FOOT SCOUTING
Last month I discussed "Arm Chair Scouting" and how it can help you get a jump on your important scouting duties at times and places when you normally couldn't do any scouting at all. This type of scouting is also useful because it can save you hundreds of hours of walking aimlessly through the woods looking for deer sign. You must assume that there are deer everywhere, and therefore zero in on areas that stand the best chance of offering you an opportunity at the buck you're after. While the arm chair part of your scouting is very important, there is a time when the hiking boots have to get put to work as well!
Even when you do have the time to get into the woods, you have to assume that you can't waste a lot of time dubbing around aimlessly. By doing your homework, you have hopefully narrowed things down to three or four pieces of property that "look promising." You don't want to spend days on end marching through these areas for a few reasons. First, you don't have that kind of time to waste (if you're lucky enough to have a lot of time, spend it looking over a lot of potential hunting places!). Second, you don't want to run the deer out of the property! Third, you don't have to.
Lets assume you've picked a particular piece of property to scout based on your careful study of topo maps. You understand how the land lays out and have determined some things about it that make you believe that there should be good bucks in residence. If you used some of my pointers from last month, this property is either fairly large, with places that are off the beaten path, or has some obstacle that will prevent most hunters from accessing some part of it. You now need to confirm that there are deer in the places you hope to hunt to take advantage of these situations. The next thing you should do, with topo map in hand, is drive around the entire perimeter of the property. I like to take an enlarged topo map with me for this part, and I usually pick a day that I wouldn't normally spend in the woods, like a rain day.
What you're trying to do is learn more about the property than what the topo map can tell you. You should stop often and make notes on your map. Put down any new developments, houses, roads, and/or buildings. Also, make note of things that might effect deer movements. Any land that is farmed near where you hope to hunt is vitally important, as is the type of crops being raised. Mark these all down on your map! Posted land is important to note for several reasons. First, you don't want to end up on posted ground without permission. Second, posted land might represent a sanctuary that deer might head to if the hunting pressure builds up during the season. Third, posted land can represent a great opportunity to hunt undisturbed deer, if you can manage that elusive exclusive permission to hunt. Clear cuts, abandoned farms, old apple orchards, pipe lines and even power lines offer great feed opportunities to resident deer, and therefore are important to mark on your map.
With this information logged onto your topo map, you should start to see a picture of where you would expect deer to travel. They are going to go to the best feed in the area, and the big bucks will seek out the best cover the area has to offer. Here in New England, the best cover is usually the thick growth in and around swamps, however south facing hillsides covered in mountain laurel are a close second. If you assume the big bucks will hold up in these areas during the day, and head to areas of good feed at night, then you can start to figure high priority travel routes. Next, look for places on the map where these travel routes would be channeled to a tight area or funnel. It could be a fence line, a steep ridge, a waterway, or a narrow strip of cover through an otherwise wide open area.
To check out the deer situation in any piece of ground, you only need check the high probability travel areas. If you don't find lots of deer sign in these areas, there are not a lot of deer! There is more that you can learn as well. The size of the deer in an area can be determined by the sign you find in these highly traveled areas. Big deer have big feet, and big feet leave big foot prints! Heavy deer will sink into the ground deeper than lighter deer, which can help the careful observer determine if any heavy old bucks are lurking around the area. Rubs are also a great indicator of the size bucks in a given area. Typically, big old bucks rubs bigger diameter trees than do the 1 1/2 year old six pointers! I don't recommend trying to spot the deer, as it will cause you to move much to slowly. Concentrate on looking for sign, get the job done quickly, and then get out of the area! Remember, you have other areas to check out, and you don't want to disturb the deer.
After checking out all the areas you've been studying maps on with a fast foot scouting trip, you should have a feel for which areas hold the best promise. Promise, at this point, means that you found good buck sign right where you thought you would! If you did your homework well, you may have more places to hunt than you have time to hunt them. That's a good thing! Pick out the hottest looking ones and go back to the maps with the additional information gathered during your hiking time. By putting the sign on the map with the other information you should see a more clear reason why the deer are traveling where the sign is, which should help you understand when the traveling is being done. This will help you determine when to be on stand, as well as where to place your stand.
There are a thousand variables when it comes to stand placement, but a few generalizations should get you going in the right direction. You know where you expect to ambush the big buck that lives in the wood lot you've selected to hunt, now you have to select the best way to get to your stand location. Your path in should be chosen so as to allow you to get to your stand safely and quietly, but without either alerting the deer or leaving a scent trail that would be intercepted before the deer gets to your stand. Here is an example: I found a good sized piece of ground to hunt that borders a major highway (that is safety fenced). The road runs north and south at this point and our prevailing winds are from the west. I scouted the woods to the west of the highway, because I wanted to follow the fence line in a mile or more and I didn't want the deer to get my scent.
My "arm chair" scouting showed a place where deer should be funnelled close to the fence by a small ridge running between two swamps holding lots of deep water. My foot scouting proved the deer were using the ridge and entering and exiting from the end close to the fence line. I also found a break in the fence close to this point. By walking the outside of the fence, with the wind in my favor, the deer will not wind me during my approach and can't cross my path after I'm already on stand. The traffic noise and headlights will cover any small noise I make on the way in and I won't need to use a flashlight. Once through the fenceline, I take only six steps to my tree stand, which has shooting lanes to three trails coming off the ridge, all with-in thirty yards. I picked this spot because of the approach advantages, "then" I picked the tree.
Remember, there may be a thousand tree stand possibilities on any given deer trail, but the best one is the one you can get to without letting the deer know you're in town!
There are a few pointers on picking the actual tree that are also important. By this point you've done a lot of work, so lets not blow it all by setting up six feet high in a tree with no cover, right in the middle of the deer trail. No one would do that, right? Don't believe it! First thing to do is get off the deer trail and out of the deer's line of sight. If you can get 15-20 yards off the trail on an outside bend it works the best. The deer will slow down at bends in the trail and will be concentrating their efforts at searching for danger ahead. If you're on the outside curve in the trail, the deer will be looking for danger away from you. That's a good thing! For additional safety sake, get up 12-15 feet (or more) and get in a tree that offers some cover.
A good rule of thumb is to get higher than the lowest branches so that the branches break up your outline some. I like pine or hemlock trees best because they stay green all season and can hide you better than hardwoods after the leaves fall. If mother nature didn't co-operate and put a big pine where you need it, hardwoods can work just fine. Try to find a grouping of three or four medium to large trunks coming out of a single root system. Setting your stand in the middle of these trees will give you optimum cover, and yet you still should be able to get a few shooting lanes. If that doesn't work, try hanging a stand on the back side of a good sized tree. The back side means the side away from where you expect the deer to come from so the tree will hide you during his approach. This will mean standing to watch the trail or using one of the stands designed to let you sit facing the tree. I love those stands for situations where there isn't much good cover!
That's it for this month. With the season upon us, I hope you've all found some good places to hunt. Next month I'll discuss some things you can do before and during the hunt to make your stand site more productive. 'Till then, good hunting.