Grape Deer Attractant

[Buckrub]

For over two years, I've looked for this little slip of paper. I knew it was here but couldn't find it. Today I finally found it in my desk while looking for something else. I think that's called Serendipity!

I had the ingredients (but gave up and used them) at one time.

You can laugh, and I have NO IDEA if this works or not. But when I got it (source long forgotten, sorry), the source said something like "If this doesn't work call me collect and I'll pay for the ingredients". Not a million dollar guarantee, but at least he sounded confident.

So, use it at your discretion. I finally typed it into Notepad and saved it on my computer so I don't spend another two years searching for a lost little scrap of paper:

Grape Deer Attractant:

Two 6.5 lb bags of Deer Cane powder mix
Ten boxes of Grape Flavored Jello gelatin
Ten packets of Equal or Sweet-N-Low

Halve the ingredients, and mix/stir in two batches in separate 5 gal. buckets of hot water, until dissolved. Pour directly onto the ground or onto an old stump.

Again, I have NOT used this. My first thought was how to get 5 gallons of HOT water next to a stump.......but I guess it just needs to be hot long enough to dissolve it, then carry them to the field. Of course, I can see slopping it all on the ground as I walk, but anyway.......sounds interesting.

I HAVE heard repeated stories that "Deer CoCane" is nowhere near the same stuff as it was when it first came out, that the first batches were lethal but now it's just semi-functional. I know the last two batches I put on a stump were ignored for an entire deer season, while rice bran piles next to it were gobbled up daily.

[mshm99]

I'll try it behind the house and let you know what happens. I put in a salt lick with just plain white salt. The guy twenty yards across the fence put in Deer Cocaine. The deer walked through the DC to get the plain salt and never touched the DC.

mshm

[rexxer]

WHITETAIL DEER HOMEMADE MINERAL MIX RECIPE

Ingredients: Makes 200 lbs. for about $30

1 part Di-calcium phosphate, this is a dairy feed additive bought at feed stores.
Comes in 50lb Bags, you need one bag.

2 parts Trace mineral salt, the red and loose kind without the medications.
Comes in 50lb Bags, you need two bags.

1 part Stock salt, ice cream salt.
Comes in 50lb Bags, you need one bag.

Directions:

-Use a 3 pound or similar size coffee can to use as your measure for each part of the mix.

-Mix all together well but not until read to use, keep ingredients separate until ready to put to use.

-Dig or tear up a circle in the soil about 36 inches wide and about 6 inches deep.

-Mix your mineral mixture with the soil.

Maintenance:

-Replenish in 6 months with fresh supply of, mineral and then each year there after.

This is one I seen floating around for a while. Maybe this year I will give it a try!

[rossman40]

Rexxer, been using it for the last 4 years except for last year, the di-cal phosphate I couldn't find last year. Plus the prices for the ingredients is up.

[rexxer]

Rossman--did it work?

[rossman40]

We put into a established mineral lick that got started with some deer cocaine about 10 years ago. It is in clay soil so it fills up with water, it seems the water will dissolve the minerals into the clay and the deer come buy and eat the clay or drink the standing water.







We put about 50lbs of the mix in the center. There was a rain about 4 days before these pics were taken so most of the tracks are pretty fresh. The square hole by the shovel was where we put one of those natural looking salt blocks. The deer didn't mess with it till it dissolved and then ate all the soil that was under it. The lick is in the center of our 150 acres and it seems to have altered their patterns. Even if the do not hit it they are used to going by it.

I wonder if Buckrubs formula might work better with a apple or cherry flavored jello. Here at the house I have some grape and blackberries at the end of the barn that are pretty much growing wild and when the berries come in the deer do seem to hit them hard.

[Buckrub]

Guys, tell me why......when I put out one of those apple/persimmon/whatever flavored mineral blocks you buy at the Farmer's Coop or Cabela's or whereever.........the deer won't touch it. I've done this for 3 years now, and I ain't doing it anymore. I stick it on a stump and they won't touch it. They'll eat the corn I pour all over it to make them come to it, but that's it.

Is it because they have the minerals that they need naturally in my area, maybe?

I've tried ever flavor there is.

I'd sure like to know if this grape thing works. I can't imagine why another flavor wouldn't also work though. But maybe something about grape.

I honestly can't remember where I found that, but I remember it was part of an article and somehow the writer convinced me............

[Dave W]

Things that deer like in this area:
Bread- out of date stuff from a local bakery. One guy goes to the local Wonder Bread bakery thrift shop and brings home all kind of bread as well as Hostess cupcakes and other sweet stuff, the deer love it and actually come up and eat out of his hand.

Salt & mineral blocks, seem to prefer salt though.

Molasses from the Co-op, pour it on a stump or corn and they will tear it up.

A guy at work swears by Buckola and said once The Rock he got at Cabelas dissolved from the rain the deer dug a large hole to get at the minerals, but while it was in the solid form they would not touch it.


We made two mineral licks with the di-cal and salt and the deer never touched either. C'Mere deer did not work for several people I talked to

[edge]

Feb 11, 2009 16:16:05 GMT -5 Dave W said:

Things that deer like in this area:
Bread- out of date stuff from a local bakery. One guy goes to the local Wonder Bread bakery thrift shop and brings home all kind of bread as well as Hostess cupcakes and other sweet stuff, the deer love it and actually come up and eat out of his hand.

SNIP

Perhaps you should put a couch and a TV for the deer....after a meal like that I guarantee you they will need to lay down for a nap....well it works in my house

edge.

[rexxer]

Rossman- Nice salt lick. Do the deer taste like ham in your neighborhood? Looks like you have good population!

Dave W I must be part deer because I have a weekness for Hotess too! I really never new deer ate that stuff.

Buckrub I'm game for trying grape!

[Dave W]

Feb 11, 2009 20:55:48 GMT -5 rexxer said:

Rossman- Nice salt lick. Do the deer taste like ham in your neighborhood? Looks like you have good population!

Dave W I must be part deer because I have a weekness for Hotess too! I really never new deer ate that stuff.

Buckrub I'm game for trying grape!

I had no idea either rex.

I wish I carried a camera when I hunted. During WV gun season a couple years ago I went with a friend to a farm neither of us had hunted previously. He told me on the ride that there was a woman who lived on the lane that was strictly against hunting and fed the deer.
As we are passing her property there she stands out in the field in a blaze orange coat throwing slices of bread to the deer, it looked like feeding time at the zoo. There must have been 20-30 deer, bucks and does, standing there huddled around her eating bread midday in gun season, I just cracked up.
The guy that owns the property said she did that every day during the two week gun season as well as the week long doe season.

[rossman40]

The aunt of a guy I know does something similar. She lives in a subdivision and beyond the back of her lot is a creekbed/wetland area. Pretty much everyday she comes home from work, changes clothes and then goes in the back yard with a peanut butter jar and puts a big dolp on a birdbath. Used to be mainly for the squirrels but the deer have taken over. He said as soon as she opens the peanut butter jar you can see deer heads poke out of the shrubs. They will hit the peanut butter and graze the remains under two large bird feeders.

As far as minerals the deer will not eat di-cal phosphate by its self, that is why you have to mix it with salt. The di-cal phosphate is the major minerals in antlers but is also a big boost for the does with milk production. Last year in the spring I couldn't get straight di-cal phosphate so I ended up getting this,



They didn't seem to hit it real hard so in the fall I dumped 100lbs of trace minerial salt into the lick. If I use it again this spring I will mix it with a bag of trace mineral salt.

Here is the most recent photo of the lick last September. You can see the trace mineral salt here it was poured in. They will not eat the salt direct but once it is dissolved in they eat the clay and drink the water.

[Buckrub]

For years, I have used Peanut Butter but one deer can eat a whole jar in a few minutes. I take a plastic jar of cheap peanut butter and take off the plastic lid. I use a battery drill and a screw and drill the jartop to a tree about knee high. There's usually a protective seal under the jar, just leave that intact. Turn the plastic jar around and take a pocket knife and cut off the end totally, all around. Screw this jar back onto the lid that is on the tree. They'll eat the FOOL out of it, I've personally used it for years. Be prepared to spend tons of money on PB though.

Another item I heard just this year, and this is direct from my cousin at his camp, and he uses it personally and often, and promises me it works. SWEET POTATOES.

They somehow find a guy that sells them an entire truckload, usually ones too small to sell for baking potatoes. They buy an entire ton at a time, and cover it with a tarp at camp in the shade, then go get a bucket full anytime they want to throw them out for the deer. They say deer eat the fool out of it.

We used Rice Bran for the first time last year and our deer went nuts over it. Being in the Rice Capital of Earth, it's plentiful here. If you buy "Buck Grub" you're buying Riceland Foods rice bran.....it's nothing more than the powder byproduct of milling rice. They used to throw it away, now they sell it as Buck Grub for a premium. We get the generic. Our deer will step over a pile of corn to get to the rice bran. Yet, another friend at a deer camp not 75 miles away says that they've tried it for years and their deer hate it, and love corn.

So, like anything else, it's all a crapshoot. Deer are mystical creatures that hate rules.

[rossman40]

I think deer are hard to get to feed on something new or un-natural to their environment. I have had them not touch a salt block but in the same spot I could take the water softener pellets and stomp them into the ground and they'll come by and dig them up. A friend of mine put in some high tech food plots and the deer didn't touch them for two years.

Having a attractant is one thing but in our situation at the farm the deer are already there and the nutritional value of the grape attractant isn't much. I like to think the main goal of our mineral lick is to provide minerals (not just salt, calcium and phosphate but also the trace minerals) and we are going to stick with vitamin supplements in a attempt to keep the local herd healthy. As a result we get pretty good traffic thru the property. There was one guy on the net talking about adding a tick repelant to corn and feeding that which sounds interesting as we have a serious deer tick problem around the cabin.

What we are doing at the farm is clearing for food plots and once we clear we seed with a common pasture mix. This gives us a chance to do the final touches to the clearing without worry of erosion and a chance to get soil PH and fertilizer levels where we want them before planting expensive stuff. This spring we are going to put in some strips (6' wide, 50-100' long) of chicory and in the fall we are going to try some winter oats. Next year we may add some other strips of maybe brassica or high tech mixes. Our goal is to give them a better feed source that is not the fields along the road.

[edge]

It is funny that you mention ticks.

I started hunting in a club about 16 years ago, and if you set foot on the property you were guaranteed to have a half dozen ticks on you until after the first hard freeze.
We had tons of raccoons and you often saw 4 or 5 pass by as you waited for daylight.

Then, about 8 or ten years ago we had a rabies epidemic come through the area. A jogger was attacked by a fox, and for a few months the whole area stuck from rotting animals.

The year after that, and up until the present time it is very rare to find a tick, not even on the deer harvested in the early bow season in September and October!
I also have not seen a raccoon since the outbreak.

edge.

[northny]

Rossman, definately go for the chickory. I have about 4 acres (different locations of 1/2 to one acre each) with combination of chickory and clover, and two sites of just chicory, and another 3 acres in brassica) When the summer gets dry and things go brown, the chicory is still bright green! Those dandelion like tap roots go down to the water, and the deer seem to really like them. I have had no problem with deer adapting to eating any of the new items we planted. The plantings do better now with pH and fertilizer up to norms, but they still did well when we just disc'd the field and rolled the seed in. Now we till, lime, fertilize, seed, roll or cultipac. I don't think the deer appreciate the difference.

[youp50]

I have had a white salt block out for three years and only a couple of porkies came by. It was on a stump and was all but melted away. Last year I mixed some stock salt (red) and some 'Sweet Licks' mineral and some mono cal/ di cal phosphate. There is not much of the stump left and I find the deer eating the clay, too.

Something has happened to the calcium phosphate supply. The local feed store had repackaged it in smaller bags. They were not afraid to charge for the repackaging either.

For a fall time food plot, in this area, it is hard to beat a well fertilized, proper pH plot planted in winter wheat or rye grain. I get three years from one seeding. In August, I simply mow the ripe grain with a rotary mower and till the plot shallow. There are a couple of weeds up here that will also do well and need to be taken care of every three years or so. The deer here really like the green growth after the hard frosts.

[mshm99]

Plain white salt. The pic from Sept.2007 says it all. It has gotten deeper since then. However I'm open to try some thing different.



mshm