Where hunters are allowed to scatter bait, corn is probably the most often used to attract deer. Sugar beets, apples and rice bran are also popular attractants, but not always as easy to find.
Sweet potatoes will get the job done, too.
Ron McGowen of Bastrop, La., learned this from hunting in Arkansas. Sweet potatoes might be the only thing a deer hunter can't use in his home state of Louisiana, but they're legal in neighboring Arkansas.
Ron was eager to try them on his brother-in-law's lease in Barber County, Kan. When he drove up there in 2009, he had 1,000 pounds of potatoes in his truck's bed.
Three weeks before the season opened in 2009, Ron erected a 5-foot-high box stand next to a soybean field and river bottom. About 140 yards in front of the stand, he set up a corn feeder. He dumped the sweet potatoes 100 yards beyond that.
On the second morning he sat in the box, the bull of the woods emerged from the opposite woods line and went straight for the sweet potatoes.
"I turned my scope up to 18X to get a good look at the buck before taking the shot," he told John Phillips, who's writing the story for Rack magazine. "I knew it was a dandy, but I wanted to look at that rack."
The buck fell amidst its breakfast.
That these unusual antlers have a typical 5x2 frame would ordinarily mean the circumference measurements on the two-point side would be insignificant. Yet the mass remains strong enough to account for nearly 17 inches of its BTR composite score of 197 4/8.