ORIGINAL: stretchhunts
I`ve also done the 10 x 10 plots where my wife hunts and it draws does in. She`s had does come within 5 feet of her next to this "PLOT". It just doesn`t make sence. We hunt on 58 acres so we can`t plant a 60 acre plot. This is why I went with alot of smaller plots. At first I thought I was making bigger RACKS on the bucks but then I started ?ing myself as far as baiting goes. So if it`s a small plot it`s baiting but if it`s a 60 acre or bigger more expensive plot it`s ok? I`m not trying to be an A@S here but just don`t see the difference in it.
You answer your own question in this response Stretch. You specifically say you have MANY SMALL FOOD PLOTS. If you didn't have "many" plots the deer would destroy your plots very quickly making them useless.
Even if we assume the deer were heavily attracted to your plots they still have "many" choices as to which one to visit. This is very much the same as deer having many choices as to where to eat naturally occuring foods.
Unlike baiting that is done with high volumes of feed at very few sites, the situation you have described still requires a hunters skills to decide which one of the "many" plots you have planted will be most attractive to deer based on their natural tendencies. This is very simililar to the situations required to hunt naturally occuring foods such as acorns.
She`s had does come within 5 feet of her next to this "PLOT". It just doesn`t make sence.
What doesn't mmake sense?...Thousands ofdeer come within 5 feet of hunters in a stand every year, especially when the hunters are located near any food source.Whether it happens near a "plot" or any other food source it is not really very surprising.
It is really pretty simple...the deer never saw, smelled, or heard your wife (that is after all every hunters goal).The deer came to a food source, and it ate. That is what deer do 24/7/365.