Hill Country w/ Marshy Bottoms - Bedding Areas

[CEG017]

Hey Guys,

Looking for some advice or opinions here. Went and scouted part of a new area this weekend that is primarily your classic hill country oak flats. However, the interesting part (at least to me because I have never hunted an area like this) is that the hills transition right into marsh in the bottoms. So its a really good mixture of high and low ground. My original assumption here was that that I would find bedding primarily in the marshy areas due to hunting pressure. I figured that the dry areas would be hunted hard forcing the deer into the bottoms where its wet. Once I got there I confirmed that there are some signs of pressure but its not too crazy. I actually struggled to find bedding areas on this property in both the hills and the marsh.
In fact I didn't find any. Seems that the bedding areas are hard to pin point here. The areas I checked included the upper 1/3 on leeward hills and high spots with good thick cover in the marsh. I really want to dig into this place more as the sign looks good. Would like to put together a better plan for my second scouting mission.

I guess my question is where would you look for bedding? Could the deer be a little more nomadic here as they have the best of both worlds for bedding making them harder to pin point?
Let me know your thoughts!

[3531usmc]

Where I hunt the terrain is somewhat similar. Instead of marsh it’s very thick swamp, depending on pressure is where I focus more. most of the time if it’s not thick around that one third I’ll find bedding in the swamps. If you have bigger marshes /swamps below with islands in those swamps it might be worth checking them out.If your hunting spots like me where the swamps are smaller and there are very few island , when scouting I’ll walk the transition line of the swamps and hard woods looking for sign going in and out. Then I can normally follow that back into swamp and find bedding. That’s how I’ve have been finding most of my beds. Hopefully this helps.

[MATexbow]

I have a few properties I hunt that sound familiar. Just scouted one that was a total mystery to me for the same reasons. Guessed that the pressure was in the hills on that 1/3 elevation and on the edges of the marsh. What I found was that a lot of the bedding was/is occuring in those classic overlooked spots. For me, it was a tiny sliver of a leeward hill cut off from the rest of the property by marsh on 3 sides and a main road. All of the best bedding was on the transition of that little sliver into the marsh and on the line of elevation just out of sight of the road (the road sits at the top of the elevation). I would review your maps again and look for the tiny little pockets that could be holding bedding in random areas, particulary close to roads but away from access points.