Post by tickman1961 on Nov 30, 2009 9:16:54 GMT -5
DEER BAIT-ONE OF MANY ROADS TO BACKSTRAP by Ted Nugent
Thump. Thump. Thump. Magic sounds on a magic morning in a magic land. It seemed that the long ridgeline of apple trees where I sat were virtually raining apples all around me. I smiled a huge, bowhunting smile and scanned my shadowy grove. I was surely in deer heaven, and I shook with excitement.
God, in His eternal mercy, had created the beyond dream, ultimate playground for a wild eyed Motorcity guitar player who remains addicted to backstraps, allthings wild and the mystical flight of the arrow. This wildlife paradise in which I waited had it all. Dozens of old apple trees lined out along a steep ridge unfolding into an eternal marshland, pocked with islands of oaks, choke cherry and maples. Scattered clumps of grey dogwood, willows, reeds, cattails, autumn olive, tag alders and untold vines and tangles of puckerbrush abounded. The whole beautiful place reeked of wildlife, especially whitetail deer. Good Lord.
One hundred feet above and behind me, the ridge lifted onto fertile, tillable ground, on which I had planted all the good stuff. Varieties of alfalfa and clover, some standing corn and soybeans, Brassica, rape, treefoil, birdsfeet, turnips, and many, many acres of a little this and a little that. Clearly, God loves me and I do all I can to love Him back. We have a deal. He creates, I harvest. Perfect.
Getting used to the pleasant sounds of falling fruit and mast with the growing daylight, I did my best to scan ever so slowly for any movement on my sacred hunting grounds. And as usual, one second there was nothing, the very next moment, a deer appeared almost directly underneath me. The big old doe was standing right there looking back to the west, then suddenly dashed up a well worn trail towards the high ground.
Instantly a handsome buck came along her trail, nose to the ground, and stopped in the exact same spot. Slowly lifting my bow for a shot, the buck gazed 180 degrees, then trotted off after the doe before I could shoot him. So what else is new?
I glanced a big smile back at Big Jim, my SpiritWild VidCamDude, and we shrugged our shoulders. Immediately Jim’s eyes got very big and he nodded to the east. The buck was walking slowly back our way when he stopped, picked up an apple, and crunched a big bite out of it. At 20 yards, he turned slightly, giving me that glorious broadside shot of our dreams, and without skipping a beat, I drilled him with a very pretty arrow, right where the good Dr. Backstrap ordered.
Happy November America!
The buck raced back east and piled up in sight, only forty yards away. It never gets old, and I never take such spectacular moments for granted. When I picked up my bloody arrow, it laid between two big juicy apples, and when I lifted my buck’s handsome head, the white fruit of his last meal was still in his mouth. It was adorable.
Follow me here, won’t you. At some point in time, a man planted all those apple trees. This man hunted amongst them for a shot at a deer. And like millions of my fellow gung-ho hunters across America, this man also planted all those crops and food plots on my hunting grounds to optimize my chances for a good shot at game. Surely, by no stretch of the imagination, could anyone attempt to claim that all these attractants are anything less than bait. And I would love to meet the man who would tell this man I cannot hunt there. I know there are many weird people in the world, I just tend to ignore them and they tend to steer clear of me. This is good.
Like the waterhole we sit over during extremely dry conditions, the mock scrapes we create in our favorite buck woods, or the trail of doe urine we strategically plot out to cross in front of our treestand, write this down-it is all bait. To listen to someone attempt to deny this is theater of the absurd in spades. Too funny.
I certainly don’t need to consult old Mr. Webster to confirm that, like the worm on my hook, or the commercial food plot mix I plant, these wildlife attractants are as pure and unadulterated bait as was Mrs. Nugent’s exercise routine, hairdo, shaved legs, choice of clothing and make up rituals in preparation for our initial encounter. Know it. Admit it. Celebrate it. For it is natural and it is perfect. And wonderful.
I will not enter the embarrassing world of rhetorical redundancy here as it pertains to the junk science of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). Like all my hunting buddies and me, all hunters should have already done their homework on the mutated protein prion transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TES) that is CWD, or how the Colorado Division of wildlife injected deer with Scrapie, the domestic sheep version of Crueutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) back in 1967, or how Mad Cow erupted from the insane, government sanctioned practice of feeding animal parts from livestock that had died from unknown causes to other livestock, and how the CWD scare is about as real as Al Gore’s global warming hoax. I dismiss it out of hand, and you should too.
Deer do not need bait thrown around to have nose to nose contact. Their lives are nose to nose contact, nose to butt contact, nose to eyeball contact, nose to ear contact, with or without man’s involvement. Find a person who says otherwise, and you are looking at a liar of a fool. Period.
Think about it. The US government takes tax dollars to provide supplemental feed for public wildlife when severe winters jeopardize western herds, then turn around and tell we the people that we can’t feed wildlife on our own private property. That’s like the insane outrage from soulless bureaucrats who tell their employers, we the people, that we must be unarmed and helpless but we must pay for their armed security detail. Makes sense,
Governor Doyle. Sure, if you reside on Planet of the Apes, or in Wisconsin.
We could go on how these same corrupt bureaucrats waste a few gazillion more of our already hammered tax dollars to further destroy our health care system, the whole time voting for their own state of the art, unlimited health care system that we the people have never had any say in deciding. Yeah, these are the people I trust to make wildlife decisions in my life. Never.
I used to live in the wonderful state of Michigan, until my heart bled from the overt desecration of the US Constitution and allthings logic there. The number one game bird on planet earth is considered a song bird in Michigan. By law I must have my bow and gun in a case even on my own farm, or I am a felon. Phenomenal until you examine the self inflicted socio-economic destructo-derby Michigan has charted for itself. And of course, Michiganiacs in the UP can bait, but not in the lower peninsula. You see, there is a southern science and a northern science, just ask the experts. Crazy stupid. Michael Moore should be Director of the DNR.
In the wonderful, last best place Republic of Texas, and elsewhere, my long gun can join me on the front seat of my truck, dove season begins when it’s supposed to, and Texas’ deer hunters spend more than a billion dollars a year on deer corn, supplemental feed products, wildlife foodplots and other wildlife attractants. Add a few billion dollars more on private property owned and maintained just for hunting, and you get the picture that we the people are still in control in the Lone Star State. I am right at home there, thank you. Remember the Alamo.
I can not begin to adequately convey my love for deer hunting. I love it all. Deer drives turn me on, smashing antlers together and grunting in early November is one of life’s greatest thrills, mock scrapes and doe urine trails can be magic, long range sniping on distant mountainsides with my scoped .270 is a rifleman’s dream, and sneaking through the cactus and mesquite flats of south Texas with my handgun, crossbow or compound turns me on no end. I have even joined the green thumb brigade and cut some food plots in such a configuration as to form natural funnels based on prevailing wind conditions on my property. Beautiful.
I do it all, and I love it all. Including cleverly positioning an automatic feeder to spray corn into shadowy groves where I might get a close shot at a doe or a buck at some point. Not only are all these strategies over the top exciting and absolutely fair chase, but astonishingly, we can find fellow hunters who would like to ban one or more of these legal methodologies for some strange, selfish, unsophisticated, small minded and unfounded reasons. Phooey. Or other such hooked on phonics verbiage.
Got straps? Get straps, and get them the way you like. Whatever your personal choice in hunting, have at it, I am with you. This includes the farmer or rancher who could care less about “sport” or “challenge”, but simply wants some delicious, succulent venison for the grill. Enough with the “ethics” hysteria. You want meat, get meat. Buy a license, eat venison. Have a nice day.
The finest human beings to found in mankind are found in hunting camps in America. Unfortunately, some of the biggest dolts are part of our family too. Ignore the dolts, embrace the BloodBrothers. America is about choice, about freedom. Beware of bureaucrats, for whenever they mingle in anything, they destroy it or immediately turn assets into a liabilities. It’s what bureaucrats do. I don’t like any of them.
We are facing many problems in America, and deer bait is not one of them. In our beloved hunting lifestyle, the real problems are illogical, counterproductive gamelaws that are designed to impede recruitment and create attrition. Sunday hunting bans, minimum age limits, shooting hours, crossbow bans, bait, the vulgar practice of hiring sharpshooters and government hunters to kill our game, three shell limits on migratory fowl, bow and gun case laws, no hunting in state and national parks, and so many more inconsistent, nonsensical rules that have nothing to do with safety or science.
Deer corn is not on the list, or at least shouldn‘t be. Believe me. Until we unite to open the gates to more and new hunters, we will be in danger. We must unite and focus on meaningful priorities and leave the squawking to the anti’s.
To read more from Ted and to communicate directly with him, visit tednugent.com.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Magic sounds on a magic morning in a magic land. It seemed that the long ridgeline of apple trees where I sat were virtually raining apples all around me. I smiled a huge, bowhunting smile and scanned my shadowy grove. I was surely in deer heaven, and I shook with excitement.
God, in His eternal mercy, had created the beyond dream, ultimate playground for a wild eyed Motorcity guitar player who remains addicted to backstraps, allthings wild and the mystical flight of the arrow. This wildlife paradise in which I waited had it all. Dozens of old apple trees lined out along a steep ridge unfolding into an eternal marshland, pocked with islands of oaks, choke cherry and maples. Scattered clumps of grey dogwood, willows, reeds, cattails, autumn olive, tag alders and untold vines and tangles of puckerbrush abounded. The whole beautiful place reeked of wildlife, especially whitetail deer. Good Lord.
One hundred feet above and behind me, the ridge lifted onto fertile, tillable ground, on which I had planted all the good stuff. Varieties of alfalfa and clover, some standing corn and soybeans, Brassica, rape, treefoil, birdsfeet, turnips, and many, many acres of a little this and a little that. Clearly, God loves me and I do all I can to love Him back. We have a deal. He creates, I harvest. Perfect.
Getting used to the pleasant sounds of falling fruit and mast with the growing daylight, I did my best to scan ever so slowly for any movement on my sacred hunting grounds. And as usual, one second there was nothing, the very next moment, a deer appeared almost directly underneath me. The big old doe was standing right there looking back to the west, then suddenly dashed up a well worn trail towards the high ground.
Instantly a handsome buck came along her trail, nose to the ground, and stopped in the exact same spot. Slowly lifting my bow for a shot, the buck gazed 180 degrees, then trotted off after the doe before I could shoot him. So what else is new?
I glanced a big smile back at Big Jim, my SpiritWild VidCamDude, and we shrugged our shoulders. Immediately Jim’s eyes got very big and he nodded to the east. The buck was walking slowly back our way when he stopped, picked up an apple, and crunched a big bite out of it. At 20 yards, he turned slightly, giving me that glorious broadside shot of our dreams, and without skipping a beat, I drilled him with a very pretty arrow, right where the good Dr. Backstrap ordered.
Happy November America!
The buck raced back east and piled up in sight, only forty yards away. It never gets old, and I never take such spectacular moments for granted. When I picked up my bloody arrow, it laid between two big juicy apples, and when I lifted my buck’s handsome head, the white fruit of his last meal was still in his mouth. It was adorable.
Follow me here, won’t you. At some point in time, a man planted all those apple trees. This man hunted amongst them for a shot at a deer. And like millions of my fellow gung-ho hunters across America, this man also planted all those crops and food plots on my hunting grounds to optimize my chances for a good shot at game. Surely, by no stretch of the imagination, could anyone attempt to claim that all these attractants are anything less than bait. And I would love to meet the man who would tell this man I cannot hunt there. I know there are many weird people in the world, I just tend to ignore them and they tend to steer clear of me. This is good.
Like the waterhole we sit over during extremely dry conditions, the mock scrapes we create in our favorite buck woods, or the trail of doe urine we strategically plot out to cross in front of our treestand, write this down-it is all bait. To listen to someone attempt to deny this is theater of the absurd in spades. Too funny.
I certainly don’t need to consult old Mr. Webster to confirm that, like the worm on my hook, or the commercial food plot mix I plant, these wildlife attractants are as pure and unadulterated bait as was Mrs. Nugent’s exercise routine, hairdo, shaved legs, choice of clothing and make up rituals in preparation for our initial encounter. Know it. Admit it. Celebrate it. For it is natural and it is perfect. And wonderful.
I will not enter the embarrassing world of rhetorical redundancy here as it pertains to the junk science of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). Like all my hunting buddies and me, all hunters should have already done their homework on the mutated protein prion transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TES) that is CWD, or how the Colorado Division of wildlife injected deer with Scrapie, the domestic sheep version of Crueutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) back in 1967, or how Mad Cow erupted from the insane, government sanctioned practice of feeding animal parts from livestock that had died from unknown causes to other livestock, and how the CWD scare is about as real as Al Gore’s global warming hoax. I dismiss it out of hand, and you should too.
Deer do not need bait thrown around to have nose to nose contact. Their lives are nose to nose contact, nose to butt contact, nose to eyeball contact, nose to ear contact, with or without man’s involvement. Find a person who says otherwise, and you are looking at a liar of a fool. Period.
Think about it. The US government takes tax dollars to provide supplemental feed for public wildlife when severe winters jeopardize western herds, then turn around and tell we the people that we can’t feed wildlife on our own private property. That’s like the insane outrage from soulless bureaucrats who tell their employers, we the people, that we must be unarmed and helpless but we must pay for their armed security detail. Makes sense,
Governor Doyle. Sure, if you reside on Planet of the Apes, or in Wisconsin.We could go on how these same corrupt bureaucrats waste a few gazillion more of our already hammered tax dollars to further destroy our health care system, the whole time voting for their own state of the art, unlimited health care system that we the people have never had any say in deciding. Yeah, these are the people I trust to make wildlife decisions in my life. Never.
I used to live in the wonderful state of Michigan, until my heart bled from the overt desecration of the US Constitution and allthings logic there. The number one game bird on planet earth is considered a song bird in Michigan. By law I must have my bow and gun in a case even on my own farm, or I am a felon. Phenomenal until you examine the self inflicted socio-economic destructo-derby Michigan has charted for itself. And of course, Michiganiacs in the UP can bait, but not in the lower peninsula. You see, there is a southern science and a northern science, just ask the experts. Crazy stupid. Michael Moore should be Director of the DNR.
In the wonderful, last best place Republic of Texas, and elsewhere, my long gun can join me on the front seat of my truck, dove season begins when it’s supposed to, and Texas’ deer hunters spend more than a billion dollars a year on deer corn, supplemental feed products, wildlife foodplots and other wildlife attractants. Add a few billion dollars more on private property owned and maintained just for hunting, and you get the picture that we the people are still in control in the Lone Star State. I am right at home there, thank you. Remember the Alamo.
I can not begin to adequately convey my love for deer hunting. I love it all. Deer drives turn me on, smashing antlers together and grunting in early November is one of life’s greatest thrills, mock scrapes and doe urine trails can be magic, long range sniping on distant mountainsides with my scoped .270 is a rifleman’s dream, and sneaking through the cactus and mesquite flats of south Texas with my handgun, crossbow or compound turns me on no end. I have even joined the green thumb brigade and cut some food plots in such a configuration as to form natural funnels based on prevailing wind conditions on my property. Beautiful.
I do it all, and I love it all. Including cleverly positioning an automatic feeder to spray corn into shadowy groves where I might get a close shot at a doe or a buck at some point. Not only are all these strategies over the top exciting and absolutely fair chase, but astonishingly, we can find fellow hunters who would like to ban one or more of these legal methodologies for some strange, selfish, unsophisticated, small minded and unfounded reasons. Phooey. Or other such hooked on phonics verbiage.
Got straps? Get straps, and get them the way you like. Whatever your personal choice in hunting, have at it, I am with you. This includes the farmer or rancher who could care less about “sport” or “challenge”, but simply wants some delicious, succulent venison for the grill. Enough with the “ethics” hysteria. You want meat, get meat. Buy a license, eat venison. Have a nice day.
The finest human beings to found in mankind are found in hunting camps in America. Unfortunately, some of the biggest dolts are part of our family too. Ignore the dolts, embrace the BloodBrothers. America is about choice, about freedom. Beware of bureaucrats, for whenever they mingle in anything, they destroy it or immediately turn assets into a liabilities. It’s what bureaucrats do. I don’t like any of them.
We are facing many problems in America, and deer bait is not one of them. In our beloved hunting lifestyle, the real problems are illogical, counterproductive gamelaws that are designed to impede recruitment and create attrition. Sunday hunting bans, minimum age limits, shooting hours, crossbow bans, bait, the vulgar practice of hiring sharpshooters and government hunters to kill our game, three shell limits on migratory fowl, bow and gun case laws, no hunting in state and national parks, and so many more inconsistent, nonsensical rules that have nothing to do with safety or science.
Deer corn is not on the list, or at least shouldn‘t be. Believe me. Until we unite to open the gates to more and new hunters, we will be in danger. We must unite and focus on meaningful priorities and leave the squawking to the anti’s.
To read more from Ted and to communicate directly with him, visit tednugent.com.