Hunting/scouting the percentages...

[dan]

I wanted to talk a little about the differances in hunting / scouting differing terrains. Having hunted and scouted most terrains its pretty obvious to me that certain types of terrain are much easier to scout and predict deer movement and bedding than others.
The easiest terrain to scout / read in my opinion is cattail marsh and hill country.
The hardest is big woods and large swamps that have level terrain and simalar cover over large expanses.
Flat farmland falls somewhere in the middle. Not as easy as Cattail marsh or hills, but easier than big woods, or swamp.
The best thing about cattail marshes is its realy easy to just look at an aeiral or topo and have a good grasp on where deer bed, and where to hunt.
Hilly terrain you can pick out bedding relitivly easy with a topo.
When you get to level swamps and big woods you really have to search for subtle elevation changes and transition.
Flat farm land usually takes grid searching areas and covering just about every piece of cover on foot...
I guess the point is that if given a choice, one can be more successful based just on the type of terrain he chooses to hunt.

Thoughts?

[BackWoodsHunter]

I think the listed areas are easier to hunt deer in because as stated the spots to hunt can be easier to pick out but also there are simply more deer there. I used to hunt 8acres in Marquette county (montello area) and I saw more "shooter bucks" in a weekend tzone hunt there when we owned that land than I have seen in 6yrs of hunting 160acres in bigwoods country we hunt now. Part of it I know is you can't kill big bucks where they don't live but we have hundreds of acres of papermill land within walking distance of our property and I have been all over that and seen the same things. No real consistency or rhyme or reason to why/where the deer are where they are. Also, if you bust them from cover its so thick you never get a good look at them.

I have found in the bigwoods, at least where I hunt, there is no true consistency with the deer bedding and their travel routes between food and bedding. A few piles of corn can truly alter everything. The does flock to the easy and tasty feed and the bucks start to follow when its about mid october. We have areas we know that deer bed in for whatever reason, usually its the pure thickness and nastiness of the cover, but there seems to be no real pattern to where or why they feed like they do or how they travel making them harder to hunt.

[BackWoodsHunter]

Also dan to build on this do you believe you can truly BUILD a buck bed on private lands or even public where appropriate? Watched this video on youtube and found it kind of funny. I like the guys enthusiasm and he seems to have some of the tactics right but he is getting so crazy with the shovel and the prep work of the soil I have to wonder if he tucks them in too? Not meaning to hi-jack the thread but is it possible to truly build a buck bed?
[bbvideo=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1yzWwtd2e8[/bbvideo]

[PLB]

I think the listed areas are easier to hunt deer in because as stated the spots to hunt can be easier to pick out but also there are simply more deer there. I used to hunt 8acres in Marquette county (montello area) and I saw more "shooter bucks" in a weekend tzone hunt there when we owned that land than I have seen in 6yrs of hunting 160acres in bigwoods country we hunt now. Part of it I know is you can't kill big bucks where they don't live but we have hundreds of acres of papermill land within walking distance of our property and I have been all over that and seen the same things. No real consistency or rhyme or reason to why/where the deer are where they are. Also, if you bust them from cover its so thick you never get a good look at them.

I have found in the bigwoods, at least where I hunt, there is no true consistency with the deer bedding and their travel routes between food and bedding. A few piles of corn can truly alter everything. The does flock to the easy and tasty feed and the bucks start to follow when its about mid october. We have areas we know that deer bed in for whatever reason, usually its the pure thickness and nastiness of the cover, but there seems to be no real pattern to where or why they feed like they do or how they travel making them harder to hunt.

I agree with your big woods assesment 100%!!

[Swampthing]

I don,t really have any woods to scout just marshes.I agree a true cattail swamp surrounded by a little timber can be pretty easy to scout .But those level wet ground s with never ending dogwood clumps and little brush everywhere is a daunting task.I have a heck of a time finding them beds.U sure earn them when you find one.A lot more legwork for sure.

[Southern Man]

I think it's all in what you're used to. Most people don't have varying terrain that they hunt, or won't hunt it. I've seen hunters that tend to get in a rut as far as hunting goes, in what they do, and do the same things year after year. So, what (and how) you're brought up hunting becomes "the way".

We have 3 different types of terain here. Farmland, swamp, and wooded hill country. Farmland is by far the most common and the easiest for me. Food sources are easily defined and so is bedding and travel corridors in between.

Swamp I haven't hunted much. Most is small pockets of public ground hammered by duck hunters.

The hill country we have is 90% forested with mature oak and hickory. While I have had some sucess there, it still kicks my but when it comes to figuring out what the deer prefer. Food is everywhere. They estimated the acorn crop in a decent year at 400lbs per acre average. I learned quick that trying to apply farm country habits to this area was not a good plan. The hil country DVD helped a bit but it's still a chore.

[Hodag Hunter]

No real consistency or rhyme or reason to why/where the deer are where they are. Also, if you bust them from cover its so thick you never get a good look at them.

I have found in the bigwoods, at least where I hunt, there is no true consistency with the deer bedding and their travel routes between food and bedding. A few piles of corn can truly alter everything. The does flock to the easy and tasty feed and the bucks start to follow when its about mid october. We have areas we know that deer bed in for whatever reason, usually its the pure thickness and nastiness of the cover, but there seems to be no real pattern to where or why they feed like they do or how they travel making them harder to hunt.

I will respectfully disagree with some, if not most of what you have found.

My points........a mature buck, or any deer for that matter, does not randomly wander, or relocate for no reason in the "the big woods". There is a reason why a deer travels and beds were it does on any given day. Can a deer be in a different location from one day to the next, why yes, I agree. But again, there is a reason that deer relocated, be it human pressure, prefered food, predators or weather. I will agree it is difficult to pin point what they will do or move to and when for any given day, hence the difficulty factor of hunting "big woods."

A few corn piles can draw does in, say a back yard cabin where they normally wouldn't go. Put some pressure on those deer, even does and fawns and you won't see them without putting the backporch light on. I do agree with you that bucks will follow does in close to a bait pile. Mostly at night if they do come close and found they circle down wind scent checking the pile almost like scent checking a scrape or doe bedding area. Terrain will dictate how far down wind they cirlcle.....most times out of your line of sight if you were hunting "right over" the pile.

Side note: since we are talking baiting, one tip that seems to help is really spread out the corn, if this is your prefered bait. When I do bait, mosty late season, 2 gallons of corn will be spread out over a 40 -50 yard area. It will calm these deer and simulate grazing on acorns or what not. Honestly, most other hunters wouldn't be able to tell where I threw corn down unless there is snow on the ground. For hunters looking to shoot a doe this method helps in calming the deer as they are constantly moving to feed and not just feeding in a 3'x3' circle of bait.

I've mentioned it before and will say it again, a deer, or any critter for that matter, will not feed or bed in a dangerous or high pressure location. I don't care if it's in or near a lush clover plot, soybean field, fresh clear cut or a corn/apple pile. Nothing happens randomly for any deer in any terrain, it is just more leg work to find the why's, how's, and when's in the big woods.

[headgear]

I think the listed areas are easier to hunt deer in because as stated the spots to hunt can be easier to pick out but also there are simply more deer there. I used to hunt 8acres in Marquette county (montello area) and I saw more "shooter bucks" in a weekend tzone hunt there when we owned that land than I have seen in 6yrs of hunting 160acres in bigwoods country we hunt now. Part of it I know is you can't kill big bucks where they don't live but we have hundreds of acres of papermill land within walking distance of our property and I have been all over that and seen the same things. No real consistency or rhyme or reason to why/where the deer are where they are. Also, if you bust them from cover its so thick you never get a good look at them.

I have found in the bigwoods, at least where I hunt, there is no true consistency with the deer bedding and their travel routes between food and bedding. A few piles of corn can truly alter everything. The does flock to the easy and tasty feed and the bucks start to follow when its about mid october. We have areas we know that deer bed in for whatever reason, usually its the pure thickness and nastiness of the cover, but there seems to be no real pattern to where or why they feed like they do or how they travel making them harder to hunt.

I agree with most of what you are saying but I have to slightly disagree with buck bedding. I have been able to find some fairly consistent buck bedding spots in the bigwoods, however they are incredibly hard to find. The beds I seem to find take on some of the marsh or hill country bedding traits.

There seems to be 3 general areas I find the beds. The first is a large cedar swamp, the hard part is finding the exact bed because everything is the same he could be just about anywhere in there. The 2nd place I have found buck is basically strait out of the Hill Country dvd but the elevation changes are much smaller than hill country. You might have a hill or ridge that is only 50 to 100 feet in elevation but the bucks seem to use it the same way. Last but not least some of the bedding I find can be related to marsh bedding, the buck find those little high spots in some kind of open swamp with the wind in their face and a lake, river, or open swamp or grass behind them.

Now the difficult part, it just seems like these bigwoods areas are not all created equal, or the bucks have too many good bedding options so you have to search that much harder to find the good buck bedding areas. Where I hunt I have miles of cedar swamps so it's impossible to just go in and search for a bed, you have to know a buck in using a particular area to narrow it down. The same goes for marsh and hill bedding, I might have to search 10 or 20 very promising hill or marsh spots before I find one that gets used on a regular basis.

I have been hunting the same bigwoods area for 20 years now so I know the land inside and out but it can often take years of scouting and hunting to finally pinpoint some of those bigwoods beds.

[BackWoodsHunter]

My point was that I know where the deer (mainly does) bed in the areas I hunt but its never consistent. I also have located a buck bedding area or two but they seem to travel more. In a lot of the cattail marshes and areas in the southern half of the state things are more broken up by homes and roads and open ground so bucks have more limited bedding. Sure they still have options and move accordingly but they don't seem to have as many options or to move as far as in the bigwoods. I am interested to see a buck bedding area in bigwoods that is CONSISTENTLY used. I have found one such spot I believe, and maybe another but I am not completely sure. Another thing I find that makes the area where I hunt anyhow is the constant changes in the landscape. The various logging operations and things taking place certainly alter a deers pattern, when a buck has a good bedding area on a slight change in topography and you clear cut it I find it hard to believe he will still use that spot. I am sure there is some consistency but I have yet to see it.


As far as baiting we bait for my grandpa to hunt over and with one small pile out in front of his little hunting shack we built we really had no problem with deer being nocturnal. He saw a lot of DEER but no mature bucks. However, we only had one mature buck set hooves on our property all fall and it was just to tease me one afternoon in the rut and get his picture taken. I think there are various approaches to baiting and having some success with it if a guy just wants to see deer.


headgear you described hunting swamps/marshes. I think its apparent deer like the safety of having some amount of water around them. The tactics used to hunt terrain as described are similar to hunting marshes I would imagine. The dry ground spots are probably going to be the best option when looking for deer. I interpret bigwoods as the acres and acres of popple forests with pines, firs, oaks, maples and birch trees all mixed in on relatively level ground. There are ridges but none high enough to incorporate hill country tactics that I have found. Also, the spots on public land I have found with small marshy potholes definitely have deer sign associated with them and I know our neighbors have a swamp the deer come out of, just can't hunt it. I think deer like the safety and cover associated with wetter terrain so if you have access to it hunt it but its not an option for everyone.

[headgear]

Very true Backwoods, we all have different land we hunt so it is impossible to compare one piece of land to the other. How much land are you talking about? When I think of bigwoods I talk in term of square miles, you might have to search a whole lot of land before you find a good/consistent buck bedding area. The general area I hunt and scout covers about 10 square miles, if you cover that much ground you are going to find all different kind of features that could be considered buck bedding. Some of this land I know well, some if it I have yet to set foot on but plan to at some point down the road.

I guess consistent bedding could also be opened up for discussion here. I know the bigwoods beds I have found do get used every year but wind direction, pressure, logging, or wolves can change those in a heartbeat. It may be possible but I don't think you will find too many bigwoods buck beds that gets used every day all fall but I think the key is the find the beds that get used consistently throughout the fall and hunt them when the wind is right and the sign tells you the buck you are after is in the area.

[Hodag Hunter]

Backwoods, first I'm probably going to spin off on some related/unrelated tangents of discussion, different thoughts churning as I write, you might have to reel me in .....

My thoughts on hunting the "big woods" on your private land, as headgear stated is different for everyone's area, can be very restricting. You stated you only had the one bait station for your Gramps..... my take that is affecting every deer on your 160 acres. Like it or not, doesn't matter if there was one pile or 10, your mature buck activity was probably surpressed, or at the very least affected, by that one bait pile. Normally I wouldn't say one pile will make that big of difference, for sure not does, but because your Gramps lives there and assumed baiting it every day will have an effect. If a guy just baits 2 gallons on the weekend the deer won't really be affected. Again assuming because of daily replenish or more than once on a weekend, your deer were more adapt to show during day light. That 2 gallons became a food source for them......not a little snack like most corn piles. I dunno, make sense?

Hard to explain, but when I hunt differnent areas, the areas can be miles apart, I'm hunting or focusing on different doe, or deer groups. I'm guessing we all want to hunt/shoot big bucks but I tend to focus on different doe groups in different areas far from each other. The buck beds, as headgear stated, locating that one consistantly used buck bed can be like a needle in the haystack and then figure when he will be there. I know I'm bucking the "Beast way of hunting" and may be right or wrong. Probably wrong. I have found buck beds and do know where a few are......to just hunt buck beds up here is going to be very tough as the choices are endless and difficult for one to locate them all.

I hunt the big woods mainly from mid October to gun season (beacuse of late musky fishing) so my thoughts are to focus on the doe groups as the bucks will be there in some phase of the rut. As you stated, looks like the deer are not following a set pattern, I assume you ment bucks....as they are cruising from one doe group to the next.

In the winter, or late bow season, I focus 100% on food. That can mean clear cuts, or the corn I do put out. I feel, and could be wrong, the bucks that have survived the rifle season are on the move looking for easy food with still good cover for daytime bedding and probably not in their super secret location beds. They no longer have to bed in the far out of the way beds away from easy meals(food) avoiding detection from the pressure of hunters in the woods during the early fall as human pressure is almost nil in mid late December. Again, I could be wrong, but my trail cameras tell me(show me) that new bucks are moving into areas with easy food come mid December.

Note: this spring will be spent trying to locate better buck only locations/beds and will give the Beast approach a 100% effort this upcoming fall. Dan will be heading up by me to assist and teach me the way........shorten the learning curve on the hill terrain as my time previous has been spent near cuts and water/swamp area almost 100% of the time.

[Stuart]

I am hunting Flat Farm Land and as most of you know you really need to walk almost every part of property to find what you are looking for. Hunting transition lines with the lucky elevation change has produced well for me as long as it is not overhunted.

[virginiashadow]

All I pretty much hunt are bigwoods. It has forced me to become a better hunter through hard work and discipline. Over the past few years I have finally learned how to scout efficiently. Before that, I had no idea what I was even looking for during my scouting trips. I was just wandering with nothing to focus on or to improve upon. These days I actually enjoy scouting as much as I do hunting. I will be in the woods tomorrow or Friday scouting next to a lake..can't wait.

[magicman54494]

Here are the reasons I think big woods are the toughest to hunt.
1. There are sooooo many bedding options that even finding one is tough.
2. The woods is often so dense that it is impossible to sight pattern deer.
3. Lack of high quality food keeps them somewhat nomadic which means they could be here today and gone tomorrow.
4. Deer tend to relocate at different times of the year. This was proven in northern Wis. by the use of radio collars in the 1970's. This means if your hunting sign your buck may be long gone.
5. low quality food means rack development (to trophy potential) is delayed a year or 2 as compared to deer in high quality feed areas. This means that in an already tough situation you have to hope your buck lives long enough to grow a big rack and by then he is old a will be going down hill in a few years. So your window of opertunity on a given buck is much smaller.
6. In the north- winters are very tough on the deer.
7. low doe populations means the bucks travel longer distances. This may appear as a plus but what can happen is many bucks can get hung up on one hot doe so unless you pick the winning lottery ticket it can mean a lot of lonely days on stand.
8. big wood usually = public land. A lot of good scouting can be ruined by a bear, deer, partridge, small game hunters.

[BackWoodsHunter]

I agree with magic, some of those points were what I was trying to get at but I just couldn't get it out right.

Hodag- I agree the bait pile affects some of those deer but not all. I know there were many nights gramps sat over his corn pile watching young does feeding while I watched the same 2.5yr old 8pt come out with 4-6 does feeding on wildflowers and grasses on our old farm field. So I don't think all the deer set up around the corn or depended on it ENTIRELY but I do think it affected movement. He doesn't live on the farm, but I do think his presence, and constant baiting of any sort, definitely creates a dependence in deer of the northwoods that cannot be recreated in some other areas. I think the hardest part is that deer will bed in the safest spot closest to their food source. In the northwoods there is ALOT of thick/safe ground, and there never seems to be one main food source. Sure a guy can pinpoint some but as magic said those deer are browsing and moving just trying to stay full. I think the tactics of hunting the does is the best bet because in the northwoods a guy needs to hunt "deer" more than "a deer".

The only guys I know of who have shot big deer they specifically knew were because of a food source on their land and trail camera pics confirming said buck was using their land. Not saying it doesn't happen elsewhere or under other circumstances but I think there is far less consistency in the pattern of a northwoods buck with the vast expanses of land and thick cover in his favor and the lack of food and nutrition working against him requiring him to move more often.


Also-I have spent a good amount of time scouting/hunting public lands in Oneida county but the lack of sign is discouraging. We at least see deer, and have deer bedding on and using our land. I have walked many pieces of public land far greater in size than 160 acres and seen minimal sign from deer use. Once again if they can't fill their bellies there, they won't be there.