If you have an emergency at the feeder..when do y'all visit feeder during season..assuming scent free....at night? With the premise of only alerting deer at night..lots of variables..but if there is no choice you have to repair something..knowing the ideal situation is to never disturb area. Except for the obvious a kill at the site

We're on a working cattle ranch so vehicle traffic is not new to the deer, it's the norm. Also have wind turbines on the place and there are frequently service trucks on the property inspecting, doing maintenance, etc. The ranch hand drives a side by side all over the place so our presence isn't as disturbing to them. I've driven right to the blind, buried the atv 30 feet away in thick brush and seen hogs, deer, etc in just a few minutes after settling in.

many times I have gone to a feeder following the morning or afternoon hunt to try to figure out what was wrong or adjust. We also fill feeders mid day between hunts ... I really don't think it matters all that much.

Fix it when you discover it needs repair.

+1, I dont think it matters much. I have found out that neither does a .22. I shoot pigs with a 22 mag and does just stand there and watch them run off squealing.

Don't over think it. Repair what is necessary. I scared off a bunch of deer at my feeder the other morning by rolling rocks down a hill because they were standing right next to my bow stand. They left, I got in my stand and several of the deer with some others came back when the feeder went off.

I usually won't approach my pen during "prime time"...1/2 hr before daylight til 9:30am...then 3:30pm til 1 hr after dark...for obvious reasons.....

so...9:30am~3:30pm is perfect time to fill/fix with minimal disturbance.

I've gone in to pull camera cards at midnight only to find i ran a nice buck off going in....had him on camera the next evening so it didn't bother him much .

The only time I visit my pen during deer season is to fill or fix....never just to "check it out"...

Depends on the place. My place is in east TX and is unoccupied most of the year. No cattle, no wells, no nothing. No feeders either. Even riding an ATV to the stands affect the deer sightings - especially mature bucks. I have much better luck hunting during the middle of the week and walking everywhere I go than my BIL who mostly hunts weekends and rides his ATV to the stand. I don’t get out on the place during the day either. When I am alone, I park my truck, don’t play music, don’t slam doors, and generally am as quiet as I can be. The difference in deer activity when I am alone vs. when others are there is dramatic.

For the typical Texas place that is a working ranch with a lot of activity, it’s much different. I doubt those type precautions are necessary for the vast majority of places.

Outside of (near) prime time for hunting, I would not be overly concerned. I've seen far too many deer hold up and wait for the human/predator to move on and then come to the area that they want to go to. They've not gone running the opposite direction; that typically happens when you accidentally bump into them.

If you really want to NOT disturb them, leave your firearm, hunting license, and tag at home. They'll hang around to just taunt you.

As soon as you figure out there is a problem. You have to fill the feeders with corn during the season so no different than making repairs IMO.

Generally inspect mid day and repair and or fix then and there

If it's in the off season I go whenever it's best for me. During the season usually mid day. I don't worry about the scent I leave there with my hands or feet because it hasn't mattered. It is a working cattle ranch so I do think they get used to a small amount of human scent and activity. Smaller properties that are absentee owned are more sensitive to human activity and scent IME.

I try do do it when no deer are around if Im leaving the blind, but will check if needed after the am hunt and do what needs to be done then.

I dont care if deer see me waling in on the road, or atv/tractor. just dont want more than that one snot nose doe nailing down my blind lol.

I soon found that walking more and riding less along with hunting during the middle of the week quickly translated into more deer sightings while on the stand. And when it was necessary to use an ATV to carry feed for a feeder, I would do it before getting ready to leave my lease and head back home. Also, when hunting on weekends when hunter pressure is greatest, I've found staying late and hunting that extra hour or two after other hunters have left the woods can be well worth the effort.

I prefer to go after the morning hunt on Sunday before I head home after hunting that weekend. I would go mid day before I would go at night.

I was blasting away with my 223 the other afternoon, and quit around 4 pm. At 6:30 there were 6 does and a 6 point right next to my targets. A year or two ago I had to hold my fire, as I target shot, so a doe could walk in front of my target. Of course, I live there, so I suppose they are used to noise of all sorts.

this is what i do,,just getting everybodys thoughts on this

I have left the stand walked to the feeder and fixed it at day break and deer were back in it 15 minutes later. A friend realized a cob was stuck and jammed the spinner plate. He went into the pen to free it. While he was using his pocket knife to clear the cob an 8 point jumps in the pen with him and stands there watching him clear it. When a few kernels hit the ground this buck stomps the ground. While all this is happening another 7 point starts pacing along the fence waiting also. Once he removed the cobb he set the feeder off and as he walked out of the pen back to the blind 2 other bucks walk out and jump into the fence with the other 2.

No evidence of hunting anywhere in those events.

Kind of long but i disturbed my area pretty good. I hadn't been to my place since April so me and the wife decided to take a trip and fill a feeder the last week of August. We drive out everything is overgrown because my buddy that took care of the place took ill and can't do it anymore. Anyway, we moved the feeder about 10yrds from where it was and had to change the spin plate because the squirrels actually chewed the ears off of it and it was a flat plate now. Left to get a new one came back put it on adjusted the feeder position again filled it. We left. Came back the second weekend in September and built a trough feeder to put rice bran in. I put it where we moved the feeder from. I watched deer come in looking confused. They saw the new feeder and went around it then would approach it from a different angle but never got within 15 yrds of it. After about 30 minutes an old buck came in eyeballed it left came back and as it got dark started feeding. Now I knew I had an old deer there but with the grass being so high shot opportunities would be limited. The next morning I mowed a sendero about 15 yards wide and 130 yards long and then around the feeder i mowed a huge circle. A friend of mine had given me an old white leather cushy chair that I had sitting between a cedar tree and the feeder, the blind blew away but the chair was still there. I sat in it a while after mowing then went home. The last weekend in September I came back out to put up a new feeder that a friend had given me. It was twice the capacity as the one I had. I went ahead and set it up about 25 yards from my old feeder and filled it. I left the old one to run out of feed and will move it later. Opening day was coming but I hadn't set up my bow blind yet and sitting in that chair left me in the open so I got a popup and went out there about 9 pm the night before opening morning and put the popup over the chair. I was in it about an hour before daylight opening morning and the deer came in. I have a small place and neighbors are close so I could hear them laughing and building something, mowing and yelling at their dog. The deer would just look that direction and go back to eating. They were on alert but not real skittish. I had a few within 10 yards. They cleaned the ground and went on.

I have a trail camera from July till Feb on every feeder on my places. I have a corn feeder and protein feeder in each feed pen that are filled year round and feed year round. I check my feeders weekly during the year to fill or adjust feed times. I also check my trail cameras just about every day or every day or two when I have the time. So the deer are used to my activity around the feeders. I make sure I leave plenty of scent there too...

Don’t you think that there is a difference in behavior of mature bucks vs. everything else? Or maybe not where you are I truly don’t know....

I was at this feeder about 20 minutes before this buck showed up. I was in my tractor and filling both the protein and corn feeders at 3 different locations that afternoon. This buck had only recently shown up on my place and I had not seen him on TC or in person in the past. The last pic shows him looking in the direction I had driven to fill the last feeder. I am heading back on the same road that takes me by this feeder. This buck was a regular in the feed pens eating corn under the feeder on my cams for a month before I was able to kill him.







My place if a buck is used to jumping into a feed pen then he will eat under the corn feeder no matter what his age is. The only limiting factor is jumping into the feed pen. I have seen bucks that would not jump into the pens but would eat corn outside the pen. I have had a lot of new bucks show up and the only way I know they are around is that I either see them or get a trail camera photo of them eating under a feeder. May be at night or in the daylight. I know it varies from location to location but the thing that I see as the main issue is that most people do not feed year round. That is what it takes to train deer to a feeder...that deer has to be raised around and eating under the feeder for them to use daily. Take a feeder in the Hill Country or even parts of South Texas and you can put it up today and have deer eating under within a day. Other parts of the state it won't be that easy. Deer in the Hill Country and mature bucks in South Texas for some reason like corn. On my place I do not have deer run to the feeder or stand there waiting on it to go off like you see in the Hill Country.

I have a feeder on a hill in the a pretty thick timber and brush area that is about 30 acres. 3 years straight I jumped bucks in August when I started the feeder back to feeding and put up a camera. All three times those bucks were on camera within a hour of me leaving there on the 4wlr the bucks were at the feeder. On year on the 15th of October I decided not to hunt the afternoon and went back about 2pm and filled the feeder. Less than 20 minutes after I left there were pictures of my target buck there eating corn. i killed him a few weeks later and we think he was a 5 year old 8pt with a 19 7/8 inch spread. That is in Eastland County and I had been hunting and feeding that location for about 7 years. Never got those deer to be there waiting on the feeder like the deer in Lampass county do but regular enough to make it interesting

Like STX described get them accustomed to a pattern and scents and they do not pay as much attention to it.

Got my 1st deer with my TC pistol. Used my game camera pics to put timeframe together based on feeder not working

5:16P Walking to Feeder
5:19p Walking back into blind
5:29p Standing out of blind, blocking camera, holstering pistol
5:36p Walking back to blind, coat off
5:49p Gutted deer dragged back to road by blind

there were a few other details involved, but that is the basics.......

Full story here HERE