They get wise to both corn and food plots very quick but early season can bring in younger deer. Only on TV can the big old ones be taken over corn or plots.
Over bait, early season
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Over bait, mid seasonView attachment 22699
Over bait, late season
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Mature does too
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...and this ancient dude
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I don't always hunt over bait but I disagree that mature bucks won't come to bait piles or food plots. Notice that all these pictures were taken on the spot with my camera, not a trail cam. Baiting can be effective but it's no guarantee, just like setting up over sign or trails or rubs or bedding.
I think you're right about weather conditions. It's 28° today but it feels like 20° with the wind chill. Here, you can only bait on private land. I do not always have access to private land so I hunt public as well. Those pictures I posted were taken from several different years also. I really don't see baiting as a huge advantage. I've had plenty of sits, with or without bait, that I saw nothing. I definitely fall into the "if it's legal and you're having fun" group when it comes to baiting.Judging from your weather conditions, we have very different habitat for our deer. So deer in your area may frequent a readily available food source more often because they have too. In SC, not so much. There’s natural browse year round. Can’t equate different regions of the country. That’s why my comment was “In SC” “in my experience” etc.
Honestly that's why I am going to be using bait and follow the trails back to the general area where they came from. So followed it back to a bedding area so I set by there tonight. And shot a doe 150 yards from my baiting area so day 1 of my plan is a success.I shot two does in the past two weeks that were full of corn and I hunt in VA where it’s not legal once season starts. Clearly one of the neighbors is sketchy. I’m assuming it’s the ass-hat who has an 8x8 box blind on the property boundary.
The VA regs make no sense. Living in NC and having hunted private for several years where baiting is legal presents an entirely different set of issues. I baited most years. One year I tried not baiting and deer activity and sightings plummeted. Where the property was is all tree farms and big hunt clubs and if you flew a helicopter over the county you would see yellow piles everywhere. If you didn’t bait you didn’t see deer. But given there is a pile every 400 yards makes it not a very natural style of hunting. Just hoping to get lucky really and I wanted to learn and become a better hunter. I did shoot my best buck with a bow in early Sept while he was still on the summer pattern but typically what I learned during baiting was between all the trips in to bait (nearly every 2 weeks to keep it full), check cameras and hunt stands all in the same area I was putting a ridiculous amount of pressure on the place and daylight sightings dropped off quickly except for yearlings. The other issue was with all that corn around hogs were a huge issue. I’d get trail cam pics of 20 hogs wiping out bait in a single night. I switched to a Redneck T post feeder to get it off the ground and then the problem was entire raccoon families hanging off it and cleaning it out. The guy who hunted next to me lived an hour and a half away and when he came to bait he dropped 200# of corn on the ground. It would take a day or two before the 100 acres we had side by side were inundated with hogs. I wanted to strangle him constantly. Lots of work and frustration for small success (bucks-shot plenty of does though), plus wasn’t growing as a hunter. I hunt VA now partly because it’s just better genetics and partly because I have to figure out the way the deer use the area and solve the puzzle.
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I will be honest definitely don't want to hunt over corn. Would must rather be able to look at a property and know what the deer are doing. But I feel that I don't possess that skill at least right now.If you wanna hunt over corn then you should hunt over corn. If you don’t want to hunt over corn then you shouldn’t.
One thing you definitely should not do is let a bunch of people on the internet tell you what’s right or wrong or how to hunt “correctly”. Figure it out for yourself. Learning from experience makes hunting fun and rewarding.
I will be honest definitely don't want to hunt over corn. Would must rather be able to look at a property and know what the deer are doing. But I feel that I don't possess that skill at least right now.
I live in TX so a bag of corn is just as vital a piece of hunting gear as a bow or a gun...
I've sat in front of feeders and shot deer in various stages of wildness, done the petting-zoo-ram "hunt" thing and none of it even comes close to matching the enjoyment I've gotten from hunting no bait walk-in public land.
I am really torn on the baiting thing...I agree on the public perception front, the folks we rely on to allow us to continue our hunting privileges are overwhelmingly against it and I do think it is a net negative for hunting but it's such an ingrained tradition here it would be WWIII if it was outlawed.
I do wish folks here in TX would be more honest about it though, there's a lot of self delusion about how it doesn't make hunting any easier, but I've never seen an answer as to why anyone would go through the hassle and expense if it doesn't make it any easier.