Ep. 516: Foundations - Big Picture Winter Scouting

about winter scouting. Winter scouting is a phrase that I don't know we deer hunters, we tossed us around all the time, but there's a reason we qualify it with the word winter because this time of year provides a unique scouting opportunity. This episode is all about winter scouting and why you should consider this the most important seasonal window in which to learn about deer. Yeah. I don't know about you, guys and gals, but I think March

is the worst month of the year. Turkey season mostly isn't open yet, and in the states that it does open, the hunting is often not all that great compared to April, unless you're way down south. Fishing opportunities In much of the country they're not all that great yet either. In the small game seasons they're mostly closed. This is the time of year where I start to go a little stir crazy and I forced myself to get into the gym more to run a few more miles outside and

just plan more scouting trips. The latter is the most relevant to this show, obviously, winner scouting is important. In fact, I think it's the most valuable scouting a hunter can do, besides some in season scouting. That type of in the moment scouting often leads directly to putting yourself in a addition to kill a buck. Winter scouting and how a lot of summer scouting kind of doesn't, but both are

valuable in their own way. With winter scouting offering us what I think is some of the most actionable intel. Allow me to explain for starters, the woods will never be more open than they are right now. That's a huge benefit that we're all aware of. This lets you see more than you would at any other time of

the season, which seems like a pretty simple advantage. No leaves mean you can stand at the bottom of a bluff and see all the way to the top in a lot of places, or all the way up to a bench that is three quarters of the way up there. You can stand there and look through the woods and see folds in the terrain, you can see the narrowest spot on a washout that funnels deer through. You can see how the woods are all laid out, and that's a gift. This goes for hunters in bluff country and

for hunters on flat as a pool table ground. This goes for big woods hunters and open country hunters. This reading ter ain advantage. It's amazing, But there are other things the general openness of the woods allows you to see as well. Let's say, if you're a big woods hunter or hell, I don't know, even if you're not, you'll never have an easier time seeing edges. Soft edges are dear magnets, those places where two types of different

cover come together. They're most evident now, and being aware of their locations is important for all hunters, but a real benefit to anyone who hunts public land or pressured private ground being able to recognize those soft edges and and use them correctly. I think that's a sign of woodsmanship, and I firmly believe woodsmanship kills bucks. You know, of course, hard edges are visible too, and I know they are easier to see throughout the year than soft edges. But

the intricacies of a hard edge matter. I liken this to some type of underwater structure you might fish for walleyes or bass like imagine a sunken island or a rocky reef down at the bottom of your favorite wally or bass lake. That line of rocks, it's probably gonna be a good place to troll lindy rigs for walleyes. But there might be you'll find if you really dig in and learn that spot like one boulder that's bigger than the others, and that will probably be the spot

on the spot. Or another way to look at it would be you might fish milfoil or cabbage weed lines for large mouth may especially in the summer. You may find them a little deeper, and you might notice that where the vegetation makes a forty five degree bend along the contour of the bottom, you just catch more bass there. They're schooled up there, or that's the spot where you always hook into the biggest fish. In both of these scenarios, it's no accident that a little something extra in an

already good location concentrates the fish. And white tails are no different, my friends. And while you might not notice the way there's a subtle rise in elevation on a hard edge while you're out there swatting mosquitoes in the summer. When you hike through there in the winter, it'll be plain as day. And you might also notice in that spot that one of my fishing partners would refer to as the juicy juice, there are more rubs, possibly a

great big loan bed tucked up against some windfall. Two. Again, this is no accident. The opportunity to find those types of terrain features and really be able to read them it's out there right now. Just about any type of terrain feature you can imagine that should theoretically funnel dear movement or concentrate deer activity will be easiest to read right now. Just think about that for a second. Think about it from the perspective of someone who wants to

take a week off during the rut this year. Now, while November is still half a year away, you know that your future self is sure as how gonna want to sit over the best funnels possible. The way to ensure that, at least to a large extent, is to get out there now and start snooping around. Now, this might not be as big of a deal to someone who has a lot of good ground to work with, maybe with some really good food plots some other manmade

deer magnets. But even then, those people are still gonna want to get out there and really learn their dear ground. And if you're a pressure ground hunter, this advantage can't be overstated. And better yet, let's say you walk into a spot and you find a location that just looks like it should be a deer highway during the rut. Don't you want to know how to get into that spot? And don't you want to know how to get out of that spot? How about what tree is positioned perfectly

for a specific kind of wind? All of that will be visible now this time of the year. And here's a pro tip for you. If you go into winter scout and you find something that really blows the wind up your camera skirt, use your mapping app and drop a pin on it. Now, write some notes on the wind direction you'd probably want to hunt it. Give yourself a chance to come back and hunt it with a

really good plan by taking notes now. And I know you think you'll remember everything about your new hot spot, But if you're like me and you pickled your brain for like two decades with wild turkey, you'll probably forget a few lines of notes on wind direction and approach direction and how you're gonna access it and get out. That can really prompt your memory and save you from having to relearn a spot you already kind of figured out.

In addition to winter scouting, in order to dive into terrain features and soft and hard edges, you should also take a look at every acre you have to hunt. I know that probably sounds like overkill, but let me give you two examples out of my own recent life. Both happened while winter scouting a farm in southeastern Minnesota

that I've hunted since I was fifteen. A couple of years ago, I found a subtle crossing while I was out there scouting in February that just took the deer from one side of this long roo mean to another, and it was right in the middle of the ravine. I've hunted the top and the bottom of that spot dozens and dozens and dozens of times. Because those washouts on hillsides they pushed deer up and they pushed dear down.

But I didn't realize because I couldn't see it from the top of the bottom, because there was also a place right in the middle where that washout narrowed way down and it had a bang and deer trail on it.

It also had a hell of a lot of rubs on both sides of it, which is a topic I'll get into next week and way more detail, but suffice it to say, it was kind of a shot to the old ego to realize that on the one dear property I've spent more time hunting and scouting than any other property in my life, there were still things to learn. I ended up hunting that spot a few times two seasons ago. Well, I didn't arrow a buck on that

specific crossing. I did have a few go through when I sat there, and I did arrow a buck very close to their Much of that success can be attributed to the one time I winter scouted through there and I found that spot. Now. The other example on the same farm is one that I found in while taking

my daughter's shed hunting. We were just messing around and dipped into a valley that is split by a trout stream, and I looked around, and while we didn't have any luck finding sheds there, I was standing on the bank of that trout stream, thinking about fishing more than anything, and I realized that the hillside along it had a very subtle dip to it in one spot. Now, I've walked up and down that hill so many times, and I've killed deer on the top of that ridge and

in that creek bottom. But this train feature caught my eye. It made me think about a lot of the deer movement I've seen over the years, and also some of the deer movement my buddy sees on a neighboring farm. Well, he and I put two and two together and started a factor in how the deer moved from one property the next. That, in a small way, led us to

hang a stand for the rut this past season. And if you want to see how that worked out for me the first time I sat there, head on over to the meat Eat YouTube channel and watch the very

first episode of one Week in November. This example leads right back to what I said earlier about how winner scouting obviously won't put you on a buck right away, but it will help you to more clearly see the bigger picture of deer usage on your hunting ground, those subtleties to the terrain that you'll see more clearly now than ever. They also give you a chance to engage

in some high level white tail thinking. Last summer, Mark and I interviewed big buck killer Adam Hayes for Wire to Hunt, and he talked about how there are just certain spots in a buck's travel route where he has a slight wind disadvantage. This is a weakness in an otherwise solid survival game that you can exploit if you know how. The best way to understand this is to win or scout and really really look at travel routes. Whether you're on top of a ridge, in a flattish

section of big woods, or wherever. Right now, you can dissect those routes. You can often see a hundred yards down the trail, or stand at the top of the hill and see hundreds of yards down exactly the different directions that deer are likely to walk in those routes. At some point there might be a spot where the deer have to dip around a low part, or avoid some dead falls, or maybe jump across an old barbedware fence.

Seeing and visualizing exactly where a buck might walk for two hundred yards gives you the chance to find in that distance the one spot where, for whatever reason, he might abandoned his reliance on the wind for just a second, simply because it makes it easier to go from point A to B, or because he just has to duke a little one way or the other to get around something.

This is what makes river crossing so potentially awesome right, and can play out in a variety of ways that have nothing to do with them choosing to wait across the waterway in an easy spot. I honestly think finding spots like this is exactly like realizing that your favorite walleye reef has one huge boulder where most of the fish will stage up and aggressively chomp a crawler or a leach troll past. Do you see what I did there?

Winner scouting does something else for us too, you know, way back last summer and then later this past fall, when I talked about rifle hunting, I mentioned how addicted we are to hunting spots that allow for nice views. Much of that stems from us just really wanting to see, Dear. Our confidence is highest will encounter some kind of deer if we set up on the edge of a bean field or set up over a recent clear cut wherever

we can get a good view. But what if you could develop an extreme level of confidence in a spot, or better yet, several spots without worrying about defaulting to the areas with the most visibility. That's one of the things that winter scouting does for you. Seeing the woods laid bare now and realizing that buck's absolutely walk down a certain trail or around a wash out in a certain way gives you a heck of a lot of confidence.

When you go back to those spots to hang a stand or maybe just set up and hunt after the season is open, you won't feel that deep draw to the default spots where you can really use your new binos. That's important, and it's a key differentiator between hunters who set up to see deer and hunters who's set up to shoot deer. I hope I've made a good case to get out and winter scout, and I promise you

I'll dive into sign next week. Before that, I want to just explain a few more things about winter scouting. The first is you should probably have some kind of loose plan, just like with shed hunting. If you're just going into the woods for a winter walk, then by all means totally freelance it. But if you're going into winter scout and try I had to become a better deer hunter, then you should have a rough plan. This will keep you on task and keep you away from

walking familiar, easy routes. This is important for new ground, like if you're scouting a random chunk of public land, but it's crucial if you're scouting a property you're already familiar with. We are awesome at walking the same routes and taking the same paths as we have in the past, but those will take us to spots we already understand. Altering a route by a little bit changes everything, and a fresh look is what helps you find the spots

you really want to find. It's also important to acknowledge that this might take a few sessions, even on a small property. How it might take you the entire month to find one good new spot that will be worth sitting come September. This is the reality of winter scouting. But I'm not done yet. I don't know how many miles I put on too winter scouting a given year,

but it's quite a few. This is due to a few reasons, the first of which I already mentioned, which is that I really really value my winter scouting time. I firmly believe it helps me kill more deer than trail cameras and summer scouting does. And like I said at the beginning, I also don't have a hell of a lot else to do, and I'm usually burning up with cabin fever by this time of the year, so putting out a bunch of miles to look at the

woods isn't any kind of sacrifice. I like it. I also think it's necessary to keep developing as a deer hunter. The more you can understand terrain and dear usage of that terrain on a given property, or better yet, a bunch of properties, the better your white tailed resume will look as the years progress. Plus more miles just increases the chance of finding the jackpot, so to speak. This

is something worth explaining a little bit more. I think while you might go out and have a bang in winter scouting session right off the bat, you're also more likely to find not much of anything, or not much of anything that really gets your gears turning. Sometimes it takes a few days and a couple dozen miles to stumble across something really special. This is often the case when I winter scout the big woods. But those findings

are always worth the effort. So don't look at this like it's a one and done proposition, but instead a bigger part of the process. Even a couple hours session once a week is going to reveal something to you eventually that you didn't know existed before. And adding one rut spot option per year, or finding one really great fence crossing every march can be a game changer to

your overall hunting success. And those findings might take an hour or a month, or they might take you a few years if you're in a hunting situation that is just plain difficult. But all of those miles, all those hours walking around and looking at the bare woods, they're making you a better hunter. They're putting you in a different category from most of your hunting competition. They are also showing you every rub in the woods, maybe every scrape,

depending on whether you're dealing with snow or not. They show you tracks, trails, and deer poop, all of of stuff you're going to hear about next week in an episode where I'm going to explore the topic of winter scouting at a more granular level. That's it for this week, my friends. I'm Tony Peterson and this has been the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you

by First Light. As I always, thank you so much for listening, and if you want to get more of a white tail fix, head on over to our YouTube channel and check out the how to videos we drop every week, or head on over to the metator dot com slash Wired to read white tail hunting articles written by some of the best hunters in the business.