Deer Baiting

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If you don't think sitting in a stand in 90+ degree heat and 90% humidity in the middle of a swamp is tough, come on out and give it a try, my guess is the mosquitos run you out in less than 30 minutes. After you've stacked up you 15th trophy buck of the afternoon, I'll buy you dinner.

There are different methods of hunting throughout the country and to disparage one based on the style is just plain stupid and biggoted. The fellow that says he stalks, observes and gets to know his game is being the ultimate hypocrite. We do the same in getting to know the game but hunting in open arid country isn't even feasible when you are after a Swamp Donkey, you would fail miserably employing your style here.

Also if you are the type above, do you use a rifle? Compound Bow? Or do you fashion your own Bow/arrows from willow branches, arrowheads from flint, fletching from turkeys, and bindings from sinew taken from the buffalo you killed with rock. Unless you do that, you are being hypocritical.

Man is able to invent and fashion tools. Man is a higher being than critters are, that is what had made him successful over the years. God gave man dominion over all animals, God never stipulated how to harvest them.
 
I figure that getting out of the house and away from city sidewalks and into the boonies is far more important than the trivial issue of how you prefer to turn Bambi into supper.

Mostly, game laws originated from the hunting fraternity. By and large, they set up what we adopt for ourselves as ethics and ethical hunting.

Regardless, terrain, vegetation and weather control the methods for our hunting. To think that there is some sort of "One size fits all" is foolish.

I prefer walking hunting or sneaky-snaking, but I know from experience that in thick-brush country you're fooling yourself to think you can do either. Mesquite, prickly pear and cat-claw acacia will change your attitude in a heartbeat. Cat-claw lets you learn all about the smell of blood: Your own. :D Pear thorn? They'll be all festered out by March, usually.

You get down here in these south Georgia forests with head-high underbrush and if you're not in a high stand you'll be eating hamburgers at Maudie's Kum-Bak Cafe. Ya gotta see Bambi before you can shoot him.

Folks generally hunt in whatever method works in the area they hunt in. Always have, always will. Pointless to go whining with this, "He's different, so he's bad!" style. Silly.
 
Excellent post Art! I had to sit back and look my self (re-adjust my thinkin)..after a post on hunting in the NE....
 
How you hunt is important if you call it hunting and sporting. If you want to get out in the outdoors and do whatever that is fine. However, sport hunting is just that. It requires that the game be stalked/taken in his element, and not fed until he is used to it, and then shoot him.

Saltydog, the thread was about hunting over bait. It has nothing to do with building a blind in the swamps. However, if you are hunting over bait, the number of mosquito bites has nothing to do with sport. I don't think you have really seen bugs until you go into Alaska in the bug season and experience that.

Putting up blinds in the woods beside trails or places where deer naturally feed is not shooting over bait or a field planted for deer to feed.

Anyway, each can do as he will as long as it is legal.

Jerry
 
It requires that the game be stalked/taken in his element
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I see you are from New Mexico where you can roam over very large areas looking for deer. That is definitely not the case everywhere. My partner and I have access to only two plots of land to hunt. One is about 130 acres and the other is only 32 acres. The ONLY way to hunt those is to use a feeder. And lest someone think that you are sitting on top of the feeder waiting for the deer to show up, let me tell you that is not how it works. Like I said in an earlier post, our deer are very nocturnal. The feeder only keeps then in the general area. You still have to wait for them to pass through.
 
Doyle,
Do you mean you cannot stalk what deer are in your area?

Yes, I am in NM, but I grew up in AR. I have some understanding of hunting in thick brush. It isn't easy, but isn't that what sport is about? I have kin in AR, and they do mostly hunt from stands. I do not have any objections to stands. In some places the brush is so thick, as also South TX, that you can't see very far.
But they scout and determine where the deer are using and feeding ant the routes they use during different times of the year. Then they construct stands. That is a lot different from hunting over bait.

Throughout the years I have enjoyed the scouting for game even more than the taking of game. It has given me time alone in the outdoors, and to see various wildlife in their natural habitat without being spooked or driven by other people. I also learned a lot more from scouting than the hunt which was often over too soon.

I assume that you are using a feeder to attract deer to the area in general. As long as you are not sitting over the feeder, but just attempting to lure deer to an area I don't consider that hunting over a feeder.

But hunting is more that shooting, and I am opposed to those who shoot at 1,000 yards and claim they hunt. It takes a lot of skill to hit the mark at that range, but it is still just shooting and not hunting. It does not take much skill to get within 1,000 yards of most game.

Now, who else is angry with me??:D:D

Jerry
 
Folks generally hunt in whatever method works in the area they hunt in. Always have, always will. Pointless to go whining with this, "He's different, so he's bad!" style. Silly.
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Silly, yes... and sad as well. The emboldened part is usually said/felt by those that have never hunted far from their own backyard.

My legal(key word) hunting tactics may not work in your neck of the woods and yours may not work in mine. Who's tactics are right? Who's wrong? Answer...paying attention to the key word legal, both would be right. May not be the style of hunting you or I are used to but again, where you hunt, my tactics may be useless and visa-versa.
 
JerryM, I still don't see a difference between sitting on deer travel routes and sitting over a food source. Now stalking an animal is different and very difficult. And is very rewarding. Still, you seem to look down on stand hunters. Unless they are related to you.
I applaud your stalking skills. Like I said, when it's time for me to take a doe I preferre still hunting them. It's way too easy over the feeder. I just think you need to come down off your high horse about others ways of hunting. There is a certain mindset necessary for one to sit in one place all day. It doesn't require a lot of physicle effort but man, it ain't easy. And like I stated before, the less I roam around the more deer I see. I save the doe hunts for the last few weekends.
 
Doyle,
Do you mean you cannot stalk what deer are in your area?
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Yep. Area is way too small. Plus, you don't stalk deer in FL. It's pretty much impossible to do. Visible distances are only about 50 yds max in the woods and they will hear you comming long before you get to them. Hunting here is much different than it is out west.
 
I got a big patch of briars/thorns so high and thick with a few locust trees scattered throughout that I'd pay to watch someone still hunt .Long as I could video you coming out bleeding on the other end and was allowed to send the tape to Funniest Home Video's. By the time you got to the other end the game warden would arrest you for thinkin you were a pervert running around the woods naked cut to pieces.:D

Guess where the 'big boys' hang out? Guess where the same big boys run when we shoot them close to there?

I don't even pull up on a deer close to that area unless he's a monster. Cutting your way in is the best way to retrieve your deer.
 
Baiting is one of the weirdest issues in the hunting world. You have people that will talk about hunting over corn like the people who do it are only a click or two above a child murderer. Then that same person will go sit over a green field and tell you they don't consider that bait. Well what is it then? It's a food source placed in a specific location by man for the purpose of luring a game animal into gun or bow range. How is that not bait? How is that different ethically than a feeder? What's the ethical difference in climbing a tree next to a white oak that's dropping acorns and climbing one that's next to a corn feeder? Where is the difference in skill in those two activities?

Strange that people feel that way about corn feeders yet no one seems to say anything negative about people who go out to Wyoming and sit over the only water hole for 30 miles waiting for an antelope to show up. Or fly up to Canada and shoot a bear over a bait barrel. What's the moral or ethical difference there?

I hear people call it cheating. Then that same person, puts on a scent dampening suit, drives to the woods in a 4x4; gets on a 4 wheeler to get further back in the woods; puts out a scent attractant; climbs a tree with a mechanical climber; scans for game using a 600 dollar pair of 12 power binoculars; then drops an animal that's 400 yards away using a high powered rifle with a 1000 dollars worth of scope sitting on top of it. LOL! Thank God they didn't cheat. They just took that deer on with the tools they were both born with. LOL!

Lets face it. Unless you are running deer down on foot and stabbing them with a spear, you are cheating. It's just a matter of degree. As long as they aren't breaking the law don't look down your nose at someone else just because you have chosen to personally restrict yourself from using a couple of the 200 ways out there that we "Cheat" to kill animals. Odds are you are still using the other 198.
 
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How you hunt is important if you call it hunting and sporting. If you want to get out in the outdoors and do whatever that is fine. However, sport hunting is just that. It requires that the game be stalked/taken in his element, and not fed until he is used to it, and then shoot him.

Saltydog, the thread was about hunting over bait. It has nothing to do with building a blind in the swamps. However, if you are hunting over bait, the number of mosquito bites has nothing to do with sport. I don't think you have really seen bugs until you go into Alaska in the bug season and experience that.

Putting up blinds in the woods beside trails or places where deer naturally feed is not shooting over bait or a field planted for deer to feed.

Anyway, each can do as he will as long as it is legal.
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You should head east and take a chance at a SE Whitetail. You will change your mind on things after 3 or 4 seasons of failure. You hunt food sources here, be it agricultural, feeder or natural concentrations. You hunt big bucks by staying close to those sources but off the beaten path. The only stalking that works around here and produces comes on the pads of a pack of Walker hounds.
 
Cougars aren't hunters, really, since they tend to sit and wait near water or food until prey shows up.

Wolves are hunters, since they run around in the open and chase down a meal.

Sumpn's wrong with this picture. :D
 
I have no problem with deer baiting as long as it's legal in the area it is being practiced. That said, I am not a fan of sittin' over a bait pile. That's the difference between legality and ethics. What's legal is delegated supposedly by those who know better than the average hunter and must be followed by all or one can face a severe punishment. Ethics are delegated by ourselves and/or our hunting partners and if not followed the punishment is either a serious ribbing, a loss of a hunting partner/area or just a sick feeling in one's gut. In our hunter safety classes, we tell our students that ethics is doing the right thing when no one else is around. Many times ethics were once determined by law....baiting is a prime example. In Wisconsin, baiting at one time was illegal for deer. Those that used bait were poachers. As years went by and the deer herd exploded and it was determined that baiting made little or no difference in the overall kill, it was legalized. Baiters, while now legal, were still looked upon ethically by older hunters as "cheaters". A few years later when CWD was discovered and it was determined that baiting and feeding could lead to the spread of the disease, baiting was once again outlawed in most of the state. Now those that were legal a few years ago would now again be poachers if they continue the practice. To me, the big problem was those hunters that only learned how to hunt deer over a bait pile and deemed it the only way they could kill a deer. It was a shortcut to learning woodsmanship and the other skills needed to take deer successfully. Time that could have been spent learning trails and patterns were spent haulin' corn. IMHO, not only did their skills suffer, but so did the quality of their hunt. Are there areas in the country where there are no other viable options to baiting? I'm sure there is. Are there folks that could not hunt if they could not sit in a platform overlooking a feeder? Again, I'm sure there are. But, are those folks really experiencing the thrill of a real hunt? Only they can answer this.
 
Art said:
Cougars aren't hunters, really, since they tend to sit and wait near water or food until prey shows up.

Wolves are hunters, since they run around in the open and chase down a meal.

Sumpn's wrong with this picture.
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Thanks Art, I really liked that one!:D:D:D

Indian weren't real hunters either. They use to chase antelope on horse back around a hill where a new group of mounted Indians would take over the chase & continue this method until the antelope were exhausted. Then stick 'em with a knife or spear.

Those @#$%^&!* cheatin' Indians!! LOL LOL

...bug :)
 
Indian weren't real hunters either. They use to chase antelope on horse back around a hill where a new group of mounted Indians would take over the chase & continue this method until the antelope were exhausted. Then stick 'em with a knife or spear.

Those @#$%^&!* cheatin' Indians!! LOL LOL
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Musta been a trick they learned from the white man seeing as they didn't have horses until the Europeans hit the Americas.......just sayin'.

There's a big difference in hunting for sport and/or for occasional table fare and the methods one uses to stay alive. Doubt very much if there's anyone here with a computer and an internet connection that's in that boat.
 
There's a big difference in hunting for sport and/or for occasional table fare and the methods one uses to stay alive. Doubt very much if there's anyone here with a computer and an internet connection that's in that boat.
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You got me there. Amen to that brother!:o

...bug:)

BTW: I'm enjoying this thread...can't ya tell.
 
Here in Idaho it is legal to bait for black bear. I've been trying for three seasons now to get a bear over bait with no luck. As far as deer hunting goes I'm in the camp with those that see no difference in planting a food plot and hunting an agricultural area frequented by deer. One place I hunt in the mountains has an old apple tree planted by some homesteaders a long time ago. I always check that spot, but someone is usually there already.
Stand hunting vs still hunting: both are viable, honorable ways to hunt deer. I have never hunted in a state that allows hounds for deer hunting, but if it is legal I see no problem with it.
The point about sport hunting vs subsistence is well taken. There is a big difference. But many of the techniques developed over millenia for subsistence hunting are still used for sport hunting, obviously.
I don't bait for deer, or spray **** on my boots or raise food plots, but those that do in places where they are legal will hear no argument from me.
Hunting should not be a competition, yet without it there would be no B&C or P&Y, now would there?
Good luck and good hunting to all.

George
 
Thanks Art, I really liked that one!

Indian weren't real hunters either. They use to chase antelope on horse back around a hill where a new group of mounted Indians would take over the chase & continue this method until the antelope were exhausted. Then stick 'em with a knife or spear.

Those @#$%^&!* cheatin' Indians!! LOL LOL

...bug
Click to expand...

Bug....Actually Native Americans(plains indians) used horses and they were expert horsemen....They could outride any white man....They did not learn their hunting skills from the white man....They had been hunting these grounds for 1000's of years..before the white man ever showed....Native Americans were expert hunters....They were opportunistic too....They had to be....They would hunt with any methods they were able to.....
 

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