Most guys are heading out soon or already have.......let's hear it guys!! What are you looking for primarily?? (State if your land is new to you or established). Are you putting cams out already?? Mineral sites?? Spring planting?? I'll be out this week a couple days and all next weekend. With the ground being wet still I tend to focus on trails.....not so much established muddy runs but spots where they branch off that you may not notice in dry conditions. This has lead me to more then one sneaky little escape route or back door to a doe bed the last couple years. I try to mark in my log book new or heavy sets of tracks I find in late snow and use them as a guide to see if they use that area more often or it was just a random trot or escape from a gunner. It's a useful guide at least to get started. We also try to locate new sign deep in the woods.....not so much on field edges or open areas where it's more likely made at night but hopefully again in staging areas or getting on a rub line in a direction we are not used to them using in hopes of discovering if nothing else that we may be screwing up our entry or exits to the stand. We also try to keep track of the wind at our place (not easy) but with 4 of us it works OK. Why is wind direction in the offseason important to us?? We discovered the does would leave the food plots in different directions frequently then they came so we started recording the wind and realized they were leaving to use different paths home because of the wind. Now we try to coordinate our mornings hunts based on the wind to guide us which way the does may be coming home......it has worked well. Not perfect or fool proof but we have it down pretty good at least which way they are gonna leave the plot and head back to bed. This is valuable info for us because some of these plots are 3-4 acres and they could and often do leave in any of 100 different directions. We have been able to watch them stroll by on a more regular basis since employing this tactic of mapping their exits with cams and being SURE your date and time stamps are correct. As we all know sooner or later if you have 10+ does cruising by a few minutes later someone in need of an arrow may be on their tail with his nose to the ground. That's kind of my early season focus.........and ALWAYS looking for a tree to toss a stand in Our land is still a learning process having only been there 4 years but each year we are improving so we're happy with the progress so far. We will also be setting up mineral sites with cams on them as well. Probably 12-15 cams will go up this week. People always look at me like a weirdo when I buy 100 AA batteries
I'm hunting the same ground I have hunted since my wife and I first started seeing each other about 8 years ago. I have already completed all my spring scouting and shed hunting, so I'm ready to finish hanging stands. I'm focused primarily on entrance and exit routes for myself. There are a ton of deer on the property so I need to do all I can to keep from being busted. I don't have any cams up right now due to the threat of flooding, but will probably put them back out in the next month or so. I'll also be starting some more mineral sites for this spring and summer as well. This was the first year I have scouted heavily during the winter months and I feel like I learned a ton about how the deer are using the place according to the wind. Since I am along a lot of water I plan to use that to my advantage. It's the perfect way to get to and from my stands without being seen or smelled. The bucks stay right along the edge of the water to scent check and can see through the woods all the way to the fields. Very good way to stay alive. My plan should work, unless of course they decide to go for a swim.
Most of my winter/spring scouting is already finished. I like to stay out woods in late March and early April so I don't spook the turkey off before season rolls in. Once season is over in early May I may check on a few spots to make sure they are still showing activity and mark some stand location. This is also the time of the year I like to prep entry and exit routes. I like to use creek beds when I can for these routes and I make sure that no fallen trees block my path. Where creek beds are not available then its time to break out the man killer(walk behind bush hog) and cut paths into and out of stand locations. In August I'll take a leaf blower in and clear any leaves that accumulate on the new trails..
I've had mineral sites out since the end of February and I slowly introduced some protein pellets and corn. I added a watering hole to my QDM plan this year because after some research and scouting the property behind me, I found that there wasn't as big of a creek as I thought there was. In a few weeks I plan on planting a few small honey hole food plots. These plots will be for nutrition only as I do not expect to keep deer on my 9 acres, nor will these plots be for hunting over. My window is typically from September to mid-November. Any time after that and the deer move onto the crop fields and stay there through the winter.
Winter and spring scouting (not including looking for sheds) for me consists almost solely on finding big lone beds, then analyzing the spot to see if the clues elude to the site being used by an older buck. It is generally very easy to determine if it is in fact a bed of an older buck by finding the tracks and rubs left behind. Does almost always bed in groups, most often in an odd pattern a bit spread apart from one another. I really pay little attention to these and keep moving. Land with topography it is much easier to find buck beds than flat land. I can generally look at a topo map then cross reference to an aerial map and pick where buck beds will likely be before ever stepping foot on the ground. It makes finding beds these days much more efficient. Many pairs of boots gave me the experience needed to do this.
I'm doing the same as buckeye but I've just started hunting this way, along with moving this past winter, I have a lot of scouting still ahead of me. Been on a lot of public, found some good spots but need a lot more before fall.
http://forums.bowhunting.com/showthread.php?t=60847 feel free to follow along!! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Getting ready to spray food plots for some summer planting. Got mineral all ready I'm progress start running trail cam in a month or so.
Totally agree with this. I hunt flat river bottoms and individual buck beds are so hard to find. The deer have so many trails that just go everywhere because nothing forces them to travel a certain way other than the water. I would love to be able to pin down certain bedding areas for bucks.
Honestly... It's sad to see a tactics thread just fall off so quickly on this site, while "post your bow" gets 10+ pages in a day. Bumping this thread to get some more discussion going.
Maybe because some people don't have tactics? I like to just walk and see what's out thete Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I highly doubt the majority of people on a bow hunting forum "don't have tactics". I've seen about 3 threads you posted talking about creating funnels, mineral sites, and food plots... All those are tactics hunters use during the spring. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I found a pretty good buck bed set-up last night, pretty much textbook marsh bedding. A thick point extending out into a cattail marsh, the end of he point is thick with bedding. About 40 yards from the tip were some red oaks and one white oak the bucks will stage during daylight before moving off the point onto the mainland during nightfall. Good tree to set-up in where I can shoot anything eating acorns. Pretty stoked, need about 10 more of these and I'll be ready for fall A picture of one of the currently used beds on the tip of the point. A picture of the tree I plan to set-up on with a north wind that will blow just off the tip of the point.
Oh no doubt a majority of people here have tactics, but a few might not for the spring whereas I'm guessing a lot more people have a bow to post on here. That was just my idea of why it's not getting hot. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
My new spring tactic when it's raining is going to be google earth, especially when I'm a long ways from home at school. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
This thread started on 4/20 and has gotten 15 replies. A thread about who has sent their bow through a chrono gets started yesterday at 5pm and already has 40+ replies... Purebowhunting hit the nail on the head with his post. I did some scouting yesterday and found a ton of new bedding (not sure if buck or doe). I know there are some bucks from the size of the scat, but other than that it's hard to tell. Property is still full of water, which is limiting my scouting a lot - Not able to follow trails, etc.
I got out a few times working on a clearing for kill plot. So far got quite a bit accomplished. Sending soil sample in today. Started a mineral site in a different spot than I had before, thinking better location. Gotta hinge cut one area. Put together a whole new plan for this season and to get some habitat management going for future years started. In my head it's all looking good, hopefully the progress will work out in reality too Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I have my plans in my head too... its taking a long time to put it all on google earth, but when im done ill post a picture of what i plan to do. We are currently waiting for the ground to dry up so we can get in there and mow do some weed control. We plant our plots in late july-early august, and if we leave them sit all year they look like a jungle of weeds still. Our main plot is going on 5 years i think and its starting to act like a crop field, less weeds grow, stays dirt longer.. I have a lot of places that I have found on Google earth that I want to check out for some reason or another. While I was looking i found that the top side of our oval swamp is FULL of deer trails on google earth. its to far to shoot from my typical shotgun season stand, and out of sight. I started to realize that we never actually hunt that area, for pheasants or deer. Do you guys have areas like this on your land? Do you guys leave these areas alone and keep them as a "sanctuary" for the deer? The funny thing is this "sanctuary" is located about 70% on our side of the property line, and 30% on the other guys. We talked to them the first year they hunted it and we thought they were jerks and ever since we havent talked to them since last fall and always have called them "the dipsticks" (also by the way they hunt, i spend more time watching them move super fast in my binocs then i do watching deer in my binocs). Anyway we talked to one of the guys last fall on the road and he actually was very nice which was a pleasant surprise, but he told us they havent seen a buck in years! I shot a 120" 9 pointer out of my stand that is 100- yards from their line, and I see little bucks all the time! So maybe it doesn't matter if I leave the sanctuary alone because they aren't shooting any bucks from it anyway? Ill try to whip up a picture to show you guys the area im talking about
Here a picture The red lines in my google earth are potential shooting distances. The red line from "Brian's Stand" (thats me) is 100 yards, so its roughly 100 yards to this "sanctuary" im talking about. The crossing stand on the right isn't a stand yet (i label new stand id like to place with a green tack) and the brown lines are potential funnel points. You can probably just ignore the crossing stand though that might not happen, unless you guys think that would be a good location? But you can see all the trails im talking about and how it crosses the property line (white line). do you guys think I should leave this area alone or try to find a stand location on the east side of it, north of the crossing stand, or place the crossing stand farther north so there is only one on that side?
