16 PETERSEN’SBOWHUNTING 09 • 20 19
WHITE
TA I LS
BY JASON SNAVELY
I
n my June 2017 “Whitetails” column, Take Control of Your Hunt
[p. 16-17], I mentioned one of the most under-utilized deer man-
agement tools: water! I rated water guzzlers and watering holes
for whitetails as the most neglected of my “Sainted Six.”
fluctuate in quality and availabili-
ty throughout the year — namely,
high-quality food and water — is
the closest thing to a guarantee for
consistently shooting mature bucks.
Forage Banking
with Reversible
Electric Fencing
Whitetail managers are charged
with maintaining the right balance of
deer in a population. With so many
interest groups today, that equilibri-
um is rarely ever found, and main-
taining it is even more difficult.
Hunters want high densities of deer,
with many of those being bucks. Biol-
ogists, however, refer to whitetails as
“keystone herbivores” because they
have the ability to impact entire com-
munities (usually viewed as a nega-
tive) by eating practically everything
from the soil up to five feet. If a di-
verse diet of desirable foods is in lim-
ited supply, deer will eat themselves
out of house and home. They’re like
herbivorous Hoover vacuums.
It’s very common to hear about
first-time food plotters who proud-
ly grew fantastic food plots in June
only to have them turned into park-
ing lots in November. Although ini-
tially rewarding, nothing about this
scenario spells bowhunting control.
The proper prescription for the over-
consumption of food plots is forage
banking through “reversible elec-
tric fencing.” By fencing deer out of
your food plot, you control when
they can access the forage you’ve
invested time and money into. Al-
though this strategy certainly results
in enhanced nutritional quality for
the deer you don’t harvest, it’s more
about attracting deer to a specific lo-
cation (your stand or blind) at a spe-
cific time. Yo u determine when the
fence drops — now, that’s control!
Forage banking with reversible
electric fencing has been made prac-
tical and economical with the devel-
opment of advanced electric fences.
success year in and year out, and
they want to know how to strate-
gically and situationally gain more
control over what they see from their
treestands. No general “hunt hard
during the rut” answers will do. The
fact is, as a bowhunter, you lack con-
trol during the rut because it’s chaos.
To own success, my answer is al-
ways the same: “Bank” your food
and water. Whether you own three
acres or 30,000 acres, the best way to
gain more control over the outcome
of your hunts is to store and provide
the most sought-after, yet limited,
nutritional resources within a deer’s
home range. Banking resources that
are in high demand, low supply and
Banking Food & Water for
Whitetail Bowhunting Success
Ever since then, it has been my
goal to circle back and drill down on
creating well-placed, high-quality
water sources to gain more control
over when, where and how often
you dump the string on whitetails.
I’ll also address forage banking, be-
cause having both food and water
when the time is right equates to your
best year yet. Let’s combine the two
and see how the average bowhunter,
whether they own hunting property
or not, can own the season!
Working with landowners and
bowhunters across the country, I’m
frequently asked about strategies for
achieving consistent bowhunting
success. In other words, they seek
Planting a food plot is only part of the battle. If you want your time and effort to really pay
off, the vegetation still needs to be available come hunting season. That’s where reversible
electric fencing comes into play.
