Hunter Turf and Field
Management and Consulting

Hunter Bryant
Owner and Operator

The hunting world is cluttered with the latest and greatest food plot choices, companies promising you big bucks if you will use their product. And they are right; just look at the big bucks leaving your wallet for their product. There is work to be done well before choosing any seed—like a soil test. By skipping this step, you are limiting the plant’s ability to perform and grow before ever breaking ground. Okay, now I have done a soil test, now what? What crop? Planted when? At what rate? All of these questions need to be thoroughly thought out and answered before ever setting foot onto the property to be planted.

Every hunting club has its rituals when it comes time to plant food plots. Seldom does this ever involve taking a soil sample. Just like we measure distance in feet or miles, we use the pH scale to classify the soil’s acidity or alkalinity levels that range from 0-14 with 7 being neutral. The soil’s pH governs everything a plant does from its growth rate and vigor to how well the plan will fare in a drought. I cannot stress to you enough how important it is to have the correct pH at the time of planting.

Nutrient availability is also directly governed by pH. A good analogy for this is trying to breathe through a straw. You can breathe enough to avoid suffocating but not enough to be comfortable. With all of the air in the world around you and yet you can barely take a deep breath. Likewise, you could have the most expensive seed and fertilizer money can buy, but if the plant is unable to draw upon the nutrients, what good is it?

Another factor influenced by pH is the plant’s taste. Imagine trying to cook without all of the ingredients needed to complete a recipe. When needed nutrients are unavailable to the plant because of a low pH, the plant’s normal functions are significantly decreased—one of which is the production of sugars. Therefore, before planting anything, you should always have a soil sample processed to see just where the field stands in relation to its pH and levels of various nutrients. This can be achieved through contacting a food-plot consultant.

They can handle collecting the soil sample, shipping it, and interpreting the results. The soil sample results will show the pH, major soil nutrient levels, and how many tons of lime to be added per acre to achieve the desired pH range best suited for your crop. One of the primary ways we, as hunters, lower the pH and increase the amount of lime to be added, is to over apply the wrong fertilizers year after year. Fertilizer is not just fertilizer. Every fertilizer was designed for a certain use, under certain criteria, and applied at a certain rate. Every bag has its place and the one often chosen is the cheapest or whatever the store had in stock. I am sure we have all been guilty of this way of thinking before, “If one bag is good, two bags will be great.” This single-handedly pushes the soils pH down faster than any other naturally or commonly occurring event that happens in our neck of the woods. By simply being informed on what type of fertilizer and at what rate to apply it, you can save money not only on wasted fertilizer but also on the lime you would need to readjust the pH year after year.

All right, we now have to choose what we want to plant; easier said than done. The traditional field has been a mono-culture, being a field consisting of one type of plant. There is nothing wrong with this, but it would be like me asking you to choose one suit of clothes to wear all year long. It would be impossible for one outfit to meet all of your needs all year long. It is the same way for a fall food source planted with only one plant species. The nutritional needs and tastes of a whitetail change throughout the year. The only way to provide for these changes is to integrate a mixed-species planting. This is a food source containing more than one plant species. A growing plant goes through several developmental stages, and within these cycles, levels of sugars and starches fluctuate within the plant. This fluctuation causes certain “windows” where whitetails find its taste most desirable. By combining several complementary plants and staggering their “window,” you can have a plant of interest in your food source all season long.

Please contact me for more information or to arrange a consultation to discuss transforming your old food plot into a nutritional and productive food source beneficial to all wildlife.
--Hunter Bryant
205.283.4655
Hunter Turf and Field