Arizona Hunting Club & Outdoor Adventure Group

Scout for Benches that Are
Used for Bedding Down and Travel Corridors

In most cases, you should already have every bench mapped out using your topographic software program. With that said, software is never as good as walking the actual terrain. A good way to search for benches is walk a path 1/3 of the way down the hill parallel to a ridge. While walking these ridges look for following x landscape items:

1. Use your preprogrammed waypoints to find all known benches
2. Look for level benches that are big enough for 10 to 20 elk to bed down
• One type of bench is just a big level spot where animals can bed down
• The other type of bench is more like a sidewalk used for travel
3. Game trails in these locations should be very easy to spot
4. Thick clumps oak trees, alligator pines other trees with low branches within 100 ft. below or above the game trail
5. Any open areas where green grass and flowers are growing
6. Signs of grazing on grass, and the tips of plants and bushes
7. Fresh signs of deer and elk droppings
8. Free tracks, trampled leaves and bedding areas
9. Line of rubs and scrapes
10. Note the time of day and which way the wind is blowing

The best way to find benches is topo software or satellite aerial images. Program them into your GPS unit, which will make them very easy to find. But always be on the lookout for good ones that just don't seem to show up unless you actually walk through them.

There are two types of hillside benches that deer and elk like to use. One is a hillside bench that simply consists of an flat or level area that might be 25 wide and 50 long that exists on the top third of a steep hill that drops several hundred feet from the top of the hill to the bottom of the valley. These small benches are great spots where elk and deer love to bed down.

Always look for animals on the downwind side of hills. In the mornings, animals will be located near the top 1/3 of the hill. In the evenings, they will be located near the bottom. This is because morning thermals carry scent uphill and afternoon thermals carry scent down hill.

Animals also like to choose benches that overlook areas where they normally feed and water at night. From their uphill vantage point, they can see predators and hunters snooping around their feeding and watering areas looking for sign and leave the area quitely without ever being seen.

The other type of bench is more like a sidewalk that travels along the side of a hill for the entire distance of the ridge above. Also located on the top 1/3 of the hill, these sidewalks may only be 5 feet wide, but they will always contain heavily traveled game trails. These sidewalk benches usually travel to the end points of the ridge; through ridge top saddles and down into drainages and draws that funnel animals down to feeding and watering areas.

If you do find a sidewalk bench, there will almost always be a line of rubs and scrapes that bucks and bulls like to leave behind so the females will know whose hill and sidewalk they are walking on. If you see a series of rubs, always look for the flat or level pathway that the animals are following and find out where it goes.

Setting up a stand on a hill side bench can be tricky, because of the morning and evening thermals that will carry your sent up or down the hillside. But learning the thermal patterns will allow you to hunt benches, which should pay off because they provide heavy deer and elk traffic all year long.

Recognizing big benches is pretty easy, but sometimes the smaller ones are harder to see. To find them look at any steep hills where the elevation lines are very close together. If you can find two lines that are two or three times wider than other lines on a steep hill side, or if wide lines make a bulge or point, you should record them and scout these areas during your scouting trips to look for game trails with fresh tracks and fresh droppings as well as scrapes and rubs.

During the summer, many elk and deer will be found on north side of the hill because that is where the shade is. The opposite is true during the winter as southern slopes offer warm sunshine.

With that said, most animals will bed down where they can use their nose to scan the prevailing wind coming over the top of the hill and the morning thermals rising up the hill for scents of danger coming their way.

On the graphic below, we have designated 3 different benches. The north bench overlooks a stock tank that is further to the northeast. More than likely the elk and deer will follow the drainage down the hill all the way to the tank.

The south bench also overlooks a stock that is to the southeast. The south bench looks good because is also serves as a mini saddle, which animals will follow to take the shortest route along the southern perimeter of this mountain.

However, the bench that looks the best to us is the bench located near the top of the hill on the southeast side of the hill/mountain where most hunters will not hike and where they can use the wind and thermals to their advantage.

1. Stock Tanks
2. Ridges
3. Ridge End Points
4. Game Trail Hubs
5. Saddles and Dips in the Ridge
6. Hillside Benches
7. Forest/Pastures/Burn Breaklines
8. Field Saddles/Creek Beds
9. Hilltop Field Funnels
10. Forest Inside and Double Inside Corners
11. Natural Funnels/Chokepoints