Hunting hill country or mountainous areas presents its own set of challenges. However, the terrain at least provides a starting point that flatlands don’t give up so easily. Saddles, benches, or drainages typically stand out on a map. Subtle terrain features and soft edges don’t.
The lack of terrain and monotonous habitat, especially in the big woods, can be intimidating when you’re e-scouting. Unless you’re working with hard edges, you’ll have to get some boots on the ground to dissect the landscape and find deer. As a bonafide flatlander, I’m reminded every season by that monotonous habitat why I’m a meat hunter.
While hunting flatland might make you reconsider hunting altogether, it can provide some of the most rewarding hunting experiences on public land. Here are a few tips on how to find deer in flatland.
Find A Starting Point
E-scouting provides a great launchpad, but that’s about as far as it takes you in flatland. Sure, you could pick a spot and go in blind, but your chances of killing a deer that way are pretty slim. Still, you’ll need to find somewhere to start, and you can certainly do that from a screen.
When you approach a new piece of ground, look for anything that stands out on the map. Hard edges like property lines, private field edges, clear cuts, sloughs, or old oxbows are a great place to start. If you know what to look for, you can also spot habitat transitions like hardwoods/pines that are either drastic or subtle. You’ll need to actually scout these places, which will help you find the edges or terrain features that don’t show on the map.
Soft Edges
The big woods might seem like one giant forest on the map, but tons of habitat edges lie underneath the canopy. Hard edges where a forest meets a field edge are easy to spot. Soft edges like old-growth pines with a privet thicket underneath them require further inspection.
Deer will travel, feed, and bed in and along these soft edges. In river bottoms, look for large canebrakes. I’ve seen deer bed in small cane patches that were a few feet high, and I’ve seen them emerge from large canebrakes that were well over head-high.
Anywhere a disturbance occurs in the canopy, you can bet there’s some type of growth happening there. A concentration of young saplings, palmetto flats, canebrakes, briar patches, etc., all make great soft edges. These soft edges provide screening cover that makes deer feel secure, so it’s no surprise that you find a concentration of sign in these areas.
If you can find a subtle and feathered transition (where large hardwoods transition to smaller hardwoods that transition to pines or some type of screening cover) leading from a bedding area, that’s a spot that deserves an observation sit. Again, these edges don’t jump off the map. It’s up to you to find them.
Subtle Terrain Features
Flat as terrain might look on a computer screen, that’s hardly the case in person. Unless you’re using a mapping system with lidar, you’ll be surprised at how much the terrain varies in these “flat” spots. Old logging ramps, abandoned railroads, mounds, ditches, old river cuts, and high spots just don’t show up on a lot of maps. Again, this is where actual scouting comes into play. Anytime I find these subtle terrain features, there are almost always deer sign like trails, scrapes, or rubs on or around them.
In flat river bottom country, deer will travel and bed along micro ridges, which are old cuts left from the river. Depending on the cover, these can provide excellent travel corridors, especially for bucks. A quick scan with onX might not reveal this, but a lidar map can expose these subtle terrain variances.
Creek/River Crossings
Large creeks or rivers provide focal points for deer to travel on the landscape. That’s why, at least in flatland, you typically find large concentrations of trails and rubs right next to the banks. Most of the signpost rubs that I locate typically occur at or just before a major creek crossing (usually where the river bends). Distance to the nearest bedding cover will dictate what time of day/night deer most use a particular crossing. If you’re within 150 yards of bedding, you’re probably close to the X. Anything beyond that probably suggests nighttime travel unless you’re hunting the rut.
You’ll also want to consider the number of tracks and the feasibility of the crossing as well. If the banks are steep and it’s the only suitable place for the deer to cross for a few hundred yards, then there’s a great chance that the deer have to go through that spot. If the banks are only a few feet high or they have subtle slopes, the deer probably have numerous places they can cross.
The number of tracks should give you the best indication about a crossing. But don’t just look for quantity. Look for a variance in track sizes, too. Sometimes, tracks can be misleading, but if you’re after a big buck, look for big tracks.
Deadfall
In flatland where large bedding areas transition to old-growth timber, travel might seem completely random. In these instances, huge fallen trees can dictate deer traffic.
If you’re hunting a travel corridor and trying to find a spot within bow range, these blowdowns can create natural funnels for close-quarter setups. Look for trails that skirt just around the tops or bottoms of these blowdowns. Deer prefer the path of least resistance, so if a huge tree falls over a trail, they’ll simply skirt around it.
An Education Worth Learning
I know hunters who avoid these types of flat, big wood areas like the plague. I typically have some type of midseason reckoning (usually when I’m struggling) where I swear off these places, too.
There’s nothing easy about hunting flatland. It has a knack for humbling most hunters. But when you do manage to experience success, even if that’s just seeing a deer take the trail you guessed, boy, does it feel good. And, yes, it’s enough to keep you coming back.
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