3/14/10 I've been on 3 more scouting missions on heavy pressure public since my last post- covering a lot of ground. The first two were okay efforts, but I didn't find anything great except for one unbelievable funnel. Today, I got on to two different decent bucks. The first is a buck that consistently rubbed on 4-5 inch diameter popple trees, but the rubs were very smooth. I found multiple rublines, but he's a young buck- at least a 3 year old this coming fall. This area has tremendous hunting pressure, and finding a buck of this age class takes a lot of scouting. I found several of his beds, the primary bed is underneath a lone oak tree out in an expansive cattail marsh. There's only room for one deer to bed here, and he's got it wore right down to the dirt. He has X-factor escape routes with 6 different runways exiting the bed into the marsh. The little hump under the tree is surrounded by knee deep water and muck. Here's the bucks view toward the mainland, there's no tree that will hold a stand within 150 yards of the bed.
On the way back out I stepped onto a point that jutted out into a different marsh, over a mile away from the buck above. I had scouted in the marsh earlier in the day looking for bedding around the point but came up empty and moved on. On the mainland behind the point there is a very sandy woods road. When I got to my tracks on the road from earlier in the day, a lone buck track crossed the road heading away from the point- splayed and 4 fingers wide, walking tracks. BONUS!! I'm sure I bumped him out earlier in the day, I'm definitely going to have to look harder for potential bedding there.
! Today I had knee high boots on in a completely different area and went over the tops twice.
