Many of you may remember my post a few weeks back regarding having an opportunity for people to hunt here in IL on a lease that Mike and I secured in West Central Illinois. After a bevy of e-mails and more conversations than I can remember we have finally come to the end of that process and the reached the "checks are in the mail stage." I will not say who our partners are in case they wish to remain anonymous, but if they do not then feel free to contribute to this thread.
In any case, Mike and I only had one opportunity to walk the prospective new property and that was back in January or February, I don't recall which. Either way, with no snow cover on the ground and the leaves all gone we were able to get a good feel of the place, see what sign was there, and determine enough to know that we liked it and wanted to hunt there this fall. We have not been back since that day. With anticipated hunt dates starting November 1 we very well may not be back until then. So we had to do something, formulate some plan, to help ourselves be successful this fall.
The first thing I did today was locate and order a plat book from Rockford Maps (
www.rockfordmap.com). I would recommend every person, regardless of where you hunt, obtain a plat book and learn everything you can about neighboring properties. How big they are, where their borders are at, their access roads, homes on site, etc. If you can meet and speak with the owners, even better. Keeping track of what is going on with your neighbors can play a vital roll in determining where and how you will hunt your property. This is especially true in a case like ours where we have only 80 acres and are surrounded by large tracts of heavy timber. One thing I wish we would have paid more attention to is if the neighbors had any stands close to the property line. I know for sure that one did to the North of our lease, but I didn't see any anywhere else. This will play a big roll in when and where we hunt that section of our farm now that we know someone else is 40 yards on the other side of the fence. With most hunters being "average" at best, it's a good bet that they will be in there at the wrong times and on the wrong winds, which could potentially effect the deer movement that we see. Much like hunting on public ground, you often times have to hunt based on what other people are doing in your area.
My next step was to order a topo map from MyTopo.com. I don't know about you guys, but I love this site. Maps are super easy to order, and while they aren't the cheapest things in the world they are extremely handy to have.Also, I ordered my laminated map less than 4 hours ago and already received confirmation that it has shpped.Now that'sservice!
What this map will allow us to do is focus on larger-scale geography traits that may affect the deer movement where we are hunting. Since we don't have permission to walk all the ground around us we can use these maps to see what terrain changes and funnels on adjoining lands may be pushing deer into our property at certain locations. A lot of times I believe we as hunters focus too much on the narrow aspects of funnels and travel routes, the obvious ones like fence crossings or creek crossings, and we miss the bigger picture of the deer that may only be traveling through our hunting areas, not living on them. Having this map will drastically speed up our scouting without having ever set foot on this property since the first time we saw it. This way when we arrive in November we will have a good idea of where we want to hunt and can then move in on the travel patterns and hot sign from there if need be.
Brad Herndon wrote a great book called "Mapping Trophy Bucks" for those of you who are interested. It's a great read and has a ton of great info on using topo maps to scout and hunt big bucks. I will be reading it once more before I give it back to Mike, who has been asking for it for 2 years now.
I think I will try to give another update once I have my map and plat book in hand. Also, I am going to try for a late-July or early-August scouting trip to possibly glass some food sources in the area or at least set out a few trail cameras but no guarantees yet.
Off Season Scouting - Today's Journey
