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Winter Deer Feeding | Guidelines and Tips for Healthy Deer

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Everything You Need to Know About Winter Deer Feeding

Winter deer feeding is a hot topic for many people. If you are a deer hunter, you’re probably always looking for ways to improve the health of the deer you hunt. So it’s a natural next step for many people to want to take care of them throughout the year. As you’re probably aware, winter is one of the toughest times of the year for many animals – whitetails included. This is especially true in the northern half of the country, where winters can be especially cruel. Cold temperatures, body warmth-stealing winds, and lack of quality food can all work against them and weed out the weaker individuals. So it makes sense that feeding deer in the winter would help them out, right? Maybe yes, maybe no. It really just depends on the situation and how the feeding is done. If it’s done the wrong way, you might actually be hurting the deer herd instead of helping them. Now we know what you’re saying. Your neighbor is feeding deer corn year round, and it doesn’t hurt them. Here are some winter deer feeding rules to help you decide whether you should or should not do it, and tips to do it the right way.

Nutritional Requirements for Deer

The first thing we need to cover is what deer actually need to survive the harsh conditions that winter throws at them. Throughout the summer and fall, deer are hopefully able to gain enough body fat that they can make it through the low calories and cold conditions of winter. They do that by eating as much high quality food as they can in the time it is available, and their fall diets focus on the best food available. But they don’t always put as much fat on as they should. And bucks, in particular, are at risk when entering the winter.

Obviously, bucks focus on breeding during the rut, which means they avoid a lot of the last-minute fall feeding opportunities, so they typically enter the winter with already-depleted bodies. Without good food sources throughout the winter, a buck’s body will start to cannibalize itself by converting their muscle tissue into energy. That puts them at risk for starvation, and if they do survive, they will start the spring at a severe deficit. At that point, all of the calories ingested would have to build muscle mass back before allowing them to use minerals for antler growth, which means they certainly wouldn’t grow to their full potential. If one of the goals on your property is to also shoot larger bucks, this is a problem you need to address.

In an ideal world, deer need high-carbohydrate and high-fat food sources in the winter (with some major caveats below), whether through natural food sources or winter deer feeding. This would help them burn enough calories to stay warm over the winter and maybe even replenish some of the fat stores lost before their bodies have to resort to using muscle. Essentially, deer in northern areas just need to survive until spring, when abundant and nutritious green food sources return. Deer in southern areas may just need the additional nutrition to produce healthier fawns next year or bounce back from the rut quicker.

What Deer Eat in Winter

So exactly what do deer eat in the winter to get that high-carbohydrate and high-fat nutrition? Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of natural food sources available in the winter that can provide that. Fortunately, deer are already highly adapted for this exact scenario.

Woody Browse

Whitetails in highly forested areas consume woody tree browse to survive the bleakest time of the year. Their digestive system, which consists of a four-part stomach, is biologically designed to break down the high fiber content present in browse and provide the most nutrition possible from it. But not all browse is created equal. Mature forests – think park-like settings – often have very little browse available at deer level, which is why deer often disappear from these areas as winter arrives. However, young forests are full of tender and nutritious browse. Think about a clear-cut area – within the next growing season, it is so dense with tender young tree branches and shrubs that you can barely walk through it, and it is all conveniently located within browsing reach for deer. Over the winter, a few acres of this habitat can support more deer than 40 or more acres of mature forest.

Agricultural Crops

In agricultural areas, there are often various agricultural crops available for deer to eat over the winter. Some farmers or hunters leave standing rows of corn, soybeans, etc. for winter deer feeding purposes. Even in harvested fields, there is often waste grain left behind for them to forage on, as long as the fields aren’t plowed under in the fall. Depending on how much snow accumulates, the ability of deer to forage for food sources on the ground may be affected. In these areas, corn, soybeans, grains, and brassicas can all be highly sought after and extremely nutritious. Corn and grains are full of carbohydrates, while soybeans provide a lot of carbohydrates and fat. These are both great for the unique nutritional needs for deer in the winter. But if these are not common food sources in the area in a given time period, they can be dangerous.

Dangers of Winter Deer Feeding

Getting back to the beginning of the post, it seems like winter deer feeding would be beneficial for them, given the lack of good food sources on some properties. But that’s not always the case. For a deer’s stomach to be able to digest wood fibers in the winter, it builds a community of gut flora (e.g., microbes and bacteria) that help digest it. When a really digestible, low-fiber food source (e.g., corn, wheat, apples, etc.) is eaten, bacteria in the deer’s rumen that can digest high-carbohydrate food rapidly multiply and produce a large amount of lactic acid. This rise in acidity kills many of the other good bacteria/microbes and essentially stops digestion. The acid in the stomach can even acidify the blood, which can kill the deer within 24 hours in severe cases. This is called acidosis, corn toxicity, or grain overload. To identify a deer killed by acidosis, you’ll generally find them in good body health and with a rumen full of corn, grain, etc. While severe for individual deer, this generally only occurs when deer suddenly get access to a large amount of high-carbohydrate food after they have adjusted to winter browse. If it doesn’t kill them, it can also cause permanent damage to their rumen stomach lining, which may affect their ability to digest in the future.

The other dangerous part about feeding deer in general is the risk of disease transmission. In many parts of the country, diseases like Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) are wreaking havoc on the population. When deer browse, they are generally dispersed and only nibble on the end of branches. But with supplemental feeders and bait piles, deer are attracted to and gather around the feed in very close proximity, so it crams more deer into a smaller area. Inevitably, there is more nose-to-nose contact or exchange of saliva, which can spread the disease further. As a result, many state wildlife agencies have put feeding bans into effect to limit the spread of such diseases. A good way to avoid that risk is to limit the amount of food offered and scatter it across a large area.

Guidelines for Winter Deer Feeding

It should be pointed out that winter deer feeding is different than baiting deer during the hunting season. When you’re feeding deer during the winter, it is solely to help them survive until spring, whereas baiting during the season is often to attract them to a spot specifically to hunt them. Depending on how severe the winter is and how good the habitat is, deer may not even require supplemental deer feeding. But if the winter gets particularly harsh, the deer herd is larger than the habitat can support, or there is just no winter browse available, winter deer feeding could actually be beneficial. As long as you do it right. Here is what to feed deer in winter and a couple deer feeding rules you can use on your property.

First, it’s no use trying to provide deer supplemental feed if they can’t find it. When you’re starting in a new area and want to make sure the deer find the food source, try applying GYT90. Our deer attractant is a great blend of over 90 minerals and crude soybean oil, and it is super attractive to deer. The calories from fat provide a boost of nutrition, and the aroma helps draw them in to the food source. You can get a 4 gallon case of GYT90 deer attractant and mix it with your deer feed/deer corn, or apply it to a decaying log nearby to get their attention. Periodically refresh it for the most attraction and benefit.

From the feeding standpoint, the most important thing you should do if you want to feed corn to deer is to start very slowly. Start applying only a small amount (i.e., sprinkling a gallon bucket over a large area) at a time to allow deer to find and get used to it. Whether you manually feed them or use an automatic feeder, replenish the feed every couple days initially. Continue this pattern of providing a few pounds of food every few days for 2 to 3 weeks, which will allow them (and their digestive systems) time to get used to it. So corn is not exactly a “what not to feed deer” item – you just need to do it the right way. As long as it is not a large amount of corn that suddenly makes up the majority of a feeding, acidosis should not occur. In other words, don’t go out in mid-winter and dump an entire sack of corn into a field, or you run the risk of killing a deer or two. But to err on the side of caution, you can just mix corn into a homemade deer feed mix, with corn only occupying about 25% of the mixture. Providing a variety of different food sources within your deer feed mix is a good way to reduce the chance of acidosis.

If you’re looking for something else in the mix or what to feed deer instead of corn, a better and safer option for winter deer feeding is to use deer food pellets or other high fiber deer feed. This is nutritionally more in line with what they naturally eat anyway. It just provides good nutrition in one area rather than a deer having to browse over a large area. With feed mixes, make sure to look at the deer feed ingredients to make sure it is high in fiber, and has low carbohydrates. Some people use alfalfa pellets for deer, which offer about 16% protein and a lot of fiber, but some deer can suffer from bloat when eating hay as they are designed to be a browsing animal rather than a grazing one. Pellets don’t usually have the same effect as hay, but again, mixing pellets with another food source can eliminate problems. As for the advantages of deer pellets vs corn, pellets are definitely safer than straight corn, but will probably cost more than a sack of corn.

The safest option of all is to have high quality, early successional habitat on your property. If you don’t already have the young, dense, and nutritious re-growth that deer need to browse on, the most inexpensive way to feed deer is to do some emergency timber harvests. Simply cut down some deciduous trees (e.g., maples, birch, aspen, basswood, etc.) and brush (e.g., dogwoods, willows, etc.) to ground level in a small patch, so that deer can eat what nature intended them to eat without any consequences. Gather the brush piles loosely so that deer can still get to them. In the future, these areas will likely respond with a flush of raspberry, blackberry, and young trees to provide additional browse, which is the best deer feed for winter.

Will You Try Winter Deer Feeding?

In many areas, winter deer feeding is not necessary or won’t make much of a measurable difference for the local deer herd. If a winter is severe enough, it’s inevitable that some deer are going to die. But in some cases, feeding deer using the right techniques can help them.

What Do Deer Eat?

Tips for Deer Hunting Over Bait and Attractants

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Deer Bait and Attractants 101

It’s an exciting time of the year for many hunters as we approach the end of summer and begin to entire the cooler months of Fall.  The grocery supercenters and gas stations in most suburban and rural areas start setting pallets of one of the highest selling hunting products on the market; deer bait.  Suddenly, the timber and fields where we hunt are deposited with concentrated piles of sustenance and we have been practicing this ritual ever since we can remember.  Pouring out bait to attract whitetail deer can sometimes be complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. 

Hunters have been baiting, attracting, and feeding deer for decades, with the main purpose of enticing that mature buck to come into shooting range during daylight hours.  In recent years, and with the wide use of trail cameras, hunters are now using bait to create feeding hubs that generate numerous quality trail camera photos of their deer herd.  As we study to learn more about the nutritional biology of whitetails, it’s been discovered that the supplemental feeding of deer shows benefits if done during the off-season. Even with all the complexity and politics surrounding the world of baiting, deer feed and deer corn continues to fly off the shelves across all regions in North America.  The basic principles of baiting remain unchanged, however, new products, better strategies, and advanced tactics can dramatically improve the success you might achieve when baiting and attracting deer.

What is the Best Bait for Deer?

A whitetail buck’s antlers are comprised of 22% calcium, 11% phosphorous, and the remaining balance is a mix of protein, trace minerals, and ash. When searching for a feed, attractant, or bait product, it’s important to look for these key ingredients of calcium and phosphorous on the package. By far the most popular and widely used bait for attracting whitetails is corn.  Not only is deer corn highly consumed and well received by whitetails in almost every habitat across the continent, but it’s also one of the cheapest options for hunters.  Corn contains several of these essential nutrients for whitetails that improve their health and ability to survive leading into winter.  Baiting with corn is always a highly recommended source for whitetails and remains as one of the best product choices out there. However, hunters using corn should keep in mind that it can be enhanced.

PHOTO: GYT90’s crude soybean oil content is thick enough to cover the corn kernels with a glaze and acts as an attractant enhancer from its soybean aroma. It also supplies heightened taste and an instinctual need whitetails have for the highest nutritional intake for their time feeding.

One product that is sometimes overlooked, but proves to be highly effective year in and year out, is soybeans.  Since soybeans aren’t commercially sold at the same level corn is, outdoorsmen and outdoorswomen don’t seem to pursue it as much.  However, if you have ever hunted over a freshly cut soybean field, or a standing soybean field in the late season you have seen the impact they have on deer. These locations can act as a free bait piles and will definitely attract several deer.  Corn and soybeans contain a higher combined percentage of calcium and phosphorous than acorns, apples, alfalfa, or clover. Not to mention carbs and fats deer seek in the fall.  Without soybeans being readily available, hunters will have a hard time accessing this without planting soybean food plots. Fortunately there is another option! 

New deer bait and feed products surface frequently, but only a select few make an impact on everyday hunters. One such product is something that can take standard deer corn bait sites, and enhance them with the nutritional power, scent, and taste of soybeans. The soybean oil based deer mineral and feed supplement “GYT90” gives hunters the best of both worlds when mixed with a standard bag of corn. GYT90’s crude soybean oil content is thick enough to cover the corn kernels with a glaze and acts as an attractant enhancer from its soybean aroma. It also supplies heightened taste and an instinctual need whitetails have for the highest nutritional intake for their time feeding. Deer corn, enhanced with GYT90’s soybean oil based nutrition and 90+ mineral supplement means that your bait site is optimized for attracting deer. Now it’s time to discuss where to put this potent mixture.

How to use GYT 90: Corn

How to use GYT 90: Corn

Posted by GYT 90 on Friday, April 13, 2018

 

The Best Locations for Deer Bait and Feed Sites

With the best deer bait and feed in hand you need to find the most effective locations for hunting, recon, or attracting deer.  Specific bait locations can vary based on terrain, wind direction, competing food sources, use, etc.  However, there is one common denominator when deciding where to place your bait site and that is its proximity to deer bedding locations.  

If you are truly looking to hunt over bait, you need to understand deer movement and how deer would potentially be traveling to and from your bait site. In addition, you need to look at how you might access and hunt that compared to where the deer will already be. Several hunters will throw out bait at a location that best suits their access restrictions or feasibility.  One of the biggest mistakes hunters make is placing bait in locations where deer usually won’t access during daylight shooting hours. As successful as deer bait is, at the end of the day its hard to force a deer to travel to a place they do not want to be. Frustration can quickly set in when hunting over a bait site and seeing minimal deer activity, then returning the next day to hunt that same location only to find your bait pile has been almost entirely consumed.  Mature bucks may become lazy and purposely nocturnal to avoid exposing themselves in daylight.   

Avoid this pitfall by placing your bait near known bedding areas. This will reduce the time it takes for deer to travel when they begin to move out of their beds towards evening feeding locations. This will generate a greater return on your investment of feed and time, and a better overall hunting experience. 

Conversely, if the sole purpose of your bait site is to generate a higher quantity of trail camera photos and night time feeding is not as much of a concern, you will have more options for your bait site locations. Generating intel and surveying your deer herd is extremely valuable for in season recon, developing a hit-list, or watching survivors through the winter. The objective is to create a resource or destination point for deer that positions them directly in front of your camera. Bait sites are a fabulous tool to utilize for this activity.  You do however want to avoid frequently visiting those sites to minimize intrusion. Using a product and a feeding mechanism that reduces routinely trafficking that area will increase your odds of obtaining quality trail camera pictures.

PHOTO: GYT90 is unique from other liquid attractants in that it uses an oil base instead of a water base.  Water based attractants will evaporate and dissipate quicker than oil, which will result in more frequent refills to that bait site.

Deer Bait Station Types

When considering how to distribute your bait, there are several different options available.  Elevated feeders, such as open trough style feeders, gravity fed feeders, and mechanized feeders all create methods to raise your bait pile up off the ground.  The purpose of placing bait in elevated feeders is to minimize the consumption of non-targeted wildlife such as raccoons, squirrels, wild pigs, etc. The easiest feeders to get your hands on are simple gravity feeders, trough feeders, or more advanced deer feeders that dispense feed on the ground below at specific times.  

However, you don’t need to spend tons of money on a feeder to have a productive bait site. In fact, some feeder setups may decrease mature buck usage as some deer just tend to avoid feeder sites and/or camera sites, especially with human scent in the area. 

At the basic level the simplest bait site is a corn pile or mineral site for deer on the ground or on some sort of platform, usually in the form of decaying wood logs or stumps. The rotten wood in a dead log or stump is more absorbent than a freshly fallen tree and will soak in the attractant or mineral. However, minerals alone are not enough to keep deer enticed throughout the fall from their summer patterns. Mineral use decreases as deer diet changes from lush summer forage to acorns, grain, and woody browse. Read more about transitioning mineral sites to attractive hunting bait sites here.

PHOTO: GYT90 has the ability to create a bait site without the use of any additional grain or seed mixed in.  A couple alternatives to the previously discussed corn mixture include simply pouring out GYT90 over a dead log, rotten stump, or directly on exposed soil. Another advantage of using the GYT90 blend is that it can be used just by clearing away some debris and uncovering the bare soil.  Emptying a 1-gallon jug over a few feet of exposed ground will result in consistent heavy deer traffic at that site.

Best Trail Camera Setups Over Deer Bait and Feed Sites

For any bait, feed, hunting, or mineral site a trail camera is a must. Normally, without attraction, trying to funnel deer activity in front of your trail camera can be tricky during certain months of the year depending on the type of habitat that you are in.  Minerals, supplemental feeding products, and deer attractants can all be highly desired by deer at various times on an annual basis. Most trail cameras on the market today have settings that let you adjust the picture resolution and the photo/video frequency.  Reducing the picture resolution to low and extending the trigger frequency between photos will prolong your battery life and extend the time between visits to your camera. You can get away with longer picture/event durations since deer at feed/mineral sites will spend between 3-5 minutes at least feeding at or licking the site.  Adjusting the settings down to that 3-5 minute mark during non-hunting months and then back to a higher frequency of photos (30 seconds- 1 minute) during hunting months. This tactic will prolong battery life, slow down the rate at which the memory cards fill up, and reduce the amount of time you spend checking the site. 

PHOTO: Using a 3-in-1 product like GYT90 takes the guess-work out of it and allows you to provide all the best resources that deer seek throughout the entire year in one single bottle.  More and more hunters are leaving their game cameras out all year long to monitor the herd even in the off-season.

You also want to avoid pouring your bait in an area with mature foliage and tall vegetation.  A location that might be great in the Fall and Winter might not be ideal during Spring and Summer when the temperatures warm and the green-up impacts the photos being taken on your camera.  The last thing you want to see when thumbing through your full SD card is 2,000 photos of grass swaying in the wind. 

Hunting Setups Over Bait

Using the right bait and placing it at the right location are two key factors when hunting over bait, but hunters often overlook the 3rd crucial element that is equally as important.   Stand or blind placement, down to the exact tree or site, as it relates to that bait site must be thoroughly thought out prior to choosing your location.  Again, you want to understand which direction the deer typically travel from (the bedding area) in order to reach your bait site.  Then you want to pinpoint their direction of travel away from the bait site (a large food source). Next, you want to account for the wind direction that will put all the odds in your favor to go undetected when hunting over that bait site.  Finally, you’ll have to figure out how you plan on entering the hunting setup without blowing your wind across the bedding area, bait site, or large food source.

Photo: Form your hunting setup before you place the bait, considering bedding areas, deer travel, larger food sources, tree stand placement, wind direction, and access. More importantly don’t be afraid to shut down a bait site if it’s not working in your favor. 

The ideal setup has the bait site in between your stand and where the deer will travel from, with the wind blowing in your face on your hike in and while hunting.  Shifting winds that blow your scent over the bait pile will result in poor hunting experiences with minimal mature buck sightings. Consider your stand or blind placement and wind direction prior to creating your bait site. Try to also give yourself options.  If the wind isn’t consistent or tends to swirl in that particular location, opt out of hunting it or continuing to bait the site.  It’s hard to pick up a pile of corn after it has been poured, but you can seal a bait or mineral site up if you choose to relocate.

 

Conclusion

Baiting deer for the purposes of hunting is a long tradition that has been refined throughout time.  There is a lot more thought and strategy that goes into it than just dumping out a pile of tasty treats.  Baiting also has several applications that can be utilized for growing and maintaining a healthy deer herd. By understanding what nutrients to look for and which resources contain those nutrients, you can impact the overall attractiveness of your bait site.  Combine that with an effective strategy when scouting and hunting around that bait location and you can maximize your hunting experience year after year!

SHOP GYT90 ATTRACTANT HERE

Note: Check your state’s regulations for baiting, feeding, and attracting wildlife and deer during any time of the year and especially the regulations concerning hunting over bait.

Note: Feeding corn in the winter months, especially in large quantities to a herd that normally does not have access to that type of food source could be dangerous. Since the deer herd might not have enough of the right bacteria to digest corn it can cause acidosis and death for individuals in the herd. Do not feed corn in the winter in large amounts, and if a feed program must be started start in periodic small amounts to allow for the bacteria to adjust in a deer’s stomach.

Best Deer Minerals

 

How to Turn Summer Mineral Sites into Attractive Hunting Sites

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Deer Hunting Bait Sites | Transitioning Deer Minerals to Fall Attraction

Most hunters are familiar with the benefits of providing their deer herds with supplemental nutrition. Whether you decide to provide mineral, the benefits range from helping you inventory bucks on your hunting property or collecting scientific data for management purposes to ensuring your herd has their complete nutritional needs in case nutrition is lacking. Although these are great reasons to use mineral sites, you may be wondering how effective they can be to use as an attractant for hunting. Although not all minerals serve as good attractants during the hunting season, GYT90 does. This article will discuss what makes GYT90 different from other minerals on the market and how to use it during the hunting season.

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Why Deer Decrease Mineral Use

If you run trail cameras over your mineral sites for deer, you probably notice some obvious trends. Use of mineral sites generally increases with spring green up and is maintained throughout the summer. This is likely related to deer seeking out sodium to balance all of the water they are consuming that is contained in the new growth of vegetation. And although there isn’t much research out there, providing supplemental minerals likely also provides nutrition needed to both bucks who are growing their antlers and does that are producing milk for their fawns. 

So why do deer decrease their use of these mineral sites in the fall? There are several reasons like alternative food sources such as acorns and supplemental food plots becoming more prevalent on hunting properties. In addition to those things, vegetation no long has the same water content in the fall as it did in early spring and summer. This means that deer no longer need to seek out sodium to balance their diet which ultimately decreases their use of mineral sites. This is where most supplemental minerals fall short, they don’t provide any additional components to continually attract deer throughout the fall, in turn, not making them useful attractants during hunting season. This leaves hunters in states where deer hunting over bait is legal scratching their head. How do you avoid reinvesting time, hunting pressure, and money into your summer mineral sites just to keep the attraction up throughout the hunting season?

PHOTO: Summer mineral sites for deer decrease in use as sodium is no longer needed once vegetation loses its water content, creating the need to provide deer with additional attraction if a bait/hunting site is desired.

If you simply have a mineral lick for deer and fail to add additional attraction, the site will no longer be pulling deer like it was through the summer. You need to be able to provide something that deer associate with quality nutrition in the fall. They concentrate on food sources like standing grain and acorns. Soybeans, corn, and acorns give deer access to fats and calories, preparing their bodies for the winter and rut ahead. Keying in on these attraction points should be the focus on your deer hunting bait sites.

Finding a Product That Doubles as Mineral and Attraction

Arguably the best thing to find in this scenario is something that doubles as providing minerals and attraction. Corn and regular deer feed do not fit the bill by themselves since they do not provide the sodium for the summer. Most mineral blocks and licks do not provide the calories and fats, not to mention the scent of associated quality nutrition like corn, acorns, or soybeans. The trick is finding something that offers sodium, minerals, scent, taste and attraction for both summer and fall.

PHOTO: GYT90 is a product that offers sodium, minerals, scent, taste and attraction for both summer and fall hunting.

GYT90 is one such product. At its core GYT90 is a deer mineral and feed supplement. So what makes GYT90 different from other deer mineral supplements on the market? First, it contains more than 90 minerals that deer can use in addition to unrefined sea salt and natural crude soybean oil. Why is this good? GYT90 has everything a deer could want in both summer and fall…hitting key features hunters should be looking for. It provides them with the sodium they need in the spring and summer time, but also provides them with healthy fats that are provided by the natural crude soybean oil. The soybean oil hits deer with both soybean scent and flavor profiles that they already associate with quality food sources. Long story short, GYT90 always provides something deer need and are attracted to.

PHOTO: With scent and flavor profiles of soybean oil, deer are instinctively attracted to GYT90 mineral and hunting sites.

Another thing that makes GYT90 a great supplement is it comes in a liquid form. This means that you can mix GYT90 with just about anything. For example, you can mix GYT90 with corn and place it out for deer. The corn may serve as an additional attractant to pull deer into an area. You can also mix it with supplemental feed. Deer may be reluctant to start eating supplemental feed when you first start providing it. Mixing an attractant like GYT90 will likely help speed up that process of deer getting used to eating supplemental feed.

 How to Use GYT90 for Hunting

So how do you maximize your use of GYT90 so deer get the supplements they need but you also can take advantage of attracting deer to an area during the hunting season? The first thing to consider is where you are going to establish your mineral site. Some obvious areas are in food plots or agricultural fields where deer are already frequenting. You can also consider using wooded areas to establish sites. It may be easiest to find a staging area going out to a food plot or agricultural field for this. Wherever you decide to establish a mineral site, there are two things to consider. You will want to pick a site that sets you up best to hunt the area. This means you can access the area on multiple wind directions with minimal probability of detection when entering and leaving the stand. The next thing to consider is when to begin establishing the site. You will want to do this as early as possible. The more time you give deer to get used to visiting a site, the better.

PHOTO: Appling GYT90 deer mineral supplement and attractive deer bait in areas of frequent travel like soybean fields make great hunting bait sites.

Now that you’ve picked out your location, how do you use GYT90? That’s easy because you can use GYT90 in several ways. As previously mentioned, you can add it to corn and place it in some type of trough on the ground to attract deer. You can also simply pour it over a stump or on a log if you are in the woods. Again, whenever you are choosing a location to establish a mineral site, be sure it is in an area that you can easily hunt. 

There are multiple benefits to using supplemental minerals on your hunting property. But if you are hoping to find a mineral that also serves as an attractant during the hunting season, then GYT90 is for you. Be sure to give GYT90 a try this fall. You never know, it may just help you harvest your hit list buck or even help to put some meat in the freezer.

Best Deer Minerals

How to Keep Your Mineral Sites from Leaching in the Soil

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Whether you’re using mineral to supplement any potential nutritional deficiencies in your deer herd or are using mineral to help you get pictures and inventory any hit list bucks for the upcoming fall, mineral sites can be highly effective. But what do you do if you hunt in an area where you hunting over a mineral site is considered baiting because of the mineral leaching into the soil? Don’t worry, all hope has not been lost! This article will discuss what you can do to prevent deer minerals from leaching and what you can do if you’re trying to restore an old mineral site so it is legal to hunt over.

How to Prevent Leaching

The easiest way to prevent getting yourself into any type of legal trouble where you are required to remove mineral sites is to prevent leaching from the start. Leaching of mineral sites generally occurs after your mineral gets rained on after sitting in one spot for any length of time. The mineral is still available to deer through the soil and that’s why you tend to see deer continually coming back to a mineral site even after the mineral has been depleted. So what can you do to prevent leaching?

There are a few things you can try to prevent leaching. First, you have to make sure that you are using mineral that can be removed from the site. This means that you shouldn’t be mixing mineral directly into the soil if you hope to hunt there in the fall. The second thing you need to make sure of is you are preventing any mineral contaminated rain water from reaching the soil. That is where most people get themselves into trouble. There are several ways you can do this.

Deer Mineral Site Setups That Prevent Leaching

Tub/Bucket: First, you can simply place your mineral in a shallow bucket or tub. Although this method can be effective, there are a couple of things you want to keep in mind. First, you have to remember to take the handle off the bucket if you choose to use one over a shallow tub. It may seem like a crazy possibility, but a deer might work that handle over its head and get the bucket stuck on its head. The other thing to keep in mind is a bucket on the ground can be easily tipped over. If there is any rain water in the bucket and it gets tipped over, then you will still have leaching issues. Burying the bucket in the ground will help provide stability while also still allowing you to remove the bucket when you’re ready. The same concept applies when using an oil pan but you need to monitor these oil pans because they may break if a deer happens to step in them and again, any break may lead to leaching.

Decaying Wood/Stump: Using an old tree stump that you can easily remove will also work for you. Finding a stump that has a depression where you can pour your mineral in is your best bet. You may want to test your stump by soaking it with water first to see if you’ll have any leaching issues. If you do, then you will need to safeguard by using a stump in conjunction with an oil pan or something that will help prevent the leaching. You can simply bury the oil pan and place the stump in it so everything can be removed.

Combine with Feed: Another not so common way to keep minerals from leaching into the soil is by combining them with feed. Liquid deer mineral supplements and deer attractants that contain minerals can be incorporated into deer feed or corn. Simply mix the mineral with the corn or feed, coating it evenly in a bucket or tub. The feed shouldn’t go directly on the ground but instead into a trough, bucket, tub, or gravity deer feeder that doesn’t distribute the seed on the ground.

Regardless of what method you use, you will want to monitor these sites to ensure that you don’t end up with any leaching issues. You don’t necessarily need to check these sites daily or even weekly, but it isn’t a bad idea to check them after a big rain. Take an extra bucket with you in case you need to dump some rain water out. That way you can take it out of the woods and dump it somewhere safe where nobody will be hunting while still leaving the mineral in the woods. You can also replace any pans or buckets that may have developed a crack.

Reclaiming an Old Mineral Site

What happens if hunting over mineral sites suddenly becomes illegal in your area or what if you’re just trying to restore an old mineral site you’ve used for years but no longer want to maintain? You should first contact your local Conservation Officer to ensure you are doing things legally so you won’t be ticketed in the fall, but here are a couple of methods that generally work.

Whatever you do, don’t simply fill in the depression that’s been created by deer with dirt. Deer will still frequent the area and paw at the ground to get to any residual mineral that is left. Instead, you’ll have to invest a little more time and energy to reclaim your mineral site. The first thing you can do is to remove the soil where the mineral site was. Be sure to also remove soil immediately surrounding the site so you can be certain that you removed any minerals that potentially leached out. Next, it’s a good idea to fill the hole in with some type of gravel. Fill the hole about half- to three-quarters full. Then, if you want to be completely sure deer will not be access any leached minerals if there are any to be found, then place a piece of plywood on top of the gravel and place dirt on top of the plywood. Hopefully, you removed all of the leached mineral when you dug the hole, but if you didn’t then filling the hole in with gravel and plywood will prevent deer from being able to paw at the site to reach the leached minerals. Once deer become used to no longer having the minerals readily available, they will stop visiting the old mineral site.

Using supplemental minerals seems like an easy way to make sure deer are getting all of the nutrition they need and can be a fun way to capture photos and videos of bucks you’ll likely be hunting this fall. Whether you find yourself legally obligated to remove your mineral sites before the season, or would like to keep mineral sites and the ground beneath them intact keep these tips in mind for easy removal of mineral sites. This way you can still enjoy the benefits that supplemental mineral sites can provide throughout the spring and summer!

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