Cheap Labor, Drunk Deer, Pears, and Ice Cream Salt

I’m lazy. No point in trying to hide that from anyone. I’m also frugal.

I’d really like to thank the hunters I know for giving me this idea to let me be more of both.

I have a couple of places I’d like to kill off the stuff growing, mostly poison ivy. I’d also like to create small shallows to make starting the new plants a bit easier.

I have deer!

Deer like fruit. Apples make great bait but just about any fruit works.

I also have a pear tree, baking pears, with fruit I never use.

Voilà. Half the answer.

Here’s the plan. Grab enough pears, unripe, bug infested, fallen and rotting, doesn’t make any difference, to fill about a gallon bucket.

Slice, dice, mash, so there’s exposed meat on each pear. Add enough warm water – any temperature you can hold your hand under – to cover the pears. Speed things along with a couple of table spoons of sugar. Drop in a yeast packet.

Set in sun for the rest of the day. You can keep it for up to a week but that requires protection from insects and hungry critters.

While it's fermenting, prepare the bait spot. Dig small shallow spot, big enough to hold salt so it is level with the natural sufrace; add salt. I used ice cream salt but table salt works too. If you've got a big area, prepare several shallows and buy hundred pound bags of salt or get cattle salt with minerals.

Dump fermenting fruit and any liquids in the bucket on top of salt.

And there’s the cheap – nearly free – labor. Let the deer do it.

Why fermenting fruit? Because the odor carries further. Better chance the deer will notice. And salt because when it warms up, deer like salt licks.

Now all I have to worry about is coons getting there first. Drunk deer are bad enough. Have you ever seen a drunk raccoon?