+1, long before this thread, I posted up in the Team 8 thread that I had high hopes because we've got beans planted rather than corn at one of my favorite spots. Adding that the CRP was just recently cut down, it will keep the deer in the woods and increase my opportunity significantly!!!!

You are also more likely to die from an unrestrained fall from a treestand than killed in an airplane crash.

If you're still singing that song about a cornfield and a baitpile being the same thing .. your still nuts! I don't care how hard you try and twist the moon into the sun to fit your reasoning you missed it bad on this one. The more you dig the more that the sides are falling in on you!

blah, blah, blah, Bob. "Rhetoric" doth not = "fact". Your rhetoric is popular in most deer hunting circles.....but the FACT remains.....Corn and soy beans are not indigenous plants where you see them planted in fields. That makes them "artificial" to that area. Shelled corn doesn't grow out of the ground into a pile....so that makes it artificial, too.

Your artificial corn field might be bigger than the artiicial bait pile......but they're both what? YES!! Artificial!

Leave the cover aspect out of it. Leave the "patterning" thing out of it. Let's get down to basics. They are both an artificially introduced food source.

Jeff, without these readily available food sources how many deer would you think there would be today? Are there more deer now or in the days of Daniel Boone? Even with habitat diminishing by the hour the deer herd countinues to grow.

An artificial food source (Bait)is something placed by someone for the benefit of attracting something else.

Corn, soy, apple orchards..whatever, were not put there to attract anything. they are a lively hood for someone. If you grow something to not harvest it and only attract game then yes, I'll buy it as artificial. A Food Plot for example.


I still have nothing against the practice of baiting if legal or food plots or what have you..but your logic and the "GMMAT spin" are what I take exception too!

That Oak tree your hunting under did someone plant it or did the acorn fall and naturally sprout?? I mean come on..

Amen Bob!!!!!!!!! Well said.

I am in the corn belt with few cattle being raised in my area anymore but I"ll gladly take clover or alfalfa anytime over a corn field for drawing deer in.

That's a fair definition, Bob....and we're just hung up on "intent", now. No....the FARMER didn't plant it to attract "somthing else".....but why is the hunter hunting it?

For the same reasons you hunt a spot, there might be a trail there, tracks. This is getting ridiculous Jeff!!

Schultzy....when someone disagrees with you....it's often FAR from "ridiculous". If ag fields couldn't be hunted.....I'd say they weren't technically "bait". GR8's already conceded that food plots "are".

So the "intent" for why the hunter is hunting the ARTIFICIAL stimulus is the key, right? WHY are you hunting near the ag fields?

That's my take on it. I'm sure the farmer isn't planting his corn so I could have success hunting. In fact I've never got a phone call telling me he finished planting the corn for me the deer should be coming once it's up. And I've never called him to thank him for baiting for me. It's intended purpose is NOT to attract deer. Does it? Sure. A pile of corn in a specific place has one intention. To attract deer to that specific spot. I view a farmers corn field as taking advantage of what the land gives me. Same as acorns, water sources, apples, etc... If he decided not to plant the following year and it grew up into overgrown crud, I'm still hunting that land. I'll change my gameplan and figure out where the critters are.