I’ve recently read some writings from a person that hunts a lot in Michigan’s pressured areas…Bowhunting Pressured Whitetails by John Eberhart. He has some great ground ideas that revolve around hunting cornfields…I tried this last year with traditional equipment without success but it was a learning experience for me and I will adapt and learn from what I did wrong. I have friends that have cleaned up walking cornfields and setting up shop in and around them, many areas don’t have trees and ground blinds are key.
Growing up on a large farm I’ve often harvested corn in the second weekend of gun season (chase deer with 700,000+ hunters for a couple weeks and deer learn to hide well) and literally chased deer down the last 4 rows of corn…they didn’t want to leave the safety of the corn. I’ve walked through the fields when the corn is wet or the wind is blowing and I’ve come very close on several occasions…all learning experiences. It’s funny when you enter a 140 acre cornfield and just weave your way across the field into the wind, looking into empty row after row and then you look into one and there they are. The key is to have a light breeze or a wet field…if there is grass in one area of the field they tend to bed in the grassy areas or if the planter swings wide during a direction and the row is wider…they love that also. I’ve seen them travel the pivot irrigation tire tracks and bed just off them in a row.
Eberhart writes that during some of the heaviest hunted times deer will still move all day in a cornfield, they feel that safe. If you find an area that has been flooded out early in the year and the corn is gone and weeds have grown up, this area can be great, bucks will cruise these areas in the rut looking for bedded does.
If you have corn up against a swamp (if it’s in the middle of the field) set up shop there. Getting to know the area over 35 years has helped, remembering where the low areas are and if they get flooded out will go a long way, finding them when the corn is tall is not fun. We’ve planted grass in sloped areas that always washout, this is another great area as they are in the middle of a massive natural food plot, they never have to leave.
Just some thoughts…
Here are some pictures from my DB Matrix hunts last year in the corn, after I looked at the pictures I could tell I need to cover the roof line better and did going forward. This is the "recurve" addition.
Josh