Baiting makes it too easy

Dam it if I would of know to whistle like calling a dog 25 years ago on the up I might of got a buck rather than a skittish doe the last day of the hunt .Wow I need to get this baiting law passed so I can get thie thing going in my back yard right away .

I would guess those were some HUNGRY deer

I still think it's cool. I'll be out all summer with my bucket of corn, but they won't be eating out of my hand. This year, when the corn was gone, so were the deer. I might have to plant some oats.

"Baiting makes it too easy" yes it does & is not needed in the woods.
There is plenty of natural food stuff in any normal woods (acorns, walnuts, pecans, persimmons) not to mention the grasses or any agriculture fields that may border the woods.
Do some scouting & learn what the deer are naturally feeding on, don't be a lazy hunter.

You need to read up on the term bait.
Here is what the Hunting Regs say.

Bait is considered any product that is transported
into a hunting area and placed there
for animal consumption. Baits can be in the
form of salt, mineral blocks, prepared solid
or liquid, or piles of apples or other food that
is intended for the animal to eat.

Things like food plots and some kinds of field manipulation would be an agriculture practice & is legal.
You need to understand that deer have a hard enough time finding food during the winter. Letting them get in the habit of having hunters put something corn or other food out for them & then when season ends the food is gone in the worst part of the winter would not be a good idea. Deer can't change from one feed to another that easy. It has been told to me that the deer is about the only animal that can starve to death with a full stomach, just because it takes time for them to change from one food source to another.

That question is among those that changed my outlook on baiting in recent years.

I think that in the reality of today's huntable habitat being so broken up into so many small areas, with many of them surrounded by areas where permission cannot be obtained , the food plots and even actual baiting by the state's definition has become a much more viable option.

Regulations can be helpful in maintaining good practices, but they are worse than useless when they are unenforced.

Under the current baiting regulations, a hunter on a smaller parcel can be convicted of hunting over bait if someone throws some corn over the fence from a neighboring property and then notifies the DNR anonymously. The hunter in question would not even necessarily be aware of the presence of the bait.

That, plus the extreme difficulty involved in any sort of meaningful enforcement, has left us with the situation where every farm store, Walmart, sporting goods store, and even many hardware stores and an occasional convenience mart have edible deer attractant/food products displayed in the fall, and carried out the door by thousands of customers who, we are assured by the law, will be using them for "observation purposes only".

Meanwhile, the legal hunter on the small property he owns or has permission on, even if he doesn't get sabotaged by someone implicating him in poaching by tossing corn over the fence, can well sit on his limited parcel the entire season without seeing a deer, despite the tracks and sign crossing the property from the deer on the adjacent property behind the "No Hunting" signs where the deer spend their daylight hours.

I think it's high time the legal hunter was accorded the same options that the poachers enjoy in that regard...the ability to use baiting as another legal option.

It would reduce the wandering about that causes tension among hunters, as well, since the tendency would be for the hunter who placed the bait to hunt there and not traipse around through everyone else's hotspots.

The lack of access to huntable property is the biggest hindrance in recruitment and retention of hunters. We can't make more dirt, the state is already supplying all the property they can afford to, and the leasing industry is restricting more of the remainder every year. The situation has changed over the past generation almost everywhere.

I think the time has come for baiting to be made legal. The studies I've seen showed little if any increased disease transmission in areas where baiting was allowed. Some problems arose in some areas where massive baitpiles were the common practice by some hunt clubs and facilities, but limiting the baitpile size to something reasonable for an individual to maintain seems to have solved those problems.

If we could draw some of those deer from the properties where we can't get permission, and we buy corn/beans/whatever from Indiana farmers to use as bait, then we sit there in our blind/stand overlooking our baitpile instead of tromping around on public land with thousands of others, busting their opportunities, doesn't everyone win?

I'm sure the younger and more athletic hunters will still be charged with the adrenalin of youth and will still wear out several pairs of hunting boots out-walking their competition to reach that magical places in the deep woods that we did when we were that age, and more power to them.

The exercise is great.

But for some of us who can't remember how long it's been since our whiskers turned white, walking a couple hundred yards into a small property we can park on, and sitting in a comfy blind or stand overlooking a food plot or a baitpile/feeder is adventurous enough, and the exercise is still better for us than sitting in the recliner watching football.

I suppose there's another option...the killing pens.....but I think I'll just take the recliner and my memories before doing that.

Yeah, don't know what the answer would be for public.

Maybe just let the hunter bait at his own peril regarding unwanted guests. Some baits are less obvious than others. Probably a feeder on public would be a poor idea, but liquid attractants, peanut butter smears on trees, etc., could be used and wouldn't be obvious to any others who didn't know where to look.

That type baiting would probably still not be practical unless done well into the area, off the more obvious trails, in order to avoid detection by other hunters, and then wouldn't be practical from the standpoint of it being too difficult to maintain.

It would work best for the hunter on smaller private parcels, but might be useful on some public, if they aren't too heavily hunted. It would also be most beneficial in those circumstances, I suspect. Might not even be worth doing on public or larger tracts of woods.

The problem of keeping the bait for the benefit of the baiter might just be the only thing needed to keep the baits from becoming too big or too obvious.

There will always be some areas of conflict. I know one area in a state forest where a local hunter hangs a half dozen stands in easy to spot locations although he only plans to use one or possibly two. The others are to convince strangers that there are already plenty of people hunting that spot.

Some things can be regulated away, and some just would be better left alone. We already have guys who think they own the woods if they hang a stand or place a blind in it, but the conflicts usually don't come to blows, and only very rarely result in shots fired. Uenforcable regulations in such matters would not be likely to help the situation.

NO WAY, should baiting be legal.... you guys ( RK,FW) make a good argument But I,m not buying it

I could not care less if they legalize hunting over bait.

I do wish they'd allow mineral licks year round. Not that I want to hunt over one, it would just save the hassle of trying to clean out "affected soil" before season starts. That one is a little over the top, in my opinion.