Deer are herbivores, meaning they eat plants. They can’t eat peanut butter because it is made of peanuts, not plants. But what if you use it as an attractant for your hunting?
Let’s find out the details below!
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Can deer eat peanut butter?
I have a lot of experience using peanut butter, and I have personally seen deer fight over the jar nailed to the tree.
The jar always appears to be licked clean. I tried setting out a pot for three weeks in Northern WI and never saw a deer track near it.
Take a high vantage point and spend 1 or 2 days looking. If you do this, you won’t need to bait them.
Screwing the lid to a tree sounds like a good idea, but I bought a 6lb can from Sams with a pop-off cap. I’m using this for rail cam pics, not baiting.
Bear can smell peanut butter for a mile. My neighbor screws the lid to a tree and cuts the bottom out of the jar. We do this in the backyard for the neighborhood deer that our wives make us watch but never talk about the shooting. They love it.
How do you put peanut butter on a deer?
A simple yet effective way of getting deer to visit your garden is by using a utility knife. You can start from the bottom by cutting it off a peanut butter jar. This method is terrific for attracting deer.
We put 1 “x6” x4′ out in the food plot with peanut butter on them and look at the does fight over the bords to lick off the p/b. A 3# tub of P/Butter at BJs is $4.99.
I have used it before; the coons will eat it before a deer will. An excellent place to get the peanut butter is at the store they had it for., 98 a jar last year. And expensive too if you use much of it.
I put out a jar two days ago for the first time and checked it today; it’s half gone. I have to get a camera on it. I put it about three feet up on a giant oak.
Unscrew the top, nail it to a tree at about waist-length height, cut the jar’s bottom out. Screw jar onto lid that settled to the tree. It will probably keep for one week or uglier.
Using peanut butter and vanilla to attract deer
We can substitute artificial vanilla, but we prefer the natural version. It’s because we have tried it before and we hardly see any success.
All you need to do is pour the vanilla on the ground. Just make sure you have some in your house all of the time!
We used it before in a camera setup on a club. It worked well. But it also attracted every raccoon, possum, coyote in the county, and many ants and bees.
It works great for deer, but if you kill one near it, you’d better be sure and brush its teeth. If the GW is close enough to see your corn pile, he’s close enough to smell your peanut butter.
It works great, but in some places but at some of our property where the deer don’t have access to peanut fields, then jump away from it.
Using corn and apple to attract deer
Best coon bait I ever tried. I love to get the deers on camera. Deers love it but use the “institutional size” in a 2.5 or 5 gal bucket. Well, ants like it too.
I tried it, and my findings were different. I put out the bowl to see what they would do – next to cubes of corn, mixed in with the corn kernels, and right on top of them – but they didn’t go near it.
When mixed, they ate what corn they could and left most of it. It is where we have 12-15 deer coming to a feeder—corn @100lbs per day and blocks, vitamins, minerals, etc.
Aside from corn, you might want to try apples and acorns. Apples or acorns are also good, or a salt lick with molasses.
Other food as a deer attractant
Deer will walk over the corn to get to persimmon or peanut butter flavored rice bran. Well worth the extra $2 per bag.
The peanut butter rice bran is the best from what I’ve seen. It doesn’t like to be rained on. Sure don’t have to worry about this right now. It’s like crack cocaine to an addict. High in fat and crude protein too.
Another food that you might want to try is sweet feed from Agway. Nine bucks for a 50lb bag. We put out about 50 lbs of corn with 50 lbs of horse charger per day. Bait hunting is illegal in VA. But I make sort of a legal pile in the summer.
They also love 12% horse feed. It cost $7.00 for a 25 bag Horse charger, which you guys are calling Sweet feed. The charger has the highest protein content of all the feeds there. We like a feed with at least 16 percent protein.
What food to feed a deer?
I feed them corn in the winter, and the spring and early summer, I feed corn/soybean mixed. Has corn, molasses, protein, etc. I’ve never seen the deer inhale this stuff the way they do.
Sometimes I’ll throw a few pairs out. Or maybe mix in a big can of raisins. The property is too small for food plots, so this will keep them interested in the property when nothing else will.
I give the deer salt and mineral blocks topped with a block topper. And I have food plots in my woods.
At the other times, I tried a handful of “Buck Lickers” this year, and the deer didn’t touch them. They love the old corn in the feeder. I’ve also put out alfalfa for them.
It lasts me about a month. I start in mid-January, after the hunting seasons are closed. I feed corn and protein, and then if I’m lucky, I feed them a 100gr rocky mountain ti or a 165 gr Nosler partition. Purina makes good products for supplemental feeding.
To feed or not to feed deer
The deer are better equipped for these conditions, so they might not need any help. A few Baker County residents have tried to help deer by feeding them.
Some deer-feeders concur with ODFW that it’s dangerous to feed deer alfalfa. Alfalfa can make the animals sick or even kill them.
But the fundamental conflict remains -should people feed deer at all?
Many deer will be saved by human intervention, but that doesn’t mean we should stop trying. ODFW was involved in a deer-feeding campaign in Baker County (Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife).
There are some Oregonians who are concerned about the issue of deer feeding. Still, Oregon’s Department of Fish and Wildlife doesn’t seem inclined to try and prevent people from feeding deer. That said, there are other ways for someone to show their dedication or concern for animals besides animal feedings.
