What your #1 find that tells you to focus on an area?

[mainebowhunter]

Your on the right track which is ...doing something different. Over the years, I have tried to keep improving, one of those ways is cutting my ties with pieces of ground that just do not produce. I am not the worlds best hunter...and sometimes it feels like giving up. BUT if your hunting a spot and just not seeing the deer you want to see, keep scouting till you find it.

[mheichelbech]

The number 1 thing that makes me focus on a certain public area is knowing the area produces big bucks, or has a big buck I would like to go after... #2 is habitat. It has to have a habitat to hold and produce big bucks without the possibility of guys being able to kill all the racked bucks. #3 would be low pressure. Or at least lower than other options.

If the property has those 3 ingredients I would want to walk it, look at the bedding, and buck sign, as well as the hunter sign, and from what I see decide if I want to hunt it.

What do you do with a place that "should" hold a big buck from a cover, pressure, water, food source standpoint but you don't find any big rubs or tracks?

[dan]

The number 1 thing that makes me focus on a certain public area is knowing the area produces big bucks, or has a big buck I would like to go after... #2 is habitat. It has to have a habitat to hold and produce big bucks without the possibility of guys being able to kill all the racked bucks. #3 would be low pressure. Or at least lower than other options.

If the property has those 3 ingredients I would want to walk it, look at the bedding, and buck sign, as well as the hunter sign, and from what I see decide if I want to hunt it.

What do you do with a place that "should" hold a big buck from a cover, pressure, water, food source standpoint but you don't find any big rubs or tracks?

I move on...

[Ruger1]

Hot oak that's dropping

[ETNyates15]

The number 1 thing that makes me focus on a certain public area is knowing the area produces big bucks, or has a big buck I would like to go after... #2 is habitat. It has to have a habitat to hold and produce big bucks without the possibility of guys being able to kill all the racked bucks. #3 would be low pressure. Or at least lower than other options.

If the property has those 3 ingredients I would want to walk it, look at the bedding, and buck sign, as well as the hunter sign, and from what I see decide if I want to hunt it.

What do you do with a place that "should" hold a big buck from a cover, pressure, water, food source standpoint but you don't find any big rubs or tracks?

I move on...

How long will you give it. Couple scouting trips, one season, two seasons. I got a piece of ground that had private all around it and really good bucks being killed all in the area but our property is more of a pass through and doe bedding that gets a few big boys moving from a neighboring property to ours at some point during the season.

[dan]

The number 1 thing that makes me focus on a certain public area is knowing the area produces big bucks, or has a big buck I would like to go after... #2 is habitat. It has to have a habitat to hold and produce big bucks without the possibility of guys being able to kill all the racked bucks. #3 would be low pressure. Or at least lower than other options.

If the property has those 3 ingredients I would want to walk it, look at the bedding, and buck sign, as well as the hunter sign, and from what I see decide if I want to hunt it.

What do you do with a place that "should" hold a big buck from a cover, pressure, water, food source standpoint but you don't find any big rubs or tracks?

I move on...

How long will you give it. Couple scouting trips, one season, two seasons. I got a piece of ground that had private all around it and really good bucks being killed all in the area but our property is more of a pass through and doe bedding that gets a few big boys moving from a neighboring property to ours at some point during the season.

If I don't think its holding big bucks, I find no sign of big bucks, i spend no more time there. Simple... You can't kill what don't live there. So I go where there is something I am interested in.

[ETNyates15]

The number 1 thing that makes me focus on a certain public area is knowing the area produces big bucks, or has a big buck I would like to go after... #2 is habitat. It has to have a habitat to hold and produce big bucks without the possibility of guys being able to kill all the racked bucks. #3 would be low pressure. Or at least lower than other options.

If the property has those 3 ingredients I would want to walk it, look at the bedding, and buck sign, as well as the hunter sign, and from what I see decide if I want to hunt it.

What do you do with a place that "should" hold a big buck from a cover, pressure, water, food source standpoint but you don't find any big rubs or tracks?

I move on...

How long will you give it. Couple scouting trips, one season, two seasons. I got a piece of ground that had private all around it and really good bucks being killed all in the area but our property is more of a pass through and doe bedding that gets a few big boys moving from a neighboring property to ours at some point during the season.

If I don't think its holding big bucks, I find no sign of big bucks, i spend no more time there. Simple... You can't kill what don't live there. So I go where there is something I am interested in.

Sorry to even ask this, but say you find some big buck sign but it would be a pass through area and does not have big bucks bedded on the property, do you hunt it?

[dan]

The number 1 thing that makes me focus on a certain public area is knowing the area produces big bucks, or has a big buck I would like to go after... #2 is habitat. It has to have a habitat to hold and produce big bucks without the possibility of guys being able to kill all the racked bucks. #3 would be low pressure. Or at least lower than other options.

If the property has those 3 ingredients I would want to walk it, look at the bedding, and buck sign, as well as the hunter sign, and from what I see decide if I want to hunt it.

What do you do with a place that "should" hold a big buck from a cover, pressure, water, food source standpoint but you don't find any big rubs or tracks?

I move on...

How long will you give it. Couple scouting trips, one season, two seasons. I got a piece of ground that had private all around it and really good bucks being killed all in the area but our property is more of a pass through and doe bedding that gets a few big boys moving from a neighboring property to ours at some point during the season.

If I don't think its holding big bucks, I find no sign of big bucks, i spend no more time there. Simple... You can't kill what don't live there. So I go where there is something I am interested in.

Sorry to even ask this, but say you find some big buck sign but it would be a pass through area and does not have big bucks bedded on the property, do you hunt it?

Maybe during the rut... Its kind of relative to what you have available too.. If its your best property guess you have to hunt it, but I would keep looking for better.

[xpauliber]

Ok. So I will take a crack at it. Kind of the method I go through.

Cyberscouting is kind of where I start and pick areas that look good from maps. Scout a lot of edges, overgrown fields, that sort of thing. Tracks are something I use more during my early season scouting to monitor. Mainly because post season, deer group and move to areas that are not during the hunting part of the season.

This past season, scouted a TON of ground. Basically, first thing that says something to me is past years sign, generational sign. Lockdown mentioned that. BUT for me, I don't plan on doing much of any hunting during November. So really takes me a season to understand IF that sign is being made during the time of year when I can hunt it. Another one I really pay attention to is good buck sign in and around food sources. Mainly apples and acorns. Where I live, food is the #1 determiner for where I hunt. Good food source in proximity to great cover with good buck sign. Good bedding habitat is in abundance. So I am always trying to figure what is the least common denominator. Don't get me wrong, I spend a lot of time looking for beds. BUT it has been my observation, bedding really moves around with the abundance of food where I live.

My next is going to be follow up with trailcams. Really, no sense in hunting an area if that bucks that made that sign are dead. Its not all that uncommon to end up with NO 3.5yr olds in an area from one season to the next. The results from the trailcam pulls is going to tell me if the bucks are around that I hope.

So if I have generational sign. GOOD. If I get good tracks indicating a good buck is in the area, even BETTER. Follow up with cams on food sources in July and August to confirm what I found pre season.

And if I hunted primarily in the midwest? I would really focus a lot more on cover/bedding than I do here. And my preparation would also be focused on the rut portion of the season. Security cover becomes the least common denominator.

Wow, this describes what I do almost to a T! One thing I will add is that as I've gotten more experience hunting over the years, I keep a list of properties that I've hunted and break them down into 3 categories:

Places that generally always seem to hold good bucks
Places that sometimes hold a good buck
Places that I've hunted but never saw a good buck

When season approaches, I put a lot of time in shining the first two types of properties. All I'm trying to do is locate a target that I want to go after. Since I've hunted those properties before, I know the basics about them (bedding, feeding, trails, what wind I need, etc.) and so when I go in to hunt, it's all about reading what sign I find and adjusting on the fly.

If I don't, locate a target buck before season, I will start bouncing around based on the wind but I'll begin hunting those properties that always seem to hold bucks. Once i exhaust all of those spots, I'll move onto the properties that sometimes hold bucks, etc

Something that amazes me as I watch other hunters is that they will hunt the same properties and even the same exact tree for YEARS. And when I ask them, how many mature bucks have you seen from there over the years, I'll usually get a response like "none" or "a dandy ran through here chasing a doe back in 2008". its crazy how some people keep doing the same exact thing hoping for different results.

[ETNyates15]

The number 1 thing that makes me focus on a certain public area is knowing the area produces big bucks, or has a big buck I would like to go after... #2 is habitat. It has to have a habitat to hold and produce big bucks without the possibility of guys being able to kill all the racked bucks. #3 would be low pressure. Or at least lower than other options.

If the property has those 3 ingredients I would want to walk it, look at the bedding, and buck sign, as well as the hunter sign, and from what I see decide if I want to hunt it.

What do you do with a place that "should" hold a big buck from a cover, pressure, water, food source standpoint but you don't find any big rubs or tracks?

I move on...

How long will you give it. Couple scouting trips, one season, two seasons. I got a piece of ground that had private all around it and really good bucks being killed all in the area but our property is more of a pass through and doe bedding that gets a few big boys moving from a neighboring property to ours at some point during the season.

If I don't think its holding big bucks, I find no sign of big bucks, i spend no more time there. Simple... You can't kill what don't live there. So I go where there is something I am interested in.

Sorry to even ask this, but say you find some big buck sign but it would be a pass through area and does not have big bucks bedded on the property, do you hunt it?

Maybe during the rut... Its kind of relative to what you have available too.. If its your best property guess you have to hunt it, but I would keep looking for better.

Last thing I promise, I know you are annoyed with me now but learning curve is steep on this kind of stuff and I like a quick study. If you were hunting a place like TN that doesn't have the depth of quality say the Midwest does but stills holds some decent quality bucks in certain areas, how do you narrow down your public areas? I live in East TN and the age and quality of bucks I want to hunt are not here so I have to venture to west TN. The drive is 3.5 + hours so I need to have an excellent plan before choosing an area to scout and how I will go about it. More specifically how would you obtain data on where the top 10% of bucks (by quality) are killed other than just heresay?

[IkemanTx]

The number 1 thing that makes me focus on a certain public area is knowing the area produces big bucks, or has a big buck I would like to go after... #2 is habitat. It has to have a habitat to hold and produce big bucks without the possibility of guys being able to kill all the racked bucks. #3 would be low pressure. Or at least lower than other options.

If the property has those 3 ingredients I would want to walk it, look at the bedding, and buck sign, as well as the hunter sign, and from what I see decide if I want to hunt it.

I just found a place that fits that bill quite well. Hoping to cover it extensively soon.

[dan]

Last thing I promise, I know you are annoyed with me now but learning curve is steep on this kind of stuff and I like a quick study. If you were hunting a place like TN that doesn't have the depth of quality say the Midwest does but stills holds some decent quality bucks in certain areas, how do you narrow down your public areas? I live in East TN and the age and quality of bucks I want to hunt are not here so I have to venture to west TN. The drive is 3.5 + hours so I need to have an excellent plan before choosing an area to scout and how I will go about it. More specifically how would you obtain data on where the top 10% of bucks (by quality) are killed other than just heresay?

Im not annoyed with you... What I would do, and the right thing for you to do might be 2 different things. I would spend a lot of time there scouting in the off season, driving around all the public areas, and then going into the ones that look promising and scouting on foot. When I got home inbetween trips I would be studying aerials and topos. A call to the states big game biologist for that area might be a good place to start. He should be able to tell you which properties produce the oldest bucks.

I tell people this all the time and I get the same response the majority of the time. Its "I don't have time to spend scouting that far from home, to that degree... My response is if you have time to hunt there you have time to scout there. Plain and simple, the more time you spend scouting the better your results will be.

[ETNyates15]

Last thing I promise, I know you are annoyed with me now but learning curve is steep on this kind of stuff and I like a quick study. If you were hunting a place like TN that doesn't have the depth of quality say the Midwest does but stills holds some decent quality bucks in certain areas, how do you narrow down your public areas? I live in East TN and the age and quality of bucks I want to hunt are not here so I have to venture to west TN. The drive is 3.5 + hours so I need to have an excellent plan before choosing an area to scout and how I will go about it. More specifically how would you obtain data on where the top 10% of bucks (by quality) are killed other than just heresay?

Im not annoyed with you... What I would do, and the right thing for you to do might be 2 different things. I would spend a lot of time there scouting in the off season, driving around all the public areas, and then going into the ones that look promising and scouting on foot. When I got home inbetween trips I would be studying aerials and topos. A call to the states big game biologist for that area might be a good place to start. He should be able to tell you which properties produce the oldest bucks.

I tell people this all the time and I get the same response the majority of the time. Its "I don't have time to spend scouting that far from home, to that degree... My response is if you have time to hunt there you have time to scout there. Plain and simple, the more time you spend scouting the better your results will be.

Thanks dan, I am greatly appreciatively of your time!