t get ahold of a guy like me, [inaudible 00:02:27]. Put on paper, what’s your goals? What are you trying to accomplish? How are you gonna get there? What’s your current strengths? What do you think your weakness is? Let’s improve our strengths and let’s do way better on these weaknesses. Formulate a plan before hard charging, and just get ground cover, get something to grow. Could be good this year, could be a total failure. And again, just like sighting in that rifle, do you wanna go hunting? Sure. Do you sight in your gun? You better. Same thing, we wanna sight in our food plots to not just have average, to reduce our risk, to be as effective as we can. That’s what I want people to think about. Bruce: So again, planning, planning, planning, planning, you’re gonna get sick and tired of hearing me say it. But by planning, okay, stage one, stage two, stage three in your land management plan, for your food plots, that’s the stages that, in my opinion and the opinion of a lot of people I’ve been talking about, you just plan it out and you plan a rotation in your crops, just like a farmer does. He doesn’t plant corn two years in a row unless he’s using a lot of supplemental fertilizers and stuff to replace the nutrients that are sucked out of the soil. So, you know, you have to do the same thing. Plus, your deer change. You gotta see what happens. If your neighbors change things up, you better know exactly what impact that is gonna have on your deer. You know, the more I get into this, people say, “Well, gee,