Some of these guys think we don't legally know the difference between baiting and not. We know the difference, we just think it's stupid. As I said earlier. Anything, and I mean anything you do to your property to encourage wildlife to use it, falls under baiting them in to me. Some people are elitists. Some guys think unless you kill a deer with traditional archery, your not a REAL hunter. Some people don't gun hunt and think that people who do, are not REAL hunters. Just like some people believe that when they clear an area and put in a food plot, lime it ,fertilize it, plant it, and then hunt it or hunt the trails leading to it, are not baiting. OH no, we're providing a year round food source. Yes, you are, but your also baiting. Not by the definition of the law, but your still baiting. How much money you've invested in the food plot, doesn't change a damn thing.
I don't think that; I just think you ought use a different word to describe it. Baiting has a legal definition, and it doesn't mean anything done to land to improve habitat. Planting a crop and putting out bait are not the "same thing" in a legal sense. They involve completely different actions, so they are not the same thing in a physical sense, so in what sense are they the same thing?
As best I can understand, you guys are saying they are the "same thing" in some kind of moral or ethical sense - am I understanding correctly? I would agree that they could be the same from an ethical sense, but the fact is that in AL right now, they are not. One is legal and one is not. A genuine supplemental feeding program is now legal; but if you hunt inside that magical barrier the dcnr has defined, then it becomes bait and in my opinion is not the "same thing" as growing a crop in any sense.
If this is just an argument that the current state policy on feeding is lousy policy, then I agree with you completely. I have often said I'm not buying corn to feed deer, but if someone else does it's not something I care about. I really hope they never legalize feeding turkeys during the season; that would require a much shorter season or we wouldn't have many left.
Good hunting to all.