Been doing a lot of scouting since moving out to the Appalachian mountains, some things i've found so far:
-Pick the upper 1/3 as a starting point as guided by Dan and others on here, it will put you very close to the main deer trails and bedding
-In this steep of terrain I've found that the beds are just below the upper 1/3, the deer trails will be almost dead on the upper 1/3 elevation but once you intersect a point the trails travel down the point to the bed (roughly 60-70 yards below the upper 1/3 elevation)
-There were scattered beds on alot of points, but the points that had thick vegetation right before they dropped off seemed to hold the most sign of buck bedding
-Some valleys roughly 50-75 yards in width have a creek with almost a micro-terrain of marsh, the deer bed in these just like they would a regular marsh/swamp. I have found a 50/50 split here for bucks preferring to bed in these valley marshes versus the upper 1/3 points.
-If you can find these rare valley marshes between ridge tops it is an awesome honey-hole. The wind is tricky but if you scout it out and find where they are exiting to go up the hillside to hit oaks you will have them pinned. Alot of roads are built right through these valleys and I glass bedded deer in them all the time, there is a few rare spots like this on public but I study these whether public land or private just to learn more on how the deer are using them, huge overlooked spots.
This first bed was on a leeward ridge and it was such a minor point that you can't even really tell it from the topo. The reason this spot stood out to me was because of the creek just east of the bed, the creek went down the mountainside and provided a natural barrier for the bed, right infront of the bed was a pretty steep drop off, and right behind was a ridge full of white oaks, so the buck had food, water, and protection all within 70 yards of his bed. He would definitely only bed here on a NW or just N wind, the bed wasn't set up for anything besides that and the sign there showed that it was used but probably not an all the time primary bedding area may even be a rut only bed.
This next spot was a picture perfect bed, located about 70 yards lower than the upper 1/3 elevation its sitting right on a narrow point with thick vegetation all around it, this point sits just lower than all of the surrounding points on the ridge with steep draws on both sides of it, There were exit and entrance trails coming in from both sides of the point, it would be hard to decide which side of the point to set up on but there was a nice spot located in the draw to the west of this bed that sets up over a creek, the exit trail cuts right through this spot as it is the only somewhat flat part of that draw for the deer to cross. I may hit it up early season just to see what happens on a rainy day where I could sneak in quietly but I believe this would be an awesome rut location
Example of a micro-terrain valley marsh
