Hoytvectrix
5 year old buck +
Have there been any grumblings in the state to do away with feeders?
Ohio corn piles
- Thread starter Mattyq2402
- Start date
There’s definitely some and a ban was put on them in the CWD counties
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They did not even ban baiting in the cwd counties in my state - thinking baiting would more easily allow increase harvest to reduce deer density
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roymunson
5 year old buck +
If there's a way to get them banned, I'll sign the petition. But it's not going to happen. The herd is healthy enough and I'm not foolish enough to wish for an EHD or CWD outbreak in order to "break the camel's back"
Was talking to someone who was at a habitat summit somewhere that had Higgins, LaPratt, etc at it and someone from the Ohio DNR said it's not gonna happen. There's too much business around feeding, minerals, etc.
The tough thing is, we have a good chunk of land that we try to manage, but every neighbor with 50 acres, 3 crossbows and the budget for more bait than we're willing to put out will trump even the lushest food plot I can put out. While legal, it gets old seeing pictures of them with the deer we've passed multiple times because he's a good looking 3 year old. It's their property and their within the law, but we cannot gain any age on our herd to get the giants on the landscape. They're all killed before they reach their potential.
but in the end, my beautiful PTT patch is nothing compared to the golden cocaine pile across the property line. (And I say this as a guy who does bait and isn't morally opposed to baiting)
Was talking to someone who was at a habitat summit somewhere that had Higgins, LaPratt, etc at it and someone from the Ohio DNR said it's not gonna happen. There's too much business around feeding, minerals, etc.
The tough thing is, we have a good chunk of land that we try to manage, but every neighbor with 50 acres, 3 crossbows and the budget for more bait than we're willing to put out will trump even the lushest food plot I can put out. While legal, it gets old seeing pictures of them with the deer we've passed multiple times because he's a good looking 3 year old. It's their property and their within the law, but we cannot gain any age on our herd to get the giants on the landscape. They're all killed before they reach their potential.
but in the end, my beautiful PTT patch is nothing compared to the golden cocaine pile across the property line. (And I say this as a guy who does bait and isn't morally opposed to baiting)
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
We are on the same page. I’m seeing for 2 summers now that I have a bunch of great up and comers but can’t get over the hump. That tells me they are getting taken out at 2-3.
I’ve considered buying a farm in Illinois or Tenn just to get away from it.
roymunson
5 year old buck +
I've had the conversation about selling the whole place (it's nearly tripled in value since 2017) and go buy 3x the land in a different area. However, myself, my wife, and our kids love place. Plus we can be there in 45 minutes. I plan on taking my rifle out there today and throwing lead to make sure I'm dialed.
Can't get that cheap land within 2 hours of my place and that "quick run out there" is pretty valuable.
And unless you're buying a GIANT chunk, or a bunch of smaller ones, you're still gonna have neighbors who can screw it up. So why trade for the devil you don't know?
Plus the smallmouth area really starting to grow and I've gotten attached to the place. :D
Except for maybe SC, GA, Fl, AL, and LA - Arkansas has about as liberal seasons as anyone. 60 days rifle, 12 days ML, five month archery crossbow, dog running in half the state. Baiting in all the state - including cwd zones. Two buck limit with modern gun. All that, and 25% of the state has the genetics/habitat type to produce an average 110” deer at age 5 1/2 - and then our average buck starts going downhill. I have 15 adjacent landowners to my 400 acres - and seems like they all have wives and kids who want to hunt. And we kill a 150” deer, give or take, about every other year - even with our horrible genetics and fertility.
I read about all the big deer killed in KY and Ohio and I often wish our season structure and soil fertility was as good as those states - and then folks hunting those states are wishing to be somewhere else.
I wish we had no baiting during season. And then I think, we have a fair many deer now - what would it be like if we had no baiting. Would they be thick as fleas on a stray dog - and about the same size. I do remember about 20 years ago when we had a much less liberal doe limit. We averaged hitting a deer in a vehicle every other year. I dont want that again.
Getting in one of the upper end leases may be a better answer than buying farms in hope of finding Utopia. There are some leases down here in the poor quality end of the state that produce some huge deer. They have enough land to control their own destiny, combined with favorable restrictions. And it is not nearly as hard to leave a lease if things arent to your liking.
I believe it is one of those grass is greener on the other side of the fence deals.
I read about all the big deer killed in KY and Ohio and I often wish our season structure and soil fertility was as good as those states - and then folks hunting those states are wishing to be somewhere else.
I wish we had no baiting during season. And then I think, we have a fair many deer now - what would it be like if we had no baiting. Would they be thick as fleas on a stray dog - and about the same size. I do remember about 20 years ago when we had a much less liberal doe limit. We averaged hitting a deer in a vehicle every other year. I dont want that again.
Getting in one of the upper end leases may be a better answer than buying farms in hope of finding Utopia. There are some leases down here in the poor quality end of the state that produce some huge deer. They have enough land to control their own destiny, combined with favorable restrictions. And it is not nearly as hard to leave a lease if things arent to your liking.
I believe it is one of those grass is greener on the other side of the fence deals.
BenAllgood
5 year old buck +
The grass is definitely greener in Kentucky than Louisiana. Both states allow baiting. The short gun season and one buck bag limit in Kentucky make it a dream for this Louisiana boy. The hunting is night and day. Now, there are some great areas in Louisiana that grow some monster bucks, but leasing ground there is extremely expensive. And, buying land in those areas costs 10x as much as buying it in Kentucky. I can't tell you how many Louisiana guys spend way too much money on corn or rice bran to not even see a deer in daylight during the season. They have their feeder set up, and watch it day after day, to just see it used by does and young bucks at night, with the rare sighting during daytime. I need to shut up before more Louisiana people start moving to Kentucky. Do I wish baiting was outlawed in Kentucky? Yes, but I'm thankful for Kentucky and the better hunting their laws provide for.
I agree - I have relatives in LA and their deer hunting regs have got to make it one of the least deer friendly states in the country - and they still kill some decent deer on their lease,, Louisiana might be a Sportsman’s Paradise but it is not a deer hunting paradise.
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
Well to play devils advocate, kentucky has 30 days of firearms which is still significant. Our landscape is wayyyy different in the western half of the state relative to ark, la, ala, ms, ga, etc. Our deer are super visible compared to those places. I bet the average hunter per sq mi is higher in ky than the Deep South, or at least relative to cover. We are able to overcome some of those obstacles by the abundance of ag and one buck (for those who don’t pull the ol’ I’m using my wife’s tag game). Corn and road hunting are so ingrained in the culture that I’m pretty sure it’s in the state charter. I think we can all find faults in our specific state. I think your neighborhood is the most important factor in your quality of hunting not your state.
BenAllgood
5 year old buck +
I think Louisiana invented those along with night hunting. There's even a song about it. Imagine sitting over a 240 acre bean field surrounded on all sides by 2100 acres of woods, and you don't see a single deer most days across the whole place. The deer are as used to getting shot at during the night as they are during the day in some places. Either that, or they're run by dogs constantly. It makes for some of the most skittish deer ever seen. Being able to drive around and just see deer during the day is a rare phenomena. Seeing a deer on stand during the day is a rare phenomena.
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
I will concede that Cajuns are a tough bunch to impart morality on! No offense of course. I’m buddies with an few
Hoytvectrix
5 year old buck +
Reading or hearing things like this always makes me appreciate how things are in our neck of the woods. We love to complain about the neighbors or the hunting culture, but it could definitely be much worse.
WTNUT
5 year old buck +
This seems to be an old thread that resurfaced. I will respond to the original post.
First, you are not going to have any “resident” bucks. I have over 20 times that amount of acreage and I have zero “resident” bucks. You may once in a blue moon, and I mean the bluest of moons find one buck that uses your place as his core area if your acreage is literally twice as thick as the neighbors.
As for the corn, the hard truth is that with that acreage no matter what you do with corn, the deer are still going to eat corn on your neighbors far more often than you. If I were you, I would use three corn piles as kill spots and try to take the buck you want each year while understanding you are going to lose more than you take.
I use to drive myself crazy with this kind of stuff. Been at it over 20 years. I have more than four times as much acreage as any neighbor. I only have 4 neighbors, but they still do a lot of things I would not do but hey it is their property so roll with it. For me the answer is to bait with gravity wagons as I have said before. They pore out 100 pound of corn. I dump 200 bushels of cob corn in many locations throughout the property and those don’t change from year to year. So when a fawn is born and mom takes him to a corn pile, the fawns great, great grandchild will go through the same process going to the same location.
I also put out some form of supplemental food all year. I also have standing corn and beans all fall and all winter. The bean fields normally get cleaned up the last of March or first of April.
In summary, it all helps me a lot. Even then my estimate is that I still lose 25% of the best bucks I want to protect.
I am a firm believer that you don’t have to have 1,000 acres to make a difference. You can make 10 acres better than it was before you started. But, you are not going to have “resident” bucks and your goals need to be realistic.
After you come to terms with that, enjoy every acre and don’t worry about anything you can not control - namely neighbors because life is too short.
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