Baiting?

[hawg hunter]

Here in Texas we use every kind of bait you can throw. I run feeders the year round. Most of the feeders have amixture of soy beans and corn. When spring turkey comes we feed basically chicken scratch. The big ranches feed high protein pellets. Deer hunting is big business in Texas .Food plots are starting to catch on in The smaller ranches most have started to plant 10% of there tillable soil in food plots that grow year round.

[huntman]

As the others from Ontario have already stated it is legal here to bait. I too bait with apples and carrots. And YES you see more deer with bait then without. Especially late in the season when most of the fields have been harvested the deer dont have much of an option. Overall a deer will take a cash crop over a regular.

[deerman]

This is one hot topic here in MI. I learned to bow hunt with bait, but now I haven't used bait for ten years now. 99.9% of the time you will never harvest a mature buck on a bait pile. It also changes the deer travel. When a neighbor starts to bait I can tell because sightings of deer go down. Baiting can also spread TB. I never hunt a stand more than twice, so that would mean a lot of bait in the woods and thats costly and a whole lot of work. For the past ten years I went to food plots and I'm sure glad I did. Deer bed down in front of your stand. Deer are relaxed and not looking up in the trees. I think your hunting skills are tested when you don't use bait. Anyone can be a shooter, but not everyone can be a hunter. The food plots I plant will sustain the deer through the winter, not just during hunting season. When you setup your property you want it like a Holiday Inn where they can eat,drink,breed and play. You dont want them to go across the street and eat at Dennys and get shot. The deer love the food plots and I love the deer!

[raydaughety]

I just double checked. I is LEGAL in NC to bait deer on private land. It is Illegal to bait deer on game lands. I don't bait because I've never had much success with it. We have plenty of farm land where I hunt so they get plenty to eat. If I were to put out some corn, I'd be covered in bears overnight.

[wabi]

I keep a feeder filled from mid-summer until the following spring. I see very few mature bucks right at the feeder but it's a good place to tag a few does for the freezer. I've seen bucks at the feeder before season, but not usually during season. They will sometimes be close, though. Probably checking out the does that visit the feeder. I have killed a couple bucks within 30 or 40 yards of the feeder in years past. I like to set a stand over a good trail leading to the feeder, but not right at the feeder. Of course I also set a stand at the feeder to take a doe or two for the meat.