Hello, so I am new to Bowhunting and have only gun hunted a few times while stationed in Cali but I’m not back home in va and have access to some land to hunt on. I am looking for advice on where to place my trail cams/ ladder stand as well as suggestions how you would hunt this area. Any and all advice/suggestions are welcome. The border is the poorly drawn black line. The black spot towards the bottom of the picture is a man-made pond right at the wood line. I have been told from the property owners of all 3 homes that they regularly see deer in their yards.
There is not much to go on with that picture of the land. It appears to be mature hardwoods. Is that a powerline that runs diagonally across it or a road or what? If it is a powerline or gas line or some kind of cleared area that doesn’t get a lot of atv or human traffic then just walk the length of it and look for deer trails that cross it. Find the best one or two and you could put cameras there. If you think they won’t be stolen you could place them right on the edge of the clearing so that way you’d get pics of anything walking along the opening too. Otherwise you could hang camera a few yards into the woods watching the crossing trail. Look around that pond for deer tracks and trails. That could also be a good place for a camera. From a macro level... are there any row crops within a quarter mile of the property? If so then you may find the deer shifted within the property toward those nearest crops. Next with food still in mind you need to just walk those woods with binos and check any oaks or persimmon trees you find for mast. If you find an area with several trees loaded with acorns or persimmons then you will have a spot to either put a camera or at least check again in a few weeks to see if anything is dropping and attracting deer. Lastly check your regulations for the area but if it is allowed you can pick up a mineral salt block or a trophy rock type product and put that somewhere where you see some deer sign and put a camera on it. That will help you get some deer pics a little faster maybe. Come back with some more info and I’m sure plenty of folks on here would be glad to give you some guidance. Good luck and welcome to bowhunting.
That cleared area is a powerline and gets very little human traffic for what I’m told. As far food sources to the top of the picture (outside of the black lines) are corn fields. I have also been told that there are many oak trees out there but I haven’t gotten the opportunity to walk the area due to work. I plan to head out this up coming weekend to do a scouting trip.
