The bait market can be a confusing one, and no game leaves as little room for error as deer can. Deer are unforgiving prey and trying to use the wrong attractant can spoil a hunt before it’s even begun.
Since you want to mix the attractant with corn, we’ve compiled five of our favorite deer attractants that can be placed in or one food to bring the deer running.
Each product entry has its pros and cons explicitly listed out so that you can see their features at a glance, and we’ve even thrown in a buyers’ guide that goes into the different types and applications of attractants on offer.
There’s also an FAQ that dispel some deer baiting myths, too, so that you’re not led astray when on your hunt.
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This is our Winner!
Our Pick
Is hunting season coming to an end? If you want to want to see which product we’d recommend with no reading and no fuss, here’s our top product.
We chose the Lucky Buck Apple Flavored Mineral Supplement since it provided a year-round supply that deer love, and for a decent price. See the features we liked about it below:
- An apple flavored mineral supplement that attracts deer on its own or when mixed with food like corn.
- Contains no molasses that cause deer to overeat.
- This batch should last you all year round, and there’s no site preparation required, you can just dump it on the ground and wait nearby.
- The 20lb bucket is reasonably priced compared to other attractants of similar sizes.
Best Deer Attractant to Mix with Corn - Comparison Table
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Best Deer Attractant to Mix with Corn - Reviews
Our first product is a large 20lb bucket of Lucky Buck Apple Flavored Mineral Attractant, a tub of mineral supplements that mix well with a variety of foods including corn.
They won’t cause the deer to overeat like other attractants can when mixed with more filling food due to their lack of molasses content.
There’s no site preparation required with the LBM20 attractant as it can be thrown onto the ground alone or mixed into food, and it can be used all year round before you get to the bottom of the bucket.
The 20lb bucket is reasonably priced for what you get out of it too, especially when similar attractants at similar quantities can be even more expensive, making them a responsible and cost-efficient product to mix into your corn. Before you leave, why not check out our best deer hunting gear guide - and see what our top picks are.
Pros
Cons
Our second option is a product that happened after Evolved Habitats combined two of their best-selling products, their Deer Co-Cain deer cane powder with their Black Magic liquid attractant.
The Deer Co-Cain Black Magic collaboration is a hybrid of deer cane and liquid that acts fast to bring deer in as soon as it’s put down.
The mix is enriched with nutrients like calcium, phosphorus, and sodium which work to bolster the health of deer herds so that the quality of deer can improve at your favorite hunting grounds.
It has a very strong licorice smell, but it isn’t that bad compared to some of the other bait smells you can get. It works best when the weather is warm and so may underperform in wintry conditions, and the price for 4.5lbs is a bit steep for how much product you actually get. Be sure to check out our list of the best deer decoys for more great items like this.
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Available in 15 or smaller 5.5lb bags, the Wildgame Innovations Acorn Rage mix is our third product on this list. It’s a bag of powder attractant made with real acorns that were developed to promote healthy deer growth so that any deer you don’t hunt will be healthier for future hunts.
Its concentrated formula is easy enough to use, being usable right out the bag with no preparation, but in these circumstances, we’d obviously recommend mixing them into some corn feed into feeders.
This can be especially handy if your deer usually ignore corn, since now your feed mixes will have some extra acorn to attract them.
This powder bag should last a fair while, and can provide year-round nutrition to deer populations, particularly whitetail deer. Find more great products like this by checking out our guide to the best deer protein feeders
Pros
Cons
The penultimate entry to our list is something a bit different with the HME Scent Web Apple, a patented scent web spray that also has a wick delivery system too. For the purposes of mixing it with corn, it should be sprayed on or near corn so that the apple scent will attract deer to the corn.
If you want to use it in the field, it also uses a Magnum propulsion mechanism that shoots webs up to 15 feet away from you. There’s 300 foot of web in the can which cuts down on messy accessories and is able to be stored easily.
If you are planning on using it in the field or getting your corn attractant mix ready shortly before you’re expecting your prey, this product can make a loud noise when spraying that can spook deer.
This is easily mitigated by prepping your mix before reaching your hunting grounds.
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Our last item on the list may be one of the most multi-functional products here but its price and scarce internet presence lets this product down, the Crooked Bend 25lb Food Plot Seed.
Deer like sunflower seeds and soybeans, that’s no secret, and so we made sure to include a food plot attractant that includes these so that you can mix them with corn immediately, but also plant them to reap the benefits of a food plot attractant later on.
Those soybeans have healthy protein in them that’ll help the bucks grow stronger antlers, so this mix can be used as an investment into the deer you’ll hunt at this plot in the future. That plot will also sprout a lot of red and crimson clovers which help repair the plot soil too.
If planted, you’ll also notice that the sunflowers that grow from this mix will also attract edible bird game such as wild turkey and pheasant, so you can have something to keep your aim fresh and your plate full during deer off seasons.
As we mentioned, this large bag of seed has a large price tag to match. We’re sure it’s a reasonable price for the size of the bag and the fact that they can be used to grow your own food plots, but in the context of this list it’s a pricey option to consider.
There are also no reviews on its Amazon page, probably related to the price, and so if you decide this option is for you then be sure to give your thoughts on it in the page’s comment section.
Pros
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Best Deer Attractant to Mix with Corn - Buyers Guide
How to choose the best deer attractants
There’s a wide range of deer attractants available, and an even wider range of factors to consider when buying and laying those attractants. Hopefully this buyers’ guide will clear a lot of things up for those of you who aren’t in the know. Aside from the types of deer attractant and the types of deer, you should also be thinking about the season, time, and the region of your hunt too.
Types of Deer Attractant
Deer attractants come in different shapes and forms, all with different uses. Let’s go through some of them and explain their qualities, as well as which ones are the most suitable to be mixed with corn.
Deer scent attractants are attractants that come in the form of sprays, which usually include the pheromones of real deer. They can either be sprayed into the air to disperse properly or sprayed directly onto food sources or foliage near the food sources so that they can lure the deer to the food. These can work with corn due to the fact that it’s just a pheromone spray that doesn’t really affect the corn.
Powder attractants also work well with corn feed due to the same reasons, those being that it’s fine and unobtrusive, and so mixes in with the food well. They tend to contain mineral salts too and are so mixable with other foods that they can even mix with non-foodstuffs like soil and still attract deer.
There are also food plot attractants which are either food that’s pre-mixed with attractant or are themselves an attractant. You can even get seeds so that you can grow food attractants so that you can get the benefits of the crop repeatedly.
Mineral attractants are similar to powders but are instead solid licking blocks of salt that are deployed at strategic hunting positions. Whilst useful as attractants, they aren’t very useful to be mixed with foods unless your idea of an attractant food mix is a brick of salt with some corn sprinkled on top.
Liquid attractants are very similar to scent attractants in the way that they’re made up, since spray cans convert liquid held inside of them. With liquid attractants, however, the attractant is dispersed with a wick that drags along the ground. This means it works as you walk through the environment, and so is a very hands-off method of attracting deer. This means we wouldn’t recommend it for food mixing since it’s more for those on the trail.
Types of Deer Species
Deer is a very vague term that refers to many different species of animals, and when hunting that vagueness can become even more of a problem where the logistics are concerned. This is because they’ll have differing behaviors and tastes in food.
Paying attention to the products themselves should tell you whether they’re suitable for all or most deer species whereas other products will outline if they’re for specific deer, assuming that the products are of a high-enough quality that they include this information on the label.
The Hunting Season
Knowing when to use the attractants can be as important as knowing which attractants you actually want to use. The most popular hunting seasons for deer species are their rutting periods, especially for hunting bucks. The rut can be broken into three parts, the pre-rut, the rut peak, and the post-rut.
Many species rut in the fall, so we’ll use this as an example. In that case the pre-rut is a period where bucks will group together to gorge and get lots of energy. This is where attractant food will be really popular since the bucks will eat a lot. For the rut’s peak itself, sprays and liquid attractants are better since the bucks will always be on the move.
For the post-rut time period the deer will get lazy, so they’ll be less responsive to baiting in general. This doesn’t mean that they won’t work, however, and if you find yourself trying to attract deer in a post-rut period you should go for the more solid attractants like mineral solids.
As for the time of day, it’s generally accepted that attractants are better during morning hunts since this guarantees the best visibility and ensures that you’re in place before the deer start mobilizing. If the deer in your area are very skittish then it’s best to be in place an hour before dawn so that you can be ready.
The Hunting Region
The hunting region is another factor to consider, especially if you’re hunting away from where you live, in which case you’re less likely to know how much deer-attracting food is naturally in the area and whether you can use that to your advantage or not. After all, if there’s an abundance of natural food to use as an attractant, it can save you from investing in ones to bring. If food isn’t abundant, you can bring your own attractant food or use scents or powders in with corn.
You should place any attractant or bait over a wide area so that they’re not grouped up together, which tends to result in inaccurate shots or collateral damage. Wind direction may also be a factor for the type of attractant you choose, since you’ll want the scent of an attractant to actually reach the noses of deer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does peanut butter attract deer?
Peanut butter works well as an attractant, so much that it’s a favorite of professional hunters. The smell and taste should bring them close, no matter the quality of the peanut butter itself.
If going down this route, it’s best to jury-rig a small dispenser by nailing a jar to a tree and smear some on the tree so that the deer will stay for longer trying to get as much peanut butter as possible, giving you ample time for a shot.
Does human urine spook deer?
It’s a longstanding old wives’ tale that urinating during a hunt will spook deer, and so you should bring a bottle to store it in. This is because the urine supposedly registers in the noses of deer, and so they are spooked by it and run away. There’s a wide range of scents that deer are spooked by since, like many in the animal kingdom, their sense of smell is their primary means of threat detection and defense through avoidance.
However, it may be surprising that this is not the case. It seems, according to research, that the urine of humans doesn’t disturb deer that much. If you’re peeing off of your tree stand then it may make some unnecessary noise, but otherwise you won’t have to worry about this. That said, it’s best to minimize scent so try not to make a habit of urinating in the wilderness.
