Ep. 873: Foundations - How to Make the Most of Your Winter Scouting Efforts

hunters don't really care about winter scouting. In some situations, they probably feel like they don't need to, or they don't understand the actual value that winter scouting can bring. But for a lot of us, it's real necessary. To me, it's really the scouting that puts me in deer most of the time, at least outside of in season scouting. And even then, most of my in season scouting is at least loosely built off of what I found months and months earlier. So I plan to talk about this

and quite a bit more. Right freaking now you know the uh, just do it Nike slogan. Well, my personal slogan would probably be just put it off until it drives you absolutely nuts, and then wait another two or three weeks and then do it. Being an adult kind of sucks, mostly because you always have a bunch of

annoying stuff hanging over your head. You know, you have to renew your license tabs and pay the property taxes, set up the annual vet appointment for the dogs, drive the kids to choir, then to basketball practice, then to their other basketball practice, and then you have to help your father in law move a giant toolbox because your mother in law has to control everything, you know, the

usual stuff. One of the things that I put off every year is emptying my boat out of like all of the tackle and rods and just sorting everything out so I can start with an organized situation and when spring comes around. I know from past experience that when

I do this, I feel like a total idiot. The first time I go fishing and I look at all of the tackle I bought over the winter and how much of it I didn't really need, Or the first time I go to dig out a certain size of jerk bait or a swimming jig, and then I realized that not once all last summer did I ever put anything back in the right spot. Of course, I also fish with a bunch of kids, too, so that makes

the situation about a billion times worse. I know this is a first world problem, but my boat reminds me of the kind of person I am, and I'm just not a huge fan of him most of the time. You know, mixing my Senko's up with my frog selection or my buzz baits is annoying. But it's not the only thing that just weighs on my mind this time of year when there isn't a whole hell of a lot to do. The deer that got away a last season, or the time I spent deer hunting when I just

didn't feel like I had something going on. They also bother me too. There's one trail in particular that I've thought about a whole bunch of times, and I can get it out of my head. It snakes its way along a ridgetop through a clearcut that might be about I don't know, six or seven years old at this point. That ridge follows a creek bottom more or less and it's a total pain in the ass to hunt because

it's so thick. But you know what, every time I hunt around there, I end up with some kind of encounter, and it's almost always tied to that ridge, and almost always tied to that specific trail. That's not that surprising to me because it's on public land, and it's the one spot on the whole portion of that property that kind of avoids all of the logging roads that the locals have turned into many highways for their four wheelers

and side by sides. Now, nine years ago, I killed a buck as he walked that trail, but it was mostly because I was sitting on a perpendicular trail that bisected the ridge trail. I killed that deer in the morning, in the middle of October, and I've seen plenty of

other deer use it. It's also the only trail I've ever seen a bear walk down that was just doing his thing and not coming into a pile of dough that might not carry much weight with a lot of you, but I've spent a ton of time hunting in bear country and I've only once seen one just walking on through. They don't make a lot of mistakes like that, and I really don't know how they do it, but they

don't show themselves very much. A good sized bear that feels safe enough to travel the same trail that's some bigger than your average bucks like to use tells you. Something tells me that I shouldn't be so lazy, and I should go walk that trail out, along with any other trails that might peel off of it. So that's

what I'm gonna do. Now, we are stuck in some sort of purgatory constructed around what seems like an infinite supply of seventh grade girls basketball tournaments, and these absolutely insane suburban moms who embrace that shit like it's the hobby they've been waiting for their whole lives, and they don't seem to understand that there's other cool stuff to do out there. So I have to find a weekend

when my kids aren't playing in some random city. But it's looking like a window has opened up, So I'm making a plan. I know, with the the snowcover we have now, the scrapes from last year are going to be impossible to find unless I get lucky and spot a very obvious licking branch in a very obvious type of spot for a scrape, but I don't really care about scrapes right now. I want to see the trails

and I want to see rubs. And I know that exact trail that I'm interested in that also had a really good deer on it last fall when I pulled my saddle set up one evening to make the long hike out. I know that trail is going to have plenty of rubs on it. So my first goal with winter scouting this year is to start right by the property boundary and work toward the interior along that trail.

I want to see which way the rubs are facing to get an idea of when the bucks were there, and I want to see if it leads me to some benches or something else that might indicate a nice little buck bedding area. Because I assume it's in there, I want to walk its entire length, which in a property of several thousand acres might take me a while. But I know I'm missing a lot out there, and while I've had decent success hunting around it, I haven't dove into it, you know, to really kind of piece

it out. And that's the best part about winter scouting, and unlike organizing my boat, I'm really looking forward to this mission because here's the thing. I don't know how to hunt them well on that trail, and scouting is an activity that is supposed to inform us on how to hunt spots better. I don't know why I feel the need to say that, I just kind of do.

I think it's because we look at scouting this time of year like it's mostly just a bonus situation, kind of like how it's easier to spend money on Payday than two weeks later when you're waiting on that next check to hit your account. It feels like we have all the time in the world right now, and learning what we can in February doesn't really hold a strong connection to our fall success, at least for a lot

of us. But it does. I've said this before, and I'm sure i'll say it again, but winter scouting is important, if for no other reason, then it's like a free play where you can go any damn where you please and look at any part of your hunting ground you want to look at without any fear of pushing your target bucks out to get shot by the neighbor or

just knocking them off some kind of pattern. There's also the benefit of time, but most importantly, this is the moment of the year when you can just go, try to answer some questions and get a clear picture not only of the deer on your ground, but the ground on your ground. That ridgetop trail I'm going to figure out. I can see it on on X. I know roughly how it courses through the landscape. I've shot grouse and woodcock around it, so it's not a total question mark

to me. But when you take a travel route that might consist of a third or a half of a mile or more, not to mention all of that distance can be traveled pretty much in thick cover, it's impossible to know how to really hunt it without just diving in. What I plan to do is look for spots where that trail allows me to get an edge on the bucks, which means I have to figure out a crafty approach for morning and evening sits, and I have to pay close attention to how to hunt various sections of it

with different winds. This is a big one because I know that the trail runs mostly east to west, with the uphill side to the north. That means south winds are going to be tough, but depending on where I have to sit, east or west winds might be a no go too. But I also know a trail like that doesn't exist in a straight line. It'll weave through the cover according to the shape of the land, and there will be spots where the bucks will have to travel not straight east or west, and those areas are

interesting to me. I want a spot where he has to give up something, even if it's just in a small section, because that's an advantage I can use. Now. I can't know that stuff just from east gout. Neither can you. You can make a guess on ambush sites, but until you get in there and put your eyeballs on the land, you really just can't know. My guess just by knowing how thicket is in there is that there won't be a ton of good spots to hunt

from a tree. There will probably be some, And I also just want to know if there are any big oak trees standing around in there, possibly left by foresters at seed trees. A single tree dropping some hard masks in a spot where they feel secure can be the ticket to filling a tag. In late September or throughout October. Those deer don't have a bunch of dreamy alfalfa and cornfields to go to, kind of like a lot of deer down in the Deep South that spend their time

in the swamps and endless seas of timber. It's also true that a tree with a good canopy, you know, that happens to be located in fairly thick cover, like a clear cut. We'll have some open ground beneath it compared to the rest of the cover, and that does two things. It often gives you a chance to shoot, which is important on public land where you can't cut shooting lanes. But it also often creates a soft edge

around the tree. Soft edges are deer magnets, and they are something I'll be looking for pretty heavily during my

winter scouting trips over to Wisconsin this year. Another part of my plan, one that I forget about when I start hiking, is that I'm going to drop more pins and cross reference what I see in person with what I see on on X. The thing about this spot is that a lot of people use the logging roads, you know, They just drive them for fun and they try to shoot an easy grouse from one, they just

offer up a lot of access. What I want to know as I follow that ridgetop trail is how it allows the deer to avoid those easy access logging roads, and how I might be able to use those logging roads for access myself, especially on morning hunts where hiking the long way through a clear cut is generally an

exercise in torture. Of course, maybe the greatest thing about really making a winter scouting plan isn't that you get to answer some of the big deer questions you have, but that it gets you to ask a lot more questions. I know when I head over there, I'll get distracted by sign and trails and folds and the terrain. And while my mission is laid out pretty clearly in my head, I also understand myself well enough to know that I

can deviate from a plan real quick. But I don't care, because that will help me learn some stuff this winter too. Now you might be thinking, well, that's great, dude, you go do your thing, But how does that help me with my spot, which isn't anything like a chunk of big woods and wolf country? Well, what don't you know about deer movement? On your place. Are you one of those people who has a good lease and a pile of hitlisters every year and think you have it all

figured out? I bet you don't, And I bet there are things you think are true which you don't really know. Like your deer are always nocturnal in October, which you may know is true because you don't see the big bucks and your camera's slow down. Okay, maybe that is true. Or maybe you don't see them because they aren't traveling in the spots you like to hunt, so you put less effort in and suddenly your expectations meet the reality that you expect kind of manifest your own destiny there.

Maybe the deer aren't running across the countryside with reckless abandoned, but they are laying down tons of sign in some tight areas like a few valleys or the creek bottom you consider off limits because you just know all the big deer bed there. Is there a way to walk that now and figure out something to do during the times when you think it would be better to not hunt.

I think the thing that might be most beneficial about winter scouting, or at least it's way up there, is how often I find like a half acre that has just rubbed a shit somewhere. The natural inclination here is to assume it's a buck's bedroom and that most of the rubs were made, you know, probably around Halloween, but

that's probably not true. Oftentimes those little spots are staging areas, and while more of the rubs might have showed up the last week October than the first, it doesn't mean that those bucks weren't there at other points of the season. Those areas are safety zones, which is why there is so much sign there. It's not because they love the spot and that prompts them to mark it up. It's because it's safe for them to be there in daylight, and you know, while they're waiting to run out the clock,

they leave lots of sign. Finding those areas is often the ticket to not having nearly as much downtime in the season as you could have, and at the very least, they make a compelling argument for some summertime in early fall trail camera recon Now, I kind of look at winter scouting like I look at elk hunting in and

over the counter unit in Colorado. I know the bulls are there, but they will be where most people don't go, and often that's just down the hill from the road or in the drainage above the trailhead that is full of nasty, dark timber. It doesn't have to be far, it just has to be overlooked. Now, even on properties where we are the only ones hunting these deer, there

are usually so many places that we overlook. Hell, I find this quite a bit on properties I hunt that are small, like twenty five or thirty acres, and it's almost a certainty that when you start to get some more acreage to work with, you start to find all kinds of spots where that you just use them because we just don't. Winter scouting is like a cheat code

for finding those areas. And while it might be beneficial to find a good rub line just below the access road, what you really need to use winter scouting for is to convince yourself that your findings are beneficial. This is the hard part about walking your deer ground out in February.

There's so much time for our discoveries to fade in our memories a little bit, and for us to talk ourselves into running cameras where we always run cameras, and setting stands where we always set stands, but don't do that. Go scout this winter with a plan, drop plenty of way points, mark your tracks, think about the spots you don't go to during the season, ask yourself why they use this trail, and then walk it to see what

you can come up with. Go explore. We often get so locked up in the idea of being super conservative with our presence in the woods that we hold ourselves back under the guise of b being wise old deer hunters. Now that may hold some water in the season or the immediate preseason. And keep in mind, I said may, because I hunt public land all the time, and myself and the other hunters out there, of which there are often many, don't seem all that concerned with maintaining sanctuaries.

And on that ground, there are big deer to be found and hunted, even where they get bumped around a lot. So even if you don't believe that, I don't care, because it doesn't matter when it comes to winter scouting. You can go deep into every nook and cranny and figure out a hell of a lot about what the bucks did last fall, and that can inform your summer scouting decisions and your fall hunting plans, and it really should.

So do that and then come back next week because I'm going to talk about the changing landscape of drawing all kinds of hunting tags from turkeys to deer to elk in what that means for you. If you ever want to travel to hunt again, that's it. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First. I want to thank

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