Deer Feeder Maintenance

Nothing sucks more than to show up for a weekend hunt after a hard week at work only to find that your deer feeder has quite working. Too many times have I sat in the stand watching the sun come up and the feeder never goes off. Talk about a ruined hunt! Coons can be one problem, causing all sorts of damage, but that is usually obvious. The not so obvious problems are the ones you can't see. Mostly it is a dead battery. I always keep a voltmeter in my repair kit and leave the repair kit at the hunting cabin. A volt meter can help you diagnose all kinds of problems when it comes to debugging a feeder. However, the easiest way to avoid feeder malfunctions is to keep those batteries charged. I keep my batteries on a battery maintenance device all year when the feeders are not it service. Even if you charge your battery to 100% after the season is over, the battery will deteriorate just by sitting. Its important to keep them "maintained" all through the off season. Since I have more than one feeder, I have multiple batteries. In the 2nd photo you will notice that they are wired in parallel by jumping all of the positive (+) terminals together and all the negative (-) terminals together. By doing this you only need one charger to keep your batteries maintained in the off season. If you use Solar Panels to charge your feeder batteries during hunting season, see the video below. I will show you how to test those Solar Panels to make sure they are still functioning.