By Horace Gore
Sometime in the late ’90s, Gene Bode, who owned a feed store in Harper, gave me a strange contraption that made a noise like a battery-operated spinner feeder. The little 4-inch square, wooden gizmo—known as the TDK Rattler—would activate by pushing a connector button hidden on the side. Pushing and holding the button caused a battery to give electrical vibration to two loosely attached tin can lids that sounded like a spinner feeder throwing corn. Talk about Yankee ingenuity!
At the time, commercial spinner deer feeders were on every deer lease, and battery-activated corn feeders were selling like hotcakes. Deer hunters liked barrel feeders on high legs or hung by cable from a tree that held about six 50-pound sacks of corn, with a battery clock set for individual feeding times.
Prior to the 1970s, deer hunters depended on oats, wheat, or other food patches to lure deer to the gun. The use of spinner corn feeders completely changed deer hunting when a clock-timed feeder situated near a hunting blind threw corn at hunting times. The spinner feeder made a rattling noise that could be heard throughout the vicinity, bringing deer, turkeys, and hogs to the corn.
Enter “The Rattler”
And now for the gist of this story. Hunters soon saw how quickly deer, turkey , and hogs came to the spinner feeder’s rattling sound as it scattered corn. Naturally, some industrious deer hunter had an idea to make a dummy contraption that sounded like a feeder.
The deer hunter could settle in a quiet place any time of day, and create the noise of the spinner-feeder throwing corn. Any wild bird or animal accustomed to the noise would come for the “corn,” and go to the hunter’s gun. The small gadget caused the demise of many bucks, gobblers, and feral hogs that came to the bogus sound just in time to get a hunter’s bullet, rather than the fresh taste of corn.
Ah, the cleverness of deer-hunter genius.
