Baiting pole

[elknutz]

No it's pole...and this one has been run up it enough.

[RAU]

Yea lpcjon2 I agree with that. We dont agree and nothings gonna change it. I'd still hunt with you. Your a traditional bowhunter you cant be that bad!

[lpcjon2]

I would also hunt with you RAU, It gave us something to do.  

48% for baiting to 52% against

[owlbait]

With many nuetral opinions tossed in.

I guess my liberal leave no trace ethic for wild land use has no place here.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

I have baited before, and killed deer over bait.

I thought it was useful in getting my sons a slam dunk shot when they were just starting out.

I have never killed a mature buck over bait, never seen one come into it.

Now that we cannot bait in southern Michigan, my succes and sighting on big deer has gone up. It is my observation that deer move more during the day foraging for food when there is no bait around.

I think that there is an obvious difference between hunting over oaks or a corn field, and sitting over a pile of carrots. Going back to what I said about using bait when my sons were young...we used it to make the deer stand "right there"....a stand of oaks has deer feeding in every direction, upwind, downwind.....it's different.

I voted that I think baiting should be illegal. If given different options, I would have said large scale baiting should be outlawed....a guy throwing out a galon of corn isn't going to hurt anything.

When I go to the UP next week, I will set up 3 stands. One will be "enhanced"...I will take a dozen apples or so, and sliver them up and spread them around over a living room size area.I may never get to this stand, because odds are I will kill a deer or 2 elsewhere. But if I don't, and I REALLY feel the need to kill a deer, I will go there and shoot one.

[upnorthbacon]

One thing I can't stand is when guys will run down others techniques on hunting.  I hate when guys say it's not "ethical" to use bait???  WHY, because your "tricking" the deer?  Where do we draw the line?  Is scentlock camo clothing unethical because it tricks the deer from seeing or smelling us?  Are treestands unethical because the deer don't expect us to be hiding in the trees? What about grunt calls, scents, and decoys since they "trick" a deer, are these unethical?

How is sitting along a corridor to a food source a farmer planted, any different than a food source someone threw down in a pile?  So what your saying is if God made an oak tree grow and drop acorns you can hunt over it, but if you threw down a bucket of acorns you can't?  Where do you draw the line, and who decides?

Let's take 50 crossbow shooters and 50 recurve shooters and have an accuracy contest.  It's fairly likely the crossbow shooters will have better accuracy.  So couldn't you pose the argument that recurves would be "unethical" to hunt deer because it's more likely you could wound one?  Everyone should obviously be shooting crossbows, so we should outlaw recurves for hunting!

My point is just because you think someone else's way of hunting is "easier" doesn't make it "unethical".  I'm not about to limit someone else's hunting opportunities because I find them too easy,  there's already a ton of anti-hunters out doing that for us!  I believe it's a slippery slope when we start pointing fingers at each other.  Ok off my soapbox  

[Ray Hammond]

upnorth,

Its all about perspective. There are some on here who live in states with one or two deer tags a year, or out West- trying to say baiting should be outlawed- and they're sounding like they believe themselves to be better hunters than guys who bait.

In the Southeast and in TX its thicker than anything most people can imagine. In South Carolina as well as GA, AL, MS, and other states deer rarely use the same trail EVER.  

We get 100+ doe tags on our property of 6k acres we never fill- but try to fill- because our property is overrun with deer and we're trying to follow QDMA.

Everyone in southern SC baits- if you do NOT you get major recruitment of your wildlife OFF YOUR LANDS- especially deer, turkey, and hogs- in January February and March- when there's nothing else to be eaten.

Ethics are personal- legal is black and white- if its legal to bait, and you want to bait- don't let the members of the Trad Police make up your mind about what to do -  do what meets your personal ethic and to heck with what other people think.

I live in GA and hunt whitetails here- baiting is not legal. I have no trouble killing game without baiting. That's not, or shouldn't be- the point of this discussion.

If you don't like baiting- don't bait- but don't run down others who do.  There's quite a few people on here who like to hunt lions with dogs- why don't you start a poll and go after them too-let's get those guys...they're not REAL trad guys because if they were real hunters they'd do it the hard way- barefoot, in a loin cloth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!YEA!!!

Then there's the issue of bears- in GA, you can't bait bears. It's one of the toughest hunts on the planet. You have to catch them in an oak tree feeding on acorns.... or raiding someone's back yard corn patch.

In Saskatchewan, its thick, you have a tough time sexing bears- its a bad idea to kill sows with cubs and I think illegal.

This seems to have transformed into something akin to political correctness- kind of like "you have freedom to hunt trad as you do it the way I do it" or you're a trad-woosie- that's horse puckey.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Ray - My perspective (in short, it is that small time baiting is no big deal, truck loads of beets and carrots are bad)is based entirely on my experience here in Michigan. I don't have a clue what deer hunting in Texas is like. I would suppose that a thick Michigan swamp is at least as thick as what you describe in Texas.

For the record, I don't think that small time baiting is ethically wrong. I've done it.

 Here in Michigan, large scale baiting has been associated with bovine TB, and some of the big deer hunting clubs in northern Michigan have baited so much as to actually change the feeding patterns of deer for several square miles. The affect is drawing all of the deer off of public land onto a few hundred acres of private land.

For the most part, I have enjoyed my baitless hunts more, now that nobody can bait. I see more deer.

I'm interested in your observation that in that some of those southern states deer rarely use the same trail...what do you attribute that to?

I think we have different opinions here, but they are based on different parts of the country. I THINK that we have more public land to hunt here...4.5 MILLION acres of huntable state land. Drawing animals from that land onto private land with bait is a sticky subject. Here, where I live, I think that baiting of a sclae large enough to "recruit" animals is wrong.

It's interesting how things are different based on geography, public land vs private, etc....

[hardwaymike]

Originally posted by Gen273:
Here are some questions I have.
Is a white oak tree dropping a ton of acorns bait?
What about hunting the edge of a corn or soybean field?
How about hunting over an apple or persimmon tree?
I have hunted places where baiting is legal and places where it is illegal, and have killed deer and other critters under both circumstances. I am certain that all of this “my way is better than yours” attitude is detrimental to our passion of hunting.  If it is legal and it suits you I have no problem with how or with what you kill them; like I said as long as it is legal.  I don’t have to agree with you to be friends with you; that is my take on a lot of the ethics hogwash. I feel we need to band together as hunters regardless of the way we hunt or even with what weapon we use to hunt. The liberals are trying to end hunting by pricing us avg-Joes out of the game. All I am saying is let’s stick together and support one another even if their way is not our way.
I am for any kind of hunting under any circumstances as long as it is legal, even though that are some things I would not do myself.

Thank you and I totally agree with this theory. My best friend and I are both disabled vetrans and he can not physicaly hunt with a trad bow or compound any more and uses a crossbow legally. I personally would not hunt with one unless it was because it was all  I had left to be able to get out into the woods with. But if anyone was to tell me that I should not hunt with him because he uses a crossbow and it would open a can or worms that would not be pretty. That is just my take on it anyways. But on the subject of baiting I feel that if that is how you want to do it then that is the way you should be able to do it.