You found 75 in a day, And you would only bother with one.. that's insane to me... I'm pretty sure that I'm letting those smaller bucks string me along... I'm left scratching my head a lot when I find a bedding area to determine how often a big buck is using it. And I think I've only found one so far that really screams a nice buck uses it often... and I mean it's so obvious I could figure it out. I think I need to Scout more and find a bunch of those areas. I thought maybe there was some small details I was missing on some of the beds to clue me in on how they are used, when most likely they're small buck beds with the occasional big buck use...
So you only bother hunting those beds that scream big buck use. Not the ones that say a big buck came through. Makes sense to me... so basically I just have to go find them? And build up my inventory of great spots. Being as I only have a short list of spots like that. Would you only hunt them when the time and conditions are right and Scout with stand on my back/ hunt hot sign the rest of the season? Cause I'm not gonna sit on the couch. Or would you just forget about hunting on those days and ONLY Scout until I have enough of those spots to fill out a full season?
The person I scouted for said he was finding beds, and was sometimes unsure if it was a bed, and was a little un-confident. I confirmed what he was looking at was indeed beds. But more "void" bedding. Big bucks bed in certain land features. The stuff I point out in videos and posts all the time. They need or want certain features in there bedding to protect them. There are really only so many spots like this on a property. The smaller/lesser deer still need to bed somewhere without getting Mr Dominant angry. They fill the void. You will find small buck and doe bedding all over the place. But even in low pressure big
bucks will bed in key predictable spots. 1st off, low human pressure does not mean no pressure. Coyotes hunt them too. And secondly, thru evolution bucks have it ingrained into there system to bed like this.
We were able to walk right past all the "void" bedding that in the past would catch this persons attention and use up his time. In this terrain (big woods with cattail marsh strips) I concentrated on the cattail strips and looked for features such as points of brush tapering down into cattails with good escape, and lone trees in marsh. The only beds that looked to be used by big bucks were those where danger was funneled down a point to the beds in one direction and could be monitored by the buck.
I wouldn't say " I only bother hunting those beds that scream big buck use" I hunt more in an area where I know a certain target buck is at and am having a hard time locating him. The "chasing down a dream" youtube video is a great example of that ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXpXH1yxeB8 ) I also would walk thu a lot of the lesser bedding I don't intend to hunt to force bedding where I do intend. I would rather hunt beds that get use from mature bucks 10 or 20 times a season, than ones that get used by mature bucks 2 or 3 times a season. Some of the beds this guy was looking at got used so lightly it was hard to tell they were beds for him. Where I located the bed I would hunt there was a big rub right in the beds and two beds that were worn to the bare ground, even an exposed tree root had wear on it. Other lesser beds could be monitored when certain rublines opened up, when big tracks were on certain trails, etc...
You should never be satisfied with what you have for an inventory of spots. Keep scouting, keep adding options, keep discarding spots that never paid off. If you run out of spots put the stand on your back and look for fresh hot sign coming out of potential buck bedding. The couch is not an option if your goal is success.