ORIGINAL: _Dan
How many of you actully have a plan when you go out to scout?
Do you just wing it or do you study the area with maps and images before you go in there?
Do you think about the impact that scouting trip may have on your fall's hunt, in terms of pressure?
Do you think you could be overscouting?
Does the type of woods you are hunting determine your scouting tactics?
Most all of my scouting trips are early in the spring....admittedly not as many as I would like the last few years. They are generally a shed hunt and scouting trip combo. Most every one of them is planned as I don't have much time to just wing it.
I study Google Earth, topo maps and logging maps all winter long. When I get to camp in the spring I have a very good idea of exactly where I want to go and what I expect to find there. If it looks good, I determine where I can set up and either do it then or shortly after.
In my area, huge woods, if I find an area that is tore up with sign in the spring I believe it will be again in the fall. Whether its the same deer or not, it doesn't matter....there's a reason a mature buck is there and there will be one there nearly every year there after. The trick is figuring out where he is coming from to get there.....
In my woods there are no set bedding areas or feeding areas....they are nearly one in the same. The only way to really hunt the mature deer is to figure out where they have to go to get from one place to another...i.e. funnels and edges.
Remember, this is big woods and patience is key. I believe the only reason I don't see deer in a certain area is not because I'm in the wrong spot....but because they just haven't been there...yet. The sign says so.
I realize that thetype of areaI hunt is different than 98% of the people on here. Each location is different.
What's the point of this thread? I guess I'm just curious as to what others think scouting is and how they go about it....mainly because most of you hunt different than I do.
Thats interesting on the part I highlighted. In the woods I hunt 4 years in a row these tree's got raked pretty good. The 1st year started out with a 2" rub. The next year it picked a bigger tree, right beside the other one, this tree was 4" in size. Then the following year these same tree's were about 6" in diameter and he hit it again. The very next year these tree's were about 10" in diameter and he hit them again. It was neat seeing the same buck year after year rub these tree's and also progressively move to a bigger tree every year! They were the biggest rubs I've ever see in person. Thats the only time I've had a buck rub in the same area or spot year after year like that. They seem to put scapes out in the same spots year after year. In your case maybe thats how or what they do in the (big woods) but from what I've seen in my little farmland woods its only scrapes I see year after year. I would have to learn to hunt whitetails all over again if I hunted a big woods. That was interesting info! Thanks!