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I use to dump but found other critters were having a feast at the pile so started spreading it around more to make it a little more work for them. I'm in 90B and the deer have every kind of food they desire available to them in mass quantities but whenever we gut them the contents are usually a mix of everything, seems they like a balanced diet. I can see how up North where a pile of corn would be an irresistible treat and cause problems.
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Originally Posted by longpointer
About the only place it can cause problems is up north and ingested in great quantity. The thought that corn will cause bloat in southern Ontario agriculture lands is laughable. We have a property in 41, and while I don’t really deer hunt it much, when we do bait, we use a mix of alfalfa, corn, grain and carrot and scatter the corn and grain so they can’t gulp it down. That said, we do that more for the trail camera photos than hunting as I hunt near my house mainly.
We should set up a survey, did you harvest a deer over a bait pile this year or not ? I was unsuccessful harvesting a deer this year over bait.
In my experience as a mentor hunter, I set up the new guys over bait as there is a lot of animal activity around it such as squirels and raccoons which keep the new hunter entertained, but for myself I have more success hunting remote areas which are hard to get to and do not see much human activity.
I use a mixture of things, I have a small foodplot that I re-seed every year and now have a good amount of clover in that area along with some root vegetables etc. I also drop carrots 50lbs at a time and I have a feeder with cracked corn.
The deer use the feeder as well as turkeys, squirrels, birds and raccoons. I stopped using apples a number of years ago because they were drawing in to may raccoons and bears. Neither will touch carrots, but the deer have to get used to carrots first, but once they do … . I go through 1400 lbs of carrots on average each year. I keep the corn feeder stocked all winter to keep the turkeys fed and we are getting quite a flock around here. Turkeys also like sunflower seeds.
I have yet to see a coyote, but when I do they’re dead, just like the bear that showed up last year on opening day of bear season.
I have taken to putting netting on a number of my trees and shrubs. Trees to prevent the squirrels from eating my apples etc.
Shrubs to prevent the fawns from chewing off all of the new growth.
One last thing, elderberry leaves and stocks contain a small amount of cyanide in them, not enough to kill a fawn, but enough to given them a good belly ache. That’s probably why the mature deer won’t touch them.