Portion of Proceeds To Be Donated To Wildlife Mississippi To Promote Deer Management In This State

MADISON, GA - Until recently, hunters and wildlife enthusiasts who wanted to produce an efficient supplemental food plot for deer had to plant a mixture for the fall and replant a mixture for the spring. This was simply because there was not a mixture available that would survive from early fall through late spring. This concerned Larry Castle, CWB, Wildlife Biologist and Whitetail Deer Program Coordinator for The Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. Since the MDWFP encourages hunters to spend more time and resources enhancing wildlife habitat through good land use practices, he and other biologists at the department started evaluating and developing a complete mixture that would attract and hold deer for more than one season.

They were looking for a mixture that would make good use of a wide variety of soil conditions while producing high quality forage that would survive more than one season. Their efforts paid off. For the past four years, the biologists have planted their mixture in a wide variety of soils and locations throughout Mississippi with superb results. According to Castle, "It works better than any mixture we've ever planted before. It seems to be highly preferred by deer. It produces a large amount of forage and has a high protein and palatability level. The key is that the mixture contains four different species of plants, each having different maturity dates, so it supplies a high quality forage for deer from Mid-October through late May and in some cases, into June. It is a mixture of oats, wheat, crimson clover and arrowleaf clover. Upon planting, the cereal grains emerge first giving deer immediate grazing, then in very early spring, the crimson clover emerges followed by growth of the arrowleaf clover in late May. This combination of plants provides supplemental nutrition for deer October through May."

This evaluation has led the MDWFP to approve the mixture contained in the Rackmaster brand Mississippi Complete Food Plot Mixture, which is produced and marketed to the public by Pennington Seed. It gives the wildlife enthusiast a quality product that has been evaluated and proven by Mississippi's top wildlife biologists. A portion of the proceeds from each bag will be donated to Wildlife Mississippi to promote deer management in this state. Says Castle, "We are comfortable that the public now has a mixture we have approved. It is a ready-to-plant mixture that is pre-inoculated, blended and bagged at a better price than the consumer can purchase all the components individually."

Pennington Seed has had an ongoing relationship with various state, local and university systems in Mississippi in supporting successful wildlife management through educational information and a complete line of quality wild game products. Pennington is the largest packager of grass seed in the world and a leader in the manufacture and distribution of lawn, garden, turf care, forage grasses, wild game and bird feed products.