• The SH Membership has gone live. Only SH Members have access to post in the classifieds. All members can view the classifieds. Starting in 2020 only SH Members will be admitted to the annual hunting contest. Current members will need to follow these steps to upgrade: 1. Click on your username 2. Click on Account upgrades 3. Choose SH Member and purchase.
  • We've been working hard the past few weeks to come up with some big changes to our vendor policies to meet the changing needs of our community. Please see the new vendor rules here: Vendor Access Area Rules

Need some more help with scouting concerns

@kyler1945 trust me I wasnt disagreeing with you. I get what you are saying I was just trying to get a little help on things. This property I was talking about is 300,000 + acres What i didnt understand was how to chose the best spots to start my walking around. I totally get what you are saying. when you said just go walk it. Im trying to break down all that acreage into smaller chunks to focus on little by little. The area is just to big to just start walking. I know there is a chance that not all there area will hold deer. I talked with Nutterbuster ealier today and he was able to help with some of the key factors with examples of how he scouts big woods. But yes you are exactly right I wont find them until i go out and find them. worst case is I dont see anything yet, best case I find good sign and have success. Reality is in an area that big without knowing where to start my search I just may get lucky but most likely not. And like you said odds are no one is hunting where I am so putting in the time to walk is only going to better help me to understand the were and whys. So let me ask you this specific question. I'm not meaning to offend if I do! If you were mentoring me as a new hunter and i asked to look at this map with 300,000 acres of land. How would you approach it never seeing it before? I know there is a chance that there may not be deer in the spot that was chosen to look at. how would you chose where to focus your first steps onto that property. Would it just be a random section of the property that you chose and look at transition lines creeks high point and low points . Im not looking for a quick fix to not have to put in the time. Time is experience and experience is success. I was just looking for tips on how to dissect such a big area bud to help eliminate lots of wasted time



Taking my bet scenario from before - if you spent 200 hours in a single season walking a property at an average of 2.5mph, You’d cover 500 miles. If you walked 500 miles and didn’t jump deer on enough occasions to start to see deer when you hunt, you either: might not be cut out for deer hunting, or you need to find a new piece of property to hunt.

See my point? If you walked 500 miles without ever crossing your path, you’d cover a lot of ground. How much? Well, let’s just say for simplicity’s sake, you did it in parallel paths 100 yards apart. You could walk 100 miles and cover half a square mile. Or 2.5 square miles in that year/season. Roughly 1500 acres.

Stretch that to 300 yards apart, and you cover 5500 acres.

If you’ve read a few books on deer biology, so you know what they eat and the type of terrain/vegetation they prefer, and you walk 5000acres in a season, and you can’t cross paths with them, something is wrong.

Deer are not smart animals. If you know what they eat, and where they live generally, and you can walk into the wind through areas they live and eat, you will run into them.

Now my question for you is WHY you want to eliminate certain portions of the property before you go scouting? And further, why would you trust strangers with significantly less experience with the specific piece of property you’re hunting? Isn’t that how you got to be where you are now? Surely you didn’t just randomly decide today to seek information from the internet or other people. You took what you learned from the internet and applied it and are coming up empty.

What is the deer density of the property you hunt?
 
Also, I don’t think people believe me when I say literally walk in a straight line. As in, don’t get to a thicket and walk around it. Walk through it. Don’t get to cornfield and walk around it, walk through it. You might think this is not very efficient. And for a hunter with 20 years of experience, it may not be. But you’re still programming your brain to learn a property and a specific critter that inhabits it. Your ability to map what’s actually happening will improve dramatically when you’re not applying your human reasoning to why you are walking certain directions or paths.

Please don’t walk in a lake. Or on an interstate. There are some exceptions. Use some discretion on when to apply the straight line…
 
I probably spent 1000 hours on a specific piece of public land before killing my first deer there. Since then, I’ve killed deer in a bunch of different places. No property has taken more than 200 hours of time spent scouting/hunting to record a kill. Most times less than 50 hours now.


I enjoy going to new places, with zero knowledge besides basic deer and hunter densities, and going drum up deer. Sure I’ve gotten better at identifying specific areas to target. But I still burn boot rubber as the most efficient way of getting on deer.

I average about 4, maybe 5 hours walking for every hour I’m in a tree.

If I don’t have eyes on deer within 4-5 hours of walking a new piece of property, I’m usually considering moving elsewhere.
 
As bad as bumping deer in the dark on the way in sucks, it's a good time to find deer. Within an hour before daylight, they're often not terribly far from where they'd be during shooting hours. And it's usually less windy and quieter so you hear them run off, and they often stand there longer before bounding off because, well, deer in the headlights.
 
Taking my bet scenario from before - if you spent 200 hours in a single season walking a property at an average of 2.5mph, You’d cover 500 miles. If you walked 500 miles and didn’t jump deer on enough occasions to start to see deer when you hunt, you either: might not be cut out for deer hunting, or you need to find a new piece of property to hunt.

See my point? If you walked 500 miles without ever crossing your path, you’d cover a lot of ground. How much? Well, let’s just say for simplicity’s sake, you did it in parallel paths 100 yards apart. You could walk 100 miles and cover half a square mile. Or 2.5 square miles in that year/season. Roughly 1500 acres.

Stretch that to 300 yards apart, and you cover 5500 acres.

If you’ve read a few books on deer biology, so you know what they eat and the type of terrain/vegetation they prefer, and you walk 5000acres in a season, and you can’t cross paths with them, something is wrong.

Deer are not smart animals. If you know what they eat, and where they live generally, and you can walk into the wind through areas they live and eat, you will run into them.

Now my question for you is WHY you want to eliminate certain portions of the property before you go scouting? And further, why would you trust strangers with significantly less experience with the specific piece of property you’re hunting? Isn’t that how you got to be where you are now? Surely you didn’t just randomly decide today to seek information from the internet or other people. You took what you learned from the internet and applied it and are coming up empty.

What is the deer density of the property you hunt?
You're going to make me work . I see whay you are doing here lol. Im loving this by the way. you are forcing me to look at things i didnt think to look at. ok to answer your question about deer density. This is all the information I can find on our dept of natural resources page.
County rankings based on deer harvested per unit area in South Carolina in 2020.
I was trying to post the stat page from the website but cant. so I'll list how it is from left to right of the page . here is the header
Table. / COUNTY/ ACRES / SQUARE MILE / BUCK HARVEST / DOE HARVEST / TOTAL HARVEST / HARVEST RATES,ACR./DEER,DEER/MILE SQUARED/ % CHANGE FROM 2019./
The counties I can hunt
Newberry 317,761/ 497/ 2,905/ 2,194, 5,099/ 62.3 /10.3/ -7.9/
Saluda /192,173 /300/ 2,011, 2,144/ 4,155/ 46.3/ 13.8/ 58.2/
Union 258,111 403 2,167 2,283 4,450 58.0 11.0 0.3
Lexington 280,742 439 2,026 1,140 3,166 88.7 7.2 -8.2
Sumter 338,968 530 1,804 1,665 3,469 97.7 6.5 -22.5

I hope you can make sense of how I i had to type it out. just read left to right and apply numbers to table in brackets
 
I probably spent 1000 hours on a specific piece of public land before killing my first deer there. Since then, I’ve killed deer in a bunch of different places. No property has taken more than 200 hours of time spent scouting/hunting to record a kill. Most times less than 50 hours now.


I enjoy going to new places, with zero knowledge besides basic deer and hunter densities, and going drum up deer. Sure I’ve gotten better at identifying specific areas to target. But I still burn boot rubber as the most efficient way of getting on deer.

I average about 4, maybe 5 hours walking for every hour I’m in a tree.

If I don’t have eyes on deer within 4-5 hours of walking a new piece of property, I’m usually considering moving elsewhere.
@kyler1945 Sorry I just found this information. The state forest in Newberry county is on avg. 45 deer per sq. mile. in lexington and saluda county it's 15 to 30 deer per sq. mile
 
@kyler1945 so if I take your advice and just start walking the property and break off a 5 mile section starting from where i park for example. If i walk a grid I can cover that 5 mile section in just a few days. if i havent seen deer or any sign then I can focus on another section and just move through out the property. am I understanding you correctly. according to my DNR report, if correct, I should bump some deer
 
@kyler1945 Sorry I just found this information. The state forest in Newberry county is on avg. 45 deer per sq. mile. in lexington and saluda county it's 15 to 30 deer per sq. mile

Let’s take an average there and say 25 deer per mile.

If you walked the 5000acres like I suggested, you have the opportunity to run into 150 plus deer on average. Obviously these are broad terms, general terms. But the point is - if you cover 5000 acres and don’t run into a lot of deer, as in, most times you talk a walk, you’re bumping deer, then you can reasonably assume that area holds less than average numbers of deer.

Is there chunks of this national forest larger than 5000acres in size without roads, clear cuts, new growth, CRP, lakes, rivers, fields, etc? Probably not. So taking a 5000 acre chunk apart will give you a TON of data. You’ll identify patterns, and have a rough gauge of how many deer you should be seeing.

Next season, you will have identified terrain types, areas, etc that don’t hold deer like others do. You can then take the next 5000 acres and learn it in 75% or 50% of the time. Use the balance to “hunt” the areas you identified in the last season as “most deery”. The following season, you should be able to pick apart 5000 acres in even less time. You can take the best spots or tactics from the first chunk, and apply it to the second chunk.

You will get better at identifying spots that hold deer and why, and you will spend less time on land that doesn’t. You will spend the free time not burnt on crappy land hunting.

This is all a sorting and patterning process. It’s why you can kill deer to begin with - your brain identifies patterns at an astonishing rate compared to other animals.

When you disrupt your brain’s ability to identify patterns by listening to what strangers on the internet think, or even worse, what your brain thinks, you make this process take longer.

You think right now that just starting at square one is the least efficient approach. I’m willing to bet if you hadn’t wasted the first five years of your hunting career “hunting” and instead spent it walking around looking for deer with no weapon, you would be armed with an immense amount of useful information right now.

And confidence. I am willing to bet I’m within the top one half of 1% of deer sightings per hour spent in a tree. And it’s not because I hunt magic land or have some special secret. It’s because I don’t get in tree until I’m 100% sure I’ll see deer. And the only way I know to be confident of that is to become proficient at finding them before I set up.

Some people sit in a tree just grateful to get away from work or wife or kids or whatever. I sit in a tree to kill deer. There’s nothing wrong with the former. I’d just rather spend most of my hunting time doing things that lead to success.

Sitting in a tree because the internet said it’s the right spot, or it feels right, or I’m scared to booger a bedding area, or whatever dozens of excuses we make to watch squirrels, just doesn’t make sense to me. If I’m risking my life, and sitting still in crap weather for hours on end, I’m doing it to kill deer.

I can watch squirrels in my yard at home.

There’s much to be said for going “waste a bunch of time scouting areas that don’t hold deer.” I can think of no greater motivator for me to learn where deer are, than to never experience wasting that time again…
 
Let’s take an average there and say 25 deer per mile.

If you walked the 5000acres like I suggested, you have the opportunity to run into 150 plus deer on average. Obviously these are broad terms, general terms. But the point is - if you cover 5000 acres and don’t run into a lot of deer, as in, most times you talk a walk, you’re bumping deer, then you can reasonably assume that area holds less than average numbers of deer.

Is there chunks of this national forest larger than 5000acres in size without roads, clear cuts, new growth, CRP, lakes, rivers, fields, etc? Probably not. So taking a 5000 acre chunk apart will give you a TON of data. You’ll identify patterns, and have a rough gauge of how many deer you should be seeing.

Next season, you will have identified terrain types, areas, etc that don’t hold deer like others do. You can then take the next 5000 acres and learn it in 75% or 50% of the time. Use the balance to “hunt” the areas you identified in the last season as “most deery”. The following season, you should be able to pick apart 5000 acres in even less time. You can take the best spots or tactics from the first chunk, and apply it to the second chunk.

You will get better at identifying spots that hold deer and why, and you will spend less time on land that doesn’t. You will spend the free time not burnt on crappy land hunting.

This is all a sorting and patterning process. It’s why you can kill deer to begin with - your brain identifies patterns at an astonishing rate compared to other animals.

When you disrupt your brain’s ability to identify patterns by listening to what strangers on the internet think, or even worse, what your brain thinks, you make this process take longer.

You think right now that just starting at square one is the least efficient approach. I’m willing to bet if you hadn’t wasted the first five years of your hunting career “hunting” and instead spent it walking around looking for deer with no weapon, you would be armed with an immense amount of useful information right now.

And confidence. I am willing to bet I’m within the top one half of 1% of deer sightings per hour spent in a tree. And it’s not because I hunt magic land or have some special secret. It’s because I don’t get in tree until I’m 100% sure I’ll see deer. And the only way I know to be confident of that is to become proficient at finding them before I set up.

Some people sit in a tree just grateful to get away from work or wife or kids or whatever. I sit in a tree to kill deer. There’s nothing wrong with the former. I’d just rather spend most of my hunting time doing things that lead to success.

Sitting in a tree because the internet said it’s the right spot, or it feels right, or I’m scared to booger a bedding area, or whatever dozens of excuses we make to watch squirrels, just doesn’t make sense to me. If I’m risking my life, and sitting still in crap weather for hours on end, I’m doing it to kill deer.

I can watch squirrels in my yard at home.

There’s much to be said for going “waste a bunch of time scouting areas that don’t hold deer.” I can think of no greater motivator for me to learn where deer are, than to never experience wasting that time again…
I see your point. I guess it's not wasted time if I have learned something from it. Even if it means I didnt see deer on that part of the property or even the property as a whole.
 
This isn’t directed towards the OP, as I know you are just getting started and asking questions which is great, always good to get many perspectives, but I do think many hunters fall into this category, every season many of my friends second guess themselves and complain to me… it’s always the same story, no deer, blah blah… my response is always the same to them, I take the Seinfeld approach, not always but sometimes it’s needed. In my entire life one thing I have never understood is hunters who refuse to change anything after a lifetime of unsuccessful seasons always grinding away like a hamster in a cage but expecting different results…. who knew George Costanza could provide inspiration to a whitetail crowd, sit back and listen my friends, maybe George could unlock the secrets to a booner this season for a few lol.
 
@Schemeecho This may or may not help you… but I hunt huge tracts of big woods, the Adirondacks, where everything generally looks the same, I have walked many miles searching out funnels and pinch points I located on topo and aerial maps ahead of time only to find them devoid of deer and sign, most if not all my best spots would never be found by looking on maps only, what I do, and kind of getting back to my George theory above, I find the sign I’m looking for… by burning shoe leather… mark that on Onx, and then go back and study the maps, learn how that sign then correlates with things like topo lines and stuff, then I start to connect the dots.. often times the best saddles and stuff won’t show up on a map very good, they can be such a small depression on a ridge the map mite not show it, by finding the sign on foot first, and then using maps afterwards, I can usually get myself pointed in the right direction for the next scouting trip to locate things like overlooked bedding areas and so on, this is what works for me. My first trip in to a new piece, like your describing, I don’t screw around, I hump it, cover ground, marking everything I find on Onx, what may seem insignificant at first mite be gold later on at home when I’m attempting to connect the dots by using maps, Onx, every available online resource I can do at night while most are sleeping, from the intel I gathered that day, I use different colors for waypoints to designate how good the sign is, perspective future spots on my Onx, stuff I haven’t actually seen in person but found at home online, always get the same color, so I don’t get confused while afield, when I’m wrapping up a piece of woods, meaning my work is done, I go through and delete all the nonsense waypoints and get my maps cleaned up, and then on to the next piece of woods and the whole process starts over again. As far as how I initially start, where do I first walk in to some huge piece of intimidating woods that all looks the same, on maps, and from a vehicle window, well that’s easy for me, I pick the place with the worst access, I hate people, deer hate people, so that’s where I start, often times I’m wading a stream or paddling a boat, jamming my truck in brush to get off the road, I look for the least pleasant access to public land, not to say I don’t eventually end up in a nice gravel parking lot littered with beer cans, but I seldom start there. Hope this helps!
 
@Schemeecho, if you’re reading all this excellent advice from everyone aren’t you in fact taking and getting tips and guidance from internet dudes you really don’t know and have never set foot on the property you’re trying to learn???? @kyler1945, @Topdog ??? Anyway, another good statistic is deer per square mile and bucks per square mile. You can usually gauge density from this statistic. I know our DEC uses those numbers to help establish the deer or doe management permit (dmp) numbers for each wildlife management unit (wmu) in the state. We won’t be allowed any guns in NY soon but that’s a different story.
 
Whenever I hunt the big woods up here in Maine I go by the mantra of find the deer first then go back to that area and hunt them. Similar to what @Topdog said. Get out there and cover as much area in those 300,000 acres as possible but do it at a fairly fast clip and then after you have covered most of it go back to the areas where you saw the most sign and do some thorough scouting. After that narrow down the best spots and go back in to really get a good idea how the deer are using that spot. Also, I have to agree with @kyler1945 about listening to the advice from some of the so called experts. I remember years ago I took the words of experts as gospel until I realized a lot of what I was reading from them didn't apply to my hunting area. One last thing. Don't sell yourself short. Nobody becomes a great deer hunter overnight. You have a brain, use it. Iv'e probably talked myself out of more deer by second guessing myself than I've killed. Have some confidence in your own abilities.
 
In the big woods, if you've determined that covering 300,000 acres isn't feasible as many have suggested you try, start your scouting at and around interesting terrain features. Saddles, points, benches on steeper hillsides, locations where multiple features come together, etc. Interestingly enough I've found that if I head to an interesting feature I find that the sign isn't as good as I hoped but there's one or more lessly defined features in the area that the deer prefer. If you're not seeing anything you're probably hunting in areas that are too open. Find bands of cover that connect features and mark any area you find with acorns and what kind of oaks are in the area. Generally where I hunt deer like to hang out in the upper 1/3 of the leeward side of ridges during the day. The upper 1/3 of long hollows where it starts to flatten out can be good general places to start. Early in the season try to figure out which, if any, oaks in your area are hitting and go back to those areas that you've marked in previous seasons.
 
@Schemeecho, if you’re reading all this excellent advice from everyone aren’t you in fact taking and getting tips and guidance from internet dudes you really don’t know and have never set foot on the property you’re trying to learn???? @kyler1945, @Topdog ??? Anyway, another good statistic is deer per square mile and bucks per square mile. You can usually gauge density from this statistic. I know our DEC uses those numbers to help establish the deer or doe management permit (dmp) numbers for each wildlife management unit (wmu) in the state. We won’t be allowed any guns in NY soon but that’s a different story.


Which of the two hunters would you choose in the bet scenario I created?
 
@Schemeecho, if you’re reading all this excellent advice from everyone aren’t you in fact taking and getting tips and guidance from internet dudes you really don’t know and have never set foot on the property you’re trying to learn???? @kyler1945, @Topdog ??? Anyway, another good statistic is deer per square mile and bucks per square mile. You can usually gauge density from this statistic. I know our DEC uses those numbers to help establish the deer or doe management permit (dmp) numbers for each wildlife management unit (wmu) in the state. We won’t be allowed any guns in NY soon but that’s a different story.
I’m not following you on this one… but full disclosure I haven’t read every post in this thread, but if your asking me do I think info from complete strangers on the internet or gathered online can replace boots on the ground, no I don’t think it can and never will, I also write off nothing I hear or read completely whether it be a tip from the mailman or guy delivering heating oil to a house, some of my best leads on bucks have come from the most unlikely sources, I’m also very skeptical of everything I hear but I never completely write it off.. The problem with statistics the NYSDEC provides is on the dependency of hunters actually submitting that kill data, I find it easy to go online and report my kill, the same as you probably, and yes it’s the law, I would be willing to bet 50% in some areas don’t care, and never do however, making the job of those in charge almost impossible. FYI or maybe you know, the lead ammo ban looks to be full steam ahead for 2023.
 
D
Ok, so hello fellow Saddle Hunters. I'm still fresh to deer hunting. I have a bout 5 seasons under my belt and as some of you already know, I have had zero luck.
I know that if I'm not seeing deer during a hunt. It's because of I few common issues. Either I have spooked them while walking in and setting up or they have gotten my wind. Or I have simply set up where there were no deer. It's been frustrating to say the least but, I am determined to figure this out. First off I am trying to devote more time to my scouting. I have tried using maps on line to look for good transition lines to look at and pick places that to me seem likely, Still no luck. I'm hunting a national forest that has almost 300,000 acres. So is there a way I can break all that land down to more manageable sections that would have a better chance to hold deer. I'm smart enough to know that where they will be isn't just by chance. There has to be a reason for them to be there. I just cant find them and I dont have someone I can take with me to help me figure this out.
Dan Infalt has some videos on youtube on scouting that are pretty good. Also, the Huntingbeast.com forum has alot of good threads on scouting as well, as an alternate to here. Both places taught me alot. But nothing is better than boots on the ground. Good luck!
 
Back
Top