Baiting.....the dirty little secret

[Fish to Win]

BIGLAKE-

I think putting corn/apples out to draw deer in and planting a food plot to draw a deer in are the same and both should be banned. You are benefiting while hunting over a food plot just as you are over a pile of corn. You are justifying food plots by saying it helps out the deer the whole year, why not hunt away from your food plot during the open season so you do not have an advantage over the rest of us that do not.

[Mark Christianson]

It just so happens that my rifle stand is not on one of our plots.

Shame on anyone that hunts near a cornfield then, if what you say is what you believe. What I am doing is no different than what a huge portion of our deer hunters do today by sitting on a cornfield edge come opening day.

So if I go to corn, soybeans, alfalfa, is that an acceptable practice?

[Fish to Win]

Most people/farmers don't plant Corn, Soybeans and Alfalfa to make it easier to bring in a deer, it is planted by farmers as a means of $.

Most years the corn in my area is harvested by the deer opener anyway. Hunting over the corn field is wrong but OK if you are set up in between the bedding areas and feeding areas.

[CodyDawg]

The point that really irks me is all the guys who work at hunting get the shaft by the guys who bait. They are cheaters, plain and simple according to the law.

As for food plots, that is not the same as baiting in any way, shape, or form. Fish to Win, you say that it is ok to sit between the bedding area and the corn....so you are using the corn to your advantage. What is acceptable to you, halfway? A little closer to the corn? Pretty close to the corn? As BLB stated, food plots take work and benefit wildlife all year. I would hazard a guess that most people who care enough about the resource to plant a food plot don't bait. The baiters are predomimantly the lazy slob hunters.

Just think, if the estimates thrown out in the article are anywhere near correct, most of the people reading this have or are baiting. How sad is that. Personally, I have never seen anyone bait. Our party of 9 does not and I am pretty confident our neighbors do not.

[Fish to Win]

So if something takes "A LOT OF WORK" it is ethical and OK to practice. Just because you take a lot of time out of your day and $ to do it does not mean it is any better than buying $5.00 bag of corn and taking 10 Min. to spill it out. I agree that baiting is so wrong on so may levels but I also think that planting a food plot on purpose to attract deer is wrong.

[Deitz Dittrich]

I like the fact that this debate has stayed relitivly calm. I have really nothing to add to the debate other than to ask a few more questions...

First off, let me say I have never hunted over bait in minnesota and I never would. For me laws are there for a reason!.. I may not always agree with a law, but that does not give me or anybody else the right to break that law.

With that said...IF someone is not breaking a law, who are we to judge them. If someone plants a food plot to attract game of any sort, which is perfectly legal, then we have no right to judge that person. To me baiting and hunting over a food plot are different, but not a whole lot. And rattling, scents, calling, doing drives are not all that different either. However, making drives, calling, putting out scents salt licks ,mineral blocks, planting food plots, and rattling are all legal. Use those to your advantage all you want, but do not judge someone who is abiding by the law.

[Mark Christianson]

I completely agree with one thing Fish.

There are a lot of laws that make things legal to do, but I don't necessarily like the laws that allow them to be done.

No question.

PS - Guess how many deer I have harvested this year on our farm? Zero. Its not a gaurantee that I will harvest a deer just because we have plots dedicated to wildlife.

[Havin' Fun]

2 thoughts from Wisconsin.

1. My county baiting is LEGAL. I have used a large pile of apples. Didn't see one single deer. I have however shot 2 deer NOT over those piles. I think bait piles not only make a hunting lazy, it makes your deer lazy and they don't move til dark.

2. Baiting really hurts the public land guys or those who don't. It's really a problem here for those who hunt public land because the deer no longer use the state and national forest lands like they use too.

[Gissert]

Fish to Win -

I have been trying to get my arms around how baiting and food plots are equivelant. I see the point you are trying to make, but I have observed that food plots are a earlier season source of nutrition for deer. They just have not proven (to me, anyway) to be this huge magnet that they hit like clockwork every day during the hunting months.

I planted my first plot this year. In fact, Big Lake Bass showed me how to get it done. I also put in a mineral lick and a trail camera to check the results. Through the summer, I had literally hundreds of photos of does, fawns, and at least 8 different bucks using this plot. I even managed to get six bucks at once in one shot. The heavy use of this plot continued until the last week of August. Once the velvet started coming off the bucks, they disappeared. I would get one photo every week or so of a buck during daylight hours. The does and fawns still used the plot, but much less. The mineral lick has not been used much at all since mid September.

Deer move into their fall patterns, and start working the ag crops. I have not seen one deer in my plot during rifle season, but then again, I only watched it one morning. The deer were not using it. Thus, I hunted elsewhere. They have been along the edges of the woods, feeding in grass coming up through a chisel plowed bean field. They have been bedding in swamp grass and evergreens. They are following the same fall patterns I have observed on this property for two decades, and the food plot has not changed that.

[BLACKJACK]

Food plots just help get and keep deer in the area, plus they provide some added nutrition for the deer, and if you have a corn plot, it will provide them winter food, but its still hunting, the deer will spot you/smell you, just if you were hunting a corn or alfalfa field.

On the other hand, baiting draws them to one specific spot and is very effective. I have a couple of trail cameras and I wanted to draw the deer to them and I tried salt blocks, minerals, molasses, apples, oats, and corn. By far the most effective was corn. I'd dump a gallon over the salt block and I'd have over 100 pictures in a week. Now that I've stopped dumping the corn because of hunting season, I'm lucky to get 10 pictures a week.

I personally don't think that baiting should be allowed, it gives the baiters an unfair advantage. I was amazed to read the Strib articles and find out how prevalent it was. They're doing the right thing, publisize it and announce the fines, it'll stop.

[Kodiak]

i dont know if this was mentioned before in this post, but you can see the corn piles from the air with ease from an airplane, there was a story in the strib about that with pictures...did anyone see any bears in the air looking for piles when you where out there this season?

[Quackaddict9]

I saw the aerial picture from the DNR in the star tribune newspaper but not on the star trib HSOforum.. but putting out corn piles works like heck and keeps others from shooting these little bucks while they stay around my property which makes me happy

[ddsbyday]

Scents, rattling, dumping out a pile of corn are all examples of baiting. Same with ducks. Calls,decoys, and the evil mechanical decoy. High heals, ear rings,hair bleach,same thing. Bucktails with a bead,a glow jig with a colored magot, its all baiting. The only connection I do not get is how taking the time to establish a enviroment for a fish or a deer or a women for that matter could be concidered baiting. If you want to beat the evil mechanical decoy or have a chance at one of the bigger fish or larger bucks you have to work at it. The laws continue to change. Some people call themselves hunters because they shot a nice buck over a pile of corn. Some poach them with a spotlight at night. I just can not see establishing an enviroment for big game would be any different than restoring a wetland so that ducks or pheasants would come.

[chucker34]

You can't deny that the purpose of a food plot is to attract deer. Is that baiting? In its simplest definition, yes. Is it baiting by the legal definition? Not in Minnesota.

From what I've seen firsthand and read, deer are on the move constantly when they're not sleeping. Unlike cattle, they're not going to spend the whole day in a food plot you put out. So it's not going to alter their regular travel patterns all that much. They may visit the plot at predictable times but they won't be there every day. Just like they won't be at your bait pile every day. So growing a food plot or dumping a pile of corn on the ground isn't going to guarantee anything. You still have to be there at the right time, go undetected, and make a good shot. By the way, we have tons of WMAs around here and I rarely see any of the ducks they were intended for more than one or two weekends a year. Just because you grow it or dump it doesn't mean they'll come all the time.

I look at food plots as a more enjoyable, legal alternative to dumping food on the ground. It's healthier for the deer and it just "feels" like it's a better (not to mention legal again) way to do it. Food plots may get deer to stop off in your hunting grounds during hunting season. They may not. Regardless, it's still pretty cool to watch deer browsing on a small patch of clover or beans that you put there.

The nice thing about food plots is that anyone can do it if you have your own land or permission from the landowner. I don't have any large ones nor any heavy equipment. I just rake up the ground and plant here and there in small openings in the woods which otherwise wouldn't have been bare dirt covered with leaves.

[chucker34]

"With that said...IF someone is not breaking a law, who are we to judge them. If someone plants a food plot to attract game of any sort, which is perfectly legal, then we have no right to judge that person. To me baiting and hunting over a food plot are different, but not a whole lot. And rattling, scents, calling, doing drives are not all that different either. However, making drives, calling, putting out scents salt licks ,mineral blocks, planting food plots, and rattling are all legal. Use those to your advantage all you want, but do not judge someone who is abiding by the law."

Bingo. It really irritates me to see see writers/editors in hunting and fishing magazines (not here by the way) criticize bear or deer hunters who bait legally in a state that allows it. That's really bad for hunting and great PR for anti-hunters who want what we do outlawed altogether. If you don't like baiting but it's legal in your state, fine. You don't have to agree with it but don't go after the hunters who are doing so legally. Talk to your local and state representatives to see how or if it can be banned. But don't start some campaign against other hunters, even if you don't agree with the way they are legally doing things.

[FOOT]

BIGLAKE & BIGBUCKS, thanks for clarifying the salt/mineral issue. Either the CO got mixed up about the deer blocks or I didn't communicate very well.

Thanks again

[rabbit lake dude]

Sucks to be all you guys. I live in wisconsin. where you can bait. I think baiting is fine. And I am not fat and lazy. It just that minnesota is so tight on all their hunting and fishing regs. I do rifle hunt in minnesota and I do follow their laws, of no baiting. Think about it you can use scents to hunt isn't that baiting, why not food. You can kill 5 deer. but you cant bait, how stupid is that

[BLACKJACK]

No rabbitdude, it sucks to be you. Is it really hunting if you shoot a deer over a pile of corn? Are you going to feel the sense of accomplishment of scouting out the 'right' spot and then actually harvesting a deer after your hard work?

[Mr. B]

I thought that WI had changed their laws to make baiting illegal.

I am not sure, I know that batting was legal there a few years ago. But I thought with the discovery of CWD in WI that baiting had been outlawed?

[lawdog]

I think Wisc. did change the law a few years back. I hunted over there by a bait pile twice and never liked it. I felt like I was cheating, even though it was legal. I didn't shoot a deer over the thing either time.

I also found this article very surprising, but perhaps after I thought about it its a geography thing. I've never seen or heard of anyone baiting around here, but then I thought, why would you anyway? There is boot loads of corn around here for the deer, more than you could ever put out for bait, so maybe it just isn't going to work here and that's why I've never seen it.

Regardless of whether you agree with baiting or not, the fact that people are doing it when its against the law is shameful and wrong. If you think you should be able to bait, work to get the law changed, don't just brake the law. But if you do just brake the law, I hope you get caught and ticketed!

[Nova]

Food plots are not even close to baiting. The plot is a year round source of nutrition for the deer. If you call hunting over a food plot baiting then in theory, hunting in the woods is baiting. Deer eat browse don't they? well, that's a food sorce and therefore hunting in the woods is baiting. Biglakes is doing his deer a great service by giving them a year round source of nutrition. He has also helped a lot of us on this site including me start a food plot to help our deer through tough times.

[rabbit lake dude]

There is 7 or 8 counties in wisconsin that do not allow baiting. The rest of the state allows 2 gallons of anykind of bait per person per 40 acres of private or state land with no 2 bait sites within 100yards of eachother. No animal parts and no honey. Not sure why the honey. It could be a bacteria thing? I dont think it is cheating. The dnr set up these regs. And if its illegal I dont understand why people get so upset about it. If you had 10 guys in one room not one person would agree on the same thing!!! I wish I owned my own land, because I would grow food plots for the deer. And I commend the people who do spend time to grow food plots. Because of them we all have better hunting!!!

[rabbit lake dude]

There is 7 or 8 counties in wisconsin that do not allow baiting. The rest of the state allows 2 gallons of anykind of bait per person per 40 acres of private or state land with no 2 bait sites within 100yards of eachother. No animal parts and no honey. Not sure why the honey. It could be a bacteria thing? I dont think it is cheating. The dnr set up these regs. And if its legal I dont understand why people get so upset about it. If you had 10 guys in one room not one person would agree on the same thing!!! I wish I owned my own land, because I would grow food plots for the deer. And I commend the people who do spend time to grow food plots. Because of them we all have better hunting!!!

[rabbit lake dude]

There is 7 or 8 counties in wisconsin that do not allow baiting. The rest of the state allows 2 gallons of food bait, per person, per 40 acres of private, or state land. With no 2 bait sites within 100 yards of eachother. (be carefull of this rule, it's best to just hunt one bait pile only, because unlike MN the fine for exceding allowed baits in WI, is $570.00) ouch. No animal parts and no honey. Not sure why the honey. It could be a bacteria thing? I dont think it is cheating. The dnr set up these regs. And if its legal I dont understand why people get so upset about it. If you had 10 guys in one room not one person would agree on the same thing!!! I wish I owned my own land, because I would grow food plots for the deer. And I commend the people who do spend time to grow food plots. Because of them we all have better hunting!!!

[Neiko]

Wisconsin allows baiting.

Wisconsin has CWD.

Minnesota does not allow baiting.

Minnesota does not have CWD.

I am glad MN doesn't allow baiting.