In y'all's opinion what is the best or had most luck and progress with off season feed/nuggets for feeders. Good antler growth and mass? I'm hunting in med west Alabama.

big salt licks and piles of corn.

Have rich neighbors

We use catfish pellets 35% protein only
Down fall you have to keep them dry
Have not found the first animal that want eat
It

anything high in protein but not made with animal by products. got a buddy that swears by golden deer and elk pellets think by record rack says its good cause coons don't much like it.

Thank y'all

I've never been big on spring/summer feeding. Just always put a bunch of slat out but this year I'm gunna put out mineral licks and most likely just corn in my feeders.

READ THIS I FOUND ONLINE ... CORN IS NOTHING MORE THEN A HIGH CARB DIET WITH VERY LITTLE TO NO NUTRITIONAL VALUE WHAT SO EVER..

Digestion problems
The problem is that deer digestion is a finely tuned physiological process. Just the right combination of microorganisms, enzymes, and pH enable deer to digest a normal winter diet of woody vegetation. When offered a sudden supply of corn, a deer’s digestive system doesn’t have time to adjust to a high carbohydrate diet. The result can be acute acidosis followed by death within 72 hours.

At the time of death these individuals can appear normal and well fed. It’s just that they cannot digest the corn. Within six hours, corn alters the environment in the rumen. It turns the rumen acidic and destroys the microbes needed for normal digestion.

Not all deer die immediately from acidosis. Its effects vary with the age and health of the individual. Some may simply slow down, get clumsy, and become easy prey to speeding traffic and hungry coyotes.

It takes deer two to four weeks of feeding on a new food source to establish populations of microbes necessary to digest the new food. It can’t happen in just a few days during a snowstorm. And healthy individuals that might survive in the short term often succumb to complications weeks later.

Caution
Furthermore, Dr. Ballmann cautions that supplemental feeding “concentrates deer in small areas where a variety of infectious diseases can be spread.” And in traveling to and from a supplemental source of food, deer, especially the young and the old, expend energy they can’t afford to lose.

Feeding deer is never a good idea. I know this runs counter to what many people think, especially those who feed deer. But just because deer don’t die in your backyard doesn’t mean they aren’t dying elsewhere in the woods or on the highway. The worst thing you can do for deer is feed them. Some will starve, and some will fall prey to coyotes, but that’s how healthy populations stay healthy.

Record Rack has worked for me for years. Only time I mix with corn is February just to get them started again. Min protein is 20%, but the coons absolutely do not mind bringing the extended family to dine.

I have seen this stuff before and I'm not saying it isn't possible. I am not a wildlife biologist. I don't even play one on TV. But if the acute life threatening effects of feeding deer corn were very common then logic suggests to me that there wouldn't be a handful of them left alive in places like Texas where deer can be legally hunted over corn feeders and feeders are as numerous as crab grass and Johnson weed. We have fed deer on our land for decades. Never seen any direct evidence of a mass die off or a reduction in herd numbers as the result of any such die off. Places in the mid-west like Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, and Illinois are covered in corn fields. They are also some of the most popular whitetail hunting locations in the country.



I'm sure deer can and have contracted a disease at a feeder. But I'm also sure they contract them eating under the same oak trees; feeding in the same small green patches; browsing on the same honeysuckle vines; licking each others ass; and "GASP" most shocking of all, having sex with one another. Deer are social animals. They eat in the same places and have physical contact with one another regardless of the actions of man.

I'm not saying that some of these bad things can't happen but I believe that their actual likelihood of having any significant impact on a given deer herd has been "VASTLY" exaggerated. You could choke to death on a green Tic Tac tomorrow. It's absolutely possible. The odds of it are incredibly low however.