At the recent Southeast Deer Study Group meeting (Febr, in
West Virginia)
there was a most interesting paper presented on the negative
impact of
baiting on hunter success in South Carolina. Now there is
at least one
study (Michigan I believe) that showed that bowhunters had
higher harvest
success rates when hunting over bait, but the South Carolina
study showed
something a bit different.
South Carolina is an interesting state in that there are 18
counties in the
Piedmont region (that would be the northwestern part of the
state) where
you cannot bait, and 28
counties along the Coastal Plain
area, where
hunters can bait, and they've done so for years. The game
agency biologist
who gave the paper, first gave some general comments about
baiting.
He noted that bigger bucks probably are more likely to visit
bait at night
than in the day. He also noted that if natural foods are
high, deer use of
bait decreases.
He also pointed out the obvious. The
general public does
not think that hunting over bait is ethical, nor do they
feel it is fair
chase.
You could debate this fair chase issue, but it
wouldn't change how
the general, nonhunting public, feels about baiting. He also noted that baiting pits one hunter against another.
And it does do
that.
Baiting is viewed as drawing deer away from those who
don't use bait
to those that do. He also noted that it may take advantage
of neighbors
with good habitat, by drawing away deer from those lands.
In Michigan,
there are situations where one person baits heavily on his
property,
drawing deer off smaller adjacent properties. This then
forces those who
hunt on small properties to bait. They may not want to, but
they get into
it so they can see deer.
He noted that baiting does little to teach hunting skills.
And, though
deer may eat lots of bait, baiting doesn't make up for poor
habitat.
Then he took several years of data from both the baited
region and the
unbaited region of the state, and made some comparisons.
First, he felt
the deer density in both regions were similar. He noted
that the deer
harvest rates in the Piedmont region (unbaited) was 33 %
more than the
Coastal area (baited). The Piedmont harvest rates of does
was 41% higher
than the Coastal Plains. Man days per hunter was 20% less
in the
Piedmont. Man days per deer harvested was 6% less in the
Piedmont. So
hunters hunt less in the unbaited area of South Carolina and
it takes them
less hours to harvest a deer than in baited areas. Human
population was
33% higher in the Piedmont. Per capita deer-vehicle
collisions were 7%
less in the Piedmont than where there is baiting.
There were lots of variables not mentioned by the author
that could impact
the results when making such a huge comparison of one group
of counties
with another.. However, he did make some good arguments
that, relative to
baiting, deserve some thought. One point is that hunters
who use bait
become dependent on that for success, while deer behavior in
and around
baits may change and make harvest more difficult there. His
conclusion was
that baiting is having a negative impact on deer harvest in
the Coastal
Plains area of South Carolina. Baiting has been really
kicked around since
the emergence of chronic wasting disease. And some states
that allow
baiting for deer, are now rethinking that. My home state of
West Virginia,
for example, has just proposed to do away with baiting
during October and
November, starting in 2006. Be interesting to see what
hunters there think
of that. Hearings are scheduled to discuss this in the near
future.
We'll hear a lot more on the negative aspects of baiting in
the relatively
near future. Meanwhile, I thought this paper presented an
interesting
perspective on baiting that we haven't hard before.
