Hunt 365 March 2019-Food, Stands, Habitat

Last month I told you, the hunter/landowner, that if you concentrate on food, stand locations, and habitat that you would be well on your way to creating your own incredible whitetail hunting farm.  These are what I call the big three in hunting farms.  Provide all three and do it right, and your hunting will be great…miss one or two and you’ll be scratching your head as to why your farm isn’t better.  Now, in March, I will start to break down these three essential ingredients to your own incredible farm.

Creating the right habitat

The biggest mistake hunters make when trying to improve the habitat on their hunting grounds is not planning out the improvements themselves.  Our goal as hunters is not just to create outstanding habitat throughout our entire property because in doing so, we could actually make it very hard to hunt that property.  It could also have an end result (if we are not careful) of attracting too many doe family groups that will just set anchor and multiply in numbers.  A farm with substantial habitat improvements can sometimes be worse than a farm with no improvements at all if not done correctly.  Let me explain.

This is where things get tricky.  Let’s first start with creating great habitat in the right places.  If you take a step back and look at your property from a wide view, your goal should be to set up as many bed—to transition area—to evening food source set ups as possible.  The idea behind this method is to hunt the transition areas on evening and morning hunts so that you aren’t bumping deer on your way in to hunt, or when getting down and sneaking out at the end of your hunt.  The habitat you are creating then would be a larger food source on the exterior of your habitat, an interior food source (transition area) just a short distance from your main food source, and then bedding cover layered beyond that.  Bedding close to the main food source and interior plot will most likely be used by doe family groups, and bedding further away will most likely attract bucks.  This can all be accomplished on 20 acres.  If you have more acreage, you can make multiple setups by just reproducing this method.  To save money, you can also utilize the same exterior plot and create multiple transition and bedding areas all lining up to this same exterior food source. 

Breaking it down further, I’ll give you some guidelines to help you picture some distances that I’m talking about.  You can use these as steps to planning your habitat improvements.  At this point don’t worry about the “what”, instead just worry about the “where”.

1. Create or utilize existing exterior food sources of larger size.  Alfalfa fields, soybeans, corn, and even food plots of cereal grains and/or brassicas work great as destination exterior plots.  These food sources should be located outside of your timber or main cover areas.  They are food sources you want the deer to end up at for their evening feeding pattern.  They should also be located in areas that you don’t walk by going in or out.
2. Now, back off 50 or 100 yards or so and create your transition area.  This is usually an area with modest cover and browse, not too much so that doe family groups bed right at your transition area.  A great transition area is one that you can get to on an evening or morning hunt without walking close to or allowing your scent to enter bedding areas.  Great locations are draws leading out to your exterior plots for example.  Plan on putting in a small food plot in this location as well as one or two stands so that you can hunt different wind directions. 
3. Now, backing off another 50 yards or so you can start creating some doe bedding through plantings, hinge cuttings, etc.  Keep in mind that the goal is for doe family groups to use this bedding cover, so don’t make it too close or easy for deer bedded in these areas to hear or see you entering your stands. 
4. Last step, back off another 100 yards or more and create some more pockets of cover that will act as your buck bedding.  It is a good idea to leave some space between doe and buck bedding that is not great habitat to discourage bedding use.  This can be mature timber or even more open ground. 

Using these 4 steps, you can successfully stack deer in an organized order on your property giving all the deer in your deer herd exactly what they want.  The more acreage you have the more times you can repeat this exterior plot—transition area—doe bedding—buck bedding scenario. 

Creating Bedding Pockets

To create a bedding pocket, you need habitat that deer want to use for bedding.  This is an area that contains enough browse that deer can have a small meal during their daytime bedding.  It is also ideal if the area has at least some horizontal cover from downed trees, tall grass or conifers, or other habitat or structure.  If hinge cutting to create this habitat, try hinging several trees to a common location creating a pile of tree tops.  The hinged trees will create good horizontal cover and the open canopy will allow sunlight in to promote deer level browse.  You don’t need to hinge 10 acres, but rather 3-10 trees in pockets.  Deer will bed around the pocket you just created.  Make sure the area is dry.

If you are planting more open ground, pockets of conifers (3-5 trees) in grass is a great combination.  Mixing in some dogwood, hazelnut, elderberry, or other small shrubs and trees can create great bedding habitat.  If using conifers or switchgrass, make sure not to create vast acres of a mono-culture.  Diversity in plantings is key to making great bedding habitat.  Deer love to bed in grass, but only if that space contains other ingredients to a great bedding area like woody browse, broadleaf weeds, or other plants deer can feed on.  My favorite way to create bedding in open ground is a combination of a switchgrass planting with pockets of conifers, mixed in with woody browse. 

If you hunt in hilly country, deer prefer to bed just off the edge of the peak of the ridge.  Sometimes this is referred to as the military crest.  They also love to bed on benches or smaller auxiliary points off the main ridge.  Deer will bed anywhere…but all things being equal, they prefer these types of areas in hilly country.  If you can incorporate this into your bedding areas you create, all the better.

Here’s the point.  Deer will bed anywhere they feel secure and have some daytime feeding available.  But, if we give them what they want, we can manipulate them into bedding where we want them to.  This helps us to align their daily movements into a pattern that we can exploit.  Make no mistake, in hunting wild free roaming whitetails, they don’t always go according to our script.  But if you create the right bedding, they will use it where we want them to. 

Mistakes to Avoid

With the invent of You Tube, on-line information, hunting videos and shows, it seems everybody is putting in better habitat.  But, putting in the wrong habitat, in the wrong places can cause more harm than good to the hunter.  All the time I see these common mistakes hunters make when trying to create better habitat and thus better hunting.  Avoid them, and stick to the strategies I outlined above for better hunting.

1.  Creating “kill plots” all over the place.  The kill plot was and is still a buzz phrase used all over the internet and on the shows.  Kill plots are supposed to be small plots designed small enough that a hunter can kill any deer that enters them.  I’ve seen properties as small as 80 acres with dozens of small kill plots located all over the entire farm.  A kill plot requiring you to walk through your entire property to access it is really a “make all the deer aware you are hunting them” plot.  More is not better.  Plots should not be located haphazardly where they are convenient to locate.  Every little open spot on our properties should not have a “kill plot”.

2.  Creating bedding for beddings sake.  Grabbing a chain saw and getting after it is probably not a great idea.  The last thing you want to do is create bedding habitat close to where you enter and exit your property alerting all the deer you are trying to hunt.  Or, creating bedding habitat in areas that don’t define the kind of movement you can exploit to hunt.  You actually don’t want deer bedding all over your property.  Instead, you want deer to bed in areas that you can control.  Maybe this is creating buck bedding behind doe bedding, or creating doe bedding close to your transition areas.  If you can use bedding to help define movement, you will have better hunting.  Think before you create bedding all over the place. 

3.  All food sources are not necessarily meant to hunt over.  If you can establish a bed to feed pattern using the methods I talk about in this article, the last thing you would want to do is break this pattern by hunting the destination food source or bedding areas so that the deer get pressured, and then move off that pattern.  By leaving your exterior plot alone, you can be assured that as long as food is there, the deer will keep coming.  Same goes for their bedding.  Then, it just becomes a season long cat and mouse game.  A big mistake you can make is to go through all the work and trouble of creating great bed to feed patterns, and then hunt the primary food source.  Cutting them off in a transition area is key to making your property last all season.  If you can’t resist hunting that standing soybean field that is drawing a ton of deer, wait to hunt it during the late muzzy season when the season is almost over.

Creating the right habitat in the right place for the right reasons can turn a poor farm into a great one.  Creating great habitat in all the wrong places can cost you a lot of time and money and can actually make your farm worse.  I’ve seen it many times…both ways.  The most productive method I’ve used is the exterior plot (also called destination plot) —to transition area—to doe bedding—to poor habitat space—to buck bedding.  By hunting the transition areas that are easy to get in and out of, your hunting will be great and last all season.

Next month, we talk what to plant in your food plots using this same methodology of creating great travel patterns and how to make sure you don’t have a farm loaded up with only doe family groups.