It's a year round thing. Sightings from last season, shed hunting and finding the sign while doing so, note deer movement while turkey hunting, trail cams once the fuzz starts growing, driving the back roads around my property. It's my obsession, but it's also fun. Time invested?? LOTS
I'll be honest. Whether gun hunting or bow hunting I have always been more concerned about putting my stand where I will see the most deer. Does or bucks. I am all about the action. I never got obsessed with bone and always have been more concerned about the meat. So to answer the question, I don’t specifically look for bucks, per say. I look for deer in general, and hope a buck is the first one to walk by.
No.. not really. Shed season helps me understand the behavior of bucks.. even certain bucks. Often it's done on properties I don't even hunt anymore.. or share.. or are far away. I believe in shed hunting.. I really do.. I use it more as a teaching tool than anything else. I don't use game cameras.. and I don't summer glass. Have no property near me to do either to. If I had land nearby me that I could hunt.. I'd do it all.. but I don't.. so I depend on my total understanding of what a buck should be doing according to each property I hunt.. then select the tree to put me in the best odds that day. And yes.. I do believe in getting as close as you can to their beds.. but its always been my common sense that has prevailed me more than anything else.
Pretty much year round here also. Shed hunting... once they start dropping every weekend until green up. summer scouting... Start long range scouting to locate bachelor groups in June. From July on to hunting season we usually walk in to film/scout 2 - 4 times a week in the evenings. Trail cam... more or less just for fun. Only have one camera and use it right at the farm I work at to see what is roaming when I am not there. Never keep take of hours spent doing all of this but it probably is a lot more then just a lot. LOL Tim
So theoretically you could be spending time hunting a spot in the early season that may not even have a buck you would be interested in? Sure anything could show up in November, but it seems like it could be a waste to me to sit there all October with out having any idea what is out there.
That's why I almost never even consider focusing on a buck for most of October. That's when I do my doe hunting.
I don't shed hunt specifically.We don't have the buck numbers in our mountains.Summer scouting is not effective for me.We have some fields and I do a little bit of glassing but the area's I have permission to hunt are so far from these fields there is no particular benefit to identifying a specific buck. I should use trail cams more in the area's that I hunt,that would give me the most significant information that I could put to use.I have used trail cams a bit but need to put a lot more effort in to it.Other wise it is on the fly for me,going in to area's that I have hunted for years and seeing what kind of sign I am seeing.While I typically set 8 to 10 stand sites a season,I will do that and also use my lone wolf and sticks a lot more this year to bounce around a lot more. Our deer are just not that visable in area's that you can actually make use of.
I spend quite a bit of time during the summer scouting on foot, and very little time glassing. This is due 100% to the fact that the areas that I can glass are several hours away, the locations that I hunt more frequently are 85% woods with no destination food source or some other location that I can see them from afar. I have to "rely" on trail cams to do my glassing for me. I move my cameras to the locations that I find sign while scouting on foot. I try to put my cameras in front of bucks instead of trying to put bucks in front of my cameras.
I don't do much glassing b/c my property is too far to make it worth my while. I primarily rely on prior experience with that property and game cams to tell me what portion of the property may hold a good buck in the early season.
Most of the areas I hunt are too far to scout....plus I work 7 days a week from May 1 to September 30. Our land in WI is 500 miles and the lease in IL is almost 1000 miles from here. I know that there are mature deer where I hunt, that's good enough for me. Besides, I don't know if I would really want to know whats exactly on the properties I hunt each year. I love to go out and be suprised at what I see and make the decision in the woods whether I'm going to shoot or not. I honestly would lose a lot of the enthusiasm I have for hunting if I knew every deer out there and had my mind made up before I even enter the woods which deer I was going to shoot. Isn't half the fun of hunting, actually hunting?
If I was in that position I would have to rely on common sense and my understanding of what they "should" be doing for that time of year and weather conditions. You do not have to have a visual confirmation that a big buck is present. They leave clues everywhere. An example would be my recent blogs about the "massive tracks" buck.. I knew he was there but it took me a long time to "see" him. Had I not saw him I would have had to play the odds that he would have been a buck that I would be proud to take home with me. Although I cannot ever see me in this position between all of the public land and the little private land I do have access to as long as I never lose the desire to find and learn as much as I can about big bucks.
Oh so true IMO! Actually I think I've over scouted areas before I actually hunt them. My goal this year is to not set a single solitary foot in my main hunting areas untill the first week of November. NOTHING! Not a humanoid presence at all. No moving stands, no trimming... no nothing. I've abandoned my trail cams and set them up on my secondary hunting areas that i'll be hunting early season. I have about 15 stand locations on my main land (and my climber). I've been hunting this peice for years and know what locations will hold a mature buck and give me the best opportunity to take one. In recent years I honestly think I've been my own worst enemy by trying to pinpoint the one or two bucks that I wanted to shoot through setting up cams and scouting. I needed visual confirmation for some reason. This year I don't. So I really have no clue what's roaming around out there this season and I dont' want to know untill it's 20 yards broadside from me .
Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring..... Never-ending pursuit of the bucks I will be hunting each fall... Thousands of hours per year...
