Contact your local WCO and get his/her view on your situation. Every situation is different but I would certainly have an issue with a hunter being within 100 yards of a feeder that they obviously know about.

There is no set distance for a very good reason. One reason is that different wildlife will travel different distances to get to the food source and setting up along any trail going to our from the feed is hunting over bait the same as if they were shooting it while its head was stuck in the feed bucket.

The other reason there is no set distance is that as soon as they set a distance any hunter would be able to shut down huge areas to all other hunters. If you make the distance 100, 200 or in some cases even 300 yards all a person has to do is sight their gun in for that distance and move that far from the bait. Then any hunters that wanted to hunt in the area anywhere around that bait, even though it might be out of sight from them would be illegal.

Allow me to put it this way. Say they make the distance 200 yards. All I would have to do is sight my rifle in for 225 yards head out and figure out where I wanted to strategically place my stand locations. Then I could go out 225 yards and place bait stations in a circular or star pattern around my stand. At that point I have shut down a pretty large area that other hunters can’t legally hunt since they would be illegal to hunt within 200 yards of my bait stations, even from the other side of it. All I would have to do is tell them they are hunting a baited area and they would either have to move to be in violation. I could even expand the area I wanted to shut down to other hunters and have all to myself by going out another hundred yards or so from the first bait circle and placing more bait stations. That way I could shut down even more of my favorite hunting areas to other hunters. I might not ever even hunt some of those baited areas during any given day but I would keep them baited just in case I wanted to hunt there sometime in the future and wanted to know the game was still being held in that area. Meanwhile, anyone that came there to hunt would not be able to hunt the area unless they used my exact stand location and I would probably have it set up so they couldn’t get into the stand.

Now does anyone still think that set distances would be better then what we have now?

The only other thing to do would be to just make baiting legal. Baiting on a large scale, and believe me in this state it would be huge because it is already huge even being illegal, would increase the probability of disease transmission, help concentrate predators to the feeding stations and also greatly increase some wildlife harvests. Some species, such as turkey and bear can be very seriously over harvested with baiting. That then would require much shorter seasons or other limiting type hunting restrictions in order to bring harvests back in line toward sustainable harvests and species populations.

Nope, I think we need to stick with the WCOs and courts using good judgment on whether the hunter knew or should have know they were hunting or taking wildlife through the use of baiting, as we have now with the existing laws. If you have questions and concerns about baiting in your area talk to your WCO about it. They will work with you on it as long as you are above board and trying to be legal instead of just a sneak taking advantage of the wildlife being pulled into a bait station.

R.S. Bodenhorn