Scattered Beds and Scattered Food:How do narrow down where to hunt?

[FlyingMullet]

Classic Shooting House Hunter New to the Beast Style

Luckily I have always liked to scout so I have some experience with sign. My favorite time of the year is to scout in Feb after season close and the rut ending not to long before.

Yet this year I didn’t have that luxury.

I hunt public and I have 3 spots that have scattered beds with a large spread of food.(I have others that I can narrow but these have a ton of sign

Also flat and consistent timber for the most part. So no sides of hills, fire roads, or thickets to funnel deer like I am used to. Aka swamp bucks.

How do y’all approach this

[FlyingMullet]

Imagine late summer scouting a new area like this

[Andy1965]

That’s hunting in the Deep South in a nutshell. Everywhere is bedding and everything is food. Best advice I can say is try to hunt the food that’s hot right now. Different oaks drop at different times. Pin oaks or water oaks drop first. Then live oaks and if you are lucky swamp chestnuts are money if you can find one dropping. Look for persimmons around the edges of pines near water. There is just so much browse they won’t move a lot until the rut and maybe that’s when your feb scouting will pay off

[headgear]

Sounds like flat bigwoods, I would focus on transitions, swamps, beaver dams, river bottoms, small islands of high ground, even any little hump can be bedding. If you look at all beds they can appear to be random but the bucks will use the most secure bedding so you can ignore most and just focus on those areas.

[Chasingdinner]

Classic Shooting House Hunter New to the Beast Style

Luckily I have always liked to scout so I have some experience with sign. My favorite time of the year is to scout in Feb after season close and the rut ending not to long before.

Yet this year I didn’t have that luxury.

I hunt public and I have 3 spots that have scattered beds with a large spread of food.(I have others that I can narrow but these have a ton of sign

Also flat and consistent timber for the most part. So no sides of hills, fire roads, or thickets to funnel deer like I am used to. Aka swamp bucks.

How do y’all approach this

Are there any acorns around? White oaks? My first thought would be to go for preferred food sources and maybe work backwards to bedding on the edge of any visible transitions... if that applies or is possible in your area. I would be more concerned with areas of good bedding instead of specific beds. Maybe think in terms of what would be the best acre or two acres of bedding instead of specific beds.

[FlyingMullet]

Its just flat open hardwoods is the trouble. They are bedded on the edge of the slough but the beds dont seem to have wind perfered benifit unless they are bedding somewhere completely different on other days(didnt find. Needless to say these beds are also spread over 2 acres and sourouneded by oaks. The grass is also high in this one so I cant see far into it or predict where they are coming out. So difficult. Im hoping pressure and anearby foodplot coming up will help narrow but it may be a few weeks

[DaveT1963]

I agree with Head Gear - buck bed hunting has its place - but in reality old traditional methods still work fine today. Play the best odds for the conditions you are facing, it is all we ever really do.

[seuss79]

Classic Shooting House Hunter New to the Beast Style

Luckily I have always liked to scout so I have some experience with sign. My favorite time of the year is to scout in Feb after season close and the rut ending not to long before.

Yet this year I didn’t have that luxury.

I hunt public and I have 3 spots that have scattered beds with a large spread of food.(I have others that I can narrow but these have a ton of sign

Also flat and consistent timber for the most part. So no sides of hills, fire roads, or thickets to funnel deer like I am used to. Aka swamp bucks.

How do y’all approach this

Are there any acorns around? White oaks? My first thought would be to go for preferred food sources and maybe work backwards to bedding on the edge of any visible transitions... if that applies or is possible in your area. I would be more concerned with areas of good bedding instead of specific beds. Maybe think in terms of what would be the best acre or two acres of bedding instead of specific beds.

As far as being new to beast hunting, this intrigues me.

What does everyone else think of this?

[IndyDawg]

You should watch the latest episode of The Hunting Public that was posted last night. Zach was hunting a small piece of bedding in Iowa and took the strategy mentioned in this thread of hunting the entire bedding area rather than focusing on individual beds. He assessed the area, planned a low impact entrance strategy, and setup in an area that allowed the deer to funnel his way using the cover and terrain in the area while being conservative to avoid blowing out the bedding.

If I were hunting the conditions you describe, I would probably try to setup for an observation sit to see how the deer are using the terrain and cover and identify the major travel into and out of the area. I know it can be hard to observe in this case, but it may be setting up on a trail on the down wind side of the area, a bit further away than you would if you were going in explicitly to kill or maybe at a vantage point where you can glass a bit more.