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Sneaky-Smart Tactics That Can Tip the Odds

A little effort before the season and a handful of easy tricks will boost your chances of luring mature whitetails within bow range of your stand locations.

By David Westphal

The November afternoon light was beginning to fade, sending lengthening grey shadows across the leaf-covered forest floor. A short time earlier, two young bucks had chased a doe through the opening below my treestand, confirming that the local whitetail rut was well underway. It also reinforced my belief that this stand location—a few hundred yards into a woodlot between a feeding and a bedding area—would serve as a conduit for any whitetail buck chasing a hot doe.

A rustle in the leaves near the edge of a distant cornfield caught my attention. A doe suddenly appeared and began to work her way through the woodlot. She walked, flicking her tail up and down, signaling to a tending buck somewhere behind her. Frantically searching the brown and grey landscape behind her for any signs of her suitor, I caught a glimpse of antler. A nice buck was slipping almost silently through the shadows behind her, intently watching her every move.

As the doe continued walking slowly through the woodlot, it became agonizingly clear that her path would lead the buck well out of my effective bow range. Realizing that this was the time to make a move, I pulled a grunt call to my lips and dug an estrous bleat call from my coat pocket. I held the can call behind my back and tipped it, producing a soft bleat. The buck looked my way, then back at his doe as she nibbled on some of the last green shoots of the season. Cupping the grunt tube, I let out a single tending grunt and tipped the estrous can call a second time.

This proved enough to get the buck moving my way. Picking up his head, lips curled, he searched for the buck and doe he had heard. A short distance further, he stopped at a well-worn scrape well within bow range. As he turned to work it, I sent an arrow cleanly through his vitals.

Whitetails, especially mature bucks and does, are amazingly perceptive and cautious mammals. They literally make their living avoiding predators on a daily basis. As most bowhunters know all too well, getting whitetails consistently into bow range and positioned for a clean shot can be a challenging proposition. Properly preparing your stand locations well in advance of the hunting season is crucial. Even if you cannot work on your stand location ahead of time—such as when you are a guest on someone else’s property or are hunting with an outfitter—knowing what to look for in an optimum setup and adding some sneaky-smart tricks can make a big difference in the success of your hunt.

Deception

The whitetail is well designed to handle its position in the food chain. Equipped with highly tuned sensory capabilities, a whitetail is constantly on alert for any threats. As a deer ages, it adds experience to its arsenal of already potent detection capabilities, making it a very challenging opponent for the bowhunter. If you are going to deceive mature whitetails, you need to understand how and why they use their senses and learn to use those senses to your advantage.

A whitetail has a sense of smell that is thought to be about 1,000 times better than a human’s. Whitetails often lick their noses with their tongue, an action which moistens the air entering the deer’s nostrils and allows them to better detect a particular scent. A whitetail’s sense of smell is critical to its survival. Smell is also important to the whitetail in detecting the various “signboards” that exist within a given territory. These scents provide key information about what deer are in the area, their territories and their social status.

Whitetails also have excellent hearing. Each of their ears can move independently, allowing a deer to pinpoint the direction and location of a sound at remarkable distances. Because whitetails also use sound to communicate with other deer, bowhunters can use that acute sense of hearing against them.

A deer’s eyes are located on the side of its head, giving the deer 270 degrees of vision. The only place whitetails cannot see is directly behind them. Their eyes are able to see in both daylight and near total darkness, and they key in on movement. A good rule of thumb is that if you can see a deer’s eye, it can see you. Sight is often used by whitetails to confirm the findings of the other senses and to remove suspicions when needed.

To bring a whitetail within bow range of your stand, you generally need to fool at least one of its primary senses. The challenge is that whitetails will constantly test you with the other two senses. A failure to fool those other senses will end the encounter. Many hunters have been able to stop a mature deer with a grunt call but have watched the deer leave quickly when it could not confirm the presence of another deer with additional sensory checks.

Your best bet in the game of deception is to create a situation around your stand that will play into multiple whitetail senses simultaneously when the time is right.

Mock Scrapes

The mock scrape is a tool all avid whitetail hunters should have in their bag of tricks. The goal of the mock scrape is to engage two of the senses: sight and smell. Although mock scrapes work best in the early-territory-definition and pre-rut periods of the annual whitetail life cycle, they can be effective all year. As you’re scouting and hanging stands in late summer, start the first mock scrapes, positioning them to provide good shot opportunities from your stands. Your goal is to make the local whitetails think one of them made the scrape, so scent control is important. Wear rubber boots and gloves when you make your scrapes.

Choose an overhanging branch that is close to your shoulder height. Grasp and twist the branch end, bending it down. Whitetail bucks do this with their teeth and antlers. Below the “licking” branch, clear a spot about the size of a trash can lid down to fresh dirt. Remember, this is well ahead of the rut, so what you are making is a type of signpost inviting other deer to visit.

Use a couple of different scents to get the scrape going. In the late summer, use an attractant scent around the area and some doe or buck urine in the dirt within the scrape. As the season progresses, switch to your pre-rut and rut scents. By that time you should be able to tell which of your mock scrapes are being hit regularly by the locals. Once the scrapes are getting used regularly, continue to use enough commercial scents to keep them interesting. Scent drippers or time-release scent products like those from Code Blue can provide scent over a longer period of time, minimizing the need to refresh frequently.

Only a percentage of the mock scrapes started at the beginning of a season will likely be used by the local whitetails, so plan ahead and make several around each stand location. A good infrared scouting camera is a great tool to help you check the quantity and quality of deer using a particular scrape, as well as the time of day when they visit. Shy away from the flash-style cameras. They may get you a good photo, but the odds of a good buck returning to a place where he got popped in the eye by a bright flash of light are not good.

Calls

If you spend enough time in the woods, you will eventually be exposed to the pulse-quickening sounds whitetails create. From the bleats of young deer to the tending grunt of a mature buck, each sound has its place in the daily social order of the animals’ lives.

Sounds are best used with caution, as whitetails will readily pinpoint a sound’s origin. Look for stand locations that have brush or terrain that obscures the deer’s sight. This will cause them to approach your stand to locate the source of the sound.

Learn to use your calls in combination to create the illusion of multiple deer. Rattling and grunts combined, estrous bleats and tending grunts all work to draw deer to you. A common mistake hunters make is to not change their methods to target and attract the specific deer they want to call in. If you are hunting in an area where many mature bucks roam, adjust your grunt call deeper to reflect the vocalization of the bucks you are pursuing. If you are hunting the only mature buck in an area, a good strategy is to alter the call to create the sounds of a lesser buck—one he is more likely to rush in and challenge.

Decoys

Another way to deceive whitetails is through the use of decoys. This method can work anytime but is especially effective when used in combination with calling during the rut. Bucks will often circle the decoy, sometimes providing the archer a shot he may not have otherwise had.

Diversions

Diversions are what should be considered soft course corrections. They are using simple means to funnel the deer past your stand in the best position for a shot. During your scouting and stand-selection forays, keep in mind that as archers we are either right- or left-handed shooters. By nature this means we will have a given range of comfortable shooting, usually over the shoulder of our bow arm. Set your stands accordingly.

Using diversions can help make good stand locations great. The goal of the process is to create a situation where the most comfortable and secure travel route in the area is past one of your stands. Diversions are best set up in the off-season as the deer require time to acclimate to them.

Once you’ve chosen a preferred stand location, look for key terrain and travel routes that you want to connect to. By using existing terrain, you can make small modifications to optimize the hunting with minimum efforts. Keep in mind the prevailing wind direction for the area when choosing your stand location.

The best way to start a diversion is to clear trails that connect these key land features during the winter, removing small trees and brush to create a path. If you can walk the path comfortably it should be about right.

Encourage the deer to use the trail by laying the brush you have cut along the sides. These brush borders serve two purposes. First, the fresh-cut brush will be used by the deer as browse during the winter months, acclimating them to the trail. Second, the brush helps to “fence” the trail, encouraging deer to stay on it as they funnel past your stand the following fall.

Diversions keep getting better year after year. All you have to do is create the very best travel route for the deer, and they will use it. Put in a little hard work this winter, and it will pay big dividends next fall.

Detours

If diversions are considered soft course corrections, then detours should be thought of as the more extreme option. Often used along with diversions, a detour is a complete travel re-route that causes whitetails to alter their travel patterns and come to or past you. Take a look at how farmers direct livestock, and you will see forms of these in use.

Don’t Fence Me In

Almost every hunter that has hunted Midwestern whitetail habitat has encountered a good fence crossing or opening. A fence can be a perfect means to funnel deer to a given area. Creating a few selective openings in the fence (if it is yours) can create two or three travel hot spots in and through a given area. Consider using the fence to control deer and focus their travel around a particular point or stand location.

Fencing can be bought as panel-sections, which are great for re-routing whitetails. A couple of these wired into a key location can focus deer at one spot very readily. To control a larger edge, opt for roll fence and wire it to drive-in steel posts. (Both are readily available and reasonably priced at most agricultural-supply stores.)

Your goal is to create the opening where you want it. Deer can and will jump these fences, but in normal travel they will simply pass at the point of least resistance. Fence openings are also great places to use scouting cameras as most deer in your area will pass through this point.

As an alternative to fencing, you can hinge-cut several trees in a row to create the same effect. Keep the felling cut about at hip height, and try to keep the trees in a line. Deer will learn to walk around these well-placed obstacles and you should be able to route them right to your stand.

Livestock Grids

Livestock grids have been used for centuries to keep hoofed animals in pastures while allowing people and vehicles to easily pass. These grids are based on the concept that animals such as cattle, sheep and deer do not like to stick their legs down into anything and thus will avoid those areas. You can create the same result by crisscrossing brush at a key crossing you want deer to avoid using. This method works particularly well in and around creek bottoms and ditch crossings. By using this method, you can refocus all the deer activity to your desired location.

To be effective with whitetails, you should use brush that is about one inch in diameter, and it should be stacked to a height of about 6 inches, effectively blocking the area. These brush grids will degrade over time, but within a few years and whitetail generations, you will have re-routed the deer to key crossing points you can use to your hunting advantage.

Brush piles are another form of the same idea. You can strategically use these throughout your hunting property to funnel and control deer travel.

Putting It All Together

It’s difficult to be consistently successful on whitetails unless you start to shift the odds in your favor, and every trick and method you can add helps. Taking advantage of their senses instead of being busted by them is a much better position for those archers who want to relish more success. Such exceptionally challenging animals might require you to put some fresh thinking into play next season, and by applying some of these preparation tricks now, you can assure that your good hunting spots become great.

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