So how do you stay on fresh sign and not ruin your area?

[Spysar]

Also, bucks aren't going to be laying down hot sign until rut time anyway.

This quote has really confused me and my scouting strategies... Can someone elaborate? What exactly are we talking about when we say "Hot Sign"? I guess this is an opened ended question..... But what is the basic checklist to put the stand on the tree then and there? And what scenario are we talking about - A piece of property that wasn't scouted in the spring? Public Land? I think I try too hard to relate these scenarios to the private farms I hunt...

[ Post made via iPad ]

I see the same cycle every year. The period of time I'm talking about, that I call the rut, roughly goes from the end of October till about the third week in November.

During the first part of all this, bucks are slowly gearing up for mating. As the daylight hours lessen, the bucks sense breeding is coming. They start to get antsy. The bucks are starting to wind up, but the does aren't ready yet.

Around the first week in Nov, the bucks start cruising, and they start to get aggravated. This is when they lay down the most hot sign.

Hot sign is concentrated, fresh, and big. It is rub lines, scrape lines, tracks, busted brush, licking branches. Scrapes that start small and get huge. More than one buck is using these areas. Two and three year olds make a lot of it, but big bucks do to- there is just less of the bigger bucks.

When the true breeding begins, there will be a drop off in this type of sign. They are using their energy for actual breeding. As you hit the second and third weeks in Nov, scrapes will start to go dead, but the deer that made them are still around. The difference is they are less interested in leaving sign because they are with does.

You have to be able to tell what sign is nocturnal, and what sign was probably left in daylight. The closer you are to where the buck beds is where the sign is left during the day. Bedding though, may become a little more random at these times.

The bigger bucks tend to breed a lot more efficiently than younger bucks. While the younger bucks are shredding up areas before breeding, the older bucks seem to wait to roam around until does are really ready to breed.

[JoeRE]

I'm finding that part of the reason I was afraid to scout until I found hot sign was because I had a limited number of areas to hunt and I was trying to make those last all season. I'm going to change that this year as well and try to gain access to a lot more areas so I can bounce around and not worry as much about messing an area up for that season.

What everyone said is good solid advice, but your comment there is the biggest reason guys either hang back and don't hunt were they need to or they jump in anyway and burn out their back 40 in 3 hunts I think. If you have 30, 40, 50 good spots across a large amount of land then being as aggressive as possible is a GOOD idea, no need to worry about saving them. I think that applies to hunting pinch points and the like during the rut as well as hunting buck bedding.

I admit I wonder sometimes what would happen if, say, half the bowhunters in any area started hunting like this....it would make things a lot more complicated, everybody would be targeting a handful of good buck bedding spots on public...don't have to worry about that though

[Edcyclopedia]

I see the same cycle every year. The period of time I'm talking about, that I call the rut, roughly goes from the end of October till about the third week in November.

During the first part of all this, bucks are slowly gearing up for mating. As the daylight hours lessen, the bucks sense breeding is coming. They start to get antsy. The bucks are starting to wind up, but the does aren't ready yet.

Around the first week in Nov, the bucks start cruising, and they start to get aggravated. This is when they lay down the most hot sign.

Hot sign is concentrated, fresh, and big. It is rub lines, scrape lines, tracks, busted brush, licking branches. Scrapes that start small and get huge. More than one buck is using these areas. Two and three year olds make a lot of it, but big bucks do to- there is just less of the bigger bucks.

When the true breeding begins, there will be a drop off in this type of sign. They are using their energy for actual breeding. As you hit the second and third weeks in Nov, scrapes will start to go dead, but the deer that made them are still around. The difference is they are less interested in leaving sign because they are with does.

You have to be able to tell what sign is nocturnal, and what sign was probably left in daylight. The closer you are to where the buck beds is where the sign is left during the day. Bedding though, may become a little more random at these times.

The bigger bucks tend to breed a lot more efficiently than younger bucks. While the younger bucks are shredding up areas before breeding, the older bucks seem to wait to roam around until does are really ready to breed.

Gr8 response and very clear!!!