bear baiting up here is about to go down... all the god damn tree huggers thinks its awful... they dont understand that w/o it they wll become over populated and being roaming around their yards!
its on the voting ballet this november... we will see what happens, i just think there are too many city poeple around here. not to mention they stupid friggin adds they run on TV... make it look horrible... if i knew nothing about it and saw those adds... id vote it down too...

 

You used to be able to bait just about as much as you wanted here in Michigan. A few years back they decided that hunters would be limited to only a five gallon bucket full. I cant remember exactly how often you can put out that five gallons, but it wasnt much, especially after having almost no restriction.

I believe the trend now is towards no bait at all. While I dont believe it has taken effect yet here in MI, it is in the plans for years to come. I'm not really a fan of this idea, and I think some sort of better plan could have been enacted. The TB problem a couple years back really got the lawmakers into a scare about spreading it, and that greatly contributed to the demise of the baiting allowances. While I am all in favor of reducing disease and maintaining the deer population, you have to be careful not to over do it. You can get doe permits in MI in great numbers, especailly if you are a landowner of x number of acres or more. The population is getting out of hand in the Lower peninsula, and if we arent allowed to feed then the deer will have no food for the winter months. If we arent allowed to bait, there will be too many deer trying to get food and it will spread weakness and disease and death in that way. Kind of a double edged sword.

 

As far as deer are concerned, if you want to bait them you might as well shoot a cow. I do understand baiting bear, but not whitetail. That just makes hunting whitetail too easy.

Ryan

 

Don't know about anywhere else, but here in KY, if you are baiting, you just aren't trying. Darn things are everywhere. I mean, are you going out in the woods to hunt, or to run a seasonal slaughterhouse?

 

I think baiting is fine, especially if its legal in your area. It helps if your on a small parcel of land that the deer dont travel through often.

 

I bate in the off season. I can get TM salt cheap so I usually just use that, I have messed with beet pulp and some clover. Figure it might keep the deer around my hunting area when the season opens!

 

the thing with having a food plot is that after the season is done you are still feeding the wildlife which in turn if you are feeding 20 deer all winter and take 1 or 2 deer from it during deer season the other 19 or so deer have a good chance for having food for part of the winter the thing with just baiting for deer is that alot of people would stop right after season which of corse doesn't help the population in the harshest months of winter. it is illegal to establish and hunt over a food plot but if you can't see the deer while they are eating out of the food plot it is still legal so if you put it 100 or so yards away behind some brush it is legal if you are into the baiting thing to a certain degree so it is kind of an up in the air thing that there is good and bad to it like what was mentioned about chronic wasting and there are soooo many deer here in northern mn that i see them all over dead along the road all the time i am glad and happy they are doing so well but sometimes they can do to well the population

 

It's illegal in Illinois, but even if it wasn't I wouldn't agree with it. That's like Texas hunting where there's an automatic feeder throwin corn out with 20 or so deer gathered around it. You have a rifle in your hands. Take your pick. That's not hunting.

 

Ther are too many of these food plots in this country. It is estimated that there have NEVER been this many whitetail deer in the u.s. Feeding the stupid things all winter as someone pointed out earlier in this post, takes away from natural selection. 30 yrs. ago it was a big deal to see a deer, now it happens all the time, all the states around us have very serious problems with the size of their deer heards. States are actually paying money to have deer shot to help thin out the heards, ludicrus. I am so sick and tired of dodging them on my commute to and from work, I may put a mad max style grill guard on my car and do a little culling myself.

 

i go through the same thing ostrich i hit one with my 98 ford truck i just traded off a couple months ago and well i hit it harder but luckily it glanced off my front bumper so both my truck and the deer were ok but i also look at it as it being nice to see the deer population doing so well we have a cottage up in canada and you can feed the deer out of the palm of your hand (needless to say you aren't allowed to hunt the deer here) but it is the most calming and relaxing thing to just sit back and watch the deer just a few feet away and just watch them in their element baiting deer always will be a big confrontation i hunt deer and i am only 24 but i love watching them more then hunting them i let many many deer pass by during deer season my favorite is when they hang around in front of my stand for a while and i can watch them so i guess we should all feel blessed that the deer population is doing so well