I have killed three deer in my life, of those two of them were within the past two years. I say that to put perspective on how new I still am to deer hunting. I am beginning to realize, a lot of pre-conceived ideas about these animals that simply are not true. I have experimented with every type of bait and attractant I could get my hands on and strictly observed these deer without hunting them on my place. One thing I learned, many of these attractants seem to scare the deer away. Especially the apple scented stuff. Second, you might have found something that the deer hammer, they will get tired of it and stop coming after a while. Even if it is something like whitehouse deer feed. And third, these animals are too curious for their own good.

At the time I got these pictures, I had no footage of deer in daylight in weeks. After gun season, I assumed they were in hiding. Well, I decided to have some fun with tannerite. I used a .308 with a brake that was much louder to my ears than the tannerite itself. Would you believe, within about three hours I had deer come to the spot I shot the tannerite on a string?

This is basically the the first time deer came within view of my camera in daylight in weeks.

If you are curious about my findings, overall the most attractive thing to deer pre-rut in my limited experience is the white house deer feed. During the rut, the doe pee and the mock scrapes seemed to get the most attention. I did use a dripper with the advertised dominant buck urine, and sprayed a crapload of doe pee everywhere.

Post rut, tannerite is the only thing they really came to in daylight 🤣. I barely saw anything after dark. I thought somebody killed all the deer 🤷

Other than that, the natural browse and plain old corn were pretty attractive. With alot of chinkapins on the ground, they ignored everything else most of the time.

No doubt they're curious animals. I've had deer walk up to me several times while I was running a chainsaw. Also had a big fire going one night and I kept catching flashes out in the darkness. I finally pulled out a flashlight and there were several deer standing about 50 yards away watching us and the fire. And the local deer at the private range where I shoot will usually come out of the brush and watch us when we start shooting.

I have a spike at one set that stands and waits for me to turn off the screaming engine of the feed trailer and drive away. I can get within about 20 yards of him, talking to him the whole time. I should shoot him, but he's just too tame. He'll probably turn into a monster. Then what'll I do?

These are my observations, take what you are seeing with a grain of salt, they are not clinical tests. Deer in my parents back yard growing up on a large lot subdivision behave differently than deer around my house on 20 acres behave different from deer on our hunting property in bfe. The one biggest thing I have found to affect deer and their habits is hunting/people pressure.

A lot ot times when you disturb earth (plowing, tannerite, etc). you'll have deer show up and check it out very quickly. They just can't help themselves.

Yep I often will see them milling around couple hundred yards behind me when shredding senderos also.