In the NH zone I live in up on the border, rifle season ends the last Sunday in Nov. Bow season goes another week. There is a baiting season from Oct 19 to Nov. 20. I don't bait but the issue up here is that people feed deer. If you knowingly shoot a deer that is heading for someone's land where they feed deer, you are in for a hassle with the warden. I hunted this past week in the zone still open until the 15th and had to let two does and a buck walk because I feared they where headed for a guy's yard. I had tracked them over a mile and caught them bedded when I spotted the guys roof down below me through the hardwoods. I ended up leaving them and spent the rest of the week snowshoeing in to a remote deer yard I found while hound hunting last winter. Saw several deer but couldn't close the deal. I will be writing and attending a f+g meeting because, there needs to be a some rules on when you can feed deer. There is so much deer feeding going on that virtually every deer you see late season is either yarded up behind someone's house where they feed, or headed there. You have to work hard to find a natural remote yard that you can hunt deer in their natural patterns, legally.

Sounds like some crazy regulations. How do you know what the deer is thinking? How would you even know if someone is feeding deer? In Illinois baiting is illegal and so is feeding deer. In fact the law states that you can not feed other critters if deer might also get to the feed. Oh, we can not pick up sheds on public land either. And no rifles for deer the entire state. Only shotgun slug, muzzle loader or pistol. I guess it could be worse. We could live in a country where we are not allowed to hunt.

Man, that can't be right! Basically, you're saying that the law (as it stands) enables anti-hunters to thwart deer population management efforts by engaging in practices which will likely increase the size of the herd EVEN WHEN THOSE DEER ARE ON SOMEONE ELSE'S PROPERTY.

No

Effing

Way.

That means that if deer cross through your property between feeding stations, your land is a no-hunting zone, which constitutes a Taking of your rights as a landowner.

JMO, a food source is a food source; hunting the approach to a "fed" area (when you are not associated with the feeding effort) is no different than hunting the approach to an oak flat. A legitimate food source is not under the control of the hunter who is capitalizing on its location to take a deer, nor does it exist solely for that purpose.

By the same token, baiting is baiting. If you actively manipulate the environment for the purpose of making it easier to shoot a deer (as opposed to just using what you find, as you find it), then....?

What's the difference between attracting deer to a small area by use of an unnaturally concentrated food supply vs. blocking off some of their trails to push them onto others vs. just stringing 8-foot fencing through the woods to create The Mother of All Funnels?

But here's your hole card, lawdy... Do you know for a fact that "the guy" whose roof you saw is actually feeding those deer, or are you just assuming that that's the case because that's where they were headed and some folks in the area ARE feeding?

So... Two things: You only know what you KNOW. If you have no direct evidence of feeding, all you know is which way the trails run.

But of course, that sounds like the defense of a full-time Weasel.... (No offense to Weasel, if he's still around the board here..)...

More importantly, if you were to run across an issue with a warden under those circumstances, you would simply offer to show the warden how you trailed them by back-tracking some reasonable distance from the kill. Even if you knew for an absolute fact that this particular landowner was feeding deer, if you had dogged them even a QUARTER of a mile from "neutral" territory, you should be able to make the case that you fulfilled your duty to locate the deer independent of a baiting/feeding effort, rather than putting up a tree stand on that guy's property line....

The feeding/baiting rules here only apply to hunting. I can feed all I want to on my property as long as I'm not hunting over it.

"If you knowingly shoot a deer that is heading for someone's land where they feed deer, you are in for a hassle with the warden."

In for a hassle with the warden... what exactly does this mean?

Are you sure this is how the regulation is actually defined and not just what some idiot: gun store clerk, hunter safety instructor, or warden with authority issues told you?

In a (very) brief search for NH baiting regulations I can't find anything like what you said.

Me either.

I always find it odd also that a state that does allow some deer baiting, urges it's hunters/residents to "never feed deer..ever" in an effort to curtail issues like CWD. Seems an odd set of bed fellows..okay to bait, not okay to feed.

""Keeping New Hampshire Deer Safe From CWD Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a wildlife disease related to BSE or “mad cow” disease and scrapie in sheep. It is fatal to deer and other cervids such as elk and moose. Based on the results of Fish and Game Department CWD monitoring efforts in which over 4,700 deer have been tested since 2002, CWD does not currently exist in New Hampshire. Activities that artificially concentrate deer greatly increase the spread of the disease and make control much more difficult. Please do not feed deer— ever.""

By the way, Pa. added another DMA2 area to the list this year after an incidence of CWD was found in Clearfield County. Near a game farm...no less. DUH! When people interfere with nature, bad things usually will happen.

I'd say keep a couple of handfulls of corn on you, "Yeah officer, I've been feeding these baiting all year"

Jeffk, the warden told me that. His quote was that "it walks a very fine line." A guy up here shot a buck across the street from a lady who feeds deer. She called the state and it turned into a cluster for the guy because he admitted that he was hunting there because the deer were going to her back yard. One problem we have with the feeding up here in our big woods is that the deer over generations have been lured out of their traditional wintering yards. The timber companies will not clearcut a yard unless deer have not yarded there for 5 years. We are losing our traditional yards to feeding. We have reached the point where if you start feeding deer, run out of money, those deer will die.Deer feeding and baiting are slowly destroying traditional hunting like tracking and still hunting in these huge timberlands. Come the first snows in early Nov. Or late October and alot of our deer head for peoples back yards. You go up into the big woods now, and you can walk for miles and never cut a track. The deer have migrated, some for over 20 miles, to feeding yards. I know of only one remote yard where I spent last week bowhunting, but I had a long snowshoe into it. Thosecdeer were feeding on whips, young spruce and cedar. Southern NH and Mass are basically the same state with small woodlots and a lot of posted land which saves a lot of deer and therefore, they have a fairly high deer density. Northern NH and Northern Maine, with huge timberlands and harsh winters are a different world.

ask for a legal description-leo's enforece laws-judges interpret.

The warden could never prove what you "knowingly" knew...it's a very subjective law unless he can plainly see the bait from where you are hunting. Tell him the only way you could knowingly know what your neighbor is up to is if you were trespassing...and that's illegal. Good grief, the wonders of this world never cease to amaze me!

Its not illegal for a warden to tresspass at all, they have more power than reg. police. If they suspect a law broken they can go the extreame.

I'd love to see the facts and studys that a deer migrated 20 miles. If you said a buck went 20 miles which is a streach to it might be a little more understood but still not recieved.

Deer will go where its easy thats why its so effective to bait or feed.

Judge could cost you money while proving yourself correct? LOL

Tough subject. In a conversation with a neighbor to my hunting area; I can't beleive you haven't gotten a deer yet, there are about ten at my feeder every night!

I didn't read this entire thread but I got a ticket in MD for shooting dove over bait when I wasn't, apparently someone on the farm right next to us had thrown bait down for the dove, and all we knew was we kept seeing more and more dove which our farm always held birds because we had corn, but anyway we got tickets for shooting migratory birds on the way to feed on illegally placed bait, we fought it and lost even though we had not the first clue that the neighboring farm had done this, and I know every DNR officer is different but it left a real bad taste in our mouths for them after this

Clarification Rymancat, I meant how could the hunter know what his neighbor is doing unless he trespasses on his land, not the C.O., no doubt they go wherever they think they need to.

"If you knowingly shoot a deer that is headed for someone's land where they feed deer, you are in for a hassle with the warden" That has to be the most idiotic thing I have ever heard. Like someone posted above, how are you supposed to know if the deer is headed toward a place where they are being fed? I guess they think you can read a deer's mind. Or better yet, are you supposed to ask the deer where they are headed? "Hey Holmes, you headed to Mrs. Jones yard for some vittles?". "Oh, you are? Well, I guess you get a free pass today. Enjoy your corn". All kidding aside, that has to be the dumbest thing I have ever heard of. Also, I've never heard of illegal baiting that occurs on an adjacent property resulting in someone who is legally hunting on the other property getting a ticket. How can one be held accountable for something that occurs on someone else's property? That is all messed up! Glad I live where most of our game laws make some sort sense.

Sounds like a completely unenforceable regulation unless you shot the deer under the person's feeder.

If you are going by an individual's interpretation of any law, shame on you. There is plenty of information from the horses- mouth...the Game Commission...not the horses-patoot. I couldn't find such a regulation but there could well be, and the principals that help define the rules and regulations would be the source to go to.

This is kinda like the hunting in gun season thread...people don't even know what the laws are in their own states. Make some calls and get the right information. Then get a name, and their capacity, and make a copy of it to carry.

I asked our local game warden in Iowa regarding how far you have to be from a salt lick or feeder to be okay. He said there was no defined distance. He said he bases his decision on the weapon you are using and how close you are to the bait. If you are within shooting distance of the baited area with the weapon in your hand he is going to nail you.

The situation is even more confounding because food plots are not considered baiting in NH. For example, I could plant a plot of corn and cut it down, bring in the deer and be "legal". However, if I put a pail of corn near a stand or a run and hunt it I am not "legal". Same with apple trees, acorns, beech nuts. I can grow them and hunt them but I can't disperse them. Mineral licks are even more of a problem. The law states that you must remove all the 'bait" when the baiting season ends. If you use minerals as a lure, how do you remove them once they dissolve into the soil….a backhoe?????? Not only that, but once a bait is removed, they don't want you to hunt there for two weeks so the animals will forget about it. Just so you know, anything an animal ingests is considered "bait" unless you grow it or it is a natural food source.

Rymancat, as a biologist I do survey work in the yards for fish and game. A collared spikehorn in Pittsburg, NH averaged 11 miles per day in February traveling from back yard to back yard. As you know, deer metabolism slows in winter, and traveling like that is deadly if the feeding stops. A buck we collared near Pittsburg traveled 22 miles as the crow flies to get to the big feeding area in Wilsons Mills, Maine. Those are the migration trails I hunt up in the 25,000 acre Dartmouth College Grant. The natural yard above Wilsons Mills was clearcut because the deer simply passed through it to get to the graining sites. The forester at the College Grant is beside himself because they have been doing cuts to provide incredible winter feed for the deer in that area, but the deer have become so trained to go to the graining sites that it is futile. Only the big old bucks hang in there until Feb or so. Another problem we see is that coyotes thrive on grain and that keeps them healthy and able to hang around the feeding areas to bag deer. Every area of the US is different. Horn porn has glorified the taking of big bucks with bait and feeders, and that is fine if you live in a Southern or Midwestern local. Our winters involve 20 to 30 days of below zero weather along with 6 - 10 feet of annual snowfall. The Northern whitetail was gifted with instincts and a metabolism that adapted it to these harsh winters. We are changing that and are literally one winter from disaster if the economy crashes and all those buying grain can't afford it.

LMAO. Only in New England could you find a screwball law like that!!!! Some day I'll get the out of here.

Lawdy: Interestingly, feeding wildlife in NH is not advised but is not illegal. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It is legal to bait squirrels but you can't shoot a deer or bear over your squirrel bait. Same thing with coyotes, can bait them but if a bear shows up, even if it is bear season you have to let him walk. Baiting bear is OK, too, but don't shoot a deer that happens to show up at your bear bait. I know it can happen because I have the pics to prove it…bear and deer can be attracted to the same feed if you are using grains, sunflower seeds and molasses on your bear bait. That 's about all I could haul into my bear bait and I saw tons of deer doing it.

BillC, you are right. The problem with baiting seasons is that the f+g tries to please everyone which is impossible. This one month baiting season on deer will go for one more year to see how it worked in saving Northern Coos County bucks which become suckers for a bait pile when they are in bad shape post-rut. I talked to a warden today and he is betting that Southern NH will go back to full-season baiting while Coos will be no baiting permitted. They want to see our big woods up here become a draw for those who like a wilderness hunting experience using tracking and still hunting, much like the Allagash Wilderness area. Bear baiting is necessary up here because we have alot of them. Saw 4 this fall. A buddy of mine who lives in Tuftonboro let 7 walk because he was after a big one that goes over 500 pounds. He hunts strictly bear, no bait. He knows the Ossipee Mtn range like the back of his hand. Everytime I drive by Cannon Mtn ski area on abus with my team, we see anywheres up to 8 bear feeding on the slopes in the spring and fall, and it is legal to hunt there.

lawdy, you mention grain sites... do you know why people are putting out these grain sites?

Is it to attract some pretty looking deer just to gaze at? To primarily attract other animals? Are they illegally hunting over it? Maybe its a decoy of sorts to protect their shrubs?

I'm just curious. You are making it sound like a sort of widespread issue rather than just one or two homeowners doing it. If lots of people are doing it you would think there would be some common reasons.

Jefftk, Part of it is to try to keep deer near their property, but a lot of it is because they like to see deer. The deer become their pets and that is why that lady called the warden after the guy shot her deer across the street. As far as shrubs go, if people didn't feed deer, they would be deep in the winter yards. The main reason people feed deer up here though is they think they are saving them from starvation. Not true, the logger doing sustainable cutting is the wild deer's best friend. What I would like to see is no deer feeding until Jan. 1st. That would keep the deer in the big woods and hopefully reestablish some traditional wintering yards. There is no biological reason to feed a deer in December with the tops, and young growth left by loggers. We opened a pandoras box when we started the feeding and baiting up here and the only solution ultimately for the Northern areas will be either feeding and baiting restrictions or shortened seasons. They used to check out over 100 deer per year in the 25,000 acre 2nd College Grant. This year only 4 deer were checked out through the gate, one doe shot on the either-or day and 3 bucks shot during a month long gun season. No bow deer.

Jefftk: All I can tell you is that my wife and I like to see wildlife so we have a timed feeder that brings all types of animals in all year round. Hardly ever in hunting season as they really do prefer natural mast…referring to deer here. The apples I have bring them in during the years they bear fruit but that is often only every other year and then mostly nocturnally. Even my wife's bird feeders seem to bring in more wildlife than our corn feeder. While baiting can be successful it has been my experience that you train them to you and your patterns much quicker than you would think. If you don't get them early you probably won't if your bait is one that you hunt frequently. Even at our house we see deer and turkeys first come in and eat natural food, then they spend a short time at the feeders and mostly after that they graze on the brush, clovers and weeds that border our pond. Up North, where Lawdy is, is a different kind of geography and weather pattern. He makes good sense and years ago, the lumber companies cut large wintering range and the herd up North just about disappeared. If they don't have evergreen cover they cannot survive winters unless they are being fed. A catch 22 at the moment.

I had a stand in an apple tree once.

lawdy - Why doesn't New Hampshire pass a "No Feeding" law as Vermont did??

"It is illegal to feed deer at any time except: A. Under a license or permit issued by Fish & Wildlife for scientific research, mitigation of wildlife damage or nuisance problems, or wildlife population reduction programs; B. By planting, cultivating or harvesting of crops directly associatedwith agricultural practices, including planted wildlife food plots."

This would stop a lot of the people from spreading Corn, etc. around their "Back Yard" to be able to hold the deer in their area. It has worked out well in Vermont.

George. The regs and "advice" read the same way in Wisconsin. Our DNR Board knows that baiting and feeding deer concentrates deer and increases the likelihood of transmitting CWD. It's against baiting and feeding. However, our legislature has over ridden the DNR on this issue and passed legislation permitting baiting. Our DNR can only put parameters around baiting, i.e., how much and where, not whether it can or cannot be done.

Here in KY you can deer, but not turkey or Bear, and I just cant for the life of me see haow the CO's can prove or disprove any situation, so it must be impossible to enforce. Easiest thing to do is ban feeding, but man, you wannna get some hackles up...., I'll catch 9 kinds of hell for this post. its a shame that 85% of our hunters today think baiting is the only way to take a deer. It takes all the hunt out of it to me.

Vthunter, why doen't NH pass a no feeding rule? Simple, they don't want to put up with the uproar it will cause. When Vt passed its no bait/feeding rule, many predicted a huge loss in license sales. The first year they went from over 22,000 bow licenses to 17,000. Within 3 years they were up to 26,000. They brought those stats up at a legislative hearing I attended. If we are going to keep baiting and feeding then I suggested at a hearing that instead of being able to shoot 3 deer in Coos county, we go back to one man, one deer, choose your weapon. That comment almost got me lynched. With high tech bows, radios, deer cocaine, and all the other gizzies, it is amazing we have any deer at all. They are incredible creatures.

Thought CO ya ment. I had a CO walk on property once said he had the right on private property was investigating held up my hunt.LOL

Was educational I first thought he was swat he looked like it too no helmet but vest and related.LOL

Not sure if the Lawyers can iterprit laws either much less judges it all cost money though. Pain in butt.

JMO... If CWD is a concern, it only makes sense to allow baiting if you have a No Deer Walks Away policy.

I hate baiting. All it seems to do is to exacerbate the skewed population dynamics, further concentrating the animals on select pieces of private land....Well, that and aid contagion.

And to Lawdy's point... if we manipulate the herds out of their natural winter survival patterns by making them more and more dependent on private-property feeding programs, then we're just one economic downturn away from losing the whole shooting match...

Deer are going to eat high starch foods in cold weather versus high protein food. It wouldn't take banning feeding or baiting. It would simply require banning certain foods that could be used. God Bless

Agreed, GF. But we keep screwing with mother nature. How selfish and pompous of us.

http://www.wildlife.state.nh.us/Newsroom/2015/deer-deaths-032315.html

"The New Hampshire Fish and Game Department today reported that twelve deer were discovered dead in South Hampton, N.H., on March 20, 2015, most likely the victims of well-intentioned, but tragically fatal, supplemental feeding by local residents."

"Two deer were brought to the University of New Hampshire (UNH) Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory for further analysis. Following a more detailed examination, the UNH Veterinary Diagnostic Lab concluded that evidence in the two deer examined was consistent with death due to enterotoxemia; a condition caused by a rapid change in diet often associated with winter feeding. Results from microscopic analysis are expected to help to further confirm this diagnosis. "

I couldn't find anything black & white for Missouri so I made a call. I live in Mississippi but do most of my hunting in Missouri where I grew up. I have food plots planted, mineral licks, & supplement deer feeders out over several thousand acres in Missouri. The answer I got was to have the feeders all empty a minimum of 10 days prior to any deer season opening & keep them empty the entire season. There comment & reasoning was there is no way I could prove no matter how close or for away from a feeder I hunt, I can't prove that the deer was not heading to or from one of them. I don't have a problem with that but I always didn't see much difference in hunting over food plots. If they are treated with TLC & taste good, you can kill all the deer you want over food plots in Missouri. They have to taste better than the neighbors food plot though.

Federal laws on baiting migratory waterfowl are written that way. Or at least they used to be. You could not set up in a path that water fowl were going to be taken as they went to a baited area. Pretty sketchy but enforceable and done often in and around concentrated water fowl areas.

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