buckeye

How many hours do you spend preparing for and scouting for bow season?

Who else puts in more time scouting, glassing and preparing for hunting then you actually hunt?


I logged 104 hours on stand from Oct. 3rd to Nov. 3rd last year. I would say I easily surpassed that in preparation for season.

So lets here it.... How much do you scout?

ash2042

I easily spend more time scouting and preparing than I do on the stand. From glassing for deer to hanging stands I spend alot more time preparing.

I spend alot of time glassing, watching the deer come into the feilds almost every evening from late August until early October. I try to figure their patterns where they enter how they leave so I can have the best stand location. Hopefully all the time spent scouting will payoff during the hunt. Alot of guys shoot year round to prepare for the season, I feel you should also spend alot scouting so you can use those shooting skills.

rybohunter

I don't really scout much anymore. I have a place I know VERY well. There's really not much left to learn, other than where the deer are spending most of thier time and which travel ways they seem to be using for that particular year. In my opinion patterning my hunting area is a myth. When I have new areas to scout, that is done in the previous seasons late season, spring and turkey hunting. Maybe if our season started 2 weeks earlier you could pattern deer around here.

tocs

I scout plenty,unfortunately glassing in my area is not a practicality,there are some fields,not many and they are not on or adjacent to land I can hunt.I walk in the mountains all year long,I usually carry a gps to mark area's that catch my interest.I have a number of stand locations that are productive most every year but I am always looking for new and better locations.I scout intensively when bucks start to rub because at least at that time there is visable evidence of a bucks existence,usually this is in area's that I know reasonably well with a liklihood that if rubs are in certain area's I will have a good possibility of figuring out that animals travel patterns.The older I get or the more years that go by the more I believe that your scouting hours should out number your hunting hours by a very wide margin.

recurver67

I mainly hunt funnels, some of them are better durning the rut so I try to save the hot ones tell then. I do alot of late season scouting( when season is closed or while shedding hunting). I try to do very little scouting during the season to avoid being over exposed. I've hunted the same land for over 25 years so I'll have a good idea where to setup when the rut hits. I do some shinning early fall to see whats in the neighborhood and last years rub are always good.

Rick James

Last year during archery season I spent a total of 11 full days in the woods. Luckily I had a new job starting on 10/15 so I took the first week and a half off and had lots of time to hunt. I spent probably 40-50 hours in the patch I was hunting the most scouting.

It is difficult for me to scout more than this considering I am 2-3 hours away from all of the areas I hunt and last year was the first time I had lived in this area for 8 years. This year I have already started scouting and have logged a good 20-30 hours or so. I will probably have a good 100+ hours of scouting time this year though since I started early.

My Leaf River has been down since turkey season so that hunters didn't steal it or mangle it. It should be up soon, and I was already seeing horns in the end of April, so it will be interesting to see what is out and about now.

PABowhntr

If you are including time spent setting up trail cams, driving back roads, etc... then I easily surpass my amount of time hunting. I passively scout all year but get more actively involved in the upcoming season as soon as spring turkey ends.

Icedragon

I will probably start scouting near the end of July because thats when my crew goes up north for all of that. THat is plenty of time for me.

shed33

I hunt big forest land country and have plenty of public land to always explore. I scout so much more than I actually hunt. I enjoy the scouting aspect of hunting as much as the hunting itself. The thing I enjoy the most is spying on critters. My neck of the woods out here is logging country and affords a lot of access to good deer habitat and with the mountains we have plenty of nice areas to get perched up high in elevation on for glassing. We also have miles of thick nasty brush and timber so it provides excellent cover for bucks and bulls.

My wife's support is unreal, my job and summers off doesn't hurt either. I log in the summers but for myself so I get to set my hours. This is helpful. The more I have scouted and spent time at patterning deer the less time I have had to spend hunting them, not always but often. Many times now the animal I am after shows up when and where he should. I have learned that my harvests are all a product of time spent out there watching/walking and learning from the animals. We also have a very generous archery hunting season from August 30th to December 20th that give a guy a lot of hunting time.

I really enjoy reading sign and just putting the big picture of a bucks existence or a doe families movements and patterns into perspective and then making a solid plan to set up an ambush site. I use structure as a key component of my scouting, but by far the best sign for me is seeing the animal I am interested in actually using the area in daylight hours. Whether it be from a tree or off the ground its all very inspiring. One thing I want to gravitate more in the future is bowhunting off the ground more. I have harvested one nice buck at 12 yards off the ground back in 98 and I really enjoyed that element. I have a lot to learn and I have definately had more mature bucks evade me than I have been able to put an arrow in. That is one reason why I scout, I try to have at least five different areas that I can hunt 1-2 scouted and known bucks in. I also understand why folks that hunt one property really don't need to scout as much as a big woods bowhunter. Weather and snow levels can be unpredictable here, and habitat gets changed here constantly due to logging. Deer patterns adjust to both. As a hunter I try to stay on top of the deers seasonal movements and habits. I pretty much scout year around. I try to take a week off over Christmas. Then start shed hunting around the first week of January.

Nicholal

Hmmmmmmm...........when do you count time out scouting??.
If shed hunting counts (which I do count) Bear hunting (which I do count) Quading (which I do count) and then REAL scouting and blind repair and tree selection.

I also ride with a few of my farmer friends during combining. just to see whats out later in the evening. you'd be suprised how close deer will let the combine pass by them.

I would say I spent way to much time lookn for deer

But that is what I enjoy doing looking at deer at any time of the season. I look at travel routes, see where the deer are. I even bump them on purpose to see where they go for safety, (but thats way before the season starts)

So I'd say 10 months