Map scouting a new area

[Topdog]

@BTaylor about 10 years ago I had a buddy send me trail cam pics of a dandy, he lives on the edge of huge big woods, and hunts behind his house on a small piece of private he owns, I also heard word of this buck from another gent I know who lives in the area, so anyways I found a seasonal dead end road with maps about a mile away from my friends house that was a way in to the huge public, used mostly by anglers in the summer, a real nice trout stream there. My first time over there I started hitting big buck sign and fresh right next to the parking lot, I thought it was fake at first, it’s crazy thick and just about impossible to walk through, a typical spruce swamp for our area, picture a Christmas tree farm with no spacing between the trees, this swamp is probably about 15-25 acres in size, this is right off the angler parking lot, maybe 200 yards from where you can park a truck, I spent that entire first season going after that buck, he was rubbing huge soft maple trees, most of his sign was right on the edge of that nasty thick little swamp, that runs a long a perfect little trout stream. I waded that stream many times looking for that buck, I circled that swamp, poked into the edge a few times, I searched on snow, high and low all over for that animal, I remember many sore days after pounding miles looking for him, I never killed a buck that season. The next summer while in there looking around scouting I found a spot on that creek that was more shallow with an easy gravel bottom, the perfect spot to cross for me or animals, a decent path was right on the bank and it emptied right into the middle of that little swamp. I never hung a single camera for this deer for fear someone would steal it so close to public access and with all the fisherman walking that creek. The next year and the very first day I hunted I went straight to that area again, it was around Halloween, parked my truck, walked down the well used path to the creek and bang… once again it was tore up, it looked fake all this big buck sign right there for anyone to see, and right on the edge of that nasty thick little swamp. I made my mind up I wasn’t going to walk all over the place looking again for this deer, instead I decided to go right into that little swamp and cover it inch by inch, the first day and get to the bottom of things before I struck off onto a hiking mission, the visibility in there was like 5 feet at times, brutal to say the least, I have no idea how a big rack buck walks through stuff like that but they do. I’m confident not many people have dove right into the center of that swamp like that, instead walking around it down fishing trails and looking in from the edge. So inch by inch I went through that little swamp sometimes literally on my hands and knees, basically like I was looking for a lost wedding ring, around lunch time I jumped a single deer, I was almost on top of it but just seen a glimpse of it’s tail. It bounded off slowly and disappeared into the spruce trees. I’m claustrophobic and hate situations like this, so I remember finding a small open spot the size of a truck cab to sit down and eat my lunch, after lunch I made a small circle around where that deer bound off to and decided to head back towards the parking lot where my truck was, inch by inch, I spent the entire day in this little nasty little swamp not half a mile from my truck, sometime in the early afternoon I killed that buck at about 25’ coming head on right at me, I’m positive he was the deer I jumped earlier, he was aged at 5.5, a nice mid 120’s 8 nothing crazy but he was super wide with an inside spread of 21” and definitely made for some great trail cam pictures for my buddy and a couple other folks that seen him crossing the road a couple times. That little swamp was his special place, people all around there had trail cam pictures of that buck, night time pictures, but when the heat was on he crawled in there and refused to be pushed out, I’m convinced that buck lived there pre rut and scent checked any doe who crossed that creek on the well used trail I found in the summer. I’ve checked that spot many times since and I’ve never seen it happen again, the buck sign is gone and nothing has ever moved back in, it was his core area. My buddy was so mad he didn’t talk to me almost an entire year and to this day he has still never sent me another trail cam picture! I like trail cams on rut hubs, scrapes, well defined trails, but to go after the best an area has to offer I still prefer to find their core area where they feel confident to move freely in day light hours. I think that is the biggest mistake most folks make when falling short on killing mature bucks they have trail cam pics of and assume to be nocturnal 24/7, they’re just not in his safe spot!

 

[CooterBrown]

You need to find his core area, assuming you’ve located or have picture evidence of one, super mature dominant buck, now you need to expand your search from the high count, more probable, multiple deer encounter locations to that bucks one “special spot”, the older, more dominant of a buck, the more predictable he will be, just like us as we get older, he will move less, and always with more security cover, but with more thought behind it, his routine is more set in stone, it’s worked for years and they hate change. Here’s one I’m betting most have not experienced, but I have, and only on the biggest of bucks I have killed or chased during a season, and I‘ve had it happen multiple times, once I have located what I assume is my target bucks core area, and if there is any cell service at all I’m looking for a good cam spot, high in a tree to not spook him or other game.. I can’t tell you the times I’ve gotten that buck the first night on camera.. if not the first night usually by the second, almost like they are pissed off and wondering what the heck I’m doing in their spot, I’m about positive I had one buck follow my tracks out one night after I hung 3 or 4 cams in and near his core area, he tripped half my cameras the first night, then he laid low for a week and settled back in to his normal routine after that. When I have a big mature buck on camera doing stuff like that, and can monitor him with cell cams and get real time intel on what he’s doing a couple times a week, that deer will have all he can do to stay alive because my degree of confidence in killing him will be off the charts and I will not stop until I do, that is how you get over the mental hurdle of grinding for one buck, after you’ve had it happen just once it gets easier the more times you do it, and becomes addicting, yes I will hammer a worthy volunteer as well if one happens to show unexpectedly, but the mental battle of locating, pursuing, and getting inside the head of just one beast of the woods buck and going after him is a rush like nothing else, and it also involves lots of dry hunts, nothing burgers are the norm, but it only takes about one minute for all that to change and have success happen, when it does it makes all the dry hunts worth it. The year I killed my personal best on public land, I had just over one year of trail cam pics of him, I spent half that season not aggressively hunting any other areas and basically just scouting when I did go into the woods, waiting for just him and staying out of there (core area) until I thought he was ready to be hunted, I seen just one buck that entire season, him, and maybe 3 or 4 other deer all season in total, that’s it. I did 4 all day saddle hunts (same tree) from dark to dark during a 5 day period just waiting for that one buck and only caught the glimpse of one deer the entire 4 days in a tree. Knowing the deer you are after, with lots of pre and post season scouting, gives you the confidence to endure the small odds of having it actually work, fresh, real time intel, cell cams, make all the difference!

What specifically are you looking for on the map to add waypoints to before you look at the arial map?

 

[Topdog]

What specifically are you looking for on the map to add waypoints to before you look at the arial map?

Cover, small or large pockets of cover and it’s proximity to historical or fresh mature buck sign.

 

[Topdog]

I have to run for a bit, but I’ll just say this, around here the common theme I see most folks falling short on is forcing the issue of hunting where they want the game to be versus accepting you have to be where they actually are, it sounds basic right….. Scrapping tactics that kind of worked in the past is a difficult thing to do, I’ve been there, most can’t do it, instead they double down or accept it will never happen, sometimes the best thing needed is a hard reset and most won’t do it, I did, and it’s paid off huge, maps are great for getting a general lay of the land, yes I stare them every week as well, I love it and will never stop, but until I really started diving into these pieces of woods in search for big, fresh, and old mature buck sign I never could connect the dots on those deer that trip all of our cameras at 2AM and we assume to be not possible to kill, I’m telling you they are, and in my opinion easier to pattern than a 2.5 or 3.5 year old buck, most folks just never find that mature bucks core area, and more 2.5-3.5 year old bucks get killed each season because they throw caution to the wind and travel saddles, pinch points, etc… in day light hours, all those spots that look good on maps that everyone can see for free who owns any kind of smart phone or device now. Maps don’t show mature buck sign, at least not yet, it takes burning shoe leather, I use maps as a general consensus to find things every hunting forum regurgitates over and over, stuff we all talk about, check those spots for high traffic, set cams to survey what’s in the general area and quality of deer, if one is located, on camera a mature buck, I go back to the map and the search begins, where is that suckers core area, and I’m usually looking for the thickest security cover, then I walk all those spots in the off season and look for his sign, you will know it when you find it. Sometimes I scout an area for 2-3 years before I actually hunt that spot, I have multiple areas in rotation, all on public, and what my cams tell me I have as inventory for a particular given spot each season dictates how or when I hunt.

 

[dhoff545]

OnX leaf off layer, caltopo shaded relief layer, caltopo false color naip, Google Earth historical imagery, occasionally a soil map.

If I want to break down a new area I start by mapping all the access points, then the main trails then logging trails. I've ground truthed enough in my part of the world I'm going to be able to rough the major deer trails in before I hit the ground especially if I can see some swamp crossings, clear-cuts, topo feature whatever that is giving me a hint about how deer are going to move. From that point I guess where I think hunting pressure will be, guess where I think doe bedding will be and at that point I have a pretty good idea where to start walking.

Depending on how much time I have and how much I want to think while scouting I'll either just start following my nose to the most interesting thing I have marked on a map or I will break it down systematically. When I have the blessing of adjacent ag I have gone about this by thinking like a doe, moving food to bedding and looking for buck sign, 90degree cross trails with rubs and scrapes along the way. If I can find a scrape that's in thick **** with no human sign around after I find bed clusters that probably money. If the rubs are up on my rib cage that's a 3.5+ deer and I drill down into where was he coming from and where is a huntable scrape I can access without getting busted?

Like a lot of you I find the other halfway decent hunters also know how to read a map and also find all the spots that scream hunt me from an air photo. I have to hit the ground and find the non obvious spots to get away from the pressure or go north and hang out with the wolves where there are no deer.

 

[dhoff545]

As an example of finding the non obvious spots. The orange pin is my tree the purple pins are people, dashed purple is deer trails. Dashed yellow is logging roads, foot access. The point where the guy has two prepped trees and a mineral lick where deer hop over to the swamp Island is about as obvious as spots come. It's the only pin I dropped before I scouted it. I found a deer trail that runs the swamp edge and intersects an old skid trail that doesn't show up on lidar right under a big ole cedar. I have a gun spot tucked up 30' covering the two main trails across that swamp, the swamp edge and the old skid road behind me.

You can see by the blood icon how well this worked for me.

 

[elk yinzer]

I'm in Florida.

So it's mainly,
1. "Do I think I can I walk around that swamp?"
2. "Do I think I can walk through that swamp?"
3. "Could I get a kayak into that swamp?"
4. "Guess I'm swimming through that swamp."

Haha I like the honesty.

Really though replace swamp with whatever it is that the locals in your area like to avoid, and you're on the right track.

 

[elk yinzer]

Something I don't hear brought up much here, to give away a tibit, is deer drives. I think @bigmike23 has brought it up also. In my local area, the pressure from drives is amplified, many times more intense (and often, successful) than your run of the mill get away from the wife bowhunter or go-sit-on-a-bucket dude. In PA we have this big camp culture, and a lot of the camps drive hard and kill a lot of furry critters. In some areas, if you want to have a good idea what the total potential is and overall picture looks like, you better keep a pretty good tabs on what goes on specifically throughout the entire rifle season, as those often are not confined to just the openers and weekends. Dead deer are pretty hard to kill in my experience.

 

[bigmike23]

Something I don't hear brought up much here, to give away a tibit, is deer drives. I think @bigmike23 has brought it up also. In my local area, the pressure from drives is amplified, many times more intense (and often, successful) than your run of the mill get away from the wife bowhunter or go-sit-on-a-bucket dude. In PA we have this big camp culture, and a lot of the camps drive hard and kill a lot of furry critters. In some areas, if you want to have a good idea what the total potential is and overall picture looks like, you better keep a pretty good tabs on what goes on specifically throughout the entire rifle season, as those often are not confined to just the openers and weekends. Dead deer are pretty hard to kill in my experience.

I want nothing more than the full ban on organized deer drives on public land. I do hunt a 1000 acre hunting club during rifle season with my family. Every time 3-4 of us get a deer on the first or second day, those guys will go out and drive the public to push everything down into the private. I have no say or call to do anything about it up there.

Its not fair to the hard working guys out on public trying to get it done to have an organized drive walk all over creation and ruin their day.

 

[dhoff545]

I want nothing more than the full ban on organized deer drives on public land.

How about we ban the disorganized drives and let the organized ones stay

Its not fair to the hard working guys out on public trying to get it done to have an organized drive walk all over creation and ruin their day.

This situation sounds like some real special people doing something unethical. I don't think that's typical of drives or drive culture. It's certainly not of our group.

I've had one negative interaction with another hunter about drives and he was a typical Sitka afficionado big buck killer that lost his private land access and didn't know what he was doing on public and was then annoyed to see someone else within a 40 of his spot. Most every other interaction I have with people while we are doing drives is positive, especially the older guys that remember how it used to be before everything was leased up and you just sat in one spot all day.

 

[Pyronole]

The older a buck gets the better he is going to know when these different doe groups are going to be ready and he will be in those doe areas for a short window at that time. What I am trying to do is build as much inventory of data for as many of those type spots as possible so in time I can hopefully build up enough of those spots that every week of the entire rut period (pre-late) I will have a different locations with high odds of a mature deer showing.

Run as many cams as you can around the different doe groups this spring to get pics of fawns. If you can figure out the fawning dates, you can back calculate when the does conceived. Then you know when to focus on each group this fall, especially if the rut is a little drawn out and you don't have just one date window. In Florida, different doe groups in the same WMA may be a few weeks different!

 

[Weldabeast]

Call me lazy but I'm looking at the surrounding private and looking for properties that look like they got feeders

 

[OSUTodd]

Call me lazy but I'm looking at the surrounding private and looking for properties that look like they got feeders

Yep. I also mark approximate locations of box blinds and stands I can see, or places where someone is obviously accessing public land from the private.