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I was watching a hunting show one day they were hunting a feeder. A large ten point stepped out and just as the guy was getting ready to shoot the feeder went off and scared the buck away. I laughed my butt off.

Taz, Ive seen too many shows and pictures of big deer around feeders during legal shooting hours to believe they only feed off bait at night.

I have no desire to hunt over bait. I would fight it if they tried to legalize it in NY.

What ever floats your boat I guess it has alot to do with how you were raised. If you were raised around baiting I guess you woiuld not have a problem with it, proably would become very good at it. A master baiter some might say,[&:] I had to get that in before anyone else did.

Well, I guess I' ll put my 2 cents in too. It' s illegal in Maine and I am glad it is. If it were legal I wouldn' t do it simply because I consider it " cheating" . If it is legal where you hunt and you enjoy hunting this way and feel there is nothing wrong with it, then go ahead! I would suggest that you don' t limit yourself to hunting this way though, because using other techniques will help you to learn and become a better all-around hunter. You will probably have lots more fun and a greater sense of satisfaction from using other tactics.

baiting dear saves time...... buying meat in the grocery store saves even more time...... both are cheezy

hook; This wasn' t directed at any one in particular. I will stand by my statement. If a person can' t tell the difference between putting hundreds of pounds of feed in a relatively small area, and a food plot of say 4, 5, or 6 acres, yes I' d call them a moron. Do you see the difference?

its not about ethics i hunt bait not over bait but on a trail leading to my bait
see where i hunt we dont got farms and all that its no diffrent making a food source to hunt by dumping bait
then it is hunting by a farm

and i hunt state land if every one is baiting and i' m not who you think is going to get the deer the people baiting[]
noway lol

the same topic is posted every year and everyone fights over it we all are hunters and need to stick toghter

Nub,

I think, as someone said earlier in this thread, that we are all looking at this issue from the perspective of our own particular geographic region. I hunt in two completely different regions: Oklahoma farmland and Southwest Texas desert.

In Oklahoma it is illegal to use feeders when hunting deer, but even if it was not I would not use one. I hunt on food plots and have had a lot of success; so I believe it is much more effective to use food plots if that option is available.

In the Southwest Texas desert it is not possible to grow a food plot, but feeders are legal. Since food plots are not an option and feeders are I use a feeder.
It is my opinion that to keep and grow a deer herd there must be a food source available. In Texas I am using the only method available to me to provide that food source. Given the two situations above, I do not see any difference between a food plot and a feeder.

Now, our Texas lease is 6,000 acres of low fenced desert property. I imagine you are drawing your conclusions on the use of feeders from the hunting television shows you have seen. Those shows are filmed on high fenced game ranches where the deer, in my opinion, are like cattle. On our fair chase lease, there (hopefully) are going to be deer at the feeders in the morning and the evening, but not any big bucks. The bucks we are after stay nocturnal until the rut. In that area the rut takes place sometime in the first two weeks on December. I have only been on this particular lease one year, but the other hunters on the lease have had it for eight years. In those eight years every large deer taken, except one, was taken between December 3rd and December 10th. The one deer taken out of this window was shot on the third weekend in November and was the biggest one ever taken on the lease, 16 points scoring in the 180s. The reason he was taken then was because of a flash flood that forced the deer out of the thick brush onto the more sparsely vegetated hills.

The point I am hoping to make with the lengthy paragraph above is this: on a fair chase ranch the feeders are not there to provide the hunter with the kind of duck-in-a-barrel hunt you see on the high fenced game ranches; they are there to hold the deer herd on the property so that when the rut begins we have the possibility of getting a shot at the monster buck as he is chasing a doe across a sendero.

As far as the moron comment, it is my opinion that when you say someone is a bigger moron than you realized the implication is that you already recognized that person as a moron, but his opinion on an issue strengthened your view. If it was not your intent to call the person a moron, then I misunderstood you. Perhaps if you had written, “If you believe that you are a moron,” your meaning would have been clearer. I would still view it as being totally inappropriate, but that’s just my opinion.

I live in Wisconsin and used to bait when it was legal. I will say I don' t think it makes dear nocturnal. I have had 170 class bucks 5 yards from my stand in the middle of the day. For the most part dear are going to be more nocturnal during the season because of hunting preasure not because of bait. I don' t see baiting any different than hunting near any other food source. State law limited baiting to 10 gallons with no containers or electric feeders. I usually just used 5 gallons of apples or corn spread out on the ground.

I don' t know why this has been such a big deal in our state. Personnally I think more attention should be paid to the game farms that brought CWD here in the first place.

I cringe when I hear.....We as hunters should stick together........
There will always be a left or right on any issue.

We are here to learn more about whitetails. If bickering helps than keep bickering. I think it does.

If your region has a tough time sustaining deer maybe the population is to high?

I agree that the unknown can be scary but you cannot rule out that CWD can be spread by close contact. What if CWD can be spread by close contact by deer. That would be worse than Anthrax. Lets keep on learning.......

Well said Ihook