what is the law about keeping deer troughs filled with corn during turkey season?
Legal not legal?
This is the first year we had troughs out 100 yards and out of sight from any stand location and need to know if we need to clean them out until after turkey season.

no NO nada neyt

Yes. Must be gone 10 days before you plan on hunting.

Do they use the same qualifiers to determine whether or not you are "hunting the area" (100yds/out of sight) like they do during deer season? If not, how far do you have to be from them before you are "hunting over bait"?

Gomer
I called Montgomery and talked to law enforcement and asked the same thing.
His reply " as long as you are planning to hunt you cannot have any corn in the area"
I said so, it's not the same as deer hunting 100 yards and out of sight deal.
He said "No!, if you are planning to hunt do not have any in the area you are hunting."

So, not gonna take any chances and leave it to some guy's opinion whether I am in "the area" or not

.

Due to the mobile nature of turkey hunting any corn/seed on the property will get you a baiting ticket according to the GW's around here

I would've asked what, legally, constitutes "the area". Is it the entire property? If it's a 10 acre farm, I could see that.....what if it's 1000 acres? "In the area" is far too vague.

I understand "area" as the particular property you have hunting rights to. Our GW just told us not to have it on any property we hunt so that's what I think he means by area.

Guy in a club put some out a few days before the opener. GW was there with him when he arrived, closed down 160 acres for two weeks, club was 2400 acres. Member expelled.

/\ /\ /\
what they all said!

I am gonna keep my feeders just like they are now. I have thousands of pictures every year and have never had a picture of a turkey at any of our feeders. I can't be hunting over bait of the turkeys don't eat the bait or come to it imo

Game warden's discretion. The regulation just says "area." A GW could deem it 100 acres, or 10,000 acres. The ones I've talked to said if it's on the property you're hunting, they have the right to give you a citation

Why 2 weeks?

How could a GW close private land? They have that authority?

I'm assuming he means that the GW told him it couldn't be hunted legally, essentially shutting it down.

What if you have protein pellets in the feeders but not corn? Same thing?

I'll try again ....HELL NO!!!! DID THAT ONE CHANGE TO SOME STRANGE CHINESE DIALECT BETWEEN MY FINGERS AND YA'LLS EYES?????

Fred what if you are not baiting? How can they prove my bunk protein feeder is keeping the turkeys on the property when the turkeys do not use the feeders? I would not be sitting there looking at em regardless cause I am not going if they ain't gobbling but still.

Dang you guys are stubborn lol. If there is any form of feed on the property, a GW can say it's baiting, and in my experience that's a ticket they'll write every time.

The fact that it is so vague, just saying "area", with apparently no definition of what constitutes an "area" is the problem, and that's the point everyone is trying to make. If you're going to make it illegal, you [should] have to define what the "area" is. The entire point of allowing "supplemental feeding of deer" is to be able to keep something out for them all year. Someone even said recently (I thought it was Fred, but maybe not) that if you stop putting corn/feed out as soon as deer season ends, you're not really supplemental-feeding, you're basically just baiting. So if you keep feed out year-round, it would be helpful to know just how far you have to stay away from said feed while turkey hunting. But nobody knows the answer to that question because it's "GW's discretion"....and that is asinine.