Deer Funnels Explained: Bobby Worthington's Bowhunting Guide

This post is based on our podcast episode with Bobby Worthington — part two of a two-part series with the Tennessee whitetail legend, where we go all-in on funnels. Watch the full conversation below, or read on for the key takeaways.

If part one with Bobby Worthington was about the mindset and mathematics of trophy hunting (we covered that in its own post), this episode is the how-to on the ground. Bobby has probably analyzed, hunted, and taught funnels as much as anyone alive — he evaluates 22 of them with students on the 3,000 acres he manages in the Tennessee mountains.

His starting point is simple: all funnels are not created equal. Deer use them for two reasons — security, and to conserve energy. Not because they're lazy, but because they're prey animals that never know when they might have to run for their lives. A deer will walk three times farther to go through a gate than hop a fence.

And when it comes to deciding where to hang a stand, Bobby refuses to guess at the "why."

"I don't care why a deer is where he is. I don't want to know the why — I want to know the where, and sign will tell you that."

Long-Range vs. Short-Range Funnels

A long-range funnel blocks deer movement over a long distance — a ditch that runs 100 yards, a body of water that runs 200. Any deer that hits it goes around one end or the other, and these catch bucks traveling miles during the rut, sometimes between two home ranges. A short-range funnel — a pond, a sinkhole, a down tree — squeezes two or three of a particular buck's routes together inside his core area, doubling or tripling your odds.

Your trail cameras tell you which is which. Three or more pictures of a buck in a funnel before the rut, even at night, and that funnel is in his core area. One or two pictures only during the rut? That's a long-range funnel catching him mid-travel. Bobby hunts short-range funnels on a schedule: October 25 to about November 3, before the buck leaves on rut excursions, and again when bucks break loose around November 19 through December 3 or 4 and return home. His buck Fate fell on December 5, back on a short-range funnel in his core area, working his scrapes again.

Ditch Funnels, Creek Crossings, and Fences

In mountain country, the number one funnel is the ditch funnel — and Bobby almost always hunts the head of it, the top, where the banks are steep and trails converge at the first crossable spot. The bottoms soften out gradually, spread the trails, and sit in low ground with swirling wind. Creek crossings are usually two-sided but softer, with trails scattered over a wider area. In agricultural country, look for connecting cover and farm fences — a major fence that dead-ends at a drainage is a great long-range funnel bucks use to cross between properties, and most people overlook it.

Know whether your funnel is one-sided or two-sided before you hang steel. On a one-sided funnel, nothing stops deer from passing 30, 50, 60 yards on the open side — so you get one tree stand, on the funnel side, period. As for the classic "saddle" everybody talks about? In all his years, Bobby has never once seen a major trail going through a low gap in a ridgeline. He'd rather have a ditch with steep banks every time.

How He Grades a Funnel

Number one: the amount of deer moving through it — how heavy the trail is right in the heart of it. Number two: buck sign, and not just fresh sign. Bobby hunts "traditional" sign — a tree dead from being rubbed years ago, scars held over from three seasons back, layered with this year's rubs. That historical sign marks routes bucks have learned over generations. Then he checks the wind: if a funnel only hunts on a southeast or southwest wind, that's warm-front wind and he's not interested. He wants funnels he can hunt on a northwest wind, when a cold front has bucks moving hard.

Why You Can't Find Funnels on a Map

Of the 22 funnels Bobby evaluates in his classes, he says you can see exactly one on a topographical map. What a map can teach you is where to start: skip the uniform, evenly spaced contour lines and go where they tighten, turn, and swirl — that geographic diversity is where funnels live. But the funnel itself? You have to get your feet there. He also notes funnels on high mountain peaks generally carry fewer deer than ones halfway down.

Tighten It Up for a 15-Yard Shot

If a soft funnel spreads trails over 20 or 30 yards, Bobby manipulates it — brush piles to discourage movement where he doesn't want it, mineral licks and a big mock scrape in summer to encourage it where he does. He wants a 15-to-18-yard shot, and he's blunt about why: too many big bucks get wounded at ranges hunters haven't earned.

"When you can put all four of your sight pins on his heart, buck fever don't happen... Buck fever sets in for lack of confidence."

One rule if you're tightening a funnel near season: do it all in one day and get out. Come back two or three days in a row and that buck smells where you've been — and now he's working off survival, not instinct.

Sit the Best Funnel — and Walk Straight to It

Bobby doesn't rotate stands. He finds the funnel pushing the most deer with the best sign and sits it day after day, week after week, unless a picture of his buck somewhere else tells him to move. And forget elaborate access loops in big woods — circling around a ditch funnel just means cutting across every travel corridor feeding it. He walks straight up the ditch, accepts 30 minutes of disturbance for 12 hours of hunting. The one access rule he won't break is thermals: if his stand is uphill of the funnel, he won't go in during that last hour before daylight, when falling thermals pour his scent right down onto the deer traffic.

Go Deeper

This is only a slice of a conversation that runs well over an hour. In the full episode, Bobby tells the story of Gimpy — a nine-and-a-half-year-old buck that stares down trail cameras and once waited until the thermals shifted before circling his stand — plus how to know when a funnel is good enough to hunt blind with no history, and details on his new book Final Quest and his hands-on funnel workshops. Watch the full episode on YouTube, or find the Southern Outdoorsmen Podcast on your favorite audio platform.

Found a funnel you can't decide is hard or soft, one-sided or two? Drop a map screenshot in our Circle community and hash it out with hunters who chase big-woods bucks the same way you do — Join the community here.

And if this one's got you itching to go walk some ditches, grab some Southern Outdoorsmen gear to wear while you're at it. Y'all Stay Southern.