Hunting the Bedroom: Readers Weigh in on Hunting Bedding Areas

Hunting the Bedroom: Readers Weigh in on Hunting Bedding Areas

By Ricky Kinder

If you’ve been bowhunting whitetails for any considerable period of time, odds are that you’ve made up your mind about whether or not to hunt buck bedding areas, or even doe bedding areas for that matter. The logic seems pretty sound, we know the bucks are using these areas to spend the majority of the day. If we can enter their bedroom we should have a great shot at harvesting a buck…right? Sounds easy enough, but as we know it isn’t that easy. If done incorrectly you will not only ruin your day’s hunt, but you could potentially ruin your entire year by pushing the buck/s into a 100% nocturnal routine or even worse push them off of your land completely. This outcome usually results in most hunters from staying away from bedding areas completely.

So what should you do? Take the risk and try and harvest a buck that would have the entire state talking about you and your accomplishment for years to come? Or sit back and game plan other options that allow you to get the bucks coming to and from their bedroom? We posed this question to several Iowa Sportsman readers and here are some of the best or most common answers:

• I have and never will enter a buck’s bedding area, no matter how big he is. My motto is to know the patterns of the deer I am hunting. In return I use that knowledge to my advantage and set up ambush points that allow me at least a chance to harvest a buck when they are going back or leaving their bedding area.
Frank, from Dubuque

• It depends on the time of the year for me. Early season is hands off, I don’t want to ruin my property for better days to come. Even in the rut I won’t go near a buck’s bedding area. Instead I will focus more on hunting doe bedding areas…that is where the bucks will be anyways. So it is kind of useless to hunt a bedding area especially when there will be no bucks in there. Late season is the only time I have ever hunted directly in a buck’s bedding area. When I say late season I mean the last two days of bow season. I have only done this when I will not be doing any more deer hunting on the property the rest of the year. And honestly I don’t have any results to suggest I should have done it in the first place.
Sean, from Stuart

• No way will I hunt a buck’s bedding area. For one it is near impossible to get in undetected if there is already a buck bedded. Even if you go in during the early morning hours who is to say that there won’t be a deer in there? I never assume anything when it comes to deer hunting. It is just too big of risk! Secondly, lets say you do get in undetected. Then what? Most bedding areas are thick, relatively small, and are not ideal spots to be hunting anyways. Shot opportunities would be scarce without trimming shooting lanes and entrance and exit routes. Not to mention, you probably don’t know the area very well (unless you scouted before season) so you wouldn’t necessarily know the routine of the bucks or the lay of the bedding area once you are in there.
Troy, Webster City

• I don’t hunt bedding areas, unless it is a does around the rut. Even then I try and stay on the outskirts and hunt over heavily used trails. I spend a lot of time learning about the deer on my property without being detected. I consider myself a Whitetail Private Eye detective. If I want to learn all there is to know about the deer I hunt I have to do so from afar. A good Private Eye would never knock on the bedroom door and start asking questions to their subject in person. The same holds true in deer hunting…why put all that work in and then blow it on hunting a slim odds chance that you will shoot a buck in a bedding area.
Wes, from Decorah

• I hunt NEAR buck bedding areas all the time and have had good success. But you have to do so with CAUTION! I still never go fully into the bedding area, and only hunt around the bedding area when all the conditions are perfect. If anything changes that I don’t like, I am up and out of that stand quickly.
Thomas, from Ankeny

• For me it depends on when and where I am hunting. If I am hunting out of state on a trip hunt and have paid a good chunk of money to be on this trip I will go for broke the last few days…only if it is discussed with the property owner and/or guides first. Just because I paid the money doesn’t give me free reign to do whatever I want! If I am hunting a large tract of my own land that has several buck bedding zones then I might opt to hunt one of them during the season. I will only do this if I have prior information of the bedding area; knowing the landscape, already have a blind or stand set up, and if the wind direction is optimal.
Ben, from Garner

• Shooting a mature buck is hard enough when not hunting bedding areas. Why would someone want to march into where a deer feels safe and ruin the hunt or season? Just because you can get into a bed doesn’t mean you will shoot a buck, nor does it mean you will up your chances. In fact I would say trying to hunt a buck’s bedding area would decrease your chances.
Jayme, from Pocahontas

• I hunt bedding areas all the time, albeit on public land. I even harvested a nice buck right smack dab in the middle of what was a bedding area. I always get in as early as possible, and make sure the wind is coming from the right spot. My philosophy is if I know I can get in undetected then I will go for it.
Trent, from West Des Moines

• I stay out, too big of risk for me! I have been hunting 25 years now and made the mistake of hunting a bedding area one time. I can still see the big rack running over the hill to this day….that was the first year I hunted with a bow and the last time I knowing walked into a bedding area.
Ross, from Humboldt

• I hunt bedding areas, but only if I have a solid plan in place. I have to know when the buck/s will be in the area or more importantly when they won’t be so I can get in there. Once I am in I sit and wait for them to come back and bed for the day. This isn’t as easy as it sounds though, it is constant scouting and monitoring of the deer I hunt. I start early in the year and don’t stop once the season has started. I use cameras around trails that lead in and out of bedding areas that tell me what times of the day the buck/s are leaving and entering the area. It takes a lot of patience and getting up earlier and staying later…my number one goal is getting up and down from the stand with no deer in bed. Once I know patterns of the bucks it is all about getting in there and waiting for them to come back or leave. With that said I would never encourage a person to enter a bedding area during the middle of the day. That is when the buck/s will be bedded and there is no good way of getting in there.
Brandon, from Knoxville

• I hunt bedding areas two times during the year. 1. During the “October Lull” when buck sightings seem to up and vanish as bucks are saving energy for the upcoming rut and bedding most of the daylight hours. 2. During the late season right after rut, when bucks are licking their wounds from a long and grueling breeding season and spend most of the day bedded. Those are the only two times I will think about hunting a bedding area. Even during those two times I am always playing the wind and I always make sure I have a stand or blind set up well ahead of the season. I do this around June. If anything changes or I don’t like the feeling I am getting I will either get down or not even go in.
Michael, from Keokuk

As you can see a lot of readers opt to stay out of bedding areas all together, most hunt around bedding areas but opt to stay out, and a handful even go all in and hunt bedding areas. Personally I opt to never hunt a bedding area. I am a risk reward type of person and the risk simply isn’t worth the reward, especially when you factor in the consequences of a failed bedding area hunt. However, just because I establish bedding areas as “no hunt zones” doesn’t mean that I don’t use them to my advantage. If you choose to avoid bedding areas you can still hunt around them in hopes that the extra security will bring mature bucks out of the bedroom in the daylight hours. Set up your stand near or around bedding areas and catch bucks as they make their way in and out, or scout the area to find food sources, put a stand up and wait for the bucks to come out of their sanctuaries to feed. No matter your preference of hunting style, there are plenty of ways to play the bedding area without breaking the “forbidden” rules. Still, if you are one that likes to throw caution to the wind and hunt bedding areas, by all means do what works for you. I am never going to tell someone that has had success doing something that they should stop.