Originally Posted By: Dream Buck
Fur Flying,
I appreciate your interest in wildlife management.
Quote:
Feeding year round is supplemental feeding. Feeding during deer season is baiting. You're misleading people by claiming otherwise.
Using that logic then planting green fields year round(warm and cool) is supplemental feeding and planting them in the fall is baiting. Cause your using it as an attractant, right? I been fortunate to learn a lot from a lot of different biologist. Some of the lessons i've learned are that you need a year round approach to land management. Included in that are habitat management, warm and cool seasons plots, and supplemental feeding. The reason the bioloigist give for one of the main benefits is what they call filling in the "nutritional gaps" Nutritional gaps is when the native browse and what you have planted are not sufficient to keep the deer healthy. This can be caused by a lot of factors, one example is a drought that limits your greenfields doing well, along with native browse suffering as well. Another example that is relevant to this bill is the winter months when native browse is mostly gone. These are the times supplemental feeding is beneficial to wildlife and really i would argue they need it during these times. The problem most honest landowners have is they will not feed during hunting season because of a horrible law that doesn't define area, and you could argue this is the time they need it most.

Allen,
We base our management program on 4 cornerstones(Age, nutrition, genetics, and stress) We try to manage all 4 of these well. We have never used steroids, hormones or anything else.
As far as wildlife belonging with the people, i generally agree with you. Since you have an issue with people raising deer, do you have an issue with the 1,000,000 plus released quail in south georgia plantations, or the hundreds of thousands of pheasant released in South Dakota Ranches and Public land, or the bass being raised to be put in ponds, what about ducks, chukar, buffalo, elk, etc. I know great stewards that own high fences and some that don't.
Moral and Ethics do matter, and I'm the one spreading facts about wildlife management, not lies about someone business.

I want to make this clear, their are a lot of people that want this bill to pass(lease holders, hunting clubs, land owners), i am amazed just at the support we have received today from people on this site through emails and phone calls.


This tends to make one believe that the property is at or above its carrying capacity and therefore either the land area needs to be increased, the land needs to be manipulated to provide more forage or the deer numbers need to be reduced, or all of the above.

If the health of the herd is riding on such a razors edge, is pouring food out of a bag really the best thing to do?

Would building ponds or installing wells for irrigation of food plots be an alternative or growing food crops during the summer that can be left standing be alternatives to pouring bait out of a bag?

Baiting just seems like a single minded approach that requires somebody else (in this case the government) to do something, when you could (pending the will) already do for yourself.

"After all, it is not the killing that brings satisfaction; it is the contest of skill and cunning. The true hunter counts his achievement in proportion to the effort involved and the fairness of the sport." Dr. Saxton Pope