Ep. 518: Foundations - The Finer Details of Winter Scouting

about the finer details of winter scouting. Now, last week I covered winter scouting and kind of a big picture sense, but this week is all about digging into the details, getting into the nitty gritty here, which basically means, dear sign, there are so many clues out there in the woods right now. They can help you put together a great season this year as long as you really know how to find them and how to read them. Winter scouting valuable, so valuable. So if you're not doing it, do it.

If you don't know what to do, go back to last week's episode. You give that a listen first, and then give this one your attention. I promise you it'll be worth it. Who doesn't get excited when they run across a concentration of buck signed I know I do, and I know you probably do too. The thing about this is it gets even more exciting at least to me when I don't expect to find it. When I think I've got things all figured out in a specific property. I love being shown that there's a lot that I

don't know. Now, Dear, Why is this happens all year long in a variety of ways, But it really happens a lot when I'm winner scouting. Probably the best example of this is rubs. Now, I love rubs. You guys know I love rubs. I mean other than hounded trails in a funnel or a pinch point. I think my favorite sign by far as rubs. I like how they

show us so many things. A rub, if you know how to read it, can show you whether a buck likely made it in the morning or the evening, just by how they are positioned on a tree, in relation to food and likely betting. I love that rubs can show you where a buck staged. I love that they can show you the direction he traveled when he left his bed. I love that they are definitive evidence of a buck using a little patch of sumac in the middle of nowhere, in a place you'd never think to hunt.

And right now rubs are more visible than they are at any other time of the year except for maybe right in the heart of the hunting season, and even then you likely aren't seeing all of the rubs that are available for your viewing pleasure. But now you can see them all. When I head out to winter scout. In addition to what I talked about last week is US terrain and edges. I'm looking for every rub I can find, from field edges to the middle of swamps. I want to see every spot a buck took the

time to make a rub. This information can tell you so much about deer usage because you know almost without question that every rub was made during a time period when you could hunt those specific deer. Now, in some cases with later bow openers, some of the rubs probably showed up before you could hunt. This is the case definitely in states with an October one or later opener, But remember even so many of them were made during the actual season no matter when you're opener is whatever

state you live in. That's important because the more rubs you find in a specific area, the more likely there are to be bucks there next season making rubs. This is because those places offer bucks an advantage not only from the perspective of leaving signed for other deer to interact with. But from a vivability perspective as well, a buck is just not that likely to make a hundred rubs in three acres of cover if he's constantly getting

harassed by predators or other hunters. There a buck, or more likely a whole bunch of bucks, they're not going to leave their calling cards on the side of saplings along a specific ridge without being awful confident that's an area they are generally safe, and there's a reason they're there to begin with. Now, I know what you're thinking, What if they're making all those rubs at night? Well, some of them are made at night, for sure. The field edge rubs you find are more likely to be

made in the dark than probably in the daylight. But any random rub could have been made in the nighttime, so you just have to use your best judgment on this. I generally look at rubs like this. If they are in a really obvious spot, like a field edge, I can probably write them off as giving me much intel to work with because they are probably made at night. But there is a catch. Sure, a field edge rub

is what it is. Bucks make them in the dark a lot of times, but they also make them during daylight. Sometimes it's a coin toss at best. But take a look beyond those field edge rubs to see if you're not seeing a one off spot where a buck challenge a young tree to a fight, maybe there's more going on. Oftentimes I see rubs maybe ten or fifteen yards off of a definitive food source. When I walk to those rubs,

often see other rubs in well a rub line. If you follow those bucky breadcrumbs, you'll see his likely direction to travel in the morning as he had it back to bed. Reverse course on those rubs leading up to the food, and you'll see how he got there from his betting or a staging area. This isn't an exact science, of course, but that's helpful information either way. You've also got to find those rubs in the woods, the ones deeper in the cover a rub or a whole bunch

of rubs in a thicket or a wood law. Now we're onto something. It's likely that the thicker the cover, the more remote the spots. Well, rubs in those places have a way higher likelihood of being made in daylight. Those are the spots where you might just kill a buck next year that's actionable intel, my friends, and worth

the effort to get out there right now. When you're scouting in the rub connection only gets better when you realize that the random rub you found along your access trail in October is actually part of a rub line, just like those rubs leading off of the food source I just talked about. When you can stand in one spot and see a series of rubs descending down into a draw, you are looking at a buck's line of travel. Tell me that's not important. Or imagine, I don't know.

You're hiking up out of that bottom in a different spot and you hit a benchy area that is two yards from the egg fields on top, and it's just covered in rubs. Now you've found either a betting area or a staging area. Uh, Are there more rubs leading up to the field or back down to the bottom. Look around sixty degree style to see what other clues

are there. And another thing that I love about rubs is how many I find now that I wouldn't really care about or maybe wouldn't even notice during the actual hunting season. For example, let's say you have a route to one of your favorite stands. You know the route well you travel it often, you might easily not look down into the timber as you travel that road, and you might miss a great big rub tucked into the cover.

And even if you did notice it as you were making your way in for an afternoon sit, how likely are you to veer off of your hunting plan to check it out? Probably not too likely. Now go check it out, you should. You should go check out those rubs. I look at every rub I find, and I look to see if it will lead me to another one. I also look to see if there are any beds close by, or if there isn't any snow. Some scrapes. The thing about this sign, whatever sign you find, is

how you use it to figure out, dear travel. This is different from what we kind of conventionally think about with sign. So let me explain this by using scrapes as my example. If you head out and you have the opportunity to find last season scrapes, that's a good thing, But what you do with it matters more. And what most of us do try to find the biggest community scrape we can, and then we just kind of plan

to hunt over at next October and listen. That strategy alone kills bucks sometimes, But I look at it a little differently when it comes to scrapes, especially great big scrapes with a good licking branch that are located in the cover. You know you're probably looking at some type of a hub of dear movement. Scrapes are Dear communication devices, and it would be pretty stupid trying to establish a communication device were very few dear travel You see where

I'm going with this. This would kind of be like if you were single and looking for a new lady friend and you decided to devote your time to the public library and not the nearest club, or hell, even the nearest target. You got to play those odds. Guys, Dear, they play the odds too, and they established the best scrapes for you to hunt over in areas where lots of deer traffic converges. What do you do with this discovery?

You can just pick out a tree twenty yards away that is worth setting up in and call it good. Or you can start to look at the terrain around you and the rubs and the trails and try to figure out how the deer getting to the scrape. You might not be able to easily hunt over a specific scrape because of the wind or available access or whatever. But figuring out not only where those scrapes are, which is valuable, but likely how the deer get to them, and then where they go once they visited them is

the key to putting together a real hunting pla. And when I walk up on a no brainer scrape, my first thought is why is it here? And usually where are the other ones? The more deer that spend time in a specific spot, the more sign that is likely to be there. It's simple stuff, but it's true, and when it comes to the scrape that's worth hunting, do yourself a favor and try to figure out where the deer are going to travel around that scrape. How would

a buck approach down wind of it? Where would dear likely be coming from if they want to check it in the morning? How about in the evening? Is it in such a spot where there's a high likelihood of daylight visitors or is it closer to a field edge or a bigger opening where maybe more of the deer using it at night. When I find a scrape like this, or maybe some rubs that get me really interested, I drop a pin on on X with some notes on the sign and what my initial impression is of the area.

This does two things for me. The first is it just simply ensures I don't forget about the discovery when summer kicks in and I'm thinking about other things. The second is that lets me use satellite imagery to start to make some connections on a given property. To illustrate this, consider how bluff country terrain works. You're likely to find rub lines going up and downhill and big community scrapes

in the bottoms. Now, knowing what we know about deer in sign, you could start to make a plan for the early season to about mid October just based off some of those rubs and scrapes. When mid October hits, you could start looking at where you found the bigger community scrapes last winter and play the wind and the conditions to start hunting those bottoms as bucks start to

feel the first whispers of the rut. If you don't have your tag filled by Halloween, you can pull up your on X and look where you found those big clusters of rubs. The more sign you find in the winner, the more options you give yourself during the season. I know this seems like a lot, but it's not. If you learn to read the sign and mark only the

most promising locations. This is most easily accomplished right now, and in addition to working this rub and scrape angle, you should also be paying attention to tracks and trails. But you should also acknowledge the reality this type of sign in the winter might not really mean a whole lot to you when it comes to fall deer movement in the upcoming season. Take a pounded trail leading from a swampy bottom to a standing cornfield, for example, if you run across that right now, it might very well

look like a deer highway there. The problem with it is that next October the deer aren't going to be nearly as desperate for carbs, nor are they as likely to take one route day after day after day after day to go from bed to food, food to bed, kind of like they do in the winter. On the other hand, a trail etched through the snow right now that curls blow a rocky outcropping and crosses a drainage

on a side hill might be a different story. This is what I covered last week to some extent, but it's really important ask yourself if the deer have to use a certain trail because it's the only route or the best route from point A to B all season or just right now. If you think, by looking at the terrain that they almost have to use it, then you're onto something. If you think it might just be the result of winter and wintry conditions, it might not

be so great. But you can take this a step further and ask yourself, are there rubs along the trail? How many? If you can walk a winter trail now and see plenty of rubs, then you know, damn well, bucks, we're using it last season, and that's what Daddy likes. If that trail that goes through a specific pinch point is marked by rubs and also happens to lead to the bottom that has a big community scrape in it, well, I don't know. You might just want to start saving

up for next season's taxidermy bill. Now do you see

where this is going. It's not enough to just walk around and and some of last seasons sign, although that's a great start, but a better strategy is to try to look at every acre you can and ask yourself a lot of questions, analyze the sign no matter where it is you're looking to answer the why as it relates to dear movement, because the more you can do that, the more you'll be able to predict where bucks should move next season and honestly in ten seasons from now.

As I've stated, this is a valuable exercise, and I really think winner scouting is one of those things that separates the weekend warriors from the die hard white sail hunters who just get it done season after season. The more miles you put on doing this, the more time you spend in the woods obviously helps, but it's also about seeing every dear clue you can and putting it to use to understand big picture dear movement during the time when you can actually hunt them, So use this

month for that. Make sure to drop plenty of way points and make sure to go out of your way to look at areas of the properties you hunt you typically don't go in during the season. The sign in the places we like to hunt just reinforces what we know, or we think we know about white tails. But the

sign we find that makes us ask questions. That's the stuff that will get you thinking new thoughts about where to set up and just how the deer avoid you, and how they avoid other hunters, and why they choose to travel where they want to travel. After all, what else do you have to do this month? Probably not much, So this is my call to action for all of

you listeners. Go win or scout your go to spot, really dive in and see if you are missing something anything, And then go win or scout a spot you've never hunted, which will likely be a chunk of public land somewhere. Go look at a place that you've never been all that interested in, or that you've made up your mind and said, there's no way this place is worth my white tailed time. You might find that to be absolutely true.

Or you might look through the bare woods to see a plane is day rub line snaking its way through a creek bottom where clearly a buck spent some serious time last fall. Either way, winner scouting is just a good use of your time. Also, be sure to tune in next week, where I'm going to make a pretty good case that you should plan an out of state scouting trip that may or may not involve trying to shoot a turkey in the face while you're out there.

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 fixed, head on over to our YouTube channel and check out how to videos we drop every week, or head on over to the meat eater dot com slash Wired to read white tail hunting articles written by some of the best hunters in the business.