I’ve never understood why people care what other hunters do. If you want to hunt it legally and bait it, shoot it inside a high fence, kill a small buck or a big buck, who gives a rip. It’s just a deer. Hunters getting mad at other hunters over not doing it their way is a bigger threat to our sport than hunting the easy way.

Agree tdog re the cameras, we pull ours in December dont need a camera to know if there are deer around. As to corn and fields the deer are hardly touching it now since the rut is on. When it comes to baiting you still have to take a breath, pull the trigger, get and make a good shot, retrieve your kill hopefully without tracking, load it up, and get it in the box. So to say baiting aint hunting well. Hunt how you want or can.

First off everyone should hunt however they want legally. Not bashing anyone. I'm 60 and have hunted since early childhood and was reflecting this morning how much I miss the days when I really got out and scouted and hunted deer sign. I love bow hunting out of a treestand. Bought a couple cellular cameras and spin feeders and put in my food plots. I was thinking how I have allowed it to make me a lazy hunter and I don't seem to enjoy it as much. I like watching deer of course and have enjoyed the cell cameras but I have let it dictate my hunting this year and it really hasn't been the year i had hoped it would be. And have spent alot more on feeding than I intended. I'm going to do things different next season not exactly sure what. I have figured out that corn and cameras haven't made me a better hunter. Maybe time to get back to my roots.

Worst thing to ever happen to Ala deer hunting = legalized baiting

^^^This^^^ Y’all need to let it go!!!

Hunting was better when only 15-20% of folks were doing it illegally. Hunting was also better in the first few seasons that does were legal game all season. I enjoyed hunting more when all the property around for miles and miles was at least 6 point or better and all private and club lands.

I'll take the bait (pun intended).

This is just my observation. I live on close to 200 acres with 2 hunt clubs around me out in Jackson. I have 2 feeders, just PVC that I fill once a week so they eat as much as they want. My cameras on the food is just to check herd health and keep tabs. I don't hunt them. I hunt the crosses, and travel paths, beds, scrapes and rubs.

However, I do have a brother-in-law who will only hunt food (luckily he's a horrible woodsman and has yet to get anything) and one of the hunt clubs is brown and down type. I still see large bucks from time to time especially when they apply pressure and are driving 4x4s and quads to their stands every morning. But with that being said, I feel like the number of mature bucks has seen a small down turn as well as smaller bucks (which would have grown to be big bucks).

Case in point, I had a young buck maybe 2 years old with a solid 6 on cam for a while. Unfortunately, someone got him over a pile of corn. No skill, no effort, no woodsmanship of any kind used. This buck would have grown to be a monster. He would have matured and provided a wonderful challenge.

Let's be honest, nobody here today is reliant on deer to feed our family. Sure, we prefer it, but it's not a necessity. The hunt use to be prized. But the need for instant gratification and the desire to be as lazy as possible while still achieving success has crept int ever facet. Including deer hunting, unfortunately. Aside from what it may or may not be doing to the deer population, I don't believe the mindset to be good for the sport and community as a whole. Half these people can't tell what's deer sign if it was lit up and neon.

If you think a ton of people wasn’t feeding before it was made legal, you’ve been having your head in the sand. You can easily find how many deer are being killed in you area by hunters who use game check. I know our area is down from years past so Corn ain’t causing hunters in our area to kill more. Baiting has been legal here in Louisiana as long as I’ve been deer hunting and the coonasses around here still ain’t killed them all so that should tell you something.

Well said tradbow, good first post an writing. Welcome, as I sit in a chair on a fire break over a scrape thats 60 yards away.

Great first post!........Welcome.......

Yall get mad because the state tells you how to hunt but then turn right around and try and tell everybody how they should hunt.

Thanks for the welcome, everyone! And nobody here is telling anyone how to hunt. If they are, I don't see it, so maybe a direct quote could help. What people are saying is we think it's poor form, and we think it's detrimental in the long run. How is that any different from the opposition and your opinion? Or are you only in it for discussions that you agree with? If so, why are you on a discussion board?

And Marshmud you do make some good arguments. People have always used feeders and I have run across some tucked away, but they were small, poorly kept and not as widespread. But I went to look at your state's last big buck, and surprisingly it was a non-typical at like 220! So not bad! But then I went on to read the story, and it's about a dentist who kept a feeder in the back yard and watched the deer on a cell phone camera and shot it over bait. Link to story(link to story)

Idk to me that just kinda takes the fun out of it. If that's fun for you, then cool, I guess. I fell like I would have to leave out the details when I told the grandkids. "I was sitting in the office drinking coffee when I saw it on the camera, I ran out back and tossed some bait on the ground, the deer walked up, and I shot him".

As far as baiting having an impact here in AL, we can see it does “Another factor that may be playing into this is the supplemental feeding. When feeding became legal last year, we had a 14-percent increase in harvest. But I wouldn’t attribute corn to the increased quality of the deer.” Link to article

I'm ok with feeding, food plots, minerals, all good to help grow deer. But hunting off the feeder in a heated shoot house 10' of the ground eating slim jims just aint my thing.

I know a guy who has been baiting corn all year and wonders why he has hogs on his property now.

tradbow - you literally degraded your brother in law for the way he hunts

Nah. TV rurnt it for most people. I get caught up in the horn porn at times.

This.. deer is really starving in my area right now. There was no acorns here this year. U can ride the county rds a see 100 deer any evening in the hay fields . Deer are hungry. I feed deer in my backyard not on club. . Sit on back porch and watch deer every day . Got 5 bucks a plenty does every day . I will not shoot any . Just love to sit an watch. Couple bucks be monster to me next couple years if neighbors don t kill them. It illegal here because of cwd but im not letting them starve .

[quote=hallb]tradbow - you literally degraded your brother in law for the way he hunts [/quote

I'm aware, i give him crap about it all the time. I dont stop him though, so I'm curious what your point is?

They’ll really get hungry next week. I had one reaching up to eat holly tree leaves.

Tradbow, if you went fishing, would you use bait or just a bare hook. Would you walk through briars on a muddy bank or use a boat if you had one. Would you use a trolling motor to fish around structure in a current or use a paddle. I know what I’d do. Same with bird hunting!! I’ll use a shotgun instead of a slingshot because it’s a tool to get the job done. Just like the bait, boat trolling motor. All tools to get the job done.
We feed lots of corn on our place but that don’t mean that’s the only places that get hunted. Also just because a deer comes to a feeder or corn pile doesn’t mean it’s gonna get shot. Does it help to see more deer, sometimes but I see way more deer out in our clearcuts and woods then I do hunting a feeder. I did kill the 2 does I wanted for sausage while they were on their way to a feeder. One was killed from a tripod and the other was a shooting house. I did that because I wanted to and both of those are tools to get the job done. If that makes me a lazy hunter, well color me lazy!!
Also yes the cell camera told me that 10pt I killed finally showed himself in the daylight hours for the first time in the 3 years I’d been watching him. His 2nd daytime appearance he made I was there when he did it. That camera, while it did take some of the surprise out of the kill was a tool used to get the job done.
I also use a dedicated turkey gun with the best chokes and the best TSS shot I can get. I use the best turkey calls I can afford. All tools to get the job done.
I like to use the tools available to me to not necessarily make it easy but to give me an advantage to accomplish the mission at hand. If you only hunt with traditional equipment, you have my utmost respect and wish I had the discipline to do it, unfortunately I don’t.
I said all that nonsense to say that we are all wired differently but at the end of the day we are all hunters and we all want things to hunt and have the common sense to do what’s right for the health of the animals we’re hunting. You hunt your way and I’ll hunt mine. And I promise you after we both finish hunting our way, we can sit around the fire, drink a beer and share the details of each other’s hunt and enjoy the story because that’s a big part of the reason we do it!!