6 Tree Stand Exit Strategies for Hunting the Rut

November 2, 2016/1 Comment/in Climbers, Fixed Position, Got Game Blog, Ladder Stand, Quad-Pods and Box Blinds /by Big Game

Exiting Your Tree Stand Undetected While Hunting the Rut

Getting to your hunting tree stand undetected is a prerequisite for choosing a spot to hang it. If you cannot navigate through the woods silently and scent free then the game is up. You will spend countless hours staring at an empty forest or field edge. However, increasing success in the rut is not only about the route you take to your stand but also how you exit it. With that said, how come hunters spend very little time trying to conceal their exit from their tree stands?

Few too many hunters do not consider their tree stand exit strategy. How many times have you climbed down, packed your tree stand accessories and started out only to be startled by the sound of a deer snorting at you? Whether there are deer around you as darkness looms or you simply want to reduce your presence in a prime rut location, having a plan for leaving your stand, or your hunting blind, can produce results that may otherwise be unnoticed. Having a tree stand exit strategy is as important as planning your entry route. Even if you have not seen any deer, carelessly exiting your tree stands can blow your chances when hunting the rut.

Planning for an Exit

The rut is different as we all know. Deer are completely out of their early fall patterns and many mature bucks are in chase mode. This time of year it is even more important to have a clean and clear stand exit strategy. Hunting the rut only gives you a small window of time to hunt so preparing beforehand is critical to making every day count.

Low-impact is what you are trying to achieve, both entering and exiting your tree stands. Planning for an exit from a stand is accomplished with good preparation. Complete scouting of areas to determine likely deer movements, habitat features and prime forage areas helps to determine where to hang a tree stand but it also gives you an idea of how to get in and out.

Use maps and aerial photos of your hunting area to pick routes that will disturb deer the least. Avoid areas that could be used for bedding spots like thickets near reliable food sources and defined funnels that bucks can be patrolling during the rut. You also want to avoid noticeable buck activity like scrapes and rub lines. Leaving hunting stands and blinds by crossing a scrape line will get you noticed by the big boys and blanked for the rest of the rut!

Another part of hunting the rut is planning to take your time not only hunting but when you are exiting your stand. Hunters take their time getting to their tree stands, wait patiently for a buck to approach while in them but leave in a flurry like something is chasing them. Rushing to exit your stand will create unnecessary noise as you rush to collect all your necessary hunting accessories alerting any deer that may be off in the distant shadows. Plan you exit routes so that you can take your time getting out of your hunting locations silently.

Additionally, effective entry routes may not make the best exit paths. Entering a hunting location depends on a number of factors like season, time of day and weather. Each of these three factors, along with others, impact how you should enter a particular spot. The same holds true for exiting any of your portable or ladder tree stands. Late in the day deer may be approaching food sources unlike when you started hunting when they may have been near bedding areas. You want to make sure your exit plans take these factors into account. Finally, conditions should also dictate if you should even hunt a particular stand on a given day. If the conditions (wind, changing deer activity, etc.) are not going to allow you to exit without making your presence known then choosing a tree stand location somewhere else is in your best interest.

Common Sense Ways to Exit Your Tree Stands

Before we get into specific tree stand exit strategies, there are a few common sense approaches to leaving your hunting tree stands. The more you are careful when leaving your tree stands the more productive they will be during the rut.

No Talking – Not hard to do if you are hunting by yourself but when hunting with a friend the temptation to ask about what they saw is overwhelming. Save the stories for the truck.

Stay Concealed – If you are leaving a stand during daylight hours, keep your camo on until you at least get out of your main hunting area. Stripping down to a visible base layer shirt can easily get you picked out while leaving your stand.

Lower Lumens – Flashlights are a must for exiting tree stands at night but avoid those that could be substituted for a spotlight. Use just enough light to get out quietly or change to a colored variant that is less visible by deer.

6 Tree Stand Exit Strategies

How many times has the sun slipped away and you hear the sounds of approaching deer in the distance? Shooting light is no more but you can just make out the outline of a deer body followed by the shine of antlers. It is too dark to shoot but you do not want to ruin this location for future hunts, so what are your exit options? Hopefully, this example is an exception and not the rule when you are hunting the rut. Regardless, it pays to have a good exit strategy from your hunting stands and blinds. Here are five ways to get out of your stand when deer are nearby.

Stay Put. The best option when deer are around you after shooting light or when you need to get out of your stand is to wait them out. Staying in your stand until they have moved on will keep them from realizing you are there and potentially blowing your hunting spot in the future. After they are gone, slip down and leave quietly. The downside is this may take all night!

Announce Your Presence. There are times when you cannot wait them out. When you have to go, spooking them with something other than “I am a hunter” is the next best strategy. Carry a coyote howl or other predator call with you for these situations. Sounding off a predator call will have any deer in your vicinity heading away without directly connecting their alarm to your tree stand. Use this sparingly and only when staying put is not an option. Use this strategy too much, however, and deer start to know something is up.

Go Wide. Sometimes deer are not directly under your stand but rather feeding in a nearby field or food plot. For these instances, slowly and quietly climb down or exit your archery blind and take a wide path around the deer as to not let them know you are there.

Multiple Escape Routes. Being able to go wide when leaving your stand is only possible when you have planned multiple exit locations. You want to have one main exit path, pre-planned as described earlier and up to two alternative locations to exit from. This is critical when hunting the rut as deer can be anywhere chasing does and your first choice may not be available. Using trail makers can help you identify alternative routes when the time comes to use them.

Choose Wisely. Not only do you need multiple exit routes but they should be chosen wisely. Stay away from active deer areas like food sources. Also, trim exit paths to avoid brush busting and spreading scent as you leave your tree stands.

Use Common Disturbances. This technique requires the right area and some help. When hunting urban areas and agricultural spots, deer are used to cars, trucks, tractors and other common disturbances. Having one of these spook deer away from you is natural for deer in these areas. Take advantage of waiting for a car to pass by or call in a buddy to bring the tractor to the field to push deer away from your hunting stands and blinds. Deer will vacate and will just think it is another normal day to day disturbance, which they will not associate with your hunting spot.

There are many tips for hunting the rut but being undetected is often your best hunting strategy. Mature bucks will be cruising for does and deer, in general, will be outside of their normal patterns. It is more important this time of year to stay concealed than deciding where to hang a tree stand. An average stand location with the ability to get in and more importantly out concealed is better than one that has difficult access but sits over exceptional deer sign. What is the point to sit over sign if you are alerting everything in the woods to your existence? Exiting silently will make for better future hunts in the rut and increase your chances of running into a mature buck. Seeing bucks in the rut is not always related to the amount of rut activity (scrapes and rubs) but rather it is connected to the number of deer you alert to and from your tree stands.

Exiting your tree stands should always be done methodically. From collecting all your tree stand accessories to safely climbing down, the end of a hunt is not the time to get sloppy. The same holds true for leaving your hunting area. If you are not well prepared or you have not thought of tree stand exit strategies, you may reduce your chances the next time you return to that particular spot. It is all about staying undetected during the rut. Be conscious of remaining concealed from start to finish of every hunt because that is what separates those who are consistently successful from those that are consistently baffled.

Private Land Hunting Guide | How to Maximize Your Opportunity

August 15, 2016/0 Comments/in Got Game Blog, Quad-Pods and Box Blinds /by Big Game

Steps You Can Take to Make Private Land Hunting More Productive

If you’re fortunate enough to own some private land hunting ground, you should be very thankful. Whether it’s a small hunting shack situated on 40 acres “up north” in the woods or simply the family farm you grew up on, private land is a real blessing. You have so many possibilities before you. These endless possibilities include shaping the land the way you would like it to look. Not only do you have the ability to keep a property in your family’s heritage, but you can help mold it into whatever you want. Some landowners scoff at this, realizing they may not personally ever see the fruits of their labor. But this is sadly short-sighted, particularly if they have family members who will one day inherit it. Owning private hunting land allows you to create a real and lasting legacy on your property for generations after you. Even if you only intend on selling it instead of keeping it in the family, managing your property for timber, wildlife, or other purposes often adds value to it, which you can recoup upon sale. In short, a little work now is worth the end result.

For those who can only hunt on public land or private hunting land for lease, it’s inconceivable that anyone would even question this. Public land hunters have many possibilities open to them, but very few of the ones this article will discuss. They can’t alter the land they hunt or improve it in any real way, and they have to share it with everyone else who decides they would like to try hunting there. Private land hunting doesn’t have these issues. Aldo Leopold once famously said in A Sand County Almanac, “A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of the land.” It doesn’t matter if you like whitetail archery hunting, or prefer a firearm either. These techniques will work in either situation. Without further ado, let’s discuss the tactics you can use to make your property more attractive to wildlife, which effectively makes it more attractive to you as well.

Habitat Management

Have no fear if you often wonder, “What do whitetail deer eat on my property?” Deer are well-equipped from getting everything they need from nature. So instead of fighting this or trying to outdo nature, sometimes the best course of action is to manage the natural habitat first. Smart management practices help improve the diversity of age classes, structure, and species in a forest or prairie. Management activities could include timber harvest, hinge-cutting trees, burning, or planting, to name a few. Let’s look at each one of these.

If your property consists of a lot of mature forest, you may want to consider a timber harvest. While mature forest is nice for bow hunting deer, it doesn’t offer deer very much in the way of food or cover. Consult a state or private forester to come tour your property so they can advise you on the best harvest practice. This is a long-lasting decision that could affect resale value if you’re going to take that route, so please consult with a professional before having a contractor cut anything. With some species and stands, a clear-cut is the best option (e.g., aspen trees), while for others it might be better to do a shelter wood cut (e.g. oak trees). The aftermath might look devastating, but it’s actually a fresh start for nature. The disturbance resembles a natural blow-down or fire event, and the sudden amount of sunlight to hit the forest floor will sprout up all kinds of herbaceous and woody plants, called early successional species. This young forest opening is perfect feeding and bedding habitat for deer, turkeys, grouse, and all kinds of other animals, which makes public land hunting even better. These areas are often the best for box stands for deer hunting, since you can hunt them stealthily all day while deer wander through a combined bedding/feeding area.

If you’re not quite ready to conduct a full clear-cut, but still want to improve your habitat and even add some variety to it, a hinge-cut could be a good idea. This practice involves only cutting non-desirable trees (from a timber or mast perspective) to release desirable ones, opening up the canopy, and adding horizontal structure at ground level. It can be done on a large or micro scale, and can easily be done yourself if you’re comfortable with a chainsaw. These DIY management activities are what make private land hunting so great. For larger canopy trees, many people fully cut them down and use the trunk as firewood instead of letting it rot. The hinge-cutting is best done on smaller trees, roughly less than 6 inches in diameter at breast height (dbh), for safety reasons anyway. To do one properly, slowly cut halfway through the tree on the opposite side you would like it to fall. Once halfway through, start slowly pushing the top until it leans over and falls. Cut a little more if you need to until it slowly falls over. You need to leave enough tree material connected so the roots can still keep the top section alive. This will extend the useful life of your hinge-cutting and allows the tops to produce tender growth at deer level, which they will browse heavily. This practice will also look very messy when you’re done, especially compared to surrounding mature forests with wide-open views. But that structure provides great bedding for deer, which can be great for bow hunting deer stands.

If your private property has a lot of old fields or native prairie remnants, burning is a very good practice. Many prairie communities evolved with natural fires, so they actually require an occasional fire to recycle nutrients, reduce the mass of organic material, remove woody species from taking over, and encourage tender new growth to sprout. Again, this is another practice you should do only with professional help unless you’re experienced in doing it, as it can quickly get out of hand and do a lot of damage. Prescribed burns, no matter how small, can do a lot of good at regenerating native species and providing lush new food for animals.

Finally, you could also plant native or beneficial tree, shrub, or herbaceous species on your private hunting land. Any wildlife planting you do should either provide hard or soft mast, or provide a good source of cover. For example, oaks and apple trees provide consistent food either now or in a few decades, depending on what you plant. Cedars provide a dense thermal cover for deer to escape from harsh conditions. A hedgerow of wild plum or crabapple through a field provides both food and cover. If you’re going to plant something, do it right by protecting your investment with necessary cages or tubes, and maintain it so that other species don’t immediately overwhelm it. In a few years, you should have a fairly self-sustaining landscape that provides much more than it once did.

Food Plots for Private Land Hunting

Earlier we said that most deer populations don’t strictly need food plots to survive, but almost any population could benefit from them. A well-managed food plot can produce a tremendous amount of highly digestible and nutritious food that helps deer to reach their full genetic potential. And they are certainly nice when you plan on bow hunting deer. Food plots are probably the number one reason people would like to own their own hunting land. It’s no wonder, as planting food plots can be an extremely addicting hobby.

While you can divide up food plot types in several ways, we’ll classify them as either feeding or hunting food plots in this article because they have very different outcomes. A strictly feeding food plot is meant to provide calories to the deer herd in an unpressured environment. Corn/bean fields and hay fields act as feeding plots from spring through summer. Private landowners often plant clover as a perennial food plot, which help nursing does and antler-growing bucks during the summer. Some people even plant fall food plots strictly to help deer through the winter and never hunt them. These plots are useful for building the resident deer herd on your property, and are amazing when used in or near a deer sanctuary area.

Hunting plots, on the other hand, are the secret weapon of private land hunting. They are generally much smaller than larger, destination feeding areas. Because of their size, they physically cannot support very many deer in them at any one time and are easier to hunt without educating the deer herd to your intentions. Bow hunting for whitetail deer is especially useful in these plots, since a hunter can shoot almost all the way across them in any direction. Additionally, deer are far more likely to use these hunting plots during daylight hours since they are so secluded and surrounded by cover. Hunting plots are usually planted with a highly attractive fall annual species, such as brassicas, cereal grains, or winter peas. When these species really start growing, you should have your best bow hunting stands hung nearby. By planting these plots on your hunting properties, you can strategically pull deer onto your land in the fall. Luckily, this is exactly the time you want them to hang out on your turf, so neighboring landowners can’t shoot them.

Private Land Hunting Strategies

This is the fun part, when you can pull all the pieces of the puzzle together. It’s the time that makes private land hunting so much more effective than public lands in many cases. One of the curses of public land hunting is that you could let a deer pass by, and they might get shot within a few hundred yards by another hunter, giving you no incentive to let bucks mature into older age classes. You can’t completely remove this problem on private land, since deer can easily wander to a neighboring property, particularly if you own a few hundred acres or less. But you can mitigate it a little using the hunting strategies below.

It’s risky to leave ladder stands or lock on stands on public lands, and impractical/illegal to set up a box blind. But there are no such restrictions on your own property. While not completely devoid of theft risks, private land hunting offers a much better place to leave your tree stands in the woods or set up box blinds in a perfect location. With more permanent stand locations, you can also manage the habitat or plant additional screening cover to hide your entry and exit route. That way, you should be able to sneak in and out of a hunting situation without alerting deer to your presence. Box blinds offer high concealment value and are useful near food sources or bedding areas alike. They are particularly nice when the weather takes a down turn or you want to bring younger kids hunting with you. Big Game Tree Stands has a Trophy Box kit with wide window openings and a flip-up trap door opening.

Speaking of tree stands, they’ll only be useful if you hang them in the right locations. Expert deer hunting stand locations are critical as you chase older and more experienced deer. As we said, hunting on large destination fields is a risky move. It might pay off, but you could also alert a dozen deer to your tree stand location in the process, making them very wary of it or anything like it again. You’re better off sitting over a hunting food plot. If you plant feeding food plots near the center of your property with quality bedding cover on the perimeter of your land (which you can establish with the habitat work from above), deer have fewer reason to leave the area. Then you can strategically plant a few small hunting plots between the bedding and feeding areas, which will intercept deer in the mornings and evenings. By having a few well-spaced hunting plots that are different shapes, you can hang several deer stands to hunt different wind directions. Simply having multiple options for different conditions can be enough to fill your buck tag.

On this topic, you can find and kill a deer in most places without too much work. But if you’re after a specific mature whitetail deer, you need to always pay attention to the hunting conditions. The smaller your property, the stricter you need to be. Bow hunting whitetail deer in a tree stand with the wind blowing right into a food plot or bedding area isn’t going to do you any favors. To get a truly old monarch buck, you should wait for the perfect conditions before hunting a stand, which can be really hard to do if you’re getting daytime pictures of one. But hunting in anything less could jeopardize future encounters with him.

Whether you plan on bow hunting deer in the early season or firearm hunting in the cold fall, improving your property is a great way to invest your time and resources. With more homesteads and farms being sold to developers every year, private land hunting is disappearing in some places. But if you develop a lasting legacy on your property, it will be enjoyed for years to come.

box blinds bow hunting | Big Game Tree Stands

Big Game Box Blinds For Bow Hunting and Deer Hunting

July 26, 2016/0 Comments/in Got Game Blog, Quad-Pods and Box Blinds /by Big Game

Box Blinds For Bow Hunting | Everything You Should Know

If you’ve ever looked into box blinds for bow hunting, you might have immediately thought, tightly enclosed space, just from there you probably know how the story goes. A deer comes in, finally presenting a great bow shot. As you maneuver to draw your bow back, it feels a bit cramped, but you think you can make it work by crouching down. As you release to let the arrow fly, you hear a loud clanging noise and feel the bow almost jump from your grip. You watch helplessly as your arrow sails off over the top of the deer you’ve been waiting for. What happened? Then you realize the bow limbs must have ricocheted off of the blind when you fired the bow, causing your arrow to fly off-course. Cue depressing music and lots of head shakes! Is this common in box blinds for bow hunting? Not always!

Whether this scenario has happened to you yet or not, it doesn’t have to be your destiny. There are ways you can make box blinds work for bow hunting. It might take a little more work, but the benefits of being in a box blind far outweigh that. For example, you can sit in an enclosed blind through almost any weather, with the exception of really bad storms. If a rogue rain shower shows up, you won’t get soaked. When you want to bow hunt late season whitetails, you can stay warm inside (especially if you bring along a small heater). Your scent typically stays contained better since you’re not exposed to the wind currents. And you can also get away with more movement since you’re fully concealed. Obviously that’s useful since it ultimately helps you avoid detection longer. But it also makes a box blind a great way to introduce kids to the outdoors, since they can fidget around and stay comfortable while you wait for the action to start. Finally, elevated bow hunting blinds are generally more effective than ground blinds for archery because of increased visibility and because the steeper shot angle produces better blood trails.

But there’s a big difference between rifle and bow box blinds. When you’re hunting with a firearm, you don’t need much vertical clearance, and you can get by with a pretty narrow shooting window. Bows on the other hand, need more vertical room for the limbs to flex and for your arms to extend when you draw it back. You’ll also need to position your box blind closer to where you expect deer to move when you’re bow hunting, since it requires closer shots than a firearm. So let’s jump right into the specifics when it comes to box blinds for bow hunting.

How to Position Box Blinds for Bow Hunting

After setting up a hunting blind, positioning will be critical to make it work for a bow hunt. Ideally, the blind windows should be perpendicular to (facing the) trail you expect deer to use, which will allow you to see as deer approach from either side and offer a broadside shot. Having multiple windows is useful since you can quickly adjust if the deer moves too far one way or the other.

The best location for deer hunting blinds will depend on when in the season you plan to hunt most often. Try to find a reliable travel corridor between feeding and bedding areas for the best chance of seeing a mature buck in the early season months. Bucks are still in a summer feeding pattern during this time of year and can be a little more predictable. While that location could also work throughout the season, spots near doe bedding areas may be better during the rut, since bucks will be scent-checking these spots frequently and chasing does every waking hour they have. But this approach requires strict attention to detail and discipline to pull it off (more about that below). If you’ll primarily hunt the cold late season months, food is the best place to be. At the end of the season, rut-weary bucks need to really put the calories down to build their bodies back up enough for winter. Set up a box blind for bow hunting on the edge of a standing agricultural field or food plot, and you’ll be amazed at the deer activity.

Invisible Box Blinds for Bow Hunting

For the locations discussed above to really work effectively, your box blind should be as hidden and discreet as possible. This is obviously true for all hunting stands and blinds, but it’s especially important with the solid blocky shape of an elevated hunting blind. Though deer can get used to seeing a large bulky shape in the sky, mature bucks usually don’t fully let their guard down. So if you’re hoping to connect with one of them, you should take any precaution you can by camouflaging your blind.

The Vertex box blind offers a great camouflage pattern as is, and comes with 12 large side windows and 1 roof opening to offer multiple shot angles. It has 61 inches of standing room and a 48-inch square platform, which allows you plenty enough room for a kneeling or seated bow shot. Before each shot, make sure to leave several inches of clearance in front of and above or below your bow limbs to make sure you don’t contact them. This combination makes it one of the best box blinds for bow hunting.

But if you want to take it a step further, add some more natural camouflage materials to hide it. Here are a few ideas if you’re wondering how to camouflage a hunting blind. First, locate your box blind among and around existing trees with lots of vertical and horizontal structure to break up the bow hunting blind outline against the background. Then use twine or zip ties to attach cut limbs and branches to the platform’s steel poles and rails. To make it look as natural as possible, step back often to see how well it blends in. While it should go without saying, use similar branches from the area so that it disappears with the surrounding vegetation. Ideally, you should attach branches all the way up to the blind, so it looks like a hedge or clump of trees. Though you can build your own wooden deer blinds and camouflage it with paint, homemade bow hunting blinds aren’t as reliable and safe as an engineered one.

Make sure to get all this work done well in advance of archery season, so the deer have time to get used to the new trees that mysteriously sprouted up overnight. Going through this work will keep you more concealed in your hunting blinds but it will also hide your ladder access, which is a good segue into the next topic.

Access Trails to Bow Hunt from a Box Blind

Assuming you’ve followed the deer hunting strategies above, you’re off to a good start. But you can quickly throw your luck and hard work out the window if you have a poor access trail. What exactly is a bad entry and exit route and how can you tell? Well, if you can’t get to your bow hunting box stands without alerting deer in bedding or feeding areas to your presence, then you’ve already failed. With more mobile tree stand options and deer hunting ground blinds, you can easily move when the deer bust you. But with all the effort that goes into installing box blinds for bow hunting, you need to be hyper-vigilant about each detail of your hunt so you can make that location last as long as you can. Thinking of them as permanent hunting blinds switches your frame of mind, so that you’ll take better care with hunting them until the conditions are perfect.

The key is to not let the deer pattern your behavior and movements. Make no mistake, if a whitetail starts to hear and smell a hunter going to the same location each morning, they will avoid that area pretty quickly. Try to plan your access trail to approach from a downwind location that doesn’t cross any major deer trails or go too close to a food plot, agricultural field, or known bedding area. Another part of hunting intelligently is to play the wind at all times. If your box blinds for bow hunting are upwind of a food plot one morning due to shifting conditions, just stay out of them. You’ll probably only spook deer, and you could make that particular box blind location useless for seeing big deer again during the season. It takes a lot of discipline to do this, but dedication is important.

Whether you are looking for a box blind for bow hunting or a tree stand for bow hunting, before you purchase, you need to have clear strategies in place. For example, if you’re hunting near a bedding area, make sure you approach very early before sunrise to allow deer to filter back in when the sun comes up. Or you can approach very quietly during daylight, moving at a stalking pace for the last 100 yards. Bedding areas can be hot spots, but you need to only hunt them when the situation is right. If you’re hunting near or on a food source, however, you need to enter it only during mid-day since deer should not be feeding during those hours. But this poses a problem, since deer will enter the feeding area again in the evening, just before you need to leave. If you were to just get down, they would spot and hear you and know to avoid that area in the future. A smarter method is to use a buddy system, where a friend or family member approaches the plot after sunset with a vehicle or ATV. This bumps the deer off the field, allowing you to get down, all while not educating deer to the location of your bow box blinds.

In summary, box blinds for bow hunting are really useful tools as part of an overall hunting plan. They allow you to stay warm, dry, and concealed from a deer’s senses, which means you can hunt longer and have a better chance at putting a mature buck on the ground. Using the tips listed above, you might just be successful this season.

make plans to stay comfortable in your tree stand | Big Game Treestands

How Staying Warm in a Tree Stand Equals Big Buck Success

May 18, 2016/0 Comments/in Got Game Blog, Quad-Pods and Box Blinds /by Big Game

Make Plans to Stay Comfortable in Your Tree Stand

You’ve been sitting in the tree stand watching your shooting lanes for what seems like hours. Your back aches, your legs need a stretch, and you can’t feel your rear end except for the millions of pin pricks starting to work their way up your body. You stand up for a while to get some blood flowing again in the cold Midwestern firearm season weather. But after you sit down again, the shivering starts. Your body starts uncontrollably shaking, but unfortunately not because of buck fever. You can feel the warmth and life in your body draining out through the cold metal seat beneath you. It must be lunchtime (aka, an excuse to get down from the tree stand) by now, right? Thinking you can’t last much longer with your numb hands and vibrating body, you check your watch and flinch in disbelief. It’s only 9:30 in the morning!

If you’ve been deer hunting long enough, you’ve probably been in this situation at least a couple times. The sheer mental boredom and physical strain of sitting absolutely still for hours takes its toll, especially when you’re uncomfortable. If you’re warm and have a comfy seat on top of one of your best tree stands, though, the time can fly by faster than you realize. And when you’re trying to put a mature buck in the back of your truck, you sometimes need to spend a lot of time in tree stands.

Why You Should Stay Put in Your Tree Stand

Think about it this way: the more you enter and leave your tree stands, the more you expose yourself to a deer’s senses. You make more noise by walking over the crunchy leaves and breaking branches, you leave a scent trail that’s difficult to fully hide, and your moving silhouette is a surefire warning to any animal watching. But when you’re in a tree, you’re quiet, scent-free, and camouflaged by your tree stand blind – fully hidden from sound, smell, and sight. This is reason enough to not leave for a midday warm-up.

But if you want more proof, here are a few to chew on. Deer don’t spend their entire day lying down in one place. They rest for a while, get up and stretch, browse on nearby vegetation, eat mineral soil, drink water, and wander within or between bedding areas. Many believe they move a lot during what’s called the noontime stroll. If you can place your tree stands near one of these areas, you could watch a lot of deer activity throughout the day. During the rut, all bets on buck movement are off and you could theoretically see a deer at any moment.

All-Day Locations for Tree Stands

There are just some hunting situations and locations where you need to spend all day in a ladder stand or climbing stand. There’s no getting down for lunch to go warm up at the shack or the truck in these situations. It’s just you and the cold all day, so you need to be prepared. Here are a few locations or circumstances where your hunting stands and blinds might need to adopt the waiting game.

While hunting bedding areas is tricky business and has a high risk of educating deer, it’s also a great way to get close to a mature buck. For that reason, many hunters roll the dice occasionally for the opportunity to bag a buck in his bedroom. But since deer return to bedding areas in the early morning hours and will generally stay until almost nightfall, you have to be very dedicated to make this kind of tree stand location work. You’ll need to be settled into your stand at least 45 minutes before sunrise in most cases, more if you’re located close to a feeding area. You need to be quiet and fairly still from then until the sun goes down again. You could very likely see deer return in the morning hours, and they may even bed in front of you. In that case especially, being uncomfortable could kill your chances at staying still long enough to see a mature buck.

Similarly, maybe you’ll be hunting a popular public land area or you hunt a small private property surrounded by neighbors with an aggressive hunting approach. In these highly pressured systems, deer are going to be very skittish and extremely discerning about every little noise, movement, or scent they encounter. When a pressured deer catches you shifting around in or getting out of your tree stands, they will quickly drop a mental waypoint and avoid that area for a while. It may not be long-term, but it could be long enough to foul up your chance of seeing them again while you’re hunting.

Additionally, when you’re surrounded by other hunters, you can use that fact to your advantage. If you’re uncomfortable and cold, it’s likely that they are too. So if you can tough it out, they’ll likely get down from their stands and unknowingly chase deer right into your lap. One thing is for certain: you can’t kill a buck if you’re not there when he walks by your stand.

On the practical side, some stand locations may just be too remote to feasibly leave and warm up anyway. For example, let’s say you found a promising funnel location tucked way back in the forest using aerial scouting methods. If you have to hike back into the woods over a mile, you probably won’t want to get down in the middle of the day to return to the vehicle. In these cases, it’s better to pack a lunch and stay put all day. We’ll discuss more on the food side down below, since that is a critical piece of staying comfortable.

Staying Comfortable in a Tree Stand

As the popular saying goes, there is no bad weather, just bad clothes and preparation. You should be able to plan for almost any conditions while in the field so that you can stay comfortable all day long. It all starts with your deer hunting tree stands. The best deer hunting tree stands should offer enough room so that you don’t feel cramped. If you feel crunched for space with no room for your hunting backpack, you’re going to feel claustrophobic within a few hours, and your legs are far more likely to fall asleep. When you don’t feel like a stand is big enough, consider buying tree stands for big men, such as two person tree stand. Obviously the most comfortable options are fully concealed box hunting blinds, where you can seal out the weather conditions and hide your presence much better. Simply lounge back on your stadium chair, and you’ll be set for a day of hunting. This amazing tree stand accessory has multiple adjustments and folds down into an easily carried bundle.

Ideally, you should also have a few other critical tree stand accessories. No matter what kind of tree stands you’re in, you need to have a comfortable hunting seat to insulate your body from the cold and feel good to sit on. A portable hot seat is a great option to take with on any hunt since it is lightweight and does a great job at keeping your rear end cushioned throughout the long day. Another common issue with sitting in the woods all day is not having enough lower back support, which can quickly convince you to abandon your hunt before it’s time. The Big Game Tree Stands spring-back lumbar support provides just the right cushion where you need it, so you can stay upright and pain-free.

Clothing is one of the most important tree stand accessories around. If you don’t have the right clothing, you will be miserable and won’t last long, guaranteed. It doesn’t matter if you expect hot or cold conditions; wear a base layer of merino wool or synthetic moisture-wicking material, which will keep your skin as dry as possible. Wet cotton clothing next to the skin is a recipe for hypothermia in the cold. Also, wear several insulating layers so you can adjust it throughout the day. On the morning walk into your stand, wear only your base layers so you don’t get hot and sweaty. As your body cools, add more layers gradually. If the sun comes out and the weather improves, you can always remove a layer again. The key is to stay dry by not letting your body overheat.

Cold feet and hands are two of the most common reasons we might want to give up on a particularly chilly day. Avoid them by bringing high quality, insulated boots and gloves. For those situations where you need to have your hands available quickly, you can slip a hand/foot warmer into a hand muff and keep your fingers toasty without your gloves.

Finally, you need to have good nutrition if you’re going to sit in the woods all day. Pack a bigger lunch and more snacks than you think you might need, focusing on high protein and high fat foods. Protein and fat fire up our metabolisms and provide a steady energy dose. Carbohydrates like candy or donuts give us a quick sugar rush, but the resulting sugar slump is not worth the short term gain. Instead, bring a whole grain sandwich of your choice, nuts, cheese, jerky, sausage, and a few pieces of fruit. Whenever you start to feel tired, cold, or even mentally bored, eat a small snack. Also, make sure to drink your usual amount of water and bring along a hot beverage in a thermos to lift your spirits when you’re getting too cold.

Being comfortable in the woods isn’t like lounging on a couch. You don’t want to get so comfortable that you fall asleep and have to test out the strength of your tree stand harness. But comfort does mean being able to sit still long enough to see a buck you could shoot. Maybe that takes an hour, or maybe it doesn’t happen after a season of all-day sits. The point is that you can’t put venison in the freezer unless you put in the time to hunt. Setting your tree stands up for success means you have a far better chance than those that don’t take these steps.

Using Desktop Scouting to Position Your Tree Stand

May 3, 2016/0 Comments/in Fixed Position, Got Game Blog, Ladder Stand, Quad-Pods and Box Blinds, Tripods /by Big Game

Tree Stand Placement | How Aerial Deer Scouting Techniques Can Lead To Great Sets

Tell me if you’ve been here before. After wandering through the woods for hours carrying your tree stand, things get depressing. You still haven’t found the magic tree that you were hoping to find and you saw very little deer sign either. Finally, you give up the search and reluctantly hang your stand in a less than ideal location on the off chance that you’ll get lucky. What if we could magically change that outcome for you? Let us introduce aerial deer scouting.

Aerial scouting would be way easier if we could ethically go deer scouting with drones. But even with its slightly less exciting approach, it’s still a very effective method of finding high percentage spots to hunt. Simply open up your favorite online mapping program, and navigate to your hunting land. That’s where the fun begins. We’ll talk about that some more below, but first let’s define what we mean by aerial scouting.

What’s the Difference?

Traditional scouting means boots-on-the-ground walking of public or private land properties. It’s time- and labor-intensive and you may go through all of the effort to find nothing. But you can also learn a lot about a new property using that approach, so don’t completely throw it out the window. Aerial scouting consists of opening up a deer scouting software and doing a lot of that legwork before you even physically set foot there. You can do it from a library, in your home office, or even lounging on the couch. Once you locate some good-looking spots from the map, you can then field verify them using the traditional deer scouting techniques. It allows you to cover way more ground, but you do need to eventually physically investigate a site before you commit to hanging tree stands. Those are the primary benefits and drawbacks of each scouting approach. Now let’s discuss how you can start your aerial assault.

How to Use Aerial Deer Scouting

The best thing about aerial scouting is that it frees up your time by eliminating 90 percent of a property before you even arrive. That’s time not spent wandering through the woods getting poison ivy or battling mosquitoes, which is undeniably great. But since time is our most precious commodity, that time-saving aspect is worth its weight in gold.

Deer Hunting Strategies| Scouting A New Property With Aerials

(Video) – There is a wrong way and a right way to scout. This especially true when we are just months or even weeks out from deer hunting season. The key during this late summer period is minimal disturbance and scouting smart.

As we briefly mentioned, download and install any deer hunting mapping software you want to use. Alternatively, Google Earth is one of the easiest free deer scouting software programs to use and it’s very user-friendly for a wide audience. You can find dozens of different map features (layers) online that can help you for scouting whitetails. For example, many counties offer free layers with property ownership information, which is basically a plat book on steroids. Many governmental agencies provide wetland, topographic, soil, or land cover layers, which you can turn on and off to create your perfect map. To find these layers, simply use a search engine to look for terms like, “topographic map google earth.” After collecting the data sources, it’s time to start deer scouting the smart way.

If you’re simply looking for new spots to hang your tree stands on a property you already have access to hunt, jump ahead at this point. If you’re looking for a new property, turn on the plat map layer to find public lands near you or promising private lands that you could then ask the landowner to hunt. Once you find some spots that look good, you’re ready to continue.

Start by turning on the wetlands layer, and you’ll likely eliminate many spots right off the bat that look like forest on the aerial but are actually intense shrub swamps you wouldn’t want to venture into with a tree stand. Locate any likely feeding areas by looking for open meadows, agricultural fields, pastures, or recent clear cuts. Since whitetails are browsing generalists, you can bet that they feed just about anywhere there is vegetation, but these are the most likely spots to focus on. If you wish, use the mapping tools to draw a green colored polygon (or any other color you prefer) around each one so that they stand out as feeding areas. Once you’ve found those, now try to pick out possible bedding areas. These will be much more challenging since deer can bed anywhere. However, south facing ridge slopes, conifer clusters, upland islands surrounded by wetlands, prairie grass plantings, and regrown clear cuts are some good spots to look for. Now mark these spots with a different colored polygon (brown or your preference).

Now we’re getting somewhere! Many people wonder how to find deer trails. Using only these two types of locations, look for possible travel routes between them, and you’re set. This is where it’s helpful to turn on topographic layers. Deer are fairly lazy creatures, and prefer to travel parallel to contour lines instead of against them, meaning they would rather walk along a ridge than straight up and down it. They’ll obviously make exceptions if the elevation changes aren’t very severe or if they get spooked, but keep this in mind as you’re searching. Also look for areas that are connected by natural or manmade corridors (e.g., logging trail connecting two clear cuts, conifer hedgerow connecting two fields, etc.). In agricultural areas, these travel corridors should be obvious and will likely be shrubby hedgerows and overgrown fence lines. Basically, any kind of structure that crosses relatively open agricultural land or fields will be used. On heavily forested properties, however, these trails may just follow the edge between two different habitats. Deer have plenty of structure in a forest, so you’re just looking for where several habitat types come together.

Using those corridors, try to identify a location along them that really funnels them to a good hunting spot. We call these spots “pinch points” because they squeeze the deer activity into a tightly bound location. Some examples include a six row windbreak narrowing down into two rows, a beaver pond and river coming together to funnel deer movement between them, or the middle of an hourglass-shaped food plot. If you can identify a spot like this that is near some mature trees where you could set your tree stands up, then you can move on to the next step below. If not, keep scanning the aerials to find a decent ambush site.

Field Verification

Now that you’ve theoretically found a handful of good tree stand locations, it’s time to put some miles on the boots and make sure that your hunches are correct. Whether it’s the middle of the summer or you’re doing some post season deer scouting, print out a map with your polygons and stand sites labeled on the aerial and bring it with you to the field. It may also be helpful to download Google Earth or similar mapping software on a smartphone (there are several smartphone hunting apps) so you can see exactly where you’re at and tweak your stand location while you’re in the woods.

Whether you use paper maps or technology, navigate to your pre-selected spots and take a look around. Does it look like you had envisioned when you were sitting at the computer screen? If it’s clearly not where you want to hunt, move on to the next spot. If it has some potential, though, it’s time to investigate a little more thoroughly. Even if it takes some slight re-adjustments of the original location, at least you didn’t spend all day wandering the woods to find it.

Scan your surroundings for deer sign along the funnel areas. If you chose well, you should be able to find a deer trail, droppings, or rubs without too much effort. Ideally, you’ll find a heavily-worn trail with plenty of scat, and several past rubs lining the way. Now do you see any good-sized trees overlooking this trail that could hide your profile once sitting in the stand? Try to stay away from aspen, ash, or birch trees as they generally don’t have a wide enough profile to hide your silhouette. However, oaks, maples, and conifers usually have enough structure at height to help you disappear.

Stealthy Access and Wind Direction are Critical

Alright, you think you’ve found the perfect spot, but did you miss something important? Most hunters focus too much on the stand location in terms of deer sign, and completely neglect the access side of things. This is one of the most important deer scouting tips. If you can’t sneak in and out of your location without spooking the deer, then the perfect tree you found is actually garbage. By hunting it, you risk disrupting normal deer behavior and travel patterns, making your top-notch pinch point useless. Similarly, if you see a perfect tree on the predominantly upwind side of the trail and still decide to hang a stand there, you could spend more time educating deer to your presence than seeing mature bucks. And that is not the goal.

Take another look at the aerial map and see if there’s a way you could approach and leave the stand location without crossing the deer trail or otherwise leaving any sign you were there. Since you’re perched on a deer trail versus bedding or feeding areas, it should be a little easier to do, but keep this in mind. For example, is there a ditch or creek near the funnel that you could use to navigate there without leaving much sign? Is there a steep ridge that deer are unlikely to use that you could approach from? Even if it means going out of your way a bit, it’s better to err on the side of caution when it comes to entry and exit routes. Yet many people ignore these basic whitetail deer hunting strategies because they get lazy.

Don’t set up tree stands on the upwind side of a trail if you can possibly help it. It’s better to choose a less-concealing tree downwind than perching in a great tree upwind. Why? You can sometimes fool a whitetail’s vision if you dress appropriately and don’t move. But it’s pretty much impossible to convince them you’re a tree after they get a nose full of human scent. For most of the whitetail range, the predominant wind direction is from the northwest, but there will be localized differences depending on the topography. Make an effort to understand that before you commit to a hunting spot.

The Best Tree Stands for Different Situations

Whew! You finally found the perfect hunting spot using your aerial deer scouting techniques and field verifying them. Now you need to decide what type of tree stand is best for the location. If your resources are somewhat limited, you may only have one stand to choose from, which makes this section pretty easy for you. But if you have a couple different types hanging in the garage or shed, this process can make a big difference in the ease of hunting and your ultimate success.

First, consider how difficult it would be to physically get tree stands to your final location. For example, do you really want to weave a ladder stand through a maze of aspen trees or brush, or haul it up a steep ridge by yourself? We’re guessing not. But a fixed position tree stand or climbing stand would be relatively easy to carry into remote sites full of the conditions above. Alternatively, if you’re hunting an open field or food plot with good access, you could easily use a side by side or ATV to haul a double-wide stand in. Along those same lines, will you be the only one hunting from the stand, or do you plan to take your kids with? The Duo is a great option for bringing along a hunting partner, no matter the age. The footrest, seat, and shooting rail all flip back to offer more room on the platform while setting up, but the stand is big enough for two people and is rated to hold 500 pounds of hunter and gear. For these reasons, it’s also one of the best ladder stands for big men, as well.

If you use hunting stands and blinds alike, you’re familiar with the challenges of private versus public land. When you primarily hunt on private land, you can leave your stands up throughout the season without much fear of it being stolen. Since you have that option, you can also choose larger, more permanent stands such as a tripod tree stand or box blind. But if you’ll be hunting public land, you’ll probably want to choose a climbing tree stand or fixed position stand that you can take with you or hope nobody notices it if you do leave it out. Your hunting personality will also play a role in deciding which tree stand to use. If you like to be very comfortable while in the woods and have all the tree stand accessories, including camouflage tree stand blinds, then a more spacious model might work better.

These considerations will all help you narrow down what kind of tree stands you decide to use. Whichever one you choose for your situation, you need to make sure that it’s safe by doing seasonal maintenance. The best option is to take it down at the end of the season and tighten all bolts, grease any moving parts, and renew your cables or straps.

The Final Touches

As you can now hopefully see, aerial deer scouting saves you from walking many, many miles to find new hunting hot spots. By first screening hunting properties and the land cover on them, you can eliminate 90 percent of the area, which saves you time and effort. Then you can focus on really examining the high priority spots in person. So this next season, spend some time deer scouting the smart way, with a refreshing beverage in hand and sitting on the couch.

hunting blinds in food plot locations most food plotters miss | Big Game Tree Stands

Hunting Blinds | 3 Great Food Plot Locations Most Food Plotters Miss

April 11, 2016/0 Comments/in Got Game Blog, Ground Blinds, Quad-Pods and Box Blinds /by Big Game

Hard To Hunt Food Plot Locations Solved With Hunting Blinds

If you’re a deer hunter the anxiety is probably about to overtake you. Rain and sunshine are on its way, and you can’t help but get excited about putting in new food plots for deer season. Fresh turned over dirt, the tractor firing up, and a lush green mat gets even the season hunters and food plotters fired up, but hold keep a grip on that excitement for a little longer. Planning before you plant is more important than planting itself. We just recently went over the planning you should do before putting in a new food plot, touching on the importance of incorporating the plot into your hunting strategy. While this advice is key and true for installing new food plots, you shouldn’t overthink it. One of the most common reasons great food plot locations do not get planted, is there is not always a clear way to hunt it. We beg to differ, here are 3 key food plot locations that most food plotters miss, but with our help, can be great hunting locations for you.

Food Plot Architecture: Where to Place Your New Food Plot | Drury Outdoors

(Video) – DOD TV: food plots are vital to holding and killing whitetails, here are three tips for establishing new food plots.

Food Plot Location 1: Adjacent to a Bedding Area

Perhaps the best, most often missed food plot location that is not taken advantage of, are food plots adjacent to bedding areas. A small feeding plot within 50 -100 yards of a bedding area will be a perfect spot to ambush in a kill plot or staging area scenario. Why are these not planted?

Hunting opportunity and pressure are of big concern on these food plots. Finding and hunting a tree stand close enough to get a shot would be hard to get into and out of without busting deer. However, placing a ground blind or hunting blind just out of sight, or an elevated box blind distant form the plot, with the food plot still in sight, gives you a completely different scenario.

Food Plot Location 2: Adjacent To a Water Source

This may seem lame to you and your probably thinking “there is water sources next to food sources everywhere…”, and you would be right in saying that, but more often than not that water source is placed in or next to the food plot, not the other way around. Not very often do you see food plots strategically placed right on or next to a small creek, edge of a river, lake, or existing pond. Why are these not planted?

More often than not these plots are nightmares for hunting. A “blocking in” or “trapped” scenario presents itself. With a food plot next to a significant water source, the benefits of food and water together are clear, but they can also be a hotspot for deer. A significant water source like a river, big enough creek, or lake cuts off multiple routes, meaning you are more likely to run into and bump a lot of deer entering or exiting the food plot. In this situation a significant plot screen, or visual barrier to the plot, with hunting blinds in the form of a ground blind or elevated box blind on the opposite side of the water source, far enough to stay out of the way of approaching deer, gives you a 2-in-1 punch of food and water and the ability to hunt it. The same can work if a tree is available for a tree stand, but an elevated box blind gives you freedom of location to ensure you are putting it in the smartest spot for access.

Food Plot Location 3: Travel Corridors

These are your hidey-hole food plot locations. These are commonly small staging plots before larger food plots, clearings in woods, or just simple a ridge top or bottom field where deer travel frequently. Why are these not planted?

While you might think travel corridors are a loose term that food plotters do plant…its hunting these small plots that become the issue…Why? Shade and bumping deer. Often these small plots are shaded out on the edge of woods, or in the woods. The shade and size of the plot significantly reduces the variety of food plot species to choose from. White clover, in a food plot that is prepared and maintained right can attract deer for a quick snack, but can survive intense browsing pressure if needed. The second most common reason these food plots are not taken advantage of is hunting pressure and bumping deer. These food plots can be hard to hunt from a tree stand. With a small plot, the more the deer can be stressed. The tiniest movement, every visit, and any scent in the plot can quickly kill the effectiveness of that travel corridor as well as the food plot. Hunting blinds, specifically a well brushed in ground blind can effectively let you hunt these plots. Better scent control, less chance a deer seeing movement, and as a result less pressure meaning this food plot and be taken full advantage of and a very successful kill plot.

These food plot locations are often not planted because a hunter cannot get around the thought of hunting it properly without busting deer. However if you consider more hunting possibilities with hunting blinds, ground blinds, and elevated box blinds, these food plots become not only great locations to plant but an essential part of a successful hunting strategy.

spring food plots and tree stand and hunting blind placement | Big Game Treestands

Plan Before You Plant! | Spring Food Plots and Tree Stand Hunting Strategy

March 23, 2016/0 Comments/in Got Game Blog, Ground Blinds, Quad-Pods and Box Blinds, Tripods /by Big Game

Spring Food Plots and Tree Stand Hunting | Planning Food Plots According To Your Hunting Blind and Tree Stand Placement

It Is March and once again the silence of winter slumber is broken by the sound of the tractor firing up. The feel, smell, and sight of dirty hands, diesel, and fresh dirt can be addicting to us, just as much if not more than turkey or deer hunting. It gets us excited and brings us satisfaction. There is nothing a hunter and manager would rather do more than climb up on the tractor, wipe the dust off the seat, and break open fresh ground, but is that really your smartest move? While it might feel like you are doing something positive you might want to think again, give it more time, more planning, and as a result, better execution. Don’t make the common mistake of creating a hunting strategy according to your food plots, when you should be planting spring food plots according to your hunting strategy! Implementing the latter of the two will create more opportunity, better hunting, and more success.

The first question to ask yourself is why are you planting the food plots? For nutritional purposes or for hunting in the situation of the “kill plot”? You can bet on the majority of hunters that plant food plots, are doing so to create hunting opportunities. So which of the following situations would make the most sense?

Option 1: Going to a chuck of timber or an old field and clearing it, breaking the ground, and planting beans or clover just to find out there isn’t a single place to put a box blind, tripod, or ground blind that a deer wouldn’t bust your wind or your entry in.

Option 2: Strategically mapping known deer movement, tree stand or blind sites, and previous observations, then taking that information to determine where, what type, and when a food plot would make sense in that area.

The choice is obvious, we understand that…and we know that if your planting a food plot you are already putting up stands or blinds in your mind. The problem lies in the fact that this thinking (not even enough to call it planning) happens when you are sitting on the tractor, or waiting for rain after planting. True, successful, well thought out plans for a food plot will only come from enough time being devoted to a map, scouting, past hunting observations, and more often than not, research on the subject. Here is some information that will help you out with your spring food plots, ensuring you are maximizing your efforts, time, and hard earned money.

Maps, Scouting, and Observations

Hopefully you took some time to shed hunt this winter, and took some notes down when you were out and about. Shed season was the perfect time to scout, you were not negatively impacting your deer season next year with the pressure, and deer sign was still fresh from November and December. Marking scrapes, rubs, funnels, highways, and bedding areas down on a map and coordinating that with hunting season observations give you a great idea of the daily movement that takes place on your property. When it comes to installing and planting food plots this spring, human pressure, staging areas and bedding areas are your biggest concern. Where are the deer, more importantly bucks bedding. Once a known bedding area is marked, next figure out when, where, and which type of food plot would make sense in the area. This is by far the most tedious part of effectively planning food plot strategy with your hunting strategy.

“Which type of food plot seed” depends on your “when”

The best advice in the situation, before diving into researching the when, where, and which type of food plot to plant, is to think about when you hunt, and what food sources are available during that time around the property. Are you a turkey hunter, a land manager, or a just a deer hunter? When you deer hunt do you hunt with a bow in the early season, or are you a gun hunter waiting on November and December? Each situation has its own, where, when, and which type of food plot you need.

Turkey Season

If you’re the turkey hunter, the ideal food plot set up is creating a food source and strutting zone that you can effectively hunt with a ground blind. In these situation size isn’t as much an issue as what type of food there is. In the situation of turkey hunting in the spring, the best candidate for turkey hunting food plots in the spring is clover and alfalfa. Clover and alfalfa explode in spring, making not only valuable spring forage for deer, but dynamite feeding and strutting sites for turkeys.

Nutrition and Observation

Late spring and summer are months of nutrition and observation. Does drop fawns, and bucks are just starting to develop some substantial velvet growth. During the lactation and antler growth stages of the year for deer, protein is valuable. Both pastures, hay fields, and food plots with substantial alfalfa and clover and large bean fields provide the protein and attraction deer need and want. These food sources also give you a great opportunity to sit up in an elevated box blind, a ground blind, or tree stand some distance away from the food, to observe and scout the bachelor groups.

Early Bow Season Attractant

Planting food plots in spring, in order to hunt over them in September-October will either take place in the form of the two best attractants of the season, beans and clover. Sure their might be some room for opinions, but staging areas in the form of small clover ( white clover) plots, adjacent or on the way to a larger food source like standing beans are dynamite locations for an early season sit. Deer will still be or just coming out of their early season patterns during early bow season, meaning they are unpressured in those small clover “kill plots”, and on the edges of large bean ag fields, or food plots Planting clover by frost seeding or drilling, disking, or tilling, in early spring during decent rain, will work for small food plots. If you want beans for the early season you will need either at least 5 acres, or install a food plot electric fence to avoid deer over-browsing the plot.

The Opening Day and Late Gun Season Attractant

Opening day of gun season is a holiday (at least it should be). Nothing is better than lifting a buck onto the tailgate during that weekend, so which food plot will give you that, or any weekend after until the close of the season? Beans, corn, and brassicas are the favorited in the November-January time period. Brassicas are planted in the late summer/early fall period before the season opens, so you can delay planning and planting that food plot until later in the year. Planting beans and corn however takes more time and precision. Cut corn fields make for some of the best rut hunting in November in the Midwest, but standing corn and beans in late November-January can’t be beat for attraction.

Design and shape

Size is important when it comes to which type of food plot seed you select, depending on the browse resistance of the species, but the design and shape of the plot can really start honing in hunting strategy, and working together with your hunting blind and tree stand placement.

Long rectangle

This is the most popular standard food plot shape and design, whether you are a firearms hunter or a bow hunter the rectangle is your friend. The length gives you the acreage and the long shot potential when hunting with a rifle or muzzleloader, but the width creates less pressure, stress, and creates more security for deer. It also happens to create a great location for a fixed position tree stand for close encounters for bow hunting.

L shape

The L shape puts a right angle in the rectangle this does three things better than the rectangle. It creates an elbow, a staging area, and creates more security. Creating essentially two different sections of the plot, while keeping the width relatively small creates the same acreage, but separates the field of view creating less stress for feeding deer, and more movement to see what’s on the other side. The bottom or smaller end of the plot basically serves as a staging area in this scenario. The smaller (potentially different food source) creates a smaller area for deer to stage in before entering the large feeding area. Both of these advantages gives rise to the third advantage, an elbow. The elbow is creates an ideal box blind, tripod, ground blind, or tree stand location, creating a funnel and views of both areas of the food plot.

Crows foot

Taking the idea of the Elbow to the next level is the crow’s foot. This obviously serves as an extreme advantage for firearms season. Strips of beans, cut corn, or strips of clover all sprawling out from a central location gives you three shooting lanes, and potentially different buffets for your deer herd.

Hunting Strategy

Now knowing your “when” and “what”, you will know exactly where to put it. Obviously a larger bean, corn, or brassica field will go wherever the acreage is available, but the smaller clover/alfalfa plots can be strategically placed. Creating these small opening, “kill plots” n heavy timber, adjacent to thick cover and bedding areas, or as staging areas before a larger food source are successful food plot tactics.

The one thing above all else when creating a food plot is knowing how you will hunt it, and if it will work. A food plot that is not hunt able is not ideal, although it does have its place on some properties. A food plot that creates hunting opportunity is a key goal. Planning a food plot effectively means, safe non disturbance entry and exits, multiple tree stand, box blind, tripod, or ground blind locations for different winds, and a food source/hunting opportunity that is completely free of human pressure.

As you can see food plots aren’t a walk in the park, but neither is deer or turkey hunting. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be near as enjoyable. Studying, researching, learning, planning, and executing are all a part of the process…the resulting failure or success are both enjoyable, but success feels much better! Take these spring food plot and hunting strategy tips seriously over the next months, and hopefully you will reap the benefits of your hard work.