Faint Trails

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UofLbowhunter
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Re: Faint Trails

Unread postby UofLbowhunter » Mon May 29, 2017 3:10 am

Great topic ! I hope there are some more good post. Faint trails are something I have ignored over the years due to most of my hunting spots were pretty small wood lots and most of the stands I hunted were set up on the edges of the woods,in fence rows,or in funneled down areas! I guess I never had to think about them. Now that I'm hunt more public big woods, I'm going to have to think about this more in my scouting and hunting for sure! Just makes me think about what I've been missing so far :think:


Bucks,ducks, turkeys,and bass!
JoeRE
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Re: Faint Trails

Unread postby JoeRE » Mon May 29, 2017 3:21 am

I completely agree mature bucks move differently than other deer, often on different travel routes. Frankly the more I study them the less inclined I am to say they follow trails at all. Its more just general areas that they move through like 50-100 yards inside the edge of a timber, or a military crest, or a faint ditch crossing that is 50 yards down slope of a much heavier one.

Anyway, its a great topic. What the trail CONNECTS is what makes it good or bad in terms of bucks. That's what I try to focus on. I frankly don't care much about the specific trail, just that movement looks like it should be within bow range of a tree or whatever. I think it helped me a lot when I broke the habit of focusing just on trails. I grew up hunting trails just like everybody probably did.

Another thing to keep in mind is the term faint trail means completely different things to different people. I became aware of this when I started scouting in other habitats than the hills that I grew up hunting. For instance the first time I was up in northern WI big woods and maybe 20 dpsm, and my buddy was pointing out a "heavy" trail...and I had to laugh because it was one of the faintest trails I had ever seen since I was used to 60-80 dpsm arm country :lol:


I have gotten to the point were I'm not even hunting a trail for rut movement, maybe just a few rubs of different ages (this years, last years, 2 years ago etc) that line up between two big doe bedding areas. To me that is a prime rut travel route. I would say more often than not a camera there for the month of November shows heavy use by rutting bucks. Heavy use to me is a buck or two every day on average, with regular use by the biggest bucks in the area. I guess I should define the regular use - to me that means a mature buck shows up 2-3 times leading up to lock down and at least a couple times at the tail end of the rut. And that is with good age structure in the deer herd although its still far from hunting a managed deer herd. Everybody with low deer numbers or just really bad buck to do ratios really have to focus on the smallest of clues...

Related to the faint trail idea - has anyone shot a really big buck walking right down a heavy trail? I have not. Sometimes they are paralleling a heavy trail off to one side, or sometimes on a fainter trail or just no trail at all. They may use heavy ditch crossings and fence crossings sometimes but but tend to break off the heavy run before or after that bottleneck.
mainebowhunter
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Re: Faint Trails

Unread postby mainebowhunter » Mon May 29, 2017 3:54 am

JoeRE wrote:I completely agree mature bucks move differently than other deer, often on different travel routes. Frankly the more I study them the less inclined I am to say they follow trails at all. Its more just general areas that they move through like 50-100 yards inside the edge of a timber, or a military crest, or a faint ditch crossing that is 50 yards down slope of a much heavier one.

Anyway, its a great topic. What the trail CONNECTS is what makes it good or bad in terms of bucks. That's what I try to focus on. I frankly don't care much about the specific trail, just that movement looks like it should be within bow range of a tree or whatever. I think it helped me a lot when I broke the habit of focusing just on trails. I grew up hunting trails just like everybody probably did.

Another thing to keep in mind is the term faint trail means completely different things to different people. I became aware of this when I started scouting in other habitats than the hills that I grew up hunting. For instance the first time I was up in northern WI big woods and maybe 20 dpsm, and my buddy was pointing out a "heavy" trail...and I had to laugh because it was one of the faintest trails I had ever seen since I was used to 60-80 dpsm arm country :lol:


I have gotten to the point were I'm not even hunting a trail for rut movement, maybe just a few rubs of different ages (this years, last years, 2 years ago etc) that line up between two big doe bedding areas. To me that is a prime rut travel route. I would say more often than not a camera there for the month of November shows heavy use by rutting bucks. Heavy use to me is a buck or two every day on average, with regular use by the biggest bucks in the area. I guess I should define the regular use - to me that means a mature buck shows up 2-3 times leading up to lock down and at least a couple times at the tail end of the rut. And that is with good age structure in the deer herd although its still far from hunting a managed deer herd. Everybody with low deer numbers or just really bad buck to do ratios really have to focus on the smallest of clues...

Related to the faint trail idea - has anyone shot a really big buck walking right down a heavy trail? I have not. Sometimes they are paralleling a heavy trail off to one side, or sometimes on a fainter trail or just no trail at all. They may use heavy ditch crossings and fence crossings sometimes but but tend to break off the heavy run before or after that bottleneck.


I was going to ask the same question. Beat runs are kind of up for interpretation I guess. Where I live, some of these pieces I am hunting are running 7-10 dpsm -- there is not a lot of pounded anything. And yes, I am the odd man out I guess. 2015 buck and 2016 buck where both on runs. Pounded? Maybe they were not. I was hunting terrain, not runs.

I know I don't dismiss anything. I do not hunt runs...because a run is there. I have watched big bucks veer off and not go through the tight spots. Also watched them go around one tight spot only to walk right through another tight spot...most times, they are following a doe.
swampyak
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Re: Faint Trails

Unread postby swampyak » Tue May 30, 2017 1:42 pm

Stanley wrote:
swampyak wrote:I will also add...I put cams on beat runs...always suprised by how few deer use them.




Hunting mature bucks is different than hunting deer. A nice licking branch with a scrape underneath will normally produce buck pictures. Much more so than heavily used trails. :think:


I m not sure what happened to my post. I thought that I had wrote that over the years I have been surprised in the areas that I hunt by the lack of deer traffic on beat down trails

I have also had good success over scrapes and also over mineral licks of the cameras are left for long periods of time
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Re: Faint Trails

Unread postby AttackMode » Thu Jun 01, 2017 1:40 pm

I got lucky on a late Jan scouting trip this past winter. I hit the mtn with just a dusting of snow and more flurries falling and bumped into a group of post season bucks. I noticed a blow down that created a funnel. Long story short, I located a good buck using it mulitple times during daylight and 3 beds along a faint trail through the mtn with another funnel before the trail opens up. Without that snow I may have never noticed it. I plan on hunting it this fall for sure.
I just kill mtn bucks


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