Visualize for a moment the best deer hunting land you’ve ever hunted. Was it along a wide-open fallow field; in the middle of a park-like woodlot with little understory; or in a tree stand overlooking a dense swamp, thicket or clearcut? I’ll bet my best grunt call that it was something similar to the last one: a heck-hole of nasty proportions; a place that looked “bucky” the instant you laid eyes on it.
In this age of shrinking hunting parcels – it seems like we’re all pushed onto smaller areas each year – it’s easy to throw up your hands and settle for what you have access to. In many cases that means hunting really marginal deer habitat. It also means spending more hours afield while seeing fewer deer. Again, the deer are out there; it’s just a matter of gaining access to where they spend most of their time.
This isn’t a new dilemma. Ask any old-timer, and they’ll tell you to hunt “the thick stuff” if you want to be one of those hunters who always gets his deer. Whitetails prefer thick cover because they are crepuscular creatures: They eat and move, for the most part, on the fringe hours of daylight. This secretive nature calls for covert behavior, and such behavior calls for protective cover. A common rookie mistake is to locate thick cover and dive into it headfirst.
My buddy and I must have made this mistake hundreds of times when we were trying to learn how to hunt a vast national forest in the 1980s. We simply parked our truck at the side of a forest road, blundered off into a swamp or clearcut, and hung our stands after finding some rubs, scrapes or well-worn deer trails. Successfully hunting thick cover, which can be described plurally as travel corridors, requires much more forethought because these are areas that deer use for secure daytime travel.
The best strategy for hunting thick cover is to locate huntable areas, then view an aerial map and highlight bottlenecks, pinch points or other terrain features. A few minutes of pre-hunt planning will at least put you in the ballpark. From there, it’s a matter of observing deer in their natural environment and learning how they move through the cover in daylight.
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Human pressure – be it from hunters, hikers or horse riders – is the No. 1 suppressor of daytime deer activity. For years my friend and former colleague Charles Alsheimer documented the extent of this suppressor during their ongoing study of how the moon affects deer behavior. Using trail timers to document deer activity in several states, he learned that 55 percent of all deer movement occurs during daylight in areas where there is little or no human pressure.
Throw human pressure into the mix, and the percentage falls way off. For example, the trail-timer data shows that moderate to heavy human activity causes deer to spend only 30 percent of daylight hours moving throughout their home areas. Extrapolate those figures for what they’re worth. Translation: If you’re after mature deer, be cautious as to how you use your property.
Avoid running ATVs across the property at all times of the day, and adopt a low-impact approach for deer-sensitive zones like bedding and feeding areas throughout the year. Also, it’s wise to limit blood-trailing recoveries to the cover of darkness, especially when a wounded deer runs into a self-imposed sanctuary.
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Mature bucks are especially sensitive to pressure, and it doesn’t take much to blow them out of an area. Spook a buck you’re hunting more than once, and you probably won’t see him during daylight for the rest of the season. I hesitate to mention these tactics, because it goes against my beliefs that deer hunting should be fun and enjoyable. Hunters shouldn’t be so paranoid about spooking deer that they walk through the woods like they’re stepping on eggshells. However, nothing will spook a mature deer from its core area more than constant human pressure. Still, human pressure affects the behavior of deer of all ages.
Even antlerless deer won’t tolerate constant intrusions. How you approach and leave your stand sites definitely affects deer patterns. When possible, don’t walk across open fields to get to or from your stands. If that means walking a quarter-mile out of your way so you can skirt a woodline, do it. You’ll see fewer and fewer deer throughout the season if you constantly blow across such feeding areas just to take a shortcut to your stand.
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