Real World's Bedding in a Bag

Build Your Ultimate Whitetail Sanctuary and Hold More Deer on Your Property

At Plant & Pursue, we know that cultivating a successful hunting property requires looking at the big picture. You can plant the best food plots in the neighborhood, but if your land lacks secure, thick cover, mature bucks will spend their daylight hours somewhere else. To consistently hold deer year-round, you must provide them with a sanctuary where they feel completely safe.

If you want to stop leasing your deer to the neighbors and start holding them on your own dirt, Real World’s Bedding in a Bag is the foundation of your habitat strategy.

What It Is: "Bedding in a Bag" is a highly engineered, premium blend of tall Native Warm Season Grasses (NWSG) specifically formulated to create the ultimate whitetail bedding cover. While generic grass blends often fall flat at the first sign of winter, this specific mix of Switchgrass, Big Bluestem, and Indian Grass is selected for its rigid stalk strength and unmatched standability.

More Than Just Tall Grass: This blend is designed to grow 6 to 8 feet tall, creating a dense micro-climate that shields deer from biting winter winds and bitter cold. In the spring and summer, the umbrella-like canopy provides the perfect, predator-resistant hiding cover for does to drop and raise their fawns.

Key Benefits:

• Unmatched Winter Structure: Stands tall through heavy snow, ice, and high winds, providing crucial thermal cover when the herd needs it most.
• Holds Mature Bucks: Creates the thick, secluded security cover that mature whitetails require for daytime bedding.
• Exceptional Fawning Habitat: Protects the next generation of your herd from coyotes and other predators.
• Strategic Property Design: Perfect for creating dedicated sanctuary zones, transition corridors, or screening the edges of your food plots.

Product Specifications

Feature	Specification
Coverage Area	1 Bag (7lb) plants 1 Acre
Seed Blend	Premium Native Warm Season Grasses (Switchgrass, Big Bluestem, Indian Grass)
Mature Height	6 to 8 feet
Planting Depth	1/8 to 1/4 inch (Do NOT plant too deep)
Planting Window	Spring (Once soil temperatures reach 60°F) or Frost Seeded in late Winter

 

Pro Tip from Plant & Pursue: Expert education is the key to habitat success. Native grasses require patience and preparation! Do not skip weed control. Because these grasses spend their first year building deep root systems, they won't look very impressive in year one and can easily be choked out by weeds. Use a pre-emergent herbicide (like Simazine) and ensure your seedbed is completely clean before planting. By year two, you will see explosive growth, and by year three, you will have a bulletproof whitetail sanctuary that will last for decades.

Empower your pursuit. Grab your Bedding in a Bag today and take the next step in mastering your property’s layout.

 

Planting and Maintenance Instructions:

Establishing the warm-season native grasses contained in the Real World’s “Bedding-in-a-Bag” mix can require some extra effort compared to other crops. This blend contains a total of 7# PLS (pure live seed) per acre. This is plenty of seed when a properly adjusted native grass planting drill is used. For other planting methods, such as broadcast seeding, you may need to plant at a higher rate per acre. Please keep this in mind when ordering.

Note:

The switchgrass seed is in a separate bag from the mix of big bluestem and Indian grass, due to the differences in the seed itself. When using a native grass drill, there will be multiple seed boxes. The mix of big bluestem and Indian grass should be used in the native grass box, which should be set at a seeding rate of 5# per acre. The switchgrass seed should be placed in the small seeds box, and it should be set at 2# per acre.

Proper Planting Time:

RWWS Whitetail Bedding Mix should be planted in mid to late spring when soil temperatures approach 60 degrees. In most parts of the country, April and early May is the perfect times for most of the United States.

Planting Site:

RWWS Whitetail Bedding Mix works best in open field areas with lots of sunlight and well to moderately well-drained soils. These grasses will not establish well in areas with lots of shade or when in competition with other vegetation. They are also not well suited for areas that flood and stand in water for more than a few days or in “gumbo” type soils. pH is not critical for these grasses, and they are suited for the entire United States. Like any plant, these grasses will grow better in more fertile soils. Most sites will not require additional fertilizer.

Site preparation and Planting:

A good stand of RWWS Whitetail Bedding Mix can be achieved without any tillage of the soil, provided the ground is free of other vegetation and a no-till drill is used for planting. Planting depth should be 1/8 inch. DO NOT PLANT TOO DEEP! Fields that have previously been in other crops are perfect for no-till planting of this mix.

Herbicide:

It is very important to spray the planting site with a combination of Round-Up (glyphosate) and Plateau herbicides. Do NOT use more than 4 oz of Plateau per acre! Round-Up will kill any weeds growing on the site and Plateau is a herbicide specially designed for native grass plantings. It works as a residual (preventative) and will curtail later weed competition. This herbicide application is extremely important for getting your grass stand established quickly.

Broadcasting:

Planting by broadcasting can be done; however, additional steps will be needed. This seed is very fluffy and difficult to broadcast, but it can be done. To help the seed flow through a broadcast seeder, mix the seed with pelleted lime. When broadcasting, you may need to use more seed per acre. You will also need to work the ground with a disc or other tillage tool, lightly drag the seedbed after broadcasting, or preferably use a culti-packer to firmly press the seed into the soil for good seed-soil contact.

Do not attempt to establish these grasses unless the planting site is completely free of live vegetation!

Maintenance:

It is not necessary to fertilize these grasses. If weeds become too bad during the year of planting, you can spray the field with 2-4D herbicide, which will kill all broadleaf weeds and plants but will not harm any grasses. Do not use 2- 4D until these grasses have at least 4 leaves per plant. You can also mow the plot to help with weeds, but do not mow lower than 12”. These grasses respond very well to fire. If possible, it is advised to burn off these grasses about every third year in the early spring before green up. Fire not only stimulates these grasses but also sets back weed competition and kills woody sprouts and seedlings. With regular burnings, these grass stands can last for decades. Keep this in mind when planning your planting. In many situations, it is a good idea to plant a firebreak around the edge of fields planted to these grasses. Real Worlds Clover & Chicory mix makes a good firebreak and also offers the deer a travel corridor and a place to feed just outside of their bedding sanctuary.

Tips:

 Areas planted in RWWS Whitetail Bedding Mix make ideal bedding cover for deer and other wildlife, but there are a few things to keep in mind to make them more attractive to wildlife. Very small fields (under 2 or 3 acres) are not nearly as attractive to game as larger fields (5 acres+). Fields of these grasses will not be utilized nearly as much if there is undue hunting pressure in or very near them. We suggest that you never enter your grass fields but instead use them as sanctuaries for the deer on your property and hunt around the field edges.

Notes:

RWWS Whitetail Bedding Mix may be used on some CRP (conservation reserve program) projects. You will likely need to add a small amount of other grasses and/or forbs to get a mixture that is acceptable to meet CRP specifications. In such cases, you might not need to order as much seed as you have acres to plant. For example, a 10-acre planting may use 8 acres of RWWS Whitetail Bedding mix and a few pounds of other seeds to be acceptable to USDA requirements. Be sure to check with your local NRCS/USDA office before using this mix on a CRP project or your funding could be in jeopardy.

When planting warm-season native grasses for bedding cover, always remember that bigger is better when it comes to plot size. Deer are much more likely to bed in bigger plots of these grasses than smaller ones. On our properties, we never plant plots of these grasses smaller than 5 acres.

Coverage: 1 acre per bag.

The best one-bag solution for screening and bedding!