Hunt 365 November 2018-In Season Questions
This month I have a couple questions from hunters about in season tactics and I’ll weigh in trying to settle a dispute with one hunting group from NE Iowa.
Where are the deer going?
First up, Aaron writes “It seems like every year I have some pictures of some pretty good bucks on the farm I can hunt, but as each year progresses they all seem to disappear. One by one I no longer get pictures of them and by mid-November of each year I typically no longer see them on my cameras anymore. I try not to put pressure on them as much as possible, but they are still gone. I hunt in the middle of farm country and I’m mostly surrounded by row crops like soybeans and corn. The farm I hunt has some timber on it and also consists of those same row crops. Any ideas of what I might be doing wrong or tips on how to take one of these good bucks would be helpful.” That was Aaron’s initial question.
I was able to correspond with Aaron several additional times through email to better understand his situation and answer his question. This is a very typical scenario that many hunters deal with each year…so let’s take a closer look.
Each year, pictures of nice bucks start showing up by the end of summer and mostly continue on until about mid-November. The timber on the farm Aaron hunts is mostly open hickories with an occasional shingle oak, cedar, or box elder mixed in. Very little bedding cover exists in the timber, especially after the leaves fall off the trees. As far as mast crops go, the few oaks on the property do drop acorns but they are scavenged up pretty quickly each year. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to why the deer travel and eat where they do. After the fall harvest, which occurs each year starting in October and finishing by early November, there is very little food left on the farm. Deer can be seen feeding on the cut beans and corn shortly after harvest, but the numbers of them diminish each day. Aaron does a great job not putting pressure on the deer and rarely bumps deer going in or out of stand locations, as well as while on stand.
I’ve seen this scenario many times before. I once hunted a farm that played out much like this one. The reasons are actually quite easy to identify, but a solution is not always as easy to implement. Without preferred bedding cover on the farm, the deer are simply picking the most convenient place to bed during the early season when hunting pressure is still low, and some daytime browse exists in the timber before heavy frosts. Because there is so much food around, deer are spread out picking a corn field, soybean field, an oak that’s dropping, on any given evening feeding pattern. This haphazard deer movement pattern makes it very difficult to harvest an early season mature buck. Early season whitetail hunting requires some amount of patterning of the deer…these deer are showing no pattern, or switching patterns every few days. After the fall harvest, the local food supply disappears and so the deer literally leave for other ground where food still exists or maybe even where other hunters have planted food plots that still remain. So, I had a few suggestions for Aaron that could make his hunting turn around.
First, it turns out the farm he hunts he has sole hunting rights to. The landowner farms the tillable ground but has expressed willingness to allow habitat improvements and some food plots (although rent would have to be paid on any acreage taken out of production). Because it would be costlier to put in food plots, the number one thing that could be done to hold more deer throughout the season would be to create some bedding cover. This can easily be done by creating small pockets of hinge cut trees. Hinge cut 3-10 trees or so in a group trying to get them all to fall in one spot creating a circle of hinge cut tops. Deer will bed around the thick tops which will create horizontal screening cover…and the light that is allowed in will create more food and still more cover. There’s no need to go nuts doing this…just create two or three of these pockets close to food sources and then back off a couple hundred yards and create a few more pockets. The doe and fawn family groups will tend to use the cover closer to food, and the bucks will tend to use the pockets further away. Doing this alone will have positive lasting affects for Aaron’s hunting grounds.
The next thing I suggested Aaron do is to create some interior transition plots to make it easier to pattern and harvest deer early in the season. This is usually quite simple. Plan an area that deer would likely travel by when heading to the agriculture fields…and then plant an interior plot just inside the timber. This interior plot should “funnel” deer by when they are heading toward a larger ag field because they simply love these small green plots. Bucks will rub and scrape in these areas and does will stage there too before heading out to the larger ag fields. These plots are cheap to make too because they are small (no larger than ¼ acre) and don’t require renting normal crop ground. If you can plan it right, it works best to coordinate your interior plots with the pockets of timber you hinge cut. Plan the pockets of cover so that they are somewhat in line with your interior plots and the final ag fields. This will create an evening and morning pattern of travel…something Aaron hasn’t had.
A final step Aaron can choose to implement would be to go ahead and either rent some tillable ground from the farmer so that he can put in some larger food plots of maybe soybeans or corn…something to hold deer on the farm after the fall harvest; or to just buy some standing beans or corn each year from the farmer so that they are not harvested. In either case, standing corn or beans after the fall harvest will continue to attract and hold deer on the farm. And, as the season progresses, those standing unharvested grain crops will attract more and more deer…something every whitetail hunter dreams of.
To sum up my answers to Aaron, and to any hunter under similar conditions…1. Create bedding cover by hinge cutting small pockets of trees. 2. Create small interior plots between bedding areas and destination agriculture fields. 3. Plant or buy larger food sources of grains like soybeans and corn for lasting preferred food sources. Do all three and any hunter can have some great all-season hunting.
Sanctuary or Not
Next, I’ve been asked to settle a dispute between a group of hunting buddies that have been debating the necessity of creating a sanctuary on their property. Todd from Allamakee County asks “I’m part of a hunting group of 5 hunters. All 5 of us are seasoned archery hunters and have had varying success over the years. Each year, we sit down as a hunting group and plan out the year. We decide things like food plots, stand locations, harvest goals, and other stuff we like to all agree on. We have almost 300 acres to hunt and each year the topic of creating a sanctuary on our farm comes up. We can’t agree on anything. Two of us want a sanctuary, one hunter doesn’t want one at all, and the other two hunters want a sanctuary but still want to go in there to hunt? In other words, we don’t have a sanctuary but each year we argue over if we should have one or not and what the rules would be. We would like to know your opinion on if we should establish a sanctuary and if so, how big and what would be the rules around it? We’ve agreed to try any advice you give us for at least 3 years to see if it makes a difference.”
Well, I don’t know that I’m the best person out there to decide this for you all, but I get that you want an outside voice to settle this debate. 300 acres is actually a pretty nice chunk of ground for 5 hunters. I used to hunt a 400-acre farm with four other hunters and it sure felt like we had plenty of acreage to spread us all out…but when you factored in that half the acreage was open tillable ground, and we all took vacation for several weeks together, it was clear that by mid-November of each year hunting pressure was starting to take its toll. To help with matters, we made two ridge points off limits for hunting. These two ridge points were preferred bedding areas. By doing this, it created a scenario where we could all hunt and hunt hard, and yet the deer still had two spots that they could rely on to not get disturbed. Total sanctuary acreage was about 80 acres which was almost half or our 200 acres that wasn’t tillable. The one problem we had was a couple of the hunters still hunted in stands that blew their scent right into those off-limits areas making them only fractionally as effective as they could have been. This is a long answer to your question but I am all in favor of creating deer sanctuaries, especially on private land when you control access.
Specifically, on your 300 acres, I would find one or two spots that deer love to bed already that are very hard to hunt and just make those spots off limits to hunting. To make sanctuaries work however, you need to make stands and entry and exit routes that allow for your scent to blow into that sanctuary off limits as well (for those specific winds). In other words, if you have a west wind, any stands or routes within 200 yards to the west of your sanctuary is also off limits during that wind. Start doing the math and on any given day half of your ground could be off limits even if only two 20-acre official sanctuaries exist. So, to settle the dispute, I would recommend creating at least one sanctuary as long as you can also make stands and routes around it off limits during certain wind directions. Good luck!
Next month I have a late season hunting question and a question concerning buying or leasing land.
Make sure to send in any questions or ideas for an article you would like written for the Whitetails 365 column to tapeppy@gmail.com. Thank you.