Choosing where to hunt for deer?

[dan]

How do you decide where you hunt for deer?
Or which property?

[Goober]

are you asking how we would choose which spot we would choose to hunt today? Or how to go about choosing a property to hunt overall? I'm not sure what the question is?

Say I have 5 properties that I hunt. Do you want to know how I choose where I go tomorrow? Or do you want to know how I chose the 5 properties......

[Swampthing]

I' m hoping your asking which one of your preselected areas you will pick to hunt on a given day. I live a minimum of 50 miles from my closest hunting area. I get a little stressed out the night before debating which place to go. I usually just go with my gut.

[ Post made via Android ]

[Z7WIBoy]

One thing I have learned from the beast is you have to do your home work. Once the bed is found why is he there and which source of food is he going to use at the time of the season. You have scout and then shine to determine which bucks are in the area. As for what and where I hunt - marsh for the first time this year and also have some private with rut funnels which I do food plots as well.

[ Post made via iPhone ]

[blackwolf]

I decide a lot by spring scouting. I do quick spot checks in fall after Oct 20-25 to decide stands I will concentrate on. It is all wilderness type big woods a few hours away so no fields to check in summer etc. The location I hunt will depend on the spot checks but generally I will hunt my N.Minn area Oct 28-Nov5-7, then Bayfield Wis until Nov 13-15. But individual spots will change yearly for no appaent reason. So the spot checks (rub-scrape activity) will point me to the the few "right" stands for this year.

[headgear]

I generally try to think about why a buck would be using that area during that time of year. Is there a preferred food source near by, is the bedding area the safest in the area, are they using a bedding areas based on the wind that day, did the pressure finally push the bucks into a hide out back in the nasty stuff, is he bedding there because the does are near by and he wants to sniff around? Lots to think about.

[dan]

Day to day, why do you choose one property over the next? Are there some propertys you choose not to hunt at all? Or have little success in?
The question can go in several directions, and I am ok with that...

For me, I will choose one spot over another if scouting tells me there is an exceptionally large buck living there.
A lot of people will likely answer this question by saying "the property with the least pressure"
But for me, mature buck numbers and ease of hunting would have more to do with it than pressure.
Yes. Sometimes pressure and lack of mature bucks go hand in hand... But, not always.
Just about every large public property in my area gets very heavy pressure, but regardless of pressure, certain properties will give me results way more than others... Cattail marshes are extrmly easy to read to me, and I do very well in that terrain, despite pressure. Main reasons are how easy it is to determine mature buck bedding, how close I can get to bedded bucks ( which makes killing them much easier ) most other hunters hunt it incorrectly, and gun hunters doing drives cannot effectively kill the majority of young bucks within the cattails...
I avoid spots with heavy pressure that is mostly dry ground... Hunters kill most of the bucks before they reach age, and seem to get everywhere.
Swamps generally are tougher to hunt than marshes, but I can effectlvly read most of it. Despite swamps being a little tougher, they do have good bucks, and I have had some success in swamps.
This year I will be hunting a certain public swamp a bit, even though I have avoided it in the past because of the size of one of its tenets.

[Spysar]

It's simple. Wind direction is #1 factor, possiblity of big buck #2, and I always like to find a spot where I won't see people.

[Pullintoobs]

Right before season I do alot of driving around the areas I hunt and use the spotting scope watching food sources. What I am seeing will play a part on where I am hunting early.I have done ALOT of scouting this spring after attending Dan's seminar. I Have found quite a few new areas within the marshes I have hunted for years, that I believe will pay off eventually if I hunt them correctly. That is going to be the tough part for me....Only going in when I feel conditions are right. So if they are not, I will have to decide where I will have the best chance. The good thing is that I have added numerous locations. So I will not be "stuck" going to the same spots. Time will also play a factor on where I go. If it is during the work week I will not go to certain areas because I will be rushed to get in a tree due to distance from my home and distance to where I want to get set up. Although if I know a good one is there and conditions are good, only sitting for a short time before dark might be the ticket.

[blackwolf]

Low or no human pressure is my number 1 criteria. Number 2 is what I feel the chance of taking a real slob is. I refuse to waste time hunting the rut with a chance someone will come thru and mess up my stand. I can't remember the last time I saw a hunter from one of my bowstands.

[Stanley]

I kind of rotate properties spending time on all of the properties. Biggest known buck gets the most attention. Most of my hunting is quite a distance from home one property is 230 miles south the other is 180 miles north. I do have a spot 3 miles from home that I spend time on also. I also have some public ground that I do hunt every once in awhile. I also have a couple of good friends that own farms and hunt those a little also. I hate hunting the same property too often. I very seldom hunt the same stand I believe this to be key.

[Autumn Ninja]

Which property or section within a large property? An area I know a 4+ year old is living.

When choosing where to hunt, I start with the edges and work my way in and out from that point.

[bowhunter15]

It's simple. Wind direction is #1 factor, possiblity of big buck #2, and I always like to find a spot where I won't see people.

X2

[phade]

Lots of good posts so far. Wind + Access/Entry dictate the day for me. If it is a hunting day, I go based on that. If I have a target buck, and he's not huntable based on conditions, then so be it. I then go to pre-hung sets that allow some doe action or maybe use the time as a way to check out an underhunted spot.

One thing that has not been mentioned, at least as a factor for me, is crop rotation/harvesting. My local area is corn and alfalfa. Beans used to be common but the farms have slowed down their bean plantings. Corn harvest timing is critical. Some places I prefer to be there while the combines are running. Others, I like to get there as soon as they are done and off the field. I follow the corn, so to speak. My bow season starts late for the northeast (mid-October); we do not have the luxury of easily-defined patterns all that often. Most times, I find just when I have a bead on a buck for the first few days of the season, the corn field around him is cut, or the alfalfa field is tilled, etc. Mind you, I'm not necessarily hunting field edges over cut corn fields, but most of my woodlots are 15 acres or less connected by hedgerows and surrounded by 50 acres of field - you're never really that far from an edge regardless of chosen stand site. Oaks are usually vaccuum cleaned by the deer by our late opener.

[Dor]

It's simple. Wind direction is #1 factor, possiblity of big buck #2, and I always like to find a spot where I won't see people.

What Eric said, except I reverse his #1 and #2.