Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Pros and Cons to "Baiting" of deer; those that live and hunt where bait is legal

We just filled up our 27 feeders last weekend.Yeah,I'm 1 of those sorry assed baiters,non-hunting son of a guns and don't give a rip what you think about me.Shot 3 hogs while we were there.Our landowner THANKS US for keeping the feeders filled up and the hog count down,besides turkey season is around the corner.

Miles, I did not want to come across as arrogant but rather just saying that I am glad I live where I do . If there was some way to bring you up here to my hunting area I would. I am sure you would admit after having been one one of our trips at basecamp 6500ft. and hiking from thereto some of the greatest peaks in Canada you would see what I mean. Black bear ,grizzly ,muledeer , high country whitetail ,moose ,and elk. All the best!

Crittergetter,

Don't be so hard on yourself.......Not everybody can be a good hunter. (Meant to be funny.....Just a joke)

What is your reason for baiting versus planting food plots or fertilizing native foods? Serious question.

I'm really curious.....In my neck of the woods Corn is illegal so we look at folks carrying bags of Corn out of Wally World during the season with the same disdain that most hunters reserve for poachers. Food plots are supposed to be so much better at attracting deer(based on the posts in this thread) and they are cheaper......Much cheaper than filling 27 feeders year round. I really want to know.

Robert

Our land is about 80% rocks and 20% soil.In a few places we tried to plant forbes and such but we don't get enough rain to sustain anything.We only get around 25in of rain a year.We do put some fertilizer on any type plant they eat just in case it might help.We feed corn and protein mix to try to help them out.Mineral salt blocks help out.

What are corn prices now? I paid from $8-$10.75/ fifty lb sack last year.

stumpy

I don't know what they are now, but I paid a little over $6/per 50lb bag this past season. We had to buy by the pallet to get that price.

Just put the cows back on the pasture we've been hunting. Wonder how long my food plots are going to last? (grin)

You may not have meant to be arrogant but it sure came off that way. We have to hunt according to the land available. I am not going to quit until I have to. I wish there were free land available to hunt where I live but there is not. miles

It's down a little per 50lb bag to $7.29 per bag.We paid as high as $8.00 per 50 lb bag.

100 miles from us, you'd be in downtown Houston or Austin or San Antonio.

Consider yourself extremely fortunate to live and hunt and be able to make a living where you do!!! I'm envious. Till then I hunt our food plots/feeders as needed.

Edited to add that I've shot exactly one deer close to a feeder in the last appx 8 years... meaning 8 years ago I did the same also....they sure keep em closer though.

Jeff

Jeff, I just spent the weekend with "rockchuker" as my guest at the lease, hunting pigs. He and his buddy Dave, both killed nice ones and we had a good time in general. I was a really interesting for them to detail how deer were hunted in the mid-west. He explained that agricultural fields(corn, soybean and alfalfa) dominated most of their areas of Missouri and Illinois with some areas of sparse hardwoods (compared to ours). I believe they now appreciate that it's a little easier to hunt game when you can see it. Lots of these guys don't truly understand what it's like to hunt a 60,000 square MILE area where you can't see more than 50' unless your on a road, pipeline or highline. It must be nice to walk down a ditch between two fields and have deer run everywhere, or watch a clump of trees and see deer.

lt,

Its even better when they are 350 yds away and you are restricted to a 100 yard gun...and you have to get to that range or 50 yards to truly be accurate with said weapon.

Their description changes drastically when a river system enters the equation...the hardwoods and thorns and pines are not so sparse.

I do agree on the pig baiting. My bud has them all over in OK. They need SHOT, not hunted. (grins)

Good grief,all this uproar.Again,why do I use feeders? Because there isn't a wheat field,alfafa field or soybean field within lord knows how many miles from where I hunt. So what do I do,quit enjoying the great outdoors because I'm "baiting"? Is the feeder a tool for commercial style slaughter on a wholesale basis? Not in my case. In fact,this year I didn't even kill a deer even though I had numerous bucks follow does to my "artificial" food plot;they were just not what I was looking for. Different regions and locales require varied hunting techniques;get over it and express love for the sport we love-deer hunting. Kix

I feel the same way about squirrels...

Kix,

No agriculture anywhere near my Alabama property either.....but we don't bait. We hunt. Yes we plant 6 acres of food plots on 1,100 acres for a supplement and we fertilize native vegetation but we don't bait with Corn,Soybeans or Protein Pellets. We Hunt.

Robert

Guess I missed it, but how do you "hunt"? Still hunt, stand hunt, combination? I love to still hunt, but on most leases I have to wait until the other guys leave the stand for breakfast - just isn't safe to wander around when people are "locked and loaded". If everybody still hunted, it would be worse. Different areas tend to develop methods that work best, not because the people aren't "hunters" and are looking for an easier way. I'm not much on stands and feeders, either, but accept that in my area, it is what is practical, and works. Maybe that's why it is legal here? From nearly a year with game cameras watching my feeders, here is what I've seen, in order of most common to least common in numbers and sightings:

Squirrels
Grackles
doves
coons
cardinals and various other songbirds
hogs
possums
some neighbor's dogs
somebody's hog dogs
rabbits
deer
bobcat
woodpecker

Seems to me like all the local animal life is enjoying and benefitting from the feeders, and few of them get shot.

Seems like there are alot of TX hunters defending using feeders, so I feel I should chime in myself. Where I hunt in West TX, if you're not feeding, your neighbors are! There are so many hunters around that if you don't do something to attract and hold deer, you likely won't see any, period. You are also competing with agriculture. We farm wheat, and if deer aren't drawn in by a feeder during daylight hours, they tend to only feed at night. We feed protein during the offseason for two reasons: 1. The health of our deer population. 2. To hold deer on our property. Food plots are not an option for us as cattle and massive hog populations would make short work of a food plot even with a fence around it.

Now, there is the argument of bow vs. rifle hunting over bait. Bow hunting is a difficult proposition, regardless of whether it is done over bait or not. The majority of what we do is bowhunting and the amount of stealthiness and preparation (camoflage, scent prevention) truly make it "hunting" in the eyes of some here. We only have 2 rifle blinds on our property and they are both 200+ yards from any potential target. One overlooks a mesquite flat where deer tend to bed with a feeder in one corner. The other faces a 100 acre wheat field with a feeder in the corner. Neither provide a "chip shot" by any stretch.

Now, along the same topic. There are plenty of hunters who take the sport out of it completely. Most "city hunters", as we so affectionately call them, hunt from their taj-mahal blind with heat and A/C (believe me, I've seen it) set up 75 yds from their feeders with their 300 Ultra Sendero or 30-378 Weatherby Accumark topped with a Zeiss 6.5-20x50. For example, I have family who hunts with a 7mm Rem Mag from a pop-up blind 40 yds from their feeder...and they've been known to miss deer. They also wounded two deer with a compound bow at 15 yds last season that had to be finished off with a rifle.

Baiting is extremely effective, you see a lot of animals, but don't for one minute try to argue that it takes as much thought or skill as more traditional methods like still hunting, tracking, spot and stalk, or stand hunting. It works very well when you are trying to hunt a specific deer. I did it a lot when I lived in Texas, but I don't consider killing deer over bait more of an accomplishment than other methods.
Baiting opponents don't like baiting because it is perceived as being less sporting, which is what recreational hunting is supposed to be. Pro baiters always bring up the midwest corn fields, however, I make a distinction between those hunts.
Traditionally corn fields were planted to make money, not hunt over. With a traditional corn field you also do not control where the deer feed at, whereas you do with bait. Bait is also typically timed, and the deer conditioned to compete to get the limited amount of bait before it is gone, so therefore they come out of cover on command. In a corn field, they come and go as they please.
However, without bait, I don't know how anyone would hunt in South Texas. Maybe over water holes and unbaited senderos, but you I'd hand it to anyone who regularly still hunts deer in the brush country of South Texas.

This is my "pro". They are fun to watch. The orange paint it 20 yds from my ladder stand.

I bait deet all year with Corn, Tomatoes, Ocra, Beets, Potatoes, Apples, Pears, Squash, onions, Pecans, Dogwood, Pine(white),
etc...

I've listened to guys who bait. I don't get it. Hunting is about finding game. The baiting crowd have hunting confused with farming. A good friend tells me how successful his hunts are. Questions found that his hunting technique consists of sitting on the porch and shooting deer in an adjacent farm field.

Most of us like the ways we learned as kids from family when we were introduced to hunting. A lot of the hunters I meet now missed the right of passage aspect of participating in grown up things.
Still, those days are gone and I would rather have these guys hunting over bait from their stands than watching tv at home.

The thing I really wonder about is why most of the bait crowd have to have tha latest hot magnum deer rounds to bag an animal.
If you can find a copy... read "Shots at Whitetails". See what you're missing.