When do deer start eating corn?
This may be a dumb question, and I'm sure the answer varies geographically and is dependent upon the other forage available, but I'm wondering when deer start eating corn off the stalks?
I'm hunting a cornfield edge, and it's a really high-traffic area, but I didn't start hunting there until the rut started to heat up last year (around Halloween). I'm wondering if it would behoove me to hunt that location starting on the opening day (around October 1)? This is the only cornfield in the area, and it draws a lot of deer into it.
Right now, I've been seeing deer moving around the cornfields at night, but the corn ears are really small and soft, barely developed.
I guess I'm just wondering how early you can effectively start hunting over a cornfield. Corn hunters, help me out.
I usually hunt acorn flats, draws, benches, scrapelines and travel corridors, so my buck last year was the first deer I've ever killed while hunting a cornfield, and it only took 2 nights to get him. That didn't give me much of a chance to get a good feel for their patterns/etc.