Wintering buck beds vs. in-season bedding

[Singing Bridge]

Good stuff craaaig. Swamps, hill and farm country too, there is always value in scouting. Craaaig mentioned looking for rubs and droppings in potential buck beds from last fall... another thing I do is scratch the frozen ground with the fingertips of my gloves- I scratch up the ground in several spots in the potential bed. If you have to paw through snow first, so be it. Scratch up the frozen ground and then sift through it. I often find deer hair doing this and the more practiced you become at finding beds the more often you will locate deer hair. More often than not I find it. Find a rub in the bed and some droppings to go along with the deer hair and that will put a smile on your face. I also locate a lot of doe bedding areas used in the fall this way, minus the potential rubbing.

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[BigHills BuckHunter]

I would go crazy not scouting until spring, right now is perfect. If the marsh is frozen over you can walk right across it, it's easier than treading through the water, unless you break through the ice with every step! That's what the waders are for! There's so much to learn out there, gotta pay attention to the small stuff though! Not to mention, 1 time through is usually not enough to get a grasp of what's going on. I think you can't go wrong by scouting right now if you have the time and motivation!

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X2

I agree why not scout now if you can.

[Czabs]

I had a marsh I scouted last winter that didn't have a whole lot of trees to sit in. We had a windy day this year so I decided to stalk and hunt all the beds I found last winter. There wasn't 1 bed that was being used....I believe certain areas are used at the same time but so far in my scouting they haven't been...

[BigHills BuckHunter]

I still think it pays to scout during winter months. I have learned quite a bit in the past week about my prey just by following tracks and seeing where they go which will better help me understand the animal I pursue and up my chaces with the knowledge. I know the bucks dont bed in the same spots for the most part during wintering months, but like I said being in the right mentality to learn led me to learn.

[Czabs]

Every minute spent in the woods is valuable...as far as pinpointing their beds in the snow and hunting them next season with no snow...im not so sure about.

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[Dewey]

Every minute spent in the woods is valuable...as far as pinpointing their beds in the snow and hunting them next season with no snow...im not so sure about.

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Works for me. I suppose it all depends on the area you are hunting and what food sources are available year round. Many of the winter beds I found are used year round due to their location with not much other good bedding nearby. If in an unpressured area they will use it all year from what I have seen.

This doesn't apply everywhere of course but I feel if I skipped snow scouting I am missing out on some extremely valuable information. It doesn't get any easier than tracking a buck back to his primary bed in freshly fallen snow.

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[BigHills BuckHunter]

Every minute spent in the woods is valuable...as far as pinpointing their beds in the snow and hunting them next season with no snow...im not so sure about.

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I see what you mean. I think it all depends but in some areas like farm country where crops can be cut off, the food scources switch and the bucks will bed elsewhere right now. Im lucky because of the standing corn on the neighbors. However, fall beds are not being used in some spots.

[Craaaig]

Moral of the story is there is no such thing as an invaluable scout. Every time you are in the woods you are collecting information. Not finding sign just puts a check in the box as a site to be re-visited in the spring. If sign is found I would still scout again in the spring. Can't hurt to know spring and winter patterns of deer. If you have the time and motivation then scouting is never a waste.

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[Craaaig]

Moral of the story is there is no such thing as an invaluable scout. Every time you are in the woods you are collecting information. Not finding sign just puts a check in the box as a site to be re-visited in the spring. If sign is found I would still scout again in the spring. Can't hurt to know spring and winter patterns of deer. If you have the time and motivation then scouting is never a waste.

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[westmibow]

Where I hunt, I think the biggest determining factor as to where the deer are in the winter is how much snow there is. Food is obviously the other main factor but if its a winter like last year, very mild and no snow the deer were much more spread out, sticking to their normal beds for the most part, and not as much yarding up. But when it snows and I mean feet of it, I am in SW Mi so we get lake effect, they yard up and bed in totally different areas as they would in the fall.

The property I hunt has a 5 acres of overgrown christmas trees. Really nothing major but they create such a sheltered bedding area and when we get a normal winter with cold temps, wind and a lot of snow it holds the deer by the dozens sometimes. In years past I have seen some impressive groups of bucks using those pine trees. Then for food their are fields no more than a couple hundred yards from this bedding area and the trails going to them are pretty impressive. Ironically when we have the bad winters I generally have great springs as far as sheds go. So I gernerally route for a ton of snow and cold temps...sorry guys.

[seeds]

I've been in the 3 areas that I primarily hunted numerous times since the end of bow season. I'm talking an 80,a 120 and a 240 acre parcel. In addition,I've been thru the 240 acres of "easier access" across the river from the 80.

There's practically no deer sign. It's like they disappeared between the beginning of the 9 day and the end of the "holiday" gun hunts.

I know the area gets hit hard during gun season,and there was significant mortality to EHD in that area.

These were newly-opened county lands,and the first I'd been in any of those parcels was last spring mushroom hunting. I don't know if the deer all vacate the areas every winter or not,but I'm a little concerned. That's a lot of land to have maybe a total of 8 deer. Every one of those areas has mixed habitat from grassy marsh to highground hardwoods. There's no standing crops anywhere even remotely nearby

These are the hunting areas closest to work and home. Any additional travel means I can't hunt after work nearly as often as I did last year....I suppose I should be starting to scout the "next-closest" areas,and there's some doors I should knock on soon but I don't have high hopes for that.

They're gonna be back,right?

[JoeRE]

They're gonna be back,right?

You bet! Like others have mentioned, its all about the food this time of year. After hunting pressure pushes deer away from a particular area, if there is nothing at that location to immediately draw them back (food), deer will take their time returning. The distribution of deer is more uneven in the winter than any other time of year. If you drive by a field and see 20, 30, 40 deer in it...whose deer aren't all in that field year round, and they must have come from somewhere and will likely return to that place eventually!

Bucks often relocate long distances in the winter I have found in farm country anyway....I have seen a couple relocate a mile away and heard stories of further than that. Maybe it has something to do with their great need for high calorie food after running themselves down with the rut.

I shed hunt around some major food sources. A few of the sheds I find are from bucks I have never seen before and never see again any other time of the year. They clearly live elsewhere the other 8-9 months of the year.

I hunt Iowa late muzzleloader season which goes to January 10. I have learned the key to repeatable success on land that has been heavily hunted for the last month is scouting massive areas. I can walk for miles and hardly cut a track, then find their preferred food source, whatever it is, and be up to my neck in deer. I then circle where the deer are bedding and generally hiding back behind a pile of does I find the bucks. Of course you can put in a big late season food plot and shoot ole mossy horns with his head in the beans but what fun is that

I know it depends on where you hunt and the consistency of food sources in your area, but my farm country observations are that where a big buck is hanging out in the winter has very little correlation with where he will be in the summer or fall. It does mean that he probably will be there again next winter if similar food source conditions exist! I have shot several big bucks where the only interactions I had with them was during the late season over several seasons.

[dan]

They're gonna be back,right?

Some of the areas I hunt are over a few thousand acres... Some of which you can't cut a track in week old snow right now... Next fall, like past falls, it will be full of deer again.

[xpauliber]

They're gonna be back,right?

Some of the areas I hunt are over a few thousand acres... Some of which you can't cut a track in week old snow right now... Next fall, like past falls, it will be full of deer again.

Dan, this sounds very similar to a lot of the areas I hunt. So how do you tackle the scouting for an area like that? Wait till snow melts and search for beds around the 1/3 elevation level?

[dan]

They're gonna be back,right?

Some of the areas I hunt are over a few thousand acres... Some of which you can't cut a track in week old snow right now... Next fall, like past falls, it will be full of deer again.

Dan, this sounds very similar to a lot of the areas I hunt. So how do you tackle the scouting for an area like that? Wait till snow melts and search for beds around the 1/3 elevation level?

Wait till the snow melts and you will see the beds and trails underneath.