LAST UPDATED: May 8th, 2015
Situations that are out of our control can come along and impact our season at any time. How we adapt to these changes will dictate our level of success in the woods. Staying positive and developing a new plan of attack is key.
The winter before last I was blindsided with the sight of Amish logging my favorite piece of land. This spring after one and a half years they finally finished their work and pulled out of the area. What was once a beautiful stand of timber chock full of white oak trees is now a huge tangle of tree tops and weeds. There is a positive to be found here though, I am sure the deer will move more on this land during daylight hours now because of the vast amount of security cover. However, I now lack all of my ambush points from yesteryear and must change my mindset and tactics to be successful on this property.
Stepping back for a moment and digesting all of the changes, it lead my mind to a new setup. One I am very confident in. I am not one to hunt near field edges but this one is different, hear me out…. The clear cut is located to the North of this stand site and reaches all the way to the fields edge, that is planted in corn. This is a huge benefit because as I already mentioned, that clear cut offers daylight security cover for the deer to transition from it to the food source. This stand site is also located on a breakline of a 100 yard wide strip of timber that meets the clear cut and an inside field corner. Say what? That is a lot to envision. Allow my photos to help clear this up.
This is a view from my approximate stand location looking North into the clear cut. The corn field is located 20 yards to my East and 100 yards to my South. The bucks love traveling along the transition of one type of cover and another. The following picture shows exactly that with a well used trail leading to the corn field along this transition line.
This trail is located about ten yards into the timber off of the transition with the clear cut, it takes the deer right to the inside corner of the corn field. I expect most of my encounters to be from the deer traveling this line as well as coming from the clear cut to the inside corner.
This view to the East shows the corn field, the fields inside corner and the transition of the field and the clear cut.
The will be my view to the West where I expect to see the deer traveling to and from when utilizing the corn field. Traveling West takes the deer to an old swamp bed that was drained a few years ago. It has served as bedding since it was drained.
The corn kernels are already hard and the deer and other wildlife are hitting it heavily.
In my opinion with out a doubt the best type of cover to hunt is security cover. No matter what your archery season pressure is, if you are hunting a stand location with cover that gives whitetail the security to move during the day, the number of deer you will see will skyrocket.
There really is a lot going on at this stand location, it is not that often that you locate a place that offers so many desirable features in one spot. I expect the stand location to be a hub of whitetail activity. There is one thing this spot is lacking to this point though, a legitimate shooter buck. I have had two cameras on this property since the middle of June and have yet to capture a photo of a buck I want to chase. This is not necessarily bad news though, as late summer always has a shuffling of many bucks leaving their summer areas to relocate to their fall haunts. Keep that bit of info fresh on your mind and keep an eye out for new bucks on your properties in the coming weeks.
