ORIGINAL: GMMAT
Also Tim....what you'll find is....the people who are most against baiting live in states where it's illegal....and they have NO first-hand knowledge of the practice. I'd say they were ignorant....but that sounds a bit inflammatory. Ill-informed, yeah.
Everybody wants to think what they want to.....because I suppose it makes them feel superior in some way....if they can tear the other guy's means/methods down.
I posted a study that was performed a couple years ago in SC. It proved that baiting actually led to LESS harvest % success, there. People can turn a blind eye to that all they want to.....but doing so on emotion and not fact is only perpetuating the ignorance. That's called denial.
I was going to set this one out, but what the hay ( I mean corn).
GMMAT is right. The SCDNR did release some information stating that hunting over "bait" doesn't give the hunter any advantage and actually puts them at a disadvantage. I've live and hunted in South Carolina my entire life so I have the first hand knowledge that (as GMMAT stated) most of you don't. I agree that most of the people who have an opinion on baiting have never lived/hunted in a state where baiting is legal. They make assumtions from watching the TV shows filmed out in Texas where it looks like deer just flock to the corn in groves. You should also be reminded that most of these shows are shot on properties that are high fence operations. A lot of people also want to bring up the topic of diseases. However (to my knowledge) there has been no confirmed evidence to show that baiting in South Carolina has lead to the spread of any known diseases.
Our weather and land are a lot different than our Midwestern and Northern states so there for our deer are going to be a lot different. Even during the harhest of South Carolina winters there is still plent of "natural" food available for our deer to eat so they don't have to flock to whatever they can find. Our deer don't herd up like the deer in the Midwest/Northern states do either. About half of the state has a deer density of 45+ deer a sq. mile, but our deer still don't herd so known diseases that are spread from contact with eachother or through baiting doesn't occur.
I hunt places that are baited and I hunt places that aren't. I have never (a long with most of the people that I know) shot a MATURE buck off of bait. Our gun season lasts five months so our deer aren't dumb. They know that corn piles and feeders just don't drop out of the sky and it doesn't take them long at all to associate bait with hunters. Our deer are on record even by some of the best biologist in the county as being the most skittish deer in the county. Just like GMMAT's thread about deer looking up. I will gladly open up my hunting grounds to anyone that doesn't believe that our deer look up more than they do down. In most states wearing rubber boots is a BIG BIG thing. Here in SC it's not because our deer are looking up in the trees more than they are smelling the ground. Again, I welcome ANYONE who wants to come to South Carolina and bow hunt the most skittish deer in the country. I am not bosting or bragging, but everyone I have ever talked to who was a serious bow hunter in SC and traveled to other states have all come back saying "man, I wish it was that easy here".
One of the major disadvantages that baiting brings a hunter is that it puts the deer in a more night time travel pattern because they know that the bait is going to be there so why take a risk of moving during day light hours. Another disadvantage is that if you put out a ton of corn a year that means your neighbor is probably going to put out two tons and his neighbor three tons and so on.
To be honest I do wish that they would ban the use of bait state wide (its not legal in about half of the state) so our deer will shift back to a more normal pattern which would boost our quality of hunting.
Another thing that gets to me is how some hunters try to make themselves feel better for hunting over food plots and ag. fields saying "corn piles aren't natural". You are right, corn piles aren't natural. Neither are ag. fields or food plots. Just because man planted it and it grows from the ground doesn't mean that it is natural. There for they are no different from baiting. A lot of hunters also use the argument "ag. fields and food plots feed more". Again, just another excuse to make them feel better for what they are doing. A LOT of animals eat corn so there for a lot of animals eat the corn that hunters put out. Deer, turkeys, squirrels, coon, opossums, every kind of bird, hogs, fox, and rats to name just a few.
This debate will be around as long as their is hunting. Just like the speed vs. mass debate. The best advice I could give anyone is that if you don't want to do it then don't. If someone is doing it legally then shut up and hunt. Stop being a cry baby because you think they have an "advantage" that you could also be taking "advantage" of, but your ego choses not to. For those who think they are not hunting over bait because they are hunting over ag. fields and food plots, go plant some oaks and wait ten years for them to start producing acorns and hunt them, thats natural.