For a wonderful whitetail hunting experience using deer feeders or if involved in quality deer management, I encourage you to follow these simple suggestions. First start with a good barrel. You can purchase barrels with timers or as separate components. Plastic barrels are recently becoming quite popular. I prefer a metal one's though. Buy a quality, digital 6 volt timer mechanisms in a metal housing from a reputable dealer who honors warranties, chances are you'll use that warranty. Place a deer feeder helper between the barrel and the timer. Doing so will save you many, many hours of time and frustration later on. Use only high quality feeder legs as the lighter, thin walled legs will certainly buckle due to the weight of the corn and pressure applied from livestock such as cows leaning on the leg. If you make your own barrel, I suggest that you buy 4 leg brackets and make a ladder using two of the legs and angle iron for steps. It's a good ideal to put feet or pads under the legs to keep them from sinking under the constant weight and make sure each leg is anchored to the ground. Any size rebar and bailing wire will work. Get a decent metal lid, I tried using plastic lids, but squirrels ate holes, leading to rain water spoiling the corn. I like the metal lids that are retained to the barrel using springs. It will save you two trips up and down the ladder and will keep your lid from blowing off during windy conditions. Always use a varmint guard, raccoons and such will rob you blind and continually break your equipment. Lock or secure any latches you can to prevent bad things from happening. Locks, pins carabineers, and simple wire all work well. Get a solar charger for the battery; it's a good investment to keep the battery from going dead which could eventually ruin an eagerly anticipated deer hunting trip. You can fasten the solar panel vertically, directly to the housing using self-drilling screws. Only fill it with recleaned corn if possible to prevent future clogs. If not, you can buy a corn screen that mounts inside the barrel, or transport the screen from barrel to barrel if you have more than one feeder. The deer feeder helper makes easy work of removing these pesky clogs instantly without you having to jeopardize your equipment in the process. I have seen clogs from rocks, corn bag material, range cubes, dirt dobber nests, corn stalks and cobs, and old clogged feed; remember its agriculture and you are certain to get some debris from time to time. Build you a solid pen made from 36" tall cattle panels to keep out the feral hogs and livestock. Using eight 16' panels in a circle appears to be the minimum size to ensure the deer feel unconfined and comfortable. I do have some feeders without pens for hog hunting. If so, make sure your deer feeder legs are anchored and secure a flat cattle panel to the ground below to prevent a huge mud puddle from forming. These puddles can become a mess and making it very nasty to work on your deer feeders. If you chose to feed protein during the spring and summer, you can remove your timer and place a 4" PVC tube and PVC "T" onto the barrel. I like to leave the timer on, but place a 5 gln bucket around the timer then attach the 4" PVC tube to the bucket. I suggest always perform a fall cleaning before deer season starts to the clean inside of the feeder barrel to remove any debris, even corn/feed dust causes problems.

I like to set my deer feeder timer to trigger 30 minutes before sunrise and 90 minutes before sunset. Doing so lets you take advantage of legal whitetail deer hunting time in the a.m. and allows for a quality deer hunt during the evening. I have experimented with other times such as 10:00 a.m. or noon but it seemed to draw in more turkeys than deer. I have utilized owl decoys to keep the turkeys away but they had minimal effect. I do have my deer feeders activate around 11:00 p.m. during the off season to help that big whitetail buck claim his territory. We all know the big deer move at night and this helps to make him comfortable to the environment. If interested, hog hunting at night makes for an awesome night hunting experience and your guest will love it. Get close and downwind and be prepared. HCR makes a low maintenance light kit for your deer feeders for that purpose. I don't own one yet, but probably will very soon. When setting up your deer blind, remember that guest may accompany you deer hunting from time to time which is great. However, their shooting skills might not be quite as good as we would like. So I try to put my deer blind no further than 100 yards from the deer feeder and downwind as well so they will have a comfortable experience. We certainly want them to be successful. Sharing your white tailed deer hunt with them will leave you forever honored in their memory bank. Upon arrival at the ranch, I like to check the function of my deer feeders immediately, before going to the deer hunting blinds. It is very common to discover relatively simple problem that is easily remedied before a spoiled deer hunt. Once your deer hunt has been a success, always remove your big trophy deer from the area before field dressing. Leaving behind innards and such will have a negative impact to the area by emitting unusual odors and drawing in varmints, encouraging deer to leave and avoid the area, possibly for several weeks. I feel following this particular lead could result in one successful deer hunt into another. During my recent 2007 season, my guest and I harvested over 30 white tail deer under an intensive quality deer management program using one deer blind and two deer feeders with no ill effect on the hunting area. The more we shot, the more they kept coming. So I believe this system is a very valuable quality deer management tool as well as offering a satisfying deer hunting experience. I hope you succeed with your adventure. Happy Hunting and May Yours be the Bigger, Better Buck. Chris Nicholes