Peter Gozinya

Here in South Carolina most people wouldn't even consider going deer hunting without corn. That said, I'm not one of them. I do put out corn, but rarely hunt over it. Corn is great if you want to see does and immature deer, but if you are hunting for bucks with any age then get back down the trail away from the corn. I put out corn to keep the deer on my property, because in the south it is "he who has the biggest corn pile wins" I hunt 850 acres of private land with very limited access and from about July 4th to around Christmas I put out 4,000 lbs. of cob corn onceeach month, usuallya ton in two different spots located in very concealed areas within the center of my property. A put that much out at each time toreduce the amount of human scent left and also so it is not such a frequent production. The key to putting out corn is to startway before hunting seasonso the deer become accustomed to using it as a frequent food source. Use cob corn becausethe deer will have to work harder at getting the corn and overall it will last much longer than shelled corn. Don't get me wrong though, when you first start feeding corn to a deer herd that has never had it before you may have a good opportunity to harvest a nice buck, but after a very short period all the deer will start to figure out that a corn pile is a dangerous area and deer sightings will decline drastically. If you have ever seen a deer walk up to a corn pile somewhere that corn has been used a long time you would understand just how cautious theybecome. Most of the time they use the wind to their advantage walking in. To those in states that do not permit baiting I know it sounds like a real advantage, but I personally think overall baiting most of the time screws up the natural movement of deer. That is why I use it as a tool to keep deer on my property, but choose to instead hunt travel routes.