Hack or Mow a Trail to Your Next Deer
Whether in the farmlands, woodlands or mountains, animals of all sizes prefer a path of least resistance.
Your trail camera tells the story of everything—from cottontails to black bears—showing up on the trails you survey. To motivate even more travel down a trail, manipulate it into a can’t-miss offramp. Groomed trails provide incentive for more whitetail activity in front of your stand and better hunting for everything beyond.
It bears repeating: Deer take the path of least resistance, at least most of the time. Creating easy routes of travel allows you to guide deer to your stand. Trail manipulation is especially helpful if you have found the perfect tree, but in a not-so-perfect place. Plan this hedge-trimming operation at least a month or so before season to allow deer time to forget your noisy intrusion and start utilizing your recently groomed trails.
For the fast road to trail alteration, bring along leather gloves, a pruner, a string trimmer (or machete) and a saw.
Look for a heavily used travel route that includes a pinch point through thick cover. Now use your tools to widen the trail past your intended stand. Carve a tunnel through the dense cover, but keep the integrity of the vegetative veil in place. You still want the deer to feel secure as they take the exit ramp through the brush.
If you have flexibility with your property management and have access to equipment, mowing and brush-hogging paths can also create whitetail highways. Trimmed paths stand out, so mow paths from the edge of bedding cover to several food sources. Whitetails may soon follow the interstate-style byway. One pass is enough, but do it late enough so it does not grow back yet early enough so deer can embrace it.
I accidentally discovered the magic of trail manipulation by widening several paths into brushy treestand sets to carry in bulky, plastic decoys without making noise. After widening the trails by pruning and machete hacking, the decoy passed through the gap on the way to my stand without noisily scraping and slapping branches. Within a week, deer started weaving along the carved tunnels through the willow bottoms. Later, on a frigid, November afternoon, a mature buck followed an estrus doe through my chopped channel of least resistance. The 18-yard shot cemented me for life on the power of trail manipulation.
