Baiting deer and bear,Yay or Nay?

[Dick Reece]

Here in West Virginia it's legal to bait deer for an archery kill,but illegal to bait bear or any other animal for any other reason. I'll tell you the truth, for a couple of years I tried baiting deer, and never did worth a hoot,and I'm glad. Something about it never felt right to me, but I guess it's no different than using decoys to duck hunt or turkey hunt, those are a form of bait,aren't they ? I always did better with deer by finding a well used game trail prior to the season and staking it out,then sticking a deer

.

I've read a lot about baiting bear,but here we've either killed them on a drive or just still hunted where we knew they were at.Muzzleloader for deer and bear season have some days in common,so you can hunt both, if you want.

What say you bunch of dadblame dummies

[thought I'd get the name calling out of the way from the git-go]yay or nay on the baiting issue, and why do you take the stand you do ? Back it up with some reasoning.

 

[Lostagain]

Got no real problem with it until ya start using some of these commerical feeds. I just read a recent opinion about CWD "MAY" be linked to mangnese. If it is then its real stupid to have it in your bait.
The practice of bushing up a bunch of native feed around to entice the critter=== whats the matter with that? nothing.
Bears killed at bait are usually NOT mama and cubs, so thats a another good point for bait.

 

[Dick Reece]

Natural stuff, no problem I can see.I really don't have a problem with any of it,except that there's some things I won't do,but we all have our preferences.I'm talking about using corn and apples to bait deer,and sweetrolls and biscuits and sweetbreads to bait bear.

 

[ELKCHSR]

One of the best reasons for baiting, is the fact that you can choose the one you want and judge size and every thing else. This way, no small ones, or ones that could have cubs get offed in the process!!!!

 

[Tom]

We bait, i.e. also supplemental feed them, deer here and don't have enough bears to hunt them, even some of the public hunts have it in a controlled way. The supplemental feed helps in times of stress here, the summer. It helps support the 4 million deer we have in the state. It helps support hunting, as non-hunters do deer bait business selling bait also, besides just hunters.

I haven't tried an automatic fish bait feeder, but I bet it would work pretty good, some people use those too, if its a private lake or something like that.

 

[Dick Reece]

bowhunters here use automatic feeders,but you gotta watch the squirrels,they'll eat the feeder and the bait [ corn mostly]!

<FONT COLOR="#800080" SIZE="1">[ 04-08-2003 14:48: Message edited by: PC Mechanic ]</font>

 

[Tom]

We have squirrel/raccoon cages for that, they'll stop it. Should I get a picture and post it?

 

[Dick Reece]

yeah,that'd be nice!