Lets be honest, most of the funnels and pinch points on your hunting property are worthless. I’m not knocking them. It’s just math. Study the map of any decent property you plan on hunting whitetails and you’ll find a dozen spots where the cover narrows or terrain pinches. The thing is, deer using that property might only be using two or three of them during daylight. Hunt the wrong ones and you’ll write funnels and pinches off. Hunt the right ones and you’ll wonder why you ever hung stands anywhere else.
The real skill isn’t finding funnels and pinch points while e-scouting deer. Its the ability to weed out the unproductive ones. Here’s how I do both, starting with the map and finishing on foot.
What are Pinch Points and Funnels?
Funnels and pinch points are terrain and cover features, natural or man made, that influence how deer move through a property. While they both influence deer movement, they are not the same.
Funnels are features that deer use when when traveling between two areas, like a bedding area and food source. Deer use these features because they offer the easiest route between the two areas. Some potential funnels include:
- Narrow strips of timber between two fields or two larger blocks of timber.
- Edges where two types of habitat meet (thick cover meets open hardwoods).
- Rivers or creeks.
- Brushy ditches or drainages running through open ground.
Pinch points are similar to funnels but choke deer movement and trails down to a narrow point where a funnel is more of an edge deer follow. Some of the most common pinch points include:
- Creek crossings.
- Terrain features like saddles or the head of a deep draw/ravine.
- Fence gaps / gates. (Most reliable manmade pinch in my experience.)
- Inside corners of where timber meets an ag field.
It’s common for these two terms to be used interchangeably at deer camp or when talking to a buddy during hunting season, and honestly that’s fine. The difference between the two matters less than the concept itself. But if you want to keep them straight just remember, funnels direct movement and pinch points are where the movement is tightest.
Funnel & Pinch Point: How to Locate
It doesn’t matter if it’s a farm I’ve hunted for years or a piece of public I’ve never set foot on, I start the search with aerial and topographic maps.
Satellite Imagery
Aerial photos are where cover funnels jump out. A narrow strip of timber connecting two blocks of cover is obvious from above. So are edges between habitat types, inside field corners, and man made pinches like fence gates, which show up as a break in the tree line along a fence row. When I find something that looks like a funnel or pinch, I drop a pin and keep scanning. At this stage I’m not judging anything. I’m building a list.
Topo Maps
Satellite imagery is great for finding pinches and funnels created by what actually sits on a piece of ground but lacks the ability to show you everything changes in elevation have to offer. That’s where topographic maps shine. Saddles, benches, ridge points, and the heads of draws that are not visible on an aerial photo stand out on a topo once you know how to read the contour lines. A saddle shows up as a gap between two sets of tight circles. The head of a draw shows up as a V cutting into a ridge.
Deer follow elevation the same way you would. Given the choice, they cross a ridge at the saddle instead of the peak and swing around the head of a draw instead of dropping through the middle of it. Less effort to reach the same destination.
Confirming Terrain Features Visually While Looking for Sign
Once you have pins dropped, it’s time to walk them. This is the step that separates hunters who have success hunting pinch points and funnels from hunters who just talk about them, because a map can’t tell you whether deer are actually using it. That’s where putting your eye’s on the area comes in.
When several trails start coming together as the cover narrows, the deer are telling you exactly where they want to walk. Check the soft dirt at creek crossings for fresh tracks, and keep an eye out for rubs or scrapes strung out along the route. One faint trail with old sign is a maybe. Three trails braiding into one with fresh tracks in the mud is an answer.
Walking your pins does one more thing for you, and it might be the most valuable part. It turns up the funnels not visible on the map. I’m talking about a slight bench on a hillside, or a shallow ditch cutting through a thicket, or a low spot in an old fence where deer have been crossing through for years. Some of the best pinch points and funnels I’ve found over the years weren’t found on a map. I stumbled onto them on foot, usually while checking a pin that turned out to be nothing.
How to Tell a Live Funnel From a Dead One
Like I mentioned earlier, any decent farm will show you a dozen potential funnels and pinches on the map. The thing is, deer might only use two or three of them. Learning to weed out the dead areas will save hours of wasted sits, hunting spots that never produce.
Funnels and pinches are worthless unless deer actually have a reason to use them. The feature itself doesn’t create deer movement. It concentrates the movement that already exists. So before you hang a stand, look at what sits on both ends of the pinch. A textbook hourglass of timber with no bedding on one side and no food or bedding on the other is a hallway connecting two empty rooms.
Ask yourself these questions when scouting every pin:
- What is on each end of this funnel? Bedding, food, or nothing?
- Is there sign in the pinch itself? Converging trails, tracks, rubs?
- Does the surrounding cover give deer a reason to feel safe moving through in daylight?
- Can I get a stand within range of the trail with an entry route that doesn’t blow the whole thing out?
That last one matters more than hunters want to admit. A pinch you can’t enter and exit clean isn’t a stand site. It’s a place you educate deer. If your access crosses the trail you plan to hunt or drifts your scent into the bedding on either end, keep looking.
One more honest note. Bedding is the anchor for most of this, and if you can’t confidently identify where deer are bedding on your ground, funnels will stay guesswork.
When to Hunt Funnels and Pinch Points
Not all funnels are created equal. Some are early and late season spots, some only light up during the rut, and hunting the right type at the wrong time is a good way to burn a spot for nothing.
During the early season and late season, deer are on a bed to feed pattern. The funnels worth hunting connect quality bedding cover to a current food source. Notice the word current. A funnel between bedding and a bean field is a different spot after the beans get cut, and a funnel leading to white oaks turns on the week those acorns start dropping. The feature stays put. The reason deer use it moves around the calendar.
In my experience, the best rut funnels are the ones connecting doe bedding areas. Saddles, ridge benches, and creek crossings between blocks of doe bedding can produce sits during the rut that you’ll think about all year.
The rut is also when a marginal funnel becomes worth a sit. A pinch that only sees occasional travel in October can turn into a highway in November. Bucks cruising between doe groups will often take the path of least resistance. If you have a limited amount of time you can spend in the woods each fall, spend the November sits in the tightest pinches between doe bedding you can find.
Wrapping Up
Funnels and pinch points shrink the biggest problem in deer hunting, not knowing where a deer will walk, down to a spot you can cover with a bow. But the map only hands you candidates. The deer decide which ones count.
So here’s your first step. Pull up an aerial of your hunting ground tonight and drop a pin on every spot where cover narrows or terrain pinches. Don’t judge anything yet. Then this winter, walk every one of them and let the sign do the sorting. Most of those pins will come down. The two or three that survive are where you hang stands.