Deer licky things!

Beowulf

Well-Known Member
I've just been to the local farm shop and brought 4x2kgs 'Baby Red Rocky' mineral blocks and 5 litres of molasses for £15. Now that beats all these 'block toppers' and 'stump lickers' on price hands down! Muntjac love em! :D
It also helps out your local farmers.

Buck licker salt block 2kgs £4.99 X 4= £19.96 +
stump licker 5 litres £14.99= £34.95

I've just saved £19.95!

And I've still got enough change to buy a portion of chips and gravy, go watch George Formby at Blackpool Pier and have bus fare home! 'Eeee isn't life grand' :lol:
 
hello Beowulf,

I have never used salt or stump licks and would be curious to know how afective they are and some addvice as to how to use them effectivly. Also I have alot of apples and pears that will go to waste this year, do you know of any way to make your own sweet fruit attraction?

craig
 
Beowulf said:
I've just been to the local farm shop and brought 4x2kgs 'Baby Red Rocky' mineral blocks and 5 litres of molasses for £15. Now that beats all these 'block toppers' and 'stump lickers' on price hands down! Muntjac love em!

Do they? Perhaps my Muntjac are just fussy buggers :mad: The salt pastes and stump pastes have always just been washed away by the weather before the deer have made extensive use of them.


grizzley davey said:
Also I have alot of apples and pears that will go to waste this year, do you know of any way to make your own sweet fruit attraction?

Tip them into old plastic 25kg feed sacks and stack them up at strategic locations.The deer will find them and knock the sacks around in order to get at the fruit. Biggest aggravation is clearing up the empty sacks from the hedges and field fences after the winds blown them about.

It is also handy place as a rat and squirrel poison baiting spot. That way you get to kill two birds with one stone. :lol:
 
Wouldn't the bags get caught around the deer's antlers Rabbit?

Grizzley Dave,
I put the blocks amongst the roots of large trees and coppiced hazel stumps in wooded areas with a good tree canopy to protect them against the worst of the weather. Even if they do get wet they take ages to disolve and the area is still attractive to the deer.
The molasses can be smeared on the base of trees or on the blocks themselves. If you check them regularly you will notice small grooves worn away by the feeding deer. Muntjac tend to nibble at the same piece, extending the groove; so you get a jaw line impression in the block.
I don't tend to shoot over these areas too much as the deer get wise! Its good to observe the deer licking the blocks and choose your cull beasts as they pop by to have ago at the nice tasting rocks.
I have used apples before as a 'honey trap' I lay some chopped up apples out (well sweated) in front of my high seat one evening. There were loads of apples, so I thought I'll come back early in the morning and catch them feeding! I got to the high seat before sunrise. When the sun came up all the soddin apples had gone! Greedy Muntjac B**tards!! :eek: :lol:
On my land permission its mostly shooting from hide and high seats because of the amount of trespassers taking short cuts across the land. Plus the terrain is in the Muntjacs favour. For these reasons I prefer to bring the deer to me.
I'm more than happy with the results. :D
 
Beowulf said:
Wouldn't the bags get caught around the deer's antlers Rabbit?

Grizzley Dave,
I put the blocks amongst the roots of large trees and coppiced hazel stumps in wooded areas with a good tree canopy to protect them against the worst of the weather. Even if they do get wet they take ages to disolve and the area is still attractive to the deer.
The molasses can be smeared on the base of trees or on the blocks themselves. If you check them regularly you will notice small grooves worn away by the feeding deer. Muntjac tend to nibble at the same piece, extending the groove; so you get a jaw line impression in the block.
I don't tend to shoot over these areas too much as the deer get wise! Its good to observe the deer licking the blocks and choose your cull beasts as they pop by to have ago at the nice tasting rocks.
I have used apples before as a 'honey trap' I lay some chopped up apples out (well sweated) in front of my high seat one evening. There were loads of apples, so I thought I'll come back early in the morning and catch them feeding! I got to the high seat before sunrise. When the sun came up all the soddin apples had gone! Greedy Muntjac B**tards!! :eek: :lol:
On my land permission its mostly shooting from hide and high seats because of the amount of trespassers taking short cuts across the land. Plus the terrain is in the Muntjacs favour. For these reasons I prefer to bring the deer to me.
I'm more than happy with the results. :D

Not really, and if they do, they soon get rid of them. In the 20 years I've been using that method I've only seen one and he had divested himself of the offending item by the following morning.

As you have found windfall fruit is a far greater attractant than blocks or licks. I also use the odd bag of beans which has a similar attractiveness combined with the ability to give a very wide area a thin scattering of tasty treats.
 
i may be late looking at this but i'm with rabbit on this . Windfall or scrumping fruit is good just don't get caught , beans work well but locall supermarket skips and greengrocer scraps are the best not that i am tight just resourcefull (cabbage,carrots,sprouts,and sweetcorn off and on the cob ) fantastic
 
I agree with you Stone but in my case I don't think the farmer would be too happy with me mounding fruit and veg everywhere. The blocks are good also for the minerals the deer require. I'd rather see the Muntjac eating salt blocks than the desicated remains of rabbits, birds and other deer. (Which I have witnessed).

I use apples in some places, salt blocks in others and when the season is right I set up under crab apple trees and wait to see what comes along. At this time of the year I look for mushrooms patches. After Christmas Guilder Roses bushes. Muntjac are very seasonal feeders.
 
yeh my farmer thought it was higly amusing that i was feeding them when i was suppose to shooting them untill he saw 30+ fallow coming to the feed one night and the watch me shoot 3 of them when they were leaving he leaves me alone now thank god
in your case choose your mushies carefully long stem with a witches hat on been told they are the best you should see all the deer you want even flying ones
 
Hi Beowolf

I have a small farm which predominently grassland but ringed by trees and i am begining to Muntjac around. In fact there was one on the lawn this morning. What can I do or plant to help create an environement that they well like and stay in.
 
Hi Ssgpiv,
I would start by looking at what trees you have. Most old farms have Hazel trees 'Coppice'. Cut a few of these down to the point where the stems emerge from the main stem or 'crown' with a bow saw or chainsaw. The resulting new growth this spring will bring the muntjac in for the sweet new buds. Muntjac love bramble and wild raspberries. Generally clear away as much bracken as possible and see what comes through in the spring. The trick is to give enough cover to make the munties feel safe and to browse freely, but at the same time allows you nice safe shots.

An old stalker told me only yesterday that muntjac like parsnips this time of the year. Sure enough, this morning I watched a doe chewing the tops off the parsnips in the farmers veg plot! :lol:

Another thing, I don't think that it is by accident that Muntjac are mainly found in the centre of England. The traditional Midland hedgerows provide safe roads for them to travel unseen give shelter and have some browse all year round. Blossom, buds and shoots, wild fruits and nuts. Use what you see around you and observe what the munties eat throughout the year.
 
hi ssgpiv if you hav no coppicing available try planting afew hazel with some dogwood in coners of fields to create small spinneys leave to grow wild. may be plant a small maize cover crop munties love the corn set up a few pheasant feeders with spirals or trays just fill with wheat and crushed or whole maize and create a veg plot and don,t shoot all your bucks on site cos they keep a territory which brings in does which causes copulation and more deer best of luck
 
hi beowulf please don't shoot those flying munties they are planes just taking off it's the mushrooms
 
Hi stone.

Thanks for the advice i am new at this and want to create a deer friendly zone. There is a stalker around here (leicester) that believes that the current population of munties is transitory but I am not so sure. I am certainly seeing them more and more and can pretty much do what I want to the land to make it the kind of place they want to stay. We have a stream and a couple of ponds, the woodland which is not extensive is predominently broad leaf with alot of willow by the stream. The willow will coppice well and I understand that this is good for Roe but dont know about muntjac. Would you recommend licks. i tried two salt licks that I had for cattle last year but cannot say i saw any sign that they were being used before the rain dissolved them completely.
 
hi ssgpiv i had the same results with salt licks so never used them again but then the ground i had plenty of other natural supplements and munties are very territorial so a badly placed lick will hardly get touched on the other hand a lick in the middle of a territory will only get used by 2/3 munties every couple of days if they are used to them being small animals the traces are small once you hav established the which buck is which and how big his territory is, then you can tell how often he marks his boundary usauly fraying small saplings check for size of slots to determine females and young and how well travelled the tracks are willow are good trees to fray as they mark easy setting up highseat by ponds and feed points will provide chances for munties and foxes and maize cover crop along the stream provides food water and cover for family groups at the moment a couple of hand fulls of beans scattered along the edge of the stream will keep him occupied long enough for a shot the list could go on but its time for me to hit the hay but with all the helpfull comments you hav had from everyone some will work better for you than others good luck and happy hunting
 
If anyone would care to look in my section of the trophy room photos you will see a picture entitled 'Mineral Block' that shows that the use of these blocks is effective.

Muntjac are present in the North Warwickshire/Leicestershire area and are settled groups as well as some transitory individuals as you would expect at this time of the year with limited food sources and young males looking for territories of their own.
As I have mentioned before Muntjac like dense cover, disused railway lines, quarries and coal mining areas. Again the formerly heavyly industrialised Midlands is ideal.
The farm I stalk has plenty of set aside and is flanked with quarries. If you want muntjac on your land reserve areas for natural regeneration of scrub woodland and bramble.
 
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