It's Scouting Time In The South
 

Nice weather? 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.

Looks like it will be a good travel path, but wouldn't you want to move it back into the trees a little to conceal it and bit more?

During the season I drape camo netting over the shooting rail of those stands. I've had deer in spitting distance. If it's been out there for a month or more they totally ignore the stand.

I set it where it is to allow me to look about 125 yards down the logging cut to the left (you can't see it in the picture) and about 80 yards down the cut to the right (where the second picture was taken from). Also, there's a 50 yard cross-cut straight away from the front of the stand.

It's a s-w-e-e-e-t spot.

I predict success, we'll look forward to a pic
Next fall.

Your club rules
 

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

Wondering? Does your club scout in March and April to pick out spots by each hunter? And if you don't scout, you get what's left?

As a non leasing hunter, and basically a lone eagle now, I've often wondered about current hunting rules for leases, like for your 900 acres for 10 hunters? Are the 90 acres blocked off for one hunter, or is it first come, first served? And would your stand be saved for your use?

I'll try to give you a good picture of our situation Valentine.

First off, we're a congenial group that enjoys activities at the club campground as much as we do the hunt. The club has been in existence for fifteen years and about half the members have been in it for ten or more.

There's a club camp ground on site and each member has his own little "hooch" or camping trailer. We have a communal cook shack and skinning shed and a 300 yard shooting range with two covered benches. There's no running water, but do have electricity and split the monthly electric bill.

The club rules are:

- Each member may take no more than two does per season. Only about half of us do that. The rest usually take only one doe for meat, and one guy will only shoot bucks.

- Only bucks of seven points or more may be killed, except that each member may take one buck of five or six points. This allows us to take out those "funky" older bucks with less than seven points. We avoid killing the young five or six pointers by general agreement. The buck limit is three per season.

-Guest are allowed, but must be accompanied in the stand by the sponsoring member and any deer killed by the guest counts against the member's kill limit.

- Any small game hunting prior to or during the deer season must be limited to the area in the immediate vicinity of the member's personal food plots.

- Small game hunting and turkey hunting is permitted anywhere on the lease after the end of deer season

- Members may establish as many food plots or stand sites as they wish, except no plot or stand may be established within 300 yards of another member's location without that member's permission. (We currently have 22 plots averaging about 1/3 acre each. Every member has at least two plots and a few have three. We usually get together in groups of two or three to plant our plots.)

- Members may not use another member's stand without permission. (Which is freely offered by all members. We often exchange hunts on each other's stand for a change of scenery.)

Here's a satellite view of our lease. It's bordered on the North, West, and East by blacktop road, and on the South by a friendly cattle rancher who usually eats with us at the cook shack on Saturday night during hunting season. The white circle with the X is the camp ground, the other white circles are food plots. The red dots are other stands (climbers, lock-ons, ladders, or "high chairs").



We're a lucky group with a nice set-up. Years ago I was in a large club with lots of land. But I called it the "cut throat" club. I don't think you could have a club like ours with any more than ten members or so.
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Some good pointers on what to find in a good lease
 

Having some old, numerous, congenial members certainly is one of your strong points. The ability to keep separate spots, with agreement, helps a lot.
Having a paved road on three sides is something that many leases regrettably do not have. Makes distributing members over a large lease a lot easier.
And I've gotten too long in the tooth for ever good leases. Food plots are beyond me. I'm down to a small yard and garden.

Your good luck was made.

It certainly does Valentine. And "old" is the key word. But we're running out of younger guys to do the heavy lifting. :s2: