Real World or Gamekeeper soybeans
Whitetail Deer
Contributors to this thread:
Which do you prefer or is there an ag bean that is as good as these are claimed to be?
Thanks
Any ag bean will do and the deer don’t know the difference. I wish people could do side by side comparison for themselves on all these fancy foodplot seeds. They could all see for themselves that there is absolutely no noticeable difference in any of them
I disagree somewhat, 1booner. I won’t say that the Real World beans are any more attractive than an ag bean, but I’ve definitely seen the deer prefer one variety of bean over another. I couldn’t tell you what any of those varieties were, but I’ve seen them decimate my plots by mid January, yet barely touch the beans in a neighbor’s food plot one year. They still had beans in the pods by the time Spring rolled around. Also, it wasn’t due to a surplus of forage for them either. A good friend of mine experienced the same thing in a different part of the state as well.
Kyrob...... One of Real World’s selling points on their beans (one variety anyway) is that they are shatter resistant, which means the pods hold the actual beans inside of them longer into the winter, instead of splitting open and the beans falling out onto the ground and spoiling. IMO, that’s not that big of a deal. We see deer here in Iowa all winter long foraging out in picked bean fields, eating waste beans off the ground. 1booner is correct that there are a lot of regular ag beans that are probably just as good. Shatter resistance is a trait that is developed in a lot of ag bean varieties to help lose fewer beans during harvest.
I think I need to start writing down which beans that I plant from now one, just in case.
Thanks for the info guys, I appreciate it. Probably just try some sh beans since they are cheaper. No one around my farm puts any beans out so they may not know an ag bean from a fancy bean.
I'm planting Ag beans this year in Ohio. Fields are too big for RW beans. Gonna try the cheap route this season. Will be hard to compare my NY results to my OH results as I have 10x the deer pop in Ohio.
Better fence them Pat!! Shawn
I’ve used Eagle beans and RW beans, I could tell no difference. I used generic beans one year and got a pigweed infestation from hell, as well as some kind of weed that I didn’t recognize, but I had trouble getting rid of it too. My only advice is to check the label on any ag beans for weed content.
I'm fencing in my small field 4 acres, but my 12 acre field is gonna be open for browsing.
Do the real world beans need to be inoculated? There is no mention of it on their website but most articles about beans in general mention it when reading.
KyRob....the short answer is no.
Agree with t-roy. Deer have a preference. We started with Eagle beans. Decided to switch to Real World for the shatter resistance. First year, we planted 1/2 Eagle and half Real World in the same field. Deer walked right by the Eagle beans to get to Real World.
I'm a firm believer shatter resistant is a true benefit. When our plots were Eagle, there were always tons of volunteer beans coming up in the spring. Since switching to Real World, the number of spring volunteer plants is WAY down. Tells me...more beans are ending up in the deer than on the ground.
I had deer walk right by real world to get to my pioneer beans. I’ve had deer walk by whitetail clover to get to generic purple top turnips. The facts are the deer will eat what you plant and there is no way to know if you would have better hunting with real world or any other brand name. There are many varieties of shatter resistant beans. Are we supposed to believe that real world genetically engineered their own bean for shatter resistance?
I've started getting advertisements from Deer Creek Seeds in WI.
Does anyone have any info about them?
Thank you
Agreed, 1booner. My guess is that Real World probably tested a bunch of different varieties of ag beans for palatability to see if they could find ones that the deer seemed to prefer- (Gen 1). They then did similar testing with some shatter resistant varieties- (Gen 2). I highly doubt they spent millions and millions of dollars on research developing the perfect deer bean.
Troy,
The micro-habitat project I documented here, the deer ate the regular ag beans all summer, ate the standing pods after maturity as well, but I really started to attract deer after I mowed the beans and "shattered" them all over the place. I was getting up to 9 deer a night on a one acre plot, and there are tons of ag fields nearby. Ph was perfect 7 and I put down a "hot" application of fertilizer and some micro-nutrients as well.
I have deer walk by certain plots also, but I am inclined to believe soil fertility and ph played a role. I am convinced the "sweeter" soil can be tasted in the plant consumed. Maybe it is just me, but some fields with a slightly different soil structure seem to respond better than others when the same nutrients are applied.
I grew up in the city though so I probably don't have a clue, LOL.
Just to show what it looked like after mowing. I will add the rye grain broadcasted in the soybeans as they began to mature was clipped heavily, so that might have something to do with it as well in terms of attractiveness, obviously.
I've noticed the same deal. We planted some asgrow a few years ago that was completely mowed to the ground. Only 3" tall when they hit them. It's an old # but available, group 4 to.