Hunting Farm Land

[Brad]

We have some amazing threads about marsh hunting ans hill country, but we don't cover farm land as much. Let's get some good farm land hunting tips ans tactics going. Let's do basics to advanced. I have found bedding to be more sporadic in farm country and you often have more night beds to sort through it seems like. Thoughts?

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[trdtnlbwhntr]

I will be watching this with serious intrigue. I searched and searched for beds during the late winter months and found beds in bunches. What I can assume are doe groups, but I never really narrowed in on a bed that I know for certain was made by a buck and was used routinely. Obviously if there is a bed in the snow and the yellow snow is in the back of the bed its a doe bed, if it is in the middle that's probably a buck bed. But having watched the videos I could not find that tell tale sign that a buck had a permanent bed in location A for example.

All of my hunting has been on farm ground. Small woodlots connected with a fence row or a change in crops. What I have found is that inside corners in woodlots can also be translated to inside corners in ag fields. When a corn field connects with a bean field you can find that inside corners will also hold true in these types of scenarios. Also when hunting over standing corn, I try to find areas that farmers have missed and allowed grass to grow. Usually where they back up with the planter to throw down the end rows and don't get close enough to the edge of the field. I have found that deer and bucks like to survey that little area and walk into the corn in these spots. These spots can also be dynamite bedding areas if they are on the interior of standing corn fields. Also another spot to locate good bedding within corn fields is in irrigation pivots and the surrounding perimeter. Usually these pivot points will have tall grass and be surrounded by standing corn.

[Ridgerunner7]

I hunt quite a bit of farm land. Routine bedding that I find in these areas are small little islands of (trees, ponds or wetland areas) out in the middle of fields away from the main woodlots that draw all the hunting pressure, creek/river bends as they snake through farm country, old abandoned farm steads that are over grown, tall CRP or weed fields..often in a clump of thicker cover, in slight elevations centralized in larger woodlots where they use scent, sight (over looking open areas) and sound (long distances of crunchy leaves) to their advantage, on the edge of tiny woodlots overlooking their feeding area for oncoming danger, standing corn towards the upwind side or in the grassy/wet areas that they couldn't plant..often off a point of a hedgerow or irragation pivot like trdtnlbwhntr mentioned. In areas with swamps/marshes in farm country I find them very consistent to what Dan describes in his DVDs..which is islands and points sticking out into the wetlands.

[brink]

Good thread. I don't have much of anything to add but I will be keeping tabs on this one.

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[Maple_Ridge]

I am all ears on this thread!

I think another element, often talked about in the AG arena, is the use of actual AG equipment.

It can be an advantage or disadvantage, determined by the distance in which whitetails feel 'safe' from danger.

I have seen some whitetails react, not caring at all if they are in the same 80 acre field as the equipment.

And, more than not, I have seen most deer run the other way when equipment passes their 'comfort zone'.

If I am hunting our farm, and Grandpa is working the field I wanted to hunt early season, (Ex. picking field corn....etc) I try to either hunt in a place of advantage on the perimeter of the field, or hunt deeper in the woods. All the action sometimes acts as a buffer and pushes them back during daylight hours.

Some argue that it does not bother them, but I tend to think otherwise based on my observations.

[Maple_Ridge]

Brad,

Also to your point of bedding.....


I cannot tell how many beds I have seen, in an alf-alfa field, and entirely sporatic. We do shine when we are allowed to, the does AND buck are scattered everywhere in bedding areas. I believe though it is night bedding only, of course.

In the CRP fields bordering AG fields however, as mentioned in another thread, these beds seem to be more patternable and my family has found off season sheds in this type of terrain. I counted about 30-40 beds this spring, in a similar CRP field. It was on the top of a hill/knoll, visibility was definetly an advantage.

[Crazinamatese]

The way deer behave on farm land I think solely depends on how humans tend the land. Where I was raised, if you were on a tractor, the deer would just get up out of their bed and watch you go by. Even during harvest time we would see deer in the corn, but they would run a short distance a few rows away and let you pass so they wouldn't get ran over. We had logging roads in the woods. If you were on a ATV cruising thru, the deer wouldn't fly out of there, but just wait until you went by and carry on what they were doing. If you were walking in the woods, the deer would get up and get the heck out fast. I think they knew if someone was on foot, it seemed like it usually meant to them that it could be a hunter.

[Crazinamatese]

I have found bedding on farm land were usually closest to a feeding area and on certain terrain such as spurs and draws. If the deer felt pressure, they would move into the neighbor's land where there was less pressure and better cover. In the winter, they would herd up and move to the nearest best food source which could have been a few miles away, depending on what farm had the best food source that year.

[JoeRE]

Good thread! I hunt a good bit of farm country - areas where the cover consists mostly of small woodlots and thin fingers and draws.

Bedding is harder to pinpoint - I find bucks still stick to the isolated pockets of thick cover and points such as in other terrains but it is more difficult because there are more such areas, the bucks seem to pick from more options for any given wind. My experience is that buck bedding areas are more variable - repeated use of one core area by one buck is much less common. A lot of farm country bucks might bed in one grassy swale one day, an isolated thicket a 1/4 mile away the next day, somewhere else a 1/2 mile away the next day and so on not to return to the first bedding area for weeks. I think this may be a result of disturbance being commonplace for farm country bucks because there is more human activity in farm country - they are used to needing to move around and there is rarely even one spot that doesn't get human activity at some point.

Another thing to keep in mind is farm country deer really change their behavior when the crops come out - think about it this way, cover could be reduced by 90% or more when the corn gets picked. The later in the season it is, the less options for secure bedding a farm country buck has which is helpful to a hunter.

[Ridgerunner7]

Good thread! I hunt a good bit of farm country - areas where the cover consists mostly of small woodlots and thin fingers and draws.

Bedding is harder to pinpoint - I find bucks still stick to the isolated pockets of thick cover and points such as in other terrains but it is more difficult because there are more such areas, the bucks seem to pick from more options for any given wind. My experience is that buck bedding areas are more variable - repeated use of one core area by one buck is much less common. A lot of farm country bucks might bed in one grassy swale one day, an isolated thicket a 1/4 mile away the next day, somewhere else a 1/2 mile away the next day and so on not to return to the first bedding area for weeks. I think this may be a result of disturbance being commonplace for farm country bucks because there is more human activity in farm country - they are used to needing to move around and there is rarely even one spot that doesn't get human activity at some point.

Another thing to keep in mind is farm country deer really change their behavior when the crops come out - think about it this way, cover could be reduced by 90% or more when the corn gets picked. The later in the season it is, the less options for secure bedding a farm country buck has which is helpful to a hunter.

Very good post! I agree, very accurate to the area I frequently hunt.

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[Sweet Shot 7]

Alot of the buck bedding I found is on the points of woodlots and overlooked areas. The main thing I noticed is that the beds are set on these woodlots to watch hunters access.

[Sweet Shot 7]

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=17743


I think this is one of the best farmland bedding threads.Chantz goes into great detail on all the beds he finds. I added some of the ones I found also. There are marked ariels to show where the bucks are bedding and that really helps me to learn.

I cant wait for the Farmalnd DVD to come out by Dan and Andrea!

[phade]

Good thread! I hunt a good bit of farm country - areas where the cover consists mostly of small woodlots and thin fingers and draws.

Bedding is harder to pinpoint - I find bucks still stick to the isolated pockets of thick cover and points such as in other terrains but it is more difficult because there are more such areas, the bucks seem to pick from more options for any given wind. My experience is that buck bedding areas are more variable - repeated use of one core area by one buck is much less common. A lot of farm country bucks might bed in one grassy swale one day, an isolated thicket a 1/4 mile away the next day, somewhere else a 1/2 mile away the next day and so on not to return to the first bedding area for weeks. I think this may be a result of disturbance being commonplace for farm country bucks because there is more human activity in farm country - they are used to needing to move around and there is rarely even one spot that doesn't get human activity at some point.

Another thing to keep in mind is farm country deer really change their behavior when the crops come out - think about it this way, cover could be reduced by 90% or more when the corn gets picked. The later in the season it is, the less options for secure bedding a farm country buck has which is helpful to a hunter.

Hugely accurate post from my experience.

Crop rotation also plays a huge factor. I chased a real nice buck for two seasons before I got a bead on his bed in an isolated clump of small trees. I had scouted it several times but someohow overlooked the bed. I probably was within 10 feet of it in post season scouting each year. I bumped him from it once in taht second season and found him to be pretty committed to that bed as the crops were still standing as I hunted him a few more times after that encounter and saw him leave it each time. I never got him that season, but the crop rotation went to short crops the following year, and the bed stopped being used for most part. That third year, he was shot just under a mile away in a similar scenario, bedding on a small clump of tree amidst a standing corn field.

[Redman232]

Small woodlots and thickets are the ticket in my opinion. The smaller the better, less ground to scout,, less competition and fewer bedding locations on each property. Unfortunately most the property around where I live is broken into 40 acres or less, so every 10+ acre woods has hunters in it. So I often ask for permission on property with less than 5 acres of woods or thicket. Heck, I even hunt a few farms that have only have a few mature trees in the middle of crop fields, usually if those trees have any brush around them they will also have bedding. Having a good vantage point and a sneaky escape route are two common trends I come across. The bigger deer I have encountered in these situations will bust out real early if they see you coming and if you don't know where their escape route is you'd never know they were there. I started scouting and hunting these little islands of cover after jumping bucks out of them during rabbit hunting. Your approach is the most important part of a hunt like this, if you can figure that out, the beds and the bucks are there.

[huntinsonovagun]

Could we lump pastureland in to this as well? The obvious difference is lack of crops, but you do have the mix of grassland and timber. The more I learn about deer bedding, the more I realize that it is all seems to be very similar. I assume that deer are going to utilize timber bordering a pastureland area as they would utilize timber bordering a swamp. What say ye?

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