Scouting Tips for Deer Hunting | Big Woods

We are here today exploring a little. This is kind of a larger wooded area, as I'm sure you can see, there's a lot of wood that's pretty common in the type of landscape in northern Wisconsin, northern Minnesota, and what we're going to do today. As we do our exploring, we try to take a lot of notes and explain what we're looking for and why, and hopefully put together some pieces of the puzzle that at least in this area we're starting to solve. Last season quite a bit and trying to fill in the gaps and learn more about the landscape at this time of year, ideally, there is no more snow, but we only have a few centimeters left, so there are still ideal conditions to explore from now and for the next six eight weeks and we're right on the edge of a swamp right behind me here and on the other side, not too far away, we have a clear cut and that nice transition line, especially in these more forest type areas big, it almost always will be.

We have an area where there is a congregation of

deer

that travel along that edge, so right now we are in one of these larger, clearer areas and this one is the age and size of the tree where it is being used quite a bit, it looks like you have these stages of these clear cuts right where they are cut and then you get weeds and really successional growth that takes over and then, at least in this type of area, the aspens will start to be the next thing that grows and once they come of a certain size or

deer

can start walking through them, they act as good cover, there are good brows many times a year and as we look at this one, I actually think there's a bed right here, we'll mark it one in just a second and I show it to you on camera, but there is friction here, there is excrement all over the place.

What you need to remember is that we have a slightly undulating habitat here and you will find that the deer travel relative to some of these little micro ridges. Within these clear cuts and also batting on certain slopes, this is where having a little bit of snow can be helpful because these deer a lot of times we'll also use them late in the season, but I also use them a lot in the beginning of the season. and during the route especially on the edges, so this time of year I really like to explore these areas because you can see through these little saplings, you can see a long way and even be able to discover where some of these deer might be stationing during During the season, in some areas they move and bed in different places early or late, but sometimes they bed all year round in these types of areas.

It can be a challenge to hunt now, remember that at the beginning of the season everything will be green. All of these young trees will have leaves on them and you can't really see very far, you almost have to hunt on the ground if you're going to hunt them, but even in the middle of the season it can be difficult a lot of times the lay of the land can make it make more sense to just because if you climb one of the few trees that are tall here, you don't really have shooting lines to get down to the ground, some of the videos that you saw last year where we're

hunting

closer to the edge of In these types of clear cuts we would be small on the ground because it was the best cover and shooting option, but you also have to think about how deer could use these thermals like this deer here that is standing next to this big tree, but when night comes and the thermals start to build up, they're going to create this little depression here, so it would be very easy for him to just get out of his bed, slide down the hill, and then he'll feel really safe collecting all the smells around him before he tells you where to move from there. he just walked over to this place right here, see, it's a little deadfall, there's a little oak tree and, uh, there's a trail heading towards it, it looks like there might be. a deer lying there we find a bare spot on the ground and we think, well, you know, this is better, it's not a bed and there's droppings and old rubs around and the qualifier for us is if there's hair in that spot it's not necessarily a guarantee. , eventually one or two, but it's nice to find a few hairs and there's sort of a little confirmation that it's probably a place where the deer bed, rather than just being a bare spot on a slope slightly to the south, they received more sun and as you look around again, this particular bed is on a small column of high ground within this larger clear cut, so I really like to find good scrapes and these types of habitats, and one of the Things that separate good scrapes from bad scrapes a lot of times is just the location and context of what's around the scrape and also if there's an attractive branch if you just find a branchless scraper that looks doesn't mean much to me and this is kind of tip that has taken me a while to get better and better over the years of doing this, but it works in the summer and it also works this time of year, the scratches will be more visible and there is no snow on the ground and no green edge has emerged so this time of year when we have snow on the ground it's sometimes hard to tell if there's a scratch there or not so we found this spot where we have these hanging branches and it looks like contextually there should be a scratch in this area, we see these branches and it's like Well, obviously we can't say that there is a scratch on the ground, but we can investigate these licking branches and sure enough, we can say that they are being used and, in fact, even There are some deer here trapped in one of them, so we know for sure.

I'm sure we can mark this as a scrape area and potentially identify it next fall and the context that made us think about looking for a scrape in the first place is number one: there is a lot of bedding around this area, but we are in an edge where we have this small depression where there is even like a small pond back there with some water accumulating and on this small ridge next to it there is thicket everywhere, but then you have this small opening between the thicket and in that opening you have that branch hanging licks is a very good recipe for finding a scratch, so Sam actually chose this while I was doing the last segment of the video and it's that in this area we also have a bunch of these twigs and almost every single one of them.

This little hillside here is cut off at the top, so you can see that the deer have been feeding on these little saplings coming out of the ground and using them as a food source. There's another branch to lick right here, we scrape, we've got rubs down there. I have rubs here closer to that water source, so this is probably one of those areas where I wouldn't be surprised if it was used earlier in the year. There could also be bedding in the clear cuts moving into this area and I could see this. It's also a good area during that pre-rut and rut period of time when deer can also use this edge as a sort of travel corridor and use it to sniff out a lot of potential deer bedding around them because it's in an area where there are a lot of ups and downs so if your deer follow a path through here they will get a lot of upper thermals throughout the day, lower thermals come down in the evenings and early mornings and they don't have to travel much. far to smell many potential beds, so now the last thing for us here in this place would be to figure out how we settled in this kind of place.

There are two trees down here that I really like along the water's edge. them by the water's edge because again at night we would probably come in from the opposite direction and allow those thermals in that last light period to just sink and sink towards that water source and that's when we'll be able to set up in some of these trees here on the edge with good cover and if this deer comes out of this clear area then we will have a good opportunity to attack him, so here is an example of another bed that we found and this one is like a purer swamp where we have this whole area of wood all around us, but if you come to this area in the summer or even the fall before it really freezes, it's really kind of spongy. wet area where you're tapping your boots and it's very dirty, but this time of year it's all frozen and it's very common to find beds, especially in this type of setting, we have this nice evergreen box and a back cover a little bit thermal cover shelter for that north wind coming from the top and we have that totally exposed south direction where there's really nothing blocking the sun all the way, so this deer can just sit here and basically sit at the sun. shelter from the wind all day so it will most likely be a late season bed but there is a chance it could also be used for the rest of the year so we'll mark it anyway and move on walking, but if you find yourself near these wood bogs, that's a pretty common thing that you'll find, especially near the edges of these types of beds, and it might also be a little bit more difficult, at least for me, to tell if it's a male that bites your dough bedding.

It usually looks like the bedding has some type. of context around it, like maybe the Hygromex narrows to a small spot in the swamp or something or there's something really obvious like bed rubs, so one of the things to watch out for this time of year that can really pay dividends comes autumn. If you're primarily a groove chaser, that's when you have moisture, you can really get a lot of value out of finding those really good pinch points just by walking around in the dirt and figuring out where they are and therefore this particular spot that they're staying. here now is a really good example of that where we have this area of ​​higher ground where there are a couple of downed trees and it's a little bit thicker overall, we know there's a lot of things that make a bet up here, you can walk up there, there are a lot of trails going back and forth out of this bedding area, it's pretty easy to verify that there is deer bedding there on the other side, we have a very wet swamp, some have some trees, but it's a lot of open swamp, just very humid. if you walk in the summer you sink in past the knee with every step and then in between those two areas we have this area of ​​really flat ground that is kind of wet in the summer but it's also kind of dry, kind of spongy, but it's got more of that.

It feels like a swamp full of wood and you can see behind me here and in the background, that's probably all you can really see. Well, that area is pretty vast, but right where we are, it narrows quite a bit between these two types of habitat. We have three types of habitat all converging here and in the areas where you have those transition lines, they're narrowing down to probably about a 15 yard window here and we have a good rub here, you can check that bucks. They're probably cruising during the downwind rut of that doe bedding area, so all that's left at this point is to look at the most common wind directions for November and then choose the right tree to set up in, e.g. so we picked one of These trees here and then if we get the right wind direction in November, it's going to be a great place to sit when I started recording that clip.

I heard that a deer must have his bed, so go check that out below, but what was I going to say. As much as possible, I like to try to start my exploration in areas that have a lot of ice like this, where yes, maybe I can explore them in the summer, but it's a nightmare and I can walk on this ice and get the same information. but it's much easier to get and usually that period of time between when the snow actually melts and the ice starts to become impassable is a very short and narrow period, so now is definitely the time to do it for me and then I got all the rest.

The dry land

scouting

spring right here is an example of another really good groove spot and this one might be a little harder to figure out on the fly, but what I've noticed about this spot is that we've got a big swamp here. and then we have more high ground here the deer often feed on the high ground because there are some clear cut areas there is a lot of browsing up there there are also brawlers down here and I think they do eat it you see signs of it from time to time but I feel like the quality of the brows tends to be a little bit better on that high ground, plus if you take certain paths, you get acorns at certain times of the year, but what you find is a lot of signs going in and out, a lot of trails, I mean, if you walk along this transition line you will find a lot of deer signs in general and some pretty heavy trails and they are all zigzag but you know, mostly. in and out of the swamp and one of the things that I observed last fall and it makes a lot of sense when you think about it, but it may not be very intuitive to everyone is that a lot of that traffic coming in and out is that. betting and they are going to eat poorlyfeeding, while once those bucks start crossing in late October, scent

hunting

for females and even into early November is that those bucks could draw a line through this transition, so I can find some of these. weaker trails that are right along the edge and in this particular case one of them slopes, but it's still the trail that the bucks are using, it slopes just below where a lot of those are batting and then comes towards the right. along this transition line and last fall I watched one of those really old guys in this area doing exactly the same thing he was gliding along ultra quiet with the wind coming out of the swamp and if I hadn't looked at the right time, I would have done it.

I haven't even seen it move around there as you can see it's pretty dense and this parallel path doesn't really have good shooting options. So I spent the last half hour trying to figure out which tree it could be in and yes I want to be able to shoot that trailer that was using that dollar, but I also want to be able to see if there's some kind of place. which could maximize shooting on high ground and also in the swamp, which is not easy. The reason you would want to do that is Buck could use that trail or he could use one of those other trails, especially if he's on a doe and he's just going to do whatever the doe does, so the ability to shoot it's still important for a place like this and I think what I've settled on is this tree behind me here that's right next to that evergreen tree that's at an angle to the swamp. a little bit and when I go up that tree I have great rear cover and I also have the ability to move for myself left handed on my bridge, turn on that platform and I could shoot towards that swamp path with very minimal movement or with all my Strong side, you could shoot this high ground on some of these other trails.

I wouldn't want to do all this intrusion during the season because I'm literally talking about the last half hour. I've been walking 360 degrees around the tree in every direction trying to figure out the best way to set it up here and ship it everywhere, so now is definitely the time of year to do it and now I know when I'll be back. here in November, if I have that wind coming out of the swamp and I want to be able to set that spot, I know exactly where I'm going, I can make a beeline to the emerging tree and I'm ready to Hunt one of the ways you can find that parallel trail too is that a lot of times there will be new rubs or historic rubs from that time of year, so when I'm on that trail, I can see those types of angles here. historical rubs, some from last year but also some older ones and that gives me the clue that, well, a lot of these trails in general have a lot of deer signs, they are well used but they do not have rubs, except for that trail. it has rubs and if you walk any of these trails in and out, you may still find those rubs there and think they are on those trails, but I think a lot of times it's the deer that uses those trails and then once they hitting that intersection of those small trails is where many times those rubs will be left, but anyway that concept of a deer crossing perpendicular to many of those trails next to the bedding during the rut is nothing new, that concept has been around for a long time. time and it works and hopefully this just gives you a real world example of where it would play out in this specific case, but you can apply that same concept to many different areas.