I'm hoping to get a few suggestions from folks that are better than me at finding good hunting locations using aerial and topo maps. Below is a portion of a piece of public ground that I have a walked a couple times. I've found some good sign in places. My brother-in-law and I are going to head up and camp here from Oct 28th - Oct 31st. I will be hunting this piece of public ground and he will be hunting some private land that's a couple miles away. There are great deer taken in this area. The private piece of land he's hunting has had a 200+ taken on it two years ago and another 170+ taken last year. I've heard of a lot of really good deer being taken in this area over the years. Let's here where you would set up on this. I'm attaching an aerial map by itself and then one with a topo overlay. Like I said, I've walked it a couple times and have a couple places I'm thinking, but I don't want to miss something obvious. Any help is appreciated.
Thanks VS, you hit on a couple places that I had seen scouting so that kinda reinforces my thinking. You also hit a couple I hadn't thought of, but might check out also. I need to get better at this aerial/topo scouting. I'm so used to hunting land that I feel like I know inside out that I haven't really taken the time to learn this. I know there are many people that have good success hunting areas they don't get to visit before hand because they can do their pre-scouting without ever leaving the computer.
Good luck Sky, I hope you drop a bruiser! If you find anything cool during your scouting and hunting, please let me know. I'd like to learn right a long with you.
So I found this topo website that's pretty cool. caltopo.com It lets you move back and forth between topo, aerial, shaded relief and a bunch of other maps that really help see the terrain. I was able to use it this afternoon to make a map where I marked all the ditches, saddles and benches. That really helped to pinpoint some areas where there were several that came together and hopefully that will mean seeing more deer when I'm out there. The really cool thing is that you can export your maps as a KMZ file right into google earth. I loaded it on my google earth app on my phone, now I can take it into the woods with me to really help me get my bearings.
I like what VS has marked up, I marked in blue where I'd focus on. I think these would be bedding points to expect movement to come from.
I had some time on Saturday afternoon to scout and hang my stand. I'm in the area I walked last February and found a bunch of sign. I'm in a nice pinch point between a cedar thicket and a steep ditch. There's standing corn on the top of the ridge, and standing soybeans in the bottom ground. It's just under a mile walk in, so getting a buck out of it could be real fun. Thanks for the help, I used what I had found in February and your all's help with the map to find what I'm hoping to be a great spot.
