Now that habitat season has begun for most whitetail hunters, I wanted to cover an important topic that has the ability to make or break your whitetail property. It’s a simple concept, and it applies anywhere a whitetail roams, public or private. By properly implementing layered bedding onto your parcel, you will have the ability to decide where different classes of deer bed. So let’s dive into it!

For starters, what is layered bedding? A concept coined by Jeff Strugis, layered bedding simply describes the relationship between the location of food and the location of the different layers of deer bedding. If a property is designed correctly, layered bedding will create a stand assemblage that allows for highly predictable movement patterns, which allows you to better hunt in the fall.

Here is a layered bedding concept visual - it is very general, but it does the trick:

1st Layer - FOOD:

It all starts with a food source. That can be in the form of a quality food source we as habitat managers create on private land or a food source on public land like an oak flat or a clear cut. As a side note, as a private landowner, you must have this quality food source, likely in the form of greens, or you will have little control over the rest of the property, but that is a topic for another article. Location of your food source will also dictate whether your land has the capacity to hold and advance mature bucks to the next age class. This will come in the form of depth of cover, which is an extremely critical concept for private land hunters to understand.

*2nd Layer - DOES & FAWNS:

The next and most important layer is where the does and fawns bed. Most people like to skip this layer or don't even consider it at all, but it is actually extremely significant. Sadly, I often see clients that have tried to build a bedding area in a random location and said they were building buck bedding. In reality, if that is the closest bedding area to a quality food source, it will be occupied by does and fawns. This only pushes the buck layer even farther back, likely off of your property. If you do not have room for buck bedding on your property, you could be putting them onto the neighbor's property (into harm's way) and prohibiting yourself from being the herd influencer. This brings up something important. The closer you can get the does to bed near the food without spooking them out when you access, the better off you will be. With proper conditions, does and fawn will bed right up against their evening food source. However, does will not bed next to their food source if they can see into it because they do not want the stress of seeing other deer, or other creatures while they are bedding. This raises social stress and causes deer to bed farther back. Also, do not forget that does that are here today are here to stay (doe factory = BAD). Mature bucks on the other hand, they are the opposite.

Oftentimes, people want to know a range of how big this 2nd layer tends to be. It is hard to put an exact yardage because it all depends on your area. What applies to a large agriculture region with minimal cover is vastly different from a massive forest where deer can travel miles in any direction without a food source. If cover is minimal, likely due to heavy ag, then you will be able to compact more deer into a tighter space. They will be used to a higher level of social pressure amongst themselves. Thus, does will bed closer to their food source, if proper conditions are met. On the other end of the spectrum, if cover is everywhere (e.g. a large national forest), then deer are naturally going to be more spread out, resulting in a bigger layer. So what is the answer for your land? It depends on your region.

2nd Layer - INTERMEDIATE:

Behind your first layer of doe bedding, you will find an intermediate or middle layer. This is where you will find a couple of does and young bucks. As you can see in the visual, this layer will be behind the doe layer.

3rd Layer - BUCKS:

Then behind the intermediate layer, is the layer everyone wants to have - buck bedding, mature buck bedding. If the previous layers are not spooked out (most importantly the food), and the depth is available, then you will consistently find buck bedding in this region. It does not even have to be a nasty swamp or crazy thick thicket that everyone talks about. Bucks will make due with adequate cover, but they will not sacrifice for poor food. There is no question that bucks still require quality browse and a safe location for their bedding area (safe is relative to your area), but often people think they require far more than what they really need. In the end, it is actually quite simple, proper depth of cover through layered bedding paired with the absence of human pressure = buck bedding.

There are no secrets. I highly recommend you avoid anyone trying to tell you, or sell you big buck bedding secrets. Again, because there are NO SECRETS. It really is as simple as food → does & fawns → does & young bucks → bucks. I encourage you to look for and apply this fundamental concept for yourself. Again, on private you build it and decide where this occurs, on public land you find it.

When visiting a client's property, I am constantly evaluating the property's depth of cover. If we put food here, will we have enough depth of cover for bucks? Questions like such are very important to ask yourself as a private landowner. If you fail to have adequate depth of cover for bucks, you will find yourself with an overflowing amount of does which is a very bad thing. Your ability to influence the herd is greatly diminished and your property will only hold bucks during peak rut at best. More on that in another article.

It is also important to keep in mind what is behind your buck bedding layer. Unless bucks are sandwiched in a small woodlot (areas with little cover as described previously), bucks will not bed up against an ag field or high pressure area. Keep this in mind when deciding the location of your food sources.

Another element to note, each layer gets bigger and bigger as you go back. The doe and fawn layer is going to be smaller in total area than the buck layer. The reason for this occurrence is social pressure. Mature bucks do not take social pressure (*during the hunting season - summer and winter are different). They want to be as far away from other deer as they can. Social pressure adds stress and stress hurts your herd. Lastly, keep in mind that if bucks do not have the various qualities they are looking for in a given location, they will simply leave and find it somewhere else.

STAND ASSEMBLAGE:

Now that you understand layered bedding and where the deer bed is on your property, you can have an assemblage of stand locations. Hunting bedding areas (away from food!) in the morning, and hunting near food or on the way to food in the evening. More on that in another article.

CONCLUSION:

There is a lot to understand when it comes to designing an optimized whitetail hunting property, but before you can have consistent success year after year, you need to apply layered bedding and depth of cover. It is a simple concept that many fail to implement correctly, if at all. So when you are out creating bedding areas this habitat season, make certain you have the foundation of your system set up correctly.