Old deer are like old coyotes. They survived a few close calls and learned from them. Big bucks are more nocturnal. Its safer. They got lucky and learned this. During rut they take a lot of chances but its difficult to pattern them. IMO they rarely, if ever, come to bait during shooting hours. If your just getting groceries its a great tactic. You don't need to put bait out all year round. You dont need to scatter a lot of it. A couple weeks before opening day is plenty of time. They find it quick if there is deer in the area. For groceries you don't want to spend a bunch on bait. A 50 pound sack every 4-5 days is plenty if you make a feeder like I described in my first post. If its empty for 2-3 days it won't matter. They will come in to check it anyway. When its full again, and they find it, it conditions them to check it.

A permanent blind helps too. One that never moves. Deer, like coyotes, are VERY familiar with their home range. It doesn't have to be pricey. An old pickup you were going to sell for scrap works fine. You can build a blind, on the ground, pretty cheap. A shed about 5x8 is plenty for two people. A couple windows salvaged from an old mobile home or camper are cheap and install with screws from the outside. You can heat one with an infrared heater that screws onto a 20 pound propane bottle. That small you dont need insulation. Open a window 3-4 inches and sit against the back wall on a cheap metal folding chair. Bottom of the window the right height to shoot from. A rest to keep your gun off the bottom of the window.

A green foodplot in a wooded area stands out more in airial views

Our deer in my DMU have been conditioned by summer crop damage permits disease control permits usda shooters all summer for close to 40 years add multiple hunts from sept till jan.1st Baiting is illegal here in the lower Peninsula every gas station sells corn,beets and carrots As spooky as our herd is your better off staying out of the woods till season opens

Only in Conn and Kansas where it is legal.

We can bait deer here in Ohio. I have food plots out. Salt blocks. Mineral blocks. They share water sources too. Aren't licking trees a thing as well? The deer herd here share all the honeysuckle growing at the edges too. CWD is just showing up here. Word is Dewine and Fauci are issuing a mask mandate for them.

Foodplot vs corn, both are manmade just for deer. Cant hollar about corn being unfair if you are planting feed just for hunting deer. Same thing.

We bait. If we didn’t, our neighbors would draw our deer across the boundary to feed under their stands.

We do it to hold our does.

definitely not me

There was a bill introduced in April to allow the PGC to expand legal baiting slightly for a few very specific situations.

We feed the deer all year around shelled corn. Went Monday to buy some and the man at the co-op said it must be deer season. Saw a guy at Tractor buy a whole pallet of corn last week.

Road kill dump sites near highway corridors
can be hot for Pa bear. Coyotes too.
Get dropped off cause the parking is full.
Take pics of the license plates of the
"community peers" trucks, for later.
Selective enforcement and tricky game laws apply.

I bait deer every year. Actually only ever shot one deer over bait. Most of the time still catch them on field edges or locked down with a doe somewhere

No its quit different. It takes a lot more work and equipment to put out a successful food plot vs dumping a bag of corn on the ground or in a timed feeder. You also have to have the land to do so.

If you want a food plot to not get eaten to dirt its also got to be large enough a few acres is no uncommon not an area a feeder is spinning into.

I agree its there to feed and hold deer but thats where the similarities end.

In NE you can bait deer but have to sit a minimum of 200 feet from the bait. Silly.

I guess the guys that don't bait have some pretty killer spots to hunt.

We have a good population of deer and a good amount of hunting land in the state both public and private. Deer are not hard to pattern.

Well where I hunt deer can go a few hundred yards in any direction and be in the neighbors corn or beans. I also hunt in a pasture so the cattle would destroy a food plot or eat the corn or whatever else set out for deer. My stands are in wooded locations where deer pass through, there is nothing that holds them to stay or even show up. If I baited or put out mineral and didn't have cattle to contend with it would make killing deer a lot easier. Baiting has been illegal here for many years because of CWD.

Again, same thing, manmade attractants for deer, sure one takes more work but both have the same purpose. Gotta have land to put corn out to here anyway. Cant bait on public.

I too live in the land of corn and beans. Next to woods with oaks of all kinds. When Im sitting still to hunt a deer I like it to be around some strange tasty growth that deer may crave over thousands of acres of dry corn. What can I offer up to make them want to be on my 2 acres? So I have a strip of say sugar beets and other forage. Salt and Mineral. Lucky buck. Maybe a fruit tree or two. My deer spot is a phone booth on my small strip next to deer mecca that I can't get on. Luckily it too is a travel corridor but I see no reason not to make it more attractive to deer. I don't see any reason to blind set for deer. It would just take longer. Killing a deer is something to cross off my list to get it in the freezer so I can go do something outside thats more exciting. Sitting around waiting on a deer kinda sucks. To each their own.