Hunting Funnels for Mature Bucks
Funnels are a great place to catch mature bucks cruising on their feet during daylight hours or coming to and from their bedding areas.
One of my favorite land features to hunt for bucks are funnels. Funnels present excellent opportunities for catching deer traveling from bedding to feeding areas and are hot spots for cruising bucks during the pre-rut. If you can locate some funnels in your area you can take advantage of these travel corridors to kill your biggest buck yet.
Funnels are great for containing deer movement to one specific area and are also an ideal place to catch deer on their feet during daylight hours. I harvested one of my best bucks in a funnel and he came through at 3 in the afternoon leaving his bedding area. I knew he was traveling this area and thanks to some summer trail cameras, I was able to locate his main travel route.
A mature buck will always travel from his bedding area using the most cover he can. These bucks didn’t get big by getting seen and want to stay in thick cover, which funnels provide. Sitting on the side closest to the bedding areas is the ideal choice because bucks will cruise this spot for does more often once the rut starts ramping up. It is also a good spot for catching bucks coming back from feeding during the morning. Hunting these spots according to the moon and Jeff Murray’s Moon guide have given many hunters a lot of success.
Using a climber or Lone Wolf portable stand works really well in these types of areas because you can move around in the funnel with ease. Moving to opposite sides of funnels for morning and evening hunts will help you catch deer that move at different times of the day. The close corridors of a funnel also makes it great for bow hunters because a lot of your deer will be traveling very close to where you are set up, so your shots should be easily within range.
Funnels are just one of the many features I enjoy hunting because of the great opportunities they can provide. You can easily check for funnels in your area by looking at aerial maps online, Bing Maps and Google Earth are both great resources for this. Make sure you then get out and scout so you know exactly where the big bucks are located.
Be on the lookout for more tips on how to hunt whitetails and how to read aerial maps in the future.
