Anybody who thinks legal baiting will be an easy button hasn't hunted much in a bait legal state. It doesn't work like that. The only thing legal baiting does is further enhance the rich man's edge. The same folks running extensive food plot systems, habitat work, and hiring in habitat consultants will now also have a green light to run feeding programs. And it won't be 50lb bags of walmart corn. It'll be quarterly or monthly flatbed deliveries of protein pellets, attractants, corn, and beans. I'd bet dollars to donuts that's where the lobby money came from to push this issue in the first place. Legal baiting has nothing at all to do with helping the average hunter. It has everything to do with giving rich folks more of an advantage.
The Final Word.
- Thread starter Double-D-Team
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BSK
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MickThompson
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Apostolic Outdoors
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Page 4?
That title is deceiving!!
That title is deceiving!!
I grew up in Arkansas where baiting is just how deer hunting was done when I grew up. So I don't really have a problem with it myself, but I do think if you haven't hunted in heavily baited deer areas that you'll be surprised how quickly the deer adapt to it. It's not just go throw a bag of corn on the ground and collect your deer. I see 100x more daylight activity in TN around my throw and grow rye food plots than I see in Arkansas around a bait pile, deer feeder, or otherwise. And it's easier to get in and out of the plots without spooking deer than it is to get on and off a bait pile since those deer will show up at dark and might not leave for hours. Most years I'm more likely to kill my buck in Arkansas by not baiting, and relying on my neighbors to push the deer to live on my land during the daylight, and only go to their piles at dark.
Average hunter is more likely to destroy their deer hunting with corn piles than they are kill big bucks over them in my experience. I think there are a lot of valid concerns with legalizing baiting, but the complaints about it not being deer hunting, my neighbor is going to ruin my farm by killing all my big bucks with 200 pounds of corn, or anything like that is probably not what you should be worried about. Believe it or not there is strategy with bait piles as well.
Like Ski said, the people you need to be worried about are the people with money to blow. They can be so much more efficient that they can go lease 10 or 15 30-40 acre blocks, dump a couple thousand pounds of bait out, put a camera on it, and they might only hunt 1 deer on one lease for the entire year. Where they wouldn't be able to manage habitat and food plots on 15 properties. It becomes an access issue, and arms race pretty quickly.
I know a lot of every day average joe hunters in Arkansas that put out 5 or 6 tons of carrots, potato and corn out. These are not wealthy people. So you might imagine if you get next to a neighbor with money, can manage their property, and provide infinite food, cover, and low pressure any mistake you make will just make his property better and yours worse. It will be very difficult to compete with that, but it was already going to be difficult to compete with them anyway so it might not be that different. It's just hard to pull deer away from a mountain of food without another mountain of food. Your 50 pounds of corn will feed the coons, birds, and other critters and the deer will ignore it unless you also spend big to compete.
Average hunter is more likely to destroy their deer hunting with corn piles than they are kill big bucks over them in my experience. I think there are a lot of valid concerns with legalizing baiting, but the complaints about it not being deer hunting, my neighbor is going to ruin my farm by killing all my big bucks with 200 pounds of corn, or anything like that is probably not what you should be worried about. Believe it or not there is strategy with bait piles as well.
Like Ski said, the people you need to be worried about are the people with money to blow. They can be so much more efficient that they can go lease 10 or 15 30-40 acre blocks, dump a couple thousand pounds of bait out, put a camera on it, and they might only hunt 1 deer on one lease for the entire year. Where they wouldn't be able to manage habitat and food plots on 15 properties. It becomes an access issue, and arms race pretty quickly.
I know a lot of every day average joe hunters in Arkansas that put out 5 or 6 tons of carrots, potato and corn out. These are not wealthy people. So you might imagine if you get next to a neighbor with money, can manage their property, and provide infinite food, cover, and low pressure any mistake you make will just make his property better and yours worse. It will be very difficult to compete with that, but it was already going to be difficult to compete with them anyway so it might not be that different. It's just hard to pull deer away from a mountain of food without another mountain of food. Your 50 pounds of corn will feed the coons, birds, and other critters and the deer will ignore it unless you also spend big to compete.
I have lived in two states when baiting was allowed and it is completely trash hunting. Especially early season. First day big bucks killed on corn piles. Poor mast years you won't see deer on properties without bail piles. Dudes guard their piles like it's a still or patch. Would be wise to keep it illegal and prosecute it when it happens.
There is no such thing as hunting, when you bait. Now destructive animals such as wild hogs, which are overpopulated in many regions, need to be culled. As far as deer, turkey, elk, antelope, if you are any kind of sportsman, spot, stalk, hunt.
MidTennFisher
Well-Known Member
10 years from now people are going to be wondering why "all of a sudden" TN is overrun with wild hogs when not that long ago it was only certain areas. Your racoon population is going to explode as well. Those poor turkey poults, like they need anymore disadvantages to make it to adulthood.
There is no shortage of studies on the effects of aflatoxin on young turkeys, right around the age they'll be in August when those corn piles start hitting the ground so people can have the easiest possible opportunity to kill a velvet buck.
What a sad thing for Tennessee to allow. I'm very disappointed in seeing this make it so far. I guess we all see it's likely going to pass.
There is no shortage of studies on the effects of aflatoxin on young turkeys, right around the age they'll be in August when those corn piles start hitting the ground so people can have the easiest possible opportunity to kill a velvet buck.
What a sad thing for Tennessee to allow. I'm very disappointed in seeing this make it so far. I guess we all see it's likely going to pass.
This is one of my main concerns because when we got hogs we tried to shoot all of them. In our scenario if you want feral hogs hunt them. You will stay overrun with them. We haven't seen one in three years because of trapping. This whole thing is a bad idea but i guess money is what's important. Hopefully we can see who voted for it so we can vote them out of office.
killingtime 41
Well-Known Member
Anyone who has put out corn in the off months and ran cameras over it. Know that all the corn is eaten mostly by raccoons and birds and squirrels. Raccoons devour it at night. Squirrels and birds by day. I quit putting it out years ago to gather intel. Waste of money to feed raccoons. Mineral site is much better way to survey deer. And most of that is done at night also. So I don't see the need to bait. It's for private land only and you can't even put minerals out on public anymore. So have fun feeding the raccoons you'll see what everyone is saying soon enough
BSK
Well-Known Member
Agree with all of the above.
BSK
Well-Known Member
Back when the technique was first scientifically describe, I learned from the original paper author how to run baited camera censuses. I ran quite a few of them around the Eastern U.S. However, I began to see unusual results in certain areas (a lack of older bucks). I also tried running censuses off salt licks in areas where feeding/baiting was not allowed. I got better results. So, I decided to run a side-by-side comparison, running a baited census using salt licks and another using corn bait on the same property. In the study, I intentionally placed some of the corn bait near a salt lick and some very distant from a salt lick. What I found from the study was the only bucks older than 2 1/2 I got at the corn-bait sites were bucks passing by in the background heading towards a slat lick. Corn-bait cameras far from salt licks got no bucks older than 2 1/2 years old. For this reason, I stopped doing censuses over corn and went strictly to salt-lick baited summer censuses.
The big downside to this technique is having to know you are going to do the census and start getting the deer acclimated to the salt licks starting early in summer. Corn will draw some deer immediately, but it generally takes a while to get them coming to salt.
I've wondered how closely related this baiting lobby is to the velvet hunt. I don't have any evidence or glaring indications but I can't shake the feeling the velvet trophy crowd is the behind the scenes money/energy behind the push.
I've been torn over the velvet hunt because although I enjoy the extra opportunity, it bothers me that it excludes non land owning hunters who don't have permission on private land or spend extra money on leases. This baiting bill even further excludes them.
killingtime 41
Well-Known Member
Agree with all you said. And I've found once the mineral sites are found. They seem to remember it year after year. And after several years doe's end up bringing their fawns to the mineral sites. And then it becomes a place where most deer within a certain distance come to every year. Especially in the summer and early fall. I've had some salt licks same place for over 10 years. And I've watched generations of deer use it. They even come to it and I haven't put salt out for months at a time.
Per regs the velvet hunt is open on some wma's
That's new to me. Is/was it CWD zone?
What wmas have a velvet hunt?
BSK
Well-Known Member
This is EXACTLY what I found. In fact, I became worried that the census numbers were being skewed by this tendency for deer to come back to a salt lick they had learned about as a fawn. In a study in West Virginia, they found does that had been fawns in the study area and had been taught by their mothers where the salt lick was, were still returning to that salt lick, even though through dispersal some of the does lived 12+ miles away! If that is the case, some of the deer being picked up on a local salt lick census don't live there. They are simply using an ancestral salt lick well outside their home range.
That's awesome news! Thank you for pointing it out. Very good change IMO.
That's super interesting, and why I am so careful about which does i kill. I don't shoot matriarchs and if i can avoid it i don't like shooting does with fawns. In fact I'd prefer shoot a doe/fawn pair over orphaning a fawn, especially if the doe is a low ranking subordinate member of the group.
I hate killing a button buck when I am trying for a doe, can't grow em if they are dead lol unfortunately I have killed several over the years, hard to tell with any distance when the shooting window is short, I read folks say they can tell , if no signs of bumps on head or horns it's a gamble for me
Cant grow em when mom runs em off following spring
Right, im selfish and backwards though, if im killing em to eat myself, fawns are gonna die and i dont care if there buttons or does for my crockpot
for others that i kill for they want more bang for their buck so they get big does for their freezers
MidTennFisher
Well-Known Member
Yep, I'm a big proponent of the idea that private land owners should not get hunting privileges that public land owners do not get. So that's been my big opposition to the velvet hunt. As I understand it, that is not open on any public land, is it?
South Carolina has historically screwed public land hunters out of opportunity that we'd get just about anywhere else, and that private land gets here. Some progress has been made recently as we fought to get Sunday hunting allowed on some public land, but they didn't give it to us for turkey season so there's still work to do. Georgia and Alabama are starting to go that same direction with screwing public land hunters out of opportunity that private land hunters get. I'd hate to see Tennessee follow suit.
Baiting shouldn't be allowed at all, and the velvet hunt weekend should be allowed on public land if it's allowed on private land.
From what I have seen in Alabama it definitely has pros/cons.
Ton of people pilling corn and just hammering does and killing young bucks. Which in return has really hurt the population in AL and totally screwed the age structure up.
On my property, I feed year around but not corn. It is a protein, soybean mix with very little corn in it. Feeders are not hunted over, simply for supplemental feeding to improve herd health. It does get expensive quickly and you do not see "benefits" for a few years. But it does certainly help the herd.
Having a good burning program,habitat improvements and keeping high quality food in plots is hands down more beneficial though.
Minerals are great but you're not going to change herd health by making mineral sites. However, they are wonderful for gathering survey's and seeing deer.
Cell camera on them and stay out till you refresh site.
Baiting Bill is both states is just a money grab. AL was all against it till they realized they could make money from it from the baiting license you buy yearly. Looks like TN is just late to the money grab.
Just goes to show they knew the CWD crap was all BS but a lot of money was in it for them. Follow the money and you will find your answers to a lot stuff. Best interest is in money not wildlife as sad as it is, but it's all they care about.
Again, all the science out there and they continue to do the complete opposite. They have a democratic mentality, if they say it enough and pay enough people to say it than hopefully the rest of the world will believe it. Absolutely pathetic and sad!
Like this turkey season change to "help" the population… Hunting in may does more harm than good and don't believe they even considered the unintended consequences.
A lot of hens getting chased off nest & never to return. Again, the science and research disproves everything they have done but continue to do the complete opposite of it.
I think both states AL & TN need a serious change in who oversees our Wildlife Resources but again it's all about money.
Ton of people pilling corn and just hammering does and killing young bucks. Which in return has really hurt the population in AL and totally screwed the age structure up.
On my property, I feed year around but not corn. It is a protein, soybean mix with very little corn in it. Feeders are not hunted over, simply for supplemental feeding to improve herd health. It does get expensive quickly and you do not see "benefits" for a few years. But it does certainly help the herd.
Having a good burning program,habitat improvements and keeping high quality food in plots is hands down more beneficial though.
Minerals are great but you're not going to change herd health by making mineral sites. However, they are wonderful for gathering survey's and seeing deer.
Cell camera on them and stay out till you refresh site.
Baiting Bill is both states is just a money grab. AL was all against it till they realized they could make money from it from the baiting license you buy yearly. Looks like TN is just late to the money grab.
Just goes to show they knew the CWD crap was all BS but a lot of money was in it for them. Follow the money and you will find your answers to a lot stuff. Best interest is in money not wildlife as sad as it is, but it's all they care about.
Again, all the science out there and they continue to do the complete opposite. They have a democratic mentality, if they say it enough and pay enough people to say it than hopefully the rest of the world will believe it. Absolutely pathetic and sad!
Like this turkey season change to "help" the population… Hunting in may does more harm than good and don't believe they even considered the unintended consequences.
A lot of hens getting chased off nest & never to return. Again, the science and research disproves everything they have done but continue to do the complete opposite of it.
I think both states AL & TN need a serious change in who oversees our Wildlife Resources but again it's all about money.
Yeah I'm all about fair. Aside from landowner permits I don't believe landowners should have any extra or special rights that public hunters do not. Rules should be the same across the board for everybody. And I'm a landowner.
I was not aware of velvet hunt being allowed on public but DA posted up where the regs show certain WMA's are now open to the velvet hunt, which is good to see. It should be all WMA's but at least we're starting in the right direction.
