I had feeders on my place for 12 years. I never saw nor ever had a trail cam photo of any buck older than 3 1/2 eating under one. They were not fenced.

Several mature bucks have been taken and have many more photos of ones not taken - just never at a feeder.

I don’t use them anymore. Just food plots. They brought in the hogs too much.

Some big deer will definitely got to feeders. Maybe a pen is what is needed.

I think the moral or the story is if you don't shoot up a place and you drive the roads fixing fences, and equipment often, deer wont see you as a threat. That whole episode of the buck and the pen was all caught on tape. No shots were fired because of ranch age and size rules. But it just goes to show the tolerance deer have for humans. This occurred on the Spike S when it was low fenced.

Some advice from stxranchman a few years ago really changed my practice —Hand/broadcast corn, ie, chum-line every time you go to your feeder and you’ll actually start to attract deer to your activity around it. While alot of mature bucks may not actively feed under the feeder, they certainly check the area around them, often from 50-100 yds downwind and will usually feed off the chum line.

I had a camera shy and feeder shy buck (still haunts me) I was after for years that wouldn’t come in the feeder pen, but would catch him 50 yds off very regularly.

Concurring somewhat with Nogalus here - every year there is a number of larger deer that do not show up on game cams in our feeder pens. Some years, you will get photos of these guys in your pens later in the season or actually see them there on the hoof in the pens. Prior to the season last year, I had zero photos of the two largest deer seen on the hoof in my pasture. This year, our fly over showed us several large deer not seen in the more than 2,000 pre-seasons photos currently taken.

Mature bucks are an entirely different animal. On most places at least.

Few more mature bucks in the daylight eating at a corn/protein feeder all off of my place. One pic is in front of my house with no feed pen. I do not have as many mature bucks as some places but due to amount of hogs and cattle in this area I would say half the neighbors use feed pens. So deer are used to them and that makes a huge difference. South Texas is similar to my results on ranches I have managed or hunted on with mature deer eating at feeders in the daylight/hunting times. Hill Country and West Texas will be the same due to lack of nutrition. Mature bucks in South Texas have a sweet tooth for corn for some reason and they will hit a feeder. Most hunters nowadays use a road feeder so they feed longer stretches of roads and open areas around or closer to their feeders so they can hunt the winds. It helps to spread the deer out more also and will not see the deer under a feeder as often during times they hunt or feed the roads a lot. You can see pics of mature deer from all over the state eating in the daytime under feeders on here. Not saying that all every deer will either. Just because you don't have success does not mean that everyone is the same.

I wasn’t meaning to imply they didn’t come to feeders anywhere. I actually thought I went out of my way to make that clear.

When I say “They are a different animal” , that’s meant to say they are a different animal. They think differently, they act differently.

Your experience dwarfs mine in the areas with which you are familiar. But I have seen some good hunters have to take some pretty extraordinary measures to kill certain mature bucks even out west and in south TX. For example, you may get TC pics by the dozens of a certain buck at a feeder, but never see him while in the blind. (Solution? Walk to the blind, or drive there at 2 AM and sit until dawn, etc.)

There may be places where every mature buck will waltz into a feeder or stroll out the onto a road and eat corn no problem. But my limited experience and the stories I’ve heard over and over relating to helicopter counts that reveal huge bucks never seen, TC photos of bucks never seen in person, etc. lead me to believe those places are the exception rather than the rule. My belief is there are always at least a few extra-cautious mature deer just about anywhere one might go.

On my place, every buck over 3 1/2 is extra cautious. Most are pretty much ghosts as far as killing one goes. It takes a lot of hours coupled with a lot of luck to put one on the ground. Many are never seen.

Try to fill the feeders on the way back to town after the last hunt. Try not to drive by the feeders unless it is mid day. Last year however shot a doe about 30 minutes before dark. By the time I went and got the 4 wheeler it was dark so I was idling by the feeder for about 10 minutes with the lights on filling out my tags and getting ready to go back to camp and nearly ran over a deer coming up the road to the feeder. She had to have seen the light and heard it idling.

I think a lot has to do with how long the pens have been there. The first few years the pens were up I had very few pis of mature deer in the pens but by year 4 there were more and more showing up in the pens. If the deer grew up with the pens around then they are more apt to go in a pen when mature. Just a casual observation over the years.

You've gotta remember that the feeder is a food source for the deer, unless you and your buddies just take a leak all over the feeder, blast some loud hip-hop, and party under that feeder until its feed time, they're going to continue to come. Unless there's acorns lol! Go make the repair after lunch, and continue hunting per usual.

I hunted from before daylight until 10:00 am and saw deer come in and out of the road by the feeder. Walked to it around 11:00. Drove too it around noon and filled the protein feeder next to it then pulled up a hog trap that's been there for about 3 years, loaded on the truck and left by about 1:30. I came back and sat in the stand around 4 and by 5:00 there were about 11 deer wondering around the area. At dark I made a little noise getting out of the stand . They just watched me walk away and then I looked back one more time and they were eating again. They didn't seem disturbed.

I did not go early morning or late evening

We go to our feeders multiple times during season, even multiple times during weekend hunts, always have and doesn't seem to have changed much.

As for the mature buck and feeder thing I can go both ways. Ive seen plenty of mature deer at feeders. The first 3-4 years we had our place we didn't shoot any deer at all. You could have deer and hogs standing at the feeder together and shoot a hog and the deer wouldn't run off at all. The first few years we shot deer most of the time the other deer wouldn't run off even if you shot one and it was flopping in the middle of the road. Fast forward several years of deer hunting and the more mature bucks are much more leary about feeders especially during the season and most everything high tails it after a shot.

I think pressure changes a lot on how deer act. They grow accustomed to human activity. I fed deer in the neighborhood out of my hand. Deer on our old lease were accustomed to the owners "ranch truck" old beat to hell rattle trap straight pipe chevy you could hear from a mile away never paid that truck any mind at all, but any other vehicle sent them running.

I think some of the precautions described here can make a difference, but there are so many other things that are completely out of our control and have a much greater effect. Weather, natural browse, moon phase, and rut cycles, just to name a few. I don't get to spend as much time in the woods as I'd like to, so my main focus is trying to be there when the conditions are good.

As for seeing mature bucks at the feeder, I have to admit that most of our top end bucks have been killed while they were eating corn. They aren't always there, but I'd say your best chance at catching them slip up is over bait. Two weeks ago I found a shooter that I posted on another thread. He hit a feeder on a Saturday evening and was there again Sunday morning. A week later we put a family member on him and she spent 8 hours a day in the same blind for 3 days and he was a no show along with most the other bucks in his bachelor group. Point being it's still hunting.

Visit my feed pens every single time I am down there.