Whitetail Traffic Control: Detour Ahead!

Okay here is a scenario that I for one have experienced and I am sure many of you have before: You have a piece of property that you hunt here in Iowa that is littered with deer sign. Everywhere you look there is a beaten down deer path that is constantly being used as a highway for deer travel. Sounds like a dream come true huh? Well not necessarily, while the land is a major travel route for deer in the area there are literally three mature trees that a stand can be placed in. The problem is that these trees are not directly in the path of any of the major trails. Frustrating year after year you see some really nice deer, but they continue to pass by out of range. It is hard to believe that with so many deer sign that none of these trees are in a great spot, but that is the hand that was dealt with this piece of property.

Sound familiar to any of you? For me this hits right at home and what I listed above was the case on our family farm down in Southwest Iowa. The property is full of mature sized deer, but as I alluded to above all of the trees that could support a hunter are not in the area that yielded the highest amount of traffic. Finally last year my frustration boiled over and I came up with the idea to reroute the deer travel system on this piece of property.

Reroute a deer’s travel routes? That is correct, by creating a new trail, while blocking off old existing trails I was able to get more traffic on the trail that I created, which purposely lead right by all three of my stands. Deer, much like humans like the path of least resistance so if you hinder travel on current routes you can push deer to use another route, in my case the trail that I created.

Creating a new deer trail is really simple, it does require a little legwork but all in all after a bit of planning and a day or two of work you can have a new highway system built.

 

Getting Started:

To get started what you need to do is come up with a blueprint for one main trail that leads by mature trees, capable of holding a hunter. This trail should have a starting point and end point. Ideally this would be from a bedding area to a food source or vice versa, since most natural deer trails revolve around this cycle yours should too.

Your trail should lead through dense brush, thick under growth, switch grass fields, and thorn thickets when ever possible. The denser the better as deer will feel more guarded in these areas as opposed to more wide-open areas.

 

Constructing The Trail:

Once you have your trail mapped out the actual process of building a new trail is pretty simple. Start out by placing marker flags along the path you have mapped out, this is done to help keep you online from point A to point Z when the actual trail creation takes place.

As far as equipment goes a walk behind bush hog from a local rental company is a great option. If you want to save money and go with a grass roots approach a commercial grade weed eater will do the trick, however using a weed eater will increase the overall time this project takes to complete. Not to mention most weed eaters were not made to knock down small saplings or dense underbrush so there are no guarantees you will return home with a working weed eater. Bottom line is you will need some sort of equipment to knock down the vegetation.

Now that you have your trail blazing equipment ready to go, whatever it may be, it’s time to put it to use. Following the predetermined route you flagged off simply go about removing any vegetation along this path. The more open you can make the trail the better for the most part. If you make your trail to wide deer may feel exposed and be more guarded when using the trail. A good rule of thumb to follow is to keep trails approximately three feet wide and now less than two feet wide.

Depending on when you construct a new trail the next step may not be necessary.

If you want to get this project done in late spring or early summer regrowth may be an issue and weeds may start to grow back quickly and not very inviting to a deer. If you want to construct your trail during this time you might want to apply some round up or other weed killer along your trail. Again timing will determine if you need to do this or not. If you construct early in the year it is probably a good idea so once you have your trail completed and weed control sprayed you can stay off the new route completely and let deer become accustom to it.

However, if you construct a new deer trail in mid to late August during the heat of the summer regrowth will not be too bad and when the deer start to take to the new route their hooves will act as your weed control. The downside to constructing a new trail during this time is your not giving deer a lot of time to start using it before the season/s open up.

I opted to construct in the early part of the summer and spray some round up on the trail. It worked out pretty good, and for the most part the weeds stayed at bay. The decision is up to you and as long as weeds don’t retake the trail deer will use it.

 

Reroute Measures:

Once you have your path created now its time to construct some obstacles on the existing deer trails to filter deer over to your new trail. The thought process here is, as stated earlier deer will use a path that provides the least resistance, so if you can make a deer’s natural trail more difficult to navigate you might be able to steer them towards your trail.

There are several things that you can do to deter deer from using their existing trails. Start out by felling some trees or piling some brush at key spots along the existing trails, intersections are great places to position these obstacles.

Another obstacle you can create is if your new trail crosses a creek you can level out the banks to make it easier for deer to cross that area and give your trail more clout and less resistance than the natural trails. Along with this you should place some brush or a felled tree next to the banks of a creek where deer are currently crossing. This will add that much more complication to the existing trail system and push deer to your trail.

Lastly as we know deer are kind of lazy and like the path of least resistance, I have on several occasions watched deer rather than jump across a fence walk over to where the fence only had the bottom two strands in tact or no strands intact and cross there…lazy huh? Well you can take advantage of this laziness and if you have a useless fence on your property that just happens to be near one of those mature trees go ahead and snip the wires and create an easy exit and entrance point that leads right to your new trail.

That is really all there is to it! With a little “yard work” in the field you can attempt to control deer traffic on your land and reroute them to where you have stands placed. If you have a similar situation to the scenario I highlighted in this article give this project a try! While I never put any guarantees or promises on projects like this, I for one had some good experiences with the new trail I created. Though I didn’t release an arrow at a deer on my property I spoke about earlier I did notice that plenty of deer were using my trail. I had several “tweener” bucks and a ton of does directly in front of me. I even had a very nice 10-point buck that had he come 20 more yards would of presented me a shot, long story short I screwed up and the buck was gone in a heartbeat…however that is another story for another day and not one I like to talk about.

Even though there are no guarantees in the whitetail world projects like this give you better odds and attempt to level the playing field…somewhat. On paper a whitetail has a hunter beat hands down, no questions asked. Whitetails have better senses and instincts than humans, we hunt them on their home turf, and while I hate to admit it they appear to be smarter than humans too! Taking the initiative to do projects like this can bring the odds closer together and lead to more chances of success! Good luck in your new job…Whitetail Traffic Controller!