what are some tricks to reading these maps. What do u look for usually when scouting for deer. How do u find good pinch points?
Goosepond is right. There is too much for a person to write what you need to know in a message forum post. That is why people write books on it. Now, having said that, if you have any specific questions or post an aerial and topo of your hunting property I'm sure we could help you out.
I dont know if these will be good enough but in the areas that are outlined in black are where i was kinda looking at to hunt
In general, looking for water, shelfs/tongues, and saddles are 3 key pieces I look for. I'm sure somebody will show you what those are in the pic, I'm on the stoopid phone, so I'm limited. However the other key thing that I look at are the corresponding aerial photos. In the aerials I'm looking at vegetation, roads and nearby fields/farms which may be a food source and opportunities for some quick evening observations. In the aerials of the top wilderness area, there are what might be farms (again stoopid phone) N and SW that would be of keen interest to me...if I saw deer in those spots it helps me if think in the next step thinking about the travel patterns.
As wI704 stated and I also look at corresponding photos to look for edges (both hard and soft), fingers of wooded areas, fence lines, field/pasture corners, pine thickets on top of ridge lines and CRP fields. Also on the topo I look for shelves as I have seen some major activity on some on mine and families property.
Ya both those areas have crop in them then woods and one has a stream running through. Only bad part is its public land, so most hunters will b on crop edges. This is some land in Kentucky i am going to hunt this fall. I will be going down turkey hunting/ scouting next month. Just seeing if anyone could pick out some key points for me to check out
coheley, is there any way you could darken those contour lines and repost those maps? I am having a hard time seeing those lines.
VAShadow Try taking the Lat/longs from the bottom of the charts and plug them into your tool of choice. I just used Morton's Lake KY to pull it up on my blackberry version of Google maps.
It's really hard for me to read a topo in this format. I find googlearth to be a lot easier because it gives you actual vegetation and you can manipulate it to show the sunrise and sunset which then reveals the contours of the land as well as showing road access. Just from what I can see, the top property seems like it will be difficult because of the way the area is peaked in the center of the property; I'd start by scouting the SE corner and work from there. I hunted a property similar to that one and found that the deer would move up the hills during the day and down during the evening, but that made it difficult to enter because they could see you coming from quite the distance. The bottom property would probably be easier to hunt and scout, I'd start in that SW corner and work from there if there's access. Hope that helps. The best advice I can give is to start with google earth and then get your feet muddy.
