My brain thoughts as the past few days have passed:
Well, I dumped out the legal amount of feed. Actually it felt kind of weird really. It took a lot of pressure off me for some reason. Like almost knowing it’s exactly what the herd wants on the property that’s safe; except for the mature bucks and a few select does if I get a crack at them. I have the cover all the neighbors want (because it holds deer), and now I have the food I know the deer want. The herds that call my properties home will no longer have to move to the neighboring corn piles (I haven’t harvested a mature buck *yet leaving my property to head to there corn pile but I have watched a few do it). It’s almost like a strange insurance policy for the herd now.
My family and friends all think I have been crazy for not baiting in the past, and I said I was against it even though every neighbor I have does it. Now I’m wondering how much this will negatively or positively impact my hunting for the next month. I’m actually pretty excited in a way I thought I would have always been against, even though it seems everyone but some of the people on here bait.
So to sum it up. Why would I not give my family and myself every chance I could, and give every chance to try and keep the deer on my property for as long as possible that I could? Seems selfish and I feel bad about it, but everyone around me baits anyway so what other choice do I have in reality to increase my odds.
I couldn’t keep a bean plant growing because of the herd wiping them out, now I have a corn “plot” I can dump out. I seriously can’t believe I’m typing this at this point in my habitat “career”.
The worm always turns and sometimes the damn thing comes back to where it started; it just added a bunch of weight on the way back in the form of knowledge and experience in habitat now. Funny thinking about it really, my dad taught me to hunt and he always had a bait pile somewhere we could count on for seeing something. That’s what got me hooked on hunting really. He still does it and he still shoots good bucks each year, come to think of it he has more than anyone I know personally. I took a turn about five years ago and started down this habitat improvement path and have had predictable and great results without baiting. My old man stayed the same course with unpredictability, but kept the bait for as much predictability as he could get. Seems if I merge everything now the results could be really beneficial for the family (and myself :-)). I guess we will see. Thanks for reading my thoughts :)
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
To me it all comes down to keeping a resident doe population happy on your land. That's why I run feeders. They are strategically placed so that the deer can get to them easily from sanctuary's/ bedding areas or normal travel routes.
I have cattle on the land too, so I have to fence in the feeders. There is ag all around me. Mostly either wheat or rye. I have 70 acres of rye on my place, but it's not for deer.It's for cattle.
I have mineral licks in the feeder pens and they are planted in rye, brasicas & clover. It's all about providing a safe non pressured place for the doe's. Thats It.
I'm not trying to feed them, there is plenty of food all around, my feeders run for 3 seconds in the morning and 3 in the evening. Thats about as much corn as a ball cap would hold. But I'll tell you, in late summer in Okla. there isn't much for them to eat. The doe's and fawns hit that every day. It becomes part of their everyday routine. And when the rut starts the bucks know where the does are. You can call it baiting, I call it patterning. I don't dump big piles of corn or apples, They come to my pens for either a bite of corn, some minerals or to graze a little without being out in an open field.
I have parts of my land I've only stepped on 2 times in the last 4 years because that is bedding area / sanctuary and I consider it no mans land. I only went in there to retrieve deer we shot.
So far this year like last year I have planted a lot of mast producing trees. And I will continue to plant every time I go there to hunt. I plan to start planting in the sanctuary's after the season ends. Jan 15th. I do that
not because I want to bait deer to my side of the fence, I do it because I want to keep a resident doe population happy on my land, because that will draw bucks that no corn pile would ever draw.
I don't know if you can use feeders up there in Wisconsin but that makes a huge difference for me in patterning the does. After that it's just about being in the right place to intercept the bucks that are looking for your does.
