Baiting makes it too easy

Farmers in my area dont plant corn with a quad so I guess I dont have a clue what you two are talking about FirstWrd and MZL

On the Federal side, hunting crop fields that are used for normal farming practices is completely legal. Planting row crops and not harvesting them in a "normal" manner is considered crop manipulation and not legal. There are several thousand acres of seed corn fields around my area in which the "male" rows are mowed before the "female" rows are harvested. We can not hunt those fields until the field has been plowed under because the mowed down rows are not considered "normal farming practices" even though that is normal for seed corn production. With the set up he has with the plots he has planted for deer, waterfowl hunting would be against Federal baiting laws.

No waterfowl hunting. And we have corn feeder set up where the corn was now. I cut off all hunting usually by Dec 1 each year. (My place is a deer sanctuary last part of season.) The 2 acre corn field is usually ate to ground by late November. We have very little crop fields (soybeans/corn) in my area. Closest maybe 1.5/2miles away. Nothing wrong with spreading corn from your quad. As long as it's not during hunting season.

Yes.

Isn't that a standard practice in establishing a separate feeding area a distance away from the blinds, though? I haven't hunted ducks in about a generation, but it seems to me that I'd seen the seasonally flooded fields used to hold ducks in the area in Arkansas and the blinds were located a short way off at the edge of some normally flooded timber. I took it to be a standard practice and OK if the distance was enough so that the shooting wasn't deemed to be "over" the bait. As I recall, flooded rice fields were also used that way.

Would be about the equivalent of hunting the staging area between the bedding area and a food plot or bait station for deer.

My duck hunting was all either sneaking a creekbank for woodies or floating the river for whatever flew past, so I never got much into the reg's for baiting waterfowl, except in idle curiosity.

Anyway, good points on all sides of the issue, I'd say.

IMO, the best arguments against baiting have been the spread of disease and the "making it too easy". I don't recall the studies to quote them, but I remember reading some pretty convincing ones a couple years ago in a similar debate conducted in a major magazine that refuted the disease argument in most cases.

I don't think baiting would turn deer hunting into a slam dunk, and IIRC that was also explored in that debate and it turned out baiting was pretty effective on getting does and fawns into bow range regularly, but minimally effective on older bucks, which tended to hang up in cover until dark before exposing themselves at the site.

It's been awhile and had to reread everything. Standing flooded crops are listed as legal, but if any corn is knocked down or otherwise exposed beyond normal harvesting practices it is considered baiting.

I too would like to see baiting made legal on private property only, not on state or federal land.

QUESTION: to those who live up north in the snow areas and plant food plots how many of you grew crops that could be used as winter forage for deer, I am talking about food that can be located and eaten through 20+inches of snow and ice like we have right now.
I began feeding the deer corn two weeks ago when I saw them trying to dig around in a 20" deep snow covered harvested bean field.

The state is responsible to determine the length of the season and the number of animals to be harvested so what's the problem if I want to spend my money buying, hauling and feeding deer so that I can sit and watch them until that deer that I want to legally take comes along and I harvest it.
The remaining deer will have been fed at my expense and would start into the winter months in better condition.

We as hunters use to hunt deer with long bows and shotguns using round ball slugs, now we use weapons of mas destruction and we want even more and larger ones.

We use clothing,scents,calls, and only God knows what else to attract deer so whats so unsportsmanlike about using approved foods.

The only problem I see with baiting or shall we call it feeding the deer such as those who grow food plots for the same reason like to call it is knowing how many animals are around and after the last few years I think its safe to say the state has done a poor job of doing that.

If the state would allow deer feeding (with regulations) then I would not be apposed to a reduced bag limit until our biologists can find a way to more accurately count deer numbers in all areas of the state.

Another thing that has always bothered me is why we set bag limits so early in the year when biologists don't really have a handle on the numbers of deer in most areas of the state.
You would think that with today's modern forms of communications that the limits could be established and publicized within weeks not months before the opening of a season.

I don't think that is true. They do have some tricky rules but you can flood a crop field just watch how you disturb the crops. There were some cases during the dry year where farmers bush hogged the bad fields resulted in baiting cases. Now the question is, did they get prosecuted? Don't know and wouldn't want to find out either.

Oops didn't read close enough.