It's ... A.... TRAP... (liquid deer attractant..eew..) [View All]

[SoCalDem]

Buying, planting, waiting for deer
http://www.startribune.com/533/story/650685.html

Land and crop management for wildlife has become more and more commercial, with all sorts of products available to attract animals, particularly deer. The question is, does it work?

Dennis Anderson, Star Tribune

Buying, planting, waiting for deer

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In the past few years I've become ever more curious about the revolution -- an apt word -- in land management for wildlife, particularly as it benefits deer.

And deer hunters.

At least that's the theory.

Land and crop management have been popular among wildlife enthusiasts and, particularly, among hunters since the days a century ago when Aldo Leopold offered his thoughts on game and game management.

But not until the past few years has the effort gone so commercial. Walk in any aisle of any sporting goods store, be it Cabelas, Gander Mountain, Sportsman's Warehouse or Joe's, and entire aisles are filled with colorful packages of seed. The promise on the bags is that if you plant it, they -- meaning deer -- will come. Of course, among the poorer times to plant many seed varieties is now, in late summer. My friend, wildlife photographer Bill Marchel, for example, has been cultivating his various food plots since early summer, hampered as he has been this year in the Brainerd area by a lack of rain.

Still, during my visits to various outdoors retailers in the past month, I've sought out sales people and let them pitch me on what I should plant on the properties I hunt. One such area is near this northwest Wisconsin town, on land owned by a friend. The other is in northern Minnesota, near Cook, on land my brother and I own. Skeptical as I was that I could get something to grow this late in the season that would benefit wildlife, I nevertheless bought a couple of bags of seed, if for no other reason than to experiment.

Some of my skepticism was cultivated last fall when I undertook a similar exercise. Intrigued then by the many, many jugs of food-flavored liquid deer attractant being sold to hunters at the same retailers, I bought a few of the containers to try the stuff out. I didn't hunt over it. Rather, I poured it on a stump or two in my yard -- a place many deer already frequent, attracted in many instances by an old apple tree that still regularly bears fruit.


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