Transitional Hubs

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Huntress13
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Re: Transitional Hubs

Unread postby Huntress13 » Tue Jul 14, 2020 11:38 am

Excellent. I like this representation.


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Re: Transitional Hubs

Unread postby DKenny » Tue Jul 14, 2020 9:18 pm

Great post and thank you for the information. This really helps a new beast style hunter understand.
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Re: Transitional Hubs

Unread postby 1STRANGEWILDERNESS » Wed Jul 15, 2020 12:13 am

8-)
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Re: Transitional Hubs

Unread postby Trout » Wed Jul 15, 2020 5:21 am

Glad to help! Here are a few other spots, two hill country and one swamp. For the hill country spots I basically treat every ridge as an edge/transition. Hills ends up looking kind of like a fish bone skeleton when you’re done, and it helps me to see the landscape and how it all connects better.

grassy knoll.jpg


This spot I’ve hunted for about 5 years now. I think of it as a transitional hub and a funnel mixed into one. This is actually a really big area/ridge system in the big woods. Not sure the image does the scale justice. There is a huge hay field in the bottom right corner and then everything else is mixed hardwoods. The black squares are clearcuts of various ages. The red lines are ridges and the blue oval is a big mud puddle that always seems to hold water. The orange circle is a tempting stand location, but because its more of a bottom and so many ridges come together there, the wind and thermals are almost impossible to overcome. I’ve tried hunting it several times because my trail cams say there is good movement here including the biggest buck I’ve ever caught on camera in this area, but I’ve only seen a doe and fawn while hunting it and she winded me quick. The yellow circles are where its at. The lower yellow circle is such a good spot to see deer at all times of day. That whole area to the upper left of it is a fairly open flat with good cover on the right from the clearcut there (10 years old or so, mostly aspen and raspberries). Deer don’t go towards the bottom left corner of this map often because there is something there I can’t disclose without giving the spot up. That thing funnels them right, the raspberries funnel them left, the numerous ridges connect to that flat and deliver deer on a conveyor belt- especially in early November. During early season, this is the spot where I will see deer all day long, but for some reason there is always really good movement between 2 and 3pm that is just as good as dawn/dusk. A NW wind has been the best for me here, and I access from due east north of the hay field, and then come under the raspberry clearcut.

The yellow circle in the upper left is a spot I found directly from doing this exercise with the transition lines. Before doing it, I always thought of the deer movement in this area as going from north to south- and it mostly is. But at this spot, there is also a lot of east-west movement that I was completely missing. Still figuring that stand location out.

cemetary topo.jpg


Here is another big woods ridge system I wanted to share just cause it does a better job of showing that fishbone-shaped ridge structure. If you look at this area on an aerial, its just a solid mass of mature hardwoods. You’d think, ahh, there are no edges there and move on. But Dan helped me realize those ridges are transitions/edges, too, and that helped me find the transitional hubs shown by yellow circles. This whole area slopes down from the right to left, making the upper left side really tough to hunt because of wind/thermals. The best buck sign is of course in the upper left where everything bottoms out and the stem count goes way up. I think that is night sign because they are bedding way up the hill system on the right. This is a spot I’ve thought a lot about and if I’m going to shoot a buck here during October, I can’t just put myself in those yellow circles where the best deer movement will be, I have to hunt specific bedding locations. For early-mid November, I would be better off hunting those transitional hubs. I think?

swamp.jpg


I’ve never hunted this swamp, only scouted it. Bedding and browse is literally everywhere. Yellow circles are my best transitional hubs. Red circles are spots I want to in season scout and set up on if there is good sign. That goes for the yellow spots, too, but the way I am thinking about the yellow spots here is they are a higher percentage spot where I can go if I don’t find hot sign in-season scouting. Basically, they’re plan A in early November, plan B in October. Not sure if that makes sense, but that’s how I’m going to approach it. I think a few of those will make for excellent observation spots.
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Fins & Tines
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Re: Transitional Hubs

Unread postby Fins & Tines » Wed Jul 15, 2020 5:26 am

:clap: Excellent post, Trout! Time to create another layer in GE for linear transitions.
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Re: Transitional Hubs

Unread postby Bowmanmike » Wed Jul 15, 2020 7:58 am

Thanks trout,that really is an interesting way to put transitions in perspective. I will certainly keep this in mind when scouting/hunting from now on.
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Re: Transitional Hubs

Unread postby Prairie Sasquatch » Wed Jul 15, 2020 12:38 pm

This is an excellent post
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Re: Transitional Hubs

Unread postby 218er » Wed Jul 15, 2020 4:27 pm

I like this concept. I’ve noticed similar topographical or barriers that encourage multiple crossings. Great graphics to support yo our descriptions.
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Re: Transitional Hubs

Unread postby Lockdown » Wed Jul 15, 2020 5:55 pm

Great post Trout!

I’ve got a couple spots in SD that you could call transition hubs. One is my favorite rut stand. There’s a long, very steep ridge with a river bend that pushes into it. Right where those meet, the ridge flattens out into riverbottom type cover with thickets and lots of thick canary grass. There’s a hard edge there from leaf litter to canary grass. Plus with the river creating that funnel, it’s a funnel AND a transition hub. And it also has bedding close by.

Another spot is where some ravines make a “T”. Along one of the legs of the T, there is a cemetery fence that parallels it. It’s too tall for them to jump. Where the ravine and fence meet the road, there is an ag transition across the road that lines up with it perfectly. In 2008 I killed a nice 8 point that followed the corn edge, crossed the road, followed the ravine by the fence right to the crotch of the T where I shot him. 10 minutes after I killed him, a yearling buck took a different leg of the T right past me.

Again, great post. Any time lots of edges come together at a common location that can be a dynamite spot.
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Re: Transitional Hubs

Unread postby Drenalin » Thu Jul 16, 2020 4:24 am

This concept reminds me a lot of one of Autumn Ninja's old maps where he had done something similar to illustrate how deer might use the terrain. I've used this method to cyber scout a couple of areas, one of which I will be pretty much going into blind this year for a backpack hunt. Another thing I've tried to add to it is circling on my map/aerial where I believe there will be a food source (mast in my case) which should somewhat help determine where in relation to the intersection of these edges I should attempt to setup (assuming appropriate wind direction and cooperation of thermals).

One spot in particular, I'll have four finger ridges converging just off the predominantly leeward side of the main ridge with what I believe to be a stand of white oaks just opposite of that on the windward side. Any deer coming toward that hub and the oaks from the expected direction would have the dominant SW wind right in their faces, and any deer bedding down that way will likely be there on a SW wind. Access and setup is going to be a challenge for sure, but I'm really interested to see how this method of cyber scouting plays out for me this season.

Really appreciate the examples you posted Trout! I just started marking maps up this way since last season ended, and it gives me a little boost of confidence to see that someone else has done it and been successful thinking of terrain edges and hubs this way!
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Re: Transitional Hubs

Unread postby Trout » Thu Jul 16, 2020 4:42 am

Drenalin wrote:This concept reminds me a lot of one of Autumn Ninja's old maps where he had done something similar to illustrate how deer might use the terrain. I've used this method to cyber scout a couple of areas, one of which I will be pretty much going into blind this year for a backpack hunt. Another thing I've tried to add to it is circling on my map/aerial where I believe there will be a food source (mast in my case) which should somewhat help determine where in relation to the intersection of these edges I should attempt to setup (assuming appropriate wind direction and cooperation of thermals).

One spot in particular, I'll have four finger ridges converging just off the predominantly leeward side of the main ridge with what I believe to be a stand of white oaks just opposite of that on the windward side. Any deer coming toward that hub and the oaks from the expected direction would have the dominant SW wind right in their faces, and any deer bedding down that way will likely be there on a SW wind. Access and setup is going to be a challenge for sure, but I'm really interested to see how this method of cyber scouting plays out for me this season.

Really appreciate the examples you posted Trout! I just started marking maps up this way since last season ended, and it gives me a little boost of confidence to see that someone else has done it and been successful thinking of terrain edges and hubs this way!


That's really cool. Taking the wind factor out, how would you adjust your stand location based off where the food source is- look for a tree on the side of the food source nearest bedding? Adding the wind back to the scenario now, is it possible to get uphill of that spot the four fingers converge on a light wind/rising thernal?
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Re: Transitional Hubs

Unread postby Drenalin » Thu Jul 16, 2020 5:00 am

Trout wrote:
Drenalin wrote:This concept reminds me a lot of one of Autumn Ninja's old maps where he had done something similar to illustrate how deer might use the terrain. I've used this method to cyber scout a couple of areas, one of which I will be pretty much going into blind this year for a backpack hunt. Another thing I've tried to add to it is circling on my map/aerial where I believe there will be a food source (mast in my case) which should somewhat help determine where in relation to the intersection of these edges I should attempt to setup (assuming appropriate wind direction and cooperation of thermals).

One spot in particular, I'll have four finger ridges converging just off the predominantly leeward side of the main ridge with what I believe to be a stand of white oaks just opposite of that on the windward side. Any deer coming toward that hub and the oaks from the expected direction would have the dominant SW wind right in their faces, and any deer bedding down that way will likely be there on a SW wind. Access and setup is going to be a challenge for sure, but I'm really interested to see how this method of cyber scouting plays out for me this season.

Really appreciate the examples you posted Trout! I just started marking maps up this way since last season ended, and it gives me a little boost of confidence to see that someone else has done it and been successful thinking of terrain edges and hubs this way!


That's really cool. Taking the wind factor out, how would you adjust your stand location based off where the food source is- look for a tree on the side of the food source nearest bedding? Adding the wind back to the scenario now, is it possible to get uphill of that spot the four fingers converge on a light wind/rising thernal?

Initially thought of it that way and would prefer to be just above that hub, but assuming SW wind I would blow all the deer out. Good potential they’d be there on SE too though, which would be perfect for me. As it stands, on a SW wind, I will need to come in way down the windward side and then pop up close to the hub with the SW wind then being “just off.” This also should work well with both rising and falling thermals since I’d be very close to end of the main ridge. Biggest concern is that if deer are rotating bedding around those finger ridges on SW and SE winds, I could be a little too far away at about 150 yards.
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Re: Transitional Hubs

Unread postby Krb017 » Thu Jul 16, 2020 11:52 pm

Awesome post- will use this strategy on my Texas lease
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Re: Transitional Hubs

Unread postby Mike32 » Fri Jul 17, 2020 2:29 am

Great post trout. Thanks, definitely has turned on a light bulb for me!! Appreciate it.
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Re: Transitional Hubs

Unread postby Rmallen » Fri Jul 17, 2020 2:57 am

Well done. I like it.


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