Deer Hunting Hot Spot: Field Corners with Old Farm Access Roads
Bob McNally 10.27.15
Deer, including huge bucks, often walk into fields using old farm roads and lanes. This is especially true where roads lead into creek-bottom, heavy-timber bedding areas. Even if deer don’t walk right in the road access, there often are enough side trails near such roads that setting a stand to hunt the roadway makes sense.
“Old roadway accesses often are best in very square fields where there is not much other timber-edge relief–no points of timber or pockets that deer may feel secure in using,” reports Illinois hunter. “In such fields where access is remote, well away from highways, bucks often scrape on the woods lane and field edges.”
Choose a tree for a stand according to wind direction, Ralph advises. Wind should be blowing out into a field–away from timber and the timber lane where deer approach. Many such fields, especially big ones common to the Midwest, have more than one farm road access. Hunt them according to the wind and use binoculars to watch other field-access roads for deer. In big field country like in Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota, Indiana, Iowa, and Kansas, Ralph finds decoys very helpful in drawing whitetails to bow range because fake animals are spotted by deer from long range.
