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I see some videos where the guys use a fertilizer spread to scatter corn etc
or is it better to pile the corn/ apples in one location ?
One fat Bear and the pile will be gone.
Also not sure that more than one doe family will work an area at a time.
But the scatter method may mean lots of the bail goes unfound?
Any thoughts ?
Yes bears love it and will devour it all. It’s best to scatter it and the deer will scavenge for it. Scatttering it is healthier for the deer as well as too much corn can cause serious health issues, even death, for deer.
We usually scatter any corn or feed so the deer spend more time pawing at it and scavenging we've found it brings them to the cameras more often even after the feed is gone.
Just scattered 1500 lbs of apples- so time will tell
Sounds like two totes of ground apples. Did you buy them? Before i owned property with apple trees i used to get them at Chudleighs for $60 per tote - that was a while back so likely double that price or more now. Tote was 700-800 llbs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Horridfiber101
Barrie Hill farms $160
I see a place in Collingwood for $120 or $100 for 2+ bins
They were pretty rotten, so hopefully they last a week or so
a local seller about 5 miles down the road from where I hunt would give me all the rotten apples or ones that they couldn't sell. Worked out good for both of us as they didn't want them around their place to draw the deer in and I wanted them to draw the deer in. I'd just dump them in one spot, but all I got to come were coyote so I stopped baiting.
For god sake don’t bulk dump bags of corn or grain unless you want to kill the deer you are trying to attract. The rumen needs to be slowly acclimatized to sugar/starch rich forage, or you will get a classic case of acidosis that will kill the animal. The animal’s rumen will bloat. I had a neighbour who used to dump 40lb bags of full corn for the deer. I found two deer dead on my property and a third showed up on the game camera bloated up the size of a 55gallon barrel. The deer I shot that year was horribly bloated. When I dressed it the rumen was bloated up the size of a punching balloon and the corn gut contents were fermenting like a beer vat. . Google ruminant acidosis if you want to read up on it. I broad scatter about a liter of full corn per baiting, every two days. It’s more than enough to draw them to your baiting area.
Good info. You can’t bait deer the same way that you bait bears. On another note, even though cattle and deer both have 4 chambered stomachs, there are many things a cow can eat that a deer can’t properly digest.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fenelon
Just picked up a crate of carrots, cheaper than anything else I've found. Going to spread them in a few spots the same as last year and hopefully they last the week. Last year they were almost gone by opening day.
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.
Quote:
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.