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When/how to scout freshest sign?

So out of curiosity, if you are going in during gray light looking for sign, aren’t you most at risk then of bumping deer out of the area since that’s also when they are generally most active?

Also, I typically can’t do all day hunts/sits because I need to spend time with the family during the day as well. With that in mind, does it still make the most sense to go in and search during gray light if I can only hunt until around lunchtime or am I better off focusing on afternoon hunts and spending the first hour or two looking for sign? I probably just need to get over it but in my mind I am thinking that I am spending the most productive time of the day on the ground looking for sign rather than in a tree over a good spot.
 
When I see him mentioning "good" deer population densities as double those found in the highest-populated areas of my state, and 10x that of the permit area I've hunted most...I know there's gonna be a lot of useful stuff as well as a lotta stuff that just might not scale.
He has a useful tip for you...move! ;)

For real though, I read that book and promptly started looking for better property to hunt, and it's paid off more than saddles, the mini, boat access....all of that junk.
 
When I do scout/hunts I go for the afternoon but if I set a spot that’s exploded with sign...seen zero deer I’ll do a morning hunt the very next time given correct conditions...doing this I get consistent sightings every few hunts
 
So out of curiosity, if you are going in during gray light looking for sign, aren’t you most at risk then of bumping deer out of the area since that’s also when they are generally most active?

Also, I typically can’t do all day hunts/sits because I need to spend time with the family during the day as well. With that in mind, does it still make the most sense to go in and search during gray light if I can only hunt until around lunchtime or am I better off focusing on afternoon hunts and spending the first hour or two looking for sign? I probably just need to get over it but in my mind I am thinking that I am spending the most productive time of the day on the ground looking for sign rather than in a tree over a good spot.

you have to find a good spot to be able to be sitting in it. And once you Find it, each time you sit in it your odds of killing deer go way down.

kind of the hidden message in spending more time walking and less time sitting. Do that a couple seasons and you should have quite a few good spots. Then you can hunt Each of them more sparingly, while still hunting A lot.
 
He has a useful tip for you...move! ;)

For real though, I read that book and promptly started looking for better property to hunt, and it's paid off more than saddles, the mini, boat access....all of that junk.
Full disclosure, the low-density area is the family homeland that I head back to for rifle season. my motivation up north...is not maximizing my chance of success. Maybe I'll bowhunt it some one of these years just out of pure masochistic pride and try to get one of like 2 annual archery harvests there.

In any case mostly just commenting on the crazy differences in deer density (and size...some tiny deer down south).
 
you have to find a good spot to be able to be sitting in it. And once you Find it, each time you sit in it your odds of killing deer go way down.

kind of the hidden message in spending more time walking and less time sitting. Do that a couple seasons and you should have quite a few good spots. Then you can hunt Each of them more sparingly, while still hunting A lot.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I need to stop thinking short term about “wasting” a day hunting and think more long-term about getting into better areas year after year.
 
The most valuable pieces of the book, in my opinion of course, are not related to southern US terrain, southern US deer densities and it's affect on their behavior.

It's mostly accepting we have a disneyfied perception of deer behavior. It is human nature to anthropomorphize everything we encounter in the world. If you can take a step back, and think of deer, as deer, it makes things easier. They just eat and sleep and try not to die. Once a year they want to have sex. Their software program is much, much less sophisticated than ours. This book just takes tens of thousands of hunts, does some multi-variate analysis of it, and points out the factors that contribute the most to success, or lack thereof. It dispels notions that we've generated anecdotally. This isn't a book of tactics, per se, unless you're a southern US hunter. I think of it as a foundation or first principles for hunting deer.

Read a book or college grad student or local biologist's study on what deer eat in your area.

Read the same on when the deer in your area typically rut.

Then read this book on what you can do to maximize your odds of success.

Like diets, exercise, investing money, pretty much everything else in life - no one can write a book that will tell YOU how to do it in YOUR specific situation. The best advice or books or lessons in these areas give you good data that you can apply to your situation. This book will not turn you into a stone cold deer killer. But it should help you analyze your hunting habits and tactics, and the deer's behavior a little better.

For example, It is a FACT that each time you sit in the same tree, your odds of seeing deer go down. Does it mean that your odds decrease the same amount in Canada, or Kansas, or Ohio, or wherever, as they do in south Alabama? No. But they decrease exponentially. That's not a function of location or deer density. That's a function of a deer wanting to live, and knowing you want to kill it. Bob's point of hunting a spot one time is not to say that's what you should do. It's to say your best odds of killing a deer are the first time you're in a spot. If you choose to continue sitting there multiple times, it would probably be good to know that your odds decrease each time. If you're ok with that, keep sitting it!

Interestingly, his most important factor to being successful is access to good habitat(lots of deer). But just because there aren't lots of deer where you hunt, doesn't mean they don't want to live any less than deer in other areas.
Reflecting on the book, there's (at the same time) very little and a lot to say.

A lot of space "wasted" on things that I have no desire to do - regardless of the odds of success I don't really see much enjoyment in hunkering down behind a gun staring down a 15 ft wide swath that someone else cut for me waiting to shoot a deer. Doesn't appeal to me.

He sure takes a ton of words to say "hunt pinchpoints (in areas with a lot of deer) between food and cover once a year when a coldfront hits on a windy day and the wind favors you". Honestly some of the more interesting analysis is what DOESN'T matter in his (large and organized) experience.
 
Reflecting on the book, there's (at the same time) very little and a lot to say.

A lot of space "wasted" on things that I have no desire to do - regardless of the odds of success I don't really see much enjoyment in hunkering down behind a gun staring down a 15 ft wide swath that someone else cut for me waiting to shoot a deer. Doesn't appeal to me.

He sure takes a ton of words to say "hunt pinchpoints (in areas with a lot of deer) between food and cover once a year when a coldfront hits on a windy day and the wind favors you". Honestly some of the more interesting analysis is what DOESN'T matter in his (large and organized) experience.
I agree with you. Gotta keep in mind I think he wrote it without our current exposure to all the vernacular. He's dumbing it down pretty hard too. I like him because he approaches things from the very bottom. But I do skim a lot of it when I re read it.

His advice is brutally pragmatic. He's not wrong when he says most folks would do better to pay to hunt if they want to kill big deer. He's not wrong when he says a 500 yard shooting lane through thick cover and a 300 RUM is an efficient way to kill big bucks. I like him for advice like that.

He helped me a lot because I read it and immediately started looking for the best public property I could access, and for spots like he described on them. I now have a respectable collection of spots, and danged if I don't generally kill deer on them if I hunt them once or twice a season on a good, windy, cold day.
 
I agree with you. Gotta keep in mind I think he wrote it without our current exposure to all the vernacular. He's dumbing it down pretty hard too. I like him because he approaches things from the very bottom. But I do skim a lot of it when I re read it.

His advice is brutally pragmatic. He's not wrong when he says most folks would do better to pay to hunt if they want to kill big deer. He's not wrong when he says a 500 yard shooting lane through thick cover and a 300 RUM is an efficient way to kill big bucks. I like him for advice like that.

He helped me a lot because I read it and immediately started looking for the best public property I could access, and for spots like he described on them. I now have a respectable collection of spots, and danged if I don't generally kill deer on them if I hunt them once or twice a season on a good, windy, cold day.
Absolutely - and there's a ton of value in laying things out step by step the way he does (and if anyone's looking for some sort of magical shortcut...they're going to be disappointed wherever they look) and backing them up with data. Like you say an excellent book...that does a good job communicating a small handful of very important things.
 
I will look at the wind predictions for the day, then look at the satellite pics, and look for an area that I want to go check out....sometimes I make it to original destination but usually find something that will send me of on another course....our terrain is much difference than u and I'm not that experienced so I probably not the best info but I noticed I have much more success when I started to worry less about getting up a tree...I am on a nature hike #1 and if and when I find what I looking for then I get in hunt mode....take it for what it's worth, I've had way more deer encounter on the ground them I've had in a tree...but again, I not that experienced
Good post. I’m in the same boat. I’ve started killing bigger bucks once I started just going for walks. Not saying to walk around haphazardly, But to do it smartly and with good intentions on what you’re looking for. I spend probably 2/3 rds of my time during hunting season walking in the woods, dressed more like a hiker than hunter, without any equipment other than maybe a few reflective tacks.

Deer move around a lot, and if you’re not continuously making adjustments, throughout the season, you’re probably missing out on opportunities nearby, that could be exploited, but you have to move to find them.

The less deer you have in an area, the better your scouting game has to be, because finding situations, that consolidate the few deer in an area, is going to take more work than a high density area.
 
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I just cruised through this thread and I'm going to take it in a slightly different direction. This won't help you now, but for next year. You can not spend enough time in the woods scouting, especially if you hunt public land. For me, post season scouting is key. Hunting season may be only open for 30, 60, 90, 180 days, but in most places you can scout 365 days a year. If you scout once a week for the 3 months after hunting season ends say that panned out to 12 good looking spots. That gives you one new spot to try every week if the last spot didn't pan out until you get on them. The thing about post season scouting is you can really dive in to places and try to learn what is going on that you wouldn't be willing to do during the season. I'll then take my knowledge from post season scouting and apply it to my hunting/in season scouting. Every time I'm in the woods I am scouting whether I have a weapon in hand or not. One of the best in season scouting tools is observation. If I'm in a spot that I think is good and I observe deer movement say 50 yards away, I note it. If I hunt that spot again and observe the same thing then it's time to move for the next sit.

I'm on board with the whole the first sit is the best sit movement, but I think a lot of knowledge is lost by only hunting a spot once. If you have a spot that post season scouting tells you is good, and you don't see something on your first sit that doesn't mean they're not there, it could mean they just weren't there that day. There is definitely a balance between hunting a good spot enough times to have useful information about it and over hunting a spot.
 
Scounting with stand on back, the old swsob, It's a concept that sounds great on a podcast, but like many things is a lot harder to execute in real world conditions. I've pulled it off just as you would draw it up and I've had days that were beyond unproductive and frustrating.
 
Scounting with stand on back, the old swsob, It's a concept that sounds great on a podcast, but like many things is a lot harder to execute in real world conditions. I've pulled it off just as you would draw it up and I've had days that were beyond unproductive and frustrating.
If definitely is one of the "trendy" things in the hunting world right now.
 
I agree with @redsquirrel's thoughts on post season. That's my favorite time to scout for places I can come back and rut hunt.

Early bow season it's usually more productive for me to do things Womack style and just walk until you find the deer. As season goes on I transition to hideouts, then to rut spots.

Really, all of it is useful. Pre, during, and post season scouting is all necessary to me. There's no bad time to scout. Ain't got time to scout, ain't got time to hunt in my mind.
 
Reflecting on the book, there's (at the same time) very little and a lot to say.

A lot of space "wasted" on things that I have no desire to do - regardless of the odds of success I don't really see much enjoyment in hunkering down behind a gun staring down a 15 ft wide swath that someone else cut for me waiting to shoot a deer. Doesn't appeal to me.

He sure takes a ton of words to say "hunt pinchpoints (in areas with a lot of deer) between food and cover once a year when a coldfront hits on a windy day and the wind favors you". Honestly some of the more interesting analysis is what DOESN'T matter in his (large and organized) experience.

I think the reason the book resonates with me so much, is that you cannot argue with the findings. They are what they are. Like you said, so many of the things that DON'T help or matter or improve your odds, are just as important. It's about as fundamental, or ground truths, as you can get in regards to improving your odds of killing deer.

I agree with you, if you trust that the person has the experience, and did the work, and when they say "hunt pinch points (in areas with a lot of deer) between food and cover once a year when a cold front hits on a windy day and the wind favors you"...that's great. The problem is many people either don't trust someone, or don't know how to think about the problem to begin with. The book not only says, here's the data, you can't argue the data -it just is...It also teaches you how to perform the experiment. You don't have to hunt the same location, terrain, weather patterns, deer densities, or bag limits as he does. But it shows the value in taking all of these things into consideration. But sometimes hammering home point after point on why some things work and why some things don't, is necessary. Like he says, you don't have to accept it - do what you want. But you can't unknow the information once you've read it. You just make a choice to decrease your odds.

If your goal is "I want to kill as many deer as I can within the confounds of the law, and I will do anything to support that effort", you can take the book literally, and it becomes THE playbook for southern hunters, and a general blueprint for all hunters.

If your goal is to better understand how daytime deer movement relates to hunter success, and use a huge data set to help you think about that relationship, and not pretend that deer think like us or how we want them to think and behave, this is an excellent resource. Like you, I don't use many of the tactics he does, and if I do, most if not all have been gained from personal experience or other mentors. I've picked up a tip or two from him. But I read the book every season, and it grounds me in reality again before I hit the woods.

One thing he doesn't cover, is the next level, or next step - This is one of the things I often think about. Ok, so you know all the reasons why the deer won't go to spot A after you or someone else on public land has stunk it up. Now what? Well, those deer are going SOMEWHERE on that property to bed, and while bedded, they will still move around within the confines of that bedding area. And eventually, they're going to eat. Yes, it most likely will be at night. But that bedding area provides opportunities. I've noted many times, I walk constantly. Part of the reason why is that I understand how transient deer will be because of public land pressure, but also because our terrain and topography dictates that deer "flow" through areas, not follow defined trails. I'm finding where I or other people push the deer, and then I'm trying to find a pinch or funnel within those areas that give me an advantage.

If nothing else, the book is an antidote to what the capitalists among us have been feeding us mainline the last 20-30 years... Humans are MUCH more afraid of loss than they are excited about gain. By promoting the next gadget or gamechanger or whatever it is, they are scraping that subconscious fear of failure. At the end of the day, the gear you use has so little to do with your success hunting. I'm a gear junkie for sure. I'm also single and have no kids. I spend more time scouting and hunting than I do messing with gear. And if some woman is crazy enough to mate with me, I promise the time lost will not be the scouting and hunting time.

As our trust in institutions erodes, I welcome books like this, that give you pure, concentrated medicine. Is there a little sugar in there in the form of outdoor writing skills, family, faith, etc.? Sure. But it's woven into the truth about deer.
 
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