In my experience, people with small properties avoid setting up sanctuaries because they don’t think they can afford to give up hunting land. In fact, they actually benefit dramatically by creating them because the deer remain on their farms more of the time and they remain more “huntable” throughout the season. Though sanctuaries are important for all deer hunters, they are actually more important for those hunting small properties.
In this article, I’ll make a case for small-property sanctuaries and talk about how to select them and what to have on them (including food plots). I actually hunted most of the 2003 season on just 125 acres and had good hunting by keeping some areas off-limits. You can expect me to go into some detail on how I was able to do this, as well.
THE VALUE OF SANCTUARIES
Most of us understand the purpose that a sanctuary serves. The intent is to keep a portion of your hunting area off-limits to human entry for various portions of the year. This permits the deer living in these areas to feel at ease, not compelled to leave in search of greener pastures. Literally, you are trying to create a whitetail deer paradise — everything they need — and then to keep them relaxed in these areas.
Without question, the deer will not leave the sanctuary as often as they might if they are feeling stressed in some way, whether by lack of food or water or the result of hunting pressure. However, in my experience, most of them will leave occasionally, giving you some access to these deer as a hunter. The main, and most obvious, goal of the sanctuary is to keep deer in your hunting area.
The only time when sanctuaries are not essential is when your hunting area butts up to another parcel that is not hunted and can act as your sanctuary.
SIZE OF SANCTUARY
This is where some of you are going to disagree with me. I firmly believe that small properties need sanctuaries more than large properties. Unless many people hunt the large property, it likely receives considerably less pressure per acre than the small property and there likely are places within the large property where no one goes even during the hunting season. By default, the large property likely has a few moderatesized sanctuaries just because those areas are particularly tough to hunt or hard to get to.
On the other hand, those hunting small properties tend to hunt every inch of the place because they feel the small size handcuffs them and they need to spread their efforts out to include as many stand locations as possible.
That line of thinking is a mistake. Actually, any given property has only a certain number of good stands. By good, I mean stands that you can get to and from without alerting deer that also allow you to sit in them without detection. Larger properties have more such ideal stands than small properties simply because they take in more land. I know it sounds blunt, but regardless of the size of the property, those should be the only stands you hunt. By spreading your efforts out over many marginal stands, you do your hunting more harm than if you hunted the really good stands more often and then left the rest of the property alone.
To give some life to this notion, I’m going to relate a few stories from my 2003 and 2004 season. I spent most of those two seasons hunting just 125 acres. I was hunting nearly everyday from late October through the end of November and then again in late December and early January. I probably spent 50 to 60 days each season hunting this small area. In fact, I spent most of that time on just 40 acres!
I was after one particular buck and that was where he lived. Those two seasons were a truly eye-opening experience for me. I hunted as carefully as you can possibly imagine; he was a huge buck. The neighbors found him dead after the 2004 season and he scored 225 inches, so you know I was tiptoeing everywhere I went.
I didn’t take any chances with spooking that buck out of the area. Because of how carefully I hunted, and the fact that I only hunted stands that set up perfectly, the small area never burned out. The hunting was just as good on the last day of the season as it had been on the first. I am not exaggerating. I never burned that area out even though I spent nearly all my time on just 40 acres. I saw some good bucks, just not the one I was after.
Though I didn’t get him, I learned a very valuable lesson. You can keep a small farm fresh all season if you hunt it carefully enough. The farm was 125 acres and I only hunted about 40 acres of it. The other 85 acres I left completely alone. The majority of the small farm was actually a sanctuary.
I have never hunted that farm again with the same intensity since that time. After that buck turned up dead, it took the wind out my sails. But I have applied what I learned during 2003 and 2004 to other areas I have hunted. Now I select fewer stands, but better stands and I hunt my areas lighter. In other words, I bet that at least half, if not three-quarters, of my hunting area is now a sanctuary. It is an amazing thing to consider, but I literally stay out of most of my hunting area now. As a good rule of thumb, you should have a minimum of 20 to 25 percent in sanctuaries. One big sanctuary in the center of your property is better than a few smaller ones scattered all around.
If you take nothing else from this article, please take note of this next sentence. You don’t have to hunt every inch of a property to do it justice. It is much better to hunt the best stand locations often and carefully and leave the rest of the area alone so the bucks remain relaxed. Eventually, they will cycle through the places where you are sitting. If it feels like you are burrowing in too deep — like you are going to spook something with every step you take — then you probably are. It is better to pull back and hunt those bucks somewhere else where you have the advantage. Give them the places that are hard for you to hunt without being detected.
WHERE TO SELECT YOUR SANCTUARY
It is easy for me to decide which parts of my hunting area to leave untouched — they are the spots where I would spook the deer if I hunted them there. It is simple. If there is only one good stand on 500 acres, then I will have a 490-acre sanctuary.
This strategy makes the most sense. You are not giving up anything when you establish a sanctuary. In fact, in some ways, establishing the sanctuary simply forces you to be more disciplined in your stand selection strategies. That is something you should be doing anyway — just as I learned back in 2003 and 2004.
If you want a more systematic approach to selecting a sanctuary, I can offer a few ideas. I would start with valleys or deep draws. These spots usually have water running through the bottom (deer like that). They also have some flat areas with good soils that make good food plots (they like that, too). And they are very hard to hunt effectively because of the swirling winds. These features all make valleys the perfect sanctuaries. I am referring to narrow valleys. Obviously, if a valley is wider than about 300 yards, the wind won’t swirl nearly as noticeably and you may be able to hunt the area more effectively. With that being the case, we can’t automatically turn a wide valley into a sanctuary without thinking about it further.
No doubt, one side of a wide valley will set up the best for undetected hunting. Turn the other side into a sanctuary. Again, it makes the most sense to turn areas that are hard to hunt into sanctuaries.
Earlier I mentioned that we want to provide the deer with everything they could need in our sanctuary. The idea is to make it a very attractive place that they don’t want to leave. That means we need food, water, cover and seclusion. If they have these four things they will spend a good deal of time on your property creating hunting opportunities all season long. At the same time you will be preserving younger bucks from being taken on surrounding properties.
Do a good job of creating food sources within your sanctuary. Some would argue with me on this, because they want the deer to have to leave their sanctuary to feed so they have better opportunities at hunting them, but I prefer to have some food plots within the boundary of the sanctuary itself. Give them a truly safe haven.
LEVELS OF SECLUSION
Now we have to decide how much we are going to enter these sanctuaries and for what reasons. The opinions here run all across the board. I know those who won’t even shed hunt within their sanctuaries. No one goes in there ever, for any reason other than to follow a wounded deer. This is the most conservative approach, to be sure. You can’t fault a person for doing this, but it may not be practical for everyone.
I know others who keep their sanctuaries off-limits only during the hunting season and the rest of the year they are in there cutting firewood, turkey hunting, looking for morel mushrooms and grabbing antlers. I think this approach errs in the opposite direction, allowing too much access that puts regular stress on the deer.
In my sanctuaries, we shed hunt and that is it. No one goes in there for any other reason during the rest of the year other than to plant food plots. We may turkey hunt in there, but we only sit on the open fields (food plots) where the birds come to peck and strut. We stay out of the cover (especially the remote areas). This strikes a realistic balance between access and seclusion.
Sanctuaries become harder to control during the offseason on properties that you don’t own. It is not possible, for example, to tell the landowner that he shouldn’t cut firewood or look for mushrooms in a certain part of his property. I guess if you are leasing the ground, you can build that into your lease agreement. However, it does make sense to mention your goals. If the landowner has options, he or she will often honor your goals and conduct their activities elsewhere.
HUNTING STRATEGIES
My final thoughts revolve around how you should hunt around your sanctuary. Of course, you are going to be careful to keep your scent from blowing into the sanctuary area. That is simply part of smart hunting because you aren’t going to do well if you let your scent blow into the very areas from which you expect the deer to approach.
I like to take things a step farther. I like to cushion my sanctuaries by staying as far from them as possible while still producing good hunting. In other words, rather than crowd my sanctuaries and fight to make them as small as possible, I would rather hang back and make them as large as possible.
For example, let’s assume you have a food plot near a sanctuary. In the first place, I am unlikely to hunt between the sanctuary and the food plot. I am more inclined to hunt the opposite side of the food plot from the sanctuary. This permits me to play a very favorable wind, not taking any chances with getting busted near the sanctuary. It also allows me to get in and out easier without the deer detecting me and, in general, makes the sanctuary seem even larger to the deer without sacrificing much in the way of hunting success for me.
Look for similar situations, where you can buffer the sanctuary easily by not hunting right up next to it. In essence, if you are hunting carefully, keeping the deer from knowing you are hunting them, your entire hunting property should feel like a sanctuary to the deer. They should never be able to tell where the sanctuary boundary lies.
If they feel consistent pressure outside the sanctuary, then you are doing something wrong — hunting the wrong stands or pushing too hard without an advantage. Of course, it is also quite possible that you don’t control all the hunting pressure. In that case, you have to live with other hunters’ mistakes or over-aggressiveness. Then the sanctuary becomes doubly important.
In summary, you should look at sanctuaries as entirely essential to the success of your season. Furthermore, strive to turn your entire hunting area into a default sanctuary through careful hunting. If the deer don’t know you are hunting them—the ideal situation—they will think your entire hunting area is a sanctuary. Mission accomplished! No matter how you set them up, sanctuaries are one of the most important keys to successful buck hunting.
