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Baiting with corn.

Take it for what it is..... There is pride in taking the hard road. Why do people torture themselves on week long elk trips. I've hunted over bait 1 time and harvested a pig. It was great and I was happy but there is, IMO, greater sense of accomplishment taking that same animal in it's element without man-made influencers to tip the odds in your favor.
 
In my area it seems like 9/10 guys use bait. I was told when I started hunting that you can't kill deer here without bait. So I did what everyone else here does, bought a bag of corn, found a pretty looking spot in the woods, dumped the corn and waited for deer to show up. It didn't take long (literally less than 15 mins) and I shot my first deer. A 6 month old doe. I "hunted" over bait for the majority of that season and noticed that I was only seeing young, small deer and it was usually right at closing time. I started trying to find where the deer were hanging out during daylight and started seeing more deer, bigger deer, and seeing them at all times of the day.

If you're using bait and seeing deer that you want to shoot, than go shoot one! If you're using bait and not seeing anything you want to shoot, then go find them!
 
We have several feeders on my private lease. I dont put them up and generally don't do corn even though it's legal where I hunt. My main complaint is everyone at my lease hunts the corn consistently and the deer pattern it pretty quickly. I also think it turns them more nocturnal. Could be wrong but thats what I think. Now hogs, I'll bait them bastards all year long without hesitation. I've never seen a buck I wanted to shoot on a corn pile. Too wiley for that.
 
Let me preface this by saying I've been hunting deer 45+ years. When I started the tree stands we all take for granted today didn't exist. We bounced around finding trees we could climb near where deer trails existed. It wasn't worth the effort to bait under a tree where I was standing on a limb to hunt.

Once I started using tree stands there was period in there where I hunted exclusively over bait. Like others I found that the only deer I was seeing were young deer and all late in the evening but I must say I successfully killed a lot of deer over bait. However, I also found that it didn't take them long to pattern me and figure out when and where I was sitting. Another issue was I couldn't make myself sit anywhere else, after all I had all this work into this baited spot.

My next solution was to place a large pile and not hunt it until the rut figuring the does coming would bring in the bucks and I wouldn't be already pattered. Since I can't help but hunt, I found myself hunting non-baited sites and suddenly discovered I was having more success on larger deer away from the bait. The light bulb went off, wow, I can kill deer without bait, and they have no clue I'm there.

That was over 25 years ago and I still consider it the most ground breaking discovery I've ever made about deer hunting. I haven't hunted bait since. In fact I rarely sit in the same tree twice in a season. I believe this gives me an advantage over the deer as they can't pattern my movements and stand locations.

All that said, if it's legal where you're at and you're comfortable hunting over bait I have no issues with it.
 
If it’s legal where you hunt and you have fun then who cares. People like to feel some superiority because they took the perceived “hard road” and almost look down on those that don’t follow their self imposed handicaps. You see this in all aspects of life but for some reason it’s more prevalent in hunting circles. Anti bait guys look down on guys who bait, bow hunters look down on rifle hunters, trad archers look down on the compound bow guys, hell I even see long bows look down on recurves... The list goes on and on. At the end of the day if it gets people in the woods I don’t care what you do as long as it’s within the law.

Half the fun for me is the scouting, the preparation, the time spent at deer camp and in nature - but the other half of the fun is actually harvesting an animal. I’d rather shoot a dink over corn than get skunked hunting over the best buck sign in the world. And you know what, I don’t care what anyone has to say about that. So do whatever you want to do and enjoy it.
 
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I haven't this season, but I have from time to time in the past. I still have an empty freezer, and with about 3 weeks left, I might just throw out a pile or two.
 
If you have to ask, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.

Spend a few minutes pondering why you’re spending time and effort and money taking the life of a sentient creature.

Whatever you decide, good on ya! Glad to have you in the brotherhood.

Having said all that - I’ve hunted public and private and what I’ve found is that on Private using bait, it just becomes a ‘food source’. We hunted bucks traveling to and from it. Only killed young deer over it. It turns into a corn field - in the sense that mature deer only frequent it at night. It was not the golden ticket people might think it is.

Do what makes you happy, and accept the consequences. People who frown on baiting from a moral/ethical perspective are small minded and don’t understand the big picture. The non hunting public who decides how much and where and when you can hunt however, they do matter....
 
I have had some decent movement setting up between bedding on public, and corn some guy was throwing on the private just across the boundary.

Haven’t had a shooter walk by doing that, but it at least increases the odds if it is positioned right ;-)
 
IkemanTX said:
Half of my state can’t grow a food plot without irrigation. Ain’t nobody gonna spend 10’s of thousands of dollars to put in a pivot irrigator for a food plot. As such, Texas has been the king of corn.

I personally don’t like sitting in one spot staring at a feeder, but if the neighbor has corn he will probably get the first crack at the deer in your area. Sitting in one spot staring at a food plot is pretty darn boring as well.

As far as “fairness” I put feeders, food plots, and even crop fields (to an extent) in kind of the same category. All 3 are artificial food sources placed there by man. The crop fields get a LITTLE more credit in my opinion because they are typically large enough that you can’t always predict which part of it the deer might use. But, they still provide a strictly defined place that deer will utilize for food on a consistent basis.

You want to point to what is most “fair” I have 3 categories that I think are TRUE old school hunting...

Big woods, without bait
Cattle grazing country, without bait
Western hunting without crop land

All 3 of those require legit woodsmanship and don’t have defined man-made food sources to concentrate deer numbers or initiate unnatural travel patterns. Give me one of those three categories for most of my hunting, and I would still thoroughly enjoy the small percentage of my food plot / corn feeder sits. Heck, I did sit one morning in an archery box over a food plot and feeder this year.
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You forgot swamp hunting as it is a huge challenge!
 
This is the first year it has been legal in my state. Ill just say I came into the season with some prior knowledge of the subject. So far I’ve seen a bunch of fat coons, squirrels, and hogs running around, but no fat deer.
 
If you feed instead of baiting, you can hold more does and more does mean more bucks somewhere in the area. Still have to put out some effort and time finding the bad boys but at least they are there.
 
baz77 said:
buddy if it’s legal and your having fun who gives a damn what anyone else says ...good luck.. be sure to post up pics of your deer when you kill one
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That's w
gumby said:
If you feed instead of baiting, you can hold more does and more does mean more bucks somewhere in the area. Still have to put out some effort and time finding the bad boys but at least they are there.
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My buddy said I can hunt on his private land next season. I am going see if I can convince him to let me make a good plot on his land. Feel like they will come out more during the day if there was a more natural food source out there instead of me laying corn out there
 
Ethically speaking on private land, I don't view it any differently than food plotting. Neither is my brand of tea or impresses me in terms of what you kill over it, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

Public land, no way. I think it promotes way too much the atmosphere of "spot claiming". Basic violation of the golden rule on public land.
 
Check your regulations to see if it legal. I have a friend who used to bait with corn then he found that bears were coming in and eating his bait pile and ruining the deer hunting.
 
bigjoe said:
Check your regulations to see if it legal. I have a friend who used to bait with corn then he found that bears were coming in and eating his bait pile and ruining the deer hunting.
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I was given permission to hunt a small farm 2 seasons ago. I put up a feeder and a camera. Everything was going good for about a month..... Getting deer and hogs regularly visiting the feeder. I drove down to hunt pigs, check cameras, and fill the feeder. Walked in while still dark and was about to set up my ground blind. I shinned the flashlight over to where the feeder should have been and it wasn't there. I walked over to investigate and all of the sudden there was a huff-huffing sound and lots crashing throu the palmettos about 20yds from me. The feeder was broken and I found the empty feeder barrel is the pond. I wasn't 100% sure what had happened until I checked the camera. A sow and 2 cubs had been on the camera 30 minutes before I got there. She had totally destroyed the feeder 2 nights before. It slowly sank in that I had been 20yds from the momma and her cubs in the dark and I started being very grateful she had chose to run off and not get aggressive. I ended up attempting to put up 2 more feeders but the bears ended up destroying them too. I finally just gave up on that farm and feeders after spending hundreds of dollars and no return. If they open bear hunts again I'll be back at that farm but I'm back to hunting public pretty much 100% of the time
 
It not legal here in MN. But it is legal to grow food plots, and a food plot is basically just a hard earned bait pile. If it's legal and its fun for ya then go ahead! I've never grown a food plot but I'm gunna try corn and Big n Beasty next year. The neighbors had corn this year and it made our hunting pitiful. So I hopped on public and had a lot of encounters but never closed the gap.

Others may look down on baiting or food plots, but it's usually because they think everyone should have it as hard as they do. I used to be that way about rifle hunters, but as you mature as an outdoorsman and a human, you learn that not everyone has the same ideas and you can't look down on anyone because they are different from you.

The one exception is if someone a Green Bay Packer fan....
 
Letemgrowitllshow said:
It not legal here in MN. But it is legal to grow food plots, and a food plot is basically just a hard earned bait pile. If it's legal and its fun for ya then go ahead! I've never grown a food plot but I'm gunna try corn and Big n Beasty next year. The neighbors had corn this year and it made our hunting pitiful. So I hopped on public and had a lot of encounters but never closed the gap.

Others may look down on baiting or food plots, but it's usually because they think everyone should have it as hard as they do. I used to be that way about rifle hunters, but as you mature as an outdoorsman and a human, you learn that not everyone has the same ideas and you can't look down on anyone because they are different from you.

The one exception is if someone a Green Bay Packer fan....
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I am definitely plan on getting land in the next couple of years. Feel like a food plot would be more ideal since it's a natural food source. Not just a pile of corn laying on the ground lol
 
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