A Public Marsh Question

[Indianahunter]

I know I watched Dan scout public marsh in the winter months in the video, but now that things have greened up so much in the woods here and next weekend is the opening of Turkey season, I want to avoid walking around the woods and ruining hunts for the turkey hunters. I found a public marsh here in Indiana that I am pretty excited about. Are marshes scoutable in the late spring early sumer months? Or do they green up and get just as thick as the hardwoods? I have never been in one, the closest one I am going to check out is a 3 hour drive north. This state conservatory has LIMITED deer hunting so I am pretty excited if I can get in.

[Swampthing]

It get's pretty nasty in the marsh ,pretty quick.Most of the vegatation are low lying,cattails,shrubs,grasses and brushes. The canopy in the woods is much higher ,but from 6 feet and down in the marsh is pretty much a wall .For me here in Mn i expect this weekend will proably be my last.

[dan]

Its certainly a lot easier before green up... But its still doable. I have gone out and scouted marshes in summer months. The biggest key at that time of the year is to do most of the scouting from maps and aerials so that you can navigate directly to where you need to be rather than busting thru brush all day searching.
Personally, I really don't think you would bother the turkey hunters a whole lot. Your scouting should be down at the swamp edge. Turkey hunters should be at fields and wood-lots...

[Indianahunter]

I want to post an Aerial for everyones review, but am unable to get a viewable file in a small enough size. This will be my first ever marsh hunt and the first time I have ever stepped foot in a marsh so very exciting. The marsh is only 646 acres but is only accessible from a ramp on the East side of the adjoining lake. It has limited deer hunting and I bet with the extra effort required to access it I will have very little competing pressure indeed

What format are you guys posting these pics as? I have seen some aerials and topo maps on here that are good sized and easily viewable. Thanks in advance.

[DEERSLAYER]

I can resize them for you if you want, but you probably have a "snippet" tool that will allow you to get a screen shot yourself to post.

Some of the swamps here are much lower than the surrounding terrain and therefore get frosts later so they green up later. You might get lucky and this may be the case where you want to go. Plus with the spot being three hours North it might not be to bad right now. Scouting swamps in the summer can be tough because of limited visibility, but I have done it up until I start running into spiderwebs every where. Call me a sissy, but I get freaked out by spiders crawling all over me.

[dan]

I do mine in Photo-bucket

[Indianahunter]

http://s996.photobucket.com/albums/af83 ... access.png

[DEERSLAYER]

Here you go Indianahunter.

[Indianahunter]

You are the Bomb DEERSLAYER.....I am a TARD!

[DEERSLAYER]

You are the Bomb DEERSLAYER.....I am a TARD!

LMAO Here is the FREE editing program I used to resize your pic. When you save a pic it gives you an option to resize it to the size you want.

http://www.getpaint.net/download.html#download

[dan]

I cheated and took a look at the google image you PM'd me... The image was much clearer there. You can actually see the deer trails when you zoom in.... I marked some of them here... The pink dot is to show where the deer trail ends in marsh I am pretty sure there is bedding.


This image portrays the areas I would want to scout, or the scouting rought I would take... It covers most of the transition line which should be where the staging occurs. It would take you a few days to scout this entire area, so I would suggest scouting the areas you want to hunt the most 1st... Or section it, and cover a section each trip. I marked a couple red dots in some rut funnel areas..

[dan]

After enlarging the pic in google again... I picked the two spots I felt would most likely have a mature buck bedding there... They are bright green dots.

[Indianahunter]

Dan,
It seems I have much to learn grasshopper! Before posting the pic I had some areas marked that I thought would be likely bedding spots and I am way off. I did have the transitional cover areas marked for scouting,but I was no where close on the bedding. Man I can't wait until next spring when I can get you down here to scout with me, talk about money well spent! You'll probably add 20 years to my deer hunting knowledge career.

[Indianahunter]

Dan thanks a lot buddy, I really appreciate your insight. Now I must take a stab at why to really begin to put everything together. Please correct me if I am wrong (which is likely )

I understand the pink dots, I never would have thought of that looking at the map, but I understand it now.

Blue Scouting Lines - Transition around and between cover, I get that one since watching Marsh bucks.

The Green Ones- I have been staring at those for a couple of days scratching my head and wondering why of all the places of cover those two spots, in addition to scratching my head I am amazed that you were able to assess that in no time, that my friend is impressive. So here is my attempt at answering the question.

1. Indiana predominately has some sort of westerly wind putting the open water to their backs and the terrain and scent of any approaching danger in front of them.
2. Those two small areas are isolated
3. These two spots have cattails and open water on three sides making approach even more difficult for a predator.
4. That particular area of the marsh is most isolated from humans (housing) and pretty centrally located near crops on three sides.
So the next question is How in the world do I get in that without the deer knowing I am there. I seen how you did it on the marsh video but this seems smaller yet and I don't see how you could set up that close, following the trails out of those areas seems there are a lot of options for the deer. The only thing I can think of is to maybe sit in that other patch of cover to the south on the east side of the trail with a West or North West wind.

What do you think sir?

[dan]

Going back to an image I could enlarge makes it a lot easier...
To really know where and when to set up, you need to get out there and find the beds and then try to establish what it would take to get into a position close enough to kill the buck.
If I had to guess, I would say bedding is likely to be near the farthest north point of each of those little islands. The upper one looks like you may only be able to hunt it in the morning ( assuming boat access only? )... But I would check it out before deciding for sure. The lower one could be accessed in the evening by boating past the bedding area and looping around on foot.