Trophy Deer Bedding Areas
Bedding Areas Of Whitetail Deer
If you can locate trophy deer bedding areas; you have greatly increased your opportunity to harvest one of them.
Trophy Deer Bedding Habitat
Whitetail bucks and does usually differ in the habitat and areas they choose to bed in. Trophy Bucks like seclusion, they are loners when it comes to their bedding areas. Big bucks often bed at least a half mile away from roads and human activity. Bucks like to bed in areas that give them a good view of any approaching danger, often bedded with the wind to their back and dense cover nearby for quick escape. Trophy deer, the big bucks, will often bed just below a ridge; under a conifer tree, or in tall grass on a brushy slope, sunning themselves. Thus allowing them the vision and a quick escape over the ridge if danger approaches form below. Bucks also like field edges, just inside the wood line. Trophy whitetail deer also favor the edges of swamps; bedded in areas of tall swamp grass or amongst the alder-brush. Trophy deer like to bed in corn fields; but not very often on windy days. Large bucks will always pick a bedding area that is to their advantage; line of sight, wind direction, and have escape cover very close by.
The Bed
How can we tell if it is a trophy buck’s bed? Three things are dead give-a-ways. First; the size of the deer bed, a buck’s bed will be oval and at least 40 inches long. Second; the smell of it, does it have a musky, kind of rank smell to it? It won’t be sweet smelling. Put your nose to it and get a whiff. Third; is it alone? Trophy bucks usually bed alone. You won’t find another fresh bed (is it still warm, any frost in it, melted snow, fresh droppings near-by? Don’t taste them!) near-by, or smaller deer beds (come across a large doe bed with yearlings).
Trophy Buck's Rub
Trophy bucks may have bedding areas near their rub and scrape line; just off doe trails, resting, and waiting a bit before their next romantic opportunity.
Scrape left by a Buck
Scouting A Buck’s Bedding Area
Scout your bedding areas as if you were hunting; were rubber boots and remain scent free. Once you have found a trophy deer’s bedding area in your hunting area, get out; don’t linger there and leave a bunch of scent. Don’t do anything to disrupt it. You should almost back out. You want that buck to come back to his bedding area and be comfortable. You don’t want him to leave. Take some mental notes. Evaluate a promising stand site; note prevailing winds, feeding areas, and cover. Don’t place your hunting stand over his bedding area. If you do, it won’t be his bedding area for long. He will leave and you will be disappointed. Your stand site needs to be placed between his bedding and feeding areas, or just off a promising scrape line, between the two. This is where you want to use a portable hunting stand, or even a ladder stand.
Ladder Stand Hunting
A deer stand that leaves a low impact on the hunting area. By low impact I mean; don’t drive an ATV right up to the tree stand site, run a chainsaw, hammer and nail, urinate all over, spend hours getting a stand in place. Do you get the idea? Low impact; get in, set your stand up and get out. Don’t hunt there 10 days in a roll either. A serious trophy deer hunter will have multiple hunting stand sites to choose from as conditions dictate. On that note, you may want to place a stand site near a doe bedding area. What are trophy bucks looking for during the rut? That’s right; a sweetie to snuggle up to.
Creating A Bedding Area
If you hunt a great area where quite a few deer move through but they don’t stop to bed, you may need to create a bedding area for them. Think about it for a while. Ideally it would cover several acres, be between food sources and water. Look for a wooded spot that is either on top or near the top of a ridge or an area that is low and brushy. Look for a spot that has plenty of cover with an opening facing a field with the prevailing winds blowing across; usually a wooded area to the southeast of a field. See deer are creatures of the edge. A bedding area with good cover on two or three sides that is exposed to the northwest allows deer to bed facing their cover with escape routes left or right. Their nose is their early warning system to any danger coming from the rear.
Once you have found a likely bedding area, you need to make a plan to make this spot as comfortable and safe as possible for deer. Work will need to be done to clear small areas of brush and debris. Sunlight has to hit this area so grasses can grow. These grasses will offer comfort and concealment that deer look for in bedding areas. Work may have to done to create dense cover where deer will feel safe. This work should ideally be done in the winter months when you will disturb deer the least. If it is the top of a ridge you will need to clear an area and probably bring in debris to create dense cover to the back and sides. Keep in mind that deer need and escape route to thick cover. You may even want to clear escape routes that deer will naturally use. Lay saplings and small trees at an angle alongside the route; make it difficult for them to cross in a different direction. Create a path for them to go. You may want these routes to take off in the direction of your stand sites that may be two to three hundreds away.
Do not place this bedding area in a spot that you need to cross or go close by to get to your hunting stand. Place your hunting stands between food sources and these bedding areas. A little scouting at the end of a hunting season should alert you to the most traveled game trails and feeding grounds. Once deer start using your bedding area, don’t be surprised if the next spring a doe or two decide to use it as a spot to birth their fawns in the spring. Once this happens, those fawns will come back and do the same when they become does. If done right and positioned in the right place; you may create a honey hole that produces year after year.
Remember, between food and water sources, a visual opening into the prevailing winds, comfortable grounds/grasses with sunshine, good dense cover – at least to two sides, and they need escape routes.
