Okay I give up and will agree that the deer are smarter than I am!!!! I need help!!!!! I built a 35' diameter feeder pen back in mid Sept. with 4' high hog panels, 2 of the panels were cut down to 40" for the younger deer. I have had the spin feeder going every day since and to my knowledge not a single deer has been in the pen to feed. Game camera confirms this also. About 750 lbs of corn has been thrown on the ground, crows are having a field day. There are deer in the area, I killed 3 does last Monday & Tuesday within 150 yds of the feeder plus have pictures of several more in the area.

What else can I do to entice the deer to use the feeder??

Double the size of the pen. Bigger is better.

I disagree, 35' diameter pen should be plenty big enough, mine are about 25' and I commonly get 2-3/4 deer in at one time, often multiple bucks. Sounds like the sides are a bit too tall to me. I go with 30-36". I'd cut the sides down another 6" before enlarging. Some deer don't like jumping in pens too.

Hog panels are 34" so cut them down. We just put them up this year and have no issues. One is 6 panels, one 7, one 8 and one is 11 panels. Bigger is better though.

Thanks Guys, I will be back at the ranch Monday and will trim some of the panels down.

I use 34" hog panels 10 minimum, 12 usually, a few using 14, I have never cut one down in height.
I make the pens as close as I can to a circle, I cut one in half length wise to make a gate.

Bigger is better, biggest mistake is making them too small.

I will have cows to contend with with the start of spring so I don't want to cut the panels too short. What is the average height of a 5 strand barbed wire fence? I have seen a lot of deer go one with out a problem. I know they like to go under also but they can go over easily.

Put a bail of alfalfa hay in there they will go in after just do it before the cattle come back to the area. Other sweet feeds like horse and mule feed work well to get them in the pin. Comerdeer corn coat in the feeder will also make it tempting. Just plain corn isnt enough to get them to go in at every place. Once they get used to jumping in they will do it regularly and U can just spin corn. With this feeding tactic I was able to get deer to jump in a 20'x20' 4' tall electric fence pin in less than a week.

Does your feeder spin corn outside the pen? If not, you might try moving the feeder closer to the edge so it throws just outside until the deer find it and start jumping in. I had to do this in one of my larger feed pens.

ive always used apple scented corn.the deer seem to like it real well.

What dimensions do y'all recommend when using hog panels? I don't have cows on the place but do have a lot of hogs I want to keep out. How short can I cut them and still not have to worry about hogs gettin in?

My protein pens are made with cattle panels - which are 50" high. Deer have no issues jumping in.

I don't think your problem is the height - you just need them to jump in the first time.

Scoop up some deer poop off of a feeder they frequent and throw it in your feeder area, Get rid of old rotten corn, leave a panel down for a while if your able to and corn around your pen also.watchinggamenotimefor punctuation.

DLALLADER

We had the same results at our lease when one of our members put up a pen to keep hogs and cows from his feeder. All summer he fed corn and had 5-6 bucks at a time at his feeder with a mix of does consistently also. He put up the pen about a month before season and the corn piled up under his feeder and no deer would jump in. It was not until the last few weeks of season that he started getting some deer in the pen. In my opinion deer on our lease were not use to pens and some of the larger bucks he was seeing never showed back up. My stand is about 300 yards away from his and I chose to not put up a pen and I saw a lot of deer ever time I hunted and some nice bucks were taken from my stand.

DLALLDER, I built a feed pen out of hog panels (7), and the diameter was around 35'. Put a corn feeder in the center, NOT ONE deer would jump in. Two months later, I took down 2 of the panels and the deer would walk in and eat. Lesson learned, pen is too small.

Pen size is dependent on the style cattle fence on or around you land. If it is barbwire fencing that the deer go under then you will need a much larger pen and might even have to leave the pen open with just the corn feeder going. If it is netwire fencing then pen size and height is not a critical. The advantage of a larger pen is it will allow more deer to feed inside it. A dominant buck or doe will keep the pen clear while they are in it.

It must be specific to different locations. I have my protein feeder in a 7 panel fence and it not unusual to see 4 or more deer at a time in it. Granted there are also times when there are deer standing outside the fence waiting for some room but they all seem to cycle through it with no problems.

not sure what your range conditions are like around you, but our native range/browse is out of this world right now due to all the rain. Deer don't want or need corn. Been that way all season for us.

If you are hunting in East Texas the deer there are very reluctant to jump in a feed pen. Especially in wet years like this one with plenty of browse and acorns. Your best bet is to leave a couple panels down until they get used to entering it and having the panels around them. Then you can eventually add the other panels. I would still not make them more than 36" high.

We put a new feeder up with pen just 3 weeks before deer season. Nearest feeder was almost 1/2 mile away. Two of our 3 bucks taken were from the new feeder with a brand new pen and we never had a panel pen up on our 1,100 acres until this year. Our cows have the whole pasture to move around so I think that helps. If we had 1/4 this size with cows I would not use a pen period.

If you want young deer to jump in you need then they need to be less than 28 inches. Since we just put ours up we noticed too but as season went on, the little ones jumped the 34 inch ones easy later in season. All deer we shot were still outside the pens except one buck. We had sucker rods or bard wire where we put the hog panels so they were used to a pen to begin with.

http://plumcreek.tamu.edu/media/7351/usi...ng-stations.pdf

Ok, I went to the ranch earlier this week and followed some of your advice. I made the openings into the feeder pen larger and lower (down to 36"). Now for another question, since some think a larger pen would eliminate the problem, the spin feeder is in the very middle of the pen about 17' from the panels if I moved the feeder closer to one edge of the pen would the deer think the pen was larger? I can move the feeder 5'or so toward one edge and would have 25' to the openings.

Cut the whole thing down to 40". I built 4 pens a couple years ago with 4 ft panels. Went back two months later and had dead deer hanging in two of the pens. Cut them all down to 40" after that, and haven't had a problem since.

we use 10 hog panels in a circle......I have pics with 9 or 10 does in the pen. the problem with such a large pen is positioning the feeders (3) in such a manner that I can get all 3 in the camera shot...

My pen is 16 hog panels round.

Very big pen.

I have had as many as ten deer in the pen at one time.

Bigger is better.

Was there a good Acorn Crop ????