Here in North Carolina hunting deer over bait is legal and practiced amongst many. However, visit any local blog or forum and you’ll soon realize that the feelings that come with discussing hunting over bait is very diverse even in a state where it is legal. You are bound to read a hundred different reasons why some approve as well as a hundred or so from the the ones against it. Seems Mississippi is in the same boat.

Mississippi allows hunters to hunt over grass patches - food plots - which, in my eyes, is just like hunting over a corn feeder. If hunting over corn will cause a greater chance of deer catching a disease, then having deer come to a grass patch is just the same as having a corn pile.

I agree, I dont find placing corn on the ground much different than hunting over a food plot. Corn is fed many ways in this state, some use feeders, whether a hanging type or the use of a tripod style. Others make homemade feeders out of PVC pipe attached to trees and as the deer feed the corn drops down at the base of a tree. Some just “scatter” corn in an area and replenish every so often as needed. All of the methods I mentioned work equally well in my opinion but the feeders on timers tend to save a little on corn cost. 

  This article is only the opinion of one person but the scary thing is there are many more out there viewing hunters that hunt over bait across this nation in the same way.

About a century ago, Teddy Roosevelt came to the Mississippi Delta to hunt bear. After a couple of days looking, he hadn’t seen a single one. His hosts, apparently believing, in their misguided way, that the object of the hunt was to shoot something, offered to tie a bear to a tree and give him a good shot; Roosevelt refused because he believed that the object of the hunt was the sport, and not the shooting.

Teddy seems to me, a non-hunter, a good example for lawmakers and hunters who want to approve a law allowing hunters to bait deer. Having never shot at a deer, I can still suspect that a moving target is a lot harder to hit than a still one; I know for a fact that it’s not sport if you arrange to win all the time. There are actually laws against fixing games, aren’t there?

But hunters who bait could preserve the fiction that they are still sportsmen by using a salt lick doused with some kind of deer-drug that would leave it free to wander - perhaps stagger - through the woods more slowly and without its natural instincts to avoid human beings with guns.

They would still be at least moving targets, and have some chance to outwit their pursuers. Better yet, why not simply farm the suckers, keep them in a pen the size of, say, a tennis court, with no trees or shrubs to hide behind?

Hunters could prop their guns on the top rail and blast away, and many of them be assured of killing something: fun and sport in that, for sure!

The law to allow baiting is, of course, a goofy one. One legislator even goofier argues that we ought to have this law because deer hunters are already baiting. By his logic, we should legalize burglary and murder and let convicted criminals out of prison.

Teddy would have sneered at such hunters, as should we all.

Noel Polk

Starkville

  
Coming from a state that allows baiting and having used corn myself, I cant help but think the legislator that was reffered to in this article was probably using common sense when he said hunters are already baiting. First thing that comes to mind is, foodplots, standing rows of corn, soybeans, etc. I dont like to make assumptions such as these but comparing that to legalizing burglary and murder based on his statements is ludacris. Here is a follow up article to the one above. This fella here seems to have some common sense.

Baited hunting is not ‘non-sporting’

Noel Polk wrote about the law to allow hunting over bait (”Law to allow hunting over bait not ’sporting,’ ” Feb. 25 letter). I’m an avid hunter, and I enjoy the outdoors. It’s always better to take a shot at an animal that is standing still, rather than one that is moving. With one moving, you could wound the animal and allow the animal to suffer.

Mr. Polk’s idea of “moving targets” may sound nice to non-hunters, but it is actually cruel.

Mississippi allows hunters to hunt over grass patches - food plots - which, in my eyes, is just like hunting over a corn feeder. If hunting over corn will cause a greater chance of deer catching a disease, then having deer come to a grass patch is just the same as having a corn pile.

Other states allow baiting. If officials at the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks are worried about the threat of disease, then make it a law to use a corn feeder that gets the corn off the ground.

Justin Horn

Decatur