hoyt3

i grew up hunting farm land. not much in the line of big woods where I came from. I prefer farm land, but won't pass up big woods

Dirt2

There's no comparison, big woods are many times tougher to hunt than farmland. I'd go so far as to say that a bowhunter in farmland has a better chance of scoring than a rifle hunter in big woods.

I grew up and learned to hunt in a big woods environment in western MT. I read every hunting mag I could lay my hands on and tried to apply what they said. It just never seemed to work somehow. Only in the past three years, when I have begun venturing into eastern MT (i.e. farm country), have I begun to see where the hunting mags are coming from. (You won't find too many Bill Winke types hunting in the big woods.)

The major operative difference is how funnels work, and a second difference in many cases is the wind.

The relative ease/difficulty of a hunting area can pretty much be summed up by how "funnel friendly" the country is. Good funnel country is easier to hunt, poor funnel country is tougher. Three factors rule whether a piece of ground makes good funnel country:

1) Amount of cover. If heavy brush and timber covers 90+% of the land form (as is typical in big woods country), then your deer just aren't as channelized in their bedding areas and movement patterns. In fact, the whole concept of "bedding areas" becomes rather tenuous in this setting. They can, and will, bed just about anywhere, and probably not in the same spot two days in a row.

If, on the other hand, you've got a land form with only 5 or 10% of the area in good cover, then obviously 100% of the deer will be compacted into 5-10% of the area during daylight hours, and it doesn't require a rocket pyschologist to find deer.

2) Availability of prime cropland for food. Obviously cropland goes with farmland, but is rare or nonexistent in a big woods environment. With no premo food sources like corn, soybeans, alfalfa, etc., the deer are true browsers. In the big woods environment, browse is everywhere. Your deer don't congregate in any one specific area to feed, but broadcast out randomly throughout the forest to feed. You can bank on clearcuts and certain other vegetative features to draw some deer, but nothing like a good alfalfa or cornfield in farm country.

In farm country, 90% of the deer in the area will go to the fields every night, bank on it.

3) Deer density, but you ruled that out in the question you asked.

So, in good funnel country, you know with 90% probability where the deer are bedded, and you know with 90% probability where they're going to go as darkness falls. In, this setting it doesn't take too much G-2 to find a narrow point of cover or other funneling feature between the beds and the food. Set up there, with the wind in your favor, and the deer will come.

In poor funnel country, hitch up your belt for a tougher hunt. You don't know with any certainty where deer are bedding or where they're going to feed, so it can feel almost random to begin with. You'll have to do a lot of study in your particular area of big woods habitat to make sense of the local deer. Even then, you'll never see as many deer as you will in farm country.

The two areas I hunt, one in big woods western MT, the other in eastern MT farmland, each have similar deer densities according to QDMA. In the big woods, I feel lucky at the end of a day if I've seen two bucks. On the other hand, in eastern MT, I'd be looking to punt the dog if I only saw two bucks in a day. In western MT, I spend literally hundreds of hours staring at maps andwalking the ground trying to figure out some vague pattern that will produce. In eastern MT my hunting area is 500 miles from home, so I do no scouting at all, and the first day I ever hunted it (sight unseen) I was on a funnel that is still my favorite spot after three years of hunting the area. On my best day in farm country, I'll probably see more deer than I do all season long in big woods country.

Finally, a little bit on wind. Only when I started hunting plains country farm land did I finally understand what the hunting mags had been talking about all those years when they said "prevailing wind". All my years in big woods, mountain habitat, I never once documented a "prevailing wind". I used to think there was something wrong with me, because the wind never behaved for me like it did for the guys in the books. The wind blew 20-30 different directions every hour, and you needed a notebook, compass, and stopwatch to determine the prevailing direction. In plains farm country, (what bliss!), you turn on the weather channel in the morning and find out which direction the wind is going to blow today, and by golly it does!

I hope this wasn't overkill, but I spend a lot of time thinking about the very difference you asked about.

max the dog

Big woods still have funnels and bedding area's but it's much more complicated than in farm country.

My hunting area is classic north west Illinois, 70% cropland and pasture, 20% woods, 10% other stuff (ditches, creeks, cemetaries, etc...). If I'm looking for a funnel I can be pretty sure it's not in the 70% of the wide open area. Bedding area's, in the woods within 100 to 200 yards of the field edge. I can look at a good map or aerial photo and pretty much do half of the scouting I need to do before I hunt an area for the first time. It's not always easy in farm country, in the weeks before the corn is harvested hunting can be darn well imposible. If you've ever stood in the middle of a corn field with 6+ foot stalks around you then you know what I'm talking about. You literally can't see more than a few feet in front of you and the noise you make is an awfull wracket that's imposible to sneak through. Deer will bed in the corn and won't leave it until they have to. Why would they, plenty of food and security in the same spot. How do you hunt the travel corridors of an animal that doesn't travel?

Big woods has the same funnels, food sources and bedding areas but they are much harder to find and not as heavily used as in farm country.

SWAMPMAN

IMHO, the hardest land to hunt is the one you haven't scouted thoroughly. I do vitually all my hunting in riverswamps and hardwood bottoms. I know these areas like the back of my hand. I don't beleive that any single type of land is any tougher or easier if you do your homework and legwork prior to hunting.

silentassassin

There are a couple of funnels in the 27,000 acre contiguous block of timber that I hunt but most everyone that hunts up there knows where they are and the areas are pressured quite a bit. If you were in the typical area in the mid west, 27,000 acres would have several hundred funnels or draws or other distinguishing terrain characteristics not to mention the congregated food sources. That's a big difference IMO.

rick_reno

Woods are harder for me.

Angus74

I think the woods are harder to hunt. Our farm is all large timber, it is 250 acres and is surrounded by more timber for thousands of acres. Ive hunted this farm all my life, and am still learning how to hunt it with success. We have started leasing a 500 acre farm 20 miles away that is almost all open farmland, we lease it for the firearms season, just to get a change of scenery, better rifle hunting, and it is definitely easier to take deer from the farmland farm than our timber farm. But I still like to bowhunt our timber, because if you see the deer, it is pretty close to being in range.

RiverBottomBowHunter

With the skill and knowledge that I posess, Its all pretty easy. That why I started hunting with rocks and a sligshot wearing a really bright shirt.

Jimmy S

RBBH....Do you need to wear the really bright shirt when hunting with a slingshot? I say, probably no, based on all your skills and knowledge....It's probably not easy being you!

max the dog

There are a couple of funnels in the 27,000 acre contiguous block of timber that I hunt
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No no no, scout some more, there are a lot more funnels in 27,000 acres than just a few. Even without looking at the property or not having any idea where it's at I can tell you that there absolutely has to be more funnels than that.
Big woods funnels are obscure and very hard to find but they are still there. They may be much different than the funnels you see in farm country. In the big woods a small elevation difference may be all it takes to funnel deer. Or it could be a change in vegetation, a stream, an old fence line, hiking trails, roads, etc.....
A funnel in farm country may be anywhere from 5 yards wide on up to 100+ yards wide. In the big woods it will be a bit wider, maybe up to 200 yards but in that area you will see a deer concentration.
I've heard of people using a GPS to find funnels but have never tried it myself. They walk as many deer trails as they can find with the GPS keeping track of where they went and later make a full map of where they walked. Even if you don't find every deer trail you will at least start noticing a pattern of deer trails concentrating in certain spots. Check out those area's again and see what's causing the trails to converge. If I know deer you will find something about that area that is drawing them in to use it as a travel corridor.