The trigger for me came on November 4, 2017, the morning that I shot a buck from a tree stand on the public ground about 1/2 mile South of my property line. As we tracked that buck for most of the day we followed a huge ridge that lead down to a small lake on the DNR property that is South of mine. That ridge contained more deer sign than anywhere else that we have been down there. From rubs and scrapes to deer beds and pounded trials. I've owned this property for 6 years and I had never set foot on that ridge before. As I spent more time thinking about it, other than studying aerial maps and walking to the few locations that we have put tree stands, I really had no clue where deer bed and feed around our property or how they travel between.
During late season, I actually did some walking around with my muzzleloader during a couple of morning hunts so that I could start scouting as I hunted. Our first official scouting trip was February 24 - 25. I had spent countless nights in my recliner at home studying aerial maps to decide where we should start. A storm that came through early Saturday morning left the roads coated with ice. Luckily the roads that I take down were well treated and just wet, but dad ended up delaying his trip down until temperatures increased to above freezing. I spent 5 hours out walking/scouting prior to dad's arrival and covered a lot of areas closer to our property. I also put up a couple of trail cameras on areas of my property that I haven't had cameras before. It was a miserable 5 hours with rain drizzle and everything coated in ice but I loved every minute of it.
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| Following a deer trail on a ridge about 1/4 mile west of my property |
After dad arrived we walked for a couple of more hours before heading into town for mass and a stop at Happy Joe's for dinner. Both of us were looking forward to dryer and more pleasant conditions on Sunday.
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| Time to replenish all of those burned calories |
Sunday morning greeted us with a beautiful morning as promised. We covered a lot of ground before lunch including the ridge from November 4th mentioned earlier in this post. We also managed to spook deer out of a bedding area that I had identified the previous day. Better yet, I had marked them as beds for a southwest wind, which is what we had that day.
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| One of many large rubs that we came across |
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| Not the end of the earth, but pretty close |
After lunch it was time to break out the bow and shoot some arrows. I haven't shot a lot since last season so I spent some time shooting at 20 yards and 30 yards. By the end I was very happy with my groups out to 30, but definitely need a lot of practice during the off season to maintain form and continue to improve. We then headed out to scout a very large and deep drainage that starts at the northeast corner of my property. I would say that we saved the worst for last as I was very disappointed in the deer sign and with how wide open the woods were all the way down through that drainage ditch. Although at the end I was still happy that we took the time to scout it because it gave us a large area to cross off the map for future stand locations.
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| Rock ledge with waterfall |
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| Surrounded by steep and muddy ridges |
As you can imagine, we were getting tired and decided to head for home in the early evening. In addition to the 2 cameras that I put on my property, I put 2 cameras up on the public ground to scout out potential stand locations. My plan is to move those cameras to different locations and leave them for a month at a time all the way up to next hunting season. This should help us decide where to put tree stands next year.
It was a very successful trip and I look forward to doing more scouting throughout the off season. One tool that I used heavily while we were scouting was Google Maps on my cell phone. Using GPS, I was able to mark deer trails, deer beds, potential stand sites, rubs and scrapes, along with any other features that I found important. With that information I was able to come back and evaluate more on my laptop at home. This proved extremely valuable because it is easy to lose track of exactly where we were and it would have been impossible to remember everything that we found along the way.
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| Snapshot of the area that we scouted |
My next trip is planned for March 23 - 24 and I'm really exited to check the cameras and get started on off season work. Although we don't have any large projects on the list this year, there is a VERY long list of small items that we want to accomplish.
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