Interesting data on corn

I was talking to our new lease manager yesterday and he told me about 2 camera surveys he was part of. One on high fence very low pressure lease, and one on a managed lease. Randomly selected the cameras, pulled the cards and would you like to guess how many mature bucks came to the corn during daylight hours?

Less than 1 percent.

And I had dude get mad and leave because we wouldn't let him bait a greenfield ......

Those 20 does coming in the daylight will put the oldest buck on the property there in daylight. People don’t wait and make the does nocturnal.IMO

This^^^^^

Well now you have to define mature. Also I need to know WHEN this survey was done. Early October? Late November? Deer become more nocturnal as the daylight changes and rifle season opens.
By some people’s definition some properties don’t have any mature deer anyway. I get the great majority of the bucks I have on camera in the daytime too. Less as rifle season opens obviously.

Why wouldn’t you let him bait a foodplot?

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I put out feeders for the does. I want every doe within a mile on my property when the rut starts. It has zero to do with trying to get bucks to the feeder.

And I wouldn’t base any decision off second hand knowledge of a camera survey on someone else’s property. I know of multiple farms/leases where mature bucks hit feeders at all times of the day. But I’m curious as to your reasoning for not letting others put corn on plots.

Old bucks wont die for corn. They will die for pu**y. You are trying to keep as many does around as many hours a day as you can. Also the trails leading to and from your feeder. They might not use them all year but they are going to follow that trail if a hot doe has been down it.

To argue with you a bit. I cut some trees this week for a fella who owns a deer farm. He said the bucks theyre killing all come to feeders, 100%. Thats where they kill them. He said a three day sit will get every one of them.

I hav had luck w corn and good deer - my cameras seem to spook the really old deer and not the corn - but some of my deer don’t mind camera. Several of my really mature deer hav shown up to corn - get that pick and it like they give me the middle finger and say screw this - not digging that camera. Hav cut several of mine off - will cut on in time and still hav some running - especially my road cameras - they help me some - but they spook some of my good deer

The corn don’t spook em. Pour some on ground - scatter it in the woods - in a month the best deer on your property prob would hav visited it

You also can’t accurately compare a survey and make it be universal to all our properties

I've tracked a bunch of mature bucks for folks that were shot over corn.

Had a friend laid out a nice 4.5 year old 8 point last year, coming to the corn at 8am on a frosty morning. The place is very unpressured and the ladder stand he shot it from was 170 yards away. Make the situation right and they'll come, but it's a lot of effort

Another thing I experienced this year and also last year - I had my oldest deer - at least 7 years old showing up regularly in daylight early Oct to corn in Wilcox county - I had moved my camera up higher and angled it down and it did not seem to bother him as much. I had already counted him as killed - then I stupidly bought in a new feeder - it looked like the other 2 feeders and I put it right by one of the existing feeders. As I was going to check the new feeder and cam for the first time it dawned on me I may hv just screwed up bad because I remembered putting up a new feeder last year in another area right before season and it screwed that field up for 3-4 weeks. Daily bucks disappeared for a while. Anyway - I hav not seen that 7 year old since October - just cause I put a new feeder up in his area - not even a night pic. He will b bac eventually- but prob not daylight

I'm surprised I havent seen more people going to the "Texas sendero" strategy.......Our cutover and young pine understory is not all that different from their brush understory.......Looks like you ought to be able to do about the same thing

They don’t come to anything that you go to every day messing around and out in the open checking cameras and scenting the place up. High fence or not.

Hunting pressure is one thing. High fence operation with a full time employee knocking around plots, stands, and feeders all day everyday is another. There not enough details in the original post to make a true comparison. Pressure and location are important when comes to camera placement and getting mature deer on a camera.

Food sources close to a bedding area that remain undisturbed and hunted correctly in early season will absolutely get a mature deer killed. Food sources with doe groups that have been undisturbed and hunted appropriately will absolutely get a mature deer killed in the rut.

Just because someone is a lease manager doesn’t mean they are knowledgeable about whitetails. If I had someone tell me the information you posted, I would be skeptical of believing they know what they are talking about.

Bingo. I’ve seen nothing as far as deer getting nocturnal. We get daylight pictures of 5 and 6 year old deer every week.

What you will see if those older deer disappear if somebody is driving or walking in 4 to 6 days a week checking a camera. Those older deer will stop coming near the camera until the rut.

Had a 6 year old disappear like that for 2.5 weeks and when he was killed there was ZERO corn in his belly. He wasn’t going anywhere near all the corn and cameras.

I’ve shot them and had em fall face first in a pile of corn and also had pics of em walk up to the feeder and never eat. I reckon it depends on the deer. Like stated above, keep the p***y around and he will be there.

Mature bucks today have been raised on corn piles or feeders. The notion that they don’t come to corn in the daylight has not been my experience.

Must not have been a very good high fence operation. The ones I've been to have had mature deer in greenfields in broad daylight.

And I hav deer on one side of my 250 that act differently than deer on other side of property and respond to things like cameras and feeders differently and that is just 250 acres

Many of the cornholers are always out there dumping more corn and screwing around with their cameras and stands and leaving scent, that's why they're not seeing bucks in daylight.

Yep I see some big uns around here feeding in high fence

We have a winner!
Pressure is the major factor. Old bucks won't tolerate it. If they get hunted at all they don't like plots or cornpiles in daylight. Sometimes I think hunters had much rather get a bunch of live trail cam pics than one dead in the truck pic. I'm more of a dead in the truck guy.

Cause in TX they’re running 140-180 deer per square mile versus our 20-40 per square mile.

I’ve spent extensive time on stand on baited and nonbaited areas and I can tell you, deer in general, approach baited areas completely different than nonbaited. You can certainly kill mature deer on corn, yes. But it’s not as easy as some think. Several camera surveys and studies have proven its more difficult to kill mature bucks in areas with bait than it is in areas without it.

I have not seen a mature buck come to a corn pile or feeder on my lease during legal shooting hours in the 3 years I have been here.

I think Sasquatch hit the problem with the field baiter. He selects the best fields on the property to bait, hangs a stand 30 feet away, puts up a camera, and then camps out on it. Not to mention nothing grows where he left it last year. And of course he doesn't hunt the wind, because after all he has corn out. We felt like if you want to put out corn and camp out on it do it in the woods somewhere.

And I wouldn't consider a mature buck showing up at a feeder during daylight because he's chasing a hot doe one using the feeder.

Just wondering if I'd be better off spending the $ I spend on corn on getting more fertilizer.

Our 2 biggest bucks in Fayette County last year were killed within close proximity of a feeder during the rut. I don't think they were feeding, but they knew does regularly come to those feeders. They popped in to check for does and ended up at the taxidermist

Thats how its gona happen. Or maybe they stay out there a little to late in the morning.

I track deer with my dogs. The vast majority of our recoveries this year as well ss our non recoveries habe been shot over corn

Just more people hunting over corn now. I guess

I've hunted high density deer areas and low density. In high density I see plenty of deer whether there is corn or not. In low density I don't see many deer, corn or not.

Corn is like the candy in the checkout isle at Walmart. Most hunters who put out corn and see deer snacking on it believe the reason they saw deer is because of the corn. The reality is you probably saw the deer because they were in the area to get lots of other groceries and happened to stop by the snack isle for a minute or two. You would have seen them either way.

Yes killing one looking for doe's isn't part of the equation. I killed a buck last year on a green field with a corn pile. He was there because a doe was there eating it and the green field. He didn't eat anything. Sometimes I'd see that doe with a spike who would eat corn. But they spent more time eating greens than corn.

Now what I 🤔 would work is bait an area and then sit back about 200 yards and see if you can catch a buck walking thru scent checking? But I haven't found a spot I can do that just yet.

Some never even consider that could be the reason.

I think it does have a lot to do with the general area also as well as pressure. I like many up in the top right corner hunt large tracts of hardwoods . Many up here hunt areas where deer never see an ag field and few people. I can't say much about deer in other areas of Alabama but I suspect as far as mature bucks , they operate similar to ours. In my mind mature is 4YO+ . Hunting big woods deer you won't consistently kill mature bucks in plots or with their head in a corn pile.

There ya go, , when there's a corn pile over every hill and a hunter sitting within sight of them , it's the corn stupid. I don't think it's caused a huge increase in the demise of old , savvy bucks though.

Some fat deer pics for sure the last couple of years….

I have a small tract and see the exact same. Any given day or moment I can get mature bucks on 4 out of five feeders. That fifth is like the plague. Poured corn out one time about 50yds from it and it was like a light switch. Beats me because there is ZERO pressure on the place other than when I go in once a month to fill the feeders.

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Booner I hav hunted all kinds of ways - clear cut and road systems w out food r 2 of my favorite

To the bait and feeder - I fed deer for years in FL and Arky now here - they like it best on the ground. Some deer in some areas are very comfortable w feeders after a few months - my big field I am just now getting them comfortable- had to take down my camera - on some deer - the feeder and the cam can both be negative amd I often threw corn on the ground - spread it thin on ground 30-40 yards around feeder - helped mine get use to it. Took deer over a year to get comfortable w my feeder at big field. Other side of my property I got a field that mainly bucks visit - call it my buck plot - super comfortable w that feeder - I started there on the ground to but they were never as tuff as the big field on the other side of property

Master Baitin ain’t easy

A mature 9 point was shot in this field a few days before this picture was taken

So my situation appears to be that the deer aren't really bothered by me. There are a few related things at play in this IMO. Biggest thing is I'm not a deer blaster. That's #1. I shoot hogs all the time I just don't shoot at or around the does. I am fairly conscious about the gunfire and I don't shoot a hog standing in a field full of deer if at all possible.

Second. I am out there all the time working on the farm.... farming. So they are use to someone being around. Because I don't shoot them, they don't run ass wild when they see me coming. Mostly just stand there looking.

What that does it this. .. The older does who are not scared of me are teaching the younger deer how to react to human presence. To the extreme that I have used the tractor that every afternoon and hydro fluid probably still warm and machine stinking like oil. Nice buck 10 feet from it eating acorns 30 minutes after dark on a Sunday night. And after I've been out there around the barn literally all weekend. That was last night.

I am not associated with Danger. That's the pinnacle of success IMO. I still use common sense about what I am doing such as not checking cameras every day. Still takes a conscious effort. What I have learned is it is still hard to get one to 5 years regardless of all this. When you put that much effort in you realize how fragile a deer's life is. When you hunt a place for 10 years and never see a really good deer.... there's your answer on how and what it takes to change that. It's easy but very tough at the same time.

I have a salt lick on our property for more than 15 years. The bucks wear it out during the summer and I have a camera within 20 feet of the salt lick. Every year, activity is phenomenal during the summer, but it stops about mid-October. This year I decided to move a corn feeder adjacent to the salt lick so that I could monitor it using the same camera. I put the corn feeder out in early September, and I never got another picture of a non-yearling buck at that site for four straight weeks. In view of this, it was not the camera - but the corn that spooked off the bucks. I will not do that again.

I rarely get pictures of a mature buck at a corn feeder, but I know they are still there because I get images of big bucks in the food plots. Big bucks learn that an easy meal is TROUBLE.

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I did the same thing 1984dog this year by one of my yearly mineral sites except I put the food on the ground for weeks - then I finally put a camera up - got some nice pics of nice bucks hitting the rice bran but most of them were one and done (they not fan of camera). I hav Since taken camera down and still feed some at that location

On the feeder - seen it happen multiple times but not all deer act the same - what I hav seen some - u put a new feeder up and it may take deer weeks to get use to it - on my big field - took them over year to get use to it. Finally got a camera up at big field and basically got one pic of several good bucks - since cut that camera off

I hav seen cameras and feeders spook deer but it may not b like that with all deer. I got a lot of my field cameras off now - I hunt the wind anyway and I May turn them back on by January. I know what’s around but by Jan anything could show up

It wasn’t the corn that spooked the deer it was the feeder. I use to get 10-15 different bucks on camera every year behind my house. Put a feeder up and poof I’ve had 4 bucks on camera in two years. It wasn’t the corn that changed them it was most definitely the feeder.

In all the places I've hunted, does won't even come to corn in daylight. They will be all over it 10 minutes after dark though. I get pretty annoyed when I get to my stand and find that the last guy threw a bunch of corn down. It basically guarantees I won't see a deer. It is useful for keeping does on the property, which is all you need once the rut starts.

You know why they hit it hard until Mid october? Deer need the salt to metabolize all the water they take in from the plants they are eating. Then they switch to eating more mast in the fall, and don't need as much salt.

You must hunt some HIGHLY pressured land.

This ^^^^^^

Was it a wooden feeder? Treated lumber? If so thats your problem. The chemical repelled the deer at my place for months and not much repells my deer. I have since started leaving any feeder or anything made of wood (shooting house etc) outside for months before moving it to the farm. This completely solved my feeder spooking issue

Not mine. Mines a gravity feeder winched up off the ground with a hand crank.

Update ....
After not get any pictures of bucks on my feeder cameras, I took the advice from this several on this site and moved put two cameras away from the feeders a considerable distance and also to just pour some corn on the ground. Both of these suggested worked.

I moved one camera about 75 yards away in the woods and put out a small pile of corn. The camera caught several bucks - some of which I have not seen in months. The camera on the feeder likewise caught nothing but does and not a single buck.

I moved one camera back in the woods away from the food plot and feeder (in the food plot) and got several bucks on camera. The bucks are simply staying in the woods back from the food plot. I get plenty of does in the food plot or at the feeder, but not a single buck.

The bottom line here is that mature bucks simply do not like feeders and will go hungry before they give up any security. We will have to wait to see how they respond to a "hot" doe.

1984dog that is true of alot of bucks but not all. Some wont come to a feeder, some will. Some wont come out of the woods, some will. Some wont eat corn out of a pile, some will. Some will eat out of a trough but not a feeder. Some will eat out of a gravity feeder but wont go around a spinner. These are all things ive personally witnessed. I guess it wouldbe a pretty good idea to move your cameras around some to really see whats there. Deer are strange creatures.

Absolutely true research findings here. We’ve got a couple of 6 year old bucks on one of our tracts that will not get near a spin feeder or tube tied to a tree. Dump feed on the ground and they’ll be eating it 6 hours later.

There’s no other explanation, other than some deer are just strange. I can’t afford it, but like I said before, I know of 2 clubs that shut down all spin feeders and they both said there buck sightings tripled when they went to spread on the ground or tube tied to a tree feeders. I just can’t afford to put that much corn out , so I have to use the spin feeders.

Different deer behave in different ways. They’re all individuals.

I had two nice bucks coming to a feeder this last week and was going to try to get one of my boys one. The feeder was 25 yards from our blind in a food plot. It was that close due to bow hunting earlier in the year. I moved it a few yards back to allow for the known noises that you’ll make with kids while preparing to shoot. We hunted it that same day. Same feeder that’s been there for months, just a few yards farther away. It sent every deer we saw into absolute chaos. They couldn’t and wouldn’t accept it. Totally blew the hunt that day. Every deer that came to the field from every direction saw it immediately and panicked, from fawns all the way up to adults.

Some Mature bucks can act finakey or stay away from some feeders - some more than others - and even shy away from cameras and also some more than others

I turned my field cams back on in Clarke since I caught 2 kids walking my property on cell road cam and wanted to be able to see if they entered fields

Hope u kill a bigun 1984Dog - wish this weather get cold

My uncle was trying to lure a couple of BIG ones out of the woods into his food plot. He got pics of them every night in the woods. He moved the corn pile closer and closer to the edge of the field then poured it out in a line the last 100ft or so to the field. They ate every kernel up to about 20ft from the edge of the field. They wouldnt come an inch closer. That is some pretty cool knowledge right there. I also have a theory about different bucks "chasing does" different ways. I believe some bucks follow does and go where they go, being strung along by the doe. I believe the oldest biggest bucks kindof herd the doe where they want them to go and then physically keep them there until theyre done with them.

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Heck yea JWalker - does can lead them around by the nose some but I hav seen even if the doe is in the field especially smaller fields - the buck can herd the doe out of the field without ever going in the field and herd them away from the field

You're hunting in the wrong places. On my place, the does will run over you when the feeder is about to go off. If the feeder is empty, the deer stand around trying to figure out where the corn is. Same way on my 2 leases. They know exactly when the feeder is about to go off and they don't want to be left out

[quote=jwalker77. I also have a theory about different bucks "chasing does" different ways. I believe some bucks follow does and go where they go, being strung along by the doe. I believe the oldest biggest bucks kindof herd the doe where they want them to go and then physically keep them there until theyre done with them. [/quote]

Many years ago during my wildlife photographer days, I saw exactly what you described. The young bucks (<3.5 years) would follow the hot does around. When the mature buck (4+ years) showed up - he simply came in and bullied the doe to go with him much like a cutting horse does. The big buck did not pussyfoot around as he came in and was gone in less than a minute. I witnessed this big buck do this two mornings in a row

Sounds like I should be hunting at your place lol. My two options are public land and a hunt club with over 20 members. From what I've seen, baiting has made pressured deer even more pressured. I have a much easier time finding public land deer, and I think that is due to the lack of bait.