That is a cool picture in your avatar. What is that?

African game?

I also see that from you website that you guys represent many guides and ranches.

Why in the world would anyone need a guide to hunt? I think it's an indication of being lazy.......

It's an antelope honkie

WRONG!!!! That's called photography!
You know I'm just messin' with you Perch!

But I do joke with some friends all the time that if I wasn't there simply to kill a deer, I'd just take up hiking.

Gotta patent that! Let's give 'em the claps!

A honkie antelope? Cool!

so a food plot and a pile of corn are the same....? Really?

maybe IF you have a feeder full of corn, year round. Or at least Aug-April or the life of your food plot.

Problem is, in the real world, most folks put corn out on Fri afternoon, or Sat morning when they are at the club hunting. Corn dosen't start till Oct 15 and ends abruptly the last hunt day of the season.

For those who plant spring/summer plots the difference is even greater if you don't keep the feeder fill 365 days a year. How many of ya corn baiters do this??? Way the hell under 10% I'd say.....

I will say this.....

Neither would be there without man putting them there.

In that sense, yes they are the same.

using that logic the Empire State building and a corn pile are the same....

Not unless deer can eat concrete.....

Here is my $.02. Using the word "baiting" for comparing using corn and food plots is apples to oranges. I side with the fair chase/sportsmanship mindset. Regulations are in place that keep sportsmanship in play. One example: you can only shoot (legally) a turkey with a shotgun (or bow) from the ground, which makes it more difficult because you have to get them close and your movement must be limited. If you could shoot them from a treestand with a rifle, it would be a lot easier...to the point of minimal fair chase/sportsmanship.

A food plot is designed to increase your chance of seeing a deer. It's not a magic bullet. Of course you're trying to lure them in. Climbing a tree in a timber pinch-point funnel is also a way of increasing your chance of seeing a deer, but takes little effort short of looking at an aerial photograph or topo map.

I busted my tail this summer and fall to establish food plots and didn't see the first deer during gun season. Didn't start seeing evidence of deer using the fall planting until mid-January (clover, rape, turnips, wheat, radishes, cereal rye).

Planted a "test plot" with the same as above in my backyard. Hardly any evidence of usage there either. Picked up a bag of corn after the season ended and threw a few pounds out in the backyard. Walked out there a couple nights later and as I came over the hill in the backyard, the woods exploded with deer bolting away.

I put a bag of corn out in a plot on the farm this past weekend (deer survey) so I'm curious to see if deer sightings increase where it has been almost nonexistent so far.

Bottom line is my view is that a food plot is something that takes a considerable amount of effort and does not guarantee success, whereas corn is highly attractive, costs very little, can bring deer in with a couple days, and takes little or no effort. Yes, I understand that corn doesn't mean deer will show up during daylight and being able to kill a deer over corn may vary from one piece of land to another. A pile of corn isn't going to sit there for weeks unused though, I can guarantee that to be true.

I'm on the side of fair chase. Our club puts out food plots for the health of the herd and to encourage them to stay in the area. We do not hunt over our food plots. I am against baiting and would like to do away with the way that it is now, even if it is over 100 yards away.

I can remember hunting food plots on the old Butler WMA that had standing corn in them. How is that not baiting?

Yes, but those guys have decided that those things don't make them lazy, unskilled, slob hunters like corn does. Cause you know, they do those things which makes them okay. Understand yet? Me either. I think you have to have some sort of brain damage to get it.

What's really strange are the people who think hunting deer near a corn feeder in Alabama would make you unethical pond scum. But then these same folks will go somewhere like Canada and gleefully shoot a bear over a bait barrel. Or go out to Wyoming and sit in a blind on the edge of the only water hole for 30 miles waiting until an antelopes thirst overwhelms his fear of their double bull blind. What is the moral or ethical difference?



You are using sound deductive logic and common sense here. See that's not going to work. You have to let go of using your brain logically and just irrationally embrace the hate for one kind of bait while being totally fine with hunting over green patch bait. In short you are thinking too much. LOL!

Besides those shooting houses over those green patches are just there so they can sit in them and watch deer ingest a superior form of nutrition to corn. LOL! I can't even say that and keep a straight face. You guys are a laugh riot.



The vast majority of people I know do not plant summer plots. But I would guess the ones that do would be doing it for the same reason some people run feeders the whole off season as well. First to hold deer on their land and condition them to coming to the same areas. Then secondly as a nutritional supplement for their deer.

But this question doesn't change the fact that both are bait artificially placed in a specific location by man. It should either be illegal to hunt over both or legal to hunt over both. Legal to hunt over one but not the other is an indefensible inconsistency. It's like saying you can night hunt with a brand A spotlight but not a brand B spotlight. It's still night hunting no matter the brand of light you use. And a food source is still bait whether it's green or yellow.



So you don't use a 4 wheel drive, a 4 wheeler, climbing stands, lock on stands, game cameras, camouflage, scent killer sprays, cover scents, binoculars, high powered rifles, scopes, scent attractants, grunt calls, rattling horns, etc, etc,

Cause you know, you are not into things that make it easier and easier for you to kill a deer so you can still call yourself a hunter.


Every time this comes up what you find is that people who have a low opinion of baiting with feeders and people who would legalize it have that low opinion basically just because it's always been illegal. But when pressed to defend why it is illegal they either can't back it up or give reasons that cannot adequately explain why it's morally any different than sitting over a green patch.

They call people who would sit over a feeder slob hunters or lazy and unskilled. Well what skill does it take to climb into a shooting house over a patch? "We scouted this green patch for 2 weeks and decided to sit in the shooting house on the edge of it." LOL!!! Does it take great physical effort to work that latch on a shooting house door or the plexiglass sliding windows? What makes these people Daniel Boone but someone that would hunt near a feeder unskilled and lazy? Because I don't see any difference in the skill or effort involved. And I certainly don't see any moral or ethical difference that should warrant one being legal and the other being illegal.

No one will ever be able to convince me that this corn baiting business is not being spearheaded by the lazy and the gimme, gimme hunters. I think deep down many pushing for corn baiting think it will help their deer sightings because " their neighbors are already doing it" or whatever.

Comparing a good plot to a pile of corn is an apples to oranges comparison. In fact, more like a sweet potato/potato comparison. Similar on the outside, yet they are a completely different thing from each other.

Joe did a good job summing it up and I don't feel like writing half of an opinion paper on the subject, but I strongly disagree with corn. Especially in a place with as much thick hidey holes as bama.

And growing corn well enough so it is standing in season requires so much fertilizer, tractor time, care, and work I can't honestly believe y'all are comparing a standing corn field, which requires weeks or months of work on someone's part at the very least, with going to the tractor supply and buying a 50lb sack of corn in 2 minutes flat and dumping it out.

This has pretty much been my experience on properties I hunt in FL. I hunted a feeder yesterday from dawn to dusk and didn't see a single deer. I maintain game feeding stations on my properties 365 days a year. In fact, FL law requires you to maintain game feeding stations a minimum of 6 months prior to hunting season in order to legally hunt over them. You can't just put a feeder out in September and start hunting in October.It is a misconception that you can dump piles of corn out legally in FL. You're required to maintain feeding stations 6 months before season starts. Of course how compliance with law is checked is another matter.

There is nothing left of this dead horse to beat on, but since you brought it up there is a difference
1. effort- relatively no effort required to pour out a bag of corn, a lot of effort in planting foodplots (assuming you don't pay someone to do them for you)
2. temporary food source vs. 9-12 month out of the year food source (if you supplemental feed, then you can take this difference out, but most don't).
3. versatility- a bag of corn/ feeder can be poured out/ placed anywhere (side of a mountain, on a trail in a clear cut, etc. etc.) food plot locations are limited and once established and hunted deer will become more reluctant to use during the day.

The end result on any given day may be the same, but there are differences...

you must have missed the part about habitat improvements still being there after deer season…footplots, honeysuckle, even an actual corn field for that matter. We plant 10 acres in corn and our biggest field still has corn in it and so do our clover fields and annual foodplots. Be curious to know the drop in corn sales after Jan 31st or Feb. 10th…. 90% probably

good points and I agree if you are talking about a feeder, but not the case if you scout an area, find a bunch of sign and then pour out a bag of corn to hunt it over the next couple of days… I suspect feeders end up being much like foodplots. Once they are established and over hunted the deer are less likely to use them during the day.