Terrain Difficulty

[fishlips]

For you guys that have hunted different terrains, how would you rank difficulty as far as scouting and hunting various terrains. First ones that come to mind are marshes, swamps, hills, farmland, big woods, river bottoms. I am sure there are other terrains I am missing, so feel free to add.

And one thing that I forgot to mention in my original post, feel free to add seasonality to your assessment.

[Bucky]

swamps and big woods IMO are the hardest

marshes/islands and hills easiest

[PK_]

Deer density plays more into the difficulty than anything else imo.

Put a lot of deer in any terrain and it becomes easier.

But all things equal. The terrain I find hardest to pattern deer in is very flat, very thick expansive terrain. A close second would be huge flooded timber like those Louisiana swamps and we have some down here as well.

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[BassBoysLLP]

Big woods/swamp/timber is the hardest IMHO. Add wolves and the odds are really stacked against you. Miles of rugged terrain with limited transitions can be tough to break down too.

Large expansive CRP/row crops with fence rows and limited timber is second hardest. At least with the bow. A tough ambush and the deer put on mega miles. Access is hard.

Hills third hardest but arguably the easiest to rut hunt especially with simole ridge systems separately ag fields. Outside the rut you are battling wind vs. thermals. Access can be a challenge.

Marshes fourth. Travel sucks but well defined transitions and cyber scouting make efforts a lot more productive. Access is simpler IMHO.

Flat timbered farm country is by far the easiest. Not necessarily the best place to find a mega giant but easy to hunt.

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[Dewey]

I will answer this by looking a two different views............ease of getting on deer and also the physical side of the different terrains since I think both combined are very important.

I have hunted a large variety of terrain in 5 different states and without a doubt bigwoods is the toughest to hunt just for the fact of low deer numbers and vast wilderness. Finding huntable bucks there is in my eyes the ultimate challenge.

Easiest as far as getting on deer in my limited experience was hunting the rolling prairies of the west along old creek and river bottoms just because the deer only had extremely limited cover and population was high. Getting on deer was very easy but killing them was much more of a challenge mainly due to my limited experience with spot and stalk.

If you want to talk about terrain being physically difficult marsh and swamp hunting is the hardest I have found. If you say it's easy you obviously haven't ever gone deep enough or dragged a deer over a mile in knee or waist deep muck, cattails or thick marsh grass or nasty blowdowns and cedar bogs in large swamps. I will flat out say scouting in hill country is physically much easier for me than in marshes or swamps. I don't have a ton of experience hunting hill country but have enough experience scouting and hiking in that and other mountainous terrain out west to back up my opinion. Sure I can find sign easier in marshes and swamps but it's so much harder to get to if your trying to avoid hunting pressure. If you think hill country is tough to navigate I challenge you to walk a few miles of early season chest high marsh grass or deep muck cattails. It will definitely test your cardio abilities. Obviously winter/spring is the best time to navigate these areas while scouting as the water in cattails is frozen and marsh grass is flattened from snow cover but most are in for a rude awakening when returning in fall to extremely thick vegetation and deep water. I always get a kick out of comments made that killing a marsh buck is easy yet the only guy I see consistantly doing it is Dan.

On the other hand physically I would say the bigwoods had been the easiest for me to cover miles since most of it is flat open woods and little water. Access in and out is usually pretty easy on old logging roads plus removing killed deer has always been pretty easy most times with a wheeled cart. Usually a good network of logging roads unless you are in the swamps.

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[dan]

Scouting wise, getting on big bucks fast.

1) cattail marsh
2) Hills

Then it gets tougher...

3) Suburban
4) Farms
5) swamps
6) big woods

Perfect world:
Early season: marsh... easy to set up on beds
Rut: Hills... You can read cruising trails like a road map if you understand leeward hills
Late season: Farm... If you got the food, your in the bucks. Most patternable.

[Stanley]

Big woods and big hills (mountains).

[cedarsavage]

swamps and big woods IMO are the hardest

marshes/islands and hills easiest

What makes a swamp different than a marsh?

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[Bucky]

swamps and big woods IMO are the hardest

marshes/islands and hills easiest

What makes a swamp different than a marsh?

[ Post made via iPhone ]

Large unbroken swampy terrain similar to large Unbroken big woods.... it is hard to see via maps where likely bedding is

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[whitetailassasin]

swamps and big woods IMO are the hardest

marshes/islands and hills easiest

x2

[ Post made via iPhone ]

[fishlips]

This is probably a dumb question, but I used to assume marsh meant any wet lowland area. But after thinking further, marshes as shown in the Marsh Bucks dvd seem to specifically deal with cattail marshes. A lot of the properties that I seem to pick out have a lot of brushy wet areas that I find difficult to pinpoint bedding in and not a lot of cattails. Am I safe to assume that most of these low brushy wetland areas (loaded with dogwood, tag alders, etc) that we have in southern WI are different from a cattail marsh?

My plan of attack on these types of areas has evolved over time and now I basically look for as many transitions as I can find on an area and then dive in and go through the area very slowly looking for any small changes that I can't pick up from aerials. Is that how you guys would recommend scouting them? I also have kind of picked up on identifying different types of vegetation based on aerials and focus a lot of transition areas that go from trees to brushy areas.