Arizona Hunting Club & Outdoor Adventure Group

Learn How to Build a Deer/Elk Funnel/Choke Point

In most cases, we like to teach students to locate natural choke points or funnels such as a wooded fence line leading from one segment forest to another across a big meadow that provides cover as deer and elk travel from one spot to another.

Other examples of chokepoints might be a saddle in a high ridge. The problem with some saddles is that they are more than 100 feet wide. Let us say that this saddle has a ton of traffic coming from a elk bedding area on the north side of a ridge to a green pasture and tank on the south side of the ridge.

The problem is that even though the elk traffic is heavy traffic coming through the saddle, the trail is heavily wooded and does not present any good archery shooting lanes. There is one section near a fence line that is more open. This site presents some good tall trees that would be great for tree stands. There is also fence line in this area that already has a game trail with light traffic running on it. You just wish you could find a way to direct more traffic to the fence line where you want to put up a tree stand.

If sufficient fallen timber is the area, you can build your own funnel. If you can stack fallen timber into a makeshift fence across the main game trail and continue the barrier all the way to the open area you want to hunt, then you can effectively squeeze the main trail traffic to the open area along the fence line that you want to hunt.

Animals will always follow the path of least resistance. Just make sure the barrier is high enough that the animals can't jump over it.