Why deer feeders

[Jameson]

...so much bait being trolled...

Can anyone show where deer feeders were needed? What was the reason they were needed?

[PEATMOSS]

I'm not really pro-baiting per se, but the double standard ethics wise between food plots and baiting is really quite annoying.

[simpzenith]

InTheNorthwoods: I'm not opposed to baiting as long as it is legal. I just don't think there is a need for it. I'm originally from S.C. where baiting is legal in half the state and not the other half. Minnesota even looked at studies from South Carolina, comparing success rates of each. The non-baiting half had a higher success rate per hour on stand. When the case is made for youth and handicapped I also don't think it is necessary. Teaching our youths to hunt with bait only keeps them from learning real hunting skills. CatchPhotoFilet: MN archery season begins in September and I think firearm season is in November. I hunt from September to December with a bow and there are no 20 below days. If your only after big bucks, pick up a bow and extend your season. Hunting is just that, hunting. If you want to take the easy way out, head to Texas.

[InTheNorthwoods]

I'm not really pro-baiting per se, but the double standard ethics wise between food plots and baiting is really quite annoying.

The difference is that one is long standing habitat improvement, the other is temporary and artificially placed. I understand that the purpose is the same for many people - to draw animals in for hunting purposes - but there is definitely a difference in practice and benefit to the animals. Try planting a corn plot the first Monday in November and tell me if it works as well as placing a pile of corn kernels the same day for attracting deer.

If you think its ethically wrong to try draw animals into your position, then you should also be against almost any hunting tactic outside of blind luck wandering around, as every move we make as hunters is calculated to lead to greater success. If thats not true in your case, you aren't hunting, you're waiting to get lucky.

If you want to play the ethics theory game,

[Basseyes]

Originally Posted By: jigginjim

...What would be the difference between tripod feeder and a 50 X 100 ft foot plot.

If the local deer herd eats the food plot to the ground over night if can't be reloaded like a feeder can. The deer would move on from the wiped out food plot potentially to the next property.

Further, if anyone is really interested in the differences between a feeder and a food plot, how about you set up a feeder a short distance from a food plot. Likely best to find a non-hunting property for this experiment. Set-up a trail camera or two over each to record deer activity. Keep a detailed account of money and time personally invested for the entire year. Try and estimate how many calories you burn refilling the feeder vs working the food plot. Really, really get into the details of each. Than post a report here telling all of us the difference between the two. I, for one would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

That would be a cool report.

IMO baiting is a tool. Not a good one but a tool none the less. I helped a friend bait a pile one time in Wisconsin years back. I felt dirty doing it. The thing I thought was interesting is the friend never hunted over bait himself and had a better harvest record than family and friends who hunted over bait. Go figure.

I've baited for bear.

Did my first food plot this year.

The food plot is far more gratifying than dumping food on the ground for the deer.

[UdeLakeTom]

To do a deer plot, you also have to depend on nature, unless you can keep it watered some other way. A drought can wipe out a wild animal plot.

You can call it a deer plot, but we had one a couple of years ago and there were droppings in it that were not deer droppings. The plot was fairly worn out by opening of the season, and we did not see any deer going to or from it during the season.

Now, like others have said, pour enough corn, sunflower seeds, or acorns down, and you will have the deer going to it.

On a side note, one in our party does a pie dish of corn each season. The blue jays and red squirrels love it. We have never seen any deer tracks near it.

[jlm]

I have always gone on record that baiting should be legal. Still stand by this. It offers many advantages but the biggest two are safety and very good shot placement to surrender an animal quickly. Of course there are many aguements to the contrary, however most do not hold water. The old "it spreads disease" theory has never held up. And the "its unethical" theory....well, compared to what we use for hunting equipment, its difficult to defend this when most of us use tools that utilize the same premise....a tool to draw them in before you shoot. Scents, calls, agricultural fields, and many other devices. This is not to mention all our modern rifles, scopes, optics, bullets, game cams, tree stands etc. You can argue all you want, the fact is that we use many things that give us an unfair advantage compared to the good old days. Before you cast your deciding vote, think about these things. Additionally, please consider that this is legal in MANY states. This is not an ethical issue in my opinion. To call it unethical, you calling about half of us fellow hunters unethical in our hunting practice. That is exceptionally disrespectful to our fellow hunters. Just my opionion of course.

[Jameson]

I'm not really pro-baiting per se, but the double standard ethics wise between food plots and baiting is really quite annoying.

Very, very understandable.

I think we can all agree that bait piles, food plots, Oak trees producing acorns, apple orchards, alfalfa fields, etc are all food sources. Deer will travel to each of these areas to eat.

Only one of those listed above is there, because a product grown one place was moved to another place; bait piles. It is the act of moving the food from where it has grown to where we want to hunt the animal that stretches fair chase IMO.

[PEATMOSS]

Originally Posted By: PEATMOSS

I'm not really pro-baiting per se, but the double standard ethics wise between food plots and baiting is really quite annoying.

The difference is that one is long standing habitat improvement, the other is temporary and artificially placed. I understand that the purpose is the same for many people - to draw animals in for hunting purposes - but there is definitely a difference in practice and benefit to the animals. Try planting a corn plot the first Monday in November and tell me if it works as well as placing a pile of corn kernels the same day for attracting deer.

If you think its ethically wrong to try draw animals into your position, then you should also be against almost any hunting tactic outside of blind luck wandering around, as every move we make as hunters is calculated to lead to greater success. If thats not true in your case, you aren't hunting, you're waiting to get lucky.

If you want to play the ethics theory game,

To those that believe that clearing out a hole in the native forest, applying herbicide, pesticide and fertilizer to grow a patch of small grain and turnips="long standing habitat improvement", I must respectfully disagree.

Regarding the ethics of this issue, as the law is written and enforced in Mn. a hunter can legally go out on his property and fence off a 50'x50' patch, grow turnips, corn, pumpkins etc. then remove the fence a week before deer season and legally hunt over it. A hunter that drops an ice cream pail of corn on the ground is arrested, labeled a poacher, fined heavily and has his gun confiscated. If this seems logical to you, explain what I'm missing here.

[InTheNorthwoods]

To those that believe that clearing out a hole in the native forest, applying herbicide, pesticide and fertilizer to grow a patch of small grain and turnips="long standing habitat improvement", I must respectfully disagree.

Regarding the ethics of this issue, as the law is written and enforced in Mn. a hunter can legally go out on his property and fence off a 50'x50' patch, grow turnips, corn, pumpkins etc. then remove the fence a week before deer season and legally hunt over it. A hunter that drops an ice cream pail of corn on the ground is arrested, labeled a poacher, fined heavily and has his gun confiscated. If this seems logical to you, explain what I'm missing here.

So you must disagree with people being able to hunt any farm land in Minnesota also? If not, how do you differentiate that hunting farm lands is ok? That farm land was native prairie grass, woods, etc. before man altered the property. I don't think you are choosing to recognize that man has been altering the landscape since the dawn of time. These changes are habitat improvement, and food plots are just a new word for a practice that people have been doing forever. New growth and edge habitat have allowed whitetails to thrive and to reach numbers previously unheard of. If we just allowed lands to become overgrown or old growth forests, the quality of the habitat actually worsens. Planting food plots is really no different than logging, burning, mowing, haying, etc. (all creating new lush growth desired by deer that allows them to benefit year round).

As to the differences between baiting and a food plot, there are many. One big difference between baiting and food plots is that you can place a bait site anywhere, including in a bucks bedroom. Good luck planting a food plot in many areas. Second, bait is concentrated into a very small area that the deer have to go to use, whereas a food plot by nature has to be larger - a small plot would be depleted quickly and cannot be replenished daily like a bait site.

Finally, the biggest differnce of all is that a food plot is grown on the ground in that particular place, where as bait is artifically placed. Any bounty available to deer has been grown from seed in a food plot - just like an acorn from an oak, an apple from a crabapple tree, etc. You may choose not to find that to be a fundamental change that you are asking for (as they are both food for deer), but there is certainly a distinguishment between the two. Your example of fencing off an area is a good one in theory, but you can do the same thing to apple trees, oaks dropping acorns, etc. if you choose. That fence won't change whether or not the plot will grow or be desired at the time of year you want to hunt over it.

[Musky Buck]

Just because some states have it as legal doesn't tell me it's the right thing to do, look at capital punishment, state by state deal. Anyway, the acorn argument is very limited to september as is the apple argument, my main thing is during rifle and musket, especially musket, you could during a cold year and one where the farmers are efficient in plowing the fields under before late fall/winter draw deer in like crazy with bait. I don't care about the technical advances helping us out, we are discussing a deers stomach and feeding them in remote locations to "hold" deer on our properties. Since we already have all these technological advances that must not be as effective as some claim or we wouldn't have wide spread baiting going on, who would need to.

[Musky Buck]

I just don't want 600,000 deer hunters dumping millions of pounds of bait in our state every year. Shells, check, license check, gun check, blaze orange check, 500 pounds of shell corn, not.

[PEATMOSS]

I'll gladly conceed that baiting is a somewhat more ethically questionable practice than hunting over foodplots. I have never disputed this, although I may not have been very clear.

To be clear, I am not in any way opposed to folks hunting over foodplots and even if I was, I don't feel as though I have the authority to impose my attitudes,values and ethics on others. I believe our laws should protect the resource and provide for public safety, nothing more.

Farm fields, orchards, forest clearcuts etc. are a part of our overall landscape. They all serve a purpose.

Foodplots, like bait piles are different in that their PRIMARY purpose is to attract game for the purpose of hunting. It seems fundamentally unfair to me that those with the time and money to establish a foodplot are afforded one set of ethics, whereas a hunter that does not is required to hunt without an artificial food source. Food plots attract deer. Those deer attracted to a foodplot do not just materialize out of a stump. They come from the surrounding area putting other hunters at a disadvantage.

[Musky Buck]

I hear that Peat I do. Field/food plot thing like how about the DNR seeding down trails with clover in the chippewa national forest so they wouldn't be allowed to do that because it's open to public hunting. People have the time and money if they choose to put their funds toward it not the lake home, rv's, etc. I see a food plot helping out lots of critters and I see baiting deer only helping the hunter.

[BobT]

If I'm driving down the highway eating an apple and then toss the core out the window, is that littering?

If so, why then should it be okay to dump a pile of corn or other organic material in the forest?

[Musky Buck]

Just googled North dakota baiting, got some good insight, glad SD and Montana are against it and the it's back on ND's radar to do away with. The one guy for it even said we wouldn't have gotten those deer without the bait most likely proving it's effectivenes. I've tried scent, drip bags, you name it calls etc. bait would easily override all this technology but what about the deer that get conditioned to it and then after muzzy season are showing up to lick an empty bucket, they'd be somewhat in places where normally seasonally they wouldn't be correct ? I think it would change deer habits and routines, it did where my neighbors are big deer baiters already for the past 5 years.

[CatchPhotoFilet]

IF a person owns land like many do for the purpose of deer hunting only and plant a food plot is that food plot not put there to intentionally shoot a deer? same purpose as if I go and dump a pile of corn in the woods. Farmers leaving hay bails in their fields over the winter and then hunting the field, that is baiting but is that considered wrong? To me there are no real reasons to NOT bait. The main reason not to bait is its unethical. To be unethical would have to be decided by the person hunting over the bait. Not the crowd of naysayers throwing in their opinions. Baiting goes on whether it is legal or not. Instead of total banning there needs to be tolerance.

[Musky Buck]

Just read as much on baiting as google allows, Minnesota has it right, if there's a remote chance it can spread disease I want no part of it.

[InTheNorthwoods]

It seems fundamentally unfair to me that those with the time and money to establish a foodplot are afforded one set of ethics, whereas a hunter that does not is required to hunt without an artificial food source. Food plots attract deer. Those deer attracted to a foodplot do not just materialize out of a stump. They come from the surrounding area putting other hunters at a disadvantage.

I understand your point here, but I think thats the DNR's point is that it takes time and effort to plant food plots and those efforts provide the potential for long term habitat improvement and increase the health of the deer herd. You can't just run out before season and bait. If people make the effort to improve the land over time, and not just make a temporary attraction that has no benefit on long term health (and is potentially a high source for disease transfer according to some), that people can utilize that area for hunting.

To be fair, I should also state that I am not necessarily against baiting, and would have no problems hunting over bait if invited to hunt someones land where that is the practice and it is legal.

[lakevet]

I don't hunt anymore but did for a long time. I see some folks have put out deer feeders in a couple areas-tripod things with tank of feed on top. Can they then sit back and shoot deer that come to the feeder? Do they put them out just to draw deer to the area? I am new to this sort of thing and honestly don't understand what is going on.

Is it legal? Ethical? Everybody do it?

In the 1950's the average household spent approximately 30% of its income on the grocery bills. The 1930's depression soup lines and WW2 food rationing were fairly recent memories. Deer hunting then was very straightforward. License, gun, go out and hunt down a deer where it was at. The thought of dumping food out in the woods that potentially was consumable by humans such as grain, carrots, beets, etc for deer to eat was universally considered totally inconceivable and wasteful. Some of my older relatives use the word immoral. Spending time and money to grow a crop just to get a deer as opposed to feeding people falls in the same category for them. Reminds them of the european system where the rich/royalty have done that. One of the reasons some of my ancestor's left there and came to the USA.

Today the average household spends approximately 11% of its household income on the grocery bills. Food shortages of any kind are inconceivable to much but not all of the public. The thought of dumping food potentially consumable by people to get "your" deer is encouraged, promoted and marketed heavily to create demand that didn't previously exist. Same with "mini fields" better known as food plots. The deer population has been at all time highs the past few years. We are a country awash in food and wild game to hunt and eat. However, not everyone has access to enough food.

For me personally, the place for corn, carrots, beets, pumpkins, rye, oats, apples, etc is on my family's dinner table right next to the venison. Friends and the local food shelf have been grateful for the extra we can't eat ourselves. Also feeding people is excellent PR to turn nonhunters against PETA's point of view. One tends to remember who fed them when they vote.

lakevet

[Jim Uran]

IMO Plots are just one well groomed bait pile that gives the hunter the advantage, the same advantage one would get by "dumping" a pile of corn out in the woods, just more work.

[B. Amish]

I got this in an email from Deer & Deer Hunting. It's a snippet from an article by Matt Harper, "Corn: Blessing or Curse?" in their October 2009 issue.

Quote:

Pros

Probably the biggest reason for corn’s popularity as a feed ingredient can be found in its nutrient profile. Energy, in the form of carbohydrates and fats/oils, make up the largest dietary need for all animals. Corn has a fat content of approximately 4 percent and is loaded with carbohydrates in the form of highly digestible starch. This combination makes corn akin to rocket fuel in terms of energy value.

When deer consume corn, it is rapidly digested by specific rumen microbes that feed largely on starch. The acids produced by this fermentation process can drop the pH in rumen by an amount proportional to the amount of corn consumed. If consumed in large amounts, the microbes responsible for fiber digestion (cellulose and hemicellulose) decrease in number due to lack of food and decreased pH.

The longer corn is consumed, the more the rumen microbial population shifts to a higher percentage of starch digesting microbes and the lower the pH will drop. As long as this process occurs gradually — and at least some forage or fiber is present in the diet — the deer’s rumen will adjust and few problems will occur.

Cons

If the corn is immediately taken away or no longer available following "slug" (binge) eating and deer return to a high fiber diet, the rumen microbial population cannot effectively digest the fibrous foods. Deer will effectively have little to no nutrients until the rumen population can adjust to the high-fiber diet. In essence, a type of starvation occurs.

Many diseases are spread via contact — whether directly or indirectly. So, the argument of a corn “pile” increasing the odds of spreading disease is a valid point, especially if practicing “slug” feeding. This will result in corn being present for multiple days, allowing several deer to use the same pile and increase the chances of disease transmission.

"slug feeding" aka baiting.