Running a Trapline Can Make You a Better Public Land Deer Hunter

I started my trapping career on the game lands of central North Carolina. By that time, I had already spent a decade hunting public-land deer and thought I had a pretty good grasp on the process. I had no idea that my winter trapping adventures would teach me not only all about furbearers but even more about the whitetails they share the land with.

I spent two years learning to trap in my favorite whitetail honey holes but generally viewed trapping as a separate pursuit. Then, I moved 1,200 miles west to Kansas and found myself back to square one on the public puzzle. This time, I had to find new spots for both deer and furbearers in an unfamiliar environment and quickly realized that the mindset of a trapper was just what I needed to dial in on deer.

Tiny Traps, Big Rewards

Since I’m trapping on public ground and limited on time, my trapline has to be small and easy to access on foot. The only way to make a line like that effective is to focus on locations where traffic on the larger landscape is funneled down to one point of intercept. Basically, I look for places where the terrain is a trap in itself.

My primary targets, bobcats and coyotes, bring me to wide-open roadside creek bottoms and tight drainages between grassland ridges. Which is pretty much the opposite of the holy trinity of secluded crop fields, big timber, and shrubby bedding areas that most deer hunters, my pre-trapping self included, tend to focus on. But in the process of seeking out these tiny terrain traps for predators, I noticed that theseoverlooked areasall seemed to be equally loaded with deer.

Maybe it’s because these areas are unpressured, or it’s the uniquelate-season browsethey hold, or that they are simply the easiest way for anything in the area to travel ridge-to-ridge. Who can say what makes a whitetail do what it does, really? That part doesn’t necessarily matter.

What I’ve found is that the same logic I use for running an efficient trapline on public land applies to efficient deer hunting, too. You don’t need access to your target’s destination to be successful; you don’t even need to know what that is or where. You just need one good spot to ambush them along the way.

Don’t discount those tiny slivers of public land other whitetail hunters will ignore because they don’t havetraditional foodor bedding. The deer you’re looking for just might be in there. Trust the evidence of their movement across the landscape, and set your trap.

Hard Truths about Timing

Although trapping requires a lot of hard work and time in the field, the payoff happens while I’m not around. That gives me some flexibility to roll out a little later on cold days or right before a big front when the fur might still be moving well into daylight.

If you’ve been hunting whitetails long enough and are being honest with yourself, you’ve probably convinced yourself to cut at least one sit short because your toes were frozen and you hadn’t seen a single deer. I’ll be the first to admit I have a tendency to give in to my antsy side, but I lost count of the number of times I pulled up to my trapline after 9:30 in the morning this season only to see deer still foraging slowly across wide-open swaths of public land.

It’s a hard kick in the rear since we all want to think deer are reluctant to daylight by the bitter cold late season after months of hunting pressure. But that’s just not the case. So, if you still have a tag to punch come December or January, layer up, bring a big stack of hand warmers, and settle in for a longmorning sit.

The Daily Grind

Whitetail hunters are almost all guilty of using some excuse to skip a sit. It’stoo hot,too windy, themoon is wrong, or public land istoo crowded, so why bother? There are no dire consequences if you decide to lounge around when you could be hunting, but trapping doesn’t offer that luxury.

Like most states, Kansas requires trappers to check their sets daily. So it doesn’t matter if the weather sucks or I have the sniffles—if I have a line open, I’m in the field every single day until I close it. And since trapping is largely a game of precision, I’m automatically more in tune with overnight changes in the landscape and how animals are moving on it.

Even though I’m not actively scouting for whitetails while I run my line, I’ll inevitably spot some or findfresh sign. That intel, combined with the sheer discipline of getting my butt out the door every day, gave me everything I needed to tag out with a beautiful buck and a huge doe this season. If there’s a better way to improve as a public hunter than just being in the field consistently, I haven’t found it yet.

Does the grind have to be daily to fill your next tag on public land? Probably not. But the lesson still stands; if you want to know what the deer are doing today and be better prepared for what they might be doing tomorrow, you just need to be there.

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