Some interesting posts in here.Ill share my opinion on a few of them.Outdoorlover, not arguing with you, just borrowing a few of your quotes as they cover the topics very well.
The reason I'm against baiting is simple. If you know exactly where the deer will stand, then you obviously do not havemany skills.
That would be a geographic thing IMPO.I live in rural Iowa, theres millions of acres of standing corn, beans, hay, alphalfa, etc...I could dump 1000 lbs of corn on the ground at the begining of season and it could very well rot there before anything bigger then a pheasant came into it.If your not in a spot the deer want to be in here theres no reason for em to come in throughout the first 2/3 of deer season, theres just to much food available.Thats not the case everywhere but I dont see baiting here{which is illegal anyway} doing anything to give you an edge.
First off, I have to draw the line with those fences. If they have wild deer and are humongous in size, then I guessI can't be against them. On the other hand, if they are small(lets say 1000 acres or less) or have pen raised deer you will never hear me approve of them. I really don't like any fences with the intent of keeping the deer in butI have to draw the line at 1000 acres because I don't even hunt an area that big
I dont like high fences, probably one of the few things I dont care for.That said if I was hunting a ranch in lets say texas that was fenced in and contained miles and miles of land Id probably do it.1000 acres dont seem like much but theres a slough here that I hunt, its 1100 acres and holds some of the biggest bucks in our area.If they threw a fence up around it tommorrow many of them deer would die of old age in there.I can cover the majority of it on foot in a day but its a nightmare to hunt and the deer have absolutely no trouble avoiding hunters in there, they just walk around them or lay quietly and let you walk past.Id feel sorry for anyone going in there expecting an easy fenced in hunt.
I am not against rifle hunting. I am simply not into it PERSONALLY. I don't see the fun in picking off whitetails from 300 yards.
I think it is what you make of it, if I could shoot 300 or 400 yards accurately Id be much pickier about what I shot I suppose.I like to hunt as much as possible and it usually involves letting many deer walk every year anyway and waiting for a bigger one.With a rifle I could have killed some real monsters over the years.If i could shoot that far Id be much more inclined to wait for those oppurtunities but it would still mean only killing a deer with a gun maybe every 2 or 3 years because I dont find truly big deer that often.The challenge would be in finding these deerand holding out for these rare occasions when a shot presented itself.
I don't like to hunt with food plots or scents, or calls myself. It takes away from the natural movements of the deer and gives you a cheap advantage. Again, I don't like hunting that way but I'm not against it. If you are happy with that method then fine. I think it takes away from the true nature of stalking them while they're doing their natural things.
I dont use scents or calls myself, mainly because I spend so much time trying to remain quiet and scent free that I find it couter productive to lay down scent and blow noisy calls or bang antlers together.
I have a lot of experience with foodplots though, the state leaves them in every piece of public hunting ground they own almost and its hard to avoid factoring them in.The deer are either coming or going to them in the late season.
I stand hunted near them for years, it was easy to see deer and if you werent picky it was easy to shoot them.I quit hanging stands and started bowhunting from the ground, I find a place and set up, wait for the deer to startcoming in and try to sneak around to get ahead of them and remain hidden till thier in bowrange.I dont know to many people that wouldnt find this as challenging as it gets.Try to remain hidden and get a shot off in a small corn patch with 20 deer feeding around you.
Then I put another twist on it.Some foodplots it was impossible to sit in and have the deer come into them.The wind swirls and is constantly out of the wrong direction and these deer have been hunted hard up till this point so they use it to thier advantage.I sit back and watch them from a half mile off or so.If I see deer heading into the foodplots I let them get in thier then try to use the wind to my advantage and sneak in behind them.Now you have to cover 1/2 mile of open ground jut to get to the foodplot then try sneaking in, locating the deer, and getting a shot .Add in the rare occasion you know a good buck went into the foodplot and you have to do all that plus try to locate a single deer in the herd.All this usually happens with less then an hour of daylight left so the clocks always running.Again, it can be as challenging as you care to make it.
This year I used the second technique and managed to get within 15 ft of a nice 130/140 class buck that was in the corn with 16 does.After all that no shot ever presented itself and at dark I had to sneak back out and leave him be, never saw him again either.