I have been playing with feeders for years since I started hunting. I set one up in the field behind my house and would watch them during the summers. First thing is, do not get the dusk and dawn one, if the deer are under it and it goes off, I don't care who tells you different, unless they are hand fed deer, they will take off like a bat out of hell and a mature buck most likely won't come back or only at night. Second thing is, don't get a tripod or bucket feeder, I've watched countless bucks and does under it feeding and suddenly look up, back up and be alert. For some reason they do not like it. I took 10" PVC about 5' long, cut a round piece of plywood just smaller to fit inside and screwed it on the bottom with a hole cut in the middle and attached the spinner. I made a bracket to hang it on a tree so the spinner is about 6' off the ground. You take it off the bracket to fill. It sits against the tree and since its only 10" wide and not 24" or how ever big a bucket is, it looks like a tree trunk and blends right in. Deer rarely look up anymore. I set my feeder to go off at 2pm. I do not want it going off at night or morning and evening or anytime deer are around to get spooked. That being said, I hunted 200yds from someone's dusk feeder and had it go off while I had does under me. I could hear it no problem, the deer looked in that direction for a few secs but went back to grazing on acorns. Again, I have been tinkering with feeders in my backyard since I was 16 and literally had nothing better to do than to build them and watch deer in the binos all summer.
