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Sunday, February 9th, 2025

Breaking News for

Sportsmen Since 1968

Steve Pollick: Baiting issue for deer a hot topic right now in Ohio

The author writes that baiting does not seem detrimental to deer populations in terms of hurting overall deer numbers, though it decidedly may be a big problem when it comes to deer distribution. (File photo)

That “baiting thing” in Ohio deer hunting has resurfaced as hot-stove league fare this post-season, and it prompts sharing some perspectives from the past 70-odd years of my association with the noble and ancient pursuit.

It begins when I was a kid, listening to The Old Man’s colorful stories of hunting in the Yoop – Michigan’s fabled, remote and rugged Upper Peninsula, accessible back then from “Down Below” only by car ferry across the storm-tossed Straits of Mackinac. Dad hunted up there in the wild and woolly late ’30s, carrying his spanking new Model 70 Winchester .30/06 with an early Weaver 4X scope. I still have his red-and-black plaid wool hunting coat and cap. Alas, not the fabled rifle.

He was a hard hunter, savvy rifleman, a good shot, and the Model 70 was ahead of its time, unheard of when most Yoopers carried lever-action Model 94 .30/30s or .32 Specials with open sights. Dad was the envy of deer camps with that big rifle, especially after making some long kills on clear-cuts.

The U.P. was cut-over brush country back then, filled with browse and brushy cover as the land slowly recovered from the timbering butchery of greedy turn-of-century lumber barons. They leveled and plundered the virgin white pine forests to the last clear-cut stump. By accident, that recovering land gradually became ideal deer habitat.

(Aside: I always have wondered why that mindless lumbering era was so nostalgically celebrated when its impact on the land was so ugly and devastating. Good-bye forever, the grayling).

Since the early and mid-1900s, the forests have grown tall, so prime deer habitat has diminished. The once-isolated Upper now has easily been accessible for decades by interstate highways and the Straits easily crossed on Big Mac, the famous bridge.

MORE WHITETAIL COVERAGE FROM OUTDOOR NEWS:

Ohio’s record buck kill already set during 2024-25 season with time remaining

Want to take the plunge into buying land for deer hunting? Here’s three things to know

Michigan managers upbeat about increase in deer tags sold but skeptical it’s a long-term trend

Legions of boom-era auto workers and others from the southern Lower Peninsula began buying up vacation-home plots. Seemingly everyone wanted his own “forty” – 40 acres. My late Uncle Al, who ran a motel in Munising and sold real estate, used to say that half the U.P. was for sale at any given time. No-hunting signs blossomed like spring wildflowers as each new forty-owner strived to keep deer for himself.

Along the way it was found that maintaining piles of sugar beets, carrots, apples, and to a lesser degree, corn, was a good way to “bait in” and hold deer on your forty. About every gas station sold bait.

The “deerfare” handout system worked, to the point that baiting deer and sitting over feed piles with a rifle came to define deer hunting in Michigan’s U.P. The old way of hunting deer on your hind legs, matching your wits and stamina against the quarry, all but faded away. Still-hunting – moving slowly as molasses in January, fully alert, through prime cover on vast gamelands – likewise slipped into the dark of the woods-work.

The foregoing is a mite simplified for space’s sake, but you get the idea. I outline it here to illustrate the way Ohio fast has become “Michiganized” in deer hunting.

RELATED COVERAGE FROM OUTDOOR NEWS:

Commentary: Is it time to ban baiting for deer in Ohio?

Bags of corn fly off pallets in Tractor Supply and Rural King like they are on fire. Ohio, so lacking in public lands as it is (ranked 41st among 50 states), is no stranger to chopped-up land-parcels. And all but gone are the days of knocking on Farmer John’s back door seeking polite permission to hunt.

My son, in canvassing the area around the family’s 50-odd-acre hunting grounds in southern Ohio, was told by rural neighbors that “everyone around here feeds deer corn.” The trail cams prove it. Not to mention that agriculture is the state’s No. 1 industry, and leftover grains in cropped corn and soybean fields are one big de-facto feed plot. No wonder Ohio whitetails are so drawn to yellow kernels.

Now, too, it’s mostly all about leasing to hunt private land. Big money talks; average and less well-heeled guys walk – on the relatively small acreages of public land available here. And those public lands that we can hunt have re-grown from grasslands, brushlands, and young forest into semi-mature or larger forest. In other words, poorer deer habitat.

Sure, there are thousands of acres of Wayne National Forest and some state forests in southern Ohio open to deer hunting. But while these “open” woods with little cover are lovely to walk through, try finding deer there. The Wayne’s parcels, moreover, are often poorly marked and are interspersed with off-limits private land like a checkerboard or crazy-quilt.

So, hunting opportunity, yes; chances for success, pretty low.

Along with the foregoing land and real estate changes has come the blossoming of archery hunting. It is a gadget-crazed industry nowadays, a long departure from the Fred Bear recurve days of simple barebows and turkey-feather fletching. Bowhunting, moreover, admittedly the art of the ambush, also is primarily sedentary. It dovetails perfectly with baiting.

More deer are killed now in Ohio by bowmen, especially crossbow shooters, than with firearms.

The “big season” now is bowhunting the November rut, when deer are active all day and more careless.

So, no wonder the rise of baiting here. The growing popularity of planting deer-attractive food plots on those private holdings is just baiting by another means.

Too, urban sprawl over the last 60 to 70 years has eaten up former potential game land as suburbanites have spilled out into more distant bedroom communities. Oddly, deer have grown increasingly attracted to these ’burblands, where they are less harassed and conveniently find plenty of nooks and crannies to lie up in, and gardens and landscaping to browse. Not to mention ’burbland parks and nature preserves (no hunting, thank you) to hole-up in.

These factors all add up.

They do not encourage more deer hunters to head afield. On the contrary, they are discouraging – even without diving into the graying and fading of the older hunting generations and poor recruitment of the young, social-media-distracted “indoors” generations. Baiting lurks in these shadows.

You do not need to bait to kill deer. In neighboring Pennsylvania, for instance, where the game commission has staunchly resisted allowing hunting over bait for deer, the all-seasons kill for 2023-24 was more than 430,000. That is about double Ohio’s best deer seasons, where a 200,000-plus season is noteworthy.

In bait-crazy Michigan, the all-seasons ’24-25 kill as of Jan. 10 was posted as 292,000-plus and it has at times over the last 60 years exceeded 400,000. Of course, both neighbor-states have a lot more public hunting land as well. All this matters.

In any case, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan today have oodles of deer – just maybe not enough in the right places to satisfy many hunters. So, baiting does not seem detrimental to deer populations, though it decidedly may be a big problem when it comes to deer distribution. Your hunting grounds may have a dearth of deer if your neighbor lays out more and better feed piles.

Me? I have hunted deer successfully over bait, including sometimes using a recurve bow and those turkey fletchings. It’s ok. And for handicapped hunters, well, no contest. Baiting surely produces deer, if not a deeply satisfying hunting experience. It may be a question of whether results are all that matter. That seems to be the modern obsession.

I long have hunted big country on foot, covering many miles a day and slowing to a crawl to still-hunt when finding good cover. In the end, that is where and when and how my hunter’s heart shines, whether I trudged to camp at night with blood on my knife or not.

11 thoughts on “Steve Pollick: Baiting issue for deer a hot topic right now in Ohio”

  1. Baiting deer in Michigan lower is not permitted. In the upper 2 gallons is permitted from september 15 to janurary 1.

  2. I feed the deer in NE Ohio on my property. I look at it like this. The deer are coming through anyways and I do harvest. However I do have neighbors. So instead of taking a longer shot across my yard as one is passing through Id rather shoot straight down. Have I noticed more deer? Meh. I have noticed the same ones coming through though at the same times. I’ll probably stop feeding in March. Then start back up again in fall. I only harvest 1 deer a year. I enjoy them. With harsh NE Ohio winters I also feel like I’m helping them. Wil they survive without me of course. But it’s like the yin and yang … My heart tells me to give back.

  3. Corn piles set up ambush attacks for coyotes to kill deer especially fawns in early season. Deer cam pics have proved that. The saying if you feed them they will come is true. Feeders in backyards and near roadways cause accidents. More corn you have the more deer you have.

    1. Corn piles and food plots kinda do the same thing so it wouldn’t be fair to make bait piles illegal and nothing be done about food plots.

  4. What’s the difference if you bait for deer in the Woods or Hunt over a corn field if a hunter wants to bait for deer let them it also keeps alot of deer from starving to death in the winter people are stupid and have nothing better to do then complain about how a hunter can harvest a deer

  5. The big debate of to hunt over bait or not ?? Hunting over bait can bring many rewards for hunters and the deer as many say I’m feeding 20 and harvesting 1 or 2 deer a season ! These so called corn fed deer will most likely survive the hardest winters even if you didn’t fed but it’s gotta help bring the bucks nutrition levels back after the rut and ready them for the long cold N.E Ohio winter ! Question I find myself asking a lot is if your bringing a new hunter afield would the new hunter be likely to wake up and be in the blind before daylight if they hadn’t seen a dang thing the day before ? Probably not !! So if your introducing them to hunting over no bait and the numbers are down compared to the neighbors hunting over bait !! Get them on the right deer trail heading to the neighbors and you might be in luck !!! I am very passionate for still hunting and live for the stalk therefore I don’t hunt over bait but I also have a understanding for hunting over bait !! Always try to keep a clear mind in the midst of bringing a new hunter along !!! Alot of youths these days are way to interested in indoor activities that they never get to find out how much more good old mother nature has to offer !! So bait or not to bait is clearly up to you and take a youngster along and introduce them to a good experience and show them the fun of the outdoors!!!! We need more influence from outdoorsman /sportsman than we need from the big money players that influence our youths today !!

  6. I never hunted over bait until I got too old to walk. However I would rather sit in a blind or stand with my grandchildren on a small pile of corn. It’s time when they aren’t staring into their phone or playing some electronic game. I haven’t taken a deer since I started hunting with them but have gotten more joy watching them harvest their own.

  7. I have been blessed to have hunted deer for the last 64 years, I have seen the methods and the equipment we use evolve over that time a lot ,but I think we would all be better off if we used sound science in wildlife management instead of judging or forcing others to hunt according to our views or those of the social media armchair hunters.i think every one is entitled to enjoy their own style of hunting as long as they follow the laws of the sport

  8. Mary Beth Breininger (Perry)

    Steve, I didn’t realize you were still writing and working magic with your words!
    Give me a shout when you have time.

  9. In the 80s as a farm boy growing up in SE Ohio we loved to hunt and could go almost anywhere to do it. If we would have tried to load up bags of corn out of the crib to go dump in the woods for deer our dad’s and grandfather would have thrashed us, thought us crazy, and probably would have had our guns taken away. Time definitely has a way of changing things. Good article.

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