How to Make a Homemade Deer Feeder
Kevin Felts 07.17.18
Deer feeders come in all shapes and sizes. Some are as easy as a piece of 4 inch PVC pipe with a 45 degree splice glued to the bottom. While those homemade deer feeders are easy to build, they allow all sorts of wildlife to feast on the corn.
In this article we are going to look at building a homemade deer feeder from a steel drum. This feeder will have three legs, motor, timer and battery.
Barrel Selection
Steel and plastic barrels both have their ups and downs.
- Plastic barrels do not rust.
- Steel barrels rust, but are rodent proof.
- Steel barrels may bend when knocked over by wild pigs.
If squirrels get hungry enough, they will chew holes in the tops of plastic barrels. Even if the hole is not large enough for the squirrel to gt through, the opening allows water to get into the drum, which causes the corn to rot.
Then there is barrel size. Depending on how long the motor spins, and how much corn is thrown out of the homemade deer feeder, a small 35 gallon barrel may need to be filled up during hunting season.
While a 55 gallon drum holds much more corn than a 35 gallon, the legs on the 55 gallon drum need to much stronger than the 35 gallon. One of the 55 gallon drum homemade deer feeders we had on the hunting lease would hold an easy 300+ pounds of corn. When wild pigs bump the legs to knock the corn out, smaller feeders would fall over.
Deer Feeder Legs
To mount the legs to the feeder, leg kits are available from Amazon. Mounting the legs is as easy as drilling holes through the side of the barrel and bolting the mount to the drum.
When I built my homemade deer feeder, I coated the outside of the holes with silicone, then mounted the bracket. The silicone was to make sure water did not leak in around the bolt holes.
For the legs, call around to metal supply, or fencing companies. I typically get the bracket mounts first, measure the inside diameter, then call around. The thicker the legs the better. If the legs are too thin, wild pigs may be able to bend the legs.
Wild pigs will bump up against the legs to make corn fallout of the homemade deer feeder. If the deer feeder legs are made from cheap thin tubing, the legs may bend and the feeder collapse.
Deer Feeder Motor
Get on Amazon and shop around for the size motor you want for your homemade deer feeder. Mounting the motor is a little more time consuming than the legs. You will need to drill:
- One large hole
- Four smaller holes for bolts
- The large hole will have a funnel that screw to the bottom of it,
- The four small holes are for mounting bolts.
- For the large hole, use either a jig saw, sawzall, or a hole saw for a doorknob.
The motor kit should come with a funnel, which will need to be secured to the bottom of the barrel with self-tapping screws.
Final Thoughts
Building a homemade deer feeder can be an enjoyable experience. All that is really needed is time, patience, and some basic hand tools.
For an added touch, the brackets on my homemade deer feeder were spray painted black. It was just a little something to help prevent the brackets from rusting.
