the DIY 5: Fail-Proof Whitetail Setups.
Somewhere along the way, the term DIY became synonymous with public-land hunting. But the vast majority of whitetail hunters pursue their favorite quarry on private land, and there is no question they are doing it themselves. Hunting whitetails is a lot of work, and rarely is someone there to help when moving stands and clearing shooting lanes.Unless you are hunting with an outfitter, or a friend or family member is selecting your stand sites and putting up your stands for you, then you are absolutely a DIY hunter. With that in mind, here are the top five places you can do it yourself in the whitetail woods this coming season.
All five of these stand sites are no-brainers; when you find these locations, it is time to start picking a tree and getting your stand in place.
Small Food Plots
If I could only hunt one type of location for whitetails for the rest of my life, it would be small, isolated, half-acre food plots. I love these spots for a bunch of really good reasons. The action is consistent both morning and evening, and it's right there in front of me--all within bow range. These micro-plots are the last places deer are on their feet in the mornings and first places they hit when they get out of their beds in the afternoons. As a result, you have the maximum amount of daylight activity.
Now, if you really want to take this DIY stuff up a notch, consider making your own small plots. My friends and I call them "poor man's plots," and we make them every spring--even on properties we don't own (with landowner's permission). As grueling as it sounds, it is possible to make plots this size with a chainsaw, backpack sprayer, torch (if you can't till), garden roto-tiller, a seed/fertilizer spreader, a three-foot-wide landscaping rake and a ton of sweat. Till the ground, spread the seed using the hand spreader and then lightly rake the soil to work dirt over the top of the seed. Consider clover and turnips planted together in mid-August.
Deer will use these isolated plots to feed during daylight hours, and bucks will check them often during the rut, at all times of the day, for doe activity. These small plots become the hub of all deer activity in the areas where you create them.
Set up right on the edge of the plot so you can get a shot at any deer that enters. Because the plot is so small, it is unlikely you will be able to sneak away without spooking any deer feeding in the plot at dark, but fortunately, the deer generally leave these small plots shortly after dark as they head for larger feeding areas nearby --giving you the opportunity to sneak out.
Ditch and Creek Crossings
Ditch and creek crossings are the easiest of all the great stand locations to find and hunt. The scouting is super easy--you can do it from your sofa looking at a topo map and aerial photo. Surely, there are some ravines in your hunting area that carry runoff water during heavy rains. If the topsoil is composed of dirt and not rock, the bottoms of these ravines will likely have an erosion ditch. In some places, that ditch will be too deep or steep to permit easy crossing by the deer, As a result, they detour and funnel through easier crossings.
The very best of these easy crossings, from the standpoint of bow-hunting success, is the one at the top of the ditch, where the ditch first starts. Here the wind will be steady. Hunt it with the wind blowing your scent toward the lower reaches of the ditches as it drops off below and approach the spot by walking up the bottom of that same ditch from the valley--with the wind in your face. The bullet-proof entry and exit route to this stand is one of its key features. This route will keep you from being detected and that in turn will minimize the disturbance to your hunting area. You may need to go in ahead of the season with a chainsaw and cut a path through any deadfalls that have accumulated in the ditch to open up a path.
During the rut especially, these ditch crossings (or top-end funnels) are highways for bucks cruising back and forth between nearby doe bedding areas.
Creek crossings are next. Deer will avoid the deeper stretches of a creek and cross where the banks are gradual and the flow shallow. Like ditches, these are easy to find using a topo map or aerial photo. Just look at the photo and identify S-curves in the creek, and you will find trails converging and crossing the creek right in the middle of the S.
This creates a funnel that is easy to find and hunt. Hunt the creek crossing when the wind is blowing parallel to the creek--either up or down the creek bottom. This keeps swirling to a minimum and gives you a predictable place for your scent to blow.
You can then walk right along the edge of the water (ideally, in it) with the wind in your face as you approach the stand. The banks of the creek will keep you out of sight, eliminate your scent trail in the water and muffle any sound you make. Creek crossings are good at all times of the day during the rut and during the mornings and evenings during the early season as deer travel to and from food.
Often, these creek crossings will lie along the base of a ridge between it and an open field--the perfect situation for a bedding to feeding pattern. When the creek lies between two ridges, similar to the ditch scenario from the last section, the crossings will be used regularly by bucks looking for does on nearby bedding ridges.
Ridgetop Bedding Areas
This is the go-to spot for morning hunts during the rut. Be patient--don't hunt these spots too soon. Your green light is when the first does are starting to come into estrous. This typically happens early in the first week of November in much of the whitetail's range.
Does love to bed on ridges, and bucks know it--they know where all the deer bed. Almost any ridge will serve as a doe bedding "area somewhere along its length and that means the bucks will be cruising it. You can expect almost every ridge to produce at least one likely stand location. Look for a spot along the downwind side of the ridgetop, just where the slope starts to break off sharply. The action usually starts slow each day but stays strong all morning as the bucks filter through looking for does.
You can improve your odds by getting closer to the actual bedding areas along the ridge. Fine-time your stand placement by first making a scouting trip to find the beds and then setting up nearby. Another option is to find the places nearby where the ridgetop narrows. These narrow points serve to funnel traveling bucks, and a stand here gives you the chance to sneak out after your morning hunt without alerting the does nearby.
Because you will be up high on the edges of these ridges, the wind is predictable and your scent will blow out over the valley on the downwind side, over the noses of deer in that direction. Enter the stand through the back door, from the direction opposite the primary food source, so you don't spook any deer when sneaking into place.
If you can also set up right next to a thick area, that is even better because the bucks have to work harder, and cruise more, to search the thicket, offering better odds for a shot.
Brushy Fence Lines
Bucks tend to stick to cover as much as possible when traveling. Sometimes their mission takes them across open fields as they move to feed or look for does in adjacent wood lots during the rut. The cover lets them keep a low profile. As a result, they will walk along brushy fence lines whenever the fence line leads roughly in the direction the buck wants to go.
Like the other stand sites, the brushy fence line is also a no-brainer. You can sneak in easily in the morning and leave with little fanfare in the evening because the stand is located on a pure travel route--not at a destination. So, the odds of a buck hanging out near your stand for any length of time are low. He'll be hustling through giving you plenty of opportunities to sneak in and out undetected.
Hunt the stand when the wind is blowing across the fence line into an area where you don't expect deer to come from--like an open pasture or CRP field, for example. Enter from the downwind side. You can expect action at such a fence-line stand at any time of the day during the rut, but the action will be best early and late. During the early season, it will almost entirely occur during the first or last hour of legal time, and only if the fence line connects the buck's core with a nearby food source.
Inside Corner
Inside corners are also easy to find and hunt. These are spots where an open field cuts deeply into a timbered area. Bucks traveling from the cover on one side of the field to the cover on the other side will converge at the corner. The corner creates the funnel.
To hunt an inside corner, simply place your stand in a tree right at the corner. Hunt it when the wind is blowing from the cover out into the middle of the field and approach it from the field. The action should occur just inside the cover.
Whitetail hunting can be a lot of work, and moving stands is where the real sweat flows. You can eliminate this part of the fall season by placing your stands in the right places ahead of time. These five no-brainer stand sites are a sure-thing. Every time you find one of these locations, put up a stand. Don't over think this--no questions asked. They are all proven producers and will make your next season your most consistent.
RELATED ARTICLE: TWO SPOTS TO AVOID.
THE BOTTOM OF A RAVINE: Buck sign is thick at the bottom of a ravine, making it a tempting place to hunt. However, if you hunt down in those holes, swirling winds will take your scent to deer in every direction. Once they know you are hunting them, they will be much harder to tag in the entire area, not just in the ravine. Go out of your way to avoid educating deer; staying away from swirling winds is key.
THE EDGE OF A BIG FIELD: There likely will be a number of deer out in a large plot or field by the time you climb down at the end of a hunt. You will need someone to drive up to the field and run them off or you will spook them. Once again, this results in educated deer that become much harder to kill. If you are hunting alone, with no one to run this necessary interference, consider avoiding these big fields completely, or at the very least, hunt 40 yards off the edge overlooking one of the trails leading to the field so you can sneak out more easily at dark.
Caption: Big fields are hard to hunt effectively with a bow. While you may see a lot of deer from a stand along the edge, the shots are likely to be few and far between. And when it comes time to climb down, you risk educating a lot of deer.
Caption: While hunting a bedding ridge in late October, bowhunter Larry Zach tagged this great buck. The buck was feeding on acorns the morning Larry shot him, but ridges are super spots for hunting bucks during the rut, too. In fact, there may not be a better morning stand during the rut than one found on the downwind fringe of a bedding ridge.
Caption: Bucks on the move will gravitate to brushy fence lines when crossing open fields. The author has a stand in this fence line, and it has proven to be one of his better spots.
Caption: Small plots are perfect for bow-hunting because they create close range opportunities. Bill Winke's son, Drew, shot his first deer with a bow from a stand on the edge of a 3A-acre plot. The shot was just 10 yards, perfect for a new bowhunter--or any bowhunter, for that matter!
Caption: Hunting down in a ravine can be very tempting because of all the buck sign typically found there. However, swirling winds in such places will alert nearby deer to your presence.
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| Title Annotation: | diy HUNTING |
|---|---|
| Author: | Winke, Bill |
| Publication: | Petersen's Bowhunting |
| Date: | Jun 1, 2018 |
| Words: | 2149 |
| Previous Article: | 3 DIY HUNTS in the Wild West. |
| Next Article: | In Praise of Public Ground. |
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