Belle,

Many of the woods I hunt have vast areas of thick scrub oak that the deer in my area prefer to bed in. One area in particular is a mile long and about 400 yds wide. And you are right - it is real hard to narrow down these big thick areas

These are a few methods I use.

1) I will scout open woods buck sign - rub lines, scrapes, funnels, deer sightings, and food sources. I don' t hunt over these but try to get a basic idea of where in the woods the most doe and buck activity is. When I have this info (sometimes takes a while hunting the same woods) I look to see my best entrance routes available - people trails, roads, etc. I really try to make these high impact stands as low impact as possible. Traveling as little as possible through the beds - and gaining the best attack points I can. When I can combine the two (activity and entrance routes) then I try to narrow a stand down by good trails or rubs in the bedding area.

2) Along with this I also simply use the shotgun technique...LOL. If I have a good route or routes into these areas I simply set up as many stands as I can. There is really no magic to it - I still look for good trails (large trails that traveling completely through a bedding area have been very good for me) In the pre-rut I have taken more than a few bucks using these trails to intercept does and travel from one are to a next. Throw a rub or scrape in the mix and it could be a super find. Look for nicks on small low branches - not rubes but nicks. Scrub oak is great for this - bucks traveling through at any pace will by often by accident, bang their racks into the thick oak and simply leave a trail of nicks very low to the ground.

3) I don' t obsess over buck sign. Many of my good stands don' t have a rub or scrape anywhere near them. For one the small thick forked branched trees that usually make up these areas (at least in my woods) are not good rubbing trees. Second these are daytime hideouts and most of the sign I find is from nighttime activity. Sometimes the lack of buck sign is an indicator that a buck is using the area in the daytime.

4) And busting those deer out of the beds is still a great way to find them. Best right after the season - when they have been pushed into the most secure areas. When you find these you usually find a " core" bedding area for many deer.

In reality my success hunting beds is do more to hard work on the off season than it is by any great woodsman ship or knowledge. To be honest, I consider myself to be far from knowledgeable about buck behavior - I have seen much of it - but I stopped trying to figure them out many years ago. Most of the deer I take - I have no idea where they came from, what they where doing, eating, etc. etc. I do know however where they where going and where they want to wait out the day.

And sometimes that’s all you need to know