Well ive be hunting for a while now. Ive used many brands of feeders and feeder motors. Ive mixed and matched and come to some conclusions.
1. All metal setup is the best. (Metal barrel and metal feeder)
2. Anything plastic will get chewed up by squirrels after a while. (Mainly plastic barrels.)
Ok so I've totally went to metal barrels but the only metal feeders are "Wildgame" (horrible garbage crap, i have 4 and they are all useless if your not gonna check on them every week) and "Ontime" feeders which are hard to find, expensive and run on AA batteries. (Dont have time to be buying AA batteries all the time).
With that said my ideal setup is Moultrie metal barrel and feeder (feeder us plastic tho).
But i wanted a good cheap tripod. (I know moultrie makes an all metal barrel tripod but it was out of my budget)
So i bought one of these:
Now its all plastic. I just cant believe all the biting points it has for squirrels to sit on and chew through the barrel over time.
How many people ever found their feeder with a fat squirrel inside of it either on attack mode or dead??
Well i got this feeder on amazon 70 bucks cheaper then anywhere i could find so i ordered one.
So my goal is to squirrel proof it. My first step was to put a guard around the plastic feeder and a metal guard around the wire:
Ill get that mounted then i think im going to buy a metal feed can and put it over top of the feeder to totally cover it from squirrels.
Ill keep you all posted on the progress!!
Sent from Mossy Oak Swamp Bottom
Carl, have you ever investigated the On Time feeder motors? Google On Time and they have some all aluminum cased feeder motors, they come with a metal bracket and funnel that attaches to the bottom of the barrel. Been using these for many years and have no complaints. I use the old style with the analog clock rather than the digital controls. They run on 11 AA batteries, 1 for the clock and 10 for the 15 volt motor. They will literally run for 8 or 10 months on one set of batteries!
Treefarmer
:oops forgive me for not completely reading all your post. I read the part about the "Wild Game" feeders and overlooked the other comment about On Time motors.
We have not had any issues with batteries with the On Time feeder motors. I normally put new batteries in the motors right before hunting season starts and they last all season without any problems, feeding twice a day. As soon as the season is over, I cut them back to one feeding a day and this carries it through the spring and summer.
There is a hardware store in South Port that sells these and does the warranty repair work on the On Time feeders. They used to charge $5 to repair, went up to $10. What ever is wrong, is covered by this small charge. After several years a bushing will go to howling and several times the spinner plates have broken due to metal fatigue. The guy that does the warranty work usually has a spare motor to lend till he gets yours repaired.
I own 3 of them, run 2 all the time and one is a spare that is ready if something happens to one in use.
As you can tell, I'm sold on this brand of feeder motor!
Treefarmer
