Here are some great tips I found on Scouting for Whitetail. It is from the Ultimate Hunting Community website.
Scouting Trails:
Deer, especially does and fawns, travel regular paths for long periods of time, often using the same routes between feeding and bedding areas. Trails can become bare and trampled to the ground. The savvy hunter knows that if he finds and watches a well-worn trail littered with fresh tracks, sooner or later he will spot deer.
But upon scouting out a good trail or "run" you must be careful. If deer pick up human scent on or around a trail, they might quit using it and shift to another travel pattern. Therefore, don't walk along a deer trail, and try not to cross one on the hike into stand. Also, stay on the downwind side of a trail when scouting or hunting.
Early in the morning and late in evening are the best times to watch for deer moving along trails. At middy, most deer bed in cover.
Doe trails are easy to find. They are often trampled to the ground and wind throughout the woods. Buck trails, however, are often faint and in dense cover. A buck likes to walk a straight line from Point A to Point B. During the rut you'll often find a buck prowling on the downwind side of a doe trail.
Scout for deer trails with fresh tracks throughout the season. It takes constant monitoring to understand the ever-changing patterns and routines of whitetails.
Scouting Droppings:
Because deer eat many different foods at different times of the year, their scat or "droppings" vary. For example, a buck feeding on apples or other soft mast in early fall will drop dark, moist, clumped pellets. Later in the fall, when a doe eats acorns, her scat will be brown and dry. By examining droppings you can generally tell what deer are feeding on. Then you can move in and set a stand in a hot feeding area.
The bigger the pellets, the bigger the deer that dropped them. Large and small droppings in the same area were left by a mature doe and her fawns. A single pile of large scat is often buck sign.
Scouting tracks:
A mature buck's tracks are usually larger than a doe's and obviously dwarf a fawn's. An old buck's hoof prints may measure 5 1/2 inches from front tip to dewclaws. Also, buck tracks are wide and splayed. Though sexing deer by their tracks is not an exact science, many big-buck hunters key on noticeably big, fresh tracks.
Doe tracks tend to meander through the woods. Adult bucks do not have time for strolling about, so their tracks generally run in a fairly straight line. In light snow, a buck drags his front feet and leaves drag marks. But in deep snow both buck and does drag their feet.
Scouting Bedding Area:
Deer feel safe in a bedding area, which is often a thicket or cutover deep in the woods. But even the biggest buck has been known to bed in a small patch near a road or in a farmer's backyard. Deer bed where they feel safe from predators.
In a bedding area, deer do not sleep for long periods of time. Rather, they doze and rest, always tuned in to their surroundings. Even when a deer's eyes are closed, its ears and nose are on full alert for danger.
Trying to hunt deer in and around a bedding area is difficult. It is generally thick, and if you spook a buck, he is apt to shift his pattern. Better strategy is to hunt along trails or rub lines that connect beds and feeding areas.
Check maps and aerial photographs, and ground scout for bedding areas. Along with food sources, they are a critical element to be worked into your strategy
Scouting Feeding Areas:
A working knowledge of deer foods and feeding patterns is important to a hunter's success. Whitetails eat hundreds of varieties of foods throughout the year. A hunter should obviously concentrate on what deer eat during fall and winter. Those foods include green vegetation, corn, alfalfa, soybeans, clover, apples and acorns.
In early fall, deer fill up on green vegetation. Greens grow all over the forest, so locating specific feeding areas can be tough. A hunter must rely on secondary clues, like droppings, tracks and rubs, to prove that deer are eating in an area.
When most of the vegetation dries up, deer turn to browse. Preferred browse trees include red-bark dogwood, black ash and mountain maple. Look for nipped-off stems where deer fed.
Certain foods will completely change a deer's routine. For example, when white oak acorns begin falling in September, does and bucks come from near and far to gorge on the high-energy nuts. Deer eat acorns at dawn and dusk, and often get out of their beds at midday to feed. Bucks feeding on acorns leave big tracks and fresh rubs and scrapes in an area. Look for these signs and position a stand nearby.
Many hunters set tree stands on the edges of crop fields or food plots, places that are normally used heavily by deer early and late in the season.
Food sources change constantly. When one source dries up, deer set off in search of new eats. Along with shifts in food sources, deer shift their trails and bedding areas. Thus, constant scouting is critical to success.
Scouting Water:
In most regions whitetails have little trouble finding water. They drink from creeks, rivers, ponds, rain puddles and the like. Also, many of the succulent plants deer eat have water.
In the arid Southwest, where water is more limited, deer often congregate at stock tanks, ponds and creeks once or twice or day. So stand hunting near a water hole can be a good bet.
Rutting deer get thirsty from all the chasing, so hunting near a water source can be good strategy during the peak of the mating season. In winter, when most ponds and creeks freeze solid up north, try this trick. Break a big hole in creek near a hot feeding area, and hang a stand nearby. A good buck might follow does to the open water and give you a shot.
Scouting Rubs:
Beginning in September, bucks rub in and around feeding and bedding areas. Generally, the bigger the rubs the bigger the bucks that blazed them. Bowhunters should scout for these "core area rubs". They can be tough to find in the thick foliage, but do the best you can. Hunting in the vicinity of fresh rubs is good strategy because that is where one or two bucks or maybe even a bachelor's club hangs out.
During the late pre-rut and peak rut, scout for rubs on or near doe trails that connect bedding and feeding spots. You'll probably find fresh scrapes nearby. Watching a sign-blazed doe trail is a good way to spot a big buck in November.
Scouting Scrapes:
Buck scrapes, those big, dank pawed-up pieces of earth, are the most alluring sign in the woods. They start popping up a couple of weeks before peak rut, in late October or early November in most areas. Scrapes are often found along the edges of fields, in funnels, in old logging roads and along trails that connect beds, food sources and social areas. Keep an eye peeled for fresh rubs; rubs and scrapes go hand in hand during the rut. Many bucks build and tend scrapes at night. That's one reason scrape hunting can be so frustrating.
The late pre-rut is the best time to scout for scrapes and use them to your advantage. Mature bucks roam far and wide in search of does, sometimes checking scrapes at dawn or dusk or even during the middle of the day. During peak rut bucks quit their scrapes and chase does. But the first week of the post-rut is another good time to post near scrapes. Some bucks reactivate scrapes in hopes of hooking up with the last hot does in an area.
Licking Branches
During the mating season, whitetails lick and rub their foreheads on branches and scrape the ground to leave scent for other deer. "Licking branches" are usually found over scrapes. Deer also lick and rub branches on trails. In this way bucks and does keep tabs on each other as the breeding season approaches. Trail licks are tough to find, but zero in on a scrape with a snapped, overhanging limb. That's a good place to hunt late in the pre-rut.
Scouting Home Range:
All whitetails have a home range, which varies from 500 to 3,000 acres. Doe ranges are smaller than buck ranges. A range has everything a deer needs to live: food, water and cover. Home ranges are to deer what neighborhoods are to humans, with grocery stores, houses and the like.
Home ranges can change with the seasons, especially in northern areas. In spring and summer deer live in forests and fields, but when the weather becomes extreme, they migrate miles to winter ranges or "deer yards". Yards, often in cedar swamps or heavy conifer forests, provide cover from the elements and browse.
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Topic: Preseason scouting key to success (Read 2558 times)
