By: Hollis Ayers
The Informed Consumer
No matter what you buy, the only way to ensure the product will meet your needs is to approach the purchase as an informed consumer — someone who takes his specific needs and the product’s ability to meet those needs into account before comparing prices. That process consists of five steps, which we’ll cover in greater detail with respect to food plot seed purchases.
Step 1: Remember Why You’re Considering Buying Food Plot Seed
The most common reason folks plant food plots is to help them improve their odds of hunting success. Success in that context can be defined by these goals: attracting and holding more deer, and improving their quality. Although that might seem obvious, I hope this article will illustrate how important it is to keep those goals in mind throughout the informed-purchase process.
Step 2: Correctly Prioritize the Purchase by its Importance to Your Odds of Success Consider all the things you buy for hunting season. Your list would likely include a wide range of items, including rifles, scopes, ammunition, bows, trail cameras, tree stands, camo clothing, gasoline, other archery equipment and food plot seed. Some items can affect your odds of success more than others, and each such purchase should be prioritized accordingly.
As a hunting-related example, consider this advice, which most of us have heard: “Buy a decent quality rifle, but put your real money into buying the highest quality scope you can afford.” The reason is that the quality of your scope is the bigger limiting factor in how well your rifle/scope setup can perform. In that way, your scope is more important to your odds of hunting success than the quality of the rifle.
The rifle-and-scope example shows the importance of prioritizing purchases in a narrow subset of hunting-related purchases. Food plot seed is arguably even more important because it directly affects the number and the quality of deer you have to hunt. In most cases the performance of your food plots is one of, if not the, Biggest factor for hunting success.
Step 3: Identify the Performance Requirements You Expect the Product to Meet
Armed with the understanding of how important food plot performance is to your odds of hunting success, you can see how critical it is to make informed purchases of food plot seed. That requires identifying specific performance requirements we expect the product to meet.
Attractiveness to Deer
When it comes to food plot products for deer, attractiveness to deer is the most important forage-performance characteristic. One reason is obvious — forage must be attractive to deer if it is going to attract and hold them, and unless deer are highly attracted to a forage, the rest of the performance characteristics on the list don’t matter. Also, consider that the longer your forage planting remains in a highly attractive state, the more deer you’ll have to hunt, and the longer you will hold them in your plot.
High germination rate: Just because you plant a food plot does not mean it will germinate. Different grades and qualities of seed have various rates of germination. The higher the germination rate of the seed you buy, the better. Unfortunately for the consumer, not all food plot seed companies mention the germination rate on their packaging or analysis sticker!
High seedling survivability: Forage plants are at their most vulnerable to changes in soil moisture just after seed germination (seedling stage) because their roots are still immature. The better seedlings can tolerate fluctuations in soil moisture, the better they can survive beyond the seedling stage.
Rapid growth: The faster a forage can grow, the more tonnage it can provide shortly after planting, and the better it can keep up with browsing pressure from the deer.
Heat, cold and drought tolerance: This one’s pretty obvious. The better a forage can withstand unexpected weather extremes, the better its chance of survival.
High nutritional content: This performance characteristic is significant for folks who want to improve the quality of the deer they hunt. There are three main reasons, all of which generally concern naturally available forages in most areas: their nutritional content is comparatively low; they can tend to become tough (less palatable to deer) as they mature; and they can be exhausted quickly.
As with any animal, deer have an upper genetic limit for antler size and body weight. In most cases, natural food sources provide sufficient nutrition for deer to survive and for bucks to grow antlers, but usually nowhere near the upper limit of their genetic potential. Also, even natural forages that are relatively high in protein during spring and summer often tend to get too stemmy and tough for deer to effectively use, and they usually don’t last very long. Likewise, in most areas there are few if any natural forages available in fall other than mast crops such as acorns, which offer carbohydrates sufficient for deer to build their fat reserves for winter.
Also, remember the importance of nutrition during the window from late winter until spring green-up, when bucks are trying to recover their winter health losses so they can begin devoting substantial resources to antler growth — right when nutritious natural forages haven’t emerged yet in most areas. That’s why any hunter or manager who expects his food plots to help deer realize more of their genetic potential for antler size and body weight should make sure the forages they plant will be highly nutritious and remain palatable and available to deer on as constant a basis as possible.
Step 4: Evaluate Each Competing Product’s Performance Potential
If you were hoping we’d start comparing competing products in Step 4, I’m sorry to disappoint you. We’re not there yet because we still have to evaluate each product individually to determine how well each can fulfill the requirements, we set out in Step 3.
Step 4 can also be the most difficult step in the process because of the need to only consider indicators of product quality and performance capacity that are reliable. It can be tempting to be swayed by fancy bags and other appealing advertising, but that’s not what we’re looking for. We’re looking for things that show whether the advertising is true, so consider the facts, and ignore the hype. Reliable indicators include the company’s longevity and track record in the industry, and its design and manufacturing processes.
Longevity and track record: A company’s longevity and track record in the industry are among the most reliable indicators of its product quality and commitment to customer service. Before we get into why that’s the case, you need to dig a little deeper and focus on how successful the company has been with products you’re seeking. That’s especially true in the food plot industry, because so many companies have diversified into other pursuits, such as land sales and a variety of other types of hunting equipment.
The good news is that’s an extra step you don’t have to take with Whitetail Institute. It pioneered the food plot industry over 30 years ago and has remained the industry leader ever since. And it has done so while sticking to its core business. Company longevity and track record are excellent indicators of product performance because they are gauges of its customer satisfaction. A company’s longevity and track record with its products depend heavily on its ability to satisfy its customers’ needs to such a high degree, and so cost-effectively, that people return with repeat business instead of buying from someone else. And they bring their friends. A history of doing so year after year shows that its customers recognize value in the company’s products.
Product design and manufacturing processes: Unlike a company’s longevity and track record in the industry, which are usually fairly easy to determine by simple observation, getting a clear picture of a company’s product design and manufacturing processes can be more difficult. Some companies, such as the Whitetail Institute, are proud and transparent to tell you of all the steps they take to ensure that its products are the best performers. And it also then makes sense that if a company won’t tell you what steps it takes in designing and manufacturing its products, there’s a reason.
For example, let’s consider a hypothetical seed product offered by a hypothetical manufacturer to be the cheapest food plot product. Let’s also say the company doesn’t readily disclose its product design and manufacturing processes. What reliable indicators might you find in the company’s product design and manufacturing processes that might affect the Step 3 performance requirements? To answer that, you’d need to have an idea of how a manufacturer might keep its design and manufacturing costs as low as possible, and even though the manufacturer might not tell us, we can make some reasonable assumptions.
First, the manufacturer would need to obtain the cheapest seed available (often designed for cattle and horses). That suggests purchasing seed on the open market with cost as the overriding factor. It also suggests that the manufacturer would try to find a seller who will agree to discount the seed even further for several reasons, such as inferior germination rates. Then, after it has obtained the seed, the manufacturer would have to get it on store shelves in a way that keeps costs to a minimum. That might require spending a little to make bags with catchy graphics to lure consumers in, but beyond that, the cheap seed would basically go straight into the bags and onto store shelves.
Taking into account the product-performance characteristics we set out, it’s likely you already see how that scenario might result in a product that’s sorely lacking in performance. The most obvious potential problem is with attraction, a factor that some manufacturers of low-priced seed products might compromise on to save costs. Another potential problem area concerns germination. Cheap seed often carries comparatively low germination rates. Manufacturers of cheap seed products might also compromise on how quickly those products can grow and how well they can withstand adverse conditions that might reduce the planting’s ability to develop or even survive. Buying the cheapest seed also carries many other potential drawbacks. You’ll be able to spot them as we discuss why Whitetail Institute seed products can never be the cheapest in the food plot market.
Whitetail Institute Food Plot Products
In comparison, what reliable indicators could you find to suggest that Whitetail Institute seed products can meet the Step 3 requirements? Again, we’ll ignore the attractive bags, and because the Whitetail Institute doesn’t pay celebrities to endorse its products, we’ll e
ven ignore the many positive comments and recommendations experts and celebrities give us on TV. As you’ll see, it takes a lot of time, effort and money to produce Whitetail Institute Seed products, but the Whitetail Institute knows it’s worth it and has proven it.
Product development: The Whitetail Institute develops its forage products through strict adherence to the scientific method, which is considered by scientists to be the exclusive process for reaching conclusions that are reliable. Reliability is assured by the scientist carefully controlling and replicating tests, and collecting and analyzing data from the tests purely as an observer. By following the scientific method in all phases of its development and testing, the Whitetail Institute ensures that its results are extremely reliable. On average, it takes the Institute about four to six years to go from idea to product, although some have taken even longer.
The Whitetail Institute scientifically develops new plant varieties specifically for food plots for deer. The Whitetail Institute also tests its forage components individually and in different ratios to each other to determine the best performing formula for each Whitetail Institute product. Testing is performed first at the Whitetail Institute and later at certified research stations across North America to determine optimum components, component ratios and seed rates. At all stages of testing, test blends are accessible by wild, free-ranging deer.
At the Whitetail Institute, real-world testing is not a step in new product development. It is a constant that starts with initial evaluation and continues as long as the Whitetail Institute offers the product. Most food plot seed companies don’t even have a research center or a qualified agronomist or scientist or deer biologist on staff!
Manufacturing: When it comes to manufacturing its forage blends, the Institute spares no expense or effort. That focus governs everything the company does from the evaluation of potential forage candidates through the process until the product is delivered to the customer.
Farmers who commercially produce proprietary Whitetail Institute seed must abide by strict requirements through the process, from initial planting throughout the growing cycle, to deliver seed that meets the high standards Whitetail Institute demands.
This process costs a little more, but it plays a huge part in the final result: You getting the best food plot products possible. The Whitetail Institute also coats its seeds with the finest polymer coatings before packaging (the coating is the brightly colored seed surface you see whenever you open a Whitetail Institute forage product). The Whitetail Institute’s Rainbond™ seed coating, for example, is a proprietary high-tech coating containing a polymer that acts like a mini-reservoir, absorbing up to 200 times its weight in water and keeping it next to the seed as it germinates and starts to grow.
As the seedling uses the water held by the coating, the water is replenished as the coating continues to absorb water from the soil. Why is Rainbond™ seed coating important? The first reason is seedling survivability. Raw seed can have a much lower survivability rate than seed that has been properly coated. The big killer of raw seed is having the seed germinate on tiny amounts of moisture that are insufficient for the seedling to survive. The coating on Whitetail Institute seeds helps ensure the seeds wait to germinate until sufficient moisture is present in the soil to sustain the seedlings. The second is inoculation. Some plant types require specific bacteria in the soil to grow and thrive.
In many cases, the required bacteria are already in the soil — but not always. Also, the Institute coats its seeds to hold inoculant up against seeds that require it. Without the coating, those seeds might require you to purchase inoculant and then mix it in with the seed immediately before planting. These are just some of the many steps the Whitetail Institute takes to ensure that its products are the best they can be.
Step 5: Buy the Product with the Highest Performance Potential Within Your Budget Most of us have to budget for hunting-related expenses. Armed with the aforementioned information, though, you’re ready to make informed decisions when it comes to buying seed for your food plots and, in doing so, maximize your odds of hunting success.
Are you making “informed” decisions on what food plot seed to buy? As you might have guessed, the answer is usually no if you just go straight to comparing prices. I hope this article has planted the seed (no pun intended) of the idea that you might need to do additional homework if you expect to get the most for your money. Now, a few final thoughts. Are Whitetail Institute products for everyone? Frankly, no. Some folks will always buy based on price alone.
And although that’s unfortunate from our perspective, it’s really OK. For those folks, it’s good that other food plot products are available. If you want the best, though, that’s why we’re here. The Whitetail Institute guarantees you the best in the industry, and it delivers!