American Hunter Feeder

After two of our old feeders had mechanical difficulties we purchased an American Hunter Feeder. The American Hunter feeder has a varmint zapper option that is sold separately and that is one of the reasons we bought this feeder. Raccoons have long been a big problem for us at our deer feeders so we thought that giving them a hair raising experience might not be a bad thing.

The American Hunter R-Pro utilizes an analog clock timer that operates on one AA battery. You can select up to twelve feeding times, one each hour. Operation is simple. You just set the clock by rotating the clockface to the current time of day to set it and then push pins in on each hour that you want the feeder to spin. The length of spin time is adjusted by turning a knob and is variable from 2 to 30 seconds. After the first few months the clock has been constantly losing time each week even when we install fresh batteries. This sure makes it tough to know when the feeder is going to spin.

The spinner operates on one 6 volt lantern battery. The first Energizer battery lasted six months after attaching the varmint zapper after the first couple of months. The second alkaline battery did not last as long. It seems that the alkaline batteries do not provide quite enough power to spin the feeder plate as quickly as it should spin.

We are now using rechargeable 6-volt batteries. They seem to have a little more power to turn the spinner plate. We've found that once these batteries lose a little bit of their power they too have difficulty spinning the plate so we bought a second one and we charge and change them out on each visit. So far rotating charged batteries in this manner has kept the feeder operating properly although it still spins sluggishly at times.

The cone is integrated with the feeder housing and this makes for simplified installation and no real need for adjustment. All that you need to do is use four screws or bolts to attach it to the bottom of your container.

The American Hunter feeder is simple to install and operate, but the construction is not real sturdy. The outer housing is all plastic and I could see it easily breaking. If the feeder were to fall I don’t think the plastic housing would survive.

We had problems with raccoons stealing from us again so we’ve purchased the varmint zapper. We installed it and I tested it and can say that it definitely works. I won't test it again. It definitely kept the raccoons away from this feeder.

So far I prefer the Smart Timer feeder to the American Hunter, but I prefer the varmint zapper to the varmint cages that we've had to make for the Smart Timer feeders.

A digital model is also available. The reason that I bought the analog model is simply because it was the model that was available the day I visited Cabela's.

On May 10, 2008 a black bear knocked the feeder over and the American Hunter broke off right at the bottom of the can. I'm not sure if the feeder broke off when the whole thing hit the ground or if the bear knocked it off. At this time it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to fix this feeder and use it again.

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