I'm going to make it really simple and show you the exact effect corn has had. Baiting was legalized in the summer of 2019. So the 2019-20 season was the first season of "Cornfest" and everyone went wild with corn. Here are the harvest numbers:
2017-18: 212,000 Deer killed in 2018-19: 203,000 Deer killed in 2019-20: 218,000

The year that corn was legalized, the total reported deer harvest increased by a whopping 15,000 animals over the previous year and just 6,000 over the year before that. Legalizing corn had a very nominal effect. Now what happened in the spring of 2020? I'll answer for you, Covid. So the 2020-2021 season was the first season when people were getting stimulus checks, being paid to stay home from work, having to quarantine for 10 days if you were exposed to a positive person, and business pretty much went mostly remote. Guess what, when everyone was at home or working from the camp and could double or triple their time in the woods, deer harvest increased. Imagine that. What else happened in 2020? Hmmm as Skinny says....yep, Chuckies new rule goes into effect and it is the first year that you have to have a harvest ID number to drop a deer off at the processor or taxidermist. Let's see, I bet a whole bunch of people that were saying FU to Chuckie Check decided they needed to get the app, participate and actually start report their kills. You think that might have led to a higher number of deer being reported as being killed in the 2020-2021 season and beyond? In order for your ridiculous theory of "all the deer were and are being killed now strictly because corn is legal", it would have to mean that the first year that it was legalized, nobody took advantage of being able to hunt over corn, or, more plausibly, it probably just took the deer a couple years to find all the corn piles and get shot over them. As your buddy Biden would say C'mon man.

Last edited by abolt300; 01/18/24 06:05 PM.