How to Find Pinch Points for Deer Hunting

today's video is all about identifying pinch points on online mapping surfaces to help you guys with your scouting and your deer hunting now as far as white tail hunting is concerned i usually like to lump pinch points or funnels whatever you want to call them into kind of four major categories and there's going to be some overlap but those categories are terrain funnels vegetation funnels water funnels or man-made funnels and so we'll go over examples of each of those so i'll just dive right into onyx here and even though there's all these great layers that i use all the time for my e-scouting i'm going to turn things like private and public land boundaries game management units all that kind of stuff off just because for the purposes of this video they're not really going to be needed so the first thing we're going to talk about is terrain funnels could be hill country but you're also going to see them in plains type of habitat as well as marsh country so let's start with marshes then go into kind of what you might see on western type habitat and then dial it back down into hill country where you're going to find a whole bunch of different kind of pinch points so most of what i oftentimes look for in marsh or swamp type habitat is where food might be where bedding might be but it's also helpful to know where some of those pinch points or funnels might be and the most common one that i'll look at for this type of terrain is going to be some type of high ground bridge there's a lot of low ground there's a lot of wet stuff and if you can find basically where a large high ground area tapers down into a very narrow strip of land and then open back opens back up again that little narrow strip oftentimes will contain that deer movement so what i have shown right here is you have high ground on the upper right you have high ground here in the lower left and if you look in the middle here you can see that in between those two you got a little bit of brush and just overall a little bit different color that's indicating to me that's probably higher ground than either what's to the southeast or the northwest of it and you can just see those deer trails just real thick and heavy on the aerial map between those two pieces of land so while i might expect bedding to be in different locations of course there could be beds out there too what i would look at that particular area is if i'm hunting say during the ride and i think bucks might be cruising from one island to another that would be a spot that i would definitely look at here's another really good example of something i found this spring so you can see my waypoints on here so you can see to the west here we got some open water we've got wet marshy type terrain and then also to the east here we have again wet marshy terrain this strip of trees right here is mostly tamarack so a swampy tree it's a little bit more wet still right there but where you see that i've walked from one side to the other it's all high ground it's just grass essentially very dry and along that route there are trails that are just beaten down into the dirt and to the north here we've got basically a higher area of land that has a lot of oak trees on it and to the south here it's more the same we got a couple scrapes that i found over here purple is always where i mark other tree stands that i find but you got big woods you know down to the south so connecting this big wood lot down here with this one further to the north you have this thin little strip of land and that's like where i have that tree stand marked right there oftentimes what you can see happen here too is those beating down end of the dirt trails might have a lot of dough traffic but they will see some buck traffic too but occasionally you might have a deer that just kind of skirts on say like the downward side of one of those bridges where he's just walking through the thick walking through those tamracs or something like that so it's good to kind of look at areas like that that might have a high ground bridge but then see within that little pinch point within that funnel where is there some type of maybe bigger buck sign or where is there a place that has a little bit more cover where deers are going to feel more secure crossing that little high ground bridge right here we have another marshy area and you can tell you got high ground to the west high ground to the east and just a very narrow strip of land that connects those two now in some of those more western plain states what you might find is you might have a lot of just kind of open area maybe some rolling hills plains grasses crop fields what have you but you might find that there's drainage systems that kind of run through out there and oftentimes those drainages will be kind of cut into the land so you might be looking across the landscape and just see tree tops but you actually walk into it and the terrain drops down into some of those areas that's providing visual cover because the deer are out of sight from anything up above but also you have the the vegetation that's in those that are is offering some security as well and while those will in and of themselves corral that deer movement oftentimes along those little corridors if you find areas where say three different ones meet then that is basically corralling deer moving from multiple different directions and acting as kind of a hub and that hub is going to definitely be sort of a pinch point type area that you can focus in on so in this one that i'm showing on the screen right here you can see that we have this east to west drainage we have this one kind of running southwest to northeast we have another one right here going north and south if i zoom in here you can see some of these areas that act as basically these little hubs where you have multiple different drainages ending up in the same spot here's another one right here where you got multiple different little drainages cut into the hillside that all end up in this one little area and here would be just another example this one has even more dramatic than the last example where you basically have this little creek drainage running through the landscape and it basically just makes a three-way connection here so if you're basically in that little hub right there that would be a spot to definitely look at and focus in on to say hey this has got a really good chance of corralling that deer movement through that one particular spot so now we'll move into the hill country type terrain and this one sometimes if it's really wooded it's almost easier to just skip back over to the bare topo as opposed to the the hybrid or the satellite view to really just be able to look at those topo lines and there's a couple different major types of pinch points that you can see in this hilly type terrain the first one is simply just the top end of a ravine and i'll focus in on this one right here which is really steep sometimes these really steep drainages like that the deer won't actually cross through them they'll basically take the path of least resistance around the top if they're traveling from one side to the other and you can see where this little tree stand waypoint is here right at the top end of that steep cut i actually did shoot a deer in this particular location and it basically was a deer coming up this draw right here he got right up on the top end and he was traveling around this direction and he only only got that far things that can make those funnels better or worse would just be how extreme they are if it's just kind of a a real narrow shallow little ravine it's going to be less likely to force the deer around a particular point whereas if that ravine is really steep maybe it's got some vertical cutouts in it or if it's full of dead fall and a bunch of debris then that makes it more and more likely that those deer are going to want to cross at the point of easiest travel and if you go and scout those areas on foot it'll be really obvious where the deer are crossing around that first location they can another type of funnel in hill country that a lot of people have probably heard of before is called a saddle and i'm just going to show an example of a saddle here out in the rocky mountains because they're more dramatic we got a peak on one side we got a peak on the other side and in between those two you basically just look for the area of lowest elevation which in this particular case is right here and you can tell how it would be very appealing for an animal that is crossing from either one hillside or even straight below or from this hillside down here to want to wait until they get into this particular area before they go and cross through as opposed to going right up over the top and covering more elevation gain and just like in the last case the more extreme those saddles are the more likely they're going to be used but you can even use those principles on areas that don't have quite as extreme of an elevation change and still look for those types of areas on a micro level to be areas that can control deer movement and you can tell in this example right here there's a small saddle right in the middle here between where this ridge system is a little bit higher elevation and where you get higher elevation here to the southwest if you zoom in here you can see that at least on this side there's only really one elevation line above where that saddle is so it might only be you know 20 feet in elevation higher but just by looking at the top of map here you can tell that there definitely still is a saddle there that's going to be a potential good place to look especially if you're on a rut hunt to be able to get some of that movement you do have to be pretty careful oftentimes playing the wind when you're hunting saddles and just about every one of these things that we're going over you have to look at things like the wind and access in order to hunt them effectively but this at least shows you how to find those particular areas on a topple map one other type of pinch point in hill country is something that i've often heard referred to as a thermal hub and it's essentially just an area where you have a lot of points and a lot of drainage systems all kind of coming down and congregating into one particular area they can be really tricky to hunt because of the wind but they can also be areas where number one a deer can just stand in in a time with falling thermals and be able to smell everything that's up on that higher elevation and also they can act as just kind of a a funnel between deer traveling from one ridge system to another they'll drop down go up to a different ridge and if you just connect all those different lines you get a congregation down in these bottom areas here's another example of one of those thermal hub type areas and and sometimes they can be a little bit bigger in just general area to where you'd want to go in on foot and just verify where some of those trails are crossing where the scrapes are there's usually scrapes in these types of areas so it can be good to just kind of verify them on foot but they're pretty easy to actually go on an aerial map or a topo map in this case and just figure out where they are now we'll just slide over here a little bit and show basically what is the opposite of one of those thermal hubs and you could think of this as like a convergence hub a ridge top hub it's basically the area of highest elevation that's connecting the ridge systems so if we look at this particular area we got a ridge up here going to the north one to the northeast one to kind of the east-southeast one to the south and then another system going over here to the west and if any of these deer are traveling from one of these ridge systems to another they're going to be going through this type of an area and even within this too you can see that this spot right here is the top end of one of those ravines top ends of one of those drainages so in combining this ridge top hub with one of the things we talked about earlier if i was looking at this place and i wanted to figure out exact pinch point locations the places i would look would be right here right here and basically every one of these these tops here it's possible the deer could go right across the top of this hub but my experience a lot of times you'll see trails on the upper ends of these drainages as they're going from one location to another but this whole area has a lot of those type of pinch points congregated in one little area and it can be a little bit easier to hunt these types of areas with the winds because you might get less of a swirling effect than you would down in the bottoms now in areas that are really steep and this is sometimes referred to as bluff country you'll find areas that don't just have these ridge systems you'll find areas that actually have vertical cliffs they're bluffed out there's rock faces that are impossible for deer to traverse from one elevation to another but what you'll often times find in areas like this is you'll find that those bluffs aren't just consistent around the entire length of a ridge system there's going to be gaps in those bluffs and a lot of times when you find those gaps you'll also find very heavily worn down trails where d will take from one elevation to another so just an example right here you can see how shaded this one little elevation zone is on this particular topple map and in some of those really shaded areas you do have vertical cliffs you have those bluffs but and this would be really tough to tell just by looking at the map there was a gap here that we were able to crawl in between and get up to this higher elevation and so right where this was located there were trails that were basically beaten down into the dirt and there also just happened to be a bed up on the top of that but these areas in general can be really good pinch points especially when they're located in relation to some of those other things we talked about earlier like the top ends of ridges like saddles and some of the the different field and vegetation type funnels we'll talk about in a little bit when i'm in steep bluff country a lot of times i like to also reference mapping technologies like lidar or 3d ep shading maps that can give you a really extreme level of detail and oftentimes that can be a big help but even in some of these cases when you go out and actually verify on foot you'll be able to find some of these actual pinch points and these trails that go through and cut through the bluffs in areas that you really just even can't quite see on that very high level of detail so i'll look at the maps like this to give me a good general idea of what's going on and give me some areas that i want to focus in on further but then it's always a good idea to go on foot and confirm and verify where those actually are next we'll talk about vegetation funnels deer are creatures of edge that like moving along edge they like hanging out in security cover and oftentimes you'll find along those edges just based on how they're set up you'll find very natural pinch points and we'll start with a very easy example here where we have essentially just a field edge and you can look at the edge of that field and see how it's shaped and you'll find that the inside corner of these woods and then also what creates basically the outside corner of the field edges can be good pinch points because you'll have a deer that might be traveling from one location down here and if he wants to stay out of sight from the actual field but still take the shortest line he might take a path that cuts the corners very close and you can see how in this particular example as well there is a ravine coming up to this corner in the field so right in this area right here would be a place that i would naturally gravitate toward to try and figure out if that's going to be a nice pinch point for say a rot setup here's another good example where you have a crop field edge and in this case it's even better than the last example in my opinion because you have a very thin strip of trees between where you have that open crop field assuming the crops are out or it's a smaller crop like a soybean or something like that as opposed to corn which offers more cover but you have a very thin strip of trees here between that opening and where that hillside just drops off incredibly steep so you have the outside corner of the field edge the inside core of the woods that's acting as a funnel and then you got that addition of just that very small amount of area where the deer actually gonna be able to travel up on that flat could make a very good pinch point when you have a longer narrow area of field that can create something that's more like a double inside corner where you have two inside corners that are very close to one another so if a deer wants to basically wrap around this field or get from one side to the other they could just go straight across but if they want to stay within that cover of the woods they would have to basically just wrap around the edge of that field you got a double inside corner there and here's an example for more of a big woods type area where you just have more of a rolling type of habitat and terrain it's not quite as hilly but you have a lot of clear cuts a lot of logging that goes on and you can tell in the middle of this map here there's an area that was clear-cut but it wasn't done in a very regular shape it kind of has some ins and outs little points and depressions and things like that and so what you can look at in an area like this is you can almost treat it as if it were the same type of thing as a field edge where you basically just have a transition between different types of cover one that offers more security one that's more open and i'm looking for areas where that transition line dips in and out nice and sharply i'm looking for corners again just like with the field edges so i'm looking right here i see a corner i see a corner right here that one i verify has good trails going around it as well as just going in and out of it we scroll down here sometimes you can find beds on some of those points too but if a deer is basically just traveling say on the east side of this clear cut and scent checking then as they get down an area like this that little point right there is going to be a natural little area to look at to be able to funnel down that deer movement this one also offers the outside bend of a little river here which we'll talk about a little bit but that's also another good indicator that this could be a great funnel location and then we got another corner down here and these ones aren't going to be as dramatic as some of what you might see in that more hilly country because in that real steep hilly country you'll get natural terrain features that prevent the deer from going through certain paths whereas in this case there's nothing that's like a very hard obstacle that the deer can't cross they can pretty much go wherever they want to go but there's going to be some features that will push them into certain areas more than others here's another example big woods again where you had an area that was clear cut and in this particular area it's not really grown up it's not super thick yet so you would look at basically the inside corner of the woods outside corner of that clear cut area as the pinch point next we'll look at water funnels and these can be just really great in certain areas because just like with the hilly terrain there's certain water features that are really going to choke down deer movement and want to prevent deer from traveling across the water i've shown this one in previous videos but it basically shows the outside bend of a river where if a deer wants to get from this area up here down to this area down here any path that they're going to want to take if they want to basically wrap around that river it's going to choke them down into this small area right here and you can see in this particular example as well there is a little bit of a vegetation edge here as well so that makes that particular funnel even more appealing if i scroll up a little bit here you can see another outside bend of a river and this one also just has a very short gap to go across to where you have another body of water that's going to pinch down to your movement so this little space right here is going to do a fantastic job at really corralling that deer movement between those two bodies of water and here's just another example of an outside of river bend that also combines the fact that it's a narrow strip of timber between the river edge and more open country and you can see how that is going to choke down deer movement quite a bit traveling from this area up here to the north down to this area here further to the south this would be another area too where you could come in from a water access just pop up right on the edge of that river system and leave almost zero cent from your access now creek and river crossings can be a little bit harder to identify you have to number one know that it could be shallow enough for deer to want to cross at certain times of the year which sometimes you can tell from the aerial photo sometimes it's harder to tell and if a creek is totally wooded then it can be really tough to locate just based on the map where those actual locations might be that the deer went across so for creeks that run through woods it's oftentimes easiest just to walk the edge and look for where the trails cut over and mark them but for areas where you have open river systems like this a thing to think about is when you have a bend in that river a lot of times you get that current sweeping around and a lot of times it will make that outer bend a little bit deeper but if you look at areas between two bends where it's a little bit straighter and maybe the river widens out a little bit oftentimes that might be areas where you have a little bit shallower water so you can see in this example right here that i have on the screen you have a river bend up here and there's a couple more bends up above to the north and you have this spot right here where that river widens out a little bit and where it widens out you can see rocks in the aerial photo right here so you know for sure that that's a shallower spot in the river and that's a place that you could definitely go and check out and look for crossing especially you got this point right here that drops down right at that location so i would definitely check that place out as a potential river crossing area in some of the areas up by me and further north where you've got more that big woods flatter rolling hill type terrain and a lot of water sometimes you'll find that in areas where you have a lot of water there'll be a lot of beavers a lot of beaver dams and those beaver dams can be areas where the deer movement really gets corralled especially if the water on either side is fairly deep and they're pretty easy to identify on a map if you look at this spot right here you can tell that there's these very distinct lines so i would say this right here looks like a beaver dam this right here looks like another one here you can see another area we have a larger little pond or lake to the south here and you have a marsh to the north you have high ground high ground and so the shortest distance between these two areas is likely going to be where the deer movement would happen from one place of high ground to the other right here you can see also this one's a little bit harder to see on the map but this is confirmed on foot you have a little bit of these wider shallower looking bodies of water here to the south and then right this line right here is the beaver dam at least the last one on a series of small ones and if you zoom in closer you can see that it is browner there sticks and things like that that's where that actual dam is there's a little bit of you know water spilling over the top of it but to the north there then you get those narrower little strips of water where that water has trickled over and just is a smaller stream and in this particular area number one you got that beaver dam location and number two you got high ground on either side of it and i have confirmed that this area is a place where deer will go and cross that little body of water and then lastly i'll cover some of these man-made pinch points and funnels so some of these are going to be similar or at least in some part naturally created but oftentimes you'll find ones that are just strictly man-made so an example that'd be really easy to point out would be fence rows and ditches and things like that in farm country where it's they're going to be acted upon similarly as some of those natural creek drainages out in some of the plains states but you might have in farm country an area where you have one big wood lot and then another one and they're only connected by basically a little thin strip of cover here along where that fence goes and at the locations where those particular areas meet we have a you know ditch right here and a small fencer right here these convergences here would be places to look at as being pinch points here's another example where you got a couple different little fence rows and it connects to this big wood lot here to the northeast you get some more cover down here to the south so this type of an area would make a good pinch point and then larger man-made structures and roads can also act as funnels the amount of traffic that a certain roadway gets can influence that but as we know a lot of deer get hit on the side of the highway every year but typically if you have a larger roadway with barriers and things like that it's going to create more of a diversion than a little dirt road out in the country that only gets one car driving by every 15 minutes i'll show an example here that i found where you have an area that's in between like a little flume and kind of a power plant type building and this is combined with the fact that right on this edge here you have a natural steep wall it's a little bit on a smaller scale than what would show up in the topo map but there's actually a little bit of a vertical bluff right there and so you get deer movement that gets choked between that little piece of vertical terrain right there and that flume on the top side and this area right here in the middle becomes a great pinch point for both deer travel above and below that area they're a little bit tougher to find but when you do find them they can be some of the more obvious and effective pinch points out there you just need to make sure that in scenarios like that you're following whatever kind of laws there are in terms of being x number feet away from structures so i hope you guys found this video helpful for me i look at pinch points mostly when i'm hunting during the rut and or if i am hunting in relation to bedding but i think there's a good pinch point between where the deer are bedding where i think they're feeding then i'll key in on them as well there are some that i kind of look at more than others but again it really depends on the type of habitat which is why i wanted to try and give a good idea of the various types of terrains or habitats that you might find and some of the better pinch points in those types of areas sometimes you can get a really good idea just by looking on a map especially out in the plains type habitat but a lot of times also it's good to just get a general idea on the map first and then verify with boots on the ground especially if you're in an area that is very wooded if you guys have any questions please leave them in the comments down below and thanks for watching

Channel: DIY Sportsman

Views: 55,608

Rating: 4.984283 out of 5

Keywords: onxhunt, pinch points, funnels, deer hunting, deer scouting, public land, hunting the rut, saddle hunting, bow hunting, onx

Id: BtGs_0u7GSA

Length: 26min 19sec (1579 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 19 2020