Travel Route or Destination Hunter

[Dbllunger]

I find myself as primarily a travel route hunter. I like to set up on corridors that I know deer travel. Sometimes I will set up directly on a food source but mostly I want to catch them getting there.

I hunt a 1400 acre lease with 11 other people in Wilson county. It has every possible type of terrain you can find to hunt in middle Tennessee. Big hardwoods, cedar thickets, open fields. Creeks, fingers of woods and fingers of fields, high ridges and deep valleys. When we first got on the lease, everyone made like bandits for the big woods and ridges. I set back and studied maps and google earth forever looking for narrow bands of woods between fields that deer travel, wooded creek areas used to get from point A to B. My point is, I think these types of areas are more predictable than hunting destination areas (food sources) because deer seem to use the same travel routes year after year regardless of what they are eating. My favorite spots are narrow strips of timber connecting woodlots during the pre rut when bucks are cruising. It seems like these places become a highway during that time.

What are some of your thoughts on this stuff? How do you guys and gals hunt?

 

[htnseymour]

I hunt travel routes on the edge of food sources and bedding areas. Works pretty good, especially when the leaves fall and you can see farther.

 

[bowriter]

Travel routes always except when hunting from a shooting house down south. All of my stands are on travel routes and I don't always know where they are going. It does not really matter. All I ever need to know is the trail is there and it is being used. I will determine when pretty quickly.

 

[bigtex]

Yep, I prefer to hunt travel routes as well.

 

[lpo1981]

I am a sucker for travel routes as well! I love finding that unoticed spot that requires a little homework that knowbody else is going to put the time and effort into doing. I'm on a lease in kentucky 1700 acres mostly which is pines, id say 75% of the guys hunt the open clear cuts, roads and food plots but I've had a great 5 years with 4 deer over 120" hunting transition area of pines along a big creek that pinches donw real narrow with a logging road along the creek bank. You can't see but about 65yds out of my tree, but there funnel thru that are all day.. Nobody else will hunt this area cause there is no access with an atv...

 

[Boone 58]

I find myself as primarily a travel route hunter. I like to set up on corridors that I know deer travel. Sometimes I will set up directly on a food source but mostly I want to catch them getting there.

I hunt a 1400 acre lease with 11 other people in Wilson county. It has every possible type of terrain you can find to hunt in middle Tennessee. Big hardwoods, cedar thickets, open fields. Creeks, fingers of woods and fingers of fields, high ridges and deep valleys. When we first got on the lease, everyone made like bandits for the big woods and ridges. I set back and studied maps and google earth forever looking for narrow bands of woods between fields that deer travel, wooded creek areas used to get from point A to B. My point is, I think these types of areas are more predictable than hunting destination areas (food sources) because deer seem to use the same travel routes year after year regardless of what they are eating. My favorite spots are narrow strips of timber connecting woodlots during the pre rut when bucks are cruising. It seems like these places become a highway during that time.

What are some of your thoughts on this stuff? How do you guys and gals hunt?

Me too! :cool:

 

[PickettSFHunter]

If I want to kill a doe with a bow for sure then Ill hunt a food source. Most times in bow season Ill hunt travel routes that also have food sources(acorns). In ML and Rifle I usually find myself hunting travel routes.

 

[bowriter]

For me, no matter what time of the season, I want a travel route and in the thickest stuff I can find. From most of the my stands, the longest bow shot I have is about 35-yards. Most are under 20. I loves me a muddy trail through a thicket, I sholey does.

 

[Dbllunger]

For me, no matter what time of the season, I want a travel route and in the thickest stuff I can find. From most of the my stands, the longest bow shot I have is about 35-yards. Most are under 20. I loves me a muddy trail through a thicket, I sholey does.

I got me one of those BW, I just dont have any kind of tree to hunt it....I have tried for 4 years to figure out a way. It is a short trail that runs between two big hairy thickets.

 

[bowriter]

Ground Blind. Or let me come hunt in about three weeks :)

 

[Anonymous]

Travel Routes for me. I find hunting over food plots will mess up the natural order of things for a few days or a week. You also have to worry about the early birds catching a swirling wind and messing up the whole afternoon when hunting over plots. I also don't like getting out of the stand and running all the deer out of a food plot.

 

[BSK]

Definitely a travel route hunter, but more often closer to thick cover than food (especially in a good acorn year when food is not concentrated). Unfortunately, being a "big woods" type property we have few true habitat bottlenecks to hunt (but I would hunt them if we had them). Most of my set-ups are terrain-based travel routes, with the best also having some type of habitat edge aligned with the terrain feature. But like Bowriter posted, sometimes we don't know where the deer are going on these travel routes. We have not chosen that travel route because it is between bedding area "A" and feeding area "B". We've chosen it simply because it is a feature that concentrates movement no matter where deer are going.

 

[BSK]

My point is, I think these types of areas are more predictable than hunting destination areas (food sources) because deer seem to use the same travel routes year after year regardless of what they are eating. My favorite spots are narrow strips of timber connecting woodlots during the pre rut when bucks are cruising. It seems like these places become a highway during that time.

In the sense that bucks like to use the same types of habitat and/or terrain features as travel routes when they are "cruising," I agree. However, my place being primarily a "big woods" type environment with few openings, we find that which of these similar terrain/habitat features bucks use changes depending on primary food sources. In a good acorn year, bucks can end up using any of them, as high-quality food is widely distributed. However, in a poor acorn year, or a total acorn failure year, food sources are limited to small food plots and browse in thinned timber areas. This reduces the list of potential features they will use. These differences in primary food sources can produce polar opposite "hot-spots" for hunting between the two food source type years. The polar opposite locations are not different types of terrain/habitat, just polar opposite locations. They involve similar terrain/habitat.

Although a good acorn crop will draw more deer (and more bucks) to my hunting property in fall, due to more concentrated and predictable movement around the more limited food sources of a poor acorn year, the hunting is actually easier in a poor acorn year. We often hav less deer to hunt in a poor acorn year, but their movements are more predictable.