While practicing extreme scent control, revisit this location prior to the season and prepare it for hunting. During inclement weather (rainy or windy conditions) is the best time to do the final touch up. You want the lanes to look as natural as possible so they do not attract attention. Do not return again until you are ready to hunt.

Hunt from a quiet folding chair and set up where little movement is required for a shot. It is important to wear a light beige camo or solid color that matches the surroundings, because dark camouflage patterns will likely cause deer to look down the lane and notice you. When a target animal passes by the visual lane, draw and be ready when he enters the shooting lane.

A marsh grass or corn-colored pop up blind will also work in this location. If one is used, make sure it has been set up outside in a shaded area for at least a week prior to using it. This will get rid of new fabric odors. Set it up during your preparation trip to allow the deer to get used to it. We hunt these spots the first couple days of season prior to any hunting pressure, and during the rut phases when mature bucks are moving more during daylight.

Arrive Early
About an hour and a half before daylight is the best time to access these locations. Early arrivals will keep you from spooking deer returning to bed down prior to daylight. Also, due to the excellent cover, bucks will scour the interior runways in pursuit of estrus does during the rut phases. When hunting during the rut phases, stay until at least midday, or all day if you can. It is practically impossible to sneak into such a spot for an afternoon hunt and remain undetected.

Standing cornfields are another excellent location. They offer excellent cover, protection from the wind, and food. Large standing cornfields are known bedding areas for deer. We have found that in agricultural areas that offer limited bedding areas when the crops are down, standing cornfields are the preferred bedding areas. In northern areas with a lot of timber, the cornfields are usually smaller and do not get used as bedding areas as frequently as they do in larger agricultural areas.

We hunt standing cornfields in a couple different ways. Our first option is stalking back and forth through the corn during inclement weather, and the other is ambush hunting from the ground. Prior to setting up a ground blind, make sure you have permission from the farmer, because you will likely have to knock some stalks of corn down. Prepare a spot just like you did for the cattail marsh. Find a spot where several runways merge and follow the same hunting procedure as noted with marshlands. You can use the cornstalks you cut for the visual and shooting lanes as blind material, or use a pop-up blind in a light-colored camouflage. Obviously cornfield ground blinds must be set up during pre-season.

Many cornfields have fencerows, lone oaks, swales, fingers of tall grass or weedy areas that are too wet or difficult to farm. Any combination of these can create a specific travel route through or along the edge of a cornfield. Even without those features, deer will usually have defined routes through the corn. Those routes will often lead to specific locations where the field edge meets with the best available transition cover for exiting the corn.