Need Help Setting up on this Buck

[AB_Vinny]

I have a big buck that I need to connect with as he is getting on in years and may not wait much longer for me to find him. He shows up on camera in that "dry slough" area (see picture below) at the end of October onward making scrapes and rubs like crazy during the night near this slough. He has been seen in person twice coming out of and going in to that north treeline that is a ridge down to the river. Note when he was going down the ridge in the AM time frame he was spooked by a farmer's truck and was running full-tilt (wind NNE). In the PM it was late November and he came out to feed on a bail (wind was WNW).

So my question is, does he bed on this north-facing slope or would his bedding be wind dependent? That attractive point to the east holds a lot of does but I haven't ruled it out. That slope has very little sign other than the west end. 1/3 way down is an open bench, but as you go further down it is old growth and a few standing pine thickets.

Thanks for any help.

[dan]

A.B. Vinny, I do think based on those sightings that he does at least some of the time bed somewhere close to where he exited, and entered that ridge... It might be just to the left of where the ridge contour lines get real close, or maybe just in a thick edge spot... If the wind is from the North typically, he may be bedding right on the edge of the timber watching down wind into the field... Thats a common scenario...

[AB_Vinny]

A.B. Vinny, I do think based on those sightings that he does at least some of the time bed somewhere close to where he exited, and entered that ridge... It might be just to the left of where the ridge contour lines get real close, or maybe just in a thick edge spot... If the wind is from the North typically, he may be bedding right on the edge of the timber watching down wind into the field... Thats a common scenario...

I should also note I checked game cam footage from last year and bucks are going north into the ridge in the morning along the west side of the N-S fenceline (fence is the line in the field left/west of the north-pointing red arrows).

I'm not sure if this helps, but in May I took a video of where he came out of in the aerial photo. I am a few feet down the ridge and you can see the second bench below, thus your are only seeing the top 1/2 or top 1/3 of the ridge. It gets nasty once you go below that big bench you see in the video.

[bbvideo=425,350]http://s1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee372/vgranson/?action=view&current=FrmFldEnt01b.mp4[/bbvideo]