That hurt...
Problem-Solution
- Thread starter Bowriter
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swat1018
Well-Known Member
Horrible no-call!
Native Hunter
Well-Known Member
Well, that's two.Now add in the ones killed in Texas and you'll have a couple pages full. But if you would hunt over around Welch or between Centralia and Pyramid Corners, you could kill some really good ones.
Two what? I counted eight.
dogghr
Well-Known Member
You guys got screwed and even at home. Sux.
catscratch
Well-Known Member
Lots of bad calls/no-calls today. The no-call pass interference was one of the worst ever.
How does a professional football player line up off sides? Damn it!
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How does a professional football player line up off sides? Damn it!
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Native Hunter
Well-Known Member
Well, that's two.
Two what? I counted 8 big deer he posted pics of that came from a feeder. How do you come up with only two?
BigCreek
New Member
Do you guys who hunt over bait stations and feeders ever feel guilty or think of the sporting aspect you’re missing out on? Not trying to be disrespectful, every area is different.
I live in west central Wisconsin, baiting and feeders are illegal here. We have plenty of P&Y bucks roaming the woods and fields. Even if legal I doubt I would ever put a feeder up. There is something about putting food in the ground, watching it grow and feeding the native wildlife that brings as much satisfaction as harvesting a 5+ yr old buck to me.
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I live in west central Wisconsin, baiting and feeders are illegal here. We have plenty of P&Y bucks roaming the woods and fields. Even if legal I doubt I would ever put a feeder up. There is something about putting food in the ground, watching it grow and feeding the native wildlife that brings as much satisfaction as harvesting a 5+ yr old buck to me.
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Mennoniteman
Well-Known Member
I agree totally with you on the satisfaction of planting and harvesting. But I'm not on board with saying someone else's way is the wrong way. Should a person feel guilt while pursuing a legal activity? With all due respect, it's easy to look at someone else's game and critique it for unsportsmanlike conduct. When in Rome...
I do both, plant food plots and use feeders. To answer your question - Nope, don’t feel guilty at all. Sure, I like the satisfaction that I get with planting myself, but that’s besides the point. Whether you draw in deer by planting the corn yourself or by paying someone else to plant/harvest it and you pouring it in the feeder, you are still attracting deer to a specific place for the purposes of harvesting them. Neither is “pure” hunting, you’re baiting the deer in either way.
And, to Mennonite’s point, if it’s legal, no need to feel guilty at all. It’s all personal preference.
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When I look back on this thread and see the Saints reference it still brings back bad memories!
I grow food plots summer and fall. I do timber mgt every year. I have a supplemental protein feed going most of the year. Our harvest strategy is highly disciplined aimed at growing a balanced, healthy herd with lots of fully mature bucks and tight ratio's and robust fawn recruitment. I have a few corn feeders here and there. Some of my hunters use rice bran. Guilt never entered my mind...not once!
My joy comes from enjoying the fruits of our labors watching a world class deer herd. Accomplishing this has been the hard part. Getting to see them is part of the pleasure. My wife once told me ...' what good is it to have all these terrific deer if you never see them. Why don't you let the herd grow." Smart woman !
I grow food plots summer and fall. I do timber mgt every year. I have a supplemental protein feed going most of the year. Our harvest strategy is highly disciplined aimed at growing a balanced, healthy herd with lots of fully mature bucks and tight ratio's and robust fawn recruitment. I have a few corn feeders here and there. Some of my hunters use rice bran. Guilt never entered my mind...not once!
My joy comes from enjoying the fruits of our labors watching a world class deer herd. Accomplishing this has been the hard part. Getting to see them is part of the pleasure. My wife once told me ...' what good is it to have all these terrific deer if you never see them. Why don't you let the herd grow." Smart woman !
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BigCreek
New Member
Thanks for the input guys! Not sure if I agree with “pure” hunting over a bait pile but that’s why we’re here..to discuss such things and give our opinions. It’s illegal to even knock down corn and hunt over it in WI. If we could it would tip the scales so heavily in our human and intelligence ways it wouldn’t be fair and I would probably lose the excitement factor but that’s me. To each their own. Happy hunting!
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BigCreek
New Member
Sorry^^, I don’t mean to come across holier than thou(which it might seem). I’m here to learn new ticks of the trade like most. I realize that I like in a rough winter are where deer feed differently than in the south and other areas. No disrespect intended, I guess I was taught to hunt/plant according to my area. I have a lot of respect for you guys and have learned plenty reading this forum.
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Mennoniteman
Well-Known Member
It's all good, I like open thinking. As far as bait VS plots, my experience has been that it's much easier to shoot a dominant buck over a plot than over a bait pile, that knowledge is the reason that I personally don't view baiting as an unfair advantage. One of the difficulties with hunting over bait that I've experienced is, the patterns of filling the feeder and hunting from a specific blind over it, will quickly make the dominant bucks go nocturnal. Hunting over a food plot gives the hunter the advantage of varying his access and hunting location, and the field doesn't have to be filled up by scent spreading people from time to time. Of the two areas that I hunt the most, the one allows bait and the other doesn't. In the area that allows bait we rarely use it because it doesn't help us any to shoot dominant deer, but works great to get the little ones, as the daytime pic below shows. Feeders are great to get youth hunters excited about seeing deer and shooting a little one. So, to me the most unfair advantage would be to hunt deer at night with thermal equipment.
THE LLC
Well-Known Member
Now, there is something I could support. It's all about getting young hunters a deer anyway isn't it?
Mennoniteman
Well-Known Member
It's all about getting young hunters excited about seeing a deer. Pennsylvania lost a whole generation of young hunters after unsustainable antlerless harvests that were a part of the antler restrictions package in the early 2000's mostly wiped out our deer herd on public lands and the pheasants were wiped out by predators. Many youth that I knew took up snowboarding and playing video games instead of hunting because they never saw a deer during the season while hunting public land, and quite a few of their parents quit rather than going without their children. After the huge spike in deer harvested in 2002, the number went to almost half in 2009, now in the 10 years since, the harvest has stablized to about the same numbers that we had prior to Gary Ault's brainchild, mostly due to responsible private landowners providing reservoirs of deer populations. So, a big upheaval, and now we are right back where we started, except with way fewer young hunters.
BTW, Vermont is considering partially going back to shooting spikes, read this interesting quote from their biologist; Vermont is seeing a downward trend in antler quality. Using harvest dates prior to the restriction and recent data from the state’s youth gun season which has no point restrictions, Vermont Fish and Game Department deer biologist Shawn Haskell found the number of yearlings with spikes increased from 50 to 65 percent. “Clearly, something is going on that concerns us,” says Haskell. “We managed to improve the age structure of our buck herd, but the overall quality seems to be going down.” Vermont is considering a change that would allow the harvest of spikes, says Haskell. He thinks allowing hunters to shoot spikes but no bucks with less than three points on one side would help remove what many biologists consider inferior bucks while still protecting the best yearlings.
Just to clarify, I said - Neither is “pure” hunting, you’re baiting the deer in either way.
My reason for using the word “pure” is that it always seems that when the “baiting” vs food plots question comes up, the satisfaction level from planting/watching it grow is brought into it. I think that muddies the waters. When bringing in the satisfaction level, it can be construed as though those who food plot are somehow using a better hunting method than those who use “bait”. Essentially, both are accomplishing the same purpose - manipulating deer movement. Neither are natural, both are manipulated by humans.
For example, Joe Hunter down the street gets permission on a piece of wooded property to hunt, with a few small openings. He doesn’t have any way to plant food plots, nor does he have the money to do so. His time is stretched thin with work and family. Should he feel guilty for using legal “bait” to draw deer into a place he can hunt? Definitely not. And if it was the reverse and he could and had the means to plant food plots, is he any better because he can and he gets satisfaction from it? Definitely not.
I say all of this to try to offer a different perspective, not trying to offend. I appreciate the question and I believe you were well meaning in asking it.
BTW, just because you put out “bait” doesn’t mean that the deer are going to come to it. They are not uncontrollably drawn to it. When it’s legal in a state, it’s so widely used that the deer are vary wary about it and will quickly become nocturnal. Also, they don’t just camp out on it, they browse just like they do with food plots and natural food sources. They may bed on one property, hit the first feeder before dark for a few minutes, and move to your neighbors soon after, and then his neighbor, and on and on. Also, they have to fight for the food with other deer, raccoons, possums, hogs, etc. So it’s not like they’ll just sit there and easily give a shot at any time. It’s not nearly as easy as some seem to portray. I agree with Mennonite, my experience is it’s a lot easier on food plots or a trail between bedding and food plot/“bait”, than over “bait”.
You’re right. Every location is different, and it all depends on where you are at. I’m in LA in piney woods and oak bottoms. Most of our area is covered in pine plantations and is mostly owned by timber companies, so that drastically limits your options when obtaining hunting permission/leases. It’s extremely thick, lots of browse, acorn producing oaks everywhere, and very few openings. For those of us that have private land, you’re still affected by that, as you are more than likely surrounded by the same. On the other hand, I don’t have any experience with your area and can see your point. It’d be a lot different if I had to deal with lots of snow and deer congregating in fields if you were to cut down corn when there is very little out there to eat. I can see your point on how that could give an unfair advantage possibly.
Hope this helps, just wanted to give some thoughts from a different point of view. Good question and I’m glad we can discuss it.
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Drycreek
Well-Known Member
Good post ! I'm in East Texas and so I'm very familiar with the surroundings you've described. The lease I'm on is owned by a family that makes its living off timber and oil/gas production. The only plots we can plant are the openings where planted pines didn't get enough water to survive. That makes for small, odd shaped plots but we plant them anyway. We all have feeders, but in reality most of our deer are killed in the plots. They are an excellent draw for the does since there is limited native browse in a pine plantation. That's slowly getting better though, as they've thinned timber two years in a row and lots more browse is now available.
Here's another scenario. I had a lease in Central Texas for 18 years on a 1400 acre ranch. Naturally the rancher owned cattle, so food plots were out. He did plant a 75 acre field in oats most every fall, and that was great also, but everybody couldn't hunt the 75 acres, so we had stands scattered out over the whole place and each had a feeder. To be honest, in 18 years I never killed a mature buck at one of those feeders. They were all killed either in the oats or downwind of the feeders while scent checking the does.
Different hunting strategies for different locations and different mindsets. That's why they make Fords and Chevys. (I confess I don't know why they make Dodges
)
