I'm in the process of setting several new blinds & feeders for rifle hunting. I'm just looking for some thoughts on distances. We're going to have a couple at 80-100 yards for the kids to learn/shoot. Others are negotiable at this point.

depends on the lay of the land and what distance your comfortable shooting at.

you're going to get a wild variety of answers here. and they're all going to boil down, to put them where you want them.

my thoughts are that feeder distance needs to be a combination of a distance that you're comfortable shooting combined with whats realistic for the location. in real dense cover, a distance of 50yds might be good, in more open space 100-200yds might be better. don't put one that far if you're not comfortable shooting that far.

the whole reason for a feeder is to bring and hold animals in an area where they are in a good position to present a shot. so no reason to draw them to an area where you can't reliably shoot.

personally, i like 75-100yds. its a good comfortable shot. most folks sight/practice at 100yds. its far enough that the deer don't hear your every rustle. unless its your preference that you like to shoot a long ways, i don't see a need to go farther.

all mine have been at the 100 yard mark and usually exactly, im a little OCD and use the range finder when setting up feeder and set it at exactly 100 yards at the center of where the feeder is. Never been too close for me and always ben very comfortable shot for anyone we took hunting being thats what 90% of people sight in there rifles at.

I like 150-200 yards but it all depends on you and your shooting ability..

I have mine at about 70 yards and it's too close when I have the kids in the blind with me. Without the kids, or when we aren't there, there are deer all over the feeder. The kids just make too much noise. I went close thinking it would be easier for the kids their first year. By the end of the season, I was wishing I had been a little farther away. Now, from that same blind, there is a game trail about 120 yards away and my son has shot a doe and buck at around 120 yards and I have shot a doe at about 140 yards. I'm setting up a new area and I'm looking to back off to something between 100 and 120 yards. We practice at 100 yards on the range and it should be far enough away that we'll be able to get away with a little noise in the blind. At least that's what I'm going with based on the fact that we have no issues seeing deer on the game trail when we are in the blind; but not at the feeder.

This

Same here.

I think if you get to far away you can't get a real good look at the bucks to judge the accurately just my opinion though for what its worth

Swarovski

I'm confident out to 300 yards but I've been shooting over 50 years. When I hunted from a stand, I tried to get betwen 150 and 200 yards away. If you can't shoot that far, then obviously that's not the set up for you. For kids just starting out, I'd keep it around 50 yards or so. Either strategy is dictated to a large degree by the terrain you're hunting. I hunted a place in East Texas for 11 years and 70 yards was the longest shot I ever attempted. You couldn't see over 30 or 40 yards for the most part so that dictated where I set up. I would just sit on the ground under a tree so I didn't have to deal withthe possibility of a big box scaring them. My Son killed his first deer at about 8 yards with a Marlin 1894 in 357 mag. Obviously, you're not going to get many shots at that range if you're sitting in a box.

I like mine right next to my stand, but I was a huge fan of whack-a-mole as a kid.


Just sayin....

R

i shot my first several deer with an old M-1 .30 carbine. the place we hunted was so thick with cedar that we had to work our butts off just to make enough of a clearing to shoot barely 30yds. it worked though.

agree, needs to be at a confident distance for shot placement and also depends on terrain. Most of mine are set up in the 75-125 yards, but I have a couple out at about 200 yards due to the lay of the land in a more open area.

On a previous lease, we had a nice sized kidney shaped field that we placed 3 feeders (tree line far side) & 3 tripods (near side tree line at creek) with each of the stands about 200 yards apart with each feeder about 90-100 yards across the field with about a 50 foot wide food plot thur the center of the field... but you could get in the center tripod and hunt over all three feeders but the outside two feeders were about a 250 yard shot ... not everyone would be comfortable making that long of a shot though.

As far as you can comfortably shoot if its in an area deer can feel comfortable frequenting it.

Whatever your comfort zone is or the ability of the shooter. For me I like 100 to 150 yards to the feeder.

I like my feeders around 100-110 yards. of course, I put the deer where I want them using a tail gate feeder.

I think 80 yards or so is about right. Far enough away that you can get away with a little noise, but close enough to be able to really get a good look at the animals coming to the feeder.

175 yards is my number.

100 yards

One of the really good things about putting some distance between you is the amount of noise you can get away with. I was sitting in a stand about 180 yards from a feeder. I wasn't seeing any deer so I closed my eyes for a few minutes. When I woke up opened my eyes, there was a good buck standing at the feeder. I forgot that my binoculars were in my lap and bolted upright. The binoculars hit the floor, my chair nearly turned over, and raising the window sounded like an old windmill. The buck never heard any of it. Or anything else shortly afterward.

That's me. Had to re-engineer a couple for my daughter though.

I've got 1 of my stands set up for kiddos..feeder is 110, deer typically cross at 50&70yds..older bucks tend to cross at either 70 or 225-275 range.

X3

You will have more mistakes forgiven the farther your feeder is from your stand (assuming your equipment/ability is compatible).