Whether you’re filling the freezer during the early season or hunting mature bucks during the rut, Ken McBroom explains how the edges can produce throughout the season.

The definition of edge, as far as the whitetail deer is concerned, is where two different types of vegetation come together. Some are obvious, while others—the ones that can payoff big come fall—are much less obvious without boots on the ground, scouting. Let’s look at a few edges and ways to approach them that will increase your odds this deer season.

Field edges

Field edges are the most common edges dotting the whitetail landscape. They are also the most commonly hunted edges in the whitetail world and will attract a lot of hunters. People can see the deer in the fields at all hours leading up to the season opener.

I hunt public land 90 percent of the time, and I don’t hunt field edges on public land unless it’s the first few days of the season. The first few days is always the best time to hunt field edges on any property and is the most effective. Deer haven’t been hunted all year, feel no need to leave their preferred food source, and will bed near the edge of the fields until pressure pushes them back into the thickets. When this happens, you will need to pull back with them to ever get a glimpse of them during daylight hours.

I just stay clear and focus on those second-tier bedding areas that I feel the deer will move to once the season begins. This way, I’m not tromping around in prime habitat looking for a stand site, and when the deer in the field disappear, I’m set up waiting, for their arrival.

Locating a field that has deer coming to it is easy enough. You can drive by fields in the mornings and evenings and see what you’ve got, or you can rely on what other local residents are saying. Whatever way you do it, you can be sure those deer are near that field edge when you go to look for a stand site.

You should apply the same scent control measures even before the season to keep those deer coming. Get in and get out is the best option for picking a stand site on the edge of a field. A good way to have a few trees picked out is to locate them well before the season, cut some shooting lanes for each one, and then choose the best tree based on where the deer are entering the field. This way, you don’t have to go in until opening evening.

Why evening? Fields tend to be a deer hangout. They oftentimes have food available in the field and deer can spot predators more easily and give them the slip. That’s why deer hang around openings like fields and open woods until daylight. This is also why hunting field edges in the morning, especially during the early season, can hurt your chances, not just for that morning, but maybe for days after, if you run them out of the field they consider to be their secure place to gather.

Remember, deer are arriving at the field in the evening, and some will usually be around come morning. Morning hunts on field edges can be detrimental to your hunt. You can spook deer that you don’t even know about. Arriving in the afternoon for an evening hunt is the deer hunter’s best option for hunting field edges. This is true for most field edges, but there is an exception: standing corn.

Standing corn

Hunting standing cornfields can be tough because sightings are usually few and far between. But rest assured that if there are deer in the area, they are using that cornfield for either bedding, transitional cover as they make their way to other areas to feed, or for their very own sanctuary. Standing corn leaves a deer no reason to leave. When the corn becomes mature enough to eat, some deer may only leave this sanctuary for water, to escape predators or to just look around.

If you scout standing corn and find tracks and chewed corn cobs, then you can bet the deer are in there or just outside it. The best part for a hunter is that the corn can conceal them, just as it conceals the deer. Planning an entering and exiting route to the edge of a standing cornfield is vital for success. Hunting standing cornfield edges in the morning is doable. While most hunters elect to hunt mornings and evenings during the early season, a stand along a standing cornfield could be a great place for an all-day sit.

Standing corn is much like open fields at night where deer can safely mill about, but they can do it all day long because of the cover that the corn provides. This gives hunters a chance to effectively hunt deer on the edges of standing cornfields. Usually, there is a buffer zone between the cornfield and the wood line that borders it. This buffer zone is often planted in grass or maybe CRP. This buffer zone can be a great place to hunt if you have a good enter/exit route to and from your stand.

Using the standing corn as cover, you can easily enter a stand site without being detected if you use the wind and silence. Playing the wind is vital and as always one of the most important aspects to getting close to whitetails. Silence is just as important, especially when getting so close to whitetails before setting up.

Once you have located a standing cornfield to hunt, choose several spots around its perimeter to hunt the field with any wind direction. Whether you use a blind or a tree stand, having these spots picked out prior to season can be a great benefit. But if you didn’t have a chance to do this before the season, you can always sneak in and set up according to conditions.

The hidden edge

The hidden edge is the edge we’ve all been looking for even if we don’t know it. This is that place deep in the woods that, for whatever reason, is a thick mix of underbrush and briars. That place where it becomes hard to walk through without getting tangled up. When this thick stuff is in the middle of big woods with oaks and other food sources for deer, then you have just located the best spot for a stand.

These hidden edges are what I look for several hundred yards from that open field edge. These hidden edges are where deer are going to filter to when the pressure increases. These hidden edges aren’t easy to see on satellite imaging and usually take boots on the ground scouting to locate one. Once you locate one on the ground, go back and have a look at that satellite image of the area. Now you see it, and with a few of these finds under your belt, it becomes easier to recognize at least a potential hidden thicket where deer will naturally want to be during daylight hours.

Deer will also want to leave these thickets as the sun goes down. They like to get out of the perfect stalking habitat for predators. These thickets can be hunted much like the standing corn, but while having plenty of low browse, they don’t have the food that deer want and need leading into fall. Scouting the perimeter of this hidden thicket, you can locate the most likely food source for that time of year and set up a plan to hunt the edge and catch the deer moving out to feed in the evening.

For more helpful hunting insight, check out the fall issues of MidWest Outdoors, available by subscribing on our website.