Secrets to Hunting Feeder Bucks in States Where Feeders Are Allowed
Day 5: Choose What Feed Attracts Deer to Your Feeders and Where to Put Them
 If you’re only using your feeder as a place to take bucks when they come to eat, you won’t get the full benefit of the feeder. Then your feeder becomes only a part of your deer-management harvest plan, not an important part of your deer-management nutritional plan. However, if you want to use your feeder to improve the nutritional level of the deer on your property, then consider a relatively new development in feeder technology. “Soybeans can provide a very-high level of protein for your deer herd,” says Dan Moultrie, founder of Moultrie Feeders in Alabaster, Alabama. “In the past, spin feeders like most deer hunters use, won’t scatter the soybeans. However, we have adapted the Moultrie Spin Feeders to dispense soybeans as well as corn.” When you use soybeans in a spin feeder, in many areas deer won’t eat them.
 However, Moultrie recommends that you train deer to eat soybeans by mixing them in with corn, “at a measurement ratio of 1/4 soybeans to 3/4 corn. Continue to use this mixture until you see the soybeans beginning to vanish from the region where the feed’s hitting the ground. Then mix 1/2 soybeans with 1/2 corn. Keep increasing the amount of soybeans in the feeder until you’ve trained the deer to eat the beans instead of the corn. Although the soybeans cost a little more than corn, soybeans provide a much-higher level of nutrition and much-more protein, which is necessary for a deer’s body growth and antler development.”
Put the Feeder In The Most-Productive Place:
 Besides placing a feeder near thick cover, which usually results in the hunter seeing more deer during daylight hours than if he puts the feeder out in the middle of a 100-acre pasture, you can make the feeder extremely effective by putting it on the edge of a thicket, next to a food plot. With this system, the feeder in combination with the food plot provides deer with a wider variety of food than if you use either one by itself. The more variety of food you provide for a deer in a single location, the more deer you can attract. In the fall, the combination of a feeder on the edge of a green field and some type of mineral lick at that same location will draw deer like a magnet. But, remember to make your feeder sites sanctuaries, and only hunt the trails that lead to the feeders or the green fields. By doing this, you’ll see more bucks, get to photograph more bucks and determine which bucks you want to take before you start hunting them. You then can raise and hunt bigger bucks.
 Feeders, in the states where legal, offer hunters an advantage for managing deer. However, if you use feeders only to attract bucks or does that you’ll harvest while they’re eating the seed from the feeder, you run the risk of making the deer around the feeder site nocturnal. Most deer hunters have learned not to hunt at an acorn tree that’s dropping nuts but rather to hunt the trails that lead to that acorn tree. Then they don’t spook the deer that come to the tree to feed and can hunt those trails successfully for deer as long as the tree continues to drop acorns. If you’ll use the same philosophy and only hunt the trails that lead to and from a feeder, your feeder will effectively produce more bucks for you. You’ll see deer around your feeder before, during and after deer season.
To learn more about feeders and trail cameras, call Moultrie Feeders at 205-664-6700 or visit www.moultriefeeders.com.
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