Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/554642
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 1 1 2 a few die-hards, went mainstream. About 20 years after the acceptance of food plots, statistics gathered by Pope and Young and Boone and Crockett showed a near 500 percent increase in record-book-quality bucks. I believe that stat mirrors the development of deer-specific food plots and the accompanying interest in quality-deer-management principles. I watched in some amazement as hunters from Wall Street to Main Street increasingly traded their suits and ties for jeans and boots and put their hands to farming tools, hauling improvised planting implements behind their ATVs, and watching the weather like any concerned farmer. Today, food plotting is a lifestyle served by many products from utility vehicles, small tractors, specialized plowing implements, and much more. More important perhaps, American hunters returned to the soil and discovered the magic of seeing tender green things sprout out of the ground. They enjoyed the satisfaction of knowing it was their hard work—their plowing, planting, and TLC—that made their crops possible and knowing that those crops could benefit their whitetails and their hunting experience. After all, you probably don't have to go very far in most of our family trees to find farmers or those who lived off the land in some fashion. Again, comparing bass and bucks . . . As anglers embraced live release and clean waters as preached through BASS, they saw they could not only protect and preserve the resource they loved, but actually improve it. So too did hunters become proactive in improving whitetail herds with improved nutrition and responsible management practices, and encouraging their neighbors to do so as well. In each case, it was a gratifying journey toward stewardship that has served both hunter and angler well. And as usual, outdoorsmen lead the way. Note: Ray Scott is founder of the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society and the Whitetail Institute of North America. plots held deer in specific locations. Nutrition control empowered sportsmen, and it didn't take long for hunters across the country to embrace food plots. There were skeptics to be sure, but it was hard to ignore the anecdotal information that was pouring in from seed users everywhere, from cold northern climes to sizzling southern states. More and more dedicated hunters embraced food plots as their success became evident; and food plots, once the dominion of bone growth. In short, food plots not only attracted and held deer, but also improved the health of the herd. For that reason most of our research and development at the Whitetail Institute focused on protein levels along with palatability and plant hardiness. The power of protein and food-plot placement gave hunters an advantage in terms of hunting deer with bigger racks than deer that simply foraged the woods and fields, and strategically placed