When was baiting legalized?

I've been posting maps showing the numbers....Check out "Fun with Numbers"

Seems like you would know that information before having an opinion on it

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.

My nephew... a dam .243 hunter mind you.... When he was 17-18 years old he couldn't kill a deer to save his life his dumbass would be back at the house within an hour saying he ain't seen nothing, blah, blah. Unless I put him directly on the "X" and put enough peer pressure on him to at least wait long enough to have to take a leak or something.... he wasn't killing a dern thing.

Well - then I put a feeder out.

He goes out there about 30 minutes before the feeder goes off and pretty soon... there's the deer.

if there is a problem with the feeder he won't hunt there. He went out there once this season and the feeder didn't go off. He texted me within 1 minute of when it didn't go off asking me why it didn't go off. So far he hasn't been back to that particular stand all season, I guess he's scared he might have to sit there and wait on a deer to appear.

I agree on pretty much all the rest of it the long seasons and lack of trigger control, etc. .... BUT - I'm sorry.... but I don't think you can discount this....

Yeah. Most people are paying about 1,000 dollars per pound.

The numbers dont lie. 15,000 kill increase, one year without corn, one year with. No other external factors other than weather. After that first year, way to many other variables introduced into the equation between the reg changes, soaring inflation, covid etc. I can tell you one thing for certain, a large portion of the reported harvest increase was due to people actually be forced to participate in Chuckies little program, as a result of the processor and taxidermist requiring a harvest number. Before the 20-21 season, all those deer were not being reported and participation was probably only 1/3 of what Chuckie said/thought it was. Once they were forced (due to the inconvenience of having to clean their own deer or not get one mounted) to report properly, the harvest numbers immediately jumped up by 30% and to closer to what they had been running for years. Like I've said before, Chuckie and the cab have been making game management decisions on the state's deer herd, based purely on BS/worthless numbers and had no real clue how many deer we have, how many we had or how many are actually being killed. Just facts. One year without corn, one year immediately after with corn. Other external factors not playing into the equation. 7% harvest increase. Probably from kids like your nephew.

This man gets it ^^^^

The number of baiting privilege permits sold this year is nearly three times what it was in year one…….Look it up.

Just because the number of permits are up doesn't mean the number of people baiting are up! Has nothing to do with corn , everything to do with extended doe season!

I get that you’re just trolling but here’s the problem with that line of thinking……Looking at zone c it would appear that limiting doe days probably wont fix the issue…..So we could go in and limit everyone on doe days and it do absolutely nothing to change things…..The problem is that now there are more properties will the ability to influence harvest rates…..That kid in Tuskegee can now legally shoot 2 or 3 or even 10 out of his uncles back yard on a 2 acre lot

I had another situation this year where a guy hunting 20 acres called me to track a deer he shot over his feeder…..The deer ran across the county road onto his neighbors place…He knew the neighbors so we had permission to keep tracking it……When we got over there the neighbor had a feeder set up as well not 300 yards from the hunter’s feeder…..Well, about 3 weeks later I get another call from the hunter’s OTHER neighbor across the creek on the same side of the road. He had yet another feeder he was hunting over not 300 yards from the first one in the other direction…..So you had 3 different hunters killing deer off of feeders within about 700-800 yard circle.

Corn has really increased the ability for small properties to influence harvest rates

I understand your way of thinking but it's the same deer that went to all the feeders. So if there are three feeders within a square of you pick the distance. The same deer are going to the all the feeders or corn piles. If you out law corn the same deer will be going to all three food plots. Someone is going to kill that deer. Make it legal to keep the corn and illegal to shoot the deer and 2 of the three won't shoot the deer . Improving the deer chances of surviving by 66%

There weren’t any food plots…….This was all just feeders set up in the woods on small parcels of land…..You’re right that the same deer are going to visit the feeders and three different people have the option to shoot them……All it takes is one to pull the trigger…..That’s how its happening.

Yes so the solution is not how you get them there, it's if your allowed to shoot them or not. If they weren't allowed to put corn out they would have a food plot. Not trying to troll, just my opinion the dang season is too long and the limits are too much! No one needs ten deer a year, and there's too many people that think if the government says it's OK to do it , it is. Again just my opinion

Let me try to explain it one more time……There wasn’t anywhere for a food plot to exist……it was in the middle of the woods on a 20 acre parcel where someone would have had a hard time killing deer otherwise……Being able to draw them into a feeder though gives each one of these hunters the ability to shoot deer and “fill the freezer” at will now on places where they likely would not have been able to before…..The same as the kid shooting deer in his uncles back yard…..These situations are happening all over the state……Some areas they are happening way more than others due to the average property sizes and hunter densities and that’s why you have some counties more heavily affected.....such as Blount and Marshall just to name a couple

Whats the number of doe harvest for each county since they went to a doe a day. Take the increase in that vs the number of doe increase since they allowed you to hunt over corn? That will give you the correct answer on the deer population decrease, without any dispute since it the does that control the population. Idk the answer to that question but I would bet the number of doe kills went up way more the year after they went to a doe a day, then when they went to allowing baiting!

And that same 20 acre property owner, with nothing to draw deer to it, most likely had a corn pile on it years before baiting was legalized. It’s been happening all over the state since the 70s. You just didn’t get a call to track on those types of properties because at the time, it was Illegal.

Thank you!!

It amazes me the love that some have for corn. I guess it’s the easy way and it’s just the norm now. There are more deer killed now due to the usage of corn. The season has always been long and the deer heard used to be fairly healthy. The biggest difference I see is we used to only get a week to kill a doe. Now you get all season to throw out your corn and kill as many as you want. Ban corn. Make hunters have to actually hunt. By doing this we will lose hunters which will help the deer herd. There’s too many hunters now anyway.

And I use the term hunters loosely. We have a lot of shooters who sit over a feeder

Most likely? Doubtful. I’ve been hunting a long time. Yes there has always been some who used corn but it wasn’t in any way close to the amount being thrown out today. Ban corn.