Bait Stations/feeding Stations: Best Food To Use?

[Guest]

Fruit indigenous to the area and in season. Stay away from meats (you will just get a lot of bees). If Bigfoot is real and a primate, it probably establishes mental food resource maps linked to weather. A strange new scent may repel, confuse or illicit wary behavior.

I have heard about and seen people use the strangest stuff... for odor, visual, and auditory reasons. Seems like auditory would be the best since it has the greastest area size coverage. Finding and utilizing a natural food source, IMHO, is what I try to do. Berry bushes, long abandoned fruit trees, edges of operational orchards, fish runs, shell fish sites, to name a few. I also stake out medicinal resources such as clay sites. The easiest is obviously water sources.

[Guest]

Forgot to mention... the water sources, like on river sandbars, look for a good population of burrowing rodents. They leave raised trailways in the sand. I have found many bear, cougar and bobcat tracks following, digging at them. A few were successful at it of course.

[Huntster]

Fruit indigenous to the area and in season. Stay away from meats (you will just get a lot of bees). If Bigfoot is real and a primate, it probably establishes mental food resource maps linked to weather. A strange new scent may repel, confuse or illicit wary behavior.

I believe this is very accurate. For bear baiters, sweets generally attract black bears, and meats generally attract brown bears. I would suspect this would be even more true of an ape or hominid. Fruits would be a much better attractant than rotted meats.

Finding and utilizing a natural food source, IMHO, is what I try to do. Berry bushes, long abandoned fruit trees, edges of operational orchards, fish runs, shell fish sites, to name a few.

This is also excellent advice. This is even better than trying to bait in an area where the natural foods isn't regularly found. It utilizes locations that might be a recurrently used site.

[Guest]

Original and crispy KFC.... Trust me

TooRisky,

That seems like a shameful waste of good chicken. I'll trust you, but I need to verify. Lets hear the story about you baiting with KFC.

Pteronarcyd

[Guest tracker]

The old lady up the street has too many cats?

kidding, well sort of.

anyone have success with rabbit guts? I would put the bait stations out of reach of all the other critters. the catch is its got to look natural.

[Guest tracker]

I guess if someone had some luck with a certain food group we wouldn't be having this conversation?

How does fruit work compared to meat or small objects?

[Guest Spazmo]

I've only attempted this a few times, but one thing I did notice was this:

Green apples would disappear. Red apples would stay put and be picked at by birds and other small animals.

My bait basket hung by a single piece of string so that almost any animal trying to get at the fruit would break the string. On the occasions where I found the basket on the ground, I disregarded the results (it could have been almost anything that pulled it down).

Twice, when green apples were placed in the basket, I came back to find the basket empty and intact.

Of course, none of this proves anything. But I did find it interesting that I seemed to get different results from different apples.

[Painthorse]

I've only attempted this a few times, but one thing I did notice was this:

Green apples would disappear. Red apples would stay put and be picked at by birds and other small animals.

My bait basket hung by a single piece of string so that almost any animal trying to get at the fruit would break the string. On the occasions where I found the basket on the ground, I disregarded the results (it could have been almost anything that pulled it down).

Twice, when green apples were placed in the basket, I came back to find the basket empty and intact.

Of course, none of this proves anything. But I did find it interesting that I seemed to get different results from different apples.

Spazmo, I experienced the same thing with the green apples vs the red. More green apples would be taken than the latter. The cam finally caught the culprit, a coyote. Not saying that this is what took your green apples but I do know for sure it's what took mine. Reasoning.....I have no idea.

[Painthorse]

Has anyone tried non food items?

I've used water stations during droughts along with a red mineral/salt block. 5 Gallon bucket. Buzzards, deer, yotee and squirrels showed interest on the cams.

[Guest Spazmo]

Coyotes eat apples? I never would have known...

But, that's the reason I put my basket on a single string. I figured if a bear or a deer (and now a coyote) tried to get at it, the string would break and I would scrap the result and try again.

I was looking for a setup that would require someone/something to reach into the basket and grab the fruit without pulling down the whole rig. The only time the basket turned up empty and intact was when I used green apples.

The lowest part of the basket was 6'2" from the ground, so I had to reach over my head to put the apples in the basket.

It's also possible that a small tree-climbing animal like a squirrel climbed down the string and tossed the apples out of the basket, but why only these green ones? I also left dried fruit, nuts, bisquits, etc. in there that all got pecked at, but eventually rotted away.

But, since I only repeated the green apple test twice, I can't make any conclusions about it.

[Painthorse]

Coyotes eat apples? I never would have known...

But, that's the reason I put my basket on a single string. I figured if a bear or a deer (and now a coyote) tried to get at it, the string would break and I would scrap the result and try again.

I was looking for a setup that would require someone/something to reach into the basket and grab the fruit without pulling down the whole rig. The only time the basket turned up empty and intact was when I used green apples.

The lowest part of the basket was 6'2" from the ground, so I had to reach over my head to put the apples in the basket.

It's also possible that a small tree-climbing animal like a squirrel climbed down the string and tossed the apples out of the basket, but why only these green ones? I also left dried fruit, nuts, bisquits, etc. in there that all got pecked at, but eventually rotted away.

But, since I only repeated the green apple test twice, I can't make any conclusions about it.

Spazmo, in the Campfire chat section under "Wildlife Photos" on page 3, there's a pic I posted of the yotee being "busted" by the cam.

I was going though "A LOT" of green apples and started putting some green apples in jars "hoping" that I would capture something messing with the jars long enough to get a pic. Well, the entire jars with the green apples inside would disapeared, lol.

Also coyotes are very good at jumping at heights you would not expect.

[Guest Spazmo]

Wow, good info PH.

I wonder what it is about green apples that they like? Maybe it's a digestive aid? Green apples are more acidic than red apples, so this might be one reason.

I'm learning more about coyotes from this forum than I have from any other source. There is a very good article describing how they learn to avoid trailcams (it's in one of these threads somewhere, originally posted by ShadoAngel). So it doesn't surprise me that they would take the whole jar with the apple in it.

I have a few more ideas about baiting that I plan to try next season.

...fingers crossed...

S.

[Guest FuriousGeorge]

I was thinking about this while reading another thread. What if you used fruit that can be peeled like bananas and oranges. DDA in another thread referenced gorillas in zoos peeling these fruits and opening manmade items in their packaging when I asked him about bf doing it. Maybe if the skins or packages were left behind and they weren't torn to shreds, it might be an indicator that something with fingers took the bait. Bf might tear it up too but if they happened to do it cleanly like other primates do, It would eliminate the usually culprits anyway as to what took the bait. Unless there is a hungry human nearby. Maybe the use of finger dexterity in combination with another attribute, height. Make it peel a piece of fruit or open a package ten feet from the ground. That would be more telling as to what took the bait if they took it cleanly. Maybe. I only thought about this for a short time. Maybe someone could take the gist of what I am saying and improve upon it. Just try to make it so raccoons can't get at it. Maybe in a box with a heavy lid. eh I don't know. I should have went to sleep an hour ago. But the main point would be to take what bf and only bf has got and make him use those attributes. Fingers, height and strength combo.

[Guest]

Fruit indigenous to the area and in season. Stay away from meats (you will just get a lot of bees). If Bigfoot is real and a primate, it probably establishes mental food resource maps linked to weather. A strange new scent may repel, confuse or illicit wary behavior.

I have heard about and seen people use the strangest stuff... for odor, visual, and auditory reasons. Seems like auditory would be the best since it has the greastest area size coverage. Finding and utilizing a natural food source, IMHO, is what I try to do. Berry bushes, long abandoned fruit trees, edges of operational orchards, fish runs, shell fish sites, to name a few. I also stake out medicinal resources such as clay sites. The easiest is obviously water sources.

Just wondering, if this advice and method has given you any proven success, in regards to attracting a creature to your bait ?

[Guest]

I don't know about luck in producing ill-refutable evidence, it is just plain ole' common sense and what work has been done with other primates.