A story of frustration, and a less than awesome solution

roymunson

5 year old buck +
Hunting in NE Ohio I love it. I generally feel the DNR allows us the tags we need to manage the herd on the land we hunt. We have probably 25 acres of specifically food on the 350 or so acres we hunt. Some are crop fields that get picked, but there's legit food plots there too.

We have probably a 100 acre sanctuary that we've chain sawed into a great spot to hold deer.

Our struggle is, as with everyone, the neighbors.
We have neighbors that own 20-70 acres a pop, and when the season opens, the corn piles come out.
I think to date there have been 7 or 8 bucks killed around the perimeter of our property and all but 1 or 2 were bucks we'd held during the summer or had regular pictures of.
Some of the deer were killed by youth and younger hunters "climbing the ladder" as it were. I have 0% issue with that. We're out in the woods to have fun, and killing a nice 3 year old is part of that.
I understand we're "picky" about what we want to shoot. I want to kill something preferably 5 or older, but realistically, a big 4 year old, or older.

Anyone who has hunted with bait knows, a 4 or 5 year old can sometimes be had over bait, but you can kill just about every and any 2 and 3 year old buck if you have corn out. specifically if the rut is banging and he's putting on miles checking these corn piles. No matter the tonnage you have in your 7 acre brassica field. You won't compete with 100# of corn.

Then some of the neighbors started a competition and have started measuring corn in tons. No joke.

My question is, how do you compete with that? I don't really want to kill 2 and 3 year olds. I don't mind hunting corn, but would WAY prefer to see a buck eating my turnips and kale.

WHat I don't like to see is our seed stock for hte next 2 years getting killed every year.

Someone posited to me that you should forget food plots,build as much cover as you can to hold deer, plant clover and mow it occassionally, and then feed corn to kill deer. Fighting Fire with fire.

I could do that. It just seems unsavory.

Or do you take a dump truck and pile corn in the center of your property to hold the deer and not let them leave the place? Hunt around those travel corridors?

Its not how I want to hunt deer. But it gets really old watching the 3 year old that was going to be a problem child at 4 and 5 get smoked across the line every year...

I'm not bad mouthing the neighbors, please don't take it as that. I know what hunting is. Its recreation. Its fun. If your within the law and having fun, go for it... But I pay enough for my land that I want to have fun chasing a certain age class of bucks. Am I being selfish? Is there a way to hold the deer and be more attactive than corn (i doubt it, but i'm all ears).

Just wanting to get another opinion from the habitat guys, which I am at heart. I'm probably better at habitat than i am at killing deer.
 
I see the exact same thing - the EXACT same thing - except most get killed at 2.5. I have over thirty acres of food plots on my 300 acres. I finally couldnt take feeding the herd anymore for my neighbors to kill them. Get a crossbow, kill them early before gun season, and out-bait thy neighbor. I killed my personal best buck last year after doing this. You dont have to hunt the bait piles.
 
Corn is the bumper lane in bowling. Those who can’t…corn. And it makes guys who want to do it right question their ethics, morals and effort. Why am I doing all this work when billy with 10 acres dumps half a picked field of corn and his land a week before opening day. I absolutely get it. I cannot stand bait. In kentucky I don’t think 95% of the population would know where to sit if they werent staring at a pile or feeder. To answer your question…I don’t know. Im wrestling with it yearly. I will be interested in following along. I imagine the answer is you give in and corn or you deal with losing deer. At the end of the day deer are smart but humans are smarter. We know that they are so gullible for a yellow pile of sweetness poured on the ground, and yes even big mature deer will hit a pile in daylight. So all our holistically and environmentally beneficial activities are great, but if your goal is big mature deer, they may not be enough.
I work my butt off on my property year round and spend a good bit of money on habitat work. My neighbor doesn’t do dick except pour corn out. We have become friends so we share cam pics, he has just as many mature deer as me and they have killed a bigger one than I’ve ever had…over a pile that nasa could see. Moral of the story, habitat work on a small scale is fun but not that beneficial in reality. I won’t stop cause I love it though!
 
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I see the exact same thing - the EXACT same thing - except most get killed at 2.5. I have over thirty acres of food plots on my 300 acres. I finally couldnt take feeding the herd anymore for my neighbors to kill them. Get a crossbow, kill them early before gun season, and out-bait thy neighbor. I killed my personal best buck last year after doing this. You dont have to hunt the bait piles.
I'm fairly sure I could kill the deer I want. My issue also is, due to different harvest goals, if I quit feeding, where are those up an coming bucks gonna go? to their corn. to get whacked.

I'm not so noble, but I almost want to save the other hunters from themselves. If I hold your bucks on mine, at my expense, for another year, you'll thank me... I dunno

I agree that we have a generation who doesn't know how to hunt, but knows how to kill and that sucks.

You will get a crack at a mature deer occasionally over corn during daylight. BUT, you will get a crack at almost all your 2 and 3 year olds during daylight with corn. That's my issue.

If the neighbors are killing mature deer over corn, good for them.
But we had a 3 year old with split brows that were probably 12-13" long that we housed all year. Saw him on the hoof, whacked last week by a neighbor.

Last year we had a 150" 3 year old who was super visible on ours, get wounded and die of infection from a neighbor. And go figure... as soon as he was hit, where did he go? Back to our sanctuary........

I'm ok, just venting a little. And when it's kids or new hunters involved, there's a lot of grace from me, because that's what its about.
Just wondered if there's a way around some of this, without corn.
I'd be money ahead forgetting food plots, chain sawing my way into bedding and holding capacity, and then using the savings to pay corn.
 
Baiting is the entitlement program of deer hunting as it removes the need for deer to move to find food. It also eliminates the "hunting" aspect as it is similar to just feeding livestock.

Planting more cover and maintaining sanctuary' areas is best way to create bedding and potentially hold deer longer with cover. Does also look for cover around food plots during the rut to avoid chasing bucks. Unfortunately baiting also can encourage deer to turn completely nocturnal when hunting pressure begins.

End of the day, realistically you would have to have corn piles year round to try to hold deer to compete or out compete your neighbors. The problem with baiting is that whatever you do, the neighbors will try and out do what you just did. Pretty soon bait piles are like fast food joints at busy intersections.
 
I feel your pain! And it takes a LOT of land before your neighbors don’t matter. In western Kentucky we have 550 acres, my business partner has 600 acres, and another friend has 1200 acres, all connected. And that’s not nearly enough, because many of those around us have a “if it’s brown - it’s down” mentality (one of them even says that out loud), and it’s tough for a deer to make it past 3-1/2. But we continue to try and our 5-50 acre neighbors are reaping the benefits. C’est la vie.
 
It doesn't get better on larger acreage either. For several years, the company I work for leased 2100 acres of river bottomland in one of the top areas of Louisiana for big bucks. I managed it and would bring customers hunting there. We leased from a timber company who did periodic cuts that would leave some of the best browse and bedding you can imagine. On 3 sides of this were ag fields in bean and wheat. Smack dab in the middle of our 2100 acres was an 80 acre bean/wheat field. I also planted 25 year round plots scattered throughout. I also had large feeders scattered around. I asked the biologist who worked for the timber company if we could start a co-op. We ended up having 30,000 acres of contiguous land in that co-op. We started sharing trailcam and kill pics and we were all amazed. "Our" bucks were ranging up to 2 miles. Everyone had feeders and foodplots and great cover. Without a fence, you will lose some.
 
While CWD is not something to hope for if it pops up in your area the DNR will likely ban baiting. In my opinion that is your only hope.
They banned it in three counties in kentucky…how many people you imagine stopped?
 
Baiting is the entitlement program of deer hunting as it removes the need for deer to move to find food. It also eliminates the "hunting" aspect as it is similar to just feeding livestock.

Planting more cover and maintaining sanctuary' areas is best way to create bedding and potentially hold deer longer with cover. Does also look for cover around food plots during the rut to avoid chasing bucks. Unfortunately baiting also can encourage deer to turn completely nocturnal when hunting pressure begins.

End of the day, realistically you would have to have corn piles year round to try to hold deer to compete or out compete your neighbors. The problem with baiting is that whatever you do, the neighbors will try and out do what you just did. Pretty soon bait piles are like fast food joints at busy intersections.
Amen. Animal husbandry. I suck at hunting and I don’t want to work at it and improve my land and it’s not fair my neighbors have more land so big brother please let me do something to make it easy because I live in the instant gratification society and if I don’t have equal opportunity I will not be successful and I can’t handle that.
 
I'm not morally opposed to baiting. I'm personally opposed to killing young deer in an area where if you can get them to 4 or 5, some pretty cool stuff happens.

We have pretty decent human beings as neighbors, we can talk, but the majority of our 3 year olds are dead this year. It's a renewable resource, it just could be better if we'd work together.
 
It ain't about keeping deer in, it's about keeping problems out.

iu
 
Amen. Animal husbandry. I suck at hunting and I don’t want to work at it and improve my land and it’s not fair my neighbors have more land so big brother please let me do something to make it easy because I live in the instant gratification society and if I don’t have equal opportunity I will not be successful and I can’t handle that.
To play devils advocate, not everyone loves the habitat stuff like we do, has the time or means to do so, and wants to enjoy being in the woods. Nothing wrong with that. Different goals.

But if they can execute their goals of shooting an age class of deer, I can do the same.
 
To play devils advocate, not everyone loves the habitat stuff like we do, has the time or means to do so, and wants to enjoy being in the woods. Nothing wrong with that. Different goals.

But if they can execute their goals of shooting an age class of deer, I can do the same.
Many small acreage landowners feel as negatively about larger land owners who put in plots/do habitat work as the larger landowners/habitat guys do about baiters. The little guys feel the only way they can compete with the guy who owns 100 acres or more and leaves 5 acres of standing food every year is to dump piles of corn.

This stuff works both ways fellas
 
To play devils advocate, not everyone loves the habitat stuff like we do, has the time or means to do so, and wants to enjoy being in the woods. Nothing wrong with that. Different goals.

But if they can execute their goals of shooting an age class of deer, I can do the same.
To further on the devils advocate theme, why does that mean because they don’t want to put in the effort there should be a short cut that blurs/crosses ethical lines. In my utopia, laws should be designed to reward those who are most willing and able to benefit society/herd not pander to the lowest common denominator of hunter
 
I understand we're "picky" about what we want to shoot. I want to kill something preferably 5 or older, but realistically, a big 4 year old, or older.

This is very hard to do even without baiting.
 
They banned it in three counties in kentucky…how many people you imagine stopped?
5 counties. But, even if they do stop baiting in Kentucky, bucks are still going to move and get shot. You can't keep them on small acreages without a fence.
 
To further on the devils advocate theme, why does that mean because they don’t want to put in the effort there should be a short cut that blurs/crosses ethical lines. In my utopia, laws should be designed to reward those who are most willing and able to benefit society/herd not pander to the lowest common denominator of hunter
Good luck selling that bill of goods.

Bottom line is, hunting to satisfy what you want out of the woods is why we do it. and Maybe habitat has to be a reward in itself.

Some guys are happy doing different things in the woods. You cannot expect people to submit to my own personal ethics on their own land, just like I don't want to on theirs. Just venting.

Homer, I couldn't agree with you more. we're all in the minority of hunters and managers. to most people in teh woods we're the "evil rich 1%ers" kinda thing.
 
Good luck selling that bill of goods.

Bottom line is, hunting to satisfy what you want out of the woods is why we do it. and Maybe habitat has to be a reward in itself.

Some guys are happy doing different things in the woods. You cannot expect people to submit to my own personal ethics on their own land, just like I don't want to on theirs. Just venting.

Homer, I couldn't agree with you more. we're all in the minority of hunters and managers. to most people in teh woods we're the "evil rich 1%ers" kinda thing.
Last argument…they arent expected to submit to mine but I have to submit to theirs? I get it. It’s philosophical. I will never convince pro baiters and they will never convince me. Best I can do is know i did it the right way.
 
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