*Sigh*

I never mentioned baiting...... Simply asked for suggestions on which was best for the deer..

"Sigh", then spit it out will ya, LOL! Regardless of what you're going to do it for, its best that the deer aren't concentrated in a real small area. That's why MI requires that any feed put out for deer is spread in a minimum of a
10'x10' area.
Feeding deer during the winter like Lunkerdog mentioned can do more harm than good if a person doesn't know what they're doing. It takes quite a while for a deer to change over from one feed to the next and you need to start feeding early and continue through the entire winter if you're talking about supplemental feeding to get them through a harsh winter. Feeding alfalfa all of a sudden once the weather gets bad like it is up here now is too late and they'll literally die laying on the alfalfa with a full stomach because they can't digest it properly. I'd rather see a person plant food plots they can use at their pleasure from Spring until they can't get at it any more. Before that happens then you should start the supplemental feed to give them a lengthy time to change over before the dead of winter hits.

Whats the deal with this stuff? Guilty conscience or what?

Your on a HUNTING forum talking about putting a pile of corn on the ground......My bad for taking the wild leap to baiting.

I don't understand why your offended? Just a habit from past debates over baiting maybe?

I don't care if you bait or feed or whatever you want to do. You can raise them up in a pin for all I care.

I'm just sharing my thoughts on the subject as I thought that was what you wanted when you made a thread about it on a public forum.

I'm sorry if my definitions differ from yours but I think when you feed animals you plan to hunt your baiting.

If baiting was bad for the deer herd then the herd in North Carolina would have died off decades ago..... :s2:

I know guys that won't/can't hunt without some corn on the ground... :)

The best way in my opinion if the property isn't too far away is to spread corn with a seeder, either one attached to your 4-wheeler (another necessity for us Southern rednecks)...Or a hand seeder, this spreads it over an area and the deer come through and pick up a kernel here and there...Twenty pounds put out twice a week is enough to keep them coming through the area and looking...

I have seen properties where it took more than just a few months for deer to get use to a mechanical feeder...In this situation, pipe feeders made from pvc pipe and attached to trees is a good option...

While I'm at it, often the best bucks are killed coming through 50-75 yards down wind from where the corn has been fed...They are scent checking for does...Put out some doe estrus scent near the area and back off to kill them...


Good luck, have fun...

On honeysuckle, deer love it, especially by December...All you need to do is fertilize it in the spring to help it along...

Great job of expanding the point Top... I can't speak for the Southern, or Western regions, but am guessing that most here in the North don't fully understand the biological changes that a deers digestive system goes threw throughout the seasons.

Okay, as a caveat I'll add that I don't "fully understand" it either, but do know that the digestive system, enzymes and such change throughout the year.

As Top said, if you intend to feed deer in the North Summer/Fall types of feed you need to start early. If a deer in the North has been eating the natural feed here for this time of year, it's body's biology literally can not digest Summer/Fall types of food. The biology change take place over time as the variety of foods available change. They can't just flip a switch and change their biology back to Summer/Fall types of feed.

As others have alluded to, most wildlife biologists discourage anyone feeding deer (especially in our part of the country - I'm not that far from you). Deer are browsers and concentrating the herd around food piles tends to propagate diseases.

All that being said, if you are going to feed deer (other than with a planted food plot) a timed broadcast spreader/feeder would be the method that is "best for the deer"

I'd go with a broadcast feeder for sure. Like someone said above, I would not start feeding corn now if you haven't been. Since deer aren't used to the corn that could easily starve even with a belly full of corn. In this cold wet weather, if you pile up corn the bottom of pile will get mildew on it and be inedible, therefor wasting your corn. A broadcast feeder will keep the corn fresh and spread it over a large area.

In our area (wv and va) if we have a decent mast crop and the deer get fat by October you can't starve them, so why bother unless you had no mast crop, besides where I hunt is now in the CWD containment area, no baiting or feeding allowed.
RR

Where I hunt in wv is no cwd containment zone but other side of road is. So they don't think deer crosses the road. Last year there was no mass crop. All the deer I killed and seen where in the fields or under the same perssimons tree. When the perssimons are on the deer flock to them better then corn. But laying corn in a pile on the ground can produce mold and is not good for the wildlife. Scattering corn on the ground and nit in a pile should be ok.