Many reason's. First let me say that starting now is a good Idea, especially for bow hunters. That's why I asked which season he was scouting for. Before I answer please bare in mind that the area's I hunt are nothing like the area's that you spoke of. It's thick hardwood's, and thicker spruce bog's. The only long distance scouting I can do is on big power line's. Ok now my first statement. Our rifle season end's in mid November, and we usually have snow by then, for the first two week's after the rifle season the mature deer are still pretty timid so all the fresh sign I see tells me were the deer are, and how their acting during the hunting season. We also usually get a couple fresh dustings during that time, giving me great opportunity's to track, and back track animal's. Usually when we get fresh snow during that time, the dominate buck's run the circut of there territory in search of doe's that were not bred during the primary breeding phase, that give's a great opportunity to pattern their range's, and I've found that these range's tend to remain traditional from one generation to the next. I'm not saying this is the only time to scout, but it is the time that I have learned the most. Now the second statement. Their was a proffesser at the U-of-M, Bemidji, who acually had a course on whitetail's, which included hunting them. He studied them for over 20 year's. He had a university budget, and score's of student's to do field work. His name was Dr. Ken Nordberg. He went on to write a series of book's titled The Whitetail Hunter's Almanac, I have found 8 in the series. I use my own variation's of his method's, but I have found his fact's to be spot on in my area. One of the thing's he discoverd was that if you chase a mature buck out of it's territory, they some time's remain off range for as long as 2 week's. I'm not saying this happen's all the time, but I figure why chance it. I hope this help's you understand reasoning for my statement's.