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should you hang early season tree stands over deer sign | Big Game Tree Stands

Should You Hang Early Season Tree Stands Over Deer Sign?

Where You Should and Should Not Use Tree Stands

We’re pretty sure that you’re aware of it, but just in case, archery season is almost upon us. Lucky hunters are starting to post pictures of big velvet bucks they’ve already tagged. And those of us whose bow seasons aren’t open yet are going a little stir crazy watching them. Now is the time to hang our tree stands and fine-tune our archery form as we prepare for opening day.

What is it about the early season that’s so enticing? After all, it’s usually still pretty hot for hanging tree stands, the bugs haven’t yet disappeared, and the vegetation is still so thick that you feel like you’re hunting in a jungle. It’s not at all like the cool weather and fall colors we associate with hunting season. The first month of the early season has its challenges to endure. But the simple fact is that the early season may be your best bet at shooting a truly big whitetail.

During the summer, bucks are just about as predictable as they will ever be. Forming bachelor groups, these bucks consistently travel from bedding areas in the day to feeding areas in the evening and then back to their bedding areas. Rinse and repeat. There’s not much variation, nor much of a reason for them to change it up. We really don’t enter the woods very much to disturb them during this time and so there’s no human pressure to influence their behavior. This summer pattern is so predictable and the deer are unsuspecting enough that many a hunter has put a Pope and Young whitetail on their wall because of it. That doesn’t mean it’s so easy that anybody can do it though. It takes discipline and precise deer hunting stand placement to pull it off. To know exactly where you should hang your tree stands, deer sign is usually the best indicator. Let’s look at some commonly discussed sign that you may want to use this archery season.

Types of Deer Sign You’ll Find in the Early Season 

Since bucks have much smaller home ranges during the summer and bed in fairly close proximity to food sources, you can bet that any fresh deer sign you find means there’s a deer nearby. If you’re seeing buck tracks and scat along a trail from the food source, for example, he’s very likely to return. Though bachelor groups tend to switch things up now and then by using a slightly different trail, you should be able to set up near enough for a shot. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Whitetail Tracks

should you hang early season tree stands over deer sign | Big Game Tree StandsIf you’re hunting a farm field, there are probably hundreds of deer tracks covering the ground in every direction. As deer enter these fields, they mull around finding the best and most palatable forage. That could take them all across the field and back again, like hairy lawnmowers. It might seem like this kind of sign is useless for a hunter. Out in the middle of the field, it probably is.

But if you look at deer trails on the field edge, this is where things can get useful. Try to sneak in during the mid-morning hours for a little reconnaissance, paying attention to the wind direction so that you don’t spook any bedded deer nearby. Look for fresh tracks from the morning feeding, paying attention to which direction they’re facing. If you find lots of tracks leading away from the field on a certain trail, you can bet that the deer are bedded within a few hundred yards of that spot. You can ignore the trails with tracks facing towards the field, as that was where they entered the prior evening. Remember, buck groups will change the trails they use from time to time. Your tree stands should be near the trails with the most recent activity.

Deer Scat 

Similar to tracks, you might not think much of a pile of digested beans. After all, you already know that deer are near and on the field fairly consistently. But scat is one of those deer hunting secrets that can tell you much more. Do does and bucks tend to have different types of scat/pellets? Some hunters will swear up and down that pellets are produced by does and clumped piles are from bucks. But the evidence from penned deer doesn’t really show this to hold up consistently. What does hold true is that the type of food the deer are consuming has a large effect on the resulting scat. Deer that are consuming lush green soybeans, soft mast, grasses, or forbs tend to have wetter, clumped piles of scat, while deer eating much drier browse (e.g., maple branches, acorns, etc.) have pellets.

Using this information, you can hone your whitetail deer hunting strategies a little more precisely. If one of the trails has a lot of pellets along it, you can bet that deer are also browsing somewhere during the day before they get to the field. Depending on the type of habitat around the field, you may be able to guess where they are bedding. For example, if you only have mature trees and grassy cover nearby but there is a thicket of young browse species a hundred yards away, you can probably guess that the deer are bedding near that thicket during the day.

Deer Beds 

Unless it’s very early in the summer, you probably shouldn’t be walking through strict bedding areas unless you want to put bucks on alert and ruin the nice summer pattern they’re following. But if you feel the need to explore the trails leading away from the food source, there’s a lot to learn at your own risk. As you walk along near the food source, you should pay attention to any beds nearby. These may just be temporary resting areas during the night as the deer feed. But as you get further away from the field, you’ll probably start to see smaller beds, which are does and fawns, first. You’ll likely bump deer out of there as you push further into the woods. Further on, you should find buck beds, which will be larger in size than the doe beds. If you find a series of beds with piles of scat around, you can bet you’ve found a bedding area.

Deer Rubs

should you hang early season tree stands over deer sign | Big Game Tree StandsEvery hunter’s favorite thing to find in the woods, rubs are a sure sign there is a buck in the area. They may be on finger-width sprouts or fence pole-sized trees, and the size of the tree does not necessarily correlate with the size of the animal. Though generally, larger bucks will be the only ones rubbing truly large trees. You can also estimate the size of the deer and it’s antlers by studying the rub a little more closely. For example, if there are deep gouges into the wood and the bark is frayed from one to four feet off the ground, the buck likely has a very strong neck, has a large body, and probably has sticker points that are cutting deep into the wood. Bucks tend to choose smooth or aromatic trees for rubbing, likely because it is easier and helps hold the buck’s scent a little longer. Such trees include aspens, maples, cedars, and pine.

Really early in the season, bucks will still be in full velvet, and they will be careful to not touch their antlers against trees during this time as they are sensitive. So rubs won’t help you much during this time frame. But as fall approaches, they will start to rub against trees to help scrape the velvet away from the hardened antlers underneath. At this point, it’s time to start hunting deer rubs. If you’re wondering how to read deer rubs, you can determine the direction of travel from them by looking for patterns. For example, if you notice a rub line that is all rubbed on the side facing away from the field, you know that buck is rubbing trees on his way to feed in the evening. You can set up your tree stands on the downwind side of one of these trails in the afternoon, and wait for him to come walking down the trail in the evening.

Deer Scrapes

If rubs get people excited, then scrapes drive them nuts. Scrapes are made by a deer when they paw the debris from the forest floor to expose the dirt underneath. They use several glands to leave their scent in it, including the gland between their hooves when they’re digging, the tarsal glands as they urinate into the scrape down their legs, and their pre-orbital gland as they rub their face/eyes on a licking branch above the scrape. There’s a lot of information being exchanged by these hormones.

should you hang early season tree stands over deer sign | Big Game Tree StandsDeer use scrapes like we use a bulletin board or online forum. It’s a way for animals to keep in touch about who is in the area, when they were there last, and when they are receptive to breed. Bucks use them to mark territories once the rut starts, to a degree, but they also use them for establishing a social hierarchy early in the season. As far as how to find deer scrapes in the early season, look along habitat edges (i.e., where field meets forest, where swamp meets thicket, etc.). Deer like to use habitat edges anyway, and so it’s a natural spot for a scrape to act as a message board.

If you don’t find any natural scrapes in your area, you can make your own mock deer scrapes, which can be very powerful if used near your tree stands. These are simple imitations designed to fool a deer into checking it out. Making mock scrapes for deer is really simple to do. Find a tree with a branch about four feet off the ground, and scratch up the dirt so that there is some fresh overturned soil and little debris in it. Use a stout tree branch instead of your boot to scratch the dirt so you can keep your scent out of it. As far as when to make mock scrapes, deer are drawn to the fresh smell of soil any time, so you can use this tactic any time. You can add deer urine to the scrape if you wish, but make sure it’s just deer urine in the early season. A full doe-in-estrous scent in September would probably raise some flags. Hunting mock scrapes can be done by placing one just upwind of where you expect the deer to enter a food source. Bucks should enter the field, immediately smell the dirt, and turn to investigate it. This allows a perfect quartering away shot with the deer looking down and in the opposite direction.

Where to Hang Your Tree Stands 

We’ve covered the common types of deer sign you’ll find in the woods and what role they play in early season whitetail deer hunting. Now let’s transition into using this information for a successful hunt. As we mentioned, the best early season tree stand locations will be located on or near food sources (e.g., row crops, hayfields, hard/soft mast trees, etc.). If it’s a particularly droughty year, setting up your tree stands near water sources for afternoon sits can be a great place too. Deer will generally take a drink before and after eating.

If you can glass an agricultural field from a distance, this is the best way to scout because you won’t spook deer. But if that’s not possible, you can also use trail cameras to spy on them, only checking them once before you decide to hang your best bow hunting stands. Or you can hang some observation tree stands near enough to the food to see, but far enough away to not be noticed. As you bring your climbing tree stand in, you can also do some very quick and stealthy scouting near the food source for deer rubs and scrapes.

Speaking of which, lightweight tree stands like lock on stands and climbers are great at setting up quickly for an afternoon hunt. You can easily bring in a lock on stand with climbing sticks and set it up with your deer stand ratchet straps in no time. The Big Game Tree Stands® Outlook climber tree stand is light to carry and great for aspens or other trees with very few branches lower down. You might already have permanent box blinds set up with shooting lanes or set over food plots, which would also work great for early season deer hunting.

Any way you can distract deer as they enter a food source, the better off you’ll be. As we mentioned, using mock scrapes will grab a deer’s attention and focus it elsewhere while you prepare for a shot. The problem with hunting right on food sources is twofold. One, there are usually many pairs of eyes watching from the field, so you’ll need to be hyper-aware of minimizing your movements. Two, it can be hard to leave a feeding area in the evening if it’s a destination area. Smaller food plots and staging areas are a good solution to both of these problems. They don’t allow many deer to be there at the same time, and deer will generally feed away from your tree stands as they move onto larger fields.

Should You Use Sign This Season? 

If you’ll be hanging tree stands soon for some early season bow hunting, paying attention to deer tracks, scat, beds, rubs, and scrapes will definitely help you to pinpoint your tree stand location. Follow the tips above, and you could be looking down at a velvet buck with your name on it.

private land hunting guide how to maximize your opportunity Big Game Tree Stands

Private Land Hunting Guide | How to Maximize Your Opportunity

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.

private land hunting guide how to maximize your opportunity Big Game Tree StandsIf 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.

private land hunting guide how to maximize your opportunity Big Game Tree StandsWhile 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.

private land hunting guide how to maximize your opportunity Big Game Tree StandsSpeaking 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.

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

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.

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  • 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.

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

  • 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.