Off Topic - It's Scouting Time In The South
 

Scouting Time!

March and April are the favorite months for scouting among the guys in my hunting club. We're a ten-man club with a 900 acre lease on a pine tree plantation. Our only hardwoods consist of a 50 yard wide swath bordering an intermittent creek bed that bisects the property.

We try to keep our impact low in the fall and during the season by using only a few well defined paths to our stands, and avoiding roaming and brush busting. So we're out in early Spring looking for deer trails, sheds, old rubs and scrapes, and new stand locations.

This year has been especially interesting because the loggers did a thinning cut a little while back and the area has changed a lot due to more sunlight and new growth. Recently I was checking out an area that has never been very good for us. But the logging activity changed it quite a bit and it has a lot of new briar and blackberry sprouts starting to stick up in the logging cuts. And one real biggie - three deer beds off to the side of the cuts, about ten yards back into the trees.

So guess where I put one of my 12 ft. “high chair” stands? :D

Here's the spot.

Semi

I kinda envy you guys that get to put up stands and use them. Around here on public land you could out one up but not guarantee that you would get to use it or that it would be there when you came back...

That spot does look awesome!

That should be a real good place to hunt, next to or in a logging area. And that tall high chair of yours.. should give you a good view.

Of course where I live we have a lot of logging. Being in the National Forest and all, there is wood of all kinds. When they clear cut an area, we get a new growth of usually popular trees. We call them slashing. And when the thousands of trees are young with like two inch to four inch trunks.. you can often get good deer and bear activity in them. Good places to watch trails, even set baits. If they select cut, like you said.. we get the berry bushes in there. Or is a place is burned over.. the berry bushes really come in. But normally you have to fight the black bear for the berries.