The Lease I am on is 800 acres of Pine and cutover with a few acres of oaks Thinking of relocating some stands to the road beds and logging roads for ease of access in the mornings and hunting deeper in the woods in the afternoons Anyone do this on a regular basis ?
Yes they can be good in certain situations, My youngest got his first on said road bed yesterday that wormed through a bottle neck between two highwalls.
I hunt skid trails (logging roads) ALL the time at my one piece of ground. After they timbered it was the only way to access the property and its paid off big time for me. Does & young bucks will follow those trails pretty good. Mature bucks tend to cross them or parallel them. Find a good intersection on one & it could be great. They are great places to find scrape lines too.
Thanks Have one particular road that dissects a swamp and think pines should be a good travel route and will definitely pay off from an observation standpoint
I have good sucess hunting logging roads,The main one is where 3 roads come together making a small clearing
Took my first deer on an old county road that cut across our property but was no longer on the map. Sounds a lot like your area: lots of pine with some mixed hardwoods. Took another 5 or 6 in the same spot over the next few years. The trick for me was to find the spot where well used paths crossed it, or even better was to find sections where the road is a lot easier than other terrain... Like along a steep dropoff or creek. Beside a steep drop was where I took most of my "roadway deer." Alas, I don't live there anymore and have to hunt public land now. But thanks for reminding me about the old roads... I'd forgotten about that spot from my youth somehow. I will have to add that trick back to my Google Earth scouting routine!
My brother has a few stands hung over a gas line on one of our properties. A few years ago, the a gas company was giving permission(not sure how it all works) by the land owner to run some off shoot of their line(I think thats what it is) on the property we hunt. I remember my brother being pissed cuz they were clearing a short section of woods that produced some really nice deer in the past. They cut it, did their thing, leveled the ground and left it. We were going to plant a food plot but ended up not doing it. We started to notice deer coming in and eating the fresh sprouts. The strip is maybe 20yards wide, but it's served as a little field. We went and spread corn out with a large garden spreading that summer as a little tester and sat with binoculars. It was amazing how many deer cam to this clearing. Now, its one of the best stand locations on the property and my brothers best friend shot his biggest buck ever out of this "field".
Deer aren't that much different from you or I when it comes to travel routes, if there is an easier route to travel they'll take it.
