I’m in the pool business and I always have pool salt available. The salt I use looks like regular table salt. Is there any reason not to use this? And is pouring it on the ground ok?

I have no clue, but if I tried it I would mix the 50/50 with an all purpose mineral mix for cattle. Tractor supply has it https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/purina-6-phosphorus-cattle-mineral-50-lb

We just use mixing salt from the feed store. $6ish for a 50lb bag

Pool salt is just a more pure type of salt than table or feed salt. It won't hurt deer. Where I hunt, which is in the Brazos river basin, they don't care anything about salt because they get enough from the water.

I have 11 feeding locations scattered throughout the ranch. At each I use a 50 lb. salt block. The deer give 'em heck. When I move cattle into a pasture, it's easy to pick up the block and once I move cattle out, the block goes back. I use granulated salt for the cattle so they won't have to spend any time at a lick. Those salt & mineral feeders follow the cattle. Lysse & Eckel makes a great deer mineral that I feed as well. That mineral I just pour into a hole in the ground and they get after it. Cattle mineral differs from what you would feed a deer.

Bury to about 3/4 of the way deep a trace mineral block. It is mainly salt but with trace minerals and do more than just salt. They are cheap also and deer will use it if they need it. Deer can get enough salt in their diet just about anywhere they are found in the state. A lot of surface tank water in many areas will have some salt in it also. Even down in South Texas there are areas that have to much salt in areas. I have land in Live Oak county that has a lot of salty land areas. You could take a post hole digger go down 4' along a drainage on the place and the hole would fill with salty water. We had areas that grass would not grow due to the salty land. We put a stock tank in back in the mid 70's and at 12' deep salt water started to seep in.

STX you would think they get enough salt in their diet. I have seen and watched deer going after the blocks as well as have pictures on cameras. Our well water is brackish and deer as well as cattle prefer that over tank water but as I learned from my grandpa as a kid, you always keep salt and mineral out. Along those lines, I have been feeding cotton seed to our ruminants for over 50 years. That's cattle, goats, as well as deer. And that is long before it became popular with deer hunters.

Most places I have managed or friends manage all feed protein year round so the deer do not touch any salt since they get it in their diet plus the pellets. One ranch did a test on their stock tank water and found it to be to much salt in everyone of them....over 30 ponds. Even the largest ones had to much salt for the animals. In the drier summers, year and year out the deer would back off of feed. When they found out how bad the water was, the put out water troughs all over the ranch. Their consumption now is the same for dry months as in wet months during the summer or rest of the year for that matter. Those deer had to drink that water or eat pear..and they ate pear and CKWRI did a study in the 80's and found it was 45% of the deer diet in Jan/Feb and Aug during the year. Before the troughs went out the deer would eat pear over the tank water, even when it was raining. I know our cattle in Live Oak county will eat salt/salt meal or trace mineral block when we have dry grass. We lack mineral due to clay soils also. They will walk past the tank to get to the water trough. We are lucky to have a rural water meter since well water would be 4000' ft deep to the Carrizo. Any shallow wells in our immediate area would be gippy water like you have.
I put out salt here and it melts away with rain. I put out any brand of mineral and the deer won't touch it. Now I am doing something with L&E Mass-O-Rack mineral that a friend of mines SIL told me he was doing. This is my second year and it is getting some minerals in the deer on top of the pellets. I did something like this back in the early 2000's with mineral for deer.

I do have friends and now other people can get deer to use mineral blocks or licks and salt, but in my 30+ yrs of feeding deer and trying to get them to eat minerals in any form, I have never been able to get deer to eat minerals that I put out. I have tried every type of loose or block mineral made for deer and tried just about every method(on the top of the ground, in a hole, buried,etc) of getting them to eat it and not had any success. I managed a ranch in Colorado County that we kept a granular deer mineral out made by Sportsman Choice/ACCO and those deer would go months and not touch it. Then hit for a while and then quit. We kept it out in a wooden box at each protein station and would put it out when it was gone. No pattern to when they wanted it or would go for to it. I fed Sulfur Salt blocks in the hill country on a ranch I managed there and one block would last about a year at each protein station. Most of it melted or washed away though. I could see where some blocks at some feeders were utilized while others were not touched.

I am one of those that feeds protein 24/7/365. Through time I have settled on Purina AntlerMax however the deer still hit the salt and mineral but their bodies as well as any animal, tell them when and how much. As dry as it is at present, deer are really hitting the protein and I have not noticed any change in their salt or mineral intake. We too have water meters but the brackish well water is what they want. Some years back I had A & M run some tests on that particular well and its water. I will see if I can locate that and let you know. My best friend irrigates from the Carrizo. His well is all of 200' deep and he is into water at about 75 feet. Here we are looking at the Edwards at about 35-3700 feet. L&E Mass-O-Rack is what I am using and have been for several years.

I only feed the straight salt blocks for deer. At my main water lot, I use the sulphur/salt for cattle. It good for lactating cattle as well as it helps to some degree with insects.

Red trace mineral block is what this buck is licking on we are not feeding corn right now but we keep blocks out all summer ,always have deer using them when it gets hot.This is deep east Texas Im not sure about other areas but they like salt around here.

I fed sulfur salt blocks in the hill country for 6 yrs from 1990-1996. I used to them to see if they would help for ticks and biting flies..not sure if they helped but I kept them out year round. I fed Purina 20% and 24% from 1990 till 2004 free choice year round on two ranches I managed in that time. I tried all forms of minerals and delivery systems with all different brands of minerals and nothing was utlilized. I switched to L&E in 2004 and tried Ronnie's minerals along with the feed, with the no utilization in La Salle County on a ranch there. In Colorado County in 2006 I found the deer would use the ACCO granulated deer minerals but it was spotty. I credit that success to the fact they had been feeding some mineral since 1998. I was using L&E feeds there along with lab lab in the spring and oats/peas in the fall. We fed protein year round. Here in Goliad County I have tried ACCO and L&E granular or loose minerals in a variety of different feeding methods since 2012 when I started feeding L&E year round. Last year in the spring I started a different way to feed it to the deer and so far they are consuming it a bit better than any other time I tried it. It is consistent use now from late Feb till late Sept. I am going to keep doing this for a few more years to see if I can try to get them to eat the minerals from a feeder or on the ground in a mineral lick.
Back in the late 90's I ran into some guys that were hunting a large ranch in either Maverick or Zavala county and all they fed was whole cottonseed, but they top dressed it with a Purina Dairy Cow mineral. They had the feed store order it in by the pallet since I don't think it was made in Gonzales but rather in Fort Worth. They told me how much the added to each feeder as a top dressing as they put in the cottonseed. They were getting great consumption of both WCS and mineral with really great results. I also seen guys in that area south of Uvalde take bag Purina Deer mineral and sprinkle it on the ground under their spin feeders inside the feed pens. They put it where the majority of the corn hit so that everytime the deer ate a piece of corn they could get a bit of mineral. Sometimes they would watch the deer eat the soil with the mineral in it when there was no corn on the ground. I think they would do 2-3 feeders with one bag of mineral. They did not feed any protein though but had good mineral usage. I tried it on feeders and it just soaked into the soil or washed away...but I was feeding free choice protein.
I have always felt like mineral was one of the key factors in the antler growth that deer lacked here in many areas of Texas. That is why I tried to get them on some type of extra mineral, so they could go to it when they needed it. I even looked into a metered delivery system to be added to water in troughs for deer. A friend in San Angelo and I were very interested in it but the delivery system was the issue. He had all water troughs and the ranch I was on had a few but a lot of surface water. He was really interested in doing something with it since he did forage samples on a monthly basis and had years of those samples to base the mineral/vitamin he needed to add.

Have you noticed when it rains what deer do in the mud puddles? I started noticing back in the early 90's in the Hill Country after rains and we had mud puddles. The deer would not go to a creek or spring or tank or water trough but go to a mud puddle to drink. They would play in the puddle or stir it up to get the silt stirred up then drink that muddy water. It seemed like every puddle had the same scenario and I talked to friends about it. After they started watching they noticed the same thing. I even talked to Dr. Varner about doing some water samples from those puddles to see what they were getting from that water that they were not getting from the other water on the ranch. I do not get much standing water here with the soil type I have and have not noticed the deer do that but I do see tracks in the muddy spots when the water has soaked in. I have watched deer in La Salle county do the same thing with mud puddles..stir them up then drink. That soil is all clay and really lacks minerals. A friend of mine said it was more like the surface of the moon than Texas...lol.
I had a friend over NW of Rocksprings that fed minerals on his ranch he managed along with free choice Protein. He tried holes in the ground or poured the minerals on top of the soil, but his best consumption was a water trough. He had the floats set just high enough so that each trough had a slow seep. Each trough had a small wet and green spot. Birds and critters along with deer used those to drink from. He poured the loose minerals into the end of those wet spots and the deer tore them ground up eating the wet soil with minerals. Every trough was the same way. He had to quit when anthrax broke out and he lost count at over 70 deer he had found dead. He was using the Purina Deer mineral. I have an old concrete trough here that has gotten a crack from freezes over the year and has a seep now. I am going to try to pour some L&E mineral in it to see what the deer do with that mineral.

We feed granular mineral mixed with salt. We keep it out year round for the livestock. I can't remember the ratio right now but I think it's a 32oz can of mineral to 4-5 cans of salt. We use old plastic protein tubs as containers.

all very good information!!! Thanks Frio & stx ... I've had decent luck with the sulfur salt blocks at various areas I have hunted and managed, but like ya'll stated, it's not consistent on when they tend to hit the blocks versus ignoring them for weeks/months. I have tried the various other blocks sold at area feed stores without any success, the trace mineral blocks tend to melt into the ground untouched ... at least the sulfur salt block last a long time without use.

I was skeptical when one of the feed store owners I have known since my college days told me he had a new product (this was at least 20 years ago) that he wanted me to try out. It's called "Trophy Rock" ... (claims to be an all natural trace mineral rock that is mined in the Rocky Mountains, contains more than 65 trace minerals including sodium, calcium and potassium) ... I thought it was a bit pricey compared to the sulfur salt block, but decided to give it a try. The cheap side of my (along with the skeptical side) decided to break it up into smaller chunks to allow multiple locations from the one ~football sized rock. I worked with a chisel and hammer on the tail gate of my truck to break it down into baseball size chunks to put out at the 5 feeder locations I had on one ranch. There was a handful of "sand/small chips" that I just tossed over into some knee deep grass to the side of the first location. The next weekend I was back out at the ranch to check game cams, and found that the deer had gone completely nuts over the Trophy Rock, rolled it all around the feeder location, ending up out of the camera view. Additionally, the area where I tossed the "sand/smaller chips" was beat down to about a 10' circle of dusty dirt. This was the same case at the other 4 feeders with all of the smaller baseball sized rocks licked to a polished finish. Needless to say, I was blown away and have tried it at various other locations with various to no success ... I guess some locations they need (or like) whatever minerals are in the Trophy Rock and some could care less about it. The first location was in northern Burnet county, I also have a place in central eastern Burnet county that has had similar success over the past 20 years. Our place SW from Ozona, the chunks looks very similar today as it did when I put them out about 5 years ago, no activity. Our place NE from Fairfield, I dropped off a full sized rock at my primary stand location 3 year ago, and the deer (and likely hogs) have moved it around over about a 2 acre area and licked it slick as glass.

Just like what ya'll have stated, some areas work better than others with all the various different products available, just depends on what their body tells them they need I guess ... nature is a truly wonderful and amazing thing to witness.