As summer gives way to fall, whitetail bowhunters prep their gear and dream of arrowing one or more mature bucks in the coming months. Of course, some are successful while many others eat tag soup when the season closes.

There are untold numbers of reasons why whitetails are successful at avoiding hunters. Even with the latest and greatest technology (cell trail cams, etc.) at their fingertips, deer hunters are at a disadvantage when they step into the whitetail woods. And this is especially true for bowhunters due to distance considerations. The fact is, a firearm can make up for many mistakes made by a hunter because a bullet or slug can “reach out and touch ‘em.” Not the case with archery gear.

If my 45-plus years of targeting whitetails have taught me anything, it’s this: The No. 1 reason hunters fail to punch a whitetail tag is because of poorly planned entry and exit routes. Or stated another way, it’s far more difficult to kill a whitetail, especially a mature buck, when it knows it’s being hunted. 

It doesn’t matter if you have the best bedding cover or food plots on your property, or even a large sanctuary that you haven’t entered since Bush No. 1 was president. If a whitetail knows it’s being hunted, then the odds swing dramatically to the deer’s favor.

Myth of a Sanctuary

Many deer hunters believe if they designate a decent-sized portion of their land to sanctuary, then whitetails will tolerate some hunting pressure outside the sanctuary without changing their typical relaxed (think summer) behavior. Wrong.

Will all deer on a property suddenly become nocturnal and travel only after dark due to hunting pressure? No.

However, almost all of their daytime movement will be within thick cover. Sure, some doe/fawn families and young bucks will probably walk out onto a food plot 30 to 60 minutes before dark, but older deer will likely browse in bedding cover and wait until after the end of legal hunting time before traveling to prime food sources in more open terrain. Similarly, these mature deer will likely be back within thick cover before legal hunting time arrives the following morning.

Hunters label such deer behavior as “nocturnal” but it’s really not. The deer are still active during daylight; they are still on their feet during daylight hours, even during midday, but they aren’t leaving thick cover.

The key to encountering mature deer during legal hunting time outside of thick cover is to treat your entire property like a sanctuary. In other words, you need to think about every entry and exit route to treestands and ground blinds. If you bump deer on your way to or from stand sites, then deer are learning that they’re being hunted.

Hunting is a wonderful tradition among family and friends. That said, even a handful of hunters can put a tremendous amount of hunting pressure on a property unless great care is taken when planning stand locations, as well as entry and exit routes. Everyone’s number of deer sightings will go down if whitetails know that they’re being hunted.

To hunt unpressured deer, you must consider every treestand or ground blind site. Ask yourself: “Can I get into a stand and out of it without alerting deer?” If the answer is “no,” then stop hunting it.

I understand that this is a difficult problem to overcome. For example, after careful consideration, you might determine that of the 10 morning and evening stand sites you currently have on an 80-acre wooded parcel, that only one or two satisfy the “no bump deer” criteria for entering and exiting. Nobody wants to hear that they should abandon 80 or 90 percent of their existing stand sites.

Of course, this situation becomes even more difficult if a hunting property is shared among two or more family members or friends. Opinions will differ on what constitutes “bumping deer.”

Opinions will also differ on how much your group is currently pressuring deer. For example, I talked about this topic recently with my dad, and asked him, “On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being severe, how much hunting pressure did our group (five bowhunters) put on our land (240 acres) during 2021? He said, “3.” My answer was “8.” Keep in mind we’ve been bowhunting together every season since the early 1970s, yet our perception regarding hunting pressure on our family almost couldn’t be further apart.

Next Steps?

I wish I had all the answers, but I don’t. 

However, I do know this: If you and all your hunting partners stayed off your land entirely this deer season, then whitetails of all ages would travel around more freely during daylight hours throughout the entire property than ever before.

Obviously, this isn’t going to happen. I like to hunt. A lot! And you like to hunt. And all of your hunting partners like to hunt. No one wants to sit home when they could be hunting. 

But smart use of your land, meaning not bumping deer, will result in better hunting. The trick is finding a way to effectively hunt a property without deer knowing their being pursued. 

One practice our hunting group has started to put in action is sitting together in double ladder stands and ground blinds. Right off the bat that will cut hunting pressure in half across our property; instead of two persons sneaking to different stand sites, they will sneak to one stand. (Click here for an article I wrote about this topic.)

Sitting in pairs is not only fun, but it’s also a great way to cut hunting pressure in half.

In general, simply hunting the edges of your property instead of hiking into its interior is a smart way reduce hunting pressure. Clear access trails around a property’s perimeter and then use them. Try to intercept deer traveling from point A to point B.

And this last bit of advice will be difficult to hear; I know my dad wasn’t happy about it when I suggested it recently: Stop hunting over food plots.

The reason is you can’t exit at dark without bumping deer on the food plot. If the big buck you were hoping to encounter on the plot doesn’t show by dark, but there’s a half dozen other deer on the field, you’ll have to bump them to exit. And if your buck is 100 yards back in the woods, and suddenly a bunch of deer come racing his way from the plot, you can bet he’ll learn from that experience.

What about having a buddy drive in a truck after dark to pick you up from a food plot? Is scaring them with headlights and a moving truck better than bumping them on foot? Probably. But we’ve tried this technique on our hunting land and from what I’ve experienced, it works a time or two. However, if you get in the habit of bumping deer after dark with a truck (once per week is a habit), then whitetails will learn to wait until even later to step out of thick cover and onto a plot. And the first whitetails to delay their food plot arrival will be the mature bucks.

The author believes that more hunters would have better overall success if they moved away from food plots and sat downwind of travel corridors for deer moving from bedding to food, and vice versa.